We don’t need 19th century inequality to achieve 21st century growth

Thomas Clarke

Professor, Centre for Corporate Governance at University of Technology, Sydney

The Coalition government is currently rehearsing a well-honed rhetoric on “everyone having to do the heavy lifting” to justify Treasurer Joe Hockey’s slash and burn budget on social services and pension entitlements.

But perhaps he might pause a while to consider a new book making waves around the world, which provides two centuries of financial data from 20 countries directly confounding Hockey’s central assumptions on the sources of growth.

French economist Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital in the 21st Century has been generating an increasing amount of heated commentary with the argument that increasing inequality is undermining democracy and destroying the chances of equitable opportunity and sustainable growth.

Piketty argues - with the support of a massive amount of economic data - that the problem is not caused by the benefits paid to the poor, but the increasing wealth commanded by the rich (such as those happy to pay $500 a plate at Liberal fundraisers).

Hockey is an old-fashioned believer that state intervention crowds out entrepreneurial initiative, individual enterprise is checked by state benefits, and that public debt is a continuous drag on economic growth.

This week Hockey will publish the report of his hand-picked Commission of Audit to support his view that only dramatic cuts in benefits in the medium term can sustain growth. Piketty demonstrates that Hockey is looking at the problem through the wrong end of the telescope: the problem is the increasing concentration of wealth of the rich, not a lack of incentives for the enterprising.

It is amazing the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Huffington Post and New Yorker magazine among many mainstream media are all earnestly debating Piketty’s devastating critique of increasing inequality. Any consideration of inequality has been out of fashion for decades. Reagan and Thatcher cauterised any sensitivity to the causes of inequality stone dead with their disinterment of a laissez-faire celebration of free enterprise. Yet Picketty’s book on inequality is now number 1 on Amazon’s top 20 books list.

And Piketty is an economist! With honourable exceptions such as A.B. Atkinson in the UK, and Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich and Emmanuel Saez in the US, with regard to the question of inequality, economists have been trapped in the fatal embrace of the efficient market hypothesis and studiously pursued quantitative modelling of increasingly obscure hypotheses.

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman has saidPiketty’s Capital inspires “a revolution in our understanding of long-term trends in inequality.”

From his more productive tunnelling through 200 years of meta-data, Piketty has emerged with the following dramatic propositions:

• There is no general tendency in market economies towards equality. The reduction of inequality after the second world war was caused by enlightened policy including progressive taxation. The erosion of progressive taxation in which the rich pay proportionately more than the poor, has in effect recreated the conditions for the return of the domination of inherited wealth of the 19th century. A new domination by dynastic wealth.
• The drift back to extreme inequality is apparent in all of the advanced industrial countries, particularly the US and UK. Picketty demonstrates that while in the US the richest 1% of households took 22.5% of total income in 2012, what is even more worrying is the trend since: “the richest 1% appropriated 60% of the increase in US national income between 1977 and 2007.”
• Accelerating this trend towards increased inequality is the rapid inflation in the reward of top executives in the US and the return of the system of inherited wealth of patrimonial capitalism in Europe.
• These tendencies are worsening as the accumulation of capital continues to grow while Western economies have slowed in recent decades. The return on capital has outpaced the growth in economic output.
• Piketty’s policy recommendations hark back to a different era – the democratic reformist zeal of the post-war period when higher marginal tax rates for the rich, and inheritance taxes were seen as essential to economic progress, not punitive.
• The alternative we are now facing is the return of plutocracy, as Piketty comments: “Inequality is fine as not long as it is not completely excessive. At the end of the day, it’s hard to make democratic institutions work if you have 95% of the wealth in the top 10% of people".
• Assumptions that inequality is necessary for economic growth are largely groundless: a more unequal society fails to deliver economic growth.
• Austerity measures simply focused on reducing national debt, by reducing the capacity of other essential services such as health, education and social support, can compound inequality and further restrain growth.

Where will this extreme inequality end? A recent Oxfam report suggests the richest 85 people in the world — the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Carlos Slim — own more wealth than the roughly 3.5 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world’s population.

Inequality is not an accident, it is a result of the way we run our government and economy. Hockey claims this budget (and his budgets to come in the medium term when the more serious cuts will be made) is directly focused on removing the fetters on economic growth. In reality it is focused on removing the fetters on increasing economic inequality.

http://theconversation.com/we-dont-need-19th-century-inequality-to-achieve-21st-century-growth-25998

Kerry: US Military Will Defend Every Inch of NATO Territory

Kerry: US Military Will Defend Every Inch of NATO Territory

Says NATO Unity 'Vital' Against Russia

by Jason Ditz,

In a speech today in Washington which was presented as a “warning” to Russia, Secretary of State John Kerry warned Russia would not be allowed to “change the security landscape” of Europe and that the US was prepared to defend “every single piece” of NATO territory.

