Year of the Hungry

Despite the West's pledge to halve world hunger, the number of people who are short of food will soon reach a shocking landmark.

Year of The Hungry: 1,000,000,000 Afflicted
by Asavari Honavar

One billion people will go hungry around the globe next year for the first time in human history, as the international financial crisis deepens, the United Nations has told The Independent on Sunday.

The shocking landmark will be passed - despite a second record worldwide harvest in a row - because people are becoming too destitute to buy the food that is produced.

Decades of progress in reducing hunger are being abruptly reversed, dealing a devastating blow to a pledge by world leaders eight years ago to cut it in half by 2015.

Rich countries have failed to provide promised money to boost agriculture in the Third World; the financial crisis is starving developing countries of credit and driving their people into greater poverty, and food aid to the starving is expected to begin drying up next month.

Development charities recently called on US president-elect Barack Obama to put the escalating food crisis "front and centre" of his priorities.

Some 963 million people are now undernourished worldwide, according to the most recent survey of the crisis by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the UN body expects the situation to worsen with the recession. "The number will rise steadily next year," an FAO spokesman told the IoS last week. "We are looking at a billion people. That is clear." The FAO fears the tally will go on increasing for years to come.

This directly contradicts an undertaking by the world's leaders at a special summit in September 2000 to "reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger" from 1990 levels by 2015, as part of an ambitious set of Millennium Development Goals.

At the time, and for several years afterwards, the goal looked achievable, if challenging. Between 1990 and 2005 the number of undernourished people stayed more or less the same at between 800 and 850 million, even though world population grew by 1.2 billion, meaning that the proportion of a rapidly increasing humanity that went hungry was steadily falling.

Several countries - including Ghana, Peru, Mexico, Chile, Jamaica and Costa Rica - actually exceeded the target years ahead of time, while others such as Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Mozambique were on track to achieve it. Twenty-five developing nations looked as if they would be able to halve the absolute number of their hungry - not just the proportion of them in their rising populations - by the target date.

But over the past three years that progress has been thrown abruptly into reverse, with the first steep and sustained rise in hunger in decades leaving another 115 million people short of food. The increase began when prosperity was still increasing and has continued despite bumper harvests; a new FAO report shows that this year's grain crop is set to grow by 5.4 per cent to 2,241 million tons, following a 6 per cent rise last year - ahead of population growth.

So the growth in hunger is not occurring, as in the past, because of shortage of food - but because people cannot afford to buy it even when it is plentiful. The main reason has been that high food prices have priced the poor out of the market.

Over the 12 months until last summer, wheat and maize prices more than doubled and rice prices more than tripled. This was due partly to the growth in biofuels which, the FAO reports, has taken over 100 million tons of cereals out of food supplies over the past year to fuel cars instead. One fill of a 4x4's tank uses enough grain to feed one poor person for a year.

The organisation also blames speculation, population growth, the shrinking of food stocks to record lows and the increasing consumption of meat in developing countries such as China and India, which mops up grain supplies because they are used to feed livestock.

International prices have fallen sharply since the summer, as this year's good harvest has further swelled supplies and the growing financial crisis has cut demand. But the FAO reports that the lower prices have failed to ease the crisis, while the increasing financial turmoil has made it worse.

Developing countries have not benefited from the falling worldwide cost of food, it says, because their currencies have depreciated against the dollar in which international prices are set and their domestic supplies remain scarce, keeping prices in local markets at record levels.

Virtually none of the increased production of the past two years has taken place in the Third World, partly because its farmers have been unable to afford expensive fertilisers and seeds while the profits of giant agrochemical and biotech companies have soared. Now as rich countries' economies slump, they are importing fewer commodities and goods from developing ones, driving national incomes down and increasing unemployment and poverty. As employment falls in the West, Third World immigrants are losing their jobs and are no longer able to send back the money they save from their wages in remittances to their families, a financial boost that is often crucial in keeping them out of dire poverty.

Just as serious, the FAO adds, the credit that Third World farmers need to buy seeds, energy and agricultural chemicals - and to improve production - is drying up.

Aid, too, is falling precipitously. Earlier this month, the World Food Programme - the UN agency that provides food to the hungry - announced that it was running out of supplies. Unless it receives more soon it expects to have to start rationing aid next month, and to run out of food altogether for needy countries such as Haiti, Sudan and Bangladesh by March.

At a special summit in June last year, rich governments pledged $12.3bn (£8.4bn) to tackle the food crisis, but have so far handed over only $1bn of it, as they have scrambled to provide trillions to bail out failing banks.

"Overcoming the financial crisis is critical," concludes the FAO in a recent report, "but continuing the fight against hunger by realising those pledged billions is no less important." Jacques Diouf, the FAO's director general, warns: "Unless the political will and donor pledges are turned into urgent and real actions, millions more will fall into deep poverty."

Josette Sheeran, the executive director of the World Food Programme, added: "While we worry about Wall Street and the high street, we are also paying attention to the needs of those who live in places with no street." She has called on governments to devote just 1 per cent of their bailout and stimulus packages to fighting hunger.

The worst is yet to come, taking the number of hungry beyond the one billion mark. As food prices fall, the FAO is reporting signs that farmers in Europe and North America are reducing their plantings for next year's harvest - and the same thing is likely to happen in the Third World as the lack of credit stops its farmers from being able to buy the food and agricultural chemicals they need. So next year's harvest, it is feared, will be smaller, even if the weather remains good.

The run of good seasons is unlikely to continue for long, even in the short run. And in the medium to long term, climate change is expected to make harvests dramatically worse. Mr Diouf predicts that, if the world fails to take urgent action to keep global warming beneath 2C, the emerging international target, "the global food production potential can be expected to contract severely" - with harvests dropping by up to 40 per cent in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Tears of the children

Tears of the Children
by David Grayling

Friends, I was struck by the haunting beauty of this crying girl. Her name is Imam Boudella. Her father was just released from Guantanamo Bay and flown back to Bosnia.

She waited excitedly at Sarajevo Airport to greet him after years of absence. He was escorted off the plane by Bosnian Security officials and driven away in an armoured van to be interrogated. She never saw him.

Sadly, all around the world, children like Imam are crying. They may be starving. They may be in the middle of a war zone or a siege. They may be dying of aids or some other easily preventable disease. They may be victims of incest or radiation from depleted uranium. They may have lost limbs from landmines, or parents. They may be being sexually abused by pedophiles or priests. They may have drunken fathers or mothers. They may be working twelve hours a day in dirty sweat shops, being beaten. Who would know? Who would care?

This X'mas, spare a moment for them and say a little prayer. The children of our world need us.

Brazilian Eco-Warriors at risk of assasination...

What is this world coming to? Twenty years after the killing of Chico Mendes, one of the world's most prominent rainforest defenders, hundreds of human rights and environmental activists still face the threat of assassination in Brazil new study claims.

The report, compiled by Brazil's Catholic Land Commission (CPT) and due to be released in full early next year, reveals that at least 260 people, among them a Catholic bishop, live under the threat of murder because of their fight against a coalition of loggers, farmers and cattle ranchers.

The list names Frei Henri des Rosiers, a French priest based in the Amazon town of Xinguara, as a particular target. Police are investigating claims he has a £14,000 price on his head because of his fight against slave labour. Also named are Maria José Dias da Costa, a union leader in the remote town of Rondon do Pará, and an Austrian bishop, Dom Erwin Krautler, who has been under 24-hour police guard for two years because of his battle against developers and child prostitution in his Amazonian diocese.

In February this year, Francisco da Silva, a 51-year-old leader of the landless movement in the Amazon, was killed with a single shot to the head. He had been named in a previous CPT report about rural leaders receiving death threats.

On Monday night the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is expected to address the country on television to pay homage to the life of Mendes, a rubber tapper turned environmentalist who was gunned down outside his home on 22 December 1988. Lula's address is part of a wave of tributes across Brazil, from marches on the streets of Rio de Janeiro to celebrations in his hometown of Xapuri. But while his standing as a symbol of protest is not in doubt 20 years on, environmentalists and human rights activists are divided on Mendes's practical legacy.

Chico Mendes: Martyr for our times

It was when Chico's union successfully defended a piece of virgin rainforest sprinkled with rubber trees against the ranchers' attempts to claim it that the struggle became personal. Before the shooting of Mendes only 10 people had ever been brought to court for around 1,000 murders in the Amazon in the 1980s.

