China on a Roll

China’s been in the news lately, very little of it benign or promising.

One story of note has to do with illegal logging in Russia’s far east that is being organized by Chinese and fueled by Chinese demand for hardwoods. Century old Oaks and Ashes are being felled to produce flooring and furniture mostly for western markets.


The Chinese, not surprisingly, are good at capitalism and generally don’t call on many scruples in their dealings in the commercial world. They aren’t the world’s only buyers that encourage illegal loggers and hardly the only crooked capitalists vying for filthy lucre, but the same economic philosophy, based on the mania for short term gain, that has driven Western capitalists to produce in Communist China, has given China free reign to exploit its advantage in any way it can.


Enforcement of environmental rules is bad enough in America but the one party state and its fostering of corruption makes its environmental record far worse. Since no demonstrating or protesting or any sort of challenge to the state is allowed, individuals seeking redress for tainted food, as in the melamine scandal, or answers as to why so many schools crumbled in the Sichuan earthquake, are targeted and harassed as enemies of the state.


However, as long as Western consumers get their hardwood products cheaply then there are no complaints from capitalist democracies. If Chinese industry gains a cost advantage by absence of environmental rules then it’s the problem of the Chinese people who suffer from the pollution, not Mall-Wart’s customers. Of course, it isn’t only their problem: environmental degradation anywhere affects everyone, but in the mind of the capitalist; out of sight, out of mind… and, if you can save money by trashing the environment, then you do it until you get caught and then use your high-powered lawyers to try to avoid responsibility.


A second event is the recent prison sentence of 11 years to a prominent dissident for advocating freedom of expression, human rights and democracy. Trade and capitalism automatically brings an open society and democracy, or so we’ve been endlessly told. Obviously, demonstrably there’s no inherent connection between the two.


While China still likes to characterize its system as socialism, it’s really much more akin to fascism or state socialism. It’s economy is designed to benefit its rulers and upper classes. This is perfectly illustrated by the great gulf between the urban and rural in society.


In China you only have citizen rights where you are registered. If you move across a boundary line, even if it’s just a kilometer, you cannot send your kids to school or receive any benefits of citizenship unless you are willing and able to pay a substantial bribe. Even back in the mid-nineties it cost $3000 to purchase citizenship in Kunming where I lived. I thought back then that the registration system was an anachronism, a throwback to the time when Chinese weren’t allowed to leave their home districts without official permission. I’m almost shocked that it’s still around, or would be if I had any faith in the country’s leadership. It’s a convenient way to exploit the peasantry for the benefit of the better classes, so they are clinging to it.


In the Chinese countryside there are near desperate conditions for hundreds of millions of people. There are few jobs and the land cannot support the number of people who live there. (China, with 22% of the world’s people has only 7% of its arable land.) The only option for many is to leave their families behind and seek work in the cities, mostly the booming cities of the East Coast. As a result, there are an estimated 150 million migrant laborers in China. When they do find work they may also find themselves mercilessly exploited. Construction workers, for example, often do not get paid until the project is finished. No Chinese workers have rights, but the migrants are especially looked down upon.


Last year there were a reported 80,000 ‘mass incidents’ - what we would call demonstrations or protests – in the Chinese countryside, some which turned violent. All demonstrating is harshly repressed but rural people know they are getting the shaft and have reached the boiling point. They pay heavy taxes and suffer corrupt officialdom. Until recently they had to pay school fees that were prohibitive for many. Now, with more than $2 trillion dollars of foreign currency in the bank, the country’s rulers are just starting to consider the needs of the rural poor.


Recent events in Thailand provide a possible indicator of what democracy would mean for China. Taksin Shinawatra, Thailand’s richest person and former prime minister, was elected on a populist platform. His government was the first ever to give a damn about the poor. He provided, for example, nearly free health care for everybody and allocated money to the village level for civic improvement. He was hounded out of office by the Bangkok elite but he’d win an election today in a snap because developing countries have disproportionate numbers of subsistence farmers and lower classes in general.


By virtue of having 800 million rural poor, China is still a developing country in spite of its emerging power. In a democracy their numbers would easily counterbalance the country’s 500 million urbanites.


India has largely neglected its poor in spite of being a democracy, but recently a more populist government established a program which guarantees subsistence farmers 100 days of work a year. I’m sure it makes a world of difference for those people to have steady incomes; and unsurprisingly, they are sure to have a strong loyalty to that party for a long time, even if it means supporting a leader who is fundamentally corrupt. And Thailand’s Taksin is a case in point: just before he sold his $2 billion telecommunications company he had the Thai legislature exempt the sale from taxes. Being the richest person in the country was not enough.


It’s hard to say definitively what a Chinese democracy would look like but it’s certain the peasantry would have substantial power and at least some of the money going to fantastically expensive projects like the Olympics and high-speed rail would be redirected to the countryside. Eighty thousand demonstrations in a country that doesn’t allow demonstrating is an indicator of extreme distress and anger. It’s axiomatic that the longer you wait to provide relief from the pressure the greater the explosion when it happens.


Chinese leaders have said that democracy won’t come to China for 100 years. At least among urbanites they have done their job well by creating a compliant population. One man recently quoted on BBC said if the government didn’t want him to know something then he didn’t care to hear about it. They know their news is censored but think the power of the state is more important than their personal freedom.


Nationalism in China is pervasive, but it won’t be able to compete with hardship or exploitation when conditions get bad enough. Time will tell.


China provides a large amount of development money to Cambodia in the form of grants and soft loans and is financing many infrastructure projects so when China pressured Cambodia to return 20 Uighur asylum seekers it almost had to comply. They came to Cambodia because it’s one of the few countries in the area that is signatory to an international treaty on refugees. They are sure to be mistreated in China.


Before the UN had sufficient time to process their refugee claims and just two days before an official Chinese visit in which a large amount of development money was pledged they were sent back. Widespread objections by international NGO’s and Western governments had no effect on the Cambodian government when balanced against a billion dollars of development money. China is not the only large country that likes to throw its diplomatic weight around but as a one party state where just a few people hold almost all the power there are no checks on that power. For sure, the country is going to be increasingly hard to handle as illustrated by the below example.


