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By Farooque Chowdhury

Condition of labor in today’s world is not difficult to gauge. News on labor’s working and living condition is in abundance, which help comprehend the conditions within which labor survive in the present day world.

State of societies also gives a picture of labor’s condition. Afghanistan or Iraq, Libya or Syria, Greece or Ukraine, Egypt or Sudan, the UK or the USA is only a few examples. A number of societies have already experienced imperialist onslaught or financial and other crises related to capitalism or the so-called austerity measures, which brought devastation and death, eviction from home and unemployment, slashed real wage and anti-labor legislation. Everyday existence is the only question that life faces there in these societies. There’s little scope for labor to get mobilized, chalk out and raise demands, express opinion. A number of laws in a number of advanced capitalist societies virtually make unionization difficult, which is hard to identify at first and easy glance. In countries, unionization is falling. It requires serious search to get the fact from these societies. Modern slaves are now well-known fact in many modern economies.

Another angle of the issue also helps see the present condition of labor: profit. The quantity of profit shows the extent labor was robbed over the years as profit comes from whatever surplus labor is appropriated. Moreover, there’s monopoly superprofit – “surplus of profits”, as Lenin defines, “over and above the capitalist profits that are normal and customary all over the world.” (“Imperialism and the split in socialism”, 1916) It comes by intensively appropriating labor, over-pricing and -valuing, and robbing non-monopoly enterprises, small producers, countries having productive investment by monopolies, by financial operations. “A handful of wealthy countries […] have developed monopoly to vast proportions, they obtain superprofits […] they ‘ride on the backs’ of hundreds and hundreds of millions of people in other countries […]” (ibid.) John Perkins in his The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man Paperback tells the ways trillions of dollars were robbed from countries. It’s a story from Ecuador, Honduras, Seychelles, Vietnam. It’s a story from Turkey. Are other countries free from the loot? Greece, Spain, Portugal? Rest of the countries within clutch of imperialism and with colluding governments? People including labor are coerced to submit to “policies that make the rich richer and the poor poorer.” Imperialist wars and interventions have aggravated the situation. At the end, there remains profit and superprofit.

Let’s look at a randomly picked portion of profit/superprofit over the last few years:

“US banks posted $40.24 billion in net income during the second quarter, the industry’s second-highest profit total in at least 23 years, according to data from research firm SNL Financial. The latest profits are just below the record $40.36 billion recorded in the first quarter of 2013.” (The Wall Street Journal, “U.S. Bank Profits Near Record Levels”, by Robin Sidel & Saabira Chaudhuri, August 11, 2014)

New York Fed economists Tobias Adrian, Michael Fleming, Or Shachar, Daniel Stackman and Erik Vogt wrote in the blog Liberty Street Economics (“Changes in the Returns to Market Making”): Profits have soared since the global financial crisis at the five biggest US banks. From 2009 to 2014, the combined net income of J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley annually averaged $41.73 billion, up from annual average of $25.08 billion from 2002 to 2008. (The table on net income for the five largest US dealers exceeds pre-crisis levels) (Reuters, “Profits at big U.S. banks soar since crisis: New York Fed”, by Richard Leong, October 7, 2015)

Citing Federal Deposit Insurance Corp Matthew Heller writes: The US banking industry finished 2015 with a strong fourth quarter. In its latest Quarterly Banking Profile, the FDIC said federally-insured commercial banks and savings institutions reported aggregate net income of $40.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2015, up $4.4 billion (11.9%) from a year earlier. The proportion of banks that were unprofitable in the fourth quarter fell from 9.9% a year earlier to 9.1%, the lowest level for a fourth quarter since 1996. (“U.S. Bank Profits Climb 11.9% to $40.8B”, CFO.com, CFO Publishing, New York, February 24, 2016)
Swiss banks saw their profits rise during 2014 to close to 19.5 billion Swiss francs although their staff count declined in the year. Announcing its annual update on Swiss banks, the country’s central bank SNB (Swiss National Bank) said on June 18, 2015: 246 out of the 275 banks in Switzerland recorded an annual profit, taking total profit to CHF 14.2 billion in 2014, from CHF 11.9 billion in the previous year. The number of staff working in banks decreased by 1,844 to 125,289. (The Economic Times, “Swiss banks’ profit rises; staff count down”, June 18, 2015)

Swiss bank UBS on February 2, 2016 reported net profit for 2015 up 79 percent at 6.2 billion Swiss francs, ahead of a consensus forecast compiled by Reuters of 5.75 billion Swiss francs. The wealth management business reported its best annual pre-tax profit since 2008. (CNBC.com, “UBS profit up 79% amid ‘paralyzing’ volatility”, by Julia Chatterley & Antonia Matthews”, February 2, 2016)

Canada’s top banks saw their fourth-quarter profits edge higher in 2014. Combined, Canada’s five biggest banks — Royal Bank, TD Bank, Scotiabank, Bank of Montreal and CIBC — earned $7.4 billion of net income during the quarter, up slightly from $7.3 billion a year ago. Their profits for the year climbed to a total of $31.7 billion, from $29.2 billion last year. National Bank, the country’s sixth largest lender, reported fourth-quarter net income of $330 million, up from $320 million a year ago. The bank also boosted its dividend for the third time in the past year. (The Canadian Press, “Canadian Banks’ Profits Top $31.7 Billion In Fiscal Year, But ‘Challenges’ Loom”, by Alexandra Posadzki, 12/05/2014 & with update 02/04/2015)

Australia’s big banks will next week hand down interim profits of almost $16 billion (The Australian, “Big banks set to face more scrutiny as profits near $16bn”, by Michael Bennet, April 25, 2016)

Armaments industries are a good indicator of the joyful journey of profit. A report by Rob Garver in The Fiscal Times said:

“[H]ow well have U.S. defense firms done in the past few years? To put it in context, in the past 24 months, the U.S. stock market has been on a nearly unprecedented tear. Since April of 2013, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has soared, increasing in value by more than 30 percent. […]

“Since April of 2013, the Dow Jones U.S. Aerospace and Defense Total Stock Market Index has grown at double the rate of the S&P, increasing in value by 60 percent”. (“U.S. Defense Industry Outperforms S&P by 100 Percent”, April 20, 2015)

Another report, two years prior to the above report, in USA Today said:

“The business of war is profitable. In 2011, the 100 largest contractors sold $410 billion in arms and military services. Just 10 of those companies sold over $208 billion. Based on a list of the top 100 arms-producing and military services companies in 2011 compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 10 companies with the most military sales worldwide.

“These companies have benefited tremendously from the growth in military spending in the U.S., which by far has the largest military budget in the world. […] SIPRI noted that between 2002 and 2011, arms sales among the top 100 companies grew by 51%.”

Based on the SIPRI report, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 10 biggest weapons companies, looked at sales figures for two years through 2011, among other metrics. Following “are the 10 companies that profit the most from war”:

10. United Technologies – arm sales: $11.6 billion, total sales: $58.2 billion, gross profit: $5.3 billion, total workforce: 199,900.

9. L-3 Communications – arm sales: $12.5 billion, total sales: $15.2 billion, gross profit: $956 million, total workforce: 61,000.

8. Finmeccanica – arm sales: $14.6 billion, total sales: $24.1 billion, gross profit: $ 3.2 billion, total workforce: 70,470.

7. European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company – arm sales: $16.4 billion, total sales: $68.3 billion, gross profit: $1.4 billion, total workforce: 133,120.

6. Northrop Grumman – arm sales: $21.4 billion, total sales: $26.4 billion, gross profit: $2.1 billion, total workforce: 72,500.

5. Raytheon – arm sales: $22.5 billion, total sales: $24.9 billion, gross profit: $1.9 billion, total workforce: 71,000.

4. General Dynamics – arm sales: $23.8 billion, total sales: $32.7 billion, gross profit: $2.5 billion, total workforce: 95,100. The company announced layoffs in early March, blaming mandated federal budget cuts.

3. BAE Systems – arm sales: $29.2 billion, total sales: $30.7 billion, gross profit: $2.3 billion, total workforce: 93,500. BAE noted that its outlook “constrained”, “likely due to the diminished presence in international conflicts and government budget cuts.”

2. Boeing – arm sales: $31.8 billion, total sales: $68.7 billion, gross profit: $4 billion, total workforce: 171,700.

1. Lockheed Martin – arm sales: $36.3 billion, total sales: $46.5 billion, gross profit: $2.7 billion, total workforce, 123,000. “In the fall of 2012, the company planned on issuing layoff notices to all employees before backing down at the White House’s request.” (“10 companies profiting the most from war”, by Samuel Weigley, 24/7 Wall St., March 10, 2013)

A year later, a Bloomberg News report by Richard Clough said:

“Led by Lockheed Martin, the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world.

“Investors see rising sales for makers of missiles, drones and other weapons as the U.S. hits Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq, said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Chicago-based BMO Private Bank.

“‘As we ramp up our military muscle in the Mideast, there’s a sense that demand for military equipment and weaponry will likely rise,’ said Ablin, who oversees $66 billion including Northrop Grumman and Boeing shares. ‘To the extent we can shift away from relying on troops and rely more heavily on equipment — that could present an opportunity.’

“A Bloomberg gauge of the four largest Pentagon contractors – excluding Boeing … – rose 19 percent this year through yesterday, outstripping the 2.2 percent gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Industrials Index.

“Lockheed, the world’s biggest defense company, reached an all-time high of $180.74 on Sept. 19, when Northrop and Raytheon also set records. General Dynamics, the parent company of Maine shipbuilder Bath Iron Works, traded at $129.45 on that day, up from $87.74 a year ago. That quartet of companies and Chicago-based Boeing accounted for about $105 billion in federal contract orders last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“Even with revenue at Lockheed, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Falls Church, Virginia-based Northrop down 4 percent since 2011, non-U.S. sales have climbed 9 percent during that stretch. The four companies also have pared expenses, including reducing their combined workforce since 2011 by 23,000 people, or about 6 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“‘We haven’t seen so many territories and borders called into question since World War II,’ said BMO Private Bank’s Ablin.” (Portland Press Herald, “U.S. defense industry’s profits soaring along with global tensions” September 25, 2014)

There’s a similar tale of profit-game from Europe. Ron Fraser writes:

“Even as the Greek economy continues its agonizing collapse, with the nation struggling to submit to extreme austerity measures being enforced by its masters in Berlin, the nation’s unelected technocratic government is overseeing a giant fiddle of the books involving the channeling of bailout money into the coffers of Germany’s armaments industry.

