Intergenerational Theft

Gideon Polya

Remorseless greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution is leaving  a polluted and devastated planet for future generations. Further, present intergenerational inequity means that for every $1 received by climate criminal corporations for thermal coal, future generations will inescapably have to pay $1 to $14 (depending on location and technology)  to sequester the CO2 from coal combustion.  Young people must revolt, oppose this mounting Carbon Debt, and insist  “Keep it in the ground”.

Carbon Debt reflects the inescapable future cost in today's dollars of fixing the remorselessly increasing climate damage. Carbon Debt  is the historical contribution of countries  to the carbon pollution of the atmosphere and can be variously expressed as Gt CO2-e (gigatonnes or billions of tonnes of CO2-equivalent) or in dollar terms by applying a Carbon Price. Thus leading climate economist Dr Chris Hope from 90-Nobel-Laureate Cambridge  University has estimated a damage-related Carbon Price in US dollars of $150 per tonne CO2.

The World added 1,285 billion tonnes CO2 to the atmosphere in 1751-2006 [2]. and currently adds a further 64 billion tonnes  CO2-e (CO2-equivalent) annually  to give a total 1751-2015 GHG pollution of 1,797 billion tonnes CO2-e.  

At a damage-related Carbon Price of $150 per tonne CO2,  the World  has a total 1751-2015 Carbon Debt of 1,797 billion tonnes CO2-e x $150 per tonne CO2-e = $270 trillion (about 3 times the annual world GDP of $85 trillion)  that is increasing by about 64 billion tonnes CO2-e x $150 per tonne CO2 = $9.6 trillion or about  $10 trillion each year.

By way of a national example, Australia is a world-leading annual per capita  GHG polluter with a total 1751-2015 Carbon Debt of $5.6 trillion that is increasing at $300 billion per year. Thus Australia (population 24 million) with 0.34% of the world's population has 2.1% of the world's Carbon Debt. The Australian Carbon Debt will have to be paid by the young and future generations and for under-30 year old Australians is increasing at about $30,000 per person per year, noting that the annual Australian per capita income is about $65,000.  

Unlike a personal debt that can be expunged by bankruptcy or a national debt that can be ostensibly reduced by reneging or by printing money (aka in the US as “quantitative easing”), the Carbon Debt is inescapable and future generations will have no choice but  to pay up or suffer horrendous consequences. Carbon Debt repayment can be concretely visualized as the ever-rising sea walls in response  to rising sea levels,  massive new building requirements to meet the increased severity of tropical storms, and the huge engineering projects needed to return the atmospheric CO2 concentration to a safe and sustainable pre-Industrial Revolution level of circa 300 ppm CO2 from the present dangerous and damaging 400 ppm CO2 as recommended by many scientists, whether by biochar production, bicarbonate  production, mineral carbonation or carbon dioxide capture and sequestration (CCS)   .

Another way of seeing this Carbon Debt currently being imposed on future generations  is to determine how much they will inescapably have to pay in today's US dollars for  every $1 paid today to mining corporations for thermal coal -  various estimates are given below in the areas of (1) damage-related Carbon Price, (2) biochar production,  (3) bicarbonate production,  (4) mineral carbonation,  and (5) CCS.

1. Damage-related Carbon Price.  

One way of assessing the Carbon Debt for future generations from burning 1 tonne of  thermal coal is via a damage-related Carbon Price  e.g. a Climate Change Tax or Carbon Tax equal to the mean estimate of the damage caused by 2.9 tonnes of  CO2 emissions from burning 1 tonne of thermal coal.

Dr Chris Hope (BA (Univ. of Oxford), MA, PhD (Univ. of Cambridge), and Reader in Policy Modelling,  Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge Judge Business School, [90  Nobel Laureate] University of Cambridge) (2011):  “If the best current scientific and economic evidence is to be believed, and climate change could be a real and serious problem, the appropriate response is to institute today a climate change tax equal to the mean estimate of the damage caused by a tonne of CO2 emissions. The raw calculations from the default PAGE09 model suggest the tax should be  about $100 per tonne of CO2 in the EU. But correcting for the limited time horizon of the model, and bringing the calculations forward to 2102, in year 2012 dollars, brings the suggested tax up to about $150 per tonne of CO2. There are good arguments for setting the initial tax at about $250 per tonne of CO2 in the US, while starting off at a much lower  level, maybe $15 per tonne of CO2, in the poorest regions of the world, all in the year 2012, in year 2012 dollars. That such policy advice would not pass the laugh test [if it can be carried out without laughing about it], particularly in the US, shows that the rhetoric about getting to grips with climate change has not been seriously thought through to its logical conclusion. As a result, rather than falling, greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to rise (Le Quere et al, 2009). A fiscally neutral significant climate change tax is the best chance we have of bringing the climate change problem under control”.

Combustion of 1 tonne thermal coal yields about 2.9 tonnes CO2. In February 2015 the coal price was US$66 per tonne Australian thermal coal corresponding to  ($66 /tonne  coal) x (1 tonne  coal/2.9 tonne CO2) = $22.8 per tonne  CO2 subsequently generated.

The  damage-related Carbon Price of  $150 per tonne  CO2 means  that. the damage-related cost per tonne CO2 generated by burning thermal coal  is $150 per tonne  CO2 /$22.8 per tonne  CO2 = 6.6   times greater than  the amount received for the coal generating that tonne of CO2. Thus for every $1 received by a mining company for thermal coal, future generations will be forced  to pay 6.6 times more in today's dollars for repairing the global consequences of that  pollution of the atmosphere  and ocean with CO2 .

If, as recommended by Dr Chris Hope, the Carbon Price for the US is $250 per tonne CO2 , then for every $1 received for thermal coal by climate criminal mining companies within  America,  future Americans would be obligated to pay $250 per tonne CO2/$22.8 per tonne CO2 =  11 times as much  or $11 in today's dollars for repairing the global consequences of pollution of the atmosphere  and ocean with CO2.

2. Biochar.

Another way of assessing the Carbon Debt for future generations is via the cost of sequestering excess atmospheric CO2 as biochar - carbon generated from the anaerobic pyrolysis at 400-700 degrees C of photosynthetically-generated cellulose and related biopolymers.

According to Simon Shackley and colleagues (2011): “Depending on the assumptions used, biochar in the UK context may cost between GB£-148 t^-1 and  389 t^-1 (US$-222 to 584) produced, delivered and spread on fields, which is a provisional carbon abatement value of (GB£-144 tCO2^–1 to 208 tCO2^–1) [(U$215 tCO2^–1  - 310 tCO2^–1 ] … [or if US corn straw-based] $49 to US$74 t^-1CO2”.

A thermal coal price of $66 per tonne thermal coal means  receipt of $22.8 per tonne CO2 generated by burning 1 tonne of thermal coal. The cheapest cost in the UK for sequestering the CO2 is  $210 per tonne CO2 sequestered/ $22.8 per tonne CO2 =   9.2 times the price of the coal generating 1 tonne of CO2. Thus for every tonne of  CO2 sequestered as biochar in the UK    the cost will be 9.2-13.6 times as much as the amount received for the coal generating that tonne of CO2. Similarly, for every tonne of CO2 sequestered as biochar in the US mid-West using corn straw (the most cost effective  way of generating biochar) ,  the cost will be 2.1-3.2  times as much as the amount received for the coal generating that tonne of CO2 on combustion.

Accordingly, for every $1 received by mining corporations  for their thermal coal about $2 - $14 (depending  on location) will have to be paid by future generations in today's dollars to sequester the resultant  CO2 as biochar.  

