August 8, 2013, Issue #193
HUDSON VALLEY ACTIVIST
NEWSLETTER
http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.com/
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CONTENTS:
1. EGYPT’S
COUP: PROGRESSIVE OR REGRESSIVE?
2. EGYPT’S
COUP, part 2
3. EGYPT’S
COUP, part 3
4. U.S.
“WINS” KOREAN WAR AT LAST
5. 12 PEOPLE, NOT MANNING, WHO BELONG IN JAIL
6. WE
RECOMMEND…
7.
DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT ‘UNMASKED’
8.
EDITORIAL: THE MOVE TO THE RIGHT
9. MORE
YEARS OF HIGH U.S. UNEMPLOYMENT
10. RELENTLESS
ATTACK ON ABORTION RIGHTS
11. THEY KNOW
MUCH MORE THAN YOU THINK
12. 80% OF U.S. ADULTS FACE NEAR-POVERTY
13. ECONOMIC
BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL
14. CHINA
LEADS BATTLE AGAINST POVERTY
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Editor’s Note:
Mid-Hudson readers — HOLD THE DATE, Saturday, September 7, for rally and
march in New Paltz to defend women’s equality and the right to abortion. It was
bad enough last year when far-right politicians were threatening to do away
with abortion. But this year they are making serious headway on the state level
(See article #10, Relentless Attack on Abortion Rights for details). The rally
begins in Peace Park, adjacent to Village Hall, at 1 p.m. The event is being
organized by the Mid-Hudson chapter of WORD (Women Organized to Resist and
Defend) and will be sponsored by dozens of local organizations. It is one of a
number of WORD demonstrations nationwide in recognition of Women's Equality Day
on Aug. 26 but we are waiting until students are back from vacation. For local
information contact Donna Goodman at donna0726@earthlink.net. The WORD website
is at http://www.defendwomensrights.org/news/call-to-action-nationwide.html
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1. EGYPT’S
COUP: PROGRESSIVE OR REGRESSIVE?
By Jack A. Smith, Editor
(Part 1 of 3 parts)
What is really happening in Egypt? Are the latest
developments a progressive step forward or a regressive step backward for the
millions of Egyptians seeking political change primarily through prolonged mass
mobilizations in the streets?
It’s been over a month since a military coup d’état,
with popular support, ousted the country’s first democratically elected
government July 3 after only one year in office, following an earlier military
coup with popular support that brought down dictator Hosni Mubarak.
There are diametrically opposed interpretations about
what is taking place in Egypt. One fact remains certain, however. In 1952
during the overthrow of the monarchy, and in 2011during the overthrow of the
dictatorship, and in 2013 during the overthrow of the newly elected government,
the military was the ultimate power. It
has no intention to forego that power regardless of the outcome of the next
election in 2014.
President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood
(MB), the candidate of the Freedom and Justice Party, remains in jail (or
“incommunicado,” as the media prefers), along with other imprisoned former
government functionaries and MB followers. Most are awaiting trial on a variety
of charges, as though it was the Brotherhood that launched the coup.
Some 250 people, almost all of them Morsi supporters,
have been slain by military and security forces when they demonstrated against
the coup. The protests are continuing, and the military crackdown is becoming
increasingly fierce.
The 450,000-strong armed forces, led by Gen. Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, dismissed the government just after popular anti-Morsi protests
brought many millions of Egyptians into the streets June 30 to demand the
president’s ouster. (In terms of the unusually huge crowds, this article just
says “millions” because both sides tend to exaggerate their protest numbers.)
 |
| Gen. Abdul Fatah al-Sisi |
Sisi, who was named defense minister by Morsi,
selected an interim government until new elections. Not one of the chosen 34
cabinet members belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, but 11 of them are veterans
of the Mubarak regime. It seems doubtful that the MB and its political groups
and associates that have produced majorities in five elections (presidential
and parliamentary), will be allowed to contend for power.
The return of elements of the Mubarak regime is
beginning to draw media attention. Writing in the Washington Post from Cairo
July 19, Abigail Hauslohner stated: “Egypt’s new power dynamic following the
coup is eerily familiar. Gone are the Islamist rulers from the Muslim
Brotherhood. Back are the faces of the old guard, many closely linked to
Mubarak’s reign or to the all-
powerful generals.”
Professor Joseph Massad, who teaches Modern Arab
Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, was highly critical
of the coup in a July 14 article in CounterPunch: “What is clear for now, with
the massive increase of police and army repression with the participation of
the public, is that what this coalition has done is strengthen the Mubarakists
and the army and weakened calls for a future Egyptian democracy, real or just
procedural. Egypt is now ruled by an army whose top leadership was appointed
and served under Mubarak, and is presided over by a judge appointed by Mubarak
(Interim President Adly Mansour) and is policed by the same police used by
Mubarak. People are free to call it a coup or not, but what Egypt has now is
Mubarakism without Mubarak.”
There is no direct evidence that the U.S. was behind
the coup. Of course Washington has long maintained intimate contact with the
leaders of the armed forces and the Cairo government. It seems to have had as
close a relationship with Morsi as it did with Mubarak and now with coup leader
Gen. Sisi. There is an indirect connection, however, according to journalist Emad Mekay,
writing in Aljazeera, July10:
“A
review of
dozens of U.S. federal government documents shows Washington has quietly funded
senior Egyptian opposition figures who called for toppling of the country's
now-deposed president Mohamed Morsi. Documents obtained by the Investigative
Reporting Program at UC Berkeley show the U.S. channeled funding through a
State Department program to promote democracy in the Middle East region. This
program vigorously supported activists and politicians who have fomented unrest
in Egypt, after autocratic president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular
uprising.”
“The State Department's
program, dubbed by U.S. officials as a ‘democracy assistance’ initiative, is
part of a wider Obama administration effort to try to stop the retreat of
pro-Washington secularists, and to win back influence in Arab Spring countries
that saw the rise of Islamists, who largely oppose U.S. interests in the Middle
East. Activists bankrolled by the program include an exiled Egyptian police
officer who plotted the violent overthrow of the Morsi government, an
anti-Islamist politician who advocated closing mosques and dragging preachers
out by force, as well as a coterie of opposition politicians who pushed for the
ouster of the
country's first democratically elected leader, government documents show.”
President Obama has proclaimed neutrality in this
matter and seems to have positioned himself above the conflict, but Washington’s
every practical deed has been supportive of the military and the
military-dominated interim civilian leadership.
President Obama refused to characterize the overthrow
as a coup, which of course it was, because to do so would legally terminate the
annual bribe of $1.3 billion to the Egyptian armed forces — a token of
America’s gratitude for maintaining good relations with Israel. On July 31 U.S.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced that the Pentagon would participate in
mid-September war games with the Egyptian army as its had done throughout the
years of dictatorship.
The task of obliquely justifying the putsch fell to
Secretary of State John Kerry. On July 17 he opined that before the coup there
was “an extraordinary situation in Egypt of life and death, of the potential of
civil war and enormous violence and you now have a constitutional process
proceeding forward very rapidly. So we have to measure all of those facts
against the law, and that's exactly what we will do." On Aug. 1, he went further, alleging that the
Egyptian army was “restoring order.” The next day, Egypt Independent reported,
that an MB spokesperson “called Kerry's comments ‘alarming,’ and accused the
U.S. administration of being ‘complicit’ in the military coup."
The U.S. and several countries, mostly western, are
leading a very public “reconciliation” campaign essentially aimed at of
convincing the leadership of the MB to capitulate, accept the overthrow, end
the protests and “swallow the reality” of defeat. It is being portrayed as a
peace effort, with no criticism directed toward the military that broke the law
and evidently future jail terms for some MB leaders including Morsi who didn’t.
Under pressure from some in Congress, President Obama
sent Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham to Cairo Aug. 6 to
suggest the U.S. might withdraw its yearly $1.5 billion stipend to the military
unless the interim government took steps to restore democracy and conduct new
elections. They also called for the release of Morsi and other MB political
prisoners. Gen. Sisi already proclaims to be in the process of resuming
democracy, so that’s not an issue. He would prefer to keep Morsi and other key
Brotherhood leaders in prison for now lest they agitate for a return to power.
This could be negotiated with Washington.
Clearly, despite remaining differences, it is just a
matter of time —an “I” to be dotted, a “T” to be crossed — before Obama and
Sisi will embrace in public.
A curious anti-Morsi coalition — a seemingly unprincipled
amalgam of left, center and right, each with somewhat different agendas that
they expect to advance by liquidating the Islamist government — has galvanized
behind the military junta and is following its “roadmap” to the next elections.
Included in the coup-supporting coalition are (1) a
large portion of the youthful protestors who launched the January 2011 Tahrir
Square freedom struggle against the single-party rule of Mubarak’s now
disbanded National Democratic Party, including such organizations as the
April 6 Youth Movement and Tamarod; (2) opposition liberal, left, and
secularist groups who have combined in the National Salvation Front, plus
worker groups who demonstrated in the name of their unions; and (3) the many
supporters of the old Mubarak regime joyfully emerging from the shadows to
support the military that in 2011 forced their leader’s resignation and
imprisonment.
Communist groups, underground for decades,
materialized during the 2011 uprising. They all supported the second uprising
too, but are not playing a significant role. The Egyptian Communist Party
heartily backed Morsi’s overthrow and strongly argued it was a popular revolt,
not a military coup. Other Marxist groups, viewing the MB as a reactionary
right wing formation, similarly backed the anti-MB rebellion.
