From the Empirical Archives: Why Human Rights Matter

Why Human Rights Matter

Emanuel Stoakes

Originally published in the February 2013 issue of Empirical

When, on occasion, I get challenged about why I bother with human rights, I’m usually surprised. The questioner must, I am often tempted to reply, be happy for me to come over to their house that night with an armed gang and torture them, and follow that by kidnapping them without trial for an indefinite period, only to be protected under law because I’m friends with the attorney general? (This is all hypothetical, of course.) When I sink to such an artless rejoinder, no one ever says “Yes” and means it. While I concede that the above may be a fatuously extreme thing to say, it raises meaningful points. If we want to be free from unimaginable suffering and injustice ourselves, then we surely have to accept in principle that all human beings should be free from it. It is this notion (the universalist principle, one which runs counter to the intellectual constructs that have so long supported the conceits and whims of power) that is found immovably at the heart of the philosophy of human rights.

Of course, this concept is nothing new. It is so ancient as to be an almost archetypal principle. In this sense, the human rights movement is a meeting place of apparently irreconcilable streams of thought, in that it echoes values common to intellectual movements both modern and ancient–for example, the enlightenment and the Abrahamic religions.

What’s more, it posits an equality of worth for all human beings that political systems devised to empower the poor, such as Communism, failed to grant in practice. Indeed, in some cases, the human rights movement has achieved what the various left-leaning political revolutions have always aspired to bring about: radically positive transformation in the lives of the most needy. Moreover, such advances did not come at the cost of individual freedoms or through the agency of an intrusive and corrupt government, as in many ostensibly socialist societies.

A case in point occurred in India in 2001, when a group of campaigners managed to secure school meals for 50 million children, many of whom suffered from extreme malnourishment. This was achieved through public interest litigation in which the indivisible right to food was invoked. This legally-mandated system already looks set to reach out to a further 50 million children–and is continuing to expand its reach. It is easily the biggest program of its kind in the world.

The central text of the rights movement, the Universal Declaration of 1948 asserts that certain fundamental entitlements are granted to all global citizens, without distinction. This was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948. The principles it contains were timely and momentous: they prefigured the end of American segregation, the break-up of apartheid and the final collapse of European colonialism. The Declaration, and the codification of the values it upholds, represented a landmark moment in the modern era, one that has helped to form the world that we inhabit now with laws and protections we take for granted. Its span covers all the essential human requirements for life and dignity ranging from freedom from slavery to the right to food.

The declaration also calls for “an international order in which human rights can be fully realized”–something that, to this writer at least, sadly remains an aspiration for the global community, the world being as it is. This is something to which I will return.

Above all else, the great beating heart of the human rights cause is its affirmation of the importance of humanity, its ability to transcend normally incommensurable differences without alienating anyone; and doing so by appealing to that most definitively human of our instincts–our ability to feel compassion for our fellow human beings.

The principles upheld are free from the prescriptions, meta-narratives and/or dictations of any belief or exclusionary creed. Rather, the defining features of human rights law and the values it seeks to honor are drawn from the common cultural treasury of our species: in it we see echoes of the Ubuntu philosophy from Africa, the ancient Manu Smriti traditions from ancient India, the central teachings of the Abrahamic religions and the liberal humanist ideals of the European Enlightenment.

Thus, the human rights outlook encompasses a remarkably flexible, inclusive “consensus narrative.” In this way it is politically and culturally neutral. Because of this, people of humane impulse from all backgrounds have joined the international justice movement, and can find common cause in seeking the implementation of the laws associated with it.

There’s plenty of ground to be made. The human rights project is a work in progress. If we just look at recent years, incidents that occurred during the Global War on Terror, the Sudanese and Sri Lankan civil wars, even the treatment of Bradley Manning by the US are considered serious offenses that remain unpunished.

Despite the fact that some of those considered responsible for the alleged crimes have not been held to account, many human rights abusers live in fear of being sent to The Hague in the future. We can thank the HR community for having brought this far.

Recent victories underline such progress.

As mentioned before, not long ago, Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia, was sentenced (effectively for the rest of his natural life) for his part in what presiding Judge Richard Lussick described as “some of the most heinous and brutal crimes recorded in human history.” Among the many terrible acts believed to have been perpetrated by his soldiers, perhaps the most abominable was the practice of cutting fetuses from the wombs of pregnant women for sport. Rape, maimings, and torture were widespread under his reign of terror.

To the countless victims of the Sierra Leonese civil war, seeing Taylor sentenced was no small matter. What’s more, his arrest and prosecution still stands as a powerful reminder that those who commit crimes against humanity can be made to pay. That’s no small victory for justice. Likewise, several of the big players in the Bosnian genocide have now also been caught and had their day in the dock.

However, it must not be forgotten that great exceptions to the proper adoption of the regime of global justice endure. At the time of writing, several pertinent cases of justice–evasion have passed through the news.

I will first attend to the most striking of such examples. Late last year, the BBC leaked an internal UN report on the international body’s failures during the finale of the Sri Lankan civil war. It makes for a terrifying read, particularly given that it has been estimated that tens of thousands of civilians may have been killed during that time, allegedly by indiscriminate shell fire issuing from government forces.

The UN, it transpires, as Frances Harrison–the BBC’s former Sri Lanka correspondent–put it, had received “unconfirmed reports of 50,000 casualties in a war off limits to journalists” in the late stages of the conflict but did not raise the alarm. This came about, according to the report, because of “a culture of trade-offs” whereby UN workers played softball with Sri Lanka in order to try to influence their behavior in an attempt to improve the situation for the victims.

However, this tactic did not work–and moreover, the numbers of those reportedly killed was so high that it is scandalous that the UN did not speak out. According to Harrison, senior figures received briefings by staff “which showed that almost all the civilian casualties recorded by the UN had reportedly been killed by Government fire” but still did not inform the world about such horrors. To compound the appalling character of the alleged crimes, the fatalities reported were concentrated in “no fire zones” that had been unilaterally declared by the government as a place of refuge for civilians.

Perhaps the strongest complaint about the conditions of the civilians stuck in the “no fire zones” came from the International Committee of the Red Cross who, at the time, stated that an “unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe” was taking place for the ethnic Tamil civilians there who were deprived of medicine and food–and under fire. Other NGOs would later describe Sri Lanka’s war effort a little under four years ago as having been “an assault on the entire regime of international law”–during which time disregard for human life was so brazen that hospitals got hit repeatedly–in one case, 35 times according to Human Rights Watch.

To this day, no one has been punished for the credibly alleged war crimes that reportedly took place, despite increasing international pressure being brought to bear on Colombo. One of the reasons for this has been the aggressive resistance shown by the government of Sri Lanka to call for an international inquiry undertaken under the auspices of the United Nations.

The government did commission its own internal inquiry, which failed to address many of the worst allegations against it, and which–predictably–exonerated the government. Amnesty International wrote of the probe that it was “fundamentally flawed and provides no accountability for atrocities.” This outcome was itself entirely predictable. An American diplomat expressed in one Wikileaks-released cable “There are no examples we know of a regime undertaking wholesale investigations of its own troops or senior officials for war crimes while that regime or government remained in power.”

“In Sri Lanka this is further complicated,” she continues, “by the fact that responsibility for many of the alleged crimes rests with the country’s senior civilian and military leadership.”

The slow-moving carriage of international justice is easily set off course by sitting governments. While misbehaving politicians maintain their grip on power, it is hard to bring to them to an international court without causing unrest in their native country–or invoking a host of sovereignty issues. Unauthorized military action to remove a criminal regime is itself a crime, and trying to do this legally (as in the case of Assad in Syria) is a torturous process, often impeded by division at the UN Security Council.

This being as it is, war crimes suspects are much more vulnerable when they have left power.

This was the case with Charles Taylor, who, despite all his best efforts, was forced to face up to his crimes after leaving office, albeit a decade later. Likewise, Radovan Karadzic was indicted in absentia by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for his role in crimes that he committed during the Bosnian war. He is currently being held in the UN’s detention center in Scheveningen in The Netherlands, after having been in hiding for decades; in 2008, Karadzic was identified and arrested in Belgrade. Despite having cultivated a long beard, living under the assumed name D.D. David and posing as a “quantum energy healer” in Vienna and Serbia, Karadzic has finally been brought before a court.

Despite such encouraging achievements, there are major obstacles to the universalist principle being applied without exception among the world’s nations where it comes to human rights, especially those associated with the conduct of armies in times of war.

