Vol 9, No 1
January 2009
THE GAZA MASSACRE IN PERSPECTIVE By Chandra Muzaffar
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onest, accurate media presentation of context is vital for in-depth understanding of a conflict. In the case of the on-going Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Gaza, the context has been distorted by much of the media. The impression given is that Israel had no choice but to retaliate against a constant barrage of rocket attacks launched by Hamas after the latter decided to end the Hamas-Israel truce on 19 December 2008. While rocket attacks targeting civilians in the southern part of Israel are wrong from the point of view of international law, the media has failed to tell the public the whole truth about why Hamas ended the truce and how Israel is largely responsible for the underlying conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and other Arabs. There are at least five dimensions to the larger context shaping the conflict that have not been highlighted in the media. One, even after the so-called Israeli “withdrawal” from Gaza in August 2005, the Israeli army has conducted numerous raids and air strikes in Gaza
in the name of fighting “terrorism” which have killed hundreds of civilians including women and children. These assaults intensified after Hamas captured the Palestinian Legislative Council in a free and fair election in January 2006. When Hamas ousted its rival Fatah from Gaza in June 2007, Israel went all out to destroy Hamas through military and non-military means. Two, in spite of Israeli attacks, Hamas, a few violations notwithstanding, observed its June 2008 truce with Israel. Not a single Israeli was killed by Hamas rocket fire during the six month period of the truce. The Hamas leadership even proposed a 10 year truce to Israel in April 2008. There was no response from Israel. It was because of continuous Israeli military strikes, the closure of border crossings and a suffocating blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel, that Hamas was forced to end the truce on 19 December. Three, in juxtaposing Hamas rockets with the Israeli arsenal, the media seldom mentions the tremendous
STATEMENTS THE MEDIA AND THE DEPORTATION RICHARD FALK .......It is an utter disgrace
asymmetry in military power between the two sides. What are Hamas’s homemade rockets compared to the wide range of sophisticated lethal weaponry at the command of the world’s fourth most powerful army? The death toll from the present assault tells the whole story: 375 Palestinians to 5 Israelis as of 30 December after 4 days of air bombardment. Four, to grasp the significance of this asymmetry one has to place it in the context of the Israeli blockade of Gaza that we have alluded to that began soon after Hamas won the 2006 election. By punishing the people of Gaza for voting Hamas through the imposition of a blockade that has increased poverty and destitution and denies life-saving drugs to the critically ill, Israel has made the victims of its cruel and callous siege even angrier and more desperate. The media has made no attempt to link Hamas rocket attacks to the siege. Five, neither has the media explained to the people that at the root of this longstanding conflict that goes back to the beginning of the twentieth century is the occupation, annexation and Turn to next page
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that the mainstream media has given so little attention to the deportation of the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories.......................................P.3
ESTABLISHING AN ASIAN MONETARY FUND .............. Now that the ASEAN Charter has come into force and ASEAN has become a legal entity, member states should double their efforts to enhance cooperation within the region.................................P.3
THE THAI CRISIS By Chaiwat Satha-Anand ........................... page 4
RETHINKING COUNTERTERRORISM AFTER M UMBAI By Richard Falk ........................................ page 6
C APITALIST FOOLS By Joseph E.Stiglitz ................................... page 8
REMEMBERING
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By V.R. Krishna Iyer ................................ page 10
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oppression of the Palestinians. Within a year of the unjust partition of the land in 1948, 78 percent of Palestine was in the hands of the Zionists. Gaza is part of the 22 percent that was annexed in 1967. Since 1948, Israel, argues Israeli historian Illan Pappe, has embarked upon a policy of “ethnic cleansing” that seeks to eliminate the indigenous Palestinians from their land. None of these facts and opinions is given any ventilation in the mainstream international media. It is not difficult to understand why this is so. Zionist influence over the US-Europe controlled international media is enormous. In the US, control over the media is part of what the American sociologist, James Petras describes as the “ Zionist Power Configuration” (ZPC) which extends to the principal arteries of the economy, political institutions and the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. This is perhaps a propitious moment to challenge the ZPC. The US economy is facing its severest crisis ever which must impact adversely upon Zionist power both directly and indirectly. With its inevitable economic decline, US global hegemony which has been a critical factor in sustaining and
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perpetuating Israel’s military dominance of the Middle East is also coming to an end. New patterns of global power are in the offing. At a time like this, it is important that Americans themselves realize that blind, uncritical US support and protection for Israel is damaging to US interests. It is significant that no less a statesman than George Washington had warned the American nation in his farewell address that “passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. … facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest… betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter … It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others…” In the last few years, some Americans from the Establishment have begun to see this. Jimmy Carter would be a case in point. Academics such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have also criticized the incestuous relationship between Zionist lobbies and the State in the US. More individuals and groups should be encouraged to oppose the subordination of the US to Israeli interests in the Middle East. The Palestinians and other Arabs who have to contend with Zionist power
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should also develop more effective strategies to pursue their struggle for justice. At this juncture many of them oscillate between violence and rhetoric. What is needed is strategic thinking and planning which will produce new forms of challenge and resistance to Zionist dominance. For instance, those who try to break Israel’s Gaza blockade by transporting food and medicines through ships are not only providing much needed assistance but are also raising public consciousness about the inhumanity of the Israeli regime. Two women have been at the forefront of such initiatives: the Nobel laureate, Mairead Maguire and former US congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney. Such initiatives, it is hoped, will accelerate the demise of Zionist power and US hegemony and create the conditions for the liberation of the Palestinians and other oppressed peoples. 31 December 2008. Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is Professor of Global Studies at Universiti Sains Malaysia and President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). In 2002, he was a member of the Internet World Court on Israel’s War of Extermination Against Palestine.
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By Richard Falk The Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an occupying power and in the requirements of the laws of war. Those violations include: Collective punishment – the entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants. Targeting civilians – the airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East. Disproportionate military response –
the airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza’s elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university. Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza’s besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.
Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give rise to any Israeli right, neither as the Occupying Power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel’s escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; to the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year. Israel has also ignored recent Hamas’ diplomatic initiatives to reestablish the truce or ceasefire since its expiration on 26 December. continued next page
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continued from page 2 The Israeli airstrikes today, and the catastrophic human toll that they caused, challenge those countries that have been and remain complicit, either directly or indirectly, in Israel’s violations of international law. That complicity includes those countries knowingly providing the military equipment including warplanes and missiles used in these illegal attacks, as well as those countries who have supported and participated in the siege
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of Gaza that itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe. I remind all member states of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law – regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations. I call on all Member States, as well as officials and every relevant organ of the United Nations system, to
move on an emergency basis not only to condemn Israel’s serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people. 27 December 2008 Professor Richard Falk is the United Nations Special Rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. He is also a member of JUST’s International Advisory Panel (IAP).
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It is an utter disgrace that the mainstream media has given so little attention to the deportation of the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories, Professor Richard Falk, from Israel on 15 December 2008. Even those that provided some coverage like the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune were clearly biased against Falk. Richard Falk is an honest, upright intellectual who for decades has endeavoured to tell the world the truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the situation in Occupied Palestine. Who can deny that the blockade imposed by the Israeli authorities— a blockade supported by the United States and the European Union— upon Gaza after Hamas won a decisive victory in the Palestinian Legislative Council election in January 2006 has created immense suffering among the people of Gaza? Food and medicines are in short supply. 50 percent of Gazan children are victims of acute malnutrition. 70 percent of the population has been deprived of gainful
The global financial crisis which is already impacting upon ASEAN countries challenges the regional organization to commit itself wholeheartedly to initiatives which may
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It may be because the Israeli government did not want Falk in his capacity as UN rapporteur to provide eye-witness confirmation of the terrible atrocities it has committed in Gaza which is still very much under its control that it detained him at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport for 20 hours and then deported him to Geneva. It was a crude attempt by an unjust and inhuman regime to curtail the impact of the truth. But a lot of people know what is happening in Gaza and have even sought to beat the blockade and reach out to the Gazans. Activists from other
ESTABLISHING Now that the ASEAN Charter has come into force and ASEAN has become a legal entity, member states should double their efforts to enhance cooperation within the region.
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employment. More than 80 percent live below the poverty-level. It is this catastrophe that Falk rightly calls a “crime against humanity.” It is because collective punishment of this sort is reminiscent of what the Nazis did to the Jews that Falk warned some time ago that if the situation persisted it could lead to a holocaust. Richard Falk is not the only individual of standing to have made such an observation.
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RICHARD FALK countries have brought humanitarian aid via ships since border crossings are closed. It is not just Israel that has sealed its border. The Egyptian authorities are also collaborating with the Israelis to ensure that there is no breach of their border with Gaza. In spite of this, there are Egyptians, just as there are Israelis, who are defying the blockade. These courageous attempts to help a beleaguered people are not highlighted in the mainstream media. The mainstream media will not allow effective scrutiny of Israeli policies and actions vis-a-vis the Palestinians. For the media elites, Israel is somehow ‘above the law.’ Even if once in a while, the media censures Israel in relation to the Palestinians and other Arabs, it is done with velvet gloves. Is it any wonder then that the shameful deportation of UN rapporteur, Richard Falk, was blacked out by the mainstream media? Chandra Muzaffar, 26 December 2008
ASIAN MONETARY FUND
not be palatable to certain powers outside Asia. One such initiative that was proposed 11 years ago by a Japanese leader, Mr. Eisuke Sakakibara, — the Asian Monetary Fund — has now been resurrected by some ASEAN leaders themselves. At that time, in 1997, in the midst of the Asian financial crisis, the Sakakibara proposal was strongly
opposed by both the US government under President Bill Clinton and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). They did not want a new financial entity managed by Asians, which was to embrace the ASEAN states and China, Japan and South Korea, to dent the dominance of the IMF. It is worth noting that the US official who was most vocal in his opposition to the Asian continued next page
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continued from page 3 Monetary Fund (AMF) was Lawrence Summers, then Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, who has now been appointed by President-elect Barack Obama to the powerful position of chair of the National Economic Council.
This time the US and its allies, and the IMF, will find it more difficult to crush the AMF idea. They are not only much weaker from a financial and economic angle; they are also more beholden today to China, Japan, and to a lesser extent, Korea than they were 11 years ago. This is why ASEAN and the three East Asian economic giants should be
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resolute in their determination to create the AMF. There are signs to suggest that the AMF will be translated into reality at the ASEAN Summit in Bangkok in February 2009. Malaysia’s Foreign Minister, Dr. Rais Yatim, has indicated that there is the political will now to establish the AMF, capitalized at 120 billion dollars. The Prime Ministers of China, Japan and Korea have also urged governments in the region to set up the AMF which they hope will supersede the bilateral currency swaps envisaged in the Chiang Mai Initiative eight years ago.
