India, China and the Indo-Pacific

Rini Babu

The phrase ‘Indo-Pacific’, which has been drawing significant attention of late, was first officially articulated in Australia’s Defence White Paper in 2013. In addition to being a geographical construct, the Indo-Pacific can also be seen as a changing network of nations. Against this background, it would be pertinent to ask why this term is gaining traction now and what roles are envisaged for India and China in it. 

Both India and China have geo-political and geo-economic reasons for their interest in this spatial construct. Running countries as big as India and China demands energy, and this region has it in abundance. 

India and the Indo-Pacific
Capt (Dr) Gurpreet S Khurana, Executive Director at National Maritime Foundation, in his article ‘Security of Sea Lines: Prospects for India-Japan Cooperation’ analyses the idea of the Indo-Pacific from an Indian perspective. He writes that as a regional or spatial concept, it serves India’s interests as a growing regional power. 

It is clear that the present NDA government wants to revamp the Indian economy by attracting more foreign investments. Since the majority of its trade relations are through the sea, resolving the present and future maritime threats by giving more attention to the Indo-Pacific construct is of prime importance. India has declined China’s offer to join the latter’s Road and Belt project, as there are fears that it might be a means to contain India. Modi’s visit to India’s neighbouring Indo-Pacific regional nations, prior to his visit to China, implies not only the strategic importance of the region for India, but also shows how India wants to counter possible Chinese threats China in the Indian Ocean Region.

In keeping with the pragmatic nature of India’s foreign policy, the Indo-Pacific construct allows India to further enhance its Look East/Act East Policy. Australia’s strategic position in the region makes it important for India’s Act East Policy. Australia, in turn, in its attempt to balance its dependence on China, has signed new agreements for security cooperation with India. The insecurity India feels from the growing influence of China has led to intensified defence and security cooperation with Japan, Vietnam and the US, strengthened security ties with ASEAN, and deepening cooperation with islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Modi’s recent engagement with the Indian diaspora in Australia, Fiji, Mauritius and South Korea was an attempt to highlight historical and cultural linkages, which is essential to increase India’s role in the region. 

China and the Indo-Pacific
China has been drawn towards Indo-Pacific to satisfy its economic and energy requirements, like India. The US’ presence in the region has also contributed to China’s increasing interest in the Indo-Pacific. The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade agreement initiated by the US, excludes China and it has been speculated that this is an economic tool to contain China’s rise in East Asia. 

The Indo-Pacific has many critical sea lanes of communication (SLOC) that are crucial for China’s energy transportation. China has long been using its strategies to reach out and find a permanent position in the Indian Ocean Region because the area is viable for long-term infrastructure development to reduce transport dependency through the Straits of Malacca. The availability of other choke points along these SLOCs, the Sunda Strait and Lombok Strait, which connect China to the mainland is also a contributing factor. 

The similarities between India and China are not only in their size and population but also in their national interests. Both of them have a large economic drive: China to maintain its global position and India to increase its import surplus. Maritime security is also an essential to both. These reasons have led to both the countries investing time, energy and capital in the Indo-Pacific region.

Oppression of African Americans Is Not A Liberal Invention

Matt Peppe

Over the last few years the killing of unarmed African Americans including Michael Brown, Eric Garner, John Crawford, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott and Freddie Gray by agents of the state have generated massive protests against a political system that almost never punishes police violence. Activist groups like Black Lives Matter have emerged as voices on the front lines from Ferguson to Baltimore. Their message is simple: American society and the political system it has created do not value black lives the same as white lives. They draw powerful connections between the state-sanctioned use of force, a discriminatory criminal justice system, mass incarceration, and economic inequality for racial minorities. But their indictment of the system is predictably met with hostility by conservatives in denial that white supremacy exists, much less dominates American politics.

Right-wing authoritarians believe the real problem is liberals blowing a small number of sensationalist incidents out of proportion. They claim liberals take isolated cases of blacks being killed during police encounters and misconstrue them as discrimination, or liberals argue that unemployed or incarcerated blacks created their own fate through their personal choices.

Most conservatives cling defensively to the notion that the system is fair, and people who claim otherwise are guilty of selection bias. They see authorities as noble and worthy of respect. Any evidence to the contrary can be written off as a few cases of bad apples.

In reality, there is overwhelming empirical evidence that white supremacy plays a dominant role in American society. Mark Twain had a point when he said, "there's three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Taken individually, you could cherry-pick any piece of data to make a point. But when you analyze the picture holistically, the result is an unequivocal pattern.

Multiple indicators - police shootings, incarceration rates, public health indicators, wealth indeces and drug use rates - demonstrate that African Americans are disadvantaged in the United States. And not just disadvantaged narrowly. The numbers confirm what any reasonable person should be able to ascertain themselves through anecdotal evidence if they have a television and an internet connection.

Numerous studies have found that blacks are killed by police at a highly disproportionate rate relative to their percentage of the population. A Vox analysis of FBI Data from 2012 determined black people represented 31% of police shooting victims, while representing just 13% of the population as a whole. That is to say, African Americans were killed 2.5 times more frequently than they would be if police killings occurred equally across racial lines. Whites accounted for 52% of victims shot dead by police, while representing 63% of the entire population.

A ProPublica analysis found that statistics were even more stark for teenagers. Black teens were 21 times more likely to be killed than white teens from 2010-2012. The authors determined that more than 1 white teen would have to have been killed by police per week over that three-year period for both groups to have an equal likelihood.

A Guardian analysis of data accumulated for the first five months of 2015 was nearly identical to the Vox analysis. The Guardian found 29% of those killed by police were black, versus 50% who were white.

Additionally, the Guardian found that twice as many blacks as whites killed by the police were likely to be unarmed (32% to 15%). The paper quoted the executive director of human rights organization Amnesty International USA, Steven Hawkins, as calling the statistics "startling .. the disparity speaks to something that needs to be examined, to get to the bottom of why you're twice as likely to be shot if you're an unarmed black male."

As a whole, the United States incarcerates more of its population than anywhere else in the world. While the U.S. represents only 5% of the world's population, it has 25% of the world's prison population. There are more Americans are in jail or under corrections supervision than were in Stalin's gulags. But these numbers alone don't convey the racial discrimination of the American prison state.

A Pew Research Center analysis reported that black men are six times more likely than white men to be imprisoned. The study demonstrates that the incarceration rate for blacks has worsened since before Civil Rights legislation was enacted in 1964. "In 1960, the white male incarceration rate was 262 per 100,000 white U.S. residents, and the black male rate was 1,313, meaning that black men were five times as likely as white men to be incarcerated," according to the Pew analysis.

There is no other country on the planet that locks up a racial minority group at remotely near the rate the United States does with African Americans. Even under the notorious racism of the apartheid regime in South Africa, blacks were not imprisoned nearly as much as in the United States.

The incarceration rate was nearly six times higher for black males in the United States than for black males in South Africa during apartheid (4,848 per 100,000 in 2001 vs. 851 per 100,000 in 1993), according to a study published by the Western Prison Project and the Prison Policy Initiative.

The driver behind what has popularly become known as mass incarceration is the hyper-criminalization of drug use, This has been exposed by Michelle Alexander, in her landmark book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness as a vast system of social control and institutional discrimination, which has evolved from the Jim Crow South to accomplish many of the same oppressive ends under the guise of legal justice.

Jamie Fellner, Senior Counsel with the U.S. Program at Human Rights Watch, wrote in her report Race, Drugs, and Law Enforcement in the United States that the "costs and benefits of this national 'war on drugs' remain debated. What is not debatable, however, is that this ostensibly race-neutral effort has been waged primarily against black Americans" who are "disproportionately arrested, convicted, and incarcerated on drug charges" relative to their percentage of the population. Fellner called into question U.S. compliance with the International Covention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a treaty which the U.S. has ratified.

