'Humanitarian' Killing Spree: The Case of Qaddafi

 

What a difference a decade makes, as they say. Qaddafi's death has spread euphoria across the Arab world, a celebration we can call as delayed. Why? The same euphoria was felt  elsewhere back in the early 2000s as diplomatic ties between Libya and the West gained new heights. In the years following Qaddafi's decision to abandon development of weapons of mass destruction, Libya saw a renaissance of close ties with the West: then British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Qaddafi in 2004, the first such visit since 1943; US lifts its trade embargo on the country; and the EU followed by lifting arms embargo.

The timing could not be more right for the West, the Iraq war has just begun and how to keep it going without hurting the economy too badly than inviting themselves to explore and exploit Libya's natural resources? Looking back from this year, we can only see how the West, for a decade now, is busy shopping for oil across the planet.

2008 for Libya and the West becomes more intimate as then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets Qaddafi in Tripoli, the first such visit since 1953.  Italy's leader Silvio Berlusconi then agrees to invest billions in Libya.

2009 brought Qaddafi closer to the leaders who will betray him in the future: he makes a controversial visit to Italy and there had to shake hands with Barack Obama while on a G8 summit.

But the West won't allow the world to see this renewed intimacy, so as the Arab Spring of 2011 arrived, a new policy on Libya was drafted. Thanks to the uprising, we can only imagine how some countries saw this as the most opportune time to act, and act fast. UN authorizes a no-fly zone in Libya basing the decision on false accusations that Qaddafi is bombing its own people. The resolution made it clear that: arms embargo applies, and that no ground troops and mercenaries are allowed to 'roam' Libya. All these were violated by NATO: the 'humanitarian' mission gave arms to the rebels while 'special ops' helped the rebels gain ground by secretly dropping mercenaries off Tripoli's shores. Today it is no secret; these secret forces are hailed for being strategic in helping pin down the unpopular leader.

So what now? I suspect there is power politics here as well, as hindsight; the Libyan humanitarian operation might be part of a larger agenda to isolate the Chinese from investing and having leverage in the African continent. Are we not tired of seeing Africans becoming under the boots of the West? Can we give the BRICs a chance to drive change and cultivate a wider policy of development for Africa? As far as history goes, Africa is nothing but the West's slave and resource exploitation waste land.

We can only speculate what happens to this energy-rich country. Qaddafi's death is an opportune time to rebuild Libya in the eyes of the West, as if anything, Afghanistan and Iraq serves a recent testament to the kind of 'democracy' Western interventions bring to these countries.

Four Years On: Did We Really Recede from the Recession?

As much as the political elite in the US and EU would like us to believe we 'recovered' from the great economic meltdown of 2008, so much of it is actually the reciprocal: unending  declines in investor confidence, clipping of businesses, credit downgrades, social spending cuts, protracted unemployment, very minimal hiring, housing still puling the economy down, and the default predicaments haunting the EU.

All these seem to point to a double-dipped recession, although unsurprisingly, policy makers, especially the ones supporting wars abroad do not admit to this. It is reasonably to state that unemployment in the US is the biggest hindrance to a 'real recovery'. For one, a high unemployment rate directly affects two things: without jobs, people dramatically cut their spending. As an effect, the government then spends billions to save these people from becoming destitute. This means a reduction in GDP, a tighter government budget, and more deficits. Although some sectors have recovered, such as the auto industry, they arrived at recovery via the layoff route.

Add to that the rise in oil prices this year due to the new Arab Spring and you get inflation back in the picture. Consumers spend even less when confronted with high prices: cotton price has gone up this year thus increasing the price of basic clothing by at least 20%, and the same goes for food like sugar, meat, and corn-based products.

Real estate and housing could be the real drag to US recovery from the 2008-2009 recession. Home equity continues to decline since 2006, so worse today than before that companies are tearing down unsold homes to avoid taxes. As a result, uncertainty in the housing sector also drags finance and net wealth sectors and most especially construction.

Also less obvious is the fact that non-financial companies are holding on to their stimulus money at near record levels, and the consumer is not far from doing so as well. What does this mean? This means that they are more nervous about the future, much like saving up for the stormy days, as they say.

Did we just record a 1.3% GDP growth and 9% unemployment this year? As such, it is hard to see whether Bernanke and his economists were too quick to declare the end of the economic meltdown. In addition to confidence, economic indicators really do point to a recession that really never ended.

On the one hand, as well all know, the NBER (responsible for calling the shot on the start and end of a recession) was unsure to declare that the 2008-2009 recession was really over during 2009. It's been two summers since, and same as in 2010, this year, more people are convinced that we really didn't recover and that we are headed to another disaster. Historically, it took the NBER almost 1 year to admit that the recession started in December 2007 and that it took almost 2 years to announce that the IT bubble of 2001 was over. Who knows when the NBER will announce the end of this present recession?

