People Before Profit blog

2010 Elections: It Takes a Fight to Win

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 13:05:00 +0000

One key arena of struggle is the Congressional elections this fall. This will be a fierce battle. I don't have to tell you that its outcome is uncertain and will have vast repercussions, either good or bad.

It's pretty clear that if the Democrats lose their majorities in Congress both the president and the broader people's coalition will be weakened. Going forward will get a lot tougher.

One difficulty is that a section of voters who supported candidate Obama are unhappy with the administration and Congress for various reasons.

Some are unhappy with the pace of change; some are confused by the right wing and its amplifiers on television and talk radio; and some still have illusions about how easy it is to make change. Neither class structures nor political forces are on their radar screen.

Whatever the case, millions have to be convinced that they have a stake in the outcome of the fall elections.

Only an incredible grassroots effort by the core political forces (working class and labor, nationally and racially oppressed people, women, youth, seniors, immigrants), and other social movements will turn back rightwing extremism and increase the Democratic majority in both chambers in Congress. Any less than that is playing with fire.

The right wing's minimum program is to regain the House and its maximum one is to regain the Senate as well.

Much like the last election, all hands should be on deck. Not every club has to do the same thing, but every club – bar none – has to make its imprint, however big or small, on the outcome.

No one should sit this one out. Actually, I expect the leadership and membership will respond to the bell. It's pretty hard not to see what is at stake. We will join with the broader movement, including new formations like Organizing for America and MoveOn.

Cautionary tale 1

Hearing that the immediate challenges facing the American people are joblessness and Congressional (and state) elections this fall this some may ask, "Are we putting everything else on hold?" The answer is no, but I would add that both of these issues have to command our primary attention.

Other issues such as Afghanistan and Iraq, the military budget, the elimination of nuclear weapons, green jobs and a safety net, the environment crisis and global warning, budget deficits and national debt, the fight against racism and for equality, repeal of the draconian immigration law in Arizona, passage of comprehensive immigration reform, a just settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, normalization of relations with Cuba and freedom for the Cuban 5 – all of these issues and more have to be a part of the 2010 elections and the struggle against the economic crisis.

By the same token, the elections and jobs campaign have to find their way into each of these struggles. Neither the elections, nor jobs, nor anything else can be won if the battle is fought along narrow lines.

Success depends on connecting the links on the chain of struggle, while understanding that the jobs and election struggles are the two links that have to be grasped at this moment in order to move the entire chain forward.

Of decisive importance is the mobilization of people whose resumes don't read "political activist."

For some voter education and registration or canvassing or online support for the Harkin, Miller, and other jobs bills may be what draws them into politics.

For others, it may be participating in a Labor Day march or urging their organization to pass a resolution supporting comprehensive immigration reform.

For still others it may be organizing a town hall meeting or establishing a jobs and relief committee in their local or central labor council or volunteering to be an election captain or lobbying elected officials to reroute monies going for war to cities and states.

Finally, it may be some form of mass civil disobedience – a tactic that will resonate in current circumstances. Imagine the buzz if a group of UAW retirees sat down in a plant scheduled for closure!

In short, a fresh surge of popular, sustained, and ever wider insurgency and militancy in the neighborhood and workplace, in churches and community, on college and high school campuses, in the corridors of political power and the in the streets is a necessary condition for progressive and radical advance.

If numbers aren't there initially, they will come as people come to understand the protracted character of this crisis and the necessity for organized action.

As for us, we will continue to be in the mix – building people's confidence, fighting for unity, keeping strategic focus on the right wing and the corporate criminals, bringing clarity and vision to a growing audience, and staying attuned to the thinking and mood of the American people.

I say "staying attuned to the thinking and mood of the American people" because that is the point of departure as far as building broad united action is concerned. What we think and how we say it to a larger audience is important and necessary for sure. In fact, our message is needed now more than ever.

But we should not make the mistake of assuming what we think is necessarily what the American people think and are ready to fight for.

Nor should we make the mistake of thinking that what unites working people and their allies and what they are ready to fight for is a static target. What energizes people today can easily give way to something of a more radical nature tomorrow.

What's the moral of the story?

It isn't that socialism is around the corner; it isn't.

Nor is it that millions are ready to vacate the Democratic Party; they aren't.

It is that a new era is rolling out, defined by an intensification of class and people's struggles on national and global level.

That being so, we should:

Stay tuned, stay connected, be sober minded, be flexible, be a long marcher, think dialectically, appreciate fluidity, be ready to shift gears, have the courage to lead, and build the constituency for jobs, peace, equality, political independence and socialism.

Not least, shed what is outdated, renovate, modernize, rebrand and grow the Party and online readership of People's World, Mundo Popular, and Political Affairs!

Marriage Equality Summer

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 10:43:00 +0000

Marriage equality activists are refusing to let the pro-discrimination voices of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) go unanswered this summer.

According to media reports, the right-wing National Organization for Marriage is planning a tour, they call "Summer of Marriage," of portions of the country to oppose same-sex marriage. In response, activists with Freedom to Marry, a national campaign that favors marriage equality, plan to organize "rallies and other events wherever NOM is planning to push discrimination and distort the truth about gay couples and their families."

In a press statement, Freedom To Marry organizers said, "we would like to thank NOM for drawing attention this summer to the love, commitment, and the crucial safety net that marriage brings to families across the country."

NOM was founded in 2007 by right-wing religious and political groups to support virulent anti-gay political campaigns in states like California and Washington. NOM's main goal is to fight growing public sentiment in favor of marriage equality and expanded protections for same-sex couples.

In contrast, Freedom to Marry campaign, beyond countering the homophobic message of NOM, promotes the basic notion that anyone should have the freedom to choose their marriage partner and have access to the social and economic benefits of that institution. Part of the goal of the campaignis to "share our stories and demonstrate how the denial of marriage harms same-sex couples and their families, while helping no one," the campaign statement noted.

In addition, the campaign will "break the silence, spark conversations, and share personal stories about why marriage matters to same-sex couples and their families."

The campaign rejects NOM's claim that allowing marriage for everyone is some sort of attack on "the values of our Nation." Instead, the group will turn the tables: "We will continue to demonstrate that there is nothing more American then embracing the Golden Rule and celebrating love, commitment, and equal protection under the law."

Participate in the Freedom to Marry campaign here.

Photo: Anti-Prop 8 protesters in California. (Photo by Steve Bott, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0)

Dying for an iPad?

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 10:38:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - 17JUNE10 - Chinese immigrants and Chinese-Americans in San Francisco protest the long hours and bad conditions at the Foxconn factory in southern China, where the Apple iPad is manufactured. They lined up in front of Apple's flagship store in San Francisco, holding signs with the names of workers at the factory who have committed suicide because of the conditions.

(All photos by David Bacon)

Those conditions include 80 hours of overtime a month, according to the Chinese media. Chinese law limits overtime to 36 hours per month. No one is allowed to talk on the production line, and workers complain of constant high line speed and speedup. Most workers live in huge dormitories, where often 12 people share a room.

The suicides include a man who jumped from a dormitory. He'd worked there for two years. Another man, recently hired, slit his wrists and was taken to a hospital. A woman hanged herself in the bathroom, and a man drowned in a company swimming pool. The latest person committed suicide right after Foxconn's head, Terry Guo, had visited the factory and taken journalists on a tour.

Apple Corporation was embarrassed by the disclosure of the conditions for the people who make iPhones, iPods and iPads. The company, which has pushed for extra production of the newly unveiled iPad, said it would compensate workers by increasing the money it was paying Foxconn from 2.3% to 3% of the final price it charges for an iPad. That's the equivalent of the amount Apple spends for the device's aluminum back.

The protest and memorial was organized by San Francisco's Chinese Progressive Association.

Sanctions against China?

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 10:53:00 +0000

Once again, Paul Krugman is calling for sanctions against China. He tags the recent pledges by China to raise its currency as "a joke." It amounts, he says, to making a 2% adjustment where a "20% to 40%" – that's a pretty big spread in estimate!! Is it a guess? – adjustment is needed. Trade sanctions would raise the price of Chinese imported goods, and give "domestic" producers more room to compete. But without a US industrial policy much more coherent than the primarily military-based one that we DO have, there will be no way to determine how much, if any, of the higher prices will result in US jobs. Many "domestic" manufacturing firms are in fact multinational corporations who will apply savings to its most profitable use, anywhere in the world.

I fail to see how trade sanctions on Chinese manufacturing – Krugman's, and most of the labor movement's, recipe for fixing US-China trade imbalances – will do much to help US workers and jobs. Workers will be the ones who feel it FIRST, and MOST at the Wal-Mart checkout counter. The waves of protection granted various industries throughout US history have a sorry historical record in improving the lives of the workers in those industries. Textile, steel, machine tools, auto, agriculture – in most cases the tariffs simply subsidized (socialized) some of the costs of a long term, irreversible decline. But the bosses got all but the crumbs of these "social programs." Further, sanctions could risk much increased instability because of the many unintended side-effects that economic warfare elevated to state policy can have.

On the other hand, the rise of labor evidenced in recent Chinese strikes demonstrates the best antidote known to humanity for raising domestic demand in any country, including China – and the ultimate answer to restoring trade imbalances. In this writer's view, a powerful labor movement has to be the flip-side of China's vast and important experiment in market socialism – managing a robust, mixed capitalist path of development for an underdeveloped country, within a socialist framework and legal system. If you unleash market forces – especially if the modes of production are primarily in transition from agricultural to industrial (and some post-industrial too) – you must unleash social-democratic forces as well – trade unions especially. Otherwise the rapid development that markets can bring may easily degenerate both economically and politically if the rich can hoard their wealth and workers are denied the fruits of their steadily increasing productivity. No trick, or technique, or policy has been found that replaces a vibrant and powerful labor movement in getting this done.

Professor Krugman is no advocate of retreat from globalization. Nor am I. Perhaps world war could reverse it. But I see no peaceful future that does not adapt to embracing it. But for working people, the key part of the embrace of globalization must be an advance in their global empowerment. If there are to be effective sanctions, let them be international, and let them be directed at enforcement of the ILO charter on labor rights. Raising the bargaining rights of the world's workers is the true path to global and balanced social progress. Of course, in that context, calls from the US for China to liberate its labor movement will be obliged – in order not to be called a "joke" – to address the the fact that US labor law itself is not in compliance with the ILO charter; and to address further the virtual collapse of US workers' bargaining power over the past 40 years, including the devastating impact that collapse has had on overall inequality, median income, financialization, and instability.

