Ritter: Recommendations for Obama’s Iran Policy

Posted on November 15, 2008 by RagBlog

A woman in the streets of Tehran holds up the Iranian daily Rozan with a photo of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama the day after the American election.
Photo: AP / Hasan Sarbakhshian.

With Iran, Obama Needs More Carrot, Less Stick
By Scott Ritter / November 13, 2008

The American people have spoken, and the next president of the United States will be Barack Obama. Running on a platform of change, the president-elect will be severely tested early in his administration by a host of challenges, be they economic, military, environmental or diplomatic in nature. How Obama handles these issues will define his tenure as America’s chief executive, and there will not — nor should there be — a honeymoon period. The challenges of these times do not permit such a luxury, something the president-elect had to know and comprehend when he chose to run for office.

John McCain and Hillary Clinton, Obama’s defeated rivals, were both correct when they noted that the next president would need to be ready to govern on day one. Barack Obama has until the 20th of January to get his policies in order, because at one minute past noon on that day, he becomes the most powerful man in a volatile world. While the problems he will face are many, I will focus on what I believe are the four most critical issues that will need to be addressed in the first weeks and months of the Obama administration: Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Russia. This will be done in a series of articles, the first of which will deal with Iran.

Barack Obama, the candidate, said many things about Iran, some of which were inherently contradictory. In this he is not unique, since the reality of the rough-and-tumble world of American presidential politics requires any given candidate to show extreme flexibility in defining solutions to complex problems, oftentimes based not on the facts as they exist, but rather the fiction of domestic political imperative. Sometimes initial positions are staked out based upon fact-based analysis, only to be corrected as a given domestic constituency expresses unease and imposes its own fantasy-based worldview on the candidate. Nowhere is this process of the fictionalization of fact more prevalent than on the issue of Iran and its nuclear program.

One year ago, in an interview with The New York Times, Obama demonstrated a level-headed approach toward Iran, expressing “serious concern” over the country’s nuclear program and its support for what he termed “terrorist organizations.” He grounded his comments in an appreciation for the cause-and-effect relationship between Iran’s involvement in Iraq and the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of that country. Obama also expressed the need for “aggressive diplomacy” with Iran at the highest levels and emphasized the importance of economic incentives and security assurances when it came to compelling Iran to change course on its nuclear program.

But many months on the campaign trail, fighting a determined Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, and a critical Republican Party, compelled the thoughtful Harvard-educated foreign policy neophyte to buckle under the pressure of needing to be seen as “strong” and “determined” in the face of continued Iranian intransigence. In July of 2008, following a series of Iranian ballistic missile tests, which included the Shahib-3 long-range missile, Obama seemed to retreat from diplomacy, noting aggressively that “Iran is a great threat.” Instead of trying to balance the Iranian decision to test its missiles with ongoing militaristic rhetoric from both the United States and Israel (including a large-scale Israeli air force exercise that simulated a strike on Iran), Obama undertook a single-dimension approach toward the problem and predictably came up with an equally simplistic solution: “We have to make sure we are working with our allies to apply tightened pressure on Iran,” including tighter economic sanctions.

Obama noted that there was a “need for us to create a kind of policy that is putting the burden on Iran to change behavior, and frankly we just have not been able to do that over the last several years.” Gone was any notion of understanding the cause-and-effect relationships that may have influenced Iran’s actions, or the notion that wrongheaded American policy (such as continued economic sanctions) may in fact have contributed to Iran’s behavior.

If one was hoping that Obama’s sweeping electoral victory in the 2008 presidential election might have liberated him from the need to assume a “tough guy” pose, the recent press conference given by the president-elect set the record straight. “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon,” Obama stated, “ … is unacceptable. And we have to mount an international effort to prevent that from happening.” Perhaps Obama received some new insight into Iran from his recent access to top-secret CIA intelligence briefings that prompted him to unilaterally declare as fact the existence of an Iranian program to develop nuclear weapons. There is, of course, no substantive data to sustain such an assertion. As a critic of the U.S. intelligence failure concerning Iraq’s WMD programs in the lead-up to the invasion and occupation of that country, as well as the Bush administration’s politicization of intelligence for ideological motives, Obama would do well to take any intelligence briefing on Iran, void of incontrovertible evidence, with much-warranted skepticism.

The president-elect went on to state, “Iran’s support of terrorist organizations I think is something that has to cease.” It would be nice to know more about how he defines “terrorist organizations.” Is he speaking about Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine or Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Iraq? The last time I looked, Hezbollah was democratically elected to Lebanon’s parliament, representing a significant percentage of the Shiite population of southern Lebanon. And Hamas became a significant player in Palestine’s budding democracy by appealing to the legitimate needs and desires of a growing number of Palestinians unimpressed by the corruption and undemocratic principles of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority.

If Obama wants to resolve the ongoing debacle that is Iraq, he would be well advised to recognize that Sadr controls more Iraqi citizens than does the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. In fact, if he’s serious about ending the violence and establishing long-term stability, Obama would do well to exploit Iran’s deep and meaningful contacts with these three organizations with an eye toward integrating them into the mainstream of their respective domestic political environments. Referring to these organizations as being “terrorist” in nature is not only factually simplistic, but also counterproductive when it comes to establishing and maintaining the kind of dialogue that can result in the diplomatic breakthroughs Barack Obama claims to be seeking. Perhaps the president-elect should take his own counsel: He went on to state, “Obviously, how we approach and deal with a country like Iran is not something that we should, you know, simply do in a knee-jerk fashion. I think we’ve got to think it through.”

Thinking through the complexity of the Iranian issue is exactly what needs to be done. Developing policies based on American political pressure rather than the reality of the Iranian “problem” will solve nothing. Now that the presidential election has liberated Obama from the need to play to the fickle whim of domestic politics, he should consider more far-reaching policy options on Iran.

To begin with, Obama should return to a policy more in line with the original October 2003 “Tehran Declaration,” negotiated between the European Union and Iran, which permitted Iran to engage in uranium enrichment so long as an adequate safeguards inspection regime was in place. The original suspension, which Iran had agreed to and implemented, was intended to be temporary, in effect until the International Atomic Energy Agency could get an adequate inspection regime up and running. However, the United States pressured Europe to alter the terms of the declaration, insisting on a permanent suspension of uranium enrichment, something the Iranians refuse to do to this day. According to the IAEA’s director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, the watchdog today has in place a safeguards inspection regime that is operating smoothly and in a manner that allows for not only an accounting of the totality of Iran’s nuclear material stockpile, but a full and comprehensive understanding of the scope and scale of Iran’s centrifuge-based enrichment effort as well. There is, therefore, no legitimate reason for continuing to deny Iran its right to enrich uranium in accordance with the terms of the nonproliferation treaty.

It would be ideal for a more intrusive inspection regime, based on what the IAEA calls an “additional protocol,” to be formalized and implemented. This should not be an insurmountable hurdle for progress. Iran has already indicated a willingness to engage in such an expanded inspection regime, contingent upon international recognition of its rights under Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium. Obama has spoken of a need for an effective global nonproliferation regime, but this can never happen if the United States shows disrespect for international law and past agreements. The United States’ hypocritical indifference toward the military nuclear programs of non-NPT nations such as Israel, India and Pakistan undermines the administration’s current stance concerning the NPT-compliant Iran.

Rather than focusing on Iran’s uranium enrichment efforts, Obama would do well to shift his attention to Iran’s long-range ballistic missile program, especially the Shahib-3, which has been cited as the principal delivery system for any nuclear weapon Iran might be developing, real or imagined. The Shahib-3 missile is also used by the United States to justify the installation of a ballistic missile defense shield in Europe (with a missile interceptor facility planned for Poland, and an associated radar facility planned for the Czech Republic), an activity that destabilizes arms control and the West’s already fragile relations with Russia. By focusing on any potential delivery system, the United States would de-escalate international concerns over Iran’s uranium enrichment program and increase the likelihood for a diplomatic resolution agreeable to all parties.

