August 2010
Vol 10, No 8
WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ? By Bill Van Auken
In a speech to a disabled veterans group in Atlanta Monday, President Barack Obama claimed credit for winding down the US war in Iraq, even as tens of thousands of troops remain there, and his administration continues to escalate the war in Afghanistan.
that his antiwar rhetoric in the presidential campaign would be quickly discarded once the Democrat entered the White House and assumed the role of commander in chief for US imperialism.
The speech appeared calculated to divert rising opposition to the Afghanistan war, particularly in the wake of the WikiLeaks disclosure of tens of thousands of classified battlefield reports, exposing an unrelenting and savage assault on the country’s civilian population. Obama touted the reduction of US troop strength in Iraq—now down to some 65,000 from a high of 144,000— and vowed that the target of pulling out all but 50,000 troops by the end of this month would be met, as well as the withdrawal of all US military forces by the end of 2011. “As a candidate for president, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end,” Obama told the veterans audience. The “responsible end” formulation was employed by Obama as a clear signal to the US ruling elite
In his speech, Obama extolled the feats of the US military in overrunning Iraq and waging a one-sided war against its civilian population.
Obama continued: “Shortly after taking office, I announced our new strategy for Iraq and for a transition to full Iraqi responsibility. And I made it clear that by August 31, 2010 America’s combat mission in Iraq would end. And that is exactly what we are doing—as promised, on schedule.” These targets were, in fact, set by Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, in a 2008 status of forces agreement negotiated with the US-
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backed regime in Baghdad. The incoming Democratic president quickly jettisoned a pledge he had made to pull out all US troops more rapidly, conforming to the original schedule, even as he kept at their posts all of the top civilian and military officials picked by Bush to run the war.
“They took to the skies and sped across the deserts in the initial charge into Baghdad,” he declared. “When the invasion gave way to insurgency, our troops persevered, block by block, city by city, from Baghdad to Fallujah,” he continued. One would never know from this lyrical description that the US had waged a criminal war of aggression that has cost the lives of over a million Iraqi men, women and children and left an entire country in ruins. Nor, for that matter, would one guess from his words that the speaker was a Turn to next page
ARTICLES ........... The
International Movement for a Just World (JUST) views with grave concern the escalating violence in Indian controlled Kashmir. The violence has already claimed 40 lives. ...............................................P. 4
STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY: THE PEOPLE VS. THE BANKS By Shamus Cooke .........................................page 5
I T ’ S W ORSE T HAN Y OU T HINK : P LOTTING GLOBAL HYDROCARBON COLLAPSE By Matthew Wilder .......................................page 6
POWER PLAY IN EAST ASIA ................. Two recent developments in East Asia — one in Northeast Asia and the other in Southeast Asia— have brought to the fore some of the latent tensions in the region .................................................................P.4
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THE MEDIA & THE DIGNITY OF THE CHILDREN By Chandra Muzaffar .................................page 10
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continued from page 1 candidate who won the Democratic nomination less than two years ago by proclaiming that the Iraq war “should never have been authorized and never been waged.” One could be excused for thinking instead that it was George W. Bush.
In extolling the supposed withdrawal from Iraq, Obama hailed the military for “moving out millions of pieces of equipment in one of the largest logistics operations that we’ve seen in decades” and bringing “90,000 of our troops home from Iraq since I took office.” He failed to add, however, that these millions of pieces of military hardware and tens of thousands of troops aren’t being brought home, but are instead being shipped to Afghanistan. While reducing the US troop level in Iraq by two thirds, the Obama administration has tripled the size of US forces in Afghanistan, while spreading the war across the border into Pakistan. He defended the US war in Afghanistan, however, using the same pretext as his predecessor, claiming that US forces are there to fight Al Qaeda and foil terrorist attacks. This, even as US and military and intelligence officials acknowledge that there are less than 100 Al Qaeda members in the entire country. In reality, Obama has appropriated the Bush administration’s rhetoric even as it pursues the same strategic goals laid out at the beginning of the century— the assertion of US hegemony over the geostrategically vital and oil-rich regions of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf by means of military aggression. The continued pursuit of this policy, which enjoys the support of decisive layers of America’s ruling financial elite, ensures the continuous escalation of war in both regions and beyond. The claim that all US “combat troops” will be out of Iraq by August 31 is fraudulent. Units previously classified as “combat” troops are merely being relabeled as “advice and assist” brigades, with their mission supposedly restricted to training and “advising” the
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Iraqi security forces. US military commanders, however, have made it clear that the remaining troops will continue to carry out “counterterrorism” operations, which are combat missions, and will be prepared to directly intervene against any major challenge to US domination of the oil-rich country. “I would say that 50,000 troops on the ground is still a significant capability,” Maj. Gen. Stephen Lanza, a US military spokesman, told the media. “There is still a lot we can do with the capability we have, and we will still have influence here,” he added in a considerable understatement. There is little reason to believe that the remaining US troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2011. Senior military officers have repeatedly stressed that US forces will remain in the country for many years to come, and Washington has continued to build up and retain control of giant military bases, such as those at Balad, Al Asad and Tallil. After seven years of war, costing the US more than $700 billion and the lives of at least 4,400 troops—and an estimated one million Iraqis—the American occupation will continue. There is no plan to have a self-sufficient Iraqi military by 2011. The American military will remain in strategic control, with the US Air Force controlling Iraq’s skies, the US Navy its Persian Gulf coastline and US Army tanks and artillery backing under-equipped Iraqi units. For its part, the US State Department is reportedly preparing to field its own private army of “security contractors,” i.e., private mercenaries. As McClatchy Newspapers reported, the top US commander in Iraq, Gen. Raymond Odierno flew back to Washington last week to discuss plans for deploying this force. The news service reported that the State Department has already asked the Pentagon for “Black Hawk helicopters; 50 mine-resistant ambushprotected vehicles; fuel trucks; hightech surveillance systems; and other military gear.”