The cropper of these four news events is China’s trashing of the Copenhagen summit and its humiliation of Obama in the process. While Obama sat with world leaders trying to hammer out an agreement, inadequate and voluntary though it was, China absolutely refused to even allow the mention of any numbers that had to do with targets for CO2 reductions or a minimum temperature rise.


Chinese premier Wen Jinbow did not even deign to attend the meetings, instead sending a second tier official who had to check with his superiors on every minor question while Obama, Brown, Merkel and many other world leaders were left to cool their heels in frustration. China succeeded in having the blame for the failure of the climate talks placed on the West while it deflected any sort of restrictions on its own growth, which is largely based on coal: the country opens a new coal-fired power plant every week. It is also investing heavily in renewables but still expects to increase its CO2 emissions by 60% by 2020.


China’s new power was a gift from the West and will come back to haunt the capitalists and their democratic countries. While it’s true that, as a friend who has spent a long time in China pointed out to me in response to a previous post, the country was always destined to be a great power because of its culture and the energy and determination of its people, the wholesale transfer of industry from the West has tremendously accelerated the process.


There are quite a few developing countries that are also democracies where Western industries could’ve transferred their production but that might have meant slightly less profit and maybe more hassle dealing with authorities and workers. There’s nothing like a repressive authoritarian government to keep workers in line.


With two trillion dollars of foreign assets in the bank, about 75% in dollar assets, the US in particular and the West in general have precious little leverage with China. For America especially, it’s kowtow time to the Middle Kingdom.

Waste

It isn’t just the superwealthy who tend to be mindless about their impact on the environment. It’s also the comparatively wealthy. The one billion people who live in the developed world or enjoy that lifestyle in the developing world are rich enough to not have to think about how much they are spending on energy. They don’t need to conserve to save money but are free to use as much as they want.


A few years back an expat friend held a house warming for a new place he’d bought in Phnom Penh. He was close to 50, recently married with a one-year-old kid, his first. Home tours are practically required under the circumstances, so he took me to check it out. When he opened the door to the kid’s room I was hit with a blast of cold air.


Gee, why do you have the air-con on full blast, I inquire. It’s on just in case the baby gets hot and needs to cool off, he replies. The kid is Cambodian and as long as she lives in Cambodia she’s going to have to get used to heat. Besides, I would think, the kid might get pneumonia from bouncing back and forth between sweltering and chilly. Besides, it doesn’t take more than a few minutes for an air-conditioner to cool down a hot room.


His thoughts are on providing the best for his child but his actions are wasting the Earth for no good reason. It’s one thing to use energy for things that have value but to waste it mindlessly is just being clueless.


In a similar experience, also here in Cambodia, I was being shown around nice remodeled colonial house in Kampot, when my friend opened a door, announcing this was the bedroom, to a very cold room. What’s with the air-con full-on, I ask. I think my girlfriend might be up for a little nookie today, he answered, so I want the room to be ready, just in case. Hours of costly air-conditioning for an empty room. Why couldn’t he wait until he was sure the great event was going to happen to turn on the air-con and then wait another 3 or 4 minutes for the room to cool down before getting all hot and bothered?


It’s thoughtless consumption that contains no positives for the Earth, although it does have one (sort of) benefit, it adds to Cambodia’s GDP, Gross Domestic Product. So actually they’re doing their part to boost Cambodia’s economy. Hmm, that doesn’t sound right, does it? Can we really think of waste as a good thing? In this case, evidently, yes.


Everybody knows people in America who leave all their lights on or maybe leave the TV on all day even when nobody is watching it. No one could begrudge the use of electricity to provide light in the dark, but at least it should have a purpose. If that light is going to add to the planet’s CO2, it should be used for something. Light to read by? 100% good. Lighting rooms for hours when no one is there? Totally negative.


Back in 1994 I stayed at a small hotel in Amsterdam. As I headed up the stairs for the first time I turned on the light at ground level. As I got near the second floor the light automatically turned on, meanwhile the first floor light had gone out. Wow, it was almost like a revelation. Nobody’s present, the light goes off, what could be more simple?


Energy in America is so cheap that most people can’t be bothered conserving or even thinking about it. The reason why it’s so cheap is that most of the costs have been externalized. Coal makes cheap electricity but its extraction and use also results in pollution that causes many health problems; the cost, however, of treating those maladies is not part of the electricity bill.


People in the Pacific Northwest have very cheap power, the bulk of which comes from the many dams on the Columbia River, but it came at a high cost. There once were between 10 million and 16 million salmon, weighing up to 40 kilos, that returned annually to spawn in the Columbia or its tributaries. Today there are about 50,000 to 100,000 wild salmon spawning in that area. (There are also farmed salmon, but I’ll tell you a secret: they have to add orange coloring to those hatchery fish to make them look like salmon.) Well, what are ten million salmon worth? Shouldn’t that be part of the cost of the power?


There was hand-wringing and consternation in the financial community recently at the news that Japan didn’t grow as fast as predicted. Japan has an aging population; the oldest in the world, I believe. Oldsters generally have accumulated what they want of the material world, and don’t need to buy much. In addition, Japan’s population as a whole is declining, so there are fewer people every year to consume things. So then why do they need to grow? They are already rich. And why is it looked at as such a tragedy when they don’t?


Well, because we are locked into a mindset that promotes, even extols waste. Not everything is purely waste, of course, but the whole idea of contemporary economic thinking is to encourage people to consume. Marketing pervades all aspects of life in the modern world. It’s designed to get people to buy things whether they need them or not. Even sometimes whether they can afford them or not; as in purchasing non-essentials with credit cards and then paying usurious interest on the credit.


You can’t think about tackling climate change without thinking of sustainability first; without redesigning modern lifestyles to reflect values other than material possessions. However, as long as corporations have such a stranglehold over contemporary life, there is no possibility of even discussing sustainability. On the periphery, of course, there are a lot of people looking for more from life than mindless consumption, but sustainability can never replace the mania for growth as long as the corporations hold sway.


In addition to the problem of the waste inherent in developed country lifestyles there’s the desire, on the part of the newly flush in previously poor countries, to catch up with the rich world. Car sales in China this year rose 44% and have now surpassed the US. Chinese have the same rights to the convenience of private vehicles as Americans. As in the US their airwaves are jammed with car ads.


