Barack Obama's missile defence pledge fails to stir Czech audience
Barack Obama's praise for the Czech government's "courage" in hosting a planned United States missile defence fell flat with many of his supporters during a speech to an audience of 20,000 on Sunday.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5110965/Barack-Obamas-missile-defence-pledge-fails-to-stir-Czech-audience.html
By Bruno Waterfield in Prague
Last Updated: 7:52PM BST 05 Apr 2009
President Obama linked America's missile defence project to his wider vision of a world free of atomic weapons while setting out his new US policy on nuclear non-proliferation.
"Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the US, but to Iran's neighbours and our allies. The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defence against these missiles," he said.
"As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defence system."
The comments met with the enthusiastic approval of centre right government ministers and supporters at the front of the audience but were greeted with an unusually stony silence throughout most of the crowd.
Commitments by the Polish and Czech governments to host antimissiles or radar stations have divided Europe and proved deeply unpopular with voters.
In the Czech Republic, polling has shown 70 per cent of people to be opposed to the presence of US missile defence radar bases in their country.
Local referendums in communities where radar sites are planned have shown that 95 per cent of Czechs are opposed.
Widespread opposition to the system is also regarded as an important factor in the collapse of the Czech government two weeks ago.
Jiri Parubek, a former Czech prime minister and leader of the opposition Social Democrats, signed a letter, along with 22 MPs, urging Mr Obama to "stop" the rader sites.
"We call on you to respect the will of a majority of the Czech Republic and to renounce installation of the radar," said the letter.
Petr Sramek, aged 33, had brought his six month old son Daniel to see America's "brilliant" new president speak in the spring Prague sunshine.
But he was "disappointed" that Mr Obama had not used the opportunity to drop an unpopular policy.
"I really liked the clear message on nuclear disarmament but I am against the missile defence system. It is not about non-proliferation, it is more about geopolitical influence then defence against missiles," he said.
Alena Protivinska, a 30 year old website designer, described herself as a "big fan" of Mr Obama but accused him of "hypocrisy" for urging world peace while at the same time promoting a military security agenda.
"He sounded like George W Bush saying that we should be afraid in order to justify missile defence," she said.
Her friend, Michaela Freeman added: "There was deep silence when he mentioned it. He is amazing, it is wonderful and unbelievable that he is here but the charm did not work for this policy."
Dana Feminova was among peaceful demonstrators prevented by armed riot police from registering a missile defence protest in front of the conference centre where the US president met with European Union leaders after his speech.
"He has said that he wants to listen to Europe but he does not respect Czech democracy. Over 70 per cent of us are against missile defence which has been forced on us," said the 38-year aid worker.
Is the Revolution in sight?
looks like the barge may be lifting off a sand bar...
April 11, 2009
The green shoots are weeds growing through the rubble in the ruins of the global economy, by Willem Buiter
from an article by Willem Buiter, Professor of European Political Economy, London School of Economics. The full article, dated yesterday, 8 April, titled "The green shoots are weeds growing through the rubble of the ruins of the global economy", may be found on Professor Buiter's Financial Times blogsite at ft.com/maverecon.
April 8, 2009
The Great Contraction will last a while longer This financial crisis will end. The Great Contraction of the Noughties also will come to an end. But neither the financial crisis nor the contraction of the global real economy are over yet. As regards the financial sector, we are not too far - probably less than a year - from the beginning of the end. The impact of the collapse of real economic activity and of the associated dramatic increase in defaults and insolvencies by non-financial enterprises and households on the loan book of what is left of the banking sector will begin to show up in the banks' financial reports at the end of the summer and in the autumn. By the end of the year - early 2010 at the latest - we will know which banks will survive and which ones are headed for the scrap heap. With the resolution of the current pervasive uncertainty about the true state of the banks' balance sheets and about their off-balance-sheet exposures, normal financial intermediation will be able to resume later in 2010.
Governments everywhere are doing the best they can to delay or prevent the lifting of the veil of uncertainty and disinformation that most banks have cast over their battered balance sheets. The banking establishment and the financial establishment representing the beneficial owners of the institutions exposed to the banks as unsecured creditors - pension funds, insurance companies, other banks, foreign investors including sovereign wealth funds - have captured the key governments, their central banks, their regulators, supervisors and accounting standard setters to a degree never seen before.
I used to believe this state capture took the form of cognitive capture, rather than financial capture. I still believe this to be the case for many, perhaps even most of the policy makers and officials involved, but it is becoming increasingly hard to deny the possibility that the extraordinary reluctance of our governments to force the unsecured creditors (and any remaining non-government shareholders) of the zombie banks to absorb the losses made by these banks, may be due to rather more primal forms of state capture.
History teaches us that systemic financial crises are protracted affairs. A most interesting paper by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, "The Aftermath of Financial Crises", using data on 10 systemic banking crises (the "big five" developed economy crises (Spain 1977, Norway 1987, Finland, 1991, Sweden, 1991, and Japan, 1992), three famous emerging market crises (the 1997-1998 Asian crisis (Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand); Colombia, 1998; and Argentina 2001)), and two earlier crises (Norway 1899 and the United States 1929) reaches the following conclusions (the next paragraph paraphrases Reinhart and Rogoff).
First, asset market collapses are deep and prolonged. Real housing price declines average 35 percent over six years; real equity price declines average 55 percent over a downturn of about 3.5 years. Second, the aftermath of banking crises is associated with large declines in output and employment. The unemployment rate rises an average of 7 percentage points over the down phase of the cycle which lasts on average over four years. Output falls (from peak to trough) an average of over 9 percent, but the duration of the downturn averages around 2 years. . . . . .
Conclusion
There are signs that the rate of contraction of real global economic activity may be slowing down. Straws in the wind in China, the UK and the US hint that things may be getting worse at a slower rate. An inflection point for real activity (the second derivative turns positive) is not the same as a turning point (the first derivative turns positive), however. And even if decline were to end, there is no guarantee that whatever growth we get will be enough to keep up with the growth of potential. We could have a growing economy with rising unemployment and growing excess capacity for quite a while.
The reason to fear a U-shaped recovery with a long, flat segment is that the financial system was effectively destroyed even before the Great Contraction started. By the time the negative feedback loops from declining activity to the balance sheet strength of what's left of the financial sector will have made themselves felt in full, financial intermediation is likely to be severely impaired.
All contractions and recoveries are primarily investment-driven. High-frequency inventory decumulation causes activity to collapse rapidly. Since inventories cannot become negative, there is a strong self-correcting mechanism in an inventory disinvestment cycle. We may be getting to the stage in the UK and the US (possibly also in Japan) that inventories stop falling an begin to build up again.
An end to inventory decumulation is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for sustained economic recovery. That requires fixed investment to pick up. This includes household fixed investment - residential construction, spending on home improvement and purchases of new automobiles and other consumer durables. It also includes public sector capital formation. Given the likely duration of the contraction and the subsequent period of excess capacity, even public sector infrastructure spending subject to long implementation lags is likely to come in handy. A healthy, sustained recovery also requires business fixed investment to pick up.
At the moment, I can see not a single country where business fixed investment is likely to rise anytime soon. When the inventory investment accelerator goes into reverse and starts contributing to demand growth, and when the fiscal stimuli kick in, businesses wanting to invest will need access to external financing, since retained profits are, after a couple of years of declining output, likely to be few and far between. But with the banking system on its uppers and many key financial markets still dysfunctional and out of commission, external financing will be scarce and costly. This is why sorting out the banks, or rather sorting out the substantive economic activities of new bank lending and funding, that is, sorting out banking , must be a top priority and a top claimant on scarce public resources.
Until the authorities are ready to draw a clear line between the existing banks in western Europe and the USA, - many or even most of which are surplus to requirements and have become parasitic entities feeding off the tax payer - and the substantive economic activity of bank lending to non-financial enterprises and households, there will not be a robust, sustained recovery.
April 8, 2009
The Great Contraction will last a while longer This financial crisis will end. The Great Contraction of the Noughties also will come to an end. But neither the financial crisis nor the contraction of the global real economy are over yet. As regards the financial sector, we are not too far - probably less than a year - from the beginning of the end. The impact of the collapse of real economic activity and of the associated dramatic increase in defaults and insolvencies by non-financial enterprises and households on the loan book of what is left of the banking sector will begin to show up in the banks' financial reports at the end of the summer and in the autumn. By the end of the year - early 2010 at the latest - we will know which banks will survive and which ones are headed for the scrap heap. With the resolution of the current pervasive uncertainty about the true state of the banks' balance sheets and about their off-balance-sheet exposures, normal financial intermediation will be able to resume later in 2010.
Governments everywhere are doing the best they can to delay or prevent the lifting of the veil of uncertainty and disinformation that most banks have cast over their battered balance sheets. The banking establishment and the financial establishment representing the beneficial owners of the institutions exposed to the banks as unsecured creditors - pension funds, insurance companies, other banks, foreign investors including sovereign wealth funds - have captured the key governments, their central banks, their regulators, supervisors and accounting standard setters to a degree never seen before.
I used to believe this state capture took the form of cognitive capture, rather than financial capture. I still believe this to be the case for many, perhaps even most of the policy makers and officials involved, but it is becoming increasingly hard to deny the possibility that the extraordinary reluctance of our governments to force the unsecured creditors (and any remaining non-government shareholders) of the zombie banks to absorb the losses made by these banks, may be due to rather more primal forms of state capture.
History teaches us that systemic financial crises are protracted affairs. A most interesting paper by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, "The Aftermath of Financial Crises", using data on 10 systemic banking crises (the "big five" developed economy crises (Spain 1977, Norway 1987, Finland, 1991, Sweden, 1991, and Japan, 1992), three famous emerging market crises (the 1997-1998 Asian crisis (Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand); Colombia, 1998; and Argentina 2001)), and two earlier crises (Norway 1899 and the United States 1929) reaches the following conclusions (the next paragraph paraphrases Reinhart and Rogoff).
First, asset market collapses are deep and prolonged. Real housing price declines average 35 percent over six years; real equity price declines average 55 percent over a downturn of about 3.5 years. Second, the aftermath of banking crises is associated with large declines in output and employment. The unemployment rate rises an average of 7 percentage points over the down phase of the cycle which lasts on average over four years. Output falls (from peak to trough) an average of over 9 percent, but the duration of the downturn averages around 2 years. . . . . .
Conclusion
There are signs that the rate of contraction of real global economic activity may be slowing down. Straws in the wind in China, the UK and the US hint that things may be getting worse at a slower rate. An inflection point for real activity (the second derivative turns positive) is not the same as a turning point (the first derivative turns positive), however. And even if decline were to end, there is no guarantee that whatever growth we get will be enough to keep up with the growth of potential. We could have a growing economy with rising unemployment and growing excess capacity for quite a while.
The reason to fear a U-shaped recovery with a long, flat segment is that the financial system was effectively destroyed even before the Great Contraction started. By the time the negative feedback loops from declining activity to the balance sheet strength of what's left of the financial sector will have made themselves felt in full, financial intermediation is likely to be severely impaired.
All contractions and recoveries are primarily investment-driven. High-frequency inventory decumulation causes activity to collapse rapidly. Since inventories cannot become negative, there is a strong self-correcting mechanism in an inventory disinvestment cycle. We may be getting to the stage in the UK and the US (possibly also in Japan) that inventories stop falling an begin to build up again.
An end to inventory decumulation is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for sustained economic recovery. That requires fixed investment to pick up. This includes household fixed investment - residential construction, spending on home improvement and purchases of new automobiles and other consumer durables. It also includes public sector capital formation. Given the likely duration of the contraction and the subsequent period of excess capacity, even public sector infrastructure spending subject to long implementation lags is likely to come in handy. A healthy, sustained recovery also requires business fixed investment to pick up.
At the moment, I can see not a single country where business fixed investment is likely to rise anytime soon. When the inventory investment accelerator goes into reverse and starts contributing to demand growth, and when the fiscal stimuli kick in, businesses wanting to invest will need access to external financing, since retained profits are, after a couple of years of declining output, likely to be few and far between. But with the banking system on its uppers and many key financial markets still dysfunctional and out of commission, external financing will be scarce and costly. This is why sorting out the banks, or rather sorting out the substantive economic activities of new bank lending and funding, that is, sorting out banking , must be a top priority and a top claimant on scarce public resources.
Until the authorities are ready to draw a clear line between the existing banks in western Europe and the USA, - many or even most of which are surplus to requirements and have become parasitic entities feeding off the tax payer - and the substantive economic activity of bank lending to non-financial enterprises and households, there will not be a robust, sustained recovery.
April 10, 2009
(Pre FMLN Victory) Pacific Rim Mining opens legal process against El Salvador under CAFTA laws Tuesday, 16 December 2008
CISPES news
On December 9, 2008, Canadian-based Pacific Rim Mining Corp. filed a Notice of Intent (NOI) to begin arbitration proceedings against the government of El Salvador. The NOI was filed under Central America-Dominican Republic-United States of America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) laws, and serves as the first step in opening up legal proceedings against El Salvador (Canada is not a member of CAFTA but the arbitration would be filed under its US-based subsidiary, Pac Rim Cayman.) The company and country will have 90 days to amicably resolve their dispute. If no resolution is reached by March 9, 2009 – just six days before the Salvadoran presidential election — Pacific Rim can then open arbitration proceedings under the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes Between States and Nationals of Other States and under the Rules of Procedure for Arbitration Proceedings of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID)—an affiliate of the World Bank.
Pacific Rim maintains that it has invested over $75 million dollars in the El Dorado mining project and that there is potential for huge returns and the creation of new jobs. The company claims that, despite its compliance with all laws, the government of El Salvador has failed to grant the permits to begin to exploit the gold and silver mine. An eventual lawsuit is expected to demand several hundred million dollars in damages from El Salvador, an amount that would further damage a country that is already in a dire economic situation, in part due to the effects of the CAFTA-DR accord.
Citizens' organizations in El Salvador have come out very strongly against mining, and specifically against the El Dorado project. Environmentalists contend that the project would lead to acid drainage, water pollution, and the evaporation of cyanide, thus devastating the environment and public health. The “I Reject Metal Mining” campaign is a combined effort of a broad spectrum of environmental, labor rights, and community organizations that has held many demonstrations and educational events throughout the country. Some political analysts have suggested that the timing of the NOI, putting the end of the 90-day grace period just days before the presidential elections, opens the possibility that the governing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party could claim that a victory by the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party would open El Salvador to losing the several hundred million dollar lawsuit.
