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24 February, 2011

Al Jazeera

Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, has said in a speech on Libyan state television that al-Qaeda is responsible for the uprising in Libya.

“It is obvious now that this issue is run by al-Qaeda,” he said, speaking by phone from an unspecified location on Thursday.

He said that the protesters were young people who were being manipulated by al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden, and that many were doing so under the influence of drugs.

“No one above the age of 20 would actually take part in these events,” he said. “They are taking advantage of the young age of these people [to commit violent acts] because they are not legally liable!”

At the same time, the leader warned that those behind the unrest would be prosecuted in the country’s courts.

He called on Libyan parents to keep their children at home.

“How can you justify such misbehaviour from people who live in good neighbourhoods?” he asked.

The situation in Libya was different to Egypt or Tunisia he said, arguing that unlike people in the neighbouring countrie,  Libyans have “no reason to complain whatsoever”.

Libyans had easy access to low interest loans and cheap daily commodities, he argued. The one reform he did hint might be possible was a raise in salaries.

Mustafa Abdel Galil, who resigned three days ago from his post as the country’s justice minister, spoke to Al Jazeera at a meeting of tribal leaders and representatives of eastern Libya in the city of Al Baida.

He warned that Gaddafi has biological and chemical weapons, and will not hesitate to use them.

“We call on the international community and the UN to prevent Gaddafi from going on with his plans in Tripoli,” he said.

“At the end when he’s really pressured, he can do anything. I think Gaddafi will burn everything left behind him.”

The United Nation’s Human Rights Council will decide whether it will send an international team to investigate the alleged violations of international human rights law in Libya at a meeting in Geneva on Friday.

‘Symbolic’ leader

Gaddafi argued that he was a purely “symbolic” leader with no real political power, comparing his role to that played by Queen Elizabeth II in England.

He also warned that the protests could cut off Libya oil production. “If [the protesters] do not go to work regularly, the flow of oil will stop,” he said.

Ibrahim Jibreel, a Libyan political activist, said that the fact that Gaddafi was speaking by phone showed that he did not have the courage to appear publically, and proved that he remained “under self-imposed house arrest in Tripoli”.

Jibreel said there were similarities between Thursday’s speech and one Gaddafi gave earlier in the week.

“The theme of people who have taken pills and hallucinations is one that continues to occur,” he said.

Jibreel noted Gaddafi’s reference to loans and that he would reconsider salaries. “I think that there [are] some concessions that he wants to make, in his own weird way,” he said.

Struggling

Gaddafi is struggling to maintain his authority in the country, as major swathes of territory in the east of the vast North African country now appear to be under the control of pro-democracy protesters.

Ali, an eyewitness to the shooting, told Al Jazeera by phone that soldiers began shooting at peaceful protesters on Martyrs’ Square with heavy artillery at around 6am and had continued for 5 hours.

“They were trying to kill the people, not terrify them,” he said, explaining that the soldiers had aimed at the protesters’ heads and chests.

He estimated as many as 100 protesters had been killed. Approximately 400 people had been injured and were now in the town’s hospital. He said he had filmed the bodies after the shooting had stopped, but was unable to send the footage because internet access has been cut off.

“The people here didn’t ask for anything, they just asked for a constitution and democracy and freedom, they didn’t want to shoot anyone,” he said.

Gunfire could be heard in the background as Ali spoke, and he said the protesters were expecting the soldiers to launch another direct attack on Martyrs’ Square later in the evening.

Despite the risk of more shooting, he said he and the other protesters would continue their protest, even if it cost their lives.

Mosque ‘attacked’

Also on Thursday, a Libyan army unit led by Gaddafi’s ally, Naji Shifsha, blasted the minaret of a mosque being occupied by protesters in Az Zawiyah, according to witnesses.

According to witnesses, pro-Gaddafi forces also attacked the town of Misrata, which was under the control of protesters.

They told Al Jazeera that “revolutionaries had driven out the security forces”, who had used “heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft guns”.

They said the pro-Gaddafi forces were called the “Hamza brigade”.

Similar clashes have also been reported in the cities of Sabha in the south, and Sabratha, near Tripoli, which is in the west.

Anti-government protesters appeared to be in control of the country’s eastern coastline, running from the Egyptian border through to the cities of Tobruk and Benghazi, the country’s second largest city.

Ahmed Gadhaf al-Dam, one of Gaddafi’s top security official and a cousin, defected on Wednesday evening, saying in a statement issued by his Cairo office that he left the country “in protest and to show disagreement” with “grave violations to human rights and human and international laws”.

Al-Dam was travelling to Syria from Cairo on a private plane, sources told Al Jazeera. He denied allegations that he was asked to recruit Egyptian tribes on the border to fight in Libya and said he went to Egypt in protest against his government’s used of violence.

Communications blocked

Libyan authorities are working hard to prevent news of the events in the country from reaching the outside world.

Thuraya, a satellite phone provider based in the United Arab Emirates, has faced continuous “deliberate inference” to its services in Libya, the company’s CEO told Al Jazeera.

Samer Halawi, the company’s CEO, said his company will be taking legal action against the Libyan authorities for the jamming of its satellite.

“This is unlawful and this in uncalled for,” he said.

The company’s engineers have had some success in combating the jamming, and operations were back on almost 70 per cent of the Libyan territory on Thursday, Halawi said. The blocking was coming from a location in Tripoli.

The Libyan government has blocked landline and wireless communications, to varying degrees, in recent days.

Some phone services were down again on Thursday. In the town of Az Zawiyah, phone lines were working but internet access was blocked.

Nazanine Moshri, reporting from the northern side of the Tunisian-Libyan border near the town of Ras Ajdir, said that security forces were confiscating cellphones and cameras from people crossing into Tunisia.

“The most important thing to them is to not allow any footage to get across the border into Tunisia,” she reported.

Capital paralysed

Tripoli, the Libyan capital, meanwhile, is said to be virtually locked down, and streets remained mostly deserted, even though Gaddafi had called for his supporters to come out in force on Wednesday and “cleanse” the country from the anti-government demonstrators.

Libyan authorities said food supplies were available as “normal” in the shops and urged schools and public services to restore regular services, although economic activity and banks have been paralysed since Tuesday.

London-based newspaper the Independent reported, however, that petrol and food prices in the capital have trebled as a result of serious shortages.

Foreign governments, meanwhile, continue to rush to evacuate their citizens, with thousands flooding to the country’s borders with Tunisia and Egypt.

 

24 February, 2011

Countercurrents.org

It dates from America’s 19th century industrial expansion when workers moved away from farms to factories, mines, and other urban environments, with harsh working conditions, low pay, and other exploitive abuses. As a result, labor movements emerged, organizing workers to lobby for better rights and safer conditions, pitting them against corporate bosses yielding nothing without a fight.

During unionism’s formative years, workers were terrorized for organizing. In company-owned towns, they were thrown out of homes, beaten, shot, and hanged to leave management empowered.

The 1892 Homestead Steel Works strike culminated in a violent battle between Pinkerton agents and workers. As a result, seven were killed, dozens wounded, and, at the behest of Andrew Carnegie, owner of Carnegie Steel, Governor Robert Pattison sent National Guard troops to evict workers from company homes, make arrests, and help CEO Henry Clay Frick’s union busting strategy. It worked, preventing organizing of the Works for the next 40 years.

The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions chose May 1, 1886 as the date for an eight-hour work day to become standard. As the date approached, unions across America prepared to strike. On May 1, national rallies were held, involving up to 500,000 workers.

On May 4, the landmark Haymarket Square riot protested police violence against strikers the previous day. Someone threw a bomb. Police opened fire. Deaths resulted. Seven so-called anarchists were convicted of murder. Four were executed.

Radicalized by the incident, Emma Goldman became a powerful social justice voice through writing, lecturing, being imprisoned for her activism, and finally emigrating to Russia after its revolution, then elsewhere in Europe. After her death, she was buried in Chicago near the graves of the Haymarket radicals she supported.

Led by American Railway Union’s Eugene Debs, the 1894 Pullman strike was the first national one, involving 250,000 workers in 27 states and territories. America’s entire rail labor force struck, paralyzing the nation’s railway system. At the time, The New York Times called it “a struggle between the greatest and most important labor organization and the entire railroad capital.”