Socialism and Sustainability: People and Nature Before Profits

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:21:00 +0000

Editor's note: The following is excerpted from a longer speech. Read the whole text here.

Socialism

Socialism has its material roots in the inability of capitalism to solve humanity's problems. Working people gravitate toward a radical critique of society out of necessity, out of a sense that the existing arrangements of society fail to fulfill their material and spiritual needs.

Thus, the gravitation towards socialism expressed in public opinion polls is closely connected to the end of an era in which U.S. capitalism was relatively stable and provided reasonable economic security.

Economic crises alone, however, do not prepare the soil for revolutionary change, though they're important. The soil is prepared via the cumulative impact of a series of crises (economic, political, social, cultural, and moral) taking place over time that together erode people's confidence in capitalism's capacity to meet humanity's needs and sustain life on our planet.

Our vision of socialism is a work in progress.

At the end of his life, Engels wrote, "To my mind, the 'so called socialist society' is not anything immutable. Like all social formations, it should be conceived in a state of flux and change."

We should take this to heart. Our socialist vision should have a contemporary and dynamic feel; it should be rooted in today's conditions and experience. It should be brought in line with current realities, trends, and sensibilities. It should reflect our values, traditions, and culture. It should be multi-racial, multi-national, and multi-lingual. It should welcome immigrants.

If it has an "old or foreign" feel, people will reject it.

In the 20th century the Soviet Union became the universal model of socialism. This universalization came at a price – it narrowed down our ability to think creatively and "outside the box."

The transition to socialism will mark an end to one stage of struggle and the beginning of a new one, distinguished a qualitative expansion and deepening of economic security, working class and people's democracy, egalitarian relations in every sphere of life, and human freedom in both a collective and individual sense.

I don't frame the matter in this way to replace the more traditional notion, in which the transition to socialism is distinguished by a revolutionary shift of class power from the capitalist class to the working class and democratic movement. What I want to do is to correct one-sidedness in our thinking.

A transfer in class power – which will more likely be a series of contested moments during which qualitative changes in power relations in favor of the working class and its allies take place rather than "the great revolutionary/to the barricades day" – is absolutely necessary, but it is not a sufficient condition for a successful transition to and consolidation of socialism.

In fact, a singular emphasis on the question of class power (a means), at the expense of social processes and social aims (economic improvement in people's lives, working class and people's democracy, rough equality, and freedom and solidarity), can lead – did lead – to distortions in socialist societies.

Socialism fully develops only to the degree that working people are empowered and participate in every aspect of society. Working class initiative, a sense of real ownership of social property, and a democratic and participatory socialist state are foundational aspects of socialism.

Lenin wrote,

"... socialism cannot be reduced to economics alone. A foundation – socialist production – is essential for the abolition of national oppression (in our context racial and national oppression), but this foundation must also carry a democratically organized state, a democratic army, etc. By transforming capitalism into socialism the proletariat (working class – SW) creates the possibility of abolishing national oppression; the possibility becomes reality "only" – "only!" – with the establishment of full democracy in all spheres."

Note the weight that Lenin attaches to democracy and working class initiative. Do we share his view? To a degree, but I would argue that re-centering working class and people's initiative, democracy, and needs at the core of our socialist vision is a necessary corrective.

While the political leadership of communist, socialist and left parties and social movements is indispensable, in the past, our understanding of our leading role came close to substituting ourselves for the wide-ranging participation and leadership of masses of people and for a vibrant public space in which these same people gather, compare ideas, and take action.

The struggle for socialism will bring a broad and diverse coalition with varied outlooks and interests into motion. And while we fight for the leadership of the multi-racial, multi-national working class in this coalition and for its deep imprint on the political process, we also combine that with the search for broad strategic and tactical alliances. At times this dual task will cause tensions, sometimes strongly felt ones, but the resolution of these tensions is condition for radical change.

Finally, the socialist economy of the 21st century should give priority to sustainability, not growth without limits. Socialist production can't be narrowly focused on inputs and outputs, nor should purely quantitative criteria be used to measure efficiency and determine economic costs. New socialist production (and consumption) models are imperative. Both must economize on natural resources and protect the planet and its various ecological systems. The future of living things that inhabit this earth will depend on it.

Environment

That said, we cannot wait for socialism to address the dangers of climate change and environmental degradation. That must be done now. We are approaching tipping points that if reached will give global warming a momentum that human actions will have little or no control over.

The planet is now warmer than it has been since the end of the last glacial age roughly 12,000 years ago, and if this pattern continues it will result in catastrophe for humanity. Both governments and peoples must take emergency measures now or the planet's future is in doubt. It is easy to make a case that climate change is the preeminent challenge to humankind in the 21st century.

Global warming is not new. In 1750, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – the main cause of the rise in global temperatures – measured 280 molecules of carbon dioxide for every one million molecules in the air. Today, it is 387 parts per million (ppm), largely because of industrialization, urbanization and consumerism – all of which were cradled and shaped by capitalism.

The quantity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increased gradually since 1750, but it spiked upward in recent decades as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases poured into the atmosphere at a feverish pace as a result of "human forcing," which are human activities that "affect the energy balance and temperature of the Earth," as opposed to natural forcing (volcanoes, change in the sun's radiation, etc,)

At one time the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) believed that carbon dioxide could rise to 450 ppm in the atmosphere (roughly increasing average global temperature by 2 degrees Celsius) without doing significant harm. New research suggests that this is far too optimistic. A rise of carbon dioxide to 350 ppm in the atmosphere brings us into the danger zone. But, as mentioned, we are already at 387 ppm.

The old calculation failed to take account of amplifying feedback factors. An increase in the earth's temperature, for example, causes the melting of ice and snow, which in turn results in less reflection of sunlight back into space and, instead, its absorption by the land and ocean and, consequently a further rise in the average global temperature.

This new scientific finding, says climate scientist James Hansan, makes it imperative to "immediately recognize the need to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 ppm in order to avoid disasters for coming generations."

If we continue to produce and consume as we have over decades (business as usual), the Earth will be warmer than it has been since 3 million years ago.

So what's the big deal? The great ice sheets will melt and eventually sea levels could rise as much as 80 feet. The frozen northern tundra will thaw and release tons of methane into the atmosphere. Whole ecological systems will collapse and species, unable to migrate or adapt to new conditions fast enough, will become extinct. Violent storms will become commonplace. Water vapor (a major cause climate change feedback) will increase. And more.

At some point, human intervention will be unable to slow down and stop this process. Obviously civilization as we know it will change drastically.

While responsibility rests on every nation, for each contributes to the planet's warning, it doesn't rest equally. The main polluters of the atmosphere as well as the land and water are the core capitalist countries.

China issues more carbon into the atmosphere now in absolute numbers. But when measured on a per capita basis the United States is still the main culprit.

Moreover, when considered as a cumulative process (which most people fail to consider) over nearly three centuries, the leading polluters are the United Kingdom and the United States.

These findings argue for an accelerated transition to new energy sources and sustainable development. We could begin with an immediate carbon tax that would penalize those with the largest carbon footprint – big corporations – while also making a case for the elimination of coal production and expansion of alternative energy sources.

More fundamentally, global warming and the various forms of environmental degradation are a compelling argument for the new urgency of socialism – a society that privileges people and nature.

Photo by Infrogmation, courtesy Flickr cc by 2.0

Coveting Riches on the Great Rare Earth Highway

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:12:00 +0000

Original source: Black Commemntator

There is little doubt in my mind as to what prompted the sudden attention to the minerals beneath the ground in Afghanistan. It's a rather blunt message to those amongst us who recently bought an IPod, Blackberry or Pirus: hold on, give the military more time; there's is no light at the end of the tunnel right now but there could be by year's end. If not, there will be fewer high tech goodies in the pipeline.

Seriously. The New York Times reported last week that "senior American government officials" say Afghanistan has "nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits," which might fundamentally alter the nation's economy "and perhaps the Afghan war itself." Nearly all the officials quoted were generals, including Gen. David Petraeus, who as head of U.S. Central Command is in charge of the war effort. Why was the information coming from the Pentagon? Why was the story fed to the Times with the reasonable expectation that it would appear on the front page? It really isn't news. Afghanistan's mineable mineral wealth was first documented by the late Soviet Union, not – as we are being told – when Soviet troops were in the country but as far back as the 1950s when geological surveys there were begun.

The military propagandists needed to come up with something to distract attention from the reality that things are going badly in Afghanistan, very badly. Public opinion in the U.S. has soured toward the war. Every other country that has troops on the battlefields is under tremendous popular pressure to withdraw them. There is obvious strategic policy disarray in the top echelons of the Obama Administration. On top of that the Pashtun people in the Afghan south don't want any more fighting. That's the reason the planned mother of all battles, the capture of the Kandahar, has for now been scuttled.

"Perhaps it was coincidental," wrote conservative columnist George Will last week, "that after several weeks of bad news from Afghanistan, on Monday there was good news, of sorts, about what Obama has previously called Afghanistan's "vast potential'."

"This could be true only on the fanciful supposition that this wealth can be tapped in 13 months or, even more fancifully, that the war will grind on for many years, until the infrastructures of extraction industries are built in a nation whose current GDP is $12 billion," Will continued.

"This `stunning potential,' in Petraeus' description of the minerals, will encourage the perception that the U.S. engagement there has something to do with economic aggrandizement, will aggravate Afghanistan's pandemic corruption and will intensify the Taliban's determination to prevail in a place where even good news has, like a scorpion, a sting in its tail," Will concluded.

The German publication Spiegel had a slightly different take on the affair. "Was the `sensational find' of large natural mineral resources in Afghanistan reported by the New York Times last week a PR trick by the United States government?" it asked. "Or was it a clever chess move by Afghan Mining Minister Waheedullah Shahrani?

"Both had good reason to announce the surprising news. US President Barack Obama is lobbying Congress for a further $33 billion for the military mission in Afghanistan, so the reference to Afghanistan's 'stunning potential,' as General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, put it, comes at a highly convenient time."

A commentary carried June 17 in Beijing, citing unnamed observers we can presume to be Chinese officials, noted that the minerals announcement "may function as a double-edged sword for the Central Asian country and it will likely justify continuous US engagement in Afghanistan's rebuilding process." According to the new agency Xinhua, Wu Dahui, with the Institute of Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the well-timed report will help justify the US presence in the country." Washington has insisted that the stability of Afghanistan relies on its economic rebuilding. The announcement was timed to prove that the US can gain strategically from its involvement in rebuilding the war-torn country. The resources in Afghanistan would feed the US' demand to boost its economy," Wu said.

