Archive for May, 2007
May 31st, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
There needs to be a call to action. Big Coal (like Peabody Energy Company aka Peabody Coal Company) is pushing hard to get us (via the government) to make massive investments in coal, and coal to liquid fuel legislation. The plan is to take our current estimated 250 year supply of coal and use it as a liquid fuel to replace imported oil. Imported oil makes up 60% of the oil used in the United States. This plan is so stupid on so many levels that it is difficult to know where to start.
Coal is being pushed as an “alternative” fuel. Oh please spare me. Coal is neither “clean,” “green,” or renewable. There is a big push to increase coal for electric generation as well. Even though the “scrubbing” technology for emissions have improved, more plants using more coal means more emissions - including CO2 emissions. Let us not forget that “energy” is not the only crisis facing us. There is the “little” issue of global warming. The New York Times (May 29, 2007) produced the nice graphic (below) comparing the greenhouse gas emissions o0f different fuel sources. It is instructive in this discussion:
As you can see from the graphic, even with carbon sequestration, the coal to liquid fuel production increases emissions. Without sequestration is increases emissions
dramatically (119% according to the NY Times. Now the rub is that carbon sequestration is virtually an undeveloped technology. It involves capturing emissions and “putting” them somewhere other than the air. The most investigated suggestions are: on the seabed; underground; and in used up oil and gas wells. To the best of my knowledge, there is no commercially active sequestration projects on line yet. Therefore, we do not know whether this will even work - nor what the consequences are of doing it. Therefore, it is unlikely that these plants will start with their emissions being “sequestered.” That will happen as a “retro-fit” sometime in the future.
The next dumb part of this is that if our current coal supply is estimated to last 250 years at existing use levels, what happens if we quadruple the use? Well, that 250 years just became 60 years (or less). Then what?
Dumb idea take three. Can we replace 60% of our current oil consumption with liquefied coal? That seems highly unlikely to me. I do not know how much usable liquid fuel one can get out of say a ton of coal, but it would seem to take one heck of a lot of coal to produce 12 million barrels of gasoline a day (we currently use approximately 20 million * 60% foreign oil = 12 mil.). That translates into roughly 505 million gallons of gasoline (from coal) a day (roughly 42 galls in a barrel). Now that is one heck of a production line, and my estimate of quadrupling coal use just shot up dramatically. Say maybe 10-15 years of coal in the U.S. instead of 250 years?
Dumb idea take 4. This is expensive and the plan is to subsidize research, development, and production. Subsidize means that our tax dollars will underwrite the cost of this little adventure while we may look at $4.00 per gallon pump prices as a real steal. This is a freaking bonanza to the “energy” industry, but it is not a bonanza for us, or the next generation, or for the planet.
Among those who have sponsored and promoted this legislation is Presidential candidate Barak Obama. I am sure he feels he is representing Illinois coal interests with this support. However, one might wonder whether Illinois is represented - much less the rest of us.
I do not see one positive thing in this plan, but it is being pushed and pushed hard. The goal is to have it passed and to Bush by early July (2007). If you want to express yourself to your legislators, then I recommend that you do so quickly.
Here is a link to get you to your Congress people and Senators - Contacting Congress
Resources for further information
CNN Money. 5/24/07. Lawmakers mull coal-to-liquid fuel plans
Edmund Andrews. NY Times. 5/29/07.
Senate Bill 154 Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Energy Act of 2007 (pdf)
Sponsors: Mr. BUNNING (for himself, Mr. OBAMA, Mr. LUGAR, Mr. PRYOR, Ms. MURKOWSKI,
Mr. BOND, Mr. THOMAS, Mr. MARTINEZ, Mr. ENZI, Ms. LANDRIEU, and Mr. CRAIG
Senate Bill 155 Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2007 (pdf)
Sponsors: Mr. BUNNING (for himself, Mr. OBAMA, Mr. LUGAR, Mr. PRYOR, Ms. MURKOWSKI,
Mr. BOND, Mr. THOMAS, Mr. MARTINEZ, Mr. ENZI, Ms. LANDRIEU, and Mr. CRAIG
House Bill 370 Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2007 (pdf)
Sponsors: Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky (for himself, Mr. RAHALL, Mr. WHITFIELD, Mr. PICKERING, Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky, Mr. DUNCAN, Mr. LAHOOD, Mr. BOUSTANY, Mrs. CUBIN, Mr. BACHUS, Mr. EVERETT, Mr. ROGERS of Alabama, Mr. BOUCHER, Mr. LINCOLN DAVIS of Tennessee, Mr. SHIMKUS, Mr. CANNON, Mrs. DRAKE, Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky, Mr. REHBERG, Mr. HASTERT, and Mr. YARMUTH)
May 30th, 2007
By: Jack Dalton
Jack Daltion is a disabled Vietnam veteran and freelance writer that lives in Portland, Oregon. He has retreated for now from internet insanity, but his voice needs to be heard. This article was first published in October 2004.
“All men having power ought to be mistrusted.” James Madison
Shortly after George W. Bush unleashed the “Dogs of War” on Iraq last year, and right after an emerging insurgency started growing, Bush asked, “What’s the matter with those people; don’t they know how good we [Americans] are?” And that right there is at the heart of what I see as a very big problem with so very many of my fellow American citizens - and one that in many ways is getting worse and not better.
Here in the U.S. there is a deeply-held belief that no matter what this nations governing body does abroad, no matter how bad what it does may appear, no matter what horror may result, the American government means well. That the government has good intentions and means well. And, generally speaking, the American public wonders why the rest of the world can’t see how “kind” and “generous” and “self-sacrificing” America is and has been. Unfortunately the road to hell is paved with “good intentions.”
