by Richard C. Cook
Global Research, October 14, 2009
It’s too late for anyone to pretend that the U.S. government, whether under President Barack Obama or anyone else, can divert our nation from long-term economic decline. The U.S. is increasingly in a state of political, economic, and moral paralysis, caught as it were between the “rock” of protracted recession and the “hard place” of terminal government debt.
Even if the stock market can be shored up by more government borrowing for “stimulus” spending, it’s a temporary reprieve, because nothing can bring back the consumer purchasing power that was lost when the banks stopped pumping money into the economy through out-of-control mortgage lending. We simply no longer have the job base for people to earn the income they need to live.
The underlying cause of the crisis is in fact the debt-based monetary system, whereby the U.S. ruling class long ago sold out our nation and its people to the international banking cartel of which the Rockefeller and Morgan interests have been the chief representatives for over a century. It was lending on a previously unheard of scale for overpriced assets to people and businesses unable to repay that created the bubbles that burst in 2008, not only in the housing market but also in such areas as commercial real estate, equities, commodities, and derivatives. It was an explosion that reverberated throughout the world.
The Obama administration’s response to the crisis has been to print Treasury bonds both for the financial system bailouts and the sputtering Keynesian stimulus that so far has gone substantially into military infrastructure. This bond bubble is what I have referred to as “Obama’s Last Picture Show.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12512
Government debt is fundamentally inflationary. For a generation, the U.S. dollar has been inflating at an increasing rate, with the economy being kept in a growth posture by selling our debt instruments abroad or allowing foreigners holding dollars to purchase property and other assets on our own soil. The website EconomyinCrisis.org reports that in 2007, the most recent year for which data are available, “foreign entities spent $267.8 billion to acquire or establish U.S. businesses.” http://www.economyincrisis.org/articles/show/2801
Foreigners are spending their dollars as fast as possible, because they are now plummeting in value. It’s increasingly clear that sooner rather than later, the dollar will be dumped by foreign purchasers of bonds, particularly China, and possibly even the oil-producing nations.
These nations know full well that bonds denominated in dollars can never be completely repaid, even if the bonds can be rolled over into fresh debt. It’s this dynamic that is dragging the U.S. economy to the cliff, because real economic growth stopped long ago when our manufacturing jobs were exported. This is because most of the growth since Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 has been only on paper through financial bubbles. This included the dot.com bubble of the Clinton years that blew up in 2000-2001.
Now, after the Treasury bond bubble of 2009, there is nothing left in America to inflate. With so many jobs gone, the American family home was the last thing of value we owned.
So the air is going out of the tires. Americans who are struggling to work for a living are passive spectators as their jobs, savings, health insurance, pensions, and homes continue to erode in value or even disappear. Last Sunday the Washington Post reported a massive crisis in state and local government pensions. Reporter David Cho wrote, “The financial crisis has blown a hole in the rosy forecasts of pension funds that cover teachers, police officers and other government employees, casting into doubt as never before whether these public systems will be able to keep their promises to future generations of retirees.”
So what, if anything, can be done about it?
Well, the first thing an intelligent physician does is diagnose the disease. Thomas Greco, in his new book The End of Money and the Future of Civilization (Chelsea Green: 2009) , outlines the increasingly familiar story of how things got so bad, and he tells it as well as anyone has ever done. His style is precise and sometimes academic. Behind it, though, is a passion for truth and the type of rock-solid integrity that refuses to sugar-coat a very bitter pill.
More than that, Greco writes about how to change what has gone wrong. His credentials as an engineer, college professor, author, and consultant are impeccable. His book is among the most important written in this decade. It is truly a book that can alter the world and, if taken seriously, give large numbers of people a practical way to survive the gathering catastrophe.
But unlike most commentators, what Greco offers is not another phony prescription for what the financiers and government should do for us, whether through “restarting” lending or another round of stimulus spending. Rather it’s what we should do for ourselves, and could do much better, if we understood what to do and if big banking and big government just got out of the way.
As I said, at the root is the monetary system, whose failure cannot be understood without a history lesson. So Greco writes about the struggle between banking and democracy that took place in the 1790s when the ink on our new national constitution was barely dry.
It was Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury, who compromised the new nation, through what he admitted was “corruption,” by giving the wealthy speculators in Revolutionary War bonds the benefit of federally-sponsored redemption and then by establishing the First Bank of the United States. This early drift toward elitist rule was opposed by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and others who figured in the creation of what later became the Democratic Party.
Greco writes: “While Jefferson favored a stronger union than that which emerged under the Articles of Confederation, he was vehemently opposed to the reconstruction of monarchic government on the American continent.” Hamilton had said frankly that the British monarchy was the best system of government known to man. Part of the monarchic system was the Bank of England, which Hamilton copied when setting up the First Bank.
But Jefferson, who repudiated Hamilton’s elitist platform, was elected president in what was then called “The Revolution of 1800.” Congress refused to renew the Bank’s charter by a single vote when it was up for renewal in 1811.
But the Second Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816 due to the government debt left behind from the War of 1812 against Great Britain. Thus was set up what became known as the “Bank War.”
It was President Andrew Jackson who dethroned the bankers from power by pulling government funds out of the Second Bank in 1833. Greco writes that in Jackson’s view: “The ‘Bank War’ was a contest for rulership—would the United States be governed by the people through their elected president and representatives, or by an unelected financial elite through their central bank instrument?”
The modern takeover began in earnest during the Civil War when Congress passed the National Banking Acts in 1863-64 which mandated use of government bonds as bank lending reserves, thereby creating a direct linkage between bank profits and the debt the government was starting to load on the shoulders of taxpayers.
The nation’s fate was sealed with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. The deal was that the bankers would control the currency, and thereby the nation’s economy, while the government would be provided with an unlimited amount of inflated dollars to fight its wars.
The bookkeeper’s trick of creating money out of thin air, charging interest for its use, then forcing it down the throats of weaker nations by threat of violence, is what has allowed the Anglo-American empire, since the founding of the Bank of England in 1696, gradually to conquer the world. Though President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law, he saw what that action meant. Greco cites Wilson as writing: “There has come about an extraordinary and very sinister concentration in the control of business in the country... The great monopoly in this country is the monopoly of big credits.”
Among other ill effects, the system has ruined the value of the currency. The inflation caused by large issues of bank-created loans is seized upon by the government which goes along because inflation reduces the cost of its deficits. Investors buy Treasury bonds denominated in Federal Reserve Notes then watch their value evaporate over time. In fact Federal Reserve Notes have lost over 95 percent of their value since they were first introduced.
Moreover, it’s additional inflation caused by bank-generated interest that drives up the costs of goods and services, forcing everyone in the economy to try to defend themselves by raising their prices to the max. Greco spells this out too, which almost every economist in the world, with the exception perhaps of Australia’s James Cumes, overlooks.
Bank interest has other tragic effects. It was high interest rates, for instance, that destroyed the Idaho potato industry. A farmer from that region told me at a conference a few years ago that when interest rates skyrocketed in the early 1980s, he asked the president of one of the Federal Reserve Banks why they did it. The answer was they were “ordered” to raise interest rates by the international banking system.
Make no mistake, it’s the banking system, facilitated by the Fed, not unwary borrowers, who brought on the collapse of 2008.
Now, in 2009, the bankers, mainly those in the U.S., have so shattered the world economy by debt mounted on debt that there may be no reprieve except the creation of a slave society based on rule by the rich over the masses of whatever peons should happen to survive the downturn and its tragic effects on employment, health, the food and water supply, and even our ability to cope with climate change.
The political establishment, expressing itself in pronouncements by organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations, see a future, not of economic democracy or increased financial pluralism, but consolidation of world currencies into a small number overseen at the top by the world’s financial oligarchy. Citing the writings of Benn Steil, the CFR’s Director of International Economics, Greco writes: “The ostensible plan is to reduce global exchange media to three—one each for Europe, the Americas, and Asia. One might reasonably suppose that at a later stage, those three would be combined into one currency also under the control of the global banking elite.”
Greco concludes: “The New World Order is upon us.”
With ample justification, he even goes apocalyptic, citing The Book of Revelation in demonstrating the import on a spiritual plane of the elitist takeover: And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. (Revelation 13: 16-17)
But is it really the end, or is there a new world waiting to be born? Greco thinks so. He speaks of the end of an era when unlimited economic growth fed by massive influxes of debt-based money is no longer sustainable. He writes: “That our global civilization cannot continue on its current path seems evident... But I think our collective consciousness is beginning to change. We are becoming aware of limits and are reaching that part of our evolutionary program that says, ‘Stop!’”
Part of the awareness of how to stop must focus on the institutions responsible for the crisis. Greco praises Ron Paul for calling out the Federal Reserve in the 2008 presidential campaign. He cites a statement Paul made to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in a 2004 hearing where Paul told Greenspan that the power of the Fed “challenges the whole concept of freedom and liberty and sound money.” Thus Paul and other monetary reformers, though largely ignored by the mainstream media and political establishment, have made it clear that change must start with what really lies at the bottom of elite control: how money is made and who makes it.
Unfortunately, few progressive economists, including Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and Robert Reich comprehend the monetary causes of today’s disasters. Instead of demanding reforms that would make money the proper servant of a sustainable economy, most call for more stimulus spending; i.e., more government debt, along with “reform” of a financial system that is corrupt down to its very DNA.
So do we really need the bankers’ fake currency, today backed by nothing but a federal deficit of $12 trillion and growing by the day?
Greco says we don’t, and this is what his book about. But it’s not about doing without the necessities of life, or heading for the hills with a gun and backpack. Nor is it about important efforts at macro-level monetary reform like those of the American Monetary Institute, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, or advocates for a basic income guarantee. Rather it’s about individuals, groups, and communities taking control of the monetary system at the grassroots level and creating an entirely new basis for trade than bank-owed debt.
Greco writes about “a new paradigm approach to the exchange function.” The solution, he says, “is to provide interest-free credit to producers within the process of mutual credit clearing. That is the process of offsetting purchases against sales within an association of merchants, manufacturers, and workers. It will eventually include everyone who buys and sells, or makes and receives disbursements of any kind.”
Greco is one of the world’s leading experts in describing alternative or complementary currencies. These are self-regulating systems that facilitate “reciprocal exchange,” not using government legal tender but which are still allowed under the currency laws so long as taxes are not evaded.
Greco discusses the large and growing worldwide “LETS” movement—Local Exchange Trading Systems, like the Ithaca HOURS system in Ithaca, New York. He describes the Swiss WIR Bank, the longest-running credit clearing system in the world, with over 70,000 members. He writes about the national and international barter exchanges that involve over 400,000 businesses trading at an annual level of $10 billion.
Greco also describes the world-famous Mondragon Cooperatives from the Basque region of Northern Spain. Started by a Roman Catholic priest in 1941, the Mondragon system, he says, is “the hub of what is probably the most successful and progressive social cooperative economy in modern history.”
He also tells the inspiring story of the Argentine trading clubs—the trueques—which, when used with “provincial bonds” issued by regional governments, rescued that country during the 2001 economic collapse brought on by the collusion between the Argentine government and the International Monetary Fund.
Credit clearing is not new. Greco traces it to the medieval European fairs. These exchanges are like banking clearing houses. The world’s largest is the automated clearing house—ACH—operated by the Federal Reserve.
But as Greco points out: “The clearing process need not be restricted to banks; it can be applied directly to transactions between buyers and sellers of goods and services. The LETS systems that have proliferated in communities around the world use the credit clearing process, as do commercial trade exchanges. Credit clearing systems are, in essence, clearing houses—but their members are businesses and individuals instead of banks.”
Alternative currency and trading systems, says Greco, are the wave of the future. Even though most only mount up to partial local successes, they show what can be done. Greco likens these efforts to the Wright Brothers’ first flight that covered 120 feet. They show, he says, that the potential exists for local, regional, then national and international money-free exchanges that eventually could be joined by a single web-based trading platform. This could eventually get rid of the corruption of debt-money altogether.
Chapter 16 of the book is about “A Regional Economic Development Plan Based on Credit Clearing” that shows the potential. Greco writes, “The credit clearing exchange is the key element that enables a community to develop a sustainable economy under local control and to maintain a high standard of living and quality of life.”
This would be a real revolution. What can governments do to help? Perhaps only by removing, as Greco recommends, the privileged position of bank debt-money as legal tender. Instead, let bank money compete with market-based alternative currencies and credit exchanges, if it can.
Greco’s book is a how-to-do-it manual that updates and expands on his previous books, Money and Debt: A Solution to the Global Crisis, New Money for Healthy Communities, and Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender. Greco also operates a website that offers advice and support to worthwhile community initiatives. Click Here
My own view is that no one should wait to see who takes the lead in creating the monetary and credit-clearing systems of the future. The time is now. There is no more reason to delay. If the people of the world do not join together in this kind of action, they can likely kiss their economic future and perhaps their livelihoods good-bye. The controllers of the world, those with the big money, the ones who run the banking systems, who own the global corporations, and who finance politicians like Obama, the Bushes, and the Clintons, are now poised in their blindness to extinguish the light of democracy on the planet for good.
Greco is implying that the power of the elite is not only dated but illusory. Thus the way to proceed is not just to oppose them. If they are opposed, they’ll do what they always do, which is to roll out the SWAT teams, the military in the streets, the tear gas, the sound cannon, the concentration camps, the Patriot Acts, the torture chambers, because that is all they know, and it’s what they do best.
The money monopoly translates into a monopoly on violence on an ascending scale. We know that the U.S. sells more weapons abroad than any other nation, and we know that it is war above all that makes the bankers rich.
So let them have their weapons and wars. With all due respect to those brave enough to protest, it’s time for people simply to walk away and set up their own economic and monetary systems as a prelude to a rebirth of humanity as ethical beings in sustainable communities of choice.
The keys, says Greco, are simple: “Promote the establishment of private complementary exchange systems—and use them. Buy from your friends and neighbors wherever possible. Contribute your time, energy, and money to whatever moves things in the right direction.”
Greco also recommends that the unit of exchange for alternative currencies be based on the value of commodities—not necessarily gold or silver, which bankers and governments manipulate, but those commodities readily available within a trading system. State and local governments should do everything possible to protect, encourage, nourish, and participate in these systems.
The irony is that what may appear on the surface to be technical changes in how the exchange of goods and services takes place can have such profound effects. The answer is that systems of exchange reflect entirely different perceptions of the world. Bank-money exchange reflects and creates a system of elite control and human slavery. Reciprocal credit exchange reflects and creates a democratic system on a level monetary playing field.
The difference points to the fact that such reform is, above all, a spiritual endeavor. Thomas Greco has devoted decades to this quest and is one of its foremost visionaries. In an Epilogue he writes: “We will either learn to put aside sectarian differences, to recognize all life as one life, to cooperate in sharing earth’s bounty, and yield control to a higher power—or we will find ourselves embroiled in ever-more destructive conflicts that will leave the planet in ruins and avail only the meanest form of existence for the few, if any, who survive.”
It’s a vision we can all strive to embrace.
Richard C. Cook is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15651
Saturday, October 17, 2009
China Russia Axis Iran Offers SCO Alternative To U.S. Control Of World Resources
Global Research, October 16, 2009
Press TV - 2009-10-15
Iran has offered to enhance its role as an energy provider and transit route for Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states.
"Tehran is ready to provide SCO members with energy and access to free waters," Iran's First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi told the organization's Secretary General Bolat Nurgaliyev in Beijing on Thursday.
Rahimi said Iran would endeavor to raise the level of its cooperation with the SCO, especially as the world is facing an effort by the United States to gain unilateral control over global energy reserves.
In response to the Iranian vice president's remarks, Nurgaliyev described the Islamic Republic's role in providing energy and a transit corridor for members of the organizations as important.
Rahimi was in the Chinese capital to partake in a SCO summit that brought together envoys from China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, India, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan in the Great Hall of the People.
The SCO is an intergovernmental organization founded in Shanghai in 2001. Within the framework of the SCO, member states engage in a wide rage of economic, political and security collaborations.
Iran joined the organization as an observer state in 2005.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15706
Press TV - 2009-10-15
Iran has offered to enhance its role as an energy provider and transit route for Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states.
"Tehran is ready to provide SCO members with energy and access to free waters," Iran's First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi told the organization's Secretary General Bolat Nurgaliyev in Beijing on Thursday.
Rahimi said Iran would endeavor to raise the level of its cooperation with the SCO, especially as the world is facing an effort by the United States to gain unilateral control over global energy reserves.
In response to the Iranian vice president's remarks, Nurgaliyev described the Islamic Republic's role in providing energy and a transit corridor for members of the organizations as important.
Rahimi was in the Chinese capital to partake in a SCO summit that brought together envoys from China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, India, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan in the Great Hall of the People.
The SCO is an intergovernmental organization founded in Shanghai in 2001. Within the framework of the SCO, member states engage in a wide rage of economic, political and security collaborations.
Iran joined the organization as an observer state in 2005.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15706
Russia ready to abandon dollar in oil, gas trade with China
Global Research, October 16, 2009
RIA Novosti - 2009-10-14
BEIJING, October 14 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is ready to consider using the Russian and Chinese national currencies instead of the dollar in bilateral oil and gas dealings, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.
The premier, currently on a visit to Beijing, said a final decision on the issue can only be made after a thorough expert analysis.
"Yesterday, energy companies, in particular Gazprom, raised the question of using the national currency. We are ready to examine the possibility of selling energy resources for rubles, but our Chinese partners need rubles for that. We are also ready to sell for yuans," Putin said.
He stressed that "there should be a balance here."
On Tuesday, Russia and China agreed terms for Russian gas deliveries at a level of up to 70 billion cubic meters a year. China also imports oil from Russia.
The Russian prime minister said the issue would be addressed among others at a meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) finance ministers, who are to convene before the end of the year in Kazakhstan.
Britain's Independent newspaper reported last Tuesday that Russian officials had held "secret meetings" with Arab states, China and France on ending the use of the U.S. dollar in international oil trade.
The countries are reportedly seeking to switch from the dollar to a basket of currencies including the euro, Japanese yen, Chinese yuan, gold, and a new unified currency of leading Arab oil producing countries.
The Independent said the meetings have been confirmed by Chinese and Arab banking sources.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15715
RIA Novosti - 2009-10-14
BEIJING, October 14 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is ready to consider using the Russian and Chinese national currencies instead of the dollar in bilateral oil and gas dealings, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.
The premier, currently on a visit to Beijing, said a final decision on the issue can only be made after a thorough expert analysis.