3. Accelerated Weathering of Limestone (AWL).

A further way of assessing the Carbon Debt for future generations is via the cost of sequestering atmospheric CO2 as bicarbonate from the reaction of CO2 with suspended limestone (calcium carbonate) (Accelerated Weathering of Limestone or AWL).

G.H. Rau has proposed an electrochemically accelerated   version of such sequestration: “ Electrochemical splitting of calcium carbonate (e.g., as contained in limestone or other minerals) is explored as a means of forming dissolve hydroxides for absorbing, neutralizing, and storing carbon dioxide, and for restoring, preserving, or enhancing ocean calcification. While essentially insoluble in water, CaCO3 can be dissolved in the presence of the highly acidic anolyte of a water electrolysis cell. The resulting charged constituents, Ca2+ and C03(2-), migrate to the cathode and anode, respectively, forming Ca(OH)2 on the one hand and H2CO3 (or H2O and CO2) on the other. By maintaining a pH between 6 and 9, subsequent hydroxide reactions with CO2 primarily produce dissolved calcium bicarbonate, Ca(HCO3)2aq. Thus, for each mole of CaCO3 split there can be a net capture of up to 1 mol of CO2. Ca(HCO3)2aq is thus the carbon sequestrant that can be diluted and stored in the ocean, in natural or artificial surface water reservoirs, or underground. The theoretical work requirement for the reaction is 266 kJe per net mole CO2 consumed. Even with inefficiencies, a realized net energy expenditure lower than the preceding quantity appears possible considering energy recovery via oxidation of the H2 produced. The net process cost is estimated to be <$100/tonne CO2 mitigated. An experimental demonstration of the concept is presented, and further implementation issues are discussed”.

Setting aside the limitations of this proposed AWL technology (it would be most effective when associated with coastally-located coal- or gas-burning power stations), a  cost of $100 per tonne CO2 sequestered would mean that for every tonne of CO2 thus sequestered as bicarbonate, the cost would be $100 per tonne CO2 sequestered/$22.8 per tonne CO2 generated = 4.4 times as much as the amount received for the coal generating that tonne of CO2 on combustion. Accordingly, for every $1 received by mining corporations  for their thermal coal, about $4.4 will have to be paid by future generations in today's dollars to sequester the resultant  CO2 as bicarbonate.

4. Mineral carbonation.

Mineral carbonation involves reaction of CO2 with minerals using  wollastonite (CaSiO₃) or steel slag as feedstock. W.J.J Huijgen et al.: “A cost evaluation of CO₂ sequestration by aqueous mineral carbonation has been made using either wollastonite (CaSiO₃) or steel slag as feedstock. First, the process was simulated to determine the properties of the streams as well as the power and heat consumption of the process equipment. Second, a basic design was made for the major process equipment, and total investment costs were estimated with the help of the publicly available literature and a factorial cost estimation method. Finally, the sequestration costs were determined on the basis of the depreciation of investments and variable and fixed operating costs. Estimated costs are 102 and 77 €/ton CO₂ [$111 and $84] net avoided for wollastonite and steel slag, respectively. For wollastonite, the major costs are associated with the feedstock and the electricity consumption for grinding and compression (54 and 26 €/ton CO₂ [$59 and $28] avoided, respectively). A sensitivity analysis showed that additional influential parameters in the sequestration costs include the liquid-to-solid ratio in the carbonation reactor and the possible value of the carbonated product. The sequestration costs for steel slag are significantly lower due to the absence of costs for the feedstock. Although various options for potential cost reduction have been identified, CO₂ sequestration by current aqueous carbonation processes seems expensive relative to other CO₂ storage technologies. The permanent and inherently safe sequestration of CO₂ by mineral carbonation may justify higher costs, but further cost reductions are required, particularly in view of (current) prices of CO₂ emission rights. Niche applications of mineral carbonation with a solid residue such as steel slag as feedstock and/or a useful carbonated product hold the best prospects for an economically feasible CO₂ sequestration process”. 

Setting aside the large-scale feasibility of this mineral carbonation technology, an IPCC Report estimates the cost of mineral carbonation at $50-$100 per tonne CO2 sequestered that would mean that for  every tonne of CO2 thus sequestered as magnesium carbonate , the cost would be $50-$100 per tonne CO2 / $22.8 per tonne CO2 = 2.2- 4.4 times as much as the amount received for the coal generating that tonne of CO2 on combustion i.e. for every $1 received for coal about $2.2- $4.4 would have to be paid for subsequent CO2 removal through mineral carbonation.

5.  Carbon Capture and Sequestration  (CCS).  

Finally,  Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)  involves concentrating  CO2 as a liquid , piping it  to a suitable location and then storing  it  underground or at the bottom of the ocean. The economic and practical difficulties of CCS mean that it has yet to be applied on a large scale. The IPCC reports that the cost of such capture from a coal- or gas-fired power station would be up to $75 per tonne CO2 sequestered and thus the cost would be 3.3  times as much as the amount received for the coal generating that 1 tonne of CO2 on combustion. The Global CCS Institute states (2011): “The cost of mitigating, or avoiding, CO₂ emissions for a coal power plant fitted with current CCS technology ranges from US$23-92 per tonne of CO₂ and is a little higher for natural gas fuelled power plants”. This would give a CO2-removal cost of  $23- $92 per tonne of CO2 sequestered / $22.8 per tonne CO2 generated = 1.0 – 4.0 times as much as that for the coal generating that 1  tonne CO2 sequestered  i.e. for every $1 received for thermal  coal about $1 - $4 would have to be paid for the removal of the subsequently generated CO2  through Carbon Capture and Sequestration.  (CCS).

Summary.  

A damage-related Carbon Price of  $150- $250 per tonne  CO2 [1] means  that for every $1 received by mining companies for thermal coal, future generations will be forced  to pay $6.6 -$11.0 in  today's dollars for repairing the consequences of that  pollution of the atmosphere  and ocean with CO2 . This assessment is in agreement with estimates that for every $1 received by mining companies for thermal coal, the  cost of sequestering the CO2 from burning that coal by a variety of means (biochar, Accelerated Weathering of Limestone, mineral carbonation or Carbon Capture and Storage ) ranges from $1 to $14.

Young people should be appalled that,  in addition to being bequeathed mass species extinction, widespread ecosystem destruction and massive economic disruption, for every $1 paid to climate criminal mining corporations  for thermal coal future generations will have to pay $1 to $14 for adaptation measures and sequestering CO2 pollution.   Young people and those who care for them must take a stand against this horrendous climate theft, climate injustice, climate crime and intergenerational inequity and must act urgently by (a) informing everyone they can, (b) demanding of fossil fuels “Keep it in the ground” and (c) urging and applying Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all those people, politicians , parties, companies,  corporations and countries disproportionately complicit in the worsening Climate Emergency and Climate Crisis.

Prospero's Business

John Knope

Shakespeare's “Mystery Play,” the 1611 The Tempest, is an exceptionally puzzling play, “as strange a maze as ever men trod,” as the play says of itself. The Tempest's story of three bizarre hours one afternoon on Prospero's remote island has long defied explanation. “The range of disagreement on how to take this play is itself astonishing,” writes Shakespearean scholar Steven Miko. Several other scholars have written that there must be a “secret meaning” camouflaged between the baffling lines (Goddard, D. James, H. Smith, H. Berger, etc.). So far though, no “other story” has ever been identified in The Tempest, leading Northrup Frye to conclude, “Interpreters must travel and labor still onward.”

