How Hypocrisy on 'Terrorism' Kills
By Robert Parry
January 01, 2009 "Consortium News" Israel, a nation that was born out of Zionist terrorism, has launched massive airstrikes against targets in Gaza using high-tech weapons produced by the United States, a country that often has aided and abetted terrorism by its client military forces, such as Chile's Operation Condor and the Nicaraguan contras, and even today harbors right-wing Cuban terrorists implicated in blowing up a civilian airliner.
Yet, with that moral ambiguity excluded from the debate, the justification for the Israeli attacks, which have killed at least 364 people, is the righteous fight against "terrorism," since Gaza is ruled by the militant Palestinian group, Hamas.
Hamas rose to power in January 2006 through Palestinian elections, which ironically the Bush administration had demanded. However, after Hamas won a parliamentary majority, Israel and the United States denounced the outcome because they deem Hamas a "terrorist organization."
Hamas then wrested control of Gaza from Fatah, a rival group that once was considered "terrorist" but is now viewed as a U.S.-Israeli partner, so it has been cleansed of the "terrorist" label.
Unwilling to negotiate seriously with Hamas because of its acts of terrorism - which have included firing indiscriminate short-range missiles into southern Israel - the United States and Israel sat back as the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza worsened, with 1.5 million impoverished Palestinians packed into what amounts to a giant open-air prison.
When Hamas ended a temporary cease-fire on Dec. 19 because of a lack of progress in those negotiations and began lobbing its little missiles into Israel once more, the Israeli government reacted on Saturday with its lethal "shock and awe" firepower - even though no Israelis had been killed by the post-cease-fire missiles launched from Gaza. [Since Saturday, four Israelis have died in more intensive Hamas missile attacks.]
Israel claimed that its smart bombs targeted sites related to the Hamas security forces, including a school for police cadets and even regular policemen walking down the street. But it soon became clear that Israel was taking an expansive view of what was part of the Hamas military infrastructure, with Israeli bombs taking out a television station and a university building as well as killing a significant number of civilians.
As the slaughter continued on Monday, Israeli officials confided to Western journalists that the war plan was to destroy the vast support network of social and other programs that undergird Hamas's political clout.
"There are many aspects of Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel," a senior Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Post.
"Hamas's civilian infrastructure is a very, very sensitive target," added Matti Steinberg, a former top adviser to Israel's domestic security service. "If you want to put pressure on them, this is how." [Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2008]
Since the classic definition of "terrorism" is the use of violence against civilians to achieve a political goal, Israel would seem to be inviting an objective analysis that it has chosen its own terrorist path. But it is clearly counting on the U.S. news media to continue wearing the blinders that effectively limit condemnations about terrorism to people and groups that are regarded as Washington's enemies.
Whose Terrorism?
As a Washington-based reporter for the Associated Press in the 1980s, I once questioned the seeming bias that the U.S.-based wire service applied to its use of the word "terrorist" when covering Middle East issues. A senior AP executive responded to my concerns with a quip. "Terrorist is the word that follows Arab," he said.
Though meant as a lighthearted riposte, the comment clearly had a great deal of truth to it. It was easy to attach "terrorist" to any Arab attack - even against a military target such as the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 after the Reagan administration had joined hostilities against Muslim forces by having U.S. warships lob shells into Lebanese villages.
But it was understood that different rules on the use of the word "terrorism" applied when the terrorism was coming from "our side." Then, no American reporter with any sense of career survival would think of injecting the word "terrorist" whatever the justification.
Even historical references to acts of terrorism - such as the brutal practice by American revolutionaries in the 1770s of "tar and feathering" civilians considered sympathetic to the British Crown or the extermination of American Indian tribes - were seen as somehow diluting the moral righteousness against today's Islamic terrorists and in favor of George W. Bush's "war on terror."
Gone, too, from the historical narrative was the fact that militant Zionists employed terrorism as part of their campaign to establish Israel as a Jewish state. The terrorism included killings of British officials who were administering Palestine under an international mandate as well as Palestinians who were driven violently from their land so it could be claimed by Jewish settlers.
One of the most famous of those terrorist attacks was the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem where British officials were staying. The attack, which killed 91 people including local residents, was carried out by the Irgun, a terrorist group run by Menachem Begin who later founded the Likud Party and rose to be Israel's prime minister.
Another veteran of the campaign of Zionist terrorism was Yitzhak Shamir, who also became a Likud leader and eventually prime minister.
In the early 1990s, as I was waiting to interview Shamir at his Tel Aviv office, I was approached by one of his young female assistants who was dressed in a gray and blue smock with a head covering in the traditional Hebrew style.
As we were chatting, she smiled and said in a lilting voice, "Prime Minister Shamir, he was a terrorist, you know." I responded with a chuckle, "yes, I'm aware of the prime minister's biography."
Blind Spot
To maintain one's moral purity in denouncing acts of terror by U.S. enemies, one also needs a large blind spot for recent U.S. history, which implicates U.S. leaders repeatedly in tolerance or acts of terrorism.
For instance, in 1973, after a bloody U.S.-backed coup overthrew the leftist Chilean government, the new regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet joined with other South American dictatorships to sponsor an international terrorist organization called Operation Condor which assassinated political dissidents around the world.
Operation Condor mounted one of its most audacious actions on the streets of Washington in 1976, when Pinochet's regime recruited Cuban-American terrorists to detonate a car bomb that killed Chile's former foreign minister Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker, Ronni Moffitt. The Chilean government's role immediately was covered up by the CIA, then headed by George H.W. Bush. [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]
Only weeks later, a Venezuela-based team of right-wing Cubans - under the direction of Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles - blew a Cubana Airliner out of the sky, killing 73 people. Bosch and Posada, a former CIA operative, were co-founders of CORU, which was described by the FBI as "an anti-Castro terrorist umbrella organization."
Though the U.S. government soon learned of the role of Bosch and Posada in the Cubana airline attack - and the two men spent some time in a Venezuelan jail - both Bosch and Posada since have enjoyed the protection of the U.S. government and particularly the Bush Family.
Rebuffing international demands that Bosch and Posada be held accountable for their crimes, the Bushes - George H.W., George W. and Jeb - have all had a hand in making sure these unrepentant terrorists get to live out their golden years in the safety and comfort of the United States.
In the 1980s, Posada even crossed over into another U.S.-backed terrorist organization, the Nicaraguan contras. After escaping from Venezuela, he was put to work in 1985 by Oliver North's contra-support operation run out of Ronald Reagan's National Security Council.
The Nicaraguan contras were, in effect, a narco-terrorist organization that partially funded its operations with proceeds from cocaine trafficking, a secret that the Reagan administration worked hard to conceal along with the contras' record of murder, torture, rape and other crimes in Nicaragua. [See Parry's Lost History.]
President Reagan joined, too, in fierce PR campaigns to discredit human rights investigators who documented massive atrocities by U.S. allies in Central America in the 1980s - not only the contras, but also the state terrorism of the Salvadoran and Guatemalan security forces, which engaged in wholesale slaughters in villages considered sympathetic to leftist insurgents.
Generally, the major U.S. news outlets treaded very carefully when allegations arose about terrorism by "our side."
When some brave journalists, like New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner, wrote about politically motivated killings of civilians in Central America, they faced organized retaliation by right-wing advocacy groups which often succeeded in damaging or destroying the reporters' careers.
Double Standards
Eventually, the American press corps developed an engrained sense of the double standards. Moral outrage could be expressed when acts of terrorism were committed by U.S. enemies, while studied silence - or nuanced concern - would be in order when the crimes were by U.S. allies.
So, while the U.S. news media had no doubt that the 9/11 terrorist attacks justified invading Afghanistan, there was very little U.S. media criticism when President Bush inflicted his "shock and awe" assault on Iraq, a war that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths.
Though many Muslims and others around the world have denounced Bush's Iraq invasion as "state terrorism," such a charge would be considered far outside the mainstream in the United States. Instead, Iraqi insurgents are often labeled "terrorists" when they attack U.S. troops inside Iraq. The word "terrorist" has become, in effect, a geopolitical curse word.
Despite the long and bloody history of U.S.-Israeli participation in terrorism, the U.S. news media continues its paradigm of pitting the U.S.-Israeli "good guys" against the Islamic "bad guys." One side has the moral high ground and the other is in the moral gutter. [For more on the U.S. media's one-sided approach, see the analysis by Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher.]
Any attempt to cite the larger, more ambiguous and more troubling picture draws accusations from defenders of U.S.-Israeli actions, especially the neoconservatives, of what they call "moral equivalence" or "anti-Semitism."
Yet it is now clear that acquiescence to a double standard on terrorism is not just a violation of journalistic ethics or an act of political cowardice; it is complicity in mass murder. Without the double standard, it is hard to envision how the bloodbaths - in Iraq (since 2003), in Lebanon (in 2006) and in Gaza (today) - would be possible.
Hypocrisy over the word "terrorism" is not an innocent dispute over semantics; it kills.
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Israel’s Warped Self-justification For Murder
Paul J. Balles exposes Israel’s warped definition of self-defence, which it uses as a cover for its murder of innocent Palestinians, including women and children, and its destruction of universities, mosques and other civilian infrastructure in the occupied Gaza Strip.
By Paul J. Balles
December 31, 2008 Redress Information & Analysis -- Israel brazenly lies, saying that Hamas broke the cease-fire when it was Israel that broke the cease-fire in November.
In Haaretz, Zvi Barel writes: "Six months ago Israel asked and received a cease-fire from Hamas. It unilaterally violated it when it blew up a tunnel, while still asking Egypt to get the Islamic group to hold its fire."
Israel continues its propaganda, claiming that its attack on Gaza is in self-defence.
The Huffington Post reports, "A mother whose three school-age children were killed, and are piled one on top of the other in the morgue, screams and then cries, screams again and then is silent."
Self-defence?
The New York Times reported: "At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, women wailed as they searched for relatives among bodies that lay strewn on the hospital floor."
Self-defence?
While the world is busy attempting to assess the damage from the financial crisis, Israel decides that it's a fitting time to massacre 350 and injure another 1500 in Gaza.
Self-defence?
In its propaganda dissemination, Israelis have been getting instruction on how to paint Israel as angels and Hamas as devils. What makes Hamas Beelzebubs? They have sent 1000 rockets into Israel, killing four Israelis altogether.
Self-defence?
The Israeli navy attacked and rammed a humanitarian boat in international waters off the coast of Gaza, preventing it from delivering desperately needed medical supplies and treatment.
Self-defence?
Eva Bartlett (Canadian), International Solidarity Movement, reported from inside Gaza on 27 December: "Israeli missiles tore through a children's playground and busy market in Diyar Balah. We saw the aftermath – many were injured and some reportedly killed.”
Self-defence?
Ewa Jasiewicz (Polish and British), Free Gaza Movement, observed: "The morgue at the Shifa Hospital has no more room for dead bodies, so bodies and body parts are strewn all over the hospital."
Self-defence?
Sharon Lock (Australian), International Solidarity Movement, writing from Gaza: "This massacre is not going to bring security for the State of Israel or allow it to be part of the Middle East. Now calls of revenge are everywhere."
Self-defence?
Jenny Linnel (British), International Solidarity Movement, reporting from Gaza: "In front of our house we found the bodies of two little girls under a car, completely burnt. They were coming home from school."
Self-defence?
Nora Barrows-Friedman, Flashpoints Radio, says: "The people [in Gaza] are filled with panic and terror – and this comes after a prolonged siege that deprives them of needed food, medicine, clean water, electricity – the basics of life."
Self-defence?
Laila El-Haddad, a mother from Gaza, writes: "My father just called to inform me he was OK – after warplanes bombed the Islamic University there, considered to be the Strip's premier academic institution." They also bombed a mosque. Why would the Israeli Air Force bomb a place of learning and one of prayer?
Self-defence?
Justin Alexander, writing for the Economist, notes: “"Israel's past military responses to the rocket threat, although massively disproportionate, have ... been largely ineffective. It demolished buildings and levelled large areas of farmland in the northern part of Gaza to reduce the cover available for rocket crews. It fired over 14,000 artillery shells in 2006, killing 59 Palestinian civilians in the process, in what was framed as a preventive tactic to make it more difficult for rocket crews to operate.”
Self-defence?
Haaretz ran an article by Gideon Levy reporting: “Within the span of a few hours on a Saturday [27 December] afternoon, the IDF sowed death and destruction on a scale that the Qassam rockets never approached in all their years, and Operation 'Cast Lead' is only in its infancy."
Self-defence? Not on your life! Or death!
Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.
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Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic. But I’m not talking about World War II, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad, or Ashkenazi Jews. What I’m referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the last 60 years. By definition, a holocaust is a mass slaughter of people or a thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life, especially through fire. There isn’t a more accurate description of the hell that US-armed and –funded Israeli Occupation Forces are unleashing on the people of Gaza at this moment. Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn’t get more anti-Semitic than this.
If you think I’m being grandiose, let us look at the words of Matan Vilnai, Israel’s Deputy Defense [sic] Minister, from February of this year: "The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.” In Hebrew, “shoah” refers to the Jewish Holocaust of the 1940's. But massive airstrikes are not self-defense if you are the aggressor. That goes for the whole stupid so-called “War on Terror,” in which not a single one of its victims had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001. That goes for the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan; that goes for Israel in Palestine.
And that goes for Germany in Poland. In 1940, the Germans began massing Polish Jews into ghettoes prior to their deportation to extermination camps. The largest one was the Warsaw Ghetto, where an uprising—a Jewish insurgency—began in 1943. Today, Gaza is essentially a large ghetto, with a population of around 1.5 million living on about 139 square miles. Israel controls Gaza’s land border, airspace, water, maritime access, and the flow of goods including food and medical supplies. Since June 2007, Israel has imposed a blockade on the people of Gaza, slowly starving them to death, slowly killing them by denial of medical care amidst intermittent gunship airstrikes. These crimes against humanity are, of course, in violation of the Geneva Conventions—international law established after World War II in the spirit of “never again.” Unlike in Warsaw, Gaza is not the staging area for the extermination camps; Gaza IS the extermination camp.
Qassam rockets fired from Gaza as retaliation for Israeli F-16 airstrikes are the equivalent of the Molotov cocktails used by the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. Like the small arms of the Polish Jews, they are no match for the sophisticated weaponry of the invading army. This is why the death toll is so high for the people on the ground in Gaza, and minimal for Israelis. The mainstream media is depicting this as an “all-out war,” as it depicts the illegal occupation of Iraq. But in both cases, you have a starving, essentially unarmed people being assaulted with F-15s/F-16s, cruise missiles, depleted uranium, cluster bombs, tanks, and artillery. This is not war; this is mass murder; this is genocide. And it is American military, financial, and political support that makes this bloodletting possible.
From North America to Germany to Cambodia to Rwanda to Palestine to Iraq, mass murder is wrong. When Americans are looking for whom to blame, we cannot blame the victims. Yes, there are many players involved and many governments turning a blind eye to genocide, but don’t we brag about how much better we are than that? Shouldn’t we stop being complicit in these supreme crimes against humanity? All we have to do is abide by our own laws, which include all signed international treaties and agreements. We must end our illegal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and stop funding and providing armaments for the illegal occupation and stealth of Palestinian land. In the words of Rachel Corrie, a 23 year old American college student who was murdered in Rafah by the Israeli Occupation Forces on March 16, 2003:
“…Just want to write to my Mom and tell her that I'm witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I'm really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don't think it's an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world…So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible.”
Let us heed her brave wisdom, and end illegal occupation. If we fail to act, then the next time someone flies airplanes into American buildings, let us not ask ignorantly, “Why do they hate us?”
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Gaza: The Logic of Colonial Power
As so often, the term 'terrorism' has proved a rhetorical smokescreen under cover of which the strong crush the weak
By Nir Rosen
December 31, 2008 "The Guardian" -- I have spent most of the Bush administration's tenure reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and other conflicts. I have been published by most major publications. I have been interviewed by most major networks and I have even testified before the senate foreign relations committee. The Bush administration began its tenure with Palestinians being massacred and it ends with Israel committing one of its largest massacres yet in a 60-year history of occupying Palestinian land. Bush's final visit to the country he chose to occupy ended with an educated secular Shiite Iraqi throwing his shoes at him, expressing the feelings of the entire Arab world save its dictators who have imprudently attached themselves to a hated American regime.
Once again, the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live on TV and online; the western media largely justify the Israeli action. Even some Arab outlets try to equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. And none of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt.
The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre. Will it remain immune from the wrath of a desperate people? So far, there have been large demonstrations in Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The people of the Arab world will not forget. The Palestinians will not forget. "All that you have done to our people is registered in our notebooks," as the poet Mahmoud Darwish said.
I have often been asked by policy analysts, policy-makers and those stuck with implementing those policies for my advice on what I think America should do to promote peace or win hearts and minds in the Muslim world. It too often feels futile, because such a revolution in American policy would be required that only a true revolution in the American government could bring about the needed changes. An American journal once asked me to contribute an essay to a discussion on whether terrorism or attacks against civilians could ever be justified. My answer was that an American journal should not be asking whether attacks on civilians can ever be justified. This is a question for the weak, for the Native Americans in the past, for the Jews in Nazi Germany, for the Palestinians today, to ask themselves.
Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.
Counterinsurgency, now popular again among in the Pentagon, is another way of saying the suppression of national liberation struggles. Terror and intimidation are as essential to it as is winning hearts and minds.
Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.
Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel. Colonial powers use civilians strategically, settling them to claim land and dispossess the native population, be they Indians in North America or Palestinians in what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories. When the native population sees that there is an irreversible dynamic that is taking away their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power, then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can.
Not long ago, 19-year-old Qassem al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian man from Jerusalem drove his car into a group of soldiers at an intersection. "The terrorist", as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz called him, was shot and killed. In two separate incidents last July, Palestinians from Jerusalem also used vehicles to attack Israelis. The attackers were not part of an organisation. Although those Palestinian men were also killed, senior Israeli officials called for their homes to be demolished. In a separate incident, Haaretz reported that a Palestinian woman blinded an Israeli soldier in one eye when she threw acid n his face. "The terrorist was arrested by security forces," the paper said. An occupied citizen attacks an occupying soldier, and she is the terrorist?
In September, Bush spoke at the United Nations. No cause could justify the deliberate taking of human life, he said. Yet the US has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes on populated areas. When you drop bombs on populated areas knowing there will be some "collateral" civilian damage, but accepting it as worth it, then it is deliberate. When you impose sanctions, as the US did on Saddam era Iraq, that kill hundreds of thousands, and then say their deaths were worth it, as secretary of state Albright did, then you are deliberately killing people for a political goal. When you seek to "shock and awe", as president Bush did, when he bombed Iraq, you are engaging in terrorism.
Just as the traditional American cowboy film presented white Americans under siege, with Indians as the aggressors, which was the opposite of reality, so, too, have Palestinians become the aggressors and not the victims. Beginning in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were deliberately cleansed and expelled from their homes, and hundreds of their villages were destroyed, and their land was settled by colonists, who went on to deny their very existence and wage a 60-year war against the remaining natives and the national liberation movements the Palestinians established around the world. Every day, more of Palestine is stolen, more Palestinians are killed. To call oneself an Israeli Zionist is to engage in the dispossession of entire people. It is not that, qua Palestinians, they have the right to use any means necessary, it is because they are weak. The weak have much less power than the strong, and can do much less damage. The Palestinians would not have ever bombed cafes or used home-made missiles if they had tanks and airplanes. It is only in the current context that their actions are justified, and there are obvious limits.
It is impossible to make a universal ethical claim or establish a Kantian principle justifying any act to resist colonialism or domination by overwhelming power. And there are other questions I have trouble answering. Can an Iraqi be justified in attacking the United States? After all, his country was attacked without provocation, and destroyed, with millions of refugees created, hundreds of thousands of dead. And this, after 12 years of bombings and sanctions, which killed many and destroyed the lives of many others.
I could argue that all Americans are benefiting from their country's exploits without having to pay the price, and that, in today's world, the imperial machine is not merely the military but a military-civilian network. And I could also say that Americans elected the Bush administration twice and elected representatives who did nothing to stop the war, and the American people themselves did nothing. From the perspective of an American, or an Israeli, or other powerful aggressors, if you are strong, everything you do is justifiable, and nothing the weak do is legitimate. It's merely a question of what side you choose: the side of the strong or the side of the weak.
Israel and its allies in the west and in Arab regimes such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have managed to corrupt the PLO leadership, to suborn them with the promise of power at the expense of liberty for their people, creating a first – a liberation movement that collaborated with the occupier. Israeli elections are coming up and, as usual, these elections are accompanied by war to bolster the candidates. You cannot be prime minister of Israel without enough Arab blood on your hands. An Israeli general has threatened to set Gaza back decades, just as they threatened to set Lebanon back decades in 2006. As if strangling Gaza and denying its people fuel, power or food had not set it back decades already.
The democratically elected Hamas government was targeted for destruction from the day it won the elections in 2006. The world told the Palestinians that they cannot have democracy, as if the goal was to radicalise them further and as if that would not have a consequence. Israel claims it is targeting Hamas's military forces. This is not true. It is targeting Palestinian police forces and killing them, including some such as the chief of police, Tawfiq Jaber, who was actually a former Fatah official who stayed on in his post after Hamas took control of Gaza. What will happen to a society with no security forces? What do the Israelis expect to happen when forces more radical than Hamas gain power?
A Zionist Israel is not a viable long-term project and Israeli settlements, land expropriation and separation barriers have long since made a two state solution impossible. There can be only one state in historic Palestine. In coming decades, Israelis will be confronted with two options. Will they peacefully transition towards an equal society, where Palestinians are given the same rights, à la post-apartheid South Africa? Or will they continue to view democracy as a threat? If so, one of the peoples will be forced to leave. Colonialism has only worked when most of the natives have been exterminated. But often, as in occupied Algeria, it is the settlers who flee. Eventually, the Palestinians will not be willing to compromise and seek one state for both people. Does the world want to further radicalise them?
Do not be deceived: the persistence of the Palestine problem is the main motive for every anti-American militant in the Arab world and beyond. But now the Bush administration has added Iraq and Afghanistan as additional grievances. America has lost its influence on the Arab masses, even if it can still apply pressure on Arab regimes. But reformists and elites in the Arab world want nothing to do with America.