"Yesterday, energy companies, in particular Gazprom, raised the question of using the national currency. We are ready to examine the possibility of selling energy resources for rubles, but our Chinese partners need rubles for that. We are also ready to sell for yuans," Putin said.
He stressed that "there should be a balance here."
On Tuesday, Russia and China agreed terms for Russian gas deliveries at a level of up to 70 billion cubic meters a year. China also imports oil from Russia.
The Russian prime minister said the issue would be addressed among others at a meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) finance ministers, who are to convene before the end of the year in Kazakhstan.
Britain's Independent newspaper reported last Tuesday that Russian officials had held "secret meetings" with Arab states, China and France on ending the use of the U.S. dollar in international oil trade.
The countries are reportedly seeking to switch from the dollar to a basket of currencies including the euro, Japanese yen, Chinese yuan, gold, and a new unified currency of leading Arab oil producing countries.
The Independent said the meetings have been confirmed by Chinese and Arab banking sources.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15715
Obama and the Nobel Prize: When War becomes Peace, When the Lie becomes the Truth
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, October 11, 2009
When war becomes peace,
When concepts and realities are turned upside down,
When fiction becomes truth and truth becomes fiction.
When a global military agenda is heralded as a humanitarian endeavor,
When the killing of civilians is upheld as "collateral damage",
When those who resist the US-NATO led invasion of their homeland are categorized as "insurgents" or "terrorists".
When preemptive nuclear war is upheld as self defense.
When advanced torture and "interrogation" techniques are routinely used to "protect peacekeeping operations",
When tactical nuclear weapons are heralded by the Pentagon as "harmless to the surrounding civilian population"
When three quarters of US personal federal income tax revenues are allocated to financing what is euphemistically referred to as "national defense"
When the Commander in Chief of the largest military force on planet earth is presented as a global peace-maker,
When the Lie becomes the Truth.
Obama's "War Without Borders"
We are the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US in partnership with NATO and Israel has launched a global military adventure which, in a very real sense, threatens the future of humanity.
At this critical juncture in our history, the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President and Commander in Chief Barack Obama constitutes an unmitigated tool of propaganda and distortion, which unreservedly supports the Pentagon's "Long War": "A War without Borders" in the true sense of the word, characterised by the Worlwide deployment of US military might.
Apart from the diplomatic rhetoric, there has been no meaningful reversal of US foreign policy in relation to the George W. Bush presidency, which might have remotely justified the granting of the Nobel Prize to Obama. In fact quite the opposite. The Obama military agenda has sought to extend the war into new frontiers. With a new team of military and foreign policy advisers, the Obama war agenda has been far more effective in fostering military escalation than that formulated by the NeoCons.
Since the very outset of the Obama presidency, this global military project has become increasingly pervasive, with the reinforcement of US military presence in all major regions of the World and the development of new advanced weapons systems on an unprecdented scale.
Granting the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama provides legitimacy to the illegal practices of war, to the military occupation of foreign lands, to the relentless killings of civilians in the name of "democracy".
Both the Obama administration and NATO are directly threatening Russia, China and Iran. The US under Obama is developing "a First Strike Global Missile Shield System":
"Along with space-based weapons, the Airborne Laser is the next defense frontier. ... Never has Ronald Reagan's dream of layered missile defenses - Star Wars, for short - been as....close, at least technologically, to becoming realized."
Reacting to this consolidation, streamlining and upgrading of American global nuclear strike potential, on August 11 the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force, the same Alexander Zelin cited earlier on the threat of U.S. strikes from space on all of his nation, said that the "Russian Air Force is preparing to meet the threats resulting from the creation of the Global Strike Command in the U.S. Air Force" and that Russia is developing "appropriate systems to meet the threats that may arise." (Rick Rozoff, Showdown with Russia and China: U.S. Advances First Strike Global Missile Shield System, Global Research, August 19, 2009)
At no time since the Cuban missile crisis has the World been closer to the unthinkable: a World War III scenario, a global military conflict involving the use of nuclear weapons.
1. The so-called missile defense shield or Star Wars initiative involving the first strike use of nuclear weapons is now to be developed globally in different regions of the World. The missile shield is largely directed against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
2. New US military bases have been set up with a view to establishing US spheres of influence in every region of the World as well as surrounding and confronting Russia and China.
3. There has been an escalation in the Central Asian Middle East war. The "defense budget" under Obama has spiraled with increased allocations to both Afghanistan and Iraq.
4. Under orders of president Obama, acting as Commander in Chief, Pakistan is now the object of routine US aerial bombardments in violation of its territorial sovereignty, using the "Global War on Terrorism" as a justification.
5. The construction of new military bases is envisaged in Latin America including Colombia on the immediate border of Venezuela.
6. Military aid to Israel has increased. The Obama presidency has expressed its unbending support for Israel and the Israeli military. Obama has remained mum on the atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza. There has not even been a semblance of renewed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
7. There has been a reinforcement of the new regional commands including AFRICOM and SOUTHCOM
8. A new round of threats has been directed against Iran.
9. The US is intent upon fostering further divisions between Pakistan and India, which could lead to a regional war, as well as using India's nuclear arsenal as an indirect means to threaten China.
The diabolical nature of this military project was outlined in the 2000 Project for a New American Century (PNAC). The PNAC's declared objectives are:
defend the American homeland;
fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
perform the "constabulary" duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
transform U.S. forces to exploit the "revolution in military affairs;" (Project for a New American Century, Rebuilding Americas Defenses.pdf, September 2000)
The "Revolution in Military Affairs" refers to the development of new advanced weapons systems. The militarization of space, new advanced chemical and biological weapons, sophisticated laser guided missiles, bunker buster bombs, not to mention the US Air Force's climatic warfare program (HAARP) based in Gokona, Alaska, are part of Obama's "humanitarian arsenal".
War against the Truth
This is a war against the truth. When war becomes peace, the world is turned upside down. Conceptualization is no longer possible. An inquisitorial social system emerges.
An understanding of fundamental social and political events is replaced by a World of sheer fantasy, where "evil folks" are lurking. The objective of the "Global War on Terrorism" which has been fully endorsed by Obama administration, has been to galvanize public support for a Worldwide campaign against heresy.
In the eyes of public opinion, possessing a "just cause" for waging war is central. A war is said to be Just if it is waged on moral, religious or ethical grounds. The consensus is to wage war. People can longer think for themselves. They accept the authority and wisdom of the established social order.
The Nobel Committee says that President Obama has given the world "hope for a better future." The prize is awarded for Obama's
"extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons."
...His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population. (Nobel Press Release, October 9, 2009)
The granting of the Nobel "peace prize" to president Barack Obama has become an integral part of the Pentagon's propaganda machine. It provides a human face to the invaders, it upholds the demonization of those who oppose US military intervention.
The decision to grant Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was no doubt carefully negotiated with the Norwegian Committee at the highest levels of the US government. It has far reaching implications.
It unequivocally upholds the US led war as a "Just Cause". It erases the war crimes committed both by the Bush and Obama administrations.
War Propaganda: Jus ad Bellum
The "Just war" theory serves to camouflage the nature of US foreign policy, while providing a human face to the invaders.
In both its classical and contemporary versions, the Just war theory upholds war as a "humanitarian operation". It calls for military intervention on ethical and moral grounds against "insurgents", "terrorists", "failed" or "rogue states".
The Just War has been heralded by the Nobel Committee as an instrument of Peace. Obama personifies the "Just War".
Taught in US military academies, a modern-day version of the "Just War" theory has been embodied into US military doctrine. The "war on terrorism" and the notion of "preemption" are predicated on the right to "self defense." They define "when it is permissible to wage war": jus ad bellum.
Jus ad bellum has served to build a consensus within the Armed Forces command structures. It has also served to convince the troops that they are fighting for a "just cause". More generally, the Just War theory in its modern day version is an integral part of war propaganda and media disinformation, applied to gain public support for a war agenda. Under Obama as Nobel Peace Laureate, the Just War becomes universally accepted, upheld by the so-called international community.
The ultimate objective is to subdue the citizens, totally depoliticize social life in America, prevent people from thinking and conceptualizing, from analyzing facts and challenging the legitimacy of the US NATO led war.
War becomes peace, a worthwhile "humanitarian undertaking", Peaceful dissent becomes heresy.
Military Escalation with a Human Face. Nobel Committee grants the "Green Light"
More significantly, the Nobel peace prize grants legitimacy to an unprecedented "escalation" of US-NATO led military operations under the banner of peacemaking.
It contributes to falsifying the nature of the US-NATO military agenda.
Between 40,000 to 60,000 more US and allied troops are to be sent to Afghanistan under a peacemaking banner. On the 8th of October, a day prior to the Nobel Committee's decision, the US Congress granted Obama a 680-billion-dollar defense authorization bill, which is slated to finance the process of military escalation:
"Washington and its NATO allies are planning an unprecedented increase of troops for the war in Afghanistan, even in addition to the 17,000 new American and several thousand NATO forces that have been committed to the war so far this year".
The number, based on as yet unsubstantiated reports of what U.S. and NATO commander Stanley McChrystal and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen have demanded of the White House, range from 10,000 to 45,000.
Fox News has cited figures as high as 45,000 more American soldiers and ABC News as many as 40,000. On September 15 the Christian Science Monitor wrote of "perhaps as many as 45,000."
The similarity of the estimates indicate that a number has been agreed upon and America's obedient media is preparing domestic audiences for the possibility of the largest escalation of foreign armed forces in Afghanistan's history. Only seven years ago the United States had 5,000 troops in the country, but was scheduled to have 68,000 by December even before the reports of new deployments surfaced. (Rick Rozoff, U.S., NATO Poised For Most Massive War In Afghanistan's History, Global Research, September 24, 2009)
Within hours of the decision of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Obama met with the War Council, or should we call it the "Peace Council". This meeting had been carefully scheduled to coincide with that of the Norwegian Nobel committee.
This key meeting behind closed doors in the Situation Room of the White House included Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and key political and military advisers. General Stanley McChrystal participated in the meeting via video link from Kabul.
General Stanley McChrystal is said to have offered the Commander in Chief "several alternative options" "including a maximum injection of 60,000 extra troops". The 60,000 figure was quoted following a leak of the Wall Street Journal (AFP: After Nobel nod, Obama convenes Afghan war council, October 9, 2009)
"The president had a robust conversation about the security and political challenges in Afghanistan and the options for building a strategic approach going forward," according to an administration official (quoted in AFP: After Nobel nod, Obama convenes Afghan war council October 9, 2009)
The Nobel committee had in a sense given Obama a green light. The October 9 meeting in the Situation Room was to set the groundwork for a further escalation of the conflict under the banner of counterinsurgency and democracy building.
Meanwhile, in the course of the last few months, US forces have stepped up their aerial bombardments of village communities in the northern tribal areas of Pakistan, under the banner of combating Al Qaeda.
Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15622
Global Research, October 11, 2009
When war becomes peace,
When concepts and realities are turned upside down,
When fiction becomes truth and truth becomes fiction.
When a global military agenda is heralded as a humanitarian endeavor,
When the killing of civilians is upheld as "collateral damage",
When those who resist the US-NATO led invasion of their homeland are categorized as "insurgents" or "terrorists".
When preemptive nuclear war is upheld as self defense.
When advanced torture and "interrogation" techniques are routinely used to "protect peacekeeping operations",
When tactical nuclear weapons are heralded by the Pentagon as "harmless to the surrounding civilian population"
When three quarters of US personal federal income tax revenues are allocated to financing what is euphemistically referred to as "national defense"
When the Commander in Chief of the largest military force on planet earth is presented as a global peace-maker,
When the Lie becomes the Truth.
Obama's "War Without Borders"
We are the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US in partnership with NATO and Israel has launched a global military adventure which, in a very real sense, threatens the future of humanity.
At this critical juncture in our history, the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President and Commander in Chief Barack Obama constitutes an unmitigated tool of propaganda and distortion, which unreservedly supports the Pentagon's "Long War": "A War without Borders" in the true sense of the word, characterised by the Worlwide deployment of US military might.
Apart from the diplomatic rhetoric, there has been no meaningful reversal of US foreign policy in relation to the George W. Bush presidency, which might have remotely justified the granting of the Nobel Prize to Obama. In fact quite the opposite. The Obama military agenda has sought to extend the war into new frontiers. With a new team of military and foreign policy advisers, the Obama war agenda has been far more effective in fostering military escalation than that formulated by the NeoCons.
Since the very outset of the Obama presidency, this global military project has become increasingly pervasive, with the reinforcement of US military presence in all major regions of the World and the development of new advanced weapons systems on an unprecdented scale.
Granting the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama provides legitimacy to the illegal practices of war, to the military occupation of foreign lands, to the relentless killings of civilians in the name of "democracy".
Both the Obama administration and NATO are directly threatening Russia, China and Iran. The US under Obama is developing "a First Strike Global Missile Shield System":
"Along with space-based weapons, the Airborne Laser is the next defense frontier. ... Never has Ronald Reagan's dream of layered missile defenses - Star Wars, for short - been as....close, at least technologically, to becoming realized."
Reacting to this consolidation, streamlining and upgrading of American global nuclear strike potential, on August 11 the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force, the same Alexander Zelin cited earlier on the threat of U.S. strikes from space on all of his nation, said that the "Russian Air Force is preparing to meet the threats resulting from the creation of the Global Strike Command in the U.S. Air Force" and that Russia is developing "appropriate systems to meet the threats that may arise." (Rick Rozoff, Showdown with Russia and China: U.S. Advances First Strike Global Missile Shield System, Global Research, August 19, 2009)
At no time since the Cuban missile crisis has the World been closer to the unthinkable: a World War III scenario, a global military conflict involving the use of nuclear weapons.
1. The so-called missile defense shield or Star Wars initiative involving the first strike use of nuclear weapons is now to be developed globally in different regions of the World. The missile shield is largely directed against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
2. New US military bases have been set up with a view to establishing US spheres of influence in every region of the World as well as surrounding and confronting Russia and China.
3. There has been an escalation in the Central Asian Middle East war. The "defense budget" under Obama has spiraled with increased allocations to both Afghanistan and Iraq.
4. Under orders of president Obama, acting as Commander in Chief, Pakistan is now the object of routine US aerial bombardments in violation of its territorial sovereignty, using the "Global War on Terrorism" as a justification.
5. The construction of new military bases is envisaged in Latin America including Colombia on the immediate border of Venezuela.
6. Military aid to Israel has increased. The Obama presidency has expressed its unbending support for Israel and the Israeli military. Obama has remained mum on the atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza. There has not even been a semblance of renewed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
7. There has been a reinforcement of the new regional commands including AFRICOM and SOUTHCOM
8. A new round of threats has been directed against Iran.
9. The US is intent upon fostering further divisions between Pakistan and India, which could lead to a regional war, as well as using India's nuclear arsenal as an indirect means to threaten China.
The diabolical nature of this military project was outlined in the 2000 Project for a New American Century (PNAC). The PNAC's declared objectives are:
defend the American homeland;
fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
perform the "constabulary" duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
transform U.S. forces to exploit the "revolution in military affairs;" (Project for a New American Century, Rebuilding Americas Defenses.pdf, September 2000)
The "Revolution in Military Affairs" refers to the development of new advanced weapons systems. The militarization of space, new advanced chemical and biological weapons, sophisticated laser guided missiles, bunker buster bombs, not to mention the US Air Force's climatic warfare program (HAARP) based in Gokona, Alaska, are part of Obama's "humanitarian arsenal".
War against the Truth
This is a war against the truth. When war becomes peace, the world is turned upside down. Conceptualization is no longer possible. An inquisitorial social system emerges.
An understanding of fundamental social and political events is replaced by a World of sheer fantasy, where "evil folks" are lurking. The objective of the "Global War on Terrorism" which has been fully endorsed by Obama administration, has been to galvanize public support for a Worldwide campaign against heresy.
In the eyes of public opinion, possessing a "just cause" for waging war is central. A war is said to be Just if it is waged on moral, religious or ethical grounds. The consensus is to wage war. People can longer think for themselves. They accept the authority and wisdom of the established social order.
The Nobel Committee says that President Obama has given the world "hope for a better future." The prize is awarded for Obama's
"extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons."
...His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population. (Nobel Press Release, October 9, 2009)
The granting of the Nobel "peace prize" to president Barack Obama has become an integral part of the Pentagon's propaganda machine. It provides a human face to the invaders, it upholds the demonization of those who oppose US military intervention.
The decision to grant Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was no doubt carefully negotiated with the Norwegian Committee at the highest levels of the US government. It has far reaching implications.
It unequivocally upholds the US led war as a "Just Cause". It erases the war crimes committed both by the Bush and Obama administrations.
War Propaganda: Jus ad Bellum
The "Just war" theory serves to camouflage the nature of US foreign policy, while providing a human face to the invaders.
In both its classical and contemporary versions, the Just war theory upholds war as a "humanitarian operation". It calls for military intervention on ethical and moral grounds against "insurgents", "terrorists", "failed" or "rogue states".
The Just War has been heralded by the Nobel Committee as an instrument of Peace. Obama personifies the "Just War".
Taught in US military academies, a modern-day version of the "Just War" theory has been embodied into US military doctrine. The "war on terrorism" and the notion of "preemption" are predicated on the right to "self defense." They define "when it is permissible to wage war": jus ad bellum.
Jus ad bellum has served to build a consensus within the Armed Forces command structures. It has also served to convince the troops that they are fighting for a "just cause". More generally, the Just War theory in its modern day version is an integral part of war propaganda and media disinformation, applied to gain public support for a war agenda. Under Obama as Nobel Peace Laureate, the Just War becomes universally accepted, upheld by the so-called international community.
The ultimate objective is to subdue the citizens, totally depoliticize social life in America, prevent people from thinking and conceptualizing, from analyzing facts and challenging the legitimacy of the US NATO led war.
War becomes peace, a worthwhile "humanitarian undertaking", Peaceful dissent becomes heresy.
Military Escalation with a Human Face. Nobel Committee grants the "Green Light"
More significantly, the Nobel peace prize grants legitimacy to an unprecedented "escalation" of US-NATO led military operations under the banner of peacemaking.
It contributes to falsifying the nature of the US-NATO military agenda.
Between 40,000 to 60,000 more US and allied troops are to be sent to Afghanistan under a peacemaking banner. On the 8th of October, a day prior to the Nobel Committee's decision, the US Congress granted Obama a 680-billion-dollar defense authorization bill, which is slated to finance the process of military escalation:
"Washington and its NATO allies are planning an unprecedented increase of troops for the war in Afghanistan, even in addition to the 17,000 new American and several thousand NATO forces that have been committed to the war so far this year".
