People Before Profit blog

US Mired in Debt Limit Deadlock Amid Anemic Economic Growth

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 11:47:00 +0000

Original source: Xinhua

The US House of Representatives passed a debt ceiling plan in a vote on Friday evening, but the bill was quickly killed in the Senate, which further dampened hope for a bipartisan deal before the Aug. 2 deadline.

The GOP managed to send the measure put forth by House Speaker John Boehner to the Senate floor, despite earlier veto warning from the White House and strong opposition in the Senate.

Under the newly modified two-step plan outlined by Boehner, a Republican, the Congress would immediately raise the federal government's borrowing capacity by 900 billion US dollars extending to early next year and cut spending by 917 billion dollars over a decade.

According to the legislation rewritten overnight, the second tranche of debt limit increase next year would be contingent on Congress approving a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and sending it to the states for ratification.

To amend the Constitution or default is a "highly dangerous game" to play, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Friday.

The Democrat-controlled Senate scuttled the Boehner bill two hours after the House passage.

The House bill is "flawed", Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said Friday, adding that the US economy could not bear the kind of uncertainty any longer.

"The House of Representatives is still trying to pass a bill that a majority of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate have already said they won't vote for," US President Barack Obama said hours before the House voting.

Any debt ceiling compromise plan to avert an unprecedented debt default should be bipartisan in order to win support from both Democrats and Republicans, Obama said during a hastily arranged White House press conference Friday morning.

The deadlock might cause the United States to lose its top-notch credit rating, Obama warned.

A lower credit rating would result in a "tax increase" on Americans in the form of higher interest rates on their mortgages, their car loans and their credit cards, Obama said.

"Now that yet another political exercise is behind us, with time dwindling, leaders need to start working together immediately to reach a compromise that avoids default and lays the basis for balanced deficit reduction," the White House said in a statement after the House voting.

"Senator Reid's proposal is a basis for that compromise. It not only achieves more deficit reduction than the bill passed in the House today and puts a process in place to achieve even more savings, it also removes the uncertainty surrounding the risk of default," noted the statement.

The Reid plan will provide the US federal government borrowing authority extended long enough to reach the end of 2012 when the presidential election is over and aimed at cutting 2.4 trillion dollars of government spending over a decade.

The federal government's borrowing limit, currently at 14.29 trillion dollars, was reached on May 16. The Treasury Department said the nation would begin to default on its debts unless the Congress agreed to lift the limit by Aug. 2.

With time running short, Beltway policymakers have not found a way to lift the nation out of the current mess, despite the sluggish economic growth in the first half of this year.

The US economy slowed to an annualized growth rate of 1.3 percent during the second quarter of 2011, far short of market expectations of around 1.7 percent, fresh evidence to a softer economy, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

The department also sharply revised the January-March figures from a growth of 1.9 percent to just 0.4 percent, the weakest since the recession ended two years ago, as flat consumer spending and spending cuts from state and local governments undermined the economic recovery.

"On a day when we've been reminded how fragile the economy already is, this is one burden we can lift ourselves. We can end it with a simple vote, a vote that Democrats and Republicans have been taking for decades, a vote that the leaders in Congress have taken for decades," Obama urged at the press conference.

Photo by AFL-CIO/cc by 2.0/Flickr

India: More Evidence of Jobless Growth

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 11:42:00 +0000

Original source: People's Democracy

It is a feature that sullies a pretty picture. Growth in post-reform India accelerates, but fails to deliver adequate jobs for its citizens. As is widely acknowledged, the large sample surveys of employment by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) undertaken once in five years provide the most exhaustive data on employment trends and conditions in India. The NSSO has just released the leading indicators yielded by the latest such survey on this subject – the 66th Round, covering 2009-10. This helps to assess the impact on employment of growth during the reform years, and especially after 2003-04 when GDP growth accelerated to touch 8-9 per cent.

Declining employment

The results suggest that while the deceleration of employment growth recorded during 1993-94 to 1999-2000 had been partially reversed in the period 1999-2000 to 2004-05, the record over the five years after 2004-05 is even worse than it was during the 1990s. To summarise, the rate of growth of employment (on a usual, principal and subsidiary, status basis), which rose from 1.07 and 2.62 per cent in rural and urban areas respectively during 1983 to 1987-88, to 2.55 and 4.08 per cent during 1987-88 to 1993-94, fell to 0.80 and 2.73 per cent during 1993-94 to 1999-2000. The scepticism about the dynamism unleashed by reform that this generated was dismissed once the results of the 2004-05 survey were announced that showed that rural employment growth had actually risen to 2.41 per cent in rural areas and 4.22 per cent in urban areas over 1999-2000 to 2004-05. Based on the results of the 2004-05 survey, some like the chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council C Rangarajan argued that “with a sustained growth of 9 per cent per annum by 2012, unemployment will be totally eliminated.” The challenge was to achieve and sustain high growth rather than to generate employment, since “accelerating growth is central to expanding employment opportunities” (Times of India, March 15, 2006).

Since then, India seems to have managed to achieve and sustain high growth, except for the brief downturn during the global crisis. Yet the recently released results from the 2009-10 (66th Round) NSSO survey are disconcerting. Over the five-year period 2004-05 to 2009-10 employment declined at an annual rate of -0.34 per cent in rural areas, and rose at the rate of just 1.36 per cent in urban area. In the aggregate, the volume of principal and subsidiary status employment rose by a negligible 0.1 per cent.

However, government spokespersons have been quick to play down the significance of these numbers by referring to two other aspects of the NSS 2009-10 figures. The first is the fact that part of the deceleration in workforce expansion is the result of the substantially larger number of young people opting to educate themselves.

If we focus on the 15-24 age group, which is the one that is most likely to choose between education and work, we find that a the increase in the number of those reporting themselves as occupied with obtaining an education was much higher over the five years ending 2009-10 (16.7 million in the case of males and 11.9 million in the case of females) than was true over the previous five years (5.6 and 5.2 million respectively). This huge difference, which is a positive development from the point of view of generating a better and more skilled workforce, would have substantially reduced the number entering the labour force, contributing to the deceleration in the growth of the total number of workers.

However, the aggregate numbers of principal and subsidiary status workers suggest that this alone would be inadequate to provide a satisfactory explanation of what seems to be a dramatic collapse of employment. The total number of usual status (principal and subsidiary) workers, which increased by 60 million during the five years ending 2004-05, rose by just 2.3 million over the subsequent five years. (If we restrict the comparison to just changes in principal status workers the difference is still substantial though less dramatic, standing at 48.3 and 13.1 million respectively).

This too has been discounted by pointing to the fact that the fall in employment increments over the two periods under comparison has been substantially due to a fall in female employment. Rural female employment, which rose by 18.3 million between 1999-2000 and 2004-05, registered a decline of 19.2 million during 2004-05 and 2009-10. Even in the urban areas, the figures for changes in female employment during the two periods were significantly different at a positive 6.4 million and a negative 1.7 million respectively. This has been cited as evidence of a definite underestimation of female employment.

The figures have provided the basis for the criticism from within the government that the NSSO’s 2009-10 survey has significantly underestimated female employment, which is difficult to capture, especially in rural areas. On the other hand, it cannot be argued that this difficulty affected only the 2009-10 survey, especially to the extent needed to explain the dramatic differences noted above.

Moreover, if we stick to usual status (principal and subsidiary status) employment, the change in male employment also points to significant deceleration. Between 1999-2000 and 2004-05 male employment increased by 20.2 million in rural areas, while between 2004-05 and 2009-10 it rose by only 13.4 million. The corresponding figures for the urban areas were 15 million and 9.8 million respectively. In the case of only principal status workers, the increases had fallen from 19.2 to 13.6 million in rural areas and from 14.4 to 10.3 million in urban areas.

As mentioned earlier, this decline in employment is partly explained by the sharp increase in those pursuing an education in the 15-24 age group. We, therefore, turn to a separate examination of the trends in employment in the two main working age groups: 15-24 and 25-59. Let us initially restrict the analysis to trends in usual principal status employment for males, to accommodate for what may be the partially correct criticism that female employment was underestimated to a greater degree in 2009-10 than before.

One positive signal here is that male employment in the 25-59 age group rose when that in the (education-opting) 15 to 24 age group fell. Male employment (rural and urban) in the 15-24 age group fell by 6.2 million between 2004-05 and 2009-10 as compared to an increase of 6.5 million during 1999-2000 and 2004-05. Contrary to this, the figures for the changes in the 25-59 age group were 28.8 and 26.2 million respectively. That is, there was a larger absolute increase in 25-59 age group employment in the more recent period when compared with the previous one. However, the difference here too is small and the rate is marginally lower (13.3 as opposed to 13.8 per cent) given the rising base value.

In the case of females, however, even in this age group employment fell during the recent period by 5.1 million, while it had increased by a huge 13.1 million during the previous period. Thus, even if we restrict ourselves to the most favourable category in aggregate principal status employment in the case of males, which is the 25-59 age group, the most we can say is that employment growth has not been lower during the five years ending 2009-10, as compared to the previous period. This is despite the fact that these were the years when there was a substantial acceleration of GDP growth from the 6-7 per cent range to the 8-9 per cent range between these two periods.

There seems to be a second positive that emerges on first examination of the data relating to male, 25-59 age group employment, which is that much of the increase in employment is paid employment as opposed to self-employment. This points to a structural shift in employment generation since most of the additional male employment generated in this age group during the 1999-2000 to 2004-05 period was in the self-employment category.

Self-employment rose by 21.8 million during that period, as compared with just 4 million during the more recent period. On the other hand, during 2004-05 to 2009-10, paid (regular or casual) employment increased by 24.6 million, as compared with just 4.4 million during the previous period. Given the fact that self-employment could be substantially distress-driven, this is indeed welcome.

Increasing inequality

But that assessment needs to be moderated on three counts. First, the structural shift in the nature of additional employment occurs in a period when aggregate employment even among 25-59 years-old males has not been rising any faster. Second, around two-thirds of the increase in paid employment in the recent period is in the casual work category, which is likely to be less well-paid and volatile, leading to much lower earnings. Third, if we consider female employment in the 25 to 59 age group, while there has been a decline of 7.7 million in the number of self-employed workers, the number of paid workers rose by just 2.6 million. The increase in paid employment here has been far short of the loss of self-employment.

These features have to be seen in the context of certain changes observed in the sectoral composition of the expansion of employment during the two periods. The figures show that over 1999-2000 to 2004-05, the increase in employment was distributed across agriculture, manufacturing, construction and services, though services and construction dominated in the case of males and agriculture in the case of rural females. As compared to this, during the 2004-05 to 2009-10 period, agriculture and manufacturing made negative or negligible contributions to the increase in employment, whereas construction played the dominant role in the case of both males and females. Clearly even the small contributions made by the commodity producing sectors to employment increases are disappearing, making the system dependent on construction and services, especially the former.

In sum, even among sections of the population who would not and have not been opting for education as activity and for whom the identification of work participation may not be difficult, the main source of employment during the high growth years seems to be casual work in the construction sector. This is likely to be among the more volatile among employment categories, with lower wages, higher uncertainty of employment and, therefore, limited earnings potential. So even if we take account of the increased participation of the young in education and the possible underestimation of the employment of women, the evidence seems to point to unsatisfactory labour market outcomes in the period when India transited to its much-celebrated high-growth trajectory.

All this is significant for at least two reasons. The first is that it indicates that the pattern of growth that India is experiencing is woefully inadequate to provide incomes and livelihoods and the dignity that comes from work to a substantial number of those seeking it. It seems to be time to shift from an obsessive and single-minded devotion to growth and focus more on employment. The second is that the picture of near-jobless growth changes the whole notion of “inclusiveness”. If the trajectory continues, India’s poor and marginalised would have to be “included” not by integrating them into the development process through employment, but through special programmes that reek of state patronage and are dependent on government prerogative. The right to a decent life is not ensured but merely assured.

The implications of this scenario where increments in GDP are not accompanied by anywhere-near-adequate increments in employment are many. One is that the growth process India is experiencing is such that the new activities that displace old and traditional ones deliver much fewer new jobs relative to the number they displace. The second is that in a whole set of new activities that are “additional” to what existed before, “value creation” is far less dependent on leveraging “work” and based more on intangible notions of meeting felt needs and offering quality. The corollary is that the value created goes less to finance an expanding wage bill and more to enhancing surplus incomes in the form of profit, rent and interest. Not surprisingly, there are clear signs of an increase in inequality and a worsening of income distribution in recent years.

Thus, the evidence points to the need to have a close look at the growth strategy and make corrections to ensure higher employment growth. This would require measures to rebalance demand, change the composition of output and alter technology choice to ensure a higher rate of growth of employment. Even if this involves some trade off between GDP growth and employment growth at the margin, a case can be made in its favour. Unfortunately, the government seems disinclined to move in this direction. Rather, senior government economists have chosen to launch an attack on the NSSO, which has a much-deserved reputation and an excellent track record, for what they perceive to be shoddy statistical work. The presumption is that these officials in high places knew the numbers even before they were collected. That may sound absurd, but it only reflects the new ethos: when faced with evidence that calls for a policy rethink, the tendency is to trash the evidence (or to manipulate it) and pretend the problem does not exist.