Most anti-Morsi organizations, including groups
affiliated with the National Salvation Front, joined pro-military
demonstrations called by Gen. Sisi himself July 26 to provide an additional
popular mandate for increasing the suppression of “violence and terrorism,”
primarily to crush continuing Brotherhood demonstrations. The interim cabinet
declared: “Based on the mandate given by the people to the state… the cabinet
has delegated the interior ministry to proceed with all legal measures to
confront acts of terrorism and road-blocking.” The MB has not perpetrated any
acts of “terrorism,” so the reference must have been to the Salafi struggle for
power in Sinai. Road-blocking refers to two large long-lasting sit-down
protests in Cairo by anti-coup forces.
On July 27, police slaughtered 82 Morsi supporters to
break up one protest. They used live ammunition and shot to kill nonviolent
demonstrators. In response, the Obama Administration muttered a few words
lacking any significance. Imagine the outcry from Washington and the mass media
had the slaughter taken place in Beijing, Moscow or Caracas.
 |
| Weeks-long, huge pro-Morsi sit-down protest in Cairo. |
The conservative Economist magazine noted Aug. 3, “the new government is resurrecting the hated arms of Hosni Mubarak’s security state…. The liberal Egyptians who teamed up with the army to oust Mr. Morsi will come to regret their enthusiasm.”
Among such liberals, reported Los Angeles Times
correspondent Jeffrey Fleishman July 3, was “Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei,
who once vilified army control, [but was] now asking the generals to reenter
the scene in a moment of opportunity for both. ‘Every minute that passes
without the armed forces intervention to perform its duties and protect the
lives of Egyptians will waste more blood, especially since the person in the
presidential position has lost his legitimacy and eligibility, and maybe even
his mind,’ ElBaradei said.”
For his selfless efforts ElBaradei has been promoted
to be the junta’s “Vice President for Foreign Affairs,” and from this exalted
position he is now a big voice in the “reconciliation” campaign. Once the MB
and its many millions of supporters “understand that Morsi failed” — that is,
accept defeat —"they should continue to be part of the political process”
and participate in the nation’s political affairs.
 |
| Children join tens of thousands of anti-coup protest. |
The New York Times noted in an editorial July 31: “Whatever Egypt’s new military strongman… thought he was doing by summoning people to Tahrir Square [July 26] to demand a ‘mandate’ to fight terrorism, the result was to undermine Egypt’s prospects for stability even further. Whatever self-described pro-democracy groups thought they were doing by endorsing his call, the result was to strengthen the military and inflame raw divisions between civilian parties.”
The pro-military Tamarod — a youthful key group in
building for the overthrow— encouraged all the opposition to attend Sisi’s
rally. Tamarod (the name translates into “mutiny” or “rebellion,” depending on
usage) justly rose to fame after collecting multi-millions of signatures
demanding the ouster of Morsi, then by calling for the huge June 30 rally that
drew many millions across the country. This protest provided an immediate
excuse for Sisi to publicly give Morsi 48 hours to meet opposition demands or
be removed.
Writing in the July 22 New Yorker, author Peter
Hessler suggested the Tamarod was convinced beforehand the armed forces would
intervene after the protest. During interviews in the Tamarod office just
before the coup, he asked how they knew this would happen, and was told: “We
know our army.” One source of this knowledge were the hints of a takeover
emanating from some army officers, including Sisi, before the coup.
Tamarod maintains it has no outside funding for the
extensive petition campaign but a millionaire businessman subsequently took
credit for the funding, saying the youthful organizers may not have known where
it came from. The group says 22 million people signed petitions but there has
not been an independent count.
(Continued below)
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2. EGYPT’S
COUP: PROGRESSIVE OR REGRESSIVE?
By Jack A. Smith
(Part 2 of 3 parts)
It is ironic that the military — formerly loathed for
upholding the dictatorship for decades, then further reviled during its
controversial 17-month governance until Morsi took office — is now supported by
nearly the entire opposition. The officer corps only changed sides in 2011 to
preserve and increase its power and privileges, rising to the occasion again in
2013 to enhance its position.
General Sisi, who is described as a dedicated Islamist,
is now adored by multitudes in the increasingly national chauvinist atmosphere
engulfing the opposition, most members of which have averted their eyes to the
murderous violence by military and police units against Morsi demonstrators.
Rumors abound that Sisi himself is considering a run for president .
New York Times Cairo correspondent David Kirkpatrick
reported July 16 that in “the square where liberals and Islamists once chanted
together for democracy, demonstrators now carry posters hailing as a national
hero the general who ousted the country’s first elected president…. The voices on the left who might be expected
to raise alarms about the military’s ouster of a freely elected government are
instead reveling in what they see as the country’s escape from the threat that
an Islamist majority would steadily push Egypt to the right.”
Both those who applaud or resist the coup claim to
support electoral democracy and the creation of a better society for Egypt’s 83
million people. From a left perspective, the various points of view about
Morsi’s ejection revolve around one main question: Is a military-led coup
against an elected government, backed by millions of demonstrators who prefer
to elect another government (and could have done so in three years) — a
progressive or regressive change within the capitalist context? (The issue of
anti-capitalism is not on the agenda so far.)
The opposition forces claim theirs is a progressive
step forward, and that the military “joined with the masses” to oust a “failed”
regime. The Muslim Brotherhood, by far the country’s largest political
organization, maintains that a regressive military coup illegally destroyed a
democratically elected government and jailed its leaders.
In order to provide context for determining whether
this is a progressive or regressive coup, it is important to understand whether
there have been changes in the “deep state” power relations since the days of
the dictatorship in four key areas — the military, the ruling class, the
bureaucracy and the security forces. This will be followed by a discussion of
the MB government’s year in office, the possible reasons for the coup, the
politics and actions of the military and civil opposition, the needs of the
Egyptian people, and the role of various countries in and around the Middle
East.
1. The military has not changed. It has enjoyed near
autonomy and virtual control of the government, openly or behind the scenes,
for some 60 years, beginning as a left exponent of pan-Arab socialism and
developing close relations with the Soviet Union. During the 1970s, President
Anwar Sadat broke with Moscow in order to develop closer relations with the
United States and capitalism. Since that time Cairo has become increasingly
subject to American influence, receiving cash subsidies, training, equipment,
international backing and guidance from Washington.
The armed forces were the power behind the
dictatorial throne of President Mubarak, a former air force general, from 1981
to 2011 when he was ousted by the military in league with mass popular
demonstrations seeking Western-type democratic elections. As soon as it was
understood American interests would not be subverted, President Obama dropped
Mubarak. The military continued as the ultimate power behind the democratic
presidency of Morsi until he, too, was overthrown. The military always claims
it does not want to be involved in the politics of running the country, but it
has every intention of continuing its traditional role in the next government.
Gen. Sisi, who has just named himself first deputy
prime minister as well as retaining his position of defense minister and head
of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), received his master’s degree
at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania in 2006. Last year the
pro-opposition newspaper al-Tahrir reported that Sisi had "strong ties
with U.S. officials on both diplomatic and military levels." Doubtless,
both the Pentagon and SCAF communicate daily these days.
2. The ruling class has not changed. Perhaps a few
Islamist millionaires who honestly supported the Morsi government will no
longer be welcome, but the moneyed interests, the bankers, the big investors,
the corporate heads, the owners of the mass media, the military leaders and the
security chiefs will remain in place. Virtually all supported Mubarak during
his long years in power. They easily survived the transition to Morsi as they
will the next regime, probably expanding their powers in the process.
3. The government bureaucracy has not changed. While
heads of various government departments were mostly replaced when Morsi took
power last year, and will be so again under the new regime, the basic
organization and politics of the bureaucracy remain very similar to the Mubarak
years. Morsi had to make do with a long-established officialdom that knew the
ropes (as he didn’t), and which largely opposed him. The New York Times July 17
pointed out there is a “widespread perception that Egypt’s sprawling state
bureaucracy had stopped cooperating with Mr. Morsi” before the latest coup.
4. The security forces have not changed. The national
police and other security forces were only formally under Morsi government
control. They remained largely the same repressive apparatus that Mubarak built
to control the population. They fought actively during the first uprising in
2011to oppose the demonstrations against dictatorial authority but often turned
their backs when MB facilities were trashed by anti-Morsi protestors. Morsi’s
interior minister, Mohamed Ibrahim (a former general with close ties to the
military), who did nothing to reform Mubarak’s brutal security and police
apparatus, was reappointed to his position by the new government. In essence,
according to The Economist July 6, “since the 2011 revolution, Egypt’s police
force has abandoned many of its duties, helping generate a threefold surge in
serious crime.” They appear to have returned with a vengeance.
So what has
changed in Egypt since early 2011 when the Arab Spring began? Two main things.
1. The Egyptian masses in their many millions
diverted the course of history when they bravely took to the streets to oust
the dictatorship in quest of a form of democracy that would bring about
improvements in the lives of the people. The causes were extremely high poverty
(nearly 50%), devastating unemployment, weak and further reduced social
services and subsidies due to the economic crisis, and the lack of political
freedom.
Young people inspired by the Tunisian revolution
weeks earlier initiated the uprising, They called for a demonstration in Tahrir
Square Jan. 25, 2011. Unexpectedly, gigantic numbers of people joined the
protest seeking a free and more open democratic society, jobs and a much
improved economy. Within weeks there were millions of protesters in Tahrir
Square and throughout the country. The MB did not join the Tahrir uprising at
first but eventually entered the struggle. They were very cautious, having
recently emerged from decades of government repression.
By mid-February Mubarak and vice president Omar
Suleiman handed power to the armed forces, which facilitated their departures
and ruled for the next year and a half. The U.S. effortlessly transferred its
30-year support for the old dictator to Gen. Sisi and the SCAF — an institution
with which Washington had long enjoyed deep and fruitful ties. Mubarak was
tried and sentenced to life in prison for allowing the army to kill peaceful
protestors. The military disbanded parliament, ended “emergency laws,”
suspended the constitution and appointed an interim leadership pending
elections. Sharp protests continued from time to time because the ruling SCAF
was both distrusted and not moving fast enough to bring about a democratic
structure.