The ads, of course, never show those shiny new wheels stuck in traffic, where, in fact, they’re likely to spend most of their time. There’s no mention of the pollution and congestion they’ll bring to Chinese cities or the drain on the planet’s fossil fuel supplies. As in the US, the Chinese government has provided incentives to purchase new cars.


I totally understand the desire to own a car. I have one here in Cambodia and would feel really burdened not to have it. In Portland I’d feel positively deprived without a car. On the other hand, when I’m in Kampot, the small town, I always ride my bicycle. I always felt uncomfortable riding a bike in Portland and Phnom Penh is much worse, I’d never ride there. However, if you make biking convenient and comfortable, as in Amsterdam or Copenhagen, a much greater percentage of people will opt for that healthiest of transport.


China, in fact, was once a model of sustainability. When I first got to Kunming, in Southwest China, in 1992, private cars were banned and more than 80% of all movement was on bicycle. Every major street had a very wide bike path, as much as 3 to 4 meters wide. You could be out on the street with hundreds of people going by and it was so quiet the loudest sound would be conversations between people. Many of those boulevards had very wide sidewalks that were graced with one, two, sometimes even three rows of stately trees. It was heavenly, especially for an urban planner type.


However, even before I left at the end of 1996 the city, in order to provide more space for motor vehicles, had felled thousands of those great old trees and narrowed both the sidewalks and bike paths. On one main thoroughfare, after they contracted the bikelane, it was so crowded at times I would have to wait for two green lights to get through.


All to make room for the small number of elite who could afford to own private vehicles. Today, of course, lots of Chinese can afford cars and the country wants nothing more than to emulate the US and its car culture. And bordering on the absurd: some streets in Beijing have been made off-limits to bicycles to make them more convenient for cars.


So how do you promote sustainability and voluntary simplicity for the sake of the world when the masses are inundated with slick advertising encouraging them to buy what they really don’t need? Where are the ads to encourage people to ride bicycles?


Well, you don’t, at least not with any chance of actually making a difference. As long as the world is focused on endless growth and the manic pursuit of wealth, the relatively small number of people who consciously reject the push to consume cannot possibly save the planet.


If the mindset doesn’t change, the world cannot meet its challenges.

Tidbits

I’ve been having a hard time thinking about what to write lately. I started out with a Copenhagen summit global warming rant but then it seemed like I was repeating the same tired old lines. Anyway, nothing of substance, at least nothing that could preserve the world as we know it, is going to come out of the summit because most of the worst polluters are concerned that considering the needs of the Earth might hamper their economic growth. It doesn’t seem to penetrate their thick skulls that accumulating wealth is not going to mean much in a world that’s no longer viable or functional but that’s where we are today: everything revolves around immediate profits or wealth accumulation and the future be damned.

Obama’s Health Care Plan, more aptly described as a Health Care Industry Guaranteed Profits Plan? Almost worse than nothing since it does a little tweaking around the edges but leaves the rotten core to fester and create conditions that will demand revisiting the whole issue a few years down the line.

Too-big-to-fail big-bank record profits and bonuses generously subsidized by US taxpayers while unemployment grows and record numbers of people are forced out of their homes? You’ve heard it all before. Sensible bank regulation, separation of retail banking from purely speculative investment banking, consumer protection from financial scamming, taxation of financial transactions? Bwaa, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Like the prospects of a young doe in the clutches of a hungry tiger.

Afghanistan, Obama’s personal quagmire? Truly a lost cause. People who know the country will tell you Obama’s nation building project will take around a decade, not the year-and-a-half that the president is talking about; the year-and-a-half he says he needs to start bringing the troops home again.

Meanwhile here are a few political tidbits to chew on that appeared in recent news.

Most Seniors Get the Shaft from the Obama Administration

The government recently announced that there’d be no cost-of-living increase for Social Security recipients. Instead there’ll be a one time payment of $250 for each pensioner. I’ve been getting a pension for six years during which my monthly pension has gone from $522 to $636. Averaged out it comes to about $19 per month per year. For me the one time $250 payment will be a wash, about the same as I would receive from a cost-of-living increase.

But I never earned more than $11,000 in one year in my life, so most seniors are getting more than me and loosing out. Half the people on Social Security depend on it exclusively so to take even a small portion of their due for other purposes – wars, bank bailouts – is borderline criminal, not to mention reneging on a firm commitment. For decades young people have been told that the money was not going to be there for them when they retired. That was to prepare them for the kind of raid on SS that we’re now witnessing.

In fact, Social Security is doing great, it has nearly $3 trillion in savings in the bank. The problem is the US government: it’s been using that money as if it were part of the general budget instead of a dedicated fund. The real crunch will come soon, in just a couple years, when a $200 billion dollar annual surplus from Social Security taxes changes to a $200 billion shortfall and SS starts dipping into its $3 trillion dollar trust fund to pay current recipients.

Reagan raised SS taxes to put money away for the eventuality that’s about to happen and it’s worth noting that SS taxes are very regressive; that is, earnings are taxed at a single rate up to $90,000 per year so the lower classes, including the lower middle class pay the full rate but the upper middle class and wealthy pay a smaller percentage of their income.

Back when Bush pushed through his tax cuts for the wealthy, Alan Greenspan, then head of the US Federal Reserve, thought it was a great idea. Just a few months later he was wringing his hands in worry about Social Security and how seniors were going to have to take a hit. Take back those tax cuts for the wealthy to meet long-time commitments to seniors? That’d be class warfare, can’t do that. Much easier to shaft the geezers.

US Government Pressures International Energy Agency to Falsify Crude Oil Supply and Demand Estimates

The IEA was created back in the 70’s in response to crude oil shortages that disrupted markets. Its purpose was to provide accurate figures for future supply and demand to protect from excessive price fluctuations. The US government, however, has not been interested in accurate numbers but rather feel-good numbers that would give everybody confidence that there’d be plenty of oil to last for decades so they could continue to consume to their heart’s content. Their rationale for fudging the numbers was they didn’t want to cause unnecessary price surges.

For their purposes they predicted that future demand and supply numbers would rise to levels that no rational impartial observer would consider achievable, let alone sustainable: in simplest terms, wishful thinking. But, reality doesn’t hinge on wishful thinking so falsifying the numbers to stave off price surges can only put off those surges to the future and make them a lot worse when they do happen. But at least Americans’ god given right to drive monster SUV’s in the interim was given a green light. Why worry about tomorrow when you can own a gas guzzler today?

