The Big Lies and the Small Lies

Manuel E. Yepe

Havana.

Any reasonably sane person would assume that after the recent public acknowledgment by US President Barack Obama of the foreign policy errors that are implicit, and even explicit, in his efforts to normalize political relations with Cuba, there would be a process of apologies and explanations for the big and small lies that the immense defamation apparatus of Washington has spread about Cuba around the world, trying to justify its economic, commercial and financial blockade against the rebel island.

Even in the simplest parts of the propaganda war against Cuba, we find evidence of the lies with which the smear campaign has sought to support its purposes –to the embarrassment of honest Americans who are becoming aware of the truth- as the curtain is drawn aside as a result of the timid measures that the White House has taken citing legal incapacity to eliminate the shameful blockade.

An example of this is provided by José Manzaneda, site coordinator of Cubainformación that originates in Spain and is dedicated to promoting solidarity with the island on the Internet. Manzaneda recalls one of the many deceitful facets of the propaganda campaign against Cuba that somehow now clashes with the truth.

Cuba has rock bands in all genres –from heavy metal to hardcore, death metal, alternative rock and punk. The Caribbean country hosts local and international groups that take part in thirteen festivals of rock music (Caimán Rock, Brutal Fest, Festival Metal HG among them) and has a unique experience in the world: a state-owned Cuban Rock Agency devoted to the promotion, distribution and hiring of rock bands. Despite this, during the recent Havana concert by the English band the Rolling Stones, the US-financed media from around the world devoted extensive space to promote their stale falsehoods against Cuba.

Manzaneda notes that Spanish channel La Sexta, in its coverage of the Stones’ artistic visit, said “Cuba has vibrated to the sound of those “Satanic Majesties” (…) and showed their trademark tongue after 40 years of rock censorship in the island “.

Another Spanish channel, Cuatro, repeated the same nonsense about the alleged “censorship” that Cuba applied to the music of the British band “whose music had been banned in Cuba until now”.

The same lie was repeated by Antena 3, another Spanish channel: “The Rolling Stones displayed their energy in the same island where their sound was banned until recently.”

Other media did not go that far but repeated over and over the same message: not now, but for decades the Cuban Revolution “censured”, “discriminated” or “banned” rock “.

Meanwhile, the international corporate media insisted on another message openly more counterrevolutionary: the concert was due to a supposed transition, an opening, or even a political “spring” in Cuba. “A concert that marked the cultural opening of Cuba,” said Deutsche Welle TV). “A historic event that shows the opening of Cuba to the West –that albeit slow, is already unstoppable.” (Cuatro TV).

In almost all news reports, this great concert was linked to the absurd events and incomprehension towards rock that occurred in Cuba in the 60s. But the reality is that if the Rolling Stones and other big bands did not act earlier on the island it was not due to obstacles from Cuba other than economic. There were big free concerts in Havana, like the Manic Street Preachers in 2001 and Audioslave in 2005. All of these, as with the Stones now, were funded by the artists themselves.

Manzaneda recalls: “It is not Cuba that has made a cultural opening to the world. What has really changed is that the US government and its accompanying media have modified their policy of aggression against Cuba. And now, for a band like the Rolling
Stones, performing on the island they are no longer at high risk of reprisals and
smear campaigns; but rather the opposite.”

It is true that in the early years of the Revolution, and until the mid 70s, rock and English language were not broadcast by Cuban radio stations as part of an inexperienced and naive defensive reaction against the huge cultural aggression promoted and financed by the United States.

In those years, Cubans certainly committed many errors of this type, including their dislike of persons that were then, and remain today, idols of US American youth, who were inspired precisely by the ideals and struggles of Cuban youth and their leaders, such as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

The Devil Capitalism

Gary Engler

Okay, here’s the proposition — you can have a good job, decent pay, lots of overtime, but only if you give me your grandchildren or maybe your great-grandchildren.

Would you make this deal with the devil?

This is pretty much the choice currently offered workers by the captains of the carbon extraction, transportation and burning industries.

In fact, in a more general sense, it seems to be the choice being forced upon many governments around the world by the devil, which has taken the form of our current economic system.

Capitalism is asking us to choose between jobs and the future livability of our planet. Capitalism tells us it makes sense to flood some of the best food growing land in B.C. and build a dam to provide electricity for Alberta’s tar sands; capitalism says build more pipelines across B.C. and allow hundreds more oil tankers every year to sail through pristine waters; capitalism doesn’t care that more carbon extraction will guarantee our planet is cooked.

Capitalism, especially the current neoliberal version, says profitability should be the sole criteria by which we decide what gets built, what services are provided and who works. If there’s a profit to be made, let’s invest in it. Don’t do it if there’s no profit to be made. The ‘invisible hand’ of the market will solve all our problems.

Profits bring jobs, the capitalist devil whispers in our ears. Jobs! So you can overcome or avoid the misery of unemployment. Jobs! So you won’t fall behind on your mortgage, your credit card payments or your student loan. Jobs! So you will be able to buy ever more stuff that you don’t really need but somehow those great commercials convince you otherwise.

“Think about the jobs!” the devil/capitalism repeats over and over again. When brave critics ask: “What about the consequences to our environment?” the devil/capitalism answers: “Don’t listen to those Leap-ing people. They’re radicals. They’re tree-hugging, moonbeam-chasing hippies. They’re Indians. They’re anti-development. They’re socialists. They’re from downtown Toronto. Think about the jobs!”

So what do we do? Listen to the devil and build more pipelines, tar sands plants, fracked oil wells, housing that requires ever more carbon-spewing automobiles and tell ourselves that we are not responsible for what happens to our grandchildren?

Or do we cast out the devil? Tell the beast we do not have to choose between jobs and the environment, that in fact there will be more jobs in a sustainable energy-based economy. Proclaim loudly that, if forced to choose between capitalism and the environment, we will choose the environment every glorious day on this wondrous planet.

The truth is the devil’s way leads to hell on earth. Building our economy solely on capitalist greed for profit has placed us all, lobster-like, into a pot of hot water that is only a few degrees away from cooking our great-grandchildren. Our most critical task right now is figuring out a way of getting out of the pot and turning down the heat.

