Must we learn this the hard way?
Sheldon Richman. Obama Plays with Fire in Ukraine. 25 april 2014
Het is beter voor Nederland en de internationale gemeenschap dat Obama de verkiezingen wint.
Geert Mak. EO Radio. 6 november 2012
The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy. President and the Press Speech. 27 april 1961
It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
- James Baldwin
- James Baldwin
Four decades of neoliberal policies have resulted in an economic Darwinism that promotes privatization, commodification, free trade, and deregulation. It privileges personal responsibility over larger social forces, reinforces the gap between the rich and poor by redistributing wealth to the most powerful and wealthy individuals and groups, and it fosters a mode of public pedagogy that privileges the entrepreneurial subject while encouraging a value system that promotes self-interest, if not an unchecked selfishness. Since the 1970s, neoliberalism or free-market fundamentalism has become not only a much-vaunted ideology that now shapes all aspects of life in the United States but also a predatory global phenomenon 'that drives the practices and principles of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and World Trade Organization, trans-national institutions which largely determine the economic policies of developing countries and the rules of international trade.'
With its theater of cruelty and mode of public pedagogy, neoliberalism as a form of economic Darwinism attempts to undermine all forms of solidarity capable of challenging market-driven values and social relations, promoting the virtues of an unbridled individualism almost pathological in its disdain for community, social responsibility, public values, and the public good. As the welfare state is dismantled and spending is cut to the point where government becomes unrecognizable—except to promote policies that benefit the rich, corporations, and the defense industry—the already weakened federal and state governments are increasingly replaced by what João Biehl has called proliferating 'zones of social abandonment' and 'terminal exclusion.'
Henry A. Giroux. Neoliberalism's War on Democracy. Zaterdag 26 april 2014
Anoniem heeft een nieuwe reactie op uw bericht 'De Volkskrant Censuur' achtergelaten:
Het is nog ernstiger bij de Volkskrant. Men verwijdert ook keurige berichten nadat deze geplaatst zijn. Om onduidelijke redenen want je krijgt geen terugkoppeling. Deze week werd een opiniestuk geplaatst over Nederlandse Jihadstrijders. De schrijver van het stuk opperde om het Nederlandse paspoort van die lieden maar in te nemen en hen de toegang bij terugkeer te ontzeggen. Er stond een suggestieve foto bij van een licht getinte jongeman met een lap voor zijn gezicht. Nou, een mooie knuppel in het hoenderhok, laat het debat maar beginnen.
Het forum stroomde al snel vol met berichten die het idee ondersteunden, er was maar weinig oppositie. De islamofobie overheerste, de gelegde koppeling met binnenlandse terroristische aanslagen was algemeen.
Je zou verwachten dat een tegengeluid in dat klimaat welkom is. Maar nee, een bericht waarin ik aangeeft het beschamend te vinden dat een wegkijkende wereld individuen die wel iets ondernemen tegen het Assad-regime weg zet als terroristen wordt geplaatst en even later weer verwijderd.
Ik ben verbijsterd. Wie maakt die keuzes? Met welk doel voor ogen? Het lijkt erop dat de anti-islam lobby zich meester heeft gemaakt van de Volkskrantredactie.
Het bovenstaande is een vrij willekeurig gekozen opmaat om de propaganda van de mainstream-opiniemakers tegen het licht te houden. Laat ik beginnen met de beweringen van Paul Scheffer, hoogleraar Europese Studies en vroegere medewerker van De Groene Amsterdammer. In Het Parool van zaterdag 12 april 2014 verklaarde dit lid van Hoflands 'politiek-literaire elite' in de polder ondermeer het volgende:
Wat in Oekraïne gebeurt, is een wake-up-call. Het is bijna onontkoombaar dat Europa zich moet verplichten meer te doen. We worden nu wel heel hard geconfronteerd met de terugkeer van de geopolitiek. Je kunt je afvragen of er een buitenlands beleid moet komen waarin over alles met meerderheid van stemmen wordt besloten en iedereen aan bijvoorbeeld een militaire missie meedoet. Maar het is nogal een beperkt idee om te denken dat we het allemaal op eigen houtje kunnen oplossen. De roep om 'minder Europa' komt voort uit het gevoel van bedreigde veiligheid. Als Europa buitengrenzen beter bewaakt, kan dat het gevoel van veiligheid juist bevorderen.
De interviewer verzuimde te vragen wie de 'we' zijn waarop de professor zich beroept. In elk geval niet de burgers, want die kunnen alleen de dupe worden van een gewapend conflict met Rusland over Oekraïne. Voor alle duidelijkheid Paul Scheffer, is een polder-intellectueel die naarmate hij ouder wordt almaar verrechtst, zeker na de kortstondige flirtage met de in Somalië geboren mevrouw Ayaan Ferguson-Hirsi Magan Isse Guleid Ali Wai’ays Muhammad Ali Umar Osman Mahamud, in Nederland beter bekend als Hirsi Ali. De vraag is: wat zegt Scheffer nu precies, wat beweert hij in deze suggestieve tekst? Laat ik beginnen met het begrip: 'wake-up-call.' Dat is niets minder dan een oproep wakker te worden. De 'Vrije Wereld,' zoals opiniemaker H.J.A. Hofland Europa en de VS met hoofdletters betitelt, wordt volgens Scheffer bedreigt. Er doemt gevaar op aan de horizon, Rusland wil Europa aanvallen, en dus 'worden [we] nu wel heel hard geconfronteerd met de terugkeer van de geopolitiek.' Scheffer stelt hiermee dat Rusland, in tegenstelling tot Washington en Brussel, geopolitiek bedrijft. Impliciet gaat hij ervan uit dat de illegale westerse inval in Irak geen geopolitieke agressie was, maar kennelijk een daad van altruïsme door aldaar de zegeningen van de neoliberale 'democratie' te verspreiden. Hetzelfde geldt voor het westerse geweld in Afghanistan, Libië, en Syrië dat, zoals bekend, in totale chaos is geëindigd. De vraag is nu: wie is de 'we' die bedreigd worden? In elk geval niet de westerse bevolking in de EU en de VS, en zelfs niet de NAVO die de belangen van de westerse elite dient te beschermen. De enige 'bedreiging' die Rusland vormt, is dat deze nucleaire macht de geopolitieke belangen, oftewel het westers expansionisme in de weg staat, waardoor de VS belemmert wordt in het wereldwijd, al dan niet met geweld, afdwingen van zijn hegemonie. Scheffer's 'we' is de economische elite, van wie de macht berust op onbeperkte toegang tot grondstoffen en markten.
