click on the link below for your invitation to a MAY DAY SYMPOSIUM & REUNION at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC at 4:00 pm.
Invitation

Time for A "Democracy Process"

“{Yassir Arafat] is the head of the Palestinian Authority, an organization that we helped create. He is seen as the leader of the Palestinian people.” -- Secretary of State Colin Powell.

It's difficult to think about long-term strategy in the midst of desperate crisis, or to reflect on past missteps. But if we don't we may make things even worse.

When the Palestinian Authority was created in Oslo in 1993, it was announced (Article 3) that its purpose would be to permit the Palestinian people to “govern themselves according to democratic principles.” Yet from the very beginning that purpose was subverted by Yassir Arafat and his circle. Elections held in 1996 had serious irregularities, and a National Legislative Council that was intended to have sovereign legislative powers was turned into such a rubber stamp for Arafat and his henchmen that elected leaders simply resigned. Corruption is endemic, critics are beaten and the press is bought or intimidated. Everywhere in PA land, it's mob and gangland justice.

Two governments and two peoples may be able to make peace. But how can Israel make peace with an authoritarian movement whose essence is to mobilize for the destruction of Israel? Peace would be the undoing of such a movement, and political suicide for its leaders.

One hopes that some kind of cease-fire or armistice can be achieved between Israel and the Palestinians. But if it is, let's hope just as fervently that we don't go back to a “peace process” unless its priority goal is creation of a Palestinian interlocutor that permits debate, respects law and human rights, and that reflects a range of the Palestinian people's interests. American policy in the Middle East has traditionally belittled democracy and sought deals with the sultans and tyrants. Anyone who questioned this “realism” was dismissed as wooly- minded. Now we see the naivete of such “realism.”
http://www.jmcc.org/media/report/98/May/3d.htm
http://www.memri.org
http://www.hrw.org/worldreport99/mideast/israel.html
http://www.metimes.com/2k/issue2000-14/reg/palestinians_beat_minister.htm

Hayden's New Look

Is it possible to feel sorry for Tom Hayden?  To test your capacity for compassion take a look at Ian Buruma's review of the former SDS leader's latest book in the April 11 issue of The New York Review of Books. It's brutal.

Hayden has gone from alienated youth to peace activist to street fightin'man and on to serve as radical tribune for tinseltown in the California State Legislature. Having exhausted available roles in politics proper, he, like many of the Sixties Left, turned to the politics of identity, and there discovered his Irishness. (Irish on the Inside: In Search of the Soul of Irish America, by Tom Hayden. Verso, 312 pp., $25.00.)

“There, in the glass-strewn streets of Derry or Belfast with the smell of cordite in his florid Irish nose,” Buruma writes, "Hayden feels he can finally live up to his name. Hayden, we learn, is from Ó hAodain, which means 'the person of the flame.'”

Buruma adds, “And I had always thought the main reason so many people flocked to America was to be rid of such nonsense.”

Buruma seems genuinely astonished by Hayden; he doesn't appear to be grinding old axes.  This gives all the more edge to what must be the unkindest cut imaginable: “Hayden, in his vulgar Freudian angst, actually sounds more like a bored Californian than a poor, suffering Irishman....”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15241

One has to welcome this forthright critique of the Left for any help it may give to counteracting those who are undermining America's war on terrorism.  Here's a paragraph for flavor:

“Many left intellectuals live in America like internal aliens, refusing to identify with their fellow citizens, regarding any hint of patriotic feeling as a surrender to jingoism. That's why they had such difficulty responding emotionally to the attacks of September 11 or joining in the expressions of solidarity that followed. Equally important, that's why their participation in the policy debate after the attacks was so odd; their proposals (turn to the UN, collect evidence against bin Laden, and so on) seem to have been developed with no concern for effectiveness and no sense of urgency. They talked and wrote as if they could not imagine themselves responsible for the lives of their fellow- citizens.”