“To counter Turkey’s aggression, Greece has spent huge amounts on defense budgets — as much as 4.3 percent of gross domestic product, proportionately the highest among the EU nations.

“Who has been the greatest beneficiary of this defense expenditure? The major supplier of defense equipment to Greece: the German armaments industry.

“How much have EU elites actually manipulated ongoing Greek-Turkish tensions for the advantage of the European Union’s thriving defense industries? As one Greek source observed: “In this volatile game of geopolitics, the bosses of Euro ‘family’ have always been playing the major role in cultivating and manipulating an unguaranteed stability in the area, thus creating market conditions for their influential military industries to flourish. German defense corporations in particular have been major contractors with the Greek (and Turkish) army for more than two decades” (Antibaro.gr, Nov. 29, 2010).

“The facts are that Greece’s coffers have been substantially drained into huge profits for German defense industry barons. This includes multibillion-euro contracts for Greece to purchase big-ticket military hardware ranging from tanks to missiles to naval vessels, including submarines.

“‘All these sum up to hundreds of billions of euros and, under other circumstances, could have been more than enough to balance the Greek budget deficit and even drastically alleviate the external debt,’ that same Greek source observed. ‘One thing is for sure, those billions were added to the profits of German industrialists, bankers and intermediaries.’

“Since that report came to light, the Greek economy has been brought to the brink of catastrophe, with the prospect of inevitable default on its debts being very real by the end of the first quarter of the current year.

“The saving grace for Greece may well be the degree of influence that German defense industry corporate elites and their bankers have in terms of convincing the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank to cough up another tranche of euros in their interests. An unnamed source is quoted by German news source Zeit Online as observing that “If Greece gets paid in March the next tranche of funding (€80 billion is expected), there is a real opportunity to conclude new arms contracts” (January 5).

“Zero Hedge reports that, ‘after the Portuguese (another obviously stressed nation), the Greeks are the largest buyers of German war weapons.’ The same source contrasts this huge expenditure by Greece on armaments amid the general state of the Grecian economy, with ‘the country’s doctors only treating emergencies, bus drivers on strike, and a dire lack of school textbooks and the country teetering on the brink of drachmatization […]’ (January 9).

“When the EU was threatened with the collapse of the Greek economy, German defense industry chiefs held the Greeks’ feet to the fire. Rather than cancel out on existing contracts, permitting the release of funds to support basic services within the ailing Greek economy, the German government defense contractors enforced Greece’s contract obligations.

“The effect of this scenario has been that Greece is treating as a priority the payment of its obligations to the German armaments industry using the very bailout funds received to ostensibly revive its dying economy.” (The Trumpet, “German Arms Industry Profits at Greek Expense”, January 11, 2012)

This seemingly endless and unfathomable profit and superprofit have its origin: at the cost of labor. In Greece, how is labor surviving? In Africa, what’s the condition of the diamond diggers? In Spain and Portugal? In India? In the US? Country after country labor, broadly, carries the same story: exploitation and deprivation, low wage and harsh living condition. Uncertainty and indignity are part of labor-life. Labor is exploited so that profit gets generated. Labor is deprived of all aspects of life: material conditions for a livable life and rights.

“An estimated one million diamond diggers in Africa”, say a number of diamond related literature, “earn less than a dollar a day. This unlivable wage is below the extreme poverty line. As a result, hundreds of thousands of miners lack basic necessities such as running water and sanitation. Hunger, illiteracy, and infant mortality are commonplace. Because children are considered an easy source of cheap labor, they are regularly employed in the diamond mining industry. In some areas of Africa, children make up more than a small part of the workforce. One survey of diamond miners in the Lunda Norte province of Angola found that 46% of miners were between the ages of 5 and 16. For children trapped in the diamond mines, life is full of hardship. Children work long days, often six or seven days a week.”

This story – source of cheap labor, long working days, seven days a week – is overwhelming in countries. The so-called informal sector, the “honorable” self-employed, labor in small enterprises, labor facing the threat of outsourcing, competition with illegal and migrant labor create the same story. Slums are one of the easier points to know working people’s life as “a large share of factory workers lives in slums and informal colonies around industrial areas.” (Labour regimes in the Indian garments sector: capital-labour relations, social reproduction and labour standards in the National Capital Region, by Alessandra Mezzadri and Ravi Srivastava, (Report of the ESRC-DFID Research Project ‘Labour Standards and the Working Poor in China and India’), October 2015, published by the Centre for Development Policy and Research) What do the Dhaka-, Cairo-, Manila-, Mumbai- slums show? What do the workers’ life in Ludhiana, Bangalore, Chennai, Tiruppur and Okhla (Delhi) show? It’s a dark, dingy-life. It’s desolate and destitute. And, slums are integral part of exploitative economy.

Europe, economically and politically much advanced and powerful than Asia-Africa-Latin America gives a clearer picture, which helps compare similar situation in the underdeveloped hemisphere. Think Differently, Humanitarian impacts of the economic crisis in Europe, an October 2013 report by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said:

In 2011, a quarter of EU’s population was at risk, having increased by 6 million since 2009 to 120 million in total. Whilst other continents successfully reduce poverty, Europe adds to it. […]

Almost half of Bulgaria’s population was at risk in 2011. Seventeen EU countries record more than one-fifth of their population as poor or excluded. This includes almost one third of the population in the most recent new member state, Croatia. […]

Poverty is on the increase in France, Romania, Spain, Sweden and many other countries …

The 68-page study report said: Europe is sinking into a protracted period of deepening poverty, mass unemployment, social exclusion, greater inequality, and collective despair as a result of austerity policies. The grave impact of the crisis was not confined to the crisis-ravaged, bailed-out countries of southern Europe and Ireland, but extended to relative European success stories such as Germany and parts of Scandinavia.

European Observatory of Working Life’s report Impact of the crisis on working conditions in Europe (July 9, 2013) covered the 27 EU member states and Norway. The report said:

Throughout this report the following pattern emerges – rising insecurity, less choice, wage freezes and the feeling of “not being all in it together”.

It found “higher levels of work intensity (workload, work pressure and job demands) […] in economically restructuring workplaces”, and diminished “choice possibilities of workers”.

The report Destitution in the UK by Suzanne Fitzpatrick, Glen Bramley, Filip Sosenko, Janice Blenkinsopp, Sarah Johnsen, Mandy Littlewood, Gina Netto and Beth Watts found more than a million people across the UK are so impoverished they don’t have enough food, clothes, heating, shelter and toiletries. The report commissioned by UK charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation was released on April 27, 2016 is based on a two years-long study. The report found: 1.25 million people, an agonizing figure, were destitute during 2015, 312,000 of whom were children. About 80 percent of these were born in Britain.

These people are humiliated and isolated. Persons considered destitute included those who:

[1] “had been forced to sleep rough”;

[2] “had no meal or just one per day over a period of 48 hours or longer”;

[3] “were unable to heat or light their home adequately for five or more days”; and

[4] “lacked weather-proof clothes or had to go without basic toiletries”.

A look at a randomly picked area provides further facts. The report on the garments sector in the India’s national capital region, cited above, says the following:

“[H]arsh, even sometimes violent, patterns of labour subordination in the industry are indisputable. In many countries, garment work could even be classified as ‘hazardous work’, based on the unsafe practices on which the industry seems to rely. Glaring examples of systemic malpractices in the sector, exposing workers to high degrees of danger and risk, have sadly emerged in the past three years across Asia.” (p. 38)

“It should be noted that the first disaster known in the history of garment production is the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, in New York City. It happened on March 25th 1911. Tellingly, over a hundred years apart, the NYC and South Asian cases reveal strikingly similar modalities. In all cases, evidence suggests that workers were locked into the factory premises. Recently, garment workers have been again subjected to high degrees of danger, risks and violence. In January 2014, the Cambodian government ordered its military and police to open fire on its own garment workers, who were on the street demanding an increase in minimum wages. These cases show how then informalisation of labour in the sector signifies much more than low wages and lack of benefits; it is effectively permeated by violence, and characterised by brutal patterns of disciplining, control, and subjugation of the workforce.” (pp. 38-9)

“Previous studies […] highlight the following employment trends at work in the NCR:

“1) The garment workforce is heavily composed of contract-workers […]
[…]
“3) A significant share of the garment workforce in the NCR is composed of homeworkers, due to high levels of value-addition in product cycles
“4) Both women and children work as homeworkers
“5) Homeworkers seem to be recruited and managed by contractors
“6) Overall, workers in both factories and homes are considered vulnerable as they are exposed to uncertain and casualised working conditions
“7) Unsurprisingly, levels of unionisation are extremely low
“8) So far, both national labour laws and corporate codes of conduct imposed by global buyers seem largely unable to improve working conditions.” (p. 41)

“Only six (1.7%) workers in our sample had written contracts. Most workers saw themselves as being casually employed (50.9 per cent) while 47.4 per cent saw themselves as being regularly employed (indefinite, oral contracts). Thus nearly half the workers see themselves as being in indefinite employment, although they do not have any contracts.” (p. 108)

“Work hours in the industry are long, particularly during peak periods, when they could be as high as 15 to 16 hours a day. […] 42.9 per cent of workers reported that their normal work hours were 6 to 9, while 50.9 per cent said that they worked between 10 and 12 hours and 6.2 per cent said that they worked an average of 13 to 16 hours per day. The highest work intensity is clearly in the large workshops, where 67.7 per cent of workers said that they worked for 10 to 12 hours and 29 per cent said that they worked for more than 13 hours a day.” (p. 120)

“Fifteen per cent of the workers in the sample say that they do not get breaks on public holidays and a similar percentage (14.2%) indicate that they do not get a weekly day-off while 15.6 per cent ― sometimes get a weekly day off.” (p. 126)

“[T]here is a thick haze of dust and particle pollution in some departments, especially in large factories. The main health risk undoubtedly comes from the nature of work – requiring focused attention and fixed postures, as well as long hours. Hours, as we have seen, are especially long in the workshops. Dust and particle pollution is regarded by workers as the main cause of health risk in the garment industry (i.e., by 79% of workers across all firms), followed by eye strain (39.1% of all workers). Accidents are regarded as a smaller but a significant source of health risk, with 7.9% of workers perceiving these to be the major health risk […]. In the workshop segment, however, eyestrain is seen as the biggest source of health risk, and the percentage of workers complaining of dust/particle pollution is highest in the export sector and in large enterprises.” (p. 128)

