A Failure of Christian Ethics

Michael Welton

At the heart of the crisis of the public presence of Christians in our tormented world has been their inability to offer any consistent and penetrating ethical critique of political subjugation, economic exploitation and racial (or sexual) oppression. In fact, Christian churches have often been in the forefront of championing and legitimating these explicit forms of human immiseration.

Those on the secular left are seldom aware of the role that exegetical interpretation of the Bible plays in shaping Christian responses to phenomena such as the state of Israel’s dispossession and brutal treatment of Palestinians or apartheid in South Africa (two of endless examples).

The question of “what kind of exegesis” is appropriate for Christians in the public square will be examined by analyzing how Christian thinkers and actors have read the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament to legitimate apartheid in South Africa (Richard Burridge, “Apartheid: an ethical and generic challenge to reading the New Testament”, in Imitating Jesus: an inclusive approach to Christian ethics [2007]).

Burridge, a well-known scholar of the New Testament gospels, has written a perceptively disturbing and unsettling commentary that reveals that Christian ethical thought offers different ways of understanding how to read texts into the world, each of which legitimized the South African apartheid regime.

Burridge identifies four types of Christian ethics (rules, principles, paradigms and symbolic world). The general call to “imitate Jesus” does not present itself with translucent clarity to faith-communities of interpretation. The first type imagines that imitating Jesus means obeying rules and prescriptive commands. The second looks for principles and universal values that can be read out of particular texts. The third offers examples and paradigms as the pedagogical form that can make transparent what Jesus requires of Christians in specific situations. And the fourth calls Christians to embrace an overall symbolic worldview. For Burridge, none of these types by itself is an adequate way of understanding the ethical demands of the gospel. He himself offers an inclusive vision, which in the end runs aground as well.

The first type “treats the New Testament as a kind of moral handbook and looks for specific material in prescriptive form or the genre of commands.” This approach is troublesome right from the start because of the absence of specific material dealing with contemporary problems. Christian rule-based ethics finds texts that are most compatible with the “genre of direct command” such as the Sermon on the Mount or select Pauline injunctions (or with some of the Old Testament material on law and commandment).

But this ethical approach runs into serious problems. The Bible reflects the culture of different times and places. For instance Paul instructs the ornery Corinthians to not eat meat offered to idols (1 Cor. 8; 10:18-35). This command does not translate easily into our world. Nor do most others!

And the concerns of our own world—nuclear war, international lawlessness, abortion, embryo research or euthanasia—are absent from the ancient texts. When the Bible does deal with violence, the state or other matters, it offers morally reprehensible ideas. Problematic considerations tumble in like falling rock on communities of interpretation.

Christian readers have to sort out the differences between the two testaments, with one counselling the use of violence; questions pertaining to whether all laws are binding (just read some of the laws in Leviticus to send shudders down your spine) or even the contradictions and variations in the gospels and letters (such as the Lutheran theme of “faith versus works” (Romans 4 set against James 2).

How has the type of ethical interpretation worked in South Africa? Burridge argues that: “The use of the Bible to defend apartheid is a good example of the problem of the selectivity of texts, especially those of rules, norms or commands.” The Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) infamously used the text from Genesis 1: 28—“Be fruitful and multiply”—which included the “diversity of humanity” as declared in Deuteronomy 32: 8-9, which reads: “When the Most High apportioned the nations, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of gods; the Lord’s own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share”–to justify both their own sense of identity as “people of the promise” and their command to live as a separate people in this land.

They also took the Old Testament injunction forbidding Israelites to marry other peoples, and legitimated the prohibition of mixed marriages in South Africa under the Immorality Act. William Vorster, Professor of New Testament at the University of South Africa, Pretoria, viewed the Bible as an “oracle book” of “proof texts” or a “book of norms.” Here, then, the political system of power and white privilege assumes the role of hermeneutical key. “The main difference is the (political) grid through which the Bible is read….In its essence there is no difference in the use and appeal to the Bible between apartheid and anti-apartheid theologians.” Vorster finds the texts he needs to justify “separate development.”

The Bible has become an instrument of oppression. It is used to reinforce and strengthen this apartheid order. Burridge comments further: “What happened in South Africa stands as warning about the temptation to choose or interpret such prescriptions according to the reader’s own prejudices or presuppositions, with both sides using similar passages and commands to justify their own previously held positions.”

Ethical position number two searches for principles and universal values. It is tied to the first type, but only in the sense that it looks “for principles and universal values lying behind the commands.” Two such general principles would be “call to love” or the “call to liberation.” These liberation theologies have widely influenced “black theologies” in South Africa. Those choosing this hermeneutical perspective work with “texts of revelation, epistles and sermons where theology is expounded in more general terms which can then be applied to our situation.”

The “principles” ethical approach leads to what Burridge calls “hermeneutical gerrymandering to annex New Testament texts to foreign modes of ethical discourse.” Thousands of disastrous sermons and teachings emerge from the promiscuity of saying, “The text says x, but it couldn’t really mean that…so let’s get at the underlying principle (which is then pulled out of the magician’s hat.” But this rampant subjectivism leads Christian ethical thought and practice in an array of conflicting directions.

Liberation theology confronts this form of critique. It uses the Exodus mythic legend without accounting for the destruction of the Promised Land’s inhabitants and a Marxist class analysis to illuminate selected texts. And one can also raise the question of whether “love and liberation” hold across Scripture.

The DRC loves principles. They begin their major pronouncements with a “statement of principle.” It is a constant refrain: the Bible “contains guiding principles for all spheres of life.” But the key question becomes “how one decides which are the important biblical principles, and the source from which they are derived.” What we now see, Burridge claims, is that the same creation stories lead to “contrasting ‘principles’ of either ‘separate development’ (God made us all different) or ‘unity’ (God made us one in our (God made us one in our diversity).”

The DRC extracted from the Tower of Babel legend (Gen. 11:1-9) the “principle of different language groups and different cultures in separate development.” The famous text of Acts 2: 6-11—where everyone hears God speaking in their own language—produces the pro-apartheid reading that “everyone hearing ‘God’s great deeds in our own language’—and thus justified separate radical church services, according to language group.”

In sharp contrast, the anti-apartheid hermeneutic saw “breaking down the barriers that separate humanity.” So, the same method of searching for a principle, once applied to the same text, evoked two divergent principles.

Burridge argues that “given this difficulty of extracting principles from within the text itself, the alternative is to bring a principle from elsewhere as a means to interpret the text.” For Jan Botha, for instance, “human rights” becomes the Archimedean point that contains critical power to illuminate previously darkened texts and reject certain particularistic teachings in the Scriptures. Itumeleng Mosala’s black theology imposes a liberation ethic on the “texts from the outside, rather than being read from within them.”

Desmond Tutu’s case is “more complex” because his “commitment to the principle of ‘justice’ … constantly stresses God’s love for everyone, regardless of their race, colour or the ‘shape of their nose’.” Nonetheless, the authority of this reading (popular among left-leaning Christians) is not firmly established. Is it derived from the Bible or did it arise from liberation theology or even Tutu’s own peculiar spirituality and life experiences? It is difficult to say. This is cold comfort for ordinary members of faith-communities who trudge along baffled by the Bible’s opaqueness in our pluralistic world.

The third ethical position—following examples and paradigms—emerges because of the sheer difficulty of “interpreting commands and prescriptive material, as well as discerning the correct principles.” This hermeneutic perspective focuses on scriptural narratives which might serve us with exemplars for us today. How does this hermeneutic work? For Catholics adhering to the idea that humans are moral creatures, biblical stories may serve as a kind of “moral reminder.”

One can imagine, then, that one could examine a story (where God approves and disapproves) and extrapolate the teaching that we ought to live as “moral beings ourselves.” Burridge links this approach to “virtue (or character) ethics”: the Bible is read to form ethical character (even though the Old Testament is chock full of non-ethical instructions). This mode of reading requires that one “formulate imaginative analogies between the stories told in the texts and the story lived out by our community in very different setting.”

Karl Barth wrote about biblical stories containing parables for our time. But this scriptural reading tip requires an imaginative leap from ancient text to contemporary pertinence. Burridge states that this approach “obviously works best with narrative, story-based texts, so in the New Testament all the gospel stories and parables are well used here, in the same way that Old Testament narratives, especially from the Pentateuch, play their part.”

