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US chalks up more first-day newborn deaths than rest of industrialized world combined – report

17 May
Reuters/Lucas Jackson

Reuters/Lucas Jackson

The number of babies dying in their first day of life remains significantly higher in the United States than 33 other leading industrialized nations combined, an annual report compiled by Save the Children reveals.

The London-based charity’s “State of the World’s Mothers” compiled a list of birth-day death rates for 176 countries, as well as information on maternal health, education and women’s income and political status.

While only one percent of the world’s more than one-million first-day deaths occur in the developed world, the US far outpaces its industrialized peers in newborn deaths.

The report determines that an estimated 11,300 babies die each year in the United States on the day they are born, “50 percent more first-day deaths than all other industrialized combined.”

“When first-day deaths in the United State are compared to those in the 27 countries making up the European Union, the findings show that European Union countries, taken together, have 1 million more births each year (4.3 million vs. 5.3 million, respectively) but only about half as many first-day deaths as the United States (11,300 in the US vs. 5,800 in EU member countries),” the report claims.

It continues that among 33 other industrialized countries where data was available, there was a combined total of 7,500 first-day deaths each year.

“The US represents 31 percent of the population in these 34 industrialized countries and 38 percent of the annual live births, but it has 60 percent of all first-day deaths,” the report continues. In some US counties, the first-day death rates are comparable to those in developing countries.

The disparity is attributed to the US pre-term birth rate, which is reportedly the second-highest in the industrialized world behind Cyprus and the sixth highest worldwide (following India, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and Indonesia.)

The US has over half a million preterm births each year, and complications from premature births are the cause of more than 35 per cent of newborn deaths in the country.

The US also has the highest adolescent birth rate of any industrialized country, with teen mothers tending to be poorer, less educated and the recipients of less pre-natal care. The report also notes poverty, racism and stress as likely contributing factors to first-day deaths in the US, as well as other industrialized states.

Worldwide the US comes in 30th place in terms of the overall assessment of mothers’ and children’s well-being. Finland meanwhile, came in first place, with its Nordic neighbors filling out the top 5.

Niger was found the be the worst place in the world to be a mother, with sub-Saharan Africa occupying the bottom ten slots for the first time in the reports 14-year history. The charity noted lack of nutrition as a key factor in the high mother and infant mortality rates in the region.

India, however, by far outpaced the world in the total number of babies dying within 24 hours of being born. The country registers over 300,000 such deaths per year – 29 percent of all newborn deaths worldwide. Other populous Asian states including China, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh were among the top ten states with the highest number of first day deaths.

Source

The Rise and Fall of Third Worldism – Part 1

1 Jan

third_world_countries_map_world_2

PART ONE: “Two, Three, many Vietnams”: National Liberation and the Rise of the Third World (1945 – 1991)

Asia, Africa and Latin America in the Early Years of the Century

With the exception of Latin America, and several noteworthy cases in Africa and Asia, the pre-1945 history of what came to be known as the “Third World” is overwhelmed by the fact of imperialism. Native voices were silenced and native cultures nearly eradicated.

In Asia, Japan was the only country to industrialize, and thus the only country to emerge as a major player in world affairs. Although at first resistant to Western influences; by the middle of the 19th century Japan had embarked on a major modernization program. Building upon traditional values, Japan built an army and navy powerful enough to challenge Russia over Korea at the turn of the last century; and strong enough to join the British, French, Germans, and Americans in carving out a sphere of influence in China. A hybrid of feudal/warrior institutions and modern technology would characterize Japan throughout most of the 20th century. Some argue that this mixture would enable Japanese economic success.

China, the most populous nation on earth, with a culture going back some 5,000 years, was weak and felt herself victimized by the Great Powers. Unlike Japan, China had not modernized. Chinese institutions had frozen. The Manchu dynasty which had ruled China for some 300 years seemed more interested in maintaining itself in power than in bettering the lot of its people; the majority of whom lived in conditions of appalling poverty. Although there was a strong feeling against foreign domination, which periodically erupted into mass uprisings such as the Boxer Rebellion; China had been effectively divided up amongst the Great Powers, who controlled large areas known as ‘concessions’ where they enjoyed trade monopolies. The corrupt and infirm Manchu dynasty fell underneath its own weight in 1911. The collapse of Manchu rule created a power vacuum which was filled by ambitions local strongmen, the ‘warlords,’ who became a law unto themselves in China’s vast outlying regions and frustrated any attempt at national unification.

Only two nations in Africa escaped colonial rule: Liberia and Ethiopia. Liberia, created by American abolitionists in 1825 as place to which future freed slaves could be “repatriated,” existed as a small anomaly to the general imperialist trend. Ethiopia, the ancient kingdom of Abyssinia, continued as a feudal monarchy surrounded by European protectorates and outright colonies.

Latin America was the great exception. By 1821, most of the old Spanish and Portuguese colonies had become independent states. Most of the 19th Century, in Latin America was consumed by a fierce struggle between traditional elites who favored a continuation of the old colonial plantation system and modernizers who wished to institute capitalist economics and bring in contemporary technologies and ideas. This conflict was further complicated by the beginning of the 20th Century by the active involvement of the United States in the region. Going back to the Monroe Doctrine of 1825, the United States had seen Latin America as its “back yard”; and American investments and interests in Latin America grew exponentially.

In Central America and the Caribbean, the battle between Conservatives (traditionalists) and Liberals (modernizers) lasted, in some case up to the 1930s. The ever increasing US presence stunted indigenous development and encouraged the rise of military dictatorships which maintained a precarious balance between repressing domestic dissent and ensuring continued US support. In Cuba and Puerto Rico, Spanish colonial rule was replaced, in the first instance by an apparent independence masking the reality of outside control, and in the second case, by direct US annexation.

Different scenarios were played out north and south of Central America. To the north, Mexico, which had, shortly after independence, lost much of its territory to the United States in the Mexican-American War of 1842, developed a strong, albeit contradictory state. In 1911, the Mexican Revolution overthrew the 40-year military dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz and inaugurated a period of titanic political/economic/social struggle. Populist radical leaders such as Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata vied with conservatives such as Venustiano Carranza and Alvaro Obregon as ad hoc revolutionary armies fought against whom ever happened to constitute the government at the time and each other. Eventually, the radicals were either marginalized or destroyed, and power settled into the hands of a conservative, modernizing elite composed of political strongmen and their followers. This elite held power through the mechanism of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The PRI oversaw the secularization and modernization of Mexican society. By 1945, Mexico was a contradictory mixture of large cities with modern industries, and a poor, backward countryside; a strong national sense of self, and control by a coterie of politicians and businessmen; an independent foreign policy, and a sharp awareness of the presence of the United States. In one way or another, this pattern would come to characterize not only Mexico, but much of Latin America.

In the south, Brazil and Argentina were becoming industrial power houses – albeit conflicted ones. Brazil seemed to follow the pre-established Mexican pattern: large, sprawling urban areas surrounded by impoverished rural zones. Brazil’s industries were concentrated in the north and along the coast; the wealth of the interior was only sporadically exploited. Argentina, with its large immigrant population (mainly Italian and Eastern European) provided something of a contrast. Heavy industry had appeared at the dawn of the century; the immense volume of European immigrant coming to work in those industries. The immigrants brought with them European ideas and social relations; both of which conflicted with traditional values. By 1945 the dictatorship of Juan Peron which combined a fascist core with modernizing elements initiated a period of military rule which would, by and large, characterize Argentina until the 1980s.

Imperialism and Colonialism Revisited

The decisions of the Versailles Conference of 1919 dismantled the Turkish, German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, but kept the British and French Empires intact. Not only that, but the Portuguese continued to rule Angola and Mozambique in Africa; the Belgians continued to rule the Congo; and the Dutch continued to govern Indonesia. The Middle East was divided between British French spheres of influence and protectorates. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand did become independent commonwealths – and Ireland did fight her way to a disunited independence – but, by and large, imperialism remained intact after World War I.

It wouldn’t be until after World War II that powerful drives towards independence and de-colonization would shatter the old European empires and create the modern states of Asia and Africa. The Second World War, with its anti-fascist and democratic aspirations, would impel the peoples of the colonial world to demand the same.

National Independence Struggles

In some cases, indigenous forces had played a major role in the defeat of the Axis powers. In Vietnam and Indonesia, Ho Chi Minh and Sukarno (respectively) emerged from the war as venerated national leaders. After the war, the French attempted to restore their rule in South East Asia. This misguided attempt came to an end in 1954 when, at the battle of Dien Bien Phu, Vietnamese forces under the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh which had previously defeated the Japanese; now prevented the French from returning. When the Americans tried to supplant the French, they too came to grief. A similar situation unfolded in Indonesia when the Dutch tried to restore the pre-war order. A similar outcome resulted: Sukarno, who had led resistance to the Japanese, now oversaw the independence of Indonesia.

