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07 March, 2011

Michaelmoore.com

Early yesterday morning, around 1:00 AM, I had finished work for the day on my current “project” (top secret for now — sorry, no spoiler alerts!). Someone had sent me a link to a discussion Bill O’Reilly had had with Sarah Palin a few hours earlier about my belief that the money the 21st Century rich have absconded with really isn’t theirs — and that a vast chunk of it should be taken away from them.

They were referring to comments I had made earlier in the week on a small cable show called GRITtv (Part 1 and Part 2). I honestly didn’t know this was going to air that night (I had been asked to stop by and say a few words of support for a nurses union video), but I spoke from my heart about the millions of our fellow Americans who have had their homes and jobs stolen from them by a criminal class of millionaires and billionaires. It was the morning after the Oscars, at which the winner of Best Documentary for “Inside Job” stood at the microphone and declared, “I must start by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by financial fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail. And that’s wrong.” And he was applauded for saying this. (When did they stop booing Oscar speeches? Damn!)

So GRITtv ran my comments — and all week the right wingopoly has been upset over what I said: That the money that the rich have stolen (or not paid taxes on) belongs to the American people. Drudge/Limbaugh/Beck and even Donald Trump went nuts, calling me names and suggesting I move to Cuba.

So in the wee hours of yesterday morning I sat down to write an answer to them. By 3:00 AM, it had turned into more of a manifesto of class war — or, I should say, a manifesto against the class war the rich have been conducting on the American people for the past 30 years. I read it aloud to myself to see how it sounded (trying not to wake anyone else in the apartment) and then — and this is why no one should be up at 3:00 AM — the crazy kicked in: I needed to get in the car and drive to Madison and give this speech.

I went online to get directions and saw that there was no official big rally planned like the one they had last Saturday and will have again next Saturday. Just the normal ongoing demonstration and occupation of the State Capitol that’s been in process since February 12th (the day after Mubarak was overthrown in Egypt) to protest the Republican governor’s move to kill the state’s public unions.

So, it’s three in the morning and I’m a thousand miles from Madison and I see that the open microphone for speakers starts at noon. Hmm. No time to drive from New York. I was off to the airport. I left a note on the kitchen table saying I’d be back at 9:00 PM. Called a friend and asked him if he wanted to meet me at the Delta counter. Called the guy who manages my website, woke him up, and asked him to track down the coordinators in Madison and tell them I’m on my way and would like to say a few words if possible — “but tell them if they’ve got other plans or no room for me, I’ll be happy just to stand there holding a sign and singing Solidarity Forever.”

So I just showed up. The firefighters, hearing I’m there, ask me to lead their protest parade through downtown Madison. I march with them, along with John Nichols (who lives in Madison and writes for the Nation). Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin and the great singer Michelle Shocked have also decided to show up.

The scene in Madison is nothing like what they are showing you on TV or in the newspaper. First, you notice that the whole town is behind this. Yard signs and signs in store windows are everywhere supporting public workers. There are thousands of people out just randomly lining the streets for the six blocks leading to the Capitol building carrying signs, shouting and cheering and cajoling. Then there are stages and friendly competing demos on all sides of the building (yesterday’s total estimate of people was 50,000-70,000, the smallest one yet)! A big semi truck has been sent by James Hoffa of the Teamsters and is parked like a don’t-even-think-of-effing-with-us Sherman tank on the street in front of the Capitol. There is a long line — separate from these other demonstrations — of 4,000 people, waiting their turn to get through the only open door to the Capitol so they can join the occupation inside.

And inside the Rotunda is … well, it will bring tears to your eyes if you go there. It’s like a shrine to working people — to what America is and should be about — packed with families and kids and so many senior citizens that it made me happy for science and its impact on life expectancy over the past century. There were grandmas and great-grandpas who remember FDR and Wisconsin’s La Follette and the long view of this struggle. Standing in that Rotunda was like a religious experience. There had been nothing like it, for me, in decades.

And so it was in this setting, out of doors now on the steps of the Capitol, with so many people in front of me that I couldn’t see where they ended, that I just “showed up” and gave a speech that felt unlike any other I had ever given. As I had just written it and had no time to memorize it, I read from the pages I brought with me. I wanted to make sure that the words I had chosen were clear and exact. I knew they had the potential to drive the haters into a rabid state (not a pretty sight) but I also feared that the Right’s wealthy patrons would see a need to retaliate should these words be met with citizen action across the land. I was, after all, putting them on notice: We are coming after you, we are stopping you and we are going to return the money/jobs/homes you stole from the people. You have gone too far. It’s too bad you couldn’t have been satisfied with making millions, you had to have billions — and now you want to strip us of our ability to talk and bargain and provide. This is your tipping point, Wall Street; your come-to-Jesus moment, Corporate America. And I’m glad I’m going to be able to be a witness to it.

You can find the written version of my speech on my website. Please read it and pass it around far and wide. You can also watch a video of me giving the spoken version from the Capitol steps by clicking here.

I can’t express enough the level of admiration I have for the people of Wisconsin who, for three weeks, have braved the brutal winter cold and taken over their state Capitol. All told, literally hundreds of thousands of people have made their way to Madison to make their voices heard. It all began with high school students cutting class and marching on the building (you can read their reports on my High School Newspaper site). Then their parents joined them. Then 14 brave Democratic state senators left the state so the governor wouldn’t have his quorum.

And all this while the White House was trying to stop this movement (read this)!

But it didn’t matter. The People’s train had left the station. And now protests were springing up in all 50 states.

The media has done a poor job covering this (imagine a takeover of the government HQ in any other country, free or totalitarian — our media would be all over it). But this one scares them and their masters — as it should. The organizers told me this morning that my showing up got them more coverage yesterday than they would have had, “a shot in the arm that we needed to keep momentum going.” Well, I’m glad I could help. But they need a lot more than just me — and they need you doing similar things in your own states and towns.

How ’bout it? I know you know this: This is our moment. Let’s seize it. Everyone can do something.

P.S. This local Madison paper/blog captured best what happened yesterday, and got what I’m really up to. Someone please send this to O’Reilly and Palin so there’s no mistaking my true intentions.

P.P.S. Full disclosure: I am a proud union member of four unions: the Directors Guild, the Writers Guild, the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA (the last two have passed resolutions supporting the workers in Wisconsin). My production company has signed union contracts with five unions (and soon to be a 6th). All my full-time employees have full medical and dental insurance with NO DEDUCTIBLE. So, yes, I’m biased.

Michael Moore is an Academy-Award winning filmmaker and best-selling author. Follow Michael Moore on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MMFlint

07 March, 2011

WSWS.org

The report that eight members of the UK’s Special Air Service (SAS) were briefly detained in Benghazi provides confirmation that the US and its European allies are stepping up their efforts to establish firm links with elements of the opposition to the regime of President Muammar Gaddafi and secure control of Libya’s oil resources.

Last week three Dutch marines were detained by forces loyal to the Gaddafi regime. They were said to be involved in rescuing Dutch civilians. British special forces were deployed to airlift civilians from remote desert oil camps. But it has never been made clear whether or not they were all withdrawn after that operation.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague refused to either confirm or deny the presence of the SAS in Libya. This is in line with London’s policy of never commenting officially on the deployment of its special forces.

Questioned on BBC television’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning, Defence Secretary Liam Fox would say only that Britain had a “small diplomatic mission” on the ground. According to the Sunday Times, which broke the story, the SAS were escorting a “junior diplomat” to meet with leading members of the opposition. The objective was to prepare the way for a visit by more senior figures.

The SAS personnel were said to be dressed in plain clothes, carrying arms and ammunition and passports from at least four different countries. According to Sky News, the eight who were detained were part of a team of 22 soldiers who were landed by helicopter south of Benghazi.

Their detention follows the announcement that Britain intended to establish a diplomatic presence to build links with the opposition. A UK diplomat explained the plan to the Financial Times last week, saying, “Having a presence on the ground allows us to get a better understanding about what’s happening. It’s about getting first-hand information and analysis.”

An unnamed defence analyst interviewed by the newspaper stressed that such a mission was the essential precursor to more extensive military intervention and involvement with the opposition. “Everyone is focused right now on whether there will be some heavy western military intervention such as no-fly zones or arming the rebels,” the Financial Times wrote. “But before you get to that point there are lots of things governments can do to help tip the strategic advantage in favour of the rebels.

“You could help them market their oil assets, help shore up their television and broadcast capabilities, and help give them raw intelligence. This is the kind of thing a diplomatic mission might start covertly doing.”

Clearly, the “junior diplomat” was tasked with sounding out elements of the opposition National Council, which met in Benghazi on Saturday for the first time. A Whitehall insider told the Financial Times: “They are not exactly a homogenous community of people.”