LEAD ARTICLE The State Department was a major employer of Blackwater mercenaries, whose bloody actions in Iraq earned the hatred of the local population. According to McClatchy, the bipartisan legislative Commission on Wartime Contracting issued a report last month that said “the number of State Department security contractors would more than double, from 2,700 to between 6,000 and 7,000, under current plans.” McClatchy quoted the State Department’s Under-secretary Patrick Kennedy defending the use of private contractors, insisting that it was the only feasible way to assemble such a paramilitary force. “This is the kind of surge activity that it seems very, very logical to use contractors for,” he said. In his speech Monday, Obama touted the “progress” achieved by the sevenyear-old US war in occupation in Iraq—which as a candidate he had ostensibly opposed—claiming that “violence in Iraq continues to be near the lowest it’s been in years.” His administration and the Pentagon know this statement is a barefaced lie. Only days earlier, the Iraqi government issued a report showing that Iraqi casualties for July month had risen to their highest level since May 2008, nearly double the number killed the previous month. In all, the figures compiled by the Iraqi defense, interior and health ministries recorded 635 deaths for the month, 396 of them civilians. In addition, 50 Iraqi soldiers, 89 police officers were killed, along with 100 individuals declared by the Iraqi regime to have been “terrorists.” Nearly another 1,400 Iraqis, the vast majority of them civilians, were wounded. The US military heatedly disputed the casualty figures from the Baghdad regime, claiming that the real number killed in “enemy action” was only 222. This figure is absurd on its face. The Associated Press counted 350 Iraqis killed based solely on its own reporting. The news agency considers this a continued next page
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continued from page 2 significant underestimate, given that many deaths do not get news coverage.
Just last week, the Baghdad Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya saw insurgents overrun an Iraqi army checkpoint, killing 10 members of the security forces in a pitched battle. Bombings and shooting remain daily occurrences, despite the fact that the Iraqi capital remains under what amounts to martial law, with some 1,500 checkpoints and large numbers of concrete blast walls dividing its neighborhoods. The increasing violence has been widely attributed to the continuing political stalemate in the efforts to cobble together a new government based on elections held last March, after being delayed from January. After five months of wrangling between the country’s corrupt political factions, prospects for a coalition agreement appear even more distant. Over the weekend, the Iraqi National Alliance, a Shi’ite-based grouping that includes the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) of Ammar al-Hakim and the followers of radical cleric Muqtada alSadr, announced that it would no longer talk to the State of Law Coalition
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unless it chose someone else than incumbent Nouri al-Maliki as its candidate for premier. There is speculation that the INA will now turn to the bloc led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite who won electoral support from Iraq’s Sunni population. Behind the scenes, Iran has been backing the INA, while Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Syria have been supporting Allawi. None of the three factions can muster by itself the 163 majority in parliament needed to seat a new government. The resulting tensions pose a serious threat that sectarian violence can erupt on a scale even greater than the bloodbath that swept the country in 2007. As for the supposed “progress” hailed by Obama, it has passed by the great majority of the country’s population. Four million Iraqis remain displaced refugees, roughly half of them forced to flee the country and the rest driven from their homes by the violence, with many subsisting in refugee and squatter camps inside Iraq. These camps have reportedly been swelled by new arrivals: people driven out of their homes by economic desperation.
LEAD ARTICLE Roughly a quarter of Iraq’s nearly 30 million citizens are forced to subsist below the poverty line of approximately $2 a day. Unemployment is rampant, rising in a number of provinces to over 30 percent. These conditions have worsened, not improved, since 2008. Vast portions of the population are denied the most basic public services, from electricity and water to adequate sewerage. The New York Times reported Monday that in the capital of Baghdad, electricity was available only five hours a day last month, this despite the US allocating $5 billion to the power sector. It is typical of the entire infrastructure. “Still, the streets are littered with trash, drinking water is polluted, hospitals are bleak and often unsafe, and buildings bombed by the Americans in 2003 or by insurgents since remain ruined shell,” The Times reports. 3 August, 2010 Bill Van Auken (born 1950) is a politician and activist for the Socialist Equality Party and was a presidential candidate in the U.S. election of 2004, announcing his candidacy on January 27, 2004. Van Auken is a full time reporter for the World Socialist Web Site, and resides in New York City. In the U.S. presidential election, 2008 he was the vice presidential nominee of the same party. Source: WSWS.org
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STATEMENTS KASHMIR BLEEDS AGAIN The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) views with grave concern the escalating violence in Indian controlled Kashmir. The violence has already claimed 40 lives. The majority were killed by police fire. Many of the victims are teenagers. In fact, the present outbreak of violence can be traced back to the killing of a 17 year-old student by a police tear gas shell on the 11th of June 2010. The incident led to mass protests which have continued unabated for the last two months. Analysts have pointed out that the protests are the spontaneous reaction of a segment of the Kashmiri population to decades of suppression by the Indian police and paramilitary forces. Their abuses and their brutalities have been documented by a number of human rights groups in India and elsewhere. It is wrong to argue, as some Indian officials have, that the protesters are in the pay of Pakistan backed hardline separatists. Instead of denying reality, the Indian
government, and the Kashmiri leadership that it supports, should take immediate steps to ensure that their security personnel stop using excessive force upon largely unarmed protesters. Police and paramilitary forces should also withdraw from heavily populated civilian areas. If such measures are adopted, it is quite conceivable that the protests will end and a degree of calm will prevail. When there is a semblance of law and order, the governments of India and Pakistan and the legitimate representatives of the people of Jammu and Kashmir should begin talks aimed at finding a just and durable solution to the decades old crisis. In seeking a solution, the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir should take precedence over everything else. Their right of selfdetermination should be respected. For this purpose, a fair and impartial plebiscite under international supervision should be held in which the people of Jammu and Kashmir( both the Indian and Pakistani parts), including those who live
in the autonomous Ladakh region, would participate. The international community should work towards this goal. For far too long, the world has turned a blind eye to the sufferings of the inhabitants of Indian controlled Kashmir. Even otherwise well informed commentators on world affairs are not aware that tens of thousands of Kashmiris have died at the hands of Indian security forces since 1947. We tend to forget that Kashmir, together with Palestine, is the longest unresolved political conflict on earth. Both centre around the question of occupation and self-determination. The world should not allow Kashmir to continue to bleed— to death. The Executive Committee, International Movement for a Just World (JUST) Malaysia. 5 August 2010.