In his speeches he used to say: "Come here and kill me. My chest is open." He knew he might achieve more by his death than he had by his life.

Today the extractive reserves Chico championed are relatively successful in protecting parts of the Amazon, as are reserves run by the rainforest's indigenous people.

Now people talk of using carbon credits to protect similar areas around the world. And I realise that I had met the martyr for our times - the Gandhi, or perhaps the Che Guevara, of our environmental age.

Unpalatable Truths

Here's a collection of quotes that I posted to Quoteland.com somewhere around 2001, that make me go hmmmm... everytime I read them. As quotes are opinions, I thought they could go well on this blog as an alternative post.

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The great masses of the people at the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously evil ... they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big."
-- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

"If we'd been born where they were born and taught what they were taught, we would believe what they believe."
-- A sign inside a church in Northern Ireland, explaining the origin of intolerance and hate.

The Israeli military men and capitalists, together with their Palestinian peers, do everything they can to remain in power. Their mass media and educational system spread vicious nationalistic propaganda, hatred and fear. Thus they divide and rule us. They incite against each other Arabs and Jews, East and West, while they continue to reign. These are our real enemies, preventing us from attaining physical and economical security. Against them Arabs and Jews should stand together.
-- Yair Khilou.

Yair Khilou, is a young activist in several radical left-wing groups, and one of the organisers behind the "letter of the twelfth-graders" (a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Sharon, signed by 62 youths, announcing their refusal to cooperate with the Israeli army's actions). Yair announced his conscientious objection to military service at the age of 16 and has refused to go through preliminary military medical and psychometric examinations.

Anybody interested in reading the whole article, is invited to click here: (makes an interesting reading) http://www.counterpunch.org/khilou.html
And the letter signed by 62(all between the ages 15-18) youths can be read here: http://www.newprofile.org/english/letters

"What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment . . . inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose."
-- Thomas Jefferson
Source: Thomas Jefferson to Jean Nicholas Demeunier, January 24, 1786

"There are plenty of good reasons for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to have without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive."
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife by the millions in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions (9 billion in the U.S. alone in 1996) and eats them. This in turn kills man by the millions, because eating all these animals leads to degenerative -- and fatal -- health conditions like heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and
malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out cards praying for "Peace on Earth."
-- C. David Coats

The inner fragmentation of man mirrors his view of the world 'outside' which is seen as a multitude of separate objects and events. The natural environment is treated as if it consisted of separate parts to be exploited by different interest groups. The fragmented view is further extended to society which is split into different nations, races, religious and political groups. The belief that all these fragments - in ourselves, in our environment and in our society - are really separate can be seen as the essential reason for the present series of social, ecological and cultural crisis. It has alienated us from Nature and from our fellow human beings. It has brought a grossly unjust distribution of natural resources creating economic and political disorder; an ever rising wave of violence, both spontaneous and institutionalized, and an ugly, polluted environment in which life has often become physically and mentally unhealthy.
-- Fritjof Capra, from The Tao of Physics

Humans have learned to split the atom. Instead of killing ten or twenty people with one club, one person can now kill a million just by pushing a button. Is that real change?
-- Eckhart Tolle, from The Power of Now

Today, as in the Gilded Age, we live in a world where a morality of personal responsibility rubs shoulders with a culture of greed and of flagrant social irresponsibility. Now as then, business has shed its collective responsibility for employees - just as government has for its citizens."
-- Charles Derber,from Corporation Nation, p28

"A considerable proportion of the developed world's prosperity rests on paying the lowest possible prices for the poor countries' primary products and on exporting high-cost capital and finished goods to those countries. Continuation of this kind of prosperity requires continuation of the relative gap between developed and underdeveloped countries - it means keeping poor people poor. Increasingly, the impoverished masses are understanding that the prosperity of the developed countries and of the privileged minorities in their own countries is founded on their poverty."
-- Philip Agee, from CIA Diary, p595

Gross utility kills beauty. We now have all over the world huge production of things, huge organizations, huge administrations of empire - all obstructing the path of life. Civilization is waiting for a great consummation, for an expression of its soul in beauty. This must be your contribution to the world.
-- Rabindranath (Thakur) Tagore.

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half so bad
if it isn't you.
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
-- Barry Lopez, from Arctic Dreams

You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have free permission to do so and it is in accordance with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering that you could have avoided.
-- Franz Kafka

Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach the injured...
... People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, from his address given at a conference on Ending the Occupation held in Boston, Massachusetts, titled Apartheid in the Holy Land

Fascism itself can only be turned away if all those who are outraged by it show a commitment to social justice that equals the intensity of their indignation. Are we ready to get off our starting blocks? Are we ready, many millions of us, to rally not just on the streets, but at work and in schools and in our homes, in every decision we take, and every choice we make?
Or not just yet...
If not, then years from now, when the rest of the world has shunned us (as it should), like the ordinary citizens of Hitler's Germany, we too will learn to recognize revulsion in the gaze of our fellow human beings. We too will find ourselves unable to look our own children in the eye, for the shame of what we did and did not do. For the shame of what we allowed to happen.
This is us. In India. Heaven help us make it through the night.
-- Arundhati Roy.

All over the world 24,000 people, mostly children, die from poverty every day. This is the true terrorism, and it is aided and abetted by politicians from rich, privileged and powerful countries who, in the cause of profit and feigning respectability, are salesmen of death. Their victims, and the rest of us, deserve better.
-- John Pilger, from his article titled, "How Britain's Armaments Fuel War And Poverty

When faced with the choice between engaging with reality or engaging with what Erich Fromm calls the "necrophiliac" world of wealth and power, choose life, whatever the apparent costs may be. Your peers might at first look down on you: poor Nina, she's twenty-six and she still doesn't own a car. But those who have put wealth and power above life are living in the world of death, in which the living put their tombstones - their framed certificates signifying acceptance to that world - upon their walls. Remember that even the editor of the Times, for all his income and prestige, is still a functionary, who must still take orders from his boss. He has less freedom than we do, and being the editor of the Times is as good as it gets.

You know you have only one life. You know it is a precious, extraordinary, unrepeatable thing: the product of billions of years of serendipity and evolution. So why waste it by handing it over to the living dead?
-- George Monbiot, from his article titled Choose Life on http://www.zmag.org/Znet.htm

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Expect additions in future to this topic. Most probably it would be done in the form of separate posts.

The loneliness of Manmohan Singh

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is under pressure from Indians to attack Pakistan. He is under pressure from his colleagues in the Congress Party, his opponents in the BJP and from the media to act. Condoleezza Rice has understood his dilemma and come to hold his hand. War with Pakistan is out of the question; the pressure is for mounting strikes against jihadi organisations.

What can he do? He could order strikes at the Markaz Dawa complex in Muridke near Lahore, where the Salafi Lashkar was based before moving to Muzaffarabad. He could order strikes at the Binori Masjid complex in Karachi, where the Deobandi Jaish-e-Muhammad was formed under Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai before his death. He must consider three things: how will it affect terrorism? How will it affect Pakistan? How will it affect India?

India can again apply military pressure on Pakistan's leaders but what does it seek this time? Indians want war on Pakistan's jihadis but war is already upon them. It is being fought between one Pakistan and another Pakistan. Zardari, Musharraf, the MQM, Kayani, Asfandyar Wali versus the Taliban, Jaish, Lashkar, Baitullah Mehsud, Lal Masjid. There are neutrals in the war -- Nawaz Sharif, Imran Khan, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Hameed Gul, Fazlur Rehman -- and at the moment they are leaning away from Zardari.

Less than a year ago, on December 27, 2007, Asif Ali Zardari lost his wife Benazir Bhutto to terrorists. General Ashfaq Kayani has lost over 1,000 of his soldiers fighting his own citizens. India is not obliged to help Zardari in Pakistan's war. But it would be a mistake to help the other side by weakening him. India wants to punish Pakistan but Pakistanis are already paying a heavy price for their mistakes.

Pakistan's inflation is at 25 Per cent. It is running out of foreign exchange and is being propped up by the IMF. Its markets have been de-capitalised by Pakistanis sending money abroad. GDP per Pakistani is $623. GDP per Indian is $900.

