Feb 13

The Media and Mass Opinion

Ac. Krtashivananda

The primary function of the media is now to sell – sell audiences to corporate advertisers. The media make no money from subscriptions, only from advertisers, whose point of view they must reflect. Advertisers will not pay for discussions that encourage people to undermine corporate power.

Media support of corporate power seemingly implies that the media  sell free market principles. In reality, like the corporations they rely on, the media believe in free market principles only for others, not for themselves. Major corporations in every industrialized society rely heavily on state subsidies, intervention and investment. They will tell others to join the free market, but not join it themselves.

Take for example Corporate-Pentagon relations show just how dependent U.S. corporations are on government financing. The Pentagon is the massive core of a welfare state for the rich. It pours public funds in the guise of national security into advanced industry in every large sector of the economy.

Corporate-Pentagon relations are so close that discussing the U.S. as a market society without considering the Pentagon is like talking about the former U.S.S.R. and ignoring the Politburo. The media, which are controlled by corporate power, protect such policies.

Thought control

media_6_2-11-061_2Another characteristic of the media is thought control, or what can be called psycho-economic exploitation. In a totalitarian state, to compare, the state typically has the equivalent of a Ministry of Truth. Whatever the state  publicises  people have to accept. In liberal democracy, there is no Ministry of Truth but a consensus among extremely narrow sectors of power about the way the world should be perceived and about what kinds of people and policies should be encouraged. In other words, though there is freedom of expression, the media constantly manipulate freedom of thought.

As a result the real spectrum of opinion in the  media in any industrialised country is quite narrow.

Take, for example, The public opposes increasing the Pentagon budget by a ratio of six to one, but it is still increasing. Another example is the policy of Globalisation. It is well documented that 20% of top echelon of the society enjoys 85% of the world income and bottom 20% only 1.5%.(hdr 2009) Still it is heralded as economic progress.

In a business-run society, those who spend a couple billion dollars on public relations want to know how to package things to overcome public opposition. Public attitudes are often quite divorced from ruling class opinion – often wildly at variance.

In reality people who run the media have no concern for democracy or freedom. They are more concerned about protecting power from people.

The Case For Challenging Corporate Journalism

Media Lens – edited by Ac. Krtashivananda

old_news2The meaning of ‘corporate journalist’ could hardly be clearer: it describes someone paid to write for a corporation. Journalists working for the corporate media are choosing to work for just such an employer guided by the same cold-blooded priorities. So what should our reaction be?

Well how would we have responded to a journalist taking big salaries from Pravda in Stalinist Russia or from Der Stürmer in Nazi Germany during the 1930s? The question might seem outrageous, but is a global psychopathic corporate system more or less destructive than a national Stalinist or fascist system?

Part of the difficulty in considering the question rationally lies in the very nature of the problem being addressed. The corporate media are as skilled at promoting their non-existent virtues as they are at marginalising critics. They also have an astonishing ability to make even the most appalling state crimes (‘mistakes’) seem somehow trivial, unimportant, ‘not that bad’. So the very deceptiveness of the system makes the comparison with totalitarian media seem far more outrageous than it really is.

In fact the question is reasonable. If we look around us today – at the devastating Western wars of aggression, at the mass killings fuelled by corporate militarism, at the truly awesome, perhaps terminal, exploitation of people and planet – we are looking at a world being devastated by psychopathic greed. Former New York Times journalist, Chris Hedges, comments of ‘the liberal class’, the ‘quality’ corporate media included:

corporate-media‘The liberal class has become a useless and despised appendage of corporate power… as [it] pollutes and poisons the ecosystem and propels us into a world where there will be only masters and serfs.’ (Hedges, Death Of The Liberal Class, Nation Books, 2011, p.12)

Noam Chomsky can answer about  independent media, as can Edward Herman. Their book, Manufacturing Consent, published 25 years ago this year, is the most rational analysis of structural media bias we have seen. Both authors are still alive, Chomsky is a ground-breaking linguist and one of the world’s most-read political analysts. And yet the book has been ignored by the great and the good of corporate journalism. It has been mentioned eight times in the last five years in all national UK newspapers, all of them mentions in passing (one or two sentences) with zero serious analysis of the contents.

Despite a quarter of a century of growing, now undeniable, evidence of looming climate catastrophe, media coverage is a fraction of what it was when we, for example, began campaigning in the late 1980s. The last decade, in particular, has seen green movements more or less routed on climate change by corporate interests, with the media very much leading the assault. The argument that progressives should continue placating these media, supporting corporate leftists, and not declaring obvious truth, is more vulnerable now than it has ever been.

Trying To Move A Ten-Ton Truck With A Toothpick

Twitter is chock full of journalists praising their colleagues, editors, potential allies and future employers, with points also scored for lambasting recognised ‘bad guys’ like Chomsky, Julian Assange and Hugo Chavez. As Chomsky has noted, the political classes are ‘the masters of self-adulation’. It hardly needs us to point out that broadcast and print journalists are often feted as national treasures.

As Chomsky once wrote  to Media Lens:

‘Am really impressed with what you are doing, though it’s like trying to move a ten-ton truck with a toothpick. They’re not going to allow themselves to be exposed.’

In the face of the disaster that has overtaken Iraq in the ten years since the 2003 invasion, a number of journalists have quietly lamented their own performance. The BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson writes in his book Live From Downing Street:

‘The build-up to the invasion of Iraq is the point in my career when I have most regretted not pushing harder and not asking more questions.’ (Robinson, Live from Downing Street, Transworld, 2012,p.332)

But the fact is that even the most cynical, hard-right media propagandists complicit in this horrendous crime have not paid any kind of price – they continue, unaffected, with their lucrative, high-profile careers. This facilitation of the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians abroad is a function of the media’s power without responsibility.

Conclusion

media-lensIn an attempt to break the spell and challenge the silence, we (Media Lens)  do deliberately use provocative language. We believe the media is far more toxic than most people imagine. From our perspective, the truth about the corporate media’s mass deception can only be communicated honestly by language that many media consumers will find outrageous.

If nothing else, we are a rare voice. Most political commentators dream of a contracted, regular column in the Guardian or Independent, of becoming a TV ‘name’. We have watched as younger writers on the left – some of them enthusiastic contributors to our message board – have carefully tailored their words and tone to achieve corporate media inclusion.   The moment inclusion becomes possible or actual, they stop posting on our site, stop mentioning our work, and join the shaking mainstream heads denouncing us as ‘irresponsible’ and ‘extreme’.  Unlike so many commentators, we really do have nothing to lose.

This does not make us saints, or even right. But it does challenge the claim that we – tragicomically charging the media’s ten-ton truck with a toothpick – are doing more harm than good.

Jan 29

Iran remains unfazed by Sanction Threat

By Ac. Krtashivananda

Iran knows that it will have more leverage in the talks with the US if it has a bomb. Iran sanctions raise concern of impending humanitarian crisis.

Fresh Western sanctions targeting industries in Iran have led to concern over an impending humanitarian crisis in the country.

Many Iranians now find black market dealers are the only way to get vital drugs, which are in limited supply because of sanctions against the country’s nuclear program.

Even basics, such as powdered milk, are reportedly unavailable in some pharmacies.

The sanction are combined with a spiraling currency, making it harder for low-income Iranians to afford basic medicines, despite Iran’s claims it had circumvented sanctions through oil sales.

A letter from the Iranian Hemophilia Society to the World Health Organization in July warned that sanctions had “seriously endangered the lives of tens of thousands of patients, particularly children, suffering from special diseases.”

A new round of sanctions imposed by the U.S. in January have drawn criticism for targeting industries.

Despite not directly targeting medical supplies, sanctions have badly affected the health care system at every level, leading to overcrowding and long waits at state-run hospitals.

