February 2013
Vol 13, No.02
THE POST- CRISIS CRISES
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By Joseph E. Stiglitz
enterprises, especially small and medium-size companies.
n the shadow of the euro crisis and America’s fiscal cliff, it is easy to ignore the global economy’s long-term problems. But, while we focus on immediate concerns, they continue to fester, and we overlook them at our peril. The most serious is global warming. While the global economy’s weak performance has led to a corresponding slowdown in the increase in carbon emissions, it amounts to only a short respite. And we are far behind the curve: Because we have been so slow to respond to climate change, achieving the targeted limit of a two-degree (centigrade) rise in global temperature, will require sharp reductions in emissions in the future. Some suggest that, given the economic slowdown, we should put global warming on the backburner. On the contrary, retrofitting the global economy for climate change would help to restore aggregate demand and growth.
At the same time, the pace of technological progress and globalization necessitates rapid structural changes in both developed and developing countries alike. Such changes can be traumatic, and markets often do not handle them well. Just as the Great Depression arose in part from the difficulties in moving from a rural, agrarian economy to an urban, manufacturing one, so today’s problems arise partly from the need to move from manufacturing to services. New firms must be created, and modern financial markets are better at speculation and exploitation than they are at providing funds for new
Moreover, making the transition requires investments in human capital that individuals often cannot afford. Among the services that people want are health and education, two sectors in which government naturally plays an important role (owing to inherent market imperfections in these sectors and concerns about equity). Before the 2008 crisis, there was much talk of global imbalances, and the need for the trade-surplus countries, like Germany and China, to increase their consumption. That issue has not gone away; indeed, Germany’s failure to address its chronic external surplus is part and parcel of the euro crisis. China’s surplus, as a percentage of GDP, has fallen, but the long-term implications have yet to play out. America’s overall trade deficit will not disappear without an increase in domestic savings and a more
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ARTICLES .GOOD TERRORIST; BAD TERRORIST BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR.......................................P 2
.VIOLENCE
. “RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT” AS IMPERIAL TOOL: THE
CONNECTICUT: WHY? BY ROBERT J. BURROWES....................................P 8
.MUSLIM SOCIETIES, ISRAEL AND THE WEST (PART III)
.THE GRAVEST THREAT TO WORLD PEACE
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CASE FOR A NON- INTERVENTIONIST FOREIGN POLICY BY JEAN BRICMONT..............................................P 4 INTERVIEW................................................................P 7
BY NOAM CHOMSKY..............................................P 10
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fundamental change in global monetary arrangements. The former would exacerbate the country’s slowdown, and neither change is in the cards. As China increases its consumption, it will not necessarily buy more goods from the United States. In fact, it is more likely to increase consumption of nontraded goods – like health care and education – resulting in profound disturbances to the global supply chain, especially in countries that had been supplying the inputs to China’s manufacturing exporters. Finally, there is a worldwide crisis in inequality. The problem is not only that the top income groups are getting a larger share of the economic pie, but also that those in the middle are not sharing in economic growth, while in many countries poverty is increasing. In the US, equality of opportunity has been exposed as a myth. While the Great Recession has exacerbated these trends, they were apparent long before its onset. Indeed, I (and others) have argued that growing inequality is one of the reasons for the economic slowdown, and is partly a consequence of the global economy’s deep, ongoing structural changes.
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An economic and political system that does not deliver for most citizens is one that is not sustainable in the long run. Eventually, faith in democracy and the market economy will erode, and the legitimacy of existing institutions and arrangements will be called into question. The good news is that the gap between the emerging and advanced countries has narrowed greatly in the last three decades. Nonetheless, hundreds of millions of people remain in poverty, and there has been only a little progress in reducing the gap between the least developed countries and the rest. Here, unfair trade agreements – including the persistence of unjustifiable agricultural subsidies, which depress the prices upon which the income of many of the poorest depend – have played a role. The developed countries have not lived up to their promise in Doha in November 2001 to create a pro-development trade regime, or to their pledge at the G-8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005 to provide significantly more assistance to the poorest countries.
A R T I C L E S is a quintessential “public goods” problem. To make the structural transitions that the world needs, we need governments to take a more active role – at a time when demands for cutbacks are increasing in Europe and the US. As we struggle with today’s crises, we should be asking whether we are responding in ways that exacerbate our long-term problems. The path marked out by the deficit hawks and austerity advocates both weakens the economy today and undermines future prospects. The irony is that, with insufficient aggregate demand the major source of global weakness today, there is an alternative: invest in our future, in ways that help us to address simultaneously the problems of global warming, global inequality and poverty, and the necessity of structural change.