2. The political system was transformed from a
capitalist dictatorship to a capitalist electoral democracy — a step forward
that allowed the Egyptian people to elect their leadership for the first time
in thousands of years. One year later, of course, a second military coup
removed the elected government, backed by the same popular forces that fought
to establish elections.
Morsi won the June 2012 election honestly with 51.73%
of the vote but there are reasons to believe that a proportion of his majority
backed him grudgingly. Four candidates ran in phase one of the balloting. Morsi
won with 24.78% of the vote, which mainly came from the MB and other Islamic
parties. Second was Ahmed Shafiq with 23.66% of the vote — presumably from
supporters of the old regime, considering that he was a former air force
commander who served a decade in Mubarak’s cabinet and was the dictator’s last
prime minister, serving five weeks until early March 2011. In the runoff
election — given the choice of a candidate who had been a Mubarak man or one
from a powerful religious organization that was harassed by the old regime, a
majority voted for Morsi. Shafiq, however, won a startling 47.27% of the vote.
Virtually as soon as he became Egypt’s first
democratically elected president Morsi was confronted by fairly strong
opposition waiting for him to fail. The honeymoon period lasted less than two
months before there were protests seeking to remove him from office. Much of
the mass media, mostly owned by Mubarak supporters, began criticizing him
almost immediately, some viciously.
The New York Times reported, only a few months after
he took office, that “Morsi’s advisers and Brotherhood leaders acknowledged
that outside his core base of Islamist supporters he feels increasingly
isolated in the political arena and even within his own government.”
One of the more interesting facts about the removal
of the Islamist president is that the popularity of the MB, the Freedom and
Justice Party (the vehicle for Morsi’s election victory) and to an extent Morsi
himself is not terribly low — at least about three months before the coup. Here
are the basic results from a public opinion poll conducted March 3-23, 2013, by
the respected Pew Global Attitudes Project:
“Only 30% of Egyptians think the country is headed in
the right direction, down from 53% last year and 65% in 2011, in the days after
the revolution…. Despite the negative views about the country’s direction, most
Egyptians still have a positive view of the Muslim Brotherhood, the
organization that has been the dominant political force in post-Mubarak Egypt.
Still, the group’s ratings have declined somewhat over the past two years – 63%
give it a positive rating today, compared with 75% in 2011. About half (52%)
express a favorable opinion of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and
Justice Party…. The National Salvation Front (NSF), a relatively secular
coalition of opposition forces, receives more negative reviews” than the MB and
NSF. In time this seeming contradiction may be clarified.
Clearly there were strong doubts about Morsi and the
MB, not only from those who backed Shafiq but from many who supported the MB
candidate to keep the former regime out of power. This was hardly an auspicious
beginning for Morsi.
Another factor was distrust of a religious regime.
Islam has been Egypt’s state religion for many years. But ever since the
leftist Free Officers Movement led by Gamal Abdel Nasser seized power in 1952
Egypt has kept religious parties off the ballot. Morsi was not only the first
elected president, and the first non-military president, he was also the first
Islamist president.
In seeking office the MB conveyed the impression it
did not seek to impose an extreme Islamist government upon the country. Of the
three main organized currents in Sunni Islam — the Muslim Brotherhood, the
Wahhabi movement (and associated Salafism), and al-Qaeda (plus allied jihadist
groupings) — the MB is the mildest and most open to modern governing
structures. However, it is considered hyper-conservative on cultural issues,
such as the rights of women, and it wasn’t trusted by large numbers of
Egyptians.
The Morsi government committed a number of political
miscalculations and blunders. Chief among them was its refusal in office to
take meaningful steps to convince dubious constituencies that compose the
opposition that he wanted to govern collegially by giving their concerns
serious consideration. The MB and Morsi had no experience in governing or
sophistication in relating to liberal and progressive Muslims and
non-Muslims.
Morsi governed as a majoritarian — a politician who
thinks an electoral majority entitles a regime to do as it pleases without
regard for the views of the opposition. A mature democracy may be able to
survive this but it is unwise in a society’s first elected government when the
opposition entertains deep worries.
During the campaign the MB, according to The
Economist, “refrained from pushing an overtly Islamic agenda, for instance
banning alcohol or enforcing corporal punishment, with the zeal which might
have been feared. But in power the Brotherhood began to abandon its previous
caution regarding its foes. Morsi appeared to dismiss secular opponents and
minorities [Coptic Christians or Shia Muslims] as politically negligible.
Instead of enacting the deeper reforms that had been a focus of popular
revolutionary demands, such as choosing provincial governors by election rather
than presidential appointment, or punishing corrupt Mubarak-era officials, the
Brothers simply inserted themselves in key positions.”
“The Brotherhood's single most divisive act,” writes
socialist journalist Mazda Majidi of the Party for Socialism and Liberation,
“was passing a constitution that was strongly opposed by all secular forces.
The constitution trampled the rights of women and laid the basis for the oppression
of religious minorities. Far from creating a consensus of the wide array of
forces that overthrew the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship, the Brotherhood codified
its own reactionary social policies into the constitution.”
(Continued
below)
_______________
3. EGYPT’S
COUP: PROGRESSIVE OR REGRESSIVE?
By Jack A. Smith
(Part 3 of 3 parts)
Morsi offered some concessions to quell the
constitutional uproar, “but opposition leaders turned a deaf ear, reiterating
their demands to begin an overhaul of the Islamist-dominated constitutional
assembly itself,” reported the New York Times Dec. 7. The assembly passed the
constitution in a very low turnout election.
The MB made a big error in developing the
constitution by seeking to please the ultra-conservative Islamist Salafi to strengthen Egypt’s Islamic bloc.
In return the Salafi al-Nour Party eventually broke with the Brotherhood and
joined the opposition when it saw a coup was on the agenda. The anti-Morsi side
welcomed this important new addition. (The Salafi party withdrew from the
opposition camp to save its reputation after the junta’s police massacred
unarmed Islamist MB supporters.)
In its brief one year in office the Morsi government
was never able to control the military or police, so it ended up catering to
these powerful institutions lest they make more trouble. Writing in
CounterPunch July 7, Franklin Lamb explained:
“Some Congressional analysts believe that one of
Morsi's biggest mistakes
resulted from a deliberate policy of accommodation
and not, as is commonly believed, confrontation. He allowed the military to
retain its corporate autonomy [it controls businesses] and remain beyond
civilian control. Furthermore, he included in
his cabinet a large number of
non-Muslim Brotherhood figures who
abandoned him within months when the going
got tough, thus presenting to the public an image that the government was on
the verge of collapse.
Some have suggested that Morsi should have brought the
military to heel
soon after he assumed power and was at the height of his
popularity, just as the military was at its lowest point in public perception.”
Morsi faced a plethora of serious problems from day
one. The worst was the dilapidated condition of the free falling economy, the
root cause of Egypt’s most pressing problems. The culprit was grave economic
mismanagement during the Mubarak years drastically compounded by the worldwide
capitalist recession, its lingering effects and the last two years of political
disruption.
The MB’s struggling government was helped by gifts of
billions of dollars, mostly from oil-rich Qatar ($7 billion) and lesser amounts
from friendly Turkey and some other sources. This helped, but not enough. The
new military-guided regime was immediately gifted with $12 billion from Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
The Cairo government is dependent on tourism, which
brought in 17% of the country’s GNP until it vanished abruptly with the first
mass demonstrations in early 2011. Investment dropped for the same reason. The
price of food imports, largely wheat, increased after Morsi won the election.
In January 2011, when the first uprising began,
unemployment was 8.9%. When Morsi took office in July 2012 it was 12.6%, and
today it is 13.2%. About 80% of the jobless are workers under 30 years old. In
urban areas, more than 50% of young men are unemployed — a politically volatile
statistic. This situation was worsened in recent months when public anger
boiled over due to fuel and electricity shortages. (The shortages ended
virtually the day after Morsi was ousted, a coincidence that led critics to
suspect that anti-MB sabotage intentionally caused the problem as an incentive
for the uprising.)
The Brotherhood’s rise to power exposed a sharp
dispute between the key Sunni factions in the region — the MB on one side and
the more extreme Wahhabi, Salafi, and al-Qaeda orientations on the other.
Indian news analyst M. K. Bhadrakumar commented in
Asia Times July 9: “The autocratic Persian Gulf oligarchies rushed to celebrate
the overthrow of the elected government under Mohamed Morsi by the Egyptian
military. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah dispatched his congratulatory cable to
Cairo within hours of the announcement of Morsi's ouster. The sense of
jubilation is palpable that the Muslim Brotherhood, which spearheads popular
stirrings against the Persian Gulf regimes, has lost power in Egypt.” (Saudi
Arabia helps finance the Egyptian Salafi and cheered when the al-Nour Party joined the opposition.)
“In that respect,” William McCants wrote in Foreign
Affairs July 7: “No Salafi is likely more pleased with the turn of events in
Egypt than Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda. For decades, Zawahiri has
argued that the Muslim Brotherhood's engagement in party politics does nothing
more than strengthen the hands of its adversaries and ratify an un-Islamic
system of rule. Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, he has continued to
make his argument that the West and its local proxies will never allow an
Islamist government to actually rule. He doubtless views the coup as a final
vindication of his argument.”
Syria was also elated by Egypt’s coup since Morsi
called for the overthrow of the Assad government and even suggested that
Egyptian Islamists consider joining the fight. However, Syria’s main ally,
Iran, condemned the coup. Oil rich Qatar (which also opposes Assad in Syria) is
odd monarchy out among the Gulf states, having provided generous funding to
Morsi’s government and deploring the coup.
