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| Minister Louis Farakhan |
Published on April 9, 2013
Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of
Islam would land at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra on Thursday,
April 11 from his base in the United states of America.
The exact time of his arrival has not been
disclosed but he is expected to stay in Ghana for several days.
The visit
is part of a world tour which will take the Muslim preacher to other countries
mainly in the Caribbean.
Mr
Farrakhan will be accompanied by a high
powered delegation of about 20 members
of his outfit.
Sources close to the Farrakhan establishment in
New York told “The Insight” that Brother
Akba Mohammed a long time associate of Mr Farrakhan will be on the delegation.
Akba
Mohammed served as a representative of the Nation of Islam in Ghana for many
years and is reputed to be an unrepentant Nkrumaist and Pan-Africanist.
Whiles in the country, Mr Farrakhan is expected
to deliver a public lecture in Accra.
Sources close to him have also indicated that he
will seek audience with President John Dramani Mahama who he considers as a
progressive leader.
He is
expected to discuss questions on Africa’s development agenda with President
Mahama.
Mr
Farrakhan and the world famous African American leader Malcolm X used to belong
to the same stable.
Malcolm X was assassinated and has since then
become a major icon of black liberation throughout the world.
Louis Farrakhan has grown to become one of the
foremost advocate of a fair
international economic order .
He is also expected to meet religious leaders
whiles in Ghana.
EDITORIAL
STRIKES GALORE
Strike actions by sections of organised labour
are becoming the norm rather than the exception and several factors account for
this.
The first is the growing realization that the
Ghanaian political elite is eating fat at the expense of the rest of society.
They want
and get everything whiles the working people and professionals sometimes get
next to nothing.
The growing perception that the only way to get
legitimate demands met is to embark upon strike actions is also partly
responsible for the mayhem on the industrial front.
Another problem is that the national purse keeps
shrinking as a direct result of neo-colonial exploitation and therefore there
is not enough to go round for everybody.
Now the resources of Ghana are not being
exploited for the benefit of the people of Ghana but to increase the profits of
the elite in the boardrooms of the multi-national corporations.
The point
ought to be made that the current situation is worsening the plight of the
under privileged Ghanaian and something needs to be done.
However,
in our view the ultimate solution to all of our problems is the smashing of the
neo-colonial order and the building of a new society based on the principle of
true justice and democracy.
Wickedness in high
places
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| Speaker of the Ghanaian Parliament Doe Adjaho |
By Dr. Michael J.K.
Bokor
My good friends, once again, reality is with us. Two major
happenings confirm fears that those in charge of our national affairs are
toying with the citizens’ destiny.
1. Government has released money to be paid to all 230 MPs who served in the fifth Parliament of the
fourth Republic as ex-gratia. Each is to receive $100,000 out of the total
payment of about Gh¢39 million.
MPs who did not return to the House after the 2012 December 7 and 8 elections, took home Gh¢211,000 each, while those who retained their seats got between Gh¢270,000 and Gh¢275,000 each, depending on their status in the House.
MPs who did not return to the House after the 2012 December 7 and 8 elections, took home Gh¢211,000 each, while those who retained their seats got between Gh¢270,000 and Gh¢275,000 each, depending on their status in the House.
2. Government has declined to fully pay the one-year market premium arrears
owed to members of UTAG although the lecturers are currently on strike. A
meeting between UTAG and the government on today was inconclusive, leading to a
reinforcement of the strike.
MY COMMENTS
Clearly, by releasing money to be paid to the former MPs
while refusing to satisfy the public sector workers demanding payment of
arrears and improvement of working conditions, the government has set itself up
for condemnation and physical confrontations with public sector workers. I
cringe at what will happen soon.
Apart from the bad timing of this payment, there is
everything nauseating about the payment itself at a time when teachers and
doctors are agitating for the payment of salaries and allowances that they have
worked for but are not being listened to.
What is the justification for paying the former MPs and
sidelining the public sector workers whose services sustain the national
economy and support life?
Agitations and industrial actions by public sector workers
(doctors, teachers at all levels, civil servants, etc.) are rampant, not
because of any political machination but because of the worsening of living
conditions in the country.
Given the current tense industrial atmosphere, it is
inconceivable for the government to pay the former MPs their “ex-gratia” while
denying public sector workers their fair share of the national cake.
I have always wondered what specifically these MPs contribute
to our national development, which is why I don’t see the need to pay them
anything like this “ex-gratia” award. Were they not taking their monthly
salaries at the time they were in office?
Now, for the government to pay them this “ex-gratia”
(additional money) while denying public sector workers the little top-up that
they need every month while in service is the height of wickedness. And the
government will pay dearly for it.
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| Members of the Ghanaian parliament |
While at it, the situation is worsened by senseless comments
from beneficiary MPs, some of whom are not even worth anybody’s bother at all.
Indeed, they are a public nuisance, to put it mildly.
Misguided comments from them are inflaming passions and
setting the stage for what we expect to be a massive agitation at the labour
front that will jolt the government. Those comments clearly depict the
heartlessness of these beneficiary MPs and anybody in government supporting
this ex-gratia nonsense.
