Obama’s Election Brings Joy to…White Supremacists?!

By MATT KENNARD, Columnist

Aside from Republicans, you might expect the American community most piqued by the election of Barack Obama would be white supremacists. There is surely no harsher blow to a single-issue political program of racism than the ascension of a black man to the highest office of the land. It’s like a hardened communist watching Milton Friedman elected Dear Leader in the Soviet Union, or Ariel Sharon taking over the Palestinian Liberation Organization. There is no way back for a movement so harshly served; it’s merely time to pack up, accept it’s over and move on.

Or so you would think.

In the increasingly surreal U.S. political landscape, white supremacists have actually greeted the election of the first black president not as the death knell of their cause, but a historic leap forward. “I don’t see anything but very positive things coming out of it,” says Tom Metzger, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who now runs an outfit called White Aryan Resistance (or W.A.R., for short). “We don’t have to do much, everything is going sour; the economy is getting worse and worse,” he tells TakingBackPolitics.com. “I don’t think we have to do much more than sit in and be aware of what is going on and train because the government is eating itself.”

And not only is the American Nazi happy about his first black president, but he believes it occasions the way for dialogue with, of all things, the left. “We are becoming more like leftists, and leftists are coming more into agreement with us on race,” he says. “I actually agree with Ralph Nader on economics. Though he’s not a racist, I think politics is going to change a lot over the next few years, dumping of old left and old right.”

But for unbridled joy at Obama’s win you can’t beat August Kreis III, the fiery leader of the Aryan Nations, a Hitler-worshipping outfit out of South Carolina. “I can actually tell you it was the best thing that happened to our movement in the United States ever,” he says breathlessly. In fact, he even wants this new wave of pinko tolerance to spread overseas. “I’d like to see it happen in the UK, but in your case, a Muslim should be elected, because that will do something to get people off their fat asses.”

But it’s not just getting people off their fat asses (less of those in the UK) that has emboldened the American neo-Nazi movement; now white supremacists finally feel that one of their own is the president. “Obama is a racist down deep and his wife is even more,” says Metzger. “It would be better for him if he now said, ‘Hey guys! Fooled you! I’m a racist!’ and I would respect that.”

Erich Gliebe, who runs the biggest neo-Nazi group in the U.S., National Alliance, agrees. “As far as I know, John McCain is not a racist,” he says. “But Obama, he is an outright racist. He was part of a racist church, he had a racist pastor. At least he has that.”

Whether Obama is a racist or not, doesn’t this election render white supremacists in the U.S. irrelevant?

“No, actually it shakes people out of their slumber,” says Gliebe. “I think a majority of Americans still want racial segregation. There are tens of millions of people who would prefer only to marry other whites, and to send their kids to white-only schools.”

I have to remind myself that the first black president has just been elected with a large percentage of white voters. Gliebe pauses when I remind him, too. “Well, people voted for Obama because of white guilt,” he says after an awkward hiatus. “They were made to feel guilty! People were afraid of voting for McCain because they feared being called a racist!”

I refrain from mentioning that the U.S. has a secret ballot because, by now, appeals to logic are futile. Barack Obama, first black president the toast of the white supremacists. Unlikely, but true. Only in America.

Matt Kennard can be reached at MattKennard@gmail.com.

The White House on Election Night

By TOMÁS DINGES, Correspondent

All Tuesday Nov. 4, the television shots of the U.S. capitol were poor. Mist and drizzle obscured the ideal backdrop for what was seen by many as a defining presidential election in American history.

But at a little past 11 p.m. EST it didn’t matter what the city looked like. Barack Obama had been declared the president-elect of the United States. The streets of Georgetown began to flow with ecstatic young supporters. The neighborhood once derided by John McCain as the too frequent host of elite cocktail parties was now a conduit for a different sort of energy. Trailed by honking taxicabs, some weighted with passengers whose limbs flailed out the windows, and their predominately immigrant and black drivers, young people from Georgetown University, dressed in sweatpants and tight jeans, flip-flops and stilettos, marched on M St. chanting, “Yes we did, yes we did!”

Revolution was in the streets. These kids, many just 18 years old, may have thought that they were the ones who created it. Between 10 and 14 years old when George W. Bush was first elected, and gradually alienated by his reaction to 9/11 and his handling of the Iraq War, many had been passionately and personally involved with the election.

Inside a television studio on M Street, a twenty-four-year-old hockey player turned teleprompter operator checked CNN’s electoral map as he guided the moderator for ARD, Germany’s most-watched news network, through his almost 100 segments of election night coverage. Virginia’s numbers were against Obama and he was angry. “I worked so hard there,” he said. His updated vote counts varied by hundreds of votes. The channel’s political commentators began to ask him for input.

Outside, kids continued to flow by, jubilant. Tall, short, athletic, overweight, statuesque, humble, they walked, and then they ran. Some had no idea where they were going. They were just following the crowd. Others knew. M Street spills into Pennsylvania Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue leads to the White House.

Along the way, 51st State Tavern blared MSNBC as a clean-shaven young man wearing a navy blue suit walked out.

A Frenchman from Paris walked in. He asked if you had to specify what beer you wanted and whether you tip the bartender. He had arrived the Friday before to work in TV production. He got two lagers and repeated how lucky his timing was. He was 200 pages into Obama’s book, “Dreams From My Father.”

The U.S., he said, is capable of electing a black man precisely because of our history of immigration and racism. France isn’t ready yet. The immigration in France is just beginning, he said, and most French have not spent any time with a Muslim or an Arab.

“We are the first generation that grew up with Arabs,” said the thirty-year-old. “I think that change will come. Maybe not soon, but it will come,” he said as he slowly drank his beer.

In front of the International Monetary Fund, the subject of furious protests by disenfranchised young people in 2000, a private security guard gave high-fives to passersby.

Waves of students seemed to roll back through the groups going to the White House, hugging, high-fiving and chanting.