A failed American administration departs, the promise of a Palestinian state a lie, as more Palestinians are murdered. A new president comes to power, but the people of the Middle East have too much bitter experience of US administrations to have any hope for change. President-elect Obama, Vice President-elect Biden and incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton have not demonstrated that their view of the Middle East is at all different from previous administrations. As the world prepares to celebrate a new year, how long before it is once again made to feel the pain of those whose oppression it either ignores or supports?
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Americans Should Act to End Violence Against Gaza
Israel's crimes against the Palestinians simply could not take place on such a massive scale were it not for US support. The American people, therefore, have a responsibility to act and pressure their government to end its financial, military, and diplomatic support for Israeli violations of international law -- a necessary first step towards any viable and sustainable peace.
By Jeremy R. Hammond
December 31, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" -- -Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has long been in the planning, and the purpose is to terrorize the Arab population in the hopes that they will revolt against the Hamas leadership and to punish them further for electing them. The siege Gaza has remained under since Israel withdrew its military from the Strip in 2006 has had the same intended purpose.
A comparable policy was implemented by the US against Iraq. The sanctions were intended to further the goal of regime change. The means by which this goal was pursued was to punish the Iraqi people, to deny them food and medical supplies. By United Nations estimates, more than a million Iraqis died as a result. More than half a million of those victims were children.
In the end, although then US ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright publicly said that the “price” of half a million dead children was “worth it”, the sanctions served only to strengthen the control of Saddam Hussein’s regime over the people by making them totally dependent upon the regime for their very survival.
When it became clear that the genocidal sanctions were not sustainable due to overwhelming global opposition, the military option came to be seen as the only option for implementing regime change.
The chokehold Israel has maintained upon the population of Gaza has not had its desired effect. And Israel has realized that its siege of Gaza might also not be sustainable, given the ever-increasing global outrage. Israel’s use of force against Gaza was only a matter of time, and the cease-fire was understood from the beginning not to be an effort at a sustained, long-term peace, but to provide political cover for the planned military operation.
Prior to the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire, Israel had announced its intention to wage full-scale military operations against Gaza. The cease-fire did not end those plans, but were a means to that end. It was clear from the beginning that Israel intended to do everything in its power to ensure that the cease-fire was unsustainable in order to provoke Hamas into acting in a way that would provide Israel with a perceived casus belli to punish Gaza violently for continuing to have the leadership of elected Hamas officials.
Israel violated the cease-fire from the start. According to the UN, Israeli soldiers on numerous occasions fired upon Gaza farmers trying to work their land near the border. An 82 year old man was injured in one such incident on June 27. In another shooting incident, a Palestinian woman was wounded.
The Israeli Defense Force openly announced that it would fire upon any Palestinian entering into what it declared was a “special security zone” within Gaza; essentially a declaration of the intention to continually violate the cease-fire with impunity by firing at farmers and other Palestinians attempting to reach their own land.
Israel also threatened a full-scale invasion if the cease-fire was violated by the Palestinians.
At the same time, Israel stepped up its operations against in the West Bank. On June 24, for example, Israel killed a member of Islamic Jihad, an act for which the group retaliated by launching several rocket attacks against Israel from Gaza.
Hamas in fact responded by appealing to Islamic Jihad and other groups to desist and to observe the cease-fire. “We expect everyone to respect the agreement so that the Palestinian people achieve what they look for, an end to this suffering and breaking the siege,” Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told reporters.
Although the Israeli leadership knew these attacks were carried out by other groups, who were not a party to the cease-fire, it declared that it would hold Hamas responsible for all such attacks.
At the same time, Israel closed off the border, allowing only minimal humanitarian supplies through. Hamas has declared since the beginning that this was itself a violation of the cease-fire.
As I wrote in June, Israel’s actions seemed “designed to bring about a hostile response which would give Israel a casus belli to invade Gaza.
“In the event of any such invasion, Israel will claim that it had exhausted diplomacy. Israel has made sure that the cease-fire is unsustainable. But it is beneficial as it would be used as political cover for future military action.
“Coupled with Israel’s agreement to a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah, the New York Times calls this ‘Israel’s Diplomatic Offensive’. The exchange is Israel’s effort to wrap-up its 2006 war with Hezbollah before engaging in another war. The ‘Diplomatic Offensive’ will more likely than not be followed in coming months by a military offensive.”
The only thing that surprised me about Israel’s bombardment of Gaza was how long it took, on account of Hamas abiding by the cease-fire and not giving Israel the excuse it was looking for to terrorize Gaza residents in an extreme form of collective punishment.
None of this violence could occur without the massive support Israel receives from the US. And the US propaganda machine has been in high gear since the bombs started falling attempting to portray Israel as the victim. Although sporadic rocket attacks had occurred during the cease-fire, no Israelis were killed. Two Israelis have been killed since the end of the cease-fire in rocket attacks launched in retaliation for the Israeli bombardment.
The Palestinian death toll, on the other hand, is rapidly climbing towards 400.
Yet the New York Times and other major corporate news outlets have virtually wiped the Israeli violation of the cease-fire last month from history. On November 4, an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip killed five Palestinians and wounded several others. The thinly veiled pretext for the attack was that Hamas was digging a tunnel which would be used to cross the border and capture Israeli soldiers.
But whether this tunnel actually existed or not hasn’t been made clear. And even if it was, such tunnels are used by the people of Gaza to smuggle in much needed supplies, like food, fuel, medicine, and other essentials Israel has denied them. In the end, this pretext bears a striking resemblance to the Bush doctrine of loosely-defined prevention (not preemption), a doctrine that has no legitimacy under international law.
But this Israeli violation of the cease-fire is being wiped from memory. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared that Hamas was solely responsible for violating the cease-fire and bringing about its end. The New York Times in current reports either finds that violation unfit for print or references it in couched language, such as by saying simply that the truce “began to unravel in early November”, as though this unraveling were some strange phenomenon with no known causal factors.
One must wonder whether the language in such reports would be so vague had Hamas been the party to initiate hostilities in violation of the truce agreement.
US-made bombs are being used by Israel to kill Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The American people have a responsibility, therefore, in stepping up and taking action to help ensure an end to the current violence. US financial, military, and diplomatic support for Israel’s violations of international law and terrorizing of the Palestinian people will continue unless there is massive public pressure brought to bear upon both the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration.
Bringing an end to US support for criminal violence in the region would be an important first step towards a viable and sustainable peace.
To send a message to your representatives in Congress and the Bush White House to take action to end the violence against the people of Gaza, you may use this convenient form at Just Foreign Policy. From there, you may also click a link to send your message to President-elect Obama.
Jeremy R. Hammond is the editor of Foreign Policy Journal, a website dedicated to providing news, critical analysis, and opinion commentary on U.S. foreign policy from outside of the standard framework offered by government officials and the mainstream corporate media, particularly with regard to the "war on terrorism" and events in the Middle East. He has also written for numerous other online publications. You can contact him at jeremy@foreignpolicyjournal.com.
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The Twilight Zone
By Jim Kirwan
‘We’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.’ - Rod Serling
December 31, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse"Barack Obama is the first American ‘leader’ to begin his administration as a lame duck. During his two year long campaign the candidate with zero experience claimed to be ‘up to the job’ of leading this nation. Yesterday he proved his critics were right: He is not qualified to lead anything other than a press-conference.
An unforeseen global crisis has erupted in Gaza with the declaration of ‘All Out WAR’ on the Palestinian people; and Obama hid behind a date on the calendar when what he might have said could have altered this entire situation.
When he was asked about Gaza, Obama mumbled a feeble excuse that clearly reflected his lack of appreciation for the depth and seriousness of the actual crisis that is in its fourth day. He said: ‘If my daughters were living in a house that was being threatened by rocket attacks, I would do whatever it takes to end that situation.’ Spoken like a true child of no-experience.
If he thought of himself as a potential leader Barack would have said “If my daughters were living in a house that was being threatened by rocket attacks; Then I would look deeper into that situation and do whatever it took to remove the reason for those attacks—immediately.’ Somehow the dictator-elect missed the fact that people do not put themselves in harm’s way just to create diversions. Those rockets were fired in anger and frustration over the impossible living conditions in Gaza that have only gotten worse over the last fifty years.
Israel has been in-charge of everything that goes on inside Palestine since 1948. It is Israel that must answer for the hunger and the lack of medical care; the lack of water, of food, of power or jobs as well as sanitation; or indeed any and all the needs that any population needs to survive. There is no freedom from the terror of random murder, whether from a drone in the sky or a bunch of terrorist thugs, that call themselves settlers, or from regular Israeli troops that shoot school children for target practice. There is no protection from interrogations, rapes, assaults and intimidation anywhere at any time within Gaza. That is why the missiles continue to be fired into the Israel beyond the camps. If conditions on the ground in Gaza were to really change—then the missiles would stop. There can be no peace unless the rights of all those involved are respected.
If Israel were to live up to its duties under the Geneva conventions and the rules of war: then there would not be any need for those rocket attacks that have killed so few in the face of decades of tanks, and planes and ships and Israeli rockets and bombs as well as troops that are all poised to attack the unarmed civilian prison camp that still holds 1.5 million people as hostages to Israel’s criminally-liable administration, over the lives and deaths of everyone in that camp.
Supplying Gaza would not cost one-tenth of what this “all-out war” will cost the US taxpayers that are financing it. Obama might have quietly demanded that the Dignity be allowed to land in Gaza with relief supplies. Then perhaps the gates around Gaza could be opened instead of continuing this massive waste of lives and money that only replicates every single failure of the past. (1)
If Obama believed that he was selected to bring real change – then there was no better place to show the world that he was serious than in that war-torn battleground upon which so many other global leaders have all failed. Here is what he, and we, inherited from Cheney-Bush and from the twisted passions of the Barbaric State of Israel:
If anything at all is to ever be done to alter the global monetary meltdown, or to alter our subservience to the unfinished state of Israel: Then the relationship between US foreign policy and Israel must be totally changed. These things are all every bit as connected, as are the flames, the flag and the global economy, that was pictured in 2003, but which has only deteriorated further since this Bush-War-upon-the-World began.
Obama, when he was asked about Change said: “I am the Change!” If that were true then the world should begin to see departures from the primitive and childish political-past that has failed in every possible way over the last five decades. Instead what we have in Barrack Obama is just another hopelessly shallow imposter pretending to be what he is completely unqualified to be; someone that could actually lead anyone anywhere!
Either the global community begins to come together to alter this continuing series of war-crimes against the people of Palestine or we shall all be reduced to living in this Twilight Zone that consists of political and military and financial fantasies, that those who must pay for it all, had no part in creating; regardless of which ‘nation-state’ they might be living in.
Obama is not only a Fraud he’s a coward as well; but it’s clear that he and the criminal-state of Israel, as it continues to threaten the world of today, were made for each other.
kirwanstudios@sbcglobal.net
1) McKinney Relief Boat Hit by Israeli Ship
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/dekalb/stories/2008/12/29/cynthia_mckinney_gaza.html?cxntlid=homepage_tab_newstab&imw=Y
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Arab Connivance in the Gaza Massacre
By Alberto Cruz,
December 30, 2008 -- Ceprid -- With the connivance, acquiescence and approval of the United Nations, Europe the United States and reactionary Arab governments, Israel is engaged in a campaign of extermination, a holocaust against the Palestinians. Israel has never wanted peace, only surrender. The Israeli vision of any peace process is based on a list of "no's" : no to the right of return, no to a recognition of the historic and political rights of the Palestinians in Jerusalem, no to the dismantling of settlements, no to a sovereign Palestinian State.
With the final objective of dictating its own vision of peace, Israel is fully prepared to degrade the lives of Palestinians, limiting their freedom of movement by means of murders and arrests, blockades, destruction of homes, universities, mosques, hospitals and agricultural and fishery resources. The siege of Gaza is self-evident proof of the behaviour of 21st century nazis : the Zionists. The massacre of Gaza is self-evident proof of the new SS : Zionist soldiers. The alternatives to the Palestinians are clear : abandon Hamas or die, either by military means or by "civil" means like blockade and siege. A lesson in democracy in the purest form by the "Middle Eastern democracy" par excellence
For that purpose it can count on its best allies, who are not, despite appearances, the United States or the European Union, but the reactionary Arab regimes. Saudi Arabia and Egypt were informed in advance of the attack, as the daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported in its edition of Sunday December 28th. As proof that they could hardly care less: one hour before the attack started, Saudi communications media were already blaming Hamas for what happened while their London newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published an interview with Shimon Perez saying that Israel was not going to attack Gaza and that the Israelis were "ready for peace". Obviously, an interview that has to be regarded as one of the Zionist decoy manoeuvres so as to allow the massacre to be as complete as possible, a measure clearly explained by the reporter for Ha'aretz, the Israeli daily, in its edition that Sunday.
For days, Israeli newspapers had been reporting the "green light" given by reactionary Arab regimes for the elimination of the main leaders of Hamas. Just as they did during the Lebanon war in the summer of 2006, the reactionary Arab regimes feel a cold chill along their spine when political -military movements like Hizbollah defeat the omnipotent Zionist army or when political military movements like Hamas win democratic elections and are able to resist a siege lasting over a year and a half. The reactionary Arab régimes can endure one defeat (which Hizbollah dealt them, since one should not forget that thanks to that defeat they dusted off the Peace Plan approved by the inoperative and inefficient Arab League in 2002) but not two. And Hamas is not Hizbollah. It is much weaker and that fact has permitted and encouraged this massacre. The most obvious case is Egypt, which reinforced the closure of the Rafah crossing just a week prior to the Zionist massacre.
Hizbollah's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallá is right when he accuses these regimes of collaboration and of acting in this way so as to defeat "the least glimmer of resistance" to the neo-colonial project advanced by imperialism in the Middle East. He knows what he is talking about because it had already been done to them in 2006. And so that no one forgets that Israeli arrogance has no limits and that the UN lets the Zionist regime do what it likes, on Sunday December 28th, while the Gaza massacre was in progress, five Zionist war planes again violated Lebanese air space, flying over Nabatiye, Marjaoun, Jiam and Arqoub. What did the UNIFIL troops do? As usual : nothing. They are there to protect the Israelis, not the Lebanese.
The reactionary Arab regimes are there to protect themselves, not the Palestinians. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have managed to put back until December 31st the "urgent meeting" of the inoperative and inefficient Arab League. Just as they did in Lebanon, they prefer to make time for Israel to finish off or weaken Hamas. For them that political military organization is the problem, not the Zionist regime.
Egypt has never forgotten that Hamas refused to accept bringing forward elections as Egypt had suggested so as to reinforce Abbas. Nor was it pleased when Hamas withdrew from the "national dialogue" talks overseen by Cairo until the Mubarak regime opened the Rafah frontier crossing. Egypt could not accept that and it has been the reason for its approval of the massacre carried out by Israel.
But the most wretched of all the Arab leaders is Mahmoud Abbas, who styles himself, "President of the Palestinian Authority" at the same time as he accuses Hamas of responsibility for the massacre for refusing to give in, as he himself has done, to Zionist and Western designs. Taking advantage of the bloodletting, he has already said he will take over the administration of Gaza if Hamas is defeated. We are faced with a Vichy-style West Bank regime, with Abbas as its Pétain, serving the 21st Century nazis, Israel.
Dumping such individuals into history's dustbin is a duty. Overthrowing the reactionary Arab regimes is a right. Solidarity with Arab people's movements and especially with Egyptian trades unionists (1) ought to be a leading priority for the world anti-imperialist movement.
And the same could be said as regards the European and United States governments. The Greek flame, like the Olympic one, should not just be allowed to go out but rather spread in the cause of peace and social justice. Capitalism offers only one kind of peace, the truly democratic one of the cemetery.
Notas:
(1) Hossam El-Hamalawy: "La resistencia en Egipto" http://www.nodo50.org/ceprid/spip.php?article265
Alberto Cruz is a journalist, political analyst and writer, specializing in international relations - albercruz@eresmas.com
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The Paradox of Peace
By Soraya Ulrich
December 30, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" -- Israel thrives on war. Peace is a threat to Zionism. It demands compromise. Twice this year, the leaders of Hamas indicated their readiness to accept a Palestinian State within the 1967 borders. Khaled Meshaal, Hamas leader, informed former president Jimmy Carter of this decision in April 2008. In May 2008, it was revealed that Yves Aubin de La Messuziere, a retired senior French diplomat had held discussions with Ismael Haniyeh and Mahmoud Zahar, two prominent Hamas leaders who confirmed Hamas’ readiness to accept a Palestinian State within the 1967 border, reflecting an unofficial acceptance of Israel. But this truce is contrary to the Zionism ideals. "The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It's that simple." —Yitzhak Shamir (Maariv, 02/21/1997). It became necessary to punish those who sought peace – and wage war.
Sadly, this was not the first time. History has repeated itself. Only our media has successfully managed to throw sands of ignorance in our eyes and blind us with bigotry, keeping our wits dull with misinformation. For the sake of the innocent victims everywhere, the truth must be exposed. We must revisit history.
Hamas, an Islamic Resistance Movement-was born with the first Palestinian uprising in December 1987. With the end of the Intifada and the initiation of the Oslo peace process, the resistance component of the Palestinian struggle-so critical to Hamas's political thinking and action-was undermined. In the two- to three-year period before the second Intifida in 2000, Hamas was no longer prominently or consistently calling for political or military action against the occupation, but was instead shifting its attention to social works and the propagation of Islamic values and religious practice. The start of the second Palestinian Intifada on September 28, 2000, coupled with the impact of September 11, dramatically changed the environment in the West Bank and Gaza. Preexisting political arrangements were disrupted, economic conditions deteriorated, and social structures weakened. Within a context of desperation and hopelessness Hamas reasserted itself.
At the same time, under the leadership of Ariel Sharon, land expansions through land expropriations and economic dispossession escalated. His agenda did not include a Palestinian state. The United States uneven handling of the conflict encouraged Sharon’s plans. With a weak Palestinian leadership in place, and the increasing significance of Hamas influence, the U.S. opened dialogue with a senior Hamas leader in early September of 2002. Israeli reactions clearly indicated it did not want to have any Palestinian engaged in dialogue with the U.S. for fear that there may be a political solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
United States-Hamas contacts of which Israel was fully aware, ended when the Israeli army arrested a politically moderate Hamas official in Ramallah on September 9, which Hamas interpreted as a deliberate attempt by the Sharon government to undermine its exchange with the Americans. A few days later, Israel launched an attack in Rafah that killed nine Palestinians, including civilians. Predictably, a suicide bomber staged an attack on a bus in Tel Aviv on September 19, killing six people. Other Hamas-Palestinian Authority (PA) cease-fires have been undermined by Israeli attacks. Alex Fishman, the security commentator for the right-of-center Yediot Achronot, Israel's largest mass-circulation newspaper, detailed in the November 25, 2001 issue of the newspaper how the assassination that November of Mahmud Abu Hanud, a key Hamas figure, shattered a Hamas promise not to carry out suicide bombings inside Israel: "Whoever gave the green light to this act of liquidation knew full well that he was thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman's agreement between Hamas and the PA; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line [Israel's pre-1967 borders] of the kind perpetrated at the Dolphinarium [a discotheque in Tel Aviv].( Perry, 2004,7)[i]. In effect, Israel’s actions led Hamas to play into their hands. Having already marginalized the PLO and Yasir Arafat, by instigating Hamas suicide bombings Sharon would ensure that negotiations for a Palestinian state would not take place, no matter what the cost.
Once again, the actions and motives of the Israeli government are ignored. The relentless Israeli siege on Gaza is cheered on by the “civilized world”, the American government topping the list. Reminiscent of Amphitheatres in Roman times, the “West” is looking on as the innocent Palestinians are being butchered by American weapons, funded by taxes; enabled through lack of Arab leadership and unity, and an absence of human indignation. The lust for blood goes on. UN Security Council has called for “restraint by urging an end to all violence in Gaza”. This is the same UN body that sanctions Iran for being a “threat to peace” while pursuing its inalienable right within the framework of the law, yet it urges restraint when it comes to genocide. Perhaps it should not come as a surprise given that Newt Gingrich at the American Enterprise Institute declared that the United Nations should be made a tool of the United States and Israel:
“The United States and Israel share a special bond rooted in our democratic traditions of government, our pluralistic societies, and our common respect for faith -- not just one faith, but all faiths, and for all people of goodwill. These values are central to our national identities and unite us in a common vision for what we expect from the U.N. The U.N.’s past and current treatment of Israel has fallen dramatically short of these ideals. When the U.N. moves finally to end the second class treatment of Israel, it will provide an important indication that U.N. reform is truly moving in the right direction.”
“The challenge before those of us who believe in the principles of the United Nations Charter, but who also believe that the UN as it operates today has betrayed these principles, is to effect change in the voting practices at the UNGA. I believe the United States can lead other countries in an effort to successfully reform the United Nations but it will take significant work over the long haul.”
“In the first place a decision will have to be made that the UN is important enough to us to link our multilateral diplomacy with our bilateral diplomacy.”
“A key first test for a concerted effort by the U.S. to win U.N. votes should be an upcoming vote in the [GA Assembly] concerning the abolishment of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and of the Division of Palestinian Rights.”[ii]
The United Nations is at the mercy of man’s inhumanity. Israel can make its way by ruin of others and hear “Restraint”! Perhaps the weakness of the UN body is based on fear for Israel has been successful at intimidation. Having successfully targeted high profile British personnel to chase them out of the British Mandate Palestine, the United Nations Mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte was assassinated on September 17, 1948 when he flew from Damascus to Jerusalem in order to negotiate the boundaries between Palestine and present day Israel. He was shot six times at point blank, along with his aide Colonel Andre Pierre Serot[iii]. The Bernadotte assassination sent a clear message to all nations and to future representatives of the United Nations: Israel would never compromise. "Take the American declaration of Independence. It contains no mention of territorial limits. We are not obliged to fix the limits of the State."—Moshe Dayan (Jerusalem Post, 08/10/1967)
Every person that does not speak up and make another aware is a spectator cheering for blood sport. Jonathan Swift aptly said: “I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.” We can each save a life, collectively; we can save the people under siege.
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich has a Master of Public Diplomacy from USC Annenberg for Communication. She is an independent researcher with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the influence of lobby groups.