'We,' zijn de uiterste kleine groep oppermachtigen, dus de mensen die het meeste belang hebben bij het neoliberale systeem, en die ervoor hebben gezorgd dat nu 85 miljardairs evenveel bezitten als de helft van de mensheid. Die 'we' walgen van een ware democratie en zijn fel gekant tegen een regeling waarbij 'met meerderheid van stemmen wordt besloten' binnen de EU dan wel de NAVO of er een oorlog wordt begonnen en of 'iedereen aan bijvoorbeeld een militaire missie meedoet.' De reden waarom deze 'we' hierop tegen zijn is voor de hand liggend: een 'democratie' kan theoretisch en soms ook in de praktijk voor de elite een ernstige belemmering vormen in het realiseren van de wereldwijde hegemonie. Niet voor niets hebben de Amerikaanse neoconservatieven beleidsbepalers onder Obama met, volgens eigen zeggen, 5 miljard dollar steun van Washington de Oekraïense oppositie de straat opgekregen om met geweld het democratisch gekozen bewind te verdrijven, zodat er een zogeheten 'vrije markt economie' kan worden geïntroduceerd en NAVO-bases kunnen worden geïnstalleerd, van waaruit Rusland wordt bedreigd. En Scheffer heeft volkomen gelijk wanneer hij stelt dat 'het nogal een beperkt idee [is] om te denken dat we het allemaal op eigen houtje kunnen oplossen.' Wil de Amerikaanse elite Rusland met succes dwingen haar wil te gehoorzamen terwijl de Russische elite het expansionistische westerse neoliberalisme blijft dwarsbomen, dan kan dit alleen in NAVO-verband en met zoveel mogelijk steun van de westerse bevolking. Op dit punt aangekomen zijn opiniemakers als Paul Scheffer van eminent belang. De propagandisten zijn onmisbaar bij het zoveel mogelijk angst veroorzaken onder de bevolking. Hoe angstiger het volk, des te plooibaarder het is. En dus maakt de hoogleraar Europese Studies een adembenemend somersault, waarbij hij het domein van de logica op fenomenale wijze ontstijgt. Hij koppelt moeiteloos het één aan het ander door te beweren:
De roep om 'minder Europa' komt voort uit het gevoel van bedreigde veiligheid. Als Europa buitengrenzen beter bewaakt, kan dat het gevoel van veiligheid juist bevorderen.
Kortom, door de NAVO nog meer wapens en macht te geven, onder het mom van de 'buitengrenzen beter' bewaken, wordt onder de bevolking 'het gevoel van veiligheid juist' bevordert! Is dit niet fantastisch? Vier vliegen in één klap: het militair-industrieel complex kan op volle toeren blijven draaien, het Westen kan blijven expanderen, de burger voelt zich veiliger, én -- het geluk kan niet op -- de neoliberale Europese Unie van Mak's 'Geen Jorwerd zonder Brussel' kan nog meer macht naar zich toetrekken. Zo leven we allen lang en gelukkig in één grote totalitaire heilstaat. Tot zover de zelfbenoemde Nederlandse 'politiek-literaire elite.' Om het simplistisch mens- en wereldbeeld van al die elkaar napratende buitenstaanders in de polder te ontstijgen, wil ik nu een Amerikaanse 'insider' aan het woord laten. Iemand die uit directe ervaring weet waarover hij spreekt. Zijn naam is Paul Craig Roberts en hij was:
Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. He was associate editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service. He is a contributing editor to Gerald Celente's Trends Journal. He has had numerous university appointments. His latest book is 'The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West.'
Zaterdag 26 april 2014 schreef Roberts het volgende op zijn website:
Moving Closer To War
Paul Craig Roberts
The Obama regime, wallowing in hubris and arrogance, has recklessly escalated the Ukrainian crisis into a crisis with Russia. Whether intentionally or stupidly, Washington’s propagandistic lies are driving the crisis to war. Unwilling to listen to any more of Washington’s senseless threats, Moscow no longer accepts telephone calls from Obama and US top officials.
The crisis in Ukraine originated with Washington’s overthrow of the elected democratic government and its replacement with Washington’s hand-chosen stooges. The stooges proceeded to act in word and deed against the populations in the former Russian territories that Soviet Communist Party leaders had attached to Ukraine. The consequence of this foolish policy is agitation on the part of the Russian speaking populations to return to Russia. Crimea has already rejoined Russia, and eastern Ukraine and other parts of southern Ukraine are likely to follow.
Instead of realizing its mistake, the Obama regime has encouraged the stooges Washington installed in Kiev to use violence against those in the Russian-speaking areas who are agitating for referendums so that they can vote their return to Russia. The Obama regime has encouraged violence despite President Putin’s clear statement that the Russian military will not occupy Ukraine unless violence is used against the protesters.
We can safely conclude that Washington either does not listen when spoken to or Washington desires violence.
As Washington and NATO are not positioned at this time to move significant military forces into Ukraine with which to confront the Russian military, why is the Obama regime trying to provoke action by the Russian military? A possible answer is that Washington’s plan to evict Russia from its Black Sea naval base having gone awry, Washington’s fallback plan is to sacrifice Ukraine to a Russian invasion so that Washington can demonize Russia and force a large increase in NATO military spending and deployments.
In other words, the fallback prize is a new cold war and trillions of dollars more in profits for Washington’s military/security complex.
The handful of troops and aircraft that Washington has sent to “reassure” the incompetent regimes in those perennial trouble spots for the West–Poland and the Baltics–and the several missile ships sent to the Black Sea amount to nothing but symbolic provocations.
Economic sanctions applied to individual Russian officials signal nothing but Washington’s impotence. Real sanctions would harm Washington’s NATO puppet states far more than the sanctions would hurt Russia.
It is clear that Washington has no intention of working anything out with the Russian government. Washington’s demands make this conclusion unavoidable. Washington is demanding that the Russian government pull the rug out from under the protesting populations in eastern and southern Ukraine and force the Russian populations in Ukraine to submit to Washington’s stooges in Kiev. Washington also demands that Russia renege on the reunification with Crimea and hand Crimea over to Washington so that the original plan of evicting Russia from its Black Sea
naval base can go forward.
naval base can go forward.
In other words, Washington’s demand is that Russia put Humpty Dumpty back together again and hand him over to Washington.
This demand is so unrealistic that it surpasses the meaning of arrogance. The White House Fool is telling Putin: “I screwed up my takeover of your backyard. I want you to fix the situation for me and to ensure the success of the strategic threat I intended to bring to your backyard.”
The presstitute Western media and Washington’s European puppet states are supporting this unrealistic demand. Consequently, Russian leaders have lost all confidence in the word and intentions of the West, and this is how wars start.
European politicians are putting their countries at great peril and for what gain? Are Europe’s politicians blackmailed, threatened, paid off with bags of money, or are they so accustomed to following Washington’s lead that they are unable to do anything else? How do Germany, UK, and France benefit from being forced into a confrontation with Russia by Washington?
Washington’s arrogance is unprecedented and is capable of driving the world to destruction. Where is Europe’s sense of self-preservation? Why hasn’t Europe issued arrest warrants for every member of the Obama regime? Without the cover provided by Europe and the presstitute media, Washington would not be able to drive the world to war.