But there are a series of immense difficulties with the third position. For one thing, one immediately faces the “cultural relativism gap”. Many preachers, perhaps hiding their own desperation, love to quarry the Bible for examples to follow or to find a “thought for the day.” Open up the Gideon Bible found in hotel rooms and find a verse for every problem you might have. Cultures are not closed tombs, but, alas, building bridges between ancient cultures and modern ones is no easy task. The Bible would simply shut the door if a radical historicist position were embraced. We can communicate across the ages and cultures, but not fluidly, easily. Burridge provides a lovely image to capture the enigmatic nature of the Bible. “The Bible is more like a river, containing the ‘water of life’ but which has flowed a long way from its source and picked up things along the way which make it unthinkable for us.”

Applied to South Africa, we return to the deeply problematic problem of the Promised Land mythological legend. Right up front, Burridge proclaims: “The paradigmatic claim to be emulating the example of a central biblical narrative lay at the heart of both the justification for apartheid and the Afrikaner mindset.” Like the Puritan pilgrims to New England in the seventeenth century, the early settlers who came to South Africa “saw themselves as similar to the ancient Israelites, making an exodus from oppression and being guided on the journey by God, eventually following their example of entering into the Promised Land.” Of course the natives—the Canaanites—were accepted as “hewers of wood and drawers of water.”

The interpretations of the myth of the Promised Land (with its exodus, exilic wandering restlessness and entry into the already occupied divine real estate) crash into each other: “For the one, God is a God of deliverance. For the other, he is a conquering God. Same texts, two views, two experiences.” Nonetheless, eminent South African theologian Jan Botha attempts to use the Bible as a “powerful means of promoting a culture of human rights and democracy in South Africa.” Applying stories, however, risks “being extremely subjective, especially in its comparison of biblical hewers with people now alive.”

The ethical approach of embracing an overall symbolic worldview carries the idea the Bible somehow provides a “basic orientation towards particular judgments.” Theologian Oliver O’Donovan claims that the Bible is read seriously “only when we use it to guide our thoughts towards a comprehensive moral viewpoint, and not merely to articulate disconnected moral claims.” Burridge thinks, however, that theologians who advocate a holistic view extrapolated from the Bible override the genre of distinctive individual books. The Greek—ta biblia—is plural; the New testament has twenty-seven books and four not easily harmonized gospels. And Burridge posits rather compellingly that a text can become a “convenient peg from which to hang the argument, which is actually driven by dogmatics and systematic theology.” The Bible is not easily wrestled to the ground and corralled between fences.

With reference to South Africa, Burridge thinks a general theological approach such as Patrick Hartin’s five themes of creation-sin-incarnation-redemption-resurrection does not necessarily provide the enlightenment values of “equality, freedom and justice.” Nor does the “virtue of equality” stream forth from the “story of creation” in translucent fashion. As we have seen from Burridge’s analysis thus far, the diversity of the creation (or natural world) could be interpreted to mean that we must act to nurture separate development along its own trajectory. It is difficult to escape the charge of importing values from outside the text; and Burridge does not think that Hartin eludes this judgment.

In the end, repeated attempts to “construct a biblical theology…has proved to be so problematic that it has been abandoned by most biblical scholars and theologians, because of the difficulty of locating ‘the centre or trajectory of the Bible’.” In “Why I am not a progressive Christian,” James Metzger (Free Inquiry, August/September, 2014) asks: “How can we really know whether God is on the side of the poor and marginalized? It certainly would be nice if God were a god of justice and compassion who took a keen interest in all who suffered, but this new deity seemed to be more a product of what people desired, more a response to recent social changes, than a genuine discovery that propelled these social changes. As Freud observed long ago, when we construct precisely the god we most desire, we open ourselves to the charge of wishful thinking. Is the creator of the universe just as we moderns wish him to be?” (p. 36).

Metzger argues—compellingly and disturbingly so—that theologians seldom take the “implications of all the suffering and waste of sentient life in our world seriously. By far, the most common solution to the problem of suffering is to divest the deity of power, so that he becomes incapable of alleviating gratuitous suffering or of altering the fundamental laws of the universe in any way. This God is said to feel our pain, to suffer with us; yet he remains impotent to introduce any changes in how his own universe operates.”

The end of formal apartheid did force the South African churches to admit, says Burridge, that “the Bible does not lend itself to be a blueprint for any political agenda.” While this may seem “vague and commonplace to outsiders, but within the ranks of the Church it represented a seismic shift in theological thinking.” This is very sobering for the problem of Christian faith-communities faced with the learning challenge of translating from religious discourse into secular discourse and action. The four approaches were used by both pro-and-anti-apartheid forces.

For Burridge, then, we ought to start from the premise that the gospels present Jesus in the ancient biographical form: the mimetic form of imitating Jesus himself. But we respond to him in the “context of his action in maintaining an open and inclusive community.” Burridge defends his own position from the charge of importing-from-the-outside by claiming that his approach is embedded in the genre of the gospels themselves.

This appears somewhat plausible, and the compelling idea of “imitating Jesus in the context of an open and inclusive community” would call into question a “violent society in which the majority of people were excluded and oppressed, suffering violence and even death,….” Still, the notion of openness and inclusivity has to break free from the evident exclusivity of God’s love for his Chosen Ones in the Bible. The notion of openness and inclusivity has also to break through restriction to faith-community-based readings.

Burridge is attracted to the reader-response mode of interpretation, in particular, viewing the community of interpretation as listening and reading together for clues about the text’s original intention. But community-based readings can run aground on the rocky reefs when a reading community discovers that earlier readings were erroneous and oppressive. We have already seen how the conquest of Canaan narratives was used by the Dutch immigrants; even the conquistadores in Latin America found them congenial. In the eighteenth century slavery was justified through community-based readings as were Nazi anti-semitic readings in mid-twentieth century Germany. And in 2015, the American right-wing evangelicals (led by the likes of Rev. Franklin Graham) can be rightly accused of islamophobia.

Recognizing the urgency of finding a way forward for Christian faith-communities, Burridge recommends opening of the faith-reading community to a wider range of voices. That is, any discussion of poverty or wealth ought to include bank managers and financial investors. That’s sound advice (though we may recall that Jesus didn’t think the rich could easily make it into heaven and perhaps the wretched of the earth want a voice, too). But Burridge remains ambivalent regarding the inclusion of secular participants in Bible reading.

He mentions—almost in passing–the need to set biblical material “alongside other sources of moral guidance such as reason, tradition and experience, as well as all our modern resources from the human sciences, medicine, psychology, and the like.” Burridge only tiptoes to the edges of the Habermasian notion of complementary learning processes wherein secular participants join in translational dynamics and together arrive at defensible positions that guarantee justice and recognition for all.

Burridge observes: “The Dutch Reformed Church thought it was doing its interpretation of the scriptures in a Spirit-guided, prayerful community, supported by excellent university faculties of theology with biblical scholars very experienced in the area of hermeneutics.” But the attempt to justify apartheid biblically is now seen as by the DRC as incorrect. How did they get it so wrong for so long? How could the Dutch Reformed Church not make the “connection between gospel and society”, and fail to “adequately understand the sufferings of our many black members…”

This catastrophic failure mainly leads to affirmations of confidence in mission and calling. As Burridge notes, speakers before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission were confident regarding the Bible’s relevance, but they never explained why mistakes were made in the first place or how they could be avoided in the future.

The DRC faith-community did not listen to “outsiders” in the rest of the world. This would require the unsettling of personal and communal perceptions; this can only happen if critical theoretical tools that reveal the extent to which the dominant ideology permeates our thinking are embraced. Then the outsider would come to us as the presence and voice of the most vulnerable members of the society. One cannot help thinking that, unless this unsettling self-criticism occurs, the Bible simply becomes a ventriloquist for the hegemonic rule of the System; and religion plays its comfortable role of priestly legitimator of the established order.

Beyond Localism

Bernard Marszalek

Occupy was a rarity in America – an explicitly “post-political” movement. It was not your textbook rebellion. No manifesto! No demands! No Villa, no Lennon, no Malcolm X to lead the masses, just a messy, somewhat incoherent, but ultimately a critical and joyful experience – until the truncheons, gas, rubber bullets, and all arrived. Occupy was an upwelling of surprising rebelliousness that by frightening the “forces of order” revealed to all their fear of free speech and their tenuous adherence to democratic debate.

And if anybody doubted the unmediated option for the iron heel, the recent nationwide protests of police terrorism against African-Americans disabused them of that. The fragility of Order was exposed as its pillars shook; the first pillar, racism; followed by economic oppression, dis-education, incarceration and psychological abuse. And again, non-violent protests attacked by the same array of truncheons, gas, rubber bullets, etc. from not only the militarized police but also, increasingly, the military itself in the form of the National Guard.

If the fight against America-brand apartheid adopts an explicit economic analysis, if the so-called progressive middle class concerned with state surveillance and corporate control join in and if the churches – not only the African American ones – demonstrate their solidarity then we may have a mass, bottom/up political movement on a scale beyond Occupy – one of historic proportions.

