the new atheism:
The civilian toll of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq is in the hundreds of thousands according to a study published in the Lancet, with a declining but substantial portion (from a third to a quarter over a three-year period) attributable directly to US military strikes. As Nick Turse has described, the public knows little about the regular attacks by the US Air Force in Iraqi population centers because of underreporting and Pentagon secrecy. In Afghanistan, even Hamid Karzai has denounced the regular NATO bombardment of civilian areas; the total dead is unknown, but five years ago various estimates were already in the thousands. Taking another known grievance in the Islamic world, the US was the aggressive and knowing driver of sanctions against Iraq which were a major factor in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children according to several studies.
(...) Americans who see good intentions in US interventions do so because they are Americans. If similar deeds are perpetrated by enemies, we don’t hesitate in our moral judgments: we didn’t wonder about good intentions of Iraq when it invaded Kuwait or the Soviet Union when it installed a puppet regime in Afghanistan, and rightly so. Likewise, those abroad often fail to see our benevolence. For example, a BBC News poll of January 2007 found that in 18 countries outside the US, only 29% of respondents thought the US played a mainly positive role in the world. In glamorizing ourselves (enabled by our media), we are no different than Russell’s Greek patriot.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
the fakery of general petraeus:
Unfortunately, the propaganda effort by the White House now underway may have a more malign impact than most propaganda exercises. It claims that victory is possible where failure has already occurred. It manipulates figures and facts to produce a picture of Iraq that is not merely distorted but substantively false.
(...) The truest indicator of the level of violence in Iraq is the number of people fleeing their homes because they are terrified that they will be murdered. According to the UN High Commission for Refugees the number of refugees has risen from 50,000 to 60,000 a month and none are returning.
(...) It is no longer possible to get medical treatment for many ailments because 75 per cent of doctors, pharmacists have left their jobs in the hospitals, clinics and universities. The majority of these have fled abroad to join the 2.2 million Iraqis outside the country.
(...) Interestingly, 46 per cent of Iraqis believe that full-scale civil war would be less likely if the US withdrew before civil order is restored. Some 35 per cent say it would be more likely to occur.
Unfortunately, the propaganda effort by the White House now underway may have a more malign impact than most propaganda exercises. It claims that victory is possible where failure has already occurred. It manipulates figures and facts to produce a picture of Iraq that is not merely distorted but substantively false.
(...) The truest indicator of the level of violence in Iraq is the number of people fleeing their homes because they are terrified that they will be murdered. According to the UN High Commission for Refugees the number of refugees has risen from 50,000 to 60,000 a month and none are returning.
(...) It is no longer possible to get medical treatment for many ailments because 75 per cent of doctors, pharmacists have left their jobs in the hospitals, clinics and universities. The majority of these have fled abroad to join the 2.2 million Iraqis outside the country.
(...) Interestingly, 46 per cent of Iraqis believe that full-scale civil war would be less likely if the US withdrew before civil order is restored. Some 35 per cent say it would be more likely to occur.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
the class struggle will no longer be offshored:
The victors on the right have not been the Keynesian, conservative wets (as Margaret Thatcher called them), but the hardliners. Until the left can come up with something better than moderately rightwing policies, it has no chance of winning. To change that, it must go back to the roots of the conflict between left and right. It must see beyond values, like feminism or antiracism, which the modern right is quite happy to adopt. It must address the fundamental question: who controls the economy?
(...) Once the means of production, and the means of information that emerged during the 20th century, are in private hands, specific individuals possess vast, almost feudal power over the rest of the population. Today the real successors of classic liberals are the proponents of socialism; while those who currently describe themselves as liberals are the supporters of a particular form of tyranny, that of the employers - and, often, of a violent form of state control through US military domination of the rest of the planet.