While the specifics of any ballistic missile-based negotiation would have to be worked out between the involved parties, a reasonable starting point would be a one-year moratorium on all ballistic missile tests of a given range (for instance, over 500 kilometers), in exchange for which the United States would support and sponsor a regional multilateral Middle Eastern disarmament conference, the goal of which would be a treaty for the elimination of all long-range ballistic missiles in the Middle East. This would be complicated, especially since such a treaty would by necessity need to include Israel. However, given the alternative (continued confrontation with Iran, and the global instability that would result), the difficulties associated with any such disarmament effort are far outweighed by the consequences of doing nothing. Furthermore, a Middle East ballistic missile disarmament effort could serve as the framework around which other regional disarmament efforts could be shaped, including those related to Pakistan and India, and even the United States, Russia and China. It would require the leadership of the United States to pull off any such effort. This should be the kind of leadership challenge an Obama administration should be seeking to embrace.

By minimizing, or eliminating, the problems associated with any potential nuclear weapons delivery system, such as the Shahib-3 missile, the Obama administration could then focus on resolving the standoff over Iran’s uranium enrichment activities. In this, Obama will be able to turn to a new initiative from a close American ally in the Persian Gulf region, the United Arab Emirates, for some “framework” around which new policies might be constructed.

I recently attended a NATO conference held in Abu Dhabi, where the UAE government spoke in some detail about its new policy concerning the evaluation and potential development of nuclear energy. Three major items emerged from this policy announcement: first and foremost, the legitimacy of an oil- and natural gas-rich Middle Eastern nation requiring an alternative means of energy production to offset the demands placed on its energy exportation by increasing domestic demands for energy. The UAE decision was driven by economic analysis which showed a cumulative annual growth rate in energy consumption from 2007 through 2020 of some 9 percent, resulting in increased demands for upwards of 40,000 megawatts, which the UAE is not in a position to provide through traditional energy supplies. Iran, of course, made a similar analysis in the mid-1970s when it decided to embark on an ambitious nuclear energy program. Iran’s logic for pursuing nuclear energy has been derided by many who view Tehran’s ambitions as merely a front for a military program.

The analysis of the UAE demonstrates the legitimacy of the Iranian nuclear energy need, and should lay to rest any logic-driven analysis that defines Iran’s nuclear ambition as being military in nature simply because Iran is deemed to be a nation “awash in a sea of oil,” to quote past and current Bush administration officials such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The UAE noted that it was committed to the “highest standards of nonproliferation” when it came to pursuing any potential nuclear energy program, renouncing any intention to develop domestic enrichment and reprocessing capability. On the surface, the UAE’s approach seems to stand as a contrast to the position taken by Iran, which has committed to an indigenous mastery of the entire nuclear fuel cycle, inclusive of enrichment and reprocessing. However, the UAE’s commitment to nonproliferation is contingent upon two pillars. The first is the ability of the UAE to source nuclear fuel from “reliable and responsible foreign suppliers.”

The UAE has also expressed an interest in creating a regional nuclear fuel bank that would guarantee the program access to nuclear fuel in times of regional and/or global unrest and uncertainty. In reviewing the Iranian program, one finds the same need for a guaranteed source of nuclear fuel as the driving force behind Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium and reprocess spent nuclear fuel. The vagaries of economic embargoes and sanctions make any Iranian nuclear energy program linked to outside sources of supply futile indeed. The continued American insistence on using economic sanctions and threatening economic embargoes as a means to compel Iran to back down from its position on uranium enrichment is illogical and counterproductive given these realities. Instead, the United States should be seeking to combine Iran’s need for reliable sources of economic-sanction resistant nuclear fuel with that of the UAE (and, looking down the road, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and even Iraq), so that a regional nuclear fuel bank would indeed be just that—regional, inclusive of Iran and its Gulf Arab neighbors.

The second pillar of the UAE nonproliferation commitment was more reality-driven: The small size of any future UAE nuclear reactor program makes the expense of an indigenous uranium enrichment program infeasible. As such, the UAE is well positioned to take a high-minded stance when it comes to adhering to “concerns from the international community regarding spent fuel reprocessing and enrichment plants in developing countries, and the dual-use nature of components employed in fuel fabrication and processing.” Simply put, it can’t afford not to. Iran, on the other hand, doesn’t have that luxury. There is no comparison between the scope and scale of the UAE’s nascent nuclear program with that of Iran. Unlike the UAE, the Iranian program is of a size that could justify an indigenous uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing effort, just as the nuclear energy programs of France, Japan and Germany justify their national fuel-cycle programs.

Establishing a policy that accepts the right of Iran to pursue indigenous enrichment of uranium is actually the soundest approach toward getting Iran to back away from the hard-line position it has taken, because when push comes to shove, Iran cannot afford the uranium enrichment program it has embarked on. This, however, is a conclusion that Iran needs to make, free of international pressure. By respecting Iran’s legal right to enrich uranium, the Obama administration would liberate Iran to make reasoned, rational decisions about its economic future, decisions that would take into account the overall economic health of the country, void of the conservative, nationalistic inputs generated in response to outside pressure.

In the end, Iran will probably have three choices to consider: continue its indigenous enrichment program despite the severe economic burden; drop its uranium enrichment program in favor of a secure, reliable international source of nuclear fuel; or seek to integrate its uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing capabilities into a larger regional and global framework, one that not only provides economic relief for the Iranian effort, but also brings with it greater international scrutiny and inspection, adherence to international practices and procedures on the handling and accountability of nuclear material, and viability to any regional nuclear fuel bank that would incorporate the product of Iran’s enrichment programs. The integration of Iran more fully into the Persian Gulf economy is by far the best guarantor of long-term stability in that region. Iran’s nuclear program should be seen as an opportunity in this regard, not an obstacle.

As Iran heads toward a presidential election in the coming year, the United States—and the Obama administration—would achieve better and longer-lasting results by seeking solutions geared toward resolving the legitimate issues at play in the region, rather than creating short-term sound bites here at home. A clean break with the neoconservative policies of the Bush administration is a prerequisite for success, and achieving this requires great imagination and courage. President-elect Barack Obama has demonstrated the potential for both of those qualities. I hope that promise is realized.

[Scott Ritter is a former U.N. weapons inspector and military intelligence officer. He is the author of numerous books, including “Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change.”]

Source / Truthdig

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Our Correspondent : Germany’s Alternative ‘Rag’ Hopeful About Obama

Posted on November 15, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


Die Tageszeitung: ‘As Obama so often said: Change is not about me, it is about you. Europeans should feel addressed by that.’
By David MacBryde / The Rag Blog / November 14, 2008

BERLIN — After the election, the headline of the radical German daily newspaper Die Tageszeitungis a pun: “Gute Wahl” means both “good choice” and “good election.” They were happy that their favorite won, and that the election process worked, was not stolen as some had feared.

Media background information: The Tageszeitung (literally “Daily Newspaper”) can be considered, with a little stretch, to be a younger sister of The Rag. How so? The Rag was an “alternative” paper published in Austin, Texas from 1966 to 1977. [The Rag was originally edited by The Rag Blog’s Thorne Dreyer, and Carol Neiman; The Rag Blog is The Rag’s spiritual stepchild.] The Tageszeitung was founded in 1979 as an alternative platform in the local media landscape, after others in Germany had tried to start “leftist papers” that were usually sectarian and usually dull, and failed.

Younger, back then, Germans had been impressed by new forms of civic actions in the US civil rights and free speech movements. The alternative papers in the US were seen by some here, and for example the Furry Freak Brothers [Gilbert Shelton’s sixties underground comic strip that originated in The Rag] got laughs, and respect. Now, while the TAZ is radically critical of aspects of US policies and society, there is a lot about the USA that is appreciated and respected.

The front page editorial is titled “Wir sind Obama” — “We are Obama”

Excerpts (my rough translation/paraphrase):

“So there he is now. The favorite candidate in the world has also been able to convince the US Americans that he is the right guy for the White House. That is good so. A day worthy to be thought about, an historical chance — not only for the USA. Does anyone still remember that vanguard thinker of the neo-conservatives, Robert Kagan, who announced in 2003 that in strategic and international issues the USA and Europe were so far apart, like coming from the different planets Mars and Venus? If there is any possibility with a politician of getting us down to earth, and together, then it is with Obama. Europeans would be crazy not to use this chance.

