Gaza & The Not So Slow Decline Of Israel

Not alone any more: Egyptian protestors in Tahrir last year

In some ways what just went down in Gaza was business as usual. Israel provoked a mini-war with Gaza killing a leading Hamas politician (who was, in fact, the chief negotiator for a long term ceasefire with Israel) after engaging in its "normal" policies of drone flights, missile strikes and, of course, economy-crippling embargoes. In the process they killed some Palestinians, primarily civilians, many of them children. The USA publicly backed every act of brutality and every lie of the Israeli government and military. Hamas, and other factions of the Palestinian resistance were hopelessly outgunned, while Abbas and the PLO were craven, irrelevant and despised by many Palestinians for being so. Most of the Israeli public cheered on the IDF and hoped for more Palestinian death and destruction.

And yet, things couldn't have been much different from one, let alone three decades ago. In the face of changes in the Middle East, not least the Arab Spring that kicked off last year, Israel is a European settler-colony in decline.

The changes are in many ways rooted in the economic developments of the Arab world that have pulled literally tens of millions of people into the cities - creating more workers, more literate people, more connected people. Turkey alone is industrializing with China-like speed, transforming the country and increasing its weight in the region. Alongside this has been a growing political awakening that received significant boosts from the two Iraq wars, the second Palestinian intifada and the indefatigability of Hizbullah in Lebanon. And the post-war, post-colonial set-ups, which often saw significant concessions to the masses by nationalist anti-colonial regimes – the Ba'ath party in Syria and Iraq, Nasser in Egypt, etc. – has been replaced by rapacious, go it alone neo-liberalism, creating resentment and class polarization.

Of course, this hasn't only affected Israel's standing as a few Arab dictators could woefully tell you - soon to be joined by Assad in Syria (I give him three months, tops). The accumulation of all those changes I indicated above were, at some point, bound to come together in an explosion. And what an explosion it has turned out to be. The Middle East is going through the kind of historic transformation that happens once in a century.

But neither has Israel been spared from this process. In many ways it had been spared from the more dramatic impacts of what was going on around it for the simple reason that it is the recipient of billions of economy boosting dollars in "foreign aid" from the USA (et al). It also receives the most advanced weaponry on the planet - often for free - from the USA. In fundamentals, Israel is a Sparta, an armed camp or, if you will, the USA's largest military base. Still, sooner or later, it was bound to catch up.

The first signs of how things were changing came from the invasion of Lebanon in 2006 (though I'm certain people could trace it back even further). Here was the IDF - an undefeated and feared military. It had launched wars before - pretty much every war, other than 1973 - and it had always won. In 2006, while it destroyed villages and neighbourhoods, and killed over 1000 people, it was forced to flee back to Israel. Hizbullah showed the whole of the Middle East (and the world) that Israel could be defeated and humiliated.

One year later Israel and the USA tried to depose Hamas in Gaza, though it had been chosen democratically in an election that was imposed upon Gaza - again, by the USA and Israel. And just as their forced election blew up in their faces, so did the attempt to foment a Fatah-led coup d'etat. Fatah was too corrupt and weak and Hamas simply drove them out of Gaza. In anger at their own stupidity and foreign policy failure, Israel imposed a near-total blockade of Gaza's economy. The idea was to put the Palestinians "on a diet" to cripple their ability to resist.

One year after that, in 2008, Israel invaded Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, wreaking wide destruction and killing over 1,000 Palestinians - again, mostly civilians. Israel's goal was to destroy Hamas - not stop rocket fire, which Hamas had effectively policed after agreeing a truce with Israel, which Israel repeatedly broke. Not only did Israel fail to dislodge Hamas, they generated an enormous amount of global criticism, which helped to create the movement to break the Gaza blockade. That movement spurred Turkey to break all ties with Israel, once its only Muslim ally in the region.