My questions to my fellow American citizens are this: What for you would be too much? What would this nation’s government have to do in its foreign policy, or domestic policies, that would cause you to forsake your basic belief in and support for that governing body and its policies?
It is apparent to me at this point in time that invading a country that posed no real threat to this nation - Iraq for instance?is not enough, for many, to question that support for this current cabal. The distortions and outright lies concerning Medicare and liability lawsuits appears not to be enough to raise questions by those of you that continue your support for Bush. Grossly under-funding the Veterans Administration Health Care system does not seem to generate any significant level of concern either.
Again I ask, what for you would be too much?
The growing number of dead, ours and Iraq’s, seems not to be enough to question that support. Why? 15 hours after being discharged from the Army, a young man that spent 12 months in Baghdad and another three months due to “stop loss” was in an auto accident. Two days later his arm was swelling and very painful. Turns out he had a blood clot in his arm from the IV the paramedics put in. This young man’s father took him to the local V.A. just to be turned away being told he did not qualify for V.A. care. This is not an isolated incident and the list is growing daily.
Once again I ask, what for you would be too much for you to be able to continue your support of these policies and those that make them?
Never in my 60+ years have I been witness to the level of corruption as what is taking place today with this current governing body led by Bush and Cheney. The increasing levels of secrecy by Bush, the criminals running congress like Tom DeLay, the nexus between government and corporations as exemplified by Dick Cheney and Halliburton. The influence pedaling by an army of over 26,000 corporate lobbyists that “help” write the nations laws is at a level unseen in this nation’s history.
In short the “Criminalization of the State” is what is taking place and still so many believe in and support this criminal enterprise known as the Bush administration.
What is it that would be too much for even you true believers in this administration to be able to continue your support for the single most disastrous administration to ever hold the reigns of power of our government?
References and Additional Readings:
The Criminalization of the State
William Blum. Common Courage Press. Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (book)
Corporations File 4 Times More Frivolous Lawsuits than Individuals
Conventional Facades: Why the Republicans Have to Hide their Agenda
William Blum. Common Courage Press. Rogue State (book)
George Lakoff. Chelsea Green Publishing. Don?t think of an Elephant (book)
May 29th, 2007
By: Alan Farago. Originally published in the Orlando Sentinel
Image courtesy of Jeff’s Weather Blog
If you can see through the smoke of forest fires, consider the experiment of putting 18 million people, plus visitors, on a narrow peninsula — Florida — in the midst of an historic drought.
Soon enough, your eyes should stop itching. What should bother you more is what you can’t see: the effect of drought on shallow-water aquifers serving Floridians with drinking water.
Here is the problem for a state built on limestone: If the aquifer empties, salt water rushes in. A little home experiment can show most of what you need to know.
Fill a shallow plate with a film of water. That would be the bay, the gulf or the ocean.
Now wring a sponge dry. Call it drought.
That would be the Biscayne aquifer. The holes of the sponge are not so different from the geological formation beneath our feet, porous and filled with occlusions and voids that allow the water below ground to migrate the same way it does above ground.
If you have a good imagination, picture a straw pulling water from the sponge. That is a drinking-water well, and represents billions of dollars of pipes and pumps, serving the showers and sinks, the washers and sprinklers and farmland of one of the nation’s fastest-growing states.
The end of the experiment is simple. You put the semi-dry sponge in the plate with a little water and what happens is that the sea wicks into the aquifer.
The most serious consequence of historic drought conditions in Florida is the destruction of drinking-water wells by saltwater intrusion.
It is a really, really big problem, and if this drought goes on much longer, it will be news around the world.
If you have a freshwater swimming pool, you are probably aware that you can’t recirculate chloride in the same pool system. The pump may not be designed to handle the corrosive effects of salt.
Also, at a time when reducing energy demand is urgently needed, the cost or removing salt from municipal drinking-water wells and treatment facilities is untold, unfunded billions of dollars.
There is a further problem with saltwater intrusion, noted by environmentalists who have shouted themselves hoarse over the issue:
It is one thing to know about pollution on the surface where you can see it and take measures (one hopes) to avoid it.
It is quite another thing to wreck an underground aquifer you rely on for the only substance you can’t live without: drinking water.
Are water managers worried about that happening?
Yes.
Ever since Florida was settled, engineering skills have been applied to the draining of wetlands to make the land habitable.
Through the housing boom, elected officials pressed water managers to use more engineering and more industrial processes to wring the maximum productivity from Florida’s aquifers.
If you looked closely, you could see the effects on the ground and it made you want to cry: vast de-watered expanses of Florida, underlying water tables sucked dry by crop irrigation or municipalities.
It was only two years ago that water managers, frightened by a series of dangerous hurricanes, opened control gates to lower the water level of Lake Okeechobee and dumped billions of gallons of polluted fresh water, causing massive ecological destruction along both Florida coasts.
What does the current drought tell us, coming so quickly and so dramatically on the heels of overabundance?
One, that population pressure has removed the elasticity from demand and supply — extraordinary in a state that received more than 50 inches of average rainfall per year and wastes most of it in order for America’s most heavily subsidized crop, sugar, to be profitably grown south of Florida’s liquid heart.
Second, that restoration of the Everglades is more of a necessity than many people ever expected would arise from its benefits to nature.
There are a few critics who argue that global warming will make tens of billions of taxpayer dollars spent on the Everglades a waste.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
If we don’t take care of the interior part of the ecosystem — the Everglades — and make sure it is full of clean, fresh water at the right time of year, there won’t be drinking water at the edges.
Wherever those coastal edges are, in an age of global warming, that’s where most people will be.