         The next three paragraphs point out an alternative scenario that is hidden within a few lines in The Tempest. This “secret meaning” has never been written about by any scholar that I could find, nor has it been presented in any of the several filmed versions of the play that are available. No familiarity with The Tempest or Shakespeare is required to understand this hidden feature. Following the short explanation of this secret element is a brief attempt at understanding how this obvious feature (and hopefully you will agree it is obvious) has not been previously noticed by any reviewer of the play.

        The short first scene of The Tempest takes place on a ship, caught in a thunderstorm, which has just arrived at Prospero's island kingdom. Right from the opening curtain, the passengers and mariners on the deck of this ship are very frightened of something, but just what is causing them such terror is unexplained. This undefined panic lasts all of the brief opening scene, and ends with people jumping overboard, “with hair upstaring,” yelling out as they leap, “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

       The ship which has just come to Prospero's island to start the play is not seen again after the opening. It is, though, better described near the very end of the play, when one of the mariners, now on Prospero's island, remarks that the ship has “roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains and moe diversity of sounds, all horrible” that are “all clapped under hatches.” There is only one kind of ship which fits this strange, fearsome description. At the start ofThe Tempest, a horrifying slave ship has just arrived at Prospero's island.

         This description of “roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains” “clapped under hatches” found at the end of Act Five finally explains the origin of those same sounds reported on the ship during the mysterious chaos of the opening scene. At line thirty-five of the first scene, barely two minutes into the start of the play, is a stage direction for “a cry within,” indicating an ill-defined noise coming from inside the ship. In the very next line, in response to this “cry,” a mariner on deck curses, “A plague upon this howling! They are louder than the weather.” The origin of this howling noise coming from inside the ship that is louder than a thunderstorm is not explained. At another point in the opening confusion, a mariner yells out “What cares these roarers for the name of the King?” Who are the disrespectful roarers? The reader or playgoer does not know at this point. The source of these howling and roaring sounds heard on the ship at the start of the play is only revealed at the end of the play, with the “roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains and moe diversity of sounds, all horrible” that are locked below deck. The terror on the deck of the ship at the start of The Tempest is caused by enraged Africans chained in the hold, threatening to break loose. This alternate scenario of a slave ship in revolt coming to Prospero's island at the start of The Tempest, which also explains the play's heretofore confounding title, has never before been presented.

       In the 1611 The Tempest, Prospero refers ten times to his “business” on the island, which he never explains further, except to state that he “makes more profit than other princes' can.” In the 17^th century, the most profitable business for Europeans was the African slave trade, the first “golden trade.” Thus, The Tempest begins on a secret slave ship arriving at Prospero's island (brought there by his “prescience”), where          he has a mysterious business that makes more profit than any other. Despite this damning evidence, Prospero remains silent throughout the play about the abject nature of this “business.”

        Prospero's silence about his unprecedentedly profitable enterprise comes from the shame and guilt which has accompanied all slavers throughout history. “Slavery, that thing of evil, by its nature evil,” wrote Euripides in a fifth century B.C. condemnation of slavery, presaging similar denunciations of human enslavement that can be found in all eras of European history. This well-documented (see M. Stanton Evans' The Theme Is Freedom), though little-known, enduring abolitionist spirit is also found in the 1587 bestseller The Description of England, where author William Harrison wrote that England has no slaves, “such is the privilege of our country by the special grace of God” (p.118). Because of this common anti-slavery attitude, Prospero's evil business must be hidden away, kept from public view, unmentioned. The ancient “silence of slavery” adopted by Prospero (and most all slavers before and since) is also employed by the legions of reviewers and directors of the play, predetermined to respect Prospero, or, as many refer to him, the Magus. All of these critics, knowing the great wrong that slavery is, “by its nature evil,” are blind to the terrible ship which is the source of Prospero's wealth. This unseen slave ship coming to Prospero's island, with jingling chains and roaring and shrieking and howling and other horrible sounds aboard, is the secret start to the story hidden in The Tempest.

A Preacher, a Faker, and a Public Opinion Maker

Aaron Vallely

So Joey Essex and Nigel Farage have both gone on a boat trip this week. Yeah, that happened. Both pretended not to know one another, both also pretended to like each other’s attire, and both regularly pretend they are a lot more stupid than they actually are to make money and gain followers. The amusing part is, so many people believe them. Celebrities have always played a prominent role in gathering votes. Joey Essex is another weapon in the arsenal of British Politicians. With his immaculately wavey hair and spandangled set of whitened teeth, Joey Essex means exposure. Essex also allows politicians to grab attention from young people they otherwise would not have. The lights that pave the way to Westminster have been lit and the race to pass the finish line is on.

Essex, a professional media performer, plays the village idiot very well, and is currently filming a programme to work out why he should vote and how Westminster works. Essex is, as one might have reasonably assumed considering his media image, a voting virgin. Less and less people are voting due to political apathy and politics joining entertainment has for a long time been a symbiotic relationship. This sounds like an entertainment show aimed at people who know as much about politics as I do about The Only Way Is Essex. That is to say, nothing. My Impression of the reality show from which Essex has garnered fame is that they all are young, have admirable hair, crispy tans, precious sets of teeth, and drink too much in the eyes of old people and have loads of sex. The idea of one of their brood having the bants with some blandly-dressed, socially-awkward, semi-unattractive political operators is at the very least, titillating.

For the generation who mock and aim disregard at those who disregard and mock the political system, they are probably best not to conduct themselves in such a fashion. Thirty-five percent of people were not enough bothered to even vote in 2010, and they are votes to be gotten. Joey Essex is the perfect lovable idiot and media pet to make use of. The secret is, of course, despite his image cemented amongst the young, Essex is hideously clever and knows that by giving young people what they expect and desire he is entertaining them with deliberate and necessary satisfaction. A career is fueled on this being sustained. A career that is now becoming Joey, the averagely intelligent and stylish guy being put in irregular circumstances. There was his soiree in the Jungle, his bout as a mountain snow-boarder, and now as the political student. Taking him out of his comfort zone has become a great marketing angle, and it is working.

The dubious part in all of this, however, is that muculant politicians such as Nigel Farage can use it to their advantage. Complicit celebrities compliment their agenda. Farage is something of a controversy generating publicist, who manipulates events to suit his own constructed image as a cutesy uncle figure who says outrageous things. Well known to want to lead Britain out of the EU, Farage was once declared having taken £2m of taxpayers’ money in expenses and allowances as a member of the European Parliament, on top of his £64,000 a year salary in order to finance his anti-EU agenda. Farage strongly opposes the use of bank bailouts, including the Irish blanket guarantee that sunk the economy, and said that it is “buying your own debt with tax payers money”. Farage has also said that discriminating employers should be allowed to hire Britons over foreigners, saying that employers “should be much freer to make decisions on who he or she employs”. He clarified his position in a later interview with Trevor Philips as that “if a British employer in a small business wants to employ a British person over somebody from Poland they should be able to do that without fear that they contravene discrimination laws.”

Nigel Farage has many Faragism’s, he once said mass immigration was making parts of the country appear “unrecognizable” and like “a foreign land” at Ukip’s spring conference. Farage said further, “In scores of our cities and market towns, this country in a short space of time has frankly become unrecognizable . . . This is not the kind of community we want to leave to our children and grandchildren.” One should keep in mind that his wife is German, so he can’t totally abhor all immigrants, despite the somewhat ignorant comments. There were also concerning comments regarding Muslims as being a “Fifth Column” in British Society. In a Channel Four documentary, he said that there was “an increasing level of concern because people do see a fifth column living within our country, who hate us and want to kill us.” Then there were comments about Mothers he made in a speech, “If a woman has a client base and has a child and takes two or three years off work, she is worth far less to the employer when she comes back than when she goes away because her client base cannot be stuck rigidly to her.”

