Just International

The Dice Are Stacked Against Humanity

 

 

09 May, 2011

Countercurrents.org

I’ll begin with an interesting debate that took place some years ago between Carl Sagan, the well-known astrophysicist, and Ernst Mayr, the grand old man of American biology. They were debating the possibility of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. And Sagan, speaking from the point of view of an astrophysicist, pointed out that there are innumerable planets just like ours. There is no reason they shouldn’t have developed intelligent life. Mayr, from the point of view of a biologist, argued that it’s very unlikely that we’ll find any. And his reason was, he said, we have exactly one example: Earth. So let’s take a look at Earth.

And what he basically argued is that intelligence is a kind of lethal mutation. And he had a good argument. He pointed out that if you take a look at biological success, which is essentially measured by how many of us are there, the organisms that do quite well are those that mutate very quickly, like bacteria, or those that are stuck in a fixed ecological niche, like beetles. They do fine. And they may survive the environmental crisis. But as you go up the scale of what we call intelligence, they are less and less successful. By the time you get to mammals, there are very few of them as compared with, say, insects. By the time you get to humans, the origin of humans may be 100,000 years ago, there is a very small group. We are kind of misled now because there are a lot of humans around, but that’s a matter of a few thousand years, which is meaningless from an evolutionary point of view. His argument was, you’re just not going to find intelligent life elsewhere, and you probably won’t find it here for very long either because it’s just a lethal mutation. He also added, a little bit ominously, that the average life span of a species, of the billions that have existed, is about 100,000 years, which is roughly the length of time that modern humans have existed.

With the environmental crisis, we’re now in a situation where we can decide whether Mayr was right or not. If nothing significant is done about it, and pretty quickly, then he will have been correct: human intelligence is indeed a lethal mutation. Maybe some humans will survive, but it will be scattered and nothing like a decent existence, and we’ll take a lot of the rest of the living world along with us.

So is anything going to be done about it? The prospects are not very auspicious. As you know, there was an international conference on this last December. A total disaster. Nothing came out of it. The emerging economies, China, India, and others, argued that it’s unfair for them to bear the burden of a couple hundred years of environmental destruction by the currently rich and developed societies. That’s a credible argument. But it’s one of these cases where you can win the battle and lose the war. The argument isn’t going to be very helpful to them if, in fact, the environmental crisis advances and a viable society goes with it. And, of course, the poor countries, for whom they’re speaking, will be the worst hit. In fact, they already are the worst hit. That will continue. The rich and developed societies, they split a little bit. Europe is actually doing something about it; it’s done some things to level off emissions. The United States has not.

In fact, there is a well-known environmentalist writer, George Monbiot, who wrote after the Copenhagen conference that “the failure of the conference can be explained in two words: Barack Obama.” And he’s correct. Obama’s intervention in the conference was, of course, very significant, given the power and the role of the United States in any international event. And he basically killed it. No restrictions, Kyoto Protocols die. The United States never participated in it. Emissions have very sharply increased in the United States since, and nothing is being done to curb them. A few Band-Aids here and there, but basically nothing. Of course, it’s not just Barack Obama. It’s our whole society and culture. Our institutions are constructed in such a way that trying to achieve anything is going to be extremely difficult.

Public attitudes are a little hard to judge. There are a lot of polls, and they have what look like varying results, depending on exactly how you interpret the questions and the answers. But a very substantial part of the population, maybe a big majority, is inclined to dismiss this as just kind of a liberal hoax. What’s particularly interesting is the role of the corporate sector, which pretty much runs the country and the political system. They’re very explicit. The big business lobbies, like the Chamber of Commerce, American Petroleum Institute, and others, have been very clear and explicit. A couple of years ago they said they are going to carry out—they since have been carrying out—a major publicity campaign to convince people that it’s not real, that it’s a liberal hoax. Judging by polls, that’s had an effect.

It’s particularly interesting to take a look at the people who are running these campaigns, say, the CEOs of big corporations. They know as well as you and I do that it’s very real and that the threats are very dire, and that they’re threatening the lives of their grandchildren. In fact, they’re threatening what they own, they own the world, and they’re threatening its survival. Which seems irrational, and it is, from a certain perspective. But from another perspective it’s highly rational. They’re acting within the structure of the institutions of which they are a part. They are functioning within something like market systems—not quite, but partially—market systems. To the extent that you participate in a market system, you disregard necessarily what economists call “externalities,” the effect of a transaction upon others. So, for example, if one of you sells me a car, we may try to make a good deal for ourselves, but we don’t take into account in that transaction the effect of the transaction on others. Of course, there is an effect. It may feel like a small effect, but if it multiplies over a lot of people, it’s a huge effect: pollution, congestion, wasting time in traffic jams, all sorts of things. Those you don’t take into account—necessarily. That’s part of the market system.

We’ve just been through a major illustration of this. The financial crisis has a lot of roots, but the fundamental root of it has been known for a long time. It was talked about decades before the crisis. In fact, there have been repeated crises. This is just the worst of them. The fundamental reason, it just is rooted in market systems. If Goldman Sachs, say, makes a transaction, if they’re doing their job, if the managers are up to speed they are paying attention to what they get out of it and the institution or person at the other end of the transaction, say, a borrower, does the same thing. They don’t take into account what’s called systemic risk, that is, the chance that the transaction that they’re carrying out will contribute to crashing the whole system. They don’t take that into account. In fact, that’s a large part of what just happened. The systemic risk turned out to be huge, enough to crash the system, even though the original transactions are perfectly rational within the system.

It’s not because they’re bad people or anything. If they don’t do it—suppose some CEO says, “Okay, I’m going to take into account externalities”—then he’s out. He’s out and somebody else is in who will play by the rules. That’s the nature of the institution. You can be a perfectly nice guy in your personal life. You can sign up for the Sierra Club and give speeches about the environmental crisis or whatever, but in the role of corporate manager, you’re fixed. You have to try to maximize short-term profit and market share—in fact, that’s a legal requirement in Anglo-American corporate law—just because if you don’t do it, either your business will disappear because somebody else will outperform it in the short run, or you will just be out because you’re not doing your job and somebody else will be in. So there is an institutional irrationality. Within the institution the behavior is perfectly rational, but the institutions themselves are so totally irrational that they are designed to crash.

If you look, say, at the financial system, it’s extremely dramatic what happened. There was a crash in the 1920s, and in the 1930s, a huge depression. But then regulatory mechanisms were introduced. They were introduced as a result of massive popular pressure, but they were introduced. And throughout the whole period of very rapid and pretty egalitarian economic growth of the next couple of decades, there were no financial crises, because the regulatory mechanisms interfered with the market and prevented the market principles from operating. So therefore you could take account of externalities. That’s what the regulatory system does. It’s been systematically dismantled since the 1970s.

Meanwhile, the role of finance in the economy has exploded. The share of corporate profit by financial institutions has just zoomed since the 1970s. Kind of a corollary of that is the hollowing out of industrial production, sending it abroad. This all happened under the impact of a kind of fanatic religious ideology called economics—and that’s not a joke—based on hypotheses that have no theoretical grounds and no empirical support but are very attractive because you can prove theorems if you adopt them: the efficient market hypothesis, rational expectations hypothesis, and so on. The spread of these ideologies, which is very attractive to concentrated wealth and privilege, hence their success, was epitomized in Alan Greenspan, who at least had the decency to say it was all wrong when it collapsed. I don’t think there has ever been a collapse of an intellectual edifice comparable to this, maybe, in history, at least I can’t remember one. Interestingly, it has no effect. It just continues. Which tells you that it’s serviceable to power systems.

Under the impact of these ideologies, the regulatory system was dismantled by Reagan and Clinton and Bush. Throughout this whole period, there have been repeated financial crises, unlike the 1950s and 1960s. During the Reagan years, there were some really extreme ones. Clinton left office with another huge one, the burst of the tech bubble. Then the one we’re in the middle of. Worse and worse each time. The system is instantly being reconstructed, so the next one will very likely be even worse. One of the causes, not the only one, is simply the fact that in market systems you just don’t take into account externalities, in this case systemic risk.

That’s not lethal in the case of financial crises. A financial crisis can be terrible. It can put many millions of people out of work, their lives destroyed. But there is a way out of it. The taxpayer can come in and rescue you. That’s exactly what happened. We saw it dramatically in the last couple of years. The financial system tanked. The government, namely, the taxpayer, came in and bailed them out.

Let’s go to the environmental crisis. There’s nobody around to bail you out. The externalities in this case are the fate of the species. If that’s disregarded in the operations of the market system, there’s nobody around who is going to bail you out from that. So this is a lethal externality. And the fact that it’s proceeding with no significant action being taken to do anything about it does suggest that Ernst Mayr actually had a point. It seems that there is something about us, our intelligence, which entails that we’re capable of acting in ways that are rational within a narrow framework but are irrational in terms of other long-term goals, like do we care what kind of a world our grandchildren will live in. And it’s hard to see much in the way of prospects for overcoming this right now, particularly in the United States. We are the most powerful state in the world, and what we do is vastly important. We have one of the worst records in this regard.

There are things that could be done. It’s not hard to list them. One of the main things that could be done is actually low-tech, for example, the weatherization of homes. There was a big building boom in the post–Second World War period, which from the point of view of the environment was done extremely irrationally. Again, it was done rationally from a market point of view. There were models for home building, for mass-produced homes, which were used all over the country, under different conditions. So maybe it would make sense in Arizona, but not in Massachusetts. Those homes are there. They’re extremely energy-inefficient. They can be fixed. It’s construction work, basically. It would make a big difference. It would also have the effect of reviving one of the main collapsing industries, construction, and overcoming a substantial part of the employment crisis. It will take inputs. It will take money from, ultimately, the taxpayer. We call it the government, but it means the taxpayer. But it is a way of stimulating the economy, of increasing jobs, also with a substantial multiplier effect (unlike bailing out bankers and investors), and also making a significant impact on the destruction of the environment. But there’s barely a proposal for this, almost nothing.

Another example, which is kind of a scandal in the United States—if any of you have traveled abroad, you’re perfectly aware of it—when you come back from almost anywhere in the world to the United States, it looks like you’re coming to a Third World country, literally. The infrastructure is collapsing transportation that doesn’t work. Let’s just take trains. When I moved to Boston around 1950, there was a train that went from Boston to New York. It took four hours. There’s now a highly heralded train called the Acela, the supertrain. It takes three hours and forty minutes (if there’s no breakdown—as there can be, I’ve discovered). If you were in Japan, Germany, China, almost anywhere, it would take maybe an hour and a half, two hours or something. And that’s general.

It didn’t happen by accident. It happened by a huge social engineering project carried out by the government and by the corporations beginning in the 1940s. It was a very systematic effort to redesign the society so as to maximize the use of fossil fuels. One part of it was eliminating quite efficient rail systems. New England, for example, did have a pretty efficient electric rail system all the way through New England. If you read E. L. Doctorow’s novel Ragtime, the first chapter describes its hero going through New England on the electric rail system. That was all dismantled in favor of cars and trucks. Los Angeles, which is now a total horror story—I don’t know if any of you have been there—had an efficient electric public transportation system. It was dismantled. It was bought up in the 1940s by General Motors, Firestone Rubber, and Standard Oil of California. The purpose of their buying it up was to dismantle it so as to shift everything to trucks and cars and buses. And it was done. It was technically a conspiracy. Actually, they were brought to court on a charge of conspiracy and sentenced. I think the sentence was $5,000 or something, enough to pay for the victory dinner.

