Archives: Articles

 

 

09 March, 2011

WSWS.org

The United States and Britain took another step towards direct military intervention against Libya Tuesday, as President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron discussed coordination of an international campaign to bring down long-time Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Obama and Cameron want to insure that the popular revolt that began last month against Gaddafi does not disrupt the exploitation of Libya’s natural resources by the big oil companies, or threaten the broader interests of the major imperialist powers in North Africa. They want to replace Gaddafi with a reliable stooge regime, and have already dispatched military units covertly into Libya.

According to the official announcement by the White House, Obama and Cameron agreed on “the departure of Gaddafi from power as quickly as possible.” In furtherance of that goal, “The President and the Prime Minister agreed to press forward with planning, including at NATO, on the full spectrum of possible responses, including surveillance, humanitarian assistance, enforcement of the arms embargo, and a no fly zone.”

Unstated, but no doubt included in this effort, is the deployment of clandestine forces, including the British SAS and SBS, and the American special operations units.

The coordinated US-British effort bears many similarities to the gang-up of George W. Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Obama and Cameron are seeking to persuade the European powers to join a new “coalition of the willing,” one that requires a somewhat greater European participation to accommodate both the larger role of the European powers in Gaddafi’s Libya and the diminished capacities of an American military still tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Washington and London are gearing up the political and military preparations for the imposition of a no-fly zone in readiness for a series of international meetings this week. NATO defence ministers, the European Union and the United Nations Security Council are all due to discuss Libya.

Obama kicked off this offensive with his remarks Monday about what he called “unacceptable” violence against civilians in Libya. He warned, “We’ve got NATO as we speak, consulting in Brussels around a wide range of potential options, including potential military options.”

It was Obama’s most direct statement yet about military action and it was immediately backed up by an announcement from NATO that it was extending its air surveillance of Libya from its current 10 hours a day to 24 hours. This is the first time that NATO has admitted that Libya is under air surveillance. Until now reconnaissance flights by AWACS planes have been officially described as “counter-terrorism” operations that were being carried out under the mandate put in place after 9/11.

The shift to round-the-clock monitoring has ominous implications. There is little night fighting in the ongoing conflict between rebel forces and those loyal to Gaddafi. Night monitoring is more than likely related to attempts to track the movements of Gaddafi’s personal aircraft in order to target him and his sons for assassination.

Earlier this week, Al Jazeera broadcast recordings of conversations between NATO and air traffic control on nearby Malta. The recording showed that NATO had tracked a plane from Gaddafi’s personal fleet visiting Belarus last week and more recently returning from Jordan.

Besides targeting Gaddafi personally, the US is considering other military options, including supplying heavy weapons to the rebel forces that hold the eastern half of the country. White House spokesman Jay Carney confirmed, “The option of providing military assistance to the rebels is on the table.”

NATO defence ministers will discuss Libya on Thursday. Britain and France back the imposition of a no-fly zone. Germany has not yet made an official statement. But Philipp Missfelder, a leading member of the ruling Christian Democrats (CDU), has called for Chancellor Angela Merkel to back the proposal. “Germany should agree in the Security Council to the creation of such a zone,” he said. “If the zone is agreed, as a Security Council member Germany will not be able to escape its responsibility.”

Britain and France are in the process of drafting a UN resolution in support of a no-fly zone in time for a Security Council meeting Thursday. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague reiterated his support, saying, “At the UN Security Council, we are working closely with partners on a contingency basis on elements of a resolution on a no-fly zone, making clear the need for regional support, a clear trigger for such a resolution and an appropriate legal basis.”

A US-European intervention in Libya will provoke massive opposition throughout North Africa and the Middle East, a fact that is well understood in imperialist capitals. The Obama administration is therefore seeking to engineer as much cover as possible from its client states in the region.

The six US-backed monarchies in the Persian Gulf, allied in the Gulf Cooperation Council, said Monday that they supported a UN-enforced no-fly zone over Libya. The six states—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman—condemned the killings by pro-Gaddafi forces in Libya as “massacres.”

This is truly a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Bahrain has killed dozens of protesters seeking the end of the monarchy of King Hamad, while the Sultan of Oman has also ordered police and troops to open fire on demonstrators. Saudi Arabia has banned public protests on pain of death and is openly preparing military intervention in Bahrain if the movement there escalates.

Arab foreign ministers are due to meet on Saturday. Secretary-General Amr Moussa has already said that the Arab League should support a no-fly zone. Touring the Gulf, Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, voiced his own support, telling reporters that he saw growing backing in the Arab world.