The British came out of World War II in no condition to hold their empire together. In India, the Congress Party, under the leadership of Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah had been the focus of the independence movement there for decades. Their moment arrived in 1948 when the British pulled out and Indian independence was declared. But independence brought crisis. Perhaps with British encouragement, Jinnah led a faction which demanded that a separate Muslim state be created. In multi-religious, polyglot India, this demand led to massive disruption, forced resettlement of huge amounts of people, and a great amount of ethnic and sectarian bloodshed. In the end, India (Hindu) and Pakistan (Muslim) were created as two separate – and mutually hostile – states.

In Africa, decolonization quite often led to extended periods of instability. Independence leaders such as Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Julius Nyere (Tanzania), and Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana) strove to modernize their countries by following a socialist model of development. In the Congo, Patrice Lumumba failed to establish a fully independent state, at the cost of his life. In many parts of Africa, the pull out of the colonial powers created confusion, chaos, and ethnic strife. Often this was caused by old imperial states themselves, as they continued to try to exert influence in their former possessions by sponsoring ethnic and political rivalries. Portugal refused to divest itself of its colonies, with the result that it took nationalist guerrilla movements until the 1970s to establish the independent nations of Mozambique and Angola. In the former British colonies of Rhodesia and South Africa, the white settler population refused to yield to demands for civil equality for the native Africans. Fighting lasted until 1975 when Rhodesia became the majority-African governed Zimbabwe (under Robert Mugabe); and until 1989 when the racist apartheid system was destroyed in South Africa (under Nelson Mandela).

In the Middle East, the Algerian Revolution of 1956 forced the French out of that country. In Egypt, Gamel Abdel Nasser came to power with a promise to encourage “Arab unity” and “Arab Socialism.” Nasser’s ideas spread to Syria and Iraq, where a movement claiming to champion Arab Socialism, but in fact more reminiscent of Italian Fascism took hold, Baathism. In many cases, interference by Western powers led to the displacement of radical, modernizing regimes with repressive conservative governments. The neutralization of the Left and the bankruptcy of the Right led many to see radical Islam as a viable political alternative.

The creation, by UN mandate, of the state of Israel in 1948 exacerbated the crises endemic to the area. The flow of immigrants to the new Jewish state led to the displacement of much of the native Palestinian population. The new Israel developed into a thoroughly militarized state, eventually going to war with the surrounding Arab states in 1967 and 1973.

The movement for de-colonization was strongly affected by the Cold War. Many independence movements had adopted one or another variety of socialism as its ideology, and many post-independence regimes sought Soviet aid. Other, more conservative post-independence governments became allies of the United States. Some changed sides. Thus, movements such as the National Liberation Front of Vietnam, Frelimo in Mozambique, and the MPLA in Angola saw themselves as Marxist; Israel, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia were in the US camp; while governments in Algeria, Egypt, and the Congo (Zaire) switched from Soviet to American sponsorship. The proxy conflict between the US and USSR was played out in the post-colonial world. Soon, two other forces, China and Cuba, would enter the fray.

The Chinese Revolution

China has seen a century of revolution – and some would say that it’s far from over. Revolution overthrew the decrepit Manchu dynasty in 1911. The newly created Chinese Republic, under the leadership of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and his Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), wanted to create a united, modern, and democratic China. The first step in achieving this would be the cancellation of foreign concessions and the bringing to heel of the regional warlords. It was ‘simple’ enough to ask the British, French, etc. to leave; the second part of that equation was more difficult to achieve. The warlords were ensconced in remote areas, unseating them would require a trained, professional army. In order to raise an officer class capable of leading such an army, the Whampoa military academy was established in 1920. The Whampoa academy attracted many young, patriotic Chinese of all political persuasions. Many of China’s future leaders would come out of the Whampoa Academy. At the head of the academy, as director, was Sun yat-Sen’s protégé, Chiang Kai-Shek. By the end of the 1920s, the “Northern Expedition,” as the anti-warlord campaign was termed, was largely successful. By that time, however, a new conflict had developed.

The new China was alone in the world. The former imperial powers, who had just been asked to leave, weren’t about to render any aid. Desperate for support, China turned to another nation just then going through a revolution of their own, the Soviet Union. The Soviets agreed to provide political and military aid to China, but at a price: that the Kuomintang bring into the government, as partners, the newly-created Communist Party of China. Sun Yat-Sen agreed, and the Communists were essential to victory in the Northern Expedition. However, Sun Yat-Sen’s lieutenant Chiang Kai-shek vehemently disagreed with any cooperation with the Communists. After Sun’s death in 1925, he was succeeded by Chiang who jettisoned any pretense of democracy, making himself military dictator. Chiang also wanted to get rid of the Communists at the first available opportunity.

In November of 1927, Chiang struck. Nationalist troops unexpectedly turned on their Communist fellows. In all of China’s major cities, Communists and their sympathizers were massacred in the streets. Overnight, the Chinese Communist Party was almost exterminated. In a state of confusion and disarray, the surviving Communists, made their way to the southern province of Jianxi where, a local Communist leader, an ex-librarian named Mao Tse-tung, had managed to hold the party together.

Organizing Communist guerrilla forces into a Red Army, Mao managed to hold off the Nationalists long enough to force an escape out of Jianxi. Known as the “Long March,” the Communists embarked on a 6,000 mile trek over rivers, mountains, and deserts, fighting Nationalists troops all the way. Finally, the Communists found sanctuary in the area of Yenan in China’s northern mountains. This, then, became their base. The Long March solidified Mao as the unquestioned leader of the Communist Party. From Yenan, Mao’s Communists engaged Chiang’s Nationalists in guerrilla warfare, and extended the Communist-controlled zone.

The full-scale Japanese invasion of China brought a temporary truce between the Communists and Nationalists, as they agreed to join forces against the foreign occupiers. Overall, as American advisers during World War II pointed out, the Communists were the more effective fighters against the Japanese. Chiang seemed to be more afraid of the Chinese Communists than he was of the invading Japanese; and American aid sent to Chiang often ended up in the pockets of Nationalist politicians. The end of the war and the defeat of Japan signaled a resumption of hostilities between the Nationalists and Communists. After an intense four-year civil war, Communist forces gained the upper hand. Chiang’s Nationalists were forced to flee the mainland; establishing themselves, as the republic of China, on the island of Taiwan – where they have remained to this very day. On October 10, 1949, from Beijing, Mao proclaimed the creation of the new, communist, Peoples Republic of China.

Communist China became a new and powerful ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In fact, Chinese troops entered the Korean War against the United States. Domestically, the Communists embarked on numerous developmental and modernization campaigns. Campaigns to eliminate infectious disease and illiteracy, as well as campaigns to ensure the equality of women were, in great part, successful. Attempts to industrialize China’s economy were less so. The best known of these, the “Great Leap Forward” (1959), which tried to jump start China’s development through mass participation in the form of things such as encouraging the building of backyard blast furnaces to produce steel, was a failure.

Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union and his policy of Peaceful Coexistence with the West met with disapproval in Beijing. Mao felt that the new Soviet leaders were abandoning revolutionary principles and bowing to the US. Tensions within the Communist camp came to the breaking point in 1961 when, at a meeting of Communist parties in Moscow, the Chinese and Albanian delegations denounced the Soviets and their supporters and walked out. The Sino-Soviet split divided the world Communist movement and led to the creation of new, more militant Communist groups dedicated to the Chinese position. China felt itself to be the new center of the world revolutionary movement and, as such, supported and encouraged revolutionary parties and guerrilla groups in the Third World. The Cold War was developing into a three-cornered fight.

Within the Communist Party of China itself, Mao feared that elements similar to those represented by Khrushchev in the USSR would derail his revolutionary vision. Starting in 1964, Mao moved to isolate “conservative” and “pragmatic” elements in the Party. His attempt at a mass mobilization to reinvigorate revolutionary enthusiasm resulted in the upheaval known as the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.” The Cultural Revolution consumed China in chaos as radical and moderate forces, through the medium of youth organizations known as “Red Guards,” jostled each other for power and influence. Reaching a crescendo in 1966 – 1967, the Cultural Revolution involved pitched armed battles between rival Red Guard units. Mao called a halt to the anarchy in 1969, castigating some of the excesses of the more extreme radicals. However, tension and conflict between the more radical and the more pragmatic members of Mao’s inner circle remained.

The same year, 1969, that Mao rolled back the Cultural Revolution saw an intensification of the Sino-Soviet crisis as the Chinese and Soviets came to blows over a border dispute. This event seems to have convinced Mao that the Soviet Union was a greater threat to China than the United States. China offered the United States an opportunity to begin a normalization of relations; an opportunity the American President Richard Nixon took advantage of. In 1972, Nixon traveled to China, met with Mao and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, and the thaw in the Chinese- American Cold War began.

