http://www.rabble.ca/columnists_full.shtml?x=54853

George Bush’s defeat is a global one

by Jim Stanford November 20, 2006

It is often suggested that one of George W. Bush’s motives for invading Iraq was to win a war his father muffed the first time around. Now, after his thumping in the U.S. midterm elections and Iraq’s continuing descent into hell, it is clear that George Jr. couldn’t win, either. The made-for-TV execution of Saddam Hussein (if it happens) won’t change that bitter reality.

A second, less obvious father-and-son irony was unfolding the very same day the Democrats won back both houses of Congress. Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s former revolutionary leader, was declared winner of the presidential election in that impoverished nation, on the first ballot.

In this case, George Sr. thought he’d won the first war: Mr. Ortega’s Sandinista movement was voted from office in 1990 (leaving peacefully, despite their caricature as dictators). This followed a multi-year program of destabilization and military intervention initiated by Ronald Reagan (through the infamous Iran-contra connection) and continued by Mr. Bush.

After 15 years of broken promises and economic decline, however, the Reagan-Bush regime change has come undone. Now the Sandinistas are back in: more cautious, and with a stronger democracy to carry on the good things they did in the 1980s (like boosting literacy to 90 per cent from 40 per cent).

In fact, it’s not just Nicaragua that slipped away under George W.’s watch, it’s most of the hemisphere. A left-wing tide has swept Latin America since 2002, when Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva first came to power. (Lula, unlike the Republicans, was just re-elected with a powerful majority.)

Only a few countries in the hemisphere still orbit closely within America’s influence: militarized Colombia, turbulent Mexico (where the rightist party clung to power by a controversial whisker), and (I almost forgot) Canada. James Monroe must be weeping in his grave.

These tectonic shifts are as much economic, as political or strategic. Indeed, it was the profound failure of the “Washington consensus” — a once-dominant doctrine emphasizing free trade, austerity, and financial liberalization — that sparked Latin America’s overwhelming swing back to the left.

Economics explains why other continents, too, have also drifted away from American leadership. For example, as U.S. voters went to the polls, virtually every African head of state was in China for a gigantic summit meeting on Sino-African co-operation. At the summit, China announced $5-billion in new development aid for Africa, a new $5-billion development fund, and several other initiatives. (Despite Africa’s catastrophic economic and health crises, the U.S. — with six times China’s GDP — sends all of $2-billion per year.) China has its own political motives, of course, but the African leaders — thrilled that someone powerful is finally paying attention — were grateful.

Within China and other successfully developing Asian economies (such as India), the influence of the U.S. model is also surprisingly weak. Yes, these countries rely on U.S. markets and investments from U.S. corporations. But in no sense do they follow U.S. policy leadership. Almost all of them do important things that American economists regularly tell them not to do. And due largely to their consequent success, Washington (shouldering its own $3-trillion foreign debt) can’t call the shots any more at the World Trade Organization and other international forums.

As for the Europeans, they couldn’t contain their glee at the U.S. results. Only Britain’s Tony Blair remains loyal — to share Mr. Bush’s lame-duck status, and commiserate on the difficulties of removing troops from places they should never have been.

My point here is not to kick a man when he’s down (although in George W. Bush’s case, this is awfully tempting), nor to suggest that the world will suddenly change with Democrats running things inside the Beltway instead of Republicans. It’s to suggest that something bigger is happening: something more global, and more hopeful, than the extended departure of one failed leader.

When George Bush Sr. was president, the Berlin Wall came down, the U.S. was the only superpower, and history was supposed to be over.

Today, as George Bush Jr. exits stage right, U.S. clout has rarely been weaker. The younger Bush’s destructive irresponsibility is one reason. But a deeper one is the utter failure of the whole model he advocates to improve the lives of masses of people — at home or around the world.

Jim Stanford is an economist with the Canadian Auto Workers union, currently on a year’s leave in Melbourne.

Americans are shopping while Iraq burns.

The competing television news images on the morning after Thanksgiving were of the unspeakable carnage in Sadr City — where more than 200 Iraqi civilians were killed by a series of coordinated car bombs — and the long lines of cars filled with holiday shopping zealots that jammed the highway approaches to American malls that had opened for business at midnight.

A Wal-Mart in Union, N.J., was besieged by customers even before it opened its doors at 5 a.m. on Friday. “All I can tell you,” said a Wal-Mart employee, “is that they were fired up and ready to spend money.”

There is something terribly wrong with this juxtaposition of gleeful Americans with fistfuls of dollars storming the department store barricades and the slaughter by the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including old people, children and babies. The war was started by the U.S., but most Americans feel absolutely no sense of personal responsibility for it.