“No safety equipment is provided to workers in workshops but units in the factory sector do provide some equipment, mainly dust masks.” (p. 128)

“Exhaustion, eye strain, back pain and allergy are the most common occupational health problems mentioned by the workers”. (p. 129)

“Garment workers whom we have interviewed live in congested surroundings, often several workers to a room, which are located in urban and peri-urban villages and slums. The density of habitation in these localities is extraordinarily high and basic amenities are poor. Typically, land owners build tenements which are provided to workers on the basis of a monthly rent, and shared. Toilet and bathroom facilities are shared floor wise or across the building. Workers share these rooms with co-workers who could be related or unrelated.” (p. 143)

“The quality of housing for workers is also poor, with one-third of them describing the construction as semi-pukka and two-thirds describing the construction as pukka [brick/concrete made]. Access to toilets and bathrooms and to drinking water is crucial. But only 7.6 per cent of workers had access to a toilet attached to the room or inside the house. In all other cases, toilets and bathrooms were common in the building premises or workers used public toilets. Only 38.1 per cent of workers had access to tapped drinking water inside their premises while 33.6 per cent used a tap water facility located outside the premise and 23.2per cent used a handpump outside their premises. Another 5.2 per cent of workers mentioned other sources such as borewells.” (p. 145)

Do the human stories from the 21st century UK or India, sound different from the reality Engels found in 1844-’45 and, based on his findings, depicted in The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) or far different from today’s toilers in Africa and Asia?

A contradictory reality emerges: higher profit or superprofit, and “deepening poverty, mass unemployment, social exclusion, greater inequality, and collective despair”, “rising insecurity, less choice, wage freezes”, “higher levels of work intensity”. Are not there relations or contradictions in the reality? Is there any reason that can make the reality in the underdeveloped hemisphere better than the European reality? Is the reality basically different from the reality that gave rise to the world workers’ May Day? In this May Day, the questions, basically old, demand renewed search.

Farooque Chowdhury, a Dhaka-based freelancer, has authored/edited three books in English (Micro Credit: Myth Manufactured (ed.), The Age of Crisis, and What Next? The Great Financial Crisis (ed.), and doesn’t operate any blog like “Farooque Chowdhury’s Blog”.

01 May, 2016
Countercurrents.org

By Khaldun Malek

“No condition of life to which man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees them accepted by everyone around him” – Tolstoy

The recent expose’ of the so-called “Panama Papers” brings to light again the morally troubling issue of tax havens and the flight of capital from taxation. The fallout from this, as is now widely known, has had serious political implications. There is already a major political casualty in the form of the former prime minister of Iceland, who resigned amidst allegations of financial impropriety by a member of his family. Politically, the issue remains a highly charged one; even David Cameron, who in recent times was one of the most vocal proponents of reforms to curb the excesses of the financial truancy of both rich corporations and individuals has not been entirely absolved from the scandal.

Some financial analysts have claimed that this is merely the tip of a very large iceberg. If true, the implications are staggering, because it gives pause to even the deeply worrying report recently published by Oxfam highlighting the global inequities of wealth which exists today. While economic inequality is a serious source of concern, it is merely a part of a larger pattern of discrimination and deprivation that afflicts all societies in the present. This question extends to far more than just economic ones; in fact, arguably the fixation on economic inequality is in danger of shifting attention away from more fundamental questions of social justice and fairness. It also gives an undue emphasis on an economic solution rather than a real one.

One of the key, though somewhat under-emphasised, aspect of Thomas Piketty’s global best-seller has not been to show the extent of the gaps between the rich and the poor but rather more pertinently how periods where the gaps have narrowed have been the rare exception rather than the rule. This in a sense gives us a more realistic appraisal of history. Seldom has the pursuit and agglomeration of wealth given pause to anything other than its own validation. If history is any guide, the impulse to accumulate wealth and power for its own sake is a universal drive that seems to transcend faith, cultures, language, politics and geography – as much as most faith and wisdom traditions counsel us against the deep spiritual and social ruin that will eventuate from such a pursuit. But in a global public culture dominated by a vain and arrogant, but more problematically, parochial ‘secularity’ promoted by the West and their allies, such discourses carry little weight.

Worryingly, even among the more visibly religious nations, there seems to be little enthusiasm to find alternative visions of progress and development.Even so called ‘alternatives’ to the dominant paradigms might not – on closer scrutiny – be so different. I think underneath the enthusiasms amongst Muslim nations, for example, over so called“Islamic” finance, the same ideological drives persist. Financial institutions no doubt understand its attractions as a marketing exercise; a more affluent, growing Muslim middle class enthusiastically embraces a means of increasing their wealth whilst palliating their ‘spiritual’ concerns!As global banks pursue this new wonderful marketing vehicle, we see hordes of both private and public conspirators – government agencies, university academics, financial consultants and so on – selling the public this new ‘product’!

However, at its centre nothing changes, and the practices of the past (profiteering for its own sake, the continued hegemony of the institutional structure of the present financial system, the ongoing valorisation of liberal capitalist values et al) continues. The terms of the process are now couched in a different language but the functioning and logical aims of the exercises remain the same. Moreover, the way in which global society speaks of the problem today – the way it has been conceived and what has been perceived as its effects is quite removed from similar episodes of social and economic distress in the past. I’ll come back to this later.

I’d wager that even the Wall Street Sit-In, applauded globally as a powerful indictment of the failures of a financial system run amok (a dubious pyramid scheme dressed under the sanctimony of the world’s most respectable financial institutions), symptomatizes the widespread moral vacuum surrounding the issue. Exemplified as a serious mass movement critique of developments which eventually led to the financial crisis of 2008, what it truly reflects is a reaction against the symptoms of failure rather than an outright questioning of the moral validity of its causes. In other words, one cannot help but wonder whether many of those who came would have bothered to do so if they had not themselves been affected by the fallout. If the prevailing system had continued to lavish the same returns it had done prior, would have there been a call to re-examine its principles or values? And what exactly are the majority angry about? The failure of the system? Or of the principles which underpin them? Then why is there a la
cuna of serious attempts to frame these issues in broader terms? If we do not take the time to think within the context of the kinds of society we are trying to build, then to paraphrase Santayana, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past in an unending vicious cycle.

One thing is clear. History tells us that the cycles of boom and bust is a natural part of the economic order. However, what is peculiar to the current malaise, is a seeming inability to articulate the problem(s) within any kind of moral compass. The way we talk about economic activity is disconnected to any view of how this is an intrinsic part of how we imagine the kinds of societies we wish to have. Even when we are angry about disparities between the rich and poor, this is seen and discussed in isolation from thinking about wider morality. It has not always been so. Even in the most celebrated totem of free-market thinking, Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”, published more than two centuries ago, the idea of free enterprise and the freedom of exchange, was an attempt to augment a liberalism and individual autonomy thought in the best interests of an Enlightenment morality. Free trade was seen as a critical element in the flourishing of a ‘good’ society. It was grounded on a moral claim (what Smith terms as
“moral sentiments”), not the kind of vacuous argument put forward today by economists talking about “efficiencies”.

This laxity, described so vividly by Tony Judt, as ‘economism’ (“the invocation of economics in all discussions of public affairs”) is frankly, intellectually lazy. He asks a deeply pertinent question, “why do we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society from the one whose dysfunctions and inequalities troubles us so?”. Why is it we no longer seem to have the wherewithal to question the present in fundamental ways? Why is it so difficult to conceive “a different set of arrangements to our common advantage”? And perhaps most worryingly, we appear to lack a sufficient vocabulary to enter a public discourse without need for an arbitrative reference to profit and loss, or what Judt refers to as an “etiolated economic vocabulary”.

These questions are, of course, not new. Decades before the publication of his report which became in 1942, the foundation of the British welfare state, William Beveridge had given a lecture in Oxford in which he bemoaned the dangers of obscuring proper political philosophy with classical economics in public debates. In some ways anticipating the intellectual malaise we face in the present, he warned of the deleterious effects of restricting public policy considerations to mere economic calculus.

We seem to live in an age where the functioning of society is seen in almost purely instrumental terms. The economic and commercial, the pursuit of leisure, securing justice and fairness, political participation and the fulfilment of spiritual needs and religious obligations are almost always discussed and seen as separate realms of values and conduct – microcosmic and through separate flows of life seemingly unconnected with one another. This is of course, a false depiction of the human condition. Under such conditions, it is extremely difficult – if not downright impossible – to speak of ‘society’ in a collective and holistic sense. All things are judged in their own terms and in their own sense; it is almost as if the kind of Thatcherite verbiage (“there is no such thing as society, merely individuals” and so on) we thought we had left behind in the 80s, has quietly subsumed the principles of public debate over everything from education, health, transport, housing and so on.

Over two centuries ago, one of the key figures of the European Enlightenment, and perhaps its keenest observer of the emergence of commercial capitalism, Marquis de Condorcet, anticipated the dire prospects that “liberty will be no more in the eyes of an avid nation, than the necessary condition for the security of financial operations”. For many of us today, this may actually sound too familiar for comfort.

Khaldun Malek is an academic who is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

29 April 2016.

Friends decline my invitations and I have taken to sleeping outside under the trees, to avoid becoming a magnet of death for my family

By Malik Jalal

I am in the strange position of knowing that I am on the ‘Kill List’. I know this because I have been told, and I know because I have been targeted for death over and over again. Four times missiles have been fired at me. I am extraordinarily fortunate to be alive.

I don’t want to end up a “Bugsplat” – the ugly word that is used for what remains of a human being after being blown up by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone. More importantly, I don’t want my family to become victims, or even to live with the droning engines overhead, knowing that at any moment they could be vaporized.

I am in England this week because I decided that if Westerners wanted to kill me without bothering to come to speak with me first, perhaps I should come to speak to them instead. I’ll tell my story so that you can judge for yourselves whether I am the kind of person you want to be murdered.

I am from Waziristan, the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. I am one of the leaders of the North Waziristan Peace Committee (NWPC), which is a body of local Maliks (or community leaders) that is devoted to trying to keep the peace in our region. We are sanctioned by the Pakistan government, and our main mission is to try to prevent violence between the local Taliban and the authorities.

