On July 31 of last year, at 7 in the morning armed police stormed into the apartment where my partner Andrej Holm, I and our two children live. We learned that day that he was a terrorism suspect and that an investigation had been going on for almost a year. Andrej was arrested and flown to Germany's Court of Justice the next day. The search of our home lasted 15 hours. I was forced to wake my children, dress them and make them have breakfast with an armed policeman watching us. That day my new life started, a life as the partner of one of Germany's top terrorists.
Andrej spent three weeks in investigative detention. The arrest warrant was signed on grounds that caused a public outcry, not only in Germany but also in many other countries. Open letters were sent to the court that were signed by several thousand people protesting against the arrests. Among the signatures were those of David Harvey, Mike Davis, Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett and Peter Marcuse.
What had happened?
Some hours before Germany's federal police came to us, three men were arrested near Berlin, who were said to have tried to set fire to several army vehicles. The original investigation was started against four other men, of which Andrej is one, who are suspected to be the authors of texts by a group called “militante gruppe” (mg, militant group). The group is known in Germany for damaging property for years, but never using violence against people. The texts claim responsibility for arson attacks against cars and buildings in and around Berlin since 2001. German anti-terror law §129a of the penal code was used to start an anti-terror-investigation against the four. All of them write and publish online. Andrej works as a sociologist on issues such as gentrification and the situation of tenants. Outside academia he is actively involved in tenants' organizations and movements that deal with gentrification and urban development. Using words such as 'gentrification', 'marxist-leninist', 'precarisation' oder 'reproduction' in their texts was enough to start complete surveillance (a linguistic analysis by the Federal Police later showed it's most unlikely they wrote these texts). As we saw later in the files, the profile for the 'militant group' was based on several assumptions: Members of the 'militant group' are assumed to
* have close ties within the group (all four have been good friends for years)
* be political activists (of the left)
* have no prior police record
* use 'conspiratorial behaviour', such as encrypting email, using anonymous mail addresses (not made of proper first and last names)
* be critical researchers and as such have access to libraries and a variety of daily papers, a profound political and historical knowledge.
How to make a terrorist
The initial suspicion based on an internet research for similarities in writing and vocabulary led to different measures of surveillance: phone tapping, video cameras pointed at living spaces, emails and internet traffic being monitored, bugging devices in cars, bugging operations on people's conversations etc. None of these produced valid evidence, so every two or three months surveillance measures were extended. Anti-terror-investigations according to §129a of the penal code are known and infamous for the fact that they are carried out secretly and only less than 5% ever produce enough evidence to lead to actual court cases. The vast majority entail lengthy investigations, during which huge amounts of data (mostly on activists) are collected and after years the case is dropped without anyone ever knowing about it.
Not the 'terrorist' deeds themselves are being prosecuted, but rather membership or support of the said terrorist organization. Therefore investigations focus on 'who knows who and why'. For the time being we know of four such cases carried out against 40 activists in Germany last year. Participation in protests against the G8 played a prominent, but not the only role. In all four cases the names of more than 2000 people were found in the files that were handed over to the defendants: a good indication of what these investigations are really good for.
In 'our' case most likely all people who had any kind of interaction with Andrej during 2006/07 were checked by the police. Doing this they noticed two meetings that allegedly took place in February and April of 2007 with someone who was later included in the investigation as a fifth suspect, and then two others who were in touch with this 'No. 5'. The two meetings took place under "highly conspiratorial circumstances": no mobile phones were taken along, the meeting had been arranged through so-called anonymous email accounts and during the meeting – a walk outside – the two turned around several times.
The three who were later included in the investigation are the same three who were arrested after the alleged attempted arson attack. Some hours later special police forces stormed our home and Andrej became 'the brain behind the militant group'. My identity changed to being 'the terrorist's partner'.
Becoming 'the terrorist's partner'
I was in shock. All of Berlin was on summer break. The few of us who were not away got together to gather the little we understood about the accusation. The media rejoiced with headlines such as 'Federal Police finally succeeded in arresting long searched for terror group' and we had to deal with media inquiries, talking to lawyers, talking to relatives, talking to friends, colleagues, neighbors and our children. We had to find out about life in prison, start a campaign for donations to pay for lawyers, make a website, agree on how to proceed between a rather heterogeneous group of suspects and even more heterogeneous network of friends and supporters and discuss how to deal with the media.
I realized slowly that my children and I were the collateral damage to this case. My computer was confiscated, things were taken from my desk, all of my belongings searched. My kids (2 and 5 years old last summer) lived through two searches carried out by armed police. Their father was kidnapped and disappeared for weeks.
Being a political activist myself, I am of course aware of the fact that phones can be tapped and that this is used extensively against activists. In Germany close to 40.000 phones (including mobiles) are tapped each year – we have a total population of 80 million. (http://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/media/archive/13600.pdf). To realize and later to read on paper that this concerns you is an entirely different thing from the somewhat abstract idea that you may be subjected to it.
When Andrej was released on bail after three weeks, Germany's Federal Prosecutor filed a complaint and wanted him back in detention right away, based on the idea that he might flee the country or the danger of repetition. How do you repeat membership in a terrorist organization? One of the many mysteries inside the prosecutors mind. The complaint was not granted right away, but instead Germany's Court of Justice decided it needed time to reflect thoroughly on the details of the arrest warrant (which was the origin of the huge wave of solidarity that was perceived widely in the media), the question of whether the so-called group actually qualified as 'terrorist' and whether the presented evidence justified detention.
Obviuos surveillance
It was impossible to overlook that Andrej was the focus of police observation. Our phones went crazy – not just once did people try to call Andrejs mobile number but ended up in my phone instead. When I in turn also tried to call him, I got my own mailbox talking to me. Our TV behaved oddly (as a result of silent, or stealth pings that were sent to Andrej's mobile phone regularly to locate him). Emails disappeared.
At some point in the middle of this, I considered starting a weblog about it. Nobody to my knowledge had ever done a blog about living with anti-terror surveillance. It was not an easy decision: were people going to believe me? Would I be portrayed as crazy or paranoid? On the other hand, unlike many other people, I know for certain that surveillance is taking place and why not write about what it feels like? Germany had a major debate about data retention last summer – the law was just passed and was to go into effect 2008 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention for details). A new anti-terror federal police law was discussed in parliament and a public debate about data protection grew to dimensions nobody had thought possible some months before. The War on Terror serves to justify more repressive laws here as well. A blog about the consequences of such an investigation to a family that is admittedly interested (and actively involved) in politics, but otherwise not exactly your typical terrorist stereotype opened many eyes.
The idea of blogging had not appealed to me very much before, precisely because I am quite fond of my privacy. Why present my personal daily life to a widely anonymous public? Absurd. But now, when my privacy was already violated beyond anything imaginable, why not talk about what it feels like to people who are more sympathetic than the Federal Prosecutor? Why not talk about how ridiculous the 'facts' to prove the case really are? And there are so many amazingly strange interpretations in the files of how we live our life, of what Andrej said on the phone, of what my mother said on the phone, that I thought nobody would believe these details just a few months later.
A weblog to protect my privacy
I can't think of many situations when it would make sense to publish details about yourself on a website with the intention to protect your privacy. In this case it did make sense. We were subjected to a powerful and (for us) uncontrollable invasion of our life: we had the said video cameras pointing at the doors of the house we live in, phones tapped, email and internet traffic monitored, mail read, the stealth pings sent to Andrejs mobile phone to locate him every hour, undercover agents following him around and who knows what else. It's likely that this is going on until now. Surveillance by police and secret services done in a very obvious way for you to notice is (also) meant to scare you, maybe to provoke reactions. Is also meant to scare others who just might have the same inclination to want to make the world a better place. Fear works best when your alone with it. Publishing details about how this fear is incited is not only a good way to open eyes about how the 'War on Terror' looks likefrom the receiving end but is also a great method to stay sane and get it of (some of) the fear.
And so I started blogging. Mostly in German, basically because I don't find the time to translate more and maybe also because I thought that there would be more German readers interested - it is a minor case of terrorism, if you want, and hardly known outside Germany. You can find some texts in English here: http://annalist.noblogs.org/category/en.
Reactions
I wasn't familiar with the world of blogs, and probably still am not very much. I didn't have time to find out how to 'make your blog popular' and was not particularly interested in that. I wasn't really sure how much attention I'd like, and so I started by publishing in the blog the same things I had previously sent by email to people interested in the development of the case and in how we personally were doing. And I only told people I knew about it. It took about three weeks until some of the more popular political German blogs picked it up, wrote about us and the number of visits exploded. In the beginning people wondered whether this, whether I 'was real'. The blog got lots of comments and it was obvious that many people were completely shocked about what was going on. They compared the investigation to what they imagined having taken place in the Soviet Union, in China, North Korea, East German, but not 'here', in a Western democracy, a constitutional state. Another group consists of people who want to help us secure our privacy by explaining about email encryption, switching SIM cards in mobile phone and the like, not realizing that at least in the first months we actively avoided anything that could only appear as though we wanted to behave in a conspiratorial way, as this was one of the reasons Andrej became a suspect to begin with.
I thought it was pretty funny that being 'the sociologist's wife' (we are not married), people seemed to assume that Linux or encryption is something I'd never heard of. Many people expressed fear that already by reading my blog or even commenting on it they might endanger themselves. I was glad they did anyway. Others expressed admiration for us to have chosen to be so public about the case. All of this was great and very important support that made it much easier to deal with the ongoing stress and tension that come with the threat of being tried as a terrorist.
Development of the investigation
Fortunately Germany's Court of Justice took several decisions that were very favorable for Andrej. In a first, two months after the prosecutor's objection to his release on bail, the court decided not only to not allow the objection, but instead completely withdrew the arrest warrant, arguing that 'pure assumptions are not sufficient'. This decision was perceived as a 'slap in the face' of Germany's Federal Prosecutor by many journalists. One months later the same court had to decide whether the 'militant group' can be considered a 'terrorist organization' and decided against this. The German definition for terrorism demands that a terrorist act is meant and able to shake the state to its very foundations, or else to terrify the population as such. When Germany's minister of justice, Brigitte Zypries, was asked in an interview with Der Spiegel, one of the biggest political weekly magazines, about the case against the alleged members of the 'militant group', she said that she thought that the attacks of September 11 are a terrible tragedy, but in her definition not a terrorist act as it didn't manage to endanger the American state. We were rather surprised by this, to say the least. In November the Court of Justice decided that the 'militant group' can't be considered to be terrorist and ordered the other three arrested to be released on bail. At this point, the investigation is being conducted on the basis of §129 (instead of §129a), which prosecutes criminal instead of terrorist organizations, with possible sentences of up to five instead of ten years.
When Andrej was arrested for 'being terrorist', on the grounds of being intelligent, knowing many people from different spheres of society, accessing libraries and publishing texts, being an activist, behaving in what is seen as a conspiratorial way (not always taking the mobile phone along or using encryption) it felt that if this is possible, then it is thinkable that they'd even sentence him to a prison term. With months of public support and more details of the investigation becoming public, like many others, I started believing that this nightmare is terminal, that the case would have to be dropped eventually. Most people don't realize that the investigation is actually still going on. All of our phone calls are still being listened to, our emails read, Andrej's every step is being watched. Germany discusses online searches of computers and using hidden cameras in people's living spaces to detect terrorists, and we know that the secret service is using what the police only dream of. It has been an extremely straining life for a year and a half now, but I am convinced that a good way to survive something like this, which terrorized us, our children, families and friends, is to not go into hiding. I understand the feeling very well of wanting to not move anymore until it's all over, to not provoke any (legal) action when you're in the focus of this kind of attention. To do the contrary - seek as much public attention and thus support as possible - was the best thing we could do.
Links:
http://annalist.noblogs.org/category/en
http://einstellung.so36.net/en
http://einstellung.so36.net/en/ps/392
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrej_Holm
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/worldwide/story/0,,2153121,00.html
Copyright according to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/deed.en.
onsdag den 3. december 2008
WTF? TERRORISM OR TRAGICOMEDY?
TERRORISM OR TRAGICOMEDY?
On the morning of November 11, 150 police officers, most of which belonged to the anti-terrorist brigades, surrounded a village of 350 inhabitants on the Millevaches plateau, before raiding a farm in order to arrest nine young people (who ran the local grocery store and tried to revive the cultural life of the village). Four days later, these nine people were sent before an anti-terrorist judge and “accused of criminal conspiracy with terrorist intentions.” The newspapers reported that the Ministry of the Interior and the Secretary of State “had congratulated local and state police for their diligence.” Everything is in order, or so it would appear. But let’s try to examine the facts a little more closely and grasp the reasons and the results of this “diligence.”
First the reasons: the young people under investigation “were tracked by the police because they belonged to the ultra-left and the anarcho autonomous milieu.” As the entourage of the Ministry of the Interior specifies, “their discourse is very radical and they have links with foreign groups.” But there is more: certain of the suspects “participate regularly in political demonstrations,” and, for example, “in protests against the Fichier Edvige (Exploitation Documentaire et Valorisation de l'Information Générale) and against the intensification of laws restricting immigration.” So political activism (this is the only possible meaning of linguistic monstrosities such as “anarcho autonomous milieu”) or the active exercise of political freedoms, and employing a radical discourse are therefore sufficient reasons to call in the anti-terrorist division of the police (SDAT) and the central intelligence office of the Interior (DCRI). But anyone possessing a minimum of political conscience could not help sharing the concerns of these young people when faced with the degradations of democracy entailed by the Fichier Edvige, biometrical technologies and the hardening of immigration laws.
As for the results, one might expect that investigators found weapons, explosives and Molotov cocktails on the farm in Millevaches. Far from it. SDAT officers discovered “documents containing detailed information on railway transportation, including exact arrival and departure times of trains.” In plain French: an SNCF train schedule. But they also confiscated “climbing gear.” In simple French: a ladder, such as one might find in any country house.
Now let’s turn our attention to the suspects and, above all, to the presumed head of this terrorist gang, “a 33 year old leader from a well-off Parisian background, living off an allowance from his parents.” This is Julien Coupat, a young philosopher who (with some friends) formerly published Tiqqun, a journal whose political analyses – while no doubt debatable – count among the most intelligent of our time. I knew Julien Coupat during that period and, from an intellectual point of view, I continue to hold him in high esteem.
Let’s move on and examine the only concrete fact in this whole story. The suspects’ activities are supposedly connected with criminal acts against the SNCF that on November 8 caused delays of certain TGV trains on the Paris-Lille line. The devices in question, if we are to believe the declarations of the police and the SNCF agents themselves, can in no way cause harm to people: they can, in the worst case, hinder communications between trains causing delays. In Italy, trains are often late, but so far no one has dreamed of accusing the national railway of terrorism. It’s a case of minor offences, even if we don’t condone them. On November 13, a police report prudently affirmed that there are perhaps “perpetrators among those in custody, but it is not possible to attribute a criminal act to any one of them.”
The only possible conclusion to this shadowy affair is that those engaged in activism against the (in any case debatable) way social and economic problems are managed today are considered ipso facto as potential terrorists, when not even one act can justify this accusation. We must have the courage to say with clarity that today, numerous European countries (in particular France and Italy), have introduced laws and police measures that we would previously have judged barbaric and anti-democratic, and that these are no less extreme than those put into effect in Italy under fascism. One such measure authorizes the detention for ninety-six hours of a group of young – perhaps careless – people, to whom “it is not possible to attribute a criminal act.” Another, equally serious, is the adoption of laws that criminalize association, the formulations of which are left intentionally vague and that allow the classification of political acts as having terrorist “intentions” or “inclinations,” acts that until now were never in themselves considered terrorist.
Kilde: http://www.liberation.fr/societe/0101267186-terrorisme-ou-tragi-comedie
On the morning of November 11, 150 police officers, most of which belonged to the anti-terrorist brigades, surrounded a village of 350 inhabitants on the Millevaches plateau, before raiding a farm in order to arrest nine young people (who ran the local grocery store and tried to revive the cultural life of the village). Four days later, these nine people were sent before an anti-terrorist judge and “accused of criminal conspiracy with terrorist intentions.” The newspapers reported that the Ministry of the Interior and the Secretary of State “had congratulated local and state police for their diligence.” Everything is in order, or so it would appear. But let’s try to examine the facts a little more closely and grasp the reasons and the results of this “diligence.”
First the reasons: the young people under investigation “were tracked by the police because they belonged to the ultra-left and the anarcho autonomous milieu.” As the entourage of the Ministry of the Interior specifies, “their discourse is very radical and they have links with foreign groups.” But there is more: certain of the suspects “participate regularly in political demonstrations,” and, for example, “in protests against the Fichier Edvige (Exploitation Documentaire et Valorisation de l'Information Générale) and against the intensification of laws restricting immigration.” So political activism (this is the only possible meaning of linguistic monstrosities such as “anarcho autonomous milieu”) or the active exercise of political freedoms, and employing a radical discourse are therefore sufficient reasons to call in the anti-terrorist division of the police (SDAT) and the central intelligence office of the Interior (DCRI). But anyone possessing a minimum of political conscience could not help sharing the concerns of these young people when faced with the degradations of democracy entailed by the Fichier Edvige, biometrical technologies and the hardening of immigration laws.
As for the results, one might expect that investigators found weapons, explosives and Molotov cocktails on the farm in Millevaches. Far from it. SDAT officers discovered “documents containing detailed information on railway transportation, including exact arrival and departure times of trains.” In plain French: an SNCF train schedule. But they also confiscated “climbing gear.” In simple French: a ladder, such as one might find in any country house.
Now let’s turn our attention to the suspects and, above all, to the presumed head of this terrorist gang, “a 33 year old leader from a well-off Parisian background, living off an allowance from his parents.” This is Julien Coupat, a young philosopher who (with some friends) formerly published Tiqqun, a journal whose political analyses – while no doubt debatable – count among the most intelligent of our time. I knew Julien Coupat during that period and, from an intellectual point of view, I continue to hold him in high esteem.
Let’s move on and examine the only concrete fact in this whole story. The suspects’ activities are supposedly connected with criminal acts against the SNCF that on November 8 caused delays of certain TGV trains on the Paris-Lille line. The devices in question, if we are to believe the declarations of the police and the SNCF agents themselves, can in no way cause harm to people: they can, in the worst case, hinder communications between trains causing delays. In Italy, trains are often late, but so far no one has dreamed of accusing the national railway of terrorism. It’s a case of minor offences, even if we don’t condone them. On November 13, a police report prudently affirmed that there are perhaps “perpetrators among those in custody, but it is not possible to attribute a criminal act to any one of them.”
The only possible conclusion to this shadowy affair is that those engaged in activism against the (in any case debatable) way social and economic problems are managed today are considered ipso facto as potential terrorists, when not even one act can justify this accusation. We must have the courage to say with clarity that today, numerous European countries (in particular France and Italy), have introduced laws and police measures that we would previously have judged barbaric and anti-democratic, and that these are no less extreme than those put into effect in Italy under fascism. One such measure authorizes the detention for ninety-six hours of a group of young – perhaps careless – people, to whom “it is not possible to attribute a criminal act.” Another, equally serious, is the adoption of laws that criminalize association, the formulations of which are left intentionally vague and that allow the classification of political acts as having terrorist “intentions” or “inclinations,” acts that until now were never in themselves considered terrorist.