The existing global power structures effectively mean that the world’s elite powers, in particular those that hold the veto on the United Nations Security Council, cannot be held accountable for offenses. The train of justice cannot move up road-blocked channels.

Russia is one example. The United States and Britain are others. When Russia crushed Grozny in 1999 in response to the invasion of Dagestan by Islamist Mujahadeen, a wide range of grave war crimes were credibly alleged to have taken place. Even long after the assault ended, Grozny was described by the UN as “the most destroyed city on earth.” Journalists reported appalling abuses. Mass graves were found. Rights groups criticized “blatant and sustained violations of international humanitarian law” committed by both sides.

Yet the military and political elite in Russia remained unaccountable, given the country’s status in the world. External criticisms could be endured. And domestically, too, because many Russians supported the action, which meant that popular uproar was not a threat; this worked well, as Moscow had achieved her strategic goals and installed a pliant suzerain. The cost-benefit analysis in pure, cynical political terms equated to net gains. By comparison, behaving ethically or proportionately once Russia’s territorial integrity was threatened was not a priority.

Likewise, the questionable conduct of British and American troops in Fallujah in 2004 during the Iraq war attracted floods of criticism but is unlikely to result in any consequences for the military command that oversaw it.

That is not to say that coalition troops planned to go in and behave criminally–it is just that the retaking of Fallujah was probably considered a significant enough strategic goal that a full-scale assault on the city was considered necessary, as in Grozny.

Due to the ferocity of the invasion, however, hell-on-earth was visited upon Iraq’s “City of Mosques.” The city was devastated by an attack that was designed to send a clear message to those forces that opposed the invading party.

This appears to be reflected in the testimony of those who served there. One Iraq veteran told me that “Right before we entered the city, I remember our company commander saying something like ‘all the civilians have left, so be as violent as you need to be to go home in one piece.’ I’m not sure at which level in the chain of command they were genuinely misinformed and at which level they were deliberately lying. Until I was in Fallujah and saw civilians with my own eyes, I believed what my command had told me.”

As the fighting got more intensive, cruel expedients were allegedly deployed. According to the same source, units in Fallujah “used a tactic called reconnaissance-by-fire, which is when you fire into a building to see if anyone is inside. There might have been civilians inside, but the point of reconnaissance-by-fire is that you don’t know what you’re firing at. We used tanks to fire into houses that had resistance fighters inside, and sometimes we used bulldozers to flatten the house on top of them."

“I watched a unit to our right flank flatten an entire neighborhood, one house after another, without checking to see if anyone was inside these houses,” he added. Without going into the full range of legal complications associated with the invasion of Iraq, or the sort of possible offenses described latterly by the source, if Russia leaders cannot be held to account because of the nation’s relative stature in world affairs–how much less so is this the case for the political elites in the US?

Indeed the unlikelihood of an American, or indeed any high-profile western politician, being sent to the Hague underlines the chief criticisms leveled at the international justice system as it currently is. So far, the International Criminal Court has focused overwhelmingly on hosting cases against Africans. Such facts, sadly, remain an enduring testimony to the limitations of the system. Some, like legal expert Chris Mahony, have argued that, in the realm of international justice “the world’s great powers . . . decide who is prosecuted, and who is not.”

This desperately needs to change–yet these are flaws which can be traced to government policies and the realities of the world’s international order–not the designs of the human rights movement.

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From the Empirical Archives: An Interview with Stephen Zunes by Emanuel Stoakes

An Interview with Stephen Zunes

Emanuel Stoakes

Originally published in the January 2013 issue of Empirical

Given that this is the first issue of Empirical in 2013 and the human race has survived yet another turbulent year (despite the predictions of Mayan calendar enthusiasts and others), it may be appropriate to take stock in some way, in keeping with the ancient traditions of New Year festivals across the world.

During the Jewish High Holy Days, the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is traditionally a time in which observant Jews are obliged to engage in sustained reflection on what’s been and resolve to do things better in the future. Other major cultural festivals such as Nowruz in Iran, Seol-Nal in Korea, and the Chaitra in the Hindu tradition, among many others, encourage varying degrees of contemplation and self searching amidst celebration of the year’s renewal.

With this in mind (albeit with a political focus), Empirical magazine caught up with the estimable San Francisco Bay Area scholar Stephen Zunes to discuss a cluster of controversial, sobering, and thought-provoking issues linked to the past and present actions of the government of the United States at home and abroad.

Professor Zunes is Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, and is considered one of America’s leading scholars on US foreign policy, in particular Middle-Eastern policy. Professor Zunes has produced many widely read articles on Middle Eastern politics, US foreign policy, international terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, strategic nonviolent action, and human rights. He also spent many hours reading internal government documents in the national archives, as well as travelling extensively throughout west Asia and meeting key political actors in the region.

I began by asking him about perhaps the most explosive issue of the last decade–the Iraq war.

Emanuel: What’s your opinion of the case that was made for the Iraq war? And what influence do you think that Project for the New American Century and its neoconservative membership had on how things turned out? [PNAC were an influential right-wing think tank during the 90s and 2000s who advocated “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.” Supporters of the Iraq war, many PNAC members were part of the Bush administration.]

Stephen Zunes: They were a strong intellectual force behind it, in their intellectual rationalization, and a series of events, including 9/11, helped make it possible, along with some more traditional conservatives and the Christian evangelicals, and so on. So, it was a tragic confluence of various ideological and strategic tendencies, and they were certainly a major piece of it. I think a lot of people overplay their role in a sense–especially the Zionist connection. If you read that famous memo from 1996, it’s more along the lines of what Israel can do for the US, than what the US can do for Israel. While I’ve certainly been attacked quite viciously by various Zionist groups, I’ve generally been one of those who has argued that the whole Israeli-lobby angle is overstated, and so I agree with Noam Chomsky on this point. The invasion had a lot more to do with a broader hegemonic priorities than any one special interest group. I think what PNAC and those guys really were talking about was an idea–in many ways it is not a new idea–but by their very name, it goes back to that post-World War II period, when there really was that sense that the United States could  reshape the world in our image. And again, it goes back in some ways to the Puritans. So in that sense I think they were able to capitalize on that part of American culture, by appealing to those that would be susceptible to that sort of thinking.

Emanuel: To what degree do you think that US foreign policy is driven by self-referential ideology?

Stephen Zunes: The older I get, the less I tend to think in terms of conspiracies and the more I am inclined to recognize the power of ideology. It’s huge. Again, Chomsky’s pretty good at recognizing this too. I have disagreements with Chomsky on some things but I think he’s a lot more on target than, say, people like Michael Parenti and other kinds of vulgar Marxists who see political smoke-filled rooms of people planning all these things.

Emanuel: I guess people like Parenti are being self-referential too.

Stephen Zunes: Yeah, and I think that’s the case with much of US policy, including when people realize that  we are supporting some pretty nasty characters. I don’t think they like the fact that these people are terrible dictators, but they believe the end justifies the means, basically. And of course you can use the idea of democracy [as a justification], and when people link free markets with that, that’s part and parcel of what freedom means. So you go on to have that play a disproportionate role in your calculations. I think its interesting with the Helms-Burton Bill on Cuba, if you look at what they say–that sanctions will be lifted when there’s “free and fair elections and Cuba embraces a free market economy.” So, if suddenly tomorrow Cuba was democratic, had free elections, but had a democratic socialist government, by law, sanctions would still be in place!

Emanuel: Does neoliberalism [extreme free market economics] necessarily make people more free and countries more democratic, or can it actually intrude on the sovereignty, economic sovereignty at least, of poorer nations?

Stephen Zunes: The current neoliberal model–[governed by] international institutions and the like–greatly compromises sovereignty. Although, I can certainly see how you can make the case that you can get more political space in a system where a government doesn’t have a monopoly on the economy. So in that sense it can be a democratizing force. And it’s interesting, because I know some folks at Otpor, and a number of them are pretty left-wing in their politics, but they actually supported some of the privatization efforts because it was a way of getting rid of the kind of crony capitalism that Milosevic and those guys had put together. In many ways, they had to clean out the old system. Although, again, their views would be well to the left of most of the neoliberals and others. But the main point is that–this is one of the big questions right now–you have all these countries becoming democratic throughout the world. I forget the figures, but the number of dictatorships had decreased by half in the past 20 to 30 years. However, the decisions that affect people’s lives the most are made less and less in the national capitals, and more and more in New York and Frankfurt and London and Geneva, etc.

Emanuel: What’s been your general experience in terms of government secrecy–is it often used to make sure that what the government is doing is held in occultation, in a sense, to provide cover for reprehensible activities as opposed to just things hidden from the public for necessary security purposes?

