What Brought the West to the Table
By Kaveh L. Afrasiabi | Iran Review | May 20, 2014
There is a widespread Western fallacy that “sanctions brought Iran to the table,” which serves to legitimize the unjust regime of sanctions imposed by the Western governments, who rationalize their action by claiming to be the “injured parties” under international law, with respect to Iran’s alleged “non-compliance” with its international obligations.
The problem with this perspective that has acquired the status of a self-evident truth in the Western media is that it adopts the rhetoric of Western governments at face value, without the slightest inquiry on what caused the US and other Western governments involved in the nuclear negotiations with Iran to also ‘come to the table,’ that is, make reciprocal concessions?
The answer to the above question is three-fold. First, the idea that the Iran sanctions have caused little or no pressure on the Western countries is, of course, suspect and can be easily debunked. On the contrary, it can be shown that the whole edifice of sanctions regime was experiencing growing pressures and the Geneva agreement reflected a break not only for Iran but also the very sanctioning regimes, above all the US and European Union (EU).
To elaborate, given the fact that Iran’s nuclear progress had continued unabated despite the escalation of sanctions since 2006, the US was poised to pass new sanction laws targeting Iran’s oil sector, which if passed would have adversely affected US’s relations with some of its own trade partners such as India and China. In the absence of a deal in Geneva last November, the US lawmakers would have for sure enacted the new legislation, which would have instantly introduced new distortions in global trade, further violating the WTO norms on free trade. In other words, the Geneva agreement was a timely rescuer for the Western sanctioning states, avoiding a deterioration of their relations with Iran’s energy partners.
Second, by the time of Geneva agreement the unilateral European sanctions had come under increasing scrutiny by various courts in Europe, which had struck down a growing number of banks, trading companies, and individuals from the sanctions list. The significance of these adverse rulings, dreaded by the US officials who lobbied unsuccessfully to prevent them, was that it questioned the legality of some aspects of the EU sanctions that went far beyond the scope of UN sanctions on Iran, thus reflecting the irrefutable legal gap between UN and unilateral sanctions.
Third, in addition to the pressure of ‘market-distorting’ Western sanctions on the sanctioning powers, who deprived their own corporations from conducting profitable business with Iran, much to the delight of their Asian competitors, another important factor that ‘brought the West to the table’ was indeed the impressive pace of Iran’s nuclear progress. As a result of this steady progress, reflected in Iran’s ability to manufacture fuel rods for its medical reactor by enriching uranium up to 19.75%, i.e., the upper limit of low-enrichment, the West was suddenly jolted into the realization that Iran had reached a new nuclear milestone warranting serious negotiation.
Connected to this at the same time was the lessening value of the “military card” in West’s hands, in light of Iran’s construction of the underground facility known as Fordo, which is relatively immune from aerial bombardment, compared to the above-ground Natanz facility. This instantly jettisoned the “Osirak option,” that is the Israeli scenario of knocking down Iran’s facilities the way they did with ease against Iraq in 1981, thus adding to the futility of military threats against Iran. Needless to say, Iran’s counter-threat of closing the Hormuz and retaliating against any attacks throughout the region and beyond, i.e., the doctrine of extended deterrence, was an effective response that raised the potential cost of any military adventures against Iran. A good deal of this successful Iranian counter-strategy hinged on Iran’s extensive preparations for “asymmetrical warfare” and reliance on missile defense, given the impressive Iranian advances in missile technology.
Notwithstanding the above-said, it is hardly surprising that faced with Iran’s steady nuclear progress despite the sanctions that had harmful effects on the Western economy and entailed exorbitant monitoring costs, the West agreed to climb down its maximalist demands on “zero centrifuges” and to tacitly recognize Iran’s right to a civilian fuel cycle.
Of course, this explanation does not preclude the argument that the escalation of sanctions adversely affected Iran’s economy and spurred the new government of Hassan Rouhani to prioritize the lifting of sanctions through good-faith and principled negotiations. As an “injured party” whose inalienable nuclear rights have been abridged by Western discrimination and punitive actions, Iran’s anti-sanctions quest is in line with the nation’s national interests. But, while so much attention has been paid to Iran’s motivation to ‘make a deal’ unfortunately so far little attention has been paid to the underlying reasons for the West to reciprocate Iran’s action and thus explore the feasibility of a “win-win” scenario.
In terms of the regional and global geostrategic context, there are undeniably a host of relevant factors such as the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from the region after a decade of costly intervention and the related concerns for stability ‘the day after’ their planned departure, i.e., issues of direct link to Iran’s role in regional stability. Altogether, the net of Western interest to deal with Iran and search for ‘common grounds’ has been expanding and, naturally, one must probe the various economic, political, and geostrategic interests and concerns of the Western governments led by the US in determining why these powers consented to an interim deal with Iran, which has triggered the current negotiations for a long-term agreement? Suffice to say that the Western media’s failure to pay attention to this side of equation fuels a Western misperception that focuses on Iran’s purported weaknesses due to the sanctions, without bothering to present a comprehensive picture that, as outlined above, presents a vastly different, and more complex, picture before us, with clear policy connotations.
Ismael Hossein-zadeh’s “Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis”
The Consequences of Parasitical Capitalism
Book review by Isaac Christiansen | CounterPunch | May 23, 2014
Ismael Hossein-zadeh has done a masterful job in explaining the causes of the 2007-08 financial collapse and in identifying what must be done in response. While there is a consensus that the main source of the 2008 financial collapse was the accumulation of too much toxic debt, there is little agreement on the factors that precipitated the buildup of all that unsustainable debt. Focusing on superficial descriptions or symptomatic factors such as deregulation, securitization, greed, and the like, mainstream economics falls way short of providing a satisfactory explanation for the collapse, or the ensuing long recession. Now comes a newly published book, Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis: Parasitic Finance Capital, which skillfully fills this theoretical void as it provides an alternative explanation of the 2008 financial collapse, of the ensuing long recession and of the neo-liberal austerity responses to it. Instead of simply blaming the “irrational behavior” of market players, as neo-liberals do, or lax public supervision, as Keynesians do, the study focuses on the core dynamics of capitalist development that not only created the financial bubble, but also fostered the “irrational behavior” of market players and subverted public policy.
Hossein-zadeh sets out in Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis to first demonstrate the origins of the crisis and the subsequent transfer of “tens of trillions” of dollars from the vast majority of society into the coffers of the financial speculators through the imposition of austerity cuts on the many for the benefit of the few; and secondly to examine potential societal responses to avoid the repetition of such crises in the future. To do this, he begins by examining the two most prominent explanations for the crisis: the neoliberal explanation, which claimed it was due to irrational market actors and/or intrusive government policies that interfered with the self-correcting market mechanism; and the Keynesian explanation, which explained the crisis as the result of excessive deregulation, “inappropriate” public policy and supply side strategies. The author skillfully exposes the weaknesses of both and offers a compelling and well grounded alternative explanation, as indicated in the book’s title.
The book is well written and is easily understood by those who may not have an extensive background in economic theory. At the same time, it provides keen insights that are essential to understanding the crisis for those who may be more experienced in the field. It is structured with the first five chapters devoted to understanding crises within advanced capitalism, particularly the role of finance capital in provoking them, while the final three chapters are dedicated to examining solutions. Moreover, the work is an essential heuristic tool for any and all who wish to show how and why advanced capitalist economies tend towards crisis and the role of finance capital as a catalyst of crisis. A more thorough examination of the work’s primary contributions follows below.
