The Rag Blog

25/02/08 “HaitiAnalysis” — – The way Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on Haiti and Venezuela in its 2008 World Report reveals an underlying assumption that the US and its allies have the right to overthrow democratic governments.[1]

It is a matter of public record that the US funded groups who were involved in the coup of 2002 and continued to do so after the coup took place, but rather than denounce or even acknowledge US destabilization efforts in Venezuela, HRW continues to complain about the non-renewal of RCTV’s public broadcasting license. [2] RCTV was one of big television networks that aided and abetted the coup. HRW objects that RCTV’s involvement in the coup “was not proven in a proceeding in which RCTV had an opportunity to present a defense.” It is impossible to imagine a non-farcical proceeding that would conclude otherwise, especially when the coup’s perpetrators thanked the private media, of which RCTV was a major part, for its help. Before the coup was reversed Vice-Admiral Ramirez Perez told a Venezuelan reporter:

“We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you.”

Judging by its reports, HRW is completely uninterested in whether the broadcaster that replaced RCTV on the public airwaves, TVes, offers viewers a wider variety of views. [3]”Freedom of the Press Barons” to perpetrate coups appears to be HRW’s concern, not freedom of expression. It is worth remembering that HRW’s response to the coup in Venezuela was appalling. Al Giordano summed their response up well in an exchange with an HRW intern:

“They recognized an illegitimate ‘authority’ as legitimate. They failed to call for the removal of that dictatorial regime. They failed to call on other nations and the OAS to refuse to recognize it. They failed to call for invoking the OAS Democratic Charter for the one event it was intended to prevent.”[4]

Giordano’s words could also be used to summarize how HRW responded to the US backed coup in Haiti in 2004.

HRW used the 2008 World Report to criticize, yet again, a judicial reform law that was passed by the Chavez administration in 2004. In contrast, HRW’s summary about Haiti said nothing about the coup that ousted Jean Bertrand Aristide’s democratic government in 2004; nothing about the subsequent murder of thousands of people who supported Aristide’s Lavalas movement (the word “Lavalas” does not even appear in the summary); nothing about the fact that Haiti’s police and judiciary remain stacked with appointees from the dictatorship of 2004-2006; nothing about Father Gerard Jean Juste, the most prominent political prisoner of that period, who continues to be hounded by Haiti’s legal system. [5]

Even if HRW’s criticism of Venezuela’s judicial reform law of 2004 were reasonable (and it isn’t) it cannot deserve more attention than the coup in Haiti that led to a human rights catastrophe. [6]

On a positive note, the 2008 World Report belatedly gave some attention to the disappearance of Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, a prominent Haitian human rights worker and opponent of the 2004 coup. HRW stated:

“In August 2007 a well known human rights advocate, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, was abducted. At this writing his whereabouts remain unknown.”

Again, the absence of the word “Lavalas” is telling. Pierre-Antoine disappeared days after he had announced that he would run for the Haitian senate as a Fanmi Lavalas Party candidate. The goal of the 2004 coup and the bloodbath that followed was to eliminate the Lavalas movement – the same goal with basically the same perpetrators as during the 1991-1994 period about which HRW reported extensively. [7]

At first glance, the 2008 World Report seems to provide courageous and much needed criticism of powerful countries like the US. HRW is willing to contradict the Bush Administration on some important matters. For example, in a press conference about the 2008 World Report, HRW director Ken Roth refused to label Venezuela as a “closed country”. However, Roth went on to say that human rights “trends were negative in Venezuela”. That conclusion is justified only if one assumes that perpetrating coups and other acts of sabotage against a democratic government should have no legal repercussions at all. Meanwhile, in Haiti, when human rights trends really were disastrously negative thanks to a coup backed by the US and its allies, HRW displayed a chilling indifference.[8]

An important lesson to learn from the coups that took place in Haiti and Venezuela is that US imperialism cannot succeed through the efforts of Neocons alone. It needs the help of other countries, and it needs the help of NGOs like Human Rights Watch. [9]

NOTES

[1] See Human Rights Watch. World Report. 2008. hrw.org/wr2k8/pdfs/wr2k8_web.pdf

[2] See Eva Gollinger’s “The Chavez Code” for details on US funding of groups that participated in the coup.