In 1991, India's GDP per capita was $328, Pakistan's was $458. In 1991, India was 28 per cent behind Pakistan. In 17 years, India has gone 30 per cent ahead. How did this happen?

For 17 years, four Indian governments have followed what is called Manmohanomics. In this period, four Pakistani governments followed a policy of 'strategic depth' in Afghanistan till 2001 and jihad in Kashmir till 2002. In 2007, India's GDP grew at 9.1 per cent, the second highest in the world. In this period, it shrugged off dozens of terror attacks including the Bombay train blasts which killed 209 people in 2006.

In the last five years, India created 11 million new jobs every year, the highest in the world and more than the job growth in China, Brazil and Russia combined. Every year, India pulls one per cent, 10 million -- one crore -- of its population out of poverty. This has happened with a single focus on economy. War, through all sorts of terrorism, and foreign policy has not been our concern.

One man began dismantling India's Nehruvian economy 17 years ago. He did it not because his party had any mandate to do this from the population: India votes for identity, not policy or governance. He did it because he believed that was the right thing for India.

That man, Dr Manmohan Singh, will go down in our history as the single most influential politician in India. More than Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Atal Behari Vajpayee. More even than the great Nehru.

Hundreds of millions of Indians have a better life in 2008 than they did in 1991 because of Manmohan Singh. Indians laugh at Manmohan Singh because he's dependent on Sonia Gandhi. L K Advani called him India's weakest prime minister. The ability to craft and deliver world-class policy did not win him our gratitude: Manmohan Singh cannot even win his own election. He lost the Lok Sabha election from South Delhi in 1999 and had to be nominated to the Rajya Sabha from Assam.

But Narasimha Rao's wisdom made him the finance minister and Sonia Gandhi's wisdom made him prime minister. Born in Chakwal, Singh is an economist trained at Cambridge and Oxford. His doctorate was on self-sustained growth in India, but he has decided that India can only grow if it embraces the world.

In the era of Manmohanomics, India's moralistic foreign policy has been abandoned in favour of pragmatism. Its anti-Americanism has disappeared. He holds the most enlightened views, which are brought out only when he's interviewed by foreign journalists: (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/int_manmohansingh.html).

He was asked why in 1991 he had agreed to take a job -- of liberalising India's economy -- that his peers were convinced would make him a scapegoat. He said: "If I fail, that's of no great consequence. And who fails if India wins?"

Nehru and Ambedkar fought against bigotry. India's pluralist constitution is a tower of white light amid a subcontinent of religious and ethnic nationalisms. Manmohan Singh is fighting against poverty and illiteracy. Indians must let him win this war he has been so good at fighting for them. India cannot be distracted by its legitimate anger into action that will have consequences it cannot control.

Manmohan Singh must be very lonely as he looks out at his people, who are urging him to get even with Pakistan. And in the process damage the work for which he should be cherished and honoured in our country and in the world.

India's Human Development Index, the status of its population's life expectancy, literacy, health and economy is .619. In another generation, in the lifetime of many of us, India can achieve an index value of .9 at which stage it will be a developed country.

Now that's a war worth fighting and winning.

This is how terrorists are created

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza "a crime against humanity."

"This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live."

Gaza now spends 12 hours a day without power, which can be a death sentence to the severely ill in hospitals. There are few drugs and little medicine, including no cancer or cystic fibrosis medication. Hospitals have generators but often lack fuel. Medical equipment, including one of Gaza's three CT scanners, has been destroyed by power surges and fluctuations. Medical staff cannot control the temperature of incubators for newborns. And Israel has revoked most exit visas, meaning some of those who need specialized care, including cancer patients and those in need of kidney dialysis, have died. Of the 230 Gazans estimated to have died last year because they were denied proper medical care, several spent their final hours at Israeli crossing points where they were refused entry into Israel. The statistics gathered on children-half of Gaza's population is under the age of 17-are increasingly grim. About 45 percent of children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth.

"There is no structure of an occupation that endured for decades and involved this kind of oppressive circumstances," Falk added. "The magnitude, the deliberateness, the violations of international humanitarian law, the impact on the health, lives and survival and the overall conditions warrant the characterization of a crime against humanity. This occupation is the direct intention by the Israeli military and civilian authorities. They are responsible and should be held accountable."

Israel seeks to break the will of the Palestinians to resist. The Israeli government has demonstrated little interest in diplomacy or a peaceful solution. The rapid expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank is an effort to thwart the possibility of a two-state solution by gobbling up vast tracts of Palestinian real estate. Israel also appears to want to thrust the impoverished Gaza Strip onto Egypt. There are now dozens of tunnels, the principal means for food and goods, connecting Gaza to Egypt. Israel permits the tunnels to operate, most likely as part of an effort to further cut Gaza off from Israel.

"Israel, all along, has not been prepared to enter into diplomatic process that gives the Palestinians a viable state," Falk said. "They [the Israelis] feel time is on their side. They feel they can create enough facts on the ground so people will come to the conclusion a viable state cannot emerge."

The use of terror and hunger to break a hostile population is one of the oldest forms of warfare. I watched the Bosnian Serbs employ the same tactic in Sarajevo. Those who orchestrate such sieges do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse. A father or a mother whose child dies because of a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. A boy whose ill grandmother dies while detained at an Israel checkpoint does not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of family members do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who, eventually, stumble out into the daylight. Is it any wonder that 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza recently said they wanted to be a "martyr"?

The Israelis in Gaza, like the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, are foolishly breeding the next generation of militants and Islamic radicals.

US supplying Arms across the Globe for Wars.

Pundits these days warn of a Middle East arms race if Iran brings its alleged nuclear weapons programme to fruition, while others fear that missile defence in Eastern Europe could spark escalation involving Russia.

But despite all the fear in Washington, it turns out that the U.S. need look no farther than its own shores to find the greatest single source of weapons proliferation around the globe.

It's the U.S, according to a new report from the New America Foundation, which "is the world's largest arms supplier". And with 23 billion dollars in receipts in 2007 and 32 billion dollars in 2008, including only foreign sales, the U.S. is also cashing in.

While arms sales are usually thought of as a defensive or preventative matter -- lopsided support by the world's preeminent military power should clearly be a deterrent -- the fact of the matter is that U.S. deals play a major role in fighting around the globe.

"U.S. arms and military training played a role in 20 of the world's 27 major wars in /2007," said the report, co-authored by New America's Hartung and Frida Berrigan.

What exactly is Money?

I completely was bowled over by this simple solution I read in the following article. You may of course be tempted to skip most of the article to get to the solution at the end of the long article, but I must urge you not to do so. Don't they say all good things come to those who wait?

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What Exactly is Money?
A separation of truth and myth about our monetary system

By Jon Ronnquist

The problem with money is essentially a question of faith. Money is a promise represented in paper, metal and digits and is as valuable as it is trustworthy. And because trust is a volatile and abstract thing at best, so is money a risky business. Its usefulness is of course undeniable. In a world as complex and multifaceted as this one, barter becomes increasingly limited as a practical means of exchange. And yet we should do well to remember that for all its practicality, money posses a very real danger, the obvious one being devaluation. But that is by no means the only or the most serious threat posed by money. As in all matters of faith, manipulation is the far greater evil.

The gold standard against which currency was once levelled is now the distant memory of a bygone age. Whatever value is represented by your Dollars, Pounds and Euros is now set solely against the trust of the user, which is to say what buyers and sellers believe it to be worth. And so it should be and must be. No man would take money for his livestock or labour if he did not believe it would be accepted in kind by the purveyors of his own needs. This is basic economics and I see no reason to bore anybody with such things. The point is that money, as a concept, is sound and necessary. But what happens when it falls into the hands of those who see money as something more than a simple mechanism of trade? Those who see in it also an opportunity to consolidate power. Then we are in trouble.

There are several axioms which govern the function of money. Adhered to, they guarantee fair and good use. Abused, they are the gateway to untold troubles. First, money is not a commodity, but a public service. In itself it has no real value or use beyond the facilitation of exchange. If this is hard to digest, try eating it, planting it or getting it to mow your lawn. And like all essential public services, it fares best in the hands of representative government.