(...) Liberal thinkers deride Marx because the anticipated transition to socialism in developed capitalist countries failed to happen. One response should be that the system under which we live is not just capitalist, but imperialist as well. Europe owes its development to the existence of a vast hinterland. Imagine that Europe was the only landmass on the planet and that all the other continents had never risen from the oceans. There would have been no slave trade, no South American gold, no emigration to North America. What sort of societies would we have built without a constant supply of raw materials, cheap immigrant labour, imports from low-income economies, and a supply of educated people from the developing world to rescue our collapsing education systems? We would have had to save drastically on energy, the balance of power between workers and employers would be radically different, and the leisure society would not exist.
(...) Socialism failed in the 20th century largely because the countries where capitalism generated a degree of cultural and economic development, where the elements of democracy existed and where, consequently, it was possible and necessary to go beyond capitalism, were also the dominant countries in the imperial system. Imperialism has two consequences. Economically it allows dominant nations to delocalise problems to the periphery. Strategically it has a divide and rule effect: western workers have always enjoyed better living conditions than their equivalents in the developing world and acquire a feeling of superiority that helps stabilise the system.
(...) This is why decolonisation was the most significant transformation of the 20th century. It freed hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Africa from a racist form of domination. Its effects will continue into this century and bring a definitive end to the historical period that began with the discovery of America. Europeans will have to adjust to losing the benefits associated with our privileged position in the imperial system. At present the Chinese have to sell us millions of shirts to buy an Airbus; but once they can build their own Airbuses, who will make our shirts?
(...) Historically, change has often come from the periphery. The October 1917 revolution and the Soviet Union's role in the victory over the Axis powers had an enormous impact upon decolonisation and upon the possibility of creating a social-democratic Eden in Europe. The victory of the colonised nations led to a number of progressive changes in Europe during the 1960s. If we make the effort to understand and take account of it, the current revolts in Latin America and the Middle East may force radical changes upon the dominant powers. Which may mean a less depressing future for the rest of us.
The victors on the right have not been the Keynesian, conservative wets (as Margaret Thatcher called them), but the hardliners. Until the left can come up with something better than moderately rightwing policies, it has no chance of winning. To change that, it must go back to the roots of the conflict between left and right. It must see beyond values, like feminism or antiracism, which the modern right is quite happy to adopt. It must address the fundamental question: who controls the economy?
(...) Once the means of production, and the means of information that emerged during the 20th century, are in private hands, specific individuals possess vast, almost feudal power over the rest of the population. Today the real successors of classic liberals are the proponents of socialism; while those who currently describe themselves as liberals are the supporters of a particular form of tyranny, that of the employers - and, often, of a violent form of state control through US military domination of the rest of the planet.
(...) Liberal thinkers deride Marx because the anticipated transition to socialism in developed capitalist countries failed to happen. One response should be that the system under which we live is not just capitalist, but imperialist as well. Europe owes its development to the existence of a vast hinterland. Imagine that Europe was the only landmass on the planet and that all the other continents had never risen from the oceans. There would have been no slave trade, no South American gold, no emigration to North America. What sort of societies would we have built without a constant supply of raw materials, cheap immigrant labour, imports from low-income economies, and a supply of educated people from the developing world to rescue our collapsing education systems? We would have had to save drastically on energy, the balance of power between workers and employers would be radically different, and the leisure society would not exist.
(...) Socialism failed in the 20th century largely because the countries where capitalism generated a degree of cultural and economic development, where the elements of democracy existed and where, consequently, it was possible and necessary to go beyond capitalism, were also the dominant countries in the imperial system. Imperialism has two consequences. Economically it allows dominant nations to delocalise problems to the periphery. Strategically it has a divide and rule effect: western workers have always enjoyed better living conditions than their equivalents in the developing world and acquire a feeling of superiority that helps stabilise the system.
