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Dangerous uncertainty in Pakistan

Relations between the Pakistani government and the military have been tense recently, even resulting in rumours of an impending military coup. A coup is not very likely at this stage, but the situation has created the environment for at least one new political actor to emerge and gain popular support.

With relations between Pakistan’s civilian government and military incredibly tense, speculation is rife in the Pakistani and international media of a looming military takeover. The military is allegedly buoyed by support of the Supreme Court and the country’s business and political elite. However, the nature of events is changing at such a fast pace that it is difficult to predict the future.

The tenuous relationship between the government and the military appears to have finally eased somewhat since the government markedly toned down its anti-military rhetoric. Indeed, Prime Minster Yousuf Raza Gilani has extended an olive branch of sorts to the military. He had previously accused Army Chief of Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the head of Pakistan’s principal intelligence agency, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, of acting unconstitutionally when they expressed their alleged disapproval of the government. Just before Gilani left for the World Economic Forum in Davos in the middle of February, he attempted to smooth over the difficulties with his comment that he wanted to ‘dispel the impression that the military leadership acted unconstitutionally or violated rules… The current situation cannot afford conflict among the institutions.’

Tensions between these institutions reached a tipping point on 11 January 2012 when the prime minister had alleged that the Pakistan Army and its intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had been unlawfully interfering in a controversial court case involving the government. This amounted to accusing the heads of the army of defying the constitution and the democratically-elected government. The military was quick to warn of ‘very serious ramifications’ and ‘grievous consequences’ if the government continued its confrontational posturing. The warning fuelled rumours that the army was planning a coup to force the four year-old PPP-led coalition from office. Later that day, Gilani found himself on the receiving end of the army’s ire when he sacked the defence secretary, Retired-General Khalid Naeem Lodhi, a confidante of Pakistan’s Chief of Armed Services, General Kayani. The person holding the pivotal defence secretary position acts as the liaison between the military and the government.

Lodhi’s dismissal stemmed from his support of the military in the ‘memo-gate’ case. This court case revolves around the scandal that emerged from a memo allegedly sent to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff in the aftermath of the raid in May 2011 by American forces on Osama Bin Laden’s hideout in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. The memo sought the help of the US government to topple the military leadership and to replace it with people more compliant with US designs. While the authenticity of the memo remains uncertain, for the already volatile political landscape of Pakistan the implications of its revelation were explosive. Since the memo had been made public, the government has been under fire, resulting in a petition filed in the Supreme Court.

The resulting crisis saw the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government trying to deal with the matter through a parliamentary committee. However, the leader of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) filed a petition at the Supreme Court, which then claimed jurisdiction over the matter, side-stepping the parliamentary committee. The court enjoys the full support of the army leadership, and Kayani and Pasha have both filed briefs supporting the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction. The military’s indignation is rooted in its belief that the memo was treasonous and that that it will dent the morale of the armed forces.

Gilani’s recent retraction of his anti-military statements in January came on the heels of another very public war of words, this one between the PPP government and the Supreme Court. Regarding the public spat with the army, Gilani claimed his comments had been misinterpreted as he had meant to target only ‘certain functionaries’. This stance convinced no one. There is speculation that Gilani’s backtracking resulted from a secret deal between the government and the army, agreed to in a closed-door meeting between Gilani, Kayani, and Pasha. Such a scenario is not unlikely, considering the unencumbered control the military continues to enjoy over national security, foreign policy and relations with the US.

Scattered reports regarding the alleged secret deal surprised observers who have monitored long-standing tensions between the military leadership and the PPP-led government. The Supreme Court, while toning down its confrontation with PPP leaders, has not withdrawn its cases against the government. Apart from memo-gate, the court is also presiding over a case that will likely order the government to reopen corruption cases pertaining to Swiss accounts held by PPP co-chairman Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari. The court indicted Gilani, and his contempt of court trial – which has overshadowed the memo-gate scandal – will play out over the next few weeks.

Pakistan’s political turmoil comes amidst the population’s worsening socio-economic conditions. Extreme inequality and poverty reflect the endemic corruption of, and catastrophic social policies pursued by, Pakistan’s rulers. Elite cronyism and patronage systems pervade every social, economic, and political aspect of Pakistani life.

The three tiers of the state – the executive, legislature and judiciary – are steeped in corruption and malfeasance. A central problem regarding the crisis scenario being probed by the Supreme Court is that it obscures several other important problems besetting the country. One striking oversight seems to be the judiciary’s indifference towards the army’s role in the memo-gate case, as the memo contains clear accusations regarding the army’s intentions to subvert government authority and derail the democratic process. There is an increasingly prevalent view in the country that the court is dispensing selective justice which is indicative of the deeper power struggles within the state.

Furthermore, the Pakistani police and security forces are rarely perceived to protect the rights of people and the rule of law; indeed, their corruption and torture tactics are notorious and deeply feared by the population. While the media focuses on high-profile show trials, the majority of Pakistanis do not have access to basic necessities, leading to public frustration reaching extraordinary levels. The middle class is shrinking due to rising inflation and the global economic recession and corruption by the PPP is generating tremendous popular anger.

American pressure

At the heart of the mass dissatisfaction is the US-Pakistan relationship that most Pakistanis regard as neo-colonial. There is a widespread sense that Pakistan’s relationship with the United States has not served Pakistani interests and is responsible for a great deal of the current problems, including the suffocating political role of the military due to US support for various military regimes. This has led to a heightened anti-Americanism, particularly since the US invasion of Afghanistan and the expansion of the war, with drone attacks and US special-forces raids, into Pakistan. Nevertheless, the Pakistani elite seems reluctant completely to cut ties with the US because the relationship has been the bedrock of Pakistani rulers’ geopolitical interests.

But increased American pressure on Pakistan to ‘do more’ against terrorism, coupled with mass opposition to US foreign policy, have persuaded the army to ensure it exercises untrammelled control over Pakistan’s relations with Washington – at the expense of the civilian government. The Pakistani elite fears the current government lacks the legitimacy and ability to institute economic restructuring needed to win the confidence of the International Monetary Fund and foreign investors. Furthermore, the elite seems exasperated by the government’s monopoly over corruption and patronage. This is a chronic disposition amongst Pakistan’s oligarchs who feel that when a government is ‘too corrupt’ its appetites need to be tamed and other elites need to retrieve their ‘fair share’ of the pie.

It should be remembered that the PPP did not wholeheartedly back the 2007 mass protests against then-president Pervez Musharraf, because its former leader, Benazir Bhutto, felt the popular feeling of discontent would escape the party’s control. This prompted the PPP to instead approach US President George W. Bush directly to convince him that the PPP would be a more suitable ally in his ‘War on Terror’.

Since assuming power, the PPP has bent over backwards to please Washington, proving it was more pliant to US demands than the military or any other political party. However, the US continued to regard the military as the central player in Pakistani politics, with US officials talking exclusively to the military top brass in major strategic discussions.

Clearly, both the civilian government and the military high command would like to re-establish cordial relations with the US. For the past six decades the alliance with the US has been the cornerstone of the Pakistani national security establishment’s geopolitical strategy. This strategy has, however, been undermined by mass antagonism to US ‘Af-Pak’ policies. The deteriorating ties between the government and the army have also acted as an obstacle for a united Pakistani foreign policy.

Drone war

As Pakistan wallows in perennial uncertainty, the US continues to launch drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The recent resumption of attacks comes after the November NATO strike on a Pakistani military check-post which killed twenty-six soldiers. Following the uproar in Pakistan, the Pentagon conceded that errors had been made, yet justified the attack as ‘self-defence’. The Obama administration’s failure to specify who was being targeted by the drones highlighted that Pakistani sovereignty was irrelevant to US-NATO geo-strategic objectives.

Drone attacks resumed after The New York Times published a report in December claiming that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, among other insurgent groups, had been bolstered by the halt in US drone strikes. The article concluded that the hiatus allowed for a coalition between the Taliban and sympathetic militias in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Furthermore, it was claimed, the break had opened the door for a deal between the Taliban and the Pakistani government.

This NYT article – and the larger imperial discourse it fed into – acted as the pretext for the US military establishment to by-pass the Obama administration, which was attempting to rebuild trust with Islamabad, and push its military agenda.

While the US continues to justify drone attacks as an efficient way of eliminating ‘terrorists’, the human cost of the strikes is barely recognised. Hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent villagers have lost their lives in these assaults. The rate and intensity of the attacks can be gleaned from a report by the pro-US ‘Long War’ website, which conservatively estimated that US forces carried out more than 180 drone missile attacks in Pakistan in 2010 and 2011.

In the short term, it seems likely that there will be continuity in Pakistani state policy – maintaining a public posture of vocally asserting Pakistani sovereignty while strengthening the alliance with the US. While organs of the Pakistani state continue vigorously to denounce drone attacks in public, the Pakistani military and civilian elites have consented to, and sometimes even requested, these strikes.

Foreign influences

The dominant foreign influence in Pakistan is that of the US which is focused on expanding its hegemony in Central, West, and South-west Asia and in containing the influence of rivals such as China, Russia, and Iran. Washington has successfully retained Pakistan in its geo-strategic orbit, showering it with billions of dollars to enlist the Pakistani military in America’s ‘Af-Pak’ theatre of its ‘War on Terror’. However, US indifference to the Pakistani state’s own geo-strategic interests has produced unfavourable results with regard to combating and curtailing terrorism, and establishing western control and stability in Afghanistan. Indeed, there has been destabilisation in both Afghanistan and Pakistan due to the policies and approach Washington has pursued since is invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The influence on Pakistan of political developments and political actors in Afghanistan cannot be underestimated. Ever since the US-led war in Afghanistan, Pakistan has been a pivotal player because of its age-old relationship and involvement with its western neighbour. Furthermore, a significant consequence of the decade-long war was that it regenerated the long-standing tribal and kinship ties of the Pashtun people along both sides of the artificial Durand Line – the British-imposed border that separates Pakistan from Afghanistan. This has compelled many Pashtuns, who feel disenfranchised in Afghanistan despite comprising sixty percent of the population, to flee across the border into Pakistan. Washington and its NATO allies, along with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, have accused these Afghan Pashtuns of joining forces with their Pakistani Pashtun brethren, and of being primarily responsible for the resistance to foreign occupation.

 Al-Qaeda and the Taliban remain important actors of global significance. The latter have recently been closely monitored by the Pakistani security establishment due to the emergence of its new Pakistani component, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Al-Qaeda is a marginal force and capitalises on the support that the resurgent Taliban receives from an Afghan (and Pakistani) population increasingly disgusted by western occupation and meddling.

A role-player not to be forgotten is Pakistan’s long-standing foe and eastern neighbour – India. While Pakistan did make a significant shift in its policy of low intensity conflict that entailed supporting and arming non-state actors fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, it is still accused of supporting ‘cross-border terrorism’ in India – the most recent being the Mumbai terror attack in November 2008. The Pakistani political establishment firmly believes that India, now a partner of the US, is trying to weaken and destabilise Pakistan by expanding Indian economic and strategic influence in Afghanistan, and by supporting non-state actors inside Pakistan who are engaged in anti-state violence – especially in the province of Balochistan.

Other significant foreign influences in Pakistan include China and Saudi Arabia. China is an old Pakistani ally, and as the Pakistani military becomes frustrated with American heavy-handedness and political pressure, the Pakistani establishment increasingly looks to its alliance with China. Economic and strategic ties between Pakistan and China have greatly expanded over the past year. Saudi Arabia has always served as a useful intermediary between Pakistan and the US – at least since the Afghan ‘jihad’ against the Soviet Union in the 1980s – and the Saudis continue to have considerable influence on Pakistani civilian and military authorities. The Saudi monarchy often mediates and resolves conflicts within the Pakistani elite.

Pakistani nuclear project and security concerns

As might be expected, Pakistan’s nuclear programme is shrouded in secrecy for national security reasons. It has, therefore, always been a difficult task to speculate on the size and nature of control mechanisms over the nuclear programme. On the whole, however, serious and credible experts are convinced that the programme is safe ,secure and firmly under the close watch of the military high command. Indeed, this is what former President Musharraf asserted whenever the US raised concerns. Western governments and think tanks, however, constantly raise concerns about the infiltration of the intelligence services and the army by extremist elements, and predict how these ‘rogue’ individuals may capture Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

The government and military officials firmly maintain that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are secure because of rigorous background checks and continuous monitoring of personnel ‘for extremist sympathies’, and continually stress the military’s scrupulous approach and careful monitoring in this regard.

Nevertheless, The Atlantic and the National Journal, in a recent joint report that cited unnamed sources, asserted that the May 2011 assassination of Osama bin Laden had renewed the fears of sections of the Pakistani establishment that the US planned to dismantle Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. This fear ostensibly has made the weapons more vulnerable as the Pakistani authorities would, according to the claim, be inclined to disperse the weapons stockpile to keep its location hidden. ‘Instead of transporting the nuclear parts in armoured, well-defended convoys,’ the report asserted, ‘the atomic bombs capable of destroying entire cities are transported in delivery vans on congested and dangerous roads.’

Pakistani authorities dismiss the assertions in this and similar reports. But repeated concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons indicate 1) propaganda pressure tactics, or 2) a genuine belief by western powers that the programme is unsafe. Analysts, however, note that it is western intervention that creates the conditions of instability that could place the weapons at the risk of ‘falling into the wrong hands’. Such an eventuality will occur only in the event of serious, irreconcilable fissures within the military high command and officer corps – something which has not yet happened.