Unless, of course, Florida turns into a pillar of salt.
Alan Farago of Coral Gables, who writes about the environment, can be reached at . He wrote this commentary for the Orlando Sentinel.
May 29th, 2007
By Gerald Rellick
Cross-posted at Thomas Paine’s Corner, Radical Noesis and Uncommon Thought Journal
There is no shortage of political pundits now wading into the discussion of global warming, despite the scientific complexity of the field. One of the latest entries is Alexander Cockburn. I have read Cockburn regularly over the years, and while I recognized him as a very talented polemicist whose acerbic screeds I could tolerate when directed to the likes of Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara and Augusto Pinochet, his latest foray into the field of man-made global warming is scientifically dreadful, and hence irresponsible, and reflects journalism and public service at its worst. Were it not for the importance of global warming, we could easily dismiss his writing. But Cockburn has a sizeable reading audience through “The Nation” and his own publication, “Counterpunch.” And since educating the public on this matter is crucial if we are to do something about global warming, Cockburn needs to be taken to task for his dishonesty and slipshod journalism.
Cockburn’s writing is so confusing, so polemical, and his “science” so inaccurate that it’s difficult to know where to begin a critique. Nevertheless, let me try, although I believe that going toe-to-toe with him on points of fact is of no value. I’ll leave it to the legitimate climate scientists to deal with this if they wish. There exists a climate science forum for this (ref. 1). The scientists at this site have already taken apart George Will for his equally insipid writings on global warming (see ref. 2, “Will-full Ignorance”).
Cockburn tries to refute the consensus of the world’s leading climate scientists that man-made (anthropogenic) carbon dioxide is responsible for the planet’s current global warming trend. In his first article he does so by relying on the supposed expertise of one man who, it turns out, is no longer active in the field of climate research (ref. 3). Having received no doubt an avalanche of negative reviews, Cockburn begins his second article (ref. 4) by going on the attack:
“No response is more predictable than the reflexive squawk of the greenhouse fearmongers that anyone questioning their claims is in the pay of the energy companies.”
Cockburn throws out this sentence as a straw man. Anyone familiar with Cockburn is unlikely to charge him with being in collusion with any interest but his ego. Like any good polemicist Cockburn is drawn further into his subject by the negative reaction to it. This is quite simply what Cockburn does for a living. So we now have three articles – each worse than the previous – with the promise of at least two more to come.
In his third article (ref. 5) Cockburn gets all twisted around on the interpretation of carbon isotope ratios in the atmosphere, in the oceans and in plant life. Aside from his erroneous interpretations, what is most striking is his casual dismissal of scientists and the scientific method. Although a non-scientist, and one who has just demonstrated in three consecutive articles little or no learning of the relevant science of which he writes, Cockburn forges ahead and challenges the scientists in their own fields of expertise, calling them, for example, “misguided,” and operating on a “naïve and scientifically silly assumption” about how plant-based carbon gets into the atmosphere. To suggest that highly educated and respected scientists throughout the world would overlook something as fundamental and basic as this – but the non-scientist Cockburn would catch it – is utterly preposterous. This is about as credible as Cockburn telling us how, in his other job as an operating room janitor, he uncovered the medical malfeasance of a team of neurosurgeons, claiming they were incorrectly reading CAT and MRI brain scans – all this due to a few weekends of self-study in neurosurgery.
Cockburn also attacks at the personal level. Cockburn calls his critics in the scientific community “greenhouse fearmongers.” He implies they have personal agendas, tied to their need for financial support. But the truth is that any scientist who challenges the anthropogenic global warming scenario – either legitimately or illegitimately –would find almost unlimited financial support from the oil, coal and gas industries, all of which seek to burn their fossil fuels with impunity.
What we see in these writings is an unqualified intrusion into the very complex interdisciplinary field of climate science, which involves cooperative expertise in atmospheric chemistry and physics, geophysics, meteorology and oceanography. And while the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists is that man-made climate change is real, these same scientists also agree there are many details still under debate, but which will, in due time, be sorted out through the scientific process.
What makes the subject of global warming so attractive to lay journalists, compared to, say, neurosurgery, is that global warming is not remote from everyday life. It affects every person on the planet and, perhaps more importantly from the decision-making level, has profound financial and political-power implications. This opens the door to charges of biased interests and even conspiracy – the very life blood of polemicists like Cockburn.
At bottom, there is no intellectual honesty in Cockburn, just bad journalism, “bad faith,” and the need to be seen and read.
There is one truly strange comment by Cockburn near the end of his third article. It suggests that he’s either writing all this as a spoof or he’s become totally detached from reality:
“I had hoped to deal with criticisms at the end of the series [but] have changed my plans, since committed greenhousers like George Monbiot charge that I have ignored their rebukes. In actual fact I was offline, in Russia, flying thither over the Arctic and thus able to make a direct review of the ice cap.”
Is he serious? Perhaps next Cockburn will fly over New Orleans and tell us what needs to be done to get that city back on its feet.
References:
Ref. 1. http://www.realclimate.org/
Ref. 2. “Will-full ignorance,” http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=90
Ref. 3. “Is Global Warming a Sin?”, The Nation, May 14, 2007, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070514/cockburn
Ref. 4 “Who Are the Merchants of Fear?”, The Nation, May 28, 2007,
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070528/cockburn
Ref. 5. “The Greenhousers Strike Back, and Strike Out,” The Nation, June 11, 2007, http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20070611&s=cockburn),
——————–
Gerald S. Rellick, Ph.D., worked in the aerospace industry for 22 years. He now teaches in the California Community College system. He can be reached at
May 28th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
One would have thought this would have been big news, but somehow it has largley escaped the U.S. corporate media. Patrick Cockburn, however, writes Opium: Iraq’s deadly new export. While apparently in the beginnings of cultivation, the poverty and chaos which has enveloped Iraq is spawning opium fields in southern Iraq. Iraq has historically been one of the opium highways for Afghanistan’s trade.
