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By Garikai Chengu

12 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Contrary to popular belief, Libya , which western media described as “Gaddafi’s military dictatorship” was in actual fact one of the world’s most democratic States.

In 1977 the people of Libya proclaimed the Jamahiriya or “government of the popular masses by themselves and for themselves.” The Jamahiriya was a higher form of direct democracy with ‘the People as President.’ Traditional institutions of government were disbanded and abolished, and power belonged to the people directly through various committees and congresses.

The nation State of Libya was divided into several small communities that were essentially “mini-autonomous States” within a State. These autonomous States had control over their districts and could make a range of decisions including how to allocate oil revenue and budgetary funds. Within these mini autonomous States, the three main bodies of Libya ‘s democracy were Local Committees, People’s Congresses and Executive Revolutionary Councils.

In 2009, Mr. Gaddafi invited the New York Times to Libya to spend two weeks observing the nation’s direct democracy. Even the New York Times, that was always highly critical of Colonel Gaddafi, conceded that in Libya, the intention was that “everyone is involved in every decision…Tens of thousands of people take part in local committee meetings to discuss issues and vote on everything from foreign treaties to building schools.” The purpose of these committee meetings was to build a broad based national consensus.

One step up from the Local Committees were the People’s Congresses. Representatives from all 800 local committees around the country would meet several times a year at People’s Congresses, in Mr. Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, to pass laws based on what the people said in their local meetings. These congresses had legislative power to write new laws, formulate economic and public policy as well as ratify treaties and agreements.

All Libyans were allowed to take part in local committees meetings and at times Colonel Gaddafi was criticised. In fact, there were numerous occasions when his proposals were rejected by popular vote and the opposite was approved and put forward for legislation.

For instance, on many occasions Mr. Gaddafi proposed the abolition of capital punishment and he pushed for home schooling over traditional schools. However, the People’s Congresses wanted to maintain the death penalty and classic schools, and ultimately the will of the People’s Congresses prevailed. Similarly, in 2009, Colonel Gaddafi put forward a proposal to essentially abolish the central government altogether and give all the oil proceeds directly to each family. The People’s Congresses rejected this idea too.

One step up from the People’s Congresses were the Executive Revolutionary Councils. These Revolutionary Councils were elected by the People’s Congresses and were in charge of implementing policies put forward by the people. Revolutionary Councils were accountable only to ordinary citizens and may have been changed or recalled by them at any time. Consequently, decisions taken by the People’s Congresses and implemented by the Executive Revolutionary Councils reflected the sovereign will of the whole people, and not merely that of any particular class, faction, tribe or individual.

The Libyan direct democracy system utilized the word ‘elevation’ rather than‘election’, and avoided the political campaigning that is a feature of traditional political parties and benefits only the bourgeoisie’s well-heeled and well-to-do.

Unlike in the West, Libyans did not vote once every four years for a President and local parliamentarian who would then make all decisions for them. Ordinary Libyans made decisions regarding foreign, domestic and economic policy themselves.

Several western commentators have rightfully pointed out that the unique Jamahiriya system had certain drawbacks, inter alia, regarding attendance, initiative to speak up, and sufficient supervision. Nevertheless, it is clear that Libya conceptualized sovereignty and democracy in a different and progressive way.

Democracy is not just about elections or political parties. True democracy is also about human rights. During the NATO bombardment of Libya , western media conveniently forgot to mention that the United Nations had just prepared a lengthy dossier praising Mr. Gaddafi’s human rights achievements. The UN report commended Libya for bettering its “legal protections” for citizens, making human rights a “priority,” improving women’s rights, educational opportunities and access to housing. During Mr. Gaddafi’s era housing was considered a human right. Consequently, there was virtually no homelessness or Libyans living under bridges. How many Libyan homes and bridges did NATO destroy?

One area where the United Nations Human Rights Council praised Mr. Gaddafi profusely is women’s rights. Unlike many other nations in the Arab world, women in Libya had the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, hold property and have an income. When Colonel Gaddafi seized power in 1969, few women went to university. Today more than half of Libya ‘s university students are women. One of the first laws Mr. Gaddafi passed in 1970 was an equal pay for equal work law, only a few years after a similar law was passed in the U.S. In fact, Libyan working mothers enjoyed a range of benefits including cash bonuses for children, free day care, free health care centres and retirement at 55.

Democracy is not merely about holding elections simply to choose which particular representatives of the elite class should rule over the masses. True democracy is about democratising the economy and giving economic power to the majority.

Fact is, the west has shown that unfettered free markets and genuinely free elections simply cannot co-exist. Organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. How can capitalism and democracy co-exist if one concentrates wealth and power in the hands of few, and the other seeks to spread power and wealth among many? Mr. Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya however, sought to spread economic power amongst the downtrodden many rather than just the privileged few.

Prior to Colonel Gaddafi, King Idris let Standard Oil essentially write Libya ‘s petroleum laws. Mr. Gaddafi put an end to all of that. Money from oil proceeds was deposited directly into every Libyan citizen’s bank account. One wonders if Exxon Mobil and British Petroleum will continue this practice under the new democratic Libya ?

Democracy is not merely about elections or political parties. True democracy is also about equal opportunity through education and the right to life through access to health care. Therefore, isn’t it ironic that America supposedly bombarded Libya to spread democracy, but increasingly education in America is becoming a privilege not a right and ultimately a debt sentence. If a bright and talented child in the richest nation on earth cannot afford to go to the best schools, society has failed that child. In fact, for young people the world over, education is a passport to freedom. Any nation that makes one pay for such a passport is only free for the rich but not the poor.

Under Mr. Gaddafi, education was a human right and it was free for all Libyans. If a Libyan was unable to find employment after graduation the State would pay that person the average salary of their profession.

For millions of Americans health care is also increasingly becoming a privilege not a right. A recent study by Harvard Medical School estimates that lack of health insurance causes 44,789 excess deaths annually in America . Under Mr. Gaddafi, health care was a human right and it was free for all Libyans. Thus, with regards to health care, education and economic justice, is America in any position to export democracy to Libya or should America have taken a leaf out of Libya ‘s book?

Muammar Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa . However, by the time he was assassinated, Libya was unquestionably Africa ‘s most prosperous nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy in Africa and less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands . Libyans did not only enjoy free health care and free education, they also enjoyed free electricity and interest free loans. The price of petrol was around $0.14 per liter and 40 loaves of bread cost just $0.15. Consequently, the UN designated Libya the 53rd highest in the world in human development.

The fundamental difference between western democratic systems and the Jamahiriya’s direct democracy is that in Libya citizens were given the chance to contribute directly to the decision-making process, not merely through elected representatives. Hence, all Libyans were allowed to voice their views directly – not in one parliament of only a few hundred elite politicians – but in hundreds of committees attended by tens of thousands of ordinary citizens. Far from being a military dictatorship, Libya under Mr. Gaddafi was Africa ‘s most prospero us democracy.

Garikai Chengu is Fellow of the Du Bois Institute for African Research

Harvard University. Garikai can be contacted at chengu@fas.harvard.edu

By Ghali Hassan

12 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

On 01 January 2013, Australia began its two-year non-permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). With no foreign policy of its own, Australia will kowtow to the U.S., supporting and participating in U.S. aggression at the expense of world peace and Australia’s national interests.

It is worth noting that Australia won the required votes not because Australia is a forward-looking, progressive and peace-loving nation. Australia spent a large amount of taxpayers’ money bribing and coercing other smaller nations to vote for Australia. Even Australia’s aid funding to poor nations has been skewed to win votes. In other words, Australia did not win on merit, Australia bought the votes. The aim of this costly campaign is designed to elevate Australia’s status as a subservient U.S. ally and an obstacle to world peace.

