This week, when I addressed the nation on Syria, I said that – in part because of the credible threat of U.S. military force – there is the possibility of a diplomatic solution. Russia has indicated a new willingness to join with the international community in pushing Syria to give up its chemical weapons, which the Assad regime used in an attack that killed more than 1,000 people on August 21. I also asked Congress to postpone a vote on the use of military force while we pursue this diplomatic path. And that’s what we’re doing.
At my direction, Secretary of State Kerry is in discussions with his Russian counterpart. But we’re making it clear that this can’t be a stalling tactic. Any agreement needs to verify that the Assad regime and Russia are keeping their commitments: that means working to turn Syria’s chemical weapons over to international control and ultimately destroying them. This would allow us to achieve our goal – deterring the Syrian regime from using chemical weapons, degrading their ability to use them, and making it clear to the world that we won’t tolerate their use.
We’ve seen indications of progress. As recently as a week ago, the Assad regime would not admit that it possessed chemical weapons. Today, it does. Syria has signaled a willingness to join with 189 other nations, representing 98 percent of humanity, in abiding by an international agreement that prohibits the use of chemical weapons. And Russia has staked its own credibility on supporting this outcome.
These are all positive developments. We’ll keep working with the international community to see that Assad gives up his chemical weapons so that they can be destroyed. We will continue rallying support from allies around the world who agree on the need for action to deter the use of chemical weapons in Syria. And if current discussions produce a serious plan, I’m prepared to move forward with it.
But we are not just going to take Russia and Assad’s word for it. We need to see concrete actions to demonstrate that Assad is serious about giving up his chemical weapons. And since this plan emerged only with a credible threat of U.S. military action, we will maintain our military posture in the region to keep the pressure on the Assad regime. And if diplomacy fails, the United States and the international community must remain prepared to act.
The use of chemical weapons anywhere in the world is an affront to human dignity and a threat to the security of people everywhere. As I have said for weeks, the international community must respond to this outrage. A dictator must not be allowed to gas children in their beds with impunity. And we cannot risk poison gas becoming the new weapon of choice for tyrants and terrorists the world over.
We have a duty to preserve a world free from the fear of chemical weapons for our children. But if there is any chance of achieving that goal without resorting to force, then I believe we have a responsibility to pursue that path. Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: My fellow Americans, tonight I want to talk to you about Syria -- why it matters, and where we go from here.
Over the past two years, what began as a series of peaceful protests against the repressive regime of Bashar al-Assad has turned into a brutal civil war. Over 100,000 people have been killed. Millions have fled the country. In that time, America has worked with allies to provide humanitarian support, to help the moderate opposition, and to shape a political settlement. But I have resisted calls for military action, because we cannot resolve someone else’s civil war through force, particularly after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The situation profoundly changed, though, on August 21st, when Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people, including hundreds of children. The images from this massacre are sickening: Men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas. Others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath. A father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk. On that terrible night, the world saw in gruesome detail the terrible nature of chemical weapons, and why the overwhelming majority of humanity has declared them off-limits -- a crime against humanity, and a violation of the laws of war.
This was not always the case. In World War I, American GIs were among the many thousands killed by deadly gas in the trenches of Europe. In World War II, the Nazis used gas to inflict the horror of the Holocaust. Because these weapons can kill on a mass scale, with no distinction between soldier and infant, the civilized world has spent a century working to ban them. And in 1997, the United States Senate overwhelmingly approved an international agreement prohibiting the use of chemical weapons, now joined by 189 governments that represent 98 percent of humanity.
On August 21st, these basic rules were violated, along with our sense of common humanity. No one disputes that chemical weapons were used in Syria. The world saw thousands of videos, cell phone pictures, and social media accounts from the attack, and humanitarian organizations told stories of hospitals packed with people who had symptoms of poison gas.
Moreover, we know the Assad regime was responsible. In the days leading up to August 21st, we know that Assad’s chemical weapons personnel prepared for an attack near an area where they mix sarin gas. They distributed gasmasks to their troops. Then they fired rockets from a regime-controlled area into 11 neighborhoods that the regime has been trying to wipe clear of opposition forces. Shortly after those rockets landed, the gas spread, and hospitals filled with the dying and the wounded. We know senior figures in Assad’s military machine reviewed the results of the attack, and the regime increased their shelling of the same neighborhoods in the days that followed. We’ve also studied samples of blood and hair from people at the site that tested positive for sarin.
When dictators commit atrocities, they depend upon the world to look the other way until those horrifying pictures fade from memory. But these things happened. The facts cannot be denied. The question now is what the United States of America, and the international community, is prepared to do about it. Because what happened to those people -- to those children -- is not only a violation of international law, it’s also a danger to our security.
Let me explain why. If we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons. As the ban against these weapons erodes, other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas, and using them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical warfare on the battlefield. And it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons, and to use them to attack civilians.
If fighting spills beyond Syria’s borders, these weapons could threaten allies like Turkey, Jordan, and Israel. And a failure to stand against the use of chemical weapons would weaken prohibitions against other weapons of mass destruction, and embolden Assad’s ally, Iran -- which must decide whether to ignore international law by building a nuclear weapon, or to take a more peaceful path.
This is not a world we should accept. This is what’s at stake. And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike. The purpose of this strike would be to deter Assad from using chemical weapons, to degrade his regime’s ability to use them, and to make clear to the world that we will not tolerate their use.
That's my judgment as Commander-in-Chief. But I’m also the President of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy. So even though I possess the authority to order military strikes, I believed it was right, in the absence of a direct or imminent threat to our security, to take this debate to Congress. I believe our democracy is stronger when the President acts with the support of Congress. And I believe that America acts more effectively abroad when we stand together.
This is especially true after a decade that put more and more war-making power in the hands of the President, and more and more burdens on the shoulders of our troops, while sidelining the people’s representatives from the critical decisions about when we use force.
Now, I know that after the terrible toll of Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of any military action, no matter how limited, is not going to be popular. After all, I've spent four and a half years working to end wars, not to start them. Our troops are out of Iraq. Our troops are coming home from Afghanistan. And I know Americans want all of us in Washington
-- especially me -- to concentrate on the task of building our nation here at home: putting people back to work, educating our kids, growing our middle class.
It’s no wonder, then, that you're asking hard questions. So let me answer some of the most important questions that I've heard from members of Congress, and that I've read in letters that you've sent to me.
First, many of you have asked, won’t this put us on a slippery slope to another war? One man wrote to me that we are “still recovering from our involvement in Iraq.” A veteran put it more bluntly: “This nation is sick and tired of war.”
My answer is simple: I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria. I will not pursue an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan. I will not pursue a prolonged air campaign like Libya or Kosovo. This would be a targeted strike to achieve a clear objective: deterring the use of chemical weapons, and degrading Assad’s capabilities.
Others have asked whether it's worth acting if we don’t take out Assad. As some members of Congress have said, there’s no point in simply doing a “pinprick” strike in Syria.
Let me make something clear: The United States military doesn’t do pinpricks. Even a limited strike will send a message to Assad that no other nation can deliver. I don't think we should remove another dictator with force -- we learned from Iraq that doing so makes us responsible for all that comes next. But a targeted strike can make Assad, or any other dictator, think twice before using chemical weapons.
Other questions involve the dangers of retaliation. We don’t dismiss any threats, but the Assad regime does not have the ability to seriously threaten our military. Any other retaliation they might seek is in line with threats that we face every day. Neither Assad nor his allies have any interest in escalation that would lead to his demise. And our ally, Israel, can defend itself with overwhelming force, as well as the unshakeable support of the United States of America.
Many of you have asked a broader question: Why should we get involved at all in a place that's so complicated, and where -- as one person wrote to me -- “those who come after Assad may be enemies of human rights?”
It’s true that some of Assad’s opponents are extremists. But al Qaeda will only draw strength in a more chaotic Syria if people there see the world doing nothing to prevent innocent civilians from being gassed to death. The majority of the Syrian people -- and the Syrian opposition we work with -- just want to live in peace, with dignity and freedom. And the day after any military action, we would redouble our efforts to achieve a political solution that strengthens those who reject the forces of tyranny and extremism.
Finally, many of you have asked: Why not leave this to other countries, or seek solutions short of force? As several people wrote to me, “We should not be the world’s policeman.”
I agree, and I have a deeply held preference for peaceful solutions. Over the last two years, my administration has tried diplomacy and sanctions, warning and negotiations -- but chemical weapons were still used by the Assad regime.
However, over the last few days, we’ve seen some encouraging signs. In part because of the credible threat of U.S. military action, as well as constructive talks that I had with President Putin, the Russian government has indicated a willingness to join with the international community in pushing Assad to give up his chemical weapons. The Assad regime has now admitted that it has these weapons, and even said they’d join the Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits their use.
It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed, and any agreement must verify that the Assad regime keeps its commitments. But this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force, particularly because Russia is one of Assad’s strongest allies.
I have, therefore, asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force while we pursue this diplomatic path. I’m sending Secretary of State John Kerry to meet his Russian counterpart on Thursday, and I will continue my own discussions with President Putin. I’ve spoken to the leaders of two of our closest allies, France and the United Kingdom, and we will work together in consultation with Russia and China to put forward a resolution at the U.N. Security Council requiring Assad to give up his chemical weapons, and to ultimately destroy them under international control. We’ll also give U.N. inspectors the opportunity to report their findings about what happened on August 21st. And we will continue to rally support from allies from Europe to the Americas -- from Asia to the Middle East -- who agree on the need for action.
Meanwhile, I’ve ordered our military to maintain their current posture to keep the pressure on Assad, and to be in a position to respond if diplomacy fails. And tonight, I give thanks again to our military and their families for their incredible strength and sacrifices.
My fellow Americans, for nearly seven decades, the United States has been the anchor of global security. This has meant doing more than forging international agreements -- it has meant enforcing them. The burdens of leadership are often heavy, but the world is a better place because we have borne them.