Now Iraq is turning to opium cultivation for the same reason that Afghanistan returned to it - poverty, profit, and chaos:
As in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, these conditions of primal anarchy are ideal for criminal gangs and drug smugglers and producers. The difference is that Afghanistan had long been a major producer of opium and possessed numerous laboratories experienced in turning opium into heroin. The Taliban, on the orders of its leader, Mullah Omar, had stopped its cultivation by farmers in the parts of Afghanistan it controlled. Farmers near the southern city of Kandahar grubbed up cauliflowers and planted poppies instead as soon as the US started bombing.
…
The one factor currently militating against criminal gangs organising poppy cultivation in Iraq on a wide scale is that they are already making large profits from smuggling drugs from Iran. This is easy to do because of Iraq’s enormous and largely unguarded land borders with neighbouring states. Iraqis themselves are not significant consumers of heroin or other drugs.
There are well established links between the illicit drug trade, U.S. foreign policy, and global financial institutions. While the discussions of these are intricate and complex, the summation of them is not. The CIA - and more recently Special Forces - have utilized the heroin and cocaine trades to finance “black ops.” Corporations have equally benefited by laundering vast amounts of drug money through financial institutions and Wall Street.
One of the implicit “benefits” of massive instability resulting from conflict and poverty is the encouragement of drug production. The desperation created in nations such as Afghanistan and Iraq fuels the increase of illicit drug manufacture. It has been argued by some that the reason for the U.S. Southeast Asia intervention (Vietnam War) was to control the “Golden Triangle. Certainly, once the Taliban stopped virtually all of the opium production in Afghanistan, Myanmar/Burma once more emerged as the leading source of opium. The invasion of Afghanistan, and removal of the Taliban, has seen opium production in Afghanistan grow each year - it is now at record highs. It is hardly likely that this is simply coincidence.
It is no surprise then that Iraq would join the opium trail. The business is “good” for all “interests.” Crime rings, war lords, and extremist groups get a massive surge of resources. The CIA and Special Forces get funding for illicit operations. Arms dealers (including the U.S. which is the world’s largest arms dealer) are assured ongoing demand. Corporations get massive infusions of cash to extend their operations and line their pockets. Meanwhile, the “war on drugs” facilitates a growing militarized police state. With the privatization of jails and prisons, the growing populations of those incarcerated in the “war” creates a profitable labor force, while tax payers pay the bill for the whole thing. This was detailed in the case of Iran/Contra by Gary Webb in his series in the San Jose Mercury News and then in his book “.”
Tangled webs that ensure future conflict - and profit. So goes Iraq.
Other Related Articles
From The Wilderness Archive: CIA and Drugs
The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire. Michael Ruppert, 10/24/2000.
CIA, Drugs, and Wall Street. Michael Ruppert, 6/29/1999.
U.S. : Afghan poppy production doubles. Reuters, 11/28/03.
May 26th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
The Democrats caved in and supported the supplemental occupation funding demanded by the Bush Cabal. The arguments apparently being that they a) didn’t have the votes to overcome a veto; b) they didn’t want to be blamed for the growing death and chaos; c) the belief this keeps Iraq the Republican’s adventure; d) perhaps - because the PSAs haven’t been signed yet. Regardless, the considerations were political - not moral - not responsive to the mandate that the November elections sent. The arguments now are that they can revisit the funding issue in September - 4 months from now - 122 days from June 1 to September 31. Given a rough average death toll of five US troops and 50 Iraqi civilians, that makes a low estimate of 6710 (610 US troops, 6100 Iraqi civilians) deaths for buckling on the funding.
Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives for a failure of will.
Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives for vested corporate interests.
Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives for a coward’s political strategy.
Damn the Democrats, and damn the Republicans. Their gamesmanship is being paid for in the blood of others. How dare they do this? How dare we let them do this?
This is NOT a war. It is an OCCUPATION. It is a bloody occupation to be sure, but an occupation all the same.
Once more the Bush Folk are talking about regime change - this time to clean the militia influence (Al-Sadar) out of the Iraqi Parliament. How exactly are they planning the removal of a democratically elected block of another government? Who is in charge? Is there even the illusion that the Iraqi government is independent to the U.S.?
Six thousand seven hundred and ten lives (and likely far more) as collateral damage for a political calculus that is doomed to fail no matter what.
May 25th, 2007
By Rowan
[A female prisoner walks with her child through the hallway of the women’s prison in Kabul, Afghanistan Saturday, Oct. 19, 2002.
(AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) ]
A couple of week’s ago, a young woman in nothern Iraq (Kurdish region) was stoned to death for wanting to marry outside her sect (Yazidi). Since then, the event has kept returning to me as emblematic of the deteriorated status of women in Iraq that has occurred since the United States took control.
The stoning of Doaa Aswad Dekhil of Bashika, aged 17, is tragic in a place that is supposedly becoming “democratic,” but it is consistent with the ongoing segregation of women’s personhood and so called “human rights. This deterioration is expanding. A student of mine from Iran has approached me recently to talk about his concern for women in Iran as conditions for women deteriorate their as well. Part of an overall response and retreat to extremeism that is characteristic of the politics of fear. I wrote the piece below in 2003 in response to the ongoing deterioration of the status of women in Afghanistan and Iraq - places where the US boot print is particularly strong. I share it with you because it seems as appropriate now as it did then.