POWER PLAY IN EAST ASIA Two recent developments in East Asia — one in Northeast Asia and the other in Southeast Asia— have brought to the fore some of the latent tensions in the region. It was the sinking of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, by a torpedo fired from a North Korean submarine in late March this year that escalated tensions in North East Asia. The dastardly North Korean attack, verified by a multinational investigation in May, killed 46 sailors. The recently concluded USSouth Korean military exercise that included a massive nuclear powered US supercarrier, was a potent show of force, in retaliation for the destruction of the Cheonan and the massacre of its crew. The Cheonan episode has made it more difficult for the two Koreas and their neighbours and allies to hold negotiations on the question of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and other related matters. Nonetheless, once the political temperature decreases, it is
important to resume talks in the larger interest of peace in the Korean Peninsula and in Asia and the world. The second incident which occurred in Hanoi in the course of an ASEAN meeting in July 2010, revolves around the remarks made by US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, about China and the Spratly and Paracel Islands. Her oblique criticism of China’s approach to territorial disputes over the chain of Islands has irked the Chinese government which sees her comment as an attempt to internationalise the issue. For the Chinese, the disputes, essentially competing sovereignty claims that pit their country against Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines, should be resolved through bilateral negotiations. Because Hillary Clinton has now stated that the US has a “ national interest” in resolving the disputes, Beijing is suspicious that Washington is setting the stage for a more intrusive role in the South China Sea. To stop this from happening— it will not be in the interest of the region—China
should be more committed to resolving the disputes as soon as possible. Underlying the Cheonan episode and the Hanoi incident, it is obvious, is a power play of immense significance between the US and China. The US, in pursuit of global hegemony, seeks to contain China. This is why it is determined to curb China’s growing economic and political clout. Taming North Korea is a way of sending a clear signal to its protector, namely, China. Similarly, by projecting itself into the territorial disputes of the South China Sea, the US is challenging China in its neighbourhood. How this power play unfolds in the coming years is of vital concern to ASEAN. Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, President, International Movement for a Just World (JUST). 3August 2010.
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STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY: THE PEOPLE VS. THE BANKS By Shamus Cooke The most powerful nations in the world met recently at the G-20 in Toronto and managed to agree on only one thing of significance: the need to reduce deficits, “half by 2013.” Implied by the statement is the need to lower deficits via “austerity,” meaning eliminating or reducing social programs. Why does every mainstream political pundit or corporate CEO fanatically agree that reducing deficits is the most important thing to do now? Let Obama explain “… if financial markets are skittish and don’t have confidence in a country’s fiscal soundness, that is also going to undermine our recovery.” Apparently, the most important policy for the world economy cannot be said in plain English. What does Obama mean? Essentially, he is saying that “financial markets” should determine how wealth is distributed and how the economy is directed. What are financial markets? And why must every country be at their mercy? A financial market is any place the superrich invest their money. It can be done through a bank, hedge fund, or a private equity firm, etc. The rich demand that their investments are safe and therefore are especially “skittish” at the slightest hint of inflation or other economic distress. The rich who dominate financial markets advocate only one solution to balancing budgets: reducing or eliminating social programs. They ignore the other solution— a massive public works project— because it directly affects them in a negative way: raising taxes on the wealthy. This raises another issue. The investors who control financial markets know that a day of reckoning is coming: the massive debt that was pushing forward the world economy for years needs to be paid back,
and those who own the banks don’t want the responsibility. Better for millions of workers to sacrifice social services, pensions, wages, etc., than for thousands of rich investors to be taxed. Some people will argue that it is counterproductive to tax the rich, since they will then choose not to invest their money, causing further harm to the economy. But this is already happening and happens every time a recession hits. The New York Times describes one example of the rich hoarding their money, until better, profitable times return: “Only on Wall Street, in the rarefied realm of buyout moguls, could you actually have too much money…. Private equity firms, where corporate takeovers are planned and plotted, today sit atop [are hoarding] an estimated $500 billion. But the deal makers are desperate to find deals worth doing…” (June 24, 2010). Rich investors are not investing in companies because consumers are not buying the products that corporations produce. And where mainstream economists blame “consumer confidence” for this problem, the real issue remains “consumer impoverishment.” It is the rich investor that lacks the “confidence” that the unemployed or low-waged worker can buy enough of the products produced by corporations. This is the problem that will continue to haunt the establishment economists, who will incessantly preach that the economy is on a perpetual verge of recovery. This illusion of recovery is being instituted into government policy. The Obama administration has argued that federal stimulus money is only needed in small doses to put the economy back on track. With politicians agreeing that
