Just International

US flyover in China-Japan island row: Will the real provocateur please stand up?

By Nile Bowie

30 November, 2013

Washington’s move to fly nuclear-capable bombers over China’s eastern air defense zone as a forceful endorsement of Japan’s claims over disputed islands is both needlessly confrontational and totally counterproductive.

The territorial dispute over an uninhabited chain of islands in the East China Sea – referred to as the Senkaku Islands by Japan and the Diaoyu Islands by China – has been a highly contentious issue in Sino-Japanese relations for decades, and the issue has resurfaced in recent times as both sides assert their sovereignty over the area. Mass protests were seen in China targeting Japan’s embassy and Japanese products, shops and restaurants when Tokyo’s far-right former governor, Shintaro Ishihara, called on Japan to use public money to buy the islands from private Japanese owners in 2012. The issue stirs passions in Chinese society because Tokyo’s claims are seen as an extension of the brutal legacy of the Japanese occupation and a direct challenge to strong historical evidence that legitimizes Chinese sovereignty over the area since ancient times. Moreover, the official stance of the government in Beijing is that Japan’s invalid claims over the islands were facilitated and legitimized by a backdoor-deal between Tokyo and Washington that directly challenges international law and post-World War II international treaties.

The right-wing government of Shinzo Abe in Japan has abandoned the passive approach to the issue taken by previous governments and has played on nationalist sentiments by asserting Tokyo’s firm positions over the islands, which are internationally administered by Japan. Chinese and Korean societies see Abe’s administration as whitewashing Japan’s history as a ruthless occupier and imperial power, and have lodged angry protests over Abe’s calls to revise Japan’s 1995 war apology and amend Article 9 of its pacifist constitution, which forbids Japan from having a standing army. China’s recent moves to introduce an air defense zone over the disputed islands have come as a response to months of aggressive Japanese military exercises in the area. Beijing has denounced the presence of the Japanese navy in the region and Japan’s numerous threats to fire warning shots against Chinese planes that violate Japan’s air defense zone, which defiantly stretches only 130 kilometers from China’s mainland and includes the disputed islands. In addition to claims by Taiwan, both China and Japan have strengthened their rights over the islands due to significant oil and mineral resources that have yet to be exploited there.

Let history be the judge

Given legacies of both China and Japan as neighboring civilizations that morphed in modern nation-states, ancient history is sewn into conflicts like the Senkaku-Diaoyu dispute. The earliest historical records of the island being under China’s maritime jurisdiction date back to 1403 in texts prepared by imperial envoys of the Ming dynasty; during the Qing dynasty, the islands were placed under the jurisdiction of the local government of Taiwan province. Maps published throughout the 1800s in France, Britain, and the United States all recognize the Diaoyu islands as a territory of China. Japan eventually defeated the Qing dynasty in the late 1800s during its expansionary campaigns in the region and strong-armed China into signing the humiliating Treaty of Shimonoseki that officially ceded Taiwan and surrounding islands, including the Diaoyu, which the Japanese renamed to ‘Senkaku Islands’ in 1900. Following the defeat and surrender of Japan in World War II, international treaties such as the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation legally returned all territories stolen by Japan to pre-revolutionary China.

Beijing accuses US forces in post-war Japan of unilaterally and arbitrarily expanding its jurisdiction to include the Diaoyu Islands shortly after the Chinese revolution in the early 1950s, which were ‘returned’ to Japan in the 1970s in the Okinawa Reversion Agreement, a move condemned by China and the US-allied Taiwan authorities. Japan has argued since the 1970s that the Diaoyu was not part of the affiliated islands that were ceded to Japan by the Qing dynasty (despite strong evidence to the contrary), and that the islands were placed under the administration of the United States following World War II and ‘returned’ to Japan. The view from Beijing, and especially from within the Xi Jinping administration, is that this case constitutes an illegal occupation of Chinese territory that seriously violates the obligations Japan should undertake according to international law. Tokyo’s position on the issue really doesn’t hold water considering that 19th century Japanese government documents available for viewing in Japan’s National Archives suggest that Japan clearly knew and recognized the Diaoyu Islands as Chinese territory.

Washington’s B-52 diplomacy

Beijing’s announcement of an air defense zone over the Diaoyu Islands would naturally be seen as controversial due to the dispute with Japan, and because Washington implicitly backs Tokyo’s claims, the US administration has taken to framing the issue so as to portray China as the hostile actor and principle belligerent. China has defended its air defense declaration as an extension of its entitlement to uphold its national sovereignty and territorial integrity; Beijing has also pointed out how the US and Japan have established their own zones decades ago, which extend to the frontline borders of other countries in some cases. Beijing’s air defense declaration essentially asserts the right to identify, monitor and possibly take military action against any aircraft that enters the area, and despite the US backing Japan’s right to uphold a similar zone, the White House declared China’s moves as “unnecessarily inflammatory.”

Just days after the Chinese government issued its defense declaration, the US military deployed two unarmed (nuclear-capable) B-52 bombers from its airbase in Guam that embarked on a 1500-mile flight into the Chinese air defense umbrella before turning back. The symbolic but forceful display by Washington is essentially the equivalent of the Pentagon giving the middle finger to the Chinese government. The maneuver was apparently part of a ‘long-planned’ exercise, but the timing and the message sent a clearly hostile, and deeply arrogant message to Beijing. China claims that it monitored the US bombers in the zone and took no action, and as Beijing exercises restraint, Tokyo and Washington’s openly stoke tensions and practice hypocritical double standards. The United States and Japan both operate vast unilateral air defense zones, and yet Washington has the cheek to childishly reject the legitimate defensive claims of others.

To quote Xinhua columnist Wu Liming’s characterization of US-Japan policy, “Their logic is simple: they can do it while China can not, which could be described with a Chinese saying, ‘the magistrates are free to burn down houses while the common people are forbidden even to light lamps.’” The message derived from Washington’s actions perfectly illustrates the nature of the so-called ‘Pivot to Asia,’ that even though America’s political representatives cannot be relied on to fulfill their long-planned appointments to visit the region, the Pentagon can always be relied on to deliver reminders that the US seeks hegemony in Asia.

The truth is that China and Japan have too much to lose as the second and third largest economies in the world to allow this issue to slide into a military confrontation, and cooler heads will likely prevent the latter scenario. Given the contention around this dispute and the destabilizing effects it could have on the global economy if the situation deteriorated into a military conflict, it would be fundamental for the US to instead remain neutral and promote a peaceful compromise and settlement to this issue. Beijing and Tokyo should both take their claims to the UN to settle this issue if a mutual compromise to jointly develop the disputed region cannot be agreed upon.

Corporate Espionage Undermines Democracy

By Ralph Nade

27 November 13

@ Reuters

It’s not just the NSA that has been caught spying on Americans. Some of our nation’s largest corporations have been conducting espionage as well, against civic groups.

For these big companies with pliable ethics, if they don’t win political conflicts with campaign donations or lobbying power, then they play dirty. Very dirty.

That’s the lesson of a new report on corporate espionage against nonprofit organizations, by my colleagues at Essential Information. The title of the report is Spooky Business, and it is apt.

Spooky Business is like a Canterbury Tales of corporate snoopery. The spy narratives in the report are lurid and gripping. Hiring investigators to pose as volunteers and journalists. Hacking. Wiretapping. Information warfare. Physical intrusion. Investigating the private lives of nonprofit leaders. Dumpster diving using an active duty police officer to gain access to trash receptacles. Electronic surveillance. On and on. What won’t corporations do in service of profit and power?

Many different types of nonprofit civic organizations have been targeted by corporate spies: environmental, public interest, consumer, food safety, animal rights, pesticide reform, nursing home reform, gun control and social justice.

A diverse constellation of corporations has planned or executed corporate espionage against these nonprofit civic organizations. Food companies like Kraft, Coca-Cola, Burger King, McDonald’s and Monsanto. Oil companies like Shell, BP and Chevron. Chemical companies like Dow and Sasol. Also involved are the retailers (Wal-Mart), banks (Bank of America), and, of course, the nation’s most powerful trade association: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Plenty of mercenary spooks have joined up to abet them, including former officials at the FBI, CIA, NSA, Secret Service and U.S. military. Sometimes even government contractors are part of the snooping.

In effect, big corporations have been able to hire portions of the national security apparatus, and train their tools of spycraft on the citizens groups of our nation.

This does not bode well for our democracy.

Our democracy is only as strong as the civic groups that work to preserve and protect it every day. To function effectively, these groups must be able to keep their inner workings secure from the prying eyes and snooping noses of the spies-for-hire.

Corporate espionage is a threat to individual privacy, too. As citizens, we do not relinquish our rights to privacy when we disagree with the ideas or actions of a corporation. It is especially galling that corporations should employ such unethical or illegal tactics to deprive Americans of their fundamental rights.

This is a subject with which I have some familiarity. In 1966, when I was working on auto safety, an enterprising young journalist at the New Republic wrote a story about private investigators tasked by General Motors to find “dirt” using false pretenses to interview my friends and teachers and by following me around the country. A Senate Committee, chaired by Senator Abraham Ribicoff, conducted a celebrated hearing confirming in detail General Motors’ unsavory tactics to try to silence my criticisms of unsafely designed automobiles. The uproar helped to pass the auto and highway safety laws in 1966.