Palestine

Australians did not have to wait too long to see the direction of Australia’s foreign policy at the UN. The first litmus test was the UN General Assembly vote on a resolution to upgrade Palestine to a non-member observer status at the UN. The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, like her predecessors is an unconditional supporter of the fascist state of Israel and had wanted Australia to join the U.S. and Israel to vote against the resolution. Ms Gillard lost because the majority of the Labor Party cabinet were against her. However, after years of kowtowing to the U.S.-Israel Zionist agenda, Australia caved to Zionist and U.S. pressures and abstained from a vote. Palestine was declared as an observer state by a 138-9 vote. Australian abstention from voting was an act of cowardice consistent with Australia’s long history of unconditionally supporting and financing Israel’s terror and war crimes in Palestine.

In Israel, Israeli leaders reciprocated in kind for the unconditional support by slapping their supporters and allies in the face and exposing their complicity in the crimes against the Palestinians. The fascist regime of Netanyahu announced the building of new (illegal) Jews-only Zionist colonies (settlements) on stolen Palestinian land and killing any meagre hope of a “two-State” solution.

Syria

Australia has joined the U.S. and its anti-Syria’s conglomerate states – Israel, NATO states, including Turkey, Jordan, and their beloved Gulf dictators – in supporting the on-going foreign-sponsored terrorist attacks against Syria. In fact, Australia was one of the first countries to follow the U.S. diktats and imposed sanctions, including the sale of medicines, putting millions of Syrian lives at risk. The Australian foreign minister, Bob Carr, has suggested that President Bashar al-Assad and his close associates be assassinated, an act of naked terrorism and in flagrant violation of UN Charter and international law. His predecessor, Kevin Rudd has called for more arms to the terrorists. Both, Bob Carr and Kevin Rudd must be fully aware that, the majority of the Syrian people support the Government of Bashar al-Assad and are vehemently opposed to foreign-sponsored aggression and interference. If Australia – and other nations – is really concern about human rights in Syria, Australia should make efforts to assist Syrian refugees in desperate need of help and facing a humanitarian catastrophe.

The violence in Syria is fuelled by the U.S. and its conglomerate states since early 2011. They have been using foreign-sponsored terrorists, including Turks, Israelis, Australians, Brits, Uzbeks, Saudis, Qataris, Libyans, etc. The U.S. and its allies are supplying these “good” terrorists and mercenaries with weapons and cash – hoping to achieve a well-established Zionist aim of destabilising and neutralising Syria as a divided and failed state modelled on Iraq and Libya. The deliberate destruction of Syria is design to isolate Iran and pave the way for the long-awaited U.S.-Israel military aggression against Iran.

Iran

According to a July 2008 WikiLeaks cable, Israeli Ambassador to Australia, Yuval Rotem said, “Israel sees Australia as playing an important role in the ‘global PR battle’ on Iran because PM [Kevin] Rudd is viewed favourably by the ‘European Left,’ many of whom are sceptical about taking a tough line towards Tehran.” Under Prime Minister Gillard, Australia is a loyal tool easily used by anti-Muslim war-thirsty Zionists. In October 2008, Australia imposed its own unilateral sanctions against Iran. As it did against the people of Iraq more than a decade ago, “Australia wants the most robust, intrusive and debilitating sanctions possible” to cripple Iran’s economy. How can the Australian Government justify its hostile policy towards a law-abiding, non-nuclear Iran while unconditionally supporting a nuclear-armed and an outlaw fascist regime in Israel?

The Region

As tension simmered in the Region, Australia has permitted thousands of U.S. marines to be stationed in Darwin, and has hinted at allowing the deployment of more U.S. forces, including a nuclear aircraft carrier and nuclear submarines on Australian soil. In addition, the U.S. has already spy stations in Western Australia and on Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean. As a U.S.-appointed “deputy sheriff”, Australia is already on the U.S. war bandwagon and remains hostage to U.S. aggressive policies. Despite Australia’s heavy reliance on China as an export market for Australian raw materials, Australia backs the U.S. in its aggressive policy of “containing” China, by force if necessary. On North Korea, Australian politicians have become accustomed to regurgitating U.S. false propaganda. Australia’s foreign minister, Bob Carr has singled-out North Korea as a threat to the Region. In reality, it is the U.S. militarism that poses the greatest threat to the Region, and the world in general, not North Korea.

Human Rights

In the last decade, Australian has enacted the most draconian laws, specifically targeting Muslim Australians and vulnerable refugees fleeing Western-sponsored violence and repression in their homelands. There are now 45 laws targeting Muslims. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the police have unprecedented powers to detain without charge, harass, monitor and report on peaceful Muslim Australians. They are under siege and their lives are being invaded by the state. This, of course, has put Muslim Australians under extreme pressure and led to overt racism in employment, housing and education.

Regarding refugees, in violation of human right laws and UN Refugee Convention, Australia now has the most anti-refugee policies of any decent government. Thousands of refugees have perished at sea desperately trying to reach Australia. Not deterred by a worldwide condemnation of its policies, Australia has been advocating and promoting these inhumane anti-refugees laws around the world. The country that many people love and called “home” has become as racist as Europe. In fact, Australia has become a preferred haven for the most racist new European migrants.

Finally, whether under Labor or Liberal government, Australia’s complicity in U.S. criminal wars will continue, despite strong opposition by a majority of Australians. Successive Australian Governments have endorsed and participated in U.S. aggression against defenceless people. From Vietnam and Afghanistan to Iraq, Australia provided the U.S. with a well-trained mercenary force.

Australia’s non-permanent membership of the UNSC will change nothing as long as Australia remains a hostage to U.S. criminal policies and among the obstacles to world peace. The Australian Government’s campaign to gain a seat at the UNSC was a waste of taxpayer money and will not serve world peace and Australia’s national interests. Most Australians do not support their Government’s complicity in U.S. aggression and would expect that their Government takes a leading role in advancing world peace and upholding human rights law.

Ghali Hassan is an independent political analyst living in Australia.

By Countercurrents.org

10 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Actual sea level rise could be much higher than earlier predictions. It could be more than three feet. Millions of people will be displaced. To cope with rising sea level, mega-cities including New York and Tokyo may need billions of dollars.

Mother Nature Network’s John Platt reported*:

In 2007, the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that global warming could cause sea levels to rise between 7 and 23 inches by the end of the century. A new study published this week says the actual levels of sea rise could be much higher — up to three feet higher.

The consequences of sea level rise at that proportion would be “horrible,” the study’s co-author told NBC News. Millions of people living in coastal areas would be displaced and mega-cities such as New York City and Tokyo would need to spend billions of dollars to improve their infrastructure to avoid flooding.

The study was published Jan. 6 in the journal Nature Climate Change. The paper claims that the IPCC report — which is in the process of being updated — did not fully anticipate the risk of melting Antarctic and Greenland glacial ice sheets and therefore underestimates the risk. The authors, J.L. Bamber and W.P. Aspinall of the University of Bristol in the U.K., pooled the findings of other researchers and came up with new estimates for sea level rise by 2100.

Depending on the climate-change scenario, they predict that sea levels could rise between 11.4 and 33 inches (there was only a 5 percent chance of reaching this level, according to the experts’ data). If rising temperatures also cause ocean waters to expand, the total sea rise could be more than three feet.

Bamber and Aspinall prepared this paper by polling 26 glaciologists around the world in 2010 and 2012. Bamber told NBC News that this technique, which has been used for earthquakes and volcanoes but not previously for climate change, is “a lot more than an opinion poll” since it rigorously analyzes ice sheet modeling and other information.

“This is the first study of its kind on ice sheet melting to use a formalized mathematical pooling of experts’ opinions,” Bamber said in a news release. “It demonstrates the value and potential of this approach for a wide range of similar problems in climate change research, where past data and current numerical modeling have significant limitations when it comes to forecasting future trends and patterns.”