The imposition of a no-fly zone is a highly aggressive military action. Attempts to dress it up in humanitarian terms are false. It would involve extensive bombing of Libya and, inevitably, would put civilians at risk. As the bombing of Afghanistan, Iraq and Serbia has shown, there is no such thing as a surgical strike.

Former Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain insisted that a no-fly zone would prevent air attacks on civilians. This is patently untrue. Military experts have pointed out that the size of Libya would make this impossible. Nor would a no-fly zone prevent Gaddafi’s strike helicopters from flying. He is reported to have used them already in attacks on civilian demonstrators.

The reservations expressed by military leaders mainly relate to the ineffectiveness of this tactic. The implication of their warnings is that a no-fly zone would have to be the prelude to operations on the ground. It would inaugurate a bid by the US to seize control of Libya’s oil and to terrorise the population of the entire region.

Obama’s concern to build a coalition of support for his actions in Libya reflects the lessons that the US ruling elite has learned from Iraq. The US is determined that the US should not go it alone in Libya and to bring the major European powers on board. This will, to some degree, spread the military load, but the principal reasons for doing so are political.

A transparently unilateral action by the US would risk inflaming the entire Middle East, under conditions of an ongoing upsurge stretching from Tunisia, to Egypt and into the Gulf States—including Saudi Arabia.

The invasion of Iraq also produced a wave of opposition around the world in 2003. Demonstrations took place in every major city, in an unprecedented display of coordinated international action. To nakedly launch yet another wave of US military expansionism in the current economic and political climate would be to risk igniting opposition on an even larger scale.

Though there is little chance of securing UN backing for action given the opposition of Russia and China, a NATO-led campaign like that in Kosovo would need maximum support to claim legality and political legitimacy.

Recognising that military action is imminent, Gaddafi has intensified his own diplomatic efforts. When he met with an EU delegation headed by Agostino Miozzo, who leads the EU’s crisis management team, Gaddafi invited the EU to send observers to undertake “an independent evaluation” of the situation in Libya.

The opposition Transitional National Council claims that Gaddafi has approached them about negotiating a deal in which he would step down if he were granted safe passage out of the country and immunity from prosecution, which Mustafa Gheriani said they had rejected. Gaddafi’s regime denied that any such approach had been made. But on Monday night, former Libyan Prime Minister Jadallah Azous Al-Talhi appeared on state television and appealed to the rebels to “give a chance to national dialogue to resolve this crisis, to help stop the bloodshed, and not give a chance to foreigners to come and capture our country again.”

As in the past, Gaddafi is attempting to negotiate a deal with imperialism. His radical rhetoric long abandoned, he has shown himself to be completely incapable of freeing Libya from the domination of the West or resolving any of the issues that confront the Libyan masses. The struggle against US aggression cannot be carried out by any section of the Arab bourgeoisie. It is the working class in North Africa and the Middle East, and above all in the main imperialist centres, that can and must fight the build-up to foreign intervention.

 

 

 

 

 

09 March, 2011

Counterpunch

Less than a dozen years after NATO bombed Yugoslavia into pieces, detaching the province of Kosovo from Serbia, there are signs that the military alliance is gearing up for another victorious little “humanitarian war”, this time against Libya. The differences are, of course, enormous. But let’s look at some of the disturbing similarities.

A demonized leader.

As “the new Hitler”, the man you love to hate and need to destroy, Slobodan Milosevic was a neophyte in 1999 compared to Muammar Qaddafi today. The media had less than a decade to turn Milosevic into a monster, whereas with Qaddafi, they’ve been at it for several decades. And Qaddafi is more exotic, speaking less English and coming before the public in outfits that could have been created by John Galliano (another recently outed monster). This exotic aspect arouses the ancestral mockery and contempt for lesser cultures with which the West was won, Africa was colonized and the Summer Palace in Beijing was ravaged by Western soldiers fighting to make the world safe for opium addiction.

The “we must do something” chorus.

As with Kosovo, the crisis in Libya is perceived by the hawks as an opportunity to assert power. The unspeakable John Yoo, the legal advisor who coached the Bush II administration in the advantages of torturing prisoners, has used the Wall Street Journal to advise the Obama administration to ignore the U.N Charter and leap into the Libyan fray. “By putting aside the U.N.’s antiquated rules, the United States can save lives, improve global welfare, and serve its own national interests at the same time,” Yoo proclaimed. And another leading theorist of humanitarian imperialism, Geoffrey Robertson, has told The Independent that, despite appearances, violating international law is lawful.