The good news is the devil’s way is not the only way, despite the constant media bombardment proclaiming that to be so. Humankind has followed the devil/capitalism path for only a relatively short time. We have tens of thousands of years of history proving that we can organize our lives around values other than greed for profit. Even today, in the midst of the most capitalist-dominated period ever, most of our lives, outside of paid work, is based on love, caring, sharing, solidarity, respect and doing what’s best for our collective future. This is called family and community.

If we can just come to the understanding that an economic and political system can also be based on these ‘community values’ we would have a path to building a viable alternative to the mess we are in.

The devil promotes the idea that we have no alternative to the way things are, but if all the people who care about their grandchildren come together to talk about a better way we can have jobs, lower the temperature and save our planet for future generations.

Job Satisfaction Under Perpetual Stagnation

David Rosen

Do you hate your job?  Do you dread getting up on Monday morning and schlepping to the office, factory, store, desk or wherever that serves, at best, as a place to earn a few dollars to meet ever-increasing needs?  Or are you excited by the challenges and opportunities that Monday morning represents, the problems you’ll deal with, the fellowship with co-workers, the sense of accomplish that comes with a job well done and the money you’ll make?

Americans are deeply dissatisfied with their jobs.  A 2015 Conference Board report stated, “for the eighth straight year, less than half of US workers are satisfied with their jobs.”  It found that only 48.3 percent were satisfied, really happy, at work.  In 2013, it reported that 47.7 percent of workers were satisfied with their jobs – a minuscule increase of 0.6 percentage points. The Conference Board has been conducting annual job satisfaction surveys since decades.  It found that the country hit bottom in 2010 when only 42.6 percent reported satisfaction and, in the report’s words, “well below the historical level of 61.1 percent in 1987.”

A 2015 Gallup survey suggests a different perspective on job satisfaction, finding that overall job satisfaction was up compared to 2005.  It arrived at this assessment examining a half-dozen variables, including health insurance benefits, vacation time, retirement plan, promotions, on-the-job recognition, flexibility and wages.

However, it warned: “Despite large improvements over the past 10 years [since 2005] in how they view many aspects of their jobs, less than half of employed Americans say they are “completely satisfied” with the recognition they receive at work for their accomplishments (45%) and the health insurance benefits their employer offers (40%).”  It concluded, “Even
fewer are ‘completely satisfied’ with the retirement plan offered (35%) and their chances for a promotion (35%).”

The great restructuring of capitalism is underway – and it is changing the lives of everyone on the plant, including U.S. working people.  Capitalism is evolving from an international system of nation states to a global system of financial plunder.  And nowhere is it felt – or struggled over – more than at the workplace.

Officially, the U.S. has steadily been climbing out of the worst of Great Recession.   In January, President Obama proudly proclaimed in his State of the Union address:

Let me start with the economy, and a basic fact: the United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world. We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history. More than 14 million new jobs; the strongest two years of job growth since the ’90s; an unemployment rate cut in half. Our auto industry just had its best year ever. Manufacturing has created nearly 900,000 new jobs in the past six years. And we’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters.

Unfortunately, the president failed to address two key issues — stagnant wages and high turnover especially among the low-wage jobholders.  Overall, the jobs created have been at lower wages than previously periods of recovery and the median household real incomes has not recovered from the recession.

Earlier this year, the National Association of Counties reported that only 7 percent (or 214 counties) of the nation’s 3,069 counties have recovered from the Great Recession – thus, 93 percent have not recovered.  Four indicators — total employment, the unemployment rate, size of the economy and home values – determined recovery.  Americans continue to suffer.

Many factors contribute to deepening sense of dissatisfaction, but none more so than wage stagnation.  In September 2015, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) painted a grim picture of the historic condition now gripping the nation in terms of wages:  “Since 1973, hourly compensation of the vast majority of American workers has not risen in line with economy-wide productivity.”  It then stressed, “In fact, hourly compensation has almost stopped rising at all. Net productivity grew 72.2 percent between 1973 and 2014. Yet inflation-adjusted hourly compensation of the median worker rose just 8.7 percent, or 0.20 percent annually, over this same period, with essentially all of the growth occurring between 1995 and 2002.”

EPI’s assessment was confirmed by a December 2014 study conducted by Monster and the Wage Indicator Foundation. It found that wages in small firms (<10 employees) are typically just about $14 per hour, while U.S. wages in larger firms (5,000+ employees) are double that of a small firm, $30 an hour.   It noted, “while employees at larger companies in the U.S. might be raking in higher wages, employees across the board are still relatively dissatisfied with how much they make.”  It added, “more than 65% of employees are not satisfied with their pay.”  Almost as an afterthought, it offered an up-beat assessment of deepening worker dissatisfaction:  “Despite the unhappiness with wages, the majority of employees in the U.S. (77.6%) are relatively satisfied with the work relationships they have with their colleagues, showing interpersonal interaction may trump wages.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) divides the U.S. labor force into three categories: Employed, Unemployed and Not-in-Labor-Force (NLF).  Perhaps most troubling is the dissatisfaction among NLF workers.  According to the BLS website, Jobenomics: “Since year 2000, the Not-in-Labor-Force cadre grew from 68.7 million to 94.1 million, an increase of 25.4 million citizens, who often become dependent on public and familial forms of financial assistance.”

Turnover is particularly high among low-wage jobs (e.g., the hospitality industry) and “contingent” — “gig” or on-demand — workers.  The BLS defines contingent workers as those holding “nonstandard work arrangements” or those without “permanent jobs with a traditional employer-employee relationship.”  It further distinguished between: (i) “core” contingency workers are agency temps, direct-hire temps, on-call laborers and contract workers; and (ii) “non-core” workers are independent contractors, self-employed workers and standard part-time workers who work fewer than 35 hours per week.  Non-core temps — notably writers, programmers, filmmakers and other “hip” indies — are the media darlings highlighting the new “entrepreneur” economy and to distort the perilous conditions faced by this growing segment to the workforce.