Surge in Billionaires

A recent news article stated that the number of billionaires in India doubled in the past year. About a month ago it was the number of billionaires in China that had doubled. In contrast to their growing numbers of mega-rich both countries have hundreds of millions of desperately poor people. So I start to ponder, in terms of carbon footprint, how many poor Indians it takes to equal one Indian billionaire. Ten thousand? One hundred thousand? I imagine that one trans-oceanic trip in a personal jet produces as much carbon as the total emissions coming from thousands of poor Indians or Chinese all year.

And I got to wondering if those at the top ever think about the amount of pollution they’re responsible for, or if they ever extend even one iota’s thought to being good global citizens. You know, maybe change the thermostat in their climate controlled mansions by one degree to do their little bit for the planet. But then I thought, impossible: putting the planet’s needs first is for peons and commoners and left-wing radical environmentalists.

Tiger Woods’s Cadillac SUV has been in the news lately. Do you think it ever occurred to him that he really didn’t need one of the largest personal vehicles ever created just to bop around town? Naa, no way, I can’t imagine that it ever entered his mind. Billionaires are exempt from those kinds of mundane considerations. They are privileged, they have a special dispensation from the creator that encourages them to satisfy their every whim.

Bill Gates, one of the people in this world I most love to hate, build a $55 million house a few years back. It’s a modern technological marvel full of electronic gadgetry and wizardry but not one second’s thought went into making it energy efficient or in tune with the planet. If he had spent another $5 or $10 million more, literally pocket change for someone worth $50 billion, he could have built a great example of advanced ecological design. He couldn’t be bothered.

The world is stuck in a conundrum. On the one hand is the very real and pressing need to reduce consumption and corollary greenhouse gas emissions, which can only be done by the world’s people adopting a more sustainable lifestyle. On the other hand is the widespread, nearly ubiquitous desire to get rich and consume extravagantly and thoughtlessly. Wealth is applauded, pushed and extolled as what everyone’s ultimate goal should be and encouraged through tax laws that favor the moneyed classes.

You can’t have both. You can’t save the planet at the same time you encourage the accumulation of wealth. The vast majority of the wealthy have no social consciousness and certainly would not give up the least trifle of their comfort or prerogatives for any measure of global citizenship.

Obama and a lot of other leaders are looking at climate change as just another political problem where you negotiate here and compromise there and… well, you come up with an agreement which looks like you are doing something, but utterly fails to take into account the seriousness of the situation.

At this point I can almost sympathize with Obama: he’s the ultimate practical politician (at this point he seems to believe in nothing except compromise) so he knows how impossible it would be to actually do something meaningful to combat global warming. The US Senate, which has to ratify any international treaty, will never agree to do the right thing regarding climate change. The last time the issue came up in the Senate in 1998 they voted 98-1 against ratifying the Kyoto Treaty.

A true leader, through force of will and power of oration, could facilitate great changes but that’s not Obama.

Israel on a Roll

If there’s one topic sure to get my blood boiling it’s Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people. Several significant and emblematic events have taken place recently that deserve discussion so I’ll just have to deal with the depression and despair that always accompanies dealing with the topic.

The first, about two months ago, involved the eviction of a family in Arab East Jerusalem from a house they had lived in for more than 50 years. It seems that a deed for the property was found showing it had been owned by a Jew back in Ottoman times, that is, about a century ago. The Israel Supreme Court decided that the extended family of about 18 people spanning three generations had to vacate the property, evidently, so that Jewish settlers could move in. In fact, it only took a couple of hours before Jews moved in to occupy the house.

The Arab family, as I understand it, has been camped out in tents across the street since the eviction. I’m sure the Jews who took over the property were proud of their actions, thinking they were doing a great thing, securing additional land for Jews in the ‘Holy Land’. Israel’s courts and the majority of its population must also be happy to see Arabs thrown onto the streets, but everyone else in the world, and especially non-Israeli Jews, should be ashamed of such a cruel and heartless act. I marvel at how Israelis are able to separate ‘holiness’ from common human decency.

We hear over and over how Israel is a bastion of democracy, a shining light in a despotic region. Well then, what of the 750,000 Arabs driven from their homes at the birth of Israel? Can they show up with 100-year-old deeds and get their properties back? Hardly. Israel is a democracy for Jews, everyone else can eat shit.

In another telling event Amnesty International recently put out a report describing how Israel is denying Palestinians access to clean water. I had heard recently of that situation; that is, where many people in the West Bank have to purchase water from tanker trucks. Such water is not only expensive but very low quality to the point of many people and especially young children being sickened by it.

West Bank Arabs living in dusty villages cannot get permits to dig wells to supply their own water but meanwhile, in their midst, there are lush green Jewish colonies graced with swimming pools and gardens. I saw, when I was in the West Bank in 1994, that very situation.

Regarding water supply in Gaza, Israel, which maintains a stranglehold on Gaza because it doesn’t like Hamas, the party that won the last Palestinian elections by a wide margin, doesn’t allow import of equipment or materials necessary to repair the damage caused by its ravaging of Gaza’s infrastructure in its recent offensive.

Terrorists drink water so water systems had to be destroyed and cannot be rebuilt. Terrorists shit in toilets so sewage treatment systems were also legitimate targets. If Gazans have to deal with raw untreated sewage, tough shit, they’re only Arabs. Bad guys use electricity to plot their homemade rocket attacks so power stations had to go. If a million and a half non-terrorist Gazans have to suffer without power, too bad, it’s not Israel’s fault. Roads, bridges, farms, factories, all part of terrorist infrastructure so had to be trashed.

In the Israeli mindset, Palestinians have to be taught hard lessons so they tire of resisting occupation and the theft of their land and resources. BTW: targeting civilian infrastructure is considered collective punishment and a war crime. Factually inaccurate was the Israeli government’s response to the Amnesty report.

The cropper is the Goldstone Report. Richard Goldstone was commissioned by the UN to look into possible war crimes committed by both sides in the Gaza war and is a damning indictment of Israel’s actions. Israel’s standard response in these situations is to slander the messenger – they referred to the work as shoddy – but in this case they picked a near impossible target for their mudslinging. Might as well accuse Mother Teresa of being a pimp or Martin Luther King of child abuse.