The number, based on as yet unsubstantiated reports of what U.S. and NATO commander Stanley McChrystal and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen have demanded of the White House, range from 10,000 to 45,000.
Fox News has cited figures as high as 45,000 more American soldiers and ABC News as many as 40,000. On September 15 the Christian Science Monitor wrote of "perhaps as many as 45,000."
The similarity of the estimates indicate that a number has been agreed upon and America's obedient media is preparing domestic audiences for the possibility of the largest escalation of foreign armed forces in Afghanistan's history. Only seven years ago the United States had 5,000 troops in the country, but was scheduled to have 68,000 by December even before the reports of new deployments surfaced. (Rick Rozoff, U.S., NATO Poised For Most Massive War In Afghanistan's History, Global Research, September 24, 2009)
Within hours of the decision of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Obama met with the War Council, or should we call it the "Peace Council". This meeting had been carefully scheduled to coincide with that of the Norwegian Nobel committee.
This key meeting behind closed doors in the Situation Room of the White House included Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and key political and military advisers. General Stanley McChrystal participated in the meeting via video link from Kabul.
General Stanley McChrystal is said to have offered the Commander in Chief "several alternative options" "including a maximum injection of 60,000 extra troops". The 60,000 figure was quoted following a leak of the Wall Street Journal (AFP: After Nobel nod, Obama convenes Afghan war council, October 9, 2009)
"The president had a robust conversation about the security and political challenges in Afghanistan and the options for building a strategic approach going forward," according to an administration official (quoted in AFP: After Nobel nod, Obama convenes Afghan war council October 9, 2009)
The Nobel committee had in a sense given Obama a green light. The October 9 meeting in the Situation Room was to set the groundwork for a further escalation of the conflict under the banner of counterinsurgency and democracy building.
Meanwhile, in the course of the last few months, US forces have stepped up their aerial bombardments of village communities in the northern tribal areas of Pakistan, under the banner of combating Al Qaeda.
Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15622
A Way of Knowing
By WES JACKSON
One of the first lessons a scientist learns is that 100 percent agreement on scientific matters is rare. And a consensus can be reversed. But that reversal won’t come from talk radio or TV pundits. It will come from those who publish under the stringent demands of scientific journals.
It is scientists’ right to disagree with the consensus in their field. I could even argue that it sometimes is their obligation. There are a small number of medical researchers who do not believe the HIV virus is the cause of AIDS. One is on the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley. I have a friend who knows him and who thinks his argument plausible. If he wants to overturn the dominant idea with data, power to him.
However, I don’t yet want a blood transfusion from someone who authorities tell me is carrying the HIV virus. I’ll stick with the overwhelming consensus of most scientists.
Which brings me to my most important message. I’m a geneticist, not a climatologist, and have no training in that discipline. But, because I hold to a scientific way of knowing, I accept the view of 99 percent of the men and women who publish in refereed journals on climate. What have they concluded? That humans burning fossil fuels — coal, oil, natural gas — are the major source of the carbon dioxide increase in the earth’s atmosphere. This is causing the planet to heat up, and for our health, and the planet’s, we must cut our fossil fuel consumption to 20 percent of what it is now long before century’s end.
Unfortunately, for purported balance, the media give disproportionate time to the 1 percent who are not convinced. But there are 2,000 scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Academy of Sciences, and among them the consensus is overwhelming.
I used to ask my students if they believed that Earth went around the sun or if the sun went around Earth. Of course, they all believed the former. I would then ask them why they believed that and if they ever stopped to check it out for themselves. They hadn’t. Few people have in our time.
How do I know the pancreas secretes insulin, that it isn’t the liver or the spleen or my femurs? How do I know that grinding plates of the earth cause earthquakes? That fire feeds on oxygen? These are only a few of countless conclusions we mostly accept because others devoted to a scientific way of knowing, in their particular fields, tell us it is so.
I have studied some of the arguments of the few climatologists who oppose their colleagues. I hope they are correct: Before me on my bulletin board as I type this are pictures of my grandchildren.
The question finally becomes, what is prudent? If 99 percent of climate scientists turn out to be wrong, what has been lost? If we act on the consensus and reduce fossil fuel consumption and turn out to be wrong, what is lost? But if the consensus is right and we refuse to respond, climate change is likely to present the greatest challenge to public health in the history of our species.
Wes Jackson is president of the Land Institute, Salina, Kan., and author of books including “Altars of Unhewn Stone: Science and the Earth.” His comment here is for the institute’s Prairie Writers Circle.
http://www.counterpunch.org/jackson10162009.html
One of the first lessons a scientist learns is that 100 percent agreement on scientific matters is rare. And a consensus can be reversed. But that reversal won’t come from talk radio or TV pundits. It will come from those who publish under the stringent demands of scientific journals.
It is scientists’ right to disagree with the consensus in their field. I could even argue that it sometimes is their obligation. There are a small number of medical researchers who do not believe the HIV virus is the cause of AIDS. One is on the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley. I have a friend who knows him and who thinks his argument plausible. If he wants to overturn the dominant idea with data, power to him.
However, I don’t yet want a blood transfusion from someone who authorities tell me is carrying the HIV virus. I’ll stick with the overwhelming consensus of most scientists.
Which brings me to my most important message. I’m a geneticist, not a climatologist, and have no training in that discipline. But, because I hold to a scientific way of knowing, I accept the view of 99 percent of the men and women who publish in refereed journals on climate. What have they concluded? That humans burning fossil fuels — coal, oil, natural gas — are the major source of the carbon dioxide increase in the earth’s atmosphere. This is causing the planet to heat up, and for our health, and the planet’s, we must cut our fossil fuel consumption to 20 percent of what it is now long before century’s end.
Unfortunately, for purported balance, the media give disproportionate time to the 1 percent who are not convinced. But there are 2,000 scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Academy of Sciences, and among them the consensus is overwhelming.
I used to ask my students if they believed that Earth went around the sun or if the sun went around Earth. Of course, they all believed the former. I would then ask them why they believed that and if they ever stopped to check it out for themselves. They hadn’t. Few people have in our time.
How do I know the pancreas secretes insulin, that it isn’t the liver or the spleen or my femurs? How do I know that grinding plates of the earth cause earthquakes? That fire feeds on oxygen? These are only a few of countless conclusions we mostly accept because others devoted to a scientific way of knowing, in their particular fields, tell us it is so.
I have studied some of the arguments of the few climatologists who oppose their colleagues. I hope they are correct: Before me on my bulletin board as I type this are pictures of my grandchildren.
The question finally becomes, what is prudent? If 99 percent of climate scientists turn out to be wrong, what has been lost? If we act on the consensus and reduce fossil fuel consumption and turn out to be wrong, what is lost? But if the consensus is right and we refuse to respond, climate change is likely to present the greatest challenge to public health in the history of our species.
Wes Jackson is president of the Land Institute, Salina, Kan., and author of books including “Altars of Unhewn Stone: Science and the Earth.” His comment here is for the institute’s Prairie Writers Circle.
http://www.counterpunch.org/jackson10162009.html
The Realistic Way Out of Iraq
By NICOLA NASSER
Insecurity in Iraq is in – built in the U.S. – conceived sectarian and “federal” constitution drafted after the U.S. – led invasion in 2003, in the political process engineered by the U.S. occupying power on sectarian and federal “constitutional” basis to create a secure pro – U.S. post – Saddam regime as well as in the sectarian polity born therefrom -- or more to the point brought in by the invading army -- and is still, seven years on, struggling to survive a possible U.S. military disengagement, and in a self – defeating contradictory and security oriented U.S. blueprints for Iraqi reconciliation as a prerequisite for securing the country at least as an ally of the United States, if not as a puppet regime.
“Six and a half years from the moment when American troops captured Baghdad on April 9, 2003, nothing is settled.” “Without reconciliation, all the gains .. will be at grave risk of foundering when American troops are no longer around. ” That’s the “warning” message that U.S. President Barak Obama, the present and immediate past U.S. ambassadors, Christopher R. Hill and Ryan C. Crocker, and the present and former American military commanders, Gen. Ray Odierno and Gen. David H. Petraeus have been repeatedly whistle-blowing. “What Mr. Obama would do if chaos set in as the American troop withdrawal gathers momentum next spring and summer could be one of the most testing moments in his presidency, all the more so for the evident fact that most Americans and most American legislators .. seem to have decided that America has already borne the burdens of Iraq for too long and needs to shift its priorities to Afghanistan,” according to John F. Burns, The New York Times’ chief foreign correspondent, on the ground in Baghdad before, during and after the U.S. – led invasion.
The car bombing in a parking lot adjacent to a building where a meeting was held on reconciliation efforts -- attended by a representative of the National Reconciliation Committee (NRC) formed by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki -- in the capital of the Iraqi western province, al-Ramadi, on October 11 was the latest symbolic bloody example of the irreconcilable security and reconciliation in Iraq.
All efforts at reconciliation exerted by the U.S. occupying power, Arabs collectively through the Arab League or separately by individual Arab states, or by regional powers have failed. While Obama is seeking a tactical exit strategy from Iraq for the sake of a long term “strategic” commitment thereto, “Iraqization” of what he described as the U.S. “war of choice” on Iraq seems to be his option. A pre-requisite for “Iraqization” is installing an effective “Iraqi” government in Baghdad; a pre-requisite for such a government is an Iraqi national reconciliation, and here Obama’s moment of truth in Iraq is racing against time.
Biden, al-Maliki Cannot Deliver
Promoting the level of the supervisor of a sectarian reconciliation from a secretary of state or a defense secretary to vice presidency to mandate Joe Biden with a failed mission will not make it a success. Biden made three visits to Iraq this year, but the outcome has been more insecurity and instability. Inside Iraq, Biden is best known as a co-author of the 2006 “Biden-Gelb Plan,” which urged “as much real power as possible be devolved from Iraq's central government in Baghdad to three mini-states that would divide the country along ethnic and religious lines,” Helena Cobban on July 6, quoted an Iraqi demonstrator against Biden’s second visit as telling a McClatchy News reporter that, “Biden's visit sent the signal to us that Iraq will be divided. Biden's background doesn't allow him to play any role in reconciliation.” Norwegian analyst of Iraqi affairs, Reidar Visser, concluded that Biden’s “solution” boils down to merely a power quota distribution among the three ethno-religious groups of “Kurds, Sunnis and Shia.” The persisting failure proves that Biden was the wrong man for a mission of an Iraqi “national” reconciliation.
Al-Malki is neither the right man for the mission. Bolstering him only gives him a veto power on reconciliation. His life long anti – Baath deep –rooted bias as well as his life long engagement with Iran and his sectarian and political loyalty thereto are trapping him into an anti – Baath obsession that unwisely made him challenge Biden during his second visit to state on record that reconciliation was and is an Iraqi “internal affair” that Biden has nothing to do with. Al-Maliki’s version of reconciliation is based on abruptly cutting Iraq off its Arab geopolitical affiliation, conceding to the Iranian and Kurdish view that only the Arabs of Iraq, a founding member of the Arab League, are part of the Pan – Arab bondage, although they are the overwhelming majority of Iraqis, and consequently giving priority to ties with Iran and the United States. Hence the latest deterioration of Al-Maliki’s ties with Syria and the reluctance of Saudi Arabia to send an ambassador to Baghdad. Internally, al-Maliki’s sole hope to form a semblance of a non – sectarian electoral constituency ahead of the upcoming elections on January 16 -- pending “sectarian” reconciliation in the “parliament” to pass an election law – was pinned on winning the support of the Sunni al-Sahwa (awakening) militia, which the U.S. was financially successful to recruit to fight al-Qaeda among its Sunni power base. However, the tribal leader of al-Sahwa, Sheikh Ahmad Abu Risha, recently announced he would not join al-Maliki’s electoral coalition. (Iraqi daily al-Zaman on October 13, 2009).
Meanwhile, Iran’s version for reconciliation is on record sectarian, and accordingly a non-starter, neither for national accord nor for security. Tehran succeeded in grouping together almost all the pro-Iran Shiite militias in one electoral bloc, a recipe for more bloody sectarian strife and further disintegration of the country on sectarian basis. The Baghdad’s bombings of August 19 of the sovereign ministerial symbols of al-Maliki’s “state” was the bloody manifestation of “to – the – death” power struggle between the two sectarian blocs. Both blocs found in accusing Syria of harboring the alleged culprits in the bombings, and in threatening to take Syria to the UN Security council, their best way to divert both internal and external attention away from their own responsibility, and indirectly that of Iran.
Former British Army Chief of Staff, General Richard Dannatt, who stepped down at the end of August, speaking at the Royal United Services Institute in London, attributed “our failure” in Iraq first to the “early switch to an economy of force operation in favor of Afghanistan,” which has become now Obama’s “strategic priority,” and second to missing “a window of consent” early after the invasion to address Iraq's security and basic needs by the U.S. – led coalition forces, which allowed “the rise of the militias supported so cynically by the Iranians.” Dannatt was short of saying that the security and reconciliation in Iraq have become irreversibly irreconcilable.
In February last year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about the success of the “surge” in Iraq: “The gains have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. This is a failure. This is a failure,” she said. Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted candidly in mid-March that without “sectarian reconciliation” among Iraqis the “strategy won’t work.” Indeed, the entire point of the surge of 30,000 troops was to bring such reconciliation about by, in Gates’ words, “buy[ing] the Iraqis time.” Gates was wrong, what is required is a national reconciliation, not a sectarian one. Sectarian strife was “the” expected outcome of the removal by invasion of a national regime, not the other way round.
Less than seven years on, the “political process” has already proved a failure. Those same players -- whom the White house, whether under Obama or under the administration of his predecessor George W. Bush, has been trying to recruit recognition of their legitimacy by the United Nations, but more importantly by their Arab brethren and regional neighbors – doomed it a failure and will continue to abort all endeavors to salvage whatever is there to make it a success story. This “process” seeks to reconcile the irreconcilable militias turned into political parties, whose dual loyalty is more to Iran and the U.S. than to their own people, who are driven by this dual loyalty and their factional interests than by the national interests of Iraq, incessantly playing their U.S. and Iranian mentors one against the other, and more than ready to instantly recur to militia practices and drop their posturing as civilized political players whenever their narrow factional interests are threatened or their quotas in the U.S. –engineered “political process” diminish or seem about to be altogether lost.
Four de Facto Governments
Ironically, Iraq has now two self – proclaimed sectarian governments, the first is the Shiite U.S. – installed and backed in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone and the second is the al-Qaeda’s underground Sunni Islamic State of Iraq (or Dawlat al-'Iraq al-Islamiyya in Arabic); both are in a declared state of war, but neither has real authority on the ground that encompass all the regional territory of the country. A third de facto theocratic pro – Iran Shiite state has evolved in southern Iraq, where it is no more possible to discern whether it is Baghdad or Tehran the central authority to which the area reports. No surprise a strong call is voiced deafeningly here for a “federal” entity similar to the Kurdish one in the north. A fourth de facto Kurdish government rules in Iraqi Kurdistan, but similarly has no “national” authority. Legitimacy of the four governments is challenged both internally and externally. Obama’s strategy, like that of his predecessor Bush, reveals no concrete evidence that he is looking for other than sustaining this tragic status quo in Iraq.
There is no single dominant grouping in this internal struggle for power. The new “Iraqi army most often behaves as a Shia militia,” and “the last chance for some kind of stability may be the division of Iraq into three nationally based independent states,” Michael Dougall Bell concluded, writing in the Globe and Mail on September 30. Disintegrating regional states into smaller ones on religious, sectarian and ethnic bases has been a pronounced goal of Israeli strategists for too long now to be dismissed as an unrealistic Israeli strategy. The writer only can tell how much he was influenced by the Israeli view, given the fact that Bell was a former Canadian ambassador to Israel and former chair of the Donor Committee of the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq. However, Bell is not a lone voice. The think tank of The Independent Fund for Peace titled its ninth report on Iraq earlier this month, “A Way Out: The Union of Iraqi States.” Dismantling Iraq is now a realistic threat as never before.
The NRC was grudgingly formed under the pressure of a U.S. and Arab demand to reconcile the sectarian (Shiite) government of al- Maliki and the pro –Iran sectarian regime that brought him to power with the national and Pan – Arab majority, whose power base is perceived by his U.S. mentors to be among the Sunnis, who have been marginalized and bloodily squeezed out of public life and institutions since the U.S. – led invasion in 2003 -- allegedly for being the power base for the pre-invasion regime, but for sectarian purposes as evidenced over the last seven years -- and who populate the heart of Iraq in the capital Baghdad as well as the northern and western provinces, in particular in al-Ramadi, which is the largest in area and the most decisive strategically because it borders three Arab countries, namely Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. No surprise this majority was the incubator and their provinces were the bed rock of the Iraqi national resistance, which so far has deprived the White house from declaring “victory” in Iraq. “I'm not sure we will ever see anyone declare victory in Iraq, because first off, I'm not sure we'll know for 10 years or five years," U.S. Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top American commander in Iraq, told reporters at a Pentagon briefing on October 1. Disillusioned by the U.S. promises of security, democracy and development as well as by any sectarian bonanza promised by Iran, the Shiite majority in southern Iraq are again recurring to their national and Pan – Arab credentials, and the Islamic – oriented or motivated rejection of foreign hegemony, be it U.S. or Iranian, is increasingly contributing to this disillusionment both in the south and the north of the country, which paved the way for the Iraqi resistance to expand southward gradually, but determinably.
Regional Input a Side Show
Later this year Washington is reportedly bracing to host an Iraqi national reconciliation conference, to be chaired by Obama himself and attended by several Arab countries, which are expected to use their good offices or their “influence” or both to secure that the Iraqi resistance to U.S. military occupation, mainly that is led by Baathists, lay their arms and join the “political process” in exchange for a greater role in decision-making "if they are allowed to function as a legitimate political party.” Egyptian the Al-Ahram Weekly reported recently that Joe Biden urged al-Maliki to allow the Ba'athists to regroup into a new party and run in the elections scheduled for early next year.