While Americans hold wide prejudices that African Americans take and sell drugs more often than whites, the data have consistently shown this is simply not true. Studies demonstrate that blacks are less likely to use and abuse drugs than whites, and that they are less likely to deal drugs than whites.

Marijuana arrests account for a huge portion of the arrests carried out as part of the war on drugs that has led to the explosion in the prison population. When you isolate marijuana use by race, there are no statistically significant differences between whites and blacks. Both groups use them roughly at the same rate. The same is true among youths. But the rate of arrests is unmistakably unequal across the nation.

"Racial disparities in marijuana possession arrests are widespread and exist in every region in the country," the ACLU wrote in their report The War on Marijuana in Black and White. They noted that in more than one-third of states, the rate of arrests of blacks was more than four times higher than that of whites for marijuana possession.

Life expectancy is one of the most important indicators of public health. The life expectancy of blacks (74.5 years) is more than four years less than that of whites (78.8 years), according to a Center for Disease Control and Prevention study published last year. This is actually a "historically record-low level" of difference in life expectancy, although it is still outrageously high for a developed nation with the wealth of the United States.

The numbers for wealth inequality are just as stark. The gap between median white net worth ($141,900) is 13 times greater than that of black net worth ($11,000), according to the Pew Research Center. They report that in the wake of the "Great Recession" that began in 2008 the difference has been exacerbated.

Every other significant economic indicator - income, home ownership, unemployment - confirms the enormous chasm between whites and blacks.

No amount of conservative denial can erase these facts. Of course, if you remove the context and look at individual stories in a vacuum you can distort the extent of the oppression. There are more than 40 million African Americans in the U.S. and so far this year there have been somewhere between 100 and 200 killings of blacks by police.

Naturally, not every black person is being killed. But the rate people are being killed is much too high compared to other ethnic groups inside the country and to other countries overall. This is not a problem the media has created, or that progressives have blown out of proportion. Any honest contextual analysis would have to acknowledge the inequality and discrimination that manifests itself in the actions of police, the courts, the economy and the health system. It points to one undeniable conclusion: blacks in the U.S. are oppressed. This is a direct result of deliberate policies formulated and carried out through the institutions of the state, not through the free market or personal choice.

The most important accomplishment of Black Lives Matter has been to make these issues visible to so many people across the country. Unfortunately, many who benefit from white supremacy are determined to keep it invisible. As the national conversation shifts to confront systemic racism and discrimination, conservative confirmation bias is difficult to overcome. But in the end the facts speak for themselves. The more they lead to real social change, the stronger the conservative backlash will be at those who bear the message. Fortunately, the movements that have developed have shown every indication they are up for the challenge and are in the struggle for the long haul.

The Capitalists are Out to Get Me

Jack Balkwill

The capitalists have decided to make my life a living hell. I can’t seem to do the slightest thing without their making it more difficult. It does no good to submissively implore, “I give up–you win,” they continue the torture relentlessly, with seemingly nothing to gain save for the pleasure of it.

When asked, “What do you do for a living,” most of us can’t respond, “I inherit from robber barons.” Many of the capitalists clearly may not only give such a response, but can add “I absolutely love to torment Jack for no reason.”

Case in point. I put a video into my DVD player and up pops a piracy warning. Then another, in case I missed the first one, telling me about the penalties for piracy, assuming I’m a criminal. Then one in French, knowing almost nobody in the USA parlez vous Francais, but also knowing it’s a great opportunity to harass honest citizens to let them know who’s in charge.

The real pirates don’t have to watch the insulting FBI warnings, because they don’t copy that crap. They just do the movie, so their customers get a much better deal than those who abide by the laws.

After giving up, having realized they are never going to let me get to the movie, running a massive number of ads for Blue Ray players and other products the capitalists have for sale (again, the pirates don’t have to watch this crap), I decide to go out and check the mail.

But I can’t find my mail. It may be buried somewhere in the ads bulging from my mailbox. I have written to the individual corporations asking them to please stop sending me this, but they don’t care, they are capitalists, and they rule. They can bother me if they want to, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.

I know, the propaganda is that there are places you can call or write that will stop junk mail, and I’ve tried them all, but the capitalists pay no attention and send me enough paper to wipe out the forests of British Columbia, just to show me they have complete control and I should keep my mouth shut.

I look out on the horizon, expecting, like an idiot, that I will see a magnificent sunrise, or trees, or some sign that the capitalists haven’t completely destroyed nature, but alas, all I see are billboards– thousands of them in every direction, urging me to buy things from the capitalist factories in China, where they sent my job.

So I turn on my computer to check my email. If I have email I can’t find it, the capitalists have decided that I need to buy numerous products. They will decide what email I get, and how much, thank you. Somewhere in the spam there may be a note from a friend, but I will unlikely ever find it. The email I want probably goes into the junk email folder, but that’s as deluged as the inbox. I’ve paid companies to have this fixed, but unwittingly gave my money to capitalists whose first priority is profit. They kept the money and the spam increased.

It’s like health care. You give the capitalists money and they tell you after the multimillion dollar salaries of executives and billions in profits, there’s nothing left for actual health care, followed by “Be sure to send in your premium, or you will lose your plan,” like the plan actually does something other than drain your bank account.

So I decide to listen to some soothing music. Only I can’t hear it because the capitalists are ringing my telephone throughout the day, out to convince me I should buy products I can’t afford because of my job hopping to China, following the one that floated to Indonesia, at the fancy of the capitalists. I am on the do not call registry, but the capitalists don’t care. They remind me with each phone call I get from them after reporting them, that they have the power.

So I turn on my TV to see what’s on the news, only to find that every channel has commercials blaring, encouraging me to take more pharmaceuticals to help me cope (how do they know?), and they are not about to let me get to actual news. When I do finally imagine I get through, the news items reflect the commercials– same slant, for the same capitalists. The “journalist” anchor, paid $15 million a year to parrot the capitalist viewpoint, tells me we live in the Land of the Free.

Not free to have health care or a decent job like people in other major industrialized nations, but free to finance a military force which protects capitalists all over the world from any outbreak of the dreaded democracy. So dedicated is the USA to freedom that it takes the world’s largest prison system to maintain this Land of the Free.

The capitalists own my government, financing the political campaigns to get some of the slimiest sycophants imaginable to run the White House, Capitol building and Supreme Court on their behalf, so I can’t call 911– they own it. I’m pretty sure if I dialed 911 they would report me to Homeland Security for complaining and I would soon be water boarded while watching FBI warnings in French about what happens to terrorists like me.

The capitalists have privatized my government, so services we once had are now for profit, so good luck if you want the government to do anything. Profit is their only priority. Call a government office and a robot answers, instructing you to “press one if you speak Swahili. Press two if you speak Ancient Greek….” You know this is going to take awhile, and in fact, nothing ever comes of it as far as I am aware.

The capitalists have their own problems, like what to buy the kid for his birthday– another champion polo pony or a Congressman accoutered with reins and a saddle. Then there are those tortured night sweats, pondering the potential for any outbreak of an iota of democracy around the planet (it could happen, but thankfully they have 800 military bases around the globe heading this nightmare off).

I do take solace in knowing the NSA, on behalf of the capitalists, is copying billions of spam emails daily and billions of commercial phone calls that must make totalitarianism much more difficult to achieve. They must sift through all of this fruit of capitalism before winnowing incriminating data down to finger an activist trying to oppose wars, pollution, bankstering or other capitalist felonies.