These workers are part of America’s new proletariat. They share many of the same conditions: no employer-sponsored health insurance, 401Ks or FLEX accounts; no Social Security employee contribution or unemployment compensation; no sick or vacation pay; no chance to join a union or move up the corporate ladder.  A 2015 survey of 1,330 gig workers reported in Information Week found that nearly half (48.5%) attributed low pay “being the most common cause of attrition.”  They do share the one attributed that Marx identified 150 years ago: They have nothing to lose but their chains.

The first lap of the 2016 electoral horse race is nearing the finishing line and the two current leaders – Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — are preparing for a head-to-head joust for the presidency.  Thanks to fierce grassroots and labor organizing, the $15 per hour minimum wage has become law in California, New York State and Seattle.  Pushed vigorously by Bernie Sanders and embraced with conditions by Clinton, wages and job dissatisfaction may become an issue in the November electoral showdown.  If Clinton and the Democrats aggressively push this issue they might force a decisive wedge in Trump’s fictitious nationalist rhetoric.

Al Jazeera America: Goodbye to All That Jazz

David Anderson

This month something unusual happened on TV for many New Yorkers and other Americans – a news channel went blank. After four years, Al Jazeera America has ceased operations.

So an obscure foreign TV network goes dark. So what? The problem here is it leaves the US TV cable viewer almost without a serious international network. At all.  A news cruise around the dial of most cable operators will leave the viewers with a surprisingly small number of news channels.

One can watch cable giants such as CNN or Fox, MSNBC and the like, and be left with the impression that almost nothing happens beyond the borders of the United States.

They have occasional foreign coverage of big bleeding stories, anything about terrorism, and a small amount of international economic news. Cable news here is parochial at best.

Fox and CNN can hardly be called serious news, nor can they ever be accused of being anything except incredibly America centered and infested with two generally extreme and cartoonish points of view; a hard right fairytale on Mr. Murdoc’s side, and CNN’s ceaseless time filing Blitzeresque droning.

The picture is just as awful when it comes to broadcast; a sample of any of the large networks’ evening or morning fare gives the viewer a feeling they are watching TV which is pitched to the intellectual and educational level of a ten year old.

The decline of American  news bureaus outside the US over the past 25 years is a symptom and a cause of American TV news organizations’ ever decreasing geographical range and interest.

This lack of access, and perhaps the horrible possibility that Americans have been trained over the last generation to value a childish celebrity obsessed junk culture of morons, spelled lights out for Al Jazeera.

What’s left for cable subscribers is PBS and foreign news channels with an international bent like the BBC, and increasingly (though increasingly slowly) other Al Jazeera-like foreign government networks such as CCTV from China, NHK from Japan (often joked as being Japan’s BBC) in English, and the hilariously slanted Kremlin mouthpiece RTT.   RTT is what professors of journalism could show their students as an example of utterly biased “reportage”.

Al Jazeera America, a subsidiary of Al Jazeera Media (Qatar) bought Canadian Current TV and combined was the closest thing we had to a serious in depth American international news channel. They have 50 (but no doubt a decreasing number of) non US news bureaus, a large budget, and a wealth of international talent. Their award winning coverage has earned various accolades within their community and an impressive number of American, Australian, British presenters and writers have defected, if you will, to Al Jazeera. They attracted viewers and  journalists who care for more than “celebrities and shouting” – as Al Jazeera themselves put it in reference to US TV infotainment.

The closing of nearly all overseas news bureaus by American media companies is in part due to changed realities of journalism and modern mass communications, but this trend of reduced interest in overseas events  was established by the mid 1990s, well before the internet was a force in journalism.

The main reasons for Al Jazeera America’s death are firstly the dramatically lowered price of oil which effects all of the owner’s -the Qatari government – finances. There has been an across the board cut for everything the petrocarbon rich Gulf Arab country supports. Additionally, Al Jazeera used to be a very unpopular name in the United States with citizens as well as cable companies (in Time Warner’s case) hungry to use the bandwidth in favor of less controversial and intellectual stations. It required a grass roots effort in NYC to even have Time Warner Cable put it on its dial at all.

As a brand, the network has come a long way since before the Gulf War II when Donald Rumsfeld toyed with the idea of actually bombing their office in Afghanistan – mainly in response to their airing of Bin Laden’s tapes. But that is what it is remembered for in the American media sphere and it was often mocked by Fox as being a nest of Islamic terrorism and apologists.  Its general liberal bent has earned it further ire from the big cable and broadcasting establishment.

Being Qatari government funded they are not beholden to advertisers – as their unimpressive advertising suggested. Ads didn’t pay the bills and their advertisers were like those of late night infomericals;- cheap face creams, personal injury attorneys, and late night drunk dial impulse purchases.

Its not the end of the world – there’s still Al Jazera International in its various online forms, but not on our TV screens with American perspectives and talent, and not with a full network in New York with other US branches to provide its 24 hour a day news, analysis, documentaries and specials. Devotees can and will access it online, just as many Americans did before Al J America was on our TVs.

But it is sad fate for the hopeful standard bearer in grown up international news, and is symptomatic of a more isolated, parochial, dumbed down America.

Political Violence in Honduras

Vijay Prashad

On March 3, assassins entered the home of Berta Caceres, leader of Honduras’ environmental and indigenous movement. They shot her friend Gustavo Castro Soto, the director of Friends of the Earth Mexico. He pretended to be dead, and so is the only witness of what came next. The assassins found Berta Caceres in another room and shot her in the chest, the stomach and the arms. When the assassins left the house, Castro went to Berta Caceres, who died in his arms.

Investigation into the death of Berta Caceres is unlikely to be conducted with seriousness. The Honduran government suggested swiftly that it was likely that Castro had killed Berta Caceres and made false statements about assassins. That he had no motive to kill his friend and political ally seemed irrelevant. Castro has taken refuge in the Mexican embassy in Honduras’ capital, Tegucigalpa. He continues to fear for his life.

Berta Caceres led the Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH), one of the most important critics of government and corporate power in her country. Most recently, she and COPINH had taken a strong stand against the construction of the Agua Zarca dam on a river sacred to the indigenous Lenca community. This dam had occupied her work. It was not merely a fight against an energy company, it was a fight against the entire Honduran elite.