Coalition Demands GOP Compromise on Debt Talks

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 15:46:00 +0000

Call on Republicans to Compromise and Not Wreck our Economy to Protect Tax Breaks for Millionaires, Private Jet Owners and Corporations

(Washington, DC) - Like a broken record Republicans in the House and Senate are willing to wreck our economy by refusing to compromise and insisting on their radical plan to balance the budget on the backs of seniors and the middle class by slashing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security while giving tax breaks to millionaires, hedge fund managers and big corporations.

Today, at over 100 events across the country Americans continued to make their voices heard and demanded a debt deal that protects seniors and the middle class while making sure the rich and corporations pay their fair share.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said, "Republican elected leaders are acting like dictators – putting their political interests before the good of the country. They're willing to throw working families and the working poor overboard just to preserve tax cuts for billionaires and hedge fund managers. With over 14 million Americans out of work we need Congress to focus on job creation. And massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will only hurt any effort to rebuild our economy."

AFSCME President Gerald McEntee said, ""Republican leaders need to get their priorities straight. They appear willing to throw the economy back into a tail spin and deny Social Security checks to seniors, benefits to veterans and care to sick children – all to save face with their corporate donors. Main Street has had enough."

Alliance for Retired Americans President Barbara Easterling said, "Retirees know firsthand that Medicare is one of America's greatest success stories, helping generations of seniors afford to see a doctor and fill a prescription."

HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome said, "It's an all-out assault on the middle class in order to protect the richest people and corporations when we need a balanced approach to avert a crisis that will wreck the economy. People are fed up with the Republicans, who want to slash Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security just to protect tax breaks for millionaires, billionaires and big corporations. People are taking action because they want Congress to create jobs and the Republicans to stop wasting precious time trying to score political points."

MoveOn.org Executive Director Justin Reuben said, "The Republicans in Washington are doing everything in their power to protect tax breaks for millionaires and corporations, even if it means throwing our entire economy off a cliff. It is time for Congress to pass a debt deal that does not further damage our economy, and does not ask seniors and the middle class to bear the burden of raising the debt ceiling."

NEA Executive Director John I. Wilson said, "There is a fundamental question before Congress. Will Congressional Republicans balance the budget on the backs of those least able to afford additional sacrifice? Will they cater to Wall Street and large corporate interests at the expense of America's children, seniors and the middle class? Or will they put partisan politics aside to do what's right for all Americans?"

Protect Your Care Communications Director Eddie Vale said, "If Republicans continue this reckless path and refuse to compromise they will wreck our economy, senior citizens won't get their Social Security or Medicare and military families will lose their benefits."

SEIU President Mary Kay Henry said, "Republicans in Congress are playing chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States and proposing policies that would force seniors to leave their nursing homes, children to give up their healthcare and working families to say goodbye to their jobs. While Americans are struggling, Congressional Republicans are taking this irresponsible and extremist approach so that corporations and millionaires can keep their tax giveaways. That is both unacceptable and morally wrong."

USAction Director of Strategy and Policy Alan Charney said, "A strong middle class isn't built by accident. It is built because of responsible investments we make together. Our safety net – programs like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security – represents these types of investments and scaling back is penny-wise and pound-foolish. The money exists to pay for these investments. We just need leaders in Congress to work for all Americans, not just the richest and most powerful Wall Street speculators."

Today's events are the continuation of a massive grassroots lobbying campaign to prevent a debt ceiling deal that slashes Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security while giving tax breaks to millionaires, private jet owners and big corporations:

AFL-CIO activists sent over 190,000 e-mails to Congress and the White House and made 3,500 calls to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

AFSCME, Americans United for Change and NEA have generated 34,709 phone calls to targeted members of the House and Senate over the past three weeks.

Alliance for Retired Americans held 30 Medicare anniversary events in July to both celebrate Medicare's many accomplishments and warn seniors of threats to its future.

HCAN has held more than 50 events the past two weeks across the country demanding members of Congress stop protecting millionaires and billionaires and preserve Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security for middle-class Americans. HCAN supporters this month also made 5,000 calls to senators and representatives' offices.

MoveOn.org Civic Action & American Dream Movement held 800 events, with over 20,000 participants, including one in every Congressional District, this past Tuesday.

NEA mobilized tens of thousands of educators in every state of the union and in addition to their phone calls sent 28,000 e-mails to Members of Congress.

Protect Your Care held 97 events in eight states in July telling Congress to keep their hands off Medicare and Medicaid.

SEIU has participated in a series of local actions at Congressional offices to support Medicaid, has generated tens of thousands of phone calls and emails into Congress, have produced multiple television, newspaper, web and radio ads shaming Republican for holding average Americans hostage to the interests of millionaires and corporate CEO's.

USAction partners and affiliates held over 100 events in July. USAction generated over 42,000 messages to Congress in the past two weeks calling on Congress to tax billionaires and cut Pentagon spending instead of slashing Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Obama Admin. Boosts Fuel Economy Standard

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 13:47:00 +0000

The average car fuel economy will nearly double by 2025 to almost 55 miles per gallon, President Obama announced July 29 in a White House gathering that included both auto company executives and UAW representatives.

The President said that higher fuel efficiency standards is part of his energy policy which aims to decrease dependence on oil, to help Americans save money on gas, and to reduce pollution caused by auto emissions.

The rise in fuel efficiency standards will mean big savings at the pump, the President said. "Think about what this means. It means that filling up your car every two weeks instead of filling it up every week. It will save a typical family more than $8,000 in fuel costs over time."

In the subsequent 15 years after implementation, oil usage will be reduced by more than 2 million barrels per day and oil imports will decline by one-third.

Less oil usage "means we’re reducing the carbon pollution that threatens our climate," he added.

President Obama explained that his goal is to combine reduced oil consumption with new incentives for renewable energy sources and an end to tax subsidies for oil companies.

In separate remarks, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said, “American consumers are calling for cleaner cars that won’t pollute their air or break their budgets at the gas pump, and our innovative American automakers are responding with plans for some of the most fuel efficient vehicles in our history.”

The administration's announcement won praise from environmental groups, despite the fact that they favored an average fuel economy standard of 60 mpg.

“After decades of inaction and stagnation," said Michael Brune, Sierra Club executive director, "President Obama has ensured 15 years of continuous progress to help cut our dangerous addiction to oil, create American jobs, save families money at the pump, curb life-threatening pollution and tackle climate disruption."

"Today's announcement is a win for everyone," he said.

Brune warned, however, that the administration should avoid creating loopholes or exceptions that weaken the standard as it is finalized this fall.

Michelle Robinson, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' clean vehicles program, also applauded the announcement but added a caveat. "If automakers can meet the standards with accounting tricks instead of using better technology, the program’s overall benefits would be eroded," she said.

Photo by David Reber's Hammer Photography/cc by 2.0/Flickr

Michigan Republicans Forcing a "Race to the Bottom" on Environment

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 11:38:00 +0000

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - Republicans in the state legislature do not care about Michigan's people or its natural resources, charged a coalition of labor and environmental activists in response to legislation designed to weaken the state's environmental protections this week.

At a press conference held on the shores of Grand River in downtown Grand Rapids, representatives of the Blue Green Alliance and We Are the People explained that the Republican-authored H.B. 4326 and SB 272 would prohibit state agencies and government entities from from adopting laws or rules regarding environmental policy that are stronger than current federal law.

This "no stricter than a federal bill" rule ties the state's hands, Mike Berkowitz, a chapter organizer with the Michigan Sierra Club, said. He noted that deferring to federal law means that issues unique to the Great Lakes will not receive special attention.

"This legislation sends a clear message that state politicians don't think the Great Lakes are worth protecting," he added.

Sue Levy, UAW Region 1D CAP coordinator, added, "State politicians need to get their priorities straight."

The law would strip the state of its authority to protect natural resources as well as to guarantee important health and safety protections in the workplace for Michigan workers, unless those rules are already mandated by Washington.

"Instead of stripping important workplace and environmental protections, our elected leaders should focus on rebuilding our economy and creating jobs for working and middle-class families."

The specific needs of this state – protections for the environment and workers – cannot be left up to bickering Washington politicians, Berkowitz noted, pointing to the impasse over the debt ceiling.

"Racing to the bottom on environmental protection and worker safety isn't a jobs plan for Michigan," added Mark Schauer, national co-chair of the BlueGreen Alliance Jobs 21!.

"In fact, it's the opposite. We need a 21st century plan to spur innovation, break our dependence on foreign oil, and protect workers. These proposals don't do that," Schauer pointed out.

"Economies are built on their assets. Michigan has two great assets: it's people and its natural resources. Economies that value those resources create the right incentives to grow new jobs needed in the 21st century. Michigan's is unique in its assets," Schauer explained. Unfortunately Republicans in the state government have shown they do not care about protecting those assets.

"We've got the best innovators in the world, the best workers int he world. The question is do we value them?" Schauer said.

He stated that after eight years of serious attention to developing Michigan's green economy with new investments in solar, wind, and biomass renewable energy source, Republican efforts to scale back this innovation is already driving job creators out of the state. He cited how last a April a Michigan-based company chose to open a solar-power equipment operation in Ontario rather than in the state.

Republican policies are driving out green jobs, Schauer suggested.

Report: Racial Wealth Gap at Record Levels

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:29:00 +0000

The Pew Research Center has just released stunning statistics on the aggravation of inequality by race, ethnicity, class and gender since the onset of this depression. The study focuses one of the broadest measures of overall social and economic progress: wealth.

Wealth is the sum of assets (houses, cars, savings and checking accounts, stocks and mutual funds, retirement accounts, etc.) minus the sum of debt (mortgages, auto loans, credit card debt, etc.). Wealth is different from household income, which measures the annual inflow of wages, interest, profits and other sources of earning. It does not include wealth in public goods, which in some countries (and some US areas) might be substantial – subsidized health care, retirement, transportation, communication-media infrastructure, education, etc).

Wealth gaps between whites, blacks and Hispanics have always been much greater than income gaps. Nonetheless the changes have never seen the magnitude witnessed in the past few years.

Pew reports that the median wealth of white households is now 20 times that of Black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available government data from 2009.

“These lopsided wealth ratios are the largest since the government began publishing such data a quarter century ago and roughly twice the size of the ratios that had prevailed between these three groups for the two decades prior to the Great Recession that ended in 2009.”

The bursting of the housing market bubble in 2006 and the depression that has followed from late 2007 took a far greater toll on the wealth of minorities than whites. Plummeting house values were the principal cause of the recent erosion in household wealth among all groups, with Hispanics hit hardest by the meltdown in the housing market.

“From 2005 to 2009, inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66 percent among Hispanic households and 53 percent among Black households, compared with just 16% among white households.

As a result of these declines, the typical Black household had just $5,677 in wealth (assets minus debts) in 2009, the typical Hispanic household had $6,325 in wealth and the typical white household had $113,149.”

These numbers represent median wealth figures, thus tens of millions – concentrated in African-American, Latino, and Asian communities – are completely underwater, are insolvent, and bankrupt.

The foreclosed homes that most of this collapsed wealth represents stand abandoned and unused in cities and towns with no property income to sustain necessary school, public safety, or health services.

An underlying, perhaps more profound, message in the Pew wealth report is that it completely refutes any remaining hopes in the viability of the Bush “ownership society” as the path to popular wealth, at least as long as market fundamentalism holds sway or veto power over economic policy.

Combined with income statistics that also show recent aggravated overall inequality layered on top of 30 years of median income stagnation or decline – and Miles Davis Bitches Brew barely captures the bad mood swirling like mouse droppings in every corner of the land. There is no reason why gains in productivity (and thus wealth) should not be distributed so that, at least, the median, ordinary person’s overall wealth grew or declined in direct proportion. When working people’s income diverges downward from their rate of improved productivity – the math tells the truth. There is robbery taking place. Reagan told us it was so that later when we got pie in the sky it would trickle back down us.

Perhaps the media is not watching closely enough – but the chief victims of the unrelenting forces of austerity – minorities, youth, seniors, workers – are going to be descending on state and national capitols in multitudes of hunger, health care and jobs marches. Frankly, they got nowhere else to go to get answers. They are coming to say: Stop Stop Stop. Turn around Get Real and Tell the Truth!

Arab Awakening and Western Media: Time for a New Revolutionary Discourse

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 10:44:00 +0000

When President Ali Abdullah Saleh tried desperately to quell Yemen’s popular uprising, he appealed to tribalism, customs and traditions. All his efforts evidently failed, and the revolution continued unabated. When Saleh denounced women for joining men in demonstrations in Sana’a – playing on cultural sensitivities and a very selective interpretation of religion – the response was even more poignant. Thousands of women took to the streets, denouncing Saleh’s regime and calling for its ouster.

The immediate popular response was notable for its level of organization and decisiveness. It was also interesting because most of the women protesting did so while wearing the Niqab. Fully covered Yemeni women have continued to inspire - if not fuel - the revolution which started in February. Without their active participation and resilience in the face of violent attempts to quash the uprising, one wonders if Yemen could have held on for so long.

