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By RT News

A cross-discipline study has challenged the belief that human sexuality and gender identity are determined by biology and remain fixed, saying that there is no scientific proof of this. The study cautioned against drastic medical treatment for transgender children.

The notion that sexual orientation is predetermined by biology is an important part of the current LGBT discourse. If a person has no choice over whether to be gay or not, society cannot demand that he or she be straight, so the argument goes.

But regardless of its political worth, the “born this way” paradigm is not backed up by sufficient scientific data, according to a new paper published in the autumn issue of the New Atlantis, a journal focusing on political, societal and ethical ramifications of technological advances.

The study does not claim that being gay is a choice, merely that stating the opposite may be wrong.

The 144-page paper was written by Dr. Lawrence S. Mayer, an epidemiologist and biostatistician also trained in psychiatry, who is currently a scholar in residence at the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Dr. Paul R. McHugh, a renowned psychiatrist, researcher, and educator and former chief of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The paper’s three parts focus on sexual orientation, links between sexuality and mental health, and gender identity.

Drawing on studies in fields varying from neurobiology to social sciences, the authors wrote that “The understanding of sexual orientation as an innate, biologically fixed property of human beings – the idea that people are ‘born that way’ – is not supported by scientific evidence.”

The term ‘sexual orientation’ itself is ambiguous and is used to describe attraction, behavior or identity by different researchers. Sometimes it refers to things such as belonging to a certain community or having certain fantasies.

“It is important, then, that researchers are clear about which of these domains are being studied, and that we keep in mind the researchers’ specified definitions when we interpret their findings,” the paper said.

There are biological factors associated with sexual behavior, the paper acknowledges, but there are no compelling “causal biological explanations for human sexual orientation.” Differences in the brain structures of gay and straight individuals identified by researchers are not necessarily innate and may be the result of environmental or psychological factors.

“The strongest statement that science offers to explain sexual orientation is that some biological factors appear, to an unknown extent, to predispose some individuals to a non-heterosexual orientation,” the paper said.

LGBT individuals are statistically at greater risk of having mental health problems than the general population, the authors say. As a more dramatic example, “the rate of lifetime suicide attempts across all ages of transgender individuals is estimated at 41 percent, compared to under 5 percent in the overall US population.”

The usually accepted explanation for this is social stress from discrimination and stigma, but the study said that those factors may not solely explain the disparity and that more scientific research on the issue is necessary.

The paper added that the notion that gender identity is fixed and determined by biological factors is also not backed up by data.

“In reviewing the scientific literature, we find that almost nothing is well understood when we seek biological explanations for what causes some individuals to state that their gender does not match their biological sex,” the authors said.

They strongly advocate caution in resorting to drastic medical treatment such as sex-reassignment surgery for people identified or identifying as transgender. This is especially true in children, whose sexuality is mutable and for whom such treatments may do more harm than good, they warn.

“There is little scientific evidence for the therapeutic value of interventions that delay puberty or modify the secondary sex characteristics of adolescents, although some children may have improved psychological well-being if they are encouraged and supported in their cross-gender identification,” the paper said. “There is no evidence that all children who express gender-atypical thoughts or behavior should be encouraged to become transgender.”

“Sexual orientation and gender identity resist explanation by simple theories. There is a large gap between the certainty with which beliefs are held about these matters and what a sober assessment of the science reveals. In the face of this complexity and uncertainty, we need to be humble about what we know and do not know,” it said.

The authors noted that their paper touches upon controversial issues and insist that first and foremost it is about science and the need for additional evidence in the field. Mayer said many people who contributed to the report asked not to be identified so as to distance themselves from the potential backlash.

“Some feared an angry response from the more militant elements of the LGBT community; others feared an angry response from the more strident elements of religiously conservative communities,” he said. “Most bothersome, however, is that some feared reprisals from their own universities for engaging such controversial topics, regardless of the report’s content—a sad statement about academic freedom.”

The paper was specifically written for the general public to draw attention to mental health problems of the LGBT community, the authors said. McHugh is an opponent of sex reassignment surgery for transgender people, arguing that it often fails to improve their well-being and instead does the opposite in the long run.

23 August 2016

By Antonio Tricarico

Financial speculation in food commodities has become one of the main drivers of food price volatility, with devastating impacts on small producers and the poor. Yet the disruptive influence of financial speculation on food markets is only a preview of future crises. International financial markets are now attempting to dominate many conventional markets as a long-term strategy to extract greater profits and accumulate capital. While governments have been discussing the issue in the context of the G20’s focus on food security,1 their responses have been insufficient and contradictory so far and do not begin to address speculation in other hard commodities, where prices are even more volatile and the impacts on energy-dependent countries are equally severe.

The systematic financial speculation on commodities (and its systemically influential increase in recent years) has been driven mainly by deregulation of derivative markets. Derivatives markets, which trade in futures contracts and options, among other financial instruments based on other assets, enable the price risks for an asset (wheat, oil, pork bellies) to be transferred from the producer to other parties, often speculators, through the sale of “derivative” financial instruments. Speculation has also soared as investment banks, hedge funds and other institutional investors have jumped into the derivative market, often intro­ducing new financial instruments such as index funds and exchange-traded funds.

All of these trends have been accelerated by financial deregulation, which over the last decade, for the first time in history, has transformed commodities into financial assets. Until the beginning of the 2000’s, holding a ton of corn could not produce a revenue stream or rent, other then from sales based on market prices. Today, thanks to financial engineering, such financial schemes are not only possible, they are highly lucrative. The largely unregulated commodity derivatives markets have resulted in greater speculation on food commodities, which can cause high prices and shortages, particularly in poorer countries. Such “financial innovation” is part of a broader trend that is structurally transforming the global economy and natural resources management.

Contrary to common sense and what civil society often assumes, financial markets are penetrating deeper and deeper into the “real economy” of actual production. Speculative finance is increasingly influencing prices and thus productive output in agriculture and energy as well as natural resource commons that have historically functioned outside of markets. The result: speculative capital is becoming structurally intertwined with productive capital, including the commons as productive realms. This expansion of (finance) capital represents a new historic type of enclosure: investor-driven appropriations and control of many forests, fisheries, arable land and water resources historically managed as commons.

The 2007-2008 crash of financial markets and the global economy, coupled with investors’ need to diversify investments beyond traditional markets (including equity, bonds and real estate), has intensified the search for new ways to achieve high rates of return, cover heavy losses that some institutional investors experienced during the crisis, and absorb the massive liquidity of capital that exists globally. These needs have propelled the development and even the creation of new types of financial market risks. But in so doing, financial market operators are reformulating the fundamentals of the real economy where everyday production and consumption occur. A massive financial transformation is underway as financial entrepreneurs create new tradable asset classes out of existing commodities, which provide a physical source of value to support new structured financial instruments.

The new financial assets are being created from existing commodities. And where markets do not yet exist, natural resources are being converted into commodities so they can be traded. Indeed, new commodities and markets are being created from scratch to satisfy the demands by financial markets for new, high-return investments

A very good example of this kind of “Rumpelstiltskin capitalism” – the making of something valuable from nothing, like spinning straw into gold – is the carbon market. These markets trade the right to emit carbon, as authorized by state-issued permits of such rights. Carbon-trading rights are also generated by companies through the implementation of projects aimed to reduce emissions in the future and thus to offset real emissions that the same companies are generating today. A carbon credit or certificate is in itself a derivative contract, given that its value is based on the estimated future price of abating carbon emissions. Therefore holding or buying a carbon credit is in itself a bet about the future, something quite different from holding stock in a ton of corn. These rights to emit – or credits and certificates – are then resold on a secondary market, otherwise known as “emission trading.” Derivative financial products are built on the rights, credits and certificates, as in the case of other commodities. In this case, as with other commodities, speculative investors are simply trading financial risks associated with the carbon commodity – which itself is highly unstable and virtual.

HOW ARE FINANCIALIZATION AND NATURAL RESOURCES CONNECTED?

We live in a time of finance capitalism, where trading money, risk and associated products is more profitable than production itself, and often accu­mulates greater capital than trading goods and services. This has huge implications for where capital is invested and the everyday impact that capital markets have on people, as more and more aspects of everyday life – from home ownership to pensions to schooling – are mediated through financial markets (rather than conventional markets alone). This is what people mean when they talk about the “financialization” of the economy.

Financialization should be regarded as more than just a further stage of commodification. Financialization reduces all value that is exchanged (whether tangible, intangible, future or present promises, etc.) into either a financial instrument or a derivative of a financial instrument. Financialization seeks to reduce any work, product or service to an exchangeable financial instrument like currency, and thus make it easier for people to trade (and profit from) these financial instruments. A mortgage loan, for example, is a financial instrument that lets an employee trade a promise of future wages for ownership of a home. Financialization aims to transform labor, goods and services into tradable financial products as we know it from currency trade.