[i] Perry, M. "Israeli Offensive Disrupts US-Hamas Contacts," Palestine Report, October 9, 2002 Downloaded April 23, 2004 from
http://www.jmcc.org/ media/report/02/Oct/2b
[ii] http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.23396,filter.all/pub_detail.asp
[iii] J. Bowyer Bell, “Assassination in International Politics”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Mar., 1972), pp. 59-82
fredag den 2. januar 2009
torsdag den 25. december 2008
Tuneserloven: Jurister giver drøje hug til regeringens tuneserlov
'Grundlovsstridig', 'begreber hentet fra en politistat'... Tuneserloven blev på Folketingets høring i går banket sønder og sammen af juridiske eksperter
Det bliver svært for regering-en og støttepartiet at få gennemført lovforslag 69 - også kaldet 'tuneserloven' - hvis ikke forslaget ændres på vigtige punkter.
Det kunne være en konklusion, efter at tre indbudte eksperter i en bemærkelsesværdig kontant tone i går formiddags i Landstingssalen punkt for punkt gennemgik lovforslaget om skrappere kontrol med udlændinge på tålt ophold. Men den konklusion køber Karsten Lauritzen (V), formanden for Integrationsudvalget, ikke nødvendigvis:
"For mig at se er der ikke kommet noget frem, som forhindrer, at vi skriver betænkning," som han sagde til Information efter høringen.
Juraprofessor Henning Koch fra Københavns Universitet var ellers usædvanlig direkte, da han som den første af tre indbudte eksperter gik på talerstolen:
"De indgreb, som lovforslaget vil medføre for udlændinge på tålt ophold, vil gøre, at der bliver tale om frihedsberøvelse," indledte Koch og henviste til statsretseksperten Alf Ross' værk om dansk forvaltningsret fra 1966.
Tre forhold skal ifølge Ross være opfyldt, for at et indgreb kan defineres som frihedsberøvelse: Der skal være påbud om ophold, der skal ske en eftersøgning, hvis påbuddet overtrædes, og endelig skal en overtrædelse straffes.
"Alle tre betingelser er til fulde opfyldt i L 69, hvor strafferammen for ikke at overholde en daglig meldepligt går helt op til et års fængsel," konkluderede Koch.
Grundlovsstridigt
Så nytter det ikke, fortsatte Koch, at Integrationsministeriet i lovbemærkningerne til L 69 "nærmest besværgende" skriver, at kontrolforanstaltningerne ikke må "have karakter af frihedsberøvelse. For enten er det frihedsberøvelse. Eller også er det ikke," sagde han.
Hvis udlændingemyndighederne vil administrere lovforslaget lige så strikt, som lovbemærkningerne lægger op til, så risikerer ministeren og hendes embedsmænd at handle grundlovsstridigt, mente Koch.
Efter et sus var gået gennem Landstingssalen, forklarede Koch, at lovbemærk-ningerne ikke omtaler en konkret begrundet fare som årsag til, at f.eks. tuneseren, der ifølge PET har haft mordplaner mod avistegner Kurt Westergaard, skal frihedsberøves. Og ifølge Koch er det ikke nok med en abstrakt henvisning til nationens sikkerhed. En fare skal altid være konkret begrundet, hvis den skal føre til frihedsberøvelse.
"Det bliver forfatningsmæssigt umuligt, når farebegrebet er abstrakt og går på en mulig risiko. Det er politistatens begrebsapparat, vi ser her," sagde professoren, hvorefter endnu et sus gik gennem salen.
Mens lovforslagets kritikere så mere og mere tilfredse ud, blev Kochs indlæg modtaget knap så entusiastisk af Dansk Folkepartis Martin Henriksen:
"Et meget ensidigt indlæg, blottet for refleksioner og overvejelser," lød hans karakteristik af indlægget, hvorefter Koch i sin slutreplik opsummerede sit eget synspunkt: "Retsstaten gælder også for udlændinge."
Den næste indbudte ekspert, generalsekretær for Advokatsamfundet Henrik Rothe, skulle belyse, om L 69 vil være lovgivning med tilbagevirkende kraft.
Nej, lød det kortfattede svar, der vil ikke være tale om tilbagevirkende kraft, for udlændinge bliver ikke med L 69 pålagt sanktioner bagud. Rothe hæftede sig derimod ved den motivforskydning, som lovforslaget indebærer. Når myndighederne skal vide, hvor en udlænding på tålt ophold befinder sig, er forklaringen i den gældende lov, at politiet skal kunne få fat i personen, hvis en udvisning uden risiko bliver mulig.
Men L 69 ændrer motivet til også at være præventivt: Den daglige meldepligt og påbuddet om at overnatte i Sandholm skal forhindre nye forbrydelser, f.eks. mod en avistegner i Århus.
"Det minder ganske meget om de begrundelser, vi hører i retten, når en person idømmes varetægtsfængsling for at forebygge yderligere kriminalitet," forklarede Rothe, hvis samlede bedømmelse var, at L 69 uden tvivl vil indebære frihedsberøvelse. "Og derfor er jeg enig i, at det er nødvendigt med domstolskontrol i hvert enkelt tilfælde," sagde han.
Træk forslaget tilbage
Sidste ekspert var lektor i menneskerettigheder Jonas Christoffersen fra Københavns Universitet. Han indledte med at kalde L 69 for en "usædvanlig sjusket og dårlig lovgivning", og hans konklusion var entydig:
Lad være med at vedtage lovforslaget. De gældende regler er fuldt tilstrækkelige til at håndtere de udfordring-er, udlændinge på tålt ophold kan medføre. Afvent i stedet den arbejdsgruppe, som er nedsat for at belyse det komplicerede område.
"I dag er det en festdag, hvor vi fejrer 60-året for menneskerettighederne. Benyt dagen til at tænke over, hvad lovgivningsmagten er på vej ud i," opfordrede han.
Christoffersen sammenlignede også L 69 med den første terrorpakke fra 2002. Dengang ville et familieliv betyde, at en tålt udlænding ikke blev pålagt at tage fast ophold i Sandholm, men det skal udlændingene nu ifølge L 69. Efter fremsættelsen af L 69 er der dog kommet et svar fra Justitsministeriet, hvorefter tålte udlændinge har ret til at være sammen med deres familie i weekenden og til fødselsdage. Ellers vil opholdspåbuddet i Sandholm udgøre en krænkelse af deres menneskerettigheder.
"Så vi har én fortolkning i 2002, en anden i L 69 og nu en tredje i Justitsministeriets svar. Der er noget, der skurrer," mente han.
I fremtiden skal myndighederne hver halve år lave en konkret afvejning af proprotionalitetshensynet for hver enkelt udlænding på tålt ophold, hvis de internationale konventioner skal overholdes, står der endvidere i lovbemærkningerne til L 69.
"Så måske er L 69 stor ståhej for ingenting. Måske fører lovforslaget i virkeligheden til en lempelse af vilkårene for udlændinge på tålt ophold," forudså Christoffersen, der derefter stillede et drilsk spørgsmål til politikerne i salen: Når Justitsministeriet i dag vurderer, at udlændinge på tålt ophold skal have ret til weekendophold med familien, er det så en ny erkendelse? Menneskerettighederne er ikke ændret siden 2002, så hvis myndighederne har administreret efter en anden opfattelse, har man så krænket menneskerettighederne for udlændinge på tålt ophold i seks år?
Dét burde politikerne se at få undersøgt, lød opfordringen fra Christoffersen, en opfordring som straks blev grebet af flere af de tilstedeværende retspolitikere.
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Source URL: http://www.information.dk/176762
Det bliver svært for regering-en og støttepartiet at få gennemført lovforslag 69 - også kaldet 'tuneserloven' - hvis ikke forslaget ændres på vigtige punkter.
Det kunne være en konklusion, efter at tre indbudte eksperter i en bemærkelsesværdig kontant tone i går formiddags i Landstingssalen punkt for punkt gennemgik lovforslaget om skrappere kontrol med udlændinge på tålt ophold. Men den konklusion køber Karsten Lauritzen (V), formanden for Integrationsudvalget, ikke nødvendigvis:
"For mig at se er der ikke kommet noget frem, som forhindrer, at vi skriver betænkning," som han sagde til Information efter høringen.
Juraprofessor Henning Koch fra Københavns Universitet var ellers usædvanlig direkte, da han som den første af tre indbudte eksperter gik på talerstolen:
"De indgreb, som lovforslaget vil medføre for udlændinge på tålt ophold, vil gøre, at der bliver tale om frihedsberøvelse," indledte Koch og henviste til statsretseksperten Alf Ross' værk om dansk forvaltningsret fra 1966.
Tre forhold skal ifølge Ross være opfyldt, for at et indgreb kan defineres som frihedsberøvelse: Der skal være påbud om ophold, der skal ske en eftersøgning, hvis påbuddet overtrædes, og endelig skal en overtrædelse straffes.
"Alle tre betingelser er til fulde opfyldt i L 69, hvor strafferammen for ikke at overholde en daglig meldepligt går helt op til et års fængsel," konkluderede Koch.
Grundlovsstridigt
Så nytter det ikke, fortsatte Koch, at Integrationsministeriet i lovbemærkningerne til L 69 "nærmest besværgende" skriver, at kontrolforanstaltningerne ikke må "have karakter af frihedsberøvelse. For enten er det frihedsberøvelse. Eller også er det ikke," sagde han.
Hvis udlændingemyndighederne vil administrere lovforslaget lige så strikt, som lovbemærkningerne lægger op til, så risikerer ministeren og hendes embedsmænd at handle grundlovsstridigt, mente Koch.
Efter et sus var gået gennem Landstingssalen, forklarede Koch, at lovbemærk-ningerne ikke omtaler en konkret begrundet fare som årsag til, at f.eks. tuneseren, der ifølge PET har haft mordplaner mod avistegner Kurt Westergaard, skal frihedsberøves. Og ifølge Koch er det ikke nok med en abstrakt henvisning til nationens sikkerhed. En fare skal altid være konkret begrundet, hvis den skal føre til frihedsberøvelse.
"Det bliver forfatningsmæssigt umuligt, når farebegrebet er abstrakt og går på en mulig risiko. Det er politistatens begrebsapparat, vi ser her," sagde professoren, hvorefter endnu et sus gik gennem salen.
Mens lovforslagets kritikere så mere og mere tilfredse ud, blev Kochs indlæg modtaget knap så entusiastisk af Dansk Folkepartis Martin Henriksen:
"Et meget ensidigt indlæg, blottet for refleksioner og overvejelser," lød hans karakteristik af indlægget, hvorefter Koch i sin slutreplik opsummerede sit eget synspunkt: "Retsstaten gælder også for udlændinge."
Den næste indbudte ekspert, generalsekretær for Advokatsamfundet Henrik Rothe, skulle belyse, om L 69 vil være lovgivning med tilbagevirkende kraft.
Nej, lød det kortfattede svar, der vil ikke være tale om tilbagevirkende kraft, for udlændinge bliver ikke med L 69 pålagt sanktioner bagud. Rothe hæftede sig derimod ved den motivforskydning, som lovforslaget indebærer. Når myndighederne skal vide, hvor en udlænding på tålt ophold befinder sig, er forklaringen i den gældende lov, at politiet skal kunne få fat i personen, hvis en udvisning uden risiko bliver mulig.
Men L 69 ændrer motivet til også at være præventivt: Den daglige meldepligt og påbuddet om at overnatte i Sandholm skal forhindre nye forbrydelser, f.eks. mod en avistegner i Århus.
"Det minder ganske meget om de begrundelser, vi hører i retten, når en person idømmes varetægtsfængsling for at forebygge yderligere kriminalitet," forklarede Rothe, hvis samlede bedømmelse var, at L 69 uden tvivl vil indebære frihedsberøvelse. "Og derfor er jeg enig i, at det er nødvendigt med domstolskontrol i hvert enkelt tilfælde," sagde han.
Træk forslaget tilbage
Sidste ekspert var lektor i menneskerettigheder Jonas Christoffersen fra Københavns Universitet. Han indledte med at kalde L 69 for en "usædvanlig sjusket og dårlig lovgivning", og hans konklusion var entydig:
Lad være med at vedtage lovforslaget. De gældende regler er fuldt tilstrækkelige til at håndtere de udfordring-er, udlændinge på tålt ophold kan medføre. Afvent i stedet den arbejdsgruppe, som er nedsat for at belyse det komplicerede område.
"I dag er det en festdag, hvor vi fejrer 60-året for menneskerettighederne. Benyt dagen til at tænke over, hvad lovgivningsmagten er på vej ud i," opfordrede han.
Christoffersen sammenlignede også L 69 med den første terrorpakke fra 2002. Dengang ville et familieliv betyde, at en tålt udlænding ikke blev pålagt at tage fast ophold i Sandholm, men det skal udlændingene nu ifølge L 69. Efter fremsættelsen af L 69 er der dog kommet et svar fra Justitsministeriet, hvorefter tålte udlændinge har ret til at være sammen med deres familie i weekenden og til fødselsdage. Ellers vil opholdspåbuddet i Sandholm udgøre en krænkelse af deres menneskerettigheder.
"Så vi har én fortolkning i 2002, en anden i L 69 og nu en tredje i Justitsministeriets svar. Der er noget, der skurrer," mente han.
I fremtiden skal myndighederne hver halve år lave en konkret afvejning af proprotionalitetshensynet for hver enkelt udlænding på tålt ophold, hvis de internationale konventioner skal overholdes, står der endvidere i lovbemærkningerne til L 69.
"Så måske er L 69 stor ståhej for ingenting. Måske fører lovforslaget i virkeligheden til en lempelse af vilkårene for udlændinge på tålt ophold," forudså Christoffersen, der derefter stillede et drilsk spørgsmål til politikerne i salen: Når Justitsministeriet i dag vurderer, at udlændinge på tålt ophold skal have ret til weekendophold med familien, er det så en ny erkendelse? Menneskerettighederne er ikke ændret siden 2002, så hvis myndighederne har administreret efter en anden opfattelse, har man så krænket menneskerettighederne for udlændinge på tålt ophold i seks år?
Dét burde politikerne se at få undersøgt, lød opfordringen fra Christoffersen, en opfordring som straks blev grebet af flere af de tilstedeværende retspolitikere.
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Source URL: http://www.information.dk/176762
tuneserloven: Klumme af advokat og lektor Jacob Mchangama
Jacob Mchangama skriver om retsstatsprincipper, som overtrædes med udvisninger, der ikke har været for en dommer.
Den seneste tids begivenheder vedrørende to tuneseres angivelige planer om at myrde Kurt Westergaard samt den efterfølgende beslutning om at udvise de to har bekræftet en sørgelig tendens i dansk politisk kultur: nemlig at frihedsrettigheder alene bliver påberåbt, når det passer ind i henholdsvis den værdipolitiske højre- og venstrefløjs politiske kram.
Det er velkendt, at store dele af venstrefløjen under Muhammed-krisen søgte at præsentere sagen, som om den ikke havde med ytringsfrihed at gøre på trods af det faktum, at udfordring af religiøse symboler og dogmer traditionelt har været en af ytringsfrihedens vigtigste funktioner i kampen for samfund, hvor borgerne er frie til at tænke og handle uafhængigt af religiøse autoriteter.
Da PET afslørede det formodede mordkomplot mod Kurt Westergaard, og konsekvenserne af ikke at støtte op om en robust ytringsfrihed blev klar, måtte de, der på venstrefløjen havde benægtet, at Muhammedkrisen handlede om ytringsfrihed, enten forsvinde i debatten eller krybe til korset og nødtvungent støtte Jyllands-Posten og Kurt Westergaard på trods af tidligere fordømmelser.
Samtidig må man undres over, hvorfor venstrefløjen pludselig finder det helt principielt at forsvare retssikkerhedsgarantier i forhold til de to terrormistænkte, når man ikke fandt ytringsfriheden værd at forsvare for så vidt angår Jyllands-Posten. Angiveligt at ville slå en tegner ihjel er vel næppe den form for "ansvarlighed" som venstrefløjen anså som en nødvendig forudsætning for at kunne påberåbe sig ytringsfriheden under Muhammed-krisen.
Under Muhammedkrisen var den værdipolitiske højrefløj - konservative som liberale - til gengæld forenet i et forsvar for det frie ord og den frie tanke. Frihedsrettighederne var ikke til salg.
Men når det kommer til kampen mod terror, er det ofte fra borgerligt - som oftest national-konservativt - hold, man hører krav om indskrænkning af frihedsrettigheder. I sagen vedrørende de to tunesere har mange borgerlige politikere og debattører således udtrykt støtte til den nuværende ordning, hvor administrative udvisninger ikke er underlagt en vis form for domstolskontrol. Det er bemærkelsesværdigt, at den principfasthed vedrørende frihedsrettigheder, som gjaldt under Muhammed-krisen, ikke genfindes, når det drejer sig om terrorlovgivning.
Et ofte hørt argument fra national-konservativt hold - herunder fra Søren Pind, Kai Sørlander og Morten Messerschmidt - er, at det er legitimt at forskelsbehandle mellem danske statsborgere og udlændinge. Også når det kommer til retssikkerhedsgarantier. Ingen fortalere for, at de udviste tunesere skal have prøvet deres sag, har så vidt ses benægtet, at der kan forskelsbehandles mellem danske statsborgere og udlændinge. Det er således helt naturligt, at de to tunesere skal udvises, såfremt der er hold i PETs anklager. En sanktion man naturligvis ikke kan anvende overfor danske statsborgere. Endvidere er det også legitimt at forskelsbehandle, når det kommer til nydelse af offentlige ydelser, stemmeret m.v. Men når det kommer til basale retssikkerhedsgarantier, er det et skråplan at forskelsbehandle på basis af nationalitet, særligt når det kommer til så alvorlige anklager som terrorisme.
At retssikkerhedsgarantier og frihedsrettigheder gælder for såvel statsborgere som udlændinge er ikke - som ellers ofte påstået af national-konservative - udtryk for multikulturalisme og kulturrelativisme, der undergraver nationalstaten. Det ville national-konservative kunne forvisse sig, om hvis de besværede sig med at læse Danmarks Riges Grundlov. Heraf fremgår det udtrykkeligt, at en række af frihedsrettighederne herunder § 71, stk. 3 (grundlovsforhøret), § 72 (boligens ukrænkelighed), § 73 (beskyttelsen af ejendomsretten), § 77 (ytringsfrihed) og § 78, stk. 2 (foreningsfrihed) ikke diskriminerer mellem danske statsborgere og udlændinge, men omfatter enhver. Det samme følger af de frihedsrettigheder og processuelle retsgarantier, som er indeholdt i den Europæiske Menneskerettighedskonvention, der er inkorporeret i dansk ret. Dette ligebehandlingsprincip afspejler et frihedsideal, hvis rødder kan spores langt tilbage i historien.
I den amerikanske uafhængighedserklæring hedder det f.eks., at "at alle mennesker er skabt lige, og at de af deres Skaber har fået visse umistelige rettigheder" - ikke alle amerikanere. Dette frihedsideal om lighed for loven for så vidt angår fundamentale frihedsrettigheder udgør et af kerneprincipperne i det liberale demokrati, hvis overlegenhed i forhold til andre regeringsformer for så vidt angår personlig frihed og velstand er åbenlys. Det er derfor dybt ironisk, at rationalet bag indskrænkning af fundamentale frihedsrettigheder så ofte er ønsket om at bevare egen kultur og demokratiske styreform. De, der ønsker at forskelsbehandle på basis af nationalitet for så vidt angår frihedsrettigheder, skylder således at forklare, hvor langt de er villige til at gå i sådan forskelsbehandling, og hvorledes denne form for forskelsbehandling er i overensstemmelse med den demokratiske styreform, de påstår at beskytte.
Det konkrete tilfælde med de to tunesere, hvor en indgribende administrativ beslutning truffet på baggrund af informationer, der ikke er tilgængelige for adressaten, er undtaget fra domstolsprøvelse, er et eksempel på skridt, der ikke er en retsstat værdig. Den udøvende magts adgang til at træffe indgribende beslutninger på diskretionær basis har alle dage været et onde, som retsstatsprincippet ved dets "checks and balances" skulle modvirke, herunder ved domstolskontrol. Dette kan sagtens lade sig gøre uden dermed at sætte den udøvende magts beslutningskompetence ud af kraft.
Det er således svært at se, at der kan være saglige argumenter mod at lade et uafhængigt organ, hvis medlemmer er sikkerhedsclearede tage stilling til PETs beviser. Et sådant organ vil sandsynligvis lægge afgørende vægt på PETs beviser, og kun i tilfælde hvor beviserne er helt åbenbart utilstrækkelige underkende den ansvarlige ministers beslutning. Dette ville f.eks være i overensstemmelse med den Europæiske Menneskerettighedsdomstols praksis i sager om national sikkerhed. Dermed bevares (i) PETs helt berettigede interesse i hemmeligholdelse af dets informationer, (ii) ministerens adgang til hurtigt at træffe foranstaltninger mod personer der søger at underminere nationens sikkerhed samt (iii) hensynet til retssikkerheden.
Det er i den forbindelse værd at bemærke, at Frankrig - et land der af mange anses for at have den mest effektive anti-terrorbekæmpelse i Europa - langt oftere end herhjemme benytter muligheden for at udvise udlændinge mistænkt for terror. Men franskmændene tillader en vis domstolsprøvelse af sådanne udvisninger. Storbritannien - der er gået ganske vidt i bekæmpelsen af terror - har oprettet et særligt uafhængigt organ, der tager stilling til administrative udvisninger, også udvisninger baseret på hensynet til national sikkerhed.
Skåret ind til benet synes det national-konservative argument for at nægte prøvelse i sager om administrativ udvisning at bunde i en dybtfølt modvilje mod at indtage en holdning, der kunne opfattes som støtte til egne ideologiske hovedmodstandere. Præcis på samme måde som mange på venstrefløjen ikke kunne få sig selv til at anerkende ytringsfriheden, da "den sorte avis" Jyllands-Posten benyttede sig af denne frihed i Muhammed-krisen. Men at insistere på uafhængig prøvelse af administrative udvisninger er ikke at støtte de to tunesere eller at udvise sympati for terrorisme. Ligesom man ikke behøver at abonnere på Jyllands-Posten, blot fordi man støtter avisens ret til at offentliggøre en række tegninger af Muhammed.
