Resisting Israeli Politics

Brenda Heard

Six months prior to the upcoming UK general election, the Board of Deputies of British Jews published its “2015 General Election Jewish Manifesto.” This forty-page document urges both existing and prospective members of the UK Parliament to support various “policy asks” and to “champion these causes.” The Manifesto was styled after a very similar one created for the 2014 EU elections. Indeed their goals appear the same: to ensure a pro-Israeli agenda in the House of Commons and beyond.

The 2015 Manifesto does include some discussion of faith-based issues, such as underscoring the need of the Jewish community in the UK to be able to provide Kosher meat and to observe the Sabbath. This discussion is a just and valid participation of citizens in their government. The problem arises, however, when the Manifesto equates Jewish and Israeli. With 58 mentions of Israel, the Manifesto, cloaked in blue and white imagery throughout, even boasts a full-page illustration of the British and Israeli flags flying together.

This self-proclaimed “voice of British Jewry” avows a “very strong attachment to the State of Israel.” Yet it is difficult to reconcile this support with such statements as “The UK Jewish community is committed to peace, security, prosperity and equality for Israel, the Palestinians and the wider Middle East” when this statement was penned less than two months after a vicious Israeli onslaught against Gaza, an indiscriminate rampage that in just fifty days killed at least 2,100 Palestinians, some 70% of whom were civilians, including 519 children. A recent report by the American National Lawyers Guild concluded that “both facts and law refute the Israeli self-defense claims” and that Israel had “collectively punished the entire civilian population.” Indeed, Israeli forces intentionally targeted Palestinian civilians, leaving them dead and wounded, homeless and devastated. There has been no peace, no security, no prosperity and no equality for the Palestinians. Not ever.

Yet the Board of Deputies of British Jews expresses unwavering support for Israel. Any resistance to Israeli policy, the Manifesto maintains, should be denounced by the world. The Manifesto offers scant attention to Palestinian resistance group Hamas, however, noting that the EU had already classified Hamas as a terrorist organisation, one with whom the UK should “refuse to engage.” Two months after the publication of the Manifesto, the EU General Court removed Hamas from the list of terrorist organisations,stating:

“the General Court finds that the contested measures are based not on acts examined and confirmed in decisions of competent authorities but on factual imputations derived from the press and the internet.”

The Board of Deputies of British Jews promptly condemned this “unacceptable” ruling, and called it “an affront to the values of Europe.” The Board statement also used the opportunity to reiterate various accusations against Hamas—characterisations that have for years engendered the very hearsay that was finally rejected by the EU General Court. The Council of the EU soon appealed the court’s decision. The Board cheered the appeal and the efforts taken to ensure the appeal, stating “we commend the European Jewish Congress on all its work in ensuring that this issue remains on top of the agenda in Brussels.” The power of lobbying for Israel.

As for Lebanon, the Manifesto proudly points out that the UK led the EU designation of Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist organisation in 2013. But that action was not enough to appease the Board, which urges the UK to lead the campaign to expand that designation to the “entirety” of Hezbollah. The key here is that Israel and its allies have always wanted to destroy all semblance of Hezbollah, as every aspect of the group builds the pride and strength of a Lebanese populace. It is the will to resist Israeli encroachment—the entire culture of resistance in both Palestine and Lebanon—that Israel wants to break. And this is a sentiment of political Israel, not of “British Jewry.” This has nothing to do with the Jewish faith.

Rather similar to the hearsay problem cited by the EU General Court, the accusations hurled at Hezbollah are based on decades of presumptions that Hezbollah is a ruthless entity to be feared and crushed. The fervour to destroy Hezbollah has long been evident in the policies of Israel, the US and the UK. Together, these three bodies have tremendous abilities to create and to seemingly substantiate and certainly to sell the narrative that suits their own agenda. Perhaps it is time to question these fervent accusations.

The Manifesto asserts that Hezbollah has “launched attacks against European and Jewish civilians worldwide” and offers three examples to illustrate this sweeping and unsubstantiated accusation: Buenos Aires (1994), Bulgaria (2012), Cyprus (2013). The responsibility in each of these incidents is far from conclusive.

The Buenos Aires investigation was at once tainted by the immediate involvement of US and Israeli intelligence services. The case was indelibly ruined by layers of corruption within Argentinian services. Even The Guardian acknowledged the investigation to be a “complex saga of mind-boggling intrigue.” Surely the extensive research published in 2008 by historian Gareth Porter should at the very least create reasonable doubt about Hezbollah’s involvement.

Like Buenos Aires, the Bulgarian case investigation was aided by US and Israeli intelligence services. Several reports raise doubts as to the legitimacy of the judgement process, examples of which: Gareth Porter, here and here; Times of Israel; Haaretz;Bulgarian FM Vigenin. Despite Israel’s initial finger-pointing at Hezbollah, the investigation revealed compelling forensic evidence of an Al Qaeda-linked suspect, which was mysteriously dropped only to reveal three Lebanese dual-nationals as suspects. The investigation that struggled for answers somehow, with the help of the US and Israel, was able to link those suspects to Hezbollah. How politically convenient.

In an attempt to offer conclusive evidence of an attack-plotting Hezbollah, the Manifesto offers a fear-inspiring quotation from an allegedly self-confessed Hezbollah member who had seemingly bungled surveillance work in Cyprus and was caught out by Mossad. The man’s “handler,” who was “always wearing a mask,” wanted him to pinpoint Kosher restaurants and to track the arrival times of flights from Israel. But why risk doing such surveillance in person? This information is readily available online, even if it required some creative computing skills. The culprit’s narrative reads more like the stuff of a cheap spy novel than it does the operational expertise of a group with more than thirty-years successful experience. Even if the confessor thought he was, in his nervously ever-changing narrative, revealing some truth, who is to say that he was not led by an imposter to believe he was acting under the direction of Hezbollah, when in fact he was not? Mission not so very impossible.

Still, we are meant to believe that in planning such globally significant missions, Hezbollah was careless enough to leave a paper-trail and to choose men who were inept in their tasks and men who would break under police questioning and tell all. And we are meant to believe that the consistent aid of US and Israeli intelligence has always been strictly objective.

This article is not intended to be a full rebuttal to these specific accusations. The point remains that there is at least reasonable doubt. These accusations are on many levels fuelled by a hatred that has burned for decades, a hatred that would stop at nothing to eradicate the Islamic Resistance of Lebanon. But even if you remain unconvinced of their problematic nature, even if you cannot bring yourself to offer Hezbollah the benefit of the doubt, there remains a double standard in this “Policy Ask” from the Board of Deputies of British Jews. How in the name of civilised democracy can the British Government continue to vehemently denounce Hezbollah, yet eagerly champion an Israeli government that routinely practices that which it condemns?