“However of course Obama was not elected president of Europe. For many years the European Governments have asked to be listened to. But actually what do they have to say? Now that Obama has been elected, what are the Europeans going to do? For a long time it has been easy for the German government to hypocritically criticize US mistakes and dominance verbally, but often remain passive. It would be better to come up with our own suggestions to put on the table (e.g. Afghanistan). It could be good for the potentially new relations with the USA under President Obama if he could meet with allies who did not duck issues or waited, but thought for themselves. As Obama so often said: ‘Change is not about me, it is about you.’ Europeans should feel addressed by that.”

A test of that, and, looking forward, also a tip about something to keep an eye open for: this weekend, Nov. 15, 2008, the “financial summit” meeting in Washington will be “interesting”. I do not expect any detailed decisions there, and do not know anyone who does, given the lame duck US administration and their position on issues. But there will be an effort to set up a working agenda and a time frame looking at March to get results. One historical point of reference: A year and a half ago at the “G8” richest country summit in Germany there was a theatrical blockade outside. Inside, the real blockade was by the Bush administration, which blocked the issue of the growing financial crisis from being put on the agenda. Now a broader range of countries intend to take initiative.

For now, and for the future,
David MacBryde
your correspondent in Berlin

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The Wall Street Bailout Is "Borderline Criminal"

Posted on November 15, 2008 by RagBlog

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Friends announcing terms of the bailout.

In Praise of a Rocky Transition
By Naomi Klein / November 13, 2008

The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington’s handling of the Wall Street bailout is not merely incompetent. It is borderline criminal.

In a moment of high panic in late September, the US Treasury unilaterally pushed through a radical change in how bank mergers are taxed–a change long sought by the industry. Despite the fact that this move will deprive the government of as much as $140 billion in tax revenue, lawmakers found out only after the fact. According to the Washington Post, more than a dozen tax attorneys agree that “Treasury had no authority to issue the [tax change] notice.”

Of equally dubious legality are the equity deals Treasury has negotiated with many of the country’s banks. According to Congressman Barney Frank, one of the architects of the legislation that enables the deals, “Any use of these funds for any purpose other than lending–for bonuses, for severance pay, for dividends, for acquisitions of other institutions, etc.–is a violation of the act.” Yet this is exactly how the funds are being used.

Then there is the nearly $2 trillion the Federal Reserve has handed out in emergency loans. Incredibly, the Fed will not reveal which corporations have received these loans or what it has accepted as collateral. Bloomberg News believes that this secrecy violates the law and has filed a federal suit demanding full disclosure.

Despite all of this potential lawlessness, the Democrats are either openly defending the administration or refusing to intervene. “There is only one president at a time,” we hear from Barack Obama. That’s true. But every sweetheart deal the lame-duck Bush administration makes threatens to hobble Obama’s ability to make good on his promise of change. To cite just one example, that $140 billion in missing tax revenue is almost the same sum as Obama’s renewable energy program. Obama owes it to the people who elected him to call this what it is: an attempt to undermine the electoral process by stealth.

Yes, there is only one president at a time, but that president needed the support of powerful Democrats, including Obama, to get the bailout passed. Now that it is clear that the Bush administration is violating the terms to which both parties agreed, the Democrats have not just the right but a grave responsibility to intervene forcefully.

I suspect that the real reason the Democrats are so far failing to act has less to do with presidential protocol than with fear: fear that the stock market, which has the temperament of an overindulged 2-year-old, will throw one of its world-shaking tantrums. Disclosing the truth about who is receiving federal loans, we are told, could cause the cranky market to bet against those banks. Question the legality of equity deals and the same thing will happen. Challenge the $140 billion tax giveaway and mergers could fall through. “None of us wants to be blamed for ruining these mergers and creating a new Great Depression,” explained one unnamed Congressional aide.

More than that, the Democrats, including Obama, appear to believe that the need to soothe the market should govern all key economic decisions in the transition period. Which is why, just days after a euphoric victory for “change,” the mantra abruptly shifted to “smooth transition” and “continuity.”

Take Obama’s pick for chief of staff. Despite the Republican braying about his partisanship, Rahm Emanuel, the House Democrat who received the most donations from the financial sector, sends an unmistakably reassuring message to Wall Street. When asked on This Week With George Stephanopoulos whether Obama would be moving quickly to increase taxes on the wealthy, as promised, Emanuel pointedly did not answer the question.

This same market-coddling logic should, we are told, guide Obama’s selection of treasury secretary. Fox News’s Stuart Varney explained that Larry Summers, who held the post under Clinton, and former Fed chair Paul Volcker would both “give great confidence to the market.” We learned from MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that Summers is the man “the Street would like the most.”

Let’s be clear about why. “The Street” would cheer a Summers appointment for exactly the same reason the rest of us should fear it: because traders will assume that Summers, champion of financial deregulation under Clinton, will offer a transition from Henry Paulson so smooth we will barely know it happened. Someone like FDIC chair Sheila Bair, on the other hand, would spark fear on the Street–for all the right reasons.

One thing we know for certain is that the market will react violently to any signal that there is a new sheriff in town who will impose serious regulation, invest in people and cut off the free money for corporations. In short, the markets can be relied on to vote in precisely the opposite way that Americans have just voted. (A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Americans strongly favor “stricter regulations on financial institutions,” while just 21 percent support aid to financial companies.)

There is no way to reconcile the public’s vote for change with the market’s foot-stomping for more of the same. Any and all moves to change course will be met with short-term market shocks. The good news is that once it is clear that the new rules will be applied across the board and with fairness, the market will stabilize and adjust. Furthermore, the timing for this turbulence has never been better. Over the past three months, we’ve been shocked so frequently that market stability would come as more of a surprise. That gives Obama a window to disregard the calls for a seamless transition and do the hard stuff first. Few will be able to blame him for a crisis that clearly predates him, or fault him for honoring the clearly expressed wishes of the electorate. The longer he waits, however, the more memories fade.

When transferring power from a functional, trustworthy regime, everyone favors a smooth transition. When exiting an era marked by criminality and bankrupt ideology, a little rockiness at the start would be a very good sign.

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (September 2007); an earlier international best-seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies; and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (2002).

Source / The Nation

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BOOKS / Comix Legend Spain Rodriquez : Che: A Graphic Biography

Posted on November 15, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


‘If you’re open-minded and curious about the events immediately to America’s south during the 1950s and 1960s that had such an overwhelming impact on our society and our political system, then this book is essential.’
By Mike Gold

“Spain” Rodriquez and “Che” Guevara. Manuel and Ernesto. Two legends, one living, the other, well, not so much.

Spain has been a cartoonist for more than 40 years, one of the first and most visible and influential storytellers of the underground comix movement. While others were preoccupied (often brilliantly) with their X-rated tributes to Harvey Kurtzman, Max Fleischer and other visionaries of their childhood, Spain was telling adventure stories of urban America, often featuring his character Trashman. His works have a strong left-wing tilt. He continues to be active, contributing to American Splendor, Blab! and Tikkun, and he produced the highly acclaimed graphic novel Nightmare Alley for Fantagraphics. He’s been fairly active in recent years on the comics convention circuit, often appearing with S. Clay Wilson.

Che was a handsome medical doctor (specializing in leprosy) and revolutionary, part of the insurgency force that overthrew the Cuban puppet dictator Fulgencio Batista and his American mobster masters, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. When, in 1967, he was killed as he was organizing in Bolivia, Che became more than a mere martyr: he became an icon. Today, his likeness (inspired by Jim Fitzpartick’s classic illustration) is well-merchandised by capitalist clothing manufacturers in America. He even had floor space at the New York Licensing Show a couple years ago.

It was only a matter of time before Spain turned his professional attentions to Che. Actually, I’m surprised it took this long.

If you’re one of those people who reduce Dr. Guevara’s work down to that of an evil godless Commie, then this graphic novel is the exact right thing for you, as long as your life insurance is paid up. If you think the left might have had legitimate cause for their actions, you’ll like this as well. If you’re open-minded and curious about the events immediately to America’s south during the 1950s and 1960s that had such an overwhelming impact on our society and our political system, then this book is essential.