A stern-faced cop and his companion in front of the old executive building were the first indication of a limited police presence.

The crowd began to come together and we dove into the teeming masses on the glistening street in front of the glowing White House. Thousands of people had accumulated, many young. Later, the crowd became more diverse in age and race.

“Grace Kohn said you can suck my dick Bush,” said Kohn, a student. Outgoing President George W. Bush had celebrated his wife’s birthday with coconut cake and a gift of earrings that night inside the White House.

Alex Rice, an 18-year-old from George Washington University took a different tack. “I love Obama and support this country,” he said. His disillusionment with Bush came when he was 13, he said, when the United States went to war with Iraq. “Finally we have a president that represents us.” There were chants of “U-S-A.”

The Frenchman saw his first American flag draped across the bare back of a bicycle rider. It was one of a few there. He was surprised. The French flag was a common site during group events, but, after years of representing national pride, it became a symbol of racist nationalism with the campaign by Jean Marie LePen. It became a regular symbol of hyper-nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment when waved at football games. But leading up to the election of Sarkozy, that nationalism began to change to suit the times. The people reclaimed it, ironically by the political posturing of Sarkozy.

It was the political posturing of the Republican party that in the end drove Dana Mozie, “the first hip-hop producer for a sitting president,” to the Obama party that night at The Park on Fourteenth, and then, alone, to the White House.

A hip-hop producer in the early 90s for the group Salt-n-Pepa, he helped bring hip-hop to mainstream America. Starting in 2000, he worked inside the White House under Bush on so-called outreach efforts to the black community. He emerged from those experiences, as did other “guys like me who were surrogates,” disillusioned.

“Republicans never would go to the ghetto,” he said, and as a result would never get the black vote. With Obama campaigning in poor black neighborhoods he noted something special in this candidate.

Still it was difficult for this black candidate to get elected. “One drop of black blood and it costs $670 million,” said Mozie, referring to the cost of the Obama campaign.

But now, the Obama candidacy allows for the “race card” to be thrown out, and “allows for a real sense of inclusiveness,” in America, he said.

The rain had stopped for a while now and Mozie, a dapper man around forty, put his umbrella down and looked wide-eyed at the people who continued to flow past.

“I thought it was a moment for black people, but it tapped something in other people too,” he said.

Mozie had been to the 54th and the 55th inaugurations, but, he said emphatically, “this is the original inaugural parade.”

People continued to squeeze through the tightening crowd on Pennsylvania Avenue. “America is back,” someone said. The fancier election night parties began to spill forth their participants near 1 a.m. Many paused in astonishment before entering the raucous crowd.

“Obama didn’t just change the party,” said Mozie, “he changed the paradigm.”

Tomás Dinges can be reached at tdinges@gmail.com.

Elizabeth Edwards On Health Care

By EUGENE MULERO, Correspondent

Most political scientists agree senior citizens are the kingmakers in national elections. And, for much of the campaign, those 65 and older eluded Barack Obama’s steady sweep across the country, especially in the swing states of Florida and Pennsylvania. But in the final stretch Sen. John McCain found it difficult to keep this older demographic, which eventually leaned toward the Obama column. One of the reasons this happened, according to some experts, was that voters found Obama’s health care proposal more agreeable than McCain’s. Health care has always been one of the leading priorities for seniors.

A week before the election, Elizabeth Edwards was at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., addressing an audience of nearly 300 on health care, her cancer and Obama’s plan. She said she took on this role because the issue had taken a “back seat” during the campaign. The financial crisis and the wars in the Middle East had eclipsed the matter. But, she explained, “the financial crisis would be solved through health care” reform.

After her husband dropped out of the presidential race, Edwards became one of the ambassadors of Obama’s health care plan, which called for, among other things, universal coverage by 2012.

“Sometimes you get politicians who dig their feet into the sand and aren’t willing to listen to another voice. That’s not the case with Senator Obama,” she told National Journal On Air. “I think that’s a very encouraging sign about him.”

Edwards would not confirm rumors that she would have an active role in the Obama administration. Sources have told National Journal on background that Edwards would be called on to join the new administration.

Edwards, a Center for American Progress senior fellow, was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2004. Two years later, she wrote “Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength from Friends and Strangers,” a book about her son’s death and her battle with cancer. Then, in the spring of 2007, she announced her cancer had returned, and in a 60 Minutes interview she said doctors told her the cancer was treatable but not curable.
Mammograms are recommended for women beginning at 40, earlier if there are risk factors or a history of cancer in the family. Overall, she advocates a greater emphasis on prevention.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the Congressional Budget Office’s former director, headed McCain’s health care team. Holtz-Eakin could not be more different than Edwards. He seemed uncharismatic, and too much of a suit-and-tie Washington insider. Holtz-Eakin pushed McCain’s proposal, which focused less on maintaining the employer-based health care system than on giving individual incentives to buy insurance. Edwards criticized McCain’s plan for relying heavily on insurance companies, which she said were being shortsighted about costs.

“In response to me, [McCain] added a new section [to his health care plan] which was to put people with pre-existing conditions in high-risk pools,” Edwards told National Journal On Air.

Edwards dismissed comments from the audience at the George Washington University forum that consumers should be making their medical decisions without government support, stressing that the issue is much more complicated.

“It’s a moral imperative,” she said. “It’s immoral to know that [the health care system] is disadvantaging good people and not do anything about it.”

Eugene Mulero may be reached at eugene.mulero@gmail.com.

Elephants in the Room: Hip-Hop Republicans Speak Out

By JERRY LAGUERRE, Editor

The term Hip-Hop Republican is one some would consider the definitive oxymoron. Hip-Hop is young, urban and cutting edge. The Republican Party … not so much. So upon first hearing the term several months ago on CNN.com, I almost fell off my chair. Were these people for real or was this some Saturday Night Live spoof?