William Hague is said to have spoken to General Abdul Fattah Younis al Obaidi, the former Libyan interior minister and head of Gaddafi’s special forces, who recently went over to the opposition. He and former Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil are both looking to the US and Europe for assistance. Jalil has called for a no-fly zone to be established.

Obaidi in particular is seen as the potential head of a successor regime. He has worked closely in the past with the SAS, which trained Libyan special forces. British officials have identified him as someone with whom they could do business, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Britain’s operations in Libya are very much subordinate to the overall authority of the US. As in Afghanistan and before that in Iraq, Britain is eager to prove itself a reliable and useful ally.

In many respects, the UK’s connections with the Gaddafi regime are more extensive than those of Washington. The revelation that the London School of Economics (LSE) had accepted a multimillion-pound donation from Libya, which has proven embarrassing for the LSE, underlines the close relations that were forged between Britain and Libya by Tony Blair.

Those links are now being put to use, with William Hague phoning current members of the regime, such as the foreign minister Mussa Qusa, as well as those who have left it to join the opposition. As Gaddafi’s minister of intelligence, Mussa Qusa played a key role in negotiating the deal under which Gaddafi restored relations with the West in 2003.

British efforts are part of multifaceted operation to construct a new Libyan regime that can suppress popular opposition and ensure that the major oil companies, banks and corporations have access to Libya’s resources. Washington is seeking to exploit the mass opposition to Gaddafi to install a new client regime that will enable it to position its political and military assets to prop up reactionary regimes across North Africa and the Middle East—including Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Oman—that are being rocked by popular uprisings.

Britain is working closely with continental Europe on a common response to the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is to attend an EU summit on the question on March 11. He has said that Europe must “radically rethink its approach to the region.”

Clegg stressed Europe’s role in shaping the future of the region. He said: “What happens in North Africa impacts on every community in Europe—this is happening in our backyard. The EU, individual member states, businesses and civil society—all of us need to step up to the plate. 2011 is certain to be a defining moment for North Africa—but it is to be a defining moment for Europe too.”

The EU plans to send an official diplomatic delegation in the next few days. Baroness Catherine Ashton, high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, said: “I have decided to dispatch this high-level mission to provide me with first-hand, real-time information to feed into the discussions leading up to the March 11 special EU leaders’ summit on Libya.”

Ashton thanked the Italian government for its help in preparing the way for the mission. Italy has perhaps the closest economic and political ties with Libya of all the European countries. It gets a quarter of its crude oil and 10 percent of its natural gas from Libya. Italy is Libya’s largest trading partner and is the major EU exporter of arms to Libya. Its national oil company Eni has extensive investments in Libya, and Italian contractors are building a new coastal highway, railways and fibre optics networks.

The Libyan Investment Authority and other investors have stakes in some of Italy’s biggest companies. Last week, Italy suspended its 2008 Friendship Treaty with Libya. This means that Italy can now allow its military bases to be used for acts of aggression against the Gaddafi regime.

France has moved rapidly to recognise the opposition National Council. Government spokesman Bernard Valero said, “France hails the creation of the Libyan National Council and pledges support for the principles that motivate it and the goals it has set itself.”

New French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé condemned what he called Gaddafi’s “criminal folly.” The previous foreign minister, Michelle Alliot-Marie, had to resign because of her close links to Tunisian dictator Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. France’s interests in North Africa, where it is the former colonial power in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, make it imperative that it should not make the same mistake in Libya and continue its association with Gaddafi.

According to Time magazine, President Barack Obama is now refining the US response to the Libyan uprising and ensuring that the US has the full capacity to act very rapidly if necessary. Part of his strategy is to position military assets under the guise of mounting a humanitarian effort to transport refugees and provide aid to civilians. At the same time, Obama has formed a supreme intelligence committee consisting of Pentagon, National Security Council and CIA experts, which will attempt to bring together reports from US sources based among the opposition and Gaddafi’s forces.

The precise scale and form of the US intervention in Libya is necessarily dependent on the developing situation in the rest of the Middle East and North Africa. Libya’s oil resources are important, but Saudi Arabia’s are even more vital. The continuing protest movement in Bahrain threatens to destabilise neighbouring Saudi Arabia, which recently mobilised its military to suppress protests against the royal regime.

In Egypt, an interim government has been established under military control that contains many figures from the Mubarak era. But the popular movement is continuing, with protesters occupying the headquarters of the hated security police.

Speaking last week on the situation in Libya, Obama stressed the importance of not giving the impression that the US was intervening directly in the internal affairs of the country. He pointed out that his administration had tried to avoid provoking anti-American sentiment in Egypt by openly dictating what should be done.

He said, “One of the extraordinary successes of Egypt was the full ownership that the Egyptian people felt for that transformation. That has served the Egyptian people well; it serves US interests well. We did not see anti-American sentiment arising out of that movement in Egypt precisely because they felt that we hadn’t tried to engineer or impose a particular outcome, but rather they owned it. The same is happening in Tunisia.”

However, the US is already intervening openly as well as covertly. Obama has demanded that Gaddafi leave and insisted that military measures such as a no-fly zone are under consideration.

As Obama’s comments on Egypt suggest, the main obstacle to a bloody imperialist intervention in Libya is the risk of mass political opposition in the working class—in Libya, in other countries in the region, and in the working class in Europe and America.

Speaking on ABC television, Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate in 2008, who has been critical of Obama’s policy in relation to Libya, concurred in the importance of Egypt. Egypt, he told Christiane Amanpour, is “the heart and soul of the Arab world.” He indicated he did not yet think it was time for a ground intervention in Libya.

John Kerry, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on the “Face the Nation” program that the US and its allies should prepare to impose a no-fly zone. When the moderator reminded him that Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week cautioned that such a move was an act of war, beginning with the bombing of Libyan air defense systems, Kerry said he did not consider a no-fly zone to constitute military intervention.

05 March, 2011

Salon.com

To follow-up on yesterday’s observations about the prolonged forced nudity to which Bradley Manning has been subjected the last two days: brig officials now confirm to The New York Times that Manning will be forced to be nude every night from now on for the indefinite future — not only when he sleeps, but also when he stands outside his cell for morning inspection along with the other brig detainees. They claim that it is being done “as a ‘precautionary measure’ to prevent him from injuring himself.”

Has anyone before successfully committed suicide using a pair of briefs — especially when under constant video and in-person monitoring? There’s no underwear that can be issued that is useless for killing oneself? And if this is truly such a threat, why isn’t he on “suicide watch” (the NYT article confirms he’s not)? And why is this restriction confined to the night; can’t he also off himself using his briefs during the day?

Let’s review Manning’s detention over the last nine straight months: 23-hour/day solitary confinement; barred even from exercising in his cell; one hour total outside his cell per day where he’s allowed to walk around in circles in a room alone while shackled, and is returned to his cell the minute he stops walking; forced to respond to guards’ inquiries literally every 5 minutes, all day, everyday; and awakened at night each time he is curled up in the corner of his bed or otherwise outside the guards’ full view. Is there anyone who doubts that these measures — and especially this prolonged forced nudity — are punitive and designed to further erode his mental health, physical health and will? As The Guardian reported last year, forced nudity is almost certainly a breach of the Geneva Conventions; the Conventions do not technically apply to Manning, as he is not a prisoner of war, but they certainly establish the minimal protections to which all detainees — let alone citizens convicted of nothing — are entitled.

The treatment of Manning is now so repulsive that it even lies beyond what at least some of the most devoted Obama admirers are willing to defend. For instance, UCLA Professor Mark Kleiman — who last year hailed Barack Obama as, and I quote, “the greatest moral leader of our lifetime” — wrote last night:

The United States Army is so concerned about Bradley Manning’s health that it is subjecting him to a regime designed to drive him insane. . . . This is a total disgrace. It shouldn’t be happening in this country. You can’t be unaware of this, Mr. President. Silence gives consent.

The entire Manning controversy has received substantial media attention. It’s being carried out by the military of which Barack Obama is the Commander-in-Chief. Yes, the Greatest Moral Leader of Our Lifetime and Nobel Peace Prize winner is well aware of what’s being done and obviously has been for quite some time. It is his administration which is obsessed with destroying and deterring any remnants of whistle-blowing and breaches of the secrecy regime behind which the National Security and Surveillance States function. This is all perfectly consistent with his actions in office, as painful as that might be for some to accept (The American Prospect, which has fairly consistently criticized Obama’s civil liberties abuses, yesterday called the treatment of Manning “torture” and denounced it as a “disgrace”). As former Army officer James Joyner (and emphatic critic of WikiLeaks and Manning) writes:

Obama promised to close Gitmo because he was embarrassed that we were doing this kind of thing to accused terrorists. But he’s allowing it to happen to an American soldier under his command?