7 January, 2013 Joseph E. Stiglitz is a Nobel laureate in economics and Professor at Columbia University, was chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and served as Senior Vice President and Chief
The market will not, on its own, solve any of these problems. Global warming
Economist of the World Bank. Source: Project Syndicate
GOOD TERRORIST; BAD TERRORIST By Chandra Muzaffar
The French military operation in Mali has brought to the fore the blatant double standards in the approach of certain Western nations to the whole question of terrorism. In the case of Mali, France, with the support of Britain, Germany and United States, has committed itself to combating diehard militants who are determined to use violence to establish their power and authority. Yet in Libya, these countries and their allies in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) had no compunctions
about colluding with militant groups to oust Muammar Gaddafi in a bloody and brutal campaign which killed tens of thousands of people in 2011.
Their hypocrisy becomes even starker in Syria. Western powers and groups from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Turkey have been providing funds, logistical support and sophisticated weapons to rebels within Syria and mercenaries from a number of other countries, to overthrow the Bashar alAssad government. Many of these armed groups, like their counterparts in Libya and Mali, justify their acts of terror and violence in the name of Islam ¯ albeit a distorted and perverted interpretation of the religion. continued next page
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continued from page 2 Different armed groups in Iraq at different times in the course of the US led occupation of that country have also, it is alleged, received material assistance from countries in the region and the US. It is an established fact that the US under Ronald Reagan gave enormous financial and military aid to so-called “jihadist” groups fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The US has often condoned acts of terror perpetrated by its close ally, Israel, against Palestinians and other Arabs. Indeed, the US itself is regarded in some circles as a “terrorist state”, given its record of killing innocent civilians in various parts of the world, including Latin America, West Asia and Southeast Asia.
What this shows is that there is terrorism that is condoned and terrorism that is condemned by Western powers and other states. If violence serves their interests, it is acceptable. If it doesn’t, the militants are targeted. In other words, there are ‘good terrorists’ and ‘bad terrorists’.
One of the main reasons why the militants in Mali have to be defeated ¯ from France’s standpoint ¯ is because France imports huge amounts of uranium from that country for its nuclear plants that generate 80% of its electricity. It is not because France abhors violence or seeks to protect human life! Besides, France wants to maintain its hegemonic grip upon West Africa and parts of North Africa at a time when resource rich Africa is
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becoming increasingly important to the global economy. The ulterior motives for Western military action in Libya; for their covert operations in Syria; for their hobnobbing with militant groups in Iraq; and for their collusion with Jihadists in Afghanistan have been exposed in numerous studies. There is no need to repeat them here. Suffice to note that that they have very little to do with defending human rights or upholding democracy. It is the overwhelming desire to perpetuate their military, political, economic and cultural hegemony over the world which is the real reason why the US and its allies seek to crush terrorism in one instance and consort with it in another instance. Why is it that this irrefutable truth about the attitude of the centres of power in the West to terrorism is not widely known? Why is it that citizens in Western democracies who are supposed to be informed and educated are not ashamed of the double standards and the hypocrisy that surround the war on terror? One of the primary reasons is because the media ¯ both the old and the new ¯ does not want to tell the whole truth. More often than not, the media regurgitates the propaganda put out by the centres of power in the West. If it is the ‘bad terrorists’ that say French troops are pursuing, the latter are projected in the media as heroes on a noble mission, without any analysis of the root causes of the conflict or what the motives are for launching the assault. If, on the other hand, it is the ‘good terrorists’ sponsored by the West who are responsible for some merciless slaughter somewhere, their barbarity is either played down by the media or the whole incident is turned and twisted to present the adversary
A R T I C L E S as the perpetrator of the killing.
This has been happening in the case of Syria. In one of the most recent episodes the ‘good terrorists’, the rebels, claimed that the horrendous attack on Aleppo University on 15 January 2013 that killed 87 people, many of them students, was the work of the Bashar government. This was the story that most media carried though a number of newspapers and television channels also reported the government’s denial. However, when evidence emerged that showed that the ‘good terrorists’ were the actual culprits and independent journalists and student groups in Syria, apart from a number of foreign governments, condemned the ‘good terrorists’ for their savagery, very few media outlets gave any prominence to their remarks. It is through distorted reporting and analysis of this sort that the media conceals the double standards and hypocrisy of the centres of power in the West. This is why we should on our own look for alternative sources of news and analysis and use the information at our command to challenge the powerful to be honest and consistent about the fight against terrorism.
