War And Peace And The Steady-State Economy

Herman Daly

My parents were children during WW I, the so-called “war to end all wars.” I was a child in WW II, an adolescent in the Korean War, and except for a physical disability would likely have been drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. Then came Afghanistan, Iraq, the continuous Arab-Israeli conflict, ISIS, Ukraine, Syria, etc. Now as a senior citizen, I see that war has metastasized into terrorism. It is hard to conceive of a country at war, or threatened by terrorism, moving to a steady state economy.

Peace is necessary for real progress, including progress toward a steady state economy. While peace should be our priority, might it nevertheless be the case that working toward a steady state economy would further the goal of peace? Might growth be a major cause of war, and the steady state a necessity for eliminating that cause? I think this is so.

More people require more space (lebensraum) and more resources. More things per person also require more space and more resources. Recently I learned that the word “rival” derives from the same root as “river.” People who get their water from the same river are rivals–at least when there are too many of them each drawing too much.

Contrary to popular belief, growth in a finite and full world is not the path to peace, but to further conflict. Photo Credit: Jayel Aheram
For a while, the resource demands of growth can be met from within national borders. Then there is pressure to exploit or appropriate the global commons. Then comes the peaceful penetration of other nations’ ecological space by trade. The uneven geographic distribution of resources (petroleum, fertile soil, water) causes specialization among nations and interdependence along with trade. Are interdependent nations more or less likely to go to war? That has been argued both ways, but when one growing nation has what another thinks it absolutely needs for its growth, conflict easily displaces trade. As interdependence becomes more acute, then trade becomes less voluntary–more like an offer you can’t refuse. Unless trade is voluntary, it is not likely to be mutually beneficial. Top down global economic integration replaces trade among separate interdependent national economies. We have been told on highest authority that because the American way of life requires foreign oil, we will have it one way or another.

International “free trade pacts” (NAFTA, TPP, TAFTA) are supposed to increase global GDP, thereby making us all richer and effectively expanding the size of the earth and easing conflict. But growth in the full world has become uneconomic–increasing costs faster than benefits. It now makes us poorer, not richer. These secretly negotiated agreements among the elites are designed to benefit private global corporations, often at the expense of the public good of nations. Some think that strengthening global corporations by erasing national boundaries will reduce the likelihood of war. More likely we will just shift to feudal corporate wars in a post-national global commons, with corporate fiefdoms effectively buying national governments and their armies, supplemented by already existing private mercenaries.

It is hard to imagine a steady state economy without peace; it is hard to imagine peace in a full world without a steady state economy. Those who work for peace are promoting the steady state, and those who work for a steady state are promoting peace. This implicit alliance needs to be made explicit. Contrary to popular belief, growth in a finite and full world is not the path to peace, but to further conflict. It is an illusion to think that we can buy peace with growth. The growth economy and warfare are now natural allies. It is time for peacemakers and steady staters to recognize their natural alliance.

It would be naïve, however, to think that growth in the face of environmental limits is the only cause of war. Evil ideologies, religious conflict, and “clash of civilizations” also cause wars. National defense is necessary, but uneconomic growth does not make our country stronger. The secular west has a hard time understanding that religious conviction can motivate people to both to kill and die for their beliefs. Modern devotion to the Secular God of Growth, who promises heaven on earth, has itself become a fanatical religion that inspires violence as much as any ancient Moloch. The Second Commandment, forbidding the worship of false gods (idolatry) is not outdated. Our modern idols are new versions of Mammon and Mars.

The Problem With Bernie

Ron Jacobs

So, Bernie Sanders made his call. He is going to run for President of the United States and he is going to do so as a Democrat. Even if he wins the nomination, one can be quite certain that the reactionary forces of US capitalism will oppose him in every way they can. Additionally, and more insidiously, so will a fair number of liberal champions of US capitalism to his right in the Democratic Party. Yet, he has made his claim and it is one he will have to live with, no matter what price he ends up paying. Given the nature of national electoral politics in the United States, his chances of winning the party nomination are small, much less the presidency itself.

Who is Bernie Sanders and what does he stand for? Now that he is a candidate, it’s fair to assume that his biography will be dissected across the media spectrum.   To much of the US population, he is still the most radical politician from the Left they have ever seen. This is especially true for anyone who came of age politically since Ronald Reagan’s first term in the White House. What interests me more is the gradual transition he has made politically from socialist (more or less) to social democrat and from that to liberal Democrat. The anecdotes that follow reveal something of that retreat.

In the spring of 1997, a drive to form a union amongst the housekeeping, bookstore, landscaping and trades workers at the University of Vermont (UVM) was well underway. The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers union (UE) had been enlisted to help those of us in the UVM work force working on the union drive get organized. Their abilities had helped us move quickly and gain numerous signatures on cards. On March 8, 1997 International Women’s Day, we held a union rally. It was very well attended. The speakers built a crescendo of assent. I was on the list and gave a brief talk about the importance of the date for the US union movement and its relevance to our campaign. Then the lead organizer Kimberley Lawson took the stage. An excellent organizer and an inspiring individual, she introduced the last speaker. It was Bernie Sanders, then Vermont’s Congressman. The applause was stupendous. Chants of Bernie! Bernie! filled the room. After about five minutes of applause, Bernie began to speak. It was a good, if standard, stump speech about the rights of workers and the need for the university administration and Board of trustees to do the right thing and recognize the union.

Two years later, it was the spring of 1999. Bill Clinton was under fire in Congress for his misguided and manipulative dalliances with Monica Lewinsky. The Dayton Accords concerning the growing civil war in Yugoslavia had created the intended scenario, leading Belgrade to insist on its historical right to keep Kosovo under its governance. In response, Washington and other NATO governments began an intensive bombing campaign. Bill Clinton and his war cabinet began an around-the-clock assault on the Serbian people. Liberals and progressives drank the kool-aid and offered their whole- hearted support. Bernie Sanders made it clear he was completely on board with the action. Indeed, after antiwar activists in Burlington, Vermont marched through downtown Burlington stopping at the offices of each Senator and ending at Sanders’ office where they staged a sit-in, Bernie instructed his office staff via telephone to call the police and clear the office. A week later at an emergency town meeting on the bombing in Montpelier, Vermont Sanders showed up with a couple staff members and a panel of pro and antiwar speakers. Bernie vehemently defended the bombing and actually told at least two antiwar members of the audience to leave if they didn’t like what he was saying.

September 2001. After thousands of people were killed in the World Trade Center and Pentagon, President George Bush and Congress declared war on Afghanistan. Sanders joined the bandwagon and voted to adopt the joint resolution that authorized the President to use the United States Armed Forces against anyone involved with the attacks of September 11th, 2001 and any nation that harbors these individuals. In October 2002, after two years of war on the people of Afghanistan and a series of lies and misinformation, Congress and the White House (with help from Great Britain and a couple other governments) ignored the United Nations and world opinion and invaded Iraq. While Sanders voted against the original authorization to use military force against Iraq, he followed that vote with several subsequent votes authorizing funding of that war and the debacle in Afghanistan. The other piece of legislation passed that long ago September was the PATRIOT Act. Like the vote that sent troops to Afghanistan, that legislation changed the US forever. To his credit, Sanders voted against the original PATRIOT Act legislation and attempted to curtail its effect in subsequent votes. However, in 2006, he voted Yea on legislation that made the remaining fourteen provisions of the Patriot Act permanent and extended the authority of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to conduct “roving wiretaps” and access certain business records through December 31, 2009. In a similar vein, Sanders voted against the original legislation that created the Department of Homeland Security, but by 2006 he had joined the majority of Congress in passing continued funding of that agency.