Bamber told NBC News that their study offers higher estimates than will be contained in the fifth IPCC assessment report, which is currently in the works. He is also serving as a reviewer of the IPCC report.

* Huffington Post, “Global Sea Level Rise By 2100 Could Top 3 Feet, New Study Suggests”, 01/08/2013

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/global-sea-level-rise_n_2435091.html?utm_hp_ref=climate-change

By Nick Turse,

08 January 13

@ TomDispatch

Pham To looked great for 78 years old. (At least, that’s about how old he thought he was.) His hair was thin, gray, and receding at the temples, but his eyes were lively and his physique robust – all the more remarkable given what he had lived through. I listened intently, as I had so many times before to so many similar stories, but it was still beyond my ability to comprehend. It’s probably beyond yours, too.

Pham To told me that the planes began their bombing runs in 1965 and that periodic artillery shelling started about the same time. Nobody will ever know just how many civilians were killed in the years after that. “The number is uncountable,” he said one spring day a few years ago in a village in the mountains of rural central Vietnam. “So many people died.”

And it only got worse. Chemical defoliants came next, ravaging the land. Helicopter machine gunners began firing on locals. By 1969, bombing and shelling were day-and-night occurrences. Many villagers fled. Some headed further into the mountains, trading the terror of imminent death for a daily struggle of hardscrabble privation; others were forced into squalid refugee resettlement areas. Those who remained in the village suffered more when the troops came through. Homes were burned as a matter of course. People were kicked and beaten. Men were shot when they ran in fear. Women were raped. One morning, a massacre by American soldiers wiped out 21 fellow villagers. This was the Vietnam War for Pham To, as for so many rural Vietnamese.

One, Two… Many Vietnams?

At the beginning of the Iraq War, and for years after, reporters, pundits, veterans, politicians, and ordinary Americans asked whether the American debacle in Southeast Asia was being repeated. Would it be “another Vietnam”? Would it become a “quagmire”?

The same held true for Afghanistan. Years after 9/11, as that war, too, foundered, questions about whether it was “Obama’s Vietnam” appeared ever more frequently. In fact, by October 2009, a majority of Americans had come to believe it was “turning into another Vietnam.”

In those years, “Vietnam” even proved a surprisingly two-sided analogy – after, at least, generals began reading and citing revisionist texts about that war. These claimed, despite all appearances, that the U.S. military had actually won in Vietnam (before the politicians, media, and antiwar movement gave the gains away). The same winning formula, they insisted, could be used to triumph again. And so, a failed solution from that failed war, counterinsurgency, or COIN, was trotted out as the military panacea for impending disaster.

Debated comparisons between the two ongoing wars and the one that somehow never went away, came to litter newspapers, journals, magazines, and the Internet – until David Petraeus, a top COINdinista general who had written his doctoral dissertation on the “lessons” of the Vietnam War, was called in to settle the matter by putting those lessons to work winning the other two. In the end, of course, U.S. troops were booted out of Iraq, while the war in Afghanistan continues to this day as a dismally devolving stalemate, now wracked by “green-on-blue” or “insider” attacks on U.S. forces, while the general himself returned to Washington as CIA director to run covert wars in Pakistan and Yemen before retiring in disgrace following a sex scandal.

Still, for all the ink about the “Vietnam analogy,” virtually none of the reporters, pundits, historians, generals, politicians, or other members of the chattering classes ever so much as mentioned the Vietnam War as Pham To knew it. In that way, they managed to miss the one unfailing parallel between America’s wars in all three places: civilian suffering.

For all the dissimilarities, botched analogies, and tortured comparisons, there has been one connecting thread in Washington’s foreign wars of the last half century that, in recent years at least, Americans have seldom found of the slightest interest: misery for local nationals. Civilian suffering is, in fact, the defining characteristic of modern war in general, even if only rarely discussed in the halls of power or the mainstream media.

An Unimaginable Toll

Pham To was lucky. He and Pham Thang, another victim and a neighbor, told me that, of the 2,000 people living in their village before the war, only 300 survived it. Bombing, shelling, a massacre, disease, and starvation had come close to wiping out their entire settlement. “So many people were hungry,” Pham Thang said. “With no food, many died. Others were sick and with medications unavailable, they died, too. Then there was the bombing and shelling, which took still more lives. They all died because of the war.”

Leaving aside those who perished from disease, hunger, or lack of medical care, at least 3.8 million Vietnamese died violent war deaths according to researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of Washington. The best estimate we have is that 2 million of them were civilians. Using a very conservative extrapolation, this suggests that 5.3 million civilians were wounded during the war, for a total of 7.3 million Vietnamese civilian casualties overall. To such figures might be added an estimated 11.7 million Vietnamese forced from their homes and turned into refugees, up to 4.8 million sprayed with toxic herbicides like Agent Orange, an estimated 800,000 to 1.3 million war orphans, and 1 million war widows.

The numbers are staggering, the suffering incalculable, the misery almost incomprehensible to most Americans but not, perhaps, to an Iraqi.

No one will ever know just how many Iraqis died in the wake of the U.S. invasion of 2003. In a country with an estimated population of about 25 million at the time, a much-debated survey – the results of which were published in the British medical journal The Lancet – suggested more than 601,000 violent “excess deaths” had occurred by 2006. Another survey indicated that more than 1.2 million Iraqi civilians had died because of the war (and the various internal conflicts that flowed from it) as of 2007. The Associated Press tallied up records of 110,600 deaths by early 2009. An Iraqi family health survey fixed the number at 151,000 violent deaths by June 2006. Official documents made public by Wikileaks counted 109,000 deaths, including 66,081 civilian deaths, between 2004 and 2009. Iraq Body Count has tallied as many as 121,220 documented cases of violent civilian deaths alone.

Then there are those 3.2 million Iraqis who were internally displaced or fled the violence to other lands, only to find uncertainty and deprivation in places like Jordan, Iran, and now war-torn Syria. By 2011, 9% or more of Iraq’s women, as many as 1 million, were widows (a number that skyrocketed in the years after the U.S. invasion). A recent survey found that 800,000 to 1 million Iraqi children had lost one or both parents, a figure that only grows with the continuing violence that the U.S. unleashed but never stamped out.

Today, the country, which experienced an enormous brain drain of professionals, has a total of 200 social workers and psychiatrists to aid all those, armed and unarmed, who suffered every sort of horror and trauma. (In just the last seven years, by comparison, the U.S. Veterans Administration has hired 7,000 new mental health professionals to deal with Americans who have been psychologically scarred by war.)

Many Afghans, too, would surely be able to relate to what Pham To and millions of Vietnamese war victims endured. For more than 30 years, Afghanistan has, with the rarest of exceptions, been at war. It all started with the 1979 Soviet invasion and Washington’s support for some of the most extreme of the Islamic militants who opposed the Russian occupation of the country.

The latest iteration of war there began with an invasion by U.S. and allied forces in 2001, and has since claimed the lives of many thousands of civilians in roadside and aerial bombings, suicide attacks and helicopter attacks, night raids and outright massacres. Untold numbers of Afghans have also died of everything from lack of access to medical care (there are just 2 doctors for every 10,000 Afghans) to exposure, including shocking reports of children freezing to death in refugee camps last winter and again this year. They were among the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have been internally displaced during the war. Millions more live as refugees outside the country, mostly in Iran and Pakistan. Of the women who remain in the country, up to 2 million are widows. In addition, there are now an estimated 2 million Afghan orphans. No wonder polling by Gallup this past summer found 96% of Afghans claiming they were either “suffering” or “struggling,” and just 4% “thriving.”

American Refugees in Mexico?