Representative Charles Rangel recently proposed that the draft be reinstated, suggesting that politicians would be more reluctant to take the country to war if they understood that their constituents might be called up to fight. What struck me was not the uniform opposition to the congressman’s proposal — it has long been clear that there is zero sentiment in favor of a draft in the U.S. — but the fact that it never provoked even the briefest discussion of the responsibilities and obligations of ordinary Americans in a time of war.

With no obvious personal stake in the war in Iraq, most Americans are indifferent to its consequences. In an interview last week, Alex Racheotes, a 19-year-old history major at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, said: “I definitely don’t know anyone who would want to fight in Iraq. But beyond that, I get the feeling that most people at school don’t even think about the war. They’re more concerned with what grade they got on yesterday’s test.”

His thoughts were echoed by other students, including John Cafarelli, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of New Hampshire, who was asked if he had any friends who would be willing to join the Army. “No, definitely not,” he said. “None of my friends even really care about what’s going on in Iraq.”

This indifference is widespread. It enables most Americans to go about their daily lives completely unconcerned about the atrocities resulting from a war being waged in their name. While shoppers here are scrambling to put the perfect touch to their holidays with the purchase of a giant flat-screen TV or a PlayStation 3, the news out of Baghdad is of a society in the midst of a meltdown.

According to the United Nations, more than 7,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in September and October. Nearly 5,000 of those killings occurred in Baghdad, a staggering figure.

In a demoralizing reprise of life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the U.N. reported that in Iraq: “The situation of women has continued to deteriorate. Increasing numbers of women were recorded to be either victims of religious extremists or ‘honor killings.’ Some non-Muslim women are forced to wear a headscarf and to be accompanied by spouses or male relatives.”

Journalists in Iraq are being “assassinated with utmost impunity,” the U.N. report said, with 18 murdered in the last two months.

Iraq burns. We shop. The Americans dying in Iraq are barely mentioned in the press anymore. They warrant maybe one sentence in a long roundup article out of Baghdad, or a passing reference — no longer than a few seconds — in a television news account of the latest political ditherings.

Since the vast majority of Americans do not want anything to do with the military or the war, the burden of fighting has fallen on a small cadre of volunteers who are being sent into the war zone again and again. Nearly 3,000 have been killed, and many thousands more have been maimed.

The war has now lasted as long as the American involvement in World War II. But there is no sense of collective sacrifice in this war, no shared burden of responsibility. The soldiers in Iraq are fighting, suffering and dying in a war in which there are no clear objectives and no end in sight, and which a majority of Americans do not support.

They are dying anonymously and pointlessly, while the rest of us are free to buckle ourselves into the family vehicle and head off to the malls and shop.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-11-26-edit_x.htm

Editorial/Opinion

LLamamiento a la denuncia y la solidaridad internacionalista con la Resistencia de los Pueblos de Oaxaca!

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20061126-1211-mexico-oaxacaunrest.html

The violence broke out late Saturday after masked youths broke away from a protest march by about 4,000 people and began attacking police and buildings in picturesque Oaxaca city.

Police drove off the attackers with tear gas and jets of water from tanker trucks, then advanced in massed ranks to drive protesters from a camp at a smaller plaza two blocks away.

But bands of young people rampaged through downtown, pushing shopping carts filled with rocks and gasoline bombs.

Court offices in one of Oaxaca’s imposing colonial buildings were gutted by flames, and the gangs burned 20 private vehicles and attacked three hotels, throwing gasoline bombs at one and smashing windows at two.

Fires also damaged four buildings housing government offices, one university building and the state hotel association, which has seen tourism reduced to a trickle by six months of demonstrations and violence. Some of the youthful protesters looted several shops.

Firefighters quelled the blazes by early Sunday, but later in the day protesters set a tax office on fire.

Downtown residents watched in horror as buildings burned and streets filled with choking clouds of tear gas and smoke.

Oaxaca resident Josefina Quiros said protesters loosely organized under the leftist People’s Assembly of Oaxaca were spreading fear. “We are terrified of the APPO people,” she said, referring to the movement by its Spanish initials.

Making one of his first visits downtown since protesters forced state officials out in May, the governor viewed the damage and vowed to punish those responsible.

“All the weight of the law will be applied to those who have committed these acts of vandalism,” Ruiz told reporters, saying 160 protesters had been arrested.

State prosecutors said at least 43 people were injured. It was unclear whether that figure included 10 police officers and three journalists who suffered minor injuries during the confrontations.

Prosecutors said there were no reports of deaths. Marcelino Coache, a spokesman for the anti-Ruiz movement, said some protesters suffered serious injuries.

Ruiz earlier blamed the disturbance on radical groups from Mexico City. “These are the death throes of a movement that has already disintegrated,” he said at a news conference.

