Scotland Yard is facing its worst corruption crisis since the 1970s, when senior police officers were found to be controlling London's pornography industry. The investigation and subsequent purge left many detectives out of a job and in some case serving prison sentences. The gloom that surrounded the Yard in those days is similar to the atmosphere that pervades it today.
Each day reveals more details of misconduct by the press and the police. The investigation is going to be looking for heads to roll, and the higher the rank the better. This extraordinary state of affairs has its roots back in the Eighties, in the days when News International was dependent on the police to protect its new premises in Wapping.
Violent demonstrations occurred each night and the police were able to assist News International in getting its product out on to the streets. This was a complete turnaround for The Times newspaper, which only a decade earlier had launched the huge inquiry into police corruption that shook Scotland Yard to its foundations. News International was now best friends with Scotland Yard, and senior executives and top policemen wined and dined together on a regular basis.
Nobody could see the potential problems of a free lunch. This mutual admiration society worked very well for a time. Information passed freely both ways. The police benefited from undercover operations run by the newspapers, and in return the papers got their exclusive stories. This comfortable arrangement was cemented by regular briefings from Scotland Yard's press bureau to the national press directly and sometimes through the Crime Writers Association.
The culture of police officers mixing with journalists was encouraged, and little thought was given to the potential of misconduct. Crime writers were expected to know lots of police officers, and there was great competition to get the inside story. If only things could have stayed the same.
The News of the World began to pursue a strategy of aggressively targeting celebrities. The use of "the Fake Sheikh", Mazher Mahmood, was very effective, and produced some exclusive exposés on the greed and stupidity of people who should have known better. They were able to obtain confidential information on individuals including criminal records but they were in too much of a hurry to research public records.
Some private detective agencies realised that there was money to be earned from celebrity stories and confidential crime stories. Some of these detective agencies were run by former Metropolitan Police officers who maintained good contacts with serving officers. Some ex-police officers set themselves up as stringers, and provided a conduit for confidential information supplied by officers directly to the press. Once the Rubicon had been crossed, it was comparatively easy for police officers to contravene the Data Protection Act and supply information from the Police National Computer.
Short cuts adopted by the News of the World put them closer to the coalface. The strategy of using several intermediaries was abandoned and they employed private detectives such as Jonathan Rees of Southern Investigations and Glenn Mulcaire. This was clearly cheaper but the drawback was that if the private detectives came unstuck so did those who hired them.
The Department of Professional Standards at Scotland Yard has not been standing idly by. A number of undercover operations were mounted against ex- and serving police officers who were suspected of receiving corrupt payments. Nobody in authority was prepared to recognise the endemic nature of this corruption and each case was dealt with as a stand-alone incident. Much the same attitude was adopted when Glenn Mulcaire and Clive Goodman were convicted of hacking messages of members of the royal family.
At this stage, the number of police officers involved is unknown. News International's attempts to switch the focus of the inquiry onto the police by releasing details of payments to officers raised more questions than answers. The obvious questions are "What about payments to intermediaries?" and "What were the payments for?" Hospitality and gifts must also be probed.
The two organisations that are carrying out the investigations are... the Metropolitan Police and News International, both of whom are the subject of these allegations.
It is with breathtaking cheek that News International announced its own investigation. It is quite clear that getting to the truth is not a goal, its real objective is damage limitation and face-saving. It is quite clear that any number of junior staff will be sacrificed in order the save the skins of the real decision-makers. The News International investigation should be laughed out of court, not that it is ever likely to get there.
The new police investigation is even more curious. Everybody wants to know why the original hacking investigation was curtailed after the convictions of Mulcaire and Goodman. It seems unlikely that this decision was made solely by the police, but it is a possibility, and if so, why?
The suspicion must be that pressure was brought to bear by either News International, the Crown Prosecution Service or a very high-ranking police officer, or perhaps a combination of all three.
The new police investigation into hacking has been running since January 2011 and the police corruption enquiry has only just begun. It seems to me that this is a classic situation whereby an outside police force should be used, under the supervision of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. There is clear precedent for using an outside force, and if the public are to be convinced that this is a fair and unbiased investigation then that should clearly point to using an independent force outside of London.
This is no reflection on the skill, determination or ability of Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, but the pressure which killed off the first enquiry might still exist.
The Metropolitan Police had one go at this and fell very short. At risk is the reputation and integrity of the service. It cannot afford to get it wrong again. The problem is that senior officers did not recognise the extent of the corruption and were probably unwilling to upset their new found pals in the media.
They must accept their responsibility for what has happened. It is astonishing that with so many resources being spent on anti-corruption, they could not see it when it was right under their noses.
John O'Connor is former commander of the Flying Squad at Scotland Yard.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Al Qaeda and Panetta's Nose The Scent of Victory? By MICHAEL BRENNER
Leon Panetta, newly installed Secretary of Defense, proclaimed in Kabul on Saturday that the United States was "within reach of strategically defeating Al-Qaeda." He did not explain how Washington defines 'Al-Qaeda' today. Nor did he specify what is meant by 'defeat.' Those are critical omissions. Without greater precision we are not in a position to assess the significance of the statement or to estimate the likelihood of success in meeting the American objective. It was simpler in the wake of 9/11. Then it was thought that Al-Qaeda was a unitary organization, hierarchically structured and with clear command and control. In other words, sort of like Goldman Sachs. That is certainly not the case nowadays. Remnants of 'classic Al-Qaeda' haunt the borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Its leadership is fragmented, its foot soldiers scattered. Al-Qaeda today is at best a loose holding company; more likely, little more than a franchise operation. Moreover, its franchise units seem to have limited operational capability.
Secretary Panetta made specific reference to U.S. born Imam Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen and unnamed members of al-Sabah in Somalia. There is a glancing reference to Al-Qaeda in North Africa. But al-Sabah has a Somalian agenda and none of its leaders have been involved in attacks on American interests for thirteen years. It has no known capability to do anything on American territory. Al-Awlaki is the supposed instigator of two failed airline plots most noteworthy for their amateurishness. As for AQNA, it is little more than a crime family specializing in equal opportunity kidnapping and extortion. What to make of this picture? Most striking is that the United States does not seem to be in danger of serious Al-Qaeda directed terrorist acts on its homeland for the foreseeable future. There is almost no likelihood of another 9/11 attempt. Second, inchoate groups of activists with some potential to develop over time an approximation of a dangerous capability can be found in an number of places - including Hamburg and other European cities. So why concentrate a huge effort in AfPak that drains hundreds of billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury, inflicts casualties on thousands of Americans, ravages the Afghan countryside and undercuts America's standing in the world? The answer is inertia – intellectual, psychological, organizational and political. Change is a forlorn hope as the Obama people continue the tradition of at once evoking a generation long war on terror and trumpeting their stellar successes.
ANOTHER CONCEPTION
Al-Qaeda has become an American obsession - especially for the security/intelligence establishment and the huge terrorism industry that it has spawned. A detached appraisal of the current situation, set against the backdrop of the 9/11 decade, points to the conclusion that the prevailing threat estimate is grossly exaggerated. That holds for both likelihood and magnitude of any conjectured attack. My personal view is that a truly consequential threat, were it ever to materialize, would take a very different form. It would involve just a handful of persons from the greater Middle East with expert credentials in biology, chemistry or the like. One may run a large import-export business. They would have ready access to the United States where they may have institutional ties to universities/research laboratories as well as business connections.They are not radical fundamentalists; indeed, they may not be particularly religious. They would be motivated by grievances such a close relative or two killed by Blackwater in Baghdad, a drone attack, or something similar. They would have experienced deep humiliation at some point in dealings with American officials. They would be embittered by U.S. actions – direct or indirect - against Muslims re. Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Lebanon, even Egypt.
The plot could entail creating a nationwide anthrax style panic. Lethal material might be sent to the Pentagon, Central Command, the CIA and/or any high profile American politician. Killing a few persons would be the aim. In addition, packets of the material would be distributed in a small number of airports, sports stadiums and freight cars. As a practical matter, this in itself is child's play. (Try it with some innocuous substance). The perpetrators would inform the media of their location – IRA fashion. Once their existence is confirmed, the group would declare that 25 similar packets have been placed in other locations. It may be true or it may just be a feint. Then watch the panic.
What could we do about it? No standard counter terrorism tactics would have any preventive effects. The hundreds of billions we have spent to make Americans safe and secure would have been wasted. The perpetrators will have been motivated by concrete American actions in the Middle East. They might demand their cessation. Does anyone in Washington think in terms of this possible threat? Nothing that I have heard or read suggests that they have. Why? One, it is hard to admit impotence – especially in American macho culture when the testosterone is churning. Two, there is the powerful terrorism industry. Reflection is not expensive and requires few resources. It makes neither money or careers. Three, the United States is incapable of changing its 'pro-active' policies in the Middle East - for reasons of intellectual, emotional and political deficiency. Finally, politically, thinking along these lines has no pay off, and we live in an era when gaining electoral office eclipses any serious thought about what one might do once having attained it. For some, even the Presidency's appeal is mainly as a good resume item – and a heck of a lot more fun than anything else they can imagine. Finally, as a people Americans cannot stand living with uncertainty.
Secretary Panetta made specific reference to U.S. born Imam Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen and unnamed members of al-Sabah in Somalia. There is a glancing reference to Al-Qaeda in North Africa. But al-Sabah has a Somalian agenda and none of its leaders have been involved in attacks on American interests for thirteen years. It has no known capability to do anything on American territory. Al-Awlaki is the supposed instigator of two failed airline plots most noteworthy for their amateurishness. As for AQNA, it is little more than a crime family specializing in equal opportunity kidnapping and extortion. What to make of this picture? Most striking is that the United States does not seem to be in danger of serious Al-Qaeda directed terrorist acts on its homeland for the foreseeable future. There is almost no likelihood of another 9/11 attempt. Second, inchoate groups of activists with some potential to develop over time an approximation of a dangerous capability can be found in an number of places - including Hamburg and other European cities. So why concentrate a huge effort in AfPak that drains hundreds of billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury, inflicts casualties on thousands of Americans, ravages the Afghan countryside and undercuts America's standing in the world? The answer is inertia – intellectual, psychological, organizational and political. Change is a forlorn hope as the Obama people continue the tradition of at once evoking a generation long war on terror and trumpeting their stellar successes.
ANOTHER CONCEPTION
Al-Qaeda has become an American obsession - especially for the security/intelligence establishment and the huge terrorism industry that it has spawned. A detached appraisal of the current situation, set against the backdrop of the 9/11 decade, points to the conclusion that the prevailing threat estimate is grossly exaggerated. That holds for both likelihood and magnitude of any conjectured attack. My personal view is that a truly consequential threat, were it ever to materialize, would take a very different form. It would involve just a handful of persons from the greater Middle East with expert credentials in biology, chemistry or the like. One may run a large import-export business. They would have ready access to the United States where they may have institutional ties to universities/research laboratories as well as business connections.They are not radical fundamentalists; indeed, they may not be particularly religious. They would be motivated by grievances such a close relative or two killed by Blackwater in Baghdad, a drone attack, or something similar. They would have experienced deep humiliation at some point in dealings with American officials. They would be embittered by U.S. actions – direct or indirect - against Muslims re. Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Lebanon, even Egypt.
The plot could entail creating a nationwide anthrax style panic. Lethal material might be sent to the Pentagon, Central Command, the CIA and/or any high profile American politician. Killing a few persons would be the aim. In addition, packets of the material would be distributed in a small number of airports, sports stadiums and freight cars. As a practical matter, this in itself is child's play. (Try it with some innocuous substance). The perpetrators would inform the media of their location – IRA fashion. Once their existence is confirmed, the group would declare that 25 similar packets have been placed in other locations. It may be true or it may just be a feint. Then watch the panic.
What could we do about it? No standard counter terrorism tactics would have any preventive effects. The hundreds of billions we have spent to make Americans safe and secure would have been wasted. The perpetrators will have been motivated by concrete American actions in the Middle East. They might demand their cessation. Does anyone in Washington think in terms of this possible threat? Nothing that I have heard or read suggests that they have. Why? One, it is hard to admit impotence – especially in American macho culture when the testosterone is churning. Two, there is the powerful terrorism industry. Reflection is not expensive and requires few resources. It makes neither money or careers. Three, the United States is incapable of changing its 'pro-active' policies in the Middle East - for reasons of intellectual, emotional and political deficiency. Finally, politically, thinking along these lines has no pay off, and we live in an era when gaining electoral office eclipses any serious thought about what one might do once having attained it. For some, even the Presidency's appeal is mainly as a good resume item – and a heck of a lot more fun than anything else they can imagine. Finally, as a people Americans cannot stand living with uncertainty.
The Magic of BLS Numerology Roils Markets Voodoo Economics, 2011 By DAVE LINDORFF
It is part of America's state religion, the Free Market fundamentalist religion that is accepted as gospel by all leading politicians, by the "brain trust" that sets goverrnment economic policy, and by the supposedly hard-nosed analysts who convince American investors where to put their money, that "markets know best."
How then to explain the panicked reaction of investors and markets to the Labor Department's monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report on the latest monthly jobs and unemployment figures?
Those numbers reported out for the month of June, released at 9:00 am after the usual kind of tight secrecy you'd expect of a National Security Administration international risk assessment, came in at an anemic 18,000 net new jobs, and a new official jobless rate up slightly from 9.1% for May to 9.2% for June. An hour later the stock market plunged by about 1% in a matter of minutes (that 1% drop represented a paper loss to investors of $140 billion!). The reason given by analysts and financial journalists for the plunge was that the "expectation" of investors, based upon forecasts of the jobs number made by economists and analysts the day before the BLS announcement, was for somewhere between 90,000 and 120,000 new jobs, and for a dip in the jobless rate to 9.0%.
So because the actual number of new jobs reported by the BLS was somewhere like 72,000 to 102,000 lower than the forecast estimates, and because the jobless rate edged up instead of down, investors dumped a pile of shares, causing the value of most shares on the exchanges to lose value.
That investor reaction, and the poor jobs numbers themselves, were interpreted by those same economists and analysts in the following days as an indication that the US economy was in trouble--that the supposed recovery from the deepest recession since the 1930s had "stalled."
The "wisdom" of the market was saying that the American economy was stumbling again.
But hold on a minute. What has really changed with those numbers?
Before that BLS number came out, most analysts and economists were talking optimistically about the economy. They were claiming that the U.S. economy would show positive growth through the year, even picking up steam in the second half of 2011. They were saying unemployment would edge down over the year. And now all that was out the window because of one pair of numbers?
Let's look at those BLS numbers, though. According to Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Department of Labor, who works directly under the Secretary of Labor, the BLS new jobs figure, which is developed each month through a survey of 400,000 randomly selected companies about their hiring, has a historic record over the past 35 years of erring by about plus or minus 115,000 jobs. Furthermore, the initial number released at the start of each month gets repeatedly revised as harder figures come in, and can change by a lot over time. For example, the number for May, which was first released in early June, was initially 50,000, but has since already been revised downward to 25,000. That is to say, the concensus forecast of economists for 90-120,000 new jobs in June, just released on July 8, is within the BLS survey's historic margin of error. Months from now, the June jobless number could turn out to be as much as 133,000 or -87,000, based on the historic record of these things.
The 18,000 number, in other words, was really no surprise at all.