These are a menu of comments Farage has uttered that generate controversy and usually lead him straight away attempting to clarify what he has said. It almost seems like he says something inflammatory and automatically is then out to deflame the controversy. The initial delivery, however, seems to continue, and seems to is the brunt of his message.

Politics and Entertainment will always be compatible because we enjoy seeing the world of seriousness clash with the world of triviality. Most of our media consumption is a diet of gossip. And what is gossip, after all, if not a sustained interest in the business of others. Mind our own business, we are told, but that’s merely a lame way of trying to cover up our secrets. Curiosity will win the day. The warning we must heed, though, is that tactful politicians will use people for power and we must be vigilant they do not use us as an extension of those celebrities we support through our curiosity and for our entertainment.

The Real Nuclear Threat in the Middle East

Sheldon Richman

To get a sense of how badly the regime in Iran wants sanctions relief for the Iranian people, you have to do more than contemplate the major concessions it has made in negotiations with the United States and the rest of the P5+1. Not only is Iran willing to dismantle a major part of its peaceful civilian nuclear program, to submit to the most intrusive inspects, to redesign a reactor, to eliminate two-thirds of its centrifuges, to get rid of much of its enriched uranium, and to limit nuclear research — it must do all this while being harangued by the nuclear monopolist of the Middle East — Israel — which remains, unlike Iran, a nonsigner of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and faces no inspections or limits on its production of nuclear weapons.

This is something out of Alice in Wonderland. The Islamic Republic of Iran, born in 1979, has not attacked another country. (With U.S. help, Iraq attacked Iran in 1980.) In contrast, Israel has attacked its Arab neighbors several times its founding, including two devastating invasions and a long occupation of Lebanon, not to mention repeated onslaughts in the Gaza Strip and the military occupation of the West Bank. Israel has also repeatedly threatened war against Iran and engaged in covert and proxy warfare, including the assassination of scientists. Even with Iran progressing toward a nuclear agreement,Israel (like the United States) continues to threaten Iran.

Yet Iran is universally cast as the villain (with scant evidence) and Israel the vulnerable victim.

You’d never know that Iran favors turning the Middle East into a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone (a nuclear-weapons-free zone was first proposed by the U.S.-allied shah of Iran and Egypt in 1974), and beyond that, Iran over a decade ago offered a “grand bargain” that contained provisions to reassure the world about its nuclear program and an offer to recognize Israel, specifically, acceptance of the Arab League’s 2002 peace initiative. The George W. Bush administration rebuffed Iran.

At the last NPT review conference in 2010, Iran renewed its support for the zone, the BBC reported at the time: “Tehran supports the ‘immediate and unconditional’ implementation of the 1995 resolution [to create the zone], declares the [then] president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”

The United States and Israel claim in principle to support having the Middle East free of nuclear weapons — but not just yet. The Israeli government said in 2010 that implementation of the principle could occur “only after peace agreements with all the countries in the region.” ABC News quoted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as saying that Israel might sign the NPT “if the Middle East one day advances to a messianic age where the lion lies down with the lambs.”

That is classic Netanyahu demagoguery. As noted, the Arab League in 2002 — and again in 2007 — offered to recognize Israel if it accepted a Palestinian state in the occupied territories and arrived at a “just solution to the Palestinian Refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194.” At that point the Arab countries would “consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region”; i.e., they would “establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.”

Thus Netanyahu’s position is a sham. He could have peace treaties in short order if he wanted to. But, as he said before the recent elections, he will never allow the Palestinians to have their own country.

For its part, the United States “broadly agrees with Israel that conditions for a nuclear-weapons-free-zone do not yet exist in the Middle East,” the BBC reported. In other words, the Obama administration slavishly takes the Israel-AIPAC line.

While politicians and pundits lose sleep over an Iranian nuclear-weapons program that does not exist — are they having nightmares of the United States being deterred by Iran? — they support Israel, the nuclear power that brutalizes a captive population, attacks its neighbors, threatens war against Iran, and refuses to talk peace with willing partners.

US Agribusiness, GMOs and the Plundering of the Planet

Colin Todhunter

Small family/peasant farms produce most of the world’s food. They form the bedrock of global food production. Yet they are being squeezed onto less than a quarter of the planet’s farmland. The world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of rich and powerful land speculators and agribusiness corporations.

By definition, peasant agriculture prioritises food production for local and national markets as well as for farmers’ own families. Big agritech corporations on the other hand take over scarce fertile land and prioritise commodities or export crops for profit and foreign markets that tend to cater for the needs of the urban affluent. This process displaces farmers from their land and brings about food insecurity, poverty and hunger.

What big agribusiness with its industrial model of globalised agriculture claims to be doing – addressing global hunger and food shortages – is doing nothing of the sort. There is enough evidence to show that its activities actually lead to hunger and poverty – something that the likes of GMO-agribusiness-neoliberal apoligists might like to consider when they propagandize about choice, democracy and hunger: issues that they seem unable to grasp, at least beyond a self-serving superficial level.

Small farmers are being criminalised, taken to court and even made to disappear when it comes to the struggle for land. They are constantly exposed to systematic expulsion from their land by foreign corporations. The Oakland Institute has stated that now a new generation of institutional investors, including hedge funds, private equity and pension funds, is eager to capitalise on global farmland as a new and highly desirable asset class. Financial returns are what matter to these entities, not ensuring food security.

Consider Ukraine, for example. Small farmers operate 16% of agricultural land, but provide 55% of agricultural output, including: 97% of potatoes, 97% of honey, 88% of vegetables, 83% of fruits and berries and 80% of milk. It is clear that Ukraine’s small farms are delivering impressive outputs.

However, The US-backed toppling of that country’s government seems likely to change this with the installed puppet regime handing over agriculture to US agribusiness. Current ‘aid’ packages are contingent on the plundering of the economy under the guise of ‘austerity’ reforms and will have a devastating impact on Ukrainians’ standard of living and increase poverty in the country.

Reforms mandated by the EU-backed loan include agricultural deregulation that is intended to benefit foreign agribusiness corporations. Natural resource and land policy shifts are intended to facilitate the foreign corporate takeover of enormous tracts of land. (From 2016, foreign private investors will no longer be prohibited from buying land.) Moreover, the EU Association Agreement includes a clause requiring both parties to cooperate to extend the use of biotechnology, including GMOs.

In other words, events in Ukraine are helping (and were designed to help) the likes of Monsanto to gain a firm hold over the country’s agriculture.

Frederic Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute last year stated that the World Bank and IMF are intent on opening up foreign markets to Western corporations and that the high stakes around control of Ukraine’s vast agricultural sector, the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat, constitute an oft-overlooked critical factor. He added that in recent years, foreign corporations have acquired more than 1.6 million hectares of Ukrainian land.

Western agribusiness had been coveting Ukraine’s agriculture sector for quite some time, long before the coup. It after all contains one third of all arable land in Europe.

An article posted on Oriental Review notes that since the mid-90s the Ukrainian-Americans at the helm of the US-Ukraine Business Council had been instrumental in encouraging the foreign control of Ukrainian agriculture.