At issue were unfair labor practices, including long hours, low pay, poor working conditions, and little sympathy from owner George Pullman. On his behalf, President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops. Hundreds of others were given police powers. At the time, unionists were seen threatening US prosperity.

The strike was broken, killing 13, wounding dozens and resulting in Debs’ arrest, trial, conviction for violating a court injunction, and imprisonment for six months. Radicalized by the experience, he became America’s leading socialist figure when released, later running five times for president, in 1920 while again in prison for opposing US involvement in WW I.

Founded in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) had 100,000 members at its peak in the 1920s. Led by Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs, and others, it was committed to help workers against abusive management practices. It’s motto was “an injury to one is an injury to all.” It’s goal was revolutionary, saying in its Constitution:

“The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people. (The) struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the (unfair) wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth….It is the mission of the working class to do away with capitalism (for) a new society within the shell of the old.”

As a result, corporate bosses and Washington sought to crush it. In 1917, the Wilson administration used the Espionage and Sedition Act to raid and disrupt union meetings across the country, arresting hundreds on the grounds that they hindered the war effort by opposing it. In 1918, they were tried, convicted and given long sentences, except Haywood. Released on bail after conviction, he fled to Russia where he remained.

From 1918 – 21, the infamous Palmer Raids ravaged the union further during the time of the first Red Scare, effectively busting it, though it’s still around, a shadow of its former self. Visit its web site at iww.org to follow their latest activities, including comments on class warfare in Wisconsin.

In the early 20th century, Colorado labor wars raged, notably pitting mine bosses, National Guard troops, and strikebreakers against workers. In his People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn wrote poignantly about the 1913-14 Ludlow, CO coal strike and subsequent massacre, killing 75 or more strikers, strikebreakers, and bystanders for defying what he called “fuedal kingdoms run by (coal barons that) made the laws,” imposed curfews, and ran their operations more like despots than businessmen.

Other Union Busting Efforts

During the 1902 coal strike, 14 miners were killed and 22 injured in Pana, IL. In 1904, a Dunnville, CO battle between state militia forces and workers left six dead, others injured, 15 arrested, and 79 exiled to Kansas.

During the 1909 New York shirtwaist strike, female garment workers were arrested, a judge telling them, “You are on strike against God.” In March 1911, a fire at New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist factory killed 46, mostly women and young girls working in sweatshop conditions. They still exist today. Earlier articles discussed them, accessed through the following links:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/03/modern-slavery-in-america.html

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/02/global-sweatshop-wage-slavery.html

In 1912, the IWW-led Lawrence, MA Bread and Roses textile strike was largely successful. It was credited with inventing the moving picket line, a tactic to avoid arrest for loitering. Also in 1912, National Guard forces were used against striking West Virginia coal miners. In July that year, striking Brotherhood of Timber Workers were confronted by armed Galloway Lumber Company thugs, resulting in four deaths and dozens wounded, the incident called the Grabow Riot.

In 1913, New Orleans police shot three maritime workers, striking against the United Fruit Company. One died.

In 1914, Butte, Montana militia crushed striking Western Federation of Miners workers.

On January 19, 1915, famed labor leader Joe Hill was arrested in Salt Lake City, UT on bogus murder charges. Nonetheless, he was executed 21 months later. Before his death, he wrote Bill Haywood saying, “Don’t mourn – organize!” The same day, Roosevelt, NJ factory guards shot 20 rioting strikers.

In 1916, Everett (WA) Mills strikebreakers attacked and beat strikers. Police stood back without intervening, claiming the incident took place on federal land. Three days later, 22 unionists were arrested for speaking out. In October that year, IWW members were beaten, whipped, kicked and impaled for their activism. At their subsequent November 5 meeting, seven were shot and killed, 50 others wounded, and unknown numbers were unaccounted for.

Numerous other incidents at that time involved shootings, hangings, beatings, and arrests, unionists viciously attacked to disrupt them.

In 1919, nearly four million workers struck, including against against steel and coal companies. Management retaliated. The year’s Great Steel Strike failed. Company owners called workers dangerous radicals threatening America. Federal and National Guard troops again were used, resulting in violence, deaths, injuries and arrests. From 1919 – 23, numerous coal strikes also occurred, government again siding with management.

In 1920, the Battle of Matewan resulted in nine deaths, later sparking an armed rebellion of 10,000 West Virginia coal miners at the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest insurrection since the Civil War against which army troops intervened.

In 1922, the Herrin, IL coal strike massacre left 21 dead. In 1927, picketing coal miners were massacred in the company town of Serene, CO. In 1929, National Guard troops and armed thugs destroyed the National Textile Workers Union (NTWU) office during the Loray Mill Strike.

During the 1937 Little Steel strike, Youngstown Steel and Tube and Republic Steel employed hundreds of armed police who fired on strikers trying to prevent scabs from entering factories. On May 30, things exploded when Chicago police joined them, opening fire on picketing strikers and their families, killing 10 and injuring hundreds.

Earlier in the 1930s, unionists were convicted of criminal syndicalism. Vigilantes beat Harlan County, KY strikers. Police killed striking Ford Dearborn, MI strikers. Four cotton workers were killed on strike. National Guard forces killed two Toledo, OH Electric Auto-Lite strikers, wounding hundreds. Police attacked and fired on striking Minneapolis Teamsters. Other deaths, beatings and arrests occurred throughout the decade, even after passage of the landmark 1935 Wagner Act.

In 1932, the Hoover administration warred on WW I veterans, demanding promised bonuses. General Douglas MacArthur-led government troops burned their camps for marching peacefully for their rights.

In 1962, Jack Kennedy’s Executive Order 10988 established limited collective bargaining rights for federal employees. It spawned state and local efforts to expand theirs.

In 1968, National Guard troops were used against Memphis, TN sanitation worker strikers, days before Martin Luther King’s assassination, there to support them. Violence followed, including beatings. A young unarmed boy was killed emerging from a housing development.

Union busting post-WW II was mostly nonviolent, but just as determined to deny workers their rights after passage of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. It greatly weakened union clout, allowing stiff penalties for noncompliance.

It enacted “unfair labor practices,” prohibiting jurisdictional strikes (relating to worker job assignments), secondary boycotts (against companies doing business with others being struck), wildcat strikes, sit-downs, slow-downs, mass-picketing against scabs, closed shops (in which workers must join unions), union contributions to federal political campaigns (now freely given candidates), and more while legalizing employer interventions to prevent unionizing drives.

Serious erosion of union power to bargain collectively followed. As a result, employers can illegally fire union sympathizers and receive only minor wrist slap fines after years of expensive litigation to prove wrongdoing. Moreover, they can fire workers for any reason like incompetence or none at all. In addition, strikes are further neutralized because companies can hire replacements or threaten to move offshore.

Since the 1980s especially, earlier hard won rights significantly eroded after Reagan busted PATCO strikers, discussed in a previous article, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/02/wisconsin-ground-zero-to-save-public.html

From then to now, it’s been all downhill to where private and public workers face losing all rights unless mass activism resists. Despite Wisconsin heroics, national actions are sorely lacking, largely because union bosses collude with management and political leaders against their own rank and file.

“Confessions of a Union Buster”

In his book, Martin Jay Levitt describes from experience what happens, saying:

“Union busting is a field populated by bullies and built on deceit. A campaign against a union is an assault on individuals and a war on the truth. As such, it is war without honor. The only way to bust a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always (one way or another) attack. The law does not (intervene)….rather, it serves to suggest maneuvers and define strategies,” pitting media-supported companies, government, and corrupted union bosses against rank and file unionists, on their own, their grit, resourcefulness, and staying power alone for strategy.

Levitt also calls the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act a “union buster’s best friend” because “its complexity….presents endless possibilities for delays, roadblocks, and maneuvers that can undermine a union’s efforts and frustrate” members. The union buster’s key tactic is delay ahead of elections, buying time to organize “counter organizing drives,” targeting members and immediate supervisors to fear, not embrace, unionism as allied with their interests.

Efforts are also made to discredit unionists by “routinely pr(ying) into (their) police records, personnel files, credit histories, medical records, and family lives in search of a weakness” to use against them. When no dirt’s found, targeted workers are called gay or accused of cheating on their wives. It works in blue collar towns.