With financialization increasingly penetrating into the real economy, financial markets, financial institutions and financial elites are gaining greater influence over basic economic policies and economic outcomes. Financialization transforms the functioning of economic systems at both the macro and micro levels of the economy in three distinct ways: 1) It changes the structure and operation of financial markets; 2) It changes the behavior of non-financial corporations (whose profits are more and more generated through financial markets than through actual production); and 3) It changes the priorities of economic policy.

Financialization is now reaching into all commodity markets and transforming their basic functioning. Just as the first wave of financialization focused on privatizing public services such as pensions, health care, education and housing systems (in the quest for better returns on investment), so the new wave of financialization seeks to commodify natural resources. In many instances, this leads to enclosures of the commons, which in turn affects both resourceexploitation as well as resource conservation projects.

At the same time, growing global competition for the control and management of natural resources worldwide is intensifying pressures on national economies to exploit natural resources, resulting in what Michael T. Klare calls “resource wars” (Klare 2002). This is not simply a matter of rapid industrialization and emerging economies fueling greater global consumption and competition for limited resources. Resource wars are symptoms of new geopolitical and geoeconomic dynamics. The control of natural resources flows is increasingly seen as a key strategic tool for directing futures markets, political relations and economic supremacy.2

This trend is quite evident in recent large-scale land acquisitions at an international level by governments and the private sector. Their aim often goes beyond just securing future crop production for their own populations; they want to secure long-term, highly profitable positions in foreign markets to enable them to acquire and process natural resources as well as diversify their investments.3 In this context, advanced economies, particularly those reeling from the economic crisis, want to expand capital markets in other countries in order to establish a new private financial infrastructure that can generate enough financial resources to develop these new infrastructure investments. Financial markets awash in liquidity are desperate for such new investment vehicles: At the end of 2010, global capital markets were trading more than $200 trillion, which is almost four times more than the world’s GDP, according to the McKinsey Global Institute (McKinsey, 2011).

The emerging “turbo-capitalism” driven by financialization seeks to address two pressing problems now facing investors: how to invest the massive amounts of private wealth and liquidity present today in capital markets, and at the same time how to create new financial instruments that will generate additional revenues for the financial industry.

Developed markets currently account for $30 trillion of the estimated total $43 trillion of global equity market capitalization, according to a recent estimate by Timothy Moe, chief Asia-Pacific strategist at Goldman Sachs. Over the next 20 years, global market capitalization could expand to some $145 trillion, he predicted.4 Looking only at private wealth not channelled through institutional investors, private equity funds managed $2.5 trillion at the end of 2008 (a 15 percent increase compared to 2007, despite the financial turmoil). International Financial Services London forecasts that funds under management will increase to over $3.5 trillion dollars by 2015, starting from less than $1 trillion in 2003.5 More and more private equity funds will focus on emerging economies. Global hedge-fund assets surpassed the $2 trillion mark for the first time ever, Hedge Fund Research Inc. said in April 2011, marking an impressive industry rebound from market losses and customer flight during the financial crisis.6

This new stage of financialization will provide new economic and legal leverage for the further commodification of nature and the commons in general. More and more natural resources will be extracted and commercialized, unleashing a new massive attack on the global and local environment and the common wealth.

Capital markets regard this approach as a vital long-term strategy to secure and lock in a new structure of control over natural resources that assures attractive profits. But this finance-driven structure will also dramatically reduce the ability of communities to reclaim their shared wealth and assert their collective, locally responsive management. This systemic goal of “financial enclosure” of the commons, when coupled with existing trade and investment agreements,7 could produce a long lasting, legally durable enclosure that would seriously diminish (policy) space for any political player and for social movements – farmers, Transition Towns, Occupy Wall Street, and others. Most importantly, it threatens to extinguish the possibility of people reproducing their livelihoods independent of the overwhelming influence of financial markets.

COMMODITY SPECULATION, INFRASTRUCTURE FINANCING AND THE INVENTION OF NEW MARKETS

FOOD, LAND AND AGRICULTURE

After the first food crisis, financial speculators such as hedge funds managers acquired strong positions in markets for physical food commodities, most importantly rice, corn and wheat. In 2010, hedge funds dominated 24 percent of the maize market, enjoying the commodity’s 34 percent price rally. Hedge funds have also increased their control of the soya bean market by 19 percent, up from 13 percent in 2009. These infusions of finance capital have affected the customary functioning of these markets by enabling large players to engage in market abuses and manipulations that make food prices more volatile. Worse, major trading companies in physical markets, such as Cargill, ADM, BUNGE and Glencore, which already play monopoly roles in several cases, are becoming more and more financialized. This means that they generate most of their profits through financial activities instead of through production for physical commodity markets.

Hedge funds, private equity funds and other investors play a central role in large-scale land acquisition, through international speculative investments. This explains why land in most cases is not put immediately into production. Instead, it is used as a vehicle to hedge against inflation or other investments in the same countries; as a way to enter those countries’ markets or as simple short-term speculation in land as a financial asset. New investments in agriculture fostered today by international financial institutions must also be seen as investments in the future financialization of the economy. They aim at deepening financial markets in developing countries (or even building them, where they do not currently exist) by making small farmers and consumers more dependent on debt and retail financial markets. For example, financial institutions wish to encourage farmers to cope with food price volatility by financially hedging their risks, or by buying food commodity futures, weather derivatives and the like.

OIL, ELECTRICITY AND RENEWABLE ENERGY

Ever since oil became a highly financialized commodity in the late Eighties, the price of oil has structurally influenced most economic processes in fossil fuel-addicted societies. The volatility of the price of oil is thereby transferred to other commodities, including food, with severe impacts on other economic sectors and consumers. This process occurs not only through the workings of the “real economy” (as oil prices are incorporated into retail prices), but also through the operations of index funds and other pools of speculative investments.

It is important to remember that major energy companies, such as General Electric and energy trading companies such as Enron, have been highly “financialized” since the Nineties. Their involvement in financial markets and high-risk speculative strategies have led to bankruptcy, as in the case of Enron’s infamous speculation (and price manipulations) in the price of electricity. Similarly, today’s major energy traders are investment banks and hedge funds – namely JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and the RAB Energy hedge fund – that control oil productions and stocks directly or indirectly through participation into energy companies, energy service companies and traders (stocks, options and other financial instruments).

Because of this extreme financialization, any policy strategies to inaugurate a “Green New Deal” that focuses on trying to shift patterns in energy consumption and production will not succeed if it does not contain at its core highly financialized features. This risk should not be underestimated. For example, private equity funds in India, both domestic and foreign, have played a key role in listing renewable companies on the stock market through IPOs (initial public offerings, in which stock is first sold to the public). The fact that these offers became significantly over-subscribed increased the value of the companies to the benefit of short-term speculators. Similarly, several exchange-traded funds have stakes in green technology companies, which has helped to raise their profiles among short-term, speculative investors. The financialization of green technologies means that decisions about future energy developments and projects are increasingly directed by short-sighted, profit-maximizing financial speculators biased toward resource extraction.

METALS AND OTHER HARD COMMODITIES

As for other hard commodities – coal, metals and non-metals – mining has already seen a strong influx of speculative capital over the last decade. Hedge funds have been playing a major role in financing mining projects and companies, including coal. Today many of the most significant mining multinationals systemically use derivative-based trading. The recent scam of transfer mispricing involving Glencore and its Mopani copper mine in Zambia8 is quite telling: the company used option derivatives to lock in copper sales to a Zug-based subsidiary – Zug is a well known tax haven within Switzerland – at below market prices and then the subsidiary was selling at market prices.

It is also telling that major investment banks like BNP Paribas are developing “structured commodity finance” as a new field of operation. This novel approach uses the full panoply of financial engineering based on securitization and derivatives to finance large-scale resource-extraction projects and companies. But unlike traditional project financing schemes that simply securitize the expected cash flows, structured commodity finance aims to securitize the expected future physical output of the project or company by issuing securities that are then tradable on financial markets. Such financial instruments would necessarily lead a variety of investors to intensify pressures on resource extraction, disempowering communities who wish to have some say in how their natural resources are managed.

WATER AND INFRASTRUCTURE

In July 2011 the chief economist of Citigroup, Willem Buiter, stated in one of the company’s regular thematic research briefings: “I expect to see a globally integrated market for fresh water within 25 to 30 years. Once the spot markets for water are integrated, futures markets and other derivative water-based financial instruments … will follow. There will be different grades and types of fresh water, just the way we have light sweet and heavy sour crude oil today. Water as an asset class will, in my view, become eventually the single most important physical-commodity based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals.”9 This vision goes far beyond the current privatization of water services and utilities; it would require a significant increase in the production of fresh water (desalinization, purification) as well as the storage, shipping and transportation of water through a network of new dams and large-scale canal systems interconnecting different water basins. In short, water itself would become a financial asset, so that holding a physical quantity of water would generate a financial rent. (Ecological considerations of the flows and location of water would be considered secondary or irrelevant.)