And I’ll say this again: just fathom the contrived, shrieking uproar from opportunistic Democratic politicians and their loyalists if it had been George Bush and Dick Cheney — on U.S. soil — subjecting a whistle-blowing member of the U.S. military to these repressive conditions without being convicted of anything, charging him with a capital offense that statutorily carries the death penalty, and then forcing him to remain nude every night and stand naked for inspection outside his cell. Feigning concern over detainee abuse for partisan gain is only slightly less repellent than the treatment to which Manning is being subjected.

03 March, 2011 Countercurrents.org

Whatever the outcome of the protests, uprisings, and rebellions now sweeping the Middle East, one thing is guaranteed: the world of oil will be permanently transformed. Consider everything that’s now happening as just the first tremor of an oilquake that will shake our world to its core.

For a century stretching back to the discovery of oil in southwestern Persia before World War I, Western powers have repeatedly intervened in the Middle East to ensure the survival of authoritarian governments devoted to producing petroleum. Without such interventions, the expansion of Western economies after World War II and the current affluence of industrialized societies would be inconceivable.

Here, however, is the news that should be on the front pages of newspapers everywhere: That old oil order is dying, and with its demise we will see the end of cheap and readily accessible petroleum — forever.

Ending the Petroleum Age

Let’s try to take the measure of what exactly is at risk in the current tumult. As a start, there is almost no way to give full justice to the critical role played by Middle Eastern oil in the world’s energy equation. Although cheap coal fueled the original Industrial Revolution, powering railroads, steamships, and factories, cheap oil has made possible the automobile, the aviation industry, suburbia, mechanized agriculture, and an explosion of economic globalization. And while a handful of major oil-producing areas launched the Petroleum Age — the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, Romania, the area around Baku (in what was then the Czarist Russian empire), and the Dutch East Indies — it’s been the Middle East that has quenched the world’s thirst for oil since World War II.

In 2009, the most recent year for which such data is available, BP reported that suppliers in the Middle East and North Africa jointly produced 29 million barrels per day, or 36% of the world’s total oil supply — and even this doesn’t begin to suggest the region’s importance to the petroleum economy. More than any other area, the Middle East has funneled its production into export markets to satisfy the energy cravings of oil-importing powers like the United States, China, Japan, and the European Union (EU). We’re talking 20 million barrels funneled into export markets every day. Compare that to Russia, the world’s top individual producer, at seven million barrels in exportable oil, the continent of Africa at six million, and South America at a mere one million.

As it happens, Middle Eastern producers will be even more important in the years to come because they possess an estimated two-thirds of remaining untapped petroleum reserves. According to recent projections by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Middle East and North Africa will jointly provide approximately 43% of the world’s crude petroleum supply by 2035 (up from 37% in 2007), and will produce an even greater share of the world’s exportable oil.

To put the matter baldly: The world economy requires an increasing supply of affordable petroleum. The Middle East alone can provide that supply. That’s why Western governments have long supported “stable” authoritarian regimes throughout the region, regularly supplying and training their security forces. Now, this stultifying, petrified order, whose greatest success was producing oil for the world economy, is disintegrating. Don’t count on any new order (or disorder) to deliver enough cheap oil to preserve the Petroleum Age.

To appreciate why this will be so, a little history lesson is in order.

The Iranian Coup

After the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) discovered oil in Iran (then known as Persia) in 1908, the British government sought to exercise imperial control over the Persian state. A chief architect of this drive was First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. Having ordered the conversion of British warships from coal to oil before World War I and determined to put a significant source of oil under London’s control, Churchill orchestrated the nationalization of APOC in 1914. On the eve of World War II, then-Prime Minister Churchill oversaw the removal of Persia’s pro-German ruler, Shah Reza Pahlavi, and the ascendancy of his 21-year-old son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

Though prone to extolling his (mythical) ties to past Persian empires, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was a willing tool of the British. His subjects, however, proved ever less willing to tolerate subservience to imperial overlords in London. In 1951, democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq won parliamentary support for the nationalization of APOC, by then renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). The move was wildly popular in Iran but caused panic in London. In 1953, to save this great prize, British leaders infamously conspired with President Dwight Eisenhower‘s administration in Washington and the CIA to engineer a coup d’état that deposed Mossadeq and brought Shah Pahlavi back from exile in Rome, a story recently told with great panache by Stephen Kinzer in All the Shah’s Men.

Until he was overthrown in 1979, the Shah exercised ruthless and dictatorial control over Iranian society, thanks in part to lavish U.S. military and police assistance. First he crushed the secular left, the allies of Mossadeq, and then the religious opposition, headed from exile by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Given their brutal exposure to police and prison gear supplied by the United States, the shah’s opponents came to loathe his monarchy and Washington in equal measure. In 1979, of course, the Iranian people took to the streets, the Shah was overthrown, and Ayatollah Khomeini came to power.

Much can be learned from these events that led to the current impasse in U.S.-Iranian relations. The key point to grasp, however, is that Iranian oil production never recovered from the revolution of 1979-1980.

Between 1973 and 1979, Iran had achieved an output of nearly six million barrels of oil per day, one of the highest in the world. After the revolution, AIOC (rechristened British Petroleum, or later simply BP) was nationalized for a second time, and Iranian managers again took over the company’s operations. To punish Iran’s new leaders, Washington imposed tough trade sanctions, hindering the state oil company’s efforts to obtain foreign technology and assistance. Iranian output plunged to two million barrels per day and, even three decades later, has made it back to only slightly more than four million barrels per day, even though the country possesses the world’s second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.

Dreams of the Invader

Iraq followed an eerily similar trajectory. Under Saddam Hussein, the state-owned Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) produced up to 2.8 million barrels per day until 1991, when the First Gulf War with the United States and ensuing sanctions dropped output to half a million barrels daily. Though by 2001 production had again risen to almost 2.5 million barrels per day, it never reached earlier heights. As the Pentagon geared up for an invasion of Iraq in late 2002, however, Bush administration insiders and well-connected Iraqi expatriates spoke dreamily of a coming golden age in which foreign oil companies would be invited back into the country, the national oil company would be privatized, and production would reach never before seen levels.

Who can forget the effort the Bush administration and its officials in Baghdad put into making their dream come true? After all, the first American soldiers to reach the Iraqi capital secured the Oil Ministry building, even as they allowed Iraqi looters free rein in the rest of the city. L. Paul Bremer III, the proconsul later chosen by President Bush to oversee the establishment of a new Iraq, brought in a team of American oil executives to supervise the privatization of the country’s oil industry, while the U.S. Department of Energy confidently predicted in May 2003 that Iraqi production would rise to 3.4 million barrels per day in 2005, 4.1 million barrels by 2010, and 5.6 million by 2020.

None of this, of course, came to pass. For many ordinary Iraqis, the U.S. decision to immediately head for the Oil Ministry building was an instantaneous turning point that transformed possible support for the overthrow of a tyrant into anger and hostility. Bremer’s drive to privatize the state oil company similarly produced a fierce nationalist backlash among Iraqi oil engineers, who essentially scuttled the plan. Soon enough, a full-scale Sunni insurgency broke out. Oil output quickly fell, averaging only 2.0 million barrels daily between 2003 and 2009. By 2010, it had finally inched back up to the 2.5 million barrel mark — a far cry from those dreamed of 4.1 million barrels.

One conclusion isn’t hard to draw: Efforts by outsiders to control the political order in the Middle East for the sake of higher oil output will inevitably generate countervailing pressures that result in diminished production. The United States and other powers watching the uprisings, rebellions, and protests blazing through the Middle East should be wary indeed: whatever their political or religious desires, local populations always turn out to harbor a fierce, passionate hostility to foreign domination and, in a crunch, will choose independence and the possibility of freedom over increased oil output.

The experiences of Iran and Iraq may not in the usual sense be comparable to those of Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Oman, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, and Yemen. However, all of them (and other countries likely to get swept up into the tumult) exhibit some elements of the same authoritarian political mold and all are connected to the old oil order. Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Oman, and Sudan are oil producers; Egypt and Jordan guard vital oil pipelines and, in Egypt’s case, a crucial canal for the transport of oil; Bahrain and Yemen as well as Oman occupy strategic points along major oil sealanes. All have received substantial U.S. military aid and/or housed important U.S. military bases. And, in all of these countries, the chant is the same: “The people want the regime to fall.”