the recession is “basically over,” less stimulus money is being offered. Indeed, Congress has had a terrible time passing the tiniest stimulus bill, which would extend unemployment benefits and help states with Medicaid costs. If such a bill is eventually passed, it will be a mere fraction of what is needed. Because Obama insists that “reducing deficits” is the new governmental priority, the stimulus faucet will quickly dry up (since government stimulus is financed through deficit spending). But for millions of U.S. workers, the debate over stimulus spending is not theoretical, but a matter of life and death. If no federal stimulus is passed— and the current one has virtually died in Congress— millions of unemployed people will have zero income. Meanwhile, the states budget crises will worsen, shutting off state-run health care, social services and education, while slashing public sector jobs by the thousands. Both Democrats and Republicans agree that “financial markets” should dictate the economic policy of the U.S. The two parties disagree only to what degree and how quickly to implement the same policy. The American labor movement must find an independent voice to demand that a stimulus bill be passed. Labor — especially public sector workers — must ally themselves with the unemployed, students and teachers, and other victims of the states’ budget crises who will suffer real tragedies unless a federal stimulus bill is passed. 30 June, 2010 Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com Source: Countercurrents.org
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IT’S WORSE THAN YOU THINK: PLOTTING GLOBAL HYDROCARBON COLLAPSE By Matthew Wilder More than 90 per cent of the world’s energy comes from non-renewable sources – and its decline can be projected on a Hubbert bell curve. It’s just that we are more familiar with the concept of peak oil. After all, oil is the world’s largest source of energy, and the size and immediacy of the problem tends to overshadow debate on the remaining energy sources. But Hubbert’s model proves versatile, as the exploitation of any non-renewable resource – from oil to uranium – follows similar patterns. Experts in the fields of coal, natural gas and nuclear power are beginning to talk of vastly inflated reserves figures and pointing to resource depletion within the next two decades. This, if it comes about, would involve all our main sources of energy declining drastically, all within a relatively short timeframe. But first, some background. Using heavily rounded figures, global energy supply can be broken down as follows: oil supplies 36 per cent of our needs, coal 28 per cent, natural gas 24 per cent, nuclear 6 per cent and hydroelectric 6 per cent. (Solar and wind are less than one per cent so don’t figure in this kind of broad-brush approach – the aim here is to establish the ratios.) Meanwhile, global demand for all energy sources is growing. Rising energy use is inextricably linked to rising GDP, which is essential both for developing nations to improve their quality of life and for our debt-based economies to function. According to the US Energy Administration Information’s (EIA) International Energy Outlook 2009, “total world consumption of marketed energy is projected to increase by 44 percent from 2006 to 2030.” (From 472 quadrillion Btu in 2006 to 678 quadrillion Btu in 2030.) Looking at this by fuel, in order of importance: Peak oil
The beginning of 2010 has seen a slew of reports pointing to the immediacy of peak oil. It saw the British government meeting to discuss the predicted energy crunch that’s five years away, and the US joint forces command report suggesting that the military needs contingency plans as surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years, with serious shortages by 2015. Meanwhile, the “massive reserves” of unconventional oil are not living up to their hype. Reports are indicating that the Canadian oil sands are falling well behind projected outputs, and deepwater drilling is emerging as the risky, expensive venture we’ve always suspected, following the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The fact that we are so desperate to find reserves itself speaks volumes about the reality of peak oil (Al Gore likened the oil sands to the last vein the junkie finds in his big toe). Even a rogue slide from a 2009 US Energy Information Administration PowerPoint presentation has recently become an internet sensation. The diagram, World’s Liquid Fuels Supply, projects oil output peaking in 2012 and immediately declining sharply – falling away from a line showing rising demand. The distance between the two is marked ‘unidentified projects.’ According to the projection, by 2016 there will be a gap between supply and demand of 10 million barrels per day. And the EIA has absolutely no idea how that shortfall will be met. Peak coal A 2008 New Scientist article, The Great Coal Hole, written by David Strahan tackles the commonly held belief that “coal is generally seen as our safety net in a world of dwindling oil.” Unfortunately, like oil, coal reserves seem to have been routinely inflated, he finds. However, global coal consumption “rose 35 per cent between 2000 and 2006,” particularly in China and India. He observes: “China is by far the world’s largest producer of coal, but such is its appetite for the fuel that in 2007 it
became a net importer.” Energy Watch, a group of scientists led by the German renewable energy consultancy Ludwig Bölkow Systemtechnik (LBST) produced a 2007 report stating commonly accepted coal reserves are unreliable, notes Strahan: “As scientists we were surprised to find that so-called proven reserves were anything but proven,” says lead author Werner Zittel. “It is a clear sign that something is seriously wrong.” Since it is widely accepted that major new discoveries of coal are unlikely, Energy Watch forecast that global coal output will peak as early as 2025 and then fall into terminal decline. That’s a lot earlier than is generally assumed by policy-makers, who look to the much higher forecasts of the International Energy Agency, which are based on official reserves. “The perception that coal is the fossil resource of last resort that you can come back to when you run into problems with all the other is probably an illusion,” says Jörg Schindler of LBST. We constantly read that the world has enough coal for centuries of “dirty power,” with environmentalists warning that more and more carbon will be released into the atmosphere as the world struggles to come to terms with declining oil supplies. This may not be the case. An item in Walrus magazine, an inconvenient talk, written by Chris Turner states: A Caltech engineer named David Rutledge, meanwhile, applied the same methods used in peak oil prediction to the coal question, and he discovered a continued next page
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fuel” that saves us from declining oil.