“Sometimes we don’t even have serum for dehydrated patients”, one doctor told AP news agency. A round of chemotherapy now reportedly costs $65,000, while increases of more than 200 percent for radiology and dialysis equipment are common.

In June, the New York Times claimed that sanctions “represent one of the boldest uses of oil sanctions as a tool of coercion since the United States cut off oil exports to Japan in 1940.”

Iranian oil output rose in October after seven months of decline due to Western sanctions and its exports rebounded strongly as China and South Korea bought more oil, the West’ energy watchdog said.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), adviser to industrialised nations on energy policy, said the rebound in Iranian output was adding to a bearish picture of growing oil supply while demand remained depressed due to a weak global economy. The IEA also added that a new round of sanctions against Iran was likely to further cripple its finances although not necessarily further reduce its oil deliveries to markets.

“With the bulk of Iranian crude now heading to Asia, however, the main impact of the new EU measures will likely be on the country’s financial sector,” the IEA said. Iran’s finances have been drastically stretched since US and EU sanctions more than halved its oil exports compared to last year, undermining its budget and leading to a spike in inflation and a sharp weakening of its currency. The sanctions are part of a stand-off between the West and Iran over Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme.
The EU further broadened the sanctions against Iran’s energy and banking industries in October in a bid to bring Iran back to the negotiating table. The IEA said Iranian oil output rose by around 70,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 2.7 mllion bpd (mbpd) in October. Iranian exports jumped to 1.3 mbpd from 1.0 million seen in the two previous months. “China and South Korea appear to account for the lion’s share of the increase in Iranian imports,” the IEA said in its monthly report.
The jump in imports could have brought Iran an additional $900 million last month, according to Reuters calculations based on the price for its oil of $100 a barrel

 

DOES  WESTERN SANCTIONS REALLY WORK?

US-led sanctions on Iran will be unable to influence events in Iran very much more, and have started to have a negative effect of strengthening Iran’s desire to develop a nuclear weapon so as to achieve greater leverage in future negotiations.

“Sanctions are coming to an end, and having watched events in North Korea, Iran knows that it will have more leverage in the talks with the US if it has a bomb,” said Vali Nasr of John Hopkins University in Washington.

He agreed with Joseph Nye of Harvard University that there is a possibility of an opening for talks in the later half of 2013, but is pessimistic that the opening would be exploited effectively as the Obama administration will not be willing to take the political risk of offering a generous deal to Iran.

Responsibility for nuclear negotiations has shifted completely to Supreme Leader Khamenei. Unlike the Iranian president, the Supreme Leader has the political authority to come to an agreement with the US, but he will need a much better deal than is on the table at the moment, said Nasr.

Nye agreed Obama lacks the political will to make a deal with Iran for two reasons. The first was his domestic focus which was the centre of Barack Obama’s inauguration speech, and the economy will remain Obama’s prime concern even if he is forced by events to pay attention to the Middle East.

But even when he is thinking about foreign policy, Obama intends to let go in the Middle East and instead focus on deepening America’s relationship with China and Asia, as the USA struggles with the growing power of the Asian economies and their increased political will.

From the Iranian point of view, a nuclear program has been extremely valuable. Having one has brought Iran prestige in the Islamic world and has given it a level of useful global political credibility. As with North Korea, having a nuclear program has allowed Iran to sit as an equal with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany, creating a psychological atmosphere in which Iran’s willingness merely to talk to the Americans, British, French, Russians, Chinese and Germans represented a concession. Though it has positioned the Iranians extremely well politically, the nuclear program also has triggered sanctions that have caused Iran substantial pain. But Iran has prepared for sanctions for years, building a range of corporate, banking and security mechanisms to evade their most devastating impact. Having countries like Russia and China unwilling to see Iran crushed has helped. Iran can survive sanctions.

Editors Note: Western powers never raised their voice about Israel’s nuclear programme. Like Iraq, Iran is a target for its oil reserve. After successive fall of Libya  and now Syria, Iran may be the next target. That’s why all rhetoric’s are now directed towards Iran.  Powerless UNO  as usual will continue remain a passive onlooker.

Jan 09

A Deception of development

M. Ramaswamy and Ramaswamy R. Iyer
edited:Ac.Krtashivananda

Save-Narmada-Movement

RALLY BY THE DAM-AFFECTED PEOPLE: In a climate where environmental and human rights issues are increasingly being sacrificed at the altar of ‘development,’ the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada Movement) has been persevering untiringly with its struggle for decades.

    The Second Interim Report of the Experts’ Committee set up by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) of the Government of India to assess the planning and implementation of environmental safeguards with respect to the Sardar Sarovar (SSP) and Indira Sagar projects (ISP) on the Narmada River is a clear finding, by a government committee, of the egregious failure of the government machinery on virtually all the aspects studied.

The report covers the status of compliances on catchment area treatment (CAT), flora and fauna and carrying capacity upstream, command area development (CAD), compensatory a-forestation and human health aspects in project impact areas. (The scope of the committee did not include the issues of displacement and rehabilitation or hydro-meteorological issues, which were dealt with by other groups.) The report is a severe indictment of the governments of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra and of the bodies set up by these governments to implement the projects for the ‘integrated development’ of the Narmada Valley. Peppered with phrases like ‘gross violation’, ‘negligence’, ‘highly unsatisfactory,’ ‘inadequate,‘ ‘serious lapse’ and ‘non compliance’etc. It states in strong and unequivocal terms that with respect to virtually all of the aspects under consideration, compliance is either highly inadequate or absent altogether (a partial exception being compensatory a-forestation).

Construction, on the other hand, has been proceeding apace: the ISP is complete and the SSP nearing completion. The report recommends that no further reservoir-filling be done at either SSP or ISP; that no further work be done on canal construction; and that even irrigation from the existing network be stopped forthwith until failures of compliance on the various environmental parameters have been fully remedied.

This is a major development. It must be seen against the backdrop of the protracted legal battle fought by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) against the various lapses, failures and deficiencies in these projects. In a climate where environmental and human rights issues are increasingly being sacrificed at  the altar of ‘development,’ the NBA has been persevering untiringly with its struggle for decades.

Even assuming that ‘development’ can be pursued without any concern for the environment, and that some argument can be found to defend the flouting of a Supreme Court judgment, there are several other concerns that should worry the votaries of ‘large infrastructural development at all costs.‘ Untreated catchments can shorten the life of projects through siltation, thus altering their cost-benefit ratios; they can also bring about increased run-off and washing-off of soil nutrients with adverse consequences for the productivity of irrigated land (as also for the aquatic and river-bank species and fisheries); dam operations in such unstable catchments can lead (and have led, in at least one incident already here) to flash floods with tragic consequences; and so on. These are hard, practical and often economic consequences that can be noted by all and not only by ‘environmentalists’.

Editors note:  It is to be noted that once the dams become operative, about 40000 villages will go under the water displacing thousands of poor people. The govt. of India, including the judiciary is intoxicated with the slogan of development ignoring the voice of the people. Is it democratic norm??

Dec 26

The illusion of Democracy

Ac. Krtashivananda

Liberal Journalism, And Climate Deceptions

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

In an era of permanent war, economic meltdown and climate ‘weirdness”, we need all the champions of truth and justice that we can find. But where are they? What happened to trade unions, the green movement, human rights groups, campaigning newspapers, peace activists, strong-minded academics, progressive voices?

We are awash in state and corporate propaganda, with the ‘liberal’ media a key cog in the apparatus. We are hemmed in by the powerful forces of greed, profit and control. We are struggling to get by, never mind flourish as human beings. We are subject to increasingly insecure, poorly-paid and unfulfilling employment, the slashing of the welfare system, the erosion of civil rights, and even the criminalisation of protest and dissent.

The pillars of a genuinely liberal society have been so weakened, if not destroyed, that we are essentially living under a system of corporate totalitarianism.