However, do we need to wait for significant social change passively, if impatiently – a social earthquake or nothing? Or should the groundswell of grassroots economic initiatives, in all areas of modern life, and in every community across this broad land register sufficient seismic activity to excite our interest?

Food or Facsimile?

Over the last five decades, as the quality of food declined with the expansion of industrial agriculture, consumers (with the purchasing power to do so) began a gradual, but determined, rebellion against corporate agriculture. The refusal to submit to the degradation of the food supply for profit gave rise to organic farms. Followed by farmers’ markets that blossomed all over the country. And that, in turn, spurred a movement for food security in communities where healthy food is unavailable.

The movement for real food – not chemical facsimiles – crossed race and class lines as urban gardens sprouted on unused land in both wealthy and poor neighborhoods. What began in a few localities as miniscule, self-help assistance programs have scaled up, and over the decades involved thousands of young people. With clever self-funding they have become viable urban ventures.

Today, to explore new possibilities of re-tooling the built, but underutilized, environment and to demonstrate the innovation of this sector, vertical gardens are planned for abandoned factories. Outfitted with solar arrays and hydroponic technology, these promise a new source of wholesome food for inner cities, while at the same time providing a source of income for the participants.

Unfortunately, the other rumblings along the fault-lines of everyday life are not affecting the poor as much as the movement for healthy food. For example, across the country dozens of successful experiments using complementary currencies offer a promise still to be fulfilled in poor, resource starved communities, though there are exceptions. In the area of housing, another area of unmet need, the vision of inexpensive construction demonstrates the ingenuity of people to transform their communities, but the priority is to stop and then reverse evictions, not to house the homeless in spiffy sheds. And the possibilities of off-grid energy provided by small-scale wind turbine and solar installations are migrating from the drawing boards to areas of poverty, but they still seek funding.

The collective experiences of these community projects establish the foundation for a meaningful oppositional culture, that is, one with ordinary people in active control. Surely, it comes as no surprise to us that our society lacks venues for collective creation. The intention, though, may fall short of practice. Jumping through hoops to maintain projects with insufficient funds and to satisfy funding agencies debilitates the best of intentions. And it is all too common for leadership to discourage “rocking the boat” if bottom/up demands are deemed disruptive of liberal support.

To cultivate an oppositional culture democratic practices are necessary, but not sufficient. What’s needed in addition is a commonly held, unifying oppositional perspective, a transformative solidarity. Socialism in one neighborhood or utopia in one urban plot too often serves as a celebrity project to accommodate funders. They don’t change anything.

What’s missing?

The proponents of these bottom/up ventures subscribe, more or less, to the ideology of localism. That is, they value small-scale operations directly controlled by the people immediately involved in order to create flexible, responsive organizations. Localists see their projects replicated in other communities and eventually, through a sort of rhizomic expansion, develop into a thick web of economic and social entities. The hope here is that these efforts will supplant the worst excesses of the profit system.

There is a seductive charm to this vision of slowly growing an alternative to the egregious tentacles of corporate domination. At the same time, this vision recalls a not too distant past when America consisted of nothing but small-scale enterprises. Henry Ford, after all, started small. Even the nationwide train system, the epitome of larger scale enterprise in the 19^th century, arose from the consolidation of hundreds of small rail lines crisscrossing the country. So does localism with its positive values promise a better future and is it a force for radical change, or is it simply an exercise in nostalgia? A non-threatening development that corporations can tolerate, or take over?

The steady growth of these grassroots economic projects, beyond their middle class origins to working class and underclass communities, is due to social justice

activists recognizing their significance as a component of their strategy to attack poverty. Despite the middle class origin of many of these community ventures, activists appreciate their practicality and, with minor tweaking, they try to replicate them in “underserved communities.”

Localism, even when coupled with political activism that tries to incorporate these grassroots projects into a larger social justice campaign, still is not sufficient. First of all, do we have time, given the imperatives of climate change, for a methodical buildup of exemplary projects? And further, these projects need more than a sense of solidarity amongst themselves; they need to acquire a sense of solidarity beyond sectoral interests to larger political struggles.

Jobs Now?

The hesitancy to focus on what dominates the lives of all of us – jobs, or the search for them, results from the silo mentality that funders enforce.

All discussion of everyday economic issues are abandoned beyond the specific, circumscribed concern that may be carved out in a mission statement, or that which forms the core of the activity of a community project. The “jobs issue” is stifled on the assumption that that territory belongs to the so-called “labor movement,” which too often means the dominant (and undemocratic) trade union leadership.

It is fantasy to believe that the union bureaucrats have any concern for the working poor, the underemployed and the unemployed beyond periodically waving the red banner of working class rhetoric on appropriate occasions, only to neatly fold it away afterwards. There are exceptions where union funds minimally support a community project or two. And, of course, the widely publicized drive to raise the minimum wage (like, Fight for 15) while union-supported, is a tightly controlled, media-focused front operation that will not evolve into a movement for “people power” if the union leadership (and the Democratic Party and the local police) has any say in the matter.

And anyway, the minimum wage campaigns don’t address the issue of unemployment. Nor do they question the miserable jobs assigned to the poor, or for that matter, the lack of meaningful employment in general.

While there is agreement that for millions of jobless (and part-timers, wanting full-time work) the bus left without them, there is less recognition that it never stopped for many more millions who have completely dropped out of the labor market. Add to these figures the number of working poor and all those with jobs way below their qualifications and you arrive at a large majority of the US work force.

All enthusiastic proclamations of a growing alternative economy, as if it will provide the millions of jobs lost in the Great Recession, is beyond hyperbolic, it verges on delusional thinking in the face of the poverty all around us. Compounding this dire situation are the economic repercussions of climate change and you have a burden of worries that lead to despair and drive the most tenacious optimist to search for a cave.

A realistic appraisal of our situation should not lead to a cave, nor to a new grant, but to a better response. If our situation is bleak, and it is, then the response we need must match the catastrophe we face. Tweaking a system that is collapsing around us may partially satisfy our desire to keep sane by keeping busy; and it may keep the horror of despair at bay for a while; but without a larger perspective to give context to our efforts, we lose effectiveness, not to mention legitimacy.

What most people can agree upon is that the economy is dysfunctional. There are disputes about why this is the case, but to get stuck there is to loose the significance of this commonly held opinion. We need to concentrate on solutions. The focus on solutions makes localism popular. The problem is that the localist solutions are too narrowly focused; they distract and prevent big picture thinking.

If we start with a dysfunctional economy, and move beyond the usual complaints about inequality, off-shoring, poor skills training, government over-regulation, and so forth, what the liberals settle on telling us is that there are not enough jobs. And at that point, if we accept that conclusion, they have us hooked running a guinea pig wheel desperate for the perfect program – remember “shovel-ready”?

. . . or income?

The media bombards us with “economic news” – the mumbo-jumbo Wall Street financial minutia – simply to condition us to believe it is important. Despite the propaganda, people know that what runs the economy is money – money to buy goods. If consumer spending declines (meaning the rate of debt declines) then we hear wailing from corporate and government offices. So, the conclusion, it seems obvious, is that we need money, not jobs.

But to demand money without the obligatory expenditure of toil flies in the face of God’s wrath on Adam and sends some people into shudders of horror and panic. Usually, it must be said, these are self-righteous people who don’t need the money or who are so invested in their daily grind that they can’t bear the thought that some slacker will “get something for nothing.” The solution is to give everybody the same amount of money, enough to live modestly with shelter, food and education covered.

The wealthy who don’t need the extra money will have it taxed. Making the payment universal will not appease the righteous, but it does avoid welfarism – the practice of demeaning the poor for the benefit maintaining the illusion that system works for all but the weak. We can be certain that the number of people who would oppose a universal dividend just to punish the poor for their poverty must be smaller than the population of Wyoming.

There are at least two angles to this outrageous idea – robotization and computerization, and second, the repercussions of climate change. Those who think that robots don’t eat jobs, belong with that crew descending on Wyoming. The obvious fact is that they have been eating our lunch for decades. Of course the advances in technology make possible Amazon-like warehouse jobs, personal service jobs and, that newest booming sector, the sharing economy jobs. Without these great jobs millions more would join the ranks of the unemployed, under-employed and the job dropouts – the jobouts.

The climate change angle is a bit more complicated, and frankly speculative. Given the implications of weather pattern changes on food production, the edifice of industrial agriculture faces its endgame. Industrial Ag depends on an overabundance of water. Or more precisely, predictable rainfall. Continued drought will evaporate investments in large-scale farming faster than a desert rainfall.