Other techniques involve “sackings,” even though illegal under NLRA’s Section 8(a)(3), prohibiting firing workers for urging others to join unions. Nonetheless, union busters know that reinstatement procedures take time, often years. The idea is to weaken support prior to elections, focusing heavily on winning over supervisor support, who, in turn, can influence rank and file members.

Learn more on Levitt’s web site, accessed through the following link:

http://www.unionbusting101.com/index.html

He also provides “Top Secret” information of what can and can’t be said on the issues, accessed through the link below:

http://www.unionbusting101.com/Top_Secret.pdf

He calls his purpose an effort “to inform and educate WORKERS and Union Organizers about what to expect from management in regards to Union Busting Terrorist Tactics used during union campaigns by management and their consultants in their attempt to defeat their employees from forming a union….or destroy (ones) that already exist.”

Nonetheless, the Wagner Act, though measurably weakened, lets workers unionize. Specifically, its Section 7 states:

“Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection.”

Levitt also provides information on union busting propaganda, tactics used by Walmart and other companies, labor union resources, for-profit union busters, and more.

Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and American Rights at Work Education Fund on Thwarting Union Organizing

On May 20, 2009, they cited a new five-year study, showing employer anti-union behavior intensifying. Cornell University Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner (a noted labor expert) said employers are more than twice as likely to use 10 or more tactics to thwart organizing efforts.

Titled “No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing,” it focused on coercive and punitive tactics against organizing efforts, including threats, intimidation, interrogation, harassment, surveillance, retaliation and firings to thwart it. As a result, most workers without unions who want them at best find their wish indefinitely postponed.

Even when workers successfully unionize, 52% have no contract a year later, and for 37% it’s two years. Moreover, besides intensive union busting tactics, employers are less likely to offer incentives such as unscheduled raises, positive personnel changes, bribes, special favors, social events, promises of improvement, and employee involvement programs.

In addition, private sector campaigns differ markedly from public sector ones, at least during the 1999 – 2003 period she studied. Recent events in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states show this very much is changing. Though most states let workers freely organize, current tactics show they’re subjected to similar private sector tactics to strip away their rights and leave them powerless.

As a result, unionists face increasingly hard times because companies, government, and corrupted union bosses use today’s economic environment against them, pleading hard times reasons for cutting back when, if fact, they’re exploiting current conditions to reward corporate favorites at their expense.

Joe Hill was right saying “organize” to fight back. So is imprisoned human rights lawyer Lynne Stewart, saying: “Organize – Agitate, Agitate, Agitate, Love Struggle!”

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.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

 

mongabay.com  February 09, 2011

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned that a drought in China could devastate the nation’s winter wheat crop and further inflate food prices worldwide. Already, food prices hit a record high in January according to the FAO. Rising 3.4 percent since December, prices reached the highest point since tracking began in 1990. While many fear a food crisis similar to the one in 2008-2007, experts say the world has more food in reserve this time around and gasoline, at least for now, remains cheaper. However, if China loses its winter wheat that could scuttle any hopes of avoiding another price rise in crop staples.

“Although the current winter drought has, so far, not affected winter wheat productivity, the situation could become critical if a spring drought follows the winter one and/or the temperatures in February fall below normal,” reads an FAO Early Warning on the situation.

Usually winter wheat is protected against frost by snow, but in China, low snow cover and little precipitation has left the wheat exposed. Approximately 60 percent of China’s planted wheat is imperiled due to the drought. If China loses the crop, analysts say the massive country, which is largely self-sufficient in food, will be forced to import grain to make up for the loss, threatening to upset an already precariously balanced international food market.

Tibetans working in wheat field in China. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Wheat crops have already had a rough year: an unprecedented heatwave and drought in Russia and Eastern Europe raised wheat prices around 50 percent last year. Russia’s vast wheat yield was cut by nearly 40 percent and the country responded by placing a ban, which remains in place, on exporting wheat. Flooding in Australia has further raised concerns about wheat prices.

The extreme weather events, especially in Russia, have led to a number of experts to finger climate change as one cause behind this year’s rising food prices.

“I think we are seeing some of the early effects of climate change on food security,” Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute told Public Radio International (PRI). “If someone had told me that there was likely to be a heat wave in Russia in which the average temperature would be 14 degrees Fahrenheit above the norm—that’s pushing the envelope. I mean FOUR degrees would be a lot.”

The FAO agrees, a report last November reads “adverse weather effects are undoubtedly a primary driver of wheat production shortfalls and, with climate change, may increasingly be so.”

In addition to climate change impacts, experts have pointed to a number of other reasons the world could see a second food crisis in three years, including use of food crops for biofuels, growing populations, fresh water shortages, rising meat and dairy consumption, the commodity boom, and soil erosion. Last time around, high oil prices played a big role, however, while oil prices are rising, they haven’t yet hit 2008 levels.

According to many analysts, high food prices have already played a part—albeit amid many other factors—in the social unrest in both Egypt and Tunisia. In addition, countries like Somalia are facing an all-out famine after rains also failed in East Africa. An estimated 2.5 million Somalians are currently requiring food assistance.

“In Somalia alone, water prices have increased as much as 300 percent in the past two months, and families are selling their assets and going into debt just to get clean water and food for their families,” said Chris Smoot, program director for World Vision in Somalia.

The UN estimates that 1 billion people in the world suffer from hunger, but the current food crisis could push that number higher.

Accounting for the Human Toll in Iraq

 

We are now in the 10th year of the first decade of the ‘war on terror.’ So the inevitable anniversary assessments are beginning to appear.  Iraq reappraisals specifically are back in vogue.  They favor the drawing of balance sheets.  Most will be skewed in an alchemic attempt to put the face of success on an unmitigated disaster.  Even a more tempered approach at calculating cost/benefits, though, leaves something missing – something of paramount importance.  It is the effects on Iraqis themselves.  Not Iraqis in the abstract, not as figures in a statistical tabulation of sects.  Rather, as flesh and blood and feeling persons.  Frankly, most of the discourse about Iraq from day one has had a disengaged quality to it.  That is the norm for dominant powers on the world stage, and for the seminar strategist.  That was not always the norm by which Americans referenced war and violence abroad in the 20th century when we truly believed in our proclaimed ideals.

To illuminate the point, here are some too readily slighted facts.  100,000 – 150,000 Iraqis are dead as the consequence of our invasion and occupation.  That is the conservative estimate.  Untold thousands are maimed and orphaned.  2 million are uprooted refugees in neighboring lands.  Another 2 million are displaced persons internally.  The availability of potable water and electricity is somewhat less than it was in February 2003.  The comparable numbers for the United States would be 1.1 – 1.6 million dead; an equal number infirmed; 22 million refugees eking out a precarious existence in Mexico and Canada; 22 million displaced persons within the country.  We did not do all the killing and maiming; we did most of the destruction of infrastructure.  To all these tragedies we are accessories before and during the fact.

Digits make less of an impact on us than observed reality.  That is always the case.  And very few have been in a position to see the human effects of our actions first hand – or even second-hand given censorship on filming casualties.  So let me suggest a couple of ways to approximate that experience.  Step one.  Go to RFK stadium, imagine it full.  Do that 3 times and then imagine them all – men, women and children – in their graves.  Repeat the exercise – this time imagine them hobbling on one leg, lying crippled or blind on a cot in a cinderblock house.  Imagine them as Americans – men, women and children – who placed USA stickers on their cars, chanted USA! USA! watching the Olympics, eating hot dogs and drinking Coke.  Imagine them now six feet under.  Imagine them all as the victims of an invasion and occupation by Iraqi Muslims who were deceived by their lying leaders who hid their own dark purposes.  An occupation that featured the likes of L. Ahmed Chelabi IV and run amok Bashi Bazouks.  Imagine that these altruistic Iraqis keep a Vice-Regal Embassy on the banks of the Potomac, giant airbases scattered around the country, and 550,000 troops (proportional) – all out of concern for our health and safety.  Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Imagine your counterparts in Baghdad now drawing up balance sheets.

Step two: go back to the study and reconstruct your own Iraq balance sheet.

Does this imply that pacifism is the only ethically acceptable conduct?  No – but it does give us a better fix on the true meaning of our shameful adventure in Iraq.  Moreover, keep in mind that the Iraqis never gave us permission to do those things to them.  We willfully imposed ourselves on them, did so based on the accusation of a fabricated threat that never existed.

