Our Hurting Planet

Posted by Arthur Palmer          14 February 2013

So many of the articles which appear on this blog are spelling out the horrors that are visited upon vulnerable communities by war and armed violence. This is bound to happen when political power insists on control, regardless of the human cost.  The method has a long and sad history.  But maybe we are now at a period when there is a greater awareness of what is happening, and why.  Is there also a new questioning, sometimes even a sense of despair, as indicated by the number of suicides among US soldiers returning from Iraq nd Afghanistan.  This number now exceeds that of soldiers killed in action. This is new.

Mass protests in London failed to stop the invasion of Iraq.  The claims of the politicians on which this was based were proven to be lies, but those who made them suffered no penalty.  When faith in national leaders is so shaken we may look for some new development before long.  And as with the fall of the Berlin Wall, this could be sudden and arrive when least expected. 

This personal comment is by way of introduction to the three articles which follow.

 

Our Failing Economic system

Posted by Arthur Palmer         9 February, 2013

For several centuries there has been a steady growth in living standards in nations where education and technology has nourished a thriving middle class. Those lower down cherished the hope of rising higher, and many did. Of course the benefit of Empire trade on favourable terms with compliant colonies and developing nations was a help.

But that world is disappearing, and new economic forces are severely curbing the modest hopes of most citizens. Rising unemployment and increasing levels of debt on all fronts is evident worldwide.  More and more the finger is being pointed at the global Corporations and their rich CEOs and Directors who have huge power to avoid contributing to society’s well-being, while hiding their wealth in safe havens beyond the reach of tax. The consequences are dire. This editorial in the Observer/UK analyses what is happening.

The Growing Wealth Gap Is Unsustainable   The ever-increasing many who are struggling cannot support a structure that favours a tiny number of the very rich

Observer/UK             Editorial                    February 3, 2013

Antony Jenkins, chief executive of Barclays, who appears before MPs and peers on the banking standards commission this week, has removed one issue from the agenda, namely his right to a bonus of more £1m. The bank has been fined £290m and faces an official investigation by the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Services Authority into its dealings. So this is the least Jenkins could do.  

Last month, Barack Obama, on his re-election to a country with 42 million living in poverty, warned: "America cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it." At the World Economic Forum in Davos, its founder, Klaus Schwab, said: "Capitalism in its current form no longer fits the world around us." How badly it "fits" is powerfully demonstrated in Inequality for All, a documentary made by Jacob Kornbluth, that recently won the special jury prize at the Sundance festival. As discussed in today's New Review, the film "stars" Robert Reich, professor of public policy at Harvard, prolific author, campaigner, former labour secretary under Bill Clinton, a charismatic man whose lectures are renowned for the way he surgically dismembers the mutant capitalism that has taken hold in the US over the past 40 years.

Reich explains in chilling detail why growth alone may not be enough. For too many, he explains, social mobility has begun to slide backwards. A small but growing band of global pirates – billionaires all, without allegiance to community or country, accrue wealth from the continued immiseration of the squeezed majority. These hugely rich are fawned over and subsidised by governments even as inequality widens to a chasm.

Reich's analysis is similar to that of the UK thinktank, the Resolution Foundation. It launches its definitive study of low to middle-income families, Squeezed Britain, this week. Britain has more than 10 million adults living on between £12,000 and £30,000 gross, the majority in work. However, this squeezed middle is fast becoming the squeezed majority, with even those on £50,000 seeing their children's prospects decline. The cause, Reich points out, is that while wages have flattened for years, the cost of living has spiralled and the richest have accelerated away. In the US, in 2008, 400 billionaires were "worth" more than 150 million of the US population.