Take Maxwell Kofi Jumah, the former NPP MP for Asokwa, for
instance, who has asked medical doctors and teachers not to compare themselves
with MPs “because MPs are on a higher pedestal compared to the two professions.”
“If you are doctor is the MP your co-equal, if you are
teacher is the MP your co-equal,” he asked.
Jumah comes across as petulant and really disgusting for
asking Ghanaians to learn to respect MPs and Parliament because it is the same
doctors, teachers, and other professionals who become MPs.
As for Kojo Adu-Asare, former Member of Parliament for
Adentan Constituency, who has expressed grave displeasure about media reports
on the ex-gratia payment to suggest that the MPs don’t fix their own ex-gratia
award, he can be dismissed as a shameless opportunist.
But we won’t pardon him for insulting the media as
"hypocritical and mischievous" and for accusing them of inciting the
public against MPs because they have been paid their end of service benefit.
Article 71 of the Constitution, which spells out this ex-gratia entitlement, is
itself a problem to be solved.
I
am more than convinced that Ghanaian politics is nothing but a goldmine for all
manner of people calling themselves politicians, which is why everybody is
drifting toward it, doing whatever they can to settle in the groove.
I
am saddened by this new development and will not be surprised if the government
faces serious confrontations from the labour front. There is every reason to
believe that this payment of ex-gratia to these MPs will set off the storm that
will shake officialdom.
Having
abolished ex-gratia payment to public sector workers, what is the moral
justification to retain it for MPs who have contributed NOTHING concrete toward
national development? And to imagine that this payment is happening at a time
that the labour front is already being rocked by strike actions? There is
something basically wrong with this government’s strategy for handling affairs.
As
is to be expected, the usual rivalry and effusive bad-mouthing that
characterizes the relationship between the MPs in both the NDC and the NPP has
suddenly evaporated and the beneficiary MPs from both divides have quickly come
together because their interests intersect at this level of ex-gratia payment.
These are nothing but greedy, unconscionable, and insensitive leeches.
Elsewhere,
something encouraging is happening to mark the huge difference that exists
between those who know why they are in office and those who don’t and use their
offices to fleece the system. Here is the example:
 |
| Majority of Ghanaians have no access to potable water |
President Barack Obama will pay back 5 percent of his annual
government salary to the U.S. Treasury. It's a move meant to signal solidarity
with federal workers facing furloughs because of automatic spending cuts known
as sequestration, the White House said Wednesday. The New York Times first
reported Obama’s decision (http://world.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201304/103909.php).
Obama makes $400,000 in presidential pay (though, thanks in
part to book royalties, his 2011 tax filings show that his adjusted gross
income that year was $789,674). Between now and Oct. 1, the end of the 2013
fiscal year, he will cut monthly checks that will total $20,000, an aide told
Yahoo News.
The announcement came one day after the Pentagon revealed
that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel would return 14 days’ pay, or roughly
$10,750, based on his annual salary of $199,700.
The symbolic move came amid widespread news reports that
sequestration —deep, indiscriminate government spending cuts—were hitting
Americans’ bottom line and leaving gaps in key services.
Friends, do
you see why we in Ghana are suffering because we have put the wrong people in
charge of our lives?
I shall
return…
 |
| Antonio Guerrero, gaoled for defending his country against terrorist activities |
"You give us immense encouragement with your support and brother/sisterhood, after close to 15 years of unjust incarceration," affirmed Guerrero in a message to those participating in the opening, which took place March 29 in the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics, in the heart of San Francisco’s Latino neighborhood.
The 25 watercolors reveal the sensitivity and humanity of Guerrero, who has developed his talents as a poet and artist in prison.
"Art liberates the mind but, more than anything, a man is free when, like the butterfly, he showers peace and goodness throughout the world; when goodness is everything that encloses his thought and action," he said, according to a note from the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5, received by Prensa Latina.
People of all ages, many of them Hispanic, expressed their shock upon learning for the first time of the injustice committed against Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González and René González, the note emphasizes.
Saul Landau, the well known U.S. filmmaker, called on those present to demand that their Congressional representatives do something to change the country’s policy toward Cuba. He also encouraged those present to join the campaign for the return of the Five to their homeland.
By Jeffrey Lewis
It is hard to say when the
disparagement of North Korea's nuclear weapons program started, but I like June
2000 as my cultural ground zero. That month, the venerable news magazine the
Economist put a picture of a Kim Jong Il on its cover with the headline "Greetings, Earthlings."
After that, Kim Jong Il became
funny. There were internet memes ("Kim Jong Il looking at things"), T-shirts courtesy of
The Onion, and, oh yes, that song-and-dance number in Team America:
World Police: "I'm So Ronery."
Even academics got into the act.
Bruce Cummings famously opened a chapter in North Korea: Another
Country by asking:
What can he possibly be thinking,
standing there in his pear-shaped polyester pantsuit, pointy-toed elevator
shoes, oversize sunglasses of malevolent tint, an arrogant curl to his feminine
lip, an immodest pot-belly, a perpetual bad-hair day? He is thinking: get me
out of here.
