OBAMA: Latin America Remarks Reaffirm Bush Policies

[magbana]

Senator Barack Obama
TC Williams High School
Alexandria, VA
Feb 10, 2008

SEE THE VIDEO
http://www.democracyinamericas.org/caracasconnect/ObamaLatinAmerica

Transcript:

I don't actually agree with Chavez's policies and how he's dealing
with his people. I think he has consolidated power. I think he has
strong despotic tendencies. I think that he has been using oil
revenue to stir up trouble against the United States. So, he is not a
leader that I admire.

But we can't, our Latin America policy can not just be "I oppose
Castro" and "I oppose Chavez" and that's the end of it. Because we've
been neglecting, (applause) we've been neglecting Latin America even
in our own back yard. We've been so obssessed with Iraq and so
obsessed with the Middle East.

In the meantime, China has been sending diplomats and economic
development specialists and building roads all throughout, all
throughout, Latin America. They are securing trade agreements and
contracts. And we ignore Latin America at our own peril.

So, I intend to visit the countries of Latin America. I intend to put
together a alliance for progress in the 21st century. We are going to
strengthen trade ties. We are going to talk about human rights.
(applause) We are going to talk about human rights and we are going
to talk about freedom of the press and we are going to talk about
political prisoners in Cuba.

But we're also going to recognize that over time what we want to
develop is the kind of relationship of mutual dignity, mutual
respect. We don't have, the notion that Latin American countries are
a junior partner to the United States, that is outmoded. We need to
be full partners with those countries, show them the respect that
they deserve.


MY COMMENT:

Senator Obama's remarks at TC Williams High School earlier this week about Latin America are a reaffirmation of the same old and quite destructive policies of Bush. First, Obama finds it necessary to insult both Venezuela and Cuba. Second, his statement of intention to travel to Latin America to talk about human rights and freedom of the press should be read as nothing more than a second slap at Venezuela and Cuba. Also, Obama would be wise not to hold the US’ human rights flag over anyone's head, especially when it comes to people of color in Venezuela and Cuba; as a Black man in America, I think Obama knows better. Finally, his declaration to engage Latin America with mutual dignity and respect is ridiculous because he so boldly violates these two values in his previous remarks.

And for a little more analysis on why the race is down to Obama and Clinton from William Bowles.

Observations from the front line

O-Bummer – the man without a past for a country without a future
by William Bowles • Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:04
http://williambowles.info/ini/2008/0208/ini_120208.html


Harlem, NYC — That both a black man and a woman are the ‘front runners’
in the ‘race’ for the presidency speaks reams about the desperate state of
the Union these days, not that the up-coming US election has much relevancy to
anything of import but the illusion that voting every five years is a
reflection of real democracy, has to be maintained.

And regardless of what the polls say, it’s obvious that the corporate press
are pushing for an Obama win, perhaps because the Clintons are vulnerable to
attack and also because Obama can be better sold as a ‘fresh face’, (no
obvious skeletons in his closet). Yet look at who Obama has grouped around
him—almost without exception they are from the Cheney/Bush propaganda team.

As for the Republican race, it’s largely an internal affair as it’s pretty
obvious that the power elite have decided that the people need a ‘rest’
from the Bush Gang (aka the Carter years following the Nixon debacle) before,
hopefully, getting back to ‘business as usual’. The question however is
whether there can ever be a return to business as usual.

So on the one hand we have Obama presented as Hope and Change to the public
whilst the reality is that he is bought and sold by the same power elite who
selected Bush (just a different branch). And on the other, Hillary Clinton, the
‘backup’ candidate, just in case.

Picking Obama/Clinton is a win-win solution, a stroke of marketing brilliance
as there’s nothing to choose between the two candidates, so whether it’s
Obama or Clinton who ‘win’ the nomination, matters little as long as one of
them does (any other alternatives have long been removed).

The important thing is that the populace are sold the idea that electing one or
the other of these ‘brands’ sells the idea of Change and Hope. Thus
whichever one ‘wins’ matters little, what’s important is the illusion
that by voting for either of the two candidates heralds a new Era of Change,
change from the disastrous rule of Bush and his gang of gangsters.

So what’s going on? Why have the US ruling elite taken such a drastic step as
boosting both a black man and a woman for the next president, an event
unprecedented in US electoral history?

The reasons for this abrupt turnaround should surely be obvious; number one is
the dire state of the economy and number two is the complete loss of
legitimacy, something all the ‘advanced’ countries are experiencing. So,
just as with the Carter years, they need the appearance of a clean break with
the past.