The role of Yemeni women in the revolution should significantly challenge any ideas of Arab women that are based simply on statistical or superficial criteria. In 2010, the Freedom House report on women in the Middle East had already determined that Yemen made no significant progress on women’s rights in the preceding five years. Most international reports examining the standing of women in Yemen – whether in education, health or any other field – have consistently been bleak. Yet, in revolutionary Yemen, the discounted women were more than equal to their male peers when it came to articulating their demands for freedom, democracy and equality.

Yemeni women have not simply broken the stereotype regarding what truly ‘radical’ women in a traditional society should be. They have also challenged all sorts of academic takes on the subject. No famous feminist or NGO has been responsible for mobilizing the women’s activism. Yemeni women are also not specifically asking for equality in a supposedly men-dominated society. They seem to understand that a truly free and democratic society will naturally deliver on its promises of equal treatment, opportunities and expectations for all.

Western media and think-tanks have long presented a mistaken and divisive understanding of Arab – and other – societies. There is a discrepancy between the actual situation and indicators-driven understanding. Entire Arab societies are deconstructed and reduced into simple data, which is filtered, classified and juggled to fit into precise criteria and clear-cut conclusions. Public opinions and entire policies are then formed or formulated based on these conclusions.

The problem does not lie in academic practices per se, but rather the objective-specific understanding that many in the west have towards the Middle East. Most Washington-based think-tanks - regardless of their political leanings - tend to study distant societies only for the sake of producing definite answers and recommendations. However, providing an all-encompassing depiction of a society like Yemen’s – whose internal dynamics and complexity necessarily differs from any other’s in the region – would be most unhelpful for those eager to design policies and short-term strategies on the go.

Arab revolutions continue to tear down archaic beliefs and misguided understandings, challenging the wild theories around Arab peoples and their supposed wrangling between secularism and Islamism. Despite all of this, the self-seeking objectifying of Arabs continues in western media.

Under the all-inclusive title, “The Arab World: The Awakening”, an article in Economist Magazine (Feb 17) attempted to describe the upheaval currently underway throughout the Arab world. Interspersed with such predictable terms as ‘extremists’, ‘Islamists’, ‘strongmen’ and so on, the inane analysis made way for equally silly conclusions. The article, for example, suggested that the West’s decision to accommodate dictatorial regimes in the Middle East was motivated by a mix of despair and altruism: “The West has surrendered to this (Arab) despair too, assuming that only the strongmen could hold back the extremists.”

While words such ‘extremists’, ‘fundamentalists’ and ‘terrorists’ may have their own special ring to western audiences, they could well mean something entirely different – if anything at all - to Arabs. Listening to the Arab media’s coverage of ongoing revolutions, one may not even encounter any of the above terminologies. At times, they can be entirely irrelevant in terms of understanding the momentous happenings underway throughout the region.

The Libyan rebellion is another example to note here. Revolution and war in Libya have ignited a heated debate among Arab intellectuals, pertaining to the use of violence and foreign intervention – although barely in support of the Libyan regime. However, for the New York Times, the coverage of the story is often slated and removed from current reality in Libya. The article “Exiled Islamists Watch Rebellion Unfold at Home,” (NYT, July 18) attempted to answer a nagging question concerning the relationship between Islamists and the Libyan rebels. This question is relevant only to western governments. Although the group examined – the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – has long been dismantled, its alleged former ties with al-Qaeda continue to concern many in the west. While for Libyans, “the men are seen not as an alien, pernicious force but as patriots,” the article claims that many in the West “are trying to assess their influence and any lingering links to Al Qaeda.”

Arab revolutions are attempting to examine larger issues that have tremendous impact on all aspects of life. They are actively confronting the suffering caused at the hands of local dictators supported by Western and other foreign governments. Western media and intellectuals, however, continue to seek only easy answers to intricate, multifaceted questions. In doing so, they follow the path of the same superficial, stereotypical and predictable discourse. While Arab societies discuss democracy, freedom and social justice, Western writers continue to follow the imagined paths of al-Qaeda, Islamists, moderates and extremists. In all of this, they are embarking on yet another futile hunt, a hunt that which will yield no concrete answers, and more misguided policies.

Photo: Protesters took to the streets of Sana'a, Yemen last May to denounce the dictatorship. (by Sallam/cc by 2.0/Flickr)

China Approves Plan for Energy "Golden Zone"

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:49:00 +0000

The central government has approved plans for an energy industry “golden zone” linking Shaanxi province and the autonomous regions of Ningxia Hui and Inner Mongolia in northwestern China, said an autonomous region official on Wednesday.

“After thorough research and investigation, we applied to the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration to establish the ‘golden zone’ and have received approval and support,” Wang Zhengwei, chairman of the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, told a news conference.

The blueprint for the zone, connecting the energy-rich regions of Yulin city in north Shaanxi province, Ordos in southwestern Inner Mongolia and the Ningdong energy and chemical base in Ningxia Hui autonomous region, was first proposed by Vice-Premier Li Keqiang during an inspection of Ningxia in February 2010.

The zone covers nine cities and areas in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces and the Ningxia Hui and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions and spreads over 240,000 square kilometers. Energy production in this area accounted for 21 percent of China’s primary energy output in 2010.

The Securities Times cited the development guidelines for the zone as saying that by 2020, coal production in the zone will total 1.45 billion tons, while oil output will reach 54 million tons and that of natural gas will stand at 55 billion cubic meters.

Wang said that 20 State-owned enterprises have invested more than 120 billion yuan ($18.56 billion) in the Ningdong energy and chemical base and have developed the base into an advanced production facility for chemicals including carbinol, dimethyl ether and coal-based alkene.

Sun Hongbo, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the development of a “golden zone” of energy in western China is significant for the region and the country.

“Many parts of China are facing energy shortages, and the abundant energy resources including coal and natural gas in the zone can meet that demand,” said Sun. “The development of the ‘golden zone’ will promote local economic growth and create jobs.”

However, he said the government should avoid over-dependence on energy production when developing policies for the region.

“The project will bring big profits in the short term, but in the long run, sustainable and balanced development is needed,” he said.

The development of the energy “golden zone” is part of the autonomous region’s plan for a new Ningxia.

“Ningxia experienced the fastest economic and social development during the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010).

“In the next five years, we will double the gross domestic product, fixed-asset investment and the incomes of urban and rural residents,” Wang told the news conference.

Ningxia recorded gross domestic product of 164.3 billion yuan in 2010, 2.7 times that of 2005. Local fiscal revenue reached 15.4 billion yuan, an average annual increase of 26.4 percent.

The autonomous region’s government is determined to develop an economic zone along the Yellow River, which is an important component of the “golden zone” of energy.

The economic zone along the Yellow River will help transport the coal of the Xinjiang to Ningxia and lay the groundwork for importing oil and natural gas from the Middle East and Central Asia.

Debt Ceiling Showdown: Time to Look Deeper?

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:42:00 +0000

The latest news has muted, but falling, markets in the wake of Republican Speaker John Boehner walking out of debt-ceiling negotiations with the President. The Sunday night deadline the President set for congressional action passed without any new agreement to raise the debt-ceiling.

Markets are jittery – and take note: there will be little warning before the exact moment a new financial crisis starts, and jitters turn into an avalanche of selling US Treasuries. over a fundamental shift in confidence of foreign owners of US debt that they will ever be paid in full will create panic. Economists call it a ‘Minsky moment”, after Hyman Minsky, who is back in vogue after being exorcised academically for decades for calling capitalism “inherently unstable”.

Its looking more likely now that Congress may cross the complete-gridlock line. It may not be able to pass legislation raising the debt-ceiling. The Presidents remarks to the nation said it straight – a grave crisis is approaching. He is not bluffing.

There is a faction in the Republican party that simply wants to strangle public goods and public works. Period. It does not matter if this reckless arrogance is born of stupidity, or meanness, greed. Under the extreme pressures of this depression, some are captured by, and cannot seem to escape – no matter the contrary arguments and common sense presented – bankrupt ideologies like Reaganism. The latter ALWAYS advocated progress through soaking the working people, fixing unemployment with more layoffs and tax cuts for the rich, and other completely refuted, dead-end, and used-up so-called “market fundamentalism” ideas.

We are in this crisis because the Reagan framework of privatization, union busting and financialization of the post-Vietnam war economy has collapsed in pieces – it does not work. A new industrial and financial policy is needed. It must include a conceptual framework that redefines the proper relations between public and private to match a world rich in human capital, services, and more public goods and works, alongside a more transparent, less corrupt private financial sector focused on innovation. How we get there – that's the “what is to be done” for this era.

What lies immediately ahead is unknown. Even if a deal is struck at the last minute, or if the President invokes power under the 14th amendment to raise the debt ceiling on his own, this controversy reveals a political system in serious need of repair, as system becoming increasingly paralyzed. A new financial crisis is a certainty if we go into default, but not unlikely even if we avoid technical default. Confidence in the United States is being shaken. The road to austerity is the only matter now being discussed – and that road leads to national disaster, in my opinion. The slightest externality – say, the unwinding of the Greek default beyond what the EU can handle – can sink the ship.

Time To Look Deeper

Its time to look deeper, and ask some basic questions – in case we survive the imminent economic tsunami and decide to mount a successful economic and democratic revival in our country.

Deep Question number one: The only regime capable of redressing this crisis is one AT LEAST as democratic, as progressive, as working class oriented, as Franklin Roosevelt’s. For many reasons, some likely personal style and philosophy but most rooted in different historical relations of forces, Obama, so far, is governing from a more centrist, friendlier-to-Wall Street position. This is seriously compromising a turn away from austerity politics. How do we shift the center leftward?

Deep Question number 2: The first question implies an effort on the scale of World War II, both economically and politically. If Hitler had not attacked, Roosevelt would have left office in 1941 with 16 percent unemployment! What is the analog to World War II that works as the great mobilizer today?

Deep Question number 3: How, and in what forms can necessarily market-based sectors of the economy both grow, and be stabilized – in what will be a mainly services, knowledge-based, more socialized economy of a better future? The “more socialism” comes from the need to curtail “too big to fail” private enterprise, and from strengthening the safety nets and investment in the abilities of our people, and from a more coherent industrial policy that addresses public private partnerships in “green” challenges on a large scale.. Clearly the Reaganite-financialization model has failed. What, exactly, replaces that model?

Deep Question 4: another financial crisis coming short range threatens to create pre-World War II Germany, Versailles-like pressures on society. Is the Norway mass murder spree a wake-up call for us all? Are there not serious fascist, anti-democratic dangers emerging and reflected in far right Republican efforts to “reduce government to a size where it can be drowned in its bathwater”?

As we approach the 2012 election cycle, the debt-ceiling showdown is showing that big questions are becoming immediate ones, not just subjects for long-range speculation. The stakes are immense, both nationally and globally. What we do – will “light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.”

Labor Movement: We will Not Be Quiet

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:35:00 +0000

Remarks by AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka, Boilermakers 32nd Consolidated Convention, Las Vegas, Nevada
July 26, 2011

Thank you, Newt [Jones]. And thank you all for inviting me here today to address the Boilermakers.

Before I say another word, I'd like to take a moment to recognize the hard work and energy of your president—Newt, you're a true friend and a man after my own heart. Thank you for everything you do.

And I want to thank all the leaders in this room. First and foremost, every last one of you stepped up and participated whole-heartedly in the fight for the Employee Free Choice Act. You invested time, energy and money into that effort, and although we haven't yet won the comprehensive reforms that America's working people need, this fight helped to bring us a National Labor Relations Board that's actually doing its job—and this fight has strengthened and energized our entire labor movement.

You and your members already have the benefit of belonging to unions, and yet you demonstrated your willingness to mobilize and fight so that all workers have the freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life. I salute you – and on behalf of working people everywhere, I thank you.

And while you were mobilizing—getting all those signatures of support for workers' rights—who knew we would get the national attention to collective bargaining that we've wanted for years, thanks to an outrageous governor in Wisconsin named Scott Walker? That guy may have gotten the legislation he wanted—but not the reaction. Because by a two to one margin the American public is on our side on this issue -- not his!

But if we look around the country today—from the Midwest to the West Coast and to Washington, D.C.—we've got too many Scott Walkers on the loose.

And too many of our political leaders in both parties are stuck, focused on deficits instead of creating jobs, telling us we need to make tough choices and accept shared sacrifice. But working families—young workers, seniors, people of color, poor people and people with disabilities—have been doing all the sacrificing, while billionaires get tax cuts, and corporations get tax incentives to export good jobs overseas!

It's insane and it has to be stopped!

We need to keep asking our leaders: "Who got us into this mess?"

It wasn't working people, I can tell you that much. The people who got us into this mess are getting off scot-free!

And too many politicians are letting them do it.

Brothers and sisters, as we look ahead, we see that the stakes for the future of working families are very, very high.

And we know that when it comes right down to it, we can't look to anyone but ourselves to get working families out of this economic mess.

Really, it's up to you. It's up to us to build our labor movement up so we can once again lift up all working people, so working families can have a level playing field and a full voice in the workplace, and in our democracy.

And to do all of this, we have to make our labor movement stronger. You know, the most important political action we can take isn't electing any politician or voting for any party. The most important political action we can make is strengthening ourselves to speak out for all working people.