Desarrollos Energeticos, SA (DESA) is owned by the Atala family, whose most famous member is Camilo Atala, who heads Honduras’ largest bank, Banco Ficohsa. By all indications, the Atala family is very close to the government. When the military moved against the democratically elected government of Manuel Zelaya Rosales in 2009, the Atala family, among others, supported the coup with their means. The Honduran sociologist Leticia Salomon listed this family among others as the enablers of the coup. They backed the conservative National Party, which now holds the reins of power alongside the military. Berta Caceres’ fight against the Agua Zarca dam, then, was not merely a fight against one dam. It was a battle against the entire Honduran oligarchy. Her assassination had, as her family contends, been long overdue.

Zelaya’s Honduras

Dario Euraque had been the Director of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History from June 2006 to the coup of September 2009. President Zelaya appointed Euraque with a clear mandate to change the culture of Honduras. He wanted to widen the cultural boundaries of the country to put the indigenous people at its centre and address their needs and ambitions. Euraque, a historian of Honduras, had already immersed himself in the world of the indigenous people. In his 2010 memoir of the coup, titled El golpe de Estado del 28 junio de 2009, Euraque explains that with encouragement from Zelaya he “advanced a more novel and democratic cultural policy” which “explicitly linked cultural heritage with strengthening the national identity of our country”.

“I met Berta [Caceres] in 1995 in La Esperanza, the city where she was murdered,” Euraque told this writer recently. “I interviewed her and her then husband, Salvador Zuniga, for a book about the ethnohistory of Honduras.” When Euraque took over the Honduran Institute, he “promoted cultural policies and projects that empowered Lenca people in the region where COPINH worked”.

Euraque and his team as well as Berta Caceres and COPINH faced harassment from the local opposition. “Our progressive policies of fomenting culture as social and political power,” said Euraque, “was part of a general commitment of President Zelaya to empower [the] Honduran people in ways that would transform the corrupt political culture and political system that [has] made Honduras one of the poorest countries in the Americas.”

As part of his commitment to the indigenous legacy of Honduras, Zelaya had halted most hydroelectric projects. This was one of the reasons why the Honduran business elite despised him. But it was not the only reason. Zelaya began his political career as a liberal, but as president he drifted closer and closer to the world view of leaders such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Raul Castro of Cuba and Evo Morales of Bolivia. Association with this Leftist movement in the Americas drove a humane agenda for Honduras. Zelaya’s government offered free education and school meals to children, provided subsidies to small farmers and free electricity to the poor, reduced interest rates and increased the minimum wage. This was a broad democratic process that earned Zelaya the love of his people, but the hatred of the elite and, consequently, the United States government.

Coup by oligarchy

The Business Council of Latin America and the Association of Honduran Manufacturers began an all-out war against Zelaya, who faced a hostile media as well as a hostile opposition in the Congress. Zelaya’s attempt to revise the conservative 1982 Constitution provided his enemies with an opportunity. On the pretext of legal irregularities, the military moved against Zelaya, arresting him on June 28, 2009. He was exiled to Costa Rica. His allies did not get the same courtesy. The military and the opposition went on a rampage against Zelaya’s base, hitting them hard with violence and prison.

The deaths came one after another: Vicky Herhandez Castillo, a transgender activist in San Pedro Sula; Mario Contreras, director of the Instituto Abelardo Fortin in Tegucigalpa; Antonio Levia, a Lenca leader of the National Front of Resistance in Santa Barbara; and a youth leader of the Resistance, Pedro Magdiel Munoz in Tegucigalpa. Euraque and his family fled to the U.S. Repressive laws came from above as the coup government provided amnesty for its forces. The coup government did what the Business Council and the Association of Honduran Manufacturers wanted. It removed Zelaya, repressed the popular movements, and handed Honduras over to the propertied elite.

U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens wrote a cable shortly after the coup, in which he wrote that “there is no doubt” that Zelaya’s removal “constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup”. He was ignored. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s long-time friend and ally Lanny Davis had been the Washington lobbyist of the Honduran business community. Through Davis, Hillary Clinton made contact with one of the conspirators of the coup, Roberto Micheletti. She would later write in her book, Hard Choices, that her government helped push the Honduran elite to give legitimacy to the new government through elections, “which would render the question of Zelaya moot”. The U.S., the main patron of the Honduran elite, backed the coup and increased military aid to the new government.

The historian Dana Frank has been a long-time critic of U.S. intervention in Honduras. She told this writer that the U.S. not only actively ensured that “the coup succeeded and stabilised” but that it continues to legitimise, “celebrate and shore up the post-coup regime devastating Honduras”. Dana Frank has hard words not only for Washington but also for Tegucigalpa. She said: “The U.S. bears direct responsibility for the terrifying crisis in Honduras today, in which Juan Orlando Hernandez’s U.S.-supported dictatorship runs roughshod over the rule of law, robs the public coffers blind, and allows security forces and death squads to kill human rights defenders and social justice activists with near-complete impunity.”

Berta Caceres’ mother, Austra Bertha Flores Lopez, released a public letter a month after her assassination. “I ask you to keep strongly supporting me to achieve justice,” she wrote, “and stop the impunity in a country so hard hit by oppressive political violence against people who work to construct a more just and humane society.”

COPINH members said that they had been under threat of violence and persecution for their work. The Honduran army, they said, had a hit list of critics of the regime. Berta Caceres had been on that list, as had many others killed over the past seven years. “Every human rights defender in Honduras knows he or she can be killed at any moment,” Dana Frank said.

What this culture of impunity has produced, according to Euraque, “is the complete destruction of the country’s social and cultural fabric, contributing to never-before-recorded deterioration of mental health problems, intra-family violence, all with the collusion of a corrupt judiciary and state.” It is not easy for Euraque to say these things. He is a patriot of his country, which is being murdered before his very eyes.

The United States, Britain and the European Union

Deepak Tripathi

On his farewell tour, President Barack Obama has stirred the pot ahead of the June referendum in Britain on whether the United Kingdom should stay in the European Union or leave. His warning to leavers that Britain cannot expect a trade agreement with the United States any time soon if it withdraws from the EU has infuriated leaders of the Brexit campaign, and delighted those who want to remain, including Prime Minister David Cameron. Obama’s message to Britain was that it should remain in the EU, and that it was in America’s interest, too.