The North Koreans deserve some of
this. North Korea's propaganda is so vitriolic that it can be hard to take
seriously, a point that we Westerners make to North Koreans in many Track II
meetings. When the Colorado legislature passed a harmless resolution urging
North Korea to return the U.S.S. Pueblo, the U.S. ship seized in 1968,
the North Koreans sent the sponsor of the bill a postcard inviting him to come and get it. (What's Korean for molon labe?)
The tendency to see North Korea as
vaguely ridiculous has helped make the country's nuclear weapons program seem silly,
too.
Which brings us to Kim Jong Un, son
and successor to Kim Jong Il, and his bizarre wall map of nuclear death and
destruction.
The initial response has been mirth.
Wits in the Southwest, noting that one of the targets appears to be near
Austin, Texas, immediately started a twitter hashtag: #whyaustin, suggesting
that maybe Kim is irritated about missing Prince perform at SXSW or with his
barbecue options in Pyongyang (although bulgogi is awfully tasty). Texas Governor Rick Perry even took the
opportunity to shill for Austin, arguing that North Korea targeted the city because of its excellent
business climate. "The individuals in North Korea understand that
Austin, Texas, is a very important city in North America, as do corporate CEOs
and others who are moving here in record numbers," he said. You can't make
this stuff up.
Maybe, though, it is time to take
all this just a bit more seriously. At the very least, when another country is
making an overt threat to use nuclear weapons against specific places, it might
be worth asking WTF?
So, WTF?
The easiest place to start is with
the Map of Death.
 |
| An aerial view of Washington |
One target is clear: Washington, DC.
North Korean officials have talked about striking Washington on any
number of occasions, so this does not surprise.
The other clear target is obviously
Hawaii. The North Koreans spelled this out in their
statement, and Hawaii is home to U.S. Pacific Command. Mele Kalikimaka.
Now, the other two targets are less
clear. One is definitely in Southern California. My best guess is San Diego,
which is the principal homeport for Pacific Fleet. There is a chance, I
suppose, that Vandenberg Air Force Base is the target.
The last target -- initially thought
by many to be Austin -- is the hardest one to make out. One of Kim's generals
and his hat -- you just don't see a man in a kepi anymore! -- gets in the way. If the target is in Texas, one
intriguing possibility is not Austin, but nearby San Antonio, sometimes called
Cyber City, USA and home to Lackland Air Force Base and Air Force Cyber
Command. The North Koreans have complained a lot lately about cyberattacks. It
may seem odd, but North Korea is very worried about maintaining command and
control of its nuclear forces.
The line seems a little far north
for San Antonio, raising the possibility that the target lies behind the
general's silly hat -- possibly Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, LA,
home of Air Force Global Strike Command.
If one has but four targets to
select, these four reflect a certain logic. North Korea is targeting both the
national and theater leadership in Washington and Hawaii, as well as major U.S.
military installations for naval operations (San Diego) and either long-range
bomber missions (if it is Barksdale) or cyberattacks (if it is Lackland).
The message is not terribly subtle,
but then again we are talking about North Korean propaganda. The identification
of specific U.S. targets is the most recent in a string of North Korean
statements over the past year about targeting the United States, starting with
the announcement that North Korea had established a "Strategic Rocket
Forces Command." Since then, the North Koreans have spoken repeatedly
about developing the ability to strike the United States.
But it is important to take these threats seriously, if only to discern the signal in the cacophony of threats and bluster. The current bellicosity is not normal. Although North Korea has long traded in insults and hyperbole, this seems different to me. The threats and assertions that have followed the collapse of the Leap Day Deal in early 2012 have been very personal. While we have largely focused on the U.S.-DPRK dynamic, the relationship between North and South Korea is equally important. The two countries have spent the past year exchanging threats to kill each other's leadership, something that is not a purely idle threat.
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| The North Korean leader and his army officers |
The current situation, then, strikes me as particularly dangerous. The North Koreans have grown used to provoking the South Koreans with relative impunity. 2010 was a very rough year, with the sinking of the Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. The South Koreans are clearly tired of taking a beating at the hands of the North Koreans, although I worry that all this talk of precision strikes is an escapist fantasy. North Korea could easily push South Korea too far, leading the South Koreans to dramatically escalate the situation in a way that would be dangerous and unpredictable. Taking a shot at Kim Jong Un and the rest of the leadership might sound like a good idea over coffee and donuts during a simulation -- but South Korea better not miss in real life.
I suspect that North Korea's sudden focus on targeting the United States reflects this. It serves as a warning that the United States has a stake in restraining South Korea. As the North and South exchange increasingly bellicose threats about targeting the other's leadership, the South Koreans have given every indication they might do something unpredictable -- apparently in the hope of deterring another provocation. Pyongyang may well believe that the United States could constrain South Korea's response. If so, that message isn't getting through. The United States and South Korea have discussed expanding the latitude of South Korean units to respond to local provocations, something I like to think of as the threat that leaves everything to chance. (That's a Schelling joke, by the way.)
The North Koreans, too, have signaled that they have delegated the "final authority" to retaliate against a provocation. Both sides are acting like teenagers in a game of chicken, claiming to have thrown the steering wheels out of their cars.
How we get through this depends in no small part on two relatively inexperienced leaders.