Obama gives Ambassador Glazer the pink slip
On December 3, US President-elect Barack Obama announced that, as of his inauguration, all US ambassadors that were politically appointed by the Bush Administration should vacate their posts. US Ambassador to El Salvador Charles Glazer, a Bush political appointee, is one of the ambassadors that have been asked to relinquish their positions on January 20, 2009.
Many within the opposition political and social movements in El Salvador view Obama’s victory in November as a blow to the ARENA party in the lead-up to El Salvador’s 2009 municipal, legislative, and presidential elections. The dismissal of Ambassador Glazer reinforces this notion. Glazer, who has been the ambassador since January 16, 2007, has spent the last two years fortifying a close relationship between El Salvador’s governing right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party and the Bush Administration.
In a June 2008 meeting with a CISPES delegation, Ambassador Glazer admitted to intervention by the US on behalf of the ARENA party during the 2004 Salvadoran presidential elections. However, he expressed hostility towards the delegation throughout the meeting and dismissed the delegates' concerns about intervention and potential fraud in the 2009 elections, as well as concerns about documented cases of human rights abuses in the country.
Minimum wages to rise in El Salvador, economist calls the increases “insulting”
In the first week of December, the Minimum Wage Council of El Salvador agreed to an increase in minimum wages that will be effective on January 1, 2009. Economist Raúl Moreno, research coordinator of the Foundation for the Study of the Application of Law (FESPAD), called the increase of 8% for the industrial, commercial, agricultural, and service sectors and 4% for textile workers “insulting.” Workers in the commercial sector will only see their monthly salary go from $192.30 to $207.68, the industrial sector from $188.10 to $203.15, and the textile sector from $167.10 to $173.78. These wages are still significantly lower than the estimated $360 basic cost of living, which only includes food costs and a fraction of the costs of basic services and goods. Moreno expressed concern that minimum wage increases should be paired with responsible regulation of the market, warning that otherwise “the trickle-down effect will also appear” and increase the costs of many goods.
Former sweatshop worker-turned-union organizer Estela Ramirez explained that that the increase “is a joke and shows that the government couldn't care less about us, particularly the sweatshop workers.” El Salvador’s Central Reserve Bank reports that workers’ salaries only make up 32% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country, while business profits make up 62% of the Salvadoran GDP. “The businesses keep making money while the government does nothing to lower the high costs of food and lets our families starve. The raises are not in accordance with the cost of living,” Ramirez said.
The minimum wage increase comes at a time when all political parties are in the midst of campaigning for the upcoming municipal and legislative elections in January of 2009 and the presidential elections in March of 2009, causing some to believe that the motive of the increase is to bolster support for the governing right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party, which is lagging behind the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in the latest presidential polls, as well as many municipal and legislative races.
FMLN candidate Funes 13 points up in CID-Gallup poll
The latest poll by international polling firm CID-Gallup, conducted November 15-23 and released on December 3, 2008, shows the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) presidential candidate, Mauricio Funes, with a 13 point lead over the governing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party’s candidate, Rodrigo Ávila. When asked which presidential candidate they would vote for if the elections were held today, 44% of those polled selected Funes, while only 31% selected Avila. Another 19% were undecided and 5.9% would vote for candidates of the Party for National Conciliation (PCN) or the Christian Democrat Party (PDC).
Reaction among civil society organizations, and on the streets of San Salvador, echoes the poll's findings. A representative of the Movement of Technicians and Intellectuals of El Salvador (MPTIES) recently stated that, “for 20 years, El Salvador has been governed by the same right wing party,” which has applied policies “that benefit a few, rather than the poor.” A street vendor, who did not want to be identified, said “We can’t continue to vote for a party [ARENA] that does not identify with us [the people]. They are mercenaries. We should vote for change, and that is the FMLN.”
Funes’ continued success in the polls demonstrates the current unity and strength of the FMLN party as the municipal, legislative, and presidential elections of 2009 approach.
Funes has drawn in many members of the population who were not previously members of the FMLN party with his platform of change and hope, which focuses on increased social investment and generating more jobs in the country.
Thus far, ARENA candidate Ávila, former chief of the National Civilian Police, has failed to unite or excite the Salvadoran right and continues to lag in the polls. The nomination of ARENA’s vice-presidential candidate, Arturo Zablah – who had previously criticized the right-wing party and insisted it was imperative to remove ARENA from power – further illustrates the divisions created by the failed policies of 20 years of ARENA governance.
Erdoğan Please Note: The U.S. Is A Secular State
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2009/04/obama-please-note-turkey-is-a-secular-state.html
Erdoğan Please Note: The U.S. Is A Secular State
On visit in the United States of America the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke to the majority-Christian population in a speech to the Joint Session of the United States Congress:
I know there have been difficulties these last few years. I know that the trust that binds Turkey and the United States has been strained, and I know that strain is shared in many places where the Christian faith is practiced. So let me say this as clearly as I can: Turkey is not, and will never be, at war with Christianity. In fact, our partnership with the Christian world is critical not just in rolling back the violent ideologies that people of all faiths reject, but also to strengthen opportunity for all its people.
I also want to be clear that Turkey's relationship with the Christian community, the Christian world, cannot, and will not, just be based upon opposition to terrorism. We seek broader engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect. We will listen carefully, we will bridge misunderstandings, and we will seek common ground. We will be respectful, even when we do not agree. We will convey our deep appreciation for the Christian faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world -- including in my own country. Turkey has been enriched by Christian Turks. Many other Turks have Christians in their families or have lived in a Christian-majority country.
Questions:
1. How would you have reacted to the above?
2. How would the U.S. public react to it?
3. How would the media react?
Comments
From a purely policy-and-practice perspective, you could react either 'high', 'low' or 'null'. That is, you could ramp up and go large, like 'shekinah' in Iraq, you could ramp up and go low, like 'Hunt for Red bin Laden' in Afghanistan, or you could do nothing, like the lip gloss 'smack down' Jung Il got from Obama.
So you have three choices of action every time a foreign leader speaks.
Since SecState has chosen to conflate Afghanistan Pakistan, by the law of the additive property of alternate choices, making GWOT 3 CF into Afghanistan Pakistan Turkeystan would mean 3 + 3 + 3 = 9 possible policy reactions, everytime any one of those three countries or their leaders did or said anything.
Since all public policy is grounded by the fundamentalism of carrot and stick, that is, IF(THEN)ELSE, by the multiplicative property of successive choices (THEN or ELSE), every time one of those three countries or leaders did anything or said anything, US SecState would have 9 x 9 = 81 possible policy choices to make, as opposed to just 6 if we focused solely on Afghanistan.
That's 1350% mission creep by including Turkey in policy decisions on Central Asia.
We need more SecState drones like SecDef needs the 13,000 contractor analysts that Gates just folded into permanent civilian employment status, with pensions, no doubt to shield those contractors from FBI searching out fraud, waste and abuse (embezzlement) in IDIQNB contracts. Now they are Defense employees, safe "inside".
So Turkey? Who gives a freek? We have enough troubles as it is with focus metrics.
Posted by: Poarty Duad | Apr 6, 2009 4:06:58 PM | 1
Foreign Minister Steinmeier - remove US nuclear weapons from Germany
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20090410-18569.html
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called for American nuclear weapons to be withdrawn from Germany, saying that the recent US-Russian declaration to reduce weapons stockpiles was a big victory.
US President Barack Obama’s recent push for nuclear disarmament, and his joint declaration with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to reduce their nuclear arsenals, prompted Steinmeier, who is the Social Democrat (SPD) chancellor candidate in this autumn’s general election, to embrace the anti-nuclear bomb cause.
He told this weekend’s Der Spiegel magazine, “These weapons are militarily obsolete today. He said he would push for the remaining US warheads “to be removed from Germany”.
Der Spiegel says this puts him in clear opposition to Chancellor Angela Merkel who, although she knew what Obama was planning to say at the NATO meeting, told parliament at the end of March, that the government was sticking to its participation in the nuclear arms situation.
She said this guaranteed Germany had a voice and some influence over decisions made in NATO circles. The Defence Ministry, run by the CDU’s Franz Josef Jung, is said to support the idea that only countries which host US bombs can expect to be taken seriously on the subject within NATO.
During the cold war, the West German government secured a certain degree of influence in return for allowing thousands of American nuclear warheads to be stationed in its territory.
After reunification and the collapse of the Soviet Union, nearly all US warheads were removed from Europe, but some remain in Büchel in the Rhineland, the magazine says, as well as some in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey.
Steinmeier spoke in Berlin on Friday as traditional Easter peace marches began across the country. He said, “For the first time for many years, we have the chance to create a new start for global disarmament and make peace safer.”
He said the vision of a nuclear weapon free world was one his party shared, and had now entered realpolitik. “Now the work begins with which we can make concrete progress,” he said.
He said the fact that 95 percent of nuclear warheads were in the possession of the US and Russia gave those countries the greatest responsibility for disarming. And he said conventional disarmament measures should be undertaken too, adding, “We have started on bans of malicious weapons such as cluster bombs but this must now be enforced, as according to UN estimates, half a million people are killed each year with such weapons.”
DDP/DPA/The Local (news@thelocal.de)
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called for American nuclear weapons to be withdrawn from Germany, saying that the recent US-Russian declaration to reduce weapons stockpiles was a big victory.
US President Barack Obama’s recent push for nuclear disarmament, and his joint declaration with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to reduce their nuclear arsenals, prompted Steinmeier, who is the Social Democrat (SPD) chancellor candidate in this autumn’s general election, to embrace the anti-nuclear bomb cause.
He told this weekend’s Der Spiegel magazine, “These weapons are militarily obsolete today. He said he would push for the remaining US warheads “to be removed from Germany”.
Der Spiegel says this puts him in clear opposition to Chancellor Angela Merkel who, although she knew what Obama was planning to say at the NATO meeting, told parliament at the end of March, that the government was sticking to its participation in the nuclear arms situation.
She said this guaranteed Germany had a voice and some influence over decisions made in NATO circles. The Defence Ministry, run by the CDU’s Franz Josef Jung, is said to support the idea that only countries which host US bombs can expect to be taken seriously on the subject within NATO.
During the cold war, the West German government secured a certain degree of influence in return for allowing thousands of American nuclear warheads to be stationed in its territory.
After reunification and the collapse of the Soviet Union, nearly all US warheads were removed from Europe, but some remain in Büchel in the Rhineland, the magazine says, as well as some in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey.
Steinmeier spoke in Berlin on Friday as traditional Easter peace marches began across the country. He said, “For the first time for many years, we have the chance to create a new start for global disarmament and make peace safer.”
He said the vision of a nuclear weapon free world was one his party shared, and had now entered realpolitik. “Now the work begins with which we can make concrete progress,” he said.
He said the fact that 95 percent of nuclear warheads were in the possession of the US and Russia gave those countries the greatest responsibility for disarming. And he said conventional disarmament measures should be undertaken too, adding, “We have started on bans of malicious weapons such as cluster bombs but this must now be enforced, as according to UN estimates, half a million people are killed each year with such weapons.”
DDP/DPA/The Local (news@thelocal.de)
Gun Shop Owner Links Ammo Shortage To Obama, NPR Apr. o7
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102851807
All Things Considered, April 7, 2009 · An ammunition shortage in the U.S. is affecting police and sheriffs' departments all over the country, as well as gun dealers, from big retailers like Wal-Mart to smaller family-run businesses and online operations.
Ammunition suppliers say the shortage is due to several factors, including the sheer volume of ammunition heading overseas to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But they also say the shortage — as well as a sharp rise in gun sales — coincided with the election of President Obama, fueled by fears his administration would usher in more restrictive gun laws.
"It started the day that Obama got elected," Johnny Dury, who owns Dury's Gun Shop in San Antonio, tells NPR's Michele Norris. "It is when everything just went crazy in the gun business."
Dury says people are buying guns as well as ammunition, creating a shortage of both. He says people are buying the guns to protect themselves because they perceive Obama's policies as socialist and rewarding those "people who are not working hard." They are also afraid, he says, of more restrictive gun laws.
"Everybody was scared he was going to take the ammo away or he was going to tax it out of sight on the prices," Dury says. "So people started stocking up, buying half a lifetime to a lifetime supply of ammo all at one time."
He calls business on Tuesday "an average post-Obama day."
"This time of year with Obama stuff still going, we're probably 15 percent over what a normal April day would be," Dury says.
All Things Considered, April 7, 2009 · An ammunition shortage in the U.S. is affecting police and sheriffs' departments all over the country, as well as gun dealers, from big retailers like Wal-Mart to smaller family-run businesses and online operations.
Ammunition suppliers say the shortage is due to several factors, including the sheer volume of ammunition heading overseas to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But they also say the shortage — as well as a sharp rise in gun sales — coincided with the election of President Obama, fueled by fears his administration would usher in more restrictive gun laws.
"It started the day that Obama got elected," Johnny Dury, who owns Dury's Gun Shop in San Antonio, tells NPR's Michele Norris. "It is when everything just went crazy in the gun business."
Dury says people are buying guns as well as ammunition, creating a shortage of both. He says people are buying the guns to protect themselves because they perceive Obama's policies as socialist and rewarding those "people who are not working hard." They are also afraid, he says, of more restrictive gun laws.
"Everybody was scared he was going to take the ammo away or he was going to tax it out of sight on the prices," Dury says. "So people started stocking up, buying half a lifetime to a lifetime supply of ammo all at one time."
He calls business on Tuesday "an average post-Obama day."
"This time of year with Obama stuff still going, we're probably 15 percent over what a normal April day would be," Dury says.
Vietnam finds mass grave of communist soldiers
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jbhQ7Gz-V7IAkAbLug0dUSbeo16wD97D056O0
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — A mass grave containing the remains of 35 communist commandos killed during the Vietnam War was found in southern Vietnam, a military official said Monday.
Meanwhile, the apparent remains of three American soldiers killed during the conflict were sent back to the United States, U.S. official Ron Ward said.
The Vietnamese soldiers were rounded up and killed by South Vietnamese forces after attacking a U.S. air base in Vinh Long province during the Tet Offensive in 1968, said Col. Vo Hieu Hoa of the provincial military command.
Authorities were tipped off about the grave by a former driver for the U.S.-backed South Vietnam government, Hoa said.
"We finally found them after three days of excavation," he said.
Thousands of Viet Cong guerrillas attacked major towns across southern Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in January 1968. Tet is seen by many as a turning point in the war.