Tværtimod er det netop i situationer, hvor frihedsrettigheder og retsstatsprincipper omfatter dem, man er uenig med, at frihedsrettighederne skal stå deres prøve. Anerkender vi alene frihedsrettighederne i situationer, hvor de beskytter dem, vi sympatiserer med, er frihedsrettighederne intet værd, idet de dermed bliver ofre for den herskende politiske vilje og deres beskyttelse dermed bliver diskretionær. Eksemplerne på, at tømmermændene indfinder sig, når retsstatsprincipper bliver sat ud af kraft i en god sags tjeneste, er legio. Er vi f.eks. stolte af vores retsopgør efter besættelsen? Var interneringen af japanere under 2. verdenskrig og oprettelsen af Guantanamo efter 11. september 2001 højdepunkter i USA's historie?
Vi lever ikke i en politistat i Danmark og er heller ikke på vej mod en. Men der er intet automatisk ved vores demokrati og frihedsrettigheder, og den frihed, det har taget århundreder at sikre, kan mistes på et øjeblik. Vi bør derfor værne om vores frihedsrettigheder, selv når det ikke er politisk opportunt, og når vores instinktive menneskelige reaktion er, at de, der påberåber sig frihedsrettighederne, egentlig ikke fortjener deres beskyttelse.
Jacob Mchangama er advokat og ekstern lektor i internationale menneskerettigheder.
kilde: http://www.180grader.dk/klumme/H_jre_og_venstres_automatreaktioner_printer.php
Den seneste tids begivenheder vedrørende to tuneseres angivelige planer om at myrde Kurt Westergaard samt den efterfølgende beslutning om at udvise de to har bekræftet en sørgelig tendens i dansk politisk kultur: nemlig at frihedsrettigheder alene bliver påberåbt, når det passer ind i henholdsvis den værdipolitiske højre- og venstrefløjs politiske kram.
Det er velkendt, at store dele af venstrefløjen under Muhammed-krisen søgte at præsentere sagen, som om den ikke havde med ytringsfrihed at gøre på trods af det faktum, at udfordring af religiøse symboler og dogmer traditionelt har været en af ytringsfrihedens vigtigste funktioner i kampen for samfund, hvor borgerne er frie til at tænke og handle uafhængigt af religiøse autoriteter.
Da PET afslørede det formodede mordkomplot mod Kurt Westergaard, og konsekvenserne af ikke at støtte op om en robust ytringsfrihed blev klar, måtte de, der på venstrefløjen havde benægtet, at Muhammedkrisen handlede om ytringsfrihed, enten forsvinde i debatten eller krybe til korset og nødtvungent støtte Jyllands-Posten og Kurt Westergaard på trods af tidligere fordømmelser.
Samtidig må man undres over, hvorfor venstrefløjen pludselig finder det helt principielt at forsvare retssikkerhedsgarantier i forhold til de to terrormistænkte, når man ikke fandt ytringsfriheden værd at forsvare for så vidt angår Jyllands-Posten. Angiveligt at ville slå en tegner ihjel er vel næppe den form for "ansvarlighed" som venstrefløjen anså som en nødvendig forudsætning for at kunne påberåbe sig ytringsfriheden under Muhammed-krisen.
Under Muhammedkrisen var den værdipolitiske højrefløj - konservative som liberale - til gengæld forenet i et forsvar for det frie ord og den frie tanke. Frihedsrettighederne var ikke til salg.
Men når det kommer til kampen mod terror, er det ofte fra borgerligt - som oftest national-konservativt - hold, man hører krav om indskrænkning af frihedsrettigheder. I sagen vedrørende de to tunesere har mange borgerlige politikere og debattører således udtrykt støtte til den nuværende ordning, hvor administrative udvisninger ikke er underlagt en vis form for domstolskontrol. Det er bemærkelsesværdigt, at den principfasthed vedrørende frihedsrettigheder, som gjaldt under Muhammed-krisen, ikke genfindes, når det drejer sig om terrorlovgivning.
Et ofte hørt argument fra national-konservativt hold - herunder fra Søren Pind, Kai Sørlander og Morten Messerschmidt - er, at det er legitimt at forskelsbehandle mellem danske statsborgere og udlændinge. Også når det kommer til retssikkerhedsgarantier. Ingen fortalere for, at de udviste tunesere skal have prøvet deres sag, har så vidt ses benægtet, at der kan forskelsbehandles mellem danske statsborgere og udlændinge. Det er således helt naturligt, at de to tunesere skal udvises, såfremt der er hold i PETs anklager. En sanktion man naturligvis ikke kan anvende overfor danske statsborgere. Endvidere er det også legitimt at forskelsbehandle, når det kommer til nydelse af offentlige ydelser, stemmeret m.v. Men når det kommer til basale retssikkerhedsgarantier, er det et skråplan at forskelsbehandle på basis af nationalitet, særligt når det kommer til så alvorlige anklager som terrorisme.
At retssikkerhedsgarantier og frihedsrettigheder gælder for såvel statsborgere som udlændinge er ikke - som ellers ofte påstået af national-konservative - udtryk for multikulturalisme og kulturrelativisme, der undergraver nationalstaten. Det ville national-konservative kunne forvisse sig, om hvis de besværede sig med at læse Danmarks Riges Grundlov. Heraf fremgår det udtrykkeligt, at en række af frihedsrettighederne herunder § 71, stk. 3 (grundlovsforhøret), § 72 (boligens ukrænkelighed), § 73 (beskyttelsen af ejendomsretten), § 77 (ytringsfrihed) og § 78, stk. 2 (foreningsfrihed) ikke diskriminerer mellem danske statsborgere og udlændinge, men omfatter enhver. Det samme følger af de frihedsrettigheder og processuelle retsgarantier, som er indeholdt i den Europæiske Menneskerettighedskonvention, der er inkorporeret i dansk ret. Dette ligebehandlingsprincip afspejler et frihedsideal, hvis rødder kan spores langt tilbage i historien.
I den amerikanske uafhængighedserklæring hedder det f.eks., at "at alle mennesker er skabt lige, og at de af deres Skaber har fået visse umistelige rettigheder" - ikke alle amerikanere. Dette frihedsideal om lighed for loven for så vidt angår fundamentale frihedsrettigheder udgør et af kerneprincipperne i det liberale demokrati, hvis overlegenhed i forhold til andre regeringsformer for så vidt angår personlig frihed og velstand er åbenlys. Det er derfor dybt ironisk, at rationalet bag indskrænkning af fundamentale frihedsrettigheder så ofte er ønsket om at bevare egen kultur og demokratiske styreform. De, der ønsker at forskelsbehandle på basis af nationalitet for så vidt angår frihedsrettigheder, skylder således at forklare, hvor langt de er villige til at gå i sådan forskelsbehandling, og hvorledes denne form for forskelsbehandling er i overensstemmelse med den demokratiske styreform, de påstår at beskytte.
Det konkrete tilfælde med de to tunesere, hvor en indgribende administrativ beslutning truffet på baggrund af informationer, der ikke er tilgængelige for adressaten, er undtaget fra domstolsprøvelse, er et eksempel på skridt, der ikke er en retsstat værdig. Den udøvende magts adgang til at træffe indgribende beslutninger på diskretionær basis har alle dage været et onde, som retsstatsprincippet ved dets "checks and balances" skulle modvirke, herunder ved domstolskontrol. Dette kan sagtens lade sig gøre uden dermed at sætte den udøvende magts beslutningskompetence ud af kraft.
Det er således svært at se, at der kan være saglige argumenter mod at lade et uafhængigt organ, hvis medlemmer er sikkerhedsclearede tage stilling til PETs beviser. Et sådant organ vil sandsynligvis lægge afgørende vægt på PETs beviser, og kun i tilfælde hvor beviserne er helt åbenbart utilstrækkelige underkende den ansvarlige ministers beslutning. Dette ville f.eks være i overensstemmelse med den Europæiske Menneskerettighedsdomstols praksis i sager om national sikkerhed. Dermed bevares (i) PETs helt berettigede interesse i hemmeligholdelse af dets informationer, (ii) ministerens adgang til hurtigt at træffe foranstaltninger mod personer der søger at underminere nationens sikkerhed samt (iii) hensynet til retssikkerheden.
Det er i den forbindelse værd at bemærke, at Frankrig - et land der af mange anses for at have den mest effektive anti-terrorbekæmpelse i Europa - langt oftere end herhjemme benytter muligheden for at udvise udlændinge mistænkt for terror. Men franskmændene tillader en vis domstolsprøvelse af sådanne udvisninger. Storbritannien - der er gået ganske vidt i bekæmpelsen af terror - har oprettet et særligt uafhængigt organ, der tager stilling til administrative udvisninger, også udvisninger baseret på hensynet til national sikkerhed.
Skåret ind til benet synes det national-konservative argument for at nægte prøvelse i sager om administrativ udvisning at bunde i en dybtfølt modvilje mod at indtage en holdning, der kunne opfattes som støtte til egne ideologiske hovedmodstandere. Præcis på samme måde som mange på venstrefløjen ikke kunne få sig selv til at anerkende ytringsfriheden, da "den sorte avis" Jyllands-Posten benyttede sig af denne frihed i Muhammed-krisen. Men at insistere på uafhængig prøvelse af administrative udvisninger er ikke at støtte de to tunesere eller at udvise sympati for terrorisme. Ligesom man ikke behøver at abonnere på Jyllands-Posten, blot fordi man støtter avisens ret til at offentliggøre en række tegninger af Muhammed.
Tværtimod er det netop i situationer, hvor frihedsrettigheder og retsstatsprincipper omfatter dem, man er uenig med, at frihedsrettighederne skal stå deres prøve. Anerkender vi alene frihedsrettighederne i situationer, hvor de beskytter dem, vi sympatiserer med, er frihedsrettighederne intet værd, idet de dermed bliver ofre for den herskende politiske vilje og deres beskyttelse dermed bliver diskretionær. Eksemplerne på, at tømmermændene indfinder sig, når retsstatsprincipper bliver sat ud af kraft i en god sags tjeneste, er legio. Er vi f.eks. stolte af vores retsopgør efter besættelsen? Var interneringen af japanere under 2. verdenskrig og oprettelsen af Guantanamo efter 11. september 2001 højdepunkter i USA's historie?
Vi lever ikke i en politistat i Danmark og er heller ikke på vej mod en. Men der er intet automatisk ved vores demokrati og frihedsrettigheder, og den frihed, det har taget århundreder at sikre, kan mistes på et øjeblik. Vi bør derfor værne om vores frihedsrettigheder, selv når det ikke er politisk opportunt, og når vores instinktive menneskelige reaktion er, at de, der påberåber sig frihedsrettighederne, egentlig ikke fortjener deres beskyttelse.
Jacob Mchangama er advokat og ekstern lektor i internationale menneskerettigheder.
kilde: http://www.180grader.dk/klumme/H_jre_og_venstres_automatreaktioner_printer.php
Tuneserloven: Tidligere PET-Chef "Terrordebat er farlig".
Skrevet af: Christian Lehmann
Den tidligere øverste PET-chef Ole Stig Andersen har fået nok af den indskrænkning af afgørende retsprincipper, som politikerne er villige til at acceptere i terrorsager. Unødvendigt og underminerende for retsstaten, kalder han det
Danske politikeres terrorfrygt har nu nået et punkt, hvor man er villig til at underminere respekten for domstolene og tilsidesætte altafgørende principper i vores retsstat.
Sådan lyder de hårde anklager fra Ole Stig Andersen, der var øverste chef for Politiets Efterretningstjeneste (PET) fra 1975 til 1984.
Som den første tidligere øverste PET-chef nogensinde tager han nu bladet fra munden og giver sin uforbeholdne mening om de indskrænkninger af retssikkerheden, som politikerne er villige til at acceptere, lige så snart det handler om 'terror' og 'statens sikkerhed'.
"Det sakrale begreb - statens sikkerhed - bliver brugt til alt for meget unødvendigt hemmelighedskræmmeri.
Nu er man endda også villig til at oprette hemmelige særdomstole. Så har man tabt respekten for domstolssystemet," siger Ole Stig Andersen.
Hans kritik er især udløst af sagen om de to tunesere og en dansk-marokkaner, der af PET mistænkes for at ville dræbe tegneren Kurt Westergaard. Begge tuneserne er administrativt udvist på grundlag af bevismateriale, som PET af hensyn til sine kilder ikke har villet fremlægge for en dommer.
"Man kan sagtens tænke sig terror så voldsom, at det er rimeligt at tale om statens sikkerhed. Men hvad har mordplaner mod en tegner med statens sikkerhed at gøre," siger Ole Stig Andersen.
Agenter kan lyve
Han erkender, at PET og politiet har et behov for at beskytte sine kilder.
"Men hvorfor er en agent, der arbejder for PET i Vollsmose, mere hemmelig og sårbar end en agent, der arbejder i et meget kriminelt og farligt narkomiljø? Forklaringen er nok, at efterforskning i terrorsager finder sted i efterretningstjenesterne. Og dermed har man overtaget det samme begrebsapparat om statens sikkerhed og forholdet til fremmede magter som dengang, hvor man bekæmpede spionage og KGB. Det fører til langt mere hemmelighedskræmmeri end i andre kriminelle sager, der ellers kan være lige så alvorlige og endnu mere destabiliserende for det danske samfund," siger den tidligere PET-chef og henviser til bandekrige, menneskehandel og narkokriminalitet som områder, som politiet sagtens kan håndtere uden yderligere hemmeligholdelse.
- Et argument i debatten har været, at PET også er nødt til at beskytte fortroligt materiale, man har modtaget fra andre landes efterretningstjenester?
"Ja, men alt internationalt politisamarbejde forudsætter, at myndighederne kan stole på hinanden. Og generelt er hensynet til fremmede stater ikke større i disse terrorsager end i sager om for eksempel menneskesmugling eller narkokriminalitet," siger Ole Stig Andersen.
Han henviser til, at en tiltalt og hans forsvarer allerede i dag kan unddrages indsigt i dybt fortroligt efterforskningsmateriale.
"Og hvis jeg sad som dommer, så ville jeg gerne kende efterforskningsgrundlaget. Jeg vil gerne vide, hvilken fremmed efterretningstjeneste en oplysning kommer fra, og hvordan den er fremkommet. Agenter kan sige forkerte ting eller synge den sang, som ophavsgiveren ønsker, at de synger. Og når det kommer til oplysninger fra fremmede magter, så ved både du og jeg, at man selv i USA bruger waterboarding - og under tortur tilstår alle jo alt."
Brug for domstolskontrol
I debatten om tunesersagen har politikere med Pia Kjærsgaard (DF) i spidsen udtrykt fuld tillid til, at PET har grundlaget i orden for sine anklager. Og justitsminister Brian Mikkelsen (K) - der så vidt vides har haft lejlighed til at se hele PET's materiale - har stået ved sin beslutning om at anbefale udvisning.
"Men hvorfor skal man stole mere på en minister end på en højesteretsdommer? En stat, hvor den udøvende magt kan holde sager uoplyste for domstolene, fordi man ikke stoler på dem - synes vi, at det er en stat, der lyder rigtig? "
- Men kan man ikke stole på PET?
"Jo, selvfølgelig kan man det - i langt de fleste tilfælde. Men det er fuldstændigt absurd at basere en retsstat på en blind tro på, at politiet altid har ret. For hvad skulle vi så have domstolskontrol til overhovedet? Så kunne vi lige så godt fjerne domstolskontrollen. Så mangler vi bare et 'Kærlighedsministerium' til at afrette borgerne til at tænke de rigtige tanker," siger Ole Stig Andersen med henvisning til George Orwells berømte roman '1984'.
- For myndighederne kan også begå fejl?
"Det kan jeg godt love dig for, at de gør - og hvis de laver fejl, så indrømmer de det nødigt bagefter. Du er nødt til at erkende, at offentlige myndigheder er mennesker på godt og ondt. Og du er også nødt til at erkende, at magt korrumperer. Det er derfor, at vi har behov for en effektiv, altomfattende domstolskontrol. Og det er også derfor, at vi ikke kan undvære Folketingets Ombudsmand."
Bange for at tage ansvar
Ifølge Ole Stig Andersen er de danske politikere ramt af en "ansvarsfobi", der får dem til at sige ja til alt for villigt at indskrænke af borgernes retssikkerhed og frihed i kampen mod terror.
"Hvis en minister i min tid udsultede PET, og ulykken skete, og de sovjetiske styrker så kom tromlende - så ville der næppe være et Folketingsvalg, hvor den ansvarlige minister kunne holdes ansvarlig bagefter. Men sådan er situationen ikke i dag. Hvis der sker det helt store brag, og du kunne holdes ansvarlig for ikke at have gjort nok, så ville du aldrig overleve som politiker. Det er det, de er bange for. Der er ingen, der tør sige: Nok er nok - og jeg tager ansvaret, hvis der sker noget," siger Ole Stig Andersen.
Source URL: http://www.information.dk/177426
Den tidligere øverste PET-chef Ole Stig Andersen har fået nok af den indskrænkning af afgørende retsprincipper, som politikerne er villige til at acceptere i terrorsager. Unødvendigt og underminerende for retsstaten, kalder han det
Danske politikeres terrorfrygt har nu nået et punkt, hvor man er villig til at underminere respekten for domstolene og tilsidesætte altafgørende principper i vores retsstat.
Sådan lyder de hårde anklager fra Ole Stig Andersen, der var øverste chef for Politiets Efterretningstjeneste (PET) fra 1975 til 1984.
Som den første tidligere øverste PET-chef nogensinde tager han nu bladet fra munden og giver sin uforbeholdne mening om de indskrænkninger af retssikkerheden, som politikerne er villige til at acceptere, lige så snart det handler om 'terror' og 'statens sikkerhed'.
"Det sakrale begreb - statens sikkerhed - bliver brugt til alt for meget unødvendigt hemmelighedskræmmeri.
Nu er man endda også villig til at oprette hemmelige særdomstole. Så har man tabt respekten for domstolssystemet," siger Ole Stig Andersen.
Hans kritik er især udløst af sagen om de to tunesere og en dansk-marokkaner, der af PET mistænkes for at ville dræbe tegneren Kurt Westergaard. Begge tuneserne er administrativt udvist på grundlag af bevismateriale, som PET af hensyn til sine kilder ikke har villet fremlægge for en dommer.
"Man kan sagtens tænke sig terror så voldsom, at det er rimeligt at tale om statens sikkerhed. Men hvad har mordplaner mod en tegner med statens sikkerhed at gøre," siger Ole Stig Andersen.
Agenter kan lyve
Han erkender, at PET og politiet har et behov for at beskytte sine kilder.
"Men hvorfor er en agent, der arbejder for PET i Vollsmose, mere hemmelig og sårbar end en agent, der arbejder i et meget kriminelt og farligt narkomiljø? Forklaringen er nok, at efterforskning i terrorsager finder sted i efterretningstjenesterne. Og dermed har man overtaget det samme begrebsapparat om statens sikkerhed og forholdet til fremmede magter som dengang, hvor man bekæmpede spionage og KGB. Det fører til langt mere hemmelighedskræmmeri end i andre kriminelle sager, der ellers kan være lige så alvorlige og endnu mere destabiliserende for det danske samfund," siger den tidligere PET-chef og henviser til bandekrige, menneskehandel og narkokriminalitet som områder, som politiet sagtens kan håndtere uden yderligere hemmeligholdelse.
- Et argument i debatten har været, at PET også er nødt til at beskytte fortroligt materiale, man har modtaget fra andre landes efterretningstjenester?
"Ja, men alt internationalt politisamarbejde forudsætter, at myndighederne kan stole på hinanden. Og generelt er hensynet til fremmede stater ikke større i disse terrorsager end i sager om for eksempel menneskesmugling eller narkokriminalitet," siger Ole Stig Andersen.
Han henviser til, at en tiltalt og hans forsvarer allerede i dag kan unddrages indsigt i dybt fortroligt efterforskningsmateriale.
"Og hvis jeg sad som dommer, så ville jeg gerne kende efterforskningsgrundlaget. Jeg vil gerne vide, hvilken fremmed efterretningstjeneste en oplysning kommer fra, og hvordan den er fremkommet. Agenter kan sige forkerte ting eller synge den sang, som ophavsgiveren ønsker, at de synger. Og når det kommer til oplysninger fra fremmede magter, så ved både du og jeg, at man selv i USA bruger waterboarding - og under tortur tilstår alle jo alt."
Brug for domstolskontrol
I debatten om tunesersagen har politikere med Pia Kjærsgaard (DF) i spidsen udtrykt fuld tillid til, at PET har grundlaget i orden for sine anklager. Og justitsminister Brian Mikkelsen (K) - der så vidt vides har haft lejlighed til at se hele PET's materiale - har stået ved sin beslutning om at anbefale udvisning.
"Men hvorfor skal man stole mere på en minister end på en højesteretsdommer? En stat, hvor den udøvende magt kan holde sager uoplyste for domstolene, fordi man ikke stoler på dem - synes vi, at det er en stat, der lyder rigtig? "
- Men kan man ikke stole på PET?
"Jo, selvfølgelig kan man det - i langt de fleste tilfælde. Men det er fuldstændigt absurd at basere en retsstat på en blind tro på, at politiet altid har ret. For hvad skulle vi så have domstolskontrol til overhovedet? Så kunne vi lige så godt fjerne domstolskontrollen. Så mangler vi bare et 'Kærlighedsministerium' til at afrette borgerne til at tænke de rigtige tanker," siger Ole Stig Andersen med henvisning til George Orwells berømte roman '1984'.
- For myndighederne kan også begå fejl?
"Det kan jeg godt love dig for, at de gør - og hvis de laver fejl, så indrømmer de det nødigt bagefter. Du er nødt til at erkende, at offentlige myndigheder er mennesker på godt og ondt. Og du er også nødt til at erkende, at magt korrumperer. Det er derfor, at vi har behov for en effektiv, altomfattende domstolskontrol. Og det er også derfor, at vi ikke kan undvære Folketingets Ombudsmand."
Bange for at tage ansvar
Ifølge Ole Stig Andersen er de danske politikere ramt af en "ansvarsfobi", der får dem til at sige ja til alt for villigt at indskrænke af borgernes retssikkerhed og frihed i kampen mod terror.
"Hvis en minister i min tid udsultede PET, og ulykken skete, og de sovjetiske styrker så kom tromlende - så ville der næppe være et Folketingsvalg, hvor den ansvarlige minister kunne holdes ansvarlig bagefter. Men sådan er situationen ikke i dag. Hvis der sker det helt store brag, og du kunne holdes ansvarlig for ikke at have gjort nok, så ville du aldrig overleve som politiker. Det er det, de er bange for. Der er ingen, der tør sige: Nok er nok - og jeg tager ansvaret, hvis der sker noget," siger Ole Stig Andersen.
