November 25,
2014, Issue 210
ACTIVIST
NEWSLETTER
—————————
CONTENTS:
1A. Hudson Valley Protests Brown Decision
1. Quotes of The Month Paul L. Robeson
1. Quotes of The Month Paul L. Robeson
2. Our Newsletter is Read Worldwide
3. The Election and Beyond
4. “Life In The Circle”
5. 2.5 Million Homeless Children in U.S.
6. The Age of Vulnerability
7. Africa is Bigger Than You Think
8. Russia, Germany & Ukraine
9. Bombing and Blaming Muslim Countries
10. Marissa
Alexander’s Plea Deal
11. Leslie
Feinberg, Presente!
12. Dilma
Rousseff Wins, Neoliberalism Loses
13. Climate
Groups Prepare for UN Meeting
14. Palestinians
are Right To Resist
15. Don’t Ask
How to Feed the 9 Billion
16. Angry French
Farmers Protest Government
17. Syria’s Ruin
18. Belgium
Protest Against Austerity
—————————
1A. HUDSON VALLEY
PROTESTS BROWN DECISION
 | ||
Poughkeepsie. (Photo by Fred Nagel.)
|
By Donna Goodman
Demonstrations
protesting the grand jury’s refusal to indict a Ferguson, Mo. police officer
for the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black youth, took place in
hundreds of U.S. cities and towns. Several were mounted in the Hudson Valley, including
in Poughkeepsie, New Paltz, Kingston, and Albany, N.Y. on Tuesday, Nov. 25.
In Poughkeepsie activist Fred Nagel
reports 500 people assembled in front of the Dutchess County Jail chanting “No
justice, no peace!” and then rallied at nearby Malcolm X Park. (See top photo.) The report noted that “A large contingent of Vassar College students
participated, bringing racial diversity to the rally.” The End the New Jim Crow
Action Network (ENJAN) initiated the event.
In New Paltz some 200 SUNY students mobilized quickly after the 9 p.m. Monday announcement of the jury’s
decision and marched through campus and the village. According to Kris Vargas
of the Black Student Union, which organized the campus march: "The
demonstration started with a Facebook post, and in literally 40 minutes the
protest grew. We emphasized peaceful protest and had a quick 'know your rights'
session before the march." Vargas noted that there was a good mix of people,
with black and white students marching together.
In Kingston 75 people
attended a rally and vigil in front of City Hall, also sponsored by ENJAN. The
most prominent signs read: "Black Lives Matter" and "Don't
Shoot." Students led chants such as "Black Nation on the Rise. Educate,
Agitate, Organize!" and "Racist violence has to stop! Prosecute the
killer cop!" Local activist Jamie Levato said, "These demonstrations bring
people in and inspire people who are driving by. We need to change the way
policing is done. People have to force the change to happen." (The bottom photo is of SUNY New Paltz students and faculty who also joined the Kingston event.)
Odell Winfield, the
founder of ENJAN, which has members in three Mid-Hudson towns, said: "This
battle is another one in a long line. When we talk about mass incarceration and
the school to prison pipeline, we can prove it. Blacks in the U.S. constitute
10% of the population and 50% of people who are incarcerated." ENJAN is actively engaged in a Ban the Box
campaign, which would prohibit potential employers from demanding that job
applicants check off a box indicating whether they've ever been arrested.
———————————
1.
QUOTES OF THE MONTH, Paul L. Robeson
(1898-1976)
Paul Robeson was a black American singer and actor kown throughout the world as a fighter for civil rights and equality in the United States. He was an outstanding football player when at Rutgers Univ., then had an international career in singing, as well as acting in theater and movies. He became politically involved in opposition to the Spanish Civil War (during which he sang for anti-fascist loyalist soldiers). His advocacy of anti-imperialism and socialism, support for the Soviet Union and criticism of the U.S. government resulted in being blacklisted during the repressive anti-communist McCarthy era. Ill health forced him into retirement but he remained until death an advocate of left-wing political causes.
·
The essential character of a nation is
determined not by the upper classes, but by the common people, and that the
common people of all nations are truly brothers in the great family of mankind
… And even as I grew to feel more Negro in spirit, or African as I put it then,
I also came to feel a sense of oneness with the white working people whom I
came to know and love.
·
When I sang my American folk melodies in
Budapest, Prague, Tiflis, Moscow, Oslo, or the Hebrides or on the Spanish
front, the people understood and wept or rejoiced with the spirit of the songs.
·
I do not hesitate one second to state
clearly and unmistakably: I belong to the American resistance movement which
fights against American imperialism.
 |
|
Paul Robeson as Othello,
with Uta Hagen (1943–4).
|
·
In Russia I felt for the first time like
a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like
in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being.
· To be free... to walk the good American earth as equal citizens, to live without fear, to enjoy the fruits of our toil, to give our children every opportunity in life--that dream which we have held so long in our hearts is today the destiny that we hold in our hands.
Here are two
songs by Robeson:
Amazing Grace, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1lSMXE3W8w
Watch a
documentary biography of Paul Robeson, “Here I Stand,” including
video of the
infamous right wing racist riot against Robeson in Peekskill, N.Y.:
——————————
2.
OUR NEWSLETTER IS READ WORLDWIDE
By the Editor
We just learned
how to obtain information about what countries our readers are in from Goggle’s
Blogger. Following is a listing of hits on the Activist Newsletter for two
years, from Oct. 1, 2012, to Oct.1, 2014. (A hit is a one viewing.) We had no
idea that more than a handful of readers were in other countries, and to
discover these totals is very gratifying.
Country Read Newsletter
United States
70,745
Russia 5173
Germany 4314
Ukraine 3534
France 3169
Slovenia 2205
United Kingdom 2149
China 1578
Netherlands 1312
Poland 807
Total
95,065
————————
3
THE ELECTION AND BEYOND
 Finally, a depiction of where the two-party system actually stands. |
By Jack A.Smith, Editor
The American people tend to view the Republican and Democratic parties as near polar opposites, but this is far from true. Indeed, they are clearly more united on the fundamentals underpinning U.S. society than they are at odds.
The heated
legislative and political battles that characterize both parties, which are
fought bitterly every two and four years in national elections and throughout
the 50 states, are taking place within a much larger context of agreement
between the right/far right Republicans and the center right Democrats.
We will touch
upon this matter after discussing the recent trouncing of the Democratic Party
in the Nov. 4 midterm elections, and posing this question: “Why are the
Democrats so unpopular at a time when it was obvious that reactionary
Republican obstructionism virtually paralyzed the political and legislative
process?”
Compounding the
GOP victory, a post-election Nov. 6-9 Gallup Poll revealed that the Democratic
Party’s favorability rating among the American people was at its lowest point
ever, 36%, compared to 51% just after the 2012 election that returned President
Barack Obama to office for a second term. The Republican post-election tally
was 42% this year compared to 28% — the lowest rating ever for either party —
just a year ago in October after shutting down the Federal government for 16
days.
Fewer voters
historically turn out for midterms, but this year that total was the lowest in
72 years — 36.6% of those eligible to vote at a time when the Democratic Party
knew it was in trouble and made special efforts to get out the vote. It didn’t
work. The result was not only that the Republicans gained control of the Senate
and increased their large margin in the House but now also dominate over 60% of
governorships and state legislatures.
Aside from the
ideological right and left and those who closely follow politics, the great
bulk of American voters — who far outnumber the ideologues and buffs — often
possess little knowledge about politics, history, foreign affairs and the inner
workings of national government, and are manipulated by the corporate mass
media and political parties.
Those who
control the levers of American society neglect to provide the masses of working
people with a thorough understanding about the realities of American society
because an enlightened citizenry would undoubtedly demand significant social
change if the truth were known. The political parties are well aware of the
consequences that might ensue if they heeded Thomas Jefferson’s famous words of
1820, and they will have none of it: “An enlightened citizenry is indispensable
for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible
unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise
oversight.”
Far from
educating, the contending parties invested billions of campaign dollars
miseducating potential voters with endless stultifying, simplistic and
deceptive negative attacks on the opposition.
Wall Street, the
banking system, corporations and those who possess great wealth paid for this
election and assuredly will be recompensed several fold in legislation, tax
rebates, and favors from Congress and the White House. According to Demos, the
liberal political policy organization:
“Democracy has
at its heart a basic promise: Citizens have an equal voice in deciding who
represents them. This promise went unfulfilled again in 2014. Large donors
accounted for the vast majority of all individual federal election
contributions this cycle, just as they have in previous elections. Candidates
alone got 84% of their individual contributions from large donors.... Just 50
individuals and their spouses accounted for more than a third of the total
money raised by Super PACs this cycle. Many candidates, including some
whose individual contribution totals reach into the millions, report receiving
few or even no dollars in contributions from small donors.”
Both parties
received about the same amount of cash, with the Democrats slightly ahead on
the national level. Many thought that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United
decision allowing virtually unlimited campaign contributions would principally
harm the Democrats but that’s not the case. The two parties are thriving
financially, while what’s left of democracy may have received a fatal wound.