Some of the comments made by leading Brexit figures in the governing Conservative Party in retaliation to Obama’s intervention have been described as borderline racist.

In a particularly outspoken jibe, London mayor and a member of the British cabinet, Boris Johnson, accused the American president of interfering in British politics. Johnson went on to say that after entering the House House Obama had ordered the removal a bust of the British wartime leader, Winston Churchill, from the Oval Office. Furthermore, he suggested that this might be because of Obama’s “part Kenyan ancestral dislike of the British empire.”

Other leading Brexit campaigners expressed similar sentiments. Nigel Farage, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, told the American president to “butt” out of intervening in Britain’s referendum on EU membership. Farage, too, asserted that Obama was influenced by his Kenyan family’s colonial view of Britain. The use of this type of language about an American president is unprecedented for the British political establishment – a country which claims a “special relationship” with the United States.

There are striking similarities between insinuations by American conservatives about Barack Obama’s Kenyan heritage and his Muslim father, and comments heard in Britain. Some members of the Brexit lobby have privately expressed fears that such direct attacks on him will backfire, and help the pro-EU campaign in a tight race. Jingoism and xenophobia live on both sides of the Atlantic. There are people ready and willing to whip up such sentiments.

Winston Churchill’s grandson, Nicholas Soames, a member of the British parliament and a supporter of remaining in the EU, has described Boris Johnson’s remarks as appalling, and said it was “inconceivable” that his grandfather would not have welcomed Obama’s views. It was, after all, Churchill who first suggested closer European unity in a famous speech in the Swiss city of Zurich in 1946.

From the ruins of the Second World War, Churchill spoke of his vision to recreate “the European family” with a structure under which it can “dwell in peace, in safety and freedom.” He described it as something like a United States of Europe. Today, his party is tearing itself apart over whether Britain should be part of that structure.

Why should President Obama have intervened so publicly in the EU debate during his visit to Britain? And why did opponents of the European Union react so furiously? These questions require understanding of how Britain’s relations with the United States and the rest of Europe, Germany in particular, have evolved in the last century.

The Second World War was a watershed which brought enormous global change. Hitler’s Nazi regime in Europe, and imperial Japan in Asia, were defeated. But Europe was quickly divided into rival blocs again – one dominated by America, the other by the Soviet Union.

At the same time, Europe’s colonial powers, Britain and France in particular, were so exhausted that they would have found it difficult to keep distant territories under their control. And the foremost superpower, the United States, was exerting pressure on the masters to let their colonies go. The Americans wanted to expand their markets worldwide, for which they were in competition with the Soviets.

Imperial Britain had to yield to imperial America – the coming inevitability which Churchill intensely disliked. There was, however, another option. Accept that the United States was paramount; stay close to Washington; and, whenever possible, use diplomacy to maneuver America in the direction in which Britain’s interests would be served.

The United States, too, was looking for close allies – in Europe, in the United Nations Security Council and other international organizations. Germany had been the main enemy in two world wars. France, at times, was too independent for Washington’s liking. Under President Charles de Gaulle’s leadership, France left NATO’s integrated military structure in 1966, asserting its independent nuclear deterrent and broader defense policy. Only in 2009 did President Sarkozy announce that France would rejoin the military structure of NATO once again.

In contrast, the United Kingdom has enjoyed the closest military and intelligence ties with the United States. “Special relationship” is a term often invoked in London. The dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the fall of the iron curtain, have paved the way for NATO and the European Union to expand. Today, both organizations perform similar functions, having incorporated countries that were once in the Soviet bloc. NATO and the EU both do the job of containing Russia, and of projecting American power beyond Europe. Brexit campaigners fail to get it.

Chernobyl’s Ongoing Toll: 40,000 More Cancer Deaths?

Ian Fairlie

In 1996, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated that Chernobyl was “the foremost nuclear catastrophe in human history”.

In 2005, the IAEA and World Health Organisation (WHO) set out their united view:

“The magnitude and scope of the disaster, the size of the affected population, and the long-term consequences make it, by far, the worst industrial disaster on record.

“Chernobyl unleashed a complex web of events and long-term difficulties, such as massive relocation, loss of economic stability, and long-term threats to health in current and, possibly, future generations.”

In 2006, the independent TORCH (The Other Report on Chernobyl) report examined the health evidence. However thousands of scientific articles have been published since then.

These are discussed in a new TORCH-2016 report commissioned by Friends of the Earth Austria and funded by the City Government of Vienna. It clearly indicates that the adverse effects from Chernobyl are continuing.

The accident had many consequences, including economic, ecological, social and political effects. TORCH-2016 focuses on the health effects, and clearly shows they were and are manifold, severe, widespread, and long-lasting. In a word, devastating, contrary to a recent article in Scientific American.

The new TORCH report finds

* 40,000 fatal cancers are predicted in Europe over the next 50 years
* 6,000 thyroid cancer cases to date, 16,000 more expected
* 5 million people in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia still live in highly contaminated areas (>40 kBq/sq.m)
* 400 million in less contaminated areas (>4 kBq/sq.m)
* 37% of Chernobyl’s fallout was deposited on western Europe;
* 42% of western Europe’s land area was contaminated
* increased radiogenic thyroid cancers expected in West European countries
* increased radiogenic leukemias, cardiovascular diseases, breast cancers confirmed
* new evidence of radiogenic birth defects, mental health effects and diabetes
* new evidence that children living in contaminated areas suffer radiogenic illnesses

Fallout from Chernobyl

The headline estimate of 40,000 future cancer deaths is derived from the collective dose estimate of 400,000 person sieverts by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) in 2011.

This figure is multiplied in TORCH-2016 by the currently accepted risk of fatal cancer from radiation (10% per person sievert) to arrive at an expected 40,000 fatal cancers in future. This is a valid routinely-used estimation method using the official linear no-threshold (LNT) model of radiation risks. The 40,000 figure is the same order of magnitude as other academic estimates.

The accident contaminated over 40% of Europe as shown in the map of Cs-137 concentrations below. This included the UK: indeed food restriction orders were finally repealed in Wales only in 2012. Restrictions still exist in several other countries, especially on wild foods.