There is no indication, of course, that Russia has any designs on any territory of any NATO member nations. Rather, that narrative has been advanced primarily by politicians in eastern NATO states, courting major boosts in US military aid.

Kerry insisted NATO unity was “vital” in moving against Russia, and the speech focused primarily, as US speeches on NATO tend to, on pressuring nations to step up military spending across Europe.

He went on to promise that the US and allies would “stand together in our defense of Ukraine,” dubbed the situation there a “defining moment” for NATO, and one which puts their entire structure at stake.

http://news.antiwar.com/2014/04/29/kerry-us-military-will-defend-every-inch-of-nato-territory/

Why is Putin in Washington’s Crosshairs?

By Mike Whitney

Washington wants to weaken Moscow economically by slashing its gas revenues and, thus, eroding its ability to defend itself or its interests. The US does not want an economically-integrated Europe and Asia. The de facto EU-Russian alliance is a direct threat to US global hegemony.”

 "ICH" - "CP" - US provocations in Ukraine cannot be understood apart from Washington’s “Pivot to Asia”, which is the broader strategic plan to shift attention from the Middle East to Asia. The so called “re-balancing” is actually a blueprint for controlling China’s growth in a way that is compatible with US hegemonic ambitions. There are different schools of thought about how this can be achieved, but loosely speaking they fall into two categories, “dragon slayers” and “panda huggers”. Dragon slayers favor a strategy of containment while panda huggers favor engagement. As yet, the final shape of the policy has not been decided, but it’s clear from hostilities in the South China Sea and the Senkaku Islands, that the plan will depend heavily on military force.
So what does controlling China have to do with the dust up in Ukraine?
Everything. Washington sees Russia as a growing threat to its plans for regional dominance.   The problem is, Moscow has only gotten stronger as it has expanded its network of oil and gas pipelines across Central Asia into Europe. That’s why Washington has decided to use Ukraine is a staging ground for an attack on Russia, because a strong Russia that’s economically integrated with Europe is a threat to US hegemony.  Washington wants a weak Russia that won’t challenge US presence in Central Asia or its plan to control vital energy resources.
Currently, Russia provides about 30 percent of Western and Central Europe’s natural gas, 60 percent of which transits Ukraine.  People and businesses in Europe depend on Russian gas to heat their homes and run their machinery. The trading relationship between the EU and Russia is mutually-beneficial strengthening both buyer and seller alike. The US gains nothing from the EU-Russia partnership, which is why Washington wants to block Moscow’s access to critical markets. This form of commercial sabotage is an act of war.
At one time, the representatives of big oil, thought they could compete with Moscow by building alternate (pipeline) systems that would meet the EU’s prodigious demand for natural gas. But the plan failed, so Washington has moved on to Plan B; cutting off the flow of gas from Russia to the EU. By interposing itself between the two trading partners, the US hopes to oversee the future distribution of energy supplies and  control economic growth on two continents.
The problem Obama and Co. are going to have, is trying to convince people in the EU that their interests are  actually being served by paying twice as much to heat their homes in 2015 as they did in 2014, which is the way things are going to shake out if the US plan succeeds. In order to accomplish that feat, the US is making every effort to lure Putin into a confrontation so the media can denounce him as a vicious aggressor and a threat to European security.  Demonizing Putin will provide the necessary justification for stopping the flow of gas from Russia to the EU, which will further weaken the Russian economy while providing new opportunities for NATO to establish forward-operating bases on Russia’s Western perimeter.
It makes no difference to Obama whether people are gouged on gas prices or simply freeze to death in the cold. What matters is the “pivot” to the world’s most promising and prosperous markets of the next century.  What matters is crushing Moscow by slashing gas revenues thus eroding its ability to defend itself or its interests.  What matters is global hegemony and world domination. That’s what really counts. Everyone knows this. To follow the daily incidents in Ukraine as though they could be separated from the big picture is ridiculous. They’re all part of the same sick strategy.  Here’s a clip from former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in Foreign Affairs explaining how–as far as Washington is concerned–it makes no sense to have separate policies for Europe and Asia:

 “With Eurasia now serving as the decisive geopolitical chessboard, it no longer suffices to fashion one policy for Europe and another for Asia. What happens with the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America’s global primacy and historical legacy.” (“The danger of war in Asia“, World Socialist Web Site)