The journalist’s name is James Ridgeway, and he kept at it. More than forty years later, he broke another important story – this time for Mother Jones – about Dow Chemical’s massive corporate espionage operation against Greenpeace, and other espionage activities by a private investigation firm called Beckett Brown International.

Ridgeway’s more recent articles, and the work of other journalists, make it clear that the self-regulation of private investigative and intelligence firms is a complete failure.

It’s time for law enforcement to focus some attention on such corporate spies and their flagrant invasion of privacy.

Where is the Justice Department? In France, when Électricité de France was caught spying on Greenpeace, there was an investigation and prosecutions. In Britain, Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World newspaper was ensnared in a telephone hacking scandal involving British public officials and celebrities. The Guardian newspaper excavated the story relentlessly, government investigations followed, with prosecutions ongoing. Here in the United States, the Justice Department has been silent.

How about Congress? Corporate espionage against nonprofits is an obvious topic for a congressional investigation and hearings. But, alas, Congress too has been somnolent.

How much corporate espionage against nonprofits is taking place? Without investigations, subpoenas and hearings, no one really knows. But it is likely that there is more corporate espionage than we know about, because the snooping corporations and their private investigators toil mightily to hide their dirty tricks – which are designed to intimidate and deter people from speaking out and standing up against corporate crimes, frauds and abuses. Is the little we know merely the tip of the iceberg?

Decline Of The American Empire? Global Configurations Of Power, The Swindle Economy And The Criminal State

By Prof. James Petras

26 November, 2013

@ Global Research

The world political economy is a mosaic of cross currents: Domestic decay and elite enrichment, new sources for greater profits and deepening political disenchantment, declining living standards for many and extravagant luxury for a few, military losses in some regions with imperial recovery in others. There are claims of a unipolar, a multi-polar and even a non-polar configuration of world power. Where, when, to what extent and under what contingencies do these claims have validity?

Bubbles and busts come and go – but let us talk of ‘beneficiaries’: Those who cause crashes, reap the greatest rewards while their victims have no say. The swindle economy and the criminal state prosper by promoting the perversion of culture and literacy. ‘Investigatory journalism’, or peephole reportage, is all the rage. The world of power spins out of control: As they decline, the leading powers declare “it’s our rule or everyone’s ruin!”

Global Configurations of Power

Power is a relationship between classes, states and military and ideological institutions. Any configuration of power is contingent on past and present struggles reflecting shifting correlations of forces. Structures and physical resources, concentrations of wealth, arms and the media matter greatly; they set the framework in which the principle power wielders are embedded. But strategies for retaining or gaining power depend on securing alliances, engaging in wars and negotiating peace. Above all, world power depends on the strength of domestic foundations. This requires a dynamic productive economy, an independent state free from prejudicial foreign entanglements and a leading class capable of harnessing global resources to ‘buy off’ domestic consent of the majority.

To examine the position of the United States in the global configuration of power it is necessary to analyze its changing economic and political relations on two levels: by region and by sphere of power. History does not move in a linear pattern or according to recurring cycles: military and political defeats in some regions may be accompanied by significant victories in others. Economic decline in some spheres and regions may be compensated by sharp advances in other economic sectors and regions.

In the final analysis, the question is not ‘keeping a scorecard’ or adding wins and subtracting losses, but translating regional and sectorial outcomes into an understanding of the direction and emerging structures of the global power configuration. We start by examining the legacy of recent wars on the global economic, military and political power of the United States .

Sustaining the US Empire: Defeats, Retreat, Advances and Victories

The dominant view of most critical analysts is that over the past decade US empire-building has suffered a series of military defeats, experienced economic decline, and now faces severe competition and the prospect of further military losses. The evidence cited is impressive: The US was forced to withdraw troops from Iraq , after an extremely costly decade-long military occupation, leaving in place a regime more closely allied to Iran , the US ’ regional adversary. The Iraq war depleted the economy, deprived American corporations of oil wealth, greatly enlarged Washington ’s budget and trade deficits and reduced the living standards of US citizens. The Afghanistan war had a similar outcome, with high external costs, military retreat, fragile clients, domestic disaffection and no short or medium term transfers of wealth (imperial pillage) to the US Treasury or private corporations. The Libyan war led to the total destruction of a modern, oil-rich economy in North Africa, the total dissolution of state and civil society and the emergence of armed tribal, fundamentalist militias opposed to US and EU client regimes in North and sub-Sahara Africa and beyond. Instead of continuing to profit from lucrative oil and gas agreements with the conciliatory Gadhafi regime, Washington decided on ‘regime change’, engaging in a war which ruined Libya and destroyed any viable central state. The current Syrian “proxy war” has strengthened radical Islamist warlords, destroyed Damascus ’ economy and added massive refugee pressure to the already uprooted millions from wars in Iraq and Libya . US imperial wars have resulted in economic losses, regional political instability and military gains for Islamist adversaries.

Latin America has overwhelmingly rejected US efforts to overthrow the Venezuelan government. The entire world– minus Israel and Washington- – rejects the blockade of Cuba . Regional integration organizations, which exclude the US , have proliferated. US trade shares have declined, as Asia is replacing the US in the Latin American market.

In Asia, China deepens and extends its economic links with all the key countries, while the US ‘pivot’ is mostly an effort at military base encirclement involving Japan , Australia and the Philippines . In other words, China is more important than the US for Asian economic expansion, while Chinese financing of US trade imbalances props up the US economy.

In Africa , US military command operations mainly promote armed conflicts and lead to greater instability. Meanwhile Asian capitalists, deeply invested in strategic African countries, are reaping the benefits of its commodity boom, expanding markets and the outflow of profits.

The exposure of the US National Security Agency’s global spy network has seriously undermined global intelligence and clandestine operations. While it may have helped privileged private corporations, the massive US investment in cyber-imperialism appears to have generated negative diplomatic and operational returns for the imperial state.

In sum, the current global overview paints a picture of severe military and diplomatic setbacks in imperial policies, substantial losses to the US Treasury and the erosion of public support. Nevertheless this perspective has serious flaws, especially with regard to other regions, relations and spheres of economic activity. The fundamental structures of empire remain intact.

NATO, the major military alliance headed by the US Pentagon, is expanding its membership and escalating its field of operations. The Baltic States, especially Estonia , are the site of huge military exercises held just minutes from the principle Russian cities. Central and Eastern Europe provide missile sites all aimed at Russia . Until very recently, the Ukraine had been moving toward membership in the European Union and a step toward NATO membership.

The US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership has expanded membership among the Andean countries, Chile , Peru and Colombia . It serves as a springboard to weaken regional trading blocs like MERCOSUR and ALBA, which exclude Washington . Meanwhile, the CIA, the State Department and their NGO conduits are engaged in an all-out economic sabotage and political destabilization campaign to weaken Venezuela ’s nationalist government. US-backed bankers and capitalists have worked to sabotage the economy, provoking inflation (50%), shortages of essential items of consumption and rolling power blackouts. Their control over most of Venezuela ’s mass media has allowed them to exploit popular discontent by blaming the economic dislocation on ‘government inefficiency’.

Overall, the US offensive in Latin America has focused on a military coup in Honduras , ongoing economic sabotage in Venezuela , electoral and media campaigns in Argentina , and cyber warfare in Brazil , while developing closer ties with recently elected compliant neo-liberal regimes in Mexico , Colombia , Chile , Panama , Guatemala and the Dominican Republic . While Washington lost influence in Latin America during the first decade of the 21st century, it has since partially recovered its clients and partners. The relative recovery of US influence illustrates the fact that ‘regime changes’ and a decline in market shares, have not lessened the financial and corporate ties linking even the progressive countries to powerful US interests. The continued presence of powerful political allies –even those ‘out of government’ – provides a trampoline for regaining US influence. Nationalist policies and emerging regional integration projects remain vulnerable to US counter-attacks.

While the US has lost influence among some oil producing countries, it lessened its dependence on oil and gas imports as a result of a vast increase in domestic energy production via ‘fracking’ and other intense extractive technologies. Greater local self-sufficiency means lower energy costs for domestic producers and increases their competitiveness in world markets, raising the possibility that the US could regain market shares for its exports.

The seeming decline of US imperial influence in the Arab world following the popular ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings has halted and even been reversed. The military coup in Egypt and the installation and consolidation of the military dictatorship in Cairo suppressed the mass national-popular mobilizations. Egypt is back in the US-Israel orbit. In Algeria , Morocco and Tunisia the old and new rulers are clamping down on any anti-imperial protests. In Libya , the US-NATO air force destroyed the nationalist-populist Gadhafi regime, eliminating an alternative welfare model to neo-colonial pillage – but has so far failed to consolidate a neo-liberal client regime in Tripoli . Instead rival armed Islamist gangs, monarchists and ethnic thugs pillage and ravage the country. Destroying an anti-imperialist regime has not produced a pro-imperialist client.

In the Middle East, Israel continues to dispossess the Palestinians of their land and water. The US continues to escalate military maneuvers and impose more economic sanctions against Iran – weakening Teheran but also decreasing US wealth and influence due to the loss of the lucrative Iranian market. Likewise in Syria , the US and its NATO allies have destroyed Syria ’s economy and shredded its complex society, but they will not be the main beneficiaries. Islamist mercenaries have gained bases of operations while Hezbollah has consolidated its position as a significant regional actor. Current negotiations with Iran open possibilities for the US to cut its losses and reduce the regional threat of a costly new war but these talks are being blocked by an ‘alliance’ of Zionist-militarist Israel, monarchist Saudi Arabia and ‘Socialist’ France.