Volatile politics

The popularity of the PPP government has plummeted in the past year with persistent accusations of corruption, failure to remedy systemic economic woes and the resurgence of a politicised civil society. Besieged from all sides, the government is struggling to complete its five-year term and speculation is rife about an early election. Opposition parties are gaining ground by tapping into the mass resentment. The leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) – and charismatic former captain of Pakistan’s cricket team, Imran Khan, has held several massive rallies and is emerging as a serious political contender in the upcoming general elections. One of his core platforms is uncompromising opposition to the US ‘War on Terror’. Khan’s position against American policies in the region and in Pakistan specifically, as well as his strong advocacy for national policies that advance greater social and economic justice in the country, has made him the most popular political figure in Pakistan.

The traditional opposition to the PPP is found in ethnic- and religious-based parties. The Pakistani elite, while occasionally patronising this opposition, feels it is neither adequately equipped to ride the storm of IMF austerity measures currently dogging Pakistan’s economy nor to ensure stability in the country. There is now a view that the establishment-elite is giving tacit support to Khan’s political campaign.

Concern over Pakistan’s vulnerable economy coupled with a deteriorating balance of payments situation makes the country a prime candidate for a fresh loan. With a budget deficit estimated at seven percent of the GDP and with an inflation rate of twelve percent, the lax monetary policy of the State Bank of Pakistan has been severely criticised by the IMF which would like to make new loans conditional on stipulations that include a tax increase. Since the government reneged on the loan agreement negotiated in 2008, the IMF has not resumed loan instalments even in the face of the humanitarian crisis that followed the floods of 2010 and 2011. Moreover, the US has displayed an unwillingness to leverage the IMF in loan negotiations due to weakened Pakistan-US relations. Plans to appease the US include promises to reopen the US-NATO supply route from Pakistan to Afghanistan – which was effectively shut down after the November US attack.

For several decades the elite had called on the Pakistan Army to stabilise the country’s political situation. However, there is now reluctance to resort to military intervention and thus derail the democratic dispensation. The military suffers from a credibility deficit as it was ousted from direct rule via a popular movement only four years ago.

Owing to the mercurial nature of Pakistani politics, even the most prudent analysts are wary of ruling out any option. As a ‘senior US official’ posited in a Reuters report, ‘Things have calmed down in the last week or so… but this is Pakistan. Any of the players could do something unexpected.’ This assessment ignores the destabilising impact of the Pakistan-US relationship which culminated in the US forcing Pakistan to ‘do more’ in the ‘War on terror’, thus ravaging the north-west Pashtun-speaking tribal areas in a bid to root out Taliban-aligned militias, and pushing Washington’s neo-liberal policies through support for IMF restructuring.

Conclusion

The current deadlock between the government on the one hand and the Supreme Court and the army on the other reflects a wider, recurring trend in Pakistani politics. While the faces might change, the issues being debated and the powerful interests at stake tend to remain fairly constant.

Power struggles and fissures in leadership have been a perennial feature of the Pakistani state since independence. However, this dynamic has become exponentially dangerous in the face of ever-widening social and economic gaps between the ruling elite and the population. In the wake of new global political realities following the Middle East-North Africa uprisings, the Pakistani elite has become paralysed with fear of the growing discontent emerging from a myriad issues ranging from the ‘War on terror’ to economic instability and the disintegration of public infrastructure.

In an incredibly brazen acknowledgement, US President Barack Obama for the first time recently declared what had already been common knowledge in Pakistan: the US conducts drone strikes inside the country. Such a proclamation demonstrates callous disregard for the wishes of the Pakistani people and utter indifference to both the sovereignty and interests of the Pakistani state. Whether Obama has brought ‘change’ to America is uncertain. But as far as most Pakistanis are concerned, he certainly has brought change to Pakistan – for the worse.

By Junaid S. Ahmed

29 February 2012

@ AMEC

Junaid S. Ahmed teaches in the Faculty of Law and Policy at the Lahore University for Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan

 

Court Martial Opens Against Bradley Manning

Accused US Army whistleblower Bradley Manning entered no plea in the brief opening hearing of military court martial February 23. The 24-year-old Army private also deferred a choice of whether to be tried by military judge or jury.

Manning faces 22 charges under the Espionage Act, including “aiding the enemy,” for allegedly leaking 700,000 military and government files while working as an Army intelligence analyst. The charges carry a maximum sentence of death. While military prosecutors said they were pursuing “only” a term of life in prison during the pre-trial hearing late last year, under court martial, Manning may still be subject to capital punishment.

Many of the files that Manning is charged with leaking document evidence of war crimes committed by US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq; these were published by the whistleblower organization WikiLeaks.

The hearing at Fort Meade, Maryland, lasted less than an hour, during which Manning spoke only a few times, to acknowledge that he understood the course of the proceedings.

Manning’s defense attorney, David Coombs, has pressed for a trial by April. Legal experts have said that by deferring to enter a plea or choose a judge or jury, the defense could have more time to negotiate a deal. Manning has been held in prison for 19 months, during much of which he was tormented in solitary confinement and denied access to legal counsel, exercise, and other basic necessities.

Military judge Colonel Denise Lind concluded by scheduling another session March 15. The government wants to schedule the trial for August 3. By this time, Manning will have been held without being convicted of a crime for more than 800 days. Under military law, courts martial are required to be held within 120 days of arrest. The fate of Manning makes a mockery of the constitutional right to a speedy trial.

The government has sought to break down the young soldier in an effort to arrive at a plea bargain, the terms of which would likely include a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. The prosecution has asserted that it has evidence in its possession that links Manning directly to Assange (see: “Manning prosecution lays basis for terror charge against WikiLeaks founder Assange”).

The government has also, with no proof, claimed that the leaks have endangered the security of the US and its military personnel by making information available publicly, and therefore accessible to al Qaeda or other enemies of the US government.

Assange is presently fighting extradition to Sweden on trumped-up charges; if he is transferred to Sweden, he faces possible extradition to the US to face a drumhead trial on terrorism charges.

Rather than mount an argument on the basis of opposition to war crimes, censorship, and attacks on democratic rights, Manning’s defense team has focused on the young soldier’s emotional state during the time he was stationed in Iraq, insisting that he never should have been granted access to classified material in the first place. During the pre-trial hearing, Coombs centered his efforts on having the 22 charges reduced to 3, for a sentence of 30 years in prison.

Media reports note that observers of the hearing were sparse, with only 20 in attendance and no more than half a dozen journalists. Another 10 journalists watched the proceeding via closed-circuit television.

US media coverage was conspicuously muted. The Associated Press wire report that was picked up by the major newspapers commented that the “only outburst was as the judge adjourned the hearing.” A 70-year-old anti-war activist from nearby Baltimore, Maryland, asked, “Judge, isn’t a soldier required to report a war crime?” The interruption elicited no response from Lind.

By Naomi Spencer

27 February 2012

WSWS.org

 

 

China: Rise, Fall And Re-Emergence As A Global Power: Some Lessons From The Past

Introduction: The study of world power has been blighted by Eurocentric historians who have distorted and ignored the dominant role China played in the world economy

John Hobson’s[1] brilliant historical survey of the world economy during this period provides an abundance of empirical data making the case for China’s economic and technological superiority over Western civilization for the better part of a millennium prior to its conquest and decline in the 19th century.

China’s re-emergence as a world economic power raises important questions about what we can learn from its previous rise and fall and about the external and internal threats confronting this emerging economic superpower for the immediate future.

First we will outline the main contours of historical China’s rise to global economic superiority over West before the 19th century, following closely John Hobson’s account in The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization. Since the majority of western economic historians (liberal, conservative and Marxist) have presented historical China as a stagnant, backward, parochial society, an “oriental despotism”, some detailed correctives will be necessary. It is especially important to emphasize how China, the world technological power between 1100 and 1800, made the West’s emergence possible. It was only by borrowing and assimilating Chinese innovations that the West was able to make the transition to modern capitalist and imperialist economies.

In part two we will analyze and discuss the factors and circumstances which led to China’s decline in the 19th century and its subsequent domination, exploitation and pillage by Western imperial countries, first England and then the rest of Europe, Japan and the United States.

In part three, we will briefly outline the factors leading to China’s emancipation from colonial and neo-colonial rule and analyze its recent rise to becoming the second largest global economic power.

Finally we will look at the past and present threats to China’s rise to global economic power, highlighting the similarities between British colonialism of the 18 and 19th centuries and the current US imperial strategies and focusing on the weaknesses and strengths of past and present Chinese responses.

China: The Rise and Consolidation of Global Power 1100 – 1800

In a systematic comparative format, John Hobson provides a wealth of empirical indicators demonstrating China’s global economic superiority over the West and in particular England. These are some striking facts:

As early as 1078, China was the world’s major producer of steel (125,000 tons); whereas Britain in 1788 produced 76,000 tons.

China was the world’s leader in technical innovations in textile manufacturing, seven centuries before Britain’s 18th century “textile revolution”.

China was the leading trading nation, with long distance trade reaching most of Southern Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

China’s ‘agricultural revolution’ and productivity surpassed the West down to the 18th century.

Its innovations in the production of paper, book printing, firearms and tools led to a manufacturing superpower whose goods were transported throughout the world by the most advanced navigational system.

China possessed the world’s largest commercial ships. In 1588 the largest English ships displaced 400 tons, China’s 3,000 tons. Even as late as the end of the 18th century China’s merchants employed 130,000 private transport ships, several times that of Britain. China retained this pre-eminent position in the world economy up until the early 19th century.

British and Europeans manufacturers followed China’s lead, assimilating and borrowing its more advanced technology and were eager to penetrate China’s advanced and lucrative market.

Banking, a stable paper money economy, manufacturing and high yields in agriculture resulted in China’s per capita income matching that of Great Britain as late as 1750.

China’s dominant global position was challenged by the rise of British imperialism, which had adopted the advanced technological, navigational and market innovations of China and other Asian countries in order to bypass earlier stages in becoming a world power[2].

Western Imperialism and the Decline of China

The British and Western imperial conquest of the East, was based on the militaristic nature of the imperial state, its non-reciprocal economic relations with overseas trading countries and the Western imperial ideology which motivated and justified overseas conquest.

Unlike China, Britain’s industrial revolution and overseas expansion was driven by a military policy. According to Hobson, during the period from 1688-1815 Great Britain was engaged in wars 52% of the time[3]. Whereas the Chinese relied on their open markets and their superior production and sophisticated commercial and banking skills, the British relied on tariff protection, military conquest, the systematic destruction of competitive overseas enterprises as well as the appropriation and plunder of local resources. China’s global predominance was based on ‘reciprocal benefits’ with its trading partners, while Britain relied on mercenary armies of occupation, savage repression and a ‘divide and conquer’ policy to foment local rivalries. In the face of native resistance, the British (as well as other Western imperial powers) did not hesitate to exterminate entire communities[4].

Unable to take over the Chinese market through greater economic competitiveness, Britain relied on brute military power. It mobilized, armed and led mercenaries, drawn from its colonies in India and elsewhere to force its exports on China and impose unequal treaties to lower tariffs. As a result China was flooded with British opium produced on its plantations in India – despite Chinese laws forbidding or regulating the importation and sale of the narcotic. China’s rulers, long accustomed to its trade and manufacturing superiority, were unprepared for the ‘new imperial rules’ for global power. The West’s willingness to use military power to win colonies, pillage resources and recruit huge mercenary armies commanded by European officers spelt the end for China as a world power.

China had based its economic predominance on ‘non-interference in the internal affairs of its trading partners’. In contrast, British imperialists intervened violently in Asia, reorganizing local economies to suit the needs of the empire (eliminating economic competitors including more efficient Indian cotton manufacturers) and seized control of local political, economic and administrative apparatus to establish the colonial state.

Britain’s empire was built with resources seized from the colonies and through the massive militarization of its economy[5]. It was thus able to secure military supremacy over China. China’s foreign policy was hampered by its ruling elite’s excessive reliance on trade relations. Chinese officials and merchant elites sought to appease the British and convinced the emperor to grant devastating extra-territorial concessions opening markets to the detriment of Chinese manufacturers while surrendering local sovereignty. As always, the British precipitated internal rivalries and revolts further destabilizing the country.

Western and British penetration and colonization of China’s market created an entire new class: The wealthy Chinese ‘compradores’ imported British goods and facilitated the takeover of local markets and resources. Imperialist pillage forced greater exploitation and taxation of the great mass of Chinese peasants and workers. China’s rulers were obliged to pay the war debts and finance trade deficits imposed by the Western imperial powers by squeezing its peasantry. This drove the peasants to starvation and revolt.

By the early 20th century (less than a century after the Opium Wars), China had descended from world economic power to a broken semi-colonial country with a huge destitute population. The principle ports were controlled by Western imperial officials and the countryside was subject to the rule by corrupt and brutal warlords. British opium enslaved millions.

British Academics: Eloquent Apologists for Imperial Conquest

The entire Western academic profession – first and foremost British imperial historians – attributed British imperial dominance of Asia to English ‘technological superiority’ and China’s misery and colonial status to ‘oriental backwardness’, omitting any mention of the millennium of Chinese commercial and technical progress and superiority up to the dawn of the 19th century. By the end of the 1920’s, with the Japanese imperial invasion, China ceased to exist as a unified country. Under the aegis of imperial rule, hundreds of millions of Chinese had starved or were dispossessed or slaughtered, as the Western powers and Japan plundered its economy. The entire Chinese ‘collaborator’ comprador elite were discredited before the Chinese people.