[3] There is good reason to believe that freedom of expression on the public airwaves has been improved by replacing RCTV with TVES James Jordan notes “The new broadcasting license is being given to a public station, TVes-Venezuela Social Television, which will run shows produced mainly by independent parties. The station will be controlled not by the government, but by a foundation of community members, with one chair reserved for a government representative. ” Source For more specifics about RCTV’s involvement in the coup see this.

[4] Al Giodano’s exchange with the HRW intern can be read here.

[5] for more about the coup and Haiti and its consequences see Kolbe and Hudson. Lancet Study. 2006, Source (PDF format). See also this.

[6] The judicial reform law broke the stranglehold of Venezuelan elite on the judiciary. For extensive discussion of the reform law and HRW’s objections see note 3.

[7]For more discussion of how HRW responded to the 1991 and 2004 coups in Haiti see this.

[8] See this.

Hope mongering has been working much better than experience mongering. Now, the rest of the story….

As befits American culture, politics is all about slick selling to the masses. Hillary Clinton is selling Day-1 help to victims and sufferers. Barack Obama is selling effervescent hope to yes-we-can dreamers. This media hyped horse race is like a fight between diet Coke and diet Pepsi, artificially sweetened candidates devoid of real nourishment.

The least educated, least sophisticated and least wealthy along with Hispanics are sipping Clinton’s fizzled-out drink. The most educated, most privileged, and most financially successful along with African-Americans are gulping down Obama’s charismatic pick-me-up.

As to who is buying what, consider these data: Clinton won the non-college-educated voters by 22 points in California, 32 points in Massachusetts, 54 points in Arkansas, and 11 points in New Jersey. In a Pew Research national survey, Obama led among people with college degrees by 22 points. In Connecticut, Obama beat Clinton among college graduates by 17 points and in New Jersey by 11 points. And note this: 39 percent of Virginia and 41 percent of Maryland Democratic primary voters reported incomes of $100,000 or more – clearly well educated people that would favor Obama.

A simplistic conclusion is that the dumber you are the more likely you prefer the first woman president because you believe this experience-selling status quo, corporate candidate. And the smarter you are the more likely you prefer the first black president because you embrace the change-promises and platitudes from the more authentic, inspirational candidate with the short resume. Clinton supporters appreciate the 10-point-plan-for-every-problem political pragmatist. Obamatons swoon over the big-picture, unity-promising political messiah.

Working-class Clinton supporters are like weary shoppers seeking decent food at low prices at Safeway and good coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts. Obama yes-we-can-happy-facers gladly pay exorbitant prices for the Whole Foods experience and Starbucks shtick.

Here are some realities that neither group wants to face:

Both candidates are establishment insiders.

Both are corporate-state politicians. Note that Robert Wolf, the CEO of UBS Americas, a major banking company, has raised more than $1 million for the Obama campaign. Large sources of Obama money are law firms, investment houses, and real estate companies, and 80 percent of his donors are affiliated with business, compared to 85 percent for Clinton.

Neither are true progressives or populists, like Kucinich and Edwards.

Both Clinton the fighter and Obama the talker will sell out once they confront presidential realities. Why? Because plutocracies know how to retain power AFTER elections. After two years it will be clear that the new president will have failed to extract the US from Iraq, will have failed to deliver universal health care, will have failed to address illegal immigration, will have done nothing to get a new and serious 9/11 investigation, will have done nothing to stop middle-class-killing globalization, and will have utterly disappointed the vast majority of Americans. The president’s most pressing priorities will be lowering expectations and getting reelected, despite raising taxes. The only people truly surprised at all this will be those lacking what the Greeks thought is a virtue: cynicism.