Two of these regimes have already fallen, three are tottering, and others are at risk. The impact on global oil prices has been swift and merciless: on February 24th, the delivery price for North Brent crude, an industry benchmark, nearly reached $115 per barrel, the highest it’s been since the global economic meltdown of October 2008. West Texas Intermediate, another benchmark crude, briefly and ominously crossed the $100 threshold.

Why the Saudis are Key

So far, the most important Middle Eastern producer of all, Saudi Arabia, has not exhibited obvious signs of vulnerability, or prices would have soared even higher. However, the royal house of neighboring Bahrain is already in deep trouble; tens of thousands of protesters — more than 20% of its half million people — have repeatedly taken to the streets, despite the threat of live fire, in a movement for the abolition of the autocratic government of King Hamad ibn Isa al-Khalifa, and its replacement with genuine democratic rule.

These developments are especially worrisome to the Saudi leadership as the drive for change in Bahrain is being directed by that country’s long-abused Shiite population against an entrenched Sunni ruling elite. Saudi Arabia also contains a large, though not — as in Bahrain — a majority Shiite population that has also suffered discrimination from Sunni rulers. There is anxiety in Riyadh that the explosion in Bahrain could spill into the adjacent oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia — the one area of the kingdom where Shiites do form the majority — producing a major challenge to the regime. Partly to forestall any youth rebellion, 87-year-old King Abdullah has just promised $10 billion in grants, part of a $36 billion package of changes, to help young Saudi citizens get married and obtain homes and apartments.

Even if rebellion doesn’t reach Saudi Arabia, the old Middle Eastern oil order cannot be reconstructed. The result is sure to be a long-term decline in the future availability of exportable petroleum.

Three-quarters of the 1.7 million barrels of oil Libya produces daily were quickly taken off the market as turmoil spread in that country. Much of it may remain off-line and out of the market for the indefinite future. Egypt and Tunisia can be expected to restore production, modest in both countries, to pre-rebellion levels soon, but are unlikely to embrace the sorts of major joint ventures with foreign firms that might boost production while diluting local control. Iraq, whose largest oil refinery was badly damaged by insurgents only last week, and Iran exhibit no signs of being able to boost production significantly in the years ahead.

The critical player is Saudi Arabia, which just increased production to compensate for Libyan losses on the global market. But don’t expect this pattern to hold forever. Assuming the royal family survives the current round of upheavals, it will undoubtedly have to divert more of its daily oil output to satisfy rising domestic consumption levels and fuel local petrochemical industries that could provide a fast-growing, restive population with better-paying jobs.

From 2005 to 2009, Saudis used about 2.3 million barrels daily, leaving about 8.3 million barrels for export. Only if Saudi Arabia continues to provide at least this much oil to international markets could the world even meet its anticipated low-end oil needs. This is not likely to occur. The Saudi royals have expressed reluctance to raise output much above 10 million barrels per day, fearing damage to their remaining fields and so a decline in future income for their many progeny. At the same time, rising domestic demand is expected to consume an ever-increasing share of Saudi Arabia’s net output. In April 2010, the chief executive officer of state-owned Saudi Aramco, Khalid al-Falih, predicted that domestic consumption could reach a staggering 8.3 million barrels per day by 2028, leaving only a few million barrels for export and ensuring that, if the world can’t switch to other energy sources, there will be petroleum starvation.

In other words, if one traces a reasonable trajectory from current developments in the Middle East, the handwriting is already on the wall. Since no other area is capable of replacing the Middle East as the world’s premier oil exporter, the oil economy will shrivel — and with it, the global economy as a whole.

Consider the recent rise in the price of oil just a faint and early tremor heralding the oilquake to come. Oil won’t disappear from international markets, but in the coming decades it will never reach the volumes needed to satisfy projected world demand, which means that, sooner rather than later, scarcity will become the dominant market condition. Only the rapid development of alternative sources of energy and a dramatic reduction in oil consumption might spare the world the most severe economic repercussions.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, a TomDispatch regular, and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. A documentary film version of his previous book, “Blood and Oil,” is available from the Media Education Foundation. To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Klare explains how resource scarcity is driving protest and much else on our planet, click here, or download it to your iPod here.

Copyright 2011 Michael T. Klare

03 March, 2011

AFP

ROME (AFP) – – World food prices have hit record highs and oil price spikes could push them even higher, the UN food agency warned on Thursday, as increasing violence in Libya sent jitters through commodity markets.

The Food Price Index, which monitors average monthly price changes for a variety of key staples, rose to 236 points in February from 231 points in January, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said.

It was the highest level since FAO began monitoring prices in 1990.

“Unexpected oil price spikes could further exacerbate an already precarious situation in food markets,” David Hallam, director of the Rome-based FAO’s trade and market division, was quoted as saying in a statement.

“This adds even more uncertainty concerning the price outlook just as plantings for crops in some of the major growing regions are about to start.”

FAO economists warned that food prices were likely to remain high until the outlook for this year’s harvests is known by around April.

Crude prices dipped on Thursday after pushing higher in nervous trading amid fighting in oil-rich Libya between Moamer Kadhafi loyalists and rebel forces.

Brent North Sea crude for delivery in April fell 63 cents to $115.72 per barrel. New York’s light sweet crude for April, known as West Texas Intermediate (WTI), shed 61 cents to $101.61.

Prices jumped on Wednesday by nearly three dollars in New York.

“Persistent uncertainty in the region continues to support fears of contagion,” British bank Barclays Capital said in a report.

“Lost output from countries like Libya and the increasing likelihood of a pushback in foreign investment is set to support longer-term prices,” it said.

Analysts at Germany’s Commerzbank warned: “There is still a risk of the unrest spreading to other oil producing countries of the region.”

The International Energy Agency said oil exports from Libya had been cut by between 850,000 and one million barrels per day, out of a total of 1.6 million barrels sent mostly to European buyers before the uprising.

Loyalist attacks on the strategic Libyan oil port of Brega, home to major petroleum operations, added to concern, while popular unrest also affects the Arabian Peninsula with protests in Bahrain, Oman and Yemen.

Higher oil prices affect all aspects of the food production chain, from fertiliser to transport.

The FAO has warned that rising food prices are in turn driving unrest around the world, including recent uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.

Aid agencies have called on the international community to take urgent action to put an end to the recent food price volatility.

The G20 group of leading world economies has vowed to take action.

The FAO said the February increase in its Food Price Index was the eighth consecutive monthly rise, with dairy prices up 4.0 percent from January and cereal prices up 3.7 percent due to increased maize demand and lower supply.

The UN food agency said that this was due to “larger use of maize for ethanol production in the United States” and “statistical adjustments to China’s historical supply and demand balance for maize.”

Meat prices meanwhile rose 2.0 percent from January, while the price of oils and fats rose only marginally and sugar fell slightly.

A breakdown of Thursday’s FAO data showed that in China prices for rice and wheat flour stabilised after government assurances on reserves but they remained 23 percent and 16 percent above their levels for February 2010.

The data also showed that coarse grain prices have started to increase in Africa, while in South America wheat and maize are also trending higher.

In the former Soviet Union, wheat prices stabilised or decreased.

© 2011 AFP

02 March, 2011

Countercurrents.org

As workers all over the U.S. become inspired by the massive demonstrations in Wisconsin, a dangerous idea is being voiced by some working-class allies that could unravel it all. The threat lies in the following argument: to protect the bargaining rights of unions, state and city workers must be prepared to make concessions over wages, benefits, etc. This line of reasoning is not only false to the core, it’s suicidal.

Take for example a recent New York Times article on the battle in Wisconsin:

“It is not yet clear whether Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin will succeed in his quest to strip public employee unions of most of their bargaining rights. But by simply pressing the issue, he has already won major concessions that would have been unthinkable just a month ago.”

This is extraordinary: The Governor makes a radically anti-union threat, and some union leaders are ready to give him EVERYTHING, just not the kitchen sink.

The article continues:

“Some of Wisconsin’s major public sector unions, faced with what they see as a threat to their existence, have decided to accept concessions that they had been vigorously fighting…translating into a pay cut of around 7 percent…But Mr. Walker is not settling for that. He said that those concessions were “an interesting development, because a week ago they said that’s not acceptable.” (February 28, 2011).

So the anti-union Governor is making the unacceptable acceptable, merely by voicing a threat. If this precedent were established, what future do unions have? Especially when one considers that state budget deficits are projected to continue for years.

Imagine the following scenario: A war is declared by a foreign army and the defending General responds by announcing to the invaders, “I will only fight one battle to preserve this particular parcel of land (bargaining rights), and will wave the white flag over all other territory (wages, benefits, etc.).

Of course the foreign army would conclude “the enemy is already defeated!” And fight without mercy for total victory.

