People Before Profit blog

Thoughts from China: Socialism, a work in progress

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 23:22:00 +0000

BEIJING - I arrived in Beijing on June 25. My first time in Asia. My first time outside of the Western hemisphere. Though I had studied some Chinese, I was a bit overwhelmed at the communication barrier as I walked into a restaurant to order my first meal here. The menu was all in Chinese, with no pictures, and no pinyin. (Pinyin is the transcription of Chinese to the Latin alphabet, with accent marks denoting the tones). Nevertheless, after being here for two and a half months, my Chinese is slowly improving.

My initial impressions of Beijing and China were, and still are, complex. China has surpassed Japan and Germany to become the second largest economy in the world, and China's GDP will likely pass that of the U.S. in a few years. China's economy is a mixed economy, with the state controlling much of what Lenin called the "commanding heights" of the economy, but with a large capitalist sector, and with an enormous number of small businesses. While the state permits capitalist enterprises, including foreign companies, to operate here, the state retains the ownership of the land, and essentially is granting the company the privilege of using the land in the interest of development.

It is true that China is a developing country. It also does, however, have a very modern aspect. The subway system in Beijing is world class, and also inexpensive at 2RMB per ride (around 30 cents USD), including limitless transfers. In 1980, there were only two subway lines; now there are 14, with plans to build 10 more in the next five years. The new lines will be welcome, as public transportation in Beijing, while modern and inexpensive, can be extremely crowded during rush hours.

Crime is very low. I feel safer in Beijing than in any other major city I've ever spent time in.

The government in Beijing plans to raise the minimum wage by 15 percent every year for the next five years. Minimum wage varies by cities in China, but is universally low. In Beijing, it is currently about 1300RMB (about $200/month). Most workers make substantially better than the minimum wage, averaging probably about 5,000RMB. As an English teacher for a private company, I'm making about 12,000RMB (about $1500/month), on which I can live comfortably.

China exercises price controls on basic necessities such as food, and the cost of living is very low in general. One exception in Beijing is rent. My rent in Beijing is comparable to what I paid in Dallas, Texas, although my place is a little nicer.

In 2008, China passed a Labor Reform Law which grants workers some very important rights. Chinese labor law intentionally favors employees over employers. "Employment at will," so common in the U.S., is illegal in China. If an employer wishes to terminate an employee, the burden is on the employer to establish just cause. Economic difficulty is not considered just cause; and this law applies to all employers, large and small, foreign and domestic. There are strict restrictions on probation periods.

Yet there are still companies, mainly foreign companies, who violate the law. And in some cases, workers have been treated in ways which one would hope to not occur in any country, particularly a socialist one. One can read about the case of Foxconn, for example, where there were several suicides by employees working in terrible conditions. I don't have to read capitalist media to learn of this; CCTV (China's state-owned television network) ran a documentary about this.

The Marxist ideological level in China is lower than one might wish. The schools focus heavily on math and science (and do quite well at it), but don't seem to do much with philosophy. While the economy is booming as it currently is, maybe that doesn't seem like a huge issue; but I fear that if global recession causes the economy to worsen, this could be a problem. While China is still a developing nation, with socialism still in infancy, the Communist Party has truly accomplished much, lifting more people out of extreme poverty than any other country in history. Despite the many contradictions of China, an end to socialism here, a la USSR 1990s, would be a disaster for the Chinese people, and for workers everywhere.

Liberalism In Despair

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:22:00 +0000

Liberalism in Despair

John Case

Despair and Gloom

Paul Krugman’s recent post to his “Conscience of a Liberal” blog concisely summarizes the despair of nearly every economist not completely under the spell of voodoo economics at the grasp of austerity politics (going under the name “political realism”) on the Obama administration.

He quotes fellow Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz on the essence --- well, we’ll get to that in a moment --- of the matter:

“When the recession began there were many wise words about having learnt the lessons of both the Great Depression and Japan’s long malaise. Now we know we didn’t learn a thing. Our stimulus was too weak, too short and not well designed. The banks weren’t forced to return to lending. Our leaders tried papering over the economy’s weaknesses – perhaps out of fear that if we were honest about them, already fragile confidence would erode. But that was a gamble we have now lost. Now the scale of the problem is apparent, a new confidence has emerged: confidence that matters will get worse, whatever action we take. A long malaise now seems like the optimistic scenario.”

