From Here to ‘Houla’

Those who are tagged ‘World Leaders’ are those who have two things: money and power.  Those who have intellect and have contributed to the alleviation of disease or have made life easier are called scientists.  Those who hone sensitivities are called artists.  World leaders call the shots.  The others are peripheral to history or rather historiography, 

We live in times where world leaders preach democracy, peace and justice.  We live in times where these same benefactors of humankind and prophets of decency and civilization are also guilty of unimaginable crimes against humanity.  George W Bush is a war criminal, it has now been acknowledged.  Tony Blair has not been named and shamed.  Tony Blair and David Cameron too.  Barack Obama who bailed out robber barons who caused a global financial meltdown and who incarcerated the victims who cried ‘foul’, the same man who Rev. Jesse Jackson called a war criminal (‘Those who own the drones are war criminals,’ Geneva, March 2012), was given the Nobel Prize for Peace in a way akin to someone being named ‘Man of the Match’ before the toss.

We got the ‘Houla Massacre’ in Syria, courtesy a media industry that went to town at end-point and scarcely murmured about all that went before, not to mention its scandalous myopia and shy-making when the authors of war criminality have addresses in Washington DC, London, Paris etc.  It’s all about ousting unfriendly regimes and getting the world to cheer war criminals re-christened as benefactors of oppressed peoples.  If you want to know the script, go to Page 14 of this newspaper. 

It is all about R2P or ‘Responsibility to Protect’, the 21^st Century name for ‘White Man’s Burden’.  And the ‘protectors’ can, if they so wish, bypass the worst butchers and swoop down on relatively benign polities.  Has happened, is happening and will probably happen again. And the ‘protectors’ can always count on help from within, for no country on earth has a population that cheers its leaders en masss.

Now there have been times when helplessness prods people to call for help, but help-calling in general although done in the name of ‘the people’ are essentially exercises in power-capture.  In general, it is best that people deal with the horrors that rule them, sometimes even elected by them, by themselves.  Even the strongest of regimes have weaknesses. No one is invincible.

This however is not about regime change but about resisting interference.  Strong states resist better, naturally.  Strong governments are more resilient than weak ones. 

There are all kinds of ‘strong states’. They need not be ‘democracies’.  Military juntas, monarchies, totalitarian systems and theocracies have proved to be as strong as certain democracies.  And there’s nothing to say that one type less popular than another, unless of course you happen to be an uncritical consumer of drivel dished out by Washington-friendly media.

But is Sri Lanka under threat?  All countries are and those (like Sri Lanka) which are reluctant to follow Washington-scripted policies are particularly vulnerable; and a threat is often more potent than its execution, Ksawery Tartakower, the Polish chess grandmaster noted more than a century ago .  We must also add the arm-twisting neighbor India into the equation, the machinations in Geneva and the veiled and open threats issued against Sri Lanka to get the full picture of intent. 

What does the domestic picture look like?  Bleak.  We have a constitution that is made to make dictators.  We have institutional flaws that no one is interested in correcting while those pointing out error have themselves benefitted from the same when in power or else have so aided and abetted spoilers (like the LTTE) to be taken seriously by the masses.  There is corruption.  There is power-abuse.  Checks and balances are woefully inadequate.  We can be thankful for the more-than-a-small-mercy of not having to deal with terrorism, but that won’t erase away the abiding anomalies, systemic flaws and the truth that citizen is not insulated by arrogant and thieving politician. 

All these, in light of what one may call the ‘Houla Doctrine’, are eminently exploitable by external forces who may appear to be regime-haters but in reality have no love for people or nation (unless as exploitable labour, ‘plunderable’ resources or convenient bases for military purposes). 

Two things need to be done.  First of all, we must be aware of the possibilities, the avenues that the interferer may take and the allies they may depend on.  Secondly, we must become stronger as a nation. 

The first is easy.  The second, tough.  Strong government is not the same as strong nation.  A strong nation is one that can make a government that is strong, effective and just.  And this, in spite of a flawed constitution, bribe-taking politicians and officials, a pathetic opposition, easily purchasable academics and media personnel, and racketeers masquerading as civil society activists.    

On thing is certain.  We are not Bahrain.  We are not Saudi Arabia.  We won’t be granted favours.  Neither are we Syria. Yet.  And that ‘yet’ is something that can be taken out of the sentence without too much difficulty.   

   

 [The Nation Editorial, June 3, 2012]

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After the election debacle, which way for the Left?