The specter of “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” is evoked to justify war.

As with Kosovo, an internal conflict between a government and armed rebels is being cast as a “humanitarian crisis” in which one side only, the government, is assumed to be “criminal”. This a priori criminalization is expressed by calling on an international judicial body to examine crimes which are assumed to have been committed, or to be about to be committed. In his Op Ed piece, Geoffrey Robertson made it crystal clear how the International Criminal Court is being used to set the stage for eventual military intervention. The ICC can be used by the West to get around the risk of a Security Council veto for military action, he explained.

“In the case of Libya , the council has at least set an important precedent by unanimously endorsing a reference to the International Criminal Court. […] So what happens if the unarrested Libyan indictees aggravate their crimes – eg by stringing up or shooting in cold blood their opponents, potential witnesses, civilians, journalists or prisoners of war?” [Note that so far there are no “indictees” and no proof of “crimes” that they supposedly may “aggravate” in various imaginary ways.) But Robertson is eager to find a way for NATO “to pick up the gauntlet” if the Security Council decides to do nothing.]

“The defects in the Security Council require the acknowledgement of a limited right, without its mandate, for an alliance like NATO to use force to stop the commission of crimes against humanity. That right arises once the council has identified a situation as a threat to world peace (and it has so identified Libya, by referring it unanimously to the ICC prosecutor).”

Thus referring a country to the ICC prosecutor can be a pretext for waging war against that country! By the way, the ICC jurisdiction is supposed to apply to States that have ratified the treaty establishing it, which, as I understand, is not the case of Libya – or of the United States. A big difference, however, is that the United States has been able to persuade, bully or bribe countless signatory States to accept agreements that they will never under any circumstances try to refer any American offenders to the ICC. That is a privilege denied Qaddafi.

Robertson, a member of the UN justice council, concludes that: “The duty to stop the mass murder of innocents, as best we can if they request our help, has crystallized to make the use of force by Nato not merely ‘legitimate’ but lawful.”

Leftist idiocy.

Twelve years ago, most of the European left supported “the Kosovo war” that set NATO on the endless path it now pursues in Afghanistan. Having learned nothing, many seem ready for a repeat performance. A coalition of parties calling itself the European Left has issued a statement “strongly condemning the repression perpetrated by the criminal regime of Colonel Qaddafi” and urging the European Union “to condemn the use of force and to act promptly to protect the people that are peacefully demonstrating and struggling for their freedom.” Inasmuch as the opposition to Qaddafi is not merely “peacefully demonstrating”, but in part has taken up arms, this comes down to condemning the use of force by some and not by others – but it is unlikely that the politicians who drafted this statement even realize what they are saying.

The narrow vision of the left is illustrated by the statement in a Trotskyist paper that: “Of all the crimes of Qaddafi, the one that is without doubt the most grave and least known is his complicity with the EU migration policy…” For the far left, Qaddafi’s biggest sin is cooperating with the West, just as the West is to be condemned for cooperating with Qaddafi. This is a left that ends up, out of sheer confusion, as cheerleader for war.

Refugees.

The mass of refugees fleeing Kosovo as NATO began its bombing campaign was used to justify that bombing, without independent investigation into the varied causes of that temporary exodus – a main cause probably being the bombing itself. Today, from the way media report on the large number of refugees leaving Libya since the troubles began, the public could get the impression that they are fleeing persecution by Qaddafi. As is frequently the case, media focuses on the superficial image without seeking explanations. A bit of reflection may fill the information gap. It is hardly likely that Qaddafi is chasing away the foreign workers that his regime brought to Libya to carry out important infrastructure projects. Rather it is fairly clear that some of the “democratic” rebels have attacked the foreign workers out of pure xenophobia. Qaddafi’s openness to Africans in particular is resented by a certain number of Arabs. But not too much should be said about this, since they are now our “good guys”. This is a bit the way Albanian attacks on Roma in Kosovo were overlooked or excused by NATO occupiers on the grounds that “the Roma had collaborated with the Serbs”.

Osama bin Laden.