Who assigns value in the equation to the dead, the maimed, the orphaned, the distressed, the uprooted?  Who assigns value to being free of Saddam’s police? Who distributes the values among Shia, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians and Turcomen? Who decides on the relevant time frame? Who determines what constitutes sufficient evidence to support any of these judgments?

Who has the right, the authority, the legitimacy to do this?  To do so before the event?  To do so after the event in a post hoc justification of the acts that produced these effects?

Who is prepared to reach a definitive judgment? Is it God? Or is it those who instigated and supported those actions in the self-righteous conceit that they were acting as His surrogate?  Personally, I place myself in neither category.

“Let humanity be the ultimate measure of all that you do” is a Confucian admonition meant to guide the behavior of officials.  America today pays it scant regard.

Michael Brenner is a Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.

25 February 2011

Counterpunch.org

 

 

 

Enter Governor Scott Walker. A month into office, he was keen to establish himself as the new sheriff in town by reprising in the state of Wisconsin a simulacrum of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Painting by numbers, Scott Walker, following Reagan’s first stroke, took on labour. But Walker’s Patco moment (the busting of the Air Traffic Controller’s union) has proved an overreach. Walker, who presents himself in a way that could be right out of Frank Capra’s central casting, may find that following Reagan’s recipe produces different results today. After 30 years of economic decline, workers in the United States are recognising the bankruptcy of these policies and are fighting back.

We have all seen the figures. While the American economy has grown the past three decades, labour has taken it on the chin. Meanwhile, CEOs and those in the FIRE sectors have seen their incomes grow by multiples, often subsidised at taxpayer expense, even as their reckless actions have left economic chaos in their wake. The whole while, labour has been repeatedly lectured that they are to blame for the country’s economic crisis and that the rich must capture ever more rents for the economy to prosper. Even if you don’t like it, workers are told, invoking Margaret Thatcher, “there is no alternative.”

This past week, however, public workers surprised everyone, including themselves and their union leadership. The rank and file took the lead in these demonstrations and forced their often conservative teachers’ union leadership to follow. Last Tuesday, teachers in the capitol announced their intention to hit the streets and take their students with them. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s biggest city, teachers defied calls from school administrators and their unions to stay on the job. They marched on Madison last Wednesday in such numbers that their union leadership was forced to follow. Thus, 35 state school districts closed, as teachers and other public workers trekked to Madison in the thousands.

Frankly, most protests the past few decades, while led by well-intentioned organisers, have been tedious. We turn out for good causes, but would rather be somewhere else, and we have secretly (and sometimes openly) doubted the effectiveness of the whole exercise. Not this time. For veterans of protests in recent decades, this had an entirely different vibe. The scene has been simultaneously creative, good-humoured, joyful, peaceful, yet angry. There were no spokespersons for this movement. People organised themselves, made decisions on the ground, and acted on them – with their actions and instincts proven right by subsequent events.

The scope of the movement is broad. Students and teachers and other public employees have been joined by firefighters and cops – whose collective bargaining rights are not, in fact, under immediate threat and are therefore there out of a remarkable solidarity. Together, they have embraced each other in a new alliance that has put the history of these 1960s antagonists aside. In this new world, cops deliver food and coffee to student protesters on the floor of the Capitol rotunda. Firefighters, arriving in their soot seasoned gear or Scottish kilts, bellow on their bagpipes and sound their support for their public employee and student brethren. Wrapping themselves in the flag – and who else can do it without looking cynical or silly? – firefighters have returned this powerful symbol to organised labour.

By Saturday, the numbers had swelled to over 60,000, while the governor’s Tea Party supporters could muster only a few thousand. This despite having billionaire financiers like the Koch Brothers creating astroturf websites, such as “Stand for Walker”, imploring Wisconsinites to hit the streets in support of the governor.

For all this good energy and success, however, all is not well. Labour is seriously divided. The political right has invested heavily in turning private sector employees against their public sector counterparts. And, it has worked. After three decades of war on private sector unions, only 7% of non-public workers are protected. Predictably, this has translated into an almost complete erosion of their previously held health and pension plans they once enjoyed.

Today, US private sector workers have been reduced to Japanese-like long hours. Their health plans consist of HMOs providing substandard care, often having to navigate numbing bureaucracies, only to be told “coverage denied”. They no longer have employer-paid pensions. Most are now on their own when it comes to retirement. Or if lucky, they may have a generous employer that gives half towards a 401k plan that merely feeds traders on Wall Street, while never delivering enough returns actually to fund their retirement.

In short, it has been a return of the mean season. Briefly, in 2008, this frustration was directed against the Republicans. Yet, the Democrats delivered no tangible gains for labour since taking power then, and now, the right has helped steer working-class anger away from Wall Street and back to Main Street’s teachers and public employees. Deftly executed, private sector workers without benefits now blame workers who do have them as the cause of their deprivation. Instead of seeing the gains unions can deliver, private sector workers now take the lesson that these gains have somehow been taken at their expense – all the while ignoring the trough-feeding that continues unabated on Wall Street.

The new class war, as it is actually perceived, is not between workers and capital, but between private and public sector workers, with the fires generously stoked by the billionaire Koch brothers and rightwing money generally. One can only imagine Mr Burns of the Simpsons hatching such a scheme in caricature of capital; but this is real, and few seem to recognise the irony as they play out their scripted parts.

Monday’s public holiday was likely the last of the big protests this week. Protests in the tens of thousands are not sustainable. Public workers are under pressure from their employers and teachers’ unions to return to work. If Governor Walker refuses to compromise, the only weapon left in labour’s arsenal is a general strike. Nobody knows if sufficient resolve exists to launch one. This movement began with Scott Walker’s actions and will likely end with them. Whether labour takes this next step toward a general strike depends on his actions in the coming days and whether he will seek compromise or further inflame workers by attacking their democratic right to organise.

Walker, the son of a preacher, has always been blind to shades of grey. His past actions suggest a fundamentalist path ahead.

Jeffrey Sommers is an associate professor of Africology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  He can be reached at: Jeffrey.sommers@fulbrightmail.org.

 

A recent report by Ethiopia and the United Nations said that “2.8 million Ethiopians will need emergency food aid in 2011, and appealed for $227 million to fund programmes for the first six months.”

UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Ethiopia Eugene Owusu said the 2.8-million figure tells only part of the story, according to Voice of America. “An additional 956,000 require targeted supplementary feeding. An estimated 107,000 children may continue to require treatment for severe acute malnutrition, and 3.3 million people will require screening for more nutrition and Vitamin A supplementation.”

7.8 million Ethiopians are also supported by the Productive Safety Net Program, which provides food or money to households facing shortages, according to Bloomberg.

Nearly 40% of the needy live in the eastern and southeastern arid lowlands of the Somali region and the Oromiya region. Drought in those areas from October to December have contributed to the problem, according to the UN. The Somali region is sparsely populated with only 6% of Ethiopia’s population, but it is also home to a low level insurgency being conducted by the indigenous rebel group the Ogaden National Liberation Force. The group claims that the national government is blocking food aid to the rebel areas, and Voice of America reports that aid community representatives are pushing for greater access there.

The situation is often frustrating, as the head of the British government’s Department for International Development office in Ethiopia, Howard Taylor, says: “It gets better and it gets worse. It is not a constant. Sometimes the food is getting through and sometimes we know it is not.”

The 2.8 million Ethiopians in need of emergency food aid is actually down from 5.2 million last year. Rains were good in 2010 and decreased the number to 2.3 million because of a bumper harvest. The current drought in the Somali region pushed the 2.3 million number up to 2.8 million, however.

Though it has an ambitious development plan, Ethiopia is currently on the bottom of the Human Development Index, and is “one of the world’s largest recipients of foreign aid, receiving more than $3 billion in 2008, according ato the New York-based Human Rights Watch.”

22 February, 2011

foddcrisis.foreignpolicyblogs.com

 

Commodities markets are telling our leaders something they should have grasped long ago

Friday, 25 February 2011 The Independent

The price of oil is surging. At one point yesterday, the price of a barrel of crude touched $120 – its highest level since 2008. The commodities trading markets are telling the world something it should have grasped long ago: that the global economy is disastrously over-reliant on energy from the most unstable of regions.