South Korea has a new president, Madam Park Geun-hye, who is understandably reluctant to set a precedent of taking North Korea's abuse. (The first draft did not say "abuse.") The fact that her mother was killed in a 1974 North Korean assassination attempt on her father adds an interesting complication to the situation.
Another complication is that the North Koreans, for their part, have the sort of views about a woman in authority that would make Archie Bunker uncomfortable. North Korea has unleashed a barrage of sexist propaganda, starting with references to a "venomous swish of a skirt." (They are kind of pigs.) That brings us to our other new leader: Kim Jong Un, whom the vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff derisively called a "young lad." Whether a young and untested North Korean leader might be backed into stupid decisions out of some sexist worry about being pushed around by a South Korean woman is an unpleasant possibility. (Maybe we can send Kim some Thatcher DVDs or a arrange a trip to the Falklands.)
All of this is to say that the situation is extremely volatile. And we sometimes forget that, for all our confidence in the stability of deterrence, the leaders making decisions in the middle of all this are human beings with their own faults and frailties.
Haiti's Inconvenient Truth
 |
| Bill Clinton |
By Jonathan M. Katz
When a major earthquake clobbered
Haiti in January 2010, a shift in how international officials talked about
solving the country's ills was already under way. Starting with then-U.N.
special envoy, Bill Clinton, the word "aid" had fallen from use, in
favor of the new buzzword in international development: "investment."
The term was sexier, more optimistic, and promised something not only for
recipients but also givers with diminishing economic and political confidence:
a return.
After the catastrophe, investment
fever was everywhere, expressing itself in hundreds of millions of dollars
poured into efforts to scale up Haiti's moribund export sector, particularly in
low-wage textile factories, tourism, and niche-crop agriculture, such as
mangoes. Another directly related trend was the investment of money and
political capital in a new president, Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly,
a former pop musician whose core governing principle -- expressed, in English,
at his inaugural address -- was to create "a new Haiti open for business,
now." Anything that threatened those investments, and the further
investments they were meant to attract, could expect a cold reception.
That's the greeting that awaited
Michel Forst, the visiting U.N. independent expert on human rights in Haiti,
when he returned to Port-au-Prince last November. His ensuing report was an ice bath in reply. Forst alleged police torture and
pervasive judicial corruption, deteriorating security, crackdowns on press
freedom, and a general inadequacy on the part of Haiti's leaders -- including
Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe -- to uphold the rule of law.
He
invoked the recent cases of Serge Démosthène, a groundskeeper allegedly
tortured to death by police trying to elicit a confession in the killing of a
major Haitian banker; and Calixte Valentin, a Martelly adviser arrested on
murder charges but freed months later by a "judge believed to have been
appointed solely for the purpose." Forst even took a swipe at the United
Nations for failing to "throw light on the causes of the outbreak of the
cholera epidemic" its peacekeepers are suspected to
have caused.
(Evidence suggests U.N. soldiers introduced the disease, previously unknown in
Haiti, by contaminating a major river with their sewage.
 |
| Logo of the United Nations |
With more than 8,000
dead, the U.N. has refused to apologize, and recently rejected a petition for
redress.) "I cannot hide from you my concern and my disappointment in the
face of how the situation has developed in the fields of the state of law and
human rights," Forst explained, as he presented his report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva last
month.
The report was Forst's last as the
U.N.'s expert on human rights in Haiti. Upon finishing his presentation, the
French official announced that despite being eligible for an additional, sixth
year on his term, he was resigning immediately "for personal
reasons." As if to underscore the improbability of that explanation, the
council's president, Remigiusz Henczel, thanked Forst for his work,
"Regardless of the reasons for your resignation."
To Haitians who had been following
the story, it seemed clear that Forst hadn't jumped on his own.
"Michel
Forst is very attached ... to the rule of law and fight against impunity while
we have a government that acts arbitrarily and encourages impunity and
corruption. " Haitian human-rights campaigner Pierre Espérance told the
newspaper Haiti Progrès.
Private interviews with
officials familiar with Forst's departure, granted on condition of anonymity
because of the sensitivity of the situation, confirmed this view: that a
breakdown in relations with President Martelly, exacerbated by impatience
inside a U.S. State Department invested in the Haitian administration's
credibility, resulted in his dismissal. At first, those sources said, the
Caribbean nation's president simply wanted the human-rights council to deny the
pro-forma yearly renewal of the independent expert's mandate entirely.
Eventually, pressured by allies who wanted to see the position maintained,
Martelly relented -- under the condition that someone other than Forst take
over the position. "They felt Forst never really helped them at all. He'd
just come pontificate," one diplomat explained. Forst's critics blasted him for arrogance. But the departing official -- who remains the voluntary chairman of the committee coordinating all U.N. special rapporteurs worldwide, and whose day job is secretary-general of the French government's national human-rights council -- wasn't finished. In a parting op-ed reprinted in Haitian newspapers and made available to foreign journalists, he poked his opponents where it hurt, rejecting the notion that Martelly's Haiti is "open for business" at all. Noting that economic development is linked to the rule of law and stability to human rights, he hoped for a Haiti where "human rights proclamations will finally become real." (In late 2012, Forst had been even more blunt, telling a press conference: "Haiti is not ready at this time for the return of large companies.")