(...) This is why decolonisation was the most significant transformation of the 20th century. It freed hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Africa from a racist form of domination. Its effects will continue into this century and bring a definitive end to the historical period that began with the discovery of America. Europeans will have to adjust to losing the benefits associated with our privileged position in the imperial system. At present the Chinese have to sell us millions of shirts to buy an Airbus; but once they can build their own Airbuses, who will make our shirts?
(...) Historically, change has often come from the periphery. The October 1917 revolution and the Soviet Union's role in the victory over the Axis powers had an enormous impact upon decolonisation and upon the possibility of creating a social-democratic Eden in Europe. The victory of the colonised nations led to a number of progressive changes in Europe during the 1960s. If we make the effort to understand and take account of it, the current revolts in Latin America and the Middle East may force radical changes upon the dominant powers. Which may mean a less depressing future for the rest of us.
why capitalism needs terror:
It was Nixon and Kissinger together. I end the book with a quote from a declassified letter from Kissinger to Nixon where he says that the threat of Allende was not about any of the things they were publicly saying at the time -- that he was cozying up to the Soviet Union, that he was only pretending to be a democrat and that he was going to turn Chile into a totalitarian system. Kissinger writes the real threat is the problem of social democracy spreading. The Soviet Union was a convenient bogeyman. It was easy to hate Stalin, but what was always more of a threat was the idea of democratic socialism, a third way between totalitarian Communism and capitalism.
(...) The idea that you could turn Chile into a laboratory for extreme Chicago School economics is a little like thinking you could launch a revolution against capitalism in Beverly Hills. It was deeply inhospitable for these ideas. But in this collaboration between Pinochet and the economists who'd gone to the University of Chicago on grants from the U.S. State Department, Chile was a laboratory for all these ideas that to this day have not been implemented in the United States, like a flat tax -- a 15 per cent flat tax -- charter schools, labour laws that essentially made it illegal for unions to be involved in any political activity. Straight out of the handbook, you know? It was like they took Friedman's manifesto and just turned it into law. The idea that this could happen in Chile at this point in history when there was so much support for developmentalism of course required force.
(...) The government, the Communist party, is extremely worried about the levels of inequality that have opened up between the countryside and the city and between the hyper-rich and the hyper-poor living side-by-side. And it's responding in two ways. One is to do some redistribution, which is really outside of the Chicago model. You have major new investments in the countryside, you have a commitment to waive school fees for the first nine years for rural children, because there were 87,000 protests in China last year -- an unbelievable statistic -- so clearly someone's not happy with how things are going in China.
(...) What I think China shows is this idea that there was a natural correlation between capitalism, between free markets and free people -- it's simply not the case. China's either undergoing a very slow transition or they've skipped the democratic phase completely, just sidestepped it, and ended up with this thing that, I think, should be described as corporatism. But that is the trend not just in China but also in Russia, in the United States, in Chile under Pinochet. It was the same patterns of heavily indebted states, actually quite interventionist governments but intervening on behalf of corporations, against workers.
(...) The New Deal came to embody another kind of capitalism, which did much more redistribution. And it wasn't because people were nice; there was a battle of ideas between Communism and capitalism, and in the 1930s and '40s and '50s and '60s it was capitalism in a seductive phase. And so elements of socialism were inserted into this model so that a more radical version of socialism would be less attractive. I'm quoting FDR and Keynes. And that model actually was the period where you had the most rapid economic growth, but it was more fairly distributed. This was the period where the middle class really grew, not just in the United States but in countries like Chile and Argentina. And then kind of a class war was waged -- a right-wing class war.
(...) In 1980 the gap between CEOs and the workers who worked for them was 43:1 and now it's 422:1.
(...) At leftie talks there's always somebody who goes up to the mike and says, "But don't things have to get worse before anything happens?" and I slam those people down because the values that I would hope we represent are human values, and that is such a profoundly anti-human idea -- of desiring a descent so there can be some shock that will wake people up.