Finally, for those seeking serious political system reforms, it is troubling that neither Clinton nor, especially, Obama have the courage to advocate needed constitutional amendments, such as replacing the Electoral College with the popular vote for president, getting all private money out of politics, making universal health care a right, and preventing presidential signing statements that undermine laws.

22/02/08 “Canwest News” — — Canada and the U.S. have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other’s borders during an emergency, but some are questioning why the Harper government has kept silent on the deal.

Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Forces announced the new agreement, which was signed Feb. 14 in Texas.

The U.S. military’s Northern Command, however, publicized the agreement with a statement outlining how its top officer, Gen. Gene Renuart, and Canadian Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, head of Canada Command, signed the plan, which allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.

The new agreement has been greeted with suspicion by the left wing in Canada and the right wing in the U.S.

The left-leaning Council of Canadians, which is campaigning against what it calls the increasing integration of the U.S. and Canadian militaries, is raising concerns about the deal.

“It’s kind of a trend when it comes to issues of Canada-U.S. relations and contentious issues like military integration. We see that this government is reluctant to disclose information to Canadians that is readily available on American and Mexican websites,” said Stuart Trew, a researcher with the Council of Canadians.

Trew said there is potential for the agreement to militarize civilian responses to emergency incidents. He noted that work is also underway for the two nations to put in place a joint plan to protect common infrastructure such as roadways and oil pipelines.

“Are we going to see (U.S.) troops on our soil for minor potential threats to a pipeline or a road?” he asked.

Trew also noted the U.S. military does not allow its soldiers to operate under foreign command so there are questions about who controls American forces if they are requested for service in Canada. “We don’t know the answers because the government doesn’t want to even announce the plan,” he said.

But Canada Command spokesman Commander David Scanlon said it will be up to civilian authorities in both countries on whether military assistance is requested or even used.

He said the agreement is “benign” and simply sets the stage for military-to-military co-operation if the governments approve.

“But there’s no agreement to allow troops to come in,” he said. “It facilitates planning and co-ordination between the two militaries. The ‘allow’ piece is entirely up to the two governments.”

If U.S. forces were to come into Canada they would be under tactical control of the Canadian Forces but still under the command of the U.S. military, Scanlon added.

News of the deal, and the allegation it was kept secret in Canada, is already making the rounds on left-wing blogs and Internet sites as an example of the dangers of the growing integration between the two militaries.

On right-wing blogs in the U.S. it is being used as evidence of a plan for a “North American union” where foreign troops, not bound by U.S. laws, could be used by the American federal government to override local authorities.

“Co-operative militaries on Home Soil!” notes one website. “The next time your town has a ‘national emergency,’ don’t be surprised if Canadian soldiers respond. And remember – Canadian military aren’t bound by posse comitatus.”

Posse comitatus is a U.S. law that prohibits the use of federal troops from conducting law enforcement duties on domestic soil unless approved by Congress.

Scanlon said there was no intent to keep the agreement secret on the Canadian side of the border. He noted it will be reported on in the Canadian Forces newspaper next week and that publication will be put on the Internet.

Scanlon said the actual agreement hasn’t been released to the public as that requires approval from both nations. That decision has not yet been taken, he added.

23/02/08 – — – BAGHDAD, Feb 22 (IPS) – What the U.S. has been calling the success of a “surge”, many Iraqis see as evidence of catastrophe. Where U.S. forces point to peace and calm, local Iraqis find an eerie silence.

And when U.S. forces speak of a reduction in violence, many Iraqis simply do not know what they are talking about.

Hundreds died in a series of explosions in Baghdad last month. This was despite the strongest ever security measures taken by the U.S. military, riding the “surge” in security forces and their activities.

The death toll is high, according to the website icasualties.org, which provides reliable numbers of Iraqi civilian and security deaths.

In January this year 485 civilians were killed, according to the website. It says the number is based on news reports, and that “actual totals for Iraqi deaths are higher than the numbers recorded on this site.”

The average month in 2005, before the “surge” was launched, saw 568 civilian deaths. In January 2006, the month before the “surge” began, 590 civilians died.