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| A Child In Haiti |
Haiti has long suffered from an often-unfairly negative image abroad. Its current government knows that in order to attract serious investment, that image has to change, and has been aggressive about pushing back against negative publicity -- no matter the source. Regardless of whether any specific initiatives were threatened by Forst's condemnations, it seems clear that his tone was no longer welcome. (The Haitian government did not respond to a request for public comment.)
Specifics may become clearer over time. Forst's departure recalls the late-2010 dismissal of another outspoken diplomat -- Organization of American States permanent representative Ricardo Seitenfus, who saw his contract expire after he criticized the heavy hand of the international community, particularly U.N. peacekeepers, in Haiti. In retrospect it seems clearer that Seitenfus was causing problems by airing public grievances at a moment when the OAS and other major players were embroiled in a debate over how and whether to intervene in a shambolic postquake presidential election. Following his dismissal, the OAS presented a highly controversial report alleging fraud in Haiti's vote count that would have benefited the then-ruling party of President René Préval. That report, backed strongly by the Obama administration, upended the electoral tally, and paved Martelly's path to the presidency.
Then, as now, it's not that the international community was reticent to make its opinions felt in Haiti -- even those far more condemnatory than Forst's ultimately toothless reports. But when investments are on the line, it's usually advantageous to keep embarrassing facts far from view. As one Western diplomat told me, "We find it's better to beat them up in private than in public."
EXTRAORDINARY
He Is A Lethal Bureaucrat
 |
| John Brennan, CIA Boss |
No politically appointed official in
U.S. history has played such a prominent role in killing so many people outside
of a war zone as John Brennan. He has been a "close advisor" to President Barack Obama since November 2008, was a Team Lead for the president-elect's review of the U.S. Intelligence
Community (IC), and has served as homeland security advisor and deputy national
security advisor for counterterrorism, with the rank of assistant to the
president, since the first day Obama entered office. Brennan does not merely
fill a White House position, but also meets with the president several times a day and -- according to administration officials -- serves as "a priest whose blessing has
become indispensable to Obama."
Brennan plays the essential role in
shaping and implementing Obama's vision for protecting the United States, its
allies, and its interests from politically motivated violence. The predominant
counterterrorism tool under Obama has been targeted killings in non-battlefield
settings, and Brennan reportedly oversees and manages the 100-person inter-agency process that nominates and vets suspected
militants and terrorists for the United States' various kill lists -- implemented by the CIA and Joint Special Operations
Command. Obama's has been a "lethal presidency," and Brennan is the Lethal Bureaucrat. Despite his
close relationship to Obama and preeminent duty in coordinating the kill lists,
he flies largely under the mainstream media's radar.
First, it is important to understand
the scope of what Obama has authorized in comparison with his predecessor.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, there have been an estimated 393 targeted killings -- in
Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and the Philippines. (President George W. Bush also
authorized an October 2008 raid six miles inside Syria to kill Abu Ghadiyah, an
Iraqi-born senior operative of Al Qaeda in Iraq, as well as several of his
bodyguards and several civilians.) Under Bush, there were roughly 50 targeted
killings; under Obama there have been 343 in less than half the time -- 95
percent of them by Predator or Reaper drones. At least 2,000 people have been
killed by U.S. targeted killings since Obama entered office.
Brennan is especially well-suited
for his position at the intersection of lethal covert operations and bureaucratic
management.
He spent a quarter-century in the IC, serving in wide-range of
distinguished roles, including as Middle East chief of station, daily
intelligence briefer for President Bill Clinton, and -- from 1999 through 2005
-- chief of staff to CIA Director George Tenet, deputy executive director of
the CIA, and head of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, later named the
National Counterterrorism Center. It was during these years that Bush
authorized the CIA to use enhanced interrogation techniques (i.e., torture) by
its agents, and transferred hundreds of people into the extraordinary rendition
program where many were tortured by foreign intelligence agencies.
In 2005, Brennan retired -- as he claimed -- "to lead and shape the future direction of The
Analysis Corp (TAC)," an intelligence consulting firm where he was
president and CEO. While running TAC, according to a corporate press release: "Brennan leveraged his knowledge of intelligence
matters and his expertise on terrorism and security issues to guide the
company's rapid corporate growth and innovative business strategy." During
this time Brennan also appeared on TV to discuss the Bush administration's
controversial counterterrorism policies. In 2005, on PBS' Newshour he
described extraordinary rendition as "an absolutely vital tool,"
which "without a doubt has been very successful as far as producing
intelligence that has saved lives." In 2007, he told CBS News that waterboarding was "the classic definition of
torture," which is "inconsistent with American values and it's
something that should be prohibited."
 |
| Hussein Obama and the lethal John Brennan |
In 2007, Brennan also became a foreign-policy adviser to the Obama
presidential campaign, though he never met Obama until the president-elect summoned him to Chicago
just after the election in November 2008. Upon meeting, as Daniel Klaidman writes: "Their views were so complementary that Obama found
himself finishing Brennan's sentences." In this campaign role, Brennan gave
interviews to tout Obama's IC priorities, noting that Obama believed that covert action "cannot be done
by a single branch of government," with oversight by both Congress and the
courts a must for such activities. Brennan's rumored nomination to become CIA
Director was resisted by progressives and psychologists, who sought a clean
break from Bush's global war on terror approach. Brennan withdrew from
consideration for the position in a Nov. 25, 2008, letter to Obama, complaining that, "The fact that I was not
involved in the decision-making process for any of these controversial policies
and actions has been ignored."