Some measures can be taken, like those that drought-stricken Australian farmers have implemented. And they should be introduced, but even with drip irrigation, GMO drought tolerant plants, and fantasies about piping Arctic water, the days of US food produced in abundance are over.

Unless we move massive food production to northern Canada and re-establish road and rail networks, future farming will perforce be decentralized and labor intensive – you and your friends will very likely be cultivating a patch of real estate, a hydroponic basement garden and a window box for a good part of your caloric intake.

It is not farfetched to see the same scenario for energy distribution. Unless we adopt the life of moles, we will have solar panels in close proximity to our air conditioners. Farm in the morning and tinker with our batteries in the evening and hopefully enjoy a good book, play music or converse between those daily activities. Marx must be rollicking with laughter in his grave.

It is not beyond possibilities that we might see a future of contradictory scenarios. On one hand, increasing artificial intelligence coupled with mechanisms will reduce the drudgery of work as we know it but, on the other hand, we may see an increase in the work that immediately benefits our everyday existence. Who will do the former? And will the latter be a new form of drudgery involving all our time? Will any of this work be mediated by the money-economy? And if so, how? Will capitalism survive? Will government?

Here’s where the insights of urban agriculture enter the field, so to speak. The technical skills acquired raising our food today may mean our survival in the not-to-distant tomorrow. And, more importantly, the collaborative social skills we practice today will benefit us in a very different future, which we will have to cope with collectively, or else reduce our chances of survival.

And finally, the diverse DIY projects proliferating from cities to villages across the land could be the basis for a decentralized system of work allocations. What better way to distribute the necessary work than on a local level where it is most understood as vital. The nightmare of climate change is superseded only by the horror of centralized, bureaucratic government determining everything. 

The agents of change are amongst us

Small-scale, bottom up community projects are like outposts of opposition that promise a better future. In order to confront and contend with the severe crises we face they miss one essential element – they need a catalyst. A catalyst that will provoke the radical upheaval of our social assumptions and initiate radical change. It is often glibly stated that we have moved from an industrial to a post-industrial reality. If we have then we have dragged along the geometry of that previous age and are lost in the old coordinates.

It would be more accurate to say that we have moved from a society where work has been replaced by consumption. Where in the past the value accrued to a person was based on their labor, today we are valued by the accouterments we labor to amass.

Previously, when labor was at the center of life, the possibility of realizing a person’s full potential led to democratic assumptions – ultimately to control work. The failure of that democratic project is at the heart of our malaise today. The concentration on bite-size endeavors – the community projects – is an attempt to retrieve what we imagine is a more realizable, and still authentic, version of the grander vision: a quest for worthwhile work. This is a Sisyphean task.

It is not work we need to control, but time. The democratic assumptions of the past were premised on the rise of an industrial society and the pivotal role of the workers. The aim was an abundant social order that would benefit those who labored to bring it about. But the abundance, the material benefit, was secondary to the main goal which was to be cultural. This was the aim of the foremost visionary of the new industrial age – Robert Owen. His industrial complex in New Lanark, Scotland comprised over a thousand men, women and children in the early 19^thcentury. It included not only the factory, but also a dining hall (to spare women the chore of each cooking a meal), a school, library, theater and dance hall. The point of laboring was not to accumulate more money (to buy goods), but to acquire the leisure to enjoy a culture only the wealthy had access to.

Owen is often considered a utopian, but Marx who relished in defaming those, like Fourier, who devised meticulous plans for a future society, respected Owen for the practical implementation of his ideas. Marx saw Owen as an exception amongst the capitalists of his time, but despite Owen’s intentions, Marx knew that only the workers could create an egalitarian future society.

But what about the workers? We don’t have the huge industrial behemoths of a hundred years ago, nor – and this is the most significant point – the armies of workers who toiled in them. Therefore, are we to consider the era passed when workers could be catalysts for change? A casual perusal of the news might dissuade us from that conclusion. As mentioned previously, some workers appear to be mobilizing for change. The problem is that they are mobilized based on the old geometry – fighting for better jobs solely defined by better wages.

In the past at the height of industrial workers’ power, good jobs were defined not only by the high wages paid, but also by work rules that mitigated the worst aspects of jobs. Workers today can’t believe that in the past bosses were restricted from imposing arbitrary work conditions. Nor can they believe that wages in the past were tied to the rise in productivity. If that were the case today the minimum wage would be over $20 per hour.

Contingent jobs

The miserable position of workers today has been documented by a recent study from the US Government Accounting Office. It shows that over 40% of today’s workers have “contingent” jobs – that is jobs that have little or no security or are part-time (meaning that termination is at the whim of the boss).

The conclusion we must come to is that workers today, compared to their grandparents, have fewer rights, worse pay and more miserable working conditions. Given this situation, and nothing on the horizon to foretell a change, we must further conclude that the traditional working class is defunct as a social force and not the catalyst that will jumpstart the social change we see puttering along across the country.

But if not the workers, who will function as the lever to move society? Community organizers? Executive Directors of non-profits and foundations? Social entrepreneurs? Bernie Sanders’ supporters? No, there is no alternative. The proletariat will not appear on the horizon like battalions from a WPA mural, but what we can imagine is a transformed class structure. A new composition of workers that encompasses part-timers, freelancers, immigrants and all those workers who may have full-time jobs without protections as a social force.

In the last serious economic crisis in the 1930’s the unemployed organized themselves into self-help and agitational groups. In California, there were hundreds of these groups that organized in a matter of months. A good idea spread with the social media available at that time – telephones, the mail and rallies. (The rail networks helped.) These groups were the core supporters of a campaign that came close to electing a Socialist governor in California.

Is it too odd to propose that something similar take place today? What if all the workers agitating for better wages formed permanent groups? What if they were organized by industry and location, outside the corrals established by the unions and non-profits, and had as a mission to create self-help institutions along with maintaining continued pressure on their workplaces? And what if they reached out to freelancers, the underemployed and unemployed who now have no organization to fight for them? And further, what if these groups contacted immigrants? In other words, what if, to borrow an old slogan from the distant past, one big union of the marginally employed organized itself?

What’s missing in this scenario is a program to fight for. The demand for higher wages cannot be the centerpiece of the agitation since it doesn’t address poverty (only partially alleviates it), doesn’t help the unemployed, it has no effect on the quality of the job, and it provides no way to address climate change by reducing the need to grow the economy.

The centerpiece of agitation must confront the issues raised earlier around the assumption that jobs can continue to serve as the sole source for income. It is futile to develop grassroots economic projects into a large alternative network – a new economy no less – to meet the needs of people, without a political vision larger than these projects. With incomes secured as a basic right of existence, with all benefiting from our common wealth, then these local projects can become sustainable benefits for their communities. They could serve as models of worthwhile work for all. Or maybe friends could undertake a limited social task just for the camaraderie of it. And always, a social project could offer compensation for time employed for those who want to earn a bit extra beyond their common dividend.

With the onslaught of climate change, many envision vast changes like the agricultural apocalypse mentioned earlier. How will we cope with these changes? One way would be to have the government impose some emergency program and conscript millions into something like a civilian work force. Essentially, a militarized solution. Hopefully a better way of contending with the capitalist (and governmental) debacle that threatens civilization can be devised. Learning the lessons of a failed system of greed, sacrifice and hierarchy is our assignment. And imagining new ways to work is an essential aspect of that assignment.

Israel Signals it’s Ready to Destroy Hezbollah

Franklin Lamb

South Beirut

These days Lebanon, as with this region, is being shaken by political and ‘terrorism” crises, threats to stability, growing popular unrest, and ideological and theological sacrum bellum turbulence. Forces not seen since the beginning of the last century with the end of the Ottoman Empire and its replacement with the hegemonic Sykes-Picot diktat.

Yet, with all of Israel’s swelling international legitimacy problems, the Zionist regime still occupying another country, Palestine, can sound its bugle, which having no valves or other political pitch-altering complications,  blast-summons its agents in Washington and elsewhere to get busy and circle the wagons.

Netanyahu indeed has blown his rams horn this week in the run-up to the June 30 “deadline” (to be extended yet again if necessary) for a 5+l agreement on the Iranian nuclear file. Israel’s agents have leapt up and are flooding Congress and the mass media with op-eds from no fewer than 14 pro-Zionist organization since May 15 Nakba Day, ranging from half a dozen articles, publications and mailings from the Washington Institute For Near East Policy (WINEP)), to  the Middle East Forum’s, Steven J. Rosen in the Washington Times, Dennis Ross in the New York Times, Congressional Testimony featuring James  L. Jeffrey  before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, and many more.

