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10 March, 2011

WSWS.org

The United States and its allies continue to prepare more expansive and direct military actions to topple the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. They have seized on the popular protests against Gaddafi’s dictatorship that broke out in mid-February to promote an opposition leadership subservient to imperialism and largely comprised of individuals who only weeks ago were part of Gaddafi’s government.

On the pretext of addressing a humanitarian emergency and protecting civilians from Gaddafi’s forces, the Obama administration is pushing for some form of large-scale, coordinated military intervention aimed at gaining control of Libya’s oil fields and installing a colonial-style client regime.

A series of meetings are set to take place to provide a legal fig leaf for imperialist intervention, obtain the imprimatur and collaboration of NATO, and line up bourgeois governments in the Arab world and Africa in support of such action.

A two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers begins today in Brussels at which the US, France and Britain are expected to push for a NATO-backed no-fly zone over Libya. Even if immediate approval of a no-fly zone is blocked by opposition from some NATO members, notably Turkey and Germany, the organization is expected to approve other military options.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that “US military planners and those from other NATO governments have prepared a range of alternatives, including the establishment of an air and/or naval bridge to carry humanitarian supplies or escort civilian ships into Benghazi and other rebel-held areas, as well as close-in naval patrols along the Libyan coast to monitor an existing arms embargo.”

The United Nations Security Council is set to meet Thursday to consider a new sanctions resolution, including the imposition of a no-fly zone, which is being drafted by Britain and France in consultation with Washington. That resolution may fail to pass due to opposition from Russia or China, both of which have veto power as permanent members of the Security Council.

Such an outcome would not necessarily prevent the US and its allies from going ahead with a no-fly zone—an overt act of war that entails the bombing of Libyan air defenses and other installations. An unnamed NATO official told the Washington Post, “If you have [support from] the Arab League, the African Union, NATO and potentially the European Union, you have every country within 5,000 miles of Libya. That gives you a certain level of legitimacy.”

The European Union is holding an emergency foreign ministers’ meeting at the end of the week to consider the Libyan crisis, the Arab League is holding its own meeting of foreign ministers on Saturday, and the African Union is holding a similar meeting over the weekend. The secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, has already said that the Arab League should support a no-fly zone.

The opposition Provisional Transitional National Council, based in Benghazi and headed by Gaddafi’s former justice minister, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, continues to call for stronger imperialist intervention, including the imposition of a no-fly zone. At a press conference in Benghazi Tuesday, his deputy, Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga, said, “We do expect the international community to impose a no-fly zone over Libya.”

President Obama’s senior advisers met Wednesday to discuss possible military moves against Gaddafi, including a no-fly zone. The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday quoted unnamed US officials as saying Obama’s first step would likely be to authorize US forces, in cooperation with NATO, to speed the delivery of what it described as “humanitarian” supplies to eastern Libya, the opposition base. The Times wrote, “Planners are assessing a range of entry points for food and medical supplies by ship, by air and by land, across the Egyptian border.”

The Journal suggested that such actions could become the pretext for more overt military moves, noting that Gaddafi “could provoke a military response if he tries to interfere in the distribution of aid.”

In conjunction with the military preparations, the US and Europe are carrying out further economic sanctions against the Libyan regime. Following a meeting between US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and leaders in Germany, the European Union announced plans to freeze billions of dollars of assets of the Libyan Investment Fund held in European institutions.

The US, which has already frozen $32 billion in Libyan assets, announced it would additionally freeze the assets of some Libyan military, intelligence and government officials.

Meanwhile, the American and European governments have stepped up their contacts with opposition leaders, indicating they may be moving toward recognizing the council based in Benghazi as the legitimate government of Libya. The EU’s foreign policy head, Catherine Ashton, met with Libyan opposition representatives in Strasbourg on Tuesday. The opposition delegates held talks with EU foreign ministers on Wednesday.

An Italian delegation met with Provisional Transitional National Council members in Benghazi on Tuesday, becoming the first official government delegation to meet with the opposition leaders in their eastern Libyan stronghold. French President Nicolas Sarkozy is to meet today in Paris with two Council members, according to BBC News.

Another Council member, Jibril al-Walfarvi, met with Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey in Geneva on Wednesday. The US State Department said Tuesday it had held face-to-face meetings in Rome and Cairo with members of the Council.

10 March, 2011

Countercurrents.org

A pervading sense of awe seems to be engulfing Arab societies everywhere. What is underway in the Arab world is greater than simply revolution in a political or economic sense– it is, in fact, shifting the very self-definition of what it means to be Arab, both individually and collectively.

Hollywood has long caricatured and humiliated Arabs. American foreign policy in the Middle East has been aided by simplistic, degrading and at times racist depictions of Arabs in the mass media. A whole generation of pseudo-intellectuals have built their careers on the notion that they have a key understanding of Arabs and the seemingly predictable pattern of their behavior.

Now we see Libya – a society that had nothing by way of a civil society and which was under a protracted stage of siege – literally making history. The collective strength displayed by Libyan society is awe-inspiring to say the least. Equally praiseworthy is the way in which Libyans have responded to growing dangers and challenges. But most important is the spontaneous nature of their actions. Diplomatic efforts, political organization, structured revolutionary efforts and media outreach simply followed the path and demands of the people. Libyans led the fight, and everyone else either obliged or played the role of spectator.

There is something new and fascinating underway here – a phenomena of popular action that renders any historical comparisons inadequate. Western stereotypes have long served an important (and often violent) purpose: reducing the Arab, while propping up Israeli, British and American invasions in the name of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’ and ‘liberation’. Those who held the ‘torch of civilization’ and allegedly commanded uncontested moral superiority gave themselves unhindered access to the lands of the Arabs, their resources, their history, and, most of all, their very dignity.

Yet those who chartered the prejudiced discourses, defining the Arabs to suit their colonial objectives – from Napoleon Bonaparte to George W. Bush – only showed themselves to be bad students of history. They tailored historical narratives to meet their own designs, always casting themselves as the liberators and saviors of all good things, civilization and democracy notwithstanding. In actual fact, they practiced the very opposite of what they preached, wreaking havoc, delaying reforms, co-opting democracy, and consistently leaving behind a trail of blood and destruction.

In the 1920s, Britain sliced up, then recomposed Iraq territorially and demographically to suit specific political and economic agenda. Oil wells were drilled in Kirkuk and Baghdad, then Mosul and Basra. Iraq’s cultural uniqueness was merely an opportunity to divide and conquer. Britain played out the ethno-religious-tribal mix to the point of mastery. But Arabs in Iraq rebelled repeatedly and Britain reacted the way it would to an army in a battle field. The Iraqi blood ran deep until the revolution of 1958, when the people obtained freedom from puppet kings and British colonizers. In 2003, British battalions returned carrying even deadlier arms and more dehumanizing discourses, imposing themselves as the new rulers of Iraq, with the US leading the way.