The anaemic liberal class continues to assert, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that human freedom and equality can be achieved through the charade of electoral politics and constitutional reform. It refuses to acknowledge the corporate domination of traditional democratic channels for ensuring broad participatory power. This pretence afflicts all the major western ‘democracies’.

But, of course, corporate media professionals have long propped up the illusion that the public is offered an ‘impartial’ selection of facts, opinions and perspectives from which any individual can derive a well-informed world view. Simply put, ‘impartiality’ is what the establishment says is impartial.

Alastair-Brian-Walden

The journalist and broadcaster Brian Walden once said: ‘The demand for impartiality is too jealously promoted by the political parties themselves. They count balance in seconds and monitor it with stopwatches.’ This nonsense suggests that media ‘impartiality’ means that one major political party receives identical, or at least similar, coverage to another. But when all the major political parties have almost identical views on all the important issues, barring small tactical differences, how can this possibly be deemed to constitute genuine impartiality?

The major political parties offer no real choice. They all represent essentially the same interests crushing any moves towards meaningful public participation in the shaping of policy; or towards genuine concern for all members of society, particularly the weak and the vulnerable.

Thomas Ferguson

The essential truth was explained by political scientist Thomas Ferguson in his book Golden Rule . When major backers of political parties and elections agree on an issue ­– such as international ‘free trade’ agreements, maintaining a massive ‘defence’ budget or refusing to make the necessary cuts in greenhouse gas emissions – then the parties will not compete on that issue, even though the public might desire a real alternative.

In many respects we now live in a society that is only formally democratic, as the great mass of citizens have minimal say on the major public issues of the day, and such issues are scarcely debated at all in any meaningful sense in the electoral arena.

The public recognises much of this for what it is. Opinion polls indicate the distrust they feel for politicians and business leaders, as well as the journalists who all too frequently channel uncritical reporting on politics and business. A 2009 survey by the polling company Ipsos MORI found that only 13 per cent of the British public trust politicians to tell the truth: the lowest rating in 25 years. Business leaders were trusted by just 25 per cent of the public, while journalists languished at 22 per cent.

And yet recall that when Lord Justice Leveson published his long-awaited report into ‘the culture, practices and ethics of the British press’ on November 29, he made the ludicrous assertion that ‘the British press – I repeat, all of it – serves the country very well for the vast majority of the time.’

That tells us much about the nature and value of his government-appointed inquiry.

Whereas Participatory democracy is a process emphasizing the broad involvement of constituents in the direction and operation of political systems. While etymological roots imply that all governments deserving the name “democracy” would rely on the participation of their citizens (the Greek demos and kratos combine to suggest that “the people rule”), traditional representative democracies tend to limit citizen participation to voting, leaving the main work of governance to a professional political elite. Participatory democracy strives to create opportunities for all members of a political group to make meaningful contributions to decision making, and seeks to broaden the range of people who have access to such opportunities.

All theories of green politics include some variant of participatory methods. In these theories, of which the best known is the Four Pillars of the Green Party, making consultation on important decisions by those who will carry it out reduces the probability of a decision that seriously disadvantages one group (reducing social justice) or of violent resistance (breaking nonviolence). Expressing ecological wisdom in law, for instance, is not likely to be respected unless the persons who live near protected ecosystems help to carry out the decision on a daily basis. Efforts to redefine green politics to exclude the participatory and consensus decision making methods have historically failed.

Source: Media Lens—David Cromwell

Dec 10

‘Flatten all of Gaza’

Edited by: Ac: Krtashivananda

Gaza buildings destroyed. Photo from CNN WebSite.

In The Politics of Genocide, Edward Herman and David Peterson wrote:  ‘The vulgar politicisation of the concept of genocide, and the “emerging international norm” of humanitarian intervention, appear to be products of the fading of the Cold War, which removed the standard pretexts for intervention while leaving intact the institutional and ideological framework for its regular practice during those years.’

We Must Blow Gaza Back To The Middle Ages

With the above in mind, consider that, on November 16, on the third day of Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, with at least 18 Palestinians already killed, the BBC reported: ‘Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza has intensified after it authorised the call-up of 30,000 army reservists, amid reports of a possible ground offensive.’

Israel’s cabinet quickly approved the activation of 75,000 reservists, as well as hundreds of Merkava main battle tanks, armoured bulldozers and other assault vehicles, which were transported into position for attack.

Was a massacre looming? The Israeli deputy prime minister Eli Yishai appeared to promise as much on November 18: ‘We must blow Gaza back to the Middle Ages destroying all the infrastructure including roads and water.’

Gaza: school. From CNN WebSite

A prominent front-page article in the Jerusalem Post by Gilad Sharon, son of the former Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, openly advocated  mass killing:‘We need to flatten entire neighbourhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza.” ‘There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire.’

Was the call to ‘Flatten all of Gaza’ beyond the pale of respectable discourse? Apparently not for the BBC, which quoted a less frenzied comment by Sharon three days later.  Recall the human cost of Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s three-week offensive waged between December 2008 and January 2009. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselm reported:

‘The magnitude of the harm to the population was unprecedented: 1,385 Palestinians were killed, 762 of whom did not take part in the hostilities. Of these, 318 were minors under age 18. More than 5,300 Palestinians were wounded, of them over 350 seriously so.’

Comparison Table of numbers killed on both sides since 2000

There is no question, then, that a ‘Benghazi moment’ had arrived for Gaza around November 16 or shortly thereafter. A Cast Lead-style  massacre of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians was a very real possibility.  Did  Hamas rockets had killed more civilians, for example in Tel Aviv?

Gaza is under decades of military occupation and years of siege, greatly strengthening the moral case for external intervention. Escape from a ground assault would have been completely impossible for Gaza’s 1.6 million people, about half of them children.  Gaza has been targeted by the  most advanced weaponry US taxpayers’ money can buy.

By any reasonable accounting, then, the case for a no-fly zone, indeed a no-drive zone – some kind of humanitarian intervention – was far  more compelling for Gaza than it had ever been for Libya. And yet our search of the Lexis media database found no mention in any UK newspaper of even the possibility of setting up a no-fly zone over Gaza. There was no reference to Gaza’s ‘Benghazi moment’.

We saw no commentary suggesting that Western military action might have been justified to prevent a massacre of civilians in Gaza.

Terror attack in Tel Aviv?

One week into Israel’s Operation Pillar of Cloud, on a day when 13 Palestinians were killed – with more than 136 people in Gaza  killed by that point in 1,500 attacks since the operation began on November 14 – 28 people were injured in a Tel Aviv bomb attack. ITV News’s international editor Bill Neely commented: ‘Tel Aviv bus bomb is first terror attack there in 6 years.’ And: ‘Israeli Police confirm terror attack.’

We wrote to Neely: ‘Bill, are the attacks on Gaza “terror attacks”? Have you described them as such?’
Neely wrote again;’A bomb on a bus, like a missile, is terror weapon.’
‘’Is This What They Mean By The Cycle Of Violence?’

The November 21 bus bombing, injuring 28 Israelis (initially reported as ten injured), was a far bigger story for the media than the killing of 13 people in Gaza that day. The bias was reflected in the tone of coverage. The BBC reported ‘Horror in Israel’ whereas they had earlier referred to a ‘difficult night for people in Gaza’ after 450 targets had been struck with scores of people killed.

The final death toll of the latest massacre is horrifying: 103 of the 158 people killed in Gaza were civilians. Of these, 30 were children – Twelve  of them under ten-years-old. More than 1,000 Palestinians were injured. Six Israelis were killed, two of them soldiers. This infographic provides a shocking comparison of numbers killed on both sides since 2000. And this excellent little animation asks: ‘Is this what they mean by the cycle of violence?’