The Manifesto complains, for instance, that Hezbollah arranged surveillance of Jewish people. Yet we find the following boast in the Board’s EU Manifesto:

“As part of the widespread intelligence cooperation between Israel and the EU, Israel is providing essential information to EU officials enabling them to enforce the proscription [against Hezbollah].”

So it is acceptable for Israel to spy on Lebanese, but not vice versa? The Manifesto also complains Hezbollah allegedly exploited dual-nationals and used false identity papers. Yet this technique is an integral component of Mossad, from false identities and false flags in the 1950s, to political military espionage in the 1960s, to international vigilante justice in the 1970s, to fake passports and double agent killing squads in the 1980s, to assassination attempts in the 1990s, to falsified passports and passport fraud, and assassination after assassination in the 2000s.

These activities tend to be forgotten in the wake of repeated wars on the Lebanese and Palestinians. These activities are often subjectively shrugged off as necessary handling of “legitimate” targets, perhaps with a few unfortunate mistakes. Nonetheless, they exhibit a perpetual defiance of the rule of law, a defiance that is made glaringly clear in Israel’s custom of not only indiscriminate, but also deliberate attacks on the civilian population of the Palestinian territories.

After Israel’s 2006 onslaught on Lebanon, the UN Commission of Inquiry emphasised that one third of the Lebanese casualties were children and stated:

“The Commission highlights a significant pattern of excessive, indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force by IDF against Lebanese civilians and civilian objects. . . The Commission has formed a clear view that, cumulatively, the deliberate and lethal attacks by the IDF on civilians and civilian objects amounted to collective punishment.”

Likewise, after Israel’s 2009 onslaught on Gaza, the UN Fact Finding Mission concluded that:

“what occurred in just over three weeks at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”

Following Israel’s 2014 onslaught on Gaza, an Independent Medical Fact-Finding Mission described in detail the reckless, often deliberate targeting of civilians, including the use of the “double tap”: multiple consecutive strikes on a single location that would lead to additional casualties amongst civilian onlookers and rescuers.

Perhaps as much as casualty statistics, this calculated strategy reveals not merely what the Manifesto describes euphemistically as “challenges about integration between different sectors of the population that need to be addressed,” but what one IDF Staff Sergeant described as “contempt for human life.” He was relating a similar tactic ordered by his battalion commander in the West Bank:

“You leave bodies in the field—they told me they did it a lot in Lebanon— you leave a body in the field, and you wait until they come to recover it so you can shoot at them. It’s like you’re setting up an ambush around the body. But those are things I heard about Lebanon. So it happened here [in Nablus], too.”

Contempt for human life happened. Contempt for rule of law happened. Again and again, at the hands of the “democratic state” promoted by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who in the same instance would like to coax British and Europeans to condemn the very victims of that state’s crimes. While their Manifesto offers a few pages pushing Israeli politics, I offer my recently published book, Hezbollah: An Outsider’s Inside View. Based on eight years of getting to know the people who are Hezbollah, this inside view of the Islamic Resistance of Lebanon offers the opportunity to explore for yourself the militants at the horizon. May common sense, not lobbying efforts, shape the concerns of the British people.

How The US Government And US Military Became Murder, Inc.

Paul Craig Roberts 

Andrew Cockburn has written a must-read book. The title is Kill Chain: The Rise Of The High-Tech Assassins. The title could just as well be: How the US Government and US Military Became Murder, Inc.

The US military no longer does war. It does assassinations, usually of the wrong people. The main victims of the US assassination policy are women, children, village elders, weddings, funerals, and occasionally US soldiers mistaken for Taliban by US surveillance operating with the visual acuity of the definition of legal blindness.

Cockburn tells the story of how the human element has been displaced by remote control killing guided by misinterpretation of unclear images on screens collected by surveillance drones and sensors thousands of miles away. Cockburn shows that the “all-seeing” drone surveillance system is an operational failure but is supported by defense contractors because of its high profitability and by the military brass because general officers, with the exception of General Paul Van Ripper, are brainwashed in the belief that the revolution in military affairs means that high-tech devices replace the human element. Cockburn demonstrates that this belief is immune to all evidence to the contrary. The US military has now reached the point that Secretary of Defense Hagel deactivated both the A-10 close support fighter and the U-2 spy plane in favor of the operationally failed unmanned Global Hawk System. With the A-10 and U-2 went the last platforms for providing a human eye on what is happening on the ground.

The surveillance/sensor technology cannot see human footprints in the snow. Consequently, the drone technology concluded that a mountain top was free of enemy and sent a detachment of unsuspecting SEALS to be shot up. Still insisting no enemy present, a second group of SEALS were sent to be shot up, and then a detachment of Army Rangers. Finally, an A-10 pilot flew over the scene and reported the enemy’s presence in force.

By 2012 even the US Air Force, which had been blindly committed to the unmanned drone system, had experienced more failure than could any longer be explained away. The Air Force admitted that the 50-year old U-2 could fly higher and in bad weather and take better pictures than the expensive Global Hawk System and declared the Global Hawk system scrapped.

The decision was supported by the 2011 report from the Pentagon’s test office that the drone system was “not operationally effective.” Among its numerous drawbacks was its inability to carry out assigned missions 75% of the time. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Congress that in addition to the system’s unacceptable failure rate, the drone system “has fundamentally priced itself out of our ability to afford it.”

As Cockburn reports: “It made no difference. Congress, led by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon and Democratic Congressman Jim Moran (whose northern Virginia district hosts the headquarters of both Northrop and Raytheon) effortless brushed aside these pleas, forcing the Air Force to keep buying the unwanted drone.”

Cockburn provides numerous examples of the utter failure of the unmanned revolution ushered in by unrealistic dreamers, such as Andrew Marshall, John Foster, William Perry, and David Deptula, who have done much harm to the US military and American taxpayers. The failure stories are legion and sad. Almost always the victims are the innocent going about their everyday affairs.

The book opens with the story of three vehicles crammed with people from the same village heading to Kabul. Some were students returning to school in Kabul, some were shopkeepers heading to the capital to buy supplies, others were unemployed men on their way to Iran seeking work, and some were women bringing gifts for relatives. This collection of ordinary people, represented on screens by vague images, was willfully mistaken, as the reproduced conversations between drone operators and assassins show, for a senior Taliban commander leading forces to attack a US Special Forces patrol. The innocent civilians were blown to smithereens.

The second chapter tells of the So Tri, an indigenous people in the remote wilderness of southeastern Laos who were bombed for nine years because the stupid American military sowed their environment with sensors that called down bombs when human presence was detected. High-tech warfare misidentified the villagers with Viet Cong moving through jungle routes.