Washington has lost economic influence in Asia to China but it is mounting a regional counter-offensive, based on its network of military bases in Japan , the Philippines and Australia . It is promoting a new Pan Pacific economic agreement that excludes China . This demonstrates the US capacity to intervene and project imperial interests. However announcing new policies and organizations is not the same as implementing and providing them with dynamic content. Washington ’s military encirclement of China is off-set by the US Treasury’s multi-trillion dollar debt to Beijing . An aggressive US military encirclement of China could result in a massive Chinese sell-off of US Treasury notes and five hundred leading US multi-nationals finding their investments in jeopardy!

Power-sharing between an emerging and established global power, such as China and the US , cannot be ‘negotiated’ via US military superiority. Threats, bluster and diplomatic chicanery score mere propaganda victories but only long-term economic advances can create the domestic Trojan Horses need to erode China ’s dynamic growth. Even today, the Chinese elite spend hefty sums to educate their children in “prestigious” US and British universities where free market economic doctrines and imperial-centered narratives are taught. For the past decade, leading Chinese politicians and the corporate rich have sent tens of billions of dollars in licit and illicit funds to overseas bank accounts, investing in high end real estate in North America and Europe and dispatching billions to money laundering havens. Today, there is a powerful faction of economists and elite financial advisers in China pushing for greater ‘financial liberalization’, i.e. penetration by the leading Wall Street and City of London speculative houses. While Chinese industries may be winning the competition for overseas markets, the US has gained and is gaining powerful levers over China ’s financial structure.

The US share of Latin American trade may be declining, but the absolute dollar worth of trade has increased several-fold over the past decade.

The US may have lost right-wing regime clients in Latin America, but the new center-left regimes are actively collaborating with most of the major US and Canadian mining and agro-business corporations and commodity trading houses. The Pentagon has not been able to engineer military coups, with the pathetic exception of Honduras, but it still retains its close working relations with the Latin American military in the form of (1) its regional policing of ‘terrorism’, ‘narcotics’ and ‘migration’, (2) providing technical training and political indoctrination via overseas military ‘educational’ programs and (3) engaging in joint military exercises.

In sum, the structures of the US empire, corporate, financial, military and political-cultural, all remain in place and ready to regain dominance if and when political opportunities arise. For example, a sharp decline in commodity prices would likely provoke a deep crisis and intensify class conflicts among center-left regimes, which are dependent on agro-mining exports to fund their social programs. In any ensuing confrontation, the US would work with and through its agents among the economic and military elite to oust the incumbent regime and re-impose pliant neo-liberal clients. The current phase of post-neo-liberal policies and power configurations are vulnerable. The relative ‘decline of US influence and power’ can be reversed even if it is not returned to its former configuration. The theoretical point is that while imperialist structures remain in place and while their collaborator counterparts abroad retain strategic positions, the US can re-establish its primacy in the global configuration of power.

Imperial ‘roll-back’ does not require the ‘same old faces’. New political figures, especially with progressive credentials and faint overtones of a ‘social inclusionary’ ideology are already playing a major role in the new imperial-centered trade networks. In Chile , newly elected “Socialist” President Michelle Bachelet and the Peruvian ex-nationalist, President Ollanta Humala, are major proponents of Washington ’s Tran-Pacific Partnership, a trading bloc which competes with the nationalist MERCOSUR and ALBA, and excludes China .

In Mexico, US client President Enrique Peña Nieto is privatizing the ‘jewel’ of the Mexican economy, PEMEX, the giant public oil company – strengthening the Washington’s hold over regional energy resources and increasing US independence from Mid-East oil. Colombian President Santos, the ‘peace president’, is actively negotiating an end to guerrilla warfare in order to expand multinational exploitation of mineral and energy resources located in guerrilla-contested regions, a prospect which will primarily benefit US oil companies. In Argentina , the state oil company, Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales (YPF) has signed a joint venture agreement with the oil giant, Chevron, to exploit an enormous gas and oil field, known as Vaca Muerte (Dead Cow). This will expand the US presence in Argentina in energy production alongside the major inroads made by Monsanto in the powerful agro-business sector.

No doubt Latin America has diversified its trade and the US share has relatively declined. Latin American rulers no longer eagerly seek ‘certification’ from the US Ambassador before announcing their political candidacy. The US is totally alone in its boycott of Cuba . The Organization of American States is no longer a US haven. But there are counter-tendencies, reflected in new pacts like the TPP. New sites of economic exploitation, which are not exclusively US controlled, now serve as springboards to greater imperial power.

Conclusion

The US economy is stagnant and has failed to re-gain momentum because of its pursuit of ‘serial’ imperial wars. But in the Middle East, the US decline, relative to its past, has not been accompanied by the ascent of its old rivals. Europe is in deeper crisis, with a vast army of unemployed, chronic negative growth and few signs of recovery for the visible future. Even China , the new emerging global power, is slowing down with its growth falling from over 11% to 7% in the current decade. Beijing faces growing domestic discontent. India , as well as China , are liberalizing their financial systems, opening them up to penetration and influence by US finance capital.

The main anti-imperialist forces in Asia and Africa are not composed of progressive, secular, democratic and socialist movements. Instead, the empire is confronted by religious, ethnic, misogynist and authoritarian movements with irredentist tendencies. The old secular, socialist voices have lost their bearings, and provide perverse ‘justifications’ for the imperialist wars of aggression in Libya , Mali and Syria . The French Socialists, who had opposed the Iraq war in 2003, now find their President Francoise Hollande parroting the brutal militarism of the Israeli warlord, Netanyahu.

The point is that the thesis of the ‘decline of the US empire’ and its corollary, the ‘crises of the US ’ are overstated, time bound and lack specificity. In reality, there is no alternative imperial or modern anti-imperial tendency on the immediate horizon. While it is true that Western capitalism is in crisis, the recently ascending Asian capitalism of China and India face a different crisis resulting from their savage class exploitation and murderous caste relations. If objective conditions are ‘ripe for socialism’, the socialists – at least those retaining any political presence- are comfortably embedded with their respective imperial regimes. The Marxists and Socialists in Egypt joined with the military to overthrow an elected conservative Islamist regime, leading to the restoration of imperialist clientelism in Cairo . The French and English ‘Marxists’ have supported NATO’s destruction of Libya and Syria . Numerous progressives and socialists, in Europe and North America, support Israel ’s warlords and/or remain silent in the face of domestic Zionist power in the executive branches and legislatures.

if imperialism is declining, so is anti-imperialism. If capitalism is in crisis, the existing anti-capitalists are in retreat. If capitalists look for new faces and ideologues to revive their fortunes, isn’t it time the anti-imperialists and anti-capitalists did likewise?

James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles in nonprofessional journals such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, New Left Review, Partisan Review, TempsModerne, Le Monde Diplomatique, and his commentary is widely carried on the internet. His publishers have included Random House, John Wiley, Westview, Routledge, Macmillan, Verso, Zed Books and Pluto Books. He is winner of the Career of Distinguished Service Award from the American Sociological Association’s Marxist Sociology Section, the Robert Kenny Award for Best Book, 2002, and the Best Dissertation, Western Political Science Association in 1968. His most recent titles include Unmasking Globalization: Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century (2001); co-author The Dynamics of Social Change in Latin America (2000), System in Crisis (2003), co-author Social Movements and State Power (2003), co-author Empire With Imperialism (2005), co-author)Multinationals on Trial (2006).

Why Don’t We Try To Understand And End Human Violence?

By Robert J. Burrowes

26November, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

The pre-eminent problem confronting humankind is human violence. It is our own violence, in its various guises, including the ongoing possibility of nuclear war and the ongoing devastation of the natural environment, that threaten to consign us to the fossil record within decades, if not sooner. And yet we devote virtually no effort to trying to understand human violence and to developing strategies to end it. Why?

The short and highly unpalatable answer is this: because most of us want to use violence when it suits us and to ‘get away with it’ when we do. This is why most of us find ways to inflict our violence in socially legitimized ways or we do it in relative secrecy. Apart from inflicting violence on our own children and the natural environment, society has created whole sectors of activity in which ‘legitimized violence’ can be inflicted.

The most obvious example of socially endorsed violence is that allowed during military service but another sector that absorbs many perpetrators of violence is the police, legal and prison system. Many police, judges, magistrates, prosecutors and prison officers use their socially legitimized role to inflict their violence (whether directly in the form of assaults or institutional in the form of imprisonment and capital punishment) on those individuals snared in the legal system. There is no evidence that violence (even when labeled ‘punishment’) and the fear that it causes can restore functionality. However, modern societies have devoted vast quantities of resources to the military, police, legal and prison systems rather than financing research efforts to understand why human beings are violent and then developing comprehensive strategies to eliminate this violence based on an understanding of its cause.

This failure to understand violence means that a vast and ever-increasing quantity of resources must be devoted to maintaining both military forces that are sent to kill all over the world and an endlessly expanding system of highly dysfunctional ‘law enforcement’ in which individuals are no longer considered important once they are defined as ‘criminal’.