Zodra men de opvattingen en feiten van insiders raadpleegt, vooral Amerikaanse, komt men al snel tot de ontdekking hoe onnozel en vooral ook gevaarlijk de polderpers is. Zonder goed geïnformeerd te zijn hebben ze al meteen een oordeel. Daarom nog maar een insider aan het woord gelaten, te weten Albert Einstein die in Pleidooi Voor Een Militant Pacifisme in 1986 erop wees dat
Als we de rijkdommen van de wereld op de juiste manier zouden verdelen in plaats van onszelf slaafs te onderwerpen aan starre economische doctrines of tradities dan zou er genoeg geld, genoeg werk, genoeg eten zijn. Maar nog belangrijker is dat we ervoor zorgen dat onze gedachten en onze energie constructief werk kunnen blijven doen en niet worden misbruikt voor de voorbereiding van een nieuwe oorlog…
Elke oorlog voegt een nieuwe schakel toe aan het kwaad dat de vooruitgang van de menselijkheid in de weg staat. Een handvol dienstweigeraars kan het algemene protest tegen de oorlog echter dramatiseren.
Zolang ze niet door propaganda wordt vergiftig, moet de massa niets van oorlogen hebben. Wij moeten de massa immuun maken voor propaganda. Wij moeten onze kinderen inenten tegen het militarisme door ze op te voeden in de geest van het pacifisme.
Wat moet de mens vandaag de dag aan met de Scheffertjes, de Makjes, de Hoflandjes, en al die andere lichtgewichten die, in een armzalige poging te overleven, in hun eigen gekte zijn gaan geloven? In de HBO-serie Game of Thrones zeggen twee intriganten aan het hof the volgende:
- The realm. Do you know what the realm is? […] A story we agreed to tell each other, over and over, till we forget that it is a lie.
- But what do we have left once we abandon the lie? Chaos. A gaping pit waiting to swallow us all.
- Chaos isn't a pit, chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb fail, and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some, given a chance to climb, they refuse, they clinch the realm, or the gods, or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.
Onder de opiniemakers zijn er de dromers en de cynici, beiden streven naar de macht, de één pretendeert namens het rijk, de gemeenschap te spreken, vreest de 'chaos' en vernietigt op die manier alles dat in zijn weg staat, de ander weet dat alles 'illusie' is en dat alleen het zuivere egoïsme waar is en vernietigt op deze manier alles dat in zijn weg staat. Beiden zijn natuurlijk stereotypen, want allen die op macht uitzijn dragen alle elementen in zich.
Zaterdag 26 april 2014 beweerde de journalist Bas den Hond, helemaal vanuit Boston, in een opiniestuk over de hele breedte van de voorpagina van Trouw onder de wervend bedoelde kop 'De kou is terug in de Situation Room. President Obama kan putten uit oude doctrine voor zijn omgang met het Rusland van Poetin' het volgende:
Wat Vladimir Poetin bezielt, is de VS al sinds 1946 duidelijk: 'Achter de neurotische kijk van het Kremlin op de gebeurtenissen in de wereld schuilt het traditionele en instinctieve Russische gevoel van onveiligheid. Oorspronkelijk was dat de onveiligheid van een vreedzaam landbouwend volk dat in leven probeerde te blijven op een enorme, onbeschermde vlakte, in de buurt van strijdlustige nomadenvolken.'
Zo schreef George Kennan, de beroemde Amerikaanse historicus en ambassadeur in Moskou, in 1946 in zijn fameuze 'lange telegram' aan Washington. Hij schraapte daarin het ideologische vernis van het regime dat de VS had geholpen Hitler te verslaan, maar dat daarna een angstwekkende factor was op het wereldtoneel.
Een jaar later gebruikte hij in een artikel voor het eerst het woord 'containment': de taak waar de VS voor stonden was de 'lange-termijn, waakzame indamming van Russische expansieve neigingen.' Daarmee werd Kennan de architect van de Koude Oorlog.
Moet het Westen weer zo'n oorlog voeren? Dat is de keuze waarvoor de Amerikaanse president Barack Obama nu staat als gevolg van de crisis in en om Oekraïne.
Zou de stelligheid waarmee Bas den Hond dit en nog meer verkondigt gebaseerd zijn op de bestudering van George Kennan's boeken? Ik vrees van niet. Ik vermoed dat collega Den Hond veel van zijn kennis bijeen geschraapt heeft uit de Amerikaanse mainstream-media, zoals bijvoorbeeld de website van Boston's NPR News Station:
http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2014/03/07/ukraine-russia-thomas-j-whalen
http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2014/03/07/ukraine-russia-thomas-j-whalen
Het gebruikelijke overschrijven en napraten van de Amerikaanse mainstream-media verklaart het feit dat de buitenlandredacteur van Trouw, en voormalige praktijkdocent Journalistiek aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Kennan zo opmerkelijk selectief citeert, en diens uitspraken uit zijn verband rukt. Laten we beginnen met de 'Russische expansieve neigingen,' dat zo'n 'angstwekkende factor was op het wereldtoneel.' Den Hond suggereert hier dat na '45 het Westen bedreigd werd door Rusland, een land waarvan de infrastructuur van het Europese deel door de nazi-troepen was verwoest tijdens de inval waarbij 27 miljoen Sovjet-inwoners om het leven waren gekomen. Dus totaal niet in staat was een serieuze bedreiging te vormen, zoals nu ook onder academici algemeen wordt aangenomen. Er bestaat een wetenschappelijke consensus over het feit dat de Koude Oorlog
was global competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to shape and control the post-World War II global economic and political order.
Daarbij wordt ondermeer gewezen op een belangrijk feit dat Bas den Hond niet meldt, namelijk dat dezelfde George Kennan, als hoofd van het Planningbureau van het Amerikaanse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, in 1948 schreef:
we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction…
We should dispense with the aspiration to 'be liked' or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and… unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.
Kern van Kennan's betoog is dat het beleid van Washington erop gericht moest zijn 'to maintain this position of disparity,' waarbij de VS 'about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 of its population,' bezat. Daarom moesten de beleidsbepalers 'all sentimentality and daydreaming' terzijde schuiven, en 'should cease to talk about vague and… unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization.' Het spreekt voor zich dat om het mogelijk te maken dat slechts 6,3 procent van de wereldbevolking ongeveer 50 procent van alle rijkdommen op aarde in handen zou handen de VS gedwongen was om met geweld de alleenheerschappij af te dwingen. Vandaar ook dat voor de overgrote meerderheid van de wereldbevolking zeker de VS nog steeds wordt gezien als 'een angstwekkend' fenomeen op aarde. Maar dat verzwijgt Bas den Hond. Wat hij eveneens verdoezelt is dat in
February 1997, Mr. Kennan wrote on The New York Times's Op-Ed page that the Clinton administration's decision to back an enlargement of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to bring it to the borders of Russia was a terrible mistake. He wrote that 'expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold war era.'
'Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking,' he wrote. His views, shared by a broad range of policy experts, did not prevail.
En de reden waarom de NAVO na de val van de Sovjet Unie werd uitgebreid, was domweg de macht van het militair-industrieel complex waarvoor president Eisenhower tijdens zijn afscheidsrede al in 1961 had gewaarschuwd. Het politieke beleid onder Clinton, Bush en Obama bleef en blijft dan ook de belangen van Wall Street behartigen, en daarom rukt de NAVO oostwaarts op, terwijl de westerse mainstream opiniemakers het doen voorkomen alsof het tegenovergestelde gebeurt. Ondertussen bereiden propagandisten als Bas den Hond al dan niet op de voorpagina van hun kranten de lezers voor op een oorlog met Rusland, al was het maar omdat 'Het regime niet gevoelig [is] voor de logica van de rede, maar wel voor de logica van kracht,' zo citeert hij de 'goede leermeester Kennan' en 'Met dat advies kan ook de huidige Amerikaanse president het doen,' aldus concludeert in al zijn dwaasheid deze Trouw-redacteur, kennelijk niet beseffend wat de consequenties zijn van dit advies.