It’s all about the pivot to Asia and the future of the empire. This is why the CIA and the US State Department engineered a coup to oust Ukrainian president Viktor Yonuchovych and replace him with a US-stooge who would do Obama’s bidding.   This is why the imposter prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, has ordered two “anti-terror: crackdowns on unarmed activists in East Ukraine who oppose the Kiev junta.  This is why the Obama administration has avoided engaging Putin in constructive dialog aimed at finding on a peaceful solution to the present crisis. It’s because Obama wants to draw the Kremlin into a protracted civil war that will weaken Russia, discredit Putin, and shift public opinion to the side of the US and NATO. Why would Washington veer from a policy that clearly achieves what it’s supposed to achieve?  It won’t. Here’s an excerpt from an article on antiwar.com:

“Reports out of Moscow say that President Putin has “shut down” all talks with President Obama, and say they are “not interested” in speaking to the US again under the current environment of threats and hostility.
Putin and Obama had been speaking regularly on the phone about Ukraine in March and early April, but Putin has not directly spoken to him since April 14, and the Kremlin says that they see no need to do any more talking.” (“Putin Halts Talks With White House Amid Sanctions Threats”, antiwar.com)

There’s nothing to be gained by talking to Obama. Putin already knows what Obama wants. He wants war. That’s why the State Department and CIA toppled the government. That’s why CIA Director John Brennan appeared in Kiev just one day before coup president Yatsenyuk ordered the first crackdown on pro Russian protestors in the East. That’s why Vice President Joe Biden appeared in Kiev just hours before Yatsenyuk launched his second crackdown on pro Russian protestors in the East. That’s why Yatsenyuk has surrounded the eastern city of Slavyansk where he is preparing an attack on pro-Russian activists. It’s because Washington believes that a violent conflagration serves its greater interests. It’s pointless to talk to people like that, which is why Putin has stopped trying.
At present, the Obama administration is pushing for another round of sanctions on Russia, but members in the EU are dragging their feet. According to RT:

 “At the moment there is no consensus among the EU members on which economic measures against Russia would be acceptable, or even if they are needed at all,” a European diplomatic source told Itar-Tass.
The diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said only an open military invasion of Ukraine or irrefutable proof of Russian clandestine military presence in Ukraine would tip EU’s stance toward economic sanctions. So far every piece of evidence that Kiev and Washington made public of alleged involvement of Russian agents in Ukraine was either inconclusive or simply false.” (“US failing to push economic sanctions against Russia through EU allies”, RT)

Once again, it appears that Washington needs to draw Russian troops into the conflict to achieve its objectives.
On Sunday, RIA Novosti published satellite images showing a large buildup of troops outside the eastern Ukrainian city of Slavyansk. According to a report in Russia Today:

“160 tanks, 230 APCs and BMDs, and at least 150 artillery and rocket systems, including “Grad” and “Smerch” multiple rocket launchers, have been deployed to the area. A total of 15,000 troops are positioned near Slavyansk, he said….
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said the large buildup of Ukraine troops, as well as war games and additional deployments of armed forces to the NATO states in the region have “forced” Russia to respond with military drills of its own…..If Kiev choses to escalate the crackdown on the protesters by using heavy arms against them Russia says it reserves the right to use its own military to stop bloodshed.” (“Tanks, APCs, 15,000 troops’: Satellite images show Kiev forces build-up near Slavyansk”, RT)

Putin has stated repeatedly that he will respond if ethnic Russians are killed in Ukraine.  That’s the red line. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated the same message in an interview last week with RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze. The usually soft-spoken Lavrov, condemned  Yatsenyuk’s  attack on Ukrainian civilians as “criminal” and warned that “an attack on Russian citizens  is an attack on the Russian Federation.”
The statement was followed by ominous reports of  Russian troop movements near Ukraine’s border indicating that Moscow may be preparing to intervene to stem the violence against civilians. According to Russian Russia’s Itar Tass “Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said, “As of today exercises of battalion tactical groups has begun in the border areas with Ukraine.” Also aviation will conduct flights to simulate the actions near the state border.”
So there you have it: It looks like Obama’s provocations WILL draw Putin into the fray after all. But will things turn out the way that Obama thinks they will?  Will Putin follow Washington’s script and leave his troops in the east where they’ll be picked off by US-funded paramilitary guerillas and neo Nazis or does he have something else up his sleeve, like a quick blitz to Kiev to remove the junta government, call for international peacekeepers to quell the violence, and slip back over the border to safety?
Whatever the strategy may be, we won’t have to wait long to see it implemented.   If Yatsenyuk’s army attacks Slavyansk, then Putin’s going to send in the tanks and it’ll be a whole new ballgame.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38362.htmhttp://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38362.htmhttp://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38362.htm

The Palestinians and the "Jewish state"

Vijay Prashad 

Palestinian negotiators have a miserable task – each time they approach the Israeli position, the Israelis demand more.