28 January, 2013 Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of International Movement for a Just World (JUST).
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“RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT” AS IMPERIAL TOOL: THE CASE NON-INTERVENTIONIST FOREIGN POLICY
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The events in Syria, after those in Libya last year, are accompanied by calls for a military intervention, in order to “protect civilians”, claiming that it is our right or our duty to do so. And, just as last year, some of the loudest voices in favor of intervention are heard on the left or among the Greens, who have totally swallowed the concept of “humanitarian intervention”. In fact, the rare voices staunchly opposed to such interventions are often associated with the right, either Ron Paul in the US or the National Front in France. The policy the left should support is nonintervention. The main target of the humanitarian interventionists is the concept of national sovereignty, on which the current international law is based, and which they stigmatize as allowing dictators to kill their own people at will. The impression is sometimes given that national sovereignty is nothing but a protection for dictators whose only desire is to kill their own people. But in fact, the primary justification of national sovereignty is precisely to provide at least a partial protection of weak states against strong ones. A state that is strong enough can do whatever it chooses without worrying about intervention from outside. Nobody expects Bangladesh to interfere in the internal affairs of the United States. Nobody is going to bomb the United States to force it to modify its immigration or monetary policies because of the human consequences of such policies on other countries. Humanitarian intervention goes only one way, from the powerful to the weak. The very starting point of the United
Nations was to save humankind from “the scourge of war”, with reference to the two World Wars. This was to be done precisely by strict respect for national sovereignty, in order to prevent Great Powers from intervening militarily against weaker ones, regardless of the pretext. The protection of national sovereignty in international law was based on recognition of the fact that internal conflicts in weak countries can be exploited by strong ones, as was shown by Germany’s interventions in Czechoslovakia and Poland, ostensibly “in defense of oppressed minorities”. That led to World War II. Then came decolonization. Following World War II, dozens of newly independent countries freed themselves from the colonial yoke. The last thing they wanted was to see former colonial powers openly interfering in their internal affairs (even though such interference has often persisted in more or less veiled forms, notably in African countries). This aversion to foreign interference explains why the “right” of humanitarian intervention has been universally rejected by the countries of the South, for example at the South Summit in Havana in April 2000. Meeting in Kuala Lumpur in February 2003, shortly before the US attack on Iraq, “The Heads of State or
Government reiterated the rejection by the Non-Aligned Movement of the socalled ‘right’ of humanitarian intervention, which has no basis either in United Nations Charter or in international law” and “also observed similarities between the new expression ‘responsibility to protect’ and ‘humanitarian intervention’ and requested the Co-ordinating Bureau to carefully study and consider the expression ‘the responsibility to protect’ and its implications on the basis of the principles of non-interference and non-intervention as well as the respect for territorial integrity and national sovereignty of States.” The main failure of the United Nations has not been that it did not stop dictators from murdering their own people, but that it failed to prevent powerful countries from violating the principles of international law: the United States in Indochina and Iraq, South Africa in Angola and Mozambique, Israel in its neighboring countries, Indonesia in East Timor, not to speak of all the coups, threats, embargoes, unilateral sanctions, bought elections, etc. Many millions of people lost their lives because of such repeated violation of international law and of the principle of national sovereignty. In a post-World War II history that includes the Indochina wars, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, of Panama, even of tiny Grenada, as well as the bombing of Yugoslavia, Libya and various other countries, it is scarcely credible to maintain that it is international law and respect for national sovereignty that prevent the United States from stopping genocide. If the US had had the means and the continued next page
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desire to intervene in Rwanda, it would have done so and no international law would have prevented that. And if a “new norm” is introduced, such as the right of humanitarian intervention or the responsibility to protect, within the context of the current relationship of political and military forces, it will not save anyone anywhere, unless the United States sees fit to intervene, from its own perspective.