Now, here we are in 2012, still in the throes of the Arab Spring, which has deposed Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, once the region's greatest protector of the Israel/US hegemony in the Middle East. Israel is more isolated than it has perhaps ever been, with no regional friends whatsoever (though Morsi in Egypt is more moderate than his supporters and also more open to accepting the Camp David peace settlement as well - popularly hated in Egypt). This time Israel couldn't even invade Gaza. And, in proportion, as the popular voices in Israel became more shrill, with calls to wipe Gaza off the map and impose a Holocaust on the Palestinians, etc. Israel was more constrained from doing so.

Israel started this latest war by murdering Hamas' military leader and chief negotiator. And they have ended it by allowing Hamas to demonstrate that it is growing more powerful, more able to strike inside Israel. They have also agreed a ceasefire - that Israel will break, like all others - that includes an end to the blockade and the policy of targeted killings inside Gaza. Moreover, Egypt gave no commitment to stop the flow of arms into Gaza. It's no wonder that Netanyahu is being assailed from all sides. He presided over another humiliation that has left their comprador ally, Abbas, even more despised and discredited.

With this secular decline of Israel's role and power in the region, one wonders how long the Americans will continue to sponsor their favourite regional gendarme. What will be the next crisis for Israel and will it lead to its further isolation?

Arab Revolutions Put Iran Attack On Back Foot

There can be little doubt that the Arab revolutions have already transformed the Middle East and look set to continue and deepen that transformation. Dictators in Tunisia, Yemen and, most spectacularly thus far, Egypt have gotten the boot. In Tunisia and Egypt the working class played a sizeable role in their ouster and this has led to a labour spring involving the explosive growth in independent unions, rank and file confidence, wild cat strikes and political demands that would have been unthinkable even two years ago.

But while most of the left have applauded the revolts in those three above countries, they have been much more circumspect - and in some cases downright hostile - to the revolts in Syria and Libya (or the earlier and less successful Green Movement in Iran). The reason is honourable enough - they see the hand of imperialism stirring the pot in countries that, if not openly anti-imperialist now, were in the past and, in the case of Syria, still support anti-imperialist movements like Hizbollah and Hamas. The USA and its allies, the logic runs, want to see Assad overthrown in order to weaken the "axis of resistance" (as Iran's president branded Iran, Syria and Hizbollah in Lebanon, in a clever twist of the Bush mantra that labelled Iran and North Korea as part of an axis of evil). Many have even argued that the revolts in Libya and Syria aren't even really revolts but merely fabricated coups by pro-imperialist elements.

This is to miss the point on a number of levels. First the mass and sustained character of the revolts in both Libya and Syria (in particular Syria) bely the notion that these are mere quislings risking their necks to sell out their country. It also starts from a profoundly naive belief that true and pure revolts have no truck with imperialism. Sadly, no such revolt has ever existed. By definition a revolt is both the underdog - lacking the weapons and infrastructure of their oppressor state(s) - and heterogenous politically.

Since humans aren't the Borg and don't think the same things simultaneously, they can reach myriad conclusions, arising from their social location and personal experiences. Some sectors of a revolt will draw the conclusion that the quickest road to victory is by aligning with the big countries of Europe or America to get access to guns and even the playing field militarily - not thinking about the price to be paid (or even accepting that price). Others will resist the conditional aid of outside states and prefer to build an indigenous mass movement.

And, lastly, imperialist countries never just sit on the sideline. Their multitude of intelligence agencies, secret services, state-funded aid organizations, etc. exist for a reason: to promote the hegemony of their country abroad. They will seek to influence opposition organizations and individuals and to bend them - and through them opposition movements - to supporting the strategic interests of their state. The proxy wars of the Cold War era were precisely the result of maneuverings between the USSR and the USA. Sometimes it involved supporting opposition movements (particularly in the case of the USSR, which was always considerably weaker than the USA) and sometimes it involved supporting the regimes already in power to crush opposition movements. Imperialism is, by definition, opportunistic.

