November 2012
Vol 12, No.11
US ELECTIONS: THE EMPTY POLITICS OF DUOPOLY
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fter months of rhetoric and political campaigning, the smoke has finally cleared on the media frenzy that is the US Presidential Election. Once the winner of the race was announced, supporters at the Obama Campaign headquarters in Chicago jubilantly celebrated. The haze of American flags, pop music, and confetti worked wonders to mask the absence of any real political substance throughout the election process. Cheering supporters shouted “four more years” as President Obama took to the stage to deliver his victory speech – complete with highly emotional grandiloquence, two mentions of the US military being the strongest in the world, and of course – a joke about the family dog. After an exorbitant $6 billion spent by campaigns and outside groups in the primary, congressional and presidential races, Americans have reelected a president better suited for
By Nile Bowie Hollywood than Washington. A 2010 ruling by the US Supreme Court that swept away limits on corporate contributions to political campaigns has paved the way for the most expensive election in American history, in the midst of an economic crisis nonetheless. [1]
In the nation that gave birth to the marketing concept of branding, it is to be assumed that politicians would eventually adopt the same techniques used to promote consumer products
BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR .................................P 3
ARTICLES
BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR ......................................P 4 .WHY EUROPE DID NOT DESERVE A NOBEL PEACE PRIZE BY DAVID SWANSON ............................................P 5 .TURKEY’S POLICIES
CROSSROADS: FROM ZERO - PROBLEMS TO A HEAP OF TROUBLE BY RAMZY BAROUD...............................................P 6 AT A
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STATEMENTS
.BATANG KALI TRAGEDY
.RICHARD FALK DOES HIS DUTY
– enter Obama. After eight years under the Bush administration, America desperately needed change. Instead of any meaningful structural reform, America ushered in a global super star whose charm and charisma not only resuscitated American prestige, but also masked the continued dominance of deregulators, financiers, and war-profiteers. Obama’s most valuable asset is his brand, and his ability to channel the nostalgia of transformative social movements of the past, while serving as a tabula rasa of sorts to his supporters – an icon of hope who is capable of inspiring the masses and coaxing them into action – despite the Obama administration expanding the disturbing militaristic and domestic surveillance policies so characteristic of the Bush years, and channeling never before seen authority to the executive branch.
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The American public at large is captivated by Barack’s contrived media personality and the grandeur of his political poetry and performance, and is therefore reluctant to acknowledge his enthusiastic continuation of the deeply unethical policies of his predecessor. Obama is indeed a leader suited for a new age, one of post-intellectualism and televised spectacle – a time when huge demographics of voters are more influenced by Jay-Z and Katy Perry’s endorsement of Obama over anything of political substance he preaches. [2] While the US has historically exported “democracy promotion” through institutions like the National Endowment for Democracy (trends that have accelerated under the Obama administration), so few see the American electoral process for what it is – unacceptably expensive, filled with contrived debates, and subject to the kind of meticulous controls that America’s foreign adversaries are accused of presiding over. A leaked ‘Memorandum of Understanding,’ signed by both the Obama and Romney campaigns, provides unique insight into the nature of the three televised debates, and the extent to which organizers went to prevent the occurrence of any form of unplanned spontaneity. [3] The document outlines how no members
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of the audience would be allowed to ask follow-up questions to the candidates, how microphones will be cut off right after questions were asked, and how any opportunities for follow-up questions from the crowd would be disregarded. In what was billed as a series of town-hall style debates where members of the community can come together and ask questions that reflect their concerns – in actuality, the two candidates dished out pre-planned responses to pre-approved questions, asked by preselected individuals. The political domination of the Republican and Democratic parties over the debates is nowhere more apparent than in the arrest of Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate, Cheri Honkala, as the two attempted to enter the site of the second presidential debate. [4]
Despite the obscurity and almost non-existent media presence of third party candidates, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party received 1% of the popular vote in the general election, amounting to over 1.1 million votes, the best in the history of the Libertarian Party. [5] In contrast to the choreographed exchanges offered by the televised debates between Obama and Romney, Moscow’s state-funded Russia Today news service offered third-party candidates an opportunity to voice their political programs in two debates aired on the channel. [6] Throughout these debates, third-party candidates spoke of repealing Obama’s authorization of indefinite detention through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the need for coherent environmental legislation, the gross misdirection of American foreign policy, the necessity of deep economic restructuring, and the illogicality of marijuana prohibition. In her closing statement at the debate, Green Party candidate Jill Stein
L E A D A R T I C L E brought up a significant point: “They’re 90 million voters who are not coming out to vote in this election, that’s one out of every two voters – that’s twice as many as those who will come out for Barack Obama, and twice the number that will come out for Mitt Romney. Those are voters who are saying ‘No’ to politics as usual, and ‘No’ to the Democratic and Republican parties. Imagine if we got out word to those 90 millions voters, that they actually have a variety of choices and voices in this election.”
