Published on The Economist, Aug 26th 2010.

… The wrong turn:

To many Americans, the misadventure in Iraq has come to symbolise a broader wrong turn America made after Osama bin Laden assaulted it on September 11th nine years ago. Nearly six out of ten Americans now say that they oppose even Mr Obama’s “good” war—the one against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. An America that is bleeding economically at home, with unemployment stuck at nearly 10% and debts as tall as the eye can see, is losing confidence in its ability, and perhaps in its need, to shape events in far-flung regions such as Central Asia and the Middle East.

Even in an age of austerity America still towers above all-comers in military power, as well it should given its annual defence spending of $700 billion, almost as much as the rest of the world put together (see article). But the past decade has laid bare the limits of high-tech power. Whizz-bang technology enabled America to conquer Afghanistan and Iraq in the twinkle of an eye with negligible losses. Subduing them has been harder. Of the 2m Americans who have served in the two wars over the past decade, some 40,000 have been wounded and more than 5,000 killed … //

… Still indispensable:

Even that abbreviated list is a heavy burden for a war-weary country struck by its worst recession since the second world war. Many Americans would like the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq to signal the beginning of the end of America’s overall embroilment in the benighted regions of the world. They look with understandable envy on rising powers such as China and India that have devoted the past decade to the serious business of becoming rich. The mistake of Iraq has strengthened the instinct against foreign adventures. But it is no less of a mistake to imagine that the dangers of terrorism, proliferation and war will simply vanish if America were now to walk away from all the bad places. If America does not take on the task of containing such threats, who else will, or can? For all the difficulties at home, the fact remains that the biggest gainer from a strong America abroad is America itself. Whatever his gut tells him, Mr Obama seems to understand that. (full text).

If “executive” MBA programmes are not much different from their full-time counterparts, how do business schools justify charging twice the price?

IT STARTED with a little-reported court judgement in an American backwater. In 2007 Ruth Creps, a resident of Idaho, was made redundant by her employer. She applied for funds from the Federal Trade Adjustment Assistance programme, a scheme designed to help retrain workers who lost their jobs due to international trade competition. Ms Creps wanted to take an MBA at nearby Boise University, but decided that she would rather do the $41,000 part-time “executive” MBA (EMBA)—which is usually paid for by employers who are looking to train up their high potentials—instead of the full-time programme which cost just $14,000. 

When her request was turned down Ms Creps fought them all the way to the Idaho Supreme Court, only to lose because the court decided the more expensive programme was not significantly different from its traditional alternative.

The decision was seized upon by business education commentators and a debate began as to how business schools could justify charging so much more for their executive MBAs. At INSEAD in France, for example, a full-time MBA costs €52,000, while the EMBA comes in at €90,000. Where schools getting away with it simply because firms have deeper pockets than individuals?

IT STARTED with a little-reported court judgement in an American backwater. In 2007 Ruth Creps, a resident of Idaho, was made redundant by her employer. She applied for funds from the Federal Trade Adjustment Assistance programme, a scheme designed to help retrain workers who lost their jobs due to international trade competition. Ms Creps wanted to take an MBA at nearby Boise University, but decided that she would rather do the $41,000 part-time “executive” MBA (EMBA)—which is usually paid for by employers who are looking to train up their high potentials—instead of the full-time programme which cost just $14,000. When her request was turned down Ms Creps fought them all the way to the Idaho Supreme Court, only to lose because the court decided the more expensive programme was not significantly different from its traditional alternative.

The decision was seized upon by business education commentators and a debate began as to how business schools could justify charging so much more for their executive MBAs. At INSEAD in France, for example, a full-time MBA costs €52,000, while the EMBA comes in at €90,000. Where schools getting away with it simply because firms have deeper pockets than individuals?

Indeed one of the biggest challenges facing executive-MBA providers is finding faculty that can hold the attention of such a demanding audience. Most EMBA participants have already learned the basic lessons of business and are on their chosen programme because they want better insight into the way they are operating within their present company, rather than for personal development or a career change. Such lessons are both difficult and expensive to teach.

EMBA students expect to be taught by people who not only have the theory but who also have demonstrable real-life experience. Sean Kilbride, a professor at HEC School of Management, Paris, says that this means flying in top professors from all over the world and recruiting business veterans with credibility, including former CEOs … (full text).

… Actually there are several big questions.

To what extent are “combat troops” being replaced by Special Operations forces, other U.S. personnel, and private contractor mercenaries?

Will all U.S. troops leave in December 2011, as the U.S.-Iraqi agreement specifies? Reports are that Special Operations forces will stay on. What about other U.S. forces and private contractors? 