Palestinians – as Arabs from other societies – were not far behind in terms of their ability to mobilize around a decided and highly progressive political platform. Indeed, Palestine experienced its first open rebellion against the Zionist colonial drive in the country, and the complacent British role in espousing it and laboring to ensure its success decades ago (well before Facebook and Twitter made it to the revolutionary Arab scene). In April 1936, all five Palestinian political parties joined under the umbrella of the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), led by Haj Amin al-Husseini. One of the AHC’s first decisions was to assemble National Committees throughout Palestine. In May, al-Husseini summoned the first conference of the National Committees in Jerusalem, which collectively declared a general strike on May 8, 1936. The first joint Palestinian action to protest the Zionist-British designs in Palestine was non-violent. Employing means of civil disobedience, the 1936 uprising aimed to send a stern message to the British government that Palestinians were nationally unified and capable of acting as an assertive, self-assured society. The British administration in Palestine had thus far discounted the Palestinian demand for independence and paid little attention to their incessant complaints about the rising menace of Zionism and its colonial project.

Palestinian fury turned violent when the British government resorted to mass repression. It had wanted to send a message to Palestinians that her Majesty’s Government would not be intimidated by what it saw as insignificant fellahin, or peasants. The first six months of the uprising, which lasted under different manifestations and phases for three years, was characterized at the outset by a widely observed general strike which lasted from May to October 1936. Palestine was simply shut down in response to the call of the National Committees and al-Husseini. This irked the British, who saw the “non-Jewish residents of Palestine” as deplorable, troublesome peasants with untamed leadership. Within a few years, Palestinians managed to challenge the conventional wisdom of the British, whose narrow Orientalist grasp on the Arabs as lesser beings with fewer or no rights – a model to be borrowed later on by the Zionists and Israeli officials – left them unqualified to ponder any other response to a legitimate uprising than coercive measures.

The price of revolution is always very high. Then, thousands of Palestinians were killed. Today, Libyans are falling in intolerable numbers. But freedom is sweet and several generations of Arabs have demonstrated willingness to pay the high price it demands.

Arab society – whether the strikers of Palestine in 1936, the rebels of Baghdad of 1958, or the revolutionaries of Libya, Tunisia and Egypt of 2011 – remain, in a sense, unchanged, as determined as ever win freedom, equality and democracy. And their tormenters also remain unhinged, using the same language of political manipulation and brutal military tactics.

The studious neoconservatives at the Foreign Policy Initiative and elsewhere must be experiencing an intellectual ‘shock and awe’, even as they continue in their quest to control the wealth and destiny of Arabs. Arab societies, however, have risen with a unified call for freedom. And the call is now too strong to be muted.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), available on Amazon.com.

An act of self-immolation in central Tunisia would normally matter very little to the intelligence and diplomatic corps in Washington, D.C. But Mohamed Bouazizi’s suicide before the Town Hall in Sidi Bouzid had an electric effect. It galvanised the people of Tunisia against their suave and ruthless leader, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had been praised by the governments of France and the United States, by the International Monetary Fund and by the bond markets. Only last year, the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report picked Tunisia as the leading country for investment in Africa. Neoliberal policies pleased everyone but the Tunisian working people, who took Bouazizi’s sacrifice as the spark to rise up and send Ben Ali into his Saudi exile.

The immediate reaction in Washington was that this was a containable problem and that the small protests that broke out in support of Tunisians across the Arab world would not have any impact in their home countries. This was a premature judgment. Long-standing grievances among Egyptians pushed them on to the streets, most famously into Cairo’s Tahrir Square. It took them two weeks to pressure Hosni Mubarak to release the reins of government and go to his seaside villa in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Mubarak did not leave easily. He was given a lease of life from the Saudi promises of financial support and from the arrival of the U.S. envoy, Frank Wisner Jr. Mubarak and Wisner are old friends. When the latter was U.S. Ambassador to Egypt between 1986 and 1991, Wisner coaxed his friend to provide diplomatic support for the U.S.-led Gulf War against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. During Wisner’s tenure, Mubarak cemented Egypt’s allegiance to the U.S. and to the neoliberal path of economic development. After Wisner left Cairo, he remained a defender of Mubarak. In the tense aftermath of the contested 2005 election, Wisner praised his friend’s re-election. When human rights organisations and electoral officials complained of voter intimidation, Wisner said, “There were no instances of repression; there wasn’t heavy police presence on the streets. The atmosphere was not one of police intimidation.” A few days after his visit to a beleaguered Mubarak in January 2011, Wisner told a Munich conference that his friend needed to remain in power for the sake of stability and his own legacy. It was an obscene affront to the people in Tahrir Square.

American policy in the Arab world is built on three pillars. The first is its reliance upon the region for oil, which must be allowed to flow freely into the car culture of Europe and the U.S. The second pillar is that its allies in the Arab world (such as Ben Ali, Muammar Qaddafi, Mubarak and the Saudis) must stand firm with the U.S. in its war on terror. Mubarak’s security chief, Omar Suleiman, had opened his jails to the “ghost prisoners” of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Qaddafi had closely collaborated with U.S. intelligence services and with Suleiman in the transit and torture of suspected Al Qaeda members (such as Sheikh al-Libi). The third, of course, is that the Arab allies had to tether their own populations’ more radical ambitions vis-a-vis Israel. Egypt accepted a U.S. annual bribe of $1.3 billion in order to honour its peace agreement with Israel, and this has allowed Israel to conduct its asymmetrical warfare against the Palestinians and the Lebanese. The maintenance of these three pillars is a fundamental goal of U.S. foreign policy in the Arab world.

Wisner’s visit was not idiosyncratic. It was to put some stick about in the Arab world’s most important capital, Cairo. If Mubarak had to go, then Mubarak’s regime had to remain in place and the public outcry had to be silenced slowly. The Egyptian military, well funded by the U.S. since 1979, came in to do the work.

However, the military might not be as pliable as it seems. Which is why the State Department’s Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Bill Burns and the National Security Council’s Senior Director David Lipton hastily travelled to Cairo. They needed to shore up people such as Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the head of Egypt’s Higher Military Council. When the Tahrir Square protests began, Mubarak sent Tantawi to Washington to seek support for his regime and for anti-riot equipment. Tantawi is an old warhorse of the Mubarak regime.

BAHRAIN PROTESTS

Protests in Bahrain sent a shiver through the Washington establishment for two reasons. First, the archipelago on the eastern flank of the Arabian peninsula is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. It is just a few miles off the coast of Iran and is able to fully support the U.S. adventures in Iraq. If the monarchy in Bahrain falls, there is every indication that a civilian government led by al-Wifaq National Islamic Society will ask the fleet to depart. An economically strapped Dubai might welcome a base, but that would mar its desire to be a Global City. The velvet glove of commerce likes to distance itself from the iron fist of military force. Secondly, if the ruling family in Bahrain is toppled it might embolden protests in the other emirates and, then, certainly, in the lead emirate, Saudi Arabia. The domino of republicanism had been throttled in the 1950s (as Nasserism) and it had to be crushed once more. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen went on a tour of the capitals of the emirates, declaring their unconditional support. The U.S. stands for “universal human rights”, Feltman told the emirs, but of course since “each country is unique” these rights would emerge in their own way. Mullen was at hand to “reassure, discuss and understand what’s going on”. The key word here is “reassure”.