On the other hand, if you’re a fan of the comic art form and are curious as to how such a powerful biography can be told in this medium, then Spain Rodriguez’ Che: A Graphic Biography is absolutely critical. Yeah, it’s a bit didactic in places – Spain’s got a point of view and he’s going to share it, but it never takes over the story. Indeed, he’s quite open about the Castros’ shutting down critical newspapers and disenfranchisement of political moderates.

Che suffers from some unfortunate production issues. The lettering is overly pixilated and overall there’s a slightly fuzzy look to the material. It’s minor, but it was avoidable and the material deserved better treatment.

If this graphic biography inspires you to Google around a bit and study up, then I smile upon you and Spain alike, pleased that you both have accomplished your mission.

Che: A Graphic Biography
Written and drawn by Spain Rodriguez.
Verso Books, 116 pages. $16.95 US

Source / ComicMix / Originally posted Sept. 21, 2008.

Find Che: A Graphic Biography on Amazon.com.

Thanks to Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog

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Joining the Peace Movement and Labor Activism

Posted on November 14, 2008 by RagBlog


What If Labor Opposed War?
By David Swanson / November 14, 2008

I think the peace movement and every justice movement in the United States should simply overwhelm Congress members during the next two months with one and only one demand: Pass the Employee Free Choice Act in January. This is, of course, the bill that the labor movement has been trying to pass for years, and that Democrats in Congress and President Elect Obama have committed to making law: aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca.

If the Democrats pull out victories in senate races in Alaska, Minnesota, and Georgia, they will have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, which could be expanded by appointing some Republican senators from states with Democratic governors to plum jobs, as well as by giving Washington, D.C., representation in our federal government. Even 58 or 59 senators, rather than the magic 60, will render the filibuster excuse pretty weak. The labor movement can certainly persuade one or two Republican senators not to filibuster. So, there will be no excuses available to the Democrats. If they hear the urgent demand for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) from all of us, they will be compelled to pass it.

The EFCA puts teeth behind legalizing the right to organize a union. We need it because a strengthened labor movement will almost certainly bring great benefits to workers, and because it just might bring benefits to our broader civil society. Peace groups need to push the EFCA so that labor unions owe peace groups a favor.

For all the effort the peace movement has put in, and for all the influence the antiwar message has had on pubic opinion (without which Barack Obama would not have been elected), the peace movement has almost no ability to influence Congress or the president elect. Take a look at Obama’s short list for possible appointees to the Pentagon, or his vice presidential pick, or his chief of staff: there’s nobody within a mile of the new administration who opposed the war. In stark contrast, check out the names under consideration for Secretary of Labor: they actually know and support the labor movement.

Were the labor movement to put its growing strength behind a demand for peace, the chances of success for the peace movement would increase dramatically. And, of course, lives would be saved, relations improved, and the economy benefitted. Within the labor movement there has been a great deal of peace activism, led by the tremendous work of U.S. Labor Against the War but, while many unions have formally passed resolutions opposing the war, none has put major resources into lobbying to end it.

What could the labor movement gain from cutting back spending on wars and the military? What if it were to gain thousands of new members? This could be made to happen. Just as, with Paygo, Congress required that any spending be balanced by cuts to avoid deficits, we could create a more targeted requirement. Congress could require that any public spending on the creation of green energy jobs be matched by cuts in spending on wars and the military, and require that any cuts in war and military spending be matched by new spending on green energy jobs in unionized employee-owned cooperatives — specific cooperatives set up and unionized by each national union. I’m sure there are several other ways that this could be done; the point is to make a shift of resources from killing to living happen in such a way that unions are motivated to push it forward.

While Obama proposed a relatively small scale investment in green energy jobs, at least until he deleted his agenda from his website, he did not explain how he would pay for it: changelost.com. Congressman Barney Frank pointed out a few weeks ago that , unless we want to cut every useful program, we will have to cut military spending — he proposed a cut of 25 percent. On Monday, the Boston Globe reported that “a senior Pentagon advisory group, in a series of bluntly worded briefings, is warning President-elect Barack Obama that the Defense Department’s current budget is ‘not sustainable,’ and he must scale back or eliminate some of the military’s most prized weapons programs.”

Of course, it is Congress that must do that. The role of the president in our system of government is simply to execute what the Congress legislates. But you get the idea. There is nothing radical about proposing military budget cuts. What would be radically beneficial to us all would be to create a means by which labor leaders can see the direct benefits of doing what must be done.

If you’re imagining that all of this is not needed because our new president-elect will fix everything for us, I would urge you to shake off that belief by January, or sooner if possible, and certainly by March when the occupation of Iraq will turn six and a Democratically controlled Congress will send a budget funding the continuation of the war to a Democratic president. The loudest war opponents will then be libertarians and others who favor peace but not justice. We would be wise to raise our own voices earlier and more strongly and to recruit allies into a broader movement with a coherent long-term vision of social change.

Source / Z-Net

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Understanding What the Stock Markets Are Doing

Posted on November 14, 2008 by RagBlog


Source / RGE Monitor

Thanks to Erich Seifert / The Rag Blog

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Teaching War : What Did You Learn in School Today?

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Veteran Fred Castaneda addresses Veterans Day assembly at Austin elementary school.
Photo by Ricardo B. Brazziell / Austin American-Statesman.

Is Veteran’s Day about War?
By Fran Hanlon / The Rag Blog / November 14, 2008

Recently, the Austin American-Statesman ran a photo of a Vietnam veteran addressing a large assembly of young children at Metz Elementary as part of a Veterans Day program called ‘Take a Vet to School’. In response to this photo, I wrote this letter to the editor, with the title ‘Take a vet to school, leave the gun at home.’

Dear Editor,

I am compelled to comment on the photo which ran on page B-1 (Nov. 8th) of a soldier, dressed in battle fatigues and carrying a rifle, standing in front of an assembly of young children. Metz Elementary’s decision to invite an armed representative of the military into the school is, unfortunately, illustrative of the culture of militarism which permeates our society. This culture embraces violence, so long as it is associated with a uniform and a flag. If we are ever to live in a society which values humanity, and places human needs above those of domination and conquest, we must reject the notion that government sponsored killing is acceptable. If we are ever to live in a peaceful world, the insidious indoctrination of our children into the military culture must end. Veterans can, I think, contribute significantly to building this peaceful world; they should be encouraged to leave their guns at home and tell the truth about war.

Fran Hanlon, Austin.

I encouraged others in my group, CodePink Austin, to also send letters if they were concerned about the judgment of the school and the school district. Diana Claitor took it a step further and contacted the AISD ombudsman’s office to express her concerns. The response she received came from Jennifer Atkinson, a first grade teacher and coordinator of “Take a Vet to School Day.” Ms. Atkinson had justifiable objections to Diana’s criticism, but they were mainly based on our rush to judge the event solely based on one photo. She pointed out that the veteran was carrying a fake, wooden gun and was dressed in his “parade uniform,” not battle fatigues. She also gave some detail about how they prepared for the event, and what happened after the assembly:

“The photo did not show the weeks of preparation our students and teachers spent learning about who Veterans are, what they do for our country and the origins of the Veterans Day holiday. The photo does not show the hallways decorated in red, white and blue, displayed with thank you letters, poems about freedom and stories about what it means to be a hero.

“Our honored guests never came to share ‘what war is like,’ they came to share their time and to share a little piece of themselves and their experiences as a Veteran and to accept the thanks that the students of Metz wanted to offer.”

So far, so good, but, then, Ms. Atkinson takes off on a tangent that is both erroneous and accusatory:

“Veterans Day is NOT, and never has been, about war. It is about the men and women who has [sic] served our country, so selflessly, so people like you can have the freedom to express their opinions, even if they are made on false assumptions.”

What? Veteran’s Day is NOT about war? “People like you?”

Here’s what Diana had to say in response to this:

The following statement is disingenuous at best, but many would find it just plain wrong: “Veterans Day is NOT, and never has been, about war.” Actually, the official U.S. Army site and the U.S. Library of Congress point out that the origins of Veterans Day are in Armistice Day, declared in 1918 to mark the end, on November 11, of World War I. While Veterans Day ceremonies of course do focus on something other than war, when you have guns, bandoliers, memorials to those killed in battle and platoons of marching soldiers to celebrate a holiday, there is something about war going on. While children should learn about war, many of us are concerned they don’t learn as much about peace and the various ways people can serve their country.”