Women, please be patient
It seems that everywhere there are struggles for freedom and equality women are told to be patient. Afghanistan and Iraq are two interesting examples. Women in Afghanistan were brutally repressed under under the Taliban. There was hope that with the overthrow of the Taliban, women could become active citizens in their nation again. After a brief surge of semi-freedom the veil (literally) is dropping again.
In Iraq under Saddam Hussein, women faced largely the same controls as males, but were remarkably free to pursue education and occupation. For all that Iraq was a dictatorship, it was a secular dictatorship. Women in Iraq are among the most educated in the Middle East.
Now Iraq is “liberated” and the conditions for women are rapidly deteriorating. Women are being ridiculed, kidnapped, attacked and raped. But fear not, a “democracy” is being established.
There is a logical fallacy in the argument that “womens’ rights” somehow are second to liberation. In the US, during the leftist and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 70s, women were told that “their turn would come.” Or that somehow women’s social equality would naturally flow from other struggles for equality. Seeing that was not happening, women started organizing for our own equality.
Somehow, consistently, women’s conditions are subordinated to, and considered less fundamental than, the “people’s conditions.” When these kinds of distinctions are made, who then are the “people?” If you extract women’s equality and participation from the collectivity of “people,” what remains are men. Men’s concerns and conditions; men’s freedom and equality; men throwing off the yoke of “oppression;” men creating another society (or reshaping society) for the “people,” and people equals men.
If there is active concern for the full participation of various ethnic and religious groups within Iraq as a prerequisite for a “democratic” Iraq, how can the group which composes over half of each of those ethnic and religious groups be excluded from the table? If it is despicable to oppress the Kurds (for example), then why is it not equally despicable to oppress women? And why can this fabrication go on and on?
The simple answer is that patriarchy systematically excludes women - whether that is the patriarchy of US mainstream society, Afghan society, Iraqi society, etc. But underlying the process is the conceptual doublethink that “people” and “human” equals everyone when in fact it consistently means “men.” Further, because we are so used to this conceptual machination and the systems that support it, it seems only appropriate that somehow the health and freedom of the “people” supercedes the health and freedom of “women.” There is more than a suggestion that women are somehow being selfish and cruel to assert that their issues be considered and accommodated. “Step back ladies, we’ll get to you.”
Excluding women from the processes of the society, especially the reconstruction of societies, seems doomed to recreating the same structures over and over again. Some would argue that this is a cultural issue, and certainly culture plays a huge part in this, but there is something bigger than culture. Certainly in US international policies the often brutal conditions which women experience is not a significant barrier to political and economic exchange. Despite global pleas for pressure to be placed on the Taliban because of the brutality of Afghan women’s lives, the US (and other nations) continued to support the Taliban. It only came up as a public political issue to help justify the invasion of Afghanistan and overthrow of the Taliban. Of course, women are not “equal” in the US either though the myth exists that we are.
So I posit the radical notion that the denial of rights and oppression of women is equally important as the denial of rights and the oppression of any other group in a society. Underlying this notion is that women ARE those other groups and one cannot separate them out from “the rest of the population” seeking a better life.
Articles of interest
Where are Iraq’s Women? Westcott, BBC, 5/08/03.
Iraq: Women’s Rights Put on Hold, Pejman, IPS, 10/04/03.
WOMEN IN AFGHANISTAN: A human rights catastrophe Amnesty International 1995.
The Plight of the Afghan Women, Afghanistan Online.
Beaten, Abused, Chained. This is One Afghan Woman’s ‘Liberation’ Monakhov, Observer/UK, 10/05/03
May 23rd, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
Maybe I’m mistaken, but I thought that “surge” was a rapid increase followed by a withdrawal. A surge does not keep coming. President Bush started a “surge” which was not supported by the public. He has now extended the tours of troops already deployed, deployed additional troops, and is continuing new deployments into the fall of 2007. We went from a “surge” of 35,000 troops to a sustained presence (of potentially) an additional 98,000 troops. This could bring U.S. troops in Iraq to 200,000 - more than have been there at any point in the invasion and occupation.
As Hearst notes in his report, the various steps taken by the Bush administration may result in as “many as 28 combat brigades in Iraq by Christmas.” He also quotes a retired US NATO Commander:
Retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, the U.S. commander who led NATO troops into Bosnia in late 1995, when asked to comment on the analysis of deployment orders, said: “It doesn’t surprise me that they’re not talking about it. I think they would be very happy not to have any more attention paid to this.”
Indeed, they likely don’t want this talked about - which is every reason to do so.
Meanwhile, the Congress, including the Dems, have decided to drop timelines and approve supplemental money to maintain the U.S. Occupation of Iraq.
There are costs to be born for the “strategy” that has been put in place: costs to the people of Iraq; costs to deployed U.S. forces; costs to the families of those troops; and costs to the entire nation. This is not a strategy that will make either Iraqi’s, the Middle East and Asia, or the United States safer. The attacks by the Lebanese army on the Palestinian Nahr el-Bared refugee camp is but one example of the tinder box that is being created.
There is also a cost that will be born for at least a life time for the repeated deployments and extended tours being forced on our “volunteer” military - visible and invisible wounds of war.
Some have read the DoD report “Mental Health Advisory Team (MHAT) IV Operation Iraqi Freedom 05-07 Final Report (17 November 2006). It clearly shows that the stress of repeated deployments, extended tours, and ongoing combat operations, are deteriorating the mental health, and the moral judgment, of the troops. Instead of addressing these critical issues, they get more of the same. There was a lot of PTSD from the Vietnam War, but it is going to be made to look insignificant compared to the percentage of troops facing PTSD from this extended disaster.