With Libya, the tenor is different. Qaddafi has been a loyal soldier in the U.S.-led war on terror. He has also, over the past 20 years, brought his country in line with the neoliberal policies that wrought havoc a decade earlier in South America and the rest of Africa. Egypt, Tunisia and Libya began to take their orders from IMF manuals in the late 1990s, and the current rebellions are as much anti-IMF riots as they are pro-democracy demonstrations. In early February 2011, the IMF said of Libya that it had followed its “ambitious reform agenda”, and the Fund encouraged Libya’s “strong macroeconomic performance and the progress on enhancing the role of the private sector”. The pain of these policies pushed the needle of distress beyond the bearable.

ERRATIC QADDAFI

What distinguishes Qaddafi from the emirs is that he is erratic and has a difficult history. An anti-imperialist Colonel in 1969, Qaddafi often returns to the rhetoric of his youth, but rarely the policies. It confuses people around the world. They think of him as the revolutionary Qaddafi, when in fact that is a posture that has long worn thin. Since 9/11, Qaddafi has been a loyal servant in the Global War on Terror and has been muscular in his propagation of the paranoia about the growth of Al Qaeda in the Sahel region of Africa. Any dissenter is tagged with the label of Salafi. But his allegiance to the Bush world view is not reliable. In August 2010, in Europe, Qaddafi said the continent’s future was in Islam. At a Group of Eight (G8) dinner, he, however, changed places and sat near Silvio Berlusconi and Barack Obama. Qaddafi’s radical past and erratic present have earned him few friends in Washington, even though he himself has been an unswerving ally of its policies over the past decade.

When the Bahraini emirs authorised their security forces to open fire in Manama, the U.S. said that force must not be used. It was the polite language of diplomacy. With Libya, the tone is harsher. Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman wanted the North Atlantic Treaty Organisationn (NATO) and the U.S. to create a “no-fly zone” and the United Kingdom sent warships off Libya’s coastline. The Wall Street Journal editorial noted that their government should “tell the Libyan armed forces that the West will bomb their airfields if they continue to slaughter their people. Arming the demonstrators also cannot be ruled out.”

This kind of language is dangerous. It will only embolden Qaddafi to crack down on the protesters with more force, returning him to his “radical” roots fed by his paranoid idea that any protest against him is conducted by Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (or associated Islamist groups).

The slow U.S. support for the uprising in Egypt, the cautious tone with Bahrain and Yemen, and the strident language against Libya are of a piece: the U.S. is not driven by the popular upsurge but by its desire to control the events in north Africa and the Gulf to accord with its three pillars. Cracks in the consensus come here and there. Representative Adam Smith (Democrat from Washington) admitted to reporters: “The old days of ‘as long as we can make a positive relationship with the autocrat who is running the place, then we are friends with the country’ are dead and gone.” This is a remarkable disclosure, and one that is rarely heard openly in Washington. It was commonplace in the 1980s, when the then U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Jeanne Kirkpatrick, distinguished between “traditional autocrats” (the emirs, for instance) and the “revolutionary autocrats” (she had in mind the Communist states). Even Smith’s cautionary note is quickly suborned to the logic of the three pillars. It is not enough to listen to the people of north Africa and the Gulf, to learn from them about their grievances and their desires. Far more important is to yoke them directly to the pillars of U.S. imperial interests, without the indirect filter of the autocrats. “We have to be much more interested in trying to get the actual populations in those countries to be supportive of us,” Smith said. “What we have to start thinking about in the foreign policy establishment is what shifts in our foreign policy do we need to make to target the populations.”

Over the past decade, the countries of South America walked through the exit from the theatre of U.S. hegemony. Galvanised by events in Venezuela and Bolivia as well as Argentina and Brazil, these countries are no longer in the reliable orbit of U.S. policy. The Arab people seem now in search of just this exit. The struggle is on to see if they will be able to find it. The U.S. and the remainder of its allies (in the emirates mainly) want to define these revolts in their image, with Donald Rumsfeld giving George W. Bush the credit (this is his freedom agenda, apparently) and Obama’s cronies saying that all this is a result of his speech in Cairo. But these are feints. In Cairo, Obama said, “We will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” During the Tahrir Square standoff, protesters chanted, “We have extended our hand, why have you clenched your fist?”

Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His most recent book, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize for 2009. The Swedish and French editions are just out. He can be reached at: vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu

A version of this piece originally ran in Frontline.

 11 March, 2011   AlJazeera

Hundreds of people are dead after one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck Japan, triggering a devastating 10-metre-high tsunami along parts of the country’s northeastern coastline.

The massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck on Friday afternoon local time, creating gigantic waves which swept away cars, boats, homes and people as the surging water overwhelmed coastal barriers.

Widespread fires burned out of control and Japan’s nuclear industry was on alert as reactors shut down automatically as a safety precaution. Millions are reported to be without electricity, airports are closed and public transport in Tokyo and other cities has come to a halt as Japan reels amid the twin devastations.

Police said 200 to 300 bodies have been found in the northeastern coastal city of Sendai where hundreds of buildings have collapsed. Japan’s NHK television said the victims appeared to have drowned. Police said another 88 were confirmed killed and 349 were missing.

Thousands of people living near a nuclear plant in Fukushima prefecture were ordered to evacuate after the reactor developing a cooling fault. Officials said the move was a precaution and there was no evidence of leaking radiation.

Meanwhile, countries around the Pacific basin are on tsunami alert amid warnings that a wall of water could completely wash over low-lying islands.

Ship swept away

Footage of the tragedy on NHK showed pictures of major tsunami damage in the north, with buildings being inundated by waves of water in Onahama city in Fukushima prefecture.

A ship carrying 100 people was swept away by the tsunami, Kyodo news agency reported.

The initial quake at 2:46pm was followed by a series of powerful aftershocks, including a 7.4-magnitude one about 30 minutes later. On Honshu, Japan’s main island, a warning was issued that another strong quake could be imminent.

Japan, which sits on the highly active “Ring of Fire,” an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones that stretches around the Pacific Rim, is one of the most earthquake-ready nations in the world.

Many of its buildings are considered quake-proof while emergency services, citizens and schoolchildren regularly participate in earthquake drills.

“Japan is very well equipped to deal both with the initial tremors caused by an earthquake: buildings are systematically built with allowances for sway so that they are less likely to fall down. Also coastal cities have long had tsunami protection measures in place,” said Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett.

Japan’s prime minister addressed the nation after the quake, saying major damage had been done but that help is on the way.

In a televised address, Naoto Kan said the government was making “every effort possible” to minimise damage.

“The earthquake has caused major damage in broad areas in northern Japan,” he said. “Some of the nuclear power plants in the region have automatically shut down, but there is no leakage of radioactive materials to the environment.”

Shortly after the quake struck, the tsunami hit Sendai airport in the north-east. Television footage showed people standing on the roof of the terminal building.