What did remain in the collective memory of the great mass of the Chinese people – and what was totally absent in the accounts of prestigious US and British academics – was the sense of China once having been a prosperous, dynamic and leading world power. Western commentators dismissed this collective memory of China’s ascendancy as the foolish pretensions of nostalgic lords and royalty – empty Han arrogance.

China Rises from the Ashes of Imperial Plunder and Humiliation: The Chinese Communist Revolution

The rise of modern China to become the second largest economy in the world was made possible only through the success of the Chinese communist revolution in the mid-20th century. The People’s Liberation ‘Red’ Army defeated first the invading Japanese imperial army and later the US imperialist-backed comprador led Kuomintang “Nationalist” army. This allowed the reunification of China as an independent sovereign state. The Communist government abolished the extra-territorial privileges of the Western imperialists, ended the territorial fiefdoms of the regional warlords and gangsters and drove out the millionaire owners of brothels, the traffickers of women and drugs as well as the other “service providers” to the Euro-American Empire.

In every sense of the word, the Communist revolution forged the modern Chinese state. The new leaders then proceeded to reconstruct an economy ravaged by imperial wars and pillaged by Western and Japanese capitalists. After over 150 years of infamy and humiliation the Chinese people recovered their pride and national dignity. These socio-psychological elements were essential in motivating the Chinese to defend their country from the US attacks, sabotage, boycotts, and blockades mounted immediately after liberation.

Contrary to Western and neoliberal Chinese economists, China’s dynamic growth did not start in 1980. It began in 1950, when the agrarian reform provided land, infrastructure, credits and technical assistance to hundreds of millions of landless and destitute peasants and landless rural workers. Through what is now called “human capital” and gigantic social mobilization, the Communists built roads, airfields, bridges, canals and railroads as well as the basic industries, like coal, iron and steel, to form the backbone of the modern Chinese economy. Communist China’s vast free educational and health systems created a healthy, literate and motivated work force. Its highly professional military prevented the US from extending its military empire throughout the Korean peninsula up to China’s territorial frontiers. Just as past Western scholars and propagandists fabricated a history of a “stagnant and decadent” empire to justify their destructive conquest, so too their modern counterparts have rewritten the first thirty years of Chinese Communist history, denying the role of the revolution in developing all the essential elements for a modern economy, state and society. It is clear that China’s rapid economic growth was based on the development of its internal market, its rapidly growing cadre of scientists, skilled technicians and workers and the social safety net which protected and promoted working class and peasant mobility were products of Communist planning and investments.

China’s rise to global power began in 1949 with the removal of the entire parasitic financial, compradore and speculative classes who had served as the intermediaries for European, Japanese and US imperialists draining China of its great wealth.

China’s Transition to Capitalism

Beginning in 1980 the Chinese government initiated a dramatic shift in its economic strategy: Over the next three decades, it opened the country to large-scale foreign investment; it privatized thousands of industries and it set in motion a process of income concentration based on a deliberate strategy of re-creating a dominant economic class of billionaires linked to overseas capitalists. China’s ruling political class embraced the idea of “borrowing” technical know-how and accessing overseas markets from foreign firms in exchange for providing cheap, plentiful labor at the lowest cost. The Chinese state re-directed massive public subsidies to promote high capitalist growth by dismantling its national system of free public education and health care. They ended subsidized public housing for hundreds of millions of peasants and urban factory workers and provided funds to real estate speculators for the construction of private luxury apartments and office skyscrapers. China’s new capitalist strategy as well as its double digit growth was based on the profound structural changes and massive public investments made possible by the previous communist government. China’s private sector “take off” was based on the huge public outlays made since 1949.

The triumphant new capitalist class and its Western collaborators claimed all the credit for this “economic miracle” as China rose to become the world’s second largest economy. This new Chinese elite have been less eager to announce China’s world-class status in terms of brutal class inequalities, rivaling only the US.

China: From Imperial Dependency to World Class Competitor

China’s sustained growth in its manufacturing sector was a result of highly concentrated public investments, high profits, technological innovations and a protected domestic market. While foreign capital profited, it was always within the framework of the Chinese state’s priorities and regulations. The regime’s dynamic ‘export strategy’ led to huge trade surpluses, which eventually made China one of the world’s largest creditors especially for US debt. In order to maintain its dynamic industries, China has required huge influxes of raw materials, resulting in large-scale overseas investments and trade agreements with agro-mineral export countries in Africa and Latin America. By 2010 China displaced the US and Europe as the main trading partner in many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Modern China’s rise to world economic power, like its predecessor between 1100-1800, is based on its gigantic productive capacity: Trade and investment was governed by a policy of strict non-interference in the internal relations of its trading partners. Unlike the US, China did initiate brutal wars for oil; instead it signed lucrative contracts. And China does not fight wars in the interest of overseas Chinese, as the US has done in the Middle East for Israel.

The seeming imbalance between Chinese economic and military power is in stark contrast to the US where a bloated, parasitic military empire continues to erode its own global economic presence.

US military spending is twelve times that of China. Increasingly the US military plays the key role shaping policy in Washington as it seeks to undercut China’s rise to global power.

China’s Rise to World Power: Will History Repeat Itself?

China has been growing at about 9% per annum and its goods and services are rapidly rising in quality and value. In contrast, the US and Europe have wallowed around 0% growth from 2007-2012. China’s innovative techno-scientific establishment routinely assimilates the latest inventions from the West (and Japan) and improves them, thereby decreasing the cost of production. China has replaced the US and European controlled “international financial institutions” (the IMF, World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank) as the principle lender in Latin America. China continues to lead as the prime investor in African energy and mineral resources. China has replaced the US as the principle market for Saudi Arabian, Sudanese and Iranian petroleum and it will soon replace the US as the principle market for Venezuela petroleum products. Today China is the world’s biggest manufacturer and exporter, dominating even the US market, while playing the role of financial life line as it holds over $1.3 trillion in US Treasury notes.

Under growing pressure from its workers, farmers and peasants, China’s rulers have been developing the domestic market by increasing wages and social spending to rebalance the economy and avoid the specter of social instability. In contrast, US wages, salaries and vital public services have sharply declined in absolute and relative terms.

Given the current historical trends it is clear that China will replace the US as the leading world economic power, over the next decade, if the US empire does not strike back and if China’s profound class inequalities do not lead to a major social upheaval.

Modern China’s rise to global power faces serious challenges. In contrast to China’s historical ascent on the world stage, modern Chinese global economic power is not accompanied by any imperialist undertakings. China has seriously lagged behind the US and Europe in aggressive war-making capacity. This may have allowed China to direct public resources to maximize economic growth, but it has left China vulnerable to US military superiority in terms of its massive arsenal, its string of forward bases and strategic geo-military positions right off the Chinese coast and in adjoining territories.

In the nineteenth century British imperialism demolished China’s global position with its military superiority, seizing China’s ports – because of China’s reliance on ‘mercantile superiority’.

The conquest of India, Burma and most of Asia allowed Britain to establish colonial bases and recruit local mercenary armies. The British and its mercenary allies encircled and isolated China, setting the stage for the disruption of China’s markets and the imposition of the brutal terms of trade. The British Empire’s armed presence dictated what China imported (with opium accounting for over 50% of British exports in the 1850s) while undermining China’s competitive advantages via tariff policies.

Today the US is pursuing similar policies: US naval fleet patrols and controls China’s commercial shipping lanes and off-shore oil resources via its overseas bases. The Obama-Clinton White House is in the process of developing a rapid military response involving bases in Australia, Philippines and elsewhere in Asia. The US is intensifying its efforts to undermine Chinese overseas access to strategic resources while backing ‘grass roots’ separatists and ‘insurgents’ in West China, Tibet, Sudan, Burma, Iran, Libya, Syria and elsewhere. The US military agreements with India and the installation of a pliable puppet regime in Pakistan have advanced its strategy of isolating China. While China upholds its policy of “harmonious development” and “non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries”, it has stepped aside as US and European military imperialism have attacked a host of China’s trading partners to essentially reverse China’s peaceful commercial expansion.

China’s lack of a political and ideological strategy capable of protecting its overseas economic interests has been an invitation for the US and NATO to set-up regimes hostile to China. The most striking example is Libya where US and NATO intervened to overthrow an independent government led by President Gadhafi, with whom China had signed multi-billion dollar trade and investments agreements. The NATO bombardment of Libyan cities, ports and oil installation forced the Chinese to withdraw 35,000 Chinese oil engineers and construction workers in a matter of days. The same thing happened in Sudan where China had invested billions to develop its oil industry. The US, Israel and Europe armed the South Sudanese rebels to disrupt the flow of oil and attack Chinese oil workers[6]. In both cases China passively allowed the US and European military imperialists to attack its trade partners and undermine its investments.

Under Mao Tse Tung, China had an active policy countering imperial aggression: It supported revolutionary movements and independent Third World governments. Today’s capitalist China does not have an active policy of supporting governments or movements capable of protecting China’s bilateral trade and investment agreements. China’s inability to confront the rising tide of US military aggression against its economic interests, is due to deep structural problems. China’s foreign policy is shaped by big commercial, financial and manufacturing interests who rely on their ‘economic competitive edge’ to gain market shares and have no understanding of the military and security underpinnings of global economic power. China’s political class is deeply influenced by a new class of billionaires with strong ties to Western equity funds and who have uncritically absorbed Western cultural values. This is illustrated by their preference for sending their own children to elite universities in the US and Europe. They seek “accommodation with the West” at any price. This lack of any strategic understanding of military empire-building has led them to respond ineffectively and ad hoc to each imperialist action undermining their access to resources and markets. While China’s “business first” outlook may have worked when it was a minor player in the world economy and US empire builders saw the “capitalist opening” as a chance to easily takeover China’s public enterprises and pillage the economy. However, when China (in contrast to the former USSR) decided to retain capital controls and develop a carefully calibrated, state directed “industrial policy” directing western capital and the transfer of technology to state enterprises, which effectively penetrated the US domestic and overseas markets, Washington began to complain and talked of retaliation. China’s huge trade surpluses with the US provoked a dual response in Washington: It sold massive quantities of US Treasury bonds to the Chinese and began to develop a global strategy to block China’s advance. Since the US lacked economic leverage to reverse its decline, it relied on its only “comparative advantage” – its military superiority based on a world wide system of attack bases, a network of overseas client regimes, military proxies, NGO’ers, intellectuals and armed mercenaries. Washington turned to its vast overt and clandestine security apparatus to undermine China’s trading partners. Washington depends on its long-standing ties with corrupt rulers, dissidents, journalists and media moguls to provide the powerful propaganda cover while advancing its military offensive against China’s overseas interests.

China has nothing to compare with the US overseas ‘security apparatus’ because it practices a policy of “non-interference”. Given the advanced state of the Western imperial offensive, China has taken only a few diplomatic initiatives, such as financing English language media outlets to present its perspective, using its veto power on the UN Security Council to oppose US efforts to overthrow the independent Assad regime in Syria and opposing the imposition of drastic sanctions against Iran. It sternly repudiated US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s vitriolic questioning of the ‘legitimacy’ of the Chinese state when it voted against the US-UN resolution preparing an attack on Syria[7].

Chinese military strategists are more aware and alarmed at the growing military threat to China. They have successfully demanded a 19% annual increase in military spending over the next five years (2011-2015)[8]. Even with this increase, China’s military expenditures will still be less than one-fifth of the US military budget and China has not one overseas military base in stark contrast to the over 750 US installations abroad. Overseas Chinese intelligence operations are minimal and ineffective. Its embassies are run by and for narrow commercial interests who utterly failed to understand NATO’s brutal policy of regime change in Libya and inform Beijing of its significance to the Chinese state.

There are two other structural weaknesses undermining China’s rise as a world power. This includes the highly ‘Westernized’ intelligentsia which has uncritically swallowed US economic doctrine about free markets while ignoring its militarized economy. These Chinese intellectuals parrot the US propaganda about the ‘democratic virtues’ of billion-dollar Presidential campaigns, while supporting financial deregulation which would have led to a Wall Street takeover of Chinese banks and savings. Many Chinese business consultants and academics have been educated in the US and influenced by their ties to US academics and international financial institutions directly linked to Wall Street and the City of London. They have prospered as highly-paid consultants receiving prestigious positions in Chinese institutions. They identify the ‘liberalization of financial markets’ with “advanced economies” capable of deepening ties to global markets instead of as a major source of the current global financial crisis. These “Westernized intellectuals” are like their 19th century comprador counterparts who underestimated and dismissed the long-term consequences of Western imperial penetration. They fail to understand how financial deregulation in the US precipitated the current crisis and how deregulation would lead to a Western takeover of China’s financial system- the consequences of which would reallocate China’s domestic savings to non-productive activities (real estate speculation), precipitate financial crisis and ultimately undermine China’s leading global position.

These Chinese yuppies imitate the worst of Western consumerist life styles and their political outlooks are driven by these life styles and Westernized identities which preclude any sense of solidarity with their own working class.