Chou En-lai’s, a protector of the moderates in Mao’s circle, death in 1976, followed by Mao’s own passing later that year renewed the conflict between radicals and moderates within ruling Party circles. After a brief and intense power struggle, the radicals were defeated. Deng Xiaoping, who had been exiled as a “capitalist roader” during the Cultural Revolution emerged as China’s new leader. Deng’s policies not only reversed the Cultural Revolution, but effectively dismantle communism itself. Throughout the 1980s, China more and more embraced a pro-market orientation, encouraging foreign investment and development of key industries. By the 1990s, China had emerged as a major economic force, exporting goods across the globe. Although the People’s Republic of China is still ruled by the Communist Party, it has, in fact, become a modern capitalist power.

The Cuban Revolution

Although conducted on a much smaller scale than the Chinese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution of 1959 would send even stronger shock waves throughout the Third World. On New Year’s Eve of 1959, guerrilla forces led by Fidel Castro overthrew the long-standing government of dictator Fulgencio Batista. Batista had been supported by the United States since 1933; and, under his leadership, the island had become a haven for US interests which virtually managed the Cuban economy.

Castro’s victory signaled major reform, including land redistribution, literacy and public health campaigns, and the nationalization of major utilities and industries. These latter reforms incurred the ire of American corporations which lost their investments in Cuba. The United States’ severing of diplomatic relations followed by the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion and an economic embargo against Cuba caused the Castro government to fully enter the Soviet orbit. However, the relationship between Cuba and the Soviet Union was far from smooth. Having come to power in through a guerrilla movement in a peasant society, Cuba had much in common with China. Both China and the USSR courted Cuba to support them in their struggle with each other. Cuba was, for a time, caught between the feuding Communist powers. Instead, Cuba developed a unique image and presented itself as a model for Third World nations to follow. This pleased neither China nor the Soviet Union. Adding to the conflict with the Soviets was Cuba’s support for armed guerrilla movements, especially in Latin America, which threatened Soviet attempts at a rapprochement with the US.

In the wake of the Cuban Revolution guerrilla and national liberation movements emerged, aiming at spreading the Cuban example in Latin America. Castro’s right-hand-man, the Argentine born Ernesto “Che” Guevara, was central to this endeavor. Guevara personally led Cuban-trained guerrillas in Africa; and, in an attempt to foment revolution in South America, died while organizing a guerrilla force in Bolivia, becoming a revolutionary icon in the process. Although most of the guerrilla organizations spawned in the 1960s failed, they had the unexpected consequence of producing a severe reaction in the form of repressive military regimes devoted to their destruction. Thus, in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Argentina, extremely violent military dictatorships characterized those nations in the 1970s. In Chile, the election and subsequent overthrow of a Socialist president, Salvador Allende, produced a similar phenomenon. Cuban advisers trained guerrillas in other parts of the world, as well, namely Angola and South Africa.

Cuban attempts at developing an independent, diversified, modern economy met with failure. By the 1970s, Cuba had abandoned overtly encouraging armed struggle and integrated itself into the Soviet system. This would continue until the collapse of the Soviet Union itself in 1991.

In the 1950s, Indian Prime Minister Nehru stated that the modern world was divided into “Three Worlds.” The “First World” consisted of the United States and the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe; the “Second World” was the Soviet Union and its Communist Bloc allies; the “Third World” was the poor, underdeveloped nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Fought over by both the First and Second Worlds, Nehru urged the Third World to develop an independent stance, find its own voice, and put forward its own demands and aspirations. Thus, the “Non-Aligned Movement” came into being.

Led by India’s Nehru, Yugoslavia’s Tito, and Egypt’s Nasser, Non-Alignment did not mean neutrality. India leaned to the West, Cuba (who later joined the Non-Aligned Movement), leaned towards the Soviets; instead, Non-Alignment meant that the Third World countries recognized that they shared a commonality of interests. Indeed, many of the Non-Aligned nations were bitter rivals; India and Pakistan readily come to mind. However, despite sometimes serious differences, the Non-Aligned nations managed to bring questions of development and industrialization, debt and poverty, national independence and self-determination to the world’s attention.

Although the Non-Aligned movement seems to have greatly dissipated with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the appearance of a unipolar world dominated by the United States, non-alignment did shift world politics from the East vs. West emphasis of the Cold War to the North vs. South conflict that persists to this very day.

FORTHCOMING:

PART TWO: “The coming of the new international:” Third Worldist Theory in the 1950s – 1970s.

Aliyaar, Indian Laborer, Gets His Hand Chopped Off by his Boss After Asking For $3 in Wages to Feed his Family

13 Sep

Shocking: The labourer’s hand was chopped in the Garhwa district of Jharkhand allegedly after he asked his employers for his salary

A manual labourer has allegedly had one hand chopped off by his employers after asking bosses for his salary.

The incident happened on Sunday when the proprietors of an illegal alcohol making unit in India punished the man – identified only as Aliyaar – with an axe.

He had asked for the three month’s wages he was owed, a total of 200 rupees (£2.25), so he could feed his family.

He was taken to Ranchi’s Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) bleeding profusely, and may not be able to work for the rest of his life.

Police said the villager used to supply wood from the nearby forests to the brewery.

‘There has been a fight between 2-3 people. The place where this incident occurred is an alcohol manufacturing unit owned by Ram Singh Yadav and Uday Yadav,’ said Dr Mical Raj, Superintendent of Police, Garhwa.

‘Those running the brewery did not pay him. For such a meagre amount, the left hand of Aliyaar was chopped off.’

Mr Raj said they had arrested one man after the incident and were looking for others. The man’s condition is now said to be stable.

‘Ram Singh Yadav and his brother cut my hand and I became unconscious immediately. I don’t remember how many other men were present there… God alone knows how will I run my family now,’ said the man, Aliyaar.

The illegal alcohol business is run by local strongmen who empoy villagers for their work, often exploiting and physically abusing workers.

Aliyaar told the police while in hospital that when he demanded the wages he was owed, he was beaten up and his hand cut off.

The victim’s wife said: ‘He used to cut wood and earn some money for us. We are a 10-member family, how will we survive, what will we eat now?’

Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Arjun Munda, said only that the state had the lowest crime rate when he was asked about the incident.

‘As far as the law and order situation is concerned or if we see national crime bureau’s report, Jharkhand is in a very good state,’ he said.

Source

“Iran and Everything Else” by Michael Parenti

9 Aug

Occasionally individuals complain that I fail to address one subject or another. One Berkeley denizen got in my face and announced: “You leftists ought to become aware of the ecological crisis.” In fact, I had written a number of things about the ecological crisis, including one called “Eco-Apocalypse.” His lack of familiarity with my work did not get in the way of his presumption.

Years ago when I spoke before the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in New York, the moderator announced that she could not understand why I had “remained silent” about the attempt to defund UNESCO. Whatever else I might have been struggling with, she was convinced I should have joined with her in trying to save UNESCO (which itself really was a worthy cause).

People give me marching orders all the time. Among the most furiously insistent are those fixed on 9/11. Why haven’t I said anything about 9/11? Why am I “a 9/11 denier.” In fact, I have written about 9/11 and even spoke at two 9/11 conferences (Santa Cruz and New York), raising questions of my own.

Other people have been “disappointed” or “astonished” or “puzzled” that I have failed to pronounce on whatever is the issue du jour. No attention is given by such complainers to my many books, articles, talks, and interviews that treat hundreds of subjects pertaining to political economy, culture, ideology, media, fascism, communism, capitalism, imperialism, ecology, political protest, history, religion, race, gender, homophobia, and other topics far too numerous to list. (For starters, visit my website: www.michaelparenti.org)

But one’s own energy, no matter how substantial, is always finite. One must allow for a division of labor and cannot hope to fight every fight.

Recently someone asked when was I going to “pay some attention” to Iran. Actually I have spoken about Iran in a number of interviews and talks—not to satisfy demands made by others but because I myself was moved to do so. In the last decade, over a five year period, I was repeatedly interviewed by English Radio Tehran. My concern about Iran goes back many years. Just the other day, while clearing out some old files, I came across a letter I had published over 33 years ago in the New York Times (10 May 1979), reproduced here exactly as it appeared in the Times:

To the Editor of the New York Times:

For 25 years the Shah of Iran tortured and murdered many thousands of dissident workers, students, peasants and intellectuals. For the most part, the U.S. press ignored these dreadful happenings and portrayed the Shah as a citadel of stability and an enlightened modernizer.

Thousands more were killed by the Shah’s police and military during the popular uprisings of this past year. Yet these casualties received only passing mention even though Iran was front-page news for several months. And from 1953 to 1978 millions of other Iranians suffered the silent oppression of poverty and malnutrition while the Shah, his family, and his generals grew ever richer.