In 2008, Sanders was elected to the Senate. This transition gave Bernie a salary increase with potentially even less power than that he had in the House. His voting record changed little: voting for some war authorization funds while opposing others; funding intelligence operations while voting to remove immunity for communications companies involved in government surveillance; supporting contraception funding and funding for children’s health insurance programs; and opposing John Brennan’s appointment to head the CIA while supporting Chuck Hagel’s appointment as Secretary of Defense. He continued authorizing grants and loans to Israel, even after Israel ruthlessly attacked Gaza (two such operations), attacked the Mavi Marmara and supported illegal settlements in the West Bank. Most recently, Sanders joined ninety-seven other Senators and approved a $1 billion aid package to the coup government in Ukraine, a package that (when combined with International Monetary Fund loans) will most certainly further impoverish Ukrainian working people. He is on record opposing US ground support for the war against ISIS and Al Qaida, as well as opposing arming Syrian mercenaries.

Beginning in 2010, Vermonters became aware that the Air National Guard base in Burlington was one of the top choices of the Pentagon to base the multimillion dollar F-35 fighter plane. Immediately, citizens began organizing against that possibility. Some members of the organizing group thought Sanders might be in support of their position. They were quickly disappointed. Indeed, as the campaign against the F-35s being based in Vermont grew, Senator Sanders’ support for the idea grew stronger and more adamant. By October 2012, after a series of victories by opponents of the plane, Sanders stated in part, “I’m very proud of the role that the Vermont National Guard has played in our state and I do not want to see that role diminished or eliminated…. The F-35, whether one may like it or not, is the plane of choice not only for the U.S. Air Force, but for the Navy, Marines and much of NATO. If the F-35 ends up not being located here, it will end up at a National Guard base in Florida or South Carolina. I would rather it be here.” As I wrote in an article after the Pentagon announced it had chosen Burlington to base the planes (VTDigger: The Pentagon gets what it wants (again)1/15/2014), “There is an alternative to the cynical attitude that rationalizes taking blood money since, after all, somebody will and it might as well be Vermont.”

In a recent interview I conducted with Left progressive authors William Grover and Joseph Peschek regarding their book The Unsustainable Presidency, I asked them if Sanders could actually move the US leftward and institute policies for working people and other disenfranchised. The key part of their answer was “(No.) He would be among the first to admit that. Indeed, in an interview last week he did just that: “We can elect the best in the world to be president, but that person will get swallowed up unless there is an unprecedented level of activism at the grassroots level.” The question I have for Mr. Sanders is this: How does he expect to create radical change in the US if this radical grassroots activism he correctly states is needed is hijacked by the Democratic Party–a political entity that is owned lock, stock and barrel by the very same banks and corporations he claims to oppose. After all, it’s been many years since the progressive George McGovern was the Democratic candidate for President. It’s been almost as long since the conservative wing of that party formed the Democratic Leadership Council and changed their rules so that no one with politics like McGovern’s would ever be their nominee again. Ask Bill Clinton about that. After all he was the first candidate chosen by that council to win the White House. His wife may be the next. There are those who say Sanders will “at least move the discussion leftward.” That is not enough. Conversations are meaningless without bold, concrete action. The Democratic Party has proven over the past six and a half years that not only is it incapable of bold action in favor of the vast majority of working people in this country, it is barely capable of concrete action. How else does one explain the disastrous austerity policies taking place in the United States?

The majority of Vermonters still like Bernie Sanders. In fact, he wins election with a substantial majority every time he runs. After all, as the summary above of his voting record suggests, Bernie Sanders is if nothing else a shrewd politician. Like his colleague currently in the White House, Sanders campaigns on progressive and populist themes. Unlike Mr. Obama, however, Sanders usually sticks to his positions on issues relating to labor, veterans, children, corporate cheats, and certain social issues (marriage equality, for example.) However, when it comes to matters of war and peace, his record is at best a mixed bag and, more likely, representative of his ideas on how the United States can maintain its imperial role forever (or at least for a long, long time.) Remember, all US wars involve a defense of the capitalist economy and, consequently, a belief in that economy’s superiority. Bernie Sanders actions make it clear he shares that belief.

After the bombing of Yugoslavia had ended and the US plan to Balkanize the Balkans neared its completion, I received many emails and calls regarding the abovementioned sit-in at Bernie’s office and the protesters’ opposition to his politics of war. Most of these messages came from outside of Vermont and considered what the protesters did to be counterproductive. After all, the messages stated, Sanders went to Chiapas to support the Zapatistas and he’s against the various free trade agreements and the WTO. He’s more of an ally than a foe, isn’t he? My answer to these challenges is that I’m not sure. So called progressive politicians who do not draw the link between corporate America’s wars and its attack on social security, health care, the minimum wage, forty- hour work week, and other issues working people consider important are doing us a disservice. The wars fought by the US military are ultimately fought for one reason only–to maintain and expand the power of corporate America at the expense of workers and the poor around the world. Didn’t neoliberal writer Thomas Friedman write during the bombing of Serbia and Kosovo, “McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force Navy and Marine Corps.” (New York Times 3/29/1999) Sanders must understand the connection. Hence, his support for those elements of the war machine that allow him to support labor in the manner he does.

The recent mass movement against the epidemic of police murders of (primarily) young Black men has exposed a gaping hole in the myth that comprises the United States.   Racism, which Barack Obama’s election was supposed to have placed in the dustbin of history, is arguably greater now than at any time since the 1960s. Because of the aforementioned movement, the nature of the criminal justice system, the laws its enforcers enforce and how those laws are enforced, and the prison system have all been brought under well-deserved scrutiny. No politician has come up with any genuine programs that will check police brutality and remove killer cops from the streets. Nor have many politicians seriously addressed the fundamental role neoliberal capitalism plays in the impoverishment of America’s working class, especially its non-white members. Bernie Sanders’ attacks on the excesses of Wall Street and its cohorts are usually addressed to the “middle class,” that US ideal. Indeed, Sanders was one of many Congressmen who voted for the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill that its author Bill Clinton recently acknowledged placed too much emphasis on mass incarceration and barely any on keeping young people out of prison or rehabilitating them if they ended up there. Failing to conduct a critically honest discussion that includes solutions to this problem that are not predicated on making profits for the private sector would be a mistake for Sanders or any candidate. It will prove interesting to watch his moves in this area.