The violent chaos in Libya is the proximate cause of the market jitters. The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt did not alarm oil traders, but Libya is a significant oil exporter. As Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime has imploded, the pumps have stopped. Output has fallen by three-quarters. And when the supply of any commodity suddenly falls, its price generally rises.

The markets are also casting wary eyes in the direction of Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter. This week, King Abdullah promised a £22bn financial relief package for his subjects. This is plainly an attempt to pre-empt the outbreak of popular protests occurring in his country of the sort that have been witnessed across the region. The Saudi Arabian oil minister is also suggesting that his country could increase production to make up for the shortfall from Libya.

But the situation is not under the Saudi regime’s control. A month ago, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya looked entirely secure. Now the first has been forced to resign and the sun has almost set on the regime of the second (although there is no telling how much damage Gaddafi could do on the way out). Anyone who asserts that the same could not happen in Saudi Arabia has few grounds for their confidence. King Abdullah certainly has more resources with which to buy off discontent, but it is impossible to say how effective this will be. When people have the scent of freedom in their nostrils, they can be impossible to deter. The markets certainly understand this.

The knock-on effects of a spike in oil prices threaten to be painful. The sudden jump in energy costs could derail the recovery from the economic crash of three years ago. Britain’s inflation is already double the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target. If the oil price remains at these levels, it will feed through to prices and the Bank will feel no alternative but to raise interest rates, pushing up the cost of borrowing and undermining consumer confidence. But other countries would be just as badly damaged by an oil price shock. Even the likes of China and India would struggle.

The world is reaping the consequences of bad geopolitical decisions going back decades. After the Second World War, the West entered into a Faustian bargain with autocratic Middle Eastern regimes. We would buy their oil exports and turn a blind eye to the repression of their populations. In return, they would buy Western-manufactured weapons and luxury goods. China has made a similar bargain with repressive regimes more recently. But the Arab revolutions are upsetting those deals.

There is little that we can do in the immediate term to mitigate the effects. But in the medium term, this underscores the imperative of weaning our economies off oil and gas. We need to do so for environmental reasons, for if we carry on burning fossil fuels at the present rate, we will get runaway climate change. We need to do so for humanitarian reasons because buying oil from autocracies facilitates the abuse of human rights.

And, as this latest shock shows, we need to do so for the most basic economic reasons. If our energy supplies are insecure, so is our prosperity. Our leaders have long paid lip service to the need to switch from fossil fuels. Perhaps now the Arab revolutions have brought them face to face with the perils of our oil addiction, we will finally get some action.

 

24 Feb richardfalk.wordpress.com

Early in the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings it seemed that winning was understood by the massed demonstrators to mean getting rid of the hated leader, of Ben Ali in the Tunisian case, and Mubarak in the Egyptian. But as the process deepened it make clear that more was being demanded and expected, and that this had to do with restoring the material and spiritual dignity of life in all its aspects.

Without any assurance as to what ‘winning’ means in the setting of the extraordinary revolutionary uprisings that are continuing to rock the established order throughout the Arab world, it is likely to mean different things in the various countries currently in turmoil. But at the very least winning has so far meant challenging by determined and incredibly brave nonviolence the oppressive established order. This victory over long reigns of fear-induced pacification is itself a great transformative moment in 21st century history no matter what happens in the months ahead.

As Chandra Muzaffar, the widely respected Malaysian scholar who  religion and justice, compelling argues, the replacement of the old order by electoral democracy, while impressive as an accomplishment given the dictatorial rule of the past in these countries, will not be nearly enough to vindicate the sacrifices of the protestors. It is significantly better than those worst case scenarios that insist that the future will bring dismal varieties of ‘Mubarakism without Mubarak,’ which would change the faces and names of the rulers but leave the oppressive and exploitative regimes essentially in tact. This would definitely be a pyrrhic victory, given the hopes and demands that motivated the courageous political challenges embodied in withstanding without weapons the clubs, rubber bullets, live ammunition, and overall brutality, as well as the uncertainty as to what the soldiers in the streets would do when the order to open fire at the demonstrators came from the beleaguered old guard.

What is needed beyond constitutional democracy is the substantive realization of good and equitable governance: this includes, above all, people-oriented economic policies, an end to corruption, and the protection of human rights, including especially economic and social rights.  Such an indispensable agenda recognizes that the primary motivation of many of the demonstrators was related to their totally alienating entrapment in a jobless future combined with the daily struggle to obtain the bare necessities of a tolerable life.

There is present here both questions of domestic political will and governmental capability to redirect the productive resources and distributive policies of the society. How much political space is available to alter the impositions of neoliberal globalization that was responsible for reinforcing, if not inducing, the grossly inequitable and corrupting impact of the world economy on the structuring of domestic privilege and deprivation? Not far in the background is an extended global recession that may be deepened in coming months due to alarming increases in commodity prices, especially food. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization the world Food Price Index reached a record high in December 2010, a level exceeded by another 3% rise in January of this year. Lester Brown, a leading expert on world food and environment, wrote a few days ago that “[t]he world is now one poor harvest away from chaos in world grain markets.” [International Herald Tribune, Feb 23, 2011]

With political turmoil threatening world energy supplies, oil prices are also surging, allegedly further endangering the uneven and fragile economic recovery in the United States and Europe. Global warming adds a further troubling feature to this deteriorating situation, with droughts, floods, fires, and storms making it difficult to maintain crop yields, much increase food production to meet increasing demands of the world’s growing population.

These impinging realities will greatly complicate the already formidable difficulties facing new leaders throughout the Arab world seeking with a sense of urgency to create job opportunities and affordable supplies of food for their citizenries. This challenge is intensified by the widely shared high expectations of improved living circumstances. If the autocratic prior regime was held responsible for mass impoverishment of the many and the scandalously excessive enrichment of the few, is it not reasonable to suppose that the more democratic successor governments should establish without much delay greatly improved living conditions? And further, how could it be claimed that the heroic uprising was worthwhile if the quality of life of ordinary citizens, previously struggling to avert the torments of impoverishment, does not start improving dramatically almost immediately? An understandably impatient public may not give their new leaders the time that need, given these conditions, to make adjustments that will begin to satisfy these long denied hopes and needs. Perhaps, the public will be patient if there are clear signs that the leaders are trying their hardest and even if actual progress is slow, there is some evidence that the material conditions of the populace are, at least, on an ascending slope.

Even if the public is patient beyond reason, and understands better than can be prudently expected, the difficulties of achieving economic justice during a period of transition to a new framework of governance, there may be still little or no capacity to fulfill public expectations due to the impact of these worsening global conditions.  It is quite possible that if the worst food/energy scenarios unfold, famines and food riots could occur, casting dark shadows of despair across memories of these historic victories that made the initial phases of each national uprising such a glowing testament to the human spirit, which seemed miraculously undaunted by decades of oppression and abuse.

It needs also to be kept in mind that often the slogans of the demonstrators highlighted a thirst for freedom and rights. Even though there is little experience of democratic practice throughout the region, there will likely be a serious attempt by new governing institutions to distinguish their practices from those of their hated forebears, and allow for the exercise of all forms of oppositional activity, including freedom of expression, assembly, and party formation. Unlike the problems associated with creating jobs and providing for material needs, the establishment of the atmosphere of a free society is within the physical capacities of a new leadership if the political will exists to assume the unfamiliar risks associated with democratic practices. We must wait and see how each new leadership handles these normative challenges of transition. It remains to be seen as to whether the difficulties of transition are intensified by counterrevolutionary efforts to maintain or restore the old deforming structures and privileges. These efforts are likely to be aided and abetted by a range of covert collaborative undertakings joining external actors with those internal forces threatened by impending political change.

And if this overview was not discouraging enough, there is one further consideration. As soon as the unifying force of getting rid of the old leadership is eroded, if not altogether lost, fissures within the oppositions are certain to emerge. There will be fundamental differences as between radical and liberal approaches to transition, and especially whether to respect the property rights and social hierarchies associated with the old regime, or to seek directly to correct the injustices and irregularities of the past. Some critics of the Mandela approach to reconciliation and transition in South Africa believe that his acceptance of the social and economic dimensions of the repudiated apartheid structure have resulted in a widely felt sense of revolutionary disappointment, if not betrayal, in South Africa.