These troops will come home to a Veteran’s health system that is largely broken and stripped. Joining them will be the array of “contractors.” Most of those contractors were never prepared for the conditions they have lived and worked under in Iraq, who will not be covered by even the modest services of the VA, and who likely will not have access to health care - much less mental health care. In other words, this country will see a lot of people with a lot of problems. They are victims of the neo-conservative Iraq “experiment.” Many of them, like too many from the Vietnam and Gulf War, will find themselves on the streets - invisible and made invisible like these earlier veterans.
As a nation, we do not want to acknowledge that dirty little secret of the homeless veterans, or the veterans who aren’t receiving the care and support they certainly deserve. The veterans who still fight the almost daily battle with PTSD. As the right rages on about supporting the troops by supporting their “mission” (no matter how ill conceived or vague), one wonders whether they will be supporting the Vet who blows up in their faces 5 years from now. One wonders if anyone will?
So the surge becomes an increased occupation while the US strong arms the Iraqi government to sign away their oil reserves through PSAs. Got to have those in place you know - and the Dems know … which is why they won’t block funding for this fiasco. It is also why virtually no one running for office, except perhaps Ron Paul, Mike Gravel, and Dennis Kucinich, is saying anything about the surge actually adding to the standing occupation. Meanwhile, the whole process is creating more extremism and conflict, and a new generation who has every reason in the world to hate the United States (and the West). It is a sure fire way to make sure the private and governmental military machine keeps its gears running smoothly and lucratively.
The pundits are saying we are looking at at least a five year occupation. My guess is it will be much longer than that. Meanwhile, the reservoirs of blood, and pain, and loss, and rage will be full for much longer still. Some stains never wash out - or stay painted over.
Related Articles
Disinformation or Hypocrisy, Wolf, 5/09/07
Send in the Troops. What Troops?, Wolf, 3/13/07
May 23rd, 2007
By: Patrice Greanville
(Originally written in 2003)
While the object of fascism is always the same, to disarm, intimidate, repress, and roll back the sectors of society pushing for further equality and democratization, its various forms take up the coloring dictated by specific cultures and epochs. That’s why military fascism in Chile is different than Argentina’s, or Spain’s, and why German fascism was far more brutal and systematic than the Italian variety. When and if it comes, American fascism will have its own defining characteristics, most likely a presidential façade.
The news about the setting up of a formal, overt, disinformation agency by the Pentagon, is not exactly surprising to many of us, as it wouldn’t be to Chomsky, Parenti, etc. Media watchers have long known about the CIA’s prolific roots and “assets” throughout the world’s media, including the sponsoring of authors, publishing ventures, and many other tricks, all amounting to immense power to inject distortion on contemporary realities (this does not include the huge pile of distortions emanating from non-CIA-connected journalists and commentators, operating under their own pro-capitalist delusions. Try stomaching Fox News, owned by Rupert Murdoch, for a taste of what the new information world might look like).
The announcement, therefore, that the US public may be subject to open propaganda is not alarming because it should indicate a departure from a wonderful information regime under which all voices were heard because such a thing we never had, but, because in its own sordid way it marks a shift in the way the elites mask the actual functioning of the system.
So the question is: Why do they feel they can now get away with this? Quite simply–as I’m sure you’ll agree–because the right wing/neoliberal elites fronted by Bush feel protected by an impregnable wall of national paranoia and jingoism, spelling ever more ignorance and provincialism in the way Americans perceive the world and their own interests.
The midwife for all this, of course, is the much accursed Bin Laden and his gang of misguided fanatics, but if Bin Laden hadn’t existed he would have been created. He’s simply too useful to the governing elites. In this context, what is even more troublesome is that, should the American public start to put aside the 9/11 memories, and therefore its effects, refocusing on their real problems such as increasing unemployment, inadequate health access, and the innumerable bizarre social and economic priorities implemented by the elites, they might be subjected to a new round of jingoist fever, again, thanks to the same cast of perps, and with further distractions and dislocations from such pressing issues. The advantages to the plutocracy of a Bin Laden specter roaming the world, of another Reichstag fire writ large, are so attractive that the chance of his re-entry into the American scene, with perfectly woeful consequences for the remainder of American democracy, are almost guaranteed. It is that sinister eventuality we must constantly watch out for and work to prevent.
I have often rebuked my fellow sufferers on the US left for crying wolf too soon and calling anything even slightly authoritarian “fascism,” but moves like these fall squarely out of the textbook of creeping fascism. Bertram Gross, not to mention Gramsci, or R. Palme Dutt (the British Marxist who wrote that classic, FASCISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION) spelled it out eloquently. Their diagnosis was that fascism, as known in Europe, would be an unlikely occurrence in America. The American brand of fascism, they concurred, would be one with a strong, self-righteous presidential mask, behind which the ruling orders, in pursuit of a fierce global class agenda, would implement policies designed to eviscerate democracy in its totality while keeping the appearance of sweet democracy in place.
I have long argued that, since the beginning of “government by professional manipulation” in America (which reached what we might call “self-conscious maturity” under Ronald Reagan), that the country has been ruled and continues to be ruled by a plutocratic oligarchy smugly dressed in the garments of democracy. The problem for the ruling orders is not new: Alexander Hamilton was already aware, along with many of the Founders, that a real, popular democracy would represent a huge class menace to dominant privileges. That people, once awakened to their true interests would simply vote their exploiters, or “betters,” out of power-at least for a while. The bicameral system was set up (in the age of puny, local media) as one way to stem or derail this ominous tide. (In France, the revolutionaries installed a unicameral system, which is intrinsically more democratic.)