It is a mistake to base our support for opposition movements on whether or not imperialism is trying to influence them - and even where they are succeeding to a degree. Revolts, even ones compromised by imperialism, have a way of getting out of the control of those who would use them to their advantage. One need only look at the challenges that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is facing in trying to rein in the tumultuous movement in Egypt that brought them to power.

There is a final reason for supporting the Arab Spring with great enthusiasm and not viewing it through the narrow lens of state-to-state relations. Western imperialism's hope that the weakening of the Syrian regime would permit greater pressure on Iran isn't happening quite that way. The belief that the Arab Spring would allow Iran to be isolated and make it more susceptible to military assault has turned out to be quite the opposite as this article in the Guardian makes clear:

US naval, air and ground forces are dependent for bases, refuelling and supplies on Gulf Arab rulers who are deeply concerned about the progress Iran has made in its nuclear programme, but also about the rising challenge to their regimes posed by the Arab spring and the galvanising impact on popular unrest of an Israeli attack on Iran...

US naval commanders have watched with unease as the newly elected Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, has made overtures towards Iran. US ships make 200 transits a year through the Suez canal. Manama, the Fifth Fleet headquarters, is the capital of a country that is 70% Shia and currently in turmoil.

Ami Ayalon, a former chief of the Israeli navy and the country's internal intelligence service, Shin Bet, argues Israel too cannot ignore the new Arab realities.

"We live in a new Middle East where the street has become stronger and the leaders are weaker," Ayalon told the Guardian. "In order for Israel to face Iran we will have to form a coalition of relatively pragmatic regimes in the region, and the only way to create that coalition is to show progress on the Israel-Palestinian track."

The conclusion seems pretty clear: the greatest threat to the goals of western imperialism in the Middle East is the Arab Spring. The deeper grows that revolt, particularly in the Gulf states and especially in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the more imperialism will be constrained in its actions and agenda.

Libya's Rebels: Yesterday We Tortured Them, Today We Arm Them

There's no doubt that NATO, primarily the UK, France and the US, inserted themselves into the Libyan uprising as a means of gaining control over the course of the Arab Spring. In the case of France, it's clear that expanding the control of Libya's oil - most notably at the expense of Italy - was also part of the reason for Sarkozy's newfound enthusiasm for democracy when only a few weeks earlier he was rather more enthusiastic for keeping the Tunisian dictator in power. Reasserting hegemony in Africa also played no small part in the Libyan adventure.

Nonetheless it is always important to keep in mind that when imperialist powers insert themselves into an insurgency - particularly against a recent ally like Gaddafi - they are at risk of not only unleashing forces that they cannot control but of being exposed for what they really are: double-dealing hypocrites.

To be honest, it doesn't appear to me likely that there will be open resistance to the overall imperial agenda as it is expressed through the new government that is coming into being, led by the NTC. The oil contracts have been signed, the backroom deals have been struck - and NATO's deeply penetrating role in the war against Gaddafi has ensured that the rebel soldiers are dependent upon them for military success of any sort. Over the coming weeks the most likely scenario is that the rebel volunteers will be demobilized or incorporated into the national military. That military and most of the governmental apparatus will remain essentially unchanged from the Gaddafi regime - the police who kept order in Tripoli under Gaddafi will be the same police who keep order under the NTC. The generals who ran the Gaddafi military will run the NTC military. And economic and social policy will be guided by people like Mahmoud Jibril, who was the head of the Gaddafi agency charged with the responsibility of selling off state assets, probably to mostly foreign buyers or other former-Gaddafi officials.

That said, I would be glad to be mistaken. There is a reason why one of the NTC's first acts is to demobilize the rebel soldiers and to clear them out of the capital. People fought for freedom and will be less likely to accept Gaddafi-ism without Gaddafi if they have guns and are organized into fighting units. And with the armed phase of Gaddafi's overthrow all but passed, it is still possible that the remnants of the revolutionary councils that dominated the early phase of the insurgency will re-emerge to challenge the NTC's policy of business-as-usual minus the Brother Leader and some of the more odious aspects of a police state.