The Democratic
campaign was largely defensive, with most of its congressional candidates
attempting to distance themselves from their own president. The apotheosis of
this humiliating situation was when Democrat Alison L. Grimes, unsuccessfully
running against Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, declared she
disagreed with Obama and wouldn’t admit to having voting for him.
Viewing the
election results and the disinclination of Democratic candidates to make a show
of support for President Obama, Stratfor’s George Friedman wrote Nov. 17: “The
president is no longer battling for the center but is fighting to hold on to
his own supporters — and is failing to do so.”
There are
several reasons for the sharp drop in Democratic electoral support this year,
but it is not a shift to the ideological right/far right. It primarily was far
more a rejection of the center right unwillingness of Obama and the Democratic
Party to mount a significant fight-back against the economic and social
tribulations increasingly afflicting the American working class, middle class
and of course the poor.
In recent years
working families have experienced drastic unemployment, underemployment or the
fear of job loss; wage stagnation; widespread foreclosure of homes; mounting
inequality; family insecurity; fear that one’s children won’t make it to the
middle class; continual wars; political gridlock; startling examples of
brutality by militarized police forces; runaway climate change, and more. And
today’s Democratic Party, as opposed to a few center left reform years in the
1930s and 1960s, is pathetically ill equipped to defend these constituencies
against the accelerating rampages of the U.S. neoliberal version of capitalism.
A number of
progressive and left commentators have noted the role the Democrats played in
their own defeat, such as Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary in the Clinton
Administration: “What the President and other Democrats failed to communicate
wasn’t their accomplishments. It was their understanding that the economy
is failing most Americans and big money is overrunning our democracy. And
they failed to convey their commitment to an economy and a democracy that serve
the vast majority rather than a minority at the top. The midterm elections
should have been about jobs and wages, and how to reform a system where nearly
all the gains go to the top. It was an opportunity for Democrats to shine.
Instead, they hid.”
He suggested
they should have “come out swinging. Not just for a higher minimum wage but
also for better schools, paid family and medical leave, and childcare for
working families. For resurrecting the Glass-Steagall Act and limiting the size
of Wall Street banks. For saving Social Security by lifting the cap on income
subject to payroll taxes. For rebuilding the nation’s roads, bridges, and ports.
For increasing taxes on corporations with high ratios of CEO pay to the pay of
average workers. And for getting big money out of politics, and thereby saving
our democracy.”
Bill Fletcher,
Jr., an educator, writer, unionist and board member of Black Commentator,
declared: “ The Obama Administration has not led in a progressive
direction.... Though the economy has improved, the condition for the
average working person has not. Yes, unemployment is down but we are still
dealing with structural unemployment that is weighing on everyone. The damage
from the foreclosure crisis is far from over. And the rich are the ones who are
benefiting from the improved economy. To turn any of this around masses
of working people need to be organized to fight for a division of the
wealth. Yes, that means building and supporting labor unions. But when
the President does not make that a clarion call-except when speaking with union
members — he has no answer to the public that is asking for their share....
Race, as always, was a factor. The Republicans had sufficient codes to
make it clear that race was an issue in the election.
Robert Borosage
of the
liberal Campaign for
America's Future noted issues that should have been, but were not,
on the Democratic campaign agenda: “There is a populist majority waiting to be
forged. Majorities will rally for full-employment economics, for fair taxes on
the rich and the corporations, investment in rebuilding the country and
educating the children, strengthening retirement security, making college
affordable, lifting the minimum wage, curbing CEO excess, empowering workers,
guaranteed paid family leave, paid sick days and paid vacations, balanced trade
to make things in America again, taking on the corruption of our politics by
big money, investment in new energy and innovation that will create jobs and
more.”
Peter Beinart,
writing in The Atlantic blog, argued: “For the most part, Democratic candidates
shied away from [the issues that most Democrats think really matter] because
they were too controversial. Instead they stuck to topics that were safe,
familiar, and broadly popular: the minimum wage, outsourcing, and the “war on
women.” The result, for the most part, was homogenized, inauthentic,
forgettable campaigns.”
During the next
two years the Republicans will block all progressive legislation, but given the
paucity of anything progressive in the last almost six years that won’t change
much. During those years, as liberal economist and columnist Paul Krugman
correctly observed, the Republicans engaged in “obstructionism bordering on
sabotage.” The GOP will try to ram through reactionary bills but may not cause
too much damage. The Democrats hold over 40 votes in the Senate, enough to
block many bills, (except when there are defections by their conservative
bloc), but Obama has a veto. At the same time Obama is expected to compromise
on certain right wing bills, such as a tax cut for rich corporations, and
possibly much worse.
The GOP will
continue to support Obama’s expansion of wars, not only in Afghanistan where
the White House just intensified America’s war commitment, but probably will
work with the president to actively seek the military overthrow of the Syrian
government, and to send larger numbers of U.S. troops to fight against the
Islamic State. Professional warhawk Sen. John McCain is expected to assume the
chairmanship of the Senate Armed Services Committee, giving much him greater
authority over wars and the Pentagon budget. In foreign policy the Republicans
will support moves to exacerbate America’s new cold war with Russia and
increase U.S. military arms and support to Ukraine.
Obama will spend
part of the remainder of his term dwelling on his so-called legacy, trying to
partially make up for the first six years with efforts to portray himself as
something of a liberal now that he is a lame duck with considerably diminished
powers. He routinely ignored or criticized party liberals and brushed aside the
Congressional Progressive Caucus since taking office, much to the chagrin of
millions of his voters who expected “change they could believe in” from what
turned out to be a conservative presidency. Of a sudden he’s issuing a few
executive orders that he could have implemented five years ago and adopting
more populist rhetoric.
Despite much
political sound and fury and sharp differences between the two
official parties they are clearly more united on the fundamentals underpinning
U.S. society than they are at odds, as we suggested at the beginning of this
article.
For one of many
examples, both uphold an essentially failing model of capitalism that prevails
in the United States — failing in the sense of fulfilling the needs of the
great majority of people.
Noting that the
United States is “home to the worst inequality among the advanced countries,”
progressive pro-capitalist economist Joseph Stiglitz, a past recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Economics, recently described America’s harsh form of capitalism
as being “designed to create inequalities. This fact was made abundantly clear
during the financial crisis, when we socialized losses but allowed the banks to
privatize profits, extended largesse to the victimizers but did little to help
the victims who were losing their homes and jobs.” Earlier this year Stiglitz
wrote, “an economic system that fails to deliver gains for most of its
citizens, and in which a rising share of the population faces increasing
insecurity, is, in a fundamental sense, a failed economic system.”
In this regard,
liberal Robert Reich wrote Nov. 17: “Capitalism is a tough sport. If those at
the top are winning big while the bottom 90% is losing — too bad. That's the
way the game is played.”
This “failed
system” — where for instance 2.4 million children in the U.S. were homeless at
some point last year — is the economic project of choice staunchly supported by
both the Democratic and Republican parties, neither of which is prepared to
propose graduating to the people-friendlier social democratic form of capitalism
that prevails in much of Europe, much less building toward the considerably
more egalitarian socialism.
During these 22
bipartisan, post-Cold War years, (1) the military budget has skyrocketed in a
series of unnecessary, stalemated or lost wars against far weaker opponents;
(2) the two parties joined in deregulating key aspects of government controls
on Wall Street, the banking system and corporations; and (3) the disproportion
of wealth and poverty has reached and is exceeding Golden Age proportions, as
you will see in the next paragraph:
The U.S. is the
richest country in the world, but about half its population of 319 million
people are low income or poor. These people generally have very little, if any,
wealth (i.e., assets over liabilities). Indeed, the bottom 90% of the U.S.
population, including the working class and the entire middle class as well as
low income and poor, possess only 25.6% of private national assets. The top 10%
own the rest, in these proportions: Those in the 90 to 99 percentile own
34.6% of the assets. The top 1% enjoys 39.8% of America’s assets. And within
that 1%, the top 0.01% has grabbed 11.1% of the assets. This most powerful one hundredth
of one percent includes 16,000 families who own $6 trillion in assets — equal
to the total wealth of the bottom two-thirds of American families combined.
Despite these
realities, or more properly because of them, the Democratic and Republican parties
still propagate the falsehood that America is a “classless” society of
“opportunity for all.” They trumpet the glories of free market fundamentalism
even as the economy and its benefits stagnate for the majority.
Regarding
political donors, the top 0.01% was responsible for 40% of campaign
contributions in the 2012 elections and at least that amount in 2014. All told, about $4 billion, nearly all from
big contributors, was spent on this year’s election and both parties received
fairly equal amounts. All this money buys sufficient influence for the wealthy
and corporate donors to basically control federal and state elections, thereby
maintaining the socio-political parameters established by the ruling elite
within which the political game must be played. Even as they fight over various
issues, the Democratic and Republican parties operate well within these
constraints.