The problem with nuclear power is that it can be supremely unforgiving: when things go wrong – as at Chernobyl (and Fukushima in 2011) – they can go very, very wrong indeed. Contaminating over 40% of Europe plus an estimated 40,000 deaths are pretty disastrous effects.

It is vital that governments learn from the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents. Many governments are phasing out their nuclear plants, but regrettably, a few governments – including the UK Government and even that of Belarus, which suffered the brunt of Chernobyl’s fallout – have decided to ignore the lessons of Chernobyl and Fukushima and are planning or constructing more nuclear power stations.

A question of trust

In 2005, the IAEA/WHO stated “What the Chernobyl disaster has clearly demonstrated is the central role of information and how it is communicated in the aftermath of radiation or toxicological incidents. Nuclear activities in Western countries have also tended to be shrouded in secrecy.

“The Chernobyl experience has raised the awareness among disaster planners and health authorities that the dissemination of timely and accurate information by trusted leaders is of the greatest importance.” While this is undoubtedly correct, it raises the vexed question of trust in governments which, for many people, has been eroded or does not exist after Chernobyl and Fukushima.

To re-establish that trust will be difficult. At a minimum, it will require the following steps. First, governments to make clear to their citizens that they will consider safer energy options that do not have the potential for another Chernobyl or Fukushima. Many such options exist.

Second, a dialogue to be set up between agencies such as IAEA, WHO and national governments on the one hand and various NGOs and health charities on the other for exchanges of views on radiation risks. Transparency is essential.

Third, WHO should no longer be required to have its reports on radiation matters vetted by the IAEA, as presently required under the 1959 agreement between the two UN agencies.

Fourth, UN agencies WHO, UNSCEAR, IAEA should be required to have independent scientists from NGOs and health charities as members of their main Committees. These agencies should also be required to consult on their draft reports, including the convening of meetings with environment NGOs and independent health charities.

Justin Trudeau Is A Climate Denying Monster

Bill Henderson

Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau thinks that you have to build pipelines to mitigate climate change; that you need to raise revenue by producing fossil fuels to pay for a transition to a renewable energy, post-carbon economy.

Canada is the worlds fifth largest producer of fossil fuels (and hence, climate change). During the Harper years (and during high fossil fuel prices) over half of Canada's wealth generated from exports were from fossil fuels. No wonder the Trudeau governments is in new climate denial - governing without these high levels of economic activity and income is impossible in our presently configured economy. Trudeau claims he has always advocated for new pipelines to get Canadian bitumen to tidewater: “I have been crystal clear for years now on pipelines. One of the fundamental responsibilities of any Canadian prime minister – and this goes back centuries, from grain on railroads to fish and fur – is to get Canadian resources to international markets”.

But times change. Climate change becomes far worse far faster. Canada's PM pretends to leadership on the world stage: 'Canada's back', and promises that his government is really serious about climate change: backing a global target of keeping emissions well below 2C, but then uses his governmental powers to try and facilitate an even larger expansion of fossil fuel production - this is Canada's PM sliding back to join Stephen Harper as a global climate criminal: continuing to subvert needed international action on a building catastrophe.

Climate change is becoming far worse, far faster. Since Paris both the global warming symptoms and the climate change science have changed for the worse. It is not just the unbelievable and terrifying spike in temperatures (partly associated with an El Nino event) or the melting Arctic or the bleaching coral. It is not just the rapidly melting icesheets and rising sea-levels, the increasing extreme weather and the famines and societal disruption as a consequence. The race to mitigate climate change effectively is getting increasingly desperate.

Last year McGlade and Ekins published a paper detailing which present fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground in order for human caused warming to stay under the internationally agreed precautionary ceiling of a 2C rise from pre-industrial levels. In order to have just a 50/50 chance of staying under 2C, a third of oil reserves, half of natural gas and 80% of coal must remain in the ground. Canada's oilsands where singled out: production must be reduced to negligible levels after 2020.

McGlade and Ekins based their calculations on a global carbon budget of 1,100Gt that could still be burned without producing enough CO2 greenhouse gas (GHG) to exceed 2C. Recent advances in the carbon budget science over the past year has now shrunk this budget to now much less than 1000 Gt, to somewhere closer to 600-800Gt.

The Rogelj et el paper is the main paper quantifying this lower carbon budget but the budget is shrinking because the climate science is also getting much dire. A recent paper studying clouds strongly suggests that climate sensitivity has been underestimated which would shrink the carbon budget further. A new paper on terrestrial sinks will soon be published predicting that we must factor in increasing carbon going to the atmosphere. Not only does this mean that we can put less carbon into the atmosphere to stay relatively safe from humanity threatening 'dangerous climate change', but the shrinking carbon budget also means we have far less time to reduce our emissions. Whereas Canada's emission reduction target (the old Harper government target) is 30% below 2005 levels by 2030, the updated carbon budget target is now probably closer to 100% reduction of all emissions by 2030.

We now know that even a 1C rise in temperature may engender civilization or even humanity threatening consequences such as the drowning of the world's great coastal cities this century and that a 2C rise in temperature is deep into dangerous climate change. By any reasonable analysis climate change is now an emergency because action to effectively reduce emissions must happen faster than presently possible within our present political and economic systems.

The climate change emergency is by far the most critical problem of our time and this is why ratcheting up action post-Paris is so important. But this is the time that Prime Minister Trudeau is following his mentor President Obama and doing everything within his power to expand fossil fuel production in Canada.

Now this isn't just about meeting our international commitments - Canadians not meeting our international climate commitments is sadly our history and it looks like we are continuing to play this WTO-style game. But there are real climate change consequences building. This accidental byproduct of our use of fossil fuels has now become humanity threatening because we have failed repeatedly to take effective mitigating action. For example, if we would have begun the presently advocated carbon pricing - decarbonization mitigation strategy in the late 80s, early 90s, by now we would be well into a post carbon economy and emission reduction wouldn't be such a daunting problem. But we didn't and now our mitigation strategy must be much more draconian - if we are reasonable and responsible and want to do due diligence and protect future generations, if we want a future for all we love and care about.