What exactly is the U.S. role in Iraq between now and the end of 2011? And what will it be beyond that?

What is the U.S. responsibility to the Iraqi people, and how should it be fulfilled? … //

… We do have a responsibility to help rebuild their hospitals, water systems, schools, cultural facilities – wrecked in the invasion or later under our watch or by our own contractors. But the U.S. should not be directing the money or deciding the projects.

Unfortunately, we’re seeing some warning signs that point in the wrong direction. A massive State Department presence in Iraq is being developed. Vast numbers of private U.S. contractors are deployed there. And notions are being floated that the U.S. military presence may “need” to continue beyond next year.

Let’s make sure all of our occupation of Iraq ends – military, economic and political.

It’s time to shed the old foreign policy habit, that sees Iraq as nothing but a giant oil well to fuel America’s oil-based economy, and a geopolitical pawn and military launch-pad to keep the rest of the region’s oil flowing our way. We just can’t afford it – not in taxpayer dollars, not in human lives, not in the survival of our planet. (full text).

Published on Voltairenet.org, par Lindsay Beyerstein, Jessica Lee, Matt Renner, 18 août 2010.

En 2007, l’administration Bush tenta de faire adopter une loi assimilant les défenseurs des droits des animaux, les militants anti-mondialisation, les membres du mouvement pour la vérité sur le 11-Septembre, et bien d’autres groupes contestataires à des terroristes. La Maison-Blanche s’appuya au Congrès sur la représentante Jane Harman (qui vient de racheter Newsweek) et sur le sénateur Joe Liberman (figure du mouvement sioniste). Face aux critiques, ce projet a été abandonné. Au demeurant, l’administration Obama a fait bien pire en ordonnant purement et simplement l’assassinat de citoyens états-uniens suspectés de liens avec « le » terrorisme. 

Dans ce qui est interprété comme une atteinte surprenante aux libertés d’expression, d’association, et à la vie privée des citoyens états-uniens, la Chambre des représentants a voté, le 23 octobre 2007, la « Loi de prévention contre la radicalisation violente et le terrorisme national » [1], par 404 voix contre 6. Le Sénat examine entre-temps un projet de loi qui l’accompagne, le S.1959.

La Loi dite H.R. 1955 prévoit la création d’une Commission nationale et la mise en place d’un « Centre universitaire d’excellence », pour étudier et proposer un nouvel arsenal juridique de prévention et de gestion de la menace posée par la « radicalisation » des citoyens des Etats-Unis … (full long text).

MOSCOW, Aug. 24 (UPI) — Even though Russia and the United States have the world’s largest nuclear arsenals, Moscow is backing a nuclear initiative to ensure that Africa remains free of nuclear weapons.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has submitted to the Duma for ratification two protocols to a treaty establishing Africa as a nuclear-free weapons zone, Itar-Tass reported.

The protocols propose a ban on nuclear tests in Africa along with the use of nuclear weapons against African countries. 

The African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty, also known as the Pelindaba Treaty was signed in Cairo in 1996 but only formally entered into force last year. Twenty-four African countries have signed but not yet ratified the treaty … //

… Roiling international issues around the treaty is the status of the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, controlled by the United Kingdom and currently leased as a military base by the United States, leaving its status under terms of the treaty unclear, especially as Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos Archipelago claimed by Mauritius despite British claims of sovereignty. (full text).

There is no sector of economy that affects life and survival as basically as agriculture. Due to our climate and topographic conditions, Swiss agriculture has developed in Switzerland in plains and in valley grounds first. In Switzerland, the cultivation of cereals, in particular wheat and barley were dominating. As early as in the 8th century, the farmers discovered the great advantages of the three-field-system which was replaced by crop rotation towards the end of the 18th century.

In order to ensure the food supply to the population of those times, the farmers developed the mountain ranges and the alpine pastures and started cattle and dairy farming under the most difficult circumstances. 

In the Middle Ages, about 90 % of the population worked in agriculture. Thus, agriculture contributed to self-subsistence. In the beginning, the dignitaries’ food supplies benefited from the proverbial “tithe” that had to be delivered by the farmers although the dignitaries made up hardly 1 % of the population on the territory of ancient Switzerland. That meant that more than the supplies for personal needs had to be produced in order to support the rest of the population. The people did not have much to get by, poverty was severe, but there was enough to survive.

