When Puppets Fall

Scan page 3

biggest contributor to our long-term deficit.” What this will mean in practice is hundreds of thousands tossed from the rolls, or having the number of covered visits and access to services cut. What it will not mean in any significant amount is cutbacks in funds to cover high-tech (and often unnecessary) care provided via machines made by manufacturers such as GE.

Certainly, the more Washington and statehouses get away with cuts to Medicaid, the sooner Social Security will be attacked.

These proposals were all motivated as part of a competitiveness agenda that would allow the U.S. to compete with rising powers like China and India: “We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. We have to make America the best place on earth to do business.”

Obama called on the nation to prepare 100,000 new math, science, and engineering teachers—this while his administration has backed the testing-based regime used as an excuse to close entire schools, fire or discipline teachers, and pack classrooms with more and more students! Obama also called for simplifying the corporate tax code by eliminating loopholes in exchange for lowering the 35 percent rate. This, of course, will merely shuffle around the largesse to corporations. Shortly before the address Obama also pledged to capital that he would get rid of supposedly “job-killing” regulations.

What’s good for GE … If anyone had any doubts about the political direction of Obama’s State of the Union, they should have been cleared up by his appointment of the CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt, to head his renamed body of economic advisers, the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. “Jeff Immelt’s experience at GE,” said Obama, “and his understanding of the vital role the private sector plays in creating jobs and making America competitive makes him up to the challenge of leading this new council.”

This follows Obama’s appointment of William Daley, former Commerce Secretary and senior executive at JPMorgan Chase, as his chief of staff.

Some pundits claimed Immelt’s appointment showed Obama’s sincere desire to revive U.S. manufacturing, its presence in what Immelt calls “the world’s fastest growing market for aviation, energy, transportation, health care, and financial services.”

Shortly before Obama’s State of the Union, Immelt stood side-by-side with the president throughout the visit of President Hu Jintao of China. And when Obama was in India recently, he announced deals involving American companies, including a $750 million order from Reliance Power for steam turbines manufactured by GE.

The United Electrical Workers Union said the company has closed 29 plants in the U.S. and one in Canada in the past two years, eliminating more than 3000 jobs. But the AFL-CIO, while mumbling about GE’s destruction of jobs in the U.S., nonetheless supported Obama’s move, saying Immelt had “embraced the president’s agenda of investing in America’s infrastructure and rebuilding manufacturing.” The union federation also issued a joint statement with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, praising Obama’s address for the jobs that will supposedly be created through his infrastructure projects and the resulting heightened competitiveness.

Criticizing the competitiveness theme of Obama’s address, New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman wrote: “It’s true that we’d have more jobs if we exported more and imported less. But the same is true of Europe and Japan, which also have depressed economies. And we can’t all export more while importing less, unless we can find another planet to sell to.”

What’s more, competition between countries is rivaled in economic significance by competition between multinational corporations. In an analysis of the production chains linking China and other East Asian economies to the U.S., radical economist Martin Hart-Landsberg pointed out, “We are being reshaped, just like East Asia, by a multinational corporate strategy … approximately 90% of China’s high technology exports to the U.S. are produced by multinational corporations.”

This helps explain Immelt’s laid-back attitude toward the supposedly artificially low levels of the Chinese currency, which he told interviewers wasn’t even among his top five concerns. Instead, he told reporters, U.S. workers just had to work harder to compete more effectively.

It may prove too early to predict the fall of Egypt’s president for life Hosni Mubarak, but events do not look hopeful for [his] long-term success. Mubarak’s regime has been the cornerstone of U.S. Middle East strategy, for, as an Arab state, it boasts the biggest population—and as Egypt goes, so goes the region.

Mubarak, who succeeded to power after the army’s assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat on Oct. 6, 1981, stood by Sadat’s “peace” deal, and has been more an ally of the West than of the Palestinians and other Arab nationalities. For his services, Egypt has been one of the biggest recipients of U.S. military aid in the region—second to Israel, of course.

Despite his long services to his Western paymasters, Mabarak is being prepared for an unwilling retirement. Mubarak, a man long on Egyptian internal security, may have been undone by kids of the Twitter generation. For those devoted to this technology, protests could be staged across the country against the regime.

Egypt’s president may be on a rowboat largely because of the nation’s economic crisis, its gnawing economic problems, and the brutal fiendish nature of the police. For several months now, pictures of people beaten and abused by cops have been flashed across the country, via the internet.

But as in Tunisia, brutality and repression by police can only work so long. Once fear evaporates, resistance grows. Egypt has served as the export destination of those who suffered U.S. rendition, whom the U.S. wanted to “disappear” forever.

And now, after decades of acquiescence to U.S. imperial whims, Mubarak may receive the Shah treatment—exile, if not worse. Panama’s former dictator, Gen. Omar Torrijos, who gave refuge to an ailing Shah of Iran, remarked upon receiving his guest, “This is what happens to a man squeezed by the great nations.” Said Torrijos, “After all the juice is gone, they throw him away.” © MAJ 2011 Socialist Action FEBRUARY 2011 3

Scan page 4

Scott Braley (Left) Cristina Gutierrez of Compañeros del Barrio speaks at Jan. 25 San Francisco rally against government repression. At her right is S.F. Labor Council delegate David Welsh, who spoke on behalf of United National Antiwar Committee.

thorities. Karen Sullivan also joined the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a socialist group that some of the subpoenaed activists support. As a member of these different groups, activists recall Sullivan making extreme statements and proposals; she was obviously sent by the FBI not only to gather information but to be a provocateur.

Activists from different social movements have rallied around those targeted by the government, demanding that the government end its witch hunt. The Chicago rally was attended by busloads of youth from the Palestinian and Puerto Rican communities.

Christine Boardman, the president of SEIU Local 73 and Jesse Sharkey, a vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union, both spoke. Those two unions, along with dozens of other labor locals, councils, and federations, have passed resolutions condemning the FBI raids and subpoenas. Other speakers included Ricardo Jiminez, a Puerto Rican Independence activist and former political prisoner of 20 years, and Basil Ali of American Muslims for Palestine.