After all is said and done, the question here is not whether Bernie Sanders is the progressive savior so many people want him to be. Instead, it is whether or not such a politician can even exist in the United States. I am one of the first to admit that Sanders’ record on labor, veterans, and most civil liberties issues is mostly decent, especially for someone who is part of the ruling elite (even if he doesn’t see himself that way.) However, this fact is probably irrelevant. The system in place in the Executive Branch is implacable and essentially without redemption. Barack Obama’s two terms should make it clear to any but his most fervent supporters the truth of this statement. With the exception of a very few social issues, Obama has done very little that is any different from his right wing predecessor or the neoliberal champion Bill Clinton who preceded George Bush. In part, this is certainly because Obama is not a leftist or even a progressive. The primary reason, though, is because politicians who do not agree with the US insistence on military superiority and economic hegemony rarely get to Washington, much less to the White House.

In a John Nichols interview with Sanders that appeared in The Nation April 7, 2014 print issue, the Jesse Jackson campaign of 1984 is also mentioned as a template for Bernie’s potential presidential run. As anyone involved in that campaign might remember, Jackson’s progressive and populist politics were succeeding beyond his (and his supporters) dreams. Then the establishment moved in. Anti-Palestinian and big business donors and media commentators took a private comment made by Jackson out of context and splashed it across the pages and television screens of America. Racial code words began being heard in relation to Jackson’s name. Soon, his chances of winning the Democratic Party nomination were gone. Instead, the party limped out of San Francisco that summer with the Cold War liberal Walter Mondale as its loser candidate.

The reality of US politics in the current age is that any progressive in a position of power must temper their left-leaning politics if they want to keep their power. The more powerful their position, the more compromise is required. The anecdotes related above suggest Bernie Sanders understands this all too well and acts accordingly. So, even if the reader might believe President Bernie Sanders could bring us back from the precipice we find ourselves on the edge of, the very nature of the US economic and political system ensures that he can not. By beginning his campaign as a Democrat one wonders if he even wants to.

As Region Implodes, Arab Socialism Fizzles Out

Ramzy Baroud

A student group had asked me to address socialism in the Arab world, with the assumption that there is indeed such a movement that is capable of overhauling inherently incompetent and utterly corrupt regimes, across the region. But of course, no such group, or configuration of socialist groups exist today, but in name.

I recall a talk I delivered in London soon after Hamas was placed under siege in Gaza in 2007. ‘Hamas is the largest and most effective socialist movement in Palestine,” I said to the surprise of some and the agreeing nods of others. Of course, I was not referring to Hamas’ adherence to Marxist theory but to the fact that it was the only operating grassroots political movement that had, in some ways succeeded in lessening the gap between various social and economic classes, all united by a radical political agenda.

Moreover, it was a movement largely made of Palestine’s fellahin (peasants) and workers who were mostly centered in refugee camps. Compare to the detached, elitist, largely urban-based ‘socialist’ movements in Palestine, the mass of Islamists in the occupied territories is as socialist as a movement can be under the circumstances.

But what do I tell the student group, made of young, enthusiastic socialists who are eager to see the rise of the proletariat?

A starting point would be that there is a difference between western socialism, and ‘Arab socialism’, a reference coined by Arab nationalists in the early 1950s, as a merger between nationalist and socialist movement began to take hold, ultimately leading to the formation of the Ba’ath parties of Syria and Iraq. The idea was originally framed by Salah al-Din al-Bitar and Michel Aflaq, founders of the Ba’ath Party.

Socialism in its western forms seemed unappealing to many Arab nationalists. Not only was it intellectually removed from the cultural and socioeconomic contexts of the Arab peoples, but also politically unpromising if not altogether chauvinistic. Many western socialists romanticized the creation and meaning of Israel, a colonial implant that has united colonial and neocolonial forces against Arab aspirations for many decades.

But Arab nationalism also failed for it neither offered a compelling alternative, nor had practically championed a serious paradigm shift. Aside from some land reforms in Egypt after the 1952 anti-King revolt, among other gestures, Arab socialism could neither break free from the confines of good-sounding ideals nor from outside influences that vied to control, influence or crush these movements.

Later, that failure became even more pronounced as the Soviet Union’s influence began to wane in the late 1980’s, till its complete collapse in the early 90s. Arab socialists, whether governments who adopted that slogan, or organizations that revolved around Soviet agendas, were too dependent on that relationship. With the absence of the Soviets from the scene, they had little chance of surviving the rising dominance of the United States.

However, that failure was not just the outcome of socialist bloc’s crumpling geopolitical regional models, but also because Middle Eastern countries (also under the influence or due to pressure from western hegemons) were experiencing a rethink. That was the time of the rise of the Islamic alternative, which was partly a genuine attempt at galvanizing the region’s own intellectual resources, and partly steered by funds coming from rich Arab Gulf countries to regulate the rise of the Islamic tide.

That was the time when the slogan: ‘Islam is the Solution’ became quite dominant. That new slogan pierced through the collective psyche of various Arab Muslim intellectual groups throughout the Middle East and beyond, specifically because it seemed to be an attempt at tapping into the region’s own historical and cultural references.

The general argument was: both US-western and Soviet models have failed or are failing along with their client regimes, and there is an urgent need for alternative.

Still, Arab socialism would have survived if it was indeed predicated on strong social platforms, propelled by wide-popular support and grassroots movement. That however, was not the case.

If I must generalize, in the Arab world, there was a relatively a strong intellectual component of the left. But the intellectual left hardly ever managed to cross the divide between the world of theories and ideas – which was available to the educated classes – into the work place, the peasants and the average man and woman on the street. Without mobilizing the workers, peasants, and oppressed masses, the Arab left had little to offer but rhetoric that was largely devoid of practical experience.

Of course, there were exceptions in every Arab country. Palestine’s early socialist movements had strong presence in the refugee camps. They were pioneers in all forms of popular resistance, but that can be explained around the uniqueness of the Palestinian situation, as opposed to reflecting a large trend throughout the entire region.

Another important note is that oppression tend to unite oppressed groups, no matter how seemingly insurmountable their ideological differences maybe. In fact, because of that shared oppression between political Islam and radical left, there was a degree of affinity between activists from both of groups, as they shared prison cells, were tortured and humiliated together.

The turning point, however could arguably be the early 1990’s when the Soviet Union collapsed. That freed much political space while oil money continued to pour in. Many Islamic universities opened up all over the world, and thousands of students from the Gulf and the rest of the Middle East received high degrees in various fields, from Islamic sharia to engineering.

The exclusive access to education was largely broken. Look at Hamas in Gaza. Many of their leaders and members have high degrees, in engineering and medicine. And that has become very common among all Islamic groups supporters in Palestine, in Egypt, in Morocco and so forth. So the hegemony over education and over the articulation of political discourses was no longer in the hands of the political or intellectual elites. On the other hand, a political agenda that was predicated on Islamic ideals was born.

With time, socialists were faced with stark choices: either live on the margin of society – imagine the stereotypical maverick communist intellectual sitting in a coffee shop in Cairo theorizing about everything – or join NGOs, official or semi-official institutions to remain financially afloat or at all relevant. Those who opted for the latter, needed to compromise to the extent that some of them are now mouthpieces for the very regimes they once fought.