Now the furies of revolution have lashed back, thus far executing about 200 of the Shah’s henchmen—less than what the Savak would arrest and torture on a slow weekend. And now the U.S. press has suddenly become acutely concerned, keeping a careful account of the “victims,” printing photos of firing squads and making repeated references to the “repulsion” and “outrage” felt by anonymous “middle-class” Iranians who apparently are endowed with finer sensibilities than the mass of ordinary people will bore the brunt of the Shah’s repression. At the same time, American commentators are quick to observe that the new regime is merely replacing one repression with another.

So it has always been with the recording of revolutions: the mass of nameless innocents victimized by the ancien régime go uncounted and unnoticed, but when the not-so-innocent murderers are brought to revolutionary justice, the business-owned press is suddenly filled with references to “brutality” and “cruelty.”

That anyone could equate the horrors of the Shah’s regime with the ferment, change and struggle that is going on in Iran today is a tribute to the biases of the U.S. press, a press that has learned to treat the atrocities of the U.S.-supported right-wing regimes with benign neglect while casting a stern self-righteous eye on the popular revolutions that challenge such regimes.

Michael Parenti
Washington, D.C.

There is one glaring omission in this missive: I focused only on the press without mentioning how the White House and leading members of Congress repeatedly had hailed the Shah as America’s sturdy ally—while U.S. oil companies merrily plundered Iran’s oil (with a good slice of the spoils going to the Shah and his henchmen).

A few years before the 1979 upheaval, I was teaching a graduate course at Cornell University. There I met several Iranian graduate students who spoke with utter rage about the Shah and his U.S.-supported Savak secret police. They told of friends being tortured and disappeared. They could not find enough damning words to vent their fury. These students came from the kind of well-off Persian families one would have expected to support the Shah. (You don’t make it from Tehran to Cornell graduate school without some money in the family.)

All I knew about the Shah at that time came from the U.S. mainstream media. But after listening to these students I began to think that this Shah fellow was not the admirably benign leader and modernizer everyone was portraying in the news.

The Shah’s subsequent overthrow in the 1979 revolution was something to celebrate. Unfortunately the revolution soon was betrayed by the theocratic militants who took hold of events and created their Islamic Republic of Iran. These religious reactionaries set about to torture and eradicate thousands of young Iranian radicals. They made war upon secular leftists and “decadent” Western lifestyles, as they set about establishing a grim and corrupt theocracy.

U.S. leaders and media had no critical words about the slaughter of leftist revolutionaries in Iran. If anything, they were quietly pleased. However, they remained hostile toward the Islamic regime. Why so? Regimes that kill revolutionaries and egalitarian reformists do not usually incite displeasure from the White House. If anything, the CIA and the Pentagon and the other imperial operatives who make the world safe for the Fortune 500 look most approvingly upon those who torture and murder Marxists and other leftists. Indeed, such counterrevolutionaries swiftly become the recipients of generous amounts of U.S. aid.

Why then did U.S. leaders denounce and threaten Iran and continue to do so to this day? The answer is: Iran’s Islamic Republic has other features that did not sit well with the western imperialists. Iran was-—and still is—a “dangerously” independent nation, unwilling to become a satellite to the U.S. global empire, unlike more compliant countries. Like Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Iran, with boundless audacity, gave every impression of wanting to use its land, labor, markets, and capital as it saw fit. Like Iraq—and Libya and Syria—Iran was committing the sin of economic nationalism. And like Iraq, Iran remained unwilling to establish cozy relations with Israel.

But this isn’t what we ordinary Americans are told. When talking to us, a different tact is taken by U.S. opinion-makers and policymakers. To strike enough fear into the public, our leaders tell us that, like Iraq, Iran “might” develop weapons of mass destruction. And like Iraq, Iran is lead by people who hate America and want to destroy us and Israel. And like Iraq, Iran “might” develop into a regional power leading other nations in the Middle East down the “Hate America” path. So our leaders conclude for us: it might be necessary to destroy Iran in an all-out aerial war.

It was President George W. Bush who in January 2002 cited Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an “axis of evil.” Iran exports terrorism and “pursues” weapons of mass destruction. Sooner or later this axis would have to be dealt with in the severest way, Bush insisted.

These official threats and jeremiads are intended to leave us with the impression that Iran is not ruled by “good Muslims.” The “good Muslims”—as defined by the White House and the State Department—are the reactionary extremists and feudal tyrants who ride high in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirate, Bahrain, and other countries that provide the United States with military bases, buy large shipments of U.S. arms, vote as Washington wants in the United Nations, enter free trade agreements with the Western capitalist nations, and propagate a wide-open deregulated free-market economy.

The “good Muslims” invite the IMF and the western corporations to come in and help themselves to the country’s land, labor, markets, industry, natural resources and anything else the international plutocracy might desire.

Unlike the “good Muslims,” the “bad Muslims” of Iran take an anti-imperialist stance. They try to get out from under the clutches of the U.S. global imperium. For this, Iran may yet pay a heavy price. Think of what has been happening to Iraq, Libya, and now Syria. For its unwillingness to throw itself open to Western corporate pillage, Iran is already being subjected to heavy sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies. Sanctions hurt the ordinary population most of all. Unemployment and poverty increase. The government is unable to maintain human services. The public infrastructure begins to deteriorate and evaporate: privatization by attrition.

Iran has pursued an enriched uranium program, same as any nation has the right to do. The enrichment has been low-level for peaceful use, not the kind necessary for nuclear bombs. Iranian leaders, both secular and theocratic have been explicit about the useless horrors of nuclear weaponry and nuclear war.

Appearing on the Charlie Rose show when he was visiting the USA, Iranian president Ahmadinejad pointed out that nuclear weapons have never saved anyone. The Soviet Union had nuclear weapons; was it saved? he asked. India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons; have they found peace and security? Israel has nuclear weapons: has it found peace and security? And the United States itself has nuclear weapons and nuclear fleets patrolling the world and it seems obsessively preoccupied with being targeted by real or imagined enemies. Ahmadinejad, the wicked one, sounded so much more rational and humane than Hillary Clinton snarling her tough-guy threats at this or that noncompliant nation.

(Parenthetically, we should note that the Iranians possibly might try to develop a nuclear strike force—not to engage in a nuclear war that would destroy Iran but to develop a deterrent against aerial destruction from the west. The Iranians, like the North Koreans, know that the western nuclear powers have never attacked any country that is armed with nuclear weapons.)

I once heard some Russian commentators say that Iran is twice as large as Iraq, both in geography and in population; it would take hundreds of thousands of NATO troops and great cost in casualties and enormous sums of money to invade and try to subdue such a large country, an impossible task and certain disaster for the United States.

But the plan is not to invade, just to destroy the country and its infrastructure through aerial warfare. The U.S. Air Force eagerly announced that it has 10,000 targets in Iran pinpointed for attack and destruction. Yugoslavia is cited as an example of a nation that was destroyed by unanswerable aerial attacks, without the loss of a single U.S. soldier. I saw the destruction in Serbia shortly after the NATO bombings stopped: bridges, utilities, rail depots, factories, schools, television and radio stations, government-built hotels, hospitals, and housing projects—a destruction carried out with utter impunity, all this against a social democracy that refused to submit to a free-market capitalist takeover.

The message is clear. It has already been delivered to Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, and many other countries around the world: overthrow your reform-minded, independent, communitarian government; become a satellite to the global corporate free-market system, or we will pound you to death and reduce you to a severe level of privatization and poverty.

Not all the U.S. military is of one mind regarding war with Iran. While the Air Force can hardly contain itself, the Army and Navy seem lukewarm. Former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, actually denounced the idea of waging destruction upon “80 million Iranians, all different individuals.”

The future does not look good for Iran. That country is slated for an attack of serious dimensions, supposedly in the name of democracy, “humanitarian war,” the struggle against terrorism, and the need to protect America and Israel from some future nuclear threat.

Sometimes it seems as if U.S. ruling interests perpetrate crimes and deceptions of all sorts with a frequency greater than we can document and expose. So if I don’t write or speak about one or another issue, keep in mind, it may be because I am occupied with other things, or I simply have neither the energy nor the resources. Sometimes too, I think, it is because I get too heavy of heart.

India missile test has few critics, unlike North Korea’s failed launch

8 May

NEW DELHI — India’s successful test of a powerful new missile that can carry nuclear weapons to Beijing caused barely a ripple — even in China — just days after North Korea was globally vilified for a failed rocket launch.

The vastly different responses show the world has grown to accept India as a responsible and stable nuclear power, while shunning North Korea as a pariah.

“It’s not the spear, but who holds the spear that matters,” said Rahul Bedi, a defense analyst in India. “North Korea is a condemned nation. It’s a pariah country. Its record of breaking nuclear agreements is well known. India has emerged in that sense as a fairly responsible country.”