This is the situation in Wisconsin and other states. War has been declared on unions and some labor leaders are pretending that they can offer concessions to appease their attackers. Unfortunately, this strategy has failed for years, and is in fact why the right wing felt confident enough to officially declare war.

Every time unions agree to lower wages and benefits — as they have been doing for years — they weaken themselves internally, thus opening the way for further, deeper attacks. The right-wing attack on bargaining rights did not appear from nowhere; it was the result of years of concessionary bargaining, which inevitably leads to worker demoralization within the union. An army which concedes every battle will be composed of demoralized soldiers.

The union policy of concessionary bargaining is the policy of committing slow suicide, and after years of providing their executioners with nooses, some labor leaders act stunned when their hanging is announced. They believed that they could befriend the hangman, as long as they didn’t create too much trouble by aggressive protesting or well-planned strikes.

But hangmen are hangmen, and they must be treated accordingly.

Labor unions must mobilize the entire community in every state to demand “No Concessions” for all public workers. The fight to save collective bargaining can only be won if workers believe that collective bargaining will save their wages and benefits; the two cannot be separated.

Contrary to what the mainstream media and politicians constantly tells us, the general public would support such a fight. A recent CBS News/New York Times poll found that “Those surveyed said they opposed, 56 percent to 37 percent, cutting the pay or benefits of public employees to reduce deficits.” (March 1, 2011).

The battle in Wisconsin proves that private-sector workers do not hate their public-sector brothers and sisters, they passionately support them.

How can labor unions mobilize the general public towards a pro-worker solution to the state budget deficits? By exposing another media lie: that Americans are against ALL tax increases. In fact, the same pollsters discovered in 2009 that 74 percent of respondents “support higher taxes on the rich.” (April 6, 2009).

Labor unions must place this demand at the head of their campaign to save collective bargaining rights and workers wages and benefits. Workers will be further encouraged to fight for their wages and benefits when they see that there is a solution to the budget crisis.

Rose Ann DeMoro of National Nurses United agrees:

“So it’s time for all of us to say it loud: No More Cuts in Public Sector Pay, Pensions, or Health Benefits; Balance Budgets By Closing Corporate Tax Loopholes, Restoring Fair Share Taxes on Corporations and Wealthy Individuals; Guarantee Retirement Security and Healthcare for All.”

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org) He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com

08 March, 2011 WSWS.org

Officially, the Obama administration and Washington’s allies are still drawing up “contingency plans” to intervene in the Libyan crisis. In reality, intensive military and intelligence operations are underway within and around the oil-rich country.

Under the hypocritical banner of stopping “unacceptable violence” against the Libyan people, the US and the European powers are seeking to install a regime in Tripoli that will be even more subordinate to their interests than Muammar Gaddafi’s has proven to be over the past decade.

Unlike its response to the revolutionary movements in Tunisia and Egypt—Obama did not once call for the ouster of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali or Hosni Mubarak and is supporting the retention of their regimes headed by new personnel—the US government has openly called for Gaddafi’s removal.

Washington is doing so in the name of democracy and humanitarian concerns even as it backs, and continues to arm, anti-democratic regimes across the region, notably in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Yemen, while they use police-state repression and violence to suppress popular uprisings.

The US is intent on working with top-level defectors from the Gaddafi regime, including those in the opposition interim government in Benghazi, to establish a puppet administration in Libya that will not only protect the substantial oil and gas interests of the US and other Western countries, but also provide a staging post for operations against the revolutionary struggles that are continuing in neighbouring countries.

An indication of the scale of the US-led operation was given by Thom Shanker in the New York Times on Monday. Citing administration officials, he reported: “The latest military force to draw within striking distance of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, is the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard two amphibious assault ships, the Kearsarge and the Ponce. The unit provides a complete air, sea and land force that can project its power quickly and across hundreds of miles, either from flat-decked ships in the Mediterranean Sea or onto a small beachhead on land.

“In this task force are Harrier jump-jet warplanes, which not only can bomb, strafe and engage in dogfights, but can also carry surveillance pods for monitoring military action on the ground in Libya; attack helicopters; transport aircraft—both cargo helicopters and the fast, long-range Osprey, whose rotors let it lift straight up, then tilt forward like propellers to ferry Marines, doctors, refugees or supplies across the desert—landing craft that can cross the surf anywhere along Libya’s long coastline; and about 400 ground combat troops of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines.”

In addition, he explained, “ample” US planes were based in Europe to strike “valued government or military targets” in Libya, and the aircraft carrier Enterprise and its strike group were “carefully sailing” up the Red Sea, bound for the Mediterranean. Other options being prepared included inserting Special Operations teams to assist the opposition forces, as was done in both Afghanistan and Iraq before the US-led invasions of 2001 and 2003.

Shanker said the expedition was initially being presented as a humanitarian one, helping to airlift international refugees from Libya, but had an unmistakeable objective. “The flotilla can be seen as a modern-day example of ‘gunboat diplomacy’—intended to embolden rebels and shake the confidence of loyalist forces and mercenaries, perhaps even inspiring a palace coup.”

Speaking from the Oval Office in the White House yesterday, President Barack Obama delivered his most explicit statement yet about using military force to oust the Gaddafi regime. He declared: “We’ve got NATO, as we speak, consulting in Brussels around a wide range of potential options, including potential military options, in response to the violence that continues to take place inside of Libya.”

Addressing reporters after a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, he said the two countries “stand shoulder to shoulder” in sending “a very clear message to the Libyan people that we will stand with them.” The Australian government had already publicly called for military intervention, via the imposition of a “no-fly zone”.

Behind the scenes, US and European military and intelligence operations are proceeding apace, as evidenced by the embarrassing detention of eight members of the UK’s Special Air Service (SAS) in Benghazi last Friday, and the earlier capture of Dutch marines by forces loyal to the Gaddafi regime.

Robert Fisk, the Independent’s veteran Middle East correspondent, yesterday reported that US AWACS surveillance aircraft had been flying around Libya, tracking Libyan planes, including Gaddafi’s private jet, for several days. On Sunday night, Al Jazeera television broadcast recordings made by American aircraft to Maltese air traffic control requesting details of Gaddafi’s plane. On Monday, NATO announced that the AWACS mission had been extended to 24 hours a day.

Fisk also reported that the US had asked Saudi Arabia to supply arms to the opposition council in Benghazi, starting with anti-tank rockets and mortars, and then ground-to-air missiles to shoot down Libyan fighter-bombers. Fisk noted that “their assistance would allow Washington to disclaim any military involvement in the supply chain—even though the arms would be American and paid for by the Saudis.”

The Saudi royal family has a track record in this regard. During the 1980s it was involved in the illegal Iran-Contra operation by the Reagan administration to secretly arm rebels in Nicaragua, and it helped the US arm Islamic fundamentalist guerrillas fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration’s request to the Saudis is extremely revealing. The White House is working hand-in-glove with its despotic ally—even as the Saudi monarchy bans all demonstrations in advance of planned “day of rage” protests—in order to protect strategic US military, diplomatic and oil interests in the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa.

Washington has been reluctant to openly intervene militarily in Libya, which could require a full-scale invasion, for fear of triggering a popular backlash across the region and in Libya itself. There is deep hostility to the neo-colonial role of the US, both for its occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and its sponsorship of all the Middle East’s repressive regimes, from Egypt to the Gulf emirates.

For that reason, and to attempt to give a fig leaf of legality to its intervention, the Obama administration has asked its European allies to take the lead, publicly at least, via NATO and the European Union. Reports of Libyan military attacks on civilians are being used to justify a more direct military assault, possibly commencing with a no-fly zone, which would require air strikes on Libyan targets.

Yesterday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said attacks against civilians in Libya may amount to “crimes against humanity,” making it difficult for the world to stand “idly by”. Shortly afterward, British Foreign Secretary William Hague told the British Parliament there were “credible reports” that Libyan government forces had used helicopter gunships against civilians. Hague said Britain and some other countries were working “on a contingency basis” on a United Nations Security Council resolution allowing for a no-fly zone.

As revealed by the abortive British SAS operation, the European powers are also spearheading efforts to liaise with the Gaddafi defectors who led the formation of a self-proclaimed Libyan National Council in Benghazi last Saturday, declaring itself the sole representative body for all of Libya. Despite the setback of the SAS fiasco—it appears that the Benghazi leadership objected to the too naked involvement of foreign troops—Defence Secretary Liam Fox stated that “a small British diplomatic team” was in Benghazi.

On Sunday, the French government hailed the creation of the national council. Paris “pledges support for the principles that motivate it and the goals it has set itself,” French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Bernard Valero said. The next day, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Farttini said Italy—which ruled Libya brutally from 1912 to 1943—had begun discreet talks with the council, boasting that Italy had better contacts in Libya than most countries.