To be realistic in these circumstances was in a way to understand the inherent limits of things, the futility (indeed blasphemy) of extending radically beyond the existing, the real. At different moments Kennan thus criticized the Sovjet Union and the United States alike for being unrealistic in this sense of not acknowledging given limits... he was aware by the end of the 1940s that the United States was embarking on a course of potentially open-ended commitments around the world, and this he could not but find dangerous and unnatural.
Het tragische van Kennan is dat hij na een lang leven getuige te zijn geweest van Amerika’s machiavellistische realpolitik, in 1989 een gedesillusioneerde terugblik schreef op zijn tijdperk. Aan het slot van zijn Sketches From A Life stelde hij somber vast:
Ik beschouw de Verenigde Staten van deze laatste jaren van de twintigste eeuw als een in wezen tragisch land, begiftigd met uitstekende natuurlijke hulpbronnen die het snel aan het verkwisten en uitputten is, en met een intellectuele en artistieke intelligentsia van groot talent en originaliteit. Voor deze intelligentsia hebben de dominante politieke machten in het land weinig begrip of respect. Haar stem wordt doorgaans tot zwijgen gebracht of overschreeuwd door de commerciële media. Het is waarschijnlijk veroordeeld om, net als de Russische intelligentsia in de negentiende eeuw, voorgoed een hulpeloze toeschouwer te blijven van de verontrustende koers in het leven van de natie.
acceptance of containment also brought Kennan disappointments that haunted him until his death in 2005. Kennan believed that the Soviet Union, however repugnant, posed little military threat to the West and urged that the United States rely mostly on economic and political means to resist Communist expansion. Other officials, above all Nitze, who succeeded Kennan as chief of policy planning, saw things differently, especially after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. Kennan watched with regret as the United States subsequently poured enormous resources into weaponry and military bases.
Het simplisme van de mainstream pers laat geen ruimte voor een genuanceerder beeld, en zeker niet voor de werkelijkheid. In de zwart/wit vertekening van de realiteit vormt de eigen partij de helden en alle anderen de boeven. Anders begrijpt de polderpers het niet. Meer later.
Zie ook: http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.nl/search?q=bas+den+hond
En ja hoor, binnen een maand de politieke reactie, Hofland maakt de weg vrij:
UN Human Rights Committee finds US in violation on 25 counts
De Russische annexatie van de Krim en de permanente onrust in Oekraïne hebben in het Westen langzamerhand een begin van paniek doen ontstaan. Na de Koude Oorlog heeft wat we toen de Vrije Wereld noemden bij gebrek aan de volgende globale tegenstander haar defensie verwaarloosd. In het begin werd dat in dit deel van de wereld als een geweldig voordeel beschouwd.
H.J.A. Hofland. Provinciaal Europa. 2 april 2014
En ja hoor, binnen een maand de politieke reactie, Hofland maakt de weg vrij:
'Zorg voor meer geld bij defensie'
VVD-fractieleider Zijlstra: 'Uitdaging voor Dijsselbloem' ... 'Amerikanen kunnen niet blijven opdraaien voor kosten'
And in the meantime:
What the 1% Don’t Want You to Know
The median pay for the top 100 highest-paid CEOs at America’s publicly traded companies was a handsome $13.9 million in 2013. That’s a 9 percent increase from the previous year, according to a new Equilar pay studyfor The New York Times.
These types of jumps in executive compensation may have more of an effect on our widening income inequality than previously thought. A new book that’s the talk of academia and the media, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, a 42-year-old who teaches at the Paris School of Economics, shows that two-thirds of America’s increase in income inequality over the past four decades is the result of steep raises given to the country’s highest earners.
This week, Bill talks with Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, about Piketty’s “magnificent” new book.
“What Piketty’s really done now is he said, ‘Even those of you who talk about the 1 percent, you don’t really get what’s going on.’ He’s telling us that we are on the road not just to a highly unequal society, but to a society of an oligarchy. A society of inherited wealth.”
Krugman adds: “We’re seeing inequalities that will be transferred across generations. We are becoming very much the kind of society we imagined we’re nothing like.”
UN Human Rights Committee finds US in violation on 25 counts
April 23, 2014
by Adam Hudson
While President Obama told the country to “look forward, not backward” when it came to Bush’s torture program, the United Nations has taken a different route. Recently, the U.N. Human Rights Committee issued a reportexcoriating the United States for its human rights violations. It focuses on violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the country is party.
Prisoners at the infamous Angola, a 17,000-acre former slave plantation that serves as the Louisiana State Penitentiary, return from a long day’s work in the fields, their white overseer spurring on the marching Black men.
The report mentions 25 human rights issues where the United States is failing. This piece will focus on a few of those issues – Guantanamo, NSA surveillance, accountability for Bush-era human rights violations, drone strikes, racism in the prison system, racial profiling, police violence and criminalization of the homeless.
Accountability for Bush-era crimes; torture
The U.N. committee expressed concerned with “the limited number of investigations, prosecutions and convictions of members of the Armed Forces and other agents of the U.S. government, including private contractors” for “unlawful killings in its international operations” and “torture” in CIA black sites during the Bush years. It welcomed the closing of the CIA black sites, but criticized the “meager number of criminal charges brought against low-level operatives” for abuses carried out under the CIA’s rendition, interrogation and detention program. The committee also found fault with the fact that many details of the CIA’s torture program “remain secret, thereby creating barriers to accountability and redress for victims.”
In response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration jettisoned the Constitution and international law and openly embraced the use of torture against suspected terrorists captured overseas. The CIA tortured people in secret prisons around the world known as “black sites.” Torture was sanctioned from the top down. Then-President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, lawyers and many others in the executive branch played roles in crafting nifty ways to justify, approve and implement the use of torture.
Rather than be held accountable, the top-level government officials responsible for authorizing torture and other crimes have been given comfort in the public sphere. Condoleezza Rice returned to Stanford University as a political science professor. John Yoo, who authored the torture memos, is a law professor at UC Berkeley. Jose Rodriguez, a former CIA officer in the Bush administration, vigorously defends torture in his autobiography andinterviews. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are able to rest comfortably in retirement and continue to defend their records.
The committee also found fault with the fact that many details of the CIA’s torture program “remain secret, thereby creating barriers to accountability and redress for victims.”
In the Guantanamo military commissions, evidence of torture is concealed. A “protective order” restricts what defense lawyers and the accused can say about how the defendants were treated in CIA black sites, including details of torture, because that information is classified. Defense lawyers have been fighting for declassification of those details, as they are mitigating evidence.
The potential release of portions of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA torture program couldtip the scale in the defense attorneys’ favor. “There is every reason to believe the SSCI (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) Report contains information about the CIA’s torture of Mr. al Baluchi,” said defense attorney James Connell, who represents Ammar al-Baluchi, one of the five 9/11 defendants, in a press statement. “The SSCI knows the truth of what happened, and the military commission considering whether to execute Mr. al Baluchi should know too.”