The tsunami roared over embankments in Sendai city, sweeping away cars, houses and farm equipment inland before reversing direction and carrying them out to sea. Flames shot from some of the houses, probably because of burst gas pipes.

Unfolding disaster

A tsunami warning has been issued for the entire Pacific basin except mainland United States and Canada, the US Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said.

“An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines near the epicentre within minutes and more distant coastlines within hours,” the centre said in a statement.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned that developing island nations could be devastated by the disaster.

“Our biggest concern is the Asia and Pacific region, where developing countries are far more vulnerable to this type of unfolding disaster. The tsunami is a major threat,” Paul Conneally, spokesman for the federation, the world’s biggest disaster relief network, told the Reuters news agency in Geneva.

“At the moment, it is higher than some islands and could go right over them,” he said.

Among the countries for which a tsunami warning is in effect are: Russia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru.

High alert

Meanwhile, a huge fire engulfed an oil refinery in Iichihara near Tokyo, where four million homes were said to be without electricity. Plumes of smoke rose from at least 10 locations in the city.

Military airplanes were flying over the worst-affected areas to assess the need for rescue efforts and 30 international search and rescue teams were prepared to go to Japan to provide assistance following the quake, the United Nations said.

Tokyo’s metro and suburban trains were halted and airports were closed for parts of the day.

The quake that struck at 2:46pm was followed by a series of powerful aftershocks, including a 7.4-magnitude one about 30 minutes later. Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan, reporting from Beijing, said tremors were felt as far away as the Chinese capital.

Several earthquakes have hit the region in recent days, including a 7.2-magnitude quake on Wednesday. Friday’s quake struck at a depth of 24km, about 125km off the eastern coast, the country’s meteorological agency said.

The quake’s magnitude surpasses the 7.9 Great Kanto quake of 1923, which killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo area.

11 March, 2011

Richardfalk.wordpress.com

Should talks of intervention in Libya turn into action, it would be illegal, immoral and hypocritical

What is immediately striking about the bipartisan call in Washington for a no-fly zone and air strikes designed to help rebel forces in Libya is the absence of any concern with the relevance of international law or the authority of the United Nations.

None in authority take the trouble to construct some kind of legal rationalisation. The ‘realists’ in command, and echoed by the mainstream media, do not feel any need to provide even a legal fig leaf before embarking on aggressive warfare.

It should be obvious that a no-fly zone in Libyan airspace is an act of war, as would be, of course, contemplated air strikes on fortifications of the Gaddafi forces.

The core legal obligation of the UN Charter requires member states to refrain from any use of force unless it can be justified as self-defence after a cross-border armed attack or mandated by a decision of the UN Security Council.

Neither of these conditions authorising a legal use of force is remotely present, and yet the discussion proceeds in the media and Washington circles as if the only questions worth discussing pertain to feasibility, costs, risks, and a possible backlash in the Arab world.

The imperial mentality is not inclined to discuss the question of legality, much less show behavioural respect for the constraints embedded in international law.

Hard cases

Cannot it not be argued that in situations of humanitarian emergency ‘a state of exception’ exists allowing an intervention to be carried out by a coalition of the willing provided it doesn’t make the situation worse? Was not this the essential moral/political rationale for NATO’s Kosovo War in 1999, and didn’t that probably spare the majority Albanian population in Kosovo from a bloody episode of ethnic cleansing at the hands of the embattled Serb occupiers?

Hard cases make bad precedents, as is well known. But even bad precedents need to find a justification in the circumstances of a new claimed situation of claimed exception, or else there would a strong reinforcement for the public impression that the powerful act as they will without even pausing to make a principled argument for a proposed departure from the normal legal regime of restraint.

With respect to Libya, we need to take account of the fact that the Gaddafi government, however distasteful on humanitarian grounds, remains the lawful diplomatic representative of a sovereign state, and any international use of force even by the UN, much less a state or group of states, would constitute an unlawful intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, prohibited by Article 2(7) of the UN Charter unless expressly authorised by the Security Council as essential for the sake of international peace and security.

Beyond this, there is no assurance that an intervention, if undertaken, would lessen the suffering of the Libyan people or bring to power a regime more respectful of human rights and dedicated to democratic participation.

The record of military intervention during the last several decades is one of almost unbroken failure if either the human costs or political outcomes are taken into proper account.

Such interventionary experience in the Islamic world during the last fifty years makes it impossible to sustain the burden of persuasion that would be needed to justify an anti-regime intervention in Libya in some ethically and legally persuasive way.

An issue with credibility

There are also serious credibility concerns. As has been widely noted in recent weeks, the US has had no second thoughts about supporting oppressive regimes throughout the region for decades, and is widely resented for this role by the various anti-regime movements.

Gaddafi’s crimes against humanity were never a secret, and certainly widely known by European and American intelligence services. Even high profile liberal intellectuals in Britain and the US welcomed invitations to Tripoli during the last several years, apparently without a blink of conscience, accepting consulting fees and shamelessly writing positive assessments that praised the softening authoritarianism in Libya.

Perhaps, that is what Joseph Nye, one of the most prominent of these recent good will visitors to Tripoli, would call a private use of ‘smart power’, commending Gaddafi for renouncing his anti-West posture, for making deals for oil and weapons, and most of all for abandoning what some now say was at most a phantom nuclear weapons program.

Some Beltway pundits are insisting on talk shows that the interventionists after faltering in the region want to get on the right side of history before it is too late. But what is the right side of history in Libya seems quite different than it is in Bahrain or Jordan, and for that matter throughout the region. History seems to flow according to the same river currents as does oil!

Elsewhere, the effort is to restore stability with minimal concessions to the reformist demands, hoping to get away with a political touch up that is designed to convert the insurrectionists of yesterday into the bureaucrats of tomorrow.

Mahmoud Mamdani has taught us to distinguish ‘good Muslims’ from ‘bad Muslims’, now we are being instructed to distinguish ‘good autocrats’ from ‘bad autocrats’.

By this definition, only the pro-regime elements in Libya and Iran qualify as bad autocrats, and their structures must at least be shaken if they cannot be broken.

What distinguishes these regimes? It does not seem to be that their degree of oppressiveness is more pervasive and severe than is the case for the others. Other considerations give more insight: access and pricing of oil, arms sales, security of Israel, relationship to the neoliberal world economy.

What I find most disturbing is that despite the failures of counterinsurgency thinking and practise, American foreign policy gurus continue to contemplate intervention in post-colonial societies without scruples or the slightest show of sensitivity to historical experience, not even the recognition that national resistance in the post-colonial world has consistently neutralised the advantages of superior hard power deployed by the intervening power.

The most that has been heard is a whispered expression of concern by the relatively circumspect secretary of defence, Robert Gates, that it may not be prudent at this time for the US to intervene in yet another Islamic country.

The past ignored

The absence of any learning from Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq is startling, underscored by the glorification of general David Petraeus who rose to military stardom soon after he was credited with refurbishing the army’s approach to counterinsurgency, which is the Pentagon jargon for pro-regime intervention.