paucity of supply so great that he now argues it will be impossible to create the worst-case scenarios in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s reports, because there are simply not enough economically viable coal reserves left on earth to cloud the atmosphere with more than 460 parts per million of carbon dioxide. Research in 2009 from the University of Newcastle in Australia concluded that global coal production “may well peak as soon as 2010.” Overall, it concludes, production will most likely peak “between 2010 and 2048.”
Peak uranium Like the hydrocarbons mentioned above, uranium is a finite resource. A 2006 report by the Energy Watch Group, Uranium Resources and Nuclear Energy, suggested that proved uranium reserves will be “exhausted within the next 30 years at current annual demand.” It states: Eleven countries have already exhausted their uranium reserves. In total, about 2.3 Mt of uranium have already been produced. At present only one country (Canada) is left having uranium deposits containing uranium with an ore grade of more than 1%, most of the remaining reserves in other countries have ore grades below 0.1% and two thirds of reserves have ore grades below 0.06%. This is important as the energy requirement for uranium mining is at best indirect proportional to the ore concentration and with concentrations below 0.01-0.02% the energy needed for uranium processing – over the whole fuel cycle – increases substantially.
Peak natural gas In an article titled The Future of the Oil and Gas Industry: Past Approaches, New Challenges, Exxon Mobil director and executive vice president Harry J. Longwell writes that most global natural gas resources were discovered “between roughly 1960 to about 1980,” and that discovery rates have subsequently been declining. He continues: In the recent past, we have seen increasing demand for oil and gas, but generally decreasing discovery volumes. . . It’s getting harder and harder to find new oil and gas. Industry has made significant new discoveries in the last few years. But they are increasingly being made at greater depths on land, in deeper water at sea, and at more substantial distances from consuming markets. According to an interview in Walrus magazine, Canadian hydrocarbon geologist David Hughes predicts a global peak of natural gas reserves by 2027. Hughes, an expert in calculating how natural gas might someday be mined from coal bed methane deposits, includes “unconventional” gas reserves in his calculations: Dave now places Canada’s natural gas production plateau between 2001 and 2006; he supports predictions of a global peak of conventional gas reserves by 2027. He is calmly, logically, witheringly dismissive of rosier scenarios involving unconventional reserves. Gas is looking unlikely to be the “bridge
The proved reserves (=reasonably assured below 40 $/kgU extraction cost) and stocks will be exhausted within the next 30 years at current annual demand. Likewise, possible resources – which contain all estimated discovered resources with extraction costs of up to 130 $/kg – will be exhausted within 70 years. It concludes that “In the long term beyond 2030 uranium shortages will limit the expansion of nuclear power plants.” This is currently being reflected in the market. A March 2010 report in Bloomberg Businessweek, with the straight-talking headline Uranium May Have ‘Hyper’ Price Run, Uranium Energy Corp Says, interviews key personnel at Uranium Energy Corp: Prices may jump to $100 a pound from about $40 a pound now, Amir Adnani, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. - based company, said today in interview in Hong Kong, without giving a timeframe for the target price. Prices may average about $75 a pound in the next 5 to 10 years, he said.
A R T I C L E S About 200 gig watts of atomic capacity are planned or under construction globally, and China, India, Russia and South Korea are set to be the main drivers of uranium demand growth, according to Nomura International. Atomic-power plants risk running short of fuel within a decade because suppliers can’t build enrichment facilities or recycle Soviet-era warheads fast enough, the World Nuclear Association said in a 2009 report. Nuclear power is clearly not the answer to peak oil. Conclusions Many peak oil proponents suggest oil either is about to peak, or has already, and that production will fall below demand sometime before 2020. In addition, many independent researchers believe the world’s natural gas, coal and uranium are likely to peak during the following decade. This is based on current usage, and does not consider what will happen to demand once we hit peak oil, and the price of oil goes high enough to push the market to find alternatives. When oil peaks, and the price rises, it may well cause our fragile, debt-ridden economies to collapse. But the worst will be yet to come. When other energy sources subsequently peak, we will be left with no affordable “bridge fuel” to carry us to a sustainable, renewable future. In addition, whereas oil is mainly used in transportation, natural gas and coal together account for the generation of 60 per cent of our electricity, according to EIA figures. If the grid goes down, modern life is over. 11 May, 2010 (Abridged from the hydrocarbons peak.)