Turkey, which had very close relations with the MB
regime in Egypt strongly opposed the coup. Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu
said: “A leader who came [to power] with the support of the people can only be
removed through elections. It is unacceptable for democratically elected leaders,
for whatever reason, to be toppled through illegal means, even a coup…. Turkey
will take sides with the Egyptian people.”
Interestingly, although they are on opposite sides of
the volatile Syrian civil war, Turkey and Iran are strongly united against the
coup, despite Tehran’s silent reservations about Morsi’s recent anti-Shi’a
comments and his backing for rebel forces in Syria. The interim regime in Cairo
has already made friendly overtures to Damascus.
Remarking on the unusual Ankara-Tehran coupling,
Bhadrakumar wrote: “The two key regional powers in the Middle East have now
openly challenged the military junta in Egypt. It will have a profound impact
on the so-called Arab Street. A Turkish-Iranian platform will be hard to
resist, in geopolitical terms, for the coup's Arab enthusiasts — Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates,
Stratfor, the private geopolitical intelligence
company, argues that the “coup does not bode well for international efforts to
bring radical Islamists into the mainstream. However, it does serve the
interests of Arab monarchies, particularly those of the energy-rich Gulf
Cooperation Council states (and especially Saudi Arabia), most of which see the
Brotherhood-style Islamist forces as a challenge to their legitimacy. The fall of
the Morsi government has given them cause to celebrate because the
Brotherhood’s political ideals run counter to their political interests.” The
Egypt-centered Brotherhood has branches in Syria, Jordan, Gaza (Hamas), Tunisia
and Morocco. It governs in the latter two countries. “Each group will be
affected according to its particular geopolitical circumstances,” says
Stratfor.
What lessons are to be deduced from the extraordinary
mass demonstrations of the Egyptian people from 2011 to 2013. There are two
important lessons, among others.
First, what occurred was an incredible display of the
political power that can be generated when unprecedented numbers of people
respond to mass popular dissatisfaction — in this case mammoth economic,
political and social problems — uniting in prolonged militant actions in the
streets, where everyone can see them and hear them. They booted out a dictator
and elected a president.
Such actions do not often achieve a change of
government, of course. But they certainly are — or should be — an inspiration
for those who wish to change especially onerous or harmful government policies,
if not government itself.
Second, while the people in the streets of Egypt were
inspiring and they certainly changed history, the absence of a strong political
organization with clear detailed goals and respected leadership, greatly
weakened their accomplishment.
The army, which served a dictatorship for 59 of its
61 years, still rules, stronger than ever, having made the transition from a
decrepit, failed Mubarak regime to a weak and pliable democracy. A difficult
but worthwhile first experiment in electoral democracy was crushed by the
military acting in the name of the mass opposition. Now, key figures from the
old dictatorship have reappeared. There is no chance the next government will
be politically left enough to resolve the grave problems plaguing the Egyptian
people. The Muslim Brotherhood is about to be repressed again, and there is no
telling how it will respond.
A number of the people who took an important part in
the mass demonstrations seemed to believe that organization, goals and
leadership could be replaced by individual or small group initiatives,
enthusiasm and spontaneity. These qualities can go so far, but no further.
For the Egyptian people to build a viable electoral
democracy with a program that puts the needs of the working masses first, they
require an organization, leadership, allies, finances, strategy and tactics
sufficient to attain that goal. The same methods exist for building socialism,
which will be considerably more difficult to attain but offers far more
benefits for the working class, middle class and the poor.
A number of left commentators have questioned the
preference of some groups involved in the mass actions, such as Tamarod, a key
player, to minimize the need for organization and leadership. In this regard
here is a quote from an article in the July 7 CounterPunch titled, “The End of
the ‘Leaderless’ Revolution,” by Cihan Tugal, who teaches Sociology at the University of California-Berkeley:
“Multiple anti-representation theses from rival
ideological corners (anarchist, liberal, autonomist, postmodernist, etc.) all
boil down to the following assumption: when there is no meta-discourse and no
leadership, plurality will win. This might be true in the short-run. Indeed, in
the case of Egypt, the anonymity of Tamarod’s spokespersons initially helped:
the spokespersons (who are not leaders, it is held) could not be demonized as
partisan populists. Moreover, thanks to uniting people only through their
negative identity (being anti-Brotherhood), as well as to its innovative
tactics, Tamarod mobilized people of all kinds. Still, the mobilized people
fell prey to the only existing option: the old regime!
“When the revolutionaries do not produce ideology,
demands and leaders, this does not mean that the revolt will have no ideology,
demands and leaders. In fact, Tamarod’s spontaneous ideology turned out to be
militarist nationalism, its demand a postmodern coup, its leader the feloul
(remnants of the old regime). This is the danger that awaits any allegedly
leaderless revolt: Appropriation by the main institutional alternatives of the
institutions they are fighting against.
“It is time to globalize the lessons from the
[actions of] 2011-2013. Let’s start with the U.S. and Egypt. What we learn from
this case is that when movements don’t have (or claim not to have) ideologies,
agendas, demands and leaders, they can go in two directions: they can dissipate
(as did Occupy), or serve the agendas of others…. The end of the leaderless
revolution does not mean the end of the Egyptian revolutionary process. But it
spells the end of the fallacy that the people can take power without an agenda,
an alternative platform, an ideology, and leaders.”
The accomplishment of the Egyptian masses in ridding
themselves of a dictatorship is immense. The move toward bourgeois democracy is
progressive within the confines of capitalism. But a variety of factors noted
above have stalled this hopefully continuing progress, not least because of the
absence of a unifying political organization with a point of view based upon
the needs of the working people and a course of action leading to victory.
The MB won the election because it was an experienced
large organization, toughened by government repression, that knew what it
wanted. Had there been a similar secular organization with an enlightened
progressive program representing the interests of the people, the MB may have
lost. In general it seems the people prefer a secular progressive government
that will do everything possible to serve their needs and interests.
Instead of building such an organization out of the
willing masses that spontaneously answered the call for action against the
dictatorship— an organization that could enter the next election — the army
destroyed the first government and is guiding the masses toward a new
conservative regime. The increasingly glorified and powerful military is not
only welcoming back the reactionary Mubarakists, but is making certain that the
other inhabitants of the deep state — the ruling class, bureaucracy and
security forces — will be pleased with their
new accommodations.
Morsi made many mistakes, but he was known to be an
Islamist when he was elected and he was not a repressive or dictatorial force. His
mistakes could have been rectified through the democratic process without a
military coup. The violence now directed at peacefully protesting supporters of
the illegally deposed president are unjust.
There is still time to pursue the progressive course
of revolution that began in January of 2011. The millions who took to the
streets for democracy are still waiting for the political mechanism that will
propel them to attaining their goals. As long as the masses remain active and
prepared to take to the streets, and as long as there are progressive forces
that recognize the necessity for building an organization to take power, the
revolution continues.
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4. U.S. “WINS” KOREAN WAR AT LAST
By the Activist Newsletter
Historians usually define the 1950-53 Korean War as a
stalemate since the war ended as it began at the 38th parallel that
divided South Korea from North Korea, and the political situation on the Korean
peninsula remained the same.
But President Obama has decided, after six decades
and no historical evidence, to declare victory.
The commander in chief did so in Washington July 27
at an outdoor commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the armistice
that temporarily halted hostilities in the 1950-53 Korean War. "Here,
today,” he told a cheering crowd of elderly U.S. and South Korean veterans, “we
can say with confidence that this war was no tie. Korea was a victory!"
Whence derives that confidence? Obama was surely aware of history’s verdict
when he claimed the bloody conflict was “no tie.” But he never explained how
the U.S., which did most of the fighting in the so-called “UN Peace Action,”
actually won. He couldn’t, but since the audience of old vets really loved it,
and most Americans know little or nothing about the Korean War, why not claim
victory?
President Obama was not known for an infatuation with
the military before he entered the Oval Office. But since then he has
demonstrated a pronounced militarist side. One aspect of this is his repeated
public adulation of America’s Armed Forces, frequently defining them as “the
best military in the world,” and repeatedly lavishing reverential praise upon
military personnel. In his 2012 State of the Union speech he even declared: “At
a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they [the troops]
exceed all expectations.”
From the beginning Obama wanted to undercut rightwing
allegations that the Democrats were “soft on defense” and could not be trusted
to protect the American people. There
are two other possibilities as well.
One is that his hyperbole is intended to inject a
heavy dose of self-confidence in a military that isn’t winning any victories on
his watch. The long wars against
absurdly weaker Iraq and Afghanistan have ended (or will end) in stalemates at
a cost of several trillion dollars. The fault belongs to the politicians and
the generals, but it is important to elevate the morale of the troops with
embellishments of their prowess. The other two big wars since WWII ended
weren’t victories either. Korea has been mentioned. Vietnam was a humiliating
defeat.
It’s also entirely probable such exaggerations about
the military and its accomplishments are intended to motivate the American
people to continue paying the indecently expensive bills for Obama to “maintain
our military superiority in all areas— air, land, sea, space and cyber,” as he
lists them. This is in addition to the grossly disproportionate fear of
terrorism that Washington has cultivated among the American people for over a
decade.
The U.S. may be able to frighten every country in the
world with its various weapons of mass destruction, but on the ground in a
conventional fight against smaller, weaker foes, Obama knows the score. This is
why the Pentagon is switching to drones, working to perfect automated
battlefields with much fewer soldiers, and developing technologies for quick,
devastating long distance wars.