Many of the killings have taken place in the most well guarded areas of Baghdad. And they have continued this month.

“Two car bombs exploded in Jadriya, killing so many people, the day the American Secretary of Defence (Robert Gates) was visiting Baghdad last week,” a captain from the Karrada district police in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS.

“Another car bomb killed eight people and injured 20 Thursday (last week) in the Muraidy market of Sadr City, east of Baghdad, although the Mehdi army (the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr) provides strict protection to the city,” the officer said. “There is no security in this country any more.”

Unidentified bodies of Iraqis killed by militias continue to appear in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. The Iraqi government has issued instructions to all security and health offices not to give out the body count to the media. Dozens of bodies are found every day across Baghdad, residents say. Morgue officials confirm this.

“We are not authorised to issue any numbers, but I can tell you that we are still receiving human bodies every day; the men have no identity on them,” a doctor at the Baghdad morgue told IPS. “The bodies that have signs of torture are the Sunnis killed by Shia militias; those with a bullet in the head are usually policemen, translators or contractors who worked for the Americans.”

The “surge” of 30,000 additional troops came to Iraq, mostly Baghdad, in February of last year. The total current number of U.S. troops in Iraq is approximately 157,000. They were sent to end violence, and with a declared aim of helping political reconciliation.

But where peace of sorts has descended in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital city of six million (in a population of 25 million), it comes from a partitioning of people along sectarian lines. The Iraqi Red Crescent reports that one in four residents has been driven out of their homes by death squads, or by the “surge”.

According to an Iraqi Red Crescent report titled ‘The Internally Displaced People in Iraq’ released Jan. 27, 1,364,978 residents of Baghdad have been displaced.

The Environment News Service reported Jan. 7 that “many of the capital’s once mixed areas have become either purely Sunni or Shia after militias forced families out for belonging to the other religious branch of Islam.”

Some of the eerie calm in areas of Baghdad comes because togetherness has ended. Sunnis and Shias who lived together for generations are now partitioned. This is not the peace many Iraqis were looking for, surge or no surge.

On Jan. 8, UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond announced that there were at least 2.2 million Iraqis internally displaced within the country, and that at least another two million had fled the country altogether. This, no doubt, would make many areas quieter.

The U.S. military has erected three to four metre high concrete walls around several neighbourhoods, forcing residents to choose either Sunni or Shia areas in which to live. Such separation has brought large-scale displacement, and protests.

Sunni Muslims seem to have the worst of it. Many Iraqis are outraged by the number of Sunni detainees the “surge” has taken.

Residents of Amiriya district of western Baghdad demonstrated Feb. 11 against mistreatment by U.S. and Iraqi forces involved in the “surge”. The “surge” aims to eradicate al-Qaeda from Iraq, but this has meant that most military operations have been carried out in Sunni areas like Amiriya.

“We are here to protest against the unfair arrests and raids conducted against the innocent people of Amiriya,” Salih al-Mutlag, chief of the Arab Dialogue Council in the Iraqi government told IPS at the demonstration. “This has gone too far under the flag of fighting terror.”

Al-Mutlag said they were also demonstrating against arrests in the western parts of Baghdad, despite an apparently peaceful situation there as a result of residents’ cooperation with Iraqi army units. Large numbers of residents came out in the Dora region of southwest Baghdad to protest against the U.S. military for arresting 18 people, including an 80-year-old man.

“We are the ones who improved the situation in western parts of Baghdad without any interference from the Americans and their puppet Iraqi government,” former Iraqi Army Major Abu Wussam told IPS in Amiriya. “We negotiated with our brothers in the Iraqi national resistance who agreed to conduct their activities in a different way from the traditional way they used to work.

“It seems Americans did not like it, and so they are punishing us for it, instead of releasing our detainees as they promised.”

Some of the apparent peace on the street is a consequence of rising detentions. In November last year Karl Matley, head of the Iraqi branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, declared that more than 60,000 prisoners and detainees are held in prisons and other detention centres. A large number of these were taken during the “surge”.