Racism in the prison system; racial profiling; police brutality
Of the report’s 25 issues, four looked at racial disparities within the United States’ criminal justice system and law enforcement practices. It denounced the “racial disparities at different stages in the criminal justice system, sentencing disparities and the overrepresentation of individuals belonging to racial and ethnic minorities in prisons and jails.”
The committee condemned racial profiling by police and FBI-NYPD surveillance of Muslims – but it did welcome plans to reform New York City’s “stop and frisk” program. It also denounced the continuing use of the death penalty and “racial disparities in its imposition that affects disproportionately African Americans.”
Finally, it expressed concern at “the still high number of fatal shootings by certain police forces” and “reports of excessive use of force by certain law enforcement officers including the deadly use of tasers, which have a disparate impact on African Americans, and the use of lethal force by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at the U.S.-Mexico border.”
Of the report’s 25 issues, four looked at racial disparities within the United States’ criminal justice system and law enforcement practices.
The United States contains the largest prison population in the world, holding over 2.4 million people in domestic jails and prisons, immigration detention centers, military prisons, civil commitment centers and juvenile correctional facilities. Its prison population is even larger than those of authoritarian governments like China and Russia, which, respectively, hold 1,640,000 and 681,600 prisoners, according to the International Centre for Prison Studies.
More than 60 percent of the U.S. prison population are people of color. African Americans, while 13 percent of the national population, constitute nearly 40 percent of the prison population. Moreover, one in every three Black males can expect to go to prison in their lifetime, compared to one in every six Latino males, and one in every 17 white males.
Thus, Black men are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white men. Even though whites and Blacks use drugs at roughly the same rates, African Americans are more likely to be imprisoned for drug-related offenses than whites.
The United States contains the largest prison population in the world, holding over 2.4 million people in domestic jails and prisons, immigration detention centers, military prisons, civil commitment centers and juvenile correctional facilities. Its prison population is even larger than those of authoritarian governments like China and Russia.
Every 28 hours, a Black person is killed by a police officer, security guard, or self-appointed vigilante, according to a report by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. Recently in New York City, NYPD brutalized two teenage African-American girls at a Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn. A 16-year-old girl’s face was slammed against the floor, while police threw the 15-year-old through the restaurant’s window, shattering it as a result. The incident started when police ordered everyone to leave the restaurant, but one of the girls refused.
This was the scene on April 4, 2014, just after NYPD officers threw a teenage girl through the restaurant’s plate glass window. – Photo: Brooklyn Paper
While police violence against people of color has long existed, the militarization of American police exacerbates this trend. This trend began when Richard Nixon inaugurated the War on Drugs in the 1970s. Then in 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed the Military Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies Act, which provided civilian police agencies with military equipment, training, advice and access to military research and facilities.
When 9/11 hit, police militarization kicked into overdrive with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which has given police still greater access to military equipment, like armored personnel carriers and high-powered weapons for anti-terrorism purposes. Now police look, act and think like the military, with dangerous consequences for the communities they serve.
Among the report’s suggestions to curb excessive police violence were better reporting of incidents, accountability for perpetrators, and “ensuring compliance with the ‘1990 U.N. Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officers.’” The “Basic Principles” include a number of provisions, including “Law enforcement officials, in carrying out their duty, shall, as far as possible, apply non-violent means before resorting to the use of force and firearms” and “Governments shall ensure that arbitrary or abusive use of force and firearms by law enforcement officials is punished as a criminal offence under their law.”
Drone strikes, assassination
To execute its perpetual global war on terrorism, the Bush administration favored large-scale, conventional land invasions and occupations, as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama has moved away from such operations and embraced seemingly lighter tactics of irregular warfare to continue the perpetual war, while making it less visible to Americans. Extrajudicial killing and drone strikes are the most notable methods, but others include air strikes,cruise missile attacks, cyberwarfare, special operations and proxy wars.
These tactics have meant more use of the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and the paramilitary branch of the CIA. Both the CIA and JSOC carry out drone strikes and sometimes collaborate in joint operations. The CIA, not the military, is legally mandated to launch covert operations, which are classified and unacknowledged by the U.S. government. However, JSOC performs essentially the same operations, particularlyextrajudicial killings. Thus, transferring control of the drone program from the CIA to the military would make little difference.
The U.N. report criticized the United States’ assassination program and drone strikes. It expressed concerned with the “lack of transparency regarding the criteria for drone strikes, including the legal justification for specific attacks and the lack of accountability for the loss of life resulting from such attacks.” The United States’ position for justifying its extrajudicial killing operations is that it is engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and “associated forces” – a term the Obama administration created to refer to co-belligerents with al-Qaeda – and that the war is in accordance with the nation’s inherent right to self-defense against a terrorist enemy.
Obama has embraced seemingly lighter tactics of irregular warfare to continue the perpetual war, while making it less visible to Americans. Extrajudicial killing and drone strikes are the most notable methods, but others include air strikes, cruise missile attacks, cyberwarfare, special operations and proxy wars.
However, the committee took issue with the United States’ position, particularly its “very broad approach to the definition and the geographical scope of an armed conflict, including the end of hostilities.” A May 2010 report by Philip Alston, former U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, notes that, under international law, states cannot wage war against non-state actors, such as international terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, because of their nebulous character and loose affiliations.
The committee’s report also took issue with “the unclear interpretation of what constitutes an ‘imminent threat’ and who is a combatant or civilian taking a direct part in hostilities, the unclear position on the nexus that should exist between any particular use of lethal force and any specific theatre of hostilities, as well as the precautionary measures taken to avoid civilian casualties in practice.”
Under international law, self-defense against an “imminent” threat is confined to cases in which the “necessity of that self-defense is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation.” However, the Obama administration completely obliterated this meaning.
In a 16-page white paper leaked to NBC News, the Obama administration believes that whether “an operational leader presents an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.” Thus, a “high-level official could conclude, for example, that an individual poses an ‘imminent threat’ of violent attack against the United States where he is an operational leader of al-Qa’ida or an associated force and is personally and continually involved in planning terrorist attacks against the United States” without any proof of an actual plot against the U.S.
Thus, in Obama-lingo, the word “imminent” means the complete opposite of what it means in the English language.
A U.S. assassination drone kills 22 people in Gedo, Somalia, on April 27, 2012. – Photo: Press TV
There is no due process in the assassination program, either. President Obama and his advisors decide who will be killed by a drone strike in a secret internal executive branch process that occurs every Tuesday. Even American citizens are fair game for the assassination program. In fact, four U.S. citizens have been killed by drone strikes, including a 16-year-old boy.
A database called the“disposition matrix” adds names to kill or capture lists, ensuring the assassination program will continue no matter who is in office. Targeting for drone strikes is not based on human intelligence but, rather, signals intelligence, particularly metadata analysis and cellphone tracking. According to a report by The Intercept, the NSA geolocates a SIM card or mobile phone of a suspected terrorist, which helps the CIA and JSOC to track an individual to kill or capture in a night raid or drone strike.