Richard Goldstone is a South African Jew with strong ties to Israel and Zionism. He has impeccable credentials. He was chief prosecutor at the war crimes trials in Rwanda and Yugoslavia and is highly respected in the legal world. Needless to say, when the puppetmaster (Israel) pulls the strings, the puppet (America) dances to the master’s tune so Hillary characterized the report as being unfair. Now the congress is about to chime in with overwhelming support for Israel’s dastardly, bloody and indefensible actions.

Where is the humanity? What about justice, fairness, equality? Why is there no sympathy for a people who’ve had their land stolen from them, and have increasing amounts being taken even today? Colonization of conquered lands is fundamentally contrary to international law. Why is the US so quick to rail against other countries when they breach international laws or treaties, but so eager to cast a blind eye to Israel’s arrogant flouting of same? The Palestinian people have lived under a brutal and oppressive occupation for 60 years; how can there be so little feeling for their plight in the halls of American power? How can the US throw its weight behind the occupier and so easily blow off the tragedy of the occupied?

Now in the latest twist to this sordid saga, after being firm about the need for Israel to cease all settlement activity, Hillary now says the Palestinians should go into peace talks without preconditions. Israel on the other hand has made it absolutely clear, amongst other things, that it won’t negotiate on the status of Jerusalem and will never give up the majority of its settlements, but I guess preconditions aren’t preconditions to peace talks when Israel makes them.

Palestinians currently control less than half the West Bank. The separation wall has a dual purpose. In addition to the obvious desire to keep suicide bombers out, in many places it was built deep into Palestinian territory so in effect serves to separate 6% of the West Bank from a Palestinian state. Many Arabs now have to go through Israeli checkpoints to go from their homes to their fields.

The settlements take a large chunk of the West Bank. Maale Adumin, the largest settlement, with 30,000 people, occupies 32 square kilometers (about 13 sq. mi.). For perspective, I live in a town in Cambodia which has about the same number of people but uses only about 4 or 5 sq. kilometers, so Israel has confiscated far more land than necessary for its colonies. The West Bank is crisscrossed with Jewish only roads that allow settlers to go between the settlements and connect them to Israel, and are one reason why Arabs have to go through so many Israeli checkpoints to go anywhere in the West Bank.

Finally there are large Israeli military bases in the West Bank. BTW: Israel does not use the name, West Bank, but instead refers to the area as Judea and Samaria, biblical names which place the area firmly within ‘Greater Israel’. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Arab population, when Israeli Arab citizens and refugees are included, now about equals the Jewish population. Even though the 1967 borders give Jews 78% of the land area they still aren’t satisfied. They are hungry for real estate. God said it was theirs and presumably said they could use any means necessary, including wanton bloodshed and devastation, to take it.

As stated previously, what Israel wants for Palestine is a demilitarized state with the West Bank divided into three Bantustans. Palestine would have no international borders so Israel could control all access. That way they could deny the fundamentals of life - food, water, sanitation, livelihood - as they are now doing in Gaza, anytime they felt the need to turn the screws, for whatever reason. Might as well bring back slavery.

The one bright spot in the story is that many prominent Israelis are no longer able to travel abroad for fear of prosecution for committing war crimes. It’s called universal jurisdiction and was first used by Israel in prosecuting Nazis, though the crimes were committed elsewhere and not against its own citizens (obviously it wasn’t a state yet). Thus an Israeli accused of war crimes in Palestine can be arrested in a country like England or Spain and turned over to an international tribunal. They may have felt their bloody wars against (mostly) innocent civilians were justified, now if they leave Israel, they may well have to defend their actions in a court of law. A small step forward.

An Ordeal and a Half

Note: For those not familiar with Cambodia place names will not register, still, you'll find it interesting.


I recently went for a hike with a friend, Nicolas, up in the mountain above Touk Chhou rapids, which is about 9 kilometers from Kampot town. I’d been on the trails in that area several times before and had a pretty good idea, or rather thought I had a good idea, of what I was doing.


I had intended to get high enough on the mountain to get a view of Kamchey dam which is under construction, which I’d been told had been seriously breached in the heavy rains last month, and in fact was responsible for the worst of the flooding in Kampot. The authorities gave their assurances that the dam was in fine shape but a friend had his Khmer staff go up disguised as a worker to check it out. He was able to take pictures that showed a gaping hole in it. I also heard from someone who lives near the road to the dam that rock trucks were rolling all night, obviously to try to patch it up.


From Wat (Wat = Temple) Touk Chhou which sits up above the village there’s a trail that leads straight up the mountain to a small shrine and then follows the ridge for quite a long distance and meets other trails. That trail, however, is steep and eroded and in full sunlight so pretty rough trekking; I prefer going down it. I can go a long ways on level terrain or downhill without tiring but uphill I’m very slow even when the grade is not very steep.


As an alternative, there’s a trail that starts in a sharp bend in the road that leads to the wat about 200 meters below it. That trail rises gradually up the valley and passes through plantations and past makeshift living quarters, many abandoned. After about two kilometers you head up away from the habitated area and in 50 meters or so of bushwhacking, you hook up with the ridge trail. I had done it that way two or three times previously so felt confident of where I was going. There probably are trails that go from the habitated area to the ridge trail, but if so, they’re hard to find.


However, the last time I headed up that way I came to a fork in the trail and thought sure the left fork was the proper direction but instead of following the valley laterally, it climbed straight up through a very large cut over area that was no fun at all to walk through. We eventually found the steep trail that heads straight up the ridge and went up to the hillside shrine and after a suitable rest time headed further up the trail. We didn’t get very far since a tree blown down from a big windstorm last spring had completely blocked the trail, at which point we gave up and headed home.


Once again trying to avoid the steep climb uphill, I, as the one who was experienced in the area, led us up the valley. I also figured the ridge trail that we were seeking to hook up with had to have been cleared by now. In fact, last time I had done those trails I thought I should bring a big knife with me next time, and as it turned out not having something to cut through the brush was our biggest problem.


We reached the fork in the trail and so this time I was sure the right fork must be the one to follow. Ah, but instead of heading up the valley it went down to the creek and over to the opposite side. At this point I must say that both times, right and left fork, I followed the most traveled, primary trail; however, there obviously must be other secondary trails that I missed because I had hiked one previously that took me up the valley where I wanted to go.


