The news out of Israel is simply horrendous. The attack by Hamas on Israeli citizens was unquestionably a war crime and deserves the world’s condemnation. Rage is an appropriate human response to these atrocities and I have no patience for those who argue that the actions of the Israeli government justify the actions of Hamas. I have plenty of problems with the current Israeli government, but the slaughter of civilians can never be justified.
But rage is an inappropriate mindset for the pursuit of a better world. We should have learned that lesson after 11 September 2001 (I am deeply troubled by those who refer to the actions of Hamas as “Israel’s 9/11). The US allowed the justifiable outrage of American (and global) citizenry to influence its foreign policy to an inordinate degree and that lack of discipline led to the US invasion of Iraq which I regard as the greatest foreign policy mistake of the US in the post-1945 period. If Israel decides to conduct a massive invasion of the Gaza Strip, I would be concerned of an error of similar magnitude.
The language used by some of the members of the Israeli Cabinet are inflammatory. To call the Palestinians who conducted the attack “animals” is dehumanizing and that identification of the enemy will inevitably lead to inhuman actions. Consider the words of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant:
“There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” he was reported as telling commanders at the Israel Defense Forces’ Southern Command.
“‘We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,’ he added, per the paper’s translation of his remarks.
“Gallant’s remarks were followed by an order from Israel’s Energy Minister Israel Katz to cut off water to Gaza, per the Times of Israel. Electricity and fuel were halted two days ago, he is reported to have added.
The idea that Israel can eradicate Hamas is superficial, roughly comparable to the foolish policy of the US to conduct a “war” on terror. It also underestimates the intelligence of those Palestinians who either support Hamas or who have no choice but to live under the rule of Hamas.
The attack on Israel was a carefully planned and choreographed operation, one which exploited the weaknesses of the Israeli intelligence services. Daniel Byman, writing for Lawfare is blunt:
“Israel’s legendary intelligence services failed to warn of and stop the Hamas attack. ‘This is a major failure,’ lamented Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And in the days and weeks to come, more and more fingers will be pointed at the leaders of Israel’s intelligence services.
“But intelligence failures come in many forms. We are still (very) early in the conflict, but there are five potential forms of intelligence failure to consider: poor assessments by the Israeli government about Hamas’s capabilities; poor assessments about Hamas’s intentions; misunderstanding the impact of Israel’s own policies; overestimating the effectiveness of Israel’s security services; and the possible unwillingness of senior Israeli policymakers to heed intelligence warnings. Some of these problems may stem from poor or incomplete collection of intelligence, while others may be due to cognitive biases or other analytic challenges.
“Israeli leaders appear to have wrongly assumed that Hamas, while hostile to Israel, could not launch a major attack. Part of this comes from Hamas’s track record, which is usually a good way to judge an organization’s goals and capabilities. Hamas has repeatedly used rockets and missiles to attack Israel, but the salvos have been more modest in size. Hamas has never done a mass infiltration of Israel from Gaza: this time it sent in hundreds of fighters or more. In addition, although Hamas has long sought to attack Israel from Gaza, some of the means used—such as the ‘kite war’ in 2018—suggested limited capabilities, at best. Israeli defensive systems like Iron Dome seemed highly effective, while the “smart fence” protected Israel from infiltration.”
The sophistication of the attack on Israel raises a very troubling question. Given that Hamas had figured out where the Israelis were weak, why would anyone attribute the slaughter of innocents to simple mindless barbarism? Kidnapping people suggests another level of planning and decapitating babies serves no useful purpose but is guaranteed to provoke spastic anger. In the struggles to liberate the European colonies after World War II, one tactic used by guerilla groups was to induce disproportionate acts of violence by the colonial powers. The assumption was that one could highlight the violence of colonialism by forcing the colonists to display graphically the violence used by the powerful against the weak.