And so, to my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America’s military might with a failure to act when a cause is so plainly just. To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain, and going still on a cold hospital floor. For sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough.
Indeed, I’d ask every member of Congress, and those of you watching at home tonight, to view those videos of the attack, and then ask: What kind of world will we live in if the United States of America sees a dictator brazenly violate international law with poison gas, and we choose to look the other way?
Franklin Roosevelt once said, “Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideals and principles that we have cherished are challenged.” Our ideals and principles, as well as our national security, are at stake in Syria, along with our leadership of a world where we seek to ensure that the worst weapons will never be used.
America is not the world’s policeman. Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong. But when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death, and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act. That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes us exceptional. With humility, but with resolve, let us never lose sight of that essential truth.
Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.
It is described as a basic right and a foundation for life-long learning, but the United Nations says millions of people around the world are still unable to read and write.
Security is challenging all the development processes in Afghanistan, that includes the development process of education .... Still we have hundreds of schools which are closed because of security concerns. And we still have two million children which are out of the schools. They can't go to school because of these problems .... 50 percent of the schools have no buildings ....
Kabir Haqmal, the spokesman for Afghanistan's minister of education
A statement released by the UN's education arm, UNESCO, to mark International Literacy Day said: "Literacy is much more than an educational priority - it is the ultimate investment in the future. We wish to see a century where every child is able to read and to use this skill to gain autonomy."
According to UNESCO, almost 774 million people in the world lack basic reading and writing skills, and of those, almost two-thirds are women and girls.
Some 123 million young people, aged 15 to 24, are unable to read and write, and again the female share is more than 60 percent.
The lowest literacy rates are in south and west Asia, which is home to half of the global illiterate population, and sub-Saharan Africa, which has some of the lowest rates - below 50 percent in 10 countries, and dropping to 25 percent in Guinea.
Providing universal primary education is among the UN's eight Millennium Development Goals, and there has been progress.
By the target year of 2015, two-thirds of adults and three-quarters of youth in sub-Saharan Africa are expected to be able to read and write, and in south and west Asia about nine out of 10 young adults are projected to be literate.
But obstacles remain as the world strives to provide education for all. So what are the challenges facing UNESCO? Why are so many people still unable to read and write? And what can be done to educate girls and women across the world?
Inside Story, with presenter Shiulie Ghosh, is joined by guests: Jordan Naidoo, a senior adviser on education for the UN children's charity UNICEF, and Kabir Haqmal, the director of Information and spokesman for Afghanistan's minister of education.
"There has been immense progress over the last 10 to 15 years ... but it still needs a lot more attention to providing access [to education] for girls that [is] closer to the communities, where girls don't have to travel too far, because parents and community members see the issue of threats along the way. But [we also need] ... to encourage parents and community members to see the value of education for all children, not just boys.
While literacy rates in general have increased, women still make up over 60 percent of those that are illiterate. There's a number of reasons and one of the main reasons is that even when girls are enrolled often they are forced to drop out for various reasons .... I think one of the main reasons remains social attitudes, but it's also a question of providing infrastructure, schools closer to communities ... we also have to change teaching practices .... The issue is not only about access but also improving the quality of learning .... Often, even when girls are enrolled, they face many other problems - acute discrimination, [a] curriculum [that] is not accurately matched to the needs of all children .... We have to work on access, quality and other measures to ensure that girls not only get into school but actually do learn."
Jordan Naidoo, a senior adviser on education for the UN children's charity UNICEF.
Emerging markets are having a tough time the world over, but who is to blame? Is it the rich world's monetary policies or have more deep-seated problems merely been masked for years by stellar economic growth?
A few months ago, the headline was simple: The blame for slumping currencies from Brazil to Indonesia was to be put firmly at the door of the United States Federal Reserve.
Guido Mantenga, Brazil's finance minister, made it clear when he declared: "We are now facing new turbulence in the financial markets caused by the Fed, which has caused serious problems not only in Brazil but around the world."
But there are those who say all is not as it seems.
In India, for example, Raghuram Rajan, the new governor of the Central Bank, faces an uphill challenge. That country's appetite for gold and oil means that it is running a current account deficit, while subsidies and welfare programmes have increased its budget deficit. And rampant inflation and corruption are only making the situation worse.
Then there is another aspect to this problem. According to Bloomberg, emerging markets, with the exception of China, have more than $2.8tn of currency reserves. But it seems that they are saving that money and using interest rates to stop the outflow of money, which is failing to have the desired impact of slowing a rout in currencies.
At the G20 in St Petersburg, BRICS nations pledged to create a $100bn pool of currency reserves to protect themselves from any shocks. Despite that pledge, China and Russia stressed the need for nations to look within to rebalance their economies, thus ruling out bailouts.
Indonesia is a key example of the troubles afflicting emerging markets. Until a year ago, its economy was doing well. But now its currency has plunged, growth is slowing and inflation is increasing rapidly. The government has announced new economic measures, including the easing of regulations and tax deductions, in a bid to restore investor confidence, but will this be enough to fix one of the most important economies in Asia? On this edition of Counting the Cost, we revisit the world's falling currencies. But this time we turn the spotlight on emerging economies and ask if they need to share some of the blame for their malaise.
Water wars Will the wars of the future be fought over water?
Many of us can simply turn on a tap and have near unlimited access to water. But what happens when this isn't the case? And are many of us oblivious to just what a source of conflict water can be?
Take the River Nile, for example. That flows through 11 African countries and has prompted all sorts of battles for its control. Then there is the River Jordan. Jordan, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories depend on it. And the diversion of the river was one of the causes of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The Euphrates River has been at the heart of conflict between Turkey and Syria in the past, while India and Pakistan are in disagreement over the water that flows from Indian-administered Kashmir into Pakistan's Indus River basin.
Will these types of conflicts become more widespread and serious? It is World Water Week, so Counting the Cost decided to take a closer look at a potential source of conflict.
Africa's aviation hub? If you think of an aviation hub, what comes to mind? London's Heathrow for Europe, Changi Airport in Singapore, or Dubai in the Middle East, perhaps?
But could Nigeria fulfil this role for Africa?
More than 10 million people travel through its 22 airports each year and that number is set to increase to 50 million over the next decade.
China has invested $500m to build more international terminals in the country and to assist with training and investment in virtually every area of the aviation sector.
"Essentially what we want to accomplish, at the end of the day, is to have Nigeria become the natural hub for the region, and then extend it for the continent, because we want to leverage on the population that we have," Princess Stella Adaeze Oduah, Nigeria's minister of aviation, declared.
However, some travellers passing through Nigeria's 22 airports say they are yet to feel the changes and improvements being made in the sector.
"Its been chaotic. I think if there had been a little bit more organisation, in terms of where departures are, arrivals, in terms of customs checks and so forth, it would be a better experience," a passenger named Prithvi told Al Jazeera.
Analysts say previous governments have not been committed to improving the aviation sector, but that this administration is investing heavily in infrastructure and training to get its ambitious ideas off the ground.
So, will the Nigerian government achieve its goal? And if it does, how could this impact the Nigerian economy?
Almost three weeks ago in Syria, more than 1,000 innocent people – including hundreds of children – were murdered in the worst chemical weapons attack of the 21st century. And the United States has presented a powerful case to the world that the Syrian government was responsible for this horrific attack on its own people.
This was not only a direct attack on human dignity; it is a serious threat to our national security. There’s a reason governments representing 98 percent of the world’s people have agreed to ban the use of chemical weapons. Not only because they cause death and destruction in the most indiscriminate and inhumane way possible – but because they can also fall into the hands of terrorist groups who wish to do us harm.
That’s why, last weekend, I announced that, as Commander in Chief, I decided that the United States should take military action against the Syrian regime. This is not a decision I made lightly. Deciding to use military force is the most solemn decision we can make as a nation.
As the leader of the world’s oldest Constitutional democracy, I also know that our country will be stronger if we act together, and our actions will be more effective. That’s why I asked Members of Congress to debate this issue and vote on authorizing the use of force.
What we’re talking about is not an open-ended intervention. This would not be another Iraq or Afghanistan. There would be no American boots on the ground. Any action we take would be limited, both in time and scope – designed to deter the Syrian government from gassing its own people again and degrade its ability to do so.
I know that the American people are weary after a decade of war, even as the war in Iraq has ended, and the war in Afghanistan is winding down. That’s why we’re not putting our troops in the middle of somebody else’s war.
But we are the United States of America. We cannot turn a blind eye to images like the ones we’ve seen out of Syria. Failing to respond to this outrageous attack would increase the risk that chemical weapons could be used again; that they would fall into the hands of terrorists who might use them against us, and it would send a horrible signal to other nations that there would be no consequences for their use of these weapons. All of which would pose a serious threat to our national security.
That’s why we can’t ignore chemical weapons attacks like this one – even if they happen halfway around the world. And that’s why I call on Members of Congress, from both parties, to come together and stand up for the kind of world we want to live in; the kind of world we want to leave our children and future generations.
Remarks by the President at the "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington
Lincoln Memorial
THE PRESIDENT: To the King family, who have sacrificed and inspired so much; to President Clinton; President Carter; Vice President Biden and Jill; fellow Americans.
Five decades ago today, Americans came to this honored place to lay claim to a promise made at our founding: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
In 1963, almost 200 years after those words were set to paper, a full century after a great war was fought and emancipation proclaimed, that promise -- those truths -- remained unmet. And so they came by the thousands from every corner of our country, men and women, young and old, blacks who longed for freedom and whites who could no longer accept freedom for themselves while witnessing the subjugation of others.
Across the land, congregations sent them off with food and with prayer. In the middle of the night, entire blocks of Harlem came out to wish them well. With the few dollars they scrimped from their labor, some bought tickets and boarded buses, even if they couldn’t always sit where they wanted to sit. Those with less money hitchhiked or walked. They were seamstresses and steelworkers, students and teachers, maids and Pullman porters. They shared simple meals and bunked together on floors. And then, on a hot summer day, they assembled here, in our nation’s capital, under the shadow of the Great Emancipator -- to offer testimony of injustice, to petition their government for redress, and to awaken America’s long-slumbering conscience.
