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Is there no limit to the villainy of Hamas? Seems there isn’t.

This week, they did something quite unforgivable.

They stole a war.

FOR SOME weeks now, our almost new Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz, has been announcing at every possible opportunity that a new war against the Gaza Strip is inevitable. Several commanders of the troops around the Strip have been repeating this dire forecast, as have their camp-followers, a.k.a. military commentators.

One of these comforted us. True, Hamas can now hit Tel Aviv with their rockets, but that will not be so terrible, because it will be a short war. Just three or four days. As one of the generals said, it will be much more “hard and painful” (for the Arabs) than Cast Lead I, so it will not last for three weeks, as that did. We shall all stay in our shelters – those of us who have shelters, anyway – for just a few days.

Why is the war inevitable? Because of the terrorism, stupid. Hamas is a terrorist organization, isn’t it?

But along comes the supreme Hamas leader, Khaled Mash’al, and declares that Hamas has given up all violent action. From now on it will concentrate on non-violent mass demonstrations, in the spirit of the Arab Spring.

When Hamas forswears terrorism, there is no pretext for an attack on Gaza.

But is a pretext needed? Our army will not let itself be thwarted by the likes of Mash’al. When the army wants a war, it will have a war. This was proved in 1982, when Ariel Sharon attacked Lebanon, despite the fact that the Lebanese border had been absolutely quiet for 11 months. (After the war, the myth was born that it was preceded by daily shooting. Today, almost every Israeli can “remember” the shooting – an astonishing example of the power of suggestion.

WHY DOES the Chief of Staff want to attack?

A cynic might say that every new Chief of Staff needs a war to call his own. But we are not cynics, are we?

Every few days, a solitary rocket is launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel. It rarely hits anything but an empty field. For months, now, no one has been hurt.

The usual sequence is like this: our air force carries out a “targeted liquidation” of Palestinian militants in the strip. The army claims invariably that these specific “terrorists” had intended to attack Israelis. How did the army know of their intentions? Well, our army is a master thought reader.

After the persons have been killed, their organization considers it its duty to avenge their blood by launching a rocket or a mortar shell, or even two or three. This “cannot be tolerated” by the army, and so it goes on.

After every such episode, the talk about a war starts again. As American politicians put it in their speeches at AIPAC conferences: “No country can tolerate its citizens being exposed to rockets!”

But of course, the reasons for Cast Lead II are more serious. Hamas is being accepted by the international community. Their Prime Minister, Isma’il Haniyeh, is now traveling around the Arab and Muslim world, after being shut in Gaza – a kind of Strip-arrest – for four years. Now he can cross into Egypt because the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’ parent organization, has become a major player there.

Even worse, Hamas is about to join the PLO and take part in the Palestinian government. High time to do something about it. Attack Gaza, for example. Compel Hamas to become extremist again.

NOT CONTENT with stealing our war, Mash’al is carrying out a series of more sinister actions.

By joining the PLO, he is committing Hamas to the Oslo agreements and all the other official deals between Israel and the PLO. He has announced that Hamas accepts a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. He has let it be known that Hamas would not contest the Palestinian presidency this year, so that the Fatah candidate – whoever that may be – would be elected practically unopposed and be able to negotiate with Israel.

All this would put the present Israeli government in a difficult position. Mash’al has some experience in causing trouble for Israel. In 1997, the (first) Netanyahu government decided to get rid of him in Amman. A team of Mossad agents was sent to assassinate him in the street by spraying his ear with an untraceable poison. But instead of doing the decent thing and dying quietly from a mysterious cause, like Yasser Arafat, he let his bodyguard chase the attackers and catch them.

King Hussein, Israel’s longstanding friend and ally, was hopping mad. He presented Netanyahu with a choice: either the agents would be tried in Jordan and possibly hanged, or the Mossad would immediately send the secret antidote to save Mash’al. Netanyahu capitulated, and here we have Mash’al, very much alive and kicking.

Another curious outcome of this misadventure: the king demanded that the Hamas founder and leader, the paralyzed Sheik Ahmad Yassin, be released from Israeli prison. Netanyahu obliged, Yassin was released and assassinated by Israel seven years later. When his successor, Abd al-Aziz Rantissi, was assassinated soon after, the path was cleared for Mash’al to become the Hamas chief.

And instead of showing his gratitude, he now confronts us with a dire challenge: non-violent action, indirect peace overtures, the two-state solution.

A QUESTION: why does our Chief of Staff long for a little war in Gaza, when he could have all the war he desires in Iran? Not just a little operation, but a big war, a very very big war.

Well, he knows that he cannot have it.

Some time ago I did something no experienced commentator ever does. I promised that there would be no Israeli military attack on Iran. (Nor, for that matter, an American one.)

An experienced journalist or politician never makes such a prediction without leaving a loophole for himself. He puts in an inconspicuous “unless”. If his forecast goes awry, he points to that loophole.

I do have some experience – some 60 or so years of it – but I did not leave any loophole. I said No War, and now General Gantz says the same in so many words. No Tehran, just poor little Gaza.

Why? Because of that one word: Hormuz.

Not the ancient Persian god Hormuzd, but the narrow strait that is the entrance and exit of the Persian Gulf, through which 20% of the world’s oil (and 35% of the sea-borne oil) flows. My contention was that no sane (or even mildly insane) leader would risk the closing of the strait, because the economic consequences would be catastrophic, even apocalyptic.

IT SEEMS that the leaders of Iran were not sure that all the world’s leaders read this column, so, just in case, they spelled it out themselves. This week they conducted conspicuous military maneuvers around the Strait of Hormuz, accompanied by the unequivocal threat to close it.

The US responded with vainglorious counter-threats. The invincible US Navy was ready to open the strait by force, if needed.

How, pray? The mightiest multi-billion aircraft carrier can be easily sunk by a battery of cheap land-to-sea missiles, as well as by small missile-boats. Let’s assume Iran starts to act out its threats. The whole might of the US air force and navy is brought to bear. Iranian ships will be sunk, missile and army installations bombed. Still the Iranian missiles will come in, making passage through the strait impossible.

What next? There will be no alternative to “boots on the ground”. The US army will have to land on the shore and occupy all the territory from which missiles can be effectively launched. That would be a major operation. Fierce Iranian resistance must be expected, judging from the experience of the eight-year Iraqi-Iranian war. The oil wells in neighboring Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states will also be hit.

Such a war would go far beyond the dimensions of the American invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan, perhaps even of Vietnam.

Is the bankrupt US up to it? Economically, politically and in terms of morale? The closing of the strait is the ultimate weapon. I don’t believe that the Iranians will use it against the imposition of sanctions, severe as they may be, as they have threatened. Only a military attack would warrant such a response.

If Israel attacks alone – “the most stupid idea I ever heard of,” as our former Mossad chief put it – that will make no difference. Iran will consider it an American action, and close the strait. That’s why the Obama administration put its foot down, and hand-delivered to Netanyahu and Ehud Barak an unequivocal order to abstain from any military action.

That’s where we are now. No war in Iran. Just the prospect of a war in Gaza. And along comes this evil Mash’al and tries to spoil the chances of that, too.

By Uri Avnery

8 January 2012

@ Gush Shalom

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. Avnery sat in the Knesset from 1965–74 and 1979–81

GLOBAL MOVEMENT TO CREATE A NONVIOLENT WORLD LAUNCHED

On 11 November 2011, the 93rd anniversary of the armistice of World War 1, a new movement to end human violence was launched around the world. ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ was launched simultaneously in Australia, Malaysia, the Philippines and the United States and has already gained signatories in sixteen countries.

The aim of the Nonviolence Charter is to create a worldwide movement to end violence in all of its forms. According to Anahata Giri, the Charter gives voice to the millions of ordinary people around the world who want an end to war, domestic violence, oppression, economic exploitation, environmental destruction, and violence of all other kinds. The Charter is also designed to support and unite the courageous nonviolent struggles of ordinary people all over the world.

People who wish to join the movement are invited to sign a pledge to take personal action to progressively eliminate the violence they inflict on themselves, others and the Earth, and to engage in acts of nonviolent resistance and/or creation to bring about a nonviolent future.

A report from a launch organizer in the United States, Tom Shea, included photos taken by fellow organizer Leonard Eiger. The launch, which took place in Seattle, involved several groups: the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, the Puget Sound Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Declaration, Seattle Veterans For Peace Chapter 92, Collective Voices for Peace USA, Collective Voces Ecologiacas Panama, and the Buddhist Peace Fellowship Seattle Chapter. Tom reported that it was a great gathering.

After a moment of silence at Seattle’s Wall of Remembrance (which lists the names of Washington State military killed in major US Wars), Tom reported, ‘we began our spoken presence’. Even amid a cold rain, over twenty people representing a broad variety of peace people assembled. These included four from Occupy Seattle (two of whom were dressed in military garb), the Colgans – who’ve been holding a vigil in front of the Seattle Federal Building every Tuesday since 2004, in honor of their son killed in Iraq – a woman in a wheelchair and the Buddhist chair of the Seattle Peace Team (a group that does training and is active as peacekeepers in places of conflict in town). ‘We spoke briefly about The Charter, how individuals can participate … and shared information about six of the groups present.’

The launch in Malaysia was organised by the International Movement for A Just World (JUST International) and was held as part of the Inter-civilizational Youth Engagement Program (IYEP) 5 held at the Shah’s Village Hotel in Petaling Jaya, Selangor. It was organised by Professor Chandra Muzaffar, Helen Ng and Nurul Haida Dzulkifli.