Significantly, one of the first actions of the Benghazi council was to assure the Western powers that it would honour all contracts to supply oil from the east of Libya, where most of the country’s oil reserves are concentred. Saad al-Ferjani, the council member managing economic affairs, told Al Arabiya television on Sunday: “We will cover all of our contracts, they cannot be changed.”

This statement exemplifies the pro-Western and capitalist character of the embryonic regime, whose leading public figures were mostly all serving in the Gaddafi regime until very recently. They include former justice minister Mustafa Mohamed Abud Al Jeleil, who chairs the council, General Abdul Fattah Younis al Obaidi, the former Libyan interior minister and head of Gaddafi’s special forces, Ali Essawi, a former ambassador to India, who heads foreign affairs, and Omar Hariri, another former military officer, who was appointed head of the military.

In another clear statement of the council’s orientation, Jeleil said it would like to be recognised by the Western powers. He told Al Jazeera: “There are official contacts with European and Arab [countries].” Worried that Gaddafi would politically exploit the council’s collaboration with the US and its allies, Jeleil said it was opposed to any foreign military intervention. However, he has backed the imposition of a no-fly zone.

Because of their leading roles in the Gaddafi regime, these figures have many intimate military, intelligence, financial and diplomatic connections with the US and its allies. Over the past decade, Gaddafi provided intelligence to the West, entered into lucrative deals with global oil companies and invested an estimated $65 billion in Europe and the US, via the Libyan Investment Authority alone.

Yesterday, Gaddafi, while accusing his Benghazi-based opponents of aiding and abetting “foreign interference” and the return of “colonialism” to Libya, issued a thinly-veiled plea for a renewed accommodation with the imperialist powers. He invoked his regime’s collaboration in the “war on terrorism” and in preventing African refugees from entering Europe. “Libya plays a vital role in regional peace and world peace. We are an important partner in fighting Al Qaeda,” he stated. “There are millions of blacks who could come to the Mediterranean to cross to France and Italy, and Libya plays a role in security in the Mediterranean.”

On the ground in Libya, fighting continued yesterday between pro- and anti-Gaddafi forces, with both sides focussing on vital oil-related facilities in the Gulf of Sirte and west of Tripoli. The mainstream media, which is reporting the clashes almost exclusively from the Benghazi side, has begun emphasising the incapacity of the opposition forces to match the firepower of Gaddafi’s forces, thereby laying the basis for more open military intervention.

07 March, 2011

Michaelmoore.com

America is not broke.

Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just that it’s not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.

Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.

Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer “bailout” of 2008, now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can’t bring yourself to call that a financial coup d’état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.

And I can see why. For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we’d have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious Democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic — and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it.

I have nothing more than a high school degree. But back when I was in school, every student had to take one semester of economics in order to graduate. And here’s what I learned: Money doesn’t grow on trees. It grows when we make things. It grows when we have good jobs with good wages that we use to buy the things we need and thus create more jobs. It grows when we provide an outstanding educational system that then grows a new generation of inventers, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and thinkers who come up with the next great idea for the planet. And that new idea creates new jobs and that creates revenue for the state. But if those who have the most money don’t pay their fair share of taxes, the state can’t function. The schools can’t produce the best and the brightest who will go on to create those jobs. If the wealthy get to keep most of their money, we have seen what they will do with it: recklessly gamble it on crazy Wall Street schemes and crash our economy. The crash they created cost us millions of jobs. That too caused a reduction in revenue. And the population ended up suffering because they reduced their taxes, reduced our jobs and took wealth out of the system, removing it from circulation.

The nation is not broke, my friends. Wisconsin is not broke. It’s part of the Big Lie. It’s one of the three biggest lies of the decade: America/Wisconsin is broke, Iraq has WMD, the Packers can’t win the Super Bowl without Brett Favre.

The truth is, there’s lots of money to go around. LOTS. It’s just that those in charge have diverted that wealth into a deep well that sits on their well-guarded estates. They know they have committed crimes to make this happen and they know that someday you may want to see some of that money that used to be yours. So they have bought and paid for hundreds of politicians across the country to do their bidding for them. But just in case that doesn’t work, they’ve got their gated communities, and the luxury jet is always fully fueled, the engines running, waiting for that day they hope never comes. To help prevent that day when the people demand their country back, the wealthy have done two very smart things:

1. They control the message. By owning most of the media they have expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of the American Dream and to vote for their politicians. Their version of the Dream says that you, too, might be rich some day – this is America, where anything can happen if you just apply yourself! They have conveniently provided you with believable examples to show you how a poor boy can become a rich man, how the child of a single mother in Hawaii can become president, how a guy with a high school education can become a successful filmmaker. They will play these stories for you over and over again all day long so that the last thing you will want to do is upset the apple cart — because you — yes, you, too! — might be rich/president/an Oscar-winner some day! The message is clear: keep your head down, your nose to the grindstone, don’t rock the boat and be sure to vote for the party that protects the rich man that you might be some day.

2. They have created a poison pill that they know you will never want to take. It is their version of mutually assured destruction. And when they threatened to release this weapon of mass economic annihilation in September of 2008, we blinked. As the economy and the stock market went into a tailspin, and the banks were caught conducting a worldwide Ponzi scheme, Wall Street issued this threat: Either hand over trillions of dollars from the American taxpayers or we will crash this economy straight into the ground. Fork it over or it’s Goodbye savings accounts. Goodbye pensions. Goodbye United States Treasury. Goodbye jobs and homes and future. It was friggin’ awesome and it scared the shit out of everyone. “Here! Take our money! We don’t care. We’ll even print more for you! Just take it! But, please, leave our lives alone, PLEASE!”

The executives in the board rooms and hedge funds could not contain their laughter, their glee, and within three months they were writing each other huge bonus checks and marveling at how perfectly they had played a nation full of suckers. Millions lost their jobs anyway, and millions lost their homes. But there was no revolt (see #1).

Until now. On Wisconsin! Never has a Michigander been more happy to share a big, great lake with you! You have aroused the sleeping giant know as the working people of the United States of America. Right now the earth is shaking and the ground is shifting under the feet of those who are in charge. Your message has inspired people in all 50 states and that message is: WE HAVE HAD IT! We reject anyone tells us America is broke and broken. It’s just the opposite! We are rich with talent and ideas and hard work and, yes, love. Love and compassion toward those who have, through no fault of their own, ended up as the least among us. But they still crave what we all crave: Our country back! Our democracy back! Our good name back! The United States of America. NOT the Corporate States of America. The United States of America!

So how do we get this? Well, we do it with a little bit of Egypt here, a little bit of Madison there. And let us pause for a moment and remember that it was a poor man with a fruit stand in Tunisia who gave his life so that the world might focus its attention on how a government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom and morality and humanity.

Thank you, Wisconsin. You have made people realize this was our last best chance to grab the final thread of what was left of who we are as Americans. For three weeks you have stood in the cold, slept on the floor, skipped out of town to Illinois — whatever it took, you have done it, and one thing is for certain: Madison is only the beginning. The smug rich have overplayed their hand. They couldn’t have just been content with the money they raided from the treasury. They couldn’t be satiated by simply removing millions of jobs and shipping them overseas to exploit the poor elsewhere. No, they had to have more – something more than all the riches in the world. They had to have our soul. They had to strip us of our dignity. They had to shut us up and shut us down so that we could not even sit at a table with them and bargain about simple things like classroom size or bulletproof vests for everyone on the police force or letting a pilot just get a few extra hours sleep so he or she can do their job — their $19,000 a year job. That’s how much some rookie pilots on commuter airlines make, maybe even the rookie pilots flying people here to Madison. But he’s stopped trying to get better pay. All he asks is that he doesn’t have to sleep in his car between shifts at O’Hare airport. That’s how despicably low we have sunk. The wealthy couldn’t be content with just paying this man $19,000 a year. They wanted to take away his sleep. They wanted to demean and dehumanize him. After all, he’s just another slob.

And that, my friends, is Corporate America’s fatal mistake. But trying to destroy us they have given birth to a movement — a movement that is becoming a massive, nonviolent revolt across the country. We all knew there had to be a breaking point some day, and that point is upon us. Many people in the media don’t understand this. They say they were caught off guard about Egypt, never saw it coming. Now they act surprised and flummoxed about why so many hundreds of thousands have come to Madison over the last three weeks during brutal winter weather. “Why are they all standing out there in the cold? I mean there was that election in November and that was supposed to be that!

“There’s something happening here, and you don’t know what it is, do you…?”