Diana responded to the publication of this photo for the same reason I did — because I feel strongly that our children should not be taught that war is a glorious and necessary means of obtaining (or imposing) freedom. If veterans are going to take up our children’s educational time, then, by all means, they should share “what war is like.” They should tell the truth about war and they should do it without the bells and whistles of camouflage and guns, fake or real. Let’s bring in veterans who are missing limbs; let’s hear the stories of seeing comrades killed and the killing of innocent civilians. Let’s discuss the realities of war. My guess is that if we were compelled to do this… to speak of and hear the truth about war, Veteran’s Day celebrations would become few and far between. We might come to understand that there is nothing in war to be celebrated.

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Austin : Iraq Veterans Speak Out Against the War

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War march in Austin’s Veteran’s Day parade. Photos by Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog.

Iraq war veterans talk the walk at UT
By Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog / November 13, 2008

See ‘Iraq Vets Against the War well received in Austin’s parade’ by Susan van Haitsma, Below.

AUSTIN — On the eve of Veterans Day, four veterans of the Iraq war spoke on a panel at the University of Texas to offer a reality check to the jingoism surrounding most November 11th commemorations. Organized by the student group, CAMEO (Campus Antiwar Movement to End Occupations), the event was designed to echo the Winter Soldier model where veterans of the wars/occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan speak from their own experience about what is happening there. In the months since the first Winter Soldier hearings were held by Iraq Veterans Against the War near Washington DC in March (patterned after the historic hearings by Vietnam Veterans Against the War in 1971), IVAW members have been speaking on regional and local panels across the country, giving Americans more opportunities to hear directly from veterans in their communities.

Are Americans listening? That is the question. The virtual media blackout in the mainstream press has been at least partially offset by good reporting among independent and international media, and IVAW itself has accomplished its own publicity through effective web outreach and creative nonviolent direct action. Thanks to student groups like CAMEO and other community sponsorship, veterans’ stories are being aired, and the mainstream can’t claim ignorance. Truth has a way of finding the light of day.

Hart Viges

Hart Viges.

The first of the four panelists to speak on Monday night was Hart Viges, one of my colleagues in the group, Nonmilitary Options for Youth. Hart has taken a strong interest in reaching out to young people who are in the position he was when he felt the best thing he could do for his country was to take up arms on its behalf. Now, on his army shirt, he wears the Nonmilitary Options logo: a gun with its barrel twisted in a knot. “I’d rather talk to a high school kid than a politician any day,” he says, “because that politician isn’t going to join the military.”

Hart enlisted on Sept. 12, 2001 out of a deep sense of patriotic duty. He trained with the tough Army Airborne, hoping to jump into Iraq the hard way. Instead, he rolled into Iraq on the ground, conducting house raids and setting mortars for “soft targets.” He discovered that the mythical battleground was actually someone’s community. After one tour, Hart came to grips with his beliefs about war, crystallized by his experience of it, and he applied for a discharge as a conscientious objector. He was one of the lucky ones whose claim was approved, and he received an honorable discharge. Since then, Hart has been devoting much time to IVAW, Nonmilitary Options for Youth and the GI Rights Hotline as a telephone counselor. He has spoken widely in the US and abroad and was one of the veterans who testified at the Winter Soldier hearings in March. He also participates in a veterans therapy group at the VA, has taken some college courses and works full-time.

When he talks to high school students about his experience in Iraq, Hart encourages them to see not only the “ground zero effects” of war but also the larger picture, the system that perpetuates war. He talks about the tax dollars that fund it and the mindset that rationalizes it. Students listen because he has been there. “I know that my real tax dollars turn into real bullets that kill real people,” he says. “What I saw over there was a gross misdirection of resources and power.” When he shows students the pie chart showing the billions of federal tax dollars funneled into military spending – money that could easily pay all the college expenses of every college-aged person in the US – he asks them, “What would you rather have – two wars or a completely educated society?”

In some respects, Hart is continuing the mission he began when the Sept. 11th hijackingss spurred his instinct to protect his community with his life. Now, the community he wants to protect extends beyond the borders of one country and encompasses future generations. Instead of using a gun, he’s using his gifts.

Bryan Hannah

Bryan Hannah.

Second panelist, Bryan Hannah has been stationed at Ft. Hood, TX and is in the discharge process after applying as a conscientious objector. He spoke primarily about the role of private contractors in the “war on terror,” and the exasperation he feels about the lack of accountability in so many aspects of the war, from the Bush Administration on down. He didn’t describe his own experiences in Iraq, but an excerpt from a blog he writes gives a clue to some of his feelings during a recent training exercise at Ft. Hood:

“I remember the first time I waited in line for my M-16 in basic. I was like a little kid at Christmas time. Now, as I stand here to the side, as everyone draws their weapons for the field, I feel like I’m not here. Seeing people fight to gain position in a line to get their weapons sooner than the next guy, I listen in from my own little world, hearing the mutters of anxious, motivated privates in chorus with the broken vets, loathing the cold black maiden that has broken families and destroyed lives. The ball and chain wrapped around their souls and anchored into a mired existence. Due to my Conscientious Objector packet, I don’t have to carry a weapon and it almost feels like I successfully kicked a habit, or that I might actually separate from the Army one day and begin to heal.”

Bryan also has written for the IVAW publication, “SIT-REP.” In their Memorial Day ’08 issue, he authored an article about soldiers who die of injuries sustained in Iraq whose deaths are not counted in official tallies. He asked, “What about the other casualties of war? The amputees, paraplegics, quadriplegics, people with brain damage and hearing loss, personalities that are permanently changed for the worse, marriages ruined (divorces among officers have risen 300% and enlisted people have a 200% higher divorce rate than before 2003), and children who are messed up by separation from their parents. Is this war worth it? Is any possible success worth the cost?”

Bryan closed his remarks on the panel by saying, “We have to remember that apathy is the dying side of freedom.” That’s a quote for the ages.

Mike Nordstrom

Mike Nordstrom.

Mike Nordstrom, a US Marine, opened his portion of the panel discussion by informing his audience, “Today is the Marine Corps’ birthday: November 10, 1775.” Mike spoke about the difficulties that arise when one of “the few, the proud” is injured and faces the stigma associated with seeking treatment. Mike sustained physical and psychological injuries during his two tours in Iraq but was hesitant to check into the VA because he didn’t want to “take away resources” from vets with injuries that seemed worse than his. He also said that he felt embarrassed using the VA. It took pressure from his family and friends to finally get him in the door. Once there, he dealt with lots of paperwork and long waiting periods for appointments. Now, he meets regularly with a group of other vets at the VA and openly discusses the PTSD that he said is considered a “weakness issue” in the Marines.

Ronn Cantu

Ronn Cantu.

Final panelist, Ronn Cantu, discussed in some detail the job he held during his last tour in Iraq as part of a human intelligence team. He feels he can finally speak openly about what he did in Iraq because he has just been discharged this month from the US Army. Ronn described the process he and others in his intelligence unit were ordered to use to “make a citizen into a detainee.” The process involved capitalizing on Iraqi grudges and loyalties and their desperate need for employment and cash. He spoke about the “dual sourced” intelligence they were supposed to gather to incriminate Iraqi men of military age (documenting two information sources for every suspect). “What makes an Iraqi want to turn in another Iraqi? Money and a lot of lying,” he said. Orders would come down to “speed things up,” meaning that higher-ups wanted more detainees, so they “cast the net” wider. He said that the more they had to speed it up, the less often they found the right people. So that numbers could increase, men of military age were rounded up and detained without cause. Ronn also said that he saw evidence of detained men having been beaten, but when he asked about it, he was told that if he didn’t witness the beating, there was nothing he could do about it.

Ronn had already served an enlistment in the army when he was inspired to re-enlist after hearing Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN arguing for an invasion of Iraq. “I bought it, hook, line and sinker,” he said. But, “after the life I took in my first deployment and the deceit in my second, I was done. I wouldn’t be a part of that anymore. I decided human beings weren’t made to treat each other like that.” Ronn did some writing from Iraq, began to speak out more publicly and filed a claim as a conscientious objector, but the military decided to use an administrative discharge. Ronn is relieved to be out, and plans to re-start his college career this spring. “As a 30 year-old, I don’t know how it will be going to school with 19 year-olds,” he says, but he is anxious to get to it. While he’s gathering intelligence in a new way, his classmates will have a lot to learn from him, too.