We owe a profound debt to the hardworking liberal economists -- Krugman, Stiglitz, Robert Reich, Mark Thoma, Brad DeLong, Christine Romer, Jared Bernstein and many others for laboring in the ideological vineyards in defense of social progress, reason and sanity: for pointing the programmatic economic compass at the way out of the deep mess our country is in --- Jobs first, Debt second; Green Industrial Policy; Tax the rich; Invest in education; Rollback inequality; Rollback financialization; Increase bargaining power over wages and salaries for working people; Mortgage assistance for underwater homeowners. We salute them for their withering criticism of Economics of Austerity fomented by banks, right - wing Republicans, and the rich; for ridiculing inane ideas to fix unemployment and debt by laying of more people (taxpayers), or by coddling the rich “job creators” with even lower taxes and even greater inequality, or for a hundred other stupidities. We thank them for laying bare the cons crude and subtle wholly designed to enrich themselves at public expense at every turn.

Yet -- the economists are all in despair. They are “driven crazy” at the failure of policy makers to follow the obvious, rational, scientific path to recovery from this great economic crisis.

Class is Relevant

For all the collective brilliance and expertise of my favorite economists, at least from my own reading, none view politics from a class perspective. I submit that is at least one source of their often voiced despair, and a big piece of the explanation of ‘unreason’ apparently infecting the political process. Lets define ‘class’ here simply as social groups classified on the basis of their ways and means of survival, of sustaining themselves in this economy. The premise is: if your income is primarily or completely from wages and salaries you spend your day doing different things (and think different thoughts about society and politics) than if your income is primarily or completely from returns on capital. The problem of how to get your next meal, or mansion, or yacht is solved differently in one class than the other. Your relation to the economy is different. Its more complex than that, obviously, because real people often play more than one class role in economic life. Some have both wealth, and wage or salary income (although there is much less of that duality since the onset of the Lesser Depression). Nonetheless working class is a real and useful role that describes all those whose security depends primarily on collective power -- either through workplace or community organization, or government -- to fairly distribute wealth proportional to the value of work. Capital will always argue that unfettered markets distribute wealth fairly -- but history completely refutes that self-serving hypothesis, by any measure of productivity. The conflict of views is not so surprising -- we all know that ‘reason’ -- even ‘scientific reason’ -- feels quite different when income depends on opposite thinking!

The Lost Continent of Socialism and Social-Democracy

On almost every specific policy issue, the economists are social democratic in the old sense. Social-Democracy has its origins in labor-led political parties in Europe. The movement was always led by ‘socialists’ of various stripes, simply because all agreed that a fair distribution of wealth could only come from working class political empowerment. Coming out of early capitalist and semi-feudal societies, social democracy was -- and at times still is -- often revolutionary since in emerging capitalist civil society working people had little and often no democratic outlet to seek justice. But later, to the extent electoral and social reforms gave more and more workers the right to vote, most social democratic parties adopted the incremental approach to ‘socialism’.

Unfortunately, liberalism in the US helped rob the economists -- and the labor and progressive movements too --- of links to European social - democracy and socialism. Not one, in print at least, connects the historical rise of social democratic policies with the rise of socialism -- and the fact that both socialist and social democratic trends are inseparable from the political and economic empowerment of the working class. Thus the economists write in the 'liberal' tradition. In the United States, however, this tradition walks in chains.

Indulge me with a little trip back in time for a moment.