In Chapter one Hossein-zadeh explains that neoliberal conceptualizations suffer from a misplaced religious-like faith in the market mechanism that led the leading neoliberal/neoclassical economists to remain oblivious to the impending crash. Due to neoliberals’ blind faith in the income-expenditure (or supply-demand) circular flow model, their economic theory is impervious to the fact that contradictions can arise within the real sector itself as well as to the reality that contradictions can also arise between the financial and the real sector. This led the leading neoliberal/neoclassical economists like Ben Bernanke and the IMF financial gurus to predict continual expansion up through the very eve of the crisis, and later to offer mistaken remedies such as quantitative easing and more funds to the financial sector. The impact of these measures is that instead of preventing a new bubble from forming they put us well on the way to creating another one.
In chapter two Mr. Hossein-zadeh delves into the weaknesses of Keynesian explanations of the crisis, arguing that while they are not wrong to signal deregulation as part of the problem leading to this crisis, they naively believe that capitalism will allow itself to be regulated without pressure from the people, thereby ignoring the power relationship between capitalism and the state. Not surprisingly, Keynesians tend to be oblivious as to why their more sane-sounding prescriptions for increasing public demand (through the promotion of New Deal type economic programs) and curtailing the aggressive and irresponsible behavior of financial players through more regulation have not been followed. While their policy suggestions may prove effective under certain circumstances, Keynesians fail to see or acknowledge that profit can also be increased through more intense exploitation of workers, that is, through supply-side measures. Furthermore, while the New Deal reforms were beneficial for the extrication of the U.S. economy from the grips of the Great Depression, these were followed much more as a response to working-class pressure from below then as a deliberated response to the writings of Keynes. In addition, the long economic expansion that followed was also due to the specific global economic situation of vast amounts of capital destroyed in Europe leaving the U.S. without much competition for its exports.
Much of the weakness of Keynesian economic theory, like all neoclassical economics, is their rejection of the category of value, and thus any real understanding as to the origin of social wealth and class dynamics. The general weaknesses of neoclassical economics are covered expertly in chapter 3. This chapter examines the weaknesses in the neoclassical understanding of the relationship between industrial and finance capital. The neoclassical position traditionally argues that the latter is limited by the real expansion of the former, and thus remains oblivious to the possibility of a crisis forming in the financial sector and spreading to the real ‘productive’ sector. To understand the real developments, Hossein-zadeh convincingly argues, we need to turn to Karl Marx’s Volume III and look at what he termed ‘fictitious capital’, when Marx examined how value tended to be siphoned from the sector in which it was produced to the unproductive sectors of the economy in pursuit of speculative investment.
Chapter 4 looks at the historical growth of finance capital (whose share of GDP in 2008 was more than double its share on the eve of the Great Depression in 1929), the growth of speculative activities (derivative markets, credit-default swaps) and the role of private control of the money supply. Each one of these phenomena is analyzed here in their social impacts and class/political dynamics. Here the author (p76) demonstrates that the speculative activity of finance capital accelerates “accumulation of fictitious capital through asset price inflation” (often with the help of public funds that simultaneously act as insurance protecting the speculators from the potential consequences of their socially deleterious behavior), creating a bubble that eventually bursts—with the public left paying the debt for the now-devalued assets.
This chapter also demonstrates that the bailouts for the speculators and austerity for the many, which further increased the already sharp economic inequality, were not an economic necessity but a reflection of the power of finance capital over the state and the monetary authority. To this end, Hossein-zadeh reflects on the immense tax-breaks for the wealthy, gargantuan military spending and lucrative contracts for weapons producers that created ‘public’ debt as a pretext to slash necessary social programs. The chapter demonstrates that we live under an economic system where losses are socialized and profits are privatized.
In Chapter 5, Hossein-zadeh reflects on Marx’s understanding of parasitic finance capital, its place within labor theory of value, and its contribution to a better understanding of the causes behind the present economic crisis. In Vol. III of Capital Marx outlined how the surplus value produced in the industrial and agricultural sectors ends up being divided between the merchant (or commercial capital), finance capital (money lending capital) and ground rent (Marx [1894] 1981). Hossein-zadeh points out that, according to Marx, fluctuations of finance capital could take place independent “of the movement of the actual capital it represents” (p86, quoted in Hossein-zadeh); and that as capitalism develops the movement of money (finance) capital becomes more and more independent of the movement of industrial capital. This is critical for his argument that crisis can hit the speculative financial sector at a moment when there is not a crisis within the real sector, but that through the tightening of credit and asset price deflation spread the crisis from the speculative to the productive sector.
The author further argues in this chapter that contemporary Marxists, unlike Hilferding and Lenin who expanded in the early 20th century on Marx’s work on finance capital, have largely abandoned systematic explorations into the workings of finance capital (generally viewing it as secondary to their conception of a Marxian theory of crisis), and focused primarily on the movements within the productive sector. It is not that Hossein-zadeh disagrees in principle with the contemporary Marxist scholars about the potential for crisis to arise within the circuit of productive capital; but that many of these Marxists have overlooked the fact that crisis can and does at times start within the financial sector and proceeds to spread to the real sector. Many contemporary Marxist theoreticians and economists seem to argue, in an inconsistent or self-contradicting fashion that “asset price inflation can boost demand and cause or magnify an expanding real cycle; but debt and/or asset price deflation cannot cause or aggravate a real-sector recession!” (p107).
In Chapter 6 the author explores the historical record of debt cancellations/write-downs, dating back to Bronze Age Mesopotamia (2400-1400 BCE) and running through the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. Here he examines the evidence that suggests that not only were debt cancellation and land restitution/reform common practices in this epoch, but that they often led to economic renewal. While there are moral and ethical arguments that can easily be made in favor of the biblical Jubilee and debt cancellation in general, Hossein-zadeh goes beyond these points to argue that the historical record offers clear evidence that an economic recovery would not occur so long as the vast majority of the population is saddled with overwhelming debt and interest payments. The author further argues that the decline of these socially-beneficial practices coincided with the rise of private property and the growth of power of landowning and rentier classes, and that these classes exerted influence over the state/religious authorities to deemphasize these central aspects to the Old Testament’s socio-economic reforms.
In Chapter 7 the author makes the case for public banking. Here he underscores once again the pernicious role of private banking in advancing the interests of the wealthy few in general and finance capital in particular at the expense of the many. He argues that while private banks “create financial bubbles during expansionary cycles and credit crunch during contradictory ones”, public banking “can provide steady, reliable financial resources as dictated by a nation’s industrial and/or commercial needs”(p129). Crucial here is the superior economic record held by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries in weathering the 2008 financial collapse and the ensuing economic crisis. Contrary to a situation in which the state becomes beholden to creditors, when banks are nationalized the state has additional resources with which to engage in essential public projects that both serve a social purpose and stimulate demand. While acknowledging that public banking by itself is insufficient to prevent the recurrence of all economic crises, Hossein-zadeh successfully makes the case that this is a necessary first step to avert crises that originate within the financial sector.
In the final chapter, the author soundly argues that there are no shortcuts to superseding capitalism by solely nationalizing the banking system; and that we must move beyond capitalism itself, or else we would be subjected to the throes of its logic. Here he examines the role of labor as one of the key players in confronting capital. Sadly, as he points out in this chapter, many unions have become caught up in business unionism and have tragically become vehicles for transmitting the dictates of capital to the workers (as opposed to vice-versa!), and have been unable (or unwilling) to resist the generalized assault on labor in the form of layoffs, wage cuts and outsourcing.
A central explanation for the debilitation of unions offered here lies in capital’s global reach and the globalization of production. Capital has free global movement and is organized on an international level and thus is able to play off workers in various countries against each other in a race to the bottom in terms of worker safety, salaries, benefits, labor laws and environmental protections. Labor must therefore organize internationally so as to be able to effectively resist a globalized capitalist system. A key element of this strategy lies in resisting all forms of chauvinisms, and reactionary nationalisms that have at times infected the labor movement and can lead to what Edna Bonacich (1972) referred to as a split-labor market.
