What has been lost? - II

"The current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years." George Soros - Financial Times

"So the moral, in a sense, is also a simple one: if someone offers you seemingly free money, in seemingly infinite quantities, with a soothing new name, you really ought to smell a rat." Gillian Tett - Financial Times

"The working class can kiss my Arse, I've got a MasterCard at last"
Revised parody of the British Labour Party hymn,"The Red Flag"

"Income inequality in the US is at its highest since that most doom-laden of years: 1929. Throughout the main English-speaking economies, earnings disparities have reached extremes not seen since the age of The Great Gatsby." John Plender - Financial Times

"The idea of the starving masses driven by their desperation to take to the streets and overthrow the ancien regime has seemed impossibly quaint since capitalism triumphed so decisively in the Cold War. Since then, the spectacle of hunger sparking revolutionary violence has been the stuff of Broadway musicals rather than the real world of politics." Tony Karon - Time Magazine"

David Seaton's News Links
Some things are pretty simple. The traditional left has practically disappeared because working people in developed countries are satisfied with the enormous prosperity of our society expressed in cheap food and abundant consumer goods. Having access to easy credit, they feel wealthy, they no longer look to their class for security and safety. They do not identify their fate with the fate of others.

The English express this as, "bugger you Jack, I'm all right" or "I'm alright Jack".

George Soros says that we are looking at the end of an era. That all the mass prosperity we have ever known was basically just a cosmic credit card binge. The cash machine has just spit our card out.

Perhaps this will lead to a rebirth of the left. For sure it will lead to the rise of the ultra-right because people will look for someone to blame. We can see this coming...

What to do?

Confucius said that the first thing to do was to "rectify names", that is to say, use correct terms.

Certainly the left needs its language retooled. Words get worn out, lose meaning. Think what words like, "awesome", "wonderful" and "amazing" originally meant and how little they mean anymore. Much of left wing discourse is similarly devalued: to speak it is to sound like the villain in a cold war spy drama. Think that the word "Proletariat" originally meant people who had a lot of prole or children and you'll see how stale language can get.

A new language of the left has to be created. This is not impossible. recently I came across an example of how something eons old could be expressed in new and different terms without missing its essence.

One of India's greatest spiritual teachers was Ramana Maharishi, a Hindu saint who died in 1950, he expounded the practice of self-inquiry as the path to liberation.

Many people who would benefit from the teachings of Ramana Maharishi might be put off by the exotic Indian English or the obscure Sanskrit terminology normally used in describing it. A spiritually "ripe" suburban housewife might be put off by words like, "Satchidananda", and think she was being drawn into some satanic sect and would end up with a shaved head, beating a tambourine in an airport.

I was amazed to discover that none other than Oprah Winfrey's favorite guru, Eckhardt Tolle, had managed to do a very workmanlike job of conveying the core of of Ramana Maharishi's teachings, in everyday English, without bending them all out of shape.

Meanings have many verbal paths leading to them.

Tolle often repeats that words are only signposts pointing at the path and that one should not get too identified with the words in detriment to where they point. Therefore if a word like "God" is a help in spiritual practice use it, and if it is an obstacle, because of the baggage it carries, don't. I don't think Tolle ever uses words like "Atman" or "Advaita", he just sticks to the central idea.

He must be getting the message over because his book "The Power of Now" sells like hot bread.

Something similar desperately needs to be done with the language of progressive politics so that people who are seeking can get quickly to the truth without being repelled by culturally over-freighted verbiage. With what is lying ahead, a failure to do so would be tragic. DS

The Soros antenna

David Seaton's News Links

George Soros has one of the world's most highly developed senses of where things are going to be in the future. Whether those things are currency futures or political ideas, his antenna are legendary.

The right wing advocates of "Greater Israel" that make up the back bone of AIPAC, themselves a minority of a minority, are driving Israel off a cliff and pulling the United States after it. As the disaster deepens this could have a devastating effect on America's vibrant Jewish community, something that in turn would have a devastating effect on American society in general. This is what I think Soros's antenna are picking up.

As rich as any of the AIPAC core members, he is a formidable opponent not to be trifled with and, along with former president Jimmy Carter and professors Mearsheimer and Walt, he is helping to make a frank conversation about US/Israeli relations possible. DS