Stephen Zunes: Very much so, I think it’s particularly true in the United States, because one of the great contradictions in American culture is that on one hand, we’re a superpower, with all the imperial prerogatives thereof, working in a realpolitik environment, at the same time Americans themselves hold on to these strong idealistic values about democracy, about rule of law and that sort of thing. And on the one hand, every empire has tried to rationalize its actions: white man’s burden, “la mission civilisatrice” [“the civilizing mission,” a French colonial saying], that kind of thing. But in general, again to the use the example of France, France intervened in Africa the way the US has in Latin America and the French shrug their shoulders. Of course that’s what governments do. That’s their sphere of influence. Some of it’s pretty nasty. Americans get this real sense of righteous moral outrage when they find out about [their government] supporting terrorists and dictatorships. So, I think because of this, the US government, more than any other, really has to hide [these things], and especially since we’ve supported some of the worst thugs in the world in the name of defending democracy. If people knew what was going on, it would be hard to get away with that. I think in many ways the fact that the US government has to go to the extent that it does in order to cover up embarrassing details about our favorite dictators and that kind of stuff is. . . a validation of the American people that they feel the need to keep this kind of thing under wraps.

Emanuel: I notice that you bring up the term empire in relation to US activities abroad. Can you clarify what you mean by that?

Stephen Zunes: Ok. It’s a term that I don’t usually use that much, as people usually get defensive about that kind of thing. I certainly don’t think there’s a big difference between lowercase i imperialism and uppercase I Imperialism, but it is to some degree about hegemony–any kind of great power trying to maximize its influence for strategic and economic reasons. Again, on the one hand the United States is different from previous empires in that, with a few short-term exceptions, we haven’t controlled colonies outright. But also there is this: because of our own history, in revolution against empire, it’s not something we really like to acknowledge. At the same time, the kind of American exceptionalism we feel goes back to the Puritans: John Winthrop, the City on the Hill, you know, the New Jerusalem, manifest destiny. There is this sense that we are special, that we can get away with stuff that other countries can’t. It is an unspoken assumption, but it’s there, especially at the presidential debate–where the debate is on how American exceptionalism should manifest itself. No one’s questioning anything.

Emanuel: To what degree do you think that religious aspects play into that? For example, not to ask a leading question, but the former Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney–a Mormon–reportedly has a view of America as being a big part of the world’s salvific destiny. Do you think there’s a bit of that which feeds into such exceptionalist worldviews?

Stephen Zunes: Very much so. It also reflects a lot of trends within American Protestantism. In fact, I couldn’t help but notice that. I mostly work on the Middle East. I couldn’t help but notice the difference in public opinion between mainline Protestants and Catholics and more humanist-orientated people on the one hand, and fundamentalist Protestants on the other, was exceptionally wide when it came to Iraq. That many Protestants really did see [the war] in terms that Bush was using–the quasi-religious rationalization. It’s even greater than it is on Israel-Palestine where there’s that evangelical need to ensure the second coming of Christ, that sort of thing. I think that both Mahmoud Abbas and the French Prime Minister said that Bush told them point blank that God had told him to invade Iraq, for example.

Emanuel: Sorry, I know this is a bit speculative, but do you think that Bush actually believed that–or do you think it was a way of, for example, manipulating other people?

Stephen Zunes: I’d doubt it–I can could see him saying it to some fellow American evangelicals, but him saying that to a Palestinian Muslim and an agnostic Frenchman is [pause]–I wouldn’t see how that would carry him very far.

Emanuel: What’s your analysis of the political economy of the relationship between the religious right within America and the government, in terms of foreign policy?

Stephen Zunes: There is this very strong belief in American exceptionalism. I mean it’s an interesting thing that, if you look at it, virtually all the mainline Protestant denominations and the Catholic church came out against the Iraq war, and yet Congress–which consists primarily of members of these denominations voted otherwise. The Catholic bishops were very clearly against the war; the Pope was against the war! It’s interesting that in certain ways–that on issues of war and peace–the leadership of American churches are more peace-oriented than their congregants. On the fundamentalist side, they have rarely been among the most militarist. Maybe you’d think it would after the end of the cold war. It was no longer a struggle against Godless communists. But, if anything, these tendencies seem to have gotten stronger.

Emanuel: What do you think of Samuel Huntingdon’s influential clash of civilizations narrative [that major cultural spheres–in particular, Islam and the West–are set to be the future points of international confrontation. Some people have said it’s an attempt to rehabilitate cold-war thinking?

Stephen Zunes: I very much agree with that critique [the “clash of civilizations” thesis]. There’s not much of an historical or empirical basis to back [the narrative] up, but it does help rationalize the kinds of behavior that would not otherwise be acceptable to a large number of Americans. I don’t know if you saw a piece I did maybe five years ago when Ahmadinejad came to the UN and I got to be part of a group (I work at a Catholic University), so I was brought in with a number of clergy and laity who were meeting with him in New York. And I mostly talked about him in many ways as being more pathetic than evil–obviously, I was quite critical of him. But I did explore this whole question of why there is this obsession with Ahmadinejad, especially since the Iranian president is not particularly powerful and doesn’t control the military, and how when there is a moderate Iranian President like Khatami [Ahmadinejad’s predecessor], he was virtually ignored by the US media. I basically argue that Ahmadinejad fits so perfectly with the image of the stereotypical middle-eastern leader we love to hate–prior to him it was Saddam; prior to that it was Gaddafi, you know. You find some crazy dictator who does irrational things, and Idi Amin played a similar role a couple of years earlier–a third-world leader, and some of these people are indeed horrific thugs, but they also play into the whole self-righteousness idea, and this idea that we Westerners need to have a strong military presence to protect us from these crazy, crazy, crazy people. And that’s why I think these guys often get far more press than they deserve, especially when you compare them to some of the thugs that the West supports–N’Guema in Equatorial Guinea; Karamov in Uzbekistan, who boils his enemies alive. These guys have done things at least as crazy as some of these other tyrants, but it doesn’t quite fit into the paradigm.

[An interesting quote from Zunes’ aforementioned piece about his meeting with the Iranian President: “My Meeting with Ahmadinejad,” for Foreign Policy in Focus": “[Ahmadinejad] was quite unimpressive. Indeed, with his ramblings and the superficiality of his analysis, he came across as more pathetic than evil. . . . The Iranian president impressed me as someone sincerely devout in his religious faith, yet rather superficial in his understanding, and inclined to twist his faith tradition in ways to correspond with his pre-conceived ideological positions.”]

Emanuel: With regard to government secrecy, again, can you give examples of secrecy laws being used to cover up reprehensible actions by the US government or its allies–in terms of it being an abuse of government secrecy?

Stephen Zunes: A clear example is during the Gulf War in 1991. A report on a friendly aircraft carrier, about how some of the fighters would watch pornographic movies to get psyched up before their attacks, and governments censored this. And when they referred to them returning from their missions “giddy,” military censors changed it to “proud.” In terms of outright secrecy, certainly the infamous massacre in El Salvador in 1981 [is an example]. The New York Times actually had an article that exposed it, but the government denied it, and had no record [of it]. The Reagan people went after the Times’ editors, and the poor guy who wrote the thing got transferred out of El Salvador to cover school board meetings in New York, or something, as a result. But it turned out the initial account was, in fact, accurate. Certainly, the issues centering around the Contras [in Nicaragua in the 1980s]–[from] their attacks on civilians to their role in the cocaine trade–those were censored. I had [written] an article recently about a human rights situation where the US government was denying one thing, and then Wikileaks came out saying that they, in fact, were quite aware of what was going on.

Emanuel: Changing subjects rather dramatically, with regards to Iraq, were there alternatives to the sanctions there that came about in the 90s and early 2000s? The human cost, which Madeline Albright insisted was “worth it” to the crew of 60 Minutes, was estimated by UNICEF as including the lives of 500,000 children. Why did they persist? Why didn’t they change their policy given that they could see that a huge number of people were being killed?

Stephen Zunes: The only thing that I can think of is that they laid down the rules, or the law, and assuming that consequences would be so bad, they’d give in. But they didn’t, and then couldn’t back down, even though they knew it didn’t work, ‘cause they had to stand by what they said. I don’t know if you’re a parent or not, but if you have any kids, you probably know what I’m talking about. “You can’t go to this birthday party unless you clean your room,” assuming they would, and then they don’t, and you feel terrible about not letting them go to the party, but you don’t want to back down–that kind of thing. I think part of it was that, and bureaucratic inertia, and just the idea that if we compromised it would seem to be rewarding him [Saddam Hussein] and nobody wanted to do that. And I think it was also just like a lot of foreign policies, unfortunately, when we’re frustrated, it’s almost by catharsis: we don’t care if it works or not. When the United States has bombed countries, like bombing Libya in ‘86 around the terrorist attacks, it felt good, almost starting foreign policy by catharsis.