One heartbreaking story follows another. If surveillance suspects the presence of a High Value Target in a restaurant, regardless of nominal restrictions on the number of innocents who can be murdered as the “collateral damage” part of the strike, the entire restaurant and all within are destroyed by a hellfire missile. Remember that the Israelis denounce terrorists for exploding suicide vests inside Israeli restaurants. What the US military does is even worse.

On other occasions the US assassinates an underling of a High Value Target on the
assumption that the Target will attend the funeral which is obliterated from the air whether the Target is present or not.

As the murders are indiscriminate, the US military defines all males killed to be valid targets. Generally, the US will not admit the deaths of non-Targets, and some US officials have declared there to be no such deaths. Blatant and obvious lies issue without shame in order to protect the “operationally ineffective” and very expensive high-tech production runs that mean billions of taxpayer dollars for the military/security complex and comfortable 7-figure employment salaries with contractors after retirement for the military brass.

When you read this book you will weep for your country ruled as it is by completely immoral and inhumane monsters. But Cockburn’s book is not without humor. He tells the story of Marine Lt. General Paul Van Riper, the scourge of the Unmanned Revolution in Military affairs, who repeatedly expressed contempt for the scientifically unsupported theories of unmanned war. To humiliate Gen. Ripper with a defeat in a massive war game as leader of the enemy Red force against the high-tech American Blue force, he was called out of retirement to participate in a war game stacked against him.

The Blue force armored with a massive database (Operational Net Assessment) and overflowing with acronyms was almost instantly wiped out by General Ripper. He sank the entire aircraft carrier fleet and the entire Blue force army went down with it. The war was over. The 21st century US high-tech, effects-based military was locked into a preset vision and was beaten hands down by a maverick Marine general with inferior forces.

The Joint Forces Command turned purple with rage. Gen. Ripper was informed that the outcome of the war game was unacceptable and would not stand. The sunken fleet magically re-floated, the dead army was resurrected, and the war was again on, only this time restriction after restriction was placed on the Red force. Ripper was not allowed to shoot down the Blue force’s troop transports. Ripper was ordered to turn on all of the Red force’s radars so that the Red forces could be easily located and destroyed. Umpires ruled, despite the facts, that all of Ripper’s missile strikes were intercepted. Victory was declared for high-tech war. Ripper’s report on the total defeat of the Blue force, its unwarranted resurrection, and the rigged outcome was promptly classified so that no one could read it.

The highly profitable Revolution in Military Affairs had to be protected at all costs along with the reputations of the incompetent generals that comprise today’s high command.

The infantile behavior of the US military compelled to create a victory for its high-tech, but legally blind, surveillance warfare demonstrates how far removed from the ability to conduct real warfare the US military is. What the US military has done in Afghanistan and Iraq is to create far more enemies than it has killed. Every time high-tech killing murders a village gathering, a wedding or funeral, or villagers on the way to the capital, which is often, the US creates hundreds more enemies. This is why after 14 years of killing in Afghanistan, the Taliban now control most of the country. This is why Islamist warriors have carved a new country out of Syria and Iraq despite eight years of American sacrifice in Iraq estimated by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes to have cost Americans a minimum of $3 trillion. The total failure of the American way of war is obvious to all, but the system rolls on autonomously.

The Revolution in Military Affairs has decapitated the US military, which no longer has the knowledge or ability or human tools to conduct war. If the crazed Russophobic US generals get their way and end up in confrontation with Russia, the American forces will be destroyed. The humiliation of this defeat will cause Washington to take the war nuclear.

Here is Stanislav Mishin’s view of what awaits the foolish West: http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/03/22/4790

U.S. versus Russia:Even Stephen Cohen Is Starting To Speak The Truth

Eric Zuesse

An alarming development is that Stephen F. Cohen, the internationally prominent scholar of Russia, is acknowledging that (1:35 on the video) “for the first time in my long life (I began in this field in the 1960s), I think the possibility of war with Russia is real,” and he clearly and unequivocally places all of the blame for it on the U.S. leadership. He calls this “possibly a fateful turning-point in history.” He also says “it could be the beginning of the end of the so-called trans-Atlantic alliance.”

He goes on to say (2:20): “This problem began in the 1990s, when the Clinton Administration adopted a winner-take-all policy toward post-Soviet Russia … Russia gives, we take. … This policy was adopted by the Clinton Administration but is pursued by every [meaning both] political party, every President, every American Congress, since President Clinton, to President Obama. This meant that the United States was entitled to a sphere or zone of influence as large as it wished, right up to Russia's borders, and Russia was entitled to no sphere of influence, at all, not even in Georgia, … or in Ukraine (with which Russia had been intermarried for centuries).” 

He also speaks clearly about the misrepresentations of Putin by the American Government, and he clearly states (5:25): “He's more European than 99% of other Russians.” 

Regarding Ukraine (5:45): “Since November of 2013, Putin has been not aggressive, but reactive, at every stage.” 

Regarding, in America, the effective unanimity of allowed scholarly and media opinions to the contrary of the actual facts (and this is the most startling thing of all, so you might want to go straight to it, at 7:05): “This is an unprecedented situation in American politics. … This is exceedingly dangerous, and this is a failure of American democracy. Why it happened, I am not sure.” 

He condemns (7:30) “this extraordinarily irrational [non] factual demonization of Putin … and this too is hard to explain.” 

Europe (8:40): “Now things have begun to change. Europe is splitting on this.” He acknowledges “Crimea is not coming back [to Ukraine],” and urges “a Ukraine — and this is what the dispute began over — free to trade with Russia and with the West.” And, “no membership in NATO for Ukraine. … This has to be in writing. No more oral promises such as they gave to Gorbachev. And it has to be ratified by the United Nations.” 

Regarding Obama (13:00): “I have never seen an American President make such personal remarks about a Russian leader [Putin] in public.” 

Regarding the existing Ukrainian Government (14:10): “This is not a democratic regime. … Unless the West stops supporting Kiev unconditionally, I fear we are drifting toward war with Russia."

WOW! When even a word-mincer such as he, is stating that the U.S. Government is seeking to conquer Russia, that is news!

He doesn't even so much as mention the Ukrainian Government's war to eliminate the residents in the resisting region (Donbass — Ukraine's far-east). There is still a lot of the ugliness that he covers up: Obama's having installed these genocidally anti-Russian nazis into power, the IMFs subservience to the Obama regime, the failure of European leaders to state flat-out that this American establishment of a nazi regime in Europe (Ukraine) is disgusting and will receive no cooperation whatsoever from them.