Here are a few
of the rules guiding those parameters: The two contending and colluding parties
are in basic concord on these key issues:
·
Foreign
policy, U.S. global hegemony, constant foreign military interventions and wars,
enormous military budgets;
·
Allegiance
to an increasingly laissez-faire brand of capitalism, and neoliberal
globalization;
·
Servile
loyalty to Wall Street, the banking system, and corporate power;
·
Plutocratic
rule (government controlled by the rich) in place of democracy, though this is
concealed from the people;
·
“Free”
elections — so cherished in national myth and external propaganda — that are in
fact dominated by the wealth of the 1% billionaires and their millionaire
cohorts;
·
The
existence of massive privacy-destroying surveillance at home and abroad;
·
Acceptance
of economic and subsequently social inequality and a huge permanent underclass
as the price multimillions of workers and their families must pay for the
privilege of living within free market capitalism;
·
Virtual
elimination of major new social programs for the people.
What have the
Republican and Democratic parties accomplished in recent decades to modify a
type of capitalism that has particularly abused the working class, lower middle
class and portions of the middle class?
They have only
made things worse because each has moved further to the political right over
the last four decades. A few decades ago the Republican Party included a
substantial moderate wing and was considered a right/right-center party, and
the Democrats had a strong liberal sector and were a center/center left party,
but those days are gone and are not coming back.
Obviously, from
a formal left perspective, today’s center right is preferable to right/far
right when confined in a two-party system. However, such a distinction contains
compromising content beyond intense surface differences when each party’s
principal obligations are to (1) maintaining the existing socio-economic system
by catering to its financial and corporate institutions and its wealthiest
beneficiaries; (2) sustaining its global imperialist structure of economic and
military domination; and (3) presiding over the increasing immiseration of the
majority of the population as wealth and privilege increasingly accumulate for
the upper classes.
These two
parties, working in tandem with degrees of power alternating every few years,
have jointly produced the economic, political and social situation that exists
in the United States today — a system where the cherished concepts of
democracy, equality and privacy rights are decaying before our eyes, the plight
of working people is getting worse, and war has become a permanent condition of
society. And since each party continues to gravitate further to the right the
chance the Democrats will execute a significant left turn is most dubious.
A left turn,
however, is an absolute necessity to resolve these problems and more that
afflict American society — most certainly including the developing climate
crisis and the ever-present possibility of nuclear war — and it will only come
from outside the 1% -controlled two-party system.
——————————
4. “LIFE IN THE CIRCLE”
By The Activist Newsletter
By the Activist Newsletter
Homeless people
(above) in Dhaka, Bangladesh, living in unused drainage pipes. Bangladesh is
one of the world's most densely populated and poorest countries, though it has its millionaires. Of its
population of 155 million people, 26% (40.3 million) live below the national poverty line of $2 per
day. Almost a million people are Homeless. In addition, child malnutrition rates are
currently at 48%, in conditions tied to the low social status of women in
Bangladeshi society. This extraordinary photo by Faisal Azim is titled “Life in
the circle.” It won the Atkins City Scape award 2014.
—————————
5.
2.5 MILLION HOMELESS CHILDREN IN U.S.
 |
| Child's drawing, from the National Center for Family Homelessness. |
The annual
levels of homelessness among children have never been higher in the United
States, according to a new comprehensive report released Nov. 17.
Prepared by the
National Center on Family Homelessness, the report — “America’s Youngest
Outcasts” — shows that with poverty and inequality soaring in recent years,
approximately 2.5 million children in 2013 found themselves without a roof over
their head or place to call home at some point during the year. That number
equals one in 30 American children nationally, and constitutes an 8% increase
over the previous year.
"Child
homelessness has reached epidemic proportions in America," said Dr.
Carmela DeCandia, director of the NCFH, in a statement. "Children are
homeless tonight in every city, county and state — in every part of our
nation.”
Based on federal
and other available data and broken down by state, the analysis shows that
homelessness among children varies widely depending on geography. The report
includes an index ranking based on four basic criteria: (1) the extent of child
homelessness, adjusted for population; (2) general well-being of the children; (
3) risk for family homelessness; and ( 4) state policies designed to combat the
problem. Ranked from 1-50, the states with the best scores were Minnesota,
Nebraska and Massachusetts. The worst states for homeless children were
Alabama, Mississippi and California.
The report cites
the major drivers behind the crisis, which include: (1) the nation’s high
poverty rate; (2) a lack of affordable housing across the nation; (3) the
continuing impacts of the Great Recession; (4) racial disparities; (5) the
challenges of single parenting; and (6) the ways in which traumatic
experiences, especially domestic violence, precede and prolong homelessness for
families.
According to a fact sheet
released alongside the study:
Research shows
that homeless children are hungry and sick more often. They wonder if they will
have a roof over their heads at night and what will happen to their families.
Many homeless children struggle in school, missing days, repeating grades, and
drop out entirely. Up to 25% of homeless pre-school children have mental health
problems requiring clinical evaluation; this increases to 40% among homeless
school-age children.
The impacts of
homelessness on the children, especially young children, may lead to changes in
brain architecture that can interfere with learning, emotional self-regulation,
cognitive skills, and social relationships. The unrelenting stress experienced
by the parents may contribute to residential instability, unemployment,
ineffective parenting, and poor health.
Dr. DeCandia
notes that federal policies seeking to address the problem of homelessness
among veterans and other chronically vulnerable adults have showed that
improvements can be made, but says specific federal action to fight child
homelessness has not been adequate to address the growing national crisis of
homeless youth.
“Living in
shelters, neighbors’ basements, cars, campgrounds, and worse — homeless
children are the most invisible and neglected individuals in our society,” she
said. “Without decisive action now, the federal goal of ending child
homelessness by 2020 will soon be out of reach.”
— From Common Dreams, Nov. 17, 2014
(http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/)
————————
6.
THE AGE OF VULNERABILITY
By Joseph E. Stiglitz
Two new studies
show, once again, the magnitude of the inequality problem plaguing the United
States. The first, the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual income
and poverty report, shows that, despite the economy’s supposed recovery
from the Great Recession, ordinary Americans’ incomes continue to stagnate.
Median household income, adjusted for inflation, remains below its level a
quarter-century ago.
It used to be
thought that America’s greatest strength was not its military power, but an
economic system that was the envy of the world. But why would others seek to
emulate an economic model by which a large proportion — even a majority — of
the population has seen their income stagnate while incomes at the top have
soared?
A second study,
the United Nations Development Program’s Human
Development Report 2014, corroborates these findings. Every year, the UNDP
publishes a ranking of countries by their Human Development Index (HDI), which
incorporates other dimensions of wellbeing besides income, including health and
education.
America ranks
fifth according to HDI, below Norway, Australia, Switzerland, and the
Netherlands. But when its score is adjusted for inequality, it drops 23 spots –
among the largest such declines for any highly developed country. Indeed, the
US falls below Greece and Slovakia, countries that people do not typically
regard as role models or as competitors with the US at the top of the league
tables.
The UNDP report
emphasizes another aspect of societal performance: vulnerability. It points out
that while many countries succeeded in moving people out of poverty, the lives
of many are still precarious. A small event — say, an illness in the family —
can push them back into destitution. Downward mobility is a real threat, while
upward mobility is limited.
In the U.S.,
upward mobility is more myth than reality, whereas downward mobility and
vulnerability is a widely shared experience. This is partly because of
America’s health-care system, which still leaves poor Americans in a precarious
position, despite President Barack Obama’s reforms.
Those at the
bottom are only a short step away from bankruptcy with all that that entails.
Illness, divorce, or the loss of a job often is enough to push them over the
brink.
The 2010 Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act (or “Obamacare”) was intended to
ameliorate these threats — and there are
strong
indications that it is on its way to significantly reducing the number of
uninsured Americans. But, partly owing to a
Supreme Court decision and the obduracy of Republican governors and
legislators, who in two dozen US states have refused to expand Medicaid
(insurance for the poor) — even though the federal government pays almost the
entire tab — 41
million Americans remain uninsured. When economic inequality translates
into political inequality — as it has in large parts of the U.S. — governments
pay little attention to the needs of those at the bottom.
Neither GDP nor
HDI reflects changes over time or differences across countries in
vulnerability. But in America and elsewhere, there has been a marked decrease
in security. Those with jobs worry whether they will be able to keep them;
those without jobs worry whether they will get one.
The recent economic
downturn eviscerated the wealth of many. In the U.S., even after the
stock-market recovery, median wealth fell more than 40% from 2007 to 2013. That
means that many of the elderly and those approaching retirement worry about
their standards of living. Millions of Americans have lost their homes;
millions more face the insecurity of knowing that they may lose theirs in the
future.
These
insecurities are in addition to those that have long confronted Americans. In
the country’s inner cities, millions of young Hispanics and African-Americans
face the insecurity of a dysfunctional and unfair police and judicial system;
crossing the path of a policeman who has had a bad night may lead to an
unwarranted prison sentence —or worse.
Europe has
traditionally understood the importance of addressing vulnerability by
providing a system of social protection. Europeans have recognized that good
systems of social protection can even lead to improved overall economic
performance, as individuals are more willing to take the risks that lead to
higher economic growth.