In November 2013, the Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation drafted a legal amendment that would benefit global agribusiness producers by allowing the widespread use of genetically modified seeds. Oriental Review notes that when GMO crops were legally introduced onto the Ukrainian market in 2013, they were planted in up to 70% of all soybean fields, 10-20% of cornfields, and over 10% of all sunflower fields, according to various estimates (or 3% of the country’s total farmland).

According to Oriental Review, “within two to three years, as the relevant provisions of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU go into effect, Monsanto’s lobbying efforts will transform the Ukrainian market into an oligopoly consisting of American corporations.”

It amounts to little more than the start of the US colonisation of Ukraine’s seed and agriculture sector. This corporate power grab will be assisted by local banks. Apparently, these banks will only offer favourable credit terms to those farmers who agree to use certified herbicides: those that are manufactured by Monsanto.

Interestingly, the investment fund Siguler Guff & Co has recently acquired a 50% stake in the Ukrainian Port of Illichivsk, which specialises in agricultural exports.

We need look no further than to Ukraine’s immediate neighbour Poland to see the devastating impact on farmers that Western agribusiness concerns are having there. Land grabs by foreign capital and the threat to traditional (often organic) agriculture have sparked mass protests as big agribusiness seeks to monopolise the food supply from field to plate. The writing is on the wall for Ukraine.

The situation is not unique to Poland, though; the impact of policies that favour big agribusiness and foreign capital are causing hardship, impacting health and destroying traditional agriculture across the world, from India and Argentina to Brazil and Mexico and beyond.

In an article by Christina Sarich, Hilliary Martin, a farmer from Vermont in the US, encapsulates the situation by saying:

“We are here at the [US-Canadian] border to demonstrate the global solidarity of farmers in the face of globalization. The corporate takeover of agriculture has impoverished farmers, starved communities and force-fed us genetically-engineered crops, only to line the pockets of a handful of multinational corporations like Monsanto at the expense of farmers who are struggling for land and livelihood around the world.”

The US has since 1945 used agriculture as a tool with which to control countries. And today what is happening in Ukraine is part of the wider US geopolitical plan to drive a wedge between Ukraine and Russia and to subjugate the country.

While the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is intended to integrate the wider EU region with the US economy (again ‘subjugate’ may be a more apt word), by introducing GMOs into Ukraine and striving to eventually incorporate the country into the EU the hope is that under the banner of ‘free trade’ Monsanto’s aim of getting this technology into the EU and onto the plates of Europeans will become that much easier.

Letters to the President

Ralph Nader

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama,

I am enclosing a copy of Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the President 2001-2015 (Seven Stories Press), which contains over 100 letters that I sent to you and President George W. Bush (from 2001 to 2015). They were almost entirely unanswered and unacknowledged.

One of these letters asked you about the White House’s policies regarding letters it receives. I raised this issue early in your first term with the Director of the Office of Presidential Correspondence, Mike Kelleher, who said there was no specific policy regarding responses, but that he would get back to me after the Office of Presidential Correspondence considered the matter. He did not.

Citizen correspondence is important both for you as President and them. For the citizens, it is an opportunity to circumvent the barriers presented by the media and governmental institutions to directly access the White House. For presidents, letters help, as you have said, escape “the bubble” (e.g. the ten letters from citizens you read each evening). Letters from citizens also convey ideas and observations that alert you to conditions, issues, and urgencies at hand and occasionally provide you with an opportunity to publically discuss the point raised by an ordinary citizen who penned such a letter.

Just the other day, when you were visiting Ohio, a chance question to you from a person in the audience elicited your view that mandatory voting would “be transformative” and exists in a number of other democracies, such as Australia. Those few words alone will stimulate a public discussion in an era of low voter turnout, including the pros and cons of having a None of the Above (NOTA) option for voters.

Letters can be very valuable by asking questions that offer you an opportunity to respond on matters or issues not ordinarily addressed by the press corps or officials or members of Congress. (Incidentally, the first annual review of the White House press corps and its interaction with the president appears in the current issue (March/April 2015) of the Columbia Journalism Review funded by the Helen Thomas Fund. She would like that!)

There are many other potential benefits of sending letters to presidents. For example, during Secretary of Energy Steven Chu’s entire four-year term, many of the major anti-nuclear power groups could not obtain a meeting with him. Although he had met numerous times with representatives from the nuclear industry, he would not respond to our several letters and calls so that he hear and respond to the empirical positions and recommendations of experienced groups whose overall views he did not share. I wrote asking if you could intervene and urge him to meet with us. Also, you needed to know about this rejection by your Secretary of Energy. There was no response.

I understand that you and your staff send courtesy responses to invitations to events around the country and you respond to letters about highly visible issues, such as the auto industry bailout, with form letters. Of course, you also respond to political allies and supporters in some fashion. But, that leaves out many letters reflecting the knowledge and position of many engaged Americans who should neither be stonewalled, nor overlooked.

Here is what I recommend:

1. Issue a policy on responding to letters with whatever classification you choose to make so that people can know what to expect.

2. At the very least, these active citizens should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of their letters and emails. This is what the Prime Minister of Canada does, regardless of whether the letters are supportive or critical. Additionally, the prime minister refers letters to the appropriate ministry for further review. Without even an acknowledgement, citizens might become cynical and/or stop writing.

3. Have your staff select the letters with ideas, proposals or suggestions that they think would make a good annual public report to the American people. Include critical letters that point out shortcomings. This has a salutary effect on “the bubble” and goes beyond the few letters that all presidents use as political props.

I’ll conclude with an invitation, which you may wish to reconsider, that appears in my book Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the President 2001-2015. On May 4, 2012, I sent a letter to you urging you to address a proposed gathering of a thousand leaders of the nonprofit civic community at a hotel ballroom near the White House, at your scheduled convenience. These leaders head diverse groups supporting justice for consumers, workers, small taxpayers, the poor and other environmental, health, housing, transportation and energy causes. These organizations represent many millions of Americans across the country who support them with donations and volunteer time. There was no reply. Then, I sent the letter to the first Lady Michelle Obama’s East Wing. Her staff at least responded, writing that you had no time. Well, what about any time this year?

Jimmy Carter addressed just such a group of civic leaders after his election in 1976. The event was very successful and helped give greater visibility to this very important civic sector in our society. I found your White House’s response disingenuous, in as much as you have traveled across the country and the world directly promoting by name for-profit U.S. companies and the jobs these companies create. (In India, it was for Boeing and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.) Well, the nonprofit sector employs millions of Americans and its growth and services are good for the society, are they not?

I hope you and the family will enjoy perusing this book and possibly gaining some insights and ideas that will enhance your service to our country, its people and its interaction with the rest of the world. This volume could have been called a “bubble buster,” except we could only wonder whether these letters were ever given access through that self-described encasement.

Sincerely yours,

Ralph Nader

The Collapse of the Obama Doctrine

Ramzy Baroud

To suggest that the United States policies in Yemen was a ‘failure’ is an understatement. It implies that the US had at least attempted to succeed. But ‘succeed’ at what? The US drone war had no other objective aside from celebrating the elimination of whomever the US hit list designates as terrorist.

But now that a civil and a regional wars have broken out, the degree of US influence in Yemen has been exposed as limited, their war on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, in the larger context of political, tribal and regional rivalry, as insignificant.

The failure, if we are to utilize the term, is of course, not just American, but involve most of US allies, who have ignored Yemen’s protracted misery – poverty, corruption, violence and the lack of any political horizon, until the country finally imploded. When the Houthis took over Sanaa last September, a foolish act by any account, only then did the situation in Yemen became urgent enough for intervention.