Building new water supply infrastructure would have its own powerful appeal to financial markets because it would require a massive mobilization of capital to build it – once again helping sop up the huge supplies of capital on global markets searching for profitable investments. Here again, a highly financialized approach will be followed in building water infrastructure, as today is happening with private equity infrastructure funds.

Specific attention should be paid to the toll that financialization has taken on water companies. The much-touted public-private partnerships have been signi­ficant failures, yet the many privatized water companies – i.e., Obras Sanitarias de la Nacion in Argentina, water supplies in Metro Manila in the Philippines, water utilities in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania – are short of financing and not producing profits. But it is becoming harder and harder to reclaim these companies to serve the public good, and eventually convert their capital base into publicly held or commons-based assets, because financial markets have promoted sophisticated bond issuances that have produced crushing indebtedness.

CARBON, FOREST AND NEW MARKETS COMMODIFYING NATURE

Carbon markets deserve specific attention because they can be seen as a deliberate experiment to try to build a new commodity, from whose trading financial assets and a financial market can then emerge. Today carbon markets are unable to function well primarily because of the virtuality of the asset that is being traded as well as the absence of reliable mechanisms for pricing carbon. These new markets are a clear example of how a new commodity could be created on the basis of market-based environmental and financial regulations: a commodity that itself is a derivative – a bet on avoiding projected carbon emissions against a disputable baseline.

With the inclusion of REDD credits into carbon markets,10 forests too will be financialized in the name of the fight against climate change.11 This could well hurt people’s livelihoods, particularly those of indigenous people living in forest areas. Similarly today there are proposals in the UK and US for establishing markets for trading species, habitats and ecosystems.12 As in the case of carbon and forests, this would require national – and where possible, international – legislation to create new types of commodities, e.g., commitments to establish a new preserved habitat in the future, to plant trees in the future, or to protect some species, which could then be traded within a cap (a defined limit on the resource established by political institutions), and thus become a financial asset. This would lead to what some scholars and activists have called the final financial project, “Nature Inc.”13

PREVENTING FUTURE ENCLOSURE OF THE COMMONS

Today we are living a paradox where after the crisis, financial markets are reinventing themselves and are even growing further despite some limited attempts to regulate them. At the same time they are displacing public finance and acquiring a larger share over the management and control of natural resources and strategic physical assets. For financial investors and speculators, controlling natural resources offers significant competitive advantages – information asymmetries, arbitrage possibilities, and hedging by pitting one sector against another e.g., energy users vs. food consumers, regardless of the environmental, social and economic implications.

Financial market managers need to diversify the assets they build upon for security reasons and natural resources offer a very safe option if their management is framed under a market-based approach that from the outset is designed to create new financial assets. However, one thing is clear: the further commodification of the commons would generate new liquidity that would directly be invested in financial markets, thus creating new bubbles and crises. Therefore, the financial restructuring of our economies will only worsen the features of our current over-financialized economy, and make exit strategies out of finance capitalism ever harder.

The financial enclosure of the commons has important implications for civil society struggles and organizing. First, the pressures to extract and commodify natural and social resources will further threaten the livelihoods of local com­munities that rely on them for their own sustainable and democratic development. However, to date, communities on the ground are largely oblivious of the new financialization scenarios and the new mechanisms aimed at boosting private profits by shifting risks to governments and citizens. Therefore, there is an urgent need to research and explain in plain words what is new in this process of financialization of the commons and how it goes far beyond commodification. Financialization is actually a new paradigm for securing additional leverage for dispossession. We need to expose the key drivers and actors, and open more political space for struggles on the ground so that different constituencies can co-develop a new analytic framework and political narrative that will advance a shared agenda.

Financialization of natural resources will not just affect “developing” countries; it will also be visible in advanced economies and the European Union in particular, where more and more large infrastructure and extractive projects will be pursued, provoking struggles and resistance on the ground. This would allow activists to establish new links of solidarity among affected communities, and in particular between advanced and emerging economies, helping to create renewed forms of international solidarity.

Second, we need to better understand the critical role that international institutions and major decision-making forums, such as the G20 and international financial institutions (IFIs), will play in promoting financialization and infra­structure-building in the name of “development.” Key governments, IFIs and influential forums such as the G20 are poised to build on previous work carried out on financial regulation and investment agreements. This would entail “advice” by influential governments and institutions to deregulate subsectors of the financial system, such as public pension systems, so that public and private actors could begin to invest in risky long-term operations and/or heavily structured financial products.

Third, civil society should open up new avenues of policy that go well beyond market-based mechanisms and public finance for existing fiscal and investment mechanisms. By focusing on alternative approaches to public finance, and by reclaiming and defending the commons beyond market and state, civil society could slow the expansion of financial markets.

Finally, financialization of emerging and developing economies will necessarily have inevitable and severe impacts on development processes. It will have serious macroeconomic and macrofinancial implications that are not yet well understood, even by governments. A broader international civil society discussion questioning both micro and macro impacts of this trend through a sustained narrative could open up new political space for democratizing and reclaiming development processes. In particular, discussions should be focused at the local level by asking a number of key questions: What projects and infrastructure are needed by communities? For whom? For what purposes? What forms of financing are needed in order to mobilize domestic resources for development of self-reliant communities and promote existing and new alternative projects and processes?

While the impending new wave of financialization is a serious threat, it also opens new opportunities to bridge civil society struggles at both the micro/community level and macro/national and international levels. One can imagine a new and unifying global campaign framework that would evolve from the “our world is not for sale” approach that has animated previous struggles against the global free trade and investment agenda.

What will happen in the very next years will be crucial. The financial industry will seek to build the consensus and legal and physical infrastructure to achieve a finance-driven enclosure of the commons. To make all of this possible, states will be asked by corporate interests to enact new legislation and authorize new financial infrastructures through ad hoc regulations. In part, this is already happening. It is therefore urgent that civil society movements understand the financial industry’s ambitions and act to stop them before it is too late.

REFERENCES

Klare, Michael T. 2001. Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict. New York, NY. Metropolitan Books.
McKinsey Global Institute. 2011. “Mapping Global Capital Markets, available at:http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/MGI/Research/Financial_Markets/Mapping_….
1.The Group of 20 is the self-proclaimed club of the 20 strongest economic nations, which collectively produce up to 85 percent of the worlds global GNP. These nations will decisively determine economic and political developments in the decades to come.
2.See essays by Lili Fuhr and Liz Alden Wily.
3.See the essay by Liz Alden Wily
4.Udayan Gupta. “The New Urgency of Emerging Markets,” Institutional Investor (June 16, 2011), available at http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Popups/PrintArticle.aspx?ArticleID =2848080.
5.IFSL Research, Private Equity, August 2009. http://www.thecityuk.com/assets/Uploads/Private-Equity-2009.pdf
6.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703922504576272683369646822.html
7.See the essay by Beatriz Busaniche on intellectual property rights and trade policy.
8.A detailed report about the dubious dealings of the Swiss company can be read here: http://www.zambianwatchdog.com/2011/05/04/detailed-report-on-glencore-mopani-mine-dubious-deals-in-zambia
9.Tracy Alloway, “Willem Buiter Thinks Water Will Be Bigger Than Oil,” Financial Times, July 21, 2001.
10.REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) is a policy model that seeks to financialize the capacity of forests to serve as a carbon sink in the global metabolic cycle. The carbon that forests absorb is being given a monetary value, which can then be used to give different weightings to various economic decisions and to facilitate market trading of carbon credits. In this way REDD will advance the process of finanicalization.
11.Editors’ note: These ramifications of REDD are not considered by Shrikrishna Upadhyay’s essay.
12.See Joshua Bishop, “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Business and Enterprise” (Earthscan) at http://www.teebweb.org
13.See Andreas Weber’s essay.
Antonio Tricarico (Italy) is an engineer, campaigner, analyst and editor. He works for Re: Common, formerly the Campaign to Reform the World Bank (CRBM), in Rome, on international financial institutions, financial markets regulation and financial glob- alization related issues. He has co-authored several publications on IFI-related issues, the most recent being, “La Banca dei Ricchi,” and has been correspondent for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto at several international summits.

First published in Wealthofthecommons.org

22 August 2016

By Nauman Sadiq

It is an irrefutable fact that the United States sponsors the militants, but only for a limited period of time in order to achieve certain policy objectives. For instance: the United States nurtured the Afghan jihadists during the Cold War against the erstwhile Soviet Union from 1979 to 1988, but after the signing of Geneva Accords and the consequent withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the United States withdrew its support to the Afghan jihadists.

