That really got out of hand fast!

In college, I couldn't resist taking the bait and responding to breathtakingly stupid opinion columns in the Daily Nexus. Case in point. As my readers (all three of them) can attest, I'm just a wee bit stubborn and have a hard time backing away from a political argument--er any argument, for that matter--even if it's a losing battle between two polarized ideologies that can only result in stalemate. Or ad hominem attacks (communist v. racist, anti-semite v. Islamophobe).

But after graduation, I didn't have another outlet for these wonderfully productive pissing contests. There was a serious shortage of self hair-rip or eyeball-gouge-enducing political fodder.

Then my endorsement of Edwards on Facebook precipitated an ongoing debate thread with a high school friend who also studied globalization but ended up on the opposite end of the spectrum. We took a long hiatus after the dialogue seemed to reach fever pitch around a "clash of civilizations"-type argument, and now we're back to electoral politics. He says he'll vote for Obama--he likes his counterterrorism expert--but he needed convincing that all this talk of populism is just to appease labor, and that he's really a free trade champion at heart.

I thought I'd share my response, since our conversations haven't gone beyond the confines of Facebook messages, and it's honestly the closest thing I've written to an editorial in a while, albeit an at times shrill antagonistic one. But that's how our conversations usually go--a jab here and there, but mostly gloves above the belt. I've kept it anonymous, though in the unlikely event he actually reads this, I'm happy to name names. For now we'll call him...Milton.

Oh Milton, trying to get my goat with some populist-baiting. Alright, I’ll bite.

No use losing sleep over Obama’s trade policy – rest assured, behind closed doors, he leans laissez faire. Yep, he’s just pulling the wool over the eyes of those poor jobless schmucks in the Rust Belt, the folks that have been hung out to dry time and time again by the race to the bottom. The proof is in the pudding (I'll let The Nation do the talking):

"...an Obama aide told Canadians not to take seriously the Illinois senator's criticisms of NAFTA"

"Obama backed the recent Peru Free Trade Agreement, and his 'movement' on globalization issues has seemed to be influenced more by presidential ambition than the commitment to workers here and abroad that motivates fair-trade crusaders like Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and Maine Congressman Mike Michaud--neither of whom has endorsed anyone in the presidential race"

And if that doesn't ease your mind, know that George Will has praised Obama's economic advisor.

Obama’s no Edwards, much to my chagrin, though I could see where you might feel like he’s taking a page from the populist playbook with his recent watershed speech. He talked about unity, which has always made me nervous because it smells a little too much like capitulation--trying to shake hands across the aisle with an unbending opponent. It also reminds me of Pollyanna sunshine and lollipops notions of colorblindness that wash over the very real experience of racism. But I digress…

Instead Obama’s speech was nothing short of a paradigm shift in the way he encouraged a frank discussion of race, bridging the gap by promoting unity against a common socioeconomic threat: “a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.” He placed corporate greed squarely in the crosshairs. I could see how that might make some nervous.

If Obama’s just spouting supposed populist claptrap about improving people’s lives, then I suppose it’s no different than the obligatory Republican deception that the GOP has middle class Americans' economic interests at heart. And I doubt Obama's just doing it to pander to labor. You know, it’s amusing to hear the free trade faithful decry the unfair influence of “big labor,” as if labor could somehow compete with corporate power in influencing politics. Last I checked, only 12% of the workforce is unionized, and Americans have a more favorable view of WalMart than unions, ferchrissakes. And anti-statists act as if they’re some embattled minority? Ha. For as much as free marketeers fancy themselves empiricists, they’ve always sounded a lot like another “embattled” faith-based force in American politics that holds onto a tired orthodoxy with religious fervor.

Phew, tangent.

Is it all empty rhetoric? I’m skeptical too, but unlike cynical fundamentalists who would conflate democracy with markets and would have every politician in their pocket, I’d prefer to think that we have a candidate who is genuinely interested in this “nonsensical” desire to address the needs of the many.

You’ll really have to make this decision on your own. And honestly, what choice do you have, since Republicans have failed to produce a worthy candidate? The American people have seen the impact of deregulation and privatization with the mortgage crisis and the catastrophe in Iraq, and if all this talk of “change” is any indication, hopefully this election will act as a referendum on the relentless corporatist trade policies that have steamrolled homeowners and robbed American troops and Iraqi civilians alike of their lives and livelihoods.

Aaand I'm spent. This ended up taking more time than I intended. But it's been a while since I've sparred with anyone on this stuff. Got me fired up -- thanks.

-Heather

P.S. About The Economist -- I no more believe that it’s an objective agenda-free publication than I believe that Pinochet's Chile was an “economic miracle.”

Banana boating the truth

Crooks and Liars traces tainted corporate contributions after today's news that Chiquita was being fined for paying right-wing terrorists in Colombia:

"Some of the same money that went to these terrorist organizations also went to the old Swift Boaters. Very interesting indeed...Remember - if you want to support terrorism then just give to the GOP. That will make sure you get off easy if you are busted supporting terrorist organizations."

Likewise, John Perkins explained in "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" how George Bush Sr.'s Zapata Oil purchased United Fruit. It's no secret how neoliberal politicians and corporations have plundered hand in hand in Latin America--it's a symbiosis in which one simply leads the way for the other, at the detriment of local livelihoods. No amount of presidential tours or photo-ops will change that reality.

h/t BoingBoing

What clash?