A couple of years ago correspondent Rex Dalton wrote in Nature magazine, "Using the phrase that has been a byword for conflict in the region since the days of Rudyard Kipling's Kim, World Bank mining engineer Michael Stanley says: 'We are into a new phase of the Great Game'." It is being replayed over 4,000 miles across the land mass and sea lanes stretching from Europe's Eastern edge to the Pacific on what might be called the Great Mineral Highway. All types of valuable rocks – not just the lithium needed to power your digital camera – are being coveted. The same day the Afghan mineral resources story broke PBS followed up its report with a special on types of "rare earth," complete with descriptions of their value, showing scenes of them being strip mined in Mongolia and filled with alarm that China is cornering the market. One commentator grew somewhat emotional as he warned that if you do not have access to rare earth you can forget about green technologies.

Actually, the people of Afghanistan might well look to the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico before they rush to sell the mineral rights to foreign multinational corporations extending into perpetuity. One thing about minerals is that they are worthless unless there is the infrastructure and investment capital. There is certainly no guarantee that having huge stores of valuable minerals beneath the ground means peace and prosperity for poor countries. Rather it often means an influx of foreign companies, massive bribery and corruption, increased wealth inequality and environmental degradation. One has only to look at "blood diamonds" and "blood minerals" in Africa – the coltan (cell phones, DVD players, video game systems and computers), and cassiterite mining in the Congo. Inviting the multinationals in can be a costly Faustian bargain.

Reporting from Nigeria last week, the Financial Times had this comment on the reoccurring flare up of violence and political upheaval in the Niger delta: "The motivation for young men to take up arms is simple. 'There are no jobs, nothing for us,' says Paul, 22, a fighter in Bayelsa state. Crude spills have poisoned long stretches of the creeks where the locals fish, wash and worship."

"The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates," the New York Times reported last Thursday. "The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless." The story said the delta "has suddenly become a cautionary tale for the United States" having witnessed spills of almost 11 million gallons a year over the past 50.

However, mineral wealth can hold out the possibility of meaningful economic development, including employment for the young. While copper has been mined for a long time and has many industrial and construction uses, it is also indispensable for modern high technology. In the 1960s Soviet and Chinese surveyors located a copper source in Afghanistan's Logar province. Today China Metallurgical Group, a Chinese government-owned conglomerate based in Beijing, operates a huge mining complex at Aynak, south of Kabul. According to a report by the McClatchy newspaper chain, the planned operation includes, "an on-site copper smelter, a $500 million generating station to power the project and augment Kabul's electricity supply, a coal mine to fuel the power station, a groundwater system, roads, new homes, hospitals and schools, and a railway line from the country's northern border with Uzbekistan to its southeastern border with Pakistan." The projection is that soon the workforce at the complex will be entirely Afghan and to that end Afghan students are studying in China and Chinese language courses are underway in Afghan universities.

"When you have men who don't have jobs, you can't bring peace," Abdel Rahman Ashraf, a German-trained geology professor who's Afghan President Hamid Karzai's chief mining and energy adviser, told McClatchy. "When we take money and invest it in a project like Aynak, we give jobs to the people."

"Indeed, the project could inject hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties and taxes into Afghanistan's meager coffers and create thousands of desperately needed jobs," noted the correspondent Jonathan S. Landay.

"What happens at Aynak could eventually serve as a model for developing Afghanistan's other natural resources, ranging from mineral wealth to reserves of coal and petroleum," Dalton wrote in Nature in 2007, before the Chinese firm won the contract bidding. It surely is a better prescription for bring peace, development and security than continuing a ruinous and seemingly unending war.

Like an echo of the war in Southeast Asia, Washington is conjuring up light at the end of the tunnel in Afghanistan. "I think that we are regaining the initiative," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a Senate panel last week in Washington. "I think that we are making headway" NATO spokesman Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz said. "Tough fighting is expected to continue, but the situation is trending in our favor as more forces flow into the area," adding "It has to be tougher perhaps before it goes easier."

"Whether or not Obama adheres to his announced deadline matters less to the Afghans than it does to us," Columnist Eugene Robinson wrote in the Washington Post June 18. "U.S. casualties are increasing, as was anticipated; Obama has tripled U.S. troop levels since he took office; and the battle for Kandahar will be bloody. Our European allies are squirming, balking, complaining and looking for the exit. As time goes on, this will become even more of a primarily American war.

"The question is how much more the war will cost in precious young lives and scarce resources. Obama won the nation's forbearance by making a promise that the inevitable withdrawal of U.S. troops would begin next year. Americans should expect him to keep his word - and insist that he does." Lithium aside.

U.S. military base at Bagram in Afghanistan. (DoD)

What Nixon's Nuke Plans for North Korea Say About Today

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:20:00 +0000

The National Security Archive, an academic, non-government research group, has acquired and released documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act concerning Nixon administration contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against North Korea in 1969.

For those familiar with Nixon’s early schemes to deliver what he called a “knockout blow” to independence and revolutionary forces in Vietnam, plans to use tactical nuclear weapon to destroy North Vietnam’s dike system to create huge floods, the sinister bombing plan to destroy the entire transportation infrastructure and urban society of North Korea through massive bombing (code named “Duck Hook”), should be of no great surprise either.

Nixon ultimately carried forward aspects of these schemes in bombing attacks in Vietnam, which eventually were greater than all the bombs dropped in World War II and the Korean War combined. But, similar plans for Korea, which fortunately were never initiated, provide insight into both the arrogance and the limitations of those who see military force and both the threat and use of nuclear weapons as the solution to diplomatic and political questions.

According to documents released this week by the National Security archive, the plans initially were drawn up in response to North Korean forces shooting down a U.S. reconnaissance plane in April, 1969, in which 31 Americans were killed. As background, one should remember that the U.S. had occupied South Korea from 1945-1949, set up a government in the South as the Soviets had in the North when Cold War conflicts prevented what in 1945 was the planned unification. The U.S. then entered the Korean Civil War which began in June 1950.

The war, which lasted three years, brought about major Chinese intervention, cost millions of lives, including 37,000 U.S. military personnel, and ended where it had begun in terms of the geography of the two Koreas. Since 1953 there has been a bitter armed truce along the demilitarized buffer zone of the 38th parallel, and many bloody incidents, as North Korea has gone its own, largely isolationist way, and South Korea has become both a significant industrial nation and the most important center for U.S. military bases on the Asian mainland.

The documents released by the National Security Archive were military contingency plans that Nixon and Kissinger ordered a somewhat reluctant Pentagon to draw up. They included attacks on North Korean military installations with “tactical nuclear weapons” codenamed Operation Freedom Storm. It should be said that the casualties estimated by the Pentagon from such attacks, ranging from hundreds to a few thousand, are simply unbelievable and reflect in my opinion the military’s desire to continue to both develop and support as a viable option “tactical nuclear weapons.”

But the Pentagon feared quite rightly that such actions could easily escalate into a new general Korean war. Given the ongoing Vietnam War at the time, a renewed attack on the Koreas would have been an extreme example of what the late C. Wright Mills called in the 1950s, “crackpot realism,” that is an open-ended commitment to the use of military force as the only “realistic policy,” regardless of the circumstances, a policy which led only wars without end and the eventual destruction of the crackpot leadership which pursued such policies.

Nixon eventually did not launch a general attack on North Korea and start a new major war. And while Obama is clearly not Nixon and Hillary Clinton far from a Kissinger, on what is the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean Civil War, the conflict between the two Koreas continues, intensified last march by a new disputed incident in which a South Korean ship was sunk.

In spite of all the changes in world politics, the possibility of a new Korean war with U.S. involvement is still there, given a fifty year old situation that one might call permanent instability.

The Obama administration can and should begin to act as a peacemaker between the North and the South and both state and seek to implement a policy that would see the demilitarization of the Korean peninsula. Even a serious commitment to this sort of policy, which of course is will be very difficult to implement, as against one based on threats and sanctions, would be a huge victory for the administration in international affairs.

It would a signal to the world that the Obama administration had really broken with a foreign policy that Charles Beard, a founding father of the progressive school of U.S. historical scholarship, once called “perpetual war for perpetual peace.” It would also of course, save many billions in U.S. dollars, which the U.S. military presence in South Korea costs. The alternative, threats and the ultimate use of military force, is of course a simple policy. But it is one that almost always has negative, if not disastrous consequences.

Assessing the Obama Administration

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:17:00 +0000

President Obama is variously described as a Wall Street politician, a centrist, a Clintonian, a liberal, a progressive, and a "small d" democrat. He probably fits each category depending on circumstances, but I don't think he consistently and completely embraces any of them.

Enclosing him in a narrowly defined, tightly sealed political category – as many on the left and right do – is a mistake. His personal and political formation suggests that any political category that isn't contradictory and elastic will be of limited value.

It also goes in the direction of pitting the president against the working class and people. That the right does it is no surprise, but when left and progressive people do it, it is wrong strategically and extremely harmful politically.

To say that we support the president when he takes good positions and oppose him when he takes bad positions is sound advice as far as it goes.

But our attitude to the administration has to be more nuanced. It has to take into account that the success of this presidency is of great importance to racial and class relations, to the country's future.

Let's be blunt: there is no progressive alternative. If the president loses in 2012, we will lose too, and the country will once again be in the hands of rightwing extremism. There is no option to the left of President Obama.

Furthermore, this administration isn't the main obstacle to social progress. It's the right wing and the corporate class and their political representatives who either attempt to block reforms of any kind or contain them within acceptable limits to capital.

In my view, the president will change with changing circumstances, much like Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Johnson.

When the rightwing AFL-CIO president announced the first Solidarity Day in 1981, we didn't say, "About time, you bum." To the contrary, we enthusiastically welcomed Kirkland's announcement and mobilized broadly. Our approach to the president should be much the same.

Where we have differences with President Obama, we should state them (and we have) in a clear, constructive and unifying way. We shouldn't do it to score points or show off our left credentials.

The main organizations of the working class and people do much the same. They don't treat the president (or Democratic Party leaders) as an intransigent enemy. In fact, they consider him a friend and are mindful of the unrelenting attack rightwing extremists are conducting against our nation's first African American president as well as the broader opposition – corporate, military, judicial, etc. – to his agenda.