The muted response to Thursday morning’s test underscores how far India has come in gaining acceptance for its nuclear program. After India tested its first nuclear bomb in 1974, the U.S. put it under sanctions for a quarter century.

But last decade, the U.S. removed the sanctions and eventually ratified in 2008 a landmark deal to allow civilian nuclear trade that effectively accepted India as a nuclear nation.

India hailed its test of the Agni-V missile as a significant step forward in its aspirations to become a regional and world power.

“The nation stands tall today,” Defense Minister A.K. Antony said, according to the Press Trust of India.

The missile, with a range of 3,100 miles, still requires a battery of tests and must clear other bureaucratic hurdles before it can be inducted into India’s arsenal in a few years. The differences between the two launches were clear before they even got under way.

North Korea insisted its rocket launch Sunday was merely part of a civilian space program aimed at putting an observation satellite into orbit. The U.S. and other countries called it a thin excuse to test technology for firing a long-range missile fitted with a nuclear warhead. The launch failed when the rocket broke apart soon after takeoff.

The condemnation of North Korea’s launch was swift. The United States canceled a plan to send food aid and the U.N. Security Council announced it would impose new sanctions.

India was clear from the start that it was testing a nuclear-capable missile that could reach major Chinese cities.

The government hailed it as a success, releasing video showing the Agni-V taking off from a small launcher on what appeared to be railroad tracks at 8:07 a.m. from Wheeler Island off India’s east coast. It rose in a pillar of flame, trailing billows of smoke behind, before arcing through the sky.

The missile hit an altitude of more than 370 miles, its three stages worked properly and its payload was deployed as planned, the head of India’s Defense Research and Development Organization, Vijay Saraswat, told Times Now news channel.

Yet officials said the missile test should not be seen as a threat because India has a no-first-use policy and its missiles were used only for deterrence.

International concerns were muted.

China, with the most at stake from the launch, declined to discuss it. Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said only that India and China should work together as strategic partners and “grasp opportunities to further develop relations.”

Even archrival Pakistan, already in range of India’s less advanced missiles, showed no concern, with foreign office spokesman Mozzam Ahmed Khan saying only that India had informed it of the test ahead of time in line with an agreement they have.

Source

Coal deals scandal robs India of billions

24 Mar

Mark Magnier, London
March 24, 2012

DELHI: India’s parliament erupted in hoots and jeers after a draft report by government auditors estimated the national treasury lost 10,670 billion rupees ($197 billion) by selling coalfields to private excavation companies in sweetheart deals.

The report, leaked to the Times of India newspaper, said the primary beneficiaries were about 100 private and state companies that were handed contracts for 155 coalfields between 2004 and 2009 without going through a competitive bidding process. The report said that $197 billion was a conservative estimate given that it relied on prices for low-grade rather than medium-grade coal.

The scandal was the latest to hit the ruling Congress party, following others involving the telecommunications, real estate and sports industries.

Opposition leaders called the latest revelation the ”mother of all scams”, accusing the government of looting the country.

Auditors with the office of the Comptroller and Auditor-General countered that the leaked draft is misleading, adding in a letter to the Prime Minister’s office that the figures publicised were the product of discussions held at a ”very preliminary stage”.

”We are examining the news report and I have called for records,” the Coal Minister, Sriprakash Jaiswal, said. ”After that I will reply.”

The government said it has not received the report yet from the Auditor-General’s office.

India, the world’s third-largest coal producer after China and the US, has seen a series of mining scandals. In August, the top elected official in Karnataka state resigned after being implicated in a mining scandal that a watchdog said involved about $380 million. Three months later, a report claimed that almost 50 per cent of the iron ore exported from Goa state was illegally mined.

India is hungry for energy to fuel its fast-growing economy, and coal accounts for 70 per cent of the mix. That percentage is expected to grow, given limitations on the further development of power from nuclear reactors and renewable sources. Environmentalists, however, argue that increased production is ecologically unsustainable.

Kalpana Jain, an analyst with the consulting firm Deloitte India, said policy and regulations over mining deals are still evolving in India, which has long eschewed auctions in favour of a first-come, first-served policy.

Several senior government figures, including former telecommunications minister A. Raja, have been jailed on corruption charges.

Source

Video: India Buying Iranian Oil With Gold Bullion, China May Follow

10 Feb

India Factory Workers Revolt, Kill Company President

29 Jan

Town of Yanam in India. Factory workers here laid to waste their ceramic factory and later killed the company president after a wage dispute between management and ownership turned ugly. Image by Wikipedia.

Workers at the Regency Ceramics factory in India raided the home of their boss, and beat him senseless with lead pipes after a wage dispute turned ugly.

The workers were enraged enough to kill Regency’s president K. C. Chandrashekhar after their union leader, M. Murali Mohan, was killed by baton-wielding riot police on Thursday. The labor violence occurred in Yanam, a small city in Andra Pradesh state on India’s east coast. Police were called to the factory by management to quell a labor dispute. The workers had been calling for higher pay and reinstatement of previously laid off workers since October. Murali was fired a few hours after the police left the factory.

The next morning, at 06:00 on Friday, Murali went to the factory along with some workers and tried to obstruct the morning shift, local media reported. Long batons, known as lathis in India, were used by police who charged the workers, injuring at least 20 of them, including Murali. He died on the way to hospital, according to The Times of India. Hundreds of workers gathered outside the police station and demanded that officers be charged with homicide.

Curfew and other civil orders were imposed in Yanam because of the uprising that ultimately led to the murder of the Regency president. Police reported that rioters also torched several vehicles outside the police station. Eight Regency Ceramics workers were injured in police firing that followed; the condition of two of them is critical. More than 100 protesters have been arrested.

India factory workers are the lowest paid within the big four emerging markets. Per capita income in India is under $4,000 a year, making it the poorest country in the BRICs despite its relatively booming economy.

At Regency Ceramics, workers went on strike Jan. 1 over the wage dispute. The management had reportedly decided to slap a restraining order on five workers and managed to obtain an order from a high court saying that the striking workers should not come within 220 yards, more than the size of two football fields, from the factory.

Once news of Murali’s death spread, the factory workers allegedly destroyed 50 company cars, buses and trucks and lit them on fire. They ransacked the factory. Residents joined hands with around 600 workers, while others were enroute to Chandrashekhar’s house.

Source

Pacifism: How to Do The Enemy’s Job For Them

11 Aug

“As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.” – George Orwell

In 1942, George Orwell wrote, “Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense.” At first glance, this sentence from Orwell’s essay “Pacifism and the War” appears to be an outrageous defamation, a provocative statement by a writer seeking attention. How on Earth could anyone equate pacifism – seemingly the expression of love for humankind, peace and harmony, relentless opponent of all forms of violence – with support for fascism – the most reactionary, chauvinist, militaristic and bloodthirsty form of bourgeois rule, which at that time waged a genocidal war? Furthermore, how could one go further and call such a label “elementary common sense?”

However, if we do not let our knee-jerk reaction have the best of us but have a closer look, we will realize that both statements are true. Orwell continues:

“If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle [...] is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security.”

He also points out that the Nazis actively spread pacifist propaganda in Great Britain and the USA. Whether we like the thought or not, it is the objective truth: in a war like World War II you had to choose sides, there was simply no way to remain neutral. Those who pretended to others and themselves to live in an ivory tower of peace and love for all of humanity while opposing all sides in the war were obviously blind to the enormous threat that the fascist Axis powers posed to the world.

“Well, that’s still a slanderous generalization”, a pacifist or sympathizer of non-violence philosophy might say, “World War II surely is a special case, and anybody who’d claim the same today as Orwell did in those days would be completely out of their mind. Today we aren’t in a total war over the future of humanity.” – Yes, we are! We are in class struggle against an enemy de-facto as merciless as the Nazis. Those propagating uncompromising non-violence, pretending to stand aloof from the mechanisms of society and condemning the mere thought of violent resistance must still be seen as “fascifists”.

In the following work we will see that the anti-pacifist statements above are also valid when applied to the class struggle. Instead of contributing successful tactics to the workers’ movement, pacifism hinders and hampers the struggle against the ruling class and this way effectively supports the latter.

The Class Base of Pacifism

Marxism-Leninism teaches that only the working class – because of its special place in the capitalist mode of production and the resulting role in bourgeois society – has a genuine interest in the socialist revolution and is solely capable of carrying it out, seizing the means of production, overcoming the class system together with it all exploitation of man by man. Therefore we have to examine the class base of pacifism. Is it a progressive expression of the class struggle, a tactic dictated by the needs and struggle of the oppressed and exploited, rooted in the working class movement? Does it pose a challenge, a threat to the existing class order, capitalism and the bourgeois rule?