On arrival, guests were welcomed, shown the video ‘Do unto others’ and given hand-made poppies. This was followed by dance performances of the Indonesian ‘Thousand Hands Dance’ and the Korean ‘Sorry Sorry’, the music video ‘Wonderful World’, and the poem ‘I Want to See What I Saw Again’. Guests then heard a talk by Dato Dr. Shad Saleem Faruqi on ‘The Violence of Capital Punishment’, a guitar performance of ‘That’s Why I Love You’, a drama performance of ‘500 Days of Violence’, a talk and video by Mr. Khampi on the Zomi Education Centre for Myanmar Refugees, before the song ‘We Are The World’. Finally, ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ was read out, with the dramatization of selective clauses, the pledge was taken, the Charter was signed and poppies were placed on a ‘field’ on their Charter banner.

In the Philippines, the launch took place in ten barangay (village) halls in Quezon province and involved the praying of the rosary and lighting of eleven candles. It was organised by Dr. Tess Ramiro who is Director of the main nonviolence organisation in the Philippines, Aksyon para sa Kapayapaan at Katarungan (Action for Peace and Justice) – Center for Active Nonviolence, at the Pius XII Catholic Center in Manila. In her report, Tess indicated that, according to the base groups, the activity was very successful. One base group alone reported an attendance of 100 persons and the event was supported by the parish priest.

The launch in Melbourne, Australia, was organised by Anahata Giri, Anita McKone and myself. Eight ordinary people spoke about why they are going to work to end human violence and what they are going to be doing differently from now on.

The speakers included a diverse range of people from various ethnic and religious backgrounds including Samah Sabawi, a Palestinian born in Gaza; Kijana Majok Piel, a Sudanese Muslim who spent 17 years living in a refugee camp in Kenya; Karen Thompson-Anderson, who teaches nonviolent communication; Frank Ruanjie, a Chinese pro-democracy activist now exiled in Australia; Tenzin Lobsang, a Tibetan Buddhist who fled Tibet as a child; John McKenna who relies on a wheelchair for his mobility and works with intellectually disabled people; Isabelle Skaburskis, a Canadian woman who did rehabilitation work (yoga therapy) with women and children who had been sexually trafficked in Cambodia; and Annie Whitlocke, a woman of Jewish heritage who has suffered much violence throughout her childhood and married life.

The launch also featured Samah Sabawi reading her evocative poems ‘The Liberation Anthem’ and ‘A Confession’ (which was accompanied by sound effects, including a recording of the Israeli bombing of Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, managed by her nephew Omer Elsaafin). Tenzing Yeshi sang his powerful song ‘Cho Sum Mirik’ about the life of His Holiness 14^th Dalai Lama of Tibet. Anita and Anahata sang ‘Freedom for Palestine/Everyone’, and ‘We Sing Nonviolence’ written by Anita specifically for the Charter launch.

My own talk, explaining the purpose of the Nonviolence Charter, included the following words:

‘So what is unique about “The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World”? The People’s Charter is an attempt to put the focus on human violence as the pre-eminent problem faced by our species, to identify all of the major manifestations of this violence, and to identify ways to tackle all of these manifestations of violence in a systematic and strategic manner. It is an attempt to put the focus on the fundamental cause – the violence we adults inflict on children – and to stress the importance of dealing with that cause. (See ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence) It is an attempt to focus on what you and I – that is, ordinary people – can do to end human violence, and “The People’s Charter” invites us to pledge to make that effort. It is an attempt, as Anahata said to me the other day, to combine the deeply personal with the deeply global: to listen to our deep inner selves to restore humanity. And it is an attempt to provide a focal point around which we can mobilise with a sense of shared commitment with people from all over the world. In short, as of tonight, it is a new, worldwide movement and its specific focus is ending human violence….

‘So, together with people in Malaysia, the Philippines and the United States, tonight many of us will choose to pledge ourselves to a new, concerted and worldwide effort to end human violence, in all of its manifestations, for all time. ‘This is undoubtedly a monumental endeavour. Perhaps, it is the greatest endeavour in human history. I feel privileged to share it with you all. And I love you all for making that endeavour….

‘We are committed to leave here tonight to struggle to end human violence. In my view, there can be no greater calling than this. Whatever our differences, ending human violence is our compelling and unifying dream.’

You can read ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ and, if it feels right to you, sign the pledge at http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com

Robert J. Burrowes

Anita McKone and Robert J. Burrowes

P.O. Box 325

Blackburn

Victoria 3130

Australia

Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites: http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com

http://tinyurl.com/flametree

http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence

http://anitamckone.wordpress.com (songs of nonviolence)

http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

The world’s poorest communities have begun to experience extreme weather outside the natural variability of African climate. Without a rapid reduction in emissions, the continent faces calamitous temperature rises within this century

We are right on the equator, and Speke, Moebius, Elena, Savoia and Moore, the five great glaciers of the the Rwenzori, the Mountains of the Moon, glint in the bright Ugandan sun. Usually lost in the mists that cloak these peaks up to 5,100 metres high, the glaciers are the only major ones left of the 43 that were mapped and named in 1906. Then, the ice covered 7.5 square kilometres, now it is thought to cover less than one.

Surveys suggest most of the glaciers shrank by nearly half between 1987 and 2003. They will be measured again in January, but air temperatures in all the high tropics have risen several degrees in a few generations and, says the British hydrologist Richard Taylor of University College London, it’s likely that the equatorial ice known to the ancient Greeks will almost certainly have disappeared in 20-30 years.

The Rwenzori glaciers cannot be saved by the 194 countries meeting in the UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa, which will move up a gear this weekend as ministers and some heads of state arrive for the serious negotiations.

But if the rise in greenhouse gas emissions is not stopped and then rapidly reduced within a few years then Africa, the most vulnerable and poorest continent, will almost certainly experience 4-5C temperature rises within a century, according to the consensus of world climate scientists. Comparatively little research has been done into the possible impacts of climate change in Africa and there are deep uncertainties about timing and severity in individual countries, but the scientific consensus – from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – is that a rise in temperatures of just 2C would guarantee more intense droughts, heatwaves, floods, stronger storms, sea level rises, crop losses and unliveable cities, and a rise of 4-5C would be calamitous across much of the continent.

From Cairo to the Cape, the impact of man-made climate change is already being felt. Farmers, people in cities, local scientists and governments all tell a remarkably similar story – that there is evidence of more extreme and unseasonal weather taking place outside the natural variability and cycles of African climate, and that the poorest communities are the least able to adapt.

In Egypt’s Nile delta, where 40% of the population lives, most of the land is liable to be inundated by a one-metre increase in sea levels, anticipated over the next century. Guy Jobbins, a Cairo-based British water scientist who heads Canada’s International Development Research Centre climate change adaptation programme for Africa, says understanding of the issue has rocketed in the past few years.

“Go to any farm, talk to any fisherman, and climate change fits their experience. The last few years have seen temperature spikes to world-record highs. We don’t absolutely know it’s climate change but we do know that the summers are hotter now, and the impact of evaporation is greater in the south of Egypt. We see crops dying in the fields, temperatures of 63C [145F] have been recorded, and the winters are not cold enough to grow olives. There are some advantages, like the fact that vegetables grow earlier, but smallholders have no way of taking advantage.

“We know sea level rise is happening but it’s slow and steady. But the effect is being aggravated by the increasing intensity of storms. Last year saw the worst [storms] in decades. The last few years have seen temperature spikes, with nights becoming unbearably hot and then switching to freezing cold. But the real issues are groundwater and soil salination. Coastal aquifers become depleted, which leads to groundwater becoming salinated. As sea levels rise the water becomes more stagnant and salty. It’s affecting hundreds of square kilometres, up to 10km from the coast in places. … Climate change is a massive problem for developing countries because people are less resistant to shocks and cannot adapt.”

A thousand miles south in Khartoum, Sumaya Zakieldeen, a researcher at Khartoum University’s institute of environmental studies, says the harsh climate that Sudan already experiences will become more extreme. She and her team have compared historical data going back to 1940 and found drought and extreme flooding more frequent, temperatures rising in winter, extreme – good and bad – years now more common and rainfall patterns changing.

A major UN study from 2007 – From Conflict to Peacebuilding: The Role of Natural Resources and the Environment – says temperatures are set to rise by several degrees in the next 50 years, with rainfall declining 5%. Climate change, say the authors, presents a “new and harsh reality”.

To the east of Sudan, the Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. Somalia, parts of Ethiopia and Kenya, and a great swath of Africa stretching to Chad, have always experienced severe droughts and scorching temperatures. But this is different, says Leina Mpoke, a vet in Moyale on the Kenya-Ethiopia border.

“In the past we used to have regular 10-year climatic cycles which were always followed by a major drought. In the 1970s we started having droughts every seven years; in the 1980s they came about every five years and in the 1990s we were getting droughts and dry spells almost every two or three years. Since 2000 we have had three major droughts and several dry spells. Now they are coming almost every year, right across the country.”

He reels off the signs of climate change that he and others have observed, all of which are confirmed by the Kenyan meteorological office and local governments. “The frequency of heatwaves is increasing. Temperatures are generally more extreme, water is evaporating faster, and the wells are drying. Larger areas are being affected by droughts, and flooding is now more serious.”

‘It is no coincidence that the worst affected areas are those suffering from entrenched poverty. Severe drought has led to the huge scale of the disaster, [but] this crisis has been caused by people and policies, as much as by weather patterns. One thing is clear. If nothing is done, climate change will in future make a bad situation,” says Tracy Carty, Oxfam policy adviser.