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Matthew Wilder (born Matthew Weiner, January 24, 1953, Manhattan, New York, United States) is an American musician and record producer, best known for his 1983 Top 5 hit, “Break My Stride”. Source: Peak Generation
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HINDU-MUSLIM DIALOGUE
By Maulana Waris Mazhari (Translated from Urdu by Yoginder Sikand)
The first step in the quest for intercommunity dialogue is the search for common ground. Religious and cultural differences divide Hindus and Muslims from each other. This diversity need not necessarily be seen as intimidating, however. In fact, the Quran explains that diversity is natural. The Quran instructs us thus: ‘If God so willed, He could make you all one people’ (16:93). Commenting on the above-quoted Quranic verse, the noted Islamic scholar Imam Razi writes in his Tafsir-e Kabir that this refers to the fact of diversity of religions and customs among human beings. Nature desires diversity, not uniformity. That is why we should aim not at eliminating these differences but, rather, to tolerate them in accordance with the demands of Nature. Man is a social animal. It is ingrained in his nature to seek to live in peace with others. That is why there are no two communities in the entire world that have nothing in common between them. It was for the common purpose of protection, peace and justice that the Prophet entered into a treaty or pact with the Jews of Medina. This is an instance of practical inter-community dialogue based on common values and concerns. The basic task before is to seek to develop and promote that spirit among both Hindus and Muslims that would urge them to ignore their differences and, instead, focus on what they have in common or on issues of common concern that can bring them closer to each other. We must not let what sets us apart overwhelm what we have in common. A key aspect that we Indian Hindus and Muslims have in common is our Indianness, the fact of belonging to the same land. Another key issue and concern that can bring us together is a common quest for preventing moral decline in our societies, which both Hindus and Muslims are faced with. Anti-religious forms of secularism and liberalism invented in the West that claim to have ‘liberated’ human beings from God have
led to horrendous anarchy throughout the world, including in our own country. This calls for Hindus, Muslims and people of other faiths, who take their religions seriously, to work together to combat such dangerous tendencies. This is a duty we all owe to God and to humanity, which we must undertake in cooperation with each other. Hindu-Muslim dialogue involves efforts at both the intellectual as well as practical levels. But, all these efforts can make no headway without sincerity of purpose. If these efforts are made simply for political gain or fame they can produce no positive results. Parties to the dialogue must be conscious of the fact that they need each other. They must realize that they can and, indeed, must, learn from each other. They must know that the progress of our common homeland, and, therefore, of each and every community that inhabits it, is impossible without Hindu-Muslim cooperation. For meaningful dialogue between Muslims and Hindus, both must consider themselves not as opponents but as friends, or at least as potential friends. Hindu-Muslim dialogue, or intercommunity dialogue more generally, must focus, among other issues, on addressing and removing mutual misunderstandings, which are often rooted in deeply-held but misleading negative stereotypical images of the ‘other’. Some of these misunderstandings are rooted in our traditional ways of thinking about the ‘other’. One such contentious issue is the way Muslims understand the status of the Hindus and their religion in terms of the shariah. While many ulema see nothing of worth in the Hindu religion and consider all the Hindus to be polytheists, some of them are of the view that the basic principles of monotheism and prophethood can be discerned in the religious traditions of the Hindus. The founder of the Dar ul-Uloom at Deoband, Maulana Qasim Nanotavi, was of the opinion that Ram and Krishna might possibly have been prophets of God and that is why Muslims must not say anything bad about them. Some scholars,
including a leading Sanskrit scholar Pandit Ved Prakash Upadhyaya, claim that the Kalki Avatar or Antim Rishi mentioned in some Hindu scriptures actually refers to the Prophet Muhammad. If this is true, then obviously these scriptures cannot be said not to have been of divine origin. Another issue that continues to be discussed in ulema circles is the status of Hindus in terms of the shariah. This question needs to be resolved in the interest of Hindu-Muslim dialogue. If, as the ulema claim, the Hindus, or many of them, are polytheists (mushriks), are they to be considered mushriks in the same sense as Muslims understood the pagan Arabs at the time of the Prophet? I personally believe that a distinction should be made between the two. Even the classical jurists and Quranic commentators differentiated between the Arab pagans, who virulently, opposed the Prophet, and other pagans so that the commandment for jihad vis-à-vis the former did not apply in the same way to the latter. It is critical to distinguish the Hindus from the Arab pagans because of the tendency of many ulema to relate and apply Quranic verses about the pagan Arabs to the Hindus of today, as, for instance, the verse which says, ‘Strongest among men in enmity to the believers will you find the Jews and pagans’ (5:82). Clearly, this is unacceptable. Yet another issue that must be clarified if Hindu-Muslim dialogue is to proceed is the distinction between Islam and Muslim history. We must not, as we often do, adopt a defensive attitude towards the latter by seeking to justify the misdeeds of Muslim rulers or argue, through erroneous interpretation of Islamic sources, that all the actions of the Sultans and Muslim religious figures were actually in accordance with the teachings of Islam. If the policies of many Muslim rulers of the early Islamic period, which many Muslims regard as a ‘Golden Age’, were not just un-Islamic but even anti-Islamic, how can we expect Muslim rulers of the later period, which Muslims continued next page