The “sixth” conference of Iraq’s neighboring countries, which convened in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on October 14 -- on the backdrop of “no Iraqi – Saudi relations” as well as on an escalating Syrian –Iraqi crisis -- grouping the interior ministers of Turkey, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt, Bahrain and the Arab League as observers, will remain a side show as it was in its previous sessions. It serves to contain the fallout of the U.S. military occupation of Iraq more than it contributes to the security or to the reconciliation of the country, as hopefully perceived by Washington’s seven – year old efforts to enlist the participants’ contribution thereto, given for instance Turkey’s concerns with the repercussions on its own “Kurdish problem” of the de facto independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, or Iran’s concerns with loosing its own exploits of the U.S. war on Iraq, mainly the strategic role it has gained in Iraq as a security subcontractor to the U.S., let alone the conflicts of interest among the participating countries, or the sectarian repercussions emanating from the sectarian regime in Iraq on other neighbors. This “regional factor” is still cited by the U.S. occupying power and the political regime it is still struggling to install in Baghdad’s “Green Zone” as part of the problem of insecurity more than it is part of the solution. The recent opening of the NATO mission offices in Baghdad’s Greene Zone and the assumption on October 8 of U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Barbero of his duties as the chief of the Multi-National Security Transition Command – Iraq is the latest proof that the occupying power could trust none other but itself with the security of Iraq; whatever regional input could be recruited will remain a subordinate side show.
However, the U.S. strategy remains the real problem, and not just part of it. This strategy has pursued five self-defeating goals, namely to empower a pro-U.S. regime that has proved powerless in fending off the overwhelming rejection of the U.S. occupation and whatever regime emanating therefrom, to dismantle sectarian militias by creating the additional al-Sahwa sectarian militia, to establish a “democratic” political process that “constitutionally” negates the democratic rights of the country’s Arab majority, to hopelessly try to uphold a “central” government on the ruins of the devastated central infrastructure of the Iraqi state, and to save a semblance of the territorial unity of the country while empowering “mini-states” that would sooner or later doom any such unity.
Many U.S. officials were on record to fault their earlier strategy in Iraq. Developments in the country over seven years vindicated them. Immediately following the invasion, Lewis Paul Bremer III -- the first U.S. administrator of Iraq after the 2003 invasion who reported primarily to U.S. secretary of defense -- enacted his three – pronged strategy to, first, bring down the central state infrastructure as the prerequisite to replace it with a loose “federal” decentralized governments “at each other’s throats” over wealth and power, second to neutralize an Iraqi “national” consensus on resisting the invading armies of the occupying power by luring the large Shiite minority (with the Iraqi Kurds inclusive the Sunnis constitute the majority) with the carrot of promising them that their centuries old Iran – fueled dream of exclusively ruling the country on a sectarian basis, that history has proved it cannot be ruled by any one sect, and, third, thus neutralizing Iran by luring it with the carrot of having a sectarian stake that would on the one hand empower it to become a regional power and on the other to settle its scores with Iraq, which were left unsettled by the 1988 ceasefire.
The Realistic Way out
However, Bremer proved wrong on the three accounts, but Obama seems determined to build on his legacy. Somebody wrote recently: “Indeed, as the American victory during the 1968 Tet Offensive demonstrated, a military success can even contribute to political defeat.”
The outcome after more than six bloody years is “that Iraq continues to lack security, stability, vital services and the non-sectarian institutions of a sovereign state” and “lack of political reconciliation, persistent sectarianism,” Prime Minister of Iraq from May 2004 to April 2005, Eyad Allawi, told the Gulf News on July 4th, concluding that, “There is already a power vacuum since the war,” a power vacuum that Obama’s approach seems intent on sustaining and “that will have to be filled by one of the two regional powers involved in Iraq - Saudi Arabia or Iran,” according to Allawi, who has no interest in recognizing the only home-grown viable alternative, i.e. the national coalition of resistance led by a hardened but wiser al-Baath, the only experienced and credible “non-sectarian institution” in Iraq today. But of course it is unrealistic to expect any of the powers which have been for seven years now actively working in and around Iraq to “debaath” the country to acknowledge this reality of life in Iraq today. So the struggle goes on, and the security and reconciliation will remain as illusive as ever since 2003.
The U.S. administration has realistically moved recently to indirectly recognize the de facto role of al-Baath as a unifying force that is essential for both security and reconciliation, but unfortunately in a divide – and – rule approach, that aims at neutralizing or containing the rank and file of the party and the military which the party used to command. The administration/s seemed to unofficially admit the twin grave mistakes committed by Paul Bremer of disbanding the national Iraqi army, which embodied and protected the national unity for some one hundred years and of the de-Ba’athification of the Iraqi civil service, which deprived the country of its secular unifying state manpower. However this divide – and rule approach has proved counterproductive. In the end, negotiating the U.S. exit strategy with al-Baath and the Iraqi resistance, the real enemy, could prove the only viable way out of Iraq for the United States.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli – occupied Palestinian territories.
http://www.counterpunch.org/nasser10162009.html
Insecurity in Iraq is in – built in the U.S. – conceived sectarian and “federal” constitution drafted after the U.S. – led invasion in 2003, in the political process engineered by the U.S. occupying power on sectarian and federal “constitutional” basis to create a secure pro – U.S. post – Saddam regime as well as in the sectarian polity born therefrom -- or more to the point brought in by the invading army -- and is still, seven years on, struggling to survive a possible U.S. military disengagement, and in a self – defeating contradictory and security oriented U.S. blueprints for Iraqi reconciliation as a prerequisite for securing the country at least as an ally of the United States, if not as a puppet regime.
“Six and a half years from the moment when American troops captured Baghdad on April 9, 2003, nothing is settled.” “Without reconciliation, all the gains .. will be at grave risk of foundering when American troops are no longer around. ” That’s the “warning” message that U.S. President Barak Obama, the present and immediate past U.S. ambassadors, Christopher R. Hill and Ryan C. Crocker, and the present and former American military commanders, Gen. Ray Odierno and Gen. David H. Petraeus have been repeatedly whistle-blowing. “What Mr. Obama would do if chaos set in as the American troop withdrawal gathers momentum next spring and summer could be one of the most testing moments in his presidency, all the more so for the evident fact that most Americans and most American legislators .. seem to have decided that America has already borne the burdens of Iraq for too long and needs to shift its priorities to Afghanistan,” according to John F. Burns, The New York Times’ chief foreign correspondent, on the ground in Baghdad before, during and after the U.S. – led invasion.
The car bombing in a parking lot adjacent to a building where a meeting was held on reconciliation efforts -- attended by a representative of the National Reconciliation Committee (NRC) formed by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki -- in the capital of the Iraqi western province, al-Ramadi, on October 11 was the latest symbolic bloody example of the irreconcilable security and reconciliation in Iraq.
All efforts at reconciliation exerted by the U.S. occupying power, Arabs collectively through the Arab League or separately by individual Arab states, or by regional powers have failed. While Obama is seeking a tactical exit strategy from Iraq for the sake of a long term “strategic” commitment thereto, “Iraqization” of what he described as the U.S. “war of choice” on Iraq seems to be his option. A pre-requisite for “Iraqization” is installing an effective “Iraqi” government in Baghdad; a pre-requisite for such a government is an Iraqi national reconciliation, and here Obama’s moment of truth in Iraq is racing against time.
Biden, al-Maliki Cannot Deliver
Promoting the level of the supervisor of a sectarian reconciliation from a secretary of state or a defense secretary to vice presidency to mandate Joe Biden with a failed mission will not make it a success. Biden made three visits to Iraq this year, but the outcome has been more insecurity and instability. Inside Iraq, Biden is best known as a co-author of the 2006 “Biden-Gelb Plan,” which urged “as much real power as possible be devolved from Iraq's central government in Baghdad to three mini-states that would divide the country along ethnic and religious lines,” Helena Cobban on July 6, quoted an Iraqi demonstrator against Biden’s second visit as telling a McClatchy News reporter that, “Biden's visit sent the signal to us that Iraq will be divided. Biden's background doesn't allow him to play any role in reconciliation.” Norwegian analyst of Iraqi affairs, Reidar Visser, concluded that Biden’s “solution” boils down to merely a power quota distribution among the three ethno-religious groups of “Kurds, Sunnis and Shia.” The persisting failure proves that Biden was the wrong man for a mission of an Iraqi “national” reconciliation.
Al-Malki is neither the right man for the mission. Bolstering him only gives him a veto power on reconciliation. His life long anti – Baath deep –rooted bias as well as his life long engagement with Iran and his sectarian and political loyalty thereto are trapping him into an anti – Baath obsession that unwisely made him challenge Biden during his second visit to state on record that reconciliation was and is an Iraqi “internal affair” that Biden has nothing to do with. Al-Maliki’s version of reconciliation is based on abruptly cutting Iraq off its Arab geopolitical affiliation, conceding to the Iranian and Kurdish view that only the Arabs of Iraq, a founding member of the Arab League, are part of the Pan – Arab bondage, although they are the overwhelming majority of Iraqis, and consequently giving priority to ties with Iran and the United States. Hence the latest deterioration of Al-Maliki’s ties with Syria and the reluctance of Saudi Arabia to send an ambassador to Baghdad. Internally, al-Maliki’s sole hope to form a semblance of a non – sectarian electoral constituency ahead of the upcoming elections on January 16 -- pending “sectarian” reconciliation in the “parliament” to pass an election law – was pinned on winning the support of the Sunni al-Sahwa (awakening) militia, which the U.S. was financially successful to recruit to fight al-Qaeda among its Sunni power base. However, the tribal leader of al-Sahwa, Sheikh Ahmad Abu Risha, recently announced he would not join al-Maliki’s electoral coalition. (Iraqi daily al-Zaman on October 13, 2009).
Meanwhile, Iran’s version for reconciliation is on record sectarian, and accordingly a non-starter, neither for national accord nor for security. Tehran succeeded in grouping together almost all the pro-Iran Shiite militias in one electoral bloc, a recipe for more bloody sectarian strife and further disintegration of the country on sectarian basis. The Baghdad’s bombings of August 19 of the sovereign ministerial symbols of al-Maliki’s “state” was the bloody manifestation of “to – the – death” power struggle between the two sectarian blocs. Both blocs found in accusing Syria of harboring the alleged culprits in the bombings, and in threatening to take Syria to the UN Security council, their best way to divert both internal and external attention away from their own responsibility, and indirectly that of Iran.
Former British Army Chief of Staff, General Richard Dannatt, who stepped down at the end of August, speaking at the Royal United Services Institute in London, attributed “our failure” in Iraq first to the “early switch to an economy of force operation in favor of Afghanistan,” which has become now Obama’s “strategic priority,” and second to missing “a window of consent” early after the invasion to address Iraq's security and basic needs by the U.S. – led coalition forces, which allowed “the rise of the militias supported so cynically by the Iranians.” Dannatt was short of saying that the security and reconciliation in Iraq have become irreversibly irreconcilable.
In February last year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about the success of the “surge” in Iraq: “The gains have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. This is a failure. This is a failure,” she said. Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted candidly in mid-March that without “sectarian reconciliation” among Iraqis the “strategy won’t work.” Indeed, the entire point of the surge of 30,000 troops was to bring such reconciliation about by, in Gates’ words, “buy[ing] the Iraqis time.” Gates was wrong, what is required is a national reconciliation, not a sectarian one. Sectarian strife was “the” expected outcome of the removal by invasion of a national regime, not the other way round.
Less than seven years on, the “political process” has already proved a failure. Those same players -- whom the White house, whether under Obama or under the administration of his predecessor George W. Bush, has been trying to recruit recognition of their legitimacy by the United Nations, but more importantly by their Arab brethren and regional neighbors – doomed it a failure and will continue to abort all endeavors to salvage whatever is there to make it a success story. This “process” seeks to reconcile the irreconcilable militias turned into political parties, whose dual loyalty is more to Iran and the U.S. than to their own people, who are driven by this dual loyalty and their factional interests than by the national interests of Iraq, incessantly playing their U.S. and Iranian mentors one against the other, and more than ready to instantly recur to militia practices and drop their posturing as civilized political players whenever their narrow factional interests are threatened or their quotas in the U.S. –engineered “political process” diminish or seem about to be altogether lost.
Four de Facto Governments
Ironically, Iraq has now two self – proclaimed sectarian governments, the first is the Shiite U.S. – installed and backed in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone and the second is the al-Qaeda’s underground Sunni Islamic State of Iraq (or Dawlat al-'Iraq al-Islamiyya in Arabic); both are in a declared state of war, but neither has real authority on the ground that encompass all the regional territory of the country. A third de facto theocratic pro – Iran Shiite state has evolved in southern Iraq, where it is no more possible to discern whether it is Baghdad or Tehran the central authority to which the area reports. No surprise a strong call is voiced deafeningly here for a “federal” entity similar to the Kurdish one in the north. A fourth de facto Kurdish government rules in Iraqi Kurdistan, but similarly has no “national” authority. Legitimacy of the four governments is challenged both internally and externally. Obama’s strategy, like that of his predecessor Bush, reveals no concrete evidence that he is looking for other than sustaining this tragic status quo in Iraq.
There is no single dominant grouping in this internal struggle for power. The new “Iraqi army most often behaves as a Shia militia,” and “the last chance for some kind of stability may be the division of Iraq into three nationally based independent states,” Michael Dougall Bell concluded, writing in the Globe and Mail on September 30. Disintegrating regional states into smaller ones on religious, sectarian and ethnic bases has been a pronounced goal of Israeli strategists for too long now to be dismissed as an unrealistic Israeli strategy. The writer only can tell how much he was influenced by the Israeli view, given the fact that Bell was a former Canadian ambassador to Israel and former chair of the Donor Committee of the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq. However, Bell is not a lone voice. The think tank of The Independent Fund for Peace titled its ninth report on Iraq earlier this month, “A Way Out: The Union of Iraqi States.” Dismantling Iraq is now a realistic threat as never before.
The NRC was grudgingly formed under the pressure of a U.S. and Arab demand to reconcile the sectarian (Shiite) government of al- Maliki and the pro –Iran sectarian regime that brought him to power with the national and Pan – Arab majority, whose power base is perceived by his U.S. mentors to be among the Sunnis, who have been marginalized and bloodily squeezed out of public life and institutions since the U.S. – led invasion in 2003 -- allegedly for being the power base for the pre-invasion regime, but for sectarian purposes as evidenced over the last seven years -- and who populate the heart of Iraq in the capital Baghdad as well as the northern and western provinces, in particular in al-Ramadi, which is the largest in area and the most decisive strategically because it borders three Arab countries, namely Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. No surprise this majority was the incubator and their provinces were the bed rock of the Iraqi national resistance, which so far has deprived the White house from declaring “victory” in Iraq. “I'm not sure we will ever see anyone declare victory in Iraq, because first off, I'm not sure we'll know for 10 years or five years," U.S. Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top American commander in Iraq, told reporters at a Pentagon briefing on October 1. Disillusioned by the U.S. promises of security, democracy and development as well as by any sectarian bonanza promised by Iran, the Shiite majority in southern Iraq are again recurring to their national and Pan – Arab credentials, and the Islamic – oriented or motivated rejection of foreign hegemony, be it U.S. or Iranian, is increasingly contributing to this disillusionment both in the south and the north of the country, which paved the way for the Iraqi resistance to expand southward gradually, but determinably.
Regional Input a Side Show
Later this year Washington is reportedly bracing to host an Iraqi national reconciliation conference, to be chaired by Obama himself and attended by several Arab countries, which are expected to use their good offices or their “influence” or both to secure that the Iraqi resistance to U.S. military occupation, mainly that is led by Baathists, lay their arms and join the “political process” in exchange for a greater role in decision-making "if they are allowed to function as a legitimate political party.” Egyptian the Al-Ahram Weekly reported recently that Joe Biden urged al-Maliki to allow the Ba'athists to regroup into a new party and run in the elections scheduled for early next year.
The “sixth” conference of Iraq’s neighboring countries, which convened in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on October 14 -- on the backdrop of “no Iraqi – Saudi relations” as well as on an escalating Syrian –Iraqi crisis -- grouping the interior ministers of Turkey, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt, Bahrain and the Arab League as observers, will remain a side show as it was in its previous sessions. It serves to contain the fallout of the U.S. military occupation of Iraq more than it contributes to the security or to the reconciliation of the country, as hopefully perceived by Washington’s seven – year old efforts to enlist the participants’ contribution thereto, given for instance Turkey’s concerns with the repercussions on its own “Kurdish problem” of the de facto independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, or Iran’s concerns with loosing its own exploits of the U.S. war on Iraq, mainly the strategic role it has gained in Iraq as a security subcontractor to the U.S., let alone the conflicts of interest among the participating countries, or the sectarian repercussions emanating from the sectarian regime in Iraq on other neighbors. This “regional factor” is still cited by the U.S. occupying power and the political regime it is still struggling to install in Baghdad’s “Green Zone” as part of the problem of insecurity more than it is part of the solution. The recent opening of the NATO mission offices in Baghdad’s Greene Zone and the assumption on October 8 of U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Barbero of his duties as the chief of the Multi-National Security Transition Command – Iraq is the latest proof that the occupying power could trust none other but itself with the security of Iraq; whatever regional input could be recruited will remain a subordinate side show.
However, the U.S. strategy remains the real problem, and not just part of it. This strategy has pursued five self-defeating goals, namely to empower a pro-U.S. regime that has proved powerless in fending off the overwhelming rejection of the U.S. occupation and whatever regime emanating therefrom, to dismantle sectarian militias by creating the additional al-Sahwa sectarian militia, to establish a “democratic” political process that “constitutionally” negates the democratic rights of the country’s Arab majority, to hopelessly try to uphold a “central” government on the ruins of the devastated central infrastructure of the Iraqi state, and to save a semblance of the territorial unity of the country while empowering “mini-states” that would sooner or later doom any such unity.
Many U.S. officials were on record to fault their earlier strategy in Iraq. Developments in the country over seven years vindicated them. Immediately following the invasion, Lewis Paul Bremer III -- the first U.S. administrator of Iraq after the 2003 invasion who reported primarily to U.S. secretary of defense -- enacted his three – pronged strategy to, first, bring down the central state infrastructure as the prerequisite to replace it with a loose “federal” decentralized governments “at each other’s throats” over wealth and power, second to neutralize an Iraqi “national” consensus on resisting the invading armies of the occupying power by luring the large Shiite minority (with the Iraqi Kurds inclusive the Sunnis constitute the majority) with the carrot of promising them that their centuries old Iran – fueled dream of exclusively ruling the country on a sectarian basis, that history has proved it cannot be ruled by any one sect, and, third, thus neutralizing Iran by luring it with the carrot of having a sectarian stake that would on the one hand empower it to become a regional power and on the other to settle its scores with Iraq, which were left unsettled by the 1988 ceasefire.