Kilde: http://www.liberation.fr/societe/0101267186-terrorisme-ou-tragi-comedie
Vote First. Ask Questions Later.
Okay, let's get the obvious out of the way. It was historic. I choked up a number of times, tears came to my eyes, even though I didn't vote for him. I voted for Ralph Nader for the fourth time in a row.
During the past eight years when I've listened to news programs on the radio each day I've made sure to be within a few feet of the radio so I could quickly change the station when that preposterous man or one of his disciples came on; I'm not a masochist, I suffer fools very poorly, and I get bored easily. Sad to say, I'm already turning the radio off sometimes when Obama comes on. He doesn't say anything, or not enough, or not often enough. Platitudes, clichés, promises without substance, "hope and change", almost everything without sufficient substance, "change and hope", without specifics, designed not to offend. What exactly are the man's principles? He never questions the premises of the empire. Never questions the premises of the "War on Terror". I'm glad he won for two reasons only: John McCain and Sarah Palin, and I deeply resent the fact that the American system forces me to squeeze out a drop of pleasure from something so far removed from my ideals. Obama's votes came at least as much from people desperate for relief from neo-conservative suffocation as from people who genuinely believed in him. It's a form of extortion – Vote for Obama or you get more of the same. Those are your only choices.
Is there reason to be happy that the insufferably religious George W. is soon to be history? "I believe that Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis." That was said by someone named Barack Obama.1 The United States turns out religious fanatics like the Japanese turn out cars. Let's pray for an end to this.
As I've mentioned before, if you're one of those who would like to believe that Obama has to present center-right foreign policy views to be elected, but once he's in the White House we can forget that he misled us repeatedly and the true, progressive man of peace and international law and human rights will emerge ... keep in mind that as a US Senate candidate in 2004 he threatened missile strikes against Iran2, and winning that election apparently did not put him in touch with his inner peacenik. He's been threatening Iran ever since.
The world is in terrible shape. I don't think I have to elucidate on that remark. How nice, how marvelously nice it would be to have an American president who was infused with progressive values and political courage. Just imagine what could be done. Like a quick and complete exit from Iraq. You can paint the picture as well as I can. With his popularity Obama could get away with almost anything, but he'll probably continue to play it safe. Or what may be more precise, he'll continue to be himself; which, apparently, is a committed centrist. He's not really against the war. Not like you and I are. During Obama's first four years in the White House, the United States will not leave Iraq. I doubt that he'd allow a complete withdrawal even in a second term. Has he ever unequivocally called the war illegal and immoral? A crime against humanity? Why is he so close to Colin Powell? Does he not know of Powell's despicable role in the war? And retaining George W. Bush's Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, a man against whom it would not be difficult to draw up charges of war crimes? Will he also find a place for Rumsfeld? And Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, a supporter of the war, to run the Homeland Security department? And General James Jones, a former NATO commander (sic), who wants to "win" in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who backed John McCain, as his National Security Adviser? Jones is on the Board of Directors of the Boeing Corporation and Chevron Oil. Out of what dark corner of Obama's soul does all this come?
As Noam Chomsky recently pointed out, the election of an indigenous person (Evo Morales) in Bolivia and a progressive person (Jean-Bertrand Aristide) in Haiti were more historic than the election of Barack Obama.
He's not really against torture either. Not like you and I are. No one will be punished for using or ordering torture. No one will be impeached because of torture. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says that prosecuting Bush officials is necessary to set future anti-torture policy. "The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it. I don't see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable."3
As president, Obama cannot remain silent and do nothing; otherwise he will inherit the war crimes of Bush and Cheney and become a war criminal himself. Closing the Guantanamo hell-hole means nothing at all if the prisoners are simply moved to other torture dungeons. If Obama is truly against torture, why does he not declare that after closing Guantanamo the inmates will be tried in civilian courts in the US or resettled in countries where they clearly face no risk of torture? And simply affirm that his administration will faithfully abide by the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, of which the United States is a signatory, and which states: "The term 'torture' means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining information or a confession ... inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or any other person acting in an official capacity."
The convention affirms that: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
Instead, Obama has appointed former CIA official John O. Brennan as an adviser on intelligence matters and co-leader of his intelligence transition team. Brennan has called "rendition" – the kidnap-and-torture program carried out under the Clinton and Bush administrations – a "vital tool", and praised the CIA's interrogation techniques for providing "lifesaving" intelligence.4
Obama may prove to be as big a disappointment as Nelson Mandela, who did painfully little to improve the lot of the masses of South Africa while turning the country over to the international forces of globalization. I make this comparison not because both men are black, but because both produced such great expectations in their home country and throughout the world. Mandela was freed from prison on the assumption of the Apartheid leaders that he would become president and pacify the restless black population while ruling as a non-radical, free-market centrist without undue threat to white privilege. It's perhaps significant that in his autobiography he declines to blame the CIA for his capture in 1962 even though the evidence to support this is compelling.5 It appears that Barack Obama made a similar impression upon the American power elite who vetted him in many fundraising and other meetings and smoothed the way for his highly unlikely ascendancy from obscure state senator to the presidency in four years. The financial support from the corporate world to sell "Brand Obama" was extraordinary.
Another comparison might be with Tony Blair. The Tories could never have brought in university fees or endless brutal wars, but New Labour did. The Republicans would have had a very difficult time bringing back the draft, but I can see Obama reinstating it, accompanied by a suitable slogan, some variation of "Yes, we can!".
I do hope I'm wrong, about his past and about how he'll rule as president. I hope I'm very wrong.
Many people are calling for progressives to intensely lobby the Obama administration, to exert pressure to bring out the "good Obama", force him to commit himself, hold him accountable. The bold reforms of Roosevelt's New Deal were spurred by widespread labor strikes and other militant actions soon after the honeymoon period was over. At the moment I have nothing better to offer than that. God help us.
The future as we used to know it has ceased to exist. And other happy thoughts.
Reading the accounts of the terrorist horror in Mumbai has left me as pessimistic as a dinosaur contemplating the future of his grandchildren. How could they do that? ... destroying all those lives, people they didn't even know, people enjoying themselves on vacation ... whatever could be their motivation? Well, they did sort of know some of their victims; they knew they were Indians, or Americans, or British, or Zionists, or some other kind of infidel; so it wasn't completely mindless, not totally random. Does that help to understand? Can it ease the weltschmerz? You can even make use of it. The next time you encounter a defender of American foreign policy, someone insisting that something like Mumbai justifies Washington's rhetorical and military attacks against Islam, you might want to point out that the United States does the same on a regular basis. For seven years in Afghanistan, almost six in Iraq, to give only the two most obvious examples ... breaking down doors and machine-gunning strangers, infidels, traumatizing children for life, firing missiles into occupied houses, exploding bombs all over the place, pausing to torture ... every few days dropping bombs on Pakistan or Afghanistan, and still Iraq, claiming they've killed members of al-Qaeda, just as bad as Zionists, bombing wedding parties, one after another, 20 or 30 or 70 killed, all terrorists of course, often including top al-Qaeda leaders, the number one or number two man, so we're told; so not completely mindless, not totally random; the survivors say it was a wedding party, their brother or their nephew or their friend, mostly women and children dead; the US military pays people to tell them where so-and-so number-one bad guy is going to be; and the US military believes what they're told, so Bombs Away! ... Does any of that depress you like Mumbai? Sometimes they bomb Syria instead, or kill people in Iran or Somalia, all bad guys ... "US helicopter-borne troops have carried out a raid inside Syria along the Iraqi border, killing eight people including a woman, Syrian authorities say" reports the BBC.6 ... "The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials. ... The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States," the New York Times informs us.7 So it's all nice and legal, not an attack upon civilization by a bunch of escaped mental patients. Maybe the Mumbai terrorists also have a piece of paper, from some authority, saying that it's okay what they did. ... I'm feeling better already.
The mythology of the War on Terrorism
On November 8, three men were executed by the government of Indonesia for terrorist attacks on two night clubs in Bali in 2002 that took the lives of 202 people, more than half of whom were Australians, Britons and Americans. The Associated Press8 reported that "the three men never expressed remorse, saying the suicide bombings were meant to punish the United States and its Western allies for alleged atrocities in Afghanistan and elsewhere."
During the recent US election campaign, John McCain and his followers repeated a sentiment that has become a commonplace – that the War on Terrorism has been a success because there hasn't been a terrorist attack against the United States since September 11, 2001; as if terrorists killing Americans is acceptable if it's done abroad. Since the first American strike on Afghanistan in October 2001 there have been literally scores of terrorist attacks against American institutions in the Middle East, South Asia and the Pacific, more than a dozen in Pakistan alone: military, civilian, Christian, and other targets associated with the United States. The year following the Bali bombings saw the heavy bombing of the US-managed Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, the site of diplomatic receptions and 4th of July celebrations held by the American Embassy. The Marriott Hotel in Pakistan was the scene of a major terrorist bombing just two months ago. All of these attacks have been in addition to the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan against US occupation, which Washington officially labels an integral part of the War on Terrorism. Yet American lovers of military force insist that the War on Terrorism has kept the United States safe.
Even the claim that the War on Terrorism has kept Americans safe at home is questionable. There was no terrorist attack in the United States during the 6 1/2 years prior to the one in September 2001; not since the April 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. It would thus appear that the absence of terrorist attacks in the United States is the norm.
An even more insidious myth of the War on Terrorism has been the notion that terrorist acts against the United States can be explained, largely, if not entirely, by irrational hatred or envy of American social, economic, or religious values, and not by what the United States does to the world; i.e., US foreign policy. Many Americans are mightily reluctant to abandon this idea. Without it the whole paradigm – that we are the innocent good guys and they are the crazy, fanatic, bloodthirsty bastards who cannot be talked to but only bombed, tortured and killed – falls apart. Statements like the one above from the Bali bombers blaming American policies for their actions are numerous, coming routinely from Osama bin Laden and those under him.9
Terrorism is an act of political propaganda, a bloody form of making the world hear one's outrage against a perceived oppressor, graffiti written on the wall in some grim, desolate alley. It follows that if the perpetrators of a terrorist act declare what their motivation was, their statement should carry credibility, no matter what one thinks of their cause or the method used to achieve it.
Just put down that stereotype and no one gets hurt.
Sarah Palin and her American supporters resent what they see as the East Coast elite, the intellectuals, the cultural snobs, the politically correct, the pacifists and peaceniks, the agnostics and atheists, the environmentalists, the fanatic animal protectors, the food police, the health gestapo, the socialists, and other such leftist and liberal types who think of themselves as morally superior to Joe Sixpack, Joe the Plumber, National Rifle Association devotées, rednecks, and all the Bush supporters who have relished the idea of having a president no smarter than themselves. It's stereotyping gone wild. So in the interest of bringing some balance and historical perspective to the issue, allow me to remind you of some forgotten, or never known, factoids which confound the stereotypes.
* Josef Stalin studied for the priesthood.
* Adolf Hitler once hoped to become a Catholic priest or monk; he was a vegetarian and was anti-smoking.
* Hermann Goering, while his Luftwaffe rained death upon Europe, kept a sign in his office that read: "He who tortures animals wounds the feelings of the German people."
* Adolf Eichmann was cultured, read deeply, played the violin.
* Benito Mussolini also played the violin.
* Some Nazi concentration camp commanders listened to Mozart to drown out the cries of the inmates.
* Charles Manson was a staunch anti-vivisectionist.
* Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader, charged with war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, had been a psychiatrist specializing in depression; the author of a published book of poetry as well as children's books, often with themes of nature; and a practitioner of alternative medicine.
I'm not really certain to what use you might put this information to advance toward our cherished national goal of becoming a civilized society, but I feel a need to disseminate it. If you know of any other examples of the same type, I'd appreciate your sending them to me.
The examples above are all of "bad guys" doing "good" things. There are of course many more instances of "good guys" doing "bad" things.
Notes
1. Washington Post, August 17, 2008↩
2. Chicago Tribune, September 25, 2004 ↩
3. Associated Press, November 17, 2008 ↩
4. New York Times, October 3, 2008 ↩
5. Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (1994) p.278; William Blum, Rogue State, chapter 23, "How the CIA sent Nelson Mandela to prison for 28 years" ↩
6. BBC, October 26, 2008 ↩
7. New York Times, November 9, 2008 ↩
8. Associated Press, November 9, 2008 ↩
9. See my article at: http://www.killinghope.org/superogue/terintro.htm ↩
During the past eight years when I've listened to news programs on the radio each day I've made sure to be within a few feet of the radio so I could quickly change the station when that preposterous man or one of his disciples came on; I'm not a masochist, I suffer fools very poorly, and I get bored easily. Sad to say, I'm already turning the radio off sometimes when Obama comes on. He doesn't say anything, or not enough, or not often enough. Platitudes, clichés, promises without substance, "hope and change", almost everything without sufficient substance, "change and hope", without specifics, designed not to offend. What exactly are the man's principles? He never questions the premises of the empire. Never questions the premises of the "War on Terror". I'm glad he won for two reasons only: John McCain and Sarah Palin, and I deeply resent the fact that the American system forces me to squeeze out a drop of pleasure from something so far removed from my ideals. Obama's votes came at least as much from people desperate for relief from neo-conservative suffocation as from people who genuinely believed in him. It's a form of extortion – Vote for Obama or you get more of the same. Those are your only choices.
Is there reason to be happy that the insufferably religious George W. is soon to be history? "I believe that Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis." That was said by someone named Barack Obama.1 The United States turns out religious fanatics like the Japanese turn out cars. Let's pray for an end to this.
As I've mentioned before, if you're one of those who would like to believe that Obama has to present center-right foreign policy views to be elected, but once he's in the White House we can forget that he misled us repeatedly and the true, progressive man of peace and international law and human rights will emerge ... keep in mind that as a US Senate candidate in 2004 he threatened missile strikes against Iran2, and winning that election apparently did not put him in touch with his inner peacenik. He's been threatening Iran ever since.
The world is in terrible shape. I don't think I have to elucidate on that remark. How nice, how marvelously nice it would be to have an American president who was infused with progressive values and political courage. Just imagine what could be done. Like a quick and complete exit from Iraq. You can paint the picture as well as I can. With his popularity Obama could get away with almost anything, but he'll probably continue to play it safe. Or what may be more precise, he'll continue to be himself; which, apparently, is a committed centrist. He's not really against the war. Not like you and I are. During Obama's first four years in the White House, the United States will not leave Iraq. I doubt that he'd allow a complete withdrawal even in a second term. Has he ever unequivocally called the war illegal and immoral? A crime against humanity? Why is he so close to Colin Powell? Does he not know of Powell's despicable role in the war? And retaining George W. Bush's Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, a man against whom it would not be difficult to draw up charges of war crimes? Will he also find a place for Rumsfeld? And Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, a supporter of the war, to run the Homeland Security department? And General James Jones, a former NATO commander (sic), who wants to "win" in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who backed John McCain, as his National Security Adviser? Jones is on the Board of Directors of the Boeing Corporation and Chevron Oil. Out of what dark corner of Obama's soul does all this come?
As Noam Chomsky recently pointed out, the election of an indigenous person (Evo Morales) in Bolivia and a progressive person (Jean-Bertrand Aristide) in Haiti were more historic than the election of Barack Obama.
He's not really against torture either. Not like you and I are. No one will be punished for using or ordering torture. No one will be impeached because of torture. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says that prosecuting Bush officials is necessary to set future anti-torture policy. "The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it. I don't see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable."3
As president, Obama cannot remain silent and do nothing; otherwise he will inherit the war crimes of Bush and Cheney and become a war criminal himself. Closing the Guantanamo hell-hole means nothing at all if the prisoners are simply moved to other torture dungeons. If Obama is truly against torture, why does he not declare that after closing Guantanamo the inmates will be tried in civilian courts in the US or resettled in countries where they clearly face no risk of torture? And simply affirm that his administration will faithfully abide by the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, of which the United States is a signatory, and which states: "The term 'torture' means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining information or a confession ... inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or any other person acting in an official capacity."
The convention affirms that: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
Instead, Obama has appointed former CIA official John O. Brennan as an adviser on intelligence matters and co-leader of his intelligence transition team. Brennan has called "rendition" – the kidnap-and-torture program carried out under the Clinton and Bush administrations – a "vital tool", and praised the CIA's interrogation techniques for providing "lifesaving" intelligence.4
Obama may prove to be as big a disappointment as Nelson Mandela, who did painfully little to improve the lot of the masses of South Africa while turning the country over to the international forces of globalization. I make this comparison not because both men are black, but because both produced such great expectations in their home country and throughout the world. Mandela was freed from prison on the assumption of the Apartheid leaders that he would become president and pacify the restless black population while ruling as a non-radical, free-market centrist without undue threat to white privilege. It's perhaps significant that in his autobiography he declines to blame the CIA for his capture in 1962 even though the evidence to support this is compelling.5 It appears that Barack Obama made a similar impression upon the American power elite who vetted him in many fundraising and other meetings and smoothed the way for his highly unlikely ascendancy from obscure state senator to the presidency in four years. The financial support from the corporate world to sell "Brand Obama" was extraordinary.
Another comparison might be with Tony Blair. The Tories could never have brought in university fees or endless brutal wars, but New Labour did. The Republicans would have had a very difficult time bringing back the draft, but I can see Obama reinstating it, accompanied by a suitable slogan, some variation of "Yes, we can!".
I do hope I'm wrong, about his past and about how he'll rule as president. I hope I'm very wrong.
Many people are calling for progressives to intensely lobby the Obama administration, to exert pressure to bring out the "good Obama", force him to commit himself, hold him accountable. The bold reforms of Roosevelt's New Deal were spurred by widespread labor strikes and other militant actions soon after the honeymoon period was over. At the moment I have nothing better to offer than that. God help us.
The future as we used to know it has ceased to exist. And other happy thoughts.