But in many
parts of Europe today, high unemployment (12% on average, 25% in the
worst-affected countries), combined with austerity-induced cutbacks in social
protection, has resulted in unprecedented increases in vulnerability. The
implication is that the decrease in societal wellbeing may be far larger than
that indicated by conventional GDP measures – numbers that already are bleak
enough, with most countries showing that real
(inflation-adjusted) per capita income is lower today than before the
crisis – a lost half-decade.
The
report by the International Commission on the Measurement of Economic
Performance and Social Progress (which I chaired) emphasized that GDP is not a
good measure of how well an economy is performing. The U.S. Census and UNDP
reports remind us of the importance of this insight. Too much has already been
sacrificed on the altar of GDP fetishism.
Regardless of
how fast GDP grows, an economic system that fails to deliver gains for most of
its citizens, and in which a rising share of the population faces increasing
insecurity, is, in a fundamental sense, a failed economic system. And policies,
like austerity, that increase insecurity and lead to lower incomes and
standards of living for large proportions of the population are, in a fundamental
sense, flawed policies.
—From
project-syndicate.org. Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and
University Professor at Columbia University, was Chairman of President Bill
Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and served as Senior Vice President and
Chief Economist of the World Bank. His most recent book, co-authored with Bruce
Greenwald, is “Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth,
Development, and Social Progress.”
————————
7.
AFRICA IS MUCH BIGGER THAN YOU THINK
By Vox and The Economist
Most maps you see are based on the "Mercator projection," so named for Gerardus Mercator, who came up with it in 1559. The Mercator projection is excellent for sailing, as it shows constant bearing as a straight line. But it’s terrible for estimating the size of large masses of land — particularly when they’re close to poles. Under the Mercator projection, for instance, Africa looks to be about the same size as Greenland; it’s actually 14 times larger. The Economist — building on work by Kai Krause — made this graphic showing Africa’s true size: bigger not just than Greenland, but than China, the United States, India Mexico, Spain, Japan, and Western and Eastern Europe put together.
Most maps you see are based on the "Mercator projection," so named for Gerardus Mercator, who came up with it in 1559. The Mercator projection is excellent for sailing, as it shows constant bearing as a straight line. But it’s terrible for estimating the size of large masses of land — particularly when they’re close to poles. Under the Mercator projection, for instance, Africa looks to be about the same size as Greenland; it’s actually 14 times larger. The Economist — building on work by Kai Krause — made this graphic showing Africa’s true size: bigger not just than Greenland, but than China, the United States, India Mexico, Spain, Japan, and Western and Eastern Europe put together.
————————
8.
RUSSIA, GERMANY & UKRAINE
[How bad are
relations between Russia and Germany? The New York Times Nov. 17 reported that
German Chancellor Angela Merkel “abandoned her traditionally cautious tone...
castigating Russia for its actions in Ukraine, for intimidating sovereign
states in Eastern Europe and for threatening to spread conflict more broadly
across Europe.” Actually, relations are relatively stable.]
By Stratfor, Nov. 21, 2014
 |
| Chancellor Merkel and President Putin. |
Berlin values
its highly pragmatic relationship with Moscow. Because of Germany's geographic
position on the North European Plain, Berlin has historically formulated its
foreign policy with both Russia and France in mind. Germany's relationship with
these two powers shaped both major conflicts of the 20th century. Today,
Germany's imperatives include maintaining its close relationship with its
neighbors to the west and keeping European markets open to trade, while also
safeguarding its close commercial and political ties with Russia to the east.
A new round of
significant economic sanctions on Russia would harm German businesses and the
EU economy as a whole. Although German Chancellor Angela Merkel has blamed
Russia publicly for facilitating some of the fighting in Ukraine, she has
recently advocated adding individual separatist leaders to the EU sanctions
list rather than extending sanctions that affect Russia's economy.
The German
government is influential in the European Union and also in Kiev. Berlin will
play a central role in determining the level of much-needed financial aid and
political support Ukraine will receive from the European Union. Moreover, key
members of the pro-Western alliance in Kiev have longstanding ties to Germany
and German institutions. But deep economic ties with Russia mean Berlin also
needs to maintain good relations with Moscow. These relationships motivate
Germany to continue acting as a mediator in efforts to alleviate tensions in
eastern Ukraine.
————————
9.
BOMBING AND BLAMING MUSLIM COUNTRIES
By Glen Greenwald, The Intercept
Barack Obama,
in his post-election press conference Nov. 5, announced
that he would seek an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) from
the new Congress, one that would authorize Obama’s bombing campaign in Iraq
and Syria — the one he began three
months ago. If one were being generous, one could say that seeking
congressional authorization for a war that commenced months ago is at
least better than fighting a war even after Congress explicitly
rejected its authorization, as Obama lawlessly did
in the now-collapsed
country of Libya.
When Obama began
bombing targets inside Syria in September, I noted
that it was the seventh predominantly Muslim country that had been bombed
by the U.S. during his presidency (that did not count Obama’s
bombing of the Muslim minority in the Philippines). I also
previously noted that this new bombing campaign meant that Obama had
become the fourth consecutive U.S. President to order bombs dropped on Iraq.
Standing alone, those are both amazingly revealing facts. American violence
is so ongoing and continuous that we barely notice it any more. Just this week,
a U.S. drone launched a missile that killed 10
people in Yemen, and the dead were promptly labeled “suspected
militants” (which actually just means
they are “military-age males”); those killings received almost no
discussion.
To get a full
scope of American violence in the world, it is worth asking a broader
question: how many countries in the Islamic world has the U.S. bombed or
occupied since 1980? That answer was provided in a
recent Washington Post op-ed by the military historian
and former U.S. Army Col. Andrew Bacevich:
“As America’s
efforts to 'degrade and ultimately destroy' Islamic State militants extent
into Syria, Iraq War III has seamlessly morphed into Greater Middle East
Battlefield XIV. That is, Syria has become at least the 14th country in the
Islamic world that U.S. forces have invaded or occupied or bombed, and in which
American soldiers have killed or been killed. And that’s just since 1980.
 |
| Destination: Yet another Muslim country. |
Bacevich’s count
excludes the bombing and occupation of still other predominantly Muslim
countries by key U.S. allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, carried
out with crucial American support. It excludes coups
against democratically elected governments, torture, and imprisonment of
people with no charges. It also, of course, excludes all the other bombing and
invading and occupying that the U.S. has carried out during this time
period in other parts of the world, including in Central America
and the Caribbean,
as well as various proxy
wars in Africa.
There is an
awful lot to be said about the factions in
the west which devote huge
amounts of their time and attention to preaching
against the supreme primitiveness and violence of Muslims.
There are no gay bars in Gaza, the obsessively
anti-Islam polemicists proclaim — as though that (rather
than levels of violence and aggression unleashed against the world) is the
most important metric for judging a society. Reflecting their single-minded
obsession with demonizing Muslims (at exactly the same time, coincidentally,
their governments wage a never-ending war on Muslim countries and their societies
marginalize Muslims), they notably neglect to note thriving gay
communities in places like Beirut
and Istanbul,
or the lack of them in Christian
Uganda. Employing the defining tactic of bigotry, they love to
highlight the worst behavior of individual Muslims as a means of attributing it
to the group as a whole, while ignoring (often
expressly) the worst behavior of individual Jews and/or their own
groups (they similarly cite the most extreme precepts of Islam while
ignoring similarly extreme ones from Judaism). That’s because, as Rula
Jebreal told Bill
Maher last week, if these oh-so-brave rationality warriors said
about Jews what they say about Muslims, they’d be fired.
But of all the
various points to make about this group, this is always the
most astounding: those same people, who love to denounce the violence
of Islam as some sort of ultimate threat, live in countries whose governments
unleash far more violence, bombing, invasions, and occupations than anyone else
by far. That is just a fact.
Those who sit
around in the U.S. or the UK endlessly inveighing against the evil of Islam,
depicting it as the root of violence and evil (the “mother lode
of bad ideas”), while spending very little time on their own
societies’ addictions to violence and aggression, or their own religious
and nationalistic drives, have reached the peak of self-blinding tribalism.
They really are akin to having a neighbor down the street who constantly
murders, steals and pillages, and then spends his spare time flamboyantly
denouncing people who live thousands of miles away for their bad acts. Such a
person would be regarded as pathologically self-deluded, a term that also
describes those political and intellectual factions which replicate that behavior.
The sheer
casualness with which Obama called for a new AUMF is reflective of how central,
how commonplace, violence and militarism are in the U.S.’s imperial management
of the world. That some citizens of that same country devote
themselves primarily if not exclusively to denouncing the violence
and savagery of others is a testament to how powerful and self-blinding
tribalism is as a human drive.
————————
10. MARISSA ALEXANDER’S PLEA DEAL
By Mid-Hudson WORD
.jpg) |
| Free Marissa! (Drawing by Jawaan Burge) |
According to the
Free Marissa Now Mobilization Campaign (http://www.freemarissanow.org):“The
plea deal is a relief in some ways, but this is far from a victory. The deal
will help Marissa and her family avoid yet another very expensive and
emotionally exhausting trial that could have led to the devastating ruling of
spending the rest of her life in prison.