Inevitably President Obama said: ‘we will continue to support Israel’s right to defend itself’. Noam Chomsky has been a rare voice making the counter-argument:

Noam Chomsky

You can’t defend yourself when you’re militarily occupying someone else’s land. That’s not defence. Call it what you like, it’s not defence.’  Obama also said: ‘There is no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.’
Try telling that to the many bereaved in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. Irony is ‘dead,’ it seems – killed by drone-fire.

A war was fought without an Israeli ground assault but with massive air and rocket attacks on both sides. Israel did  not have the appetite and perhaps the power to crush Hamas. Hamas did not have the power to compel Israel to change its policies but wanted to achieve a symbolic victory against Israel. Both decided that continued fighting made little sense. And 23 rd Nov. they agreed on a cease fire brokered by the Americans and Egyptians to for a settlement.  Everyone from Iran to the  Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood played a role, and then the curtain on this act went down for the time being to flare it again till Gaza cease to remain an open air prison. Freedom is the  birth right of every citizen.

Source: Media Lense – David Edwards

Nov 23

Israel and Gaza: Then and Now

by Ac.Krtashivananda

Ismail-Haniyeh Hamas Prime Minister

Four years ago on Nov. 4, while Americans were going to the polls to elect a new president, Israeli infantry, tanks and bulldozers entered the Gaza Strip to dismantle an extensive tunnel network used by Hamas to smuggle in weapons. An already tenuous truce mediated by the Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak had been broken. Hamas responded with a barrage of mortar and rocket fire lasting several weeks, and on Dec. 27, 2008, Israel began Operation Cast Lead.

The military campaign began with seven days of heavy air strikes on Gaza, followed by a 15-day ground incursion. By the end of the campaign, nearly 1,000 poorly guided shorter-range rockets and mortar shells hit southern Israel, reaching as far as Beersheba and Yavne. Several senior Hamas commanders and hundreds of militants were killed in the fighting. Israel Defense Forces figures showed that 10 IDF soldiers died (four from friendly fire), three Israeli civilians died from Palestinian rocket fire and 1,166 Palestinians were killed – 709 of them combatants.
The strategic environment during the 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead was vastly different from the one Israel faces in today’s Operation Pillar of Defence.

Operation Cast Lead

Hamas was operating in a difficult strategic environment  during Operation Cast Lead. During Operation Cast Lead, Cairo did little to hide its true feelings toward Hamas. Though Egypt played a critical role in the cease-fire negotiations, it was prepared to incur the domestic political cost of cracking down on the Rafah border crossing to prevent refugees from flowing into Sinai and to prevent Hamas from replenishing its weapons supply.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, then in the opposition, took advantage of the situation to publicly rally against the Mubarak regime, but its protests did little to change the situation. Hamas was boxed in by Egypt and Israel.
The rest of the region largely avoided direct involvement.

Cast Lead Operation Dec. 2008

Iran was the exception. While the Arab regimes ostracized Hamas, Iran worked to sustain the group in its fight. Tehran’s reasoning was clear and related to Iran’s emergence as a regional power. Iraq had already fallen into Iran’s sphere of influence (though the United States was not yet prepared to admit it) – Building up a stronger militant proxy network in the Palestinian territories was the logical next step in Tehran’s effort to keep a check on Israeli threats to strike the Iranian nuclear program.

The Current Geopolitical Environment
Hamas and Israel now find themselves in a greatly altered geopolitical climate. On every one of its borders, Israel faces a growing set of vulnerabilities that would have been hard to envision at the time of Operation Cast Lead.
The most important shift has taken place in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood carefully used the momentum provided by the Arab Spring to shed its opposition status and take political control of the state. Hamas, which grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood, then faced an important decision. With an ideological ally in Cairo, Egypt no longer presents as high a hurdle to Hamas’ political ambitions. Indeed, Hamas could even try to use its ties to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to achieve political legitimacy.

When unrest spread into Syria and began to threaten Iran’s position in the Levant, Hamas made a strategic decision to move away from the Iran-Syria axis, now on the decline, and to latch itself onto the new apparent regional trend: the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist affiliates across the Arab world.
This rise of the Muslim Brotherhood spread from Egypt to Syria to Jordan, presenting Israel with a new set of challenges on its borders.

A political machine such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which derives its power from the street, will be far more sensitive to pro-Palestinian sentiment than will a police state that can rule through intimidation.
The United States remains diplomatically involved in trying to reach a cease-fire, but as it has made clear throughout the Syrian crisis, Washington does not intend to get dragged into every conflagration in the Middle East. Instead, the United States is far more interested in having regional players like Egypt and Turkey manage the burden.
Saudi Arabia was already uncomfortable with backing more radical Palestinian strands, but Riyadh now faces a more critical threat — the regional rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamist political activism poses a direct threat to the foundation of the monarchy, which has steadfastly kept the religious establishment out of the political domain. Saudi Arabia has little interest in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood encouraging Hamas’ political rise, and Riyadh will thus become even more alienated from the Palestinian theatre.
Hamas would not be able to strike Tel Aviv and Jerusalem with long-range rockets had it not been for Iran, which supplied these rockets through Sudan and trained Palestinian operatives on how to assemble them in Gaza.

Israel’s only hope to deny Hamas that victory is to eliminate Hamas’ arsenal of these rockets, all the while knowing that Iran will likely continue to rely on Egypt’s leniency on the border to smuggle more parts and weaponry into Gaza in the future. The Hamas rocket dilemma is just one example of the types of problems Israel will face in the coming years. The more vulnerable Israel becomes, the more prone it will be to pre-emptive action against its neighbours as it tries to pick the time and place of battle. In this complex strategic environment, Operation Pillar of Defence may be one of many similar military campaigns that Israel is struggling to adjust to this new geopolitical reality.

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky recently visited Gaza and reported his impressions in a moving piece ‘Even a single night in jail is enough to give a taste of what it means to be under the total control of some external force. And it hardly takes more than a day in Gaza to begin to appreciate what it must be like to try to survive in the world’s largest open-air prison, where a million and a half people, in the most densely populated area of the world, are constantly subject to random and often savage terror and arbitrary punishment, with no purpose other than to humiliate and degrade, and with the further goal of ensuring that Palestinian hopes for a decent future will be crushed and that the overwhelming global support for a diplomatic settlement that will grant these rights will be nullified’.

‘The intensity of this commitment on the part of the Israeli political leadership has been dramatically illustrated just in the past few days, as they warn that they will “go crazy” if Palestinian rights are given limited recognition at the UN. That is not a new departure. The threat to “go crazy” (“nishtagea”) is deeply rooted, back to the Labour governments of the 1950s, along with the related “Samson Complex”: we will bring down the Temple walls if crossed. It was an idle threat then; not today.’

The ongoing blitz on Gaza is surely another horrific example of Israel’s willingness to ‘go crazy’.

Source: Stratfor and Media Lens

Nov 05

UPRISING IN TIBET

Ac. Krtashivananda – Latest report 2012                                                              

Himalaya

The high-altitude Himalayan plateau associated in popular memory with meditation and Buddhist serenity, has been the scene of periodic strife ever since it was seized militarily by China in 1951.

China’s government regards Tibet as an integral part of China and is sensitive to expressions of support from Tibet’s former ruler, the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959, after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. He has accused China of stifling Tibetan culture. The Chinese consider the Dalai Lama a subversive advocate of Tibetan independence, although he has said he only wants greater autonomy for Tibet.

In March 2011, the Dalai Lama announced what he called his retirement, as he prepared to relinquish political power. The next month, Tibet’s government announced the election of a Harvard legal scholar, Lobsang Sangay, as its new prime minister, a choice signaling a generational shift within the Tibetan movement.

Analysts said the Dalai Lama would continue to be recognized as the leader of the Tibetan cause since he alone can unify and mobilize Tibetans inside and outside of China. But by formally giving up political power, the Dalai Lama was trying to deepen the authority of the movement’s democratic government, according to analysts.