Sure enough, it was real. It was as if I discovered that unicorns or mermaids existed. I had to find out who they were and how on earth could they infuse the message of hip-hop with the ideals of the Republican Party.

I honestly do subscribe to the theory of never judging a book by its cover. But to be perfectly honest, I have to admit sometimes I slip and find myself prejudging. However, it’s at those moments that something happens that will remind me why I should never, EVER jump to conclusions.

There are about 500 strong (with an age range from about 20-45) who associate with this movement in some form, gathered largely through social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. With their numbers growing and their philosophy and message gaining respect, Hip-Hop Republicanism seems to be just scratching the surface of its potential.

My initial reaction as a young black Democrat is something that the people of the Hip-Hop Republican movement deal with on a regular basis.

“They think we’re frauds. They think there’s no way you can be a true hip-hop head and a Republican,” said Lenny McAllister, a 36-year-old community volunteer from North Carolina who is firmly entrenched in Republican activism and a contributor to hiphoprepublican.com.

After talking with Lenny about the blog, I understood that it was more than just a term, more than just music. The ideology of Hip-Hop Republicanism goes way beyond beats, rhymes and traditional Republican themes. It speaks more to how the Hip-Hop generation views the world.
“They view race differently. They view gender differently. They view limitations differently. They view the box as being something you can regularly jump in and out of it. You don’t have certain rules that other generations felt themselves having,” McAllister explained. “As a matter of fact you look at the youth generation throughout American history, it was generally those movements, especially the last 75 years that changed the dynamic of how America engaged.”

After interviewing McAllister, who does a weekly spot on “Fox News Rising” in Charlotte, N.C., and talking to Richard Ivory (who founded the blog about four years ago), I noticed a driving force in both men that proved to me how passionate they were about this cause.

Ivory, 30, founded the site because of former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele. While on the campaign trail in 2004, Steele centered his platform on urban issues. He received the backing of Russell Simmons and LL Cool J, and was dubbed a Hip-Hop Republican by The Washington Post. Steele was Ivory’s inspiration and in the years since, Ivory has learned that a number of young African-Americans also back the Republican Party.

“A bright spot for the Republicans is that most African-Americans under the age of 30 agree more on paper with Republican ideals than Democratic ideals,” said Ivory, citing a 30-page report from jointcenter.org, a national political and economic research institution whose work focuses on people of color. Ivory added that the reason why you don’t see more black Republicans is because of the stigma associated with the term, not because of a disagreement with policies.

There are 64,000 registered black Republicans in Florida, according to an Associated Press story published in August, and 3,000 black Republicans registered in Harlem, according to JoLinda Cogen, former Republican district leader.

Turns out black Republicans aren’t as rare as I thought. And even those who aren’t down with the movement are still tipping their caps toward it.

“Actually, most of the venom we receive comes from white liberals,” Ivory said. “The black community may not always agree with you, but they respect you once you’ve explained your opinion. Older black Republicans use to stay quiet. But we’re out constantly spreading our message.”

From being featured in publications such as, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, to radio spots for everything from NPR to Hot 97, a New York City hip-hop station, they seem to be popping up everywhere.

Their goal extends far beyond just letting people know that the Republican Party has a young, black bloc. They want to change the party from the inside.

“(Through our philosophy) we can bring about several changes,” McAllister said. “The diversification of the Republican Party, the inclusion of the Republican Party, the reinvigoration of the Republican Party within the core, energetic youthful voters (and using) free-market values and conservative principles to (address) the urban issues we face today. … (Issues) such as black-on-black crime … black under-education and underemployment in urban America. We can take a new approach and break the trends that we’ve been finding with Democratically-controlled city and state governments for the last 40 years.”

Ivory added that he never understood how some people could blame what they viewed as a white, racist government for their problems, but then look to that same government to fix those problems. “It starts from the community (not government),” said Ivory, who spends a lot of time working with Harlem’s underprivileged.

“Government can’t keep funding the same solution to problems that aren’t getting solved,” Ivory said. “I grew up in Richmond, V.A., and every year it was the same Democrats running the city. … Oftentimes the response is that people are in their situations because of racism and slavery. And I’m like ‘No, it’s not. Because why aren’t you in that situation?’ ”

Ivory and McAllister talk about how desperately change is needed in urban America. So I had to know, would either of these men be voting for Mr. Change, Sen. Obama? After all, they do share a common thread as African-Americans involved with community activism. And both men share an appreciation for the candidate’s charisma and ability to inspire.

“I support Obama historically. … But to me he’s too far left for me to support as a presidential candidate in 2008,” said McAllister, citing Sen. Barack Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience, record on abortion and his history of voting “present” over 100 times as a state senator. “If he goes up for reelection in 2012 or loses and runs again in 2012 and he’s more center, it’s a different type of evaluation process.”

“I always look at it as, if I had a daughter who was very ill and there were two doctors, one very charismatic young doctor who has a great medical degree from an Ivy League school … who came out of nowhere and is getting a lot of attention, and another doctor who has been tested and tried based on his experience, who would I choose to save my daughter’s life?” said Ivory, who is backing Sen. John McCain mainly because he believes the primary issue facing America is foreign policy, not the economy.

Ivory pointed out that history has been unkind to many presidents. “Bush initially talked about unilateralism and letting foreign countries be. … Obama may find himself in the same situation as Bush. We may see ourselves in anti-war rallies against Obama.”

Despite backing McCain, both men admitted to feeling conflicted about not voting for Obama because of what his presidency would mean for the country from a historical standpoint. But at the same time, they’ve chosen to vote their conscience, which is something I can’t knock anyone for. I also can’t knock a true grassroots effort because it makes me think of what American politics should be. Hip-Hop Republicans aren’t about assimilation, but diversification.

“The older generation of black Republicans wanted to look like the party. We want the party to look like us,” Ivory explained.