On the contrary, pacifism is a product of the petty-bourgeoisie, the favorite of members of that class and liberal academics. We already saw that Orwell rightfully called it “a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security.” Realizing this origin, it is no longer surprising that pacifism often appears to be out of touch with reality, drenched with idealist notions. This and the refusal to recognize or grasp the essence of class struggle makes pacifism an obstacle to the working class movement and liberation struggles.

Class struggle is the driving force of history, inherent to class society. Marx and Engels showed that the bourgeoisie can only make profits at the expense of the working class while the working class can only advance its interests and better its situation at the expense of the bourgeoisie. In other words: the aims of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are diametrically opposed, their antagonistic class interests are irreconcilable.

If we understand this, we have to realize that violence is inherent to class struggle. History has yet to record a ruling class voluntarily giving up its power and privileges. It has never happened and it will never happen.

Of course the pacifist is either ignorant of this, or knowingly complicit. The petty-bourgeoisie is essentially a doomed class and torn between supporting the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Most of the time they are drawn toward the bourgeoisie, but in case they support the latter it is not out of understanding the objective necessity to abolish capitalism and thus the existence of classes. Instead, they are driven by either rebellious adventurism or, in case of pacifists, an emotional humanism.

For them, violence is, far from an unavoidable consequence. It is merely a personal choice, the product of an irrational and brutal mind. After all, the pacifist fairy tale goes, everybody can be convinced by rational arguments. So let us “speak truth to power,” appeal to the good will, the rational and emotional side of those with power, and let us remind them of their “moral responsibility.”

It should be obvious that this is a naïve and idealist approach requiring nothing short of a miracle: the bourgeoisie denying their class interests and acting contrary to them would mean ceasing to be the bourgeoisie.

In his valuable book How Nonviolence Protects the State, the American anarchist Peter Gelderloos reminds us:

“The elite cannot be persuaded by appeals to their conscience. Individuals who do change their minds and find a better morality will be fired, impeached, replaced, recalled, assassinated” ( Gelderloos 22).

If the ruling class cannot be swayed, maybe at least “the ordinary man” will see the truth behind our words and rationality will celebrate its triumph this way?

If there was any truth to the anti-materialist assumption that it is all about propagating “the right idea” and everybody will have to see its beauty and truth, then there is absolutely no way to explain why we in the West do not already live in a socialist society. We should also wonder why there is still so much wrong with the world, despite so many people speaking out against out various problems in the most rational and agreeable manner for decades. Public support requires that sympathetic attention is drawn to the cause. The most important factor in directing attention and building public support is undoubtedly the media.

Who controls the media again and therefore has a monopoly in opinion making? Ah, right, the corporate elite. Back at the idealist appeals to the mercy of the very people we struggle against.

“… an ostensibly revolutionary movement would have constrained itself to a horribly mismatched battle, trying to win hearts and minds without destroying the structures that have poisoned those hearts and minds” (Gelderloos 92).

Expecting otherwise means taking a step back to the days of the Utopian socialists who argued and expected the same. We should ask ourselves: what compels one to hold similar naïve views after Utopian socialism was succeeded by scientific socialism, that is after Marx and Engels gave socialism a scientific base?

The answer lies again in the class base of pacifism. The petty-bourgeoisie does not want to overcome capitalism as this would mean them putting their privileged position at risk!

The Racism of Pacifism

The color of your skin is another factor greatly contributing to a privileged or disadvantaged position in society. Although Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi are used as figureheads, the overwhelming majority of pacifist adherents and theoreticians are also white, which leads to an Euro-centric view and little attention for the institutionalized discrimination people of color have to face on a daily base.

“Besides the fact that the typical pacifist is quite clearly white and middle class [sic], pacifism as an ideology comes from a privileged context. It ignores that violence is already here; that violence is an unavoidable, structurally integral part of the current social hierarchy; and that it is people of color who are most affected by that violence” (Gelderloos 23).

Instead of taking into account the different circumstances of people less well-off, oppressed, discriminated and brutalized, of oppressed minorities at home and peoples threatened by imperialism worldwide, the typical pacifist will moralize that “violence can never be the answer.” Successfully they manage to overlook the fact that in almost all the time violent resistance is, in fact, an answer – to even more violence experienced on a regular base, directed against people who simply have no choice than to fight back if they want to live!

Gelderloos points out that this is essentially a different form of colonialist thinking (“white man’s burden”), the expression of an underlying racism:

“the idea that we are all part of the same homogeneous struggle and white people at the heart of the Empire can tell people of color and people in the (neo-) colonies the best way to resist” (28).

That this is not just a wild accusation but a valid observation, proven by the attempts of supporters of white supremacy to utilize pacifism in general and especially colored pacifists to keep their movements down.

“Perhaps the largest of the limited, if not hollow, victories of the civil rights movement came when black people demonstrated they would not remain peaceful forever” (Gelderloos 12).

The ruling class suddenly discovered their concern for the rights of black people when the latter was fed up with months of non-violent protests and started to fight back against police violence, like in Birmingham in 1963. To prevent further situations like this the FBI focused on tracing and “pacifying” potential troublemakers. Gelderloos quotes a FBI memo worried about the rise of a “black messiah” like Malcolm X could have been if he was still alive then. The document continues:

“Prevent violence on the part of black nationalist groups. This is of primary importance, and is, of course, a goal of our investigative activity; it should also be a goal of the Counterintelligence Program [in the original government lingo, that phrase refers to a specific operation, of which there were thousands, and not the overarching program]. Through counterintelligence it should be possible to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence” (Gedlerloos 47).

What the FBI policy meant in practice was impressively illustrated by the “neutralization” of activists of the Black Panther Party, for example.

The majority of the petty-bourgeois is incapable of being radical, “going to the root,” as this would mean critically questioning and in all likelihood endangering their own privileged role in capitalist society. The “lower classes” and the “colored folks” claiming their rights sounds like a threat to those who benefit of the current power structure. Even if they give in to their more rebellious feelings, they still enjoy more leniency from the ruling class than working class militants or militants from an oppressed minority could ever expect. The moment that they genuinely join the ranks of one of the latter groups the lose their status in society.

The “Victories” of Pacifism

Bearing this in mind, we should deal with the notion that pacifism is a successful approach which accomplished several historical victories. Heroes of non-violent resistance like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi immediately come to mind.

Previous articles in The Red Phoenix have already dealt with their alleged single-handed struggle and historical triumph. Nevertheless, let us hear what Mr. Orwell has to say:

“As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there.”

Peter Gelderloos similarly challenges the notion that Gandhi accomplished anything else than ensuring comfort and safety for British imperialism. He shows that the British were faced with the death toll of both World Wars, the immense destruction the German Luftwaffe caused and with the armed struggles in their Arab colonies. No matter what pacifists and the mainstream view would like to have us believe, it was not Gandhi’s civil disobedience that worried and compelled the British to give up their “jewel in the crown of the Empire,” as India was called. The British, responsible for several devastating famines that killed millions, were struggling with more compelling reasons to withdraw from India than the possibility of Gandhi starving himself to death:

“As part of a disturbingly universal pattern, pacifists white out those other forms of resistance and help propagate the false history that Gandhi and his disciples were the lone masthead and rudder of Indian resistance. Ignored are important militant leaders such as Chandrasekhar Azad, who fought in armed struggle against the British colonizers, and revolutionaries such as Bhagat Singh, who won mass support for bombings and assassinations as part of a struggle to accomplish the ‘overthrow of both foreign and Indian capitalism’” (Gelderloos 8).

Clearly the latter aim was not accomplished and we have a right to wonder together with Gelderloos whether the liberation movement in India was really as successful as we are told:

“The liberation movement in India failed. The British were not forced to quit India. Rather, they chose to transfer the territory from direct colonial rule to neocolonial rule,” What kind of victory allows the losing side to dictate the time and manner of the victors’ ascendancy? The British authored the new constitution and turned power over to handpicked successors. They fanned the flames of religious and ethnic separatism so that India would be divided against itself, prevented from gaining peace and prosperity, and dependent on military aid and other support from Euro/American states.” India is still exploited by Euro/American corporations (though several new Indian corporations, mostly subsidiaries, have joined in the pillaging), and still provides resources and markets for the imperialist states. In many ways the poverty of its people has deepened and the exploitation has become more efficient“ (Gelderloos 9).

On to Martin Luther King Jr., the alleged champion of the American civil rights movement. Unsurprisingly we discover the same pattern again: the role of a pacifist figurehead is generously exaggerated, the “victory” of the movement is attribute to non-violent spokespersons and tactics alone. Ignored are militant groups like the Black Panther Party and individuals like Malcolm X, ignored is the immense influence they had among the black community and ignored are their successes.

“According to a 1970 Harris poll, 66 percent of African Americans said the activities of the Black Panther Party gave them pride, and 43 percent said the party represented their own views” (Gelderloos 11).