Bleaker than Ever: World Will Miss Avoiding 2050 Temperature Increase Targets

In its 2011 estimate, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that in 2010, the world emitted some 30.6 gigatonnes of harmful CO2 gasses into the atmosphere, thus making the target of limiting global temperature increase of 2ºC a bleak prospect.

On the one hand, emissions actually reduced in 2009, when the global economic meltdown of 2008 allowed for lower manufacturing and demand for energy. However, in 2010, as the economy recovered slowly, emissions once again increased to 5% than in the previous levels. This went against sympathetic scientists' expectations of a 'breathing space' while demand for energy is low and gives policy makers more time to 'negotiate' and contemplate a well-positioned climate policy.

In a statement, IEA chief economist Dr Fatih Birol said that “This significant increase in CO2 emissions and the locking in of future emissions due to infrastructure investments represent a serious setback to our hopes of limiting the global rise in temperature to no more than 2ºC".

For some time now, it has been a consensus among scientists and policy makers that the world must at all cost avoid a temperature increase of 2ºC through to 2050, if we are to avoid catastrophic and irreversible weather consequences. To achieve this goal, the world should emit no more than 5% of CO2 emissions in 2020 compared with 2000 levels, and even less after 2020. This also means that the world should not emit more than 32 gigatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere by 2020, or rise less than the total increase in emissions from 2009-2010.

Thanks to last year's 30.6 gigatonnes of emissions, the world is now in an even more difficult situation to meet the 32 gigatonnes limit emissions by 2020; too bad some 80% of the emissions in the next decade is now locked-in, meaning that 80% of emissions will come from presently under-construction powerplants thus adding to the predicament.

However, as with previous climate talks in the past ten years, climate talks have been hampered by the unwillingness of advanced economies to commit more for the climate than developing countries, not to mention economically struggling economies.  It all boils down to the capitalist system of business as usual and gaining geo-strategic advantage over other countries as well as baby-sitting greedy corporations.

Although scientists still are not sure what a 2ºC global rise in temperature brings, nevertheless, they are predicting mass extinctions, deforestation, desertification, more extreme weather events, as well as rise in sea level which will greatly threaten low-lying countries and thus pave the way for mass migration and conflict.

Quite predictably, imperialist powers are not busy tackling dramatic steps toward a friendlier emissions targets; tensions are actually building up as fight for new sources of resources slowly becomes the new agenda: with the melting of the Arctic, vast oil and gas reserves become economically viable to tap while new sea lanes open as well. Arctic countries including Denmark, Canada, Russia, and even the US and UK now are scrambling for control of this new exploitable expanse of the globe.

Also, efforts to forge a free-market out of CO2 emissions have failed as capitalist leaders can't agree on how to cash in. On the one hand, developing countries and the lesser ones argue that developing a market that takes advantage of this climate danger is not the path at all to solving this unprecedented challenge; those who caused this in the first place should be the ones who should be more diligent, responsible, and empathetic.

In addition to governments, transnational corporations represent a real obstacle to any advances in green technologies; anything that presents a threat to their profits should be side-placed, if not thrown to the waste bins.

On the one hand, the economic resources needed to tackle climate change is not as gigantic as most think it is; it is just a matter of the right allocation of resources. For instance, the IEA estimates that spending US$10-$100 billion annually can help tackle 2020 emissions targets. That figure translates less than what the US military will spend in Afghanistan this financial year in Afghanistan. Even more startling, that amount is less than one-third of the combined wealth of the ten richest individuals in the US alone.

To effectively tackle global emissions, developed nations should be more serious in developing new strategies including pursuing the path to greener energy generation, rethinking of industrial and agricultural practices, as well as making transportation more efficient. It is never been more important to move away from a profit-based way of life, but more toward to a world where social needs are met, and not on excessive consumption, wanton exploitation, and business as usual.

EU 'quietly' Seeking BRIC Assistance Regarding Greece Debt

Early this week, a news headline from Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal caught my attention regarding lobbying the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) to 'quietly' assist the EU, specifically Greece.

In seeking for the quiet assistance, in a telephone interview, The Institute of International Finance Inc. (IIF) Deputy Managing Director Hung Tran said that “If you have the extra 20 billion which we are seeking from other countries, that of course would increase the amount of debt retirement that Greece can have.” He also added that “We have been in preliminary discussions with some countries and the reaction we received is an open mind and request for more information and discussion.” the IIF represents 440 of the world's largest banks, insurance companies and investment firms.

Basically, this allows BRIC countries to pool their resources into a new account via the IMF, which in turn would be loaned to the Greek government. The goal is to allow lower Greece's burden by as much as $25 billion and lower the country's debt-to-GDP ration to about 91% by 2020, assuming the world is headed on a better economic climate.