Further south, on the Tanzania border, the semi-nomadic Maasai, who never used to cultivate food, have been hit repeatedly by droughts, which have forced them to adapt by herding cattle less and growing beans, fruit and vegetables.

“These days the water evaporates faster and the grass dries very quickly. Last March it rained, but very little. So now I try to cultivate. We have greatly changed our life but so far not much is going better,” says Simatoi Tirike, one of a group of around 1,300 in the Maasailand division of Magadi.

Most of his community have only a few cows left. “It’s definitely hotter now. We had many cows, but now we have few and they get sick more quickly. The rivers used to flow all the year but now not so much. The winds are stronger and we have new livestock diseases. I used to be able to work many hours in the fields, now just a few hours. Sometimes it rains for two or three weeks now but then it stops. Very long droughts now affect the cattle.”

A spokesman for the Kenyan environment ministry says: “We are vastly endangered by climate change. The minimum temperature has risen generally 0.7-2C and the maximum 0.2-1.2C. There is generally less rain. More intense rainfall occurs, and more frequently. This means the frequent occurrence of severe floods.

“We have had the mass deaths of animals, famine, a great influx of refugees from Somalia and armed conflicts over water. It means we have to look for aid. Adaptation is now our priority. Climate change is now central to our planning.”

The minister for environment and natural resources, John Michuki, says: “If the world does not implement measures that result in deep cuts in anthropogenic emissions, such impacts will only worsen in future.”

Back on the equator, the coffee farmers of Rwenzori expect to grow only 5,000-6,000 tonnes of beans, compared with 15,000 tonnes 10 years ago. It’s largely because temperatures have risen dramatically, and the arabica coffee that they have always grown needs quite specific temperatures.

Coffee growing is now far less profitable below 360 metres. “I can’t produce anything like I used to. The temperature goes up all the time. I used to harvest nearly three times as much coffee. This year there’s been lots of rain but that is unusual. Everyone is in the same situation. We have new diseases. It affects all crops,” says Fidel Nzeomasi, a small farmer.

Changing rainfall in the Rwenzori hills has resulted in less water to power three hydroelectric plants. Nearly 75% of all Kenya’s electricity is generated by water and whenever the rains fail there is a dramatic drop in water levels at many of the reservoirs. “The effect on Kenya’s export industries is catastrophic as much of the country’s exports are based on fresh produce, and a lack of reliable power creates havoc with irrigation and temperature controls in greenhouses,” says Steve Mutiso, Oxfam’s disaster risk reduction officer. “Any drought in Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya or Tanzania can knock off power.”

One thousand miles further south in Zimbabwe, there is a large-scale community response to climate change in Gutu district, Masvingo province. Rain-fed farming has become nearly impossible because of constant droughts, and irrigation provides 25,000 households with some certainty.

“Our land was fertile and we used to get good harvests but then the weather changed, the rain is really erratic. You work and work but get nothing back if there’s no water. We just dream of rainfall. The weather has changed, the climate has changed. There are no signs telling us whether rains will come or not. There are so many dry spells we cannot even grow enough to survive for the whole year. But with our irrigation scheme we can survive all the way through to next year now,” says Ipaishe Masvingise, a 46-year-old widow.

South Africa’s emissions of more than nine tonnes per person of carbon dioxide a year is more than four times that of any other African country and greater than that of France or Britain. But the vast majority of the power is used by the mining, power and aluminium industries, which mainly work for export. More than 2.5m homes have no electricity at all and 70% of rural households still rely on wood fuel.

But climate change and the need to mitigate emissions is helping to break the old monopoly of coal power. There are plans to rapidly expand wind power in the Western Cape near St Helena’s Bay, where winds blow constantly off the Atlantic. Neil Townsend, director of Just Energy, a start-up company, hopes to build four small farms, which would have 40% community ownership.

“Investors are queueing up. This could be a model for community windfarms around the world. We reckon just 10 3MW turbines here can provide an income of around £20m over 20 years. If the four farms are given licences they could together provide education, job opportunities and business loans for nearly 20,000 of the poorest people in South Africa. Climate change is creating the opportunity for these projects,” says Townsend.

One place that should benefit is the Laingville township near Saldanha Bay, where there is 90% unemployment. “This project would make a significant difference to the whole area,” says Johan Akron, spokesman for a group of 200 relatively poor local people who bought the farm as part of a land redistribution project. “Fishing here has declined. There’s nothing else.”

Climate change could possibly benefit farming in southern Africa because extra carbon dioxide in the air from fossil fuel burning could promote plant growth, but mostly it threatens water supplies, farming, wildlife and health, say scientists and the government.

A new report by the South African government expects the geographic range of malaria to nearly double in the next 50 years, and rainfall to decrease by around 10%. It predicts that by mid-century, 50 million to 100 million extra people in southern Africa countries will experience water shortages. Weather patterns are changing and “hotspots” such as Botswana can expect temperature rises of 5C by the end of the century, which could make any life there nearly untenable.

But how far climate change is already affecting natural ecosystems is hard to tell, says Guy Midgley, head of the South African national biodiversity institute in Cape Town. “Climate change could mean unthinkable loss for South Africa. But there are large gaps in our knowledge and we need more research. What we do know is that millions of people’s lives are at stake. The well-being and lives of vulnerable populations are on the frontline. A very significant change is happening very rapidly and it’s outside our evolutionary history. This is an evolutionary sledgehammer.”

• Travel and accommodation was supported by Oxfam, and the African Investigative Journalism Conference at Wits University. Neither organisation had any control over content of the article.

By John Vidal

1 December 2011

@ The Guradian

Doctors and residents blame US weapons for catastrophic levels of birth defects in Fallujah’s newborns

Fallujah, Iraq – While the US military has formally withdrawn from Iraq, doctors and residents of Fallujah are blaming weapons like depleted uranium and white phosphorous used during two devastating US attacks on Fallujah in 2004 for what are being described as “catastrophic” levels of birth defects and abnormalities.

Dr Samira Alani, a paediatric specialist at Fallujah General Hospital, has taken a personal interest in investigating an explosion of congenital abnormalities that have mushroomed in the wake of the US sieges since 2005.

“We have all kinds of defects now, ranging from congenital heart disease to severe physical abnormalities, both in numbers you cannot imagine,” Alani told Al Jazeera at her office in the hospital, while showing countless photos of shocking birth defects.

As of December 21, Alani, who has worked at the hospital since 1997, told Al Jazeera she had personally logged 677 cases of birth defects since October 2009. Just eight days later when Al Jazeera visited the city on December 29, that number had already risen to 699.

“There are not even medical terms to describe some of these conditions because we’ve never seen them until now,” she said. “So when I describe it all I can do is describe the physical defects, but I’m unable to provide a medical term.”

‘Incompatible with life’

Most of these babies in Fallujah die within 20 to 30 minutes after being born, but not all.

Four-year-old Abdul Jaleel Mohammed was born in October 2007. His clinical diagnosis includes dilation of two heart ventricles, and a growth on his lower back that doctors have not been able to remove.

Four-year-old Abdul Jaleel Mohammed has birth defects and health problems that his family blames on depleted uranium exposure from the 2004 US military attacks on Fallujah [Dahr Jamail/Al Jazeera]

Abdul has trouble controlling his muscles, struggles to walk, cannot control his bladder, and weakens easily. Doctors told his father, Mohamed Jaleel Abdul Rahim, that his son has severe nervous system problems, and could develop fluid build-up in his brain as he ages, which could prove fatal.

“This is the first instance of something like this in all our family,” Rahim told Al Jazeera. “We lived in an area that was heavily bombed by the Americans in 2004, and a missile landed right in front of our home. What else could cause these health problems besides this?”

Dr Alani told Al Jazeera that in the vast majority of cases she has documented, the family had no prior history of congenital abnormalities.

Alani showed Al Jazeera hundreds of photos of babies born with cleft palates, elongated heads, a baby born with one eye in the centre of its face, overgrown limbs, short limbs, and malformed ears, noses and spines.

She told Al Jazeera of cases of “thanatophoric dysplasia”, an abnormality in bones and the thoracic cage that “render the newborn incompatible with life”.

Rahim said many of his relatives that have had babies after 2004 are having problems as well.

“One of them was born and looks like a fish,” Rahim said. “I also personally know of at least three other families who live near us who have these problems also.”

For now, the family is worried how Abdul will fare in school when he is enrolled next year. Maloud Ahmed Jassim, Abdul’s grandfather, added, “We’ve seen so many miscarriages happen, and we don’t know why.”

“The growth on his back is so sensitive and painful for him,” Rahim said. “What will happen in school?”

Jassim is angered by a lack of thorough investigations into the health crisis.

“Why is the government not investigating this,” he asked. “Western media seem interested, but neither our local media nor the government are. Why not?”

In April 2011, Iraqi lawmakers debated whether the US attacks on the city constituted genocide. Resolutions that called for international prosecution, however, went nowhere.

Scientific proof

Alani, along with Dr Christopher Busby, a British scientist and activist who has carried out research into the risks of radioactive pollution, collected hair samples from 25 parents of families with children who have birth defects and sent them to a laboratory in Germany for analysis.

Alani and Busby, along with other doctors and researchers, published a study in September 2011 from data obtained by analysing the hair samples, as well as soil and water samples from the city.

Mercury, Uranium, Bizmuth and other trace elements were found.