The remains of the U.S. troops were recovered over the past month from sites in central and southern Vietnam. They were flown aboard a military transport plane to Hawaii on Saturday for identification.
Nearly 1,800 U.S. servicemen are still unaccounted for throughout Southeast Asia since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, when communist North Vietnamese forces overran Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam.
AN ESTIMATED 58,000 AMERICANS, AND 3 MILLION VIETNAMESE WERE KILLED DURING THE WAR.
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — A mass grave containing the remains of 35 communist commandos killed during the Vietnam War was found in southern Vietnam, a military official said Monday.
Meanwhile, the apparent remains of three American soldiers killed during the conflict were sent back to the United States, U.S. official Ron Ward said.
The Vietnamese soldiers were rounded up and killed by South Vietnamese forces after attacking a U.S. air base in Vinh Long province during the Tet Offensive in 1968, said Col. Vo Hieu Hoa of the provincial military command.
Authorities were tipped off about the grave by a former driver for the U.S.-backed South Vietnam government, Hoa said.
"We finally found them after three days of excavation," he said.
Thousands of Viet Cong guerrillas attacked major towns across southern Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in January 1968. Tet is seen by many as a turning point in the war.
The remains of the U.S. troops were recovered over the past month from sites in central and southern Vietnam. They were flown aboard a military transport plane to Hawaii on Saturday for identification.
Nearly 1,800 U.S. servicemen are still unaccounted for throughout Southeast Asia since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, when communist North Vietnamese forces overran Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam.
AN ESTIMATED 58,000 AMERICANS, AND 3 MILLION VIETNAMESE WERE KILLED DURING THE WAR.
April 9, 2009
(REVISED) BOOK REVIEW by Andrew Taylor, The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization
(REVISED)BOOK REVIEW by Andrew Taylor, The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization
Lynne Viola, The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization, , 1988: A BOOK REVIEW By Andrew Taylor
In November 1929 at its Central Committee plenum, the Communist Party of the USSR volunteered to take on and organize collectivization of agriculture. Of 70,000 volunteers, 27,OOO plus were selected, and became known as “the 25,000ers”. In the main they were factory worker-activists, factory committee activists and union committee members. About 80 per cent of them were Communist party members, or in the party's youth organization. Over 50% were under 30 years of age, just under 8% were women. A strict vetting process was run to eliminate workers from wealthier farmer backgrounds, as well as drunkards and those with connections to party opposition factions.
After a brief training course the 25,000'ers were sent out amid communist party rallies to the rural areas in order to establish the organized collectivization of agriculture. They were of the most class-conscious layers of the industrial working class prepared to assume tasks as chairs of collective farms and administrators.
Soviet archival records reveal that the old rural officialdom, established in their roles, very often resented the urban volunteers' entry onto their turf, denigrated them, and frequently handed them shovels and pointed to the manure mound. The peasantry was to say the least ambivalent in their approach to the centre's grain requisitions that had begun in 1928, and were often hostile to the urban Party volunteers and their outsider, urban, working class culture. Based on her groundbreaking work in the Soviet archives, Lynne Viola notes that the volunteers' general attitude towards the peasants was a distinct improvement on that of the average rural officials. But no influx of new organizers is accepted into a bureaucracy without incident, and a few volunteers were murdered with the utmost cruelty. At the close of the collectivization 25,000'er campaign at the end of '31, 18,000 of the volunteers remained in the countryside and had retained leading positions in rural party and administrative structures.
The author states that collectivization was intended "to be a revolution which would undermine the old order, modernize agriculture, institute a reliable method of grain collection, stimulate a cultural revolution, and build a new social and administrative base in the countryside".
According to Viola, collectivization, though an initiative from the Centre, became limited in its potential by ad hoc policy responses. It is her contention that collectivization came over time to be shaped less by Stalin and the Party militants than by the often less-than-disciplined or irresponsible activity of rural officials, the experimental methods of collective farm leaders left to manage as best they knew how, and the stark and stubborn realities of a backward countryside and a traditional peasantry which maintained defiance to the communist workers in their midst with their new ways.
According to Viola, the Centre’s response changed following the first wave of the 25,000'ers revolutionary service in the vanguard of the revolution. In response to continued wrecking and uneven response from the peasantry and officials, strict repressive measures rather than class political action belied soviet control of agricultural policy.
The author calls the 25,000'ers the cadres of the Stalin revolution who, as advanced workers, served in the vanguard of the revolution. But a large percentage of the kulaks destroyed their livestock rather than submit them to socialist ownership in the collectives 1. The Centre had continuing outbreaks of food shortages in the cities and viewed the “kulaks” or wealthier peasants as the open enemy of the working-class. Shortages and dislocations became famine. And as we know, the severe famine led in many areas of the Ukraine to mass death. Millions are believed to have perished. Thousands faced exile to the east.
Viola's closely documented Study using original documents from the Soviet Archives illustrates the jury is still out on the precise conjunction of reasons for the Ukrainian famine. Some other prominent historian-agronomists do not concur in the claim made by many Ukrainian nationalists that the famine was an "act of genocide" and question the whole thesis of a persecution of the Ukrainian nation. Professor of History at the University of West Virginia , Mike Tauger and Professor of History at the University of Melbourne, Steven Wheatcroft, argue that the famine was not a result of a deliberate policy against the Ukrainians, they bring out agricultural and political documentation to illustrate their contention that the widespread 1932 starvation in Ukraine and western Russian areas was due to misguided or misapplied economic policies during collectivization, to severe drought conditions, and to a harvest that turned out to be much smaller than originally anticipated.
This is on one level an academic debate among experts on soviet agricultural and national history. But it is at the same time an impassioned often extremely personal contended space with an ongoing vigorous global campaign by Ukrainian nationalists, anti-communists, and the “Orange Revolution” government of Ukraine which is pressing a charge of genocide at the UN as a front of its ongoing struggle with Moscow.
Viola affirms the 25,000ers as enthusiastic idealist workers fighters for Socialism, the idealist youth of their generation. She shows that the Soviet state mobilized working-class support for collectivization and also shows from Soviet Archive documentation that, contrary to previous anti-communist claims, the 25,000ers went into the countryside as enthusiastic recruits 2. Her unique social history uses an "on the scene" approach from letters and documents of militant cadre to offer a new understanding of the process of the USSR agricultural revolution under Stalin.
On a personal note my ex-mother in law was a child of 10 living on her parents farm on the outskirts of Ternopil, Ukraine in 1932 and has no memory of any famine in her area. So we need to be careful about which regions were most impacted by famine.
Second, I suggest to academic readers that they read RW Davies & SG Wheatcroft's book The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-33 (NY: Macmillan, 2004)esp p 214; Also see Mark B Tauger's article: "The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933", Slavic Review, 50:1 (1991) esp p 89; and see Terry Martin's The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union 1923-1939 (Cornell U Press: 2001) esp 273-308
NOTE: None of these scholars are ‘Stalinists’. They are social scientists and historians of Soviet agriculture who do not however support the notion of a conscious conspiracy by Stalin and the CPSU of 1929-31 to create a "Ukrainian Holocaust". Their careful research shows there are intermediate positions.
________________________________________________________________________
1. From 1929 to 1933 the number of cattle fell from 70.5 to 38.4 million, pigs from 26 to 12.1 million, horses from 34 to 16.6 million, and sheep and goats from 146.7 to 50.2 million.
2.Such an upsurge [pod" em] which we now observe is characteristic only
of large revolutionary overturns. This is not an ordinary upsurge, but a
revolutionary upsurge, especially the upsurge among workers. All
questions of workers' daily life [byt], all questions with which the trade
unions are concerned in relation to wages, etc. are now subsumed by the
question of collectivization. All problems in workers' provisioning, all
questions about inefficiencies, food shortages, high prices, etc., are
subsumed by collectivization. All the attention of the working class is
centered on collectivization. It [the working class] instinctively feels that
the key to all these problems is collectivization and that the sooner this
issue is resolved, the sooner all the remaining problems will be resolved
. . . We presently have a real revolutionary movement in the working
class for collectivization: a real revolutionary socialist campaign to the
countryside for collectivization when workers gladly decline a high
salary and go to the countryside. There are masses of cases of the best
skilled workers refusing high salaries and going to the countryside.
A. A. ANDREEV, speech at the Third Plenum of the North
Caucasus Regional Party Committee, 13 January 1930
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Information on the Viola book:
The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization
by Lynne Viola; Oxford University Press, 1987. 292 pgs.
Introduction
1: Workers to the Countryside: from Revolution to Revolution
Conclusion
2: The Recruitment of the 25,000ers
Conclusion
3: Setting the Campaign in Motion
Conclusion
4: The Drive to Collectivize Soviet Agriculture: Winter 1930
Conclusion
5: The 25,000ers and the Cadres of Collectivization: The Offensive on Rural Officialdom
6: The 25,000ers at Work on the Collective Farms
Conclusion
7: The Denouement of the Campaign
Epilogue
Conclusion
Notes
Glossary
A Note on Sources
Index
Afghanistan – Harper imitates Bush's cut-and-run, support-the-troops rhetoric: Canadian deaths up ante in patriotic slogan debate
Canada became involved in the NATO occupation of Afghanistan to placate the Americans for not sending troops to Iraq. The nature of Canadian involvement changed radically, however, once Stephen Harper's minority government was elected in January 2006.
Harper has always backed the aggressive military behaviour of the United States. He enthusiastically supported the US invasion of Iraq and complained bitterly when Canada did not send troops there.
"I don't know all the facts on Iraq, but I think we should work closely with the Americans," he told Report Newsmagazine, March 25th 2002. He voted against a motion urging the Canadian government not to participate in the US military intervention in Iraq on March 20, 2003.
On April 4, 2003, he told a Friends of America Rally, "Thank you for saying to our friends in the United States of America, you are our ally, our neighbour and our best friend in the whole wide world. And when your brave men and women give their lives for freedom and democracy we are not neutral. We do not stand on the sidelines; we're for the disarmament of Saddam and the liberation of the people of Iraq."
Most Canadians, however, did not support Canadian involvement in Iraq. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien arranged to send a few troops to relatively safe parts of Afghanistan as a quiet, face-saving endorsement of America without high costs. Later under Prime Minister Paul Martin and Defence Minister Bill Graham, Canadian troops were deployed to more dangerous southern regions on the advice of newly-appointed chief of Canada's land forces Rick Hillier. When the Harper Conservatives won their minority government, things intensified.
Canada rapidly became involved in the same kind of high-stakes, high-risk war-fighting activities as the US. With this new emphasis came casualties. "As Canada's troop casualties in Afghanistan mounted in the summer and fall of 2006, so did the calls for us to stay the course and 'rally behind our troops.'" writes Toronto Starcolumnist Linda McQuaig in her 2007 book Holding the Bully's Coat. "With each new death there were new pledges not to 'cut and run,'" echoing the rhetoric of George W Bush.
McQuaig points out that the war in Afghanistan was an illegal war of aggression at the outset with questionable status today. It was launched without regard for international convention, negotiation attempts made by the Taliban government or the human rights abuses of its Northern Alliance allies. By definition it is illegal. She quotes Canadian international law professor Michael Mandel as saying that Afghan civilian deaths represent "'very serious crimes, in fact supreme international crimes,' because according to international law asserted at the post-World War 2 Nuremburg Trials, 'To initiate a war of aggression... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime... '."
The persecution of women persists as badly as under the Taliban, as confirmed, she reports, by the women of RAWA, the same women's group that resisted the Taliban government. The government is elected but controlled by the US and the warlords, civilians continue to die in large numbers as a result of NATO and Canadian actions, leading to the creation of more insurgents.
"The Harper government claims (among other things) that the fight in Afghanistan is about the establishment of a democratic government that respects human rights, in particular the rights of women. In fact, this fight is not about human rights and never has been," wrote political scientist James Laxer in Straight Goods in February 2007.
"The Taliban and Al Qaeda grew out of the earlier struggles of the Mujahideen from the 1970s to the 1990s to overturn the pro-Soviet regime that was kept in power by Soviet troops. The United States provided enormous financial aid and direction to the Mujahideen, knowing that they were virulently opposed to the rights of women. Now the US and its NATO allies are fighting the political forces Washington helped create.
"While the human rights record of the Taliban government was atrocious... we must never forget that the US played a large role in creating the Taliban. Moreover, the Northern Alliance and other allies of the US in the struggle to overturn the Taliban government have been guilty of major human rights abuses including rape, public executions, bombing of civilians and the massacre of prisoners."
Stephen Harper casts Canada's role in a heroic light. "There are too many unsung heroes in Afghanistan.... helping the Afghan people reclaim and rebuild their war-ravaged country," Harper told a large "red Friday" rally in Petawawa, Ontario, May 11. He made the surprise visit along with Chief of Defence Staff Gen Rick Hillier and Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor.
Harper said that criticism over Canada handing detainees over for torture have diverted public attention from the "positive stories."
"They did not get the attention they deserve because their stories were eclipsed by arguments in the House of Commons over the allegations of Taliban prisoners," Harper said. His words came close to implying that raising human rights concerns and international law is disloyal to troops in the field.
To quell public criticism of the Afghanistan mission, Conservatives have relied on the motto "support our troops." "There will be some who want to cut and run, but cutting and running is not my way and it's not the Canadian way," Harper told a rally of troops in March, 2007.
Even those who oppose the war risk encouraging its support when they use the phrase, which is intended to invoke patriotic emotions.
Harper has always backed the aggressive military behaviour of the United States. He enthusiastically supported the US invasion of Iraq and complained bitterly when Canada did not send troops there.
"I don't know all the facts on Iraq, but I think we should work closely with the Americans," he told Report Newsmagazine, March 25th 2002. He voted against a motion urging the Canadian government not to participate in the US military intervention in Iraq on March 20, 2003.
On April 4, 2003, he told a Friends of America Rally, "Thank you for saying to our friends in the United States of America, you are our ally, our neighbour and our best friend in the whole wide world. And when your brave men and women give their lives for freedom and democracy we are not neutral. We do not stand on the sidelines; we're for the disarmament of Saddam and the liberation of the people of Iraq."
Most Canadians, however, did not support Canadian involvement in Iraq. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien arranged to send a few troops to relatively safe parts of Afghanistan as a quiet, face-saving endorsement of America without high costs. Later under Prime Minister Paul Martin and Defence Minister Bill Graham, Canadian troops were deployed to more dangerous southern regions on the advice of newly-appointed chief of Canada's land forces Rick Hillier. When the Harper Conservatives won their minority government, things intensified.