By August 2007, half a year into the “surge”, the number of detainees held by the U.S.-led military forces in Iraq had swelled by 50 percent, with the inmate population growing to 24,500, from 16,000 in February, according to U.S. military officers in Iraq.

The officers reported that nearly 85 percent of the detainees in custody were Sunni Arabs.

Given that the majority of the detained are Sunnis, the “surge”, rather than bridging political differences and aiding reconciliation between Sunni and Shia groups, appears to have had the opposite effect.

And yet, there could be more dangerous reasons to doubt such success of the “surge” that is claimed.

Among the recent arrests in Baghdad, the U.S. military counted six members of the Sahwa (Awakening) forces. This is a force of resistance fighters now ostensibly working with the U.S. military. The U.S. pays each member 300 dollars monthly. More than 80 percent of about 70,000 Sahwa members are Sunni.

The arrest of some Sahwa members is indication of U.S. military doubts about the loyalties of some of these Sahwa fighters. Shia political parties and militias already accuse them of being resistance fighters in disguise. Many believe that large numbers of Sahwa forces are resistance fighters simply riding the “surge”.

“How come Sunni parts of Baghdad became so quiet all of a sudden,” says Jawad Salman, a former resident of Amiriya who fled his house in 2006 after Iraqi resistance members accused him of being a government spy. “It is a game well played by terrorists to divert the fight against Shia groups. I lived there and I know that all residents fully support what the U.S. calls the terrorists.”

The Sahwa strategy has brought down the number of U.S. casualties – for now. But the U.S. strategy seems to have done less for Iraq than for its own forces.

23/02/08 “ICH” — — THE US occupying army in Iraq (euphemistically called the Multi-National Force-Iraq) carries out extensive studies of popular attitudes. Its December 2007 report of a study of focus groups was uncharacteristically upbeat.

The report concluded that the survey “provides very strong evidence” to refute the common view that “national reconciliation is neither anticipated nor possible”. On the contrary, the survey found that a sense of “optimistic possibility permeated all focus groups … and far more commonalities than differences are found among these seemingly diverse groups of Iraqis.”

This discovery of “shared beliefs” among Iraqis throughout the country is “good news, according to a military analysis of the results”, Karen deYoung reports in The Washington Post.

The “shared beliefs” were identified in the report. To quote deYoung, “Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of ‘occupying forces’ as the key to national reconciliation.”

So, according to Iraqis, there is hope of national reconciliation if the invaders, responsible for the internal violence, withdraw and leave Iraq to Iraqis.

The report did not mention other good news: Iraqis appear to accept the highest values of Americans, as established at the Nuremberg Tribunal — specifically, that aggression — “invasion by its armed forces” by one state “of the territory of another state” — is “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”. The chief US prosecutor at Nuremberg, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, forcefully insisted that the Tribunal would be mere farce if we do not apply its principles to ourselves.

Unlike Iraqis, the United States, indeed the West generally, rejects the lofty values professed at Nuremberg, an interesting indication of the substance of the famous “clash of civilisations”.

More good news was reported by Gen David Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker during the extravaganza staged on September 11, 2007. Only a cynic might imagine that the timing was intended to insinuate the Bush-Cheney claims of links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, so that by committing the “supreme international crime” they were defending the world against terror — which increased sevenfold as a result of the invasion, according to an analysis last year by terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank.

Petraeus and Crocker provided figures to show that the Iraqi government was greatly accelerating spending on reconstruction, reaching a quarter of the funding set aside for that purpose. Good news indeed, until it was investigated by the Government Accountability Office, which found that the actual figure was one-sixth of what Petraeus and Crocker reported, a 50 per cent decline from the preceding year.

More good news is the decline in sectarian violence, attributable in part to the success of the murderous ethnic cleansing that Iraqis blame on the invasion; there are fewer targets for sectarian killing. But it is also attributable to Washington’s decision to support the tribal groups that had organised to drive out Iraqi Al Qaeda, and to an increase in US troops.