The capitalists know they are killing thousands of people annually in unsafe workplaces, where their managers are aware the workplaces are unsafe yet do nothing about it because it would interfere with profits. But if human life were a priority of the capitalists, they would allow a real health care system like other industrialized nations have.

Nothing interferes with profits (see any free trade agreement). The capitalists know they are killing millions each year around the globe from unsafe products they sell, but continue because of the profits. Would someone who was not a psychopath kill six to eight million people by selling them tobacco products, year after year?

It’s difficult to tell how many die from capitalist polluting around the globe, because the health impact is largely undocumented, with most of the chemical combinations untested, but it’s easy to guess at least millions, if not tens of millions.

Wistfully I accept that there is no impending challenge to capitalist rule. I have no doubt the capitalists would murder me save for the enjoyment they get from watching me writhe in agony. I am certain they would kill us all if there was a dime in it for them anywhere, but of course, they need a working class with which to produce profit (no way any of them is ever going to do a lick of work).

I suppose it will have to be enough to know that their servants, to retaliate for the humiliation and abuse, are likely pissing in their martinis.

Obama in the Middle East

Jack A. Smith

President Obama’s post-election promise of a “new dawn of American leadership” began in earnest five months into his first term with an important speech in Cairo June 4, 2009, appropriately titled, “A New Beginning.” He started his oration by remarking “We meet at a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world…. I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world.”

The packed audience at Cairo University, including many students, was mesmerized by Obama’s rhetoric and the renewal of hope for a better future. They were not told that his “new beginning” was based on the geopolitical intention to continue and tighten U.S. hegemony the Middle East. At the time Washington was supporting authoritarian regimes throughout the region, just as it does today. Further, Obama today is fighting or supporting more wars in the vicinity than when he assumed office.

The wreckage of that “new beginning” is strewn throughout the Middle East in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere.

President Obama inherited and approved of former President George W. Bush’s stalemated Afghan war, now in its 14th year.  He expanded the war in quest of victory but failed.  He declared it was over, but 10,000 troops remain. It is probable this losing Bush-Obama venture will continue for many more years. Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai is now telling all who will listen, including the leaders of India, Russia and China, that the U.S. and its NATO allies plan to remain in Afghan military bases and listening posts for many years because of its geopolitical proximity to China, Central Asia, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and India.

Obama disapproved of Bush’s unjust, unnecessary 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, which largely secured his nomination and election in November 2008. The U.S. pulled out of Iraq at the end of 2011 with nothing to show for this nine-year misadventure but a million dead Iraqis and trillions in taxpayer war debts. Two years later the remnant of al-Qaeda in Iraq began transforming into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now the Islamic State (IS), without seeming to alarm the Oval Office. Suddenly, in June last year, IS defeated and occupied Mosul — Iraq’s second largest city — in a matter of hours. By August the U.S. was once again at war in Iraq, but this time it was confined to an air campaign and retraining dispirited and poorly led Iraqi troops.

The U.S. campaign to defeat the religio-fascist Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria is a failure so far. Despite 10 months of American bombing IS remains strong. It has experienced a couple of big defeats, but has had several more major victories. Aside from the U.S. and a few allies, Washington’s vaunted 60-country coalition exists in name only.

The U.S. war against IS — the end product so far of earlier American interventions beginning in the late 1970s — may last many years. Currently there are 3,050 U.S. troops in Iraq. Most are “supporting Iraqi security forces.” About 450 are “training Iraqi troops,” and 200 are in “advising and assisting roles.” On June 10 the White House announced it was sending another 450 troops to train members of Sunni Tribes. The Pentagon thinks these numbers are far too low. It seems inevitable that U.S. ground troops eventually will be deployed in large number, perhaps sooner than later.

McClatchy News reported June 12 that after 10 months of war “the White House has failed to give
Congress and the public a comprehensive written analysis setting out the legal powers that President Obama is using to put U.S. personnel in harm’s way in Iraq and Syria…. The only document the White House has provided to a few key lawmakers comprises four pages of what are essentially talking points, described by those who’ve read them as shallow and based on disputed assertions of presidential authority.”

Antiwar critic Phyllis Bennis wrote June 12: “Almost nine months after President Obama admitted that ‘we don’t have a strategy yet’ to challenge the Islamic State – and just days after he said he still has ‘no complete Iraq strategy’ – the non-strategy suddenly has a name: escalation…. The Obama administration has so far been unable or unwilling to act on its own oft-repeated understanding that ‘there is no military solution’ to the so-called IS crisis. Instead, the U.S. strategy has relied almost solely on military action.”

While fighting the Islamic State, a contradictory Obama objective is the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, which at this stage would require the defeat of the Syrian army and a victory for the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda’s powerful franchise in Syria) and various other Sunni jihadist fighting groups who lately have been getting close to al-Nusra. These two organizations are blood rivals that could end up in a vicious war or merge into the most dangerous jihadi group of all.

Obama’s desire to bring about regime change in Syria has nothing to do with democracy, although that was Washington’s original justification three years ago. Syria under Assad is a very close ally to Iran and is supported by Russia. Breaking the alliance with Iran by replacing Assad with a leader acceptable to the U.S. would weaken the influence of both Iran and Russia — a feather not only in America’s cap but those of Saudi Arabia, Israel and many Sunni states in the region.

The natural allies of Iran (a Shi’ite majority state) are Iraq (Shi’ite majority), and Syria (Alawite, Shi’ite derived and governed in a 60% Sunni population). All three have a major stake in defeating IS, al-Nusra and other Sunni jihadist groups that consider the Shia minority to be heathens. The Shi’ites are an often-despised minority within Islam, and amount to about 10-13% of the Muslim world.

Both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia share the objective of disrupting the contiguous 1,200-mile East to West Iran-Iraq-Syria coalition that refuses to succumb to American hegemony and imperialism.

The opposition to Shia influence in the Middle East is led by the Saudi monarchy, the principal exponent of the ultra-conservative Wahhabi Islam — a faith that has been embraced by a number of Sunni extremist groups. Saudi Arabia has been under U.S. protection for almost 70 years because of its enormous oil resources.  Most Sunni states in the region appear allied with Riyadh (the Saudi capital) in its desire to limit the regional influence of Shiism.

The reason Saudi Arabia has been bombing Yemen (with U.S. backing) for nearly three months is to defeat the Houthi insurgency, mainly because this group adheres to the Zaidi sect of the Shia religion. (Yemen is 50-55% Sunni and 42%-47% Shi’ite.) In addition, the Houthis in power would be unlikely to take orders from its neighboring monarchy. So far the Saudi air force has killed about 2,500 civilians, largely Shia. The UN says the Saudi attacks have created a humanitarian disaster for about 80% of the Yemeni population, some 20 million people. So far at least eight regional Sunni states have sent jets to join the Saudi onslaught.

Saudi Arabia launched its air war and blockade on March 23 near the end of peace talks between the Houthis and various other Yemeni factions that seemed to be heading toward a positive resolution. The attacks ended the talks and the Houthi rebellion is continuing. On June 14 the rebels seized Hazm, a provincial capital in the northwest. The New York Times reported that the capture of Hazm “appeared to give the Houthis another bargaining chip in United Nations-sponsored peace talks that begin June 15 in Geneva.” It has been reported that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), headquartered in Yemen, has become stronger as a result of the Saudi war, acquiring more territory and obtaining backing from some local Sunni groups.