The Legacy of US Liberalism

The collapse of the USSR in 1990 led also to the collapse of the cold-war framework. Part of that 70-year framework included the legitimacy of anti-communist, anti-socialist liberalism as both a compromise with social democracy (in the US--the New Deal) that, after the McCarthy era, citizens could endorse without ending up in jail or fired. From the standpoint of capital it was the soft defense (right wing reaction being the hard one) against the (to them) 'excessive' advance of progressive wealth distribution apparent in both purely socialist and social-democratic nations across the world. Despite its limitations, liberalism was able to bind itself, haltingly, in steps, with the genuine democratic upsurge of the civil rights movement epitomized in the leadership of Dr Martin Luther King. Perhaps because of this upsurge, along with the vast movements against the war in Vietnam which liberalism almost but never quite embraced (Vietnam was under Communist leadership, after all!), Reaganism marked a sharp turn by capital against liberal legitimacy, and an all-out assault on both social-democracy and socialism worldwide. This assault gathered momentum and came to dominate in varying degrees many if not most of the advanced economies in the 80’s and 90’s. Against this attack liberalism -- because of its anti-communist and anti-socialist premises --- was nearly powerless. It was forced to compromise progressive positions even further under the onslaught. Thus the Clinton administration, despite good intentions on many fronts (health care, education, etc), fully conceded to the financialization of the US economy which helped lay the groundwork for the current disaster.

The Obama administration reflects a continuation of this liberal tradition. It was elected on a wave of revulsion at both the economic and military horrors perpetrated by Bush -- who claimed the mantle of Reagan. But without the rise of working class led political organization (including both the social-democratic or socialist varieties), political history is proving that the liberal framework remains increasingly compromised and powerless to resist private capital prerogatives -- especially now that a fundamental structural crisis in has arisen for the first time since the 1930's requiring a new balance between capital and labor. The restructuring required looks like more socialism to capital. And it is "more socialism". Public wealth in various forms (infrastructure, redistribution, more public goods, etc) must increase relative to private wealth. Private capital clearly sees the advance of the public sector as a potential death sentence.

It is true that, willy-nilly, public goods must inevitably increase with the advancing socialization and interdependence of economic life. Both technology and the threats of environmental catastrophe mandate it.

At the same time, in many ways, capital is indulging in a paranoid and even psychotic reaction (take the rebellion against climate change science, for example). A little more socialism is not going to be a death sentence for useful markets and commodities. On the contrary, an appropriate dose of socialism would restore vitality to many sections of the market economy that are not a failure. But nevermind science and rationality. Capital’s resistance is also complicated and made nearly schizophrenic by the rise of services and intangible products in a high tech economy. Intangibles (software, for example) require ever more tedious and irrational legal protections -- copyrights, patents, confidentiality, etc --- to survive as commodities and remain marketable despite being very poor commodities in the economic sense. After all, they are easily copied.

Thus, the economists’ "dismal thoughts" on the prospects for progress going forward from here. They predict decades of stagnation or worse as a cycle of debt---austerity---layoffs---debt---austerity feeds upon it self with no self-correcting mechanism in sight, and policy remains trapped in a vise imposed by the corrupting and paralyzing grip of the financial oligarchy on democratic institutions.

The economists are “stunned” that so-called “political realists” like William Daley and David Plouff have overtaken more rational and scientific advisers to President Obama. They are “shocked” that rather than turning toward “progressives” in his re-election bid, since the Republican counter-attack in November 2010 Obama has steadily tacked “pragmatically” toward Wall Street.

But these steps are not really “new”. They are signature weaknesses of liberalism:

a) to collapse when red-baited; and

b) retreat from reliance on the working people in favor of capital when push comes to shove.

Begging for Crumbs

Firing Van Jones as his environmental adviser less than a year into his presidency after Jones was called a ‘communist’ by the fascist creep Glen Beck, Obama made his first “I am not a communist” pledge, at the same time removing the strongest environmental voice from his ears.

When Obama took single-payer or Medicare-for-all off the health care reform table -- before the negotiations even began-- he took the “I am not a socialist” pledge and virtually condemned health care reform to be the budget buster the Right wants it to be.