The Dalai Lama and many older Tibetan exiles were born inside Tibet and fled in 1959. But Mr. Sangay is part of the younger generation born outside Tibet, many of whom are eager for a more confrontational approach with China.

An Exile’s Self-Immolation Galvanizes a Movement

Jamphel Yeshi - 2012

Nearly 50 Tibetans have set fire to themselves since 2009 in what appear to be protests against Chinese rule. In the first three weeks of March 2012 alone, seven Tibetans chose an agonizing, self-annihilating protest.

But  on March 26, 2012 when Jamphel Yeshi, a Tibetan exile in New Delhi, India, set himself alight in front of hundreds of people during a protest before a visit by President Hu Jintao of China, who was scheduled to attend an economic summit meeting in New Delhi. Mr. Yeshi was taken to a hospital with burns over 98 percent of his body, and died two days later. The shocking images of Mr. Yeshi’s self-immolation provided the Tibetan exile movement with a rallying point. Within hours, the pictures had been posted on blogs and social-networking Web sites.

Read More…In August 2012, a Tibetan woman, Dolkar Kyi, 26, killed herself through self-immolation at a monastery in a Tibetan area of China, according to Free Tibet, an advocacy group based in London. Also, a Tibetan monk from Kirti Monastery self-immolated in the town of Ngaba, according to reports by Free Tibet and Radio Free Asia, which is financed by the United States government.

The monk appeared to be alive and badly burned when he was taken away by security forces after the self-immolation, the reports said. Radio Free Asia gave his name as Lobsang Trinlay, while Free Tibet identified him as Lobsang Tsultrim. Many self-immolations have taken place in Ngaba, called Aba in Chinese, where there is a market street now known as “Martyrs Road” because of the number of self-immolations that have taken place there.

2008: Uprising Across Tibet

Rioting in 2008 convulsed Tibetan areas of China, and rights groups said scores of artists, intellectuals, students and businesspeople were detained and sentenced to prison on charges of subverting state power or seeking to “split” Tibet from China.

A report on the 2008 riots by Human Rights Watch, released in July 2010, said Chinese security forces violated international law in suppressing the protest by indiscriminately beating, detaining and fatally shooting civilians in towns across the vast Tibetan plateau in western China. Disturbances broke out on March 10, 2008, the anniversary of the failed uprising against Chinese rule. The protests turned violent and were described as the largest since 1989, which ended in a bloody clash with Chinese security forces and the imposition of martial law.

The 2008 disturbances were a public relations nightmare for the ruling Communist Party, which held its annual meeting of the National People’s Congress in Beijing in March of that year. Harried by pro-Tibet demonstrations around the world, China was hard pressed to present a harmonious image to the world when it played host to the Olympic Games in August 2008.

2009: Words From the Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama

In 2009, the Dalai Lama delivered one of his harshest attacks on the Chinese government in recent times, saying the Chinese Communist Party had transformed Tibet into a “hell on earth” and that the Chinese authorities regarded Tibetans as “criminals deserving to be put to death.” The Dalai Lama advocates genuine autonomy for Tibet and not secession, while more radical Tibetans are urging him to support outright independence.

Imposing More Control Over Clergy

Communist Party leaders have also introduced a “monastic management” plan to more directly control religious life. As part of the plan, 21,000 party officials have been sent to Tibetan communities with the goal of “befriending” monks — and creating dossiers on each of them. Compliant clergy are rewarded with health care benefits, pensions and television sets; the recalcitrant are sometimes expelled from their monasteries.

At some temples, monks and nuns have been forced to publicly denounce the Dalai Lama, whose name is often invoked by self-immolators. The freedom of movement that allowed monks to study at distant monasteries across Tibet and four adjacent provinces has been curtailed.

Senior officials have trumpeted the new approach, which includes the distribution of one million national flags and portraits of Mao Zedong and other party leaders. But such measures may be having the opposite intended effect.

But Tibetan scholars and exiles say the current resistance campaign is unlike anything seen before. The tactic — public, fiery suicides that do not harm bystanders or property — has profoundly moved ordinary Tibetans and bedeviled Chinese officials. Just as significant, they note, is that the protesters are mostly young.

Note: Freedom loving people of the world are waiting to see the Sun rise in Tibet

Oct 18

Is Wal-Mart Good for Asia?

Source: Far Eastern Economic Review                           Edited: Ac. Krtashivananda

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., headquartered in rural Bentonville, Arkansas (population 29,000), is the world’s largest corporation, with annual revenues approaching the $350 billion range. Wal-Mart’s revenues are larger than the combined GDPs of Hong Kong and Malaysia. Wal-Mart imported about $27 billion in merchandise from China last year—about the same as did Singapore. What began 45 years ago when hillbilly entrepreneur Sam Walton launched a no-frills mom-and-pop discount store in a remote corner of the American South, now is a corporate empire that spans the globe. In the United States, Wal-Mart directly employs a workforce of about 1.4 million so-called “associates” who work in 4,000-plus Spartan big-box stores.

As any casual reader of newspapers would know, opinions differ greatly as to whether that beast has economic beauty. There’s a sort of yin and yang as one begins to sort out the criticisms. To some on the conservative end of the economic spectrum, Wal-Mart is an inspiring entrepreneurial success story, its ruthless price-cutting a model of Adam Smith’s beneficent invisible hand. But to others who consider themselves liberals, Wal-Mart is an arrogant, union-busting employer that refuses to pay its own employees, many of whom don’t even have health insurance, decent wages.

Many other critics accuse Wal-Mart of exploiting hundreds of thousands of anonymous poor workers who work in the sweatshops in some of the poorer parts of the world—especially Asian countries like China, Bangladesh and the Philippines—that churn out all those cheap toys, clothing and so forth. To some of the corporation’s more energetic cyber critics who inhabit the blogosphere, Wal-Mart is a hated capitalistic “Satan.” Beyond the fringes, the growing chorus of Wal-Mart sentiments have now reached the mainstream of American politics, where anti-globalism sentiments are on the rise.

So how to sort out the “truth”?

The Truth About Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is often accused of exercising what antitrust theorists call “monopsony” purchasing power, squeezing its suppliers for ever-lower prices until they go out of business. The blogosphere is full of accusations, for example, that Wal-Mart’s relentless cost-cutting pressures in the late 1990s eventually drove Vlasic Pickles into bankruptcy. Yet that story doesn’t check out. As recounted in author Charles Fishman’s The Wal-Mart Effect, an often-critical history that detailed Wal-Mart’s rise from mom and pop to an economic superpower, Vlasic was indeed pressured mercilessly to cut its prices for gallon jars of pickles, to the extent that profits were barely a penny a jar.

Indeed, Wal-Mart’s aisles are filled with products made by corporate giants, including famous brands like Pfizer’s Listerine, Kellogg’s Special K cereal, Procter & Gamble Co.’s Crest toothpaste, Johnson’s Baby Lotion, Gillette Razors and Bayer vitamins. Consumers should be delighted that Wal-Mart is on their side, squeezing the big players in a competitive marketplace, turning profits by offering lower prices to consumers. If it is true that hard-nosed capitalistic competition, viewed up close, is never pretty, it is also argued that the end result can serve an economic public good.

Wal-Mart’s critics quickly retort that these consumer savings come with a price tag that is taken off the hides of poor, often exploited, Asian workers who make the cheap blue jeans. Indeed, the criticisms don’t just come from the antitrade crowd. There is widespread, if understandably muted, agreement inside the rag trade that the criticisms are reasonable. While everyone in the clothing industry has to worry about sweatshops, Wal-Mart’s extreme cost-cutting business model appears to give the company’s contract suppliers incentives to cut costs by the usual sweatshop methods: refusing to pay statutory minimum wages, demanding excessive overtime hours and then cheating their workers out of overtime pay, secretly subcontracting parts work out to children, and otherwise skirting internationally accepted labor practices. Wal-Mart claims to be on top of the problems.

