Obama: a dangerous socialist?

S P SETH

Even as the presidential debates hog the limelight to the real contest next month, the surreal world of American politics is a bewildering exercise. Take, for example, the claim of the American right and its corporate world that President Barack Obama is a dangerous socialist bent upon starting a class war in the country. In most other countries, Obama’s “socialist” credentials will be laughed off. After all, he is the President who bailed out America’s beleaguered banks and other financial institutions and gave the rich of America another lease of life. At the same time, America’s 46 million poor (they don’t count in the country’s ever-raging political debate) and the middle class are the biggest losers. With these kinds of facts, one has to seriously question the socialist epithet thrown at Obama by the rich and powerful in the Republican Party.

Obviously, this is meant to sharpen the ideological divide between the two contending political parties in the US, made worse by the racial innuendo and identity issue (whether or not he was born in the US?) that has plagued Barack Obama all through his term. Therefore, his “socialism” is somehow sinister and unwholesome in the eyes of his many critics. For instance, Mitt Romney has said “this president doesn’t understand freedom.” Another Republican, Mike Coffman, reportedly said that “in his heart,…[Obama] is just not an American.” And Rush Limbaugh, a popular conservative radio host has come to the conclusion: “I think it can now be said, without equivocation… that this man [Obama] hates this country.” And: “He is trying… to dismantle, brick-by-brick, the American dream.”

Let us look at why socialism is hated so much by so many Americans? First, for many Americans socialism is an evil creed associated with the failed Soviet Union. Therefore, even a suggestion that an American president might be espousing it is considered dangerous and even un-American. It is meant to stir class war in the United States, turning one section of the society against the other—the rich against poor. And what is the proof that Obama is doing this? Because he is making a case that America’s well off and rich should pay a bit more tax to repair the country’s damaged economy.

His critics call it “a philosophy of disdain toward wealth creation.” There is a concerted political movement, funded and articulated by the country’s ultra-rich, to bring down Obama by throwing all their weight and resources behind Mitt Romney.  One of the leaders of this club of rich men, described as “pope of this movement”, is Lee Cooperman, a hedge fund billionaire. In a letter to President Obama in November last year, decrying his provocative tone against the country’s rich people (partly reported in New Yorker), he said, “… Capitalism is not the source of our problems, as an economy or as a society, and capitalists are not the scourge that they are too often made out to be.” He added, “As a group we employ many millions of taxpaying people, pay their salaries, provide them with healthcare coverage, start new companies ...”

In other words, instead of praising and encouraging the capitalist class for their tremendous contribution to the country’s economy and society, President Obama’s framing of “the debate as one of rich-and-entitled versus poor-and- dispossessed is to both miss the point and further inflame an already incendiary environment.”

What most worries America’s rich is that Obama’s mild advocacy of fairness in paying taxes by the rich is somehow debunking the much-hyped up myth of the American dream. Which means that any American, however low, has the potential to reach the top because this country is special. It is true that now and then even a poor and disadvantaged person can make it to the top in any society, but such examples are few and far between in the US or anywhere else. The US’s economic mess, with the rise in the numbers of poor (now numbering about 46 million) and the unemployed and under-employed  (at 23 million), is stripping bare this myth. The recent spontaneous rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement against the “one per cent” that hogs America’s wealth has created fear among the country’s rich. And they fear that Obama’s talk about fairness might create an environment of popular insurrection against the rich and their powerful political allies, the Republican Party.

The point, though, is that Obama’s so-called socialism is not the real danger. What is dangerous, according to Joseph E. Stiglitz, an American Nobel laureate economist, as he says in his book The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future, is: “In important ways, our own country has become like one of these disturbed places serving the interests of a tiny elite.” And he seems to suggest that unless these inequalities are addressed, the United States might not be able to avoid for long the kind of popular revolts that are engulfing the Middle East.

But this is not the kind of stuff the Republicans and their rich supporters are interested in. If anything, they just want to forget the 47 per cent Americans who, they believe like Mitt Romney, look to the state for handouts and pay no taxes. In his view, they will not vote for him because his party is against welfare spending by the government, of which they are the beneficiaries. In other words, Mitt Romney, if elected, will work only for nearly half the population; others might have to fend for themselves.