As Stevenson told me, with a laugh, "It is kind of funny when there is such a dramatic reaction in the market" to release of the BLS numbers." She says the truth is, "One monthly figure doesn't tell you much. These jobs numbers provide a pretty good measure of what's happening in the economy, but you really need to look at trends over 12 months' time."
Of course, the 12-month trend she refers to tells a pretty grim story: unemployment is stuck at an official rate of around 9%, and that's just the people who are actively looking for work and who have found nothing. The June figure of 9.2% unemployed represents 14.1 million people officially out of work. It does not count, according to the BLS, 8.6 million "involuntarily part-time" workers and it did not include 2.7 million "marginally attached to the labor force" who want jobs but have despaired of finding work and have given up looking. It also doesn't include another 1.7 million who haven't looked for work for over four weeks and who have returned to school or decided to stay home, perhaps caring for kids, rather than continue futile efforts at finding a new job. All those people--13 million of them--are also jobless because of this ongoing deep recession/depression. That's another 8.4% unemployed, if we're being honest, which means that the Department of Labor is really saying is that today, nearly four years into this economic crisis, we have a real unemployment rate of 17.8%, meaning more than one in six workers is still jobless.
Furthermore, those numbers have barely budged. If you want a real picture of what's going on with the US economy, you don't look at the BLS's monthly jobs number. You look at how the jobless numbers have been trending, as Stevenson correctly notes. And you might also look at how many of those jobless have been jobless for a long time. The would be those 8.6 million laboring at part-time jobs, and the 2.7 million who have been jobless so long (more than a year) they've given up looking. And add to them the 6.3 million of the "officially" jobless whom the BLS says have been looking unsuccessfully for work for over six months. That's 17.6 million people who have been jobless for at least half a year or more. And 17.6 million is 11.6% of the American labor force, or more than one in nine American workers!
Clearly the idea that investors have some kind of collective "wisdom" is a sad joke. Asked why they would leap to their computers en masse and start selling shares on the release of one bad monthly report from the BLS, Ryan Sweet, a senior economist with Moody's, one of the three big rating agencies, says, "It's often overlooked by investors and analysts that the [BLS] number can be off by [100,000] either way."
Of course, the BLS contributes to this nonsense by wrapping its economic research in super secrecy, such that nobody outside the BLS gets to hear how the surveys of job creation and total official unemployment are going while they're underway, and the results are kept secret even from the chief economist, the Secretary of Labor, and the White House until 8 am on the morning of the official release. That lends the numbers an air of importance they simply don't deserve.
It's a bit like the line of people waiting for communion in a Catholic service. The tension builds as the line of churchgoers slowly moves up to the altar, so that when the priest finally offers each congregant a cracker and a sip of wine it seems like it's really the body and blood of Christ instead of just a cracker and some cheap booze.
It's okay for ordinary people and for investors, even, to be fundamentalists, but when the president and his economic and political advisers start making policies based on such mumbo jumbo, as when the president says the latest BLS figures are evidence that employers need "more certainty" about action on the national debt, or when Republican leaders, like House Speaker Boehner, even more ludicrously claim the numbers show the results of the White House's "stimulus binge, excessive regulations, and an overwhelming national debt," its like we've handed over governing and national economic policy-making to Pat Robertson, John Hagee or the Pope.
And the worst part? The corporate media play right along with this nonsense, trumpeting the numbers as if they really meant anything, and reporting on the policy comments as they they were anything but propaganda and statements of faith-based nonsense.
How then to explain the panicked reaction of investors and markets to the Labor Department's monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report on the latest monthly jobs and unemployment figures?
Those numbers reported out for the month of June, released at 9:00 am after the usual kind of tight secrecy you'd expect of a National Security Administration international risk assessment, came in at an anemic 18,000 net new jobs, and a new official jobless rate up slightly from 9.1% for May to 9.2% for June. An hour later the stock market plunged by about 1% in a matter of minutes (that 1% drop represented a paper loss to investors of $140 billion!). The reason given by analysts and financial journalists for the plunge was that the "expectation" of investors, based upon forecasts of the jobs number made by economists and analysts the day before the BLS announcement, was for somewhere between 90,000 and 120,000 new jobs, and for a dip in the jobless rate to 9.0%.
So because the actual number of new jobs reported by the BLS was somewhere like 72,000 to 102,000 lower than the forecast estimates, and because the jobless rate edged up instead of down, investors dumped a pile of shares, causing the value of most shares on the exchanges to lose value.
That investor reaction, and the poor jobs numbers themselves, were interpreted by those same economists and analysts in the following days as an indication that the US economy was in trouble--that the supposed recovery from the deepest recession since the 1930s had "stalled."
The "wisdom" of the market was saying that the American economy was stumbling again.
But hold on a minute. What has really changed with those numbers?
Before that BLS number came out, most analysts and economists were talking optimistically about the economy. They were claiming that the U.S. economy would show positive growth through the year, even picking up steam in the second half of 2011. They were saying unemployment would edge down over the year. And now all that was out the window because of one pair of numbers?
Let's look at those BLS numbers, though. According to Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Department of Labor, who works directly under the Secretary of Labor, the BLS new jobs figure, which is developed each month through a survey of 400,000 randomly selected companies about their hiring, has a historic record over the past 35 years of erring by about plus or minus 115,000 jobs. Furthermore, the initial number released at the start of each month gets repeatedly revised as harder figures come in, and can change by a lot over time. For example, the number for May, which was first released in early June, was initially 50,000, but has since already been revised downward to 25,000. That is to say, the concensus forecast of economists for 90-120,000 new jobs in June, just released on July 8, is within the BLS survey's historic margin of error. Months from now, the June jobless number could turn out to be as much as 133,000 or -87,000, based on the historic record of these things.
The 18,000 number, in other words, was really no surprise at all.
As Stevenson told me, with a laugh, "It is kind of funny when there is such a dramatic reaction in the market" to release of the BLS numbers." She says the truth is, "One monthly figure doesn't tell you much. These jobs numbers provide a pretty good measure of what's happening in the economy, but you really need to look at trends over 12 months' time."
Of course, the 12-month trend she refers to tells a pretty grim story: unemployment is stuck at an official rate of around 9%, and that's just the people who are actively looking for work and who have found nothing. The June figure of 9.2% unemployed represents 14.1 million people officially out of work. It does not count, according to the BLS, 8.6 million "involuntarily part-time" workers and it did not include 2.7 million "marginally attached to the labor force" who want jobs but have despaired of finding work and have given up looking. It also doesn't include another 1.7 million who haven't looked for work for over four weeks and who have returned to school or decided to stay home, perhaps caring for kids, rather than continue futile efforts at finding a new job. All those people--13 million of them--are also jobless because of this ongoing deep recession/depression. That's another 8.4% unemployed, if we're being honest, which means that the Department of Labor is really saying is that today, nearly four years into this economic crisis, we have a real unemployment rate of 17.8%, meaning more than one in six workers is still jobless.
Furthermore, those numbers have barely budged. If you want a real picture of what's going on with the US economy, you don't look at the BLS's monthly jobs number. You look at how the jobless numbers have been trending, as Stevenson correctly notes. And you might also look at how many of those jobless have been jobless for a long time. The would be those 8.6 million laboring at part-time jobs, and the 2.7 million who have been jobless so long (more than a year) they've given up looking. And add to them the 6.3 million of the "officially" jobless whom the BLS says have been looking unsuccessfully for work for over six months. That's 17.6 million people who have been jobless for at least half a year or more. And 17.6 million is 11.6% of the American labor force, or more than one in nine American workers!
Clearly the idea that investors have some kind of collective "wisdom" is a sad joke. Asked why they would leap to their computers en masse and start selling shares on the release of one bad monthly report from the BLS, Ryan Sweet, a senior economist with Moody's, one of the three big rating agencies, says, "It's often overlooked by investors and analysts that the [BLS] number can be off by [100,000] either way."
Of course, the BLS contributes to this nonsense by wrapping its economic research in super secrecy, such that nobody outside the BLS gets to hear how the surveys of job creation and total official unemployment are going while they're underway, and the results are kept secret even from the chief economist, the Secretary of Labor, and the White House until 8 am on the morning of the official release. That lends the numbers an air of importance they simply don't deserve.
It's a bit like the line of people waiting for communion in a Catholic service. The tension builds as the line of churchgoers slowly moves up to the altar, so that when the priest finally offers each congregant a cracker and a sip of wine it seems like it's really the body and blood of Christ instead of just a cracker and some cheap booze.
It's okay for ordinary people and for investors, even, to be fundamentalists, but when the president and his economic and political advisers start making policies based on such mumbo jumbo, as when the president says the latest BLS figures are evidence that employers need "more certainty" about action on the national debt, or when Republican leaders, like House Speaker Boehner, even more ludicrously claim the numbers show the results of the White House's "stimulus binge, excessive regulations, and an overwhelming national debt," its like we've handed over governing and national economic policy-making to Pat Robertson, John Hagee or the Pope.
And the worst part? The corporate media play right along with this nonsense, trumpeting the numbers as if they really meant anything, and reporting on the policy comments as they they were anything but propaganda and statements of faith-based nonsense.
Exxon, the Yellowstone and the Damage Done A Pipeline Runs Through It By MICHAEL KIDDER
And how many pipeline-river crossings are there in North America? I understand that there are 88 more in Montana alone; so we're probably talking thousands in total.
After hearing some Exxon rep blithering the usual bullshit: unforeseeable, unusually high river flow, minor leak, and older technology; I remain thoroughly unimpressed.
In some ways it is the 'older tech' excuse that is most disconcerting. Whether they cross rivers or not is immaterial; there are many thousands of kilometers of these older pipelines still in service. When they were built, we were given glowing assurances of their durability and safety; now they are dismissed as relics of some distant ignorant age.
Pipeline companies are like shameless toothbrush or shampoo producers. "Our new product is the best thing in the whole world." So the old product was shit? At least a discarded toothbrush is relatively harmless. (Not so much shampoo, of course. Estrogen mimics and nasty chemical soups abound; contaminating water everywhere. A strong case can really be made for condemning all manufacturers who play the 'new improved' game. Their duplicity and greed contributes immensely to the overall destructiveness of the entire ...) but I digress.
Even the pipeline companies', reluctant and disingenuous, acknowledgement of responsibility for environmental mitigation and financial compensation; falls far short of satisfactory. It is mere PR; more product puffery. For starters they will fight in the courts over every penny; delaying and stonewalling in hopes that the plaintiffs run out of cash. But most important; the damage is already done. I saw a nice goat pasture in Montana on the news; irreparably contaminated; useless for the foreseeable future. That pasture, and a large chunk of Northern Alberta, are beyond the capacity of even the best hearted and best funded attempts at reclamation.
The land is simply fucked.
There have been, and will continue to be, numerous pipeline leaks. Each creates its own little Love Canal. Cumulatively their toxic footprint grows.
But the old debates and hidden complicities around protesting corporatization still exist. How can one possibly travel to a protest about rapacious oil companies without: contributing money to, and using the products of; the very evil one opposes?
My old friends in the hard-core 'back to the land' movement saw complete divorce as the only solution. But the picture of the earth used on the cover of the 'bible', The Whole Earth Catalogue, was taken from space by the US military industrial complex. And Stewart Brand now supports nuclear power.
This machine, at which I sit, is a product of destructive technology. The server farm through which this message will be routed uses as much energy as a pulp mill. I will be driving to a friend's house later today.
I do, at times, despair.
After hearing some Exxon rep blithering the usual bullshit: unforeseeable, unusually high river flow, minor leak, and older technology; I remain thoroughly unimpressed.
In some ways it is the 'older tech' excuse that is most disconcerting. Whether they cross rivers or not is immaterial; there are many thousands of kilometers of these older pipelines still in service. When they were built, we were given glowing assurances of their durability and safety; now they are dismissed as relics of some distant ignorant age.
Pipeline companies are like shameless toothbrush or shampoo producers. "Our new product is the best thing in the whole world." So the old product was shit? At least a discarded toothbrush is relatively harmless. (Not so much shampoo, of course. Estrogen mimics and nasty chemical soups abound; contaminating water everywhere. A strong case can really be made for condemning all manufacturers who play the 'new improved' game. Their duplicity and greed contributes immensely to the overall destructiveness of the entire ...) but I digress.
Even the pipeline companies', reluctant and disingenuous, acknowledgement of responsibility for environmental mitigation and financial compensation; falls far short of satisfactory. It is mere PR; more product puffery. For starters they will fight in the courts over every penny; delaying and stonewalling in hopes that the plaintiffs run out of cash. But most important; the damage is already done. I saw a nice goat pasture in Montana on the news; irreparably contaminated; useless for the foreseeable future. That pasture, and a large chunk of Northern Alberta, are beyond the capacity of even the best hearted and best funded attempts at reclamation.
The land is simply fucked.
There have been, and will continue to be, numerous pipeline leaks. Each creates its own little Love Canal. Cumulatively their toxic footprint grows.
But the old debates and hidden complicities around protesting corporatization still exist. How can one possibly travel to a protest about rapacious oil companies without: contributing money to, and using the products of; the very evil one opposes?
My old friends in the hard-core 'back to the land' movement saw complete divorce as the only solution. But the picture of the earth used on the cover of the 'bible', The Whole Earth Catalogue, was taken from space by the US military industrial complex. And Stewart Brand now supports nuclear power.
This machine, at which I sit, is a product of destructive technology. The server farm through which this message will be routed uses as much energy as a pulp mill. I will be driving to a friend's house later today.
I do, at times, despair.
Radiation Levels in Northwest Rain Were Up to 130 Times Safe Drinking Water Standards Following Fukushima Radiated Rain By GERALD POLLET
Radiation levels in rainwater collected in Portland, Oregon on March 25, 2011 were 86.8 pCi/L for Iodine 131 (I131), amongst the highest recorded in the US after Fukushima. Rain in Olympia had even higher levels of radioactive Iodine. The Portland result was not posted by EPA until April 4.
The maximum level of Iodine 131in rain in Olympia, WA was 125 pCi/L on March 24, which was not posted by EPA until April 4.
Highest levels in rainwater in California were collected March 22, 2011 in Richmond, CA with levels of 138 pCi/L.
The Drinking Water Standard is just 3 pCi/L (picoCuries per Liter, which is a very small measurement). Thus, people drinking undiluted rainwater n Portland would have consumed and been exposed to Iodine 131 at levels nearly 30 times the DWS, and 41 times the standard in Olympia. There are no results for Seattle or Bellingham areas. The DWS is set at a level based on drinking 2L/day resulting in a 4 mrem per year dose, which is a 1 in 10,000 lifetime risk of fatal cancer in adults, if consumed daily over 30 years. Children are 3 to 10 times more susceptible to develop cancer from the same does, especially because Iodine concentrates in young thyroids. Of course, Iodine 131 may cause non-cancerous health conditions.
If the rain in Richmond, CA had high levels on March 22, one might expect that EPA would have been testing the same day or as close as possible at Pacific Northwest locations that day. However, locations only test once a week or once a month without apparent coordination related to the event, e.g., without apparent increased testing based on weather patterns from Japan and daily events, such as explosions at Fukushima.
The highest levels of Iodine 131 in rain were collected in Boise, Idaho on March 27 and March 22, 2011 with levels of 390 and 242, respectively.