Why do governments devote resources to the military, police, legal and prison systems? In brief, this occurs because members of governments want to perpetuate violence in the delusional belief that it gives them ‘control’ and one socially endorsed way of participating in this violence is to perpetuate an institutional framework that defines ‘enemies’ and ‘criminals’ as legitimized victims. This happens because people who feel powerless to control what is important (particularly the violence they suffered at the hands of their own parents) seek control of other people and things (including trivia) to avoid the feeling of powerlessness.

The social investment in violence at all levels is staggering: if it was not, as noted above, there would be substantial research funds devoted to understanding the origins of violence so that it could be reduced and eventually eliminated. But there is no budget allocation anywhere to fund research to understand this most pervasive and phenomenally destructive problem, although humans spend approximately $2billion each day on military violence and a staggering, but unknown to me, amount on the world’s police, legal and prison systems. Who benefits? It includes individuals working in government and the military forces, those corporations that make the weapons and build the military and prison infrastructure, and those individuals (including police, lawyers and judges) who gain employment within legal institutions.

However, the victims of military violence, ‘criminals’ and particularly ‘the public’ (that is, the vast majority of the world’s population) do not benefit because violence is perpetuated rather than progressively cut back. How do governments, legal institutions, corporations and the individuals who work within them actually benefit? At the superficial level it is about things like status and money: taxes, profits, income from jobs. But the deeper, psychological reason is that it helps these individuals to suppress awareness of the terror, self-hatred and powerlessness that has destroyed their Self-hood and that drives their use of violence in the delusional belief that they will regain ‘control’.

So what can we do? Despite the lack of social effort to understand human violence, there is a comprehensive explanation available. According to this research, all violence is an outcome of the visible, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence inflicted by adults on children. See ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence Once the child has been damaged, it will inflict violence on itself, the people around it, as well as non-human species and the natural environment; it will also play a part in maintaining structures of violence and exploitation, such as the education and legal systems.

If you wish to join the worldwide movement to end all violence, you can sign online ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com

Human beings will end violence or

Violence will end human beings

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

US Bullying At TPP Negotiations For Big Pharma Profits

By Popular Resistance

24 November, 2013

@ Popularresistance.org

Outrageous US bullying by US Trade Representative Stan McCoy on intellectual property and health. McCoy puts profits of pharmaceuticals ahead of the lives of people. “The world should stand up to the United States. US corporations are not more important than people’s lives.”

A key dispute in the TPP negotiations is the patents on pharmaceutical drugs and medical procedures. Long patents inflate the profits of the pharmaceutical industry by not allowing less expensive generic drugs on the market. This means that people around the world will not be able to afford critical, often life-saving, drugs and medical procedures. It also means that countries like Japan, Australia and New Zealand that have national health care systems will see the cost of healthcare rise to a breaking point, undermining some of the best health systems in the world.

In order for the US to get its way,Stan McCoy, Assistant US Trade Representative for Intellectual Property and Innovation, is chairing the meetings on intellectual properties and medicines. He has been using bullying tactics to force countries to agree to positions that will harm people in the countries negotiating the TPP, including the US.

“The US has adopted a strategy of exhaustion in its bullying of negotiators on the crucial intellectual property chapter to force countries to trade away health in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations in Salt Lake City,” according to Professor Jane Kelsey from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, who is monitoring the negotiations. ”The US has stepped up its aggression as they move towards their ‘end point’ of the TPP ministerial meeting in Singapore from 7 to 10 December.”

Margaret Flowers, MD a health policy expert from the US says “The Office of the US Trade Representative is putting the interests of trans-national health corporations before the needs of people. If the US position is forced through, the TPP will extend patents for medications, medical devices and even procedures for exorbitant lengths of times. This will inflate prices, keeping treatments out of reach for those who need them. This will cause unnecessary suffering and death, especially for the most vulnerable populations, and will undermine health systems around the world and at home.”

“This is a loaded game,” Professor Kelsey said. “McCoy sets the agenda and timetable. Negotiators are working from morning until late at night and preparing to work all night, if necessary. ”This is a crucial period for New Zealand and a number of other countries,” Kelsey observed. The text published by Wikileaks last week shows they have tabled an alternative to the US proposed text that has been repeatedly rejected.”

“New Zealand’s trade minister Tim Groser and his counterparts from the other ten countries must tell the US to stop this behaviour now,” Kelsey said. Flowers added: “Countries negotiating with the United States should not allow themselves to be bullied but should stand up to the United States. It is looking very unlikely that President Obama will be able to get TPP through the Congress. Why would any country negotiate against the interests of their people?”

The US has around twenty people in Salt Lake City for the intellectual property chapter, who can rotate. Some countries have only one delegate for crucial talks on intellectual property on medicines. Their negotiations on medicines have been extended beyond the dates that were scheduled before negotiators came. They have continued despite the fact that some health negotiators, especially from poor countries, could not extend their stay.

This follows a pattern of abuse over recent rounds reported in Inside US Trade and other media, where McCoy has acted as a gatekeeper, deciding what proposals from other countries are allowed into the text and what are not.

“This is an early warning of the extreme bullying that can be expected in when the trade ministers seek to close the deal off in December,” Professor Kelsey warned.

Contact: Prof Kelsey is in Salt Lake City she can be contacted through text messages at +64 21 765 055. Margaret Flowers can be contacted at 410-591-0892

@KBZeese

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P5+1 And Iran Agree Landmark Nuclear Deal At Geneva Talks

By Russia Today

24 November, 2013

@ RT.com

The P5+1 world powers and Iran have struck a historic deal on Tehran’s nuclear program at talks in Geneva on Sunday. Ministers overcame the last remaining hurdles to reach agreement, despite strong pressure from Israel and lobby groups.

Under the interim agreement, Tehran will be allowed access to $4.2 billion in funds frozen as part of the financial sanctions imposed on Iran over suspicions that its nuclear program is aimed at producing an atomic bomb.

As part of the deal Iran has committed to:

– Halt uranium enrichment to above 5 per cent.

– Dismantle equipment required to enrich above 5 per cent.

– Refrain from further enrichment of its 3.5 per cent stockpile.

– Dilute its store of 20 per cent-enriched uranium.

– Limit the use and installation of its centrifuges.

– Cease construction on the Arak nuclear reactor.

– Provide IAEA inspectors with daily access to the Natanz and Fordo sites.

Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, called the deal a “major success” and said Tehran would expand its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

While Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced that the deal reached in Geneva shows that world powers have recognized Tehran’s “nuclear rights.”

“Constructive engagement [and] tireless efforts by negotiating teams are to open new horizons,” Rouhani said on Twitter shortly after the announcement.

Foreign ministers from the US, Russia, UK, France, China, Germany and the EU hailed the deal as a step toward a “comprehensive solution” to the nuclear standoff between Tehran and the West. The interim deal was reached early Sunday morning in Geneva after some 18 hours of negotiation.

“While today’s announcement is just a first step, it achieves a great deal,” US President Barack Obama said in a statement at the White House. “For the first time in nearly a decade, we have halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program, and key parts of the program will be rolled back.”

However, Obama said that if Iran fails to keep to its commitments over the next six months, the US will “ratchet up” sanctions. US Secretary of State John Kerry, a key participant in the Geneva talks, said that Iran still had to prove it is not seeking to develop atomic weapons.

Tehran has repeatedly denied that it is developing atomic weapons, however, and maintains that its nuclear program is purely for civilian purposes.

Uranium enrichment

As part of the agreement, the international community has accepted Tehran’s right to a peaceful nuclear program. But after the deal was struck, participants in the Geneva talks put different interpretations on the issue of Iran’s right to enrich uranium.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi wrote on Twitter that the right to enrichment had been recognized in negotiations, and after the deal was clinched Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the deal accepted Tehran’s right to enrich uranium.

“This deal means that we agree with the need to recognize Iran’s right for peaceful nuclear energy, including the right for enrichment, with an understanding that those questions about the [Iranian nuclear program] that still remain, and the program itself, will be placed under the strictest IAEA control,” Lavrov told journalists.

John Kerry had a different spin on the deal, however, telling the media that it did not recognize Tehran’s right to enrich nuclear fuel.

“The first step, let me be clear, does not say that Iran has a right to enrich uranium,” Kerry said.

Israel has already voiced its opposition to the deal with Iran, claiming it is based on “Iranian deception and self-delusion.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the agreement as a “historic mistake” and said the world had become a more dangerous place.

© Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2005–2013.

Phony Muslimness Among Muslim Boys In Schools And Colleges In UK

By Mike Ghouse

24 November, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

I am concerned about the segregated seating arrangements in colleges and Universities for seminars and other educational activities organized by Muslim Students Associations in the United Kingdom.

Unlike the Students Association in the United States, where both men and women manage and participate, the MSA’s in UK seem to be run over by the boys. These boys become instantaneously Sanctimonious Muslims when they have a responsibility to manage a Muslim loaded event. The more they “control” women to go sit elsewhere, the greater the Muslim they become! What a phony Muslimness!

It’s not only the boys, some of the Imams who come around to give Sermons at special events, invariably make a comment to women sitting somewhere in the darkness in the back to quit gossiping! Darn it, when your lecture is so idiotic, men do the same, either gossip or go to their i-phones and Samsungs.  I am glad I don’t go to these events, but when I do, I will tear them apart for such an abusive and disrespectful comment towards women. Remember, our silence gives them permission to continue doing the wrong. Speak up; the other goats will jump in later.