However, it is very common for people in places like Yemen or Pakistan, to hold multiple SIM cards, give their phones, with the SIM cards in them, to children, friends and family and for groups like the Taliban to randomly distribute SIM cards among their units to confuse trackers. As a result, since this methodology targets SIM cards rather than real people, civilians are regularly killed by mistake.
As with the word “imminent,” the Obama administration utilizes its own warped definitions of “civilian” and “combatant.” As The New York Times reported in May 2012, the Obama administration “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants … unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”
Despite claims to the contrary, drone strikes kill a significant number of civilians and inflict serious human suffering. So far, U.S. drone strikes and other covert operations have killed between 2,700 and nearly 5,000 people, including 500 to more than 1,100 civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s figures.
Many of those deaths occurred under Obama’s watch, with drone strikes killing at least 2,400 people during his five years in office. Only 2 percent of those killed by drone strikes in Pakistan are high-level militants, while mostare low-level fighters and civilians. In addition to causing physical harm, drone strikes terrorize and traumatizecommunities that constantly live under them.
Despite claims to the contrary, drone strikes kill a significant number of civilians and inflict serious human suffering.
Drone strikes have lulled in Pakistan due to peace talks between the Pakistani government and Pakistan Taliban, which collapsed on Feb. 17. The last U.S. drone strike in Pakistan happened on Christmas Day 2013.
In Yemen, drone strikes have continued. Several U.S. drone strikes in Yemen occurred during the first 12 days of March. Last November, six months after President Obama laid out new rules for U.S. drone strikes, a TBIJanalysis showed that “covert drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed more people than in the six months before the speech.”
It also was recently reported that the Obama administration is debating whether to kill a U.S. citizen in Pakistan who is suspected of “actively plotting terrorist attacks,” according to The New York Times.
It is very likely these operations will continue. The Pentagon’s 2015 budget proposal, taking sequestration into account, spends $0.4 billion less than 2014 at $495.6 billion, shrinks the Army down to between 440,000 to 450,000 troops from the post-9/11 peak of 570,000, and protects money for cyberwarfare and special operations forces.
Cyber operations are allocated $5.1 billion in the proposal, while U.S. Special Operations Command gets $7.7 billion, which is 10 percent more than in 2014, and a force of 69,700 personnel. While President Obama promised to take the United States off a “permanent war footing,” his administration’s policies tell a different story. The Obama administration is reconfiguring, rather than halting, America’s “permanent war footing.”
Guantanamo, indefinite detention
President Obama recommitted himself to closing the prison in Guantanamo last year but has made little progress, which the U.N. report noted. The committee said it “regrets that no timeline for closure of the facility has been provided.” It also expressed concern that “detainees held in Guantanamo Bay and in military facilities in Afghanistan are not dealt with within the ordinary criminal justice system after a protracted period of over a decade in some cases.”
The report called on the United States to expedite the transfer of prisoners out of Guantanamo, close the prison, “end the system of administrative detention without charge or trial” and “ensure that any criminal cases against detainees held in Guantanamo and military facilities in Afghanistan are dealt with within the criminal justice system rather than military commissions and that those detainees are afforded fair trial guarantees.”
Art: Lance Page, Truthout
Currently, 154 men remain held in the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Of those, 76 are cleared for release; around four dozen will remain inindefinite detention; 20 can be “realistically prosecuted,” according to chief prosecutor Brig. Gen. Mark Martins’ estimate; six are being tried in military commissions and two are serving sentences after being convicted in the commissions.
President Obama promised to close Guantanamo right when he stepped into office. However, he has yet to fulfill that promise. Congressional obstructionism, especially from the Republican Party, has stalled his plans. For a long time, Congress blocked funding for transferring Guantanamo prisoners. Recently, though, Congresseased those restrictions, making it easier to transfer prisoners to other countries, but not to the United States.
While the Obama administration is working to close the prison at Guantanamo, it maintains the policy of indefinite detention without trial, designating nearly four dozen Guantanamo prisoners for forever imprisonment. Obama’s original plan to close Guantanamo was to open a prison in Illinois to hold Guantanamo detainees, many indefinitely. While soon killed, this plan would have effectively moved the system of indefinite detention from Guantanamo to U.S. soil.
Now the Obama administration is considering opening a prison in Yemen to hold the remaining Guantanamo prisoners, many of whom are Yemeni. Indefinite detention violates international human rights law but has beenembraced by Obama ever since he stepped into the White House. The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that Obama signed into law contains sections that allow for the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens on American soil.
NSA surveillance
Notably, the U.N. report denounced the NSA’s mass surveillance “both within and outside the United States through the bulk phone metadata program (Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act) and, in particular, the surveillance under Section 702 of Amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) conducted through PRISM (collection of the contents of communications from U.S.-based companies) and UPSTREAM (tapping of fiber-optic cables in the country that carry internet traffic) programs and their adverse impact on the right to privacy.
The report also criticized the secrecy of “judicial interpretations of FISA and rulings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC),” which prevent the public from knowing the laws and legal interpretations that impact them. Promises of “oversight” obviously did not persuade the committee, either, as it said “the current system of oversight of the activities of the NSA fails to effectively protect the rights of those affected,” and “those affected have no access to effective remedies in case of abuse.”
Continuing NSA leaks, provided by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden last year, have revealed the depth of the United States’ massive surveillance system. The bulk collection of phone metadata is probably the most well-known program. Recently, President Obama proposed ending the bulk phone metadata collection program. But the NSA’s surveillance system extends far beyond phone metadata.
In a program called PRISM, the NSA collects user data, such as search history and message content, sent through internet communication services like Google, Yahoo!, Facebook and Skype. Major tech companies have denied knowledge of the program, but the NSA claims those companies knew and provided full assistance.
The NSA uses a back door in surveillance law to monitor the communications of American citizens without a warrant. As mentioned earlier, the NSA is also involved in the drone program through the collection of signals intelligence.
Additionally, much of NSA surveillance is used for economic espionage. With the help of Australian intelligence, the NSA spied on communications between the Indonesian government and an American law firm representing it during trade talks. Indonesia and the United States have long been in trade disputes, such as over Indonesia’s shrimp exports and a U.S. ban on the sale of Indonesian clove cigarettes. It is highly unlikely Obama’s reformswill curb these abuses.
Criminalizing the homeless
Homeless people who had bedded down on a Market Street sidewalk prepare to avoid a high-powered hosing from the San Francisco Department of Public Works. They bitterly resent being hosed, often without warning, with chemical-laced water. – Photo: Mark Richards, Al Jazeera America
The plight of homeless people is rarely held up as a pressing human rights issue. But, in the U.N. report, it is. The committee expressed concern “about reports of criminalization of people living on the street for everyday activities such as eating, sleeping, sitting in particular areas etc.” It also “notes that such criminalization raises concerns of discrimination and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
For evidence of such criminalization and of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” look no further than to the liberal, historically countercultural city of San Francisco. The city that smugly prides itself on progressivism has a sit-lie ordinance that forbids people from sitting or lying on public sidewalks between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. It particularly hurts and targets homeless people.