One would have thought that the “Palestinian Versailles” – as Edward Said called the 1993 Oslo accords – were enough of a concession to Israel. But with the illegal settlement activity and the illegal West Bank wall, Israel continues to demand more land for less peace.

For decades Israeli negotiators would sullenly say that the Palestinian parties refused to accept Israel’s right to exist. Oslo invalided that call, but of course it did not bring from Israel its corollary – namely, the right to existence of Palestine.

Not long after Oslo, the Israeli position morphed; no longer was it sufficient to demand that Palestinians recognize Israel, they also had to accept that Israel is a “Jewish state.” It has become a demand of the current negotiations ongoing in fits and starts under the auspices of US Secretary of State John Kerry. The Israeli demand is so outrageous that Kerry told US Congress on 13 March that this is a “mistake.”

On 25 March, the Arab League passed a unanimous resolution stating: “We express our total rejection of the call to consider Israel as a Jewish state.” The League followed the argument made by a new UN report – “Arab Integration” – produced by the UN’s Economic and Social Commission of West Asia (ESCWA).

“Israel insists on being recognized by the world and the Arabs as an exclusively Jewish state,” notes the report, released in early March. “It imposes this recognition as a condition for reaching a settlement with the Palestinians. This policy is based on the concept of the religious or ethnic purity of states, which brought humanity the worst crimes and atrocities of the twentieth century.”

These are strong words. It implies that a better comparison for Israel than its preferred glance to the West is to its south – to Saudi Arabia, another state that bases itself on religious supremacy and denies minority rights. It is a comparison that the Israelis do not want to adopt.

Confusion and frustration

On 5 March and 7 April, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor sent strong letters to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemning Rima Khalaf, a former Jordanian cabinet minister who heads ESCWA.

In his second letter, quoted by the Israeli daily Haaretz, Ambassador Prosor says that Dr. Khalaf “may have a PhD in Systems Science, but she deserves a PhD in science fiction for her 200 page report filled with conspiracy theories. There is far more fiction than fact in this report that alleges that Israel is reviving the concept of ‘state ethnic and religious purity.’” Prosor throws in the now conventional allegations that Dr. Khalaf’s “accusations represent the epitome of modern day anti-Semitism” and that she is “demonizing Israel.”

Reading these letters one would assume that Israel does not want to be called a “Jewish state,” a concept that is indeed about “state ethnic and religious purity.” If this is the case then there is confusion in many quarters, where there is indeed frustration with the new demand coming from Tel Aviv.

On 4 March, at his favorite venue, the Washington, DC conference ofAIPAC, the powerful Israel lobby group, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to “recognize the Jewish state,” making clear that this would mean the invalidation of the Palestinian “right of return” (“You would be telling Palestinians to abandon the fantasy of flooding Israel with refugees”).

What is Israel’s definition of a Jewish state if it does not conform to “ethnic and religious purity?” Israel has not been able to settle this question. Parliamentarian Avi Dichter (Kadima) has put bills before theKnesset in 2010 and 2011 calling for an end to Arabic as an official language, with Jewish religious law taking the place of Israel’s Basic Law. These bills were withdrawn.

Last year, two sets of bills from Yariv Levin (Likud) and Ayelet Shaked(Jewish Home) as well as Ruth Calderon (Yesh Atid) tried to define the term “Jewish State,” but again could not find consensus. How can the Palestinian leadership agree to a vague term that Israeli lawmakers cannot define?

“Apartheid law”

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has an anodyne definition, linking the term to the idea of nationality: “Since their emergence in antiquity, the Jewish people have constituted a nation, a people and a civilization, anchored in basic aspects of their identity, such as Judaism and the Hebrew language. Israel is to the Jewish people what France is to the French people, Ireland is to the Irish and Japan is to the Japanese.”

But the Israeli state-building exercise – by the displacement of the Palestinians – is different from that of the French, Irish and Japanese. However, the comparison is salient in terms of minority rights. Francesuffers today from an absence of robust statutory and social protection for minority rights, and it also suffers from the growth of a xenophobic political force (captured to some extent by the National Front) that seeks to subordinate minorities.