Canada rapidly became involved in the same kind of high-stakes, high-risk war-fighting activities as the US. With this new emphasis came casualties. "As Canada's troop casualties in Afghanistan mounted in the summer and fall of 2006, so did the calls for us to stay the course and 'rally behind our troops.'" writes Toronto Starcolumnist Linda McQuaig in her 2007 book Holding the Bully's Coat. "With each new death there were new pledges not to 'cut and run,'" echoing the rhetoric of George W Bush.
McQuaig points out that the war in Afghanistan was an illegal war of aggression at the outset with questionable status today. It was launched without regard for international convention, negotiation attempts made by the Taliban government or the human rights abuses of its Northern Alliance allies. By definition it is illegal. She quotes Canadian international law professor Michael Mandel as saying that Afghan civilian deaths represent "'very serious crimes, in fact supreme international crimes,' because according to international law asserted at the post-World War 2 Nuremburg Trials, 'To initiate a war of aggression... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime... '."
The persecution of women persists as badly as under the Taliban, as confirmed, she reports, by the women of RAWA, the same women's group that resisted the Taliban government. The government is elected but controlled by the US and the warlords, civilians continue to die in large numbers as a result of NATO and Canadian actions, leading to the creation of more insurgents.
"The Harper government claims (among other things) that the fight in Afghanistan is about the establishment of a democratic government that respects human rights, in particular the rights of women. In fact, this fight is not about human rights and never has been," wrote political scientist James Laxer in Straight Goods in February 2007.
"The Taliban and Al Qaeda grew out of the earlier struggles of the Mujahideen from the 1970s to the 1990s to overturn the pro-Soviet regime that was kept in power by Soviet troops. The United States provided enormous financial aid and direction to the Mujahideen, knowing that they were virulently opposed to the rights of women. Now the US and its NATO allies are fighting the political forces Washington helped create.
"While the human rights record of the Taliban government was atrocious... we must never forget that the US played a large role in creating the Taliban. Moreover, the Northern Alliance and other allies of the US in the struggle to overturn the Taliban government have been guilty of major human rights abuses including rape, public executions, bombing of civilians and the massacre of prisoners."
Stephen Harper casts Canada's role in a heroic light. "There are too many unsung heroes in Afghanistan.... helping the Afghan people reclaim and rebuild their war-ravaged country," Harper told a large "red Friday" rally in Petawawa, Ontario, May 11. He made the surprise visit along with Chief of Defence Staff Gen Rick Hillier and Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor.
Harper said that criticism over Canada handing detainees over for torture have diverted public attention from the "positive stories."
"They did not get the attention they deserve because their stories were eclipsed by arguments in the House of Commons over the allegations of Taliban prisoners," Harper said. His words came close to implying that raising human rights concerns and international law is disloyal to troops in the field.
To quell public criticism of the Afghanistan mission, Conservatives have relied on the motto "support our troops." "There will be some who want to cut and run, but cutting and running is not my way and it's not the Canadian way," Harper told a rally of troops in March, 2007.
Even those who oppose the war risk encouraging its support when they use the phrase, which is intended to invoke patriotic emotions.
Policing Afghanistan: Obama's New Strategy by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch, March 23, 2009
A new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan will be unveiled by President Barack Obama this week. A centerpiece of the new strategy is a plan to ramp up the training of the Afghan army and police at a cost of some $2 billion a year, an astronomical sum in Afghanistan where the entire government budget is about half that amount. Another key part of the plan is expected to be an effort to divide and conquer the Taliban with a mix of negotiations and targeted missile strikes in Pakistan.
CorpWatch, in association with KPFA radio, traveled to Afghanistan recently to interview a variety of Afghans from students to parliamentarians on their views of what Obama should do in their country...
Sitting in his darkened apartment in Kabul, a victim of the many power cuts in the capital city, Mir Ahmed Joyenda, an Afghan member of parliament, summed up the hopes and anxieties of many Afghans when he told us: “First of all, they should build (up) the Afghan army to defend the country. Second of all they should not plan attacks by B52s, Chinooks or pilot-less planes, they should have coordination with the Afghan army. Thirdly they should change their policy on the economic development of Afghanistan – it should be tangible for the people to have change in their lives."
Obama's new plan, which will aim to double the current size of the security forces to 400,000 troops and national police officers, may reassure Joyenda, but the ongoing program of missile strikes will not. Whether or not Obama will significantly increase and improve economic assistance to Afghanistan is a question that will only be answered over time.
To date most foreign economic assistance to Afghanistan has targeted the Taliban strongholds and the opium growing areas in the South, ignoring the needs of the majority of the country. Even the ancient Silk Road town of Bamiyan, the country's largest tourist attraction, with stunning archaeological and natural beauty (and the former site of the millennia-old Buddhas of Bamiyan, dynamited by the Taliban in 2001), has been ignored by the United States. A CorpWatch and KPFA video on the lack of basic services such as electricity and potable water in this region may be seen here.
The Obama plan to police Afghanistan and Pakistan and target the Taliban was coordinated at the National Security Council by Bruce Reidel, a 29-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, who is a firm believer in the global war on terror (although that title has been quietly withdrawn by the Obama administration). The New York Times summed up Riedel's views as "one of a chorus of terrorism experts who see the terrorist network's base in the mountains of Pakistan as America's greatest threat" – a theory he has been working since 1981 when he was assigned to track what he calls the "birth of the global jihad" – notably focusing on an Egyptian physician named Ayman al-Zawahiri. Reidel recently published a book at the Brookings Institute titled: "The Search for Al Qaeda.”
Contracting out Police Training
Who will train the tens of thousands of new police officers and soldiers? We await the answer to this question but there is a fairly good chance that some of it will be contracted out to companies like Virginia-based DynCorp who have previously been awarded multiple projects to train the Afghan police.
DynCorp's latest contract is a one-year-old U.S. State Department funded pilot project to reform the Afghan police called "Focused District Development" (FDD) that was initially directed by Major General Bob Cone, the former commanding general of the Combined Security Transition Command- Afghanistan.
The Afghan police, who can be seen speeding around the country in their brand new green Ford Ranger pickup trucks (paid for by the U.S. government), have long been considered to be inefficient or corrupt. "Officers aren't trained to be beat cops, much less to fight insurgents, say U.S. military and local Afghans. Many smoke hashish. Some demand illegal "taxes" from drivers on nearby roads. Often, the local police force is more of a militia answering to the local strongmen," wrote Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, a National Public Radio (NPR) reporter last year.
This popular view was backed up by a 2007 study done by the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan. The study found negative information –including assertions of involvement in drug trafficking, corruption and assaults – on 939 (38 percent) of 2,464 officers it reviewed.
Another problem is the existence of "ghost policemen" – fictitious names on personnel rolls that allow police chiefs to collect extra payments. A 2007 Pentagon census of the Afghan National Police in several provinces could not confirm the existence of about 20 percent of uniformed police and more than 10 percent of border police listed on Ministry of Interior payroll records.
This is despite an extensive $10 billion training and support program funded by the U.S. for the Afghan Ministry of Interior (MOI) and Afghan National Police (ANP). A total of $653.5 million has been spent on Afghan police salaries to date, with the remainder of the money presumably going to equipment, infrastructure and salaries of U.S. government and contractor personnel.
Some of that money appears to have been wasted or stolen, according to several reviews done by the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress. A 2005 GAO report noted that, "some recently trained police were forced to give their new equipment to more senior police and were pressured by their commanders to participate in extorting money from truck drivers and travelers." In 2008, a State Department investigation found that newly trained police were being assigned into an "unreformed environment" to work with untrained or corrupt colleagues, defeating the purpose of the training.
A 2008 GAO report was just as scathing. In a presentation to the U.S House of Representatives Subcommittee On National Security And Foreign Affairs, Congressman John Tierney summed up the findings on the 433 Afghan National Police units: "Zero are fully capable, three percent are capable with coalition support, four percent are only partially capable, 77 percent are not capable at all, and 68 percent are not formed or not reporting."
In an effort to combat these failures, notably the corruption and local loyalties that hampered past efforts to train individuals, DynCorp (which also ran the previous training contracts) was tasked to run the newly designed FDD program. Instead of training individual officers, DynCorp was asked to first assess each police district's organization, training, facilities and judicial infrastructure. Then the entire police unit was removed from their district for eight weeks of full-time training, segmented into basic training for all untrained recruits; advanced training for recruits with previous training; and management and leadership training for officers.
At a briefing in Camp Eggers in Kabul last November just before he relinquished his post, Cone explained that DynCorp was tasked with ongoing mentorship after the police returned to their districts: "I think that's really important is that we have these police mentor teams that stay and live with the police in the districts to perhaps keep them – in terms of – keep them from returning to some of their previous behavior, but more importantly keep them tied into the logistics system, the pay system, weapons accountability, et cetera, make sure they're performing as a competent police force."
So far the DynCorp FDD police training project has had mixed success, according to NPR's Nelson who traveled to Patkia province to see the new graduates in action earlier this month. She met with the Afghan major general in charge of the border provinces, Nabi Jan Molakheil, who is loyal to the government in Kabul instead of the local war lords.
Molakheil's battalion commanders "have lied about how many men they had on their rosters in the first place: a lie that allowed them to pocket Western money being paid for border police salaries and upkeep. A third of his commanders were removed last year after being accused of corruption. Two more were summoned to the interior ministry in Kabul in the past couple weeks to answer similar charges."
Nelson also observed that the border police "don't go on patrol a lot, either, relying instead on feral dogs to attack people sneaking across the border via remote goat trails or forest paths. Nor do these guards always check the handful of cars that cross into the area. The guards barely glance at a pickup that rumbles past, hauling a mound of unseen items covered by a tarp. The driver is a local, they say dismissively, just a shopkeeper who went to Pakistan for the day."
Back up for Nelson's report comes from a newly issued report by the GAO, also released earlier this month. The GAO quoted a February 2009 review by the Pentagon that assessed just 19 percent of FDD-retrained units as "capable of conducting missions," 25 percent as capable of doing so with outside support, 31 percent as capable of partially doing so with outside support, and 25 percent as not capable."
The GAO report says that one of the key achievements of the program has been to reform the top-heavy command structure of the security forces by cutting the officer corps from about 17,800 to about 9,000, reducing the percentage of high-ranking officers, while increasing pay for all ranks.
Some 55 percent of the 17,800 officers screened for "professionalism and integrity" apparently passed the test but the GAO was unable to review the results because the State Department "did not systematically compile its records." (A UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan review of the officers also noted that 10,000 names turned up no records in any database, making assessment difficult.)
Despite these failings, Obama is expected to take up recommendations from the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CST-A) to expand the FDD system to a total of 399 police mentor teams – 365 district teams and 34 provincial level teams. CSTC-A wants to implement a three-year planning model that would have 250 police mentor teams fielded by the end of December 2009 and the remaining 149 teams fielded in districts by October 2010. The Pentagon has also asked for an additional 1,500 additional military personnel to complement the civilian police trainers under this FDD expansion plan.
(FDD is not the only police training program in Afghanistan. A similar project, called In-District Reform (IDR), is under way in Herat province, where the training is provided by the U.S. Marines. Under this program, only half the police are taken out of their district for training while the Marines provide a temporary "surge" to provide back up. The IDR program is also different from FDD in that it provides a two-week collective skills training program.)
The job of fulfilling Obama's new plan will fall to Cone's successor, U.S. Major General Richard Formica, who took over the job as commanding general of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan on December 28th, 2008.
DynCorp is already hoping to win these contracts. William L. Ballhaus, DynCorp's CEO, told financial analysts in February that the company was "seeing the potential for increased demand for our services in Afghanistan and we hope over the next few months to start to get some more insight into the ramp up for trainers and advisors for police training."
Lack of "Basic Understanding"
Will the new plan succeed? Christine Fair, co-author of a recent U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) report on the need for new strategy in Afghanistan says that the problems with foreign aid in the last several years are deep rooted.
"The lack of oversight – or even basic understanding – of the universe of international assistance programs at work in Afghanistan was one of the most striking findings of this report," says Fair. "The international community has shown a remarkable commitment to Afghanistan through its provision of resources and personnel, but only a fraction of that commitment is being met."
One example Fair cites is the 67 percent shortfall in international mentors for the police and a 30 percent shortfall for the army. Fair's report says that since 2001, the U.S. and international community have focused predominantly on top-down security efforts, including the establishment of an Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army. "But the deteriorating situation and local nature of the insurgency require supporting district-level institutions that are Afghan-led and locally appropriate, with safeguards and oversight to establish order and deliver services," concludes the USIP report.
Yet even more tragic is the fact so little effort is being put into answering basic economic needs. "It's very ironic that we are trying to build a sovereign state that can't afford the security architecture we are building for it," Fair told NPR. Money is not the biggest problem, she says. "The chief problem in Afghanistan is not necessarily a lack of resources, but a better use of resources and one that builds governance, not weakens it."
CorpWatch, in association with KPFA radio, traveled to Afghanistan recently to interview a variety of Afghans from students to parliamentarians on their views of what Obama should do in their country...
Sitting in his darkened apartment in Kabul, a victim of the many power cuts in the capital city, Mir Ahmed Joyenda, an Afghan member of parliament, summed up the hopes and anxieties of many Afghans when he told us: “First of all, they should build (up) the Afghan army to defend the country. Second of all they should not plan attacks by B52s, Chinooks or pilot-less planes, they should have coordination with the Afghan army. Thirdly they should change their policy on the economic development of Afghanistan – it should be tangible for the people to have change in their lives."
Obama's new plan, which will aim to double the current size of the security forces to 400,000 troops and national police officers, may reassure Joyenda, but the ongoing program of missile strikes will not. Whether or not Obama will significantly increase and improve economic assistance to Afghanistan is a question that will only be answered over time.
To date most foreign economic assistance to Afghanistan has targeted the Taliban strongholds and the opium growing areas in the South, ignoring the needs of the majority of the country. Even the ancient Silk Road town of Bamiyan, the country's largest tourist attraction, with stunning archaeological and natural beauty (and the former site of the millennia-old Buddhas of Bamiyan, dynamited by the Taliban in 2001), has been ignored by the United States. A CorpWatch and KPFA video on the lack of basic services such as electricity and potable water in this region may be seen here.