“Marissa’s
children, family, and community need her to be free as soon as possible.
However, the absurdity in Marissa’s case was always the fact that the courts
punished and criminalized her for surviving domestic violence, for saving her
own life. The mandatory minimum sentences of 20 years, and then 60 years,
just made the state’s prosecution increasingly shocking. But we have
always believed that forcing Marissa to serve even one day in prison represents
a profound and systemic attack on black women’s right to exist and all women’s
right to self-defense.”
— To contact Mid-Hudson WORD to receive occasional reports about women and feminism, email NP@defendwomensrights.org.
————————
11. LESLIE FEINBERG, PRESENTE!
By Preston Wood
(Author’s note: Because Leslie Feinberg, a prolific writer, preferred
the pronouns “she/zie” and “her/hir” we are using those pronouns in this
article.)
 |
| Leslie Feinberg, 'Transgender Warrior.' |
Born in Kansas
City, MO, Sept.1, 1949, Feinberg grew up in Buffalo, N.Y. Hir biography, posted
on “Transgender Warrior” website, describes hir roots as “coming of age as a
young butch lesbian in the factories and gay bars of Buffalo, N.Y. in the
1960s. Throughout hir life, she identified as an anti-racist white,
working-class, secular Jewish transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary
communist.”
Hir writings on
the super-oppression of transgender people came at a time when voices of
solidarity and support for transgender people were few and far between. The
impact of hir theoretical development of transgender liberation as a Marxist
concept has affected and guided the transgender movement, the LGBTQ movement,
academic circles all around the world, and the broader movement for justice.
Hir writings and activism have contributed immeasurably to the growth of the
transgender movement.
Hir acts of
solidarity in support of oppressed people around the world, for Palestine,
Cuba, political prisoners such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, Native Americans — plus so
many more — have provided a basis for increased working-class solidarity
throughout the progressive movement.
Feinberg’s first
novel, “Stone Butch Blues,” published in 1993, struck a chord with hundreds of
thousands of LGBTQ people and others dealing with a hostile and often violent
society, a society with zero tolerance for anyone stepping out of bounds
regarding sexua,. In addition to çl orientation or gender identity.
Selling in the
hundreds of thousands, the ground-breaking work has been translated into many
languages. It captured, in real terms, the realities of people pushed to the
edge of society, forced to go underground just to live: transgender people, gay
people, lesbians, queer people, street people — all forced to deal with all the
complexities of gender and sexual issues in a violent, homophobic and
transphobic world. “Stone Butch Blues” remains a classic today.
It was Feinberg
who pointed out, in numerous essays, that in many ways transgender people were
in the leadership and on the front lines of rebellions that erupted in the
LGBTQ communities in the early days of the modern LGBTQ movement.
At the Stonewall
Inn rebellion in New York (1969), the Black Cat Bar uprising in Los Angeles
(1967), the Compton Cafeteria uprising in San Francisco (1966), transgender
people, those who faced the most violence and hatred, were often the most
courageous and effective leaders in those battles for justice. Years of developing
tactics and strategies to outsmart and outmaneuver the endless brutality and
violence of the cops, transgender people had the skills to lead, and did so.
While engaging
in countless struggles as a member of the Workers World Party, and as a
managing editor of Workers World newspaper, Leslie Feinberg contributed greatly
to the development of a theoretical Marxist material view of the new modern
LGBTQ movement, focusing primarily on the role of transgender individuals in
history and researching transgender movements and communities both before and
after the advent of class society.
Feinberg was
unique in that she was perhaps the first to show that it is theoretically
necessary to include the rise of oppression of transgender people in any
analysis regarding the historical roots of the oppression of women and
homosexuals with the rise of class society, and concurrently, the state.
Feinberg’s works
include “Lavender & Red,” a series of writing on the links between
socialism and LGBTQ history; “Transgender Warriors: Making History;” “Trans
Liberation: Beyond Pink and Blue;” and the novel “Drag King Dreams.”
Diagnosed with
Lyme disease and other multiple tick-borne infections, Feinberg endured many
decades of suffering, both from the effects of the devastating illness, from
lack of scientific research and effective treatments, and also from the bigotry
of the U.S. healthcare system towards transgender people, who are
systematically denied full access to care due to discrimination and
transphobia.
In hir blog,
Feinberg outlines the brutal ways that the capitalist healthcare system
excludes millions from care, and resorts to prejudice and anti-science to
justify inaction on a multitude of afflictions that are left undone because
they don’t enrich the capitalist health care monolith.
In spite of
failing health, Feinberg continued to write and work. “I had hoped to write
much more,” she writes in hir blog, “how the ruling classes have historically
used already existing prejudices to deny the scientific resources and
individual aid that epidemics require. I had wanted in particular to write more
about institutionalized racism, women’s oppression and other barriers to health
care, about the infamous “Tuskegee experiment” and the AIDS epidemic.”
Minnie Bruce
Pratt, in a moving tribute to hir lover, best friend, and comrade, referred to
the necessity for the two of them to marry, in order to protect their
relationship. Feinberg was estranged from hir family by their hostility, and
Pratt had lost custody of hir sons as a lesbian mother. Feinberg stressed,
Pratt recounts, “… that state authorities had no right to assign who were or
were not hir loved ones, but rather that she would define hir chosen family,
citing Karl Marx who said that the exchange value of love—is love.”
Leslie Feinberg,
presente!
— Preston Wood is a member of the Central Committee of the Party for
Socialism and Liberation (PSL).
— From
Liberation News, 11-17-14 Nov 17, 2014
————————
12. DILMA ROUSSEFF WINS, NEOLIBERALISM LOSES
 |
| Dilma Rousseff giving her joyful reelection speech. |
By Pepe Escobar
Sun, sex, samba,
carnival and at least until the World Cup hammering by Germany, the "land
of football." And don't forget "vibrant democracy." Even as it
enjoys one of the highest soft power quotients around the world, Brazil remains
submerged by clichés.
"Vibrant
democracy" certainly lived up to its billing as President Dilma Rousseff
of the ruling Worker's Party (PT) was re-elected Oct. 26 in a tight run-off
against opposition candidate Aecio Neves of the Social Democracy Party of
Brazil (PSDB). Rousseff won 51.6% of votes in a runoff against centrist
opposition leader Aecio Neves, who won 48.4%.
Yet another
cliché would rule this was the victory of "state-centric" policies
against "structural reforms. Or the victory of "high social
spending" against a "pro-business" approach — which implies
business as the privileged enemy of social equality.
Exit clichés.
Enter a cherished national motto: "Brazil is not for beginners."
Indeed. Brazil's
complexities boggle the mind. It starts with arguably the key, multi-layered
message a divided country sent to winner Dilma Rousseff. We are part of a
growing middle class. We are proud to be part of an increasingly less unequal
nation. But we want social services to keep improving. We want more investment
in education. We want inflation under control (at the moment, it's not). We
support a very serious anti-corruption drive (here's where Dilma's Brazil meets
Xi Jinping's China). And we want to keep improving on the economic success of
the past decade.
Rousseff seems
to get the message. The question is how she will be able to deliver — in a
continental-sized nation suffering from appalling education standards, with
Brazilian manufacturing largely uncompetitive in global markets, and with
corruption run amok.
Brazil is now
mired in dismal GDP growth (0.3%). Just blaming the global crisis doesn't cut
it; South American neighbors Peru (3.6%) and Colombia (4.8%) are definitely
going places in 2014.
And yet the
numbers are not that shabby. Job creation is up. Unemployment is down (only
5.4%). Investment in social infrastructure is picking up. From 2002 to 2014,
the minimum wage more than tripled. GDP per capita is up, reaching roughly
$9,000 while the Gini coefficient of social inequality (2012 data) is down.
Industrial
production is back to the same level before the 2008 financial crisis. Brazil
paid all its debts to the IMF. The proportion of debt in relation to GDP is
falling — reaching only 33.8% in 2013. Workers have more purchasing power — and
even with rising inflation, that mirrors better income distribution.
Social programs
have benefited 14 million families — roughly 50 million Brazilians. [Brazil’s
population is 201 million.] These policies may arguably be derided as too
little, too late Keynesianism. But at least that's a start - in a nation
exploited by immensely ignorant, arrogant and rapacious elites for centuries.
Rousseff'’s first
stint as president may also be blamed for too many concessions to big banks
(extremely profitable in Brazil), powerful agribusiness interests and Big
Capital. What happened, in a nutshell, is that the center-left Workers' Party
swung to the center — and was compelled to make unsavory oligarchic alliances.
The result is that a significant section of its social base — the metropolitan
working class, now heavily indebted to sustain its brand new consumer dream —
ended up flirting with the right as a political alternative.
Add to it the
PT's not exactly brilliant management skills. True, the fight against poverty
is a lofty ideal. But in such an unequal nation, that will take at least until
2030 for really serious results. Meanwhile, serious planning is in order — such
as building a high-speed rail between the two megalopolises, Rio and Sao Paulo
(the Chinese would do it in a few months). And seriously tackling Brazil's
oligopolies; banks, corporate media, construction/real estate conglomerates,
the auto industry lobby.