But the Pentagon’s wars and the threat of future wars
will continue as they have for the last 65 years since the U.S. emerged from
the carnage of the Second World War as a superpower with the goal of achieving
and maintaining global hegemony.
So now Korea’s a “victory” and eventually in a
generation or two Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan may also become victories.
The ability to continue financing and feeding the insatiable
maw of U.S. militarism is built on a variety of fabrications and will continue
until the American people finally see through the fog of propaganda and rebel against
the Warfare State.
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5. 12 PEOPLE, NOT MANNING, WHO BELONG IN JAIL
By Liberation
newspaper
On July 30, a judge in a military court found Bradley Manning guilty of 19
of the 21 charges brought against him. Although he was acquitted of “aiding the
enemy,” the most serious he faced, Manning could still face a sentence of about 100 years' imprisonment.
It is absurd that the U.S. government would prosecute Manning, a
whistleblower who exposed crimes and secrets that were being covered up by the
Pentagon and State Department. It is equally absurd that the so-called justice
system allows the real criminals in society—Wall Street drug launderers, CEOs
responsible for willful and deadly negligence, racist murderers, killer cops
and war criminals—to walk free. Below is a list of a dozen people, in no
particular order, who should rightfully be sitting in prison cells instead of
Bradley Manning.
1. George Zimmerman
Racist vigilante George Zimmerman murdered 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on
Feb. 26, 2012, in Sanford, Fla., as Martin walked home from a convenience
store. Although Zimmerman got out of his car with a handgun and stalked the
totally unarmed Trayvon, while muttering racist insults about “punks” who
“always get away,” he was found not guilty by an overwhelmingly white jury.
Zimmerman has shown no remorse and expressed "no regrets" for his
cold-blooded crime, going so far as to ask the Black community to apologize to
him following his outrageous acquittal.
2. Don Blankenship
Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is responsible for the 2010 Upper
Big Branch mine explosion that killed 29 coal miners in Raleigh County, W. Va.
His insatiable drive for greater and greater profit led him to blatantly ignore
safety regulations—the mine was cited for 57 infractions the month of the
disaster, including two the very day of the explosion.
3. George W. Bush
President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 despite losing the popular
vote in the dubious 2000 election, George W. Bush is a war criminal notorious
for the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In addition
to the deaths of well over one million civilians who were killed as a result of
these wars, Bush supported the failed 2002 coup in Venezuela, the 2004 coup and
subsequent occupation of Haiti, and the criminally negligent response to
Hurricane Katrina, in which hundreds of mostly Black residents of New Orleans
died after being totally abandoned by government “relief” agencies.
4. Johannes Mehserle
Bay Area Rapid Transit cop Johannes Mehserle murdered Oscar Grant, a Black
man who had a 4-year-old daughter, on a train in Oakland, Calif., on New Year’s
Day, 2009. Mehserle attacked Grant, who was trying to break up a fight, threw
him on the ground and, while Grant was restrained and lying face down, fatally
shot him in the back. Although Mehserle’s shocking crime was caught on video,
he served less than eight months in prison and walks free today.
5. Joe Arpaio
Arizona's Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is a symbol of racism and
anti-immigrant hate, who has waged a campaign of terror against undocumented
workers and all oppressed people since taking office in 1993. He regularly
subjects prisoners to cruel and unusual punishment, was an outspoken backer of
the SB1070 “show me your papers” law and has taken his department’s policy of
racial profiling to such extremes that even the Department of Justice filed
suit against him last year.
6. Ken Thompson
Money launderer of choice for a range of drug cartels, Ken Thompson served
as CEO of Wachovia Corporation from 2000 until 2008—the sixth largest bank in
the country until the financial crash led to its taxpayer-funded acquisition by
Wells Fargo. He helped brutal narcotics trafficking syndicates embezzle an
estimated $378 billion between 2004 and 2007, but unlike most victims of the
racist war on drugs, his organization was able to settle out of court. They
paid just a fraction of a percent of what they earned from their drug dealings.
7. Henry Kissinger
National security adviser from 1969-1975 and secretary of state from 1973
to 1977, Henry Kissinger played a key role in the genocidal Vietnam War and
orchestrated the 1973 coup in Chile that led to 17 years of blood-soaked
military dictatorship. For his distinguished service to world imperialism, he
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
8. Richard Haste
On Feb. 2, 2012, Officer Richard Haste kicked down the door into
18-year-old Ramarley Graham’s home in the oppressed South Bronx neighborhood of
New York City, and then ran upstairs and fatally shot Graham in his bathroom
based on the suspicion that he was in possession of a bag of marijuana. Graham
was completely unarmed.
9.
Dick Cheney
A key figure in the notorious Bush administration, former Vice-President
Dick Cheney played a central role in the murderous invasion of Iraq and the
adoption of torture as an official government policy. The CEO of energy
conglomerate Halliburton immediately prior to taking office, he used the brutal
occupation of Iraq as an opportunity to reward his business connections.
10. Luis Posada
Carriles
International terrorist Luis Posada Carriles began his career as a torturer
for Venezuela’s now-defunct DISIP secret police, but soon became a central
figure in the CIA-backed campaign of counter-revolutionary terrorism against
Cuba. Along with his accomplice Orlando Bosch, he carried out the bombing of
Cubana Airlines flight 455 in 1976, killing all 73 people on board. He now
lives in Miami.
11. Oliver North
Current TV personality and author, Ret. Col. Oliver North was in charge of
the Iran-Contra scheme in which he illegally funneled money to the “Contra”
death squads attempting to undo the historic 1979 Sandinista revolution in
Nicaragua. Working closely with cocaine traffickers, this arrangement was an important
component of a broader reign of terror imposed by the U.S. government aimed at
repressing revolutionary movements throughout Central America in the 1980s that
led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
12. Lamar McKay
As president of BP America, Lamar McKay is responsible for the 2010 BP oil
spill following an explosion on the inadequately constructed Deepwater Horizon
drilling rig that killed 11 workers. Hundreds of millions of gallons of oil
filled the Gulf of Mexico over the course of nearly three months, destroying
the environment and devastating communities along the Gulf Coast. Currently,
McKay is head of BP’s Upstream unit, which is tasked with oil and natural gas
exploration.
—From http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/12-people-prison-instead-bradley-manning.html
––––––––––––––
6. WE
RECOMMEND…
By the activist Newsletter
1. America is the richest country on
earth, but 50 million of us — over third of them children— go hungry. Debates
on how to address hunger, in both Congress and the media, are filled with tired
clichés about freeloaders undeserving of government help. If this concerns you
at all, do not miss the recent Bill Moyers interview with two of the women
associated with the powerful new documentary “A Place at the Table,” about
hunger and the poor. It’s online at
http://billmoyers.com/episode/encore-the-faces-of-america’s-hungry/.
2. Most
readers are aware of President's Obama's remarks in the aftermath of the jury
decision not to convict George Zimmerman for the murder of unarmed black
teenager Trayvon Martin. It's good he spoke up, and many people were moved by
his statement. However, we suggest you check out Amy Goodman’s July 22
interview with Cornell West, the African American public intellectual who
teaches at Union Theological
Seminary. He took Obama to task on
Democracy Now for offering too little, too late, and for his failure to
challenge the "New Jim Crow.”
West’s comments hit the mark. It’s available online (video, voice or text) at http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/22/cornel_west_obamas_response_to_trayvon
3. Readers interested in an anti-capitalist view of
national and international news should tune in to the weekly half-hour
Liberation Radio broadcast online. It’s a valued supplement to such progressive
media as Democracy Now and Bill Moyers. This week’s Liberation Radio focuses on
three topics: Bradley Manning’s conviction, a travesty of justice; Obama on
Trayvon, the words left unsaid; California unites against police brutality. It
is at http://www.liberationradio.org.
4. Have you heard about Nadezhda Popova? Probably
not, so we recommend that you read her obituary published in the July 15 New
York Times. Popova, a World War II “Night Witch” for the Red Army, died
recently at the age of 91. What an incredible life she led as a young woman
fighting the Nazi invaders. It’s online at
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/world/europe/nadezhda-popova-ww-ii-night-witch-dies-at-91.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0.
5. On July 26, radical hip-hop producer Agent of
Change released a "beat tape" to mark the 60th anniversary of the
start of the Cuban Revolution. Agent of Change, also known as London-based
activist and writer Carlos Martinez, said: "The 18 hip-hop instrumentals -
with a couple of feature
verses from Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela —
celebrate Cuban culture, drawing influence and samples from Cuba’s diverse
musical heritage." http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/54661#sthash.8lD4H9ID.dpuf
–––––––––––––
7. DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT ‘UNMASKED’
By Glen Greenwald
One of the worst myths Democratic partisans love to
tell themselves — and everyone else – is that the GOP refuses to support
President Obama no matter what he does. Like its close cousin — the massively
deceitful inside-DC grievance that the two parties refuse to cooperate on
anything — it's hard to overstate how false this Democratic myth is. When it
comes to foreign policy, war, assassinations, drones, surveillance, secrecy,
and civil liberties, President Obama's most stalwart, enthusiastic defenders
are often found among the most radical precincts of the Republican Party.
The rabidly pro-war and anti-Muslim GOP former
Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Peter King, has repeatedly lavished Obama
with all sorts of praise and support for his policies in those areas. The Obama
White House frequently needs, and receives, large amounts of GOP
Congressional support to have its measures enacted or bills it dislikes
defeated. The Obama DOJ often prevails before the
US Supreme Court solely because the Roberts/Scalia/Thomas faction adopts its view while
the Ginsburg/Sotomayor/Breyer faction rejects it (as happened in February when
the Court, by a 5-4 ruling, dismissed a lawsuit brought by Amnesty and the
ACLU which argued that the NSA's domestic warrantless
eavesdropping activities violate the Fourth Amendment; the Roberts/Scalia wing
accepted the Obama DOJ's argument that the plaintiffs lack standing to sue
because the NSA successfully conceals the identity of which Americans are subjected
to the surveillance). As Wired put it at the time about
that NSA ruling:
The 5-4 decision by Justice Samuel Alito was a clear
victory for the President Barack Obama administration, which like its
predecessor, argued that government wiretapping laws cannot be challenged in
court."