Reading the accounts of the terrorist horror in Mumbai has left me as pessimistic as a dinosaur contemplating the future of his grandchildren. How could they do that? ... destroying all those lives, people they didn't even know, people enjoying themselves on vacation ... whatever could be their motivation? Well, they did sort of know some of their victims; they knew they were Indians, or Americans, or British, or Zionists, or some other kind of infidel; so it wasn't completely mindless, not totally random. Does that help to understand? Can it ease the weltschmerz? You can even make use of it. The next time you encounter a defender of American foreign policy, someone insisting that something like Mumbai justifies Washington's rhetorical and military attacks against Islam, you might want to point out that the United States does the same on a regular basis. For seven years in Afghanistan, almost six in Iraq, to give only the two most obvious examples ... breaking down doors and machine-gunning strangers, infidels, traumatizing children for life, firing missiles into occupied houses, exploding bombs all over the place, pausing to torture ... every few days dropping bombs on Pakistan or Afghanistan, and still Iraq, claiming they've killed members of al-Qaeda, just as bad as Zionists, bombing wedding parties, one after another, 20 or 30 or 70 killed, all terrorists of course, often including top al-Qaeda leaders, the number one or number two man, so we're told; so not completely mindless, not totally random; the survivors say it was a wedding party, their brother or their nephew or their friend, mostly women and children dead; the US military pays people to tell them where so-and-so number-one bad guy is going to be; and the US military believes what they're told, so Bombs Away! ... Does any of that depress you like Mumbai? Sometimes they bomb Syria instead, or kill people in Iran or Somalia, all bad guys ... "US helicopter-borne troops have carried out a raid inside Syria along the Iraqi border, killing eight people including a woman, Syrian authorities say" reports the BBC.6 ... "The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials. ... The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States," the New York Times informs us.7 So it's all nice and legal, not an attack upon civilization by a bunch of escaped mental patients. Maybe the Mumbai terrorists also have a piece of paper, from some authority, saying that it's okay what they did. ... I'm feeling better already.
The mythology of the War on Terrorism
On November 8, three men were executed by the government of Indonesia for terrorist attacks on two night clubs in Bali in 2002 that took the lives of 202 people, more than half of whom were Australians, Britons and Americans. The Associated Press8 reported that "the three men never expressed remorse, saying the suicide bombings were meant to punish the United States and its Western allies for alleged atrocities in Afghanistan and elsewhere."
During the recent US election campaign, John McCain and his followers repeated a sentiment that has become a commonplace – that the War on Terrorism has been a success because there hasn't been a terrorist attack against the United States since September 11, 2001; as if terrorists killing Americans is acceptable if it's done abroad. Since the first American strike on Afghanistan in October 2001 there have been literally scores of terrorist attacks against American institutions in the Middle East, South Asia and the Pacific, more than a dozen in Pakistan alone: military, civilian, Christian, and other targets associated with the United States. The year following the Bali bombings saw the heavy bombing of the US-managed Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, the site of diplomatic receptions and 4th of July celebrations held by the American Embassy. The Marriott Hotel in Pakistan was the scene of a major terrorist bombing just two months ago. All of these attacks have been in addition to the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan against US occupation, which Washington officially labels an integral part of the War on Terrorism. Yet American lovers of military force insist that the War on Terrorism has kept the United States safe.
Even the claim that the War on Terrorism has kept Americans safe at home is questionable. There was no terrorist attack in the United States during the 6 1/2 years prior to the one in September 2001; not since the April 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. It would thus appear that the absence of terrorist attacks in the United States is the norm.
An even more insidious myth of the War on Terrorism has been the notion that terrorist acts against the United States can be explained, largely, if not entirely, by irrational hatred or envy of American social, economic, or religious values, and not by what the United States does to the world; i.e., US foreign policy. Many Americans are mightily reluctant to abandon this idea. Without it the whole paradigm – that we are the innocent good guys and they are the crazy, fanatic, bloodthirsty bastards who cannot be talked to but only bombed, tortured and killed – falls apart. Statements like the one above from the Bali bombers blaming American policies for their actions are numerous, coming routinely from Osama bin Laden and those under him.9
Terrorism is an act of political propaganda, a bloody form of making the world hear one's outrage against a perceived oppressor, graffiti written on the wall in some grim, desolate alley. It follows that if the perpetrators of a terrorist act declare what their motivation was, their statement should carry credibility, no matter what one thinks of their cause or the method used to achieve it.
Just put down that stereotype and no one gets hurt.
Sarah Palin and her American supporters resent what they see as the East Coast elite, the intellectuals, the cultural snobs, the politically correct, the pacifists and peaceniks, the agnostics and atheists, the environmentalists, the fanatic animal protectors, the food police, the health gestapo, the socialists, and other such leftist and liberal types who think of themselves as morally superior to Joe Sixpack, Joe the Plumber, National Rifle Association devotées, rednecks, and all the Bush supporters who have relished the idea of having a president no smarter than themselves. It's stereotyping gone wild. So in the interest of bringing some balance and historical perspective to the issue, allow me to remind you of some forgotten, or never known, factoids which confound the stereotypes.
* Josef Stalin studied for the priesthood.
* Adolf Hitler once hoped to become a Catholic priest or monk; he was a vegetarian and was anti-smoking.
* Hermann Goering, while his Luftwaffe rained death upon Europe, kept a sign in his office that read: "He who tortures animals wounds the feelings of the German people."
* Adolf Eichmann was cultured, read deeply, played the violin.
* Benito Mussolini also played the violin.
* Some Nazi concentration camp commanders listened to Mozart to drown out the cries of the inmates.
* Charles Manson was a staunch anti-vivisectionist.
* Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader, charged with war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, had been a psychiatrist specializing in depression; the author of a published book of poetry as well as children's books, often with themes of nature; and a practitioner of alternative medicine.
I'm not really certain to what use you might put this information to advance toward our cherished national goal of becoming a civilized society, but I feel a need to disseminate it. If you know of any other examples of the same type, I'd appreciate your sending them to me.
The examples above are all of "bad guys" doing "good" things. There are of course many more instances of "good guys" doing "bad" things.
Notes
1. Washington Post, August 17, 2008↩
2. Chicago Tribune, September 25, 2004 ↩
3. Associated Press, November 17, 2008 ↩
4. New York Times, October 3, 2008 ↩
5. Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (1994) p.278; William Blum, Rogue State, chapter 23, "How the CIA sent Nelson Mandela to prison for 28 years" ↩
6. BBC, October 26, 2008 ↩
7. New York Times, November 9, 2008 ↩
8. Associated Press, November 9, 2008 ↩
9. See my article at: http://www.killinghope.org/superogue/terintro.htm ↩
tirsdag den 2. december 2008
The Great Land Giveaway: Neo-Colonialism by Invitation
"The deal South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics is negotiating with the Madagascar Government looks rapacious…The Madagascan case looks neo-colonial…The Madagascan people stand to lose half of their arable land." Financial Times Editorial, November 20, 2008
"Cambodia is in talks with several Asian and Middle Eastern governments to receive as much as $3 billions US dollars in agricultural investments in return for millions of hectares of land concessions…" Financial Times, November 21, 2008
"We are starving in the midst of bountiful harvests and booming exports!: Unemployed Rural Landless Workers, Para State, Brazil (2003)
December 01, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" -- Colonial style empire-building is making a huge comeback, and most of the colonialists are late-comers, elbowing their way past the established European and US predators.
Backed by their governments and bankrolled with huge trade and investment profits and budget surpluses, the newly emerging neo-colonial economic powers (ENEP) are seizing control of vast tracts of fertile lands from poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, through the intermediation of local corrupt, free-market regimes. Millions of acres of land have been granted – in most cases free of charge – to the ENEP who, at most, promise to invest millions in infrastructure to facilitate the transfer of their plundered agricultural products to their own home markets and to pay the ongoing wage of less than $1 dollar a day to the destitute local peasants. Projects and agreements between the ENEP and pliant neo-colonial regimes are in the works to expand imperial land takeovers to cover additional tens of millions of hectares of farmland in the very near future. The great land sell-off/transfer takes place at a time and in places where landless peasants are growing in number, small farmers are being forcibly displaced by the neo-colonial state and bankrupted through debt and lack of affordable credit. Millions of organized landless peasants and rural workers struggling for cultivatable land are criminalized, repressed, assassinated or jailed and their families are driven into disease-ridden urban slums. The historic context, economic actors and methods of agro-business empire-building bears similarities and differences with the old-style empire building of the past centuries.
Old and New Style Agro-Imperial Exploitation
During the previous five centuries of imperial domination the exploitation and export of agricultural products and minerals played a central role in the enrichment of the Euro-North American empires. Up to the 19th century, large-scale plantations and latifundios, organized around staple crops, relied on forced labor – slaves, indentured servants, semi-serfs, tenant farmers, migrant seasonal workers and a host of other forms of labor (including prisoners) to accumulate wealth and profits for colonial settlers, home country investors and the imperial state treasuries.
The agricultural empires were secured through conquest of indigenous peoples, importation of slaves and indentured workers, the forcible seizure and dispossession of communal lands and the rule through colonial officials. In many cases, the colonial rulers incorporated local elites (‘nobles’, monarchs, tribal chiefs and favored minorities) as administrators and recruited the impoverished, dispossesed natives to serve as colonial soldiers led by white Euro-American officers.
Colonial-style agro-imperialism came under attack by mass-based national liberation movements throughout the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, culminating in the establishment of independent national regimes throughout Africa, Asia (except Palestine) and Latin America. From the very beginning of their reign, the newly independent states pursued diverse policies toward colonial-era land ownership and exploitation. A few of the radical, socialist and nationalist regimes eventually expropriated, either partially or entirely, foreign landowners, as was the case in China, Cuba, Indochina, Zimbabwe, Guyana, Angola, India and others. Many of these ‘expropriations’ led to land transfers to the new emerging post-colonial bourgeoisie, leaving the mass of the rural labor force without land or confined to communal land. In most cases the transition from colonial to post-colonial regimes was underwritten by a political pact ensuring the continuation of colonial patterns of land ownership, cultivation, marketing and labor relations (described as a ‘neo-colonial agro-export system). With few exceptions most independent governments failed to change their dependence on export crops, diversify export markets, develop food self-sufficiency or finance the settlement of rural poor onto fertile uncultivated public lands.
Where land distribution did take place, the regimes failed to invest sufficiently in the new forms of rural organization (family farms, co-ops or communal ‘ejidos’) or imposed centrally controlled large-scale state enterprises, which were inefficiently run, failed to provide adequate incentives for the direct producers, and were exploited to finance urban-industrial development. As a result, many state farms and cooperatives were eventually dismantled. In most countries great masses of the rural poor continued to be landless and subject to the demands of local tax collectors, military recruiters and usurious money lenders and were evicted by land speculators, real estate developers and national and local officials.
Neo-Liberalism and the Rise of New Agro-Imperialism
Emblematic of the new style agro-imperialism is the South Korean takeover of half (1.3 million hectares) of Madagascar’s total arable land under a 70-90 year lease in which the Daewoo Logistics Corporation of South Korea expects to pay nothing for a contract to cultivate maize and palm oil for export.1 In Cambodia, several emerging agro-imperial Asian and Middle Eastern countries are ‘negotiating’ (with hefty bribes and offers of lucrative local ‘partnerships’ to local politicians) the takeover of millions of hectares of fertile land.2 The scope and depth of the new emerging agro-imperial expansion into the impoverished countryside of Asian, African and Latin American countries far surpasses that of the earlier colonial empire before the 20th century. A detailed account of the new agro-imperialist countries and their neo-colonial colonies has recently been compiled on the website of GRAIN3.
The driving forces of contemporary agro-imperialist conquest and land grabbing can be divided into three blocs:
The new rich Arab oil regimes, mostly among the Gulf States (in part, through their ‘sovereign wealth funds).
The newly emerging imperial countries of Asia (China, India, South Korea and Japan) and Israel
The earlier imperial countries (US and Europe), the World Bank, Wall Street investment banks and other assorted imperial speculator-financial companies.
Each of these agro-imperial blocs is organized around one to three ‘leading’ countries: Among the Gulf imperial states, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait; in Asia – China, Korea and Japan are the main land grabbers. Among the US-European-World Bank land predators there are a wide range of agro-imperialist monopoly firms buying up land ranging from Goldman Sachs, Blackstone in the US to Louis Dreyfuss in the Netherlands and Deutschbank in Germany. Upward of several hundred million acres of arable land have been or are in the process of being appropriated by the world’s biggest capitalist landowners in what is one of the greatest concentration of private landownership in the history of empire building.
The process of agro-imperial empire building operates largely through political and financial mechanisms, preceded, in some cases, by military coups, imperial interventions and destabilization campaigns to establish pliable neo-colonial ‘partners’ or, more accurately, collaborators, disposed to cooperate in this huge imperial land grab. Once in place, the Afro-Asian-Latin American neo-colonial regimes impose a neo-liberal agenda which includes the break-up of communal-held lands, the promotion of agro-export strategies, the repression of any local land reform movements among subsistence farmers and landless rural workers demanding the redistribution of fallow public and private lands. The neo-colonial regimes’ free market policies eliminate or lower tariff barriers on heavily subsidized food imports from the US and Europe. These policies bankrupt local market farmers and peasants increasing the amount of available land to ‘lease’ or sell-off to the new agro-imperial countries and multinationals. The military and police play a key role in evicting impoverished, indebted and starving farmers and preventing squatters from occupying and producing food on fertile land for local consumption.
Once the neo-colonial collaborator regimes are in place and their ‘free market’ agendas are implemented, the stage is set for the entry and takeover of vast tracts of cultivable land by the agro-imperial countries and investors.
Israel is the major exception to this pattern of agro-imperial conquest, as it relies on the massive sustained use of force against an entire nation to dispossess Palestinian farmers and seize territory via armed colonial settlers – in the style of earlier Euro-American colonial imperialism.4
The sellout usually follows one of two paths or a combination of both: Newly emerging imperial countries take the lead or are solicited by the neo-colonial regime to invest in ‘agricultural development’. One-sided ‘negotiations’ follow in which substantial sums of cash flow from the imperial treasury into the overseas bank accounts of their neo-colonial ‘partners’. The agreements and the terms of the contracts are unequal: The food and agricultural commodities are almost totally exported back to the home markets of the agro-imperial country, even as the ‘host country’s’ population starves and is dependent on emergency shipments of food from imperial ‘humanitarian’ agencies. ‘Development’, including promise of large-scale investment, is largely directed at building roads, transport, ports and storage facilities to be used exclusively to facilitate the transfer of agricultural produce overseas by the large-scale agro-imperial firms. Most of the land is taken rent-free or subject to ‘nominal’ fees, which go into the pockets of the political elite or are recycled into the urban real estate market and luxury imports for the local wealthy elite. Except for the collaborationist relatives or cronies of the neo-colonial rulers, almost all of the high paid directors, senior executives and technical staff come from the imperial countries in the tradition of the colonial past. An army of low salary, educated, ‘third country nationals’ generally enter as middle level technical and administrative employees – completely subverting any possibility of vital technology or skills transfer to the local population. The major and much touted ‘benefit’ to the neo-colonial country is the employment of local manual farm workers, who are rarely paid above the going rate of $1 to 2 US dollars a day and are harshly repressed and denied any independent trade union representation.
In contrast, the agro-imperial companies and regimes reap enormous profits, secure supplies of food at subsidized prices, exercise political influence or hegemonic control over collaborator elites and establish economic ‘beachheads’ to expand their investments and facilitate foreign takeover of the local financial, trade and processing sectors.
Target Countries
While there is a great deal of competition and overlap among the agro-imperial countries in plundering the target countries, the tendency is for the Arab petroleum imperial regimes to focus on penetrating neo-colonies in South and Southeast Asia. The Asian ‘Economic Tiger’ countries concentrate on Africa and Latin America. While the US-Europe Multinationals exploit the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as well as Latin America and Africa.
Bahrain has grabbed land in Pakistan, the Philippines and Sudan to supply itself with rice. China, probably the most dynamic agro-imperial country today, has invested in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia to ensure low cost soybean supplies (especially from Brazil), rice production in Cuba (5,000 hectares), Burma, Cameroon (10,000 hectares), Laos (100,000 hectares), Mozambique (with 10,000 Chinese farm-worker settlers), the Philippines (1.24 million hectares) and Uganda.
The Gulf States are projecting a $1 billion dollar fund to finance land grabs in North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Japan has purchased 100,000 hectares of Brazilian farmland for soybean and maize. Its corporations own 12 million hectares in Southeast Asia and South America. Kuwait has grabbed land in Burma, Cambodia, Morocco, Yemen, Egypt, Laos, Sudan and Uganda. Qatar has taken over rice fields in Cambodia and Pakistan and wheat, maize and oil seed croplands in Sudan as well as land in Vietnam for cereals, fruit, vegetables and raising cattle. Saudi Arabia has been ‘offered’ 500,000 hectares of rice fields in Indonesia and hundreds of thousands of hectares of fertile land in Ethiopia and Sudan.
The World Bank (WB) has played a major role in promoting agro-imperial land grabs, allocating $1.4 billion dollars to finance agro-business takeovers of ‘underutilized lands’. The WB conditions its loans to neo-colonies, like the Ukraine, on their opening up lands to be exploited by foreign investors.5 Taking advantage of neo-liberal ‘center-left’ regimes in Argentina and Brazil, agro-imperial investors from the US and Europe have bought millions of acres of fertile farmlands and pastures to supply their imperial homelands, while millions of landless peasants and unemployed workers are left to watch the trains laden with beef, wheat and soy beans head for the foreign MNC-controlled port facilities and on to the imperial home markets in Europe, Asia and the US.
At least two emerging imperial countries, Brazil and China, are subject to imperial land grabs by more ‘advanced’ imperial countries and have become ‘agents’ of agricultural colonization. Japanese, European and North American multinationals exploit Brazil even as Brazilian colonial settlers and agro-industrialists have taken over wide swathes of borderlands in Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia. A similar pattern occurs in China where valuable farmlands are exploited by Japanese and overseas Chinese capitalists at the same time that China is seizing fertile land in poorer countries in Africa and Southeast Asia.
Present and Future Consequences of Agro-Imperialism
The re-colonization by emerging imperialist states of huge tracts of fertile farmland of the poorest countries and regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America is resulting in a deepening class polarization between, on the one hand, wealthy rentier Arab oil states, Asian billionaires, affluent state-funded Jewish settlers and Western speculators and, on the other hand, hundreds of millions of starving, landless, dispossessed peasants in Sudan, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Palestine, Burma, China, Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Paraguay and elsewhere.
Agro-imperialism is still in its early stages – taking possession of huge tracts of land, expropriating peasants and exploiting the landless rural workers as day laborers. The next phase which is currently unfolding is to take control over the transport systems, infrastructure and credit systems, which accompany the growth of agro-export crops. Monopolizing infrastructure, credit and the profits from seeds, fertilizers, processing industries, tolls and interest payments on loans further concentrates de facto imperial control over the colonial economy and extends political influence over local politicians, rulers and collaborators within the bureaucracies.
The neo-colonized class structure, especially in largely agricultural economies are evolving into a four tier class system in which the foreign capitalists and their entourage are at the pinnacle of elite status representing less than 1% of the population. In the second tier, representing 10% of the population are the local political elite and their cronies and relatives as well as well placed bureaucrats and military officers, who enrich themselves, through partnerships (‘joint ventures’) with the neo-colonials and via bribes and land grabs. The local middle class represents almost 20% and is in constant danger of falling into poverty in the face of the world economic crises. The dispossessed peasants, rural workers, rural refugees, urban squatters and indebted subsistence peasants and farmers make up the fourth tier of the class structure with close to 70% of the population.