But it's a lot better than Cohen's earlier mealy-mouthed statements. And what it shows to all of us is that he is now truly alarmed. Having started out by condemning “American hawks” regarding Ukraine, he has finally come to condemning specifically both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — two Democratic Party Presidents — and saying that democracy in America might itself already be gone, and that the end of civilization might be the result from all of this. 

Which ought to alarm us all.

Things are so scary now, that even he is beginning to come close to saying publicly (to whatever small public the U.S. aristocracy will allow him to be heard) that America's corruption at the top is threatening the continued existence of civilization.

Implicit in his statements is that there is massive and systematic censorship and warping of the truth on the part of America's aristocrats. 

Regarding the reason why Cohen had not previously been so alarmed and truth-telling about the Ukrainian situation, he provided a hint in this lecture — a lecture to a group of European scholars:

He said (7:55): “We thought, some of us [Americans] when we got together and talked in 2014, that you would come to our rescue — ‘you' I mean Europe — … we thought that Europe being part of the same history as Russia, closer to Russia, economically embedded in Russia to an extent that the United States isn't, would put an end to this crisis. But instead most countries in the EU went along with Washington's policies.”

In other words: He (and, evidently, his friends) ignored the evidence, such as this and this and this, all of which atrocities Obama supported and his White House was even personally implicated in, which indicated that Obama was hard-charging into conquering Russia, and was using Ukraine as the proxy-state to make it happen, and had used Ukraine's nazis as his Ukrainian Government's spearhead, specifically because Ukraine's nazis fanatically hate Russians and want them dead. 

Elsewhere in his talk, Cohen said (12:45) that Obama is “a weak foreign-policy leader.” This is like Hitler-supporter David Irving's similarly explaining Hitler's bad decisions by saying that Hitler was a “weak leader who was taken advantage of by his advisors.” Cohen (and presumably also his friends) are like that about Obama: they simply refuse to consider the evidence that the man is evil — they ignore it; they don't want to see it. 

Consequently, with such naivete about power, they were expecting people such as this to block Obama. They shoved responsibility off onto Europeans. In other words: Cohen (and his friends) are blind to the ugliness in their own sty, because they want to be.

Maybe before people like that open their eyes to what's happening, eveybody will be turned to nuclear char, and so such liberals won't even need to suffer disillusionment about the world in which they have lived.

Relying upon liberals to protect the world from fascists or even nazis, always fails. But that's all the aristocracy will even allow onto the field, at all (at least in America). Progressives, people who acknowledge the reality, are portrayed simply as being kooks.

Hold The Rich Accountable In New U.N. Development Goals, Say NGOs

Thalif Deen

When the World Economic Forum (WEF) met last January in Switzerland, attended mostly by the rich and the super-rich, the London-based charity Oxfam unveiled a report with an alarming statistic: if current trends continue, the world’s richest one percent would own more than 50 percent of the world’s wealth by 2016.

And just 80 of the world’s richest will control as much wealth as 3.5 billion people: half the world’s population.

So, when the World Social Forum (WSF), created in response to WEF, holds its annual meeting in Tunis later this week, the primary focus will be on the growing inequalities in present day society.

The Civil Society Reflection Group (CSRG) on Global Development Perspectives will be releasing a new study which calls for both goals and commitments – this time particularly by the rich – if the UN’s 17 proposed new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the post-2015 development agenda are to succeed.

Asked if the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which will reach their targeted deadlines in December, had spelled out goals for the rich, Jens Martens, director of the Global Policy Forum in Bonn, told IPS MDG 8 on global partnership for development was indeed a goal for the rich. “But this goal remained vague and did not include any binding commitments for rich countries,” he pointed out.

This is the reason why the proposed SDG 17 aims to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development, he added.

In addition, Martens said, governments agreed to include targets on the means of implementation under each of the remaining 16 SDGs. However, many of these targets, again, are not “smart”, i.e. neither specific nor measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. “What we need are ‘smart’ targets to hold rich countries accountable,” he added.

Martens said goals without the means to achieve them are meaningless. And the post-2015 development agenda will only succeed if the SDGs include meaningful and time-bound targets and commitments for the rich that trigger the necessary regulatory and fiscal policy changes, he added. Goals for the rich are indispensable for the post-2015 agenda, stressed Barbara Adams, senior policy advisor for Global Policy Forum and a member of the coordinating committee of Social Watch.

The eight MDGs, which will be replaced by the proposed new 17 SDGs, to be finalized before world leaders meet at a summit in September, were largely for developing nations with specific targets, including the reduction of extreme poverty and hunger, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, reducing infant mortality and fighting environmental degradation.

Beginning Monday, a new round of inter-governmental negotiations will continue through Mar. 23 to finalize the SDGs.
The 17 new goals, as crafted by an open-ended working group (OWG), include proposals to end poverty, eliminate hunger, attain healthy lives, provide quality education, attain gender equality and reduce inequalities, perhaps by 2030.

The list also includes the sustainable use of water and sanitation, energy for all, productive employment, industrialization, protection of terrestrial ecosystems and strengthening the global partnership for sustainable development.

Roberto Bissio, coordinator for Social Watch, said three specific “goals for the rich” are particularly important for sustainable development worldwide:

The goal to reduce inequality within and among countries; the goal to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns; and the goal to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for development

He said the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” (CBDR) must be applied rigorously.

Coupled with the human rights principle of equal rights for all and the need to respect the planetary boundaries, this must necessarily translate into different obligations for different categories of countries, Bissio added.

Henning Melber, director emeritus of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, said for Dag Hammarskjöld, the former U.N. Secretary-General, the United Nations was an organization guided by solidarity. If solidarity is with the poor, the rich have to realize that less is more in terms of stability, sustainability, equality and the future of humanity, he said.

In its new study, the Civil Society Reflection Group said all of the 17 goals proposed by the Open Working Group are relevant for rich, poor and emerging economies, in North and South alike.

All governments that subscribe to the post-2015 agenda must deliver on all goals.

On the face of it, for rich countries, many of the goals and targets seem to be quite easy to fulfill or have already been achieved, especially those related to social accomplishments (e.g. targets related to absolute poverty, primary education or primary health care), the Group noted.

“Unfortunately, social achievements in reality are often fragile particularly for the socially excluded and can easily be rolled back as a result of conflict (as in the case of Ukraine), of capitalism in crisis (in many countries after 2008) or as a result of wrong-headed, economically foolish and socially destructive policies, as in the case of austerity policies in many regions, from Latin America to Asia to Southern Europe. “

In the name of debt reduction and improved competitiveness, these policies brought about large-scale unemployment and widespread impoverishment, often coupled with the loss of basic income support or access to basic primary health care. More often than not, this perversely increased sovereign debt instead of decreasing it (“Paradox of thrift”), the study said.