American presidential politics are not devoid of progressive voices, but in reality, America doesn’t need a third-party – it needs a second party. The overwhelming lack of choice offered by this election can only be attributable to the political duopoly of the Republican and Democratic parties. As President Obama begins his second term and final term, some feel that this could be a chance for the White House to pursue more progressive ends – an opportunity for Obama to act on his own campaign rhetoric and roll back militarism and the influence of Wall St. financers. While such optimism may prevail in the minds of many, the fact that President Obama issued a drone strike that killed three people in Yemen just hours after being reelected is a telling sign of things to come from the Obama administration. [7] As the United States continues to project continued next page
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itself around the world as the definitive model of “freedom and democracy,” it is apparent that the central bankers, corporate financiers, and crony capitalists who control America’s electoral system did indeed learn a thing or two from communism: “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.”– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Notes: [1] US presidential election: Obama vs the Super PACs - How the incumbent prevailed, The Economic
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Times, November 8, 2012 [2] Katy Perry, Beyonce and Jay-Z lead stars voting for Barack Obama, Metro, November 6, 2012 [3] Obama and Romney agree to cowardly debates, Russia Today, October 16, 2012 [4] Police arrest US presidential candidate Jill Stein at debate site, Russia Today, October 17, 2012 [5] Gary Johnson Pulls One Million Votes, One Percent, Reason Foundation, November 7, 2012 [6] RT presents third-party presidential debate, Russia Today, October 19, 2012
S T A T E M E N T [7] Yemen drone strike kills ‘al-Qaeda members’, Al-Jazeera, November 09, 2012
9 November, 2012 Nile Bowie is a Kuala Lumpur-based American writer and photographer for the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal, Canada. He explores issues of terrorism, economics and geopolitics.
STATEMENTS
BATANG KALI TRAGEDY It is commendable that the Malaysian Government is getting members of Parliament regardless of their political affiliation to sign a petition seeking an official apology from the British Government for the Batang Kali massacre of 12 December 1948. This infamous massacre of 24 poor, unarmed, innocent villagers is one of the worst injustices perpetrated by British troops during the colonial period. A couple of eye witness accounts, investigative reports and television documentaries over the last few decades have established beyond any doubt that those massacred were not supporters or sympathisers of the militant, underground Malayan
Communist Party (MCP). The Scots Guards who were responsible for the massacre were clearly wrong in branding them as “bandits.” Though a British Court decided in early September this year not to institute a public inquiry into the massacre since “there are obviously enormous difficulties in conducting an inquiry into a matter that happened over 63 years ago”, the relatives of the victims intend to pursue the issue right up to the Supreme Court. Whatever the eventual verdict, the British Government has to take responsibility and apologise to the kith and kin of the massacred since the High Court had upheld that the victims were civilians and unarmed.
Apart from an apology, the British government should also give serious consideration to two other demands of the relatives of the Batang Kali episode. One, it should grant “reasonable compensation to the descendants of the massacred victims” and two, it should make a financial contribution towards the construction of a memorial to remember the 24 dead villagers, mostly rubber tappers.
Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, President, International Movement for a Just World (JUST). 28 October, 2012.