Within the emerging neo-colonial agro-export model, the ‘middle class’ is shrinking and changing in composition. The number of family farmers producing for the domestic market is declining in the face of state-supported foreign-owned farms producing for their own ‘home markets’. As a result market vendors and small retailers in the local markets are falling behind, squeezed out by the large foreign-owned supermarkets. The loss of employment for domestic producers of farm goods and services and the elimination of a host of ‘commercial’ intermediaries between town and country is sharpening the class polarization between top and bottom tiers of the class structure. The new colonial middle class is reconfigured to include a small stratum of lawyers, professionals, publicists and low-level functionaries of the foreign firms and public and private security forces. The auxiliary role of the ‘new middle class’ in servicing the axis of colonial economic and political power will make them less nation-oriented and more colonial in their allegiances and political outlook, more ‘free market’ consumerist in their life style and more prone to approve of repressive (including fascistic) domestic solutions to rural and urban unrest and popular struggles for justice.
At the present moment, the biggest constraint on the advance of agro-imperialism is the economic collapse of world capitalism, which is undermining the ‘export of capital’. The sudden collapse of commodity prices is making it less profitable to invest in overseas farmland. The drying up of credit is undermining the financing of grandiose overseas land grabs. The 70% decline in oil revenues is limiting the Middle East Sovereign Funds and other investment vehicles of Gulf oil foreign reserves. On the other hand, the collapse of agricultural prices is bankrupting African, Asian and Latin American elite agro-producers, forcing down land prices and presenting opportunities for imperial agro-investors to buy up even more fertile land at rock-bottom prices.
The current world capitalist recession is adding millions of unemployed rural workers to the hundreds of millions of peasants dispossessed during the expansion period of the agricultural commodity boom during the first half of the current decade. Labor costs and land are cheap, at the same time that effective consumer demand is falling. Agro-imperialists can employ all the Third World rural labor they want at $1 dollar a day or less, but how can they market their products and realize returns that cover the costs of loans, bribes, transport, marketing, elite salaries, perks, CEO bonuses and investor dividends when demand is in decline?
Some agro-imperialists may take advantage of the recession to buy cheaply now and look forward to long-term profits when the multi-trillion dollar state-funded recovery takes effect. Others may cut back on their land grabs or more likely hold vast expanses of valuable land out of production until the ‘market’ improves – while dispossessed peasants starve on the margins of fallow fields.
The new agro-imperials are banking on the new imperialist states committing resources (money and troops) to bolster the neo-colonial gendarmes in repressing the inevitable uprisings of the billions of dispossessed, hungry and marginalized people in Sudan, Ethiopia, Burma, Cambodia, Brazil, Paraguay, the Philippines, China and elsewhere. Time is running out for the easy deals, transfers of ownership and long-term leases consummated by local neo-colonial collaborators and overseas colonial investors and states. Currently imperial wars and domestic economic recessions in the old and emerging imperial countries are systematically draining their economies and testing the willingness of their populations to sacrifice for new style colonial empire building. Without international military and economic backing, the thin stratum of local neo-colonial rulers can hardly withstand sustained, mass uprisings of the destitute peasantry allied with the downwardly mobile lower middle class and growing legions of unemployed university-educated young people.
The promise of a new era of agro-imperial empire building and a new wave of emerging imperial states may be short-lived. In its place we may see a new wave of rural-based national liberation movements and ferocious competition between new and old imperial states fighting over increasingly scarce financial and economic resources. While downwardly mobile workers and employees in the Western imperial centers gyrate between one and another imperial party (Democrat/Republican, Conservative/Labor) they will play no role for the foreseeable future. When and if they break loose…they may turn toward a demagogic nationalist right or toward a currently invisible (at least in the US and Europe) ‘patriotic nationalist’ socialist left. In either case, current imperial pillage and the subsequent mass rebellion will start elsewhere with or without a change in the US or Europe.
"Cambodia is in talks with several Asian and Middle Eastern governments to receive as much as $3 billions US dollars in agricultural investments in return for millions of hectares of land concessions…" Financial Times, November 21, 2008
"We are starving in the midst of bountiful harvests and booming exports!: Unemployed Rural Landless Workers, Para State, Brazil (2003)
December 01, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" -- Colonial style empire-building is making a huge comeback, and most of the colonialists are late-comers, elbowing their way past the established European and US predators.
Backed by their governments and bankrolled with huge trade and investment profits and budget surpluses, the newly emerging neo-colonial economic powers (ENEP) are seizing control of vast tracts of fertile lands from poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, through the intermediation of local corrupt, free-market regimes. Millions of acres of land have been granted – in most cases free of charge – to the ENEP who, at most, promise to invest millions in infrastructure to facilitate the transfer of their plundered agricultural products to their own home markets and to pay the ongoing wage of less than $1 dollar a day to the destitute local peasants. Projects and agreements between the ENEP and pliant neo-colonial regimes are in the works to expand imperial land takeovers to cover additional tens of millions of hectares of farmland in the very near future. The great land sell-off/transfer takes place at a time and in places where landless peasants are growing in number, small farmers are being forcibly displaced by the neo-colonial state and bankrupted through debt and lack of affordable credit. Millions of organized landless peasants and rural workers struggling for cultivatable land are criminalized, repressed, assassinated or jailed and their families are driven into disease-ridden urban slums. The historic context, economic actors and methods of agro-business empire-building bears similarities and differences with the old-style empire building of the past centuries.
Old and New Style Agro-Imperial Exploitation
During the previous five centuries of imperial domination the exploitation and export of agricultural products and minerals played a central role in the enrichment of the Euro-North American empires. Up to the 19th century, large-scale plantations and latifundios, organized around staple crops, relied on forced labor – slaves, indentured servants, semi-serfs, tenant farmers, migrant seasonal workers and a host of other forms of labor (including prisoners) to accumulate wealth and profits for colonial settlers, home country investors and the imperial state treasuries.
The agricultural empires were secured through conquest of indigenous peoples, importation of slaves and indentured workers, the forcible seizure and dispossession of communal lands and the rule through colonial officials. In many cases, the colonial rulers incorporated local elites (‘nobles’, monarchs, tribal chiefs and favored minorities) as administrators and recruited the impoverished, dispossesed natives to serve as colonial soldiers led by white Euro-American officers.
Colonial-style agro-imperialism came under attack by mass-based national liberation movements throughout the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, culminating in the establishment of independent national regimes throughout Africa, Asia (except Palestine) and Latin America. From the very beginning of their reign, the newly independent states pursued diverse policies toward colonial-era land ownership and exploitation. A few of the radical, socialist and nationalist regimes eventually expropriated, either partially or entirely, foreign landowners, as was the case in China, Cuba, Indochina, Zimbabwe, Guyana, Angola, India and others. Many of these ‘expropriations’ led to land transfers to the new emerging post-colonial bourgeoisie, leaving the mass of the rural labor force without land or confined to communal land. In most cases the transition from colonial to post-colonial regimes was underwritten by a political pact ensuring the continuation of colonial patterns of land ownership, cultivation, marketing and labor relations (described as a ‘neo-colonial agro-export system). With few exceptions most independent governments failed to change their dependence on export crops, diversify export markets, develop food self-sufficiency or finance the settlement of rural poor onto fertile uncultivated public lands.
Where land distribution did take place, the regimes failed to invest sufficiently in the new forms of rural organization (family farms, co-ops or communal ‘ejidos’) or imposed centrally controlled large-scale state enterprises, which were inefficiently run, failed to provide adequate incentives for the direct producers, and were exploited to finance urban-industrial development. As a result, many state farms and cooperatives were eventually dismantled. In most countries great masses of the rural poor continued to be landless and subject to the demands of local tax collectors, military recruiters and usurious money lenders and were evicted by land speculators, real estate developers and national and local officials.
Neo-Liberalism and the Rise of New Agro-Imperialism
Emblematic of the new style agro-imperialism is the South Korean takeover of half (1.3 million hectares) of Madagascar’s total arable land under a 70-90 year lease in which the Daewoo Logistics Corporation of South Korea expects to pay nothing for a contract to cultivate maize and palm oil for export.1 In Cambodia, several emerging agro-imperial Asian and Middle Eastern countries are ‘negotiating’ (with hefty bribes and offers of lucrative local ‘partnerships’ to local politicians) the takeover of millions of hectares of fertile land.2 The scope and depth of the new emerging agro-imperial expansion into the impoverished countryside of Asian, African and Latin American countries far surpasses that of the earlier colonial empire before the 20th century. A detailed account of the new agro-imperialist countries and their neo-colonial colonies has recently been compiled on the website of GRAIN3.
The driving forces of contemporary agro-imperialist conquest and land grabbing can be divided into three blocs:
The new rich Arab oil regimes, mostly among the Gulf States (in part, through their ‘sovereign wealth funds).
The newly emerging imperial countries of Asia (China, India, South Korea and Japan) and Israel
The earlier imperial countries (US and Europe), the World Bank, Wall Street investment banks and other assorted imperial speculator-financial companies.
Each of these agro-imperial blocs is organized around one to three ‘leading’ countries: Among the Gulf imperial states, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait; in Asia – China, Korea and Japan are the main land grabbers. Among the US-European-World Bank land predators there are a wide range of agro-imperialist monopoly firms buying up land ranging from Goldman Sachs, Blackstone in the US to Louis Dreyfuss in the Netherlands and Deutschbank in Germany. Upward of several hundred million acres of arable land have been or are in the process of being appropriated by the world’s biggest capitalist landowners in what is one of the greatest concentration of private landownership in the history of empire building.
The process of agro-imperial empire building operates largely through political and financial mechanisms, preceded, in some cases, by military coups, imperial interventions and destabilization campaigns to establish pliable neo-colonial ‘partners’ or, more accurately, collaborators, disposed to cooperate in this huge imperial land grab. Once in place, the Afro-Asian-Latin American neo-colonial regimes impose a neo-liberal agenda which includes the break-up of communal-held lands, the promotion of agro-export strategies, the repression of any local land reform movements among subsistence farmers and landless rural workers demanding the redistribution of fallow public and private lands. The neo-colonial regimes’ free market policies eliminate or lower tariff barriers on heavily subsidized food imports from the US and Europe. These policies bankrupt local market farmers and peasants increasing the amount of available land to ‘lease’ or sell-off to the new agro-imperial countries and multinationals. The military and police play a key role in evicting impoverished, indebted and starving farmers and preventing squatters from occupying and producing food on fertile land for local consumption.
Once the neo-colonial collaborator regimes are in place and their ‘free market’ agendas are implemented, the stage is set for the entry and takeover of vast tracts of cultivable land by the agro-imperial countries and investors.
Israel is the major exception to this pattern of agro-imperial conquest, as it relies on the massive sustained use of force against an entire nation to dispossess Palestinian farmers and seize territory via armed colonial settlers – in the style of earlier Euro-American colonial imperialism.4
The sellout usually follows one of two paths or a combination of both: Newly emerging imperial countries take the lead or are solicited by the neo-colonial regime to invest in ‘agricultural development’. One-sided ‘negotiations’ follow in which substantial sums of cash flow from the imperial treasury into the overseas bank accounts of their neo-colonial ‘partners’. The agreements and the terms of the contracts are unequal: The food and agricultural commodities are almost totally exported back to the home markets of the agro-imperial country, even as the ‘host country’s’ population starves and is dependent on emergency shipments of food from imperial ‘humanitarian’ agencies. ‘Development’, including promise of large-scale investment, is largely directed at building roads, transport, ports and storage facilities to be used exclusively to facilitate the transfer of agricultural produce overseas by the large-scale agro-imperial firms. Most of the land is taken rent-free or subject to ‘nominal’ fees, which go into the pockets of the political elite or are recycled into the urban real estate market and luxury imports for the local wealthy elite. Except for the collaborationist relatives or cronies of the neo-colonial rulers, almost all of the high paid directors, senior executives and technical staff come from the imperial countries in the tradition of the colonial past. An army of low salary, educated, ‘third country nationals’ generally enter as middle level technical and administrative employees – completely subverting any possibility of vital technology or skills transfer to the local population. The major and much touted ‘benefit’ to the neo-colonial country is the employment of local manual farm workers, who are rarely paid above the going rate of $1 to 2 US dollars a day and are harshly repressed and denied any independent trade union representation.
In contrast, the agro-imperial companies and regimes reap enormous profits, secure supplies of food at subsidized prices, exercise political influence or hegemonic control over collaborator elites and establish economic ‘beachheads’ to expand their investments and facilitate foreign takeover of the local financial, trade and processing sectors.
Target Countries
While there is a great deal of competition and overlap among the agro-imperial countries in plundering the target countries, the tendency is for the Arab petroleum imperial regimes to focus on penetrating neo-colonies in South and Southeast Asia. The Asian ‘Economic Tiger’ countries concentrate on Africa and Latin America. While the US-Europe Multinationals exploit the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as well as Latin America and Africa.
Bahrain has grabbed land in Pakistan, the Philippines and Sudan to supply itself with rice. China, probably the most dynamic agro-imperial country today, has invested in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia to ensure low cost soybean supplies (especially from Brazil), rice production in Cuba (5,000 hectares), Burma, Cameroon (10,000 hectares), Laos (100,000 hectares), Mozambique (with 10,000 Chinese farm-worker settlers), the Philippines (1.24 million hectares) and Uganda.
The Gulf States are projecting a $1 billion dollar fund to finance land grabs in North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Japan has purchased 100,000 hectares of Brazilian farmland for soybean and maize. Its corporations own 12 million hectares in Southeast Asia and South America. Kuwait has grabbed land in Burma, Cambodia, Morocco, Yemen, Egypt, Laos, Sudan and Uganda. Qatar has taken over rice fields in Cambodia and Pakistan and wheat, maize and oil seed croplands in Sudan as well as land in Vietnam for cereals, fruit, vegetables and raising cattle. Saudi Arabia has been ‘offered’ 500,000 hectares of rice fields in Indonesia and hundreds of thousands of hectares of fertile land in Ethiopia and Sudan.
The World Bank (WB) has played a major role in promoting agro-imperial land grabs, allocating $1.4 billion dollars to finance agro-business takeovers of ‘underutilized lands’. The WB conditions its loans to neo-colonies, like the Ukraine, on their opening up lands to be exploited by foreign investors.5 Taking advantage of neo-liberal ‘center-left’ regimes in Argentina and Brazil, agro-imperial investors from the US and Europe have bought millions of acres of fertile farmlands and pastures to supply their imperial homelands, while millions of landless peasants and unemployed workers are left to watch the trains laden with beef, wheat and soy beans head for the foreign MNC-controlled port facilities and on to the imperial home markets in Europe, Asia and the US.
At least two emerging imperial countries, Brazil and China, are subject to imperial land grabs by more ‘advanced’ imperial countries and have become ‘agents’ of agricultural colonization. Japanese, European and North American multinationals exploit Brazil even as Brazilian colonial settlers and agro-industrialists have taken over wide swathes of borderlands in Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia. A similar pattern occurs in China where valuable farmlands are exploited by Japanese and overseas Chinese capitalists at the same time that China is seizing fertile land in poorer countries in Africa and Southeast Asia.
Present and Future Consequences of Agro-Imperialism
The re-colonization by emerging imperialist states of huge tracts of fertile farmland of the poorest countries and regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America is resulting in a deepening class polarization between, on the one hand, wealthy rentier Arab oil states, Asian billionaires, affluent state-funded Jewish settlers and Western speculators and, on the other hand, hundreds of millions of starving, landless, dispossessed peasants in Sudan, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Palestine, Burma, China, Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Paraguay and elsewhere.
Agro-imperialism is still in its early stages – taking possession of huge tracts of land, expropriating peasants and exploiting the landless rural workers as day laborers. The next phase which is currently unfolding is to take control over the transport systems, infrastructure and credit systems, which accompany the growth of agro-export crops. Monopolizing infrastructure, credit and the profits from seeds, fertilizers, processing industries, tolls and interest payments on loans further concentrates de facto imperial control over the colonial economy and extends political influence over local politicians, rulers and collaborators within the bureaucracies.
The neo-colonized class structure, especially in largely agricultural economies are evolving into a four tier class system in which the foreign capitalists and their entourage are at the pinnacle of elite status representing less than 1% of the population. In the second tier, representing 10% of the population are the local political elite and their cronies and relatives as well as well placed bureaucrats and military officers, who enrich themselves, through partnerships (‘joint ventures’) with the neo-colonials and via bribes and land grabs. The local middle class represents almost 20% and is in constant danger of falling into poverty in the face of the world economic crises. The dispossessed peasants, rural workers, rural refugees, urban squatters and indebted subsistence peasants and farmers make up the fourth tier of the class structure with close to 70% of the population.
Within the emerging neo-colonial agro-export model, the ‘middle class’ is shrinking and changing in composition. The number of family farmers producing for the domestic market is declining in the face of state-supported foreign-owned farms producing for their own ‘home markets’. As a result market vendors and small retailers in the local markets are falling behind, squeezed out by the large foreign-owned supermarkets. The loss of employment for domestic producers of farm goods and services and the elimination of a host of ‘commercial’ intermediaries between town and country is sharpening the class polarization between top and bottom tiers of the class structure. The new colonial middle class is reconfigured to include a small stratum of lawyers, professionals, publicists and low-level functionaries of the foreign firms and public and private security forces. The auxiliary role of the ‘new middle class’ in servicing the axis of colonial economic and political power will make them less nation-oriented and more colonial in their allegiances and political outlook, more ‘free market’ consumerist in their life style and more prone to approve of repressive (including fascistic) domestic solutions to rural and urban unrest and popular struggles for justice.
At the present moment, the biggest constraint on the advance of agro-imperialism is the economic collapse of world capitalism, which is undermining the ‘export of capital’. The sudden collapse of commodity prices is making it less profitable to invest in overseas farmland. The drying up of credit is undermining the financing of grandiose overseas land grabs. The 70% decline in oil revenues is limiting the Middle East Sovereign Funds and other investment vehicles of Gulf oil foreign reserves. On the other hand, the collapse of agricultural prices is bankrupting African, Asian and Latin American elite agro-producers, forcing down land prices and presenting opportunities for imperial agro-investors to buy up even more fertile land at rock-bottom prices.
The current world capitalist recession is adding millions of unemployed rural workers to the hundreds of millions of peasants dispossessed during the expansion period of the agricultural commodity boom during the first half of the current decade. Labor costs and land are cheap, at the same time that effective consumer demand is falling. Agro-imperialists can employ all the Third World rural labor they want at $1 dollar a day or less, but how can they market their products and realize returns that cover the costs of loans, bribes, transport, marketing, elite salaries, perks, CEO bonuses and investor dividends when demand is in decline?
Some agro-imperialists may take advantage of the recession to buy cheaply now and look forward to long-term profits when the multi-trillion dollar state-funded recovery takes effect. Others may cut back on their land grabs or more likely hold vast expanses of valuable land out of production until the ‘market’ improves – while dispossessed peasants starve on the margins of fallow fields.