It is possible that Petraeus’s strategy may approach the success of the Russians in Chechnya, where fighting is now “limited and sporadic, and Grozny is in the midst of a building boom” after having been reduced to rubble by the Russian attack, CJ Chivers reports in the New York Times last September.

Perhaps some day Baghdad and Fallujah too will enjoy “electricity restored in many neighbourhoods, new businesses opening and the city’s main streets repaved”, as in booming Grozny. Possible, but dubious, considering the likely consequence of creating warlord armies that may be the seeds of even greater sectarian violence, adding to the “accumulated evil” of the aggression. Iraqis are not alone in believing that national reconciliation is possible. A Canadian-run poll found that Afghans are hopeful about the future and favour the presence of Canadian and other foreign troops — the “good news” that made the headlines.

The small print suggests some qualifications. Only 20 per cent “think the Taleban will prevail once foreign troops leave”. Three-quarters support negotiations between the US-backed Karzai government and the Taleban, and over half favour a coalition government. The great majority therefore strongly disagree with the US-Canadian stance, and believe that peace is possible with a turn towards peaceful means. Though the question was not asked in the poll, it seems a reasonable surmise that the foreign presence is favoured for aid and reconstruction.

There are, of course, numerous questions about polls in countries under foreign military occupation, particularly in places like southern Afghanistan. But the results of the Iraq and Afghan studies conform to earlier ones, and should not be dismissed.

Recent polls in Pakistan also provide “good news” for Washington. Fully 5 per cent favour allowing US or other foreign troops to enter Pakistan “to pursue or capture Al Qaeda fighters”. Nine per cent favour allowing US forces “to pursue and capture Taleban insurgents who have crossed over from Afghanistan”.

Almost half favour allowing Pakistani troops to do so. And only a little more than 80 per cent regard the US military presence in Asia and Afghanistan as a threat to Pakistan, while an overwhelming majority believe that the United States is trying to harm the Islamic world. The good news is that these results are a considerable improvement over October 2001, when a Newsweek poll found that “eighty-three per cent of Pakistanis surveyed say they side with the Taleban, with a mere three per cent expressing support for the United States,” and over 80 per cent described Osama bin Laden as a guerrilla and six per cent a terrorist.

Amid the outpouring of good news from across the region, there is now much earnest debate among political candidates, government officials and commentators concerning the options available to the US in Iraq. One voice is consistently missing: that of Iraqis. Their “shared beliefs” are well known, as in the past. But they cannot be permitted to choose their own path any more than young children can. Only the conquerors have that right.

Perhaps here too there are some lessons about the “clash of civilisations”.

“If Obama were to somehow prevail on election night, I would be OJ Simpson-acquittal shocked…The awe part wouldn’t kick in until a few months later…If he actually lived aaaall the way from election night to the inauguration, I would be so awed I’d lead an anti-affirmative action protest in front of the NAACP’s national headquarters.” — Sean Gonsalves

I wrote that in December 2006 and if Obama’s campaign continues to roll, I just might be in front of the NAACP’s Baltimore headquarters in the days following the inauguration of America’s first black president.

That’s if (I said IF), Obama wins — and survives all the way to the inauguration.

I know. It’s a horrible thought. Survive all the way to inauguration? But, honestly — are you telling me it hasn’t run through your mind, especially with all of these comparisons to JFK and MLK?

I wasn’t even alive when John and Martin were around and I’ve wondered, once or twice, whether Barack should move around a lot – maybe throw in a head-fake, here and there — whenever he speaks in public.

Recognize: it takes courage to be in Obama’s very public place. Even a soldier like Colin Powell said no to that call.

In the May 1996 issue of Ladies Home Journal (what can I say, I read a lot), Powell’s wife, Alma, put into words the echo that still emanates from the Lorraine Motel balcony, 40 years after King’s murder.