As a result, the thrust of the socialists’ political power as a group has diminished so greatly throughout the years. Being more institutionalized, they became more inclusive, further removed from the masses, in whose name they continued to speak. In Egypt, once can hardly think of one powerful leftist organization that operates there. There are ‘leftists’ but they hardly register as movers and shakers of the current political landscape.

Wishful thinking alone will hardly revive the socialist tide in the Arab world. There are little signs that the decline will be soon reversed, or that a homegrown interpretation of socialism – think the relatively successful Bolivarian movement of Latin America – will mold together nationalistic priorities and socialist ideals into a workable mix.

But of course, the Middle East is experiencing its greatest political upheaval and socialist influx in a hundred years. New variables are added to the multifarious equation on a regular basis. While the present remains grim, the future seems pregnant with possibilities.

Do Black Lives Matter in Africa?

David Swanson

Reading Nick Turse’s new book, Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, raises the question of whether black lives in Africa matter to the U.S. military any more than black lives in the United States matter to the police lately trained and armed by that military.

Turse scouts out the still little told tale of U.S. military expansion into Africa over the past 14 years, and primarily over the past 6 years. Five to eight thousand U.S. troops plus mercenaries are training, arming, and fighting alongside and against African militaries and rebel groups in nearly every nation in Africa. Major land and water routes to bring in the U.S. armaments, and all the accouterments of bases housing U.S. troops, have been established to avoid the local suspicions created by building and improving airports. And yet, the U.S. military has proceeded to acquire local agreements to make use of 29 international airports and gotten to work building and improving runways at a number of them.

The U.S. militarization of Africa includes airstrikes and commando raids in Libya; “black ops” missions and drone murders in Somalia; a proxy war in Mali; secretive actions in Chad; anti-piracy operations that result in increased piracy in the Gulf of Guinea; wide-ranging drone operations out of bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Niger, and the Seychelles; “special” operations out of bases in the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo; CIA bungling in Somalia; over a dozen joint training exercises a year; arming and training of soldiers in places like Uganda, Burundi, and Kenya; a “joint special operations” operation in Burkina Faso; base construction aimed at accommodating future “surges” of troops; legions of mercenary spies; the expansion of a former French foreign legion base in Djibouti and joint war-making with France in Mali (Turse must be reminded of that other wonderfully successful U.S. takeover of French colonialism known as the war on Vietnam).

AFRICOM (Africa Command) is in fact headquartered in Germany with plans to be based at the giant new U.S. base built in Vicenza, Italy, against the will of the Vicentini. Important parts of AFRICOM’s structure are in Sigonella, Sicily; Rota, Spain; Aruba; and Souda Bay, Greece — all U.S. military outposts.

Recent U.S. military actions in Africa are mostly quiet interventions that stand a good chance of leading to enough chaos to be used as justifications for future public “interventions” in the form of larger wars that will be marketed without mention of their causation. Future famous evil forces that may one day be threatening U.S. homes with vague but scary Islamic and demonic threats in U.S. “news” reports are discussed in Turse’s book now and are arising now in response to militarism rarely discussed in corporate U.S. news media.

AFRICOM is advancing with as much secrecy as it can, trying to maintain the pretense of self-governance by local government “partners,” as well as to avoid the scrutiny of the world. So, it hasn’t been invited by public demand. It isn’t riding in to prevent some horror. There has been no public debate or decision by the U.S. public. Why, then, is the United States moving U.S. war making into Africa?

AFRICOM Commander General Carter Ham explains the U.S. militarization of Africa as a response to the problems it may in the future manage to create: “The absolute imperative for the United States military is to protect America, Americans, and American interests [clearly something other than Americans]; in our case, in my case, to protect us from threats that may emerge from the African continent.” Asked to identify such a threat in current existence, AFRICOM cannot do so, struggling instead to pretend that African rebels are part of al Qaeda because Osama bin Laden once praised them. During the course of AFRICOM’s operations, violence has been expanding, insurgent groups proliferating, terrorism rising, and failed states multiplying — and not by coincidence.

The reference to “American interests” may be a clue to real motivations. The word “profit” may have been accidentally omitted. In any case, the stated purposes are not working out very well.

The 2011 war on Libya led to war in Mali and anarchy in Libya. And less public operations have been no less disastrous. U.S.-backed war in Mali led to attacks in Algeria, Niger, and Libya. The U.S. response to greater violence in Libya has been still more violence. The U.S. embassy in Tunisia was attacked and burned. Congolese soldiers trained by the United States have mass raped women and girls, matching the atrocities committed by U.S.-trained Ethiopian soldiers. In Nigeria, Boko Haram has arisen. The Central African Republic has had a coup. The Great Lakes region has seen violence rise. South Sudan, which the United States helped to create, has fallen into civil war and humanitarian disaster. Et cetera. This is not entirely new. U.S. roles in instigating long wars in Congo, Sudan, and elsewhere predate the current Africa “pivot.” African nations, like nations in the rest of the world, tend to believe the United States is the greatest threat to peace on earth.

Turse reports that AFRICOM’s spokesman Benjamin Benson used to claim the Gulf of Guinea as the sole supposed success story, until doing so became so untenable that he began claiming he’d never done so. Turse also reports that the Benghazi disaster, contrary to what common sense might suggest, became a basis for further expansion of U.S. militarism in Africa. When something’s not working, try more of it! Says Greg Wilderman, the Military Construction Program manager for Naval Facilities Engineering Command, “We will be in Africa for some time to come. There’s lots more to do there.”

Someone recently told me that China had threatened to cut of U.S. billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s profits from casinos in China if he continued to fund Congress members who insisted on going to war with Iran. The alleged motivation for this was that China can better buy oil from Iran if Iran is not at war. True or not, this fits Turse’s description of China’s approach to Africa. The U.S. relies heavily on war making. China relies more on aid and funding. The U.S. creates a nation doomed to collapse (South Sudan) and China buys its oil. This of course raises an interesting question: Why can’t the United States leave the world in peace and still, like China, make itself welcome through aid and assistance, and still, like China, buy up the fossil fuels with which to destroy life on earth by means other than warfare?

The other pressing question raised by the Obama government’s militarization of Africa, of course, is: Can you imagine the ear-splitting everlasting biblical proportions of the outrage had a white Republican done this?

Illusions in the British Election Campaign

Binoy Kampmark

Election watching in Britain usually takes various forms. This time, the challenging nutters have been said to be getting the runs on the board, and the voters are having the most interesting, if confusing spread, in years. This terrifies the incumbents, and worries the orthodox challengers such as the Labour Party, whose Achilles heel so happens to be its head. Ever since suffering a Tony Blair engineered castration, New Labour is no longer neo, and is attempting to claw back some votes from the rather confused centre.