The new agro-imperials are banking on the new imperialist states committing resources (money and troops) to bolster the neo-colonial gendarmes in repressing the inevitable uprisings of the billions of dispossessed, hungry and marginalized people in Sudan, Ethiopia, Burma, Cambodia, Brazil, Paraguay, the Philippines, China and elsewhere. Time is running out for the easy deals, transfers of ownership and long-term leases consummated by local neo-colonial collaborators and overseas colonial investors and states. Currently imperial wars and domestic economic recessions in the old and emerging imperial countries are systematically draining their economies and testing the willingness of their populations to sacrifice for new style colonial empire building. Without international military and economic backing, the thin stratum of local neo-colonial rulers can hardly withstand sustained, mass uprisings of the destitute peasantry allied with the downwardly mobile lower middle class and growing legions of unemployed university-educated young people.
The promise of a new era of agro-imperial empire building and a new wave of emerging imperial states may be short-lived. In its place we may see a new wave of rural-based national liberation movements and ferocious competition between new and old imperial states fighting over increasingly scarce financial and economic resources. While downwardly mobile workers and employees in the Western imperial centers gyrate between one and another imperial party (Democrat/Republican, Conservative/Labor) they will play no role for the foreseeable future. When and if they break loose…they may turn toward a demagogic nationalist right or toward a currently invisible (at least in the US and Europe) ‘patriotic nationalist’ socialist left. In either case, current imperial pillage and the subsequent mass rebellion will start elsewhere with or without a change in the US or Europe.
Obama-administrationen: Robert Gates
Robert Gates - head of the Defense Department.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/politics/2008/12/01/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-robert-gates.html
In the 1970s, Gates worked for five years for the National Security Council. Along the way, he also earned a Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University in 1974.
Gates served as the acting head of the CIA in 1986 and 1987 when William Casey became ill with cancer. Gates was nominated to replace Casey, but he withdrew his name from consideration when questions were raised about his role in the Iran-contra affair. He was nominated again, and confirmed, in 1991.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/politics/2008/12/01/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-robert-gates.html
Let’s remember: Gates was head of the CIA during Bush I. As such, he was involved in the invasion of Panama, the funding of a genocidal regime in Guatemala, the support of Suharto’s brutal government in Indonesia, and the overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti.
onsdag den 26. november 2008
Noam Chomksy om valget
The Election, Economy, War, and Peace
By Noam Chomsky
The Election
The word that immediately rolled off of every tongue after the presidential election was "historic." And rightly so. A Black family in the White House is truly a momentous event.
There were some surprises. One was that the election was not over after the Democratic convention. By usual indicators, the opposition party should have had a landslide victory during a severe economic crisis, after eight years of disastrous policies on all fronts including the worst record on job growth of any post-war president and a rare decline in median wealth, an incumbent so unpopular that his own party had to disavow him, and a dramatic collapse in US standing in world opinion. The Democrats did win, barely. If the financial crisis had been slightly delayed, they might not have.
A good question is why the margin of victory for the opposition party was so small, given the circumstances. One possibility is that neither party reflected public opinion at a time when 80% think the country is going in the wrong direction and that the government is run by "a few big interests looking out for themselves," not for the people, and a stunning 94% object that government does not attend to public opinion. As many studies show, both parties are well to the right of the population on many major issues, domestic and international.
It could be argued that no party speaking for the public would be viable in a society that is business-run to an unusual extent. Evidence for that is substantial. At a very general level, evidence is provided by the predictive success of political economist Thomas Ferguson's "investment theory" of politics, which holds that policies tend to reflect the wishes of the powerful blocs that invest every four years to control the state. More specific illustrations are numerous. To mention just one, for 60 years the US has failed to ratify the core principle of international labor law, which guarantees freedom of association. Legal analysts call it "the untouchable treaty in American politics," and observe that there has never even been any debate about the matter. And many have noted Washington's dismissal of conventions of the International Labor Organization as contrasted with the intense dedication to enforcement of monopoly pricing rights for corporations ("intellectual property rights"). There is much to explore here, but this is not the place.
The two candidates in the Democratic primary were a woman and an African-American. That too was historic. It would have been unimaginable forty years ago. The fact that the country has become civilized enough to accept this outcome is a considerable tribute to the activism of the 1960s and its aftermath.
In some ways the election followed familiar patterns. The McCain campaign was honest enough to announce clearly that the election wouldn't be about issues. Sarah Palin's hairdresser received twice the salary of McCain's foreign policy adviser, the Financial Times reported, probably an accurate reflection of significance for the campaign. Obama's message of "hope" and "change" offered a blank slate on which supporters could write their wishes. One could search websites for position papers, but correlation of these to policies is hardly spectacular, and in any event, what enters into voters' choices is what the campaign places front and center, as party managers know well.
The Obama campaign greatly impressed the public relations industry, which named Obama "Advertising Age's marketer of the year for 2008," easily beating out Apple. The industry's prime task is to ensure that uninformed consumers make irrational choices, thus undermining market theories. And it recognizes the benefits of undermining democracy the same way.
The Center for Responsive Politics reports that once again elections were bought: "The best-funded candidates won nine out of 10 contests, and all but a few members of Congress will be returning to Washington." Before the conventions, the viable candidates with most funding from financial institutions were Obama and McCain, with 36% each. Preliminary results indicate that by the end, Obama's campaign contributions, by industry, were concentrated among Law Firms (including lobbyists) and financial institutions. The investment theory of politics suggests some conclusions about the guiding policies of the new administration.
The power of financial institutions reflects the increasing shift of the economy from production to finance since the liberalization of finance in the 1970s, a root cause of the current economic malaise: the financial crisis, recession in the real economy, and the miserable performance of the economy for the large majority, whose real wages stagnated for 30 years, while benefits declined. The steward of this impressive record, Alan Greenspan, attributed his success to "growing worker insecurity," which led to "atypical restraint on compensation increases" - and corresponding increases into the pockets of those who matter. His failure even to perceive the dramatic housing bubble, following the collapse of the earlier tech bubble that he oversaw, was the immediate cause of the current financial crisis, as he ruefully conceded.
Reactions to the election from across the spectrum commonly adopted the "soaring rhetoric" that was the hallmark of the Obama campaign. Veteran correspondent John Hughes wrote that "America has just shown the world an extraordinary example of democracy at work," while to British historian-journalist Tristram Hunt, the election showed that America is a land "where miracles happen," such as "the glorious epic of Barack Obama" (leftist French journalist Jean Daniel). "In no other country in the world is such an election possible," said Catherine Durandin of the Institute for International and Strategic Relations in Paris. Many others were no less rapturous.
The rhetoric has some justification if we keep to the West, but elsewhere matters are different. Consider the world's largest democracy, India. The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, which is larger than all but a few countries of the world and is notorious for horrifying treatment of women, is not only a woman, but a Dalit ("untouchable"), at the lowest rung of India's disgraceful caste system.
Turning to the Western hemisphere, consider its two poorest countries: Haiti and Bolivia. In Haiti's first democratic election in 1990, grass-roots movements organized in the slums and hills, and though without resources, elected their own candidate, the populist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The results astonished observers who expected an easy victory for the candidate of the elite and the US, a former World Bank official.
True, the victory for democracy was soon overturned by a military coup, followed by years of terror and suffering to the present, with crucial participation of the two traditional torturers of Haiti, France and the US (contrary to self-serving illusions). But the victory itself was a far more "extraordinary example of democracy at work" than the miracle of 2008.
The same is true of the 2005 election in Bolivia. The indigenous majority, the most oppressed population in the hemisphere (those who survived), elected a candidate from their own ranks, a poor peasant, Evo Morales. The electoral victory was not based on soaring rhetoric about hope and change, or body language and fluttering of eyelashes, but on crucial issues, very well known to the voters: control over resources, cultural rights, and so on. Furthermore, the election went far beyond pushing a lever or even efforts to get out the vote. It was a stage in long and intense popular struggles in the face of severe repression, which had won major victories, such as defeating the efforts to deprive poor people of water through privatization.
These popular movements did not simply take instructions from party leaders. Rather, they formulated the policies that their candidates were chosen to implement. That is quite different from the Western model of democracy, as we see clearly in the reactions to Obama's victory.
In the liberal Boston Globe, the headline of the lead story observed that Obama's "grass-roots strategy leaves few debts to interest groups": labor unions, women, minorities, or other "traditional Democratic constituencies." That is only partially right, because massive funding by concentrated sectors of capital is ignored. But leaving that detail aside, the report is correct in saying that Obama's hands are not tied, because his only debt is to "a grass-roots army of millions" - who took instructions, but contributed essentially nothing to formulating his program.
At the other end of the doctrinal spectrum, a headline in the Wall Street Journal reads "Grass-Roots Army Is Still at the Ready" - namely, ready to follow instructions to "push his agenda," whatever it may be.
Obama's organizers regard the network they constructed "as a mass movement with unprecedented potential to influence voters," the Los Angeles Times reported. The movement, organized around the "Obama brand" can pressure Congress to "hew to the Obama agenda." But they are not to develop ideas and programs and call on their representatives to implement them. These would be among the "old ways of doing politics" from which the new "idealists" are "breaking free."
It is instructive to compare this picture to the workings of a functioning democracy such as Bolivia. The popular movements of the third world do not conform to the favored Western doctrine that the "function" of the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" - the population -- is to be "spectators of action" but not "participants" (Walter Lippmann, articulating a standard progressive view).
Perhaps there might even be some substance to fashionable slogans about "clash of civilizations."
In earlier periods of American history, the public refused to keep to its assigned "function." Popular activism has repeatedly been the force that led to substantial gains for freedom and justice. The authentic hope of the Obama campaign is that the "grass roots army" organized to take instructions from the leader might "break free" and return to "old ways of doing politics," by direct participation in action.
Latin America
In Bolivia, as in Haiti, efforts to promote democracy, social justice, and cultural rights, and to bring about desperately needed structural and institutional changes are, naturally, bitterly opposed by the traditional rulers, the Europeanized mostly white elite in the Eastern provinces, the site of most of the natural resources currently desired by the West. Also naturally, their quasi-secessionist movement is supported by Washington, which once again scarcely conceals its distaste for democracy when it does not conform to strategic and economic interests. The generalization is a staple of serious scholarship, but does not make its way to commentary about the revered "freedom agenda."
To punish Bolivians for showing "the world an extraordinary example of democracy at work," the Bush administration cancelled trade preferences, threatening tens of thousands of jobs, on the pretext that Bolivia was not cooperating with US counter-narcotic efforts. In the real world, the UN estimates that Bolivia's coca crop increased 5 percent in 2007, as compared with a 26 percent increase in Colombia, the terror state that is Washington's closest regional ally and the recipient of enormous military aid. AP reports that "Cocaine seizures by Bolivian police working with DEA agents had also increased dramatically during the Morales administration."
"Drug wars" have regularly been used as a pretext for repression, violence, and state crimes, at home as well.
After Morales's victory in a recall referendum in August 2008, with a sharp increase in support over his 2005 success, rightist opposition turned violent, leading to assassination of many peasants supporting the government. After the massacre, a summit meeting of UNASUR, the newly-formed Union of South American Republics, was convened in Santiago Chile. The summit issued a strong statement of support for the elected Morales government, read by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. The statement declared "their full and firm support for the constitutional government of President Evo Morales, whose mandate was ratified by a big majority" -- referring to his overwhelming victory in the referendum a month earlier. Morales thanked UNASUR for its support, observing that "For the first time in South America's history, the countries of our region are deciding how to resolve our problems, without the presence of the United States."
A matter of no slight significance, not reported in the US.
The Administration
Turning to the future, what can we realistically expect of an Obama administration? We have two sources of information: actions and rhetoric.
The most important actions to date are selection of staff. The first selection was for vice-President: Joe Biden, one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq invasion among Senate Democrats, a long-time Washington insider, who consistently votes with his fellow Democrats but not always, as when he supported a measure to make it harder for individuals to erase debt by declaring bankruptcy.
The first post-election appointment was for the crucial position of chief of staff: Rahm Emanuel, one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq invasion among House Democrats and like Biden, a long-term Washington insider. Emanuel is also one of the biggest recipients of Wall Street campaign contributions, the Center for Responsive Politics reports. He "was the top House recipient in the 2008 election cycle of contributions from hedge funds, private equity firms and the larger securities/investment industry." Since being elected to Congress in 2002, he "has received more money from individuals and PACs in the securities and investment business than any other industry"; these are also among Obama's top donors. His task is to oversee Obama's approach to the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, for which his and Obama's funders share ample responsibility.
In an interview with an editor of the Wall Street Journal, Emanuel was asked what the Obama administration would do about "the Democratic congressional leadership, which is brimming with left-wing barons who have their own agenda," such as slashing defense spending (in accord with the will of the majority of the population) and "angling for steep energy taxes to combat global warming," not to speak of the outright lunatics in Congress who toy with slavery reparations and even sympathize with Europeans who want to indict Bush administration war criminals for war crimes. "Barack Obama can stand up to them," Emanuel assured the editor. The administration will be "pragmatic," fending off left extremists.
Obama's transition team is headed by John Podesta, Clinton's chief of staff. The leading figures in his economic team are Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, both enthusiasts for the deregulation that was a major factor in the current financial crisis. As Treasury Secretary, Rubin worked hard to abolish the Glass-Steagall act, which had separated commercial banks from financial institutions that incur high risks. Economist Tim Canova comments that Rubin had "a personal interest in the demise of Glass-Steagall." Soon after leaving his position as Treasury Secretary, he became "chair of Citigroup, a financial-services conglomerate that was facing the possibility of having to sell off its insurance underwriting subsidiary... the Clinton administration never brought charges against him for his obvious violations of the Ethics in Government Act."
Rubin was replaced as Treasury Secretary by Summers, who presided over legislation barring federal regulation of derivatives, the "weapons of mass destruction" (Warren Buffett) that helped plunge financial markets to disaster. He ranks as "one of the main villains in the current economic crisis," according to Dean Baker, one of the few economists to have warned accurately of the impending crisis. Placing financial policy in the hands of Rubin and Summers is "a bit like turning to Osama Bin Laden for aid in the war on terrorism," Baker adds.
The business press reviewed the records of Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board, which met on November 7 to determine how to deal with the financial crisis. In Bloomberg News, Jonathan Weil concluded that "Many of them should be getting subpoenas as material witnesses right about now, not places in Obama's inner circle." About half "have held fiduciary positions at companies that, to one degree or another, either fried their financial statements, helped send the world into an economic tailspin, or both." Is it really plausible that "they won't mistake the nation's needs for their own corporate interests?" He also pointed out that chief of staff Emanuel "was a director at Freddie Mac in 2000 and 2001 while it was committing accounting fraud."
Those are the actions, at the time of writing. The rhetoric is "change" and "hope."
Health Care
The primary concern for the administration will be to arrest the financial crisis and the simultaneous recession in the real economy. But there is also a monster in the closet: the notoriously inefficient privatized health care system, which threatens to overwhelm the federal budget if current tendencies persist. A majority of the public has long favored a national health care system, which should be far less expensive and more effective, comparative evidence indicates (along with many studies). As recently as 2004, any government intervention in the health care system was described in the press as "politically impossible" and "lacking political support" - meaning: opposed by the insurance industry, pharmaceutical corporations, and others who count. In 2008, however, first Edwards, then Obama and Clinton, advanced proposals that approach what the public has long preferred. These ideas now have "political support." What has changed? Not public opinion, which remains much as before. But by 2008, major sectors of power, primarily manufacturing industry, had come to recognize that they are being severely damaged by the privatized health care system. Hence the public will is coming to have "political support." There is a long way to go, but the shift tells us something about dysfunctional democracy.
International Relations
Internationally, there is not much of substance on the largely blank slate. What there is gives little reason to expect much a change from Bush's second term, which stepped back from the radical ultranationalism and aggressive posture of the first term, also discarding some of the extreme hawks and opponents of democracy (in action, that is, not soothing words), like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
Israel-Palestine
The immediate issues have to do mostly with the Middle East. On Israel-Palestine, rumors are circulating that Obama might depart from the US rejectionism that has blocked a political settlement for over 30 years, with rare exceptions, notably for a few days in January 2001 before promising negotiations were called off prematurely by Israel. The record, however, provides no basis for taking the rumors seriously. I have reviewed Obama's formal positions elsewhere (Perilous Power), and will put the matter aside here.
After the election, Israeli president Shimon Peres informed the press that on his July trip to Israel, Obama had told him that he was "very impressed" with the Arab League peace proposal, calling for full normalization of relations with Israel along with Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories - basically, the long-standing international consensus that the US-Israel have unilaterally blocked (and that Peres has never accepted - in fact, in his last days as Prime Minister in 1996 he held that a Palestinian state can never come into existence). That might suggest a significant change of heart, except that the right-wing Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu said that on the same trip, Obama had told him that he was "very impressed" with Netanyahu's plan, which calls for indefinite Israeli control of the occupied territories.
The paradox is plausibly resolved by Israeli political analyst Aluf Ben, who points out that Obama's "main goal was not to screw up or ire anyone. Presumably he was polite, and told his hosts their proposals were `very interesting' - they leave satisfied and he hasn't promised a thing." Understandable, but it leaves us with nothing except his fervent professions of love for Israel and dismissal of Palestinian concerns.
Iraq
On Iraq, Obama has frequently been praised for his "principled opposition" to the war. In reality, as he has made clear, his opposition has been entirely unprincipled throughout. The war, he said, is a "strategic blunder." When Kremlin critics of the invasion of Afghanistan called it a strategic blunder, we did not say that they were taking a principled stand.
By the time of writing, the government of Iraq seems close to accepting a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Washington on the US military presence in Iraq - with reservations, according to Prime Minister Maliki, who said that this is the best Iraq could get and it was at least "a strong beginning." The talks dragged on, the Washington Post reports, because Iraq insisted on "some major concessions, including the establishment of the 2011 withdrawal date instead of vaguer language favored by the Bush administration [and] also rejected long-term U.S. military bases on its soil." Iraqi leaders "consider the firm deadline for withdrawal to be a negotiating victory," Reuters reports: Washington "long opposed setting any timetable for its troops to withdraw, but relented in recent months," unable to overcome Iraqi resistance.
Throughout the negotiations, the press regularly dismissed the obstinate stance of the Maliki government as regrettable pandering to public opinion. US-run polls continue to report that a large majority of Iraqis oppose any US military presence, and believe that US forces make the situation worse, including the "surge." That judgment is supported, among others, by Middle East specialist and security analyst Steven Simon, who writes in Foreign Affairs that the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy is "stoking the three forces that have traditionally threatened the stability of Middle Eastern states: tribalism, warlordism, and sectarianism. States that have failed to control these forces have ultimately become ungovernable, and this is the fate for which the surge is preparing Iraq. A strategy intended to reduce casualties in the short term will ineluctably weaken the prospects for Iraq's cohesion over the long run." It may lead to "a strong, centralized state ruled by a military junta that would resemble the Baathist regime Washington overthrew in 2003," or "something very much like the imperial protectorates in the Middle East of the first half of the twentieth century" in which the "club of patrons" in the capital would 'dole out goods to tribes through favored conduits." In the Petraeus system, "the U.S. military is performing the role of the patrons -- creating an unhealthy dependency and driving a dangerous wedge between the tribes and the state," undermining prospects for a "stable, unitary Iraq."