Unfortunately, in contrast to the AIPAC-ZOA organized blitz, many who oppose Zionist aggressions continue to waste their energies and actually aid their Zionist opponents by indulging in largely irrelevant, unproven, counterintuitive, counterproductive wing-nut conspiracy-theory blogging partly because this form of internet pollution is easy and does not require old fashioned research or marshaling of empirical facts or much thinking. So it remains no real contest for the Zionist lobby as they continue to dominate Congressional hearings and mainstream Op-eds, not to mention Fox news and CNN type outlets.

A WINEP memo, authored with AIPAC and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is making its way to powerful  opinion and policy makers this week on the subject of Iran and Hezbollah’s involvement in three regional wars and what opportunities it presents Israel to replace  Hezbollah’s  summer of 2006 “Devine Victory” with a  summer of 2015 “Devine Destruction.”

Simultaneously, the Israeli army, according to Congressional staffers on the House Foreign Affairs committee, has forwarded to key allies detailed plans to evacuate more than a million civilians in southern Lebanon before obliterating Hezbollah and everything south of the Litani River—for starters. They carefully locate Mediterranean ports near Tyre and Saida where US Naval ships can rescue endangered Americans, hopefully doing a better job than the US Embassy did back in July-August of 2006.  A senior military official confirmed these plans on 6/3/2015.

As this news wafted across the US Congress, Republican Presidential candidate Se Lindsey Graham, on cue began leading cheers for another Zionist aggression against Lebanon as he seeks Jewish campaign funding. As part of his entrance into the 2016 US Presidential race, a centerpiece of which will be his cash cow “Bomb Iran” plank, his staff has begun distributing a recent press release from the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). It declares that “ZOA is very shocked and deeply critical of President Barack Obama’s recent statement, in an interview on Israeli TV, that military action against Iran would be ineffective in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power. This statement contradicts his repeated commitments that “all options are on the table.” Clearly, when the President publicly states that a course of action would be ineffective he is removing it from the list of options of what he is prepared to do.”

An Israeli military intelligence source told the Jerusalem Post on 6/3/2015  that during the coming war, Hezbollah rocket and missile fire will be met with civilian evacuations, massive Israeli aerial strikes, and then by a ground offensive. “If we have no choice, we have to evacuate 1 million, 1.5 million residents in Lebanon, and act,” the source said. “Failure to evacuate the civilian population would result in many thousands of non-combatant deaths, according to Israeli army assessments” following a week-long drill simulating destroying Hezbollah on multiple fronts, including massive use of the Israeli air force. The Israeli embassy in Washington citing US-Israeli intelligence, including claimed sources inside Hezbollah, is telling Congressional leaders that Hezbollah is “in deep distress in Syria, cannot win that war and is in strategic trouble despite attempts by its Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to deliver morale-boosting speeches.”

Among the Zionist lobby’s current arguments is that Hezbollah is nothing more than Iran’s Lebanon branch of its Baji (people’s) militia and that with respect to the nuclear issue, is an argument being pushed by the Middle East Forum that “Iran is a revolutionary power with hegemonic aspirations seeking to assert its dominance in the region and uses an assortment of terrorism, proliferation, military proxies, and occasionally old-fashioned diplomacy to further its dominance. Do not expect Iran to compromise its principles any time soon.”

While conceding that a military confrontation with Iran could be costly and risk escalation, WINEP is telling the US Congress: “It is unlikely to produce either a U.S. defeat or a “war” in the sense normally used in American political debate — endless, bloody ground combat by hundreds of thousands of troops as in Iraq or Vietnam would not be necessary and this could be over quickly.”

Meanwhile, Dennis Ross, a former Middle East adviser to President Obama, reportedly believes that another Israeli war in Lebanon is just a matter of timing. He is currently working on trying to get the Gulf States more deeply involved against Iran. Ross frequently argues that “The Saudis see Iran trying to encircle them with its Quds Force killing Sunni Muslims in Syria, mobilizing Shia Muslim militias in Iraq, providing arms to the Houthi rebels in Yemen or fomenting unrest among Saudi Shia. Ross told AIPAC this week that Iran set the recent bombs in Saudi Shia mosques to frighten Shia into compliance with its projects. A tactic it has used many times before in Iraq and Ross argues that fundamentally, the Saudis believe that America’s friends and interests are under threat, and the U.S. response has ranged from indifference to accommodation such that an Israel war could be a ‘game-changer ’ in the region.

But it with respect to Hezbollah, that Israel and her agents see real nice prospects. The Zionist organizations talking points on Hezbollah include, but are not limited to the following:

Hezbollah continues to incur heavy losses in Syria and has entered a fight that neither it nor Iran can win. Its supporters in Lebanon are increasingly raising questions about why Hezbollah is killing Sunni’s in Syrian, Iraq and Yemen- and how this helps Lebanon.  AIPAC argues that no one is Lebanon, except for a small percentage of hard core Party of God supporters believes its claimed justifications about “takfires, terrorists and IS” will destroy Lebanon unless Hezbollah fights in three countries.

Former Mossad director Efraim Halevy claims that Hezbollah, given what he labels its military entanglements in Syria, is unable to focus on fighting Israel and is incurring severe losses in manpower.

Handouts  from Tel Aviv and Israeli embassy political officers in Washington and provided to friends of Israel for circulating, point out that Hezbollah’s support among Sunni’s in Lebanon is now essentially nil and is also weakening fast among its own Shia base as hundreds of sons are dying killing Sunni Arabs in the east rather than fighting Israeli soldiers in the south.

Congress is being advised that in Lebanon the rhetoric of Hezbollah Secretary-General is wearing thin and becoming shopworn with jokes in Lebanon’s media and even in Shia areas about the coming Devine Defeat. Senator John McCain complains Hezbollah is forcing the Lebanese army to fight a non-Lebanese war against IS (Da’ish), Iran’s most feared enemy that has little if anything to do with Lebanon.

Chiming in are yet more Israeli officials making the case that war with Hezbollah will almost certainly shift momentum in the U.S. Congress decisively against the pending nuclear deal with Iran — a deal that critics say will increase Iran’s maneuverability in the region, including its support for Hezbollah. The idea being that war with Hezbollah might be a positive game changing development to undermine the current majority support in Congress and the American public a majority of who currently back a US-Iran nuclear deal.

The case for  military action against Hezbollah was recently made also by the anti-Arab, Palestinian-loathing Dore Gold, who is close to Netanyahu and was just appointed director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Accusing the UN of having failed to stop Hezbollah, Gold argues that “Either the IDF will have to destroy the weapons now being stored in southern Lebanon, or let Hezbollah fire thousands of rockets into Israel. What would you do?”

On 5/12/2015 the New York Times reported that Israeli is preparing for “what it sees as an almost inevitable next battle with Hezbollah.” An Israeli official added “We will hit Hezbollah hard.”

If so, it wouldn’t be the first time that an Israeli confrontation with Hezbollah would be motivated by the hope that war with Iran was looming.  During the July 2006 Zionist invasion of Lebanon, which as Aurélie Daher reminds us caused more than 1,200 civilian deaths, 4,400 injuries, 200,000 people rendered homeless and more than 25% of the population displaced, Israel’s then-Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh announced that the Lebanon war was all about Iran: “War with Iran in inevitable. Lebanon is just a prelude to the greater war with Iran.”  Sneh timing was off, but as Trita Parsi and Paul Pillar have suggested, an Israeli war this summer would likely assure that, despite Obama’s efforts, US-Iran peace is beyond Obama’s reach.

Some in Lebanon and Washinton believe that Israel may attack Hezbollah in Qalamoun as well as South Lebanon. Israel already bombed Qalamoun twice in April 2015.

Were Iranian troops in Syria to intervene directly on behalf of Hezbollah in Qalamoun, Nicholas Saidel, Associate Director of the Institute for Strategic Threat Analysis & Response (ISTAR) at the University of Pennsylvania argues that this escalation would likely lead to mission creep, and an eventual war between Iran and Israel, and quite possibly an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Meanwhile, the Zionist regime and some of its US lobby are arguing that “once Obama leaves office next year and a purebred 100% American patriot is in the Oval Office things can finally be put right in this region and we will knock some heads.”

And if anyone is still alive– in the words of wisdom from |Alan Dershowitz, “We can let Allah sort it all out.”

Dalit Women and Village Justice in Rural India

Graham Peebles

The vast majority of India’s 1.3 billion people live in its 630,000 villages. They have seen little or no benefit from the country’s economic growth. Over 80% do not have ‘approved sanitation’ according to UNICEF, and are forced to defecate in public. Village health care, where it exists, is poor and inaccessible. Education is basic, with large class sizes and schools lacking desks and chairs, let alone books.