The left has something to learn from their approach. To simply say, as some on the left do, that our main task is to bring pressure and non-negotiable demands on this administration sounds good and certainly has a militant ring. But it is simplistic and undialectical in the sense that it is blind to the mix of conflicting forces that have a hand in determining the political direction of the country.

In my view, President Obama is a reformer – not a socialist reformer, not a radical reformer, and not even a consistent anti-corporate reformer – but a reformer nonetheless, whose agenda creates space for the broader people's movement to deepen and extend the reform process in a non-revolutionary period.

Unfortunately, the broad coalition supporting reform is not yet of sufficient size, strength and understanding to guarantee passage of his reform agenda – let alone impress its political will on the nation's politics and stretch the president's agenda in a radical direction.

For this reason alone, it is premature to say what the president's political limits are, or to put it differently, to smugly dismiss him as a "Clintonian" Democrat, as simply another Democratic Party centrist.

When our movement is on the level of the popular upsurge of the 1930s and 1960s, we will be in a better position to say if his views are elastic enough to accommodate more deep-going change, as Roosevelt and Johnson did.

There will be differences and tensions with the White House as we go forward. In some cases, the differences will surface over the pace and depth of reform; in other instances, they will be more fundamental. How we navigate these differences while maintaining strategic unity is the needle that the broader movement and the left must skillfully thread.

Hurling abuse at the president or the Democrats in Congress is easy, but it doesn't solve a very complicated problem – the further building of a broad labor-led, multiclass movement that has the capacity to decisively defeat the right and resolve the hard-edged crisis faced by the working class, people of color, women, youth, seniors, small and medium business people, sections of industrial capital, and others.

A reform-minded president – and certainly one who has transformative ambitions – is only successful to the degree that a mass and militant insurgency is part of the political mix.

Photo by Teresa Albano/People's World.

Economic Crisis, Financialization, and a New Model of Governance

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:15:00 +0000

The economic crisis is nearly two years old. I like to call it the Second Great Contraction, to borrow a term from a mainstream economist, to distinguish it from other postwar economic downturns.

Notwithstanding the "good" reports on GDP, employment and personal consumption growth, there is plenty of reason to be uneasy about the economy.

Investment is sluggish, trillions of dollars in real and fictitious capital have disappeared and will not return, and exploitation increases and wages fall. The housing crisis has eased a bit, but the foreclosure rate and the number of houses underwater are still enormous. Consumer spending remains low as households begin to work off their debt. State and local government spending is declining, even though it should be increasing to counter downward economic pressures. Income inequality is worsening, debt levels remain enormous, manufacturing is limping along; export growth is weak and poverty is ratcheting up, particularly in the racially oppressed communities and among single moms.

And no one should expect China to become a buyer of last resort in global markets.

The one indicator that shows some rebound is – you guessed it – corporate profits, especially in the financial sector. With no shame, management committees at the biggest financial institutions are awarding themselves a huge payout in salary and bonuses. Just when you thought the criminals on Wall Street might lie low, they come out in the open and flaunt their new wealth with supreme arrogance.

By most standards, the recovery falls somewhere between modest and stalled. To say the economy is getting back on its feet is to look at the economic indicators selectively.

Many mainstream economists fail to appreciate that the Second Great Contraction is different in its origins, magnitude and resistance to quick fixes, compared to earlier crises.

If history is any guide, the return to normality following a crisis of this kind will be slow. And still within the realm of possibility is not only a new downturn – a double dip, as it is called.

Furthermore, because of the hyper-connectivity of global markets, the power of bondholders/finance capital, the socialization by taxpayers of losses of "too big to fail financial institutions," and the buildup of external and internal debt in most countries prior to and after the crisis, one can't rule out a financial crisis breaking out in one or a few countries and potentially spreading worldwide.

Capitalism, says David Harvey, doesn't resolve crises so much as it moves them around.

So far the financial crisis has been contained here, but no one should sleep soundly. The notion that it "can't happen here" has been pulverized by events.

Even if it is contained, the mushrooming of debt is becoming the new instrument to bludgeon working people worldwide, as is evident in Greece. "Tighten your belt and rein in your expectations" are the new clarion calls of deficit hawks worldwide. As if it didn't get enough, the investor/finance class wants more surplus value from the working class and people in the form of lower living standards and fewer social benefits.

Here there is talk of social security and Medicare reform. And the current budget gives the green light to discretionary spending cuts. What is missing in the dialogue is any talk of a deep going change in the tax structure, reductions in the military budget, and a debt moratorium for ordinary Americans and state and local government.

As long as this out of the conversation, the solution to indebtedness will fall on working people and the poor.

To make matters worse, the endless talk of fiscal responsibility conceals the underlying causes of the crisis: income inequality, the rise of finance and financial liberalization, the hollowing-out of the manufacturing sector, the undermining of working-class power, the entry of new competitors in the global economy, and chronic overproduction in world commodity markets.

No solution to the nation's economic and financial woes that doesn't address these fundamental causes of the dire economic situation stands "a snowball's chance in hell" of succeeding.

Financialization

From the standpoint of the top layers of financial institutions – Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo – the current legislative struggle over financial regulation is but one battle, albeit a crucial one, in an ongoing struggle to fully restore themselves to the preeminent position they occupied in the global economy for the past three decades.

After sitting at the pinnacle of power, seeing their wealth multiply exponentially, and shaping the dynamics and contours of the world economy, they are not about to easily yield – or even slightly diminish – their power and privileged position.

Call the financial czars here and elsewhere whatever you like, but they are well aware of their class interests. What is more, they are mindful that the New Deal hemmed them in for roughly four decades. Admittedly none of them starved, but neither did they enjoy the nearly unchallenged political and economic sway as they have in recent decades.

If finance capital is able to reconstitute its power, the prospects of working people here and elsewhere are bleak. If, on the other hand, its power is progressively curbed, as it can be in the course of successive and contentious struggles, the future of the multiracial working class and its allies is far brighter.

Tough regulation and reduction in bank size are critical, but not enough.

In a larger sense the struggle is to change the whole social structure of governance and process of accumulation. For more than three decades, the main contours, dynamics and interrelations of the U.S. economy were shaped by finance capital and an exploding and nearly autonomous financial sector.

In previous periods of capitalist development, financial bubbles occurred at the peak of the business cycle. Today, however, financial bubbles are better seen "as manifestations of a longer-term process of financialization, feeding on stagnation rather than prosperity."

In contrast to conventional wisdom, the severe erosion of the manufacturing sector was not a product of financialization, but the other way around in the early going. New conditions and contradictions – intense price competition, entry of new producers in the global marketplace, high unit labor costs in American manufacturing relative to their counterparts elsewhere, and the consequent difficulty of maintaining adequate levels of profitability in the 1970s – combined with de-regulation and a recession (engineered by the Reagan administration) to stimulate the flight of capital out of the manufacturing and other sectors of the real economy.

Most of it ended up in speculative channels, while some went to plant relocation in countries abroad where costs were cheaper. The center of economic gravity shifted from industry to finance and over time the wheels of financialization, greased by both parties, brought the country to ruin, the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Depression.

Much of what is now taking place in the political arena is driven by the battle to reconstitute the economy and along what lines - labor or capital. Or said another way, the corporations or the people.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed; that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor! (Abraham Lincoln)

A New New Deal

The Obama administration's immediate challenge will be to revive the economy. The question is how? Where will economic dynamism come from in the near term? What change in political and economic structures and property relations are necessary?

Part of the answer is massive fiscal expansion, that is, large injections of money from the federal government into the is no answer to growing joblessness.

According to conventional wisdom and mainstream economists, near-full employment and healthy profit rates are the normal condition of a capitalist economy. Perhaps that was the case at an earlier stage of capitalism's development, but not now. Indeed, one has to wonder what the long-run prospects of U.S. and world capitalism are.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near meltdown of the financial system announced the death knell of capitalism, as we know it. What the future holds no one knows for sure, but it does look dim for working people if the economy is allowed to run its course.

It is hard to draw any other conclusion, given the fragility of the world economy, the incredible debt that has built up worldwide, overcrowded and hypercompetitive world markets, the emergence of the Asian tigers and now the BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and particularly China, the entry of hundreds of millions of people into the workforce, and the resistance of many sections of the capitalist class to structural economic change.

New model of economic governance

What is needed is a new model of political-economic governance at the state and corporate level that favors working people, the racially and nationally oppressed, women, youth, seniors, small business people and other social groupings.

This new model of governance won't be socialist, but like the New Deal, it would make substantial inroads into corporate power, profits and prerogatives; democratize state and quasi-state structures like the Federal Reserve; give communities, workers and small businesspeople a say in corporate decision-making, encourage small and medium size businesses and new forms of social property such as cooperatives; place energy, finance and transportation in the public domain; demilitarize and green the economy; deepen and extend equality, and reconfigure our government and nation's role in world affairs.

Furthermore, militarism and militarization of the economy are incompatible to a peaceful world and a people friendly economy.

Yes terrorism is a problem, but projecting U.S. military power overseas and frightening the American people is no solution; its solution requires police action, intelligence sharing, and a more just world.

In any event, class and democratic struggles over the direction of the economy will intensify and will be resolved ultimately in the political arena. These struggles and capitalism's growing incompatibility with human aspirations and the future of the planet will reveal the new necessity of socialism, to which I now briefly turn

Photo by AFL-CIO, courtesy Flickr

Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon: Righting a Perpetual Wrong

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:13:00 +0000

Finally, a parliamentary debate in Lebanon over the human rights of Palestinian refugees. What is unfortunate though, is that granting basic civil rights to over 400,000 Palestinians – 62 years after their expulsion from their historic homeland and the issuing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – has been a topic of ‘debate’ in the first place. Equally regrettable is the fact that various ‘Christian’ Lebanese political forces are fiercely opposing granting Palestinians their rights.

Most Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are second and third generation refugees. Impoverished camps are the only homes they have ever known. In Palestine, their real home, their villages were destroyed, their fields were burnt down and their culture was eradicated. An ongoing attempt at erasing every aspect of the Palestinian Arab identity in today’s Israel continues unabated, strengthened by the rightwing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is recognized in many political circles as ‘fascist’.

But what 62 years of dispossession, massacres and untold hardship failed to destroy – the memory and the belonging – will certainly not be eliminated now by some rightwing politicians and few parliamentary bills at the Israeli Knesset, including one that forbids Palestinians from commemorating their Nakba (Catastrophe of 1947-48).