The federal government stepped in. We have something that is now called the interstate highway system. When it was built in the 1950s, it was called the national defense highway system because when you do anything in the United States you have to call it defense. That’s the only way you can fool the taxpayer into paying for it. In fact, there were stories back in the 1950s, those of you who are old enough to remember, about how we needed it because you had to move missiles around the country very quickly in case the Russians came or something. So taxpayers were bilked into paying for this system. Alongside of it was the destruction of railroads, which is why you have what I just described. Huge amounts of federal money and corporate money went into highways, airports, anything that wastes fuel. That’s basically the criterion.

Also, the country was suburbanized. Real estate interests, local interests, and others redesigned life so that it’s atomized and suburbanized. I’m not knocking the suburbs. I live in one and I like it. But it’s incredibly inefficient. It has all kinds of social effects which are probably deleterious. Anyway, it didn’t just happen; it was designed. Throughout the whole period, there has been a massive effort to create the most destructive possible society. And to try to redo that huge social engineering project is not going to be simple. It involves plenty of problems.

Another component of any reasonable approach—and everyone agrees with this on paper—is to develop sustainable energy, green technology. We all know and everyone talks a nice line about that. But if you look at what’s happening, green technology is being developed in Spain, in Germany, and primarily China. The United States is importing it. In fact, a lot of the innovation is here, but it’s done there. United States investors now are putting far more money into green technology in China than into the U.S. and Europe combined. There were complaints when Texas ordered solar panels and windmills from China: It’s undermining our industry. Actually, it wasn’t undermining us at all because we were out of the game. It was undermining Spain and Germany, which are way ahead of us.

Just to indicate how surreal this is, the Obama administration essentially took over the auto industry, meaning you took it over. You paid for it, bailed it out, and basically owned large parts of it. And they continued doing what the corporations had been doing pretty much, for example, closing down GM plants all over the place. Closing down a plant is not just putting the workers out of work, it’s also destroying the community. Take a look at the so-called rust belt. The communities were built by labor organizing; they developed around the plants. Now they’re dismantled. It has huge effects. At the same time that they’re dismantling the plants, meaning you and I are dismantling plants, because that’s where the money comes from, and it’s allegedly our representatives—it isn’t, in fact—at the very same time Obama was sending his Transportation Secretary to Spain to use federal stimulus money to get contracts for high-speed rail construction, which we really need and the world really needs. Those plants that are being dismantled and the skilled workers in them, all that could be reconverted to producing high-speed rail right here. They have the technology, they have the knowledge, they have the skills. But it’s not good for the bottom line for banks, so we’ll buy it from Spain. Just like green technology, it will be done in China.

Those are choices; those are not laws of nature. But, unfortunately, those are the choices that are being made. And there is little indication of any positive change. These are pretty serious problems. We can easily go on. I don’t want to continue. But the general picture is very much like this. I don’t think this is an unfair selection of—it’s a selection, of course, but I think it’s a reasonably fair selection of what’s happening. The consequences are pretty dire.

The media contribute to this, too. So if you read, say, a typical story in the New York Times, it will tell you that there is a debate about global warming. If you look at the debate, on one side is maybe 98 percent of the relevant scientists in the world, on the other side are a couple of serious scientists who question it, a handful, and Jim Inhofe or some other senator. So it’s a debate. And the citizen has to kind of make a decision between these two sides. The Times had a comical front-page article maybe a couple months ago in which the headline said that meteorologists question global warming. It discussed a debate between meteorologists—the meteorologists are these pretty faces who read what somebody hands to them on television and says it’s going to rain tomorrow. That’s one side of the debate. The other side of the debate is practically every scientist who knows anything about it. Again, the citizen is supposed to decide. Do I trust these meteorologists? They tell me whether to wear a raincoat tomorrow. And what do I know about the scientists? They’re sitting in some laboratory somewhere with a computer model. So, yes, people are confused, and understandably.

It’s interesting that these debates leave out almost entirely a third part of the debate, namely, a very substantial number of scientists, competent scientists, who think that the scientific consensus is much too optimistic. A group of scientists at MIT came out with a report about a year ago describing what they called the most comprehensive modeling of the climate that had ever been done. Their conclusion, which was unreported in public media as far as I know, was that the major scientific consensus of the international commission is just way off, it’s much too optimistic; and if you add other factors that they didn’t count properly, the conclusion is much more dire. Their own conclusion was that unless we terminate use of fossil fuels almost immediately, it’s finished. We’ll never be able to overcome the consequences. That’s not part of the debate.

I could easily go on, but the only potential counterweight to all of this is some very substantial popular movement which is not just going to call for putting solar panels on your roof, though it’s a good thing to do, but it’s going to have to dismantle an entire sociological, cultural, economic, and ideological structure which is just driving us to disaster. It’s not a small task, but it’s a task that had better be undertaken, and probably pretty quickly, or it’s going to be too late.

Questions and Answers

WHAT POLITICAL process is needed to loosen the control of corporations that profit from the status quo and resist regulation and change?

THAT’S A question that goes way beyond climate change. It also has to do with a whole range of very serious problems which are not as lethal as the environmental crisis but are nevertheless serious, like, for example, the financial crisis, which is not just financial, it’s an economic crisis. There are millions of people unemployed. They may never get jobs back. The fact of the matter is, the U.S. is not all that different from other industrial societies, but it’s somewhat different.

Europe, for example, developed out of a feudal system. In feudal systems everybody had a place, maybe a lousy place, but you had some kind of place. And the society guaranteed you that place. The U.S. developed as a kind of a blank slate. The indigenous population was exterminated, a small fact that we don’t like to think about. Immigrants came. The country had huge economic advantages. The government massively supported the development of the society. Contrary to what’s claimed, we have always had substantial state intervention in the economy. And what developed was a business-run society, to an unusual extent. That shows up in all kinds of ways, like the fact that we’re about the only industrial society, maybe the only one, that doesn’t have some kind of semi-rational health care system, and that benefits in general are pretty weak as compared with other industrial societies. Labor is weak. That’s just a fact. There have been all kinds of developments, protests, and so on. There have been changes, a lot of progress, often regression. But it remains a society that is very much under the control of the concentrated corporate sector. It happens to have increased substantially in the last years. It’s getting increased right before our eyes, so, for example, the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court is another very severe blow to democracy, and it should be understood as that.

So what do we do about it? What’s been done in the past? These are not laws of nature. The New Deal made a dent, a significant dent, but it didn’t come just because Roosevelt was a nice guy. It came because after several years of very serious suffering, much worse than now, five or six years after the Depression hit, there was very substantial organizing and activism. The CIO was formed, sit-down strikes were taking place. Sit-down strikes are terrifying to management, because they’re one step before what ought to be done—the workers just taking over the factory and kicking out the management. If you look back at the business press at that time, they were really terrified by what they called the hazard facing industrialists and the growing power of the masses and so on.

One consequence was that the New Deal measures were instituted, which had an effect. I’m old enough to remember. Most of my family was unemployed working class. And it had a big effect, as I mentioned, a lasting effect. Out of it came the biggest growth period in American history, probably world history, extended growth and egalitarian growth. Then it started getting whittled away, as all of this began to recede. It’s now changed very radically. The 1960s was another case where substantial popular activism was the motive force that led to Johnson’s reforms, which were not trivial. They didn’t change the social and economic system to the limited extent that the New Deal did, but they had a big effect then and in the years that followed: civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, all kinds of things. That’s the only way to change. If anybody has another idea, it would be nice to hear it, but it’s been kept a secret for a couple of thousand years.

ARE WE further along in global warming than it is politically possible for scientists to say?

IN THE sciences, you’re always going to find some people out at the fringes, maybe with good arguments but kind of at the fringes. But the overwhelming majority of scientists are pretty much agreed on the basic facts: that it’s a serious phenomenon that’s going to grow even more serious, and we have to do something about it. There are divisions. The major division is between the basic international scientific consensus and those who say it doesn’t go far enough, it’s nowhere near dire enough. So, for example, this study that I mentioned, which is one of the major critical studies, saying it’s much too optimistic, they point out that they’re not taking account of factors that could make it very much worse. For example, they didn’t factor into the models the effect of melting of permafrost, which is beginning to happen. And it’s pretty well understood that it’s going to release a huge amount of methane, which is much more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide is, and that could set off a major change for the worse. A lot of the processes that are studied are called nonlinear, meaning a small change can lead to a huge effect. And almost all the indicators are in the wrong direction. So I think the answer is that scientists can’t say anything in detail, but they can say pretty convincingly that it’s bad news.

HOW CAN philosophers advance environmental responsibility?

PRETTY MUCH the same way algebraic topologists can. If you’re a philosopher, you don’t stop being a human being. These are human problems. Philosophers, like anybody else—algebraic topologists, carpenters, others—can contribute to them. People like us are privileged. We have a lot of privilege. If you’re an academic, you’re paid way too much, you have a lot of options, you can do research, you have a kind of a platform. You can use it. It’s pretty straightforward. There are no real philosophical issues that I can see. There is an ethical issue, but it’s one that is so obvious you don’t need any complicated philosophy.

HOW CAN human beings and food production be reformed to promote ecological stability? Is agriculture inherently destructive to our planet?

IF AGRICULTURE is inherently destructive, we might as well say good-bye to each other, because whatever we eat, it’s coming from agriculture, whether it’s meat or anything else, milk, whatever it is. There is no particular reason to believe that it’s inherently destructive. We do happen to have destructive forms of agriculture: high-energy inputs, high fertilizer inputs. Things look cheap, but if you take in all the costs that go into them, they’re not cheap. And if you count in environmental destruction, which is a cost, then they’re not cheap at all. So are there other ways of developing agricultural systems which will be basically sustainable? It’s kind of like energy. There’s no known inherent reason why that’s impossible. There are plenty of proposals how it could be done. But, again, it involves dismantling a whole array of economic, social, cultural, and other structures, which is not an easy matter. The same problems with green technology.

I should say another word about the green technology issue, which is, again, basically ideological. If you look at the literature on this, when people make the point, as they do, that the green technology is being developed in China but not here, a standard reason that’s given is, well, China is a totalitarian society, so that government controls the mechanisms of production. It has what we call an industrial policy: government intervenes in the market to determine what’s produced and how it’s produced and to set the conditions for it and to fix conditions of technology transfer. And they do that without consulting the public, so therefore they can set the conditions which will make investors invest there and not here. We’re democratic and free and we don’t do that kind of thing. We believe in markets and democracy.