Second, money must exist in a quantity that is relatively equal to the volume of exchange it expedites. Where the supply is insufficient it creates an artificial strangulation of trade, where necessary and vital transactions become arbitrarily halted for want of worthless paper. Where it is allowed to exist in excessive quantities, the value of real goods and services is artificially lowered to the detriment of all. A money supply which is not regulated professionally and competently will begin to outweigh it own benefits.

Third, some cap must exist on savings. Money removed from the supply and set to one side must be replaced to ensure it does not violate its own primary purpose by deflating. If it is reintroduced in excessive quantities it will also have the effect of causing inflation. This does not become a problem if deposits and withdrawals from saving are relatively balanced. It also illustrates that huge stockpiles of unreasonable wealth violate the laws upon which money operate and should not be allowed.

Fourth and last, money must be introduced into circulation as payment, not debt. To make money available on the condition that it must be taken back out of circulation in equal or greater measure is a violation of its purpose and leads to all manner of problems. Earth in the twenty-first century being the most obvious one.

As populations rise, production increases and trade expands, more money must be made available to facilitate it. The question of how this is done fairly is simple but requires first and foremost a sound government. Money must be introduced through payment for goods and services of universal benefit to the population. This means direct investment into public infrastructure, services and institutions. Healthcare, roads, bridges, libraries, parks, highways, schools, research and science, welfare institutions, water and power infrastructure, the maintenance of public parks and wildlife reserves and public transport to name a few. In this fashion the benefit is egalitarian and money will trickle into first the secondary economy (automobile production, private services, finance, electronics, etc.) and eventually into the luxury economy (holiday providers, premium branded good, unessential services, etc.). The extent to which the second and third tiers of the economy are successful is dependant on the state of essential services, as it should be. Otherwise we get luxury sports cars driving down deteriorating highways and criminal opulence in the face of inhumane poverty. And for those who are thinking this is some kind of socialist/communist rhetoric, I pray you wake up soon. This is reality. What we live today is a twist on that reality and one that we better star seeing for what it is. Contrary to popular belief, the great failed Marxist experiments of the age are not failures of those philosophies so much as proof that there is no room left in the order of things to even try them.

It is a dominant idea in modern politics that too much government is “bad for business”. But that is an argument made by business that has no place in the civilized world and it is true only from that very narrow and twisted point of view. And where the common man agrees, it is only on the understanding that modern government are not really governments at all, but representatives of private power. A government run by and for the people is an absolute must if society is to progress at all.

If a government is charged with the responsibility to uphold the rights of those it represents it must be empowered to do so. The right to political freedom, democracy and a fair chance at success are all very pretty sentiments, but what about the right to work, to food, water, shelter and education? Surely these things are as important. For government to ensure all the rights of citizenship, it must have either ownership of or at least firm regulatory power over all the institutions which provide them. But unless you can find a private enterprise willing to provide these services without profit as its primary concern, they are best left to government. Essential human needs, which are all derived from the very earth we inhabit, must not and can not become sources of private profit. This doesn't mean that those who bear the greatest burden of responsibility should not be compensated accordingly, it means the institutions themselves should not be allowed to develop selfish domineering ambitions and the stockpiles of wealth to pursue them. This is not socialism, but humanity.

Another thing that should not be allowed to happen to money is it's pining against the value of other currencies. When it is, it immediately becomes a commodity in its own right, traded like goods with the aim of increasing wealth. This is an essential violation of the axioms which govern money and a gateway to extensive abuse. Trade done over borders would need to be handled in a global market place with its own currency, against which only commodities are assigned value, not currencies. The value of sugar would be assigned in this currency on any given day based solely on existing demand and so on. Such a trade currency would have no paper form, but would only be a numeric value assigned to all traded commodities, its purpose being to form a barrier between different national currencies to avoid them becoming commodities.

The alternative would be one government, one people, one currency. But this is a utopian dream that would require a separate dissertation all together. My reference to a world government should not be confused with the one being pushed for today. The New World Order as it has come to be known, is entirely devoted to what would sit at its head, not who it would pretend to represent.

The above is a rough outline of what money is supposed to be and how it is supposed to work. Unfortunately reality is a stark contrast to this. The reason is quite simple. Every axiom outlined above has been heavily violated by those entrusted to care for our monetary systems. In doing so, money has come to serve a second and very sinister purpose, one that almost seems to justify its eradication from use all together and the introduction of a clean start.

Before the post office, the water works, the phone companies and the coal mines were auctioned out of the hands of the people and into those of for-profit private enterprise, another public service was sold to the private sector, the money works. In an age none are old enough to remember, and a frighteningly small percentage of us even know about, the production, supply and regulation of national currencies was surrender by government after government. If anyone wonders when things really started going wrong for planet earth, that was the day. Almost every daily hardship we suffer now has its roots at least partially set in this dark era. But more important than the fact is the reason. It would be nice to believe that it was simply the suggestion of a group of concerned citizens who thought they could do a better job and that governments obliged out of genuine concern for its populations. We do not even need to know what was said or exactly how this was done to know that is not true. The men responsible and their successive dynasties have had a long time to prove their intentions and the proof is overwhelmingly in favour of the notion that it was done with a view to turning the world into a feeble shadow of its former self. Why would men do this? For power? Control? Sure. What are they afraid of? You and me. But I fancy that they see us not as we are, but with red eyes, split hooves and forked tails. But whatever the reason, the facts remain the same.

The first and primary violation of these new private national banks was to create money only as debt. This of course ensured that a country's debts would grow in direct proportion to its economy. This is a fact so illogical that it leaves the mind boggled and helpless to make sense of it. But only so long as you assume the intent was benevolent. See it for the sheer evil that it is and you need be confused no more. Think of it this way. A trader does business between two markets several miles apart. To move his products back and forth between them he needs carts. But carts cannot be made or owned, they can only be borrowed. And for every cart that is borrowed two must be returned in due course. So he borrows ten carts on the understanding that he must return twenty by year's end. Only by year's end he not only has but ten carts, he needs another ten to keep up with his expanding business. His only choice is two borrow forty new carts. Twenty to return as payment for the first ten and twenty for use. And now he owes eighty carts by year's end. And the better things get, the deeper in debt he is. And the circle can never be broken. So why doesn't he just make his own carts? It would be easy enough. Only by the time he comes to this simple conclusion, the law, the courts and the police are all in the cart borrowing enforcement business.

And so it is with the money supply today. All the money, the land and the commodities on earth could not pay all the debt. And as interest is ever due and mounting, borrowing must grow to keep up. Where does the cycle end? By all appearances, it's ending now. And what has come to an end exactly? Production? Resources? Human intelligence? No. Borrowing has slowed down, thereby interrupting the unstoppable cycle and calling a halt to trade through an artificial scarcity of money. Is this real? No. Your willingness to work hasn't changed and nor has your desire for the things you would buy with your earnings. Everything is in place to allow life to go on, bar one thing. The worthless paper and coinage that serve as nothing but a tool of interaction. If everyone simply agreed, we could start printing our own money at home and use it to go on as we did. Provided it didn't get out of hand, (which it would on account of the prevalence of certain mindsets) life would just go on. Because money is just paper and an idea backed by trust, nothing more.

But when it is controlled out of personal interest by a greedy few, we can see how it is also a very effective control mechanism. First replace supply with loans, then when the country is irreversibly in debt control those loans. Withdraw credit for a while, strangle the economy until it screams for more debt and supply it. Or flood the economy with worthless money and then recall debts fast and wait for the inevitable chaos to ensue. Delegate your divine right of money creation for interest to commercial banks and watch the population strangle itself with unmanageable debt. Allow Wall Street to create value out of thin air by turning confidence into price tags which soon have no comparable relation to the things they are attached to, as banks increase lending to make them affordable to you and me. Wait for the population to buckle under under the strain of unmanageable debt, then lend more to their governments. Watch wars begin and lend to each side. Every time the cycle comes full circle, the concentration of power is a little less diluted and a lot more frightening.

Ever wonder why your representatives in government seem helpless to make real changes to bad situations? It's because the situations are only bad from where you're standing and he or she couldn't change them if they wanted to. They just don't have permission. From who? From the people that own your mortgage and his. From the people who lend your county, state and country the paper it needs to go on at all costs. From the people who own your car, your TV and your fridge. If you want something to change, you need to ask them. And they won't want them to change.