There is an economic basis for the pro-Western sentiments of China’s neo-compradors. They have transferred billions of dollars to foreign bank accounts, purchased luxury homes and apartments in London, Toronto, Los Angeles, Manhattan, Paris, Hong Kong and Singapore. They have one foot in China (the source of their wealth) and the other in the West (where they consume and hide their wealth).

Westernized compradores are deeply embedded in China’s economic system having family ties with the political leadership in the party apparatus and the state. Their connections are weakest in the military and in the growing social movements, although some “dissident” students and academic activists in the “democracy movements” are backed by Western imperial NGO’s. To the extent that the compradors gain influence, they weaken the strong economic state institutions which have directed China’s ascent to global power, just as they did in the 19th century by acting as intermediaries for the British Empire. Proclaiming 19th Century “liberalism” British opium addicted over 50 million Chinese in less than a decade. Proclaiming “democracy and human rights” US gunboats now patrol off China’s coast. China’s elite-directed rise to global economic power has spawned monumental inequalities between the thousands of new billionaires and multi-millionaires at the top and hundreds of millions of impoverished workers, peasants and migrant workers at the bottom.

China’s rapid accumulation of wealth and capital was made possible through the intense exploitation of its workers who were stripped of their previous social safety net and regulated work conditions guaranteed under Communism. Millions of Chinese households are being dispossessed in order to promote real estate developer/speculators who then build high rise offices and the luxury apartments for the domestic and foreign elite. These brutal features of ascendant Chinese capitalism have created a fusion of workplace and living space mass struggle which is growing every year. The developer/speculators’ slogan “to get rich is wonderful” has lost its power to deceive the people. In 2011 there were over 200,000 popular encompassing urban coastal factories and rural villages. The next step, which is sure to come, will be the unification of these struggles into new national social movements with a class-based agenda demanding the restoration of health and educational services enjoyed under the Communists as well as a greater share of China’s wealth. Current demands for greater wages can turn to demands for greater work place democracy. To answer these popular demands China’s new compradore-Westernized liberals cannot point to their ‘model’ in the US empire where American workers are in the process of being stripped of the very benefits Chinese workers are struggling to regain.

China, torn by deepening class and political conflict, cannot sustain its drive toward global economic leadership. China’s elite cannot confront the rising global imperial military threat from the US with its comprador allies among the internal liberal elite while the country is a deeply divided society with an increasingly hostile working class. The time of unbridled exploitation of China’s labor has to end in order to face the US military encirclement of China and economic disruption of its overseas markets. China possesses enormous resources. With over $1.5 trillion dollars in reserves China can finance a comprehensive national health and educational program throughout the country.

China can afford to pursue an intensive ‘public housing program’ for the 250 million migrant workers currently living in urban squalor. China can impose a system of progressive income taxes on its new billionaires and millionaires and finance small family farmer co-operatives and rural industries to rebalance the economy. Their program of developing alternative energy sources, such as solar panels and wind farms – are a promising start to addressing their serious environmental pollution. Degradation of the environment and related health issues already engage the concern of tens of millions. Ultimately China’s best defense against imperial encroachments is a stable regime based on social justice for the hundreds of millions and a foreign policy of supporting overseas anti-imperialist movements and regimes – whose independence are in China’s vital interest. What is needed is a pro-active policy based on mutually beneficial joint ventures including military and diplomatic solidarity. Already a small, but influential, group of Chinese intellectuals have raised the issue of the growing US military threat and are “saying no to gunboat diplomacy”.[9]

Modern China has plenty of resources and opportunities, unavailable to China in the 19th century when it was subjugated by the British Empire. If the US continues to escalate its aggressive militaristic policy against China, Beijing can set off a serious fiscal crisis by dumping a few of its hundreds of billions of dollars in US Treasury notes. China, a nuclear power should reach out to its similarly armed and threatened neighbor, Russia, to confront and confound the bellicose rantings of US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton. Russian President-to-be Putin vows to increase military spending from 3% to 6% of the GDP over the next decade to counter Washington’s offensive missile bases on Russia’s borders and thwart Obama’s ‘regime change’ programs against its allies, like Syria[10].

China has powerful trading, financial and investment networks covering the globe as well as powerful economic partners .These links have become essential for the continued growth of many of countries throughout the developing world. In taking on China, the US will have to face the opposition of many powerful market-based elites throughout the world. Few countries or elites see any future in tying their fortunes to an economically unstable empire-based on militarism and destructive colonial occupations.

In other words, modern China, as a world power, is incomparably stronger than it was in early 18th century. The US does not have the colonial leverage that the ascendant British Empire possessed in the run-up to the Opium Wars. Moreover, many Chinese intellectuals and the vast majority of its citizens have no intention of letting its current “Westernized compradors” sell out the country. Nothing would accelerate political polarization in Chinese society and hasten the coming of a second Chinese social revolution more than a timid leadership submitting to a new era of Western imperial pillage.

[1] John Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press 2004)

[2] Ibid, Ch. 9 pp. 190 -218

[3] Ibid, Ch. 11, pp. 244-248

[4] Richard Gott, Britain’s Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt (London: Verso 2011) for a detailed historical chronicle of the savagery accompanying Britain’s colonial empire.

[5] Hobson, pp. 253 – 256.

[6] Katrina Manson, “South Sudan puts Beijing’s policies to the test”, Financial Times, 2/21/12, p. 5.

[7] Interview of Clinton NPR, 2/26/12.

[8] La Jornada, 2/15/12 (Mexico City).

[9] China Daily (2/20/2012)

[10]Charles Clover, ‘Putin vows huge boost in defense spending’, Financial Times, 2/12/2012

By James Petras

7 March 2012

@ The James Petras Site

James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals. He has published over 2000 articles in nonprofessional journals and his commentary is widely carried on the internet.

 

China offers other Brics renminbi loans

China intends to extend renminbi loans to other Brics nations, in another step towards the internationalisation of its currency.

The China Development Bank will sign a memorandum of understanding in New Delhi with its Brazilian, Russian, Indian and South African counterparts on March 29, say people familiar with their talks. Under the agreement CDB, which lends mainly in dollars overseas, will make renminbi loans available, while the other Brics nations’ development banks will also extend loans denominated in their respective currencies.

The initiative aims to boost trade between the five nations and promote use of the renminbi, rather than US dollar, for international trade and cross-border lending. Under 13 per cent of China’s Asia trade is transacted in renminbi, according to Helen Qiao, chief Asia economist for Morgan Stanley. HSBC estimates that the currency’s share of regional trade could swell to up to 50 per cent by 2015.

BNDES, Brazil’s development bank with a loan book about four times the size of that of the World Bank, and South Africa’s finance ministry said they expected a master agreement to be signed in New Delhi that would include the lending pledge, with details to be ironed out during a summit.

“We will discuss the creation of structures and mechanisms for lending in local currencies in order to maximise economic and financial transactions between the countries that are members of the accord,” BNDES said.

CDB declined to comment. Other signatories will include Russia’s Vnesheconombank, Export-Import Bank of India and the Development Bank of Southern Africa.

Representatives of the five nations called for a broader-based international currency system in a communiqué issued after a meeting in China in April.

While the US dollar has recently strengthened, many governments believe it will weaken over the longer term and want alternatives, other than the tarnished euro, to use for trade and investment. CDB recently extended a $30bn loan to Petróleos de Venezuela, the state company, half of which will be repaid in oil.

By Henny Sender in Hong Kong and Joe Leahy in São Paulo

7 March 2012

@ Financial Times

Additional reporting by Andrew England in Johannesburg

Can You Pass The US Christian Right Quiz?

An understanding of the Christian Right, a loose coalition of politically conservative congregations and organizations, is critical to understanding the US . While the Christian Right has largely been frustrated in its attempts to reverse the cultural direction of America—it has failed, for example, to limit women’s rights, censor the media, ban abortions and prevent gays from serving in the military—it has largely succeeded in influencing the national debate, the Supreme Court and the Republican Party.

The radical Christian Right is an enemy of the open society. Its attacks on the rights of gays, feminists, Muslims, secular humanists and others provide a vision of the type of society it desires. It is not mere coincidence that its vision mirrors that of radical Islamists who also seek to silence opposing views.

This quiz seeks to explore the political influence of the Christian Right, and to highlight the threat its radical fundamentalists pose to the majority of Americans who value pluralism and tolerance. To paraphrase the philosopher Karl Popper, liberal tolerance should not be an excuse for passivity in the face of intolerant fundamentalists pursuing an illiberal America .

THE US CHRISTIAN RIGHT QUIZ

1. Approximately what percentage of US adults is affiliated with the Evangelical Protestant tradition?

-26%. (http://religions.pewforum.org/maps)

-It is useful to distinguish between two broad groups of evangelicals:

i) moderate evangelicals who concede that there is more than one legitimate way to worship and serve Christ; and,

ii) traditional evangelicals, which include those identified as fundamentalists, who come closest to the “Christian Right” discussed in the media. Traditional evangelicals, who approximate 12% of the US population, are overwhelmingly Republican, openly hostile to democratic pluralism, and promoters of policies that deny the civil rights of others (such as gays and Muslims). While they insist on tolerance for their brand of Christianity, it is clear that they would not provide the same tolerance to others if they gained significant political power.

-A radical subset of traditional evangelicals includes strict fundamentalists, called Dominionists, who make more than a few traditional evangelicals uncomfortable. It “is this core group of powerful Christian dominionists who have latched on to the despair, isolation, disconnectedness and fear that drives many people into…traditional evangelical churches….[The dominionists] can count on the passive support of huge numbers of Christians, even if many of these Christians may not fully share dominionism’s fierce utopian vision, fanaticism or ruthlessness.” (Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America , Free Press, New York : 2006, 20-21 [hereinafter Hedges].)

-It should be noted that, since the mid-1970s, conservative Catholics, Jews and other non-evangelicals have been invited into traditional evangelical political organizations. (K. Williams, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right, Oxford University Press, New York : 2010, 160 [hereinafter Williams].)

2. Why is the US a far more religious country than the UK, France, Germany and other economically advanced states?

-One of the great paradoxes of the eighteenth century is that some evangelicals allied themselves with Enlightenment types to press for religious disestablishment in the US . “This alliance of strange bedfellows produced the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads in part: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’…It ensured that Americans would never have to deal with the miserable effects of religious establishment, effects that many of the founders knew all too well from their experience of Great Britain and the Continent. While it is probably true that Thomas Jefferson wanted to maintain that ‘wall of separation’ in order to protect the fragile new government from religious factionalism, whereas…[many religious people] wanted the ‘wall of separation’ to preserve the integrity of the faith, the happy consequence…is that both sides benefited…Religious faith has flourished in America as nowhere else precisely because the government has (for the most part, at least) stayed out of the religion business. At the same time, allowing religious groups to function freely in the marketplace of popular discourse has tended to dissipate voices of political dissent…[And] no group has functioned more effectively in this marketplace than evangelicals…[This reality] makes the persistent attempts on the part of the Religious Right to eviscerate the First Amendment utterly confounding.” ( Randall Balmer, The Making Of Evangelicalism: From Revivalism to Politics and Beyond, Baylor University Press, Texas : 2010, 17-18 [hereinafter Balmer].)

-If the US had no proscription against religious establishment, religion in America today could look like the Church of England in Great Britain . The Church of England, “the established religion, draws less than three percent of the population to its Sunday services.” ( Balmer, 18.)

-“[E]vangelicalism has competed freely in the American religious marketplace. And it has done so with intelligence, vigor, and savvy.…[E]vangelicals have understood better than anyone else how to communicate to the masses. The message they propagate is simple…Come to Jesus. Make a decision for Christ. You control your own spiritual destiny.” ( Balmer, 25.)

-The First Amendment has been crucial to the Southern Baptist Convention. “Ever since the colonial era, when their denominational forebears had encountered persecution from established churches, most Baptists had placed a greater primacy on religious freedom than on public displays of faith.” (Williams, 66.)

-“Southern California, along with Colorado Springs , is one of the epicenters of the radical [Christian Right] movement. Numerous television evangelists, including the disgraced Jimmy and Tammy Faye Bakker, got their start in these huge, soulless exurbs. These large developed tracts of housing are isolated, devoid of neighborhood gathering places, community rituals and routines, even of sidewalks. The isolation, coupled with the long, lonely commutes in a car; the cold, impersonal world of the corporate office; and the banal, incessant chatter of talk radio and television create numbness and disorientation. This destruction of community is one of the crucial factors that has led to the rise of the Christian Right. The megachurches, which have prospered in these environments, have become surrogate communities, places where people can find clubs to pursue common interests, friends, a sense of belonging, and moral direction. In these sprawling churches…believers are reassured, told that affluence is blessed by God—a sign of their righteousness and the righteousness of their nation—and that in the embrace of the church they have a place, a home.” The abandonment of the working class by political leaders of all parties has been crucial to the success of the Christian Right. Only by reintegrating the working class into society through job creation, access to good education and health care can the Christian Right be effectively blunted. (Hedges, 130.)

3. In 2000, what percentage of evangelicals voted for George W. Bush for president?

-In an extremely close 2000 presidential election in which Bush lost the popular vote and received a slim victory in the electoral college only after the Supreme Court’s intervention, “Bush won 74 percent of the evangelical vote, and 84% percent of the votes of white evangelicals who regularly attended church.” The lesson to Bush advisors was that “most of his core support came from white religious voters who were energized by the ‘wedge issues’ of abortion and gay rights….In 2004, Bush would run as the candidate of the Christian Right.” (Williams, 250-1.)