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ARTICLES RICHARD FALK DOES HID DUTY By Chandra Muzaffar The US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, for instance, dismissed it as “irresponsible and unacceptable.” A spokeswoman for the Israeli regime rubbished the proposal as “a distasteful sideshow.”
Once again, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories, Professor Richard Falk, has shown tremendous courage and integrity in calling for the boycott of major Multi-National Corporations (MNCs) that have dealings with Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem “until they adhere to international rights, standards and practices.” The call was made in Falk’s report to the UN General Assembly on the 24th of October 2012. In his report, he named companies such as Caterpillar, Hewlett Packard, Motorolla, the Volvo Group and Cemex, among others, as companies that have violated international human rights and humanitarian law by “exploiting Palestinian resources and helping Israel construct illegal settlements and providing security for them.” A boycott of these companies may compel them to pressurize the Israeli regime to change its behaviour towards the Palestinians. It may result in the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the West Bank and in the dismantling of the settlements paving the way for a genuine peace founded upon justice. As expected, United States and Israeli officials criticised Falk severely for proposing the boycott.
which is now beginning to gain some momentum. Of course, boycotting powerful MNCs — as suggested by Falk— requires a lot of preparatory work and the mobilisation of public opinion which will take time. But it can be done.
The Canadian government has gone even further. Its Foreign Minister, John Baird, has not only accused Falk of bias but has also called for his resignation as Special Rapporteur. His call echoes segments of the Western media and Western NGOs. Rushing to the defence of Israel whenever its policies and actions are criticised has become an addiction for much of the West. It does not matter whether the criticism is legitimate or not. Often, the critic is savaged and vilified. There is no attempt to examine or evaluate the issue at hand in a dispassionate and objective manner. Richard Falk has been victim of this sort of irrational, almost fanatical obsession with Israel’s defence for a number of years now. Falk’s boycott idea should have been viewed as a sincere attempt by a UN investigator on the plight of Palestinians living under occupation to lessen their pain and suffering by suggesting concrete, peaceful action that could be taken to force the occupier — the Israeli regime — to recognise the rights of the Palestinians and to be accountable to international law. He has proposed a measure which dovetails with a much larger international campaign — the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign— initiated some years ago by a number of NGOs
By focusing upon boycott, Falk is sending an urgent message to the world. Take concrete action immediately to end Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Or face decades of violence and turmoil in West Asia and elsewhere. It is significant that he is doing this in his capacity as UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories. For this is what a UN Rapporteur is supposed to do. Present an honest account of what is happening on the ground. Analyse the underlying causes. Propose tangible solutions. Professor Richard Falk has done his duty. He has lived up to the ideals of the UN of protecting people from oppression and aggression and respecting the right of selfdetermination. He has fulfilled his mandate as Special Rapporteur. The world should applaud him. 28 October, 2012 Chandra Muzaffar
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By David Swanson
Yes, indeed, it is a littleacknowledged feat of miraculous lifesaving power that Europe has not gone to war with itself — other than that whole Yugoslavia thing — since World War II. It’s as clear a demonstration as anything that people can choose to stop fighting. It’s a testament to the pre-war peace efforts that criminalized war , the post-war prosecutions of the brand new crime of making war, the reconstruction of the Marshall Plan, and ... and something else a little less noble, and much less Nobel-worthy. Alfred Nobel’s will, written in 1895, left funding for a prize to be awarded to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Fredrik Heffermehl has been leading a valuable effort to compel the Nobel committee to abide by the will . Now they’ve outdone themselves in their movement in the other direction. Europe is not a person. It has not during the past year — which is the requirement — or even during the past several decades done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations. Ask Libya. Ask Syria. Check with Afghanistan. See
what Iraq thinks. Far from doing the best work to abolish or reduce standing armies, Europe has joined with the United States in developing an armed global force aggressively imposing its will on the world. There were good nominees and potential nominees available, even great ones . Now the Nobelites have almost guaranteed themselves a second-ever pro-war peace-prize acceptance speech. If you don’t recall who gave the first one, I’ll tell you after the U.S. election when you might be better able to hear me. What a disgrace that the Nobel peace prize needs alternative awards that don’t go to warmongers. What a further shame that even those don’t always go to people who measure up to Nobel’s will. Was Nobel asking so much really when he asked that a prize go to whoever did the best work toward abolishing war? The West is so in love with itself that many will imagine this award a success. Surely Europe not going to war with itself is more important that Europe going to war with the rest of the world! Imagine
how many white people might have died if Europe had kept its warmaking to itself. By directing the threat of war outward and engaging in humanitarian wars and philanthropic wars, Europe has taken us beyond naive war abolition and into an era of powerful possibilities. Oh, and some dark people died. But we’re looking at the Big Picture. Does this not frighten anyone?