If you want to see the logic of this tactic unfold, just watch The Battle of Algiers which was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo and released in 1966. It masterfully shows the logic of the National Liberation Front in Algeria against French rule. Or read the preface to The Wretched of the Earthby Frantz Fanon written by Jean-Paul Sartre as he discusses the violence of the Algerian war of liberation:
“This fat, pale continent ends by falling into what Fanon rightly calls narcissism. Cocteau became irritated with Paris — ‘that city which talks about itself the whole time’. Is Europe any different? And that super-European monstrosity, North America? Chatter, chatter: liberty, equality, fraternity, love, honour, patriotism and what have you. All this did not prevent us from making anti-racial speeches about dirty niggers, dirty Jews and dirty Arabs. High-minded people, liberal or just soft-hearted, protest that they were shocked by such inconsistency; but they were either mistaken or dishonest, for with us there is nothing more consistent than a racist humanism since the European has only been able to become a man through creating slaves and monsters. While there was a native population somewhere this imposture was not shown up; in the notion of the human race we found an abstract assumption of universality which served as cover for the most realistic practices. On the other side of the ocean there was a race of less-than-humans who, thanks to us, might reach our status a thousand years hence, perhaps; in short, we mistook the elite for the genus. Today, the native populations reveal their true nature, and at the same time our exclusive ‘club’ reveals its weakness — that it’s neither more nor less than a minority. Worse than that: since the others become men in name against us, it seems that we are the enemies of mankind; the élite shows itself in its true colours — it is nothing more than a gang. Our precious sets of values begin to moult; on closer scrutiny you won’t see one that isn’t stained with blood. If you are looking for an example, remember these fine words: ‘How generous France is!’ Us, generous? What about Sétif, then? And those eight years of ferocious war which have cost the lives of over a million Algerians? And the tortures?”
If the Israelis consider the Palestinians to be “animals”, their fight against Hamas cannot be won. The Israeli government must protect its people but it can only do so by patiently and systematically disarming Hamas supporters. If it chooses to starve the people of the Gaza Strip, or to cut off their water or electricity, then it will only increase the number of Hamas supporters in the future. Worse–the Israelis will lose their humanity.
The End of the Liberal Rules-based International Order, Part I
I went to a talk recently given by Professor Stephen Jones, an old colleague who now runs the Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard. He spoke about the situation in Ukraine, and, as always, he made me think more deeply about something that I thought I knew something about. The point that intrigued me the most was Stephen’s analysis of the reasons why Russian President Putin invaded Ukraine. I was quite familiar with Putin’s outrageous view that Ukraine is not a nation-state, and that it is a genuine part of Russia. But Putin’s view of the geopolitical situation which he believes justifies Russian action in Ukraine offers a distinct perspective:
“Like a mirror, the situation in Ukraine reflects what is going on and what has been happening in the world over the past several decades.… Our western partners, led by the United States of America, prefer not to be guided by international law in their practical policies, but by the rule of the gun. They have come to believe in their exclusivity and exceptionalism, that they can decide the destinies of the world, that only they can ever be right. They act as they please: here and there, they use force against sovereign states, building coalitions based on the principle ‘If you are not with us, you are against us.’”
The Liberal Rules-Based International Order
This perspective is a critique of the “liberal rules-based international order” which is the phrase some analysts use to describe the international system nurtured by the US at the end of World War II. At that time, the US knew that the devastation of the war, which the territory of the US did not experience, would create a massive power vacuum that could be exploited by resurgent states. As was the case in 1918, the US itself was reluctant in 1945 to insert itself as a global power, largely because the US was geopolitically disadvantaged: its allies (and potential allies such as Germany and Japan) were far away from the US while the US opponent–the USSR–was close to those allies. The Soviet explosion of the atomic bomb in August 1949, the Chinese Revolution in October 1949, and the North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950 convinced many that the US had no choice but to become a global superpower. That decision was difficult for the US but was embraced by the governing elites and became the basis for the protracted Cold War which only ended in 1991.