The caste system dominates all areas of life and, although the constitution of India prohibits discrimination based on caste, violent exploitation and prejudice are the norm. Add economic and gender divisions to this medieval Hindu social system and a multi-layered structure of separation begins to surface. At the bottom of the social ladder are girls and women from the Dalit caste (previously known as the untouchables), who are born into a life of exploitation, entrapment and potential abuse. As an International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) report for the UN makes clear, “discrimination and violence systematically deny them opportunities, choices and freedoms in all spheres of life”.

The police are negligent, discriminatory and corrupt, and village justice, as dispensed by the ‘Panchayat’, is archaic. The village council or Panchayat “consists of five members … [and] sits as a court of law”, adjudicating in cases, which the Encyclopedia Britannica describes as relating to ‘caste’ offences. These ‘offences’ are trivial one and all, and range from a Dalit woman taking water from a well reserved for higher caste families, to breaching eating, drinking, or smoking restrictions to—God forbid—having a relationship with a man from a neighbouring village. The punishments meted out by the Panchayat are extreme, often brutal, always unjust.

Victimised

The most common victims are Dalits, of whome there are an estimated 167m in India (16% of the population). They tend to be poorly educated, landless, with few employment opportunities and so dependent on the very people who mistreat them—men and women of the higher castes. It is a dependency based on vulnerability, allowing exploitation and abuse.

Dalit girls and women are victimised and violated in villages, towns and cities up and down the country. The Dalit Freedom Network (DFN) records that they are murdered and burned alive, “raped, held captive in brothels and temple ceremonies, and forced to work as bonded laborers”, while young girls are kidnapped and trafficked into prostitution or trapped into domestic servitude. All because they happen to have been born into a particular family, in a particular place. 

Kessi Bai has lived in Thuravad village in Rajasthan for 21 years. In November last year the 45 year-old mother of five was accused, with no evidence, of murder, by a mob of villagers led by the village council. She was violently punished: stripped naked, her face was blackened with charcoal, her head was shaved and she was repeatedly beaten with wooden sticks. Her husband and son were locked inside their home while she was paraded for six hours around neighbouring villages on a donkey.

The procession returned to Thuravad at around 8pm, she was thrown from the donkey and again beaten, before the police finally arrived. When I met this frail, desperately poor Dalit woman in December, she would not show her face and wept repeatedly. She has not left her house since the distressing incident.

In a similar recent case in Utter Pradesh, the Daily Mail reports, “15 Other Backward Castes (OBC) villagers stripped five women of the Dalit community, paraded them naked, caned them and then put them on show on the highway because one of their daughters had allegedly eloped with a Dalit’s son”. 

And most shocking of this trinity of injustice: last January in the remote village of Subalpur in West Bengal, a 20 year-old Dalit woman who was “found in the company of a married man from another village”, was, the Guardian reported, “dragged out by her neighbours … tied to a tree then raped by up to 15 men as punishment for the illicit liaison”.

The woman, known only as ‘W’, has since been regarded as a ‘woman of bad character’, who “‘spoiled the atmosphere of the village’ by going against local customs”. These medieval ‘traditions’ of suppression and division enforced by the Panchayats, which are widespread in India’s villages, support a deeply patriarchal society and have no place in any civilised country. 

National Neglect

The Panchayat is elected by villagers and is paid for by the Indian government—it is in effect the first level of local governance. All members are duty-bound to maintain communal harmony and to discharge their office, the official legislation says, in “a fair and judicious manner without fear or favour, affection or ill-will”. As with many areas of Indian life, however, what is universally lacking is the implementation of such liberally acceptable legislation.

Complacency and corruption are two of the major obstacles to the observation of universal human rights and the realisation of democracy in India. If the government, under the leadership of the Hindu-nationalist Naredra Modi, wishes to build a truly democratic state, it needs to enforce its legislation on caste, ensure village Panchayats operate within the law and provide Dalit women with the justice and support they so badly need.

Harper Conservatives’ Disregard for Democracy

Yves Engler

With flagrant disregard for democracy, the Harper Conservatives recently signed a deal with a transition regime to circumscribe future governments’ capacity to regulate Canadian miners. But, those victimized are impoverished Africans so the move elicited little reaction in this country.

In April Harper’s Conservatives signed a Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) with the interim government of Burkina Faso. According to the official release, the West African nation was represented at the signing ceremony in Ottawa by Prime Minister Yacouba Isaac Zida, who was deputy commander of the presidential guard when Blaise Compaore was ousted by popular protest last October. A U.S. and Canadian trained Lieutenant Colonel, Zida is one of five military men in a cabinet overseeing the landlocked country’s transition towards elections after President Compaore’s 27 year rule.

While the caretaker government is supposed to move aside after an election planned for October, the investment treaty will live on for at least 16 years. According to the FIPA, “the termination of this Agreement will be effective one year after notice of termination has been received by the other Party.” The subsequent line, however, reads that “in respect of investments or commitments to invest made prior to the date when the termination of this Agreement becomes effective, Articles 1 to 42 inclusive, as well as paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 of this Article, shall remain in force for a period of 15 years.” In other words, any elected government will be effectively bound by the accord for another decade and a half.

The FIPA’s Investor State Dispute Settlement mechanism clearly undermines (forgive the pun) democracy. It gives Canadian corporations the right to sue Burkina Faso’s government – in a private, investor-friendly international tribunal – for pursuing policies that interfere with their profit making. While Ottawa says the process protects Canadian investors “against discriminatory and arbitrary practices”, it also undermines the public’s ability to determine economic policy.

What is of concern to the Conservatives is the impoverished nation’s mining sector, which is dominated by corporate Canada. Since ousting Compaore, community groups and mine workers have launched a wave of protests against foreign-owned mining companies. After local residents damaged equipment in January, Vancouver’s True Gold Mining shuttered its Karma gold project and an official from Montréal-based Semafo recently told Bloomberg that the company was looking to fund a new police unit that would focus on protecting mining interests.

Under the FIPA a Canadian mining firm could sue if the central government listened to a community opposed to a mine. Canadian companies have already used investment treaties to claim hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from Latin American countries that withdrew mining licenses after stiff local resistance.

A company could also sue if a new government required a certain level of domestic purchasing. The accord explicitly precludes “domestic content” requirements or any effort to “accord a preference to a good produced or service provided in its territory.”

At a broader level, the aim of the FIPA is to counter a resurgence of “resource nationalism”. Having received a free hand during the last decade of Compaore’s rule, Canadian companies fear a reversal of these policies. So, they seek rights to sue the country if a new government expropriates a concession, changes investment rules or requires value added production in the country.

Over the past decade Canada has become a mining superpower in Africa and the Conservatives have aggressively pushed the industry’s agenda. To protect $31 billion in Canadian mining investment from policy shifts, the federal government has signed or negotiated FIPAs with 15 African countries and officials have sent a message that aid is more likely to flow to a government that signs a FIPA.

The Conservatives are undermining African democracy in their haste to defend mining companies. It is unjust to persuade an elected government to concede power to an international investment tribunal and simply indefensible to sign a deal with an unelected transition administration that binds future governments.

Fanciful Threats

Binoy Kampmark

The fantasy driven Herald Sun has always enjoyed a good screech with headlines. While hardly compares to that other Murdoch rag, The Sun, which runs both humour and hysteria in its lines, it does attempt to frighten its readers into grievous despair. And nothing does this better, it would seem, than talking up the radicalisation threat in Australia, the lurking monsters that creep out at night with machetes awaiting to attack figures of authority. Naturally, Allah and Mohammed are meant to be their inspiring companions.

The tabloid screeching has reached new levels, with more desperate accretions on the story that the Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, was the “target” of a “plot” by various young men who have assumed cartoonish proportions. The documents centred around the so-called Anzac Day terror plots, released by Justice Peter Riordan who lifted the suppression order on transcripts of conversations between 18-year-old Sevdet Besim and a 14-year-old boy in England. These came in the form of “explosive documents” that the paper perused, though a perusal by everyone else reveals nothing that incendiary.

Instead, they reveal the minds of disturbed and aggrieved teenagers keen to have an impact in the manner puerile aspirants seek. They allegedly sought weapons. They allegedly were involved in plans, if they even warrant that term, that seems to have been given retrospective coherence by inventive police accounts. Plots, after all, tend to have a degree of certainty.

Besim’s alleged involvement comprised mourning at the grave of the late Numan Haider before being arrested in April. In broken patois more reminiscent of satirical nonsense, Besim is said to have communicated to his English-based counterpart how, “After Numan r.a. (sic) did his op here and I heard this it was enough for me to say that’s it im doing this. Im gonna fight these enemies of Allah.” This would have involved fire arms and “a massive machete”.