Source URL: http://www.information.dk/177426
Tuneserloven: Lad Maskerne Falde
Den igangværende økonomiske krise tvinger regeringen og DF til at intensivere kampen for at holde sammen på samfundet. I forsvaret for den danske befolknings privilegier og velstand er alle midler legitime, inklusive racistiske nødlove. Tuneserloven er et afsindigt forsøg på at indhegne vores velstand.
Med Tuneserloven har det danske demokrati således vist, hvor det ønsker at bevæge sig hen: undtagelsestilstand. De juridiske værn, som almindeligvis beskytter os mod overgreb fra statens side, sættes helt eller delvist ud af kraft. Med udpegningen og kriminaliseringen af en gruppe mennesker i Danmark er der taget et uigenkaldeligt skridt hinsides alle idealerne om det liberale demokrati og de almindelige menneskerettigheder, som borgerskabet ellers selv i sin tid introducerede for mere end to hundrede år siden. Tuneserloven viser, at magten nu ikke engang gider gøre sig besværet med at opretholde illusionen om en borgerlig retsstat. Med loven er vi kommet ind i et nyt politisk rum, hvor magten på én gang er lovgivende, dømmende og udøvende. I dag er vi potentielt set alle tunesere.
Hidtil har udlændingepolitikkens racisme og brutalitet været gemt væk under administrative foranstaltninger: flygtninge er i tusindvis blevet afvist ved grænserne, indvandrefamilier er blevet straffet økonomisk gennem starthjælp og deres forhåbninger om at få samlet familien i sikkerhed er blevet forhindret og umuliggjort gennem abstrakte administrative forordninger: 24-årsregel, 29-årsregelen, tilknytningskrav og så videre. Alle abstrakte bureaukratiske forordninger, som i det skjulte gør mange menneskers liv ubærligt. De fremmede skal føle, de er fremmede, og grænserne er lukket for de uønskede. Men disse overgreb har foregået langt fra mediernes søgelys og hinsides middelklassens forbrugs- og investeringshorisont.
Med Tuneserloven er der kommet ansigter på: 18 juridisk set uskyldige personer er blevet dømt med tilbagevirkende kraft til tilbageholdelse på livstid. Deres eneste forbrydelse er at være fremmede og uønskede.
Reelt befandt de udlændinge, der opholder sig i landet på tålt ophold, sig allerede før vedtagelsen af loven i en limboagtig retstilstand. Rigspolitiet har længe haft beføjelser til at pålægge dem meldepligt, hvis de fandt, at sikkerhedsmæssige grunde talte for det. Forskellen er, at nu skal samtlige personer på tålt ophold frihedsberøves over én kam. Staten placerer en gruppe mennesker i en situation, hvor de frihedsberøves uden om domstolene og med en abstrakt henvisning til nationens sikkerhed. Retsstatens grundlovssikrede rettigheder suspenderes med henvisning til en enkeltsag, en herboende tunesisk mands påståede drabsplan mod en af Jyllands Postens karikaturtegnere. Denne form for tilbageholdelse strider mod internationale konventioner, men staten opfinder blot en ny betegnelse for et fængsel: melde- og opholdspligt.
Med Tuneserloven er alle masker faldet: regeringen og dets støtteparti vil gøre alt, hvad de kan for desperat at holde sammen på det danske folkefællesskab. Det gælder for enhver pris om at opretholde de eksisterende uligheder mellem hvide og ikke-hvide, rige og fattige, statsborgere og ikke-statsborgere.
Dette danske folkefællesskab, som der konstant messende henvises til, er et fantasimonster, men et formålstjenligt fantasimonster, som for Dansk Folkeparti betyder: hvid kristen racisme. Og for regeringen: ekskluderende sortering og værdisætning af menneskeliv på den globale markedsplads. Sammen har regeringen og DF effektivt radikaliseret det nationale demokrati i Danmark og dyrket en form for nationalistisk autenticitetstotalitarisme, der har taget form af hetz af muslimer og kulturradikale, kombineret med besættelseskrige i Irak og Afghanistan. Liberalistisk markedsøkonomi er blevet kombineret med undtagelsestilstand legitimeret af racistisk nationalisme.
Konfronteret med den største finansielle krise siden 1930’erne, der truer med at fordele verdens rigdom anderledes og åbne for en ny runde af imperialistisk strid, skruer regeringen og DF op for deres racistiske kulturkamp i et desperat forsøg på at sikre den danske befolknings privilegier og velstand. I denne kamp er alle midler tilsyneladende legitime, inklusive racistiske nødlove. Målet er at opretholde den uværende magtbalance og sikre at velfærden forbliver ‘hvid’. Men den brutale globale ulighed, som vi danskere nyder så godt af, lader sig ikke opretholde selv med undtagelsestilstand, pigtrådshegn og invasionskrige.
Under undtagelsestilstanden giver det ikke længere mening at forestille sig en dialog mellem rationelle parter, der vil det samme og stræber efter det samme fælles gode. Hvordan kan vi appellere til menneskerettigheder, rimelighed og objektivitet, når de herskende kræfter kun har hån til overs for disse værdier? Lad maskerne falde.
-------------------------------------------
ovenstående er hentet fra kontradoxa på modkraft.dk og er forfattet af en aktivistgrupper der kalder sig Imaginær Fraktion.
http://www.modkraft.dk/spip.php?article9485
Med Tuneserloven har det danske demokrati således vist, hvor det ønsker at bevæge sig hen: undtagelsestilstand. De juridiske værn, som almindeligvis beskytter os mod overgreb fra statens side, sættes helt eller delvist ud af kraft. Med udpegningen og kriminaliseringen af en gruppe mennesker i Danmark er der taget et uigenkaldeligt skridt hinsides alle idealerne om det liberale demokrati og de almindelige menneskerettigheder, som borgerskabet ellers selv i sin tid introducerede for mere end to hundrede år siden. Tuneserloven viser, at magten nu ikke engang gider gøre sig besværet med at opretholde illusionen om en borgerlig retsstat. Med loven er vi kommet ind i et nyt politisk rum, hvor magten på én gang er lovgivende, dømmende og udøvende. I dag er vi potentielt set alle tunesere.
Hidtil har udlændingepolitikkens racisme og brutalitet været gemt væk under administrative foranstaltninger: flygtninge er i tusindvis blevet afvist ved grænserne, indvandrefamilier er blevet straffet økonomisk gennem starthjælp og deres forhåbninger om at få samlet familien i sikkerhed er blevet forhindret og umuliggjort gennem abstrakte administrative forordninger: 24-årsregel, 29-årsregelen, tilknytningskrav og så videre. Alle abstrakte bureaukratiske forordninger, som i det skjulte gør mange menneskers liv ubærligt. De fremmede skal føle, de er fremmede, og grænserne er lukket for de uønskede. Men disse overgreb har foregået langt fra mediernes søgelys og hinsides middelklassens forbrugs- og investeringshorisont.
Med Tuneserloven er der kommet ansigter på: 18 juridisk set uskyldige personer er blevet dømt med tilbagevirkende kraft til tilbageholdelse på livstid. Deres eneste forbrydelse er at være fremmede og uønskede.
Reelt befandt de udlændinge, der opholder sig i landet på tålt ophold, sig allerede før vedtagelsen af loven i en limboagtig retstilstand. Rigspolitiet har længe haft beføjelser til at pålægge dem meldepligt, hvis de fandt, at sikkerhedsmæssige grunde talte for det. Forskellen er, at nu skal samtlige personer på tålt ophold frihedsberøves over én kam. Staten placerer en gruppe mennesker i en situation, hvor de frihedsberøves uden om domstolene og med en abstrakt henvisning til nationens sikkerhed. Retsstatens grundlovssikrede rettigheder suspenderes med henvisning til en enkeltsag, en herboende tunesisk mands påståede drabsplan mod en af Jyllands Postens karikaturtegnere. Denne form for tilbageholdelse strider mod internationale konventioner, men staten opfinder blot en ny betegnelse for et fængsel: melde- og opholdspligt.
Med Tuneserloven er alle masker faldet: regeringen og dets støtteparti vil gøre alt, hvad de kan for desperat at holde sammen på det danske folkefællesskab. Det gælder for enhver pris om at opretholde de eksisterende uligheder mellem hvide og ikke-hvide, rige og fattige, statsborgere og ikke-statsborgere.
Dette danske folkefællesskab, som der konstant messende henvises til, er et fantasimonster, men et formålstjenligt fantasimonster, som for Dansk Folkeparti betyder: hvid kristen racisme. Og for regeringen: ekskluderende sortering og værdisætning af menneskeliv på den globale markedsplads. Sammen har regeringen og DF effektivt radikaliseret det nationale demokrati i Danmark og dyrket en form for nationalistisk autenticitetstotalitarisme, der har taget form af hetz af muslimer og kulturradikale, kombineret med besættelseskrige i Irak og Afghanistan. Liberalistisk markedsøkonomi er blevet kombineret med undtagelsestilstand legitimeret af racistisk nationalisme.
Konfronteret med den største finansielle krise siden 1930’erne, der truer med at fordele verdens rigdom anderledes og åbne for en ny runde af imperialistisk strid, skruer regeringen og DF op for deres racistiske kulturkamp i et desperat forsøg på at sikre den danske befolknings privilegier og velstand. I denne kamp er alle midler tilsyneladende legitime, inklusive racistiske nødlove. Målet er at opretholde den uværende magtbalance og sikre at velfærden forbliver ‘hvid’. Men den brutale globale ulighed, som vi danskere nyder så godt af, lader sig ikke opretholde selv med undtagelsestilstand, pigtrådshegn og invasionskrige.
Under undtagelsestilstanden giver det ikke længere mening at forestille sig en dialog mellem rationelle parter, der vil det samme og stræber efter det samme fælles gode. Hvordan kan vi appellere til menneskerettigheder, rimelighed og objektivitet, når de herskende kræfter kun har hån til overs for disse værdier? Lad maskerne falde.
-------------------------------------------
ovenstående er hentet fra kontradoxa på modkraft.dk og er forfattet af en aktivistgrupper der kalder sig Imaginær Fraktion.
http://www.modkraft.dk/spip.php?article9485
The Crisis and what to do about it - Soros
1.
The salient feature of the current financial crisis is that it was not caused by some external shock like OPEC raising the price of oil or a particular country or financial institution defaulting. The crisis was generated by the financial system itself. This fact—that the defect was inherent in the system —contradicts the prevailing theory, which holds that financial markets tend toward equilibrium and that deviations from the equilibrium either occur in a random manner or are caused by some sudden external event to which markets have difficulty adjusting. The severity and amplitude of the crisis provides convincing evidence that there is something fundamentally wrong with this prevailing theory and with the approach to market regulation that has gone with it. To understand what has happened, and what should be done to avoid such a catastrophic crisis in the future, will require a new way of thinking about how markets work.
Consider how the crisis has unfolded over the past eighteen months. The proximate cause is to be found in the housing bubble or more exactly in the excesses of the subprime mortgage market. The longer a double-digit rise in house prices lasted, the more lax the lending practices became. In the end, people could borrow 100 percent of inflated house prices with no money down. Insiders referred to subprime loans as ninja loans—no income, no job, no questions asked.
The excesses became evident after house prices peaked in 2006 and subprime mortgage lenders began declaring bankruptcy around March 2007. The problems reached crisis proportions in August 2007. The Federal Reserve and other financial authorities had believed that the subprime crisis was an isolated phenomenon that might cause losses of around $100 billion. Instead, the crisis spread with amazing rapidity to other markets. Some highly leveraged hedge funds collapsed and some lightly regulated financial institutions, notably the largest mortgage originator in the US, Countrywide Financial, had to be acquired by other institutions in order to survive.
Confidence in the creditworthiness of many financial institutions was shaken and interbank lending was disrupted. In quick succession, a variety of esoteric credit markets—ranging from collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) to auction-rated municipal bonds—broke down one after another. After periods of relative calm and partial recovery, crisis episodes recurred in January 2008, precipitated by a rogue trader at Société Générale; in March, associated with the demise of Bear Stearns; and then in July, when IndyMac Bank, the largest savings bank in the Los Angeles area, went into receivership, becoming the fourth-largest bank failure in US history. The deepest fall of all came in September, caused by the disorderly bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in which holders of commercial paper—for example, short-term, unsecured promissory notes—issued by Lehman lost their money.
Then the inconceivable occurred: the financial system actually melted down. A large money market fund that had invested in commercial paper issued by Lehman Brothers "broke the buck," i.e., its asset value fell below the dollar amount deposited, breaking an implicit promise that deposits in such funds are totally safe and liquid. This started a run on money market funds and the funds stopped buying commercial paper. Since they were the largest buyers, the commercial paper market ceased to function. The issuers of commercial paper were forced to draw down their credit lines, bringing interbank lending to a standstill. Credit spreads—i.e., the risk premium over and above the riskless rate of interest—widened to unprecedented levels and eventually the stock market was also overwhelmed by panic. All this happened in the space of a week.
With the financial system in cardiac arrest, resuscitating it took precedence over considerations of moral hazard—i.e., the danger that coming to the rescue of a financial institution in difficulties would reward and encourage reckless behavior in the future—and the authorities injected ever larger quantities of money. The balance sheet of the Federal Reserve ballooned from $800 billion to $1,800 billion in a couple of weeks. When that was not enough, the American and European financial authorities committed themselves not to allow any other major financial institution to fail.
These unprecedented measures have begun to have an effect: interbank lending has resumed and the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) has improved. The financial crisis has shown signs of abating. But guaranteeing that the banks at the center of the global financial system will not fail has precipitated a new crisis that caught the authorities unawares: countries at the periphery, whether in Eastern Europe, Asia, or Latin America, could not offer similarly credible guarantees, and financial capital started fleeing from the periphery to the center. All currencies fell against the dollar and the yen, some of them precipitously. Commodity prices dropped like a stone and interest rates in emerging markets soared. So did premiums on insurance against credit default. Hedge funds and other leveraged investors suffered enormous losses, precipitating margin calls and forced selling that have also spread to markets at the center.
Unfortunately the authorities are always lagging behind events. The International Monetary Fund is establishing a new credit facility that allows financially sound periphery countries to borrow without any conditions up to five times their annual quota, but that is too little too late. A much larger pool of money is needed to reassure markets. And if the top tier of periphery countries is saved, what happens to the lower-tier countries? The race to save the international financial system is still ongoing. Even if it is successful, consumers, investors, and businesses are undergoing a traumatic experience whose full impact on global economic activity is yet to be felt. A deep recession is now inevitable and the possibility of a depression cannot be ruled out. When I predicted earlier this year that we were facing the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, I did not anticipate that conditions would deteriorate so badly.
2.
This remarkable sequence of events can be understood only if we abandon the prevailing theory of market behavior. As a way of explaining financial markets, I propose an alternative paradigm that differs from the current one in two respects. First, financial markets do not reflect prevailing conditions accurately; they provide a picture that is always biased or distorted in one way or another. Second, the distorted views held by market participants and expressed in market prices can, under certain circumstances, affect the so-called fundamentals that market prices are supposed to reflect. This two-way circular connection between market prices and the underlying reality I call reflexivity.
While the two-way connection is present at all times, it is only occasionally, and in special circumstances, that it gives rise to financial crises. Usually markets correct their own mistakes, but occasionally there is a misconception or misinterpretation that finds a way to reinforce a trend that is already present in reality and by doing so it also reinforces itself. Such self- reinforcing processes may carry markets into far-from-equilibrium territory. Unless something happens to abort the reflexive interaction sooner, it may persist until the misconception becomes so glaring that it has to be recognized as such. When that happens the trend becomes unsustainable and when it is reversed the self-reinforcing process starts working in the opposite direction, causing a sharp downward movement.
The typical sequence of boom and bust has an asymmetric shape. The boom develops slowly and accelerates gradually. The bust, when it occurs, tends to be short and sharp. The asymmetry is due to the role that credit plays. As prices rise, the same collateral can support a greater amount of credit. Rising prices also tend to generate optimism and encourage a greater use of leverage—borrowing for investment purposes. At the peak of the boom both the value of the collateral and the degree of leverage reach a peak. When the price trend is reversed participants are vulnerable to margin calls and, as we've seen in 2008, the forced liquidation of collateral leads to a catastrophic acceleration on the downside.
Bubbles thus have two components: a trend that prevails in reality and a misconception relating to that trend. The simplest and most common example is to be found in real estate. The trend consists of an increased willingness to lend and a rise in prices. The misconception is that the value of the real estate is independent of the willingness to lend. That misconception encourages bankers to become more lax in their lending practices as prices rise and defaults on mortgage payments diminish. That is how real estate bubbles, including the recent housing bubble, are born. It is remarkable how the misconception continues to recur in various guises in spite of a long history of real estate bubbles bursting.
Bubbles are not the only manifestations of reflexivity in financial markets, but they are the most spectacular. Bubbles always involve the expansion and contraction of credit and they tend to have catastrophic consequences. Since financial markets are prone to produce bubbles and bubbles cause trouble, financial markets have become regulated by the financial authorities. In the United States they include the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and many other agencies.
It is important to recognize that regulators base their decisions on a distorted view of reality just as much as market participants—perhaps even more so because regulators are not only human but also bureaucratic and subject to political influences. So the interplay between regulators and market participants is also reflexive in character. In contrast to bubbles, which occur only infrequently, the cat-and-mouse game between regulators and markets goes on continuously. As a consequence reflexivity is at work at all times and it is a mistake to ignore its influence. Yet that is exactly what the prevailing theory of financial markets has done and that mistake is ultimately responsible for the severity of the current crisis.
3.
In my book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets,[*] I argue that the current crisis differs from the various financial crises that preceded it. I base that assertion on the hypothesis that the explosion of the US housing bubble acted as the detonator for a much larger "super-bubble" that has been developing since the 1980s. The underlying trend in the super-bubble has been the ever-increasing use of credit and leverage. Credit—whether extended to consumers or speculators or banks—has been growing at a much faster rate than the GDP ever since the end of World War II. But the rate of growth accelerated and took on the characteristics of a bubble when it was reinforced by a misconception that became dominant in 1980 when Ronald Reagan became president and Margaret Thatcher was prime minister in the United Kingdom.
The misconception is derived from the prevailing theory of financial markets, which, as mentioned earlier, holds that financial markets tend toward equilibrium and that deviations are random and can be attributed to external causes. This theory has been used to justify the belief that the pursuit of self-interest should be given free rein and markets should be deregulated. I call that belief market fundamentalism and claim that it employs false logic. Just because regulations and all other forms of governmental interventions have proven to be faulty, it does not follow that markets are perfect.
Although market fundamentalism is based on false premises, it has served well the interests of the owners and managers of financial capital. The globalization of financial markets allowed financial capital to move around freely and made it difficult for individual states to tax it or regulate it. Deregulation of financial transactions also served the interests of the managers of financial capital; and the freedom to innovate enhanced the profitability of financial enterprises. The financial industry grew to a point where it represented 25 percent of the stock market capitalization in the United States and an even higher percentage in some other countries.
Since market fundamentalism is built on false assumptions, its adoption in the 1980s as the guiding principle of economic policy was bound to have negative consequences. Indeed, we have experienced a series of financial crises since then, but the adverse consequences were suffered principally by the countries that lie on the periphery of the global financial system, not by those at the center. The system is under the control of the developed countries, especially the United States, which enjoys veto rights in the International Monetary Fund.
Whenever a crisis endangered the prosperity of the United States—as for example the savings and loan crisis in the late 1980s, or the collapse of the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management in 1998—the authorities intervened, finding ways for the failing institutions to merge with others and providing monetary and fiscal stimulus when the pace of economic activity was endangered. Thus the periodic crises served, in effect, as successful tests that reinforced both the underlying trend of ever-greater credit expansion and the prevailing misconception that financial markets should be left to their own devices.
It was of course the intervention of the financial authorities that made the tests successful, not the ability of financial markets to correct their own excesses. But it was convenient for investors and governments to deceive themselves. The relative safety and stability of the United States, compared to the countries at the periphery, allowed the United States to suck up the savings of the rest of the world and run a current account deficit that reached nearly 7 percent of GNP at its peak in the first quarter of 2006. Eventually even the Federal Reserve and other regulators succumbed to the market fundamentalist ideology and abdicated their responsibility to regulate. They ought to have known better since it was their actions that kept the United States economy on an even keel. Alan Greenspan, in particular, believed that giving users of financial innovations such as derivatives free rein brought such great benefits that having to clean up behind the occasional financial mishap was a small price to pay. And his analysis of the costs and benefits of his permissive policies was not totally wrong while the super-bubble lasted. Only now has he been forced to acknowledge that there was a flaw in his argument.
Financial engineering involved the creation of increasingly sophisticated instruments, or derivatives, for leveraging credit and "managing" risk in order to increase potential profit. An alphabet soup of synthetic financial instruments was concocted: CDOs, CDO squareds, CDSs, ABXs, CMBXs, etc. This engineering reached such heights of complexity that the regulators could no longer calculate the risks and came to rely on the risk management models of the financial institutions themselves. The rating companies followed a similar path in rating synthetic financial instruments, deriving considerable additional revenues from their proliferation. The esoteric financial instruments and techniques for risk management were based on the false premise that, in the behavior of the market, deviations from the mean occur in a random fashion. But the increased use of financial engineering set in motion a process of boom and bust. So eventually there was hell to pay. At first the occasional financial crises served as successful tests. But the subprime crisis came to play a different role: it served as the culmination or reversal point of the super-bubble.
It should be emphasized that this interpretation of the current situation does not necessarily follow from my model of boom and bust. Had the financial authorities succeeded in containing the subprime crisis—as they thought at the time they would be able to do—this would have been seen as just another successful test instead of the reversal point. I have cried wolf three times: first with The Alchemy of Finance in 1987, then with The Crisis of Global Capitalism in 1998, and now. Only now did the wolf arrive.
My interpretation of financial markets based on reflexivity can explain events better than it can predict them. It is less ambitious than the previous theory. It does not claim to determine the outcome as equilibrium theory does. It can assert that a boom must eventually lead to a bust, but it cannot determine either the extent or the duration of a boom. Indeed, those of us who recognized that there was a housing bubble expected it to burst much sooner. Had it done so, the damage would have been much smaller and the super-bubble may have remained intact. Most of the damage was caused by mortgage-related securities issued in the last two years of the housing boom.