Ed Milliband is, in fact, so concerned about the tightness of the contest he decided to pay comedian “of the people”, Russell Brand, a visit at his apartment in Shoreditch, east London. Milliband went for the slang (“It ain’t gonna be like that. Change is hard right?”); Brand went for the big meat issues: those “unelected powerful elites” as puppet masters of the earth; the Murdoch empire, inequality, the housing problem.

And whether people should even vote. “We all got excited by Tony Blair, we all got excited by Barack Obama and what happened?” Hence the reason he had never voted in his life – “because I think it doesn’t matter." Brand is certainly hard to refute on that one, even if not voting is a recipe for political incapacity. The value of the vote diminishes as a proportion to the weight an illusion of hope exercises. The better the illusion of hope, the more likely a vote might be made. That, however, explains exactly why Milliband, arguably one of the least convincing leaders in years, is doing the rounds with a person the British Prime Minister has dismissed as a “joke”.

British society boasts one, all fascinating reality, apart from the seeming immutability of the National Health Service. For all the pretences of modernisation, of a sceptred isle that speaks of Westminster democracy and the liberties supposedly breathing in the common law, it remains, if not class-riddled, then certainly network riddled. The New Labour experiment was designed to mask it even as it claimed to change it.

The enervating nature of current politics, etherised by the Campbell-Blair line of manufactured enthusiasm for over a decade; the sound bite, which is merely neat cover for establishment politics, continues to cloak British political life. This is what the United Kingdom Independence Party is attacking, insisting that it will challenge the stifling networks of qangos, the sweet deals, the musty public school boy chatter.

Two general elections, argues columnist Gerald Warner, are taking place. The first is “the fantasy election being conducted within the imagination of the political class, the BBC, the dead-tree press and the vast array of public bodies, qangos, and similar running dogs of the consensual establishment.” That class is supposedly pro-Europe, metropolitan, elitist, politically correct “and wholly divorced from real-life Britain.” The second election will only figure on May 8 – “the first occasion” which “concrete reality” will visit those of the virtual world.

In so doing, they are marketing another illusion. It is the anti-Europe vision, one of chest thumping Britain happy to labour away in the sunshine, or perhaps drizzle, of freedom. In some instances, the rhetoric from UKIP is happily populist and anti-establishment. At stages, its only difference with the more extreme BNP is one of shaved heads.

Perhaps one of the most dangerous themes in this election, and not simply because Chris Patten, Britain’s last governor of Hong Kong, thinks so. “The UK no longer wields the international influence it once did; indeed, Britons hardly seem to be bothered by their downgraded importance – or even very much aware of the implications.” The nationalists persist in peddling the “delusional belief that the UK can exercise the same degree of control over global events that might have been possible 50 years ago.”

The mania with Europe – its influence over Britain, its perceived intrusiveness and groping of British institutions like a horny French pimp, has produced the tremors that can only be called delusion. As Prime Minister David Cameron tried, unconvincingly, to explain in 2013 when things were getting chilly with Brussels, “We have the character of an island nation – independent, forthright, passionate in defence of sovereignty.” That is what UKIP has induced, an illusion that is catching, a form of mental debility.

His suggestion then, something which he is emphasising in the lead-up to the election, is that he will take the issue of continued EU membership to a referendum come 2017. His efforts thus far to renegotiate the treaty with the EU have, however, fallen flat. Britain, in short, is Europe’s big boor, the sozzled oaf.

The idea of detachment from Europe could only be the stock sentiment of a power capable of going its own way with any constructive gumption. This implies power, and not merely of the pedestrian, light-weight sort that acts as the alibi for banksters. This is imperial, and the imperialists of all sorts, be they the beer swilling trotters of the UKIP side, or some of the Tory fold, are convinced that Britain matters on the world stage. In truth, the stage left them decades ago.

The sense that chaos is descending on British politics is, for all of that, fitting. The electoral patient is fed up with the feed. No one quite cuts the mustard – and the alternatives are proving politically racy or extreme. But they have the political mainstream on the run.

China Offers a World Bank Alternative

Walden Bello

With friends like this, who needs enemies?”

This must be what Washington policymakers muttered to themselves following the decision by their allies in London, Paris, Rome, and Berlin to join a new development bank proposed by Beijing.

The anger in Washington most likely mounted as two of its key allies in the Pacific, Australia and South Korea, also joined the bandwagon. In fact, as of mid-April, nearly 60 countries had accepted Beijing’s invitation to be founding members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, or AIIB.

$50 billion of the initial target capitalization of $100 has been committed by China.

Washington insiders fear that the AIIB would rival the U.S.-dominated World Bank and Asian Development Bank as sources of development finance in the region. They’re probably correct.

Despite the efforts of World Bank President Jim Yong Kim to improve the image of the bank, the widespread perception of the institution is that it carries out Washington’s priorities. The Japanese-controlled Asian Development Bank is similarly seen as following the World Bank’s lead, much like Tokyo broadly follows Washington’s directions in foreign policy.

As a result, there’s widespread global appetite for an alternative. And Beijing is only too happy to offer one.

The Price of Sitting Out

China’s move to found the AIIB is its third major initiative in less than a year to establish multilateral alternatives to the so-called “Bretton Woods twins” — the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, or IMF.

Last July, during the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, Beijing was central in setting up the New Development Bank, a planned $100-billion rival to the World Bank. At the same gathering, China and its BRICS partners also set up the Contingency Reserve Arrangement, a thinly veiled alternative to the IMF to assist BRICS members and eventually other developing countries suffering from balance of payments crises.

For Washington’s traditional allies, U.S. disapproval of the AIIB initiative couldn’t compete with the disadvantages of sitting out the new enterprise.

Construction companies and suppliers promoted by non-partner governments, for example, will have much less chance of winning the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of bids for AIIB-funded infrastructural projects. For ailing economies like Britain, France, and Japan, the possibility of being sidelined from juicy contracts in a period of global stagnation was simply too awful to contemplate.

Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey was candid about how his country’s commercial links with China trumped its traditional friendship with Washington: “The United States understands that this is a bank that’s going to be operating in our region,” he said. “It’s going to be using contractors in our region. We want Australian contractors involved. We want work for Australians out of this bank.”

Dissatisfied Customers

For many analysts, Washington and its Western allies have only themselves to blame for China’s increasingly assertive push to build new multilateral institutions.

According to some, the U.S. Congress’ refusal to approve legislation giving China greater voting rights at the IMF and World Bank following the global financial crisis led to Beijing’s disenchantment with the two institutions.

The United States and 15 developed countries control 52 percent of voting rights at the IMF, leaving 48 percent for the 168 other member countries. China, now the world’s biggest economy, has only 3.8 percent of voting power — that’s a smaller share than those of the UK, France, Germany, or Japan. Brazil, South Korea, and Mexico each enjoy less voting power than tiny Belgium.

Despite much protest from the BRICS and other developing economies, they’ve received just 6 percent more voting power over the last 20 years. The proportions and trends have been roughly the same at the World Bank.

The United States and the Europeans have also held tightly to what’s been characterized as their “feudal” prerogatives of filling the World Bank presidency with a U.S. citizen and the managing director post at the IMF with a European.