A high level reported by EPA was 150 pCi/L collected in Jacksonville, FL on March 31. This shows how far and wide the contamination can, and did, spread. It also reveals that claims and news reports were false in presenting that the 8 day half-life of Iodine 131 (half of the radiation remains) meant that contamination would not reach across the US. If levels of 150 were in rain in Jacksonville, the levels were much higher days earlier on the West Coast.
If levels of 390 reached Boise, 130 times the Drinking Water Standard, the same clouds likely dropped precipitation at levels 50% higher in Oregon and Washington before reaching Boise.
There were no samples collected and reported in Oregon and WA in the days immediately prior to the Boise collection of a sample with 242 pCi/L on March 22nd. Portland had only two precipitation samples reported during this entire period, the second on April 20, with all results "non-detects". These results were not posted by EPA until May 24.
While there are numerous results collected at Oak Ridge, home of USDOE's Oak Ridge National Lab, it appears that USDOE's Hanford site and Pacific NW National Lab were not part of EPA's collection program – despite claims of extensive radiological monitoring at Hanford.
EPA refuses to make public who is collecting data samples for its RadNet program, preventing independent review of accuracy and raising concern that the choices as to sampling may be biased, and leaving numerous questions such as why some collection stations were only collecting monthly even at the height of the crisis (e.g., Portland).
EPA's announcement that it was returning to "routine" sampling implied that there was across the board increased sampling from mid-March to May3, 2011. However, a review of the posted sampling results show many locations, such as Portland, OR, did not increase precipitation sampling from once a month during the crisis.
EPA's May 3 Statement:
"After a thorough data review showing declining radiation levels related to the Japanese nuclear incident, EPA has returned to the routine RadNet sampling and analysis process for precipitation, drinking water and milk.
"As always, EPA's RadNet system of more than 100 stationary monitors will continue to provide EPA scientists near-real-time data on the slightest fluctuations in background radiation levels…
"It is important to note that all of the radiation levels detected by RadNet monitors and sampling have been very low, are well below any level of public health concern, and continue to decrease over time. EPA continues to work with federal partners to monitor the situation in Japan and stands prepared to accelerate radiation sampling and analysis if the need arises. Data will continue to be available on EPA's public website."
Heart of America Northwest's review shows that EPA's claim of "near real-time data" is belied by EPA taking a week to post data. In the event of another explosion releasing radioactive particles and gases, the serious week long gap in time between collection of results and posting could prevent a proper public health advisory and response. By taking a week to post results, the public is deprived of the ability to make its own choices in time to make a difference.
All data from EPA: http://www.epa.gov/japan2011/rert/radnet-sampling-data.html
The maximum level of Iodine 131in rain in Olympia, WA was 125 pCi/L on March 24, which was not posted by EPA until April 4.
Highest levels in rainwater in California were collected March 22, 2011 in Richmond, CA with levels of 138 pCi/L.
The Drinking Water Standard is just 3 pCi/L (picoCuries per Liter, which is a very small measurement). Thus, people drinking undiluted rainwater n Portland would have consumed and been exposed to Iodine 131 at levels nearly 30 times the DWS, and 41 times the standard in Olympia. There are no results for Seattle or Bellingham areas. The DWS is set at a level based on drinking 2L/day resulting in a 4 mrem per year dose, which is a 1 in 10,000 lifetime risk of fatal cancer in adults, if consumed daily over 30 years. Children are 3 to 10 times more susceptible to develop cancer from the same does, especially because Iodine concentrates in young thyroids. Of course, Iodine 131 may cause non-cancerous health conditions.
If the rain in Richmond, CA had high levels on March 22, one might expect that EPA would have been testing the same day or as close as possible at Pacific Northwest locations that day. However, locations only test once a week or once a month without apparent coordination related to the event, e.g., without apparent increased testing based on weather patterns from Japan and daily events, such as explosions at Fukushima.
The highest levels of Iodine 131 in rain were collected in Boise, Idaho on March 27 and March 22, 2011 with levels of 390 and 242, respectively.
A high level reported by EPA was 150 pCi/L collected in Jacksonville, FL on March 31. This shows how far and wide the contamination can, and did, spread. It also reveals that claims and news reports were false in presenting that the 8 day half-life of Iodine 131 (half of the radiation remains) meant that contamination would not reach across the US. If levels of 150 were in rain in Jacksonville, the levels were much higher days earlier on the West Coast.
If levels of 390 reached Boise, 130 times the Drinking Water Standard, the same clouds likely dropped precipitation at levels 50% higher in Oregon and Washington before reaching Boise.
There were no samples collected and reported in Oregon and WA in the days immediately prior to the Boise collection of a sample with 242 pCi/L on March 22nd. Portland had only two precipitation samples reported during this entire period, the second on April 20, with all results "non-detects". These results were not posted by EPA until May 24.
While there are numerous results collected at Oak Ridge, home of USDOE's Oak Ridge National Lab, it appears that USDOE's Hanford site and Pacific NW National Lab were not part of EPA's collection program – despite claims of extensive radiological monitoring at Hanford.
EPA refuses to make public who is collecting data samples for its RadNet program, preventing independent review of accuracy and raising concern that the choices as to sampling may be biased, and leaving numerous questions such as why some collection stations were only collecting monthly even at the height of the crisis (e.g., Portland).
EPA's announcement that it was returning to "routine" sampling implied that there was across the board increased sampling from mid-March to May3, 2011. However, a review of the posted sampling results show many locations, such as Portland, OR, did not increase precipitation sampling from once a month during the crisis.
EPA's May 3 Statement:
"After a thorough data review showing declining radiation levels related to the Japanese nuclear incident, EPA has returned to the routine RadNet sampling and analysis process for precipitation, drinking water and milk.
"As always, EPA's RadNet system of more than 100 stationary monitors will continue to provide EPA scientists near-real-time data on the slightest fluctuations in background radiation levels…
"It is important to note that all of the radiation levels detected by RadNet monitors and sampling have been very low, are well below any level of public health concern, and continue to decrease over time. EPA continues to work with federal partners to monitor the situation in Japan and stands prepared to accelerate radiation sampling and analysis if the need arises. Data will continue to be available on EPA's public website."
Heart of America Northwest's review shows that EPA's claim of "near real-time data" is belied by EPA taking a week to post data. In the event of another explosion releasing radioactive particles and gases, the serious week long gap in time between collection of results and posting could prevent a proper public health advisory and response. By taking a week to post results, the public is deprived of the ability to make its own choices in time to make a difference.
All data from EPA: http://www.epa.gov/japan2011/rert/radnet-sampling-data.html
Modern Blood Rites Revisited War Without Humans By BARBARA EHRENREICH
For a book about the all-too-human "passions of war," my 1997 work Blood Rites ended on a strangely inhuman note: I suggested that, whatever distinctly human qualities war calls upon -- honor, courage, solidarity, cruelty, and so forth -- it might be useful to stop thinking of war in exclusively human terms. After all, certain species of ants wage war and computers can simulate "wars" that play themselves out on-screen without any human involvement.
More generally, then, we should define war as a self-replicating pattern of activity that may or may not require human participation. In the human case, we know it is capable of spreading geographically and evolving rapidly over time -- qualities that, as I suggested somewhat fancifully, make war a metaphorical successor to the predatory animals that shaped humans into fighters in the first place.
A decade and a half later, these musings do not seem quite so airy and abstract anymore. The trend, at the close of the twentieth century, still seemed to be one of ever more massive human involvement in war -- from armies containing tens of thousands in the sixteenth century, to hundreds of thousands in the nineteenth, and eventually millions in the twentieth century world wars.
It was the ascending scale of war that originally called forth the existence of the nation-state as an administrative unit capable of maintaining mass armies and the infrastructure -- for taxation, weapons manufacture, transport, etc. -- that they require. War has been, and we still expect it to be, the most massive collective project human beings undertake. But it has been evolving quickly in a very different direction, one in which human beings have a much smaller role to play.
One factor driving this change has been the emergence of a new kind of enemy, so-called "non-state actors," meaning popular insurgencies and loose transnational networks of fighters, none of which are likely to field large numbers of troops or maintain expensive arsenals of their own. In the face of these new enemies, typified by al-Qaeda, the mass armies of nation-states are highly ineffective, cumbersome to deploy, difficult to maneuver, and from a domestic point of view, overly dependent on a citizenry that is both willing and able to fight, or at least to have their children fight for them.
Yet just as U.S. military cadets continue, in defiance of military reality, to sport swords on their dress uniforms, our leaders, both military and political, tend to cling to an idea of war as a vast, labor-intensive effort on the order of World War II. Only slowly, and with a reluctance bordering on the phobic, have the leaders of major states begun to grasp the fact that this approach to warfare may soon be obsolete.
Consider the most recent U.S. war with Iraq. According to then-president George W. Bush, the casus belli was the 9/11 terror attacks. The causal link between that event and our chosen enemy, Iraq, was, however, imperceptible to all but the most dedicated inside-the-Beltway intellectuals. Nineteen men had hijacked airplanes and flown them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center -- 15 of them Saudi Arabians, none of them Iraqis -- and we went to war against… Iraq?
Military history offers no ready precedents for such wildly misaimed retaliation. The closest analogies come from anthropology, which provides plenty of cases of small-scale societies in which the death of any member, for any reason, needs to be "avenged" by an attack on a more or less randomly chosen other tribe or hamlet.
Why Iraq? Neoconservative imperial ambitions have been invoked in explanation, as well as the American thirst for oil, or even an Oedipal contest between George W. Bush and his father. There is no doubt some truth to all of these explanations, but the targeting of Iraq also represented a desperate and irrational response to what was, for Washington, an utterly confounding military situation.
We faced a state-less enemy -- geographically diffuse, lacking uniforms and flags, invulnerable to invading infantries and saturation bombing, and apparently capable of regenerating itself at minimal expense. From the perspective of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his White House cronies, this would not do.
Since the U.S. was accustomed to fighting other nation-states -- geopolitical entities containing such identifiable targets as capital cities, airports, military bases, and munitions plants -- we would have to find a nation-state to fight, or as Rumsfeld put it, a "target-rich environment." Iraq, pumped up by alleged stockpiles of "weapons of mass destruction," became the designated surrogate for an enemy that refused to play our game.
The effects of this atavistic war are still being tallied: in Iraq, we would have to include civilian deaths estimated at possibly hundreds of thousands, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and devastating outbreaks of sectarian violence of a kind that, as we should have learned from the dissolution of Yugoslavia, can readily follow the death or removal of a nationalist dictator.
But the effects of war on the U.S. and its allies may end up being almost as tragic. Instead of punishing the terrorists who had attacked the U.S., the war seems to have succeeded in recruiting more such irregular fighters, young men (and sometimes women) willing to die and ready to commit further acts of terror or revenge. By insisting on fighting a more or less randomly selected nation-state, the U.S. may only have multiplied the non-state threats it faces.
Unwieldy Armies
Whatever they may think of what the U.S. and its allies did in Iraq, many national leaders are beginning to acknowledge that conventional militaries are becoming, in a strictly military sense, almost ludicrously anachronistic. Not only are they unsuited to crushing counterinsurgencies and small bands of terrorists or irregular fighters, but mass armies are simply too cumbersome to deploy on short notice.
In military lingo, they are weighed down by their "tooth to tail" ratio -- a measure of the number of actual fighters in comparison to the support personnel and equipment the fighters require. Both hawks and liberal interventionists may hanker to airlift tens of thousands of soldiers to distant places virtually overnight, but those soldiers will need to be preceded or accompanied by tents, canteens, trucks, medical equipment, and so forth. "Flyover" rights will have to be granted by neighboring countries; air strips and eventually bases will have to be constructed; supply lines will have be created and defended -- all of which can take months to accomplish.
The sluggishness of the mass, labor-intensive military has become a constant source of frustration to civilian leaders. Irritated by the Pentagon's hesitation to put "boots on the ground" in Bosnia, then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright famously demanded of Secretary of Defense Colin Powell, "What good is this marvelous military force if we can never use it?" In 2009, the Obama administration unthinkingly proposed a troop surge in Afghanistan, followed by a withdrawal within a year and a half that would have required some of the troops to start packing up almost as soon as they arrived. It took the U.S. military a full month to organize the transport of 20,000 soldiers to Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake -- and they were only traveling 700 miles to engage in a humanitarian relief mission, not a war.
Another thing hobbling mass militaries is the increasing unwillingness of nations, especially the more democratic ones, to risk large numbers of casualties. It is no longer acceptable to drive men into battle at gunpoint or to demand that they fend for themselves on foreign soil. Once thousands of soldiers have been plunked down in a "theater," they must be defended from potentially hostile locals, a project that can easily come to supersede the original mission.
We may not be able clearly to articulate what American troops were supposed to accomplish in Iraq or Afghanistan, but without question one part of their job has been "force protection." In what could be considered the inverse of "mission creep," instead of expanding, the mission now has a tendency to contract to the task of self-defense.
Ultimately, the mass militaries of the modern era, augmented by ever-more expensive weapons systems, place an unacceptable economic burden on the nation-states that support them -- a burden that eventually may undermine the militaries themselves. Consider what has been happening to the world's sole military superpower, the United States. The latest estimate for the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is, at this moment, at least $3.2 trillion, while total U.S. military spending equals that of the next 15 countries combined, and adds up to approximately 47% of all global military spending.
To this must be added the cost of caring for wounded and otherwise damaged veterans, which has been mounting precipitously as medical advances allow more of the injured to survive. The U.S. military has been sheltered from the consequences of its own profligacy by a level of bipartisan political support that has kept it almost magically immune to budget cuts, even as the national debt balloons to levels widely judged to be unsustainable.
The hard right, in particular, has campaigned relentlessly against "big government," apparently not noticing that the military is a sizable chunk of this behemoth. In December 2010, for example, a Republican senator from Oklahoma railed against the national debt with this statement: "We're really at war. We're on three fronts now: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the financial tsunami [arising from the debt] that is facing us." Only in recent months have some Tea Party-affiliated legislators broken with tradition by declaring their willingness to cut military spending.
How the Warfare State Became the Welfare State
If military spending is still for the most part sacrosanct, ever more spending cuts are required to shrink "big government." Then what remains is the cutting of domestic spending, especially social programs for the poor, who lack the means to finance politicians, and all too often the incentive to vote as well. From the Reagan years on, the U.S. government has chipped away at dozens of programs that had helped sustain people who are underpaid or unemployed, including housing subsidies, state-supplied health insurance, public transportation, welfare for single parents, college tuition aid, and inner-city economic development projects.
Even the physical infrastructure -- bridges, airports, roads, and tunnels -- used by people of all classes has been left at dangerous levels of disrepair. Antiwar protestors wistfully point out, year after year, what the cost of our high-tech weapon systems, our global network of more than 1,000 military bases, and our various "interventions" could buy if applied to meeting domestic human needs. But to no effect.
This ongoing sacrifice of domestic welfare for military "readiness" represents the reversal of a historic trend. Ever since the introduction of mass armies in Europe in the seventeenth century, governments have generally understood that to underpay and underfeed one's troops -- and the class of people that supplies them -- is to risk having the guns pointed in the opposite direction from that which the officers recommend.
In fact, modern welfare states, inadequate as they may be, are in no small part the product of war -- that is, of governments' attempts to appease soldiers and their families. In the U.S., for example, the Civil War led to the institution of widows' benefits, which were the predecessor of welfare in its Aid to Families with Dependent Children form. It was the bellicose German leader Otto von Bismarck who first instituted national health insurance.