The ongoing debate in the Lebanese parliament, however, is of a different nature. Lebanon is striving to settle many hanging political questions. Despite Israel’s devastating wars, a more confident Lebanese populace is emerging. This was largely empowered by the success of the Lebanese military resistance to Israel. A country of law and order is replacing that of chaos and turmoil, and a level of political independence is making some promising appearances after decades of total political dependency and proxy civil wars.

However, there are those who want Lebanon to remain a country divided on sectarian lines, a characteristic that defined Lebanese society for generations. Only such a division could guarantee their survival at the helm of dismal clan-based, sectarian hierarchy that has long degraded the image of the country, and allowed outsiders, notwithstanding Israel, to manipulate the fragile structure for their own benefit.

The denial of rights for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is an old subject that often resurfaces as a political ploy to serve immediate interests. This time, however, things seem to be different. Lebanon needs to move forward. Denying 400,000 people living a most wretched existence in scattered refugee camps, surrounding by mass graves, military checkpoints and no political horizon whatsoever is not conducive to the process of political and social progress.

Of course, those who dread the possibility of a modern Lebanon unified by one common identity – one that is not held hostage to sectarian allegiances or tribal affiliations – want Palestinian refugees to remain perpetual victims. The good news is that the bill is supported by who are otherwise political rivals in Lebanese politics – Saad Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister of the Future Movement, and Hezbollah and Amal, among others.

The bill, introduced by the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) on June 15 “would cancel prohibitions on property ownership and social security benefits for Palestinians, and ease restrictions on their right to work,” according to Human Rights Watch. Nadim Houry, HRW director in Beirut, said, “Lebanon has marginalized Palestinian refugees for too long (and the) parliament should seize this opportunity to turn the page and end discrimination against Palestinians.”

Indeed, it is an opportunity. But MPs from the Free Patriotic Movement, Phalange and Lebanese Forces are strongly opposing the measure. Phalange official Sami Gemayel, for example, has tried to delay the measure, hoping perhaps to deflate the strong movement that no longer tolerates denying Palestinian refugees their basic rights. “A matter that has created a number of crises for more than 60 years could not be tackled within three days,” the Lebanese Daily Star quoted him as saying. Of course he could not help but infuse the same old tired mantra, stressing that “integrating the Palestinians in the Lebanese society would undermine their right of return and fulfill an Israeli demand.”

Not one Lebanese could possibly believe that a Phalange official – whose party worked with Israeli forces in the summer of 1982 to orchestrate and carry out the killing of thousands of defenseless Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps – could truly be concerned about the Palestinian sense of belonging, identity and right of return. It is obvious that the measure could embolden refugees into demanding full integration into Lebanese society, which would completely undermine the foundation of the sectarian society that the Phalange official stalwartly champions.

But why should Palestinian refugees be humiliated for no fault of their own? Why should they live under the choice that they either suffer under draconian measures or risk losing their right of return? It’s like repeatedly punishing the victim for ‘allowing’ his victimhood. The fact is, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, like Palestinian refugees elsewhere are utterly clear regarding their right of return and their adherence to that right. They need not to be fined or jailed for adding a bedroom to their ramshackle homes in the refugee camps. They need not be treated like tenth class citizens to be reminded of their love for Palestine, the names of their destroyed villages, and the memories of their ancestors.

It is ironic how Mr. Gemayel found it implausible to reach a solution regarding the acknowledgment of Palestinian refugees basic rights in three days, while it was astoundingly achievable to butcher thousands of innocent civilians by Phalange forces in 36-48 hours in Sabra and Shatilla on September 16, 1982.

The survivors of those camps, and the rest don’t wish to impede the ‘Christian’ parties’ bid for demographic and sectarian ‘balance’ in Lebanon. Their home is Palestine and they cannot wait to return. But, until that day arrives, there is no need to deny them the most basic of rights and infringe upon their very dignity. One can only hope that Lebanon’s new political development overpowers those who wish to keep the country fragmented, sectarian and forever hostage to the ghosts of its colonial past.

Capitalism “Indian-style”

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:09:00 +0000

Original source: People's Democracy (India)

To those fearful of any challenge to private property and the unbridled accumulation of capital, India’s recent growth experience serves as a new “model.” The evidence indicates that in most poor countries modern industry is unequal to the task of ensuring adequate employment to support the diversification of economic activity away from agriculture. But, these sections argue, India's recent growth trajectory proves that services can offer an alternative. Despite the country's low per capita income, its relatively high GDP growth rates of between 8 and 9 percent per annum have been driven substantially by services. Given the historical experience with the diversification of economies at different levels of per capita income, this is unusual. The diversification away from agriculture in terms of sectoral shares in national output and employment is expected, at India’s level of per capita income, to result in a predominant shift towards manufacturing rather than services.

In the past, a premature increase in the share of services was considered an aberration because services were conventionally seen as activities characterized by lower levels of productivity and lower rates of increase in productivity. A country intent on raising productivity and per capita income was not expected to rely excessively on services. Further, services were conventionally treated as non-tradeables, since their mode of delivery required the presence of the service provider at or near the point of provision. Hence, rapid GDP growth based on services in a reasonably open economy was expected to be destabilizing. Growth would be accompanied by increased imports of food, raw materials and manufactured goods, but would not deliver the export revenues needed to finance this growth.

The Indian experience seems to belie these arguments. Services growth especially that of modern services such as communication services, financial services and IT and IT-enabled services, is not accompanied by a proportionate growth in employment, reflecting an increase in labor productivity. This makes India’s trajectory more acceptable from the productivity angle, even if not the most advantageous from the point of view of unemployed and underemployed workers in a labor-surplus economy. Moreover, technological changes and developments have made a number of services exportable through various modes of supply, including cross-border supply through digital transmission. Thus, in the case of IT and IT-enabled services in India, the expansion of output is driven by the expansion of exports, with positive balance of payments implications.

SHARP RISE IN SERVICES' SHARE

The growth of services of these kinds are seen as explaining the domination of services as a group in the Indian economy, accounting for more than half its GDP and contributing an overwhelming share to its recent relatively high rate of growth. The rise in the share of services (excluding construction) in GDP has been particularly sharp since 1996-97, amounting to 6.8 percentage points over the subsequent ten years as compared with just 1.9 percentage points during the previous ten years.

This shift in favor of services occurred at a time when globally there was a technology-facilitated increase in the exports of services. India’s transition to being a predominantly service economy was at least partly because it benefited from this increase in the global exports of services with its share in world exports of services rising from 1.1 percent in 2001 to 2.6 percent in 2006. As a result India was ranked 11th among the world’s leading exporters of services. The only other developing country that contributed more than India was China.

Within exports of services, Software and Non-software miscellaneous services dominate. Thus, by 2001, software services and Non-software miscellaneous services accounted for 60 percent of total services exports and this figure had risen to 64 percent by 2007-08. Clearly, software services exports and business process outsourcing (BPO) were responsible for India’s success as a services exporter.

According to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) balance of payments data, gross exports of software, business, financial and communication services amounted to 5.3 percent of GDP at market prices in 2007-08, with software services exports touching 3.4 percent of GDP. These figures compare with a merchandise exports to GDP ratio of 14.2 percent. These sectors are, therefore, not just important sources of growth but also of foreign exchange earnings, supporting the balance of payments and making up for the fact that liberalization has yet to trigger a commodity export boom from the country.

India's export success in the IT and IT-enabled services area has also contributed to an increased presence of these sectors within the domestic economy. In absolute and relative terms the size of the IT sector in India is now impressive. The Central Statistical Organization has estimated that the share of ICT services in total GDP has increased from 3 per cent in 2000-01 to 6 percent in 2007-08. ICT services dominate the ICT industry as a whole accounting for 90 percent of GDP. And ICT services have increased their share in service sector GDP from 6 percent in 2000-01 to 10 percent in 2007-08. All this makes ICT services an important segment of the non-agricultural sector and gives rise to the impression that modern and more productive services are responsible for the dynamism of services and it contribution to GDP growth.

LITTLE REASON TO CELEBRATE

However, a closer look at the evidence suggests that there is still little reason to celebrate India’s post-liberalization version of capitalist growth. Even now a large part of the services economy consists of low productivity services offering low paying, informal and insecure “employment.” India’s “new” and unusual growth trajectory has not delivered what is needed most: employment and a reasonable standard of living for the poor majority.

According to the data collated by consulting firm Global Insight on value added revenues generated in the knowledge-intensive services sectors, despite rapid growth, the absolute size of the sector in India remains small. Measured in 2000 constant price dollars, the global value added revenues from market-oriented, knowledge intensive services rose from $2.9 trillion in 1985, to $3.7 trillion in 1990, $4.4 trillion in 1995, $5.6 trillion in 2000, and $6.8 trillion in 2005. During this period, India’s share of these services rose from just below one half of one per cent to just above one per cent. That is, India was and remains a small player in this sector when global revenues from domestic sales and exports are taken into account.

But market-oriented knowledge intensive services (consisting of Communications, Financial and Business Services) are a growing presence within the Indian economy. The ratio of value added revenues from these services in 2000 constant price dollars to GDP in 2000 constant price dollars rose from 5.30 percent in 1985, to 8.64 in 1995 and 11.96 percent in 2005. This does point to a significant role for these services in the national economy, especially when compared with the corresponding values for ‘non-market oriented,’ knowledge-intensive services (consisting of education and health services). Those values were 5.97, 4.81 and 5.72 percent respectively in those years.

However, the figures suggest that the knowledge-intensive services sectors together (market and non-market oriented) accounted for 17.7 percent of GDP. Adding on the 8 percent contributed by Railways and Public administration and defense (as per the official National Accounts Statistics), the total comes to 25.7 percent. That leaves almost half of the services sector unaccounted for, which presumably would consist substantially of unorganized services. This makes the argument that services are reflective of a new dynamism in India that much less convincing.

Thus, while modern services do play an important role in the Indian economy, so do traditional unorganized services offering extremely low earnings, which grow because of the inadequate employment opportunities in the primary and secondary sectors, especially those providing a reasonable wage and decent work conditions. What is disconcerting is that even in 2004-05, 41 percent of the workforce in the tertiary sector was in the rural areas, which are unlikely to be in the nature of modern, productive services.