The US, however, had a problem. The template for Great Powers throughout the period of Western domination was imperial–direct territorial control over peoples who were forced to submit. The US, as the first country to overthrow its colonial overlords in 1776, viewed itself as an anti-imperial power (despite the Spanish-American War). More importantly, after having fought two wars in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters, the US was aware of the difficulties and costs of direct control.
The solution for the US was to construct a set of international organizations that could be relied upon to protect American interests and foster liberal values without direct territorial control outside of the US. Those institutions were the United Nations (to address the problem of aggression and to create a democracy of states), the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (to enforce the rules of market capitalism), and the International Court of Justice (to enforce the rules of human rights as outlined in the Univeral Declaration of Human Rights). The US had a preeminent role in all these organizations and the US was confident that its allies would support those institutions. This system of indirect control was effective for many circumstances throughout the Cold War, and, indeed, the Cold War period saw some states, like South Korea benefit from the liberal world order. US Secretary of State Blinken described this outcome in a recent speech:
“We will advance this vision guided by a sense of enlightened self-interest that has long animated U.S. leadership at its best. We helped build the international order after World War II and invested in the progress of other nations and people because we recognized that it would serve humanity’s interest, but also our own. We understood that, even as the most powerful nation on Earth, forging shared global rules – accepting certain constraints – and supporting the success of others would ultimately make the American people more prosperous, more peaceful, more secure.
“It still does. Indeed, America’s enlightened self-interest in preserving and strengthening this order has never been greater.
“Now, our competitors have a fundamentally different vision. They see a world defined by a single imperative: regime preservation and enrichment. A world where authoritarians are free to control, coerce, and crush their people, their neighbors, and anyone else standing in the way of this all-consuming goal.
“Our competitors claim that the existing order is a Western imposition, when in fact the norms and values that anchor it are universal in aspiration – and enshrined in international law that they’ve signed onto. They claim that what governments do within their borders is their business alone, and that human rights are subjective values that vary from one society to another. They believe that big countries are entitled to spheres of influence – that power and proximity give them the prerogative to dictate their choices to others.”
The Contemporary Critique of the US System
The liberal world order, however, did not benefit all states and was challenged by the Soviet bloc which slowly expanded. This bloc offered a world order based on socialist economics and people’s democracy and was described by Russian analysts as an anti-hegemonic world order, a point of view which has increasingly resonated with many states in the international system. But both the US and the Soviet Union never resolved the fundamental tension of working to establish a world order while at the same time protecting their national interest. This tension, which is one of thinking about the short term at the expense of the long term, forced both states to take actions which contradicted the aspirational rhetoric used to defend their preferred world order. Thus, the US intervened in the internal affairs of states that it feared were sympathetic to the rival world order, undermining its rhetoric about self-determination and democracy: Iran, 1953; Guatemala, 1954; Vietnam, 1962; the Dominican Republic, 1965; and Grenada, 1983. Similarly, the Soviet Union intervened in East Germany, 1953, Hungary, 1954, Czechoslovakia, 1968, and Afghanistan, 1979. These hypocritical actions were tolerated by other states in the system since protecting the national interest is held by all states in common as the most important state objective (the world would be a different place if individuals were making decisions about consistency in moral judgments).
The willingness to tolerate hypocrisy faded more rapidly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The contest over world order ended and many in the US and Europe celebrated the end of the Cold War and led some analysts, such as Francis Fukuyama to declare the “end of history”. Importantly, the two US Presidents during and after the Soviet collapse–George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton–kept the faith in the liberal order. The US response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1991 was a textbook case in working through the mechanisms of the UN and assembling a coalition of states to support the counterattack on Iraq. The Clinton Administration also worked through international institutions to formulate a response to the atrocities in the Balkans in the early 1990s. These examples suggested that the US was not going to use the opportunities afforded by the end of the Cold War to move from a rules-based world order to an imperial order.