World War II spawned educational benefits and income support for American veterans and led, in the United Kingdom, to a comparatively generous welfare state, including free health care for all. Notions of social justice and fairness, or at least the fear of working class insurrections, certainly played a part in the development of twentieth century welfare states, but there was a pragmatic military motivation as well: if young people are to grow up to be effective troops, they need to be healthy, well-nourished, and reasonably well-educated.
In the U.S., the steady withering of social programs that might nurture future troops even serves, ironically, to justify increased military spending. In the absence of a federal jobs program, Congressional representatives become fierce advocates for weapons systems that the Pentagon itself has no use for, as long as the manufacture of those weapons can provide employment for some of their constituents.
With diminishing funds for higher education, military service becomes a less dismal alternative for young working-class people than the low-paid jobs that otherwise await them. The U.S. still has a civilian welfare state consisting largely of programs for the elderly (Medicare and Social Security). For many younger Americans, however, as well as for older combat veterans, the U.S. military is the welfare state -- and a source, however temporarily, of jobs, housing, health care and education.
Eventually, however, the failure to invest in America's human resources -- through spending on health, education, and so forth -- undercuts the military itself. In World War I, public health experts were shocked to find that one-third of conscripts were rejected as physically unfit for service; they were too weak and flabby or too damaged by work-related accidents.
Several generations later, in 2010, the U.S. Secretary of Education reported that "75 percent of young Americans, between the ages of 17 to 24, are unable to enlist in the military today because they have failed to graduate from high school, have a criminal record, or are physically unfit." When a nation can no longer generate enough young people who are fit for military service, that nation has two choices: it can, as a number of prominent retired generals are currently advocating, reinvest in its "human capital," especially the health and education of the poor, or it can seriously reevaluate its approach to war.
The Fog of (Robot) War
Since the rightward, anti-"big government" tilt of American politics more or less precludes the former, the U.S. has been scrambling to develop less labor-intensive forms of waging war. In fact, this may prove to be the ultimate military utility of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: if they have gained the U.S. no geopolitical advantage, they have certainly served as laboratories and testing grounds for forms of future warfare that involve less human, or at least less governmental, commitment.
One step in that direction has been the large-scale use of military contract workers supplied by private companies, which can be seen as a revival of the age-old use of mercenaries. Although most of the functions that have been outsourced to private companies -- including food services, laundry, truck driving, and construction -- do not involve combat, they are dangerous, and some contract workers have even been assigned to the guarding of convoys and military bases.
Contractors are still men and women, capable of bleeding and dying -- and surprising numbers of them have indeed died. In the initial six months of 2010, corporate deaths exceeded military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan for the first time. But the Pentagon has little or no responsibility for the training, feeding, or care of private contractors. If wounded or psychologically damaged, American contract workers must turn, like any other injured civilian employees, to the Workers' Compensation system, hence their sense of themselves as a "disposable army." By 2009, the trend toward privatization had gone so far that the number of private contractors in Afghanistan exceeded the number of American troops there.
An alternative approach is to eliminate or drastically reduce the military's dependence on human beings of any kind. This would have been an almost unthinkable proposition a few decades ago, but technologies employed in Iraq and Afghanistan have steadily stripped away the human role in war. Drones, directed from sites up to 7,500 miles away in the western United States, are replacing manned aircraft.
Video cameras, borne by drones, substitute for human scouts or information gathered by pilots. Robots disarm roadside bombs. When American forces invaded Iraq in 2003, no robots accompanied them; by 2008, there were 12,000 participating in the war. Only a handful of drones were used in the initial invasion; today, the U.S. military has an inventory of more than 7,000, ranging from the familiar Predator to tiny Ravens and Wasps used to transmit video images of events on the ground. Far stranger fighting machines are in the works, like swarms of lethal "cyborg insects" that could potentially replace human infantry.
These developments are by no means limited to the U.S. The global market for military robotics and unmanned military vehicles is growing fast, and includes Israel, a major pioneer in the field, Russia, the United Kingdom, Iran, South Korea, and China. Turkey is reportedly readying a robot force for strikes against Kurdish insurgents; Israel hopes to eventually patrol the Gaza border with "see-shoot" robots that will destroy people perceived as transgressors as soon as they are detected.
It is hard to predict how far the automation of war and the substitution of autonomous robots for human fighters will go. On the one hand, humans still have the advantage of superior visual discrimination. Despite decades of research in artificial intelligence, computers cannot make the kind of simple distinctions -- as in determining whether a cow standing in front of a barn is a separate entity or a part of the barn -- that humans can make in a fraction of a second.
Thus, as long as there is any premium on avoiding civilian deaths, humans have to be involved in processing the visual information that leads, for example, to the selection of targets for drone attacks. If only as the equivalent of seeing-eye dogs, humans will continue to have a role in war, at least until computer vision improves.
On the other hand, the human brain lacks the bandwidth to process all the data flowing into it, especially as new technologies multiply that data. In the clash of traditional mass armies, under a hail of arrows or artillery shells, human warriors often found themselves confused and overwhelmed, a condition attributed to "the fog of war." Well, that fog is growing a lot thicker. U.S. military officials, for instance, put the blame on "information overload" for the killing of 23 Afghan civilians in February 2010, and the New York Times reported that:
"Across the military, the data flow has surged; since the attacks of 9/11, the amount of intelligence gathered by remotely piloted drones and other surveillance technologies has risen 1,600 percent. On the ground, troops increasingly use hand-held devices to communicate, get directions and set bombing coordinates. And the screens in jets can be so packed with data that some pilots call them "drool buckets" because, they say, they can get lost staring into them."
When the sensory data coming at a soldier is augmented by a flood of instantaneously transmitted data from distant cameras and computer search engines, there may be no choice but to replace the sloppy "wet-ware" of the human brain with a robotic system for instant response.
War Without Humans
Once set in place, the cyber-automation of war is hard to stop. Humans will cling to their place "in the loop" as long as they can, no doubt insisting that the highest level of decision-making -- whether to go to war and with whom -- be reserved for human leaders. But it is precisely at the highest levels that decision-making may most need automating. A head of state faces a blizzard of factors to consider, everything from historical analogies and satellite-derived intelligence to assessments of the readiness of potential allies. Furthermore, as the enemy automates its military, or in the case of a non-state actor, simply adapts to our level of automation, the window of time for effective responses will grow steadily narrower. Why not turn to a high-speed computer? It is certainly hard to imagine a piece of intelligent hardware deciding to respond to the 9/11 attacks by invading Iraq.
So, after at least 10,000 years of intra-species fighting -- of scorched earth, burned villages, razed cities, and piled up corpses, as well, of course, as all the great epics of human literature -- we have to face the possibility that the institution of war might no longer need us for its perpetuation. Human desires, especially for the Earth's diminishing supply of resources, will still instigate wars for some time to come, but neither human courage nor human bloodlust will carry the day on the battlefield.
Computers will assess threats and calibrate responses; drones will pinpoint enemies; robots might roll into the streets of hostile cities. Beyond the individual battle or smaller-scale encounter, decisions as to whether to match attack with counterattack, or one lethal technological innovation with another, may also be eventually ceded to alien minds.
This should not come as a complete surprise. Just as war has shaped human social institutions for millennia, so has it discarded them as the evolving technology of war rendered them useless. When war was fought with blades by men on horseback, it favored the rule of aristocratic warrior elites. When the mode of fighting shifted to action-at-a-distance weapons like bows and guns, the old elites had to bow to the central authority of kings, who, in turn, were undone by the democratizing forces unleashed by new mass armies.
Even patriarchy cannot depend on war for its long-term survival, since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have, at least within U.S. forces, established women's worth as warriors. Over the centuries, human qualities once deemed indispensable to war fighting -- muscular power, manliness, intelligence, judgment -- have one by one become obsolete or been ceded to machines.
What will happen then to the "passions of war"? Except for individual acts of martyrdom, war is likely to lose its glory and luster. Military analyst P.W. Singer quotes an Air Force captain musing about whether the new technologies will "mean that brave men and women will no longer face death in combat," only to reassure himself that "there will always be a need for intrepid souls to fling their bodies across the sky."
Perhaps, but in a 2010 address to Air Force Academy cadets, an under secretary of defense delivered the "bad news" that most of them would not be flying airplanes, which are increasingly unmanned. War will continue to be used against insurgencies as well as to "take out" the weapons facilities, command centers, and cities of designated rogue states. It may even continue to fascinate its aficionados, in the manner of computer games. But there will be no triumphal parades for killer nano-bugs, no epics about unmanned fighter planes, no monuments to fallen bots.
And in that may lie our last hope. With the decline of mass militaries and their possible replacement by machines, we may finally see that war is not just an extension of our needs and passions, however base or noble. Nor is it likely to be even a useful test of our courage, fitness, or national unity. War has its own dynamic or -- in case that sounds too anthropomorphic -- its own grim algorithms to work out. As it comes to need us less, maybe we will finally see that we don't need it either. We can leave it to the ants.
More generally, then, we should define war as a self-replicating pattern of activity that may or may not require human participation. In the human case, we know it is capable of spreading geographically and evolving rapidly over time -- qualities that, as I suggested somewhat fancifully, make war a metaphorical successor to the predatory animals that shaped humans into fighters in the first place.
A decade and a half later, these musings do not seem quite so airy and abstract anymore. The trend, at the close of the twentieth century, still seemed to be one of ever more massive human involvement in war -- from armies containing tens of thousands in the sixteenth century, to hundreds of thousands in the nineteenth, and eventually millions in the twentieth century world wars.
It was the ascending scale of war that originally called forth the existence of the nation-state as an administrative unit capable of maintaining mass armies and the infrastructure -- for taxation, weapons manufacture, transport, etc. -- that they require. War has been, and we still expect it to be, the most massive collective project human beings undertake. But it has been evolving quickly in a very different direction, one in which human beings have a much smaller role to play.
One factor driving this change has been the emergence of a new kind of enemy, so-called "non-state actors," meaning popular insurgencies and loose transnational networks of fighters, none of which are likely to field large numbers of troops or maintain expensive arsenals of their own. In the face of these new enemies, typified by al-Qaeda, the mass armies of nation-states are highly ineffective, cumbersome to deploy, difficult to maneuver, and from a domestic point of view, overly dependent on a citizenry that is both willing and able to fight, or at least to have their children fight for them.
Yet just as U.S. military cadets continue, in defiance of military reality, to sport swords on their dress uniforms, our leaders, both military and political, tend to cling to an idea of war as a vast, labor-intensive effort on the order of World War II. Only slowly, and with a reluctance bordering on the phobic, have the leaders of major states begun to grasp the fact that this approach to warfare may soon be obsolete.
Consider the most recent U.S. war with Iraq. According to then-president George W. Bush, the casus belli was the 9/11 terror attacks. The causal link between that event and our chosen enemy, Iraq, was, however, imperceptible to all but the most dedicated inside-the-Beltway intellectuals. Nineteen men had hijacked airplanes and flown them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center -- 15 of them Saudi Arabians, none of them Iraqis -- and we went to war against… Iraq?
Military history offers no ready precedents for such wildly misaimed retaliation. The closest analogies come from anthropology, which provides plenty of cases of small-scale societies in which the death of any member, for any reason, needs to be "avenged" by an attack on a more or less randomly chosen other tribe or hamlet.
Why Iraq? Neoconservative imperial ambitions have been invoked in explanation, as well as the American thirst for oil, or even an Oedipal contest between George W. Bush and his father. There is no doubt some truth to all of these explanations, but the targeting of Iraq also represented a desperate and irrational response to what was, for Washington, an utterly confounding military situation.
We faced a state-less enemy -- geographically diffuse, lacking uniforms and flags, invulnerable to invading infantries and saturation bombing, and apparently capable of regenerating itself at minimal expense. From the perspective of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his White House cronies, this would not do.
Since the U.S. was accustomed to fighting other nation-states -- geopolitical entities containing such identifiable targets as capital cities, airports, military bases, and munitions plants -- we would have to find a nation-state to fight, or as Rumsfeld put it, a "target-rich environment." Iraq, pumped up by alleged stockpiles of "weapons of mass destruction," became the designated surrogate for an enemy that refused to play our game.
The effects of this atavistic war are still being tallied: in Iraq, we would have to include civilian deaths estimated at possibly hundreds of thousands, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and devastating outbreaks of sectarian violence of a kind that, as we should have learned from the dissolution of Yugoslavia, can readily follow the death or removal of a nationalist dictator.
But the effects of war on the U.S. and its allies may end up being almost as tragic. Instead of punishing the terrorists who had attacked the U.S., the war seems to have succeeded in recruiting more such irregular fighters, young men (and sometimes women) willing to die and ready to commit further acts of terror or revenge. By insisting on fighting a more or less randomly selected nation-state, the U.S. may only have multiplied the non-state threats it faces.
Unwieldy Armies
Whatever they may think of what the U.S. and its allies did in Iraq, many national leaders are beginning to acknowledge that conventional militaries are becoming, in a strictly military sense, almost ludicrously anachronistic. Not only are they unsuited to crushing counterinsurgencies and small bands of terrorists or irregular fighters, but mass armies are simply too cumbersome to deploy on short notice.
In military lingo, they are weighed down by their "tooth to tail" ratio -- a measure of the number of actual fighters in comparison to the support personnel and equipment the fighters require. Both hawks and liberal interventionists may hanker to airlift tens of thousands of soldiers to distant places virtually overnight, but those soldiers will need to be preceded or accompanied by tents, canteens, trucks, medical equipment, and so forth. "Flyover" rights will have to be granted by neighboring countries; air strips and eventually bases will have to be constructed; supply lines will have be created and defended -- all of which can take months to accomplish.
The sluggishness of the mass, labor-intensive military has become a constant source of frustration to civilian leaders. Irritated by the Pentagon's hesitation to put "boots on the ground" in Bosnia, then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright famously demanded of Secretary of Defense Colin Powell, "What good is this marvelous military force if we can never use it?" In 2009, the Obama administration unthinkingly proposed a troop surge in Afghanistan, followed by a withdrawal within a year and a half that would have required some of the troops to start packing up almost as soon as they arrived. It took the U.S. military a full month to organize the transport of 20,000 soldiers to Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake -- and they were only traveling 700 miles to engage in a humanitarian relief mission, not a war.
Another thing hobbling mass militaries is the increasing unwillingness of nations, especially the more democratic ones, to risk large numbers of casualties. It is no longer acceptable to drive men into battle at gunpoint or to demand that they fend for themselves on foreign soil. Once thousands of soldiers have been plunked down in a "theater," they must be defended from potentially hostile locals, a project that can easily come to supersede the original mission.
We may not be able clearly to articulate what American troops were supposed to accomplish in Iraq or Afghanistan, but without question one part of their job has been "force protection." In what could be considered the inverse of "mission creep," instead of expanding, the mission now has a tendency to contract to the task of self-defense.
Ultimately, the mass militaries of the modern era, augmented by ever-more expensive weapons systems, place an unacceptable economic burden on the nation-states that support them -- a burden that eventually may undermine the militaries themselves. Consider what has been happening to the world's sole military superpower, the United States. The latest estimate for the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is, at this moment, at least $3.2 trillion, while total U.S. military spending equals that of the next 15 countries combined, and adds up to approximately 47% of all global military spending.