Major current illustrations are Afghanistan, Iraq, and several other places in the Middle East. Technically speaking, the proposed intervention in Libya is not an instance of counterinsurgency, but is rather a pro-insurgency intervention, as has also been the case with the covert destabilisation efforts that continue in Iran.

It is easier to understand the professional resistance to learning from past failure on the part of military commanders as it is their life work, but the civilian politicians deserve not a whit of sympathy.

Among the most ardent advocates of intervention in Libya are the last republican presidential candidate, John McCain, the supposedly independent Joe Lieberman, and the Obama democrat John Kerry.

It seems that many of the republicans focused on the deficit although cutting public expenditures punishes the poor at a time of widespread unemployment and home foreclosures would not mind ponying up countless billions to finance acts of war in Libya.

There exists a worrying readiness to throw money and weapons at an overseas conflict, seemingly as to show that imperial geopolitics is not yet dead despite the growing evidence of American decline.

In the end, I suppose we have to hope that those more cautious imperial voices that base their opposition to intervention on feasibility concerns carry the day!

What I am mainly decrying here in the Libyan debate are three kinds of policy failure:

>> The exclusion of international law and the United Nations from relevance to national debates about international uses of force;

>> The absence of respect for the dynamics of self-determination in societies of the South;

>> The refusal to heed the ethics and politics appropriate for a post-colonial world order that is being de-Westernised and is becoming increasingly multi-polar.

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing the volume International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (Routledge, 2008).

He is currently serving his third year of a six year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.

11 March, 2011

The Independent

The most popular cry in politics today is a pledge to deny reality and cut petrol prices. Give us our fix! Make it cheap! Make it now!

My name is Johann Hari, and I am an addict. If you restrict the supply of my drug, as has happened over the past month, I become panicky and angry. If you cut it off entirely, my life will fall apart. I want my fix, I want it cheap, and I want it now. My drug is called oil. I eat it: my food is driven to me. I wear it: my clothing is shipped and flown to me. I travel with it: on every bus, train and plane. But if I don’t go to rehab soon, this addiction is going to ruin me. This is the inaugural meeting of Petroleum Anonymous. We’re all going to need it now. There are four major symptoms to my addiction and yours, and in 2011 they are all getting worse.

Symptom one: unpredictable convulsions. There is a revolution happening all around the world’s biggest oil-fields, and it is getting closer to the deepest pools every day. For 60 years our governments have armed, funded and fuelled tyrants in return for them pointing the petrol pump in our direction. Just as junkies will rob their mothers and mug their grannies, we have abandoned the most basic values of our societies in pursuit of cheap oil. Initially, this created the virus of jihadism. Now some of the local populations are finally rising up in a democratic spirit against their tyrants. They are being shot at by soldiers trained at Sandhurst and with weapons stamped Made in America.

Nobody knows where this revolution will stop, but today is a declared “day of rage” in Saudi Arabia. The angriest part of the population, the marginalised and abused Shia, happen to live on top of the biggest oil-fields on Earth, and can stare across a thin patch of water to see their fellow Shia rising up in Bahrain. Sixty per cent of the Saudi population is under the age of 25, yet they are governed by an 86-year-old and half-dead “King” who bans women from driving and has rape victims whipped. It seems unlikely they can be bribed, beaten and shot into submission forever.

Even a small and brief disruption in the oil supply can cause this symptom in us. Since 1973, there have been five oil price shocks – and every single one has been followed rapidly by a global recession. A Saudi uprising would be the biggest disruption yet, triggering $200-a-barrel oil and beyond. It would be like having the 1973 oil price shock just after the 1929 Great Crash – and change all our lives.

Symptom two: fever. In the century-long party since a pair of brothers first struck oil big-time in Texas, human beings have burned up 900 billion barrels of the black gloop. Each one of them has released gases into the atmosphere that have trapped more and more of the sun’s heat here on Earth. The result is that, according to Nasa, 2010 was globally the hottest year ever recorded, tied with 2005. Don’t be fooled by local snow: the last time it was this hot was three million years ago, when the sea level was 25 metres higher. Yes, we have a planetary fever. If we burn up all the oil that remains, we will push it way beyond current levels – or any ever seen by human beings.

Symptom three: hunger. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says food is soaring in price across the world as a result of this man-made fever. Last year Russia’s wheat crop dried out and burned down in wildfires nobody had ever seen before. It caused the global price of wheat to double, and President Dmitri Medvedev to renounce his global warming denialism.

Similarly strange things are happening across the world’s most important agricultural areas. All this, in turn, helped cause the Arab revolutions. These crop failures rendered many of the Arab people unable to meet their food bills – and made them rise up in desperation.

Symptom four: denial. Petrol is finite. It takes millions of years to form under the ground: it can’t be grown, or made in factories. We all know that, sooner or later, it is going to run out. But when? The last year in which humans found more oil than we burned was the year I was born: 1979. Since then, it’s been a downward graph. But it may be plunging much faster than we think. The WikiLeaks cables revealed that the US suspects the Saudis have 40 per cent less oil than they claim, and that the country’s supply could peak as soon as next year.

There is a shrinking pool of oil in the world – and more and more people chasing it. In China, three quarters of city-dwellers understandably say they plan to buy a car in the next five years. There is not enough for everyone.

We are going to have to make the transition to fuelling our societies by the mighty power of the sun, the wind and the waves sooner or later. The technology exists today. It can be done without us regressing to caves, or any of the other ludicrous myths pumped out by the oil lobby. George Monbiot’s book Heat is a detailed roadmap of how to do it, step by step. Far from killing our economies, the work needed to build a new energy infrastructure would be a vast source of new jobs – at precisely the moment when we need a huge economic stimulus.

Every time the oil price spikes, our politicians mouth platitudes about the need to kick oil, but the change never comes. It’s worth going back to the last serious proposal because it offers a tantalising “what if?”.

On 18 April 1977, President Jimmy Carter delivered a televised address from the Oval Office. He said: “Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly.” He said the West must wean itself off oil or “the alternative may be a national catastrophe… This difficult effort will be the moral equivalent of war – except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy.”

What would the world be like today if Jimmy Carter had been listened to by the Western world, instead of being booted out of office as a “whiner”? With the US no longer backing Arab petro-tyrannies and occupying Arab territories, there would probably have been no 9/11. There would have been no Iraq war. There would have been no BP oil spill. We would not be facing an oil price shock today that could cripple our economies and leave us backing some of the worst dictators in the world.

The Copenhagen climate summit could well have established a path to dealing with global warming, rather than burying it. If we pursue Drilling As Usual, what unnecessary disasters will they curse us for 30 years from now?

Yet the most popular cry in politics today is a pledge to deny all this reality and cut petrol prices. Give us our fix! Make it cheap! Make it now! In truth we don’t have a choice about whether we join Petroleum Anonymous. Our only choice is: do we do it today, or do we do it 20 or 30 years from now, on a much hotter planet, after squabbling and fighting and killing for the last pathetic dregs of petroleum.