America ain’t broke! The only thing that’s broke is the moral compass of the rulers. And we aim to fix that compass and steer the ship ourselves from now on. Never forget, as long as that Constitution of ours still stands, it’s one person, one vote, and it’s the thing the rich hate most about America — because even though they seem to hold all the money and all the cards, they begrudgingly know this one unshakeable basic fact: There are more of us than there are of them!

Madison, do not retreat. We are with you. We will win together.

Michael Moore is an Academy-Award winning filmmaker and best-selling author. Follow Michael Moore on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MMFlint

02 March, 2011

Democracy Now!

Forces aligned with Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi have launched new assaults to regain control of several towns captured in a popular uprising over the past two weeks. Meanwhile, two U.S. warships have moved through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean Sea toward Libya under orders by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. As talk of potential Western military intervention grows, we speak to Horace Campbell, a professor of African American studies and political science at Syracuse University.

AMY GOODMAN: Fierce battles are raging in Libya. Forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi have launched new assaults in an attempt to regain control of several towns that had been captured in a popular uprising over the past two weeks. Earlier today, Gaddafi addressed a small group of supporters in Tripoli in his third televised appearance. He continued to deny the uprising, saying opposition to him is led by terrorists and al-Qaeda operatives.

Meanwhile, two U.S. warships have moved through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean after orders by Defense Secretary Robert Gates that they should move closer to Libya.

For more, we’re joined by Horace Campbell, professor of African American studies and political science at Syracuse University. He has written extensively on African politics. He’s joining us now by Democracy Now! video stream from his home.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Campbell. Your assessment of the situation in Libya?

HORACE CAMPBELL: Good morning, and thank you very much for inviting us to discuss the delicate stage of the revolutionary situation in Libya. It is a situation that is maturing with very deliberate and great dangers for the revolutionaries. The dangers arise from the number of areas: firstly, the massacres that have been carried out by Gaddafi himself and the clique around Gaddafi; secondly, the dangers that are coming from the drumbeats for Western military intervention; and thirdly, the kind of xenophobia and anti-African, anti-black sentiment that is being stirred up among sectors of the Libyans who are rising up for freedom.

So, in this context, it is very important, for those who have solidarity with the Libyan uprising, with those fighting for freedom in Libya, to support the people in Libya and at the same time denounce any attempts by the Western forces, especially elements within the administration in the United States and Great Britain, for military intervention. We have seen, from the testimony yesterday from the Senate Armed Services Committee, that the chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is very uncomfortable with military intervention. Gates is uncomfortable with military intervention. And the head of the U.S. Central Command said that a no-fly zone is a prelude to military activity. And then, on the other hand, we have John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton and those forces calling for a no-fly zone and military intervention.

It is up to the peace and justice movement in this country to stand with one voice to say that at this point any kind of humanitarian intervention must be through the United Nations and to support those who are suffering at the borders and those who are suffering inside of Libya. We do not need military intervention by Britain, United States or any forces of NATO at this present moment.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Campbell, when you hear “forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi,” I don’t know if that’s actually an accurate term, because of the number of people he is paying to do this, to fight the pro-democracy groups. But can you talk about the mercenaries and where they come from and why they would support Muammar Gaddafi or work for him?

HORACE CAMPBELL: Well, I am going to be very careful of the use of the term “mercenaries,” because every government that say they have the control over state power use the instruments of the state to employ persons to fight for that state. So the fact that the United States of America employs other nationals to fight their wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, those persons are not called “mercenaries.” So I want to be very careful in the use of this term “mercenaries.”

Gaddafi and his children have access to billions of dollars. There are many citizens of countries all over the world, from the Middle East and from Africa, who have been in Libya, especially those from Africa who were aligned with forces like Charles Taylor from Liberia, Foday Sankoh from the Sierra Leone, the elements from Chad, where Gaddafi has been supporting for many years. Added to this, there are a number of Africans who were kept prisoners in Libya, who were caught trying to escape to Europe because they believed in freedom of movement of labor, just as in the international economy we have the freedom of capital. Now, many of these persons have been caught in this battle. And some Africans who are being paid by Gaddafi are called “mercenaries.”

Now, one has to do intense work among the governments of these states to do the diplomatic work to extricate their citizens who are caught in this fighting. And one has to also, at the same time, do very clear, deliberate work with the people fighting for freedom in Libya, that they do not, in their fight for freedom, whip up any kind of xenophobia against Africans, as if Libya is not an African country, or what we would say, against black Africans who are caught in this crossfire of Gaddafi manipulating citizens who are supposed to fight to keep him and his family in power.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Campbell, we’re also joined by Elizabeth Tan, deputy regional representative for UNHCR in Cairo, Egypt, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. The refugee crisis is getting more intense every day, Elizabeth Tan, both on the Tunisian-Libya border and on the Egyptian-Libya border. Can you talk about what is happening now?

ELIZABETH TAN: Yes. The crisis is indeed getting worse by the day in Tunisia. There are thousands and thousands of people stranded there at the border who are trying to get back to their homes. Many of them are from Egypt. There are efforts underway to go and to repatriate them, but the border is extremely congested, and UNHCR is very concerned about the humanitarian situation there. We are, together with the International Organization for Migration, trying to mount an air operation to bring people back to Egypt. There are, of course, a lot of other persons stranded at the border both here in Egypt and even more in Tunisia, people who are desperate to get home, to get away from the situation at the border there, thousands and thousands of people stuck who want to go home.

AMY GOODMAN: How can they best be helped?

ELIZABETH TAN: I think for the—certainly, there is a need to decongest the area around the border in Tunisia. In Egypt, I would say that there is—that the situation is better. There are less people there. And most of the people crossing are Egyptian, so they are directly going to their homes. In Tunisia, UNHCR is providing shelter, and agencies are providing food and trying to set up sanitation facilities there, but I think the main need is really to provide transportation for people to get home.

AMY GOODMAN: And food? How are people getting access to food? And what about word that Muammar Gaddafi’s forces are now moving into the border areas, where people have been able to go freely back and forth until now?

ELIZABETH TAN: I think certainly there are a lot of humanitarian agencies, and the governments of both Egypt and Tunisia are helping the people who are at the borders. In terms of—I am based in Cairo. So, there are no problems of people accessing the border, with the exception of people—refugees and persons of—from sub-Saharan Africa who are stuck in their homes, who are very afraid to move, as the other speaker on your program was mentioning. UNHCR is very concerned about those people. But on the eastern side, otherwise, the access to the border is OK.

AMY GOODMAN: Elizabeth Tan, I want to thank you for being with us, deputy regional representative for the U.N. High Commission on Refugees. She’s speaking to us from Cairo, Egypt.

Also, still with us, Professor Horace Campbell, professor of African American studies at Syracuse University. Professor Campbell, I wanted to read to you from The Guardian newspaper. This is a pseudonym, Muhammad min Libya, who wrote this. But he said, “As the calls for foreign intervention grow, I’d like to send a message to western leaders: Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy. This is a priceless opportunity that has fallen into your laps, it’s a chance for you to improve your image in the eyes of Arabs and Muslims. Don’t mess it up. All your previous programmes to bring the east and the west closer have failed, and some of them have made things even worse. Don’t start something you cannot finish, don’t turn a people’s pure revolution into some curse that will befall everyone. Don’t waste the blood that my friend Ahmed spilt for me,” he writes. He is speaking against intervention, Professor Campbell.

HORACE CAMPBELL: I think that is a sentiment that is seen very clearly from sectors of those who are hungry for freedom in Libya, because any kind of intervention by the United States and NATO forces would send a signal to anti-imperialist forces that the revolution in Libya has been instigated by the West and would throw sentiments in favor of Gaddafi at this moment when he’s carrying out massacres against the people. In fact, I would think that the opportunistic and cynical elements in the military establishment in the United States and Britain, in particular, are calculating that keeping Gaddafi in power longer would be to the benefit of the West, because it would destabilize the revolutionary forces in both Egypt and in Tunisia. And I would think that the concern that is being expressed by Lieberman, McCain and Hillary Clinton is not for the revolution in Libya, but is a concern for oil and for the destabilization of the Egyptian revolution, because of the long-term implications of this revolution for Africa and the Middle East.

AMY GOODMAN: What about, Professor Campbell, the fact that it is usually referred to as rebellions, uprisings, revolutions that are taking place “in the Arab world”?