Over the past few decades, average families have coped by more women going into employment, by working longer hours and by credit. But since 70% of the US economy is based on consumer spending, a lack of surplus cash means the engine is running out of fuel. The rich are small in number and don't spend nearly as much as the majority. "Free" markets with the rules written by the richest result in a shrinking public sector, deregulation, unemployment, low taxes for the most affluent and the threat of globalisation, depressing wages still further. The sum impact isn't "bad" capitalism, it is modern-day capitalism. How it changes, and how rapidly, is a challenge to its own survival. Once, the advancement of the employee was a part of the social contract. Under Thatcher, the aspiration of the average citizen was central via shareholding and home ownership. Now, a more brutal set of priorities pushes the requirements of "the little man" aside, while those who have money buy the influence that unjustly shapes the world in which we live. So how do we forge again the link between morality and the markets?

Iceland, post 2008, forced the resignation of the government, refused to bail out the banks and placed 200 "banksters” under investigation. In 2011, its economy grew by 2.9%. Would a similarly tough approach persuade some of today's pirates that the much mocked habits of the bourgeoisie do have a value that also matters: moderation; giving something back; a sense of civic duty. In that context, Apple would desist from legitimately funnelling more than a billion dollars' worth of iTunes sales through the tax haven of Luxembourg, while the British Virgin Islands would no longer be home to 30,000 people but a staggering 457,000 companies legally siphoning money that could build sustainable communities.

Reich's agenda for positive change includes more jobs; greater investment in skills and higher education; a just taxation regime; strong unions; investment in public infrastructure; a living wage and a narrowing of the earnings gap. Reich ends with a warning: "We are losing the moral foundation stones on which our democracy is built," he says. How much more evidence do we need?                                          [Abridged] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/03/capitalism-reform-essential

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2013

Flashpoint in Korea

Posted by Arthur Palmer       8 February, 2013

The political world of international relationships is in large measure an area where we distinguish between allies and potential enemies, good guys and bad, ‘them’ and ‘us’…  It’s a long-standing tradition, and despite the tragic conflicts that have been the outcome of this mind-set, most politicians seem unable to imagine another way of thinking and acting.

Take divided Korea as an illustration. The Korean people are split between a prosperous well-armed South, the good guys, and a hungry nuclear-armed North, distrusted and feared. On both sides of the demilitarized zone which separates them, increasing firepower to counter perceived danger takes precedence over food to satisfy hunger.  National pride demands no backing down. The stage is set for further tragic conflict.

 Kevin McBride reports on what he has seen there, and also on the recommendation of the World Council of Churches’ Working Party which has been studying this situation. Surely there is a way that offers hope. But it may require a new and better way of thinking about neighbours.

Confronting Them and Us    Talking Cents,    Kevin McBride   February  2013

Talking Cents is an ecumenical group charged by the Anglican Diocesan Council to promote an alternative to current economic and political thought, and to encourage debate within the church. Ministry units are encouraged to distribute these articles. This article is contributed by Kevin McBride of Pax Christi Aotearoa-New Zealand

On the morning of Thursday 14 December, I was one of a group of delegates to a World Council of Churches (WCC) Working Party driving across the 38th parallel and into the Demilitarized Zone which still divides the Korean Peninsula into two vastly unequal countries. The Armistice which brought an end to the fighting in 1953 has, after 60 years, not resulted in a Peace Agreement, so in effect, the Cold War which led to the outbreak of hostilities, was resumed, not ended, by the armistice. Only the shooting stopped. This was dramatically brought home to us as we gazed across the border from the shelter of the public observation post into the bleak landscape to the North, aware that not too far away, North Korean observers were likewise gazing at us. In the -20C temperatures outside the building, it was not difficult to sense the continuing chilly division of the world into them and us, "good guys and bad guys", in an ongoing struggle for dominance.

The WCC Working Party had been called to develop plans for the next World Assembly which is to be held in Busan, South Korea, in October/November of this year. Its specific objective was to find ways to focus attention at the Busan gathering on the need to address ongoing issues relating to world peace and well-being arising from the continuing threats provided by nuclear arms and risky nuclear power. At the meeting, evidence was provided showing that a great number of the world's nuclear weapons are in the North-East Asia region together with the greatest number of operating nuclear power plants. This is a veritable time-bomb with the ever-present threat of both nuclear weapon use and, as the destruction of the Fukashima nuclear power plant showed, for damage from nuclear contamination. In spite of this, the situation is sustained by governments and corporations driven by what Pope John Paul II called "an overwhelming desire for profit and a thirst for power".