This is precisely what Levin and Shaked’s bill sought, which is why the Israeli newspaper Haaretz called it an “apartheid law” (“Basic Law: Apartheid in Israel,” 30 March 2013).

This kind of law, the newspaper’s editorial board writes, is shockingly low on tolerance for minorities. “Arabs will enjoy at best the status of a tolerated minority, with the option of turning them into a non-tolerated minority down the line, one which needs to be rid of because its presence spoils the state’s Jewish purity.”

Is this the “Jewish state” that the Israeli negotiators want the Palestinian leadership to accept? If so, then the ESCWA report is correct, and Ambassador Prosor needs to apologize to Dr. Khalaf.

“Torpedo the negotiations”

Frustration with Israel’s new demand – that the Palestinians accept it as a Jewish state – has gone into the heart of the US diplomatic establishment. In an open letter published by Politico on 8 April, six leading US diplomats (including former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci) reject the Israeli demand and ask John Kerry to “stand firm.”

Israeli politicians “do not have the right to demand that Palestinians abandon their own national narrative,” they write, “and the United States should not be a party to such a demand … Israeli demands that Palestinians recognize that Israel has been and remains the national homeland of the Jewish people is intended to require the Palestinians to affirm the legitimacy of Israel’s replacement of Palestine’s Arab population with its own. It also raises fears of continuing differential treatment of Israel’s Arab citizens.”

In late March, Knesset member Zehava Galon (Meretz) said that Netanyahu’s insistence that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state “was meant to torpedo the negotiations.”

This seems to be the case. As the “peace process” goes once more into deep freeze, the Israeli government waits to change the “facts on the ground” with greater resolution — more settlements, more security barriers, less rights to Palestinians, and less chance of any political dialogue.

In 2003, Netanyahu said that the wall built to encage the West Bank would prevent a “demographic spillover” into Israel. The collapse of the “peace process” to deliver a two-state solution threatens to leave the Israelis with only two options – expel the Palestinians to Jordan andEgypt to liquidate the Palestinian question, or absorb the Palestinians into a non-racial single state.

Israeli policy leans toward the former, with the latter its nightmare. There is no seriousness of purpose in Israel toward any kind of negotiation. It has gained ground by obduracy. Why should it shift its strategy now?

Vijay Prashad is the Edward Said Chair at the American University of Beirut. He has an essay in Githa Hariharan’s edited volume From India to Palestine: Essays in Solidarity (New Delhi: LeftWord, 2014), reviewed byThe Electronic Intifada.

http://electronicintifada.net/content/palestinians-and-jewish-state/13323

New Bill Would Demand VOA Serve US Propaganda

New Bill Would Demand VOA Serve US 

Propaganda

John Glaser, 

According to a report at Foreign Policy, a new piece of legislation due for a vote on Wednesday of this week would force Voice of America, the federally funded news media organization, to toe the U.S. line even more closely and become an explicit propaganda tool of Washington.

A powerful pair of lawmakers in the House of Representatives have agreed on major legislation to overhaul Voice of America and other government-funded broadcasting outlets that could have implications for the broadcaster’s editorial independence, Foreign Policy has learned.

The new legislation tweaks the language of VOA’s mission to explicitly outline the organization’s role in supporting U.S. “public diplomacy” and the “policies” of the United States government, a move that would settle a long-running dispute within the federal government about whether VOA should function as a neutral news organization rather than a messaging tool of Washington.

“It is time for broad reforms; now more than ever, U.S. international broadcasts must be effective,” said Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a statement.

VOA has always been a propaganda outlet, broadly speaking, but it reportedly has taken an adversarial stance in some cases. Foreign Policy:

Founded in 1942 as a part of the Office of War Information, the VOA was originally tasked with countering Japanese and Nazi propaganda. In the 1950s, it moved to the State Department and the U.S. Information Agency where it focused its efforts on countering Communist propaganda. In later years, VOA concentrated on providing news to individuals living in repressive regimes. In 1976, President Gerald Ford signed its principles into law, emphasizing VOA’s mission as an “accurate, objective, and comprehensive” source of news, as opposed to a propaganda outlet.

For many years since then, employees at the TV and radio broadcaster have insisted on viewing themselves as objective journalists as opposed to instruments of American foreign policy. On some rare occasions, that sense of independence has resulted in news stories that depict the United States in a less than favorable light.

“The Persian News Network of Voice of America has been documented to show anti-American bias,” the conservative Heritage Foundation alleged in a policy brief this month.