When Obama retreats from the stimulus all “rational” economists recommend in favor of the debt--austerity box, he takes the “I am not a big-spending liberal” pledge and hopes the unemployed and all their hurting families will still give him their vote as the lesser evil -- while the slightest shock from Europe, or oil, or weather, or wherever will send the entire economy into a new definition of ‘depression’. If Obama is not careful -- he will end up like Romney, who has now taken the “I am not even a moderate” pledge, damning even his own health care reform record in Massachusetts.

The "political realist's" philosophy of "half-a-loaf-is-better-than-none" degenerating into "begging for crumbs" is a well known tale in the trade union movement. And its worst aspect is not actually the crumbs. Sometimes crumbs are all you have the power to win. But declaring 'crumbs' to be 'jewels', and then extolling the virtues --- on the golf course --- of 'crumb' bargaining, or the patriotism of the scoundrels pursuing "the people are entitled to nothing" agendas---- is about as appealing as a plate of vomit for dinner.

The Game-Changer

The rise of the working class is the "mechanism" -- and the only one -- that can change this game. Contending for power within the Democratic Party is the most immediate battle ground in which working people must focus their self-organizing efforts. The working class came close to this contention in the 30's under Roosevelt. WWII -- and the post-war anti-communist and anti-labor explosion of US imperial expansion -- steadily returned leadership of the Democratic Party to corporate forces. Yet the Democratic Party's survival depends today as much as in 1932 on a coalition with working class forces. It cannot do anything without us. Its time for us to abandon the subordinate role. Cold-war liberalism will not get it done. A return to the original spirit and base of democratic and social-democratic politics will.

The tactics of building the left opposition to austerity and corporate control of the Democratic Party are not trivial. It won’t work for Left organizations to liquidate themselves or surrender an inch ideologically to austerity politics. Participation most decidedly must move toward the consolidation of coherent progressive factions with the express purpose of challenging corporate leadership -- both within the party organization and wherever possible or practical in primaries. Learning to operate as socialists within the 21st century electoral arena -- including within the Democratic Party -- is an art we are all learning, but that cannot be ignored or put off.

No doubt its possible for a small number of Green Party, or other Independent candidates, to eventually get elected (look at Bernie Sanders). But the 2-party system in dynamics in most states will make this a rare exception rather than a rule or trend, thus too marginal from a strategic point of view. The problem is ironically further exemplified by Sanders own success. He has called for a challenge in some primaries against Obama on anti-austerity grounds. He would be among the most credible candidates for that --- but -- he can't because he is not a Democrat.

Ironically, Van Jones Rebuild the Dream campaign contains all the elements that save the Obama presidency that discarded him, and the party that failed to come to his defense.

Some may say this is impossible; that the wealthy and dominant faction in the party cannot be overthrown. Perhaps so -- maybe this will be a new version of the Republican split from the Whigs in 1854 -- but that will only be determined by the contest now underway. The fullest mobilization of working people is the key -- once in motion they will send the message: yield power or fade away!

The New Scramble for Africa

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:18:00 +0000

The New Scramble for Africa

By Conn Hallinan
September 14, 2011

Is current U.S. foreign policy in Africa following a blueprint drawn up almost eight years ago by the rightwing Heritage Foundation, one of the most conservative think tanks in the world? While it seems odd that a Democratic administration would have anything in common with the extremists at Heritage, the convergence in policy and practice between the two is disturbing.

Heritage, with help from Joseph Coors and the Scaife Foundations, was founded in 1973 by the late Paul Weyrich, one of the most conservative thinkers in the U.S. and a co-founder of the Moral Majority. While the Moral Majority whipped up the culture wars against abortion and gays, Heritage lobbied for an aggressive foreign policy and American military supremacy.

In October 2003, James Carafano and Nile Gardiner, two Heritage Foundation heavyweights, proposed a major shift in U.S. military policy vis-a-vis the African continent. Carafano is a West Point graduate who heads up the Foundation's foreign policy section, and Gardiner is the director of Heritage's Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.

In a "Backgrounder" article entitled "U.S. Military Assistance for Africa: A Better Solution," the two called for the creation of a military command for the continent, a focus on fighting "terrorism," and direct military intervention using air power and naval forces if "vital U.S. interests are at stake." Such interventions should avoid using ground troops, the authors argue, and should include the participation of other allies.