In January 2010, I lent my vehicle to my nephew, Salimullah, to drive to Deegan for an oil change and to have one of the tires checked. Rumours had surfaced that drones were targeting particular vehicles, and tracking particular phone signals. The sky was clear and there were drones circling overhead.

As Salimullah conversed with the mechanic, a second vehicle pulled up next to mine. There were four men inside, just local chromite miners. A missile destroyed both vehicles, killed all four men, and seriously injured Salimullah, who spent the next 31 days in hospital.

Upon reflection, because the drones target the vehicles of people they want to kill in Waziristan, I was worried that they were aiming for me.

The next attack came on 3 September 2010. That day, I was driving a red Toyota Hilux Surf SUV to a ‘Jirga’, a community meeting of elders. Another red vehicle, almost identical to mine, was some 40 meters behind. When we reached Khader Khel, a missile blew up the other vehicle, killing all four occupants. I sped away, with flames and debris in my rear view mirror.

Initially I thought the vehicle behind was perhaps being used by militants, and I just happened to be nearby. But I learned later the casualties were four local laborers from the Mada Khel tribe, none of whom had any ties to militant groups. Now it seemed more likely that I was the target.

The third drone strike came on 6 October 2010. My friend Salim Khan invited me to dinner. I used my phone to call Salim to announce my arrival, and just before I got there a missile struck, instantly killing three people, including my cousin, Kaleem Ullah, a married man with children, and a mentally handicapped man. Again, none of the casualties were involved in extremism.

Now I knew for certain it was me they were after.

Five months later, on 27 March 2011, an American missile targeted a Jirga, where local Maliks – all friends and associates of mine – were working to resolve a local dispute and bring peace. Some 40 civilians died that day, all innocent, and some of them fellow members of the NWPC. I was early to the scene of this horror.

Like others that day, I said some things I regret. I was angry, and I said we would get our revenge. But, in truth, how would we ever do such a thing? Our true frustration was that we – the elders of our villages – are now powerless to protect our people.

I have been warned that Americans and their allies had me and others from the Peace Committee on their Kill List. I cannot name my sources, as they would find themselves targeted for trying to save my life. But it leaves me in no doubt that I am one of the hunted.

I soon began to park any vehicle far from my destination, to avoid making it a target. My friends began to decline my invitations, afraid that dinner might be interrupted by a missile.

I took to the habit of sleeping under the trees, well above my home, to avoid acting as a magnet of death for my whole family. But one night my youngest son, Hilal (then aged six), followed me out to the mountainside. He said that he, too, feared the droning engines at night. I tried to comfort him. I said that drones wouldn’t target children, but Hilal refused to believe me. He said that missiles had often killed children. It was then that I knew that I could not let them go on living like this.

I know the Americans think me an opponent of their drone wars. They are right; I am. Singling out people to assassinate, and killing nine of our innocent children for each person they target, is a crime of unspeakable proportions. Their policy is as foolish as it is criminal, as it radicalises the very people we are trying to calm down.

I am aware that the Americans and their allies think the Peace Committee is a front, and that we are merely creating a safe space for the Pakistan Taliban. To this I say: you are wrong. You have never been to Waziristan, so how would you know?

The mantra that the West should not negotiate with “terrorists” is naive. There has hardly ever been a time when terrorists have been brought back into the fold of society without negotiation. Remember the IRA; once they tried to blow up your prime minister, and now they are in parliament. It is always better to talk than to kill.

I have travelled half way across the world because I want to resolve this dispute the way you teach: by using the law and the courts, not guns and explosives.

Ask me any question you wish, but judge me fairly – and please stop terrorizing my wife and children. And take me off that Kill List.

Malik Jalal is represented by the charity Reprieve

12 April 2016
http://www.independent.co.uk/

 

A wide-ranging interview tied to his new book, “The Killing of Osama Bin Laden.”

By Ken Klippenstein

Seymour Hersh is an American investigative journalist who is the recipient of many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for his article exposing the My Lai massacre by the U.S. military in Vietnam. More recently, he exposed the U.S. government’s abuse of detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison facility.

Hersh’s new book, The Killing of Osama Bin Laden, is a corrective to the official account of the war on terror. Drawing from accounts of a number of high-level military officials, Hersh challenges a number of commonly accepted narratives: that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the Sarin gas attack in Ghouta; that the Pakistani government didn’t know Bin Laden was in the country; that the late ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in a solely diplomatic capacity; and that Assad did not want to give up his chemical weapons until the U.S. called on him to do so.

Ken Klippenstein: In the book you describe Saudi financial support for the compound in which Osama Bin Laden was being kept in Pakistan. Was that Saudi government officials, private individuals or both?

Seymour Hersh: The Saudis bribed the Pakistanis not to tell us [that the Pakistani government had Bin Laden] because they didn’t want us interrogating Bin Laden (that’s my best guess), because he would’ve talked to us, probably. My guess is, we don’t know anything really about 9/11. We just don’t know. We don’t know what role was played by whom.

KK: So you don’t know if the hush money was from the Saudi government or private individuals?

SH: The money was from the government … what the Saudis were doing, so I’ve been told, by reasonable people (I haven’t written this) is that they were also passing along tankers of oil for the Pakistanis to resell. That’s really a lot of money.

KK: For the Bin Laden compound?

SH: Yeah, in exchange for being quiet. The Paks traditionally have done security for both Saudi Arabia and UAE.

KK: Do you have any idea how much Saudi Arabia gave Pakistan in hush money?

SH: I have been given numbers, but I haven’t done the work on it so I’m just relaying. I know it was certainly many—you know, we’re talking about four or five years—hundreds of millions [of dollars]. But I don’t have enough to tell you.

KK: You quote a retired U.S. official as saying the Bin Laden killing was “clearly and absolutely a premeditated murder” and a former SEAL commander as saying “by law we know what we’re doing inside Pakistan is homicide.”

Do you think Bin Laden was deprived of due process?

SH: [Laughs] He was a prisoner of war! The SEALs weren’t proud of that mission; they were so mad it was outed…I know a lot about what they think and what they thought and what they were debriefed, I will tell you that. They were very unhappy about the attention paid to that because they went in and it was just a hit.

Look, they’ve done it before. We do targeted assassinations. That’s what we do. They understood—the SEALs—that if they were captured by the Pakistani police authorities, they could be tried for murder. They understood that.

KK: Why didn’t they apprehend Bin Laden? Can you imagine the intelligence we could have gotten from him?

SH: The Pakistani high command said go kill him, but for chrissake don’t leave a body, don’t arrest him, just tell them a week later that you killed him in Hindu Kush. That was the plan.

Many sections, particularly in the Urdu-speaking sections, were really very positive about Bin Laden. Significant percentages in some areas supported Bin Laden. They [the Pakistani government] would’ve been under great duress if the average person knew that they’d helped us kill him.

KK: How did it hurt U.S./Pakistan relations when, as you point out in your book, Obama violated his promise not to mention Pakistan’s cooperation with the assassination?

SH: We spend a lot of time with [Pakistani] generals Pasha and Kayani, the head of the army and ISI, the intelligence service. Why? Why are we so worried about Pakistan? Because they have [nuclear] bombs. … at least 100, probably more. And we want to think that they’re going to share what they know with us and they’re not hiding it.

We don’t really know everything we think we know and they don’t tell us everything… so when he [Obama] is doing that, he’s really messing around with the devil in a sense.

…. He [Bin Laden] had wives and children there. Did we ever get to them? No. We never got to them. Just think about all the things we didn’t do. We didn’t get to any of the wives, we didn’t do much interrogation, we let it go.

There are people that know much more about this and I wish they would talk, but they don’t.

KK: You write that Obama authorized a ratline wherein CIA funneled arms from Libya into Syria and they ended up in jihadi hands. [According to Hersh, this operation was coordinated via the Benghazi consulate where U.S. ambassador Stevens was killed.] What was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s role in this given her significant role in Libya?

SH: The only thing we know is that she was very close to Petraeus who was the CIA director at the time … she’s not out of the loop, she knows when there’s covert ops. … That ambassador who was killed, he was known as a guy, from what I understand, as somebody who would not get in the way of the CIA. As I wrote, on the day of the mission he was meeting with the CIA base chief and the shipping company. He was certainly involved, aware and witting of everything that was going on. And there’s no way somebody in that sensitive of a position is not talking to the boss, by some channel.

KK: In the book you quote a former intelligence official as saying that the White House rejected 35 target sets provided by the Joint Chiefs as being insufficiently painful to the Assad regime. (You note that the original targets included military sites only—nothing by way of civilian infrastructure.) Later the White House proposed a target list that included civilian infrastructure.

What would the toll to civilians have been if the White House’s proposed strike had been carried out?

SH: Do you really think that at any time this is discussed? You know who’s sanest on this: Dan Ellsberg. When I first met Dan, it was way early—in ’70, ’71, during the Vietnam War. I think I met him before the Pentagon Papers were around. I remember him telling me that he asked that question at a meeting while planning the war [regarding B-52 targets] and nobody had even looked at it.

You really don’t get a very good hard, objective look. You can see a movie in which they seem to do it, but that’s not really so.

I don’t know if [regarding Syria] they looked at collateral damage and noncombatants, but I do know that in wars in the past, that’s never been a big issue. … you’re talking about the country that dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki.

KK: In a recent interview with the Atlantic, Obama characterized his foreign policy as “Don’t do stupid shit.”

SH: I read the Jeff Goldberg piece…and it of course drove me nuts, but that’s something else.

KK: As you point out in your book, Obama originally wanted to remove Assad. Isn’t that the definition of stupid? The power vacuum that would ensue would open Syria up to all kinds of jihadi groups.

SH: God knows I can’t tell you why anybody does anything. I’m not inside their head. I can tell you that the same question was asked by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs—Dempsey—which is why I was able to write that story about their going, indirectly, behind his [Obama’s] back because nobody could figure out why.

I don’t know why we persist on living in the Cold War, but we do. Russia actually did a very good job. They not only did the bombing that was more effective than what we do, I think that’s fair to say. Russia also did stuff that was sort of more subtle and more interesting: they renewed the Syrian army. They took many major units of the Syrian army offline, gave them R&R and re-equipped them. Got new arms, got a couple weeks off, then they came back, got more training and became a much better army.