But in the initial days it's good to see that, at the very least, some of the duplicity of the United States and Britain are being revealed. The discovery of documents in the Interior Ministry building that show the level of cooperation between the CIA and the Gaddafi regime are something of an embarrassment. As is the fact that the new commander of Tripoli was a victim of CIA torture and the extraordinary rendition program that sent him back to Libya for several years of brutal incarceration. Abdul Hakim Belhaj, a former commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group has been undergoing something of a renovation, with a fluff piece in the New York Times, which I covered the other day. He may be claiming that he is now grateful for the support of NATO and the USA - but he hasn't forgotten what was done to him and some reporters have cottoned on to this.

The result is that the British spy agency MI6 is now exposed as having cooperated - perhaps illegally - with the American rendition program and facilitated torture. In some ways nobody ought to be surprised by this but the fact that it is coming out in public at a moment when the UK is jockeying for fat reconstruction and oil contracts is sweet. These revelations are undermining one of the domestic goals of the intervention in Libya - to rehabilitate the idea of humanitarian intervention by demonstrating that the UK, USA and NATO really do have good intentions, even if sometimes they get the details wrong. Let's hope that the revelations keep on coming. There is a sweet irony in the possibility that the countries of NATO will be more fully exposed as having aided Gaddafi in crushing the revolt that they ended up opportunistically supporting.

MI6 knew I was tortured, says Libyan rebel | World news | The Guardian

How Bin Laden's Death Proves America's Masculinity Is Safe

What are we supposed to do with a White House press briefing that tells us Osama bin Laden tried to hide behind women before the death squad that came for him finished him off? I guess this has meant to tell us that he wasn't a "real man", like a "red-blooded American", because American men, faced with heavily armed assassins would stand out in the open, chest out, like Rambo or Chuck Norris or Arnie and shout "Come and get me, you bastards!" Personally, hat kind of behaviour just seems stupid to me but then, I'm a cowardly pinko who wants to live.
But in the end, that's what this ten year war on terror is all about: America's manhood was hurt by the destruction of the WTC. It wasn't ultimately about foreign policy or past wrongs or anything that we could critically examine. Nope, it was just about some dude giving us a sucker punch in front of our woman and our friends. We couldn't be men again till we got him back in a, uh, fair fight where he was out-manned and out-gunned. I imagine that in bars across America tonight, there will be men belly-bumping and raising beers to the death of EEEVIL and the victory of righteous America. There'll probably be a fair amount of the same in Canada, no doubt and in a few other countries.
Hopefully, there will be a few people who will see the bravado for what it is: a cover for the utter failure of the war on terror to deliver a renewed Pax Americana. The US ruling class can encourage all the chest-thumping that it wants. But that won't win the war in Afghanistan and it won't stop the wave of revolutions in the Middle East. It won't reverse the decline of the USA relative to China and the rest of the world, or the loss of hegemony in Latin America. It won't bring back the dead - not the dead from the World Trade Center nor those hundreds of thousands killed by US guns and bombs as the empire sought to rejuvenate its manhood. And it won't stop the resentment and anger that generated support for al-Qaeda in the first place.
In my own opinion, revolution in the Middle East has meant that al-Qaeda's model has been superceded and marginalized. Killing bin Laden is like putting out a fire in a garbage can when the whole neighbourhood is going up in flames. It might make America feel good but it's still pointless. And tomorrow the hangovers will hurt just as much as they always do.


White House: Bin Laden tried to hide behind women during battle - The Globe and Mail

Stem Cell Injunction: More Proof of a Nation in Decline

As if it weren't obvious to anyone but the most ideologically blinded that America, if not yet a lame duck, is an empire in serious decline, the recent injunction by a federal judge against embryonic stem cell research is further evidence. And a further nail in the coffin.