 

The End of the Production Line:

Chong Won (a garment manufacturing unit outside Manila) had folded, after a long struggle with workers, who said they had earned two or three dollars a day and had been pressing for a better deal. This is a familiar Philippine story, as contract workers are fired the day before their sixth month, thus allowing the employers to avoid paying legally required benefits such as health care. The one word for this is: exploitation.

Since 1994, Chong Won workers tried to form a union, hoping to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement. But the organizing efforts had been vigorously suppressed by the factory management, which paid scant heed to the Philippine freedom of association laws.

Ultimately an Union was formed and it recommended that Wal-Mart guarantee to keep buying clothes from Chong Won, provided the Korean owner would refrain from further illegal union-busting activities, and rehire the fired workers, with back pay (as provided by Philippine law). Wal-Mart apparently accepted the recommendations, but by then Chong Won had gone out of business, changing its name to C. Woo Trading (which presumably could reopen in another location, another familiar sweatshop tactic in poor Asian countries). By whatever corporate name, the Korean executives declined to respond to requests to be interviewed.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., Wal-Mart faced criticism during 2008 presidential campaign trail for providing too many jobs to Asians. Mr. Obama then was quoted as telling a New York City audience that some American workers “now compete with their teenagers for minimum-wage jobs at Wal-Mart because their factory moved overseas.” Former Sen. John Edwards had not only campaigned against Wal-Mart and the globalization it stands for, but had staffed his campaign with anti-Wal-Mart activists.

Problem is, the political critics often have their own contradictions. Ms. Clinton was a former director of Wal-Mart. Mr. Edwards owned Wal-Mart stock before he ran for national office. And Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle Obama, was associated with a company that supplies Wal-Mart with pickles, until she resigned, the association raised questions.

Perhaps, whatever one thinks about Wal-Mart, the greater cause for concern is with the double standard associated with politicians who want to become president of the world’s economic superpower by pandering for anti-globalist votes against America’s No. 1 employer.

Note: Forming of whole sale market by the smaller manufactures for consumer goods and by farmers for food products and selling it through multiple retailers in one big campus like in Singapore, Kathmandu (Nepal) and New market in Kolkata will be more cost effective for manufacturers and farmers and will also be democratic in character than economic dictatorship and monopolisation by the big corporations.

——————————————————–
Support the Walmart Black Friday Strikers!

Fellow occupier, it’s time to take a stand and support the workers who are standing up to live better through an unfair labor practice strike.

Support of Worker's Rights

 

Walmart workers decided to strike on Black Friday after they were targeted for retaliation for speaking out about substandard work conditions and treatment last month in the first ever walk out in the history of the company.

The workers are demanding the following from Walmart:

 

  • Improve Workers’ Lives
  • Rebuild Communities 
  • Put Its Promises in Writing
  • Elevate Global Living Standards

 

Oct 05

ICE MELTS INTO WATER

Arctic Ice Melt, Psychopathic Capitalism And The Corporate Media.
By David Cromwell and David Edwards.

Artic Ice reduction since 1979

Climate scientists recently announced that Arctic sea ice had shrunk to its smallest surface area since satellite observations began in 1979. An ice-free summer in the Arctic, once projected to be more than a century away, now looks possible just a few decades from now. Some scientists say it may happen within the next few years.

The loss is hugely significant because Arctic sea ice reflects most solar energy into space, helping to keep the Earth at a moderate temperature. But when the ice melts it reveals dark waters below, which absorb more than 90 per cent of the solar energy that hits them, leading to faster warming both locally and globally.

Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, warns that the Arctic may be ice-free in summer as soon as 2015. Such a massive loss would have a warming effect roughly equivalent to all human activity to date. In other words, a summer ice-free Arctic could double the rate of warming of the planet as a whole. No wonder that leading NASA climate scientist James Hansen says bluntly: ‘We are in a planetary emergency.’

In the Scientific American website, Ramez Naam points out that:

‘The reality of changes to the Arctic has far outstripped most predictions. Only a few years ago, in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the bulk of models showed the Arctic ice cap surviving in summer until well past 2100. Now it’s not clear that the ice will survive in summer past 2020. The level of sea ice we saw this September, in 2012, wasn’t expected by the mean of IPCC models until 2065. The melting Arctic has outpaced the predictions of almost everyone – everyone except the few who were called alarmists.’

As well as global warming from carbon dioxide (CO2), there is the additional risk of warming from methane (CH4) being released into the atmosphere. Huge quantities of methane are locked up in land permafrost. But even vaster quantities exist as methane hydrates frozen below the shallow waters of the Arctic Ocean’s continental shelves. Naam warns:

‘If even 10% of the northern permafrost’s buried carbon were released as methane, it would have a heating effect over the next decade equivalent to ten times all human greenhouse emissions to date, and over the next century equivalent to roughly four times all human greenhouse emissions to date.’

That’s just the methane on land, trapped in the permafrost. If the methane hydrates buried on the Arctic continental shelves were to be released, that would have a warming effect equivalent to hundreds of times the total human carbon emissions to date.

Although Namm says ‘we are probably not in danger of a methane time bomb going off any time soon’, recent observations show that Arctic methane is being released into the atmosphere. And there is scientific controversy over how serious and how rapid this release is: In summary, Naam points to a triple whammy effect:

  1. Warming from the greenhouse gases we are currently emitting.
  2. Warming from the loss of ice and permafrost in the Arctic, and the exposure of dark water and dark land below.
  3. Warming from the release of more carbon into the atmosphere as the permafrost and the Arctic sea floor methane begin to melt.

The situation is already dire. According to a new report  commissioned by twenty governments, more than 100 million people will die by 2030 if the world fails to tackle climate change. Five million deaths already occur each year from air pollution, hunger and disease as a result of climate change and carbon-intensive economies. This death toll would likely rise to six million a year by 2030 if current patterns of fossil fuel use continue. More than 90 per cent of those deaths will occur in developing countries.

On a sane planet, action would have been taken long before now to limit the risk. But, as Greenpeace International head Kumi Naidoo notes,  fossil fuel industries have been working hard to corrupt the political process:‘Why our governments don’t take action? Because they have been captured by the same interests of the energy industry.’

As we noted in an alert  last year, a Greenpeace study titled Who’s Holding Us Back? reported:

‘The corporations most responsible for contributing to climate change emissions and profiting from those activities are campaigning to increase their access to international negotiations and, at the same time, working to defeat progressive legislation on climate change and energy around the world.’

Greenpeace added: ‘These polluting corporations often exert their influence behind the scenes, employing a variety of techniques, including using trade associations and think tanks as front groups; confusing the public through climate denial or advertising campaigns; making corporate political donations; as well as making use of the “revolving door” between public servants and carbon-intensive corporations.’

Unsurprisingly then, meaningful action on tackling climate change is nowhere on the political agenda.

But the record of corporate capitalism shows that powerful industrial forces will do all they can to lobby governments to allow for continued economic exploitation of the planet’s resources. According to U.S Geological Survey, within the Arctic Circle there are some 90 billion barrels of oil – 13 per cent of the planet’s undiscovered oil reserves – and 30 per cent of its undiscovered natural gas. The race for corporate profits is now on, with Shell already committed to a multi year exploration programme in the Arctic.

Media Malpractice: Corporate media ‘inclusion’ of dissent has deceived the public with the illusion of openness and change, while business-as-usual has taken us very far in the opposite direction. Ironically, meek ‘cooperation’ has handed influence and control to the very forces seeking to dis-empower dissent.   And in the absence of serious left/green criticism, corporate media performance has actually deteriorated.

Why should progressives help this system sell the illusion that the corporate media offers a ‘wide spectrum of views’ when its biased output overwhelmingly and inevitably promotes Permanent War for resources and war on the planet? The corporate media must be confronted with the reality of what it is, and what it has done. It is vital that this be highlighted to the public it has been deceiving.