The unrest began as a strike by teachers, but mushroomed into a broad protest against social and economic injustices in this poor state. Protesters focused their anger on Ruiz, accusing him of brutality, corruption and electoral fraud.

A majority of teachers have returned to work and did not participate in Saturday night’s demonstration.

Nine people have been killed over the months, including freelance video journalist Bradley Roland Will, 36, of New York, who was filming a group of leftist protesters clashing with a group of armed men. Guns were fired by both sides, although it was not clear who shot first.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1128/p01s03-woam.html

Latin left’s latest victory: Ecuador

But apparent victor Rafael Correa is unlikely to become as radical or isolationist as some have painted him.

QUITO, ECUADOR – The apparent victory of Rafael Correa - a left-leaning economist and friend of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez - in Ecuador’s presidential runoff election Sunday is the latest triumph for leftist governments in Latin America.

"Hopefully, we will get much, much closer to Mr. Chávez," Mr. Correa said after declaring victory Sunday night.

At press time, three exit polls, a quick count, and official results from more than half of the ballots showed Correa with close to 60 percent of the vote.

The election, which pitted Correa against billionaire banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa, was watched closely in the US. Correa had promised to disregard a free trade agreement with the US and close down a US military base in the country. Correa’s win means Ecuador joins Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua, and Venezuela on the list of countries that have also elected leftist presidents in recent years.

But Eduardo Gamarra, a Latin American expert at Florida International University, says that while Correa will forge closer relations with Latin America’s leftist leaders, he is unlikely to become as radical or isolationist as his opponents have painted him. "[Ecuador’s] relationship with Chávez will be stronger, the relationship with Evo Morales [Bolivia’s leftist leader] will be stronger," Mr. Gamarra says. "But these countries have gone too far on the side of democracy and the economic side to turn back. Ecuador cannot think of closing its doors."

Correa says he will not rule out stronger ties to leftist leaders, but that their influence will be limited. "Chávez is my personal friend, but in my house, my friends aren’t in charge, I am. And in Ecuador, it will be Ecuadorians in charge."

He reiterated he would not restart negotiations for a free trade agreement with the US and that Ecuador could rejoin the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). He plans to call a constituent assembly to get rid of what he refers to as "political mafias" that he says have ruled the country at the expense of the majority. After Venezuela, Ecuador is ranked the most corrupt country in South America by the international watchdog group Transparency International.

A ‘new face’

Many are attracted to Correa as a new face. He is an economics professor who served just briefly as finance minister last year, and supporters say he has the willingness and ability to change the status quo, which has not served the poor well. According to the World Bank, the richest 10 percent of the population receives three times the income of the poorest 50 percent.

"Correa is a new person. He has no relation with any political party," says college student Andrés Pavon. "With Noboa it’d be more of the same."

But not all agree that Correa’s brand of change is best for the country. "His ideas are new, he wants change. But not in a good way," says Fernando Santos, a law professor at Las Americas University in Quito. "He is a clean person, but on the wrong track."

During the campaign, Correa’s critics painted him as a danger to the economic viability of the country. "Noboa is a businessman who believes in free thought and free trade," says Federico Perez, a top adviser for Noboa and a congressman-elect, as he multitasks on three cellphones in his office in Quito. "Correa is worse than a socialist, maybe even a communist."

Toned down rhetoric helped Correa win

Correa had been expected to win in the first round of voting on Oct.15, but instead came in second to Noboa. Since then Correa toned down his rhetoric to attract those who were scared off by his threats to default on the nation’s debt or get rid of dollarization. "His bark is worse than his bite," says Gianfranco Bertozzi, a Latin American strategist at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc in New York, who adds that Wall Street was much more anxious about a Correa win during the first round when his anticapitalist rhetoric flowed more freely. "[In the first round] Correa was sort of overly confident, in a way arrogant. He inspired a lot of mistrust in the electorate - one that is interested in change, but not interested in conflict at every angle."

Still, many voted for Correa because he promised a new economic model and social order for Ecuador and the region. "Not having a free trade agreement with the US doesn’t scare me," says Diego Arias, a taxi driver in Quito. "If we unite here in South America we can be a big power. We have a lot of oil."

But Correa will not find it easy to govern a fractious and volatile Ecuador, say analysts. Three Ecuadorean leaders have been ousted by street protests in the past decade - a result of not just inequality but factionalism in the government, says Adrian Bonilla, a political analyst at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Quito. That has made it hard to push through reforms.

"We are going to have the same scenario," Mr. Bonilla says, "because the structural causes of instability … have not changed."

• Ms. Llana is Latin America correspondent for the Monitor and USA Today. Wire services were used in this report.