-“At the time that George W. Bush took office, evangelicals accounted for one-third of the Republican vote in presidential elections, but that figure increased to nearly 40 percent by the end of his term. It became impossible for any Republican presidential candidate to ignore the Christian Right’s demands on abortion, gay rights, and other social issues.” However, because the majority of Americans did not want to revert to a time when abortions were illegal, gays closeted themselves and premarital sex was taboo, religious conservatives “found that they could win elections, but not change the culture.” (Williams, 8.)

-In 2004, “78 percent of evangelicals…voted for Bush.” The evangelical vote was crucial to Bush’s win as “the outcome…depended on only 120,000 votes in Ohio [where evangelical support for Bush was strong]…Evangelicals were…well positioned for long-term influence over the nation’s culture. By 2005, there were nearly fourteen thousand Christian radio stations…and 16 percent of American adults said that they tuned in to these stations daily. The Left Behind series of end-times novels that Tim LaHaye coauthored—in which Christians fought the Antichrist…had sold 60 million copies….The Christian Right was also training a new generation of political activists [many of whom were working in the White House and Congress]…” (Williams, 261-2.)

4. What was the main reason John McCain selected (a clearly unqualified) Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate in 2008?

-“Recognizing that he had not yet won the loyalty of the Christian Right, McCain made a bid for their support by selecting Alaska governor Sarah Palin, a strongly pro-life evangelical Christian…He would have preferred to select Joe Lieberman for the role, but his campaign aides warned him that the choice of the pro-choice, pro-gay-rights senator from Connecticut would anger the Christian Right and doom his candidacy….Palin…supported the teaching of ‘intelligent design’ in public schools, opposed abortion…, and staunchly defended marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution….Palin’s place on the ticket won over most of the evangelicals who had been skeptical about McCain” (Williams, 274.)

-In the 2008 presidential election, 23 percent of all voters were white evangelicals, and although McCain received only 46 percent of the popular vote, he “won the votes of 73 percent of white evangelicals and more than 80 percent of white evangelicals who attended church weekly….[E]vangelicals’ importance to the Republican coalition was increasing. Whereas 36 percent of Bush’s supporters in 2004 had been evangelicals, 38.5 percent of McCain’s were.” In short, evangelicals had become the core constituency of the Republican Party. (Williams, 275.)

5. At the January 2012 Republican Iowa caucuses, what percentage of caucus-goers were evangelicals?

-57%.  ( http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/01/iowa-mash-up-settles-nothing/ )

6. Who was the first openly Born Again Christian president of the US ?

-Jimmy Carter, President of the US (1977-81), “ is widely regarded as the first openly Born Again president, and perhaps the most Evangelical president in U.S. history. He is an active Sunday School  teacher  and has written inspirational Christian books.

 

Carter attended First Baptist Church in Washington D.C. while he was President….Carter was long associated with the Southern Baptist Convention, and was a Southern Baptist while in office . Although he remained a devout Baptist, he renounced his association with the Southern Baptist Convention in October 2000.” ( A Christian, like Carter, can be Born Again and not be part of the Christian Right.) ( http://www.adherents.com/people/pc/Jimmy_Carter.html )

-Evangelicals helped “sweep Carter to victory in the presidential election of 1976. His rhetoric about being a ‘born again Christian’ had energized evangelicals, many of whom had been resolutely apolitical until the mid-1970s….[H]is pledge that he would ‘never knowingly lie to the American people’…resonated…especially after…Nixon’s endless prevarications.” (Balmer, 67.)

-Newsweek magazine declared 1976 “The Year of the Evangelical….In 1980, all three of the major candidates for president claimed to be born again Christians: Jimmy Carter; Ronald Reagan, the Republican nominee; and John B. Anderson, The Republican-turned-independent…” (Balmer, 56.)

7. Which religious group’s delegates passed the following resolution at their 1971 Convention, and reaffirmed the position in 1974 and 1976? “We call upon…[the religious group] to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

 

-Evangelical delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America , passed this liberal abortion resolution. And, after the 1973 US Supreme Court landmark Roe v. Wade decision—that effectively struck down all laws banning abortion until the point at which a fetus could survive outside the womb—“the overwhelming response on the part of evangelicals was silence, even approval; Baptists, in particular, applauded the decision as an appropriate articulation of the line of division between church and state, between personal morality and state regulation of individual behavior.” (Balmer, 61-2.)

-The conservative Baptist pastor, W. A. Criswall, “lauded the Court’s ruling in Roe . ‘I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had life separate from its mother, that it became an individual person, and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed,’ he said.” (Williams, 117.)

-The Roman Catholic Church, in contrast, had “longstanding arguments against abortion. As early as the Iowa precinct caucuses in 1972, the bishops were urging their communicants to support candidates opposed to abortion.” The Catholic Church even condemned abortion when the woman’s life was at stake. (Balmer, 61.)

-“Prior to the mid-1970s, no one would have associated the GOP [Republican Party] with opposition to abortion. Republican politicians spearheaded some of the earliest efforts to liberalize abortion laws in California, Colorado, and New York….If Republicans were reluctant to restrict abortion in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so were most evangelicals. They greeted the first state abortion legalization laws with silence and apathy.” (Williams, 111.)

-It should be noted that a very small contingent of fundamentalists, who had condemned abortion before the Roe decision, made more concerted efforts on behalf of the pro-life cause after the decision. (Williams, 253.)

8. If, contrary to myth, the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision was not the precipitating cause for the rise of the Christian Right—see question 7—what was?

-“In the early 1970s, the…US government was looking for ways to extend the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964….[T]he Internal Revenue Service opined that any organization that engaged in racial discrimination was not, by definition, a charitable organization and therefore should be denied tax-exempt status….On January 19, 1976, the IRS…revoked Bob Jones University’s tax-exempt status…Bob Jones University [an evangelical institution with racially discriminatory policies] sued to retain its tax exemption, [it eventually lost at the Supreme Court in 1982,] and conservative activist Paul Weyrich…sensed the electoral potential of enlisting evangelical voters in the conservative crusade [something he had been working on since the early 1970s]…Evangelical leaders, prodded by Weyrich, chose to interpret the IRS ruling against segregationist schools as an assault on the…sanctity of the evangelical subculture. And that is what prompted them to action and to organize into a political movement….[O]nce these evangelical leaders had mobilized in defense of Bob Jones University , they held a conference call to discuss the possibility of other political activities. Several people suggested potential issues, and finally a voice…said, ‘How about abortion?’ And that…was how abortion was cobbled into the agenda of the Religious Right—in the late 1970s, not as a direct response to the January 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.” (Balmer, 62-66.)

-Paul Weyrich was a founder of the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank largely financed by beer mogul, Joseph Coors. “Weyrich…understood the abortion issue’s potential appeal to politically liberal pro-life activists who had shown little interest in the New Right’s other causes [such as tax cuts and business deregulation].” (Williams, 169.)

-It should be noted that Jimmy Carter was not yet president when Bob Jones University was informed by the IRS in 1975 that its tax exempt status would be revoked. “And yet, according to Weyrich, it was ‘Jimmy Carter’s intervention against Christian schools’ that precipitated the rise of the Religious Right….[W]eyrich succeeded in pinning this unpopular action on the Democratic president and using it to organize a movement to deny him reelection in 1980.” The result was that evangelicals, who had emerged to help elect Carter president in 1976, turned strongly against him just four years later. (Balmer, 62-63.)

-“According to pollster Louis Field, had it not been for the participation of politically conservative evangelicals in 1980, many of whom were voting for the first time, Carter would have beaten Reagan by one percent of the popular vote.” (Balmer, 57.)

-Once he was elected president in 1980, “Reagan backed away from his pledge to defend Bob Jones University against the IRS’s attempts to rescind the college’s tax” exempt status. (Williams, 197.)

9. What explains traditional evangelicals’ comfort with conservative economics since the 1980s?

-As evangelicals have experienced political success, they have had to make important compromises. Thus it has been commonplace to hear evangelical preachers peddle Republican myths of trickle-down prosperity. While evangelicals over 50 years of age grew up hearing a lot of sermons about the perils of wealth—as Jesus did clearly identify with the poor —such is rare today. It is much more common to hear leaders of the Religious Right speak on the miracle of supply side economics. Is it mere coincidence “that the so-called ‘prosperity theology,’ a kind of spiritualized Reaganism, flourished among evangelicals during the 1980s?” According to the prosperity gospel, wealth, fame and power are manifestations of God’s work, proof that God has a plan and design for believers. (Balmer, 83.)

-Fundamentalist leader Jerry Falwell “was just as conservative as the most fervent New Right ideologue” when it came to tax policy. As Falwell said, “I don’t think a guy who makes a lot of money should pay more taxes than a guy who makes a little…” (Williams, 176.)

-“[T]he Christian Right has engaged voters on nonmaterial grounds. Moral values issues like abortion and gay marriage are the focus. And this concentration on moral issues has had a paradoxical consequence: It has aligned a large bloc of evangelical voters whose incomes are generally modest with a political party highly attuned to the economic demands of the wealthy, that is, the Republican Party. It has done so, moreover, in an era in which, over the entire electorate, economic issues divide the parties more sharply along class lines than in the past, with Democrats favored by less affluent voters and Republicans by more affluent voters….All this makes it more consequential that evangelicals have become such loyal GOP supporters….[I]t means that Republicans attract far more support from lower- and middle-class voters than they would otherwise.” (Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson; Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class; Simon & Schuster Paperbacks; New York : 2010; 147-9.)

-“[T]he gospel of prosperity—which preaches that Jesus wants us all to be rich and powerful and the government to get out of the way—has formulated a belief system that delights corporate America. Corporations such as Tyson Foods—which has placed 128 part-time chaplains, nearly all evangelicals or fundamentalists, in 78 plants across the country—along with Purdue, Wal-Mart, and Sam’s Wholesale, to name a few, are huge financial backers of the movement.” (Hedges, 22.)

-The gospel of prosperity seems to be working for some people. The owners and founders of the Trinity Broadcasting Network , the world’s largest televangelist organization, Paul and Jan Crouch, “collect nearly $1 million a year in salary from the network, also have use of 30 ministry-owned homes…They travel in a $7.2 million…Turbojet…[However, their] message…has a dark side. Those who do not support their ministry…will see God turn against them. Viewers who have struggled with deep despair, and who believe that the world of miracles and magic is the only thing holding them back from the abyss, often find the threat potent and frightening.” The Trinity Broadcasting Network “generates more than $170 million a year in revenue…” (Hedges, 171 and 174.)

10. Who said the following in 1958? “The true negro does not want integration. He realizes his potential is far better among his own race. Who then is propagating this terrible thing?…We see the hand of Moscow in the background….[We see the] Devil himself.”

-Jerry Falwell: Best-known Christian Right leader in the 1980s, fundamentalist Baptist Pastor, and later founder of the influential Moral Majority. Falwell, who also defended the white apartheid South African government, was assuring “segregationists that God and the nation were on their side.” (Williams, 33.)

-To airbrush his past, Falwell, sometime after 1970, tried to recall “all copies of his earlier sermons warning against integration and the evils of the black race.” “In 1968, shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Falwell admitted the first African American family to his church.” (Hedges, 28 and 87.)

-“The ties by Christian Right leaders…with racist groups highlight the long ties between right-wing fundamentalists and American racist organizations, including the Klan, which had a chaplain assigned to each chapter….By the late 1950s these radical Christians had drifted to the fiercely anticommunist John Birch Society…Many of the ideas championed by today’s dominionists—the bizarre conspiracy theories, the calls for unrestrained capitalism, the war against ‘liberal’ organizations…, along with calls to dismantle federal agencies that deal with housing or education—are drawn from the ideology of this rabid anticommunist enclave. Timothy LaHaye used to run John Birch Society training seminars in California .” (Hedges, 137.)

11. True or False: The Bible, not to mention Jesus himself, says a great deal about divorce—and none of it good; yet relatively little about homosexuality and arguably nothing about abortion.

-True. “Jesus himself said nothing whatsoever about sexuality, though he did talk a good bit about money. Still, the preponderance of the biblical witness, which the Religious Right claims as formative, is directed toward the believer’s responsibility to those Jesus calls ‘the least of these,’ toward an honoring of the meek and peacemakers, and, on social matters, against divorce. Yet the Religious Right made no attempt to outlaw divorce.” (Balmer, 69.)

-The lack of attention toward divorce by the Religious Right is probably due to the fact that “the divorce rate among evangelicals by the late 1970s…was roughly the same as that of the larger population.” As well, the “Religious Right’s designation of abortion and homosexuality as the central issues of their social agenda allowed them to divert attention from their embrace of Reagan [a divorced and remarried man]…” (Balmer, 69-70.)

-“The so-called red states, which vote Republican and have large evangelical populations, have higher rates of murder, illegitimacy and teenage births than so-called blue states, which vote Democrat and have kept evangelicals at bay. The lowest divorce rates tend to be found in blue states as well as in the Northeast and upper Midwest . The state with the lowest divorce rate is Massachusetts , a state singled out by televangelists because of its liberal politicians and legalization of same-sex marriage.” (Hedges, 43.)