Much bigger news about AQAP was released June 15 when it confirmed the death of its leader, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen. This raises an odd question:  Wuhayshi was also second in command to al-Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who replaced Osama bin-Laden four years ago. Washington has been seeking to assassinate Zawahiri for years, but there may be a reason to change plans, according to Barak Mendelsohn three months ago in a March 9 article in Foreign Affairs titled “Accepting al-Qaeda.” He wrote:

“If and when Washington succeeds in killing Zawahiri, the leaders of al-Qaeda’s branches would have the opportunity to reassess whether to remain with al-Qaeda or join Baghdadi’s caliphate. [The reference is to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State's Caliph.] It is possible that Zawahiri’s successor will be able to hold al-Qaeda together, particularly if it is Nasir al-Wuhayshi, al-Qaeda’s so-called general manager and the head of its Yemeni branch. But it is more likely that in Zawahiri’s absence, al Qaeda would drift into IS’ camp, offering it manpower, resources, and access to arenas such as Algeria and Yemen where al-Qaeda’s dominance has so far hindered IS’ expansion.” Time will tell.

The struggle against IS would be considerably more difficult were it not for the fighting by the non-Arab Iraqi Kurds and Iraqi Shia militias, the latter usually led by Iranian officers. Baghdad’s demoralized, poorly led army is being retrained and is not ready take the field, except for a few special units. The U.S. supplies the Kurds but has not provided support to the militias and Iranians.

In addition to the Iraqi fighters, the Syrian army is a strong ground force willing to fight the Islamic State — and is actually doing so defensively to prevent the Baghdad government from being crushed. So far the White House extends its air war support to Syrian Kurds in the north of the country, but refuses to back the besieged Syrian army by extending its bombing campaign to the jihadi forces battling their way toward Damascus in the south.

The U.S. has reduced its public effusions of support for the Syrian rebels —the largely jihadist forces that seek to overthrow the Assad government — but it remains involved in trying to destroy the Damascus regime. Stratfor wrote June 5:

“Washington can see the battlefield momentum lies with an array of radical Islamists who will demonize the United States along with the Syrian government. Though the United States is working more closely with regional players Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan in selectively sponsoring Syrian rebel factions, it cannot effectively channel the direction of the fight against the Islamic State when that goal is competing with the aim of toppling Iran’s ally in Damascus and strangling Hezbollah in Lebanon — a tantalizing prospect for the Sunni powers of the region.”

As such, the Obama Administration is in effect subverting the war against the Islamic State. It offers nothing but malice and subversion to the Damascus government and the Syrian army. Were Obama more interested in eliminating jihadist violence against Syria and Iraq than in protecting its geopolitical interests and pandering to powerful anti-Iranian and anti-Syrian political interests in the U.S. and Middle East, he would aid and support the Syrian army’s battle against invading jihadists.

The Islamic State has made some stunning advances in Syria since the beginning of this year, culminating with the capture of the ancient city of Palmyra. The IS now controls half of Syrian territory and is moving toward the strategic city of Aleppo and a handful of other core territories leading to the gates of Damascus.

Simultaneously, Al-Nusra has proven itself to be nearly as brutal as the Islamic State. Writing in The Independent (UK) June 14, Patrick Cockburn revealed: “Last week fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, entered a village in Idlib province in the north-west of the country and shot dead at least 20 villagers from the Druze community. They had earlier forcibly converted hundreds of Druze to their fundamentalist variant of Sunni Islam.

“The incident happened in the Druze village of Qalb Lawzeh in the Jabal al-Summaq region, a place where al-Nusra fighters have dug up historic graves and destroyed shrines in recent months, according to the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It says Nusra first tried to confiscate the house of a Druze government official and shot one villager dead. Another villager then seized a fighter’s weapon and killed him. Nusra then sent reinforcements into the village and they opened fire….

“A reason why Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, another hard-line jihadi group, were able to break the military stalemate is the greater support they are getting from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Since succeeding to the throne in January, Saudi King Salman, along with other Sunni leaders, has pursued a more aggressive policy in backing extreme jihadi rebels in Syria.”

It is clear that Nusra is now functioning as the leader of the non-IS fighters in Syria who are receiving the bulk of support from America’s closest regional allies while the Obama Administration keeps silent. In effect, U.S. allies, and by extension Washington itself, are subsidizing al-Qaeda.

One has to wonder what in the world the White House is up to in the Middle East — unless this, unbelievably, is Obama’s missing strategy.

Meanwhile, Syria and Iran’s biggest foreign backer, Russia, is working toward a diplomatic solution if one is possible. It has been doing so for at least two years but the situation in Syria is so desperate there may be grounds for a settlement.

Stratfor also noted June 5: “Just as Russia swooped in with an exit strategy for the United States in 2013 when it presented a plan to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons, it is now trying to draw the United States into a political settlement on Syria that will preserve an Alawite-heavy government, even if Assad does not lead it. To that end, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who owns the Syria file in the Kremlin, has been trying to organize a Geneva conference that would include both Sunni regional players and Iran to work toward a power-sharing agreement.”

Class Views of the Grand Canal of Nicaragua

Sam Gordon

Those familiar with British economic history will know of the 1840’s “railway mania.” During a few years in this decade British railways expanded rapidly as investors poured their money into tracks and rolling stock. Industry and the factory systems were already established, surplus labour was available and those with cash to spare felt confident.

There was indeed a remarkable expansion of the railway system. But for many investors it also ended in tears amid a crisis of capitalism. The maniacs went puffer mad and suffocated amidst an oversized railway industry.

In the Americas, during these early years of the 21st century, there is the making of what may well turn out to be a variation on a similar theme. Instead of the English midlands and other manufacturing centres reaching out to city ports like London and Liverpool, or Glasgow in Scotland and Cardiff in Wales it’s something of a historical reverse.

The canal craze, if that is what it is, is headed by the Grand Canal of Nicaragua. The cost of the proposed canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is estimated at US$ 50bn. The company undertaking this is the Chinese based Hong Kong Development Group (HKND) headed by Wang Jing whose previous business background is in telecommunications. Nicaragua’s Sandinista government headed by President Daniel Ortega claim this is Nicaragua’s ladder out of poverty.

For Nicaragua’s part, in the translucent information flow which is part of everyday life here, HKND will be given a 50 year concession, possibly stretching to 100 years, to build and run the canal. This will require dredging a channel across Central America’s largest fresh water source, Lake Cocibolca.

In return Nicaragua will receive US$10m annually when the canal becomes operational. Beyond that is a mass of financial and legal detail which edges ever closer to the opaque.

But taken all together it appears that Nicaragua is being visited by the rentier class. Rentiers, as Marx called them, differ from financiers who thrive on compound interest, or merchant and manufacturers who profit from buying then selling or produce goods for sale. Rentiers secure land and other (often natural) resources. These take on the characteristics of commodities which are exchanged for rent.

Another water way, the Panama Canal, opened its lock gates to traffic 101 years ago. At first this canal was operated under the auspices of the USA. The Colossus of the North had successfully promoted – better to say provoked – the province of Panama to break away from the Republic of Colombia. This made it easier for JP Morgan bank transfers and the US military to supervise construction work. Under Jimmy Carter’s tenure in the White House control of the canal was given to Panama.

For a century the dimensions of the canal determined the dimensions of much of the world’s shipping. The shipping industry term Panamax refers to the maximum length of a middle range of ships which can pass though the locks at both ends of the canal. However Panama has set about enlarging the canal’s capacity, so allowing it to facilitate the passage of bigger ships. This is due to open in 2016.

Before Panama the only sea route between the two oceans was via the south of South America. It was either south of the Tierra del Fuego Island, at the tip of that continent or between the island and the Chilean mainland. The latter passage, the Straits of Magellan, was named after the Portuguese explorer who was the first European to make the crossing in 1520.

I made the voyage as an engineer on a tramp ship in the late 1960s. I can’t recall seeing many other ships although nowadays my old, chug-along tramp seems to have been surpassed by the luxury tourist cruse trade.