A R T I C L E S Given the reluctance of the US government to undertake meaningful restructuring of the international financial architecture, an initiative like the AMF may be one of the few options available to economies in the region that seek to minimize the adverse consequences of the global financial crisis. Besides, the three East Asian states and ASEAN have the right to try to shape their own financial architecture to the extent that it is possible since they control two thirds of all the foreign exchange reserves in the world. Chandra Muzaffar, 19 December 2008
ARTICLES THE THAI CRISIS By Chaiwat Satha-Anand Dear friends, It has been a long time since I last wrote you. Watching the news, you must have been wondering what has happened to Thailand and to me personally. Here’s my analysis of the situation: Let me explain the Thai crisis in this order: conflict, non-violence, prognosis, and solutions: Three conflicts: 1) conflict of goals: one side (Red shirt) wants a strong government which could deliver on policy promises; the other side (Yellow shirt) wants a weak government, because they think the previous government was corrupt (Thaksin and his nominees), and therefore what is needed are strong monitoring measures - hence the conflict between the 1997 Constitution (coming out of the fight against a coup for strong government) and the 2007 Constitution (coming out of the Sept.19, 2006 coup for weak government). 2) conflict of means: one side (Red) believes that election is the method by which political conflict should be decided. This is democratic and it is the basis of their legitimisation. The other side (Yellow) believes that the election itself is corrupted with money,
with local influence, among others and that democracy does not mean election only. The Yellow does not therefore accept election as a solution to the political crisis; hence the call for the dissolution of the House. 3) conflict of imaginations: in the process of confrontation, though alleged to be non-violent, hatred and demonization have been used, weapons have been used, killings have occurred. This has turned ugly because each side, especially the Yellow, accuses those who are not with them as not being Thai, perhaps traitors. The Yellow is pushing for the use of the power of the King, or those close to the monarchy, to intervene in some form, to put an end to parliament, come up with a government headed by a “neutral” person, appointed by the King, an impossibility under the present Constitution which says that the Prime Minister will have to be a member of the House of Representatives. So they have to find a way to amend the constitution but they don’t want to do this through the House, controlled by the party that is said to be Thaksin’s nominee. What they seem to push for is intervention by the military. But the military came out and insisted that they won’t stage a coup and wanted the conflict to end peacefully, perhaps through a dissolution of the House. This
option the Red dislikes because they feel that without the House of Representatives with their side in the majority, the legislative power will rest in the hands of the Senate, part of which was appointed and therefore could opt to amend the Constitution for an appointed Prime Minister. Through the pressures from different corners, the military and the judiciary, among others, a coalition with the Democrat as the core group emerged and Abhisit Vejjajiva becomes the Prime Minister in a weak coalition with some highly dubious characters in his cabinet. These conflicts co-exist and result in a deeply divided Thai society, something quite unprecedented: from within families, to working places, public areas, and the media. I got a note from a former student, my first assistant who likes me all these years, saying she was disappointed with what I said in public when I refused to be partial and said something along the lines that to practice civil disobedience, in consonance with Socrates, Thoreau, King Jr. and Gandhi, means that one has to accept the penalty. She said everyone was mad with me, my professors their wives and others. When I go to my usual mosque, sometimes no one wants to talk to me continued next page
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continued from page 4 because what I said was criticized by the Yellow (Peoples Alliance for Democracy: PAD). I said that there is no one who is totally evil nor totally good and therefore, the use of violence, killing, cannot be justified. PAD (Yellow) said that in the garden of good and evil, one has to take sides. And Thaksin’s side has been painted, with a lot of truth, to be totally evil. The Red, on the other hand, painted the Yellow as an obstacle to democracy and will turn back the clock of this country (Thailand).
Non-violence Perhaps the most difficult thing for me is that I do not know what to feel about all this since all sides claim to be non-violent, including the police and the military, especially at the moment. The Yellow announced from the beginning that their campaign was non-violent and geared towards, civil disobedience. Using immense power, based on popular support, they could take over the government house and later two airports, effectively making the country almost ungovernable. Again through the power of non-violence. When I called the PAD’s actions non-violent, a lot of people were angry with the PAD and me, because they don’t see that occupying the airports and government house could be anything but violent. I said that there is a difference between sending tens of thousands of people, largely bare-handed, to take over these places, and sending in an armed group to do the same. But this nonviolent action is not totally pure. The group has armed guards and sometimes they attacked the other with clubs and whatever they could find, they even accepted donation for golf clubs and were sent hundreds of them! But then there is almost no pure form of nonviolent action, without any weapon whatsoever anywhere. Given the three conflicts taking place, I would like to add two more components that will help us see the prognosis: class and rural-urban backgrounds. The Red are rural-lower class, peasants and others who have benefited from the populist policies of the Thaksin government. The Yellow are urban-middle class who dislike corruption by the government and don’t need the populist policies but a fairer
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deal in business and economics. Prognosis Judging from what has happened, violence has been used by fringe groups associated with both sides and sometimes by the police, while claiming to be non-violent. It is spreading throughout the country because if one looks at election results, it goes like this: 14-16 million for the (Thaksin, Red side);10-12 million for the (Democrat Party, Yellow side). In terms of space, the Red is popular in the North (Thaksin’s area) and Northeast (poor and needs development) while the Yellow is popular in Bangkok and the South (high political awareness and the Democrat’s stronghold). What we are looking at are also local powers on the ground, supporting politicians with their bases. About two weeks ago, a Red MP came out to say that if there was a coup, then each MP will bring 10,000 people from their constituencies to block the road, use the cars to block the tanks, fight against the coup with non-violence! The confusing thing is that the Yellow, who claims to use non-violence, and have used powerful non-violent actions to make the government ungovernable, is waiting for power outside the democratic process, including a military coup and the King’s power to settle the conflict, while the Red who is with the elected government, will be fighting against the coup with non-violent action. They are in support of Thaksin and his nominees whose policies have sunk Thailand deep into the global capitalist system and the depth of human rights abuse. What these conditions imply is that violence could spread and civil war is not out of the question. I spoke on TV that normally what happens is conflict between two groups of people and the state machine intervenes, or conflict between two sides of the military and the people intervene, but this time people are divided and the state apparatus is also divided, therefore the prognosis is dangerous. Solutions There are two levels: political and tactical. Political solutions are difficult,. We could propose but they do not reach the PAD since they listen only to their media and leaders. Their position is the PM has to resign and