In what can only be described as the views and attitudes of a terrorist thespian and errant child, the English-based figure observed how, “You are a lone wolf, a wolf that begs Allah for forgiveness a wolf that doesn’t fear blame of the blamers.” Police have read volumes into this exchange. They do not see children so much as well motivated terrorists on the make.

Using voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP), Besim is said to have discussed possible attacks on the Shrine of Remembrance and the federal police headquarters at La Trobe Street. “Lik[sic] I said though I’d love to take out some cops. Intelligence agents.” Apparently, he could not “wait now for the op”.

Accompanying Besim would have been co-accused Harun Causevic, another 18-year-old who was going to accompany Besim after nabbing a car to run down a police officer, behead the person in question and use available weapons to shoot others on Anzac Day. Much like Grand Theft Auto without the screen.

Central to this ill-planned, cumbersome balderdash was the fate of 18-year-old Haider, who was shot dead by police having, it is claimed, attacked two officers without warning. Haider was killed outside the Endeavour Hills police station in Melbourne’s south-east in September 2014. What had ensued was a messy melee of aggravation and blood, Haider having been invited to discuss the cancellation of his passport, a fact he did not take too well too. Both a Victorian officer and an Australian Federal Police officer were stabbed. The Victorian officer subsequently shot Haider in the head after the assailant’s refusal to stop stabbing the fallen AFP officer.

A feature that is evaded by way of convenience was the undue interest the authorities showed in Haider prior to the event. In some ways, he provides an object study about how to invite assault and mayhem when mere delusionary outbursts might have sufficed. A religious, confused fanatic is not necessarily a problem till he has a grievance to feed. The police were particularly keen to emphasise how Haider had brandished“a black flag with white Arabic writing emblazoned on it at a Dandenong shopping plaza.”

This says absolutely nothing about the young man, other than the petty grand standing that accompanies such acts. But the police, short on Arabic translators, persisted in asking Haider what his flag featured. In cavalier fashion, he replied that they “should know what it said and to Google it”. While he was not present “to bomb the plaza… your government will pay.”

The accounts by some papers suggest that Haider had it in for Abbott, though it is hard to actually give that any credence on looking at the transcripts. The Age is dry but direct. “In documents released by a Supreme Court judge on Wednesday, police allege Numan Haider’s actions constituted an implied threat towards Mr Abbott.” The Herald is dramatic and overwrought. “It can now be revealed that two teens charged over an alleged Anzac Day terror plot were close associates of Haider’s and were with him until just half an hour before his death.”

Actions of ideological bravura and religious fervour, notably by young men in suburban Australia, are not necessarily signs of terrorist motivation. Incompetence and inertia tend to be their enemies. Ennui is draining but hardly worthy of domestic engagement. Political assassinations and attacks on police stations demand a degree of ruthless skill and cruel indifference to life. Mere babbling doesn’t suggest actual worth.

Detective Senior Sergeant Adam Shoesmith is, however, convinced. As a member of the counter-terrorism team, he claimed that his office had received information “from a highly reliable source” on the movements of Haider. The link is then made between the death of Haider, and two other suspects.

The definitions of plots keep getting thinner with each exposure and media sensation. The mere mention of the word radicalisation conjures up the grounds, the basis of conviction. There is no margin for error – this is the world of assumptions, one of absolute truths. And Abbott and the Murdoch press seem to have that sewn up. Pre-emptive criminality, not actual proof, is what gains attention.

The means are barely there, even if they did show a desire to get arms or a machete. Nor was there any opportunity to present itself. A mere inarticulate desire to kill a leader of a state regarded as an imbecile and oppressive is hardly more dangerous than the mental drivel of teenagers seeking world domination.

Modern Life, Light Pollution, & Fear Of The Dark

Mickey Z.

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light./And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.” (Genesis 1:3-5)

“Hello darkness, my old friend.” (Simon and Garfunkel)

Every now and then, I’m asked some variation of this question: When were you most awed by nature? Like most of you, I have a handful of examples to choose from… but the answer I usually settle on involves gazing at the night sky in a very rural Vermont town.

I had never witnessed that many visible stars in my life and -- being a heavily conditioned modern urban dweller -- I promptly bellowed something like: “Wow, it looks like the Hayden Planetarium!”

(insert sad trombone here)

A far more dramatic version of this modern malady took form in Los Angeles -- a city with a sky glow visible from an airplane 200 miles away. After an earthquake knocked out electrical power in 1994, it seems “many anxious residents called local emergency centers to report seeing a strange "giant, silvery cloud" in the dark sky. What they were really seeing -- for the first time -- was the Milky Way, long obliterated by the urban sky glow.”

(insert sad trombone here)

While perhaps some of you are well-versed in the concept and consequences of light pollution, since I’ve recently been learning and musing upon this topic, I thought I’d share some miscellaneous facts and contemplations -- with the intention of provoking further thought and conversation.

For starters, check this out: Light pollution map.

Light pollution comes in many forms, including sky glow, light trespass, glare, light clutter, and over illumination. Whichever version you encounter, make no mistake, it’s working against billions of years of light-dark regularity. Here’s how the folks at the Florida Atlantic University Astronomical Observatory describe it:

“This regularity is ingrained into the DNA of species up and down our evolutionary tree to our biological advantage. Natural light ‘entrains’ or regularizes basic and fundamental biological activities across species from plants to humans … The effects of light pollution on plants and animals in the environment are numerous and are becoming more known over time … For approximately half of all life, those crepuscular and nocturnal species that begin their daily activities at sundown, our artificial lights at night seriously constrain their lives, exposing them to predators and reducing the time they have to find food, shelter, or mates and reproduce.”

Frighteningly, the examples of such disruptions are far too numerous to detail in a short article so please allow me to highlight just one: “Nesting sea turtles, which show a natural predisposition for dark beaches, find fewer and fewer of them to nest on,” writes Verlyn Klinkenborg in National Geographic. “Their hatchlings, which gravitate toward the brighter, more reflective sea horizon, find themselves confused by artificial lighting behind the beach. In Florida alone, hatchling losses number in the hundreds of thousands every year.”

As with most contemporary “problems,” we are taught that the solution is to be found by slightly modifying our own behavior while simultaneously trusting the experts (sic) to keep things moving forward into, um… progress?

Wanna reduce light pollution? Simple: just buy blackout curtains or use outdoor lights that operate via sensors or lower the wattage of your bulbs, blah, blah, blah.

Reminder #4,411: Personal lifestyle choices are not game changers.

Light pollution is not an anomaly or a glitch in an otherwise efficient system. Light pollution and its myriad deleterious impacts are the predictable outcome of a dominant culture that is, by definition, in perpetual conflict with the natural world. Capitalism cannot be tenderly reformed into sustainability and its consequences will never be properly confronted if we don’t stop demonizing and fearing the dark.

“Civilization has fallen out of touch with night,” wrote Henry Beston in 1928. “With lights, we drive the holiness and the beauty of night back to the forests and the seas; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of the night? Do they fear the vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars?”

Criminal Justice System In India

Rayees Rasool

The Criminal Justice System in India has many loop holes. With my last assignment with Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) on Prisoner’s Rights I came to know about several problems existing in the system. I witnessed so many cases where for petty crimes people are in jails for more than 3, 4 years. Many un-dertrials are detained because they have no money to get a bail or hire a lawyer to assist them. If he is unable to furnish surety, he cannot get bail and spends years in a prison. Quite often, the surety amount asked by the court is large that the poor cannot furnish it as a result he goes to the prison. And the speed of justice delivery system has given rise in Prison population which resulted in overcrowding.

Criminal Law of India is a replica of colonial times. It is hostile to the poor and the weaker sections of society. The law still serves and protects the needs of the haves and ignores the have-nots. Such biasness has resulted in rich people escaping law and the jail is more often full of the unprivileged class of society. The hierarchy of courts and with appeals after appeal have led to a situation where the poor cannot reach the temple of justice due to heavy cost of its access. In other words one can state that granting justice at a higher cost indirectly means the denial of justice. Such circumstances lead to a clear violation of the Supreme Court judgement which held, legal aid to a poor is a constitutional mandate not only by virtue of Article 39A but also Articles 14, 19, 21 which cannot be denied by the government.

When we think about prisons the image that comes to our mind is that of hard core criminals who were imprisoned for committing crimes. But in actual fact 64.7% of prisoners in Indian jails are undertrials who may or may not be punished. Thousands of them, arrested on suspicion of committing petty crimes, languish in jails for a much longer period than the maximum punishment under the law for the crime which they have committed. The presence of higher number of undertrials in the prison results in their over-crowding, which in turn causes many socio economic problems in the society.