12 October, 2012 David Swanson is an American activist, blogger and author. Source: Warisacrime.org
To All Our JUST Commentary Readers If you are receiving a hardcopy of the Commentary and would prefer to receive your copy electronically via email alert please inform comment@justinternational.org Thank you!
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By Ramzy Baroud It seems that media consensus has been conclusively reached: Turkey has been forced into a Middle Eastern mess not of its own making; the ‘Zero Problems with Neighbors’ notion, once the foreign policy centerpiece of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), is all but a romantic notion of no use in realpolitik.
Turkey’s “policy’s goal – to build strong economic, political, and social ties with the country’s immediate neighbors while decreasing its dependency on the United States – seemed to be within sight,” wrote Sinan Ulgen nearly a year ago. “But the Arab Spring exposed the policy’s vulnerabilities, and Turkey must now seek a new guiding principle for regional engagement.” This reading was not entirely unique and was repeated numerous times henceforth. It suggests an air of naiveness in Turkish foreign policy and overlooks the country’s barely selfless regional ambitions. It also imagines that Turkey was caught in a series of unfortunate events, forcing its hand to act in ways inconsistent with its genuine policies of yesteryears. This, however, is not entirely true. The recent skirmishes of Oct 4 at the Syrian-Turkish border were
reportedly invited by mortar shells fired from the Syrian side. Five people including 3 children were killed and the incident was Turkey’s ‘last straw.’ Turkey’s Anatolia news agency reported of an official Syrian apology through the United Nations soon after the shelling and the Syrian government promised an investigation. However, their seriousness remains doubtful. But the Turkish military was quick to retaliate, as the parliament voted to extend a one-year mandate to the military in order carry out cross-border military action. Irrespective of the violence at the Syrian border, the mandate was originally aimed at Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq and it had already been set for a prescheduled vote in mid-October. The peculiarly evolving episode seems unreal. Not long ago, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had, to the displeasure of Israel and the US, reached out to both Syria and Iran. He referred to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as his ‘brother’, knowing of the full political implications of that term. When Turkey voted against Iran sanctions at the United Nations in June 2010, ‘it provoked a crisis,” a Wall Street Journal article read. Later, Turkey quarreled with NATO over the missile-defense initiative, a system that is clearly aimed at Iran and Syria. “Turkey is becoming the Alliance’s ‘opt-out’ member in operations in Muslim countries,” said the WSJ. These developments took place at the heels of the deadly Israeli military raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which carried mostly Turkish peace activists as part of a larger effort – The Gaza Freedom Flotilla – aimed at breaking the siege
on Gaza. Israel killed 9 Turkish civilians and wounded many more on the Mavi Marmara. Erdogan and other Turkish officials rose to the status of superstars among Arabs at the time when ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was himself complicit in the Gaza siege. Understandably, the AKP became a political model and the subject of endless academic and television debates. Turkey was the brand to beat even culturally and economically.
Internally, Erdogan and his party were credited for overseeing massive economic growth, and successfully reining in and eventually integrating the once insubordinate, coup-prone military leadership into a democratic system managed by elected civilians. Externally, Erdogan and his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu helped rebrand and partly break the isolation of several Arab leaders, including Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi. (Turkish leaders must have been fully aware of the grievances of Arab peoples as they signed economic deals worth billions of dollars with the very dictators they helped oust.) Although Ankara’s spat with Tel Aviv didn’t translate into tangible change in Israeli or US policies continued next page
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towards Palestinians, a level of gratification permeated: At last, a country strong enough as Turkey had the courage to stand up to Israel’s intransigent and calculated insults.