The report’s conclusion states:

“Whilst caution must be exercised about ruling out other possibilities, because none of the elements found in excess are reported to cause congenital diseases and cancer except Uranium, these findings suggest the enriched Uranium exposure is either a primary cause or related to the cause of the congenital anomaly and cancer increases. Questions are thus raised about the characteristics and composition of weapons now being deployed in modern battlefields.”

“As doctors, we know Mercury, Uranium and Bismuth can contribute to the development of congenital abnormalities, and we think it could be related to the use of prohibited weapons by the Americans during these battles,” Alani said.

“Findings suggest the enriched Uranium exposure is either a primary cause or related to the cause of the congenital anomaly and cancer increases,” says a recent scientific report on the incidence of birth defects in Fallujah [Dr Samira Alani]

“I made this link to a coroner’s inquest in the West Midlands into the death of a Gulf War One veteran… and a coroner’s jury accepted my evidence,” he told Al Jazeera.

“It’s been found by a coroner’s court that cancer was caused by an exposure to depleted uranium,” Busby added, “In the last 10 years, research has emerged that has made it quite clear that uranium is one of the most dangerous substances known to man, certainly in the form that it takes when used in these wars.”

In July 2010, Busby released a study that showed a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in Fallujah since the 2004 attacks. The report also showed the sex ratio had declined from normal to 86 boys to 100 girls, together with a spread of diseases indicative of genetic damage similar to but of far greater incidence than Hiroshima.

Dr Alani visited Japan recently, where she met with Japanese doctors who study birth defect rates they believe related to radiation from the US nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

She was told birth defect incidence rates there are between 1-2 per cent. Alani’s log of cases of birth defects amounts to a rate of 14.7 per cent of all babies born in Fallujah, more than 14 times the rate in the affected areas of Japan.

A contaminated country?

In Babil Province in southern Iraq, the head of the Babil Cancer Centre, Dr Sharif al-Alwachi, said cancer rates have been escalating at alarming rates since 2003, for which he blames the use of depleted uranium weapons by US forces during and following the 2003 invasion.

“The environment could be contaminated by chemical weapons and depleted uranium from the aftermath of the war on Iraq,” Dr Alwachi told Al Jazeera. “The air, soil and water are all polluted by these weapons, and as they come into contact with human beings they become poisonous. This is new to our region, and people are suffering here.”

The US and UK militaries have sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted uranium, but Iraqi doctors like Alwachi and Alani, and along with researchers, blame the increasing cancer and birth defect rates on the weapon.

Abdulhaq Al-Ani, author of Uranium in Iraq, has been researching the effects of depleted uranium on Iraqis since 1991. He told Al Jazeera he personally measured radiation levels in the city of Kerbala, as well as in Basra, and his Geiger counter was “screaming” because “the indicator went beyond the range”.

Alani explained that she is the only doctor in Fallujah registering cases of congenital abnormalities.

Dr Samira Alani, who has been working as a pediatrician at Fallujah General Hospital since 1997, has registered 699 cases of birth defects in Fallujah babies since late 2009 [Dahr Jamail/Al Jazeera]

“We have no system to register all of them, so we have so many cases we are missing,” she said. “Just yesterday a colleague told me of a newborn with thanatophoric dysplasia and she did not register it. I think I only know of 40-50 per cent of the cases because so many families have their babies at home and we never know of these, and other clinics are not registering them either.”

The hospital where Alani does her work was constructed in the Dhubadh district of Fallujah in 2008. According to Alani, the district was bombed heavily during the November 2004 siege.

“There is also a primary school that was built nearby, and from that school alone three teachers developed breast cancer, and now two of them are dead,” Alani said. “We get so many cases from this area, right where the hospital is.”

Even with a vast amount of anecdotal evidence, the exact cause of the health crisis in Fallujah is currently inconclusive without an in-depth, comprehensive study, which has yet to be carried out.

But despite lack of governmental support, and very little support from outside Iraq, Alani is determined to continue her work.

“I will not leave this subject”, she told Al Jazeera. “I will not stop.”

By Dahr Jamail

6 January, 2012

@ Al Jazeera

2011 was a year of austerity for Europe. At the behest of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, stringent programs imposing cuts in wages, pensions and social services, combined with the decimation of jobs, were introduced by governments across the continent.

These austerity measures, designed to pay for massive bailouts of the banks following the financial crash of 2008, are now plunging Europe into new economic and social turmoil. This is confirmed by the most recent economic figures, which indicate that 2012 will be a year of renewed recession in Europe.

The first economic statistics for Europe issued in the new year show that manufacturing across the euro zone declined in December, the fifth consecutive month of decreased output. Overall economic growth in the 17-nation euro zone was anemic throughout the second half of 2011, increasing by just 0.2 percent between July and September. The performance of the 27 economies of the entire European Union was only slightly higher, at 0.3 percent. Since September the general trend has been downwards.

While Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, recorded significant economic growth in the second half of 2011, other major economies such as Italy and Spain registered large falls in production.

French manufacturing has also suffered from the slump in demand across the continent. PSA Peugeot Citroën, Europe’s second-biggest carmaker after Volkswagen, recorded a 29 percent fall in its December sales, while the country’s second major car producer, Renault, registered a 28 percent drop. “Orders were down about 55 percent in December, which leads us to expect a car market contraction of 17 percent in the first quarter of 2012,” said Renault sales chief Bernard Cambier.

In Britain, retailers announced disappointing figures for the Christmas period. Jonathan De Mello, the head of the CBRE retail consultancy, said that due to the slump in consumer spending, 30,000 to 40,000 retail jobs could disappear in Britain over the next 18 months.

During the recession of 2008-09, major British retailers such as Woolworths, Zavvi and MFI went into liquidation. According to the head of another British retail consortium, conditions are now even worse than at the end of 2008.

The trend toward recession has been confirmed by British economists. In a poll conducted by the BBC at the end of the year, 25 leading economists predicted recession for Europe in 2012. Only 2 of those polled dissented. A majority of the economists questioned also said there was a significant likelihood of a breakup of the euro zone.

A parallel survey of 83 economists conducted by the Financial Times concluded that 2012 will rival 2009 for economic weakness, with output in the UK suffering as a result of the continuing debt crisis in the euro zone. According to Sir Alan Budd, chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK faces a “choice between extended misery if the euro survives and catastrophe if it doesn’t.”

While predicating recession in 2012, a large majority of the economists questioned by the Financial Times stressed their continuing support for the draconian austerity measures introduced by the British coalition government headed by Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron.

Reflecting the intensifying crisis in Europe, the euro slid to a ten-year low against the yen and a one-year low against the US dollar to end 2011 as the world’s worst performing major currency. International hedge funds stepped up their speculation against the euro in the last week of 2011. The slump in the fortunes of the euro came despite the action of the European Central Bank, which just a week previously provided European banks with nearly half a trillion euros in the form of new credits.

European leaders went public at year’s end to warn that there would be no let-up in the policy of austerity. Ignoring the disastrous social consequences for European workers of the cuts already imposed, Danish Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who took over the six-month rotating European Union presidency on January 1, declared, “The fat years are behind us. We must prepare ourselves for some lean years.”

The message was drummed home by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who warned in her New Year’s speech that for Europe, 2012 would “no doubt be more difficult than 2011,” adding that the continent faced its “harshest test in decades.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was even more explicit, warning, “This extraordinary crisis, without doubt the most serious one since World War II … is not over.”

In Spain, the cabinet of the conservative People’s Party meets Thursday to agree further measures aimed at slashing public spending. The new proposals will come on the heels of a €15 billion package of spending cuts announced just days ago and the declaration by the treasury minister that the country’s budget deficit for 2011 is likely to be higher than forecast.

In Italy, the technocratic government of Mario Monti is under renewed pressure from the financial markets to implement further austerity measures following its recent €33 billion package of cuts to pensions and social spending. Following a brief dip in December, Italy’s long-term borrowing costs have once again been driven up to the critical level of 7 percent.

Bourgeois political commentators have drawn their own conclusions from the crisis and are issuing warnings to the political elite to prepare for major class confrontations. In her prognosis for 2012, Princeton Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote in Tuesday’s Financial Times that austerity and the spread of poverty would provoke revolts in sub-Saharan Africa and further mass protests in Central Asia and South America.

“In the US,” she wrote, “the Occupy movement will operate through rolling flashmob-type disruptions, but we should also see much more concrete actions such as defending against foreclosures—a tactic pioneered in Spain. In European countries that are choking on euro zone-imposed austerity, protests are also likely to turn into coordinated civil disobedience, centered on a refusal to pay new or higher taxes. And the Middle East will continue to burn. … Expect a very turbulent year.”

There are already indications of growing resistance within the working class. In Greece, state hospital doctors started a four-day strike this week against the government’s cuts to the state health system. Their strike has been joined by pharmacists and other workers in the health system.

By Stefan Steinberg

4 January 2012

WSWS.org

Stefan Steinberg is WSWS.org writer

The European Union’s (EU) in-principle decision on Wednesday to impose an embargo on oil imports from Iran has further escalated the danger of military conflict in the Persian Gulf. The EU move dovetails with President Obama’s signing on Saturday of US legislation designed to cripple the Iranian banking system and cut the country’s oil exports.

The US and EU threats have already provoked a sharp reaction from Tehran, which has warned that it would respond to an oil embargo by blocking the Strait of Hormuz—a strategic waterway into the Persian Gulf through which about 20 percent of global oil trade passes.

As Economy Minister Shamseddin Hosseini said yesterday, Iran confronts “an economic war.” Oil and gas exports account for some 80 percent of the country’s hard currency earnings and provide about half of government revenue. The Iranian rial has already plunged by 11 percent this week against the US dollar, compounding already high levels of inflation.