[This is the 8th in a series of articles titled 'Love notes to democracy' written around the time of the US Presidential Election 2004, when I was a member of a team of international election monitors, working in the state of Florida]

In Sri Lanka, in the aftermath of the general election in 1989, a columnist wrote an article titled “After the election debacle, which way for the Left?”  The “Left” referred to what is now known as the “Old Left”, those political parties which spearheaded the struggle for independence in the 1930s.  They were roughly two factions, the Trotskyites and the Communists, and had come together, along with some centre-left groups, to form the United Socialist Alliance, and were routed at the hustings.  Another columnist, supportive of the more radical (and to this mind the most progressive and “truly left”) People’s Liberation Front (better known by its Sinhala acronym, JVP), responded with an article titled, “Which way for the Left? Right!”

I remembered this as I was roaming around Miami Dade, Florida, on November 2.  I remembered this line, because there were three possible outcomes, two of which would be cause for concern, given a refreshing desire by ordinary people in the USA to ensure their voice is heard through the vote. 

Outcome 1:  the difference in the number of votes polled by George W Bush and John Kerry is so small that every vote would be fought over, every allegation of fraud looked into and all the niggling issues that are part and parcel of a patently flawed system would be discussed and debated.

Outcome 2:  John Kerry wins easily. 

Outcome 3: George W Bush wins easily.

I believe, in the interest of the future of democracy in the USA, Outcome 1 would have been the most desirable because it forbids the issues from being pooh-poohed, swept under the carpet and generally forgotten until 2008.  Outcome 2 might have persuaded the more alert and democracy-desiring sections of the population to celebrate the fact that Bush was voted out of office, while forgetting that the fundamental issues pertaining to exercising the franchise, being able to vote and having one’s vote counted, has not been resolved. 

We got Outcome 3.  I was troubled by the possibility of two by-products emerging.  One, the Democratic Party believing that in order to win in 2008, it has to re-clothe itself in the political colors of the Republican Party.  Secondly, the marginalized sections that had been mobilized in unprecedented numbers, would retreat into a state of unbelief, resolving not to vote because in the end their vote did not count. 

It is too early to say if either of these will happen, but I believe it is worthwhile pointing out the problems of these possibilities.  The signs are there, however, and in fact they were out there even before November 2.  The Jewish Vote.

The Kerry Campaign and indeed the Democratic Party have essentially abandoned the struggle for a more representative and fraud-free democratic system.  That task has been left to the likes of Ralph Nader, Cobb and organizations such as Moveon and www.blackboxboting.org and others who voted Democratic not so much because they were pro-Kerry, but because they were more anti-Bush.   

Noam Chomsky, referring to US foreign policy on Latin America, and especially El Salvador in the late eighties, once said, “the entire political spectrum in this country agrees on this…..” (I can’t remember what exactly they were agreeing about), and went on to say (complementing his comment by bringing his hands together, within about an inch apart from each other) “although of course the spectrum is this thin”.  There are many people, especially in other parts of the world who would laugh when Republicans refer to Democrats as “left”.  Sure, they are “left” in a relative sense, but the Republicans are so far “right”, that “left of the Republicans” is still way too far to the right! 

My friend Ayca Cubukcu, a graduate student at Columbia University put it best: “The Republican candidate is always going to be to the right of the Democrats, and therefore will always be able to pin the left label on the Democratic candidate.  So what’s the point in trying to be “right”? 

But this is the obsession of the Democratic Party!  Someone said that ideology had become a non-issue in presidential elections.  True. And what of the Left outside of the Democratic Party?  Why is it so reluctant to admit that even if allowing for fraud, millions of Americans in the United States have embraced Bushism, that we-are-number-one-and-we-don’t-care-for-world-opinion kind of arrogance is a significant trait in the cultural ethos of this country? 

No, the Left, like the Democratic Party prefer to live in the rarified territories of nostalgia.  Their politics is colored by and indeed motivated by a longing for a land that does not exist and probably never did.  If there is a Religious Right, it follows that there is a non-Religious Right as well.  The Left, however, has failed to obtain the other “Other” of the Religious Right, for if there is a Religious Right, logically there should also be a Religious Left, but no, the Left does not want to touch religion with a ten-foot pole!  They could for example, at least in line with the fundamental political sense of subverting the enemy, reference Jesus Christ himself to counter the bigotry that is mouthed in his name. 

Someone said, “It is important for the Left that Bush is defeated, because Bush makes the Left look ridiculous; once he is defeated they can take on Kerry.”  Makes sense, but I believe the people of the United States can do better.  And I believe that the Left can reason better.  Sure, Bush makes them look ridiculous, but not as silly as they make themselves look! 