US interference in the internal affairs of other states is multi-faceted but constant and repeatedly violates the spirit and often the letter of the UN Charter. Despite claims to act on behalf of principles such as freedom and democracy, US intervention has repeatedly had disastrous consequences: not only the millions of deaths caused by direct and indirect wars, but also the lost opportunities, the “killing of hope” for hundreds of millions of people who might have benefited from progressive social policies initiated by leaders such as Arbenz in Guatemala, Goulart in Brazil, Allende in Chile, Lumumba in the Congo, Mossadegh in Iran, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, or President Chavez in Venezuela, who have been systematically subverted, overthrown or killed with full Western support. But that is not all. Every aggressive action led by the United States creates a reaction. Deployment of an antimissile shield produces more missiles, not less. Bombing civilians – whether deliberately or by so-called “collateral
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damage” – produces more armed resistance, not less. Trying to overthrow or subvert governments produces more internal repression, not less. Encouraging secessionist minorities by giving them the often false impression that the sole Superpower will come to their rescue in case they are repressed, leads to more violence, hatred and death, not less. Surrounding a country with military bases produces more defense spending by that country, not less, and the possession of nuclear weapons by Israel encourages other states of the Middle East to acquire such weapons. If the West hesitates to attack Syria or Iran, it is because these countries are stronger and have more reliable allies than Yugoslavia or Libya. If the West complains about the recent Russian and Chinese vetoes about Syria, it has only to blame itself: indeed, this is the result of the blatant abuse by Nato of Resolution 1973, in order to effect regime change in Libya, which the resolution did not authorize. So, the message sent by our interventionist policy to “dictators” is: be better armed, make less concessions and build better alliances. Moreover, the humanitarian disasters in Eastern Congo, which are probably the largest in recent decades, are mainly due to foreign interventions (mostly from Rwanda, a US ally), not to a lack of them. To take a most extreme case, which is a favorite example of horrors cited by advocates of the humanitarian interventions, it is most unlikely that the Khmer Rouge would ever have taken power in Cambodia without the massive “secret” US bombing followed by USengineered regime change that left that unfortunate country totally disrupted and destabilized. Another problem with the “right of humanitarian intervention” is that it fails to suggest any principle to replace
A R T I C L E S national sovereignty. When NATO exercised its own self-proclaimed right to intervene in Kosovo, where diplomatic efforts were far from having been exhausted, it was praised by the Western media. When Russia exercised what it regarded as its own responsibility to protect in South Ossetia, it was uniformly condemned in the same Western media. When Vietnam intervened in Cambodia, to put an end to the Khmer Rouge, or India intervened to free Bangladesh from Pakistan, their actions were also harshly condemned in the United States. So, either every country with the means to do so acquires the right to intervene whenever a humanitarian reason can be invoked as a justification, and we are back to the war of all against all, or only an all-powerful state, namely the United States (and its allies) are allowed to do so, and we are back to a form of dictatorship in international affairs. It is often replied that the interventions are not to be carried out by one state, but by the “international community”. But the concept of “international community” is used primarily by the United States and its allies to designate themselves and whoever agrees with them at the time. It has grown into a concept that both rivals the United Nations (the “international community” claims to be more “democratic” than many UN member states) and tends to take it over in many ways. In reality, there is no such thing as a genuine international community. NATO’s intervention in Kosovo was not approved by Russia and Russian intervention in South Ossetia was condemned by the West. There would have been no Security Council approval for either intervention. The African Union has rejected the indictment by the International Criminal Court of the President of Sudan. Any system of international justice or police, whether continued next page
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continued from page 5 it is the responsibility to protect or the International Criminal Court, would need to be based on a relationship of equality and a climate of trust. Today, there is no equality and no trust, between West and East, between North and South, largely as a result of the record of US policies. For some version of the responsibility to protect to be consensually functional in the future, we need first to build a relationship of equality and trust.
The Libyan adventure has illustrated another reality conveniently overlooked by the supporters of humanitarian intervention, namely that without the huge US military machine, the sort of safe no-casualty (on our side) intervention which can hope to gain public support is not possible. The Western countries are not willing to risk sacrificing too many lives of their troops, and waging a purely aerial war requires an enormous amount of high technology equipment. Those who support such interventions are supporting, whether they realize it or not, the continued existence of the US military machine, with its bloated budgets and its weight on the national debt. The European Greens and Social Democrats who support the war in Libya should have the honesty to tell their constituents that they need to accept massive cuts in public spending on pensions, unemployment, health care and education, in order to bring such social expenses down to an American level and use the hundreds of billions of euros thus saved to build a military machine that will be able to intervene whenever and wherever there is a humanitarian crisis. If it is true that the 21st century needs a new United Nations, it does not need one that legitimizes such interventions by novel arguments, such as responsibility to protect, but one that gives at least moral support to those
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who try to construct a world less dominated by a single military superpower. The United Nations needs to pursue its efforts to achieve its founding purpose before setting a new, supposedly humanitarian priority, which may in reality be used by the Great Powers to justify their own future wars by undermining the principle of national sovereignty. The left should support an active peace policy through international cooperation, disarmament, and nonintervention of states in the internal affairs of others. We could use our overblown military budgets to implement a form of global Keynesianism: instead of demanding “balanced budgets” in the developing world, we should use the resources wasted on our military to finance massive investments in education, health care and development. If this sounds utopian, it is not more so than the belief that a stable world will emerge from the way our current “war on terror” is being carried out. Moreover, the left should strive towards strict respect for international law on the part of Western powers, implementing the UN resolutions concerning Israel, dismantling the worldwide US empire of bases as well as NATO, ceasing all threats concerning the unilateral use of force, stopping all interference in the internal affairs of other States, in particular all operations of “democracy promotion”, “color” revolutions, and the exploitation of the politics of minorities. This necessary respect for national sovereignty means that the ultimate sovereign of each nation state is the people of that state, whose right to replace unjust governments cannot be taken over by supposedly benevolent outsiders.