Then Tunisia overthrew its president and Turkey’s foreign policy cards were mix-up like never before. If the US, France and other Western powers were inconsistent and selfcontradicting in their stances on uprisings, revolutions and civil wars that struck the Middle East and North Africa in the last 18 months, Turkey’s foreign policy was particularly muddled. Initially, Turkey responded to what seemed like distant affairs with good sound bites concerning people’s rights, justice and democracy. In Libya, the stakes were higher as NATO was hell-bent on determining the outcomes of Arab revolts whenever space allowed. Turkey was the last NATO member to sign onto the Libya war. The delay proved costly as Arab media that cheered for war seemed to target Turkey’s prized reputation and credibility. When Syrians rebelled, Turkey was prepared. Its policy was aimed at taking early initiative by imposing its own sanctions on Damascus. It went even further as it turned a blind eye while its once well-guarded border area became awash with smugglers, foreign fighters, weapons and more. Aside
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from hosting the Syrian National Council (SNC), it also provided a safe haven for the Free Syrian Army that operated from the Turkish borders at will. While much of that was justified as righteous Turkish action to deter injustice, it was one of the primary reasons which made a political solution unattainable. It turned what eventually became a bloody and brutal conflict into a regional struggle. It allowed for Syrian territories to be used in a proxy conflict involving various countries, ideologies and political camps. Since Turkey is a NATO member, it meant that NATO was involved in the Syrian conflict, although in a more understated way than its war on Libya. The Kurdish dimension to Turkey’s role in Syria is of course enormous. Less reported is that Turkey is industriously working to control any Kurdish backlash in Syria’s northeast region, thus doubling Turkey’s border conflict, which has been mostly confined to northern Iraq. Writing in Turkish Today’s Zaman, Abdullah Bozkurt spoke of “a high-stakes game plan for Turkey to control the fastpaced developments in northern Syria using the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in neighboring Iraq as a proxy force without getting directly involved in Syria.” Moreover, Ankara has more discreetly worked to compel favorable policies by the SNC regarding the Kurdish question. Bozkurt further reports that “Ankara has silently pushed SNC to elect an independent Kurd, Abdulbaset Sieda, in June as a compromise leader .. as a safeguard measure for Turkey to exert influence over some 1.5 million Kurds in Syria.” Indeed, the so-called Arab Spring has partly confused and eventually helped realign Turkish foreign policy towards Arab countries, and even Iran. Turkey however was barely a passive player before or after the upheaval. The impression that
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Turkey has stood at the fence as competing agendas south of their border finally pushed Ankara to the brink, is both erroneous and misleading. Regardless of how Turkish politicians wish to formulate their involvement, there is no escaping that they have taken part in the war against Libya, and are now entangled, to some extent by choice, in the brutal mess in Syria.
The sad irony is that hours after Turkey’s retaliation to the Syrian fire, Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor told reporters in Paris that an attack on Turkey is an attack on NATO, an underhanded gesture of careful solidarity. He added, “If the Assad regime were to fall, it would be a vital strike on Iran.” Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman could barely hide his excitement, for what the US neoconservatives failed to achieve, is now being done by proxy. Lieberman, hardly a visionary, predicted a ‘Persian Spring’ on the way that, he urged, must be supported. For Israel and the US, now that Turkey is on board, the possibilities are endless. Ankara must reconsider its role in the deepening calamity, and devise more sensible policies. War should not be on the agenda. Too many people have died that way. 13 October, 2012 Ramzy Baroud is an internationally syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. Source: Countercurrents.org
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By Countercurrents.org Speculation with food is an area of huge profit by financial institutions. “More than 40 percent of grain futures can now be traced to financial institutions, which nearly doubled their commodity bets over the last five years — from $65 billion to $126 billion”, write Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the New England Complex Systems Institute, an independent academic research institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Greg Lindsay, an affiliate of NECSI and a visiting scholar at New York University [1]. A month ago, on September 26, 2012, the European Parliament agreed on plans to improve financial market transparency and end speculation, notably deal-making blamed for volatile food prices [2].