In Washington this week, British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond met with his American counterpart Leon Panetta and threatened joint military action with the US in response to any Iranian attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz. A potential trigger for a military clash was established when the Pentagon dismissed an Iranian warning on Tuesday that an American aircraft carrier, the USS John C. Stennis, should not return to the Gulf.

The UK, together with the US and France, has been driving the international campaign for a crippling oil embargo on Iran. While ruling out British support for a pre-emptive military strike on Iran, at present at least, Hammond declared: “We are very clear that we need to maintain pressure” on Tehran. In November, the British government ordered all British financial institutions to stop doing business with their Iranian counterparts, including the country’s central bank. The sanctions provoked angry protests in Tehran and led to the closure of the British embassy.

A European oil embargo on Iran is to be finalised at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on January 30. Already divisions are evident. Unlike the US, France and Britain, Italy, Greece and Spain are heavily dependent on imported Iranian oil. Yesterday Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti warned that his government would only back a ban if it were imposed gradually and excluded oil deliveries aimed at reimbursing $2 billion worth of Iranian debt to the Italian energy firm Eni.

While the European decision relates only to EU countries, the US legislation is aimed against all foreign companies doing business with the Iranian central bank. Apart from the EU, other major buyers of Iranian oil are China and Japan. The new law allows President Obama to delay its application for six months and to issue waivers to prevent havoc in oil markets. It is expected that countries will have to convince US officials that action is being taken to reduce economic ties with Iran.

As a result, the Obama administration has the ability to selectively grant waivers to its allies such as Japan, while penalising Chinese corporations for doing business with Iran. According to Reuters, China has already cut its oil purchases from Iran by half this month and might further reduce the amount in February. A government source told Reuters that Japan is also considering cutting its imports from Iran in order to obtain a US waiver.

It is not accidental that the main impact of the sanctions is on Washington’s European and Asian rivals. The escalating US-led confrontation with Iran goes far beyond the US’s unsubstantiated claims that Iran is building nuclear weapons—an allegation that Tehran has repeatedly denied. The latest threats against Iran are a continuation of US efforts over the past two decades to use its military might to consolidate American hegemony in the Middle East and Central Asia at the expense of competitors in Europe and Asia.

Under Obama, the focus of US foreign policy has shifted towards the Asia Pacific region where Washington has engaged in intense diplomatic activity aimed at strengthening its alliances and strategic ties and undercutting China’s influence over the past three years. By targeting Tehran, the Obama administration is dealing a blow to Beijing, which is the largest buyer of Iranian oil and has significant investments in Iran.

The Obama administration has dismissed Iranian threats of action in the Strait of Hormuz as bluster—a sign that existing sanctions are impacting on Tehran. Regardless of the intentions on either side, Washington’s reckless raising of tensions in the Persian Gulf has a dangerous logic of its own. An incident or miscalculation has the potential to rapidly escalate into military conflict across the region or even the globe.

The US is already engaged in actions throughout the Middle East to undermine Iran—from the campaign to oust Iranian ally, President Bashar al-Assad, in Syria, to the sale of sophisticated arms to US client regimes in the Persian Gulf.

Like George W Bush, President Obama continues to repeat that “all options are on the table”—that is, including an illegal, unprovoked military attack on Iran. The US and Israel have just announced their largest-ever joint military exercise, which is designed to test Israel’s missile defence capabilities.

While Iran and the EU have tentatively mooted renewed negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, the likelihood of talks taking place, let alone achieving a breakthrough, is slim. The release of two Americans convicted of spying inside Iran in September was regarded as an attempt by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to create a diplomatic opening towards the US. Washington simply ignored the gesture.

Compounding the tensions is what amounts to a covert war by Israel, backed by the US, inside Iran over the past two years.

Writing on Bloomberg.com, American commentator Vali Nasr warned that while Tehran had played down the impact of a destructive computer virus on its nuclear facilities, it was being goaded into responding: “The government has been embarrassed and unnerved by multiple assassinations of its scientists and by suspicious explosions at its military facilities. One blast killed the general charged with developing Iran’s missile program. The attacks have shaken the country’s security forces.”

By placing the Persian Gulf on a hair trigger, the Obama administration’s provocative actions threaten to plunge the region into another disastrous war. 

By Peter Symonds

6 January 2012

WSWS.org

Peter Symonds is WSWS.org writer

The Three Top Hot Spots of Potential Conflict in the Geo-Energy Era

Welcome to an edgy world where a single incident at an energy “chokepoint” could set a region aflame, provoking bloody encounters, boosting oil prices, and putting the global economy at risk. With energy demand on the rise and sources of supply dwindling, we are, in fact, entering a new epoch — the Geo-Energy Era — in which disputes over vital resources will dominate world affairs. In 2012 and beyond, energy and conflict will be bound ever more tightly together, lending increasing importance to the key geographical flashpoints in our resource-constrained world.

Take the Strait of Hormuz, already making headlines and shaking energy markets as 2012 begins. Connecting the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, it lacks imposing geographical features like the Rock of Gibraltar or the Golden Gate Bridge. In an energy-conscious world, however, it may possess greater strategic significance than any passageway on the planet. Every day, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, tankers carrying some 17 million barrels of oil — representing 20% of the world’s daily supply — pass through this vital artery.

So last month, when a senior Iranian official threatened to block the strait in response to Washington’s tough new economic sanctions, oil prices instantly soared. While the U.S. military has vowed to keep the strait open, doubts about the safety of future oil shipments and worries about a potentially unending, nerve-jangling crisis involving Washington, Tehran, and Tel Aviv have energy experts predicting high oil prices for months to come, meaning further woes for a slowing global economy.

The Strait of Hormuz is, however, only one of several hot spots where energy, politics, and geography are likely to mix in dangerous ways in 2012 and beyond. Keep your eye as well on the East and South China Seas, the Caspian Sea basin, and an energy-rich Arctic that is losing its sea ice. In all of these places, countries are disputing control over the production and transportation of energy, and arguing about national boundaries and/or rights of passage.

In the years to come, the location of energy supplies and of energy supply routes — pipelines, oil ports, and tanker routes — will be pivotal landmarks on the global strategic map. Key producing areas, like the Persian Gulf, will remain critically important, but so will oil chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca (between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea) and the “sea lines of communication,” or SLOCs (as naval strategists like to call them) connecting producing areas to overseas markets. More and more, the major powers led by the United States, Russia, and China will restructure their militaries to fight in such locales.

You can already see this in the elaborate Defense Strategic Guidance document, “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership,” unveiled at the Pentagon on January 5th by President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. While envisioning a smaller Army and Marine Corps, it calls for increased emphasis on air and naval capabilities, especially those geared to the protection or control of international energy and trade networks. Though it tepidly reaffirmed historic American ties to Europe and the Middle East, overwhelming emphasis was placed on bolstering U.S. power in “the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean and South Asia.”

In the new Geo-Energy Era, the control of energy and of its transport to market will lie at the heart of recurring global crises. This year, keep your eyes on three energy hot spots in particular: the Strait of Hormuz, the South China Sea, and the Caspian Sea basin.

The Strait of Hormuz

A narrow stretch of water separating Iran from Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the strait is the sole maritime link between the oil-rich Persian Gulf region and the rest of the world. A striking percentage of the oil produced by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE is carried by tanker through this passageway on a daily basis, making it (in the words of the Department of Energy) “the world’s most important oil chokepoint.” Some analysts believe that any sustained blockage in the strait could trigger a 50% increase in the price of oil and trigger a full-scale global recession or depression.

American leaders have long viewed the Strait as a strategic fixture in their global plans that must be defended at any cost. It was an outlook first voiced by President Jimmy Carter in January 1980, on the heels of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan which had, he told Congress, “brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world’s oil must flow.” The American response, he insisted, must be unequivocal: any attempt by a hostile power to block the waterway would henceforth be viewed as “an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America,” and “repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

Much has changed in the Gulf region since Carter issued his famous decree, known since as the Carter Doctrine, and established the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) to guard the Strait — but not Washington’s determination to ensure the unhindered flow of oil there. Indeed, President Obama has made it clear that, even if CENTCOM ground forces were to leave Afghanistan, as they have Iraq, there would be no reduction in the command’s air and naval presence in the greater Gulf area.

It is conceivable that the Iranians will put Washington’s capabilities to the test. On December 27th, Iran’s first vice president Mohammad-Reza Rahimi said, “If [the Americans] impose sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the Strait of Hormuz.” Similar statements have since been made by other senior officials (and contradicted as well by yet others). In addition, the Iranians recently conducted elaborate naval exercises in the Arabian Sea near the eastern mouth of the strait, and more such maneuvers are said to be forthcoming. At the same time, the commanding general of Iran’s army suggested that the USS John C. Stennis, an American aircraft carrier just leaving the Gulf, should not return. “The Islamic Republic of Iran,” he added ominously, “will not repeat its warning.”

Might the Iranians actually block the strait? Many analysts believe that the statements by Rahimi and his colleagues are bluster and bluff meant to rattle Western leaders, send oil prices higher, and win future concessions if negotiations ever recommence over their country’s nuclear program. Economic conditions in Iran are, however, becoming more desperate, and it is always possible that the country’s hard-pressed hardline leaders may feel the urge to take some dramatic action, even if it invites a powerful U.S. counterstrike. Whatever the case, the Strait of Hormuz will remain a focus of international attention in 2012, with global oil prices closely following the rise and fall of tensions there.