There will also be tactical and strategic differences about how to deal with the world economy, especially with respect to creating stability and attractive conditions for foreign investment. It is here that tensions emerge as between safeguarding labor rights and making investors feel that their operations will remain profitable in the new political environment.

This recitation of difficulties is not meant to detract attention from or to in any way diminish the glorious achievements of the revolutionary uprisings, but to point to the unfinished business that must be addressed if revolutionary aspirations are going to be able to avoid disillusionment. So often revolutionary gains are blunted or even lost shortly after the old oppressors have been dragged from the stage of history. If ever there exists the need for vigilance it at these times when the old order is dying and the new order is struggling to be born. As Gramsci warned long ago this period of in-betweens is vulnerable to a wide range of predatory tendencies. It is a time when unscrupulous elements can repress anew even while waving a revolutionary banner and shouting slogans about defending the revolution against its enemies. And a difficulty here is that the enemies may well be real as well as darkly imagined. How many revolutions in the past have been lost due to the machinations of their supposed guardians?

Let us fervently hope that the mysteries of the digital age will somehow summon the creative energy to manage the transition to sustainable and substantive democracy as brilliantly as it earlier staged the revolutionary uprisings.

 

 

25 February, 2011

YES! Magazine

Phyllis Bennis on why Libya differs from other pro-democracy uprisings in the region

In Egypt, the relatively short-lived military crackdown by the hated security agencies and pro-regime thugs actually strengthened the opposition, reminding the millions in the streets exactly what they were protesting against. In Libya, the Gaddafi regime seems to have turned that lesson on its head, apparently believing that if their response is violent enough, brutal enough, murderous enough, the opposition will stop.

So far, it hasn’t worked. With earlier attacks from helicopter gunships and jet bombers, and with reports of machine gun fire in and around Tripoli continuing at least through February 24, the estimates of Libyans killed range from 300 to more than 1,000 people—but the popular resistance has continued unabated.

What is different in Libya from the earlier iterations of the Arab world’s great democratic revolution of 2011 is that the anti-regime, pro-democracy side that has succeeded in ousting the regime from major cities and most of eastern Libya, is now seeing huge sectors of the Libyan military defect directly to the opposition. Libyan civil society democracy activists in Benghazi and elsewhere are apparently taking up arms with and alongside the military units now on their side, both to defend their cities and, reportedly, to prepare to help the people of Tripoli and the west, still under Gaddafi’s contested control, finally to overthrow the regime. Libya, unlike Egypt and Tunisia or states where revolutionary upheavals are underway, is moving towards a military confrontation closer to a civil war.

Social, political, demographic, and other conditions in Libya are significantly different than in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain or elsewhere, so it is not surprising that the progress of the revolution has differed too. The first victories—ousting a dictator in Tunisia and, soon after, the monumental achievement of the Egyptian revolution in getting rid of Mubarak—inspired democratic risings across the Arab world and North Africa, with parallel movements emerging in sub-Saharan Africa as well, in Gabon and elsewhere.

Not only the inspiration but crucially the success of Tunisia and Egypt continue to empower the rest. The regimes and societies differ widely, but the dissatisfaction is similar all over: widening gaps between the wealthy and the poor, rising unemployment and a lack of jobs for huge young populations, and most of all, the demand for dignity, hope, and for people to have a say in determining their own lives and how they are governed.

The Crumbling of the Gaddafi Regime

In Libya the opposition movement has actually seized control of cities, and now of whole sectors of the country, even while the embattled Gaddafi regime remains more or less in control of the capitol. The entire eastern parts of Libya, including the key city of Benghazi as well as numerous other cities and the long border with Egypt, all now appear to be in the hands of the opposition, in many cases reportedly with the military forces joining the protesters rather than fighting them or fleeing.

The takeover of cities by the pro-democracy demonstrators seems now to be moving closer to Tripoli in the western part of the country, with reports from the nearby city of Misurata claiming the protesters, backed by defecting army units, have been in control since February 21. The Financial Times quoted a local worker in Misurata describing how “the people are now organising themselves into committees. Some are managing traffic, others are cleaning up after the fighting and the fires of previous days. There are also people handing out water and milk to the population.” It looks very much like the self-organization of Tahrir Square in Egypt, in the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain—and very much like the non-violent society-wide mobilization of the first Palestinian intifada of 1987-93.

Misurata is only about 125 miles east of Tripoli—meaning that most of the strategic Mediterranean coast from just east of the capital to the Egyptian border (excepting only the area around Sirte, Gaddafi’s tribal homeland) is now apparently controlled by pro-democracy forces. There are reports of a new local council being established in Benghazi, the first city to be taken over by the opposition.

The regime itself continues to splinter, with top officials, including the justice minister and the interior minister, being the latest to resign. The interior minister, responsible for internal security, said he now supports what he called the “February 17 Revolution,” and urged the military forces to support the Libyan people’s “legitimate demands.” Libyan diplomats around the world, including the ambassadors to the U.S., Indonesia, Australia, India, Bangladesh, and elsewhere, as well as virtually the entire staff of the Libyan mission to the United Nations, have all resigned in protest of the violence.

Other Regimes React to Stem the Tide

The regimes’ responses have differed. Some are desperately trying to make concessions, even before any protests arise.

>> In Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, where opposition forces have only barely shown their presence, emirs and kings have been quick to dole out money ($3,700 per family and free food for 14 months in Kuwait, new social benefits in Saudi Arabia).

>> In Jordan, the still-popular king has been trying to convince a skeptical public that his decision to sack the cabinet and appoint another appointed prime minister should somehow satisfy them. (It hasn’t.)

>> The King of Bahrain launched a vicious crack-down on the largely Shi’a protesters demanding an end to the years of discrimination against their majority community, but backed off under international pressure and turned to a series of political and financial incentives to buy new loyalty; many protesters are still demanding the transformation to a constitutional monarchy, but others have now escalated to demand an end to the king’s role altogether.

>> In Yemen, the president has pledged not to run again in the next election and other meager reforms, but his offer has been insufficient and the regime has continued using force against protesters remaining in the streets.

Meanwhile, in what seems to be an ever-growing list of countries, democracy is rising. New movements demanding democracy are rising in Djibouti, where the U.S. maintains its sole military base on the African continent; in Algeria, a crucial oil-exporting country with its own proud history of independent struggle; in Syria, where the long-standing president has so far vowed only that he will not run again. And of course, many union supporters in Wisconsin claim the Egyptian victory as their own inspiration.

The International Response

With Libya providing huge percentages of the oil and gas imported by powerful European countries—especially Italy—and with the UK working hard the last several years to burnish Libya’s image so that British Petroleum could claim a privileged stake in the Libyan oil industry and General Dynamics UK could sign lucrative weapons contracts, western countries came late and soft to criticize Gaddafi’s violent assault. The United States had not moved as far as most European allies in rehabilitating the Gaddafi regime after an initial embrace following Tripoli’s agreement to dismantle its nuclear programs in 2003, but still moved too slowly to fully condemn the regime.

Only on February 23 did President Obama explicitly condemn the violence, and called the bloodshed “outrageous” and “unacceptable.” He said “these actions violate international norms and every standard of common decency. This violence must stop.”

Obama spoke clearly of the importance of international action, and praised the statement released by the Security Council the day before. That UN statement included some important issues, including a condemnation of the violence, a call on the Libyan government to abide by human rights and international humanitarian law and to allow medical, humanitarian, and human rights workers in to the country, and a reference to the need for accountability for perpetrators of the violence.

But the statement was merely a Security Council press release, which lacks the power of enforcement of an actual resolution, and falls even below the status of the formal “presidential statement” which indicates Council unanimity. There was no decision, for example, to freeze all assets of Gaddafi and his family, to impose an immediate end on all weapons sales and a halt any weapons or security goods currently in the pipeline to Libya, or to refer the Libyan regime’s violence to the International Criminal Court for immediate investigation and prosecution.