The fact that the new paradigm does not claim to predict the future explains why it did not make any headway until now, but in the light of recent experience it can no longer be ignored. We must come to terms with the fact that reflexivity introduces an element of uncertainty into financial markets that the previous theory left out of account. That theory was used to establish mathematical models for calculating risk and converting bundles of subprime mortgages into tradable securities, as well as other forms of debt. Uncertainty by definition cannot be quantified. Excessive reliance on those mathematical models did untold harm.
4.
The new paradigm has far-reaching implications for the regulation of financial markets. Since they are prone to create asset bubbles, regulators such as the Fed, the Treasury, and the SEC must accept responsibility for preventing bubbles from growing too big. Until now financial authorities have explicitly rejected that responsibility.
It is impossible to prevent bubbles from forming, but it should be possible to keep them within tolerable bounds. It cannot be done by controlling only the money supply. Regulators must also take into account credit conditions because money and credit do not move in lockstep. Markets have moods and biases and it falls to regulators to counterbalance them. That requires the use of judgment and since regulators are also human, they are bound to make mistakes. They have the advantage, however, of getting feedback from the market and that should enable them to correct their mistakes. If a tightening of margin and minimum capital requirements does not deflate a bubble, they can tighten them some more. But the process is not foolproof because markets can also be wrong. The search for the optimum equilibrium has to be a never-ending process of trial and error.
The cat-and-mouse game between regulators and market participants is already ongoing, but its true nature has not yet been acknowledged. Alan Greenspan was a past master of manipulation with his Delphic utterances, but instead of acknowledging what he was doing he pretended that he was merely a passive observer of the facts. Reflexivity remained a state secret. That is why the super-bubble could develop so far during his tenure.
Since money and credit do not move in lockstep and asset bubbles cannot be controlled purely by monetary means, additional tools must be employed, or more accurately reactivated, since they were in active use in the 1950s and 1960s. I refer to variable margin requirements and minimal capital requirements, which are meant to control the amount of leverage market participants can employ. Central banks even used to issue guidance to banks about how they should allocate loans to specific sectors of the economy. Such directives may be preferable to the blunt instruments of monetary policy in combating "irrational exuberance" in particular sectors, such as information technology or real estate.
Sophisticated financial engineering of the kind I have mentioned can render the calculation of margin and capital requirements extremely difficult if not impossible. In order to activate such requirements, financial engineering must also be regulated and new products must be registered and approved by the appropriate authorities before they can be used. Such regulation should be a high priority of the new Obama administration. It is all the more necessary because financial engineering often aims at circumventing regulations.
Take for example credit default swaps (CDSs), instruments intended to insure against the possibility of bonds and other forms of debt going into default, and whose price captures the perceived risk of such a possibility occurring. These instruments grew like Topsy because they required much less capital than owning or shorting the underlying bonds. Eventually they grew to more than $50 trillion in nominal size, which is a many-fold multiple of the underlying bonds and five times the entire US national debt. Yet the market in credit default swaps has remained entirely unregulated. AIG, the insurance company, lost a fortune selling credit default swaps as a form of insurance and had to be bailed out, costing the Treasury $126 billion so far. Although the CDS market may be eventually saved from the meltdown that has occurred in many other markets, the sheer existence of an unregulated market of this size has been a major factor in increasing risk throughout the entire financial system.
Since the risk management models used until now ignored the uncertainties inherent in reflexivity, limits on credit and leverage will have to be set substantially lower than those that were tolerated in the recent past. This means that financial institutions in the aggregate will be less profitable than they have been during the super-bubble and some business models that depended on excessive leverage will become uneconomical. The financial industry has already dropped from 25 percent of total market capitalization to 16 percent. This ratio is unlikely to recover to anywhere near its previous high; indeed, it is likely to end lower. This may be considered a healthy adjustment, but not by those who are losing their jobs.
In view of the tremendous losses suffered by the general public, there is a real danger that excessive deregulation will be succeeded by punitive reregulation. That would be unfortunate because regulations are liable to be even more deficient than the market mechanism. As I have suggested, regulators are not only human but also bureaucratic and susceptible to lobbying and corruption. It is to be hoped that the reforms outlined here will preempt a regulatory overkill.
—November 6, 2008
Notes
[*]The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means (PublicAffairs, 2008).
The salient feature of the current financial crisis is that it was not caused by some external shock like OPEC raising the price of oil or a particular country or financial institution defaulting. The crisis was generated by the financial system itself. This fact—that the defect was inherent in the system —contradicts the prevailing theory, which holds that financial markets tend toward equilibrium and that deviations from the equilibrium either occur in a random manner or are caused by some sudden external event to which markets have difficulty adjusting. The severity and amplitude of the crisis provides convincing evidence that there is something fundamentally wrong with this prevailing theory and with the approach to market regulation that has gone with it. To understand what has happened, and what should be done to avoid such a catastrophic crisis in the future, will require a new way of thinking about how markets work.
Consider how the crisis has unfolded over the past eighteen months. The proximate cause is to be found in the housing bubble or more exactly in the excesses of the subprime mortgage market. The longer a double-digit rise in house prices lasted, the more lax the lending practices became. In the end, people could borrow 100 percent of inflated house prices with no money down. Insiders referred to subprime loans as ninja loans—no income, no job, no questions asked.
The excesses became evident after house prices peaked in 2006 and subprime mortgage lenders began declaring bankruptcy around March 2007. The problems reached crisis proportions in August 2007. The Federal Reserve and other financial authorities had believed that the subprime crisis was an isolated phenomenon that might cause losses of around $100 billion. Instead, the crisis spread with amazing rapidity to other markets. Some highly leveraged hedge funds collapsed and some lightly regulated financial institutions, notably the largest mortgage originator in the US, Countrywide Financial, had to be acquired by other institutions in order to survive.
Confidence in the creditworthiness of many financial institutions was shaken and interbank lending was disrupted. In quick succession, a variety of esoteric credit markets—ranging from collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) to auction-rated municipal bonds—broke down one after another. After periods of relative calm and partial recovery, crisis episodes recurred in January 2008, precipitated by a rogue trader at Société Générale; in March, associated with the demise of Bear Stearns; and then in July, when IndyMac Bank, the largest savings bank in the Los Angeles area, went into receivership, becoming the fourth-largest bank failure in US history. The deepest fall of all came in September, caused by the disorderly bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in which holders of commercial paper—for example, short-term, unsecured promissory notes—issued by Lehman lost their money.
Then the inconceivable occurred: the financial system actually melted down. A large money market fund that had invested in commercial paper issued by Lehman Brothers "broke the buck," i.e., its asset value fell below the dollar amount deposited, breaking an implicit promise that deposits in such funds are totally safe and liquid. This started a run on money market funds and the funds stopped buying commercial paper. Since they were the largest buyers, the commercial paper market ceased to function. The issuers of commercial paper were forced to draw down their credit lines, bringing interbank lending to a standstill. Credit spreads—i.e., the risk premium over and above the riskless rate of interest—widened to unprecedented levels and eventually the stock market was also overwhelmed by panic. All this happened in the space of a week.
With the financial system in cardiac arrest, resuscitating it took precedence over considerations of moral hazard—i.e., the danger that coming to the rescue of a financial institution in difficulties would reward and encourage reckless behavior in the future—and the authorities injected ever larger quantities of money. The balance sheet of the Federal Reserve ballooned from $800 billion to $1,800 billion in a couple of weeks. When that was not enough, the American and European financial authorities committed themselves not to allow any other major financial institution to fail.
These unprecedented measures have begun to have an effect: interbank lending has resumed and the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) has improved. The financial crisis has shown signs of abating. But guaranteeing that the banks at the center of the global financial system will not fail has precipitated a new crisis that caught the authorities unawares: countries at the periphery, whether in Eastern Europe, Asia, or Latin America, could not offer similarly credible guarantees, and financial capital started fleeing from the periphery to the center. All currencies fell against the dollar and the yen, some of them precipitously. Commodity prices dropped like a stone and interest rates in emerging markets soared. So did premiums on insurance against credit default. Hedge funds and other leveraged investors suffered enormous losses, precipitating margin calls and forced selling that have also spread to markets at the center.
Unfortunately the authorities are always lagging behind events. The International Monetary Fund is establishing a new credit facility that allows financially sound periphery countries to borrow without any conditions up to five times their annual quota, but that is too little too late. A much larger pool of money is needed to reassure markets. And if the top tier of periphery countries is saved, what happens to the lower-tier countries? The race to save the international financial system is still ongoing. Even if it is successful, consumers, investors, and businesses are undergoing a traumatic experience whose full impact on global economic activity is yet to be felt. A deep recession is now inevitable and the possibility of a depression cannot be ruled out. When I predicted earlier this year that we were facing the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, I did not anticipate that conditions would deteriorate so badly.
2.
This remarkable sequence of events can be understood only if we abandon the prevailing theory of market behavior. As a way of explaining financial markets, I propose an alternative paradigm that differs from the current one in two respects. First, financial markets do not reflect prevailing conditions accurately; they provide a picture that is always biased or distorted in one way or another. Second, the distorted views held by market participants and expressed in market prices can, under certain circumstances, affect the so-called fundamentals that market prices are supposed to reflect. This two-way circular connection between market prices and the underlying reality I call reflexivity.
While the two-way connection is present at all times, it is only occasionally, and in special circumstances, that it gives rise to financial crises. Usually markets correct their own mistakes, but occasionally there is a misconception or misinterpretation that finds a way to reinforce a trend that is already present in reality and by doing so it also reinforces itself. Such self- reinforcing processes may carry markets into far-from-equilibrium territory. Unless something happens to abort the reflexive interaction sooner, it may persist until the misconception becomes so glaring that it has to be recognized as such. When that happens the trend becomes unsustainable and when it is reversed the self-reinforcing process starts working in the opposite direction, causing a sharp downward movement.
The typical sequence of boom and bust has an asymmetric shape. The boom develops slowly and accelerates gradually. The bust, when it occurs, tends to be short and sharp. The asymmetry is due to the role that credit plays. As prices rise, the same collateral can support a greater amount of credit. Rising prices also tend to generate optimism and encourage a greater use of leverage—borrowing for investment purposes. At the peak of the boom both the value of the collateral and the degree of leverage reach a peak. When the price trend is reversed participants are vulnerable to margin calls and, as we've seen in 2008, the forced liquidation of collateral leads to a catastrophic acceleration on the downside.
Bubbles thus have two components: a trend that prevails in reality and a misconception relating to that trend. The simplest and most common example is to be found in real estate. The trend consists of an increased willingness to lend and a rise in prices. The misconception is that the value of the real estate is independent of the willingness to lend. That misconception encourages bankers to become more lax in their lending practices as prices rise and defaults on mortgage payments diminish. That is how real estate bubbles, including the recent housing bubble, are born. It is remarkable how the misconception continues to recur in various guises in spite of a long history of real estate bubbles bursting.
Bubbles are not the only manifestations of reflexivity in financial markets, but they are the most spectacular. Bubbles always involve the expansion and contraction of credit and they tend to have catastrophic consequences. Since financial markets are prone to produce bubbles and bubbles cause trouble, financial markets have become regulated by the financial authorities. In the United States they include the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and many other agencies.
It is important to recognize that regulators base their decisions on a distorted view of reality just as much as market participants—perhaps even more so because regulators are not only human but also bureaucratic and subject to political influences. So the interplay between regulators and market participants is also reflexive in character. In contrast to bubbles, which occur only infrequently, the cat-and-mouse game between regulators and markets goes on continuously. As a consequence reflexivity is at work at all times and it is a mistake to ignore its influence. Yet that is exactly what the prevailing theory of financial markets has done and that mistake is ultimately responsible for the severity of the current crisis.
3.
In my book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets,[*] I argue that the current crisis differs from the various financial crises that preceded it. I base that assertion on the hypothesis that the explosion of the US housing bubble acted as the detonator for a much larger "super-bubble" that has been developing since the 1980s. The underlying trend in the super-bubble has been the ever-increasing use of credit and leverage. Credit—whether extended to consumers or speculators or banks—has been growing at a much faster rate than the GDP ever since the end of World War II. But the rate of growth accelerated and took on the characteristics of a bubble when it was reinforced by a misconception that became dominant in 1980 when Ronald Reagan became president and Margaret Thatcher was prime minister in the United Kingdom.
The misconception is derived from the prevailing theory of financial markets, which, as mentioned earlier, holds that financial markets tend toward equilibrium and that deviations are random and can be attributed to external causes. This theory has been used to justify the belief that the pursuit of self-interest should be given free rein and markets should be deregulated. I call that belief market fundamentalism and claim that it employs false logic. Just because regulations and all other forms of governmental interventions have proven to be faulty, it does not follow that markets are perfect.
Although market fundamentalism is based on false premises, it has served well the interests of the owners and managers of financial capital. The globalization of financial markets allowed financial capital to move around freely and made it difficult for individual states to tax it or regulate it. Deregulation of financial transactions also served the interests of the managers of financial capital; and the freedom to innovate enhanced the profitability of financial enterprises. The financial industry grew to a point where it represented 25 percent of the stock market capitalization in the United States and an even higher percentage in some other countries.
Since market fundamentalism is built on false assumptions, its adoption in the 1980s as the guiding principle of economic policy was bound to have negative consequences. Indeed, we have experienced a series of financial crises since then, but the adverse consequences were suffered principally by the countries that lie on the periphery of the global financial system, not by those at the center. The system is under the control of the developed countries, especially the United States, which enjoys veto rights in the International Monetary Fund.
Whenever a crisis endangered the prosperity of the United States—as for example the savings and loan crisis in the late 1980s, or the collapse of the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management in 1998—the authorities intervened, finding ways for the failing institutions to merge with others and providing monetary and fiscal stimulus when the pace of economic activity was endangered. Thus the periodic crises served, in effect, as successful tests that reinforced both the underlying trend of ever-greater credit expansion and the prevailing misconception that financial markets should be left to their own devices.
It was of course the intervention of the financial authorities that made the tests successful, not the ability of financial markets to correct their own excesses. But it was convenient for investors and governments to deceive themselves. The relative safety and stability of the United States, compared to the countries at the periphery, allowed the United States to suck up the savings of the rest of the world and run a current account deficit that reached nearly 7 percent of GNP at its peak in the first quarter of 2006. Eventually even the Federal Reserve and other regulators succumbed to the market fundamentalist ideology and abdicated their responsibility to regulate. They ought to have known better since it was their actions that kept the United States economy on an even keel. Alan Greenspan, in particular, believed that giving users of financial innovations such as derivatives free rein brought such great benefits that having to clean up behind the occasional financial mishap was a small price to pay. And his analysis of the costs and benefits of his permissive policies was not totally wrong while the super-bubble lasted. Only now has he been forced to acknowledge that there was a flaw in his argument.
Financial engineering involved the creation of increasingly sophisticated instruments, or derivatives, for leveraging credit and "managing" risk in order to increase potential profit. An alphabet soup of synthetic financial instruments was concocted: CDOs, CDO squareds, CDSs, ABXs, CMBXs, etc. This engineering reached such heights of complexity that the regulators could no longer calculate the risks and came to rely on the risk management models of the financial institutions themselves. The rating companies followed a similar path in rating synthetic financial instruments, deriving considerable additional revenues from their proliferation. The esoteric financial instruments and techniques for risk management were based on the false premise that, in the behavior of the market, deviations from the mean occur in a random fashion. But the increased use of financial engineering set in motion a process of boom and bust. So eventually there was hell to pay. At first the occasional financial crises served as successful tests. But the subprime crisis came to play a different role: it served as the culmination or reversal point of the super-bubble.
It should be emphasized that this interpretation of the current situation does not necessarily follow from my model of boom and bust. Had the financial authorities succeeded in containing the subprime crisis—as they thought at the time they would be able to do—this would have been seen as just another successful test instead of the reversal point. I have cried wolf three times: first with The Alchemy of Finance in 1987, then with The Crisis of Global Capitalism in 1998, and now. Only now did the wolf arrive.
My interpretation of financial markets based on reflexivity can explain events better than it can predict them. It is less ambitious than the previous theory. It does not claim to determine the outcome as equilibrium theory does. It can assert that a boom must eventually lead to a bust, but it cannot determine either the extent or the duration of a boom. Indeed, those of us who recognized that there was a housing bubble expected it to burst much sooner. Had it done so, the damage would have been much smaller and the super-bubble may have remained intact. Most of the damage was caused by mortgage-related securities issued in the last two years of the housing boom.
The fact that the new paradigm does not claim to predict the future explains why it did not make any headway until now, but in the light of recent experience it can no longer be ignored. We must come to terms with the fact that reflexivity introduces an element of uncertainty into financial markets that the previous theory left out of account. That theory was used to establish mathematical models for calculating risk and converting bundles of subprime mortgages into tradable securities, as well as other forms of debt. Uncertainty by definition cannot be quantified. Excessive reliance on those mathematical models did untold harm.
4.
The new paradigm has far-reaching implications for the regulation of financial markets. Since they are prone to create asset bubbles, regulators such as the Fed, the Treasury, and the SEC must accept responsibility for preventing bubbles from growing too big. Until now financial authorities have explicitly rejected that responsibility.
It is impossible to prevent bubbles from forming, but it should be possible to keep them within tolerable bounds. It cannot be done by controlling only the money supply. Regulators must also take into account credit conditions because money and credit do not move in lockstep. Markets have moods and biases and it falls to regulators to counterbalance them. That requires the use of judgment and since regulators are also human, they are bound to make mistakes. They have the advantage, however, of getting feedback from the market and that should enable them to correct their mistakes. If a tightening of margin and minimum capital requirements does not deflate a bubble, they can tighten them some more. But the process is not foolproof because markets can also be wrong. The search for the optimum equilibrium has to be a never-ending process of trial and error.
The cat-and-mouse game between regulators and market participants is already ongoing, but its true nature has not yet been acknowledged. Alan Greenspan was a past master of manipulation with his Delphic utterances, but instead of acknowledging what he was doing he pretended that he was merely a passive observer of the facts. Reflexivity remained a state secret. That is why the super-bubble could develop so far during his tenure.
Since money and credit do not move in lockstep and asset bubbles cannot be controlled purely by monetary means, additional tools must be employed, or more accurately reactivated, since they were in active use in the 1950s and 1960s. I refer to variable margin requirements and minimal capital requirements, which are meant to control the amount of leverage market participants can employ. Central banks even used to issue guidance to banks about how they should allocate loans to specific sectors of the economy. Such directives may be preferable to the blunt instruments of monetary policy in combating "irrational exuberance" in particular sectors, such as information technology or real estate.
Sophisticated financial engineering of the kind I have mentioned can render the calculation of margin and capital requirements extremely difficult if not impossible. In order to activate such requirements, financial engineering must also be regulated and new products must be registered and approved by the appropriate authorities before they can be used. Such regulation should be a high priority of the new Obama administration. It is all the more necessary because financial engineering often aims at circumventing regulations.
Take for example credit default swaps (CDSs), instruments intended to insure against the possibility of bonds and other forms of debt going into default, and whose price captures the perceived risk of such a possibility occurring. These instruments grew like Topsy because they required much less capital than owning or shorting the underlying bonds. Eventually they grew to more than $50 trillion in nominal size, which is a many-fold multiple of the underlying bonds and five times the entire US national debt. Yet the market in credit default swaps has remained entirely unregulated. AIG, the insurance company, lost a fortune selling credit default swaps as a form of insurance and had to be bailed out, costing the Treasury $126 billion so far. Although the CDS market may be eventually saved from the meltdown that has occurred in many other markets, the sheer existence of an unregulated market of this size has been a major factor in increasing risk throughout the entire financial system.
Since the risk management models used until now ignored the uncertainties inherent in reflexivity, limits on credit and leverage will have to be set substantially lower than those that were tolerated in the recent past. This means that financial institutions in the aggregate will be less profitable than they have been during the super-bubble and some business models that depended on excessive leverage will become uneconomical. The financial industry has already dropped from 25 percent of total market capitalization to 16 percent. This ratio is unlikely to recover to anywhere near its previous high; indeed, it is likely to end lower. This may be considered a healthy adjustment, but not by those who are losing their jobs.
In view of the tremendous losses suffered by the general public, there is a real danger that excessive deregulation will be succeeded by punitive reregulation. That would be unfortunate because regulations are liable to be even more deficient than the market mechanism. As I have suggested, regulators are not only human but also bureaucratic and susceptible to lobbying and corruption. It is to be hoped that the reforms outlined here will preempt a regulatory overkill.
—November 6, 2008
Notes
[*]The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means (PublicAffairs, 2008).
The Coming Capitalist Consensus - Walden Bello
Not surprisingly, the swift unraveling of the global economy combined with the ascent to the U.S. presidency of an African-American liberal has left millions anticipating that the world is on the threshold of a new era. Some of President-elect Barack Obama’s new appointees – in particular ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers to lead the National Economic Council, New York Federal Reserve Board chief Tim Geithner to head Treasury, and former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk to serve as trade representative – have certainly elicited some skepticism. But the sense that the old neoliberal formulas are thoroughly discredited have convinced many that the new Democratic leadership in the world’s biggest economy will break with the market fundamentalist policies that have reigned since the early 1980s.
One important question, of course, is how decisive and definitive the break with neoliberalism will be. Other questions, however, go to the heart of capitalism itself. Will government ownership, intervention, and control be exercised simply to stabilize capitalism, after which control will be given back to the corporate elites? Are we going to see a second round of Keynesian capitalism, where the state and corporate elites along with labor work out a partnership based on industrial policy, growth, and high wages – though with a green dimension this time around? Or will we witness the beginnings of fundamental shifts in the ownership and control of the economy in a more popular direction? There are limits to reform in the system of global capitalism, but at no other time in the last half century have those limits seemed more fluid.
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has already staked out one position. Declaring that “laissez-faire capitalism is dead,” he has created a strategic investment fund of 20 billion euros to promote technological innovation, keep advanced industries in French hands, and save jobs. “The day we don’t build trains, airplanes, automobiles, and ships, what will be left of the French economy?” he recently asked rhetorically. “Memories. I will not make France a simple tourist reserve.” This kind of aggressive industrial policy aimed partly at winning over the country’s traditional white working class can go hand-in-hand with the exclusionary anti-immigrant policies with which the French president has been associated.
Global Social Democracy
A new national Keynesianism along Sarkozyan lines, however, is not the only alternative available to global elites. Given the need for global legitimacy to promote their interests in a world where the balance of power is shifting towards the South, western elites might find more attractive an offshoot of European Social Democracy and New Deal liberalism that one might call “Global Social Democracy” or GSD.