(...) Most of those statistics are about China and India, countries that are undergoing rapid urbanization, and what a dollar means if you're living on a farm and growing your own food and have access to water and what it now means in a slum on the outskirts of Delhi, is completely different. But of course there have been successes, and there are wonderful things about living in a capitalist country -- I benefit from it, you benefit from it. We've been forced into believing we can't have the benefits of a market system unless we destroy the bridges that'll allow more people to have that access. And when we do things like, in this country, triple tuition fees over the course of the '90s, and privatize health care, and take out these bridges between classes, we have a very brutal economic law.
(...) Look, I think there's going to be a lot of radical leftists who would be disappointed by how Keynesian this book is.
It was Nixon and Kissinger together. I end the book with a quote from a declassified letter from Kissinger to Nixon where he says that the threat of Allende was not about any of the things they were publicly saying at the time -- that he was cozying up to the Soviet Union, that he was only pretending to be a democrat and that he was going to turn Chile into a totalitarian system. Kissinger writes the real threat is the problem of social democracy spreading. The Soviet Union was a convenient bogeyman. It was easy to hate Stalin, but what was always more of a threat was the idea of democratic socialism, a third way between totalitarian Communism and capitalism.
(...) The idea that you could turn Chile into a laboratory for extreme Chicago School economics is a little like thinking you could launch a revolution against capitalism in Beverly Hills. It was deeply inhospitable for these ideas. But in this collaboration between Pinochet and the economists who'd gone to the University of Chicago on grants from the U.S. State Department, Chile was a laboratory for all these ideas that to this day have not been implemented in the United States, like a flat tax -- a 15 per cent flat tax -- charter schools, labour laws that essentially made it illegal for unions to be involved in any political activity. Straight out of the handbook, you know? It was like they took Friedman's manifesto and just turned it into law. The idea that this could happen in Chile at this point in history when there was so much support for developmentalism of course required force.
(...) The government, the Communist party, is extremely worried about the levels of inequality that have opened up between the countryside and the city and between the hyper-rich and the hyper-poor living side-by-side. And it's responding in two ways. One is to do some redistribution, which is really outside of the Chicago model. You have major new investments in the countryside, you have a commitment to waive school fees for the first nine years for rural children, because there were 87,000 protests in China last year -- an unbelievable statistic -- so clearly someone's not happy with how things are going in China.
(...) What I think China shows is this idea that there was a natural correlation between capitalism, between free markets and free people -- it's simply not the case. China's either undergoing a very slow transition or they've skipped the democratic phase completely, just sidestepped it, and ended up with this thing that, I think, should be described as corporatism. But that is the trend not just in China but also in Russia, in the United States, in Chile under Pinochet. It was the same patterns of heavily indebted states, actually quite interventionist governments but intervening on behalf of corporations, against workers.
(...) The New Deal came to embody another kind of capitalism, which did much more redistribution. And it wasn't because people were nice; there was a battle of ideas between Communism and capitalism, and in the 1930s and '40s and '50s and '60s it was capitalism in a seductive phase. And so elements of socialism were inserted into this model so that a more radical version of socialism would be less attractive. I'm quoting FDR and Keynes. And that model actually was the period where you had the most rapid economic growth, but it was more fairly distributed. This was the period where the middle class really grew, not just in the United States but in countries like Chile and Argentina. And then kind of a class war was waged -- a right-wing class war.
(...) In 1980 the gap between CEOs and the workers who worked for them was 43:1 and now it's 422:1.
(...) At leftie talks there's always somebody who goes up to the mike and says, "But don't things have to get worse before anything happens?" and I slam those people down because the values that I would hope we represent are human values, and that is such a profoundly anti-human idea -- of desiring a descent so there can be some shock that will wake people up.