It’s all totally bogus. The United States has a very significant industrial policy and it’s highly undemocratic. It’s just that we don’t call it that. So, for example, if you use a computer or you use the Internet or you fly in an airplane or you buy something at Wal-Mart, which is based on trade, which is based on containers, developed by the U.S. Navy, every step of the way you’re benefiting from a massive form of industrial policy, state-initiated programs. It’s kind of like driving on the interstate highway system. State-initiated programs where almost all the research and development and the procurement, which is a big factor in subsidizing corporations, all of this was done for decades before anything could go on to the market.

Take, say, computers. The first computers were around 1952, but they were practically the size of this room, with vacuum tubes blowing up and paper all over the place, I was at MIT when this was going on. You couldn’t do anything with them. It was all funded by the government, mostly by the Pentagon, in fact, almost entirely by the Pentagon. Through the 1950s, it was possible to reduce the size and you could get it to look like a big bunch of filing cabinets. Some of the lead engineers in Lincoln Labs, an MIT lab which was one of the main centers for development, pulled out and formed the first private computer company, DEC, which for a long time kind of was the main one. Meanwhile, IBM was in there learning how to shift from punch cards to electronic computers on taxpayer funding, and they were able to produce a big computer, the world’s fastest computer, in the early 1960s. But nobody could buy these computers. They were way too expensive. So the government bought them, meaning you bought them. Procurement is one of the major techniques of corporate subsidy. In fact, I think the first computer that actually went on the market was probably around 1978. That’s about twenty-five years after they were developed. The Internet is about the same. And then Bill Gates gets rich. But the basic work was done with government support under Pentagon cover. The same with most of these things—virtually the entire IT revolution. The Internet was in public hands for, I think, about thirty years before it was privatized.

So that’s industrial policy. We don’t call it that. Was it democratic? No more democratic than China. People in the 1950s weren’t asked, “Do you want your taxes to go to the development of computers so maybe your grandson can have an iPod, or do you want your taxes to go into health, education, and decent communities?” Nobody was told that. What they were told was, “The Russians are coming, so we have to have a huge military budget. So therefore we have to put the money into this. And maybe your grandchild will have an iPod.” It’s as undemocratic as the Chinese system is, and it goes way back. We just don’t give it that name. It doesn’t have to be done undemocratically, but to do it democratically requires cultural changes, understanding. On the computers, maybe it was the wrong decision. Maybe they should have done other things, make a more decent life. Maybe it was the right decision. But on things like green technology and sustainable energy, I don’t think there’s much question what’s the right decision, if you get people to understand it and accept it. And that has great barriers, like the kind I mentioned.

WHAT ROLE do you see cooperatives and community-based enterprises having in the United States as compared to other countries, like Argentina?

I THINK it’s a very positive development. It’s kind of rudimentary. There are some in Argentina, which developed after the crisis. They had a huge crisis. What happened in Argentina was that for years Argentina followed the advice of the IMF [International Monetary Fund]. In fact, they were the poster child for the IMF. They were doing everything right. And it totally collapsed, as, in fact, almost always happens. At that point, about ten years ago Argentina dismissed the advice of the IMF and the economists, rejected it totally, violated it, and went on to have pretty successful economic development, probably the best in South America. But out of the crisis did come cooperatives, some of them remain, and remain viable worker-controlled enterprises. There are some in the United States, too, more than you might imagine. There is a book about it, if you’re interested, by one of the main activists who works in this movement. His name is Gar Alperovitz. He reviews a lot of initiatives that have been taken, and there are surprisingly many of them. None of them exist on a very large scale, but they exist.

Let’s go back to the one example that I mentioned, of the closing the GM plants and getting contracts in Spain. One of the things that could happen is that the workers in those plants could simply take over the factories and say, Okay, we’re going to construct and develop, we’re going to reconvert, we’re going to develop high-speed rail, which they have the capacity to do. They would need help: they would need community support and other support. But it could be done. In that case, the community and the industry wouldn’t be destroyed. The banks wouldn’t make as much money, but we would have home-grown, high-speed rail. Those things are all possible.

In fact, sometimes they’ve come pretty close. Around 1980, U.S. Steel was going to close its main facilities in Youngstown, Ohio. That’s a steel town. It was kind of built out of the steel industry, but whoever owned it at that time figured they could make more profit if they destroyed it. There were big protests—strikes, community protests, others. Finally there was an effort to take it over by what are called the stakeholders, the workforce and the community. There are some legal questions, so they tried to fight through the courts to gain the legal right to do it. Their lawyer was Staughton Lynd, an old radical activist who was also a labor lawyer. They made it to the courts, and they had a case. But the courts turned it down. The courts aren’t living in some abstract universe. They reflect what’s going on in society. If there had been enough popular force behind it, they probably could have won, and the steel industry would still be here. Except it would be worker-controlled, community-controlled. These things are just at the verge of happening many times. And I don’t think it’s at all a utopian conception. It’s perfectly consistent with the basic legal system, the basic economic system. And it could make big changes.

Noam Chomsky is the internationally renowned Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT. He is the author of scores of books including Failed States, What We Say Goes and Hopes and Prospects. This is the text of a speech delivered at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, on September 30, 2010.

 

The Youth Will Win In Yemen

 13 May, 2011 The Guardian

We will complete our revolution and oust President Saleh, with or without international support

Yemen is a fertile land with beaches that stretch for more than 1,700km. It is also a country in which more than 10 million people are threatened by starvation, where thousands spend their lives sneaking into neighbouring countries in search of better opportunities, and where children are violated in forced labour markets. In an age of extraordinary medical advances, the greatest hope of 24 million Yemenis is that their children are not crippled by polio. Man landed on the moon more than 40 years ago, but in Yemen, many still dream of travelling by car rather than donkey. In an age of Facebook and Twitter, many Yemenis simply wish they could read a letter from a loved one.

That is why the Yemeni revolution was formulated in the minds of the young long before it broke out on the ground. A failing economy and a deteriorating security situation, together with spiralling corruption, simply amplified most Yemeni people’s daily experience of poverty, ignorance and disease.

The people’s aspirations for something better were transformed into a crisis when President Ali Abdullah Saleh sought to extend his rule beyond 40 years and to bequeath Yemen – as if the country was one of his possessions – to his son. Young Yemenis could no longer contain their desire to become a real part of the world. We took to the streets – unarmed in a country where the people own more than 60m guns. What we wanted was a modern civil state in Yemen.

When we saw the success of the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, our determination to topple the Yemeni regime was heightened. Students from the University of Sana’a went out on to the streets raising placards which called, for the first time, for the overthrow of the regime. One hour after the toppling of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, thousands of youths in the city of Taiz came out to celebrate, and to announce the start of the Yemeni revolution.

When the opposition parties joined in on 21 February, it was clear that Saleh had lost all popular legitimacy and was now being propped up only by tribe, the army, vested economic interests and the international community. We knew that if he was to fall, these elements must be overcome. First, the tribes joined the revolution: the Hashid and Bakil, the largest ethnic groups in Yemen, followed by all the others.

In revenge, Saleh sent republican guard snipers to Sana’a, killing at least 45 and wounding hundreds. This bloody Friday shook the conscience of the nation. Those murdered youths had gone out into the streets carrying only their beautiful dreams, and had ended up being carried on the shoulders of others.

 

The killings persuaded many in the army’s leadership to declare their support for the revolution, and many in Yemen’s administrative and diplomatic bodies resigned.

Saleh then said he would step down. We knew this was a lie. He continued to exert control over the republican guard led by his son, the central security led by his nephew, and the air force led by his brother. The young people decided to escalate the protest, staging marches and sending a message about our ability to access the presidential palace.

Saleh sensed the imminence of his downfall and began to hint that he would provoke a war that would have a disastrous impact not only on Yemen but on the entire region. This led to the Gulf states’ initiative, to broker a transfer of power from Saleh to his opponents. This initiative had US support and has become Saleh’s last source of legitimacy.

However, the youth movement rejected it – partly because, under the initiative’s terms, Saleh’s departure would not be immediate, but would take place a month after the agreement was signed. Saleh has previously broken agreements after just two days, so what would he do if given a month?

The initiative also guaranteed that Saleh and his government would not be tried. This would be a betrayal of the blood of our martyrs, and of the Yemeni people who need to recover their looted wealth to rebuild their country.

And the initiative required that power be transferred to Saleh’s deputy until presidential elections could be held. We feared that a new regime could emerge from the old – different faces, but the same corruption. We demanded a regime built on a true balance of national forces, with the authority and legitimacy to ensure political and media freedoms, respect for human rights, and an independent judiciary. The Gulf initiative had also stipulated that that the protests should be suspended, but we plan to maintain the sit-ins until the objectives of the revolution have been achieved.

The Gulf initiative presents a way out for the regime, prolonging its life and stirring up disagreement between the youth and the opposition parties – who agreed to the initiative under pressure from the international community and to “stop the bloodshed”. Our young people have decided to escalate civil disobedience until Saleh’s regime is overthrown. It remains for the international community to realise that the youth will complete their revolution with or without international support.

However, the withdrawal of international legitimacy from Saleh would achieve two things: it would stop Saleh from killing any more young people; and it would reinforce the values of freedom, justice, equality and democracy for which we are struggling.

The youth of the revolution realise that once their civil state is born, it will form part of the wider world. The more the revolution is supported today by the international community, the more that will motivate the youth to become a positive international partner when that day comes.

 

Wasim Alqershi is a member of the organisational committee of the people’s youth revolution in Yemen, and a former president of the Yemeni student union

 

TEPCO Now Confirms Nuclear Meltdown In Fukushima Reactor No. 1

 

13 May, 2011 Naturalnews.com

(NaturalNews) TEPCO has now publicly admitted it wasn’t telling the truth about the severity of the damage to Fukushima reactor No. 1. We’re now being told what we’ve suspected all along — that nuclear fuel rods in that reactor are totally exposed and have suffered a nuclear meltdown , releasing vast amounts of radiation comparable to Chernobyl. As Bloomberg now reports, the water level in reactor No. 4 is one meter below the fuel assembly itself. This means, of course, that the water isn’t high enough to cover the fuel rods , which is why those fuel rods have suffered a nuclear meltdown. ( http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-… )

The Associated Press is also reporting that “other fuel has slumped to the bottom of the pressure vessel and is thought to be covered in water .” This statement is astonishing all by itself because it means the fuel rods were in a total meltdown hot enough to cause their metal containment cylinders to “slump” and melt their way down to the lower levels of the coolant pools. Notably, AP carefully avoids using the term “melt” and instead says the fuel rods “slumped.” This is all part of the AP’s determined downplaying of the Fukushima catastrophe (see below).

Not surprisingly, as AP now reports, “The findings also indicate a greater-than-expected leak in that vessel.” But the laws of nuclear physics don’t care what you “expect,” you see. They don’t care about media spin or power company B.S. The laws of physics simply follow their natural course, regardless of what you hope they do.

And in the case of Fukushima, the laws of physics led directly to a core fuel meltdown that now even the mainstream media cannot deny (although they still aren’t calling it a “nuclear meltdown”). As AP reports:

Nuclear Industrial and Safety Agency officials said the new data indicates that it is likely that partially melted fuel had fallen to the bottom of the pressurized vessel that holds the reactor core together and possibly leached down into the drywell soon after the March 11 quake and tsunami that struck Japan’s northeastern coast.