Not only do both men expect the movement to grow, they also see it expanding to where it is a recognized voice among the Republican discourse – despite the party’s current unwillingness to embrace the Hip-Hop Republicans and similar groups – highlighting the party’s historically poor record of reaching out to minorities.

“I can’t even name the minority director for the Republican Party right now. Republican Party outreach to minorities is sad. It’s just a sad, sad story,” Ivory said.

McAllister attributes the problem to the party’s inability to grow their image outside of the ’70s and ’80s – which has put the party in the position it’s in now: staring at the possibility of the Democrats controlling the presidency and Congress. He believes that had the Republicans tried to engage young voters and diversify its image years ago, the brand name wouldn’t be so weak.

So the Hip-Hop Republicans are doing the outreach the party has failed to do. Ivory believes that the reason why Republicans are failing at outreach is not racism, but a lack of understanding in terms of how to go about it.

“They’re just not comfortable talking about [race]. But they have a responsibility to bring in people who are,” Ivory said. He believes the party shouldn’t be afraid of change because it has always been changing throughout its history. His philosophy: Republicans have some core beliefs that unite them, but it’s OK for differences among the group. He went on to talk about the Hip-Hop Republican movement having many different types of Republicans from conservatives to libertarians. And that’s the point – more ideas will result in more solutions.

“(Hip-Hop Republicanism) is not a moniker. It’s not meant to just be cute. It’s meant to show a growing movement of urban Republicans voicing diverse opinions that will impact the Republican Party internally and impact our communities externally,” McAllister added. “This is something that’s not going to go away. And it’s something that’s for the benefit of America. … The message of hip-hop is always about keeping it real and telling the story about what people are going through so that somebody can be the ambassadors to help move people past those challenges.”

With an Obama presidency apparently looming, McAllister stressed the importance of the African-American community not to become complacent. And Ivory believes that an Obama presidency could help strengthen the movement because it would force the party to examine itself and in turn, hopefully become more inclusive.

“There are some people who say a President Obama proves that affirmative-action is not needed. That’s the furthest thing from the truth. … We have black youths that are given up on in the third grade (in our public schools),” McCallister said, adding the fact that despite the growing number of black mayoral and gubernatorial leaders over the last 20 years, the issues in urban America remain the same. “He’s America’s president, not just black America’s president.”

Jerry Laguerre may be reached at TakingBackPolitics@gmail.com.

Nonsensical Hitchens Has Become a Joke

By MATT KENNARD, Columnist

I remember the first time I read Christopher Hitchens. I wasn’t that old, maybe 13 or 14, but even at that young age I recall being dazzled by his command of the English language, his razor-sharp mind and the courage he demonstrated in unashamedly taking on society’s sacred cows – those institutions or individuals elevated to sainthood by popular culture for reasons often divorced from reality. Hitchens has dispatched Henry Kissinger and Mother Theresa with righteous ferocity during his career.

I had been bought up on a self-inflicted diet of George Orwell, and, as a kid, I remember wondering what it might be like to have a mind of Orwell’s caliber when talking about current events. Hitchens was not Orwell, but I trusted him in the same way, believed that he had an independent mind; that he would not lie if he knew the truth.

As an ex-pat British journalist now living in the United States, just like Hitchens, I still follow his career and writings with keen interest. He is now a big, bright star in the American media firmament, talking on endless chat shows and lending his writings on politics and literature to a host of august journals.

Back when I first started reading him Hitchens was on the left, but that wasn’t what attracted me to him. He used his journalism to take on the powers that be, whether they were left, right or center. He had a disdain for platitudes, for lazy narratives and baseless hearsay. He had written expertly on the criminal Turkish occupation of Cyprus, the subject of his first book; he penned acerbic polemics on the criminal U.S. war in Indochina; he vented against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Hitchens was never a bien-pensant on the left, however: he supported the Falklands War, and intermittently came out with shock positions that would offend his comrades. But even if you disagreed with him, you had to concede he was thinking for himself, and his equations had some equilibrium.

Hitchens is a different man now. His facile word skills are still there, his fearless attacks on venerated institutions, his quick mind, but he’s not serious like he was. His pronouncements make no sense and have no inherent logic. Instead of expressing rational thinking in cute phrases, he now, in the words of Norman Finkelstein, dresses up flatulence in bouquets.

I’ve been watching him during the 2008 election and his illogical and strange pronouncements have really been embarrassing to watch. It’s telling that the point when his political bearings went off-kilter was the same point when the establishment started to accept him with open arms. Now he is everywhere; you literally can’t turn on the TV without his brash private-schoolboy schtick in your face.

His position in the 2008 election is that you have to support Obama because, (a) John McCain is senile, for which Hitchens provides no evidence, apart from a few linguistic lapses, which are inevitable as the factor of speeches goes up on the campaign trail. And (b) Sarah Palin is a religious fanatic hostile to reason and science.

On (b) he is undoubtedly correct and any right-thinking person couldn’t disagree (probably she doesn’t even). But, wait. Hitchens himself voted for George W. Bush in 2004. Yes, the same president who doesn’t believe in evolution, wants creationism taught in schools, is against stem-cell research and acted like a zealot in the Terry Schiavo case. Doesn’t that qualify as religious fanaticism? Why does he suddenly care now about religious fanaticism when Bush’s pea-in-a-pod Sarah Palin is the vice presidential candidate?

The only reason I can think of is after supporting the Iraq war, he just doesn’t want to be caught on another sinking ship.

Just think about it. McCain is Hitchens ideological bedfellow:

(1) Hitchens says he used to be a single-issue voter on the threat of Islamic fundamentalism to the Western world. Well, McCain is probably even more hawkish than Bush (if possible) and wants to bomb Iran. Surely that would get Hitchens on board, especially as Barack Obama wants to – shock, horror! – talk to the leaders of Iran before bombing them.