The 2003 Invasion of Iraq and the Scuttling of the Liberal Rules-Based Order
The al Qaeda attack on the US on 11 September 2001 would have posed serious problems for any Great Power. The organization had no identifiable territory, no recognized government, and no uniformed military. It was not clear to many analysts that there was any effective military response to the attack. Nonetheless, the US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 and remained there until 2023. Most states in the world doubted whether the US could eliminate al Qaeda, but few states openly objected to the invasion, since, once again, all states share the common principle of self-defense. The US decided to escalate the conflict by invading Iraq on the pretense that the leader of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was prepared to give al Qaeda “weapons of mass destruction”. This decision ultimately proved to be both tragic and unacceptable to most of the world.
The US President at the time, Geroge W. Bush, was able to persuade Great Britain and some other states to join the fight in Iraq, but additional assistance was not necessary to topple the government of Iraq and Hussein was overthrown after only three weeks of fighting. The country was plunged into a civil war in which US and coalition forces found themselves without any Iraqi allies on the ground.
It is safe to say that the invasion of Iraq was one of the most consequential foreign policy decisions of the US since 1945. US and coalition troops left Iraq in 2011, having failed to stabilize the internal politics of Iraq. There were many strategic consequences of the failed invasion, but those consequences are not the subject of this particular post. Rather, the failed invasion raised serious doubts in the halls of many states about the commitment of the US to the liberal rules-based international order.
First, for the first time the US used military force without the sanction of an international organization. The US had always been careful to pay at least lip service to international organizations whenever it intervened in another country. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy got the approval of the Organization of American States as it did in the Dominican Republic intervention in 1965. The US argued that the Southeast Treaty Organization (SEATO) authorized its intervention in Vietnam. Even in the invasion of Grenada, US President Reagon claimed to have received a request for the intervention from the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States. There were a number of UN Security Council Resolutions condemning Saddam Hussein for a variety of offenses, but not a single one of those resolutions–even the last one, Resolution 1441–had the critical sentence: “Therefore, the Security Council authorizes the use of force to bring about international peace and stability”.
In the end, the Bush Administration assembled what it called “the coalition of the willing” but the failure to obtain authorization of an international organization blew apart the pretense of a “rules-based” order.
Second, the invasion failed to produce anything remotely like a democratic outcome. Indeed, the US found itself in the position of supporting minority populations like the Sunnis and Kurds and not the dominant population demographic of Shiite Muslims. The Sunni population had been protected by Saddam Hussein and, without his protection, that demographic produced a Sunni organization–what the US called ISIS–that proved to be as morally reprehensible as al Qaeda.
Third, the US violated many precepts of the human rights regime it had championed since 1945. It found itself using techniques such as waterboarding which is universally held as torture. The photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison shocked many in the world and American citizens were forced to view the graphic evidence of techniques that the US had traditionally condemned. The US also imprisoned what it claimed were combatants in the “war” on terror at the US military base in Guantanamo, Cuba. These individuals were held, not under the terms usually afforded to prisoners of war but without access to counsel or any of the normal processes to assure fair treatment.
Unfortunately, many states violate human rights but the US is distinctive among most countries in the world by the amount of attention it pays to the issue of human rights. For example, the US regularly condemns the treatment of Uighurs in China, the treatment of the Rohingya in Burma, and the issue of hijab in Iran. Moreover, the US has made progress in addressing its own domestic record on human rights, particularly in terms of protecting the rights of minorities such as African-Americans and the rights of women and people who identify as LBGTQ. Moreover, the US stance on human rights is one of the most attractive messages to people all over the world.
Thus, the behavior of the US in its war on terror eroded its distinctive role in world affairs. And human rights are the most differentiating component of “liberal” in the liberal rules-based order since many other countries embrace democracy and market capitalism. The US lost its voice on human rights and that voice has yet to recover. Since 2003 the singular attractiveness of the liberal rule-based order has been diminished and other states are articulating alternative orders which have resonated with other countries in the world.
The UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Irish Centre for Human Rights ats the University has published a report on the Israeli occupations of the territory it controlled after the 1967 war with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. The report is entitled “The Legality of the Israeli Occupation” and it builds upon the positions taken by various legal organizations, including the International Court of Justice.
The report condemns the continuing occupation:
“Israel’s continued belligerent occupation of the Palestinian territory for almost 56 years – decades after it concluded peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, key parties to the conflict, and after multiple Security Council calls for it to end – makes it clear that the belligerent occupation has exceeded the parameters of military necessity and proportionality for a legitimate act of self-defence. The study demonstrates that Israel is carrying out an indefinite belligerent occupation, with annexationist intent, in violation of the exercise of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and permanent sovereignty over national resources. In doing so, this research broadly examines Israel’s breach of the principles and rules of international humanitarian law, and in particular, the breach of three peremptory norms: (1) the right to self-determination; (2) the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by use of force; and (3) the prohibition of racial discrimination and apartheid, as particularly compelling indicators that Israel is occupying the Palestinian territory in breach of the principles of immediacy, necessity and proportionality, rendering the belligerent occupation an unlawful use of force in self-defence.”
This conclusion is not surprising because the committee was looking only at the legal dimensions of the Israeli occupation and international law on military occupation is straightforward: occupiers are prohibited from making any permanent changes to the territory they are occupying. Since the United Nations Charter outlaws war as an instrument of diplomacy (self-defense is the only legitimate basis for the use of force–all other issues relating to peace and security should be dealt with by the UN Security Council), it is unlikely that the UN would sanction any action that served as a “reward” for aggression. So, the committee did not address the security threats that Israel uses to justify its control of the Palestinian population.
It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss the report because, as the Israelis allege, the UN has an anti-Israel bias. When reviewing the 57 years of Israeli occupation, it seems clear that the occupation is much more than an occupation; in recent years, the occupation has served as a cover for annexation. The current Israeli government includes individuals who unabashedly call for complete Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank:
“Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has openly admitted that his right to move around unimpeded is superior to the freedom of movement for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, sparking outrage.
“My right, the right of my wife and my children to move around Judea and Samaria is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs,” he said in a Wednesday evening interview with Channel 12 News, using the biblical term for the occupied territory.”
This position is not acceptable for anyone who believes in the right of self-determination. The Palestinians did not consent to be ruled by Israeli law. And it is hard for me to conceive of any circumstances in which the Palestinian people would agree to Israeli rule. And given the level of violence between Israelis and Palestinians in recent months, as the BBC reports: “
“There’s been a dramatic rise in violence carried out by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank this year, with more than 100 incidents reported a month according to the UN. It warns that some 400 people have been driven from their land since the start of 2022.
“Smashed cars and homes and shops set ablaze. Recent months have seen some of the worst ever scenes of settler violence in the occupied West Bank.”
Israel does have security threats, but it is important to remember that Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan and is working to improve its relations with Saudi Arabia. Iran is clearly a threat, but a threat that has truly little to do with the occupation. The Palestinians have resorted to violence, but it is difficult for me to imagine how the Israelis could expect anything else given the circumstances.
The report is long and very dense. But if one wishes to be better informed about the situation, I recommend the report.
Today, many Americans are celebrating Labor Day even though most of the world celebrates Labor Day on 1 May. The origins of Labor Day in the US tell us a lot about American politics.