Undeniable meltdown

What AP is describing, of course, is a nuclear meltdown . It doesn’t get any more obvious than this: The fuel reached melting temperature and melted down. Along with this, there would have had to be a massive release of  radiation into the containment vessel, which just happens to have numerous holes in it that allow highly radioactive water to leak directly into the environment. No wonder TEPCO discovered its radiation detectors had all maxed out there and become non-functional. No wonder TEPCO had to selectively stop reporting radiation releases — it was in the middle of a Chernobyl-like core fuel meltdown!

The Telegraph in the UK is refreshingly printing the truth on this story: “One of the reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant did suffer a nuclear meltdown, Japanese officials admitted for the first time today, describing a pool of molten fuel at the bottom of the reactor’s containment vessel.” ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor… )

But the mainstream media in the U.S. has obviously been instructed by the White House to avoid using the term “nuclear meltdown” in describing what happened at Fukushima. There is a rather blatant downplaying of the facts going on behind the scenes at the media giants.

Some of this spin can only be called blatant lies, by the way. In the same story linked above, AP claims “Unit 4 contained no fuel rods at the time of the earthquake …”

Huh? No fuel rods in reactor No. 4? This what on Earth is this video showing? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKHW…

I love how the media admits it has been misreporting the truth of the situation all along, and then it comes up with new fairytale spin stories in practically the same sentence. They might as well just report, “There was no nuclear fuel in Fukushima at the time of the tsunami, and that’s why governments have stopped monitoring radiation levels.”

TEPCO once again meets Murphy’s Law

In any case, this sudden revelation that reactor No. 4 has already experienced a nuclear fuel meltdown is, not surprisingly, causing considerable setbacks to TEPCO’s plan to have the whole facility deactivated by Christmas. Just as NaturalNews publicly predicted, the Christmas shutdown plan was little more than a combination of fantasyland thinking and industry spin.

“What this means is this is probably going to be a much more difficult cleanup than they originally planned for,” said particle physicist Paul Padley in a Bloomberg story ( http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-… ). The government and Tepco “have consistently appeared to be underestimating the severity of the situation.”

And that’s the story of modern science : Arrogant in its confidence over the laws of nature, yet utterly dishonest in reporting the truth when its Tower of Babel crumbles to the ground. No wonder the reputation of the conventional scientific community continues to plummet as people realize just how dangerous these people really are. Read my related story on this to learn the truth of how modern conventional science is based on a mindless, soulless, false belief that human beings have no free will or consciousness. And therefore, human beings are all expendable in science’s big experiments: Nuclear power, GMOs, vaccines and much more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032372_s…

Sources for this story include:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie…

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor…

Mike Adams is the NaturalNews Editor

 

 

 

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How The Murdoch Press Keeps Australia’s Dirty Secret

 

 

13 May, 2011

Johnpilger.com

The illegal eavesdropping on famous people by the News of the World is said to be Rupert Murdoch’s Watergate. But is it the crime by which Murdoch ought to be known? In his native land, Australia, Murdoch controls 70 per cent of the capital city press. Australia is the world’s first murdochracy, in which smear by media is power.

The most enduring and insidious Murdoch campaign has been against the Aboriginal people, who were dispossessed by the arrival of the British in the late 18th century and have never been allowed to recover. “Nigger hunts” continued into the 1960s and beyond. The officially-inspired theft of children from Aboriginal families, justified by the racist theories of the eugenics movement, produced those known as the Stolen Generation and in 1997 was identified as genocide. Today, the first Australians have the shortest life expectancy of any of the world’s 90 indigenous peoples. Australia imprisons Aborigines at five times the rate South Africa during the apartheid years. In the state of Western Australia, the figure is eight times the apartheid rate.

Political power in Australia often rests in the control of resource-rich land. Most of the uranium, iron ore, gold, oil and natural gas is in Western Australia and Northern Territory – on Aboriginal land. Indeed, Aboriginal “progress” is all but defined by the mining industry and its political guardians in both Labor and coalition (conservative) governments. Their faithful, strident voice is the Murdoch press. The exceptional, reformist Labor government of Gough Whitlam in the 1970s set up a royal commission that made clear that social justice for Australia’s first people would only be achieved with universal land rights and a share the national wealth with dignity. In 1975, Whitlam was sacked by the governor-general in a “constitutional coup”. The Murdoch press had turned on Whitlam with such venom that rebellious journalists on The Australian burned their newspaper in the street.

In 1984, the Labor Party “solemnly pledged” to finish what Whitlam had begun and legislate Aboriginal land rights. This was opposed by the then Labor prime minister, Bob Hawke, a “mate” of Rupert Murdoch. Hawke blamed the public for being “less compassionate”; but a secret 64-page report to the party revealed that most Australians supported land rights. This was leaked to The Australian, whose front page declared, “Few support Aboriginal land rights”, the opposite of the truth, thus feeding an atmosphere of self-fulfilling distrust, “backlash” and rejection of rights that would distinguish Australia from South Africa. In 1988, an editorial in Murdoch’s London tabloid, the Sun, described “the Abos” as “treacherous and brutal”. This was condemned by the UK Press Council as “unacceptably racist”.

The Australian publishes long articles that present Aboriginal people not unsympathetically but as perennial victims of each other, “an entire culture committing suicide”, or as noble primitives requiring firm direction: the eugenicist’s view. It promotes Aboriginal “leaders” who, by blaming their own people for their poverty, tell the white elite what it wants to hear. The writer Michael Brull parodied this: “Oh White man, please save us. Take away our rights because we are so backward.”

This is also the government’s view. In railing against what it called the “black armband view” of Australia’s past, the conservative government of John Howard encouraged and absorbed the views of white supremacists — that there was no genocide, no Stolen Generation, no racism; indeed, whites are the victims of “liberal racism”. A collection of far-right journalists, minor academics and hangers-on became the antipodean equivalent of David Irving Holocaust deniers. Their platform has been the Murdoch press.

Andrew Bolt, columnist on Murdoch’s Melbourne Herald-Sun tabloid, is currently the defendant in a racial vilification case brought by nine prominent Aborigines, including Larissa Behrendt, a professor of law and indigenous studies in Sydney. Behrendt has been an authoritative and outspoken opponent of Howard’s 2007 “emergency intervention” in the Northern Territory, which the Labor government of Julia Gillard has reinforced. The rationale to “intervene” was that child abuse among Aborigines was in “unthinkable numbers”. This was a fraud. Out of 7,433 Aboriginal children examined by doctors, four possible cases were identified – about the rate of child abuse in white Australia. What this covered was an old-fashioned colonial grab of mineral-rich land in the Northern Territory where Aboriginal land rights were granted in 1976.

The Murdoch press has been the most lurid and vociferous in its promotion of the “intervention”, which a United Nations special rapporteur has condemned for its racial discrimination. Once again, Australian politicians are dispossessing the first inhabitants, demanding leasehold of land in return for health and education rights that whites take for granted and driving them into “economically viable hubs” where they will be effectively detained — a form of apartheid.

The outrage and despair of most Aboriginal people is not heard. For using her institutional voice and exposing the government’s black supporters, Larissa Behrendt has been subjected to a vicious campaign of innuendo in the Murdoch press, including the implication that she is not a “real” Aborigine. Using the language of its soulmate the London Sun, the Australian derides the “abstract debate” of “land rights, apologies, treaties” as a “moralizing mumbo-jumbo spreading like a virus”. The aim is to silence those who dare tell Australia’s dirty secret.

 

 

 

 

 

Obama’s Hot Feeler Triggers More Confusion

 

21 May, 2011

Countercurrents.org

President Obama has again come out with yet another hot-feeler. The ‘Arab spring’ speech he delivered on 19 May—viewed by many as a possible breakthrough in the American policy towards the Middle East—is yet another ‘strategic’ ploy to masquerade Washington’s’ long-term goals in the region. Think-tanks may initiate a debate whether it is the ‘beginning’ of a ‘new end’ in the US policy, but Obama’s disorientated analysis of the ‘Arab spring’ offered hardly anything substantial. The most sensitive aspect of his speech came when he referred to the 1967 lines to be the basis for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations over final borders, adding that negotiated land swaps would also be needed. His call for negotiations based on this ‘line’ could be yet another attempt to place himself as an able international negotiator and honest ‘broker‘ but his constraints and compulsion are even more palpable.

In his speech, President Obama had stressed the need for negotiations “based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.” His statement on Palestine came in the background of the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to US. Hours before the visit of Netanyahu, Obama’s formula apparently sought to set in a new framework for Washington’s finesse. The New Right in the US has already seized on this statement saying it amounts to a ‘betrayal’ of Israel. A senior Israeli official said that “Washington does not understand the reality, doesn’t understand what we face.” Israeli daily Haaretz wrote that tensions between the two reached fever pitch following Obama’s speech and ahead of Netanyahu’s planned address to American Congress. New York Times reported that Obama had told his close aides that he did not believe that Netanyahu would be able to make the concessions necessary to strike a peace deal that would even the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In a statement after Obama’s speech outlining his new policy, Netanyahu said before leaving for Washington that “the viability of a Palestinian state cannot come at the expense of Israel’s existence.” Can Obama cross the Rubicon?

After talks with Netanyahu in Washington, Obama reiterated that “a true peace can only occur if the ultimate resolution allows Israel to defend itself against threats, and that Israel’s security will remain paramount in U.S. evaluations of any prospective peace deal.” He also underlined the American goal, ie., “a secure Israeli state, a Jewish state, living side by side in peace and security with a contiguous, functioning and effective Palestinian state.”

Earlier, it may be recalled, Obama made no condemnation of the illegal settlements nor did he demand a freeze on settlement activity, which is sharply accelerating with plans for building 1,550 new homes in the occupied territories around Jerusalem. Curiously, Obama’s speech referred to Israelis living in fear of their children being killed and Palestinians’ “suffering and humiliation” under occupation. It is hardly surprising that the Israeli occupation has claimed 100 Palestinian lives for every Israeli killed in the conflict or that just days before, Israeli troops had shot to death 16 unarmed Palestinian protesters who sought to assert their right to return to their homeland by scaling borders into Israeli occupied territory. That these demonstrations, which were joined by many thousands who marched on the borders from the refugee camps, are part of the revolutionary wave sweeping the region was missing in Obama’s speech.

Eventually, Obama’s speech offered hardly anything new in terms of US policy and expressed the US commitment to militarism, economic domination to assert its control over the region’s strategic energy resources. At the same time, however, the absence of substantive initiatives and inability to make any credible appeal to the Arab masses express the decline of US influence in the region and the increasing frustration of the American ruling elite as it attempts to repel the threat of revolutionary upheaval.
It was natural that the speech was received with scepticism and contempt in the Arab world. Despite Obama’s repeated references to ‘democracy’ or ‘democratic’ nearly two dozen times in his address, there was no reference at all in the speech that anything has changed in the policy of a government that has backed dictatorships and monarchies in the region and given unqualified support for six decades to Israel’s suppression of the Palestinian people.