Iraq Vets Against the War well received in Austin’s parade

Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War groups marched in Veterans Day parades around the country yesterday [Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2008], although VFP and IVAW chapters were denied permission to march in some cities. In Raleigh, North Carolina, for example, the parade overseer excluded the local VFP group from marching with their flag (which simply reads “Veterans for Peace” with the peace dove on helmet image) because the flag was deemed a “political statement.” The parade organizer also made the confounding statement that the parade “has nothing to do with war.”

I was pleased to read that the Houston VFP group marched along with several IVAW members and other supporters. Here is a report posted at Houston Indymedia:

Members of Veterans for Peace, chapter #12 (Houston) marched in the Houston Veterans Day parade again this year on Nov. 11, joined by other peace activists. VFP invited other peace groups to march with them, and representatives of the Progressive Action Alliance, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and the Harris Co. Green Party helped carry banners, signs, and flags.

Marchers were led by banners for IVAW, VFP, and a giant one saying “Stop the War On Iraq – Bring the Trrops Home Now”. Signs included slogans like “Fund Vet Benefits, Not the War”, and “Support the Troops – Bring them Home Now”. Marchers also carried both VFP and US flags.

Jim Rine, President of the Houston area VFP chapter, said, “We were in the parade to show that war is not the answer. We wanted to offer an alternative to the usual militaristic displays.” ….

As I watched Austin’s parade from the sidewalk along Congress Avenue yesterday, I also heard a lot of supportive hoots and applause when IVAW walked by, and a number of folks stopped to shake the vets’ hands as we stood near the capitol afterward. The guys said that, as in Houston, response all along the route was overwhelmingly positive. They noticed two men turn their backs on them — the only negative reaction they encountered. An older woman in uniform (a WAVE, I think) saw their banner and remarked, “You’re against the war? Well, bless your hearts” in a strangely Sarah Palinesque sort of way.

As IVAW passed the reviewing area at 7th and Congress, it was good to hear the announcer state the name of the group along with their mission statement: troops home from Iraq, full benefits for returning veterans and reparations for Iraq.

Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog / November 12, 2008

[Susan Van Haitsma also blogs as makingpeace at Statesman.com and at makingpeace.]

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Signs of a Sick Society, Episode XLIX: A Vote for Obama Was "Material Cooperation with Intrinsic Evil"

Posted on November 14, 2008 by RagBlog

Reverend Jay Scott Newman.

Priest Blasts Catholic Obama Voters
By Meg Kinnard / November 14, 2008

COLUMBIA, S.C. – A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him “constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil.”

The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Greenville that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote.

“Our nation has chosen for its chief executive the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president,” Newman wrote, referring to Obama by his full name, including his middle name of Hussein.

“Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ’s Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation.”

During the 2008 presidential campaign, many bishops spoke out on abortion more boldly than four years earlier, telling Catholic politicians and voters that the issue should be the most important consideration in setting policy and deciding which candidate to back. A few church leaders said parishioners risked their immortal soul by voting for candidates who support abortion rights.

But bishops differ on whether Catholic lawmakers — and voters — should refrain from receiving Communion if they diverge from church teaching on abortion. Each bishop sets policy in his own diocese. In their annual fall meeting, the nation’s Catholic bishops vowed Tuesday to forcefully confront the Obama administration over its support for abortion rights.

According to national exit polls, 54 percent of Catholics chose Obama, who is Protestant. In South Carolina, which McCain carried, voters in Greenville County — traditionally seen as among the state’s most conservative areas — went 61 percent for the Republican, and 37 percent for Obama.

“It was not an attempt to make a partisan point,” Newman said in a telephone interview Thursday. “In fact, in this election, for the sake of argument, if the Republican candidate had been pro-abortion, and the Democratic candidate had been pro-life, everything that I wrote would have been exactly the same.”

Conservative Catholics criticized Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004 for supporting abortion rights, with a few Catholic bishops saying Kerry should refrain from receiving Holy Communion because his views were contrary to church teachings.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said she had not heard of other churches taking this position in reaction to Obama’s win. A Boston-based group that supports Catholic Democrats questioned the move, saying it was too extreme.

“Father Newman is off base,” said Steve Krueger, national director of Catholic Democrats. “He is acting beyond the authority of a parish priest to say what he did. … Unfortunately, he is doing so in a manner that will be of great cost to those parishioners who did vote for Sens. Obama and Biden. There will be a spiritual cost to them for his words.”

A man who has attended St. Mary’s for 18 years said he welcomed Newman’s message and anticipated it would inspire further discussion at the church.

“I don’t understand anyone who would call themselves a Christian, let alone a Catholic, and could vote for someone who’s a pro-abortion candidate,” said Ted Kelly, 64, who volunteers his time as lector for the church. “You’re talking about the murder of innocent beings.”

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Source / America On Line

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Bad News: Pollution Reaching from Arabia to Japan

Posted on November 14, 2008 by RagBlog

In this 2007 satellite image, a band of brown haze crosses over South Korea, center, then spreads out over the Sea of Japan toward Japan, center right. According to a U.N. report released Thursday, a thick brown cloud of soot, particles and chemicals stretching from the Persian Gulf to Asia threatens the world’s health and food supplies. Photo by AP/NASA.

U.N. sees new peril in Asia’s huge brown cloud
By Tini Tran / November 13, 2008

BEIJING — Thick brown clouds of soot, particles and chemicals stretching from the Persian Gulf to Asia threaten health and food supplies in the world, the U.N. reported Thursday, citing what it called the newest threat to the global environment.

The regional haze, known as atmospheric brown clouds, contributes to glacial melting, reduces sunlight, and helps create extreme weather conditions that impact agricultural production, according to the report commissioned by the U.N. Environment Program.

To see the entire report, click here.

The huge plumes have darkened 13 megacities in Asia — including Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, Cairo, Mumbai and New Delhi — sharply “dimming” the amount of light by as much as 25% in some places.

Caused by the burning of fossil fuels, wood and plants, the brown clouds also play a significant role in exacerbating the effects of greenhouse gases in warming up the Earth’s atmosphere, the report said.

“Imagine for a moment a three-kilometer-thick (1.8-mile-thick) band of soot, particles, a cocktail of chemicals that stretches from the Arabic Peninsula to Asia,” said Achim Steiner, U.N. undersecretary general and executive director of the U.N. Environment Program.

“All of this points to an even greater and urgent need to look at emissions across the planet because this is where the stories are linked in terms of greenhouse emissions and particle emissions and the impact that they’re having on our global climate,” he said.

Some particles within the pollution cloud, such as soot, absorb sunlight and heat the air. That has led to a steady melting of the Himalayan glaciers, which are the source of most of the major rivers on the continent, the report said.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences estimates the glaciers have shrunk by 5% since the 1950s. At the rate of retreat, glaciers could shrink by as much as 75% by the year 2050, posing a major risk to the region’s water security.

The pollution clouds also have helped reduce the monsoon season in India. The weather extremes may have also played a part in reduced production of key crops such as rice, wheat and soybean, the report said.

At the same time, the brown clouds have also helped mask the full impact of global warming by helping to cool the Earth’s surface and tamp down rising temperatures by between 20% to 80%, the study said. That’s because some of the particles that make up the clouds reflect sunlight and cool down the air.

The latest findings, conducted by an international collaboration of scientists over seven-plus years, are the most detailed to date on the brown cloud phenomenon, which is not unique to Asia. Other hotspots are seen in North America, Europe, South Africa and South America.

The enormous cloud masses can move across continents within three to four days, illustrating the fact that the phenomenon is not just a regional urban issue but a global one, said lead scientist, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego.

“The main message is that it’s a global problem. This is not a problem where we point fingers at our neighbors. Everyone is in someone else’s backyard,” said Ramanathan.

The report also noted that health problems associated with particulate pollution, which include cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, are linked to nearly 350,000 premature deaths in China and India every year, said Henning Rohde, a University of Stockholm scientist who worked on the study.