With some 17 percent of the vote in both institutions, the United States also exercises veto power over key policy decisions. To show that it didn’t want to replicate the Americans’ behavior at the World Bank, Beijing announced that despite its contribution of the largest share of capital to the AIIB, it would not demand veto power over policy decisions.

Policy Failures

But the actual behavior of the Bretton Woods banks has had an equal if not greater role in fueling global dissatisfaction with the two institutions than the issue of voting rights, veto powers, or feudal prerogatives.

The IMF has never been able to shake off its reputation for helping to trigger the Asian financial crisis by promoting capital account liberalization, then worsening the plight of the affected countries by imposing harsh austerity policies. The World Bank has also failed to live down its partnership with the IMF in the imposition of painful and ineffective structural adjustment policies in over 90 developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s. Hardly any of these programs succeeded in bringing about growth and reducing poverty.

A few years ago, the IMF leadership announced it was moving towards a less neoliberal and more Keynesian approach to economic growth and development. This was belied, however, by the fund’s membership in the so-called “Troika” — alongside the European Central Bank and the European Commission — to push savage austerity policies on Greece, Portugal, and Ireland following the eruption of the global financial crisis in 2008.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde’s recent admission that the fund didn’t anticipate the depth of the damage done to Greece’s economy by the austerity program is likely to erode its credibility even further.

The World Bank, meanwhile, tried to reinvent itself as the “climate bank” under former President Robert Zoellick, only to be accused by developing countries of seeking to centralize funding for climate adaptation efforts. Under Jim Yong Kim, a Korean American appointed by President Barack Obama, the bank has tried to erect itself as an advocate of massive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by the developed countries and as a key actor in the containment of deadly diseases like the Ebola virus. However, conservative economics and U.S. economic interests continue to govern the implementation of most of its policies and projects.

With the institutions it controls having such dismal records in managing the global economy and promoting development, the United States should have expected that at some point, the world would begin looking elsewhere for institutions that could deliver. It’s clear that Beijing is now stepping into the vacuum.

Nuclear Number Games

Miriam German

A number is something that expresses a mathematical value. A reference point representing a neutral fact. For example, some numbers regarding the Columbia Generating Station nuclear plant in WA State:

1 Nuclear Reactor.

12 Earthquake Fault lines.

764 fuel assemblies.

185 control rods.
0 containment around the fuel pool

7 million people in Washington State

1 million people in Oregon.

56 million gallons of radioactive waste next door at Hanford.

Numbers. They represent value. But the value depends upon the validity of the process, the integrity of the process whereby the numbers were ascertained, determined or in the case of TEPCO and Fukushima, created. TEPCO figured out at the very start of 3.11 that numbers, their values and the process of distributing those numbers to the media, to the world, was the very juncture at which they could control the story. If they could confuse, obfuscate, create, disburse and seem as though they were the authority rather than the ship of fools that they truly are, credibility was going to be built in with as much assurance as 2+2=4 with each number they released.

Let’s take a look at the number 300. It is half of 600 and 100 less than 400. But still, it is static and relative. Then ask a question: Is using the number 300 in terms of the amount of tons of radioactive water flowing from Fukushima-Daiichi into the Pacific, a reality or one of the best PR campaigns ever in the history of the worst disasters created by man on Earth?

300 Tons of radioactive water flowing, 24/7. No more. No less. TEPCO’s story line is this: 300 tons of radioactive water is flowing daily into the Pacific Ocean.

Let’s look at the numbers for any sort of reality base. But first…

Imagine turning on your faucet in your bathroom sink. You are brushing your teeth. When you’re finished, you turn off the water. How much water did you use? 5 gallons? 10 gallons? 2? You might like to think 2 gallons because it is less than all of the other options you have made up. But really, you don’t know. You are still guessing but feel good about 2 gallons rather than more. If you had a gauge on your tap, you would know how much water you used.

Do you think you use the same amount of water each time you brush your teeth? How would you know? Do you turn the water on the same amount with regard to pressure? Do you brush for the same duration each time? You have no way of knowing unless you have a gauge. No gauge? All guesses.

300 tons is a random number TEPCO chose to use after deliberating with the messaging of yet another PR campaign of dis-information. The first numbers we heard were 400 tons but those morphed into 300 and then 600. 300 stuck when an article was written claiming that 300 tons of radioactive water leaked from one of the tanks at Fukushima. It hadnothing to do with all of the water flowing into the Pacific nor was it based in reality since the tanks had no gauges on them. Nevertheless, 300 tons stuck.

The amount of radioactive water flowing into the Pacific comes from many sources. There are no gauges on rain water, on ground water, on the amount of water leaking from the tanks bolted together at Fukushima. There is absolutely no way to know definitively, let alone exactly, how much highly radiated water has been flowing over the melted cores of Reactors 1, 2 and 3 and from the fuel pool in #4 since 3.11 began. Here we go again. Numbers. Reactors 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Rain water. Ground Water. Hosed in water. Tanks leaking water. Surely TEPCO had a way to determine this number of 300 tons of leaking radioactive water into the Pacific that even our anti-nuclear leaders to this day, still espouse to the public when talking about the ongoing disaster at Fukushima.

Back to the point. The number 300 is an “unknowable” in the sense that in this equation of how much radioactive water has been leaking, pouring, flowing, seeping into the Pacific, 300 would equal X. X is the unknown factor.

In an article from Japan News from Sept 7, 2013, Kazuaki Nagata writes, TEPCO said ‘it will install water gauges on all flange-type tanks storing radioactive water from Reactor #1 to enhance monitoring.’ So we know there were no gauges on the tanks when they were haphazardly created and TEPCO had revealed itself early on to be 100% full of lies; the gauges which they said they did attach at a later date, didn’t work as we were soon to find out.

But to go on with that article, Nagata reveals that a tank leaked 300 tons of highly radioactive water, “causing a domestic and international uproar over environmental contamination.”

There was no uproar. All was quiet like a mouse.

So how did TEPCO get the number ‘300 tons’? It’s hard to know when gauges aren’t present or those that are, are broken or when TEPCO is only obfuscating the truths of things exponentially worse than what they are reporting.

Word problem:

Find the amount of radioactive water leaking from each of the 1000 bolted tanks.

Add X to each tank that does not have a gauge.

Add <or>X to each tank whose gauge does not work.

Add <or>X when you find that there was no way to determine how much water filled each tank originally.

Now add the amounts of rainfall over Fukushima since 3.11 day one through current date.

Then determine how much ground water sits beneath Fukushima-Daiichi and how much of that ground water flows into the Pacific.

How much ocean water was poured over Fukushima on 3.11 till current date from hoses to keep the fuel pools cool?

How much water was in the fuel pools and how much leaked out?

How much steam was cast out into the atmosphere and back down over Fukushima from 3.11 to current date adding to the amount of 300 tons?

Add all of these together.

The answer is still X.

The only answer to this word problem is that it is impossible to know how much radioactive water flows into the Pacific but it exceeds 300 tons by exponential realities.