The catalyst for designating a day honoring working people was the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago on 4 May 1886. The Encyclopedia of Chicago gives a great overview of the event:
“On May 1, 1886, Chicago unionists, reformers, socialists, anarchists, and ordinary workers combined to make the city the center of the national movement for an eight-hour day. Between April 25 and May 4, workers attended scores of meetings and paraded through the streets at least 19 times. On Saturday, May 1, 35,000 workers walked off their jobs. Tens of thousands more, both skilled and unskilled, joined them on May 3 and 4. Crowds traveled from workplace to workplace urging fellow workers to strike. Many now adopted the radical demand of eight hours’ work for ten hours’ pay. Police clashed with strikers at least a dozen times, three with shootings.
“At the McCormick reaper plant, a long-simmering strike erupted in violence on May 3, and police fired at strikers, killing at least two. Anarchists called a protest meeting at the West Randolph Street Haymarket, advertising it in inflammatory leaflets, one of which called for “Revenge!”
“The crowd gathered on the evening of May 4 on Des Plaines Street, just north of Randolph, was peaceful, and Mayor Carter H. Harrison, who attended, instructed police not to disturb the meeting. But when one speaker urged the dwindling crowd to “throttle” the law, 176 officers under Inspector John Bonfield marched to the meeting and ordered it to disperse.
“Then someone hurled a bomb at the police, killing one officer instantly. Police drew guns, firing wildly. Sixty officers were injured, and eight died; an undetermined number of the crowd were killed or wounded.”
No one knows who threw the bomb, but many felt that the situation was dangerous and demanded a response to the threat posed by “communists, socialists, and anarchists.” Such fears were not confined just to the US. Many in Germany, for example, felt the same fear of the working class but the response in Germany was to establish a social safety net to address the needs of workers. But in the US eight of the leaders of the protests were tried and sentenced to death despite the complete absence of evidence linking any of them to the bomb.
The Haymarket Massacre only served to enflame the workers and they continued to press for an 8-hour workday and other concessions. The pressure led to another massacre, this time in 1894. Jonah Walters explains the sequence of events:
“In 1894, President Grover Cleveland pushed Congress to establish the holiday as a way to de-escalate class tension following the Pullman Strike, during which as many as ninety workers were gunned down by thousands of US Marshals serving at the pleasure of railway tycoon George Pullman, one of the time’s most hated industrial barons.
“A few months earlier, the Pullman Palace Car Company — a prominent manufacturer of railway cars — drastically cut wages and laid off a number of workers at their Chicago factory. Four thousand workers — many of whom lived in the company town of Pullman, IL and were further outraged by high rents — went on wildcat strike.
“In an impressive display of working-class solidarity, more than 150,000 railroad workers in 27 states joined the strike in the weeks that followed, refusing to switch, signal, or service trains pulling Pullman cars. Suddenly, with all trains at a standstill, the railway system was under the control of the American Railroad Union, then led by Eugene V. Debs.
“President Cleveland conveniently invoked the executive responsibility to deliver mail to claim the strike was illegal and unjustified because the US Postal Service relied on train travel. He mustered a heavily armed force of more than 14,000 US Marshals, soldiers, and mercenaries to break the strike. After days of fighting and more than 30 workers killed, the strikers were dispersed and trains began to move.
“The Pullman Strike was one of the most catalyzing moments in American history, leading working people all over the country to draw revolutionary conclusions — including Debs, who read Marx for the first time while imprisoned for his role in organizing the strike.
“Cleveland was wary of the response to his actions. He signed Labor Day into law a mere six days after busting the strike.”
Fears of communism plagued the US throughout the 20th century, leading to the Palmer Raids in the 1920s and the “Red Scare” incited by Senator Joe McCarthy. President Eisenhower declared 1 May to be celebrated as “Loyalty Day” to divert attention from the May Day celebrations being held in many of the Communist countries.