The value of the study is that scientists looked at the effect of the brown clouds on multiple levels, said Ankur Desai, assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Quantifying the impact on people, ice, agriculture, etc., is certainly going to be useful,” he said. “The study also brings together scientists who don’t traditionally work together into thinking together about the impact, mitigation and fundamental science on how this works.”

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Source / USA Today

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A New Model for Managing International Trade and Development , Part III

Posted on November 14, 2008 by RagBlog

Click here for all the posts in the series.

In Development…
…only one road leads to Rome, Part 3
By Sid Eschenbach / The Rag Blog / November 14, 2008

To Rome… or to Ruin?

As a result of the application of their influence and power, the ‘structural adjustment programs’ pursued by the IMF, World Bank and other international agencies reflected corporate, not national agendas. In fact, the entire neo-liberal ‘free-trade’ approach represents a policy that will produce exactly the opposite results from those desired by the national entities.

The forced opening of fragile and underdeveloped manufacturing sectors to the onslaught of ‘free-trade’ international industrial giants pits David against Goliath, but this time David has no slingshot, and the outcome cannot be in doubt. In the name of lower prices, consumerism and market efficiency, developing nations are reduced to dependent colonies, exporting raw materials and importing finished goods, a policy that we have seen is a dead end policy, a policy of decreasing returns rather than increasing returns.

This is even true when manufacturing facilities are located in a low-labor cost nation, because the nation does not control nor own the factories… and as they can be and are moved on a moments notice, the nation can never develop any real leverage regarding wage productivity gains for the workers, or national ownership and participation.

That being the case, they represent a road that doesn’t lead to Rome, but to ruin. Therefore, a new trade and development paradigm must be developed to challenge the policies and practices of international policy makers as represented by the ‘Washington Consensus’; a new model that, as a product of its use, creates new and widespread national economic sectors of increasing returns, the condition that builds prosperous societies without creating a new, massive, or unwieldy regulatory framework to manage it. However, before we move to a new trade theory, one more element of economic well-being must be reviewed, and that is innovation.

Labor and Innovation

As I wrote at the start of this essay, “…it has been repeatedly shown that there is only one proven road to economic well-being, and that road starts with industrialization and ends higher worker productivity and innovation.” I have discussed the reasons that the road to prosperity of necessity passes through industrialization and higher worker productivity… but what about innovation? What role does that play?

Innovation is generally thought of as phenomena separate from both industrialization and productivity, driven by good education and free capital markets… but actually it is productivity’s little brother and industrialization’s child. The same obligations of management that drive the ‘efficiency wage hypothesis’ described above, the desire to cut costs and increase profits, is also the driving force behind innovation. Therefore, just as the search to lower costs is the driving component behind increased worker productivity as wages rise, the need to increase sales is the driving force behind increased innovation.

Innovative features on existing products, or wholly new products themselves, can do nothing but separate your product from the competition, thereby increasing total sales and profits. None of these things happen by chance or by magic, but rather they must and always do happen in a competitive, industrial, organized labor environment.

The issue isn’t which company will innovate and separate itself, but the simple truth that one or some of them must and will. Because of that central fact of the capitalist environment, we should be able to design a new manufacturing and labor oriented development paradigm that factors in the goals, motivations, rights and abilities of the new player, the global, stateless international corporations, and integrates their abilities and needs with those of the states and the people.

Ideas for a new Trade and Development Policy

Before I get into details of what a new international trading and development regime should look like, it might be best to restate the goals first, because as we have seen, it was the replacement of the original national goals with international business goals that has brought us to this point. Therefore, these are the fundamental elements of what I believe any decent trade and development policy should deliver to each of the three parties involved: the people, the governments, and the businesses:

  1. For the people, higher wages and wider employment.
  2. For the government, greater tax revenues and greater political and social stability.
  3. For business, a fair, level and universal platform on which to compete, whether globally or nationally.

The People

Taking them one at a time, we have seen that wages can only be raised when productivity is raised… and that can only happen in an industrialized society as a byproduct of higher worker productivity. Beyond that, and because most industrial companies are not run by the likes of Henry Ford, we must recognize that the economic benefits of increased worker productivity are usually not passed on to labor willingly, but held as increased profits by management.

That being the historical truth, we must then accept that organized labor is not an option but a requirement in any future development paradigm. As pointed out earlier, historical periods when there was a balance of the countervailing forces of capital and labor were the most prosperous periods, so we must accept as fact that the benefits that organized labor brings to society more than offset whatever problems they present. So, from the people’s point of view, the new model must:

  • Create national economies that grow at rates higher than that of population, and create new, middle class jobs.
  • Guarantee the rights of industrial workers to organize and share in the benefits of higher productivity.

The Government

Second, from the governmental point of view, a new trade and development policy cannot demand the creation of costly new bureaucracies. It cannot be based upon ten-thousand page international ‘trade’ deals that take longer to negotiate than the time it takes for new technical or financial conditions to overtake them and render them useless.

Bi- or tri-lateral treaties between willing nations, of course, cannot and should not be excluded, but they should not be the general trade model. The new model should be able to be implemented unilaterally. Most importantly, it should be a model that does not represent a race to the bottom and present national leaders with a set of equally unpopular choices, destabilizing fragile governments and encouraging abuse and corruption. On the contrary, it should be a policy that can be easily explained to any population, and readily seen as in the national interest while not at the national expense. Furthermore, it must be politically viable in any setting, as it must help all nations on their road to prosperity, rich and poor.

Therefore, a new policy must:

  • Not cost any government in creation or operation more than it is worth
  • Be easy and simple to negotiate and implement
  • Be clearly beneficial to the mass of the people in order to increase national socio-political stability
  • Allow for unilateral implementation if desired
  • Encourage poor nations to develop a protected sector of increasing returns and innovation
  • Maintain the existing sectors of increasing returns and innovation in developed nations
  • Help rich and poor nations alike.

Business

Lastly, it must be fair from the businesses point of view. It must not create or foster an adversarial ‘friend/enemy’, ‘us/them’, ‘national polity/international business’ division and discord. While the interests of the stateless global business may be historically new to the scene, they’re certainly not inherently detrimental, nor are they leaving any time soon. Therefore, they must be seen as a component of the solution, not the creator of the problem.

One of the major problems with the current WTO model of globally negotiated deals is that the very essence of them is to legislate and protect particular national or corporate advantages … which is why they are not only immensely complex and large documents, but indeed why the model itself has finally failed with the end of the Doha round.

Instead of a model whose intent is to legislate and protect inequalities, the new model must be a system that does not create opportunities that can be exploited by any of the three parties; not by governments, not by businesses, and not by the people. Specifically, it must aim to build a uniform floor under labor costs, the greatest single variable cost advantage and the dominant driver of all ‘off-shoring’, particularly in developed and prosperous countries.

It must be a system that tends and trends towards equality as a function of its operation, and that makes it impossible for any company to take a labor cost advantage over another by abusing the poverty of a particular region that for any reason it has access to. There will always be disparities in labor costs. However, the effort should be to lift the poor into the middle and consuming class, not exploit the situation and maintain a state of desperate poor.

The huge labor surplus that exists in the world today provides the fuel for this race to the bottom. This creates a situation where for competitive reasons many companies must meet the lowest labor price available at any given time in order to ensure their own survival. To prevent this, a floor must be built under these labor costs that over time will trend towards parity, not more and greater inequality.

If the rise in labor costs is shared by all producers, there is no competitive advantage to any. Therefore, a new trade and development policy must, to the degree possible, tend and trend to equalize labor costs internationally so that companies are no longer required to shop for the poorest and most desperate workers in order to maintain the viability of their business.

For all of the reasons above, from the international businesses point of view, a new development and trade paradigm must be only one thing

  • Simple, fair and internationally uniform

Sidney Eschenbach, 60, lives and works in Guatemala, Central America. His thoughts regarding developmental economics and trade are based on decades of development work in Latin America at various levels, community and corporate.

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Roberts: The US Is a Bankrupt Superpower

Posted on November 14, 2008 by RagBlog


Crisis Is Beyond The Reach of Traditional Solutions
By Paul Craig Roberts / November 13, 2008

By most accounts the US economy is in serious trouble. Robert Reich, an adviser to President-elect Obama, calls it a “mini-depression,” and that designation might be optimistic. The Russian economist, Mikhail Khazin says that the “U.S. will soon face a second ‘Great Depression.’” It is possible that even Khazin is optimistic.