Similarly, the United States lent its support to the militants during the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, but after achieving the policy objectives of toppling the Qaddafi regime in Libya and weakening the anti-Israel Assad regime in Syria, the United States relinquished its blanket support to the militants and eventually declared a war against a faction of Syrian militants, the Islamic State, when the latter transgressed its mandate in Syria and dared to occupy Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in early 2014.

The United States’ regional allies in the Middle East, however, are not as subtle and experienced in Machiavellian geopolitics. Under the misapprehension that alliances and enmities in international politics are permanent, the Middle Eastern autocrats keep on pursuing the same policy indefinitely as laid down by the hawks in Washington for a brief period of time in order to achieve strategic objectives.

For example: the security establishment of Pakistan kept pursuing the policy of training and arming the Afghan and Kashmiri jihadists throughout the ‘90s and right up to September 2001, even after the United States withdrew its support to the jihadists’ cause in Afghanistan in 1988.

Similarly, the Muslim Brotherhood-led government of Turkey has made the same mistake of lending indiscriminate support to the Syrian militants even after the United States’ partial reversal of policy in Syria and the declaration of war against Islamic State in August 2014 in order to placate the international public opinion when the graphic images and videos of Islamic State’s brutality surfaced on the mainstream media.

Keeping up appearances in order to maintain the façade of justice and morality is indispensable in international politics and the Western powers strictly abide by this code of conduct. Their medieval client states in the Middle East, however, are not as experienced and they often keep on pursuing the same counterintuitive policies of training and arming the militants against their regional rivals, which are untenable in the long run in a world where pacifism has generally been accepted as one of the fundamental axioms of the modern worldview.

Regarding the recent thaw [1] in the icy relationship between Russia and Turkey after the latter shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 in November last year on the border between Syria and Turkey, although the proximate cause of this détente seems to be the attempted coup plot against Erdogan’s Administration last month by the supporters of the US-based preacher, Fethullah Gulen, but this surprising development also sheds light on the deeper divisions between the United States and Turkey over their respective Syria policy.

After the United States’ reversal of regime change policy in Syria in August 2014 when Islamic State overran Mosul in Iraq in June 2014 and threatened the capital of another steadfast American ally, Masoud Barzani’s Erbil in the oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan, the Obama Administration has made the Kurds the centerpiece of its policy in Syria and Iraq.

Bear in mind that the conflict in Syria and Iraq is actually a three-way conflict between the Sunni Arabs, the Shi’a Arabs and the Sunni Kurds. Although, after the declaration of war against a faction of Sunni Arab militants, the Islamic State, the Obama Administration has also lent its support to the Shi’a-led government in Iraq, but the Shi’a Arabs of Iraq are not the trustworthy allies of the United States because they are under the influence of America’s archrival in the region, Iran.

Therefore, the Obama Administration was left with no other choice than to make the Kurds the centerpiece of its policy in Syria and Iraq after a group of Sunni Arab jihadists transgressed its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq from where the United States had withdrawn its troops only a couple of years ago.

The so-called Syrian Democratic Forces, which has recently captured Manbij near the border with Turkey only a couple of weeks ago, are nothing more than Kurdish militias with a tinkering of mercenary Arab tribesmen in order to make them appear more representative and inclusive in outlook.

As far as the regional parties to the Syrian civil war are concerned, however, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf Arab States may not have serious reservations against this close cooperation between the United States and the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, because the Gulf Arab States tend to look at the regional conflicts from the lens of the Iranian Shi’a threat.Turkey, on the other hand, has been more wary of the separatist Kurdish tendencies in its northeast than the Iranian Shi’a threat, as such.

Notwithstanding, any radical departure from the longstanding policy of providing unequivocal support to the American policy in the region by the political establishment of Turkey since the times of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is highly unlikely. But after this perfidy by the Americans of lending their support to the Kurds against the Turkish proxies in Syria, it is quite plausible that the Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Turkey might try to strike a balance in its relations with the Cold War-era rivals.

Remember that Turkey has the second largest army in the NATO, the United States has been conducting air strikes against the targets in Syria from the Incirlik airbase and around fifty American B-61 hydrogen bombs have also been deployed there, whose safety became a matter of real concern during the attempted coup when the commander of the Incirlik airbase, General BekirErcan Van, along with nine other officers were arrested for supporting the coup; movement in and out of the base was denied, power supply was cut off and the security threat level was raised to the highest state of alert, according to a report by Eric Schlosser for the New Yorker.

Sources and links:

[1] Turkish Foreign Minister’s exclusive interview to Sputnik News:

http://sputniknews.com/interviews/20160818/1044406014/turkey-cavusoglu-exclusive-interview.html

[2] The H Bombs in Turkey by Eric Schlosser:

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-h-bombs-in-turkey

 

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and MENA regions, neocolonialism and petroimperialism.

22 August 2016

By Alex Lantier

Fifty-one people died and 69 were injured Saturday when a horrific suicide bombing hit a Kurdish wedding in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the border with Syria. At least 17 of the wounded are severely injured and clinging to life.

The pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) has confirmed that one of its members was getting married at the wedding. The wedding party was winding down and guests were beginning to leave when the suicide bomber, identified as a boy aged 12 to 14, detonated his explosive vest. “The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion,” one of the guests said. “There was blood and body parts everywhere.”

Many of the victims were children, apparently because they had gathered to one side of the folk dancing at the party, and were therefore closer to the blast.

The bride and groom, Besna and Nurettin Akdogan, were injured. “They turned our wedding into a blood bath,” the bride told Turkey’s Anadolu News Agency after being released from the hospital.

The couple had reportedly fled the town of Siirt to Gaziantep in order to escape fighting between the Turkish army and ethnic Kurdish militias in Turkey. The government offensive against Kurdish separatists escalated as Kurdish militias across the border in Syria began playing a larger role in the war in that country.

Yesterday, a mass funeral was held for victims of the bombing in Gaziantep, though authorities said further DNA testing will be needed to identify all of the victims, many of whom were blown apart.

Several international heads of state issued condemnations of the bombing. Russian President Vladimir Putin called it “shockingly cruel and cynical,” and French President François Hollande denounced it as an “infamous terrorist attack.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel sent a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım regretting that “Again, innocent men, women, and children have fallen victim to cowardly and treacherous violence.”

Notable for his silence on the bombing was US President Barack Obama, whose relations with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have collapsed since Erdoğan publicly attacked Washington for supporting last month’s failed military coup against him.

While as of this writing no one has claimed responsibility for the Gaziantep bombing, international media and several Turkish officials blamed the atrocity on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has reportedly recruited children to be used as suicide bombers.

“Initial evidence suggests it was an ISIS attack,” Erdoğan said while visiting Gaziantep after the bombing, which he called a “heinous” crime. Stating that the attackers aim to “provoke people by abusing ethnic and sectarian sensitivities,” he added, “Our country and nation have only a single message to those who attack us: you will not succeed.”

The atrocity in Gaziantep is the outcome of years of incitement of Islamist terror and ethnic bloodshed in the region by Washington and its imperialist allies in Europe as part of their proxy war for regime-change in Syria. Since 2011, the NATO powers and their Middle East allies have funneled billions of dollars and vast weapons shipments to Islamist and Kurdish nationalist militias fighting in Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died and over 10 million have fled their homes, unleashing the greatest global refugee crisis since World War II.

Erdoğan’s attempts to follow the twists and turns of imperialist policy have had devastating consequences for Turkey itself, particularly since Washington and its European allies began attacking ISIS in 2014 after it invaded Iraq and threatened to topple the US-backed puppet regime in Baghdad. ISIS had developed an extensive logistical network in Turkey and, starting last year, retaliated with a string of terror bombings inside Turkey.

These included the October 2015 attack in Ankara that killed 105 people and the March 2016 bombing on Istiqlal Avenue in Istanbul, both of which were planned by ISIS forces in Gaziantep.

The latest attack is retaliation for an even broader shift in the alignment of forces in the Syrian war that has intensified the conflict between the Erdoğan government and ISIS. Since last year’s Russian military intervention tipped the scales of the war in favor of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Turkish government has steadily shifted its policy. Having found itself isolated after it recklessly shot down a Russian bomber over Syria last fall, and facing the prospect of a defeat of US-backed forces in Syria, it reoriented its policy towards Moscow and the Assad regime.

This reorientation accelerated last month after Moscow warned Erdoğan of the coup being prepared against him by Turkish officers acting out of the Incirlik air base in Turkey, a critical staging ground for US and NATO air strikes on Syria and Iraq.

Both Washington and ISIS are furious at the developing ties between Turkey, Syria, Russia and now China, which pledged last week to begin expanding its aid to the Assad regime.

Shortly before the Gaziantep bombing on Saturday, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım made clear that his government is considering taking the unprecedented step of allowing Moscow to use Incirlik air base to bomb ISIS. The base has historically been used by Washington to further its designs against Moscow. Yıldırım’s remarks confirmed rumors that have circulated since Igor Morozov, a member of the Russian upper house, called for Moscow to make an “agreement with Erdoğan that we get the NATO base at Incirlik as our primary air base.”

