What it Means When Hillary Clinton Says: “We Could Totally Obliterate Them (Iran)”

Hillary Clinton has been chastised by many including the editorial page of the New York Times for saying that if Iran attacked Israel "we could totally obliterate them." Her comment on Iran, which she refuses to retract, has been explained by some as the desperate effort of a losing candidate to fall back on populist hyperbole to defeat her opponent.

Chastising and explaining are not enough. Clinton's threat was criminal. If a major leader in any other country talked about obliterating a country, that leader would be condemned as contemplating mass murder, even genocide. The word "obliterate" extends far beyond the usual American bluster about promoting "regime change" in this or that country, and that bluster has opened the way for invasions and the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

  When the would be leader of the only nation ever to drop atomic bombs on human beings threatens the obliteration of a country through the use of nuclear weapons----what else could her remarks possibly mean---the world is awakened to the ultimate meaning of the American Empire. It is a military empire that is capable of killing every man, woman and child on earth. At a time when the economic power of the empire is in serious decline and its conventional forces are failing to win wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the nuclear threat is the trump card, the card that makes us all pay attention.

  In the 21^st century, empires are dangerous beasts. Our survival literally depends on their good humour. Americans who wonder why so many people around the world don't trust their country need to understand that what appears to them as little more than a campaign tactic on Clinton's part, is a reminder to the world of a wholly unacceptable state of affairs.

America’s Energy Crisis: The Realities the Politicians Won’t Talk About

The United States faces a severe energy crisis that is compounding its broader economic and military predicaments. The highly visible tip of the energy crisis can be seen at the gas pumps where Americans are paying an average of $3.60 a gallon for regular gas this week.

On the campaign trail, Senators McCain, Clinton and Obama have been debating the 18.4 cent a gallon federal excise tax on gasoline. While McCain and Clinton want to remove the tax for the busy summer driving season, Obama correctly notes that this is a diversion from serious discussion of energy issues. Although the Illinois senator has a grip on reality on this minor issue, the major politicians are not telling Americans the hard truths about the energy crisis:

· Americans pay much lower gasoline prices than people in other industrialized countries. Their average price tag comes out to 95 cents a liter, which compares to $1.25 a liter, the average price this week in Canada. Looking further afield and going back to gallons, the U.S. price of $3.60 a gallon is low compared with the $7.60 paid in France. The difference in price between the U.S. and other advanced countries is a consequence of the lower gas taxes paid by Americans.
· Lower gasoline prices in the United States are one reason the American automobile fleet is so much less efficient than the fleet in other countries. The average American vehicle (there is a wide range depending on the vehicle) gets 22 miles to the gallon, compared with over 40 miles per gallon in the countries of the European Union, and over 45 miles to the gallon in Japan.
· The United States, which accounted for half the global output of petroleum as late as 1950 now imports over half the petroleum Americans consume. Most Americans believe they receive most of their imported oil from the Middle East, which they do not. Their largest foreign source is Canada, which is followed by Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria. While they may regard Canada as a safe and secure supplier, they are going to have to grapple with the fact that about half of the oil from Canada comes from the oil sands in northern Alberta, and over the next decade that source will make up an ever larger proportion of the Canadian imports. The oil sands, as Canadians are aware, are a problematic source of oil. Huge amounts of natural gas and water are used in separating the bitumen from the sand to produce synthetic crude oil. Oil sands operations scar the landscape. This week five hundred ducks died because they landed in a tailings pond at an oil sands (Syncrude) plant. And the greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands production are enormous. They are the single biggest reason Canada is getting nowhere near meeting the targets it signed onto when it ratified the Kyoto accord. (The current Conservative government, with its close ties to the petroleum industry has abandoned Canada’s efforts to meet the Kyoto targets.)
· The United States will soon be paying close to half a trillion dollars a year to import oil. This is simply unaffordable. The annual American trade deficit is already $827 billion and this is going to grow much larger very quickly as the oil bill skyrockets. The U.S. current account deficit (which includes profits, interest payments and tourism as well as goods) is running at $738 billion a year. This is why the United States is plunging into debt with the rest of the world, a net debt that is now well in excess of two trillion dollars. And that’s why foreign central bankers in China and Japan who hold two trillion dollars in U.S. treasury bills and other government securities have now become so vital to keeping the U.S. dollar from plunging even further against other currencies.
· The bleeding of the U.S. dollar against the Euro and other currencies is tempting petroleum exporting countries to set their prices in Euros rather than dollars. When this happens, the price shock for Americans will be immediate and enormous.