-“[F]undamentalists are…not biblical literalists, as they claim, but ‘selective literalists,’ choosing the bits and pieces of the Bible that conform to their ideology and ignoring, distorting or inventing the rest. And the selective literalists cannot have it both ways. Either the Bible is literally true and all of its edicts must be obeyed, or it must be read in another way.” While the Bible (Leviticus 18:22) says that a man who has sex with another man is an abomination and should be killed, a “literal reading of the Bible [also] means reinstitution of slavery…Children who strike or curse a parent are to be executed…[M]en are free to sell their daughters into sexual bondage…” (Hedges, 4 and 6.)

12. True or False: The Christian Right, respecting the sanctity of human life, opposes capital punishment.

-False. “The Religious Right’s opposition to abortion has been weakened…by its insistent refusal to be consistently ‘pro-life.’ Unlike the Roman Catholic Church…the leaders of the Religious Right have failed to condemn capital punishment or even the use of torture by the Bush administration….[In fact,] when the Republican-Religious Right coalition controlled [the Congress and presidency]…from February 1, 2006…until January 3, 2007…no attempt whatsoever [was made] to outlaw abortion….[Instead] the Military Commissions Act [was passed and signed into law]…which sought to legitimize the use of torture.” (Balmer, 70-71.)

 

-There is a danger to religion by associating it with the state. When religious leaders pursue political power they lose their spiritual integrity. The failure of the Religious Right to condemn the Bush administration’s policies on torture provides perhaps the most egregious example. “The very people who purport to hear a fetal scream turned a deaf ear to the real screams of fully formed human beings who were being tortured in the name of our government.” (http://mainstreambaptist.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.html)

13. How many times does the word “God” appear in the US Constitution?

-Zero. The First Amendment to the Constitution does refer to religion but not in a manner that fundamentalist Christians desire. The First Amendment does not privilege Christianity; rather, it reads in part, that “ Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” As well, “ Article 6, Section 3 states explicitly that federal officials ‘shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.’ The addition of the word ‘affirmation’ is significant because it meant that officeholders could not be compelled to take an oath on the Bible ….[T]he founders, who did in fact live in an era when the states were peopled almost entirely by Christians, thought to include freethinkers and non-Christians…in their basic laws.” ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/spirited-atheist/post/how-the-religious-right-distorts-history/2011/07/06/gIQAZwIo0H_blog.html )

14. Who, in 1994, convinced 1 million Americans to call the congressional switchboard to stop legislation that would have tightened regulations on home schooling?

-James Dobson: One of the US ‘s most prominent Christian Right leaders. (Williams, 239.)

-“He [Dobson] has built a massive empire based on his advice to families as a Christian therapist. He is heard on Focus on the Family , a program broadcast on more than 3,000 radio stations; runs a grassroots organization with chapters in 36 states; and runs his operation out of an 81-acre campus in Colorado Springs , Colorado , a campus that has its own zip code. He employs 1,300 people, sends out four million pieces of mail each month, and is heard in 116 countries. His estimated listening audience is more than 200 million worldwide, and in the United States he appears on 80 television stations each day. He is antichoice, supports abstinence-only sex education exclusively and is fiercely antigay.” With respect to the roles of the sexes he is clear: “Genesis tells us that the Creator made two sexes…He designed each gender for a specific purpose…[T]he man is the master and the woman must obey.” According to Dobson and many others in the movement, the principal role for women with children is to home-school the children. (It is fairly easy to see the allure of traditional evangelicalism if you are one of its leaders as they “assume a higher intelligence and understanding that gives them a divine right to rule. These men are…the powerful, all-knowing father. Those they direct become as powerless, credulous and submissive as children.”) (Hedges, 82 and 92.)

 

-Dobson’s effort to hold Republicans accountable for their legislative record has led to Republican leaders introducing bills to ban human cloning, prevent gay couples from adopting children, and cut off funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1999, President Bush, aiming to widen his appeal, said that America is not ready to ban abortions. The result was that he suffered a stern rebuke from Dobson which led Bush to backtrack and move sharply to the right on cultural issues. In the 1996 presidential election, Dobson supported the third-party Christian conservative Howard Phillips who supported Reconstructionist beliefs that called for the implementation of a biblical legal code and capital punishment for abortion doctors. (Williams, 241-3.)

-“Dobson’s attacks on gays are relentless and brutal. He likens the proponents of gay marriage to the Nazis….[He has written that] ‘The homosexual agenda is a beast. It wants our kids…How about marriage between a man and his donkey?’” In fact, many leaders of the Christian Right attack gays in dehumanizing language. (Hedges, 103.)

15. Are members of the Christian Right anti-Semitic?

-While dominionists regularly preach that Jews must rule the biblical land of Israel in order for Christ to return. They also believe, but rarely state, “that Jews who do not convert are damned and will be destroyed in the fiery, apocalyptic ending of the world.” Despite this blatant anti-Semitism, right-wing Jews embrace traditional evangelicals as such evangelicals lobby persistently for US financial, military and diplomatic support of Israel . (It is ironic that most US evangelicals have never demonstrated the slightest interest in the welfare of Palestinian Christians who live under Israel ‘s harsh and illegal occupation.) (Hedges, 142-143.)

-Timothy LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’s popular Left Behind series of Christian apocalyptic thrillers “provide the graphic details of raw mayhem and cruelty that God will unleash on all nonbelievers when Christ returns and raptures Christians into heaven. Astonishingly, the novels are among the best-selling books in America with more than 62 million in print….LaHaye [a Southern Baptist minister] has helped found and lead numerous right-wing groups, including the Council for National Policy, and he is…one of the dominionists’ most powerful propagandists.” (Hedges, 183-5.)

16. Who said the following at a major meeting of religious conservatives in 1980? “It is interesting at great political rallies how you have a Protestant to pray, a Catholic to pray, and then you have a Jew to pray. With all due respect to those dear people, my friends, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew….How in the world can God hear the prayer of a man who says that Jesus Christ is not the Messiah? It’s blasphemous.”

-Bailey Smith: Southern Baptist Convention president. “Falwell attempted to do damage control by arguing that God hears the prayers of all ‘redeemed’ Jews, which was what Smith had meant when he said that prayers must be offered in the name of Jesus to be acceptable.” (Williams, 190.)

 

-“Hatred of Jews and other non-Christians pervades the Gospel of John…Jews, he wrote, are children of the devil…” (Hedges, 4.)

17. Was it an American general or a Taliban commander who said the following after leading troops into battle? “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his God was an idol.”

-An American general, William Boykin, stated the above after leading American troops into battle against a Somalian warlord. “General Boykin belongs to a small group called the Faith Force Multiplier, whose members apply military principles to evangelism…Boykin, rather than being reprimanded for his inflammatory rhetoric, was promoted [in 2003] to the position of deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence. He believes America is engaged in a holy war as a ‘Christian nation’ battling Satan and that America ‘s Muslim adversaries will be defeated ‘only if we come against them in the name of Jesus.’” (Hedges, 29.)

“[M]any evangelical leaders portrayed the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as a sign of Islam’s allegedly violent or ‘evil’ nature….‘We will rid the world of the evil-doers,’ Bush promised America…Evangelicals’ view of politics as a spiritual battle between good and evil led them to support not only the military’s actions in Afghanistan but also President Bush’s war in Iraq….[T]he evangelical population…was more supportive of the war than any other demographic group….Evangelical support for the war increased to 79 percent in May 2003, and it remained high long after other Americans had given up hope for success in Iraq.” (Williams, 255-6.)

18. Why did the Christian Right begin to use the term “intelligent design” in place of “creationism”?

-Intelligent design has been the code word of the Christian Right “since the Supreme Court ruled in the 1987 Edwards v. Aguillard case that creationism cannot be taught in public schools. Intelligent design argues that the slow process of evolution could not have produced something as complex as the living cell. Rather, life was created by an ‘intelligent agent,’ one the proponents of intelligent design are careful to specify is unknown, in order to skirt the judicial ban on creationism.” The theory of “Evolution… shattered the comfortable worldview of many Christians, who saw themselves created in the image of God….It dethroned Christians from their self-constructed platform of moral and ethical superiority. It challenged the belief that God intervenes in human affairs to protect and guide believers.” (Hedges, 116-7.)

-In response to a “2004 Gallup poll…38 percent [of Americans] believed God guided evolution, and 45 percent said the Genesis account of creation was a true story. Courses on intelligent design have been taught at the universities of Minnesota , Georgia , New Mexico and Iowa State , along with Wake Forest and Carnegie Mellon, not to mention Christian universities that teach all science through the prism of the Bible.” (Hedges, 116-7.)

 

-The highly respected Union of Concerned Scientists, concerned by the number of pseudoscientists peddling falsehoods inside the government (such as the claim that condoms are not safe), included the following in its March 2004 report, Scientific Integrity in Policymaking : “There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression, and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration are unprecedented .” (Hedges, 123.)

-“[E]vangelicals have been notoriously uninterested in environmental preservation. If Jesus is going to return soon to rescue the true believers and to unleash judgment on those left behind, why should we devote any attention whatsoever to care of the earth, which will soon be destroyed in the apocalypse predicted in the book of Revelation?…[President Reagan’s evangelical secretary of the interior revealed his beliefs when he] remarked to stunned members of the House Interior Committee, ‘I don’t know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.’” (Balmer, 40-1.)

19. Who distributed the following memo—titled, How to Participate in a Political Party— to his supporters at the Iowa Republican County Caucus? “Rule the world for God. Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology. Hide your strength. Don’t flaunt your Christianity. Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership whenever possible, God willing.”

-Joan Bokaer, the Director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University , was on a 1986 speaking tour in Iowa when she “obtained a copy of a memo Pat Robertson [ a leading televangelist and Republican presidential candidate] handed out to followers at the Iowa Republican County Caucus.” (In September 1986, Robertson announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination for President. Robertson’s campaign got off to a strong second-place finish in the  Iowa caucus.) ( http://www.thechristianleftblog.org/1/post/2011/10/the-christian-right-and-the-rise-of-american-fascism.html )

-“The Reconstructionist movement, founded in 1973 by Rousas Rushdooney, is the intellectual foundation for the most politically active element within the Christian Right. Rushdooney’s…three-volume work, Institutes of Biblical Law, argued that American society should be governed according to the Biblical precepts in the Ten Commandments. He wrote that the elect, like Adam and Noah, were given dominion over the earth by God and must subdue the earth, along with all non-believers, so the Messiah could return….The religious utterances from political leaders such as George Bush, Tom Delay, Pat Robertson and Zell Miller are only understandable in light of Rushdooney and Dominionism. These leaders believe that God has selected them to battle the forces of evil, embodied in ‘secular humanism,’ to create a Christian nation….Pat Robertson…says he is training…students [at his Regent’s University] to rule when the Christian regents take power, part of the reign leading to the return of Christ.” ( http://www.theocracywatch.org/chris_hedges_nov24_04.htm )

-“Dominionists now control at least six national television networks, each reaching tens of millions of homes…” (Hedges, 10.)

 

-When some Christian Right activists became disillusioned with their lack of success in achieving substantive legislative gains they joined Rushdoony’s Christian Reconstructions movement. Rushdoony called for a replacement of American constitutional government with the revival of Old Testament law. “The Chalcedon Foundation, which he founded in 1965, advocated the reinstitution of slavelike indentured servitude and a restoration of the death penalty for homosexuals, adulterers, and ‘Sabbath-breakers.’…[Rushdoony] did influence a few prominent individuals in the Christian Right.” (Williams, 226.)

-The Bush administration “diverted billions of dollars…from secular and governmental social-service organizations to faith-based organizations, bankrolling churches and organizations that seek to dismantle American democracy and create a theocratic state….These groups can and usually do discriminate by refusing to hire gays and lesbians, people of other faiths and those who do not embrace their strict version of Christianity….In fiscal year 2004, faith-based organizations received $2.005 billion in funding—10.3 percent of federal competitive service grants. [ President Obama renamed the office, White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. He also established an advisory council that is composed of religious and secular leaders and scholars from different backgrounds.]” (Hedges, 23.)

By Jeffrey Rudolph

28 February 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Jeffrey Rudolph, a Montreal college professor, was the Quebec representative of the East Timor Alert Network, and presented a paper on its behalf at the United Nations. He was awarded the prestigious Cheryl Rosa Teresa Doran Prize upon graduation from McGill University ‘s faculty of law; has worked as a chartered accountant at one of the world’s largest public accounting firms; and has taught at McGill University . He has prepared widely-distributed quizzes on Israel-Palestine, Iran, Hamas, Terrorism, Saudi Arabia, and US Inequality which can be found, respectively, at:

http://www.countercurrents.org/rudolph180608.htm;

http://www.countercurrents.org/rudolph240410.htm;

http://www.countercurrents.org/rudolph250610.htm;

http://www.countercurrents.org/rudolph080810.htm;

http://www.countercurrents.org/rudolph020311.htm; and,

http://www.countercurrents.org/rudolph270611.htm .

(Comments concerning the quizzes can be emailed to:

Israel-Palestine-Quiz@live.com )

 

Can There Be “Good” Corporations?

When companies are owned by workers and the community—instead of Wall Street financiers—everything changes

George Siemon calls himself Organic Valley’s “C-E-I-E-I-O.” An organic farmer himself, he leads the $700 million cooperative of small dairy and egg farmers with a commitment to sustainability. Photo courtesy of Organic Valley.