Even before the full unfolding of the financial crisis, partisans of GSD had already been positioning it as alternative to neoliberal globalization in response to the stresses and strains being provoked by the latter. One personality associated with it is British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who led the European response to the financial meltdown via the partial nationalization of the banks. Widely regarded as the godfather of the “Make Poverty History” campaign in the United Kingdom, Brown, while he was still the British chancellor, proposed what he called an “alliance capitalism” between market and state institutions that would reproduce at the global stage what he said Franklin Roosevelt did for the national economy: “securing the benefits of the market while taming its excesses.” This must be a system, continued Brown, that “captures the full benefits of global markets and capital flows, minimizes the risk of disruption, maximizes opportunity for all, and lifts up the most vulnerable – in short, the restoration in the international economy of public purpose and high ideals.”
Joining Brown in articulating the Global Social Democratic discourse has been a diverse group consisting of, among others, the economist Jeffrey Sachs, George Soros, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the sociologist David Held, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, and even Bill Gates. There are, of course, differences of nuance in the positions of these people, but the thrust of their perspectives is the same: to bring about a reformed social order and a reinvigorated ideological consensus for global capitalism.
Among the key propositions advanced by partisans of GSD are the following:
Globalization is essentially beneficial for the world; the neoliberals have simply botched the job of managing it and selling it to the public;
It is urgent to save globalization from the neoliberals because globalization is reversible and may, in fact, already be in the process of being reversed;
Growth and equity may come into conflict, in which case one must prioritize equity;
Free trade may not, in fact, be beneficial in the long run and may leave the majority poor, so it is important for trade arrangements to be subject to social and environmental conditions;
Unilateralism must be avoided while fundamental reform of the multilateral institutions and agreements must be undertaken – a process that might involve dumping or neutralizing some of them, like the WTO’s Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPs);
Global social integration, or reducing inequalities both within and across countries, must accompany global market integration;
The global debt of developing countries must be cancelled or radically reduced, so the resulting savings can be used to stimulate the local economy, thus contributing to global reflation;
Poverty and environmental degradation are so severe that a massive aid program or “Marshall Plan” from the North to the South must be mounted within the framework of the “Millennium Development Goals”;
A “Second Green Revolution” must be put into motion, especially in Africa, through the widespread adoption of genetically engineered seeds.
Huge investments must be devoted to push the global economy along more environmentally sustainable paths, with government taking a leading role (“Green Keynesianism” or “Green Capitalism”);
Military action to solve problems must be deemphasized in favor of diplomacy and “soft power,” although humanitarian military intervention in situations involving genocide must be undertaken.
The Limits of Global Social Democracy
Global Social Democracy has not received much critical attention, perhaps because many progressives are still fighting the last war, that is, against neoliberalism. A critique is urgent, and not only because GSD is neoliberalism’s most likely successor. More important, although GSD has some positive elements, it has, like the old Social Democratic Keynesian paradigm, a number of problematic features.
A critique might begin by highlighting problems with four central elements in the GSD perspective.
First, GSD shares neoliberalism’s bias for globalization, differentiating itself mainly by promising to promote globalization better than the neoliberals. This amounts to saying, however, that simply by adding the dimension of “global social integration,” an inherently socially and ecologically destructive and disruptive process can be made palatable and acceptable. GSD assumes that people really want to be part of a functionally integrated global economy where the barriers between the national and the international have disappeared. But would they not in fact prefer to be part of economies that are subject to local control and are buffered from the vagaries of the international economy? Indeed, today’s swift downward trajectory of interconnected economies underscores the validity of one of anti-globalization movement’s key criticisms of the globalization process..
Second, GSD shares neoliberalism’s preference for the market as the principal mechanism for production, distribution, and consumption, differentiating itself mainly by advocating state action to address market failures. The kind of globalization the world needs, according to Jeffrey Sachs in The End of Poverty, would entail “harnessing…the remarkable power of trade and investment while acknowledging and addressing limitations through compensatory collective action.” This is very different from saying that the citizenry and civil society must make the key economic decisions and the market, like the state bureaucracy, is only one mechanism of implementation of democratic decision-making.
Third, GSD is a technocratic project, with experts hatching and pushing reforms on society from above, instead of being a participatory project where initiatives percolate from the ground up.
Fourth, GSD, while critical of neoliberalism, accepts the framework of monopoly capitalism, which rests fundamentally on deriving profit from the exploitative extraction of surplus value from labor, is driven from crisis to crisis by inherent tendencies toward overproduction, and tends to push the environment to its limits in its search for profitability. Like traditional Keynesianism in the national arena, GSD seeks in the global arena a new class compromise that is accompanied by new methods to contain or minimize capitalism’s tendency toward crisis. Just as the old Social Democracy and the New Deal stabilized national capitalism, the historical function of Global Social Democracy is to iron out the contradictions of contemporary global capitalism and to relegitimize it after the crisis and chaos left by neoliberalism. GSD is, at root, about social management.
Obama has a talent for rhetorically bridging different political discourses. He is also a “blank slate” when it comes to economics. Like FDR, he is not bound to the formulas of the ancien regime. He is a pragmatist whose key criterion is success at social management. As such, he is uniquely positioned to lead this ambitious reformist enterprise.
Reveille for Progressives
While progressives were engaged in full-scale war against neoliberalism, reformist thinking was percolating in critical establishment circles. This thinking is now about to become policy, and progressives must work double time to engage it. It is not just a matter of moving from criticism to prescription. The challenge is to overcome the limits to the progressive political imagination imposed by the aggressiveness of the neoliberal challenge in the 1980s combined with the collapse of the bureaucratic socialist regimes in the early 1990s. Progressives should boldly aspire once again to paradigms of social organization that unabashedly aim for equality and participatory democratic control of both the national economy and the global economy as prerequisites for collective and individual liberation.
Like the old post-war Keynesian regime, Global Social Democracy is about social management. In contrast, the progressive perspective is about social liberation.
Copyright © 2008, Institute for Policy Studies
-------
Walden Bello is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus, a senior analyst at the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South, president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition, and a professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines.
One important question, of course, is how decisive and definitive the break with neoliberalism will be. Other questions, however, go to the heart of capitalism itself. Will government ownership, intervention, and control be exercised simply to stabilize capitalism, after which control will be given back to the corporate elites? Are we going to see a second round of Keynesian capitalism, where the state and corporate elites along with labor work out a partnership based on industrial policy, growth, and high wages – though with a green dimension this time around? Or will we witness the beginnings of fundamental shifts in the ownership and control of the economy in a more popular direction? There are limits to reform in the system of global capitalism, but at no other time in the last half century have those limits seemed more fluid.
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has already staked out one position. Declaring that “laissez-faire capitalism is dead,” he has created a strategic investment fund of 20 billion euros to promote technological innovation, keep advanced industries in French hands, and save jobs. “The day we don’t build trains, airplanes, automobiles, and ships, what will be left of the French economy?” he recently asked rhetorically. “Memories. I will not make France a simple tourist reserve.” This kind of aggressive industrial policy aimed partly at winning over the country’s traditional white working class can go hand-in-hand with the exclusionary anti-immigrant policies with which the French president has been associated.
Global Social Democracy
A new national Keynesianism along Sarkozyan lines, however, is not the only alternative available to global elites. Given the need for global legitimacy to promote their interests in a world where the balance of power is shifting towards the South, western elites might find more attractive an offshoot of European Social Democracy and New Deal liberalism that one might call “Global Social Democracy” or GSD.
Even before the full unfolding of the financial crisis, partisans of GSD had already been positioning it as alternative to neoliberal globalization in response to the stresses and strains being provoked by the latter. One personality associated with it is British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who led the European response to the financial meltdown via the partial nationalization of the banks. Widely regarded as the godfather of the “Make Poverty History” campaign in the United Kingdom, Brown, while he was still the British chancellor, proposed what he called an “alliance capitalism” between market and state institutions that would reproduce at the global stage what he said Franklin Roosevelt did for the national economy: “securing the benefits of the market while taming its excesses.” This must be a system, continued Brown, that “captures the full benefits of global markets and capital flows, minimizes the risk of disruption, maximizes opportunity for all, and lifts up the most vulnerable – in short, the restoration in the international economy of public purpose and high ideals.”
Joining Brown in articulating the Global Social Democratic discourse has been a diverse group consisting of, among others, the economist Jeffrey Sachs, George Soros, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the sociologist David Held, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, and even Bill Gates. There are, of course, differences of nuance in the positions of these people, but the thrust of their perspectives is the same: to bring about a reformed social order and a reinvigorated ideological consensus for global capitalism.
Among the key propositions advanced by partisans of GSD are the following:
Globalization is essentially beneficial for the world; the neoliberals have simply botched the job of managing it and selling it to the public;
It is urgent to save globalization from the neoliberals because globalization is reversible and may, in fact, already be in the process of being reversed;
Growth and equity may come into conflict, in which case one must prioritize equity;
Free trade may not, in fact, be beneficial in the long run and may leave the majority poor, so it is important for trade arrangements to be subject to social and environmental conditions;
Unilateralism must be avoided while fundamental reform of the multilateral institutions and agreements must be undertaken – a process that might involve dumping or neutralizing some of them, like the WTO’s Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPs);
Global social integration, or reducing inequalities both within and across countries, must accompany global market integration;
The global debt of developing countries must be cancelled or radically reduced, so the resulting savings can be used to stimulate the local economy, thus contributing to global reflation;
Poverty and environmental degradation are so severe that a massive aid program or “Marshall Plan” from the North to the South must be mounted within the framework of the “Millennium Development Goals”;
A “Second Green Revolution” must be put into motion, especially in Africa, through the widespread adoption of genetically engineered seeds.
Huge investments must be devoted to push the global economy along more environmentally sustainable paths, with government taking a leading role (“Green Keynesianism” or “Green Capitalism”);
Military action to solve problems must be deemphasized in favor of diplomacy and “soft power,” although humanitarian military intervention in situations involving genocide must be undertaken.
The Limits of Global Social Democracy
Global Social Democracy has not received much critical attention, perhaps because many progressives are still fighting the last war, that is, against neoliberalism. A critique is urgent, and not only because GSD is neoliberalism’s most likely successor. More important, although GSD has some positive elements, it has, like the old Social Democratic Keynesian paradigm, a number of problematic features.
A critique might begin by highlighting problems with four central elements in the GSD perspective.
First, GSD shares neoliberalism’s bias for globalization, differentiating itself mainly by promising to promote globalization better than the neoliberals. This amounts to saying, however, that simply by adding the dimension of “global social integration,” an inherently socially and ecologically destructive and disruptive process can be made palatable and acceptable. GSD assumes that people really want to be part of a functionally integrated global economy where the barriers between the national and the international have disappeared. But would they not in fact prefer to be part of economies that are subject to local control and are buffered from the vagaries of the international economy? Indeed, today’s swift downward trajectory of interconnected economies underscores the validity of one of anti-globalization movement’s key criticisms of the globalization process..
Second, GSD shares neoliberalism’s preference for the market as the principal mechanism for production, distribution, and consumption, differentiating itself mainly by advocating state action to address market failures. The kind of globalization the world needs, according to Jeffrey Sachs in The End of Poverty, would entail “harnessing…the remarkable power of trade and investment while acknowledging and addressing limitations through compensatory collective action.” This is very different from saying that the citizenry and civil society must make the key economic decisions and the market, like the state bureaucracy, is only one mechanism of implementation of democratic decision-making.
Third, GSD is a technocratic project, with experts hatching and pushing reforms on society from above, instead of being a participatory project where initiatives percolate from the ground up.
Fourth, GSD, while critical of neoliberalism, accepts the framework of monopoly capitalism, which rests fundamentally on deriving profit from the exploitative extraction of surplus value from labor, is driven from crisis to crisis by inherent tendencies toward overproduction, and tends to push the environment to its limits in its search for profitability. Like traditional Keynesianism in the national arena, GSD seeks in the global arena a new class compromise that is accompanied by new methods to contain or minimize capitalism’s tendency toward crisis. Just as the old Social Democracy and the New Deal stabilized national capitalism, the historical function of Global Social Democracy is to iron out the contradictions of contemporary global capitalism and to relegitimize it after the crisis and chaos left by neoliberalism. GSD is, at root, about social management.
Obama has a talent for rhetorically bridging different political discourses. He is also a “blank slate” when it comes to economics. Like FDR, he is not bound to the formulas of the ancien regime. He is a pragmatist whose key criterion is success at social management. As such, he is uniquely positioned to lead this ambitious reformist enterprise.
Reveille for Progressives
While progressives were engaged in full-scale war against neoliberalism, reformist thinking was percolating in critical establishment circles. This thinking is now about to become policy, and progressives must work double time to engage it. It is not just a matter of moving from criticism to prescription. The challenge is to overcome the limits to the progressive political imagination imposed by the aggressiveness of the neoliberal challenge in the 1980s combined with the collapse of the bureaucratic socialist regimes in the early 1990s. Progressives should boldly aspire once again to paradigms of social organization that unabashedly aim for equality and participatory democratic control of both the national economy and the global economy as prerequisites for collective and individual liberation.
Like the old post-war Keynesian regime, Global Social Democracy is about social management. In contrast, the progressive perspective is about social liberation.
Copyright © 2008, Institute for Policy Studies
-------
Walden Bello is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus, a senior analyst at the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South, president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition, and a professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines.
Dismantling the Imperial Presidency - Aziz Huq
President-elect Obama's first appointments to the Justice, State and Defense Departments mark no radical change. Rather, they return to a centrist consensus familiar from the Clinton years. But pragmatic incrementalism and studied bipartisanship will do little to undo the centerpiece of the Bush/Cheney era's legacy. At its heart, that regime was intent on forcing the Constitution into a new mold of executive dominance.
Obama enters the White House in a slipstream of forces that will hinder attempts to abandon this constitutional vision. He may be a careful constitutional scholar, but we can't rely on Obama alone to reorient the constitutional order. It will be up to progressives to insist on fundamental repudiation of the Bush/Cheney era.
At first blush, Obama's victory is cause for optimism. As a senator he roundly rejected the signature Bush/Cheney national security policies: torture, "extraordinary rendition," Guantánamo and--until July--warrantless surveillance. Obama appointees like Eric Holder as attorney general speak unequivocally against these violations of constitutional and human rights (to be sure, in Holder's case it was after early equivocation).
The most significant Bush/Cheney innovation was planted at the taproot of our Constitution. It was the insistence that the president can exercise what Cheney in 1987 called "monarchical notions of prerogative." That he can, in other words, override validly enacted statutes and treaties simply by invoking national security. This monarchical claim underwrote not only the expansion of torture, extraordinary rendition and warrantless surveillance but also the stonewalling of Congressional and judicial inquiries in the name of "executive privilege" and "state secrets."
The Bush/Cheney White House leveraged pervasive post-9/11 fears to reverse what Cheney called "the erosion of presidential power" since Watergate. Relying on pliant Justice Department lawyers for legal cover, it put into practice a vision of executive power unconstrained by Congress or the courts. It achieved what James Madison once called the "accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands," which he condemned as "the very definition of tyranny."
Radical change is needed to re-establish legitimate bounds to executive power. We must again place beyond the pale Nixon's famous aphorism that "when the president does it, that means it's not illegal." But radical change--as early appointments and policy signals from the Obama transition team suggest--comes easier as campaign slogan than governing practice. And there are many reasons to fear a go-slow approach from Obama when it comes to restoring the constitutional equilibrium.
No matter how decent, any new president is tempted by the tools and trappings of executive authority. However tainted the Oval Office is now, Obama's perspective will change dramatically on entering the White House. He is already reading more daily security briefs than Bush and beginning each day with a barrage of fearful intelligence, hinting at dangers that largely never materialize. Submersion in that flow of intelligence will wrenchingly change his sense of the world's risks.
So Obama will be tempted to maintain Bush's innovations in executive power. While the terror threat remains substantial, as the Mumbai attack shows, the Bush administration has left counterterrorism policy in tatters. We have no rational strategy for terrorist interdiction and prevention. Obama's nominations of Robert Gates as defense secretary and Gen. James Jones as national security adviser suggest he is acutely aware of these deficits and of the Democrats' perceived vulnerability on national security. Nor are terrorists the only threat that might lead Obama to reach for emergency powers: credit crunches and fiscal meltdowns can also prompt unilateral executive action, with consequences as sweeping as any national security initiative.
Internal pressure for changing the White House position on executive power will thus wane as the new administration settles in. And pressure from the other two branches is unlikely to swell. The Obama White House will at first face a friendly Congress eager to show results on the economy and healthcare. Unlike the recently oppositional Congress, legislators in the majority have little incentive to make constitutional waves (expect some stalwarts, such as Senator Russ Feingold, to buck this trend). Matters are not helped by the turn from the feckless to the competent. Legislators and the public care most about the constitutional restraints on executive power when the occupant of the White House raises concerns about abuses of power. A more capable leader's entrance saps immediate pressure for reform, even when openings for such limits can be glimpsed.
Nor will the judiciary, listing rightward with President Bush's 324 appointments, provide much constraint. In his appointments to the Supreme Court and the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals (which hears many key constitutional cases), Bush seems to have selected executive-power mavens, including Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito and Judge Janice Rogers Brown. Their opinions already evince strong deference to executive claims of secrecy and expediency. Paradoxically, then, one of Bush's key legacies will be a judiciary that instinctually hews to an executive controlled by a Democratic president.
I am thus not optimistic that the Obama administration will of its own volition restore the constitutional balance, even if it gives up some of Bush/Cheney's most extravagant and offensive policies. With formidable forces arrayed against them, advocates for the Constitution's original equilibrium of powers must choose their battles carefully.
Three areas are particularly important in the administration's early days: torture, the law that the executive follows and accountability. In each case, measures can be taken that would correct a policy the Obama administration clearly disagrees with and simultaneously help dismantle the Bush/Cheney constitutional revolution. (The other pressing issue to face the incoming administration--detention policy--is so complex and difficult, largely thanks to the outgoing administration's compounded mistakes, that it needs to be looked at separately.)
Begin with torture. President Bush's repeated disavowals of government-sanctioned torture have created cognitive dissonance: White House protestations that "we don't torture" are no longer believed. An Obama administration dedicated to restoring America's tarnished international reputation must do more than talk. The best way to begin is for Congress to enact and President Obama to sign already introduced legislation that would limit the intelligence community to the specific interrogation tactics listed in the recently revised Army Field Manual. This law would make it clear that the CIA in particular cannot use what it euphemistically calls "enhanced interrogation techniques." In signing the law, Obama should eschew the weaseling signing provisos favored by Bush and instead forthrightly recognize that there is no presidential override when it comes to torture. This bill is a golden opportunity to restore international credibility and repudiate the monarchical presidency. So it is unfortunate that Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Ron Wyden have already begun backsliding on it.
Also on the torture front, the Obama administration should candidly acknowledge past wrongs, thereby abandoning the Bush/Cheney demand for absolute secrecy. In legal cases filed by torture victims such as Maher Arar, Khaled el-Masri and Shafiq Rasul, the Bush administration has parried demands for acknowledgment or restitution with a sweeping constitutional theory of "state secrets." Rejecting this theory would be a significant step in dismantling the Bush/Cheney view of executive unilateralism. It would be the smallest measure of justice to abandon this theory as ill founded and also to offer profound apologies and restitution to victims. It would be a public acknowledgment that our fears are never an excuse for anyone's suffering.
Torture is only one aspect of a larger distortion of the Constitution. Changing the executive's operating definitions of the law will be critical to rolling back the Bush/Cheney vision. Now this vision is largely memorialized in Justice Department opinions, many still secret. Some of them directly address presidential prerogatives to override laws. Others deal with specific constitutional rights, such as Fourth Amendment privacy rights and the freedom from indefinite detention without trial.
While there is not much general public pressure to change these positions, many constitutional scholars and advocacy groups have protested these opinions. Consistent pressure is required to ensure that the Obama Justice Department cleans house. All department opinions on executive power should be revealed, and troubling ones should be red-flagged so officials will know they can no longer rely on them. The Justice Department should then develop opinions that systematically repudiate the most offensive positions, in particular the idea of monarchical prerogatives to override the law.
Traditionally, opinions have been prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel in secret and then closely held within the administration. Given executive-branch lawyers' habitual pro-presidential tilt, this process should be refashioned. Not only should opinions be made public after publication; the OLC should invite comment and criticism from the public and scholars during drafting, much as other federal regulations are subject to pre-publication "notice and comment."
Finally, there is the thorny matter of accountability. Absent accountability, the lesson of the Bush/Cheney era would be that those who violate the law can, if brazen enough, get away with it. Yet the Obama transition team has signaled no appetite for criminal proceedings. And in any case, indictments might be pre-empted by a blanket pardon before January 20.
Many others have made a compelling case for prosecutions. But what if they don't happen? Paradoxically, blanket presidential pardons may be the least bad alternative. If prosecutions proceed, they may not be edifying. Admissible evidence will be sparse, given secrecy rules. Officials will protest at being sandbagged after having relied on (flawed) OLC opinions. And there is the danger of a repeat of the Iran/Contra trials, where Oliver North used the dock as a soapbox. Given these risks, a blanket pardon perversely might send the clearest signal that the malaise of the Bush/Cheney era was endemic.
Yet this is no reason to renounce accountability. Several commentators have urged a commission to establish full documentation of what was done and its legal justifications. An investigative commission could be less amenable to manipulation than trials. If it could carry out its work in a bipartisan spirit, while insisting on the investigative tools needed to cut through secrecy, such as subpoena power, it could establish a definitive historical record of Bush/Cheney's extraordinary power grab. Bringing to public scrutiny the imperial presidency's infractions will, I suspect, be as good a way as any of thoroughly discrediting that constitutional vision.
No one should assume that the end of the Bush presidency marks the end of the imperial presidency. The Obama administration faces a geostrategic environment of growing uncertainty, with treasury, reputation and military depleted by eight feckless years. It would be foolhardy simply to assume that the worst will be swept away. Yet the opportunities exist for progressives to insist that Obama stay true to his message of hope and his promise of restoring America's tarnished Constitution.