To this must be added the cost of caring for wounded and otherwise damaged veterans, which has been mounting precipitously as medical advances allow more of the injured to survive. The U.S. military has been sheltered from the consequences of its own profligacy by a level of bipartisan political support that has kept it almost magically immune to budget cuts, even as the national debt balloons to levels widely judged to be unsustainable.
The hard right, in particular, has campaigned relentlessly against "big government," apparently not noticing that the military is a sizable chunk of this behemoth. In December 2010, for example, a Republican senator from Oklahoma railed against the national debt with this statement: "We're really at war. We're on three fronts now: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the financial tsunami [arising from the debt] that is facing us." Only in recent months have some Tea Party-affiliated legislators broken with tradition by declaring their willingness to cut military spending.
How the Warfare State Became the Welfare State
If military spending is still for the most part sacrosanct, ever more spending cuts are required to shrink "big government." Then what remains is the cutting of domestic spending, especially social programs for the poor, who lack the means to finance politicians, and all too often the incentive to vote as well. From the Reagan years on, the U.S. government has chipped away at dozens of programs that had helped sustain people who are underpaid or unemployed, including housing subsidies, state-supplied health insurance, public transportation, welfare for single parents, college tuition aid, and inner-city economic development projects.
Even the physical infrastructure -- bridges, airports, roads, and tunnels -- used by people of all classes has been left at dangerous levels of disrepair. Antiwar protestors wistfully point out, year after year, what the cost of our high-tech weapon systems, our global network of more than 1,000 military bases, and our various "interventions" could buy if applied to meeting domestic human needs. But to no effect.
This ongoing sacrifice of domestic welfare for military "readiness" represents the reversal of a historic trend. Ever since the introduction of mass armies in Europe in the seventeenth century, governments have generally understood that to underpay and underfeed one's troops -- and the class of people that supplies them -- is to risk having the guns pointed in the opposite direction from that which the officers recommend.
In fact, modern welfare states, inadequate as they may be, are in no small part the product of war -- that is, of governments' attempts to appease soldiers and their families. In the U.S., for example, the Civil War led to the institution of widows' benefits, which were the predecessor of welfare in its Aid to Families with Dependent Children form. It was the bellicose German leader Otto von Bismarck who first instituted national health insurance.
World War II spawned educational benefits and income support for American veterans and led, in the United Kingdom, to a comparatively generous welfare state, including free health care for all. Notions of social justice and fairness, or at least the fear of working class insurrections, certainly played a part in the development of twentieth century welfare states, but there was a pragmatic military motivation as well: if young people are to grow up to be effective troops, they need to be healthy, well-nourished, and reasonably well-educated.
In the U.S., the steady withering of social programs that might nurture future troops even serves, ironically, to justify increased military spending. In the absence of a federal jobs program, Congressional representatives become fierce advocates for weapons systems that the Pentagon itself has no use for, as long as the manufacture of those weapons can provide employment for some of their constituents.
With diminishing funds for higher education, military service becomes a less dismal alternative for young working-class people than the low-paid jobs that otherwise await them. The U.S. still has a civilian welfare state consisting largely of programs for the elderly (Medicare and Social Security). For many younger Americans, however, as well as for older combat veterans, the U.S. military is the welfare state -- and a source, however temporarily, of jobs, housing, health care and education.
Eventually, however, the failure to invest in America's human resources -- through spending on health, education, and so forth -- undercuts the military itself. In World War I, public health experts were shocked to find that one-third of conscripts were rejected as physically unfit for service; they were too weak and flabby or too damaged by work-related accidents.
Several generations later, in 2010, the U.S. Secretary of Education reported that "75 percent of young Americans, between the ages of 17 to 24, are unable to enlist in the military today because they have failed to graduate from high school, have a criminal record, or are physically unfit." When a nation can no longer generate enough young people who are fit for military service, that nation has two choices: it can, as a number of prominent retired generals are currently advocating, reinvest in its "human capital," especially the health and education of the poor, or it can seriously reevaluate its approach to war.
The Fog of (Robot) War
Since the rightward, anti-"big government" tilt of American politics more or less precludes the former, the U.S. has been scrambling to develop less labor-intensive forms of waging war. In fact, this may prove to be the ultimate military utility of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: if they have gained the U.S. no geopolitical advantage, they have certainly served as laboratories and testing grounds for forms of future warfare that involve less human, or at least less governmental, commitment.
One step in that direction has been the large-scale use of military contract workers supplied by private companies, which can be seen as a revival of the age-old use of mercenaries. Although most of the functions that have been outsourced to private companies -- including food services, laundry, truck driving, and construction -- do not involve combat, they are dangerous, and some contract workers have even been assigned to the guarding of convoys and military bases.
Contractors are still men and women, capable of bleeding and dying -- and surprising numbers of them have indeed died. In the initial six months of 2010, corporate deaths exceeded military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan for the first time. But the Pentagon has little or no responsibility for the training, feeding, or care of private contractors. If wounded or psychologically damaged, American contract workers must turn, like any other injured civilian employees, to the Workers' Compensation system, hence their sense of themselves as a "disposable army." By 2009, the trend toward privatization had gone so far that the number of private contractors in Afghanistan exceeded the number of American troops there.
An alternative approach is to eliminate or drastically reduce the military's dependence on human beings of any kind. This would have been an almost unthinkable proposition a few decades ago, but technologies employed in Iraq and Afghanistan have steadily stripped away the human role in war. Drones, directed from sites up to 7,500 miles away in the western United States, are replacing manned aircraft.
Video cameras, borne by drones, substitute for human scouts or information gathered by pilots. Robots disarm roadside bombs. When American forces invaded Iraq in 2003, no robots accompanied them; by 2008, there were 12,000 participating in the war. Only a handful of drones were used in the initial invasion; today, the U.S. military has an inventory of more than 7,000, ranging from the familiar Predator to tiny Ravens and Wasps used to transmit video images of events on the ground. Far stranger fighting machines are in the works, like swarms of lethal "cyborg insects" that could potentially replace human infantry.
These developments are by no means limited to the U.S. The global market for military robotics and unmanned military vehicles is growing fast, and includes Israel, a major pioneer in the field, Russia, the United Kingdom, Iran, South Korea, and China. Turkey is reportedly readying a robot force for strikes against Kurdish insurgents; Israel hopes to eventually patrol the Gaza border with "see-shoot" robots that will destroy people perceived as transgressors as soon as they are detected.
It is hard to predict how far the automation of war and the substitution of autonomous robots for human fighters will go. On the one hand, humans still have the advantage of superior visual discrimination. Despite decades of research in artificial intelligence, computers cannot make the kind of simple distinctions -- as in determining whether a cow standing in front of a barn is a separate entity or a part of the barn -- that humans can make in a fraction of a second.
Thus, as long as there is any premium on avoiding civilian deaths, humans have to be involved in processing the visual information that leads, for example, to the selection of targets for drone attacks. If only as the equivalent of seeing-eye dogs, humans will continue to have a role in war, at least until computer vision improves.
On the other hand, the human brain lacks the bandwidth to process all the data flowing into it, especially as new technologies multiply that data. In the clash of traditional mass armies, under a hail of arrows or artillery shells, human warriors often found themselves confused and overwhelmed, a condition attributed to "the fog of war." Well, that fog is growing a lot thicker. U.S. military officials, for instance, put the blame on "information overload" for the killing of 23 Afghan civilians in February 2010, and the New York Times reported that:
"Across the military, the data flow has surged; since the attacks of 9/11, the amount of intelligence gathered by remotely piloted drones and other surveillance technologies has risen 1,600 percent. On the ground, troops increasingly use hand-held devices to communicate, get directions and set bombing coordinates. And the screens in jets can be so packed with data that some pilots call them "drool buckets" because, they say, they can get lost staring into them."
When the sensory data coming at a soldier is augmented by a flood of instantaneously transmitted data from distant cameras and computer search engines, there may be no choice but to replace the sloppy "wet-ware" of the human brain with a robotic system for instant response.
War Without Humans
Once set in place, the cyber-automation of war is hard to stop. Humans will cling to their place "in the loop" as long as they can, no doubt insisting that the highest level of decision-making -- whether to go to war and with whom -- be reserved for human leaders. But it is precisely at the highest levels that decision-making may most need automating. A head of state faces a blizzard of factors to consider, everything from historical analogies and satellite-derived intelligence to assessments of the readiness of potential allies. Furthermore, as the enemy automates its military, or in the case of a non-state actor, simply adapts to our level of automation, the window of time for effective responses will grow steadily narrower. Why not turn to a high-speed computer? It is certainly hard to imagine a piece of intelligent hardware deciding to respond to the 9/11 attacks by invading Iraq.
So, after at least 10,000 years of intra-species fighting -- of scorched earth, burned villages, razed cities, and piled up corpses, as well, of course, as all the great epics of human literature -- we have to face the possibility that the institution of war might no longer need us for its perpetuation. Human desires, especially for the Earth's diminishing supply of resources, will still instigate wars for some time to come, but neither human courage nor human bloodlust will carry the day on the battlefield.
Computers will assess threats and calibrate responses; drones will pinpoint enemies; robots might roll into the streets of hostile cities. Beyond the individual battle or smaller-scale encounter, decisions as to whether to match attack with counterattack, or one lethal technological innovation with another, may also be eventually ceded to alien minds.
This should not come as a complete surprise. Just as war has shaped human social institutions for millennia, so has it discarded them as the evolving technology of war rendered them useless. When war was fought with blades by men on horseback, it favored the rule of aristocratic warrior elites. When the mode of fighting shifted to action-at-a-distance weapons like bows and guns, the old elites had to bow to the central authority of kings, who, in turn, were undone by the democratizing forces unleashed by new mass armies.
Even patriarchy cannot depend on war for its long-term survival, since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have, at least within U.S. forces, established women's worth as warriors. Over the centuries, human qualities once deemed indispensable to war fighting -- muscular power, manliness, intelligence, judgment -- have one by one become obsolete or been ceded to machines.
What will happen then to the "passions of war"? Except for individual acts of martyrdom, war is likely to lose its glory and luster. Military analyst P.W. Singer quotes an Air Force captain musing about whether the new technologies will "mean that brave men and women will no longer face death in combat," only to reassure himself that "there will always be a need for intrepid souls to fling their bodies across the sky."
Perhaps, but in a 2010 address to Air Force Academy cadets, an under secretary of defense delivered the "bad news" that most of them would not be flying airplanes, which are increasingly unmanned. War will continue to be used against insurgencies as well as to "take out" the weapons facilities, command centers, and cities of designated rogue states. It may even continue to fascinate its aficionados, in the manner of computer games. But there will be no triumphal parades for killer nano-bugs, no epics about unmanned fighter planes, no monuments to fallen bots.
And in that may lie our last hope. With the decline of mass militaries and their possible replacement by machines, we may finally see that war is not just an extension of our needs and passions, however base or noble. Nor is it likely to be even a useful test of our courage, fitness, or national unity. War has its own dynamic or -- in case that sounds too anthropomorphic -- its own grim algorithms to work out. As it comes to need us less, maybe we will finally see that we don't need it either. We can leave it to the ants.
The Unequal Battle Class War Without Mercy By GREGORY ELICH
One can never have too much money. In the U.S., the top one percent of the population rakes in almost a quarter of the national income and enjoys 40 percent of the wealth. That class sees this as a problem. It is not enough.
For ordinary workers, the recession brought only economic hardship. But for corporate America, it meant one thing: opportunity. This is the chance to permanently mold the economy into something approximating the Third World model: vast wealth and privilege for those at the top, and unemployment, falling wages, and inadequate or nonexistent social services for the rest of society.
The recession ended two years ago, yet more than nine percent of the population remains without work. If one takes into account discouraged workers and part-time workers wanting a full-time position, nearly one sixth of the workforce is underutilized. For people of African descent, the situation is even more dire, with unemployment approaching a rate twice as high. Yet, a jobs program has never been on lawmakers' agenda.
Instead, the trend has been to slash benefits at a time of heightened need, while simultaneously calling for more tax cuts for the wealthy. Deficits run up by the George W. Bush Administration and President Barack Obama have handed the right wing a cudgel to impose their will and discipline workers. President Obama needed no votes from Congress had he been willing to simply let the Bush tax cuts expire. By insisting on an unwinnable partial continuation of the tax cuts, Obama ensured that the entire package would remain in effect. At a time when the recession has caused a plunge in tax revenue, starving the government of funds when it is most needed is exacting a toll on the well being of the population, and opened the door for slashing benefits. According to the Congressional Budget Office, continuation of the Bush tax cuts through the year 2020 will contribute $3.3 trillion toward the national debt. This is money that would be better utilized in providing much needed social services and launching a real jobs program, assuming of course, the political will to do so - which has been noticeably lacking.
Add in the fact that the Bush Administration's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were mostly run on borrowed funds to the tune of $1.2 trillion. Take into consideration associated costs, and the total price tag on the Iraq and Afghan wars rises to at least $3.2 trillion, according to the Costs of War project. Those wars are still underway, chewing up resources, and for good measure President Obama has added a third war, in Libya. There is no end in sight for military adventurism, and the defense budget remains sacrosanct. For all the talk of budget cuts, this department remains immune. Indeed, the House of Representatives recently voted to boost the already bloated defense budget by an additional $17 billion.
What we get instead of a responsible and progressive tax policy or trimming of the defense budget is the steady drumbeat of debt panic, with loud demands to cut social services, shrink pensions and pay, and, oddly enough, provide additional tax reductions for the well-to-do. This debt panic has become the driving argument for a ferocious assault on workers. Class war is being waged, and sensing victory, the owning class is taking no prisoners.
Current policies already in place ensure that workers are being bypassed in the economic recovery. Over the course of the two year recovery, worker salaries remain essentially unchanged, showing in fact a slight decline. Meanwhile, median compensation for CEOs ballooned 27 percent in 2010 alone, rising to a cool $9 million. Before-tax corporate profits fared even better, growing by nearly 37 percent in 2010 and maintaining their pace with an additional nine percent growth in the first quarter of 2011. Indeed, so one-sided has the recovery been that corporate profits account for 92 percent of the growth in national income since the beginning of the recovery.
These are booming times for corporations. To a large extent, this comes at the expense of their workforce. When workers are laid off, those remaining on the job must shoulder the extra burden. After shedding millions of jobs during the recession, the corporate world remains loath to hire full-time workers during the recovery. Half of newly created jobs are in temporary help agencies, and many of the newly created full-time positions lack benefits. Over 90 percent of the growth in output has been due to rising productivity. Workers still fortunate enough to have a job are being driven to work harder, put in longer hours, and to take on more duties without any corresponding gain in pay. In plain terms, the exploitation of labor is increasing.
Workers are understandably fearful. With the unemployment rate so high, and with so many of the unemployed finding it difficult or impossible to find another job, no one wants to rock the boat. Circumstances dictate that workers feel they have to put up without whatever outrage management chooses to impose. The current climate of fear has all but eliminated union action. To be sure, this is a continuation of a long-standing trend. Work stoppages involving more than one thousand workers averaged 269 per year during the 1970s. Under the Reaganite onslaught of the eighties, the average fell to 69 per year, and then down to 34 per year in the nineties. But even those sorry figures have been outdone in the last three years. In 2009, there were just five major work stoppages, the lowest total by far since records began to be kept in 1947. Last year there were only eleven, and the pace so far in 2011 promises to fall short of even that figure. The recession has produced a dream come true for the corporate world, with a workforce that has essentially become de-unionized.