©independent.co.uk

Military ranking

Mar 9th 2011, 14:57 by The Economist online

The world’s biggest defence budgets

THE ten biggest defence budgets for 2010 add up to a total of more than $1.1 trillion, according to the latest Military Balance report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a think-tank. The defence budget of America alone, at $693 billion, accounts for more than 60% of the total. But when defence spending is compared to the overall size of each country’s economy, Saudi Arabia tops the list. It spends over 10% of GDP on defence, more than double the proportion spent by America. China ranks second in the world’s biggest defence budgets (spending some $76 billion) and also boasts the largest armed forces. Only America, India, Russia and North Korea (not shown) have more than 1m military personnel. Defence budgets have grown since 2005, but the balance of military power may be shifting. Western countries, many of which are engaged in Afghanistan, now face budget constrains and cuts, whilst emerging economies, such as Brazil and China, have increased military spending in line with economic growth.

11 March, 2011

Post Carbon Institute

6 energy experts address the economic impact of Middle East unrest

With instability in the Middle East driving oil prices higher, huge cracks are widening in the global economy. In an effort to broaden the conversation about Middle East unrest and its impacts on oil prices and economies, the Post Carbon Institute offers six informed perspectives on what to expect in the days, weeks and months ahead.

Individuals, businesses and policy makers are made aware of the speed with which seemingly incremental price gains can topple global dominoes.

(In what should be a startling wake up call to industrial society, the Korean government ordered power to be shut off in the bustling metropolis of Seoul to save on fuel costs. Violators face $2700 fines.)

1. THE GLOBAL ECONOMY UTTERLY DEPENDS ON CHEAP OIL

CHRIS MARTENSON (Post Carbon Institute Economy & Personal Preparedness Fellow)

The unfolding social and political unrest in the Middle East/North African (MENA) region are emblematic of changes that will be visiting the rest of the developed world in the near future. Yes, dictators, corruption, and weak justice all play into the MENA situation but underlying those insults is a deeper structural flaw that rests on the relentless math of energy depletion and its relationship to economic growth. The short version of the story is this: the global economy utterly depends on cheap oil to function. Without cheap oil, the economy will not work quite the same as it did before.

We have irreversibly slipped into a world of ever-increasing energy costs and those, predictably, are dragging down the weaker players first. By failing to appreciate the fundamental and irreplaceable role of energy in fostering economic growth, the world’s high priests and priestesses of monetary and fiscal policy have placed the developed world in the exact same situation as the MENA countries.

No, printing more money and manufacturing more debt to promote more consumption will not help anything. In fact these efforts are harmful because they distract us from what’s really at the heart of the issue; instead we should honestly admit to ourselves that we have a gigantic energy-based economic and monetary predicament on our hands. One that requires a clear-eye diagnosis, and adult-sized conversations about what sorts of intelligent responses will make sense here.

Assuming the west fails to heed the warnings and lessons being served up by the MENA region, the predictions are easy enough to make. Fiscal and monetary crises will sweep inwards from the weaker regions towards the center. Markets will violently gyrate but ultimately destroy wealth. We still have time, but not a lot, especially considering that the leadership of the developed world is, for the most part, operating with the wrong narrative in place. The right one would consider energy and other critical environmental resources equally alongside economic goals.

2. OIL SPIKES UNDERCUT ALTERNATIVE ENERGY PROGRAMS

DAVID FRIDLEY (Post Carbon Institute – Renewable Energy & Biofuels Fellow)

Since 2008, oil demand in the developed countries of the OECD has declined by 4 million barrels/day. Over the same period, oil demand in the rest of the world has risen by 4 million barrels/day. In 2011, the world has returned to the precarious balance of oil supply and demand that we faced in 2007 and 2008, when rising demand and stagnant production sent prices soaring to nearly $150.

The uprising in Libya, removing 700,000 b/d from the market, yet sending crude oil prices up 15%, reminds us both of how fragile that balance is as well as of how little has changed since 2008 in terms of our preparedness for such price shocks. If unrest were to spread to the core of the Middle East producing area in Saudi Arabia, disruption of exports from there could produce a price spike unlike any experienced in the past. And with the spike would come another economic crash.

The events since January highlight important vulnerabilities: one is the mismatch between the long lead times of our programs to develop alternatives to oil and the rapidity with which crude oil supply can be disrupted, sending markets into turmoil and undercutting the same programs attempting to mitigate such impacts. A second is reliance on strategic and critical inputs that are sourced from a small concentration of producers. As the US looks to move away from oil for transportation, it is at the same time moving to import dependence on other critical inputs such as lithium for batteries and rare earths for hybrid-car motor magnets from a small concentration of producers. This leaves our energy system open to the same types of supply and price shocks as we are witnessing today.

3. LIBYA & MIDDLE EAST UNREST WIDEN A VICIOUS CIRCLE

COLIN J. CAMPBELL – Post Carbon Institute Adviser

Oil and gas were formed in the geological past, meaning that for every gallon used, one less remains. Although the details are masked by unreliable data and ambiguous definitions, it becomes evident that Oil Age is about half over. Growing oil production during the First Half facilitated the rapid expansion of industry, transport, trade and agriculture, allowing the population to grow six-fold. Declining production during the Second Half will likely give a corresponding contraction.

Shortages appeared following the peak of Regular Conventional oil production in 2005, and led to a surge in oil price in 2008, which gave an economic recession and financial crisis, killing oil demand. Prices then fell back to 2005 levels before Governments intervened to stimulate consumerism under outdated economic principles. Oil demand recovered to again threaten the supply barrier, such that prices had risen to almost $100 by the end of 2010.

The transition to the Second Half threatens to be a time of great social, political, financial and economic tension, as recent events, ranging from student demonstrations in London to revolutions in North Africa, confirm. Some of the affected countries, including Libya, are important oil producers, run by authoritarian regimes controlling underlying tribal conflicts. Oil revenues allowed the elite to amass colossal wealth but also bred a corresponding resentment, which exploded when the people at large faced soaring food costs and rising unemployment.

Oil production will fall in Libya whatever the political outcome, and it will not be easy to replace it elsewhere. Oil prices are accordingly likely to rise again prompting a certain vicious circle: the higher the price, the greater the social tension and the risk of further cuts in supply. A critical element is of course Saudi Arabia, responsible for more than ten percent of the world’s supply of conventional oil, and it is significant that tensions have been rising in Bahrain, an island off its coast, and in the neighboring countries of Yemen and Oman.

If this vicious circle widens, it will represent a turning point for mankind of historic proportions.

4. HEY TEACHER: LEAVE THOSE AUTOCRATIC REGIMES ALONE!

RICHARD HEINBERG (PCI Senior Fellow-in-Residence)

Many in the US cheered as decrepit dictators in Egypt and Tunisia fell. But now that more democracy for North African and Middle Eastern nations seems to translate to higher gasoline prices for American motorists, the real motives for, and costs of Western nations’ decades-long support for autocratic regimes in oil-rich nations are becoming apparent. This was a strategy to control the world’s most important resource, but it was wrong-headed from the start because it could not be sustained on the backs of millions of people with rising expectations but declining ability to afford food and fuel.