Dr. Hossein-zadeh in this chapter also looks at the limitations of the Occupy movement, arguing that while their heart was in the right place, Occupy activists had condemned themselves to be ineffective as a long-term force for change by refusing to adopt an organizational structure or outline specific demands. The author thus points us back to the critical role of labor to play in this regard, but that it is essential that they organize and coordinate globally, otherwise capital will be able to outmaneuver workers’ resistance and subject labor to its logic. In the end, Hossein-zadeh remains hopeful based on the seeds of international labor organizing that labor will be able to meet this challenge in the future and serve as a primary catalyst for meaningful socio-economic transformation. In summary, I recommend this book without reservation, as a critical component of the library of those who are not just concerned with understanding the dynamics of finance capital and its role in facilitating economic crisis, but to all those who are genuinely interested in bringing about a more socially just and equitable society.
Isaac Christiansen is a Ph.D Student in the Sociology Department at Iowa State University.
Works Cited
Bonacich, Edna. 1972. “A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split-Labor Market” American Sociological Review, 37:5 547-559.
Marx Karl. [1894] 1981. Capital Vol. III Penguin Books in Association with New Left Review. London WI.
FBI threatens to go after Russian hackers
RT | May 23, 2014
On the heels of a high-profile indictment announced earlier this week by the United States Department of Justice against five Chinese military officers, sources say Russian hackers could be among the next individuals targeted by the DOJ.
The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy magazine and the Chicago Tribune all reported this week that officials close to the US government’s hunt for foreign hackers say Russians are on the radar of the Justice Department, and could be named in the next DOJ indictment.
All three outlets hesitated to name their sources, but the Journal reported that people familiar with the government’s investigations said alleged cybercriminals in Russia are likely to be charged soon.
“For several years, the Obama administration has put Chinese and Russian cyber spies and criminals at the top of its list of worst offenders in what officials describe as a relentless campaign targeting American businesses for the benefit of those countries’ own industries,” Shane Harris wrote for FP. “Estimates on the true cost of cyber-espionage range widely, but are generally believe by experts and officials to be in the tens of billions of dollars annually.”
As Harris reported, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee this week that the FBI was aggressively pursuing further criminal investigations pertaining to foreign hacking cases, but fell short of announcing the filing of new charges. Now with Monday’s indictment out of the way and the US officially charging members of the Chinese military for the first time ever, however, multiple sources said that American authorities are gearing up to throw the book at Russian hackers.
Earlier this week, the Justice Dept. said that five Chinese individuals working within a highly-secretive cyber unit inside the People’s Liberation Army have stolen trade secrets and sensitive communications from six American entities, including major metal companies that compete with Chinese businesses and the US Steel Workers union.
“The range of trade secrets and other sensitive business information stolen in this case is significant and demands an aggressive response,” US Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement on Monday.
“This administration will not tolerate actions by any nation that seeks to illegally sabotage American companies and undermine the integrity of fair competition in the operation of the free market,” Holder added.
Nevertheless, the Chinese government fired back and accused the US of hypocrisy, and its Foreign Ministry demanded a withdrawal of the indictment and called the US “the biggest attacker of China’s cyberspace.” As RT reported earlier this week, leaked National Security Agency documents released by former US government contractor Edward Snowden have revealed that the US does, in fact, conduct economic cyberespionage in order to spy on competitors in Brazil, France, Mexico and, indeed, China. As with China, the Russian government has adamantly denied any involved in cyber spying, and claims to lack the same technical abilities as the NSA.
And although the Justice Dept. declined to name any other targets of investigation while touting their latest cyber indictment on Monday, reports for years have suggested that Russian hackers have targeted US businesses in a similar way to what China’s PLA Unit 61398 are accused of doing.
Most recently, American cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike reported in January that the Russian government spied on hundreds of US, European and Asian companies, which Reuters called the first time ever that Moscow has been linked to conduct economic espionage over the web.
“These attacks appear to have been motivated by the Russian government’s interest in helping its industry maintain competitiveness in key areas of national importance,” Dmitri Alperovitch, CrowdStrike’s chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, said to Reuters at the time.
“They are copying the Chinese play book,” he said. “Cyber espionage is very lucrative for economic benefit to a nation.”
In March, researchers in the US also traced a piece of malicious malware known as Turla back to Moscow.
“It is sophisticated malware that’s linked to other Russian exploits, uses encryption and targets western governments,” Jim Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Reuters then. “It has Russian paw prints all over it.”
The Chinese-Russian ‘Power of Siberia’ … thanks to EU, US foot-in-mouth
By Dmitry Babich | The BRICS Post | May 22, 2014
The Russian press is rarely unanimous in its opinions, but there are two points in today’s coverage of the Russia-China gas deal where all the experts agree.
First, it is not yet clear whether the new deal is a boon for Russia.
But it is certainly a huge failure for the US and the European Union, who lose out on Eastern Siberia’s gas.
Second, in light of the sharp deterioration of Russia’s relations with the West because of the mishandled Western-supported “revolution” in Ukraine, the deal with China now becomes a strategic necessity for Moscow.
The West’s hostile attitudes toward both Russia and China (during his Asia tour last month, US President Barack Obama sided 100 per cent with Japan and the Philippines in their maritime disputes with China), pushed Beijing and Moscow closer together.
The Russo-Chinese contract, which had been in the works for 10 years, was finalized at 4 O’clock in the morning on Wednesday, on the second day of the visit to Beijing by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It became a dramatic ending to several months of marathon negotiations.
The new contract is supposed to determine the next 30 years of Russo-Chinese cooperation in developing the Russian natural gas fields in Siberia (the eastern part of Russia) and the Russian Far East.
According to the words of Alexei Miller, the head of Russia’s largest gas company, Gazprom, the total cost of the contract is $400 billion.
The volume of gas to be delivered is estimated at a gargantuan amount of over 1 trillion cubic metres. Mr. Miller refused to reveal the price tag, as it is usually done after signing these sorts of deals.
He simply said it was a “commercial secret” for the moment.
“The Force of Siberia”
Nevertheless, most experts agree that Russia has been lucky to sign the deal.
The competition among countries willing to supply energy to China is very intense.
In the ten years that have passed since the start of Russo-Chinese negotiations on the deal, Beijing managed to sign contracts with several Central Asian states, including Turkmenistan, a country boasting gas deposits second only to Russia’s in the former Soviet Union.
Experts estimate an average price of $387 per thousand cubic metres for the 38 billion cubic meters of gas Russia is going to supply to China in the first years of deliveries beginning in 2018.
The deliveries will start once the construction of the pipeline nicknamed “The Force of Siberia” has been completed.
The pipeline is supposed to connect the Russian gas reserves in Eastern and possibly (in future) Western Siberia with the Chinese border.
The project will require investments, which both Russia and China agreed to provide.
The Russian participation is estimated at $55 billion and the Chinese are expected to add $22 billion.
Alexander Birman, a journalist specializing in energy issues, writes in the respected Russian daily Izvestia that the Chinese leader Xi Jinping showed a certain nicety to his Russian counterpart, since he did not pressure Moscow given its deteriorated ties with the EU and US.
“If the West had started applying the so called “sector-geared” economic sanctions, targeting Russia’s energy companies – if such sanctions had been applied, even the price of $350 [per thousand cubic metres of gas] would look good to Gazprom [Russia’s leading energy provider],” he writes of the gas deal.
However, Birman notes that the current standoff between Russia and the West is hurting first and foremost the West’s long-term interests.
(This standoff was made possible by the coup d’etat in Ukraine at the end of February when the legally elected president Viktor Yanukovich was toppled by crowds of pro-Western protesters in the Ukrainian capital Kiev.)
“Having assured for itself the supply of cheap energy, China will reaffirm its position as the world’s most competitive cost-cutting workshop,” Birman writes.
Obama, the pro-Russian lobbyist?