So what does a man do? Call me an anarchist, I'm beyond caring about semantics and sentiment and being a good boy. If you can't afford to comfortably repay what you owe in a reasonable amount of time, don't pay it. Declare bankruptcy, leave your phone off the hook, move to Mexico. So you'll be persona non grada with the credit people. They never liked you in the first place and now you'll never have to do business with them again.

The point is that we need to see money for what it is. It's just paper and that's all. Would you revere you toilet roll in a similar fashion? That's because you know it's just toilet paper, useful, handy but not essential. And when it runs out there are other ways, you don't have to stop using the toilet.

One means of circumventing a crash created by a lack of national currency is the creation of a local currency. This has been done throughout history on many occasions to counter the collapse of national banks. It's a shame to think that the ingenuity such a bold plan would require is fatally lacking in most modern communities, who have become so dependant on the vicious circle of big banks, big employers and big chain stores for their survival that such a radical departure from the comfort of the status quo would almost certainly be beyond the imagination. Saying that, pressure can have a miraculous effect on the mindset.

Ofog and Avrusta - A people's movement to do away with weapons.

Ofog and Avrusta - Swedish words that mean Mischief and Disarm resp. - are two anti-war groups from Sweden, the home of Alfred Nobel who a fortune as an inventor, principally for his invention of dynamite. He died in 1896, leaving most of his fortune to endow the Nobel prizes.

Nobel believed the destructive power of his inventions could promote peace. He wrote to his lifelong friend, peace activist Bertha von Suttner, who would win the Nobel Peace Prize almost a decade after his death, “Perhaps my factories will put an end to war even sooner than your Congresses; on the day when two army corps will be able to annihilate each other in a second, all civilised nations will recoil with horror and disband their troops.”

But instead of recoiling in horror, countries today destroy each other many times over, while continuing to buy more and more destructive weapons and ironically this has made Sweden one of the world leaders in exporting weapons. Nobel in 1894 aquired the company Bofors which is now a subsidiary of the present day BAE Systems.

Paradoxically while year after year many people around the world, vie for the coveted Nobel Peace Prize, the lesser known Swedes who oppose Bofors in their own unique way go unnoticed.

Cattis Laska is a member of the anti-war groups Ofog and Avrusta, speaks about their non-violent protests against the the Swedish weapons industry: “We went into two weapon factories the same night. Two went into Saab Bofors Dynamics (while General Motors bought Saab’s auto division, Saab in Sweden makes weapons) ... and they disarmed about 20 [grenade launchers] ... to prevent them from being used in wars. They did it by using a hammer. There’s very much details in those launchers, so they have to be perfect. So it’s enough just to scrape inside to disable them. And then, me and another person went into the BAE Systems Bofors factory, where we disabled some parts for howitzers going to India. We also used hammers.”

Cattis Laska and many of her compatriots, follow the plowshares activists in the United States, who practice the biblical prescription from Isaiah 2:4, turning “swords into plowshares,”albeit in their own peculiar way. While Laska has been sentenced to a prison term of three months for her mischievous deeds, Annika Spalde another activist with Ofog and Avrusta, waiting for her trial says,

“We sell weapons to countries at war and to countries who seriously violate human rights, and still these sales just grow bigger and bigger, so we feel that we, as ordinary citizens, have a responsibility to act then and to physically try to stop these weapons from being shipped off."

Securing Basic Human Needs

This is part of a bigger article written by Davinder Kaur. But i think this is the most relevant part of it, so here it is...

***

The current economic system, based on ever-increasing economic growth as the overarching solution to fighting poverty, is both ineffective and unsustainable. The key to tackling poverty and inequality must come from a change in principles and priorities from which practical steps can be taken to put long-term structures in place. One such solution would be to define and redistribute essential resources in order to immediately secure basic human needs. The universal right to a life of dignity and survival has long been enshrined in article 25 of the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights which states that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services.”

There is no reason why 967 million people should go to bed hungry every day. The problem is not defined by a scarcity of food, but by the insufficient access to resources for millions of the world’s poor who lack the necessary purchasing power to survive. The ‘trickle-down theory’ of economic growth, or the political promise that wealth accumulated by the rich would eventually permeate down through society, has proven to be grossly insufficient in dealing with the urgent demand for basic and essential needs.

To immediately reduce inequality and end extreme poverty, a new international mechanism is required which can facilitate a greater economic sharing of essential resources. The most critical of these are land, basic agricultural produce, water, energy and essential medicines, which together need to be defined, withdrawn and protected from international markets and no longer traded by multinational corporations. A similar initiative was supported by over 100 civil society organizations at the recent WTO talks. Bolivia, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua presented a proposal to remove healthcare, education, water, telecommunications and energy from the WTO “on the basis that these essential public services are human rights which governments have an obligation to provide, and should not be treated as tradable commodities.”

A genuine change in principles and a renewed sense of commitment is urgently needed to tackle extreme poverty and inequality. A global undertaking of this scale would not come without further challenges and complexities, but it would lead to rapid and progressive change as low-income countries lift themselves out of poverty without permanently relying on financial hand-outs. Campaigning for the redistribution of essential resources, rather than just more aid or fairer trade, is the first vital step to securing the basic needs of the world community.

Davinder Kaur is the Communications Officer for Share the World’s Resources, an NGO advocating for essential resources such as food, water and energy to be shared internationally.

Season for Job Cuts...

Recession is hitting big time and very bad. Cost cutting makes way for job cuts/filing for bankruptcy in corporate houses all over the world and how? Just today I read about so many that it really put me into spin. Our local papers did not even mention them. Here are a few prominent ones...

US Tribune the publisher of Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune has filed for bankruptcy protection yesterday as it struggles to renegotiate its estimated $13 billion (£8.7 billion) debt mountain, while the New York Times Company looked for a multibillion-dollar loan against its headquarters.

Sony axes 16,000 jobs and shuts down its plants and Dow Chemical cuts 5000 jobs and is planning to shut down 20 plants.

Ford's Volvo cuts 4616 jobs, while Deutsch bank to cut 900 jobs.

Rio Tinto, the giant miner, the Anglo-Australian company cited the "unprecedented rapidity and severity of the global economic downturn," and said it was shedding 14,000 jobs, of which 8,500 are contract positions. It is struggling to reduce a debt burden of nearly $40 billion.

SKF of Sweden, the world's largest maker of ball bearings, said Wednesday that it would cut 2,500 jobs as its customers struggle.

Despite joblessness and foreclosures uncontrollably soaring, we still think capitalism has a future. The Big Three auto makers are about to go bust, banks and investment biggies are filing for bankruptcy and leading retailers are shuttering their doors. Great Depression II looms. Yet still, we think there can be a “turnaround.”

As history would recall, the great depression of early 20th century saw a big band-aid in the form of the manufacturing boom that followed all the wars. Are all the occupations and wars happening around the world future band-aids for such scenarios?

Other questions: What if war once again emerges as the only real way to fire up any nation’s manufacturing sector? Who would we fight, and at what horrendous cost across the globe? What fraudulent, immoral excuse would “justify” our action? Is India's present war alert, one of such excuses?

The many decades of capitalist media have carefully cultivated a false consciousness that greed is good, that private ownership of economic (and socially produced) property as well as natural resources is sacrosanct. One turns around and wonders how many more company's need go bankrupt and how many need to lay off people, for the population at large to understand that capitalism really stinks!!

World Bank predicts global gloom

The World Bank has forecast a significant decline in global economic growth in 2009 for both developed and emerging countries.

In a report assessing economic prospects, the Bank has predicted that the world's annual economic growth will slow to 0.9%, from 2.5% this year.

The rate of growth for emerging economies is expected to be around 4.5%, down from 7.9% in 2007.

The Bank said a deep global recession could not be ruled out.

And its forecast suggests that, on a per capita basis, world growth would be negative in 2009.

"Following the insolvency of a large number of banks and financial institutions... capital flows to developing countries have dried up and huge amounts of market capitalisation have evaporated," the bank said.

The World Bank has warned that some emerging economies are likely to face serious challenges, including bank failures and currency crises, even if global bail-out plans start restoring confidence in financial markets.

The Bank's chief economist, Justin Lin, said the financial crisis "has eased tensions in commodity markets, but is testing banking systems and threatening job losses around the world".