If somehow the uprisings can be confined to Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain, oil-importing nations may be able to weather 2011 with minimal GDP declines resulting from $100 oil prices. But that is a big “if.” It is really only a matter of time until Saudi Arabia is engulfed in sectarian and political turmoil, and when that happens we will see biggest oil price spike ever, and central banks will be unable to stop the ensuing economic carnage.

It’s both comic and sad to see certain economists insisting that a 10 percent rise in oil prices will translate only to a certain smaller percentage of decline in GDP growth. There are thresholds—such as $5 a gallon gasoline for US motorists—that will make hash of such forecasts. Energy is not a segment of the economy; it IS the economy.

I think we’re probably in for a very nasty ride these next few months.

5. CHINA & THE INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY: BOOKS BALANCED?

TOM WHIPPLE – Post Carbon Institute Peak Oil Fellow

Prior to the unrest breaking out in the Middle East, all eyes were on China for an answer to the question of “How high will oil prices go in the next year or two?” In 2010 the demand for oil surged ahead by 2.8 million b/d, much more rapidly than had been expected. Much of this increase in demand came from China where a number of factors converged to push demand to new highs.

To avoid predicting a growth-killing price spike this year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) decided that the increase in demand for oil in 2011 would be only 1.5 million b/d. This forecast assumed that the seriously overheated Chinese economy would have to cut back markedly on the annual growth of its oil consumption this year in order to control price inflation.

In order to balance the books IEA envisioned OPEC slowly increasing production in 2011 out of its spare productive capacity. The IEA now recognizes that production from newly opened oil fields is very close to balancing declines in production from older fields, so not much increase in total world oil production is expected in the future.

We have a whole new game. After working through Tunisia and Egypt, the Middle Eastern unrest came to a significant oil producer, Libya, which had been exporting circa 1.3 million b/d of the world’s best crude. Now it is exporting little if any oil and world prices are $15+ a barrel higher.

As it became apparent that the loss of Libyan crude exports was going to be a major economic problem for the European economy, the Saudis stepped in to say they would increase production from what they claim to be 3 or 4 million b/d of spare productive capacity. As the Saudi’s are reluctant to announce production above their OPEC ceiling, they have relied on leaks to get out the message that they are now producing somewhere over 9 million b/d – various reports have their output at 9.2, 9.3, or even 9.4 million b/d, up from 8.4 million in January. A few other OPEC states with spare capacity are said to be increasing production by another 300,000 b/d. All this makes it look, on paper, that should Libyan oil production remain shut-in for weeks or months, the missing oil output will be replaced and oil prices should move lower.

This happy scenario, however, does not take into account China and its voracious appetite for imported energy. Should the IEA be overestimating OPEC’s real spare capacity, or underestimating the size of China’s demand for imported oil, or should unrest force another Middle East producer to slow or halt its output, the global oil world will be a different place by the end of the year.

6. ADDICTS EVENTUALLY PAY THE PRICE

DAVID HUGHES – Post Carbon Institute Fossil Fuels Fellow

We need to prepare for the inevitable crises that will upset the apple cart on oil supply. Macondo was just an appetizer. So far, the Libyan revolt is only an unforeseen precursor that has caused indigestion in the oil importing countries. The Saudi’s are numero uno when it comes to a major case of the oil deprivation flu. If they go at it, all bets are off. And if Iran goes, watch out world.

The worst case scenario I usually toss out in my talks is the obvious: If Israel takes aggressive action against Iran, Iran will in turn shut down the Strait of Hormuz, shutting off 20% of the world’s oil supply.

If the Libyan revolt is contained and either someone sane or maybe even Gaddafi retains power, then oil prices will stabilize—for awhile.

American’s are broke and hopelessly oil addicted–this could be the wakeup call needed in terms of high oil prices and potentially even supply restrictions that will make Americans believers in the vulnerabilities of their current lifestyle.

The implications of the current unrest for the global economy and the industrialized world, which imports over half of its oil consumption, should be obvious.

11 March, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Ralph Nader calls Washington corporate-occupied territory – “every department agency controlled by the overwhelming presence of corporate lobbyists, corporate executives in high government positions, turning the government against its own people.”

Nader also said corporations don’t just control government, they are the government. “The corporation IS the government!” They bought and own it at the federal, state and local levels, running it like their private fiefdom at the expense of working Americans, systematically stripping them of hard-won rights.

They have 10,000 Political Action Committees and 35,000 full-time lobbyists. “Just imagine,” says Nader, “even the Labor Department is not controlled by trade unions – it’s (owned and) controlled by corporations.”

In 1938, Franklin Roosevelt defined the problem, saying:

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private power.”

Today it’s more virulent and pervasive than anything Roosevelt could have imagined, using corrupted politicians to smash worker rights.

It’s more evidence of America’s fake democracy and the criminal class running it. Politicians are bought like toothpaste. Mock elections pretend to be real. Behind the scenes power players control everything, supported by brazen media misreporting, whether about war and peace, the rule of law, or other vital issues, including worker rights.

Overnight on March 9, fascist Republicans erased them in five minutes, in violation of Wisconsin’s open meetings law, requiring “24 hours prior to the commencement of (special sessions) unless for good cause such notice is impossible or impractical.”

The measure had nothing to do with budget-balancing. It’s corporate ordered union busting. Wisconsin is a microcosm of America, ground zero, now breached as well as Ohio. Expect other states to follow. Public and private sector workers nationwide are losing out – betrayed by brazen politicians and corrupted union bosses, selling out rank and file members for self-enrichment and privilege.

On March 9, New York Times writer Monica Davey headlined, “Wisconsin Senate Limits Bargaining by Public Workers,” saying:

The 23-day “bitter political standoff in Wisconsin over Gov. Walker’s bid to sharply curtail (public worker) collective bargaining (rights) ended abruptly Wednesday night as” on-the-take Senate Republicans rammed through an illegitimate bill, voting 18 – 1 – with no debate or Democrat members present.

On March 10, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (JS) writers Patrick Marley and Lee Bergquist headlined, “Maneuver ignites furious protests,” saying:

Republicans secretly “devised a plan to get around the impasse and hurriedly approved the bill late in the day.” Some financial issues were removed to be voted on separately. Included were provisions raising worker healthcare and pension contributions. Democrat Senator Bob Jauch called it ‘political thuggery,’ saying ‘it’s akin to political hara-kiri. I think it’s political suicide.’ “

The measure gives Walker dictatorial power over BadgerCare health coverage for low-paid Wisconsinites earning too much for Medicaid. It also makes 37 civil service jobs political appointments.

Moreover, state and local public employees must pay half their annual pensions cost contributions, and minimally 12.6% of healthcare premiums. In addition, future pay raises are pegged to annual CPI increases, a rigged index not reflecting true inflation. Greater ones may only be approved by statewide referendum, a cumbersome process taking time.

Further, unions must hold annual votes to let workers decide whether or not to be members, and state authorities no longer will collect union dues from paychecks.

On March 10, Wisconsin’s Republican controlled State Assembly easily passed the measure 53 – 42. Walker will sign it into law – by diktat, not democracy.