To the north of North America lies the North West Passage. In my day and for centuries before, this was a no-no for ships. Remember reading about John Cobalt who set sail from England in 1498? He hoped to find a channel through the ice packed seas at the north of Canada that would take him from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He was never seen again.

Some might want to deny climate change. But in September 2014 the Canadian owned ship, mv Munavik, with a 23000 ton cargo of nickel concentrate sailed from Canada to China via the North West Passage. The North West passage is a goer, even if it is not a threat to the other options. It certainly cuts a lot of time off the Central American routes for those wanting to carry goods between North West Europe and the gate way ports of eastern Siberia and China.

So we can see and to some extent define the capitalist’s interest in the canal. The merchant class has little to gain; the production and manufacturing interests are at present peripheral. Finance interests are considerable but for the next 50 to 100 years the rentier class will vie with the finance class for control.

Those on the left, and even some on the right, have little difficulty in accepting the contradiction between the interests of capital and interests of labour. But capitalism has other contradictions to cope with.

Let me explain this though an example a Belfast trade unionist shared with me.

Northern Ireland is a community divided by political traditions often associated with religious differences, even though both the politics of Irish nationalism and British unionism generally identify with Christianity. It’s a community not noted for progressive views; homosexuality is a criminal offence under law and creationism is a prevalent religious force challenging science education. A small, dogged, radical tradition does persist although conflicting mainstream traditions don’t mention it much.

My trade unionist friend explained that left wing activists have to cope with a contradiction between reality and illusion. Sometimes the illusion – perceptions held of one tradition with regard to those they oppose, becomes the reality. At other times reality, say, lack of jobs or a deficit of human rights, becomes an illusion. This illusion/reality contradiction can both stifle and breathe life into dialogue and action. The former seems to hold the upper hand most often.

Back in Nicaragua, those in favour of the canal continue to make their case, as is their right. Environmentalists present and campaign for more information and transparency on canal proposals, setting out their view of the associated ecological dangers (See theconversation.com February 19, article by Jorge Huete-Perez)

On Sunday 13 June BBC World News carried a news article on Nicaragua. This channel usually avoids any mention of Latin America like a swarm of malaria carrying mosquitos. Except of course is it’s on kicking a football about a patch of grass.

The news piece highlighted a protest staged in the city of Juigalpa, close to Lake Cocibolca. According to La Prensa, a conservative daily paper, this was protest number 46 organised against the canal. More are planned including what is described as a “national production stoppage.”

Viewed as a whole, within Nicaraguan society, the canal phenomenon shows contradictions which might yet nurture resistance to the interests of capital.

Some of these include; a conflicting unity of national sovereignty and the interests of a privately owned Chinese company, the quality of life with particular regard to clean water supply and effects of dredging operations in the construction and maintenance of a navigable channel across Lake Cocibolca, to say nothing of indigenous minority’s land loss and way of life rights and the anticipated improvement in the quality of life for the general population.

There are external contradictions with which the canal might have to contend. Consider a dip in world trade, a shift in technology away from larger ships and their copious carbon emissions, or jittery investors with other concerns on their minds. Tearful transport shareholders may not just be phenomena of the 19th century.

Turning the Tide on Bomb Trains

Stephen Quirke

Two months ago I reported on the plan to build propane export facilities at the Port of Portland. This report investigated bomb trains and the blast zone around the proposed terminal, dug into Pembina’s operations in Canada, and reported on their heavy participation in both tar sands extraction and fracking in Western Canada.

Much has happened since this last report. On April 7th the Swinomish tribe in Washington filed a lawsuit against BNSF oil trains. On April 9th Portland’s Planning and Sustainability Commission (PSC) voted in favor of Pembina’s pipeline, raising howls of opposition from the crowd. On May 6th the Tories of Alberta were unseated after 44 years of rule – kicked out by a wave of opposition to the fossil fuel industry that finally crashed along with oil prices, with the socialist New Democratic Party now in charge promising to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. On May 7th Mayor Hales cleaned up the PSC’s mess and dropped his support for Pembina. On May 16th, thousands of activists showed up in Seattle to obstruct Shell’s Arctic drilling fleet, including hundreds of “kayactivists” on the water, who took leadership from Alaskan and Puget Sound tribes fighting coal and oil companies. On May 19th, an oil pipeline ruptured on the California coast, spilling over 100,000 gallons of oil and creating a 9 mile ocean slick. And on June 4th the Coast Salish Nation, representing dozens of powerful tribes in the region, announced a unanimous agreement to protect the Salish Sea from crude oil shipments by rail, pipe, and sea.

Following these successful calls for solidarity from First Nations, the Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland is asking people to bear witness to tribal struggles to protect sacred land – particularly the Lummi Nation in Washington’s Puget Sound, who are currently fighting the largest coal export terminal in the country.

On June 27th, members of the Lummi Nation will join the Unitarian Universalist’s annual General Assembly to discuss how the public can address climate change by centering indigenous struggles. The event organizers say their intent is to create stronger alliances across environmental and faith groups, and send a strong message of solidarity to indigenous nations in the fight against fossil fuels and other extractive industries. Their event begins at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland at 4:45 pm, and is both free and open to the public.

Portland’s mayor got a bit bruised during his brief foray into the world of propane exports. Fossil fuel Charlie received countless phone calls, emails, public records requests, and a string of difficult questions regarding his consultation policies with local tribes. Suddenly feeling which way the wind was blowing, and perhaps noting the oil train that caught fire the day before, Charlie shed his fossil fuel title on May 7th, and publicly dropped his support for the project, telling the press “At some point those of us in power have to listen to those who put us there.”

That same morning Tim Norgren, a local member of Laborers’ International Union of North America, locked himself to the train tracks feeding an oil terminal in Northwest Portland, stating his opposition to bomb trains, climate chaos, and the new “free trade” deal that he said would drive both.

Shortly before the mayor’s public announcement, Hales’ staff also reached out to the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission to re-establish regular meetings with local tribes – a city commitment that was originally dropped after Hales took office in 2013.

Though Hales’ words were music to many, they were very displeasing to Port Director Bill Wyatt, who seemed worried about his business prospects with fracked gas no longer on the table. Wyatt has since pontificated on the new and dangerous effects of popular opinion, asking “…what does that mean for other companies that do business at the port? ….what if someone thinks we shouldn’t be shipping GMO corn to Korea?” From their dark tower of opulence, the Portland Business Alliance warmly agreed, suggesting that fossil fuel jobs are the only way to create equity in the city. Never to be upstaged, the Oregonian’s editorial board revved up its brain engines and sputtered hard, accusing the mayor of creating lost job “casualties”, and urging us to “refuse to look the other way while the mayor kneecaps the city’s reputation…”

Knowing a good team when they see one, Pembina announced they would stay and fight, revoking the CEO’s earlier promise to leave “if it turns out the people of Portland don’t want this.” The company is currently funding a PR blitz demanding that the city council vote on their proposal despite a total lack of interest – which could invite a lawsuit if any formal decision is made. When asked for her legal opinion, City Attorney Tracy Reeves argued there is no requirement to put Pembina on the council agenda.

The mayor’s surrender to popular opinion is clearly a reflection of climate change awareness in Portland, as well as effective groundwork in its local environmental scene. It was also sweet vindication for the hundred people who turned out to speak with the PSC back in April, including Paul Lumley, Executive Director of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.