John Brennan has seized the lead in guiding the debate on which terror leaders will be targeted for drone attacks or raids, establishing a new procedure to vet both military and CIA targets. The move concentrates power over the use of lethal U.S. force outside war zones at the White House...
The move gives Brennan greater input earlier in the process, before senior officials make the final recommendation to President Barack Obama. Officials outside the White House expressed concern that drawing more of the decision-making process to Brennan's office could turn it into a pseudo military headquarters, entrusting the fate of al-Qaida targets to a small number of senior officials...(S)ome of the officials carrying out the policy are equally leery of "how easy it has become to kill someone," one said.
It should be noted that all of the powers endowed within Brennan's cramped White House office were bestowed by Obama, who, as commander-in-chief, has shown unmatched enthusiasm for "broadening the aperture" of whom the United States will use lethal force against. Although both Clinton and Bush had their own under-reported kill lists, neither was nearly as willing to attempt to kill as many named and anonymous suspected militants or terrorists -- as well as innocent civilians.
This is primarily due to the distinct capabilities that drones provide compared to other military tools to reduce many of the inherent political, diplomatic, and military risks of targeted killings. (Obama has roughly three times the number of armed drones Bush did.) Brennan has touted drones' "surgical precision, the ability, with laser-like focus, to eliminate the cancerous tumor called an al-Qaeda terrorist while limiting damage to the tissue around it." He also used this cancer metaphor at his first meeting with Obama, when they were finishing each other's sentences.
 |
| Obama loves killing with the drone |
Despite Obama conducting nearly seven times the number of targeted killings than his predecessor, the administration has never provided a clear articulation of its policies and processes, nor answered challenging questions, such as whether legitimate targets include children, individuals attempting to rescue drone strike victims, and the funeral processions of deceased militants; each of these categories has been targeted by the United States on multiple occasions.
The people killed in such lethal operations, were all the victims of signature strikes, which, when asked, Brennan refused to acknowledge even occur. Moreover, as an executive branch appointee, he is not the "lead executive authority" for drone strikes -- either the CIA director or the secretary of defense -- and will never be required to answer a congressional subpoena to explain the logic of signature strikes, or any aspect of his job.
In a 2006 interview, a then-retired Brennan offered some thoughtful comments about how to balance terrorist threats with American values:
It's a tough ethical question, and it's a question that really needs to be aired more publicly. The issue of the reported domestic spying -- these are very healthy debates that need to take place. They can't be stifled, because I think that we as a country and a society have to determine what is it we want to do, whether it be eavesdropping, whether it be taking actions against individuals who are either known or suspected to be terrorists. What length do we want to go to? What measures do we want to use? What tactics do we want to use?
Six years later, this sounds like an useful and long-overdue public debate worth having, and these would be excellent framing questions for President Obama's targeted killings, and John Brennan's role in seeing them to their execution.
Marx’s Revenge: How Class Struggle Is Shaping the World
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| US Citizens queue for food stamps |
By Michael Schuman
Or so we thought. With the global economy in a protracted crisis, and workers around the world burdened by joblessness, debt and stagnant incomes, Marx’s biting critique of capitalism — that the system is inherently unjust and self-destructive — cannot be so easily dismissed.
Or so we thought. With the global economy in a protracted crisis, and workers around the world burdened by joblessness, debt and stagnant incomes, Marx’s biting critique of capitalism — that the system is inherently unjust and self-destructive — cannot be so easily dismissed.
Marx theorized that the capitalist system would inevitably
impoverish the masses as the world’s wealth became concentrated in the hands of
a greedy few, causing economic crises and heightened conflict between the rich
and working classes. “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time
accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental
degradation, at the opposite pole,” Marx wrote.
Karl Marx was supposed to be
dead and buried. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s Great Leap
Forward into capitalism, communism faded into the quaint backdrop of James Bond
movies or the deviant mantra of Kim Jong Un.
The class conflict that Marx
believed determined the course of history seemed to melt away in a prosperous
era of free trade and free enterprise. The far-reaching power of globalization,
linking the most remote corners of the planet in lucrative bonds of finance,
outsourcing and “borderless” manufacturing, offered everybody from Silicon
Valley tech gurus to Chinese farm girls ample opportunities to get rich. Asia
in the latter decades of the 20th century witnessed perhaps the most remarkable
record of poverty alleviation in human history — all thanks to the very
capitalist tools of trade, entrepreneurship and foreign investment. Capitalism
appeared to be fulfilling its promise — to uplift everyone to new heights
of wealth and welfare.