Emanuel: Finally, what do you think about Hugo Chavez in Venezuela? Do you think he’s a monstrous dictator, or is that a bit of a false image?

Stephen Zunes: I think in his election, he won fair and square, though I think that part of the problem is that the old opposition is still dominated by the old elites. And if you’re Venezuelan, you have the choice of the status quo or the status quo anti. So you may not be happy with either, but you’d probably choose the status quo, because at least under Chavez he’s provided the political space for some exciting grassroots socialist initiatives that have helped a lot of people and have given hope to a lot of people that didn’t have much of that in the old system. At the same time, he’s definitely suppressed civil liberties. I have one Venezuelan friend who’s decidedly left-wing in her politics, but she referred to him as the Berlusconi of the poor [Berlusconi was an Italian Prime Minister with a reputation for corruption and media domination.] There’s definitely a demagogic quality to him, and certainly when he embraces Ahmadinejad and Assad and the dictator of Belarus, these guys–I mean c’mon give me a break–that’s inexcusable. On another hand, he’s given money to end Venezuela’s odious debt, he’s given money to Evo Morales, who is more democratic and by certain measures, more left-wing, given him space to do some good things in Bolivia, so I’m very mixed on Chavez.

Emanuel: Professor Zunes, thank you very much.

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From the Empirical Archives: Exploring the Rich World of Flexidox Judaism by Emanuel Stoakes

Exploring the Rich World of Flexidox Judaism

Emanuel Stoakes

Originally published in the December 2012 issue of Empirical

December is the month in which two of the major American holidays, Christmas and Hanukkah, are celebrated–though Hanukkah sometimes begins in late November. While the former celebration is familiar to most, with its family gatherings, present-sharing, spirit of goodwill and an attendant crush of gaudy commercial mayhem, Hanukkah is a more understated and often more misunderstood–as well as misspelled midwinter festival.

It is apt to include a conversation with Rabbi Gershon in the December issue of Empirical, given the beautiful symbolism of Hanukkah, the festival that to many Jews concludes the High Holy Day season which begins with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The Holy Day, also known as the “festival of lights,” celebrates a miracle that occurred in Solomon’s Temple during the second century BCE, after the Maccabees had regained Jerusalem from the Seleucid tyrant Antiochus. According to the Talmud, after the Holy Temple was rededicated, oil lamps were lit in celebration and burned for eight days despite there being only enough sacred oil for one day’s use.

This was a reminder of the love of God for the Jewish people, having once again overcome great adversity and oppression. Since that time, in the heart of winter around much of the world, Jews have lit menorah candles in solemn remembrance of this redemptive moment.

It is thus apposite to mention the story of Hanukkah in relation to Flexidox Judaism, a radically universalist school of thought within the great Jewish tradition. The Flexidox movement celebrates all that Judaism encompasses from the time of the Patriarchs through the era of the Nivi’im (prophets) and great thinkers like Hillel to more contemporary voices such as the Lubevitcher Rebbe. In that mix, Rabbi Gershon also includes Jesus, of whom he says: “He was an early rabbi, a Tanna. He was of Davidic ancestry, possibly the legitimate heir of his generation.”

Drawn from the incomparable history of the Jewish people and religion, Flexidoxy collects the varied lights of Jewish faith in celebration of all it has to offer. The Hanukkah menorah, the nine-branched candelabra lit in gratitude to God, puts one in mind of the Flexidox spirit: a tribute to memory and triumph. I began by asking Rabbi Gershon to describe his understanding of the significance of Hanukkah.

Rabbi Gershon: Hanukkah began as a celebration of a revolution to oppose oppression and forced foreign worship [by the Seleucid empire]. Instead of fulfilling the mandate of the Revolution, to restore the Davidic throne and the Zadokite High Priest, the Maccabees made claim on both traditional, lineage-related offices (the royalty and the priesthood), and then went about seeking to eradicate those with a legitimate claim to either.

Emanuel: How would you define the message of Flexidox Judaism?

Rabbi Gershon: The message of Flexidox Judaism is that every branch of Judaism is legitimately Jewish, equally. It posits that interfaith marriage and families is traditional and to be respected. That proselytizing is always in error.

Emanuel: What is your understanding of the creation narrative in Genesis–do you believe in evolution?

Rabbi Gershon: Yes, I believe in scientific knowledge as telling me how God did it.

Emanuel: What do you understand the soul to be? 

Rabbi Gershon: The Hebrew word for soul is neshamah (breath). When one dies the breath returns to the One Who Breathed it and the body returns to the elements.

Emanuel: What is your position on heaven and hell?

Rabbi Gershon: Both heaven and hell are here on earth, in a person’s lifetime. They are but two sides of the same coin (Isaiah 45: 7).

Emanuel: Do you believe that Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship the same God?

Rabbi Gershon: Short answer, yes! And the Buddhist and Hindu as well. Longer answer, the kabbalist Moses Cordovero, writing in the 16th century, put it this way: The essence of Divinity is found in every single thing–nothing but it exists. Since it causes everything to be, no thing can live by anything else. IT enlivens them. Ein Sof [the infinite] exists in each existent. Do not say, ‘This is a stone and not God.’ God forbid! Rather, ALL existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity. But also do not say, ‘This stone alone is God.’ Again, God forbid! For God is not confined in a stone. The Hebrew concept of God is more as the Force(s) of Creation than as a Man in the Sky. Daniel C. Matt writes in his book God and The Big Bang, GOD is a name we give to the oneness of it all. God is the oneness of the Cosmos. But the name ‘GOD’ is a label we attach to this oneness–the ultimate, all inclusive name. In fact, this is exactly how traditional Jews refer to God: HaShem, The Name. . . .God is the oneness of matter and energy, the process through which one is transformed into the other, the nothingness that embraces both. It is when you confine God to place and space, to image, that you are worshiping an idol. That said, everyone who sees that there is some force in the Universe greater than the human force, is worshiping God.

Emanuel: Does reading Genesis with an understanding of Hebrew alter its meaning?

Rabbi Gershon: I do not know the answer to that. I read it in Hebrew most often. Genesis 1:1 does not say “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Bareyshit, the first word, is continuous. The bareyshit is still happening, not “once upon a time.” A better translation would be “When it began to be created.”

Emanuel: So, creation is still unfolding. That makes sense in relationship to evolution.

Rabbi Gershon: Take the second word in Genesis: bara. It actually conveys the idea of a something coming out of nothing.

Emanuel: That is beautiful.

Rabbi Gershon: Your name [Emanuel, a Hebrew name] reminds me of Star Wars’ “the Force is with us.”

Emanuel: So El does not refer to God?

Rabbi Gershon: El does not mean God but a force, a force of nature. Rabbi Gershon Winkler states: Elo’heem sometimes means God, sometimes means angels, sometimes means mortal judges. Hebrew is not a stiff language, but as with most aboriginal languages it is elastic, lending each word to numerous meanings. Elo’heem, the Zohar says, is “Ey’ma D’ila’a,” literally Great Mother, yet it is written in what seems masculine but that is because, again, it is not a word exclusivelyconnoting the divine mother creator but mortal judges, too, as well as angels. El is divine power, Eloh is feminine attribute of divine power, elo’heem incorporates both, because a mother is capable of conceiving and containing both, male and female within her. Females give birth to boys, too.

Emanuel: So El an expression of God’s power?

Rabbi Gershon: It does not mean God to the ancient Jews. It always is an expression of power.

Emanuel: Isn’t it true that the Tetragammaton is the holy name for God?

Rabbi Gershon: Yes, but what does that name mean? Names in Hebrew define what is being named. It means continual existence! Heh, vav, hen means to be–to exist.

Emanuel: Like the I am in the scriptures?

Rabbi Gershon: Yes, the ehyeh asher ehyeh (the I will be what I will be)–always in becoming. 

Emanuel: What is your understanding of the Moschiach or Messiah–would you understand the Messiah as being a person, or a coming age of spiritual enlightenment as some have posited–or something else?

Rabbi Gershon: The Messiah (Moschiach) is an age–not a person. At one time it was a king of the lineage of King David. But, the concept evolved to refer more to the time of world disarmament and equality of sharing the resources so that no one is hungry or homeless.