We rightly and best remember Dr. King’s soaring oratory that day, how he gave mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions; how he offered a salvation path for oppressed and oppressors alike. His words belong to the ages, possessing a power and prophecy unmatched in our time. But we would do well to recall that day itself also belonged to those ordinary people whose names never appeared in the history books, never got on TV. Many had gone to segregated schools and sat at segregated lunch counters. They lived in towns where they couldn’t vote and cities where their votes didn’t matter. They were couples in love who couldn’t marry, soldiers who fought for freedom abroad that they found denied to them at home. They had seen loved ones beaten, and children fire-hosed, and they had every reason to lash out in anger, or resign themselves to a bitter fate.
And yet they chose a different path. In the face of hatred, they prayed for their tormentors. In the face of violence, they stood up and sat in, with the moral force of nonviolence. Willingly, they went to jail to protest unjust laws, their cells swelling with the sound of freedom songs. A lifetime of indignities had taught them that no man can take away the dignity and grace that God grants us. They had learned through hard experience what Frederick Douglass once taught -- that freedom is not given, it must be won, through struggle and discipline, persistence and faith.
That was the spirit they brought here that day. That was the spirit young people like John Lewis brought to that day. That was the spirit that they carried with them, like a torch, back to their cities and their neighborhoods. That steady flame of conscience and courage that would sustain them through the campaigns to come -- through boycotts and voter registration drives and smaller marches far from the spotlight; through the loss of four little girls in Birmingham, and the carnage of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and the agony of Dallas and California and Memphis. Through setbacks and heartbreaks and gnawing doubt, that flame of justice flickered; it never died.
And because they kept marching, America changed. Because they marched, a Civil Rights law was passed. Because they marched, a Voting Rights law was signed. Because they marched, doors of opportunity and education swung open so their daughters and sons could finally imagine a life for themselves beyond washing somebody else’s laundry or shining somebody else’s shoes. (Applause.) Because they marched, city councils changed and state legislatures changed, and Congress changed, and, yes, eventually, the White House changed. (Applause.)
Because they marched, America became more free and more fair -- not just for African Americans, but for women and Latinos, Asians and Native Americans; for Catholics, Jews, and Muslims; for gays, for Americans with a disability. America changed for you and for me. and the entire world drew strength from that example, whether the young people who watched from the other side of an Iron Curtain and would eventually tear down that wall, or the young people inside South Africa who would eventually end the scourge of apartheid. (Applause.)
Those are the victories they won, with iron wills and hope in their hearts. That is the transformation that they wrought, with each step of their well-worn shoes. That’s the debt that I and millions of Americans owe those maids, those laborers, those porters, those secretaries; folks who could have run a company maybe if they had ever had a chance; those white students who put themselves in harm’s way, even though they didn't have; those Japanese Americans who recalled their own internment; those Jewish Americans who had survived the Holocaust; people who could have given up and given in, but kept on keeping on, knowing that “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” (Applause.)
On the battlefield of justice, men and women without rank or wealth or title or fame would liberate us all in ways that our children now take for granted, as people of all colors and creeds live together and learn together and walk together, and fight alongside one another, and love one another, and judge one another by the content of our character in this greatest nation on Earth. (Applause.)
To dismiss the magnitude of this progress -- to suggest, as some sometimes do, that little has changed -- that dishonors the courage and the sacrifice of those who paid the price to march in those years. (Applause.) Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Martin Luther King Jr. -- they did not die in vain. (Applause.) Their victory was great.
But we would dishonor those heroes as well to suggest that the work of this nation is somehow complete. The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn’t bend on its own. To secure the gains this country has made requires constant vigilance, not complacency. Whether by challenging those who erect new barriers to the vote, or ensuring that the scales of justice work equally for all, and the criminal justice system is not simply a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails, it requires vigilance. (Applause.)
And we'll suffer the occasional setback. But we will win these fights. This country has changed too much. (Applause.) People of goodwill, regardless of party, are too plentiful for those with ill will to change history’s currents. (Applause.)
In some ways, though, the securing of civil rights, voting rights, the eradication of legalized discrimination -- the very significance of these victories may have obscured a second goal of the March. For the men and women who gathered 50 years ago were not there in search of some abstract ideal. They were there seeking jobs as well as justice -- (applause) -- not just the absence of oppression but the presence of economic opportunity. (Applause.)
For what does it profit a man, Dr. King would ask, to sit at an integrated lunch counter if he can’t afford the meal? This idea -- that one’s liberty is linked to one’s livelihood; that the pursuit of happiness requires the dignity of work, the skills to find work, decent pay, some measure of material security -- this idea was not new. Lincoln himself understood the Declaration of Independence in such terms -- as a promise that in due time, “the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.” And Dr. King explained that the goals of African Americans were identical to working people of all races: “Decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children, and respect in the community.”
What King was describing has been the dream of every American. It's what's lured for centuries new arrivals to our shores. And it’s along this second dimension -- of economic opportunity, the chance through honest toil to advance one’s station in life -- where the goals of 50 years ago have fallen most short.
Yes, there have been examples of success within black America that would have been unimaginable a half century ago. But as has already been noted, black unemployment has remained almost twice as high as white unemployment, Latino unemployment close behind. The gap in wealth between races has not lessened, it's grown. And as President Clinton indicated, the position of all working Americans, regardless of color, has eroded, making the dream Dr. King described even more elusive.
For over a decade, working Americans of all races have seen their wages and incomes stagnate, even as corporate profits soar, even as the pay of a fortunate few explodes. Inequality has steadily risen over the decades. Upward mobility has become harder. In too many communities across this country, in cities and suburbs and rural hamlets, the shadow of poverty casts a pall over our youth, their lives a fortress of substandard schools and diminished prospects, inadequate health care and perennial violence.
And so as we mark this anniversary, we must remind ourselves that the measure of progress for those who marched 50 years ago was not merely how many blacks could join the ranks of millionaires. It was whether this country would admit all people who are willing to work hard regardless of race into the ranks of a middle-class life. (Applause.)
The test was not, and never has been, whether the doors of opportunity are cracked a bit wider for a few. It was whether our economic system provides a fair shot for the many -- for the black custodian and the white steelworker, the immigrant dishwasher and the Native American veteran. To win that battle, to answer that call -- this remains our great unfinished business.
We shouldn’t fool ourselves. The task will not be easy. Since 1963, the economy has changed. The twin forces of technology and global competition have subtracted those jobs that once provided a foothold into the middle class -- reduced the bargaining power of American workers. And our politics has suffered. Entrenched interests, those who benefit from an unjust status quo, resisted any government efforts to give working families a fair deal -- marshaling an army of lobbyists and opinion makers to argue that minimum wage increases or stronger labor laws or taxes on the wealthy who could afford it just to fund crumbling schools, that all these things violated sound economic principles. We'd be told that growing inequality was a price for a growing economy, a measure of this free market; that greed was good and compassion ineffective, and those without jobs or health care had only themselves to blame. And then, there were those elected officials who found it useful to practice the old politics of division, doing their best to convince middle-class Americans of a great untruth -- that government was somehow itself to blame for their growing economic insecurity; that distant bureaucrats were taking their hard-earned dollars to benefit the welfare cheat or the illegal immigrant.
And then, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that during the course of 50 years, there were times when some of us claiming to push for change lost our way. The anguish of assassinations set off self-defeating riots. Legitimate grievances against police brutality tipped into excuse-making for criminal behavior. Racial politics could cut both ways, as the transformative message of unity and brotherhood was drowned out by the language of recrimination. And what had once been a call for equality of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead was too often framed as a mere desire for government support -- as if we had no agency in our own liberation, as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child, and the bigotry of others was reason to give up on yourself.
All of that history is how progress stalled. That's how hope was diverted. It's how our country remained divided. But the good news is, just as was true in 1963, we now have a choice. We can continue down our current path, in which the gears of this great democracy grind to a halt and our children accept a life of lower expectations; where politics is a zero-sum game where a few do very well while struggling families of every race fight over a shrinking economic pie -- that’s one path. Or we can have the courage to change.
The March on Washington teaches us that we are not trapped by the mistakes of history; that we are masters of our fate. But it also teaches us that the promise of this nation will only be kept when we work together. We’ll have to reignite the embers of empathy and fellow feeling, the coalition of conscience that found expression in this place 50 years ago.
And I believe that spirit is there, that truth force inside each of us. I see it when a white mother recognizes her own daughter in the face of a poor black child. I see it when the black youth thinks of his own grandfather in the dignified steps of an elderly white man. It’s there when the native-born recognizing that striving spirit of the new immigrant; when the interracial couple connects the pain of a gay couple who are discriminated against and understands it as their own.
That’s where courage comes from -- when we turn not from each other, or on each other, but towards one another, and we find that we do not walk alone. That’s where courage comes from. (Applause.)
And with that courage, we can stand together for good jobs and just wages. With that courage, we can stand together for the right to health care in the richest nation on Earth for every person. (Applause.) With that courage, we can stand together for the right of every child, from the corners of Anacostia to the hills of Appalachia, to get an education that stirs the mind and captures the spirit, and prepares them for the world that awaits them. (Applause.)
With that courage, we can feed the hungry, and house the homeless, and transform bleak wastelands of poverty into fields of commerce and promise.
America, I know the road will be long, but I know we can get there. Yes, we will stumble, but I know we’ll get back up. That’s how a movement happens. That’s how history bends. That's how when somebody is faint of heart, somebody else brings them along and says, come on, we’re marching. (Applause.)
There’s a reason why so many who marched that day, and in the days to come, were young -- for the young are unconstrained by habits of fear, unconstrained by the conventions of what is. They dared to dream differently, to imagine something better. And I am convinced that same imagination, the same hunger of purpose stirs in this generation.