They could find out why millions don’t vote and maybe they will realize that these people simply cannot identify with the likes of John Kerry.  Or Hillary Clinton for that matter.  Even if the Democratic Party reduces politics to capturing the White House, it makes no sense to act as though these people do not exist. 

After the election debacle, which way for the Left?  Right?  Not right, I believe is the answer!

How long will the vast numbers who have by not voting expressed a massive vote of no-confidence in the system remain silent?  What if, they decide to take matters into their hands and into their communities?  What if they design a politics outside of the mainstream and it grows big enough to so narrow the defined “mainstream” and make it obsolete?  What if Howard Dean, who is probably the only candidate deserving the left label, and who was unceremoniously dumped by the party hierarchy, decides not to take up the post of President of the Democratic Party?  What if the Left dares to ponder the fact that the most left candidate in the senate races, Barack Obama won some 70% of the votes in Illinois?  What if Barrak Obama himself contests as an independent?  What if the so-called Blue States initiate procedures to secede from the Union?  What if someone launches a let’s-not-vote campaign and agitates for a none-of-the-above option to be included in the next ballot, so that the United States and the world can measure the true political pulse of the country?  

Let the Left, self-defined and Republican-defined, sleep on these questions.  Let the Left awake.  Or decide never to wake up again.  In either event, the people of the United States of America would have gained, I believe.

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LOVE NOTES TO DEMOCRACY I: Observing the “minders”

Leonardo DiCaprio once related a hilarious incident involving the paparazzi.  “We started chasing them.  We just flipped the script on them.  That really threw them.  Instead of us dodging them, they were suddenly in a situation where they had to run from us!”

I remember a long time ago, as a graduate student in a PhD program in Development Sociology, commenting on this in a missive to my advisors.  I told them how it brought to mind the well-known painting titled “The Scream”.  This was roughly what I wrote, if memory serves me.

“Social scientists are used to investigating people, following their life stories, recording their lives.  What if the subject(s) began investigating the interrogator?  What is communities began chasing us and hordes of people with the image of “the scream” imprinted on their faces come running after us?  Where would we run?  Where could we hide?  I believe if such scenarios were necessarily part of the investigating exercise, we would become less arrogant.  We would be humbled enough to write more nuanced narratives or better still to give up the pretensions of narrating in the “this is the truth” mode.  Ideally, we would stop advocating and begin to listen; we would come out of the ivory tower and start recognizing community.  We might even begin to live a little, love a little.”  For the record, I was kicked out or facilitated my kicking out of academe. 

I remembered all this when my sister emailed me a few weeks ago and asked if I was interested in helping monitor the US Presidential Election.  Apparently, a Catholic peace group called Pax Christi USA, was looking for international election observers to come to Florida and help deter malpractice in the counties reporting untrammeled fraud during the previous election in 2000.  I laughed when I read the email.  My friends laughed when I told them.  Yes, flipping scripts is a laughter-providing exercise. 

Sure, a part of me was happy and indeed honored to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the good and honorable people in the United States who were humble enough to recognize that their country had a problem and were trying to correct it.  These were people who, like me and indeed like millions all over the world, had no illusions about the United States of America and were wont to chortle when their “representatives” touted peace, justice and democracy to the rest of the world.  I knew enough about political economy to know that in this increasingly and perniciously global world, I was as much a victim of US democracy or lack thereof as was the average US citizen and perforce it was as much my struggle as it was theirs to overhaul “their” archaic and undemocratic system.  

I would be lying, however, if I did not admit that my disenfranchised participation in the US electoral process tickled me pink.  It has been a week since George W Bush was “elected” (note the quotation marks for they are deliberate).  The more forgiving and less alert would say he was “elected for the first time” while the more discerning about the entire electoral process would say “he was re-selected” and not just because the system of the electoral college rebels against notions of representative democracy.  All we can say at this point is, sadly, “they say he won the popular vote”.  Anyway, it has been a week since George W Bush, let’s say, prevailed against John Kerry.  The Democratic Party has stopped dead in its tracks.  Without a whimper.  I have not stopped laughing, though.

I attended several “teach-ins” about monitoring/observing in Broward County, Florida, where the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or NAACP had worked tirelessly to educate and mobilize the marginalized and structurally disenfranchised African American community.  Literally hundreds of democracy-desiring people from all parts of the country had come to Broward County to help ensure that democracy-mugging of the kind that happened in Florida in 2000 would not happen again. A white woman from California, accosted me during one of the breaks and said, “I am embarrassed that you have to be here”.  That came from the bottom of her heart. 