Almost every element of that proposal has come together over the past year, though some pieces, like African Command (Africom) and the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism
Initiative, were in place before the Obama administration took office.

The Libya war seems almost straight off of Heritage's drawing board. While the U.S. appeared to take a back seat to its allies, NATO would not have been able to carry out the war without massive amounts of U.S. military help. It was the U.S. who took out the Libyan anti-air craft systems, blockaded the coast, collected the electronic intelligence, fueled the warplanes, and supplied munitions when NATO ran low.

While the UN resolution forbade using ground troops, U.S. special forces and CIA teams, along with special units from Britain, France, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates organized the rebels, coordinated air strikes, and eventually pulled off an amphibious operation that sealed Tripoli's fate.

The Heritage scholars were also clear what they meant by vital U.S. interests: "With its vast natural and mineral resources, Africa remains strategically important to the West, as it has been for hundreds of years, and its geostrategic significance is likely to rise in the 21st century. According to the National Intelligence Council, the United States is likely to draw 25 percent of its oil from West Africa by 2015, surpassing the volume imported from the Persian Gulf."

It was a sentiment shared by the Bush Administration. "West Africa's oil has become a national strategic interest," said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Walter Kansteiner in 2002.

The UN tasked NATO with protecting civilians in Libya, but France, Britain, the U.S. and their Gulf allies focused on regime change. Indeed, when leaders of the African Union (AU) pushed for negotiations aimed at a political settlement, NATO and the rebels brusquely dismissed them.

The NATO bombing "really undermined the AU's initiates and effort to deal with the matter in Libya," complained South African President Jacob Zuma. More than 200 prominent Africans released a letter Aug. 24 condemning the "misuse of the United Nations Security Council to engage in militarized diplomacy to effect regime change in Libya," as well as the "marginalization of the African Union."

The suspicion that the Libya war had more to do with oil and gas than protecting civilians is why the AU has balked at recognizing the rebel Transitional National Council. For much of Africa, the Libya war was a "shot heard `round the continent," and there is a growing unease at the West's "militarized diplomacy."

Though the Defense Department's African Contingency Operation Training and Assistance Program, the U.S. is actively engaged in training the militaries of Mali, Chad, Niger, Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Gabon, Zambia, Uganda, Senegal, Mozambique, Ghana and Malawi, and Mauretania.

In June 2006, NATO troops stormed ashore on Sao Vicente island in the Cape Verde archipelago in operation "Steadfast Jaguar" (an odd choice of monikers, since
jaguars are natives of the New World, not Africa). The exercise, which brought together a host of nations, including France, Germany, Spain, Greece, the U.S. and
Poland, was aimed at "protecting energy supplies" in the Niger Delta and Gulf of Guinea.

Major oil producers in the region include Angola, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Chad and Mauritania.

Protecting energy supplies from whom?

In the case of the Niger Delta, it means protecting oil companies and the Nigerian government from local people fed up with the pollution that is killing them, and corruption that denies them any benefits from their resources. Under the umbrella of the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), locals are waging a low-key
guerilla war that at one point reduced oil supplies by 20 percent.

MEND is certainly suspicious of American motives in the region. "Of course, it is evident that oil is the key concern of the U.S. in establishing African Command," says the organization's spokesman, Jomo Gbomo.

The Nigerian government labels a number of restive groups in Nigeria as "terrorist" and links them to al-Qaeda, including Boko Haram in the country's north.

But labeling opponents "terrorists" or raising the al-Qaeda specter is an easy way to dismiss what may be real local grievances. For instance, Boko Haram's growing penchant for violence is more likely a response to the heavy handedness of the Nigerian Army than an al-Qaeda inspired campaign.