Steering women and men to different sitting areas in the name of Islam needs to go. A man or a woman should have the freedom to choose, where he or she is comfortable to sit, nothing should be forced on. There should be no compulsion.

Do they teach that Islam is about regulating your own behavior to be a kind, gentle, truthful, trustworthy and caring and just individual,  the Amin, as the Prophet was called. Indeed, that should be the first foundational Sunnah for Muslims to follow. Islam is not about controlling others personal behavior.  Islam is about freedom – you are individually rewarded or deprived with the grace of God for your acts, neither the Muslim Students Association nor the Mufti of your town is even remotely accountable for your acts.  Even Prophet Muhammad, let alone your parents, spouse, siblings, or your Imam will not come to your rescue in your reflective solitude or the Day of Judgment. Prophet Muhammad did not assign the responsibility to teach Quran to anyone either.

The Hijab or segregation is a cultural product of predominantly Muslim nations, there is no sanction for it in Islam. The very first and foremost place of worship does not have segregation, even to this day.  Men and women perform Hajj together, God wants all of us together without distinction.

Muslims living in UK, US, France, Canada or elsewhere have their own culture, or modified culture without any reluctance. Unlike Saudi Arabia, where women are taken care of, the women living in other nations have to learn to live on their own, earn their own and support their kids if they have to, and their culture should be based on their needs and not the needs of Saudi Arabia.

Shame on those parents who make their daughters dependent on men, and when that man dies, or runs off – it puts the woman in a difficult situation. Is that how the parents care for their daughters?  She should be free and able to handle her own affairs. The prophet had said to Fatima, you will not get a free ticket to paradise just because you are my daughter; you have to earn it like everyone else.

If a woman is trained to live in segregation how would she handle in situations when her father, brother, husband or son is not around. Love is not making a dependent out of the loved ones. If we love, yes, if we love our loved ones, we make them independent, free and able to stand on their own in contingencies with the least suffering.

By the way the stories are similar with Sikhs, Hindus, Jains,  Christians and others from Asia.

Mike Ghouse is a speaker , thinker and a writer on pluralism , politics , peace, Islam , Israel , India , interfaith , and cohesion at work place. He is committed to building a Cohesive America and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day at www.TheGhousediary.com . He believes in Standing up for others and has done that throughout his life as an activist. Mike has a presence on national and local TV, Radio and Print Media. He is a frequent guest on Sean Hannity show on Fox TV, and a commentator on national radio networks, he contributes weekly to the Texas Faith Column at Dallas Morning News ; fortnightly at Huffington post; and several other periodicals across the world. His personal site www.MikeGhouse.net indexes all his work through many links.

Shielding A Flickering Flame

By Chris Hedges

25 November, 2013

@ TruthDig.com

With the folly of the human race—and perhaps its unconscious lust for self-annihilation—on display at the U.N. Climate Talks in Warsaw, it is easy to succumb to despair. The world’s elite, it is painfully clear, will do little to halt the accelerating destruction of the ecosystem and eventually the human species. We have, through our ingenuity and hubris, unleashed the next great mass extinction on the planet. And I suspect the reason we have never discovered signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is because extraterrestrial societies that achieved similar levels of technological development also destroyed themselves. There are probably more wreckages of advanced civilizations, cursed by poisoned ecosystems, floating through the universe than we imagine.

The death spiral we face means that resistance will increasingly break down along two lines—those who have children and those who do not. It is one thing to sacrifice one’s self. It is another to sacrifice one’s children. No matter how grim and apocalyptic the world becomes, a parent is compelled to protect his or her child. One cannot totally give up hope. When resistance becomes an act of almost certain futility and suicide, and this is what is fast approaching, violent confrontation will mean the extermination of your children. And that is too much to ask of a parent. Parents—and I am one—do not make great revolutionaries. We have to go home to put a child to bed. Those who do not have children more easily rise up. Most parents, for this reason, are able to embrace only nonviolent protest. And nonviolent mass protest offers, as long as we remain in a period of relative stability, our best hope. Resorting to violence would, right now, make things worse. But as societies unravel, as desperation becomes worldwide, both nonviolence and violence will do little to alter our impending self-destruction. In the coming struggle against the global corporate elite there will be two sets of priorities—those of parents and those of fighters. These differing priorities will have to be respected if we are to build a cohesive movement. There are some things a mother or a father cannot, and perhaps should not, do.

The dichotomy between the role of parents and the role of fighters in times of extremity was delineated in Hanna Krall’s remarkable book “Shielding the Flame,” a narrative that drew on the experience of Dr. Marek Edelman, who when he died in 2009 was the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Edelman, 23 years old when he helped lead the April 1943 uprising, refused to hold up his actions as more moral than those who walked with their children to the gas chambers. After all, he said, by the time of the uprising he and the other resistance fighters knew that “it was only a choice as to the manner of dying.”

The uprising lasted three weeks, ending when the Germans razed the Warsaw Ghetto. Edelman was the only commander of the uprising to come out alive. He escaped through the sewers and was carried away from the ghetto on a stretcher by some of the few remaining members of the underground, posing as members of the Polish Red Cross. A sign reading “Typhus” was placed on his body, and the terror of that disease among the German soldiers ensured his passage through checkpoints. One of the women carrying the stretcher, Dr. Alina Margolis, later became Edelman’s wife. During part of the 1979-1992 war in El Salvador, Margolis lived in my house in San Salvador. She was working in a refugee camp for Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, an organization she helped found. She and Edelman were fierce anti-Zionists, publicly denounced Israel’s occupation and repression of the Palestinians, and defended the right of Palestinian people to resist that occupation, even through violence. They saw in the Palestinian struggle their own fight against German occupation during World War II. I deeply respected them.

“… [T]o die in a gas chamber is by no means worse than to die in battle, and … the only undignified death is when one attempts to survive at the expense of somebody else,” Edelman told Krall. He said of parents and children who were deported to the death camps: “Those people went quietly and with dignity. It is a horrendous thing, when one is going so quietly to one’s death. It is infinitely more difficult than to go out shooting. After all, it is much easier to die firing—for us it was much easier to die than it was for someone who first boarded a train car, then rode the train, then dug a hole, then undressed naked. …”

And yet, at the same time, Edelman noted that everyone, even the young ghetto fighters, needed “somebody to act for, somebody to be the center of his life.” To be totally alone was to be drained of purpose and meaning. This was true even for those who faced certain death. “To be with someone was the only way to survive in the Ghetto,” he told Krall. “One would secret oneself somewhere with the other person—in a bed, in a basement, anywhere—and until the next action one was not alone anymore. One person had had his mother taken away, somebody else’s father had been shot and killed, or a sister taken away in a shipment. So if someone, somehow, by some miracle escaped and was still alive, he had to stick to some other living human being. People were drawn to one another as never before, as never in moral life. During the last liquidation action they would run to the Jewish Council in search of a rabbi or anybody who could marry them, and then they would go to the Umschlagplatz [where Jews were forced to gather for transportation to the death camps] as a married couple.”

“When one knows death so well, one has more responsibility for life,” he said. “Any, even the smallest chance for life becomes extremely important. A chance for death was there all the while. The important thing was to make a chance for life.”

Edelman noted the collective self-delusion that prohibited the Jews in the ghetto—as it prohibits us—from facing their fate, even as the transports were taking thousands daily to the Nazi death camp Treblinka. The Germans handed out oblong, brown loaves of rye bread to those lining up outside the trains. Those clutching the loaves, desperately hungry and overjoyed with receiving the food, willingly climbed into the railway carriages. In 1942 the underground sent a spy to follow the trains. He returned to the ghetto and reported, in the words of Krall’s book, that “every day a freight train with people would pass that way [to Treblinka] and return empty, but food supplies were never sent there.” His account was written up in the underground ghetto newspaper, but, as Edelman remarked, “nobody believed it.” “ ‘Have you gone insane?’ people would say when we were trying to convince them that they were not being taken to work,” Edelman remembered. “ ‘Would they be sending us to death with bread? So much bread would be wasted!’ ”

Edelman castigated the head of the Jewish Council, Adam Czerniaków, for committing suicide. The official killed himself by swallowing cyanide on July 23, 1942, the day after the mass deportation of the Jews to Treblinka began. “There was only one man who could have declared the truth out loud: Czerniaków,” Edelman said. “They would have believed him. But he had committed suicide. That wasn’t right: one should die with a bang. At that time this bang was most needed—one should die only after having called other people into the struggle.” Edelman went on to say that Czerniaków’s suicide was the “only thing we reproach him for.”

“We?” Krall asked.

“Me and my friends,” Edelman said. “The dead ones. We reproach him for having made his death his own private business. We were convinced that it was necessary to die publically, under the world’s eyes.”

Traditional concepts of right and wrong, Edelman pointed out, collapse in moments of extremity. Edelman spoke to Krall about a woman doctor in the ghetto hospital who poisoned the sick children on her ward as the Germans entered the building. “She saved children from the gas chamber,” Edelman said. “People thought she was a hero. So what, then, in that world turned upside down, was heroism? Or honor? Or dignity? And where was God?”

Edelman answered his own question. God, he said, was on the side of the persecutors. A malicious God. And Edelman said that as a heart surgeon in Poland after the war he felt he was always battling against this malevolent deity who sought to extinguish life. “God is trying to blow out the candle and I’m quickly trying to shield the flame, taking advantage of His brief inattention.”