“You think everybody loves Colin Powell,” she said. “Everybody doesn’t like Colin Powell…I don’t want to describe the hate mail we’ve gotten…A black man running for president is going to be in a dangerous position.”

Not that I’m trying to divide Obamanation, as the superdelegate situation has the potential to do, but, in case you haven’t noticed because of the unfolding Obamanomenom (or maybe you’ve just been feeling Barackward lately), this is Black History Month.

But, let’s do this the left-handed way and look beyond black history to imagine the future of black history, which is to say American history. For you righties, I’ll translate: Instead of thinking about historical “progress” as if it moves forward in linear fashion, let’s think about history as a geometrical shape, like a circle.

Recently, among my multi-racial circle of friends, political discussion turned to the Obama effect on the future of black history. If Obama is elected, does that mean black history (in America) has come full circle?

Of course, an Obama presidency would not put an end to racism, especially the institutional kind. But it would likely mean whatever political support that remains for affirmative action and other race-conscious policies will dry up like a raisin in the sun.

So, on the one hand, Obama in the White House is not quite the same thing as making it to Martin’s mountaintop. I mean, unless a person thinks African-Americans are inferior, which is the very definition of racism, you can’t say were beyond “the race problem” when black folk are disproportionately in jail, out of school, unemployed and in debt. And none of that is likely to significantly change under an Obama administration — without a mass movement behind it, as Barack has pointed out ad naseum on the campaign trail, even if the point is lost on those who criticize his hope talk.

On the other hand, an Obama presidency would definitely be a huge leap forward on several fronts, to the point where it could very well signify the Civil Rights Movement (dormant since King’s death but still very much alive in our political culture), has come full circle.

And that would be a good thing because when Martin was on the mountaintop, preaching the night before his assassination, King looked to the future of American history and saw beyond the color line — to the horizon of economic justice.

“It’s all right to talk about ‘long white robes over yonder,’ in all of its symbolism,” he said. “But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. It’s alright to talk about ‘streets flowing with milk and honey,’ but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can’t eat three square meals a day.”

So like I was saying, if — if – Obama wins, and the ghosts of black history don’t condemn us to repeat the Sixties, I guess I’ll be in front of NAACP HQ in the days following the inauguration, holding a sign that’ll read: “No to race-based affirmative action.”

The other side will say: “Yes to a class-based affirmative action.”

There’s a man in Florida who has been writing to me for years (ten pages, handwritten) though I’ve never met him. He tells me the kinds of jobs he has held-security guard, repairman, etc. He has worked all kinds of shifts, night and day, to barely keep his family going. His letters to me have always been angry, railing against our capitalist system for its failure to assure “life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness” for working people.

Just today, a letter came. To my relief it was not handwritten because he is now using e-mail: “Well, I’m writing to you today because there is a wretched situation in this country that I cannot abide and must say something about. I am so enraged about this mortgage crisis. That the majority of Americans must live their lives in perpetual debt, and so many are sinking beneath the load, has me so steamed. Damn, that makes me so mad, I can’t tell you. . . . I did a security guard job today that involved watching over a house that had been foreclosed on and was up for auction. They held an open house, and I was there to watch over the place during this event. There were three of the guards doing the same thing in three other homes in this same community. I was sitting there during the quiet moments and wondering about who those people were who had been evicted and where they were now.”

On the same day I received this letter, there was a front-page story in the Boston Globe, with the headline “Thousands in Mass. Foreclosed on in ‘07.”

The subhead was “7,563 homes were seized, nearly 3 times the ‘06 rate.”

A few nights before, CBS television reported that 750,000 people with disabilities have been waiting for years for their Social Security benefits because the system is underfunded and there are not enough personnel to handle all the requests, even desperate ones.

Stories like these may be reported in the media, but they are gone in a flash. What’s not gone, what occupies the press day after day, impossible to ignore, is the election frenzy.

This seizes the country every four years because we have all been brought up to believe that voting is crucial in determining our destiny, that the most important act a citizen can engage in is to go to the polls and choose one of the two mediocrities who have already been chosen for us. It is a multiple choice test so narrow, so specious, that no self-respecting teacher would give it to students.