The absurdity of US political debate is further highlighted when some of his rich opponents are even starting to see a Hitler in him. For instance, Stephen Schwarzman, a billionaire businessman, has compared President Obama’s proposed measures to eliminate some of the preferential tax treatment of the rich, to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.  If you think that Schwarzman might be one of those odd people seeing Hitler everywhere, it is not so. He is not alone. Cooperman, a hedge fund founder, shares the same broad view, though he doesn’t want to be that blunt. He told the New Yorker’s Chrystia Freeland, “You know, the largest and greatest country in the free world [USA] put a forty-seven-year-old guy [Obama] that never worked a day in his life [which is not true] and made him in charge of the free world.” Which, in his view is: “Not totally different from taking Adolf Hitler in Germany and making him in charge of Germany because people were economically dissatisfied.”

Elaborating on this, he said, “Now, Obama is not Hitler… But it is a question that the dissatisfaction of the populace was so great that they were willing to take a chance on an untested individual”. And look what happened in Germany. In other words, Obama is creating an inflammatory situation in the United States by turning the poor against rich, when the country’s rich have been at the forefront of creating jobs et al. Therefore, Obama is not only a dangerous socialist but also an agitator and provocateur trying to stir up things like Hitler did in Germany.

This level of debate in the United States, where the electors are pilloried for electing Barack Obama who, in turn, is pilloried for his “socialist” and Hitlerist views, is a sad reflection on the state of politics in the “largest and greatest country in the free world”. No wonder, the United States is in such a parlous state.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and the US

S P SETH

When you are pitted against a superpower like the United States, as Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks organization are, your odds of escaping that net are pretty low. Assange’s supposed crime is that by allowing WikiLeaks to release a multitude of US diplomatic cables, as well as the sordid crimes of its military in the Iraq war, he has earned the ire of the US government. Even though he is not a US citizen and hasn’t committed any cognizable crime, the US reportedly has a judicial process against him in motion, if he were ever to fall into their clutches. The result of such a process will be a foregone conclusion with the US military reportedly regarding Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as enemies of the United States. According to Julian Assange’s US attorney, Michael Ratner, “An ‘enemy’ is dealt with under the laws of war, which could include killing, capturing, detaining without trial etc…”

Understandably, Assange is not keen on this for simply exercising his right to disseminate information for public good.  And to avoid being possibly extradited to the US from Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning on sexual assault charges made by two women when he was in that country, he is now holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London having been granted asylum by that country’s government. After having exhausted all the legal avenues available in UK to stop his extradition to Sweden, he broke his bail conditions to take refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy. And that is where he is now stranded, unable to go anywhere for fear of arrest by the British authorities for breaching bail conditions, and extradition to Sweden.

Whether or not Sweden will extradite him to the US if asked,   is not quite clear. But considering that there is reportedly a grand jury indictment against him in the US, Sweden might not be able to resist the US request. As for the sexual assault case,  Assange was questioned on this when he was in Sweden, but at the time nothing incriminating was found and he was allowed to leave the country. However, not long after that, the sexual assault case was reopened in Sweden and Assange was asked to return for questioning. To avoid extradition, he jumped bail and sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. At no stage did Assange deny the sexual encounter with the women, maintaining that it was consensual. The only complaint is that he used a torn condom in the act against the said female’s wishes, which in Sweden might border on rape.

Whatever the legal merits or otherwise of the case, it is a bit odd, if not outrightly suspicious, why when Assange was first found not to have any case to answer, the Swedish authorities subsequently sought his extradition from UK for further questioning? It is important to note that at no time has Assange been actually charged with sexually assaulting the two women. It still is a matter of investigating the complaint against him. For which he is prepared to be questioned in London. But the Swedish authorities have insisted on his return to Sweden to complete their enquiries.