Spikes in grain prices are regularly blamed on oil shocks, droughts and emerging markets’ hunger for meat. The real culprit in the three bubbles-and-busts of the last five years, however, isn’t the weather. It’s financial speculation. The Midwest drought this summer, the worst in a half-century, produced a bumper crop of profits for derivatives traders like Chris Mahoney, the director of agricultural products for Glencore, the world’s largest commodities trading firm. Mahoney noted during one August conference call that tight grain supplies and the resulting arbitrage opportunities “should be good for Glencore.” They’ve been a disaster, however, for the world’s poor. More than 40 percent of grain futures can now be traced to financial institutions, which nearly doubled their commodity bets over the last five years — from $65 billion to $126 billion.
Howard Schultz, Chief Executive, Starbucks Coffee Company, said: “Without any real supply or demand issues we are witness to the fact that most agricultural food commodities are at record highs at once, and coffee is at a 34-year high. Through financial speculation …the commodities market is in a very unfortunate position.” Similar opinions were expressed by Nigel Miller, President, National Farmers Union, Scotland and Peter Orszag, Vice Chairman, Citigroup [3]. Yaneer and Greg write:
During that time, food prices have bubbled and burst twice — leaving millions of people to go hungry and stoking global unrest — before climbing to new heights this summer. Corn prices soared 65 percent between June and July alone, the same month the World Bank’s food price index recorded its highest rise ever, breaking the previous record set in February 2011. What’s fueling this stunning price fluctuation is financial speculation. Our research team at the New England Complex Systems Institute built mathematical models to test possible explanations for the price spikes of 2007-2008 and 2010-2011 —
including all the above, in addition to the rise of ethanol production. We could replicate a rise in prices but couldn’t explain the bubbles and crashes. When we added speculation, the model fit precisely.
When it comes to food, our faith in markets is contingent on their ability to match supply and demand at prices that benefit farmers, while ensuring the greatest number of people can afford to eat. Speculation in grain futures knocks these prices out of equilibrium. During past bubbles, for example, bountiful harvests piled up in silos because grain was too expensive for consumers to buy. This grain accumulation eventually bursts the bubbles after a year or more – the time elapsed between harvests. While Americans will likely only feel a pinch of drought-fueled speculation this year – the Department of Agriculture projects a 3 percent-4 percent rise in food prices next year – the situation is direr in the developing world. Those living on less than a dollar per day already spend most of their income on food. The price bubble of 2007-2008 led to food riots in more than 30 countries, including Mexico’s “tortilla continued next page
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riots” and the overthrow of Haiti’s government, before prices peaked again in February 2011, during the Arab Spring.
The current bubble is behind the fresh protests in Haiti, where food prices have gone up 40 percent since the election of President Michel Martelly last year. In eastern India, mobs robbed government granaries. Hunger and revolutions have always gone hand-in-hand, of course — the latter is what happens when you let them eat cake but the people have no bread. But at which point do prices pass the point of no return? Our research has found that food riots are most likely to occur when the Food Price Index, compiled by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, rises above 210. It’s currently 216. Recognizing the dangers of food speculation, six European banks – including Commerzbank, Germany’s second largest – this summer removed agricultural products from their commodity funds altogether. Wall Street, however, has not been so accommodating. Last month a federal judge vacated tough new rules designed to rein in commodity speculation that would have taken effect Oct. 12. The rules would have closed loopholes and instituted new position limits that
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would cap the number of derivative contracts a commodities trader could hold, in the hopes this would dampen volatility and prices. But Judge Robert L. Wilkins channeled Wall Street’s objections when he questioned whether these rules were appropriate or necessary. In his decision he quoted Michael V. Dunn, a former commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, who had doubted whether “excessive speculation is affecting the market.” Dunn once declared, “at best position limits are a cure for a disease that does not exist, or at worst it’s a placebo for one that does.” CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler has vowed to push ahead with the rule – including the possibility of appealing. Commissioner Bart Chilton meanwhile has proposed drafting an “interim final rule” that would appease Wilkins’ objections and could be instituted quickly. “Position limits are simply too important,” Chilton said earlier this month in a speech at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome. They are. But if the rule that’s eventually passed is to be more than the placebo Dunn fears, it will be necessary to close the loopholes added to the bill to appease derivatives traders – who instead sued to have it overturned. The proof will be in seeing if speculation actually decreases. Current volumes are three to five times higher than what’s necessary for the smooth functioning of the markets, according to our research. At a time when the US corn harvest is expected to be less than annual consumption, we can’t afford to gamble with our food. The European Parliament’s
A R T I C L E S economic affairs committee unanimously agreed – 45 votes in favor – new rules based on a proposal last year by the European Commission to update EU regulation on markets in financial instruments, known as MIFID. Under the agreement, market players and trading operators would be required to lay down clear rules and procedures for fair and orderly trading, objective criteria for executing orders efficiently, and transparent criteria for determining which financial instruments may be traded via their systems. The rules notably would provide a structure for Organized Trading Facilities (OTF), which are currently not regulated.