And sad to say, the Presidential contest has mesmerized liberals and radicals alike. We are all vulnerable.

Is it possible to get together with friends these days and avoid the subject of the Presidential elections?

The very people who should know better, having criticized the hold of the media on the national mind, find themselves transfixed by the press, glued to the television set, as the candidates preen and smile and bring forth a shower of clichés with a solemnity appropriate for epic poetry.

Even in the so-called left periodicals, we must admit there is an exorbitant amount of attention given to minutely examining the major candidates. An occasional bone is thrown to the minor candidates, though everyone knows our marvelous democratic political system won’t allow them in.

No, I’m not taking some ultra-left position that elections are totally insignificant, and that we should refuse to vote to preserve our moral purity. Yes, there are candidates who are somewhat better than others, and at certain times of national crisis (the Thirties, for instance, or right now) where even a slight difference between the two parties may be a matter of life and death.

I’m talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes-the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.

But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice.

Let’s remember that even when there is a “better” candidate (yes, better Roosevelt than Hoover, better anyone than George Bush), that difference will not mean anything unless the power of the people asserts itself in ways that the occupant of the White House will find it dangerous to ignore.

The unprecedented policies of the New Deal-Social Security, unemployment insurance, job creation, minimum wage, subsidized housing-were not simply the result of FDR’s progressivism. The Roosevelt Administration, coming into office, faced a nation in turmoil. The last year of the Hoover Administration had experienced the rebellion of the Bonus Army-thousands of veterans of the First World War descending on Washington to demand help from Congress as their families were going hungry. There were disturbances of the unemployed in Detroit, Chicago, Boston, New York, Seattle.

In 1934, early in the Roosevelt Presidency, strikes broke out all over the country, including a general strike in Minneapolis, a general strike in San Francisco, hundreds of thousands on strike in the textile mills of the South. Unemployed councils formed all over the country. Desperate people were taking action on their own, defying the police to put back the furniture of evicted tenants, and creating self-help organizations with hundreds of thousands of members.

Without a national crisis-economic destitution and rebellion-it is not likely the Roosevelt Administration would have instituted the bold reforms that it did.

Today, we can be sure that the Democratic Party, unless it faces a popular upsurge, will not move off center. The two leading Presidential candidates have made it clear that if elected, they will not bring an immediate end to the Iraq War, or institute a system of free health care for all.

They offer no radical change from the status quo.

They do not propose what the present desperation of people cries out for: a government guarantee of jobs to everyone who needs one, a minimum income for every household, housing relief to everyone who faces eviction or foreclosure.

They do not suggest the deep cuts in the military budget or the radical changes in the tax system that would free billions, even trillions, for social programs to transform the way we live.

None of this should surprise us. The Democratic Party has broken with its historic conservatism, its pandering to the rich, its predilection for war, only when it has encountered rebellion from below, as in the Thirties and the Sixties. We should not expect that a victory at the ballot box in November will even begin to budge the nation from its twin fundamental illnesses: capitalist greed and militarism.

So we need to free ourselves from the election madness engulfing the entire society, including the left.

Yes, two minutes. Before that, and after that, we should be taking direct action against the obstacles to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

For instance, the mortgage foreclosures that are driving millions from their homes-they should remind us of a similar situation after the Revolutionary War, when small farmers, many of them war veterans (like so many of our homeless today), could not afford to pay their taxes and were threatened with the loss of the land, their homes. They gathered by the thousands around courthouses and refused to allow the auctions to take place.

The evictions today of people who cannot pay their rents should remind us of what people did in the Thirties when they organized and put the belongings of the evicted families back in their apartments, in defiance of the authorities.

Historically, government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, has failed its responsibilities, until forced to by direct action: sit-ins and Freedom Rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war.

Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.

Howard Zinn is the author of “A People’s History of the United States,” “Voices of a People’s History” (with Anthony Arnove), and most recently, “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.”