America was once thought to be the land of pragmatic innovation, the pinnacle of what capitalism could achieve - particularly market-driven capitalism. America brought us mass production, in particular of the automobile, the airline industry, Hollywood, TV, computers, radio, etc. Not that Americans invented all of these things but they popularized them in a way that made America the epitome of technological advancement and its associated social progress.These advances were the reason that by the end of World War 2 America had the world's largest economy by a long shot, with around half of global industrial production originating on American shores.

Those days are over.

America's obsessive self-image of itself as the world's cop, a sort of John Wayne figure, meting out justice in the wild west of the rest of the planet, has not been without its costs. For one thing, it's mean that the bucket-loads of money that the US has spent on military hardware didn't get spent in productive investment and research.

Other countries, firstly post-war Germany and Japan, invested their social surplus back into the economy. Without the drag of a vast and unproductive military apparatus, these countries were able to quickly rebuild and surpass their rivals, with Japan ultimately becoming the world's second largest economy and Germany becoming the world's largest exporter.

That advancement eroded America's relative economic dominance. Today American industrial production is down to around 20% of the global total. And even that position is eroding with the Chinese behemoth moving up fast. China just surpassed Japan as the world's second largest economy and has passed Germany as the world's largest exporter. As a still relatively undeveloped country with a vast population, almost five times that of the USA, China has lots more room to grow rapidly and is likely to fly by the USA some time this century; some say sooner rather than later.

America's response to this has been multifold but for the purposes of this discussion, there's two elements that stick out as key. The first is a growing reliance by the USA on its overwhelming military dominance as the means to secure and guarantee what is euphemistically called "American leadership" of the world. America's military budget is greater than the next half-dozen countries' military budgets combined.

The second element of the American ruling class' attempt to sustain America's position is a sort of domestic retrenchment, both ideological and economic. On the economic front it has been a multi-generational war against unions and working people, leading to the slow erosion of living standards, education levels, social infrastructure and just plain happiness amongst American workers. On the ideological front, America has become increasingly brittle, hunkered down in a state of siege to defend "American values", which are defined increasingly narrowly. This stridency and aggressiveness has done its job in terms of keeping the population as a whole sufficiently cowed, if not active supporters of the "American Dream." And Protestant Fundamentalism, the unofficial religion of the American state, has played an important role as the most coherent ideological arm of the repressive state apparatus.

But here's the contradiction. Take one look at China. A length critique can be written about conditions inside of China from labour and human rights to environmental regulation. I don't want to lionize China as a model to pursue - either in terms of socialism or capitalism (China is, in any case, clearly the latter type of social order). However, China's development is unhindered by ideological rigidities of the American type. China's ideological and political repression derives from its attempt to keep a fast-moving train from going off the tracks. America's is the repression necessitated to achieve an orderly retreat. In the case of China, their repression is actually aiding the rapid expansion of the Chinese economy - it has to be said, largely at the expense of the Chinese working class. But in America, the repression that has been necessitated by its slide is itself becoming a factor in America's further descent, which brings us back to the reason for this blog post: the injunction against embryonic stem cell research.

The control of women's bodies has always been a key element in the ideological toolkit of capitalist society, no less in America than in Stalinist Russia. Hammering away at the idea of women's proper role (i.e. as baby-carriers) is another route to the idea that everyone has their proper place in society. It is a powerful tool (along with racism) through which to exercise social control. This is reinforced in America through the use of a particular kind of religious discourse and it is a KEY prop of Americanism. The battleground over that prop has been through abortion rights, which the right wing has steadily eroded over the past thirty or so years. America now has the most retrograde attitudes towards women's right to reproductive choice in the advanced capitalist world (and more retrograde than significant sections of the newly industrializing world). But, like military spending, this has its cost. In this case, religious zealotry has become an obstacle to economic innovation. Countries like Taiwan and, increasingly India and China, are catching up with America in the fields of nanotechnology and biotechnology. China is now the number two producer of solar panels on the planet and sells more solar panels in California than any other country, including the USA. The stem cell decision, of course, isn't itself an obstacle to innovation in renewable energy or in other forms of scientific advancement. But it is symptomatic of a broader trend in American society: it is the age of retreat. And in a period of retreat there is always less room to question. There will continue to be fits and starts - Bushes and Obamas - but the general trend is one of narrowing and descending (and if Sarah Palin wins the presidency, that pace will certainly speed up).