So let me say this: We will be friends of any politician who is a friend to working people. But we will not be an automatic advocate for any political party, not for any candidate, not for any elected official.

They've got to earn it.

Our single job, our sole mission, our sole priority, is to represent the interests of men and women who work, who bring home wages—and to represent them honestly and fearlessly, every single day, with no caveats, no apologies.

A lot of people think that means we need to be harder on Democrats, and it does. President Obama and the Democrats have done a great deal—not enough—but a lot. Still, we need a lot more. And we will not be quiet about it.

We intend to hold everyone in public office accountable, regardless of their political party.

And yet, brothers and sisters, let's be crystal clear about who has consistently launched and relentlessly pursued attacks on working people.

Tea Party Republicans again, and again, and again have been a united front against us, against all working people in America, to do all the harm they can.

Listen, it's been almost three years since our entire financial system went into meltdown.

Even before that, outsourcing and stagnant wages were already a plague on our communities, but then they became an epidemic.

Wages for working people are still flat and falling; 25 million people are looking desperately for full-time work.

Let's be clear about who's been waving the flag of patriotism while undercutting the very values America represents.

Brothers and sisters, this is America! We can do better than this! These are our kids and our parents and neighbors -- hard-working people who want nothing more than a job.

And so we have to fight for the future we know is possible—a future of long-term, broadly shared prosperity.

We have to fight to tell the truth—that America's largest global corporations are swimming in cash. CEOs have never had it better.

America isn't poor. We're still the richest nation on earth, with the strongest GDP in the world. It's just that very, very few of us are seeing any of that wealth.

We have to tell the truth about our economic crisis—that it's not the result of a force of nature or an act of God. Our economy was ruined by the actions and decisions of some of the biggest players in our financial system—and it can happen again if we make the same choices again.

And we have to connect the dots to show how unemployment feeds foreclosures, how foreclosures weaken banks, and how it all leads to more layoffs, feeding the entire, ugly, destructive cycle.

So what am I asking you to do?

I'm asking you to fight cheap patriotism, with deep patriotism!

I'm asking you to be prepared to do the hard work, to engage and talk to and listen to all our members, year-round, about their needs and interests.

We have to be prepared to listen to, and continue to stand together with, workers who have never had the benefits of union membership.

We've got to reach out to our communities, and be real, committed, engaged members of our communities, building coalitions, and not just when our backs are against the wall. Our communities are struggling too, and our concerns are the same. We don't have to look further than Westwego, Louisiana, to see that.

We have to ask ourselves if we're ready to get serious about what young workers are up against today and embrace them fully in our unions.

We have to commit to meeting the needs of today's workforce and understand what work looks like for them.

We have to ask ourselves what organizing means now and in the future, and how we will help workers organize to rebuild our labor movement until we're large enough, and strong enough to once again set national standards with our contracts.

We have to redefine unions for today's generations, and define unions for the next generation.

This is a massive responsibility, and one that we absolutely must take on!

Brothers and sisters, we have a long way to go before we can fix our broken trade laws and ensure that every working man and woman in America has the freedom to form a union and bargain for a better life.

How will we rebuild America's manufacturing might?

Will we even be able to keep Avondale open for five more years?

Will we foster and keep enough good jobs to support working families, our communities, our cities and our states?

These are hard questions, to be perfectly honest with you. But let me tell you something. I can't think of a time that I'd rather be a leader in the American labor movement, and I can't think of anyone I'd rather be in our movement with, than with all of you.

Sisters and brothers, the future of working people and the essence of our American democracy is on the line.

There is no way forward, except through the fire.

And we're going to go there together. We're going to walk through it side-by-side.

It'll be hard. We'll be tested.

But I know we're going to get to the other side, and this fight will make us stronger.

Brothers and sisters, this is our time. This is our moment.

Are you ready to fight for good jobs from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean? From the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico?

This is work we can only do together. All of us. Public-sector and private-sector, progressives and conservatives.

We don't have to agree all the time. Our differences can make us stronger. We don't all have to think alike to respect one another, and to work hard and well together.

But when it comes to our rights and freedoms, when it comes to ruthless politicians who want to hurt working people, we've got to be united.

We need to feel it, right here, in our hearts.

Brothers and sisters, the challenges before us are extraordinary—but we have to face them if we want the future that I know is possible, a future of long-term, broadly shared prosperity.

A future when CEOs aren't the only ones who can make ends meet.

A future when every single working person in America has the fundamental right to be part of this labor movement.

A future when every single worker has the fundamental right to be treated with dignity, to put in a hard, honest day's work and be rewarded fairly for it, to have the health care and retirement security we need and the opportunity to see our children a little better off than we are.

We'll work for it. We'll stand for it. We'll fight for it. Together.

To bring out the best in the America.

To bring out the best in ourselves, and each other.

And we will never, ever, back down.

Thank you, and God bless you and the work you do.

Seeing "Islamic Terror" in Norway

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:26:00 +0000

Media Advisory
Seeing 'Islamic Terror' in Norway
Learning no lessons from Oklahoma City mistakes
7/25/11

Fairnesss and Accuracy in Reporting

Right-wing terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik reportedly killed 76 people in Norway on Friday, by all accounts driven by far-right anti-immigrant politics and fervent Islamophobia. But many early media accounts assumed that the perpetrator of the attacks was Muslim.

On news of the first round of attacks--the bombs in Oslo--CNN's Tom Lister (7/22/11) didn't know who did it, but knew they were Muslims: "It could be a whole range of groups. But the point is that Al-Qaeda is not so much an organization now. It's more a spirit for these people. It's a mobilizing factor." And he speculated confidently about their motives:

You've only got to look at the target--prime minister's office, the headquarters of the major newspaper group next door. Why would that be relevant? Because the Norwegian newspapers republished the cartoons of Prophet Mohammad that caused such offense in the Muslim world.... That is an issue that still rankles amongst Islamist militants the world over.

CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank (7/22/11) took to the airwaves to declare that "Norway has been in Al-Qaeda's crosshairs for quite some time." He added that the bombing "bears all the hallmarks of the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization at the moment," before adding, almost as an afterthought, that "we don't know at this point who was responsible."

On Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor (7/22/11), guest host Laura Ingraham declared, "Deadly terror attacks in Norway, in what appears to be the work, once again, of Muslim extremists." Even after Norwegian authorities arrested Breivik, former Bush administration U.N. Ambassador John Bolton was in disbelief. "There is a kind of political correctness that comes up when these tragic events occur," he explained on Fox's On the Record (7/22/11). "This kind of behavior is very un-Norwegian. The speculation that it is part of right-wing extremism, I think that has less of a foundation at this point than the concern that there's a broader political threat here."

Earlier in the day on Fox (7/22/11), Bolton had explained that "the odds of it coming from someone other than a native Norwegian are extremely high." While he admitted there was no evidence, Bolton concluded that "it sure looks like Islamic terrorism," adding that "there is a substantial immigrant population from the Middle East in particular in Norway."

An early Wall Street Journal editorial (7/22/11) dwelled on the "explanations furnished by jihadist groups to justify their periodic slaughters," before concluding that because of Norway's commitment to tolerance and freedom, "Norwegians have now been made to pay a terrible price."

Once the alleged perpetrator's identity did not conform to the Journal's prejudice, the editorial was modified, but it continued to argue that Al-Qaeda was an inspiration: "Coordinated terrorist attacks are an Al-Qaeda signature. But copycats with different agendas are surely capable of duplicating its methods."

Many pundits and outlets had to scramble to justify their ideological presumptions in the wake of the unexpected suspect. Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin (7/22/11) had called the Norwegian violence "a sobering reminder for those who think it's too expensive to wage a war against jihadists," citing Thomas Joscelyn of the Weekly Standard's assertion that "in all likelihood the attack was launched by part of the jihadist hydra." In a follow-up post (7/23/11), Rubin insisted that even though she was wrong, she was right, because "there are many more jihadists than blond Norwegians out to kill Americans, and we should keep our eye on the systemic and far more potent threats that stem from an ideological war with the West."

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat (7/25/11) likewise argued that we should respond to the horror in Norway by paying more attention to the alleged perpetrator's point of view:

On the big picture, Europe's cultural conservatives are right: Mass immigration really has left the Continent more divided than enriched, Islam and liberal democracy have not yet proven natural bedfellows and the dream of a postnational, postpatriotic European Union governed by a benevolent ruling elite looks more like a folly every day.... Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have an obligation to acknowledge that Anders Behring Breivik is a distinctively right-wing kind of monster. But they also have an obligation to the realities that this monster’s terrible atrocity threatens to obscure.

The New York Times' July 23 report explained that while early speculation about Muslim terrorists was incorrect,

there was ample reason for concern that terrorists might be responsible. In 2004 and again in 2008, the No. 2 leader of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, who took over after the death of Osama bin Laden, threatened Norway because of its support of the American-led NATO military operation in Afghanistan.

Of course, anyone who kills scores of civilians for political motives is a "terrorist"; the language of the Times, though, suggested that a "terrorist" would have to be Islamic.

The Times went on:

Terrorism specialists said that even if the authorities ultimately ruled out Islamic terrorism as the cause of Friday’s assaults, other kinds of groups or individuals were mimicking Al-Qaeda’s brutality and multiple attacks.

"If it does turn out to be someone with more political motivations, it shows these groups are learning from what they see from Al-Qaeda," said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation in Washington.

It is unclear why any of Breivik's actions would be considered connected in any way to terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda, which certainly did not invent the idea of brutal mass murder. But the Times was able to turn up another expert the following day who saw an Islamist inspiration for Islamophobic terrorism (7/24/11):

Thomas Hegghammer, a terrorism specialist at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, said the manifesto bears an eerie resemblance to those of Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders, though from a Christian rather than a Muslim point of view. Like Mr. Breivik’s manuscript, the major Qaeda declarations have detailed accounts of the Crusades, a pronounced sense of historical grievance and calls for apocalyptic warfare to defeat the religious and cultural enemy.

"It seems to be an attempt to mirror Al-Qaeda, exactly in reverse," Mr. Hegghammer said.

To the paper's credit, the Times' Scott Shane wrote a strong second-day piece (7/25/11) documenting the influence of Islamophobic bloggers on Breivik's manifesto:

His manifesto, which denounced Norwegian politicians as failing to defend the country from Islamic influence, quoted Robert Spencer, who operates the Jihad Watch website, 64 times, and cited other Western writers who shared his view that Muslim immigrants pose a grave danger to Western culture.... Mr. Breivik frequently cited another blog, Atlas Shrugs, and recommended the Gates of Vienna among websites.

(Spencer was one of the anti-Muslim pundits profiled in FAIR's 2008 report, "Meet the Smearcasters: Islamophobia's Dirty Dozen.")

Shane's piece noted that the document, rather than being an Al-Qaeda "mirror," actually copied large sections of Ted Kaczynski's 1995 Unabomber manifesto, "in which the Norwegian substituted 'multiculturalists' or 'cultural Marxists' for Mr. Kaczynski’s 'leftists' and made other small wording changes."

It is not new for media to jump to the conclusion that Muslims are responsible for any given terrorist attack; the same thing was widespread after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings (Extra!, 7-8/95). "It has every single earmark of the Islamic car-bombers of the Middle East," syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer (Chicago Tribune, 4/21/95) asserted. "Whatever we are doing to destroy Mideast terrorism, the chief terrorist threat against Americans, has not been working," wrote New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal (4/21/95). "Knowing that the car bomb indicates Middle Eastern terrorists at work, it's safe to assume that their goal is to promote free-floating fear," editorialized the New York Post (4/20/95). It is unfortunate that so many outlets have failed to learn any practical lessons from such mistakes--or question the beliefs that drive them.

Norway Attacks: Christian Jihadi Strikes Terror and Shoots Down Multiculturalism

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:24:00 +0000

The horrific slaughter of 76 people by the Christian Jihadi Anders Behring Breivik has surely closed the door on Europe’s multiculturalism experiment. Media reports indicated that Breivik was opposed to multiculturalism and Islam. However, in the immediate aftermath of killings, it was difficult to distinguish between the Western media’s rant against Islam and Muslims, and Breivik’s abhorrent views. Europe’s tirade against multiculturalism and its failure to accommodate Muslims is not new.

Earlier this year, David Cameron launched a devastating tirade against 30 years of multiculturalism in Britain. He warned that multiculturalism was incubating extremist ideology and directly contributing to home-grown Islamic terrorism. He said, “We have failed to provide a vision of society [to young Muslims] to which they feel they want to belong. We have even tolerated segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to our values. All this leaves some young Muslims feeling rootless. And the search for something to belong to and believe in can lead them to extremist ideology.”

Cameron is not the only European leader critical of multiculturalism. In October 2010, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, unequivocally declared: “The approach of saying, ‘Well, let’s just go for a multicultural society, let’s coexist and enjoy each other,’ this very approach has failed, absolutely failed.” Merkel’s remarks came soon after Thilo Sarrazin’s diatribe against multiculturalism. In August 2010, then a board member of Germany’s central bank, Thilo condemned multiculturalism and claimed Germany’s intelligence was in decline because of Muslim immigrants. Elsewhere in Europe, boisterous voices are reverberating in the corridors of power warning about dangers of multiculturalism. And all too often, Muslim adherences to Islamic values in Western societies are cited as demonstrative examples of the failure of multiculturalism.