On March 10, JS writers Lee Bergquist, Jason Stein and Bill Glauber headlined, “Demonstrators crowd Capitol in wild scene after Senate vote,” saying:

“Protesters took back control of the Capitol on Wednesday night after Senate Republicans” stripped their collective bargaining rights. “Surging past security, (they) reclaimed the Capitol rotunda….”

Others outside chanted, “Let us in.” Inside, they yelled, “You lied to Wisconsin” and “Kill the Bill.” In a shocking act of betrayal, the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), representing 98,000 public education employees, instructed teachers to return to classrooms, instead of calling for a general strike to shut down the entire state until the bill is reversed. Growing numbers of teachers and other workers demand one.

Ahead of the Senate vote, email exchanges between Walker and Democrats suggested a deal, involving union certification votes triannually instead of as approved as well as other compromises. All along Democrats, like union bosses, planned capitulation, but needed enough cover to fool constituents.

On March 10, Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal gave Walker op-ed space to headline, “Why I’m Fighting in Wisconsin,” claiming:

He’s doing it “to avoid mass teacher layoffs and reward our best performers,” when, in fact, he and other Democrat and Republican governors and lawmakers are destroying public education in their states, and making public university tuitions unaffordable for millions of aspiring students with inadequate family and personal resources to afford them.

Nonetheless, Walker claimed the bill’s passage is “good for the Badger State’s hard-working taxpayers. It will also be good for state and local government employees who overwhelmingly want to do their jobs well….Our (union busting) bill is a commitment to the future so our children won’t face even more dire consequences than we face today, and teachers (won’t have to be) laid off (so) government (can) work for” everyone in Wisconsin.

It’s instructive to remember journalist IF Stone’s admonition to young journalists, telling them:

“All governments lie,” or at other times, saying, “All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” Who better than Walker and Obama prove it. Like other corrupted politicians, the president is no friend of labor.

A Final Comment

Wisconsin Republicans’ Wednesday night putch was preceded a week earlier by Walker demanding at least $1.5 billion in budget cuts, besides earlier ones enacted, including:

— $1.25 billion from schools and local governments, including $900 million in education funding (or $500 per student), exposing his real education agenda;

— $500 million from Medicaid at the expense of a million needy Wisconsinites dependent on it; and

— $250 million from the University of Wisconsin, besides sharp tuition hikes, wage and benefit reductions, separating the main Madison campus from others, and possibly privatizing the system, ruining it by selling it off to profiteers.

Now, with collective bargaining gone, all other rights are threatened, except one – a mass action general strike, shutting down the state, staying out until Walker’s coup is reversed. Protests aren’t enough. Inflicting pain on politicians and corporate interests is crucial. Nothing less can work with firm non-negotiable demands for:

— restoring collective bargaining rights;

— social spending increases, not cuts, especially for healthcare, education, and aid to Wisconsin’s most needy;

— recalling all Democrat and Republican politicians, eligible under state law, requiring one year in office before possible; and

— replacing corrupted union bosses who sold out their rank and file members for self-enrichment and privilege.

Negotiations failed. Mobilized, committed, unified mass action is essential as quickly as possible. On Wisconsin! Then take the campaign nationwide, especially to ground zero in Washington, the heart of corrupted power.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

President Obama can choose war with Moammar Gadhafi, or he can choose to keep the U.S. military out of Libya. But, contrary to claims of Sen. John Kerry and a platoon of pundits, Obama cannot walk a middle line by imposing a “no-fly zone” or staging an antiseptic air campaign.

Imposing a no-fly zone is not a step short of war – it is war. And how many Americans are willing to go to war for Libya?

Many commentators, hoping a no-fly zone would end Gadhafi’s air attacks on protesters and rebels, point to the decade-long no-fly rules the United States enforced in Iraq. But Michael Knights, a leading expert on no-fly zones, says that the Iraq model is neither apt nor desirable. Knights, a Lafer fellow in the Washington Institute’s Military and Security Studies Program, wrote his doctoral dissertation on no-fly zones. He says enforcing a no-fly zone “is basically an act of war.”

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates seems to agree. “A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses.” This would include – as Kerry put it on CBS on Sunday – “cratering their runways” to ground their jets. “An attack on Libya,” as Gates puts it, which would mean dropping bombs or shooting rockets, is pretty hard to distinguish from war.

On Iraq, it’s crucial to remember our no-fly zone there followed Operation Desert Storm – an invasion of Iraq. Knights told me that “no-fly zones are best utilized in countries that you already have quasi-war relations with,” either following a war like Desert Storm or as “preparatory actions” for a war.

And there’s no logic behind simply stopping Gadhafi’s jets. AP quoted reports Wednesday that Libyan tanks are firing “randomly” on homes in Zawiyah. Gadhafi also has artillery – plenty of it. There’s no coherent justification for the U.S. military shutting down Gadhafi’s jets but not his howitzers and tanks. If we do no-fly, we also have to do no-tank and no-cannons. You see how things start to get sticky.

Americans could take out Libyan tanks and cannons from the air, but can pilots really tell the difference between a tank driven by a soldier still loyal to Gadhafi and one driven by a rebel soldier? U.S. pilots could easily confuse farmers’ tractors for mortars.

And does anyone doubt that Gadhafi is evil enough to put anti-aircraft weapons on the back of a school bus or the roof of a mosque. So do American pilots bomb a mosque or risk getting their jets shot down? War often involves terrible choices like that – which is one reason it’s good to stay out of war when you can.

Many of the hawks today calling for a no-fly zone admit they want war with Libya. D.B. Grady, a former paratrooper now a writer at the Atlantic, put bluntly the advantage of a no-fly zone: First the United States would have to clear the zone with attacks on air defenses. “Once the first U.S. missile strikes the first Libyan target, the shock is gone and the stage is set for continued operations. It’s far easier to launch the second missile.”

But others draw an imaginary line between no-fly and war. Kerry, after advocating the “cratering” of Libyan runways, said on CBS, “The last thing we want to think about is any kind of military intervention. And I don’t consider the no-fly zone stepping over that line,”

Some of this talk is just political spin – politicians and laptop generals hoping Americans won’t balk at a war if it’s not called a war. Iraq hawks pulled the same bait-and-switch tactic in 2002 and early 2003: promising the nation a cakewalk and then scolding President Bush and the American people for lacking the “resolve” for a bloody, protracted occupation.

But the word games also matter because of the so-called “Pottery Store Rule”: You break it, you buy it.

What constitutes “breaking” Gadhafi? At what point does the United States “own” the rebuilding of Libya in the way it has responsibility for nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can America “crater” a country’s runways, bomb its tanks, blow up its howitzers, and shoot down its jets – and then walk away from the rubble?

Gates apparently doesn’t harbor the same illusion Kerry does – that we can flex military muscle in Libya but keep our hands clean. It’s like the old saying that you can’t be a little bit pregnant. Gates knows a third war in the Muslim world would be tough for our military, tough for our budget and tough for the American people to bear.

Timothy P.Carney, The Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at tcarney@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Monday and Thursday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.