While the power of the internet remains relatively open, there is a brief window to free ourselves from the shackles of the corporate media and to build something honest, radical, and publicly accountable.

SOURES: Media Lens

Sep 18

THE POLARISED WORLD OF GLOBALISATION

A response to Friedman’s Flat earth hypothesis – Dr. Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva

The project of corporate Globalisation is a project for polarising and dividing people – along axis of class and economic inequality, axis of religion and culture, axis of gender, axis of geographies and regions.

Never before in human history has the gap between those who labour and those who accumulate wealth without labour been greater. Never before has hate between cultures been so global. Never before has there been a global convergence of three violent trends – the violence of primitive accumulation for wealth creation, the violence of “culture wars”, and the violence of militarized warfare.

Yet Thomas Friedman, describes this deeply divided world created by Globalisation and its multiple offspring’s of insecurity and polarization as a “flat” world. In his book “The world is Flat” Friedman tries desperately to argue that Globalisation is a leveler of inequalities in societies. But when you only look at the worldwide Web of information technology, and refuse to look at the web of life, the food web, the web of community, the web of local economies and local cultures which Globalisation is destroying, it is easy to make false and fallacious arguments that the world is flat.

When you look at the world perched on heights of arrogant, blind power, separated and disconnected from those who have lost their livelihoods, lifestyles, and lives – farmers and workers everywhere – it is easy to be blind both to the valleys of poverty and the mountains of affluence. Flat vision is a disease. But Friedman would like us to see his diseased, perverse flat view of globalization, and polarization as revolution.

Thomas Friedman

Friedman’s false flat earth history then enables him take two big leaps results of coercive, undemocratic “free trade” treaties are reduced to achievements of information technology and corporate globalisation and corporate control is presented as the collaborations and competition between individuals.

Neither e-commerce not walmartisation of the economy could take place without the dismantling of trade protections, workers protections, environmental protections. Technology of communication do not make long distance supply of goods, including food products cheaper than local supply. Low wages, subsidies, externalisation of costs make Walnut cheap, not its information technology based supply chain management.

Citizens’ movements fighting globalisation advocate democratic, consensual governance and fight W.T.O, the World Bank and global corporations precisely because they are undemocratic and dictatorial; they are authoritarian and centralized. The W.T.O agreement on Agriculture was drafted by Amstutz, a Cargill official, who led the U.S negotiations on agriculture during the Urguay Round and is now in-charge of Food and Agriculture in the Iraqi Constitution. This is a centrally planned authoritarian rule over food and farming.

The biggest wall created by W.T.O is the wall of the trade related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement. (TRIPS). This too is part of a centrally planned authoritarian rule. As Monsanto admitted, in drafting the agreement, the corporations organised as the Intellectual Property Committee were the  “patients, diagnosticians and physicians all in one.” Instead of telling the story of TRIPS and how corporate and WTO led globalisation is forcing India to dismantle its democratically designed patent laws, creating monopolies on seeds and medicines, pushing farmers to suicide and denying victims of AIDS, Cancer, TB, and Malaria access to life saving drugs, Friedman engages in another dishonest step to create a flat world.

Friedman presents a 0.1% picture and hides 99.9%. And in the 99.9% are Monsanto’s seed monopolies and the suicides of thousands of farmers. In the eclipsed 99.9% are the 25 million women who disappeared in high growth areas of India because a commodified world has rendered women a dispensable sex. In the hidden 99.9% economy are thousands of tribal children in Orissa, Maharashtra, Rajasthan who died of hunger because the public distribution system for food has been dismantled to create markets for agribusiness. The world of the 99.9% has grown poorer because of the economic globalisation.

And the world we are reclaiming and rejuvenating is not flat. It is diverse democratic and decentralised, it is sustainable and secure for all, based on cooperation and sharing of the earth’s resources and our skills and creativity. The freedom we seek is freedom for all, not freedom for a few. Free-trade is about corporate freedom and citizen disenfranchisement.

Free trade freedom is flat earth freedom. Earth democracy is full earth freedom and round earth freedom – freedom for all beings to live their lives within the abundant, renewable but limited bounds of the earth. We do not inhabit a world without limits where unbounded corporate greed can be unleashed and allowed to destroy the earth and rob people of their security, their livelihoods, their resources. Full earth freedom is born in free societies, shaped by free people recognizing the freedom of all. Diversity is an expression of full earth freedom. “Flatness” is a symptom of the absence of real freedom.

Editor’s Note: About 20% people enjoy the fruits of Globalisation. This includes the power structure, Political power and their administrative machinery and the economically privileged class supported by corporate media, educational, cultural and religious institutions.

The rest 80% are at the receiving end without a voice in the decision making. They have only one power if they can rise to the occasion—“Peoples Power”

Sep 05

A Planetary Alternative to the Global Economy

By David C. Korten, The People-Centered Development Forum

David Corten

The Global Capitalist Economy

Inequality and injustice are not accidental outcomes of global capitalism, they are its defining characteristics. In a capitalist regime, money is embraced as the measure of all value. The maximization of returns to financial capital becomes society’s defining goal. Competition, individualism, and materialism are nurtured as favoured cultural norms. Stock prices and gross domestic product (GDP) are the accepted measures of progress and well being. Inflation of land and stock values is encouraged, while wages are held constant or depressed, thus creating ever growing inequality by increasing the financial assets of a small elite relative to the incomes of working people.

Inequality and injustice are not accidental outcomes of global capitalism, they are its defining characteristics.

Capitalism trains and selects as its leaders those imbued with a highly developed financial consciousness — “think money.” Its favoured institution is the publicly traded, limited liability corporation, which concentrates power in the hands of a chief corporate executive account able only to absentee owners who themselves are shielded from public accountability for the decisions made on their behalf. With a legal fiduciary responsibility to maximize short-term returns to its shareholders, the legal structure of the corporation virtually compels it to mimic a cancer — pursuing its own unlimited growth without regard to consequences for either itself or its host.

Though living capital — human, social, institutional, or natural — is the ultimate source of all real wealth, capitalism assigns it no value and makes no accounting for its depletion. The ultimate power over both governments and corporations resides with global financial markets in which speculators gamble with hundreds of billions of dollars in borrowed money. Corporate ownership of media and politicians renders democracy meaningless as the institutions of money rewrite laws to free themselves from public regulation, economic borders, and restraint on their ability to eliminate competition through mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances.

Meanwhile the WTO, a body created at the instigation of the world’s largest corporations to serve their financial interests, has been given the power to challenge local and national laws that conflict with its view of global priorities. Through the WTO the world’s rich and powerful aggressively advance the negotiation and enforcement of international agreements to place the protection of property rights ahead of the protection of human rights, regulate governments to prohibit them from regulating global corporations and finance, remove barriers to the spread of a homogenized corporate-friendly consumer culture, mould all countries into a standardized laissez-faire capitalist economic model, press governments to privatise public goods and services, assure global corporations unrestricted access to natural resources, and provide public guarantees for private investors and speculators. The increasingly shaky legitimacy of this flawed economic model rests in large measure on two well-promoted fallacies: Capitalism is…a system that concentrates economic power in the hands of the few to the exclusion of the many…

Fallacy 1: The fairest and most effective way to end poverty is to expand the economic pie through economic growth, thus improving the standard of living of everyone.

Reality: The economic growth we currently experience is destroying the real living wealth of society and the planet, thus reducing the pie of real wealth.

Fallacy 2: The global victory of capitalism is a victory for democracy and the market economy, which is the fairest and most efficient mechanism for allocating economic resources.