The ruling class, as we already saw, actively sought to isolate and pacify these groups and individuals by instrumentalizing people like Dr. King to this end. Again, the alleged victory is not as complete as it is portrayed:

“People of color still have lower average incomes, poorer access to housing and health care, and poorer health than white people. De facto segregation still exists. […] Other races have also been missed by the mythical fruits of civil rights. Latino and Asian immigrants are especially vulnerable to abuse, deportation, denial of social services they pay taxes for, and toxic and backbreaking labor in sweatshops or as migrant agricultural laborers. Muslims and Arabs are taking the brunt of the post-September 11 repression, while a society that has anointed itself “color-blind” evinces nary a twinge of hypocrisy. Native peoples are kept so low on the socioeconomic ladder as to remain invisible, except for the occasional symbolic manifestation of US multiculturalism-the stereotyped sporting mascot or hula-girl doll that obscures the reality of actual indigenous people” (Gelderloos 11).

The list goes on and on. Non-violent resistance did not stop the US wreaking havoc upon Indochina in general and Vietnam specifically — the violent resistance of the Indochinese and Vietnamese people did. After defending themselves for years against the imperialist aggression, including the largest bombing campaign known in history and further genocidal acts causing unimaginable suffering, the ruling elites came to the conclusion that the war could not be won. To make things even worse for them, the troops became increasingly “infected” with militant working class and black liberation views. More and more demoralized the troops refused to obey their orders, resorted to sabotage and even the killing of hated officers. Even after the American ground troops withdrew they continued to support their puppet, the military dictatorship in the south. The peace movement could do the same about it as before: absolutely nothing. Many did not even care anymore after the US troops were out.

Needless to say, the same applies to more recent wars. None of them were stopped by pacifist appeals and demonstrations. Rather, the armed resistance in attacked and occupied countries bothers imperialist leaders and results in increasing calls for reducing or withdrawing troops.

The Immorality of Pacifism

Why this “principled” condemnation of violence? Why completely rule out the possibility of violent resistance accomplishing anything? Why this insistence that everything else but non-violent tactics are doomed to fail? What is the pacifist justification? The answer is very simple, namely that “violence is never the answer,” “all violence is bad” or because “violence is violence” or even that “violence begets violence.”

Time to examine this profound wisdom. Thoroughly applying it enriches us with even deeper insights. Looking back to Orwell and his article on WW2 we have to condemn not only all armies but also partisan groups fighting the Nazis because “violence only breeds more violence.”

So after all, Gandhi was right in recommending the Jews to stop resisting the Nazis and instead “offer themselves to the butcher’s knife.”

What right did the Vietcong have to take up arms against the US invaders, knowing this would lead to a “spiral of violence?”

Suddenly we discover that Israel deserves our sympathy because if these nasty Palestinians would not constantly resort to violence the poor besieged Zionists probably would have never been forced into bombing the Gaza Strip and similar “defensive actions.” Even if the bombing would have occurred anyway, this apparently would not justify Palestinian violent resistance in the least. The Palestinians only lose their moral high ground because “violence is violence,” “violence is never the answer” and “violence begets violence.” They should probably have a few sit-ins and candlelight vigils, maybe stick flowers in Israeli rifles or speak truth to the Knesset!

“If the Palestinians hadn’t made the Israeli occupation and every successive aggression so costly, all the Palestinian land would be seized, except for a few reservations to hold the necessary number of surplus laborers to supplement the Israeli economy, and the Palestinians would be a distant memory in a long line of extinct peoples. Palestinian resistance, including suicide bombings, has helped ensure Palestinian survival against a far more powerful enemy” (Gelderloos 122).

Pacifists often argue that those who use violence as “the easy way out” are bad, ignorant, emotion-driven and overall immoral while pacifists are good, enlightened rational people who are morally vastly superior. Yet again we see the moral and “principled pacifist position” playing into the hands of the ruling class and imperialism. Not violent resistance but pacifism is in fact “the easy way out” and by working into the hands of deeply immoral people (accepting that ridiculous “the good ones vs. the evil ones” moralizer approach for a second) pacifism becomes their accomplice. The examples above should have illustrated this logical fact but in case there is need for more Peter Gelderloos provides this prospect:

“Nonviolence declares that the American Indians could have fought off Columbus, George Washington, and all the other genocidal butchers with sit-ins; that Crazy Horse, by using violent resistance, became part of the cycle of violence, and was “as bad as” Custer. Nonviolence declares that Africans could have stopped the slave trade with hunger strikes and petitions, and that those who mutinied were as bad as their captors; that mutiny, a form of violence, led to more violence, and, thus, resistance led to more enslavement” (24).

Whether the Russian proletariat rises up to end the imperialist war and the tsarist reaction or whether the Tsar orders his troops to shoot into an unarmed crowd of peaceful protestors (speaking truth to power) – it does not matter because “violence is violence.” The pacifist approach ignores concrete conditions and thus cannot grasp that not all violence is bad and that there are different “violences” in motivation, content, quality and quantity.

Pacifism does not care to differ, instead it throws around an over-simplified term evoking negative connotations. Instead of showing support for the liberation struggles of the oppressed, pacifism ends up at victim-blaming and advising them to wait for miracles to happen. Because apparently if we do not want to fall victim to an endless cycle of violence we have to ensure that only non-violent tactics are followed. Funny that we seem to have a free choice now to reject violence and embrace pacifism but are inevitable predestined to drown in blood if we dare take up arms. Why should people not be able to turn their backs to violence after their country was liberated from imperialism or after the revolution succeeded – if not it is so easy to reject violence once and for all?

“Pretending that all violence is the same is very convenient for supposedly anti-violence privileged people who benefit from the violence of the state and have much to lose from the violence of revolution” (Gelderloos 123).

The Tactics of Pacifism

The petty-bourgeois class interest can be observed not only in its ideological expression but also in the concrete tactics and aims. The preconditioned rejection of violence under any circumstances of course considerably narrows the pool of tactics available, such as sit-ins, candlelight vigils, chanting songs, etc. That is all fine and well, sure a lot of fun for everybody and clearly shows that those protesting are good people morally vastly superior to their corrupt opponents. But unfortunately we can conclude together with Orwell:

“Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.”

Gelderloos adds:

“Put simply, if a movement is not a threat, it cannot change a system based on centralized coercion and violence” (p. 22).

That is exactly what the state is — it not some neutral and benevolent entity worried for the well-being of society but an instrument of class rule eager to ensure its monopoly on violence. It does not do so out of an irrational savage instinct. On the contrary, centralizing and institutionalizing violence is vital for the survival of the ruling class. If this state monopoly is challenged the ruling class will react fiercely as a plain look at the news or a history book shows.

“At the absolute best, strategies of this type will lead to an oppositional but passive majority, which history has shown is easy for an armed minority to control (colonialism, for example)” (Gelderloos 92).

Insisting on exclusively non-violent tactics therefore only ensures that any chance for real progress is effectively wasted and that discontent is kept under control and directed into harmless channels. Thus we can say that pacifists, far from challenging the ruling power, actually consolidate it. While governments all over the world react more and more violently to protests questioning their policies we are told to disarm, to not even think about the mere possibility of resisting violently.

Gelderloos quotes another FBI memo to local police officers, explaining what constitutes an “extremist.” Their most outstanding, terrible and inexcusable characteristic is that “extremists may be prepared to defend themselves against law enforcement officials” (47).

The depravity of these “extremists” knows no end, listed are the wearing of sunglasses and scarves “to minimize the effects of tear gas and pepper spray,” using shields and body equipment for protection and they even may – Good God! – “use intimidation techniques such as videotaping and the swarming of police officers to hinder the arrest of other demonstrators!” Needless to say that under such grave circumstances “law enforcement officials should be alert to these possible indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal acts to the nearest FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.”

Luckily the FBI and the law enforcement officials are not alone in their heroic struggle against these dangerous “extremists;” the strict adherents of non-violence come to our rescue! Their rationale goes like this: “Since all violence is bad and since extremists are obviously immoral people threatening the whole movement with their thirst for violence they have to be isolated, pacified, ousted and if necessary handed over to the police. If the movement demonstrates good-will to the state and its representatives and makes clear that it cannot tolerate any acts of violence under any circumstances it will surely be received far more sympathetic. Who can blame the police if they have to restore order after some irresponsible short-minded and -tempered brutes started rioting? All these violent people achieve is giving the state and the media a reason to go after us and crush the protest.” Apart from pondering why suddenly police violence would be “justified” while “violence is never justified” we should be realistic about this:

“The state is not a passive thing. If it wants to repress a movement or organization, it does not wait for an excuse, it manufactures one […] About such campaigns, the FBI says, “It is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge….[D]isruption [through the media] can be accomplished without facts to back it up” (Gelderloos 57).