But also under ‘normal’ circumstances some of the “MDG-plus” targets relating to poverty eradication and other social development issues may prove to be a real challenge in many parts of the rich world, where poverty has been rising.

In the United States, the study said, poverty increased steadily in the last two decades and currently affects some 50 million people, measured by the official threshold of 23,850 dollars a year for a family of four.

In Germany, 20.3 percent of the population – a total of 16.2 million people – were affected by poverty or social exclusion in 2013.
In the European Union as a whole, the proportion of poor or socially excluded people was 24.5 percent, the Group said.

To address this and similar situations, target 1.2 in the Open Working Group’s proposal requests countries to “by 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions”.

How one looks at ‘goals for the rich’ depends on whether one takes a narrow national or inward-looking view, or whether one takes into account the international responsibilities and extraterritorial obligations of countries for past, present and future actions and omissions affecting others beyond a country’s borders; whether one accepts and honors the CBDR principle for the future of humankind and planet earth, the study said.

In addition, this depends on whether one accepts home country responsibilities for actions and omissions of non-state actors, such as transnational corporations and their international supply chains. Contemporary international soft law (e.g. UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights) is based on this assumption, as are other accords such as the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.

Last, but not least, rich countries tend to be more powerful in terms of their influence on international and global policy-making and standard setting, the study declared.

Rising Food Price A Global Concern

Mousumi Roy

The issue of rising food Prices across the globe is a matter of great concern, and is being discussed on many international forums. Studies show that, since households in developing countries spend most of their income on food items, rising food prices affect them significantly more than households in developed countries.

The rise in food prices is not only due to higher production costs and shortages. It is also a result of poor storage, wastage and improper distribution as well as corruption in managing food policies. It goes without saying that famine, drought and political stability in many countries also have great impact on the rise in global food prices. Speculation is another important reason. infographs on the role played by banks and other financial Institutions in speculative details frequently suggest adverse impacts on global food prices.

Furthermore, global demographic patterns, urbanization and industrialization play their own role in food habits. The resulting high usage of staple foods globally is the combined impact of all these factors. In developing countries, poor food import policies and incorrect political decisions are, without doubt, damaging livelihoods and employment of poor households. Villagers, as local producers, are being deprived of reasonable prices. The protection of local agricultural systems to enhance rural employment should be incorporated in the framework for food security in poor and developing nations. Hence, it is imperative for every country to focus on long term planning to attain stable food self-sufficiency, based on optimum utilization of its own unique natural resources.

In recent times, food security issues have assumed critical importance. Undoubtedly, food price volatility and its adverse impacts are being felt all over the world, more so in the developing countries. At global forums attempts are being made, though not adequately. Some corrective measures are being initiated to address the global food crisis. The FAO has emphasized repeatedly to the world community that excessive financial speculation in derivative markets comprising food grains and other cereals is having a devastating impact on the people's lives. Concerns have been raised for falling world food production. The need for increasing the production of major food corps has been emphasized. Food prices, including the prices of all agricultural commodities, were fairly stable for four decades since the sixties. However, beginning in 2007, excessive fluctuations became the norm as commodity trading in derivatives picked up. Other concomitant factors like wastage, inefficient distribution and other systemic deficiencies in the entire food chain have continued to add to the crisis.

It is important to understand the nature, causes, impacts and responses to such excessive volatility, including the complexities in inter-relationships between agricultural and financial and energy markets. Food price inflation has been a constant source of worry for the policy makers in developing countries and has been adding to the overall inflation in almost everywhere. This has had greater impact on poorer populations who spend up to 75 percent of their income on food. More importantly, the volatility in food prices, declining food production and allowances granted to market forces to have a field day, have had significantly detrimental impact on the global fight against hunger, malnutrition and poverty. As a consequence, many parts of the world have witnessed social and political unrest arising from food shortages and burgeoning prices of food grains.

The debate (or dilemma) of food versus fuel, an embodiment of the risks of diverting farmland or crops for biofuels production, is well known. It works as a detriment to food supply on a global scale. It is strongly believed that large increases in biofuels production in the United States and Europe are the main reason behind the steep rise in global food prices. Urbanization and industrialization (mostly in the developing and emerging economies) are encroaching into the areas meant for farming, adding to the crisis. All these complexities call for multi-pronged policy initiatives.

Many experts feel that agriculture and food issues need to be looked at in a more holistic manner with particular attention to the sustainable use of scarce land and water resources, livelihoods of poor farmers, along with concerns for ecology and the environment, with an increasing role of science and technology in the transformation of agriculture. It is imperative that farmers be given improved and attractive minimum support prices as a means for sustaining agriculture. The world over, agriculture is in peril and is sustained with governmental support. That must continue. Policy parameters must be tightened so as to make speculative trading in commodities unsustainable, thus curbing its exploitative tendencies. Of course, this is easier said than done.

To attain a high GDP, agriculture in the developing countries needs to grow at or above 4 to 5%, with sustained investment in irrigation. The area under irrigation must expand beyond the present dependence on rain-fed farming. Most of the developing countries have a significant percentage of people dependent on agriculture. There is an increasing requirement to creating many more civil job works to encourage people to move away from farming and farm labor. Food security for the poor is imperative to stem hunger and malnutrition among the most vulnerable.

More efficient food procurement, storage and distribution policies that can respond to the market quickly are required urgently to guard against food prices collapsing to the point that it hurts the farmer and removes his incentive to produce more, or rise to the extent that poor consumers are hurt. Finally, the middle and wealthy class in India and other similarly placed countries must address the question of whether it is the correct for the urban people to obtain their produce at some of the lowest prices in the world, depriving the farmers of their dues.

Global poverty, death from hunger are shameful for any community – there must be effective schemes and active initiatives to fight the obstacles to restore the fundamentals of survival...

Netanyahu the Mythbuster

Ramzy Baroud

Imagine if an American presidential candidate made a plea to his supporters on election day with the following statement: “The Republican administration is in danger. Black voters are going en masse to the polls. Liberal NGOs are bringing them on buses.”

Even in a country where Chris Matthews is a media celebrity and Pamela Geller is an intellectual, the statement would be scandalous, a political death wish even. In Israel, however, the opposite is true.

In a message delivered in a video on Facebook, incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a sinister call appealing to ingrained racism in Israeli society:

“The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are going en masse to the polls. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them on buses.”

Netanyahu’s fight was not exactly against the Arabs. The Joint List, which united various Arab parties as a response to new Israeli laws aimed at reducing their representation in the Knesset, came third with 14 seats. Though this is an impressive showing nonetheless, it falls short of being an imminent threat to Netanyahu or the Labor (Zionist Union) Party.