We might not face the same dangers of 1963, but the fierce urgency of now remains. We may never duplicate the swelling crowds and dazzling procession of that day so long ago -- no one can match King’s brilliance -- but the same flame that lit the heart of all who are willing to take a first step for justice, I know that flame remains. (Applause.)
That tireless teacher who gets to class early and stays late and dips into her own pocket to buy supplies because she believes that every child is her charge -- she’s marching. (Applause.)
That successful businessman who doesn't have to but pays his workers a fair wage and then offers a shot to a man, maybe an ex-con who is down on his luck -- he’s marching. (Applause.)
The mother who pours her love into her daughter so that she grows up with the confidence to walk through the same door as anybody’s son -- she’s marching. (Applause.)
The father who realizes the most important job he’ll ever have is raising his boy right, even if he didn't have a father -- especially if he didn't have a father at home -- he’s marching. (Applause.)
The battle-scarred veterans who devote themselves not only to helping their fellow warriors stand again, and walk again, and run again, but to keep serving their country when they come home -- they are marching. (Applause.)
Everyone who realizes what those glorious patriots knew on that day -- that change does not come from Washington, but to Washington; that change has always been built on our willingness, We The People, to take on the mantle of citizenship -- you are marching. (Applause.)
And that’s the lesson of our past. That's the promise of tomorrow -- that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it. That when millions of Americans of every race and every region, every faith and every station, can join together in a spirit of brotherhood, then those mountains will be made low, and those rough places will be made plain, and those crooked places, they straighten out towards grace, and we will vindicate the faith of those who sacrificed so much and live up to the true meaning of our creed, as one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. (Applause.)
Source: TED My name is Dan Cohen, and I am academic, as he said. And what that means is that I argue. It's an important part of my life, and I like to argue. And I'm not just an academic, I'm a philosopher, so I like to think that I'm actually pretty good at arguing. But I also like to think a lot about arguing.
And thinking about arguing, I've come across some puzzles, and one of the puzzles is that as I've been thinking about arguing over the years, and it's been decades now, I've gotten better at arguing, but the more that I argue and the better I get at arguing, the more that I lose. And that's a puzzle. And the other puzzle is that I'm actually okay with that. Why is it that I'm okay with losing and why is it that I think that good arguers are actually better at losing?
Well, there's some other puzzles. One is, why do we argue? Who benefits from arguments? And when I think about arguments now, I'm talking about, let's call them academic arguments or cognitive arguments, where something cognitive is at stake. Is this proposition true? Is this theory a good theory? Is this a viable interpretation of the data or the text? And so on. I'm not interested really in arguments about whose turn it is to do the dishes or who has to take out the garbage. Yeah, we have those arguments too. I tend to win those arguments, because I know the tricks. But those aren't the important arguments. I'm interested in academic arguments today, and here are the things that puzzle me.
First, what do good arguers win when they win an argument? What do I win if I convince you that utilitarianism isn't really the right framework for thinking about ethical theories? So what do we win when we win an argument? Even before that, what does it matter to me whether you have this idea that Kant's theory works or Mill's the right ethicist to follow? It's no skin off my back whether you think functionalism is a viable theory of mind. So why do we even try to argue? Why do we try to convince other people to believe things that they don't want to believe? And is that even a nice thing to do? Is that a nice way to treat another human being, try and make them think something they don't want to think?
Well, my answer is going to make reference to three models for arguments. The first model, let's call this the dialectical model, is that we think of arguments as war, and you know what that's like. There's a lot of screaming and shouting and winning and losing, and that's not really a very helpful model for arguing but it's a pretty common and entrenched model for arguing.
But there's a second model for arguing: arguments as proofs. Think of a mathematician's argument. Here's my argument. Does it work? Is it any good? Are the premises warranted? Are the inferences valid? Does the conclusion follow from the premises? No opposition, no adversariality, not necessarily any arguing in the adversarial sense.
But there's a third model to keep in mind that I think is going to be very helpful, and that is arguments as performances, arguments as being in front of an audience. We can think of a politician trying to present a position, trying to convince the audience of something. But there's another twist on this model that I really think is important, namely that when we argue before an audience, sometimes the audience has a more participatory role in the argument, that is, arguments are also audiences in front of juries who make a judgment and decide the case. Let's call this the rhetorical model, where you have to tailor your argument to the audience at hand. You know, presenting a sound, well-argued, tight argument in English before a francophone audience just isn't going to work. So we have these models -- argument as war, argument as proof, and argument as performance.
Of those three, the argument as war is the dominant one. It dominates how we talk about arguments, it dominates how we think about arguments, and because of that, it shapes how we argue, our actual conduct in arguments.
Now, when we talk about arguments, yeah, we talk in a very militaristic language. We want strong arguments, arguments that have a lot of punch, arguments that are right on target. We want to have our defenses up and our strategies all in order. We want killer arguments. That's the kind of argument we want. It is the dominant way of thinking about arguments. When I'm talking about arguments, that's probably what you thought of, the adversarial model. But the war metaphor, the war paradigm or model for thinking about arguments, has, I think, deforming effects on how we argue.
First it elevates tactics over substance. You can take a class in logic, argumentation. You learn all about the subterfuges that people use to try and win arguments, the false steps. It magnifies the us-versus-them aspect of it. It makes it adversarial. It's polarizing. And the only foreseeable outcomes are triumph, glorious triumph, or abject, ignominious defeat. I think those are deforming effects, and worst of all, it seems to prevent things like negotiation or deliberation or compromise or collaboration. Think about that one. Have you ever entered an argument thinking, "Let's see if we can hash something out rather than fight it out. What can we work out together?" And I think the argument-as-war metaphor inhibits those other kinds of resolutions to argumentation. And finally, this is really the worst thing, arguments don't seem to get us anywhere. They're dead ends. They are roundabouts or traffic jams or gridlock in conversation. We don't get anywhere.
Oh, and one more thing, and as an educator, this is the one that really bothers me: If argument is war, then there's an implicit equation of learning with losing. And let me explain what I mean. Suppose you and I have an argument. You believe a proposition, P, and I don't. And I say, "Well why do you believe P?" And you give me your reasons. And I object and say, "Well, what about ...?" And you answer my objection. And I have a question: "Well, what do you mean? How does it apply over here?" And you answer my question. Now, suppose at the end of the day, I've objected, I've questioned, I've raised all sorts of counter-considerations, and in every case you've responded to my satisfaction. And so at the end of the day, I say, "You know what? I guess you're right. P." So I have a new belief. And it's not just any belief, but it's a well-articulated, examined, it's a battle-tested belief.
Great cognitive gain. Okay. Who won that argument? Well, the war metaphor seems to force us into saying you won, even though I'm the only one who made any cognitive gain. What did you gain cognitively from convincing me? Sure, you got some pleasure out of it, maybe your ego stroked, maybe you get some professional status in the field. This guy's a good arguer. But cognitively, now -- just from a cognitive point of view -- who was the winner? The war metaphor forces us into thinking that you're the winner and I lost, even though I gained. And there's something wrong with that picture. And that's the picture I really want to change if we can.
So how can we find ways to make arguments yield something positive? What we need is new exit strategies for arguments. But we're not going to have new exit strategies for arguments until we have new entry approaches to arguments. We need to think of new kinds of arguments. In order to do that, well, I don't know how to do that. That's the bad news. The argument-as-war metaphor is just, it's a monster. It's just taken up habitation in our mind, and there's no magic bullet that's going to kill it. There's no magic wand that's going to make it disappear. I don't have an answer. But I have some suggestions, and here's my suggestion.
If we want to think of new kinds of arguments, what we need to do is think of new kinds of arguers. So try this. Think of all the roles that people play in arguments. There's the proponent and the opponent in an adversarial, dialectical argument. There's the audience in rhetorical arguments. There's the reasoner in arguments as proofs. All these different roles. Now, can you imagine an argument in which you are the arguer, but you're also in the audience watching yourself argue? Can you imagine yourself watching yourself argue, losing the argument, and yet still, at the end of the argument, say, "Wow, that was a good argument." Can you do that? I think you can. And I think, if you can imagine that kind of argument where the loser says to the winner and the audience and the jury can say, "Yeah, that was a good argument," then you have imagined a good argument. And more than that, I think you've imagined a good arguer, an arguer that's worthy of the kind of arguer you should try to be.
Now, I lose a lot of arguments. It takes practice to become a good arguer in the sense of being able to benefit from losing, but fortunately, I've had many, many colleagues who have been willing to step up and provide that practice for me.
On August 21, Bradley Manning, the US soldier convicted of leaking a trove of secret government documents to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, was sentenced to 35 years in prison having been convicted in July of 20 charges against him, including espionage.
This is one of the latest developments in the ongoing story of secrecy and surveillance in Barack Obama’s America.
When we first took an extended look at the White House’s war on whistleblowers a year ago, little did we know that there was another figure waiting in the wings, about to make political history.
Edward Snowden took the stage in June 2013, revealing the sweeping extent of the NSA's surveillance programme. He has gone down as one of US' most important whistleblowers of all time, becoming the seventh person to be charged by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act, more than double the number of prosecutions of all previous presidential administrations combined.
For the most part, coverage of this story by the US mainstream media has been interesting, to say the least.
At the beginning of Manning’s trial, many mainstream organisations did not even bother turning up. And across the airwaves, both Manning and Snowden had their characters assassinated, their pasts smeared and their motives pathologised.
Then the journalist who broke the Edward Snowden story, the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, became the subject of a hostile media reception himself, something that the other messenger, Julian Assange, can relate to.
And in an ironic twist, the US media establishment has not been immune to government surveillance itself, as news outlets like The Associated Press and Fox News, discovered the government was eavesdropping on some of their own reporting on national security issues. Facing mounting pressure, President Obama acknowledged that his government needs to be more transparent about surveillance. He has pledged to carry out a review of the Patriot Act to see what changes need to be made to protect privacy and civil liberties. This is a story journalists and citizens in the US and around the world will be watching closely.