Obama went on to boast of the US killing of Osama bin Laden as a major ‘blow’ to al-Qaeda, while acknowledging that the former CIA ally had lost his ‘relevance’ in the face of the upheavals in the region over the past several months. He tried to call the US as the model to be emulated and the benevolent power whose role it is to guide the Arab peoples to democracy. He said that the US would continue to pursue its “core interests” in the region, which he defined as “countering terrorism and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons; securing the free flow of commerce, and safe-guarding the security of the region, standing up for Israel’s security and pursuing Arab-Israeli peace.” Obviously missing from this list and indeed from the entire speech was the subject of American interest in oil. Its omission is certainly glaring. The US, Obama said, would continue to pursue the ‘core interests’ with “the firm belief that America’s interests are not hostile to people’s hopes; they are essential to them.” What Washington’s proposed economic policies amount to is an attempt to use the changes brought about by the mass upheavals to open the region up even more fully to the exploitation of American capitalism and US-based transnationals. He said that US policy would “focus on trade, not just aid; and investment, not just assistance.” Its aim, he said, would be opening up the region’s markets, while “ensuring financial stability.” Obama is obviously in the ‘businesses’ of furthering Washington’s goals in the region with a heavy-load of rhetorics.

Obviously, the presidential election due next year could be a major factor for Obama to take ‘new’ initiatives. But it is certain to trigger more confusion than consolation. Many eyebrows were raised when Obama made a U-turn in his Middle East Policy particularly when Dennis Ross—Obama’s chief adviser—is Israel’s most trusted man’ in the White House and one of the most influential pro-Jewish figures in the country. Naturally, the position of the Jewish lobby in the US is very crucial in the emerging scenario.

(Prof. K.M. SEETHI is Dean of Social Sciences and Director of Research in Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala. He is also Professor of International Relations and Chairman, Centre for Cross-National Communication in South Asia, School of International Relations and Politics(SIRP) in Mahatma Gandhi University. He has been the General Editor of Indian Journal of Politics and International Relations a biannual of the SIRP and currently the Editor of South Asian Journal of Diplomacy, published by the KPS Menon Chair for Diplomatic Studies. Prof. K.M. SEETHI can be contacted at kmseethimgu@gmail.com)

 

 

Obama’s Middle East Hypocrisy

 


21 May, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Since taking office in January 2009, Obama broke every major campaign promise, including relevant ones to his May 19 Middle East speech; namely:

— “hope;”

— “change;”

— peace;

— democratic values;

— closing Guantanamo in one year;

— ending torture, illegal spying, and detention without trial;

— “a new era of openness;”

— willingness to meet individually with Iranian, Syrian, Venezuelan, Cuban, and North Korean leaders;

— supporting Israeli and Palestinian efforts to “fulfill their national goals: two states living side by side in peace and security;” and

— on Afghanistan saying (October 27, 2007): “I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this (and the Iraq) war(s). You can take that to the bank,” and by implication not begin new ones.

Instead, his rhetoric belied his policy, spurning democracy, civil liberties, human rights, and rule of law principles. He doubled down George Bush with:

— imperial Iraq and Afghan wars;

— two others against Pakistan and Libya;

— another allied with Israel against Palestine;

— regional support for subservient despots; as well as

— anti-populist proxy wars in Somalia, Central Africa, Yemen, Bahrain, Haiti, Honduras, Colombia, and at home against Muslims, Latino immigrants, and working Americans.

Make no mistake. People across the Middle East aren’t fooled, unlike many Americans no matter how many times they’re betrayed.

Ahead of his speech on May 18, Washington Post writer Scott Wilson headlined, “Obama faces pressure from allies on eve of speech Thursday on Middle East policy,” saying:

US allies want more decisive action “on several volatile issues in the Middle East and North Africa, including the armed rebellion in Libya, the uprising in Syria, and the moribund peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.”

On May 19, New York Times writer Michael Shear headlined, “Obama’s Middle East Speech Has Many American Audiences,” saying:

He aimed at a domestic and global audience, trying “to construct a cohesive narrative for American voters about his administration’s (unsuccessful) efforts in the region,” notably:

— the stalled peace process;

— continuing Bush-era policies; and

— failure to address Arab uprisings constructively.

As a result, Obama’s Middle East speech was “designed to be the first in a series of rhetorical opportunities for the president,” ahead of a Friday Netanyahu meeting in Washington.

Then over the weekend, he’ll address the annual AIPAC conference, affirming his unwavering support for Israel, expressed Thursday saying:

“As for Israel, our friendship is rooted deeply in a shared history and shared values. Our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable. And we will stand against attempts to single it out for criticism in international forums,” adding:

“Israel must be able to defend itself – by itself – against any threat (with) robust enough (efforts) to prevent a resurgence of terrorism; to stop the infiltration of weapons; and to provide effective border security.”

In fact, Israel is a global menace, nuclear-armed with other super-weapons ready and able to use them. Terrorizing Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese, it’s belligerent on the slightest pretext or none at all.

As a result, it threatens world peace and security because US administrations partnered in its militarism, repression, and other high crimes for decades, a testimony to the Israeli Lobby’s power in America.

Commenting on his speech, New York Times writers Steven Myers and Mark Landler headlined, “Obama Sees ’67 Borders as Starting Point for Peace Deal,” saying:

Obama “declared that the prevailing borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war – adjusted to some degree to account for Israeli settlements in the West Bank – should be the basis of a deal.”

In fact, that notion has been on the table for years, based on isolating Palestinians in cantonized bantustans situated on worthless scrubland with few or no resources – a proposal no legitimate leader would accept.

Notably, Haaretz reported that “Obama has granted Netanyahu a major diplomatic victory” by leaving undefined the size or locations of a Palestinian state. It also quoted Netanyahu saying:

“Israel appreciates President Obama’s commitment to peace,” adding that he expects Obama to refrain from demanding Israel withdraw to “indefensible (1967 borders) which will leave a large population of Israel in Judea and Samaria and outside Israel’s borders.”

Moreover, core Israel/Palestinian issues remain to be negotiated, no matter that Washington and Israel spurn diplomacy and concessions.

As a result, Palestine is still occupied. Gaza remains isolated under siege, its legitimate government vilified as a terrorist organization. Moreover, the peace process was stillborn from inception, what journalist Henry Siegman once called “the most spectacular deception in modern” times.

Obama’s speech dripped with hypocrisy, another example of policy belying rhetoric, exposing America’s longstanding alliance with Israel for regional dominance. Saying “(i)t will be the policy of the US to support reform throughout the region” is code language for business as usual.

Adding that “(w)e face a historic opportunity (to) show that America values the dignity of a street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator” ignores a belligerent policy, as well as disdain for human rights and civil liberties. It also conceals a determination to divide, conquer, colonize, exploit and control the entire region, giving no quarter to populist aspirations anywhere, including in America, let alone Israel, Palestine, Egypt, or elsewhere in the region.

Important also is that if America had a legitimate regional policy, Obama wouldn’t have to make speeches affirming one.

Post/911, in fact, it was easier than ever for America to declare war on Islam, abroad and at home – a policy no different under Obama than Bush. Empty rhetoric changes nothing.

Around 1.5 billion Muslims want change, peace and the basic respect they deserve. They’re sick and tired of Western dominance, colonization, exploitation, and oppression, supportive of homegrown dictatorships.

On June 4, 2009, Obama addressed Muslims in Cairo, “seek(ing) a new beginning….based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, or need be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

It was hypocritical boilerplate. He decried the “killing of innocent men, women, and children,” yet US forces slaughter them daily in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya. In addition, America supplies Israel with billions of dollars and the latest weapons and technology to commit slow-motion genocide against millions of Palestinians, deny their legitimate self-determination, and right of their refugees to return home as international law demands.

Moreover, America is a serial aggressor and human rights abuser. High-sounding rhetoric changes nothing. Yet Obama claimed America “did not go (to Afghanistan) by choice, we went of necessity….we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there….Iraq was a war of choice (but) I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.”

“Today, America has a dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future – and leave Iraq to Iraqis. I have made it clear to the Iraqi people that we pursue no bases, and no claim on their territory or resources. Iraq’s sovereignty is its own.”

In fact, secret provisions in the Pentagon’s 2008 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) indicate otherwise. They flagrantly violate Iraqi sovereignty, authorizing permanent US bases, camps, and prisons. Moreover, they immunize US forces, civilian security, and private contractors from criminal prosecution. They assure Iraqi “democracy” is illusory.

Afghanistan’s occupation is similar. Officials in both countries have no say over US operations, including incursions into other countries. They require Washington’s approval before concluding any agreements with other countries. Their leaders and key ministries are US-controlled.

Moreover, no timeline is stipulated for America’s withdrawal beyond disingenuous rhetoric affirming it, returning sovereign power to Iraqis and Afghans. Instead, occupation is permanent. America came to stay, allied with proxy security forces to maintain hardline control.

Since Cairo 2009, Obama’s declared support for democracy, peace, human rights, mutual understanding, and social justice brought none to the region where Washington backs its most ruthless tyrants.

His “unbreakable” bond with Israel ignored Palestinian’s six decade ordeal and 44-year occupation. He said nothing earlier or now about Cast Lead slaughter, besieged Gaza, land theft, home demolitions, mass arrests, torture, targeted assassinations, legitimate Palestinian self-determination, and the right of diaspora refugees to return.

In Cairo, he came, saw, spoke, made empty gestures, no clear promises, and followed it with more of the same yesterday, concealing America’s intention to exploit this resource-rich part of the world.

Unlike easily fooled Americans, Arabs have no illusions. They’ve heard it all before, this time responding with popular uprisings for change they know only they can achieve by staying resolutely committed for it.

So far, it’s nowhere in sight, but maybe, just maybe this time is different. In the fullness of time, we’ll know.

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

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

 

Earth Has Entered A New Geological Age

 

The Stockholm Memorandum

22 May, 2011

Countercurrents.org

The Stockholm Memorandum concludes that the planet has entered a new geological age, the Anthropocene. It recommends a suite of urgent and far-reaching actions for decision makers and societies to become active stewards of the planet for future generations.

The verdict from the trial of humanity, which opened the 3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium, has been incorporated into the Stockholm Memorandum: Tipping the Scales towards Sustainability .In particular, the jury of Nobel Laureates concluded that humans are now the most significant driver of global change, and that our collective actions could have abrupt and irreversible consequences for human communities and ecological systems.

“We are the first generation with the insight of the new global risks facing humanity, that people and societies are the biggest drivers of global change. The basic analysis is not in question: we cannot continue on our current path and need to take action quickly. Science can guide us in identifying the pathway to global sustainability, provided that it also engages in an open dialogue with society, ” says Professor Mario Molina, who acted as judge and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995.

Some of the other key messages of the Stockholm Memorandum are:

– Environmental sustainability is a precondition for poverty eradication, economic development, and social justice.

– With almost a third of the world living on less than $2 per day, we must, as a priority, achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

– Develop new welfare indicators that address the shortcomings of GDP.

– Keep global warming below 2oC, implying a peak in global CO2 emissions no later than 2015 and carrying with it a very high risk of serious impacts and the need for major adaptation efforts.