(2) McCain, like Hitchens, had a religious fervor when supporting the war in Iraq and the surge. But Obama was against both.

(3) And Hitch, if religion is your problem, McCain is much less fanatical than Bush. Even McCain’s foreign policy is closer to Hitchens than Bush. Bush recently took the slave state North Korea off the terrorist list, against McCain’s wishes, and I’m assuming Hitchens’. Obama has said he would talk to Kim Jong-Il.

So Hitchens’ ideas are nowhere; he is scrambling to patch together his disintegrating platform and it shows. He has used Palin’s fanaticism – nothing worse than his previous favorite for top office, Bush – as an excuse to go against a presidential candidate who is actually in agreement with all his ideas. It’s cheap and see-through, but hey, this is Christopher Hitchens.

Hitchens nowadays is even too dense to have an opinion on domestic policy. Nowhere does he comment on taxes, or health care; he just doesn’t care. Why? Well, foreign policy gives his ego full license to wander off on macho rants about murdering scum fascists, but you don’t get any of those primal screams on domestic policy because it’s not some abstract fantasy about Good and Evil, about democracy and fascism or any other puerile oppositions.

The descent of Hitchens into some fat joke, the risible and edgy plaything of the American right wing, has really been solidified by his weird performance in the 2008 election. Conservatives in the U.S. have expressed surprise at his about-face, and this is a perfectly legitimate emotion. Hitchens disgraced himself by backing Bush in 2004, but perhaps, worse now, he has now shown himself to have no spine, his faculties of clear thought and logic have been jettisoned in clear daylight by not backing McCain.

It’s not tragic though. Hitchens is good for a laugh. Watch him on a show and he will be arrogant and rude, he will make funny one-liners, he will give you all the good branding he has worked on so assiduously. But that’s what he is: a stand-up comic, not a political thinker.

Matt Kennard can be reached at MattKennard@gmail.com.

U.S. Policy on Latin America Changing for Better

By MATT KENNARD, Columnist

It may sound grandiose, but I think it’s true. Right now we are seeing the biggest political shift in the Western Hemisphere since the genocidal thief Christopher Columbus thought he had arrived in the Indian subcontinent, but had actually “discovered” the (already discovered) Americas.

The idea came to me most powerfully when I was watching the latest presidential debate and the topic turned to the last remaining outpost of the U.S. Empire in Latin America, Colombia. McCain did his usual bluster: “So Sen. Obama, who has never traveled south of our border, opposes the Colombia Free Trade Agreement,” said McCain. “The same country that’s helping us try to stop the flow of drugs into our country that’s killing young Americans.”

Now, in a heavily doctrinaire public discourse in the U.S., criticizing the Colombian government is like criticizing Israel, you don’t do it, despite the despicable human rights records of both countries. You just don’t go there.

Knowing Obama’s acquiescence to the Israel lobby, I was expecting the usual formulaic response about Marxist guerillas, etc. But he came out with this: “Actually, I understand it pretty well. The history in Colombia right now is that labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis and there have not been prosecutions.”

Now, this is all true, but truth has never been a prerequisite for this election season, so to see Obama come out with it without being jumped on indicates a genuine shift in how the U.S. has been made to see Latin America. No longer, it seems, under a President Obama, will the country support any regime that subjugates its people and represents U.S. business interests. A brief history lesson is required to show how astonishing this really is.

Since 1823 and the so-called Monroe Doctrine, the Western Hemisphere has been designated by American planners as “our backyard,” a vast resource-rich expanse open for pillage and exploitation for the gain of the elite class in the U.S. and a handsomely rewarded quisling elite in the raped countries.

This dynamic has been constant and unbroken for two centuries.

President James Monroe obviously didn’t put it in these bald terms when he made his address to Congress on December 2, 1823, which forms the basis of this so-called doctrine. Monroe said that day that countries in the Western Hemisphere “are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European power,” which sounds like a good idea for the subjected peoples – until you realize Monroe instead gives his own country the right to take over from the European powers. “We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers,” he continues, “to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.”

He was telling the European powers simply, “It’s ours now!” Under this naked imperialism dressed up in fusty diplomatic language, the U.S. took Cuba from the Spanish in 1852 (the U.S. still illegally occupies Guantanamo Bay today), and then Puerto Rico from them in 1898 (which the U.S. still owns today).

As the European empires broke down completely after WWII, the idea of imperialism became increasingly untenable as indigenous movements removed their oppressors at a rapid rate. But as Europe lay in ruins, the U.S. was rising to its superpower status, and the elites weren’t going to lose control of their “backyard” during the ensuing Cold War with the Soviet Union. Occupations were frowned upon now, not least by an American population culturally averse to empires and imperialism. So instead the intelligence services turned to subverting any Latin American government that did not support American business interests away from the attention of the American people.

First went Guatemala in 1954, a coup against the center-left President Jacobo Arbenz who had the gall to redistribute land to landless peasants from the United Fruit Company. The CIA stepped in and installed a military junta and started one of the most horrendous civil wars in history that left 200,000 people dead.

Any country that elected any sort of left politician would incur a terrorist war of anti-democratic aggression. Brazil went down in 1961, Dominican Republic in 1963, Chile through the ’60s and eventually culminating in 1973, Nicaragua in the 1970s, and on and on. All the governments I mention were democratic, and many times they were replaced with a collection of open neo-Nazis, fascists and other dregs of humanity. It was all cloaked under the guise of the war against the “Evil Empire:” Soviet Russia. Much like today where Islamic fundamentalism gives the U.S. an excuse to do whatever it wants.

Millions upon millions of peoples were slaughtered across Latin America with the support of many U.S. household names: John Foster Dulles starting the Guatemalan bloodbath, Henry Kissinger backed the dictatorship in Chile, Ronald Reagan supporting the fascist Contras against the democratically elected Sandinistas in Nicaragua. These figures are all hailed as great heroes to this day in mainstream American culture, although not by the rest of the hemisphere, for obvious reasons.