Taking us through the debate are Michael Ratner, the president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights; Ed Pilkington, a chief reporter for the American edition of TheGuardian newspaper; Chase Madar, the author of The Passion Of Bradley Manning; Michael German, a former FBI agent and member of the American Civil Liberties Union; and Jeffrey D Gordon, former Defense department spokesman.
In the second half of the show we speak to Matthew Miller, a defender of the Obama administration’s crackdown on whistleblowers and a former director of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice. He has also served as Attorney General Eric Holder’s spokesman during Obama’s first two years in office.
Early last year, he wrote a piece in The Daily Beast, defending the administration’s approach to those who leak classified information. “Some things are secret for a reason,” he argued, “and when government employees violate the law, to disclose information that undermines our national security, there must be consequences.”
Hi, everybody. Over the past month, I’ve been visiting towns across America, talking about what our country needs to do to secure a better bargain for the middle class.
This week, I met with high school and college students in New York and Pennsylvania to discuss the surest path to the middle class – some form of higher education.
But at a moment when a higher education has never been more important, it’s also never been more expensive. That’s why, over the past four years, we’ve helped make college more affordable for millions of students and families with grants and loans that go farther from before.
But students and families and taxpayers cannot just keep subsidizing college costs that keep going up and up. Not when the average student now graduates more than $26,000 in debt. We cannot price the middle class out of a college education. That’s why I proposed major new reforms to make college more affordable and make it easier for folks to pay for their education. First, we’re going to start rating colleges based on opportunity – are they helping students from all kinds of backgrounds succeed, and on outcomes – their value to students and parents. In time, we’ll use those ratings to make sure that the colleges that keep their tuition down are the ones that will see their taxpayer funding go up.
Second, we’re going to jumpstart competition between colleges over innovations that help more students graduate in less time, at less cost, while maintaining quality. A number of schools are already testing new approaches, like putting more courses online or basing course credit on competence, not just hours spent in the classroom.
And third, we’re going to help more students responsibly manage their debt, by making more of them eligible for a loan repayment program called Pay-As-You-Earn, which caps your loan payments at 10 percent of what you make. And we’ll reach out directly to students to make sure they know that this program exists.
These reforms won’t be popular with everybody. But the path we’re on now is unsustainable for our students and our economy.
Higher education shouldn’t be a luxury, or a roll of the dice; it’s an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford.
The MIT professor lays out how the majority of U.S. policies are opposed to what wide swaths of the public want
By Noam Chomsky The following is a transcript of a recent speech delivered Noam Chomsky in Bonn, Germany, at DW Global Media Forum, Bonn, Germany. It was previously published at Alternet.
I’d like to comment on topics that I think should regularly be on the front pages but are not — and in many crucial cases are scarcely mentioned at all or are presented in ways that seem to me deceptive because they’re framed almost reflexively in terms of doctrines of the powerful.
In these comments I’ll focus primarily on the United States for several reasons: One, it’s the most important country in terms of its power and influence. Second, it’s the most advanced – not in its inherent character, but in the sense that because of its power, other societies tend to move in that direction. The third reason is just that I know it better. But I think what I say generalizes much more widely – at least to my knowledge, obviously there are some variations. So I’ll be concerned then with tendencies in American society and what they portend for the world, given American power.
American power is diminishing, as it has been in fact since its peak in 1945, but it’s still incomparable. And it’s dangerous. Obama’s remarkable global terror campaign and the limited, pathetic reaction to it in the West is one shocking example. And it is a campaign of international terrorism – by far the most extreme in the world. Those who harbor any doubts on that should read the report issued by Stanford University and New York University, and actually I’ll return to even more serious examples than international terrorism.
According to received doctrine, we live in capitalist democracies, which are the best possible system, despite some flaws. There’s been an interesting debate over the years about the relation between capitalism and democracy, for example, are they even compatible? I won’t be pursuing this because I’d like to discuss a different system – what we could call the “really existing capitalist democracy”, RECD for short, pronounced “wrecked” by accident. To begin with, how does RECD compare with democracy? Well that depends on what we mean by “democracy”. There are several versions of this. One, there is a kind of received version. It’s soaring rhetoric of the Obama variety, patriotic speeches, what children are taught in school, and so on. In the U.S. version, it’s government “of, by and for the people”. And it’s quite easy to compare that with RECD.
In the United States, one of the main topics of academic political science is the study of attitudes and policy and their correlation. The study of attitudes is reasonably easy in the United States: heavily-polled society, pretty serious and accurate polls, and policy you can see, and you can compare them. And the results are interesting. In the work that’s essentially the gold standard in the field, it’s concluded that for roughly 70% of the population – the lower 70% on the wealth/income scale – they have no influence on policy whatsoever. They’re effectively disenfranchised. As you move up the wealth/income ladder, you get a little bit more influence on policy. When you get to the top, which is maybe a tenth of one percent, people essentially get what they want, i.e. they determine the policy. So the proper term for that is not democracy; it’s plutocracy.
Inquiries of this kind turn out to be dangerous stuff because they can tell people too much about the nature of the society in which they live. So fortunately, Congress has banned funding for them, so we won’t have to worry about them in the future.
These characteristics of RECD show up all the time. So the major domestic issue in the United States for the public is jobs. Polls show that very clearly. For the very wealthy and the financial institutions, the major issue is the deficit. Well, what about policy? There’s now a sequester in the United States, a sharp cutback in funds. Is that because of jobs or is it because of the deficit? Well, the deficit.
Europe, incidentally, is much worse – so outlandish that even The Wall Street Journal has been appalled by the disappearance of democracy in Europe. …[I]t had an article [this year] which concluded that “the French, the Spanish, the Irish, the Dutch, Portuguese, Greeks, Slovenians, Slovakians and Cypriots have to varying degrees voted against the currency bloc’s economic model since the crisis began three years ago. Yet economic policies have changed little in response to one electoral defeat after another. The left has replaced the right; the right has ousted the left. Even the center-right trounced Communists (in Cyprus) – but the economic policies have essentially remained the same: governments will continue to cut spending and raise taxes.” It doesn’t matter what people think and “national governments must follow macro-economic directives set by the European Commission”. Elections are close to meaningless, very much as in Third World countries that are ruled by the international financial institutions. That’s what Europe has chosen to become. It doesn’t have to.
Returning to the United States, where the situation is not quite that bad, there’s the same disparity between public opinion and policy on a very wide range of issues. Take for example the issue of minimum wage. The one view is that the minimum wage ought to be indexed to the cost of living and high enough to prevent falling below the poverty line. Eighty percent of the public support that and forty percent of the wealthy. What’s the minimum wage? Going down, way below these levels. It’s the same with laws that facilitate union activity: strongly supported by the public; opposed by the very wealthy – disappearing. The same is true on national healthcare. The U.S., as you may know, has a health system which is an international scandal, it has twice the per capita costs of other OECD countries and relatively poor outcomes. The only privatized, pretty much unregulated system. The public doesn’t like it.
They’ve been calling for national healthcare, public options, for years, but the financial institutions think it’s fine, so it stays: stasis. In fact, if the United States had a healthcare system like comparable countries there wouldn’t be any deficit. The famous deficit would be erased, which doesn’t matter that much anyway.
One of the most interesting cases has to do with taxes. For 35 years there have been polls on ‘what do you think taxes ought to be?’ Large majorities have held that the corporations and the wealthy should pay higher taxes. They’ve steadily been going down through this period. On and on, the policy throughout is almost the opposite of public opinion, which is a typical property of RECD.
In the past, the United States has sometimes, kind of sardonically, been described as a one-party state: the business party with two factions called Democrats and Republicans. That’s no longer true. It’s still a one-party state, the business party. But it only has one faction. The faction is moderate Republicans, who are now called Democrats. There are virtually no moderate Republicans in what’s called the Republican Party and virtually no liberal Democrats in what’s called the Democratic [sic] Party. It’s basically a party of what would be moderate Republicans and similarly, Richard Nixon would be way at the left of the political spectrum today. Eisenhower would be in outer space.
There is still something called the Republican Party, but it long ago abandoned any pretence of being a normal parliamentary party. It’s in lock-step service to the very rich and the corporate sector and has a catechism that everyone has to chant in unison, kind of like the old Communist Party. The distinguished conservative commentator, one of the most respected – Norman Ornstein – describes today’s Republican Party as, in his words, “a radical insurgency – ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, dismissive of its political opposition” – a serious danger to the society, as he points out.
In short, Really Existing Capitalist Democracy is very remote from the soaring rhetoric about democracy. But there is another version of democracy. Actually it’s the standard doctrine of progressive, contemporary democratic theory. So I’ll give some illustrative quotes from leading figures – incidentally not figures on the right. These are all good Woodrow Wilson-FDR-Kennedy liberals, mainstream ones in fact. So according to this version of democracy, “the public are ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. They have to be put in their place. Decisions must be in the hands of an intelligent minority of responsible men, who have to be protected from the trampling and roar of the bewildered herd”. The herd has a function, as it’s called. They’re supposed to lend their weight every few years, to a choice among the responsible men. But apart from that, their function is to be “spectators, not participants in action” – and it’s for their own good. Because as the founder of liberal political science pointed out, we should not succumb to “democratic dogmatisms about people being the best judges of their own interest”. They’re not. We’re the best judges, so it would be irresponsible to let them make choices just as it would be irresponsible to let a three-year-old run into the street. Attitudes and opinions therefore have to be controlled for the benefit of those you are controlling. It’s necessary to “regiment their minds”. It’s necessary also to discipline the institutions responsible for the “indoctrination of the young.” All quotes, incidentally. And if we can do this, we might be able to get back to the good old days when “Truman had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers.” This is all from icons of the liberal establishment, the leading progressive democratic theorists. Some of you may recognize some of the quotes.