The rallying cry against the concept of multicultural societies extends beyond European shores. On September 28th, 2010, Australia’s former Prime Minister John Howard said, “This is a time not to apologize for our particular identity but rather to firmly and respectfully and robustly reassert it. I think one of the errors that some sections of the English-speaking world have made in the last few decades has been to confuse multiracialism and multiculturalism.” He further added that some sections of society have gone too far in accommodating Muslim minorities.

In America, the daily assault on multiculturalism by conservatives and other right wing politicians is polarizing American communities and is accentuating tensions between Americans and Muslims. The plan to build a mosque close to ground-zero is just the latest manifestation of this struggle. Clearly then, multiculturalism as envisaged by its proponents has failed to deliver what it was supposed to do, i.e., protect groups or communities against intolerance and discrimination perpetrated by society or dominant groups.

Concepts like multiculturalism and diversity signify that in liberal democracies coexistence can be fostered between different groups without the erosion of their respective identities or cultural norms. However, these concepts although widely employed in the lexicon of modern political philosophy are not new. Rather they are derived from one of the main pillars of Western liberal political thought called pluralism. Like other Western concepts, the origin of pluralism is firmly rooted in birth of secularism. Back then, some philosophers were incensed at the manner by which various Christian denominations were forced to assimilate and conform to the standards and virtues mandated by the papacy.

They endeavored to safeguard the religious practices of such groups by campaigning for greater tolerance and leniency to be shown to them by the rest of society and other dominant groups. Initially, this meant that such groups were spared physical punishment and financial penalties. However, they were barely tolerated, and were subject to torrents of racial abuse, extreme discrimination, and forced exclusion from different facets of society. For instance, they were denied employment, precluded from educational institutions, suffered from restrictions on travel movements, etc.

But as time passed, other thinkers sought to extend the boundaries of pluralism and pressed for weaker groups to be granted greater opportunities to express their religious and cultural identity in all aspects of societal life, besides the designated areas of worship. In some cases, the thinkers managed to convince the state to extend protection against persecution of a group’s cultural identity and race, and remove impediments to employment previously barred. Hence over the centuries, the concept of pluralism underwent progressive elaboration by Western philosophers and thinkers, as well as selective application by Western States. Despite numerous revisions and reviews, divergent views over pluralisms meaning, its applicability and value to society still persist. Some advocate that pluralism should be limited to a mere tolerance of a group’s cultural identity and nothing more. Others equate pluralism with the right for diverse groups to freely express and celebrate their cultural identity without fear and restrictions imposed by society or dominant groups.

Towards the middle of the last century, the labor crisis in Europe spurred an influx of immigrants to European shores. Attempts by Europe to absorb people from numerous diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds posed a number of challenges to the cohesiveness of their respective societies—chief amongst them were housing, marriage, education, health care, welfare benefits and employment. Tensions frequently surfaced between the indigenous populations and the immigrants, as both competed for limited resources. During this period, several thinkers and a handful of politicians criticized the inability of Western governments to assimilate immigrants. They suggested alternative solutions to preserve social cohesion based on pluralism, and advocated cultural diversity under the guise of integration.

In 1966, Roy Jenkins, a British politician, presented a new pluralistic vision for Britain. He said, “ I do not think we need in this country a ‘melting pot’ which will turn everybody out in a common mould, as one of a series of carbon copies of someone’s misplaced vision of the stereotyped Englishman… I define integration therefore, not as a flattening process of assimilation but as equal opportunity, coupled with cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance.” This became known as Jenkins formula and was widely employed by policy makers to establish guidelines and laws for multiculturalism.

In the next 40 years, pluralism or multiculturalism—as it came to be widely known—was introduced in almost every aspect of life; so much so that indigenous populations perceived immigrants and other minority groups to enjoy greater benefits than themselves. Subsequently, relations between the host and immigrant communities rapidly deteriorated, many questioned the wisdom behind multiculturalism, and some even went as far as calling for its abolition. Therefore, even before the events of September 11, 2001, multiculturalism which was coveted as a panacea for social cohesion was an abject failure.

Multiculturalism or pluralism is whimsical idea that is conceptually flawed and unworkable in practice. This is because pluralism encourages groups to promote their cultural identity irrespective of their political influence or financial strength. Naturally, the strongest group uses its political prowess and financial muscle to persuade politicians to define legislation, which vigorously defends and endorses their culture and values at the expense of other groups. Additionally, the most powerful group manipulates the media and the educational establishments to actively promote its culture, which leads to widespread acceptance amongst the indigenous population. In this way, the strongest group’s culture becomes indistinguishable from the state’s culture. Weaker groups find themselves culturally squeezed, discriminated against, and in conflict with the state. Such groups are coerced by both the state and society to dilute their cultural identity to fit in. Those groups that refuse to temper with their cultural identity are ostracized and consigned to live in ghettos. In extreme cases, they are expelled from the host nation, like what happened to the Roma gypsies in France.

What the Norwegian massacre illustrates is that the preoccupation of mainstream society to stigmatize Muslims has provided ample opportunity for other marginalized groups to implant their terrorist ideas and attract new recruits to their detestable ideologies. One must wonder, how many other homegrown Christian jihadis lurk in European cities waiting to pounce against their governments and fellow citizens, whilst politicians struggle to replace multiculturalism with other fad ideas like assimilation, and integrations that will no doubt lead to the same result.

European politicians would do well to look at the Islamic rule in Spain to draw lessons on how Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in harmony on European shores.

Truth Held Hostage

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:21:00 +0000

Original source: Cubadebate.cu

“There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.” (Luke 12:2)

To start out, from a juridical standpoint the case of the Cuban Five has run its course. We’re now moving on to something out of the ordinary, the so-called Habeas Corpus, which is an opportunity that is available only once to convicted persons after they have exhausted all appeals. Here we have to take into account that historically the chances of our comrades being freed this way are extremely remote.

However, we’re taking this step for two basic reasons. First of all, it’s a question of principles: We have to wage this battle on every battlefield that we can, because these are five innocent men who are suffering cruel and unfair imprisonment. Second, because only in the case of judicial decisions has it become possible, even partially and in a limited manner, to break through the iron-fisted censorship that the big news media have imposed on this case.

I could have also begun this talk by saying that the present situation of the Five is identical to that which they faced thirteen years ago. There’s no news about them. They are suffering a double imprisonment: That imposed by their jailers, and that imposed by journalists.

The first thing we have to ask is why has there been such a silence in the media? Is it that Cuba, its Revolution, its problems, have been of little or no media interest? As you well know, it is very much to the contrary. Our motherland has received and keeps on receiving incomparably more attention than any of the rest of the nations of this hemisphere. They analyze us day and night under the brightest spotlights and the most powerful magnifying glass, almost always distorting the various aspects of our reality. So, why is it that almost nothing is ever said about this particular case? If the Five had committed some crime, if any one of them had done, or tried to do, something against the American people, does anyone have the slightest doubt that they would have become a constant theme in anti-Cuban propaganda?

The truth is that the Five are completely innocent and are quite literally and without the slightest exaggeration, heroes. The have sacrificed their lives to save ours, giving proof of supreme altruism. Here I’m not just spouting rhetoric. This truth is proven in official U.S. government documents and in its courts. The fact that their mission was to try to uncover terrorist plans against Cuba is plainly stated in numerous official documents ranging from the original indictment, to several motions by the prosecution at the beginning of the trial, throughout its development, and in the final sentences that were imposed on them. That the purpose of the U.S. government was to protect those terrorists was also acknowledged in these documents and in repeated statements by the prosecution, all of which is recorded in the court transcripts.

The big problem that we are facing is that the Empire has been able to stop this information from reaching the people. Its degree of success has been impressive. With total impunity, they have been able to take the truth hostage. I’m not talking about secret texts or classified documents. I’m talking about documents which have been and are available to anyone who goes to the official website of the Federal District Court for south Florida and looks up the case of “U.S. vs. Gerardo Hernandez et al.” But only a few specialist scholars or persons who are particularly interested in the case ever do that. The general public finds out about what happens in the court system through whatever reports the so-called “news media” care to give them. And about this trial, the longest Federal trial in the history of a nation that has, among other things, several TV channels dedicated exclusively to the courts, nothing was said outside the city of Miami. …

As I already mentioned, right now we’re involved in presenting an application for Habeas Corpus. The most difficult case is that of Gerardo, to which I’ll refer later.

But there is a common element in all their appeals, regarding the conduct of the press. While the trial was being totally ignored all around the world, in Miami the trial received strident, over-the-top coverage in the local media, promoting an atmosphere of hatred against the defendants. There were even threats and provocations against jurors, attorneys and witnesses. The judge herself repeatedly complained and asked the government to put an end to a situation that clearly violated due process norms. This was one of the factors behind the unanimous decision in 2005 by the Appeals Court panel to toss out the whole farce and order a new trial, a just decision that was later reversed under pressure from the Bush Administration.

The following year, in 2006, it came out that these Miami “journalists” were in fact being paid by the government to carry out this sleazy job. For five years now, American private groups have been demanding that the authorities reveal everything that they are still concealing about the scale of this million-dollar operation—how much was paid, to whom, and for that—in a cover-up that would be more than sufficient to declare the whole legal process against our comrades null and void.

Against Gerardo there was an additional charge, a filthy slander which is why he was sentenced to die twice in prison: They accused him of “conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.”

However, I have this document dated May 30, 2001 from the U.S. Attorney General’s office. Here they state that the accusation could not be proven, and for that reason they asked at the last moment that the charge be dropped. In spite of this, Gerardo was found guilty of a non-existent crime that could not be proven, and to top it off, for which he had not even been indicted.

But, what does it matter that this document exists if nobody talks about it?

Gerardo was falsely accused of having participated in something that he had absolutely nothing to do with: The 1966 shooting down over Cuban territorial waters of two small planes flown by a terrorist group which systematically dedicated itself to violating Cuban airspace, announcing each violation and shamelessly bragging about it in the Miami media. Independent of the fact that this document is undeniable proof of the falsehood of this accusation, there is another very important fact that illustrates the prevarication of the American authorities.

In order to claim legal jurisdiction over the incident, the United States had to prove that it had occurred outside of Cuban airspace. Cuban radars recorded the incident inside our territorial waters very close to the city of Havana. American radars show confused data, or contradict each other. An International Civil Aviation Organization investigative mission requested images taken by U.S. satellites, but Washington refused to release them. During the Miami trial the defense repeated this same request and the government once again refused. Now, Gerardo is again requesting this same information for his Habeas Corpus, and Washington is again refusing to allow anyone to see these images. This cover-up has now gone on for fifteen years, which clearly proves the fraudulent nature of the U.S. government charges. But Washington has made sure that nobody will blow the whistle on this operation, allowing them to continue their deception.

This information is key to freeing Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, Ramón Labañino Salazar, Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez, Fernando González Llort and René González Sehweret. In order to win this battle we need to mobilize many people, millions of people, and deploy a truly broad-based and effective solidarity movement

Yet any even minimally objective approach to this problem must recognize that we are still very far from this goal.

It is a proven fact that the giant media corporations have imposed a total wall of silence around this case, a silence that is especially rigorous within the United States itself, where the immense majority of the population knows absolutely nothing about the case. The complete lack of reporting on this theme does not reflect any professional incompetence on the part of journalists, but rather obeys precise instructions, a political decision to silence it, made at the highest levels in Washington.

To hope that these censors will change their attitude is senseless illusion and self-deception. To blow the whistle on it over and over is right but it is not enough, because our repeated denunciations have barely had any effect at all.

But there is much, very much, that we still can and must do.

First of all, we have to objectively take into account the current extent of what we should call by its proper name: the global media tyranny.

We’re not only talking about what leading newspapers say or cover up, the big TV networks or the news agencies that decide what news will be broadcast around the world. All of them, united in enormous monopolies, control and manipulate information and their influence even extends to would-be alternatives to this global dictatorship, even to media that define themselves as revolutionary.

There are many people in this world who make an effort to speak out and to be heard with very limited resources, and who have every so often been successful in penetrating the wall of disinformation and deception. Our resources are much greater, those of the Cuban universities, their professors and their students.

Let’s be like the children of “La Colmenita” (“The Little Beehive,” a Cuban fairy-tale) and ask “What more can we do?”

A talk delivered at the Cuban University of Information Sciences (UCI), Havana, July 20, 2011.

Stand Up for Clean Air, NAACP Report Urges

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:40:00 +0000

America is addicted to coal, and that addiction is killing poor people and people of color, according to a new report published by the NAACP and other environmental justice organizations.

Sulfur dioxide (SO2) and Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) emissions from 431 coal plants across the country, the report, titled "Coal Blooded: Putting Profits Before People," causes 30,000 premature deaths and tens of thousands incidents of chronic respiratory health problems like asthma, bronchitis and lung cancer each year. According to the study, coal plants produce nearly all of the SO2 and fine particle pollution in the U.S.

Coal-powered plants produce about 44 percent of the electricity used in the U.S. Ten states use about half of the total amount of coal-fired electricity produced in the whole country.