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| A homeless woman |
A
growing dossier of evidence suggests that he may have been right. It is sadly
all too easy to find statistics that show the rich are getting richer while the
middle class and poor are not. A September study from the Economic Policy
Institute (EPI) in Washington noted that the median annual earnings of a
full-time, male worker in the U.S. in 2011, at $48,202, were smaller than in
1973. Between 1983 and 2010, 74% of the gains in wealth in the U.S. went
to the richest 5%, while the bottom 60% suffered a decline, the EPI calculated.
No wonder some have
given the 19th century German philosopher a second look. In China, the
Marxist country that turned its back on Marx, Yu Rongjun was inspired by world
events to pen a musical based on Marx’s classic Das Kapital. “You
can find reality matches what is described in the book,” says the playwright.
That’s
not to say Marx was entirely correct. His “dictatorship of the proletariat”
didn’t quite work out as planned. But the consequence of this widening
inequality is just what Marx had predicted: class struggle is back. Workers of
the world are growing angrier and demanding their fair share of the global
economy.
From the floor of the U.S. Congress to the streets of Athens to the
assembly lines of southern China, political and economic events are being
shaped by escalating tensions between capital and labor to a degree unseen
since the communist revolutions of the 20th century. How this struggle
plays out will influence the direction of global economic policy, the future of
the welfare state, political stability in China, and who governs from
Washington to Rome. What would Marx say today? “Some variation of: ‘I told you
so,’” says Richard Wolff, a Marxist economist at the New School in New York.
“The income gap is producing a level of tension that I have not seen in my
lifetime.”
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| The few rich men and women of the United States |
Tensions
between economic classes in the U.S. are clearly on the rise. Society has been
perceived as split between the “99%” (the regular folk, struggling to get by)
and the “1%” (the connected and privileged superrich getting richer every day).
In a Pew Research Center poll released
last year, two-thirds of the respondents believed the U.S. suffered from
“strong” or “very strong” conflict between rich and poor, a significant
19-percentage-point increase from 2009, ranking it as the No. 1 division in
society.
The
heightened conflict has dominated American politics. The partisan battle over
how to fix the nation’s budget deficit has been, to a great degree, a class
struggle. Whenever President Barack Obama talks of raising taxes on the
wealthiest Americans to close the budget gap, conservatives scream he is
launching a “class war” against the affluent. Yet the Republicans are engaged
in some class struggle of their own. The GOP’s plan for fiscal health
effectively hoists the burden of adjustment onto the middle and poorer economic
classes through cuts to social services.
Obama based a big part of his
re-election campaign on characterizing the Republicans as insensitive to the
working classes. GOP nominee Mitt Romney, the President charged, had only a
“one-point plan” for the U.S. economy — “to make sure that folks at the
top play by a different set of rules.”
Amid
the rhetoric, though, there are signs that this new American classism has
shifted the debate over the nation’s economic policy. Trickle-down economics,
which insists that the success of the 1% will benefit the 99%, has come under
heavy scrutiny. David Madland, a director at the Center for American
Progress, a Washington-based think tank, believes that the 2012 presidential
campaign has brought about a renewed focus on rebuilding the middle class, and
a search for a different economic agenda to achieve that goal. “The whole way
of thinking about the economy is being turned on its head,” he says. “I sense a
fundamental shift taking place.”
The
ferocity of the new class struggle is even more pronounced in France. Last May,
as the pain of the financial crisis and budget cuts made the rich-poor divide
starker to many ordinary citizens, they voted in the Socialist Party’s François
Hollande, who had once proclaimed: “I don’t like the rich.”
He has proved true
to his word. Key to his victory was a campaign pledge to extract more from the
wealthy to maintain France’s welfare state. To avoid the drastic spending cuts
other policymakers in Europe have instituted to close yawning budget deficits,
Hollande planned to hike the income tax rate to as high as 75%. Though that
idea got shot down by the country’s Constitutional Council, Hollande is
scheming ways to introduce a similar measure. At the same time, Hollande has
tilted government back toward the common man.
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| Karl Marx |
He reversed an unpopular decision
by his predecessor to increase France’s retirement age by lowering it back down
to the original 60 for some workers. Many in France want Hollande to go even
further. “Hollande’s tax proposal has to be the first step in the
government acknowledging capitalism in its current form has become so unfair
and dysfunctional it risks imploding without deep reform,” says Charlotte
Boulanger, a development official for NGOs.
His
tactics, however, are sparking a backlash from the capitalist class. Mao Zedong
might have insisted that “political power grows out of the barrel of
a gun,” but in a world where das kapital is more and
more mobile, the weapons of class struggle have changed. Rather than paying out
to Hollande, some of France’s wealthy are moving out — taking badly needed
jobs and investment with them.
Jean-Émile Rosenblum, founder of online retailer
Pixmania.com,
is setting up both his life and new venture in the U.S., where he feels the
climate is far more hospitable for businessmen. “Increased class conflict is a
normal consequence of any economic crisis, but the political exploitation of
that has been demagogic and discriminatory,” Rosenblum says. “Rather than
relying on (entrepreneurs) to create the companies and jobs we need, France is
hounding them away.”