We know that TEPCO is a conduit of deception, evasion, and lies so let’s not pass along in our teachings to others, anything from their PR campaign, the most ubiquitous of which being the amount of radioactive water flowing into the ocean; 300 tons is a gross misrepresentation of the 24/7 massive radioactive assault on the Pacific Ocean and her animals.

What are the real numbers? As you can see now, we will never know. What is the real damage? As we witness the death toll rise among the ocean animals, we will have a better and clearer recognition that the damage that nuclear power creates is one that is NEVER worth the risk.

Now that you’ve made it to the end of this article, everything you just read about the water is true but it is a DISTRACTION! It is a distraction by design from TEPCO. As John Bertucci of Fukushima Response points out, “repetitively attaching this number to the contaminated water effectively mutes public perception and discussion of the real 300 tons we should be worried about: the missing core material from 3 empty reactors, each of which contained about 100 tons of fuel rods, called corium now, although that assumes it has retained some coherent physical state.”

We know definitively that parts of the core of Reactors 1, 2 and 3 (you knew I’d circle back to these, didn’t you!) blew across the world and landed in your organic gardens, your lungs, your children’s lungs, your food supply and of course, in your DNA. The isotopes that blew with it are lethally yours for the next tens of thousands of years.

So remember, when you hear 300 tons of water, think 300 tons of melted and atmospherically dispersed radioactive material in our ocean, air, food and soil and you will be 1 day smarter than yesterday.

There is no number to designate a “safe level” of radiation because there is no such thing as a safe level of radiation, but there is value to each and every one of your lives and even more value when you add the life of future generations to the life of our planet. Do the math.

Is the Stock Market Another Bubble?

Dean Baker 

The stock market has recovered sharply from the lows hit in the financial crisis. All the major indices are at or near record highs. This has led many analysts to worry about a new bubble in the stock market. These concerns are misplaced.

Before going through the data, I should point out that I am not afraid to warn of bubbles. In the late 1990s, I clearly and repeatedly warned of the stock bubble. I argued that its collapse was likely to lead to a recession, the end of the Clinton-era budget surpluses, and pose serious problems for pensions. In the last decade I was yelling about the dangers from the housing bubble as early as 2002.

I recognize the dangers of bubbles and have been at the forefront of those calling attention to them. However, it is necessary to view the picture with clear eyes, and not scream “fire” every time someone lights a cigarette.

First, we should not be concerned about stock indices hitting record highs; that is what we should expect. Unless we’re in a recession we expect the economy to grow. If profits grow roughly in step with the economy, then we should expect the stock market to grow roughly in step with the economy, otherwise we would be seeing a declining price to earnings ratio for the market. While that may happen in any given year, few would predict a continually declining price to earnings ratio.

This means that we should expect the stock market indices to regularly be reaching new highs. We need only get concerned if the stock market outpaces the growth of the economy. Outwardly, there is some basis for concern in this area. The ratio of the value of the stock market to GDP was 1.75 at the end of 2014. This is well above the long-term average, which is close to 1.0, and only slightly below the 1.8 ratio at the end of 1999 when the market was approaching its bubble peaks.

It is worth noting that this run-up is primarily in the stock of newer companies. The S&P 500 is only about 40 percent above its 2000 peak, while the economy has grown by roughly 80 percent. This doesn’t mean that the newer companies are necessarily over-valued. It could prove to be the case that the older companies will rapidly lose market share and profits to the upstarts in the next decade.

If we look beyond GDP to corporate profits, the case for a bubble looks much weaker. In 1999, after-tax profits were 4.7 percent of GDP. By comparison, they were 6.3 percent of GDP in 2014, and over 7.0 percent in 2012 and 2013. Just taking the single year number, this gives a price to earnings ratio of 27.7 at the end of 2014 compared to 38.7 in 1999. This is still high by historical standards, but far below the bubble peaks.

Whether this figure proves to be excessive will depend in large part on whether the extraordinarily high profit share is anomaly or whether it is the new normal. My guess (and hope) is that it is largely anomalous, and if the labor market is allowed to tighten further, then we will see a further shift back toward wages. But if the profit share stays near its current level; there seems little basis for concerns about a bubble in the market.

There is another important factor that we have to consider in assessing stock prices. The interest rate on 10-year government bonds has been hovering just under 2.0 percent. By comparison, it was over 6.0 percent at the end of 1999. This matters hugely in assessing whether the market is in a bubble, since it is necessary to know what the alternative is. In 1999, with an inflation rate just over 2.0 percent, the real interest rate on long-term bonds was close to 4.0 percent. By comparison, with a current inflation at just 2.0 percent, the real interest rate is close to zero.

Here also there is there is an important question about future trends. If interest rates rise, then that increase should have some negative impact on the stock market. But those who have been predicting a huge jump in interest rates have been wrong for the last five years and they are likely to continue to be wrong long into the future. It is certainly is plausible there will be some upward trend (that’s my bet), but given the weakness of the economy, it is likely to be many years before we see anything like a 6.0 percent long bond rate.

In short, there doesn’t seem much basis for concern about a market crash. However, with price to earnings ratios well above normal levels even assuming no further fall in profit shares, there is no way investors will see anything resembling the 7.0 percent real return on stock, which has been the historic average. But given the low returns available elsewhere, stockholders may be quite satisfied a real return in the 4.0-5.0 percent range.

There is one final point worth emphasizing about the current market. In the 1990s, the stock bubble was driving the economy with the wealth effect propelling consumption, and the saving rate hitting a then record low. The bubble also drove a tech investment boom. In the last decade bubble generated housing wealth led to an even larger consumption boom and a surge in residential construction.

It is hard to make the case that current market valuations are driving the economy. Consumption is somewhat high relative to disposable income, but not hugely out of line with past experience. And, there is no investment boom in aggregate, even if some social media spending might be misguided.

This means that if the market were to suddenly plunge by 20 to 30 percent, we will see some unhappy shareholders, but it is unlikely to sink the economy. This is not Round III of the bubble economy.

Woman in Gold: The battle to recover art stolen by the Nazis

David Walsh

Directed by Simon Curtis; written by Alexi Kaye Campbell

By the time of its downfall in 1945, the Hitler Nazi regime, its armed forces and police had looted hundreds of thousands of cultural objects from museums and individuals (it also destroyed thousands) in the territories, including Germany, under its control.

Woman in Gold

Simon Curtis’s Woman in Gold is a fictional rendering of the legal efforts, beginning in 1998, undertaken by Maria Altmann, an Austrian Jew forced to flee the Nazis in 1938, to regain possession of several Gustav Klimt paintings stolen or coerced from her family. The remarkable story has been told in at least three documentaries, The Rape of Europa (2006), Stealing Klimt (2007) and Adele’s Wish (2008).

Living in modest circumstances in Los Angeles, Altmann (Helen Mirren) asks the son of a family friend, Randol Schoenberg (the grandson of composer Arnold Schoenberg, played by Ryan Reynolds), a lawyer who has had difficulties launching his legal career, to look into the case of the Klimt paintings. Her sister has just died and some letters from the late 1940s turn up, referring to an attempt to recover artwork once owned by the family.