Such sentiments deserve a robust cheer. Let's not allow any churlish memories get in the way -- such as, "What would Dissent editors say about anyone else who made comments such as these, and what have they been saying about those who have been worrying about this problem for the past 35 years?"

No, let's instead hope that Dissent editors will not now balk at taking their critique beyond the Left's deficiencies on terrorism and Israel to take up other issues as well: defense spending, race, the global economy, ineffective government services, the labor move- ment, the under-class.

A decent left will challenge abuses of corporate, financial and political powers, but it will also challenge the monitors of political correctness who have so ardently stifled examination of a whole range of left and liberal orthodoxies.  There are signs that the swing toward the moderate left that developed in Europe and the U.S. (Bill Clinton) at the close of the Cold War may be coming to a close.  The center/left parties have found it too difficult to deal with issues that provoke the ire of their more orthodox elements. This challenge offers a new role for Dissent. But it is one that will first of all require Dissent itself to accept radical change.

The conflict centers on Blair's intention to reform Britain's ailing public services. Some believe that the prospects of labor winning yet another term depend on this. In Blair's view, reform means greater accountability, more management authority, more contracting out of public services to the private sector. For the unions and the workers this looks like lower pay and less job security. In some instances, it could lead to a two-tier work force, in which senior workers with better contracts work alongside new hires with diminished pay and benefits.

Some of Blair's ministers contend that they have responsibility without authority: they appear to be running government services but have little capacity actually to manage the workforce. There are too many rules and entrenched practices. Workers and unions reply that they are being made scapegoats for the effects of budget cuts and feckless privatization schemes that began in the Thatcher era.

The issues are not easy ones, and debate about what should be done has gotten off on an especially ugly footing. In anticipation of an upcoming battle, workers in two railway unions have elected leaders who come from the remnants of Britain's hard Left. Blair has lashed out against his opponents as “wreckers” and conserva- tives with a small 'c,'” who have to be taken on the way the militant tendency of the Labour Party was taken on in the 1980s. John Monks, the TUC Secretary General, called Blair's remarks "bizarre and juvenile."

The conflict has comparisons to tensions within our Democratic Party in the U.S., where yuppie “progressives” often find themselves at odds with unions and other interest groups. These conflicts erupted from time to time in the Clinton-Gore years, but a combination of Clinton's nimble footwork and dread of the looming Republican alternative helped contain the differences. Blair's big majority in Commons and the high expectations created by his overwhelming re-election have not made his situation easy. But his footwork can also be faulted.

Conservative pundits have long been needling Blair about an approach to government that is heavy on spin and short on principle.  Perhaps he has let this get to him: his approach to the unions has been surprisingly confrontational.  Rather than consult and explain in order to ease fears and underline the benefits that many union members can gain from more efficient public services, Blair has lashed out.  His manner reminds many Britons that he has never really seemed at home around the country's enduring working class culture.  “He just always looks uncomfortable when he comes to the TUC Congress to give a speech,” one seasoned observer told us. “He just hectors them.”

He still does have one advantage, though: the Tories, his eventual opponents, still can't even find their way into the ring.

Sudan has been the scene of one of Africa's most awesome humanitarian and political disasters. Over a million and a half people have died in more than a decade and a half of civil war, drought and famine. The government in Khartoum, led by the National Islamic Front, denies that slavery exists. But the United States Government's Human Rights Reports and the reports of a succession of United Nations' Rapporteurs argue that indeed it does, principally as a consequence of attacks by Arab tribes in the north on Christian and animist tribes in the south.

Many observers believe that the September 11 attacks and the U.S. war on terrorism have stirred new currents in Sudan that could possibly encourage peaceful change.

Muravchik's "Socialism" at the Bookstores

Josh Muravchik's book on socialism is out, and we hope to discuss it in our next issue.  It's a collection of biographical portraits of socialist and communist figures through history, and, although we are not ready to offer any conclusions, we already can say the book is interesting and readable. The book will be a featured topic in our May Day symposium and reunion and will be available (see invitation above). (“Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism,” Encounter, 417 pp, $27.95.)

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