Every government has some form of propaganda outlet. But the U.S.A. and the people within it have always thought of themselves as different. Propaganda is a dirty word and a filthy activity that only governments less divine than ours engage in. We are benevolent and good, which makes the need for self-serving and inaccurate propaganda obsolete.

But if we have bipartisan legislation moving through Congress that explicitly calls for VOA an other U.S. funded news outlets to toe the fallacious government line, then perhaps we’ve lost even that level of pretense.

http://antiwar.com/blog/2014/04/29/new-bill-would-demand-voa-serve-us-propaganda/

The West's Hypocrisy in Ukraine

The West's Hypocrisy in Ukraine

Losing Russia

by JONATHAN POWER

When it comes to Ukraine the US and the EU are adopting a holier than thou attitude which, unfortunately, leads them not to worship at the altar of truth.

Take the issue of the fuss made over alleged soldiers wearing Russian uniforms. They are not dressed in the smart fatigues of the unmarked Russian soldiers in Crimea, about which President Vladimir Putin has acknowledged he misled us.

What these soldiers, leading the Russian-speaking revolt, are wearing can be bought in any army surplus store. As for the photos Western intelligence has persuaded much of the media to use as evidence, they are hazy and would not be admissible in a court of law.

The Ukranian Security Agency announced that it captured 20 of its Russian counterparts. But then it reduced the number to 10 and then to 3.  But the last figure received much less highlighting from Western governments and media than the first.

The West isn’t innocent in this crisis

How all this “Russian interference” compares with the post Cold War expansion by Nato forces up to Russia’s borders, senior Western politicians’ (including the US ambassador) provocative support for a revolutionary movement that included a healthy contingent of neo-fascists who now have seats in the Ukrainian cabinet, and the funding of opposition forces and NGOs, is to be wondered at.

I’ve long been surprised at the tolerance for Western NGOs based in Russia and China. Imagine the reverse.

The West has no moral or legal capital

As for international law the US, the UK and France ignore it when convenient.

When in 1980 Iraq’s Saddam Hussein launched an invasion of Iran the US and the UK supplied him with weapons and military intelligence. When the US feared the World Court would find against it for mining the harbours of revolutionary Nicaragua it withdrew from the Court.

When Nato was intent on bombing Serbia and later Kosovo it bi-passed the UN Security Council although, according to the Charter, it is the only body that can legalise offensive military activity.

When the Security Council voted against the US, UK and France launching a second Iraq war they ignored its majority vote against.

When the West won a resolution, with Russian support, to protect civilians in the Libya of Muammar al-Gaddafi, it bent Security Council authority and did not stop air attacks until he was overthrown.

Kosovo and Crimea – the latter at least wasn’t bombed

The Russians were furious. Ironically, when most Western nations decided to recognise Kosovo as a state independent of Serbia against the wishes of Russia and even some EU members such as Spain, they gave a hostage to fortune. Russia is now able to say over Crimea we are only doing what you did over Kosovo.

The trouble with behaving like this is that international law and the Security Council don’t, like an elastic band, return to their original shape when stretched. So when it came to Crimea, where Russia was arguably in the wrong, many influential countries in the world, such as India, China, South Africa, Brazil and Israel kept silent and did not vote to back the Western condemnation. (Neither did they support Russia.)

Self-defeating to lose Russia

Losing Russia through mismanagement of a crisis is not a very clever thing to do.

It means that there will be no more nuclear disarmament for as far into the future as one can see. Trade and financial exchange with Russia’s big and growing market will be hit by sanctions.

Nationalism in Russia, even among the intelligentsia, is rising fast. (Remember how, after 9/11, 80% of Russians supported the US.) Russia and China will become closer.

The US and the EU are shooting themselves in the foot. Former president, Richard Nixon, the author of detente, is presumably turning in his grave. He tried to persuade President Bill Clinton, gung-ho on expanding Nato to Russia’s borders, despite an American promise not to, to go easy.

President Barack Obama, after steering well clear of Clinton-type policy, now is in danger of being dragged down by a similar one. Is he downplaying the many ways Russia cooperates with the West?

Russia provides transport on its rockets to the International Space Station, which no other nation is capable of doing at the moment. It supplies engines to US space rockets. It cooperates with the West in combating Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

It has granted permission for US war materials en route to Afghanistan to use Russian trains. It has given its permission for overflying to Afghanistan. (Russia shares an interest with Nato in Afghanistan since it lost a million men in its own foolish war there.) Russian support is now needed in the next delicate stage of Nato withdrawal.

With Syria it persuaded Bashar Al-Assad to give up its chemical weapons and now has moderated its arms shipments.