Using an imagined Arab threat as a fearmongering tactic is an Israeli political staple. It is a notion founded before the creation of Israel over the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948. But what makes Netanyahu’s latest statement more important than usual is that the Israeli leader blew to bits a well-guarded secret – at least in mainstream media – that Israel is a racist country. Not only did Netanyahu make the racist call to SAVE his career and stay in the race, he actually won with a substantial margin precisely because of that very call.

Indeed, racism was in fact the reason behind his “surprise” election victory. He is now on his way to BECOMING a prime minister for the fourth time, as his Likud Party secured 30 seats in the 120-member Knesset. The supposed “left” mostly represented in the Zionist Union won 24 seats, although their political programme was virtually indistinguishable from Likud.

For Netanyahu’s main challenger, Isaac Herzog, Palestinians hardly existed. The occupation was a non-issue for him and for most Israeli political rivals for that matter. His foreign policy programme was either identical to Netanyahu’s or was largely based on deferring foreign policy issues to a later date. The soft-speaking Herzog had no qualms about keeping the illegal Jewish settlements intact – which stands at the crux of Israeli military occupation of Palestine.

“No matter who emerges as the prime minister following the election and the inevitable weeks of haggling and horse-trading that go into forming a coalition,” wrote Michael J Koplow, “Israel’s foreign policy on the big issues will be marked by consistency rather than transformation.”

Although Netanyahu vowed to oppose a future Palestinian state – raising concerns among his Western allies – Herzog, too, practically opposed a contiguous and sovereign Palestinian state because no such state could possibly co-exist with colonial settlements and military occupation.

However, the US administration and media pundits didn’t seem to be bothered by Herzog as they were by Netanyahu’s grandstanding over Arab voters being bussed in droves or his intentions to block a Palestinian state. If the prospective foreign policy outcome of both leaders would have been the same, why didn’t the Obama administration object as strongly to Herzog’s political programme as to Netanyahu’s racist rants?

One of the reasons is that Netanyahu deviated from an unwritten script that sustained the Washington-Tel Aviv alliance for decades and has served as the central discourse to the so-called peace process. According to that script, Israel is allowed to virtually do as it pleases in Palestine as long as it adheres to a strict, agreed upon narrative.

But in his hunger for power and in line with his unquenchable arrogance, Netanyahu violated the code. For Washington, a red line is being frequently crossed and it is becoming increasingly difficult for Washington to maintain a special relationship with Israel, which, under Netanyahu is paying no heed to the foreign policy interests of the United States.

Despite protest by the Obama administration, Netanyahu’s triumphant speech in US Congress on 3 March was perhaps the most humiliating political episode in US politics in many years.

In the long run, that strategy could backfire. Netanyahu’s antics are increasingly denying the US administration a prolonged, tired and failed discourse pertaining to the peace process, Israeli security, democracy and so on, leaving the White House with two stark choices: to follow the lead of a racist and obsessive Netanyahu (as many Republicans and Democrats have already done) or to part ways.

Thanks to Netanyahu, some of the misleading Israeli myths promoted as facts by Israel supporters are now falling apart.

First, Israel cannot be a Jewish and democratic state. There is no such thing. Jewish democracy is as flawed as any democracy that promotes the interest of any specific racial or ethnic group at the expense of all others. The collective cognitive dissonance that has been streamlined into Israeli thinking that democracy can be tailored to fit racial and ethnic needs is completely unacceptable as a sensible democratic standard.

Democracy is grounded on pluralism and inclusion, not racial exclusion and fearmongering about Arabs voting in droves. The fact that 4.5 million Palestinians don’t have the right to vote in an area under Israel control says volumes. The fact that Palestinians who voted in a democratic Palestinian elections in 2006 are still suffering a punishing siege to this day because of that choice, is particularly devastating.

Second, Israel is not an American ally and there is no “special relationship”. Netanyahu’s speech about Iran at the US Congress in defiance of President Obama and declared US foreign policy on Iran’s nuclear programme was the last nail in the coffin of the tired argument that Israel and the US are unified by a clear set of mutual interests. The “tail wagging the dog” argument is back in full force, and Americans must understand that their country’s political elites are torn between the interests of their country and those of Israel. No amount of reasoning about the “special relationship” will rectify the damage created by Netanyahu.

Third, the peace process was a farce from the START. In fact, it was designed to be a farce, meant to manage but not resolve the conflict. The Americans had come to terms with the idea that they cannot pressure Israel to alter its policies, thus designed the peace process as a way to promote an illusion that a two-state solution to the conflict is still possible, placing the US at the helm of being a mediator between both parties.

It mattered little if the “peace process” dragged on for a century more, as long as both parties remained verbally committed to the unfeasible idea of a two-state solution. While Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas kept reiterating his lines as requested by Washington – in exchange for money and political support from the US and its Western allies – Netanyahu reneged, not just unmasking Israel, but exposing the American-led farce altogether. With no two-state discourse, there is no peace process, thus there is no American strategy in the Middle East and this leads to the question: now what?

As for Palestinians, they are not exactly “happy” that Netanyahu has won, but some see his victory as an important step towards confronting the 20-year charade of the peace process. They are not “relieved” that a man with a racist and bloody legacy will invite more terror and war, but they understand that regardless of the outcome, their suffering will endure, as will the siege and the occupation.

While there is little that Palestinians can learn from the outcome of Israeli elections, there is much for Americans to think about.

TPP Trade Negotiations At Critical Juncture

Jack Rasmus

Passage of the “Trans Pacific Partnership” (TPP) free trade agreement between the USA and 11 other pacific rim countries has been the number one economic priority of both political parties in the USA since last November 2014’s national Congressional elections. Concluding a TPP deal in 2015 is right up there — along with across the board corporate tax rate cuts — at the top of Corporate America’s “must have” list for this year.

But the window may be closing on concluding a deal. That’s why American trade negotiators are desperate for “fast track” authority to accelerate the effort to finish negotiations — before global developments force the window shut.

Republican and Democrat representatives and Senators in both houses of Congress in the USA, as well as the Obama administration, have been pushing hard for passage of the TPP since December 2012, when the most recent media-legislative campaign to pass a TPP deal was rolled out immediately following the presidential elections the month before.

The TPP-Free Trade USA push goes back even further, however, to at least 2010. That’s when Obama put Jeff Immelt, the CEO of the giant U.S. global corporation, General Electric, in charge of a special Presidential Committee tasked with coming up with recommending future USA trade initiatives. TPP was one of them.