On the one hand, I don't really have a horse in the race. I don't live in America and I am a socialist. On the other hand, I live next door and I don't like the idea of a very large, heavily armed neighbour who has turned into a crazed, heavily armed survivalist. I would much rather see the American people rise up and throw off the parasites, imbeciles and lunatics who lead them.

The End is Nigh, Dumbasses. Stop With The Fossil Fuels Already.

OK, so there’s forest fires sweeping Russia as the country swoons under the worst heat wave and drought in a thousand years. Yeah, that’s not a type: ONE THOUSAND YEARS. Meanwhile Pakistan is drowning in waters caused by the worst monsoon season in decades. And there’s the small matter of an ice island four times the size of Manhattan that has broken from the Petermann Glacier in north Greenland.
You might think that all this is a bad sign of climate change. But then you might also think that the American government is crammed with murderous, corrupt bastards, too stupid to do anything but fiddle while the whole damn planet melts like a creamsicle on a July sidewalk.
And you’d be right. These boneheads and knuckle-draggers are hauling is to hell in a handbasket. Scratch that, most of us don’t get a seat in the handbasket, we just go straight into the fire - as the hundreds of thousands of refugees in Pakistan have discovered. It seems clear that the present round of talks in Bonn Germany aredoomed to failure as the US, the EU and the other rich nations drag their feet. Meanwhile, governments continue to pump massive subsidies into the fossil fuel industry, letting renewables starve by contrast. According to a Bloomberg report:
“The $43-46bn figure [subsidies for renewables] stands in stark contrast to the $557bn spent on subsidizing fossil fuels in 2008, as estimated by the International Energy Agency last month.”
The net result is that all these negotiations are just so much hand-waving to distract us from the fact that it is business as usual. Hell, that $46 billion is less than 10 percent of the US military budget, expected to climb to over $700 billion in 2011 (not including the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, which are paid for out of a separate fund). One can only draw one conclusion: the world’s rulers - led by the US and our own oil-soaked Prime Ministerial dickhead - really don’t care if they destroy the planet as long as they are the ones to squeeze the last drop of profit out of its dying body.

Arizona: Boycott America's Most Racist State

Back in 1993 the NFL pulled the planned Superbowl out of Arizona because the state government refused to recognize Martin Luther King Day. The pressure ultimately worked, the state instituted the day and were rewarded in 1996 with a Superbowl. But Arizona racism runs deep and MLK Day hasn't stopped the state from continuing in the vanguard of US racism - no mean feat in a country with so much of it. This is a state that bans "ethnic studies" in its public school, reinforcing ignorance of other cultures.
Back in April, Arizona's governor signed into law SB 1070, known also by its more polemical title "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighbourhoods" Act. It will become law on July 29. The law effectively legalizes and encourages racial profiling by the police. If you "look" like an "alien", the police have the right to stop and demand to see your papers. It is obvious towards whom this is directed - the significant state Latino population, who already suffered the effects of racial profiling, as this excellent editorial in the Washington Post points out.

This law isn't about solving the immigration issue; it's about scapegoating, an established practice in Arizona. For years, law enforcement agencies have criticized the Maricopa County sheriff's office for not serving felony arrest warrants in favor of conducting "saturation" sweeps in which hundreds of Latinos have been indiscriminately arrested in order to find undocumented immigrants. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon has stated that "citizens are being stopped because they are brown," and in a letter to the Justice Department he asked for a federal investigation into Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio based on his "pattern and practice of conduct that includes discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches, and arrests." And this was before SB1070 became law.