There Lumley informed commissioners that, contrary to rumors, the tribes he represented had not actually been consulted on the project, and at least one of these tribes had serious concerns about explosive propane trains making frequent visits to popular fishing sites, and passing by fishing communities. Cathy Sampson-Kruse, a Walla Walla tribal elder, explained to commissioners that their lack of consultation was also a violation of their own policies on tribal relations, which were established back in 2012 to help the city be a better neighbor to tribes, and to avoid being sued by them. Strangely, Commissioner Karen Gray was very forward in asking city planner Tom Armstrong if the project would violate treaty rights, then mysteriously voted in favor of the project, allowing it to squeak by 6-4. “The answer is: you have to ask the tribes,” Lumley later explained in an interview, “But it sure seems like it would affect their treaty-reserved resources.”

This little oversight loomed larger in the following weeks when Walter Echo-Hawk, a renowned indigenous legal scholar, held a talking circle on treaty rights and consultation at PSU, calling on the city to re-commit to consultation (an event humbly attended by members of the PSC). While these conversations moved forward activist groups bird-dogged the mayor at events and disrupted his council hearings, where they performed surreal political theater with giant cardboard heads. If that wasn’t unsettling enough, posters started to pop up all over town showing a sickly-looking Hales flanked by oil wells, covered with the text “Fossil Fuel Charlie for Mayor 2016”. On May 7th, the day after fossil fuel Tories were thrown out of office, the mayor finally dropped his support for the $500 million project, and urged the company to leave Portland.

The activists who rattled the mayor are a small part of what’s been dubbed “the thin green line” – a network of environmental activists in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia who are working to stop over 29 fossil fuel expansion and export projects in the Northwest, citing damage to air quality, waterways, coastlines, and the global climate.

And in front of that thin green line is a fierce red one, made up of Native Americans with deep spiritual connections to the local landscape. These Native Americans carry an intergenerational struggle to protect their lands from a style of development that is, by any historical standard, utterly foreign to the North American landscape.

Consultation and accommodation: a tale of two cultures

A glimpse of this cultural conflict over land can be seen in over-confident statements from Port Director Wyatt, who argued back in September that massive shipments of propane in the Columbia Gorge “add tremendous value to the River” by accelerating the transformation of the river through dredging and jetty expansion. Paul Lumley, Executive Director of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, begs to differ. In an interview last month, Lumley explained that “adding value to the river means restoration of natural resources for the benefit of all members of the public,” while “destroying the river, or even parts of it, does not add value.”

Despite promises of peaceful accommodation, the U.S. government has routinely broken treaties with Native Americans by depriving them of access to traditional foods – most famously through dam-building in the Northwest.

Acting on what Barry Lopez called “a ruthless, angry search for wealth”, early Europeans saw themselves on a proud crusade to transform the new world. This became a religious mission to mine raw materials from unfamiliar landscapes as quickly as possible – including irrigation water from the Columbia River. This was backed by a strangely irreligious pride that counted all negatives, including poisoned water and ruined salmon stocks, as necessary costs for a brand of “progress” that had all the marks of solipsism. Lacking any brakes, this drive to transform landscapes under the banner of “development” was a constant risk to treaty rights, and drove numerous attempts to steal land from native reserves in the Northwest. These risks have become increasingly ominous as climate change brings drought to the Cascades, and as scientists discover that atmospheric carbon drives the acidification of oceans – which is already making the Pacific coast uninhabitable for shellfish. Given the circumstances, the need to establish two-way dialogue, and genuine accommodation, could hardly be greater. And it’s clear that we have a long way to go.

“Gold is excellent, gold is treasure, and he who possesses it does whatever he wishes in this life and succeeds in helping souls into paradise,” wrote Christopher Columbus. “Energy is the lifeblood of America’s economy,” said Sean Hannity to a conference of bakken oil executives last year. “What you have been able to show this country is nothing short of a miracle.”

Although we usually speak of Oregon and Washington as fossil fuel roadblocks, the westward shipment of fossil fuels would also cross the territory of at least 38 sovereign First Nations in Oregon and Washington, and many more in British Columbia. One of these is the Unist’ot’en Band of the Wet’suwet’en, which has blocked multiple pipelines for several years by occupying their unceded territory, and building traditional houses in the path of proposed pipelines. Affirming the rights of these nations to assert their sovereignty, and to receive full recognition from government entities that owe it to them, has become an increasingly loud demand in the fight for climate justice.

In May the Lummi Nation held a treaty rights conference in Seattle that drew over 150 people to support indigenous struggles in the fight against fossil fuels and climate chaos. There, at the Seattle University student center, Lummi representatives told the audience that their fight against coal is critical to mankind’s survival. “Our resistance is your resistance. If we lose, you are lost,” said councilmember Jay Julius.

Government-to-Government Relations (It’s really not that hard!)

Formal recognition for indigenous sovereignty comes from an official process of government-to-government consultation, which has been laid out in statutes in both Oregon and Washington.

Consultation is a necessary ingredient for any government entities that need to accommodate one another, including state agencies consulting eachother, like the Department of Forestry and the Department of Fish and Wildlife. For tribal governments, any potential decision that can affect their treaty-reserved resources requires that the responsible government agencies enter into consultation with those tribes. This allows the affected government body to address and resolve the conflict early on, before a decision has been made, and long before any action has been taken – similar to relations between state agencies or city bureaus. Failure to do so risks violating federal treaty rights, state and local laws, federal statutes, and international human rights law. The city of Boardman, for instance, could have avoided last year’s conflict over the Coyote Island coal export terminal if they had a local consultation policy in place. Instead, after years of planning, the Department of State Lands shot down the project last year after tribes told the state it was planned on top of a traditional fishing site.

After weeks of phone calls and meetings, I learned that Oregon state agencies, and especially Portland city bureaus, are very unsure about how to approach consultation with Native American tribes, and are particularly confused about the difference between what is desired and what is required. For instance, when DEQ altered the air quality permit at Port Westward in Clatskanie, they effectively legalized a thousand oil trains coming through the Columbia Gorge every year. Did DEQ consult tribes before letting oil trains start crowding their fishing sites? According to DEQ’s Tribal Liaison Christine Svetkovich, the answer is both yes and no. DEQ did tell tribes what was happening, but did not search for potential impacts to treaty rights, and did not acknowledge that their decision could trigger impacts to treaty-reserved resources. Instead, DEQ insisted that the scope of their decision was very limited – an opinion that has actually landed them in court with environmental groups, who say they did not even estimate their air pollution impacts properly.

CRITFC’s position? According to Paul Lumley “These trains would be going right by our traditional fishing sites, right by our river-side communities. The risk of an explosion, particularly for a propane train, or of an oil spill and derailment, would be very devastating. The loss of life is not something we want to risk, and my member tribes have expressed serious concern about this.”

In the run up and immediate aftermath of the April 7th PSC vote, Tom Armstrong and the mayor’s staff effectively said (in multiple interviews) that sending unread emails to tribal representatives is consultation enough, and gave no indication that they searched for potential impacts to cultural resources. This was likely the source of rumors that bothered CRITFC. In a brief interview after the hearing, Armstrong also said in a phone conversation that “there are no established protocols” for consultation in Portland – information he conspicuously left out in his testimony to Commissioner Gray. Paradoxically, both state and city officials contend that they were engaged in a sort of consultation, but in an ad-hoc manner that they apparently hoped would end as quickly as possible. “I testified before the PSC that ‘consultation has not occurred’,” explains Paul Lumley, Executive Director of CRITFC. “You would think the one message they couldn’t take away was that they did consultation, but they did. People who know better wanted to just ‘check the box’ and say consultation happened because I spoke. That’s not how consultation works.”

One factor at play here was the perception among state and local officials that tribes only have influence with the federal government. However, according to Gabe S. Galanda, a practicing attorney in Washington,

“In the Pacific Northwest, the consequences to a local government for failing to honor the normative tenet of inter-governmental consultation could include significant liability for violation of guaranteed federal Indian Treaty rights or destruction of tribal historic or cultural properties. Beyond that, it is simply a best governmental practice to consider whether the rights of sister governments might be implicated by local government action.”