LIMITED GROWTH IN EMPLOYMENT

Further, despite the expansion of services, the growth of employment in this sector has been limited. According to figures from the National Sample Survey Organization, tertiary sector employment in 2004-05 amounted to only 25 percent of the work force despite the fact that more than 50 percent of GDP came from this sector. Moreover, between 1999-00 and 2004-05, employment in the tertiary sector increased by only 22 percent, whereas GDP at constant prices contributed by the service sector expanded by 44 percent. This was possibly because high productivity services that delivered substantially in terms of GDP growth contributed little in terms of employment.

A typical example is the IT sector, the contribution of which to employment does not compare with its role in the generation of income and foreign exchange. Going by NSS figures, employment in Computer related activities (Category 72 of National Industrial Classification 2004) which increased from 314 thousand in 1999-00 to 963 thousand in 2004-05, accounted for 0.2 percent of the work force. If we consider categories 65 to 74 which covers all business services including financial intermediation, and real estate, renting and business activities, the share of employment in that sector is just 1.7 percent. This explains in large measure the lack of correspondence of GDP and employment figures. Clearly, the high share of services in GDP is no cause for celebrating capitalism “Indian-style.”

Photo by subzi73, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

Terrorist Brags in Miami While Cuban Five Remain in Prison

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:07:00 +0000

HAVANA, Cuba, Jun 24 (acn) Well-known terrorist Guillermo Novo Sampoll walks the streets of Miami saying he will not give up on violence and not asking for forgiveness on the crimes he has committed, while the five Cuban antiterrorists remain unjustly incarcerated in the United States.

Novo Sampoll made those statements to CubaNews, a specialized bulletin coming out from Wheaton (Maryland), reported Granma newspaper.

He was, along his brother Ignacio, Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo, Pedro Remón, Dionisio Suárez, Virgilio Paz, Luis Posada Carriles and others, one of the bloodthirsty murderers the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used against Cuba and other Latin American nations.

Novo Sampoll lives in Miami, benefiting from the impunity status granted to him by the FBI to Cuban American terrorists. He regretted they haven’t been able to kill the Cuban Revolution leaders, a feat they have tried for half a century, which he described as a “failure.”

In other statements, the murderer dubbed as “weak” the so-called “dissidents movement” within Cuba which is sponsored by the CIA through the USAID.

“They are kind of confusing, living under a constant brainwashing and have no exposure to other ideas” pointed out Novo Sampoll, who immigrated to the United States when he was 15, to rapidly enroll in anti-Cuba terrorist organizations.

In 2004, he and Posada Carriles, along two other terrorist were caught when trying to blow up a Panamanian theater full of students and social movements members that were there to attend a speech by the Cuban Revolution leader Fidel Castro. They were charged on terrorism. Later he was paroled by former Panamanian president Mireya Moscoso under pressures from the US government.

Gillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll made an unsusceful bazooka shot against the UN headquarters in New York while Cuban Argentinean guerrilla Che Guevara was addressing the UN General Assembly.

He was also involved in the murder of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier on September 1976 in Washington DC, and also in dozens of criminal actions against Cuba throughout the world. He also killed two Cuban diplomats in Argentina as part of the Condor Plan.

While this terrorist walks freely in the US, René González, Ramón Labañino, Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando González have been unjustly incarcerated since 1998.

These Cuban patriots were monitoring precisely Florida-based anti-Cuba terrorist groups that for over five decades have caused the death to thousands of Cubans and damages for millions of dollars to Cuban economy.

Their job was to alert Cuba of these criminal actions to prevent these groups from bringing death to both the Cuban and American peoples.

Global: Pressure on workers’ rights grows as crisis hits jobs

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:03:00 +0000

Original source: The Guardian (Australia)

The ITUC’s (International Trade Union Congress) Annual Survey of Trade Union Rights has documented a dramatic increase in the number of trade unionists murdered in 2009, with 101 killings – an increase of 30 percent over the previous year. The Survey also reveals growing pressure on fundamental workers’ rights around the world as the impact of the global economic crisis on employment deepened.

Colombian unionist Luciano Enrique Romero was murderd in 2005. He was the leader of the food industry union SINALTRAINAL, which is known for its legal actions against Coca Cola.

Of 101 murdered, 48 were killed in Colombia, 16 in Guatemala, 12 in Honduras, six in Mexico, six in Bangladesh, four in Brazil, three in the Dominican Republic, three in the Philippines, one in India, one in Iraq and one in Nigeria. Twenty-two of the Colombian trade unionists who were killed were senior trade union leaders and five were women, as the onslaught of previous years continued. The rise in violence in Guatemala and Honduras also followed a trend developing in recent years.

“Colombia was yet again the country where standing up for fundamental rights of workers is more likely than anywhere else to mean a death sentence, despite the Colombian government’s public relations campaign to the contrary. The worsening situation in Guatemala, Honduras and several other countries is also cause for extreme concern,” said ITUC general secretary Guy Ryder.

This year’s report again records an extensive list of violations suffered by trade unionists struggling to defend workers’ interests, this time in 140 countries. Many other violations remain unreported, as working women and men are deprived of the means to have their voices heard, or fear to speak out due to the consequences to their jobs or even to their physical safety.

Along with the appalling list of killings, the Survey provides detailed documentation of harassment, intimidation and other forms of anti-union persecution. A further ten attempted murders and 35 serious death threats were recorded, again mostly in Colombia and Guatemala. Furthermore, many trade unionists remained in prison and were joined by around hundred newly imprisoned in 2009. Many others were arrested in Iran, Honduras, Pakistan, South Korea, Turkey and Zimbabwe in particular. The general trade union rights’ situation has continued to deteriorate in a number of other countries, including Egypt, the Russian Federation, South Korea and Turkey.

Anti-democratic forces continued to target union activity, aware that unions are often in the front line in the defense of democracy. This was evident in Honduras during the post-coup violence and in Guinea during a protest demonstration against the ruling junta which turned into a terrible massacre on September 28, 2009.

Numerous cases of strike-breaking and repression of striking workers were documented in each region. Thousands of workers demonstrating to claim wages, denounce harsh working conditions or the harmful effects of the global financial and economical crisis faced beatings, arrest and detention, including in Algeria, Argentina, Belarus, Burma, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Honduras, India, Iran, Kenya, Nepal, Pakistan and Turkey. Dismissals of workers due to their trade union activities were reported in many countries. In Bangladesh, six garment workers on strike for a pay increase and settlement of outstanding wages died after a police intervention.

Union busting and pressure continued to be widely used by employers. In several countries, companies threatened workers with closure or transfer of production sites if they organized or joined a trade union. Often employers simply refused to negotiate with legitimate workers’ representatives while the authorities did nothing. Some labour codes were amended to permit more “flexibility” and to unravel social welfare systems, which often impacted the existing industrial relations systems and thus curtailed trade union rights.

The undermining of internationally-recognized labor standards saw more and more workers facing insecurity and vulnerability in employment, with some 50 percent of the global workforce now in precarious jobs. This affected workers in export processing zones, especially in South East Asia and Central America, domestic workers, particularly in the Middle East and South East Asia, and migrants and agricultural workers.

Many of the worst affected sectors have high concentrations of women workers. Furthermore, the growth of informal employment and the development of new “atypical” forms of employment were seen across both regions and industrial sectors. The difficulties faced by these workers to organize or exercise their trade union rights are directly related to their highly vulnerable position in the labor market.

The Survey also highlights many cases where, while trade union rights are officially protected in legislation, restrictions on legal coverage and weak or non-existent enforcement added to the vulnerability of workers already struggling in the depths of the crisis. Severe restrictions or outright prohibition of strikes also exist in a large number of countries. Furthermore, complex procedural requirements, imposition of compulsory arbitration and the use of excessively broad definitions of “essential services” provisions often make the exercise of trade union rights impossible in practice, depriving workers of their legitimate rights to union representation and participation in industrial action.

The ITUC report notes that 2009 was the 60th Anniversary of the ILO Convention 98 on the Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining, which has still not been ratified by countries such as Canada, China, India, Iran, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam. Thus, approximately half of the world’s economically active population is not covered by the Convention.

“This year’s ITUC survey shows that the majority of the world’s workers still lack effective protection of their rights to organize trade unions and bargain collectively. This is a major factor in the long-term increase in economic inequality within and between countries. Inadequate incomes for much of the world’s workforce helped cause the global economic crisis, and is making it much harder to put the economy on a path of sustainable growth,” said Ryder

Photo by AFL-CIO, courtesy Flickr

Immediate and Complete End of the Illegal Closure of Gaza?

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:01:00 +0000

Original source: Palestinian Center for Human Rights

Israel has subjected the Gaza Strip to an illegal closure policy since 1991. This policy’s current, most extreme form has been applied continuously for over three years following the Hamas takeover in June 2007. This closure constitutes a form of collective punishment and has completely cut off Gaza from the outside world.

Palestinian civilians in Gaza are deprived of their fundamental human rights, such as the freedom of moment, and are deliberately and systematically denied access to the most basic needs, such as food, medicine and electricity. By enforcing this illegal policy Israel has manufactured a chronic and completely preventable humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The current situation is the direct result of Israel’s long-standing violations of international law, in particular the State’s disregard for its obligations as an Occupying Power. Despite condemning the closure, the international community has failed to take necessary action to alleviate the suffering of innocent civilians and hold Israel accountable under international law.

The attack on the 'Gaza Freedom Flotilla' on 31 May 2010, which resulted in the killing of nine civilians in international waters, has focused the world’s attention on the suffering of the Palestinian population of Gaza. As a reaction to this tragic recent event, new international pressure has been exerted on Israel in order to put an end to the closure and its fatal consequences.

On 14 June, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued a critically important report, which highlighted the illegality of the closure and called upon the international community to uphold its obligation to "ensure that repeated appeals by States and international organizations to lift the closure are finally heeded."

As acknowledged by the ICRC, the closure constitutes a form of collective punishment of the civilian population, which is clearly prohibited under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. This closure regime also violates a number of other principles of international humanitarian law and human rights law, including the right to life, the right to the highest attainable standard of health, the right to freedom of movement of persons and goods, the right to adequate shelter. Ultimately, the closure violates the right of the Gaza people to live in human dignity.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) emphasizes that in order to put an end to this dire situation a dramatic change is needed. Measures to ease the blockade announced by Israel in recent days are purely cosmetic and will not represent any significant improvement.

According to media reports – and in line with a proposal put forward by the Quartet Representative to the Middle East, Tony Blair – Israel is planning to expand the list of permitted goods into Gaza moving from a list of permitted items to one of prohibited items; this measure is not adequate and does not represent any substantial change to the current illegal policy. Israel’s proposal is only shifting attention from the real problems and does not deal with the root causes of the crisis.