A global majority rebuffs Samuel P. Huntington's theory of an inevitable "clash of civilizations" along religious and cultural fault lines.

A poll of 28,000 people in 27 countries has found most believe political and economic interests - not religious and cultural diversity - are the underlying cause of violent conflict in the world today.

The Harvard academic's thesis struck a chord with Westerners looking for an easy explanation of global violence in the 21st century. The appeal of Huntington's dubious clash lies in its invocation of history, how it adds apparent depth to lazy pundritry analysis, and how it maps easily into simplistic, essentialist notions of the unfamiliar "other."

Economist Amartya Sen countered the civilizational approach, arguing that Huntington incorrectly assumes that people only identify with one civilizational system, that civilizations are monolithic, based mostly on religion, and that they will always clash. His theory rejects diversity, and is grossly confrontational. Edward Said called it "the clash of ignorance."

Akbar S. Ahmed, former High Commissioner of Pakistan to Great Britain, critiqued Huntington in the Spring 2003 issue of The Hedgehog Review:

Islam was singled out as a potential enemy civilization in an argument that was as deterministic as it was simplistic. Huntington's thesis dervied from established Orientalist thinking: "We are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of cilizations," wrote Beranard Lewis in 1990. "Islam has bloody borders," concluded Huntington.

Bernard Lewis, Huntington's predecessor, originally coined the term. During a career spanning many decades of U.S. foreign policy blunders in the Middle East, Lewis fed (and, with a recent inflammatory WSJ editorial on Iran, continues to feed) the neoconservative movement a wealth of revisionist history that conveniently rationalizes their expansionist endeavors. Cheney commended Lewis as a scholar--"...in this new century, his wisdom is sought daily by policymakers, diplomats, fellow academics, and the news media." His aggressive ideology for governing the Islamic world is enshrined by the "Lewis Doctrine," which consists of "a Westernized polity, reconstituted and imposed from above...that is to become a bulwark of security for America and a model for the region." "Freedom" from without acts as a thin veil for securing strategic interests.

In a White House lunch honoring the historian, Cheney beamed,

Bernard Lewis knows the greatness of Islamic civilization -- its tradition of learning and its towering cultural achievements. He refuses to condescend to the people that produced those achievements, and who have lately suffered such great torment at the hands of dictators.

But Lewis' selective reading of history betrays his Orientalist ideological prejudice:

Lewis' presentation of his narrative of Middle Eastern decline without any context is a ploy. His objective is to whittle down world history, to reduce it to a primordial contest between two historical adversaries, the West and Islam. This is historiography in the crusading mode, one that purports to resume the Crusades-interrupted in the thirteenth century-and carry them to their unfinished conclusion, the triumph of the West or, conversely, the humiliation and defeat of Middle Eastern Islam. Once this framework has been established, with its exclusive focus on a failing Islamic civilization, it is quite easy to cast the narrative of this decay as a uniquely Islamic phenomenon, which must then be explained in terms of specifically Islamic failures.

The conflict is not evidence of cultural superiority, the result of a fundamental clash of identity or ingrained values, but a byproduct of Western expansion and the quest for resources and capital:

Once Western Europe began to make the transition from a feudal-agrarian to a capitalist-industrial society, starting in the sixteenth century, the millennial balance of power among the world's major civilizations shifted inexorably in favor of Western Europe. A society that was shifting to a capitalist-industrial base, capable of cumulative growth, commanded greater social power than slow-growing societies still operating on feudal-agrarian foundations. Under the circumstances, it was unlikely that non-Western societies could simultaneously alter the foundations of their societies while also fending off attacks from Western states whose social power was expanding at an ever-increasing rate. Even as these feudal-agrarian societies sought to reorganize their economies and institutions, Western onslaughts against them deepened, and this made their reorganization increasingly difficult. It is scarcely surprising that the growing asymmetry between the two sides eventually led to the eclipse, decline, or subjugation of nearly all non-Western societies.

It's a relief to see that most of the world can see global conflict within the proper historical and political context, refusing to fall for reckless explanations that inflame polarizing tensions.

On the brink of a CAFTA vote

The Senate sends the free trade agreement to the floor with a favorable recommendation amid news that the Department of Labor withheld information on labor rights in the countries signing onto the agreement:

The Associated Press is reporting that the Labor Department kept secret for more than a year government-funded studies that could hinder the passage of CAFTA -- the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The studies had concluded that several of the countries involved in the trade negotiations have poor working conditions and have failed to protect workers' rights. The studies' conclusions contrast with the administration's arguments that Central American countries have made enough progress on such issues to warrant a free-trade deal with the United States. The studies were conducted by an outside contractor -- the International Labor Rights Fund. According to the AP, the Labor Department instructed the contractor to remove the reports from its Web site, ordered it to retrieve paper copies before they became public, banned release of new information from the reports, and even told the contractor it couldn't discuss the studies with outsiders. The Labor Department said such moves were taken because the agency had concluded the contractor had "failed to meet the academic rigor expected."

Stop CAFTA by calling your rep. In California, Lofgren, Eshoo and Davis are on the fence.
Get educated about the impact of trade liberalization.