For Russia, diversifying the directions of its gas supplies has become a vital necessity.
The gas deal opens a market corridor for Gazprom to potentially access Asian super guzzlers Japan and South Korea, and allow it to become a player in the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) sector.
This is particularly poignant when considering that EU ministers day and night publicize how they want to decrease their “energy dependence” on Russia.
The Soviet Union and Russia have maintained a good reputation with the West since they began supplying gas to Western Europe in the 1960s.
There was a ‘pause’ only once in the winter of 2008-2009, when the Ukrainian authorities stole the Russian gas destined for Western Europe.
Despite this reputation, however, EU member countries make no secret of their preference for gas from Qatar, Algeria, Norway or even the US, where fracking technology has led to a surplus of gas at the domestic market.
“Politically, the Russo-Chinese contract is a success,” says Grigory Vygon, the Director of the Energy Center of the prestigious Skolkovo Business School, near Moscow.
“The Ukrainian risks and the position of Europe make diversification a vital necessity.”
One could add that Obama revealed himself (inadvertently) to be the best lobbyist for Russo-Chinese rapprochement during his recent visits to countries having territorial disputes with China.
By directly supporting the “revolution” in Kiev and by lending support to all of China’s challengers in the South China Sea and East China Sea, Obama helped Moscow and Beijing to bridge during their intense negotiations the gap in desired prices for their mammoth deal.
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Dmitry Babich is a senior journalist based in Moscow who has worked with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, Moscow News and Ria Novosti. He is currently a political analyst for Voice of Russia.
Capitalists, Technocrats and Fanatics: The Ascent of a New Power Bloc
By James Petras :: 05.21.2014
Introduction
The sweeping electoral victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India is the latest expression of the world-wide advance of a new power bloc which promises to impose a New World Order harnessing ethno-religious fanaticism and narrowly trained technocrats to capitalist absolutism.
The far-right is no longer at the margins of western political discourse. It is center-stage. It is no longer dependent on contributions by local militants; it receives financing from the biggest global corporations. It is no longer dismissed by the mass media. It receives feature coverage, highlighting its ‘dynamic and transformative’ leadership.
Today capitalists everywhere confront great uncertainty, as markets crash and endemic corruption at the highest levels erode competitive markets. Throughout the world, large majorities of the labor force question, challenge and resist the massive transfers of public wealth to an ever reduced oligarchy. Electoral politics no longer define the context for political opposition.
Capitalism, neither in theory nor practice, advances through reason and prosperity. It relies on executive fiats, media manipulation and arbitrary police state intrusions. It increasingly relies on death squads dubbed “Special Forces” and a ‘reserve army’ of para-military fanatics.
The new power bloc is the merger of big business, the wealthy professional classes, upwardly mobile, elite trained technocrats and cadres of ethno-religious fanatics who mobilize the masses.
Capitalism and imperialism advances by uprooting millions, destroying local communities and economies, undermining local trade and production, exploiting labor and repressing social solidarity. Everywhere it erodes community and class solidarity.
Ethno-Religious Fanatics and Elite Technocrats
Today capitalism depends on two seemingly disparate forces. The irrational appeal of ethno-religious supremacists and narrowly trained elite technocrats to advance the rule of capital. Ethno-religious fanatics seek to promote bonds between the corporate-warlord elite and the masses, by appealing to their ‘common’ religious ethnic identities.
The technocrats serve the elite by developing the information systems, formulating the images and messages deceiving and manipulating the masses and designing their economic programs.
The political leaders meet with the corporate elite and warlords to set the political-economic agenda, deciding when to rely on the technocrats and when to moderate or unleash the ethno-religious fanatics.
Imperialism operates via the marriage of science and ethno-religious fanaticism- and both are harnessed to capitalist domination and exploitation.
India: Billionaires, Hindu Fascists and IT “Savants”
The election of Narendra Modi, leader of the BJP and long-time member of the Hindu fascist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) para-military organization was based on three essential components:
(1) Multi-billion rupee funding from corporate India at home and abroad.
(2) Thousands of upwardly mobile IT technocrats mounting a massive propaganda campaign.
(3) Hundreds of thousands of RSS activists spreading the “Hindutva” racist doctrine among millions of villagers.
The Modi regime promises his capitalist backers that he will “open India”– namely end the land reserves of the tribes, convert farmland to industrial parks, deregulate labor and environmental controls.
To the Brahmin elite he promises to end compensatory quotas for lower castes, the untouchables, the minorities and Muslims. For the Hindu fascists he promises more temples. For foreign capitalists he promises entry into all formerly protected economic sectors. For the US, Modi promises closer working relations against China, Russia and Iran… The BJP’s ethno-religious Hindu fanaticism resonates with Israel’s notion of a “pure”Jewish state. Modi and Netanyahu have longstanding ties and promise close working relations based on similar ethno-racist doctrines.
Turkey: The Transition to Islamic-Capitalist Authoritarianism
Turkey under the rule of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party has moved decisively toward one-man rule: linking Islam to big capital and police state repression. Erdogan’s ‘triple alliance’ is intent on unleashing mega-capitalist projects, based on the privatization of public spaces and the dispossession of popular neighborhoods. He opened the door to unregulated privatization of mines, communications, banks – leading to exponential growth of profits and the decline of employment security and a rising toll of worker deaths. Erdogan has shed the mask of ‘moderate Islam’ and embraced the jihadist mercenaries invading Syria and legislation expanding religious prerogatives in secular life. Erdogan has launched massive purges of journalists, public officials, civil servants, judges and military officers. He has replaced them with ‘party loyalists’; Erdogan fanatics!
Erdogan has recruited a small army of technocrats who design his mega projects and provide the political infrastructure and programs for his electoral campaigns. Technocrats provide a development agenda that accommodates the foreign and domestic crony corporate elite.
The Anatolian Islamists, small and medium provincial business elite, form the mass base – mobilizing voters, by appealing to chauvinist and ethnocentric beliefs. Erdogan’s repressive, Islamist, capitalist regime’s embrace of the “free market” has been sharply challenged especially in light of the worst mining massacre in Turkish history: the killing of over 300 miners due to corporate negligence and regime complicity. Class polarization threatens the advance of Turkish fascism.
Israel and the “Jewish State”: Billionaires , Ethno-Religious Fanatics and Technocrats
Israel, according to its influential promoters in the US, is a ‘model democracy’. The public pronouncements and the actions of its leaders thoroughly refute that notion. The driving force of Israeli politics is the idea of dispossessing and expelling all Palestinians and converting Israel into a ‘pure’ Jewish state. For decades Israel, funded and colonized by the diaspora, have violently seized Palestinian lands, dispossessed millions and are in the process of Judaizing what remains of the remnant in the “Occupied Territories”.
The Israeli economy is dominated by billionaires. Its “society” is permeated by a highly militarized state. Its highly educated technocrats serve the military-industrial and ethno-religious elite. Big business shares power with both.
High tech Israeli’s apply their knowledge to furthering the high growth, military industrial complex. Medical specialists participate in testing the endurance of Palestinian prisoners undergoing torture (“interrogation”). Highly trained psychologists engage in psych-warfare to gain collaborators among vulnerable Palestinian families. Economists and political scientists, with advanced degrees from prestigious US and British universities (and ‘dual citizenship’) formulate policies furthering the land grabs of neo-fascist settlers. Israel’s best known novelist, Amos Oz condemned the neo-fascist settlers who defecate on the embers of burnt-out mosques.
Billionaire real estate moguls bid up house prices and rents “forcing” many “progressive” Israelies, who occasionally protest, to take the easy road of moving into apartments built on land illegally and violently seized from dispossessed Palestinians. ‘Progressives’ join neo-fascist vigilantes in common colonial settlements. Prestigious urbanologists further the goals of crude ethno-racist political leaders by designing new housing in Occupied Lands. Prominent social scientists trade on their US education to promote Mid-East wars designed by vulgar warlords. Building the Euro American Empire: Riff-Raff of the World Unite!