“He is not terribly just. It can also be very satisfying because whenever something does work out, it means you have, after all, fooled Him.”

The forces of life, including the ecosystem, are being transformed into forces of death. The monster Typhoon Haiyan is only one of the first tragedies. Nature and global elites seeking to exploit the planet’s last drops of blood and its repressed masses are joining to make the days of descent squalid and terrifying. And in this extremity we will have to find our place. There will come a time, if there is no radical change, when we too will be forced to choose how we will die, whom we will cling to, what we will risk. There will be no moral hierarchy to resistance. We will be pulled one way or another by fate and love. And these different routes of resistance will all be legitimate as long as we do not, as Edelman said, attempt “to survive at the expense of somebody else.”

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

© 2013 TruthDig.com

Secret US-Iran Talks Set Stage for Nuke Deal

By Bradley Klapper, Matthew Lee, Julie Pace, Associated Press

24 November 13

@ Readersupportednews.org

With their destination and mission among America’s closest guarded secrets, the small group of officials hand-picked by President Barack Obama boarded a military plane in March.

The travel plans of the U.S. diplomats and foreign policy advisers were not on any public itineraries. No reception greeted them as they landed. But awaiting the Americans in the remote and ancient Gulf sultanate of Oman was the reason for all the secrecy: a delegation of Iranians ready to meet them.

It was at this first high-level gathering at a secure location in the Omani capital of Muscat, famous for its souk filled with frankincense and myrrh, that the Obama administration began laying the groundwork for this weekend’s historic nuclear pact between world powers and Iran, The Associated Press has learned.

Even America’s closest allies were kept in the dark. Obama first shared the existence of the secret diplomacy with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September, and only then offered a limited recounting of how long the discussions between Iran and the United States had been taking place.

The Obama administration then informed the other five nations negotiating alongside the U.S. – Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. And since then much of their public diplomacy with Iran has focused on incorporating and formalizing the progress made in the private U.S.-Iranian talks.

The AP has learned that at least five secret meetings have occurred between top Obama administration and Iranian officials since March.

Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Jake Sullivan, Vice President Joe Biden’s top foreign policy adviser, led each U.S. delegation. At the most recent face-to-face talks, they were joined by chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Wendy Sherman.

It was at the final get-together that the two sides ultimately agreed on the contours of the pact signed before dawn Sunday by the so-called P5+1 group of nations and Iran, three senior administration officials told the AP. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to be quoted by name talking about the sensitive diplomacy.

The AP was tipped to the first U.S.-Iranian meeting in March shortly after it occurred, but the White House and State Department disputed elements of the account and the AP could not confirm the meeting. The AP learned of further indications of secret diplomacy in the fall and pressed the White House and other officials further. As the Geneva talks appeared to be reaching their conclusion, senior administration officials confirmed to the AP the details of the extensive outreach. They spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss by name the secret talks.

The Geneva deal provides Iran with about $7 billion in relief from international sanctions in exchange for Iranian curbs on uranium enrichment and other nuclear activity. All parties pledged to work toward a final accord next year that would remove remaining suspicions in the West that Tehran is trying to assemble an atomic weapons arsenal.

Iran insists its nuclear interest is only in peaceful energy production and medical research. The U.S. and Israel have regularly threatened military action if they believe Iran is about to develop a nuclear weapon.

While the agreement early Sunday – late Saturday in Washington – was concluded to great fanfare and global attention, with Secretary of State John Kerry joining fellow foreign ministers in signing the deal and Obama then presenting it to the nation in a televised White House address, the path there couldn’t have been more secret.

With low expectations, mid-level American officials began in 2011 meeting their Iranian counterparts in Muscat, one of the Arab world’s most tranquil if overlooked metropolises. The process was guided by Sultan Qaboos, Oman’s diminutive but wily monarch, who has cultivated decades of good relations with the United States and his region’s two rivals: Sunni-controlled Saudi Arabia and Shia-dominated Iran.

Qaboos had endeared himself to the Obama administration after three American hikers were arrested in 2009 for straying across Iraq’s border. As a mediator he was able to secure their freedom over the next two years, prompting U.S. officials to wonder whether the diplomatic opportunity was worth further exploring.

Expectations were kept low for the initial U.S.-Iranian discussions. The officials skirted the big issues and focused primarily on the logistics for setting up higher-level talks. For the U.S., the big question was whether Iran’s leaders would be willing to secretly negotiate matters of substance with a country they call the “Great Satan.”

The private talks were also a gamble for the United States, which cut off diplomatic ties with Iran in 1979 after the Islamic Revolution and the taking of 52 American hostages held for 444 days after rebels stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. To this day the State Department considers Iran the biggest state supporter of terrorism in the world.

When Obama decided to send Burns and Sullivan to Oman, Iran was still being governed by the hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose inflammatory rhetoric severely worsened the Islamic republic’s relations with the West.

Ahmadinejad’s contested re-election early in Obama’s presidency, followed by the violent Iranian crackdown on pro-reform protesters, had already severely tested the American leader’s inauguration pledge to reach out to America’s enemies.

The goal on the American side, the U.S. officials said, was simply to see if the U.S. and Iran could successfully arrange a process for continued bilateral talks – a low bar that underscored the sour state of relations between the two nations.

Burns and Sullivan were accompanied in Muscat by National Security Council aide Puneet Talwar and four other officials. The senior administration officials who spoke to the AP would not identify whom the delegation met with, but characterized the Iranian attendees as career diplomats, national security aides and experts on the nuclear issue who were likely to remain key players after the country’s summer elections.

Occurring just days after the U.S. and the other powers opened up a new round of nuclear talks with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan, the U.S. officials achieved some modest progress. They understood that the Iranians in Muscat at least had some authority to negotiate from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on the nuclear program and many other big Iranian issues.

Beyond nuclear issues, the officials said the U.S. team at the March meeting also raised concerns about Iranian involvement in Syria, Tehran’s threats to close the strategically important Strait of Hormuz and the status of Robert Levinson, a missing former FBI agent who the U.S. believes was abducted in Iran, as well as two other Americans detained in the country.

Hoping to keep the channel open, Kerry then made an official visit to Oman in May, ostensibly to push a military deal with the sultanate. Officials said the trip actually focused on maintaining Qaboos’ key mediation role, particularly after the Iranian election scheduled for the next month.

Hassan Rouhani’s June election to Iran’s presidency, on a platform of easing the sanctions crippling Iran’s economy and stated willingness to engage with the West, gave a new spark to the U.S. effort, the officials said.

Two secret meetings were organized immediately after Rouhani took office in August, with the specific goal of advancing the stalled nuclear talks with world powers. Another pair of meetings took place in October.

The Iranian delegation was a mix of officials the Americans had met in March in Oman and others who were new to the talks, administration officials said. All of the Iranians were fluent English speakers.

The meetings encompassed multiple locations and U.S. officials would not confirm the exact spots, saying they did not want to jeopardize their ability to use the same venues in the future. At least some of the talks continued to take place in Oman.

The private meetings coincided with a public easing of U.S.-Iranian discord. In early August, Obama sent Rouhani a letter congratulating him on his election. The Iranian leader’s response was viewed positively by the White House, which quickly laid the groundwork for the additional secret talks. The U.S. officials said they were convinced the outreach had the blessing of Ayatollah Khamenei, but would not elaborate.

As negotiators worked behind the scenes, speculation swirled over a possible meeting between Obama and Rouhani on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in September, which both attended. Burns and Sullivan sought to arrange face-to-face talks, but the meeting never happened largely due to Iranian concerns, the officials said. Two days later, though, Obama and Rouhani spoke by phone – the first direct contact between a U.S. and Iranian leader in more than 30 years.

It was only after that Obama-Rouhani phone call that the U.S. began informing allies of the secret talks with Iran, the U.S. officials said.

Obama handled the most sensitive conversation himself, briefing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a Sept. 30 meeting at the White House. He informed Netanyahu only about the two summer meetings, not the March talks, in keeping with the White House’s promise only to tell allies about discussions with Iran that were substantive.

The U.S. officials would not describe Netanyahu’s reaction. But the next day, he delivered his General Assembly speech, blasting Rouhani as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and warning the U.S. against mistaking a change in Iran’s tone with an actual change in nuclear ambitions. The Israeli leader has subsequently denounced the potential nuclear agreement as the “deal of the century” for Iran.

America’s negotiating partners were then informed, though European officials said they assumed something was cooking between Washington and Tehran based on the surprising progress toward a deal after more than a decade of stalemate.

The secrecy of Obama’s effort may explain some of the tensions between the U.S. and France, which earlier this month balked at the proposed accord, and with Israel, which is furious about the agreement and has angrily denounced the diplomatic outreach to Tehran.

Burns and Sullivan continued their efforts behind the scenes at this month’s larger formal negotiations between world powers and Iran in Geneva, though the State Department went to great lengths to conceal their involvement.

Their names were left off of the official delegation list. They were housed at a different hotel than the rest of the U.S. delegation, used back entrances to come and go from meeting venues and were whisked into negotiating sessions from service elevators or unused corridors only after photographers left.

Congress hasn’t been notified in detail about the secret diplomacy. That could also pose a challenge for Obama, who has been waging a tense battle with Republicans and Democrats alike to prevent them from enacting new sanctions against Iran at the same time he has been offering Tehran some relief.