It is quite lamentable that the IMF and World Bank cannot continue to support a faltering economy such as Greece's. As the EU financial juggernaut becomes exhausted, so as the countries that it persuaded to join this exclusive 'club' of supposedly advanced economies.

Just last May, when the IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was on the headlines, concerns about who should head the IMF cropped up. Despite the fact that the global economy is now concentrated in the East (BRIC), we still failed to see a BRIC leader in the IMF. Indeed, the West has a short memory, having forgotten Strauss-Kahn's statement just a few months ago that India and China's economy are the ones that really lifted the global economy out of the recession.

Fast forward to this day, how hypocritical is it to witness that the West is asking for assistance, albeit quietly? Why be quiet about a matter that will save the Euro zone? If the economies of Portugal and Spain crashes as well, do you really need to ask for assistance, discretely? Financial ministers from BRIC countries will be meeting with the IMF today; for now, let us standby and wait for further developments.

America Goes on to Sacrifices Economy for Influence

It has been a decade since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US; a solid ten years of rambunctious terror here and there, weakening of American leverage, influence, and leadership, as well as the rise of non-Western powers as the new leaders of the new century. At this point, it's become tiring to mention "9/11" or colloquially known as "twin towers attack", really.

Looking at this September 11 date from 2011, it can be interesting to figure out 'what went wrong' and if there is any room for improvement left for the US to do. In that ten years, we saw the sharp rise of BRIC countries, skyrocketing of energy prices, the greatest recession the capitalist world has experienced, the fall of overstaying leaders in the Middle East and Africa, and unprecedented disasters from natural calamities that further confirms that global climate change is real and thus further limits the world's options for development.

In the months following the 9/11 attacks, the US experienced a much needed sympathy from the global community; although a small fraction of the global population saw the US as the menace, the greater population grieved and empathized with the US. But in the next few years, we saw a dramatic decline in how the world viewed the "Global War on Terror", especially after the 2003 American invasion of Iraq: no weapons of mass destruction and the rest is history. Despite that, even in Barack Obama's time, the promise of withdrawing from the 'oil lands'  has not been met. The American war machine continued to rally its allies to foreign lands and as a consequence, sharply compromised its economy.

Indeed, Uncle Sam is in a really hard position these days: how do you balance global leverage with a failing economy? The more matured analysts advises the West to step aside and allow for change, than to be empire nostalgic.

But this is not the case, even after the Western recession of 2008-2009. Instead of pulling out from foreign lands, the US is taking advantage of the regime changes taking place in the Middle East and Africa. How hypocrite it is to see how the West literally embraced Gadaffi in the past but today we see him being betrayed by his 'energy partners'. Indeed, the US not only needs to secure energy for its own consumption, but also to actually profit from it by 'owning' the top oil producing countries. As the Gadaffi regime ends, otherwise NATO allies like Germany have become self-critical, blaming local policies for not joining the greatest oil looting in recent memory and thus, cannot take part in the oil bounty.How many times did we actually witness how the West encroached governments? Did we really think that the US government interventions in South America during the Cold War ended there?

And then the China equation aches to be solved: What to do with China's phenomenal rise? Everyday for at least the past decade we are bombarded with endless news about a China that is a non-responsible, economically and ecologically unsustainable country that needs to be tamed if the West is to maintain hegemony and a one-polar world. What the US cannot do by itself, it outsources, encouraging new powers to contain China. In a recent conversation with an Indian colleague, it is truly enlightening to realize that it seems that the US agenda for India is to pit it against its neighbor China. But it is more important to know that for now, India is not interested to become a US puppet.

What the West needs to do and avoid does not require hard thinking in actuality, it takes just to give up imperialism and see where the winds of change bring the world.

Nuclear Power and Meltdown 101: In light of Japan’s Nuclear Crisis

Although not yet in a full meltdown status, nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi station in Japan is now at a very critical status. Japanese officials rated earlier the accident as a level 4 “accident with local consequences” as per the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale’s (INES) 7-tier nuclear crisis scale.

Nuclear energy is basically an upscale water boiling process, where a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction sustains heat to boil water, driving steam turbines and then electricity. Japan has 54 nuclear reactors, making it the third-largest user of nuclear power in the world, only after the US and France. Six of these reactors are housed in the Fukushima Daiichi station, which was commissioned in the 1970s.

Since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi station are considered seriously crippled: explosions occurred at Unit 1 and 3 which destroyed exterior walls, most probably due to buildups of hydrogen gas produced by the zirconium in the fuel rods reaction with coolant water at extremely high temperatures. As of March 15, a third explosion has occurred at reactor No. 2, which seems that the containment vessel had been seriously breached.

How do you turn off a nuclear reaction?