In his speech, President Obama stated he had “asked my administration to prepare the full range of options that we have to respond to this crisis. This includes those actions we may take and those we will coordinate with our allies and partners, or those that we’ll carry out through multilateral institutions.” His careful distinguishing between what the U.S. would insist on doing on its own, as opposed to actions taken with allies or in multilateral venues such as the United Nations, may be an indication why there was no stronger Security Council response. If the Council had decided, for instance, to hold Libyan officials and soldiers directly accountable for alleged war crimes against a civilian population by referring the issue directly to the International Criminal Court, what kind of a precedent would that set, and what other political leaders or soldiers responsible for civilian deaths might face that same method of accountability? If the Council had passed a resolution stating that top officials of all governments and corporations who provided weapons to the Libyan regime should be held accountable for how those weapons are being used, what precedent would that set for the powerful weapons-exporting governments and corporations now arming military forces where human rights violations and war crimes are routine?

The UN Security Council should reconvene now to pass a binding, enforceable resolution. It should demand an immediate halt to the attacks, call for immediate access for international humanitarian and human rights workers, and refer the issue to the International Court of Justice to initiate on an emergency basis a full investigation and prosecution of those responsible, making clear that not only top decision-makers but all soldiers and mercenaries carrying out illegal orders would be held to account. The resolution should require that governments and corporations with ties to the Libyan regime—especially those in Europe and the U.S.—immediately sever all military ties, cancel military contracts, and withdraw any military equipment that may be in the pipeline.

Next Steps for the United States

There has been a growing demand, in the United Statea from powerful neo-conservative war-mongers as well as from some of the most progressive members of Congress, to establish a no-fly zone in Libya. The call has also come from former Libyan officials who have defected from the regime. But at the moment I believe that would be a mistake. There have been no reports of air strikes since February 21; current assaults are relying on heavy weapons on land. While it is certainly possible a desperate Gaddafi could lash out once again by sending his warplanes aloft to attack his own people, it isn’t clear he has loyal pilots left to answer his call. The discussion of a no-fly zone in the Security Council could well become the sole means of responding to the Libyan crisis – even though it would likely have little impact on the actual threats currently facing the Libyan people, especially in and around the capitol, and would be serve as a distraction from other actions that might actually help.

The political cost of such a decision, given its likely low protection value, must be weighed against the lessons of the 1990s-era no-fly zone established in Iraq by the U.S. and Britain, a unilaterally-imposed no-fly zone which President Bill Clinton and other officials often claimed, mendaciously, was authorized by the United Nations, but which in fact was never mentioned in any Security Council resolution. As documented by the United Nations, enforcement of the no-fly zone in Iraq resulted in the deaths of several hundred Iraqi civilians. It is not clear that any country other than the U.S. could carry out enforcement of a no-fly zone in Libya (there are even questions whether the U.S. military, already stretched in illegitimate wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, could field such an operation, let alone to be prepared to start immediately). But giving a Security Council imprimatur to the U.S. (or NATO, which would still be relying on U.S. air power) to define, impose, determine violations of, and carry out bombing raids in response to those violations of, a Libyan no-fly zone, when it is unlikely to actually protect Libyan civilians but could well result in justifying a much longer-term U.S. intervention than Council members anticipate, does not pass the legitimacy test.

If the fighting in Libya continues or escalates, an accountability-focused UN Security Council resolution authorizing a Blue Helmet contingent of medical, other humanitarian workers, human rights monitors, and investigators from the International Criminal Court, recruited from neighboring countries, sent with armed escort if necessary, would likely be far more useful in providing actual protection to Libyan civilians than imposing a high-profile but likely low-impact and dangerous no-fly zone.

While the Libyan leader escalates his threats, and while the violence may continue for a bit longer, the international standing of the Libyan regime has collapsed. More importantly, the territory, cities, and population still under the regime’s domination are all dwindling rapidly. Gaddafi is losing control. Democracy is gaining.

Phyllis Bennis wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Phyllis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Her books include Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the UN Defy U.S. Power.

YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

 

 

 

 

25 February, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Our stories of awakenings — whether moral, intellectual, religious, artistic, or sexual — are tricky. Honest self-reflection doesn’t come easy, and self-satisfied accounts are the norm; we love to be the heroes of our own epics.

That’s true of accounts of political awakening as well, especially for those of us born into unearned privilege as a result of systems of illegitimate authority. Not only do we love to tell stories in which we come out looking good, but we know how to decorate the narrative with the trappings of humility to avoid seeming arrogant.  We use our failures to set up the story of our transformation; even when we speak of our limitations we are highlighting our wisdom in seeing those limitations.

So, when I got a request from a researcher to tell my story about how my political consciousness was raised, I was hesitant. I don’t like feeling like a fraud, and something always feels a bit fraudulent about my account, even when I am being as honest as I can. But, like most people, I feel driven to tell my story, mostly to try to explain myself to myself. So, here I go again:

As a teenager coming of age in the 1970s in mainstream culture in the upper Midwest, I missed the United States’ radicalizing movements by a decade and several hundred miles. I developed conventional liberal politics in reaction to the conventional conservative politics of my father and his generation. But in a more basic sense, I grew up depoliticized — like most contemporary Americans, I was never taught to analyze systems and structures of power, and so my banal liberal positions seemed like cutting edge critique to me. After college I worked as a journalist at mainstream newspapers, which further retarded my ability to think critically about power; reporters who don’t have a political consciousness coming into the field are unlikely to develop one in an industry that claims neutrality but is fanatically devoted to the conventional wisdom.

The raising of my consciousness began when I started a journalism/mass communication doctoral program in 1988, a time when U.S. universities were somewhat more intellectually and politically open than today. After years of the daily grind in newsrooms, I felt liberated by the freedom to read, think, and talk to others about all the new ideas I was encountering. My study of the First Amendment led me to the feminist critique of pornography, which at the time was an important focus for debate about the meaning of freedom of expression. My first graduate courses were taught by liberal defenders of pornography, who were the norm in the academy then and now. But I also began talking with activists in a local group that was fighting the sexual-exploitation industries (pornography, prostitution, stripping), and I realized there was a rich, complex, and exciting feminist critique, which required me to rethink what I thought I knew about freedom, choice, and liberation.

As a result of those first conversations, I started reading feminist work and taking feminist classes, and I kept talking with folks from the community group, which led me to get involved in their educational activities. I didn’t make those choices with any sense that I was constructing a radical philosophical and political framework. I was just following the ideas that seemed the most compelling intellectually and the people who seemed the most decent personally. Those ad hoc decisions changed my life, in two ways.

First, they opened up to me an alternative to the suffocating conventional wisdom, in which liberals and conservatives argue within narrow ideological boundaries. This exposure to feminist thinking, especially those people and ideas most commonly described as radical feminist, allowed me to step outside those boundaries and ask two simple questions: Where does real power lie and how does it operate, in both formal institutions and informal arrangements?

Second, they helped me realize the importance of always having a political life outside the university. Instead of putting all my energy into my teaching and research, I was anchored in a community project and connected to people who weren’t preoccupied with publishing marginally relevant research in marginally relevant academic journals. Although I had to publish scholarly articles for my first six years as an assistant professor, once I got tenure and job security I immediately returned to community organizing and ignored the pseudo-intellectual pretensions that dominate in most of the so-called scholarly world in the social sciences and humanities. I had developed respect for rigorous and relevant scholarship but had come to realize how little of it there was in my fields in the contemporary academy.

From those first inquiries into the sexual-exploitation industries and the role of a pornographic culture in men’s violence, I continued to think about how power is organized and operates around other dimensions of our identities and statuses in the world. After opening the gender door, it was inevitable that I would have to open the race door. From there, questions about the inherent economic injustice in capitalism and the violence required for U.S. imperial domination of the world became central. Finally, I began thinking more about how human domination of the living world is destroying the ecosphere’s capacity to sustain life as we know it.

All of those inquiries led me to the same conclusion: We live in a world structured by illegitimate hierarchies and based on a domination/subordination dynamic. For those of us with unearned privilege, the rewards for ignoring this conclusion are whatever status and money we can squeeze out of the system, while the cost of capitulation to power is a surrender of some essential part of our humanity. More than 20 years after embarking on this investigation, I can see that clearly. But when I first started confronting these issues, I only knew that the conventional wisdom seemed inadequate, that the platitudes uttered by people in power seemed empty, and that the rationalizations offered by the intellectuals in the service of power seemed self-serving. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew I didn’t want that kind of career or life.