The South China Sea

The South China Sea is a semi-enclosed portion of the western Pacific bounded by China to the north, Vietnam to the west, the Philippines to the east, and the island of Borneo (shared by Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia) to the south. The sea also incorporates two largely uninhabited island chains, the Paracels and the Spratlys. Long an important fishing ground, it has also been a major avenue for commercial shipping between East Asia and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. More recently, it acquired significance as a potential source of oil and natural gas, large reserves of which are now believed to lie in subsea areas surrounding the Paracels and Spratlys.

With the discovery of oil and gas deposits, the South China Sea has been transformed into a cockpit of international friction. At least some islands in this energy-rich area are claimed by every one of the surrounding countries, including China — which claims them all, and has demonstrated a willingness to use military force to assert dominance in the region. Not surprisingly, this has put it in conflict with the other claimants, including several with close military ties to the United States. As a result, what started out as a regional matter, involving China and various members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), has become a prospective tussle between the world’s two leading powers.

To press their claims, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines have all sought to work collectively through ASEAN, believing a multilateral approach will give them greater negotiating clout than one-on-one dealings with China. For their part, the Chinese have insisted that all disputes must be resolved bilaterally, a situation in which they can more easily bring their economic and military power to bear. Previously preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has now entered the fray, offering full-throated support to the ASEAN countries in their efforts to negotiate en masse with Beijing.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi promptly warned the United States not to interfere. Any such move “will only make matters worse and the resolution more difficult,” he declared. The result was an instant war of words between Beijing and Washington. During a visit to the Chinese capital in July 2011, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen delivered a barely concealed threat when it came to possible future military action. “The worry, among others that I have,” he commented, “is that the ongoing incidents could spark a miscalculation, and an outbreak that no one anticipated.” To drive the point home, the United States has conducted a series of conspicuous military exercises in the South China Sea, including some joint maneuvers with ships from Vietnam and the Philippines. Not to be outdone, China responded with naval maneuvers of its own. It’s a perfect formula for future “incidents” at sea.

The South China Sea has long been on the radar screens of those who follow Asian affairs, but it only attracted global attention when, in November, President Obama traveled to Australia and announced, with remarkable bluntness, a new U.S. strategy aimed at confronting Chinese power in Asia and the Pacific. “As we plan and budget for the future,” he told members of the Australian Parliament in Canberra, “we will allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region.” A key feature of this effort would be to ensure “maritime security” in the South China Sea.

While in Australia, President Obama also announced the establishment of a new U.S. base at Darwin on that country’s northern coast, as well as expanded military ties with Indonesia and the Philippines. In January, the president similarly placed special emphasis on projecting U.S. power in the region when he went to the Pentagon to discuss changes in the American military posture in the world.

Beijing will undoubtedly take its own set of steps, no less belligerent, to protect its growing interests in the South China Sea. Where this will lead remains, of course, unknown. After the Strait of Hormuz, however, the South China Sea may be the global energy chokepoint where small mistakes or provocations could lead to bigger confrontations in 2012 and beyond.

The Caspian Sea Basin

The Caspian Sea is an inland body of water bordered by Russia, Iran, and three former republics of the USSR: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. In the immediate area as well are the former Soviet lands of Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. All of these old SSRs are, to one degree or another, attempting to assert their autonomy from Moscow and establish independent ties with the United States, the European Union, Iran, Turkey, and, increasingly, China. All are wracked by internal schisms and/or involved in border disputes with their neighbors. The region would be a hotbed of potential conflict even if the Caspian basin did not harbor some of the world’s largest undeveloped reserves of oil and natural gas, which could easily bring it to a boil.

This is not the first time that the Caspian has been viewed as a major source of oil, and so potential conflict. In the late nineteenth century, the region around the city of Baku — then part of the Russian empire, now in Azerbaijan — was a prolific source of petroleum and so a major strategic prize. Future Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin first gained notoriety there as a leader of militant oil workers, and Hitler sought to capture it during his ill-fated 1941 invasion of the USSR. After World War II, however, the region lost its importance as an oil producer when Baku’s onshore fields dried up. Now, fresh discoveries are being made in offshore areas of the Caspian itself and in previously undeveloped areas of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

According to energy giant BP, the Caspian area harbors as much as 48 billion barrels of oil (mostly buried in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan) and 449 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (with the largest supply in Turkmenistan). This puts the region ahead of North and South America in total gas reserves and Asia in oil reserves. But producing all this energy and delivering it to foreign markets will be a monumental task. The region’s energy infrastructure is woefully inadequate and the Caspian itself provides no maritime outlet to other seas, so all that oil and gas must travel by pipeline or rail.

Russia, long the dominant power in the region, is pursuing control over the transportation routes by which Caspian oil and gas will reach markets. It is upgrading Soviet-era pipelines that link the former SSRs to Russia or building new ones and, to achieve a near monopoly over the marketing of all this energy, bringing traditional diplomacy, strong-arm tactics, and outright bribery to bear on regional leaders (many of whom once served in the Soviet bureaucracy) to ship their energy via Russia. As recounted in my book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, Washington sought to thwart these efforts by sponsoring the construction of alternative pipelines that avoid Russian territory, crossing Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey to the Mediterranean (notably the BTC, or Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline), while Beijing is building its own pipelines linking the Caspian area to western China.

All of these pipelines cross through areas of ethnic unrest and pass near various contested regions like rebellious Chechnya and breakaway South Ossetia. As a result, both China and the U.S. have wedded their pipeline operations to military assistance for countries along the routes. Fearful of an American presence, military or otherwise, in the former territories of the Soviet Union, Russia has responded with military moves of its own, including its brief August 2008 war with Georgia, which took place along the BTC route.

Given the magnitude of the Caspian’s oil and gas reserves, many energy firms are planning new production operations in the region, along with the pipelines needed to bring the oil and gas to market. The European Union, for example, hopes to build a new natural gas pipeline called Nabucco from Azerbaijan through Turkey to Austria. Russia has proposed a competing conduit called South Stream. All of these efforts involve the geopolitical interests of major powers, ensuring that the Caspian region will remain a potential source of international crisis and conflict.

In the new Geo-Energy Era, the Strait of Hormuz, the South China Sea, and the Caspian Basin hardly stand alone as potential energy flashpoints. The East China Sea, where China and Japan are contending for a contested undersea natural gas field, is another, as are the waters surrounding the Falkland Islands, where both Britain and Argentina hold claims to undersea oil reserves, as will be the globally warming Arctic whose resources are claimed by many countries. One thing is certain: wherever the sparks may fly, there’s oil in the water and danger at hand in 2012.

By Michael T. Klare

10 January 2012

TomDispatch.com

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, a TomDispatch regular, and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. His newest book, The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources, will be published in March.

There must be more than coincidence to the observation that the American media’s appraisal of a world leader often reflects the State Department’s attitude towards the same leader. Just search history; leaders who failed their people but accepted United States foreign policies received only mild criticisms, while leaders who contended U.S. foreign policies, regardless of relations with their populations, received scathing reviews from popular news sources.

China’s Chang Kai-Shek, Korea’s Syngman Rhee, Vietnam’s President Van Thieu, Nicaragua’s Somoza and in more recent times, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Mexico’s Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Russia’s Boris Yeltsin, and Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili fit the former pattern. These friends of Washington received relatively harmless rebukes for nefarious actions.

Soviet leaders until Mikhail Gorbachev, France’s Charles de Gaulle, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Indonesia’s Sukarno, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and Venezuela’s Hugo Rafael Chavez, all of whom confronted American foreign policies, were, regardless of their accomplishments, constantly castigated by the American media.

Description of the castigated grow, graduating from being against American policies to being anti-American, then a serious threat to America and finally a danger to everyone. Nothing good can be said about them; anyone muttering kindly remarks is considered ignorant and slightly warped. After the aversion to the anti-Americans who are a danger to everyone engulfs a large percentage of the population, the media joins the bandwagon, aware it best not contradict the one-sided appraisals.

This conditioning enables U.S. foreign policy planners to gain public support for their rejection of foreign critics and for policies that disturb their critics. Initiation of wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Granada, Panama and other countries could not occur before a mention of the name of the leaders of the antagonist nations had aroused an angry emotional reaction in America’s psyche. Economic warfare against several nations could not be practiced until Americans were made to feel that the economic warfare was morally correct; a necessary action to defeat and replace the criminal leader of the impudent nation.

Despite Hillary Clinton having pressed the reset button, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin clearly broadcasts his disfavor with State Department initiatives. Has he also fallen into the Washington character crusher and being leveled due to his alleged antagonism towards America? American media’s scornful attacks on the Russian premier hint at that possibility.

The Russian Prime Minister is continually presented as a bad boy, a tyrannical, and corrupt megalomaniac who assists his cronies in pilfering Russia’s resources. Lacking is a body of verified evidence to support the allegations. Putin’s critics found an opportunity to provide evidence in the recent legislative elections in Russia and promptly accused the Russian premier of personally stealing the election, labeled him rejected by the Russian people, made him responsible for his Party’s losses, and described him as lucky. To them, Russia’s tremendous growth during Putin’s tenure is only due to high energy prices and not his leadership.

Constant repetition of these charges condition the portrait of Vladimir Putin. Are the charges true, specious or a matter of perspective? If the facts are obscure, logic overcomes the obscurity.

Putin stole the election

The New York Times echoed the American media approach to the confusing situation.