John Perkins, who worked as an “Economic Hit Man” for a U.S. corporation for decades, has written a book exposing the type of work he did. He puts it succinctly: “Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is to do is to build up the American empire. To bring — to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government, and in fact we’ve been very successful. We’ve built the largest empire in the history of the world. It’s been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It’s only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort. This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.”

But even with this tragic history of exploitation and mass murder, I want to now sound an optimistic note. The Western Hemisphere — especially Latin America — is finally taking off the shackles of the imperial bully, and this time they will win.

No longer will democratically elected leaders from Chile to Bolivia to Brazil to Venezuela allow their sovereign nations to balk under the giant upstairs. When they propose economic plans to actually give the wealth of their lands to the people that live in it rather than rich corporations and exiles in Miami, they no longer take the U.S. trying to overthrow them with a shrug, they are ready.

In Bolivia recently, when the fascist paramilitary groups in eastern provinces like Pando massacred indigenous peasants and the pale-skinned traditional elite tried to start an uprising against the democratically elected president, Evo Morales, he didn’t stand for the encouragement the U.S. was giving. He kicked out the ambassador. And he also brought the governor who had incited the massacre to justice. On top of this stern action, all the newly independent center-left leaders of the Latin American bloc came to Morales’ aid at the U.N. They knew together they were a powerful force that couldn’t be crushed under the boot of the American government.

Hugo Chavez in Venezuela even followed suit and kicked out the ambassador there. And who can blame him? In 2002 when he himself was ousted temporarily by a U.S.-backed coup that put a billionaire businessman into power and suspended the constitution and democracy, the people of the Venezuelan barrios fought back; marching in their hundreds of thousands for the first leader that had ever considered them worthy of their own minerals. He had to be reinstated because the people of Venezuela were too powerful and alive to their plight to be raped again by another lackey of the U.S.
On top of this, the new independence is being entrenched through the new Bank of the South, which will gradually bring Latin American countries away from their reliance on the agents of Western governments, the IMF and World Bank. And then there is Telesur, a Latin American analogue to Al Jazeera, a continent-wide news network that undercuts the corporate media bias of the U.S. and their supporters in Latin America. These are important developments that will outlast any individuals, which is the kind of change that is truly needed for this new independence to be resilient.

There are a number of reasons for the U.S. losing grip of its backyard. First, this generation of left-wing leaders have learned from the past. They know about the dirty tricks of the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy and other agents of the U.S. government. They are aware that they have a constant battle against reactionary elements supported by the U.S. But in Bolivia, for example, the indigenous communities are equipping themselves to fight back; there will be none of Salvador Allende’s erroneous belief in pacifism. “If the right-wing tries to liquidate democracy we will fight you to defend civility,” is now the message.

The second important factor is that because the Cold War has ended it is harder for the U.S. government and their conduits in the corporate media to paint any politician who is vaguely left of center as an agent of Soviet Russia. Admittedly the New York Post, without shame, does describe Chavez – one of the most frequently elected leaders in the world – as a dictator. The childish invective against him comes from all over the narrow media spectrum in the U.S. But when they try to destroy democracy, like in 2002, the old Cold War lie doesn’t work. The left in Latin America are using this to their advantage by accentuating their independence from anyone and building alliances all over the world from Iran to China.

The third reason is that the U.S. imperial project is so bogged down in the Middle East — where support for dictators has been equally obscene — so they have in many ways taken their eye off the ball. It’s arguable that without September 11, Chavez would be history by now, as well as Morales.

The fourth reason is that when the U.S. helped set up Operation Condor — a continent-wide terror network — with their surrogate General Pinochet, they could count on the compliance of the security states they had helped set up. Now the tables have turned. With Fernando Lugo’s election in Paraguay, the whole continent is a left-wing independent bloc, so they can’t be subverted as easily and a strong alliance has been built between all the leaders, who now come to each other’s defense against subversion.

For the first time in centuries, down in Latin America things are looking up. Democracy, economic justice and dignity are returning to the continent that has been crushed under the U.S.’ boot for so long. This time they will win.

Matt Kennard can be reached at MattKennard@gmail.com.

Where on Earth are These “Polling People?”

By AMANDA KOCH, Assistant Managing Editor

I’ve been waiting around for a long time now. I’ve been waiting for my chance to take part in a poll –

a political poll, more specifically. I have never been asked for my opinions by a recognized organization and frankly, I’m a little offended. What qualifies all these other people to be asked extensive, sometimes personal and, as I imagine them, intriguing and thought-provoking questions?

In the Oct. 20 issue of TIME Magazine there is a special report titled, “You. A Voter’s Guide.” When I read that I immediately looked around me, perhaps someone on the PATH train had been asked to participate. Surely, that “you” they referred to was not “me.” ‘They didn’t ask me anything,’

I thought to myself insolently. Like all polls they claimed around 1,000 likely U.S. voters were asked to participate. At the rate polls are released during the election year I should have been asked my opinion ten times already.

My surly mood deepened after reading the second page of the writer’

s thesis on how I think about politics. I learned I am a rational voter, which at first made me feel superior, but that quickly faded to indignation when I read their description. Apparently, as a rational voter I actively seek out information on both candidates, consider the positives and negatives of both and evaluate their interests against my own. Pretty smart strategy, right? Wrong. Passive, frugal and intuitive voters are less likely to make an incorrect choice, meaning picking a candidate who does not reflect my views. I guess they think all that information I am actively seeking out will confuse me.

I did learn some things from this poll, however. I learned Republicans always win the votes of the richest individuals, except for that time the richest voted for LBJ, although I feel the need to point out that in the 1964 column all five voting groups were for Johnson; Goldwater had a very poor showing. I learned that Independents generally go for Republicans too, which surprised me. I learned that in the last fifty years of all presidential candidates, Nixon won the popular vote by the largest margin of percentage points, which actually made me laugh. Americans have such good taste, right?