Not least, it is a positive diplomatic force in pushing Iran to prove to the world community that it has no program to build nuclear weapons.

Does the West really want to lose Russia?

Jonathan Power is a columnist and associate at the Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research in Lund Sweden.

© Jonathan Power 2014

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/29/losing-russia/

Iraq: A Different Kind of Legacy

Iraq: A Different Kind of Legacy

By John Tirman

Over a decade after the United States’ invasion of Iraq, the embattled country is still experiencing sectarian violence and political instability on a daily basis. Analyst John Tirman argues that the war has also left behind an environmental wreckage that will plague Iraq for decades to come.

The Iraq War is now 11 years old and still tearing up the country, but no longer with the assistance of U.S. troops. Between 500,000 and 700,000 people died from 2003–2011. The monthly civilian toll now is as high as it’s been since 2008. It’s a riven country, at odds with itself, fending off jihadists from Syria, and morally and physically drained by more than 20 years of war (starting with Operation Desert Storm in 1991) and crippling sanctions.

And that’s not all. We now know, thanks to the courageous efforts of several researchers, that environmental toxins have likely poisoned the country – another consequence of the war instigated by the United States. The munitions the United States used in Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom are the apparent culprits, and, like the grim Agent Orange legacy in Vietnam, controversy and denial animate much of the discussion.

THESE TOXIC MATERIALS, AMONG OTHERS, HAVE LARGELY BEEN IGNORED IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE WAR.

Two agents are at issue. One is depleted uranium, which is used to harden bullets and mortar shells to enable them to more easily penetrate targets. Depleted uranium (DU) is slightly radioactive and harmful if inhaled, though the extent of this hazard is unclear and most studies discount widespread impacts. The most likely effect is chemical (rather than radiological), and affects kidneys, according to studies conducted in manufacturing DU applications. Other metals used in munitions could have similar effects.

A second candidate is white phosphorous (WP), a known carcinogen, which U.S. forces used extensively in Fallujah and possibly elsewhere to light up fields of battle, and as an incendiary. The Army referred to its use of WP as “shake and bake.” A shell containing WP could burn toxic smoke for 15 minutes. Israel also used WP extensively in its assault on Gaza in 2008 and 2009, but said last year it would no longer use the agent.

These toxic materials, among others, have largely been ignored in the aftermath of the war. But epidemiological studies have raised the distinct possibility that such agents have taken a sizable human toll, particularly in Fallujah and other places of intense fighting.

A 2010 peer-reviewed study by molecular biologists found high rates of birth defects among Iraqis in Fallujah – “the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied,” according to the lead author. Another scientificstudy found that “since 2003, congenital malformations have increased to account for 15% of all births in Fallujah, Iraq. Congenital heart defects have the highest incidence, followed by neural tube defects. Similar birth defects were reported in other populations exposed to war contaminants.”

BUT THE MOTHERS WITH MALFORMED BABIES AND HIGH RATES OF INFANT PATHOLO- GIES ARE GRIM REMINDERS OF OUR LEGACY.

Depleted uranium is a leading suspect for these effects, though many official bodies, including the World Health Organization, assert that based on most studies, DU is not enough of a hazard to explain birth defects. A comprehensive reportissued by a coalition of activists seeking to ban DU responds that studies have not been done in enough war zones to understand the dynamic effects of the weapons and the environment. The subject deserves considerably more independent study.

Currently, there’s no indication that the U.S. military will stop using DU or WP weapons. They’re not classified as chemical weapons, though a case could be made that they should be. It defies logic that there are no effects from these contaminants when the high levels of “genetic damage” are coincident with the conduct of the war.

The military’s rote response in most cases of wrongdoing is denial. Remarkably, the American people and their political leaders are in denial about the impacts of the Iraq War as well. Many news media elites insist that no more than 100,000 people have been killed, and there’s little attention to the millions of Iraqis displaced from their homes by the war.

That the shattered society earns little heed today is no surprise – it’s a misadventure everyone wants to forget. But the mothers with malformed babies and high rates of infant pathologies are grim reminders of our legacy. It happens in all of America’s wars: We’re leaving a legacy of the uncaring bully. We should be better than that.

John Tirman is the Executive Director and Principal Research Scientist at the Center for International Studies in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

http://www.themarknews.com/2014/04/21/a-different-kind-of-legacy/

The Demonization of Hamas

What Destruction of Israel?

by JOHN V. WHITBECK

Paris.

When, in response to the threat of potential Palestinian reconciliation and unity, the Israeli government suspended “negotiations” with the Palestine Liberation Organization on April 24 (five days before they were due to terminate in any event), Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office issued a statement asserting: “Instead of choosing peace, Abu Mazen formed an alliance with a murderous terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel.”