The
rich-poor divide is perhaps most volatile in China. Ironically, Obama and the
newly installed President of Communist China, Xi Jinping, face the same
challenge. Intensifying class struggle is not just a phenomenon of the
slow-growth, debt-ridden industrialized world. Even in rapidly expanding
emerging markets, tension between rich and poor is becoming a primary concern
for policymakers. Contrary to what many disgruntled Americans and Europeans
believe, China has not been a workers’ paradise.
The “iron rice bowl”
— the Mao-era practice of guaranteeing workers jobs for life — faded
with Maoism, and during the reform era, workers have had few rights. Even
though wage income in China’s cities is growing substantially, the rich-poor gap is extremely wide.
Another Pew study revealed that nearly
half of the Chinese surveyed consider the rich-poor divide a very big problem,
while 8 out of 10 agreed with the proposition that the “rich just get richer
while the poor get poorer” in China.
Resentment
is reaching a boiling point in China’s factory towns. “People from the outside
see our lives as very bountiful, but the real life in the factory is very
different,” says factory worker Peng Ming in the southern industrial enclave of
Shenzhen. Facing long hours, rising costs, indifferent managers and often late
pay, workers are beginning to sound like true proletariat. “The way the rich
get money is through exploiting the workers,” says Guan Guohau, another
Shenzhen factory employee. “Communism is what we are looking forward to.”
Unless the government takes greater action to improve their welfare, they say,
the laborers will become more and more willing to take action themselves.
“Workers will organize more,” Peng predicts. “All the workers should be
united.”
That
may already be happening. Tracking the level of labor unrest in China is
difficult, but experts believe it has been on the rise. A new generation of
factory workers — better informed than their parents, thanks to the
Internet — has become more outspoken in its demands for better wages and
working conditions. So far, the government’s response has been mixed.
Policymakers have raised minimum wages to boost incomes, toughened up labor
laws to give workers more protection, and in some cases, allowed them to
strike. But the government still discourages independent worker activism, often
with force. Such tactics have left China’s proletariat distrustful of their
proletarian dictatorship. “The government thinks more about the companies than
us,” says Guan. If Xi doesn’t reform the economy so the ordinary Chinese benefit
more from the nation’s growth, he runs the risk of fueling social unrest.
Marx
would have predicted just such an outcome. As the proletariat woke to their
common class interests, they’d overthrow the unjust capitalist system and
replace it with a new, socialist wonderland. Communists “openly declare that
their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing
social conditions,” Marx wrote. “The proletarians have nothing to lose but
their chains.” There are signs that the world’s laborers are increasingly
impatient with their feeble prospects. Tens of thousands have taken to the
streets of cities like Madrid and Athens, protesting stratospheric unemployment
and the austerity measures that are making matters even worse.
So
far, though, Marx’s revolution has yet to materialize. Workers may have common
problems, but they aren’t banding together to resolve them. Union membership in the U.S., for
example, has continued to decline through the economic crisis, while the Occupy
Wall Street movement fizzled. Protesters, says Jacques Rancière, an expert in
Marxism at the University of Paris, aren’t aiming to replace capitalism, as
Marx had forecast, but merely to reform it. “We’re not seeing protesting
classes call for an overthrow or destruction of socioeconomic systems in
place,” he explains. “What class conflict is producing today are calls to fix
systems so they become more viable and sustainable for the long run by
redistributing the wealth created.”
Despite
such calls, however, current economic policy continues to fuel class tensions.
In China, senior officials have paid lip service to narrowing the income gap
but in practice have dodged the reforms (fighting corruption, liberalizing the
finance sector) that could make that happen. Debt-burdened governments in
Europe have slashed welfare programs even as joblessness has risen and growth
sagged. In most cases, the solution chosen to repair capitalism has been more
capitalism. Policymakers in Rome, Madrid and Athens are being pressured by
bondholders to dismantle protection for workers and further deregulate domestic
markets. Owen Jones, the British author of Chavs: The Demonization of
the Working Class, calls this “a class war from above.”
There
are few to stand in the way. The emergence of a global labor market has
defanged unions throughout the developed world. The political left, dragged
rightward since the free-market onslaught of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald
Reagan, has not devised a credible alternative course. “Virtually all
progressive or leftist parties contributed at some point to the rise and reach
of financial markets, and rolling back of welfare systems in order to prove
they were capable of reform,” Rancière notes. “I’d say the prospects of Labor
or Socialists parties or governments anywhere significantly reconfiguring —
much less turning over — current economic systems to be pretty faint.”
That
leaves open a scary possibility: that Marx not only diagnosed capitalism’s
flaws but also the outcome of those flaws. If policymakers don’t discover new
methods of ensuring fair economic opportunity, the workers of the world may
just unite. Marx may yet have his revenge.
— With
reporting by Bruce Crumley / Paris; Chengcheng Jiang / Beijing; Shan-shan Wang
/ Shenzhen
Read more: http://business.time.com/2013/03/25/marxs-revenge-how-class-struggle-is-shaping-the-world/#ixzz2Ob1SClfN
Read more: http://business.time.com/2013/03/25/marxs-revenge-how-class-struggle-is-shaping-the-world/#ixzz2Ob1SClfN
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