The latest Iraqi success culminates a long process of resistance to demands of the US invaders. Washington fought tooth and nail to prevent elections, but was finally forced to back down in the face of popular demands for democracy, symbolized by the Ayatollah Sistani. The Bush administration then managed to install their own choice as Prime Minister, and sought to control the government in various ways, meanwhile also building huge military bases around the country and an "embassy" that is a virtual city within Baghdad - all funded by congressional Democrats. If the invaders do live up to the SOFA that they have been compelled to accept, it would constitute a significant triumph of nonviolent resistance. Insurgents can be killed, but mass nonviolent resistance is much harder to quell.
Within the political class and the media it is reflexively assumed that Washington has the right to demand terms for the SOFA. No such right was accorded to Russian invaders of Afghanistan, or indeed to anyone except the US and its clients. For others, we rightly adopt the principle that invaders have no rights, only responsibilities, including the responsibility to attend to the will of the victims, and to pay massive reparations for their crimes. In this case, the crimes include strong support for Saddam Hussein through his worst atrocities on Reagan's watch, then on to Saddam's massacre of Shiites under the eyes of the US military after the first Gulf War; the Clinton sanctions that were termed "genocidal" by the distinguished international diplomats who administered them and resigned in protest, and that also helped Saddam escape the fate of other gangsters whom the US and Britain supported to the very end of their bloody rule; and the war and its hideous aftermath. No such thoughts can be voiced in polite society.
The Iraqi government spokesman said that the tentative SOFA "matches the vision of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama." Obama's vision was in fact left somewhat vague, but presumably he would go along in some fashion with the demands of the Iraqi government. If so, that would require modification of US plans to ensure control over Iraq's enormous oil resources while reinforcing its dominance over the world's major energy producing region.
Afghanistan, Pakistan...
Obama's announced "vision" was to shift forces from Iraq to Afghanistan. That stand evoked a lesson from the editors of the Washington Post: "While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves." Increasingly, as Washington has been compelled to accede to Iraqi demands, tales about "democracy promotion" and other self-congratulatory fables have been shelved in favor of recognition of what had been obvious throughout to all but the most doctrinaire ideologists: that the US would not have invaded if Iraq's exports were asparagus and tomatoes and the world's major energy resources were in the South Pacific.
The NATO command is also coming to recognize reality publicly. In June 2007, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer informed a meeting of NATO members that "NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is directed for the West," and more generally to protect sea routes used by tankers and other "crucial infrastructure" of the energy system. That is the true meaning of the fabled "responsibility to protect." Presumably the task includes the projected $7.6-billion TAPI pipeline that would deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India, running through Afghan's Kandahar province, where Canadian troops are deployed. The goal is "to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran" and to "diminish Russia's dominance of Central Asian energy exports," the Toronto Globe and Mail reported, plausibly outlining some of the contours of the new "Great Game."
Obama strongly endorsed the then-secret Bush administration policy of attacking suspected al-Qaeda leaders in countries that Washington has not (yet) invaded, disclosed by the New York Times shortly after the election. The doctrine was illustrated again on October 26, when US forces based in Iraq raided Syria, killing 8 civilians, allegedly to capture an al-Qaeda leader. Washington did not notify Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki or President Talabani, both of whom have relatively amicable relations with Syria, which has accepted 1.5 million Iraqi refugees and is bitterly opposed to al-Qaeda. Syria protested, claiming, credibly, that if notified they would have eagerly apprehended this enemy. According to Asia Times, Iraqi leaders were furious, and hardened their stance in the SOFA negotiations, insisting on provisions to bar the use of Iraqi territory to attack neighbors.
The Syria raid elicited a harsh reaction in the Arab world. In pro-government newspapers, the Bush administration was denounced for lengthening its "loathsome legacy" (Lebanon), while Syria was urged to "march forward in your reconciliatory path" and America to "keep going backwards with your language of hatred, arrogance and the murder of innocents" (Kuwait). For the region generally, it was another illustration of what the government-controlled Saudi press condemned as "not diplomacy in search of peace, but madness in search of war."
Obama was silent. So were other Democrats. Political scientist Stephen Zunes contacted the offices of every Democrat on the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees, but was unable to find any critical word on the US raid on Syria from occupied Iraq.
Presumably, Obama also accepts the more expansive Bush doctrine that the US not only has the right to invade countries as it chooses (unless it is a "blunder," too costly to us), but also to attack others that Washington claims are supporting resistance to its aggression. In particular, Obama has, it seems, not criticized the raids by Predator drones that have killed many civilians in Pakistan.
These raids of course have consequences: people have the odd characteristic of objecting to slaughter of family members and friends. Right now there is a vicious mini-war being waged in the tribal area of Bajaur in Pakistan, adjacent to Afghanistan. BBC describes widespread destruction from intense combat, reporting further that "Many in Bajaur trace the roots of the uprising to a suspected US missile strike on an Islamic seminary, or madrassa, in November 2006, which killed around 80 people." The attack on the school, killing 80-85 people, was reported in the mainstream Pakistani press by the highly respected dissident physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy, but ignored in the US as insignificant. Events often look different at the other end of the club.
Hoodbhoy observed that the usual outcome of such attacks "has been flattened houses, dead and maimed children, and a growing local population that seeks revenge against Pakistan and the US." Bajaur today may be an illustration of the familiar pattern.
On November 3, General Petraeus, the newly appointed head of the US Central Command that covers the Middle East region, had his first meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and other high officials. Their primary concern was US missile attacks on Pakistani territory, which had increased sharply in previous weeks. "Continuing drone attacks on our territory, which result in loss of precious lives and property, are counterproductive and difficult to explain by a democratically elected government," Zardari informed Petraeus. His government, he said, is "under pressure to react more aggressively" to the strikes. These could lead to "a backlash against the US," which is already deeply unpopular in Pakistan.
Petraeus said that he had heard the message, and "we would have to take [Pakistani opinions] on board" when attacking the country. A practical necessity, no doubt, when over 80% of the supplies for the US-NATO war in Afghanistan pass through Pakistan.
Pakistan developed nuclear weapons, outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), thanks in no small measure to Ronald Reagan, who pretended not to see what his ally was doing. This was one element of Reagan's "unstinting support" for the "ruthless and vindictive" dictator Zia ul-Haq, whose rule had "the most long-lasting and damaging effect on Pakistani society, one still prevalent today," the highly respected analyst Ahmed Rashid observes. With Reagan's firm backing, Zia moved to impose "an ideological Islamic state upon the population." These are the immediate roots of many of "today's problems - the militancy of the religious parties, the mushrooming of madrassas and extremist groups, the spread of drug and Kalashnikov culture, and the increase in sectarian violence."
The Reaganites also "built up the [Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, ISI] into a formidable intelligence agency that ran the political process inside Pakistan while promoting Islamic insurgencies in Kashmir and Central Asia," Rashid continues. "This global jihad launched by Zia and Reagan was to sow the seeds of al Qaeda and turn Pakistan into the world center of jihadism for the next two decades." Meanwhile Reagan's immediate successors left Afghanistan in the hands of the most vicious jihadis, later abandoning it to warlord rule under Rumsfeld's direction. The fearsome ISI continues to play both sides of the street, supporting the resurgent Taliban and simultaneously acceding to some US demands.
The US and Pakistan are reported to have reached "tacit agreement in September [2008] on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets" in Pakistan, according to unidentified senior officials in both countries. "The officials described the deal as one in which the U.S. government refuses to publicly acknowledge the attacks while Pakistan's government continues to complain noisily about the politically sensitive strikes."
Once again problems are caused by the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" who dislike being bombed by an increasingly hated enemy from the other side of the world.
The day before this report on the "tacit agreement" appeared, a suicide bombing in the conflicted tribal areas killed eight Pakistani soldiers, retaliation for an attack by a US Predator drone that killed 20 people, including two Taliban leaders. The Pakistani parliament called for dialogue with the Taliban. Echoing the resolution, Pakistani foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said "There is an increasing realization that the use of force alone cannot yield the desired results."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai's first message to president-elect Obama was much like that delivered to General Petraeus by Pakistani leaders: "end US airstrikes that risk civilian casualties." His message was sent shortly after coalition troops bombed a wedding party in Kandahar province, reportedly killing 40 people. There is no indication that his opinion was "taken on board."
The British command has warned that there is no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan and that there will have to be negotiations with the Taliban, risking a rift with the US, the Financial Times reports. Correspondent Jason Burke, who has long experience in the region, reports that "the Taliban have been engaged in secret talks about ending the conflict in Afghanistan in a wide-ranging 'peace process' sponsored by Saudi Arabia and supported by Britain."
Some Afghan peace activists have reservations about this approach, preferring a solution without foreign interference. A growing network of activists is calling for negotiations and reconciliation with the Taliban in a National Peace Jirga, a grand assembly of Afghans, formed in May 2008. At a meeting in support of the Jirga, 3,000 Afghan political and intellectuals, mainly Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group, criticized "the international military campaign against Islamic militants in Afghanistan and called for dialogue to end the fighting," AFP reported.
The interim chairman of the National Peace Jirga, Bakhtar Aminzai, "told the opening gathering that the current conflict could not be resolved by military means and that only talks could bring a solution. He called on the government to step up its negotiations with the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami groups." The latter is the party of the extremist radical Islamist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a Reagan favorite responsible for many terrible atrocities, now reported to provide core parliamentary support for the Karzai government and to be pressing it towards a form of re-Talibanization.
Aminzai said further that "We need to pressure the Afghan government and the international community to find a solution without using guns." A spokeswoman added that "We are against Western policy in Afghanistan. They should bury their guns in a grave and focus on diplomacy and economic development." A leader of Awakened Youth of Afghanistan, a prominent antiwar group, says that we must end "Afghanicide -- the killing of Afghanistan." In a joint declaration with German peace organizations, the National Peace Jirga claimed to represent "a wide majority of Afghan people who are tired of war," calling for an end to escalation and initiation of a peace process.
The deputy director of the umbrella organization of NGOs in the country says that of roughly 1,400 registered NGOs, nearly 1,100 are purely Afghan operations: women's groups, youth groups and others, many of them advocates of the Peace Jirga.
Though polling in war-torn Afghanistan is a difficult process, there are some suggestive results. A Canadian-run poll found that Afghans favor the presence of Canadian and other foreign troops, the result that made the headlines in Canada. Other findings suggest some qualifications. Only 20% "think the Taliban will prevail once foreign troops leave." Three-fourths support negotiations between the Karzai government and the Taliban, and more than half favor a coalition government. The great majority therefore strongly disagree with the US-NATO focus on further militarization of the conflict, and appear to believe that peace is possible with a turn towards peaceful means. Though the question was not asked, it is reasonable to surmise that the foreign presence is favored for aid and reconstruction.
A study of Taliban foot soldiers carried out by the Toronto Globe & Mail, though not a scientific survey as they point out, nevertheless yields considerable insight. All were Afghan Pashtuns, from the Kandahar area. They described themselves as Mujahadeen, following the ancient tradition of driving out foreign invaders. Almost a third reported that at least one family member had died in aerial bombings in recent years. Many said that they were fighting to defend Afghan villagers from air strikes by foreign troops. Few claimed to be fighting a global Jihad, or had allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Most saw themselves as fighting for principles - an Islamic government -- not a leader. Again, the results suggest possibilities for a negotiated peaceful settlement, without foreign interference.
A valuable perspective on such prospects is provided by Sir Rodric Braithwaite, a specialist on Afghanistan who was UK ambassador to Moscow during the crucial 1988-92 period when the Russians withdrew (and the USSR collapsed), then becoming chair of the British Joint Intelligence Committee. On a recent visit, Braithwaite spoke to Afghan journalists, former Mujahideen, professionals, people working for the US-based "coalition" - in general, to "natural supporters for its claims to bring peace and reconstruction." In the Financial Times, he reports that they were "contemptuous of President Hamid Karzai," regarding him as another one of the puppets installed by foreign force. Their favorite was "Mohammad Najibullah, the last communist president, who attempted to reconcile the nation within an Islamic state, and was butchered by the Taliban in 1996: DVDs of his speeches are being sold on the streets. Things were, they said, better under the Soviets. Kabul was secure, women were employed, the Soviets built factories, roads, schools and hospitals, Russian children played safely in the streets. The Russian soldiers fought bravely on the ground like real warriors, instead of killing women and children from the air. Even the Taliban were not so bad: they were good Muslims, kept order, and respected women in their own way. These myths may not reflect historical reality, but they do measure a deep disillusionment with the `coalition' and its policies."
Specialists on the region urge that US strategy should shift from more troops and attacks in Pakistan to a "diplomatic grand bargain -- forging compromise with insurgents while addressing an array of regional rivalries and insecurities" (Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid in Foreign Affairs, Nov.-Dec. 2008). They warn that the current military focus "and the attendant terrorism" might lead to the collapse of nuclear-armed Pakistan, with grim consequences. They urge the incoming US administration "to put an end to the increasingly destructive dynamics of the Great Game in the region" through negotiations that recognize the interests of the concerned parties within Afghanistan as well as Pakistan and Iran, but also India, China and Russia, who "have reservations about a NATO base within their spheres of influence" and concerns about the threats "posed by the United States and NATO" as well as by al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The immediate goal should be "Lowering the level of violence in the region and moving the global community toward genuine agreement on the long-term goals," thus allowing Afghans to confront their internal problems peacefully. The incoming US president must put an end to "Washington's keenness for `victory' as the solution to all problems, and the United States' reluctance to involve competitors, opponents, or enemies in diplomacy."
It appears that there are feasible alternatives to escalation of the cycle of violence, but there is little hint of it in the electoral campaign or political commentary. Afghanistan and Pakistan do not appear among foreign policy issues on the Obama campaign's website.
Iran
Iran, in contrast, figures prominently -- though not of course as compared with effusive support for Israel; Palestinians remain unmentioned, apart from a vague reference to a two-state settlement of some unspecified kind. For Iran, Obama supports tough direct diplomacy "without preconditions" in order "to pressure Iran directly to change their troubling behavior," namely pursuing a nuclear program and supporting terrorism (presumably referring to support for Hamas and Hezbollah). If Iran abandons its troubling behavior, the US might move towards normal diplomatic and economic relations. "If Iran continues its troubling behavior, we will step up our economic pressure and political isolation." And as Obama informed the Israeli Lobby (AIPAC), "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon" - up to nuclear war, if he meant what he said.
Furthermore Obama will strengthen the NPT "so that countries like North Korea and Iran that break the rules will automatically face strong international sanctions." There is no mention of the conclusion of US intelligence with "high confidence" that Iran has not had a weapons program for 5 years, unlike US allies Israel, Pakistan, India, which maintain extensive nuclear weapons programs in violation of the NPT with direct US support, all unmentioned here as well.
The final mention of Iran is in the context of Obama's strong support for Israel's "Right to Self Defense" and its "right to protect its citizens." This commitment is demonstrated by Obama's co-sponsorship of "a Senate resolution against Iran and Syria's involvement in the war, and insisting that Israel should not be pressured into a ceasefire that did not deal with the threat of Hezbollah missiles." The reference is to Israel's US-backed invasion of Lebanon in 2006, with pretexts that are hardly credible in light of Israel's regular practices. This invasion, Israel's fifth, killed over 1000 Lebanese and once again destroyed much of southern Lebanon as well as parts of Beirut.
This is the sole mention of Lebanon among foreign policy issues on Obama's website. Evidently, Lebanon has no right of self defense. In fact who could possibly have a right of self defense against the US or its clients?
Nor does Iran have such rights. Among specialists, even rational hawks, it is well understood that if Iran is pursuing a weapons program, it is for deterrence. In the conservative National Interest, former CIA weapons inspector David Kay speculates that Iran might be moving towards "nuclear weapons capability," with the "strategic goal" of countering a US threat that "is real in Teheran's eyes," for good reasons that he reviews. He notes further that "Perhaps the biggest agitator of all in this is the United States, with its abbreviated historical memory and diplomatic ADD." Wayne White, formerly deputy director for the Near East and South Asia in State Department intelligence, dismisses the possibility that Supreme Leader Khamenei and the clerical elite, who hold power in Iran, would throw away the "vast amounts of money" and "huge economic empires" they have created for themselves "in some quixotic attack against Israel with a nuclear weapon," if they had one. The probability of that is virtually undetectable, he points out.
White agrees that Iran might seek weapons capability (which is not the same as weapons) for deterrence. He goes on to suggest Iran might also recall that Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons program when Israel bombed its Osiraq reactor in 1981, and that the attack led him to initiate a program using nuclear materials it had on hand as a result of the bombing. At the time, White was Iraq analyst for State Department intelligence, with access to a rich body of evidence. His testimony adds internal US intelligence confirmation to the very credible evidence available at once, later strengthened by reports of Iraqi defectors, that the Israeli bombing did not terminate, but rather initiated, Saddam's pursuit of nuclear weapons. US or Israeli bombing of Iranian facilities, White and other specialists observe, might have the same effect. Violence consistently elicits more violence in response.
These matters are well understood by informed hardliners. The leading neoconservative expert on Iran, Reuel Marc Gerecht, formerly in the CIA Middle East division, wrote in 2000 that:
Tehran certainly wants nuclear weapons; and its reasoning is not illogical. Iran was gassed into surrender in the first Persian Gulf War; Pakistan, Iran's ever more radicalized Sunni neighbor to the southeast, has nuclear weapons; Saddam Hussein, with his Scuds and his weapons-of-mass-destruction ambitions, is next door; Saudi Arabia, Iran's most ardent and reviled religious rival, has long-range missiles; Russia, historically one of Iran's most feared neighbors, is once again trying to reassert its dominion in the neighboring Caucasus; and Israel could, of course blow the Islamic Republic to bits. Having been vanquished by a technologically superior Iraq at a cost of at least a half-million men, Iran knows very well the consequences of having insufficient deterrence. And the Iranians possess the essential factor to make deterrence work: sanity. Tehran or Isfahan in ashes would destroy the Persian soul, about which even the most hard-line cleric cares deeply. As long as the Iranians believe that either the U.S. or Israel or somebody else in the region might retaliate with nuclear weapons, they won't do something stupid.
Gerecht also understands very well the real "security problem" posed by Iranian nuclear weapons, should it acquire them:
A nuclear-armed Islamic Republic would of course check, if not checkmate, the United States' maneuvering room in the Persian Gulf. We would no doubt think several times about responding to Iranian terrorism or military action if Tehran had the bomb and a missile to deliver it. During the lead-up to the second Gulf War, ruling clerical circles in Tehran and Qom were abuzz with the debate about nuclear weapons. The mullahs...agreed: if Saddam Hussein had had nuclear weapons, the Americans would not have challenged him. For the "left" and the "right," this weaponry is the ultimate guarantee of Iran's defense, its revolution, and its independence as a regional great power.