A R T I C L E S own people”, the current slogan justifying intervention. But if nonintervention may allow such terrible things to happen, history shows that military intervention frequently has the same result, when cornered leaders and their followers turn their wrath on the “traitors” supporting foreign intervention. On the other hand, nonintervention spares domestic oppositions from being regarded as fifth columns of the Western powers – an inevitable result of our interventionist policies. Actively seeking peaceful solutions would allow a reduction of military expenditures, arms sales (including to dictators who may use them to “murder their own people”) and use of resources to improve social standards. Coming to the present situation, one must acknowledge that the West has been supporting Arab dictators for a variety of reasons, ranging from oil to Israel, in order to control that region, and that this policy is slowly collapsing. But the lesson to draw is not to rush into yet another war, in Syria, as we did in Libya, claiming this time to be on the right side, defending the people against dictators, but to recognize that it is high time for us to stop assuming that we must control the Arab world. At the dawn of the 20th century, most of the world was under European control. Eventually, the West will lose control over that part of the world, as it lost it in East Asia and is losing it in Latin America. How the West will adapt itself to its decline is the crucial political question of our time; answering it is unlikely to be either easy or pleasant.
20 February, 2012 Jean Bricmont teaches physics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He is the
It will be objected that such a policy would allow dictators to “murder their
author of Humanitarian Imperialism. Source: Counterpunch.org
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We publish below the final part of an email interview which the well known Iranian journalist Kourosh Ziabari conducted with Dr. Chandra Muzaffar. The first & second parts of this interview appeared in the December 2012 & January 2013 issues of the JUST Commentary. –editor 7- On the political level, what do you think about President Obama’s policy toward the Muslim world in his first term? Has he succeeded in realizing what he had promised to the Muslim nations, especially in his 2009 Cairo speech? What’s your evaluation of his second term? Answer: There were some promising elements in President Obama’s 2009 Cairo Speech especially his acknowledgement of the suffering of the Palestinian people. But he did very little to translate his rhetoric into action. He not only failed to move the Palestine-Israel Peace Process forward but he also allowed himself to be humiliated by one of the most bellicose Israeli leaders ever, Benjamin Netanyahu. Iraq, in spite of US troop withdrawal, remains a tragic tale of a nation mired in unending violence. Afghanistan is another sordid mess. The US drive for hegemony has not ceased under Obama as evidenced by US involvement in Libya and Syria. Iran is still in his crosshairs. He continues to prop up the Saudi and Qatari elite and elites in other feudal, autocratic kingdoms in the Gulf, while pretending that the US is a champion of democracy. Will Obama’s second term be different? I suspect that the US economy will absorb most of his energies in the second term. Nonetheless, he will have to pay attention to international issues too. Since he does not have to worry about a third term, will he be courageous enough to push aside all the powerful lobbies in the US, including the Zionist and Christian Right lobbies, and do
what is right and true in West Asia and the rest of the world? There is nothing in Obama’s personality or his politics that appears to suggest that he will go all out to fight for justice regardless of the consequences. We must have the audacity to hope for this: that Obama will prove us all wrong.