Why should she or any other American from the United States be ashamed of someone “observing” them?  Why did Jean-Roll Jean-Louis, a fellow election monitor from Haiti be pursued by countless media outfits and asked “what does it mean for a Haitian to come to monitor the US election?”  Why was Jean-Roll so enthused about responding to this question?  The answer is simple.  When the script is flipped, all characters have to do a re-think, they are lost on the grand stage of political theatre, and in that confusion some home truths get articulated.  

What I will write now is not something the world, by and large, is ignorant of.  America of the US is not a democracy.  America of the US is not a fan of democracy and one need not have read Noam Chomsky’s “What Uncle Sam really wants” to know that the USA will support tyrants, autocrats, military juntas, dictators, despots, monarchies with as much vigor as it would support democrats, democracies and democracy as long as its interests are safeguarded.  This is why it is not possible to apply the analogy of a basketball coach need not be a good basketball player to be a good coach to the USA teaching democracy to the rest of the world.  The good basketball coach knows the game and is committed to producing good basketball players and teams.  His/her job depends on it.  Unless he/she happens to own the particular basketball franchise or has enough firepower to control the franchise.  The USA has the guns and the personnel (for now) to brush aside charges of contradiction, foul play, and inconsistency, in its democracy verbiage. 

What Florida 2000 did was not simply a matter of overturning the democratic will of the citizens of the USA.  What was tragic about it for that country is that it served to tear to shreds its practiced script.  Even if the people of Iraq do not have the power to ask “what gives you people the right?” when Colin Powell waxes eloquent about the virtues of “restoring democracy”, they can still laugh and speak the Arabic equivalent of “yeah right!” So too the people of Afghanistan, where George W Bush established confirmed warlordism and called it democracy.  Florida 2000 gave the people of all those unhappy countries the world over and especially Latin America where the US “democratic” obsession overthrew popular and popularly elected governments and established/celebrated murderous tyrannies, the right to laugh openly.  More than all this, Florida 2000 woke up the complacent American of the US, made him/her swallow his/her pride and admit, although unwillingly, that Malcolm X had a point when he said "This is not a democracy, this is a hypocrisy!”  The American Dream, he said, was for him nothing less than a nightmare.  Well, Florida 2000 was the nightmare erupting through the hard layers of myopia that makes up the psyche of Comfortable America of the US. 

In Miami Dade, Florida, the Elections Supervisor, after much agitation that included press conferences and rallies, grudgingly allowed some of us to enter the polling stations (carefully selected) for a limited period of time.  She sent “minders” to accompany us, to make sure we did not abuse the “professional courtesy” she extended to us.  I was not insulted, because that was not “new”.  The USA has always “minded” people.  It has never allowed other countries to mind their own business, but has made it the core element of its national ethos to “mind other people’s business for them”.  Yes, it felt good, minded or otherwise, to observer these global “minders”, even in a limited sense. 

Jean-Roll says: “I come from Haiti, a country where we have had just 2 proper elections, where your country sent troops to oust a leader and establish democracy, where the elected leader is deposed courtesy your government, and yet a country which has an independent authority to conduct elections, and where there is no confusion about the ballot card, where there is uniformity across the board.” 

And I say, “I am proud and honored to be a part of this important first step as the USA struggles to protect its democratic spirit, still in its infancy, and strives to become a representative democracy with free and fair elections.  It is going to be a long and hard road, believe me.  It will be a road that has to be walked.  I am glad that the people of this country have chosen to walk it.”  

[From a set of essays written around the time of George W Bush's re-selection as US President in 2004 when I was part of a team of international election monitors]

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Bending the arc of history

Gamini Gunawardena, forwarding an excellent analysis by Drew Weston on Barack Obama (’What happened to Obama?’) highlighted two observations.  The first, given below, reminded him of Simon Navagaththegama’s play ‘Suba saha Yasa’, he said, and those who know the story of what happened when king and his gate-keeping look-alike exchanged places would call that observation ‘apt’. 

‘ Like so many politicians who come to Washington, he has already been consciously or unconsciously corrupted by a system that tests the souls even of people of tremendous integrity, by forcing them to dial for dollars — in the case of the modern presidency, for hundreds of millions of dollars.’ 
My take on Obama or for that matter any president or presidential hopeful of the Democratic Party of the USA has been consistent from the time of the first presidential race I was conscious of, Walter Mondale’s attempt to deny Ronald Reagan a second term in 1988.  It has remained the same through Michael Dukakis’ failed bid in 1988, the Bill Clinton years, Al Gore being pipped by a single vote of the Supreme Court in 2000, Bob Kerry failing to stop George W Bush being re-selected by massive fraud, Barack Obama’s stirring rise to be the 5^th Black president of the USA and the same with respect to each and every candidate championed by the self-proclaimed ‘Left’ of the USA.  My question has been, ‘What is his policy on Cuba, and what does he have to say about the Palestinians?’ 