The
extraordinary events that took place in the House of Representatives July 24
are perhaps the most vivid illustration yet of this dynamic, and it
independently reveals several other important trends. The House voted on an amendment sponsored by Justin Amash, the young Michigan lawyer elected in 2010 as a Tea
Party candidate, and co-sponsored by Michigan’s John Conyers, the 24-term
senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. The amendment was simple. It
would de-fund one single NSA program: the agency's bulk collection of the
telephone records of all Americans that we first revealed in this space, back on June 6. It accomplished this "by requiring the FISA
court under Sec. 215 [of the Patriot Act] to order the production of records
that pertain only to a person under investigation".
The
amendment yesterday was defeated. But it lost by only 12 votes: 205-217.
Given that the amendment sought to de-fund a major domestic surveillance
program of the NSA, the very close vote was nothing short of shocking. In fact,
in the post-9/11 world, amendments like this, which directly challenge the
Surveillance and National Security States, almost never get votes at all. That
the GOP House Leadership was forced to allow it to reach the floor was a sign of how much things have changed over the
last seven weeks.
—This article is continued on the Guardian (UK)
website at
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/25/democratic-establishment-nsa
–––––––––––––
8. EDITORIAL: THE MOVE TO THE RIGHT
By the Activist Newsletter
Can there be any doubt about the American political
system’s quick-march to the right? The increasing rightward trend has been
going on for decades, but in recent years the trend has become a near craze for
the Republican Party and an occasion for tut-tutting — but little more — by the
Democratic Party, which itself is chiseling away at American equality and
democracy.
How else to explain the recent Republican House vote
eliminating food stamps for 47 million poor, hungry Americans, half of them
children? Or right wing successes in weakening abortion rights in state
legislatures? Or the accelerated conservative campaign to destroy public
service unions in several states? Or the ultra-conservative Supreme Court’s
decision to gut the Voting Rights Act?
Simultaneously, the Democrats are rapidly converting
America into a global surveillance state where virtually every move by the
people is noted, recorded and retrieved at will. When whistle-blower Edward
Snowden revealed the extent of the government’s secret criminal destruction of
our liberties, the Big Brothers in Washington branded him a disloyal saboteur
in the land of freedom and harmony. Opinion polls show most people view him as
a whistle-blower, not a traitor.
Democrat Jimmy Carter, not much of a president but
the best ex-president America ever had, evaluated Snowden’s revelations and
concluded July 16: “America has no functioning democracy.” He was essentially
referring to the appalling expansion of surveillance during the Bush and Obama
Administrations.
President Obama tried to make the revelations appear
trivial but he has ordered a vast tightening of government security systems,
and he will employ all his formidable powers to severely punish Snowden for
exposing the shocking extent of his administration’s contempt for the civil
liberties and privacy rights of the American people. Good grief, they even
photograph every envelope we send or receive via snail mail. One looks back
with nostalgia to the days when they mainly just tapped our phones.
The center right Democratic Party ignores its own
excesses and wrings its hands over those of the far right but does virtually
nothing to fight the Tea Party-infused Republicans because it is politically
unable to fight fire with the return fire that is required. It has made a
decent showing on behalf of certain women’s rights and gay marriage, but in
general it is characterized by conciliation and compromise with the right as
they collude in crippling our democracy.
The Democrats are not defending the great majority of
the American people — the poor, the working class and lower middle class and a
substantial sector of the middle class as well — against the reactionary
onslaught. Our electoral system is in the hands of big money and our democracy
is gradually corroding. The Democrats may be better than the obstructionists of
the far right, but they are clearly part of the problem, infrequently part of
the solution.
President Obama refuses to create a serious jobs
program to cut unemployment. He won’t take meaningful action to halt foreclosures.
He shuts his eyes to the economic crisis afflicting the black community. He
won’t fight on behalf of the labor movement. He has not taken one step in the
direction of reducing ever-mounting inequality in America. And despite his
recent hopeful rhetoric, he has done nothing to halt global warming.
Instead, the White House coddles the corporations,
bails out the bankers, weakens Wall St. regulations, panders to the wealthy1%,
pursues militarism and weakens our civil liberties.
How long are we going to suffocate in a two party
system of right and center right, of evil and lesser evil? How long before the
people build a viable and broad political left to wage a decisive struggle
against the forces of reaction and lead the advance to a better life for the
great majority of Americans?
––––––––––––––
9. MORE YEARS OF HIGH U.S. UNEMPLOYMENT
By the Activist Newsletter
According to the July 2013 jobs report from the
Bureau of Labor StatisticsAug. 2, unemployment in America remains unacceptably —7.4%, four years after the Great Recession ended.
When will “full” employment return to America? (Full
employment, according to the U.S. government, means that “only” about 5% of the
U.S. workforce will still be jobless.)
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) suggests it may
take five more years to attain “full” status.
Liberal economist Paul Krugman, writing in the July 8
New York Times, declared with exasperation: “Full recovery still looks a very
long way off. And I’m beginning to worry that it may never happen.”
The new jobs report claimed that 162,000 jobs had
been created in July, which motivated CNN to report that “the job market made solid improvement last
month, sending signals to markets that the Federal Reserve is on track to start
pulling back on its stimulus program.” It should be noted that population growth is
somewhat over 90,000 a month so that must be subtracted from the totals.
EPI notes that the June rate “brought the average
monthly job growth of the last three months to 196,000. This rate is an
improvement, as the average growth rate for the previous 12 months was
169,000.” However, EPI reported: “At the current pace of job growth, it will be
more than five years until the economy returns to the pre-recession unemployment
rate [4.4%], an indication of how little progress we have made over the last
four years towards undoing the damage caused by the Great Recession.
“The gap in our labor market is so profound that even
if we added more than a million jobs each quarter, it would take us another 2.5
years to be made whole. Behind these numbers is the financial and emotional
toll that unemployment takes on millions of Americans who want to work but
cannot find jobs.
Getting the kind of job growth we need would take a
radical shift from policy makers. Absent that shift, we can expect to see
elevated unemployment for years to come — which represents an ongoing disaster
for the U.S. workforce.”
USA Today declared July 5: “The underemployment rate — a broader gauge of
joblessness that includes people who stopped looking for work and part-time
workers who prefer full-time jobs, as well as the unemployed — jumped to 14.3%
from 13.8%. The number of so-called involuntary part-time workers increased by
322,000 to 8.2 million.” All told, this includes about 23 million people. Not
included are 2.3 million incarcerated Americans.
African Americans have been hit hardest by
unemployment —12.6%. Latinos are next, 9.4%. Whites, 6.6%. The rate for young
workers (16 to 24) is 16.3%, and for teenagers only, 23.7%.
A July 5 article in www.correntewire.com points out:
“There is the ongoing crisis in the
quality of American jobs. 2/3 of jobs are being created in the retail trade,
and the leisure and hospitality sectors. These jobs pay poorly. At the same
time, leisure and hospitality jobs are heavily part time. Overall, job hours
remain largely static and wages are either stagnant or falling slightly behind,
despite a low inflation rate.”
The Obama Administration has utterly failed to
provide adequate jobs programs to bring about full employment. Asking “What,
exactly, will bring us back to full employment?” Krugman answered: “We certainly can’t count on
fiscal policy. The austerity gang may have experienced a stunning defeat in the
intellectual debate, but stimulus is still a dirty word, and no deliberate
job-creation program is likely soon, or ever.
“Aggressive monetary action by the Federal Reserve,
something like what the Bank of Japan is now trying, might do the trick. But
far from becoming more aggressive, the Fed is talking about ‘tapering’ its
efforts. This talk has already done real damage.
“Someday, I suppose, something will turn up that
finally gets us back to full employment. But I can’t help recalling that the
last time we were in this kind of situation, the thing that eventually turned
up was World War II.”
Why is “full” employment actually about 5%
unemployment? Structural unemployment of
this nature is entirely acceptable to Wall Street and the business sector
because it provides a ready supply of desperate workers when needed. It also
acts to reduce working class/lower middle class wages and benefits since
millions of unemployed workers are ready to replace employees dissatisfied with
their low pay and working conditions.
Unions protect workers through collective bargaining
with employers for wages and benefits, but decades of anti-union campaigns by
management and anti-labor legislation have drastically reduced union membership
and power, leading to lower wages. This situation has seemed to worsen
regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats dominate Washington.
A more realistic full employment rate, where only 1%
or 1.5% of the working age population was seeking jobs, would significantly
strengthen labor at the expense of capital. But even when unemployment is 7.6%,
capital is hardly complaining or taking any action to facilitate a real jobs
program, as long as its own profits continue to pile up.
–––––––––––––––
10. RELENTLESS ATTACK ON ABORTION RIGHTS
By
the Activist Newsletter
The ultra-conservative war on
the right to abortion is increasing throughout the U.S. in states where the
right wing enjoys political leverage. Here are the major legislative
restrictions on abortion enacted so far in 2013, based on reports from the
American Civil Liberties Union. If you live in the Mid-Hudson region of
New York State and wish to protest these infringements on the right to
abortion, attend the big outdoor rally for women’s rights in New Paltz at Peace
Park on Saturday, Sept. 7, at 1 p.m. Information, donna0726@earthlink.net
FEBRUARY — Arkansas enacted a law that bans abortion after 20 weeks. Arkansas
enacted a law that prevents plans sold in the new health exchanges from
offering comprehensive insurance coverage that includes abortion care.