Empire building is a dirty business. And while the political leaders directing it, feign respectability and are adept at rolling out the moral platitudes and high purposes, the ‘combatants’ they employ are a most unsavory lot of armed thugs, journalistic verbal assassins and highly respected international jurists who prey on victims and exonerate imperial criminals.
In recent years Euro-American warlords have employed “the scum of the slaughterhouse” to destroy political adversaries in Libya, Syria and the Ukraine.
In Libya lacking any semblance of a respectable middle-class democratic proxy, the Euro-American empire builders armed and financed murderous tribal bands, notorious jihadist terrorists, contrabandist groups, arms and drug smugglers. The Euro-Americans counted on a pocketful of educated stooges holed up in London to subdue the thugs, privatize Libya’s oil fields and convert the country into a recruiting ground and launch pad for exporting armed mercenaries for other imperial missions.
The Libyan riff-raff were not satisfied with a paycheck and facile dismissal: they murdered their US paymaster, chased the technocrats back to Europe and set-up rival fiefdoms. Gadhafi was murdered, but so went Libya as a modern viable state. The arranged marriage of Euro-American empire builders, western educated technocrats and the armed riff-raff was never consummated. In the end the entire imperial venture ended up as a petty squabble in the American Congress over who was responsible for the murder of the US Ambassador in Benghazi.
The Euro-American-Saudi proxy war against Syria follows the Libyan script. Thousands of Islamic fundamentalists are financed, armed, trained and transported from bases in Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Libya to violently overthrow the Bashar Assad government in Syria. The world’s most retrograde fundamentalists travel to the Euro-American training bases in Jordan and Turkey and then proceed to invade Syria, seizing towns, executing thousands of alleged ‘regime loyalists’ and planting car bombs in densely populated city centers.
The fundamentalist influx soon overwhelmed the London based liberals and their armed groups.
The jihadist terrorists fragmented into warring groups fighting over the Syrian oil fields. Hundreds were killed and thousands fled to Government controlled regions. Euro-US strategists, having lost their original liberal mercenaries, turned toward one or another of the fundamentalist groups. No longer in control of the ‘politics’ of the terrorists, Euro-US strategists sought to inflect the maximum destruction on Syrian society. Rejecting a negotiated settlement, the Euro-US strategists turned their backs on the internal political opposition challenging Assad via presidential elections.
In the Ukraine, the Euro-Americans backed a junta of servile neo-liberal technocrats, oligarchical kleptocrats and neo-Nazis, dubbed Svoboda and the Right Sector. The latter were the “shock troops” to overthrow the elected government, massacre the federalist democrats in Odessa and the eastern Ukraine, and back the junta appointed oligarchs serving as “governors”.
The entire western mass media white-washed the savage assaults carried out by the neo-Nazis in propping up the Kiev junta. The powerful presence of the neo-fascists in key ministries, their strategic role as front line fighters attacking eastern cities controlled by pro-democracy militants, establishes them as central actors in converting the Ukraine into a military outpost of NATO.
Euro-America Empire Building and the Role of Riff-Raff
Everywhere the Euro-American imperialists choose to expand – they rely on the ‘scum of the earth’: tribal gangs in Libya, fundamentalist terrorists in Syria, neo-Nazis in the Ukraine.
Is it by choice or necessity? Clearly few consequential democrats would lend themselves to the predatory and destructive assaults on existing regimes which Euro-US strategists design. In the course of imperial wars, the local producers, workers, ordinary citizens would “self-destroy”, whatever the outcome. Hence the empire builders look toward ‘marginal groups’, those with no stake in society or economy. Those alienated from any primary or secondary groups. Footloose fundamentalists fit that bill – provided they are paid, armed and allowed to carry their own ideological baggage. Neo-Nazis hostile to democracy have no qualms about serving empire builders who share their ideological hostility to democrats, socialists, federalists and culturally ‘diverse’ societies and states. So they are targeted for recruitment by the empire builders.
The riff-raff consider themselves ‘strategic allies’ of the Euro-American empire builders. The latter, however, have no strategic allies – only strategic interests. Their tactical alliances with the riff-raff endure until they secure control over the state and eliminate their adversaries. Then the imperialists seek to demote, co-opt, marginalize or eliminate their ‘inconvenient’ riff-raff allies. The falling out comes about when the fundamentalists and neo-Nazis seek to restrict capital, especially foreign capital and impose restrictions on imperial control over resources and territory. At first the empire builders seek ‘opportunists’ among the riff-raff, those willing to sacrifice their ‘ideals’ for money and office. Those who refuse are relegated to secondary positions distant from strategic decision-making or to remote outposts. Those who resist are assassinated or jailed. The disposal of the riff-raff serves the empire on two counts. It provides the client regime with a fig leaf of respectability and disarms western critics targeting the extremist component of the junta.
The riff-raff, however, with arms, fighting experience and financing, in the course of struggle, gains confidence in its own power. They do not easily submit to Euro-US strategies. They also have ‘strategic plans’ of their own, in which they seek political power to further their ideological agenda and enrich their followers.
The riff-raff, want to ‘transition’ from shock troops of empire into rulers in their own right. Hence the assaults on the US embassy in Libya, the assassination of Euro-American proxies in Syria, Right Sector riots against the Kiev junta.
Conclusion
A new power bloc is emerging on a global scale. It is already flexing its muscles. It has come to power in India, Turkey, Ukraine and Israel. It brings together big business, technocrats and ethno-religious fascists. They promote unrestrained capitalist expansion in association with Euro-American imperialism.
Scientists, economists, and IT specialists design the programs and plans to realize the profits of local and foreign capitalists. The ethno-fascists mobilize the ‘masses’ to attack minorities and class organizations threatening high rates of returns.
The Euro-Americans contribute to this ‘new power bloc’ by promoting their own ‘troika’ made up of ‘neo-liberal clients’, fundamentalists and neo-Nazis to overthrow nationalist adversaries. The advance of imperialism and capitalism in the 21st century is based on the harnessing of the most advanced technology and up-to-date media outlets with the most retrograde political and social leaders and ideologies.
How the Iran Nuclear Deal May Impact Iran’s Approach in OPEC
Going to Tehran | May 19th, 2014
How the Iran Nuclear Deal May Impact Iran’s Approach in OPEC
by Erfan Ghassempour
Iran is thinking seriously about how to put its crude oil back on the market, and—following the November 2013 Geneva interim agreement on Iran’s nuclear program—is planning for a future when sanctions no longer hamper its oil industry. The country is changing its contracts for the exploration, development, and production of its oil and gas resources to tempt major international oil companies to return to its petroleum sector. Iran’s Petroleum Minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, has expressly invited seven oil giants to invest in Iran after sanctions are lifted.
Iranian ambitions are also reflected in Tehran’s approach to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). At the most recent OPEC meeting, held in December 2013—in the wake of the Geneva nuclear deal—Zanganeh made a powerful impression, warning other members to make room for Iranian crude. One way or another, he declared, Iran plans to increase its oil output to four million barrels per day (bpd), even if prices decrease to twenty dollars per barrel. (Some analysts think that the highest output Iran could achieve in the near-to-medium term after the lifting of sanctions would be 3-3.5 million bpd—but even that would mean a significant increase in Iranian oil exports, which, according to Zanganeh, are now at 1.5 million bpd.)
Iran’s reemergence on the international oil scene comes at a time when developments in other OPEC member states are increasing the likelihood of an appreciable rise in Middle Eastern oil production—e.g., Iraq’s security is improving, and strikes and rebel attacks seem to be ebbing in Libya. Zanganeh argues that, even in this context, Iran’s return to the oil market should have no negative impact on prices. As he told the OPEC Bulletin, over the years other OPEC members had “gone out of the market” for some time, “but when they returned to the market, OPEC knew how to deal with the situation—to create room to maintain the extra capacity, so that these countries can have a good return and for it not to have a bad impact on prices.”