The Realistic Way out
However, Bremer proved wrong on the three accounts, but Obama seems determined to build on his legacy. Somebody wrote recently: “Indeed, as the American victory during the 1968 Tet Offensive demonstrated, a military success can even contribute to political defeat.”
The outcome after more than six bloody years is “that Iraq continues to lack security, stability, vital services and the non-sectarian institutions of a sovereign state” and “lack of political reconciliation, persistent sectarianism,” Prime Minister of Iraq from May 2004 to April 2005, Eyad Allawi, told the Gulf News on July 4th, concluding that, “There is already a power vacuum since the war,” a power vacuum that Obama’s approach seems intent on sustaining and “that will have to be filled by one of the two regional powers involved in Iraq - Saudi Arabia or Iran,” according to Allawi, who has no interest in recognizing the only home-grown viable alternative, i.e. the national coalition of resistance led by a hardened but wiser al-Baath, the only experienced and credible “non-sectarian institution” in Iraq today. But of course it is unrealistic to expect any of the powers which have been for seven years now actively working in and around Iraq to “debaath” the country to acknowledge this reality of life in Iraq today. So the struggle goes on, and the security and reconciliation will remain as illusive as ever since 2003.
The U.S. administration has realistically moved recently to indirectly recognize the de facto role of al-Baath as a unifying force that is essential for both security and reconciliation, but unfortunately in a divide – and – rule approach, that aims at neutralizing or containing the rank and file of the party and the military which the party used to command. The administration/s seemed to unofficially admit the twin grave mistakes committed by Paul Bremer of disbanding the national Iraqi army, which embodied and protected the national unity for some one hundred years and of the de-Ba’athification of the Iraqi civil service, which deprived the country of its secular unifying state manpower. However this divide – and rule approach has proved counterproductive. In the end, negotiating the U.S. exit strategy with al-Baath and the Iraqi resistance, the real enemy, could prove the only viable way out of Iraq for the United States.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli – occupied Palestinian territories.
http://www.counterpunch.org/nasser10162009.html
The Rich Have Stolen the Economy
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Bloomberg reports that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s closest aides earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and other Wall Street firms. Bloomberg adds that none of these aides faced Senate confirmation. Yet, they are overseeing the handout of hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds to their former employers.
The gifts of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money provided the banks with an abundance of low cost capital that has boosted the banks’ profits, while the taxpayers who provided the capital are increasingly unemployed and homeless.
JPMorgan Chase announced that it has earned $3.6 billion in the third quarter of this year.
Goldman Sachs has made so much money during this year of economic crisis that enormous bonuses are in the works. The London Evening Standard reports that Goldman Sachs’ “5,500 London staff can look forward to record average payouts of around 500,000 pounds ($800,000) each. Senior executives will get bonuses of several million pounds each with the highest paid as much as 10 million pounds ($16 million).“
In the event the banksters can’t figure out how to enjoy the riches, the Financial Times is offering a new magazine--”How To Spend It.”
New York City’s retailers are praying for some of it, suffering a 15.3 per cent vacancy rate on Fifth Avenue. Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that retail sales adjusted for inflation have declined to the level of 10 years ago: “Virtually 10 years worth of real retail sales growth has been destroyed in the still unfolding depression.”
Meanwhile, occupants of New York City’s homeless shelters have reached the all time high of 39,000, 16,000 of whom are children.
New York City government is so overwhelmed that it is paying $90 per night per apartment to rent unsold new apartments for the homeless. Desperate, the city government is offering one-way free airline tickets to the homeless if they will leave the city. It is charging rent to shelter residents who have jobs. A single mother earning $800 per month is paying $336 in shelter rent.
Long-term unemployment has become a serious problem across the country, doubling the unemployment rate from the reported 10 per cent to 20 per cent. Now hundreds of thousands more Americans are beginning to run out of extended unemployment benefits. High unemployment has made 2009 a banner year for military recruitment.
A record number of Americans, more than one in nine, are on food stamps. Mortgage delinquencies are rising as home prices fall. According to Jay Brinkmann of the Mortgage Bankers Association, job losses have spread the problem from subprime loans to prime fixed-rate loans. At the Wise, Virginia, fairgrounds, 2,000 people waited in lines for free dental and health care.
While the US speeds plans for the ultimate bunker buster bomb and President Obama prepares to send another 45,000 troops into Afghanistan, 44,789 Americans die every year from lack of medical treatment. National Guardsmen say they would rather face the Taliban than the US economy.
Little wonder. In the midst of the worst unemployment since the Great Depression, US corporations continue to offshore jobs and to replace their remaining US employees with lower paid foreigners on work visas.
The offshoring of jobs, the bailout of rich banksters, and war deficits are destroying the value of the US dollar. Since last spring the US dollar has been rapidly losing value. The currency of the hegemonic superpower has declined 14 per cent against the Botswana pula, 22 per cent against Brazil’s real, and 11 per cent against the Russian ruble. Once the dollar loses its reserve currency status, the US will be unable to pay for its imports or to finance its government budget deficits.
Offshoring has made Americans heavily dependent on imports, and the dollar’s loss of purchasing power will further erode American incomes. As the Federal Reserve is forced to monetize Treasury debt issues, domestic inflation will break out. Except for the banksters and the offshoring CEOs, there is no source of consumer demand to drive the US economy.
The political system is unresponsive to the American people. It is monopolized by a few powerful interest groups that control campaign contributions. Interest groups have exercised their power to monopolize the economy for the benefit of themselves, the American people be damned.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts10162009.html
Bloomberg reports that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s closest aides earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and other Wall Street firms. Bloomberg adds that none of these aides faced Senate confirmation. Yet, they are overseeing the handout of hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds to their former employers.
The gifts of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money provided the banks with an abundance of low cost capital that has boosted the banks’ profits, while the taxpayers who provided the capital are increasingly unemployed and homeless.
JPMorgan Chase announced that it has earned $3.6 billion in the third quarter of this year.
Goldman Sachs has made so much money during this year of economic crisis that enormous bonuses are in the works. The London Evening Standard reports that Goldman Sachs’ “5,500 London staff can look forward to record average payouts of around 500,000 pounds ($800,000) each. Senior executives will get bonuses of several million pounds each with the highest paid as much as 10 million pounds ($16 million).“
In the event the banksters can’t figure out how to enjoy the riches, the Financial Times is offering a new magazine--”How To Spend It.”
New York City’s retailers are praying for some of it, suffering a 15.3 per cent vacancy rate on Fifth Avenue. Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that retail sales adjusted for inflation have declined to the level of 10 years ago: “Virtually 10 years worth of real retail sales growth has been destroyed in the still unfolding depression.”
Meanwhile, occupants of New York City’s homeless shelters have reached the all time high of 39,000, 16,000 of whom are children.
New York City government is so overwhelmed that it is paying $90 per night per apartment to rent unsold new apartments for the homeless. Desperate, the city government is offering one-way free airline tickets to the homeless if they will leave the city. It is charging rent to shelter residents who have jobs. A single mother earning $800 per month is paying $336 in shelter rent.
Long-term unemployment has become a serious problem across the country, doubling the unemployment rate from the reported 10 per cent to 20 per cent. Now hundreds of thousands more Americans are beginning to run out of extended unemployment benefits. High unemployment has made 2009 a banner year for military recruitment.
A record number of Americans, more than one in nine, are on food stamps. Mortgage delinquencies are rising as home prices fall. According to Jay Brinkmann of the Mortgage Bankers Association, job losses have spread the problem from subprime loans to prime fixed-rate loans. At the Wise, Virginia, fairgrounds, 2,000 people waited in lines for free dental and health care.
While the US speeds plans for the ultimate bunker buster bomb and President Obama prepares to send another 45,000 troops into Afghanistan, 44,789 Americans die every year from lack of medical treatment. National Guardsmen say they would rather face the Taliban than the US economy.
Little wonder. In the midst of the worst unemployment since the Great Depression, US corporations continue to offshore jobs and to replace their remaining US employees with lower paid foreigners on work visas.
The offshoring of jobs, the bailout of rich banksters, and war deficits are destroying the value of the US dollar. Since last spring the US dollar has been rapidly losing value. The currency of the hegemonic superpower has declined 14 per cent against the Botswana pula, 22 per cent against Brazil’s real, and 11 per cent against the Russian ruble. Once the dollar loses its reserve currency status, the US will be unable to pay for its imports or to finance its government budget deficits.
Offshoring has made Americans heavily dependent on imports, and the dollar’s loss of purchasing power will further erode American incomes. As the Federal Reserve is forced to monetize Treasury debt issues, domestic inflation will break out. Except for the banksters and the offshoring CEOs, there is no source of consumer demand to drive the US economy.
The political system is unresponsive to the American people. It is monopolized by a few powerful interest groups that control campaign contributions. Interest groups have exercised their power to monopolize the economy for the benefit of themselves, the American people be damned.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts10162009.html
US-IRAN: Congress Begins Pressing Sanctions Legislation
By Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON, Oct 16 (IPS) - As the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama prepares for a critical series of talks about the fate of Iran's nuclear programme, Congress has begun moving long-pending legislation to impose new unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
In just the past few days, the Senate approved a measure, already passed by the House of Representatives, that bans companies that sell Iran gasoline from bidding on contracts for the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).
And the House Thursday approved by an overwhelming 414-6 margin the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act (IRSA) that would permit local and state governments and their pension funds to divest from foreign companies or U.S. subsidiaries with investments of more than 20 million dollars in Iran's energy sector.
Finally, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard Berman, scheduled a vote for Oct. 28 on the long-stalled Iran Petroleum Sanctions Act (IRPSA) bill that would, if passed, impose sanctions on companies that are involved in exporting refined petroleum products to Iran or expanding Tehran's capacity to produce its own refined products.
Moreover, the House Majority Leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer, pledged that he would push for a floor vote on the measure, which is expected to easily pass the Committee, by early November.
While the bills' supporters insist they are trying to give Obama more leverage in the upcoming talks with Iran, the administration has itself declined to endorse any of them, suggesting that unilateral sanctions may prove counterproductive both to its "engagement" strategy with Tehran and to lining up international support, even among its European allies, for multilateral sanctions if the negotiations fail to make progress.
"I think we have not reached a judgement as to which [sanctions] might be the most effective," Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey told senators earlier this month when asked about the IRPSA bill.
"In part because, not only do we want to have the impact on the economy, we want to make sure that [the sanction] is going to affect the decision making in Iran and not target the wrong people in Iran and, similarly, to make sure that we maximise the chance of getting international support for these things," he continued. "If we do not have international support, there'll be diversions."
"Not only is a sanction more effective when they're (sic) broad-based, but it also takes away the political argument that the Iranian government may try to make, which that this is American hostility," added Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg at the same hearing.
Both men suggested that sanctions affecting the general population could actually strengthen popular support for the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whose credibility at home was badly damaged by June's disputed election and its violent aftermath.
The renewed drive for unilateral sanctions comes just days before two critical tests of Iran's willingness to follow through on agreements in principle reached between it and the so-called P5+1 – the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, including the U.S. and Germany – at their meeting in Geneva Oct. 1.
On Monday, the P5+1 will meet at the Vienna headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to work out the technical details of a plan under which Tehran would ship out most of the low-enriched uranium (LEU) it has produced over the last several years to Russia and France for reprocessing into fuel for a small reactor that makes isotopes for nuclear medicines.
In his testimony, Steinberg said actual shipment of the LEU by Tehran would be considered by the administration to be "tangible sign of progress".
Iran has also agreed to grant IAEA inspectors full access Oct. 25 to a newly disclosed nuclear enrichment plant near Qom to ensure that it is being built for civilian purposes only. Assuming the inspection goes smoothly, the P5+1 and Iran are expected to hold a second high-level meeting in early November at which additional confidence-building measures are to be agreed.
While senior administration officials, notably Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have spoken in favour of imposing "crippling sanctions" as a source of pressure on Iran, they have also made clear that negotiations should be given a chance and that, in any event, multilateral sanctions, hopefully approved by the Security Council, were much preferable to unilateral ones.
"In the absence of any significant progress, we will be seeking to rally international opinion behind additional sanctions," Clinton said this week in Moscow.
Last May, Obama himself said he would wait until the end of the year to assess whether the negotiations track was making sufficient progress to continue his engagement policy or to adopt a more punitive approach.
And while the administration has not endorsed any of the unilateral measures pending before Congress, it has been consulting intensively in recent weeks with its western allies and other powers about what kinds of multilateral sanctions would be most effective if talks broke down.
While the Israeli government, which has described Iran's nuclear programme as an "existential threat" to the Jewish state, has said it backs Obama's engagement strategy, the so-called "Israel Lobby" here, led by the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has been pushing hard to advance sanctions legislation swiftly through Congress.
In applauding passage of the divestment bill this week, AIPAC stressed that "Iran's continued defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding immediate suspension of Tehran's nuclear fuel work ...calls for concerted and forceful sanctions to compel (it) to change its behaviour."
"For diplomacy to succeed, we must provide our diplomats more tools for their diplomatic toolbox," said Republican Rep. Mark Kirk, an IRPSA co-sponsor and a top recipient of campaign funds from political action committees closely linked to AIPAC.
"The Iran Sanctions Enabling Act is a good first step – but it cannot be the last," he said, urging the Democratic leadership to bring IRPSA to the floor "for immediate consideration".
Americans for Peace Now, however, denounced the sanctions push, arguing that "efforts to move them now would appear to be poorly timed, conflicting with the Obama administration's current engagement strategy, which for now puts the emphasis on diplomacy rather than additional sanctions."
Even Berman, the IRPSA's chief Democratic co-sponsor, indicated that he had strong reservations about the moving the bill now, insisting in an unusual statement that it was only "the fourth best option to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons capability".
"My first preference is to resolve the nuclear issue through diplomatic means, and I strongly support the Obama administration's efforts to engage Iran," he said.
"Should engagement not yield the desired results within a very short time, then my second preference would be tough, hard-hitting multilateral sanctions endorsed by the U.N. Security Council," he added. "If those are not possible to obtain, then the third best option is to work with a group of like-minded nations to impose such sanctions."
*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.
(END/2009)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48901
WASHINGTON, Oct 16 (IPS) - As the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama prepares for a critical series of talks about the fate of Iran's nuclear programme, Congress has begun moving long-pending legislation to impose new unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
In just the past few days, the Senate approved a measure, already passed by the House of Representatives, that bans companies that sell Iran gasoline from bidding on contracts for the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).
And the House Thursday approved by an overwhelming 414-6 margin the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act (IRSA) that would permit local and state governments and their pension funds to divest from foreign companies or U.S. subsidiaries with investments of more than 20 million dollars in Iran's energy sector.
Finally, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard Berman, scheduled a vote for Oct. 28 on the long-stalled Iran Petroleum Sanctions Act (IRPSA) bill that would, if passed, impose sanctions on companies that are involved in exporting refined petroleum products to Iran or expanding Tehran's capacity to produce its own refined products.
Moreover, the House Majority Leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer, pledged that he would push for a floor vote on the measure, which is expected to easily pass the Committee, by early November.
While the bills' supporters insist they are trying to give Obama more leverage in the upcoming talks with Iran, the administration has itself declined to endorse any of them, suggesting that unilateral sanctions may prove counterproductive both to its "engagement" strategy with Tehran and to lining up international support, even among its European allies, for multilateral sanctions if the negotiations fail to make progress.
"I think we have not reached a judgement as to which [sanctions] might be the most effective," Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey told senators earlier this month when asked about the IRPSA bill.
"In part because, not only do we want to have the impact on the economy, we want to make sure that [the sanction] is going to affect the decision making in Iran and not target the wrong people in Iran and, similarly, to make sure that we maximise the chance of getting international support for these things," he continued. "If we do not have international support, there'll be diversions."
"Not only is a sanction more effective when they're (sic) broad-based, but it also takes away the political argument that the Iranian government may try to make, which that this is American hostility," added Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg at the same hearing.
Both men suggested that sanctions affecting the general population could actually strengthen popular support for the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whose credibility at home was badly damaged by June's disputed election and its violent aftermath.
The renewed drive for unilateral sanctions comes just days before two critical tests of Iran's willingness to follow through on agreements in principle reached between it and the so-called P5+1 – the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, including the U.S. and Germany – at their meeting in Geneva Oct. 1.
On Monday, the P5+1 will meet at the Vienna headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to work out the technical details of a plan under which Tehran would ship out most of the low-enriched uranium (LEU) it has produced over the last several years to Russia and France for reprocessing into fuel for a small reactor that makes isotopes for nuclear medicines.
In his testimony, Steinberg said actual shipment of the LEU by Tehran would be considered by the administration to be "tangible sign of progress".
Iran has also agreed to grant IAEA inspectors full access Oct. 25 to a newly disclosed nuclear enrichment plant near Qom to ensure that it is being built for civilian purposes only. Assuming the inspection goes smoothly, the P5+1 and Iran are expected to hold a second high-level meeting in early November at which additional confidence-building measures are to be agreed.
While senior administration officials, notably Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have spoken in favour of imposing "crippling sanctions" as a source of pressure on Iran, they have also made clear that negotiations should be given a chance and that, in any event, multilateral sanctions, hopefully approved by the Security Council, were much preferable to unilateral ones.
"In the absence of any significant progress, we will be seeking to rally international opinion behind additional sanctions," Clinton said this week in Moscow.
Last May, Obama himself said he would wait until the end of the year to assess whether the negotiations track was making sufficient progress to continue his engagement policy or to adopt a more punitive approach.
And while the administration has not endorsed any of the unilateral measures pending before Congress, it has been consulting intensively in recent weeks with its western allies and other powers about what kinds of multilateral sanctions would be most effective if talks broke down.
While the Israeli government, which has described Iran's nuclear programme as an "existential threat" to the Jewish state, has said it backs Obama's engagement strategy, the so-called "Israel Lobby" here, led by the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has been pushing hard to advance sanctions legislation swiftly through Congress.
In applauding passage of the divestment bill this week, AIPAC stressed that "Iran's continued defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding immediate suspension of Tehran's nuclear fuel work ...calls for concerted and forceful sanctions to compel (it) to change its behaviour."
"For diplomacy to succeed, we must provide our diplomats more tools for their diplomatic toolbox," said Republican Rep. Mark Kirk, an IRPSA co-sponsor and a top recipient of campaign funds from political action committees closely linked to AIPAC.