8- What do you think about the economic sanctions imposed against Iran by the United States and its European allies? Iran is under pressure over its nuclear program while there’s no shred of evidence confirming that it has been developing nuclear weapons. We also have Israel’s constant war threats against Iran which have been intensified recently. What should Iran and other Muslim nations do about such threats? Answer: Iran is another colossal tragedy. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution it has been under tremendous pressure from the US and other Western powers. Economic sanctions, which are nothing but instruments of war, imposed by the US have been in force for the last 33 years. Iran’s ‘sin’ is that it wants to safeguard
its independence as a sovereign nation. It wants to chart its own future; shape its own destiny. Because the Iranian Revolution overthrew a US-Israeli client, Reza Shah, both US and Israel and their European allies have not forgiven the revolutionaries. In spite of all the difficulties it has undergone, Iran has remained steadfast. It has not succumbed to the US and its allies. It has not yielded to the hegemon. Unfortunately, there are very few Muslim majority states that are prepared to stand up for Iran. If they are silent, it is because a number of them are close allies of the US and will not want to antagonise the US in any way. Others are afraid of the repercussions if they take Iran’s side. In fact, non-Muslim states such as Cuba and Venezuela have been far more vocal in their defence of Iran in the midst of all the reckless allegations about its nuclear weapons programme. Their expression of solidarity proves yet again that in the struggle for truth and justice, it is not one’s religious affiliation that is the decisive factor. What can Iran do in this situation? Apart from continuing to cooperate with the IAEA which is important, Iran should speak more loudly than ever before on behalf of a nuclear weapons free West Asia and North Africa (WANA). I know Iran has expressed its support for this idea before. But it should do more. It should spearhead an international campaign for such a zone in WANA. It should get governments, NGOs and the media involved. continued next page
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9- And finally; Iran has just assumed the 3-year presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement. What’s your viewpoint about the role this movement can play in the international level? How can it effectively contribute to world developments and help with the establishment of a new world order? Answer: Like other similar global and regional organisations, the effectiveness of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is hampered to a great extent by its internal ideological diversity. We should therefore be realistic about our expectations of NAM. Nonetheless, as NAM Chairman, Iran can utilise its leadership position to at least initiate some meaningful changes. It should work hand in hand with Venezuela which will assume the chair after Iran’s three year term. This is a great opportunity for the two countries that share many common aspirations vis-avis the international system to set a new tone for NAM over a six year period.
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What are some of the goals that NAM can pursue? A) NAM can take a strong moral position against speculation in the international financial system and mobilise global public opinion against this vice. It should apply pressure against the centres of speculative capital such as London and New York. B) NAM should also call for the stabilisation of global food prices. Here again it should target speculators whose immoral activity is responsible for perhaps 20 % of the rise in food prices in recent months. At the same time, NAM should encourage member states to adopt concrete measures to increase food production. C) NAM should also focus upon the global environmental crisis and explore ways and means of dovetailing development to the larger goal of ecological harmony.
and individuals in different parts of the world, including Dr. Mahathir Mohammad, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, to eliminate war as a means of resolving inter-state and intra-state conflicts. E) NAM should commence serious discussions within the movement on the underlying spiritual and moral values that are essential for the evolution of a just, compassionate civilisation that is free of global hegemony, gross inequalities, glaring social injustices, and religious bigotry. It is only when the underlying values conduce towards justice and compassion that a new civilisation will emerge capable of enhancing human dignity and protecting the integrity of creation. End 18 November, 2012 Kourosh Ziabari is an award- winning Iranian journalist. In 2010, he received the
D) NAM should also lend support to efforts undertaken by various groups
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CONNECTICUT: WHY?
By Robert J. Burrowes Because of the death of my two uncles in World War 11, I have been researching the question ‘Why are human beings violent?’ since 1966, including spending 14 years living in seclusion from 1996 to 2010 with Anita McKone, undertaking a deep psychological examination of our own minds.
The tragic shootings in Connecticut again raise the perennial question ‘Why are human beings violent?’ Are we genetically programmed to be violent? Is violence socially learned? Or are some individuals just ‘psychotic’? Perhaps the most important question is this: Can we do anything to end human violence?
I have summarized our learning in the document ‘Why Violence?’ - http:// tinyurl.com/whyviolence In essence, human beings are violent because of the ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence that we adults unconsciously inflict on children. And this is in addition to the ‘visible’ violence that we inflict on them consciously.
So what is ‘invisible’ violence? It is the ‘little things’ we do everyday, partly because we are just ‘too busy’. For example, when we do not allow time to listen to, and value, a child’s thoughts and feelings, the child learns to not listen to itSelf thus destroying its internal communication system. When we do not let a child say what it wants (or ignore it when it does), the child develops communication and behavioral dysfunctionalities as it keeps trying to meet its own needs (which, as a basic survival strategy, it is genetically programmed to do). When we blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, continued next page
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continued from page 8 taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie to, bribe, blackmail, moralize with and/or judge a child, we both undermine its sense of Self-worth and teach it to blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie, bribe, blackmail, moralize and/or judge.