Paul Lumley was fully in agreement with this final point, and highlighted the absurdity of the city assuming tribal support for Pembina’s project prior to the April hearing. “Would the city email the state, then assume they’ve signed off on a project because they don’t respond? It’s the same with tribes – we are sovereign governments just like the state of Oregon.”

“Free Trade” vs Indigenous Rights

At the April 7th PSC hearing, Sampson-Kruse attempted to emphasize that point, but Chair Baugh cut her off quickly, saying his staff would look into the matter. In a push to support Pembina, he would later describe barriers to free trade as a form of colonization, after distracting commissioners from the indigenous concerns that were actually in the room. “We industrialized this nation over the indigenous people here, and told them the same thing, and polluted this planet,” Baugh intoned. “Now we’re gonna sit here and say ‘no’?”

In early March, a unique lawsuit was filed by the Blueberry River First Nations in British Columbia that aims to stop all new oil and gas developments in their territory – one of the places where Pembina gets its fracked gas. The tribes say these operations are a violation of Treaty 8, from 1900, which promised Natives they could continue their traditional ways of life in exchange for opening up their lands to European settlement. Instead they’ve seen over 16,000 oil and gas wells, and over 28,000 kilometers of pipelines, with severe impacts on water quality, fish, and wildlife.

It’s worth remembering that just two weeks before planners voted on their pipeline, Pembina abruptly promised a $3 million “community investment fund” to help the city of Portland implement its Climate Action Plan – a kindly gesture to off-set their carbon emissions.

In 2008, Pembina also consulted with the Canadian indigenous environmental group REAC, promising off-sets to a pipeline right-of-way through Alberta, Canada for the Nipisi and Mitsue pipelines, which were planned to carry diluent and tar sands. During these meetings they promised REAC directors extensive restoration of caribou habitat covering an area that represented five times the footprint of their right-of-way: a forest that would be permanently clearcut to make way for their pipelines. The promise was exciting enough for REAC to drop their opposition to the new pipelines, despite fears that more clearcuts and pipelines could push the caribou herds into extinction.

What came next? According to REAC director Julie Asterisk, “The area they re-planted was miniscule, and far less than we agreed to. We were left with the sickening feeling that we got suckered.”

According to Doug Badger, another director of REAC, Pembina has often preferred to avoid consultation altogether, and regularly gives out cash envelopes to tribal members instead.

“Pembina is not to be trusted,” Doug told me “This is a company that thinks money can buy them anything — except restoration for the habitat they destroyed.”

Doug and other indigenous activists are cautiously optimistic that Alberta’s new government will restore respect for indigenous peoples. With thousands recently laid off by oil companies, there is also hope that people might go back to work restoring habitat harmed by resource extraction – a hope bolstered by the NDP’s pledge to implement the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights.

Over 25 years in the making, the Declaration marks an exciting new commitment from world governments to respect indigenous peoples, and will likely create a fresh background for upholding treaty rights in the courts. With support from President Obama beginning in 2010, the federal government’s commitment could encourage our states to follow Alberta. That, plus support from the thin green line, would be a truly historic development.

The Mirror of Inflexibility

Binoy Kampmark

The terrorist imaginary necessarily requires mutual enforcement. It begins with the idea of a red under the bed, or the monster in the woods. The work for such a monster is essentially done by the fantasist victim, the individual who fears what he or she might become. For those anticipating the next terrorist attack, praise and aggrandisement of the perpetrator’s potential is exactly what is sought. Call them vicious, call them ambitious, and they have notched a few more points on the ideological scoreboard.

No one has been doing this better in terms of “western” countries than Tony Abbott of Australia. The Prime Minister has made it a primary object of his time in office to raise the threat of the Islamic State to the level of Satan’s wily battles with God.

In an address to the UN Security Council in September last year, Abbott insisted that ISIS had “declared war on the world” by emphasising its caliphate building credentials. But it was important for Abbott to globalise local incidents by connecting them with events in Syria. The enemy, in other words, was formidable, seductive and powerful. “Last week, an Australian operative in Syria instructed his local network to conduct demonstration killings and this week an Australian terror suspect savagely attacked two policemen.”

A “terror suspect” is a handy creation of the addled security complex, operating neatly to patch over inadequate arguments and deficiencies in evidence. In that sense, the public relations ballast ISIS obtains in distant Australia is vastly disproportionate with that it can actually do. Terrifying as it is for residents in Syria, Iraq and immediate environs, the impression that a caliphate is about to spring up in Lakemka, Sydney or the Dandenong’s in Victoria are farfetched notions of lunacy. Nor is it entirely convincing that bad boys in the Middle East will continue to be rebels in Australian suburbia.

This has merely spurred Abbott on. Bereft of ideas in keeping the peace, he is intent on forging the ground for domestic conflict. In his latest speech on the subject in what is fast becoming a conference junket of “violent extremism summits,” Abbott explained how the Islamic State represented “terrorism with global ambitions”. The message stemming from the group, which Abbott now insists on calling Daesh, was “Submit or die”.

With a puerile reflex, Abbott could only see an enemy incapable of negotiations and discussion. (This fashionable nonsense is typical of the righteous – in truth, deals are always done, irrespective of how an enemy is rhetorically fashioned.) This is the mirror logic of the inflexible and dogmatic, a phenomenon Abbott knows rather well. “You can’t negotiate with an entity like this, you can only fight it.” This has been his own recipe in domestic politics for years.

Such an approach also reveals a persistent strategy. It is the theme of relevance in the face of irrelevance; huge distances overcome by appropriate proximity to the dangers posed by certain ideas. The land down under, one suitable for the US Marines and signals intelligence, but not really significant to militants keen on redrawing the Middle Eastern map, has become ripe for conquest.

Yearning for his invitation to the boardroom of historical merit, Abbott insists that Australia has been swept up in the current of terroristic fascination, one which has affected a list of countries, including France, Belgium, Canada, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Nigeria, Jordan, Denmark, Kenya and the United States. “The tentacles of the death cult have extended even here as we discovered with the Martin Place siege last December.” For those vaguely acquainted with the colourfully distressed past of the man in question, Man Haron Monis, Islamic fundamentalism was merely a prop, a crutch of reassurance. All in all, he was merely an ideological drag act, keen to dress up for a fashion when needed.

Feeding such threats adds fuel to the suggestive fire that revolutions only succeed because the government of the day is happy to do four fifths of the work of the threat in question. As Abdul-Rehman Malik, programs manager at the Muslim outreach group Radical Middle Way opined, “to call [Islamic State] a death cult, as the Australian Prime Minister does, is a complete misnomer and it actually feeds in to IS propaganda.”

Instead of focusing on feasible education programs involving community individuals of merit, the statement of innate cultural superiority has been raised on the parapets. We are good, you are bad; what we do is fabulous, and what you do reflects the innately primitive and barbaric.

It is an ominous sign for Australians when their leader insists that they are of sufficient importance to be conquered by a “death cult”. In an oddly convergent way, Monis and Abbott share one fundamental principle – a yearning for infamous relevance, and a fear of being inconsequential to the bricks and mortar of history. Being mere minutiae terrifies them.

Avaaz’s Climate Vanity

Patrick Bond

Who’s not heard the great African revolutionary Amilcar Cabral’s injunction, fifty years ago, “Tell no lies and claim no easy victories”? If, like me, you’re a petit bourgeois who is hopeful for social progress, then let’s be frank: this advice hits at our greatest weakness, the temptation of back-slapping vanity.