Not What Mr. Putin Planned, New York Times, December 7, 2011

“The United States needs Russia’s cooperation on a host of issues, most notably Iran, and the Obama administration made the right decision to try to ‘reset’ the relationship. But that can’t mean giving Mr. Putin’s authoritarian ways a pass. So it was good to hear Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton express ‘serious concerns’ that the voting was neither free nor fair.”

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitored the election and presented an analysis on “free and fair” in a press release.

MOSCOW, 5 December 2011 “Despite the lack of a level playing field during the Russian State Duma elections, voters took advantage of their right to express their choice.

“The observers noted that the preparations for the elections were technically well-administered across a vast territory, but were marked by a convergence of the state and the governing party, limited political competition and a lack of fairness.

“Although seven political parties ran, the prior denial of registration to certain parties had narrowed political competition. The contest was also slanted in favour of the ruling party: the election administration lacked independence, most media were partial and state authorities interfered unduly at different levels. The observers also noted that the legal framework had been improved in some respects and televised debates for all parties provided one level platform for contestants.

“On election day, voting was well organized overall, but the quality of the process deteriorated considerably during the count, which was characterized by frequent procedural violations and instances of apparent manipulations, including serious indications of ballot box stuffing.”

http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/85753

Granted the OSCE press release is only a preliminary and abbreviated summary before a final report, scheduled for its 2012 meeting. Nevertheless, its evaluation uses vague expressions – procedural violations, instances of apparent, serious indications – that don’t confirm extensive fraud.

All seven registered political parties were approved to participate in the elections. Is that a narrow field? The Party with the lowest total received only 0.3% of the vote. Did the electorate need more or want more?

Incumbent legislators, certainly those in the U.S., usually have great advantages in elections, monopolize the news and gain more media coverage. Wherever possible, the Party in power slants the election with all its power. What else is new? Proven charges of ballot stuffing and multiple voting demand investigations, but these skewing of elections are minor when compared to the disguised frauds from PACs and lobbies, many of whom control media expressions and campaign funding. Political Parties are shaped to skirt the edges of legality and do everything to assure victory. When the numerical and financial disparity between one political Party and the others is great, as it is between United Russia and its competitors, the favoritism and slant becomes more exaggerated.

By sensationalizing the alleged frauds, constantly repeating and continually re-circulating the same, the media made it difficult to gauge their actual significance. Signals were filtered out and noise amplified so that only the noise was heard. A similar happening occurred with the heavily publicized videos. Subjectively interpreted, lacking verification and possibly being staged, an unlikely situation, but still a possibility that nobody considered to investigate, an appraisal of the condemning videos places them as images of fraud that look good on Court TV but are not sufficiently convincing for judicial courts. Undoubtedly there were severe irregularities, but were they substantiated as massive and organized or were they more driven by local exuberances and incompetent behaviors?

The table below contains significant details for resolving the debate on election validity. It shows that the election results were close to the trend in the polls and to their final readings. If United Russia (UR) did much better than the polls, then fraud would be a definite probability. By doing worse than predicted, either the UR poorly prepared the mechanisms for illegally augmenting vote totals, or the mechanisms did not exist.

The Russian people rejected Putin

“The youthful, Internet-savvy Russians who have turned out in the streets in historic numbers in recent weeks want to end Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s untrammeled rule over their country, but whether they can translate their frustration to the political arena – or even whether they will remain fired up – remains an open question.”

Washington Post, December 19, 2011

Did voters, who were electing local delegates to the Duma, go to the polls thinking of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin? Unlikely. Interim elections reflect voter opinions on the legislature and somewhat on the president, who is Dmitry Medvedev. In Russia, as in France, the president has considerable power. He nominates the highest state officials, including the prime minister, can pass decrees without consent from the Duma, and is head of the armed forces and Security Council.

The American media might insist that Putin manages everything behind the scenes, but President Medvedev’s performance during the last four years contradicts that assertion. No question that several years ago Putin dealed with Medvedev and promised him support for the presidency in return for a promise that Medvedev would not run for a second term. Knowledge of that agreement might have disturbed voters and swayed their preferences. Nevertheless, Medvedev has operated sufficiently independent during his reign. U.S. media portrays Putin as the Russian leader. Putin is prime minister, but Russians and the U.S. State Department interacted with President Medvedev during the last four years.

Putin’s United Russia was Defeated

“It’s embarrassing enough to do poorly in an honest election. Putin’s party managed to crater despite vigorous measures to rig the vote.” Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman, Dec. 15, 2011.

Crater? A defeat? Steve Chapman misrepresented the election. Gaining 49.3% of the vote in a five Party system is an astonishing victory, not as large as previous United Russia victories, but a total that any European political Party would envy. In the last national elections in United Kingdom, France and Germany, no political Party received more than 36% of the vote. Don’t weep for UR. They are not too sad.

The electorate normally anguishes when the same political Party dominates its life for a decade. Lower totals for United Russia reflect that usual discontent. After ten years of power, it is surprising that Russia’s leading political organization still retains 50% support from the electorate. Evidently, the populace has not tired of United Russia’s managed economy, which features statist and nationalist positions, both of which have irked the western powers. The statist Communist Party and nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (misnamed) showed increased vote totals from their 2007 vote totals.

Putin was lucky. Yeltsin was unlucky

“In retrospect, Mr. Putin was lucky to inherit a recovering economy and an incipient oil-and commodity-price boom from Mr. Yeltsin.” The Economist, February 28, 2008

The difference in media treatment between Boris Yeltsin’s government, which brought Russia to poverty and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which brought Russia to a moderate prosperity, proves the thrust of this article: “There must be more than coincidence to the observation that the media’s appraisal of a world leader, which often shapes public opinion, reflects the State Department’s attitude towards the same leader.”

Putin’s Russia has its corrupt and authoritative components. Unfortunately these are common features of a nation where corruption is ingrained into the society, and authoritarian rule has been the norm.

Evgeny Yakovlev and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, State Capture: From Yeltsin to Putin, explained the situation.

“In contrast to Yeltsin whose political term was notorious for creating and strengthening oligarchs, Putin began his first term in the office by fighting the most famous of them: Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, Gusinsky, and Lebedev. Fighting oligarchs was again high on the agenda during his second election campaign. In addition, Putin attempted centralization process, restricting autonomy of regional political elites and moved political and economic power from the regions to the federal center. A new tax law, which restricted the use of individual tax breaks, was adopted, as well as a number of laws, aimed at easing the burden of business regulation. A new anti-corruption campaign was launched and some governors who were considered most corrupt, e.g. Rutskoy in Kursk region and Nazdratenko in Primorsky region, were not permitted to run for re-election. The governor of Yaroslavl region, Lisitsin, was under a criminal investigation in early fall of 2004 because of pursuing illegal paternalistic policies towards regional business.”

http://www.cefir.ru/papers/WP52.pdf

Note that Saudi Arabian and Iranian oil productions increased during the 1990’s and Russian oil production dropped sharply. Demand was there, but Yeltsin’s policies neither enabled the world’s largest oil producer to produce nor prevented it from halving output in only two years. Although oil production and prices bottomed, Yeltsin’s Russia did not. The GDP continued to fall, lowering to 38% of the value at the time Yeltsin took office.

Regard Putin’s administration. Oil production increased rapidly from the day he took office, up 50% in eight years. GDP increased more rapidly than oil production and prices, rising monotonically to an increase of 700% (in nominal terms) in the same eight years. In July 1997, opinion polls showed Yeltsin having about 5 percent of public support. Putin, who once had 70% approval, has been constantly castigated by the American media. Yeltsin, who fell to 5% approval, received mild rebukes.

Was Yeltsin, who created his own problems, unlucky? Was Putin, whose administration knew what to do, just lucky?

Those who continue crushing Vladimir Putin are tending to bring back the era of Yeltsin and the oligarchs, a time when Russia was a paradise for five to ten persons and a weak antagonist to U.S. military adventures. Could that be what the disparagement of Prime Minister Putin is all about?

By Dan Lieberman

28 December, 2011

@ Countercurrents.org

Dan Lieberman is the editor of Alternative Insight, a monthly web based newsletter. His website articles have been read in more than 150 nations, while articles written for other websites have either appeared or been linked in online journals throughout the world. Many have served as teaching resources in several universities and several have become Internet classics, each attracting about ten thousand readers annually

If we had a wish list for 2012 as Palestinians and friends of Palestine, one of the top items ought to be our hope that we can translate the dramatic shift in recent years in world public opinion into political action against Israeli policies on the ground.

We know why this has not yet materialized: the political, intellectual and cultural elites of the West cower whenever they even contemplate acting according to their own consciences as well as the wishes of their societies.

This last year was particularly illuminating for me in that respect. I encountered that timidity at every station in the many trips I took for the cause I believe in. And these personal experiences were accentuated by the more general examples of how governments and institutions caved in under intimidation from Israel and pro-Zionist Jewish organizations.

A catalogue of complicity

Of course there were US President Barack Obama’s pandering appearances in front of AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, and his administration’s continued silence and inaction in face of Israel’s colonization of the West Bank, siege and killings in Gaza, ethnic cleansing of the Bedouins in the Naqab and new legislation discriminating against Palestinians in Israel.

The complicity continued with the shameful retreat of Judge Richard Goldstone from his rather tame report on the Gaza massacre — which began three years ago today. And then there was the decision of European governments, especially Greece, to disallow campaigns of human aid and solidarity from reaching Gaza by sea.

On the margins of all of this were prosecutions in France against activists calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and a few u-turns by some groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Europe caving in under pressure and retracting an earlier decision to cede connections with Israel.