The roots of these attitudes go back quite far. They go back to the first stirrings of modern democracy. The first were in England in the 17th Century. As you know, later in the United States. And they persist in fundamental ways. The first democratic revolution was England in the 1640s. There was a civil war between king and parliament. But the gentry, the people who called themselves “the men of best quality”, were appalled by the rising popular forces that were beginning to appear on the public arena. They didn’t want to support either king or parliament. Quote their pamphlets, they didn’t want to be ruled by “knights and gentlemen, who do but oppress us, but we want to be governed by countrymen like ourselves, who know the people’s sores”. That’s a pretty terrifying sight. Now the rabble has been a pretty terrifying sight ever since. Actually it was long before. It remained so a century after the British democratic revolution. The founders of the American republic had pretty much the same view about the rabble. So they determined that “power must be in the hands of the wealth of the nation, the more responsible set of men. Those who have sympathy for property owners and their rights”, and of course for slave owners at the time. In general, men who understand that a fundamental task of government is “to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority”. Those are quotes from James Madison, the main framer – this was in the Constitutional Convention, which is much more revealing than the Federalist Papers which people read. The Federalist Papers were basically a propaganda effort to try to get the public to go along with the system. But the debates in the Constitutional Convention are much more revealing. And in fact the constitutional system was created on that basis. I don’t have time to go through it, but it basically adhered to the principle which was enunciated simply by John Jay, the president of the Continental Congress, then first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and as he put it, “those who own the country ought to govern it”. That’s the primary doctrine of RECD to the present.
There’ve been many popular struggles since – and they’ve won many victories. The masters, however, do not relent. The more freedom is won, the more intense are the efforts to redirect the society to a proper course. And the 20th Century progressive democratic theory that I’ve just sampled is not very different from the RECD that has been achieved, apart from the question of: Which responsible men should rule? Should it be bankers or intellectual elites? Or for that matter should it be the Central Committee in a different version of similar doctrines? Well, another important feature of RECD is that the public must be kept in the dark about what is happening to them. The “herd” must remain “bewildered”. The reasons were explained lucidly by the professor of the science of government at Harvard – that’s the official name – another respected liberal figure, Samuel Huntington. As he pointed out, “power remains strong when it remains in the dark. Exposed to sunlight, it begins to evaporate”. Bradley Manning is facing a life in prison for failure to comprehend this scientific principle. Now Edward Snowden as well. And it works pretty well. If you take a look at polls, it reveals how well it works. So for example, recent polls pretty consistently reveal that Republicans are preferred to Democrats on most issues and crucially on the issues in which the public opposes the policies of the Republicans and favors the policies of the Democrats. One striking example of this is that majorities say that they favor the Republicans on tax policy, while the same majorities oppose those policies. This runs across the board. This is even true of the far right, the Tea Party types. This goes along with an astonishing level of contempt for government. Favorable opinions about Congress are literally in the single digits. The rest of the government as well. It’s all declining sharply.
Results such as these, which are pretty consistent, illustrate demoralization of the public of a kind that’s unusual, although there are examples – the late Weimar Republic comes to mind. The tasks of ensuring that the rabble keep to their function as bewildered spectators, takes many forms. The simplest form is simply to restrict entry into the political system. Iran just had an election, as you know. And it was rightly criticized on the grounds that even to participate, you had to be vetted by the guardian council of clerics. In the United States, you don’t have to be vetted by clerics, but rather you have to be vetted by concentrations of private capital. Unless you pass their filter, you don’t enter the political system – with very rare exceptions.
There are many mechanisms, too familiar to review, but that’s not safe enough either. There are major institutions that are specifically dedicated to undermining authentic democracy. One of them is called the public relations industry. A huge industry, it was in fact developed on the principle that it’s necessary to regiment the minds of men, much as an army regiments its soldiers – I was actually quoting from one of its leading figures before.
The role of the PR industry in elections is explicitly to undermine the school-child version of democracy. What you learn in school is that democracies are based on informed voters making rational decisions. All you have to do is take a look at an electoral campaign run by the PR industry and see that the purpose is to create uninformed voters who will make irrational decisions. For the PR industry that’s a very easy transition from their primary function. Their primary function is commercial advertising. Commercial advertising is designed to undermine markets. If you took an economics course you learned that markets are based on informed consumers making rational choices. If you turn on the TV set, you see that ads are designed to create irrational, uninformed consumers making irrational choices. The whole purpose is to undermine markets in the technical sense.
They’re well aware of it, incidentally. So for example, after Obama’s election in 2008, a couple of months later the advertising industry had its annual conference. Every year they award a prize for the best marketing campaign of the year. That year they awarded it to Obama. He beat out Apple computer, did an even better job of deluding the public – or his PR agents did. If you want to hear some of it, turn on the television today and listen to the soaring rhetoric at the G-8 Summit in Belfast. It’s standard.
There was interesting commentary on this in the business press, primarily The London Financial Times, which had a long article, interviewing executives about what they thought about the election. And they were quite euphoric about this. They said this gives them a new model for how to delude the public. The Obama model could replace the Reagan model, which worked pretty well for a while.
Turning to the economy, the core of the economy today is financial institutions. They’ve vastly expanded since the 1970s, along with a parallel development – accelerated shift of production abroad. There have also been critical changes in the character of financial institutions. If you go back to the 1960s, banks were banks. If you had some money, you put it in the bank to lend it to somebody to buy a house or start a business, or whatever. Now that’s a very marginal aspect of financial institutions today. They’re mostly devoted to intricate, exotic manipulations with markets. And they’re huge. In the United States, financial institutions, big banks mostly, had 40% of corporate profit in 2007. That was on the eve of the financial crisis, for which they were largely responsible. After the crisis, a number of professional economists – Nobel laureate Robert Solow, Harvard’s Benjamin Friedman – wrote articles in which they pointed out that economists haven’t done much study of the impact of the financial institutions on the economy. Which is kind of remarkable, considering its scale. But after the crisis they took a look and they both concluded that probably the impact of the financial institutions on the economy is negative. Actually there are some who are much more outspoken than that. The most respected financial correspondent in the English-speaking world is Martin Wolf of the Financial Times. He writes that the “out-of-control financial sector is eating out the modern market economy from the inside, just as the larva of the spider wasp eats out the host in which it has been laid”. By “the market economy” he means the productive economy.
There’s a recent issue of the main business weekly, Bloomberg Business Week, which reported a study of the IMF that found that the largest banks make no profit. What they earn, according to the IMF analysis, traces to the government insurance policy, the so-called too-big-to-fail policy. There is a widely publicized bailout, but that’s the least of it. There’s a whole series of other devices by which the government insurance policy aids the big banks: cheap credit and many other things. And according to the IMF at least, that’s the totality of their profit. The editors of the journal say this is crucial to understanding why the big banks present such a threat to the global economy – and to the people of the country, of course.
After the crash, there was the first serious attention by professional economists to what’s called systemic risk. They knew it existed but it wasn’t much a topic of investigation. ‘Systemic risk’ means the risk that if a transaction fails, the whole system may collapse. That’s what’s called an externality in economic theory. It’s a footnote. And it’s one of the fundamental flaws of market systems, a well-known, inherent flaw, is externalities. Every transaction has impacts on others which just aren’t taken into account in a market transaction. Systemic risk is a big one. And there are much more serious illustrations than that. I’ll come back to it.
What about the productive economy under RECD? Here there’s a mantra too. The mantra is based on entrepreneurial initiative and consumer choice in a free market. There are agreements established called free-trade agreements, which are based on the mantra. That’s all mythology.
The reality is that there is massive state intervention in the productive economy and the free-trade agreements are anything but free-trade agreements. That should be obvious. Just to take one example: The information technology (IT) revolution, which is driving the economy, that was based on decades of work in effectively the state sector – hard, costly, creative work substantially in the state sector, no consumer choice at all, there was entrepreneurial initiative but it was largely limited to getting government grants or bailouts or procurement. Except by some economists, that’s underestimated but a very significant factor in corporate profit. If you can’t sell something, hand it over the government. They’ll buy it.
After a long period – decades in fact – of hard, creative work, the primary research and development, the results are handed over to private enterprise for commercialization and profit. That’s Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and so on. It’s not quite that simple of course. But that’s a core part of the picture. The system goes way back to the origins of industrial economies, but it’s dramatically true since WWII that this ought to be the core of the study of the productive economy.
Another central aspect of RECD is concentration of capital. In just the past 20 years in the United States, the share of profits of the two hundred largest enterprises has very sharply risen, probably the impact of the Internet, it seems. These tendencies towards oligopoly also undermine the mantra, of course. Interesting topics but I won’t pursue them any further. Instead, I’d like to turn to another question. What are the prospects for the future under RECD? There’s an answer. They’re pretty grim. It’s no secret that there are a number of dark shadows that hover over every topic that we discuss and there are two that are particularly ominous, so I’ll keep to those, though there are others. One is environmental catastrophe. The other is nuclear war. Both of which of course threaten the prospects for decent survival and not in the remote future.
I won’t say very much about the first, environmental catastrophe. That should be obvious. Certainly the scale of the danger should be obvious to anyone with eyes open, anyone who is literate, particularly those who read scientific journals. Every issue of a technical journal virtually has more dire warnings than the last one.
There are various reactions to this around the world. There are some who seek to act decisively to prevent possible catastrophe. At the other extreme, major efforts are underway to accelerate the danger. Leading the effort to intensify the likely disaster is the richest and most powerful country in world history, with incomparable advantages and the most prominent example of RECD – the one that others are striving towards.