– Foster a new agricultural revolution where more food is produced in a sustainable way on current agricultural land.

– Inspire and encourage scientific literacy especially among the young.

The Stockholm Memorandum will be signed by Nobel Laureates on May 18th and handed over in person to the UN High-level Panel on Global Sustainability, which is preparing the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro (Rio +20).

“The Nobel Laureate Symposium has answered this emergency call from the future: environment and development must go hand in hand. Human pressures are challenging the resilience of the planet, while inequalities remain high. The only way to move towards fair and lasting prosperity for present and future generations is along a pathway of environmental sustainability. The time for procrastination is over. We cannot afford the luxury of denial, ” says Professor Johan Rockström, Symposium chairperson and Executive Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI).

The Stockholm Memorandum

Tipping the Scales towards Sustainability

3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium* on Global Sustainability, Stockholm, Sweden, 16-19 May 2011

*The Nobel Laureate Symposium Series on Global Sustainability was initiated in 2007 at Potsdam and continued by the St James’s Palace Symposium in spring 2009. This Symposium series unites Nobel Laureates of various disciplines, top-level representatives from politics and NGOs, and renowned experts on sustainability.

I. Mind-shift for a Great Transformation

The Earth system is complex. There are many aspects that we do not yet understand. However, we are the first generation with the insight of the new global risks facing humanity. We face the evidence that our progress as the dominant species has come at a very high price.

Unsustainable patterns of production, consumption, and population growth are challenging the resilience of the planet to support human activity. At the same time, inequalities between and within societies remain high, leaving behind billions with unmet basic human needs and disproportionate vulnerability to global environmental change.

This situation concerns us deeply. As members of the Symposium we call upon all leaders of the 21st century to exercise a collective responsibility of planetary stewardship. This means laying the foundation for a sustainable and equitable global civilization in which the entire Earth community is secure and prosperous.

Science makes clear that we are transgressing planetary boundaries that have kept civilization safe for the past 10,000 years. Evidence is growing that human pressures are starting to overwhelm the Earth’s buffering capacity.

Humans are now the most significant driver of global change, propelling the planet into a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. We can no longer exclude the possibility that our collective actions will trigger tipping points, risking abrupt and irreversible consequences for human communities and ecological systems.

We cannot continue on our current path. The time for procrastination is over. We cannot afford the luxury of denial. We must respond ationally, equipped with scientific evidence.

Our predicament can only be redressed by reconnecting human development and global sustainability, moving away from the false dichotomy that places them in opposition.

In an interconnected and constrained world, in which we have a symbiotic relationship with the planet, environmental sustainability is a precondition for poverty eradication, economic development, and social justice.

Our call is for fundamental transformation and innovation in all spheres and at all scales in order to stop and reverse global environmental change and move toward fair and lasting prosperity for present and future generations.

II. Priorities for Coherent Global Action

We recommend a dual track approach:

1. emergency solutions now, that begin to stop and reverse negative environmental trends and redress inequalities within the current inadequate institutional framework, and

2. long term structural solutions that gradually change values, institutions and policy frameworks. We need to support our ability to innovate, adapt, and learn.

1. Reaching a more equitable world

Unequal distribution of the benefits of economic development are at the root of poverty. Despite efforts to address poverty, more than a third of the world’s population still live on less than $2 per day. This needs our immediate attention. Environment and development must go hand in hand. We need to:

>> Achieve the Millennium Development Goals, in the spirit of the Millennium Declaration, recognising that global sustainability is a precondition of success.

>> Adopt a global contract between industrialized and developing countries to scale up investment in approaches that integrate poverty reduction, climate stabilization, and ecosystem stewardship.

2. Managing the climate – energy challenge

We urge governments to agree on global emission reductions guided by science and embedded in ethics and justice. At the same time, the energy needs of the three billion people who lack access to reliable sources of energy need to be fulfilled. Global efforts need to:

>> Keep global warming below 2oC, implying a peak in global CO2 emissions no later than 2015 and recognise that even a warming of 2oC carries a very high risk of serious impacts and the need for major adaptation efforts.

>> Put a sufficiently high price on carbon and deliver the G-20 commitment to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, using these funds to contribute to the several hundred billion US dollars per year needed to scale up investments in renewable energy.

3. Creating an efficiency revolution

We must transform the way we use energy and materials. In practice this means massive efforts to enhance energy efficiency and resource productivity, avoiding unintended secondary consequences. The “throw away concept” must give way to systematic efforts to develop circular material flows. We must:

>> Introduce strict resource efficiency standards to enable a decoupling of economic growth from resource use.

>> Develop new business models, based on radically improved energy and material efficiency.

4. Ensuring affordable food for all

Current food production systems are often unsustainable, inefficient and wasteful, and increasingly threatened by dwindling oil and phosphorus resources, financial speculation, and climate impacts. This is already causing widespread hunger and malnutrition today. We can no longer afford the massive loss of biodiversity and reduction in carbon sinks when ecosystems are converted into cropland. We need to:

>> Foster a new agricultural revolution where more food is produced in a sustainable way on current agricultural land and within safe boundaries of water resources.

>> Fund appropriate sustainable agricultural technology to deliver significant yield increases on small farms in developing countries.

5. Moving beyond green growth

There are compelling reasons to rethink the conventional model of economic development. Tinkering with the economic system that generated the global crises is not enough. Markets and entrepreneurship will be prime drivers of decision making and economic change, but must be complemented by policy frameworks that promote a new industrial metabolism and resource use. We should:

>> Take account of natural capital, ecosystem services and social aspects of progress in all economic decisions and poverty reduction strategies. This requires the development of new welfare indicators that address the shortcomings of GDP.

>> Reset economic incentives so that innovation is driven by wider societal interests and reaches the large proportion of the global population that is currently not benefitting from these innovations.

6. Reducing human pressures

Consumerism, inefficient resource use and inappropriate technologies are the primary drivers of humanity’s growing impact on the planet. However, population growth also needs attention. We must:

>> Raise public awareness about the impacts of unsustainable consumption and shift away from the prevailing culture of consumerism to sustainability.

>> Greatly increase access to reproductive health services, education and credit, aiming at empowering women all over the world. Such measures are important in their own right but will also reduce birth rates.

7. Strengthening Earth System Governance

The multilateral system must be reformed to cope with the defining challenges of our time, namely transforming humanity’s relationship with the planet and rebuilding trust between people and nations. Global governance must be strengthened to respect planetary boundaries and to support regional, national and local approaches. We should:

>> Develop and strengthen institutions that can integrate the climate, biodiversity and development agendas.

>> Explore new institutions that help to address the legitimate interests of future generations.

8. Enacting a new contract between science and society

Filling gaps in our knowledge and deepening our understanding is necessary to find solutions to the challenges of the Anthropocene, and calls for major investments in science. A dialogue with decision-makers and the general public is also an important part of a new contract between science and society. We need to:

>> Launch a major research initiative on the earth system and global sustainability, at a scale similar to those devoted to areas such as space, defence and health, to tap all sources of ingenuity across disciplines and across the globe.

>> Scale up our education efforts to increase scientific literacy especially among the young.

We are the first generation facing the evidence of global change. It therefore falls upon us to change our relationship with the planet, in order to tip the scales towards a sustainable world for future generations.

 

“Every 30 Minutes”: Crushed By Debt And Neoliberal Reforms, Indian Farmers Commit Suicide At Staggering Rate

 


22 May, 2011

Democracy Now!

A quarter of a million Indian farmers have committed suicide in the last 16 years—an average of one suicide every 30 minutes. The crisis has ballooned with economic liberalization that has removed agricultural subsidies and opened Indian agriculture to the global market. Small farmers are often trapped in a cycle of insurmountable debt, leading many to take their lives out of sheer desperation. We speak with Smita Narula of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University Law School, co-author of a new report on farmer suicides in India.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to the issue of farmer suicides in India, where a quarter of a million farmers have committed suicide in the last 16 years. On average, that figure suggests one farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes.

Today, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU Law School will release a report called “Every Thirty Minutes: Farmer Suicides, Human Rights and the Agrarian Crisis in India.”

The agricultural sector in India has become more vulnerable to global markets as a result of economic liberalization. Reforms in the country have included the removal of agricultural subsidies and the opening of Indian agriculture to the global market. These reforms have led to increased costs, while reducing yields and profits for many farmers.

As a result, small farmers are often trapped in a cycle of insurmountable debt, leading many to take their lives out of sheer desperation. The rate of suicide is highest among cotton farmers. Like other cash crops in India, the cotton industry is increasingly dominated by foreign multinational corporations that tend to promote genetically modified cottonseed and often control the cost, quality and availability of agricultural inputs.

To discuss this issue, we’re joined by Smita Narula, faculty director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

SMITA NARULA: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about this report that you are just releasing today.

SMITA NARULA: Our major finding for this report is that all the issues that you just described are major human rights issues. And what we’re faced with in India is a human rights crisis of epic proportions. The crisis affects the human rights of Indian farmers and their family members in extremely profound ways. We found that their rights to life, to water, food and adequate standard of living, and their right to an effective remedy, is extremely affected by this crisis. Additionally, the government has hard human rights legal obligations to respond to the crisis, but we’ve found that it has failed, by and large, to take any effective measures to address the suicides that are taking place.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this number is unbelievable. Thirty—every 30 minutes, an Indian farmer commits suicide?

SMITA NARULA: And that’s been going on for years and years. And what these intense numbers don’t reveal are two things. One is that the numbers themselves are failing to capture the enormity of the problem. In what we call a failure of information on the part of the Indian government, entire categories of farmers are completely left out of the purview of farm suicide statistics, because they don’t formally own title to land. This includes women farmers, Dalit, or so-called lower caste farmers, as well as Adivasi, or tribal community farmers. In addition, the government’s programs and the relief programs that they’ve offered fail to capture not only this broad category, but also fail to provide timely debt relief and compensation or address broader structural issues that are leading to these suicides in the country.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the issue of globalization and how it’s affecting these farmers.

SMITA NARULA: Sure. So, basically, ultimately, the proximate cause for a number of these suicides is farmer indebtedness. What lies behind that indebtedness is two decades of market liberalization in India, which have resulted in two simultaneous processes. First, the government has withdrawn significantly from the agricultural sector. It has reduced subsidies. It has decreased access to rural credit. Irrigation is insufficient and doesn’t reach most farmers who need it. And at the same time, it has encouraged a switch over to cash crop cultivation, of which cotton is one example.

Simultaneously, the market has been opened up to global competitors, which makes Indian farmers extremely vulnerable. And at the same time, foreign multinationals now dominate industries, such as the cotton industry, including dominating the key inputs that are needed for cotton. In the case of cotton, in particular, the genetically modified Bt cottonseed has been promoted so effectively in India that it now dominates the entire sector, and between its cost, quality and availability, has an enormous impact on farmer costs and profits and yields to the point that it’s landing them in enormous debt. And many of them, ironically, are actually consuming the very pesticide that they went into debt to purchase, to kill themselves when they can’t escape that cycle of debt.