For most Americans, this type of unrelenting, war-related misery is unfathomable. Few have ever personally experienced anything like what their tax dollars have wrought in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia in the last half-century. And while surprising numbers of Americans do suffer from poverty and deprivation, few know anything about what it’s like to live through a year of war – let alone 10, as Pham To did – under the constant threat of air strikes, artillery fire, and violence perpetrated by foreign ground troops.

Still, as a simple thought experiment, let’s consider for a moment what it might be like in American terms. Imagine that the United States had experienced an occupation by a foreign military force. Imagine millions or even tens of millions of American civilians dead or wounded as a result of an invasion and resulting civil strife.

Imagine a country in which your door might be kicked down in the dead of night by heavily-armed, foreign young men, in strange uniforms, helmets and imposing body armor, yelling things in a language you don’t understand. Imagine them rifling through your drawers, upending your furniture, holding you at gunpoint, roughing up your husband or son or brother, and marching him off in the middle of the night. Imagine, as well, a country in which those foreigners kill American “insurgents” and then routinely strip them naked; in which those occupying troops sometimes urinate on American bodies (and shoot videos of it); or take trophy photos of their “kills”; or mutilate them; or pose with the body parts of dead Americans; or from time to time – for reasons again beyond your comprehension – rape or murder your friends and neighbors.

Imagine, for a moment, violence so extreme that you and literally millions like you have to flee your hometowns for squalid refugee camps or expanding slums ringing the nearest cities. Imagine trading your home for a new one without heat or electricity, possibly made of refuse with a corrugated metal roof that roars when it rains. Then imagine living there for months, if not years.

Imagine things getting so bad that you decide to trek across the Mexican border to live an uncertain life, forever wondering if your new violence- and poverty-wracked host nation will turn you out or if you’ll ever be able to return to your home in the U.S. Imagine living with these realities day after day for up to decade.

After natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy or Katrina, small numbers of Americans briefly experience something like what millions of war victims – Vietnamese, Iraqis, Afghans, and others – have often had to endure for significant parts of their lives. But for those in America’s war zones, there will be no telethons, benefit concerts, or texting fund drives.

Pham To and Pham Thang had to bury the bodies of their family members, friends, and neighbors after they were massacred by American troops passing through their village on patrol. They had to rebuild their homes and their lives after the war with remarkably little help. One thing was as certain for them as it has been for war-traumatized Iraqis and Afghans of our moment: no Hollywood luminaries lined up to help raise funds for them or their village. And they never will.

“We lost so many people and so much else. And this land was affected by Agent Orange, too. You’ve come to write about the war, but you could never know the whole story,” Pham Thang told me. Then he became circumspect. “Now, our two governments, our two countries, live in peace and harmony. And we just want to restore life to what it once was here. We suffered great losses. The U.S. government should offer assistance to help increase the local standard of living, provide better healthcare, and build infrastructure like better roads.”

No doubt – despite the last decade of U.S. nation-building debacles in its war zones – many Iraqis and Afghans would express similar sentiments. Perhaps they will even be saying the same sort of thing to an American reporter decades from now.

Over these last years, I’ve interviewed hundreds of war victims like Pham Thang, and he’s right: I’ll probably never come close to knowing what life was like for those whose worlds were upended by America’s foreign wars. And I’m far from alone. Most Americans never make it to a war zone, and even U.S. military personnel arrive only for finite tours of duty, while for combat correspondents and aid workers an exit door generally remains open. Civilians like Pham To, however, are in it for the duration.

In the Vietnam years, there was at least an antiwar movement in this country that included many Vietnam veterans who made genuine efforts to highlight the civilian suffering they knew was going on at almost unimaginable levels. In contrast, in the decade-plus since 9/11, with the rarest of exceptions, Americans have remained remarkably detached from their distant wars, thoroughly ignoring what can be known about the suffering that has been caused in their name.

As I was wrapping up my interview, Pham Thang asked me about the purpose of the last hour and a half of questions I’d asked him. Through my interpreter, I explained that most Americans knew next to nothing about Vietnamese suffering during the war and that most books written in my country on the war years ignored it. I wanted, I told him, to offer Americans the chance to hear about the experiences of ordinary Vietnamese for the first time.

“If the American people know about these incidents, if they learn about the wartime suffering of people in Vietnam, do you think they will sympathize?” he asked me.

Soon enough, I should finally know the answer to his question.

By Countercurrents.org

08 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Sanctions against Iran have started taking its toll. The country’s crude oil export has dropped.

A report [1] by Ladane Nasseri and Yeganeh Salehi said:

Iran’s crude oil shipments plunged 40 percent in the last nine months, state-run Iranian Students News Agency reported, in a rare acknowledgment that international sanctions are crimping the country’s most lucrative export.

Iran will export an estimated 1.5 million barrels a day in the Iranian year starting March 21, said Gholamreza Kateb, a spokesman for the parliamentary planning and budget committee, according to ISNA. Kateb, who didn’t provide comparable sales data for the current Iranian year, based his comments on a report Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi presented to the nation’s parliament, the agency reported today.

Revenue from sales of oil and natural gas condensates has fallen by 45 percent and faces a “considerable decrease” by March 20, Kateb said, according to ISNA.

Iran’s oil exports have dwindled as the US and European Union tighten sanctions on the Islamic republic’s energy and banking industries in an effort to deter its nuclear program. Iranian authorities and state-run media have typically played down the impact of sanctions on crude sales.

Formerly the second-biggest producer in the 12-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Iran has slipped to fifth place behind Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Venezuela and Kuwait, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It pumped 2.66 million barrels a day in December, 40,000 barrels a day less than in November, the data show.

The International Energy Agency, which advises the world’s biggest industrialized economies, said last month that Iranian oil exports will slump to 1 million barrels a day this month as European and Asian nations cut purchases to gain exemptions from US sanctions. The EU banned imports of Iranian crude in July.

China, the biggest importer of Iranian crude, reduced shipments by more than 20 percent in the first 11 months of 2012, the Paris-based IEA said.

Iran faces additional penalties starting in February that will prohibit the repatriation of export earnings, according to the agency.

An AFP report carried by Business Insider [2] on Jan 7, 2013 said:

Iran’s oil exports have been slashed 40 percent in the past nine months because of tough Western sanctions, Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi was quoted as saying in a reversal of his previous denials of any decline at all.

“There has been a 40 percent decrease in oil sales and a 45 percent decrease in repatriating oil money,” Qasemi told the Iranian parliament’s budget commission, according to the ISNA news agency citing MPs.

The minister said the final figures for the current Iranian calendar year, which ends in March 2013, would see “a significant decrease” in crude export revenues, but he did not provide any numbers.

The admission by Qasemi was significant, given that he was one of the officials who up to now had been most adamant in claiming that Iran’s crucial oil exports were entirely unaffected by draconian US and EU sanctions.

Those assertions have crumbled in recent months, with other Iranian officials acknowledging that the sanctions were hurting the economy.

Economy Minister Shamseddine Hosseini for instance last month admitted that oil revenues had plunged 50 percent because of the Western embargo, which took effect in July 2012.

According to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA), Iranian crude exports have fallen from around 2.4 million barrels per day (mbpd) in late 2011 to around 1.0 mbpd by the end of 2012.

The overall amount Iran is pumping out of its oil fields is estimated to have fallen by some 25 percent to 3.0 mbpd — its lowest level since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

In 2011, the Islamic republic relied on the $100 billion brought in by oil exports to cover 60 percent of the budget.

This year will see much less money to spend, several Iranian lawmakers and government officials have hinted.

“It is expected that oil exports will be 1.5 mbpd” in the next Iranian calendar year starting in March, Qasemi said, according to remarks relayed to ISNA by budget commission spokesman Gholam Reza Kateb.