Unlike the U.S.
and Europe, neoliberalism in Brazil has been repeatedly knocked out at the
ballot box since 2002, when Lula [Luiz Inácio da Silva] was first elected
president. As for the "social democrat" opposition, there's nothing
social, and barely democratic, about it. The Partido da Social Democracia
Brasileira’s pet project is turbo-neoliberalism, pure and simple.
[From the
Activist Newsletter: It must also be pointed out that leftist Lula, who served
two terms and groomed Rousseff as his successor and backed her reelection, was
not above placating Washington a number of times and putting the breaks on the
ambitions of his left wing supporters.]
Team Neves had
everything going for them. Their key constituency was in fact 60 million mostly
angry Brazilian taxpayers — over 80% living and working in the wealthier
southeastern seaboard. Life is tough if you are a Brazilian salaried
professional or the owner of a small and medium-sized enterprise. The tax
burden is on a par with the industrialized world, but you get virtually nothing
in return.
No wonder these
irate taxpayers are desperate for decently paved roads, urban security, better
public hospitals, a public school system they can send their children to, and
less red tape and bureaucracy — which add to the nefarious, universally known
"Brazilian cost" (as in no value for money). These are not Workers'
Party voters — although some of them were. What they want is galaxies beyond
the everyday tribulations of the new, large lower middle class created by the
social programs first implemented by Lula.
Yet with a
mediocre candidate like Neves — he even lost in his home state, where he was
governor — neoliberalism does not need enemies.
Neves
predictably billed himself as the dragon who would slay what Wall Street
derides as "statism" —cutting government spending and
"liberalizing" trade, code for privileging corporate U.S. interests.
At the same time Neves has never been able to capture the vote of an
overburdened black woman in the favelas.
With Neves,
Brazil's future finance minister would have been Arminio Fraga, a slick
operator who, among other things, ran high-risk funds in emerging markets for
George Soros and is also a former president of Brazil's Central Bank. Some of
his shenanigans are detailed in More Money than God: Hedge Funds and the Making
of a New Elite, by Sebastian Mallaby. Fraga would have been the point man of a
Soros-inspired government.
Fraga is the
proverbial Wall Street predator. With him at the Finance Ministry, think JP
Morgan controlling Brazil's macroeconomic policy. The road in fact was already
paved by PSDB's eminence, former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who met
with key global investors — via JP Morgan — in New York last month.
 |
| Dilma, a young women on trial. |
And as
perception is reality, contamination ensued — pressuring public spending
downwards, installing major confusion among private investors, and leading
Western credit rating agencies to confirm the supposed lack of credibility of
the Brazilian economy.
Brazil is slowly
but surely moving from the semi-periphery to being closer to the center of the
action in international relations; because of its own regional geopolitical
relevance and mostly because of its leading role among the BRICS (Brazil,
Russia, India, China, and South Africa, who at times act in concert on certain
issues). This is happening even as Washington could not give a damn about
Brazil — or Latin America for that matter. U.S. Think Tankland, by the way,
abhors BRICS.
Politically, a
victory for the Cardoso/Neves neoliberals — a ghost of the social democracy
they once practiced — would have thrown Brazilian foreign policy upside down;
not only against the way the historical winds are blowing, but also against
Brazil's own national interests.
As Rousseff
argued at the UN last month, Brazil is trying to fight a global crisis marked
by increasing inequality without provoking unemployment and without sacrificing
workers' jobs and salaries. As ace economist Theotonio dos Santos stressed the
decadence of the West still exerting substantial influence over the
Global South via their extensive network of collaborators, he also went one up;
the key fight, as he sees it, is to control Brazilian oil.
Dos Santos is
referring to Brazil's top corporation, Petrobras, currently mired in a bribery
scandal — which must be fully investigated — that obscures the Holy Grail: the
future revenues from "pre-salt" oil — named after the billions of
barrels of oil capped by a thick layer of salt lying several miles below the
south Atlantic floor. Petrobras plans to invest $221 billion up to 2018 to
unlock this treasure — and expects to make a profit even if oil trades around
$45 to $50 a barrel.
Politically, in
a nutshell, Rousseff's narrow victory is crucial for the future of a
progressive, integrated South America. It will reinvigorate MERCOSUR, the
common market of the South, as well as UNASUR, the union of South American
nations. This goes way beyond free trade; it's about close regional
integration, in parallel to close Eurasia integration.
And starting in
2015, Brazil may be on the road to renewed economic expansion again, largely
boosted by the fruits of "pre-salt" and compounded with accelerated
building of roads, railways, ports and airports. That is bound to have a ripple
effect across Brazil's neighbors.
As for
Washington and Wall Street, the Empire of Chaos is certainly not happy about the
election results.
— Pepe Escobar
is a regular correspondent for Asia Times, where this was first published Oct.
27. He is the author of “Globalistan:
How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War,”(Nimble
Books, 2007), Red Zone
Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007),
and “Obama does
Globalisatan,” (Nimble Books, 2009).
—————————
13. CLIMATE GROUPS PREPARE FOR UN MEETING
By Rachael Boothroyd, TeleSUR
Delegates from
environmental groups from around the world gathered on the Venezuelan island of
Margarita earlier this month to prepare for the Dec. 1-12 UN climate change
conference in Lima, Peru. The event was coordinated by the Venezuelan government
in a bid to take the “voice of the people” to the conference.
Over several
days, movements and activists put the final touches to the “Margarita
Declaration” that includes a comprehensive set of proposals on how to address
climate change and was presented to 47 ministers from different countries
across the world on Nov 6. Many activists say the document includes a critique
of capitalism that is lacking from the UN talks. The conference slogan was
“Let's change the system, not the climate.”
The official
name of the annual UN meeting is the Conference of Parties, of which the
December meeting will be the 20th. The COPs have been consistently criticized
by environment activists for excluding social movement voices while giving a
platform to business representatives of corporations such as Shell and
McDonald's. Many NGOs walked out of last year's Warsaw COP in frustration.
Jamie Peters,
activist with Push Europe, told TeleSUR English: “We've been having these
negotiations at the UN for two decades and they've not worked, they've not
reduced temperature rises. So this is a change of direction actually, to give a
platform to social movements from around the world.”
Beverley Keene,
from Jubilee South Network, said: “They are just stalling for time when there
is no time…. They are not looking to change the system as the movements are.”
The next COP
will take place in Peru in December, where the Margarita Declaration will also
be discussed. Activists say Venezuela's declaration will play a pivotal role in trying to steer
the talks in a more radical direction, before a new global treaty is hammered
out in 2015 to replace the current Kyoto agreement.
————————
Pix Israel wall
resist & Israel kids resist
14. PALESTINIANS ARE RIGHT TO RESIST
Arrests of Palestinian children by Israeli soldiers are becoming commonplace in theWest Bank.
[Journalist and
author Gideon Levy, the long-time columnist for the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz, is one of the most profound Jewish voices in Israel in support of
Palestinian rights. During last summer’s war on Gaza, he was forced to resort
to bodyguards to protect him from right wing violence. Here is his Oct. 26
column. The preface to this article read “Faced with a reality in which Israel
is strong and the United States is in its pocket, it is the duty of
Palestinians to resist the occupation. The only question relates to the
means.”]
By Gideon Levy
Imagine you're
the Palestinians — perhaps residents of East Jerusalem. Forty-seven difficult
years are behind you; a big, depressing darkness lies ahead. The Israeli
tyranny that dooms your fate declares arrogantly that everything will stay like
this forever. Your city will remain under occupation "for ever and
ever." The defense minister, second in importance in the government that
subjugates you, says a Palestinian state will never be established.
Imagine you're Palestinian
and your children are in danger. Two days ago, the occupation forces killed
another child because "he lit a firebomb." The words "Death to
Arabs" were sprayed near your home. Everywhere you turn, a soldier or
Border Police officer may shout at you. Every night, your home may be invaded
brutally. You will never be treated like human beings. They'll destroy,
humiliate, intimidate, perhaps even arrest you, possibly without trial.
There are close
to 500 administrative detainees, a record number in recent years. If one of
your dear ones is arrested, you will have difficulty visiting him. If you
succeed, you'll get half an hour's conversation through a glass window. If your
dear one is an administrative detainee, you will never know when he'll be released.
But these are trivia you grew accustomed to long ago.
Maybe you've
also grown accustomed to the land theft. At every moment a settler can invade
your land, burn your plantation or torch your fields. He will not be brought to
trial for this; the soldiers who are supposed to protect you will stand idly
by. At any moment, a demolition order or random eviction order may appear.
There's nothing you can do.
Imagine you're
the Palestinians. You can't leave Gaza and it's not easy to leave the West
Bank, either. The beach, less than an hour's drive from your West Bank home, is
beyond the mountains of darkness. An Israeli can go to Tierra del Fuego,
between Argentina and Chile, much more easily than you can go to the beach at
Ajami [near Jaffa].