It is this juxtaposition of events, which raises questions of what transpired in the intervening period. Not unreasonably, Assange and his supporters fear the worst suspecting he would end up in a US jail like Private Bradley Manning, who was put into solitary confinement for allegedly leaking the US material to WikiLeaks. Considering that Julian Assange has reportedly been declared an ‘enemy’ of the US, it is not an unreasonable fear.

Considering further that no less a person than the US Vice-President, Joe Biden, called him “a high-tech terrorist”.  Biden’s opposite number in the 2008 presidential election and leader of the US Tea Party movement, Sarah Palin, has urged that Assange should be “hunted like bin Laden.” Not surprisingly, Assange is refusing to oblige without credible assurances that he wouldn’t be extradited to the United States by being lured into Sweden on a sexual assault complaint.

Now and then there are individuals and organizations that stand up for certain principles. In Assange and WikiLeaks’ case, they have sought to throw some light on the dark recesses of the US’s secret world of policy making, and the impunity with which it acts against its own much publicized human rights advocacy. Sadly, they have to pay a high price to promote larger public good. This is not right.

In a different era, Daniel Ellsberg, a former US defence department official, took on himself to release the Pentagon Papers in 1971 about the murky side of the US involvement in the Vietnam War, suffering utmost persecution by the then Nixon Administration. Recalling his experience recently, he said, “If I released the Pentagon Papers today, the same rhetoric and the same calls would be made about me.” He added, “I would be called not only a traitor, which I was [called] then, which was false and slanderous, but I would be called a terrorist” too. Now Ellsberg is a highly admired living legend. Will Assange also have a happy ending? Let us hope so. But at present he finds himself a hunted man.

 The sad thing is that his own Australian government has abandoned him, with Prime Minister Julia Gillard calling the WikiLeaks disclosures “grossly irresponsible” and illegal. It is not surprising, though, because when an Australian citizen has fallen foul of the US government, Canberra has tended to line up with its powerful ally.

But it is not all that bad in Australia. Commenting on the Assange affair against a backdrop of American policies, the Sydney Morning Herald said editorially, “As it is, we now have an American president who continues with indefinite detention outside the protection of the US constitution, who orders the killing of US citizens, who allows punishment of Manning [the US soldier who allegedly passed on the cables to WikiLeaks], and who continues to keep American officials immune from prosecution in the International Criminal Court for war crimes.”

With implied praise for Ecuador, it added, “With Assange, we now have a democratic government in the American hemisphere granting asylum to someone on the basis of well-grounded fear of political persecution in the United States.”  In other words, Canberra might have abandoned him, but many people in Australia would like their government to be proactive on his behalf.

Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times.

Looming China-Japan conflict

S P SETH

China-Japan relations are at a crisis point. The trigger this time is the ownership of the Senkaku islands (known as Diaoyu in China) in the East China Sea, with both China and Japan claiming sovereignty. Japan first acquired the islands after the Sino-Japanese war in 1896. During WW11, these were lost to the United States. But since 1971, when the US returned the Senkakus to Japan, these are under Japanese control. Beijing claims that these islands were historically part of China, and the US had no business returning them to Japan.

The recent escalation of tensions in China-Japan relations started with the Japanese government’s purchase of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands from their private Japanese owners to reinforce its state sovereignty. Which has led China to send naval patrol boats to the area to affirm the seriousness of its own claim. There are reports that Chinese fisherman will soon be going to the contested waters for fishing, possibly under protection of Chinese naval vessels.

These developments have occasioned an unprecedented show of national anger in China targeting Japanese establishments, big and small, leading them to shut down their operations. Apparently, there was an element of state encouragement behind all this. But these are being carefully controlled lest such public anger turn on state institutions for unrelated reasons.

There are several aspects to China-Japan hostility. First, on China’ side, there is the century of humiliation starting with the Sino-Japanese war of 1895-96, the 1930’s occupation of Manchuria followed by the brutality and atrocities of WW 11. The Japanese invasion of China was a horrendous affair and the memories are still fresh with the Chinese. China believes that Japan never made suitable and adequate amends for their wartime crimes, and remains unrepentant. Instead, it is still clinging on to old relics like the Diaoyu islands, as China would see.