"The Iran Sanctions Enabling Act is a good first step – but it cannot be the last," he said, urging the Democratic leadership to bring IRPSA to the floor "for immediate consideration".
Americans for Peace Now, however, denounced the sanctions push, arguing that "efforts to move them now would appear to be poorly timed, conflicting with the Obama administration's current engagement strategy, which for now puts the emphasis on diplomacy rather than additional sanctions."
Even Berman, the IRPSA's chief Democratic co-sponsor, indicated that he had strong reservations about the moving the bill now, insisting in an unusual statement that it was only "the fourth best option to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons capability".
"My first preference is to resolve the nuclear issue through diplomatic means, and I strongly support the Obama administration's efforts to engage Iran," he said.
"Should engagement not yield the desired results within a very short time, then my second preference would be tough, hard-hitting multilateral sanctions endorsed by the U.N. Security Council," he added. "If those are not possible to obtain, then the third best option is to work with a group of like-minded nations to impose such sanctions."
*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.
(END/2009)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48901
POLITICS: U.N. Body Backs War Crimes Charges on Israel, Hamas
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16 (IPS) - The 47-member Human Rights Council (HRC) approved a resolution Friday endorsing war crimes charges against Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, as spelled out in a report by a four-member international fact-finding mission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone.
As expected, the United States threw a protective arm around Israel and voted against the resolution, along with some members of the European Union (EU): Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovakia, as well as Ukraine.
"The voting was predictable," an Asian diplomat told IPS, pointing out that while Western nations voted against the resolution or abstained, most of the developing countries voted in favour.
The vote was 25 in favour, six against, 11 abstentions and five no-shows.
The Geneva-based Council not only endorsed the recommendations of the Goldstone report but also strongly condemned Israeli policies in the occupied territories, including those limiting Palestinian access to their properties and holy sites, particularly in occupied Jerusalem.
Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies told IPS the U.S. vote - and its obvious pressure on governments dependent on U.S. political, financial or military support - "indicates just how out of step the administration of President Barack Obama is on this issue".
"There is a clear double-standard, once again, in the U.S. position between Ambassador Susan Rice's recognition of the primacy of accountability for war crimes in the case of Darfur and Sudan, regardless of any potential impact on future peace talks, while rejecting accountability in the case of Israeli actions in Gaza," she said.
She said the U.S. administration claims to base its foreign policy on a commitment to international cooperation and the rule of law.
It is unfortunate that on the question of war crimes against innocent civilians in Gaza, the United States is continuing its longstanding pattern of Israeli exceptionalism, said Bennis, author of 'Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer.'
"If Washington remains unwilling to hold Israel accountable for its violations, the potential for a new U.S. position in the world - one in which the United States is respected instead of resented, welcomed as a partner instead of feared - will be impossible," she added.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, strongly supportive of Israel, said his organisation was "outraged, but far from surprised" by the Council's endorsement of the Goldstone report.
Describing the resolution as one-sided, Foxman said the vote only proves the Council's "unwavering and biased focus on all things related to Israel".
"We express profound appreciation to the United States and the five other nations which showed their commitment to principles of fairness and moral responsibility by voting against this resolution," he added.
An overwhelming majority of developing countries in the Council, along with Russia, supported the resolution: Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, and Zambia.
The abstentions came from Belgium, Bosnia Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gabon, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Republic of Korea, Slovenia, Uruguay.
The five countries that skipped the voting were Angola, France, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar and Britain.
Naseer Aruri, chancellor professor (emeritus), University of Massachusetts, told IPS it remains to be seen how Israel and the Obama administration will react to the adoption of the Goldstone report.
"The latter action will expose Israelis to possible arrests and criminal prosecution under the principle of universal jurisdiction, when traveling abroad," he noted.
He said the Goldstone report recommends that both Israel and Hamas bring their accused to justice.
"If they don't, they could be facing prosecution in the International Criminal Court (ICC) and it could signal a major diplomatic defeat for the Obama administration," Aruri said.
"If Obama uses more vetoes in the Security Council to protect Israel from the international scrutiny, he would be placing his country in moral jeopardy," he declared.
Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies said Washington also must take into account its own complicity and potential liability in war crimes during Operation Cast Lead, the code-named for the 22-day Israeli military attacks on Gaza last December.
Violations of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, which narrowly constrains Israel's use of U.S.-supplied weapons and military equipment, must be investigated thoroughly and violators held accountable, she added.
"The significance of the Goldstone report overall is not because it exposed war crimes that had not been known before; the significance lies in the comprehensiveness of the assessment, certainly, but most of all in the breadth of the recommendations," Bennis said.
She said it is almost unprecedented for a U.N. human rights report to move so broadly to identify obligations and responsibilities under international law - not only for the alleged perpetrators, but as well for virtually all relevant United nations agencies, as well as for individual governments.
It was particularly so in invoking universal jurisdiction, and most especially in defining obligations and recommendations for global civil society.
She said the reversal of the earlier withdrawal of the report from consideration at the Human Rights Council reflects the significance of the issue not only among Palestinians inside the Occupied Territory, inside Israel and among the diaspora, but as well in international civil society.
"It was that pressure that forced the Palestinian Authority to reverse its wrong-headed rejection of the report," Bennis added.
Aruri said the government of Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, whose term of office expired long ago, had succumbed to pressure being exerted by Israel and the United States to defer all discussion of the Goldstone report until next March.
Nearly two weeks later, however, Abbas succumbed to a different kind of pressure, this time exerted by Palestinians, Arabs, and various members of the U.N. Human Rights Council.
A broad coalition succeeded in getting Abbas to rescind his earlier position.
Undoubtedly, Abbas - who was widely condemned in Palestinian circles, including being accused of treason - could not withstand the pressure, especially that which included credible calls on him to resign, Aruri added.
In a statement issued Friday, Amnesty International said the resolution recommends that the U.N. General Assembly, the next body which is able to consider the Goldstone report, do so during its current session.
"Amnesty International urges the Assembly to demand that both Israel and the Hamas de facto administration in Gaza immediately start independent investigations that meet international standards into alleged war crimes, possible crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international law reported during the conflict," the statement added.
(END/2009)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48899
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16 (IPS) - The 47-member Human Rights Council (HRC) approved a resolution Friday endorsing war crimes charges against Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, as spelled out in a report by a four-member international fact-finding mission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone.
As expected, the United States threw a protective arm around Israel and voted against the resolution, along with some members of the European Union (EU): Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovakia, as well as Ukraine.
"The voting was predictable," an Asian diplomat told IPS, pointing out that while Western nations voted against the resolution or abstained, most of the developing countries voted in favour.
The vote was 25 in favour, six against, 11 abstentions and five no-shows.
The Geneva-based Council not only endorsed the recommendations of the Goldstone report but also strongly condemned Israeli policies in the occupied territories, including those limiting Palestinian access to their properties and holy sites, particularly in occupied Jerusalem.
Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies told IPS the U.S. vote - and its obvious pressure on governments dependent on U.S. political, financial or military support - "indicates just how out of step the administration of President Barack Obama is on this issue".
"There is a clear double-standard, once again, in the U.S. position between Ambassador Susan Rice's recognition of the primacy of accountability for war crimes in the case of Darfur and Sudan, regardless of any potential impact on future peace talks, while rejecting accountability in the case of Israeli actions in Gaza," she said.
She said the U.S. administration claims to base its foreign policy on a commitment to international cooperation and the rule of law.
It is unfortunate that on the question of war crimes against innocent civilians in Gaza, the United States is continuing its longstanding pattern of Israeli exceptionalism, said Bennis, author of 'Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer.'
"If Washington remains unwilling to hold Israel accountable for its violations, the potential for a new U.S. position in the world - one in which the United States is respected instead of resented, welcomed as a partner instead of feared - will be impossible," she added.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, strongly supportive of Israel, said his organisation was "outraged, but far from surprised" by the Council's endorsement of the Goldstone report.
Describing the resolution as one-sided, Foxman said the vote only proves the Council's "unwavering and biased focus on all things related to Israel".
"We express profound appreciation to the United States and the five other nations which showed their commitment to principles of fairness and moral responsibility by voting against this resolution," he added.
An overwhelming majority of developing countries in the Council, along with Russia, supported the resolution: Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, and Zambia.
The abstentions came from Belgium, Bosnia Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gabon, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Republic of Korea, Slovenia, Uruguay.
The five countries that skipped the voting were Angola, France, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar and Britain.
Naseer Aruri, chancellor professor (emeritus), University of Massachusetts, told IPS it remains to be seen how Israel and the Obama administration will react to the adoption of the Goldstone report.
"The latter action will expose Israelis to possible arrests and criminal prosecution under the principle of universal jurisdiction, when traveling abroad," he noted.
He said the Goldstone report recommends that both Israel and Hamas bring their accused to justice.
"If they don't, they could be facing prosecution in the International Criminal Court (ICC) and it could signal a major diplomatic defeat for the Obama administration," Aruri said.
"If Obama uses more vetoes in the Security Council to protect Israel from the international scrutiny, he would be placing his country in moral jeopardy," he declared.
Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies said Washington also must take into account its own complicity and potential liability in war crimes during Operation Cast Lead, the code-named for the 22-day Israeli military attacks on Gaza last December.
Violations of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, which narrowly constrains Israel's use of U.S.-supplied weapons and military equipment, must be investigated thoroughly and violators held accountable, she added.
"The significance of the Goldstone report overall is not because it exposed war crimes that had not been known before; the significance lies in the comprehensiveness of the assessment, certainly, but most of all in the breadth of the recommendations," Bennis said.
She said it is almost unprecedented for a U.N. human rights report to move so broadly to identify obligations and responsibilities under international law - not only for the alleged perpetrators, but as well for virtually all relevant United nations agencies, as well as for individual governments.
It was particularly so in invoking universal jurisdiction, and most especially in defining obligations and recommendations for global civil society.
She said the reversal of the earlier withdrawal of the report from consideration at the Human Rights Council reflects the significance of the issue not only among Palestinians inside the Occupied Territory, inside Israel and among the diaspora, but as well in international civil society.
"It was that pressure that forced the Palestinian Authority to reverse its wrong-headed rejection of the report," Bennis added.
Aruri said the government of Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, whose term of office expired long ago, had succumbed to pressure being exerted by Israel and the United States to defer all discussion of the Goldstone report until next March.
Nearly two weeks later, however, Abbas succumbed to a different kind of pressure, this time exerted by Palestinians, Arabs, and various members of the U.N. Human Rights Council.
A broad coalition succeeded in getting Abbas to rescind his earlier position.
Undoubtedly, Abbas - who was widely condemned in Palestinian circles, including being accused of treason - could not withstand the pressure, especially that which included credible calls on him to resign, Aruri added.
In a statement issued Friday, Amnesty International said the resolution recommends that the U.N. General Assembly, the next body which is able to consider the Goldstone report, do so during its current session.
"Amnesty International urges the Assembly to demand that both Israel and the Hamas de facto administration in Gaza immediately start independent investigations that meet international standards into alleged war crimes, possible crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international law reported during the conflict," the statement added.
(END/2009)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48899
DEVELOPMENT: More Than a Billion Going Hungry
By Eli Clifton
WASHINGTON, Oct 16 (IPS) - The global economic crisis has led to an historic increase in hunger and undernourishment in the world's poorest countries, with broad consequences for political security and stability, according to two reports released for World Food Day, observed Friday.
More than a billion people are undernourished worldwide, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP). This figure includes 642 million people suffering from chronic hunger in Asia and the Pacific; 265 million in Latin America and the Caribbean; 42 million in the Near East and North Africa; and 15 million in developed countries.
"The most striking and shocking fact in this report is that now more than one billion people are going hungry," WFP spokesperson Bettina Luescher told IPS. "As an aid organisation, this is unbelievable and unexpected that today one in six people are going hungry."
The increasing levels of undernourishment have been a decade-long trend, the report says, which has continued steadily in both periods of low prices and economic prosperity - as experienced in the early 2000s - and high prices and economic downturn - as seen during the global financial crisis. This implies fundamental problems with the "global food security governance system".
"World leaders have reacted forcefully to the financial and economic crisis and succeeded in mobilising billions of dollars in a short time period. The same strong action is needed now to combat hunger and poverty," said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf.
"The rising number of hungry people is intolerable. We have the economic and technical means to make hunger disappear, what is missing is a stronger political will to eradicate hunger forever," he said. "Investing in agriculture in developing countries is key as a healthy agricultural sector is essential not only to overcome hunger and poverty but also to ensure overall economic growth and peace and stability in the world."
The FAO emphasised that the current situation facing the world's poorest populations has deteriorated further during the global economic downturn. People already vulnerable to food insecurity are experiencing even greater difficulties now that food prices have gone up, migrant remittances have declined, and income and employment levels have dropped.
"I think what we're seeing is that people who have not much to do with the financial crisis are affected the worse. First they're hit with high food prices and then the financial crisis. In some places it may have taken time to hit them, but now they are being affected by it," said Luescher.
Over the last two decades, developing economies have become more integrated in the global economy, making them more vulnerable to global economic shocks and recession.
"The 17 largest Latin American economies, for example, received 184 billion dollars in financial inflows in 2007, which was roughly halved in 2008 to 89 billion dollars and is expected to be halved again to 43 billion dollars in 2009," said the WFP report.
"This means that that consumption must be reduced, and for some low-income food-deficit countries, adjusting consumption may mean reducing badly needed food imports and other imported items such as health-care equipment and medicines," it said.
Also in observance of World Food Day, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) released its own report reflecting similar trends to those discussed in the U.N. report, and offered a detailed map of the worldwide progress in reducing hunger in its Global Hunger Index (GHI).
The report evidences the slow progress in reducing hunger, with the GHI dropping by only one quarter since 1990.
Significant progress has been made in Southeast Asia, the Near East, North Africa and Latin America, but hunger levels remain high in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
IFPRI says that the countries with the largest percentage improvement in their GHI were Kuwait, Tunisia, Fiji, Malaysia, and Turkey. The countries with the largest absolute improvements in their score were Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nicaragua and Vietnam.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the countries with the highest levels of hunger, and the highest GHI scores, were Burundi, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone.
Noticeably, most of the countries with high GHI scores have experienced war or violent conflicts which have led to poverty and food insecurity, says the IFPRI.
Like the U.N. report, the GHI points to the link between the financial crisis and food instability as a key and complex problem to address.
The IFPRI also emphasised that fighting global hunger is a crucial step in addressing gender inequality, since GHI data shows that higher levels of hunger are correlated with lower literacy levels and less access to education for women.
The focus on food security is shared not just by the U.N. and NGOs with an interest in food policy, but also by massive charities like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which spends billions on public health challenges and development in some of the world's poorest countries.
"Melinda and I believe that helping the poorest small-holder farmers grow more crops and get them to market is the world's single most powerful lever for reducing hunger and poverty," Bill Gates said at the announcement of a 120-million-dollar grant to increase the yields of small farmers in poor countries.
"The next Green Revolution has to be greener than the first," Gates said. "It must be guided by small-holder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and the environment."
(END/2009)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48898
WASHINGTON, Oct 16 (IPS) - The global economic crisis has led to an historic increase in hunger and undernourishment in the world's poorest countries, with broad consequences for political security and stability, according to two reports released for World Food Day, observed Friday.
More than a billion people are undernourished worldwide, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP). This figure includes 642 million people suffering from chronic hunger in Asia and the Pacific; 265 million in Latin America and the Caribbean; 42 million in the Near East and North Africa; and 15 million in developed countries.
"The most striking and shocking fact in this report is that now more than one billion people are going hungry," WFP spokesperson Bettina Luescher told IPS. "As an aid organisation, this is unbelievable and unexpected that today one in six people are going hungry."
The increasing levels of undernourishment have been a decade-long trend, the report says, which has continued steadily in both periods of low prices and economic prosperity - as experienced in the early 2000s - and high prices and economic downturn - as seen during the global financial crisis. This implies fundamental problems with the "global food security governance system".
"World leaders have reacted forcefully to the financial and economic crisis and succeeded in mobilising billions of dollars in a short time period. The same strong action is needed now to combat hunger and poverty," said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf.
"The rising number of hungry people is intolerable. We have the economic and technical means to make hunger disappear, what is missing is a stronger political will to eradicate hunger forever," he said. "Investing in agriculture in developing countries is key as a healthy agricultural sector is essential not only to overcome hunger and poverty but also to ensure overall economic growth and peace and stability in the world."
The FAO emphasised that the current situation facing the world's poorest populations has deteriorated further during the global economic downturn. People already vulnerable to food insecurity are experiencing even greater difficulties now that food prices have gone up, migrant remittances have declined, and income and employment levels have dropped.
"I think what we're seeing is that people who have not much to do with the financial crisis are affected the worse. First they're hit with high food prices and then the financial crisis. In some places it may have taken time to hit them, but now they are being affected by it," said Luescher.
Over the last two decades, developing economies have become more integrated in the global economy, making them more vulnerable to global economic shocks and recession.
"The 17 largest Latin American economies, for example, received 184 billion dollars in financial inflows in 2007, which was roughly halved in 2008 to 89 billion dollars and is expected to be halved again to 43 billion dollars in 2009," said the WFP report.
"This means that that consumption must be reduced, and for some low-income food-deficit countries, adjusting consumption may mean reducing badly needed food imports and other imported items such as health-care equipment and medicines," it said.
Also in observance of World Food Day, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) released its own report reflecting similar trends to those discussed in the U.N. report, and offered a detailed map of the worldwide progress in reducing hunger in its Global Hunger Index (GHI).
The report evidences the slow progress in reducing hunger, with the GHI dropping by only one quarter since 1990.
Significant progress has been made in Southeast Asia, the Near East, North Africa and Latin America, but hunger levels remain high in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
IFPRI says that the countries with the largest percentage improvement in their GHI were Kuwait, Tunisia, Fiji, Malaysia, and Turkey. The countries with the largest absolute improvements in their score were Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nicaragua and Vietnam.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the countries with the highest levels of hunger, and the highest GHI scores, were Burundi, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone.
Noticeably, most of the countries with high GHI scores have experienced war or violent conflicts which have led to poverty and food insecurity, says the IFPRI.
Like the U.N. report, the GHI points to the link between the financial crisis and food instability as a key and complex problem to address.
The IFPRI also emphasised that fighting global hunger is a crucial step in addressing gender inequality, since GHI data shows that higher levels of hunger are correlated with lower literacy levels and less access to education for women.