One other point of clarification, just in case: There are no signs whatever on these trails and while there is evidence of human activities, you don’t necessarily see people that often, so can’t depend on asking directions. In fact, during the day we often wished somebody, anybody, would show up to help us out of our predicament. If so we would have made his day with generous recompense.


But I’m getting ahead of myself. Well, after heading up the other side a ways, sometimes steeply, the trail just disappeared. Mm, I’m thinking, there’s got to be a trail on this ridge top as well and it’s most likely to meet with the trail on the opposite side at some point so let’s bushwhack a bit until we find the trail.


We found the trail, all right, but not until after nearly two hours of rough slogging. In an old intact tropical forest, the dense canopy shuts out most sunlight from ground level and it’s relatively easy to hike off-trail. When most or all of the larger trees are cut, the ground level often becomes a maze with areas of impenetrable thicket. I’d bushwhacked in the general area several times before and always found a reasonable way through it. Not this time.


I was sad to see the locals are slowly but surely cutting the few big trees that are left in the area. I don’t know if they have titles to the land and the rights to cut the trees or are just squatters. I tend to think the latter since many of their dwellings are ramshackle to say the least.


When I have a destination in mind, I tend to plow on through till I get there. Headstrong is another way to put it. This doesn’t work too well when you’re trying to go through a thicket filled with thorny vines and plants. My legs are crisscrossed with scratches. It’d make a great picture but unfortunately I lost my camera on the hike. From hours of rough jostling the leather case attached to my belt fell apart. I actually had had it repaired at a shoemaker once, but as it turns out he stitched up everything but the part that was still together, which is, of course, where it came apart and allowed the camera to slip through. I loved that little camera and almost cried when I discovered its loss.


The other part about being headstrong is that you don’t think enough about what you are doing or look carefully enough where you are going. Thus Nick, who was far more tuned in at how to negotiate the thicket than I was, had barely half the scratches on his legs as I did.


But I’m getting ahead of myself. On the way to finding the trail, we wound up going to the highest point on the ridge. The trail was a short ways down the other side. At the top someone had set homemade small animal traps. I’m not sure what they were after, the only animal I saw was a squirrel or something akin.


It was a relief to find the trail after our ordeal but our luck was short lived. After about 15 minutes of easy walking we hit an impasse. A large blowdown of several trees had covered the trail for maybe 15 or 20 meters, and all around it was difficult going. The trail had to restart on the other side but we couldn’t figure out how to get to it.


Once you start into a thicket it sometimes becomes a maze with lots of dead-ends. You start through the best opening you can find, and follow through logically where you see a way to go in your preferred direction, but then you can find yourself almost surrounded by thicket and are forced to retrace your steps. It’s also possible, with all that changing of direction that you’re no longer sure where you are. We should’ve concentrated more on finding the trail because we knew it was leading in the right general direction. We just kept getting diverted from our path. In fact, we always knew where we were in a macro sense; that is, we could often see in the distance where we needed to go, but just couldn’t find a way to get there.


It was another three hours of hard slogging, during which we found and lost another trail that was blocked by a blowdown. During that time, by charging ahead without looking very carefully, I disturbed two bee hives. They were small, translucent blue bees and not terribly aggressive. If they had been I would’ve been really suffering. The first time I got stung on my finger – it was still swollen five days later. At that point I was on a steep overgrown area and in my haste, shall we say panic, to get out of their way, I slipped and fell and bruised myself up a bit.


At this point, let me say, though I have a lot of stamina and can keep plugging away without a lot of rest (we stopped frequently but only for short periods) after two or three or five hours of it I get very sloppy and careless and fall and bump into things. That’s especially true when it’s getting late in the day and I can imagine the very distasteful possibility that I’ll be out there all night. The one sting from the second hive, which happened about 4pm knocked me for a loop as it got me right in the eye.


I’m of the belief that events like bee stings are instant karmic reminders, or rejoinders. Just as that bee stung me I was thinking, gotta slog through, gotta slog through, whereas I should’ve been thinking about how to stay calm and be careful. I fell down lots of times through being hasty and pushing too hard; it’s only luck that I didn’t really hurt myself in a way that made walking difficult and our ordeal ten times worse.


Sometime after 3 we had come across a spring which led to a nearby little creek. I had thought following the creek downhill might provide a way out but didn’t recommend it since it meant walking through the water. A trail that would’ve gotten us to the other ridge where the car was parked would’ve been preferred but at that point just getting downhill would’ve been good enough. I knew there were plantations and dwellings at the bottom of the valley so it would be easy walking even if there wasn’t a clear trail and that a trail would appear soon enough.


At about 4.30, after more than an hour of hard slogging trying to find a way downhill or anywhere out of the morass, and after getting stung and barely able to see, we found ourselves back at the little stream. At this point I have to say I’m glad Nick was able to see and think clearly because it was he who realized we were back at the creek. We followed the creek and it was easy going for a short time at which point we came to a very difficult spot. I was in the lead and in my haste made a bad choice and fell through the thicket covering the stream. Nick, just behind me, saw a much better way and helped me out of the thicket. At that point it was getting on to 4.30pm.


It wasn’t more than a few meters after that before we came to a clearing and banana plantation. We soon found a good trail and we were home free, at least in terms of not being stuck on the mountain all night. It still took more than an hour of walking before we reached the main road and a village where we could grab beers and rest a little. By that time my cheap, but previously very comfortable, shoes were in shreds and I was walking in my socks. At that point Nick hired a motorbike to take him to the car which was 3 or 4 kilometers away and then picked me up and drove us home. I would never have been able to drive home from there.


I’m thankful I was able to keep my eyes open long enough to make that last hour’s walk because once I sat down I could barely open them at all. Adrenaline and Necessity. After I got home at about 7 I was so burned out I couldn’t keep my eyes open enough to eat, let alone not having the energy to do same, though we hadn’t eaten all day.


An adventure and a half and, all things considered, not bad for a near geezer.

Whither Obama

The following is my response to comments from a friend regarding my last post.