The fundamental outcome of being bombarded throughout its childhood by this ‘invisible’ violence is that the child is utterly overwhelmed by feelings of fear, pain, anger and sadness (among many others). However, parents and other adults also actively interfere with the expression of these feelings and the behavioral responses that are naturally generated by them and it is this ‘utterly invisible’ violence that explains why the dysfunctional behavioral outcomes actually occur. For example, by ignoring a child when it expresses its feelings, by comforting, reassuring or distracting a child when it expresses its feelings, by laughing at or ridiculing its feelings, by terrorizing a child into not expressing its feelings (e.g. by screaming at it when it cries or gets angry), and/or by violently controlling a behavior that is generated by its feelings (e.g. by hitting it, restraining it or locking it into a room), the child has no choice but to unconsciously suppress its awareness of these feelings. However, once a child has been terrorized into suppressing its awareness of its feelings (rather than being allowed to have its feelings and to act on them) the child has also unconsciously suppressed its awareness of the reality that caused these feelings. This has many outcomes that are disastrous for the individual, for society and for nature because the individual will now easily suppress its awareness of the feelings that would tell it how to act most
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functionally in any given circumstance and it will progressively acquire a phenomenal variety of dysfunctional behaviors, including some that are violent towards itself, others and/or the Earth.
life-enhancing behavioral options (including those at variance with social laws and norms) and will fearlessly resist all efforts to control it or coerce it with violence.
From the above, it should also now be apparent that punishment should never be used. ‘Punishment’, of course, is one of the words we use to obscure our awareness of the fact that we are using violence. Violence, even when we label it ‘punishment’, scares children and adults alike and cannot elicit a functional behavioural response. If someone behaves dysfunctionally, they need to be listened to, deeply, so that they can start to become consciously aware of the feelings (which will always include fear and, often, terror) that drove the dysfunctional behaviour in the first place. They then need to feel and express these feelings (including any anger) in a safe way. Only then will behavioural change in the direction of functionality be possible.
So how do we end up with people like Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot and all those other perpetrators of violence, including political leaders who conduct wars and those who perpetrate their violence in our homes and on our streets? We create them.
‘But these adult behaviors you have described don’t seem that bad. Can the outcome be as disastrous as you claim?’ you might ask. The problem is that there are hundreds of these ‘ordinary’, everyday behaviors - many of them perpetrated in school - that destroy the Selfhood of the child. It is ‘death by a thousand cuts’ and most children simply do not survive as Self-aware individuals. And why do we do this? We do it so that each child will fit into our model of ‘the perfect citizen’: that is, obedient and hardworking student, reliable and pliant employee/soldier, and submissive law-abiding citizen. The tragic reality of human life is that few people value the awesome power of the individual Self with an integrated mind (that is, a mind in which memory, thoughts, feelings, sensing, conscience and other functions work together in an integrated way) because this individual will be decisive in choosing
And can we do anything to end human violence? Yes we can. Each one of us. Here is the formula, briefly stated: If you want a child who is nonviolent, truthful, compassionate, considerate, patient, thoughtful, respectful, generous, loving of itself and others, trustworthy, honest, dignified, determined, courageous and powerful, then the child must be treated with and experience - nonviolence, truth, compassion, consideration, patience, thoughtfulness, respect, generosity, love, trust, honesty, dignity, determination, courage and power. And if you need an incentive, ask yourself this: Do you think it is possible to successfully tackle the many manifestations of violence - war, terrorism, street violence, the ongoing climate catastrophe, the ongoing exploitation of Africa, Asia and Central/ South America ... – without addressing its fundamental cause? It’s a big task. But we have a world to save. Literally.
15 December, 2012 Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensieve research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981.
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Reporting on the final U.S. presidential campaign debate, on foreign policy, The Wall Street Journal observed that “the only country mentioned more (than Israel) was Iran, which is seen by most nations in the Middle East as the gravest security threat to the region.” The two candidates agreed that a nuclear Iran is the gravest threat to the region, if not the world, as Romney explicitly maintained, reiterating a conventional view. On Israel, the candidates vied in declaring their devotion to it, but Israeli officials were nevertheless unsatisfied. They had “hoped for more ‘aggressive’ language from Mr. Romney,” according to the reporters. It was not enough that Romney demanded that Iran not be permitted to “reach a point of nuclear capability.” Arabs were dissatisfied too, because Arab fears about Iran were “debated through the lens of Israeli security instead of the region’s,” while Arab concerns were largely ignored – again the conventional treatment. The Journal article, like countless others on Iran, leaves critical questions unanswered, among them: Who exactly sees Iran as the gravest security threat? And what do Arabs (and most of the world) think can be done about the threat, whatever they take it to be? The first question is easily answered. The “Iranian threat” is overwhelmingly a Western obsession, shared by Arab dictators, though not Arab populations. As numerous polls have shown, although citizens of Arab countries generally dislike Iran, they do not regard it as a very serious threat.