Furthermore, it reveals a ruling class in disarray and divided over what to do.
The Bush years, led by the alliance of the weapons, financial and energy
sectors and until recently, a totally complicit corporate media, are caught in
a paradox of their own making.

On the one hand in order to maintain hegemonic control of the global economy
through unlimited access to resources and markets, meant the projection and use
of overwhelming military power but in so doing it has undermined the economic
basis of the rule of Capital, eg the $9 trillion government debt, the collapse
of the credit system, itself the product of cutting social spending to the bone
and depressing wages, so that millions of working people whose consumer
spending kept the ‘wheels of industry’ turning can no longer afford to buy
the products produced, produced not in the US but in China and other points
East and South.

A closer look at the contradictions of deindustrialising the US reveals the
nature of the paradox (ditto for its junior ‘partner’, the UK).

In order to maintain the level of profit US capital was forced to move
production to low wage countries but in so doing they created another
competitor, China to add to Japan and the European Union.

The process has been inexorable. For example, starting in the 1970s, local US
production (concentrated in the North and North-east) first moved to the
Southern states then to Mexico and other points South, then onto Taiwan, then
to places like South Korea and then Vietnam and finally China and India,
creating new competitors along the way as inevitably, each move kick-started
the Western-style industrialisation of these countries.

Parallel to the process of the globalisation of production and distribution,
the financial sector has followed a similar pattern, aided by the deregulation
(de-criminalisation) of all constraints on the fraudulent scams dreamed up by a
host of financial whizzkids, all anxious to cash in on the cash cows of futures
trading, ie hedge funds and speculation in currencies and all manner of what
are euphemistically called financial instruments.

Ultimately, such fraudulent activities had to crash supported as they are by
the domination of the so-called fiat currency, the dollar, which in turn held
its dominance by being the only currency with which to buy oil. And as we have
witnessed, once the dollar dived, losing over half of its value in the space of
a decade, it makes the US economy even more vulnerable to its foreign
competitors.

In turn this has meant that the US has had to increasingly rely on its military
supremacy to maintain its ruling position, but without the economic power to
support it, military force is ultimately useless, short of Armaggedon (and
there’s no guarantee that in its final death spasms, US capitalism won’t
decide to take us all down with it).

Which brings us back to Obama and the US ‘election’, which in reality
amounts to little more than buying time and with no guarantee that a solution
can be found to what appears to be the end of the road for the capitalist
system.

There are of course those, on both the left and right, who argue that the sheer
innovative power of capital will produce a solution, normally of a
technological nature (eg, some kind of ‘fix’ for the climate crisis) but
ultimately, all depend on capitalism being able to expand—find new markets,
another revolution in production, destroy the competition and so on. But the
world is finite, there are only so many markets, only so many new low wage
countries that capital can relocate to in order to reproduce itself.

Added to this heady mix we now have the climate crisis, which I have long
maintained the ruling class have been well aware of perhaps for decades and
even hope that it will ‘solve’ the crisis of
over-production/under-consumption, and furthermore ‘solve’ the problem of
surplus labour without the need to initiate a Third World War (let Nature take
the blame and do the dirty work on Capital’s behalf).

The dominant ruling classes of the ‘advanced’ countries hope they can ride
out the conflagration and emerge triumphant into a world ‘cleansed’ of its
competitors (just as it has before). This is the ‘Plan’, but will it work?
Are they capable of forward thinking beyond the short-term ‘bottom line’?
All the indications are that they are propelled by the forces of capital
accumulation over which they have at best not only very little control but very
little comprehension.

Karl Marx, who in a sane world should be their guru and guide, has been
dismissed as irrelevant, yet the causes of the current situation was unpacked
by the Master over one hundred and fifty years ago.

The $9 trillion question is whether capitalism has run out of road and if it
has, what are the alternatives and even more importantly, are we in a position
to implement them?

The irony of the situation is not lost on yours truly. Here we are, at the
beginning of the 21st century, where the analysis of Marx are finally coming
true but without a revolutionary movement to carry out the transformation.

Thus we have reached an historically unique moment for which we too have no
solution even though we can identify the forces which have led us to this
situation, truly a paradox of global dimensions. No doubt in the fullness of
time, new forces will emerge, some of which we are already witnessing but not
in the so-called developed countries, the locations where they are needed the
most.

This essay is archived at:
http://williambowles.info/ini/2008/0208/ini_120208.html

Email me with comments, whinges and suggestions

[Judi Lynn]

1. Saving this information to study later, when I can concentrate on it. Looks very helpful. Thanks.n/t

[roody]

2. Me too. Thank you.