At a press conference, Yıldırım said, “Turkey opened Incirlik airbase to fight ISIS terrorists. It is being used by the United States and Qatar. Other nations might also wish to use the airbase, which the Germans are also now using.” Asked specifically if Moscow could also use Incirlik air base, Yıldırım replied, “If necessary, the Incirlik base can be used.”

US officials are increasingly desperate over these shifts, which threaten to split Turkey from the NATO alliance and create a broad realignment of major powers in Eurasia against the United States. They are responding by escalating their reckless threats of military action against Russian and Syrian government forces, at the risk of provoking a global war.

Last week, after Assad’s Air Force bombed Kurdish militia among whom were “embedded” US Special Forces operating extra-legally within Syria, Pentagon spokesmen warned that the US was prepared to attack anyone who threatened its troops, risking a direct clash with Russian, Iranian or Syrian forces.

On Saturday, the commander of US forces in Iraq and Syria, Lt. General Stephen Townsend, issued a more official threat to take military action against Syria and Russia. He told CNN, “We’ve informed the Russians where we’re at… [They] tell us they’ve informed the Syrians, and I’d just say that we will defend ourselves if we feel threatened.”

“If the Syrians try this again, they are at great risk of losing an aircraft,” an anonymous senior US military officials told CNN.

CNN commentators added that the situation “increases the probability of direct conflict” between US forces on the one hand, and Moscow and Damascus on the other.

First published by wsws.org

22 August 2016

By Nauman Sadiq

In order to create a semblance of objectivity and fairness, the American policymakers and analysts are always willing to accept the blame for the mistakes of the distant past that have no bearing on the present, however, any fact that impinges on their present policy is conveniently brushed aside.

In the case of the creation of Islamic State, for instance, the United States’ policy analysts are willing to concede that invading Iraq back in 2003 was a mistake that radicalized the Iraqi society, exacerbated the sectarian divisions and gave birth to an unrelenting Sunni insurgency against the heavy handed and discriminatory policies of the Shi’a-dominated Iraqi government; similarly, the war on terror era political commentators also “generously” accept that the Cold War era policy of nurturing the Afghan so-called “freedom fighters” against the erstwhile Soviet Union was a mistake, because all those fait accompli have no bearing on their present policy.

The corporate media’s spin-doctors conveniently forget, however, that the creation of Islamic State and myriads of other Sunni Arab jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has as much to do with the unilateral invasion of Iraq back in 2003 under the previous Bush Administration as it has been the consequence of the present policy of Obama Administration in Syria of training and arming the Sunni militants against the Syrian regime since 2011-onward, in fact, the proximate cause behind the rise of Islamic State, al Nusra Front and myriads of Sunni jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has been Obama Administration’s policy of intervention through proxies in Syria.

Leaving the funding, training and arming aspects of the insurgencies aside, but especially pertaining to conferring international legitimacy to an armed insurgency, like the Afghan so-called “freedom struggle” during the Cold War, or the supposedly “moderate and democratic” Libyan and Syrian insurgencies of today, it is simply beyond the power of minor regional players and their nascent media, that has a geographically and linguistically limited audience, to cast such heavily armed and brutal insurrections in a positive light in order to internationally legitimize them; only the Western mainstream media, that has a global audience and which serves as the mouthpiece of the Western political establishments, has perfected this game of legitimizing the absurd and selling the Satans as saviors.

It is very easy to mislead the people merely by changing the labels while the content remains the same – call the Syrian opposition moderate and nationalist rebels or insurgents and they would become legitimate in the eyes of the Western audience, and call the same armed militants “jihadists or terrorists” and they would become illegitimate. How do people expect from the armed thugs, whether they are Islamic jihadists or supposedly “moderate” and nationalist rebels, to bring about democratic reform in Syria or Libya?

For the whole of the last five years of the Syrian civil war the focal point of the Western policy has been that “Assad must go!” But what difference would it make to the lives of the Syrians even if the regime is replaced now when the whole country has been reduced to rubble? Qaddafi and his regime were ousted from power in September 2011; five years later Tripoli is ruled by the Misrata militia, Benghazi is under the control of Khalifa Haftar who is supported by Egypt and UAE and a battle is being fought in Sirte between the Islamic State-affiliate in Libya and the so-called Government of National Accord.

It will now take decades, not years, to restore even a semblance of stability in Libya and Syria; remember that the proxy war in Afghanistan was originally fought in the ‘80s and even 35 years later Afghanistan is still in the midst of perpetual anarchy, lawlessness and an unrelenting Taliban insurgency.

The only difference between the Soviet-Afghan jihad back in the ‘80s, that spawned the Islamic jihadists like the Taliban and al Qaeda for the first time in history, and the Libyan and Syrian jihads 2011-onward is that the Afghan Jihad was an overt jihad – back then the Western political establishments and their mouthpiece, the mainstream media, used to openly brag that CIA provides all those AK-47s, RPGs and stingers to the Pakistani ISI which then forwards such weapons to the Afghan mujahideen (freedom fighters) to combat Soviet Union’s troops in Afghanistan.

After the 9/11 tragedy, however, the Western political establishments and corporate media have become a lot more circumspect, therefore, this time around they have waged covert jihads against the “unfriendly” Qaddafi regime in Libya and the anti-Israel Assad regime in Syria, in which the Islamic jihadists (terrorists) have been sold as “moderate rebels” to the Western audience. It’s an incontrovertible fact that more than 90% of militants operating in Syria are either the Islamic jihadists or the armed tribesmen, and less than 10% are those who have defected from the Syrian army or otherwise have secular and nationalist goals.

Notwithstanding, unlike al Qaeda, which is a terrorist organization that generally employs anticolonial and anti-Zionist rhetoric to draw funds and followers, Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front, both, are basically anti-Shi’a sectarian outfits. By the designation “terrorism” it is generally implied and understood that an organization which has the intentions and capability of carrying out acts of terrorism on the Western soil. Though, Islamic State has carried out a few acts of terrorism against the Western countries, such as the high profile November 2015 Paris attacks and the March 2016 Brussels bombings, but if we look at the pattern of its subversive activities, especially in the Middle East, it generally targets the Shi’a Muslims in Syria and Iraq.

A few acts of terrorism that Islamic State has carried out in the Gulf Arab States were also directed against the Shi’a Muslims in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia and Shi’a mosques in Yemen and Kuwait. Moreover, al Qaeda Central is only a small band of Arab militants whose strength is numbered in several hundreds, while Islamic State is a mass insurgency whose strength is numbered in tens of thousands, especially in Syria and Iraq.

Additionally, Syria’s pro-Assad militias are comprised of local militiamen as well as Shi’a foreign fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and even Hazara Shi’as from Afghanistan. And Sunni jihadists from all over the region have also been flocking to the Syrian battlefield for the past five years. A full-scale Sunni-Shi’a war has been going on in Syria, Iraq and Yemen which will obviously have its repercussions all over the Middle East region where Sunni and Shi’a Muslims have coexisted in peace for centuries.

Regardless, it should be kept in mind here that the Western interest in the Syrian civil war has mainly been about ensuring Israel’s regional security. The Shi’a resistance axis in the Middle East, comprised of Iran, the Syrian regime and their Lebanon-based proxy Hezbollah, posed an existential threat to Israel; a fact which the Israel’s defense community realized for the first time during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War.

When protests broke out against the Qaddafi and Assad regimes in Libya and Syria, respectively, in early 2011 in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings, under pressure from the Zionist lobbies, the Western powers took advantage of the opportunity provided to them and militarized those protests with the help of their regional allies: Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf Arab States.

All of the aforementioned states belong to the Sunni denomination and they have been vying for influence in the Middle East against the Shi’a Iranian axis. Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in August 2011 to June 2014, when Islamic State occupied Mosul, an informal pact existed between the Western powers, their regional allies and the Sunni jihadists of the Middle East against the Shi’a resistance axis. In accordance with this pact, Sunni militants were trained and armed in the training camps located in border regions of Turkey and Jordan.

This arrangement of an informal pact between the Western powers and the Sunni jihadists of the Middle East against the Shi’a Iranian axis worked well up to August 2014, when Obama Administration made a volte-face on its previous regime change policy in Syria and started conducting air strikes against one group of Sunni jihadists battling against the Syrian regime, i.e. the Islamic State, after the latter transgressed its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq and threatened the capital of another steadfast American ally: Masoud Barzani’s Erbil in the oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan.

After that reversal of policy in Syria by the Western powers and the subsequent Russian military intervention on the side of the Shi’a regime, the momentum of Sunni Arab jihadists’ expansion in Syria has stalled and they now feel that their Western allies have committed a treachery against the Sunni jihadists’ cause; that’s why, they feel enraged and they are once again up in arms to exact revenge for this betrayal.