Woman in Gold

At the center of the dispute is one painting in particular, a portrait of Maria’s aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, done by Klimt (1862-1918), the famed symbolist and member of the Vienna Secession movement, in 1907. The picture hung at the time the film opens in the Belvedere gallery, an Austrian public museum, and the country’s establishment considers it an irreplaceable national treasure.

After hesitations on both their parts, Altmann and Schoenberg travel to Vienna to put their case before the committee charged with restitution of Nazi art. They encounter an ally there, Austrian journalist Hubertus Czernin (Daniel Brühl), whose research has uncovered important facts about the provenance of the Klimt paintings.

The Austrian government supports its claim to ownership of the paintings on the grounds that Adele Bloch-Bauer’s 1923 will (she died of meningitis in 1925 at the age of 34) expressed the wish that the works should go to the Austrian state museum. However, Schoenberg and Czernin learn that the paintings never actually belonged to Adele, and that her husband, Ferdinand, left them to his nieces (including Maria) and nephew when he died in 1945.

Nonetheless, the Austrian commission rejects Altmann’s claim. The cost of filing a lawsuit in Austria, calculated as a percentage of the worth of the pictures, would be prohibitive, more than $1 million. Defeated, Altmann and Schoenberg return to the US.

Interspersed with these scenes are flashbacks representing Maria’s memories of growing up in the 1920s and 1930s. Her affluent and sophisticated family inhabits the legendary world of early twentieth century Viennese culture and thought. Sigmund Freud and Arnold Schoenberg are family friends. As a child, Maria is entranced by her elegant aunt Adele (Antje Traue), painted twice by Klimt.

Woman in Gold

In March 1938, only months after Maria (played as a young woman by Tatiana Maslany) has married Fritz (Max Irons), German troops mass on the Austrian border. Maria’s uncle Ferdinand (Henry Goodman), Adele’s widowed husband, prepares to leave for Zurich. Maria’s father (Allan Corduner) and mother (Nina Kunzendorf) are not so pessimistic. They remain, only to see Nazi officials strip them of their valuable belongings, including the Klimt paintings. Ultimately, Maria and her husband flee Vienna, leaving behind her parents, who both die at the hands of the Nazis.

Back in the present, Schoenberg convinces Maria they can take Austria to court in the US under provisions of a statute that sets out the ground rules for lawsuits against foreign governments. The case makes its way to the Supreme Court, where Schoenberg and Altmann prevail, encountering bitter opposition from the Austrian authorities at every point. Finally, the two parties agree to arbitration by a panel of three Austrians. Since the outcome is part of the historical record, we can report that Altmann wins back the paintings in 2006, some five years before her death in February 2011.

Curtis’s Woman in Gold treats a fascinating and complicated series of events, including some of the legal issues. Unhappily, the events and the personalities associated with them are considerably more fascinating than the work itself.

The strongest sequences are those set in the 1920s and 1930s in Vienna. The vignettes of family life are sensitively and thoughtfully done. One remembers the image of Maria’s father furiously playing his cello in a vain effort to drown out the growing roar of the fascist threat. The final scene between daughter and parents, whose tragic parting words are, “Remember us,” is extremely moving. Maslany, Corduner, Kunzendorf and Goodman are all effective and believable.

On the other hand, the contemporary scenes, which take up most of the film, are far less satisfactory. They seem duller and less substantive, organized and performed according to an unimaginative formula. One can almost set one’s watch by the predictable stages in the legal-political fight and the inevitable (and rapidly resolved) disputes between Altmann and Schoenberg, as well the tensions created at home, with wife Pam (Katie Holmes), by Schoenberg’s obsession with the case. Nor should Pam’s final “this is no time to quit, we’ve come so far” speech come as a surprise to anyone.

Mirren is enjoyable as the witty and irrepressible Maria, who remained lively and cogent until her death a few weeks before her 95th birthday. Reynolds, a talented performer, does not seem to know what to do with the rather colorless and quiet role he has been handed in Schoenberg. He flounders and never truly finds his way.

The American scenes are also rather conformist. There is no good reason why the filmmaker has to go out of his way to paint modern conditions in the US in such glowing and uncritical colors, including a warm and friendly tribute to that aging reactionary, Chief Justice William Rehnquist (Jonathan Pryce).

And one must say that even the Vienna sequences, thoughtful as they are, skim over the thorniest and most critical questions. One of those, incidentally, is the matter of Klimt’s art itself. While his portrait of Bloch-Bauer is extraordinarily striking, even mesmerizing, there are certainly issues bound up with the Secession movement, including its social indifference and Klimt’s allegiance to Nietzsche’s irrationalism, that deserve our attention today.

Moreover, there are the political and historical questions. Woman in Goldpresents the Austrian population, every man, woman and child in view, as wildly supportive of Hitler and fascism. But the political conditions existing in Austria in 1938 were largely shaped by the betrayals of the working class in the post-World War I era by the Social Democrats, who possessed a mass following. The Austrian workers showed their willingness to fight the class enemy throughout this period, especially in the general strike of 1927 and the quasi-civil war in 1934.

As Leon Trotsky noted in 1930, “Austrian Social Democracy helped the Entente to deal with the Hungarian revolution, helped its own bourgeoisie emerge from the post-war crisis, and created a democratic asylum for private property when it was staggering and close to collapse. Thus, through the entire post-war period, it has been the chief instrument for the domination of the bourgeoisie over the working class.”

That sections of the Austrian population welcomed the German troops and even tolerated the horrific crimes carried out against the Jews were signs of terrible political demoralization. As Trotsky noted, “In Austria, as everywhere else, fascism appears as the necessary supplement to Social Democracy, is nourished by it, and comes to power through its aid.”

In any event, the Austrian population in March 1938 was hardly universally behind Hitler. Mass opposition existed, forcing the Nazis to arrest some 70,000 Socialists and Communists and other opponents within days, and imprison or send them to concentration camps.

The absence in Curtis’s film of any consideration of the political and social contradictions extends, for that matter, to the treatment of Adele Bloch-Bauer herself. She may have been the somewhat ethereal, heavy-lidded creature Klimt painted in 1907, and whom Traue in Woman in Gold attempts to capture, but by the time she wrote her will in 1923, Bloch-Bauer was a changed woman, with definite social views, of a left-wing character.

Anne-Marie O’Connor, in The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, notes that in her will Bloch-Bauer left money to the Vienna Workers’ Association Friends of the Children, while her “immense library of books would go to the Peoples’ and Workers’ Library of Vienna.”

O’Connor writes, “Adele was immersed in the ideals of this ‘Red Vienna,’ and the battle for social justice.… The architects of this movement gathered at Adele’s house every week for a salon her family called her Red Saturday.” The author later adds, “At her Saturday salon, she spoke excitedly…about the creation of a new society in the Soviet Union.… She spoke of traveling…to witness the Soviet experiment.”

The history touched upon in Woman in Gold is laden with such rich and fraught complexities. It is a pity the film does as little as it does to present or convey them.