My response in blue

Stan

Thanks for your efforts to see the bright side of Obama while criticizing his position on Afghanistan. It is my feeling that he is caught in the vice of a culture which has forsaken intelligent discourse and his own "arc of history" theories.

Vice – Vise, in this case pretty much the same, but it’s in large part of his own making.

The dilemma the Left faces at this time is that their (our?) man cannot simply try to lift the locomotive from one set of tracks to the other without revealing his impotence.

He has in a sense chosen impotence, maybe thinking he’s not up to the choice of change and maybe, as you point out in the next sentence, he thinks we will get there at some point and he will be able to manifest his true feelings and political positions. There is a small part of me that thinks this is the case and at some stage he will become what we voted for, but only a small part.

To continue this set of muddled metaphors, it is obvious that he believes there is a cross-over switch somewhere on down the line and when we get there, we will get there. Thus his stance on Afghanistan and gay rights and, to a large degree, Health Care reform. In the meantime, we cannot stop the momentum of the past 8 years entirely. And simply slowing the Bush Train can seem like just more of the same, which it is by virtue of the rails it is on.

Correct except he has purposely chosen to maintain many, if not most of the worst Bush policies, now embracing them as his own: Spying, Habeas Corpus, two wars, feeding banks while the common folk starve; and in the Bush tradition, impunity for constitution maulers, insurance reform designed to protect company profits, standing by Israel in spite of its war crimes and dastardly treatment of the Palestinian people, even though that goes against the best interests of the US and Israel, as well as majority opinion in the US. Those are just a few amongst many other capitulations he’s made to vested authority.

Clearly any elected leader is governed by electors who may give or deny their consent at any point, rendering their ultimate verdict during an election. Obama is no different. Of course, it is often pointed out that true leadership---strong leadership---is brave and heedless of mere public opinion, even to the point of disregarding the imperative to stay in power, even to the point of undressing in public if necessary.

Good analogy, except in this case it falls flat since Obama is going against public opinion in the wrong direction. He’s sloughing off the will of the public to serve the rotten and beaten-down opposition in a way that lifts the opposition and dumps on his constituency. Public opinion strongly supports single-payer health care, withdrawing from Afghanistan, fair treatment of the Palestinians, opposition to bank bailouts, justice for constitutional law breakers.

True leadership is heedless of the wrath of the fat cats, he bows down to them in obeisance. FDR had as great a mandate as any president, but still had to fight tooth and nail against regressive forces. The banksters who brought down the world economy in 1929 put out everything in their power to stymie or emasculate his program, but because he fought and fought hard and had the people on his side, they were powerless to stop him. Obama, in contrast, has decided that the banksters deserve to be coddled so has given them everything they could ask for; plying them with taxpayer money, letting them off the hook for meaningful regulation, exempting the wealthy from having to pay their fair share of taxes. Didn’t have to be that way.

There also desperately needs to be a financial truth commission, a breaking up of the biggest banks, a tax on stock transactions, a return to the separation of retail banking from speculative banking and an assurance that no bank is too big to fail. If the latter especially doesn’t happen there will almost certainly be another bubble to burst. The banksters are already back in the business of excessive speculation; this time on the taxpayer dime. And making big-time bonuses off the rise in stocks. The latter spike in stock prices created, I might add, from the wealthy having too much money to play with. Too much money needing a purpose creates bidding competitions and causes prices to rise.

There needs to be a total change in the organization of banking that leaves the current banking system for business and big money individuals and creates an alternative system of credit unions designed for citizen banking. There also needs to be a philosophical change away from easy credit - including a strong social push against high-interest credit – towards saving and responsible borrowing.

To a considerable extent this was the nature of the Bush Administration, especially in the case of Dick Cheney. To an amazing extent, this highly aggressive leadership accomplished a great deal of what it set out to accomplish. I am reminded of this period being marked by virtually daily assaults on the Constitution.

Leadership creates results, even when it gets there by stealing two elections.

But obviously some of these more draconian changes were so radical they have had a problem becoming "traditional." All governance is, in some important ways, a reflection of the governed. My reading of history tells me that even out-and-out dictatorships and authoritarian regimes must keep their ear to the ground constantly about public opinion. They have always feared the impatience of The People---and with good reason. During the Reign of Terror something like 17,000 aristocrats (and other hapless bystanders) came away from the guillotines without so much as a head. Leadership can suddenly become a target for rotten eggs and pitch forks. And yet the siren call of leadership is almost irresistible to those inclined to seek it.

Another person who commented on my last post talked of revolution. The Declaration of Independence spoke of the people taking things in their own hands when they received no proper redress of their concerns from their government. While I’m not in the States to properly gauge the mood, it seems to me most of the people who have skin in the protest game (not even talking about revolution) are wingnuts of the Neanderthal persuasion, and no offence to our prehistoric cousins. Where is the anger? Where are the street fighting men/women?

I’m not quite in favor of the guillotine for congresspeople who don’t support single-payer health care but I do think that progressives should make it clear they will strive to defeat any legislator who doesn’t pledge to support it with their votes, no matter what the consequences. When legislators know the people are serious about reform, they will serve the people.

It is clear that all the major decisions facing Obama in the foreseeable future involve enormous political risks for the future of his presidency. If he quits Afghanistan in a way that can be construed as precipitous he will be vulnerable to criticism for being too "soft" by vast numbers of Americans still clinging to their cherished notions of military and nationalistic prestige.

Yes but he will be on the right side of history and be expressing the will of the majority; and especially the majority who elected him.

On the other hand, if he lingers there and the losses continue to increase, he will be vulnerable to criticism from the Left who harbor their own warm images of lions and lambs lying together.

The left as well as the majority. Most people on the left recognize that there are times when war is absolutely necessary. But also don’t harbor the romantic view of war held by the right.

Thus we see how narrow the options are at this moment, regardless of the actual reality of what we face regarding geopolitical relationships. So what should he do?

He should represent his constituency, the people who elected him based on his campaign promises. He should fight like hell for what he knows is right. If that includes playing hardball with reluctant corporate-lackey Dems, so be it. Begging for support from Repugs is stupid when the opposition acts like rabid pit bulls and your own party has an overwhelming mandate.

As I see it, it is almost pointless to critique this or any leader unless the cultural milieu is brought into the analysis. How do leaders in a (nominally) democratic political culture navigate these forces, especially when they involve intense domestic policies (Health Care reform), always the most difficult issues as they pit brother against brother---a recipe for carnage if ever there was one. The Cain and Abel syndrome.