MARCH — Arkansas went a step further and enacted a law that bans abortion after
12 weeks. The ACLU has challenged this bill in court, along with the ACLU of
Arkansas and Center for Reproductive Rights.
North Dakota
enacted a law that bans abortions after about 6 weeks (before a woman may know
she is pregnant). The same state subsequently enacted a law that bans abortions
when sought because of the sex of the fetus or because of fetal anomaly, even
fatal fetal anomalies. Further, it enacted a law that requires that doctors
providing abortions have admitting privileges at local hospitals. This bill is
designed to shut down the one clinic in the state.
South Dakota
enacted a law that declares the 72 hour waiting period between a woman’s first
trip to the clinic and her abortion does not toll on a Saturday, Sunday, or
holiday.
APRIL — Kansas enacted a sweeping anti-abortion law described by an opponent as
"delightful" because it opens so many avenues to obstruct access.
This law could force doctors to share information about a supposed link between
breast cancer and abortion and aims to impose new taxes on the women who need
abortions and the health centers that provide them. Also bans abortion based on
the sex of the fetus and includes personhood language that could lay the
groundwork for further restrictions.
Montana enacted
a law that requires parental consent for a woman under 18 who needs an
abortion.
Virginia
enacted a law that prevents plans sold in the new health exchange from offering
comprehensive insurance coverage that includes abortion care.
Virginia Board
of Health approved regulations to require clinics to become like
mini-hospitals, designed to force many to close. At least one clinic has
already closed down.
MAY— Indiana enacted a law that imposes regulations intended for surgical
facilities on clinics that provide only medical abortions. This law may prevent
a Planned Parenthood site from continuing to provide abortion care.
On May 23, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee,
Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice held a hearing on H.R. 1797,
which would ban abortion care starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy. As introduced,
the proposed ban would apply only to Washington, D.C., but its sponsor, Rep.
Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), recently announced his intention to expand it
nationwide.
JUNE — Pennsylvania enacted a bill that prevents women from obtaining
comprehensive insurance coverage that includes abortion care in the new health
care exchanges.
The Ohio
legislature enacted provisions that aim to make it harder on women to access
abortion care. Legislation signed by the Governor would make it more difficult
for clinic doctors to obtain written agreements from hospitals confirming
hospitals’ willingness to accept the doctor’s patients in the rare event they
need hospital care, even though (or because) hospitals face political pressure
to deny such written confirmations. The legislation also includes ultrasound
provisions and an attempt to block Planned Parenthood from receiving funding.
JULY — Senators in
North Carolina amended sweeping anti-abortion provisions on an unrelated House
bill July 3, rushed it through the Senate and it now awaits action in the
House. On July
29, the North Carolina Governor signed a bill that contains sweeping
anti-abortion provisions, including opening the door to regulations that could
shut down most providers in the state.
The Wisconsin
legislature enacted a bill July 5 that could require a woman seeking an abortion
to undergo an ultrasound, force doctors to display and describe the ultrasound
image to her, and force the doctors performing the abortion to have special
hospital privileges that have proven impossible to get in other states. The
ACLU, ACLU of Wisconsin, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America have
challenged this bill in court.
The Texas House passed a sweeping anti-abortion bill July 9 that could
block women from accessing abortion care in most of the state and prevent
doctors from treating women who need
an abortion. The bill now awaits Senate action. On July 18 Legislators introduced another abortion restriction that opens the door to
banning abortion very early in pregnancy, before a woman may know the health of
her pregnancy and before she may even know she is pregnant at all. The same
day, Texas Gov. Rick Perry today signed into law a sweeping anti-abortion bill
that could result in the closure of most women's health clinics that provide
abortions in the state and block doctors from providing abortion care when
needed.
–––––––––––––
11. THEY KNOW MUCH MORE THAN YOU THINK
[The following
article from the New York Review of Books dated Aug. 15, 2013, explains the
inner workings of the U.S. Surveillance State. James Branford is the author of three
books on the NSA, including “The
Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11.” The link for continuing is
below.]
By James Branford
In mid-May, Edward Snowden, an American in his late
twenties, walked through the onyx entrance of the Mira Hotel on Nathan Road in
Hong Kong and checked in. He was pulling a small black travel bag and had a
number of laptop cases draped over his shoulders. Inside those cases were four
computers packed with some of his country’s most closely held secrets.
Within days of Snowden’s documents appearing in The
Guardian and The Washington Post, revealing several of the National Security
Agency’s extensive domestic surveillance programs, bookstores reported a sudden
spike in the sales of George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984. On
Amazon.com, the book made the “Movers & Shakers” list and skyrocketed
6,021% in a single day. Written 65 years ago, it described a fictitious
totalitarian society where a shadowy leader known as “Big Brother” controls his
population through invasive surveillance. “The telescreens,” Orwell wrote,
“have hidden microphones and cameras. These devices, alongside informers,
permit the Thought Police to spy upon everyone….”
Today, as the Snowden documents make clear, it is the
NSA that keeps track of phone calls, monitors communications, and analyzes
people’s thoughts through data mining of Google searches and other online
activity. “Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper,
would be picked up by it,” Orwell wrote about his protagonist, Winston Smith.
“There was of course no way of knowing whether you
were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the
Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even
conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they
could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became
instinct — in the assumption that every
sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement
scrutinized.”
Of course the U.S. is not a totalitarian society, and
no equivalent of Big Brother runs it, as the widespread reporting of Snowden’s
information shows. We know little about what uses the NSA makes of most
information available to it — it claims
to have exposed a number of terrorist plots
— and it has yet to be shown what effects its activities may have on the
lives of most American citizens. Congressional committees and a special federal
court are charged with overseeing its work, although they are committed to
secrecy, and the court can hear appeals only from the government.
Still, the U.S. intelligence agencies also seem to
have adopted Orwell’s idea of doublethink
— “to be conscious of complete
truthfulness,” he wrote, “while telling carefully constructed lies.” For
example, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, was asked at a Senate hearing in March whether
“the NSA collect[s] any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions
of Americans.” Clapper’s answer: “No, sir…. Not wittingly.”
Three months later, following the revelations of the
phone-log program in which the NSA collects telephone data — the numbers of both callers and the length
of the calls — on hundreds of millions
of Americans, Clapper switched to doublethink. He said that his previous answer
was not a lie; he just chose to respond in the “least untruthful manner.” With
such an Orwellian concept of the truth now being used, it is useful to take a
look at what the government has been telling the public about its surveillance
activities over the years, and compare it with what we know now as a result of
the top secret documents and other information released by, among others, the
former NSA contract employee Edward Snowden.
— This article continues with details about the history
America’s development into a surveillance state. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/aug/15/nsa-they-know-much-more-you-think/?pagination=false
––––––––––––––
12. 80% OF
U.S. ADULTS FACE NEAR-POVERTY
By
Hope Yan
WASHINGTON — Four out of
five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare
for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security
and an elusive American dream.
Survey data exclusive to
The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the
widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing
jobs as reasons for the trend.
As nonwhites approach a
numerical majority in the U.S., one question is how public programs to lift the
disadvantaged should be best focused – on the affirmative action that
historically has tried to eliminate the racial barriers seen as the major
impediment to economic equality, or simply on improving socioeconomic status
for all, regardless of race.
Hardship is particularly
growing among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial
group about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point
since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63% of whites called the
economy "poor."
"I think it's going to
get worse," said Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., a declining
coal region in Appalachia. Married and divorced three times, Salyers now helps
run a fruit and vegetable stand with her boyfriend but it doesn't generate much
income. They live mostly off government disability checks.
"If you do try to go
apply for a job, they're not hiring people, and they're not paying that much to
even go to work," she said. Children, she said, have "nothing better
to do than to get on drugs."
While racial and ethnic
minorities are more likely to live in poverty, race disparities in the poverty
rate have narrowed substantially since the 1970s, census data show. Economic
insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in the
government's poverty data, engulfing more than 76% of white adults by the time
they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge being published next year by
the Oxford University Press.
The gauge defines
"economic insecurity" as experiencing unemployment at some point in
their working lives, or a year or more of reliance on government aid such as
food stamps or income below 150% of the poverty line. Measured across all
races, the risk of economic insecurity rises to 79%.
Marriage rates are in
decline across all races, and the number of white mother-headed households
living in poverty has risen to the level of black ones.
"It's time that
America comes to understand that many of the nation's biggest disparities, from
education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to economic
class position," said William Julius Wilson, a Harvard professor who
specializes in race and poverty. He noted that despite continuing economic
difficulties, minorities have more optimism about the future after Obama's
election, while struggling whites do not.
"There is the real
possibility that white alienation will increase if steps are not taken to
highlight and address inequality on a broad front," Wilson said.
Nationwide, the count of America's
poor remains stuck at a record number: 46.2 million, or 15% of the population,
due in part to lingering high unemployment following the recession. While
poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics are nearly three times higher, by
absolute numbers the predominant face of the poor is white.
More than 19 million whites
fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for
more than 41% of the nation's destitute, nearly double the number of poor
blacks.
Sometimes termed "the
invisible poor" by demographers, lower-income whites generally are
dispersed in suburbs as well as small rural towns, where more than 60% of the
poor are white. Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are numerous in
the industrial Midwest and spread across America's heartland, from Missouri,
Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains….
In 2011 that snapshot
showed 12.6% of adults in their prime working-age years of 25-60 lived in
poverty. But measured in terms of a person's lifetime risk, a much higher
number – 4 in 10 adults – falls into poverty for at least a year of their
lives.