Our economic system is profoundly broken. To anyone paying attention, that much is clear. But what’s less clear is this: Our approach to fixing the economy is broken as well. The whole notion of “fighting corporate power” arises from an underlying belief that there is no alternative to capitalism as we know it. Starting from the insight that capitalism has become virtually a universal economy, we conclude that our best hope is to regulate corporations and work for countervailing powers like unions. But then we’ve lost before we begin. We’ve defined ourselves as marginal and powerless.

There is another approach. It’s bubbling up all around us in the form of economic alternatives like cooperatives, employee-owned firms, social enterprises, and community land trusts. We don’t recognize that these represent a coherent, workable alternative to capitalism, for two reasons.

First, we haven’t acknowledged what unites them. Second, we don’t have a name for this seemingly disparate batch of alternatives.

Ownership unites them. That’s the reason that these different models represent change that goes deep. It’s the reason this change is fundamental, enduring, and real. This transformation doesn’t depend on the legislative or presidential whims of a particular hour, but is instead a permanent shift in the underlying architecture of economic power.

The alternatives emerging in our time represent an unsung ownership revolution. This revolution is about broadening economic power from the few to the many and redefining the purpose of economic activity. The aim isn’t to endlessly grow gross domestic product or to create wealth for a financial elite, but to generate the conditions for the flourishing of life.

Here we confront the second consideration—the need for a name. We can call this new economy the generative economy. The word generative is from the Greek ge; it’s the same root form found in the word Gaia and means “the carrying on of life.” The generative economy is one whose fundamental architecture tends to create beneficial rather than harmful outcomes. It has a built-in tendency to be socially fair and ecologically sustainable.

Options like worker ownership and cooperatives not only spread wealth but ensure that owners are local, hence more likely to care about local ecological impacts. And they allow enterprises to reject the growth imperative endangering the biosphere. Generative enterprise does not answer to the demands of the finance system, which locks publicly traded companies into a growth path in order to keep stock prices inflated.

In writing the book, Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution, I’ve been traveling around and visiting places where this new economy is bubbling up. Here’s some of the good news I have to share: Generative ownership isn’t just about small, local, founder-run companies. It’s possible to keep the soul of these companies alive even at large scale, and long after the founder is gone.

Founded on Fairness

Consider, for example, the John Lewis Partnership (JLP) in England. It’s the largest department store chain in the country, with 35 department stores and 272 Waitrose grocery stores. Revenues of this company are more than $11.5 billion. If placed into the Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. corporations, JLP would settle in around 212—a little higher than Starbucks. It’s 100 percent owned by its employees.

The John Lewis Partnership is built around the value of fairness. The founder, John Spedan Lewis, who created its democratic structure about a century ago, believed that traditional ownership was unfair because dividends paid to shareholders for doing nothing were obscene when workers barely earned subsistence wages. The stated purpose of the company he created is to serve the happiness of its employees, or, as the company calls them, partners.

To see if this firm was real, I flew to London and visited a few of its stores—including a Waitrose grocery store. I met a butcher at the meat counter wearing a white linen fedora, a crisp white shirt beneath a green-striped apron, and a bow tie. The hats were required, he explained. But wearing a tie every day was his choice. “I just feel more dressed,” he told me. People notice touches like that at Waitrose, where pay raises are given for performance, including such things as “being a tidy person,” John said. He told me about his sister, Carol, who also worked at Waitrose and had just been diagnosed with cancer. “They’ve been really good,” he said, referring to the company. “There’s a budget set aside for people like this. She’s been off for three months, and they’re holding her job.”

When employees at Waitrose and other JLP stores face a family emergency, they can seek a grant or loan from the Committee for Financial Assistance. That committee, composed of and elected by employees, controls the special budget John referred to and makes decisions outside the chain of management. Help from that fund—plus the commitment to hold Carol’s job—took “the money side of worries away,” John said.

I also visited the company’s Peter Jones department store, entering through an arched doorway with the legend inscribed in stone, “Here is Partnership on the scale of modern industry.” There I encountered a mid-level manager named Harry Goonewardene, who served on the Partnership Council, an elected body of employees that works alongside the board of directors.

 

“How did you get on the council?” I asked him. “Did you campaign?”

“Very much so,” he said. “I stood at the door and grabbed people, told them, ‘Hi, this is who I am.’” He carried himself as a city councilmember might, calmly, with an air of dignity that was almost arresting. He was impeccably dressed in a dark suit and had dark olive skin—he is from Sri Lanka, I was later told. He lacked that harried, pinched sense one often sees among floor managers at other retailers. A meeting of the Partnership Council would be held soon, he told me, during which an adjustment to the pension scheme would be discussed.

Each year, the company contributes to pension accounts a sum not far below employees’ annual pay; employees aren’t required to contribute anything. However, they are not eligible until they have completed three years of work, and people were concerned about that. “A committee has been looking at this, and we’ll take it back to constituents and present a plan,” he said. By “constituents,” he meant the workers.

John and Harry are among the 76,500 employee-owners of the John Lewis Partnership. If the ultimate perquisite of being an owner is the right to pocket some of the profit left after the bills are paid, then these employees are genuine owners. Each year, after the firm sets aside a portion of profits for reinvestment in the business, the remainder—generally between 40 and 60 percent of profit—is distributed to employees. One clerk named Emma told me her recent bonus was 2,000 pounds [U.S. $3,264]. “I spent some on a holiday in the Canary Islands,” she told me. “It was my first holiday in four years.”

Every employee at JLP, from shop clerk to the chairman, gets a bonus representing the same percentage of individual pay. As one manager told me, “In the worst year, it’s 8 percent, in the best year, 24 percent” of salary. Last year, the annual figure was announced with fanfare on the floor of the company’s store on Oxford Street, where a partner held up a poster reading “18%,” and employees clapped and cheered. That bonus amounted to about nine weeks pay.

Here we begin to see what is revolutionary about the John Lewis Partnership. Employees in this firm are not a countervailing power. They’re not legally outside the firm, negotiating with it. They are the firm.

From shareholders to stakeholders

This concept represents a kind of revolution akin to the shift from monarchy to democracy. In the American Revolution, the founding generation didn’t attempt to regulate or restrain monarchy. They created a new source of political power and sovereignty that they controlled themselves. The revolution they began is one that we are in a position to finish today. That previous generation democratized the political aspect of sovereignty. But our politics and economy are so intertwined that imbalances in wealth and ownership have eroded our political democracy. To fix this, we need to democratize the economic aspect of sovereignty.

Today the ruling oligarch in our economy is capital. Only capital has the right to vote inside most companies, and only capital has a claim on profits. Serving capital—maximizing returns for absentee shareholders—is the goal of publicly traded companies.

In the generative economy, ownership is rooted instead in the hands of stakeholders connected to the life of the enterprise. In some cases, these are employees. They can also be community members, as with municipally owned electric plants and wind installations. In the case of credit unions, the depositors are the owners.

With a farmer-owned cooperative like Organic Valley—a Wisconsin firm with more than $700 million in revenue—the owners are the suppliers, the people who produce the organic milk, cheese, and eggs that the company distributes. While the purpose of JLP is to serve employee happiness, the purpose of Organic Valley is to save the family farm. Both JLP and Organic Valley share certain ownership design patterns: a combination of rooted ownership and a mission that is not about maximizing profits but serving the needs of life. Protecting and enhancing the biosphere is integral to Organic Valley’s operations, since it deals only in organic products. The company helps its new farmers through the rigorous process of going organic, which means company growth translates into wider restoration of soils and watersheds.

There are many other benefits the company produces. Farmers benefit from healthy income. Employees benefit from stable jobs and rewarding work. Customers benefit from chemical-free food. Investors in the firm’s preferred stock benefit from dependable rates of return. Farming communities benefit from the return of vitality that flows from farmers’ prosperity.

Through enterprises like these, we can begin to grasp the principles that we could use to create a generative economy:

1. There is an alternative to capitalism. This is the heresy that the keepers of the temple do not wish us to utter. It is possible to organize a large, sophisticated, modern economy that tends toward fair and just outcomes, benefits the many rather than the few, and enables an enduring human presence on a flourishing Earth.

2. Getting there is not only about regulation but about emergence. As organizational change theorist Margaret Wheatley writes, “emergence” refers to what happens when local actions spring up and connect through networks. Without warning, emergent phenomena can occur, such as the rise of the organic food movement. Such movements rely not on central leadership but on shared vision.

3. The generative economy is not a legal exercise but the embodiment of an emerging value system. Companies in the generative economy are built around values; the John Lewis Partnership’s core value is fairness, while Organic Valley’s core values are sustainability and community.

4. Generative values become enduring through the social architecture of ownership. The generative economy is built on a foundation of stakeholder ownership designed to generate and preserve real wealth—resources held and shared by our communities and the ecosystems we live in. These enterprises don’t have absentee ownership shares trading in a casino economy, but ownership held in human hands.

Today’s major corporations may seem eternal. But as economist Joseph Schumpeter observed, creative destruction is ever present in capitalism. In industrialized nations, an estimated 15 percent of jobs are destroyed every year, and new jobs replace them. It’s the same with companies. Hypothetically, a new economy comes into existence every seven years. In the long run, battling the dinosaurs of today may be less important than getting the next economy into the right kinds of ownership.

We can’t get where we need to go by starting with corporations and asking how to restrain them, regulate them, or rein them in. We need to start with life, with human life and the life of the planet, and ask: How do we generate the conditions for life’s flourishing? Will we continue to rely on ownership architectures organized around growth and maximum income for the few? Or can we shift to new ownership models organized around keeping this planet and all its inhabitants thriving?

Our greatest challenge lies in the realm of imagination and ideas. Imagine, for example, if the energy aroused by Occupy Wall Street were channeled into achievable strategies that supported ownership alternatives. Such strategies could include the Move Your Money campaign to shift bank deposits to cooperative and community banks or a push for major legislation to advance employee ownership (an alternative favored by both left and right). Imagine if campaigns like these were unified as a single movement for a generative economy. We might create an unstoppable force—a movement less about regulating corporations as they are and more about building living enterprises as we want them to be.

By Marjorie Kelly

16 March 2012

@ YES! Magazine

Marjorie Kelly wrote this article for 9 Strategies to End Corporate Rule, the Spring 2012 issue of YES! Magazine. Marjorie is a fellow with the Tellus Institute in Boston and director of ownership strategy with Cutting Edge Capital. Her new book, Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution, will be published in June 2012 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

 

 

Can Russia Save The Day?

” You are my creator, but I am your master—obey!” So said the Monster to its creator Frankenstein [1] .   As with the monster and its creator, we witness once again Israel telling America to obey – to start yet another war of choice and massacre Iranians.

For over six decades, Israel has demanded full obedience from the United State .  Every  U.S. president, pressured by the pro-Israel lobbies in the United States and the Congressional members whose primary loyalty is to Israel at the expense of America’s national interest,  have been forced to comply with the ever-increasing bellicose Israeli demands.   No wonder Benjamin Netanyahu imagines himself unstoppable.

Netanyahu, one of the most dangerous Israeli leaders, is demanding another war so that he may continue the aggressive usurpation of Palestinian and Arab lands uninterrupted by public opinion and disregard for international laws.  The thuggish Netanyahu came to Washington to demand surrender from its puppet master, America , like every other Israeli politician before him.   He demands sacrifice from Americans in the firm belief  that all sacrifice is justified having witnessed his own brother Yonatan Netanyahu get killed in a 1976 Israeli false flag operation in Entebbe, Uganda.

Lending support to his conviction is the American cover-up of US servicemen murdered by Israel .   When the USS Liberty was attacked by Israelis and the servicemen deliberately massacred, the Johnson Administration’s cover-up of the tragic event send a clear message to Israel :  American leaders have your back, even if you murder our citizens.

However, the  Soviet message to the Israelis and America was different — as one hopes Russia ‘s will be.

In January 1970, Israel ‘s deep penetration raids into Egypt , prompted Nasser to plea to the Soviets for help.  The Soviets sent a warning to President Nixon who dismissed it (thanks to a faulty Israeli intelligence analysis of the Soviet intentions and capabilities). By March, the Soviets had provided Egypt with air defense and Soviet troops equipped with advanced weaponry arrived in Egypt .   In addition to the 10,000 Soviet technicians, Soviet pilots were flying Egyptian planes in combat (Ball ’92).  The firm action taken by the Soviets forced Israel to modify its tactics and stop its deep penetration raids.

Perhaps it is time for Russia to once again stop this aggressive madness so that balance and sanity may resume.

The Israeli plan to wage war on Iran , will, by necessity, drag in the whole region and make the conflict  global in scope.  But how important is Iran or the other Islamic countries devastated by US-Israel? As Azar Gat, Ezer Weizman professor of National Security at Tel Aviv University opined ( Foreign Affairs, July-August 2007 ), “radical Islam” poses “no significant military threat to the developed world..”  The significant challenge, she contended, emanates from China and Russia operating under “authoritarian capitalist”  poised for a comeback.

This self-serving portrayal  has been coupled with absurd religious zealotry in the same quarters with devastating effect.  Powerful  Jews and Christians (such as AIPAC)  who believe in a “final battle” of  Gog and Magog (Ezekiel (38:1 – 39:29) preceded by a period of violence,  chaos and war,  view Israel ‘s expansionist agenda and   America ‘s imperial ambitions through ideologically tainted lenses.