I cannot predict the future. However, I can explain what the problems are, how they differ from past times of troubles, and why traditional remedies, such as the public works programs that Reich proposes, are unlikely to succeed in reviving the U.S. economy.

Khazin points out, as have others such as University of Maryland economist Herman Daly and myself, that consumer debt expansion is the fuel that kept the U.S. economy alive. The growth of debt has outstripped the growth of income to such an extent that an increase in consumer credit and bank lending is not possible. Consumers are overburdened with debt. This fact takes monetary policy out of the picture. Americans can no longer afford to borrow more in order to consume more.

This leaves economists with fiscal policy, which, as Reich realizes, also has problems. Reich is correct that neither a reduction in marginal tax rates nor a tax rebate is likely to be very effective. Reich, a Keynesian, has an uncertain grasp of supply-side economics, but as one who has a firm grasp, I can attest that marginal tax rates today are not the stifling influence they were prior to John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. As Art Laffer said, there are two tax rates, high and low, that will produce the same tax revenues by expanding or contracting economic activity. Marginal tax rates are no longer in the higher ranges. As for a tax rebate, Reich is correct that in the present situation a tax rebate would be dissipated in paying off creditors.

Reich sees the problem as a lack of aggregate demand sufficient to maintain full employment. His solution is for the government to spend “a lot” more on infrastructure projects on top of a trillion dollar budget deficit –”repairing roads and bridges, levees and ports; investing in light rail, electrical grids, new sources of energy.” This spending would boost employment, wages, and aggregate demand.

I have no opposition to infrastructure projects, but who will finance the baseline trillion dollar US budget deficit plus the additional red ink spending on infrastructure? Not Americans. The US savings rate is zero or negative. Home mortgage foreclosures are in the millions. Officially, US unemployment is 10 million, but if measured by pre-Clinton era standards unemployment is much higher. Statistician John Williams, who measures the unemployment rate by the pre-Clinton standards concludes that the rate of US unemployment is about 15 percent. President Clinton “reformed” the unemployment statistics by ceasing to count discouraged workers as unemployed.

For years, the US government’s budget has been dependent on foreigners financing the red ink. Countries such as Japan and China and OPEC suppliers of oil to the US have huge export surpluses with the US. They recycle the dollars by buying US Treasury bonds, thus financing the US government’s red ink budgets.

The open question is: how much longer will they do so?

Foreign portfolios are overweighed in dollar assets. Currently the dollar’s value is benefitting from the financial crisis, as investors flee to the reserve currency. However, sooner or later the huge outpourings of dollar debts will cause foreign creditors to draw back. Already China, America’s largest creditor, has sent a signal that that time might be drawing near. Recently the Chinese government asked, as they do indirectly through third parties, “Why should China help the US to issue debt without end in the belief that the national credit of the US can expand without limit?”

Is the rest of the world, which has demanded a financial summit to work toward a new financial order, going to permanently allocate the world’s supply of capital to covering American mistakes?

If not, the bailout and the stimulus package will have to be financed by printing money.

And the bailout needs are growing. Car loans and credit card debt were also securitized and sold. As the economy worsens, credit card and car loan defaults are rising. Moreover, AIG needs more money from the government. Fannie Mae’s loss has widened to $29 billion despite the $200 billion bailout. General Motors and Ford need taxpayer money to survive. General Motors says that its GMAÇ mortgage unit “may not survive.” Deutsche Bank sees General Motors shares “as likely worthless.”

Shades of the Weimar Republic.

What Reich and the American economic establishment do not understand is that the recession paradigm does not apply. There are no jobs waiting at US manufacturers for a demand stimulus to pull Americans back into work. The problem is not a liquidity problem. To the contrary, there have been many years of too much liquidity. Credit has grown far more than production. Indeed, US production has been moved offshore. Jobs that used to support the growth of American incomes and the tax bases of cities and states have moved, along with US GDP, to China and elsewhere.

The work is gone. All that are left are credit card and mortgage debts.

Anyone who thinks that America still has a vibrant economy needs to log onto www.EconomyInCrisis.org and face the facts.

Economists associate economic depression with price deflation. However, traditionally, debts that are beyond an economy’s ability to service are inflated away. This suggests that the coming depression will be an inflationary depression. Instead of falling prices mitigating the effects of falling employment, higher prices will go hand in hand with rising unemployment–a situation worse than the Great Depression.

The incompetent Clinton and Dubya administrations, unregulated banksters and Wall St criminals, greedy CEOs, and a no-think economics profession have destroyed America’s economy.

What is the remedy for simultaneous inflation and unemployment?

Three decades ago the solution was supply-side economics. Easy monetary policy had pushed up consumer demand, but high tax rates had curtailed output. It was more profitable for firms to allow prices to rise than for them to invest and increase output.

Supply-side economics changed the policy mix. Monetary policy was tightened and marginal tax rates were reduced, thus stimulating output instead of inflation.

Today the problem is different. The US has abused the reserve currency role, thus endangering its credit worthiness and the exchange value of the dollar. Jobs have moved offshore. The budget deficit is huge and growing. If foreigners will not finance the widening gap, the printing presses will be employed or the government will not be able to pay its bills.

The bailout funds have been wasted. The expensive bailout does not address the problem of falling employment and rising mortgage defaults. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson could not see beyond saving Goldman Sachs and his bankster friends. The Paulson bailout does nothing except take troubled assets off banks’ books and put them on the overburdened taxpayers’ books, thus endangering the US Treasury’s credit rating.

What the Bush Regime has done is to stick the taxpayers with the banks’ mistakes. An intelligent government would have used the money to refinance the troubled mortgages and stop the defaults. By saving the mortgages from default, the banks’ balance sheets would have been made secure. By failing to deal with the subprime crisis, Bush and Congress have added a financial crisis to the exhaustion of consumer demand and the problems of financing huge trade and budget deficits.

Belatedly, Paulson has realized his mistake. On November 12, Paulson announced, “We have continued to examine the relative benefits of purchasing illiquid mortgage-related assets. Our assessment at this time is that this is not the most effective way to use [bailout] funds.”

The financial crisis has cost taxpayers far more than the amount of the bailout. Americans’ savings and pension funds have been devastated. Americans in investment partnerships, who have been required by IRS rules to pay income taxes on gains in the partnerships’ portfolios, have had the accumulated multi-year gains wiped out. They have paid taxes on years of “capital gains” that have disappeared, thus doubling their losses.

America’s economic troubles will rapidly accumulate if the dollar loses its reserve currency role. To protect the dollar and the Treasury’s credit standing, the US needs to curtail its foreign borrowing by reducing its budget deficit. It can do this by halting its gratuitous wars and slashing its unnecessary military spending which exceeds that of the rest of the world combined. The empire has run out of resources, and the 700 overseas bases must be closed.

Can Americans afford massive infrastructure spending when they cannot afford health care? In Florida a Blue Cross Blue Shield group policy for a 60-year old woman costs $14,100 annually, and this is a policy with deductibles and co-payments. Supplementary policies from AARP to fill some of the gaps in Medicare can cost retirees $3,300 annually. When one looks at the economic situation of the vast majority of Americans, it is astonishing that the Bush regime regards wars in the Middle East and taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street criminals as a good use of scarce resources.

US corporations, which have moved their production for US markets offshore in order to drive up their share prices and provide their CEOs with multi-million dollar bonuses, can be provided with a different set of incentives that encourage the corporations to bring employment back to the US. For example, the corporate income tax can be restructured to tax corporations according to the value-added in the US. The higher the value-added in the US, the lower the tax rate; the lower the value-added, the higher the tax rate.

Cutting the budget deficit by halting pointless wars and unnecessary military spending and reducing the trade deficit by bringing jobs back to America are simple tasks compared to confronting inflationary depression.

The world has had enough of American irresponsibility and is taking away the reins. At the November 15 economic summit, the world will begin the process of imposing a new financial order on the US in exchange for continued lending to the bankrupt “superpower.” With bailouts eating up the world’s supply of capital, continued foreign financing for Washington’s wars of aggression is out of the picture.

Source / Information Clearing House

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