There is an increase in union activity in the US right now, but its effect on the American economy is hard to measure. National Public Radio points out that there has been an increase in union membership in the US, but that increase has not kept pace with the recent increase in the total number of jobs in the US:
“Last week, researchers at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR School) released the school’s annual report tracking labor actions across America. Alexander Colvin, the dean of the ILR school, says the data shows that something real was bubbling in the labor movement last year. They find that strikes, for example, were up 52% in 2022 over the previous year. However, considering we live in a nation with roughly 160 million workers, the absolute number of labor actions last year remains pretty small: 424 work stoppages (417 strikes and seven lockouts). Even the authors of the ILR School report note, ‘the level of strike activity is lower than earlier historical eras. The number of work stoppages and approximate number of workers involved in work stoppage is considerably less than the most recent comprehensive BLS data from the 1970s.'”
It remains to be seen whether the strong verbal support of unions by President Biden is enough to protect the interests of workers. But the US remains an outlier among economically developed nations in terms of worker support.
I doubt that I will ever be able to comprehend fully how bankrupt US politics has become. 6 of 8 Republican Party presidential candidates indicated that they would support ex-President Trump even if he were convicted of the crime of subverting the Constitution.
It’s hard to articulate how profoundly mindless and evil this position is. For most people, being convicted of a crime is evidence of a character flaw or a moment of irrationality or an arrogant sense of entitlement. If Trump is convicted of the crimes for which he is accused, those crimes transcend Trump’s degraded character. Those crimes point to an effort to destroy the very institutions and values to which these candidates purportedly aspire.
“This little orchard will be a part of a great holding next year, for the debt will have choked the owner.
“This vineyard will belong to the bank. Only the great owners can survive, for they own the canneries, too. And four pears peeled and cut in half, cooked and canned, still cost fifteen cents. And the canned pears do not spoil. They will last for years.
“The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow.
“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.
“And the smell of rot fills the country.
“Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
“There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.
“The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrathare fillingand growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
Professor Jenny Bulstrode of University College in London has just published an extraordinary article in the journal, History and Technology entitled “Black metallurgists and the making of the industrial revolution”. The argument of the article is clear and is based on evidence not easily accessible to many researchers and from sources that required persistence and imagination to find:
“This paper identifies the Black metallurgists in Jamaica as the authors of one of the most significant innovations of the British industrial revolution, but this identification is only possible because the paper engages with the practices and purposes of those Black metallurgists on their own terms….Between 1783 and 1784, British financier turned ironmaster, Henry Cort, patented a process of rendering scrap metal into valuable bar iron that has been celebrated as one of the most important innovations in the making of the modern world. Here, the concern is the 76 Black metallurgists in Jamaica, who developed the process for which Cort took credit.”
It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of wrought iron to the Industrial Revolution and how Britain used technological innovation to become the leading industrial state in the 18th and 19th centuries. But iron of great strength was difficult to manufacture. Bulstrode identifies 76 enslaved Jamaicans who developed a technique to produce efficiently iron with very few impurities in a foundry owned by John Reeder who did not know very much about producing iron. In Britain, Henry Cort was an iron producer who
“…learned of the Jamaican ironworks from a visiting cousin, a West Indies ship’s master who regularly transported “prizes” – vessels, cargo and equipment seized through military action – from Jamaica to England. Just months later, the British government placed Jamaica under military law and ordered the ironworks to be destroyed, claiming it could be used by rebels to convert scrap metal into weapons to overthrow colonial rule….
“The machinery was acquired by Cort and shipped to Portsmouth, where he patented the innovation. Five years later, Cort was discovered to have embezzled vast sums from navy wages and the patents were confiscated and made public, allowing widespread adoption in British ironworks.”
One of the most crucial elements of the British rise to power was its control over the metallurgical process. But the innovation was developed by enslaved people. The British stole the intellectual property of slaves and used the profits to enslave even more.
The University of Maine has a website entitled “Climate Reanalyzer” which has an extraordinary amount of data on climate change. The site has recorded three successive days (3, 4, and 5 July ) in which the highest global temperatures ever measured occurred. Maine’s records are very good but they do not meet the international criteria for climate data, so we should not consider the matter decided. Nonetheless, the average global temperature is close to the mark for what matters other than record-keeping:
“Thursday’s planetary average surpassed the 62.9-degree mark (17.18-degree mark) set Tuesday and equaled Wednesday, according to data from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure the world’s condition. Until Monday, no day had passed the 17-degree Celsius mark (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in the tool’s 44 years of records.”