As understood by a layman an, 'undertrial’is a person who is currently on trial or who is imprisoned on remand whilst awaiting trial. As defined in the Oxford Dictionary, ‘A person who is on a trial in a court of law’. The 78th Report of Law Commission also includes a person who is in judicial custody on remand during investigation in the definition of an 'undertrial'.

The presence of large number of undertrial prisoners and their continuing stay for longer period definitely indicates the slow pace of trials which will leads to the overcrowding of prisons. In the National Human Rights Commissions view, unnecessary and unjustified arrests made by the police and the slow judicial processes causing congestion of undertrial prisoners are the main causes of overcrowding in jails.
The poor are particularly worse off when confronted with criminal justice system.

When prison population goes beyond its authorized capacity of accommodation, it is known as Over-crowding. Overcrowding in the Prisons is an important human rights issue as it results in deterioration of the general living conditions of the prisoners. It also creates hindrances in the reformation process. Prison officers find it difficult to initiate and continue correctional measures.

Overcrowding contributes to a greater risk of disease, higher noise levels, which affect the health of the prisoners, and adversely affect the hygienic conditions, surveillance difficulties, which increase the danger level. This apart, life is more difficult for inmates and work is more onerous for staff when prisoners are in over capacity.

The system of imprisonment has originated in the first quarter of the 19th century. In the initial stages the prisons were used as a place for detention of the undertrials. It has undergone a radical change and the penology of the present day has become centered on imprisonment as a measure of rehabilitation of the criminals. But unfortunately even now the prisons are crowded with under-trial prisoners. Many of them are innocent persons who are caught in the web of the law eagerly waiting for their trial date and several of them are prepared to confess their crime and accept their sentence

There is a law where undertrials can get justice but the implementation is an issue. In one of the study the data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) at the end of 2013, the total number of convict prisoners was 1,29,608 and under-trial prisoners was 2,78,503 in jails of the country, there were 1,92,202 Hindu, 57,936 Muslim, 11,666 Sikh, 12,406 Christian, 4,293 Other under-trial prisoners in jails at the end of 2013. In terms of societal strata there were 59,326 Scheduled Caste, 31,581 Scheduled Tribe, 87,848 OBC and 99,748 Other under-trial prisoners at the end of 2013.

Supreme Court of India in its order dated 5.9.2014 in Writ Petition No. 310/2005 –Bhim Singh Vs Union of India & Others relating to under-trial prisoners, has directed for effective implementation of Section 436A of the Code of Criminal Procedure by directing the jurisdictional Magistrate/Chief Judicial Magi-strate/Sessions Judge to hold one sitting in a week in each jail/prison for two months commencing from 1st October, 2014 for the purposes of effective implementation of section 436A of the Code of Criminal Procedure. In its sittings in jail, the above judicial officers shall identify the under-trial prisoners who have completed half period of the maximum period or maximum period of Imprisonment provided for the said offence under the law and after complying with the procedure prescribed under Section 436A pass an appropriate order in jail itself for release of such under-trial prisoners who fulfill the requirement of section 436A of Cr PC.

One of the serious concerns for these undertrials is their family. In the absence of the main breadwinner, many families are forced into destitution. This combined with the social stigma and ostracism that they face, leads to circumstances propelling children towards delinquency and exploitation by others. It is a vicious circle. The problems become acute when they belong to the socio-economically marginalized and exploited sections of the society. One of the horrible plights a person can undergo is spending years in a jail as undertrials and at the end he was found not guilty. In such a situation can anyone compensate them for the mental agony and torture they and their family have suffered or give back to them the lost years, the loss of honour and reputation. The undertrials should not be kept in the jails as far as possible. If unavoidable then they should be kept separately with in the prison so that they are not allowed to mix with the convicts. Within the undertrials also a classification should be made so that the first and young offenders should be kept away from the hard core criminals thereby preventing contamination.

There are hundreds of examples where court acquitted people from criminal charges after spending more than 10 years in Jail. There are no proper policies for their rehabilitation. No one can compensate them the time they spent and the things they lose during the period. But to respect their human rights govern-ments should form a policy to adequately rehabilitate them.

In order to mitigate the conditions of the undertrial prisoners the first and foremost thing that has to do is to bring down their population drastically. This cannot happen unless all the branches of the criminal jus-tice system work hand in hand. The presence of large number of undertrial prisoners is really shame to any criminal justice administration .For this we have to take these undertrials out of the prison or not to keep them for a long period as well as not to sent more undertrials to the prison.

Shrinking Campus Spaces In India

Parvin Sultana

University spaces are supposed to be just, equal and free. They are supposed to be spaces where young minds are shaped and their ideas are given wings. The ‘young’ India with a large youth population usually has its first tryst with democracy in campuses. The students as citizens of tomorrow play a crucial role in shaping the political system of the country. And a strong citizenry begins with campus politics. Campus politics acts as an important tool to achieve campus democracy. It is a useful means to give voice to the students’ opinions about issues that concerns them. Students get valuable understanding of the democratic process through campus elections and active campus politics.

However this democratic space in campus has shrunk over time. And under the new government, there has been a systematic assault on this space. Keeping in line with the popular belief that all politics is dirty and students should stay away from it, many colleges don’t even hold elections. As having a student council is compulsory, they are formed by nomination instead of elections. This denies students the right of choosing their representatives and holding them accountable.

Of late the larger politics of oppression have been reflected in the heavy handedness of authorities in academic institutions. Incidents when talks inviting speakers who have spoken on controversial topics being disrupted have been way too many. Talks on Kashmir, Northeast or the violence inflicted by Indian state have been cancelled arbitrarily. Such attitude points towards the intolerance of the administration towards open healthy discussion on certain topics on which dissenting views tend to emerge. State and administration seems to be in tandem in controlling dissenting voices.

A trend is seen in the heavy handedness of the administration. Scholars who have questioned arbitrary state intervention have been harassed on multiple occasions. Problems usually arise when state violence is discussed and questioned. The government also had a free hand in labeling NGOs and Civil Society Organisations as anti national and anti development based on differences of opinions over paradigms of development. This points to the larger atmosphere of stifling difference.

The right to dissent and express that dissent is a cornerstone of democracy. Students in many cases have been rusticated for participating in student protest movements. Student protests are deemed illegal foreclosing any possibility of raising voice against arbitrary administrative steps. Even the response to peaceful student protests has been draconian. Police has been called and students have been arrested. Such attempt of stifling dissent is becoming a norm rather than an exception. The administration is seen following a two pronged strategy:

1. Introduce in a spurt a number of anti-student policy decisions,
2. Scuttling the space to oppose such decisions.

The latest victim of such assault on freedom of expression has been the independent students’ group- the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle of IIT-Madras. Following an ambiguous anonymous complaint against the activities of the group, the Ministry of Human Resource Development directed the administration of IIT-M to look into the matter. The study circle often holds public meetings with scholars on important socio-political issues. The aim is to initiate a discourse on social and political issues that play an important role in shaping our lives.

But in a rather arbitrary manner, the view of a scholar on the present day government was held akin to spreading hatred and communalism. Ironically engaging with questions of polarization was equated to promoting the same. The group was accused of ambiguous charges of indulging in ‘controversial’ activities while the administration did not bother to spell out what they mean by controversial activity. In a rather unilateral decision, the administration decided to de-recognise the group. Even protestors demonstrating against the ban were picked up by the police.

Premier engineering colleges like IITs having such study circles which grappled with questions like caste discrimination, social justice and discussed ideas of Ambedkar and Periyar is a welcome news. These are no exclusive domains of social science students. All higher educational institutions should be a platform where critical thinking and dissent ought to be encouraged, where brave new thoughts are to be nurtured. Young minds should be allowed to engage in societal dialogue in a constructive manner and dissent should not be stifled.

Campus should not imprison thoughts and ideas. There is a need for a liberating space where debates and discussions from various conflicting perspectives is possible. No matter how absurd, every idea should be allowed expression. Campuses like JNU have seen vibrant student politics. While many are cynical about the left rhetoric of such campus politics, it continues to be a vibrant space giving voice to difference of opinions. While many continue to bask in the comfort of utopian ideas, others have graduated from the University acknowledging the limitations of campus politics and continue to take part in the greater society armed with ideas of equality and social justice.

Campus should be the most liberating spaces where young minds must feel free to question. The banning of the Study Circle have set a dangerous precedent which has limited the issues and questions that students can raise. The systematic assault on freedom of expression and democratic values of respecting dissent and differences marks the gradual progression towards an era of authoritarian control and intolerance. If dissenting voices continue to be stifled in this manner, in the long run it will weaken the very foundations of democracy.