Those who would occupy the White House ought to level with Americans about these realities. Americans are going to have to make enormous changes in the efficiency of their vehicles---and this means getting the SUVs, vans and pickups off the roads---and they are going to have to make vast investments in improving urban public transit, and establishing inter-city high speed rail systems. They are going to have to redesign their cities. The day of the low density suburb is coming to an end. American cities in the future are going to have to be more densely populated than they have been in the age of cheap oil, to allow public transit to work. And the redesign of the cities will have to be carried out so as to be socially fair----otherwise the rich will invade the city centres, take the most desirable properties and drive everyone else to the peripheries. (This has already happened in Manhattan and has gone much further in London.)

The investments required to prepare the United States for the realities of the new age are enormous and make the tax plans of people like Senator John McCain utterly ludicrous (what can you expect from a man whose economic ideas are poorly learned versions of 18th century thought). In fact, Clinton and Obama have not done much better in facing up to reality.

The good news----and it is really good---is that if the United States faces up to the changes it has to make, Americans will no longer have to import petroleum, from the Alberta oil sands or from anywhere else, and will no longer feel compelled to listen to politicians who claim that it is in the vital national interest to control the lands of the Persian Gulf by dispatching young men and women to a war zone.

Come to think of it, cutting the defence budget in half, which would still make the U.S. by far the largest military spender in the world, would free up the capital to make the changes America needs.

Earlier this week though, I saw footage of George W. Bush decked out in a green tie as he told his Rose Garden audience that the only way ahead is to drill for oil in the lands of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns. He ought to change his middle name from Dubya to Nero.

TTC Workers and the Right to Strike

The way the mainstream media has told the story, all is well in Toronto in the aftermath of the passage of legislation in the Ontario Legislature ordering the employees of the Toronto Transit Commission back to work. The subways, buses and streetcars are running and that's all that matters.

Something is very wrong with this picture. Fundamental issues are at stake here and they cut right to the heart of our democracy.

The right of workers to withdraw their labour in pursuit of improved pay, better working conditions and job security is not some frill that can be dispensed with for the sake of momentary convenience. It is a human right no less important than the right to vote to choose members of parliaments and legislatures.

The media coverage of the transit strike in Toronto, including that of the CBC, has been shockingly one-sided. News stories have focused on the rapid response of the politicians to get the TTC back in service for Monday morning's job commute, as well as on the anger of people on the street at the workers for going on strike.

You had to search long and hard to find out why a substantial majority of TTC workers turned down the contract they had been offered. On CBC Newsworld's newscast at 8.00 a.m.,there was no coverage of the issues in the strike, and no one representing the union was interviewed. (Later in the morning a union rep was interviewed, but not on the main newscast.) On the newscast, we learned that the issues will now go to arbitration but we were not told why the workers felt compelled to turn down the contract. The tone was one of relief that the strike was over. We were left with the impression that the very idea of a strike was simply unthinkable. And then we got the words of Mayor David Miller saying he was sure that Torontonians would treat the TTC drivers with respect.

What a kindly society we are. Workers should not be the objects of public rage, but as for their right to strike that can be airily dispensed with.

We live in a time when the right of investors to do what they like has become holy writ. Speculators are driving up the price of food, which may well lead to the starvation and deaths of a not inconsiderable number of people in the poorest countries. For this, they get some mild tsk tsking, but nothing like the rage that is meted out to workers who are trying to keep their heads above water with rising fuel and food prices driving up their cost of living.

Too many wage and salary earners have fallen prey to the divide and conquer strategy of the fat cats and their media outlets. That's why we hear so much from working people about how they pay the salaries of TTC drivers out of their taxes.

Those of us who are wage and salary earners need to re-learn the solidarity that has been assiduously programmed out of us in a society where the public narrative is all about individuals making it on their own. The extent to which we are suckers to buy this line can be seen from the ever wider gap in income and wealth between the rich and the rest of us.

The problem in our society is not bus and subway drivers who are trying to make a decent living, doing a job that is wracked with increasing stress. TTC employees don't turn down a contract to inconvenience the rest of us. They only opt for a strike if their backs are pushed to the wall. Instead of blaming the workers for the inconvenience of a strike, we should aim our displeasure at the chair of the TTC, City Hall and Queen's Park. It's the decision makers there who create the conditions that make strikes necessary. Tell them you're pissed off, not the man or woman driving the bus.

As for legislating away the right of TTC workers to strike in future on the grounds that they provide an essential service, that is a crock. Public transit is vital and a lot more public capital needs to be invested in it at a time of when the days of auto use in big cities are numbered. Among other things that capital needs to ensure decent pay and working conditions for transit workers, who should not have to live with the threat that their jobs are going to be contracted out to the private sector as a way for the politicians to reduce bills by breaking unions and lowering pay.

The most dire threat to our democracy arises from the widening gap between a newly enriched class of owners and managers, and the rest of us. It's time for us to put the whole subject of economic democracy back on the agenda. It's been missing from the public dialogue for far too long.