The sense of imminent danger has been intensified in the Asia-Pacific region over the first decade of this century by growing rivalry between US and China for dominance in the Pacific, by flare-ups over territory and resources (eg in the Spratley and Sensaku/Diaoyu  islands) and by increasing awareness of the dangers provided by nuclear power plants, particularly in earthquake and tsunami-prone areas. Newly-elected leaders in both Japan and South Korea have taken more aggressive approaches than their predecessors, deepening fears of descent into a new Cold War in the region. Meanwhile, North Korea has done little to lessen the tension by successfully testing a long-range ballistic missile capable of carrying its newly-developed nuclear weapons well into Japan and possibly further across the Pacific. This in turn, is used as an excuse to ship more US missiles into Japan and South Korea, the latter having 30,000 US troops to supplement the already extensive national military forces. "Immense resources are diverted from the basic needs of people to sustain armies and armaments on both sides of the demilitarized zone."

One of the issues which arose repeatedly at the Seoul consultation was the malign influence of outside interests on the lives of a nation of people. Some of the local people there had originated in North Korea and many had family and church connections across the artificial border. These families had lived through a history which saw an ancient, civilised and united nation invaded and dominated by Japan from 1910 until 1945 when it was divided between World War 'winners', US and USSR. Each of its competing dictatorial leaders, northern communist Il-Sung and southern capitalist Rhee, sought to re-unite the nation but only led it into a disastrous war, eventually halted by the 1953 Armistice. Following that, resources and support from the West developed the South into one of today's economic giants, whose 50 million people enjoy an advanced standard of living, with Seoul standing out as a thriving modern city. Meanwhile, as the USSR collapsed, China focussed on its own economic growth and international aid came and went, the 21 million people of the North have fallen into economic disaster, where harsh winters and famines have led to thousands of deaths and chronic malnutrition. What wealth has accrued has been diverted into countering a paranoic fear of attack by the West, particularly following US President George Bush including it in an "axis of evil" which, like Iraq and Iran, had to be excised. Currently, a nuclear-armed North faces a South "protected" by US weapons and troops and economically dependent on 24 nuclear power sites, some of which are considered beyond their use-by date. "In the midst of this insecurity, the people of Korea, in the North and the South, have stated their longing for a just and sustainable peace, normalization of relations on the peninsula, and the pursuit of peaceful steps to reunification." *

Somehow, all this 'us-them' confrontation was dramatically present on that chilly border on 14 December and brought to mind all the other 'us-them' divisions which rend and threaten our world. A recent visitor to Afghanistan brought back two quotations which illustrate this:"The powers will not let people live in peace" (Afghan elder in refugee camp 6 December 2012) and "Poverty is pushing people to take up arms" (member of Afghan Peace Volunteers). The experience of people from Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific would say the same.

In confronting such issues in Seoul, the WCC Working Party had two main challenges to put to the coming Busan Assembly and also to member churches world-wide:        develop the concept of sang-saeng (living together in justice and peace)·         initiate a process of exodus from the dangers and instability of the nuclear regime; exodus to the safety and shared human security of a nuclear-free world.*

Specifically, this would mean: Developing an 'Exodus' concept as part of churches' understanding of nuclear threats, with special attention to the NE Asia context: exodus from nuclear dangers, threats and false security (Korea, Japan, Taiwan, etc); exodus to a world free of nuclear contamination and the risk of annihilation; an exodus from over-consumption and from lifestyles complicit with abundant  energy production and pollution (widespread in Global North, growing in Global South); exodus to the freedom and responsibility of adopting safer, more just and more sustainable sources of energy; the need to abandon nuclear umbrellas and reject nuclear deterrence (Korea, Japan, Taiwan. Europe), while promoting cooperative security and advocating for more countries to join the growing nuclear-weapon-free zones. *

Currently, it seems that our churches too readily accept a world divided into us and them and thus condone the excessive expenditure on weapons and market values which promote profitable energy-production systems rather than utilising earth-and people-friendly options. We buy into the unsustainable status quo rather than seek alternatives which respect the integrity of Creation and the unity of humanity in all our diversity. If the recommendations of the Seoul Working Party are accepted, the coming World Council Assembly in Busan will challenge that position and lead us to take a far more proactive approach towards a nuclear-free, sustainable and peaceful world.