But despite enforced speedup, benefit cuts, and downward pressures on wages, U.S. firms continue to export jobs abroad. Why pay a U.S. worker a piddling $8 an hour, when you can get someone in Indonesia, for instance, to do the same job at 50 cents an hour? In the decade leading up through 2009, U.S. multinational corporations slashed 2.9 million domestic jobs. At the same time, they added 2.4 million employees abroad. This figure represents direct hires only, and does not take into account subcontracting to foreign films, which is typically the means used for moving one's manufacturing to sweatshops.
So what does one make of all this? If you listen to the pundits and politicians, the urgent need now is to end the "privileges" of government workers. Smash government employee unions, reduce or ditch pensions altogether, cut salaries and lay off workers. Tough economic times call for shared sacrifice. To hear them tell it, the American people are clamoring for an end to decent benefits for all workers. All must share the pain. President Obama fired a shot across the bow of Federal employees by freezing their pay for two years - in effect, implementing a pay cut. And he was recently quoted as saying, "In the public sector, what is true is that some of the pension plans that have been in place and the health benefits that are in place are so out of proportion with what’s happening in the private sector that a lot of taxpayers start feeling resentful...What this means is, is that all of us are going to have to make some adjustments." All, that is, except the wealthy, who can continue to party on.
The right-wing philosophy is profoundly anti-government. In their eyes, the only proper function of government is to serve the wealthy and devise new ways of allowing the well-to-do to further enrich themselves. Unceasing efforts are made to convince the rest of us that all other governmental functions are essentially illegitimate and should be reduced or abolished. The only other pressing task of the moment is how to provide additional tax cuts for corporations, even though two thirds of corporations now pay zero Federal income taxes, and most Fortune 500 companies pay a lower percentage of earnings in Federal taxes than do ordinary workers.
We are told that excessive taxation is all that stands in the way of job creation. Unleash the power of the market by reducing the corporate tax rate, goes the refrain. Yet corporations are already sitting atop a pile of $1.9 trillion in cash reserves, which they are holding onto as a hedge against economic insecurity. Adding another trillion or so that that stack is not going to encourage a manufacturing plant to ramp up production when consumers are being hammered so hard that there are not enough buyers for the goods that are already on the market. The job creation premise, of course, is a smokescreen to get public buy in for funneling yet more money into the pockets of the wealthy. It is dismaying to hear President Obama parroting that mythology, as in a comment he made in late June that "it makes perfect sense" to look at "other tax breaks for business investment that could make a big difference in terms of creating more jobs right now."
One of the more prominent plans being bandied about is for a corporate repatriation tax holiday. U.S. multinational corporations pay zero Federal income taxes on money earned abroad until - and if - the money is brought into the U.S. Many firms establish sham headquarters in places such as Bermuda, and monies are siphoned through foreign subsidiaries, all in order to circumvent tax laws. Cisco Systems, for example, reduced its taxes by $7 billion by booking about half of its earnings at a small subsidiary office in Switzerland.
Corporate lobbyists are winning considerable support among senators and congressmen for the tax holiday proposal. Instead of paying a maximum rate of 35 percent, the tax holiday would allow firms to transfer these funds into the U.S. at a top rate of just over five percent. This plan, we are told, could bring in $1 trillion and foster investment and job creation. The only problem is that this proposal has been tried before, when a two year corporate repatriation tax holiday was granted in 2004 for the same ostensible goal. On that occasion, U.S. multinationals took advantage of the opportunity to transfer $400 billion into the U.S., and used that money to pay down debts, provide dividends to shareholders, and give bonuses to managers; in short, everything except creating jobs. A repeat performance is unlikely to produce a different result. Indeed, passage of such a plan would signal businesses that if only they would move more of their production abroad, they could expect to enjoy periodic tax holidays and pay much less in taxes than they would by keeping plants running in the U.S.
The recession sharply reduced tax revenues for state governments across the land, but with 29 Republican governors leading the way, the shortfalls have provided an opening for an all out assault on workers at the state level, and cuts in social services have been introduced in nearly all states.
In New Jersey, for example, governor Chris Christie eliminated funding for family planning, cut medical assistance for home care and nursing homes, wiped out funding for Rutgers University legal programs that assisted the poor, and sliced 40 percent from funding for civil legal services for the needy. No money was given for the Urban Enterprise Zone program, which had been designed to encourage economic development in poor neighborhoods. Also dropped were after school programs, while changes to eligibility rules are expected to cause over 50,000 poor people to lose access to health care coverage.
Such cuts were deemed necessary due to inadequate state revenue, yet at the same time, Christie granted corporations $180 million in tax breaks.
The New Jersey Supreme Court overturned Christie's education cuts of $1 billion last year, ordering the state to spend half that amount on its poorest schools in the current fiscal year. Christie considers this only a momentary setback, however. Unremittingly hostile to the concept of public education, Christie envisions the complete privatization of education in his state, and to help spur efforts in that direction, he appointed Christopher Cerf, former president of Edison Schools Incorporated, as acting Commissioner of Education. Replacing public education with a voucher system has long been on the Right's agenda. The well-to-do send their children to private schools, and resent having to pay taxes to support public education. With their narcissistic rejection of the concept of the public good, they see only their own personal interest. In their eyes, the beauties of the voucher system are manifold. Poor families would not be able to afford any amount over the voucher amount, with the result that their children would be condemned to attend the most poorly funded schools. The "riffraff," in other words, would be kept out of sight. The well-to-do, however, would see the fees they currently pay to private schools reduced by the voucher amount. And perhaps best of all in the free market mindset, would be the evisceration of schoolteacher unions and the opportunity for private companies to run schools, where quality of education would run a distant second to the drive for profit.
To take another example, Ohio Governor John Kasich has played a particularly prominent role in the attack on workers. Even before he took office, he announced that he would kill the nascent program to bring much needed train service linking Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland, the largest population base lacking such service. That train service was to eventually lead to high speed rail, but proved unpopular with the new governor because it would be publicly owned.
Despite persistent demonstrations in opposition, Kasich easily pushed through passage of a bill that eliminated collective bargaining rights for state workers. Determined efforts by the labor movement gathered 1.3 million signatures for a ballot initiative to repeal the law, and the outcome of that battle remains to be seen. Although poll results are initially encouraging, vast sums of advertising money are sure to be devoted to convincing voters to reject the ballot measure.
In his first press conference following electoral victory, Kasich promised to implement a four percent tax cut. The upon taking office, he proclaimed that social services would need to be reduced because there was not money enough in state coffers. In the recently passed state budget, Kasich made good on his pledge to implement the tax reduction. Support for local governments shrinks in the budget by $630 million, which will surely result in an adverse effect on local social services. Five prisons are to be privatized, and plans are afoot to privatize the Ohio Turnpike, with a sharp increase in user fees expected. Counties are being granted the ability to sell local government-owned buildings, and then lease them back from the new owners, as a sort of gift to wealthy interests. Also included in the budget is a plan to assist small businesses, which is expected to reduce state revenue by $100 million every two years. The estate tax is scheduled to be completely eliminated beginning in 2013, reducing revenue for local governments by $250 million a year. And in another gift to corporate interests, the Kasich budget prohibits cities from attempting to regulate the use of trans fats in restaurant meals.
Make no mistake. There is worse to come. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives will continue to push President Obama to the right. And the outcome of the 2012 election is by no means certain. It is noted that many workers, worried over unemployment and the decline in living standards, are expressing a determination to vote a straight Republican ticket, under the illusion that a Republican victory will benefit working people. Corporations are ramping up to flood the next campaign season with political advertising, and in a culture where most people rely on television for their view of the world, such advertising does have an effect.
Corporate lobbyists are besieging Washington in droves, all pushing the same proposals. And right wing think tanks are operating in overdrive, churning our policy recommendations that receive serious attention on Capitol Hill to an alarming degree. These efforts largely determine the limits of discourse and the issues that are felt to merit attention. As a result, workers' concerns are left out in the cold, with only the corporate agenda on the table.
There is not much variation in the policies that corporate lobbyists and right-wing think tanks advocate. The same set of prescriptions is on offer wherever one looks. Therefore, it suffices to consider a single example, the Cato Institute, as typical of the nature of proposals for downsizing the Federal government.
Unemployment insurance, argues Cato, distorts the economy and is in need of reform. At a time when millions of Americans are unable to find work, Cato wants to replace unemployment insurance with a system of personal savings. As Cato sees it, unemployment insurance causes unemployment, because all those people collecting paltry payments that are inadequate to cover their expenses are enjoying the experience, and choose not to look for work. The jobs are out there, if only one bothers to apply. That is so remarkably wrong-headed as to defy comprehension. Workers should simply save their money to cover potential periods of unemployment, Cato recommends. Never mind that many workers earn barely enough to pay their bills, and that young workers who lose their jobs will not have had much time to save. Another alternative Cato suggests is to move the entire operation down to the state level, which would allow states to "be free to move to a more market-oriented system," and "repeal any laws that obstruct insurance firms from offering private UI policies." Here we come to the crux of Cato's complaint. Under the current system, private corporations cannot get a share of the action. What is the good of unemployment insurance if no corporation can directly profit by it?
Not surprisingly, the Department of Labor draws the ire of Cato. Employment and training services should be eliminated, because they "don't fill any critical need that private markets don't already fill." Congress "should downsize the Department of Labor's regulatory activities." Cato then goes on to complain that "the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Wage and Hour Division, and other agencies impose a thick web of rules on America's employers. The main issue is not the Federal budget costs of these agencies, but the damage to the economy caused by unneeded regulations such as the Federal minimum wage." From the standpoint of corporate America, it is time to get rid of pesky regulations that help protect workers from unsafe conditions, and to remove any limitation on how far businesses can drive down wages. These "unneeded regulations" stand in the way of corporations being able to boost their earnings.
To peruse Cato's philosophy regarding unions is a jaw-dropping experience. It is difficult to believe that even corporate managers could take this literally, so keenly aware are they of their class interests, and how at variance those are with the class interests of working people. Perhaps Cato's position papers are intended to convince those working people who are not class conscious to act against their own interests. "Major Federal interventions in favor of unionism," such as the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, Cato reasons, "were premised on the false idea that business management and labor are natural enemies. In fact, both management and labor are employed by consumers to produce goods and services, and so it makes no sense to assume a sharp divide between these groups." One has to have considerable nerve to make such an outlandish claim during these tough economic times. And the goal of business is to produce profit; any goods produced are only the means of doing so.
"It is important for policymakers to reexamine labor union laws and repeal those laws that are harmful to economic growth and inconsistent with a free society," Cato helpfully suggests. Already legislators are responding to such proposals, and efforts are underway in a number of states to prohibit unions from collecting dues through payroll deduction. Workers would be instead required to write a check to the union each month. The intent is obvious. By making it more difficult for unions to collect dues, their operations would be crippled. State employee collective bargaining rights are under siege in several states. Corporations are not content with their already lopsided advantages. They are seeking total victory, in which workers are left without any means of defending their rights.
Cato wants to see the repeal of every law favorable to labor. High on its wish list is to eliminate the prohibition on union-free contracts. "A rule that requires a worker to remain union-free would be merely part of the job description," Cato explains, "and the worker is free to accept or reject the job offer." How free would one be, in this free market dream world, when the inevitable result would be that nearly every employer would make a contract to remain union free a condition of employment. The worker would have a free choice: he could either sign such a contract or go hungry.
Among the "important reforms" Cato urges Congress to pass are the elimination of exclusive representation, in other words, authorizing open shops; passage of a national right-to-work law; allowing firms to permanently hire scab replacement workers; and allowing companies to refuse to continue to employ union representatives. Cato would also like to see a bill permitting company unions, since, as it puts it, "the current ban on cooperation...makes no economic sense."
Cato's recommendations for the Department of Health and Human Services are no less draconian. "Medicare reduces individual freedom," the think tank proclaims. Cato resurrects that tired old saw that Medicare is a "pyramid scheme allowing each generation to take advantage of the next." Cato wonders why young people should have to be taxed to support the elderly. Never mind that the elderly have already paid into the system. Once again, the all too common right-wing sociopathic hostility toward the public good is on display. "Congress must cut Medicare spending," Cato demands, because "the elderly are more prosperous today than ever before." Congress should end Medicare and offer retirees a voucher to purchase health insurance. That is Cato's solution. After all, what is the good of a program in which corporations cannot profit? One wonders, though, how many insurance companies would be willing to insure an elderly person, and if so, at what exorbitant rates it would do so.
Cato praises President Clinton's welfare reform of 1996 for having slashed two thirds of people from the rolls. But more can be done. "The ultimate reform goal," Cato explains, "should be to eliminate the entire system of low-income welfare for individuals who are able to work. That means eliminating not just TANF but also food stamps, subsidized housing, and other programs. Individuals unwilling to support themselves through the job market would have to rely on the support of family, church, community, or private charity." It is the perfect Third World model, just waiting to be brought into the U.S. Maybe Cato has not noticed, but the job market has not been doing so well at employing people willing, even eager, to work. And not everyone has family they can fall back on, nor are all families doing so well financially that they can take on an added burden. One wonders how charities and churches could ever handle the task of supporting millions of people in need. There are not homeless shelters enough to accommodate them all. But never mind, because "private charity is superior to government welfare." And there are still plenty of park benches where one can sleep, and bridges to settle under.
A special hostility is reserved for the Department of Transportation. "The Federal Transit Administration should be eliminated," because of its support for rail. The loss of Federal transit subsidies would lead local governments to open "transit markets to private operators." Air traffic control ought to be "removed from the Federal budget," as its operations could be run by a private company. Amtrak, too, should be privatized. And the Federal Highway Administration should be eliminated, which would encourage state governments to "look to the private sector for help in funding and operating highways," including electronic tolling, all at a healthy profit, naturally. Imagine life where driving on highways entails repeated charges, and where rail service as a safe, speedy, and more climate-friendly transportation alternative has been permanently killed off, and you will gain a small taste of just some of the wonders this free market dreamland can bring us.
These are not just some crackpot concepts, although they certainly give that impression. Lobbyists and think tanks sense that the moment is theirs, and they are pursuing these goals with abandon. Already many state governments are moving to implement some of these policy objectives, and House Republicans have introduced a number of bills along these lines. Indeed, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's budget proposal reflects the recommendations of organizations like Cato, and includes many of the same ideas. While Ryan's proposal has no chance of passage into law unchanged, it is certain that sooner or later, some elements will find their way into law.
House Republicans are proposing that Amtrak be privatized. In effect, that would mean the sale of the northeast corridor to a private company which would operate the line, charging customers higher fees. And since the profitability of that line helps to support train service to the rest of the nation, other lines are unlikely to find buyers, resulting in their closure. China has embarked on a $1 trillion high speed rail, infrastructure and highway program, while in the U.S. that kind of money is reserved for military adventures and tax cuts. Instead, we are offered transportation plans that are based on privatization, elimination of alternatives to the automobile, and deteriorating infrastructure. Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois has introduced a bill that typifies this approach, calling for private investment in highways and airports, and the "commercialization" of highway rest stops.
As far as things have gone, these ideas will only gain more traction with the election of a Republican president. Working people are faced with an unenviable choice in the 2012 election: vote for President Obama, who can be counted on to serve corporate interests, or to vote for the Republican candidate, who can be counted on to do the same, only in a harsher manner.