At least on the surface, other OPEC players responded positively to Zanganeh’s message. OPEC’s secretary general, Abdalla el-Badri, welcomed Iran’s return to the market, denying any concern at this prospect. Even Iran’s biggest political and oil rival, in the region, Saudi Arabia (the biggest oil producer in OPEC), welcomed an increase in Iranian production. Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister, Ali Naimi, told reporters that he did not see a price war on the horizon: “They are welcome, everyone is welcome to put in the market what they can; the market is big and has many variables—when one comes in, another comes out.” Mr. Naimi also stated, “I hope Iran comes back [and] produces all it can.”
Iran is also stepping up its cooperation with Iraq on oil issues. At the December 2013 OPEC meeting, Iraq vigorously defended Iran’s plans to raise oil production, while also making clear that Iraq would remain outside OPEC’s quota system and that other members should decrease their production, if necessary, to make room for both Iran and Iraq. (Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister for Energy, Hussein al-Shahristani, has announced that his country intends to increase its oil output to nine million bpd by 2020, partly through cooperation with Iran.) Recently, Iraq has been helping Iran to develop new contracts to attract more foreign investment to its oil sector. Baghdad and Tehran have also established a committee to oversee the joint exploitation of fields lying astride the Iranian-Iraqi border. Some analysts think that the two countries are drawing closer to maximize their relative power and influence—on oil-related issues as well as on strategic and political matters—vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia.
As the six-month deadline for the Geneva interim deal approaches, Iran’s determination to produce more crude becomes stronger. If a permanent nuclear deal is reached at the end of six months (that is, on or around July 20), it would mean that sanctions will be lifted and Iran will renew its upstream and downstream activities.
So far, the interim deal has been well implemented. The International Atomic Energy Agency affirms that Iran is fulfilling its commitments; the West has returned some of the Iranian funds that have been frozen in Western banks and has eased some sanctions. None of the parties has been motivated to breach the interim agreement. On the Iranian side, the political and economic atmosphere in Iran suggests that Iranian officials are willing to continue this approach; Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei has publicly expressed his support for the ongoing nuclear negotiations. On the American side, while some political factions in the United States want President Obama to increase pressure on Iran, this seems more a matter of political posturing than serious action. At this point, there is little appetite in the United States for torpedoing nuclear diplomacy with Iran.
Iran knows that any improvement in its oil industry is dependent on the nuclear talks. As the negotiations progress, Iranian officials are playing a bolder role in the region and in international organizations to which Iran belongs. At the next OPEC meeting in June, Zanganeh is likely to take an even tougher approach than at the previous meeting in December. It seems that other OPEC states are progressively accepting the inevitability of Iran’s return to the international oil scene.
There are two ways in which OPEC can handle prospective increases in Iranian, Iraqi, and Libyan output: other members—especially Saudi Arabia—can decrease production to make room for increased production by others, or the organization can raise its current 30 million bpd production ceiling. Politically as well as economically, much will hinge on what OPEC decides.
Kiev liable for crisis in eastern Ukraine: Analyst
Press TV – May 20, 2014
The Kiev government is actually responsible for the ongoing crisis in eastern Ukraine, a political analyst tells Press TV.
“We can blame the military operation launched by Kiev and this is not just a military operation. It’s not just used military forces of the Ukrainian army; it has also used militias, irregular troops, terrorist units, simple violent hooligans,” Manuel Ochsenreiter, chief editor of news magazine, Zuerst, said in an interview with Press TV on Tuesday.
He held the Kiev government and not Donetsk and Lugansk or even Moscow accountable for the ongoing crisis.
The acting Kiev government has been staging military operations in the eastern and southern regions since mid-April in a bid to root out pro-Moscow demonstrations.
Nearly 130 people have so far been killed during clashes and operations by Ukrainian troops in the east and the south, according to figures from the United Nations.
The commentator further emphasized that the recent referendum in Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk is not responsible for the humanitarian situation as it did not take the social services from the country.
He added that an election or referendum has never changed the direct humanitarian situation of the people on the ground in any time of history, noting that Kiev and the West are likely to use it as an excuse.
“It’s a very cynical interpretation of the situation to say, well, you wanted to be independent, now take starve, don’t find a doctor, now don’t get medicine,” the analyst pointed out.
On May 12, Ukraine’s two eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk declared independence following local referendums in which the regions’ residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Kiev.
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Sanctions ‘sharp knife’ to business in Europe and America – Medvedev
RT | May 20, 2014
Economic sanctions against Russia will only bring the world closer to another Cold War, which is counterproductive and most of all hurts business in Europe and America, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
“Let’s be honest, the sanctions are a sharp knife; European business and American business don’t need them either. The only ones who want sanctions are politicians,” the Prime Minister said in the interview aired May 20.
“Basically we are slowly but surely approaching a second Cold War that nobody needs,” Medvedev said, as he says Russia prefers not to politicize trade and economic sanctions.
The Prime Minister said the degeneration of US-Russia relations were reminiscent of Soviet times during the Cuban missile crisis of Afghanistan war. The US launched sanctions against Russian politicians, which only further exacerbated diplomatic relations.
“You know to put it simply no one is happy about sanctions since they are always a sign of tense relations. We do not support sanctions. Moreover, you may have noticed that we have not commented on them a great deal or responded to them harshly, although we probably could cause some unpleasantness with the countries that are imposing those sanctions, but it’s bad for international economic relations, relations with Europe and the United States. It’s just bad,” Medvedev said.
The US and the EU have tightened sanctions against Russia, but Moscow maintains they are an outdated practice that will only backfire and hurt business and industry on all sides.
“The sanctions have not had a significant effect on us. That doesn’t mean that we are happy about them. Again, sanctions are a dead-end, and, in fact, everyone understands this – everyone, including businesses in Europe and America,” said Medvedev.
The US expanded its sanctions on April 28, which were shortly followed by a copy-paste EU version. All together, the sanctions target dozens of Russian politicians deemed critical in reuniting Crimea with Russia, 6 businessmen believed to be close to Putin’s inner circle, 3 banks and 17 companies.
Retaliatory sanctions
Moscow doesn’t rule out a set of counter sanctions to protect the Russian economy.
“Of course, there is a plan of action depending on how the situation will develop,” Medvedev said.
Retaliatory measures would be reciprocal and similar to those of the West.
“If we talk of a worst case scenario, despite the fact that we object to any sanctions, our package of retaliatory measures not only includes the measures towards a gradual improvement of the situation in our economy, but also measures that might target certain states,” the Prime Minister said.
Medvedev, who himself was responsible for the so-called reset between the US and Russia, said that he was disappointed in President Obama’s politics and that he could have acted with more political finesse.
“Once a new administration comes to power in the United States and a new president takes office after Obama, these sanctions will be forgotten. In the end, nobody stands to win,” Medvedev said.
In the same interview Prime Minister Medvedev discussed the landmark gas deal due to be signed on Tuesday by Gazprom CEO Aleksey Miller and his CNPC counterpart Zhou Jiping in Shanghai.
Study: Growth in US student debt linked to pay for university presidents
Press TV – May 19, 2014
American public universities with the highest-paid presidents also have the highest increase in both student debt and the use of low-wage, part-time professors, according to a new study.
The study, conducted by the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning Washington research group, examined the relationship between executive pay, student debt and low-wage faculty labor at 25 public universities with the highest-paid presidents.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, executive pay at “the top 25” has risen dramatically to far exceed pre-recession levels, the study found. Over the same period, low-wage faculty labor and student debt at these colleges rose faster than national averages.