Emanuel: Is it permitted for Jews to build a third temple on Moriah, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, as some groups are calling for, absent the appearance of the Moschiach?

Rabbi Gershon: Yes, and one day it will happen. But it can only happen when Islam and Judaism resolve their difference with each other and then bring Esau (Christianity) back into the picture. A Third Temple will incorporate the Holy Places of all Three Abrahamic Faiths plus create worship centers for those of non Abrahamic religious traditions.

Emanuel: Interesting. I take it you are saying this will happen by God’s will–so it cannot be planned for?

Rabbi Gershon: Insh’allah!

Emanuel: Do you think that increased understanding between the Abrahamic faiths could solve some of the internecine rancor on display in places like the Holy Land?

Rabbi Gershon: Yes. Jews and Muslims lived in the Holy Land in abject poverty for multiple centuries until Western powers saw a benefit in [taking advantage of ] Arab and Jewish nationalism. It has only been since the rise of nationalism that the two ways of viewing God (Allah), both correct, have been used for political purposes.

Emanuel: What is your position on homosexuality? Do you consider it a “sin” as such?

Rabbi Gershon: Sexuality is of no concern of mine except where force or violence is involved. A homosexual is as God made them, just as any other sexuality is as God made that person. Homosexuality is as much a sin as is heterosexuality. It is a sin only when the sex is substitutional or abusive.

Emanuel: What do you say to people who bring up Leviticus 18:22?

Rabbi Gershon: It is good to bring it up as then we can go over it. We read those verses in synagogue today. There is no prohibition of homosexuality in Leviticus. It is a prohibition of substitutional sex.

Emanuel: I may be mistaken, I ask your forgiveness–but does it not say “thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman”?

Rabbi Gershon: Exactly, and a homosexual does not lay with a man as he would with a woman. The wording tells you that the perpetrator is heterosexual, not homosexual. He is simply a-sexual. The sex of his partner is not as important as is sex itself. Thus he is substituting a man for a woman.

Emanuel: Thank you. Rabbi Gershon, what inspires you?

Rabbi Gershon: I am inspired by the degree of progress towards equality and Universalism that has happened in my short 70 years on the planet. I believe in the future.

Emanuel: Thank you so much, Rabbi Gershon. Rav Todot.

Rabbi Gershon: B’vakashah!

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From the Empirical Archives: Syria: Notes on a Tragedy by Emanuel Stoakes

Syria: Notes on a Tragedy 

Emanuel Stoakes

Umayyad Mosque in Aleppo, Syria
PHOTO: Kok Leng

Originally published in the November 2012 issue of Empirical

At the time of writing the Syrian regime is rumored to be “on the brink of collapse” as the battle in the ancient city of Aleppo reportedly approaches its endgame. The reader will, by now, be able to confirm the veracity of such reports, the latest example of similar claims that have been stated confidently on many occasions since the opening of the conflict. I write at a time when the United Nations observer mission has, like Ramadan, recently departed. The sanctity of the Holy month, not unlike the presence of the UN, did little to inhibit the brutality being visited upon Syrians from either side. Neither the Geneva Convention nor the injunctions of religion were forces powerful enough to slow the engine of this dirty war.

February Excerpt: Why Human Rights Matter by Emanuel Stoakes

Why Human Rights Matter and How They Get Sidelined

Emanuel Stoakes

UN Building, New York
PHOTO: Phillip Capper

When, on occasion, I get challenged about why I bother with human rights, I’m usually surprised. The questioner must, I am often tempted to reply, be happy for me to come over to their house that night with an armed gang and torture them, and follow that by kidnapping them without trial for an indefinite period, only to be protected under law because I’m friends with the attorney general? (This is all hypothetical, of course.) When I sink to such an artless rejoinder, no one ever says “Yes” and means it. While I concede that the above may be a fatuously extreme thing to say, it raises meaningful points. If we want to be free from unimaginable suffering and injustice ourselves, then we surely have to accept in principle that all human beings should be free from it. It is this notion (the universalist principle, one which runs counter to the intellectual constructs that have so long supported the conceits and whims of power) that is found immovably at the heart of the philosophy of human rights.

Of course, this concept is nothing new. It is so ancient as to be an almost archetypal principle. In this sense, the human rights movement is a meeting place of apparently irreconcilable streams of thought, in that it echoes values common to intellectual movements both modern and ancient–for example, the enlightenment and the Abrahamic religions.

What’s more, it posits an equality of worth for all human beings that political systems devised to empower the poor, such as Communism, failed to grant in practice. Indeed, in some cases, the human rights movement has achieved what the various left-leaning political revolutions have always aspired to bring about: radically positive transformation in the lives of the most needy. Moreover, such advances did not come at the cost of individual freedoms or through the agency of an intrusive and corrupt government, as in many ostensibly socialist societies.

A case in point occurred in India in 2001, when a group of campaigners managed to secure school meals for 50 million children, many of whom suffered from extreme malnourishment. This was achieved through public interest litigation in which the indivisible right to food was invoked. This legally mandated system already looks set to reach out to a further 50 million children–and is continuing to expand its reach. It is easily the biggest program of its kind in the world.

The central text of the rights movement, the Universal Declaration of 1948 asserts that certain fundamental entitlements are granted to all global citizens, without distinction. This was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948. The principles it contains were timely and momentous: they prefigured the end of American segregation, the break-up of apartheid and the final collapse of European colonialism. The Declaration, and the codification of the values it upholds, represented a landmark moment in the modern era, one that has helped to form the world that we inhabit now with laws and protections we take for granted. Its span covers all the essential human requirements for life and dignity ranging from freedom from slavery to the right to food.

The declaration also calls for “an international order in which human rights can be fully realised”–something that, to this writer at least, sadly remains an aspiration for the global community, the world being as it is. This is something to which I will return.

Above all else, the great beating heart of the human rights cause is its affirmation of the importance of humanity, its ability to transcend normally incommensurable differences without alienating anyone; and doing so by appealing to that most definitively human of our instincts–our ability to feel compassion for our fellow human beings.

If you would like to read more of this article in Empirical, the February issue is now available at your local bookstore and online at our website.

From the Empirical Archives: A Tale of Two Crashes Part I by Emanuel Stoakes

A Tale of Two Crashes: The Financial System and Our Planet 

Emanuel Stoakes

PHOTO: NASA/Goddard

The East Asian and global economic crises resulted in mass suffering both at home and abroad in the recent past. However, the greatest crash in human history is yet to come–something we must not forget if we care about the fate of our species. 

The United States of America, the most wealthy and powerful nation that has ever existed, was founded by a group of men who rebelled against the tyranny of imperial rule. A great number of those who had come to the “The New World,” including many of the forebears of the founding fathers, left from England and sought a place where they could freely express their religious and/or intellectual convictions far from the pressure cooker of European society with its political oppression, poverty, disease, and rigid class system.

America represented a new start. Many took the ten-week Atlantic crossing from Plymouth, Bristol, or elsewhere to forge a bold new life–and many found that. Even thousands of miles away from home, they were still subjected to manifestly unfair taxation and laws designed to subjugate the population to foreign rule. This had consequences. An epochal moment occurred on the July 4th, 1776 (as the reader will know) with the Declaration of Independence. It expressed the intention of the colonies to establish an independent sovereign nation, founded in rebellion against just such domination-by-proxy. The victory of General Washington’s Continental Army over the British in the Revolutionary War promised a chance for Americans to live according to their rights, as opposed to being subjected to the dictates of Westminster.

Jefferson Memorial
PHOTO: P. Couture

The principal author of America’s Declaration of Independence–the document that affirmed and sanctified the values of this brave new world–was Thomas Jefferson, a man revered since his day as an iconic champion of individual liberty. Nearing the end of his life he wrote a letter to his friend John Taylor, in which he reflected on the state of the nascent nation. While writing with approval about the Constitution and its virtues, he complained about “the system of banking” of the present day that he and Taylor “have both equally and ever reprobated.” Jefferson evidently took the banking system very seriously, describing it as “a blot left in all our constitutions, which if not covered, will end in their destruction.” He evinced in the final lines of the letter the frank opinion that “banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies,” a statement now well-known. 

Jefferson’s view on banking is elucidated further in another letter held by the Library of Congress and not generally quoted, written this time to his friend Thomas Cooper. “Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass,” he complained. After which he stated: “We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper [a reference to inflation]. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs.”