Courageous personalities: … //

… Decisive role in maintaining our freedom

Recognizing that agriculture played a decisive role in maintaining our freedom and independence, above all in the severe crises of the 20th century, in spite of all industrialization and modernization in the 20th and 21st century, we are even more appalled to see how irresponsibly politicians treat our farmers. Federal Councilor Mrs Leuthard ‘s economic and political orientation becomes obvious in her massive reduction of customs duties on imported flour which was due to her neoliberal delusion. This measure will make both the medium sized mills and the grain producers suffer in spite of their essential significance for the providing of the country’s population with good and healthy flour.

This step was taken beyond all reason and all knowledge of the most recent research in agriculture and without consulting the most affected representatives of those branches.

The World Agriculture Report, published two years ago, sees the solution for the future farming and successful fight against world hunger in a regionally rooted, small-scale family farming. According to the research published in the World Agriculture Report, family farms are the only feasible alternative to ecologically and economically senseless industrial production. The return of agriculture to the rural community, away from neoliberal gigantism will not only successfully fight hunger in the world but also help the states establish their own agriculture, with respect to food sovereignty in fact.
Deep rootedness in the country and its people

This would also mean a strengthening of our state and our country. Direct democracy in Switzerland has its historical roots in a self-confident peasantry, who assumed their responsibility for the common weal, guided by individuals who helped cooperative democracy to gain ground. This rootedness in the country and its people is an important prerequisite for the most liberal of democracies to prevail in the future. No matter how some historians regard Napoleon, they will have to give him his credit:

Notwithstanding all delusion, he judged the characteristics of Switzerland correctly, when he said: “It is democracy that distinguishes Switzerland and makes it interesting for the rest of the world, conferring it a characteristic color.”

Do we intend to sacrifice all those advantages of democracy to a blind economism, to a perverse globalization which has been accelerating the process of impoverishment of many countries during the last 20 years; do we intend to sacrifice it to the sweet poison of power?

Never ever!

(full text).

A cold wave hitting central Russia has finally provided relief to millions of Moscow residents who have been living in suffocating heat and smog for weeks. While the wildfires that turned the air in the nation’s capital into a toxic haze have reportedly been brought under control, numerous blazes continue to burn in other areas, in particular Siberia and the Far East … //

… The lesson that the ruling elite is drawing from these events is that it is necessary to further consolidate its grip on power in order to prevent similar crises in the future from sparking a challenge to its authority. In an August 11 article published in the government newspaper Rossiskaia Gazeta and entitled “Lessons of a Hot Summer,” Nikolai Zlobin warns that the Russian state must consider the national security implications of the wildfire disaster. 

“Today [national security] threats frequently lie in spheres far removed from the purely military. When such threats are unexpectedly exacerbated the state and its citizens become vulnerable and defenseless and the situation threatens to get out of control, to become unmanageable, and to lead to destabilization, instability, and a decline in the authorities’ prestige.”

Russia’s liberal opposition has responded to the wildfire disaster by denouncing the Kremlin, directing the bulk of its criticism to Putin, as opposed to Medvedev, who it views as a potential political ally. In particular, several leading newspapers have carried editorials insisting that the slow response of local officials to the disaster and the efforts of regional leaders to cover up the extent of the crisis in their areas point to the failure of Putin’s “power vertical,” whereby regional governors are appointed by the Kremlin. Government corruption, several have noted, contributed to the wildfire disaster, as money intended for firefighting purposes was often used to purchase luxury items for state bureaucrats.

The claim is made that if the people had the right to choose local leaders, the officials would behave more responsibly. Remarking on the fact that the governor of Vladimir oblast, Nikolai Vinogradov, was on vacation while thousands of hectares of forestland in his region were ablaze, the liberal daily Nezavisimaia Gazeta stated, “Of course, if regional heads were elected, they would hardly permit themselves such liberties.”

The profoundly anti-democratic character of the Russian political system no doubt contributed to the wildfire disaster and the suffering of the population. However, this alone cannot explain why villages burnt to the ground for want of firefighting equipment or the peat bogs in surrounding Moscow were left unmonitored for fire danger.

The collapse of public services in Russia and the semi-privatization of the country’s forests are part and parcel of the restoration of capitalism, which the liberal opposition hails as a great historic achievement. The 2007 forest code passed by the Kremlin is not simply a product of Putin’s corrupt relationship with powerful logging and paper manufacturing interests in Russia. It is entirely in keeping with the political principles dictated by Russia’s market economy, in which the profit motive, not social needs, determines how resources will be utilized. (full long text).

How about them political elites, huh? Five million bucks for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding; 15K just to rent the air-conditioned shitters — huge chrome and glass babies with hot water and everything. No gas masks and waxy little squares of toilet paper for those guys.