As you mentioned previously, leadership is the key. A leader takes the popular will and turns it into reality. A leader isn’t so much interested in everybody liking him or her but serving the greater good. Compromising on health care to the point of watering it down to worthlessness in order to make it acceptable to the insurance industry is not the mark of a leader.

Some people think his policies will result in a one-term presidency, with the country back in the hands of a moronic Repug party. I don’t think so, but it’s a possibility that all should fear. In spite of how bad he may be, he’s an angel compared to the opposition, who will, without the least compunction, steal the next election if it’s remotely close.
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Whither to Rant

I’ve been working on a large writing project so haven’t had much time to rant. Now that I’m finished, I’ve been having a hard time thinking of what to write; it’s all so depressing and demoralizing – Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize as he’s escalating the war in Afghanistan and increasing the defense budget? Israel’s refusal to acknowledge the legitimate needs and aspirations of the Palestinian people because it’s fixated on accumulating real estate? Health Care reform in the US tailored to preserve the profits of the industry rather than serve the needs of the citizenry? Action on climate change which amounts to inaction? One after another natural disasters in the Asia Pacific region, in most cases exacerbated by environmental degradation?

But first an apology.

Sometimes when writing a blog, which is usually done on a short schedule and in my case doesn’t include professional editing, you say things which get interpreted far differently than you intended. And so it was with my comment on my last post that my novel Y3K was liked by all but those who can’t deal with big words.

I didn’t mean to insult or denigrate anyone just because they didn’t like or couldn’t deal with my book. If I had taken more time I would’ve mentioned that many people who liked Y3K also had their criticisms – mostly on the order of preachy, pontificating, wordy - which I fully accept. At any rate I didn’t mean to sound or be arrogant.

Back on topic: Let’s start with Obama’s Nobel Prize. It has generated a lot of controversy, though hearing a short clip of Bush recently, which instantly provoked a feeling of revulsion, it’s clear how far Obama has raised the level of discourse internationally. He keeps a cool head, he can listen and talk to anybody, he’s driven to compromise and deflect rancor, all necessary qualities of a peacemaker. He’s working on nuclear disarmament and he scrapped the provocative but useless missile defense so there are rationales for giving him the prize.

A short while ago Obama spoke at a gathering of gays and lesbians. He said all the right things including that he was going to end the ban on homosexuals in the military (though he waffled by not saying when). He then went on to praise those gays who wish to serve and finished by saying, especially when we are fighting two wars.

So that’s the trade off. He’s immeasurably better than any Repug could possibly be on issues like gay rights, supreme court appointees and America’s standing in the world. Europeans hated Bush more than Americans. At the same time the Man of Peace is fighting two unnecessary wars.

The US has now been in Afghanistan more than eight years. We deposed the Taliban after 9-11 because they wouldn’t hand over Bin Laden. The Taliban said he was a guest in their country and they couldn’t turn him over without seeing some evidence against him. Bush considered asking for proof as an affront to America so proceeded forthwith to take over the country.

So who is the international community (it is after all a NATO force) fighting in Afghanistan? The Taliban say they have no interest in fighting the West, they only want the occupation to end. Are we there to fight Al Qaida? Last I heard there were about 100 Al-Qaida in Afghanistan. 100,000 troops and an equal number of mercenaries to fight 100 militants?

So then are we there to save the Afghan people from the Taliban? The Taliban can certainly cause a lot of trouble, but the people remember what is was like under their rule and really don’t want them, so it’s very unlikely they could take over the country again.

Obama appointed a hard line general, Stanley McCrystal, to run the Afghan adventure. The good general leaked to the press that if he doesn’t get an additional 40,000 troops there’s a good chance of failure. In fact, if he doesn’t get the requested troops he’s covered his ass in case of failure. If he does get the additional manpower and the mission still fails, which it is almost certain to, the burden will be on Obama’s shoulders. By the Pentagon’s own standards in fighting insurgencies – 25 troops per 1000 population – it would take an army of half million to stabilize the country.

Obama recently held a forum of heavy thinkers to discuss the war, but no peaceniks - people opposed to continuing the war - were present; that viewpoint was not welcome. Only the same mentality that led the Vietnam fiasco to go on for so long was allowed to be voiced.

His ‘necessary’ war should really be called his nonsensical war. Same with Iraq. He promised to withdraw ‘combat’ troops within 18 months. That’s been set back to 2011. Even so, that would still leave 50,000 non-combat troops and an even larger number of mercenaries. A few years back 60% of Iraqis said it was ok to kill American troops. Every poll I’ve ever seen on the matter showed a majority of Iraqis wanting the US to withdraw immediately. If they wish to sort it out themselves, why are we there six years later?

Why did Obama ask for even more money for the military than Bush when the US is already spending more on defense than all other nations on Earth combined? In just the eight years of the Bush regime the defense budget was doubled. To fight ragtag insurgents and militants in broken-down Afghanistan? To protect oil supplies coming from Iraq? Why not just divert a few hundreds of billions from defense to green energy?

Those two wars have cost a cool trillion dollars… and still counting, not just because the wars are ongoing, but also because all the money to wage them was borrowed so interest payments will continue for decades.

I needn’t detail the massive number of solar panels, windmills, electric trains both urban and interurban, that that money would buy. Or the transformative effect it would have if spent in the developing world where social and infrastructure needs are far greater.

I hate to say this but I despair of any of the issues mentioned in the beginning of this post coming out well. Every case bodes ill. The best that can be expected in today’s political world falls far short of the minimum necessary to make things right.

Obama, decent, well meaning guy that he is, seems to be completely in awe of the fat cats around him and catatonically unable to challenge their hegemony in any meaningful way. The Peace prize, it is said, was given more to encourage him than for anything he’s actually accomplished, other than rhetoric, that is. The problem is his almost desperate need to mediate and accommodate makes it near impossible for him to think outside the box, or take on the powers that be. In nearly every case he’s dumped on his constituency, the Dems and progressives who elected him, and stood by the corporate and military masters of the US government.

His campaign slogan should have been, ‘Compromise and incrementalism you can sort of believe in’.

That’s all I can stand to write for now.