The Obama plan to police Afghanistan and Pakistan and target the Taliban was coordinated at the National Security Council by Bruce Reidel, a 29-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, who is a firm believer in the global war on terror (although that title has been quietly withdrawn by the Obama administration). The New York Times summed up Riedel's views as "one of a chorus of terrorism experts who see the terrorist network's base in the mountains of Pakistan as America's greatest threat" – a theory he has been working since 1981 when he was assigned to track what he calls the "birth of the global jihad" – notably focusing on an Egyptian physician named Ayman al-Zawahiri. Reidel recently published a book at the Brookings Institute titled: "The Search for Al Qaeda.”
Contracting out Police Training
Who will train the tens of thousands of new police officers and soldiers? We await the answer to this question but there is a fairly good chance that some of it will be contracted out to companies like Virginia-based DynCorp who have previously been awarded multiple projects to train the Afghan police.
DynCorp's latest contract is a one-year-old U.S. State Department funded pilot project to reform the Afghan police called "Focused District Development" (FDD) that was initially directed by Major General Bob Cone, the former commanding general of the Combined Security Transition Command- Afghanistan.
The Afghan police, who can be seen speeding around the country in their brand new green Ford Ranger pickup trucks (paid for by the U.S. government), have long been considered to be inefficient or corrupt. "Officers aren't trained to be beat cops, much less to fight insurgents, say U.S. military and local Afghans. Many smoke hashish. Some demand illegal "taxes" from drivers on nearby roads. Often, the local police force is more of a militia answering to the local strongmen," wrote Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, a National Public Radio (NPR) reporter last year.
This popular view was backed up by a 2007 study done by the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan. The study found negative information –including assertions of involvement in drug trafficking, corruption and assaults – on 939 (38 percent) of 2,464 officers it reviewed.
Another problem is the existence of "ghost policemen" – fictitious names on personnel rolls that allow police chiefs to collect extra payments. A 2007 Pentagon census of the Afghan National Police in several provinces could not confirm the existence of about 20 percent of uniformed police and more than 10 percent of border police listed on Ministry of Interior payroll records.
This is despite an extensive $10 billion training and support program funded by the U.S. for the Afghan Ministry of Interior (MOI) and Afghan National Police (ANP). A total of $653.5 million has been spent on Afghan police salaries to date, with the remainder of the money presumably going to equipment, infrastructure and salaries of U.S. government and contractor personnel.
Some of that money appears to have been wasted or stolen, according to several reviews done by the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress. A 2005 GAO report noted that, "some recently trained police were forced to give their new equipment to more senior police and were pressured by their commanders to participate in extorting money from truck drivers and travelers." In 2008, a State Department investigation found that newly trained police were being assigned into an "unreformed environment" to work with untrained or corrupt colleagues, defeating the purpose of the training.
A 2008 GAO report was just as scathing. In a presentation to the U.S House of Representatives Subcommittee On National Security And Foreign Affairs, Congressman John Tierney summed up the findings on the 433 Afghan National Police units: "Zero are fully capable, three percent are capable with coalition support, four percent are only partially capable, 77 percent are not capable at all, and 68 percent are not formed or not reporting."
In an effort to combat these failures, notably the corruption and local loyalties that hampered past efforts to train individuals, DynCorp (which also ran the previous training contracts) was tasked to run the newly designed FDD program. Instead of training individual officers, DynCorp was asked to first assess each police district's organization, training, facilities and judicial infrastructure. Then the entire police unit was removed from their district for eight weeks of full-time training, segmented into basic training for all untrained recruits; advanced training for recruits with previous training; and management and leadership training for officers.
At a briefing in Camp Eggers in Kabul last November just before he relinquished his post, Cone explained that DynCorp was tasked with ongoing mentorship after the police returned to their districts: "I think that's really important is that we have these police mentor teams that stay and live with the police in the districts to perhaps keep them – in terms of – keep them from returning to some of their previous behavior, but more importantly keep them tied into the logistics system, the pay system, weapons accountability, et cetera, make sure they're performing as a competent police force."
So far the DynCorp FDD police training project has had mixed success, according to NPR's Nelson who traveled to Patkia province to see the new graduates in action earlier this month. She met with the Afghan major general in charge of the border provinces, Nabi Jan Molakheil, who is loyal to the government in Kabul instead of the local war lords.
Molakheil's battalion commanders "have lied about how many men they had on their rosters in the first place: a lie that allowed them to pocket Western money being paid for border police salaries and upkeep. A third of his commanders were removed last year after being accused of corruption. Two more were summoned to the interior ministry in Kabul in the past couple weeks to answer similar charges."
Nelson also observed that the border police "don't go on patrol a lot, either, relying instead on feral dogs to attack people sneaking across the border via remote goat trails or forest paths. Nor do these guards always check the handful of cars that cross into the area. The guards barely glance at a pickup that rumbles past, hauling a mound of unseen items covered by a tarp. The driver is a local, they say dismissively, just a shopkeeper who went to Pakistan for the day."
Back up for Nelson's report comes from a newly issued report by the GAO, also released earlier this month. The GAO quoted a February 2009 review by the Pentagon that assessed just 19 percent of FDD-retrained units as "capable of conducting missions," 25 percent as capable of doing so with outside support, 31 percent as capable of partially doing so with outside support, and 25 percent as not capable."
The GAO report says that one of the key achievements of the program has been to reform the top-heavy command structure of the security forces by cutting the officer corps from about 17,800 to about 9,000, reducing the percentage of high-ranking officers, while increasing pay for all ranks.
Some 55 percent of the 17,800 officers screened for "professionalism and integrity" apparently passed the test but the GAO was unable to review the results because the State Department "did not systematically compile its records." (A UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan review of the officers also noted that 10,000 names turned up no records in any database, making assessment difficult.)
Despite these failings, Obama is expected to take up recommendations from the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CST-A) to expand the FDD system to a total of 399 police mentor teams – 365 district teams and 34 provincial level teams. CSTC-A wants to implement a three-year planning model that would have 250 police mentor teams fielded by the end of December 2009 and the remaining 149 teams fielded in districts by October 2010. The Pentagon has also asked for an additional 1,500 additional military personnel to complement the civilian police trainers under this FDD expansion plan.
(FDD is not the only police training program in Afghanistan. A similar project, called In-District Reform (IDR), is under way in Herat province, where the training is provided by the U.S. Marines. Under this program, only half the police are taken out of their district for training while the Marines provide a temporary "surge" to provide back up. The IDR program is also different from FDD in that it provides a two-week collective skills training program.)
The job of fulfilling Obama's new plan will fall to Cone's successor, U.S. Major General Richard Formica, who took over the job as commanding general of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan on December 28th, 2008.
DynCorp is already hoping to win these contracts. William L. Ballhaus, DynCorp's CEO, told financial analysts in February that the company was "seeing the potential for increased demand for our services in Afghanistan and we hope over the next few months to start to get some more insight into the ramp up for trainers and advisors for police training."
Lack of "Basic Understanding"
Will the new plan succeed? Christine Fair, co-author of a recent U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) report on the need for new strategy in Afghanistan says that the problems with foreign aid in the last several years are deep rooted.
"The lack of oversight – or even basic understanding – of the universe of international assistance programs at work in Afghanistan was one of the most striking findings of this report," says Fair. "The international community has shown a remarkable commitment to Afghanistan through its provision of resources and personnel, but only a fraction of that commitment is being met."
One example Fair cites is the 67 percent shortfall in international mentors for the police and a 30 percent shortfall for the army. Fair's report says that since 2001, the U.S. and international community have focused predominantly on top-down security efforts, including the establishment of an Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army. "But the deteriorating situation and local nature of the insurgency require supporting district-level institutions that are Afghan-led and locally appropriate, with safeguards and oversight to establish order and deliver services," concludes the USIP report.
Yet even more tragic is the fact so little effort is being put into answering basic economic needs. "It's very ironic that we are trying to build a sovereign state that can't afford the security architecture we are building for it," Fair told NPR. Money is not the biggest problem, she says. "The chief problem in Afghanistan is not necessarily a lack of resources, but a better use of resources and one that builds governance, not weakens it."
11-Year-Old Hangs Himself after Enduring Daily Anti-Gay Bullying
Media Contact:
Daryl Presgraves
646-388-6577
dpresgraves@glsen.org
Apr 09, 2009
GLSEN Calls on Schools, Nation to Embrace Solutions to Bullying Problem
NEW YORK, April 9, 2009 - An 11-year-old Massachusetts boy, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, hung himself Monday after enduring bullying at school, including daily taunts of being gay, despite his mother’s weekly pleas to the school to address the problem. This is at least the fourth suicide of a middle-school aged child linked to bullying this year.
Carl, a junior at New Leadership Charter School in Springfield who did not identify as gay, would have turned 12 on April 17, the same day hundreds of thousands of students will participate in the 13th annual National Day of Silence by taking some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) bullying and harassment at school. The other three known cases of suicide among middle-school students
took place in Chatham, Evanston and Chicago, Ill., in the month of February.
"Our hearts go out to Carl’s mother, Sirdeaner L. Walker, and other members of Carl's family, as well as to the community suffering from this loss," GLSEN Executive Director Eliza Byard said. "As we mourn yet another tragedy involving bullying at school, we must heed Ms. Walker’s urgent call for real, systemic, effective responses to the endemic problem of bullying and harassment. Especially in this time of societal crisis, adults in schools must be alert to the heightened pressure children face, and take action to create safe learning environments for the students in their care. In order to do that effectively, as this case so tragically illustrates, schools must deal head-on with anti-gay language and behavior."
Two of the top three reasons students said their peers were most often bullied at school were actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender expression, according to From Teasing to Torment: School Climate in America, a 2005 report by GLSEN and Harris Interactive. The top reason was physical appearance.
"As was the case with Carl, you do not have to identify as gay to be attacked with anti-LGBT language," Byard said. "From their earliest years on the school playground, students learn to use anti-LGBT language as the ultimate weapon to degrade their peers. In many cases, schools and teachers either ignore the behavior or don’t know how to intervene."
Nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT youth (86.2%) reported being verbally harassed at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation, nearly half (44.1%) reported being physically harassed and about a quarter (22.1%) reported being physically assaulted, according to GLSEN’s 2007 National School Climate Survey of more than 6,000 LGBT students.
In most cases, the harassment is unreported. Nearly two-thirds of LGBT students (60.8%) who experience harassment or assault never reported the incident to the school. The most common reason given was that they didn’t believe anything would be done to address the situation. Of those who did report the incident, nearly a third (31.1%) said the school staff did nothing in response. While LGBT youth face extreme victimization, bullying in general is also a widespread problem. More than a third of middle and high school students (37%) said that bullying, name-calling or harassment is a somewhat or very serious problem at their school, according to From Teasing to Torment. Bullying is even more severe in middle school. Two-thirds of middle school students (65%) reported being assaulted or harassed in the previous year and only 41% said they felt very safe at school.
Carl's suicide comes about a year after eighth-grader Lawrence King was shot and killed by a fellow student in a California classroom, allegedly because he was gay.
GLSEN recommends four simple approaches schools can take to begin addressing bullying now.
Said Walker in the Springfield Republican: "If anything can come of this, it's that another child doesn't have to suffer like this and there can be some justice for some other child. I don't want any other parent to go through this."
About GLSEN
GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, is the leading national education organization focused on ensuring safe schools for all students. Established nationally in 1995, GLSEN envisions a world in which every child learns to respect and accept all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. GLSEN seeks to develop school climates where difference is valued for the positive contribution it makes to creating a more vibrant and diverse community. For information on GLSEN's research, educational resources, public policy advocacy, student organizing programs and educator training initiatives, visit www.glsen.org.
Poll: Just 53 percent of Americans say capitalism better than socialism
http://pww.org/article/articleview/15177/
Author: Teresa Albano
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 04/09/09
^^^ ^ ^^^ ^ ^^^
This poll made our day.
According to a recent Rasmussen Report, only 53 percent of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.
Not a very good spread for the profits-before-people, greed-is-good crowd. Ayn Rand must be rolling in her grave.
These numbers of course reflect the deep, transformative moment we are living in. An economic depression is a powerful force for people to experience, leading them to question the system that got us here.
Then there is the 20 percent that say socialism is better than capitalism, according to Rasmussen. Another wow! Twenty-seven percent are not sure which is better.
As the population gets further away from the Cold War years, the more they are open to socialism. The under 30 population is essentially divided: 37 percent prefer capitalism, 33 percent socialism and 30 percent are undecided.
Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the current system with 49 percent for capitalism and 26 percent for socialism.
But the ones over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13 percent of those believe socialism is better. What happened to the radical baby boomers?!
As you may imagine, those who have money to invest chose capitalism by a 5-to-1 margin. But for the rest of us who have no money to invest – a quarter of us say socialism would be o.k. Only 40 percent of non-investors think capitalism is better.
These are amazing statistics considering Rasmussen did not define either capitalism or socialism in their questions.
In an earlier survey by the polling firm they found, 70 percent of Americans prefer a free-market economy. When using the term “free market economy,” Rasmussen asserts, it attracts more support than using the term “capitalism.”
“Other survey data supports that notion. Rather than seeing large corporations as committed to free markets, two-out-of-three Americans believe that big government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors,” the poll summary stated.
Imagine how Americans would react if truly a national conversation was had on the benefits of socialism. Right now most Americans see it as a “government-managed” economy and they aren’t convinced the government could do any better than the corporate royalty, according to further poll findings.
Not included in the current popular view of socialism is democratization of the economy – where representatives of all communities, unions, schools, etc., would actually be involved in steering economic policy and decision making on all levels – micro and macro.
Recently, a colleague of mine, Sam Webb, the chair of the Communist Party said of the current economic and political situation:
“Is there any reason to think that millions in motion can't transform this country and world into the just, green, sustainable and peaceful "Promised Land" that Martin Luther King dreamed of?
“It would be a profound mistake to underestimate the progressive and socialist potential of this era. The American people have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity within their reach.”
While polls are just a snapshot of a very fluid and dynamic process of what people think, the more long term forces of the economy are already having this profound effect.
Author: Teresa Albano
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 04/09/09
^^^ ^ ^^^ ^ ^^^
This poll made our day.
According to a recent Rasmussen Report, only 53 percent of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.
Not a very good spread for the profits-before-people, greed-is-good crowd. Ayn Rand must be rolling in her grave.