In the months ahead, we are certain to see more savage cuts in pensions and social services, as well as relentless attempts to undermine Social Security. Judges in two court cases, in Colorado and Minnesota, have dismissed legal challenges by retired state workers whose pension cost of living adjustments had been cut. The decisions are widely seen as giving a green light to state legislatures to slash pensions, and already New Jersey Governor Christie has signed into law severe cuts in state worker pension and health benefits. And Christie says that he has received calls from governors in other states, asking for advice on how they can replicate his action.
With a low level of solidarity among workers, the battle is unequal. But unions, weakened as they are, continue in spirited opposition to the attacks on workers. They comprise the best weapon in our defense, and deserve our full support. The corporate world is aggressively pushing its agenda. We should be no less militant in defending our rights.
Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Korea Truth Commission. He is the author of the book Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit.
"Humala's Triumph in Peru: America's Defeat"
Commentary No. 308, July 1, 2011
"Humala's Triumph in Peru: America's Defeat"
Ollanta Humala was elected President of Peru on June 5, 2011. The one sure loser in this election was the United States, whose ambassador, Rose Likins, scarcely hid her open campaigning for Humala's opponent in the second round, Keiko Fujimori. What was at stake in this crucial election in Latin America?
Peru is a key country in the geopolitics of South America for a number of reasons: its size, its heritage as the locus of the Inca empire, its locus as a fount of the Amazonia River, its ports on the Pacific, and its recent history as the site of a major struggle between nationalist forces and pro-American elites.
In 1924, Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, a Peruvian intellectual and Marxist - a quite unorthodox Marxist - founded the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA), which was intended to be a pan-American anti-imperialist organization. APRA flourished in Peru, although it was severely repressed. What was original about APRA, unlike most left movements in the Americas, was its understanding that the majority of Peru's peasantry were indigenous Quechua-speaking peoples who had been systematically excluded from political participation and cultural rights. After 1945, APRA began to lose some of its radical edge but still had a strong popular base. Only the death of Haya de la Torre prevented his election as President in 1980.
Peru's governments remained in conservative hands until 1968, when scandals over oil leases were the spark for a military coup by nationalist officers led by Gen. Juan Velasco Alvarado. They seized power and established a Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces.
The Velasco government nationalized the oil fields, and then multiple other sectors of the economy. It invested heavily in education. More than that, it made it bilingual education, elevating Quechua to co-equal status with Spanish. The government launched programs of agrarian reform and import-substitution industrialization.
Its foreign policy moved sharply to the left. Peru cultivated good relations with Cuba, and purchased military equipment from the Soviet Union. After Pinochet's overthrow of the Allende government in Chile in 1973, relations between Peru and Chile became tense. There was even talk of war when finally in 1975 Velasco was deposed by conservative military forces. And Peru thus ended its seven-year period of military-led nationalism with a left socio-economic program.
When Alan García, as leader of APRA, was elected President in 1985, he briefly renewed the left tradition by proposing a moratorium on external debt. But he was soon blocked in this effort, and then moved rightward to embrace neo-liberalism. Peru at this time faced several insurrections, the most famous of which was the Sendero Luminoso, which based its activity in the Andean regions of Quechua and Aymara peasantries.
In the 1990 elections, a now quite unpopular García faced the famous novelist and noted Conservative thinker and aristocrat, Mario Vargas Llosa, who ran on a purely neo-liberal economic platform. Unexpectedly, a little-known Peruvian of Japanese extraction, Alberto Fujimori, won in the three-way split. Fujimori's voting strength derived largely from voter rejection of the aristocratic style of Vargas Llosa.
Fujimori turned out to be a tough dictatorial type who successfully used the army to crush Sendero Luminoso as well as urban insurrectionary groups. To ensure his power, Fujimori did not hesitate to close down Congress, interfere with the judiciary, and extend his second term. But the high degree of corruption and harsh rule led to his overthrow. He fled to Japan. He was later extradited from Chile, tried for his crimes in a Peruvian court, and sentenced to a long prison term.
His successor in 2001, Alejandro Toledo, continued the neoliberal program. And in 2006, Alan García again ran for president. He faced a former military officer, Ollanta Humala, who was openly supported by Hugo Chavez, support that hurt his prospects, as did attacks on his human rights record as an army officer. García won and continued and amplified the neoliberal path. The economy flourished because of the world boom in mineral and energy exports. But the mass of the population was left out of the benefits. Typically, the government allowed transnational corporations to seize land in the Amazonian region to exploit its mineral resources. The indigenous movements resisted, leading to a massacre in June 2009, called the Baguazo.
It is in this last period that Peru became the focal point of two geopolitical struggles. One was between Brazil and the United States. Under Lula's presidency, Brazil had been struggling with considerable success to achieve South American autonomy through the construction of regional structures like UNASUR and Mercosur. The United States sought to counter Brazil's program by creating a Pacific Alliance of Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Peru based on free trade agreements with the United States. In addition, Colombia, Peru, and Chile launched a project for an integrated stock exchange, whose Spanish acronym is MILA. And Peru's armed forces actively linked up with the U.S. military's Southern Command.
The second geopolitical struggle was between China and the United States in the search for privileged access to South America's mineral and energy resources. Peru once again was a key site.
What allowed Humala to win the election this time was three things. On the one hand, Humala turned openly and publicly to a Brazilian social-democratic path. No longer any mention of Chavez. Humala met often with Lula and talked of Peru's becoming a "strategic partner" of Mercosur.
The second critical element was the very strong endorsement he received from Vargas Llosa. Vargas Llosa, the conservative aristocrat, said it would be a catastrophe for Peru to elect Fujimori's daughter, who would release her father from prison, and continue his disreputable ways. Vargas Llosa caused a serious split in conservative forces.
The third critical element was the attitude of the Peruvian left, which had long had its reservations about Humala. As Oscar Ugarteche, a leading left intellectual, wrote for the Latin American press service, Alai-AmLatina, "for all of us Humala is a question mark but Fujimori is a certainty."
Ugarteche summed up the election by saying that "What is most significant about it, however, is the return of Peru to South America." We shall see how much Humala will be able to achieve internally in terms of redistribution and restoring the rights of the indigenous majority. But the U.S. geopolitical counteroffensive, the Pacific Alliance, is undone.
by Immanuel Wallerstein
"Humala's Triumph in Peru: America's Defeat"
Ollanta Humala was elected President of Peru on June 5, 2011. The one sure loser in this election was the United States, whose ambassador, Rose Likins, scarcely hid her open campaigning for Humala's opponent in the second round, Keiko Fujimori. What was at stake in this crucial election in Latin America?
Peru is a key country in the geopolitics of South America for a number of reasons: its size, its heritage as the locus of the Inca empire, its locus as a fount of the Amazonia River, its ports on the Pacific, and its recent history as the site of a major struggle between nationalist forces and pro-American elites.
In 1924, Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, a Peruvian intellectual and Marxist - a quite unorthodox Marxist - founded the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA), which was intended to be a pan-American anti-imperialist organization. APRA flourished in Peru, although it was severely repressed. What was original about APRA, unlike most left movements in the Americas, was its understanding that the majority of Peru's peasantry were indigenous Quechua-speaking peoples who had been systematically excluded from political participation and cultural rights. After 1945, APRA began to lose some of its radical edge but still had a strong popular base. Only the death of Haya de la Torre prevented his election as President in 1980.
Peru's governments remained in conservative hands until 1968, when scandals over oil leases were the spark for a military coup by nationalist officers led by Gen. Juan Velasco Alvarado. They seized power and established a Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces.
The Velasco government nationalized the oil fields, and then multiple other sectors of the economy. It invested heavily in education. More than that, it made it bilingual education, elevating Quechua to co-equal status with Spanish. The government launched programs of agrarian reform and import-substitution industrialization.
Its foreign policy moved sharply to the left. Peru cultivated good relations with Cuba, and purchased military equipment from the Soviet Union. After Pinochet's overthrow of the Allende government in Chile in 1973, relations between Peru and Chile became tense. There was even talk of war when finally in 1975 Velasco was deposed by conservative military forces. And Peru thus ended its seven-year period of military-led nationalism with a left socio-economic program.
When Alan García, as leader of APRA, was elected President in 1985, he briefly renewed the left tradition by proposing a moratorium on external debt. But he was soon blocked in this effort, and then moved rightward to embrace neo-liberalism. Peru at this time faced several insurrections, the most famous of which was the Sendero Luminoso, which based its activity in the Andean regions of Quechua and Aymara peasantries.
In the 1990 elections, a now quite unpopular García faced the famous novelist and noted Conservative thinker and aristocrat, Mario Vargas Llosa, who ran on a purely neo-liberal economic platform. Unexpectedly, a little-known Peruvian of Japanese extraction, Alberto Fujimori, won in the three-way split. Fujimori's voting strength derived largely from voter rejection of the aristocratic style of Vargas Llosa.
Fujimori turned out to be a tough dictatorial type who successfully used the army to crush Sendero Luminoso as well as urban insurrectionary groups. To ensure his power, Fujimori did not hesitate to close down Congress, interfere with the judiciary, and extend his second term. But the high degree of corruption and harsh rule led to his overthrow. He fled to Japan. He was later extradited from Chile, tried for his crimes in a Peruvian court, and sentenced to a long prison term.
His successor in 2001, Alejandro Toledo, continued the neoliberal program. And in 2006, Alan García again ran for president. He faced a former military officer, Ollanta Humala, who was openly supported by Hugo Chavez, support that hurt his prospects, as did attacks on his human rights record as an army officer. García won and continued and amplified the neoliberal path. The economy flourished because of the world boom in mineral and energy exports. But the mass of the population was left out of the benefits. Typically, the government allowed transnational corporations to seize land in the Amazonian region to exploit its mineral resources. The indigenous movements resisted, leading to a massacre in June 2009, called the Baguazo.
It is in this last period that Peru became the focal point of two geopolitical struggles. One was between Brazil and the United States. Under Lula's presidency, Brazil had been struggling with considerable success to achieve South American autonomy through the construction of regional structures like UNASUR and Mercosur. The United States sought to counter Brazil's program by creating a Pacific Alliance of Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Peru based on free trade agreements with the United States. In addition, Colombia, Peru, and Chile launched a project for an integrated stock exchange, whose Spanish acronym is MILA. And Peru's armed forces actively linked up with the U.S. military's Southern Command.
The second geopolitical struggle was between China and the United States in the search for privileged access to South America's mineral and energy resources. Peru once again was a key site.
What allowed Humala to win the election this time was three things. On the one hand, Humala turned openly and publicly to a Brazilian social-democratic path. No longer any mention of Chavez. Humala met often with Lula and talked of Peru's becoming a "strategic partner" of Mercosur.
The second critical element was the very strong endorsement he received from Vargas Llosa. Vargas Llosa, the conservative aristocrat, said it would be a catastrophe for Peru to elect Fujimori's daughter, who would release her father from prison, and continue his disreputable ways. Vargas Llosa caused a serious split in conservative forces.
The third critical element was the attitude of the Peruvian left, which had long had its reservations about Humala. As Oscar Ugarteche, a leading left intellectual, wrote for the Latin American press service, Alai-AmLatina, "for all of us Humala is a question mark but Fujimori is a certainty."
Ugarteche summed up the election by saying that "What is most significant about it, however, is the return of Peru to South America." We shall see how much Humala will be able to achieve internally in terms of redistribution and restoring the rights of the indigenous majority. But the U.S. geopolitical counteroffensive, the Pacific Alliance, is undone.
by Immanuel Wallerstein
"The Coming Israeli Tsunami?"
Commentary No. 307, June 15, 2011
"The Coming Israeli Tsunami?"
The Palestinians are pursuing their project of seeking a formal recognition of their statehood by the United Nations when the General Assembly convenes in the fall. They intend to request a statement that the state exists within the boundary lines as they existed in 1967 before the Israeli-Palestinian war. It is almost certain that the vote will be favorable. The only question at the moment is how favorable.
The Israeli political leadership is well aware of this. There are three different responses that are being discussed by them. The dominant position seems to be that of Prime Minister Netanyahu. He proposes ignoring such a resolution totally and simply continuing to pursue the Israeli government's present policies. Netanyahu believes that, for a very long time, there have been resolutions adopted by the U.N. General Assembly that have been unfavorable to Israel, all of which Israel has successfully ignored. Why should this one be any different?
There are a few politicians on the far right (yes, there is an even further right position than that of Netanyahu) who say that, in reprisal, Israel should formally annex all of the presently occupied Palestinian territories and end all talk of any negotiations with the Palestinians. Some of them also want to force an exodus of non-Jewish populations from this expanded Israeli state.
Former Prime Minister (and present Defense Mini ster) Ehud Barak, whose political base is now almost non-existent, is warning Netanyahu that he is being unrealistic. Barak says that the resolution will be a tsunami for Israel, and that therefore Netanyahu would be wisest somehow to make a deal with the Palestinians now, before the resolution passes.
Is Barak right? Will this be a tsunami for Israel? There is a good chance that he is. There is however virtually no chance that Netanyahu will heed Barak's advice and try seriously to make a deal with the Palestinians before then.
Consider what is likely to happen in the General Assembly itself. We know that most (maybe all) countries in Latin America and a very large percentage of countries in Africa and Asia will vote for the resolution. We know that the United States will vote against it and try to persuade others to vote against it. The uncertain votes are those of Europe. If the Palestinians can get a significant number of European votes, their political position will be much reinforced.
So, will the Europeans vote for the resolution? That depends in part on what happens throughout the Arab world in the next two months. The French have already hinted openly that, unless they see significant progress in Israel-Palestinian negotiations (which are not even occurring at the moment), they will support such a resolution. If they do, it almost certain that southern European governments will join them. So may the Nordic countries. It is a more open question whether Great Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands are ready to join them. If these countries do decide to go with the resolution, this may resolve the hesitations of various east European countries. In this case, the resolution would obtain the vast majority of Europe's votes.
We need to look therefore at what is going on in the Arab world. The second Arab revolt is still in full swing. It would be rash to predict exactly which regimes will fall and which will hold tight in the coming two months. What does seem clear is that the Palestinians are on the verge of launching a third intifada. The Palestinians, even the most conservative among them, seem to have given up hope that there can be any negotiated arrangement with Israel. This is the clear message of the agreement between Fatah and Hamas. And given that the Arab populations of virtually every Arab state are in direct political revolt against their regimes, how could the Palestinians remain relatively quiet? They will not remain quiet.
And if they do not remain quiet, what will other Arab regimes do? All of them are having a difficult enough time, to say the least, handling the uprisings in their own countries. Actively supporting a third intifada would be the easiest position to take as part of the effort they are making to regain control of their own country. Which regime would dare not support the third intifada? Egypt has already moved clearly in that direction. And King Abdullah of Jordan has hinted that he too would do so.
So imagine the sequence: a third intifada, followed by active Arab support for a third intifada, followed by Israeli intransigence. What will the Europeans then do? It is hard to see them refusing to vote for the resolution. We could easily arrive at a vote with only Israel, the United States, and a very few tiny countries voting against, and perhaps a few abstentions.
This sounds like a possible tsunami to me. Israel's major fear for the past few years has been "delegitimization." Would not such a vote precisely encrust the process of delegitimization? And would not the isolation of the United States in this vote further weaken its position in the Arab world as a whole? What then will the United States do?
by Immanuel Wallerstein
Last Updated: 6/14/11
"The Coming Israeli Tsunami?"