I think in the beginning, there’s just no question, we wanted to get rid of Bashar. I think they misread the whole resistance. Wikileaks is very good on this…there’s enough State Department documents that show that from 2003 on, we really had a policy—not very subtle, not violent, but millions of dollars given to opposition people. We certainly were not a nonpartisan foreign government inside Syria.

Our policy has always been against him [Assad]. Period.

One of the things that comes across just in the current stories about all the travails we’re having about ISIS allegedly running all these terror teams in Brussels and in the suburbs of Paris… it’s very clear, ironically, that one of the things France and Belgium (and a lot of other countries) did was after the Syrian civil war began, if you wanted to go there and fight there in 2011-2013, ‘Go, go, go… overthrow Bashar!’

So they actually pushed a lot of people to go. I don’t think they were paying for them but they certainly gave visas. And they would spend four or five months, come back and do organized crime and get in jail and next thing you know they’re killing people. There’s a real pattern there.

I do remember when the war began in 2003, our war against Baghdad, I was in Damascus working for The New Yorker then and I saw Bashar and one of the things he told me, he said, ‘Look, we’ve got a bunch of radical kids and if they want to go fight, if they want to leave the mosque here in Damascus and go fight in Baghdad, we said fine! We even gave them buses!’

So there’s always been a tremendous, Why does America do what it does? Why do we not say to the Russians, Let’s work together?

KK: So why don’t we work closer with Russia? It seems so rational.

SH: I don’t know. I would also say, why wasn’t the first door we knocked on after 9/11, Russia’s? They just had a terrible 10-year war with Chechnya. Believe me, the Chechen influence in the Sunni world in terms of jihadism is strong. For example I’ve been told by my friends in the intelligence community that al-Baghdadi (who runs ISIS) is surrounded by a lot of guys with experience in Chechnya. A lot of people involved in that operation did.

So who knows the most about jihadism? You look at it from the Russian point of view—we never like looking at things from other people’s point of view.

KK: In the book you quote a Joint Chiefs of Staff adviser who said that Brennan told the Saudis to stop arming the extremist rebels in Syria and their weapons will dry up—which seems like a rational request—but then, you point out, the Saudis ramped up arms support.

Seymour Hersh: That’s true.

KK: Did the U.S. do anything to punish the Saudis for it?

SH: Nothing. Of course not. No, no. I’ll tell you what’s going on right now … al Nusra, certainly a jihadist group… has new arms. They’ve got some tanks now—I think the Saudis are supplying stuff. They’ve got tanks now, have a lot of arms, and are staging some operations around Aleppo. There’s a ceasefire and even though they’re not part of it, they obviously took advantage of the ceasefire to resupply. It’s going to be bloody.

KK: Just to be clear, the U.S. hasn’t done anything to punish or at least disincentivize the Saudis from arming our enemies in Syria?

SH: Quite the contrary. The Saudis and Qatar and the Turks put money into those arms [sent to Syrian jihadis].

You’re asking the right questions. Do we say anything? No. Turkey’s Erdogan has played a complete double game: for years he supported and accommodated ISIS. The border was wide open—Hatay Province—guys were going back and forth, bad guys. We know Erdogan’s deeply involved. He’s changing his tune slightly but he’s been deeply involved in this.

Let me talk to you about the sarin story [the sarin gas attack in Ghouta, a suburb near Damascus, which the U.S. government attributed to the Assad regime] because it really is in my craw. In this article that was this long series of interviews [of Obama] by Jeff Goldberg…he says, without citing the source (you have to presume it was the president because he’s talking to him all the time) that the head of National Intelligence, General [James] Clapper, said to him very early after the [sarin] incident took place, “Hey, it’s not a slam dunk.”

You have to understand in the intelligence community—Tenet [Bush-era CIA director who infamously said Iraqi WMD was a “slam dunk”] is the one who said that about the war in Baghdad—that’s a serious comment. That means you’ve got a problem with the intelligence. As you know I wrote a story that said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs told the president that information the same day. I now know more about it.

The president’s explanation for [not bombing Syria] was that the Syrians agreed that night, rather than be bombed, they’d give up their chemical weapons arsenal, which in this article in the Atlantic, Goldberg said they [the Syrians] had never disclosed before. This is ludicrous. Lavrov [Russia’s Foreign Minister] and Kerry had talked about it for a year—getting rid of the arsenal—because it was under threat from the rebels.

The issue was not that they [the Syrians] suddenly caved in. [Before the Ghouta attack] there was a G-20 summit and Putin and Bashar met for an hour. There was an official briefing from Ben Rhodes and he said they talked about the chemical weapons issue and what to do. The issue was that Bashar couldn’t pay for it—it cost more than a billion bucks. The Russians said, ‘Hey, we can’t pay it all. Oil prices are going down and we’re hurt for money.’ And so, all that happened was we agreed to handle it. We took care of a lot of the costs of it.

Guess what? We had a ship, it was called the Cape Maid, it was parked out in the Med. The Syrians would let us destroy this stuff [the chemical weapons]… there was 1,308 tons that was shipped to the port…and we had, guess what, a forensic unit out there. Wouldn’t we like to really prove—here we have all his sarin and we had sarin from what happened in Ghouta, the UN had a team there and got samples—guess what?

It didn’t match. But we didn’t hear that. I now know it, I’m going to write a lot about it.

Guess what else we know from the forensic analysis we have (we had all the missiles in their arsenal). Nothing in their arsenal had anything close to what was on the ground in Ghouta. A lot of people I know, nobody’s going to go on the record, but the people I know said we couldn’t make a connection, there was no connection between what was given to us by Bashar and what was used in Ghouta. That to me is interesting. That doesn’t prove anything, but it opens up a door to further investigation and further questioning.

This interview was lightly edited for readability.

Ken Klippenstein is an American journalist who can be reached on Twitter @kenklippenstein or email: kenneth.klippenstein@gmail.com.

20 April 2016

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

Having removed the reformist President of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Washington is now disposing of the reformist President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff.

Washington used a federal judge to order Argentina to sacrifice its debt restructuring program in order to pay US vulture funds the full value of defaulted Argentine bonds that the vulture funds had bought for a few pennies on the dollar. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/27/us-vulture-funds-argentina-bankruptcy These vultures were called “creditors” who had made “loans” regardless of the fact that they were not creditors and had made no loans. They were opportunists after easy money and were used by Washington to get rid of a reformist government.

President Kirchner resisted and, thus, she had to go. Washington concocted a story that Kirchner covered up an alleged Iranian bombing in Buenos Aires in 1994. This implausible fantasy, for which there is no evidence of Iranian involvement, was fed to one of Washington’s agents in the state prosecutor’s office, and a dubious event of 22 years ago was used to clear Kirchner out of the way of the American looting of Argentina.

In Brazil, Washington has used corruption insinuations to get President Rousseff impeached by the lower house. Evidence is not necessary, just allegations. It is no different from “Iranian nukes,” Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” Assad’s “use of chemical weapons,” or in Rousseff’s case merely insinuations. The Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, notes that Rousseff “hasn’t been accused of anything.” The American-backed elites are simply using impeachment to remove a president who they cannot defeat electorally.

In short, this is Washington’s move against the BRICS. Washington is moving to put into political power a rightwing party that Washington controls in order to terminate Brazil’s growing relationships with China and Russia.

The great irony is that the impeachment bill was presided over by the corrupt lower house speaker, Eduardo Cunha, who was recently discovered to have stashed millions of dollars in secret Swiss bank accounts (perhaps his pay-off from Washington) and who lied under oath when he denied having foreign bank accounts. You can read the sordid story here:

US Complicity? After Vote to Remove Brazil’s President, Key Opposition Figure Holds Meetings in Washington

Kirchner and Rousseff’s “crimes” are their efforts to have the governments of Argentina and Brazil represent the Argentine and Brazilian peoples rather than the elites and Wall Street. In Washington these are serious offenses as Washington uses the elites to control South American countries. Whenever Latin Americans elect a government that represents them, Washington overthrows the government or assassinates the president.

Washington is close to returning Venezuela to the control of the Spanish elite allied with Washington. http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2016/04/new-coup-plot-hatched-in-venezuela.html The presidents of Ecuador and Bolivia are also targeted. One reason Washington will not permit its British lapdog to honor the asylum Ecuador granted to Julian Assange is that Washington expects to have its own agent back in as President of Ecuador, at which time Assange’s asylum will be repealed.

Washington has always blocked reform in Latin America. Latin American peoples will remain American serfs until they elect governments by such large majorities that the governments can exile the traitorous elites, close the US embassies, and expel all US corporations. Every Latin American country that has an American presence has no future other than serfdom.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

23 April, 2016
Paulcraigroberts.org

By Pratap Antony

We humans have been in existence for less than 1% of life on Earth – In the short time of our existence, we have impacted everything; every part of our small blue planet. Our home!

We have been around for only 200,000 years – Archaeologists have calculated that humans originated about 200,000 years ago in the Middle Palaeolithic period in southern Africa, and migrated out of Africa around 70,000 years ago and began colonizing the entire planet. We spread to Eurasia around 40,000 years ago (there is no geologic boundary between Europe and Asia – so they are combined as Eurasia.) and Oceania (roughly Australia to Fiji), and reached the Americas just 14,500 years ago.

Humans are a member of a species of bipedal primates. We walk upright. We also have opposable thumbs so we can grip ‘things’. We have, what we think of as a highly developed brain. And so, we have called ourselves ‘homo sapiens’. In Latin, “Homo” means “man” and “Sapiens” means “wise”. Wise Men.

Dinosaurs existed for 135 million years – It is estimated that dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for 135 million years, from 231.4 million years ago till around 65 million years ago.

Dinosaurs lived for a greater time on the planet than man. Scientists explain the extinction of dinosaurs with one or two hypotheses – that the extinction was due to an extraterrestrial impact, such as an asteroid or comet, or, a massive bout of volcanism.

We humans though, have been around for a comparatively short while, yet we are making ourselves extinct due to our own activities.

In our short existence, we have impacted every corner of the world with smog, with acid rain; by breaking-up habitats and causing extinctions.

We have taken the route to deforestation to make more room for ourselves. And, through sheer cruelty and indiscriminate killing, we have disturbed the ecological balance of nature. Birds and animals are dying and gradually getting extinct. Seasons and the soil have been changed harmfully. We are waging ecocide to garner greater power to ourselves. We are cruel without remorse and we hold nature, environmental issues, truth and justice in contempt. We will soon be wiping ourselves out due to man-made climate changes and devastation of food and water supply. And, we also wage war with each other. We are killing ourselves.