To fight speculation of food products, the rules also limit the number of positions traders can take in a set time on commodities on the derivatives market. The MEPs also tightened up a EC proposal on high-frequency algorithmic trading, in which computers trade millions of orders per second, with little or no human intervention. This technology can be used to check what buyers would pay, with a view to exploiting tiny price differences. continued next page
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The committee voted provisions to ensure all orders be valid for at least 500 milliseconds, meaning they cannot be cancelled or modified during that time.
All firms and trading venues would also have to ensure that trading systems are resilient and prepared to deal with sudden increases in order flows or market stresses. These could include “circuit breakers” to suspend trading. The Socialists and Democrats group in parliament dubbed the agreement “a very important step forward to increase transparency and to ensure a smooth price formation process on European exchanges.” NGOs, including Oxfam and Friends of the Earth, welcomed the plan but said it continued to fall short of what was needed to tackle food speculation.
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The rules will need to be adopted by a parliament plenary, probably in November, before being submitted to EU finance ministers who will have the final say. On the issue of speculation with food Nigel Miller said: “It is deeply alarming that the greatest proportion of activity in the futures markets no longer involves those in the supply chain but is, instead, taken up by speculators. Food commodities are too important to be played about with by day traders and speculators.” Peter Orszag said: ‘‘Financial flows (including index funds) can, over brief periods, exert a noticeable destabilizing effect […] Trying to use inventory levels to measure how far the market is out of whack may not work that well. As a result, “multiple equilibriums” of plausible market prices can persist over a surprisingly long period before supply-anddemand fundamentals finally exert themselves.” Food speculation refers to bankers and other financial investors betting on food prices. Food speculation occurs if ’futures contracts’ are written for the sole purpose of money making. Originally, future contracts allow farmers to sell crops at a future date at a guaranteed price - helping them to overcome
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unforeseen variations in crop production. Over the last two decades, bankers have successfully lobbied for weaker regulations on food speculation. They are now able to buy and sell futures contracts to make money. Bankers have also created special products and funds to help other financial companies make money from betting on food [4]. References: [1] “The real reason for spikes in food prices”, Oct. 25, 2012, http:// blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2012/ 10/25/the-real-reason-for-spikes-infood-prices/ [2] EUbusiness, “European Parliament moves to fight market speculation”, Sept. 26, 2012, http:// www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/ markets-finance.ik6 [3] Make finance work for people and the planet, “Financial speculation on food drives up and distorts prices”, http://www.makefinancework.org/ the-food-crises-the-us-drought/foodspeculation/ [4]http://www.makefinancework.org/ home-english/food-speculation/ briefings-and-reports-70/ 25 October, 2012 Source: Countercurrents.org
TRANSLATION
By Thorsten Pattberg Few people realize that the Bible discourages people from studying foreign languages. The story of the tower of Babel informs us that there is one humanity (God’s one), only that “our languages are confused”. From a European historical perspective, that has always meant that, say, any German philosopher could know exactly what the Chinese people were thinking, only
that he couldn’t understand them. So instead of learning the foreign language, he demanded a translation. Coincidentally, or maybe not quite so, History with a capital ‘H’ followed the Bible. At the time of the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation, when German scholars still spoke Latin, the German logician Christian Wolff got his hands on a
Latin translation of the Confucian Classics. His reaction, I think, is as funny as it is disturbing: He reads Kongzi in Latin and says something like “Great, that looks very familiar, I have the feeling that I totally understand this Confucius!”. Wolff was so overjoyous with his new mental powers, that he went continued next page