Another resemblance between former Yugoslavia and Libya is that the United States (and its NATO allies) once again end up on the same side as their old friend from Afghan Mujahidin days, Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden was a discreet ally of the Islamist party of Alija Izetbegovic during the Bosnia civil war, a fact that has been studiously overlooked by the NATO powers. Of course, Western media have largely dismissed Qaddafi’s current claim that he is fighting against bin Laden as the ravings of a madman. However, the combat between Qaddafi and bin Laden is very real and predates the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Indeed, Qaddafi was the first to try to alert Interpol to bin Laden, but got no cooperation from the United States. In November 2007, the French news agency AFP reported that the leaders of the “Fighting Islamic Group” in Libya announced they were joining Al Qaeda. Like the Mujahidin who fought in Bosnia, that Libyan Islamist Group was formed in 1995 by veterans of the U.S.-sponsored fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Their declared aim was to overthrow Qaddafi in order to establish a radical Islamist state. The base of radical Islam has always been in the Eastern part of Libya where the current revolt broke out. Since that revolt does not at all resemble the peaceful mass demonstrations that overthrew dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, but has a visible component of armed militants, it can reasonably be assumed that the Islamists are taking part in the rebellion.

Refusal of negotiations.

In 1999, the United States was eager to use the Kosovo crisis to give NATO’s new “out of area” mission its baptism of fire. The charade of peace talks at Rambouillet was scuttled by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who sidelined more moderate Kosovo Albanian leaders in favor of Hashim Thaci, the young leader of the “Kosovo Liberation Army”, a network notoriously linked to criminal activities. The Albanian rebels in Kosovo were a mixed bag, but as frequently happens, the US reached in and drew the worst out of that bag.

In Libya, the situation could be even worse.

My own impression, partly as a result of visiting Tripoli four years ago, is that the current rebellion is a much more mixed bag, with serious potential internal contradictions. Unlike Egypt, Libya is not a populous historic state with thousands of years of history, a strong sense of national identity and a long political culture. Half a century ago, it was one of the poorest countries in the world, and still has not fully emerged from its clan structure. Qaddafi, in his own eccentric way, has been a modernizing factor, using oil revenues to raise the standard of living to one of the highest on the African continent. The opposition to him comes, paradoxically, both from reactionary traditional Islamists on the one hand, who consider him a heretic for his relatively progressive views, and Westernized beneficiaries of modernization on the other hand, who are embarrassed by the Qaddafi image and want still more modernization. And there are other tensions that may lead to civil war and even a breakup of the country along geographic lines.

So far, the dogs of war are sniffing around for more bloodshed than has actually occurred. Indeed, the US escalated the Kosovo conflict in order to “have to intervene”, and the same risks happening now with regard to Libya, where Western ignorance of what they would be doing is even greater.

The Chavez proposal for neutral mediation to avert catastrophe is the way of wisdom. But in NATOland, the very notion of solving problems by peaceful mediation rather than by force seems to have evaporated.

Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions.She can be reached at diana.josto@yahoo.fr

 

 

 

 

10 March, 2011

WSWS.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

10 March, 2011

Countercurrents.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

BAHRAIN PROTESTS

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

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

ERRATIC QADDAFI

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

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

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

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

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

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

A version of this piece originally ran in Frontline.

 11 March, 2011   AlJazeera

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ship swept away

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unfolding disaster

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

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

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

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

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

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

High alert

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

11 March, 2011

Richardfalk.wordpress.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hard cases

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

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

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

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

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

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

An issue with credibility

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The past ignored

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

11 March, 2011

The Independent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

©independent.co.uk

Military ranking

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

 

 

The world’s biggest defence budgets

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

 

 

 

 

11 March, 2011

Post Carbon Institute

6 energy experts address the economic impact of Middle East unrest

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

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

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

1. THE GLOBAL ECONOMY UTTERLY DEPENDS ON CHEAP OIL

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

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

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

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

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

2. OIL SPIKES UNDERCUT ALTERNATIVE ENERGY PROGRAMS

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

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

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

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

3. LIBYA & MIDDLE EAST UNREST WIDEN A VICIOUS CIRCLE

COLIN J. CAMPBELL – Post Carbon Institute Adviser

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

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

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

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

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

4. HEY TEACHER: LEAVE THOSE AUTOCRATIC REGIMES ALONE!

RICHARD HEINBERG (PCI Senior Fellow-in-Residence)

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

TOM WHIPPLE – Post Carbon Institute Peak Oil Fellow

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. ADDICTS EVENTUALLY PAY THE PRICE

DAVID HUGHES – Post Carbon Institute Fossil Fuels Fellow

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

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

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

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

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