Our excuse – Cleansing, development and progress – The irony of it all is we justify our destructive tendencies as intervention and manipulation – for cleansing, development and progress. And we do this because we suffer from a delusion that sees us as being separate; we think that we live in a higher plane than everything else. But trees, birds, animals and men are all inseparable parts of nature.

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”

~ E.F. Schumacher

We humans are part of the same ecosystem. Each creature on this planet has a reason for its existence and is as important to life on earth as we (humans) think we are.

We are dependent on nature. Nature is not dependent on us. When we destroy an ecosystem, we are destroying life that depends on that ecosystem. Humans and nature are powerfully linked and co-evolving. All living things in an ecosystem depend on all the other things – living and non-living – i.e. organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings for continued survival, to form a self-regulating, complex system that contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet. All the actions and reactions that take place and affect one part of an ecosystem, affect the whole ecosystem in some way or the other.

We are only one small part of the web of life, yet we, in this short time of our existence have treated our planet so shoddily and with such a callous contempt that we have irreversibly damaged our planet and shortened our own existence on the planet.

When nature cannot defend itself there will be a backlash. Nature cannot resist our wiles and will eventually succumb to our destructive tendencies. When forests are mined for minerals and other resources and laid bare of all their biodiversity, desertification will take place. Lakes, rivers and water resources will dry up.

There is no wisdom in man killing what sustains man … and with it, humankind!

The backlash will not be nature fighting back! But, of nature as we know it, dying out!

Homo Sapiens… Wise Men. Not at all!? Our wisdom is highly disputable. Dinosaurs were considered unintelligent, due to the small size of their brain compared to their body size. They existed for 135 million years. They didn’t kill themselves. But, man is destroying mankind.

Our planet is not in danger. Humans are in danger. From ourselves. Humankind is on the road to extinguish ourselves. Sooner rather than later. The future for all of us is bleak. The planet will continue as it has for the 99% of the time before man, it will adjust and continue. Perhaps with other life forms, other vegetation, other landscapes.

The earlier we learn to curb our innate inclination to be brutal, to pollute and to annihilate, and the earlier we will learn to live with compassion and in peaceful co-existence with ourselves and with nature, the better it is for us and our continued existence.

“When we respect the environment, then nature will be good to us. When our hearts are good, then the sky will be good to us. The trees are like our mother and father, they feed us, nourish us, and provide us with everything; the fruit, leaves, the branches, the trunk. They give us food and satisfy many of our needs. So we spread the Dharma (truth) of protecting ourselves and protecting our environment, which is the Dharma of the Buddha. When we accept that we are part of a great human family—that every being has the nature of Buddha—then we will sit, talk, make peace. I pray that this realization will spread throughout our troubled world and bring humankind and the earth to its fullest flowering. I pray that all of us will realize peace in this lifetime and save all beings from suffering”. Maha Ghosananda (1929 – 2007) revered Cambodian Buddhist monk – known as the Gandhi of Cambodia

Pratap Antony, Passive activist/Active pacifist writer on ecology and environment, compassion and humanity, dogs, social justice, music and dance.

22 April, 2016
Countercurrents.org

Sanders’ Jewish socialism, his recognition of the injustice of the occupation, is a rebuke to those in the U.S. and Israel who believe Jews should only care about other Jews’ freedom and dignity. No wonder they’re trying to marginalize him.

By Max Berger

As Jews in the U.S., we are taught over and over about the history of our persecution. American Jews are applying the lessons we learned from that history — and the reality of our current situation — by supporting Bernie Sanders.

The out-of-touch American Jewish establishment — and some of their funders on Wall Street — believe the lesson of the history of Jewish persecution is to join with the powerful to protect ourselves. Many Jews in America believe our safety lies in becoming a part of the American empire, white supremacy, or corporate capitalism.

But as this generation comes of age in an economy wrecked by greed, a society alienated from each other by the gospel of individualism and the violent lies of racism, in an empire laid bare by the foolishness of conquest, we are looking for truth-tellers who defy the corrupt political and economic establishment. Bernie Sanders resonates with this generation of American Jews because he speaks with a prophetic voice that is at the heart of our tradition.

It is no mere coincidence that the voice calling us to wholeness by speaking the truth of our interconnection amidst the ruins of our division is a Jewish voice.

The tradition of democratic socialism that Bernie comes from has deeply Jewish roots — and has never been more relevant than it is today. Bernie comes from a long tradition of Jews who believe that striving for all people to enjoy the fruits of freedom and justice is the essence of being Jewish. The tradition of Jewish socialism comes from understanding that we are a people who have been dehumanized for who we are, and divided from our neighbors, throughout history. It is based on a commitment to our mutual interdependence as both a matter of self-interest and profound moral belief.

“I am very proud of being Jewish and that’s an essential part of who I am as a human being,” Bernie Sanders has said. When asked to define what being Jewish means to him, Bernie said, “[Being Jewish] means all of us are connected, all of life is connected, and that we are all tied together.”

This message speaks deeply to those of us who have seen the failure of capitalism run of, by, and for Wall Street and the billionaire class; of a foreign policy and an American Jewish establishment guided by fear and hatred; of a political system run by big money funders. To millions of young people — Jew and Gentile alike — this vision of a society bound together across difference is the obvious remedy to the challenges we face. To Jewish socialists, there is nothing more Jewish than looking into the face of another people and recognizing our common humanity. This message is no longer confined to the Polish factory workers, New York tenement residents, or kibbutzim of the 1920s and 30s — it is deeply relevant to American Jews today.

When we look at the immigrant community in this country and see their vilification and exclusion, we recognize the courage of our ancestors who fled from lands that offered neither hope nor safety.

When we look at the millions of black lives that have been devalued and destroyed, we recognize the history of how whiteness was used by those who wanted to erase us as a people.

When we look at the poor and working class people of this country, we recognize the ghettos we were forced into and the sweatshops we worked in and organized against.
When we look at the Palestinians and see their dispossession and displacement, we recognize our own history of exile and persecution.

As an American Jew, I am tremendously proud that Bernie Sanders has shown an entire generation of Americans — of all races and religions — that it is possible to overcome fear with hope, division with unity, and hatred with love. Whatever happens with Bernie’s campaign, he has popularized the notion of political revolution and democratic socialism, and won over millennials by such an overwhelming margin that it’s inevitable his message is the future of the Democratic Party and politics in the U.S.

It’s time for all Jews to take heed of his message. Bernie’s version of Jewish socialism harkens to a time when our people’s belief in solidarity and unity was not confined to those who shared our blood. It was in those moments of Jewish solidarity with other peoples – in the strikes against the sweatshop bosses, in the early kibbutzim that brought people together across race and religion, in the movements against racism and patriarchy — that made us a light unto the nations. It is a stern rebuke to those in our community — in the U.S. and in Israel — who believe Jews should only care about the freedom and dignity of other Jews.

Far from being an obstacle to overcome, Bernie’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a huge attraction to the young Americans Jews who are flocking to his campaign. His recognition of the humanity of Palestinians and the injustice of the occupation is yet another sign that he shares our values. The rise of groups like IfNotNow, a youth-led movement against American Jewish support for the occupation, is a testament to the generational shift in our community from hatred of Palestinians to a belief in our shared fate. While some in the Jewish American establishment strive to marginalize Bernie and his movement by suggesting we’re self-hating Jews who don’t care about Israel, it just goes to show how badly out of touch they are with the future of our community, and the values of our tradition.

The values of interconnection and togetherness across difference that Bernie espouses are the future of American politics — and the politics of the American Jewish community. Instead of running from those values in fear, or denying their essential Jewishness, I’d like to invite the rest of our community — in the U.S. and in Israel — into their power and righteousness.

This year in New York. Next year, god willing, in Jerusalem.

Max Berger is a political organizer, trainer and writer in New York City. He was one of the leading participants in Occupy Wall Street and a founding member of IfNotNow.

16 April 2016

By Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC)

The recent handing over of two islands – Tiran and Sanafir – to Saudi Arabia by the Egyptian government emphasises that the Sisi regime remains so in need of external support to buttress its domestic control that it is willing to anger significant sections of the population. The islands’ importance to Israel and the fact that Israel agreed to the handover also point to strengthening cooperation between Tel Aviv, Riyadh and Cairo in an effort to contain Iran’s resurgence.

The announcement about the islands was made as the Saudi king, Salman bin Abdul Aziz, undertook his first official trip to Egypt since acceding to the thrown in January 2015. Other deals signed during his visit included a twenty-two billion dollar agreement for Saudi Arabia to supply Egypt with energy, and the establishment of a sixteen billion dollar joint Saudi-Egyptian investment fund. Recent tensions between the two regional powers had heightened after Egypt’s refusal to commit troops to the Saudi war in Yemen, and because of Egypt’s support for Russia’s Syrian intervention. Egypt is also critical about strengthening ties between Riyadh and Ankara, and because of the Kingdom’s support for Yemen’s Muslim Brotherhood Islah party. Tensions had been simmering since Salman became king, however, with his suspicion that Egypt’s military ruler, Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, had plotted against his acceding to the throne.

Riyadh nevertheless views Egypt as an important ally in its attempt to counter growing Iranian influence in the region, and sees its large and well-equipped military as a critical deterrent to Iran’s regional forays. Moreover, Egypt’s Sidi Kerir port and SUMED oil storage terminal can be used by Saudi Arabia to slow down and disrupt Iranian oil exports. Before 2011 Iran had dispatched over 200 000 barrels of oil per day from the port, has used the storage terminal for oil shipped to Europe since diverting shipments through its own Kharg Island port causes a month delay. With this agenda, Salman has reduced his criticism of Egypt – and especially of Sisi – and continued to buttress it. Significantly, however, recent assistance packages to Egypt have been more as loans and investments than aid; only around two billion of the sixty billion in recent deals is aid.

But there is also a third player involved; for the transfer to have occurred Israel’s approval was required in terms of the 1979 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt. The two islands essentially block access to the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aqaba, thus blocking access to the critical Israeli port of Eilat. Israel thus regards control of the Tiran Straits and the waters around both islands as critical since much of its maritime trade passes through en route to Eilat. A perception that this access would be disrupted was a major factor informing Israel’s involvement in the 1956 Suez crisis and 1967 six day war. They were twice captured by Israel, which controlled them from 1967 to 1982. Guarantees over waterway access were thus key stipulations in the Camp David agreement. The transfer of the islands means Israeli vessels will now traverse Saudi waters to reach Eilat.