This mindset was well demonstrated when in October 2007, President Bush remarked that a nuclear Iran would mean World War III, at which time Israeli newscasts on channels 2 and 10 featured Gog and Magog maps of the likely alignment of nations in that potential conflict: on one side were Israel, the United States, Britain, France and Germany; on the other were Iran, Russia, China, Syria and North Korea.   (The current GOP Presidential debate (with the exception of Ron Paul) point to this dangerous mindset).

It comes as no surprise that in 2008, the influential pro-Israel Dennis Ross , had a meeting with the Syrian “opposition group” chief, Anas al-Abdah ( see here ) to discuss “Syria in-transition” – years before the current uprisings, but without a doubt, a major contributing factor to the current unrest – a policy that continues today.

While Iran (and Syria ) is the direct target of an immediate attack, it is not the ultimate target.

Russia ‘s policies have been based on Realpolitik. As such, in the interest of its national interest , Russia must place a premium on preventing an Israeli/US led war with Iran ,  and the prelude to such a war – the illegal and immoral “crippling sanctions”.   Although Russia and Iran have had a tainted history in the past, it must be emphasized that preventing the disintegration and upheaval of the countries in the region will serve both nations and strengthen the resistance barrier to the planned global domination, future wars, and help avert the potential for a catastrophic world war.

Such deterrence is possible under the strength and resolve shown by Vladimir Putin.  Perhaps aware of Putin’s strength prompted America to increase its aid to Russian dissidents.  In 2008, Congress provided an additional $6 million for “human rights defenders and political activists in Russia .”   In line with these tactics, attempts were  made to delegitimize the election  results in Russia and create chaos in order to weaken the nation and its resolve – the usual NED and Freedom House tactic.

There has never been more need for  Russia  to demonstrate its resolve.   As elected president, Mr. Putin would do well to draw his own “red lines” by addressing the UN  Security Council and stating firmly and irrevocably that a preventative/preemptive attack on Iran (or Syria ) is illegal, and unacceptable, which will draw reaction from Russia .   Mr. Putin should ask that the United States firmly, openly, and honestly (without giving Israel the green light privately, which the US has done many times) reject the notion that Israel has the ‘right’ to launch such and illegal act.

Perhaps with a show of strength from Russia ,  other countries will join in to resist wars of choice, ushering in a new era of renewed hope for the future of humanity and this planet.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich has a Master’s degree in Public Diplomacy from USC Annenberg for Communication and Journalism and USC School of International Relations.  She is  an independent researcher and writer with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the role of lobby groups in influencing US foreign policy.

[1] There is a common misconception that Frankenstein is the monster; it is in fact the name of the creator.

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

8 March 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

BRICS summit 2012: Member nations sign pacts to promote trade in local currency

NEW DELHI: In an initiative to promote trade in local currencies, the BRICS nations today signed two agreements to provide line of credit to business community and decided to examine the possibility of setting up a development bank on lines of multilateral lending agencies.

The agreements were signed by officials of five countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — at the fourth BRICS summit here.

“The agreements signed today by development banks of BRICS countries will boost trade by offering credit in our local currency,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a media statement after the meeting.

The Master Agreement on Extending Credit Facility in Local Currency and the Multilateral Letter of Credit Confirmation Facility Agreement are being perceived as a step towards replacing the dollar as the main unit of trade between them.

Such intra-BRICS initiatives, according to officials, will not only contribute to enhanced trade and investments among the nations but would also facilitate economic growth in difficult economic times.

As regards the initiative to set up a BRICS Development Bank on the lines of multilateral lending agency, Singh said the proposal would be examined by the finance ministers.

“A suggestion has been made to set up a BRICS development bank, we have directed our FM to examine the proposal and report back by next summit,” Singh said.

The initiative to set up a BRICS Development Bank on the lines of the World Bank would allow the member countries to pool resources for infrastructure development and could also be used to lend during the difficult global environment.

Intra-BRICS trade is about USD 230 billion and has the potential of more than doubling to USD 500 billion by 2015.

By The Times of India

29 March 2012

Between Politics And Principles: Hamas’ Perilous Maneuvers

Despite all of Hamas’ assurances to the contrary, a defining struggle is taking place within the Palestinian Islamic movement. The outcome of this struggle – which is still confined to polite political disagreements and occasional intellectual tussle – is likely to change Hamas’ outlook, if not fundamentally alter its position within a quickly changing Arab political landscape.

The current Hamas is already different from the one initially set up by a local Gaza leadership in December 1987 in response to the first Palestinian uprising. One of the very first statements circulated by their newly established ‘military wing’ (masked men armed with wooden clubs and cans of spray paint) expressed the nature of that political era:

“What has happened to you, O rulers of Egypt? Were you asleep in the period of the treaty of shame and surrender, the Camp David treaty? Has your national zealousness died and your pride ran out while the Zionists daily perpetrate grave and base crimes against the people and the children?”

Although the power discrepancy between Israel and the Palestinians has remained largely unchanged, Hamas has morphed from a local Palestinian branch of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood into a tour de force within Palestinian society. It has also become an important regional player, long designated by the US and Israel as a member of the radical camp in the Middle East (the other members being Iran, Syria and Hezbollah). While Iran and Syria were demonized for aiding and enabling Palestinian and Lebanese resistance to Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah successfully resisted Israel’s military adventures in Gaza and Lebanon.

Arab revolutions, however, forced a remarkable transformation in terms of power relations in the region. Longtime symbols of Western influence in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen were violently and decisively forced out of power, although their cronies are still battling for position and sway. The ‘moderate camp’ was shocked to its core by the removal of Honsi Mubarak, who, for three decades, diligently guarded a pro-American fort in exchange for a fixed sum of money. The dramatic events that swept the Arab world required urgent action, a spectacular jockeying for influence – to either coerce where change was deemed unacceptable, or exploit genuine, homegrown uprisings where change presented an opportunity to settle scores.

Syria was a prime example of the latter. It is widely understood that to balance the power play of gains and losses, the removal of Mubarak could only be offset with the ousting of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. Only then would the game return to a state of normalcy – especially when we consider the diminishing American influence in the region following its withdrawal from Iraq. Unfortunately for Syria, the conflict was quickly redrawn around regional politics. The horrifying violence in Syria is being contextualized within dangerous paradigms concerning NATO intervention and some Arab countries’ insistence on transforming the civil war into a zero-sum game.

Hamas, which had successfully survived factional rivalry, Israeli wars and international isolation, was faced with its most pressing dilemma since the legislative elections of January 2006. On one hand, the so-called Arab Spring has ushered the unmistakable (and predicted) rise of Islamic political forces – of which Hamas is part and parcel. On the other, it has confusingly renovated the political equilibrium of the entire region.

It is no secret that without Iran’s financial support, Hamas would have found it very difficult to operate in the Gaza Strip following the Israeli blockade in 2007. Damascus had provided Hamas with a political platform, allowing the Islamic movement a level of freedom to propagate its ideas and take some of the heat off its besieged leadership in Gaza and the West Bank. Disowning its allies due to a growingly polarizing political (and sectarian) discourse in the region is not an easy decision by any means. Here lies Hamas’ predicament.

Political realism is unavoidably opportunistic. Hamas’ reputation among its supporters was maintained through a careful balance between political savvy and religiously motivated ideological principles. Revolutionary times can upset any balance, however skillfully cultivated. A series of agreements between Hamas and Fatah – including the landmark Doha accord on February 6 – were attributed to the reformatting of regional alliances: Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah suffered a serious blow with the ousting of Mubarak, and Hamas’ future in Syria looked increasingly dim in light of the escalating violence.

Although Palestinians have been demanding reconciliation between the rivals, to no avail, the successive unity episodes were incriminating to both parties as national accord and resisting Israel proved less urgent than regional politics. Hamas’ drift to a new camp continued at astonishing speed. Hamas’s leaders in Damascus, and also Gaza went out on regional tours, hoping to forge new alliances to the once shunned resistance movement. And in another twist, exiled Hamas leaders have suddenly emerged as agents of political moderation. The swiftness of the new terminology is explained by Brian Murphy and Karin Laub: “The movement’s top leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal, wants Hamas to be part of the broader Islamist political rise…For this, Hamas needs new friends like the wealthy Gulf states that are at odds with Iran” (AP, Feb 9).

Writing in the Lebanese Daily Star, Michael Broning, Israel-based director of the German Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung foundation, agrees. “Meshaal has come to represent a force of change,” he states, while Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh “represents the conservative wing of Gaza’s Hamas leadership.” Thus a long-coveted opening is presenting itself as “disagreements within Hamas have been escalating, pitting the movement’s diaspora leadership against the Hamas-led Gaza administration.” Tellingly, the title of Broning’s article is: “Engage Hamas’ moderates and test their newfound flexibility” (Feb 24).

Some commentators, Broning included, are widely speculating on the future of the movement. News outlets are rife with reports regarding Hamas’ maneuvering – whether compelled by political necessity or propelled by the ideological triumph of Islamist forces in the region.

Hamas might be reinventing itself, or it may simply be trying to weather the storm. Either way, the political context of Hamas’ maneuvers is quickly leaving its traditional home (the Israeli occupation), and moving into a whole new dimension regarding the region as a whole. While Hamas might convincingly argue that survival necessitates measured shifts in politics, it is more difficult to explain how quickly and readily regional politicking is trumping national priorities.

Indeed, the line separating principles and politics can at times be a very fine one.

By Ramzy Baroud

1 March 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

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

Beijing’s lessons for central banks

Contrary to widespread concerns over an imminent hard landing, China will defy the naysayers.

Even after premier Wen Jiabao’s latest warning over a moderate slowing of growth, it is doing a far better job in managing its economy than most give it credit. It even offers some lessons in macro policy strategy that the rest of the world should heed.

Nowhere is that more evident than on the inflation front, where Chinese authorities have waged a very successful campaign against what has long been the nation’s most destabilising economic threat. After peaking at 6.5 per cent in July 2011, the headline consumer price index (CPI) has decelerated to 4.5 per cent in early 2012, with more disinflation likely in the coming months.

This reflects the impacts of three very deliberate policy actions taken by Beijing.

First, administrative measures were put in place to deal with bottlenecks in agriculture – pork,cooking oil, fresh vegetables and fertiliser. Food inflation, which accounts for about one-third of the items on the Chinese CPI, peaked at 15 per cent in mid-2011. It has slowed to about 10 per cent.

Second, bank required reserve ratios were raised 12 times in 2011 to slow credit growth. The results are encouraging. Renminbi bank loan growth decelerated from 19.9 per cent in 2010 to 15.8 per cent in 2011 and renminbi deposit growth slowed even more sharply from 20.2 per cent in 2010 to 13.5 per cent in 2011.

Third, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) raised policy interest rates five times in 2011. This was particularly important in light of the acceleration of non-food, or core inflation, to a 3 per cent high last northern summer – the sharpest such increase in more than a decade. Had the PBoC not acted, underlying inflationary pressures could have intensified further. Instead, they have now begun to moderate – with non-food CPI inflation easing off to 1.8 per cent in January 2012.

This three-pronged approach – in conjunction with a modest acceleration in renminbi currency appreciation – is an important example of China’s increased prowess in macro policy stabilisation.

Particularly significant was the central bank’s willingness to take its policy rate – the one-year benchmark lending rate – up to the peak headline inflation rate of 6.5 per cent last northern summer. By doing so, the PBoC not only ended the excessive accommodation imparted by negative real interest rates but it was then able to orchestrate a “passive” monetary tightening – allowing real short-term interest rates to climb to 2 per cent as administrative actions took food price and headline inflation lower in the second half of 2011.

This is classic central banking at its best. China now has plenty of ammunition in its monetary policy arsenal – namely, high required bank reserve ratiosand positive real short-term interest rates – to deploy as circumstances dictate. In contrast, the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England are out of traditional ammunition. They have followed the Bank of Japan and taken their short-term policy rates down to the zero bound.

As a result, the world’s big central banks have been forced to rely on untested and dubious liquidity injections as the primary means of monetary control. Where this ends and what it implies for the future – inflation, another outbreak of asset and credit bubbles, or some combination of all that – is anyone’s guess.

In the event of a downside shock to its economy, Chinese authorities have ample scope to ease. With economic activity slowing, they have already taken modest actions in that direction with two recent 50 basis point cuts in the required reserve ratio to a still very high 20.5 per cent. At the same time, with real policy rates at 2 per cent and likely to rise a little further as headline inflation eases, there is plenty of scope for traditional monetary easing if there is further weakening in the economy. The west – out of basis points and with massive budget deficits – has no such option.

In a crisis-prone world, there is a gathering sense of foreboding over China. First it was the US, then Europe. Now there are growing fears the Chinese economy must be next. It’s not just the hand-wringing over inflation but also worries of a huge property bubble, a banking crisis or social unrest.

Those fears are overblown. China is cut from a very different cloth than the advanced economies of the west. Long focused on stability, it is more than willing to accept the short-term costs of a growth sacrifice to keep its development strategy on track.

A successful battle against inflation is an important example of the interplay between China’s tactical imperatives and its overarching strategic objectives. That’s a lesson the rest of the world could certainly stand to learn.

By Stephen S. Roach

5 March 2012

@ Financial Times

Stephen S. Roach, a member of the faculty at Yale University, was formerly chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and is the author of ‘The Next Asia’