With appropriate translations for the doctrinal term "Iranian terrorism," Gerecht's concerns capture realistically the threat posed by an Iran with a deterrent capacity (Iranian military action is quite a remote contingency).
While as usual ignored as irrelevant to policy formation, American public opinion is close to that of serious analysts and also to world opinion. Large majorities oppose threats against Iran, thus rejecting the Bush-Obama position that the US must be an outlaw state, violating the UN Charter, which bars the threat of force. The public also joins the majority of the world's states in endorsing Iran's right, as a signer of the NPT, to enrich uranium for nuclear energy (the position endorsed also by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Kissinger and others when Iran was ruled by the tyrant imposed by US-UK subversion). Most important, the public favors establishment of a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East, which would mitigate and perhaps eliminate this highly threatening issue.
Popular Influence
These observations suggest an interesting thought experiment. What would be the content of the "Obama brand" if the public were to become "participants" rather than mere "spectators in action"? It is an experiment well worth undertaking, and there is good reason to suppose that the results might point the way to a saner and more decent world.
By Noam Chomsky
The Election
The word that immediately rolled off of every tongue after the presidential election was "historic." And rightly so. A Black family in the White House is truly a momentous event.
There were some surprises. One was that the election was not over after the Democratic convention. By usual indicators, the opposition party should have had a landslide victory during a severe economic crisis, after eight years of disastrous policies on all fronts including the worst record on job growth of any post-war president and a rare decline in median wealth, an incumbent so unpopular that his own party had to disavow him, and a dramatic collapse in US standing in world opinion. The Democrats did win, barely. If the financial crisis had been slightly delayed, they might not have.
A good question is why the margin of victory for the opposition party was so small, given the circumstances. One possibility is that neither party reflected public opinion at a time when 80% think the country is going in the wrong direction and that the government is run by "a few big interests looking out for themselves," not for the people, and a stunning 94% object that government does not attend to public opinion. As many studies show, both parties are well to the right of the population on many major issues, domestic and international.
It could be argued that no party speaking for the public would be viable in a society that is business-run to an unusual extent. Evidence for that is substantial. At a very general level, evidence is provided by the predictive success of political economist Thomas Ferguson's "investment theory" of politics, which holds that policies tend to reflect the wishes of the powerful blocs that invest every four years to control the state. More specific illustrations are numerous. To mention just one, for 60 years the US has failed to ratify the core principle of international labor law, which guarantees freedom of association. Legal analysts call it "the untouchable treaty in American politics," and observe that there has never even been any debate about the matter. And many have noted Washington's dismissal of conventions of the International Labor Organization as contrasted with the intense dedication to enforcement of monopoly pricing rights for corporations ("intellectual property rights"). There is much to explore here, but this is not the place.
The two candidates in the Democratic primary were a woman and an African-American. That too was historic. It would have been unimaginable forty years ago. The fact that the country has become civilized enough to accept this outcome is a considerable tribute to the activism of the 1960s and its aftermath.
In some ways the election followed familiar patterns. The McCain campaign was honest enough to announce clearly that the election wouldn't be about issues. Sarah Palin's hairdresser received twice the salary of McCain's foreign policy adviser, the Financial Times reported, probably an accurate reflection of significance for the campaign. Obama's message of "hope" and "change" offered a blank slate on which supporters could write their wishes. One could search websites for position papers, but correlation of these to policies is hardly spectacular, and in any event, what enters into voters' choices is what the campaign places front and center, as party managers know well.
The Obama campaign greatly impressed the public relations industry, which named Obama "Advertising Age's marketer of the year for 2008," easily beating out Apple. The industry's prime task is to ensure that uninformed consumers make irrational choices, thus undermining market theories. And it recognizes the benefits of undermining democracy the same way.
The Center for Responsive Politics reports that once again elections were bought: "The best-funded candidates won nine out of 10 contests, and all but a few members of Congress will be returning to Washington." Before the conventions, the viable candidates with most funding from financial institutions were Obama and McCain, with 36% each. Preliminary results indicate that by the end, Obama's campaign contributions, by industry, were concentrated among Law Firms (including lobbyists) and financial institutions. The investment theory of politics suggests some conclusions about the guiding policies of the new administration.
The power of financial institutions reflects the increasing shift of the economy from production to finance since the liberalization of finance in the 1970s, a root cause of the current economic malaise: the financial crisis, recession in the real economy, and the miserable performance of the economy for the large majority, whose real wages stagnated for 30 years, while benefits declined. The steward of this impressive record, Alan Greenspan, attributed his success to "growing worker insecurity," which led to "atypical restraint on compensation increases" - and corresponding increases into the pockets of those who matter. His failure even to perceive the dramatic housing bubble, following the collapse of the earlier tech bubble that he oversaw, was the immediate cause of the current financial crisis, as he ruefully conceded.
Reactions to the election from across the spectrum commonly adopted the "soaring rhetoric" that was the hallmark of the Obama campaign. Veteran correspondent John Hughes wrote that "America has just shown the world an extraordinary example of democracy at work," while to British historian-journalist Tristram Hunt, the election showed that America is a land "where miracles happen," such as "the glorious epic of Barack Obama" (leftist French journalist Jean Daniel). "In no other country in the world is such an election possible," said Catherine Durandin of the Institute for International and Strategic Relations in Paris. Many others were no less rapturous.
The rhetoric has some justification if we keep to the West, but elsewhere matters are different. Consider the world's largest democracy, India. The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, which is larger than all but a few countries of the world and is notorious for horrifying treatment of women, is not only a woman, but a Dalit ("untouchable"), at the lowest rung of India's disgraceful caste system.
Turning to the Western hemisphere, consider its two poorest countries: Haiti and Bolivia. In Haiti's first democratic election in 1990, grass-roots movements organized in the slums and hills, and though without resources, elected their own candidate, the populist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The results astonished observers who expected an easy victory for the candidate of the elite and the US, a former World Bank official.
True, the victory for democracy was soon overturned by a military coup, followed by years of terror and suffering to the present, with crucial participation of the two traditional torturers of Haiti, France and the US (contrary to self-serving illusions). But the victory itself was a far more "extraordinary example of democracy at work" than the miracle of 2008.
The same is true of the 2005 election in Bolivia. The indigenous majority, the most oppressed population in the hemisphere (those who survived), elected a candidate from their own ranks, a poor peasant, Evo Morales. The electoral victory was not based on soaring rhetoric about hope and change, or body language and fluttering of eyelashes, but on crucial issues, very well known to the voters: control over resources, cultural rights, and so on. Furthermore, the election went far beyond pushing a lever or even efforts to get out the vote. It was a stage in long and intense popular struggles in the face of severe repression, which had won major victories, such as defeating the efforts to deprive poor people of water through privatization.
These popular movements did not simply take instructions from party leaders. Rather, they formulated the policies that their candidates were chosen to implement. That is quite different from the Western model of democracy, as we see clearly in the reactions to Obama's victory.
In the liberal Boston Globe, the headline of the lead story observed that Obama's "grass-roots strategy leaves few debts to interest groups": labor unions, women, minorities, or other "traditional Democratic constituencies." That is only partially right, because massive funding by concentrated sectors of capital is ignored. But leaving that detail aside, the report is correct in saying that Obama's hands are not tied, because his only debt is to "a grass-roots army of millions" - who took instructions, but contributed essentially nothing to formulating his program.
At the other end of the doctrinal spectrum, a headline in the Wall Street Journal reads "Grass-Roots Army Is Still at the Ready" - namely, ready to follow instructions to "push his agenda," whatever it may be.
Obama's organizers regard the network they constructed "as a mass movement with unprecedented potential to influence voters," the Los Angeles Times reported. The movement, organized around the "Obama brand" can pressure Congress to "hew to the Obama agenda." But they are not to develop ideas and programs and call on their representatives to implement them. These would be among the "old ways of doing politics" from which the new "idealists" are "breaking free."
It is instructive to compare this picture to the workings of a functioning democracy such as Bolivia. The popular movements of the third world do not conform to the favored Western doctrine that the "function" of the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" - the population -- is to be "spectators of action" but not "participants" (Walter Lippmann, articulating a standard progressive view).
Perhaps there might even be some substance to fashionable slogans about "clash of civilizations."
In earlier periods of American history, the public refused to keep to its assigned "function." Popular activism has repeatedly been the force that led to substantial gains for freedom and justice. The authentic hope of the Obama campaign is that the "grass roots army" organized to take instructions from the leader might "break free" and return to "old ways of doing politics," by direct participation in action.
Latin America
In Bolivia, as in Haiti, efforts to promote democracy, social justice, and cultural rights, and to bring about desperately needed structural and institutional changes are, naturally, bitterly opposed by the traditional rulers, the Europeanized mostly white elite in the Eastern provinces, the site of most of the natural resources currently desired by the West. Also naturally, their quasi-secessionist movement is supported by Washington, which once again scarcely conceals its distaste for democracy when it does not conform to strategic and economic interests. The generalization is a staple of serious scholarship, but does not make its way to commentary about the revered "freedom agenda."
To punish Bolivians for showing "the world an extraordinary example of democracy at work," the Bush administration cancelled trade preferences, threatening tens of thousands of jobs, on the pretext that Bolivia was not cooperating with US counter-narcotic efforts. In the real world, the UN estimates that Bolivia's coca crop increased 5 percent in 2007, as compared with a 26 percent increase in Colombia, the terror state that is Washington's closest regional ally and the recipient of enormous military aid. AP reports that "Cocaine seizures by Bolivian police working with DEA agents had also increased dramatically during the Morales administration."
"Drug wars" have regularly been used as a pretext for repression, violence, and state crimes, at home as well.
After Morales's victory in a recall referendum in August 2008, with a sharp increase in support over his 2005 success, rightist opposition turned violent, leading to assassination of many peasants supporting the government. After the massacre, a summit meeting of UNASUR, the newly-formed Union of South American Republics, was convened in Santiago Chile. The summit issued a strong statement of support for the elected Morales government, read by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. The statement declared "their full and firm support for the constitutional government of President Evo Morales, whose mandate was ratified by a big majority" -- referring to his overwhelming victory in the referendum a month earlier. Morales thanked UNASUR for its support, observing that "For the first time in South America's history, the countries of our region are deciding how to resolve our problems, without the presence of the United States."
A matter of no slight significance, not reported in the US.
The Administration
Turning to the future, what can we realistically expect of an Obama administration? We have two sources of information: actions and rhetoric.
The most important actions to date are selection of staff. The first selection was for vice-President: Joe Biden, one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq invasion among Senate Democrats, a long-time Washington insider, who consistently votes with his fellow Democrats but not always, as when he supported a measure to make it harder for individuals to erase debt by declaring bankruptcy.
The first post-election appointment was for the crucial position of chief of staff: Rahm Emanuel, one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq invasion among House Democrats and like Biden, a long-term Washington insider. Emanuel is also one of the biggest recipients of Wall Street campaign contributions, the Center for Responsive Politics reports. He "was the top House recipient in the 2008 election cycle of contributions from hedge funds, private equity firms and the larger securities/investment industry." Since being elected to Congress in 2002, he "has received more money from individuals and PACs in the securities and investment business than any other industry"; these are also among Obama's top donors. His task is to oversee Obama's approach to the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, for which his and Obama's funders share ample responsibility.
In an interview with an editor of the Wall Street Journal, Emanuel was asked what the Obama administration would do about "the Democratic congressional leadership, which is brimming with left-wing barons who have their own agenda," such as slashing defense spending (in accord with the will of the majority of the population) and "angling for steep energy taxes to combat global warming," not to speak of the outright lunatics in Congress who toy with slavery reparations and even sympathize with Europeans who want to indict Bush administration war criminals for war crimes. "Barack Obama can stand up to them," Emanuel assured the editor. The administration will be "pragmatic," fending off left extremists.
Obama's transition team is headed by John Podesta, Clinton's chief of staff. The leading figures in his economic team are Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, both enthusiasts for the deregulation that was a major factor in the current financial crisis. As Treasury Secretary, Rubin worked hard to abolish the Glass-Steagall act, which had separated commercial banks from financial institutions that incur high risks. Economist Tim Canova comments that Rubin had "a personal interest in the demise of Glass-Steagall." Soon after leaving his position as Treasury Secretary, he became "chair of Citigroup, a financial-services conglomerate that was facing the possibility of having to sell off its insurance underwriting subsidiary... the Clinton administration never brought charges against him for his obvious violations of the Ethics in Government Act."
Rubin was replaced as Treasury Secretary by Summers, who presided over legislation barring federal regulation of derivatives, the "weapons of mass destruction" (Warren Buffett) that helped plunge financial markets to disaster. He ranks as "one of the main villains in the current economic crisis," according to Dean Baker, one of the few economists to have warned accurately of the impending crisis. Placing financial policy in the hands of Rubin and Summers is "a bit like turning to Osama Bin Laden for aid in the war on terrorism," Baker adds.
The business press reviewed the records of Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board, which met on November 7 to determine how to deal with the financial crisis. In Bloomberg News, Jonathan Weil concluded that "Many of them should be getting subpoenas as material witnesses right about now, not places in Obama's inner circle." About half "have held fiduciary positions at companies that, to one degree or another, either fried their financial statements, helped send the world into an economic tailspin, or both." Is it really plausible that "they won't mistake the nation's needs for their own corporate interests?" He also pointed out that chief of staff Emanuel "was a director at Freddie Mac in 2000 and 2001 while it was committing accounting fraud."
Those are the actions, at the time of writing. The rhetoric is "change" and "hope."
Health Care
The primary concern for the administration will be to arrest the financial crisis and the simultaneous recession in the real economy. But there is also a monster in the closet: the notoriously inefficient privatized health care system, which threatens to overwhelm the federal budget if current tendencies persist. A majority of the public has long favored a national health care system, which should be far less expensive and more effective, comparative evidence indicates (along with many studies). As recently as 2004, any government intervention in the health care system was described in the press as "politically impossible" and "lacking political support" - meaning: opposed by the insurance industry, pharmaceutical corporations, and others who count. In 2008, however, first Edwards, then Obama and Clinton, advanced proposals that approach what the public has long preferred. These ideas now have "political support." What has changed? Not public opinion, which remains much as before. But by 2008, major sectors of power, primarily manufacturing industry, had come to recognize that they are being severely damaged by the privatized health care system. Hence the public will is coming to have "political support." There is a long way to go, but the shift tells us something about dysfunctional democracy.
International Relations
Internationally, there is not much of substance on the largely blank slate. What there is gives little reason to expect much a change from Bush's second term, which stepped back from the radical ultranationalism and aggressive posture of the first term, also discarding some of the extreme hawks and opponents of democracy (in action, that is, not soothing words), like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
Israel-Palestine
The immediate issues have to do mostly with the Middle East. On Israel-Palestine, rumors are circulating that Obama might depart from the US rejectionism that has blocked a political settlement for over 30 years, with rare exceptions, notably for a few days in January 2001 before promising negotiations were called off prematurely by Israel. The record, however, provides no basis for taking the rumors seriously. I have reviewed Obama's formal positions elsewhere (Perilous Power), and will put the matter aside here.
After the election, Israeli president Shimon Peres informed the press that on his July trip to Israel, Obama had told him that he was "very impressed" with the Arab League peace proposal, calling for full normalization of relations with Israel along with Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories - basically, the long-standing international consensus that the US-Israel have unilaterally blocked (and that Peres has never accepted - in fact, in his last days as Prime Minister in 1996 he held that a Palestinian state can never come into existence). That might suggest a significant change of heart, except that the right-wing Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu said that on the same trip, Obama had told him that he was "very impressed" with Netanyahu's plan, which calls for indefinite Israeli control of the occupied territories.
The paradox is plausibly resolved by Israeli political analyst Aluf Ben, who points out that Obama's "main goal was not to screw up or ire anyone. Presumably he was polite, and told his hosts their proposals were `very interesting' - they leave satisfied and he hasn't promised a thing." Understandable, but it leaves us with nothing except his fervent professions of love for Israel and dismissal of Palestinian concerns.
Iraq
On Iraq, Obama has frequently been praised for his "principled opposition" to the war. In reality, as he has made clear, his opposition has been entirely unprincipled throughout. The war, he said, is a "strategic blunder." When Kremlin critics of the invasion of Afghanistan called it a strategic blunder, we did not say that they were taking a principled stand.
By the time of writing, the government of Iraq seems close to accepting a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Washington on the US military presence in Iraq - with reservations, according to Prime Minister Maliki, who said that this is the best Iraq could get and it was at least "a strong beginning." The talks dragged on, the Washington Post reports, because Iraq insisted on "some major concessions, including the establishment of the 2011 withdrawal date instead of vaguer language favored by the Bush administration [and] also rejected long-term U.S. military bases on its soil." Iraqi leaders "consider the firm deadline for withdrawal to be a negotiating victory," Reuters reports: Washington "long opposed setting any timetable for its troops to withdraw, but relented in recent months," unable to overcome Iraqi resistance.
Throughout the negotiations, the press regularly dismissed the obstinate stance of the Maliki government as regrettable pandering to public opinion. US-run polls continue to report that a large majority of Iraqis oppose any US military presence, and believe that US forces make the situation worse, including the "surge." That judgment is supported, among others, by Middle East specialist and security analyst Steven Simon, who writes in Foreign Affairs that the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy is "stoking the three forces that have traditionally threatened the stability of Middle Eastern states: tribalism, warlordism, and sectarianism. States that have failed to control these forces have ultimately become ungovernable, and this is the fate for which the surge is preparing Iraq. A strategy intended to reduce casualties in the short term will ineluctably weaken the prospects for Iraq's cohesion over the long run." It may lead to "a strong, centralized state ruled by a military junta that would resemble the Baathist regime Washington overthrew in 2003," or "something very much like the imperial protectorates in the Middle East of the first half of the twentieth century" in which the "club of patrons" in the capital would 'dole out goods to tribes through favored conduits." In the Petraeus system, "the U.S. military is performing the role of the patrons -- creating an unhealthy dependency and driving a dangerous wedge between the tribes and the state," undermining prospects for a "stable, unitary Iraq."
The latest Iraqi success culminates a long process of resistance to demands of the US invaders. Washington fought tooth and nail to prevent elections, but was finally forced to back down in the face of popular demands for democracy, symbolized by the Ayatollah Sistani. The Bush administration then managed to install their own choice as Prime Minister, and sought to control the government in various ways, meanwhile also building huge military bases around the country and an "embassy" that is a virtual city within Baghdad - all funded by congressional Democrats. If the invaders do live up to the SOFA that they have been compelled to accept, it would constitute a significant triumph of nonviolent resistance. Insurgents can be killed, but mass nonviolent resistance is much harder to quell.