But before acting on Immelt’s 2010 recommendations, Obama had to first wrap up the loose ends of the several bilateral free trade agreements still on the table between the USA, South Korea, Colombia, Panama and other countries. Then there was the 2012 presidential elections. Obama and Democrats knew trying to push the TPP through before would risk their re-election chances. So they waited. Then came the November 2014 midterm Congressional elections. Better wait again, since Democrats in Congress coming out for TPP might jeopardize union and consumer support for their re-election, and potentially cost the administration and Democrats their majority in the Senate — which they lost anyway due to many reasons.

But now, early 2015, the short term political risks are reduced and bilateral free trade agreements with the other countries have been completed. Now the majority of Congressional Democrats, nearly all the Republicans, and the Obama administration are all united on the goal of pushing through the most massive free trade agreement to date, called the TPP. How massive? No less than 40 percent of the world’s total annual GDP and a third of all global trade, that’s how massive.

U.S. Corporations and Corporate Parties United for TPP

The vast majority of members of Congress, in the House and Senate alike, don’t even know what’s being negotiated in TPP. Except for perhaps a few in-siders in both parties, virtually no one in Congress has any real information whatsoever as to the details of the current TPP negotiations. Only the trade representatives of the 11 countries and their invited guests, the representatives from global corporations, are privy to what’s being discussed in the 28 industry negotiating sessions.

Of the 566 groups that have been invited to attend the negotiations at various levels, 480 are apparently representatives of businesses, trade, and industry groups. The rest are pro-trade academics, a smattering of sympathetic NGOs that benefit from corporate contributions, and a few token union representatives in the pockets of their corporations or governments at home.

From what is known from the periodic leaks from the discussions, it appears proposals for TPP are heavy on permitting capital to freely and easily enter a country, for profits to be just as easily repatriated, for wholesale privatization of public enterprises, and for proposals to allow corporations to sue governments in global secret courts if national laws are passed that challenge any provision of the TPP — to name but the most corporate-friendly measures being proposed.

Even though there are apparently no provisions for Congress to receive progress reports on the status of negotiations, nevertheless a majority in Congress is about to vote in April in favor of TPP, and specifically on a strategic measure will increase the possibility of passage of TPP soon after. That vote and measure is called “fast track” authority.

Fast track means Congress agrees with the president’s negotiating demands before an agreement is struck, and then votes quickly on it once it has, voting yes or no, without any amendments or procedural delays in the legislation making TPP a law in the USA. In other words, if “fast track” passes, whatever the President’s trade negotiators agree on will quickly become law of the land. Corporate America in particular likes “fast track.” It means whatever anti-worker, anti-consumer, anti-environment and deals are agreed to at the negotiating table cannot be challenged, amended or reversed by Congress when the vote comes up.

“Fast track” passage in April will mean the push to conclude a TPP deal will accelerate and intensify in subsequent weeks. It means the path is politically paved to conclude a TPP deal asap. Passage of fast track is not the ‘endgame’, but it’s damn near close to meaning just that.

Recent USA history shows that a massive, free trade treaty like TPP can only be passed with the support of a Democratic president and Democrat support in Congress — just as Democrat Bill Clinton was essential for passing the previous USA free trade initiatives in the 1990s: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and opening up China-USA trade by proposing the Preferred Nation Trading Rights (PNTR) for China, a quasi free trade measure.

If another Democrat is elected president in 2016 — an unlikely but possible event — that Democrat will have to wait until 2018 or later to push for TPP. And if a Republican is elected president in 2016, it is likely that Democrats may not support TPP in Congress.

Corporate America does not want to wait that long for TPP, given either those events. It wants TPP now, not later. The political timing on the USA side is right, in its view, given the current party alignments in Congress, and with the current Democrat President, Obama, a strong, unequivocal advocate of free trade agreements like TPP since 2010. (In contrast to his election promises in 2008 when he said he would not support more free trade agreements). But there’s another reason “why TTP now.” They all know — corporations, Republican and Democrat politicians, and the Obama administration alike — that the longer they wait, the more unstable the global economy will continue to become, and thus the more difficult will become the concluding of a TPP deal.

Not only are internal U.S. political alignments the best in years. But the external global economic developments can only get worse over time. The U.S. side of the negotiations are in sync, with all the corporate and pro-corporate players agreed on doing a deal quickly. But the rest of the 11 TPP countries in negotiations will find it increasingly difficult to agree to a deal as time goes on, as their economies become more unstable and slow.

The Global Instability “Wildcard”

Time is not on the side of advocates of the TPP in the USA and they know they need to accelerate the process.

The global economy is slowly but steadily unraveling. Currencies are becoming more volatile. More economies are slipping into recession. Inter-capitalist competition is shifting and assuming more aggressive forms. Real investment is slowing everywhere. Trade in commodities, including oil, is collapsing in price and volume. Furthermore, these trends are going to get worse, not better, and will likely continue to do so in what remains of 2015-16. Only a short window may exist therefore this year, or early next at the latest, to conclude a TPP deal. Here’s why.

The quantitative easing (QE) programs of the two weak links today in the advanced economies — Japan and the Eurozone — are causing increasing global currency instability. And the more currency instability, the more complicated the negotiations for TPP will become, as well as the more difficult it will be to conclude a deal.

Japan set off the current deepening currency war in 2013 when it introduced its first QE. That had little to no effect on Japan’s real growth but it boosted stock prices for a while and then, like all QEs, even that dissipated. Japan fell into another recession, its fourth since 2008, during early 2014. So it increased is QE-liquidity injections last fall 2014 still further, as it expected the Eurozone to introduce its own QE, which the Eurozone did just recently.

Then there’s the matter of China. Not a party to the TPP negotiations, China’s general economic slowdown underway will undoubtedly result in China allowing its currency, the Yuan (reminbi), to decline as well, in order for China to boost its exports too.

So all three major regions — Japan, China, and Europe — are driving down their currencies to get a short term export (and economic growth) advantage. Unable to confront this ‘triple threat’ to their exports, many of the 11 Asian rim TPP countries are becoming desperate to increase their exports in response—as are most of emerging market economies in general worldwide. And where better to do that than to open and raise new demands and to request even more concessions from the USA in current TPP negotiations?

As their own currencies rise in value, and their economies slow, many of the 11 will also seek even more guarantees of USA to ensure direct investment into their economies. But with the U.S. dollar rising sharply, U.S. corporations also want and plan to invest heavily in the Eurozone and Japan economies. How will the USA assure the 11 TPP partners that U.S. corporations will invest even more money capital in their economies, when there are growing opportunities at the same time for even better investments in Europe and Japan, and of course China.

There’s also the matter of collapsing oil prices. This will undoubtedly complicate the energy track discussions in the TPP negotiations.