AMY GOODMAN: They’re consuming the pesticide.

SMITA NARULA: That’s correct. And behind each and every one of these numbers—the statistics are, appalling as they are, every 30 minutes—it’s hard to get our heads around it—but something else that the report tries to do is to put a human face on these numbers and tragedies. So, take two stories to put that humanity back into it. There are farmers in Vidarbha, Maharashtra, which is seen as an epicenter of this crisis, and an epicenter of cotton production in the country. Farmers now address their suicide notes to the prime minister and to the president, hoping that their last words, before they kill themselves, will reach an audience that’s going to take action.

Then you have farmers like Nanda Bhandare, who is a widow, and she lost her husband in 2008. As a result, she had to pull her 10- and 12-year-old children out of school to work the farm. They own seven acres of land, and after toiling every day on that land for a year, she likely won’t earn more than $250 for the entire year. She may have received compensation from the government, but that’s certainly been eaten up by the private moneylenders who her husband took out loans from, because there’s no rural credit in the country. And now she is struggling to afford basic needs for her family.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about genetically modified seeds and U.S. multinational corporations.

SMITA NARULA: So, genetically modified seeds. Bt cottonseed is the cottonseed input that dominates the cotton industry now. And what the genetic modification promises to do is to produce a toxin within the seed that kills a very common pest that affects the cotton crop in India. The Bt cottonseed, which is—has been marketed by Monsanto, among other multinationals, requires two resources that are already scarce for most Indian smallholder farmers. That’s money and water. Bt cottonseeds cost anywhere from two times to 10 times as much as regular cottonseed, and they also require a great deal more water in order to yield successful crops. The farmers often go to private moneylenders, who charge exorbitant interest rates, to purchase the seeds, on the promises and based on aggressive marketing that they will bring greater financial security. But then, because 65 percent of cotton farms in India are rain-fed and don’t have access to irrigation, the crops inevitably fail. And also, increasing drought has made that the case for many farmers. So they’ve gone into insurmountable debt to purchase the inputs. They don’t have the yields. They repeat this cycle for a couple of seasons. And by the end of it, they’re simply trapped in a cycle that they can’t get out of, and they consume the very pesticide that they purchased, in order to kill themselves. And—

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, what needs to be done?

SMITA NARULA: There are many things that the government can do and should do. The first is to address the failure of information. The government has failed to adequately capture the scope of the problem, as I described before. There is a failure of intervention. The debt relief program, that the government proudly boasts about to human rights committees, doesn’t reach most farmers, leaves many out of their purview, and provides too little. And there are structural issues. The government needs to put human rights at the center of its agricultural policies, and it needs to regulate multinational corporations, which it’s not doing, rather than approving more and more GM crops in the country, when so many have already devastated farmers’ lives.

AMY GOODMAN: Smita Narula, I want to thank you for being with us. We’ll link to your study at our website, from the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU Law School.

 

Obama’s Reset Rhetoric Is Unlikely To Translate Into Meaningful Policy Change In The Middle East

 


22 May, 2011

Countercurrents.org

President Barack Obama delivered a major foreign policy speech Thursday on historic changes in the Middle East. This was his second major address about America’s relationship with the Muslim world which may be dubbed as Cairo-2.

There were at least two parts to the president’s speech. In the first part he outlined his administration’s response to the “Arab Spring.” The president promised to forgive a billion dollars in loans to Egypt and said the United States would work to create enterprise zones to encourage private investment. “It will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region and to support transitions to democracy,” he said.

His speech was perhaps a belated response to extraordinary events in the Middle East following the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings that toppled or unsettled many US-backed autocratic rulers throughout the region. Repeating the slogans of the youth in Yemen, Tunisia, Syria and Egypt was just Obama jumping on the bandwagon.

According to Ian Black, Middle East editor of the Guardian, Obama lavished praise on the spirit of people power that has animated this year’s “Arab spring” but also made clear that direct US involvement in the region would remain selective. Strikingly, Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive countries in the Arab world and a key US ally and oil supplier, got not a single mention in the 5,400-word speech.

Nor did Obama offer any really new ideas on the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, reiterating the “unshakeable” US commitment to Israel’s security, Black said adding: But he did clearly oppose the “symbolic” recognition by the UN of an independent Palestinian state in September, an idea for which momentum has been growing internationally in the absence of any peace negotiations.

Obama had harsh words for Bashar al-Assad of Syria, where hundreds have been killed by the security forces, but he did not address the reason why Libyan logic did not apply, and why Syria’s dictator should not also be removed, Black argued.

Arab-Israeli conflict

The most important part of the speech dealt with borders as a key element of “reset strategy” will involve prodding Israel and the Palestinians to re-engage in negotiations on a two-state solution to the six-decade Arab-Israeli conflict. Yet the basis for a solution he offered — a settlement based on Israel’s pre-1967 borders, with negotiated land swaps — is well over a decade old.

“The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine,” said Obama.

Obama did call for a permanent Palestinian state along 1967 borders, with Palestinian control over its external borders and, most importantly, a contiguous Palestinian state. But all of these points were undermined by the insistence on security as the metric of progress, and a commitment to a 30-year old negotiations process that will lead nowhere.

The President reaffirmed an unshakable U.S. commitment to Israel’s security and condemned what he called “symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations,” referring to the Palestinians’ plan to seek General Assembly recognition for statehood in September.

September 2011 is the target date for completion of institutional readiness for statehood set by the Palestinian Authority and supported by the diplomatic grouping known as the Quartet – which comprises the UN, European Union, Russia and the United States. The World Bank’s assessment in September 2010, noted by the Quartet, was that ‘if the PA maintains its current performance in institution-building and delivery of public services, it is well positioned for the establishment of a state at any point in the near future’.

On April 12, 2011 a new United Nations report highlighted progress made by the Palestinian Authority in building institutions necessary for a functioning State, while stressing the need for Israel to roll back “measures of occupation” and for an urgent resumption of negotiations between the two sides. “In the limited territory under its control and within the constraints on the ground imposed by unresolved political issues, the PA has accelerated progress in improving its governmental functions,” states the report, entitled “Palestinian State-building: A Decisive Period.” Prepared by the office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO), the report notes that in the six areas where the UN is most engaged, governmental functions are now sufficient for a functioning government of a State.

The diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state is gathering momentum, particularly in Latin America. Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and a number of other nations in that region have recognized the independence of Palestine. On December 6, 2010 the Brazilian Foreign Ministry announced that Brasilia recognizes the Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. By early 2011 a dozen countries in the Caribbean basin and Africa were about to do the same. If more countries announce a recognition of the independence of Palestine, the Palestinians can push a resolution on the creation of a new state through the UN General Assembly.

On January 19, 2011 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stressed during a visit to the West Bank that Moscow recognized an independent Palestinian state in 1988 and is not changing that position. Speaking at a news conference with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in Jericho, Medvedev said: “We made our decision then and we have not changed it today.”

U.S. policy is to oppose the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, to withhold diplomatic recognition of any Palestinian state that is unilaterally declared, and to encourage other countries and international organizations to withhold diplomatic recognition of any Palestinian state that is unilaterally declared.

To borrow Robert Fisk, renowned journalist, Obama’s speech was “the same old story… Israel cannot be deligitimised… No peace can be imposed on either party… It sounded like his pro-Israeli speech to AIPAC.”

Arab disappointment with Obama’s “reset policy” is best reflected in the comment by a Beirut student Anthony Haddad: ” Obama’s rhetoric won’t consistently be met with action. … Obama’s rhetoric only has teeth where America’s unchanged interests lie. [Even with insisting on] 1967 borders … a strong-willed speech from Obama without the will to twist a few Israeli arms along the way will do nothing to fix the Israeli-Palestinian question.”

According to Nick Turse, the associate editor of TimDispatch.com, all signs indicate that the Pentagon will quietly maintain antithetical policies, just as it has throughout the Obama years. Barring an unprecedented and almost inconceivable policy shift, it will continue to broker lucrative deals to send weapons systems and military equipment to Arab despots. Nothing indicates that it will be deterred from its course, whatever the president says, which means that Barack Obama’s reset rhetoric is unlikely to translate into meaningful policy change in the region.

Jeff Mason of Reuters believes it was Obama’s election campaign speech:

“It may not have been a campaign speech, but President Barack Obama’s foreign policy address on Thursday sent a series of political messages that could resonate in his 2012 race to retain the White House. Standing in front of a row of American flags at the State Department, Obama directed his comments on U.S. policy to populations throughout the Middle East and North Africa, offering economic and political support for democratic reform. But the president had another target audience: voters at home. By spelling out U.S. positions on the war in Libya, violence in Syria, and roadblocks in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Obama addressed specific interest groups and crucial independent voters who use foreign policy as a criteria at the ballot box. Obama also bolstered his case for being a strong leader by citing the successful operation to kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.”

Why the world’s Muslims are so mad at America?

President Obama spoke at a time when U.S. influence in the region is at an all-time low in modern history.

A new PEW survey, released two days prior to Obama’s speech, finds that the rise of pro-democracy movements has not led to an improvement in America’s image in the region. Instead, in key Arab nations and in other predominantly Muslim countries, views of the U.S. remain negative, as they have been for nearly a decade. Indeed, in Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan, views are even more negative than they were one year ago.

With the exception of Indonesia, Obama remains unpopular in the Muslim nations polled, and most disapprove of the way he has handled calls for political change roiling the Middle East. Moreover, many of the concerns that have driven animosity toward the U.S. in recent years are still present – a perception that the U.S. acts unilaterally, opposition to the war on terror, and fears of America as a military threat. And in countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, and Pakistan, most say their own governments cooperate too much with the U.S.

As Obama tries to “reset” relations with a Muslim world another survey released on Wednesday highlighted one of the most fundamental questions about U.S. involvement there.

Why are Muslims, by and large, so mad at America?

The survey published in the form of a new book Feeling Betrayed: The Roots of Muslim Anger at America, reflecting five years of research on the ground by political psychologist Steven Kull, suggests a pair of startling explanations. Kull performed polls and focus groups throughout the Middle East, North Africa and the Asian Pacific from 2006-2010.

“Out of this process, we identified a widespread Muslim narrative of why they are mad at America,” he said, presenting his findings Wednesday at the Brookings Institution.

“It was really striking to me how common this was. All the way from Morocco to Indonesia, they were singing off the same song sheet. The closer you get to the Middle East, there’s more intensity, but the themes are really very much the same.”

Kull recounts four themes common to Muslim complaints of oppression:

1. The US as Coercively Dominating

The United States seeks to and largely succeeds in coercively dominating the Muslim world, using the threat of military force to shape it in ways that serve its interests.

Large majorities of people polled throughout the region told him that they believe the U.S. coercively dominates the Muslim world – often through the threat of military aggression — to shape it in America’s interests.

“How much of what happens in the world today would you say is controlled by the U.S.?” he asked. Majorities throughout the Muslim world went with “nearly all” or “most” of what happens. Fifty-nine percent of Egyptians (pre-Arab uprising) said “nearly all.”

“That the U.S. is really this 800-pound gorilla in the minds of people in this part of the world, and they feel threatened by it,” Kull pointed out.