If the PM lead in recognizing the climate dangers and recognized that climate is now an emergency requiring deep systemic change, and Canada actually did provide leadership at this critical time by forming an emergency, wartime-style coalition government, imposed restrictions on new fossil fuel infrastructure and a regulated schedule to wind down all fossil fuel production and use in accordance with the McGlade-Ekins framework but based upon a 600-800Gt budget, Canada at least would be doing what was necessary to stay safe under 2C. Most probably countries such as Russia and the Saudis wouldn't follow suite, but the pressure upon countries like the US, Australia and China, the EU countries, etc. would be immense and it would be hard for their governments to not take effective action. Hopefully, action would spur action, innovation and adaption, new political and economic structures where reducing emissions to stay at least under 2C became practical.

It might even be possible to save this very fortunate way of life that we now enjoy: democracy, wealth and increasing complexity, reasonable safety and room to grow, a path to a future like we grew up believing possible.

Justin Trudeau isn't the only Canadian politician ludicrously pushing fossil fuel expansion. BC's Premier Clark, who's government is desperately trying to build an LNG industry to expand natural gas production for export, and remarking about the onset of a severe forest fire outbreak caused by abnormally high winter and spring temperatures, told an audience that the way to fight BC forest fires was to sell LNG to Asia in order to replace coal in power plants. Clark is an expert in post-truth politics often channeling Sarah Palin in her self serving make believe. Alberta Premier Notley, who has been desperately lobbying for that mythical pipeline to tidewater and world prices as Alberta's economic savior, is going to Washington to tell legislators there that Alberta has a new climate plan that will keep emissions the same in 2030 as they are today. (???? Good work Premier Notley.)

But Justin Trudeau stands out claiming to take climate change seriously and lead, and now he is subverting needed action globally just like previous Canadian prime ministers. When you consider what is at stake, what has to happen so that innocents in the future, our kids and their kids, aren't victim of a climate catastrophe baked in today, when you consider Mr. Trudeau's actions in contrast to his words at this critical time, and you consider the consequences, our good looking, young and dynamic PM is just as much a monster as his climate action subverting predecessor Stephen Harper.

The Killing Field And The Incoherent Politics Of Bangladesh

Taj Hashmi

The latest killings of scores of freethinking writers by “Islamist” or “unknown” assailants are fast turning Bangladesh into a killing field. The latest killings of an atheist blogger, one university professor, and two LGBT activists in Bangladesh have stirred the world outside Bangladesh. Even the UN has demanded prompt probe into the latest killings in the country. However, what we hear from Bangladesh is bizarre, and unfortunate. While the Home Minister thinks people live in absolute safety, the police chief has asked people to make their own “security circles”. Some politicians have already “identified” the killers, said to be BNP-Jamaat activists! Surprisingly, while the Home Minister asserts there is no ISIS in Bangladesh, the Information Minister has confirmed – with absolute precision – there are 8,000 al Qaeda activists in the country.

Since human insecurity in a modern state is a political problem, only honest politicians can resolve it. I use Ghazzali’s famous book on the incoherence of philosophers metaphorically, to explain the incoherence of politicians in Bangladesh. In his classic The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-Falasifa), famous Muslim philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111) – aka Imam Ghazzali – convincingly argues that philosophers had been consistently inconsistent, incoherently applying logic only to science and mathematics, not to metaphysical, and abstract thoughts and ideas. As politics is all about philosophy – even terrorism is philosophy-driven – so it’s time to look at the age-old incoherence in the realm of Bangladesh politics.

Imputing philosophers’ incoherence to his temporary loss of imaan or faith in Allah and Islam, considering philosophy dangerous, Ghazzali abandoned it altogether. Whether most Bangladeshis have abandoned politics altogether, considering it too dangerous to be associated with, is an important question. A depoliticized nation is like a terminally ill patient, who can’t breathe in any oxygen despite being connected to a cylinder full of oxygen. I think the prevalent “apathy” to politics in Bangladesh is fear-induced, what political thinker Anthony Downs calls “rational ignorance” of the underdogs. The average Bangladeshis are just too scared to open their mouth.

The way pro-BNP or anti-Awami League politicians, journalists, and civil society members are getting arrested and kept behind bars – without trial for indefinite periods – has terrorized would be dissidents. People get arrested, harassed and persecuted by pro-Government police and party activists even for writing critical things in social media, about the Prime Minister, her son, and her government, which came to power through farcical parliamentary elections in January 2014.

Interestingly, there are hardly any major ideological differences, between the various secular, nationalist, and Islamic parties in the country. The differences between the ruling Awami League (AL) and BNP, the main opposition party, are personal than ideological. While the AL promotes “Bangali Nationalism”, the BNP holds fast to “Bangladeshi Nationalism”; their differences are as phony as those between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Again, both of them are: a) least democratic, and b) not transparent at all.

Ever since the Liberation, different sets of politicians have been telling the people what is more important to them than food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and education. Politicians have their own versions of cry wolves to deceive the people. Sometimes they tell the people their freedom is at stake; and sometimes people hear about the conspiracies against Islam, hatched out by certain politicians. It’s unbelievable but true, as it appears in the Gulliver’s Travels, Lilliputians were at war against each other over the issue of which end of the egg they should break before making an omelette, many Bangladeshis are programmed to fight each other over the contentious issue if “Bangladeshi” or “Bangali” should be their national identity. Who are “pro-Liberation” and who are “opposed” to freedom is another bone of contention.

Bangladesh since the 1980s has virtually become Satyajit Roy’s Hirak Rajar Desh. And in this hedonistic kingdom of power and pleasure, politicians in power make and break rules, plunder, extort, and even kill with total impunity. Nothing seems immoral, impossible, disorderly, or surprising at all! The “winners take all” is the rule of the game. The opposition – the real ones, not some pseudo-opposition parties – isn’t even entitled to crumbs from the high table. However, there is a problem. All losers aren’t just sitting idle.