Leading the efforts to preserve conditions in which our immediate descendants might have a decent life, are the so-called “primitive” societies: First Nations in Canada, Aboriginal societies in Australia, tribal societies and others like them. The countries that have large and influential indigenous populations are well in the lead in the effort to “defend the Earth”. That’s their phrase. The countries that have driven indigenous populations to extinction or extreme marginalization are racing forward enthusiastically towards destruction. This is one of the major features of contemporary history. One of those things that ought to be on front pages. So take Ecuador, which has a large indigenous population. It’s seeking aid from the rich countries to allow it to keep its substantial hydrocarbon reserves underground, which is where they ought to be. Now meanwhile, the U.S. and Canada are enthusiastically seeking to burn every drop of fossil fuel, including the most dangerous kind – Canadian tar sands – and to do so as quickly and fully as possible – without a side glance on what the world might look like after this extravagant commitment to self-destruction. Actually, every issue of the daily papers suffices to illustrate this lunacy. And lunacy is the right word for it. It’s exactly the opposite of what rationality would demand, unless it’s the skewed rationality of RECD.
Well, there have been massive corporate campaigns to implant and safeguard the lunacy. But despite them, there’s still a real problem in American society. The public is still too committed to scientific rationality. One of the many divergences between policy and opinion is that the American public is close to the global norm in concern about the environment and calling for actions to prevent the catastrophe and that’s a pretty high level. Meanwhile, bipartisan policy is dedicated to ‘bringing it on’, in a phrase that George W. Bush made famous in the case of Iraq. Fortunately, the corporate sector is riding to the rescue to deal with this problem. There is a corporate funded organization – the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). It designs legislation for states. No need to comment on what kind of legislation. They’ve got a lot of clout and money behind them. So the programs tend to get instituted. Right now they’re instituting a new program to try to overcome the excessive rationality of the public. It’s a program of instruction for K-12 (kindergarten to 12th grade in schools). Its publicity says that the idea is to improve critical faculties – I’d certainly be in favor of that – by balanced teaching. ‘Balanced teaching’ means that if a sixth grade class learned something about what’s happening to the climate, they have to be presented with material on climate change denial so that they have balanced teaching and can develop their critical faculties. Maybe that’ll help overcome the failure of massive corporate propaganda campaigns to make the population ignorant and irrational enough to safeguard short-term profit for the rich. It’s pointedly the goal and several states have already accepted it.
Well, it’s worth remembering, without pursuing it that these are deep-seated institutional properties of RECD. They’re not easy to uproot. All of this is apart from the institutional necessity to maximize short-term profit while ignoring an externality that’s vastly more serious even than systemic risk. For systemic risk, the market failure – the culprits – can run to the powerful nanny state that they foster with cap in hand and they’ll be bailed out, as we’ve just observed again and will in the future. In the case of destruction of the environment, the conditions for decent existence, there’s no guardian angel around – nobody to run to with cap in hand. For that reason alone, the prospects for decent survival under RECD are quite dim. Let’s turn to the other shadow: nuclear war. It’s a threat that’s been with us for 70 years. It still is. In some ways it’s growing. One of the reasons for it is that under RECD, the rights and needs of the general population are a minor matter. That extends to security. There is another prevailing mantra, particularly in the academic professions, claiming that governments seek to protect national security. Anyone who has studied international relations theory has heard that. That’s mostly mythology. The governments seek to extend power and domination and to benefit their primary domestic constituencies – in the U.S., primarily the corporate sector. The consequence is that security does not have a high priority. We see that all the time. Right now in fact. Take say Obama’s operation to murder Osama Bin Laden, prime suspect for the 9/11 attack. Obama made an important speech on national security last May 23rd. It was widely covered. There was one crucial paragraph in the speech that was ignored in the coverage. Obama hailed the operation, took pride in it – an operation which incidentally is another step at dismantling the foundations of Anglo-American law, back to the Magna Carta, namely the presumption of innocence. But that’s by now so familiar, it’s not even necessary to talk about it. But there’s more to it. Obama did hail the operation but he added to it that it “cannot be the norm”. The reason is that “the risks were immense”. The Navy SEALs who carried out the murder might have been embroiled in an extended firefight, but even though by luck that didn’t happen, “the cost to our relationship with Pakistan – and the backlash of the Pakistani public over the encroachment on their territory”, the aggression in other words, “was so severe that we’re just now beginning to rebuild this important partnership”.
It’s more than that. Let’s add a couple of details. The SEALs were under orders to fight their way out if they were apprehended. They would not have been left to their fate if they had been, in Obama’s words, been “embroiled in an extended firefight”. The full force of the U.S. military would have been employed to extricate them. Pakistan has a powerful military. It’s well-trained, highly protective of state sovereignty. Of course, it has nuclear weapons. And leading Pakistani specialists on nuclear policy and issues are quite concerned by the exposure of the nuclear weapons system to jihadi elements. It could have escalated to a nuclear war. And in fact it came pretty close. While the SEALs were still inside the Bin Laden compound, the Pakistani chief of staff, General Kayani, was informed of the invasion and he ordered his staff in his words to “confront any unidentified aircraft”. He assumed it was probably coming from India. Meanwhile in Kabul, General David Petraeus, head of the Central Command, ordered “U.S. warplanes to respond if Pakistanis scrambled their fighter jets”. It was that close. Going back to Obama, “by luck” it didn’t happen. But the risk was faced without noticeable concern, without even reporting in fact.
There’s a lot more to say about that operation and its immense cost to Pakistan, but instead of that let’s look more closely at the concern for security more generally. Beginning with security from terror, and then turning to the much more important question of security from instant destruction by nuclear weapons.
As I mentioned, Obama’s now conducting the world’s greatest international terrorist campaign – the drones and special forces campaign. It’s also a terror-generating campaign. The common understanding at the highest level [is] that these actions generate potential terrorists. I’ll quote General Stanley McChrystal, Petraeus’ predecessor. He says that “for every innocent person you kill”, and there are plenty of them, “you create ten new enemies”.
Take the marathon bombing in Boston a couple of months ago, that you all read about. You probably didn’t read about the fact that two days after the marathon bombing there was a drone bombing in Yemen. Usually we don’t happen to hear much about drone bombings. They just go on – just straight terror operations which the media aren’t interested in because we don’t care about international terrorism as long as the victims are somebody else. But this one we happened to know about by accident. There was a young man from the village that was attacked who was in the United States and he happened to testify before Congress. He testified about it. He said that for several years, the jihadi elements in Yemen had been trying to turn the village against Americans, get them to hate Americans. But the villagers didn’t accept it because the only thing they knew about the United States was what he told them. And he liked the United States. So he was telling them it was a great place. So the jihadi efforts didn’t work. Then he said one drone attack has turned the entire village into people who hate America and want to destroy it. They killed a man who everybody knew and they could have easily apprehended if they’d wanted. But in our international terror campaigns we don’t worry about that and we don’t worry about security.
One of the striking examples was the invasion of Iraq. U.S. and British intelligence agencies informed their governments that the invasion of Iraq was likely to lead to an increase in terrorism. They didn’t care. In fact, it did. Terrorism increased by a factor of seven the first year after the Iraqi invasion, according to government statistics. Right now the government is defending the massive surveillance operation. That’s on the front pages. The defense is on grounds that we have to do it to apprehend terrorists.
If there were a free press – an authentic free press – the headlines would be ridiculing this claim on the grounds that policy is designed in such a way that it amplifies the terrorist risk. But you can’t find that, which is one of innumerable indications of how far we are from anything that might be called a free press.
Let’s turn to the more serious problem: instant destruction by nuclear weapons. That’s never been a high concern for state authorities. There are many striking examples. Actually, we know a lot about it because the United States is an unusually free and open society and there’s plenty of internal documents that are released. So we can find out about it if we like. Let’s go back to 1950. In 1950, U.S. security was just overwhelming. There’d never been anything like it in human history. There was one potential danger: ICBMs with hydrogen bomb warheads. They didn’t exist, but they were going to exist sooner or later. The Russians knew that they were way behind in military technology. They offered the U.S. a treaty to ban the development of ICBMs with hydrogen bomb warheads. That would have been a terrific contribution to U.S. security. There is one major history of nuclear weapons policy written by McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor for Kennedy and Johnson. In his study he has a couple of casual sentences on this. He said that he was unable to find even a staff paper discussing this. Here’s a possibility to save the country from total disaster and there wasn’t even a paper discussing it. No one cared. Forget it, we’ll go on to the important things.
A couple of years later, in 1952, Stalin made a public offer, which was pretty remarkable, to permit unification of Germany with internationally supervised free elections, in which the Communists would certainly lose, on one condition – that Germany be demilitarized. That’s hardly a minor issue for the Russians. Germany alone had practically destroyed them several times in the century. Germany militarized and part of a hostile Western alliance is a major threat. That was the offer.
The offer was public. It also of course would have led to an end to the official reason for NATO. It was dismissed with ridicule. Couldn’t be true. There were a few people who took it seriously – James Warburg, a respected international commentator, but he was just dismissed with ridicule. Today, scholars are looking back at it, especially with the Russian archives opening up. And they’re discovering that in fact it was apparently serious. But nobody could pay attention to it because it didn’t accord with policy imperatives – vast production of threat of war.
Let’s go on a couple of years to the late ’50s, when Khrushchev took over. He realized that Russia was way behind economically and that it could not compete with the United States in military technology and hope to carry out economic development, which he was hoping to do. So he offered a sharp mutual cutback in offensive weapons. The Eisenhower administration kind of dismissed it. The Kennedy administration listened. They considered the possibility and they rejected it. Khrushchev went on to introduce a sharp unilateral reduction of offensive weapons. The Kennedy administration observed that and decided to expand offensive military capacity – not just reject it, but expand it. It was already way ahead.
That was one reason why Khrushchev placed missiles in Cuba in 1962 to try to redress the balance slightly. That led to what historian Arthur Schlesinger – Kennedy’s advisor – called “the most dangerous moment in world history” – the Cuban missile crisis. Actually there was another reason for it: the Kennedy administration was carrying out a major terrorist operation against Cuba. Massive terrorism. It’s the kind of terrorism that the West doesn’t care about because somebody else is the victim. So it didn’t get reported, but it was large-scale.