Several lawmakers from both parties openly scoffed Sunday at the terms of the deal between world powers and Iran. And in a reflection of the primary role played by his administration, some already are referring to the end result as Obama’s agreement. None said they had been briefed on the secret talks.

“I don’t know how to react,” Sen. Bob Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s top Republican, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “The administration has been trying to set the framework for these discussions for some time and I guess I’m not really particularly shocked that this has occurred.”

Business Elites Are Waging Brutal Class War in America

By Noam Chomsky, Zuccotti Park Press

24 November 13

@ Readersupportednews.org

The business classes are constantly fighting a bitter class war to improve their power and diminish opposition.

An article that recently came out inRolling Stone, titled “Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail,” by Matt Taibbi, asserts that the government is afraid to prosecute powerful bankers, such as those running HSBC. Taibbi says that there’s “an arrestable class and an unarrestable class.” What is your view on the current state of class war in the U.S.?

Well, there’s always a class war going on. The United States, to an unusual extent, is a business-run society, more so than others. The business classes are very class-conscious—they’re constantly fighting a bitter class war to improve their power and diminish opposition. Occasionally this is recognized.

We don’t use the term “working class” here because it’s a taboo term. You’re supposed to say “middle class,” because it helps diminish the understanding that there’s a class war going on.

It’s true that there was a one-sided class war, and that’s because the other side hadn’t chosen to participate, so the union leadership had for years pursued a policy of making a compact with the corporations, in which their workers, say the autoworkers—would get certain benefits like fairly decent wages, health benefits and so on. But it wouldn’t engage the general class structure. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why Canada has a national health program and the United States doesn’t. The same unions on the other side of the border were calling for health care for everybody. Here they were calling for health care for themselves and they got it. Of course, it’s a compact with corporations that the corporations can break anytime they want, and by the 1970s they were planning to break it and we’ve seen what has happened since.

This is just one part of a long and continuing class war against working people and the poor. It’s a war that is conducted by a highly class-conscious business leadership, and it’s one of the reasons for the unusual history of the U.S. labor movement. In the U.S., organized labor has been repeatedly and extensively crushed, and has endured a very violent history as compared with other countries.

In the late 19th century there was a major union organization, Knights of Labor, and also a radical populist movement based on farmers. It’s hard to believe, but it was based in Texas, and it was quite radical. They wanted their own banks, their own cooperatives, their own control over sales and commerce. It became a huge movement that spread over major farming areas.

The Farmers’ Alliance did try to link up with the Knights of Labor, which would have been a major class-based organization if it had succeeded. But the Knights of Labor were crushed by violence, and the Farmers’ Alliance was dismantled in other ways. As a result, one of the major popular democratic forces in American history was essentially dismantled. There are a lot of reasons for it, one of which was that the Civil War has never really ended. One effect of the Civil War was that the political parties that came out of it were sectarian parties, so the slogan was, “You vote where you shoot,” and that remains the case.

Take a look at the red states and the blue states in the last election: It’s the Civil War. They’ve changed party labels, but other than that, it’s the same: sectarian parties that are not class-based because divisions are along different lines. There are a lot of reasons for it.

The enormous benefits given to the very wealthy, the privileges for the very wealthy here, are way beyond those of other comparable societies and are part of the ongoing class war. Take a look at CEO salaries. CEOs are no more productive or brilliant here than they are in Europe, but the pay, bonuses, and enormous power they get here are out of sight. They’re probably a drain on the economy, and they become even more powerful when they are able to gain control of policy decisions.

That’s why we have a sequester over the deficit and not over jobs, which is what really matters to the population. But it doesn’t matter to the banks, so the heck with it. It also illustrates the consider- able shredding of the whole system of democracy. So, by now, they rank people by income level or wages roughly the same: The bottom 70 percent or so are virtually disenfranchised; they have almost no influence on policy, and as you move up the scale you get more influence. At the very top, you basically run the show.

A good topic to research, if possible, would be “why people don’t vote.” Nonvoting is very high, roughly 50 percent, even in presidential elections—much higher in others. The attitudes of people who don’t vote are studied. First of all, they mostly identify themselves as Democrats. And if you look at their attitudes, they are mostly Social Democratic. They want jobs, they want benefits, they want the government to be involved in social services and so on, but they don’t vote, partly, I suppose, because of the impediments to voting. It’s not a big secret. Republicans try really hard to prevent people from voting, because the more that people vote, the more trouble they are in. There are other reasons why people don’t vote. I suspect, but don’t know how to prove, that part of the reason people don’t vote is they just know their votes don’t make any difference, so why make the effort? So you end up with a kind of plutocracy in which the public opinion doesn’t matter much. It is not unlike other countries in this respect, but more extreme. All along, it’s more extreme. So yes, there is a constant class war going on.

The case of labor is crucial, because it is the base of organization of any popular opposition to the rule of capital, and so it has to be dismantled. There’s a tax on labor all the time. During the 1920s, the labor movement was virtually smashed by Wilson’s Red Scare and other things. In the 1930s, it reconstituted and was the driving force of the New Deal, with the CIO organizing and so on. By the late 1930s, the business classes were organizing to try to react to this. They began, but couldn’t do much during the war, because things were on hold, but immediately after the war it picked up with the Taft-Hartley Act and huge propaganda campaigns, which had massive effect. Over the years, the effort to undermine the unions and labor generally succeeded. By now, private-sector unionization is very low, partly because, since Reagan, government has pretty much told employers, “You know you can violate the laws, and we’re not going to do anything about it.” Under Clinton, NAFTA offered a method for employers to illegally undermine labor organizing by threatening to move enterprises to Mexico. A number of illegal operations by employers shot up at that time. What’s left are private-sector unions, and they’re under bipartisan attack.

They’ve been protected somewhat because the federal laws did function for the public-sector unions, but now they’re under bipartisan attack. When Obama declares a pay freeze for federal workers, that’s actually a tax on federal workers. It comes to the same thing, and, of course, this is right at the time we say that we can’t raise taxes on the very rich. Take the last tax agreement where the Republicans claimed, “We already gave up tax increases.” Take a look at what happened. Raising the payroll tax, which is a tax on working people, is much more of a tax increase than raising taxes on the super-rich, but that passed quietly because we don’t look at those things.

The same is happening across the board. There are major efforts being made to dismantle Social Security, the public schools, the post office—anything that benefits the population has to be dismantled. Efforts against the U.S. Postal Service are particularly surreal. I’m old enough to remember the Great Depression, a time when the country was quite poor but there were still postal deliveries. Today, post offices, Social Security, and public schools all have to be dismantled because they are seen as being based on a principle that is regarded as extremely dangerous.

If you care about other people, that’s now a very dangerous idea. If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself. Maybe you can become rich, but you don’t care whether other people’s kids can go to school, or can afford food to eat, or things like that. In the United States, that’s called “libertarian” for some wild reason. I mean, it’s actually highly authoritarian, but that doctrine is extremely important for power systems as a way of atomizing and undermining the public.

That’s why unions had the slogan, “solidarity,” even though they may not have lived up to it. And that’s what really counts: solidarity, mutual aid, care for one another and so on. And it’s really important for power systems to undermine that ideologically, so huge efforts go into it. Even trying to stimulate consumerism is an effort to undermine it. Having a market society automatically carries with it an undermining of solidarity. For example, in the market system you have a choice: You can buy a Toyota or you can buy a Ford, but you can’t buy a subway because that’s not offered. Market systems don’t offer common goods; they offer private consumption. If you want a subway, you’re going to have to get together with other people and make a collective decision. Otherwise, it’s simply not an option within the market system, and as democracy is increasingly undermined, it’s less and less of an option within the public system. All of these things converge, and they’re all part of general class war.

Can you give some insight on how the labor movement could rebuild in the United States?

Well, it’s been done before. Each time labor has been attacked—and as I said, in the 1920s the labor movement was practically destroyed—popular efforts were able to reconstitute it. That can happen again. It’s not going to be easy. There are institutional barriers, ideological barriers, cultural barriers. One big problem is that the white working class has been pretty much abandoned by the political system. The Democrats don’t even try to organize them anymore. The Republicans claim to do it; they get most of the vote, but they do it on non-economic issues, on non-labor issues. They often try to mobilize them on the grounds of issues steeped in racism and sexism and so on, and here the liberal policies of the 1960s had a harmful effect because of some of the ways in which they were carried out. There are some pretty good studies of this. Take busing to integrate schools. In principle, it made some sense, if you wanted to try to overcome segregated schools. Obviously, it didn’t work. Schools are probably more segregated now for all kinds of reasons, but the way it was originally done undermined class solidarity.

For example, in Boston there was a program for integrating the schools through busing, but the way it worked was restricted to urban Boston, downtown Boston. So black kids were sent to the Irish neighborhoods and conversely, but the suburbs were left out. The suburbs are more affluent, professional and so on, so they were kind of out of it. Well, what happens when you send black kids into an Irish neighborhood? What happens when some Irish telephone linemen who have worked all their lives finally got enough money to buy small houses in a neighborhood where they want to send their kids to the local school and cheer for the local football team and have a community, and so on? All of a sudden, some of their kids are being sent out, and black kids are coming in. How do you think at least some of these guys will feel? At least some end up being racists. The suburbs are out of it, so they can cluck their tongues about how racist everyone is elsewhere, and that kind of pattern was carried out all over the country.