More than 8 million people live within three miles of a coal power plant, and those people are disproportionately poor or people of color. The average per capita income of those people total less than $19,000, substantially lower than the national average. About 3 million are people of color, the report found.

The report also revealed the locations of the worst coal plants in the countries. These "failing plants" produce the most pollution and impact the largest number of poor and people of color.

To be precise, 90 "failing plants" across the country produced a quarter of SO2 and one-fifth of NOx emissions in the entire country. Some 4.7 million people live near these plants, more than half of which are people of color.

Of the 90 "failing plants," the report scrutinizes the 12 worst offenders. Three are owned by Edison International and are located in Illinois. PSEG owns two of the worst offenders in Connecticut and New Jersey. Duke Energy, DTE Energy, and Dominion are among the companies whose plants create the greatest harm.

Detroit, Michigan is host to one of the worst pollution-producing plants in the country. The River Rouge Power Plant (DTE Energy), located on the southwest edge of the city produces more than 13,000 tons of SO2 and 4,658 tons of NOx each year.

The plant is just five miles from downtown Detroit and just across the Rouge River from the only major Latino district in the city, known as "Mexican Town."

Of the residents who live within three miles of the River Rouge plant, more than 65 percent are African Americans and Latinos. Average income for people living in the area is just over $13,000 each year. The study attributed 44 premature deaths and hundreds of asthma attacks each year to the pollution from just this one plant.

Another deadly culprit is the Hammond, Indiana plant owned by Dominion. Located on outskirts of Chicago, this plant emits almost 17,000 tons of SO2 and NOx pollution. Of the people living within three miles of the plant, almost 80 percent are African Americans and Latinos.

In that same corridor along the southern edge of Lake Michigan between Chicago and the Michigan border are six other coal-fired power plants that contribute to the poor health and premature deaths of mostly poor communities of color.

The authors of the report called for immediately closing the 90 "failing plants." While they total about 20 percent of the coal-fired plants in the country, they produce less than 10 percent of its electricity.

In addition, closing those plants would reduce the number of people living within three miles of a coal-fired plant by 58 percent and reduce the number of emergency room visits, deaths and chronic illnesses by thousands each year.

Increased environmental protections and subsidies for clean energy alternatives on the federal level are among the ways to reduce pollution.

Above all, however, local communities should hold local and state elected officials as well as energy companies accountable.

"Community organizations must engage directly with plant owners to advocate for their rights to clean air and negotiate regarding plant closure and development of alternative electricity generating and revenue generating industries," the report concluded.

Ground Your Warplanes, Save the Horn of Africa

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 09:23:00 +0000

“When you are hungry, cold is a killer, and the people here are starving and helpless.” Not many of us can relate to such a statement, but millions of ‘starving and helpless’ people throughout the Horn of Africa know fully the pain of elderly Somali mother, Batula Moalim.

Moalim, quoted by the British Telegraph, was not posing as spokesperson to the estimated 11 million people (per United Nations figures) who are currently in dire need of food. About 440,000 of those affected by the world’s “worst humanitarian disaster” dwell in a state of complete despair in Dadaab, a complex of three camps in Kenya. Imagine the fate of those not lucky enough to reach these camps, people who remain chronically lacking in resources, and, in the case of Somalia, trapped in a civil war.

All that Batula Moalim was pleading for was “plastic sheeting for shelter, as well as for food and medicine.”

It is disheartening, to say the least, when such disasters don’t represent an opportunity for political, military or other strategic gains, subsequently, enthusiasm to ‘intervene’ peters out so quickly.

UN officials from the World Food Programme (WFP) are not asking for much: $500 million to stave off the effects of what is believed to be the worst drought to hit the Horn of Africa in 60 years. This is not an impossible feat, especially when one considers the geographic extent of the drought and creeping famine. Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya are all affected, and terribly so. Sudan and Eretria are also not far from the center of this encroaching disaster.

60 percent of the amount requested by WFP has already been raised. More is needed, however, especially as the reverberation of the drought is already surpassing the immediate need for food and shelter. Five million are already at risk of cholera in Ethiopia alone, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Hundreds have reportedly died, and many more are likely to follow.

Cholera requires an immediate remedy as the intestinal infection leads to sever diarrhea, dehydration and death. Other figures are equally grim. 8.8 million people, also in Ethiopia, are at risk of contracting malaria, according to Tarik Jasarevic, WHO spokesman. Jasarevic has also told journalists that these ailments have already been reported in Somalia, and other Ethiopian regions. This means the disaster is not confined to refugee camps and is thus much harder to control.

For refugees, there is nothing worse than having no safe haven in sight. Still, they must escape when death becomes the only alternative to aimless journeys. While hundreds of thousands are gathering in Kenya’s camps, an average of 1,700 Somali refugees venture to Ethiopia each day. The latter, a country with a population of about 85 million, is fully embroiled in the crisis. 4.5 million Ethiopians need assistance, a rise of over 50 percent in less than three months, according to WHO. One can only try to envisage the speed at which this disaster is unraveling.

International organizations, including WFP, WHO and UNICEF have made numerous appeals. Some major media outlets responded by giving the humanitarian crisis a degree of coverage. While donations have bashfully trickled in, the goals are yet to be reached. According to a report by the Telegraph, “no African country has offered a donation to help drought victims in the Horn of Africa outside of those affected.”

The report, published July 15, quoted Michael O’Brien-Onyeka, Oxfam’s Regional Campaigns Policy Manager for East and Central Africa, who said it was “disappointing” that “African states insist on ‘African solutions for African problems’ with regard to Libya but fail to respond to droughts and famines.”

On the subject of Libya, it may be helpful to consider some financial figures.

“The British Government has pledged £38 million in food aid to Ethiopia,” reported the Telegraph. The following day, British Daily Mirror reported on the seemingly different subject of Libya. Four more British jets were recently deployed to the war zone near Libya, raising the total to 22 RAF jets, according to James Lyons in the Mirror (July 16). The cost thus far is £260 million, only £40 million short of the total amount needed by the WFP to feed 11 million starving people.

Here is another example of the dubious nature of British involvement in the war on Libya (falsely slated as a war to prevent imminent massacres of civilians): “Tornado GR4s cost around £35,000 for every hour they are in the air and are having to fly long distances from their base in Gioia del Colle, southern Italy, to Libya,” according to the Mirror.

Major African countries and Britain are not the only parties involved in acts of duplicity. The US military adventurism in the Horn of African, especially Somalia, and its renewed use of costly unmanned drones can feed, cloth, shelter and treat countless refugees. More, Arab and Muslim countries tend to be the least responsive parties in such situations. While it is true that the chief of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu made several appeals for help, such singular calls generate feel-good moments but no major mobilization for action.

The disaster in the Horn of Africa is partly man-made. Countries with ‘failed states’ status (in other words, victims of outside interventions) cannot possibly fend off crises of this magnitude. For the last 20 years, Somalia has had no central government controlling the country’s territories. Outside intervention has made it impossible for any party to unite the disjointed country. What is a Somali refugee to do?

To help the millions disaffected by the multilayered disaster in the Horn of Africa, we need more than appeals for blankets and food stuff. We also need a degree of human decency and common sense. We need to re-channel some of the funds wasted on disastrous wars into actually saving lives. If warning parties would ground their Tornado GR4s and other warplanes for a few days, the single action alone could save the entire region.

For now, though, let us all do what we can to help the Horn of Africa survive this terrible ordeal.

Photo: A British official meets with Somali refugees. Ironically, British and U.S. policies in Africa helped create a refugee problem throughout the Horn. (by DFID/ cc by 2.0/Flickr)

AKEL Statement on the recent tragic event at Mari naval base

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 09:20:00 +0000

AKEL Statement on the recent tragic event at Mari naval base

Release Date: July 21, 2011

The tragic incident at Mari resulted in the creation of a difficult situation for Cyprus. Apart from the deep pain and sorrow it inflicted on the whole of society, it has also caused a social upheaval which has regretfully intensified the political fanaticism that has, on the part of certain circles and forces, gone to the extreme.

As AKEL, from the outset we stressed that the tragic loss of human lives makes an immediate, serious, responsible and in depth investigation imperative, an investigation that will identify the causes of the tragic incident and apportion responsibilities where and wherever they exist. It is important to safeguard that for as long as it is ongoing the conclusions of the investigation must not be preempted. The only thing such a development would bring would be to raise difficulties to the path towards the truth and the dispensing of justice. The pledge and demand of AKEL is for the full probing of the case and apportioning of blame whoever it may be, based on the findings of the investigation.

The events of 11th July have created a multitude of consequences for the country. The leadership of AKEL had a meeting with the President of the Republic and discussed ways of thoroughly tackling the critical situation that has been formulated. The essential conclusion is that at this time the greatest possible unity and rallying of the political forces of the country is demanded. At this time, division and discord which some circles are trying to cultivate within Cypriot society must be terminated. The confrontation based on ideological posturing, which can only lead to unpleasant adventures, must be eased. As AKEL, we shall lead the way in averting such a development. I clarify that this does not mean that it will be demanded from any political force to abandon its character, philosophy and positions.

It is a common assessment that the restoration of the credibility of the political system in the eyes of the Cypriot people is a pressing need. The full investigation and apportion of responsibilities regarding the tragic events at Mari will constitute a significant step towards this end. However at the same time the serious tackling of the problems caused as a result of these events is demanded too. One of these problems is the continuous and uninterrupted supply of electricity power. The Government and the Electricity Authority of Cyprus AHK have already taken significant steps towards the right direction. We believe that the energy issues must be discussed collectively, aiming at tackling them in an all-round and comprehensive way.

Furthermore, the tackling of the economic difficulties that have arisen as a consequence of the world economic crisis and that have been exacerbated further due to the deadly blast at Mari is demanded. It is the conviction of AKEL that this goal can be achieved with consensus and collectivity within the framework of the convergence that existed in the meetings of the President with the political forces. It is important that we seek a common understanding on a broad range of proposals we agree with and not with extreme approaches. These extreme approaches will only lead to social upheaval that will exacerbate even more the problems of the economy.

In the meetings held on the economy a positive disposition was recorded between the social players to support the efforts underway. We are duty bound to utilize this disposition through a speedy and constructive dialogue. Now is the time for collective decisions and not unilateral actions that potentially may be considered as provocative by the social players, provoking problems to the whole objective.

In addition the attempt to promote further changes and reforms in the functioning of the wider public sector must continue and intensify aiming at its more smooth and effective operation. Within this framework effective control, meritocracy, openness and the combating of the phenomena of inertia, lack of initiative and corruption in the public sector must be strengthened.

During the discussion with the President of the Republic we proposed that he proceed to a broad cabinet reshuffle as soon as possible. The goal must be the formulation of a government formation that will function with the greatest possible effectiveness. An effort must be made for the participation of the parties that are taking part in the government today, but also credible personalities that enjoy a broader acceptance.

Cyprus is going through a very critical and decisive phase. At this moment it is imperative that responsibility, sober dialogue, unity and consensus prevail. All the political and social forces of the country must feel conscious of the responsibilities we have towards our country and people and undertake initiatives to overcome the wounds by leading Cyprus and Cypriot society forward.

Agribusiness and the Environment

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 09:16:00 +0000

EarthTalk®
E - The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: I’ve been hearing more and more references to the need to clean up our agricultural practices for reasons pertaining to health, food quality, even global warming. What are the major environmental issues today associated with agriculture? -- Tony Grayson, Newark, NJ

What amazes many environmental advocates to this day is how the widespread adoption of synthetic chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers for use in agriculture was dubbed the “Green Revolution,” when in fact this post-World War II paradigm shift in the way we produce food has wreaked untold havoc on the environment, food quality and human health.

Agricultural output has certainly increased as a result of these changes, but with the vast majority of the world’s farms now relying on petroleum-derived synthetic chemicals to grow crops and petroleum-derived fuels to drive the engines of production—modern agriculture has become overwhelmingly toxic to the atmosphere and is hastening global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that agricultural land use contributes 12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions; here in the U.S. almost 20 percent of our carbon dioxide emissions come from agricultural sources.

Intensive use of chemicals isn’t good for our nutrition intake, either. Overworked, depleted agricultural soils generate fruits and vegetables with fewer nutrients and minerals than those produced by farmers decades ago. And much of the food we eat is laced with chemicals that end up in our bloodstreams.

Beyond its effect on the food we put in our bodies, modern agriculture generates large amounts of nitrogen, phosphorous and other fertilizers running off into our streams, rivers and oceans, compromising not only the quality of our drinking water and the health of riparian ecosystems, but also causing those huge oxygen-depleted ocean dead zones we hear about in coastal areas such as the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet another issue with modern farming is the amount of animal waste generated and concentrated in small areas, which creates unsanitary and potentially dangerous conditions for the animals and humans alike. And the widespread use of antibiotics on farm animals to keep disease in check results in the development of stronger strains of bacteria that resist the antibiotics used by humans to ward off infection and sickness.

Also, many worry about the potential impacts of the widespread use of genetic engineering, whereby genes in plants, animals and microorganisms are manipulated to select for specific traits. These genetically modified organisms, reports Greenpeace, “can spread through nature and interbreed with natural organisms,” thus contaminating the natural environment in unforeseeable and uncontrollable ways.