------
Aziz Huq directs the liberty and national security project at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. He is co-author of Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror (New Press, 2007)
Obama enters the White House in a slipstream of forces that will hinder attempts to abandon this constitutional vision. He may be a careful constitutional scholar, but we can't rely on Obama alone to reorient the constitutional order. It will be up to progressives to insist on fundamental repudiation of the Bush/Cheney era.
At first blush, Obama's victory is cause for optimism. As a senator he roundly rejected the signature Bush/Cheney national security policies: torture, "extraordinary rendition," Guantánamo and--until July--warrantless surveillance. Obama appointees like Eric Holder as attorney general speak unequivocally against these violations of constitutional and human rights (to be sure, in Holder's case it was after early equivocation).
The most significant Bush/Cheney innovation was planted at the taproot of our Constitution. It was the insistence that the president can exercise what Cheney in 1987 called "monarchical notions of prerogative." That he can, in other words, override validly enacted statutes and treaties simply by invoking national security. This monarchical claim underwrote not only the expansion of torture, extraordinary rendition and warrantless surveillance but also the stonewalling of Congressional and judicial inquiries in the name of "executive privilege" and "state secrets."
The Bush/Cheney White House leveraged pervasive post-9/11 fears to reverse what Cheney called "the erosion of presidential power" since Watergate. Relying on pliant Justice Department lawyers for legal cover, it put into practice a vision of executive power unconstrained by Congress or the courts. It achieved what James Madison once called the "accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands," which he condemned as "the very definition of tyranny."
Radical change is needed to re-establish legitimate bounds to executive power. We must again place beyond the pale Nixon's famous aphorism that "when the president does it, that means it's not illegal." But radical change--as early appointments and policy signals from the Obama transition team suggest--comes easier as campaign slogan than governing practice. And there are many reasons to fear a go-slow approach from Obama when it comes to restoring the constitutional equilibrium.
No matter how decent, any new president is tempted by the tools and trappings of executive authority. However tainted the Oval Office is now, Obama's perspective will change dramatically on entering the White House. He is already reading more daily security briefs than Bush and beginning each day with a barrage of fearful intelligence, hinting at dangers that largely never materialize. Submersion in that flow of intelligence will wrenchingly change his sense of the world's risks.
So Obama will be tempted to maintain Bush's innovations in executive power. While the terror threat remains substantial, as the Mumbai attack shows, the Bush administration has left counterterrorism policy in tatters. We have no rational strategy for terrorist interdiction and prevention. Obama's nominations of Robert Gates as defense secretary and Gen. James Jones as national security adviser suggest he is acutely aware of these deficits and of the Democrats' perceived vulnerability on national security. Nor are terrorists the only threat that might lead Obama to reach for emergency powers: credit crunches and fiscal meltdowns can also prompt unilateral executive action, with consequences as sweeping as any national security initiative.
Internal pressure for changing the White House position on executive power will thus wane as the new administration settles in. And pressure from the other two branches is unlikely to swell. The Obama White House will at first face a friendly Congress eager to show results on the economy and healthcare. Unlike the recently oppositional Congress, legislators in the majority have little incentive to make constitutional waves (expect some stalwarts, such as Senator Russ Feingold, to buck this trend). Matters are not helped by the turn from the feckless to the competent. Legislators and the public care most about the constitutional restraints on executive power when the occupant of the White House raises concerns about abuses of power. A more capable leader's entrance saps immediate pressure for reform, even when openings for such limits can be glimpsed.
Nor will the judiciary, listing rightward with President Bush's 324 appointments, provide much constraint. In his appointments to the Supreme Court and the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals (which hears many key constitutional cases), Bush seems to have selected executive-power mavens, including Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito and Judge Janice Rogers Brown. Their opinions already evince strong deference to executive claims of secrecy and expediency. Paradoxically, then, one of Bush's key legacies will be a judiciary that instinctually hews to an executive controlled by a Democratic president.
I am thus not optimistic that the Obama administration will of its own volition restore the constitutional balance, even if it gives up some of Bush/Cheney's most extravagant and offensive policies. With formidable forces arrayed against them, advocates for the Constitution's original equilibrium of powers must choose their battles carefully.
Three areas are particularly important in the administration's early days: torture, the law that the executive follows and accountability. In each case, measures can be taken that would correct a policy the Obama administration clearly disagrees with and simultaneously help dismantle the Bush/Cheney constitutional revolution. (The other pressing issue to face the incoming administration--detention policy--is so complex and difficult, largely thanks to the outgoing administration's compounded mistakes, that it needs to be looked at separately.)
Begin with torture. President Bush's repeated disavowals of government-sanctioned torture have created cognitive dissonance: White House protestations that "we don't torture" are no longer believed. An Obama administration dedicated to restoring America's tarnished international reputation must do more than talk. The best way to begin is for Congress to enact and President Obama to sign already introduced legislation that would limit the intelligence community to the specific interrogation tactics listed in the recently revised Army Field Manual. This law would make it clear that the CIA in particular cannot use what it euphemistically calls "enhanced interrogation techniques." In signing the law, Obama should eschew the weaseling signing provisos favored by Bush and instead forthrightly recognize that there is no presidential override when it comes to torture. This bill is a golden opportunity to restore international credibility and repudiate the monarchical presidency. So it is unfortunate that Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Ron Wyden have already begun backsliding on it.
Also on the torture front, the Obama administration should candidly acknowledge past wrongs, thereby abandoning the Bush/Cheney demand for absolute secrecy. In legal cases filed by torture victims such as Maher Arar, Khaled el-Masri and Shafiq Rasul, the Bush administration has parried demands for acknowledgment or restitution with a sweeping constitutional theory of "state secrets." Rejecting this theory would be a significant step in dismantling the Bush/Cheney view of executive unilateralism. It would be the smallest measure of justice to abandon this theory as ill founded and also to offer profound apologies and restitution to victims. It would be a public acknowledgment that our fears are never an excuse for anyone's suffering.
Torture is only one aspect of a larger distortion of the Constitution. Changing the executive's operating definitions of the law will be critical to rolling back the Bush/Cheney vision. Now this vision is largely memorialized in Justice Department opinions, many still secret. Some of them directly address presidential prerogatives to override laws. Others deal with specific constitutional rights, such as Fourth Amendment privacy rights and the freedom from indefinite detention without trial.
While there is not much general public pressure to change these positions, many constitutional scholars and advocacy groups have protested these opinions. Consistent pressure is required to ensure that the Obama Justice Department cleans house. All department opinions on executive power should be revealed, and troubling ones should be red-flagged so officials will know they can no longer rely on them. The Justice Department should then develop opinions that systematically repudiate the most offensive positions, in particular the idea of monarchical prerogatives to override the law.
Traditionally, opinions have been prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel in secret and then closely held within the administration. Given executive-branch lawyers' habitual pro-presidential tilt, this process should be refashioned. Not only should opinions be made public after publication; the OLC should invite comment and criticism from the public and scholars during drafting, much as other federal regulations are subject to pre-publication "notice and comment."
Finally, there is the thorny matter of accountability. Absent accountability, the lesson of the Bush/Cheney era would be that those who violate the law can, if brazen enough, get away with it. Yet the Obama transition team has signaled no appetite for criminal proceedings. And in any case, indictments might be pre-empted by a blanket pardon before January 20.
Many others have made a compelling case for prosecutions. But what if they don't happen? Paradoxically, blanket presidential pardons may be the least bad alternative. If prosecutions proceed, they may not be edifying. Admissible evidence will be sparse, given secrecy rules. Officials will protest at being sandbagged after having relied on (flawed) OLC opinions. And there is the danger of a repeat of the Iran/Contra trials, where Oliver North used the dock as a soapbox. Given these risks, a blanket pardon perversely might send the clearest signal that the malaise of the Bush/Cheney era was endemic.
Yet this is no reason to renounce accountability. Several commentators have urged a commission to establish full documentation of what was done and its legal justifications. An investigative commission could be less amenable to manipulation than trials. If it could carry out its work in a bipartisan spirit, while insisting on the investigative tools needed to cut through secrecy, such as subpoena power, it could establish a definitive historical record of Bush/Cheney's extraordinary power grab. Bringing to public scrutiny the imperial presidency's infractions will, I suspect, be as good a way as any of thoroughly discrediting that constitutional vision.
No one should assume that the end of the Bush presidency marks the end of the imperial presidency. The Obama administration faces a geostrategic environment of growing uncertainty, with treasury, reputation and military depleted by eight feckless years. It would be foolhardy simply to assume that the worst will be swept away. Yet the opportunities exist for progressives to insist that Obama stay true to his message of hope and his promise of restoring America's tarnished Constitution.
------
Aziz Huq directs the liberty and national security project at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. He is co-author of Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror (New Press, 2007)
onsdag den 24. december 2008
Higher Wages or Bubblenomics: What's it gonna be?
Wages, wages, wages. It all gets down to wages.
A strong economy must be built on a solid foundation of steadily rising wages. If wages don't keep pace with production, the only way the economy can grow is through the expansion of debt, which leads to disaster.
Consider this: the US economy is 72 percent consumer spending. That means the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) cannot grow if salaries don't keep up with the price of living. Low Income Families (LOF)--that is, any couple making less than $80,000--represent 50 percent of all consumer spending. These LOF's spend everything they earn just to maintain their present standard of living. So, how can these families help to grow the economy if they're already spending every last farthing they earn?
They can't! Which is why wages have to go up. The cost to short-term profits is miniscule compared to the turmoil of a deep recession which is what the world is facing right now. The present crisis could have been avoided if there was a better balance between management and labor. But the unions are weak, so salaries have languished while Wall Street has grown more powerful, stretching its tentacles into the government and spreading its anti-labor dogma wherever it goes.
The investor class has rejiggered the system to meet their particular needs. Financial wizardry has replaced factories, capital formation and hard assets while real wealth has been replaced by chopped up bits of mortgage paper, stitched together by Ivy League MBAs, and sold to investors as priceless gemstones. This is the system that Bernanke is trying to resuscitate with his multi-trillion dollar injections; a system that shifts a larger and larger amount of the nation's wealth to a smaller and smaller group of elites.
When Alan Greenspan appeared before Congress a few months ago, he admitted that he had discovered a "flaw" in his theory of how markets operate. The former Fed chief was referring to his belief that investment bankers could be trusted to regulate themselves. Whether one believes Greenspan was telling the truth or not is irrelevant. What really matters is that the wily Maestro managed to skirt the larger issues and stick to his script. Congress never challenged Greenspan's discredited, trickle-down economic theories which guided his policymaking from the get-go. Nor was he asked to explain how a consumer-driven economy can thrive when salaries stay flat for 30 years. An answer to that question might have exposed Greenspan's penchant for low interest rates and deregulation, the two fuel-sources for the massive speculative bubbles which emerged on Greenspan's watch. These are the tools the Fed chief used for 18 years to enrich his buddies at the big brokerage houses while workers slipped further and further into debt.
There's no "flaw" in Greenspan's thinking; his views perfectly reflect his unwavering commitment to the rich and powerful. That's never changed. Since retiring, he has continued to ingratiate himself to his Wall Street paymasters while fattening his bank account with royalties from his best seller. Unfortunately, his success has come at great cost to the country.
Millions of homeowners are now facing eviction, consumers are tapped out, and the job market is in a shambles. When equity bubbles unwind, it's never pretty and the Greenspan implosion has been particularly nasty. Assets are being sold at fire sale prices and there's a frantic rush to the safety of US Treasurys. It's a catastrophe.
That said, it may seem like a bad time to boost workers' pay, but that's not the case. Crisis creates opportunities for change---real structural change. And that's what's needed.
The bottom line is that this whole mess could have been avoided if demand was predicated on wage increases instead of asset inflation. Of course, that precludes the Fed's traditional remedies for economic malaise--easy money and massive leveraging. Just last week, Bernanke announced a plan to buy $800 billion of securities backed by mortgages and credit card debt in an effort to stimulate more borrowing. The Fed chairman would rather drown the country in red ink than support pay raises for workers. Go figure? This just illustrates the class bias that underscores the Fed's policies, which is why pointless to debate the issue or try to find common ground. The only way to effect real change is with political power.
From Bernanke and Greenspan's perspective, any small gain by workers is tantamount to communism. They will continue to do everything in their power to preserve the current labor-debasing system which keeps workers just one paycheck away from the homeless shelter. This type of hostility is neither good for the economy nor the country. It just intensifies class animosities by accentuating the chasm between rich and poor. The only way to overcome these differences is by narrowing the wealth gap and rewarding hard work with fair pay.
John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff explain how establishment economists and their corporate patrons developed their ideas of how to use equity bubbles to grow the economy and shift wealth from workers to elites. In their Monthly Review article "Financial Implosion and Stagnation":
"It was the reality of economic stagnation beginning in the 1970s, as heterodox economists Riccardo Bellofiore and Joseph Halevi have recently emphasized, that led to the emergence of “the new financialized capitalist regime,” a kind of “paradoxical financial Keynesianism” whereby demand in the economy was stimulated primarily “thanks to asset-bubbles.” Moreover, it was the leading role of the United States in generating such bubbles—despite (and also because of) the weakening of capital accumulation proper—together with the dollar’s
reserve currency status, that made U.S. monopoly-finance capital the “catalyst of world effective demand.”
Greenspan figured out how to strengthen the grip of the banking sector by creating asset bubbles. That was his great contribution during the Clinton years. The leveraging of complex financial products and the surge in real estate prices gave the impression of prosperity, but it was all smoke and mirrors. The "wealth effect" vanished as soon as the interest payments on mortgages could no longer be paid. That's when Maestro's bubble blew up and Greenspan retired to write his memoirs.
So far, world stock indexes have lost over $30 trillion and there will probably be another bloody leg down in 2009. As the underlying economy contracts, there's no need for a lumbering, oversized financial system. Institutions will have to be shut down and their assets will have to be sold at auction. That means prices will continue to fall, business activity will falter, and GDP will shrivel. The mismatch between output and falling demand presages a painful correction. When credit gets scarce, business activity slows, and nervous investors head for the exits. That forces businesses to lay off workers which causes prices to fall even further, accelerating the pace of deflation. Economist Henry Liu made these observations in his article "China and the Global financial Crisis":
"US neoliberal trade globalization, having promised a primrose garden of economic growth, has instead led the global economy into a jungle of poison reed, resulting in the worst financial disaster in a century, setting the whole world ablaze with a financial firestorm. This unhappy fate was finally acknowledged as having been policy-induced by Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve who was largely responsible for the monetary indulgence that had caused this hundred-year financial perfect storm....The Federal Reserve under Greenspan repeatedly created money faster than the global economy could profitably absorb, creating serial bubbles denominated in fiat dollars. Greenspan insisted that it was not possible, nor desirable, to identify an economic bubble in the making as he was inflating it with easy money, lest economic growth should be prematurely cut short. It was a perfect example of the rule that intoxication begins when a drinker becomes unable to know its time to stop drinking." (Henry C.K. Liu China and the Global Financial Crisis", Asia Times)
The Fed wants to stimulate demand by slashing the price of money to 0% while pumping trillions of dollars into the financial system (quantitative easing). But the millions of foreclosures, credit card and student loan defaults, indicate that the underlying economy is rapidly contracting and cannot support such an oversized system. Something's gotta' give. Homeowners and consumers are poorer than they were a year ago. They're focused on paying down their debts not creating new ones. Attitudes towards spending have changed; people are hunkering down. That's why Bernanke's radical liquidity experiment is doomed. There's no way to reflate a bubble if consumers refuse to spend.
If the Fed is serious about fulfilling its mandate, it should abandon its serial bubblemaking altogether and return to basics; productivity, good wages and sound money. The country's future rests on its workers. They don't need a bailout, just a raise.
A strong economy must be built on a solid foundation of steadily rising wages. If wages don't keep pace with production, the only way the economy can grow is through the expansion of debt, which leads to disaster.
Consider this: the US economy is 72 percent consumer spending. That means the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) cannot grow if salaries don't keep up with the price of living. Low Income Families (LOF)--that is, any couple making less than $80,000--represent 50 percent of all consumer spending. These LOF's spend everything they earn just to maintain their present standard of living. So, how can these families help to grow the economy if they're already spending every last farthing they earn?
They can't! Which is why wages have to go up. The cost to short-term profits is miniscule compared to the turmoil of a deep recession which is what the world is facing right now. The present crisis could have been avoided if there was a better balance between management and labor. But the unions are weak, so salaries have languished while Wall Street has grown more powerful, stretching its tentacles into the government and spreading its anti-labor dogma wherever it goes.
The investor class has rejiggered the system to meet their particular needs. Financial wizardry has replaced factories, capital formation and hard assets while real wealth has been replaced by chopped up bits of mortgage paper, stitched together by Ivy League MBAs, and sold to investors as priceless gemstones. This is the system that Bernanke is trying to resuscitate with his multi-trillion dollar injections; a system that shifts a larger and larger amount of the nation's wealth to a smaller and smaller group of elites.
When Alan Greenspan appeared before Congress a few months ago, he admitted that he had discovered a "flaw" in his theory of how markets operate. The former Fed chief was referring to his belief that investment bankers could be trusted to regulate themselves. Whether one believes Greenspan was telling the truth or not is irrelevant. What really matters is that the wily Maestro managed to skirt the larger issues and stick to his script. Congress never challenged Greenspan's discredited, trickle-down economic theories which guided his policymaking from the get-go. Nor was he asked to explain how a consumer-driven economy can thrive when salaries stay flat for 30 years. An answer to that question might have exposed Greenspan's penchant for low interest rates and deregulation, the two fuel-sources for the massive speculative bubbles which emerged on Greenspan's watch. These are the tools the Fed chief used for 18 years to enrich his buddies at the big brokerage houses while workers slipped further and further into debt.
There's no "flaw" in Greenspan's thinking; his views perfectly reflect his unwavering commitment to the rich and powerful. That's never changed. Since retiring, he has continued to ingratiate himself to his Wall Street paymasters while fattening his bank account with royalties from his best seller. Unfortunately, his success has come at great cost to the country.
Millions of homeowners are now facing eviction, consumers are tapped out, and the job market is in a shambles. When equity bubbles unwind, it's never pretty and the Greenspan implosion has been particularly nasty. Assets are being sold at fire sale prices and there's a frantic rush to the safety of US Treasurys. It's a catastrophe.
That said, it may seem like a bad time to boost workers' pay, but that's not the case. Crisis creates opportunities for change---real structural change. And that's what's needed.
The bottom line is that this whole mess could have been avoided if demand was predicated on wage increases instead of asset inflation. Of course, that precludes the Fed's traditional remedies for economic malaise--easy money and massive leveraging. Just last week, Bernanke announced a plan to buy $800 billion of securities backed by mortgages and credit card debt in an effort to stimulate more borrowing. The Fed chairman would rather drown the country in red ink than support pay raises for workers. Go figure? This just illustrates the class bias that underscores the Fed's policies, which is why pointless to debate the issue or try to find common ground. The only way to effect real change is with political power.
From Bernanke and Greenspan's perspective, any small gain by workers is tantamount to communism. They will continue to do everything in their power to preserve the current labor-debasing system which keeps workers just one paycheck away from the homeless shelter. This type of hostility is neither good for the economy nor the country. It just intensifies class animosities by accentuating the chasm between rich and poor. The only way to overcome these differences is by narrowing the wealth gap and rewarding hard work with fair pay.
John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff explain how establishment economists and their corporate patrons developed their ideas of how to use equity bubbles to grow the economy and shift wealth from workers to elites. In their Monthly Review article "Financial Implosion and Stagnation":
"It was the reality of economic stagnation beginning in the 1970s, as heterodox economists Riccardo Bellofiore and Joseph Halevi have recently emphasized, that led to the emergence of “the new financialized capitalist regime,” a kind of “paradoxical financial Keynesianism” whereby demand in the economy was stimulated primarily “thanks to asset-bubbles.” Moreover, it was the leading role of the United States in generating such bubbles—despite (and also because of) the weakening of capital accumulation proper—together with the dollar’s
reserve currency status, that made U.S. monopoly-finance capital the “catalyst of world effective demand.”
Greenspan figured out how to strengthen the grip of the banking sector by creating asset bubbles. That was his great contribution during the Clinton years. The leveraging of complex financial products and the surge in real estate prices gave the impression of prosperity, but it was all smoke and mirrors. The "wealth effect" vanished as soon as the interest payments on mortgages could no longer be paid. That's when Maestro's bubble blew up and Greenspan retired to write his memoirs.
So far, world stock indexes have lost over $30 trillion and there will probably be another bloody leg down in 2009. As the underlying economy contracts, there's no need for a lumbering, oversized financial system. Institutions will have to be shut down and their assets will have to be sold at auction. That means prices will continue to fall, business activity will falter, and GDP will shrivel. The mismatch between output and falling demand presages a painful correction. When credit gets scarce, business activity slows, and nervous investors head for the exits. That forces businesses to lay off workers which causes prices to fall even further, accelerating the pace of deflation. Economist Henry Liu made these observations in his article "China and the Global financial Crisis":
"US neoliberal trade globalization, having promised a primrose garden of economic growth, has instead led the global economy into a jungle of poison reed, resulting in the worst financial disaster in a century, setting the whole world ablaze with a financial firestorm. This unhappy fate was finally acknowledged as having been policy-induced by Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve who was largely responsible for the monetary indulgence that had caused this hundred-year financial perfect storm....The Federal Reserve under Greenspan repeatedly created money faster than the global economy could profitably absorb, creating serial bubbles denominated in fiat dollars. Greenspan insisted that it was not possible, nor desirable, to identify an economic bubble in the making as he was inflating it with easy money, lest economic growth should be prematurely cut short. It was a perfect example of the rule that intoxication begins when a drinker becomes unable to know its time to stop drinking." (Henry C.K. Liu China and the Global Financial Crisis", Asia Times)
The Fed wants to stimulate demand by slashing the price of money to 0% while pumping trillions of dollars into the financial system (quantitative easing). But the millions of foreclosures, credit card and student loan defaults, indicate that the underlying economy is rapidly contracting and cannot support such an oversized system. Something's gotta' give. Homeowners and consumers are poorer than they were a year ago. They're focused on paying down their debts not creating new ones. Attitudes towards spending have changed; people are hunkering down. That's why Bernanke's radical liquidity experiment is doomed. There's no way to reflate a bubble if consumers refuse to spend.
If the Fed is serious about fulfilling its mandate, it should abandon its serial bubblemaking altogether and return to basics; productivity, good wages and sound money. The country's future rests on its workers. They don't need a bailout, just a raise.
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