Yes, it looks big time from the cheap seats. But the truth is that when we are looking at the political elite, we are looking at the dancing monkey, not the organ grinder who calls the tune. Washington’s political class is about as upwardly removed from ordinary citizens as the ruling class is from the political class. For instance, they do not work for a living in the normal sense of a job, but rather obtain their income from abstractions such as investment and law, neither of which ever gave anybody a hernia or carpal tunnel. By comparison, the ruling class does not work at all … // 

… Therefore, you are left with a rigged game called legislative action. This is an invisible power process, masked by another process called public relations strategy, which feeds it into yet another process called media, that makes “news decisions,” as to what you need to hear or see. And there’s plenty you don’t need to hear. For instance, NPR, the New York Times and thousands of other outlets refuse to use the word torture to describe waterboarding, preferring instead “aggressive interrogation methods,” unencumbered interrogation, free interrogation, or similar euphemisms. NPR’s justification for sugarcoating US torture is, ““the word torture is loaded with political and social implications.”

Ya think?

Truth is a hard road to travel:

After decades of hyper-militant consumerism and its attending alienation, and a national consciousness spun from pure capitalist bullshit and mirrors, it is testimony to the American people that they can still see to piss straight, much less recognize any sort of truth whatsoever. Yet, a portion of Americans are beginning to grasp the truth about what has happened to their country — that it has been bought and paid for by an elite class in a nation that is supposed to be classless. They are beginning to realize that, when it comes to actually governing our country, we are powerless as individuals — even members of the political class — and serve the overall will of its true owners. It’s been that way so long we’ve become conditioned to accept it as a natural state, something we cannot change, and do not even know how to question, because, like the atmosphere, it’s just there.

The higher truth is something we recognize when we encounter it. We may not have the right words, or all the facts, but we can feel it in our bones. Intuition is the first glimmer in the distance. It goes unsaid that we always have the choice of not looking in truth’s direction, or not looking for it at all. Seldom is it a pleasant sight, which is the chief sign that it is truth. Even the best of it arrives to the sound of ominous bells.

I think about that young reader, Brent B., who takes time to email me now and then. Today he wrote, summarizing the only thing of which I am certain: “

It’s a hard thing to know the truth in this world, it’s like something inside of you dies, but sometimes you still have to know it. (full very long text).

(Joe Bageant is the author of Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War. His newest book, Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir, deals with America’s permanent white underclass, and how it was intentionally created. To be released in September in Australia and October in the United Kingdom.Rainbow Pie is available for preorder from Amazon-UK and Amazon-Canada. In Australia, the book can be preordered at Scribe Publications …
… where you can find also an interview video, 7.30 min).

Is socialist revolution necessary? Under what conditions? How far should it go? Is more than one revolution needed, even in the same society? What about the issue of revolutionary “excess”? Is there such a problem, and if so, what causes it and does it lead to counterrevolution? If the revolution is “defeated,” was it still worth undertaking? And finally, who gets to decide these questions, and write the history of revolutionary change? For each country or society, these queries must be broken down more specifically. In the case of China, for example, was a revolution in land control needed? Should it have been carried to the point of the collective socialist organization of rural society? Why was the Great Leap Forward undertaken, and the Cultural Revolution? Did they go “too far”? Did their “excesses” lead China back to the “capitalist road” under Deng Xiaoping? … // 

… To many heads of elite schools, children making revolution must have seemed ridiculous. But even in the United States we knew at the time what this “means.” My older daughter grew up with the wonderful series of books for children put out by the Chinese during the Cultural Revolution, exemplifying in simple stories the values it promoted, including cooperation above individualism, and opposition to male superiority. My own personal favorite was I Wanted to Go to School, the beautifully illustrated true life story of a leading cadre, who as a poor peasant child struggled to gain access to an education, and which laid out in moving form all the class relations and the brutal exploitation in a typical pre-revolution village.

But there were other US parallels during the same time, for example the Freedom Schools that were established during the Mississippi Summer of 1964 to give poor Black children access to an education, including in their own history, denied them by the segregated system, or the Free Breakfast program by Chicago Black Panthers a few years later, which drew inspiration in part from the Cultural Revolution and which offered political as well as physical sustenance to primary school students, and was so threatening to the authorities that they murdered Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in their beds in part to stop this example. But the movement could not be stopped.

Two decades later, the pre-school that my younger daughter attended converted Thanksgiving into a celebration of Native American culture, while the child care center where she in turn now teaches has changed Columbus Day into Indigenous Peoples Day. In this way, cultural revolution has continued to sweep the globe, and changed life even for children.