The focus on food security is shared not just by the U.N. and NGOs with an interest in food policy, but also by massive charities like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which spends billions on public health challenges and development in some of the world's poorest countries.
"Melinda and I believe that helping the poorest small-holder farmers grow more crops and get them to market is the world's single most powerful lever for reducing hunger and poverty," Bill Gates said at the announcement of a 120-million-dollar grant to increase the yields of small farmers in poor countries.
"The next Green Revolution has to be greener than the first," Gates said. "It must be guided by small-holder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and the environment."
(END/2009)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48898
Dr. Frankenstein of Fox News Creates Another Right-Wing Monster
By Karl Frisch, Media Matters for America
Posted on October 14, 2009, Printed on October 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143294/
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, her classic work from 1818, Dr. Victor Frankenstein brings life to the lifeless. Larger and more powerful than an average man, Dr. Frankenstein's creation strikes fear in the hearts of those it encounters. Remember, this monster was only man-like -- a far cry from the real thing.
With Halloween just around the corner, Fox News president Roger Ailes -- a former Republican communications guru -- is looking more and more like the news industry's Dr. Frankenstein. For months now, he has been putting the finishing touches on his first monster, Fox News Channel, just as its bride, Fox Business Network, is showing signs of life.
His main tactic has been all too apparent: steal conservative media figures from real news networks like CNN, MSNBC, and ABC in order to build something new from the pieces -- something that only superficially resembles a legitimate news outlet.
Last spring, conspiracy-loving crybaby Glenn Beck claimed that Ailes wooed him over to Fox News from CNN Headline News by stressing the conservative network's opposition to the president. Beck even told one newspaper that Ailes had likened Fox News' battle against Obama to the Alamo.
Then there was Tucker Carlson in May. Fresh off yet another canceled show -- first with CNN and then with MSNBC -- and a brief stint on ABC's Dancing With The Stars, the conservative man-boy cable host known for his bow-tie fetish landed with a bang at Fox News, declaring, "I've waited a long time to get here."
Luring two big right-wing names to Fox News Channel's roster allowed Ailes to focus on Fox Business Network, his answer to NBC Universal's successful business news outlet, CNBC.
Since its launch in late 2007, Fox Business has been plagued with horrible ratings. In fact, CNBC sometimes outperformed the new conservative business outlet by a margin of 10-to-1. It's hardly surprising, then, that Ailes has turned his focus to the struggling network.
Just last month, Fox Business announced that it would begin carrying a weekday simulcast of Don Imus' radio program. Imus is, of course, far better known for his long history of outrageous and at times racist and sexist comments than for his business-reporting chops. In fact, he'll likely represent the word "business" in his new employer's name about as well as his new colleagues represent the word "news" in Fox News Channel.
Imus comes to Fox Business from the little-known and little-watched RFD-TV, his television home following his high-profile firing from MSNBC and CBS radio in 2007 for referring to the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos."
September would prove to be a barn burner of a month for Ailes. In addition to Imus, John Stossel, a correspondent for the ABC newsmagazine 20/20, also announced his intention to join Fox Business. Stossel will no doubt feel right at home -- he has a long history of denying the scientific reality of global climate change and promoting a cornucopia of right-wing myths and distortions. So much so that Fox's Chris Wallace described Stossel as a "very natural fit at Fox because he is a contrarian, and he's a conservative."
So what's next for Fox Business? Well, according to recent reports, CNN's immigrant-bashing conspiracy theorist Lou Dobbs met with Ailes over dinner last month. Could Dobbs be taking his loony quest for President Obama's already-available birth certificate to Fox Business? It seems plausible. Years before CNN turned over its airwaves to Dobbs for his nightly broadcasts of immigrant-smearing hysteria and right-wing fringe causes of the day, Dobbs was something of a respected financial news anchor.
Surely, Imus, Stossel, and Dobbs won't be enough to breathe new life into Ailes' monster bride of a network. He's going to need a few more high-profile names before he's able to shout "It's alive!" from the rooftops. But who?
Perhaps Ailes could sign Michael Savage, the third-highest-rated radio host in America, who was fired by MSNBC in 2003 for describing a caller as "a sodomite" and telling him to "get AIDS and die." While he's at it, he could also snatch up Pat Buchanan, the former CNN and MSNBC host who currently serves as resident cranky uncle and political commentator for the latter. Surely, they could use someone with his decades-long history of racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, defending of Hitler, and whitewashing of the Holocaust.
We might as well refer to Ailes as Dr. Fox-enstein at this point. After all, his relentless abuse of the journalistic form is just as frightening as Shelley's chilling fictional tale of scientific experimentation run amok -- perhaps more so.
© 2009 Media Matters for America All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143294/
Posted on October 14, 2009, Printed on October 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143294/
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, her classic work from 1818, Dr. Victor Frankenstein brings life to the lifeless. Larger and more powerful than an average man, Dr. Frankenstein's creation strikes fear in the hearts of those it encounters. Remember, this monster was only man-like -- a far cry from the real thing.
With Halloween just around the corner, Fox News president Roger Ailes -- a former Republican communications guru -- is looking more and more like the news industry's Dr. Frankenstein. For months now, he has been putting the finishing touches on his first monster, Fox News Channel, just as its bride, Fox Business Network, is showing signs of life.
His main tactic has been all too apparent: steal conservative media figures from real news networks like CNN, MSNBC, and ABC in order to build something new from the pieces -- something that only superficially resembles a legitimate news outlet.
Last spring, conspiracy-loving crybaby Glenn Beck claimed that Ailes wooed him over to Fox News from CNN Headline News by stressing the conservative network's opposition to the president. Beck even told one newspaper that Ailes had likened Fox News' battle against Obama to the Alamo.
Then there was Tucker Carlson in May. Fresh off yet another canceled show -- first with CNN and then with MSNBC -- and a brief stint on ABC's Dancing With The Stars, the conservative man-boy cable host known for his bow-tie fetish landed with a bang at Fox News, declaring, "I've waited a long time to get here."
Luring two big right-wing names to Fox News Channel's roster allowed Ailes to focus on Fox Business Network, his answer to NBC Universal's successful business news outlet, CNBC.
Since its launch in late 2007, Fox Business has been plagued with horrible ratings. In fact, CNBC sometimes outperformed the new conservative business outlet by a margin of 10-to-1. It's hardly surprising, then, that Ailes has turned his focus to the struggling network.
Just last month, Fox Business announced that it would begin carrying a weekday simulcast of Don Imus' radio program. Imus is, of course, far better known for his long history of outrageous and at times racist and sexist comments than for his business-reporting chops. In fact, he'll likely represent the word "business" in his new employer's name about as well as his new colleagues represent the word "news" in Fox News Channel.
Imus comes to Fox Business from the little-known and little-watched RFD-TV, his television home following his high-profile firing from MSNBC and CBS radio in 2007 for referring to the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos."
September would prove to be a barn burner of a month for Ailes. In addition to Imus, John Stossel, a correspondent for the ABC newsmagazine 20/20, also announced his intention to join Fox Business. Stossel will no doubt feel right at home -- he has a long history of denying the scientific reality of global climate change and promoting a cornucopia of right-wing myths and distortions. So much so that Fox's Chris Wallace described Stossel as a "very natural fit at Fox because he is a contrarian, and he's a conservative."
So what's next for Fox Business? Well, according to recent reports, CNN's immigrant-bashing conspiracy theorist Lou Dobbs met with Ailes over dinner last month. Could Dobbs be taking his loony quest for President Obama's already-available birth certificate to Fox Business? It seems plausible. Years before CNN turned over its airwaves to Dobbs for his nightly broadcasts of immigrant-smearing hysteria and right-wing fringe causes of the day, Dobbs was something of a respected financial news anchor.
Surely, Imus, Stossel, and Dobbs won't be enough to breathe new life into Ailes' monster bride of a network. He's going to need a few more high-profile names before he's able to shout "It's alive!" from the rooftops. But who?
Perhaps Ailes could sign Michael Savage, the third-highest-rated radio host in America, who was fired by MSNBC in 2003 for describing a caller as "a sodomite" and telling him to "get AIDS and die." While he's at it, he could also snatch up Pat Buchanan, the former CNN and MSNBC host who currently serves as resident cranky uncle and political commentator for the latter. Surely, they could use someone with his decades-long history of racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, defending of Hitler, and whitewashing of the Holocaust.
We might as well refer to Ailes as Dr. Fox-enstein at this point. After all, his relentless abuse of the journalistic form is just as frightening as Shelley's chilling fictional tale of scientific experimentation run amok -- perhaps more so.
© 2009 Media Matters for America All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143294/
Politicians Have Failed in Efforts to Stave Off Climate Change, Now It's Up to Us
By Bill McKibben, Mother Jones
Posted on October 17, 2009, Printed on October 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143282/
I didn't make the trip to Thailand for the pre-Copenhagen negotiating session last week, and I'm glad I didn't. For one thing, the weather was doing its best to remind delegates what global warming feels like: Bangkok can do hot and muggy like no place on Earth. For another, nothing much was happening -- the big countries continued to refrain from making any promises about how much they'd cut emissions or how much they'd fork over to help the developing world leapfrog past fossil fuel. As Kevin Grandia, editor of the invaluable DeSmogBlog put it, "At the pace I have seen here in Bangkok there is little hope that these issues will be resolved by the time the negotiations end here on Friday. If these issues couldn't be resolved in two weeks here, it would take a miracle for them to be in the can for Copenhagen."
Meanwhile, in Washington, senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer issued the Senate version of climate change legislation, which most environmentalists took as a modest improvement on the modest bill the House has already passed. It works the same cap-and-trade way, at the same all-too-deliberate speed. And it had barely been introduced before the president's climate czarina, Carol Browner, said there was no chance it would make its way through Congress in time for Copenhagen anyway. Which everyone kind of already knew -- but still, if there had been any buzz to begin with it would have been a buzzkill. About the only good news: Norway announced it will aim for even deeper cuts, reducing its carbon emissions 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 if other developed countries will go along. Given Norway's position in the world carbon league, this is akin to the guy who stopped drinking in 1967 announcing he's getting on the wagon -- it somehow served only to underscore the depressing reality of climate gridlock.
In short: The scientific method has successfully identified the biggest problem the world has ever faced. It's worked great. The political method has not worked so well. In fact it's lurching toward something between abject and embarrassing failure.
And yet the game isn't quite over yet, because one team has barely begun to take the field. And that's the team you're on -- the, uh, people. For 20 years we've left climate policy up to the kind of people now failing to solve things in Bangkok. We've had experts of every kind, but we haven't had -- outside of, say, Norway -- enough of a movement to be heard.
Which is why, all the bad news aside, I'm in a good mood. We're just under two weeks away from our global day of action at 350.org, and the movement has gone viral, turned into a monster. It's the first campaign ever built around a scientific data point (scientists now tell us that 350 parts per million is the most carbon we can safely have in the atmosphere, a number we're already past). Every day new people appear who are organizing big actions; yesterday we found out that organizers in Iran have managed to organize four actions for the October 24 day. They've even set up a website in Farsi. Ditto for events in Yemen, ditto Palestine, ditto Burundi. Thousands of actions, each more creative than the last. Artists too: Here’s Barry Lopez writing an exactly 350-word short story, the first in a series of writers that will be popping up in the next two weeks. I'm going to be in organizing mode these next 14 days, with not much time for reflecting: If you hear from me it will be in a hectoring tone. Like this: If people in Iran can get it together to organize an action, so can you.
This article is part of our Assignment 2020 project, a long-term reporting effort on the most important story of our time.
Bill McKibben is the author of 10 books, most recently Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont.
© 2009 Mother Jones All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143282/
Posted on October 17, 2009, Printed on October 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143282/
I didn't make the trip to Thailand for the pre-Copenhagen negotiating session last week, and I'm glad I didn't. For one thing, the weather was doing its best to remind delegates what global warming feels like: Bangkok can do hot and muggy like no place on Earth. For another, nothing much was happening -- the big countries continued to refrain from making any promises about how much they'd cut emissions or how much they'd fork over to help the developing world leapfrog past fossil fuel. As Kevin Grandia, editor of the invaluable DeSmogBlog put it, "At the pace I have seen here in Bangkok there is little hope that these issues will be resolved by the time the negotiations end here on Friday. If these issues couldn't be resolved in two weeks here, it would take a miracle for them to be in the can for Copenhagen."
Meanwhile, in Washington, senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer issued the Senate version of climate change legislation, which most environmentalists took as a modest improvement on the modest bill the House has already passed. It works the same cap-and-trade way, at the same all-too-deliberate speed. And it had barely been introduced before the president's climate czarina, Carol Browner, said there was no chance it would make its way through Congress in time for Copenhagen anyway. Which everyone kind of already knew -- but still, if there had been any buzz to begin with it would have been a buzzkill. About the only good news: Norway announced it will aim for even deeper cuts, reducing its carbon emissions 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 if other developed countries will go along. Given Norway's position in the world carbon league, this is akin to the guy who stopped drinking in 1967 announcing he's getting on the wagon -- it somehow served only to underscore the depressing reality of climate gridlock.
In short: The scientific method has successfully identified the biggest problem the world has ever faced. It's worked great. The political method has not worked so well. In fact it's lurching toward something between abject and embarrassing failure.
And yet the game isn't quite over yet, because one team has barely begun to take the field. And that's the team you're on -- the, uh, people. For 20 years we've left climate policy up to the kind of people now failing to solve things in Bangkok. We've had experts of every kind, but we haven't had -- outside of, say, Norway -- enough of a movement to be heard.
Which is why, all the bad news aside, I'm in a good mood. We're just under two weeks away from our global day of action at 350.org, and the movement has gone viral, turned into a monster. It's the first campaign ever built around a scientific data point (scientists now tell us that 350 parts per million is the most carbon we can safely have in the atmosphere, a number we're already past). Every day new people appear who are organizing big actions; yesterday we found out that organizers in Iran have managed to organize four actions for the October 24 day. They've even set up a website in Farsi. Ditto for events in Yemen, ditto Palestine, ditto Burundi. Thousands of actions, each more creative than the last. Artists too: Here’s Barry Lopez writing an exactly 350-word short story, the first in a series of writers that will be popping up in the next two weeks. I'm going to be in organizing mode these next 14 days, with not much time for reflecting: If you hear from me it will be in a hectoring tone. Like this: If people in Iran can get it together to organize an action, so can you.
This article is part of our Assignment 2020 project, a long-term reporting effort on the most important story of our time.
Bill McKibben is the author of 10 books, most recently Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont.
© 2009 Mother Jones All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143282/
"Clean, Safe and High-Value" Neighborhoods Are Nice Ways of Saying "White" Without Bringing Race into It
By Rich Benjamin, Hyperion Books
Posted on October 16, 2009, Printed on October 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143337/
The following is an excerpt from Searching for Whitopia by Rich Benjamin (Hyperion, 2009).
In twenty-first-century America, how do so many Whitopias hatch and flourish?
A few white readers may protest that their neighborhood’s appeal has nothing to do with its racial composition. The homogeneity of where they live is “irrelevant” or “coincidental,” they say. But divorcing a Whitopia’s appeal from its predominantly white composition is like extracting the marshmallow from the s’more. Impossible. Each is fundamental to the other.
Whites may not move to a place simply because it teems with other white people. Rather, to many Americans, a place’s whiteness implies other qualities that are desirable. Americans associate a homogenous white neighborhood with higher property values, friendliness, orderliness, hospitability, cleanliness, safety, and comfort. These seemingly race-neutral qualities are subconsciously inseparable from race and class in many whites’ minds. Race is often used as a proxy for those neighborhood traits.
Through most of the twentieth century, racial discrimination was deliberate and intentional. Today, racial segregation and division often result from habits, policies, and institutions that are not explicitly designed to discriminate. Contrary to popular belief, discrimination or segregation do not require animus. They thrive even in the absence of prejudice or ill will.
It’s common to have racism without “racists.”
The law does not forbid segregated or discriminating neighborhoods. It simply forbids intentional discrimination. Successful plaintiffs in a discrimination lawsuit must prove that someone intended racial bias.
And the legal standard to establish proof of that intent is very high: The plaintiff must present a “smoking gun” and this particular gun is often impossible to furnish. The 1973 Supreme Court decision San Antonio v. Rodriguez held that a school funding system based on local property taxes that perpetuated egregious disparities in per-pupil spending between mostly white districts and mostly minority districts does not violate the Constitution, because the plaintiffs could not prove that the funding differences emerged from intentional racial discrimination. Another landmark Supreme Court decision, Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp (1977), reinforced this “intent doctrine”: The court ruled that a suburban village did not discriminate, because it did not intend to discriminate when it set-up zoning that disproportionately harmed racial minorities.
There is a terrible disconnect between our everyday experiences and the law: In day-to-day life, racial inequity continues without intent, yet courts require evidence of intent before the law can acknowledge or effectively confront discrimination. Regrettably, the absence of explicit intent has become a common crutch that justifies private decisions that wreak racial havoc upon minorities.
Not to know what has been transacted in the past is to be always a child, said Cicero.
The history of the U.S. housing market shows the corrosive influence of discriminatory public policy on private decision-making: For many decades, private lenders, neighborhoods, and citizens adopted intolerant public policies. Discriminatory government behavior was aped by the public, and blended seamlessly into the “free market.” Covert and overt, these segregating and unjust public and private practices made it difficult, if not impossible, for blacks to own homes in broad swaths of America’s suburbs.
From 1934 to 1962, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) underwrote $120 billion in new housing. Less than 2 percent of that went to nonwhites. From 1938 to 1962, the FHA insured the mortgages on nearly one third of all new housing in the United States. Its Underwriting Manuals, however, considered blacks an “adverse influence” on property values and instructed personnel not to insure mortgages on homes unless they were in “racially homogenous” white neighborhoods. Under its eligibility ranking system, the FHA often refused to lend money to or underwrite loans for whites if they moved to areas where people of color lived. Some scholars now call the government’s handiwork a “$120 billion head start” on white home ownership, on white equity, and on whites’ ability to pass along wealth from one generation to the next.
The private sector then played its part. Banks regularly “redlined,” denying credit to qualified black borrowers. Individuals and neighborhoods, taking the Federal Housing Administration’s cue, maintained “restrictive covenants” to ban blacks from purchasing homes.
Home ownership through a thirty-year mortgage has long been the primary mechanism by which most American families created wealth. So deferred home ownership opportunities have compounded economic disadvantages for racial minorities.