In a series of related media appearances, Mr. Netanyahu hammered repeatedly on the “destruction of Israel” theme as a way of blaming Palestine for the predictable failure of the latest round of the seemingly perpetual “peace process”.

The extreme subjectivity of the epithet “terrorist” has been highlighted by two recent absurdities – the Egyptian military regime’s labeling of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has won all Egyptian elections since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, as a “terrorist” organization and the labeling by the de facto Ukrainian authorities, who came to power through illegally occupying government buildings in Kiev, of those opposing them by illegally occupying government buildings in eastern Ukraine as “terrorists”. In both cases, those who have overthrown democratically elected governments are labeling those who object to their coups as “terrorists”.

It is increasingly understood that the word “terrorist”, which has no agreed definition, is so subjective as to be devoid of any inherent meaning and that it is commonly abused by governments and others who apply it to whomever or whatever they hate in the hope of demonizing their adversaries, thereby discouraging and avoiding rational thought and discussion and, frequently, excusing their own illegal and immoral behavior.

Mr. Netanyahu’s assertion that Hamas “calls for the destruction of Israel” requires rational analysis as well.

He is not the only guilty party in this regard. The mainstream media in the West habitually attaches the phrase “pledged to the destruction of Israel” to each first mention of Hamas, almost as though it were part of Hamas’s name.

In the real world, what does the “destruction of Israel” actually mean? The land? The people? The ethno-religious-supremacist regime?

There can be no doubt that virtually all Palestinians – and probably still a significant number of Native Americans – wish that foreign colonists had never arrived in their homelands to ethnically cleanse them and take away their land and that some may even lay awake at night dreaming that they might, somehow, be able to turn back the clock or reverse history.

However, in the real world, Hamas is not remotely close to being in a position to cause Israel’s territory to sink beneath the Mediterranean or to wipe out its population or even to compel the Israeli regime to transform itself into a fully democratic state pledged to equal rights and dignity for all who live there. It is presumably the latter threat – the dreaded “bi-national state” – that Mr. Netanyahu has in mind when he speaks of the “destruction of Israel”.

For propaganda purposes, “destruction” sounds much less reasonable and desirable than “democracy” even when one is speaking about the same thing.

In the real world, Hamas has long made clear, notwithstanding its view that continuing negotiations within the framework of the American-monopolized “peace process” is pointless and a waste of time, that it does not object to the PLO’s trying to reach a two-state agreement with Israel; provided only that, to be accepted and respected by Hamas, any agreement reached would need to be submitted to and approved by the Palestinian people in a referendum.

In the real world, the Hamas vision (like the Fatah vision) of peaceful coexistence in Israel/Palestine is much closer to the “international consensus” on what a permanent peace should look like, as well as to international law and relevant UN resolutions, than the Israeli vision – to the extent that one can even discern the Israeli vision, since no Israeli government has ever seen fit to publicly reveal what its vision, if any exists beyond beyond maintaining and managing the status quo indefinitely, actually looks like.

As the Fatah and Hamas visions have converged in recent years, the principal divergence has become Hamas’s insistence (entirely consistent with international law and relevant UN resolutions) that Israel must withdraw from the entire territory of the State of Palestine, which is defined in the UN General Assembly resolution of November 29, 2012, recognizing Palestine’s state status as “the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967” (including, significantly, the definite article “the” missing from “withdraw from territories” in the arguably ambiguous UN Security Council Resolution 242), in contrast to Fatah’s more flexible willingness to consider agreed land swaps equal in size and value.

After winning the last Palestinian elections and after seven years of responsibility for governing Gaza under exceptionally difficult circumstances, Hamas has become a relatively “moderate” establishment party, struggling to rein in more radical groups and prevent them from firing artisanal rockets into southern Israel, a counterproductive symbolic gesture which Israeli governments publicly condemn but secretly welcome (and often seek to incite in response to their own more lethal violence) as evidence of Palestinian belligerence justifying their own intransigence.

Mr. Netanyahu’s “destruction of Israel” mantra should not be taken seriously, either by Western governments or by any thinking person. It is long overdue for the Western mainstream media to cease recycling mindless – and genuinely destructive – propaganda and to adapt their reporting to reality, and it is long overdue for Western governments to cease demonizing Hamas as an excuse for doing nothing constructive to end a brutal occupation which has now endured for almost 47 years.

John V. Whitbeck is an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/29/what-destruction-of-israel/