A R T I C L E S the PM does not want to resign, pending the constitutional court case this week. In the past weeks, I have been discussing this with politicians but have not felt very hopeful. However, through the constitutional court verdict the parties in power were dissolved and a new political arrangement has taken place with the Democrat at the helm in a weak coalition at present. The other level: tactical. At the time of the airport / government house siege, we were thinking of how the siege could be lifted non-violently. I have spoken out for non-violent arrest. My colleague suggested that when the police come, the protesters who were now holding the airports should simply sit down and allow themselves to be arrested. Right now, I just spoke with a coordinator for this and suggested that for the arrest, to save people’s lives, it needs to be done in a very public way, including cultural forces (monks, imams, priests, what not), media (foreign and local), lawyers, international witnesses (EU, US embassies, Human Rights Watch, ICJ etc.,) Make this a public event with high level of participation under the global gaze to minimize the violence. By the way, we are talking about tens of thousands of people at the airports and number of witnesses and police will have to be high as well. About the Buddhist factor, I just told my colleagues to try again to beg for alms from both sides, donate alms, declare that one will not use violence as a way of merit making for the King’s birthday. It would be a wonderful gift to the monarch, we all claim to love. This has turned into a long letter with some analysis of the situation. My apology. We have been trying hard to prevent the calamity from taking place. A lot of people have tried, but God knows what lies ahead. Peace be with you, Chaiwat 27 December 2008 Dr Chaiwat Satha-Anand is a well-known and highly respected academic attached to Thammassat University in Thailand. He is also a member of JUST’s International Advisory Panel (IAP). The above letter was first written – and later modified – at an earlier stage of the Thai crisis. – Editor
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RETHINKING COUNTERTERRORISM
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By Richard Falk The ferocity of the terrorist assault on an array of highly symbolic targets in Mumbai on November 26-29 produced many instant comparisons to the 9/11 al Qaeda attack more than seven years ago. There were far fewer casualties in Mumbai and there was nothing comparable to the spectacular live TV image of a hijacked commercial plane crashing into the Twin Towers or the later collapse of both buildings. Also India, although a rising regional superpower did not occupy the pinnacle of global power as was the case with the United States. In other respects the comparison is not misguided. The TV pictures of the mayhem and fires consuming the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, the most famous landmark in the great city of Mumbai, was also spectacular, and the continuing TV coverage over the 60 hours of terrorist violence, and ensuing struggle, ensured that the attack would long be inscribed in the political consciousness of a massive global audience that watched in real time as the bloodsoaked drama unfolded. As well, the startling revelation that only ten attackers split into teams of two could mount simultaneous assaults on several high profile targets bringing a major city to its knees underscored the acute vulnerability of modern states to skilled terrorist assaults. It also highlighted the frightening shift in terrorist tactics from symbolic bloodshed to an all out effort to kill as many civilians as possible, often ethnically coded, as at Mumbai to select Hindus, Westerners, and Jews as priority targets. We can only tremble to think what 100 or more similarly trained and armed terrorists might do in virtually any crowded urban center anywhere on the planet. The evidence conclusively shows that the attack was launched by extremists operating from Pakistani territory, seemingly with the acquiescence, if not the complicity, of elements of the Islamabad government. Under these circumstances, concern about a provocative Indian military response has shaped world diplomacy. With unacknowledged irony, the American Secretary of State, Condeleezza Rice
rushes to India to urge calm, and then to Pakistan to insist on full cooperation with the Indian enforcement efforts, partly to head off an inter-govermental military confrontation and partly to avoid shifting Pakistani army units away from the Afghan border region. The irony arises because the United States embarked on a response to 9/11 premised on just the sort of logic that Rice is rightfully fearful of in the India/ Pakistan inflamed setting. President Bush set the tone for the American response in his September 20, 2001 speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress initiating the “war on terror” a few days after 9/11: “..we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism.” And further, “Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Afghanistan and Iraq were deemed “with the terrorists” and were subjected to an all out “shock and awe” military onslaught with goals that went far beyond counterterrorism, seeking “regime change” and overall political restructuring. From the perspective of late 2008, it seems clear that when Bush launched the “war on terror” he put the United States on a self-destructive path that produced two costly and inconclusive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that greatly intensified antiAmericanism around the world and undermined the reputation of the United States as benevolent global leader. Obama’s electoral success in part expressed the hope that the United States would now choose a different approach to security in the face of global terrorist threats. The United States government should have reconsidered the thinking behind its 9/11 response much earlier in light of the formidable obstacles encountered both in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is late to do so but not too late. The American diplomatic initiative is mainly designed to make sure that India does not react militarily to the Mumbai attacks. We should realize that President Elect Obama promised not only to end America’s combat role in Iraq War but more significantly to repudiate “the mentality” that led to warfare as the
crux of counterterrorism. All along, it was difficult to know exactly what Obama meant when he referred to mentality. He had made clear that despite his opposition to the Iraq War, he favored the Afghanistan War, and argued repeatedly for an escalation of the American military presence in Afghanistan. Part of his criticism of the Iraq policy was that it was misrepresented from the outset as countering a terrorist threat, which he rightly regarded as non-existent however objectionable was the regime of Saddam Hussein. Given Obama’s reasoning, to wage war in Iraq was a misguided distraction from Afghanistan where he believed the genuine terrorist threat was lodged. From this perspective it would seem that Obama is not likely to renounce a “war on terror” but rather is determined to recalibrate the war on terror so as to reduce the threat of future catastrophic terrorism. In this regard, we can expect a partial revision of American counterterrorist policy, likely a series of tactical moves that would supposedly substitute the “smart” counterterorism of a Democratic presidency for the “dumb” counterterrorism of the Bush era. While this shift has certain important benefits it fails to abandon the dubious core conviction that foreign counterinsurgency wars are effective and necessary instruments of policy in this post-colonial era. The cast of lead players that Obama has so far assembled for his cabinet adds to my worry that counterinsurgency remains alive and well in future American foreign policy. The new Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, as well as the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, and the National Security Advisor, James Jones, are all uncritical adherents of counterinsurgency doctrine and warfare, as well as onetime supporters of the Iraq War. The bipartisan admiration for General David Petraeus derives from his impressive rewriting of a counterinsurgency approach. What is ignored in this advocacy of an escalated military effort in Afghanistan continued next page
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continued from page 6 is that since Vietnam no major counterinsurgency undertaking has ended in victory for the foreign intervenor. This unheeded experience is not only applicable to the United States. The Soviet failures in Afghanistan during the 1980s are indicative of the irrelevance of military superiority, as was the unexpected inability of Iraq’s mighty war machine to reverse the outcome of the Iranian Revolution in the 1980s. Foreign counterinsurgency operations although highly destructive are no match for determined nationalist resistance, and until this lesson is learned strategic mistakes will continue to be made by major states acting on the global stage.