Terrorism and the protection of civilians may be the public rationale for intervention, but the bottom line looks suspiciously like business. Before the guns go silent in Libya, one British business leader complained to The Independent that Britain was behind the curve on securing opportunities. "It`s all politics, no commercial stuff. I think that is a mistake. We need to be getting down there as soon as possible,"

The Spanish oil company Reposal and the Italian company Eni are already gearing up for production. "Eni will play a No.1 role in the future," says Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini. Almost 70 percent of Libya's oil goes to four countries, Spain, Germany, France and Italy. Qatar, which is already handing oil sales in Eastern Libya, will also be on the ground floor as production ramps up.

A major loser in the war-and some would argue, not by accident-is China. Beijing had some 75 companies working in Libya and 36,000 personnel, and accounted for about 11 percent of Libya's pre-war exports. But because China complained that NATO had unilaterally changed the UN resolution from protecting civilians to regime change, Beijing is likely to suffer. Abdeljalil Mayouf, information manager of the rebel oil firm AGOCO told Reuters that China, Brazil and Russia would be frozen out of contracts.

Brazil and Russia also supported negotiations and complained about NATO's interpretation of the UN resolution on Libya.

For Heritage, keeping China out of Africa is what it is all about. Peter Brookes, the former principal Republican advisor for East Asia on the House Committee on International Relations, warned that China was hell-bent on challenging the U.S. and becoming a global power, and key to that is expanding its interests in Africa. "In a throwback to the Maoist revolutionary days of the 1960s and 1970s and the Cold War, Beijing has once again identified the African continent as an area of strategic interest," he told a Heritage Foundation audience in a talk entitled "Into Africa: China's Grab for Influence and Oil."

Beijing gets about one third of its oil from Africa-Angola and Sudan are its major suppliers-plus important materials like platinum, copper, timber and iron ore.

Africa is rife with problems, but terrorism is not high on that list. A severe drought has blistered much of East Africa, and, with food prices rising, malnutrition is spreading continent-wide. The "war on terrorism" has generated 800,000 refugees from Somalia. African civilians do, indeed, need help, but not the kind you get from fighter-bombers, drone strikes, or Tomahawk cruise missiles dispatched at the urging of right-wing think tanks or international energy companies.

Conn Hallinan can be read at
dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com

The United States, Israel & Very Little of the Rest of the World, United

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:54:00 +0000

The United States, Israel & Very Little of the Rest of the World, United

By Carl Bloice

There have been a lot of foreign guests in Israel recently. Many of them had their way paid. The list includes a lot of notables or wannabe notables, including about 20 percent of the members of the United States Congress. BC Question: What will it take to bring Obama home?One visitor who received major attention during his late summer junket has been none other than our own rightwing preacher - broadcaster Glenn Beck. He was accompanied by "personages identified with the Republican Party's extreme right and a group of Christian Zionist evangelical leaders," according to the Jerusalem Post.

"Beck never misses an opportunity to speak ill of U.S. President Barack Obama and to challenge his leadership," said the Post, editorially. "His elevision program fell out of favor even with rightist Fox Broadcasting, which took Beck off the air. A few weeks ago, Beck received publicity for comparing the young Norwegians who were killed by an extreme right-winger to the Hitler Youth. Hundreds of rabbis in the United States, from all streams of Judaism, have expressed disgust with Beck's incitement on the air
against Jewish financier George Soros and Jewish intellectuals `accused' of harboring liberal, leftist views."

The newspaper noted that, "people from Israel's ruling party, Likud, foremost among them Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon and World Likud Chairman Danny Danon" and
members of the Israeli parliament "have joined the circle of Beck's fans." Jerusalem's Mayor Nir Barkat was among the speakers at Beck's "support event" rally in that city.

Caroline Glick, a former assistant foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu, with numerous ties to neo-conservative circles in the US, and now deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post, labored mightily to convince readers of Back's importance: "Unlike the leftist public intellectuals such as New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, who are celebrated and obsessively covered by the Israeli media, Beck exerts real influence on public opinion in the US. His calls for action are answered by hundreds of thousands of people. His statements are a guidepost for millions of Americans. Aside from radio host Rush Limbaugh, no media personality in the US has such influence." Wow.

Meanwhile, 81 congressional representatives from all over the country, led by Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, traveled to Israel last month. Most were new to Congress, including half of all the freshmen Republicans voted into office last year.