For a long time, the US seemed invulnerable to what even Yemen analysts admit is a intricate subject to understand, let alone attempt to explain in a straightforward manner. The US drones buzzed overhead independent from all of this. They ‘took out’ whomever they suspected was al-Qaeda affiliate. President Barack Obama was even revealed to have approved of a ‘secret kill list’, and agreed to consider counting casualties in such a way that “essentially designates all military-aged males in a strike zone as military combatants.”

In fact, a timeline of events that have befallen poverty-stricken Yemen shows a strange phenomenon, where US involvement in that country operates parallel to but separate from all other horrific events, violence, suffering and politicking. Sure, US shadowy war had augmented the suffering, demoralized the nation and undermined whatever political process underway, especially after the Yemeni version of the Arab Spring early 2011. However, the US paid little heed to Yemen’s fragile alliances and the fact that the country was on a fast track towards civil war, worse a regional war, direct or by proxy.

That responsibility of mending broken Yemen was left to the United Nations. But with regional rivalry between Iran and Gulf countries at its peak, UN envoys had little margin for meaningful negotiations. Despite repeated assurances that the ‘national dialogue’ was on its way to repair Yemen’s body politic, it all failed.

But the US continued with its war unabated, arming whomever it deemed an ally, exploiting regional differences, and promoting the power of al-Qaeda in ways that far exceeded their presence on the ground. It saw Yemen as a convenient ‘war on terror’, enough to give Obama the tough persona that American voters love about their presidents, without the high risk of military quagmires like the ones that his predecessor, George W. Bush, created in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was hardly that simple. Even a ‘clean’ drone war activated from faraway places is rarely enough to guarantee results.

Set aside the moral responsibility of torturing an already wounded nation, the US seemed to lack understanding of how its actions frustrate and contribute to regional conflicts. Its exasperation of Iraq’s sectarian fault lines following the 2003 invasion, leading to a massive civil war few years later, was a lesson unlearnt. That ‘divide and conquer’ backfired badly. Empowered and brutal US-supported Shia government that took revenge on Sunni tribes and communities across Iraq following the war, met their match with the rise of a brutal so-called ‘Islamic State’ in more recent years, turning Iraq, and of course, Syria, into a savage battleground.

Gone are the days in which US policies alone dictated the course of history in the Middle East. The Iraq war was catastrophic at so many levels, lead amongst which is relegating direct military intervention as a way to achieve strategic and political ends.

The Obama doctrine was an attempt at combining use of US military influence (while scaling down on direct military intervention), on the one hand, and regional and international allies on the other, to sustain US ascendency in the region as much as possible.

What seemed like a relative success in Libya with the ousting of Muammar al-Qaddafi was too difficult to duplicate in Syria. The stakes there were simply too high. Regional rivals like Iran, and international rivals like Russia were too resistant to any open attempt at overthrowing the al-Assad regime. And with the rise of IS, al-Assad had suddenly be re-casted into a different role, becoming a buffer, although still designated as an enemy. John Kerry’s statement about willingness to engage Assad signaled a massive turnabout in US policies there.

Now, with a preliminary nuclear deal agreed upon by Iran and US and its allies, chances are the US, although will carry on with its saber-rattling (as Iran will surely do as well) there is little chance that Obama will enact any major shift in his regional policies. To the contrary, his administration is likely to retreat, further hide behind its allies to achieve whatever muddled objectives it may have at the chaotic moment.

For Iran, and to a lesser degree, the US, Yemen is maybe a suitable ground for a token war. In “Why it may suit Iran to let the Saudis win in Yemen“, Daniel Levy and Julien Barness-Decey argue that the current rivalry in Yemen has at its heart the nuclear talks between Iran and the West. Iran never ‘won’ Yemen to lose it anyway, and supporting the Houthis can only push Iran’s Arab enemies into a protracted conflict from which there is no easy escape.

Yet while indirect military involvement is consistent with the Obama war doctrine, the US could still stand to lose. Sure, Obama can counter his Republican critics – stalwart supporters of Israel, thus strongly opposing to any Iran deal – by military engaging Iran from a distance in a useless Yemen war. That said, if the US allies fail to achieve a quick victory, which unlikely anyway, the US would have one of two options: to disown its allies (who are already infuriated by the US double speak on Iran) or to get pulled into an unwinnable war that cannot be lost.

A loss for the Houthis would certainly bloody Iran’s nose, but not much more than that. It is the Arabs and their regional allies that risk a major loss due to their direct involvement. And since defeat ‘is not an option’ the Yemen quagmire is likely to prove more lengthy and lethal. In the first two weeks of war, over 500 Yemenis have been reportedly killed. This is just the beginning.

Of course, there is a way out. Iran and its Arab rivals must understand that political scenarios where once cancels out the other is impossible to achieve. Syria has been a paramount, although tragic example.

They must also keep in mind that the US, which is playing both parties against one another, is only interested in the region for economic and strategic reasons. Regardless of the hyped sectarian divides, Shia, Sunnis, and numerous other groups, crisscrossed, overlapped and co-existed in the Middle East for centuries. No war, no matter how destructive, and no alliance, no matter how large, can possibly change that historical inevitability.

My Great Escape

James McEnteer

Though I’m not a career criminal, I have had occasional hair-raising encounters with the police. The strangest one happened decades ago in Monrovia, Liberia. In those days I was a casual, even careless, traveler, essentially ignorant of large swatches of this planet. I knew little about Liberia or West Africa. But that did not stop me and my lovely friend, A.J., from going there.

We picked Liberia because we knew they used American money. And we urgently needed some. Was it folly to land in a new continent with dwindling financial resources? Arthur Frommer probably wouldn’t recommend it and I have tried not to do it since. But we were young and naively confident, though African travel hardships would finally contribute to A.J. and I breaking up.

There were no Lonely Planet guide books in those days. We had to make our own lonely plans. And they were all short-term, plotting how to get from A to B, worrying about the big picture later. No money meant no flying. After a long, difficult, overland journey through half a dozen outlandish lands, filled with slapstick and beauty and horror, we arrived at an upcountry rain forest border crossing between the Ivory Coast and Liberia.

The river that supposedly marked that border had shriveled to a muddy bog. You could almost make a run and jump across it. But the price of falling short looked messy. Among the half-dozen onlookers at this non-descript jungle spot was an enterprising man on a small raft, charging passengers for the ten-foot journey. There were no guards or customs officials. We were told to report to the nearby town, which we could reach in the back of a waiting truck.

It was late afternoon when we got down in that small bush town, whose name I no longer remember. There wasn’t much to it. We wandered around asking about hotels or guest houses. The Liberians spoke and English that was harder to comprehend than the French of the Ivory Coast. We finally understood that there were no formal lodgings of any kind there. We ate a restaurant meal and wandered up and down the dirt streets with our backpacks.

In the near-total darkness, we found what look liked the ruin of a half-built house. Walls with no roof, and only bare ground for the floor. We decided to camp in there, hanging our mosquito nets from the walls, sleeping on top of our sleeping bags in the hot, muggy night. Not long after we fell asleep we were awakened by lights in our faces and people shouting.

We dressed more fully and staggered to our feet, blinded by the lights and confused by the din. Finally a man in uniform confronted us, angrily.

“This is our mosque. You are trespassing. You must come with us…”

Hurriedly we stuffed our gear in our packs as some kind of argument rose up around us in a tribal language we couldn’t understand. There seemed to be some young high school-age kids here, who were badgering the authorities.