Even if such efforts to use superior military force to change the political future were effective there would be other reasons to oppose such policies. For one thing, foreign intervention without an authorization from the UN Security Council violates international law and undermines the authority of the UN. This is one of the major costs of the Iraq War. For another, the devastation caused by high technology weaponry of the intervening power inflicts enormous damage, measured by casualties, displaced persons, and infrastructure devastation. Finally, to reconfigure the political future of a foreign country, especially when the intervenor is from the North and the society at risk is in the South does move the world closer to “a clash of civilizations,” as well as exhibiting a disregard for the most fundamental of all human rights, the right of selfdetermination that is to be enjoyed by all peoples. Yet the threats of transnational extremist violence cannot be ignored, and it would be as unreasonable for the Indian Government to shrug their shoulders as it would be for India to mount a large-scale military attack on Pakistan. India had been subjected to past terrorist attacks, and can only expect more to come. Besides Pakistan is on the Indian border, and to the extent that the Islamabad government uses extremists to carry out such deadly missions would certainly seem to confer on India the right to take reasonable steps in self-defense.
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In this sense, Rice’s advice to both governments is appropriate to prevent an upward, dangerous cycle of violence between these two nuclear weapons states. The best short-term outcome would be a zealous effort by the Pakistani Government to suppress the Lashkar-e-Taiba (army of the pure) and to arrest those among its membership who can be shown to have acted to facilitate the Mumbai operation. Pakistan should also accede to the Indian request to extradite the twenty individuals suspected of past terrorist and criminal activities directed at India, provided evidence of their involvement is given to Palistani authorities. At the same time it would be important to couple these security moves with continued efforts to look beyond the crisis and mood of the moment, and to signal an intention to revive efforts to improve diplomatic relations between the two countries. But what if Pakistan is unable or unwilling to do this to a degree that satisfies the security concerns of New Delhi? Pakistan has already taken some steps in response to the pressure applied, but so far this effort is ambiguous to such a degree that India will certainly demand more forthcoming and substantial counterterrorist actions to be taken. And likely Islamabad will falter at that point either because the government is too weak, or because its grievances against India are believed to be so great that it is unwilling to give ground, regardless of consequences. Then what? This is when the calls for moderation will probably go unheeded, and India will take action, and at the very least attack Lashkar training camps, and possibly strongholds of Muslim extremism. Already the government in Pakistan is being severely criticized domestically for its refusal to stand up to India and for its seeming readiness to do whatever Washington insists upon. It could collapse if it accommodates India to any further extent. If this analysis is generally correct, it promises a bleak future for the region. But there is another way for India, and for the United States. It relies to the extent possible on law enforcement, strengthened by inter-governmental
A R T I C L E S cooperation. In some circumstances, such an effort will be stymied by a government that refuses to cooperate, as may turn to be the case for Pakistan, making it reasonable for India to mount low profile special forces operations in Pakistan that are specifically designed to eliminate terrorist capabilities to mount attacks. But most important of all, an alternative approach must be attentive to legitimate grievances. In this instance, there are two that stand out: first, take measures to end the pervasive discrimination in India against the minority Muslim population of 150 million; it is reliably reported that Indian Muslims endure a standard of living significantly below that of impoverished Hindu “untouchables.” Muslim communities have been the targets of periodic riots, even massacres, and are denied anything approaching proportional representation in the Indian governmental civil service. And secondly, seek a solution for Kashmir that respects the right of selfdetermination for the Kashmiris that includes credible security guarantees and autonomy arrangements for the Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist minorities and regions. There may be no soft landing for restored security in the 21st century. Mumbai dramatizes the persistence of large-scale terrorist threats and clarifies the great risks of relying on a militarist response. Similarly, the U.S. response to 9/11 has established negative precedents for meeting counterinsurgency threats. Although the context was vastly different, the Spanish response to the Madrid train bombings of March 11, 2004 are suggestive. It was expressed by the demonstrations that followed the terrorist attack: “No to War, No to Terrorism.” Responding to this public opinion, the Spanish government withdrew its forces from the Iraq War, and greatly enhanced its effort to rely on law and police methods to address future threats. So far the results have been positive. This Spanish model can and should be adapted to the circumstances of India, and the United States. If such a course is taken, we can expect less violence and more security; if not, more violence and less security. 11 December 2008
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CAPITALIST FOOLS There will come a moment when the most urgent threats posed by the credit crisis have eased and the larger task before us will be to chart a direction for the economic steps ahead. This will be a dangerous moment. Behind the debates over future policy is a debate over history-a debate over the causes of our current situation. The battle for the past will determine the battle for the present. So it’s crucial to get the history straight. What were the critical decisions that led to the crisis? Mistakes were made at every fork in the road-we had what engineers call a “system failure,” when not a single decision but a cascade of decisions produce a tragic result. Let’s look at five key moments. NO. 1: FIRING THE CHAIRMAN In 1987 the Reagan administration decided to remove Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and appoint Alan Greenspan in his place. Volcker had done what central bankers are supposed to do. On his watch, inflation had been brought down from more than 11 percent to under 4 percent. In the world of central banking, that should have earned him a grade of A+++ and assured his re-appointment. But Volcker also understood that financial markets need to be regulated. Reagan wanted someone who did not believe any such thing, and he found him in a devotee of the objectivist philosopher and freemarket zealot Ayn Rand. Greenspan played a double role. The Fed controls the money spigot, and in the early years of this decade, he turned it on full force. But the Fed is also a regulator. If you appoint an anti-regulator as your enforcer, you know what kind of enforcement you’ll get. A flood of liquidity combined with the failed levees of regulation proved disastrous. How did we land in a recession? Visit our archive, “Charting the Road to Ruin.” Greenspan presided over not one but two financial bubbles. After the high-tech bubble popped, in 2000-2001, he helped inflate the housing bubble. The first responsibility of a central bank should be to maintain the stability of the financial