(...) Most of those statistics are about China and India, countries that are undergoing rapid urbanization, and what a dollar means if you're living on a farm and growing your own food and have access to water and what it now means in a slum on the outskirts of Delhi, is completely different. But of course there have been successes, and there are wonderful things about living in a capitalist country -- I benefit from it, you benefit from it. We've been forced into believing we can't have the benefits of a market system unless we destroy the bridges that'll allow more people to have that access. And when we do things like, in this country, triple tuition fees over the course of the '90s, and privatize health care, and take out these bridges between classes, we have a very brutal economic law.
(...) Look, I think there's going to be a lot of radical leftists who would be disappointed by how Keynesian this book is.
hamas, a history from within:
In Palestine, Hamas leaders were noted for “ascetism, altruism, dedication, and honesty,” for living with and among the people as they always had, as “no one joins Hamas to make money or has become rich by virtue of their position within it….Finally, donors were aware that only a small fraction of the money raised by Hamas would be used for military purposes.”
In Palestine, Hamas leaders were noted for “ascetism, altruism, dedication, and honesty,” for living with and among the people as they always had, as “no one joins Hamas to make money or has become rich by virtue of their position within it….Finally, donors were aware that only a small fraction of the money raised by Hamas would be used for military purposes.”
shiite power struggle:
it is the armed wing of the Islamic Supreme Council that is affiliated with the Shiite high authority Ali al-Sistani, and both hold unquestionable allegiance to Iran. The US also claims to fight Iran’s agents in Iraq (who are blamed for the development of most destructive types of guerrilla warfare tactics) and yet Iran plays an uncontested role in determining the overall policies of the ruling Shiite parties in Iraq - who are willing collaborators with the US military.
(...) Top official Gen. David Petraeus has already boasted about the troop surge leading to a reduction in sectarian fighting. Statistics, however, directly contradict such claims. Figures from the Associated Press show that the month of August registered the second highest civilian death toll in Iraq - 1,809 civilians - since the US invasion of March 2003. The sharp rise is largely attributed to the quadruple suicide bombings on August 14, near the Syrian border, which killed 520 people.
(...) With Badr Brigade claiming 70,000 strong militiaman and al-Mahdi counting over 50,000, both groups are overwhelmed with fear and mistrust; under these circumstances, the prospect of co-existence seems bleak.
it is the armed wing of the Islamic Supreme Council that is affiliated with the Shiite high authority Ali al-Sistani, and both hold unquestionable allegiance to Iran. The US also claims to fight Iran’s agents in Iraq (who are blamed for the development of most destructive types of guerrilla warfare tactics) and yet Iran plays an uncontested role in determining the overall policies of the ruling Shiite parties in Iraq - who are willing collaborators with the US military.
(...) Top official Gen. David Petraeus has already boasted about the troop surge leading to a reduction in sectarian fighting. Statistics, however, directly contradict such claims. Figures from the Associated Press show that the month of August registered the second highest civilian death toll in Iraq - 1,809 civilians - since the US invasion of March 2003. The sharp rise is largely attributed to the quadruple suicide bombings on August 14, near the Syrian border, which killed 520 people.
(...) With Badr Brigade claiming 70,000 strong militiaman and al-Mahdi counting over 50,000, both groups are overwhelmed with fear and mistrust; under these circumstances, the prospect of co-existence seems bleak.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
from the bayou to baghdad:
Two years after Katrina, as Bush flew from the bayou to Baghdad, a People’s Hurricane tribunal—putting every level of government on trial—was wrapping up in New Orleans. A group was selling a T-shirt there that reads: “Don’t believe the hype. Gulf Coast recovery is not ‘slow’—it is a privatization scheme that takes away our homes, schools, hospitals and human rights.” Mission accomplished?
Two years after Katrina, as Bush flew from the bayou to Baghdad, a People’s Hurricane tribunal—putting every level of government on trial—was wrapping up in New Orleans. A group was selling a T-shirt there that reads: “Don’t believe the hype. Gulf Coast recovery is not ‘slow’—it is a privatization scheme that takes away our homes, schools, hospitals and human rights.” Mission accomplished?
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