The export plunge, and US sanctions restricting Iran’s ability to use international banking transactions to repatriate oil revenues, is costing the country around $5 billion per month, according to experts.

Despite the climbing evidence of hardship, Iran is sticking to what its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called a “resistance economy”, aiming for greater self-reliance and belt-tightening.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said late December that “we should be able to administer the country without reliance on oil revenues.”

His policies, though, have been blasted by hardline lawmakers for mismanaging the economy and worsening the situation.

The international sanctions targeting Iran aim to choke the country’s revenues used for its disputed nuclear program, and to force it to the negotiating table.

Iran insists the program is for purely peaceful purposes, and denies Western and Israeli allegations that it wants to manufacture nuclear weapons. It is defiantly forging on with uranium enrichment and says it will survive the Western pressure.

Another report [3] said:

Iran’s oil exports to Asia were subsequently targeted by an EU insurance ban on Iranian oil shipping and US sanctions against Tehran’s central bank.

Citing Iran’s Economist’s Intelligence Unit a report by the country’s state-owned Mehr News Agency said “nearly all of Iran’s oil exports now go to China, South Korea, Japan and India.”

The report cited a particular dependence on China, which is now estimated to purchase some 50 percent of Iran’s total oil exports.

Source:

[1] Bloomberg, “Iran Crude Oil Exports Drop 40 Percent Amid Sanctions, ISNA Says”, Jan 7, 2012, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-07/iran-crude-oil-exports-drop-40-percent-amid-sanctions-isna-says.html

[2] “Iran Admits That Oil Sanctions Are Having A Brutal Effect”, http://www.businessinsider.com/irans-oil-exports-have-dropped-by-forty-percent-in-the-last-nine-months-2013-1

[3] RT, “Iran admits oil exports fall by 40 percent amid crippling Western sanctions”, Jan 7, 2013,

http://rt.com/news/iran-oil-exports-drop-536/

By Richard Vodra JD CFP

08 January, 2013

@Advisor Perspectives

A few weeks ago, John Mauldin called fracking a “happy solution” that will produce jobs, potentially solve our trade deficit and generate new tax revenue, though energy prices may rise in the process. But how excited should we be about the “shale revolution”?

Over the last few years, we have seen increasing enthusiasm – bordering on hype – over the idea that horizontal drilling plus hydraulic fracturing of shale rock to produce oil and gas, commonly referred to as “fracking,” is changing everything. The US is about to be the leading oil-producing nation again, says the International Energy Agency. We have 100 years of abundant gas supplies, says President Obama. In the recent election, thanks to these developments, the candidates were actually debating how soon the United States would be “energy independent.”

Largely due to fracking in North Dakota and Texas, US oil production has grown from five million barrels per day (bpd) in 2008 to about 6.5 million bpd now, though that is still much less than the total amount we use. Natural gas production over that time has risen from 21 trillion cubic feet per year to about 24.7 trillion cubic feet today, led by fracking for gas in Texas, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania. After decades of declining production, these reverses are big news.

That’s indisputable. The question is “how big?”

Some background

First, a bit of geology. Oil and natural gas are ancient plant life that has been transformed by millions of years of pressure into hydrocarbons and captured in rock formations rather than escaping into the air. When these pressure-cooker carbons end up with a single carbon atom, the resulting methane is what we call natural gas. When there are two, three, or four carbons, the resulting “natural gas liquids” have mostly industrial uses, and while they are often included in statistical reports of oil production, they are not “oil.” Molecules with more carbon atoms are liquids that are mostly used for transportation fuel – what we call oil. Refineries sort out all these molecules and remove various impurities. When gas and oil are found in large quantities in sandstone or other porous rock, we call that “conventional” oil or gas, because the fossil fuel can flow through pores in the rocks to reach a well. (Note that “gas” as I’m using it in this article refers to “natural gas” or methane, not to “gasoline.”)

Sometimes, though, the gas is locked up in the shale rock where it formed, and it won’t move, or the oil is so thick or impartially “cooked,” that we have to use extreme “unconventional” technologies to get at it. Worldwide production of conventional oil has been on a plateau since about 2005, so we have turned to “unconventional” production to keep the wheels of the world economy turning. The Canadian tar sands, for example, are a major “unconventional” oil source.

So is fracking of shale.

Shale is a very solid rock that forms numerous thin layers. When gas is present, it is found in pores barely larger than a single gas molecule. Oil engineers have combined several technologies developed over decades to drill horizontally along a shale layer, rather than vertically through it, and to apply a high-pressure mix of water, chemicals and sand through holes in the drill pipe to shatter, or fracture, the shale, allowing the gas or oil to move to the pipe and up to the surface. Fracked wells in oil country commonly produce a mixture of oil, gas, and natural gas liquids. (Some wells target gas alone; these are called “dry gas” wells.) It turns out there is a lot of oil and gas in those rocks, if you’re willing to invest the money and energy necessary to get it, and, with technological changes, what couldn’t be extracted economically a decade ago can be today.

Fracking today

So how is this working out in the real world? Let’s look at some of the impacts.

Oil and gas are priced on a spot basis, based on today’s mix of supply and demand, and prices are very volatile. Because natural gas is hard to transport globally, the American price is independent of the world price, and currently is much lower. Oil, in contrast, is traded around the world and normally has a much more uniform price globally. The large increase in US gas production caused US gas prices to collapse from over $13 per thousand cubic feet in 2008 to under $2 briefly this year, and they remain under $3.50. At such low prices, gas is cheaper than coal for use in electricity plants, and companies are replacing old coal plants with new gas-powered plants. Even a nuclear plant in Wisconsin was shut down in favor of gas generation. If gas prices go up, however, such decisions could prove hasty and shortsighted.

The problem is that no one can make money producing gas at $3 per thousand cubic feet. The actual break-even price for shale gas production is estimated to be in the $6 to $8 range. The shale boom started when gas was higher than that, so companies eagerly paid for leasing rights and access to drilling rigs. Leases commonly require drilling to start within a few years or the lease is void, so there was a strong incentive to start production and secure the well rights. When everybody did that at once, a surplus of gas hit the market, prices collapsed, and drilling for dry gas abruptly slowed.

Two aspects of shale production make it radically different from conventional production. First, it takes a lot more energy (including many miles of steel tubing per well, for example) to extract energy out of these wells. Traditional wells have a ratio of energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) of 10- or 20-to-one, or an energy cost factor of 5 to 10%. The EROEI with fracking is in the range of 5- or 10-to-one, or a cost factor of 10 to 20%. Professor Charles Hall of the State University of New York, a recognized expert in the field, claims that modern civilization will have trouble functioning with an average EROEI under 10-15, so shale oil and gas alone could not support our civilization at its current standard-of-living. EROEI roughly correlates with financial cost, and a typical fracking oil well in Texas now costs over $10 million to drill, compared to less than $1 million for a conventional well.

The other thing about extraction from shale is that it ends quickly. A conventional well’s production declines at about 5-8% per year, and it can remain productive for decades. By contrast, the first-year decline in shale wells is over 60%, and about 90% of a well’s production occurs in the first five years. That creates a “drilling treadmill,” as new wells are needed simply to replace production from wells drilled a few years before.

Further, studies by Arthur Berman, David Hughes, and Rafael Sandrea have analyzed well-by-well data from existing mature oil and gas shale fields and concluded that the ultimate production from these sources is likely to be much more limited than optimists claim. While fields are large, covering many counties or even states, most production comes from a few “sweet spots,” where drilling opportunities are limited by quality acreage. While the Bakken field in North Dakota is producing about 750,000 barrels per day now, and common projections are for production to reach two million bpd in a few years, both Hughes and Sandrea project a maximum of less than one million bpd within five years, and a sharp decline after that.