Over and above China’s historical claim to the islands, they are also seen now as valuable real estate in terms of potential oil and gas resources on the ocean surface. Besides, they are rich in fisheries. Tokyo feels that this is indeed the real reason for China’s new interest in the islands. These two, history and prospective gas and oil discoveries, are important factors behind China’s sovereignty claim. A resurgent and powerful China is seeking to assert its claim and thereby announce a new Chinese era in regional politics and strategy, as it is doing in regard to other maritime disputes with some of its neighbors.

Japan raises China’s ire for its perceived arrogance in refusing to come to terms with its wartime crimes with suitable contrition. Such arrogance comes up time and again when some Japanese prime minister or minister visits the Yasukini shrine, which is a memorial to Japan’s war dead, including some of its WW11 generals charged with war crimes. Similarly, there is the issue of Japanese school textbooks that tend to whitewash Japan’s wartime record. Another problem that has cropped up, from time to time, is Japan’s attempt to ignore, as much as it can, its disgraceful record of “comfort women” (local prostitutes) it requisitioned for its soldiers during its occupation of Asian countries.

What it means is that the current crisis over the Senkaku/ Diaoyu islands has a history involving China’s deeply felt humiliation when it was weak with Japan treading all over it.  Now that it is strong and powerful, it might be going overboard to right the wrongs of the past. As for Japan, it is not willing to give any ground on its ownership claim on the islands, which is under its control. On both sides it is a question of national pride, even more so in China with seething anger over Japan’s wartime record.

It is also a difficult political time in China with the leadership transition in the country to be formalized at the 18^th Party Congress to be held soon. Because of the Bo Xilai factor and his wife’s murky murder verdict, there is a certain political shadow hanging over the country needing clear resolution. The expulsion from the Party of Bo Xilai, followed by his likely trial on criminal charges, is supposed to clear the political climate. That would remain to be seen. For instance, only recently there were all sorts of rumors when the presumptive president Xi Jinping was not seen publicly for two weeks. Against this political backdrop, the national outrage against Japan, involving attacks on Japanese businesses and establishments in China, is a useful distraction and a mobilization technique.

The CPC, however, is always mindful of keeping popular demonstrations under close watch because nationalism is a beast that might take an unwelcome turn, even turning on the Party, for all sorts of reasons. The Party appears to be already taking steps to dampen down some of the anti-Japanese hysteria. But these protests serve a useful purpose from time to time to distract, as at present, from the country’s slowing economic growth, internal political wrangling from Bo Xilai affair and the leadership transition.

Whatever might be China’s internal political imperatives and compulsions, its external ramifications are quite worrying by way of increased regional tensions. Japan has its own ultra nationalists like the Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara who wanted to buy the Senkakus from its Japanese owners, thus forcing the national government to pre-empt him with its purchase. Indeed, Japan’s centrist ruling Democratic Party of Japan looks like it will lose the ensuing election to a right-leaning Liberal Democratic Party that has just elected Shinzo Abe, a fervent nationalist, as its president. With Abe becoming the next prime minister of Japan, the political temperature between the two countries is likely to rise further.

Beijing, however, is not interested in Japan’s internal political dynamics and is furious over the islands’ deal. While this is essentially an issue between China and Japan, any military conflict between them is likely to involve the United States on behalf of its ally, Japan. The US secretary of defense, Leon Panetta, has visited both Tokyo and Beijing emphasizing the need for both countries to sort out the islands’ issue peacefully, lest it develops into a military conflict that could involve the United States.

The People’s Daily of China has observed that Beijing might take punitive economic measures against Japan, if it doesn’t back off. Highlighting Japan’s economic paralysis of the last two decades, further compounded by the global financial crisis, it warned that, “Japan’s economy lacks immunity to Chinese economic measures”, even though admitting that it was a “double-edged sword” for China as the two countries’ economies are interdependent in many ways. It added,“ Amidst a struggle that touches on territorial sovereignty, if Japan continues its provocations China will inevitably take on the fight.” And it doesn’t take long for economic warfare to take on the shape of a military conflict.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.