And when it comes to the candidates and their running mates now? Well, single women hate Palin, but love Obama so much it’s almost embarrassing. Eighty-eight percent of Democrats would vote for the Obama/Biden ticket if the election were today. And so would 88 percent of liberals, which made me laugh again –

this time at TIME magazine for differentiating between Democrats and liberals. And who likes Biden? People who seldom or rarely go to church.

In the end, I mostly approved of TIME’s likely voters and their opinions. It seemed they were a pretty accurate representation of what people in the U.S. are thinking. I am still pretty pissed though, especially after reading the pop quiz portion and realizing 15% of the respondents couldn’t tell you who the current vice president of the U.S. is. Really, these are your likely voters, TIME? Apparently they didn’t vote in the last election.

I’d still like to point out, however, that I have never known anyone who was asked to participate in a poll, and when I read the qualifications I think I’m a pretty good fit. This makes me a bit suspicious, but I’m still going to patiently wait until these polling organizations come to their senses and call my number.

Amanda Koch can be reached at amandarosekoch@gmail.com.

Body of Lies: A Review

By TOMÁS DINGES, Correspondent

“Body of Lies” is a story about the dapper subtlety of the Jordanian intelligence service, the General Intelligence Department (GID) and the contrasting bumbling of an out-of-touch, impatient and ineffective CIA leadership that squashes good efforts by good agents.

The movie is a good story. Worth watching, if anything, to gain insight upon intelligence in Jordan, a country and intelligence service few lay people pay much attention to. It’s also a lot better than the other recent CIA flick, farce as it was, Burn After Reading, by the Coen Brothers.

Partners in fiction and in real-life, the GID have long collaborated with the CIA and allied with the United States. The movie is a film-adaptation of a novel of the same name. The author, David Ignatius, is a long-time columnist for the Washington Post who worked as the editor of the International Herald Tribune from 2000 – 2004. “Body of Lies” is his sixth novel.

Blessed or cursed by geography, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is bordered by Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Over his 47-year-rule, King Hussein has been a savvy diplomat playing countries and politicians to his benefit with regularity. Two recent biographies review his life. His foreign legacy is seen as pragmatic and non-confrontational, but pro-Western. He died in 1999, but left behind an intelligence service in the GID, or Dairat al-Mukhabarat al-Ammah that has often cooperated with U.S. intelligence services, most notably advancing a warning of imminent Al-Qaeda attack in the summer of 2001.

In this movie, the head of the GID is tall, eagle-eyed and wears tailored suits and silk even to torture sites, desert rendezvous (filmed in Morocco) and raids on bloodied terrorist warrens. His character is based upon a Jordanian official identified by a senior CIA official in a conversation with Ignatius.

This is intelligence chief as omniscient and omnipresent. With observational powers spread throughout the small country of six million, it brings to low relief the maxim that information is power.

While seen as a force for good, the Jordanian’s play all sides in order to maintain control and ensure their own survival.

The CIA agent is played by Leonard DiCaprio. An embattled young divorcee operating initially with a long scruffy beard and fluent Arabic in Samarra, he loses his loyal “indigenous asset” partner at the outset of the film. He is moved to Amman, Jordan. He receives little sympathy from his handler, played by Russell Crowe.

Crowe is a cold man with a southern accent and a curt directness that is like Dick Cheney. He runs violent operations aboard his yacht in the soft light of the early morning. He plots surveillance while picking his daughter up during cheerful after-school chaos at a private school in D.C.’s suburbs. He peers into Jordanian alleyways via a camera mounted on the flying MQ-1B UAV that broadcasts to his operations center.

The target for Crowe, DiCaprio and Hani Salaam, head of the GID, is a bin-Laden-like figure with an ego apparently greater than his tactical terrorist sense. After DiCaprio gains the trust of Salaam, they work together to develop surveillance of an al-Qaida-like cell in downtown Amman. Crowe runs a failed parallel operation, ruining that trust and blowing the operation. He is arrogant and forceful.

After a falling out at the Washington Mall, Crowe sends DiCaprio back to Amman. He is allowed back in by the GID, this time to create a straw terrorist organization (think scarecrow) in the region to incite and then eliminate the bin-Laden figure. The CIA relies on Saudi intelligence to eavesdrop and distribute information about the new terrorist group. The Saudi’s inform the Jordanians.

The straw organization was based upon “the famous British World War II deception of the Nazis described in the memoir, ‘The Man Who Never Was,’” according to Ignatius in an interview with Ken Silverstein of Harpers.org. The Brits used a “body of lies,” a decoy body cast out to the waters of the Atlantic with intelligence documents, to convince the Nazi’s they would invade from another place than they actually would.

In Jordan, the parallel operation being run by the CIA is actually surveilled by the GID. The GID uses DiCaprio, who gets captured as a result of an inexplicable, falling-out-of-character love interest. “Welcome to our Guantanamo,” goes the arch-villain as he applies a hammer blow to DiCaprio’s pinky finger. But, lo and behold, the slow, steady, GID cultivation of an asset leads them to the bin-Laden figure and saves DiCaprio from further mutilation.

The lesson: the GID’s methods are effective; the CIA’s are ineffective. This ineffectiveness will drive good agents away. Ignatius called it “seduction and abandonment,” a moral obligation to allies. DiCaprio would stay in Jordan after his mission, disillusioned with CIA methods.

The reality? I don’t know. Ignatius describes for Silverstein how Jordanians gently conducted interrogation while cultivating assets and accurate, actionable intelligence. But, his own paper, the Washington Post, wrote in 2007 that Jordan was actually a well-used waystation for captives of extraordinary rendition operations. This month Human Rights Watch released a 95-page report indicting Jordan for rampant use of torture. The CIA would capture targets and dump them in Jordan, where for as long as two years they would experience regular regimens of torture and interrogation. That wasn’t mentioned in this movie. Probably for good reason.