Soros adds voice to debate over Israel lobby - Reuters
Abstract: The billionaire investor George Soros has added his voice to a heated but little-noticed debate over the role of Israel's powerful lobby in shaping Washington policy in a way critics say hurts U.S. national interests and stifles debate. In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Soros takes issue with "the pervasive influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)" in Washington and says the Bush administration's close ties with Israel are obstacles to a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. Soros, who is Jewish but not often engaged in Israel affairs, echoed arguments that have fueled a passionate debate conducted largely in the rarefied world of academia, foreign policy think tanks and parts of the U.S. Jewish community. "The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism," wrote Soros. Politicians challenge it at their peril and dissenters risk personal vilification, he said.(...) The long-simmering debate bubbled to the surface a year ago, when two prominent academics, Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, published a 12,500-word essay entitled "The Israel Lobby" and featuring the fiercest criticism of AIPAC since it was founded in 1953. AIPAC now has more than 100,000 members and is rated one of the most influential special interest groups in the United States, its political clout comparable with such lobbies as the National Rifle Association. Its annual conference in Washington attracts a Who's Who of American politics, both Republicans and Democrats. Mearsheimer and Walt said the lobby had persuaded successive administrations to align themselves too closely with Israel. "The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only U.S. security but much of the rest of the world," they wrote. No other lobby group has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy so far from the U.S. national interest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of Israel are essentially identical, they wrote. Once considered an honest broker in the Middle East, the United States is now seen in much of the Arab world as an unquestioning backer of Israel, according to international opinion polls.(...) The two academics said that pressure from Israel and its lobby in Washington played an important role in President George W. Bush's decision to attack Iraq, an arch-enemy of Israel, in 2003. Mearsheimer and Walt found no takers for their essay in the U.S. publishing world. When it was eventually published in the London Review of Books, they noted it would be hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States publishing such a piece.(...) In his contribution to the debate, Soros said: "A much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can't make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties." That influence is reflected by the fact that Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world.(...) According to Oren, the pro-AIPAC historian, the Carter book and the Mearsheimer-Walt paper had the same "insidious thesis" and suffered from the same flaw -- ignoring oil as a driving element in U.S. policies on the Middle East. READ IT ALL

Soros on AIPAC... power shifts

David Seaton's News Links

What George Soros says, in his NYRB piece abstracted below, is what you can read in any progressive blog, or in any European, (or for that matter Israeli) newspaper.

The significance is that these home truths are being stated by George Soros in a prestigious American publication. Important people with worldwide prestige, like Soros, Judt or Carter are stepping forward to criticize AIPAC following the pioneering report by Mearsheimer and Walt. They step forward knowing full well the kind of slander and insults they are going to be subjected to. They also know that those insults and slander prove every criticism of theirs to be true.

They are doing something very brave and at the same of vital importance, because AIPAC is one of the most sinister organizations in contemporary America.

One thing that I think should be made clear, although AIPAC is Jewish, it is much more an American phenomena than a Jewish phenomena. It has everything to do with the masculine identity crisis of middle aged, American white men of all denominations and much less about Judaism or antisemitism... The cloak of victim-hood obtained by the Jewish identity is just a convenient disguise for a type of behavior much too familiar in American life and which would not be acceptable if not for that mantle. With the Iraq war the AIPAC has gone "A Bridge Too Far". George Soros, who really knows from personal experience what true antisemitism is, knows that this is a matter that the Jewish community itself must clean up before the damage spreads. DS
George Soros: On Israel, America and AIPAC - New York Review of Books

Abstract: The Bush administration is once again in the process of committing a major policy blunder in the Middle East, one that is liable to have disastrous consequences and is not receiving the attention it should. This time it concerns the Israeli–Palestinian relationship. The Bush administration is actively supporting the Israeli government in its refusal to recognize a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas, which the US State Department considers a terrorist organization. This precludes any progress toward a peace settlement at a time when progress on the Palestinian problem could help avert a conflagration in the greater Middle East.(...) While other problem areas of the Middle East are freely discussed, criticism of our policies toward Israel is very muted indeed. The debate in Israel about Israeli policy is much more open and vigorous than in the United States. This is all the more remarkable because Palestine is the issue that more than any other currently divides the United States from Europe. Some European governments, according to reports, would like to end the economic boycott of Hamas once a unity government is successfully established. But the US has said it would not. One explanation is to be found in the pervasive influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which strongly affects both the Democratic and the Republican parties.[2] AIPAC's mission is to ensure American support for Israel but in recent years it has overreached itself. It became closely allied with the neocons and was an enthusiastic supporter of the invasion of Iraq. It actively lobbied for the confirmation of John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations. It continues to oppose any dialogue with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas. More recently, it was among the pressure groups that prevailed upon the Democratic House leadership to drop the requirement that the President obtain congressional approval before taking military action against Iran. AIPAC under its current leadership has clearly exceeded its mission, and far from guaranteeing Israel's existence, has endangered it.(...) The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism.[4] Politicians challenge it at their peril because of the lobby's ability to influence political contributions. When Howard Dean called for an evenhanded policy toward Israel in 2004, his chances of getting the nomination were badly damaged (although it was his attempt, after his defeat in Iowa, to shout above the crowd that sealed his fate). Academics had their advancement blocked and think-tank experts their funding withdrawn when they stepped too far out of line. Following his criticism of repressive Israeli policy on the West Bank, former president Jimmy Carter has suffered the loss of some of the financial backers of his center.(...) Whether the Democratic Party can liberate itself from AIPAC's influence is highly doubtful. Any politician who dares to expose AIPAC's influence would incur its wrath; so very few can be expected to do so. It is up to the American Jewish community itself to rein in the organization that claims to represent it. But this is not possible without first disposing of the most insidious argument put forward by the defenders of the current policies: that the critics of Israel's policies of occupation, control, and repression on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and Gaza engender anti-Semitism. The opposite is the case. One of the myths propagated by the enemies of Israel is that there is an all-powerful Zionist conspiracy. That is a false accusation. Nevertheless, that AIPAC has been so successful in suppressing criticism has lent some credence to such false beliefs. Demolishing the wall of silence that has protected AIPAC would help lay them to rest. A debate within the Jewish community, instead of fomenting anti-Semitism, would only help diminish it.
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