It also warns that capital flows to developing countries are shrinking fast, reducing the level of investment, while the slowdown in world trade is likely to cut into their export markets.

Regional impacts

Even the fast-growing emerging giants, India and China, are likely to suffer from the slowdown. The World Bank projects China's growth to slow from 11.9% in 2007 to 7.5% in 2009, while India's growth prospects will be cut from 9% to 5.8%.

The impact of falling commodity prices has been positive for around half of developing countries.

In response to the global downturn, the World Bank is increasing its support for developing countries by helping local banks recapitalise and providing aid for infrastructure projects.

Despite the current crisis, the Bank says that the long-term growth prospects for developing countries remain strong, and this will lead to substantial reduction in world poverty rates by 2015, with just 15% of people living on less than $1.25 per day, compared to 25% in 2005.

However, it warns that severe poverty in sub-Saharan Africa will fall less quickly, with 37% still living on $1.25 per day by 2015.

Two Stories from Either Side

I was a faithful follower of the Refuser Solidarity Movement in Israel for a long period of time. The many stories I have read of the soldiers who refused active duty in the IDF always moved me to tears. They were stories full of personal horror, bewilderment and anguish. But they were all stories of the IDF Soldiers... I had not till today come across stories from either side. I stumbled on them while trying to search for the RSM site.

Both were stories from the two opposite sides - Israeli and Palestinian, and both gave me hope. Hope for a better world. Most of us in the outside world - the world outside of Israel and USA (because US is controlled by the Jews), would be sympathetic to the Israeli in the story, after all he was a soldier who was defending his national territory, and would easily term the palestinian a terrorist or at the very least a murderer. Yet I ask you to read it with compassion in your heart for both, and maybe you will understand where Terrorism really comes from.

I am reminded of a line from Neale Donald Walsch's celebrated book "Conversations with God - An Uncommon Dialogue" which said - ALL ATTACK IS A CALL FOR HELP.

***

Story of Chen Alon as told in the "Combatants for Peace" gathering in Beit Jala, 16.06.2005

I am a Major in the armored corps and was recruited for the IDF at the very beginning of the first Intifada. I feel emotional now because although I spoke many times in the past of my experiences from the time of serving in the occupied territories, I have never spoken about it in front of Palestinians until today, especially not ones that I may have even fired at.

I would like to briefly describe to you the process that I went through – from being a young Zionist Israeli, who was raised in a normal home and encouraged to become a combatant and an officer, to who I am today. It is important for me to tell my story, not because I seek forgiveness, but because I believe that it is a key to the success of this group.

In 1987-1988, when I began chasing Palestinians, perhaps even one of you, who were throwing stones at us in the refugee camps, I was told, and also told my soldiers, that we were protecting the State of Israel...

In 2001, on my last night in the occupied territories, I demolished a house not far from here, in El Chader. Later on during the same day, we initiated a curfew over the village of Husan and I could see Arab girls, at the same age as my daughter, in the village which in fact became a jail. While looking at these young Palestinian girls on the embankment which blocked the village, I was speaking to my wife on the telephone. She was troubled, telling me that no one can bring our daughter Tamar home from the kindergarten, and that she must find a solution. The memory of my daughter and the reality of the routine and the simple daily problems had shaken me.

I guess I was brought up with paranoia, thinking that everyone is out to get us. At the age of 32, after seeing the Palestinian girls on the embankment in the village which I closed off, and after demolishing a house the previous night, it hit me profoundly that these girls are no different than my own daughter. It was then that decided that I will no longer take part in this situation, no matter what price I would have to pay.

I believe that our voice can make a difference in our societies. I hope that we may be able to turn all those incidents in which we crossed the lines and carried out forbidden actions into means for finally ending the occupation before it ends our societies and leads to their total collapsing. I would like to act upon my realization, translate it into actions together with representatives from the other side and draw red lines for both of our societies.

Story of Suliman al-Chatib as told in the "Combatants for Peace" gathering in Beit Jala, 16.06.2005

I am Suliman al-Chatib from the village of Chizme in northeast Jerusalem. I was raised in a family which was badly affected by the occupation and fought it, according to the outlook that the only possible solution is a military one.

I joined the “Fatah” movement at the age of 12, and was involved in various actions, such as throwing stones, writing slogans, preparing Molotov Cocktails. This was in 1986, before the first Intifada. As Chen pointed out, it is very possible that people who are sitting here today were harmed by my actions.

At the age of 14, I stabbed Israeli soldiers with a friend of mine. We were arrested. I was sentenced to 15 years in jail and my friend to 18 years.

For the first two years, I was in the children’s section in the Hebron jail, where the management and staff were extremely tough. Settlers from Kiryat Arba were among the jail staff, which made the situation more difficult and enhanced the suffering. There were many problems in this jail. For example, often there was a lack of drinking water, and of course there was not enough water for showers. Hitting prisoners, spraying tear gas into prison cells, and stripping prisoners were daily occurrences.

Later on I was transferred to the Janad jail, near Shechem, where I worked in the Jail’s library. This provided me with an opportunity to read a lot, also about the history of the Jewish people. In fact I acquired my entire education and constructed my worldview in jail. I never went to university, but I did attend the learning groups in jail every day. This is when I started having new thoughts about the conflict and the means for resolving it.

In 1997, after 10 years and 5 months in jail, I was freed. The Beer Sheva jail was my last prison. In spite of numerous difficulties, such as the separation wall, the curfews, the settlements and more, some of us, who are here today, have established the Abu Sukar Center for Peace. We believe that combatants, who personally paid a price for their active involvement in the conflict, are the ones who can significantly change the situation.

***

I found many lessons in these two simple stories, hope you find your own too.

How Death came calling elsewhere on November 26th, 2008

During the two days of violence in Mumbai, 6.1 billion of the world's estimated 6,602,224,175 citizens did not commit violence against anyone else, and instead went about trying to improve their own lives and the lives of their children.

Although 217 people per day in the United States are killed, injured or commit suicide with the deliberate use of firearms, the coverage of the Mumbai attack far outweighs the coverage of firearm deaths in the US -- by a ratio of nearly 100% to 0%.

The World Heath Organization reports that during 48 hours of violence in Mumbai, more than 50,000 people --including 36,000 children -- have starved to death elsewhere in the world.

Asked why the network didn't report this death toll with as much Breaking News urgency, a CNN spokesman told the AP,

"That would just make the viewer feel bad and guilty, and might even make them think about having some sort of personal responsibility in resolving the situation -- in which case, they wouldn't watch. Our viewers prefer to meditate on subjects which bring about the emotions of anger at someone else's misdeeds, and which can be easily resolved -- at least theoretically and in movies -- by dropping bombs or killing someone."

The motives of the Mumbai terrorist cells is reportedly a desire for the democratic governments of India and the United States to respond by crushing the liberties of their citizens, making it easier for the terrorist groups to stir discontent and recruit eager followers. The two governments have responded swiftly, issuing terror alerts, increasing fruitless searches, and generally trying to accommodate the terrorist's wishes.

Information Warfare

Scary Stuff

December 6, 2008: China and Russia are displaying numerous instances of a new phenomenon; cyber-nationalism. This new disease manifests itself when an event, or government propaganda, stirs up nationalistic feelings among many Internet users. There then follows much chatter on message boards, email, messaging and so on. This quickly evolves into the organizing of online vigilantes. Nationalistic hackers proceed to do damage to any available target of these nationalistic feelings. Often there isn't a target, as in the case of a natural disaster, where the mobilized net users concentrate on helping out. But when the news event involves another nation, or person, there follows hacking attacks, of varying degrees of intensity, against the designated "enemy."

The governments in Russia and China have both "guided" this ire at approved targets. But since China is still a tightly (more so than Russia) controlled police state, there is also the risk of the enraged cyber patriots turning on the Communist Party. This has already happened a few times, usually in response to government corruption or incompetence. This explains why China spends so much on software, hardware and staff to gain some control over who uses the Internet inside China. Obviously, the ultimate defense against uncontrolled cyber-nationalism against the government, is to pull the plug on the Internet. That's a very short term solution, because so much of the economy depends on the Internet. Moreover, there would be a major backlash over this tactic.

As long as China is a communist police state, with a large and growing (half a billion users in a few years, they will remain vulnerable to a revolution that gets started, not in the streets, but on the net.