Today, and prior to 9/11, the world’s ruling plutocracies (among which I now must include China’s authoritarian capitalists, and Russia’s state capitalist Mafias) were already facing an intractable problem:
Under the present system, world production can easily outstrip world consumption due to the tremendous productivity of new technologies. Industry requires fewer and fewer workers to turn out ever larger outputs…Under conditions of authentic democracy and egalitarianism, this should mean humanity’s liberation from toil, as, ideally fewer and fewer hours of labor would have to be surrendered to produce a very high standard of living.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Why? because social property, read capital to produce everything-land, machines, etc.–is owned by a tiny minority and it is precisely this tiny minority that also appropriates the lion’s share of society’s production, translated, of course, into money, which is nothing but a certificate of entitlement to this enormous mountain of goods and services…a “claim” redeemable anywhere such certificates are accepted. (By law the legal tender, or currency, must be accepted everywhere in the nation.)
The inevitable upshot of such grotesque disequilibrium is overconsumption on one side and underconsumption on the other. In other words, as long as the social relations that bind society to this unfair “contract” remain in place so will this untenable equation, since, if technology is constantly eliminating human labor, and therefore paychecks, who is going to have the necessary income to go back to the market and buy back that ever expanding pile of production?
So, the simple, biggest reason for the problem of faltering demand, recession, or even depression on a world scale, is severe income and wealth inequality, which becomes ever more acute as the system–unchecked by progressive forces such as labor and other pro-democracy groups–follows through with its inherently myopic dynamic of heaping ever larger accumulations of wealth onto the hands of a privileged few while slowly and inexorably immiserating the majority. Such conditions must eventually lead to a major, structural crisis, and they do. History is replete with such examples. But since the system can choose any solution to the crisis, except the obvious–social justice–as the latter goes against its central, non-negotiable dynamic, this is then the anteroom to fascism.
FINANCIAL FRAGILITY ON THE INCREASE
The US today shows alarming inequality. This is evident to all of us who can look at the situation fairly and impartially. We now have hundreds of billionaires, and a similarly growing mass of millionaires. Meanwhile, the income and wealth gap is not big, it’s obscene. The legendary American middle class, the envy of the world, the staple of television sitcoms of the 1950s, not to mention the working classes, have lost a substantive share of national income over the last 35 years and the financial stress observed in this sector is evident in most national indicators.
Consider: There were 1,661,996 bankruptcies filed in Fiscal Year 2003, up 7.4 percent from the 1,547,669 filings in Fiscal Year 2002. This is the highest-ever total of filings for any reporting period. Since 1994, when filings totaled 837,797, bankruptcies in federal courts have increased 98 percent.
The financial profile of the typical American family reflects this troubling reality. As reported by the Washington Post in March of 2006,
[The typical family] has about $3,800 in the bank. No one has a retirement account, and the neighbors who do only have about $35,000 in theirs. Mutual funds? Stocks? Bonds? Nope. The house is worth $160,000, but the family owes $95,000 on it to the bank. The breadwinners make more than $43,000 a year but can’t manage to pay off a $2,200 credit card balance.
That is the portrait of the median American household as painted by the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances. Such findings might represent a rude awakening to those still starry-eyed about the vaunted “new affluence” everyone was until recently talking about.
But how does capital deal with this problem? In the way you have seen all over the place: cutting back on wages and benefits, laying off workers, or simply moving to a remote location where labor can be paid a pittance and where neither humans nor animals nor nature do or will enjoy any protection. (The output is then cheerfully sent back to the more affluent–but shrinking– developed world, where extravagant profits are made, except that here, too, the crunch is inevitable because average income, in real terms, is dropping relative to production.)
In the more developed world, especially Europe, where citizens have a more sophisticated understanding of politics, and larger self-defense organizations than in the USA, governments have been obliged to apply some bigger band-aids to the crisis–read a measure of tangible social welfare. But the issue remains: the social vessel is listing badly, making water from many holes and infinite patches and now requires a serious overhaul, if not rebuilding altogether.
An outside observer, say an interplanetary traveller who never set foot in America, might deem such conditions deranged. And why not? Is it sane to live under a system whose ruling elites openly decry a rise in employment and living standard for the masses? And, conversely, isn’t it bizarre that, on Wall Street, supposedly the barometer of society’s economic health, when multinationals lay off workers by the tens of thousands, or shut down facilities, or abandon communities for an overseas location in pursuit of bigger profits for the few, the stocks go up amid wild celebration, and the executives in charge get fat bonuses and other rewards?
In a sane, truly democratic, not to say moral, society such behavior would be hidden from view, like the plotting of common criminals. But in this society, long inured to the reigning disease, Wall Street reactions are not hidden from view at all, they’re bragged about, as they remain safe behind an elaborate national brainwash that teaches Americans to accept such conditions with the tolerance we assign to the whims of nature.
The crisis of overproduction represented by humanity’s new technological capabilities is here to stay and can only be resolved by a far, far more equitable distribution of the product of human labor, on a world scale. This means serious, dramatic revisions of the current social contract–”the terms of agreement”–between two utterly conflicting social interests. Or the abandonment of such an injurious contract entirely.
I hate to quote one of the bogeymen of the American psyche, Karl Marx’s longtime collaborator and friend, Engels, but he put it admirably in 1886:
[If] there are three countries (say, England, America and Germany) competing on comparatively equal terms for the possession of the world market, there is no chance
but chronic overproduction, one of the three being capable of supplying the whole quantity required.
That was written in the 19th century. Multiply that by a thousand to begin to approach the contours of the current crisis.
DARKER BEFORE DAWN–IS IT TRUE?