The good news is that rapidly increasing consumer demand for healthier food is forcing agribusiness to see the wisdom of moving away from business-as-usual. Organic farming, which eschews chemical fertilizers and pesticides in favor of more natural choices, holds considerable promise for greening up our agricultural systems. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, organic cropland acreage averaged 15 percent increases between 2002 and 2008, although certified organic cropland and pasture accounted for only about 0.6 percent of U.S. total farmland in 2008. So we still have along way to go.

CONTACTS: IPCC, www.ipcc.ch; USDA, www.ers.usda.gov/Data/Organic.

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine ( www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe. Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

Photo by Roger Smith, courtesy Flickr.

In Retrospect, Some Candid Opinions: Unpublished Final Chapter of Dissent on Trial

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 09:09:00 +0000

Note: William Schneiderman came to the United States in 1908 at the age of two, was an important leader of the Communist Party of the United States of America from the 1930s until the 1950s, and was the principal figure in two precedent-setting political trials. His autobiography, Dissent on Trial was published by the Marxist Educational Press in 1983 with a foreword by Harry Bridges (MEP Publications, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis). He remained an active member of the Party until his death in 1985. After completion of the manuscript in 1981, Schneiderman submitted it to International Publications. Despite some re-editing in consultation with Party leaders, International Publishers, instead of publishing it itself, offered it, with Schneiderman’s agreement, to the Marxist Educational Press for publication. In the first half of 1991, Bill's widow, Leah Schneiderman, made available to MEP the last chapter of this autobiography, which, as she explained, although written at the same time as the rest of the autobiography, he had withheld it when he submitted the manuscript to International Publishers. She said that he withheld it because he feared that its sharp criticism of then-existing Party practices would cause the Party leadership to oppose publication of the book. He did not include it in the manuscript presented to MEP. Upon receipt of the chapter from Leah, MEP published it in the next issue of its Marxist Studies journal, “Nature, Society, and Thought,” vol. 4, nos. 1-2 (1991), pp. 231–37.

With the Korean War over, a process of detente slowly began to evolve on the international scene, and a thaw simultaneously developed in the domestic political climate. It was possible for the first time in five years to hold a meeting of the National Committee of the Party in New York. Nearly everybody there was a Smith Act victim, prisoners who had served their terms, political refugees who had returned, and defendants out on bail pending appeal of their sentences. A few of the Party leaders were still in prison. The Party leadership and membership had conducted itself courageously, but inevitably the persecution had taken its toll. Many members dropped out because of pressure and intimidation, and some simply had to sever their connections with the Party in order to retain their means of livelihood.

Nevertheless, in looking back over the past few years, it was apparent that we need not have suffered as great losses as we did. The theory that we were rapidly approaching fascism at the beginning of the fifties gave rise to the concept that it was hopeless for the Party to continue to fight publicly for its legal existence, which led to an unnecessary liquidation of the Party apparatus, and this in turn had a disastrous effect on the morale of the membership.

In California we had been criticized by the absentee leadership for maintaining a fully operating headquarters; most of our state and local leaders functioned to the day of our arrest and were able to continue to function throughout the period of the trial and the years we were out on bail while our case was on appeal. We were thus able to conduct a more effective defense campaign, and our membership losses, although heavy, were only half the rate in the rest of the country. We not only held public mass meetings, but while we were still fighting for bail, we ran Oleta O’Connor Yates for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It was widely known that she was in jail at the time, without bail, and yet she received 35,000 votes. After reviewing the Party’s experiences, the National Committee was in a mood to be self-critical about its wrong political estimate as well as about a number of sectarian errors committed during this last period. But the lines began to form as to how much of this should be admitted. While Eugene Dennis [1] was inclined to be self-critical, William Z. Foster [2] and others minimized the harmful effects of our recent policy and contended that the persecutions and objective historical factors were the main reasons for our setbacks.

Undoubtedly the objective factors had to be taken into account, but the California experience surely demonstrated that it was unnecessary to take such extreme measures as to put the Party on an “underground” status and thus give up the public fight for its legality. When we had been summoned from California to defend the conduct of our trial before Foster, it reflected the fact that some Party leaders looked upon those trials as a rear-guard action in a lost cause, because they believed that fascism was just around the corner.

In my view, it was important that they frankly admit these errors as the best guarantees that they would not be repeated. But unfortunately, while the National Committee officially did take such a stand, in the discussion that followed a number of Party leaders took an equivocal position on our recent policy. Much as this discussion created a disturbance and confusion among the Party membership, it was nothing compared to the earthquake that followed the Khrushchev report in 1956 to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Since Stalin’s death in 1953, the Soviet Party leadership had been conducting a campaign against the “cult of the individual.” We had generally assumed that this was an attempt to emphasize the new collective leadership which succeeded Stalin, whose tremendous authority inevitably had led to one-man leadership. At the time we did not know what else might have been behind the hints that were veiled in the term “cult of the individual,” and the struggle which went on in the leadership to bring the true state of affairs out in the open. It was to Khrushchev’s credit that he insisted on revealing the brutal facts about Stalin’s rule, even though it sent shock waves through the entire Communist movement.

We had come to look upon the Soviet Party leadership, and especially Stalin, as practically infallible. The remark able achievements of the Soviet Union since the Revolution, and especially its heroic role in the war against Hitler, were monuments to the leadership of the Party under Stalin, and to us represented the triumph of socialist ideas and the theories of Marx and Lenin. We were thus immune to the criticisms of its enemies, most of them wholly biased, and we brushed aside its faults with ready explanations, often valid.

Russia had been a backward country, devastated twice in our lifetime by wars which had destroyed tens of millions of people, cities, and industries, beset after the Revolution by famine, blockade, civil war, and intervention by British, French, Japanese, and U.S. armies, which invaded its territories north, south, east, and west. The great capitalist powers have never ceased to plot its downfall, most notoriously when they encouraged Hitler to turn to the East; their intelligence agencies have waged constant warfare to exploit its difficulties.

To achieve what it did in the face of such enormous obstacles; to have lifted itself by its own bootstraps to become one of the world’s great powers; to have abolished illiteracy and hunger and unemployment in the process of constructing a socialist society, all this was a far cry from the crude caricature of Russia as painted by the U.S. press, which from the earliest days of the Revolution predicted its downfall and denigrated its successes.

When its critics pointed to the Soviet Union’s cracking down on dissent, they chose to ignore the long struggle to putdown counterrevolution, civil war, armed interventions, and internal subversion fomented by the CIA. They failed to take into account that the Soviet Union had had to combat the consequences of a hostile capitalist encirclement and the threat of fascism and, since World War II, the menace of nuclear arms posted on its borders by Dulles’s policy of “brinkmanship,” continued by his successors, right down n to Kissinger, Brzezinski, and Haig. This was our reasoning, much of it still valid, but which led to an uncritical attitude to the faults and shortcomings of the Soviet Union, which we attributed primarily to these objective historical factors. We knew nothing of the crimes committed by Stalin in his later years or the violations of Party rules and Soviet laws which dated back to the thirties. We dismissed whatever seeped through the rumor factories as exaggerated concoctions reflecting the bearer’s hostility and hatred of the Soviet Union, especially since the main conveyors of these stories could hardly be called apostles of democracy. Thus the Party leadership was as stunned as the membership by the revelations contained in Khrushchev’s report, and a crisis developed in the Party.

I was deeply disturbed by the revelations about Stalin and their effect on our own Party. I could not accept the contention of some of our leaders that only Stalin’s paranoia was to blame. A system of leadership which depended on the death of the man at the top for change was surely at fault. I believed that the Soviet Union was strong enough to relax its rule without danger to its stability despite measures necessary to combat the dangers from outside intervention and internal subversion. I was also shocked, as so many others were, that anti-Semitism was one of the factors in the acts for which Stalin was condemned; especially so since anti-Semitism had been outlawed in the Soviet Union and because we knew of the extraordinary efforts of the beleaguered Soviet government to save the Jewish population from the Nazi invasion by transporting tens of thousands of them to safer areas. Stalin had played an important role in the construction of socialism through difficult times and in the war against Nazi Germany, but to many of us this was overshadowed by the violations of Marxist-Leninist principles which marked his later years. I could not accept the explanation of the Soviet Party leaders that only Stalin was to blame. The election of a Party leader to such a high pedestal that he cannot be criticized or removed was a serious flaw which contradicted collective leadership, a lesson we painfully learned with Earl Browder. [3]

Was Stalin’s rule in the Soviet Union simply a fault of leadership or did it reflect a flaw in the socialist system itself? I did not accept the claim of the Soviet Union’s enemies that democracy is impossible under socialism. It was my view that as long as the Soviet Union was encircled by a hostile environment, with the threat of nuclear missiles on its borders, it had to take security measures to protect itself. And as long as there were more prosperous capitalist neighbors on the socialist borders, while the socialist system was struggling to rebuild from the ravages of war and Nazi occupation, there would always be some elements in the socialist countries attracted by the lure of an illusory prosperity on the other side, and fall prey to the propaganda of the CIA’s Radio Free Europe.

But it seemed to me that the fear of war and subversion had led to excesses in security measures which outlived Stalin’s rule. It would take a long period of peace and detente to bring about their disappearance. In the meantime, the enemies of socialism would have a field day, and the Communist parties in the capitalist countries would also be the victims. It was important, therefore that our Party, while not falling into the trap of anti-Soviet propaganda, not be blind to the faults and shortcomings of the Soviet Union and its socialist neighbors. We would certainly be more credible in our defense of the merits of socialism.

These questions became a subject for discussion and hot debate in the world Communist movement. In countries like France and Italy, where mass Communist parties had deep historical roots in their countries, especially in the war against fascism, they were able to survive without too much damage. But in the United States the Party, already weakened by McCarthyite persecution and its own sectarian mistakes, was especially hard hit.

The Party convention which took place at the end of the year, when some of the Party’s most experienced leaders were still in jail, did not resolve the crisis. The discussions, both before and at the convention, revealed that the membership was not only sharply critical of the National Committee’s leadership, but of the bureaucratic practices which had prevented a democratic discussion in the past. In my own district, I was criticized for not informing the membership that I was in opposition to the national policy of going “underground”; my only defense was that I felt then that it would only create more confusion if I opened up the question at such a critical time.

But these matters were overshadowed by the discussion which developed around the Khrushchev revelations. Again, lines began to form among the national convention delegates. In oversimplified terms, it was a debate between the role of objective factors versus subjective factors. Those who saw the mistakes of the Soviet Party leadership as due only to objective historical circumstances wanted to minimize the crimes of Stalin and tone down the criticism of our own errors. Others who emphasized only the errors ignored the objective factors. Both were one-sided views; the former would lead to a repetition of our sectarian errors of the past; the latter would undermine the Party, whose membership had already been shaken up very badly, if it did not acknowledge the role of objective conditions. In fact, the latter view held by John Gates [4] and others eventually led to their abandonment of the Party and of Marxist- Leninist principles.

A large number of the delegates, perhaps the majority, recognized both factors as contributing to the situation the Party found itself in, but were up in arms against the leadership and felt that changes were needed in its whole political approach and its methods of work. The convention, thus divided, did not resolve anything. It was sharply critical of the National Committee and condemned Stalin’s excesses, but was sharply split and straddled the issue of Soviet intervention in Hungary by “neither condoning nor condemning” it.

The changes demanded, however, were subject to different interpretations. There were some who wanted to change the name and form of the Party organization in a way reminiscent of Browderism. To them, it would be only the first step leading to a revision of the Party’s role as a Marxist-Leninist organization, and perhaps to its liquidation. Thus the issue was drawn for a parting of the ways with Gates and his group.

There were a large number of members, however, demanding changes in the leadership’s functioning who wanted to stand by the Party, but some of the old-line leadership made the mistake of indiscriminately accusing everyone who wanted some changes as “revisionist.” Perhaps the exodus could not have been prevented anyway, but in my view our loss of membership would not have been so great if an effort had been made to differentiate between those who wanted the Party to function more democratically and Gates’s revisionist position.

To many the principle of “democratic centralism” in the Party had been so abused as to become discredited. In an article I wrote for the convention discussion, I tried to deal with this problem. Having in mind the dilemma I had found myself in during the discussion on the “underground,” I wrote that a Party such as ours must have unity of purpose in carrying out its program, but some way must be found to draw the membership more fully into the decision-making discussions, and that policies should be constantly reviewed to judge whether the decisions were correct, or whether a changed situation might require a new look at past policies and decisions. (To my great surprise this article was singled out for criticism by a prominent Soviet leader in his Party’s theoretical magazine, and although our National Committee voted to protest against the criticism and asked for a retraction, it was never disavowed. It was always a mystery to me why I was singled out, and I could only conclude that it was based on some misinformation.)

Hindsight tells me that all of us were guilty of mistakes in judgment during that period, but in looking back I still believe that the leadership’s resistance to self-criticism was responsible for losing many members. I also believed that more new blood must be brought into the political leadership in order to reassure the membership that efforts for a genuine change were being made. In the perception of many members, some of the older leaders had been too long at their posts and grown too inflexible in their thinking and methods of work. I was caught somewhere in the middle, having rejected Gates’s line, but being unwilling to excuse our errors as due primarily to objective circumstances.