Democratic presidents might have been good for the USA, but they have by and large mimicked their Republican counterparts when it comes to foreign policy.  There’s nothing to be surprised about how Barack Obama has operated since becoming President.  He’s black, yes, and the fact has helped bring to the surface whatever racism that lies under the veneer of racial equality projected to the world by a diligent and well briefed mainstream media industry (meaning, much of it is pretty ‘out there in the open’ all over the USA).  The fact has been beautifully captured in a lampooning of Obama’s predecessor which has Dubya Bush saying ‘I f***** you all, but thanks for blaming it on the black guy!’ 

Sympathy on account of getting extra flak on account of skin colour aside, I have no tears for Barack Obama.  He is no well-meaning victim done in by spine-lack.  ‘Naïve’ is not a word one associates Obama with.  Neither is he lacking in grey matter, a deficiency many of his predecessors were not hampered by.  He had the words and he used them well to get to where he is.  Many believed he would deliver, forgetting that a single human being is not a front and that the White House doesn’t have room for more than one First Family, so to speak.  The people counted, yes, but only until the polls closed.  That’s when system kicks in and the rigid but strangely invisible structures  that shape policy marks presence.  Westen, above, has captured it all very neatly. 

More interesting and indeed educational for those who really want change and who must now realize that getting ‘the right person’ in the White House won’t set things right is the second observation, Gamini Gunawardena highlighted:

‘But the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans.
It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks.’

Westen plays on the Martin Luther King (Jr) line ‘the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice,’ which he claims Obama paraphrases as ‘the arc of history’.  According to the above description, then, the question arises ‘what really bends the arc of history?’ 

The internal contradictions of capital, as Marx might put it?  System collapse courtesy human greed that is blind to nature’s regenerative capacity?  Well, we’ve had the crisis of capitalism for a long time now.  ‘Late capitalism’ is a boring term now.  Capital has shown a lot of resilience.  It has shown, more than anything, an incredible willingness and capacity to unleash violence on all objectors.   The arc of history has bent and how!  And always in favour of the powerful.

Where does all this leave the vast majorities who have their futures decided for themselves by a handful of (white, yes) men (yes)?  They rise in indignation, they are ignored and if they become too much of an irritant, they are arrested, tortured or disappeared as deemed appropriate for purposes of sustainability.  How long can they do this?

We’ve seen ‘regime change’ in almost all nations.  Change has been predicted and its dawn has been cheered only for ‘same old, same old,’ to shut the door, often so softly that the cheering continues long after all reasons for celebration have been buried unceremoniously. 

Is that the fate of all objections though?  I am no clairvoyant and therefore I will not offer prediction.  There are signs that things are not as rosy as they used to be for capital and the lords and ladies who move and shake the world so its resources and labour congeal into profit.  On the other hand there have been such signs before. Reason to be pessimistic? No. 

When Barack Obama said ‘yes we can!’ the ‘we’ referred not to those who put all their hope eggs in his presidential basket but the people those who voted for him wanted out of their hair.  That’s what his incumbency has showed.  The bubble burst late for many, especially in the USA, but for those who have the slightest understanding of systems and individuals there never was a bubble to begin with.  It is cause for celebration for the end of illusion can be the beginning of reality and that’s where the struggle must take place.  That’s where we can and must fight.

We fight because what we see happening around us is illegal, unjust and amoral.  Can people demand from us a blueprint for assured victory?  No, because we do the best we can with heart and mind, hampered by our numerous frailties.  We fight because the arc of history does not bend of its own accord alone. It needs coaxing.  We fight in structures that contain us, limit us and also yield opportunities to re-shape the terms of engagement and alter the structures themselves.  We fall, but we can choose to stay down or stand up.  We see our comrades fall and die and we can choose either to opt for safe enslavement or be brave enough to take the risks necessary so our children will not be thus enslaved. 

We fight together and we need to fight together because even as we are put down as individuals it is a collective that gets insulted, humiliated and dispossessed.  Together we remake, refashion this world in ways closer to the collective desires of our hearts.   Together we break the unbreakable. Together we bend the arc of history.  Towards justice.  On all counts.

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