There are no
dreams, no wishes. Your children have a slim chance of accomplishing anything
in life, even if they go to university. All they can look forward to is a life
of humiliation and unemployment.
There's no
chance that this situation is about to change anytime soon. Israel is strong,
the United States is in its pocket, your leadership is weak (the Palestinian
Authority) and isolated (Hamas), and the world is losing interest in your fate.
What do you do?
 |
| The Palestinian side of Israel's infamous separation wall. |
Imagine you're a
Palestinian. You have every right to resist. In fact, it's your civil duty. No
argument there. The occupied people's right to resist occupation is secured in
natural justice, in the morals of history and in international law.
The only
restrictions are on the means of resistance. The Palestinians have tried almost
all of them, for better and worse — negotiations and terror; with a carrot and
with a stick; with a stone and with bombs; in demonstrations and in suicide.
All in vain. Are they to despair and give up? This has almost never happened in
history, so they'll continue. Sometimes they'll use legitimate means, sometimes
vile ones. It's their right to resist.
Now they're
resisting in Jerusalem. They don't want Israeli rule, or people who set live
children on fire. They don't want armed settlers who invade their apartments in
the middle of the night, under the Israeli law's protection, and evict them.
They don't want a municipality that grants its services according to national
affiliation, or judges that sentence their children according to their origin.
They also go nuts when the house of a Jewish terrorist is not demolished, while
the house of a Palestinian will be torn down.
They don't want
Israel to continue tyrannizing them, so they resist. They hurl stones and
firebombs. That's what resistance looks like. Sometimes they act with heinous
murderousness, but even that is not as bad as their occupier's built-in
violence.
It's their
right; it's their duty.
—————————
15. DON’T ASK HOW TO FEED THE 9 BILLION
By Mark Bittman, New York Times, Nov. 12,
2014
At dinner with a
friend the other night, I mentioned that I was giving a talk
this week debunking the idea that we need to grow more food on a large scale so
we can “feed the nine billion” — the anticipated global population by 2050.
She looked at
me, horrified, and said, “But how are you going to produce enough food to feed
the hungry?”
I suggested she try
this exercise: “Put yourself in the poorest place you can think of. Imagine
yourself in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example. Now. Are you hungry?
Are you going to go hungry? Are you going to have a problem finding food?”
The answer,
obviously, is “no.” Because she — and almost all of you reading this — would be
standing in that country with some $20 bills and a wallet filled with credit
cards. And you would go buy yourself something to eat.
The difference
between you and the hungry is not production levels; it’s money. There are no
hungry people with money; there isn’t a shortage of food, nor is there a
distribution problem. There is an
I-don’t-have-the-land-and-resources-to-produce-my-own-food,
nor-can-I-afford-to-buy-food problem.
And poverty and
the resulting hunger aren’t matters of bad luck; they are often a result of
people buying the property of traditional farmers and displacing them,
appropriating their water, energy and mineral resources, and even producing
cash crops for export while reducing the people growing the food to menial and
hungry laborers on their own land.
Poverty isn’t
the only problem, of course. There is also the virtually unregulated food
system that is geared toward making money rather than feeding people. (Look no
further than the ethanol mandate or high fructose corn syrup for evidence.)
If poverty
creates hunger, it teams up with the food system to create another form of
malnourishment: obesity (and what’s called “hidden hunger,” a lack of
micronutrients). If you define “hunger” as malnutrition, and you accept that
overweight and obesity are forms of malnutrition as well, than almost half the
world is malnourished.
The solution to
malnourishment isn’t to produce more food. The solution is to eliminate
poverty.
Look at the most
agriculturally productive country in the world: the United States. Is there
hunger here? Yes, quite a bit. We have the highest percentage of hungry people
of any developed nation, a rate closer to that of Indonesia than that of
Britain.
Is there a lack
of food? You laugh at that question. It is, as the former Food and Drug
Administration commissioner David Kessler likes to call it, “a food carnival.”
It’s just that there’s a steep ticket price.
A majority of
the world is fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers, some of whom
are themselves among the hungry. The rest of the hungry are underpaid or
unemployed workers. But boosting yields does nothing for them.
So we should not
be asking, “How will we feed the world?,” but “How can we help end poverty?”
Claiming that increasing yield would feed the poor is like saying that
producing more cars or private jets would guarantee that everyone had one.
And how do we
help those who have malnutrition from excess eating? We can help them, and help
preserve the earth’s health, if we recognize that the industrial model of food
production is neither inevitable nor desirable.
That is, the
kind of farming we can learn from people who still have a real relationship
with the land and are focused on quality rather than yield.
The best method
of farming for most people is probably traditional farming boosted by science.
The best method of farming for those in highly productive agricultural
societies would be farming made more intelligent and less rapacious. That is,
the kind of farming we can learn from people who still have a real relationship
with the land and are focused on quality rather than yield. The goal should be
food that is green, fair, healthy and affordable.
It’s not news
that the poor need money and justice. If there’s a bright side here, it’s that
it might be easier to make the changes required to fix the problems created by
industrial agriculture than those created by inequality.
There’s plenty
of food. Too much of it is going to feed animals, too much of it is being
converted to fuel and too much of it is being wasted.
We don’t have to
increase yield to address any of those issues; we just have to grow food more
smartly than with the brute force of industrial methods, and we need to address
the circumstances of the poor.
Our slogan
should not be “let’s feed the world,” but “let’s end poverty.”
— Mark Bittman
writes (mostly) about food for the Times Opinion pages, and is The Magazine’s
lead food columnist. He is the author of “VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00,” “How To
Cook Everything,” and our favorite, “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” — 996
pages of meatless recipes.
—————————
16. ANGRY FRENCH FARMERS PROTEST GOVERNMENT
By the Activist Newsletter
France was
gripped by a series of protests throughout the country by farmers on Nov. 4-5,
organized by farm unions. Tens of thousands of farmers took part. In many
protest locations tons of rotten vegetables and manure were dumped near
government buildings.
One cause of ire
is that farmers have been confronted by falling prices because Russia
retaliated to a series of U.S.-UE sanctions by halting imports of farm goods
from Europe. Also, France has started enforcing a 1991 EU directive aimed at
curbing nitrate pollution, which forced tens of thousands of farms that
previously used manure as fertilizers to undergo costly infrastructure upgrades
to comply.
The farmers hold
the government responsible for their plight. In Dijon, farmers burnt an effigy
of French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal. In Marseille, they threw apples at
riot police; in Avignon, rotten pumpkins were dumped in the street.
—————————
17. SYRIA’S RUIN
 |
|
This family is one of a million Syrian refugees to find
relative safety in Lebanon. But when fighting broke out recently in the
Lebanese town of Arsal they fled with their belongings back toward Syria. That’s when
this Reuters photo was taken. We don’t know if they made it.
|
LEBANON: A small village in the upper elevations of the borderlands between Syria and Lebanon
awaits the slow drop in temperature. Jabhat al Nusra fighters [the Syrian
branch of al-Qaeda] who had been stuck in these upper redoubts fear the winter.
They are already cut off from their supply lines and hemmed in by the Syrian
and Lebanese armies, as well as by Hezbollah’s fierce determination to prevent
their further movement into Lebanon. It is mid-October and alongside the road,
just outside the village, sit six al Nusra fighters. They are all young, in
their early twenties. Each has long hair and a beard — a Jesus look that does
not match the various guns that are near at hand. One of them, Mohammed, with a
Kalashnikov in his lap, is Lebanese. He has a college degree and has been with
al Nusra for at least a year.
In early
October, a week before this encounter, al Nusra fighters who had been encircled
in the Qalamoun Mountains along the Syria-Lebanon border broke into Nabi Sbat,
east of the Lebanese town of Baalbek. They clashed with Hezbollah fighters, who
pushed them back into the hills. The sound of mortar fire and gunfire shook the
valley. Hezbollah’s checkpoints are hidden in the hillsides of this undefined
border. More such clashes are to be expected as al Nusra fighters try to reopen
supply lines. Hezbollah officials say they are confident that they will be able
to protect the roadways that link the Bekaa Valley, where the town of Baalbek
is the great jewel, to Beirut and the coastline. [Hezbollah is a powerful
Lebanese Shi’ite militia, aligned with Iran.]
Mohammed does
not dispute Hizbollah’s skilled ferocity. He says that the Hizbollah fighters
are much more difficult to tackle than those of the Lebanese or Syrian armies.
But the war has made this young man from a moderate family in the Akkar region
weary. His eyes sparkle as he speaks, but there is already iron in his soul.
“If I had a job,” he said, “I would not do jehad.” I ask him about Al Qaeda,
the parent organisation of Jabhat al Nusra. He speaks idealistically, but is
not versed in scripture or in the ideological squabbles between the jehadi
groups. “I was trained in engineering,” he says, as if in apology. What gets
him going is not Al Qaeda or al Nusra, the formal colours of his outfit. He is
enamoured of the battlefield successes of the Islamic State (I.S.). Its sheer
audacity impresses him. They care for nothing—not for borders or for the old
order. Mohammed likes that. It excites him.