Furthermore, the terror operation – it was called Operation Mongoose – had a plan. It was to culminate in an American invasion in October 1962. The Russians and the Cubans may not have known all the details, but it’s likely that they knew this much. That was another reason for placing defensive missiles in Cuba.
Then came very tense weeks as you know. They culminated on October 26th. At that time, B-52s armed with nuclear weapons were ready to attack Moscow. The military instructions permitted crews to launch nuclear war without central control. It was decentralized command. Kennedy himself was leaning towards military action to eliminate the missiles from Cuba. His own, subjective estimate of the probability of nuclear war was between a third and a half. That would essentially have wiped out the Northern Hemisphere, according to President Eisenhower.
At that point, on October 26th, the letter came from Khrushchev to Kennedy offering to end the crisis. How? By withdrawal of Russian missiles from Cuba in return for withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Turkey. Kennedy in fact didn’t even know there were missiles in Turkey. But he was informed of that by his advisors. One of the reasons he didn’t know is that they were obsolete and they were being withdrawn anyway. They were being replaced with far more lethal invulnerable Polaris submarines. So that was the offer: the Russians withdraw missiles from Cuba; the U.S. publicly withdraw obsolete missiles that it’s already withdrawing from Turkey, which of course are a much greater threat to Russia than the missiles were in Cuba.
Kennedy refused. That’s probably the most horrendous decision in human history, in my opinion. He was taking a huge risk of destroying the world in order to establish a principle: the principle is that we have the right to threaten anyone with destruction anyway we like, but it’s a unilateral right. And no one may threaten us, even to try to deter a planned invasion. Much worse than this is the lesson that has been taken away – that Kennedy is praised for his cool courage under pressure. That’s the standard version today.
The threats continued. Ten years later, Henry Kissinger called a nuclear alert. 1973. The purpose was to warn the Russians not to intervene in the Israel-Arab conflict. What had happened was that Russia and the United States had agreed to institute a ceasefire. But Kissinger had privately informed Israel that they didn’t have to pay any attention to it; they could keep going. Kissinger didn’t want the Russians to interfere so he called a nuclear alert. Going on ten years, Ronald Reagan’s in office. His administration decided to probe Russian defenses by simulating air and naval attacks – air attacks into Russia and naval attacks on its border. Naturally this caused considerable alarm in Russia, which unlike the United States is quite vulnerable and had repeatedly been invaded and virtually destroyed. That led to a major war scare in 1983. We have newly released archives that tell us how dangerous it was – much more dangerous than historians had assumed. There’s a current CIA study that just came out. It’s entitled “The War Scare Was for Real”. It was close to nuclear war. It concludes that U.S. intelligence underestimated the threat of a Russian preventative strike, nuclear strike, fearing that the U.S. was attacking them. The most recent issue of The Journal of Strategic Studies – one of the main journals – writes that this almost became a prelude to a preventative nuclear strike. And it continues. I won’t go through details, but the Bin Laden assassination is a recent one.
There are now three new threats. I’ll try to be brief, but let me mention three cases that are on the front pages right now. North Korea, Iran, China. They’re worth looking at. North Korea has been issuing wild, dangerous threats. That’s attributed to the lunacy of their leaders. It could be argued that it’s the most dangerous, craziest government in the world, and the worst government. It’s probably true. But if we want to reduce the threats instead of march blindly in unison, there are a few things to consider. One of them is that the current crisis began with U.S.-South Korean war games, which included for the first time ever a simulation of a preemptive attack in an all-out war scenario against North Korea. Part of these exercises were simulated nuclear bombings on the borders of North Korea. That brings up some memories for the North Korean leadership. For example, they can remember that 60 years ago there was a superpower that virtually leveled the entire country and when there was nothing left to bomb, the United States turned to bombing dams. Some of you may recall that you could get the death penalty for that at Nuremberg. It’s a war crime. Even if Western intellectuals and the media choose to ignore the documents, the North Korean leadership can read public documents, the official Air Force reports of the time, which are worth reading. I encourage you to read them. They exulted over the glorious sight of massive floods “that scooped clear 27 miles of valley below”, devastated 75% of the controlled water supply for North Korea’s rice production, sent the commissars scurrying to the press and radio centers to blare to the world the most severe, hate-filled harangues to come from the Communist propaganda mill in the three years of warfare. To the communists, the smashing of the dams meant primarily the destruction of their chief sustenance: rice. Westerners can little conceive the awesome meaning which the loss of this staple food commodity has for Asians: starvation and slow death. Hence the show of rage, the flare of violent tempers and the threats of reprisals when bombs fell on five irrigation dams. Mostly quotes. Like other potential targets, the crazed North Korean leaders can also read high-level documents which are public, declassified, which outline U.S. strategic doctrine. One of the most important is a study by Clinton’s strategic command, STRATCOM. It’s about the role of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War era. Its central conclusions are: U.S. must retain the right of first strike, even against non-nuclear states; furthermore, nuclear weapons must always be available, at the ready, because they “cast a shadow over any crisis or conflict”. They frighten adversaries. So they’re constantly being used, just as if you’re using a gun, going into a store pointing a gun at the store owner. You don’t fire it, but you’re using the gun. STRATCOM goes on to say planners should not be too rational in determining what the opponent values the most. All of it has to be targeted. “It hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed. That the United States may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be part of the national persona that we project.” It’s beneficial for our strategic posture “if some elements appear to be potentially out-of-control”. That’s not Richard Nixon or George W. Bush; it’s Bill Clinton.
Again, Western intellectuals and media choose not to look, but potential targets don’t have that luxury. There’s also a recent history that the North Korean leaders know quite well. I’m not going to review it because of lack of time. But it’s very revealing. I’ll just quote mainstream U.S. scholarship. North Korea has been playing tit for tat – reciprocating whenever Washington cooperates, retaliating whenever Washington reneges. Undoubtedly it’s a horrible place. But the record does suggest directions that would reduce the threat of war if that were the intention, certainly not military maneuvers and simulated nuclear bombing.
Let me turn to the “gravest threat to world peace” – those are Obama’s words, dutifully repeated in the press: Iran’s nuclear program. It raises a couple of questions: Who thinks it’s the gravest threat? What is the threat? How can you deal with it, whatever it is?
‘Who thinks it’s a threat?’ is easy to answer. It’s a Western obsession. The U.S. and its allies say it’s the gravest threat and not the rest of the world, not the non-aligned countries, not the Arab states. The Arab populations don’t like Iran but they don’t regard it as much of a threat. They regard the U.S. as the threat. In Iraq and Egypt, for example, the U.S. is regarded as the major threat they face. It’s not hard to understand why.
What is the threat? We know the answer from the highest level: the U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon provide estimates to Congress every year. You can read them. The Global Security Analysis – they of course review this. And they say the main threat of a Iranian nuclear program – if they’re developing weapons, they don’t know. But they say if they’re developing weapons, they would be part of their deterrent strategy. The U.S. can’t accept that. A state that claims the right to use force and violence anywhere and whenever it wants, cannot accept a deterrent. So they’re a threat. That’s the threat.
So how do you deal with the threat, whatever it is? Actually, there are ways. I’m short of time so I won’t go through details but there’s one very striking one: We’ve just passed an opportunity last December. There was to be an international conference under the auspices of the non-proliferation treaty, UN auspices, in Helsinki to deal with moves to establish a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. That has overwhelming international support – non-aligned countries; it’s been led by the Arab states, Egypt particularly, for decades.
Overwhelming support. If it could be carried forward it would certainly mitigate the threat. It might eliminate it. Everyone was waiting to see whether Iran would agree to attend.
In early November, Iran agreed to attend. A couple of days later, Obama canceled the conference. No conference. The European Parliament passed a resolution calling for it to continue. The Arab states said they were going to proceed anyway, but it can’t be done. So we have to live with the gravest threat to world peace. And we possibly have to march on to war which in fact is being predicted.
The population could do something about it if they knew anything about it. But here, the free press enters. In the United States there has literally not been a single word about this anywhere near the mainstream. You can tell me about Europe.
The last potential confrontation is China. It’s an interesting one, but time is short so I won’t go on.
The last comment I’d like to make goes in a somewhat different direction. I mentioned the Magna Carta. That’s the foundations of modern law. We will soon be commemorating the 800th anniversary. We won’t be celebrating it – more likely interring what little is left of its bones after the flesh has been picked off by Bush and Obama and their colleagues in Europe. And Europe is involved clearly.
But there is another part of Magna Carta which has been forgotten. It had two components. The one is the Charter of Liberties which is being dismantled. The other was called the Charter of the Forests. That called for protection of the commons from the depredations of authority.
This is England of course. The commons were the traditional source of sustenance, of food and fuel and welfare as well. They were nurtured and sustained for centuries by traditional societies collectively. They have been steadily dismantled under the capitalist principle that everything has to be privately owned, which brought with it the perverse doctrine of – what is called the tragedy of the commons – a doctrine which holds that collective possessions will be despoiled so therefore everything has to be privately owned. The merest glance at the world shows that the opposite is true. It’s privatization that is destroying the commons. That’s why the indigenous populations of the world are in the lead in trying to save Magna Carta from final destruction by its inheritors. And they’re joined by others. Take say the demonstrators in Gezi Park in trying to block the bulldozers in Taksim Square. They’re trying to save the last part of the commons in Istanbul from the wrecking ball of commercial destruction. This is a kind of a microcosm of the general defense of the commons. It’s one part of a global uprising against the violent neo-liberal assault on the population of the world. Europe is suffering severely from it right now. The uprisings have registered some major successes. The most dramatic are Latin America. In this millennium it has largely freed itself from the lethal grip of Western domination for the first time in 500 years. Other things are happening too. The general picture is pretty grim, I think. But there are shafts of light. As always through history, there are two trajectories. One leads towards oppression and destruction. The other leads towards freedom and justice. And as always – to adapt Martin Luther King’s famous phrase – there are ways to bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice and freedom – and by now even towards survival.