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consider to have been characterized by widespread deviation from Islam, to have been models of Islamic virtue? A basic cause for mutual misunderstandings between Hindus and Muslims is lack of proper knowledge and awareness of each other. They have made no serious attempts to understand the religious traditions and beliefs of each other from their original sources, in an objective manner. Muslims have viewed Hinduism in a polemical fashion, not as the Hindus themselves understand it, and not using the same framework as the Hindus use to relate to their faith tradition. And vice versa. This explains the virtual absence of any literature that can enable Hindus and Muslims to understand each other seriously, in a balanced way. Not a single book of this sort on the religious traditions of the Hindus has been written by Muslims ever since Al-Biruni wrote his famed Kitab alHind more than a thousand years ago. Barring a few exceptions, our madrasas do not teach about other religions. That is why their students, our would-be ulema, have only a very superficial and partial understanding of Hinduism and other religions. This urgently needs to change. A key form of Hindu-Muslim dialogue is for Hindus and Muslims to work together for common social purposes on a wide range of issues. The opportunities for this, however, are becoming alarmingly restricted today as, especially in urban areas in northern India, Muslims are becoming increasingly ghettoized, for various reasons. In recent years, especially in the aftermath of the destruction of the Babri Masjid and the ensuing wave of anti-Muslim violence that culminated in the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat, there has been a perceptible trend of Muslims seeking to shift from mixed localities to almost wholly Muslim ghettos. Numerous leading ulema and other Muslim leaders have openly supported this trend, claiming that there are numerous Hadith reports wherein the Prophet had advised Muslims to do so. This, to my mind, is a wholly incorrect deduction from Hadith reports wherein the Prophet is said to have advised Muslims not to stay in the same localities as polytheists, because these reports
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actually relate to those Muslims who had stayed behind in pagan-dominated Mecca even after the Prophet had migrated to Mecca. Heavily outnumbered by their pagan opponents, their lives and properties were gravely threatened. This is the particular historical context for these Hadith reports. To argue, as some of our ulema do, that the same rule applies for Muslims in India, even in places where Muslims do not face any such threat, is incorrect. If Muslims were to restrict themselves to Muslim ghettos and thereby cut themselves off from people of other faiths, they would be unable to relate to, and interact with, others in the social, economic and political spheres, and would also have no opportunity to engage in the task of da‘wah or communicating the true message of Islam to them. Hence, this ghettoisation process must be reversed, for it is harmful particularly to the Muslims themselves. In fact, Muslims must make all efforts to promote closer interaction at all planes with Hindus, rather than isolate themselves in a corner. In this regard, we would need to exercise a certain degree of flexibility in the matter of some fiqh rules about relations between Muslims and others that were developed in the period of Muslim domination and which may not be relevant in today’s context. In the light of these medieval fiqh prescriptions, many Muslims have grave reservations on a host of issues with regard to people of other faiths, such as participating in their functions, greeting them on their festivals, wishing them, exchanging gifts with them, and sharing in their joys and sorrows. In the face of this, it is imperative that we develop a contextually-relevant ‘fiqh for Muslim minorities’ (fiqh ul-aqalliyat) through which we can review and rethink these fiqh rules so as to enable us to adopt a more expansive and open stance on these matters. Similarly, in line with medieval fiqh formulations, many Muslims take a very extreme position with regard to the prohibition of imitating or following the ways and customs of non-Muslims. Traditional understandings of this question also need to be reviewed if we are to establish closer links with Hindus and people of other faiths. On this issue,
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the influential medieval Islamic scholar Ibn Taimiyah, who is known for having adopted a rather extreme position in this regard, made a clear distinction between Muslims in a state of cultural domination and those in a condition where they are culturally dominated by others. In the latter case, he opined, for Muslims to adopt some of the external practices of non-Muslims might actually be desirable from the point of view of the Islamic cause. Indeed, he went on, it might even become necessary for this purpose. As he explained in his book Iqtiza us-Sirat ulMustaqim: ‘Saving oneself from imitating nonMuslims and distinguishing oneself from them applies only in the context of [Muslim] dominance. When in the early period [of Islam] Muslims were weak, this commandment was not given. This commandment was given only later, when Islam became dominant and acquired power. Likewise, today, Muslims living in non-Muslim lands are not obliged to distinguish themselves externally from non-Muslims, because this might cause them harm. Indeed, under some circumstances, it is appropriate or even necessary for Muslims to share [some of] the external practices of non-Muslims if this is in the larger interests of Islam or for a noble purpose.’ The time for Hindu-Muslim dialogue is now. It cannot be put off until later. 28 April, 2010
Maulana Waris Mazhari is the editor of the New Delhi-based monthly Tarjuman Dar ul-Uloom, the official organ of the Graduates’ Association of the Deoband madrasa. He can be contacted on w.mazhari@gmail.com Yoginder Sikand works with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion at the National Law School, Bangalore.