“Like executives in the corporate and banking sectors, public university presidents weathered the immediate aftermath of the fall 2008 financial crisis with minimal or no reductions in total compensation,” the report said.
The study, titled “The One Percent at State U: How University Presidents Profit from Rising Student Debt and Low-Wage Faculty Labor,” found that Ohio State was No. 1 on the list of what it called the most unequal public universities.
The report found that from fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2012, Ohio State paid its president, E. Gordon Gee, a total of $5.9 million. During the same period, it said, student debt at Ohio State grew 23 percent faster than the national average.
Others on the “most unequal” list were Pennsylvania State University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Michigan and the University of Washington.
Student loan debt is growing public concern for millions of Americans, who currently owe $1.2 trillion, a number that has tripled in the last decade.
Condi Rice, Christine Lagarde: Cowardice at Commencement
By William Boardman | Reader Supported News | May 14, 2014
What would you expect from powerful people, personal courage?
The American Condoleeza Rice, 60, Iraq War architect, and the French Christine Lagarde, 58, International Monetary Fund managing director, have little in common beyond being women of power who have contributed to the misery of millions of people they never cared to meet. And now they have another quality in common, cowardice under fire, albeit only verbal fire after they were invited to speak at college commencements.
Rutgers University invited Rice to speak (for $35,000 and an honorary degree) and Smith College invited Lagarde (compensation undisclosed).
Student and faculty objections to Rice started in February and continued to grow for months. The Rutgers administration held firm, Rice kept quiet. On April 28, some 50 students staged a sit-in at the Rutgers president’s office. The president refused to talk with them and they dispersed when Rutgers threatened to arrest them.
In a letter ironically foreshadowing his bald hypocrisy on free speech and academic freedom, Rutgers president Robert Barchi had written in March:
We cannot protect free speech or academic freedom by denying others the right to an opposing view, or by excluding those with whom we may disagree. Free speech and academic freedom cannot be determined by any group. They cannot insist on consensus or popularity.
Students and faculty objected to Rice for her participation in lying her country into war in Iraq, and even more so for her defense of widespread American use of torture in the “global war on terror.” An online petition by a 1991 Rutgers grad collected 694 signatures opposed to Rice, and campus petitions gathered hundreds more. In a lucid indictment of Rice’s apparent criminality, published in The Chronicle of Higher Education the day before Rice withdrew, Rutgers history professor Jackson Lears wrote:
Rice sanctioned the use of torture and has continued to defend it even after a top aide warned that she and her colleagues were violating the law. To invite her to address the Rutgers graduating class, and then to award her a doctor-of-laws degree, is a travesty of all the ideals the university embodies. Our students deserve better. Most of all, they deserve the truth.
Officially, Rutgers showed no interest in truth, history, morality, etc.
Rice did not engage issues like war or torture in her withdrawal statement, arguing instead that the crucial issue was the party-time nature of commencements. She said she was “honored to have served my country,” without mentioning any specifics. She did not explain why her controversial performance in office wasn’t as obvious to her in February as it became in May. Bowing out of the May 18 graduation as of May 3, Rice’s statement on her Facebook page read in part:
Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families. Rutgers’ invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time…. I understand and embrace the purpose of the commencement ceremony and I am simply unwilling to detract from it in any way.
Despite Rice’s belated withdrawal, Rutgers faculty and students went ahead with a planned, six-hour teach-in on May 6 because, as three participating professors wrote, “we concluded that the need remained for a scholarly exposition of Dr. Rice’s responsibility in the lies leading to the Iraq war and the implementation of the unprecedented torture policies under the Bush administration.”
In an exercise of actual academic freedom, Rice was invited to the teach-in when it was first planned, but she did not attend. President Barchi expressed the corporate position that Rutgers stood “fully behind” inviting Rice to the commencement (where only the speaker has freedom of speech). The teach-in (on YouTube) began shortly after that official statement, and the professors wrote:
It was an event that will be remembered because there has not been one like it for a very long time. The lecture room of the Student Activities Center was packed by a crowd of more than two hundred students and faculty members, many sitting on the floor, others standing anywhere they could, all listening with the utmost attention to the poignant speech of human rights attorney Jumana Musa, then to the illuminating exposés of our panelists, to whom Rutgers University – the real Rutgers – is forever indebted.
And we all stood up to applaud the six students who represented the ‘No to Rice’ movement that organized the demonstrations of the last ten days: the enthusiastic commitment they expressed to humanistic values was a reminder that there is real hunger among our students for more knowledge of history, of foreign cultures, of the very notion of ‘culture,’ of political science, of economics, as well as a deep interest in questions related to ethics, public policy and the place of media in our culture. Students like these give a special meaning – and responsibility – to our teaching and research.
Rutgers was against students learning about unapproved reality
No free speech was harmed in the unfolding of these events, except at the Rutgers president’s office (where student speech was met with threats of arrest). By cutting and running, Condoleezza may have lost a paid venue (her net worth is about $4 million), but she has hardly been muzzled; on the contrary, her exercise of her own free speech got us into a deceitful, destructive failure of a war for which millions of Iraqis continue to pay with their own freedom and lives. The Rutgers administration lost students’ respect for promoting an apparent war criminal, but there’s no sign the administration is sensitive to any of that.
Academic freedom is a big winner at Rutgers, where faculty let some air and light into the discussion of 15 years of American crimes against humanity that are usually left to fester down the memory hole. And perhaps the biggest winners are Rutgers students, whose determined integrity allowed their voices to be heard on an issue of principle that the Rutgers administration got wrong on both substance and morality.
Like Rutgers, Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, announced its choice of commencement speaker in February and protest began soon after, but the two protests are very different responses to two very important elephants in our collective cultural-political living room. Where Rice is emblematic of the elephant of illegal war, torture, war crimes, and crimes against humanity about which we are not supposed to speak, Lagarde represents the much tidier elephant of financial plunder and economic “austerity” that probably leaves millions more innocent people to suffer and die without hope.
It’s not that Christine Lagarde sold people an illegal war as Rice did, but as head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since 2011, she carries out a prior ordained policy that is as inhumane as it is merciless. In Ukraine now, some people are hoping that $17.1 billion from the IMF will somehow help to save a country that can hardly pay for gas these days. But that $17.1 billion is not a gift, it is a loan to a country that can’t support its current debt load, and so, thanks to the IMF, Ukraine can look forward to another decade or more of even worse debt servitude than it has suffered in the past. The IMF’s $17.1 billion is typically reported as a good deed, but there are 46 million Ukrainians (except for a small number of oligarchs and bankers) who will have no reason to be grateful for this “beneficence.” The IMF has just bought the right to be the unelected ruler of Ukraine, and the purchase is so sweet, the Ukrainians will have to pay for it – with interest.
Objections to Lagarde are institutional and philosophical
Christine Lagarde is a well-regarded attorney whose specialties were antitrust and labor issues. She has held several French government posts, including Minister of Finance. She was the first female chairman of the international law firm Baker & McKenzie. She is an undeniably accomplished woman about whom the worst, easily available personal criticism is her apparent callousness toward the Greeks in 2012. Any real skeletons she may have remain tucked away in her closet.
Opposition to Lagarde at Smith was not personal, as an online petition made clear:
By selecting Ms. Lagarde as the commencement speaker we are supporting the International Monetary Fund and thus going directly against Smith’s values to stand in unity with equality for all women, regardless of race, ethnicity or class. Although we do not wish to disregard all of Ms. Lagarde’s accomplishments as a strong female leader in the world, we also do not want to be represented by someone whose work directly contributes to many of the systems that we are taught to fight against. By having her speak at our commencement, we would be publicly supporting and acknowledging her, and thus the IMF.