Across the
battlefields of America’s War on Terror have emerged groups that speak for the
youth—the Taliban (students) and al-Shabab (the youth). In many parts of the
Arab world, those under thirty comprise close to three quarters of the
population. This “youth bulge” comes alongside a colossal failure to provide
jobs for these young people, many of whom are not only unemployed but also
unemployable. There is no credible agenda to tackle this serious problem of
joblessness. An International Labour Organisation study from 2013 (“Rethinking
Economic Growth”) found that youth unemployment in the Arab world stands at 23
per cent, compared with a world average of 14 per cent. If jobs do come, said
Mohammad Pournik of the United Nations Development Fund, they are secured
through bribes or favours (wasta). “The real issue is the need for jobs with
social dignity,” said Pournik, “rather than jobs that come at the expense of
dignity.” Groups such as al-Shabab and al Nusra attract young men whose dignity
has been offended in their failed search for a better life.
Mohammed
thoughtfully answers my questions about al Nusra, his family and his future. He
thinks that the money for al Nusra comes from the Persian Gulf countries. He is
right. People like the Qatari national Khalifa Muhammed Turki al-Subaiy
collected vast amounts of money that they handed over to conduits such as
Ashraf Muhammad Yusuf Uthman Abd al-Salam, who is currently in Syria with
Jabhat al Nusra. Mohammed does not tell me much about his family for fear that
this will help the authorities identify him. But of his future, he is measured.
His expectations are minimal. A mediocre formal education in Lebanon’s northern
city of Tripoli came alongside the fulminations of a cleric in the city’s many
mosques. It was from the latter that he found his way in the world.
An hour’s drive
from the mountains, in a cafe in Beirut’s Hamra district, sits a group of young
students. People across the city wonder how long it will take for al Nusra and
the I.S. to seize their city. Some worry about the presence of al Nusra
fighters in the Shebaa Farms towards the south of Lebanon. War games are the
necessary tonic. If al Nusra attacked Lebanon’s south, this would draw
Hizbollah fighters to defend the area. Such a move would weaken Lebanon’s
defences in the north, opening it up to an Islamist assault. Others disagree.
Hizbollah is well prepared to tackle both an assault in the south and the
north. Yet others worry about an Israeli intervention. There is always the
worry of an Israeli assault. Israeli aircraft frequently fly in Lebanon’s skies
in a show of force. These worries are not idle.
Two young women
say that if the I.S. enters Beirut, they will take up arms and fight. They have
no training, but a great deal of determination. Rumours are afoot that the
various sectarian factions—not too far removed from their own internecine
battles—have opened up their arsenals and distributed weaponry. Lebanon is
worried, but prepared. It will not fall easily. This is a land that has
withstood and defeated an Israeli occupation as well as survived its own
15-year-long civil war. But nerves are frayed. Acts of violence against Syrian
refugees are a sign of the frustration. There is an unwarranted suspicion that
the refugees harbour jehadi groups. Lebanon’s government has now decided to no
longer allow Syrians into the country, where there are already more than a
million refugees to add to the four million Lebanese.
Not far away, in
the Metro al-Madina theatre, a band called al-Rahel al-Kabir (The Great
Departed) runs a popular show that mocks the I.S. and its caliph Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi. “Oh master,” they sing, “you will lead God’s servants to an abyss
like no other.” In Beirut, famous for traffic jams, al-Rahel al-Kabir praises
al-Baghdadi for trying to reduce the traffic by blowing up human beings. It is
uncomfortable satire. Jokes are legion against the I.S.’ decrees. One suggests
that cow udders must not be allowed to be visible. “I swear to God,” goes one
of the songs, “if I was a cow, I would be wearing a bra.” This is gallows
humour that often needs little more from the artists than embellishment. The
raw material from the territory of the I.S. is tragically absurd (such as the
decree against diapers).
Mouataman
al-Baba is a Syrian businessman who is in a hurry. He wants to inform the
Europeans that there is no possibility of creating a new armed, moderate Syrian
force to take on both the I.S. and the government of Bashar al-Assad. In other
words, al-Baba believes that the entire conceit of the United States’ policy—to
bomb I.S. and to create a new moderate Syrian group—is an illusion. It is
simply not possible. He does not know the U.S. He believes that the Europeans
are more rational and would be more willing to hear his message.
We are sitting
in Beirut near the old Green Line that divided the city during its civil war.
Al-Baba speaks with the credibility of a man with an insider’s knowledge who
has moved away from his earlier commitments. In 2011, al-Baba financed the
purchase of arms for the Syrian rebels near Damascus. He threw himself into the
Syrian uprising, using his money and his contacts. In early 2012, al-Baba wrote
to the United Nations-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan saying that people like him
were ready to pay for the revolution. They wanted no Gulf Arab money to come
into their fight. “We have a network to help and support people,” he wrote. But
Gulf Arab money and influence swept into the rebellion, he now admits. Al-Baba
soured of the endeavour. He fled Syria that summer. In November 2012, he
published an essay called “Syria and the Raped Revolution”. The revolution is over,
he wrote. The jehadis have taken it away from the Syrian people. Voices like
that of al-Baba were not heard over the din. When he was with the revolt, the
studios of al-Arabiya and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) welcomed
him. When his views changed, he could not get on the air. His Syrian voice was
no longer of interest.
Yassin al-Haj
Saleh, a Syrian dissident who had become an important voice of the rebellion
after 16 years in Syrian prisons, went underground in 2011. He fled to his
native city of Raqqa, which fell to the I.S. in March 2013. In an open letter,
“Farewell to Syria, for a while”, written in October 2013, Saleh wrote that his
city had been taken over by “the spectres of horror of our childhood, the
ghouls”. The situation in Raqqa, Saleh writes, is deplorable. It was hard to
watch “strangers oppress it and rule the fates of its people, confiscating
public property, destroying a statue of Haroun al-Rashid or desecrating a
church, taking people into custody where they disappeared in their prisons”. He
fled Syria for Turkey. In December 2013, Saleh’s wife, Samira al-Khalil, the
well-regarded communist, was abducted in Douma (near Damascus) along with her
comrades Razan Zeitouneh, Wael Hamada and Nazem al-Hammadi from the Violations Documentation
Centre. The kidnapper was most likely Jaish al-Islam, a Saudi-backed group that
hopes to become the “moderate” army of the Western imagination. The whereabouts
of the four activists are unknown. Their fate is as uncertain as that of the
beloved priest of Deir Mar Musa, Paolo Dall’Oglio, who went to Raqqa in July
2013 to negotiate with the I.S. That he was kidnapped is known. Beyond that is
silence.
Endless cups of
juice and plates of biscuits come between al-Baba and myself. We are talking
about the barbarism that has taken hold of Syria. Al-Baba has six cell phones
on the table before him. He wants to create a network against the encroachment
of the jehadis into his beloved Syria. Al-Baba is not alone, and he knows it.
There are many Syrians who are horrified by what has happened to their country.
People like al-Baba do not see themselves as responsible for the emergence of
the jehadis. They wanted a more just and free Syria. The Syrian government had
blocked the space for their ambitions. It was not capable of genuine reform.
Into the breach came Gulf Arab money, pushed along by a naive West, suggests
al-Baba. This is what ruined Syria.
My mind wanders
to the al Nusra fighters who are sitting on the side of the road, polishing
their Kalashnikovs. Their future had been sidelined. They were not seeking
democracy or human rights, or free markets. What they wanted was dignity. They
have found something in this struggle, and will not so easily withdraw from it,
aerial bombardment or not.
— From Frontline,
India's National Magazine, 11-14-14
— Vijay Prashad is Chair
in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity
College in Hartford, and the Edward Said Chair at the American University of
Beirut. He has authored 15 books, including his most recent (2013), “The Poorer
Nations: A Possible History of the Global South.”
—————————
 |
| Workers and police clash om streets of Brussels. |
18. BELGIUM PROTEST AGAINST AUSTERITY
By Nadia Prupis, Common Dreams
More than
100,000 workers took to the streets in Brussels, Belgium on Nov. 6 to protest
austerity cuts and free-market reforms that are set to cut vital social
services, freeze wages, and raise the retirement age.
Police used tear
gas and water cannons to break up the protest, which saw laborers and other
low-wage workers marching peacefully through downtown Brussels to mark the
start of an anticipated month-long campaign against the country's newly elected
center-right government.
The actions will
culminate with a nationwide strike on December 15.
"They are
hitting the workers, the unemployed. They are not looking for money where it
is, I mean, people with a lot of money," one worker, Philippe Dubois, told
the Associated Press.
Belgium's
recently elected coalition, which shuts out the Socialist Party for the first
time in decades, is made up of three pro-business parties and the centrist
Christian Democrats. The coalition said it was forced to institute these new
free-market reforms in order to comply with the European Union's budget
restrictions.
But residents
and other politicians disagreed. Former Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo, a
Socialist Democrat, told
Reuters UK, "I share the concern of the people and the measures of the
government are unjust."
—————————