Segregation is no longer codified by law; it is propped up by the “innocuous” and “nonracial” choices local governments and average citizens eagerly make. One warm afternoon, Brian Dill, the vice president for economic development in Forsyth County, Georgia, a lily-white upscale exurb north of Atlanta, tells me that his county has resisted zoning for apartments and condos in fear of future “blight.” A dissenting voice in his county, Dill wishes Forsyth would allow for more varieties of housing in order “to recruit and retain a diverse workforce.” Nationwide, municipal governments enact suburban land-use and zoning policies to promote larger lot development, to sustain private property values, to restrict suburban rental housing, all of which limit the influx of black and Latino households.
Such public and private behavior continues residential segregation, inflicting a double whammy: The residential segregation furthers unacceptable disparities in wealth between the races, and it creates a geography of opportunity, determining who has access to the valuable resources that improve one’s life.
Thirty years after the civil rights era, the United States remains a residentially segregated society in which non-Hispanic whites, Latinos, and blacks inhabit different neighborhoods with a vastly different quality of services and opportunities.
In spite of decades-long income gains among Latinos and blacks, non-Hispanic white households enjoyed a median net worth of $79,400 — eight times the net worth of Latino households and ten times the net worth of black households. Even at similar income levels, significant wealth gaps between the races remain. In terms of wealth, America is now the most unequal country in the industrialized world.
Most Whitopians I encounter don’t purposefully practice racial discrimination and don’t give segregation much thought. Rather, they engage in a form of “opportunity mapping.” Like geocachers on a treasure hunt, they chase communities according to “opportunity indicators”: housing, education, medical facilities, crime rates, perceived sense of safety, outdoor amenities, and social comfort (simpatico values). James, who is over the moon in Whitopia, says he literally created a spreadsheet charting his “wish list” and “won’t list,” then identified five communities congenial to those lists, crunched some numbers, checked the results against his wife’s common-sense sniff test, and settled on Utah’s Dixie.
Voilà .
Not only do whites follow the opportunity, they leverage their connections and capture public resources (e.g., tax dollars) to bring opportunity along with them. The geography of opportunity — or, the geography of homogeneity — is becoming frighteningly entrenched. Such geography forecasts trouble for our democracy.
“Geography is more important than before because spatial segregation has not just residential but economic implications,” according to Roberto Suro, founder of the Pew Hispanic Center and a preeminent scholar of race in America. “The wholesale shift of the middle class to the suburbs has been followed by the movement of economic activity outside the urban core. As a result, the landscape is clearly demarcated into zones of privilege and zones of abandonment. Society concentrates its best resources — green spaces, doctors’ offices, new schools, and sewer lines — in some areas, neglecting others. In the United States, this separation still has an important racial component, because most of the people living in the zones of privilege are white, of course, and those in the zones of abandonment are not.”
Over all, levels of residential segregation remain high for Latinos and blacks, says Douglas Massey, the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, and a world-renowned expert on race. “According to the latest data, half of all urban African Americans live under extreme conditions of racial isolation and another third live under conditions that would qualify as high segregation for any other group.” Modest declines in blacks’ segregation have occurred in cities with small black populations like Seattle, Tucson, San Jose, and Minneapolis, according to Massey.
“Asians and light-skinned blacks and Hispanics seem to be able to take advantage of socioeconomic mobility and gain entrée to advantaged, integrated neighborhoods,” he adds. “The black/non-black divide continues to loom as a major cleavage in American society. And segregation on the basis of class has been rising. Poor dark-skinned minorities are confined to very disadvantaged neighborhoods, while affluent and educated minorities share more advantaged neighborhoods with similarly situated whites, especially if the minorities have light skin.”
The philosophy and policies that underlie desegregation are under intense assault from administrative actions, voter initiatives, and court cases. The Supreme Court’s 2007 landmark rulings in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and in Meredith v. Jefferson prohibited assigning students to public schools for the purpose of achieving racial integration. These court rulings also declined to recognize racial balancing as a “compelling state interest.”
The rise of Whitopia dovetails with the nationwide decline in support for racial integration. In 1964, 41 percent of Americans wanted the federal government to integrate our public schools. By the early 1990s, 95 percent of Americans wanted integrated schools in principle, but only 34 percent wanted the federal government to help make integration a reality. By the early 2000s, our public schools continued their slide toward re-segregation: They are less integrated now than in 1970.
Prepositions can help orient us around the varieties of racism. Interpersonal racism exists between people. Institutional racism exists within institutions. Structural racism exists across institutions, public policy, and other important domains (education, the judiciary, real estate, etc.).
The difference between interpersonal racism and structural racism is huge. In combating each, we might consider C. Wright Mills’s distinction between troubles and problems. Troubles are what individuals have. Problems are what groups create and then like to ignore. Interpersonal racism is only a trouble. Structural racism is a problem.
Structural racism is baked into our national psyche and behavior. It is “the blind interaction between institutions, policies and practices, which inevitably perpetuates barriers to opportunities and racial disparities,” according to the Center for Social Inclusion, a non-partisan research organization. So the PC-diversity racket badgers us into “sensitivity,” but has little to say about structural racism. And the conservative echo chamber upbraids black leaders for churlish racial asides, with no regard to the target of the leaders’ agitation: structural racism. We fumble in defining and identifying structural racism, so we are reluctant to acknowledge it. Even when structural racism is acknowledged, its ambiguity and enormity frighten us out of action.
Picture this. A government agency decides to build low-income housing for low-income Latinos and blacks. The agency “fails to look for locations near jobs and important infrastructure, like working schools, decent public transportation and other services,” the Center for Social Inclusion’s literature explains. In fact, the new housing is built in a poor, mostly black and Latino part of town. “When the housing is built, the school district, already under-funded, has new residents too poor to contribute to its tax base. The local government spends its limited resources on transportation to connect largely white, well-to-do suburban commuters to their downtown jobs. The public housing residents are left isolated, in under-funded schools, with no transportation to job centers. Whole communities of people of color lose opportunities for a good education, quality housing, living wage jobs, services and support systems.”
When asked about his county’s white homogeneity, Norman Baggs, a longtime resident of Forsyth County, Georgia, and former editor and publisher of the Forsyth County News, replies: “There’s a suburban elitism among people who move into communities like this.” Baggs remembers attending a public meeting years ago where a woman stood up to say she lived in a $150,000 house, but didn’t want to look out her window at a $100,000 house. “By that elitism, you restrict, negatively, the ability of certain groups of people to come here and live.” Baggs attributes the “elitism” to county officials, developers, and residents.
On my journey through Whitopia, examples of structural racism surface over and over—from how towns and neighborhoods are zoned, to how chambers of commerce favor or discourage certain newcomers and businesses, to how political and business establishments address social conflict (stay tuned on Forsyth County, Georgia). If whites and nonwhites interact pleasantly on a one-to-one basis, how does a Whitopia mushroom? Structural racism is what we need to train our eyes to see.
Some Whitopians are indifferent to their community’s homogeneity with downright orneriness: Why do you have to make race an issue!? And others with Zen serenity: We don’t let it be an issue for us ;-> Whitopia is a tale of racial segregation, abetted by Uncle Sam, by local governments, by business interests, and by individuals, all of whom say they are offering or chasing powerful “nonracial” incentives.
Copyright (c) 2009 Rich Benjamin. Published by Hyperion. All Rights Reserved. Available wherever books are sold.
Rich Benjamin is the author of Searching for Whitopia(Hyperion, 2009).
© 2009 Hyperion Books All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143337/
Posted on October 16, 2009, Printed on October 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143337/
The following is an excerpt from Searching for Whitopia by Rich Benjamin (Hyperion, 2009).
In twenty-first-century America, how do so many Whitopias hatch and flourish?
A few white readers may protest that their neighborhood’s appeal has nothing to do with its racial composition. The homogeneity of where they live is “irrelevant” or “coincidental,” they say. But divorcing a Whitopia’s appeal from its predominantly white composition is like extracting the marshmallow from the s’more. Impossible. Each is fundamental to the other.
Whites may not move to a place simply because it teems with other white people. Rather, to many Americans, a place’s whiteness implies other qualities that are desirable. Americans associate a homogenous white neighborhood with higher property values, friendliness, orderliness, hospitability, cleanliness, safety, and comfort. These seemingly race-neutral qualities are subconsciously inseparable from race and class in many whites’ minds. Race is often used as a proxy for those neighborhood traits.
Through most of the twentieth century, racial discrimination was deliberate and intentional. Today, racial segregation and division often result from habits, policies, and institutions that are not explicitly designed to discriminate. Contrary to popular belief, discrimination or segregation do not require animus. They thrive even in the absence of prejudice or ill will.
It’s common to have racism without “racists.”
The law does not forbid segregated or discriminating neighborhoods. It simply forbids intentional discrimination. Successful plaintiffs in a discrimination lawsuit must prove that someone intended racial bias.
And the legal standard to establish proof of that intent is very high: The plaintiff must present a “smoking gun” and this particular gun is often impossible to furnish. The 1973 Supreme Court decision San Antonio v. Rodriguez held that a school funding system based on local property taxes that perpetuated egregious disparities in per-pupil spending between mostly white districts and mostly minority districts does not violate the Constitution, because the plaintiffs could not prove that the funding differences emerged from intentional racial discrimination. Another landmark Supreme Court decision, Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp (1977), reinforced this “intent doctrine”: The court ruled that a suburban village did not discriminate, because it did not intend to discriminate when it set-up zoning that disproportionately harmed racial minorities.
There is a terrible disconnect between our everyday experiences and the law: In day-to-day life, racial inequity continues without intent, yet courts require evidence of intent before the law can acknowledge or effectively confront discrimination. Regrettably, the absence of explicit intent has become a common crutch that justifies private decisions that wreak racial havoc upon minorities.
Not to know what has been transacted in the past is to be always a child, said Cicero.
The history of the U.S. housing market shows the corrosive influence of discriminatory public policy on private decision-making: For many decades, private lenders, neighborhoods, and citizens adopted intolerant public policies. Discriminatory government behavior was aped by the public, and blended seamlessly into the “free market.” Covert and overt, these segregating and unjust public and private practices made it difficult, if not impossible, for blacks to own homes in broad swaths of America’s suburbs.
From 1934 to 1962, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) underwrote $120 billion in new housing. Less than 2 percent of that went to nonwhites. From 1938 to 1962, the FHA insured the mortgages on nearly one third of all new housing in the United States. Its Underwriting Manuals, however, considered blacks an “adverse influence” on property values and instructed personnel not to insure mortgages on homes unless they were in “racially homogenous” white neighborhoods. Under its eligibility ranking system, the FHA often refused to lend money to or underwrite loans for whites if they moved to areas where people of color lived. Some scholars now call the government’s handiwork a “$120 billion head start” on white home ownership, on white equity, and on whites’ ability to pass along wealth from one generation to the next.
The private sector then played its part. Banks regularly “redlined,” denying credit to qualified black borrowers. Individuals and neighborhoods, taking the Federal Housing Administration’s cue, maintained “restrictive covenants” to ban blacks from purchasing homes.
Home ownership through a thirty-year mortgage has long been the primary mechanism by which most American families created wealth. So deferred home ownership opportunities have compounded economic disadvantages for racial minorities.
Segregation is no longer codified by law; it is propped up by the “innocuous” and “nonracial” choices local governments and average citizens eagerly make. One warm afternoon, Brian Dill, the vice president for economic development in Forsyth County, Georgia, a lily-white upscale exurb north of Atlanta, tells me that his county has resisted zoning for apartments and condos in fear of future “blight.” A dissenting voice in his county, Dill wishes Forsyth would allow for more varieties of housing in order “to recruit and retain a diverse workforce.” Nationwide, municipal governments enact suburban land-use and zoning policies to promote larger lot development, to sustain private property values, to restrict suburban rental housing, all of which limit the influx of black and Latino households.
Such public and private behavior continues residential segregation, inflicting a double whammy: The residential segregation furthers unacceptable disparities in wealth between the races, and it creates a geography of opportunity, determining who has access to the valuable resources that improve one’s life.
Thirty years after the civil rights era, the United States remains a residentially segregated society in which non-Hispanic whites, Latinos, and blacks inhabit different neighborhoods with a vastly different quality of services and opportunities.
In spite of decades-long income gains among Latinos and blacks, non-Hispanic white households enjoyed a median net worth of $79,400 — eight times the net worth of Latino households and ten times the net worth of black households. Even at similar income levels, significant wealth gaps between the races remain. In terms of wealth, America is now the most unequal country in the industrialized world.
Most Whitopians I encounter don’t purposefully practice racial discrimination and don’t give segregation much thought. Rather, they engage in a form of “opportunity mapping.” Like geocachers on a treasure hunt, they chase communities according to “opportunity indicators”: housing, education, medical facilities, crime rates, perceived sense of safety, outdoor amenities, and social comfort (simpatico values). James, who is over the moon in Whitopia, says he literally created a spreadsheet charting his “wish list” and “won’t list,” then identified five communities congenial to those lists, crunched some numbers, checked the results against his wife’s common-sense sniff test, and settled on Utah’s Dixie.
Voilà .
Not only do whites follow the opportunity, they leverage their connections and capture public resources (e.g., tax dollars) to bring opportunity along with them. The geography of opportunity — or, the geography of homogeneity — is becoming frighteningly entrenched. Such geography forecasts trouble for our democracy.
“Geography is more important than before because spatial segregation has not just residential but economic implications,” according to Roberto Suro, founder of the Pew Hispanic Center and a preeminent scholar of race in America. “The wholesale shift of the middle class to the suburbs has been followed by the movement of economic activity outside the urban core. As a result, the landscape is clearly demarcated into zones of privilege and zones of abandonment. Society concentrates its best resources — green spaces, doctors’ offices, new schools, and sewer lines — in some areas, neglecting others. In the United States, this separation still has an important racial component, because most of the people living in the zones of privilege are white, of course, and those in the zones of abandonment are not.”
Over all, levels of residential segregation remain high for Latinos and blacks, says Douglas Massey, the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, and a world-renowned expert on race. “According to the latest data, half of all urban African Americans live under extreme conditions of racial isolation and another third live under conditions that would qualify as high segregation for any other group.” Modest declines in blacks’ segregation have occurred in cities with small black populations like Seattle, Tucson, San Jose, and Minneapolis, according to Massey.
“Asians and light-skinned blacks and Hispanics seem to be able to take advantage of socioeconomic mobility and gain entrée to advantaged, integrated neighborhoods,” he adds. “The black/non-black divide continues to loom as a major cleavage in American society. And segregation on the basis of class has been rising. Poor dark-skinned minorities are confined to very disadvantaged neighborhoods, while affluent and educated minorities share more advantaged neighborhoods with similarly situated whites, especially if the minorities have light skin.”
The philosophy and policies that underlie desegregation are under intense assault from administrative actions, voter initiatives, and court cases. The Supreme Court’s 2007 landmark rulings in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and in Meredith v. Jefferson prohibited assigning students to public schools for the purpose of achieving racial integration. These court rulings also declined to recognize racial balancing as a “compelling state interest.”
The rise of Whitopia dovetails with the nationwide decline in support for racial integration. In 1964, 41 percent of Americans wanted the federal government to integrate our public schools. By the early 1990s, 95 percent of Americans wanted integrated schools in principle, but only 34 percent wanted the federal government to help make integration a reality. By the early 2000s, our public schools continued their slide toward re-segregation: They are less integrated now than in 1970.
Prepositions can help orient us around the varieties of racism. Interpersonal racism exists between people. Institutional racism exists within institutions. Structural racism exists across institutions, public policy, and other important domains (education, the judiciary, real estate, etc.).
The difference between interpersonal racism and structural racism is huge. In combating each, we might consider C. Wright Mills’s distinction between troubles and problems. Troubles are what individuals have. Problems are what groups create and then like to ignore. Interpersonal racism is only a trouble. Structural racism is a problem.
Structural racism is baked into our national psyche and behavior. It is “the blind interaction between institutions, policies and practices, which inevitably perpetuates barriers to opportunities and racial disparities,” according to the Center for Social Inclusion, a non-partisan research organization. So the PC-diversity racket badgers us into “sensitivity,” but has little to say about structural racism. And the conservative echo chamber upbraids black leaders for churlish racial asides, with no regard to the target of the leaders’ agitation: structural racism. We fumble in defining and identifying structural racism, so we are reluctant to acknowledge it. Even when structural racism is acknowledged, its ambiguity and enormity frighten us out of action.
Picture this. A government agency decides to build low-income housing for low-income Latinos and blacks. The agency “fails to look for locations near jobs and important infrastructure, like working schools, decent public transportation and other services,” the Center for Social Inclusion’s literature explains. In fact, the new housing is built in a poor, mostly black and Latino part of town. “When the housing is built, the school district, already under-funded, has new residents too poor to contribute to its tax base. The local government spends its limited resources on transportation to connect largely white, well-to-do suburban commuters to their downtown jobs. The public housing residents are left isolated, in under-funded schools, with no transportation to job centers. Whole communities of people of color lose opportunities for a good education, quality housing, living wage jobs, services and support systems.”
When asked about his county’s white homogeneity, Norman Baggs, a longtime resident of Forsyth County, Georgia, and former editor and publisher of the Forsyth County News, replies: “There’s a suburban elitism among people who move into communities like this.” Baggs remembers attending a public meeting years ago where a woman stood up to say she lived in a $150,000 house, but didn’t want to look out her window at a $100,000 house. “By that elitism, you restrict, negatively, the ability of certain groups of people to come here and live.” Baggs attributes the “elitism” to county officials, developers, and residents.
On my journey through Whitopia, examples of structural racism surface over and over—from how towns and neighborhoods are zoned, to how chambers of commerce favor or discourage certain newcomers and businesses, to how political and business establishments address social conflict (stay tuned on Forsyth County, Georgia). If whites and nonwhites interact pleasantly on a one-to-one basis, how does a Whitopia mushroom? Structural racism is what we need to train our eyes to see.
Some Whitopians are indifferent to their community’s homogeneity with downright orneriness: Why do you have to make race an issue!? And others with Zen serenity: We don’t let it be an issue for us ;-> Whitopia is a tale of racial segregation, abetted by Uncle Sam, by local governments, by business interests, and by individuals, all of whom say they are offering or chasing powerful “nonracial” incentives.
Copyright (c) 2009 Rich Benjamin. Published by Hyperion. All Rights Reserved. Available wherever books are sold.
Rich Benjamin is the author of Searching for Whitopia(Hyperion, 2009).
© 2009 Hyperion Books All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143337/
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