Israel’s proposed easing of the blockade fails to address the necessary measures to restart the economy of Gaza, such as the import of fuel and construction materials or the export of products from the Strip. Expanding the list of permitted items cannot improve the situation unless it is accompanied by the unconditional opening of all border crossings of the Gaza Strip.

PCHR stresses that the alleged easing of the closure fails to address the most important issue: the freedom of movement of the imprisoned Palestinian population of Gaza.

The 1.5 million people living in the Gaza Strip have the legitimate right to live normal, dignified lives, to enjoy freedom of movement and to have access to work, education and medical treatment.

"The siege has transformed the Gaza Strip into an animal farm" forcefully notes Raji Sourani, Director of PCHR. "The risk is that Gaza is just passing to another form of illegal blockade, one that may become internationally accepted and institutionalized."

The Quartet noted that the situation of the civilian population of Gaza is unsustainable, unacceptable and cannot be resolved by providing humanitarian aid; as confirmed by the ICRC, there is no sustainable solution other than the complete, immediate lifting of the closure.

The whole international community must act decisively in order to put an end to the illegal closure of the Gaza Strip, and to ensure civilians legitimate human rights.

Japan: New PM Offers Little Change

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 11:58:00 +0000

Original source: Akahata (Japan)

Question is whether the new Cabinet can speak up against US and business world

Prime Minister Kan Naoto on June 8 inaugurated his Cabinet consisting of the Democratic Party of Japan and the People’s New Party. The main players in the latest Japan-U.S. agreement on the relocation of the U.S. Futenma base, including Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya, Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi, and Minister in Charge of Okinawa Maehera Seiji, all retained their posts from the previous administration.

The new lineup shows that the Kan Cabinet is planning to push ahead with the implementation of the agreement.

Asked by reporters for a comment on the inauguration of the new Cabinet, Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi stated, “Whoever may make up the Cabinet, the question is whether or not it can boldly speak up against the United States and large corporations in the interests of the general public. If not, it can neither improve the national economy nor people’s living conditions.”

Ichida criticized the new Cabinet for already thinking of having discussions on an increase in the consumption tax and more tax breaks for large companies.

The other day, new Secretary General of the DPJ Edano Yukio said that Ozawa Ichiro accepted his political responsibility for the fall in support for the DPJ to a certain extent by stepping down from his post as secretary general. However, it is the DPJ itself that has been refusing to summon Ozawa as a sworn witness before the Diet.

Pointing out the lack of internal critique within the DPJ, Ichida stated, “Without digging out the whole truth regarding allegations of corruption in the Diet, Kan cannot claim to represent ‘clean politics’ free from money scandals.”

Ichida further pointed out that Kan formed a cabinet that will firmly maintain the recent Japan-U.S. agreement that will impose on Okinawans another military base. He said, “It is essential to take up these issues in Diet plenary sessions and budget committee meetings of both Houses and clarify all the issues so that voters can more accurately vote as informed citizens in the upcoming Upper House election.”

He learns nothing from Hatoyama failings: Shii on Kan’s policy speech

Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo harshly criticized the new Prime Minister for his refusal to learn lessons from the causes of the previous government’s failure, saying, “Since the previous Hatoyama government was forced to resign due to the anger of the general public, the new government should start its political efforts based on remorse for the failure. However, I found that Prime Minister Kan refuses to address the causes of the previous administration’s demise.” Shii said this on June 11 in a press conference held in the Diet Building after Prime Minister Kan’s policy speech.

Regarding the issue of the relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Station, Shii pointed out that Kan is taking a ‘‘so what’’ attitude toward strong public anger concerning the DPJ government’s stand on this issue and that he will stand by the Japan-U.S. agreement in which Japan and the U.S. government confirmed the intention to build a large replacement facility in the Henoko-saki area. On the issue of ‘‘politics and money,’’ Shii denounced Kan for his attempt to bring the scandal to a close on the grounds that the former prime minister has stepped down. The chair added that Kan totally failed to mention such issues as the removal of the discriminative health insurance system for elderly people aged 75 and older or the fundamental reform of the Worker Dispatch Law.

The Chair’s comments in the question and answer session are as follows.

Overall impression

The DPJ has been repeatedly chanting its slogan ‘‘putting people’s livelihoods first.’’ However, I was shocked to find that this phrase never appeared in his policy speech. I feel this is indicative of the new government’s direction of moving further away from public interest.

Consumption Tax

Prime Minister Kan called for a national debate that includes both ruling and opposition parties. The Prime Minister urged the Liberal Democratic Party to also join the discussion on a bill concerning the responsibility to restore fiscal health presented by the LDP to the Diet. The Bill clearly states that an increase in the consumption tax rate in the future is required, so there is the probability that we will see a coalition between the DPJ and the LDP demanding for a consumption tax hike.

Main characteristics of the new government

There are a variety of reasons for the failure of the previous government including the issue of the relocation of U.S. Futenma Air Station, “politics and money” corruption allegations, and matters concerning people’s livelihoods. Among them, what I think the DPJ government should realize is that it will reach an impasse if it maintains the position of subservience to the United States.

Rather than learning the lesson taught by public outrage, the Prime Minister has pledged his loyalty to the United States by promising that he will strictly follow the Japan-U.S. agreement. I am also concerned about the possibility that the government is moving in the direction of meeting the demands of financial circles to raise the consumption tax rate and further reduce corporate taxes.

Incoming Japanese PM Kan Naoto. (Photo by Kenji-Baptiste OIKAWA, courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Venezuela’s Oil Company Injects $56 Billion into Social Development

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 11:53:00 +0000

Original source: Venezuelanalysis.com

Mérida, June 21st 2010 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) assigned $56.3 billion of its budget to social development between 2001 and 2009, according to the state owned company’s president, Rafael Ramirez, speaking on Televen yesterday.

The money went to health, education, food, and other programs. Ramirez specified that $28 billion went to the National Development Fund (Fonden, which in turn has spent the money on public projects such as transport and energy infrastructure, technology, housing, and medicine), $1.8 billion went to communities, $2.06 billion went to the basic literacy program Mission Ribas, and $5.7 billion went to the health mission Barrio Adentro.

Also, PDVSA assigned $3.6 billion to agricultural projects, $2.8 billion to infrastructure projects, and $2.8 million to housing, said Ramirez.

According to the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) PDVSA directed a total $13.3 billion (or 7.3% of the GDP) to social projects in 2006.

Such social spending is in addition to the high social spending the Venezuelan government has been including in its budgets. Almost 46% of the government’s 2010 budget is allocated to social spending such as public education, social development, health care, and the social missions.

In roughly a similar period, from 2002 to 2009, PDVSA earned an extra $85.7 billion as a result of the Plan of Full Petroleum Sovereignty which involved adjusted taxes and royalties, Ramirez explained. In 2005, Venezuela increased oil royalties from 1% to 16.66% and in 2008 the government implanted a new tax on extraordinary oil profits.

However, the Venezuelan daily El Universal, using figures from the oil company’s annual reports, states that PDVSA’s spending on the social programs called “missions” decreased by 82% from 2007 to 2009.The statistics, which pertain only to the social missions and not to other spending on community projects, agricultural credits, infrastructure and other development projects, show that in 2007 PDVSA designated $5.3 billion to the missions, $1.9 billion in 2008 and 942 million in 2009, when oil prices plunged.

Ramirez PDVSA had become stronger despite the fact that “in 2008 the price of oil per barrel was $140 dollars, and in 2009 it fell to $57.”

Venezuela has 212 billion barrels of petroleum in certified reserves, Ramirez said. It has produced just over 3 million barrels per day since 2004.

Photo by Open Democracy, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

Volcanoes and Global Warming

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:14:00 +0000

EarthTalk®
From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: Is there any link between increased volcanic activity—such as the recent eruptions in Iceland, Alaska and elsewhere—and global warming? -- Ellen McAndrew, via e-mail

It’s impossible to pin isolated natural phenomena—like an individual volcanic eruption—on global warming, but some researchers insist that there is a correlation between the two in some instances.

“Global warming melts ice and this can influence magmatic systems,” reports Freysteinn Sigmundsson of the Nordic Volcanological Centre at the University of Iceland. Her research with Carolina Pagli of the University of Leeds in England suggests that rocks cannot expand to turn into magma—the primary “feedstock” for volcanic eruptions—when they are under the pressure of a big ice cap pushing down on them. As the theory goes, melting ice caps relieve that pressure and allow the rocks to become magma. This in turn increases the chances of larger and/or more frequent eruptions in affected regions, from Iceland to Alaska to Patagonia to Antarctica.

As for Iceland specifically, the eruption of Mt. Ejyafjallajökull that shut down some air travel for weeks this past spring cannot be blamed on changing climate: That volcano lies under a relatively small icecap which would not exert enough pressure to affect the creation of magma. But Sigmundsson and Pagli found that the melting of about a tenth of Iceland’s biggest icecap, Vatnajokull, over the last century caused the land to rise an inch or so per year and led to the growth of an underground mass of magma measuring a third of a cubic mile. Similar processes, they say, led to a surge in volcanic eruptions in Iceland at the end of the last ice age, and similarly increased volcanic activity is expected to occur there in the future.

On the flip side, volcanic eruptions can exacerbate the ongoing effects of climate change: Already retreating glaciers can lose all their ice when something below them blows. Of course, many volcanoes around the world are not subject to pressure from ice caps, and scientists stress that there is little if any evidence linking global warming to eruptions in such situations.

Some have theorized that large volcanic eruptions contribute to global warming by spewing large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the stratosphere. But the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by even a large and ongoing volcanic eruption is but a drop in the bucket in comparison to our annual output of industrial and automotive carbon emissions.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, greenhouse gas emissions from volcanoes make up less than one percent of those generated by human endeavors. Also, ash clouds and sulfur dioxide released from volcanoes shield some sunlight from reaching the Earth and as such can have a cooling effect on the planet. The 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines—a much larger eruption than what occurred recently in Iceland—caused an average cooling of half a degree centigrade worldwide during the following year. Regardless, single volcanic eruptions, even if they last for weeks or months, are unlikely to send enough gas or ash up into the skies to have any long term effect on the planet’s climate.