Even if we give Ms. Lagarde the benefit of the doubt, and recognize that she is just a good person working in a corrupt system, we should not by any means promote or encourage the values and ideals that the IMF fosters. The IMF has been a primary culprit in the failed developmental policies implanted in some of the world’s poorest countries. This has led directly to the strengthening of imperialist and patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide.
Smith’s trustees haven’t said why they wanted to honor the IMF
Not surprisingly, Smith’s administration stood by its invitation to Lagarde, and there is little evidence of campus ferment even at the low level on the Rutgers campus. There was one report of a quiet campus sit-in by 40 students earlier in May. But apparently Lagarde is thin-skinned as well as guarded in her public persona. According to Smith president Kathleen McCarthy in a May 12 letter to the college community, Lagarde withdrew “in the wake of anti-IMF protests from faculty and students, including a few who wrote directly to her,” which might seem pretty thin-skinned for someone with a net worth of $4 million (and annual, untaxed income of about $630,000) whom Forbes ranked as the 7th most powerful woman (35th most powerful person) in the world.
According to McCarthy, Lagarde retreated with the same lame excuse Rice used, not wanting to be a party-pooper. As quoted by McCarthy, Lagarde wrote: In the last few days, it has become evident that a number of students and faculty members would not welcome me as a commencement speaker. I respect their views, and I understand the vital importance of academic freedom. However, to preserve the celebratory spirit of commencement day, I believe it is best to withdraw my participation.
Back in February, Lagarde observed that income inequality was increasing globally, citing the United States and India in particular. Delivering a lecture in London, she said, “In India, the net worth of the billionaire community increased twelve-fold in 15 years, enough to eliminate absolute poverty in this country twice over…. [Inequality] leads to an economy of exclusion, and a wasteland of discarded potential.” She did not suggest doing anything particular about this kind of global impoverishment for the vast majority of people on the planet.
Reaction to Lagarde’s reneging on a commitment is reportedly mixed on the Smith campus. Unlike at Rutgers, there is no teach-in or other communal effort to explore the issues raised by IMF activities. The argument, as in President McCarthy’s letter, is limited to supporting or opposing the choice of a speaker, and is not about the vast damage the IMF does in the name of economic stability. And it’s also not about the startling cowardice of a powerful woman who can’t find the wee bit of courage it might take to face a bunch of 20-something, well-mannered Smith College women who might disagree with her or even, God forbid, say something rude to a global administrator of cruel and unusual policies. What is it with these people who lack the fortitude to speak to an audience not in total awe of their magnificent selves?
As Katherine Sumner, Smith ’14, wrote: “It was in a Smith classroom that I first learned about the problems that the IMF has wrought on the Global South, and how those problems have affected women’s lives for the worse. As a graduating senior, I would be disappointed, to say the least, if a representative of that institution were honored and endorsed by a community that I am a part of.”
Needless to say, that is not the perspective with which this story is covered in mainstream media, where actual issues of substance and the events are presented with a tone of supercilious trivialization, as in the Washington Post story that began: “The commencement speaker purity bug has hit Smith College.” [Emphasis added.]
Rice and Lagarde were not subjected to “commencement speaker purity” or any other form of censorship. They were faced with coherent intellectual challenges to the core value of some of their most significant activities, and they did not rise to that challenge. And they bailed. They exercised self-censorship, deploying a spurious excuse rather than even attempting to engage in a serious debate. They did not act boldly and address the legitimate concerns of students and faculty with honesty and respect. That would have been too close to actual academic freedom. Instead these women of power fled the field rather than face an audience that might show disappointment. They retreated when the game wasn’t rigged in their favor; they folded when the institution failed to guarantee them commencement audience purity.
Portugal leaves bailout program with 214bn euro debt, 4% lower GDP
RT | May 17, 2014
Portugal exited its international bailout program on Saturday, regaining its economic sovereignty, which it lost after the European debt crisis. However, the country’s GDP is four percent lower than in 2010, a year before it asked for financial help.
The country will become the second eurozone country to leave the bailout after Ireland. Portugal underwent three years of painful austerity, in order to receive a 78-billion euro loan (106 billion US dollars), to help a nation that was on the verge of bankruptcy.
However, not everything has gone smoothly for Portugal, with the end of the bailout coming at a time when data has shown the country’s economy contracted by 0.7 percent in the first quarter of 2014. Overall, the country’s GDP is four percent lower than in 2010, a year before they asked the International Monetary Fund for financial help.
The Iberian country is 214 billion euros in debt (293 billion US dollars), which is the third highest in the eurozone. The Portuguese government has focused on trying to increase exports, but this has been hampered by volatile markets abroad. There have been some positive signs, such as the Portuguese government’s success in reducing unemployment from its peak of 17.5 percent in 2013, to 15.1 percent at present, while borrowing costs are at an eight-year low.
The drop in unemployment has been aided by new rules, which make it much easier for firms to hire and fire workers. Labor costs in Portugal fell by 8 percent to 11.60 euros between 2011 and 2013, according to the EU statistics agency, Eurostat.
Nicholas Spiro, managing director at Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London, said: “It is still a job half done. The danger is that the reforms grind to a screeching halt. There is a very high risk that that happens.”
With the bailout, Portugal has also sold assets, raised taxes on everything from wages to diesel cars and reduced budget spending by 12 billion euros since 2010. According to Bloomberg, the government said on January 9 it raised 8.1 billion euros from asset sales, more than the proceeds of about 5 billion euros projected in the bailout program.
Last year, it sold shares in its postal service, CTT-Correios de Portugal SA, in the country’s first initial public offering since 2008, and also sold airport operator ANA-Aeroportos de Portugal SA. Earlier it sold stakes in utility EDP-Energias de Portugal SA and in REN-Redes Energeticas Nacionais SA, Portugal’s power and natural gas grid operator.
Although Berlin and Brussels have hailed Portugal’s clean exit from its EU bailout, it has not been popular at home.
“There is a great need in Brussels and Berlin and other capitals to present Portugal and Ireland as success stories. They will claim that their reforms in Portugal have been a success- well, they haven’t, they have destroyed the society and economy,” Rui Tavares, an independent Portuguese MEP told RT in April.
Portugal’s high unemployment has forced the workforce to look abroad for work opportunities, increasing emigration.
During the past 3 years, the work force has defected for more robust neighboring economies in record numbers. In 2012, this reached a new high of 120,000 émigrés, which was coupled with Portugal’s lowest birth rate.
Another harrowing reality is that while many people are struggling with tough austerity measures, a disproportionate amount of people are getting richer and richer. In Portugal, the top 20 percent make six times more than the bottom 20 percent.
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Iran UN ambassador calls for destruction of all nuclear weapons
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo
Press TV – March 29, 2017
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo has called for the total eradication of nuclear weapons.
Khoshroo reiterated Iran’s call during a UN conference aimed at creating a nuclear weapons ban treaty in New York on Tuesday.
“Iran, as a victim of chemical weapons, strongly feels the danger posed by the existence of weapons of mass destruction and is determined to engage actively in international diplomatic efforts to save humanity from the menace of nuclear weapons,” he said.
Khoshroo stressed that Iran is committed to its Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, which include negotiations based on effective nuclear disarmament measures.
He added that several countries continue to ignore international calls and treaties for nuclear disarmament and even continue to increase their nuclear stockpiles. “They do not have political determination to abandon doctrines of nuclear deterrence and nuclear terror,” he went on to say.
Iran’s UN ambassador noted that boycotting the talks by many countries, including the US, shows that the world’s nuclear powers are by no means committed to the eradication of nuclear arms. Britain and France were also among the some 40 countries that did not join the talks.
“We note that prohibition of nuclear weapons must be accompanied by the elimination of such weapons. There can be no doubt that without complete abolition of nuclear weapons, there will be no absolute guarantee against the danger of nuclear war and the use of such weapons,” Khoshroo added.
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