These numbers of course reflect the deep, transformative moment we are living in. An economic depression is a powerful force for people to experience, leading them to question the system that got us here.
Then there is the 20 percent that say socialism is better than capitalism, according to Rasmussen. Another wow! Twenty-seven percent are not sure which is better.
As the population gets further away from the Cold War years, the more they are open to socialism. The under 30 population is essentially divided: 37 percent prefer capitalism, 33 percent socialism and 30 percent are undecided.
Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the current system with 49 percent for capitalism and 26 percent for socialism.
But the ones over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13 percent of those believe socialism is better. What happened to the radical baby boomers?!
As you may imagine, those who have money to invest chose capitalism by a 5-to-1 margin. But for the rest of us who have no money to invest – a quarter of us say socialism would be o.k. Only 40 percent of non-investors think capitalism is better.
These are amazing statistics considering Rasmussen did not define either capitalism or socialism in their questions.
In an earlier survey by the polling firm they found, 70 percent of Americans prefer a free-market economy. When using the term “free market economy,” Rasmussen asserts, it attracts more support than using the term “capitalism.”
“Other survey data supports that notion. Rather than seeing large corporations as committed to free markets, two-out-of-three Americans believe that big government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors,” the poll summary stated.
Imagine how Americans would react if truly a national conversation was had on the benefits of socialism. Right now most Americans see it as a “government-managed” economy and they aren’t convinced the government could do any better than the corporate royalty, according to further poll findings.
Not included in the current popular view of socialism is democratization of the economy – where representatives of all communities, unions, schools, etc., would actually be involved in steering economic policy and decision making on all levels – micro and macro.
Recently, a colleague of mine, Sam Webb, the chair of the Communist Party said of the current economic and political situation:
“Is there any reason to think that millions in motion can't transform this country and world into the just, green, sustainable and peaceful "Promised Land" that Martin Luther King dreamed of?
“It would be a profound mistake to underestimate the progressive and socialist potential of this era. The American people have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity within their reach.”
While polls are just a snapshot of a very fluid and dynamic process of what people think, the more long term forces of the economy are already having this profound effect.
Fidel Castro: Reality Will Overpower Obama’s “Sincere Intentions”
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=331479&CategoryId=14510
HAVANA – Fidel Castro said he believes that President Barack Obama truly wants to improve relations between the United States and Cuba, but that the U.S. political reality will make that impossible.
The former leader commented in an article recounting his meeting on Tuesday with three members of a U.S. congressional delegation.
Castro said that when one of the lawmakers, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), told him Obama would need help from Cuba to end the five-decade chill in U.S.-Cuban ties, he replied by observing “that the objective realities” of the United States are “stronger than Obama’s sincere intentions.”
Castro, who formally stepped down as head of state early last year due to health reasons, also told Rush that Cuba has not been the aggressor between the two nations nor posed any threat to the United States.
Both Fidel Castro and his successor, younger brother Raul, said during the visit by the seven members of the Congressional Black Caucus that Havana is willing to enter into a dialogue with Washington, while insisting that that has been the communist-ruled island’s position for the past 50 years.
Fidel, 82, described as “wonderful” his almost two-hour meeting with Rush and California Democrats Barbara Lee and Laura Richardson.
“I didn’t try to meet with all of them because I don’t have enough space for all seven ... I asked (Lee) to visit me with two other lawmakers designated by the group. That way I could meet with her once again,” Castro said of his first meeting with U.S. public officials since he underwent surgery for a serious gastro-intestinal ailment in July 2006 and delegated power to his brother.
Castro praised Lee – the Black Caucus chairwoman and leader of the congressional delegation – and her colleagues and said he told them about “his experiences during two years and seven months of hospital confinement,” as well as his current activities.
“I explained what I had learned during that time of obligatory reclusion, above all my keen interest in what’s happening in the world and especially the United States,” Castro wrote.
He added that “the three came across as sincere, proud of their work, their organization, their struggle and their country. It’s apparent that they know Obama and showed their trust, confidence and sympathy toward him.”
The lawmakers who met with Castro said he appeared to be in good health.
“Very healthy, very energetic, very clear thinking,” was how Lee described Fidel at a press conference in Washington after the delegation got back from Cuba.
“We believe it is time to open dialogue and discussion with Cuba,” she told reporters. “Cubans do want dialogue. They do want talks. They do want normal relations.”
The legislators’ trip to Cuba came as the U.S. press reported that Obama plans to lift restrictions on Cuban-Americans’ travel and remittances to the communist-ruled island, in what could be a first step toward better ties with Havana.
Obama, however, has made it clear that he has no plans to immediately end the economic embargo that Washington imposed on Cuba in 1962. EFE
Excerpt from V.I. Lenin's "Marxism and Revisionism", 1908
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/apr/03.htm
In the sphere of politics, revisionism did really try to revise the foundation of Marxism, namely, the doctrine of the class struggle. Political freedom, democracy and universal suffrage remove the ground for the class struggle—we were told—and render untrue the old proposition of the Communist Manifesto that the working men have no country. For, they said, since the “will of the majority” prevails in a democracy, one must neither regard the state as an organ of class rule, nor reject alliances with the progressive, social-reform bourgeoisie against the reactionaries.
Georgians rally against president, bbc News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7991026.stm
Thousands of Georgians have gathered outside parliament saying they will not disperse until the president resigns.
Protesters, chanting and waving flags, blamed President Mikhail Saakashvili for defeat against Russia in August's war and said he had stifled democracy.
The opposition alleged that dozens of members were arrested before the rally - a claim denied by the government.
President Saakashvili urged Georgians to show unity and "work day and night... to finally liberate Georgia".
He was speaking at a ceremony in the capital, Tbilisi, to commemorate the day, 20 years ago, when 20 people died as Soviet Red Army troops crushed a popular protest in the same place.
"It is absolutely clear that no matter what opinions we may hold and how we may differ from each other, we have one homeland," he said.
He linked the events of 1989 to those of last August, when Georgia fought a brief war against Russia.
"This is what these people sacrificed themselves for under Russian tank tracks, and what our fighters sacrificed themselves for last August... freedom and a united Georgia," he said.
The BBC's Tom Esslemont in Tbilisi says opposition leaders have deliberately chosen this poignant date for their demonstrations.
The mood was calm as protesters gathered outside parliament on Thursday morning, and there was little sign of a police presence, our correspondent says.
This is the most organised protest since the war with Russia, he adds, and it is one that opposition leaders are likely to be pleased with.
Van-loads of riot police had been seen arriving at Tbilisi's parliament square hours earlier.
Opposition leaders have appealed to the government not to use violence to break up mass protests.
Police used rubber bullets and tear gas to break up the last mass protests in the capital, Tbilisi, in November 2007.
Claims of plot
"I don't think that it should be a surprise that after we lost 20% of Georgian territory and have no democracy in the country, we are asking for the resignation of the president," said Nino Burjanadze.
Ms Burjanadze was formerly an ally of Mr Saakashvili but now leads the opposition Democratic Movement-United Georgia party.
The party said 60 members, who had been planning to attend the demonstrations, were arrested overnight.
An interior ministry spokesman said that was "not true".
Our correspondent says both opposition and government figures have accused one another of planning to use violence in Thursday's rallies.
Video footage was recently released by the government allegedly showing a group of opposition supporters planning a disturbance at the protests.
The government accused the men of trying to provoke the government into using force.
Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili said the government would "not intervene or impede members of the protest in expressing their will freely" but indicated that the authorities could take action if they deemed it necessary.
"My position does not give me the liberty to exclude anything, but my mood tells me there will not be violence," he told Reuters.
"There is no chance of a revolution in Georgia."
Story from BBC NEWS:
Published: 2009/04/09 11:56:02 GMT
Thousands of Georgians have gathered outside parliament saying they will not disperse until the president resigns.
Protesters, chanting and waving flags, blamed President Mikhail Saakashvili for defeat against Russia in August's war and said he had stifled democracy.
The opposition alleged that dozens of members were arrested before the rally - a claim denied by the government.
President Saakashvili urged Georgians to show unity and "work day and night... to finally liberate Georgia".
He was speaking at a ceremony in the capital, Tbilisi, to commemorate the day, 20 years ago, when 20 people died as Soviet Red Army troops crushed a popular protest in the same place.
"It is absolutely clear that no matter what opinions we may hold and how we may differ from each other, we have one homeland," he said.
He linked the events of 1989 to those of last August, when Georgia fought a brief war against Russia.
"This is what these people sacrificed themselves for under Russian tank tracks, and what our fighters sacrificed themselves for last August... freedom and a united Georgia," he said.
The BBC's Tom Esslemont in Tbilisi says opposition leaders have deliberately chosen this poignant date for their demonstrations.
The mood was calm as protesters gathered outside parliament on Thursday morning, and there was little sign of a police presence, our correspondent says.
This is the most organised protest since the war with Russia, he adds, and it is one that opposition leaders are likely to be pleased with.
Van-loads of riot police had been seen arriving at Tbilisi's parliament square hours earlier.
Opposition leaders have appealed to the government not to use violence to break up mass protests.
Police used rubber bullets and tear gas to break up the last mass protests in the capital, Tbilisi, in November 2007.
Claims of plot
"I don't think that it should be a surprise that after we lost 20% of Georgian territory and have no democracy in the country, we are asking for the resignation of the president," said Nino Burjanadze.
Ms Burjanadze was formerly an ally of Mr Saakashvili but now leads the opposition Democratic Movement-United Georgia party.
The party said 60 members, who had been planning to attend the demonstrations, were arrested overnight.
An interior ministry spokesman said that was "not true".
Our correspondent says both opposition and government figures have accused one another of planning to use violence in Thursday's rallies.
Video footage was recently released by the government allegedly showing a group of opposition supporters planning a disturbance at the protests.
The government accused the men of trying to provoke the government into using force.
Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili said the government would "not intervene or impede members of the protest in expressing their will freely" but indicated that the authorities could take action if they deemed it necessary.
"My position does not give me the liberty to exclude anything, but my mood tells me there will not be violence," he told Reuters.
"There is no chance of a revolution in Georgia."
Story from BBC NEWS:
Published: 2009/04/09 11:56:02 GMT
April 7, 2009
Crisis allows us to reconsider left-wing ideas, Oct 18, 08, The Irish Times
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/1018/1224279408893.html
Paul Gillespie
WORLD VIEW: IN NOVEMBER 1857, Karl Marx wrote to Frederick Engels: "The American crash is a delight to behold, and it's far from over." He predicted the financial crisis - the most geographically widespread to have hit 19th-century capitalism until then - would deepen and lead to a complete collapse of Wall Street, writes Paul Gillespie
Notwithstanding his own financial distress, he had never felt so "cosy". Engels himself felt "enormously cheered". The events confirmed their theoretical analysis and political strategy of linking reality to preparedness.
That crisis spurred Marx to complete his economic studies on finance capital and its cycles of boom and bust, clearing the way for the more comprehensive Das Kapital , published 10 years later. It theorised the system as an anarchic, irrational and blind competition, pursuing profit and accumulation.
Credit and production expand in a contradictory way until they can no longer sustain profitability. Then collapse clears out waste, reorganises production and stimulates the capitalist state to amend the rules governing trade, finance and investment. The state's role oscillates between night-watchman and direct intervention, but its power should never be underestimated.
Marx's work has suddenly become popular again in Germany, as a new generation tries to understand the dynamics of these events and how they should be evaluated historically. There are disturbing memories of the 1929 crash and its awful political consequences, coming after the 1922-1923 financial collapse which destroyed German savings. As the crisis unfolded three weeks ago, German finance minister Peer Steinbrück was quick to claim "the US will lose its status as the superpower of the world economic system. The world will become multipolar." It is happening before our eyes. And Steinbrück says "generally we have to admit that parts of Marx's theory are not so bad".
Commentators have been quick to notice, and many to mock, such left-wing schadenfreude , whether directed at the US or capitalism as a whole. Germans especially should be aware of how hubris and nemesis can follow one another - as Steinbrück found out a mere 11 days after saying a bank rescue programme was not needed when he announced a plan to protect German bank deposits.
Although this is undoubtedly a grave crisis for finance capitalism, with deep effects on the real international economy, it is not - as yet - a systemic collapse. The extraordinary speed and depth of the events and the $1.8 trillion response to them, especially this week in the European Union, have helped avoid the meltdown heralded at the weekend by Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington. French president Nicolas Sarkozy, British prime minister Gordon Brown, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero are taking the lead to create a "refounded capitalism" more capable of withstanding such cyclical shocks by better global regulation.
In an audacious initiative, Sarkozy and EU Commission president José Manuel Barroso are meeting US president George Bush this weekend to seek a G8 summit next month on a new agreement to regulate global finance. Presumably it would include the president-elect. If that is Barack Obama, he will be confronted with a dramatic adjustment of US power to a more multipolar world, for which he is better prepared and which he is more willing to accept than John McCain.
Note that most of these leaders are from the centre right, not the centre left. Centrism is resurrected from the wreckage of radical right-wing deregulation, more than is the left. The argument is about re-regulation rather than redistribution, the public rather than the private interest, transnational against national sovereignty.
So far, that is. The traditional left has had little operational purchase on the crisis other than I-told-you-so utterances about their inherently cyclical nature. Confronted with this international convulsion, "the Left" is for the most part as weak and tame as it certainly is in Ireland. Popular anger here and in the US, for example, is far more radical, but not expressed in such vocabularies. This is a real challenge and also an opportunity for the left - just as it was for Marx and Engels 150 years ago.
But does the left refer to traditional social democracy, which accepts market capitalism but seeks to equalise it; to the "third way" variety popularised by Blair and Brown; or to the "democratic socialism" of post-Stalinist parties? What of more recent green socialism? How to classify the rump of traditional Stalinist parties in Europe, India and elsewhere? Should Chinese and Vietnamese one-state authoritarian capitalisms led by such communist parties be included? Where do the left of South Africa's ANC and the burgeoning variety of Latin American left-wing movements fit in? Is the US Democratic Party part of that family? How do all of these relate to the growing radical or far-left tendencies and social movements drawing on previous bottom-up revolutionary traditions such as Trotskyism and anarchism?