Then there’s the USA dollar and imminent U.S. interest rate hike policies. The rising dollar and U.S. interest rates mean capital outflows and even capital flight are high on the agenda for a number of the 11 TPP negotiating countries. Will the USA agree in TPP negotiations to lower the dollar’s value as concessions in TPP bargaining? Not likely, give the growing consensus to raise interest rates in the USA very soon, either this June or September at the latest, which will continue to drive up the dollar and in turn suck money capital out of many of the 11 other TPP partners in the form of capital flight and redirected investment. The TPP 11 will want to know what their USA partner is going to do about all this. They will want more concessions, in exchange for the USA demands for intellectual property and software products protections, patent protections, more opportunities for U.S. banking access to those countries, and so on.

There are literally dozens of other examples and ways that current TPP negotiations can, and will, be up-ended by the monetary policies of Europe, Japan China, and the USA. Global currency instability, falling exports, redirected global investment flows, capital flight, etc., will impact TPP negotiations significantly in the coming weeks and months as the global economy becomes still more unstable and continues to slow. TPP negotiations will become even more complicated, more time may be needed to conclude a deal, and the negotiations themselves may be suspended in part.

All of which does not bode well for concluding a deal long term. A deal must be struck quickly, in the shorter term, according to the Corporate view. All of which leads to the key to the entire process: the current rush to conclude fast track, to get a TPP deal as quickly as possible. For it is fundamentally for TPP negotiators a race against time, given the progressively deteriorating global economy.

The Politics of TPP

TPP is not only about U.S. multinational corporations getting a free entry into economies that make up a third of world trade and constitute 40 percent of world GDP. It is also about Obama’s, the U.S. military’s, and U.S. neocons “pivot” to Asia to contain China.

Without concluding the TPP, the USA’s ability to contain China on the economic front — a strategic necessity for its political and military containment goals for China — will unravel.

China is already causing the USA major concerns on a number of economic fronts. There’s China’s recently announced $50 billion development bank, designed to rival the USA-dominated World Bank. There’s Russia’s turn to deeper economic relations with China, especially with regard to oil and energy, which threatens long term to raise energy prices in Europe to unpleasant levels. There’s China’s deepening trade deals with Germany, making it already one of Germany’s prime trading partners; China’s buying of sovereign bonds in southern Europe to help bail out the Italian and other economies in that region; its targeting of east Europe and Baltic economies offering billions in new funding there to increase its influence; its negotiations with Greece to provide assistance (including buying the Piraeus port) as that country confronts its European bankers insisting on continuing austerity; and there’s the recent announcement, just days ago, that Britain — with its so-called “special relationships” with the USA — is breaking ranks with the USA and deepening its financial relations with China. The UK had already become the future currency trading hub for the China Yuan, as that currency challenges the US dollar long term. But now, in a surprise announcement, the UK has agreed to participate in China’s new global development fund as well.

If the USA fails to conclude the TPP deal, designed to contain China economically, it is likely that China will subsequently sweep up a good number of the 11 countries in current TPP negotiations into its own economic orbit and its own regional free trade agreement. Should that occur, the USA’s political and military pivot to Asia will be limited to Japan and South Korea.

Should TPP negotiations fail, much of South Asia, and potentially even Australia with its heavy dependence on raw materials and commodities trade with China, could adopt a more neutral economic position vis-à-vis China and the USA — instead of acting as pro-USA allies, as in the past.

Much is riding on the TPP, in other words, politically as well as economically, for the USA. That’s why U.S. trade negotiators are pulling out “all the stops,” as they say, to accelerate concluding a TPP deal. That’s why “fast track” is so important to them. Without it, “all the stops” don’t get pulled out. In short, so goes TPP, goes the USA “pivot”; and so goes fast track goes TPP. But in the end, as goes the global economy, so goes all the rest.

Two Tiers, Three Tiers…

David Macaray

At its national bargaining convention, now taking place in Detroit, UAW president Dennis Williams announced that he is not only opposed to a “three-tier” wage format (rumored to be on GM and Ford’s agenda and aimed at MEMBERS engaged in the manufacture of auto parts), he is opposed to the two-tier configuration already in place.

For those unfamiliar with the two-tier, it works more or less like this. Union MEMBERS who are currently on the payroll and receiving decent (let’s call them “middle-class”) wages and benefits, will be allowed to keep those goodies if, and only if, they agree to saddle all future new-hires with lesser wages and benefits.

Management insists they need lower labor costs to remain competitive. Without these guarantees, they can’t stay in business. While senior people GET to hang on to what they have (the “top tier”), those who eventually replace them will be locked into a reduced wage structure (the “lower tier”). How reduced? They’ll be earning roughly half as much.

And with the UAW’s assembly workers presumably “comfortable” with the two-tier arrangement, the automakers are now looking to impose a third tier upon those who union MEMBERS who produce the parts—a job that, without a third tier, could be sent to low-cost Mexico. In fact, a small number of GM parts-makers are already receiving third tier wages.

So, on the ONE hand, you have the UAW president boldly telling a room full of delegates that he would like to see the two-tier wage format abolished (and according to reports, being greeted with a standing ovation), and on the other hand, you have the automakers drooling at the prospect of implementing a third tier.

Which outcome has the better odds of succeeding? The UAW forcing the Big THREE to adhere to an “equal pay for equal work” format and return to one tier, or the Big Three eventually implementing a third, fourth, fifth and sixth tier? Not to sound defeatist, but I think we know the answer.

When I was a union negotiator, a management person once posed this question: Why would a company pay its workers a nickel more than what they were willing to accept? Why would you pay them $20 per hour when you were absolutely, positively certain they would accept $15 per hour?

Anticipating I’d say something about “fairness” or “loyalty” or how “good wages attract the most COMPETENT people,” he offered an example of buying a used car. If you were certain the seller would accept $5,000, why would you pay the $6,500 he was initially asking? It’s not about fairness, and it’s not about loyalty. To quote from The Godfather, “It’s business, Sonny.”

Speaking of cars, it’s disappointing how many people are willing to criticize the UAW for being a bunch of greedy bastards, as if making the top-tier rate of $28 per hour ($57,000 a year) is somehow un-American. As if they themselves, if given the opportunity, wouldn’t want to be part of the middle-class.

To those who think unions are “bad” for the country, consider this quote from John Sweeney, former president of the AFL-CIO: “Anything that can be digitalized can be outsourced.” He’s not saying unions can necessarily prevent it. He’s saying that unions are the only institution capable of collectively resisting it.

There’s a reason THE STOCK MARKET continues to soar even as the middle-class shrinks. It’s because we’ve become an “investor economy.” The good news is that as more U.S. jobs are exported to low-wage nations, investors in those oversees ventures continue to profit. The bad news is that Detroit ain’t where it stops. Your job is next.