That is disheartening, since a lot of current policymaking assumes that abundant and cheap gas and oil will be ours for many years to come, and the problem is what we will do with it all. Oil companies are lobbying to lift restrictions on exporting American crude oil and to build gasexporting facilities. It has been suggested that one purpose of those proposals is to link our market to the (higher-priced) world market. By contrast, companies building new electricity generating facilities and designing new trucks are counting on cheap gas (under $6) in the future, and they are likely to be disappointed.

The shale boom has enabled – or perhaps, some say, was itself enabled by – financial wizardry on Wall Street. Recent changes in how the SEC allows corporations to report their oil and gas reserves have made shale holdings a valuable tool for supporting stock prices, leading to a wave of fee-generating M and A activity. Additionally, some firms are securitizing packages of leases, bringing back memories of subprime mortgages. With low interest rates, capital is plentiful, and those who wanted to explore these newly productive oilfields did not have trouble raising money, at least to get the shale boom started. Once again, the opportunities for gain in the financial economy overrode the realities of the “real” economy.

Thus, shale oil and gas may be both less plentiful and less affordable than many assume, and should not form the basis for long-term assumptions about energy independence or a new economy.

Environmental issues

Between ongoing droughts in the Midwest and superstorm Sandy in New York, more Americans are accepting the idea that the climate is changing for the worse, and that human beings and our fossil fuels are largely responsible. One attraction of natural gas is that it produces less CO2 at the point of use than coal does, so replacing coal with gas seems to many people like prudent change.

But since a lot of methane is released in the fracking process, there is considerable dispute about what the net benefit of gas really is. Moreover, the growing use of gas in the US is not reducing the production of coal but rather is facilitating more exports of coal to China, India, and Europe. While this helps our trade balance, it does not do much for climate control.

One long-term strategy for limiting climate change is to replace fossil fuels with “renewable energy,” mostly wind and solar-based systems, while also using the energy we have more efficiently. But such alternatives are not as attractive as fossil fuels from either a cost or reliability perspective (if they were, we would already be using them), even though they may be necessary in the future. It normally takes decades for a society to transition to a new energy system, and cheap gas is making it hard to get support for these new technologies (or for nuclear, which is even more expensive than renewable energy sources).

And what about more immediate environmental concerns? The most common objection to fracking is not the false promises discussed above but its impact on the world we live in. In John Mauldin’s piece, he said that, according to “true experts, properly done, horizontal drilling and fracking pose no danger to the environment.” (Of course, “properly done,” there would be no automobile accidents or outbreaks of food poisoning, either.) Here are a few legitimate concerns that have been raised about fracking’s environmental effects:

>> Fracking uses millions of gallons of water per well, most of which is unusable thereafter. There is competition for water rights between oil companies on one hand and farmers and ranchers on the other. Last summer Pennsylvania suspended fracking for a while, due to low stream flows.

>> The mix of chemicals used in fracking is treated as proprietary, is not subject to much regulation, and therefore is not tested for environmental safety before use. Not surprisingly, when leakages and spills have occurred, they have harmed people and farm animals.

>> Possible pollution of drinking water is a matter of considerable debate. Although fracking is normally done well below the water table, there are natural fissures in the rock that can allow chemicals to migrate. The disposal of used fracking water is another major source of concern, although some operators are experimenting with ways to recycle and reuse the fracking water.

>> Earthquakes in areas that don’t commonly have them, including Ohio and Oklahoma, have been linked to fracking activities nearby.

>> The shale production process requires thousands of wells, and each well requires dozens of heavy truck trips to carry the drilling equipment, pipe, and water and chemicals to the well site, often over rural roads not built for such intense traffic. In many cases it is not clear whose responsibility it is to pay for the road damage.

>> The impact on a community of a blizzard of drilling activity is very disruptive, and recovery when the oil folks leave town in a year or three may be quite difficult. When it requires $15 per hour to get people to work in a fast food restaurant, as Mauldin describes in his story, people living on fixed incomes or not participating in the drilling boom will be adversely affected.

>> In contrast to long-lived conventional wells, as I noted above, shale wells will likely have a short productive life. Who will be responsible for the long-term monitoring of the spent wells? The record of other extractive industries does not give cause for much optimism.

Creating a happier solution

Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, recently told the Wall Street Journal that our American system of private ownership of mineral rights, the fact that we have independent drilling companies, and our mature system of refined rules and experienced industry personnel “ensures that all natural resources are fully developed” in this country. Whatever the concerns, in other words, it is likely that extraction of oil and gas from shale deposits will continue. It is also likely that it will not turn out to be the “happy solution” that Mauldin and others want to see.

This boom (or is it a bubble?) creates a unique opportunity. The burst of new oil and gas is like winning a lottery. As most financial advisors know, sudden wealth can only enable long-term security if serious planning is involved at the outset. That’s what we should be doing now.

We need a new energy system, both because climate impacts are growing and fuel supplies are limited. Building it out will require a lot of capital and extensive labor – all fueled by a lot of energy – before the new electricity starts to flow. Rather than seeing how fast we can use up our bounty with cheaper electricity, business as usual, and disregard for the consequences, we should invest this one-time abundance to promote long-term low-carbon prosperity. If we do, once prices are back up and production has dropped back to normal levels we will have something to base an economy on. If we don’t, we’ll just end up with a shale oil and gas hangover and nothing to show for our binge.

Richard Vodra, J.D., CFPR, is the President of Worldview Two Planning of McLean, VA. He recently retired from a 27-year career as a personal financial planner. He is a member of the Board of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO-USA). He can be reached at rvodra@worldviewtwo.com.

By Herman Daly

08 January, 2013

@ The Daly News

Foreword to Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources, a book by Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill (published by Berrett-Koehler in the U.S. and Earthscan in the U.K.)

I have long wanted to write a book on the subject of “enough” but never did. Now I don’t have to because Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill have done it in a clearer and more accessible way than I could have. Therefore it is a special pleasure for me to write a foreword calling attention to their important contribution.

Enough should be the central concept in economics. Enough means “sufficient for a good life.” This raises the perennial philosophical question, “What is a good life?” That is not easy to answer, but at a minimum we can say that the current answer of “having ever more” is wrong. It is worth working hard and sacrificing some things to have enough; but it is stupid to work even harder to have more than enough. And to get more than enough not by hard work, but by exploitation of others, is immoral.

Living on enough is closely related to sharing, a virtue which today is often referred to as “class warfare.” Real class warfare, however, will not result from sharing, but from the greed of elites who promote growth because they capture nearly all of the benefits from it, while “sharing” only the costs.

Enough is the theme of the story of God’s gift of manna to the ancient Hebrews in the wilderness. Food in the form of manna arrived like dew on the grass every morning and was enough for the day. If people tried to gather more than enough and accumulate it, it would spoil and go to waste. So God’s gift was wrapped up in the condition of enough — sufficiency and sharing — an idea later amplified in the Lord’s Prayer, “give us this day our daily bread.” Not bread for the rest of our lives or excess bread with which to buy whatever luxuries we may covet, but enough bread to sustain and enjoy fully the gift of life itself.

This story from Exodus has parallels in the thoughts of pioneer ecological economist and Nobel Prize-winning chemist, Frederick Soddy. Soddy observed that humanity lives off the revenue of current sunshine that is gathered each day by plants with the aid of soil and water. Unlike manna some of the sunshine was accumulated and stored by geologic processes, and we have consumed it lavishly with mixed results. Today we also try to accumulate surplus solar income and exchange it for a permanent lien on future solar income. We then expect this surplus, converted into debt in the bank, to grow at compound interest. But the future solar-based revenue, against which the debt is a lien, cannot keep up with the mathematics of exponential growth, giving rise to debt repudiation and depression.