If we look at the chain of events, the timing of the Paris and Brussels attacks has been critical: Islamic State overran Mosul in June 2014, Obama Administration started bombing Islamic State’s targets in Iraq and Syria in August 2014 and after a long time first such incident of terrorism took place on the Western soil at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 and then the November 2015 Paris attacks and the March 2016 Brussels bombings.

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and MENA regions, neocolonialism and petroimperialism.
21 August 2016

By Dr Fayaz Ahmad Bhat

I have heard that the life in the hell would be very tough, painful and torment. One punishment will be followed by another. There will be guards watching and patrolling the hell so that no body from the hell has relief and escape. The screams of the cursed will fall upon the deaf ears and nobody will be ready to listen and help. When I make an analogue between Kashmir and the hell, I feel no difference between the two, rather I see Kashmir the worst since it is practical and the hell is hypothetical.

In Kashmir (hell) people suffer irrespective of their socio-economic background. The cries go unheard and fall upon deaf ears. During the daytime protesters “watch and guard” the streets and don’t allow anyone to move even ailing are not allowed to have access to health care. During nights “security” forces don’t allow anybody to step out even they barge into houses to “avenge” the people. Both the parties (security forces and protestors) employ different means and methods to punish “violators”. Protesters don’t allow people to move even from one village to another. Sometimes they force the “violators” to chant anti India and pro-Pak slogans those who resist are dealt strictly with the volley of stones. On the other hand “security forces” punish everyone physically and sometimes even damage the property (vehicles, household etc). This is the way how they guard and patrol the hell so that “cursed” have no relief and escape. I am sure that hypothetical hell won’t be so pathetic and torment, the guards there won’t be so cruel and merciless.

It is more than a month now that Kashmir is burning and life is at standstill. According to local media reports more than eight thousand civilian got injured, near about seventy died and hunderends lost eye sight in the ongoing unrest. The rest of the population is in flames (in Kashmir/hell) and their screams go unheard. There are no traces of government and law and order especially in the rural areas of Kashmir Valley. Important entry and exit points and most of the streets in rural areas are fully in the control of unruled protestors. “Separatists” who come up with strike programmes and protest calendars even dance on the tunes of protestors.

The situation is worsening day by day and taking an ugly shape. Another generation of Kashmiris is being radicalised and becoming scapegoat. Interactions and observations suggest that situation in Kashmir is quite different from late 1980’s when young Kashmiris opted gun to challenge Indian rule over Kashmir. A large number of youth who opted for weapons had very humble socio-economic and educational background. They were almost unaware about the political past of the state. The “educated” lot who joined the militant ranks were either Jammaat ideologues or politically disgruntled or the both. The present generation is altogether different. They are literate and well aware of the past especially of the blunders which New Delhi has been committing since late 1980’s in Kashmir. Above all the strategies adopted by New Delhi to handle the Kashmir issue are proving counter- productive, children from the very birth witness killings, protests, processions, mishandling of the issue and bear the brunt of violence. From the age of five and six years misleading and communal readings too reach out to children through oral lore and propaganda. This is one of the reasons that children belonging to the age group of nine to sixteen years are very active in the present unrest. It gives sleepless nights and restive days to see children from the mentioned age group blocking roads and not listening to anybody. They dare everyone; challenge “security” forces and respond bullet, pellet and tear gas shells with slogans and stones. They sometimes even try to barge into army camps and police stations. I remember my childhood days; we used to flee the village along with elders even after listening that vehicles in army camp some eight kilometers away from our village are faced towards our village. Today people (mostly children and young) march towards army camps and police stations to give vent to their anger and frustration. A good number of populace tries to be aloof but they too are not spared. They are labeled Indian agents, traitors, anti movement, anti Kashmiri by protestors and rented mob, pro-Pakistanis, fundamentalists and what not by the state (army, police, crpf etc).

Many Kashmiris want to know what their crime is. They shout they are neither anti Indian nor pro- Pakistani. They are simply Kashmiri who lost their childhood and schooling to curfews, crackdowns, chugs, strikes and cross firings. Their youth disappeared in depression, disappointment and hopelessness and they are longing for nothing but peaceful and harmonious future for their kids.

It is very painful but worth to mention that last Friday when I offered congregational prays I rushed home hurriedly to escape from any possible trouble but was traumatised to hear my three years old son asking her mother that he will go for stone pelting. The case may not appear serious and worth to be mentioned to many but being a student of sociology and misfortune of being brought up in a conflict zone I think, it is really exemplary, serious and alarming. I sense how cruel and merciless I was to my parents. By virtue of fatherhood, I am able to understand how grave wounds I have inflicted to my parents when I was young and death was dancing in every nook and corner of Kashmir. I understand why they (parents) were not only surrendering before my every adamant but bearing every absurd act of mine. Perhaps, they did so to see me alive and not to provide any “reason” for me to join militants. Now I understand despite they desired me to prosper in my studies why they turned mute spectators when I burnt my books. I am sure besides their love and care, the peaceful childhood they had had determinant for their endurance and handling my nonsense and absurdity.

I cry! Can I too do the same? I am certain I cannot! Though I too love my son more than anything but I can’t prove myself to be like my parents as the childhood we had was different. I have been brought up in the environment which knew no tolerance, respect for teachers, neighbours and relations even for parents. More than two decades long conflict has negative impact on my attitude and mentality. I must acknowledge I am weak. I am intolerant. I never introspect and always try to identify the faults of others. I am and psychologically too weak, turns intolerant and violent over nothing.

I cry! The people of Kashmir cry! We cry for the future of our children. We cry in pain and agony but our suffering and misery goes unnoticed rather people pretend to deaf and blind. Our screams annoy our own brothers and sisters and we are looked down as damned and evil mongers.

A Kashmiri narrative very well narrates the state and agony of common Kashmiris; once upon a time there was a fisherman, starvation and misfortune had caught him very badly. One day his mother succumbed to misfortunes and hardships of life. The poor fisherman did not burry the corpse his mother and decided to sustain on the flesh of his mother. The people living nearby smelled “meat” and interpreted that fisherman was enjoying fried fish.

The fellow citizens while sitting in luxurious air-conditioned rooms watching Kashmiris participating in protests and stone pelting, most of which are mourning, funerals, or reaction to atrocities of “security” forces, do not look at these gatherings beyond anti India demonstrations. They curse, curb and labeled all Kashmiris as traitors, Pakistanis and what not.

What is happening in Kashmir and response to it from the rest of country is not different from the narrative. All the Kashmiris are like the fisherman who ate the dead corpse of his mother to survive and the fellow citizens are like the neighbors who mesmerized the event and “thought” he enjoyed fried fish.

Dr Fayaz Ahmad Bhat, presently crying from the hell (Kashmir). He is a student of Sociology, social activist and teaching Sociology at Government Degree College, Sumbal Sonawari, Jammu and Kashmir, India.

21 August 2016

By Aurel Keller

Cuba has come a long way since the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the loss of imports crucial for the island nation’s industrial agriculture system—such as chemical pesticides and fertilizers—left Cuba with a severe food crisis in the 1990s. Today, Cuba has become a regional leader in sustainable agricultural research. Within its practices and institutions lies a model for localized and small-scale urban agriculture.

With the loss of the Soviet market, which had imported sugar at subsidized prices, and the fall of global sugar prices in the late 1980s, sugar monoculture production in Cuba collapsed. Out of necessity, Cuba underwent a social, scientific, and economic push toward self-sufficiency. This shift required radical change for the authoritarian communist state as desperation and cooperation drove innovation in sustainable agriculture and urban farming. Although Cuba’s successes relied on country-specific policy adoptions and favorable geographic conditions, the country’s scientific frameworks and practices are widely applicable in other regions.

Reforms Propelled by the Government

Cuba’s success hinged on the adoption of Article 27 of the constitution in 1992, which recognized the state’s innate duty to ensure the sustainable use of resources and to protect the nation’s environment and people. The Cuban state and the Ministry of Agriculture instituted austerity measures, re-adjusting priorities and resources into support roles. State companies in many sectors became employee-owned co-ops, and small-farm distribution programs were greatly expanded. Realizing the need to meet the population’s basic food needs with limited resources, funding for agricultural research infrastructure was expanded to optimize low-input, small-scale farming. The government stepped back from direct management and worked with grassroots organizations and co-ops to provide support through extensive research partnerships to optimize and spread beneficial practices.