If you want to experience the Internet as users inside China do, go to www.chinachannel.hk Scary Stuff

International Terrorism Does Not Exist.

General Leonid Ivashov was the Chief of Staff of the Russian armed forces when the September 11, 2001, attacks took place. This military man, who lived the events from the inside, offers an analysis which is very different to that of his American colleagues. As he did during the Axis for Peace 2005 conference, he now explains that international terrorism does not exist and that the September 11 attacks were the result of a set-up. What we are seeing is a manipulation by the big powers; this terrorism would not exist without them. He affirms that, instead of faking a “world war on terror”, the best way to reduce that kind of attacks is through respect for international law and peaceful cooperation among countries and their citizens.

As the current international situation shows, terrorism emerges where contradiction aggravate, where there is a change of social relations or a change of regime, where there is political, economic or social instability, where there is moral decadence, where cynicism and nihilism triumph, where vice is legalized and where crime spreads.

It is globalization what creates the conditions for the emergence of these extremely dangerous phenomena. It is in this context that the new world geo-strategic map is being designed, that the resources of the planet are being re-distributed, that borders are disappearing, that international law is being torn into pieces, that cultural identities are being erased, that spiritual life becomes impoverished...

The analysis of the essence of the globalization process, the military and political doctrines of the United States and other countries, shows that terrorism contributes to a world dominance and the submissiveness of states to a global oligarchy. This means that terrorism is not something independent of world politics but simply an instrument, a means to install a unipolar world with a sole world headquarters, a pretext to erase national borders and to establish the rule of a new world elite. It is precisely this elite that constitutes the key element of world terrorism, its ideologist and its “godfather”. The main target of the world elite is the historical, cultural, traditional and natural reality; the existing system of relations among states; the world national and state order of human civilization and national identity.

Today’s international terrorism is a phenomenon that combines the use of terror by state and non-state political structures as a means to attain their political objectives through people’s intimidation, psychological and social destabilization, the elimination of resistance inside power organizations and the creation of appropriate conditions for the manipulation of the countries’ policies and the behavior of people.

Terrorism is the weapon used in a new type of war. At the same time, international terrorism, in complicity with the media, becomes the manager of global processes. It is precisely the symbiosis between media and terror, which allows modifying international politics and the exiting reality.

In this context, if we analyze what happened on September 11, 2001, in the United States, we can arrive at the following conclusions:

1. The organizers of those attacks were the political and business circles interested in destabilizing the world order and who had the means necessary to finance the operation. The political conception of this action matured there where tensions emerged in the administration of financial and other types of resources. We have to look for the reasons of the attacks in the coincidence of interests of the big capital at global and transnational levels, in the circles that were not satisfied with the rhythm of the globalization process or its direction
2. Unlike traditional wars, whose conception is determined by generals and politicians, the oligarchs and politicians submitted to the former were the ones who did it this time.
3. Only secret services and their current chiefs – or those retired but still having influence inside the state organizations – have the ability to plan, organize and conduct an operation of such magnitude. Generally, secret services create, finance and control extremist organizations. Without the support of secret services, these organizations cannot exist – let alone carry out operations of such magnitude inside countries so well protected. Planning and carrying out an operation on this scale is extremely complex.
4. Osama bin Laden and “Al Qaeda” cannot be the organizers nor the performers of the September 11 attacks. They do not have the necessary organization, resources or leaders. Thus, a team of professionals had to be created and the Arab kamikazes are just extras to mask the operation.

The September 11 operation modified the course of events in the world in the direction chosen by transnational mafias and international oligarchs; that is, those who hope to control the planet’s natural resources, the world information network and the financial flows. This operation also favored the US economic and political elite that also seeks world dominance.

General Leonid Ivashov with journalist Christopher Bollyn from American Free Press

The use of the term “international terrorism” has the following goals:

• Hiding the real objectives of the forces deployed all over the world in the struggle for dominance and control;
• Turning the people’s demands to a struggle of undefined goals against an invisible enemy;
• Destroying basic international norms and changing concepts such as: aggression, state terror, dictatorship or movement of national liberation;
• Depriving peoples of their legitimate right to fight against aggressions and to reject the work of foreign intelligence services;
• Establishing the principle of renunciation to national interests, transforming objectives in the military field by giving priority to the war on terror, violating the logic of military alliances to the detriment of a joint defense and to favor the anti-terrorist coalition;
• Solving economic problems through a tough military rule using the war on terror as a pretext. In order to fight in an efficient way against international terrorism it is necessary to take the following steps:
• To confirm before the UN General Assembly the principles of the UN Charter and international law as principles that all states are obliged to respect;
• To create a geo-strategic organization (perhaps inspired in the Cooperation Organization of Shanghai comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) with a set of values different to that of the Atlantists; to design a strategy of development of states, a system of international security, another financial and economic model (which would mean that the world would again rest on two pillars);
• To associate (under the United Nations) the scientific elites in the design and promotion of the philosophical concepts of the Human Being of the 21st Century.
• To organize the interaction of all religious denominations in the world, on behalf of the stability of humanity’s development, security and mutual support.

General Leonid Ivashov
General Leonid Ivashov is the vice-president of the Academy on geopolitical affairs. He was the chief of the department for General affairs in the Soviet Union’s ministry of Defense, secretary of the Council of defense ministers of the Community of independant states (CIS), chief of the Military cooperation department at the Russian federation’s Ministry of defense and Joint chief of staff of the Russian armies.

The Real Truth Behind the Citigroup Bank Nationalisation

The Real Truth Behind the Citigroup Bank Nationalisation

F. William Engdahl
01 Dec 2008.

On Friday November 21 the world came within a hair’s breadth of the most colossal financial collapse in world history according to bankers on the inside of events with whom we have contact. The trigger was the bank which only two years ago was America’s largest, Citigroup. The size of the US Government de facto nationalization of the $2 trillion banking institution is an indication of shocks yet to come in other major US and perhaps European banks thought to be ‘too big to fail.’

The clumsy way in which US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, himself not a banker but a Wall Street ‘investment banker’, whose experience has been in the quite different world of buying and selling stocks or bonds or underwriting and selling same, has handled the unfolding crisis has been worse than incompetent. It has made a grave situation into a globally alarming one.

‘Spitting into the wind’
A case in point is the secretive manner in which Paulson has used the $700 billion in taxpayer funds voted him by a labile Congress in September. Early on Paulson put $125 billion in the nine largest banks, including $10 billion for his old firm, Goldman Sachs. However, if one compared the value of the equity share that $125 billion bought with the market price of those banks’ stock, US taxpayers have paid $125 billion for bank stock that a private investor could have bought for $62.5 billion, according to a detailed analysis from Ron W. Bloom, an economist with the US United Steelworkers union, whose workers face devastating job losses were GM to fail.

That means half of the public's money was a gift to Paulson’s Wall Street cronies. Now, only weeks later, the Treasury is forced to intervene to de facto nationalize Citigroup. It will not be the last. Paulson demanded, and got from a labile US Congress sole discretion over how and where he can invest the $700 billion, to date with no effective oversight. It amounts to the Treasury Secretary in effect ‘spitting into the wind’ in terms of resolving the fundamental crisis.

It should be clear to any serious analyst by now that the September decision by Paulson to defer to rigid financial ideology and let the fourth largest US investment bank, Lehman Bros. fail, was the proximate trigger for the present global crisis. Lehman Bros.’ surprise collapse triggered the current global crisis of confidence, because it was not clear to the rest of the banking world which US financial institution bank might be saved and which not after the Government had earlier saved the far smaller Bear Stearns, while letting the larger more strategic Lehman Bros. fail.

Some details
The most alarming aspect of the crisis is the fact that we are in an interregnum period when the next President has been elected but cannot act on the situation until after January 20, 2009 when he is sworn in.

Consider the details of the latest Citigroup government de facto nationalization (for ideological reasons Paulson and the Bush Administration hysterically avoid admitting they are in the process of nationalizing key banks). Citigroup has more than $2 trillion of assets, dwarfing companies such as American International Group Inc. that got major US Government funds in the past two months. Ironically, only eight weeks before the US Government had designated Citigroup to take over the failing Wachovia Bank. Now it is clear that the Citigroup was in deeper trouble than Wachovia.