The same has been true of women’s rights. But when you have a working class that’s under real pressure, you know, people are going to say that rights are being undermined, that jobs are being under- mined. Maybe the one thing that the white working man can hang onto is that he runs his home? Now that that’s being taken away and nothing is being offered, he’s not part of the program of advancing women’s rights. That’s fine for college professors, but it has a different effect in working-class areas. It doesn’t have to be that way. It depends on how it’s done, and it was done in a way that simply undermined natural solidarity. There are a lot of factors that play into it, but by this point it’s going to be pretty hard to organize the working class on the grounds that should really concern them: common solidarity, common welfare.

In some ways, it shouldn’t be too hard, because these attitudes are really prized by most of the population. If you look at Tea Party members, the kind that say, “Get the government off my back, I want a small government” and so on, when their attitudes are studied, it turns out that they’re mostly social democratic. You know, people are human after all. So yes, you want more money for health, for help, for people who need it and so on and so forth, but “I don’t want the government, get that off my back” and related attitudes are tricky to overcome.

Some polls are pretty amazing. There was one conducted in the South right before the presidential elections. Just Southern whites, I think, were asked about the economic plans of the two candidates, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Southern whites said they preferred Romney’s plan, but when asked about its particular components, they opposed every one. Well, that’s the effect of good propaganda: getting people not to think in terms of their own interests, let alone the interest of communities and the class they’re part of. Overcoming that takes a lot of work. I don’t think it’s impossible, but it’s not going to happen easily.

In a recent article about the Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest,*you discuss Henry Vane, who was beheaded for drafting a petition that called the people’s power “the original from whence all just power arises.” Would you agree the coordinated repression of Occupy was like the beheading of Vane?

Occupy hasn’t been treated nicely, but we shouldn’t exaggerate. Compared with the kind of repression that usually goes on, it wasn’t that severe. Just ask people who were part of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, in the South, let’s say. It was incomparably worse, as was just showing up at anti-war demonstrations where people were getting maced and beaten and so on. Activist groups get repressed. Power systems don’t pat them on the head. Occupy was treated badly, but not off the spectrum—in fact, in some ways not as bad as others. I wouldn’t draw exaggerated comparisons. It’s not like beheading somebody who says, “Let’s have popular power.”

How does the Charter of the Forest relate to environmental and indigenous resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline?

A lot. The Charter of the Forest, which was half the Magna Carta, has more or less been forgotten. The forest didn’t just mean the woods. It meant common property, the source of food, fuel. It was a common possession, so it was cared for. The forests were cultivated in common and kept functioning, because they were part of people’s common possessions, their source of livelihood, and even a source of dignity. That slowly collapsed in England under the enclosure movements, the state efforts to shift to private ownership and control. In the United States it happened differently, but the privatization is similar. What you end up with is the widely held belief, now standard doctrine, that’s called “the tragedy of the commons” in Garrett Hardin’s phrase. According to this view, if things are held in common and aren’t privately owned, they’re going to be destroyed. His- tory shows the exact opposite: When things were held in common, they were preserved and maintained. But, according to the capitalist ethic, if things aren’t privately owned, they’re going to be ruined, and that’s “the tragedy of the commons.” So, therefore, you have to put everything under private control and take it away from the public, because the public is just going to destroy it.

Now, how does that relate to the environmental problem? Very significantly: the commons are the environment. When they’re a common possession—not owned, but everybody holds them together in a community—they’re preserved, sustained and cultivated for the next generation. If they’re privately owned, they’re going to be destroyed for profit; that’s what private owner- ship is, and that’s exactly what’s happening today.

What you say about the indigenous population is very striking. There’s a major problem that the whole species is facing. A likelihood of serious disaster may be not far off. We are approaching a kind of tipping point, where climate change becomes irreversible. It could be a couple of decades, maybe less, but the predictions are constantly being shown to be too conservative. It is a very serious danger; no sane person can doubt it. The whole species is facing a real threat for the first time in its history of serious disaster, and there are some people trying to do some- thing about it and there are others trying to make it worse. Who are they? Well, the ones who are trying to make it better are the pre-industrial societies, the pre-technological societies, the indigenous societies, the First Nations. All around the world, these are the communities that are trying to preserve the rights of nature.

The rich societies, like the United States and Canada, are acting in ways to bring about disaster as quickly as possible. That’s what it means, for example, when both political parties and the press talk enthusiastically about “a century of energy independence.” “Energy independence” doesn’t mean a damn thing, but put that aside. A century of “energy independence” means that we make sure that every bit of Earth’s fossil fuels comes out of the ground and we burn it. In societies that have large indigenous populations, like, for example, Ecuador, an oil producer, people are trying to get support for keeping the oil in the ground. They want funding so as to keep the oil where it ought to be. We, however, have to get everything out of the ground, including tar sands, then burn it, which makes things as bad as possible as quickly as possible. So you have this odd situation where the educated, “advanced” civilized people are trying to cut everyone’s throats as quickly as possible and the indigenous, less educated, poorer populations are trying to prevent the disaster. If somebody was watching this from Mars, they’d think this species was insane.

As far as a free, democracy-centered society, self- organization seems possible on small scales. Do you think it is possible on a larger scale and with human rights and quality of life as a standard, and if so, what community have you visited that seems closest to an example to what is possible?

Well, there are a lot of things that are possible. I have visited some examples that are pretty large scale, in fact, very large scale. Take Spain, which is in a huge economic crisis. But one part of Spain is doing okay—that’s the Mondragón col- lective. It’s a big conglomerate involving banks, industry, housing, all sorts of things. It’s worker owned, not worker managed, so partial industrial democracy, but it exists in a capitalist economy, so it’s doing all kinds of ugly things like exploiting foreign labor and so on. But economically and socially, it’s flourishing as compared with the rest of the society and other societies. It is very large, and that can be done anywhere. It certainly can be done here. In fact, there are tentative explorations of contacts between the Mondragón and the United Steelworkers, one of the more progressive unions, to think about developing comparable structures here, and it’s being done to an extent.

The one person who has written very well about this is Gar Alperovitz, who is involved in organizing work around enterprises in parts of the old Rust Belt, which are pretty successful and could be spread just as a cooperative could be spread. There are really no limits to it other than willingness to participate, and that is, as always, the problem. If you’re willing to adhere to the task and gauge yourself, there’s no limit.

Actually, there’s a famous sort of paradox posed by David Hume centuries ago. Hume is one of the founders of classical liberalism. He’s an important philosopher and a political philoso- pher. He said that if you take a look at societies around the world—any of them—power is in the hands of the governed, those who are being ruled. Hume asked, why don’t they use that power and overthrow the masters and take control? He says, the answer has to be that, in all societies, the most brutal, the most free, the governed can be controlled by control of opinion. If you can con trol their attitudes and beliefs and separate them from one another and so on, then they won’t rise up and overthrow you.

That does require a qualification. In the more brutal and repressive societies, controlling opinion is less important, because you can beat people with a stick. But as societies become more free, it becomes more of a problem, and we see that historically. The societies that develop the most expansive propaganda systems are also the most free societies.

The most extensive propaganda system in the world is the public relations industry, which developed in Britain and the United States. A century ago, dominant sectors recognized that enough freedom had been won by the population. They reasoned that it’s hard to control people by force, so they had to do it by turning the attitudes and opinions of the population with propaganda and other devices of separation and marginalization, and so on. Western powers have become highly skilled in this.

In the United States, the advertising and public relations industry is huge. Back in the more honest days, they called it propaganda. Now the term doesn’t sound nice, so it’s not used anymore, but it’s basically a huge propaganda system which is designed very extensively for quite specific purposes.

First of all, it has to undermine markets by trying to create irrational, uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices. That’s what advertising is about, the opposite of what a market is supposed to be, and anybody who turns on a television set can see that for themselves. It has to do with monopolization and product differentiation, all sorts of things, but the point is that you have to drive the population to irrational consumption, which does separate them from one another.

As I said, consumption is individual, so it’s not done as an act of solidarity—so you don’t have ads on television saying, “Let’s get together and build a mass transportation system.” Who’s going to fund that? The other thing they need to do is undermine democracy the same way, so they run campaigns, political campaigns mostly run by PR agents. It’s very clear what they have to do. They have to create uninformed voters who will make irrational decisions, and that’s what the campaigns are about. Billions of dollars go into it, and the idea is to shred democracy, restrict markets to service the rich, and make sure the power gets concentrated, that capital gets concentrated and the people are driven to irrational and self-destructive behavior. And it is self-destructive, often dramatically so. For example, one of the first achievements of the U.S. public relations system back in the 1920s was led, incidentally, by a figure honored by Wilson, Roosevelt and Kennedy—liberal progressive Edward Bernays.

His first great success was to induce women to smoke. In the 1920s, women didn’t smoke. So here’s this big population which was not buying cigarettes, so he paid young models to march down New York City’s Fifth Avenue holding cigarettes. His message to women was, “You want to be cool like a model? You should smoke a cigarette.” How many millions of corpses did that create? I’d hate to calculate it. But it was considered an enormous success. The same is true of the murderous character of corporate propaganda with tobacco, asbestos, lead, chemicals, vinyl chloride, across the board. It is just shocking, but PR is a very honored profession, and it does control people and undermine their options of working together. And so that’s Hume’s paradox, but people don’t have to submit to it. You can see through it and struggle against it.