2. The US as Hostile to Islam

The United States is hostile to Islam and seeks to undermine it and to impose a secular social order or even Christianity. They frequently cited American support for Israel as an illustration of the fear that the U.S. dislikes Islam and maneuvers to dominate the region.

3. Support for Israel

Driven by anti-Islamic prejudice and seeking regional domination, the United States supports and enables Israel in its victimization of the Palestinian people.

4. The US as Undermining Democracy

The United States undermines democracy in the Muslim world so as to preserve its control and to ensure that Islamism is kept under wraps.

Majorities in every country but the United Arab Emirates said they believe democracy is not a real U.S. objective in the region. They argued that the U.S. favors democracy in Muslim countries, but only if the government is cooperative with the U.S.

People frequently told Kull that they admired the values America once embodied — fairness, equality, self-determination, respect for human rights — but that at some point in a linear timeline, the U.S. had abandoned those values, and on its responsibility as a world superpower to promote them abroad.

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of the online magazine American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com email: asghazali2011(@)gmail.com

 

The Unholy Alliance Of Blackwater Mercenaries With The UAE Rulers

 


23 May, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Remember Blackwater USA, the private military group, which worked as contractors for the U.S. State Department? Since June 2004, it has been paid more than $320 million out of State Department budget for the Worldwide Personal Protective Service, which protects U.S. officials and some foreign officials in conflict zones. Inside Iraq alone, at one time, it employed no less than 20,000 armed security forces. In the post-Saddam Iraq, they drew much notoriety for their trigger-happy, gung ho attitude. Between 2005 and September 2007, Blackwater security staffs were involved in 195 shooting incidents; in 163 of those cases, Blackwater personnel fired first.

On March 31, 2004, Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah attacked a convoy containing four Blackwater contractors. According to Iraqi accounts, the men broke into homes and raped some women. The four contractors were attacked and killed with grenades and small arms. Later their bodies were hung from a bridge crossing the Euphrates. In April 2005 six Blackwater independent contractors were killed in Iraq when their Mi-8 helicopter was shot down.

On February 16, 2005, four Blackwater guards escorting a U.S. State Department convoy in Iraq fired 70 rounds into a car. An investigation by the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service concluded that the shooting was not justified and that the Blackwater employees provided false statements to investigators. The false statements claimed that the one of the Blackwater vehicles had been hit by insurgent gunfire, but the investigation found that one of the Blackwater guards had actually fired into his own vehicle by accident. However, John Frese, the U.S. embassy in Iraq’s top security official, declined to punish Blackwater or the security guards because he believed any disciplinary actions would lower the morale of the mercenary group.

On February 6, 2006 a sniper employed by Blackwater Worldwide opened fire from the roof of the Iraqi Justice Ministry, killing three guards working for the state-funded Iraqi Media Network. Many Iraqis at the scene said that the guards had not fired on the Justice Ministry. On Christmas Eve 2006, a security guard of the Iraqi vice president was shot and killed while on duty outside the Iraqi prime minister’s compound by an employee of Blackwater USA. Five Blackwater contractors were killed on January 23, 2007 when their helicopter was shot down on Baghdad’s Haifa Street. In late May 2007, Blackwater contractors opened fire on the streets of Baghdad twice in two days, one of the incidents provoking a standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi Interior Ministry commandos. On May 30, 2007, Blackwater employees shot an Iraqi civilian who was said to have been “driving too close” to a State Department convoy that was being escorted by Blackwater contractors.

The Iraqi Government revoked Blackwater’s license to operate in Iraq on September 17, 2007, because of the death of seventeen Iraqis. The fatalities occurred while a Blackwater Private Security Detail (PSD) was escorting a convoy of U.S. State Department vehicles en route to a meeting in western Baghdad with USAID officials. As in many other previous cases, here again, it was found that Blackwater’s guards had opened fire without provocation and used excessive force. The incident sparked at least five investigations, and an FBI probe found that Blackwater Employees used lethal force recklessly. The license was reinstated by the American government in April 2008, but in early 2009 the Iraqis announced that they have refused to extend that license.

Documents obtained from the Iraq War document leak argue that Blackwater employees have committed serious abuses in Iraq, including killing civilians. In the fall of 2007, a congressional report by the House Oversight Committee found that Blackwater intentionally “delayed and impeded” investigations into the contractors’ deaths (of March 31, 2004).

So negative was the public perception of the mercenary group, it had to change its name twice – first in October 2007 to Blackwater Worldwide and then to Xe Services LLC in February of 2009.

After all those serious incidents of unprovoked murderous orgy of unarmed civilians in Iraq by the trigger-happy mercenaries working as contractors for the U.S. State Department in the post-Saddam era, we thought that we had seen the last of Blackwater and its CEO Erik Prince. But we were wrong. Utterly wrong! We forgot that evil sells big time! An ugly monster is more preferable to a Mafia Don than an attractive good hearted man.

Erik Prince has settled in Abu Dhabi, and has opened a mercenary wing there. It goes by the name Reflex Responses. The company, often called R2, was licensed last March. Outside Americans, Brits, French and some Colombians, R2 has recruited a platoon of South African mercenaries, including some veterans of Executive Outcomes, a South African company notorious for staging coup attempts or suppressing rebellions against African strongmen in the 1990s.

Last week the New York Times (NYT) had a detailed report on this mercenary group which is employed by – who else this time but – the oil-soaked Emirates prince Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi to protect the sheikdom from threat. The lucrative deal is worth $529 million. R2 spends roughly $9 million per month maintaining the battalion, which includes expenditures for employee salaries, ammunition and wages for dozens of domestic workers who cook meals, wash clothes and clean the camp.

Emirati law prohibits disclosure of incorporation records for businesses, which typically list company officers, but it does require them to post company names on offices and storefronts. Over the past year, the sign outside the suite has changed at least twice — it now says Assurance Management Consulting.

We are told that the foreign military force was planned months before the so-called Arab Spring revolts that many experts believe are unlikely to spread to the U.A.E. People involved in the project and American officials of R2 told the NYT reporters that the Emiratis were interested in deploying the R2 battalion to respond to terrorist attacks and put down uprisings inside the country’s sprawling labor camps, which house the Pakistanis, Filipinos and other foreigners who make up the bulk of the country’s work force.

It is worth pointing out that the UAE is the abysmal bottom of today’s Arab world without democracy. Through its unfathomable wealth it has transformed itself into a new high-tech federation that is lived by two low-life communities – a body of modernist Arab (21% of population) and western capitalists (8%) in total play-mode, who have very little touch with the great deen of Islam, and a body of foreign migrant workers (totaling 71%) — 27% Indians, 20% Pakistanis, 8% Bangladeshis, and 16% other Asians — unpaid or underpaid, without papers or their own (confiscated) passports, working all-day in any heat without medical aid or supervision. Like the Egyptian slaves of the Biblical times, these migrant workers – denied their basic human rights — are the modern-day slaves that have built the Burj Khalifah (the tallest building in the world) and continue to build a playground for the world’s capitalist elite – a zone without rules and without fear of recourse to law. As noted recently by Shaykh Abdal Qadir as-Sufi, “There are no suicide-bombers in the U.A.E.; only the weekly suicide of a worker in despair of his salary, his work conditions, his foul dormitory and his future.”

The UAE, like many of the Gulf states, has a highly discriminatory pay-scale that is based on one’s nationality. For example, the top wage earners are white westerners (from the USA, Europe, Australia and New Zealand) followed by the GCC nationals, East Asians (from Japan, Korea), South-east Asians (from Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand), South Asians (from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh) and other African countries (in that order).

While the corrupt princes and sheiks live an opulent life of parasites drawing benefits from God’s gift to the nation – the oil and natural gas resources — and the fruit of the labor of their ‘slave’ workers that work in those oil and natural gas fields, the construction industry and the shops or malls, these workers are paid some of the lowest salaries imaginable. The building workers work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and are paid around 370 AED ($100) per month. The ‘workers’ are bound by the Kafala System not to move from their job to another one, and are ‘tied’ to their employer. Employers house workers in dormitories known as labor camps, usually on the edge of urban zones. In Al-Quoz and in Sonopar in Dubai the typical dwelling for an average construction worker is a small room (120 sft) which must take up to eight workers. Al-Quoz Camp has 7,500 migrant workers sharing 1,248 rooms. Withholding of wages, in total disregard of the Islamic ruling, is commonplace. The greedy employers don’t like their Muslim workers to fast during the month of Ramadhan, fearing that their labor efficiency would go down.

In May 2010 hundreds of workers marched from their Sharjah Labour Camp to the Ministry in Dubai demanding to be sent home. They claimed they were unpaid for over six months and were kept in squalor. The authorities finally sent home 700 stranded from Sharjah’s Al-Sajar Labor Camp.

So, it does not take a rocket scientist to understand the rationale behind the deployment of R2 in the UAE. The authorities are afraid of these low paid workers and their legitimate rights of which they are robbed. The unholy alliance with a hated trigger-happy murderous group like Blackwater has much to do about containing potential labor unrest, and thus avoiding catastrophes like the ones visited by the former Shah of Iran, and Zine ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. But as history has shown so many times when the time comes no mercenary group can protect an unpopular regime.

In recent years, the Emirati government has showered American defense companies with billions of dollars to help strengthen the country’s security. A company run by Richard A. Clarke, a former counterterrorism adviser during the Clinton and Bush administrations, has won several lucrative contracts to advise the U.A.E. on how to protect its infrastructure.

Emirati military officials had promised that if Erik Prince’s first battalion of R2 was a success, they would pay for an entire brigade of several thousand men. The new contracts would be worth billions, and would help with Mr. Prince’s next big project: a desert training complex for foreign troops patterned after Blackwater’s compound in Moyock, N.C.

In a recent spring night after months stationed in the desert, the R2 mercenaries boarded an unmarked bus and were driven to hotels in central Dubai. There, some R2 executives had arranged for them to spend the evening with prostitutes. Where else in the Arab world but UAE can one find such displays of sexually immoral acts?

In a well-known hadith, Muhammad (S), the Prophet of Islam, said, “Allah the Most High says: ‘There will be three persons against whom I shall fight on the Day of Judgment: (1) the person who makes a promise with an oath in My name and then breaks it, (2) the person who sells a free man as slave and appropriates his sale proceeds, and (3) the person who engages a workman and having taken full work from him fails to pay him his dues.’” [Bukhari: Abu Hurayrah (RA)]

Muhammad (S) also said, “Give the laborer his wages before his sweat dries.” [Ibn Majah: Abdullah b. Umar (RA)]

Something has gone profoundly wrong in the Arab world. The once camel-riding and tent-dwelling, and now jet-flying and high-rise-dwelling modern-day Arabs of the desert had been so busy taking on the modalities and values of modern techno-society that they had completely lost the Deen in all its civic and spiritual identity. They forgot that the best security comes not from mercenaries but from a satisfied workforce that are treated fairly and humanly.

Dr. Habib Siddiqui is a peace activist based in USA.He blogs at http://www.drhabibsiddiqui.blogspot.com/