After considerable reflection and discussions with my wife Leah, I came to the conclusion that twenty-one years was too long for anyone to remain in one post, and I decided to step down. The internal struggle in the Party had begun to take its toll on me, and I could already feel my reduced capacity for a high-pressure job, the first warning signals which eventually resulted in a series of five heart attacks in a period of three years. And so, after twenty- seven years of full-time Party work, I gave up my post and went to work in private industry, with no regrets for the most meaningful years of my life. I stepped down with the belief that has never faded that a new generation in the Party and the working class will find the U.S. road to socialism.

NOTES

1. General Secretary of the Communist Party 1948–59.

2. Leader of the 1919 steelworkers strike and well known for his early advocacy of industrial unionism. Served in various positions of leadership in the Party from 1921 until his death in 1961, at which time he was honorary chair.

3. Communist Party leader who promoted the transformation of the Party into the Communist Political Association in 1944. In 1945 the Party was reconstituted under the leadership of Foster.

4. At this time Gates was editor of the Party's newspaper, the Daily Worker.

Brinksmanship and the Dollar

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 08:58:00 +0000

Besides the fact that he may be offering a security-blanket to the psyches of his fellow citizens and at the same time pumping up public confidence in order to strengthen the dollar, Wall Street Journal analyst David Wessel is not far off track when he refuses to predict the imminent fall of the “greenback,” this because the impression that the U.S. is in decline has not become sufficiently widespread.

However, he is particularly wise to note that his analysis doesn’t rule out the fear factor, given that the dollar has already “come down a lot, probably enough to bring the trade deficit to sustainable levels. But once markets start moving, they often overshoot.” A country that is so dependent on international credit, even in its own currency, is susceptible to every fluctuation of market sentiment.

For this reason, even though it may not be at the brink it’s getting rather near, don’t you think? As the Mexican daily La Jornada points out, the importance of the dollar has declined so much that between 2001 and 2007 official central bank reserves went from 71.5% to 64.1%. And by 2010 they were down to 61.3%. That is to say that the greater part of this decline actually occurred before the current crisis began, and was linked to the emergence of the Euro and other contingencies.

Yet, gone is the era of those “happy” times that sprang into being with the Bretton Woods accords (1944), thanks to which Uncle Sam’s currency pulled itself up by its own bootstraps to become the world’s recognized reserve currency, its value guaranteed by a huge gold reserve. It even hung on after president Richard Nixon disconnected it from the precious metal and started to flood the planet with paper bearing the pictures of the “Founding Fathers,” but without the backing of the issuing country’s riches.

Worries about the weakness and future prospects of the U.S. currency come from the foreign alternate creditors of the American debt who have bought it up and who place their ever more shaky confidence in it. It was not for nothing that a number of specialists have suggested we need to adopt a new world currency system upheld by strong economies and backed by gold (a return to the so-called “gold standard”), a position supported “sotto voce” by governments and individuals who prefer to forget about “the details,” such as the fact that the Pound Sterling, which dominated world commerce during the 18th, 19th and early part of the 20th centuries, fell due to the debt run up by the British Empire in the two World Wars plus the rise of the United States as leading world power.

Thus the problem turns out to be structural in nature. As has been noted, the American economy’s frequent cycles of crisis have left it with enormous fiscal and trade deficits plus a public debt of more than 14 trillion dollars, the equivalent of 92.8 percent of GDP. As a result, the country has fallen to sixth place among the top twenty in innovation and competitiveness.

To all these misfortunes now toss in an unsustainable level of unemployment (over nine percent), a growing level of poverty, and deteriorating educational standards. What you get is an inevitable witches’ brew for precisely what Wessel is worried about, in spite of his circumlocutions: the definitive downfall of the dollar, something that is being brought ever closer by the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan plus the burden of a $13 trillion foreign debt to support the greediest consumer nation on the face of the planet.

It is not for nothing that China now allows neighboring countries to carry on trade in its currency in order to avoid foreign exchange fluctuations. The Asian giant’s multimillion-dollar contracts with Brazil and Argentina are now in Yuan Renminbi [Chinese currency], something that they are planning to extend to Peru, Chile, South Korea, Malaysia, Belarus and Indonesia It was not simply for the fun of it that Beijing and Moscow decided to use their own currencies for bilateral trade. And it was not “for love of art” that the ALBA carries out part of its transactions in “Sucres,” a still-virtual currency. Iran is now selling its oil in Euros, something that is expanding inexorably like an epidemic to Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Sweden and Russia.

Yet a skeptic still might respond, “Okay, if this is all true then why hasn’t China given up completely on the damned greenback?” The answer isn’t rocket science. With $2.7 trillion worth of U.S. currency in its reserves, more than 35 percent of the world total, including $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury obligations, China doesn’t have the luxury of being able to suddenly stop buying these bonds, given the catastrophic consequences this would cause to an ever more closely intertwined worldwide financial system and economy

For the moment, China exports the majority of its products to the USA. But things are changing. Beijing has already replaced Washington as Brazil’s largest trade partner, and since 2010 China has been that country’s largest investor as well. Is this no more than a sign of what is to come? Perhaps, but these signs already seem to be paving the dollar’s road toward the brink, driven by a fatal economic attraction.

Choice in All Things: Consumer Financial Protection as the “Plain Vanilla Approach"

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 12:52:00 +0000

“[T]here's a view that says protect consumers by limiting the choices they have. Let's create one mortgage, one approved credit card, one of each, right, kind of a plain-vanilla approach to financial products. We don't think consumers benefit from fewer choices.” -- David Hirschmann, U.S. Chamber of Congress

Although you will not see any mention of “choice” as an inalienable right in the U.S. Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, or find any philosophical certitude supporting our exuberant American “free to choose” attitude, choice, and especially the proliferation of choice, is what our notion of freedom – existential – and liberty – political – seem to be all about.

On the political Conservative Right we have a deeply committed effort to provide Americans with opportunities to choose in every domain that is not illegal and on the political Liberal Left we have a deeply committed effort to protect Americans from the possible dire consequences of their own choices.

The Right portrays the Left here as an intrusive government cop in the dark tradition of all manner of dictatorial power. The Left portrays the Right as duplicitously supporting free consumer choice but actually inveigling that choice in sly chicanery and “branding” the psyche of that consumer with all manner of sly brainwashing – that is, advertising and marketing – tactics.

The Right believes in and upholds the notion of “free to choose,” of a consumer whose free choice rises above and trumps all manner of constraints while the Left recognizes the awful power of all manner of constraints and seductions to shape and influence a “free” choice that is thereby only free within those boundaries.

On which side does the present American cultural imaginary align itself? Quite simply, how do Americans prefer to see themselves, and, in effect, choose to see themselves? Once again, we have a Right/Left division: on the Right, the choice is the individual’s alone and on the Left how an individual may choose to align himself or herself may or may not be accommodated by a resident “order of things.”

Americans have a fiery response to this: their right to choose what suits them personally cannot be infringed upon and does not seek the accommodation of any power outside their own. It’s a sort of “Don’t Tread On Me!” defiance, a defiance once directed at George III’s monarchy but now replaced with the U.S. Federal Government itself. We choose to be free to choose because it is our inalienable right to do so. Thus, our choice in all things becomes a sign of our freedom, becomes in fact how we define freedom. As such, it – choice – must be cherished and protected. Progress is a continuous expansion of our freedom that is accomplished by a continuous expansion of our choices, of our opportunities to choose, of an arrangement of all things and all matters to what is subject to our choice. In this fashion, the world truly becomes our kingdom. Not “ours” in a plural, societal sense but “ours” individually and personally as we each exercise our “freedom to choose” … as we choose.

On this foundational psychic level, we are more attuned to the Right’s vehement opposition to any governance of our right to make individual choices than we are to the Left’s skepticism not only in regard to the “freedom” of our choices but also to the Right’s agenda in promoting a politics of visionary and simpleminded freedom. Both “visionary” and “simpleminded” are antagonistic to the “free to choose” individual who does not see the actuality of choices made daily both online and offline as “visionary” nor does the “free to choose” individual accept the notion that his or her mind can be overwhelmed by complexity or chicanery. In short, while the Right polishes the apple of personal ego, the Left tarnishes it by pointing out vulnerabilities and susceptibilities, addictions and dependencies, seductions and repressions.

The Left’s chances of making any cracks in the illusions of individual freedom to choose can be represented most easily by considering what we now mean by “The Left.” I mean that the “Left” of now has already had its “Leftness” shaped by the metanarrative of “individual freedom to choose.” It’s very difficult to critique anything from a socialist or social democratic or democratic socialist view because the underlying belief in all is that “society” means something good and positive, something helpful and civilizing. Unfortunately, anything “social” and “societal” has given way in the American cultural imaginary to what is “individual” and “personal.” Influencing conditions of our worldly surround have been trumped by personal choice.

It seems pretty clear even to this much diminished “Left” of today that the Great Recession of 2008 provides us with a clear illustration of how personal freedom to choose can be led astray, detoured, obstructed, bamboozled by a complexity of financial dealings expanded to global proportions. From the Right’s point of view, the collapse came about through various intrusions of the Federal Government into the housing market. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, stigmatized by some attachment to the Feds, forced choices upon a group of people – the Have Nots – choices that would not, in the normal transaction between products and consumers, been available.

A Congress more “Left” than Right at the time, as well as a President with developing affinities to the “Left,” responded from the “Left.” A Federal financial reform law was enacted and a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau formed. The grounding idea here was to prevent a repetition of the 2008 financial collapse by placing some protection between the freely choosing individual and whatever the market was pitching. Within the American cultural imaginary context I have been describing, neither the market nor the freely choosing American is attached, politically or psychically, to the need for Federal protection.

In a debate on the PBS News Hour, July 18, 2011, between Jeff Madrick of the “Left” leaning Roosevelt Institute and David Hirschman of the Right leaning U.S. Chamber of Congress, Madrik argued for clarity in standardization while Hirschman argued for the benefit to the consumer of lots of choices. Hirschman is not referring to product and service choices but to choices in consumer protection efforts. States should be free to choose to protect – or not – consumers as they see fit. Hirschman affirms that consumer protection is a good thing and even a better thing if every State goes about it, or not, in their own way. And the best that consumer protection can do in the way of protection is to inform consumers as to what choices they have. There is no benefit to consumers in Hirschman’s view in limiting the choices they have, that is, allowing Federal protection laws to trump States’ protection laws. He argues against the Feds establishing one “plain vanilla approach” to everyone.

What Hirschman does here is play the “personal free to choose” card. He can expect great success in doing so. Why? Because any association with a “personal free to choose” connects positively in the American cultural imaginary. Power resides here and not in any attempt to get in between the individual and his freedom, which historically has been defined differently, but now rest totally in “choice.”

The power of globalized techno-capitalism stands behind all the illusions of individual freedom and choice. It stands behind an American attachment to these because of American history, everything from a rugged individualism fostered by a Frontier spirit, to a geographical spaciousness that privileged a mythos of individual and not societal well-being, to an economic system that defines “winning” not collectively but personally.

The unquestioned circle of connections that holds on deeply with the American cultural imaginary is this: we choose to be free to choose because we are free to choose, the more choices we have, the freer we are as individuals, we achieve and fulfill our personal uniqueness by expanding our freedom to all things, capitalism proliferates choices to all things and therefore expands our freedom, allows us to become “all we can be.” “We” here always refers to “me,” to the first person singular and not plural.

It’s difficult to see how this cycle of illusions can be interrupted once it has become established. I mark Reagan, some thirty years ago, as a beginning, not the “new morning in America” beginning but rather an assault on reality by illusion beginning. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau goes right to the heart of the matter – consumption, freedom and protection. The intelligent “free to choose” individual is not opposed to “becoming informed.” Individuals can Google or Wiki or Twitter and so on. However, what we choose to Google is already influenced by what was once estimated as three thousand commercial messages a day but now in our cyberspace age that is no more than what we’re exposed to before breakfast. We are informed in the fashion of Huxley’s Brave New World. We can choose to choose to be unaffected by these, day after day, but that freedom is illusionary. Consider how Americans, in the face of increasing environmental degradation and gas prices, “choose” to drive SUV’s, a “personal” choice “freely” made that is neither personal nor freely made.

Our Millennial generation feels more capable of self-empowerment through cyber-tech and is therefore more inclined to believe in personal free choice and less inclined to accept any intrusion in that personal transaction. It is this disposition that will torpedo eventually any societal entitlement program. The preference is always for “personal choice,” a preference strengthened by the self-design nature of cyberspace.

The cyberworld is a world where an individual has spyware protection, can “un-friend” or “de-friend,” and can limit the offline world to a “networking circle.” The problems the “Left” is now having regarding the illusions of free choice are nothing compared to problems it will have with Millennials in their majority. No one feels that there is “one, plain vanilla approach” on Facebook, no template here of standardization meant to achieve clarity. And yet the Twitter/Facebook world is a world of what Huxley called “hypnopaedic phrases,” phrases already manufactured for our choosing. Clarity here, like choice itself, is what we personally choose, a notion of clarity that makes all things dark indeed.