Reality: Democracy and market economies are exactly what we should be seeking, because they are the foundation of equitable, self-organizing societies. Unfortunately, capitalism is the mortal enemy of both. Capitalism is by definition a system that concentrates economic power in the hands of the few to the exclusion of the many—creating an illusion in the minds of power holders that it is an engine of prosperity rather than an engine of destruction and upward redistribution.

A Planetary Society

Consider the possibility of a planetary society in which life is the measure of value and the defining goal is to assure the happiness, well being, and creative expression of each person. Well-being and progress are evaluated on the basis of indices of the vitality, diversity, and productive potential of the whole of society’s living capital—its human, social, institutional, and natural capital. These indices are monitored as carefully as we now monitor GDP and stock prices. Any sign of decline evokes prompt corrective action. Leaders are trained and selected for their highly developed planetary consciousness—”think living planet.” Consider the possibility of a planetary society in which life is the measure of value…

Human rights and political sovereignty reside in real persons on the basis of one person one vote. Civic associations facilitate the practice of direct democracy. Public funding of elections and free access for political candidates to media minimize the role of money in elections.

Economic life centres on well regulated, self-organizing markets that function within a strong ethical culture of cooperation and mutual responsibility. Some call it the mindful market economy. Firms are human-scale and owned by real human stakeholders—their workers, customers, suppliers, and community members. There are many forms of enterprise, including proprietorships, cooperatives, partnerships, and stakeholder owned corporations-but the once common publicly traded, limited-liability corporation no longer exists.

The right of each person to a means of livelihood is considered to be the most basic of human rights—a right secured in part through owning a share in the assets on which one’s livelihood depends. Concerns for equity and public accountability are hallmarks of economic life. The right of each person to a means of livelihood is considered to be the most basic of human rights…

Yes to Trade Rules, Markets, and Fair Trade. No to Global Capitalism and the WTO

Fair and balanced trade that serves the mutual interests of the trading partners is welcomed. How ever, the planetary society has a natural preference for local production to strengthen local control and economic security, increase the stability and resilience of economic relations among countries, and reduce transportation costs and energy use. Another point of difference between the planetary society and the global economy is that the former takes seriously the underlying principles of market and trade theory—including the principle that markets must be regulated to maintain the conditions of efficient market function. It thus uses regulatory and fiscal measures to maintain a reasonable balance in trade between countries (exports     imports for each trading partner), assure that full costs are internalised by producers and reflected in selling prices (no direct or hidden subsidies and no unfair competitive practices such as dumping), and keep finance and ownership predominantly national (limit international financial flows and foreign/absentee ownership). In short, it takes trade rules seriously.

The WTO was created at the behest of international corporations and financiers to prevent and roll back the regulation of trade, corporations, or finance by governments.

A Reform Agenda

  • Regulate trans-national corporations and finance to sharply curb financial speculation, the money laundering activities of trans-national banks, trade in arms and illegal drugs, corporate tax evasion using off-shore havens, the sale abroad of chemicals and drugs banned in a corporation’s home country, and anti-competitive practices such as price-fixing cartels.
  • Establish a strong international anti-trust regime to reverse the trend toward the global concentration of corporate power, especially in such sensitive areas as banking, media, and agribusiness, and maintain competitiveness in international markets.
  • Require global corporations to adhere to the highest of international, local, or their home country standards regarding human rights, labour, environment, health, and safety everywhere they operate.
  • Monitor national trade balances and facilitate negotiations toward agreement on corrective action where consequential and persistent imbalances are found.
  • Organize sanctions in cases where a country engages in an economic assault on another by dumping products at prices substantially below the real costs of production, uses bullying tactics to force a country to open its markets to products it considers harmful or unnecessary, or intentionally disrupts the economy of another country by unilaterally imposing an economic embargo not sanctioned by the United Nations General Assembly.
  • Create mechanisms for dealing with such matters as the problem of invasive alien species like the Asian longhorn beetle, the threat to human food security created by the growing number of countries that are dependent on food imports, threats to human, economic, and environmental health posed by the reckless introduction of genetically modified organisms into food supplies and the environment, the use of child and slave labour in export production, and the abuse of intellectual property rights to overprice beneficial drugs and technologies and limit their availability to poor people and countries.

David C. Korten is author of:

  • The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism and
  • When Corporations Rule the World.  

http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten

Aug 13

Transformation through the people and for the people.

by Ac. Krtashivananda

Voting - (from Wikipedia)

At the outset, the word transformation or progress needs to be defined.  The development of roads, buildings and industries are not the criteria of progress. The quest for freedom in physical, intellectual and spiritual realm is the criteria of progress. This quest for freedom can be referred back to humanity’s struggle of existence. This quest accounts for the human triumph over nature in the course of efforts to satisfy biological needs. It provides the basis for constant search for knowledge, which enables people to be progressively free from the tyranny of natural phenomena and social environment. Guided by the dictum of ancient wisdom that man(sic) is the measure of everything, the philosophy of the future should judge the merit of any social or political system by the actual measure of freedom it affords to the individual in the physical, mental and spiritual spheres.

Through or by the people is a democratic slogan. In third world countries like India are trying to follow a process inherited from liberal democracy imported from the West. Although democracy preceded liberalism in Western history, in the modern age liberalism preceded democracy by nearly two centuries and created a world to which the later had to adjust. Liberal democracy is basically a liberalised or liberally constituted democracy; that is democracy defined and structured within the limits set by liberalism. Liberalism is its fundamental premise and foundation and penetrates to design democratic character.

The problem is that the concept of the individual is obviously complex and presupposes a theory of individuation. By the very condition of his or her existence, every human being is inseparably connected with other human beings and nature. To individuate a person is to decide where to draw the boundary  between  that person and other persons and nature. Individuation is thus a matter of social convention, obviously  different societies  individuate human beings and define the individual differently. In countries dominated by caste or religious and tribal sentiment,  an individual is integrated with a particular caste or religious or tribal community. That’s why  the idea of liberal democracy cannot blossom in the background of caste and communal politics.

These societies are still under the influence of  traditionalism and feudalism. It is far away from embracing modernism which flourished  in the West rejecting institutionalised religion and embracing the upsurge of science. The branch of modernism, liberal democracy and Marxism dominated the world in the 19th century. Both rejected religion and propagated the supremacy of matter over consciousness. But what happened to  the Western world ? The achievement of wealth and comfort for all was supposed to result in unrestricted happiness for all. The trinity of unlimited  production, absolute freedom, and unrestricted happiness formed the nucleus of a new religion—progress and a new Earthly City of Progress was to replace the City of God. It is not astonishing that this new religion provided its believers with energy, vitality and hope. The grandeur of great promise, the marvellous material and intellectual achievements of the industrial age, must be visualised in order to understand the trauma, that realisation of its failure is producing today.

The Nations which are reeling under the dogma of caste and religion, the materialistic tendency and consumer psychology has accelerated the dehumanising process of modern civilisation. Instead of achieving real freedom, new bondages are suffocating human aspiration.

It is obvious that the experiment with liberal democracy has failed in those background disintegrated cultural communities. Democracy cannot be imposed. It must evolve in the background of a particular culture and social psychology. Democracy is a process of collective decision making process. The idea of by the people can only be successful when the polity have:

  1. Minimum education in the sense that people become conscious their rights and duty.
  2. Social consciousness in the sense that they are not influenced by narrow sentiments that divide the human society and counters hedonist culture.
  3. Majority of the polity has some moral consciousness
  4. And there exists the guarantee of minimum requirements of life for all.

For the People: Today we can see the drum beating in favour of globalisation of economy in all sphere life. All the parties with minor difference has accepted this centralisation of economic power by the multinationals under the slogan of free market economy which can without hesitation  be termed as economic monopoly by a few. Is economic development programme meant for a class of people or for all the people? Is there any scope in this system to guarantee the minimum requirements of life for all ?

It is essential to  expose the hypocrisy of the present political power structures and vigilantly expose the growing dangers of economic colonization.