By Joseph E.Stiglitz system. If banks lend on the basis of artificially high asset prices, the result can be a meltdown-as we are seeing now, and as Greenspan should have known. He had many of the tools he needed to cope with the situation. To deal with the high-tech bubble, he could have increased margin requirements (the amount of cash people need to put down to buy stock). To deflate the housing bubble, he could have curbed predatory lending to low-income households and prohibited other insidious practices (the nodocumentation-or “liar”-loans, the interest-only loans, and so on). This would have gone a long way toward protecting us. If he didn’t have the tools, he could have gone to Congress and asked for them. Of course, the current problems with our financial system are not solely the result of bad lending. The banks have made mega-bets with one another through complicated instruments such as derivatives, credit-default swaps, and so forth. With these, one party pays another if certain events happen-for instance, if Bear Stearns goes bankrupt, or if the dollar soars. These instruments were originally created to help manage risk-but they can also be used to gamble. Thus, if you felt confident that the dollar was going to fall, you could make a big bet accordingly, and if the dollar indeed fell, your profits would soar. The problem is that, with this complicated intertwining of bets of great magnitude, no one could be sure of the financial position of anyone else-or even of one’s own position. Not surprisingly, the credit markets froze. Here too Greenspan played a role. When I was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, during the Clinton administration, I served on a committee of all the major federal financial regulators, a group that included Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Even then, it was clear that derivatives posed a danger. We didn’t put it as memorably as Warren Buffett-who saw derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction”but we took his point. And yet, for all the risk, the deregulators in charge of the financial system-at the Fed, at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and elsewhere-decided to do nothing, worried
that any action might interfere with “innovation” in the financial system. But innovation, like “change,” has no inherent value. It can be bad (the “liar” loans are a good example) as well as good. NO. 2: TEARING DOWN THE WALLS The deregulation philosophy would pay unwelcome dividends for years to come. In November 1999, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act-the culmination of a $300 million lobbying effort by the banking and financial-services industries, and spearheaded in Congress by Senator Phil Gramm. Glass-Steagall had long separated commercial banks (which lend money) and investment banks (which organize the sale of bonds and equities); it had been enacted in the aftermath of the Great Depression and was meant to curb the excesses of that era, including grave conflicts of interest. For instance, without separation, if a company whose shares had been issued by an investment bank, with its strong endorsement, got into trouble, wouldn’t its commercial arm, if it had one, feel pressure to lend it money, perhaps unwisely? An ensuing spiral of bad judgment is not hard to foresee. I had opposed repeal of Glass-Steagall. The proponents said, in effect, Trust us: we will create Chinese walls to make sure that the problems of the past do not recur. As an economist, I certainly possessed a healthy degree of trust, trust in the power of economic incentives to bend human behavior toward self-interest-toward short-term self-interest, at any rate, rather than Tocqueville’s “self interest rightly understood.” The most important consequence of the repeal of Glass-Steagall was indirect — it changed an entire culture. Commercial banks are not supposed to be high-risk ventures; they are supposed to manage other people’s money very conservatively. It is with this understanding that the government agrees to pick up the tab should they fail. Investment banks, on the other hand, have traditionally managed rich people’s money-people who can take bigger risks in order to get bigger returns. When repeal of Glass-Steagall brought investment and commercial banks together, the investment-bank culture came out on top. continued next page
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There was a demand for the kind of high returns that could be obtained only through high leverage and big risktaking. There were other important steps down the deregulatory path. One was the decision in April 2004 by the Securities and Exchange Commission, at a meeting attended by virtually no one and largely overlooked at the time, to allow big investment banks to increase their debtto-capital ratio (from 12:1 to 30:1, or higher) so that they could buy more mortgagebacked securities, inflating the housing bubble in the process. In agreeing to this measure, the S.E.C. argued for the virtues of self-regulation: the peculiar notion that banks can effectively police themselves. Self-regulation is preposterous, as even Alan Greenspan now concedes, and as a practical matter it can’t, in any case, identify systemic risks-the kinds of risks that arise when, for instance, the models used by each of the banks to manage their portfolios tell all the banks to sell some security all at once. As we stripped back the old regulations, we did nothing to address the new challenges posed by 21st-century markets. The most important challenge was that posed by derivatives. In 1998 the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Brooksley Born, had called for such regulation-a concern that took on urgency after the Fed, in that same year, engineered the bailout of LongTerm Capital Management, a hedge fund whose trillion-dollar-plus failure threatened global financial markets. But Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, his deputy, Larry Summers, and Greenspan were adamant-and successfulin their opposition. Nothing was done. NO. 3:APPLYINGTHE LEECHES Then along came the Bush tax cuts, enacted first on June 7, 2001, with a followon installment two years later. The president and his advisers seemed to believe that tax cuts, especially for upperincome Americans and corporations, were a cure-all for any economic disease-the modern-day equivalent of leeches. The tax cuts played a pivotal role in shaping the background conditions of the current crisis. Because they did very little to stimulate the economy, real stimulation was left to the Fed, which took up the task with unprecedented low-interest
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rates and liquidity. The war in Iraq made matters worse, because it led to soaring oil prices. With America so dependent on oil imports, we had to spend several hundred billion more to purchase oilmoney that otherwise would have been spent on American goods. Normally this would have led to an economic slowdown, as it had in the 1970s. But the Fed met the challenge in the most myopic way imaginable. The flood of liquidity made money readily available in mortgage markets, even to those who would normally not be able to borrow. And, yes, this succeeded in forestalling an economic downturn; America’s household saving rate plummeted to zero. But it should have been clear that we were living on borrowed money and borrowed time.
fundamental underlying problem: stock options. Stock options have been defended as providing healthy incentives toward good management, but in fact they are “incentive pay” in name only. If a company does well, the C.E.O. gets great rewards in the form of stock options; if a company does poorly, the compensation is almost as substantial but is bestowed in other ways.
The cut in the tax rate on capital gains contributed to the crisis in another way. It was a decision that turned on values: those who speculated (read: gambled) and won were taxed more lightly than wage earners who simply worked hard. But more than that, the decision encouraged leveraging, because interest was tax-deductible. If, for instance, you borrowed a million to buy a home or took a $100,000 home-equity loan to buy stock, the interest would be fully deductible every year. Any capital gains you made were taxed lightly-and at some possibly remote day in the future. The Bush administration was providing an open invitation to excessive borrowing and lending-not that American consumers needed any more encouragement.
Agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s are paid by the very people they are supposed to grade. As a result, they’ve had every reason to give companies high ratings, in a financial version of what college professors know as grade inflation. The rating agencies, like the investment banks that were paying them, believed in financial alchemy-that F-rated toxic mortgages could be converted into products that were safe enough to be held by commercial banks and pension funds. We had seen this same failure of the rating agencies during the East Asia crisis of the 1990s: high ratings facilitated a rush of money into the region, and then a sudden reversal in the ratings brought devastation. But the financial overseers paid no attention.
NO. 4: FAKING THE NUMBERS Meanwhile, on July 30, 2002, in the wake of a series of major scandals-notably the collapse of WorldCom and EnronCongress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The scandals had involved every major American accounting firm, most of our banks, and some of our premier companies, and made it clear that we had serious problems with our accounting system. Accounting is a sleep-inducing topic for most people, but if you can’t have faith in a company’s numbers, then you can’t have faith in anything about a company at all. Unfortunately, in the negotiations over what became Sarbanes-Oxley a decision was made not to deal with what many, including the respected former head of the S.E.C. Arthur Levitt, believed to be a
NO. 5: LETTING IT BLEED The final turning point came with the passage of a bailout package on October 3, 2008-that is, with the administration’s response to the crisis itself. We will be feeling the consequences for years to come.
This is bad enough. But a collateral problem with stock options is that they provide incentives for bad accounting: top management has every incentive to provide distorted information in order to pump up share prices. The incentive structure of the rating agencies also proved perverse.
Both the administration and the Fed had long been driven by wishful thinking, hoping that the bad news was just a blip, and that a return to growth was just around the corner. As America’s banks faced collapse, the administration veered from one course of action to another. Some institutions (Bear Stearns, A.I.G., Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) were bailed out. Lehman Brothers was not. Some shareholders got something back. Others did not. continued next page
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continued from page 9 The original proposal by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a three-page document that would have provided $700 billion for the secretary to spend at his sole discretion, without oversight or judicial review, was an act of extraordinary arrogance. He sold the program as necessary to restore confidence. But it didn’t address the underlying reasons for the loss of confidence. The banks had made too many bad loans. There were big holes in their balance sheets. No one knew what was truth and what was fiction. The bailout package was like a massive transfusion to a patient suffering from internal bleeding-and nothing was being done about the source of the problem, namely all those foreclosures. Valuable time was wasted as Paulson pushed his own plan, “cash for trash,” buying up the bad assets and putting the risk onto American taxpayers. When he finally abandoned it, providing banks with money they needed, he did it in a way that not only cheated America’s taxpayers but failed to ensure that the banks would use the money to re-start lending. He even allowed the banks to pour out money to their shareholders as taxpayers were pouring money into the banks.
The other problem not addressed involved the looming weaknesses in the economy. The economy had been sustained by excessive borrowing. That game was up. As consumption contracted,
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exports kept the economy going, but with the dollar strengthening and Europe and the rest of the world declining, it was hard to see how that could continue. Meanwhile, states faced massive dropoffs in revenues-they would have to cut back on expenditures. Without quick action by government, the economy faced a downturn. And even if banks had lent wisely-which they hadn’t-the downturn was sure to mean an increase in bad debts, further weakening the struggling financial sector. The administration talked about confidence building, but what it delivered was actually a confidence trick. If the administration had really wanted to restore confidence in the financial system, it would have begun by addressing the underlying problems-the flawed incentive structures and the inadequate regulatory system. Was there any single decision which, had it been reversed, would have changed the course of history? Every decisionincluding decisions not to do something, as many of our bad economic decisions have been-is a consequence of prior decisions, an interlinked web stretching from the distant past into the future. You’ll hear some on the right point to certain actions by the government itself-such as the Community Reinvestment Act, which requires banks to make mortgage money
REMEMBERING
A R T I C L E S available in low-income neighborhoods. (Defaults on C.R.A. lending were actually much lower than on other lending.) There has been much finger-pointing at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two huge mortgage lenders, which were originally government-owned. But in fact they came late to the subprime game, and their problem was similar to that of the private sector: their C.E.O.’s had the same perverse incentive to indulge in gambling. The truth is most of the individual mistakes boil down to just one: a belief that markets are self-adjusting and that the role of government should be minimal. Looking back at that belief during hearings this fall on Capitol Hill, Alan Greenspan said out loud, “I have found a flaw.” Congressman Henry Waxman pushed him, responding, “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right; it was not working.” “Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan said. The embrace by America-and much of the rest of the world-of this flawed economic philosophy made it inevitable that we would eventually arrive at the place we are today. January 2009 Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize -winning economist, is a professor at Columbia University. Source: vanityfair.com
A GLORIOUS By V.R. Krishna Iyer
Was not the kingdom of God that Jesus held up but the forerunner to socialism, social justice, secularism and democracy? He was a raging egalitarian, an invisible socialist, and an economic democrat. Jesus, born of humble parents in Bethlehem, rose as a glorious phenomenon. He became a world wonder of spiritual-temporal revolution against an imperial establishment and a corrupt priestly order. Judas Iscariot betrayed his master for a few pieces of silver. Every barbarity from those treacherous days still exists, indeed in magnified malignancy, to victimise the have-not humanity and slay the radical humanist and activist. Lofty testament For all of humankind, Jesus’ magnificent,
yet militant, teaching was a lofty testament of egalitarian liberation from obscurantist faith, authoritarian politics, theological orthodoxy and big business freebooting. Similarly, the ring of his message constituted a de facto revolt against Roman imperialism, absolutist injustice and priest-proud godism. He stood for a higher culture marked by a sacred, sublime, compassionate ethos, and a divinity of humanity that is free from crass, class-mired materialism and gross, greedy, grabbing riches. This rare man of Nazareth resisted Jewish ecclesiastical domination, opposed discrimination among brothers and demanded, in God’s name, socio-economic justice. This is the essence of the Jesus jurisprudence of human dignity, inner divinity and fraternal obligation to help every brother in distress.