In the same city, homeless people are washed away. Street cleaners from the San Francisco Department of Public Works regularly spray their high-powered hoses at homeless people sleeping on the streets.
The plight of homeless people is rarely held up as a pressing human rights issue. But, in the U.N. report, it is. The committee expressed concern “about reports of criminalization of people living on the street.
Recently, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, police shot and killed a homeless man. His crime? Illegal camping … in the Albuquerque foothills. Albuquerque police went to arrest 38-year-old James Boyd, who was sleeping in a campsite he set up.
After arguing with police for three hours, Boyd was apparently about to leave and picked up his belongings. As he started walking down the hill, police shot a flash-bang device at Boyd. Disoriented, he dropped his bags, appeared to take out a knife, and then police fired multiple bean-bag rounds at Boyd. The man fell to the ground, hitting his head on a rock, his blood spattered on it.
Officers yelled at him, telling Boyd to drop his knife. When Boyd didn’t answer, police fired more bean-bag rounds and sicced their dog on him. Boyd was later taken to a hospital and pronounced dead a day later. In addition to stun guns and bean bags, officers shot six live rounds at Boyd. The shooting prompted an FBI investigation, which is ongoing, and a protest in Albuquerque that was met with intense police violence as officers fired tear gas into the crowd.
Adam Hudson
Clean your own backyard
The U.N. report elevates the suffering inflicted by U.S. domestic and foreign policies to the realm of international human rights. To be tortured, spied on, unjustly imprisoned, put in solitary confinement, indefinitely detained, extrajudicially killed by the state, racially profiled, deprived of a home and criminalized for being homeless is to have one’s basic human rights violated and dignity as a human demolished.
That’s why there are international laws to protect those rights – laws with which the United States and every nation-state are bound to comply. Even as the United States commonly condemns other countries for their human rights abuses, it has yet to clean its own house.
Adam Hudson is a journalist, writer and photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a graduate of Stanford University and a former intern at The Nation magazine. He can be reached athudson.adam1@gmail.com.
Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission fromhttp://truth-out.org/news/item/22887-un-human-rights-committee-finds-us-in-serious-violation.
OpEdNews Op Eds Oligarchs, Billionaires, Uber Wealthy are Killing Capitalism-- They Are DangerousBy Rob Kall (about the author) Permalink (Page 1 of 2 pages), Add to My Group(s)
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Capitalism has many faces. That's the message of Thomas Piketty, whose book, Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, is making right wingers crazy, and clearing the inventory shelves of Amazon. The big message people are taking from his book is that capitalism as it now exists will produce income inequality.
Piketty has put a scientific face on what we've pretty much known already.
The detour capitalism has take that has led to the development of ultra-wealthy individuals could be a dead end-- a dangerous detour that could disrupt capitalism as the world has known it.
This may be a message we, the ninety-nine percent can use against the billionaires, ultra-wealthy and the transnational corporations mutating capitalism to something that threatens the planet.
Reading Naomi Klein's book Disaster Capitalism opened my eyes to the idea that there are different kinds of capitalism, and that some of them can be malignantly evil and toxic. I asked Naomi to describe the basic concept of Disaster Capitalism. She replied, in an interview on my radio show,
"the thesis of the book is that if we want to understand how this radical "market fundamentalism" has swept the globe, the system that has imploded before our eyes, the de-regulated system that has been so profitable for the people at the top but something of a disaster for everyone else.
If we want to understand how this system has swept the globe from Latin America to Russia to this country, we need to understand the incredible "utility of crisis" to this project, because the great leaps forward for this project have taken place in the midst, during the immediate aftermath of some kind of a shock.The extreme cases that I discuss in the book are wars, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, but overwhelmingly, the most common shocks that have created the context for pushing through these very unpopular policies in a way that economists often call "economic shock therapy," the first shock is the economic crisis, the second shock is the economic shock therapy; overwhelmingly the shocks have been economic crises, whether it's the Asian financial crisis in 1987 or the economic crisis in the former Soviet Union that created this sort of panic atmosphere where they could impose economic shock therapy, so we are in one of those moments of shock.In the book, I quote a Polish human rights activist in 1989 describing what it was like in that country when they were living through a very profound economic crisis. They became the first Eastern Bloc country to be prescribed shock therapy, and as she said, "We're living in 'dog years' (laughs) not human years, which is to say it's this fast forward intense period where you can barely keep up and I think we are living in dog years at the moment."
A conversation I had with Thomas Frank a few years after Klein's Disaster Capitalism came out got me thinking further about how there are different kinds of capitalism-- some that really helped the middle class. Frank had just written a book, Pity the Billionaire, and he described how, after the crash of the 1930's people got together and demanded economic cleanups. Capitalism, for the next forty years started to serve the middle class.
Yes capitalism is not some sacrosanct, one version, monolithic economic model.
The question is, who steers the ship of capitalism? Who decides what model of capitalism dominates?
What we know today is that capitalism is not working for more than 99% of the people on this planet. When capitalism is not working it increases the problems that make a more dangerous, less stable world-- hunger, poverty, inequality, police states, corrupt judicial systems with different laws for elites.
When capitalism is warped and abused by a small group, it ruins capitalism for the rest of us.
It's not just about the oligarchs and billionaires and the politicians they buy being greedy. These people are endangering the planet and ruining capitalism. Ruin of capitalism will also mean ruination for big corporations too.
Ruining capitalism? Yes, Capitalism the way Roosevelt sculpted it, capitalism with 92% top earner tax rates under Dwight Eisenhower-- those were capitalist models that worked to raise the middle class and strengthen industry. Capitalism in the 1960s included publicly owned utilities, water companies, public transportation-- it was a hybrid of capitalism with socialism-- as we now have with medicare and road construction and public schools.
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ELITES DISCOVER THAT SO-CALLED 'FREE-TRADE' IS KILLING ECONOMY, MIDDLE CLASS
Published: Sunday 27 April 2014
Acknowledging that our trade deals have hurt the country, it is said that maybe we could try to do it right with coming agreements.
The New York Times editorial board finally gets it right about trade in its Sunday editorial, “This Time, Get Global Trade Right.” Some excerpts:
Many Americans have watched their neighbors lose good-paying jobs as their employers sent their livelihoods to China. Over the last 20 years, the United States has lost nearly five million manufacturing jobs.
People in the Midwest, the “rust belt” and elsewhere noticed this a long time ago as people were laid off, “the plant” closed, the downtowns slowly boarded up and the rest of us felt pressure on wages and working hours. How many towns — entire regions of the country — are like this now? Have you even seen Detroit?
“This page has long argued that removing barriers to trade benefits the economy and consumers, and some of those gains can be used to help the minority of people who lose their jobs because of increased imports,” the editors write. “But those gains have not been as widespread as we hoped, and they have not been adequate to assist those who were harmed.”
So acknowledging that our trade deals have hurt the country, they say maybe we could try to do it right with coming agreements. They write:
If done right, these agreements could improve the ground rules of global trade, as even critics of Nafta like Representative Sander Levin, Democrat of Michigan, have argued. They could reduce abuses like sweatshop labor, currency manipulation and the senseless destruction of forests. They could weaken protectionism against American goods and services in countries like Japan, which have sheltered such industries as agriculture and automobiles.