Maybe even to think of 'them and us' as 'we'.*(WCC Nuclear Advocacy Consultation Working Party, Seoul 10-12 December 2012).          Received via Peace Movement Aotearoa

Rosa Parks at 100: a great American rebel for racial justice

Amy Goodman                          Guardian/UK                       31 January 2013

On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, thus launching the modern-day civil rights movement. Monday 4 February is the 100th anniversary of her birth. After she died at the age of 92, in 2005, much of the media described her as a tired seamstress, no troublemaker. But the media got it wrong. Rosa Parks was a first-class troublemaker.

Professor Jeanne Theoharis debunks the myth of the quiet seamstress in her new book The Rebellious Life of Mrs Rosa Parks. Theoharis told me: "This is the story of a life history of activism, a life history that she would put it, as being 'rebellious,' that starts decades before her famous bus stand and ends decades after."

She was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, and raised to believe that she had a right to be respected, and to demand that respect. Jim Crow laws were entrenched then, and segregation was violently enforced. In Pine Level, where she lived, white children got a bus ride to school, while African American children walked. Rosa Parks recalled: "But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world."

In her late teens, Rosa met Raymond Parks, and they married. Rosa described Raymond Parks as the first activist she had ever met. He was a member of the local Montgomery NAACP chapter, and, when she learned that women were welcome at the meetings, she attended. She was elected the chapter's secretary. It was there that Rosa met and worked with ED Nixon, a radical labor organizer. Rosa Parks was able to attend the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee in 1955. The school was a gathering place for activists – black and white together – committed to overcoming segregation, and for developing strategies and tactics for nonviolent resistance to it. It was there that Pete Seeger and others wrote the song "We Shall Overcome" as the enduring anthem of the civil rights movement.

Parks returned to Montgomery and her job as a seamstress. On 1 December 1955, she left work and got on the bus to go home. "The driver said that if I refused to leave the seat, he would have to call the police. And I told him, 'Just call the police,'" Parks told Pacifica Radio in April 1956. "The time had just come when I had been pushed as far as I could stand to be pushed."

Her arrest that day sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which would last more than a year. It was led by a young minister who had just moved into town: Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Rosa Parks helped to launch Dr King. Some 50,000 African Americans carpooled, used church vehicles, rode in African-American-owned taxis and walked. The boycott crippled white businesses and the public transit system. Parks and others mounted a court challenge to the segregation, and in June 1956, a federal court ruled segregation on buses as unconstitutional.

The Parks moved to Detroit. She continued her work, responding to the Detroit riots in 1967, conferring with members of the Black Power movement like Stokely Carmichael. She opposed the war in Vietnam. Historian Theoharis notes that Parks' biggest hero was Malcolm X. In the 1980s, Rosa Parks fought against apartheid, joining protests outside the South African embassy in Washington, DC.

When she met Nelson Mandela after his release from prison, he told her, "You sustained me while I was in prison all those years." When Rosa Parks died, she was the first African-American woman to lie in state in the Capitol rotunda. I raced down to Washington, DC to cover her memorial service. I met a young college student and asked her why she was there standing outside with so many hundreds of people listening to the service on loudspeakers. She said proudly: "I emailed my professors and said I won't be in class today; I'm going to get an education."