Grassroots Organizations and Co-ops Were Key

Grassroots organizations—representing small-scale farmers, animal producers, and agricultural and forest technicians—became essential in forming cooperatives and spreading services and education in Cuba. The small farmer organization, ANAP, has been active since the 1980s, working with farmers and the government to teach beneficial practices and create farmer’s cooperatives—groups of farmers who combine their resources and create employee-owned businesses that provide production, credit, and service assistance. Initially slow, the spread of farm co-ops grew once President Fidel Castro recognized their benefits, with official support commencing in 1987, and picked up speed as land-distribution and support programs expanded. Working with agricultural research outposts and universities, ANAP was instrumental in facilitating the extensive spread of research extension programs through its network, as well as propagating resulting improvements. Many peasant farmers were members of ANAP and participated in co-ops, successful to the point of producing 60 percent of produce on 25 percent of worked land in 2003.

Planning Principles of Cuba’s Sustainable Agriculture

A United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reporton Havana details organopónicos, an agricultural method created in Cuba built on improving organic matter. Based on raised beds, it is easily adapted to many settings and soil types that otherwise would be challenging to use. The agro-ecological model used to manage and plan organopónico farm activities follows a basic frameworkaround local conditions and resources availability.

The framework outlined in the Figure shows the planning process, but a few principles are clear. Organopónicos:

require a continuous investment of time and effort and a reactive approach to pest and soil management;
acknowledge the importance of building healthy soils in having productive, resilient agro-ecological systems; and
seek to emulate the strengths and stability of natural systems.
Havana: Cuba’s Epicenter of Agricultural Transition and Innovation

Urban agriculture has been practiced in Havana since the 1800s, making it an ideal petri dish for development and innovation under Cuban programs, although recent shifts in land-use priorities have led to displacement of farms, especially in high-volume tourism areas.

A nationwide campaign, launched in December 1987, strongly encouraged people to use organopónicos to raise food for their own consumption. Campaign offices and support infrastructure in each district helped to provide technical and input support under urban and peri-urban programs, producing compost, improved seeds, and other inputs. Havana alone had 7 provincial offices and 15 municipal support offices, making it an essential research hub that radiated innovative practices to the rest of the country. The support programs and scientific investments have created an extensive network of scientific and research infrastructure.

As of 2013, Havana district had 97 highly productive organopónicosfarms. One high-yielding farm co-op with 188 members produced more than 300 tons of vegetables a year. The program has been applied throughout the country, with varying success. Nationwide,Cuba had 530,000 small farm plots and backyard gardens, 6,400 intensive gardens, and 4,000 high-yielding organopónicos in 2013. In2003, yields on the best organopónicos farms reached 44 pounds per square meter. Cities like Havana were able to meet up to 70 percent of food needs from local urban farms and gardens.

Social Payoffs of Sustainable Systems and Urban Agriculture

Cuba’s agricultural policies and practices also have had economic and social pay-offs, although this has come at the expense of economic growth associated with export-oriented commodity crops.

The organopónico approach is cost effective, with substantially lower environmental and input costs than traditional industrial agriculture. Fuel costs come to just US$0.55 per ton of produce (stemming primarily from the cost of transporting compost needed to build the soils and maintain fertility), whereas standard systems can cost US$400 per ton of produce.

Cuba’s model of agriculture also has societal advantages. Average income and benefits for co-op farmers are greater than those of the general population. Recipients of farmland were largely peasants, and economic reforms expanded their opportunities. Once a small percentage of the harvest was given to the government, farmers could choose whether to sell the rest on the open market or to the state at set prices, opening the potential of social mobility and income. The incentive of a free home and land led to migration from overcrowded urban centers to rural areas, alleviating social pressures in cities. Poverty and malnutrition have been reduced, contributing to Cuba’s ranking of 67th out of 188 countries on the UN’s 2015 Human Development Index. The extent of research and infrastructure investment has resulted in Cuba being home to 11 percent of Latin America’s scientists, despite having only 2 percent of the region’s population.

Transferring the Cuban Agricultural Model

With the global increase in food insecurity issues—ranging from food “deserts” to extreme food shortages—many university programs and organizations have emerged to teach, research, or promote low-cost, sustainable urban production methods using principles similar to Cuba’s small-scale farming systems. Venezuela,in particular, is facing a severe food crisis and has created a state-sponsored urban agriculture program that could draw lessons from Cuba’s experience.

Cuba’s agricultural transition and methods provide four key lessons that are applicable to other regions:

Integrate grassroots organizations and co-ops. Cooperation and grassroots organizations are essential to the growth of localized agriculture beyond government promotion. Co-ops, as community-based organizations owned by employees, help to distribute economic benefits and opportunities evenly within communities and among their members. Pooled resources and community organizations facilitate involvement, coordination, and transfer of knowledge among groups.
Promote diversity, for increased resilience and self-regulation. Diverse agro-ecological systems have proved more resilient to adverse conditions. Research done after Hurricane Ike in 2008found a 50 percent recovery rate for diverse cropping systems (polyculture), whereas as much as 90–100 percent of single-crop systems (monoculture) were lost. High diversity allows for self-regulation within the agricultural system and compensates for losses of one or more species or ecosystem functions (such as retaining water in the ground or increasing nitrogen content). Diverse plantings develop fertility and can attract predators of agricultural pests to provide redundancy and resilience within the systems and reduce the need for intervention by detecting potential problems early.
Close the nutrient cycle through the use of compost and organic inputs. Returning organic material to the soil and building soil organic matter improves fertility, water retention, and soil structure, while reducing erosion. Materials collected and composted in Cuba include food waste, crop residues, and animal waste. Within the organopónico system, inputs from off the farm are minimized and sourced locally, which maintains low production and transport costs. Maximizing the use of locally sourced organic waste also benefits the global climate by reducing the volume of organic material that is decomposing and emitting methane emissions in dumps.
Use Integrated Pest Management (IPM). Many pest control chemicals can be expensive and have adverse effects on people and other non-target species (the well-recorded impact ofneonicotinoids on bee populations is just one example). IPM is a set of principles and practices based on ecological and local conditions. These practices include using anti-pest spray soaps, introducing predatory insects to combat specific pests, and using pest-resistant seed strains, among many approaches. IPM requires careful planning and monitoring for potential problems and pests.
Agricultural System Under Threat in Cuba

Lessons learned from Cuba’s agriculture system must be gleaned now, as global environmental and economic tides are affecting the Cuban system. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), productivity in Cuba has been strained by adverse weather conditions and climate patterns. Hurricanes and drought have caused crop losses and lower yields. Food assistance programs, reliant on local production, were reduced in 2011 and are increasingly supplemented by expensive imports. As a result, imports have soared to 70–80 percent of food use, straining food programs as state finances struggle to cope with import costs.

Top-producing organopónicos can compete with the productivity of industrial farms, but they are intensive operations requiring inputs of compost and access to support, credit, and technology. The WFPattributes heavy post-harvest losses to obsolete technology, and low yields to localized shortages of inputs and credit.

Moving Forward

Worldwide, the importance and benefits of urban farms—ranging from vertical farms in warehouses to rooftop farming and the remediation of empty lots into community farms—has become evident. Although efforts and research are moving in the right direction, there is much left to do. Substantial gaps have yet to be filled, and practical knowledge still needs to be spread. Ultimately, wide-scale adoption of urban and community agriculture could bring us one step toward building brighter futures, sustainable cities, and improved communities. Cuba’s model, born out of constraint, may provide good lessons on how to change today’s failing agricultural structures.

Aurel Keller is a Communications Intern at the Worldwatch Institute.

First published in Worldwatch Institute

19 August 2016

By Deirdre Fulton

Laying bare the horrors of Syria’s ongoing civil war, heartbreaking footage of a young boy rescued from the rubble following an airstrike in Aleppo has gone viral.

Much as last year’s photos of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi—”The Boy on the Beach“—offered a stark reminder of the human toll of the refugee crisis, the images of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh—”The Boy in the Ambulance”—are forcing many to consider the devastating realities of life in war-torn Syria, where more than 250,000 people, including many children, have died in almost five years of war.

The photo and accompanying video, taken and distributed by the activist group Aleppo Media Centre, show Omran being pulled from a partially destroyed building and placed in a chair inside a brightly lit ambulance after an airstrike Wednesday evening. His face and body are covered in ash, dust, and blood. Seemingly dazed, he says nothing.

Watch the video below [warning: graphic content]:

According to news outlets, Omran was taken to a hospital, treated for head wounds, and released. It has been confirmed that though his parents and siblings were also wounded in the attack, they survived.

The Associated Press reports: “An hour after his rescue, the building the boy was in completely collapsed.”

Eight people, including five children, are said to have died in the bombing.

As many observers pointed out on social media, young Omran represents thousands of innocent children. As journalist Raf Sanchez—whose initial tweet containing the disturbing image has been shared more than 15,000 times—wrote at the Telegraph, “Tomorrow there will, no doubt, be more strikes and more children like Omran will be hurt.”

Indeed, Sanchez on Thursday posted a video of medics in Aleppo giving CPR to a child on hospital floor. The child later died.