On August 22, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu held a separate meeting with the delegation of visiting GOP Congressmembers, headed by Cantor and Policy
Committee Chairman Tom Price.

"The timing of the visits by the GOP contingent and an even larger number of Democratic legislators could not have been better for the Netanyahu government," said the Post, which said attention was drawn to the recent conflict on the Israel-Egyptian border that "highlighted for the Congressmen the dangers of an independent Palestinian Authority."

Of course, that's wrong. There already is an independent Palestinian authority. What is meant here is the intention of the Palestinians to take the ongoing conflict to the United Nations. That's what the Netanyahu regime sees as a threat.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is slated to present the Palestinian bid for UN membership in person to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon at the opening of the 66th session of the General Assembly September 20 in New York. The Palestinian statehood proposal has the full backing of the Arab League.

There has been scant notice of the U.S. politicians' pilgrimage to Tel Aviv in the major U.S. media. Not surprising; the whole affair is diplomatically unprecedented and politically a bit unseemly.

The American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), which is linked to the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC), the major pro-Israel lobbying organization in Washington, picked up the tab for the visits. "This is an extraordinary situation, wrote Alison Weir on counterpunch.org last week. "No other lobby on behalf of a foreign country comes anywhere near controlling such wealth or taking so many of America's elected representatives on a propaganda trip to its favorite country."

In a related development, according to the Jerusalem Post:

"The Israel Project will be bringing a group of 18 Washington-based ambassadors from Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America to Israel on Monday for a weeklong tour and high-level meetings. Like the congressmen, they will also go to Ramallah, for a meeting with PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad."

Among the countries represented on the trip are Albania, Barbados, Belize, Burkina Faso, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Macedonia, St. Lucia and Uganda.

"Some of these countries have been mentioned by officials in Jerusalem as likely candidates to either vote against, or at least abstain, when the vote on Palestinian statehood comes before the UN in September," said the newspaper.

Behind all the seeming bravado coming out of Tel Aviv these days one senses desperation rather than confidence. The Netanyahu government and its allies at home and abroad are certainly pulling out all stops to try to prevent something their supporters are trying to convince the world won't change anything at all. But it will.

The moment of truth approaches. The Palestinians are going to the UN seeking recognition. There was a time when the Israeli government could count on an overwhelmingly vote against their policies on resolutions vetoed by Washington and a few client states in Latin America. Gone are the days. Last week, Honduras and El Salvador endorsed Palestinian statehood and said they support the PA's bid at the United Nations. European governments are divided and wavering. Perhaps the most the Israeli expansionists can hope for is unwavering support from the U.S. joined by one or two small indebted Pacific islands.

The reason for the alarm in Tel Aviv and Washington is simple. If the U.S. votes no in the General Assembly, or exercises its veto in the Security Council, the two countries will stand sharply isolated amongst the nations of the world. This will be particularly vexing against the backdrop of the popular, democratically oriented uprisings sweeping the Middle East and Africa.

The U.S. could and should vote with the rest of the world to support the Palestinians and thus signal agreement with the long-standing international consensus regarding Palestinian statehood. But it won't.

It's an election year here and those politicians being charmed on their trip to Israel are intending to make certain that such remains the case. Worse than that, one of the Obama's Administration's chief diplomats, Daniel Rubinstein, the US consul general in Jerusalem, last week warned of "punitive measures" should the Palestinians go ahead with the statehood bid at the General Assembly. That threat was openly reiterated by the visiting U.S. politicians. (In a truly strange development, a deputy spokesman for the consulate confirmed that he told Israeli media August 28 that Rubinstein's reported comments are "not an accurate portrayal of the U.S. position").

However, the expansionist forces in Israeli want much more from Washington, including its use of diplomatic and economic force to persuade other governments to oppose the statehood bid, forthright support for the Netanyahu government's stance, and an end to criticism of settlement expansion. They also want the U.S. President to take back his suggestion that an eventual peace accord be based on the 1967 armistice lines.