Tel Aviv’s acquiescence and statements by Israeli and Saudi officials indicate that firm guarantees had been provided by Saudi Arabia regarding Israel’s freedom of navigation through the Strait of Tiran. Israel has been informed about the secret negotiations regarding the islands from the beginning, and written guarantees that Riyadh would abide by the terms stipulated at Camp David were given in talks that involved Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the USA. (Although Israel and Saudi Arabia are officially in a state of war, they have collaborated on a number of issues recently, and Riyadh had informed Israel about then-secretive nuclear negotiations between the USA and Iran.)

For Egypt, transferring the islands to Saudi Arabia has little negative strategic implication. The islands are uninhabited, have few resources, and technically belonged to Saudi Arabia though administered on its behalf by Egypt since 1950, when Saudi Arabia requested Egypt to play this role, believing that Egypt could protect them from Israel. Returning the islands was thus an opportunity to renew Egypt’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, and to continue receiving assistance for Egypt’s stalling economy and Sisi’s power base.

The move has elicited much criticism from Egyptians, especially since Sisi had inserted a stipulation in Article 151 of the 2014 Egyptian Constitution prohibiting territorial transfers. The clause was intended to augment Sisi’s nationalist credentials, and because the army garnered support for its 2013 coup by arguing that the former president, Mohamed Morsi, was ceding parts of Sinai to Hamas, and endangering Egyptian sovereignty through his alliance with Qatar.

Sisi thus argued that the island transfer restores sovereignty to Saudi Arabia, which owns the islands, and was not a ceding of Egyptian territory. But prominent political figures such as Hamdeen Sabahi, Khaled Ali, Ayman Nour and the Muslim Brotherhood criticise this reasoning, and Ali has lodged court papers to halt the deal. Although this sees some fissures in the regime’s support base, it is unlikely to pose a significant threat.

16 April 2016

By Eric Zuesse

Saudi Arabia, owned by the Saud family, are telling the U.S. Government, they’ll wreck the U.S. economy, if a bill in the U.S. Congress that would remove the unique and exclusive immunity the royal owners of that country enjoy in the United States, against their being prosecuted for their having financed the 9/11 attacks, passes in Congress, and becomes U.S. law.

As has been well documented even in sworn U.S. court testimony, and as even the pro-Saudi former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged privately, “Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” She didn’t name any of those “donors” names, but the former bagman for Osama bin Laden, who had personally collected all of the million-dollar+ donations (all in cash) to Al Qaeda, did, and he named all of the senior Saud princes and their major business-associates; and, he said, “without the money of the — of the Saudi you will have nothing.” So, both before 9/11, and (according to Hillary Clinton) since, those were the people who were paying virtually all of the salaries of the 19 hijackers — even of the four who weren’t Saudi citizens. Here’s that part of the bagman’s testimony about how crucial those donations were:

Q: To clarify, you’re saying that the al-Qaeda members received salaries?
A: They do, absolutely.

So: being a jihadist isn’t merely a calling; it’s also a job, as is the case for the average mercenary (for whom it doesn’t also have to be a calling). The payoff for that job, during the jihadist’s life, is the pay. The bagman explained that the Saud family’s royals pay well for this service to their fundamentalist-Sunni faith. Another lifetime-payoff to the jihadists is that, in their fundamentalist-Sunni culture, the killing of ‘infidels’ is a holy duty, and they die as martyrs. Thus, the jihadist’s payoff in the (mythological) afterlife is plenty of virgins to deflower etc. But, the payers (the people who organize it, and who make it all possible) are the Saud family princes, and their business associates — and, in the case of the other jihadist organizations, is also those other Arabic royal families (the owners of Qater, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman). However, 9/11 was virtually entirely a Saudi affair, according to Al Qaeda’s bagman (who ought to know).

The report of the threat by the Saud family comes in veiled form in an April 15th news-story in The New York Times, headlined, “Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill.” It says that the Saud family’s Foreign Minister is “telling [U.S.] lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in [U.S.] treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.” The NYT says that this threat is nothing to take seriously, “But the threat is another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States.” While the carrying-out of this threat would be extremely damaging to the Saud family, the NYT ignores the size of the threat to the Sauds if their 9/11 immunity were removed — which could be far bigger. Consequently, this matter is actually quite a bit more than just “another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States.”

Russian Television is more direct here: “Saudi Arabia appears to be blackmailing the US, saying it would sell off American assets worth a 12-digit figure sum in dollars if Congress passes a bill allowing the Saudi Government to be held responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.” (The Saudi Government is owned by the Saud family; so, even that statement is actually a veiled way of referring to the possibility that members of the royal Saud family — the individuals name by the bagman — could be held responsible for 9/11.)

Even immediately in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, there had been some mentions in the U.S. press of the U.S. Government making special allowances for Saud Prince Bandar al-Saud, a close friend of the Bush family (and he was also one of the Saudi Princes mentioned specifically by the bagman), to fly out of the country to avoid being sought by prosecutors. Furthermore, Newsweek’s investigative journalist, Michael Isikoff, headlined on 12 January 2001, “The Saudi Money Trail”, and he reported statements from royal Sauds, that they didn’t really mean for their donations to be going to such a thing as this. (Perhaps those individuals didn’t, but Bandar almost certainly did, because he was the Saud Ambassador to the U.S. at the time of 9/11.) However, now that the U.S. Government is relying heavily upon Saudi money to pay for the U.S. weapons and to help to organize the operation to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria and to replace him with a fundamentalist-Sunni leader, there is renewed political pressure in the United States (from the victim-families, if no one else), for the arch-criminals behind the 9/11 attacks to be brought to American justice. After fifteen years, this process might finally start. That would be a drastic change.

Clearly, the threat from the Sauds is real, and the royal response to this bill in the U.S. Congress reflects a very great fear the owners of Saudi Arabia have, regarding the possible removal of their U.S. immunity, after 15 years.

Prosecution of those people will become gradually impossible as they die off. But a lot more time will be needed in order for all of the major funders of that attack to die natural deaths and thus become immune for a natural reason — the immunity of the grave. The U.S. Government has protected them for 15 years; but, perhaps, not forever.

To say that this threat from the Sauds is just “another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States” seems like saying that a neighbor’s threat to bomb your house would constitute just “another sign of escalating tensions” between you and your neighbor. The passing-into-law of this bill in Congress would actually constitute a change from the U.S. Government being a friend and partner of the Sauds, to becoming their enemy.

Obviously, there is little likelihood of that happening; and, on April 20th and 21st, U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet with Saudi King Salman al-Saud. Without a doubt, this topic will be on the agenda, if it won’t constitute the agenda (which is allegedly to improve U.S. relations “with Arab leaders of Persian Gulf nations” — not specifically with Saudi King Salman and with his son Prince Salman).

If President Obama represents the American public, then the Sauds will have real reason to fear: the U.S. President will not seek to block passage of that bill in Congress. However, if the U.S. President represents instead the Saud family, then a deal will be reached. Whether or not the U.S. Congress will go along with it, might be another matter, but it would be highly likely, considering that the present situation has already been going on for fifteen years, and that the high-priority U.S. Government foreign-policy objective, of overthrowing Bashar al-Assad, is also at stake here, and is also strongly shared not only by the Sauds but by the members of the U.S. Congress. Furthermore, the impunity of the Saud family is taken simply as a given in Washington. And, the U.S. Government’s siding with the Sauds in their war against Shia Muslims (not only against one Shiite: Assad) goes back at least as far as 1979. (Indeed, the CIA drew up the plan in 1957 to overthrow Syria’s Ba’athist Government, but it stood unused until President Obama came into office.)

Furthermore, the U.S. Government is far more aggressive to overthrow Russia-friendly national leaders, such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, and Viktor Yanukovych, than it is to stop the spread of fundamentalist Sunni groups, such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc.; and, a strong voice for U.S. foreign policy, the Polish Government, even said, on April 15th, that as AFP headlined that day, “Russia ‘more dangerous than Islamic State’, warns Poland foreign minister”; and Russia itself is, along with Shiite Iran, the top competitor against the fundamentalist Sunni Arab royal families in global oil-and-gas export markets. So, clearly, the U.S. Government is tightly bound to the Saud family. Terrorism in Europe and America is only a secondary foreign-policy concern to America’s leaders; and the Saud family are crucial allies with the U.S. Government in regards to what are, jointly, the top concerns of both Governments.

Consequently, there is widespread expectation that some sort of deal will be reached between U.S. President Barack Obama and the Saudi leaders, King and Prince Salman, and that the Republican-led Congress will rubber-stamp it, rather than pass the proposed bill to strip the Saud family’s immunity.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
18 April, 2016
Countercurrents.org

 

By Franklin Lamb

“It was a place to connect to your history, to your identity and to tell others, who were not from Aleppo or Syria: “This is where we are from. This is who we are.” This is where you come to encounter your roots. It was a place that existed forever, a place we thought would exist long after we were gone. But we were wrong.” (Amal Hanano, Lessons from the Minaret, 2013)

For the past two months, since the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee amended legislative proposal H.R. 1493, known as the Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act , the key bill has picked up stream on Capitol Hill with bi-partisan support. This week (4/13/2016), the full senate passed the measure by unanimous consent. This important legislation, which is expected to become law in the coming weeks, given its strong support also on the House side of Congress, calls for emergency import restrictions on at-risk Syrian cultural property within 90 days of President Obama’s signature. Rather than establishing a rather controversial cultural heritage czar called for in an earlier version, H.R. 1493 now calls for an inter-agency executive committee to protect international cultural property.

This observer has been advised by two Congressional sources that concerns for the restoration of our shared global cultural heritage in Syria, widespread relief that Palmyra has been liberated from ISIS iconoclasm, and American public support for the repair and restoration of Palmyra’s treasures, are major reasons for moving the tough new and most welcomed ban on Syrian cultural property forward.