The sense of despair that many activists feel these days, battered on all sides by this truly monstrous regime-monstrous in its immorality, cynicism, hypocrisy, self-righteousness and sheer evil-and its all-enveloping prostituted cheer-leading media, is shared amply in this quarter. In a sense, and without going too far afield, the present situation is the inevitable outcome of several realities which have defined this sick society for quite some time:
(1) The absence of a workers’ party, and by that I mean nothing so “alien” to the American mind as a bolshevist vanguardist party, but simply the absence of a real movement and party expressing and articulating the needs and visions of the average person, whose needs are clearly anchored in a “working class reality.”
Parties in a class-divided society, which the US surely is (business propaganda aside), are supposed to represent the interests of the various classes constituting the social pyramid. But since both Democrats and Republicans stand first and foremost for “free enterprise,” i.e., the polite coinage for the national and international bourgeoisie, what we have here is a single party cynically masquerading as two. I’m sure this is scarcely a revelation to most moderately sophisticated American audiences. (The obvious question then is, why is such a fraudulent state of affairs tolerated?)
2) The successful enthronement in the American mind of liberals as real leftists.
Ferociously centrist, some might call them “extremists of the center,” liberals, frequently the embodiment of the petit bourgeois element in a nation, have never been and never will be real leftists because their entire class orientation and economic interests, which, as is true for all classes, largely determine their mindset, is anchored in the upper, propertied sector, which they tend to ape. This limits their vision and political actions. They are for endless tinkering within the system, while never daring to go beyond its egregiously restrictive limits. Their systemic solutions are therefore stillborn, quilts of pitiful patches with the problem itself often dictating remedial policy! (Witness, for example, Hillary Clinton’s health plan reform initiative, whereby no Naderites, or the Harvard Independent Health Reform Study Group, or similar authentic healthcare system critics were invited to the discussions, but the AMA, the Hospital chains, and the pharmaceutical lobbyists were. When was the last time that the disease found a cure for itself?)
(3) The rise and (momentary) triumph of corporate propaganda
The system requires the illusion of options, the illlusion of some sort of political balance. And as democracy instinctively struggles to survive and deepen its roots, against great odds, corporate power, especially through its media and political assets, works tireslessly to confuse and derail the effort. Still, the propaganda apparatus necessitated to negate obvious realities, to inject and maintain a pre-emptive consumerist consciousness among the masses, and to sow escapist notions as a complementary venting valve for gathering tensions, is an enormous and sophisticated machine, precisely what we witness today in modern America. In fact, the rise of such a disinformation machine was foreseen more than 80 years ago, as the growth of corporate propaganda was anticipated to match, blow by blow, the extension of democracy.
Against this backdrop, it’s no surprise that only liberals are heard in this country when it comes to shaping national debates. Reflecting the so-called two-party system, which provides us with a rump political spectrum of choice, the media, too, take care not to admit people to the left of what is regarded as “mainstream opinion” or what some also quaintly define as the “loyal opposition” (loyal to what? to whom? That’s never spelled out with any precision).
True radicals (those that go to the root of a problem) are ruled out as “extreme” from the word go. (When the national debate commission not only prevents Ralph Nader from attending the debates, but threatens to throw him in jail for exercising his right to do so, we know we are living in a country where the word democracy is a joke.)
In this regard, for those who will surely protest with alacrity that America is still the land of the free, I will say only this: The freedom guarantees of any bourgeois democracy can only be tested when that society’s power-holders feel they are under attack. The record so far is not pretty, and I refer you here to any number of episodes and incidents in American history showing that the American upper class is extremely manipulative and paranoid in the defense of its privileges. The trip wire is indeed very close to the ground in this nation. But, folks, who needs widespread repression when the masses can be so successfully controlled by a pervasive 24/7 brainwash? Why show the jackboot and the truncheon, when we can launch massive invasions with relative impunity, under transparently hypocritical motives, and appear every day on the boob-tube with the photo-op of the day, claiming to be the last defenders of human sanity and decency on earth? Why indeed use the mailed fist and give away the system’s true fascistic nature when ubiquitous sound-bites and torrents of idiocy on the tube will suffice? I repeat: The true test of whether this or any nation is a reliable “free” democracy can only be approached with the rise of a mass movement seriously bent on replacing the rotting structure with something deserving of the word “representative democracy.”
My money is that long before the emergence of such a welcome phenomenon, you will see the system’s crises depositing us at the doorstep of operational fascism, albeit of the American sort, “friendly fascism.”
THE PREFIGUREMENT OF FASCISM
Coups and military takeovers may happen overnight, but fascism (incubated behind a presidential façade) arrives on the scene with plenty of advance notice. Its ready-made arsenal of anti-democratic weapons gives it away: increasing thuggery, judicial intimidation, widespread lies at all levels of governance, cultivation of public paranoias, political persecutions, dismantlement of constitutional rights in exchange for “security,” and, when all this fails, widespread repression using the immense reservoir of technical and military assets the system has amassed, from military repression to “retail suppression,” using covert assets, or even “indirect assets,” that is, killing dissidents and making it seem a common crime. (The latter is an old tactic used throughout the Third World.)
Against all the above, how can a populace so deeply depoliticized and so stubbornly naive about the true material mainsprings of American policy–abroad and at home–ever rise to claim its position as the genuine fount for US policies on this endangered planet? How can the democratic imposture be retired?
That is the central question facing all dedicated activists in America and around the world. For America’s ever deepening immersion in fascistoid waters is the cross that the world–not only this nation–continues to bear in this age of wholesale reaction sponsored by the “Free World colossus.” And the longer we take in finding genuine solutions to this crisis, the harder it will be to implement them.
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