On Thursday, the United Nations suspended its humanitarian task force in Syria amid frustration over intensified fighting that has prevented aid deliveries to besieged areas for at least a month.

“Not one single convoy in one month has reached any of the humanitarian besieged areas—not one single convoy,” U.N. envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, who chairs the task force and suspended Thursday’s meeting after just eight minutes, told reporters. “And why? Because of one thing: Fighting.”

Earlier this week, the U.N.-mandated Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria warned in a statement: “The situation in Aleppo city has been catastrophic for many years. As unthinkable as it is, the current attacks suggest the agony of its civilians is about to deepen.”

First published by CommonDreams.org

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

19 August 2016

By Peter Symonds

Even as tensions are rising with Russia in Eastern Europe and China in Asia, the United States has launched a new war in Libya and is preparing a major military escalation in the Middle East, nominally directed against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In an interview yesterday with USA Today, Air Force Lieutenant General Jeffrey Harrigan confirmed that the US-led coalition is planning coordinated offensives against two ISIS-held cities—Mosul in northern Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. “If we are able to do simultaneous operations and synchronise the Mosul piece and the Raqqa piece, think about the problem that generates for [ISIS],” he said.

Harrigan, who recently took over command of air operations in the Middle East, said coalition war planes had been striking targets in both cities in recent months. “The team is focussed on force generation to try and make that simultaneous operation occur, because we see huge benefits from it,” he said, referring to the build-up of anti-ISIS ground forces in Iraq and Syria.

USA Today reported US troops are already operating extensively inside Syria, stating: “US Special Operations Forces are helping to identify and organise Syrian rebel groups into a force that can take on the Islamic State [ISIS]. The force now numbers about 30,000 and had generated some surprisingly early successes, particularly around the northern city of Manbij.”

Within Iraq, US-led preparations have been underway for months to retake Mosul, the country’s second largest city, which still has a population of up to one million despite a mass exodus. Iraqi government forces last month seized the Qayyarah air base, 60 kilometres south of Mosul, which is being transformed into a major hub of operations for the upcoming offensive.

The US has funnelled in around 400 troops to carry out repairs, as well as to provide military advice, logistics, communications and intelligence to Iraqi ground troops, which have already begun seizing villages and towns to the south of Mosul. The air base’s runways are being upgraded and extended to allow large military transports to land, along with US and Iraqi fighters and helicopter gunships.

The anti-ISIS forces preparing for the Mosul offensive consist of an unstable coalition of Kurdish peshmerga militia, regular Iraqi army troops and Shiite-dominated Popular Mobilisation Forces, which are notorious for their atrocities against Sunni civilians during the battle for Fallujah. Already concerns are being raised about the potential for sectarian fighting and human rights abuses once Mosul is recaptured.

Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland, the top US commander in Syria and Iraq, declared this week: “We are going to try to get Mosul back as fast as we can. It’s one million people living under an oppressive rule under terrible conditions… The Iraqi security forces around Qayyarah are in a position now to begin that process and we’ll try to hurry that along as fast as we possibly can but putting an exact time on it, I’d rather not.”

MacFarland, who is due to be replaced, declared the US was winning the war against ISIS, reducing their territory in Iraq by more than half. “Although it’s not a measure of success and it’s difficult to confirm, we estimate that over the past 11 months we’ve killed about 25,000 enemy figures.” He provided no estimate of the number of civilians killed in the fighting or in US air raids.

The general also downplayed the role of US military forces, declaring they were only playing an “advise and assist” role at a distance and in specific locations. It is clear, however, that US troops are increasingly involved closer to the frontlines.

In an article late last month, the Washington Post reported: “While US Special Operations forces have already been advising elite counterterrorism troops and Kurdish peshmerga forces at their lower levels, the Qayyarah mission marks the first time since 2014 that US forces have advised Iraqi army battalions in the field.”

A small team of American combat engineers accompanied Iraqi forces on July 20 to advise on the task of constructing a temporary bridge over the Tigris River to the southeast of the town of Qayyarah. According to the Post, the US troops spent a few hours in the field in what was a “narrowly targeted mission, with limited battlefield exposure”—a model for “the restricted role that American commanders are planning for US ground forces in the Mosul operation.”

US generals are clearly concerned that American battlefield deaths will fuel anti-war sentiment at home, but have not ruled out putting US troops on the frontline. “In private, other senior officers are even more blunt, making reference to troops they lost in earlier Iraq deployments. This time, they will place Americans in the thick of fighting only if the overall mission is at risk,” the newspaper stated.

The timing of offensives in Iraq and Syria is also being driven by political considerations. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party are increasingly attacking Republican nominee Donald Trump as being unfit to be commander-in-chief of US forces. A substantial military victory in the Middle East, no matter what the cost in Syrian and Iraqi lives, has the potential to boost Clinton.

The issue is clearly being discussed in Washington circles. An article on thePolitico website on August 1, entitled “Get ready for Obama’s ‘October Surprise’ in Iraq,” suggested that “the American public could be treated to a major US-led military victory in Iraq this fall, just as voters are deciding who will be the nation’s next president.”

The article cited unnamed senior US officers who insisted the Mosul offensive’s timing was not bound up with politics, but it did not rule out the possibility. “If Mosul is retaken, it would both mark a political triumph for Barack Obama and likely benefit his party’s nominee at the polls, Hillary Clinton, undercutting Republican claims that the Obama administration has failed to take the gloves off against Islamic State,” it noted.

13 August 2016

By Alia Al Ghussain

Norma Hashim’s engagement with the issue of Palestinian prisoners has previously produced one book — The Prisoners’ Diaries: Palestinian Voices from the Israeli Gulag — which has been described by former hunger-striker Hana al-Shalabi as “A humane, beautiful, valuable but painful book.”

Hashim’s Dreaming of Freedom is worthy of a similar description. In this collection children recount their experiences of solitary confinement, beatings, torture and humiliation while in Israeli detention.

The use of firsthand accounts gives a platform for stories that would otherwise go unheard and shed light on systematic abuse in Israel’s prison system.

Harrowing

dreaming-freedomDreaming of Freedom begins with the story of 14-year-old Yazan al-Shrbati, one of the most harrowing narratives in the book.

Yazan lives on Shuhada Street in Hebron, formerly the commercial heart of Hebron’s Old City but now severely restricted to Palestinians for the benefit of Israeli settlers. Yazan recounts his brutal assault by Israeli settlers while walking by himself in the street and his subsequent arrest by the Israeli military, despite the fact that he had done nothing to provoke the attack.

Like all the children in the book, Yazan says that his experience of imprisonment has changed him. As well as the physical violence Yazan endured during his arrest, when Israeli soldiers kicked him and hit him in the head, he was subjected to psychological pressure during his detention.

“I was taken to the interrogation room, not knowing why, as I was the victim of an assault,” the boy states. “The interrogator tried to make me say something. I refused, insisting on my innocence. I was still trying to work out how bad my wounds were after the beatings [by] the settlers and the police.”

Human rights laws and norms do not apply under occupation, as these children are painfully aware.

One child describes their home being stormed by Israeli soldiers, another recounts a summons to an interrogation center. Under occupation, no one can ever truly feel secure.

The story of Ayman Abbasi, a 16-year-old from occupied East Jerusalem, is especially poignant.

Ayman was imprisoned several times — the first when he was just in ninth grade — and was released from prison to serve an open-ended house arrest that lasted for 10 months. He was then sentenced to 18 more months in prison and was forced to turn himself over to the prison authorities.

Ayman did not live to the see the publication of Hashim’s book; in November last year, he was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers.

Long-term consequences

Hashim is careful to present her child subjects as honestly as possible rather than idealizing them. Nor does Hashim romanticize the consequences of rebellion against the occupation, for which Palestinians pay a high price.

Ammar Adeli, a child prisoner who took part in numerous acts of resistance against the occupation, drops out of school after repeated arrests. He cannot find a job due to the high unemployment in the West Bank and is isolated from his family.

The long-term impact that arrest and detention has on children — such as dropping out of school, psychological trauma and unemployment — are central themes of their post-prison experiences.

Yet none of the children profiled in Dreaming of Freedom express a desire to leave their homeland. Their shared experiences of arrest and imprisonment, however, reinforce the sense that they are trapped in a system not of their making that dictates the terms and conditions of their lives.

Most amazingly, the children still have hope. When he explains how he coped with imprisonment, Muslim Ouda explains, “despite the miserable conditions in the cells, I would still try to draw a bright picture of my future, using my innocent imagination, in which there is no occupation.”

Alia Al Ghussain is a British-Palestinian currently based in London.

Dreaming of Freedom: Palestinian Child Prisoners Speak, edited by Norma Hashim and translated by Yousef M. Aljamal, Saba Islamic Media (2016)

First published in The Electronic Intifada

11 August 2016