Jefferson’s observations, it seems to this writer, were apt, insightful, and tragically prescient. Jefferson’s vision of the banks of his day prefigures the potent role of private money in America’s future fortunes. The self-interested agents of finance and their allies in the corporate world, modern-day “avaricious adventurers” hungry for “swindling profit”–so often enabled by our politicians, particularly those in the party that Jefferson founded–have imposed a great deal of suffering on this nation, and on large areas of the world, as we shall see. 

ART: Luming Marr*
Luming Marr has constructed a composite photograhp based on original photographs of the Lincoln statue (by Sean Hayford O'Leary), the young girl (by xenia/morguefile), and balloon flag (by US Navy Illustrator Draftsman 1st Class Moises M. Medel).

By the time of the earlier twentieth century President Woodrow Wilson would complain of “an invisible empire” of “special interests,” which he described as occupying a position of influence “above the forms of democracy,” seeking its own agenda. As the twentieth century continued in its path, the Great Depression would issue the nation an object lesson in the dangers posed by the stock market on society as a whole, resulting in powerful regulatory measures being passed into law by Congress. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was an example of such legislation, which separated investment and commercial banks, in order to avoid “improper banking activity”–in particular the involvement of the latter form of banking in the stock market. However, regardless of such legislation, the power and influence of Wall Street remained enormous. The philosophies of modern “Chicago School” economists such as Milton Friedman acquired influential devotees among the West’s political leaders, leading to the gradual un-weaving of regulatory legislation from the seventies onward, a process generally agreed to have continued up until the 2008 economic crisis.

America was a country built on the back of a rebellion against the impositions of an imperial power, particularly the politically-active merchant and aristocratic classes that managed to influence London’s foreign policy to suit their own interests. Adam Smith, a contemporary of Jefferson and a man whose philosophy would come to influence US economists hugely, complained in his day of how “the merchants and manufacturers” of Britain acted as “the principal architects” of government policies, who thus ensured that their special interests were “most peculiarly attended to.” Their eye was fixed on Britain’s imperial wealth as much as it was domestic concerns.

Living in the post-crash era, it appears that the current of power in this country is concentrated in the economy and is channelled to the custodians of market forces, a state of affairs that calls one to ask whether the masters of money have too much influence, yet again, over American life. The Nobel-Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz observed how during the bail-out of big banks in the aftermath of the big crash in 2008: “as we pour money in, they can pour money right out” given that there exists no mechanism for the public to control how the banks spend the people’s money, a rule that would hardly apply if several hundred billion dollars had been handed-over to the same companies from the private sector.

The question of whether corporations and banks have too much power is an urgent one. At present the excesses of unregulated capitalism threaten the decent survival of many inhabitants of planet earth, our species included. This is chiefly owing to the impact of anthropogenic climate change, caused by the massive–still increasing–carbon emissions produced for centuries by Western industry and infrastructure despite decades of warnings about the results of not reigning such pollution in. Recently, developmental programs in India and China have contributed to this problem significantly; while well-funded global warming-skeptic groups in the US still attempt to influence Congress to not adopt legislation that takes the issue seriously, regardless of the interests of the wider human race.

At present, lobbying by special interests–including representatives of corporations who are both among the biggest carbon emitters and most generous donators to congressional candidates–has successfully stalled real movement to neutralize the multiple threats to our future posed by climate change. Presidents Reagan, Bush Senior, his son, and their international partners in the English-speaking world must share a great deal of the blame for this. Bush Junior in particular, who failed to ratify international treaties on carbon emissions against the wishes of most of the world, opting instead to protect US industry from the inconvenience of the Kyoto protocols.

Sadly, the prospective inheritors of Bush’s mantle differ little in their policies toward climate change. During the recent campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination, there were few who did not sincerely take the position that the issue poses little to moderate threat, or is questionable, regardless of the findings of academic research, as their allies at Fox News also prefer to do. The proposals of the incumbents go some way to deal with the problem, but hardly far enough.

To this we will return. First it may be worthwhile to revisit the past, specifically the period that led to our present state of affairs–a period that may prefigure the future devastation of our world at the hands of those who seek “swindling profits” without consideration for what they leave in their wake. 

The Greenspan False Economy 

Alan Greenspan with his wife, Andrea Mitchell
PHOTO: Financial Times/flickr

William Jefferson Clinton was elected President of the United States in 1992, having won the election that year with promises of improving life for the middle classes and other members of society he claimed were neglected by the previous administration. On making it to the White House, the new President met with Alan Greenspan, at that time the head of the Federal Reserve, who advised him that his plans for social reforms were unrealistic in the economic environment he was set to be operating in. The budget deficit, Clinton was told, was so large that if he borrowed more money to finance his planned reforms interest rates would go up dramatically–a taboo action for “neoliberal” economists like Greenspan–and damage economic growth, leaving everyone worse off. Greenspan suggested that the Clinton administration should cut government spending instead of investing tax money in social intervention and predicted that as a result of decreased interest rates the markets would soar, producing widespread and fiscally affordable benefits to all in society.

Greenspan was reportedly surprised when Clinton took his advice, which initially paid off spectacularly. The boom happened. As share prices rose and the markets ostensibly seethed with rude health, a new confidence gripped the world of finance leading to a growing belief that America’s economy had found the holy grail of modern economics–a boom without a bust. As absurd as this might sound now, the seductive belief that America was experiencing a boom that could lead to endless growth began to be adopted by respected members of America's intellectual elite.

As the 2011 BBC documentary All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace detailed, this belief was fueled by the development of computers that could perform complex mathematical models that, so it was believed, could assess with accuracy the risk of banks making any loan or investment. Thus, to use the terminology of the marketplace: if a risk could be predicted with confidence, investors could offset their potential losses by “hedging” against it. To hedge against something means that an investor will invest in many financial products at the same time, so that if one of the investments does not yield a return, another set of purchases (if chosen shrewdly) will be calculated to offer a return that covers any losses from the companion investment.

As a result of this, banks lent many millions to people that they never would have dreamed of lending money to in the past, believing that they could do so safely with the aid of this new technology coupled with strategic hedging. Stephen Roach, Chief Economist of Morgan Stanley throughout a substantial period of the 1990s, appearing in the aforementioned BBC documentary, described the thinking he encountered at the time: "Whether they came from Silicon Valley, from Washington, from academia, or from Wall Street there were a number of leading individuals who basically articulated a body of thought now known as 'the New Economy'; it was based on the premise of a dramatic and permanent increase in the rate of productivity growth sparked by new information technologies that would let this thing go on forever. This was manna from heaven . . . You don't have to do anything, you just press a button and "presto!" [sic] you have a brand new economy that creates jobs and prosperity."

Belief in the New Economy and early Clinton-era growth with its remarkable, ostensibly attendant low inflation and high employment is now believed to have led to overly optimistic forecasting from respected and influential sources within the banking establishment and subsequently many flawed high-level business plans. The seeds of the recent crash were being planted in the soil of America's economy, but few were paying serious attention to the warning signs.

Greenspan, however, had concerns. In 1996 he gave a speech suggesting that the American stock market may have been going through "a period of irrational exuberance," and that a potentially destructive speculative bubble was being created. The response from politicians and the business world, Roach notes, was venomous. "You would have thought the world had come to an end. Politicians attacked him from the left and the right, Main Street was upset with him, Wall Street was upset with him." Subsequently, Roach observed, "he knuckled under to political pressure" and decided to change his mind. Peer pressure, it seems, exists at every level of society.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the power of financial figures with strong ties to Wall Street had grown significantly, largely due to the political capital wrought by the economy's strength. In accord with co-thinkers in key roles at powerful institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, there were those who believed (echoing a Reagan-era world-view) that America had a manifestly heroic role in creating global economic prosperity and stability. The way to achieve this, according to leading "free marketeers" from those within the high finance community and to many within the IMF, was to encourage the free flow of capital through the world's economies by pressing nations to lift all restrictions on foreign investment.

The East Asian Crisis and Its Injustices

Many took their advice, and many bitterly regretted doing so. As the British journalist George Monbiot observed in 2003, going back even to the eighties “the IMF began to destabilize some of the most successful economies in the developing world” such as Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia. This set of countries, some of whom were recovering from the centuries-old damage of colonialism had “become rich by doing precisely what the IMF and World Bank had been telling them not to do,” by controlling capital flows in their economies, actively investing in education and supporting domestic industries, Monbiot observed.

During the Clinton era those countries were enthusiastically encouraged to liberalize their economies and, by following orders, expedited the process of opening themselves up to the flows of international capital and foreign direct investment in addition to borrowing large sums of money from the IMF.