These concerns are global and being widely debated this spring, especially by archeological organizations. Among a growing number of diverse organizations that continue to monitor damage to Syrian cultural heritage and who are joining the debate and often voicing disparate and occasionally emotionally antithetical views with respect to our shared global cultural heritage in Syria are the following:

Aga Khan Trust for Culture the Co-coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA), ASOR, Avaaz, , Heritage and development, International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), International Council on Archives (ICA), International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), International Council of Museums (ICOM), , Libraries without Borders/Bibliothèques sans Frontières, Peace Palace Library. Research Guide Cultural Heritage, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, Blue Shield International, Canadian Conservation Institute, Conservation Center for Art & historic artefacts, Conservation OnLine (CoOL), History of Historic Royal Palaces, Hornemann Insitut, IFLA’s work on preserving cultural heritage, Image Permanence Institute, International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (ICC), International Red Cross and Red Crescent, Le laboratoire de conservation, restauration et recherches de Draguignan, Portal Euromed Heritage Digital Resources, ,Preserving History. How to Digitally Archive and Share Historical Photographs, Documents, and Audio Recordings, The Shirin NGO (www.shirin-international.org), The Getty Conservation Institute, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

There are many contributing to this rapidly expanding dialogue and sometimes boisterous and even accusatory debate.

Avaaz, is circulating a Petition against UNESCO and Russian plans to reconstruct Palmyra. It states in part: “We, the undersigned, urge the international community and its cultural organizations and academic institutions to help protecting the Syrian heritage and sparing it the political, ethnic, sectarian, or business agendas of the fighting groups in the Syrian conflict and their global backers. …We regret that UNESCO Director General “reiterated her full support for the restoration of Palmyra” without first considering the ramifications of such a hasty statement.

The intention of UNESCO and other organizations to engage in a restoration and reconstruction process of the ancient site of Palmyra right now is both inopportune and unrealistic. Millions of Syrians are still suffering the enormous consequences of this bloody war. Among them are the people of Palmyra who have experienced and continue to experience loss of life, detention, displacement, and the devastating destruction of their homes and heritage.” But we firmly oppose any hasty reconstruction initiated by UNESCO and carried out by parties directly involved in the Syrian tragedy.”

Restoring Palmyra: Yes! Hastily: No!!!

The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has made public its views “Against Rushing to Conclusions about Palmyra Damage.” ICOM warns against rushing to draw conclusions about the damage inflicted by ISIS terrorists on the world heritage site of Palmyra, ICOM’s director of Programs and Partnerships advised this week.

“Assessment is what we need so far, because no official international mission has been there in a couple of years, we have not assessed the situation of heritage,” France Desmarais said advising that “There are three words that we need to remember when we talk about this – professionalism, independence and integrity, and we want to make sure that whatever assessment is conducted it should be of course done with national and international experts of diverse institutions and expertise and it needs to be done thoroughly. Any quick assessment that would be done for communication purposes would not be welcome.”

Other experts and academics are also skeptical, believing that the task will take many years and resources, that some sites are beyond repair, and that others might never be restored to their former glory. They argue as Syrian archeologist and refugee Mr. Azm has that “It’s still early days,” “This is all going to take a long time.”

The Shirin NGO (www.shirin-international.org) will soon release a blunt motion challenging a project of reconstruction of Palmyra, a result of recent talks between UNESCO Director General and the President of Russia. According to the Shirin-International Board of Directors, their motion, “written by professional archaeologists and Directors of excavations in Syria until 2010/11 will be sent to a large number of institutions and organizations, including to UNESCO and its satellite agencies, universities, press agencies, chancelleries.”

Avaaz, noted above, is circulating another Petition against UNESCO and Russian plans to reconstruct Palmyra. It states in part: “We, the undersigned, urge the international community and its cultural organizations and academic institutions to help protecting the Syrian heritage and sparing it the political, ethnic, sectarian, or business agendas of the fighting groups in the Syrian conflict and their global backers. We regret that UNESCO Director General “reiterated her full support for the restoration of Palmyra” without first considering the ramifications of such a hasty statement. The intention of UNESCO and other organizations to engage in a restoration and reconstruction process of the ancient site of Palmyra right now is both inopportune and unrealistic. Millions of Syrians are still suffering the enormous consequences of this bloody war. Among them are the people of Palmyra who have experienced and continue to experience loss of life, detention, displacement, and the devastating destruction of their homes and heritage. And we firmly oppose any hasty reconstruction initiated by UNESCO and carried out by parties directly involved in the Syrian tragedy.”

Some inside and outside of Syria question whether limited government resources should be used restoring ruins while half of Syria’s population remains displaced, including thousands from Palmyra, and others are killed in daily fighting and airstrikes that are hallmarks of its five-year-old conflict. They suggest that there is an international responsibility to preserve and protect our shared cultural heritage.

Karen Leigh, deputy Middle East bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal explained to this observer recently that some are advocating that while Palmyra was built with stone and mortar, it must be rebuilt with computers and drones and with the new technology. She wrote: “Some are urging UNESCO to use drones to get a bird’s-eye view of areas needing repair, not just at Syria’s six UN World Heritage Sites but at countless other sites around Syria.

Three-dimensional reconstructions will aid precise repairs. Radar scanning will be used to view and assess any damage to underground structures such as the city’s Roman-era catacombs.

Francesco Bandarin, assistant director-general for culture at UNESCO. Opined, “A machine in one or two hours gives you a perfect reconstruction of an object, whereas before it would take weeks and weeks. But don’t expect Palmyra will be rebuilt in a day. This will be years and years of painful work,” he added noting that the continuing reconstruction at Cambodia’s Angkor, similar to some of Palmyra’s sites in scope, has taken decades after war and nature took their toll.

Stefan Simon, director of the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage at Yale University, expresses the hope “that colleagues can travel to Syria with sophisticated equipment and scanners can go to Palmyra.”

Nasser Rabbat, director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology argues that strict views on conservation could impair Palmyra’s reconstruction efforts: Technological improvements aren’t a substitute for knowledge held by the generations of Syrian historians who lovingly restored the city’s columns and stones. It is not that we have lost things that have stood as they were for 2,000 years. What we have lost is the effort, the intellectual and labor effort, of generations of restorers who worked on this city.”

Shall we 3D print a new Palmyra?

The Institute for Digital Archaeology hopes 3-D models of Palmyra’s sites will result in their detailed reconstructions which helps produce a replica of Palmyra’s Arch of Triumph and other structures. Others criticize this approach and worry about creating ‘kitch antiquates.’

Many archeologists argue that 3D printing fails to capture the authenticity of the original structures, amounting to little more than the Disneyfication or McDonaldization of heritage. They also point out that the fighting is still ongoing: some estimates suggest that half a million Syrians are dead, millions are displaced, and perhaps 50%-70% of the nearby town has been destroyed. Given the pressing humanitarian needs, stabilization alone should be the priority for now.

The international community is also playing a role. Groups like UNOSAT, the UN’s satellite imagery analysts have used satellite imagery to monitor the damage. On the ground, Syrian-founded NGOs like APSA have linked with universities to assess the site. Groups such as NewPalmyra and Palmyra 3D Model are using the latest technology to create open-access 3D computer models from photographs.

Still others claim that rebuilding archeological sites fail to redress the loss caused by the extensive looting of the site, focusing only on the dramatically destroyed monuments. Raising questions, for example whether returning Palmyra to its pre-conflict state denies a major chapter of its history and suggesting that what is required is wide-ranging discussion on the priorities for the immediate future and the nature of any future reconstruction.

Some aver that at each repaired archeological site that there must be a memorial as a testimony to those beheaded in the arena, or tied to columns that were detonated etc because their stories are also part of Syria’s, history. Others insist that while Palmyra may hold great interest to the world, the final decision should belong to those who have lived in and around it, took care of it for centuries managed it, fought for it, and protected it for generations: the Syrian people.

Syria’s Director of Antiquities, Dr. Maamoun Abdul-Karim has recently urged that Palmyra must not just “rise again”, It must not be turned into a fake replica of its former glory. Instead, what remains of this ancient city after its destruction by Isis – and that is mercifully more than many people feared –perhaps 80%, should be tactfully, sensitively and honestly preserved. DGAM Director Abdelkarim promised that 100 years of experience in conservation, including on the grand avenues and public buildings of Palmyra, would be put to immediate use but also called for international support. “We have to send a message against terrorism that we are united in protecting our heritage,” he said. “We will never accept that the children of Syrian and the world visit the site of Baalshamin and Bel and the victory arch while they are lying in ruins on the ground. We will rebuild them.”

The Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums at the Syrian Ministry of Culture is currently assessing the damage inflicted on the ancient city along with its museum in order to be able to set plans and visions for emergency and urgent intervention through adopting a clear and scientific method (the castle of Palmyra, the gate of the Temple of Bel, the structure of the museum, the damaged statues). In addition, the DGAM is preparing the architectural and constructional plans for our future restoration works within definite deadlines; this is because a large part of the architectural elements of the damaged monuments can be reused in restoration so as to retain the city’s originality and identity.

Wrote Dr. Abdul-Karim to this observer on 4/13/2016, “Some speculations and statements, made by some who do not belong to our institution, speak of our intention to rebuild the city utilizing 3D technologies as well as constructing modern buildings. These, unquestionably, are in complete contrast to our vision at the DGAM, which has been well-reputed for its scientific professionalism for almost 100 years since it was established. It has helped rescue the majority of artifacts under such exceptional circumstances in the past five years of war. It also carried out emergency restoration works in a number of Syrian ancient cities between 2014 and 2015, including the Ancient City of Homs, Maaloula, the Ancient City of Damascus, Krak des Chevaliers (after its liberation) and a number of other castles on the Syrian coast. Hence, we would like to emphasize that our plans and visions will be devised and designed in cooperation with our national and international partners taking into account international standards and conventions applicable worldwide.”

It has been reported that even after becoming refugees and leaving their beloved country, Syrians have worked to keep a detailed memory of the archeological sites alive. Syrian artists have created artworks depicting destruction in Palmyra and elsewhere. In a Jordanian camp, refugees made miniature models of the city and other cultural sites, even measuring out the number and position of Palmyra’s columns from available photos.

The intensifying international debate over how best to restore and protect our shared global cultural heritage in Syria is positive, relevant, essential and constructive.

And it is quite likely that this discourse will bring new safeguards for saving our past for our future.

Franklin Lamb’s recent book, Syria’s Endangered Heritage, an International Responsibility to Preserve and Protect is available on Amazon and other ebook outlets as well as at www.syrian-heritage.com . Lamb is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com.

16 April, 2016
Countercurrents.org