Rosa Parks has much to teach us. In fact, she and other young women had refused to give up their seats on the bus before 1 December 1955. You never know when that magic moment will come. This 4 February, the US Postal Service will release a "Rosa Parks forever" stamp, a reminder of the enduring mark she made. Rosa Parks was no tired seamstress. As she said of that brave action she took: "The only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

• Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.                       2013 Amy Goodman

The Growing Wealth Gap Is Unsustainable

The ever-increasing many who are struggling cannot support a structure that favours a tiny number of the very rich

Observer/UK             Editorial                    February 3, 2013

Antony Jenkins, chief executive of Barclays, who appears before MPs and peers on the banking standards commission this week, has removed one issue from the agenda, namely his right to a bonus of more £1m. The bank has been fined £290m and faces an official investigation by the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Services Authority into its dealings. So this is the least Jenkins could do.  

Last month, Barack Obama, on his re-election to a country with 42 million living in poverty, warned: "America cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it." At the World Economic Forum in Davos, its founder, Klaus Schwab, said: "Capitalism in its current form no longer fits the world around us." How badly it "fits" is powerfully demonstrated in Inequality for All, a documentary made by Jacob Kornbluth, that recently won the special jury prize at the Sundance festival. As discussed in today's New Review, the film "stars" Robert Reich, professor of public policy at Harvard, prolific author, campaigner, former labour secretary under Bill Clinton, a charismatic man whose lectures are renowned for the way he surgically dismembers the mutant capitalism that has taken hold in the US over the past 40 years.

Reich explains in chilling detail why growth alone may not be enough. For too many, he explains, social mobility has begun to slide backwards. A small but growing band of global pirates – billionaires all, without allegiance to community or country, accrue wealth from the continued immiseration of the squeezed majority. These hugely rich are fawned over and subsidised by governments even as inequality widens to a chasm.

Reich's analysis is similar to that of the UK thinktank, the Resolution Foundation. It launches its definitive study of low- to middle-income families, Squeezed Britain, this week. Britain has more than 10 million adults living on between £12,000 and £30,000 gross, the majority in work. However, this squeezed middle is fast becoming the squeezed majority, with even those on £50,000 seeing their children's prospects decline. The cause, Reich points out, is that while wages have flattened for years, the cost of living has spiralled and the richest have accelerated away. In the US, in 2008, 400 billionaires were "worth" more than 150 million of the US population.

Over the past few decades, average families have coped by more women going into employment, by working longer hours and by credit. But since 70% of the US economy is based on consumer spending, a lack of surplus cash means the engine is running out of fuel. The rich are small in number and don't spend nearly as much as the majority. "Free" markets with the rules written by the richest result in a shrinking public sector, deregulation, unemployment, low taxes for the most affluent and the threat of globalisation, depressing wages still further. The sum impact isn't "bad" capitalism, it is modern-day capitalism. How it changes, and how rapidly, is a challenge to its own survival. Once, the advancement of the employee was a part of the social contract. Under Thatcher, the aspiration of the average citizen was central via shareholding and home ownership. Now, a more brutal set of priorities pushes the requirements of "the little man" aside, while those who have money buy the influence that unjustly shapes the world in which we live. So how do we forge again the link between morality and the markets?

Iceland, post 2008, forced the resignation of the government, refused to bail out the banks and placed 200 "banksters' under investigation. In 2011, its economy grew by 2.9%. Would a similarly tough approach persuade some of today's pirates that the much mocked habits of the bourgeoisie do have a value that also matters: moderation; giving something back; a sense of civic duty. In that context, Apple would desist from legitimately funnelling more than a billion dollars' worth of iTunes sales through the tax haven of Luxembourg, while the British Virgin Islands would no longer be home to 30,000 people but a staggering 457,000 companies legally siphoning money that could build sustainable communities.

Reich's agenda for positive change includes more jobs; greater investment in skills and higher education; a just taxation regime; strong unions; investment in public infrastructure; a living wage and a narrowing of the earnings gap. Reich ends with a warning: "We are losing the moral foundation stones on which our democracy is built," he says. How much more evidence do we need?                                                                                                             [Abridged]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/03/capitalism-reform-essential

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2013