Reflecting on this period from recent history, Stiglitz paints a picture of predatory pillaging: "The countries in East Asia had no need for additional capital, given their high savings rate, but still capital account liberalization was pushed on these countries in the late eighties and early nineties … [the IMF] pushed these policies even though there was little evidence that such policies promoted growth, and there was ample evidence that they imposed huge risks.” As a consequence of East Asian nations adopting the advice of the IMF, domestic industry suddenly had to compete with Western corporations and speculators who swooped on the new markets with gusto.

Monbiot recollects, accurately, that Thailand was for all intents and purposes economically plundered by Western activity in the currency market. Having world-leading GDP growth rates building to 9% per year from the mid-eighties up to 1995, Thailand was a major success for years– that is, until it fell victim to the machinations of aggressive currency traders. These people “made their money by a simple game” Monbiot wrote in his 2003 book The Age of Consent, which ran as follows: “You borrow a huge quantity of baht from a Thai bank, while the currency is valuable. You convert the baht into dollars. If you do so suddenly enough, and in sufficient quantity, the value of the currency collapses. Baht, as a result, are now much cheaper than they were before. You then pay off the loan with some of your dollars, and pocket the difference.”

Bangkok, Thailand skyline
PHOTO: Hendrik Dacquin

The apparent results of such a cruel speculative ruse were devastating for Thailand’s economy which went into near meltdown. Before long the Thai stock market lost 75% of its value while massive lay-offs and the liquidation of leading Thai companies followed after. A real estate crisis added to the problem, as there were masses of housing projects built for Thailand’s nouvelle riche, with suddenly no one able to afford them. Thailand’s economy was traumatized and needed help. The IMF flooded the country with loans in response. These carried “conditionalities” that were imposed upon the country, leading to cuts in programs intended to improve the lot of the ordinary citizen in key areas such as healthcare and education.

The crisis then quickly spread beyond borders. In Japan, South Korea, and south-east Asia, panic gripped the stock market. In Indonesia, a nation which had in 1997 very positive macroeconomic indicators in terms of low inflation, a healthy banking sector, a trade surplus, and large foreign exchange reserves, the economy was plunged into chaos within months. This was owing to a decision in Jakarta to increase and then abandon what is known as a “currency band” (the currency band represents the percentage of hard money tied to the value of a currency when it is floated on the foreign exchange markets), which invited massive speculative raids on the economy as in Thailand.

ILLUSTRATOR: Mark Hurwitt

The rupiah, Indonesia’s currency, plummeted. As a result, domestic companies that had borrowed in dollars had to face the higher costs of repayment caused by the rupiah’s fall, and local businesses responded by simply purchasing US currency by selling their holdings of Rupiah, further undermining the value of their national currency. Before his exit, under international pressure, after initially resisting fiercely, Indonesia’s autocratic President Suharto signed an IMF agreement in early 1998, watched over by the head of the foundation, Michel Camdessus. Accordingly, Indonesia received a huge loan to ease its economic woes. Shortly thereafter Indonesia’s currency disintegrated dramatically, losing 80% of its value and bringing the country to the edge of all-out implosion.

Initially, economists were mystified about what had happened. The truth soon became apparent: just as in Thailand, the IMF loan agreement that Suharto was induced into signing caused a brief settling of the markets–and then all of a sudden, great amounts of money left the economy as the Western investors called in their loans and fled. Later, the economist and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz would state on the matter: “The interests of the financial community dominated over other interests. By providing mega-billion dollar loans, the IMF was bailing out Western investors and leaving the taxpayers in the countries further in debt–because they had to repay the IMF.” 

Tremors were felt, though not quite as disastrously, in South Korea, the Philippines, and elsewhere, where significant economic trauma also occurred during this period. Asia’s most carefully nurtured economies were brought to the brink of implosion by governments who adopted the advice of those global institutions (like the IMF) designed to assist their development, according to the so-called “Washington Consensus”–the prevailing wisdom of the day.

There were those in East Asia who did not follow the prescriptions of Washington and the IMF, however. China, for example, resisted pressure to follow “international norms” and maintained control over its economy, and saw substantial growth continue from that period to the present day. The Chinese evidently watched and learned as Western forces massed to abuse the suddenly weakened economies of their regional neighbors. They have since ensured that they could have some leverage over North American and European economies by buying huge amounts of US securities, government bonds and debt, particularly when the Western-led “global” crash happened.

According to a congressional research service paper of last year: “As of June 2010, China was the largest holder of US securities, which totalled $1.6 trillion. China’s holdings of US Treasury securities, which are used to help finance the federal budget deficit, totalled $1.17 trillion as of June 2011, which were 25.9% of total foreign holdings.” 

With China looking set to overtake the US economy in little under five years from the time of writing, in terms of gross domestic product (the total amount of wealth produced by a nation in a year) according to IMF figures, with a future of potential Chinese superiority in the arena of trade by 2030, it seems that the future is set to see a new race between two superpowers. Having made many enemies in East Asia during the crisis years, the US is left with slim pickings for regional partners to combat the expansion of Chinese influence in the East, inadvertently aiding the prospects of a future Beijing hegemony.

As far as self-inflicted wounds go, the unintended consequences of Western and IMF interference in East Asia would soon be totally diminished by the deep wounds issuing from another crash, one that occurred approximately a decade after the Eastern free fall – a man-made disaster with its epicenter in the heart of America’s financial establishment.

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From the Empirical Archives: A Tale of Two Crashes Part 2 by Emanuel Stoakes

A Tale of Two Crashes Part II
Emanuel Stoakes 

PHOTO: Francisco Diez

Originally Published in the August 2012 Issue of Empirical

In the first part of this two-part series in the July and August 2012 issues of Empirical (available for purchase here) we revisited the beginnings of colonial American and US history and examined how founding fathers like the libertarian-leaning Thomas Jefferson critically regarded aspects of the banking sector in his day. We also looked at the remarkable construction of the so-called “New Economy” during the Clinton years, a development that led to increased lending to new markets based on the belief that risk could be accurately assessed and hedged against through new mathematical models, assisted by emerging technology. Additionally examined were the forces at play in the East Asian crash of the late nineties, and, in particular, the destabilizing influence of “Washington consensus” economics pushed by the US government and powerful global institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 

We return to the story at the turn of the century.

The Great Crash of the New Century

The East Asian crash of the late nineties devastated the lives of the poor and the burgeoning middle-classes in those Eastern nations that had, prior to the crisis, seen remarkable growth by adopting economic policies at variance with many of the prescriptions of the IMF and Washington. Roughly a decade later, the global crash of 2008, which had its epicenter in the United States, had a parallel impact on the same groups of people.

House foreclosures, evictions, job losses, prolonged unemployment, house-value slumps and negative equity hit ordinary Americans hard. 

In the case of the East Asian crash, as addressed in Part I, the damage to the economies assaulted by predatory speculators who made serious money out of currency manipulation was intended to be cushioned by IMF loans. However, according to leading economists like Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, these same loans ended up effectively bailing-out Western investors, who promptly removed their money from the ailing eastern economies, leaving Asian taxpayers to foot the bill.

In the United States, as Stiglitz also observed, something not entirely dissimilar occurred. “As we pour money in” to the banks, “they can pour money right out,” he stated at the time, referring to taxpayer bail-outs of major banks and the imperiled mortgage sector. The public could not easily trace where exactly the money dispensed to these beneficiaries was going at the time, despite the fact that the taxpayers were those who salvaged the banks–arguably, the American economy as a whole. It is impossible to imagine a similar situation occurring if a private source provided $700 billion or more in an act of comparable generosity. 

Journalists, such as Matt Appuzzo from the Associated Press, tried and failed to get a meaningful response to queries about the big banks’ use of public money. That reluctance persists to this day. 

Returning briefly to the Clinton years, parts of laws dating from the Great Depression designed to protect ordinary people from the predation of Wall Street were repealed, such as those produced by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 (signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt), which was shoved into history by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. Glass-Steagall separated investment (stock market) banking from depository banking. The legislation that replaced it allowed commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms, and insurance companies to consolidate, giving them access to large amounts of formerly protected funds and a carte blanche, to some degree, to speculate with them. 

US Treasury Dept.
PHOTO: DB King

The Bush camp that followed Clinton looked even less favorably on regulatory legislation than their predecessor, doing little to protect ordinary Americans from the coming crisis, which they, instead, proceeded to expeditiously deepen. The treasury was occupied by followers of the laissez-faire school of neoliberal capitalist economics who entrusted the fate of the American economy in the hands of powerful banks and corporations, adopting the reflexive belief that “the market knows best” and that its workings inevitably lead to efficient outcomes.