While there was an immediate and vociferous outcry from immigrants and immigrants' rights organizations, there are nonetheless ten other states, including Texas and Colorado, considering implementing a similar law. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the most draconian, racist immigration law to be passed in generations. Sadly, Obama has done little to disperse the myths of a crime wave by "illegal aliens" announcing that he would add 1,200 troops to patrol the US-Mexico border.
Not surprisingly, the media has been in lockstep with the most virulent anti-immigrant propaganda. Bill O'Reilly of Fox News ranted in May that "Phoenix is the kidnapping capital of the United States. Crime is through the roof. Drugs are coming across the border all the time. So what do you expect Arizona to do?" Except that every word out of his mouth was a lie.

Arizona's crime rate has been falling for several years, even as the number of immigrants to Arizona, both documented and undocumented, has been increasing.

What's more, study after study has shown that foreign-born immigrants are, in fact, less likely than native-born white Americans to commit crimes...

The endless repetition of the assertion, no matter that it is directly contradicted by the evidence, has nevertheless had its impact. When asked whether "more immigrants cause higher crime rates," 25 percent of Americans replied "very likely" and another 48 percent said "somewhat likely," according to the National Opinion Research Center's 2000 General Social Survey. This three-quarters of the U.S. population that believes there is a causal link between immigration and crime is significantly greater than the 60 percent of people who think more immigrants are somewhat likely or very likely "to cause Americans to lose jobs."

Not surprisingly the bloviating of scumbags like O'Reilly and right-wing, talk-radio agitators has had an effect upon attitudes towards immigration in America and in Arizona, with something like 67 percent of the US population supporting the Arizona measure. But even still a clear majority support legalization and "paths to citizenship" for immigrants coming into the country. According to this article by Justin Akers Chacón, such support remains large and solid, particularly amongst younger people.

A May 2009 CNN poll found that two out of three people supported legalization. A May 2010 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll found that while there is a substantial increase in support for enforcement measures, 80 percent of respondents nationally support "creating a program that would allow illegal immigrants already living in the United States for a number of years to stay here and apply to legally remain in this country permanently if they had a job and paid back taxes."

Drilling down beneath the support for SB 1070 is also revealing. According to an America's Voice poll conducted in June, 84 percent of national respondents who supported SB 1070 also support comprehensive immigration reform that includes legalization.

The truth of these numbers can be seen from the fact that at the end of May somewhere approaching 100,000 people marched in Arizona in opposition to the law, while the "Stand With Arizona" rally in support of the law drew about 7,000 people. A national mobilization, called "Phoenix Rising", a week later drew less than 1,000 people. On May 1, over half a million people marched in over 100 cities across the US in support of immigrants rights. And back in March 200,000 marched in Washington to demand comprehensive immigration reform. And the numbers of union and community leaders speaking out against the law continues to grow, along with unions and others which have passed resolutions condemning the law. Given the attempts by some to use populist rhetoric about "American jobs" being stolen by immigrants, it is especially important that the union movement has come out solidly opposed to this law.
The outrage that the racist Arizona law has generated is leading to a broad-based and widespread move towards boycotting the state. In 2011 the Major League Baseball All-Star Game is scheduled to take place in Arizona. An open letter has been sent to Bud Selig, the MLB commissioner, calling for it to be removed unless Arizona drops the law. This has been signed by the president of the AFL-CIO, the union central representing millions of American workers and numerous other community leaders. A website has been set up to promote a national and international boycott of the state. Boycotts have been decided upon or are being considered in Seattle, Berkeley, Burlington, and Chicago.
This pressure is no doubt behind the fact that the Department of Justice finally announced on July 6 that it would challenge SB 1070 as unconstitutional. Obama also spoke out against the Arizona law on July 2, after too long a silence on the issue and a failure to deal with immigration reform for the first half of his mandate - though he used the rhetoric of the Immigrant Rights Movement to help get himself elected.
He also accepts the law and order discourse on immigration and suggests that illegals in the USA are criminals by definition who ought to be punished.