But all such complexities and interrelations escape MacFarquhar and Schoenhals. In the end, they cannot even resist adopting the language of Chang and Halliday – albeit tucked away in an appended “Glossary of Names and Identities” of all the main players. There they tell us, “Together with Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, Mao appears destined to go down in history as one of the great tyrants of the twentieth century” (471) – though they don’t go so far as to label him, as some reviewers of the former authors do, the “greatest monster” of them all. As usual, MacFarquhar and Schoenhals do not make clear whether the “tyrant” phrase is their own opinion, or just the “common verdict” of unnamed sources. Certainly, with their own work, they are doing their little bit to make sure that their prediction comes true. Yet only a few pages earlier, they have described another side of Mao’s legacy.

In the wake of the Cultural Revolution, popular liberation finally did begin to flourish. The humiliation of party cadres high and low destroyed the authority of the CCP in the eyes of the Chinese people, who took to heart the Maoist message of daring to think, speak and act. Today, all over China, people protest what they consider to be unjust treatment by corrupt officials. The Cultural Revolution was truly the watershed in the history of the People’s Republic of China (459).

What a strange legacy for one of the “great tyrants” of the modern era – to have helped hundreds of millions, in the working classes especially, to reclaim their birthright, not as objects, but subjects of their own history, to assert their “right to rebel,” and to resist not only the authority of those above them, but the attempt of those same officials to impose on them a brutal exploitation in the name of opening up China to the global capitalist “free market.” Protests by Chinese workers and peasants now number tens of thousands each year, and they are growing in frequency, scale and coordination across the lines of region and class that were so divisive in the past and so easily manipulated by those in power.31 This is the abiding legacy of the Cultural Revolution, even to those who are today unfamiliar with it or who have succumbed to the efforts to suppress its history. (full long text).

What it might have looked like inside the fence: … Bodies like the G8 and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are generally like minded, as they represent the minority of countries that are already wealthy. These countries have an interest in the current order, skewed as it is toward their interests. Until recently, they have had the power to keep things that way. But when what was then called the Asian economic crisis struck in the late 1990s, the wealthy countries let the biggest of the poor countries into a new club, the G20 Finance Ministers meeting. The new body could claim to be more inclusive: with China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil aboard, the G20 had the Finance Ministers of 80% of the world’s population and 80% of the world’s GDP. 

But as an informal gathering of Finance Ministers (Labour Ministers started to meet at separate summits years later), without any transparent structure, and whose debates took place away from the public eye, the gatherings were still suspect. Norway’s Foreign Minister recently called the G20 “the greatest setback since World War II”, “a grouping without international legitimacy”, with “no mandate” (1). The skewed membership and structure hides skewed power relations within the G20, where the G8 countries have far more say in how the world is going to be governed.

Because the lowest common denominator for countries with such vastly different problems and agendas is low indeed, the G20 meetings produce declarations of principle that are mostly platitudes. It is difficult to argue that they have done much, in their 11 years of existence, to stabilize economies, much less to deal with any of the other issues for which sound thinking about global finance is needed, from food and fuel system problems, development aid and war to environmental degradation and climate change … //

… People on Toronto streets reported seeing police operations that had no relationship to any protest or anything going on: riot police shuffling about, horse charges, rapid deployment from one part of the city to another, temporary closures of areas and sweeping up of random people into mass arrests. It looked to me like Harper’s people were flexing their muscles, testing the public stomach, seeing how far they could ride over people’s rights and liberties. Accompanying the show of muscle was a public relations effort – placing the burden of justifying the $1 billion security expenditure on some smashed windows and police cars (with damages probably in the tens of thousands).

Something of a public backlash did emerge. On Monday afternoon, 2600 people (by my count) protested the police response outside headquarters. Among the slogans: “No more cops on overtime, protesting is not a crime”. The same police who had been so abusive the day before were relatively quiet. Protesters didn’t see any riot gear, the bike police didn’t push people with their bikes as they often do at protests, and the horses stayed largely out of sight a block away.

Important questions remain about the dozens that remain in detention. Will the government pursue charges and seek jail sentences for protesters? If some of those who smashed windows were entrapped by provocateurs, will the evidence emerge in trial? Will the public allow the state to persecute protesters when the police role was so pernicious? And the question that, unfortunately, is likely to get lost in the details: since these summits are destructive when they are not useless, are they worth spending hundreds of millions of dollars, shutting down cities, destroying civil liberties? (full long text and Notes 1 – 4).

Links:

Zgroup;

Proposal for a Participatory Socialist International PSI, published on Zcommunications.org, not dated.