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continued from page 10 on to lecture about the Chinese as if he was the king of China. It’s brilliant; if it wasn’t so comical. Among his unforgettable findings were ‘The Motives of the Chinese’, or ‘The Final Purpose of the Chinese’, and so on. And, of course, when somebody occasionally asked master Wolff why he didn’t visit China, the greatest sinologist of all time played out his greatest intellectual triumph. He replied that “the wisdom of the Chinese was generally not so highly valued that it was necessary to travel there for its sake”. It’s thus pretty much established, I think, that History stopped with this Wolff, or at least got too tired and too cynical. He sufficiently demonstrated that just about any European could become a ‘China expert’ without knowing a single Chinese terminology. Since this was true for just about any foreign language; so now we know why the German philosopher Immanuel Kant could reasonably announce the ‘End of All Things’, and Georg Hegel could proclaim the ‘End of History’. Both learned men knew very well that they hadn’t mastered any non-European language in their life-time; and they simply assumed that History was a bit like that too. This attitude in the Western hemisphere has never changed, with the effect that we live in a crazy world today. Most Europeans believe that the Chinese “speak their languages”, only that they “talk” in Chinese. Take the case of ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’. You may have considered this, but those are European words and do not exist in China at all. Imagine China would return a favor and demand from Europe more wenming and tian ren he yi.
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The European attitude is reflected in its translations. Most Westerners simply translate every Chinese key concept into convenient biblical or philosophical terminology. As a result, the Western image of China is literal Chinese-free. Translation, of course, is an old human habit. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question it. It was our habit to slay our opponents in battle, but we don’t do that any more (except in Afghanistan and Iraq). Why do we still destroy foreign key vocabulary? Well, we first do so, I think, for sociological reasons. If Germany censors all important foreign terminologies, the German public is led to think that it alone knows everything there is to be known in the world, and – metaphorically speaking - behaves like it. That’s why Germany has produced so many “world historians” and “philosophers” like Georg Hegel, Max Weber or Karl Marx. Academics call it deutungshoheit – meaning having the sovereignty over the definition of thought. It might sound very depressing, but truth must be told: the West knows little about China, and Cultural China has never become a truly global phenomenon. Not a single one percent of the educated European citizenry, in my estimation, knows what ruxue is, or a junzi or shengren. And those are some of the most important Chinese concepts there ever were.
A R T I C L E S Some commentators have argued with me that we need a ‘Global language’, and today’s English is the best candidate. To this I reply, are you crazy, that’s exactly what the Germans once did; now it’s the Anglo-Saxons who close their ‘History’ book and say “we already know you”. No, the true ‘Global language’ would be radically different from today’s English, it would need to adopt the originality and the tens of thousands of words provided by humankind’s other language traditions on top of it. Every language learner has this from time to time: a subconscious certainty that something is lost in translation, every time, without exception. Maybe there is a hidden flaw in the story of the tower of Babel. What if our languages are not confused at all, but any single group of human beings were just never enough in numbers to explore all the world’s possibilities? What if the Chinese had invented things – and named them daxue, datong, wenming, tian ren he yi and so on – that no American has ever thought of this way, just as it always has been – I think we agree on this- the other way round. It is often said that language is the key to understanding China’s culture and tradition. The question is, which one should it be. 12 October, 2012 Dr. Thorsten Pattberg is a German scholar at The Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University. Versions of this article have been published by Shanghai Daily and Asia Times in October 2012.
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