Ultimately, he said, "our nation, like all nations, has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship. And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11 million who broke these laws should be held accountable."

Obama said those who entered the country illegally must admit they broke the law, register with the appropriate authorities, pay taxes, pay a fine, and learn English. They must "get right with the law before they can get in line and earn their citizenship."

As always, American politicians abdicate the responsibility of their own country in creating refugee crises. US foreign policy acts to create situations where immigrants seek to flee to somewhere more prosperous. Haitians flee Haiti because the US has prevented that country from developing independently (including generations of reparations that were paid to France for overthrowing French slavery) and kidnapped the countries' democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrande Aristide. The US overthrew, invaded or funded coups in countries throughout Central America - just this week sending thousands of Marines to Costa Rica, off the coast of Nicaragua. The US contributes to poverty and repression in Mexico through the support for maquilladora (free trade) zones and the crushing of independent unions and indigenous resistance by US corporations and US backed political actors. Almost every country in South America has experience an American-backed coup against reformist leaderships who seek to develop their countries and alleviate poverty. What's more, both Texas and significant portions of California were illegally stolen from Mexico in the first place.
Rolling back this present round of attacks, part of a longer-term assault in immigrants rights in America, where 11 million people (up to 5 percent of the workforce) are undocumented, will require dispensing with the whole legal-illegal language. This is about human rights and workers' rights since the wealthy have few obstacles to living wherever they want in the world. Defeating the Arizona law could be an important victory in the movement to roll back that assault. Take the opportunity to join the Boycott Arizona movement - write to Bud Selig, pass resolutions in your union, community, or school. Send a strong message that racism is unwelcome everywhere.

Russian Spies, American Spies. We All Got Spies - Why the Hoopla?

I've mostly been not reading about the Russian spy scandal. I just don't care that much. But I browsed this article in the Globe & Mail this evening to catch up on what's going on. Apparently a bunch of people were spying for Russia and they were arrested in the US with some of them charged and convicted. But now some of those people are going to be sent back to Russia in exchange for some people in Russia who were caught spying, were charged and sent to jail. Huh?

Wait a minute. If our side is spying - I'm assuming CSIS is doing more than telling tales about our foreign agent MPs, they're actually doing some spying of their own - and their side is spying, then everyone is spying and why is it a crime? I mean, I can see why governments and corporations don't want spies stealing the secret to how they get the Caramilk inside the Caramilk bar (I know how by the way and will sell it to the highest bidder) but why the jail term? Isn't that, you know, hypocritical? And why the big stink about it?

"Holy shit there were people spying on our country just like we were doing to them!"

Part of the hoopla, I suspect, has to do with the fact that there is increased imperial friction going on in the world these days. No, Imperial Friction is not the name of the well-known penguin's mating activity. What I mean is that while the USA is still the world's pre-eminent power, with an enormous military capacity, it is no longer unassailable and other pretenders and regional powers are beginning to challenge the Americans.

Afghanistan, for instance, is not just about those Kazakh gas deposits and possible lithium supplies inside Afghanistan itself. It is about containing China on its western borders and pushing up against Russia on its southern borders. And Russia and China are pushing back, though in different ways. The clash in Georgia is another reflection of this friction. At one level it does look utterly silly, this tit-for-tat spy swap with lots of huffing and puffing and hand-wringing by the American and Canadian media about Russia doing the same thing here that we're doing over there. But on another level it is quite frightening because we can see in miniature how such conflicts can escalate and become much more dangerous. This is primarily expressed through proxy fights - Russia crushes Georgia, America's Newest caucasian sweetheart; America sells weapons and performs joint military maneuvers with Taiwan, infuriating China. But sometimes secondary conflicts can spiral out of control. Imperialism plays a very high stakes game of chicken and people's lives, including our own, are the ante.