Following orders from the men in uniforms, groggy and still unable to see who was who or what was what, we got into the back seat of the police pick-up, apparently headed for jail. How could we have guessed it was a mosque? Had we desecrated their shrine?

The teenagers were making a huge racket. Half a dozen of them stood in front of the headlights, to block our vehicle. A.J. and I had no clue what was happening. The truck moved slowly ahead. Some of the teens jumped up and down next to the driver’s window, shouting and pounding on the hood. Then the driver said something and the vibe completely changed.

Now the teenagers ran ahead and our truck followed, stopping in front of a house. The kids helped us get out and carry our stuff. Theauthorities, whoever they were, simply drove away without a word.

“This house of Peter Jay. Peace Corps. You Peter’s friends. He teach us. We tell police you come here. Not jail…”

We finally gleaned that Peter Jay was a white American about our age. He was out of town right now, down in Monrovia. So his students persuaded the authorities to let us stay at his house as his guests. They told the cops we had come to visit him. And somehow this all worked.

Inside, in the light, we saw the bright, eager faces of these laughing kids. Our saviors. I silently congratulated Peter Jay for inspiring the loyalty of his students. His house was neat and well-furnished with an inviting king-sized bed. In short order the students left and we fell into that bed. Our pulses gradually slowed as we slipped into a grateful sleep.

In the morning we left Peter a note of thanks and caught a bus to Monrovia, the capital of the country, where all Liberian roads led. The airport, the sea port, the capital and all the paved roads were there.

To get the lay of the land we paid ten cents to ride half-size city busses from one end of the line to the other, enjoying the meager breeze and the spectacle of people living their lives among the rusted urban wreckage and crumbling cement as the bus driver played 45-rpm “High Life” records on a swaying turntable mounted on the dash.

“Who do you think you are, Mister Big Stuff? You’re never gonna win my love…” Lively, big-beat, some Caribbean, mostly African-American music. James Brown could have run for president here and won easily. But only William Tolbert was running. Tolbert had been vice president for nineteen years until President-for-Life William Tubman finally died.

Now Tolbert was running unopposed, but making a show of campaigning. Huge banners all around town bore his likeness and his campaign slogan: “Total Involvement for Higher Heights.” What that might mean was never explained. Tolbert won the presidency, of course, only to be hacked to death with machetes in his presidential bed nine years later during a military coup.

The Liberian flag, also prominently displayed, was similar to the U.S. flag, with thirteen red and white stripes but only a single star in the blue corner. Liberia styled itself “The Lone Star Country,” but the Texas echo made no sense. The country was run by an aristocracy of so-called Americo-Liberians, families descended from former slaves, returned from the United States.

Most Liberians were among the poorest people in Africa.  Unlike the white colonial rulers of other African countries, the black masters of Liberia were less visible and therefore able to be more despotic. Monrovia – named for the fifth American president – was rough, dirty, dangerous and always steamy hot.

Being far more ambitious and resourceful than I was, A.J. quickly found work. She somehow encountered a fairly lucrative opening, as the manager of a bowling alley, bar, restaurant and disco. But in spite of her obvious intelligence and her attractive, authoritative manner, the owners would not hire a female. A.J. quickly got another position, where her sex didn’t matter, keeping books for a Lebanese importing firm. So she recommended me for the bowling alley position.

In those days I was a skinny, dark-bearded, long-haired wanderer, fond of any and all mind-altering substances, often shabbily attired. But indisputably, anatomically male. I tried to iron the sport jacket I had carried rolled up in my backpack for months, but the wrinkles persisted and the jacket refused to flatten out. It was too hot to wear it anyway.

My job interview, with one of the five owners of the business, was brief. Al Shoucair, a gigantic, balding Lebanese-descended man, resembled Jabba the Hutt in a tent-like shirt. He had quit smoking, but could not stop chewing on unlit cigarettes, and still consumed a couple of packs a day. He liked to look at lithe young Liberian girls, so there were always plenty of them in his office, who seemed to have little to do except to be there and hand him what he wanted.

Al only asked me one question.

“Have you had any experience?”

Since he didn’t specify what kind, I could truthfully answer, “Yes.”  They should have hired A.J., of course. She had brains and ambition and competence. But they wanted a white male, so they hired me instead.

The Coconut Grove Amusement Center sat beside the sea, where salt air corroded everything from the air conditioning system to the warped lanes and chipped bowling pins, to the many pinball machines which had ground to a halt and stood where they had died, around the bowling alley, modern marvels of Western ingenuity overcome by the tropics like characters in a Somerset Maugham novel.

Fred, the Assistant Manager, had worked there ten years and knew the business inside and out. He had seen other white managers come and go. He was justifiably disgusted. He should have been promoted to the manager’s position, as he and I both knew. But because the Coconut Grove owed money all over town, they needed a white man to beg credit from the local beer distributors and cigarette brokers, who would simply let an African cool his heels in their waiting rooms, but would not let me wait. Colonial racist reality was at least dependable.

About two dozen people worked at the Coconut Grove. My salary equaled all theirs combined. It was embarrassing and wrong. But I was too broke to quibble. And the job even came with a car, a beat-up little Renault that may or may not have seen better days. Al Shoucair got my drivers’ license by sending ten dollars and my photo by messenger to the appropriate government office.

I knew my job would not last long. Between the merciless climate and the unwillingness of the owners to re-invest in a business now losing money, the Coconut Grove was not destined to amuse many more. In those days, before the internet or satellite TV, the hard-core bored of the city might bowl up to four nights a week. And drink for seven. The one television channel in the country, on four hours every night, featured films about nature or the steel mills of Cleveland.

The disco liquor supply had been raided just before my hiring, leaving the disco in a dark limbo. The funky old Brit hired to fix the dead pinball machines pronounced his work hopeless. The owners refused to order more imported parts, but none were made locally. Game over.

I assessed what the place needed and called a meeting with the partners. I did not want to be scapegoated for any deficiencies. The wealthy owners resented a stranger criticizing their operation. Who was I?

When it became clear they did not plan any improvements, I relaxed. I had been hired just to keep the leaky vessel afloat as long as possible. Not to save it. That I had no ambition or aptitude was irrelevant. My maleness counted for more than A.J.’s competence. My whiteness trumped Fred’s expertise. It was futility with a paycheck. Gentlemen, count me in.

The Coconut Grove owners, some of the most powerful men in the country, would later be among those tied to posts on the beach and executed in the coming coup. I forgave their arrogance in retrospect but it rankled at the time.

One afternoon I was driving in the city when I saw a friend of mine, a Canadian named Ray. I stopped so he could get in the car with me. The streets of Monrovia were not exactly clogged with traffic. Private cars were few and far between. But a policeman blew his whistle and gestured at me to pull over, for having stopped in the middle of the street.

I was in no mood for that kind of encounter. My car had no air con and I needed to get moving to work up a cooling breeze. The cop was on foot, heading toward us, when I just decided to pull away. Hell with it. In the rearview mirror I could see the man’s shock. Then, to my own shock, he hailed a cab, pointed in our direction and got in. He was going to chase us down!

Unfortunately we were on the one steep street in town, a long avenue that led straight up to the fancy Ducor International Hotel, perched atop the city like a giant garish gravestone. My rattling Renault was not up to the climb. The cab was coming up behind us quickly, I turned down a cross street to my left. If I caught a parallel road down the hill I could get some momentum.

Ray was appalled. “I don’t think this is a good idea, man. I really don’t…” But I was roaring now, picking up speed. Ready to make a run for it. The light at the next corner turned red but I didn’t see any cross traffic.