HORACE CAMPBELL: Yes. And one of the major challenges is for the people who call themselves progressives to be very careful in their language about this so-called revolution in the Arab world. Libya is on the African continent, long historic ties to Africa. Tunisia is on the African continent. Egypt stands at the headwaters of the Nile River that comes out of Central Africa. All of these states work very hard to be citizens and members of the African community. We only need to look at the African nation—Cup of Nations Cups and to see the role that Tunisia and Egypt plays in African soccer. So, these are African societies. In these African societies, they have citizens who are of an Arab extraction, and many of these people call themselves Arabs. So what we can see is that the revolution in North Africa links the Arab revolution of Arabia and North Africa.

This intersection of Arab and Africa has been positive in the past during the period of Nasser, when Nasser was anti-imperalist. What we have to be very careful about in this period is those who call themselves Arab carry on the arrogance and chauvinism and racism of Western Europeans who look down on Africans. And it is in a revolutionary process that revolutionaries themselves have to have a higher standard of ethics, morality and racial and gender consciousness so that they do not reproduce the hierarchy and racism that looks down on Africans who are called black Africans, because Tunisians, Libyans and Egyptians are also Africans.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Campbell, the issue of Saudi Arabia? We are hearing protests in Yemen, in Oman, in Bahrain, in Jordan. Saudi Arabia, we have heard there have been some strikes, but what about how Saudi Arabia fits into this?

HORACE CAMPBELL: This is the real clincher for the revolutionary process underway. I have been following the writings of Robert Fisk, and Robert Fisk has said that the real challenge will be the extent to which the revolutionary process gets underway in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, like Egypt under Mubarak, like Gaddafi’s police state, like Ben Ali’s police state, these are police states where the political leaders have billions of dollars to repress the people, where the political leaders use the resources of the state to recycle for Western armaments companies. And the leaders of Saudi Arabia are very conservative, oppressing not only the people, but particularly the women of Saudi Arabia. So there are large and huge pent-up sentiments and hunger for freedom within Saudi Arabia.

It is precisely because the Western strategic thinkers understand the potential for revolution in Saudi Arabia, along with all over the Arabian Peninsula, why it is urgent for them to intervene in North Africa, because from the time of Cleopatra right down through the Nazis in Germany, the occupation of Libya, right next to Egypt, was strategically important for access to North Africa and Arabia. So the strategic thinkers in Washington, in London, in Paris and Brussels are considering that with the impending isolation of Israel, with revolutionary processes all over Arabia and North Africa, it is very important for the West to have a foothold.

It is in this very moment they need ways to divert the working peoples of North America and Western Europe from the practice of capitalism. As we’ve seen in Wisconsin, the workers in Wisconsin gained confidence, gained support, gained courage from the peoples of Egypt. We’ve seen signs where the people say they’re standing up for their rights. In moments like these, when the Governor of Wisconsin is cutting back on expenditure on health, on education, for the poor, and the Pentagon is spending over a trillion dollars in its budget, it is times like these that the conservative forces need to whip up a new militarism in the United States of America to divert attention from the struggles of the working peoples, from students, from women, from the youth, who are against the capitalist system as it exists. We are in the midst of the most intense capitalist crisis since 1930s. This struggle internationally is a struggle against capitalism.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Campbell, I want to thank you very much for being with us, a professor of African American [studies] and political science at Syracuse University, African American studies and political science at Syracuse. He’s written extensively about African politics. As we move on now from talking about the protests from the Middle East and North Africa to the Midwest to Iraq, we’ll be going to Iraq in a minute.

08 March, 2011

Cassandra’s legacy

One of the lectures of my class in materials science involves showing to the students an inflated balloon. I puncture it with an needle and it explodes. Then I ask to the students to explain to me exactly what has happened. Why did the balloon explode and not just deflate gradually?

It is not an easy question and, usually, my students cannot answer it. We learn as children that some objects break more easily than others. It is after a good number of failures that we learn how to handle glasses and china. And, yes, we do learn that puncturing an inflated balloon with a needle makes it explode. It looks normal to us because we have seen it happening many times. But it is difficult to explain exactly why.

Human societies, it seems, have some elements in common with inflated balloons. A society is not as simple as a balloon, of course, but it can easily explode in revolutions, collapse, breakdowns, civil wars and all sort of rapid and unpredictable changes. Societies, it seems, are fragile, at least in terms of the stability of their governments. This behavior looks normal to us because we have seen it happening many times. But, just as for balloons, it is difficult to explain exactly why societies “explode.”

Of course, the difficulty of the problem has not prevented historians from proposing various causes for past collapses and revolutions in terms of economic, political, and social factors. Recently, crude oil has become popular as the cause of dramatic social changes. For instance, the collapse of the Soviet Union has been related to the local peaking of oil production (see this post of mine on The Oil Drum). Could crude oil be the “needle” that has been puncturing North African countries as well?

But how exactly is peak oil related to collapse? Why doesn’t society simply adapt to the new conditions? I think we can gain some insight on these points if we consider human societies as complex systems which obey the laws of physics.

There are some common physical elements in the behavior of balloons, human societies and many other systems. One is that these systems accumulate energy. A balloon accumulates energy as pressurized gas, a society accumulates energy in forms that we tend to call “capital” (human capital, monetary capital, industrial capital, etc.). Both inflated balloons and societies are systems defined as “out of thermodynamic equilibrium” because of this accumulated energy.

The second principle of thermodynamics says that system will try to find the fastest possible way to reach equilibrium, that is the condition of maximum entropy. That means dispersing the accumulated energy to the largest possible number of states. The system will do that by following the available pathway that leads faster to that condition.

Thermodynamics doesn’t say that a pathway (fast or slow) to equilibrium must necessarily exist. In the case of an inflated balloon, as long as the balloon walls are intact, there is no such pathway and the balloon stays inflated. But, if we puncture the balloon, we create a fast route to entropy increase. In the right conditions, that is, if the accumulated energy is sufficiently large, the crack created by the needle tip generates a rapidly expanding fracture. The balloon explodes.

Human societies are much more complicated than a balloon but, in the end they tend to reach equilibrium by dispersing the accumulated energy – that is, reaching a condition of maximum entropy. That means transforming the accumulated energy into what we call “waste” or “pollution”. The dispersal process can take many different routes: a society is a tangle of feedbacks; with some stabilizing the system while others destabilizing it. Societies also grow new structures and new stocks of energy as they exploit natural resources. Then, when the stocks of non renewable energy are gradually exhausted, the rate of energy processing slows down – that’s something we sometimes call “The Hubbert cycle.” The fact that production shows a peak (“Hubbert’s peak”) is typical of crude oil, but it is a normal feature of dynamic systems of this kind. The cycle of a society often follows a “bell shaped” curve (e.g. for the Roman Empire)

Sometimes, the process of energy dispersal is smooth, but sometimes it is not smooth at all. Societies seem to be easily subjected to rapid and sudden changes as the system finds new pathways to disperse energy. In some cases, a growing society gets rid of a stumbling block to energy dispersal. This could be a good model for events such as the French Revolution that found such a stumbling block in the aristocrats of the time. In other cases, when a society is declining or reaching a peak, the problem may be that some structures built in order to manage large fluxes of energy become useless and must disappear. That may have been the case of the Red Army and of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. In all cases, the social system is blocked in an out of equilibrium condition because of the lack of a path to release the stored energy. Such a path may be created, however, by positive feedbacks generated by apparently minor events, for instance an increase in oil prices. Then, when the pathway appears, the transition may be abrupt: it is what we call revolution or collapse.

How about Northern African countries? In this case, we don’t have yet a clear picture yet of what is happening, especially for the case of Libya. But we know that the uprising in Egypt arrived shortly after that the curve of internal consumption crossing the one of national production. Egypt “exploded” when it became a net importer of crude oil (see e.g. this paper by Gail Tverberg). Tunisia went along the same path with consumption surpassing production around 2001. In the new condition of oil scarcity, these societies needed to get rid of energy expensive structures in the form of static governments that had been around for decades. That, of course, was not easy to do and it needed a trigger; something that released the accumulated pressure. Not unlike a punctured balloon.

We should always be careful about simple explanations for complex events. More than all, we should be wary of falling in the trap of seeing a simple chain of cause and effects in complex systems. Oil prices are not a “cause” of the unrest – just a trigger for something that needed to happened for other reasons.

But, even with these caveats, we know that oil – as our main source of energy – plays a role in the recent unrest in North Africa and will continue to do so in the future -. and not just in North Africa.

To know more about energy dispersal and entropy in out of equilibrium systems, you may give a look the papers by Arto Annila and coworkers at the University of Helsinki. Not the kind of stuff you read to relax in the evening, but – if you can manage to digest it, at least in part – it can answer a lot of questions you have always been wondering about.

At present Ugo Bardi is a professor of Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Firenze, Italy. He started with this position in 1992, before that he was staff researcher at the Department of Applied Chemistry in the same university.