The risks of poverty also
have been increasing in recent decades, particularly among people ages 35-55,
coinciding with widening income inequality. For instance, people ages 35-45 had
a 17% risk of encountering poverty during the 1969-1989 time period; that risk
increased to 23% during the 1989-2009 period. For those ages 45-55, the risk of
poverty jumped from 11.8% to 17.7%.
Higher recent rates of
unemployment mean the lifetime risk of experiencing economic insecurity now
runs even higher: 79%, or 4 in 5 adults, by the time they turn 60.
By race, nonwhites still
have a higher risk of being economically insecure, at 90%. But compared with
the official poverty rate, some of the biggest jumps under the newer measure
are among whites, with more than 76% enduring periods of joblessness, life on
welfare or near-poverty.
By 2030, based on the
current trend of widening income inequality, close to 85% of all working-age
adults in the U.S. will experience bouts of economic insecurity.
"Poverty is no longer
an issue of ‘Them', it's an issue of “us” says Mark Rank, a professor at
Washington University in St. Louis who calculated the numbers. "Only when
poverty is thought of as a mainstream event, rather than a fringe experience
that just affects blacks and Hispanics, can we really begin to build broader
support for programs that lift people in need."
The numbers come from
Rank's analysis being published by the Oxford University Press. They are
supplemented with interviews and figures provided to the AP by Tom Hirschl, a
professor at Cornell University; John Iceland, a sociology professor at Penn
State University; the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute; the
Census Bureau; and the Population Reference Bureau.
Among the findings:
• For the first time since
1975, the number of white single-mother households living in poverty with
children surpassed or equaled black ones in the past decade, spurred by job
losses and faster rates of out-of-wedlock births among whites. White
single-mother families in poverty stood at nearly 1.5 million in 2011,
comparable to the number for blacks. Hispanic single-mother families in poverty
trailed at 1.2 million.
• Since 2000, the poverty
rate among working-class whites has grown faster than among working-class
nonwhites, rising 3%age points to 11% as the recession took a bigger toll among
lower-wage workers. Still, poverty among working-class nonwhites remains
higher, at 23%.
• The share of children
living in high-poverty neighborhoods – those with poverty rates of 30% or more
– has increased to 1 in 10, putting them at higher risk of teenage pregnancy or
dropping out of school. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 17% of the child
population in such neighborhoods, compared with 13% in 2000, even though the
overall proportion of white children in the U.S. has been declining.
—From Huffington Post, July
26, 2013.
––––––––––––––
13. ECONOMIC BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL
[The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz features a
number of liberal writers. Among them is Gideon Levy, a long time columnist who
often speaks his mind on controversial matters. In this July 14 article he for
the first time calls for an economic boycott of Israel.]
By Gideon Levy
Anyone who really fears for the future
of the country [Israel] needs to be in favor at this point of boycotting it
economically.
A contradiction in terms? We have
considered the alternatives. A boycott is the least of all evils, and it could
produce historic benefits. It is the least violent of the options and the one
least likely to result in bloodshed. It would be painful like the others, but
the others would be worse.
On the assumption that the current
status quo cannot continue forever, it is the most reasonable option to
convince Israel to change. Its effectiveness has already been proven. More and
more Israelis have become concerned recently about the threat of the boycott.
When Justice Minister Tzipi Livni warns about it spreading and calls as a
result for the diplomatic deadlock to be broken, she provides proof of the need
for a boycott. She and others are therefore joining the boycott, divestment and
sanction movement. Welcome to the club.
The change won’t come from within. That
has been clear for a long time. As long as Israelis don’t pay a price for the
occupation [of Palestinian territory], or at least don’t make the connection
between cause and effect, they have no incentive to bring it to an end. And why
should the average resident of Tel Aviv be bothered by what is happening in the
West Bank city of Jenin or Rafah in the Gaza Strip? Those places are far away
and not particularly interesting. As long as the arrogance and
self-victimization continue among the Chosen People, the most chosen in the
world, always the only victim, the world’s explicit stance won’t change a
thing.
It’s anti-Semitism, we say. The whole
world’s against us and we are not the ones responsible for its attitude toward
us. And besides that, despite everything, the English singer Cliff Richard came
to perform here. Most Israeli public opinion is divorced from reality — the reality in the territories and abroad.
And there are those who are seeing to it that this dangerous disconnect is
maintained. Along with the dehumanization and demonization of the Palestinians
and the Arabs, people here are too brainwashed with nationalism to come to
their senses.
Change will only come from the outside.
No one — this writer included, of course — wants another cycle of bloodshed. A
nonviolent popular Palestinian uprising is one option, but it is doubtful that
will happen anytime soon. And then there’s American diplomatic pressure and the
European economic boycott. But the United States won’t apply pressure. If the
Obama Administration hasn’t done it, no American administration will. And then
there’s Europe. Justice Minister Livni said that the discourse in Europe has
become ideological. She knows what she’s talking about. She also said that a
European boycott would not stop at products made in West Bank settlements.
There’s no reason it should. The
distinction between products from the occupation and Israeli products is an
artificial creation. It’s not the settlers who are the primary culprits but
rather those who cultivate their existence. All of Israel is immersed in the
settlement enterprise, so all of Israel must take responsibility for it and pay
the price for it. There is no one unaffected by the occupation, including those
who fancy looking the other way and steering clear of it. We are all settlers.
Economic boycott was proven effective in
South Africa. When the apartheid regime’s business community approached the
country’s leadership saying that the prevailing circumstances could not
continue, the die was cast. The uprising, the stature of leaders like Nelson
Mandela and Frederik de Klerk, the boycott of South African sports and the
country’s diplomatic isolation also contributed of course to the fall of the
odious regime. But the tone was set by the business community.
And it can happen here too. Israel’s
economy will not withstand a boycott. It is true that at the beginning it will
enhance the sense of victimhood, isolationism and nationalism, but not in the
long run. It could result in a major change in attitude. When the business community
approaches the government, the government will listen and also perhaps act.
When the damage is to every citizen’s pocketbook, more Israelis will ask
themselves, maybe for the first time, what it’s all about and why it’s
happening.
It’s difficult and painful, almost impossibly so, for an Israeli who has
lived his whole life here, who has not boycotted it, who has never considered
emigrating and feels connected to this country with all his being, to call for
such a boycott. I have never done so. I have understood what motivated the
boycott and was able to provide justification for such motives. But I never
preached for others to take such a step. However, with Israel getting itself
into another round of deep stalemate, both diplomatic and ideological, the call
for a boycott is required as the last refuge of a patriot.
———————
14. CHINA LEADS BATTLE AGAINST
POVERTY
UNITED
NATIONS, (IPS): The United Nations has
singled out China – the world’s most populous country with over 1.3 billion
people – as one of the key success stories in the longstanding battle against
poverty.
Although extreme poverty rates have
fallen in every developing region, says a new 60-page report released here last
month, China is way ahead of the pack.
In China, extreme poverty dropped from
60% in 1990 to 16% in 2005 and 12% in 2010.
Still, “poverty remains widespread in
sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, although progress in the latter region
has been substantial,” according to the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) Report 2013, released Monday.
Following the launch of the report in
Geneva, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hailed the MDGs as “the most successful
global anti-poverty push in history.”
The study takes stock of the successes
and failures of the MDGs – aimed primarily at fighting poverty, hunger,
illiteracy, disease and gender discrimination – which were approved at a summit
of world leaders in September 2000, with a targeted deadline of 2015.
Despite impressive achievements at the
global level, the study said, 1.2 billion people are still living in extreme
poverty.
While trumpeting some of the successes,
including big gains in improved health and reduction in hunger, the report says
progress towards achieving the MDGs has been uneven – not only among regions
and countries but also between population groups within countries.
The study also says that over two
billion people gained access to improved sources of drinking water and there
were “remarkable gains” in the fight against malaria and tuberculosis.
The bad news is that environmental
sustainability is under severe threat, too many children are still denied their
right to primary education, and there is less aid money overall, with the
poorest countries most adversely affected.
Roberto Bissio, coordinator of the
Uruguay-based Social Watch, an international non-governmental organization
(NGO) advocating poverty eradication, told IPS the reduction of income poverty, highlighted as the single major
achievement of the MDGs, happened almost exclusively in China.
“But it happened mainly before the year
2000, and thus cannot be honestly attributed as a success of the MDGs,” he
added….
Shobha Das, director of programs at the
London-based Minority Rights Group (MRG), told IPS that the MDGs served to
build a global discourse around development needs, and they have achieved much.
“However, the MDGs appear to have
consistently failed minorities and indigenous peoples around the world,” she
said.
For example, in India, poverty rates
have remained higher for minorities and indigenous peoples as compared to the
overall population, she noted.
In Uganda, rates of malnourishment are
higher for the minority pastoralist population than for non-pastoralists.
In Peru, a lower proportion of children
from the Afro-Peruvian community complete primary school than the overall
national rate.
A key reason for these disparities, she
pointed out, is that governments have not been encouraged or incentivized to
resist cherry-picking in the scramble to meet MDG targets.
“This has meant they have reached the
easiest to reach populations, who are usually the majority communities, and
left behind the harder to reach populations, who are usually minorities,” Das
added.
An eye on inequality is therefore key to
the success of the proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to be
launched as part of the UN’s post-2015 development agenda.
“Without clear targets to reduce
inequality and spread the benefits of development equally, it is all too likely
that the failures of the MDGs for minorities and indigenous peoples will be repeated
post-2015,” she said….
The World Bank and the different drafts
for a post-2015 agenda claim that “for the first time ever” it is now possible
to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030….
Paradoxically, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) is now saying that poverty in developed countries and
inequalities everywhere are an obstacle for recovery of the global economy.
______________