The graphic demonstration of the records is dramatic (remember–the Southern Hemisphere is currently experiencing winter):
There are several climate anomalies this year. The sea ice surrounding Antarctica is currently at its lowest recorded level for this time of year. The North Atlantic ocean is “nearly 2 degrees (1.09 Celsius) above the mean dating back to 1982, the earliest year with comparable data.” Perhaps the most frightening anomaly occurred in Algeria: “the nighttime low in Adrar, Algeria, was 39.6C (103.3F) on Thursday.”
Climate change is unquestionably the most urgent issue facing humanity today. But the current politics of the world make an effective response improbable. The answers will not be found in the current ruling generation–its interests and ideologies are too deeply entrenched in preventing change.
The American people have been subjected to an intense campaign designed to persuade them that the Federal budget deficit represents a serious threat to the future of the country. Axios reports on the latestanalysis on the subject by the Congressional Budget Office:
“The federal deficit is on track to be 5.8% of gross domestic product (GDP) in the 2023 fiscal year, before declining to 5% in 2027 — but the shrinkage will be short-lived.
It will grow every year after before reaching 10% of GDP by 2053, per the CBO.
From 2023 to 2053, deficits will average 7.3% of GDP — more than double their average over the past half-century.
Federal debt held by the public will hit 98% of GDP this year, and is on track to surpass an all-time high in 2029 when it reaches 107% of GDP.”
This projection assumes that there will be no tax increases in the future and that the political sentiment in the US makes tax increases impossible. In 2021 the Gallup Organization found that:
“Gallup, over the years, has done interesting research on the “rich,” and the conclusion I keep coming back to is that Americans, in some ways, like having a rich class. The majority of Americans themselves would like to be rich someday. Further, Americans believe that having rich people in society is good for that society.
“Americans thus do not harbor the heavy resentment toward the rich that might be assumed from their agreement that income inequality should be reduced. It appears that while Americans think the rich should pay more into the tax system, Americans don’t broadly view them as evil or as of no benefit to our society. Demonizing the rich thus may not be the most advisable course of action for politicians — even as they propose to raise their taxes.”
The taxes on the poor and middle class in the US are unquestionably high (and many of those taxes, like Social Security, are deliberately regressive so that those taxes barely touch the rich). But there is an incredible pool of wealth that the Federal Government has decided to exempt from taxation. According toThe Guardian:
“The world’s 722 biggest companies collectively are making more than $1tn a year (£780bn) in windfall profits on the back of soaring energy prices and rising interest rates, according to research by development charities.
“The companies made $1.08tn this way in 2021 and $1.09tn last year, according to analysis of Forbes magazine data by the charities Oxfam and ActionAid. The collective profits were 89% higher than the previous four-year average covering 2017-2020.
“Windfall profits are defined as those exceeding average profits in the previous four years by more than 10%.”
The article goes on:
“Katy Chakrabortty, Oxfam’s head of advocacy, said ‘These eye-watering excess profits are not only immoral, We are also seeing increasing evidence that a corporate bonanza is supercharging inflation, leaving millions of people in the UK and around the world struggling to pay their bills and feed their families.
“’When the windfall profits of 18 food and beverage corporations are more than twice the amount needed to cover the shortfall in life-saving assistance to tens of millions of people facing hunger in east Africa, it is clear governments need to act.
“’We need to see windfall taxes introduced across the board and an end to this racket, where rich shareholders are rewarded at the expense of everyone else.’”
We need to ignore the political tripe spouted by those who seek to avoid inconveniencing the rich. There is plenty of money to protect the poor,
World Politics News 