Big events revive these debates, but they need to be reinvented for new times. Conventional sociological post-industrialism accounts rendering left ideologies and movements redundant badly need revision in the light of falling living standards and growing inequalities. So does Fukuyama's notion of the end of ideology and the triumph of market capitalism - as he now admits. Big names too: Keynes, Polanyi, Kondratieff, Galbraith and now Paul Krugman are deployed by social democrats against those who want to resurrect Marx and Engels.
pgillespie@irish-times.ie
© 2008 The Irish Times
Paul Gillespie
WORLD VIEW: IN NOVEMBER 1857, Karl Marx wrote to Frederick Engels: "The American crash is a delight to behold, and it's far from over." He predicted the financial crisis - the most geographically widespread to have hit 19th-century capitalism until then - would deepen and lead to a complete collapse of Wall Street, writes Paul Gillespie
Notwithstanding his own financial distress, he had never felt so "cosy". Engels himself felt "enormously cheered". The events confirmed their theoretical analysis and political strategy of linking reality to preparedness.
That crisis spurred Marx to complete his economic studies on finance capital and its cycles of boom and bust, clearing the way for the more comprehensive Das Kapital , published 10 years later. It theorised the system as an anarchic, irrational and blind competition, pursuing profit and accumulation.
Credit and production expand in a contradictory way until they can no longer sustain profitability. Then collapse clears out waste, reorganises production and stimulates the capitalist state to amend the rules governing trade, finance and investment. The state's role oscillates between night-watchman and direct intervention, but its power should never be underestimated.
Marx's work has suddenly become popular again in Germany, as a new generation tries to understand the dynamics of these events and how they should be evaluated historically. There are disturbing memories of the 1929 crash and its awful political consequences, coming after the 1922-1923 financial collapse which destroyed German savings. As the crisis unfolded three weeks ago, German finance minister Peer Steinbrück was quick to claim "the US will lose its status as the superpower of the world economic system. The world will become multipolar." It is happening before our eyes. And Steinbrück says "generally we have to admit that parts of Marx's theory are not so bad".
Commentators have been quick to notice, and many to mock, such left-wing schadenfreude , whether directed at the US or capitalism as a whole. Germans especially should be aware of how hubris and nemesis can follow one another - as Steinbrück found out a mere 11 days after saying a bank rescue programme was not needed when he announced a plan to protect German bank deposits.
Although this is undoubtedly a grave crisis for finance capitalism, with deep effects on the real international economy, it is not - as yet - a systemic collapse. The extraordinary speed and depth of the events and the $1.8 trillion response to them, especially this week in the European Union, have helped avoid the meltdown heralded at the weekend by Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington. French president Nicolas Sarkozy, British prime minister Gordon Brown, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero are taking the lead to create a "refounded capitalism" more capable of withstanding such cyclical shocks by better global regulation.
In an audacious initiative, Sarkozy and EU Commission president José Manuel Barroso are meeting US president George Bush this weekend to seek a G8 summit next month on a new agreement to regulate global finance. Presumably it would include the president-elect. If that is Barack Obama, he will be confronted with a dramatic adjustment of US power to a more multipolar world, for which he is better prepared and which he is more willing to accept than John McCain.
Note that most of these leaders are from the centre right, not the centre left. Centrism is resurrected from the wreckage of radical right-wing deregulation, more than is the left. The argument is about re-regulation rather than redistribution, the public rather than the private interest, transnational against national sovereignty.
So far, that is. The traditional left has had little operational purchase on the crisis other than I-told-you-so utterances about their inherently cyclical nature. Confronted with this international convulsion, "the Left" is for the most part as weak and tame as it certainly is in Ireland. Popular anger here and in the US, for example, is far more radical, but not expressed in such vocabularies. This is a real challenge and also an opportunity for the left - just as it was for Marx and Engels 150 years ago.
But does the left refer to traditional social democracy, which accepts market capitalism but seeks to equalise it; to the "third way" variety popularised by Blair and Brown; or to the "democratic socialism" of post-Stalinist parties? What of more recent green socialism? How to classify the rump of traditional Stalinist parties in Europe, India and elsewhere? Should Chinese and Vietnamese one-state authoritarian capitalisms led by such communist parties be included? Where do the left of South Africa's ANC and the burgeoning variety of Latin American left-wing movements fit in? Is the US Democratic Party part of that family? How do all of these relate to the growing radical or far-left tendencies and social movements drawing on previous bottom-up revolutionary traditions such as Trotskyism and anarchism?
Big events revive these debates, but they need to be reinvented for new times. Conventional sociological post-industrialism accounts rendering left ideologies and movements redundant badly need revision in the light of falling living standards and growing inequalities. So does Fukuyama's notion of the end of ideology and the triumph of market capitalism - as he now admits. Big names too: Keynes, Polanyi, Kondratieff, Galbraith and now Paul Krugman are deployed by social democrats against those who want to resurrect Marx and Engels.
pgillespie@irish-times.ie
© 2008 The Irish Times
The return of the prophet, by Noah Tucker / Nov. 4th 2008
http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/the_return_of_the_prophet_01780.html
In Highgate Cemetery, three miles from where I write, Karl Marx's body lies a-mouldering in his grave; and, for so many years, it seemed that his critique of the capitalist system was also safely buried.
But suddenly, the ideas which Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels developed a century and a half ago are back; and notably, given that there is no longer a mass movement which draws guidance from Karl Marx's work, commentators and politicians firmly within the capitalist mainstream find the urge to refer to Marx irresistible. The President of France has been improving his understanding of the current crisis by reading Marx's Capital, and Germany's Finance Minister has grudgingly conceded the correctness of "certain elements of Marxist theory". In the USA, where to make such a remark would be political suicide, there has been a counterpart phenomenon; in a CNN interview, it was demanded of the likely next Vice-President of the United States that he admit or deny that the likely next President of the USA is a Marxist- a charge which was taken up with alacrity by supporters of the opposing candidate.
On 18th October, the Irish Times published a thoughtful article by its foreign editor, Paul Gillespie, entitled 'Crisis allows us to reconsider left-wing ideas'. Gillespie noted:
Marx's work has suddenly become popular again in Germany, as a new generation tries to understand the dynamics of these events and how they should be evaluated historically. There are disturbing memories of the 1929 crash and its awful political consequences, coming after the 1922-1923 financial collapse which destroyed German savings.
On the probable consequences of the crisis on the 'real' world economy and the global balance of power, Gillespie took a moderate position:
Although this is undoubtedly a grave crisis for finance capitalism, with deep effects on the real international economy, it is not - as yet - a systemic collapse. The extraordinary speed and depth of the events and the $1.8 trillion response to them, especially this week in the European Union, have helped avoid the meltdown heralded at the weekend by Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington. French president Nicolas Sarkozy, British prime minister Gordon Brown, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero are taking the lead to create a "refounded capitalism" more capable of withstanding such cyclical shocks by better global regulation.
In an audacious initiative, Sarkozy and EU Commission president José Manuel Barroso are meeting US president George Bush this weekend to seek a G8 summit next month on a new agreement to regulate global finance. Presumably it would include the president-elect. If that is Barack Obama, he will be confronted with a dramatic adjustment of US power to a more multipolar world, for which he is better prepared and which he is more willing to accept than John McCain.
In decades past, a crisis on this scale would have presented an immediate opportunity for the 'left'; but the 'left' as it is- defeated, tamed and fragmented- is in no position, as yet, to rise to the occasion. As Paul Gillespie observed:
Note that most of these leaders are from the centre right, not the centre left. Centrism is resurrected from the wreckage of radical right-wing deregulation, more than is the left. The argument is about re-regulation rather than redistribution, the public rather than the private interest, transnational against national sovereignty.
So far, that is. The traditional left has had little operational purchase on the crisis other than I-told-you-so utterances about their inherently cyclical nature. Confronted with this international convulsion, "the Left" is for the most part as weak and tame as it certainly is in Ireland. Popular anger here and in the US, for example, is far more radical, but not expressed in such vocabularies. This is a real challenge and also an opportunity for the left - just as it was for Marx and Engels 150 years ago.
But does the left refer to traditional social democracy, which accepts market capitalism but seeks to equalise it; to the "third way" variety popularised by Blair and Brown; or to the "democratic socialism" of post-Stalinist parties? What of more recent green socialism? How to classify the rump of traditional Stalinist parties in Europe, India and elsewhere? Should Chinese and Vietnamese one-state authoritarian capitalisms led by such communist parties be included? Where do the left of South Africa's ANC and the burgeoning variety of Latin American left-wing movements fit in? Is the US Democratic Party part of that family? How do all of these relate to the growing radical or far-left tendencies and social movements drawing on previous bottom-up revolutionary traditions such as Trotskyism and anarchism?
It is despite this present weakness and incoherence of the left that Gillespie makes a remarkable suggestion, implicit in which is the notion- fully supported by recent events- that the ideas of the 'free-market' right wing have been bankrupted by the capitalist crisis; hence the key ideological struggle of the near future will be between, on the one hand, socialists who utilise the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and on the other hand, 'social democratic' supporters of a 'refounded', moderated version of capitalism, utilising the ideas of various other 'big names'. The Irish Times article concludes:
Big events revive these debates, but they need to be reinvented for new times. Conventional sociological post-industrialism accounts rendering left ideologies and movements redundant badly need revision in the light of falling living standards and growing inequalities. So does Fukuyama's notion of the end of ideology and the triumph of market capitalism - as he now admits. Big names too: Keynes, Polanyi, Kondratieff, Galbraith and now Paul Krugman are deployed by social democrats against those who want to resurrect Marx and Engels.
If it is true that the new main battle of ideas is to be fought between the social democrats (who wish to ressurect a moderated capitalism in order to save capitalism) and the Marxists (who wish to abolish capitalism), then the ideological success of the former will in large part depend on their practical ability to, in Gillespie's words, "create a 'refounded capitalism' more capable of withstanding such cyclical shocks by better global regulation"; as we shall see, not only better global regulation would be required in order for such a new-model capitalism to be better at withstanding 'cyclical shocks', but a reversal of the "falling living standards and growing inequalities" which characterise the contemorary model of capitalism would also be required if future crises on a similar scale to our current ongoing crisis- or even worse- are to be avoided.
If such a radically different 're-founded capitalism' cannot be achieved, the Marx-inspired socialists will begin to make serious headway.
So, is it possible that a new-model capitalism can arise in the course of, or subsequent to, the efforts of governments to cope with the current crisis? This is a matter on which a consideration of 20th Century history, and of the underlying causes of the present crisis, can both offer some guidance.
Changing spots
For proof that it could be possible to re-found capitalism on a different basis, we can look to the period following the catastrophic slump of the 1930s, particularly after World War Two, in the developed capitalist countries. For an extended period, the gap between rich and poor was steadily narrowed, the living standards and economic security of of working class people vastly improved, and cyclical shocks were minimised.
Marx had not predicted that such a development would be possible without the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system; and it seemed that the prediction of the non-Marxist social democrats, that capitalism could be reformed so thoroughly as to provide a much better and improving life for the majority of people, was vindicated.
Then in the 1970s, a major economic crisis did occur; but it did not appear to resemble the 19th Century crises so vividly described by Marx, or indeed the crises of the early 20th Century, which broadly followed the same pattern. The main economic symptom of the crisis of the 1970s, as identified by the establishment experts of that time, was rising inflation (caused to some extent by rapidly increasing wages); and in order to defeat inflation (involving of course the defeat of the trade unions which had succeeded in raising wages faster than the increase in industrial productivity), the Western governments deliberately caused a rise in unemployment. That explanation of the economic disturbances of the time was far closer to the reality, which anyone could observe, than anything which could be found in the pages of Capital.
Thus orthodox Marxism in the developed capitalist countries was already in ideological retreat, even before the events of 1989 to 1991.
Since when, enthused by the defeat of inflation, the defeat of the trade unions and- that crown of glory- the defeat of the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and the USSR; capitalism has returned, by leaps of privatisation, bounds of ending progressive taxation, and accelerating global deregulation- to a modernised, turbo-charged version of its former self.
So, along comes the immense and frightening crisis; the basic nature of which- as anyone, even a president or a finance minister, can observe- can be understood with the help of volumes 1 to 3 of Capital.
Indeed, Marx's dissections of the crises of the old-model capitalism of the 19th Century show remarkable similarities to the processes of our current debacle. Consider this, for example:
In a system of production, where the entire continuity of the reproduction process rests upon credit, a crisis must obviously occur — a tremendous rush for means of payment — when credit suddenly ceases and only cash payments have validity. At first glance, therefore, the whole crisis seems to be merely a credit and money crisis. And in fact it is only a question of the convertibility of bills of exchange into money. But the majority of these bills represent actual sales and purchases, whose extension far beyond the needs of society is, after all, the basis of the whole crisis. At the same time, an enormous quantity of these bills of exchange represents plain swindle, which now reaches the light of day and collapses; furthermore, unsuccessful speculation with the capital of other people; finally, commodity-capital which has depreciated or is completely unsaleable, or returns that can never more be realised again. The entire artificial system of forced expansion of the reproduction process cannot, of course, be remedied by having some bank, like the Bank of England, give to all the swindlers the deficient capital by means of its paper and having it buy up all the depreciated commodities at their old nominal values. Incidentally, everything here appears distorted, since in this paper world, the real price and its real basis appear nowhere, but only bullion, metal coin, notes, bills of exchange, securities. Particularly in centres where the entire money business of the country is concentrated, like London, does this distortion become apparent; the entire process becomes incomprehensible; it is less so in centres of production.
On the political effect of capitalist crises, Marx noted:
Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells [...] It is enough to mention the commercial crises that, by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly.
Among the many very pertinent aspects of Karl Marx's work is his insistence that all value is created in the productive sectors of the economy- the sectors which, since the start of this present crisis, the commentators have begun to call the 'real economy'- and that the wealth which is supposedly 'created' in the stock exchange and the financial sector is a combination of: (a) value which is transferred into that sector from the 'real economy' (in Vols. 2 and 3 of Capital, Marx goes into some detail about the mechanisms by which this takes place), and (b) fictitious value, resulting from speculation, the illusory nature of which is suddenly exposed when the inevitable crisis ensues.
Why do crises inevitably occur under capitalism, according to Marx? Karl Marx considered this matter from various aspects and in great detail, and in a very brief article like this one risks the dangers of over-simplification. But two factors can be explained fairly quickly and without too much distortion. Firstly, the possibility of crisis arises because, in the economy as a whole, production is unplanned; and futhermore, goods are produced not to directly fulfill a need, but to be sold so that the owner of the enterprise can make a profit. However, though each individual enterprise is operated to maximise the profit of its owner, the enterprises are tied together through money and credit. So what happens if a significant proportion of the capitalists find that they are unable to sell all, or nearly all, of the products made in their enterprises? Marx gives an example:
The flax grower has drawn on the spinner, the machine manufacturer on the weaver and the spinner. The spinner cannot pay because the weaver cannot pay, neither of them pay the machine manufacturer, and the latter does not pay the iron, timber, or coal supplier. And all of these in turn, as they cannot realize the value of their commodities, cannot replace that portion of value which is to replace their constant capital. Thus the general crisis comes into being. This is nothing other than the possibility of crisis described when dealing with money as a means of payment.