Rather, they perceive the threat to be Israel and the United States; and many, sometimes considerable majorities, regard Iranian nuclear weapons as a counter to these threats. In high places in the U.S., some concur with the Arab populations’ perception, among them Gen. Lee Butler, former head of the Strategic Command. In 1998 he said, “It is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East,” one nation, Israel, should have a powerful nuclear weapons arsenal, which “inspires other nations to do so.” Still more dangerous is the nucleardeterrent strategy of which Butler was a leading designer for many years. Such a strategy, he wrote in 2002, is “a formula for unmitigated catastrophe,” and he called on the United States and other nuclear powers to accept their commitment under the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) to make “good faith” efforts to eliminate the plague of nuclear weapons. Nations have a legal obligation to pursue such efforts seriously, the World Court ruled in 1996: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” In 2002, George W. Bush’s administration declared that the United States is not bound by the obligation. A large majority of the world appears to share Arab views on the Iranian threat. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has vigorously supported Iran’s right to enrich uranium, most recently at its summit meeting in Tehran last August.
India, the most populous member of the NAM, has found ways to evade the onerous U.S. financial sanctions on Iran. Plans are proceeding to link Iran’s Chabahar port, refurbished with Indian assistance, to Central Asia through Afghanistan. Trade relations are also reported to be increasing. Were it not for strong U.S. pressures, these natural relations would probably improve substantially. China, which has observer status at the NAM, is doing much the same. China is expanding development projects westward, including initiatives to reconstitute the old Silk Road from China to Europe. A high-speed rail line connects China to Kazakhstan and beyond. The line will presumably reach Turkmenistan, with its rich energy resources, and will probably link with Iran and extend to Turkey and Europe. China has also taken over the major Gwadar port in Pakistan, enabling it to obtain oil from the Middle East while avoiding the Hormuz and Malacca straits, which are clogged with traffic and U.S.-controlled. The Pakistani press reports that “Crude oil imports from Iran, the Arab Gulf states and Africa could be transported overland to northwest China through the port.” At its Tehran summit in August, the NAM reiterated the long-standing continued next page
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continued from page 10 proposal to mitigate or end the threat of nuclear weapons in the Middle East by establishing a zone free of weapons of mass destruction. Moves in that direction are clearly the most straightforward and least onerous way to overcome the threats. They are supported by almost the entire world. A fine opportunity to carry such measures forward arose last month, when an international conference was planned on the matter in Helsinki. A conference did take place, but not the one that was planned. Only nongovernmental organizations participated in the alternate conference, hosted by the Peace Union of Finland. The planned international conference was canceled by Washington in November, shortly after Iran agreed to attend. The Obama administration’s official reason was “political turmoil in the region and Iran’s defiant stance on nonproliferation,” the Associated Press reported, along with lack of consensus “on how to approach the conference.” That reason is the approved reference to the fact that the region’s only nuclear power, Israel, refused to attend, calling the request to do so “coercion.” Apparently, the Obama administration is keeping to its earlier position that “conditions are not right unless all
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members of the region participate.” The United States will not allow measures to place Israel’s nuclear facilities under international inspection. Nor will the U.S. release information on “the nature and scope of Israeli nuclear facilities and activities.” The Kuwait news agency immediately reported that “the Arab group of states and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) member states agreed to continue lobbying for a conference on establishing a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction.” Last month, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling on Israel to join the NPT, 174-6. Voting no was the usual contingent: Israel, the United States, Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau. A few days later, the United States carried out a nuclear weapons test, again banning international inspectors from the test site in Nevada. Iran protested, as did the mayor of Hiroshima and some Japanese peace groups.
implementation because the U.S. insists on maintaining and upgrading nuclear weapons bases on islands it controls. As the NGO meeting convened in Helsinki, a dinner took place in New York under the auspices of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an offshoot of the Israeli lobby. According to an enthusiastic report on the “gala” in the Israeli press, Dennis Ross, Elliott Abrams and other “former top advisers to Obama and Bush” assured the audience that “the president will strike (Iran) next year if diplomacy doesn’t succeed” – a most attractive holiday gift. Americans can hardly be aware of how diplomacy has once again failed, for a simple reason: Virtually nothing is reported in the United States about the fate of the most obvious way to address “the gravest threat” – Establish a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East. 6 January, 2013 Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist. He is
Establishment of a nuclear weaponsfree zone of course requires the cooperation of the nuclear powers: In the Middle East, that would include the United States and Israel, which refuse. The same is true elsewhere. Such zones in Africa and the Pacific await
an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT. In addition to his work in linguistics, he has written on war, politics, and mass media. He is also a member of the JUST International Advisory Panel (IAP). Source: Znet
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