For the Hebrews in the wilderness the manna economy was designed with “enough” as a built-in feature. Our economy does not have that automatic regulation. We have to recognize the value of enough and build it into our economic institutions and culture. Thanks to Dietz and O’Neill for helping us do that.

Herman Daly is an American ecological economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States. He was Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank, where he helped to develop policy guidelines related to sustainable development. He is closely associated with theories of a Steady state economy. He is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and the NCSE Lifetime Achievement Award

By Franklin Lamb

08 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Damascus: Easy walking distance from this observer’s hotel near the city center, the Damascus Opera House, the site of yesterday’s Presidential address, was inaugurated in May of 2004 by the President and his wife, completing a project of his late father, Hafez, who actually planned the opera house in detail, but which had been put on hold since the late 1970’s. Located off Umayyad Square, the multipurpose culture center complex, presented its most recent opera, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s, The Marriage of Figaro, just months before the current crisis erupted.

The nearly 1,400 seating capacity Opera Theater was packed for yesterday’s presidential address, and as in the final scene of Mozart’s Opera, the conclusion of Bashar Assad’s performance was followed by, as Mozart wrote, “a night-long celebration” among many of his supporters here in Damascus. Basher Assad’s glory, as he tried to leave the stage last night and was swarmed by scores of admirers, may not have been that of Caesar’s, during the Gallic wars as the latter also portrayed a domestic crisis and challenge as a defensive struggle to save “Rome”. And granted, it is unlikely that Syria’s president will appear to his critics as posh as John Kennedy at Vienna’s Opera House. But the man connected with his audience (s) during his watershed speech. He excelled in delivery, content and, most critically, stating and advocating what he believes is his countryman’s case. While welcoming foreign advice on how to end the current crisis, he insisted that the Syrian people throughout their history of resistance to occupation and hegemony have rejected the orders from certain governments he referred to, in the current crisis, as the “masters of the puppets” who are every day causing death, destruction and deprivations across the Syrian Arab Republic. Admittedly sleep deprived, this observer, as he listened to Bashar Assad’s address was reminded of a Macbeth or Brutus soliloquy. I could not help but transpose in my mind Brutus’ plea in Act 3, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:

“Who is here so rude or unpatriotic that would not be a Syrian? Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak–for him

I have not intentionally or unjustly wronged. I pause for a reply.”

Following his presidential address to the nation, one local journalist, who is sometimes critical of the regime, elaborated–in answer to my question about Assad’s apparent enduring popularity during this tragic period for people of Syria: “It’s true. And it’s partly due to the fact that he is modest, even humble– and well-educated in contrast to some regional monarchs who are essentially illiterate and uninterested in the world outside their fiefdoms palaces.” She continued, “Before the crisis it was not unusual to spot him, without a security convoy, driving himself around downtown, his car full of kids- doing errands or taking them out to eat-sometimes collecting them from school. You saw his almost boyish charm yesterday as he entered the hall and made his way down the aisle to the podium as he greeted members of the audience. As he departed he did not appear in a hurry as he shook hands. Bashar Assad obviously enjoys being among people and is not at all a sullen remote type personality as some critics wrongly portray him.” Following the speech, when the lovely chamber maid who daily spruces up my hotel room dropped by in early evening to do something, I was reading and watching the news. They showed a clip of the president delivering his noontime speech. She lite up when she saw Bashar, spontaneously walked across the room, wrapped her arms around the TV set and hugged it while kissing the screen. I noticed that the lady’s hands were wet and became fearful that the dear woman might get electrocuted! One well known politically connected Sheik in Damascus offered his view last night to this observer that Assad’s message was to the Syrian people and to his country’s foreign friends and to those who are neutral–and not to his governments enemies. He also suggested that the President will deliver two more speeches in the near future, the next one perhaps having a “FDR fireside chat” format. The Sunni Sheik referred to yesterday’s speech as the first of three “victory” speeches he expected to be delivered. He also spoke about the UAE and Saudi Arabia in relation to what was happening in Syria and the fact that they are experiencing challenges of their own. In the case of the Saudi Kingdom, and against the backdrop of increased Iran-Saudi consultations regarding Syria, the ill health of King Abdullah and the evident succession power struggle which has intensified recently, with some of the royal family potentates reportedly being strongly opposed to the current campaign to undermine the Assad regime. The Syrian government, despite its detractors, is seen by many in the Gulf countries as being pedigree Arab nationalists with a history of mutual respect for other countries. The Sheik also sees signs of the Obama administration backing off from its covert war against Syria partly due to the fractured and often coherent message coming from various spokesman of the misnomered “coalition.” Mr. Assad, in what historians and Middle East analysts may well dub an historic speech, offered a new plan to his countrymen, friends and foes alike, and to the international community to immediately end the crisis

It includes, in sequential order:

* foreign countries to stop financing the rebels;

* Syria’s government putting down its arms and declaring an amnesty;

* a national conference and dialogue;

* the drafting of a constitution approved by referendum;

* a coalition government, presumably until the holding of elections scheduled for 2014.

One Congressional staffer on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee emailed late today that the Obama administration may well be willing to accept Bashar Assad’s “Damascus Opera House” formula given the fast changing geopolitical reality the region and the military stalemate on the ground in Syria. Both facts suggesting that there is no realistic alternative to the current elected government or that there is much of a realistic prospect that the regime will throw in the towel or collapse anytime soon.

The Congressional staffer, who works on US-Middle East issues, also believes that the incoming Secretary of State, John Kerrey and the likely new Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who will face a tough Senate confirmation fight, but will likely survive it, would go along. In contract to President Assad’s speech this morning, one of the leaders of the so-called opposition, George Sabra, did not appear capable of offering much to aid the process of ending the current crisis in Syria. Said Mr. Sabra, “No one could possibly think about dialogue or working with this regime in any way. It is not a possibility. It is out of the question.”

This may not be the evolving international view.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Syria and can be reached c/o fplamb@gmail.com

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

07 January 2013

@ Project Syndicate

NEW YORK – In the shadow of the euro crisis and America’s fiscal cliff, it is easy to ignore the global economy’s long-term problems. But, while we focus on immediate concerns, they continue to fester, and we overlook them at our peril.

The most serious is global warming. While the global economy’s weak performance has led to a corresponding slowdown in the increase in carbon emissions, it amounts to only a short respite. And we are far behind the curve: Because we have been so slow to respond to climate change, achieving the targeted limit of a two-degree (centigrade) rise in global temperature, will require sharp reductions in emissions in the future.

Some suggest that, given the economic slowdown, we should put global warming on the backburner. On the contrary, retrofitting the global economy for climate change would help to restore aggregate demand and growth.

At the same time, the pace of technological progress and globalization necessitates rapid structural changes in both developed and developing countries alike. Such changes can be traumatic, and markets often do not handle them well.

Just as the Great Depression arose in part from the difficulties in moving from a rural, agrarian economy to an urban, manufacturing one, so today’s problems arise partly from the need to move from manufacturing to services. New firms must be created, and modern financial markets are better at speculation and exploitation than they are at providing funds for new enterprises, especially small and medium-size companies.

Moreover, making the transition requires investments in human capital that individuals often cannot afford. Among the services that people want are health and education, two sectors in which government naturally plays an important role (owing to inherent market imperfections in these sectors and concerns about equity).

Before the 2008 crisis, there was much talk of global imbalances, and the need for the trade-surplus countries, like Germany and China, to increase their consumption. That issue has not gone away; indeed, Germany’s failure to address its chronic external surplus is part and parcel of the euro crisis. China’s surplus, as a percentage of GDP, has fallen, but the long-term implications have yet to play out.

America’s overall trade deficit will not disappear without an increase in domestic savings and a more fundamental change in global monetary arrangements. The former would exacerbate the country’s slowdown, and neither change is in the cards. As China increases its consumption, it will not necessarily buy more goods from the United States. In fact, it is more likely to increase consumption of non-traded goods – like health care and education – resulting in profound disturbances to the global supply chain, especially in countries that had been supplying the inputs to China’s manufacturing exporters.