According to the New York Times review, Americans don’t watch movies that involve torture or politics these days (see Rendition, Redacted and Lions for Lambs). They will see Dark Knight, a dystopia driven by “ruthlessness, political expediency and moral bankruptcy,” according to the Times. This is part of what drives “Body of Lies.”

So, while it is true that politics are not overt, for it may have been too risky, the context of this movie is what drives it, even if it makes no grand statement in its telling.

Tomás Dinges can be reached at tdinges@gmail.com.

Tanking Economy? How About Tanking McCain Campaign?

By SARAH N. LYNCH, Correspondent

Remember when the Twin Towers crumbled and President Bush sat there in a grade school classroom, engrossed in a copy of “My Pet Goat”? It didn’t instill much confidence that he could lead in a time of chaos.

Well, these past few weeks have been the equivalent of a financial 9/11, only this time, the companies on Wall Street did it to themselves. But this time around, the American people got the benefit of previewing how our presidential nominees might respond to such a gargantuan crisis.

So far, it appears McCain is batting zero for zero. And if Obama plays his hand right, he may just have a shot of drowning out the Palin-mania that has swept over conservatives across the country and win this election.

McCain has admitted before that economics are not his strong suit, which is problematic enough. He demonstrated that about two weeks ago when he called for the firing of Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Chris Cox, when in fact a president does not even have the power to fire an SEC chairman. He also made a huge gaffe by claiming the “fundamentals of the economy are strong” at a time when Wall Street’s largest banks were falling to their knees. He made matters worse later when he said he was referring to the American people, demonstrating that he doesn’t really know the definition of “fundamentals.”

If that seemed like a bad move, it only got worse when he pulled a John Kerry and “flip-flopped” his positions, both on the bailout of AIG and the dramatic change in his policy position, to suddenly call for more regulation of the financial industry.

But perhaps his biggest public relations nightmare may come from the people he has chosen to advise him on economic policy – one of the biggest bull’s-eyes on McCain’s back that Obama can shoot at if he wants to win this debate.

Most notably of course is Phil Gramm, a former senator and fellow “de-regulator.” He’s the one who made the big mistake of calling Americans a “nation of whiners” caught up in a mere “mental recession.”

Phil Gramm is the man behind much of the deregulation of the banking and over-the-counter derivatives industries. In particular comes to mind the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, a piece of legislation tucked into an appropriations bill that essentially carved much of the multitrillion dollar “swaps” industry outside the reach of any federal regulator.

That bill is perhaps most infamous for creating the “Enron loophole” that helped the company escape regulation. But it’s now becoming equally infamous for exempting many other types of derivatives including credit default swaps. Credit default swaps are essentially bond insurance that one company will issue for a premium to another company as protection in case a borrower can’t cough up the funds. These financial instruments are traded in secret, off regulated exchanges and outside the reach of the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Unlike regulated exchanges, they don’t have the backing of a centralized clearing house to protect companies from default.

Credit default swaps were behind the collapse of AIG, which issued these insurance-like instruments to protect against toxic mortgage-backed securities, but couldn’t pay up when many of those debts went bad. And now, the very man who de-regulated them could become the next treasury secretary if McCain has his way.

Yes, things didn’t seem like they could get worse for the McCain campaign on the economy in recent weeks as company after company continued to collapse. The possibilities for attack by the Obama campaign seemed endless.

And then, it did.

Catastrophes on Wall Street got worse, and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson told Congressional leaders he needed them to give him the power to spend up to $700 billion to buy the illiquid assets that were poisoning Wall Street. He didn’t want the plan to have a shred of oversight, and both Democrats and Republicans cried foul.

In a very theatrical move, the former de-regulator announced he planned to suspend his campaign and flee to Washington where he hoped to help push through the passage of Henry Paulson’s unprecedented $700 billion bailout plan. He even threatened to boycott the debate for good measure.

But Murphy’s Law decided to follow him along for the ride.

He arrived right when a deal had been announced and sat in a meeting with President Bush where he offered few words. And then, after previously expressing cautious support for the plan, his own party turned sour and staged a coup.

Democrats pointed fingers at McCain, claiming he was to blame for the failure. He pushed back, telling reporters he was working the phones to get the plan back on track. (But he still showed up to the debate, and did not return to Capitol Hill).

After a long and tedious weekend, progress appeared to be made. Republican House leaders seemed more likely to support the plan. McCain’s chief Republican strategist Steve Schmidt even gave McCain credit on Meet the Press for saving the bailout by claiming he was critical to helping win more votes on the Republican side of the aisle.

Perhaps McCain was starting to turn things around. Maybe his connections to Phil Gramm would not seem so bad now. Perhaps suspending the campaign had done some good.

Then, the unthinkable happened. The bailout failed.

Its stunning defeat has made McCain appear the fool.

And the only person who could be more foolish than McCain right now is Obama, if he doesn’t take advantage of this opportunity to kill his opponent when he’s at his lowest point in this campaign.

Sarah N. Lynch can be reached at sarahnlynch@gmail.com.

Fannie and Freddie Pay Out

By CASEY HYNES, Correspondent

Members of Congress have notably been working hard to come together on the controversial $700 billion bailout. Perhaps equally notable, however, are some of the names that appear toward the top of the Center for Responsive Politics’ list of lawmakers who received thousands of dollars from troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Topping the list is Sen. Chris Dodd, chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, with $165,400. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama comes in second with $126,349. Leaders on both sides of the aisle have also received money from Fannie and Freddie, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with $77,000, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi with $56,250, House Minority Leader John Boehner with $67,750 and House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, at $96,950, according to the report.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain also made the list, with $21,550.

Casey Hynes may be reached at casey.hynes@gmail.com.

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