Learning firsthand how pro-Israel intimidation works

In recent years, I have learned firsthand how intimidation of this kind works. In November 2009 the mayor of Munich was scared to death by a Zionist lobby group and cancelled my lecture there. More recently, the Austrian foreign ministry withdrew its funding for an event in which I participated, and finally it was my own university, the University of Exeter, once a haven of security in my eyes, becoming frigid when a bunch of Zionist hooligans claimed I was a fabricator and a self-hating Jew.

Every year since I moved there, Zionist organizations in the UK and the US have asked the university to investigate my work and were brushed aside. This year a similar appeal was taken, momentarily one should say, seriously. One hopes this was just a temporary lapse; but you never know with an academic institution (bravery is not one of their hallmarks).

Standing up to pressure

But there were examples of courage — local and global — as well: the student union of the University of Surrey under heavy pressure to cancel my talk did not give in and allowed the event to take place.

The Episcopal Bishops Committee on Israel/Palestine in Seattle faced the wrath of many of the city’s synagogues and the Israeli Consul General in San Francisco, Akiva Tor, for arranging an event with me in September 2011 in Seattle’s Town Hall, but bravely brushed aside this campaign of intimidation. The usual charges of “anti-Semitism” did not work there — they never do where people refuse to be intimidated.

The outgoing year was also the one in which Turkey imposed military and diplomatic sanctions on Israel in response to the latter’s refusal to take responsibility for the attack on the Mavi Marmara. Turkey’s action was in marked contrast to the European and international habit of sufficing with toothless statements at best, and never imposing a real price on Israel for its actions.

Do not cave in to intimidation

I do not wish to underestimate the task ahead of us. Only recently did we learn how much money is channeled to this machinery of intimidation whose sole purpose is to silence criticism on Israel. Last year, the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs — leading pro-Israel lobby groups — allocated $6 million to be spent over three years to fight BDS campaigns and smear the Palestine solidarity movement. This is not the only such initiative under way.

But are these forces as powerful as they seem to be in the eyes of very respectable institutions such as universities, community centers, churches, media outlets and, of course, politicians?

What you learn is that once you cower, you become prey to continued and relentless bashing until you sing the Israeli national anthem. If once you do not cave in, you discover that as time goes by, the ability of Zionist lobbies of intimidation around the world to affect you gradually diminishes.

Reducing the influence of the United States

Undoubtedly the centers of power that fuel this culture of intimidation lie to a great extent in the United States, which brings me to the second item on my 2012 wish list: an end to the American dominance in the affairs of Israelis and Palestinians. I know this influence cannot be easily curbed.

But the issue of timidity and intimidation belong to an American sphere of activity where things can, and should be, different. There will be no peace process or even Pax Americana in Palestine if the Palestinians, under whatever leadership, would agree to allow Washington to play such a central role. It is not as if US policy-makers can threaten the Palestinians that without their involvement there will be no peace process.

In fact history has proved that there was no peace process — in the sense of a genuine movement toward the restoration of Palestinian rights — precisely because of American involvement. Outside mediation may be necessary for the cause of reconciliation in Palestine. But does it have to be American?

If elite politics are needed — along with other forces and movements — to facilitate a change on the ground, such a role should come from other places in the world and not just from the United States.

One would hope that the recent rapprochement between Hamas and Fatah — and the new attempt to base the issue of Palestinian representation on a wider and more just basis — will lead to a clear Palestinian position that would expose the fallacy that peace can only be achieved with the Americans as its brokers.

Dwarfing the US role will disarm American Zionist bodies and those who emulate them in Europe and Israel of their power of intimidation.

Letting the other America play a role

This will also enable the other America, that of the civil society, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the progressive campuses, the courageous churches, African-Americans marginalized by mainstream politics, Native Americans and millions of other decent Americans who never fell captive to elite propaganda about Israel and Palestine, to take a far more central role in “American involvement” in Palestine.

That would benefit America as much as it will benefit justice and peace in Palestine. But this long road to redeeming all of us who want to see justice begins by asking academics, journalists and politicians in the West to show a modicum of steadfastness and courage in the face of those who want to intimidate us. Their bark is far fiercer than their bite.

By Ilan Pappe

28 December 2011

@ The Electronic Intifada

The author of numerous books, Ilan Pappe is Professor of History and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter.

There is mounting evidence that China’s massive real estate speculation “bubble” has begun to burst. The result will destabilise the country’s banking system, slow its economic growth and impact heavily on the world economy, which has relied on China as a major source of growth since the global financial crisis began in 2008.

An article in the US Foreign Affairs magazine warned last month that “sudden, steep price reductions” were “upending real estate markets across China.” It cited industry data showing that new home prices in Beijing dropped 35 percent in November alone, and that developers had built up 22 months’ worth of unsold inventory in Beijing and 21 months’ worth in Shanghai.

Written by an academic at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, the article noted: “Everyone from local landowners to Chinese speculators and international investors are now worrying that these discounts indicate that the ‘biggest bubble of the century,’ as it was called earlier this year, has just popped, with serious consequences not only for one of the world’s most promising economies—but internationally as well.”

Fuelled by housing construction, the country produced 627 million tonnes of steel in 2010, or 44.3 percent of the world’s output. It produced 1.87 billion tonnes of cement—60 percent of the world’s total. China manufactured 43 percent of the world’s construction machinery such as excavators and bulldozers. The speculative housing boom also bolstered spending by the urban middle class, driving up the demand for cars—China’s automotive output was 18.2 million vehicles in 2010, or one quarter of the world’s production.

Significant global corporations, such as iron ore miners in Australia and Brazil, and equipment manufacturers in Germany and Japan, are likely to be the first to suffer heavy blows from a sharp downturn in China’s real estate. China is looming as another shock, on top of the predicted recessions in Europe and other parts of the world.

The current real estate bubble has its roots in the 2008-09 worldwide financial crisis. The Chinese Stalinist regime released trillions of dollars of cheap credit in a desperate attempt to stem social unrest after 23 million migrant workers, especially in export industries, lost their jobs. The main result, however, was a borrowing spree by local governments, developers and industrial companies to speculate in the property market.

Led by the construction boom, capital investment currently accounts for nearly 50 percent of China’s gross domestic product—a recipe for a major crisis. In the first 10 months of last year, 3.6 billion square metres of property were under construction—compared to sales of just 709 million square metres, pointing to massive overcapacity about to hit the market.

At the same time, unaffordable housing has become a highly politically charged issue in China. Based on prices earlier last year, it would take the average wage earner in Beijing 36 years to pay for an average residence, compared to 18 years in Singapore, 12 in New York and five in Frankfurt.

Yet, up to 65 million homes are estimated to be “idle”—kept empty on speculation of securing even higher prices in the future. This social irrationality is most graphically expressed in smaller cities, such as Inner Mongolia’s Ordos where property investment recorded average growth of 69 percent during the past four years—compared to 27.6 percent nationally. Large parts of Ordos have become “ghost” towns, with speculators leaving behind empty and unfinished apartment blocks.

In late 2010, Beijing sought to placate public discontent over soaring housing prices by imposing restrictions on bank lending and house ownership. These measures only exacerbated the intensifying financial instability, as many operators turned to other sources for highly leveraged loans. The developing economic crisis has been compounded by the lack of recovery in China’s main export markets—the US, Japan and the European Union.

Businesses in the export hub of Wenzhou borrowed heavily from dubious underground lending schemes charging interest rates up to 150 percent a year. The sell-offs in real estate threatened to unleash a domino effect, wiping out large numbers of small and medium enterprises. More than 80 debt-laden entrepreneurs have fled the city, and a shoe factory owner jumped to his death last year.

Property market collapses have become a new source of discontent. Last weekend, thousands of small investors protested in Anyang city’s train station, in an attempt to bring their grievances to the Beijing leadership. They had lost their savings in failed Ponzi investment schemes based on real estate and other projects. Since October, the operators of many such schemes had fled after their projects—based on duping depositors with promises of high returns—unravelled.

The first quarter outlook published by the Bank of China last week pointed to the huge debts incurred by local governments to finance property and infrastructure projects as part of the 2008 stimulus package. “The actual scale of the debt is likely even larger [than the official estimate of $US1.69 trillion], and much of the debt is due soon,” it wrote. A slump in land sales, which had accounted for up to 40 percent of the local government revenue, was hitting their finances. From January to November last year, 24,000 plots of land use rights were sold for 1.18 trillion yuan—a 30.5 percent fall in value from the same period in 2010.

To offset the downturn in the property market, Beijing is pinning its hopes on building 36 million subsidised flats by 2015. This “one stone-two birds” strategy seeks to provide affordable housing for low-income earners, while maintaining investment-led growth. Surveys show, however, that most developers have no incentive to build housing that is going to further drive down property prices. Municipal governments are also suspected of inflating the numbers of such projects, counting holes in the ground as the “commencement” of construction. Bank loans on such projects, especially for rentals, are likely to become another source of bad debts in the coming years, due to the low-yield rents.

The Bank of China predicted an economic growth rate of 8.8 percent this year, down from 9.3 percent for 2011. However, Andy Xie, a leading Chinese economist, warned last week that given the vast distortions created by the property bubble, a “correction” would last until 2014 and could halve China’s growth rate to just 4-5 percent. “If you think 2008 was bad enough,” Xie wrote, “tighten the seat belt in the upcoming 2012.”

Such dramatically slowing growth, not to mention an outright financial crisis, would inevitably lead to rising unemployment, triggering a social explosion in China, with immense implications for global capitalism.

By John Chan

4 January 2012

WSWS.org

John Chan is a WSWS.org writer