Nuclear reactors work by harnessing the process of nuclear fission: the splitting of an atom into two smaller atoms, which also yields heat and send neutrons flying. Another atom absorbs one of the neutrons, which itself becomes unstable and releases more heat and more neutrons. To stop this process, the runaway neutrons must be intercepted. Control rods made of materials that absorb neutron do this interception.

Once the reactor is stopped, it still exhibits an enormous amount of heat, especially due to the by-then split uranium atoms those themselves give off so much heat. In the case of Japan, the disaster caused blackouts that cut off the externally sourced AC power for the reactor’s cooling system. The facility’s backup diesel generators also failed after the blackout, exposing the reactor to untamed heat and in serious situation of overheating.

Because of these dangerous developments, the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant now ranks as the second most serious nuclear power plant accident after Chernobyl (Soviet Union 1986).

Effects on human health

Humans are exposed to radiation on a daily level, albeit in low levels. They occur naturally in sunlight, as well as human-made like X-rays, cancer treatment, nuclear weapons, and nuclear power plants.

Exposure to radiation starts to be dangerous with the amount and duration of exposure. Over a short period, significant exposure can cause burns or radiation sickness. Symptoms include nausea, weakness, hair loss, skin burns and reduced organ function.

Long term effects include skin cancer, cataract, mutation of human fetuses or unborn children which when born will have smaller brain and head size, abnormal eyes, slow growth, and mental retardation.

Duane ARD, March 2011

Culture of Dominance in Decline: A Warning

As the sun itself sets, so does empires and imperialism, a fact its champions, Great Britain and the United States, should just recognize sooner.

In the specific case of Great Britain, market, entertainment, defense, and other British icons now belong to foreigners: Burberry, although still at the top of its league, its patrons are often tourists; Cadbury is now owned by America’s Kraft; luxury car brand Jaguar was bought by Ford in the 1990s and now is owned by India’s Tata Group; even top football teams (Manchester League) are now owned by Americans. In the 1990s, bands like the Spice Girls and Oasis ruled the charts. British Petroleum (BP) even re-branded itself to remove “British” and is today known as Beyond Petroleum, although after the Gulf oil spill in 2010, no one wants to be attached to the brand.

As in the law of diminishing rates of returns where profits will always decline and the search for new markets becomes more important as the decline happens, an imperialist government needs to find and nurture sympathetic, if not always legitimate governments to get market share. We need not look any further than the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In addition to securing the supply of fossil energy to the West, the Iraq war was also instigated to guarantee Western market dominance.

As there are no more other new markets to dominate, it is unfortunate that we are witnessing the privatization of war. Schools, health care, prisons have been privatized by international capital, and today, violence and war. As nation states become market states, violence and war also become privatized.

Unless imperialist Britain become more modest in its treatment of the world and abandon the Pax Britannica dream, it will have a difficult position in living with, if not confronting, the growing powers of the East which now are collectively known as BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China).

Duane ARD, March 2011

Mr. Obama, “tear down this wall”

A little more than 22 years ago, the 2nd world that is Eastern Europe saw major transformations. I don't totally agree with the Reagan and Thatcher doctrines, especially those who relate the Reagan rant of "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" as one of the forces that apparently contributed to the fall of the Berlin wall and much of the East.

Forgiving this totally uninitiated, hypocritical state of mind, the recent events in the North Africa and the Middle East makes us think history indeed repeats itself; we can start ranting here from the East: “Mr. Obama, tear down this wall.” Perhaps it is now high time for the US not to fear Arab democracy. Maybe it is time to stop supporting dictators and autocrats and monarchies that will not attack Israel and will not ensure the flow of foreign oil to the Western markets. It’s also high time to start valuing Egypt as a model of democratic reform than valuing it more as a strategic partner.

And then Libya comes next. The immediate neighbor of Tunisia and Egypt to the west and east and the largest oil producer in Africa, Libya’s ruler Gaddafi also has Western blessing, like his unpopular neighbor Mubarak. Could the Gaddafi regime and the West continue to deny an end to corruption and the better use of oil revenues and bring true democracy in the process? The opposite is true so far, as the US remains silent. As for Gaddafi, in a speech this week by his son and most likely future successor, he warned of Western domination once Libya falls, which is of course hypocrisy at its best.

This ‘freedom virus’ also has spread to Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet. Needless to say, it is one of the most important naval armadas, in this case ensuring that the Persian gulf is open and biased to US shipping, and of course for projecting power against Iran. This is a sad tale, as Bahrain is not even the most important country where American-style democracy should be demonstrated, and yet it fails and frustrates to affect any positive stance.

It’s unfortunate that you are the present commander-in-chief of the sole superpower of the world as this really testing events unfold; but as someone who has promised ‘change has come to America’, dealing with these revolutions (let’s hope not civil wars) really will be one of the tests that is itching to be passed. Then again, Mr. Obama, tear down this hypocrisy wall.

Duane ARD, February 2011