All that seems clear to me now, but it wasn’t at the start. The researcher’s query that prompted this essay asked about my “earliest consciousness-raising memory.” I have no simple answer, because my awakening was such a gradual process. But there were some moments along the way, such as the day I read Andrea Dworkin’s 1983 speech entitled “I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape,” in which she asked men for “one day in which no new bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old.” [1] In that speech she pointed out that feminists don’t hate men, but instead “believe in your humanity, against all the evidence.” [2]

I also remember the crucial role of one friend in the anti-pornography group, a white man who was older than I and was a part of not only the feminist movement but the civil-rights, anti-war, and environmental struggles. He provided me with a model for how someone with privilege could contribute to radical politics in a principled fashion. In my book on pornography, I wrote about one particularly important moment with Jim Koplin, when we talked about my motivation in volunteering with the group:

 

“If you want to be part of this because you want to save women, we don’t want you,” he said. At first I was confused — wasn’t the point of critiquing the sexual exploitation of women in pornography to help women? Yes, Jim explained, but too many men who get involved in such work see themselves as knights in shining armor, riding in like the hero to save women, and they usually turn out not to be trustworthy allies. They are in it for themselves, not to challenge masculinity but to play out the role of heroic man in a new, pseudo-feminist context. You have to be in it for yourself, but in a different way, he said.

“You have to be here to save your own life,” Jim told me.

I didn’t understand exactly what he meant at that moment, but something about those words resonated in my gut. This is what feminism offered men — not just a way to help those being hurt, but a way to understand that the same system of male dominance the hurt so many women also made it impossible for men to be fully human. [3]

Jim challenged me to ask myself why I was there and what I hoped to gain, and I came to understand that my interest in feminist politics was driven in large part by my own alienation from traditional definitions of masculinity. For me to tell a simple story about doing the right thing, implying nobility on my part, wasn’t going to cut it.

More than 20 years later, I’m still wrestling with these questions about why I make the choices I make. I am a man who is part of a feminist movement and a white guy who critiques the white supremacy deeply embedded in mainstream culture. I am an American who opposes U.S. imperial foreign policy and a middle-class academic working with a local group that organizes immigrant workers. For these efforts, I get attention and praise that is disproportionate to my effort and ability, a fact I point out as often as possible. People sometimes listen to me not because I’m smarter than feminist women, but because I am a man. My writing on race is not better than the work of non-white authors, but I’m appreciated because I’m white.

This is the tricky part of my awakening story. I was lucky to learn to see the world from the point of view of those who struggle against power, and I’m rewarded in many ways when I speak, write, or act in public in these movements. But I recognize that those rewards are unfair, and so my professed humility becomes another mark of my alleged sophistication. Yet if I were to refuse to use my privilege — if I dealt with this angst by fading into the background — I would be throwing away resources that come with my position in the world and which I can offer to these movements.

I am trapped, yet I am trapped in a system that makes my life relatively easy. Even when there is some threat of punishment for my political activities, such as during the fallout from critical essays about U.S. war crimes that I wrote after 9/11, I have so much support from outside the power structure and so much privilege as an educated white guy that I never really felt threatened. Even if I had been fired from my university position after 9/11, I likely would have landed on my feet.

I realize not all who adopt a critical perspective, even those in privileged categories, fare as well as I have. But in recent decades in the United States, in which dissent by people who look like me is mostly tolerated, there has been no widespread repression of people in the privileged sectors. People in targeted groups (particularly immigrants, Muslims, Arabs) have had to be careful, and there’s no guarantee that a more widespread repression won’t return to the United States, especially as U.S. power continues to decline around the world and elites get nervous. But for now, white men with U.S. citizenship are pretty safe. We may risk losing a job, but that’s trivial compared with the fates suffered by radicals in other eras in U.S. history or in other places today.

So, here’s my consciousness raising story summarized: I wandered through the first 30 years of my life mostly oblivious to the workings of power, protected by my privilege. For the past 20 years I’ve been struggling to contribute to a variety of movements for social justice and ecological sustainability, getting my consciousness raised on a regular basis whenever I seek out new experiences that push me beyond what I have come to take for granted (lately for me that has been happening at 5604 Manor, our progressive community center in Austin, TX, http://5604manor.org/ ). Although I love teaching and put considerable energy into my job as a professor, my community and political activities are just as important to me — and a greater source of intellectual vitality. If consciousness-raising is an ongoing project, it’s not likely to happen in moribund institutions such as universities but will come through engagement with people taking real risks in political work.

That’s as accurate an account as I can offer about how I became, and continue becoming, the political person I am. But telling this story always makes me a bit queasy; I have yet to find a way to describe my political development that doesn’t sound self-aggrandizing, as if I am casting myself as an epic hero.

That longstanding discomfort in telling my story is further complicated by new concerns in the past few years. More than ever I’m aware that no matter how high anyone’s consciousness in the United States is raised, there may be very little we can do to reverse the consequences of modern industrial society’s assault on the living world. I don’t mean that there is nothing we can or should do to promote ecological sustainability, but only that the processes set in motion during the industrial era may be beyond the point of no return, that the health of the ecosphere that makes our own lives possible may be compromised beyond recovery.

In contemporary left/progressive organizing, we typically focus on those small victories we achieve in the moment and on a vision for social change that sustains us over the long haul. With no revolution on the horizon, we pursue reforms within existing systems but hold onto radical ideals that inform those activities. We are willing to work without guarantees, bolstered by a faith that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” [4] That’s supposed to get us through; even if our movements don’t prevail in our own lifetime, we contribute to a better future.

But what if we are no longer bending toward justice? What if the arc of the moral universe has bent back and the cascading ecological crises will eventually overwhelm our collective moral capacities? Put bluntly: What if homo sapiens are an evolutionary dead-end?

That’s the central problem with my consciousness-raising story. When I was politicized 20 years ago, I made a commitment to facing the truth to the best of my ability, even when that truth is unpleasant and painful. My ideals haven’t changed and my commitment to organizing hasn’t waned, but the weight of the evidence suggests to me that our species is moving into a period of permanent decline during which much of what we have learned will be swamped by rapidly worsening ecological conditions. I think we’re in more trouble than most are willing to acknowledge.

This is not an argument for giving up on or dropping out of radical politics. It’s simply a description of what seems true to me, and I can’t see how our movements can afford to avoid these issues. I’m not sure I’m right about everything, though I am sure this analysis is plausible and should be on our agenda. Yet it’s my experience that most people want to push it out of view.

In trying to make sense of my political consciousness-raising, I try to avoid the temptation to cast myself as an epic hero who overcomes adversity to see the truth. That’s a struggle but is possible when one is part of a vibrant political community in which people hold each other accountable, and for all my fretting in this essay, I think I’ve done a reasonably good job of keeping on track. We can overcome our individual arrogance.

More difficult is facing the possibility that the human species has been cast as a tragic hero. Tragic heroes aren’t characters who have just run into a bit of bad luck but are protagonists brought down by an error in judgment that results from inherent flaws in their character. The arrogance with which we modern humans have treated the living world — the hubris of the high-energy/high-technology era — may well turn out to be that tragic flaw. Surrounded by the big majestic buildings and tiny sophisticated electronic gadgets created through human cleverness, it’s easy for us to believe we are smart enough to run a complex world. But cleverness is not wisdom, and the ability to create does not guarantee the ability to control the destruction we have unleashed.

Not every human society has gone down this road, but we live in a world dominated by those who not only exhibit that arrogance but embrace it, refusing to accept the reality of decline. That means our individual awakenings may be taking place within a much larger dying. To face that is to live in a profound state of grief. To stay true to a radical political consciousness is to face that grief.

———————–

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin, one of the partners in the community center “5604 Manor,” http://5604manor.org/ .

He is the author of All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, (Soft Skull Press, 2009); Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002).

Jensen is also co-producer of the documentary film “Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing,” which chronicles the life and philosophy of the longtime radical activist. Information about the film, distributed by the Media Education Foundation, and an extended interview Jensen conducted with Osheroff are online at http://thirdcoastactivist.org/osheroff.html .

Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html . To join an email list to receive articles by Jensen, go to http://www.thirdcoastactivist.org/jensenupdates-info.html