Just in case the White House didn't get the message, the website Politico noted that the visit to Israel by the 81 Congressmembers "offers a glimpse into a simmering foreign policy fight that could unify the two parties and cause headaches for the White House."

Meanwhile, rightwing Israeli attacks on President Obama have, in recent weeks, become ferocious.

"Barack Obama is solidifying his status as the worst president in American history," wrote Yigal Walt an editor at YNetNews.com. "The leader who promised us a bright future of peace and fraternity is leading the American empire - and the rest of the world with it - into a dark abyss. Ever since he settled into the Oval Office, Obama has been hopping from one disaster to the next, making every possible mistake, boosting enemies and disregarding allies while ruining everything he touches in the process. To our regret, the heaviest price - for the time being at least - is being paid by residents of the Middle East."

After attacking Obama, whom he referred to as "Barack Hussein" and "a living and breathing nightmare" for failure to act correctly as regards Iran, and accusing him of cozying up to "a new buddy, Bashar Assad," Walt struck a chord frequently sounded these days in the rightwing media: "So when did Obama act? Mubarak! The Egyptian ruler, possibly the wisest, most moderate Mideastern leader safeguarded the peace treaty with Israel, hunted down Islamic radicals, counter-balanced the Shiite Iran, steadfastly maintained his ties with the US, and turned our crazed region into a slightly saner place," he wrote. "He was no angel, certainly not towards his own people, but was, or is there, a better realistic option?

"Yet, there of all places, Obama the brilliant diplomat opted to intervene aggressively, openly humiliated Mubarak and ultimately presented him with an explicit threat while the latter was struggling to maintain his rule."

"And we haven't even mentioned the economy yet, where Obama appears poised to lead his country into what appears to be a devastating recession. Only recently he won the dubious honor of being the first president to see America's credit rating lowered while in office," wrote Walt.

Walt's commentary was reprinted far and wide last week by numerous rightwing internet outlets in the U.S.

The Netanyahu government refuses to end the occupation of Palestinian land seized in war and held in defiance of international law. That still lies at the heart of the conflict in the region and Israeli opposition to any form of Palestinian statehood. Now, the U.S. appears to be engaged in a full court press to head it off. "Washington and Tel Aviv are putting pressure to hamper the Arab-Palestinian effort (to seek UN recognition), without coming up with a serious alternative," an unnamed Arab diplomat told AFP last
week.

Early last month, a "senior Western diplomat" held a special briefing for Israeli journalists in Tel Aviv. According to the newspaper Haaretz, "the diplomat" told them "Cooperation between the U.S. and the Palestinian Authority will be harmed if the PA goes through with its plan to seek United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state."

"If the PA will go to the UN in September, it will make it harder for us to have the same relations with them as we had before when it comes to aid and security training," the diplomat said. "We want that to continue that cooperation but it will make it harder for us. It is easier to work together as partners."

No one from the European Union would ever make such a statement.

Last December, the EU foreign policy council expressed disappointment that Israel was proceeding with territorial expansion, saying, "Our views on settlements, including in East Jerusalem, are clear: they are illegal under international law and an obstacle to peace." The council said it "reiterates its readiness, when appropriate, to recognize a Palestinian state."

China's Foreign Ministry said two weeks ago that country's special envoy on the Middle East, had informed Palestinian leaders in a meeting in Ramallah that Beijing will support the proposed UN recognition.

The Spanish government also recently expressed support for an independent Palestinian state, saying it hopes a meeting of European Union foreign ministers this Friday
and Saturday in Sopot, Poland will bring progress toward its recognition. The EU's Ashton will meet with Netanyahu the previous day. Israeli sources now say they expect no more than four European countries to vote with Washington and Tel Aviv. This probably explains the hurried phone consult between Obama and Chancellor Merkel August 27 when the President had interrupted his vacation because of hurricane Irene.

Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs Trinidad Jimenez told the newspaper El Pais, "There's the feeling that now is the time to do something, to give the Palestinians the hope that a state could become reality,"
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BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice
is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National
Coordinating Committee of the Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly
worked for a healthcare union.