“No! No! You can’t run that light. They’ll have our balls for bookends!” Even in the heat of that moment I knew I’d remember that phrase. “Man, I beg you, please! Please, no! No!” He sounded frantic.

He tugged at my arm and looked terrified. But who the hell stops for a red light in the middle of a police chase? That’s insane. But…Ray’s panic overwhelmed my desire to escape in my defective vehicle.

So I stopped at the light, shaking my head, pounding the steering wheel with my hand in frustration. The cop ran up to us and jumped into the back seat. He was sweaty and breathless and angry.

“We go to headquarters,” he said. “Drive that way…”

I glanced at Ray. He looked away in silence. I started driving slowly. The one thing I knew above all others was that I did not want to go to police headquarters.

“Show me your license,” said the cop. My license? I had no idea where it might be. I made a show of looking for it in the glove compartment. But the only license in there belonged to my predecessor at the Coconut Grove, a broad-faced, blonde fellow, with Slavic features, maybe twenty years older than I was, judging by his photo. Rumor had it he got drunk one night and went on a wild rampage before being deported some months before my arrival. I could sympathize.

But when I handed his license to the police officer, the cop made no comment about our very different physical appearances. Maybe all white men looked alike to him.

“Listen,” I said. “I’m really sorry about driving away from you back there. But I’m in the middle of very busy day. I’ve got a lot of things to do. That’s why I had to get going. And I really don’t have any time to spare. Isn’t there some way we can avoid going through all the formalities at police headquarters?

The cop, calming down a bit now, seemed to ponder this possibility.

“Sometimes it’s good to harmonize in the field,” he said.

Another phrase I would not forget.

“You mean, you could collect my fine and take it to headquarters for me?” I said, trying to keep up the pretense of probity.

“I am thinking so, boss. You must give me only one hundred dollars…”

“What? A hundred dollars!? I don’t have anything like a hundred dollars. That’s a huge amount… My God…”

I glanced at Ray, who finally appeared contrite. Too damn late.

“Well, sir, you are violating traffic laws, running away from the police…”

“Yes, I’m sorry, of course. But… a hundred dollars is just way beyond anything I have or could even get…” Remember, there were no ATMs then.

I made eye contact with the policeman in the rearview mirror.

“Well…”

To make a very long story somewhat shorter, we drove around in that car for a better part of a long, hot hour, as I begged and wheedled and the cop gradually, very gradually, dropped his price.

In the end he settled for everything I had in my pocket: seventy-five cents.

It was the greatest bribe reduction I had ever negotiated. But I was too stunned to celebrate, like dropping too fast in an elevator I thought would crash. A dizzy relief outweighed my impatience and even my irritation with Ray.

As I had known from the start, my tenure as manager of the Coconut Grove did not last long. When I resigned from the job after six months, Al Shoucair only asked me one question: “What are you afraid of?”

I claim no prescience about the coming bloody coup and years of dreadful slaughter that would ravage Liberia. Along with AIDS and then Ebola. Did Al Shoucair know, in his bones, if not his brain, that a mighty shit storm lay ahead? I simply felt a deep unease in that country – from the moment we were arrested on our first night there – as I did not feel elsewhere in West Africa.

It was another great relief to stand at the rail of a freighter pulling out of Monrovia harbor en route to Ghana down the coast. My other great escape, also in slow motion. Details of the city, including the Coconut Grove, blurred and faded. My personal and professional dramas there diminished and disappeared, along with the squalor and suffering that would later overwhelm the country.

You would never know from looking at the misty green shoreline that the apparently benign landscape hid absurd and unspeakable realities. It was the kind of knowledge you had to pay to acquire. Some paid with everything they had. And some of us got off cheap.

Voting Fraud or Morons?

Kathleen Wallace

The state of Kansas has difficulty getting good press. This is for a certain reason….think of it this way–

“What did you expect? ‘Welcome, sonny?’ “Make yourself at home?” ‘Marry my daughter?’ You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the New West. You know…morons.” I admit that I fall back on this wise observation from Jim, The Waco Kid when I hear about continued self-defeating behavior on the part of fellow citizens doing things like voting Sam Brownback in again as governor.

But suddenly the plot thickens. I will admit that I was fairly baffled by his win as he is supremely loathed around here. You can stop at a gas station and have a stranger start telling you how much he dislikes the man. It is a common discussion circulating….the ripe dislike of this man. Individuals around here said things before the election like “even though I am a Republican, I am not going to bother voting this time.” Polls looked to be headed against him, but the bizarre did occur. He slipped in for another term.

This is how much he is disliked: The guy got hissed and boo’d when his visage was projected on the big-screen during the NCAA Championships; Two Kansas teams were competing. It was a sweet moment that brought together fans of both schools, the mutual disgust for this guy. His wife in a cheesy Marie Antoinette moment appeared to mouth “are they booing us?” He is hated. He has to slip out back doors after certain speaking engagements to avoid embarrassing rabble who hurl unpleasantries his way. I used to be in the anarchist camp– well it wasn’t really an organized camp, of course, more a free-form collection of sleeping bags in the backyard. But I was down with the idea that it makes no difference to vote, but that was a fairly easy stance to take. With that view, comes the need to do something (as in pitchfork action), not simply avoid voting. In these local matters, it makes a huge difference who gets in, if nothing else for the blood pressure needs of those still in these areas with functioning empathy glands (they exist, check out the New England Journal of Medicine, Fall Fun issue 1987). But if the act of voting makes no difference because of fraud….well that is a completely different animal.

Here is where it gets weird. It’s pretty easy to assume the current state of things is the work of morons. It is ingrained in the American soul at this point that problems are always individual, not societal or something even more creepy…….. like old billionaire degenerates in a wood paneled room sharing cigars, whores and plots. Now that’s just crazy right?

There is an open records lawsuit at this time in Sedgwick County filed by a Wichita State University statistician, Beth Clarkson. She wants the paper tapes from the Kansas voting machines. She became curious after a paper from Francois Choquette and James Johnson, two statisticians who noted strong statistical evident of election manipulation during the 2012 elections. She didn’t believe their findings at first so she checked their data and also looked at other elections they hadn’t analyzed. She found the same oddities that they did.

Clarkson wants an explanation why there is a pattern that shows the percentage of Republican votes increase in a predictable manner as the size of the precinct increases. These things shouldn’t follow anything that resembles a formula…..right? Variation in demographics should not allow for straight line predictions. You see what she is getting at. Yet she remains diplomatic, saying it could be fraud or there is a trend that has not been picked up extensive polling. Notice the extensive polling she mentioned—that speaks volumes. Smoke is rising from these machines and their “results”. Many of us have had gut feelings that these elections have not been reflecting the actual votes, but this is all subjective, and the appearance of a highly trained statistician digging into the paper trail is what is needed. I have no idea how sophisticated a fraud scenario might be, but the sheer arrogance of the oligarchy makes me think something very well may be found.

The talk of voting machine chicanery has been extensive, but mainly a grumbled thing as in “what are you gonna do?”…..it sadly now sort of lives in the realm of fuzzy conspiracy theory. This could change that. The fact that a fingerprint of weirdness had been noted by a Ph.D statistician who sees a reproducible and inexplicable trend— this small lawsuit in Sedgwick County, Kansas might open the floodgates, and may even make jerks like me have to rethink the number of morons out there voting against their own interests. Maybe there simply aren’t so many morons out there as we have been led to believe. Beth Clarkson, good luck to you. This is good work you are doing.