Within the political class and the media it is reflexively assumed that Washington has the right to demand terms for the SOFA. No such right was accorded to Russian invaders of Afghanistan, or indeed to anyone except the US and its clients. For others, we rightly adopt the principle that invaders have no rights, only responsibilities, including the responsibility to attend to the will of the victims, and to pay massive reparations for their crimes. In this case, the crimes include strong support for Saddam Hussein through his worst atrocities on Reagan's watch, then on to Saddam's massacre of Shiites under the eyes of the US military after the first Gulf War; the Clinton sanctions that were termed "genocidal" by the distinguished international diplomats who administered them and resigned in protest, and that also helped Saddam escape the fate of other gangsters whom the US and Britain supported to the very end of their bloody rule; and the war and its hideous aftermath. No such thoughts can be voiced in polite society.
The Iraqi government spokesman said that the tentative SOFA "matches the vision of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama." Obama's vision was in fact left somewhat vague, but presumably he would go along in some fashion with the demands of the Iraqi government. If so, that would require modification of US plans to ensure control over Iraq's enormous oil resources while reinforcing its dominance over the world's major energy producing region.
Afghanistan, Pakistan...
Obama's announced "vision" was to shift forces from Iraq to Afghanistan. That stand evoked a lesson from the editors of the Washington Post: "While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves." Increasingly, as Washington has been compelled to accede to Iraqi demands, tales about "democracy promotion" and other self-congratulatory fables have been shelved in favor of recognition of what had been obvious throughout to all but the most doctrinaire ideologists: that the US would not have invaded if Iraq's exports were asparagus and tomatoes and the world's major energy resources were in the South Pacific.
The NATO command is also coming to recognize reality publicly. In June 2007, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer informed a meeting of NATO members that "NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is directed for the West," and more generally to protect sea routes used by tankers and other "crucial infrastructure" of the energy system. That is the true meaning of the fabled "responsibility to protect." Presumably the task includes the projected $7.6-billion TAPI pipeline that would deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India, running through Afghan's Kandahar province, where Canadian troops are deployed. The goal is "to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran" and to "diminish Russia's dominance of Central Asian energy exports," the Toronto Globe and Mail reported, plausibly outlining some of the contours of the new "Great Game."
Obama strongly endorsed the then-secret Bush administration policy of attacking suspected al-Qaeda leaders in countries that Washington has not (yet) invaded, disclosed by the New York Times shortly after the election. The doctrine was illustrated again on October 26, when US forces based in Iraq raided Syria, killing 8 civilians, allegedly to capture an al-Qaeda leader. Washington did not notify Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki or President Talabani, both of whom have relatively amicable relations with Syria, which has accepted 1.5 million Iraqi refugees and is bitterly opposed to al-Qaeda. Syria protested, claiming, credibly, that if notified they would have eagerly apprehended this enemy. According to Asia Times, Iraqi leaders were furious, and hardened their stance in the SOFA negotiations, insisting on provisions to bar the use of Iraqi territory to attack neighbors.
The Syria raid elicited a harsh reaction in the Arab world. In pro-government newspapers, the Bush administration was denounced for lengthening its "loathsome legacy" (Lebanon), while Syria was urged to "march forward in your reconciliatory path" and America to "keep going backwards with your language of hatred, arrogance and the murder of innocents" (Kuwait). For the region generally, it was another illustration of what the government-controlled Saudi press condemned as "not diplomacy in search of peace, but madness in search of war."
Obama was silent. So were other Democrats. Political scientist Stephen Zunes contacted the offices of every Democrat on the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees, but was unable to find any critical word on the US raid on Syria from occupied Iraq.
Presumably, Obama also accepts the more expansive Bush doctrine that the US not only has the right to invade countries as it chooses (unless it is a "blunder," too costly to us), but also to attack others that Washington claims are supporting resistance to its aggression. In particular, Obama has, it seems, not criticized the raids by Predator drones that have killed many civilians in Pakistan.
These raids of course have consequences: people have the odd characteristic of objecting to slaughter of family members and friends. Right now there is a vicious mini-war being waged in the tribal area of Bajaur in Pakistan, adjacent to Afghanistan. BBC describes widespread destruction from intense combat, reporting further that "Many in Bajaur trace the roots of the uprising to a suspected US missile strike on an Islamic seminary, or madrassa, in November 2006, which killed around 80 people." The attack on the school, killing 80-85 people, was reported in the mainstream Pakistani press by the highly respected dissident physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy, but ignored in the US as insignificant. Events often look different at the other end of the club.
Hoodbhoy observed that the usual outcome of such attacks "has been flattened houses, dead and maimed children, and a growing local population that seeks revenge against Pakistan and the US." Bajaur today may be an illustration of the familiar pattern.
On November 3, General Petraeus, the newly appointed head of the US Central Command that covers the Middle East region, had his first meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and other high officials. Their primary concern was US missile attacks on Pakistani territory, which had increased sharply in previous weeks. "Continuing drone attacks on our territory, which result in loss of precious lives and property, are counterproductive and difficult to explain by a democratically elected government," Zardari informed Petraeus. His government, he said, is "under pressure to react more aggressively" to the strikes. These could lead to "a backlash against the US," which is already deeply unpopular in Pakistan.
Petraeus said that he had heard the message, and "we would have to take [Pakistani opinions] on board" when attacking the country. A practical necessity, no doubt, when over 80% of the supplies for the US-NATO war in Afghanistan pass through Pakistan.
Pakistan developed nuclear weapons, outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), thanks in no small measure to Ronald Reagan, who pretended not to see what his ally was doing. This was one element of Reagan's "unstinting support" for the "ruthless and vindictive" dictator Zia ul-Haq, whose rule had "the most long-lasting and damaging effect on Pakistani society, one still prevalent today," the highly respected analyst Ahmed Rashid observes. With Reagan's firm backing, Zia moved to impose "an ideological Islamic state upon the population." These are the immediate roots of many of "today's problems - the militancy of the religious parties, the mushrooming of madrassas and extremist groups, the spread of drug and Kalashnikov culture, and the increase in sectarian violence."
The Reaganites also "built up the [Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, ISI] into a formidable intelligence agency that ran the political process inside Pakistan while promoting Islamic insurgencies in Kashmir and Central Asia," Rashid continues. "This global jihad launched by Zia and Reagan was to sow the seeds of al Qaeda and turn Pakistan into the world center of jihadism for the next two decades." Meanwhile Reagan's immediate successors left Afghanistan in the hands of the most vicious jihadis, later abandoning it to warlord rule under Rumsfeld's direction. The fearsome ISI continues to play both sides of the street, supporting the resurgent Taliban and simultaneously acceding to some US demands.
The US and Pakistan are reported to have reached "tacit agreement in September [2008] on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets" in Pakistan, according to unidentified senior officials in both countries. "The officials described the deal as one in which the U.S. government refuses to publicly acknowledge the attacks while Pakistan's government continues to complain noisily about the politically sensitive strikes."
Once again problems are caused by the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" who dislike being bombed by an increasingly hated enemy from the other side of the world.
The day before this report on the "tacit agreement" appeared, a suicide bombing in the conflicted tribal areas killed eight Pakistani soldiers, retaliation for an attack by a US Predator drone that killed 20 people, including two Taliban leaders. The Pakistani parliament called for dialogue with the Taliban. Echoing the resolution, Pakistani foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said "There is an increasing realization that the use of force alone cannot yield the desired results."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai's first message to president-elect Obama was much like that delivered to General Petraeus by Pakistani leaders: "end US airstrikes that risk civilian casualties." His message was sent shortly after coalition troops bombed a wedding party in Kandahar province, reportedly killing 40 people. There is no indication that his opinion was "taken on board."
The British command has warned that there is no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan and that there will have to be negotiations with the Taliban, risking a rift with the US, the Financial Times reports. Correspondent Jason Burke, who has long experience in the region, reports that "the Taliban have been engaged in secret talks about ending the conflict in Afghanistan in a wide-ranging 'peace process' sponsored by Saudi Arabia and supported by Britain."
Some Afghan peace activists have reservations about this approach, preferring a solution without foreign interference. A growing network of activists is calling for negotiations and reconciliation with the Taliban in a National Peace Jirga, a grand assembly of Afghans, formed in May 2008. At a meeting in support of the Jirga, 3,000 Afghan political and intellectuals, mainly Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group, criticized "the international military campaign against Islamic militants in Afghanistan and called for dialogue to end the fighting," AFP reported.
The interim chairman of the National Peace Jirga, Bakhtar Aminzai, "told the opening gathering that the current conflict could not be resolved by military means and that only talks could bring a solution. He called on the government to step up its negotiations with the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami groups." The latter is the party of the extremist radical Islamist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a Reagan favorite responsible for many terrible atrocities, now reported to provide core parliamentary support for the Karzai government and to be pressing it towards a form of re-Talibanization.
Aminzai said further that "We need to pressure the Afghan government and the international community to find a solution without using guns." A spokeswoman added that "We are against Western policy in Afghanistan. They should bury their guns in a grave and focus on diplomacy and economic development." A leader of Awakened Youth of Afghanistan, a prominent antiwar group, says that we must end "Afghanicide -- the killing of Afghanistan." In a joint declaration with German peace organizations, the National Peace Jirga claimed to represent "a wide majority of Afghan people who are tired of war," calling for an end to escalation and initiation of a peace process.
The deputy director of the umbrella organization of NGOs in the country says that of roughly 1,400 registered NGOs, nearly 1,100 are purely Afghan operations: women's groups, youth groups and others, many of them advocates of the Peace Jirga.
Though polling in war-torn Afghanistan is a difficult process, there are some suggestive results. A Canadian-run poll found that Afghans favor the presence of Canadian and other foreign troops, the result that made the headlines in Canada. Other findings suggest some qualifications. Only 20% "think the Taliban will prevail once foreign troops leave." Three-fourths support negotiations between the Karzai government and the Taliban, and more than half favor a coalition government. The great majority therefore strongly disagree with the US-NATO focus on further militarization of the conflict, and appear to believe that peace is possible with a turn towards peaceful means. Though the question was not asked, it is reasonable to surmise that the foreign presence is favored for aid and reconstruction.
A study of Taliban foot soldiers carried out by the Toronto Globe & Mail, though not a scientific survey as they point out, nevertheless yields considerable insight. All were Afghan Pashtuns, from the Kandahar area. They described themselves as Mujahadeen, following the ancient tradition of driving out foreign invaders. Almost a third reported that at least one family member had died in aerial bombings in recent years. Many said that they were fighting to defend Afghan villagers from air strikes by foreign troops. Few claimed to be fighting a global Jihad, or had allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Most saw themselves as fighting for principles - an Islamic government -- not a leader. Again, the results suggest possibilities for a negotiated peaceful settlement, without foreign interference.
A valuable perspective on such prospects is provided by Sir Rodric Braithwaite, a specialist on Afghanistan who was UK ambassador to Moscow during the crucial 1988-92 period when the Russians withdrew (and the USSR collapsed), then becoming chair of the British Joint Intelligence Committee. On a recent visit, Braithwaite spoke to Afghan journalists, former Mujahideen, professionals, people working for the US-based "coalition" - in general, to "natural supporters for its claims to bring peace and reconstruction." In the Financial Times, he reports that they were "contemptuous of President Hamid Karzai," regarding him as another one of the puppets installed by foreign force. Their favorite was "Mohammad Najibullah, the last communist president, who attempted to reconcile the nation within an Islamic state, and was butchered by the Taliban in 1996: DVDs of his speeches are being sold on the streets. Things were, they said, better under the Soviets. Kabul was secure, women were employed, the Soviets built factories, roads, schools and hospitals, Russian children played safely in the streets. The Russian soldiers fought bravely on the ground like real warriors, instead of killing women and children from the air. Even the Taliban were not so bad: they were good Muslims, kept order, and respected women in their own way. These myths may not reflect historical reality, but they do measure a deep disillusionment with the `coalition' and its policies."
Specialists on the region urge that US strategy should shift from more troops and attacks in Pakistan to a "diplomatic grand bargain -- forging compromise with insurgents while addressing an array of regional rivalries and insecurities" (Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid in Foreign Affairs, Nov.-Dec. 2008). They warn that the current military focus "and the attendant terrorism" might lead to the collapse of nuclear-armed Pakistan, with grim consequences. They urge the incoming US administration "to put an end to the increasingly destructive dynamics of the Great Game in the region" through negotiations that recognize the interests of the concerned parties within Afghanistan as well as Pakistan and Iran, but also India, China and Russia, who "have reservations about a NATO base within their spheres of influence" and concerns about the threats "posed by the United States and NATO" as well as by al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The immediate goal should be "Lowering the level of violence in the region and moving the global community toward genuine agreement on the long-term goals," thus allowing Afghans to confront their internal problems peacefully. The incoming US president must put an end to "Washington's keenness for `victory' as the solution to all problems, and the United States' reluctance to involve competitors, opponents, or enemies in diplomacy."
It appears that there are feasible alternatives to escalation of the cycle of violence, but there is little hint of it in the electoral campaign or political commentary. Afghanistan and Pakistan do not appear among foreign policy issues on the Obama campaign's website.
Iran
Iran, in contrast, figures prominently -- though not of course as compared with effusive support for Israel; Palestinians remain unmentioned, apart from a vague reference to a two-state settlement of some unspecified kind. For Iran, Obama supports tough direct diplomacy "without preconditions" in order "to pressure Iran directly to change their troubling behavior," namely pursuing a nuclear program and supporting terrorism (presumably referring to support for Hamas and Hezbollah). If Iran abandons its troubling behavior, the US might move towards normal diplomatic and economic relations. "If Iran continues its troubling behavior, we will step up our economic pressure and political isolation." And as Obama informed the Israeli Lobby (AIPAC), "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon" - up to nuclear war, if he meant what he said.
Furthermore Obama will strengthen the NPT "so that countries like North Korea and Iran that break the rules will automatically face strong international sanctions." There is no mention of the conclusion of US intelligence with "high confidence" that Iran has not had a weapons program for 5 years, unlike US allies Israel, Pakistan, India, which maintain extensive nuclear weapons programs in violation of the NPT with direct US support, all unmentioned here as well.
The final mention of Iran is in the context of Obama's strong support for Israel's "Right to Self Defense" and its "right to protect its citizens." This commitment is demonstrated by Obama's co-sponsorship of "a Senate resolution against Iran and Syria's involvement in the war, and insisting that Israel should not be pressured into a ceasefire that did not deal with the threat of Hezbollah missiles." The reference is to Israel's US-backed invasion of Lebanon in 2006, with pretexts that are hardly credible in light of Israel's regular practices. This invasion, Israel's fifth, killed over 1000 Lebanese and once again destroyed much of southern Lebanon as well as parts of Beirut.
This is the sole mention of Lebanon among foreign policy issues on Obama's website. Evidently, Lebanon has no right of self defense. In fact who could possibly have a right of self defense against the US or its clients?
Nor does Iran have such rights. Among specialists, even rational hawks, it is well understood that if Iran is pursuing a weapons program, it is for deterrence. In the conservative National Interest, former CIA weapons inspector David Kay speculates that Iran might be moving towards "nuclear weapons capability," with the "strategic goal" of countering a US threat that "is real in Teheran's eyes," for good reasons that he reviews. He notes further that "Perhaps the biggest agitator of all in this is the United States, with its abbreviated historical memory and diplomatic ADD." Wayne White, formerly deputy director for the Near East and South Asia in State Department intelligence, dismisses the possibility that Supreme Leader Khamenei and the clerical elite, who hold power in Iran, would throw away the "vast amounts of money" and "huge economic empires" they have created for themselves "in some quixotic attack against Israel with a nuclear weapon," if they had one. The probability of that is virtually undetectable, he points out.
White agrees that Iran might seek weapons capability (which is not the same as weapons) for deterrence. He goes on to suggest Iran might also recall that Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons program when Israel bombed its Osiraq reactor in 1981, and that the attack led him to initiate a program using nuclear materials it had on hand as a result of the bombing. At the time, White was Iraq analyst for State Department intelligence, with access to a rich body of evidence. His testimony adds internal US intelligence confirmation to the very credible evidence available at once, later strengthened by reports of Iraqi defectors, that the Israeli bombing did not terminate, but rather initiated, Saddam's pursuit of nuclear weapons. US or Israeli bombing of Iranian facilities, White and other specialists observe, might have the same effect. Violence consistently elicits more violence in response.
These matters are well understood by informed hardliners. The leading neoconservative expert on Iran, Reuel Marc Gerecht, formerly in the CIA Middle East division, wrote in 2000 that:
Tehran certainly wants nuclear weapons; and its reasoning is not illogical. Iran was gassed into surrender in the first Persian Gulf War; Pakistan, Iran's ever more radicalized Sunni neighbor to the southeast, has nuclear weapons; Saddam Hussein, with his Scuds and his weapons-of-mass-destruction ambitions, is next door; Saudi Arabia, Iran's most ardent and reviled religious rival, has long-range missiles; Russia, historically one of Iran's most feared neighbors, is once again trying to reassert its dominion in the neighboring Caucasus; and Israel could, of course blow the Islamic Republic to bits. Having been vanquished by a technologically superior Iraq at a cost of at least a half-million men, Iran knows very well the consequences of having insufficient deterrence. And the Iranians possess the essential factor to make deterrence work: sanity. Tehran or Isfahan in ashes would destroy the Persian soul, about which even the most hard-line cleric cares deeply. As long as the Iranians believe that either the U.S. or Israel or somebody else in the region might retaliate with nuclear weapons, they won't do something stupid.
Gerecht also understands very well the real "security problem" posed by Iranian nuclear weapons, should it acquire them:
A nuclear-armed Islamic Republic would of course check, if not checkmate, the United States' maneuvering room in the Persian Gulf. We would no doubt think several times about responding to Iranian terrorism or military action if Tehran had the bomb and a missile to deliver it. During the lead-up to the second Gulf War, ruling clerical circles in Tehran and Qom were abuzz with the debate about nuclear weapons. The mullahs...agreed: if Saddam Hussein had had nuclear weapons, the Americans would not have challenged him. For the "left" and the "right," this weaponry is the ultimate guarantee of Iran's defense, its revolution, and its independence as a regional great power.
With appropriate translations for the doctrinal term "Iranian terrorism," Gerecht's concerns capture realistically the threat posed by an Iran with a deterrent capacity (Iranian military action is quite a remote contingency).
While as usual ignored as irrelevant to policy formation, American public opinion is close to that of serious analysts and also to world opinion. Large majorities oppose threats against Iran, thus rejecting the Bush-Obama position that the US must be an outlaw state, violating the UN Charter, which bars the threat of force. The public also joins the majority of the world's states in endorsing Iran's right, as a signer of the NPT, to enrich uranium for nuclear energy (the position endorsed also by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Kissinger and others when Iran was ruled by the tyrant imposed by US-UK subversion). Most important, the public favors establishment of a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East, which would mitigate and perhaps eliminate this highly threatening issue.
Popular Influence
These observations suggest an interesting thought experiment. What would be the content of the "Obama brand" if the public were to become "participants" rather than mere "spectators in action"? It is an experiment well worth undertaking, and there is good reason to suppose that the results might point the way to a saner and more decent world.
Abonner på:
Opslag (Atom)