In a matter of hours in the week before the US Government nationalization was announced, the stock value of Citibank plunged to $3.77 in New York, giving the company a market value of about $21 billion. The market value of Citigroup stock in December 2006 had been $247 billion. Two days before the bank nationalization the CEO, Vikram Pandit had announced a huge 52000 job slashing plan. It did nothing to stop the slide.

The scale of the hidden losses of perhaps the twenty largest major US banks are so enormous that if not before, the first Presidential decree of President Barack Obama will likely have to be declaration of a US ‘Bank Holiday’ and the full nationalization of the major banks, taking on the toxic assets and losses until the economy can again function with credit flowing to industry once more.

Citigroup and the government have identified a pool of about $306 billion in troubled assets. Citigroup will absorb the first $29 billion in losses. After that, remaining losses will be split between Citigroup and the government, with the bank absorbing 10% and the government absorbing 90%. The US Treasury Department will use its $700 billion TARP or Troubled Asset Recovery Program bailout fund, to assume up to $5 billion of losses. If necessary, the Government’s Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) will bear the next $10 billion of losses. Beyond that, the Federal Reserve will guarantee any additional losses. The measures are without precedent in US financial history. It is by no means certain they will salvage the dollar system.

The reason is that the situation is so intertwined, with six US major banks holding the vast bulk of worldwide financial derivatives exposure, that the failure of a single major US financial institution could result in losses to the OTC derivatives market of $300-$400 billion, a new IMF working paper finds. What’s more, since such a failure would likely cause cascading failures of other institutions the total global financial system losses could exceed another $1,500 billion according to an IMF study by Singh and Segoviano.

The madness over a Detroit GM rescue deal
The health of Citigroup is far from the most gripping crisis that must be dealt with. At this point, political and ideological bickering in the US Congress has so far prevented a simple emergency loan extension to General Motors and other of the US Big Three automakers - Ford and Chrysler. The absurd spectacle of US Congressmen attacking the chairmen of the Big Three for flying to the emergency Congressional hearings on a rescue loan in their private company jets underscores the utter lack of touch with reality that has overwhelmed Washington in recent years.

For GM to go into bankruptcy risks a disaster of colossal proportions. Although Lehman Bros., the biggest bankruptcy in US history, appeared to have an orderly settlement of its credit defaults swaps, the disruption occurred before-hand, as protection writers had to post additional collateral PRIOR to settlement. That in turn was a major factor in the horrific downdrafts in October. GM is bigger by far, meaning bigger collateral damage, and this would take place when the financial system is even weaker than when Lehman failed.

In addition, a second, and potentially far more damaging issue, has been largely overlooked. The advocates of letting GM go bankrupt argue that it can go into Chapter 11 just like other big companies that get themselves in trouble. That may not come to pass, and a Chapter 7 or liquidation of GM would be a seismic event.

The problem is that under Chapter 11 US law, it takes time for the company to get the protection of a bankruptcy court. Until that time, which may be weeks or months, the company would need urgently ‘bridge financing’ to continue operating. This is known as ‘Debtor-in-Possession or DIP financing. DIP is essential for most Chapter 11 bankruptcies, as it takes time to get the plan of reorganization approved by creditors and the courts. Most companies, like GM today go to bankruptcy court when they are at the end of their liquidity.

DIP is specifically for companies in, or on the verge of bankruptcy, and the debt is generally senior to other outstanding creditor claims. So it is actually very low risk, as the amount spent to shepherd a company through the bankruptcy process is usually not large, relatively speaking, but DIP lending is being severely curtailed right now, just when it is most needed, as healthier banks drastically cut loans in the severe credit crunch situation.

Without access to DIP bridge-financing GM would likely be forced into a partial, or even a full liquidation. The ramifications are nightmarish. Aside from the loss of 100,000 jobs at GM itself, GM's business is critical to keep many US auto suppliers in business. If GM failed soon most, possibly even all of the US and even foreign auto suppliers, go under. Those parts suppliers are important to other auto makers. Many foreign car factories would be forced to close due to loss of suppliers. Some analysts put 2009 job losses from a GM failure as high as 2.5 million jobs due to the follow-on effects. If the impact of that 2.5 million job loss is seen in terms of the overall losses to the economy of non-auto jobs such as services, home foreclosures caused and such, some estimate total impact would be more than 15 million jobs.

So far in the face of this staggering prospect, the members of the US Congress chose to focus on the fact the GM chief flew in the private company jet to Washington. It conjures up the image of Nero playing his fiddle as Rome goes up in flames. It should not be surprising that at the recent EU-Asian summit Chinese officials mooted the idea of trading between the EU and Asian nations such as China in Euro, Renminbi, Yen or other national currencies other than the dollar. The Citigroup bailout and GM debacle has confirmed the death of the post-1944 Bretton Woods Dollar System.

The real truth behind Citigroup bailout
What neither Paulson nor anyone in Washington is willing to reveal is the real truth behind the Citigroup bailout. By his and the Republican Bush Administration’s adamant earlier refusal to take an initial resolute action to immediately nationalize the nine or so largest troubled banks and reorganize the assets into some form of ‘good bank’ and ‘bad bank,’ similar to what the Government of Sweden did with what it called Securum, during its banking crisis in the early 1990’s, allowing the healthy banks to continue lending to the real economy so the economy could continue operating, while the State merely sat on the undervalued real estate assets of the Swedish banks for some months until the recovering economy made the assets again marketable to the private sector, Paulson and his ‘crony capitalists’ have turned a bad situation into a globally catastrophic one.

His apparent realization of the error of his initial refusal to nationalize, deeming it in effect ‘un-American’ came too late. When Paulson reversed policy on September 19 and presented the nine largest banks with an ultimatum to accept partial Government equity ownership, abandoning his original bizarre plan to merely buy up the toxic waste asset-backed securities of the banks with his $700 billion TARP taxpayer money, he never revealed why.

Under the original Paulson Plan, as Dimitri B. Papadimitriou and Research Scholar L. Randall Wray of the respected Jerome Levy Institute at Bard College in New York point out, Paulson sought to create a situation in which the US ‘Treasury would become an owner of troubled financial institutions in exchange for a capital injection - but without exercising any ownership rights, such as replacing the management that created the mess. The bailout would be used as an opportunity to consolidate control of the nation’s financial system in the hands of a few large (Wall Street) banks, with government funds subsidizing purchases of troubled banks by “healthy” ones.’

Paulson soon realized the scale of crisis, largely triggered by his inept handling of the Lehman Brothers case, had created an impossible situation. Were Paulson to use the $700 billion to buy up toxic waste ABS assets from the select banks at today’s market price, the $700 billion would be far too little to take an estimated $2 trillion ($2,000 billion) in Asset Backed Securities off the books of the banks. The Levy Economics Institute states, ‘It is probable that many and perhaps most financial institutions are insolvent today -- with a black hole of negative net worth that would swallow Paulson's entire $700 billion in one gulp.’

That reality is the real reason Paulson was forced to abandon his original ‘crony bailout’ TARP plan and opt to use some of his money to buy equity shares in the nine largest banks. That scheme as well is ‘dead on arrival.’ The dilemma he has created with his inept handling of the crisis is simple: If the US Government paid the true value for these nearly worthless assets, the banks would have to write down huge losses, and, as Levy economists put it, ‘announce to the world that they are insolvent.’ On the other hand, if Paulson raised the toxic waste purchase price high enough to protect the banks from losses, $700 billion ‘will buy only a tiny fraction of the 'troubled' assets.’ That is what the latest nationalization of Citigroup is about.

It is only the beginning. The 2009 year will be one of titanic shocks and changes to the global order of a scale perhaps not experienced in the past five centuries. This is why we speak of the end of the American Century and its Dollar System.

How destructive that process will be to the citizens of the United States who are the prime victims of Paulson’s crony capitalists, as well as to the rest of the world depends now on the urgency and resoluteness with which heads of national Governments in Germany, the EU, China, Russia and the rest of the non-US world react. It is no time for ideological sentimentality and nostalgia of the postwar old order. That collapsed this past September along with Lehman Brothers and the Republican Presidency. Waiting for a ‘miracle’ from an Obama Presidency is no longer an option for the rest of the world.

F William Engdahl is an economist and author of the best selling "A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order." He is based in Germany
Courtesy F. William Engdahl

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