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THE MEDIA & THE DIGNITY OF THE CHILDREN By Chandra Muzaffar How can the media help to protect the dignity of the child in the AsiaPacific region? There are perhaps three roles that the media, both mainstream and alternative, can play in ensuring that the self-worth and self-respect, the honour and integrity, of any person below the age of eighteen is safeguarded to the utmost in the most extensive region of the world, stretching from Syria and Iraq, at one end, to New Zealand and the Fijis, at the other end of the geographical spectrum. One, the media should be unrelenting in its mission to expose those circumstances and situations that undermine the dignity of the child in the Asia-Pacific region. Two, the media should never cease to remind policy-makers, other influential elements in society, and society as a whole, of the essential prerequisites of an environment that is conducive for the dignity of the child. Three, the media should convince today’s child that if he is to live with dignity in tomorrow’s world he will have to be imbued with values and principles that are different from some of the dominant motives and attitudes that have driven economic growth and development in various countries in Asia-Pacific in the last few decades. Undermining Dignity Poverty is one of the greatest threats to human dignity. Though millions of people in the region no longer live in abject poverty, there are still huge numbers trapped in destitution in various parts of Asia-Pacific. There is no need to emphasise that this impacts adversely upon children — their health, their education, their life opportunities. It is mainly because of poverty that child labour is still prevalent, especially in South Asia. A big portion of child labourers are actually bonded
labourers, forced to work, often in slave –like conditions, because of a family or personal debt. There are millions of them in India, Pakistan and Nepal just as there are street children, as young as five years, in these and other countries such as the Philippines
and Thailand. In Cambodia, one-third of the roughly 80,000 to 100,000 prostitutes are children. Child trafficking is also a lucrative trade in some countries in the region. The media within and without AsiaPacific has given some attention to the indignity of bonded labour, of street children, of child prostitution. Though this has embarrassed some governments, it has also resulted in legislation aimed at curbing some of the more inhuman and degrading aspects of these practices. Legislation that offers some protection to the dignity of the child is, however, often compromised by weak implementation. A Conducive Environment Effective implementation of laws aside, how can one create an environment that is conducive for the dignity of the child? There must be a sincere, concerted effort to eradicate absolute poverty. At the same time, primary health care facilities and educational opportunities should be made available to every child. Other essential amenities such as piped
water and electricity should also be accessible to everyone. An efficient public delivery system should be established to ensure that goods and services reach the people. These are some of the attributes of societies that have looked after their young in the Asia-Pacific region. Countries like Japan and South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand, have also created well-managed economies with growth and equity. There is political stability and social order. What this means is that good governance is a vital condition for protecting the dignity of the child. Abuse of power and corruption should be eliminated. Public accountability should be enhanced. And the rule of law should reign supreme. In those countries in the region where mass poverty is ubiquitous, primary heath-care facilities are woefully inadequate and educational opportunities are deplorably truncated, the media should coax the ruling elite to address these challenges. In this regard, it is a pity that only 49 percent of children were in secondary school in South Asia between 2003 and 2008. The media should examine critically the priorities of the elite. Does the state spend much more on the military than on schools and hospitals? Can the media in Asia-Pacific do a budgetary analysis of how much each government in the region spends on protecting the dignity of the child, by looking at allocations for education from pre-school to tertiary levels, and for primary health-care? There are of course countries in the region that cannot do much for their children because of internal upheaval and political instability. In fact, whenever there is chaos and anarchy, continued next page
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children who are among the most vulnerable suffer much more than other groups in society. As a case in point, children in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan— societies under occupation and in turmoil —— are not only deprived of the essentials of life but are also often victims of deep psychological trauma and emotional anguish. Journalists should highlight this in their reports. They should point out that foreign occupation and war have a devastating impact upon the child. Media analysts should show how other forms of global injustice also impact adversely upon the child. Crippling external debts increase further the burden of poor states that are unable to look after their child population, as proven by the Filipino experience. When a massive financial crisis generated in part by global casino capitalism — as in the case of Indonesia in 1998— reduces a nation to penury, the government would be forced to cut back upon public expenditure including food aid to schoolchildren from disadvantaged families. From what has been discussed, the media should know that it is not only good governance within the domestic sphere but also justice in the global arena that ensures and enhances the dignity of the child. Today; Tomorrow However conducive the domestic and global environment maybe for the dignity of the child, the media should also be aware that there are other forces at work in the contemporary world that are inimical to the spiritual and moral well-being of the child. Today’s child is growing up in a family that is in the midst of a profound crisis.
The family institution in many parts of Asia-Pacific as in the West, is no longer the strong, stable and secure institution it was six or seven decades ago. Pressures emanating from work, urban living, and an exaggerated notion of individualism, have resulted in the weakening of the institution. Because love, warmth and cohesiveness have ceased to be synonymous with the family, today’s child is deprived of a fundamental source of spiritual and emotional succour. The media has an obligation to focus upon this grave challenge to an institution which has been the foundation of human civilisation. It follows from this that the media should also warn the present generation about the danger of inducting the next generation into an individualistic lifestyle and culture that eschews values such as sharing, giving and caring. It would be disastrous if this happens because the various crises that confront humankind today — the ‘peak-oil’ crisis; the water crisis; the food crisis; the environmental crisis and the economic crisis — demand that we move away from an individualistic, self-centred lifestyle towards a culture that is more inter-connected and communitarian. That is the only assurance of our survival as a species. The media should not continue promoting directly and obliquely the vice of self-centredness and egoism, and should instead encourage our children to be more ‘other-oriented’ through cartoons, comics and films. To inculcate attitudes orientated towards the other in our children — attitudes of sharing, giving and caring— the media, together with other institutions such as the family and the school, should instill in them a sincere appreciation of two supreme
moral values embodied in all religions: restraint and moderation. Our children should learn the importance of restraining their own wants and desires, with the interests of the other, especially the weaker other, in mind. They should understand that moderation is an ethic of balance, of balancing one’s legitimate interests with the interests of others, of avoiding extremes, of walking the middle path. Restraint and moderation as living values would dissuade us from becoming overly materialistic and consumerist. They are the antidote to the greed that is the bane of this materialistic, consumerist culture. It is undeniably true that the media, especially the commercially inclined media, has played a big role in reinforcing and perpetuating this culture within the middle and upper classes in Asia-Pacific. Given the perilous state of the world, it would be suicidal if our children, with the help of the media, emulate us. This is why if our present generation, if the media, really cares for the future, for tomorrow’s world, it will help strengthen the spiritual-moral core in today’s child. If that core is strong in our children, their dignity would be enhanced, especially in an endangered planet. It would be the media’s most precious gift to the children of Asia-Pacific and the world! 14 June, 2010
Source: The above was one of the keynote speeches at the World Summit on the theme “Challenges in Young People’s world of communication” held at Karlstad, Sweden from the 1418 June 2010.
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