After the uncompromising pacifists have thus succeeded in keeping discontent in acceptable, harmless forms and the people helpless and dependent on the sudden enlightenment after “speaking truth to power” they have to be rewarded. They can have their protest and their media coverage. Nobody really cares, nothing really changes, some liberals can feel like real rebels and most important, the facade of social peace, freedom of speech and democracy is kept up. Successfully the ruling class has prevented the possibility of violent resistance destroying the image of social peace, love and harmony.

“Permitting nonviolent protest improves the image of the state. Whether they mean to or not, nonviolent dissidents play the role of a loyal opposition in a performance that dramatizes dissent and creates the illusion that democratic government is not elitist or authoritarian. Pacifists paint the state as benign by giving authority the chance to tolerate a criticism that does not actually threaten its continued operation” (Gelderloos 53).

How can another phenomenon the pacifist movement likes to credit to itself, the so-called “non-violent revolutions,” be explained then? The state and the ruling class were challenged, maybe they used the police against protesters but no bloodshed worth speaking of occurred and definitely no civil war erupted. Yet these regimes collapsed and the people triumphed. What do we make of all that Velvet, Orange, Rose and other “Color Revolutions?”

It is sad and once again shows the naivety of the non-violent movement that you even have to answer such a question. Are they not self-explanatory? What was the result of all these “revolutions?” Did they really succeed? Did anything really change for the better? Do people in the countries where these “revolutions” occurred now live in pacifist wonderland?

“In its long history, this strategy type has not succeeded in causing the class of owners, managers, and enforcers to defect and be disobedient, because their interests are fundamentally opposed to the interests of those who participate in the disobedience. What disobedience strategies have succeeded in doing, time and time again, is forcing out particular government regimes, though these are always replaced by other regimes constituted from among the elite.

[...]

It is not even proper to say the old regimes are “forced out.” Faced with rising disobedience and the threat of real revolution, they choose to hand over power to new regimes that they trust to honor the basic frameworks of capitalism and state. When they do not have the option of a transfer of power, they take off the gloves and attempt to brutalize and dominate the movement, which cannot defend itself and survive without escalating tactics.” (Gelderloos 100 ).

Conclusion

As we have seen, pacifism:

“assumes a society without race and class hierarchy; without privileged, powerful, and violent elites; without a corporate media controlled by the interests of state and capital, ready to manage the perceptions of the citizenry. Such a society does not exist among any of the industrial, capitalist democracies” (Gelderloos 59).

Does this mean that all peaceful tactics are completely useless or that we should stay at home when non-violent protests and rallies take place and should rather seek to escalate violence whereever and whenever possible? Is throwing Molotov cocktails at every occasion what we have to do?

Of course not! Marxism-Leninism condemns individual terrorism and counter-productive inciting of violence. Such would indeed only alienate potential supporters and give the state a reason to increase its reactionary pressure. Agitation and propaganda are of utmost importance and both are non-violent tactics. Peaceful tactics can be a useful and effective mean for gaining attention, support and minor victories such as reforms. But we have to keep in mind that peaceful tactics never be more than means to achieve our final goal, socialist revolution, which will be necessarily violent. This article is directed against denial of the latter fact and an outright rejection of anything else than pacifist tactics, seen as an end within themselves.

There is no way around this fact and no matter how much we try to ignore it, no matter how safe we feel in our dream world and ivory tower, reality will catch up; hopefully it will not take us by surprise. When the time has come we both have to be prepared to defend ourselves and answer violent reaction by violent means as well as preparing and arming the proletariat in theory and practice for the inevitable violent showdown with the bourgeoisie, the revolution.

Everything else would mean to “give up militant revolution (which is to give up on revolution as a whole),” as Gelderloos correctly states (126). The ruling class will not go peacefully, they will not stand by and simply watch us taking the base of their power and wealth. If we do not want to work into the hands of our class enemy we have to realize that there is a war going on and that pacifism is still pro-fascist, pro-bourgeoisie and pro-imperialist.

“Privileged activists need to understand what the rest of the world’s people have known all too long: we are in the midst of a war, and neutrality is not possible. There is nothing in this world currently deserving of the name peace. Rather, it is a question of whose violence frightens us most, and on whose side we will stand” (Gelderloos 134).

“We must realistically accept that revolution is a social war, not because we like war, but because we recognize that the status quo is a low-intensity war and challenging the state results in an intensification of that warfare” (142).

To conclude, we might paraphrase Engels with an excerpt of his work Anti-Dühring:

“To [the pacifist] force is the absolute evil; the first act of force is to him the original sin; his whole exposition is a jeremiad on the contamination of all subsequent history consummated by this original sin; a jeremiad on the shameful perversion of all natural and social laws by this diabolical power, force. That force, however, plays yet another role in history, a revolutionary role; that, in the words of Marx, it is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one, that it is the instrument with the aid of which social movement forces its way through and shatters the dead, fossilised political forms — of this there is not a word in [the pacifist]. It is only with sighs and groans that he admits the possibility that force will perhaps be necessary for the overthrow of an economic system of exploitation — unfortunately, because all use of force demoralises the person who uses it. And this in spite of the immense moral and spiritual impetus which has been given by every victorious revolution! [...] And this parson’s mode of thought — dull, insipid and impotent — presumes to impose itself on the most revolutionary [class] that history has known!”

Sources

Engels, Frederick. Anti-Dühring. 1878.

Gelderloos, Peter. How Nonviolence Protects the State. South End Press, 2007.

Orwell, George. Pacifism and the War. London: 1942.

Review of “Soil, Not Oil”

4 Jun


In her book Soil Not Oil, Vandana Shiva argues that ecological and social justice are connected in that the chief victims of ecological injustices, such as pollution, leading to climate change and increased resource consumption by corporations to meet demands in the global north, are typically those people of modest means who live in the global south.

Shiva cites the increased number of natural disasters the current warming trends have brought about, which have ravaged communities in the developing world, as well as the emergence of a renewed food crisis within these areas as examples of how the trespasses of corporations within the developed world exact a toll on those living elsewhere. Here we see a base injustice, in that it is those who pollute the least are harmed the most by the effects of pollution on the global climate.

Shiva expands on this, claiming that globalization and industrial economies contribute to the degradation of the environment while impoverishing poor communities and people around the world, in that the world’s resources are handed over to a mechanistic system that is increasingly dehumanizing, which ultimately harms the world’s poor. The emphasis is no longer on the health and well-being of people but the maintenance of profit for the few. An expansion of road infrastructure in India, for instance, has led to many people losing their land and livelihood so that an increasing number of cars can commute along the roads there. Although this may be good for business, especially for the people selling the “micro-cars” and fossil fuels which run them, the impact on small farming communities is devastating. This sort of thing stems from a pattern in which people who are “redundant” or “disposable” to the current mode of production find their needs, such as access to food and clean water, to be second to the needs of capitalists in meeting their “bottom line.”

Shiva proposes that if we are to solve the crises of the environment, of energy, and of hunger, we need to focus on the “soil,” or encouraging biodiversity and focusing our efforts on renewing the earth and living in a sustainable manner, rather than “oil,” the mechanistic mode of production which sees nature as something to be converted into profit and consumer goods rather than a part of ourselves and crucial to our very survival. What is needed is both Earth justice as well as social justice, something she refers to as “Earth Democracy.”

Shiva’s book, in addition to being a “call to action” concerning the triple crises of climate change, peak oil, and food, Shiva also presents a biting critique of the capitalist system in general. When a society is driven by the desire for profit and material gain alone, and sees all other priorities as secondary (if they are even considered priorities at all), people and the planet merely become a means to that end. Our consumption of natural and human resources to meet this all-consuming end will ultimately reach a point in which production cannot sustain itself. This is the quandary in which we’ve found ourselves.

However, to stop the harms as they are being perpetrated on the planet and its people, and to put any such notion of “Earth Democracy,” even theoretically into action, modern society will need to change dramatically.

Imperial capitalism is unsustainable, extremely destructive, and fails to fulfill the basic needs of human beings. We live in a world where a small minority lives in extravagance while the rest of the world lives in varying degrees of poverty. The structural violence associated with this system leads to approximately 50 million people dying each year from hunger and treatable disease. In addition to the human toll, the environmental destruction caused by corporations and the consumerist culture it has creating is threatening our very survival as a species.

At the same time that they are destroying the world, private enterprise is putting forward “solutions” which will only make the situation worse. Industrial bio-fuels, which may be profitable for corporations and a short-term fix, will only serve to exacerbate the food crisis in the end. Growing “food for cars” will lead to deforestation as a means to make room for more farms with which to grow this new energy source, and will cause an increase in carbon dioxide emissions rather than a decrease. Of course, this is a fact of little concern to the corporate entities which seek to profit off of “green” energy.

If we want to build a society which is capable of sustaining itself while preserving nature, we need to break private hegemony over our planets natural resources and focus on getting our energy in a safe and sustainable manner. If we fail to do this, we will be doomed as a species.

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