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Born into a carpenter’s family, Jesus lived a sage and simple life and chose his disciples from a weaker section of society — indigent fishermen. He symbolised a revolutionary change in the theologicaltemporal establishment and advocated social justice and divinity, dignity and equity in the social order. Such a transformation was the truth of the kingdom of heaven, which was a challenge to the Roman Empire, the Jewish priestocracy and the arbitrary justice system that then prevailed. H.G Wells wrote: “This doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was the main teaching of Jesus, is certainly one of the most revolutionary doctrines that ever stirred and changed human thought. It is small wonder if, the world of that time [and of our time, if this writer may add] failed to continued next page
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grasp its full significance, and recoiled in dismay from even a half apprehension of its tremendous challenges to the established habits and institutions of mankind.” Rare daring Jesus, the glorious rebel, proclaimed the reality of a universal moral order. He called it the kingdom of heaven and told the people that the kingdom of God was indeed within them. He outraged the hypocrites who did their commerce inside the temples and the shrines. He drove them out with rare daring. Now, right before our eyes, our temples and churches are again centres of big business. Jesus, to the anger of the proprietariat, resisted the commercialisation of god and the commoditisation of man. Big temples, great churches, god-men, bishops, mullahs and acharyas are a mundane part of the capitalist establishment and are antiJesus in spirit. India’s Constitution mandates equality, secularism and economic democracy. What a marvel it was that Jesus preached ages ago — that God was equal in granting his favours to all, as was the sun. Jesus was a raging egalitarian, an invisible socialist, an economic democrat. Proof of this lies in his parables and preaching. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus cast scorn upon that natural tendency we all obey, to glorify our own people and to minimise the righteousness of other creeds and races. In the parable of the labourers he thrust aside the obstinate claim of the Jewish people to have a sort of first mortgage upon God. All whom God takes into the kingdom, he taught, he serves alike. There is no distinction in his treatment, because there is no measure to his bounty. There are no privileges, no rebates, and no excuses. H.G. Wells has presented these propositions in The Outline of History. Barabbas jurisprudence The abolition of poverty is a socialist feature of the societal structure. In order to wipe every tear of grief from every eye, you need a social transformation and an economic regeneration, a special concern for women and children, and a rage against those who rob the people’s resources. This is the majesty and humanity of true spirituality that was
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absent during the era of Emperor Tiberius. It was his administration and justice delivery system, presided over in the region by Pontius Pilate, which decreed, with perverse judicial power and under pressure from the priestly class and in exercise of state authority that Jesus, who argued for the kingdom of heaven, be put to the cross. When treason was the charge and the priestly order was exposed by the accused, there was terrific pressure on the Governor-judge to sentence him. The same judge set free Barabbas. Even today innocence suffers state punishment and robbery rides state power. Barabbas jurisprudence is in currency even today. Jesus spoke for all time and all humankind when he, bedrocked on the spiritual philosophy of the kingdom of God, told that court this truth of human rights and social justice. His advocacy of the humanist culture as the ultimate value, as against obscurantist godism, is evident from the admonition that sabbath is for man, not man for sabbath. Advocate of unity and fraternity Jesus advocated the unity and fraternity of humanity, like the doctrine of Advaita that Adi Sankara propagated as an upanishadic fundamental. Not only did he strike at patriotism and the bonds of family loyalty in the name of God’s universal fatherhood and the brotherhood of all mankind, his teaching condemned all the gradations of the economic system, all private wealth, and personal advantage. He said: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.” To my mind, this glorious dimension of the kingdom of God is the forerunner to socialism, social justice, secularism and democracy. The life of Jesus was absolute simplicity, matchless humility, compassionate humanity, gender reverence and pro-poor egalite. He washed the feet of his disciples, he defied godist superstition. To share and care for your neighbour, even your enemy, were the fundamentals he taught. He was thus a pioneer of world brotherhood, who advocated freedom from dogmas and obscurantist cults. Such a universalism is the testament of Jesus. This is the Christianity to be practised daily — not the Christianity for a Sunday ritual, or for an alibi to hold the world under imperial
A R T I C L E S might and big business power. Not showy charity coupled with mighty rapacity. The Buddha was a predecessor of Jesus. The Mahatma whom Churchill called “the halfnaked fakir” was his successor. Yet, Jesus if born today will meet Pilate’s justice yet again. Barabbas is in power everywhere again. Judas the pretentious disciple and arch-betrayer is a subtle and slight presence practising diplomacy — the Cross in one hand and nuke bomb in the other. The terrorist incarnation today masquerades as the ruler of the earth. The resurrection of the world and the elimination of the sufferings and slavery of millions are desiderata for many a million honest disciples of Jesus. Even so, the finest teachings of Jesus have perished, and the world today suffers a grave decline in the values of humanism, compassion, morality and divinity. Greed, vulgarity and the collapse of the public good have been a shock and a shame, a terror and a horror. Structural splendour Resurrection, not in the lexical or biblical sense, but in the grand moral dimension of the term conveying the spirit of transmaterial mutation, is the structural splendour of the world order. Peace, not war; stability, not subservience; high morality, not any grab-based acquisitive success, is the new ethic. Exploitation has become the rule of law, and equity and justice have become the vanishing point of international jurisprudence. The hidden agenda after a unipolar world is the malignant methodology of insatiable accumulation of wealth. This terrible trend must be trampled under the foot by a triumphant and dynamic generation. This should be done with socialist convictions and a profound prognosis — of work, wealth and happiness for every human being. This should be the ‘developmental drama’ of the New World Order. 24 December 2008 The author, 93 years old, is a retired Supreme Court Judge of distinction, a former Cabinet Minister in the Kerala government, a great humanist, and a regular contributor to The Hindu. He is also a member of JUST’s International Advisory Panel (IAP). Source: The Hindu
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