CONTACTS: Nordic Volcanological Centre at the University of Iceland, www2.norvol.hi.is; U.S. Geological Survey, www.usgs.gov.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

Photo by pizzodisevo, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

Beware of the New Racist Counteroffensive

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:20:00 +0000

Many people say that racism is simply an attitude or a prejudice of one people toward another people. That allowed Republican senators, during Sonia Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearings for the U.S. Supreme Court, to make the ludicrous claim that she was a racist.

Racism is actually a historically developed set of practices, institutions, and beliefs that systematically subordinates racially oppressed people to an inferior status in every area of life, while at the same time, creates a major fault line of division and disunity within the community of working people and between the working class and its allies. In doing so, racism undermines democracy and social solidarity, corrodes the living conditions of the entire working class, and saps the strength of the working class and its allies.

Its genesis lies in the practical economic and political requirements of the interwoven systems of predatory colonialism, slavery, annexation, and nascent capitalism in the "new world" centuries ago.

These systems of exploitation in the Americas needed not only an unlimited supply of unpaid or underpaid labor to work in the seized mines and fields, but also a system of rationalization – racist ideology and a corresponding set of institutions – to legitimize and naturalize its theft of lands and resources, the unparalleled subjugation of tens of millions, and genocide on a nearly unimaginable scale.

Slavery and other forms of subjugation were eventually eliminated, but after a short burst of freedom, were replaced by new forms of racist and class oppression.

In the South, the old slaveowners and their reactionary coalition, defeated decisively on the battlefield, was able after a brief retreat to regroup. It seized political power, and then constructed with the use of nearly unimaginable forms of coercion, both public and private, a new system of racial oppression, ostracism, exploitation and political economy, popularly called Jim Crow.

In the Southwest and West, the forms of oppression and exploitation of Mexican, Asian, and Pacific Islander people, mutated too, but discriminated labor, extra exploitation and national and racial oppression continued.

As for the Native American Indian peoples, their racist subjugation continued on reservations as well as in urban settings where many were moving.

In other regions of the country, the forms of racist discrimination and oppression changed, adjusting to the new stage of development of U.S. capitalism in the 20th century and intensity of class and people's struggles.

Only in the sixties did the modern civil rights movement and other struggles for equality upended most of these "legal" forms and structures of racism, discrimination. But, as Martin Luther King said more than once, racism and national oppression, though not legally sanctioned, persisted in old and new forms in urban and rural settings.

Moreover, in recent decades racism has worsened in some ways, under the weight of crisis tendencies of a globalizing capitalism, the unraveling of the New Deal coalition, and the rise of the extreme right and finance capital.

Seen through this lens, Barack Obama's stunning victory, as significant and as promising as it is, doesn't eliminate in one fell swoop the structures and institutions on which racist oppression and ideology rest in the early 21st century.

Nor does it mark a withdrawal from political life by the forces of reaction and racism. Proclamations of a post-racial era are exceedingly premature.

In fact, the election of the nation's first African American president has triggered a new racist counteroffensive in much the same way as the North's victory in the Civil War set into motion a racist and restorationist counteroffensive by the former slaveholders and their allies.

The new racist counteroffensive, much like the earlier one, hopes to turn the clock back as well. It not only aims to strip away the popular support for the first African American president in ways that are both coded and crude (witness the use of the "n" word by tea party activists when Congress member John Lewis passed by them on his way to the capitol building – not to mention the "f" word upon seeing Lewis' colleague Barney Frank), but it also hopes to make invisible the democratic, class, and human bonds shared by tens of millions of American people, and trigger racial fissures in the coalition that elected the president. And in so doing, restore the power of rightwing extremism to power in 2012.

My guess is that the Republican Party, which has turned into an instrument of unabashed racism – not to mention militarist, obstructionist, anti-working class, anti-immigrant, anti-women, homophobic, anti-democratic, anti-scientific, and so forth, will not be successful. But only if its racist barrage runs into a powerful anti-racist response coming not only from people of color, but also from the white majority and white workers.

To no small degree, the success of this anti-racist struggle depends on the ability of white people to understand that racism not only impacts the dignity and life prospects of people of color (native born and immigrants), but also cuts against the material and moral wellbeing of white people. Nothing is so immobilizing of united action and so corrosive of democracy and social progress as the poison and practice of racism. If unchallenged, it could lead to disaster, to a much uglier version of the Bush-Cheney administration. That should be a sobering thought and a wake-up call for the people's movement.

To say that the Republican Party is the party of extreme reaction and racism is not to say that the Democratic Party is a consistent anti-racist force or ready to challenge the corporate power and capitalism in a basic way – far from it. But that shouldn't obscure the differences between them that are of great import at a strategic and tactical level.

Photo by blakeemrys, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

Why BP US Operations Should be Nationalized – Now

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:03:00 +0000

Two weeks ago, Robert Reich wrote:

It’s time for the federal government to put BP under temporary receivership, which gives the government authority to take over BP’s operations in the Gulf of Mexico until the gusher is stopped. This is the only way the public can know what’s going on, be confident enough resources are being put to stopping the gusher, ensure BP’s strategy is correct, know the government has enough clout to force BP to use a different one if necessary, and be sure the President is ultimately in charge.

Since that time, the scope and scale of the Gulf oil leak, and it environmental, economic and political consequences, have steadily grown.

Stopping the spill, and beginning recovery, is beyond the capacity of a private corporation. So why didn't President Obama call last night for placing British Petroleum – at least its American subsidiary – in receivership until all claims are processed? Why did he not order that the government clearly and unambiguously assume control and responsibility for the crisis – especially since taxpayers will be footing a huge portion of the many "bills" that will come due. Bills whose scale we can barely glimpse. As a private corporation, BP's liability will certainly be capped at some limit less than the real cost, and some limit less than that beyond which the company would just go out of business. That's the whole purpose of limited liability law that created the corporation as a legal entity. Society permits, even encourages ventures and permits limiting liability. If liability is not limited, investors simply do not invest. In addition, only the assets of the corporation, in this case its American entity, can be assessed. This formula, designed in the 19th century, works well as long as the overall innovation and efficiency benefits are greater than the social costs of failed endeavors. The BP spill shows that, for deepwater drilling, the formula is in shreds.

Receivership would give the president full disposal of BP operations and US assets to fight the crisis and pay the victims. But receivership is probably not enough. BP employs 26,000 Americans, and its workers and engineers, including contractors, are a key resource for mastering and ultimately exploiting the great deepwater oil and gas reserves. The declining proven reserves of fossil fuel in shallower areas of the globe makes deepwater drilling necessary for the immediate future, at least, and probably for quite a few years. But clearly, the risks associated with the very complex technologies required to exploit these resources, or at least with the 'human interface' to these technologies, are too high to be entrusted to giant private corporations competing with each other to see who gets the oil out of the deep faster. Anyone familiar with the work pressures on the teams working the deepwater rigs knows that ideal safety procedures will inevitably be sacrificed to beating the competitor.

A government takeover of this technology and process will, its true, slow down the innovation curve and take a little longer to get the the deepwater oil. But until the techniques and safety requirements of this technology are more perfected, we have to go slower, slower on oil. If we try and force giant private multinational corporations to do whats needed on their own – they will fight it every inch of the way, and conspire (in exchange for more regulation) to drive up prices to protect their bottom lines.

Prices are likely to rise no matter what or who runs deepwater drilling going forward. But a public takeover – now – seems the only sane, and the most economical, way to go.

Photo by Fibonacci Blue, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

Glenn Beck's Blues: Why the Far Right Hates Soccer

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:15:00 +0000

Original source: Edge of Sports

Every World Cup, it arrives like clockwork. As sure as the ultimate soccer spectacle brings guaranteed adrenaline and agony to fans across the United States, it also drives the right-wing noise machine utterly insane.

“It doesn’t matter how you try to sell it to us,” yipped the Prom King of new right, Glenn Beck. “It doesn’t matter how many celebrities you get, it doesn’t matter how many bars open early, it doesn’t matter how many beer commercials they run, we don’t want the World Cup, we don’t like the World Cup, we don’t like soccer, we want nothing to do with it.”

Beck’s wingnut godfather, G. Gordon Liddy also said on his radio program,

‘Whatever happened to American exceptionalism? This game … originated with the South American Indians and instead of a ball, they used to use the head, the decapitated head, of an enemy warrior.”

Dear Lord, where do we begin? First of all, I always find it amusing when folks like Beck say, “We don’t like soccer” when it is by far the most popular youth sport in the United States. It’s like saying, “You know what else American kids hate? Ice cream!” Young people love soccer not because of some kind of commie-nazi plot conjured by Saul Alinsky to sap us of our precious juices, but because it’s – heaven forefend – fun.

Among adults, the sport is also growing because people from Latin America, Africa, and the West Indies have brought their love of the beautiful game to an increasingly multicultural United States. As sports journalist Simon Kuper wrote very adroitly in his book Soccer Against the Enemy, “When we say Americans don’t play soccer we are thinking of the big white people who live in the suburbs. Tens of millions of Hispanic Americans [and other nationalities] do play, and watch and read about soccer.” In other words, Beck rejects soccer because his idealized “real America” – in all its monochromatic glory – rejects it as well. To be clear, I know a lot of folks who can’t stand soccer. It’s simply a matter of taste. But for Beck it’s a lot more than, “Gee. It’s kind of boring.” Instead it’s, “Look out whitey! Felipe Melo’s gonna get your mama!”

As for Liddy, let’s be clear. There is not in fact hard anthropological evidence that early soccer games were played with a human head. Interestingly, though, there is an oft-told legend that the sport took root in England in the 8th century because the King’s army playfully kicked around the detached cranium of the conquered Prince of Denmark. Notice that this tall-tale is about Europe not “South American Indians.” I think we’re seeing a theme here.

But maybe this isn’t just sports as avatar for their racism and imperial arrogance. Maybe their hysteria lies in something far more shallow. Maybe the real reason they lose their collective minds is simply because the USA tends to get their asses handed to them each and every World Cup. After all, as G. Gordon asked, “Whatever happened to American exceptionalism?” When it comes to the World Cup, the exceptional is found elsewhere. Could Beck, Liddy, and company just have soccer-envy? Is it possible that if the USA was favored to win the World Cup, Beck himself would be in the streets with his own solid gold vuvuzela? I feel that to ask the question is to answer it. In fact, this is as good a reason as any to hope for a mighty run by the US team. It would be high comedy to see Beck and Friends caught in a vice between their patriotic fervor and their nativist fear.

Photo: by Gage Skidmore, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0