There’s, however, an almost invisible albeit not that powerful undercurrent of resistance to the superordinates, who have failed miserably to establish their hegemony among the bulk of the populace. The Bashkhali protest against coal-generated power plant, and mass rallies for the arrest of the killer of Tonu, are just sporadic examples in this regard. The ruling elites’ self-inflicted inability-cum-unwillingness to accept the reality – the existence of any resistance to their rule – has been the biggest incoherence in Bangladesh politics since day one of the emergence of this nation-state.

Ruling elites reject mass protests against massive corruption, injustice, and killing of innocent people as law and order problem, or as machinations by the ubiquitous opposition, “linked with” foreign agents or terrorism. In the past, we heard weird things from the government about the ten truckloads of arms captured by police in Chittagong; the grenade attacks on Sheikh Hasina’s rally; and the rise of Bangla Bhai and the JMB- and HUJI-led terror attacks across the country.

Politicians in power haven’t yet convincing explained scores of violent attacks on innocent people by political goons, law-enforcers or “unknown assailants”; extra-judicial killings by law-enforcers; the killing of 57 army officers at the BDR Headquarters; and the killing of pedestrians, bus and car drivers/passengers in 2013-2014. Last but not least, politicians in power and in the opposition have diametrically opposite stories about the ongoing selective killings of writers, bloggers, and LGBT activists quite for some time. Meanwhile, Bangladesh is fast becoming a safe haven for killing squads and terrorists, and a killing field for innocent victims.

History is replete with examples of rulers’ selling grand but useless objects to the people as symbols of their greatness, grandeur and virtue: the Colossus of Rhodes in ancient Greece; the Taj Mahal in Mughal India; and the Victoria Memorial in British India. The number of flyovers in over-congested Dhaka city for example, which don’t benefit more than five per cent of the population, may be mentioned in this regard. The flyovers are like what was once the “legendary” Kamalapur Railway Station in Dhaka during Ayub Khan’s “Decade of Development” – sold as the best of its kind in Asia.

The long and short of the story is that, instead of leading their followers politically, towards good governance, progress, and nation-building, politicians here mostly mislead people through lies, deceptions, and non-issues. Politicians here behave in the most unethical and unprofessional manner. During the last ten years alone, politicians defended, justified and collaborated with General Moeen Ahmed’s illegitimate regime. They play dubious roles by enacting controversial laws, and holding controversial elections – either boycotted en masse or rigged in the most unprecedented manner.

While innocent people, intellectuals and dissidents get arrested, harassed by law-enforcers, disappear and die, politicians are in a state of denial, and even worse, busy vilifying each other as killers and anti-state elements. Meanwhile, Bangladesh is virtually fast turning into a killing field, and a safe haven for politically well-connected bank defaulters, money launderers, and share-market scammers. Money launderers have so far sent more than 30 thousand crore (thirty billion) taka out of Bangladesh; share-scammers defrauded millions to the tune of several billion takas; and “unknown” criminals robbed more than $100 million from the Bangladesh Bank. Interestingly, the Finance Minister often rubbishes all criticisms of financial scams, and considers these crimes as growing pains of growth and development.

It’s time Bangladeshi politicians resolve their differences, hold credible elections, learn how to respect each other (without turning Donald Trump into their role model), and learn the art and science of governance. Let politics be a means to serve the people, not an end in itself. Bangladeshi politicians must realise, world leaders, various UN agencies, intellectuals, human rights activists, social media and global media as a whole don’t lie, and they have no agendas to harm Bangladesh. The Government should pay heed to what the Guardian has published on the rise of extremism in Bangladesh (26 April, 2016): “Bangladesh's pluralism is at risk if Sheikh Hasina does not stop extremists”.

As a recent Financial Times article “Bangladesh pays for bad politics in blood” (27 April 2016) suggests in the wake of the killings of two LGBT activists in Dhaka, there is no room for complacency for this regime. The article has also cited the latest Report on Bangladesh by the International Crisis Group, which believes that the Government’s “heavy-handed measures are damaging its own legitimacy and benefitting extremists”; and that: “There is no time to lose. If mainstream dissent remains closed, more and more government opponents may come to view violence and violent groups as their only recourse.” Sooner the Hasina Government realise there is no room for complacency, tribalism and rural factional politics or patron-client relationship in democracy, the better. Perpetual cry wolves, denial of the prevalent state of terror, anarchy, and corruption, and blaming the main opposition parties (the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami) for corruption and terrorism – as this Government has been doing quite for sometime – will eventually backfire.

Kashmir: Truth Lost In Propaganda

Gowhar Geelani

Twirling his grey moustache General (retired) Bakshi said on NDTV’s programme Big Fight (Kashmir On The Edge: What's The Solution?) that the Indian army personnel opened fired on the civilians in north Kashmir’s frontier towns of Handwara and Kupwara only when the angry protesters set their bunker on fire and tried to attack the army. “Should our soldiers be bowing their head to say ‘come on, mob lynch us’ we will exercise restraint?” The audience gave him a rapturous round of applause.

The gullible Indian audience thought that the retired army general was speaking the gospel truth. But he was lying. It was a blatant lie. There was no one there to tell Mr. Bakshi or the seasoned anchor Mr. Vikram Chandra that the woman Raja Begum, who was one among the five civilians killed by the army, was attending her vegetable garden when she was hit by a bullet. She later succumbed to her injuries. She was not even part of the demonstrations. She was nowhere near the army bunker. Similarly, the young cricketer Nayeem, another boy who was mercilessly killed, was in the market to buy grocery when fired upon by the police. Yet another boy in Kupwara was killed when not a single stone was pelted. One more person Iqbal was the first one killed in cold blood in Handwara. That’s how blatant lies are spread by the army generals and Indian media.

That’s the propaganda: “Give a dog a bad name and hang him. Repeat a lie thousand times and it becomes truth.” That’s what India has been doing since 1947. Especially post 1989.

And now a new rabid poster boy of the Pandit community claims that Kashmiri Muslims are “Islamist goons”. This is how they have mastered the art of playing the victim card. Despite being the extensions of the mighty State their main contention is the narrative of victimhood to stay relevant in New Delhi. But relevance matters on the home turf. Their vicious propaganda and vitriolic commentary may pave way for them to get free ration, some temporary packages and sympathies in Delhi but they are losing the battle on the home soil: Kashmir.