The leading framers for the 41-million strong clicktivist team from Avaaz need to remember Cabral. They over-reached ridiculously last week in praising the G7:

Many told us it was a pipe dream, but the G7 Summit of leading world powers just committed to getting the global economy off fossil fuels forever!!! Even the normally cynical media is raving that this is a huge deal. And it’s one giant step closer to a huge win at the Paris summit in December – where the entire world could unite behind the same goal of a world without fossil fuels – the only way to save us all from catastrophic climate change… Our work is far from done, but it’s a day to celebrate – click here to read more and say congratulations to everyone else in this incredibly wonderful community!!

Actually, according to The Economist: “no fossil-fuel-burning power station will be closed down in the immediate future as a result of this declaration. The goal will not make any difference to the countries’ environmental policies, since they are mostly consistent with this long-range goal anyway. Where they are not (some countries are increasing coal use, for example) they will not be reined in because of the new promises… the G7’s climate effort raises as many questions as it answers. The group seems to have rejected proposals for more demanding targets, such as decarbonisation by 2050.”

Or Time: “The results were disappointing to say the least… The G7 announced an ‘ambitious’ plan to phase out all fossil fuels worldwide by 2100. Unfortunately, they didn’t make any concrete plans to scale back their own conventional fuel consumption. That’s a big deal when 59 percent of historic global carbon dioxide emissions—meaning the greenhouse gases already warming the atmosphere—comes from these seven nations. Taken as a group, G7 coal plants produce twice the amount of CO2 as the entire African continent, and at least 10 times the carbon emissions produced by the 48 least developed countries as a whole. If the G7 is serious about tackling climate change, they should start at home.”

So what was going on, really? Here’s a talking head from the Council on Foreign Relations (an imperialist brains-trust): “The United States has long pressed for a shift away from binding emissions reduction commitments and toward a mix of nationally grounded emission-cutting efforts and binding international commitments to transparency and verification. European countries have often taken the other side, emphasizing the importance of binding targets (or at least policies) for cutting emissions. Now it looks like the big developed countries are on the same page as the United States. The language above is all about binding countries to transparency – and there isn’t anything elsewhere in the communiqué about binding them to actual emissions goals.”

There is an even tougher critique from the left, e.g. from Oscar Reyes of the Institute for Policy Studies, who annotated the G7 climate communique here. He lands many powerful blows, not least of which is that you simply cannot trust these politicians. This is well known in Africa. Exactly a decade ago, Tony Blair led the (then-G8) Gleneagles Summit that made all manner of ambitious redistributive promises for the continent that weren’t fulfilled.

Another promise to look at more critically is whether ‘net zero’ carbon emissions by 2100 will be gamed through ‘false solutions’ like Carbon Capture and Storage, dropping iron filings in the ocean to create algae blooms, and expansion of timber plantations to suck up CO2. The most serious watchdogs here, the ETC group, ActionAid and Biofuelwatch, agree that the G7 needs to reverse its energy ministers’ recent endorsement of these Dr Strangelove strategies.

Put it all together, and after last week’s Elmau G7 Summit, admits even Oxfam (often also upward gazing), “This lukewarm summit result willonly make the fight harder, if not impossible.”

Avaaz are not only embarrassingly contradicted on their right flank. The organisation’s premature celebration is dangerous. After all, the conservative (pro-market pro-insiderism anti-activism) wing of ‘climate action’ politics – as distinct from climate justice advocacy – is gaming us all now, arguing that the Paris COP21 can result in a victory. Avaaz just amped up that narrative.

Will the mild-mannered Climate Action Network (CAN) join a big all-in tent to maximise Paris popular mobilisations? In 2011 at the COP17, that’s the approach that civil society tried in Durban, to my regret. I think CJ activists drawing in CAN – and Avaaz – may be making a serious mistake. For this surprising Avaaz spin – declaring victory at the G7 – compounds the essential problem of mis-estimating the rigour of the fight ahead.

The reality: if we don’t dramatically change the balance of forces and applaud activists who do much more militant modes of engagement, then global COP malgovernance continues another 21 years. Civil disobedience has been breaking out in all sorts of blockadia spaces, and so surely Avaaz should put 99% of its climate advocacy effort into amplifying the work of those heroes?

From Paris, one of the main organisers of COP21 protests, Maxime Combes, was suitably cynical about the G7, which “had already committed in 2009 (in Italy) to not exceed 2° C and to achieve a reduction of at least 50% of global emissions by 2050. So nothing new in the 2015 declarations except that at that time they had also committed to reduce by 80% or more their own emissions by 2050. No mention of this target is present in the declaration this year.” Avaaz is young, yes, but still should be able to recognise backsliding over the half-dozen years.

Last September, I was greatly heartened by Avaaz mobilising (not messaging), against what were my own prior predictions (on RealNewsfrom 4’00”, reflecting pessimism thanks partly to Avaaz’s awfully unfortunate New York subway adverts, putting “hipsters and bankers in the same boat march”). That wonderful mass march linked the issues and put non-compromising placards high into the air (way higher than ‘climate action’ or pro-nuke or pro-cap-and-trade), and the next day, the Flood Wall Street protest hit corporations hard for a few hours. Avaaz and allies appropriately had us marching away from the UN, because after all nothing useful has happened there regarding air pollution – or any global crisis for that matter – since the 1987 Montreal Protocol addressed the ozone hole by banning CFCs.

And I am also one who appreciates Avaaz’s excellent petition machinery. (It’s in use now generating awareness and solidarity for truly excellent anti-mining campaigns two hours south and north of where I live in Durban, for example.) So this is not a standard lefty critique of clicktivism. It is a recognition of how desperately important it is for Avaaz to retain maximum credibility in the mainstream and among hard-core activists alike. Endorsing the world’s 1% politicians is quite surreal, given how little they did last week in Bavaria, what with their 85-year time horizon and orientation to false solutions.

Avaaz wasn’t alone, by the way. From a press release I learned from Greenpeace’s international climate politics officer Martin Kaiser: “Elmau delivered.” Also, from Greenpeace US Energy Campaign director Kelly Mitchell, “Leaders at the G7 meeting have put forward a powerful call to move the global economy away from fossil fuels and toward a renewable energy future. Heading into the Paris climate meeting this year, it’s a significant step toward securing a commitment to 100% renewable energy by 2050.”

Tell no lies, claim no easy victories. What I hope might happen is that in future Avaaz, Greenpeace and similar well-meaning activists might at least see it in their interest to tell the truth and intensify the battleagainst the leaders of the G7 (and the BRICS too) and especially against the corporations that yank their chains. Instead of Avaaz massaging the G7 elites for “sending an immediate signal to dirty and clean energy investors that will help accelerate the clean-energy boom we desperately need,” as if capitalism can solve the climate crisis, why not re-boot the power relations?

How about this wording, instead: “Since the G7 rulers finally recognise that fossil fuels must stay underground, duh!, but still fail to act decisively to that end, we in Avaaz condemn the politicians. We’ll redouble our efforts to target their biggest fossil investors. We’ll do so through not only divestment – achieved by small investor committees in wealthy Global North institutions – but now we’ll also turn Avaaz’s mighty 41-million strong listserve towards consumer boycotts of the corporations and especially the banks that have the most power over these G7-BRICS politicos. And we’ll get legal and media support for anyone blockading these firms, since the ‘necessity defence’ for civil disobedience is becoming much more vital to our world’s near-term survival. Even the Pope’s new climate Encyclical agrees.”

Wouldn’t that be a more satisfying and nutritious strategy than the climate junkfood email that millions just received from Avaaz? I really felt a little sick after consuming it. Surely Avaaz can see the merits of shifting the goalposts to the left each time they have a chance, and thusenhancing the climate justice struggle – not joining the G7 in a fatal climate snuggle.