They write that one problem is that these agreements are negotiated of, by and for the giant corporations:
One of the biggest fears of lawmakers and public interest groups is that only a few insiders know what is in these trade agreements, particularly the Pacific pact.
The Obama administration has revealed so few details about the negotiations, even to members of Congress and their staffs, that it is impossible to fully analyze the Pacific partnership. Negotiators have argued that it’s impossible to conduct trade talks in public because opponents to the deal would try to derail them.
But the administration’s rationale for secrecy seems to apply only to the public. Big corporations are playing an active role in shaping the American position because they are on industry advisory committees to the United States trade representative, Michael Froman. By contrast, public interest groups have seats on only a handful of committees that negotiators do not consult closely.
The current trade-negotiation process is a system designed to rig the game for the giant multinationals against everyone else:
That lopsided influence is dangerous, because companies are using trade agreements to get special benefits that they would find much more difficult to get through the standard legislative process. For example, draft chapters from the Pacific agreement that have been leaked in recent months reveal that most countries involved in the talks, except the United States, do not want the agreement to include enforceable environmental standards. Business interests in the United States, which would benefit from weaker rules by placing their operations in countries with lower protections, have aligned themselves with the position of foreign governments. Another chapter, on intellectual property, is said to contain language favorable to the pharmaceutical industry that could make it harder for poor people in countries like Peru to get generic medicines.
These trade agreements place corporate rights over national sovereignty:
Another big issue is whether these trade agreements will give investors unnecessary power to sue foreign governments over policies they dislike, including health and environmental regulations. Philip Morris, for example, is trying to overturn Australian rules that require cigarette packs to be sold only in plain packaging. If these treaties are written too loosely, big banks could use them to challenge new financial regulations or, perhaps, block European lawmakers from enacting a financial-transaction tax.
And they’re asking, like the rest of us are asking, why in the world won’t they do something about currency?
It’s easy to point the finger at Nafta and other trade agreements for job losses, but there is a far bigger culprit: currency manipulation. A 2012 paper from the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that the American trade deficit has increased by up to $500 billion a year and the country has lost up to five million jobs because China, South Korea, Malaysia and other countries have boosted their exports by suppressing the value of their currency.
What So-Called “Free Trade” Agreements Did To The Economy
A trade deficit means that we buy more from the rest of the world than we sell to it. This means that jobs making and doing things here migrate to there. Before the mid-70s the United States ran generally balanced trade, with a bias toward surplus. Look at this chart to see what happened, beginning in the ’80s, and then … wham.
Now we have an enormous, humongous, ongoing trade deficit that over the years has added up to trillions and trillions of dollars drained from our economy. We have lost millions and millions of jobs as tens of thousands of factories closed. We have lost entire industries. We are losing our entire middle class to the resulting wage stagnation and inequality.
Here is what happened when the trade deficit took off. First, look at this chart of the “decoupling” of wages with productivity. In other words, as productivity goes up, what happens to the share of those gains that go to labor:
In case you don’t see the correlation, this chart shows both the trade deficit and labor’s share of the benefits of our economy:
Most people understand the damage that so-called “free trade” has done to the economy, much of our country and the middle class. Millions of people have outright lost their jobs because of corporate CEOs who conclude, “It’s cheaper to manufacture where they pay 50 cents an hour and let us pollute all we want.”
Many others have felt the resulting job fear: “If I so much as hint that I want a raise or weekends off they’ll move my job to China, too.” Entire regions have lost their economic base as factories and entire industries closed and moved.
But We Globalized And Expanded Trade
The basic pro-free-trade argument is that all trade is good and these agreements increase trade. NAFTA negotiator Carla Hills, defending NAFTA, says, “our trade with Mexico and Canada has soared 400 percent, and our investment is up fivefold.”
Of course, this is like proudly telling people that the Broncos scored 8 points in the 2014 Super Bowl*. (Hint: the Seahawks scored 43 points.)
Yes, trade is up and exports are up, but imports are up even more, which costs us jobs, factories and industries. What happened was NAFTA “expanded” trade against American workers and our economy, costing about a million jobs and increasing our trade deficit 480 percent. And don’t even ask what happened with our China trade. (Hint: our 2013 trade deficit with China was 318.4 billion dollars.)
How Would The N.Y. Times Fix Trade?
The Times editorial says we should “press countries to stop manipulating their currencies” and “the president also needs to make clear to America’s trading partners that they need to adhere to enforceable labor and environmental regulations.”
OK, but why would the giant multinationals participate? The point of the free-trade regime up to now has been to accomplish the opposite: to free the giants from the pesky laws and regulations imposed by governments, especially from labor and environmental regulations. The negotiations have been a rigged game designed to transfer the wealth of entire nations to a few billionaires (including Chinese billionaires) and giant, multinational corporations. It worked.
Meanwhile … In The L.A. Times
Meanwhile in the Los Angeles Times, representatives George Miller (D-Calif.), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) have written an op-ed, “Free trade on steroids: The threat of the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” talk about NAFTA as a “model for additional agreements, and its deeply flawed approach has resulted in the outsourcing of jobs, downward pressure on wages and a meteoric rise in income inequality,” and ask us not to “blindly endorse any more unfair NAFTA-style trade agreements, negotiated behind closed doors, that threaten to sell out American workers, offshore our manufacturing sector and accelerate the downward spiral of wages and benefits.”
In 1993, before NAFTA, the U.S. had a $2.5-billion trade surplus with Mexico and a $29-billion deficit with Canada. By 2012, that had exploded into a combined NAFTA trade deficit of $181 billion. Since NAFTA, more than 845,000 U.S. workers in the manufacturing sector — and this is likely an undercount — have been certified under just one narrow program for trade adjustment assistance. They qualified because they lost their jobs due to increased imports from Canada and Mexico, or the relocation of factories to those nations.
The recent Korea free trade agreement followed the NAFTA model and the results have already proven terrible for American workers:
Obama said it would support “70,000 American jobs from increased goods exports alone.” In reality, U.S. monthly exports to South Korea fell 11% in the pact’s first two years, imports rose and the U.S. trade deficit exploded by 47%. This led to a net loss of tens of thousands of U.S. jobs in this pact’s first two years.
They conclude:
There are many things we can do to enhance our competitiveness with China and in the global economy.
We can invest in our own infrastructure, manufacturing and job training. We can work harder to address issues like currency manipulation, unfair subsidies for state-owned enterprises in other nations and global labor protections. We can enter deals that increase U.S. exports while doing right by our workers and our priorities, and we can address the real foreign policy challenges in Asia with appropriate policies instead of through a commercial agreement that could weaken the United States and its allies.
What we should not do is blindly endorse any more unfair NAFTA-style trade agreements, negotiated behind closed doors, that threaten to sell out American workers, offshore our manufacturing sector and accelerate the downward spiral of wages and benefits.
No New Trade Agreements, Instead Fix The Ones We Have
Of course, as we reach consensus that we got trade wrong, and realize how these “NAFTA-style” agreements have done so much damage to our economy and middle class, doesn’t this mean it is time to back up and renegotiate NAFTA and others?
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