Secondly, why should this situation actually occur- or rather, why does it inevitably, eventually, occur, resulting in the 'cyclic shocks' which, now that Gordon Brown's boast of 'an end to boom and bust' has disappeared like a mirage, the mainstream commentators now concede are inherent to capitalism?
Principally, because each capitalist enterprise is run with the objective of making the greatest profit: therefore it must strive to expand production while holding down, or even reducing, its costs- and key among those costs is the wages of its workers. Fine, so far, for the owner of the individual enterprise. But who are the majority of the ultimate consumers of the goods created in the productive enterprises? They are, in the phrase of the old constitution of the British Labour Party, 'the workers, by hand or by brain'. So invariably, the situation sooner or later arises in which the masses of the people cannot purchase the increasing volume of consumer goods produced; and the inevitable crisis follows.
Thus, Marx argues, even if the crisis first makes its appearance in the financial sector:
The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit.
A tale of two countries
On 21st October, Chris Dillow, a columnist for the Investors Chronicle, was sufficiently emboldened by his passing aquaintance with the works of Karl Marx, and no doubt also by his equal knowledge of the backgound of our current crisis, to write a blog article on which sought to refute the applicability of Marx's analysis to the present debacle. The article, entitled 'Marx: less relevant' was duly promoted in the electronic editions of the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph.
Dillow conceded that:
On many things, Marx was right. He was right to show that capitalism was a force for great growth and great instability; right to show that profits arose from exploitation; right to stress that technical progress determines social conditions; right on alienation and primitive accumulation.
But, he claimed:
To Marx, crises originated in the real economy [...]
Instead, this crisis originates in the financial system. To Marx, however, finance was not so much a cause of capitalist crises - and for that matter of capitalist growth as well - but a mere accelerant of them. It’s the petrol, not the spark. Credit, he wrote (vol III, p572), “accelerates the violent outbreaks of this contradiction, crises…” Accelerate, note, not cause.
It is important to evaluate this claim. If the current crisis is purely or mainly the creation of the financial system, and the devastating effects on the 'real economy' are merely the fallout from the financial crisis, then one can at least envisage that a 'refounded capitalism', by enforcing stricter regulation on the financial sector, by repressing speculation and fraudulent dealings, could thereby- and without addressing the issues of 'real economy' production and the living standards of the masses- prevent the emergence, in future, of such major crises.
So let's put to one side (only for a moment) what has been taking place in the financial sector, and look at what has been taking place in global 'real economy' production, and in the incomes of the masses of the people, in the period leading up to our current crisis, in terms of Marx's insistence that: "the ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit".
What do we find? We find that globally, the production of goods for sale has been increasing, while the incomes of the majority of the people have been held down. How has that gap been bridged? It was bridged by the phenomenon of rising debt.
Two great countries appear as opposite poles of the modern process of globalisation: so let us take them as our examples- China and the USA.
China, the world's biggest country by population but a poor country by its per-capita income, has for almost three decades, by means of foriegn investment and the import of technology, been increasing its manufacturing production at a rate of between 10% and 15% annually. In a typical period, the five years from 1998 to 2003, China's output of manufactured products rose by 91%.
The average incomes of people in China have also been rising- but by a significantly lower rate. Advanced on the one hand by the country's huge trade union movement, depressed on the other hand by the influx of workers from the countryside, real wages in China have been rising at around 8% annually. In any case, too rapid a growth in wages would have made China a much less attractive destination for foreign investment, and would have undermined China's price advantage in selling its products abroad. During the nine years from 1997 to 2006, taking urban and rural incomes as a whole, the mean average household income in China rose by 72%- a very respectable figure, but far less than the increase in manufacturing output.
Thus the vastly rising volume of goods made in China could not possibly be purchased by the Chinese; but this was not a problem, because a high proportion of the Chinese-made products were created in order to be sold abroad, to much richer countries. The biggest destination for China's exports was the world's most lucrative consumer market, and still, despite China's relative rise, the world's biggest producer of goods by dollar value, the United States of America. In 2007, approximately 20% of exports from China went to the USA.
Now, the majority of people in the US can hardly be described as poor, or as suffering from restricted consumption, when considered against global average living standards. Yet, due to the decline in trade union power and various other factors including the re-location of industrial production by US corporations to other countries where the labour costs are much lower (China, for instance), the real hourly wage rate of the median average worker in the USA has been held down to such an extent that it is no higher now than it was in the mid 1970s. Yet production in the USA, despite the transfer of industry abroad, continued to increase with the introduction of new technology. In the non-financial corporate sector, productivity has been increasing by an average of between 2% and 4% annually, resulting in a cumulative increase of 45% in hourly production per worker in the United States between 1992 and 2005.
During this time, production processes have of course become increasingly globalised, and not everything made in the USA has to be consumed in the USA- but it has to be consumed somewhere. To take for example the fastest growing sector of US industry, the computer and electronics sector: a high proportion of its products are components, which require for their manufacture very advanced levels of production technology and skill; these are sent to low-wage countries such as China, where they are assembled, combined with other components which require lower levels of skill and production technology- and the resultant finished products are then sent to the USA and other developed countries to be sold to the final consumers.
And, despite the stagnation in their hourly pay, the masses in the United States have until very recently kept on increasing their spending, thus squaring the gap between production and consumption.
For a while, two means were available to achieve this. The first was by increasing the number of working hours per family: men began to have a longer average working week, there was a big increase in the number of women in the workforce, and it became common for people to hold two or even three jobs. But this, of course, raises the amount of material products and services which need to be sold. Also, in the end, there are physical and social limits to the average number of working hours per household.
By the start of the 21st Century, the increase in working hours had come to a halt; and the continuing rise in mass consumption was facilitated exclusively by the second available means of increasing spending: rising debt. As Edward Luce noted in the Financial Times:
Between 2000 and 2006, the US economy expanded by 18 per cent, whereas real income for the median working household dropped by 1.1 per cent in real terms, or about $2,000 (£1,280, €1,600). Meanwhile, the top tenth saw an improvement of 32 per cent in their incomes, the top 1 per cent a rise of 203 per cent and the top 0.1 per cent a gain of 425 per cent.
Edward Luce added:
According to Emmanuel Saez at the University of California, Berkeley, the distribution of income today almost exactly matches that of 1928 on the eve of the Wall Street crash. In 1928, the top 1 per cent of Americans took in 24 per cent of national income, compared with 23 per cent today. Between 1940 and 1984 their share never exceeded 15 per cent and it was in single digits for most of the 1960s and 1970s.
However, the big rise in incomes at the top could not compensate for the stagnation or decline in incomes at the middle and the bottom; because, unlike nearly everybody in the lower social strata, the richer people do not spend all their money: they invest much of their income; and that investment goes either into the 'real economy' locally or abroad (thus further increasing production) or into the various kinds of financial speculation.
The debt bubble
In an article entitled 'The Household Debt Bubble', published in the May 2006 issue of Monthly Review, John Bellamy Foster observed:
...for households in the bottom 60 percent of the income distribution in the United States, average personal consumption expenditures equaled or exceeded average pre-tax income in 2003; while the fifth of the population just above them used up five-sixths of their pre-tax income (most of the rest no doubt taken up by taxes) on consumption. In contrast, those high up on the income pyramid—the capitalist class and their relatively well-to-do hangers-on—spend a much smaller percentage of their income on personal consumption. The overwhelming proportion of the income of capitalists (which at this level has to be extended to include unrealized capital gains) is devoted to investment.
It follows that increasing inequality in income and wealth can be expected to create the age-old conundrum of capitalism: an accumulation (savings-and-investment) process that depends on keeping wages down while ultimately relying on wage-based consumption to support economic growth and investment.
Under these circumstances, in which consumption and ultimately investment are heavily dependent on the spending of those at the bottom of the income stream, one would naturally suppose that a stagnation or decline in real wages would generate crisis-tendencies for the economy by constraining overall consumption expenditures.
But, even after the 'dot.com' stockmarket crash in 2000, that 'age-old conundrum of capitalism' did not manifest itself in a major crisis; following that stockmarket crash, the US government cut interest rates, after which, as John Bellamy Foster noted in 2006:
...overall consumption has continued to climb. Indeed, U.S. economic growth is ever more dependent on what appears at first glance to be unstoppable increases in consumption.
This was made possible by a huge increase in personal debt- some on credit cards, but the largest part through the mortgaging and re-mortgaging of houses; a seeming safe bet, given the steep rise in house prices (fuelled in large part by the low interest rates), and which also appeared to be unstoppable. Average outstanding consumer debt, which had crept up from 62% of consumer disposable income in 1975 to 96.8% in 2000, splurged to 127.2% of disposable income in 2005.
It has been made clear to all, since the credit first began to crunch in the summer of 2007, that the US government, by reducing interest rates, relaxing controls on lending, and allowing the financial sector to 'regulate' itself, had thereby facilitated the production of both the 'raw material' and the 'tools' by which an enormous volume of debt-based speculation was created in the financial sector. Less attention has been paid to the other main effect of these debt-inducing measures: that of delaying the onset of the crisis.
We have taken the USA as our developed country example; and although it is the biggest and richest of the developed countries, it might be argued that it is an extreme example, given that hourly wages in the USA have been held flat for more than thirty years. However, a not dissimilar phenomenon has occurred in the other main rich countries. The average annual real wage increase in 13 OECD countries (as shown in figure 1.2 in Andrew Glyn's book 'Capitalism Unleashed') which had been running at between 3% and 5% through the 1960s and mid-1970s, fell by the 1980s to between 1% and 2% and has remained at those low levels; and the burden of personal debt in Britain, Germany, Japan and the other major developed countries has been rising inexorably.
The jitters in the financial markets first appeared in August 2007, as the revenue streams which supported the values of the various debt-based financial instruments, in which the banks and hedge funds had invested trillions of dollars, began to be revealed as less reliable than had previously been surmised. And whence was this revenue supposed to stream? From the incomes of the increasingly indebted mortgage and credit card holders, particularly those in the USA- incomes which were stagnant or even declining, while their burden of debt, and the payments due on that debt, were rising steeply.
At the time it had been little reported in the mainstream press, especially outside the United States; but already by the spring of 2007, mortgage defaults in the USA, especially in the sub-prime sector, were increasing to an alarming scale. The enormous inevitable crash was beginning to emerge.
And where could this crisis lead? On 28th October, one respected analyst, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, speculated on the possible medium-term consequences if further radical measures are not taken immediately to address the financial meltdown:
...the idea that a quick recession would purge the world of past excesses is ludicrous. The danger is, instead, of a slump, as a mountain of private debt – in the US, equal to three times GDP – topples over into mass bankruptcy. The downward spiral would begin with further decay of financial systems and proceed via pervasive mistrust, the vanishing of credit, closure of vast numbers of businesses, soaring unemployment, tumbling commodity prices, cascading declines in asset prices and soaring repossessions. Globalisation would spread the catastrophe everywhere.
Many of the victims would be innocent of past excesses, while many of the most guilty would retain their ill-gotten gains. This would be a recipe not for a revival of 19th-century laisser faire, but for xenophobia, nationalism and revolution. As it is, such outcomes are conceivable.
Western governments, argues Martin Wolf, must- without delay- slash interest rates, increase state debt, insist that the banks lend money to those businesses which some chance of survival, provide financial assistance to the 'emerging economies' of the poorer countries, and pressurise countries in 'strong financial positions' to 'expand domestic demand'.
He concluded with a swipe not only at those who do not endorse such immediate measures, but also at those who are already considering the lines of a new and improved global capitalist order:
Decisions made over the next few months may well shape the world for a generation. At stake could be the legitimacy of the open market economy itself. Those who view liquidation of past excesses as the solution fail to understand the risks. The same is true of those dreaming of new global orders. Let us first get through the crisis. The danger remains huge and time is short.
This is incorrect in terms of political tactics. The people are now witnessing the consequences of the current global order, and, even if the programme which Martin Wolf proposes is implemented in full, we will now undergo a period of seriously increased suffering. If the 'open market economy' (ie, capitalism) is not to lose further legitimacy, then the prospect must be held out of a 'refounded capitalism' which would be able to minimise and withstand economic 'cyclic shocks'.
Back to the future?
Is such a prospect realistic? As the great physicist Nils Bohr once said, making predictions is very difficult, especially about the future. But it must be remarked that the prospects for a new-model capitalism are rather doubtful; the main reason being that merely re-regulating the financial system and suppressing speculation, even on a global level, would not be sufficient to ensure the success of such a model. In order to avoid the re-appearance of catastrophic economic crises, the 'refounded' system would also have to allow the incomes of the masses of the people to rise in line with increases in production and drastically reverse the trend of inequality; it would require a dramatic rolling-back of the scope of the private sector in the 'real economy', through a combination of nationalisation, regulation and state control.
That, after all, was the basis on which the Western economies refounded themselves after World War 2, in order to avoid a repeat of the great slump of the 1930s. But among the many differences between the situation which followed World War 2 and that of our near and foreseeable future, one is particularly significant. Six decades ago, the political consequences had there been another huge economic crisis involving the whole developed capitalist world was not a matter of speculation- it was a matter of certainty. The USSR had emerged triumphant and with huge renown from the war against Nazism; in almost half of Europe the communists had taken power; and the People's Liberation Army headed by Mao Zedong was in the process of taking power in China.
It was encumbent on the politicians to prove that Marx was wrong about the inevitability of catastrophic crises under capitalism, and it was encumbent on the capitalists to allow them to make such drastic amendments to the system as would allow them to do so. Otherwise, the overthrow of capitalism in several of the major developed countries would be guaranteed.
However bad this crisis proves to be, such an immediate and overwhelming threat to the capitalist system in the developed countries does not now exist, and will not exist for the foreseeable future. And therefore, it is unlikely that sufficiently thorough amendments will be made to the system as would be required to prevent a further massive crisis, sooner or later, following this one.
In which case, the future might not be quite so foreseeable.
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