Finally, there is a worldwide crisis in inequality. The problem is not only that the top income groups are getting a larger share of the economic pie, but also that those in the middle are not sharing in economic growth, while in many countries poverty is increasing. In the US, equality of opportunity has been exposed as a myth.

While the Great Recession has exacerbated these trends, they were apparent long before its onset. Indeed, I (and others) have argued that growing inequality is one of the reasons for the economic slowdown, and is partly a consequence of the global economy’s deep, ongoing structural changes.

An economic and political system that does not deliver for most citizens is one that is not sustainable in the long run. Eventually, faith in democracy and the market economy will erode, and the legitimacy of existing institutions and arrangements will be called into question.

The good news is that the gap between the emerging and advanced countries has narrowed greatly in the last three decades. Nonetheless, hundreds of millions of people remain in poverty, and there has been only a little progress in reducing the gap between the least developed countries and the rest.

Here, unfair trade agreements – including the persistence of unjustifiable agricultural subsidies, which depress the prices upon which the income of many of the poorest depend – have played a role. The developed countries have not lived up to their promise in Doha in November 2001 to create a pro-development trade regime, or to their pledge at the G-8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005 to provide significantly more assistance to the poorest countries.

The market will not, on its own, solve any of these problems. Global warming is a quintessential “public goods” problem. To make the structural transitions that the world needs, we need governments to take a more active role – at a time when demands for cutbacks are increasing in Europe and the US.

As we struggle with today’s crises, we should be asking whether we are responding in ways that exacerbate our long-term problems. The path marked out by the deficit hawks and austerity advocates both weakens the economy today and undermines future prospects. The irony is that, with insufficient aggregate demand the major source of global weakness today, there is an alternative: invest in our future, in ways that help us to address simultaneously the problems of global warming, global inequality and poverty, and the necessity of structural change.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, was Chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. His most recent book is The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers our Future.

By Noam Chomsky,

@ ZNet

06 January 13

Reporting on the final U.S. presidential campaign debate, on foreign policy, The Wall Street Journal observed that “the only country mentioned more (than Israel) was Iran, which is seen by most nations in the Middle East as the gravest security threat to the region.”

The two candidates agreed that a nuclear Iran is the gravest threat to the region, if not the world, as Romney explicitly maintained, reiterating a conventional view.

On Israel, the candidates vied in declaring their devotion to it, but Israeli officials were nevertheless unsatisfied. They had “hoped for more ‘aggressive’ language from Mr. Romney,” according to the reporters. It was not enough that Romney demanded that Iran not be permitted to “reach a point of nuclear capability.”

Arabs were dissatisfied too, because Arab fears about Iran were “debated through the lens of Israeli security instead of the region’s,” while Arab concerns were largely ignored – again the conventional treatment.

The Journal article, like countless others on Iran, leaves critical questions unanswered, among them: Who exactly sees Iran as the gravest security threat? And what do Arabs (and most of the world) think can be done about the threat, whatever they take it to be?

The first question is easily answered. The “Iranian threat” is overwhelmingly a Western obsession, shared by Arab dictators, though not Arab populations.

As numerous polls have shown, although citizens of Arab countries generally dislike Iran, they do not regard it as a very serious threat. Rather, they perceive the threat to be Israel and the United States; and many, sometimes considerable majorities, regard Iranian nuclear weapons as a counter to these threats.

In high places in the U.S., some concur with the Arab populations’ perception, among them Gen. Lee Butler, former head of the Strategic Command. In 1998 he said, “It is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East,” one nation, Israel, should have a powerful nuclear weapons arsenal, which “inspires other nations to do so.”

Still more dangerous is the nuclear-deterrent strategy of which Butler was a leading designer for many years. Such a strategy, he wrote in 2002, is “a formula for unmitigated catastrophe,” and he called on the United States and other nuclear powers to accept their commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to make “good faith” efforts to eliminate the plague of nuclear weapons.

Nations have a legal obligation to pursue such efforts seriously, the World Court ruled in 1996: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” In 2002, George W. Bush’s administration declared that the United States is not bound by the obligation.

A large majority of the world appears to share Arab views on the Iranian threat. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has vigorously supported Iran’s right to enrich uranium, most recently at its summit meeting in Tehran last August.

India, the most populous member of the NAM, has found ways to evade the onerous U.S. financial sanctions on Iran. Plans are proceeding to link Iran’s Chabahar port, refurbished with Indian assistance, to Central Asia through Afghanistan. Trade relations are also reported to be increasing. Were it not for strong U.S. pressures, these natural relations would probably improve substantially.

China, which has observer status at the NAM, is doing much the same. China is expanding development projects westward, including initiatives to reconstitute the old Silk Road from China to Europe. A high-speed rail line connects China to Kazakhstan and beyond. The line will presumably reach Turkmenistan, with its rich energy resources, and will probably link with Iran and extend to Turkey and Europe.

China has also taken over the major Gwadar port in Pakistan, enabling it to obtain oil from the Middle East while avoiding the Hormuz and Malacca straits, which are clogged with traffic and U.S.-controlled. The Pakistani press reports that “Crude oil imports from Iran, the Arab Gulf states and Africa could be transported overland to northwest China through the port.”

At its Tehran summit in August, the NAM reiterated the long-standing proposal to mitigate or end the threat of nuclear weapons in the Middle East by establishing a zone free of weapons of mass destruction. Moves in that direction are clearly the most straightforward and least onerous way to overcome the threats. They are supported by almost the entire world.

A fine opportunity to carry such measures forward arose last month, when an international conference was planned on the matter in Helsinki.

A conference did take place, but not the one that was planned. Only nongovernmental organizations participated in the alternate conference, hosted by the Peace Union of Finland. The planned international conference was canceled by Washington in November, shortly after Iran agreed to attend.

The Obama administration’s official reason was “political turmoil in the region and Iran’s defiant stance on nonproliferation,” the Associated Press reported, along with lack of consensus “on how to approach the conference.” That reason is the approved reference to the fact that the region’s only nuclear power, Israel, refused to attend, calling the request to do so “coercion.”

Apparently, the Obama administration is keeping to its earlier position that “conditions are not right unless all members of the region participate.” The United States will not allow measures to place Israel’s nuclear facilities under international inspection. Nor will the U.S. release information on “the nature and scope of Israeli nuclear facilities and activities.”

The Kuwait news agency immediately reported that “the Arab group of states and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) member states agreed to continue lobbying for a conference on establishing a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction.”

Last month, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling on Israel to join the NPT, 174-6. Voting no was the usual contingent: Israel, the United States, Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.

A few days later, the United States carried out a nuclear weapons test, again banning international inspectors from the test site in Nevada. Iran protested, as did the mayor of Hiroshima and some Japanese peace groups.

Establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone of course requires the cooperation of the nuclear powers: In the Middle East, that would include the United States and Israel, which refuse. The same is true elsewhere. Such zones in Africa and the Pacific await implementation because the U.S. insists on maintaining and upgrading nuclear weapons bases on islands it controls.

As the NGO meeting convened in Helsinki, a dinner took place in New York under the auspices of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an offshoot of the Israeli lobby.

According to an enthusiastic report on the “gala” in the Israeli press, Dennis Ross, Elliott Abrams and other “former top advisers to Obama and Bush” assured the audience that “the president will strike (Iran) next year if diplomacy doesn’t succeed” – a most attractive holiday gift.

Americans can hardly be aware of how diplomacy has once again failed, for a simple reason: Virtually nothing is reported in the United States about the fate of the most obvious way to address “the gravest threat” – Establish a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.