The Palestinians are pursuing their project of seeking a formal recognition of their statehood by the United Nations when the General Assembly convenes in the fall. They intend to request a statement that the state exists within the boundary lines as they existed in 1967 before the Israeli-Palestinian war. It is almost certain that the vote will be favorable. The only question at the moment is how favorable.
The Israeli political leadership is well aware of this. There are three different responses that are being discussed by them. The dominant position seems to be that of Prime Minister Netanyahu. He proposes ignoring such a resolution totally and simply continuing to pursue the Israeli government's present policies. Netanyahu believes that, for a very long time, there have been resolutions adopted by the U.N. General Assembly that have been unfavorable to Israel, all of which Israel has successfully ignored. Why should this one be any different?
There are a few politicians on the far right (yes, there is an even further right position than that of Netanyahu) who say that, in reprisal, Israel should formally annex all of the presently occupied Palestinian territories and end all talk of any negotiations with the Palestinians. Some of them also want to force an exodus of non-Jewish populations from this expanded Israeli state.
Former Prime Minister (and present Defense Mini ster) Ehud Barak, whose political base is now almost non-existent, is warning Netanyahu that he is being unrealistic. Barak says that the resolution will be a tsunami for Israel, and that therefore Netanyahu would be wisest somehow to make a deal with the Palestinians now, before the resolution passes.
Is Barak right? Will this be a tsunami for Israel? There is a good chance that he is. There is however virtually no chance that Netanyahu will heed Barak's advice and try seriously to make a deal with the Palestinians before then.
Consider what is likely to happen in the General Assembly itself. We know that most (maybe all) countries in Latin America and a very large percentage of countries in Africa and Asia will vote for the resolution. We know that the United States will vote against it and try to persuade others to vote against it. The uncertain votes are those of Europe. If the Palestinians can get a significant number of European votes, their political position will be much reinforced.
So, will the Europeans vote for the resolution? That depends in part on what happens throughout the Arab world in the next two months. The French have already hinted openly that, unless they see significant progress in Israel-Palestinian negotiations (which are not even occurring at the moment), they will support such a resolution. If they do, it almost certain that southern European governments will join them. So may the Nordic countries. It is a more open question whether Great Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands are ready to join them. If these countries do decide to go with the resolution, this may resolve the hesitations of various east European countries. In this case, the resolution would obtain the vast majority of Europe's votes.
We need to look therefore at what is going on in the Arab world. The second Arab revolt is still in full swing. It would be rash to predict exactly which regimes will fall and which will hold tight in the coming two months. What does seem clear is that the Palestinians are on the verge of launching a third intifada. The Palestinians, even the most conservative among them, seem to have given up hope that there can be any negotiated arrangement with Israel. This is the clear message of the agreement between Fatah and Hamas. And given that the Arab populations of virtually every Arab state are in direct political revolt against their regimes, how could the Palestinians remain relatively quiet? They will not remain quiet.
And if they do not remain quiet, what will other Arab regimes do? All of them are having a difficult enough time, to say the least, handling the uprisings in their own countries. Actively supporting a third intifada would be the easiest position to take as part of the effort they are making to regain control of their own country. Which regime would dare not support the third intifada? Egypt has already moved clearly in that direction. And King Abdullah of Jordan has hinted that he too would do so.
So imagine the sequence: a third intifada, followed by active Arab support for a third intifada, followed by Israeli intransigence. What will the Europeans then do? It is hard to see them refusing to vote for the resolution. We could easily arrive at a vote with only Israel, the United States, and a very few tiny countries voting against, and perhaps a few abstentions.
This sounds like a possible tsunami to me. Israel's major fear for the past few years has been "delegitimization." Would not such a vote precisely encrust the process of delegitimization? And would not the isolation of the United States in this vote further weaken its position in the Arab world as a whole? What then will the United States do?
by Immanuel Wallerstein
Last Updated: 6/14/11
"The Political Quandary of Barack Obama"
Commentary No. 306, June 1, 2011
"The Political Quandary of Barack Obama"
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The President of the United States is considered to be the most powerful single individual in the modern world. What Barack Obama is learning to his chagrin is that he still has enormous power to do harm. But he has virtually no power to do good. I think he realizes this, and doesn't know what he can do about it. The fact is that there is very little he can do about it.
Take his biggest single concern at the moment - the second Arab revolt. He didn't start it. He was obviously taken by surprise when it began, as was almost everyone else. His immediate response was to think, correctly, that it posed great dangers to the already shaky geopolitical order in the region. The United States sought in every way it could to limit the damage, maintain its own position, and restore "order." One can't say that the United States has been very successful. Every day in every way the situation has become more disorderly and beyond the control of the United States.
Barack Obama is by conviction and by personality the quintessential centrist. He seeks dialogue and compromise between "extremes."� He acts with due reflection, and makes major decisions prudently. He is in favor of slow, orderly change - change that doesn't threaten the basic system of which he is not merely a part but the ordained central figure and most powerful single player.
He is today constrained on all sides from playing this role. Nonetheless, he continues to try to play it. He is obviously saying to himself, what else can I possibly do? What happens, as a result, is that other players (including those who were once upon a time his subordinate allies) defy him openly, and shamelessly, and get away with it - diminishing his power further.
Netanyahu addresses the U.S. Congress, which enthusiastically and endlessly applauds his dangerous self-interested nonsense as though he were George Washington reincarnated. It was a direct slap in the face of Barack Obama, even though Obama had already, in speaking to AIPAC, withdrawn de facto his timid attempt to propose the 1967 Israel/Palestine borders as the basis of a solution.
The Saudi government has made it very clear that it will do everything in its power to defend existing regimes in the Arab world and is angry at Obama's occasional concession to "human rights" language. Pakistan�s government is telling Obama very clearly that, if it tries to be tough with it, they have a firmer friend in China. The Russian, Chinese, and South African governments have all made it very clear to Obama that, if the United States tries to get Security Council action against Syria, it will not have their support and it probably couldn't get even a simple majority of votes - echoes of Bush's failure in 2003 with the second Iraq resolution. In Afghanistan, Karzai is calling on NATO to stop drone attacks. And the Pentagon is feeling pressure to pull out of Afghanistan on the grounds that it is too expensive.
Lest one think that U.S. weakness is exclusively a Middle East issue, take a look at Honduras. The United States had virtually endorsed the coup against now former President Zelaya. Because of the coup, Honduras was suspended from the Organization of American States (OAS). The United States then struggled hard to get Honduras restored to full membership in the OAS on the grounds that a new president had been formally elected. Latin American governments resisted this because Zelaya had not been allowed to return with all phony legal charges dropped.
What happened next? Colombia (supposedly the U.S.'s best friend in Latin America) and Venezuela (supposedly the U.S.'s nemesis in Latin America) got together and jointly arranged with the Honduran government in power Zelaya's return under Zelaya's conditions. Secretary of State Clinton smiled wanly at this de facto rebuff to U.S. diplomacy.
Finally, Obama is in trouble with the U.S. Congress over the war in Libya. Under the War Powers Act, Obama was supposed to be able to commit troops in Libya only for 60 days without explicit further endorsement by Congress. Sixty days have now passed, and there has been no Congressional action. Continuing the Libyan action is clearly illegal, but Obama is unable to get the endorsement. Nonetheless, Obama remains committed to the Libyan action. And U.S. involvement could escalate. So he can do the harm, but not the good.
Meanwhile, Obama is concentrating on getting re-elected. He stands a good chance of achieving this. The Republicans are moving further and further to the right, and politically they are no doubt overdoing it. But once re-elected, the president of the United States will have even less power than today. The world is moving on at a rapid pace. In a world with so many uncertainties and unpredictable actors, the most dangerous "loose gun" is turning out to be the United States.
by Immanuel Wallerstein
Last Updated: 5/31/11
"The Political Quandary of Barack Obama"
�
The President of the United States is considered to be the most powerful single individual in the modern world. What Barack Obama is learning to his chagrin is that he still has enormous power to do harm. But he has virtually no power to do good. I think he realizes this, and doesn't know what he can do about it. The fact is that there is very little he can do about it.
Take his biggest single concern at the moment - the second Arab revolt. He didn't start it. He was obviously taken by surprise when it began, as was almost everyone else. His immediate response was to think, correctly, that it posed great dangers to the already shaky geopolitical order in the region. The United States sought in every way it could to limit the damage, maintain its own position, and restore "order." One can't say that the United States has been very successful. Every day in every way the situation has become more disorderly and beyond the control of the United States.
Barack Obama is by conviction and by personality the quintessential centrist. He seeks dialogue and compromise between "extremes."� He acts with due reflection, and makes major decisions prudently. He is in favor of slow, orderly change - change that doesn't threaten the basic system of which he is not merely a part but the ordained central figure and most powerful single player.
He is today constrained on all sides from playing this role. Nonetheless, he continues to try to play it. He is obviously saying to himself, what else can I possibly do? What happens, as a result, is that other players (including those who were once upon a time his subordinate allies) defy him openly, and shamelessly, and get away with it - diminishing his power further.
Netanyahu addresses the U.S. Congress, which enthusiastically and endlessly applauds his dangerous self-interested nonsense as though he were George Washington reincarnated. It was a direct slap in the face of Barack Obama, even though Obama had already, in speaking to AIPAC, withdrawn de facto his timid attempt to propose the 1967 Israel/Palestine borders as the basis of a solution.
The Saudi government has made it very clear that it will do everything in its power to defend existing regimes in the Arab world and is angry at Obama's occasional concession to "human rights" language. Pakistan�s government is telling Obama very clearly that, if it tries to be tough with it, they have a firmer friend in China. The Russian, Chinese, and South African governments have all made it very clear to Obama that, if the United States tries to get Security Council action against Syria, it will not have their support and it probably couldn't get even a simple majority of votes - echoes of Bush's failure in 2003 with the second Iraq resolution. In Afghanistan, Karzai is calling on NATO to stop drone attacks. And the Pentagon is feeling pressure to pull out of Afghanistan on the grounds that it is too expensive.
Lest one think that U.S. weakness is exclusively a Middle East issue, take a look at Honduras. The United States had virtually endorsed the coup against now former President Zelaya. Because of the coup, Honduras was suspended from the Organization of American States (OAS). The United States then struggled hard to get Honduras restored to full membership in the OAS on the grounds that a new president had been formally elected. Latin American governments resisted this because Zelaya had not been allowed to return with all phony legal charges dropped.
What happened next? Colombia (supposedly the U.S.'s best friend in Latin America) and Venezuela (supposedly the U.S.'s nemesis in Latin America) got together and jointly arranged with the Honduran government in power Zelaya's return under Zelaya's conditions. Secretary of State Clinton smiled wanly at this de facto rebuff to U.S. diplomacy.
Finally, Obama is in trouble with the U.S. Congress over the war in Libya. Under the War Powers Act, Obama was supposed to be able to commit troops in Libya only for 60 days without explicit further endorsement by Congress. Sixty days have now passed, and there has been no Congressional action. Continuing the Libyan action is clearly illegal, but Obama is unable to get the endorsement. Nonetheless, Obama remains committed to the Libyan action. And U.S. involvement could escalate. So he can do the harm, but not the good.
Meanwhile, Obama is concentrating on getting re-elected. He stands a good chance of achieving this. The Republicans are moving further and further to the right, and politically they are no doubt overdoing it. But once re-elected, the president of the United States will have even less power than today. The world is moving on at a rapid pace. In a world with so many uncertainties and unpredictable actors, the most dangerous "loose gun" is turning out to be the United States.
by Immanuel Wallerstein
Last Updated: 5/31/11
SWAN CREEK HEIRLOOM FARM, LLC
The Southbound Metra train out of Fox Lake was 18 minutes late and thus I missed the 12:30 connecting train back to Barrington. No Problem -- the Lord of Hosts has trained me as well as the best circus dog you've ever seen - LORD, I get it! There are people I now must meet.
Went to the Rock 'N Roll MacDonalds, thinking maybe Marla would be there, or Jill, and I could invite them out to my folks, feed 'em a hot meal, let 'em shower, do some laundry, and then put 'em back on the last train to the city. No dice.
Hotter than a cat on a Hot Tin Roof, too. I was melting.
Got involved in the most engaging conversation with George Rasmussen (there are several Rasmussen's that attend the crappy church my folks go to), the German-Danish Organic Farmer who owns about 30 organic farms across the country. HERE -- is what he and his vision are all about:
Went to the Rock 'N Roll MacDonalds, thinking maybe Marla would be there, or Jill, and I could invite them out to my folks, feed 'em a hot meal, let 'em shower, do some laundry, and then put 'em back on the last train to the city. No dice.
Hotter than a cat on a Hot Tin Roof, too. I was melting.
Got involved in the most engaging conversation with George Rasmussen (there are several Rasmussen's that attend the crappy church my folks go to), the German-Danish Organic Farmer who owns about 30 organic farms across the country. HERE -- is what he and his vision are all about:
Farmers You Should Know
Good food comes from somewhere and someone. Behind food with superlative taste, there is always a place and a face.
Slow Food Chicago strives to forge stronger ties between our region’s farmers and the consumers of their products. When speaking about the food consumer, Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini has coined the term “co-producer”, to stress the importance of an eater’s partnership and bond with the farmer.
Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer and poet, famously said, “Eating is an agricultural act,” to which Slow Food responds, “Agriculture is a gastronomic act.” We all benefit when we strive to shorten the links in the chain from pasture to plate, and by realizing that satisfaction at the table is inextricably linked to conscientious custody of the field.
On these pages, we would like to introduce some farmers you should know. Read and learn, and then go meet these terrific producers at farmers markets in our area. Reestablish the connection we should all have to the sources of fresh, local, seasonal, healthy, delicious food.
Green Acres (vegetables)
Caveny Farm (turkeys, geese)
Prairie Fruits Farm (goat and sheep cheese)
Triple S Farm (pork, beef, chicken, eggs)
Mint Creek Farm (lamb, chicken, eggs, seasonal turkey)
Kinnikinnick Farm (vegetables)
Heritage Prairie (4-season vegetables, honey)
Chicago Honey Co-op (local honey)
Fairstream Farms (vegetables)
Growing Power (vegetables)
Organic Pastures (pork, chicken, lamb, beef, sausage)
Wettstein Organic Farm (pork, chicken, lamb, beef, sausage)
Seedling Fruit (Fruits, Jams)
Heartland Meats (Piedmontese Beef)
Plapp Family Organics (beef
Henry’s Farm (vegetables)
Nate Wieland Farm (dried beans)
Tempel Farms (vegetables, poultry, eggs, flowers)
Twin Oak Meats (pork, chicken, sausage)
TJ’s Meats
Spence Farm (Ramps, Maple Syrup, Heirloom Corn)
Slagel Family Farm (goat)
Arnold Family Farm (beef, pork, chicken, lamb)
Chicago Honey Co-op
Harvest Moon Organics (vegetables, meat, cheese, eggs, and flowers)
Genesis Growers (vegetables)
Swan Creek Farm (pork, chickens, turkeys)
Another excellent source of farmer information is the web site Local Harvest. There you’ll find a nationwide database of small, sustainable farmers, organized by region, with detailed information about their products, markets and CSAs. Local Harvest has also partnered with Slow Food USA to catalog producers of US Ark Products, in an effort “to bring the Ark of Taste off the page and into farms and kitchens!”
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