Not long after the East Asian crisis and few months into the Bush presidency, a recession hit America caused by the first pin prick of reality to pierce the “New Economy.” The “dot-com bubble,” as it is known, burst in 2000: caused by a sudden fall in the value of the information technology markets that had previously been so buoyant. The bursting of the “dot-com bubble,” in conjunction with a drop in business outlays, investments, and the events of 9/11 contributed to a minor recession. 

The Enron scandal followed two weeks after 9/11, drawing back the curtain on the widespread corporate mendacity. A number of leading American firms had committed large-scale fraud in order to maintain an appearance of success to keep share values high during the boom years. Following Enron, it was exposed that many leading corporations faked evidence of profits and had hidden their debts, allegedly in collusion with respected accounting firms. 

The US economy, hit by a triple shock in such a short period, looked to be set to go through a period of crisis unprecedented for a decade. The new challenges posed by these problems called for action. Greenspan’s bold and controversial response was to drastically lower interest rates in order to encourage greater borrowing, spending, and consumption. This created a gargantuan consumer boom, without the dreaded side effect of inflation–a result that gave the impression that America’s economy was once again in the best of health.

Meanwhile, the Chinese deliberately held their exchange rate at a low level, meaning that their exports were cheap and therefore highly attractive to American corporations, leading to a huge inflow of US dollars into China and a re-stimulated American economy. The Chinese then immediately purchased American bonds, which contributed to keeping the US economy in health– and ensured greater Chinese influence over the US, allegedly an intentional strategy by the Chinese politburo.

Yet again it seemed that Greenspan’s inscrutable wizardry injected health into the economy, leading to a temporary boom. As the appearance of well-being continued, widespread lending activity akin to that seen in the period of the first Greenspan boom occurred. Again, loans were made available to members of American society who would not normally have been lent to under ordinary circumstances. Borne from this, a massive housing bubble was being constructed involving a new frontier in the housing loan market–the “subprime” mortgage.

Protesting the close ties of the Treasury Department and Wall Street
PHOTO: takomabibelot

The Housing Bubble

According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, “sub-prime” lending occurs in a market intended “for persons with blemished or limited credit histories. The loans carry a higher rate of interest than prime loans to compensate for increased credit risk.” Roughly translated, this means that people who have a reasonable chance of not being able to repay are given loans anyway, with big interest charges to compensate for the risk to the lender–the obvious effect being that the risk of default is great, and the risk of further indebtedness for a consumer of this financial product is increased. The ethics of this financial product were as questionable as loans to “sub-prime” borrowers were imprudent.

As recent history reveals, sub-prime mortgages turned out to be a very bad deal for both the lenders and their customers. The now-infamous Lehman Brothers invested heavily in the subprime market by “bankrolling lenders across the country that were making convoluted loans to questionable borrowers” as well as producing their own subprime loan offers, Time magazine recalls. Lehman “took all those loans, whipped them into bonds and passed on to investors billions of dollars of what is now toxic debt,” the Time piece continues. When the debt bubble broke, the American economy took a hit. Operating in this market helped Lehman CEO Dick Fuld earn around half a billion dollars for himself in the process, while effectively steering the company he managed to ruin. 

The fall of Lehman coincided with a decline in housing prices from a historical peak in 2006 to ever more worrying levels in 2007. As a result of the permissive lending environment of the Clinton-Bush years, the ratio of American debt to disposable personal income reached a high of 127% in 2007, largely owing to the opening up of the mortgage market. A slump in housing values meant that many Americans who held subprime mortgages with adjustable rates saw their repayment costs increase just as times were getting harder for everyone. Mortgage delinquencies became common, and financial instruments such as securities backed by mortgages, which constituted a big market, increasingly lost their value.

The housing slump was also helped by Greenspan’s decision to lower interest rates after the “dot-com crash.” He would later admit that the housing bubble was “fundamentally engendered by the decline in real long-term interest rates,” which he had intentionally kept low in order to stimulate the economy, knowing that they would have to be raised again eventually–with unpredictable results. In the meantime money on credit became more available to borrowers who would eventually simply default on their payments as times got tough. All of a sudden a lot of money that was owed and which was backed-up financial instruments owned by Wall Street could not be accessed, with a sweeping domino effect throughout the economy. 

PHOTO: Jeffery Turner

The consequences for the average American, as already established, were horrendous. Moreover, the cost of the economic crisis was borne primarily by the taxpayer–just as much of the benefits of the boom years had flowed to private companies, the costs of rescuing many of the biggest offenders got paid for by ordinary people.

The manifest injustice of the situation can be adequately demonstrated by looking at figures between 2007 and 2009: the top 1% who owned 34.6% of the nation's wealth in 2007 increased their proportional share to over 37.1% by 2009, while nearly two-thirds of Americans saw a decline in wealth. 

The dream of the self-regulating market was assaulted by reality in the form of the crash of 2008. The notion of trickle-down wealth was no less bruised. 

There are those, however, who contend that many of the ideological truisms of modern economic thinking are myths, particularly in the “Gordon Gekko” age of no-holds barred wealth-seeking. Respected economists, such as the Nobel laureate and New York Times contributor Paul Krugman, have drawn attention to why the “greed is good” culture that has dominated Wall Street and influenced politics so profoundly since the 1980s was no less as miraculous or socially salutary as Greenspan’s 90s boom, despite common assumptions. 

Considering “how trends changed after 1980 or so, when the underlying rules of American business (and politics) shifted” this 23rd May in the New York Times, Krugman noted that “productivity growth has actually been slower” since that period. Additionally, he observed that, coupled with this, “income distribution became radically more unequal,” and that the notion that the US “began selling competitively on world markets instead of running big trade deficits” is also demonstrably false. 

On the Threat of Environmental Catastrophe

The influence of private power over human fate is as strong as it has ever been and looks set to have an impact generally on much of life on earth if the reckless and single-minded pursuit of profit so often associated with modern capitalism is not reigned in. The gravity of the problem is almost certainly unrivaled by any threat to the species in recent history since the Second World War or the Cuban missile crisis.

Yet the danger is not posed by the familiar boogeyman of corporate greed per se. The threat is represented by the effects of significant global climate change, presently on course to occur barring some miracle. 

An authoritative government report released last year indicated that in only the next decade New York would be under threat from temporary or partial submergence by rising sea levels and increased storm activity similar to Hurricane Irene, causing enormous damage with a massive economic price tag attached to the mess. Yet this scenario, entirely plausible and very worrying, is only a taste of what looks set to be a part of our future.

In November last year the International Energy Agency released a report described as the “most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure,” which indicated that if global fossil-fuel-producing infrastructure (i.e. coal and power stations) is not widely replaced or significantly altered in the next five years, then it would “become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating runaway climate change will be lost for ever.” 

Additionally, around the same time as the IEA report was published last year, the US Department of Energy reported that the “biggest jump” in carbon dioxide (a major cause of climate change) outputs ever measured occurred in 2010, indicating that the trajectory of risk from the effects of global environmental cataclysm is rising steeply. 

World-leading academics like John Reilly, a senior climate change researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have warned that some of the most widely-accepted estimates of the effects of global warming have been far too conservative. Reilly’s team at MIT forecast carbon emissions scenarios, their likelihood, and what the most likely outcomes are in the event they occur. What they discovered recently does not bode well. According to an Associated Press report, a “[UN-organised International Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, report’s] worst-case scenario was only about in the middle of what MIT calculated are likely scenarios.” It is interesting to note that, to many climate skeptics, the IPCC report was widely derided as being “too alarmist.”

The IPCC estimates foresaw a rise in global temperature of somewhere between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit (2.4-6.4 Celsius), with the most likely outcome being a rise of 7.5 Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius). To put this in perspective, the generally-agreed baseline for “safety” in terms of climate change would see an increase in global temperatures by only 2 degrees, in itself a global climate shift that would still have profound consequences. 

However, topping the safety line things begin to look really scary. At 3 degrees alone the consequences for humanity are close to nightmarish. 

According to British newspaper The Guardian’s science correspondent Alok Jha, who compiled the predictions of researcher Mark Lynas, the World Bank’s “Stern report,” and Britain’s Met Office, at 3 degrees: “Billions of people are forced to move from their traditional agricultural lands, in search of scarcer food and water. Around 30-50% less water is available in Africa and around the Mediterranean.” At 4 degrees “Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey become deserts and mid-Europe reaches desert temperatures of almost 50 degrees Celsius in summer. Southern England's summer climate could resemble that of modern southern Morocco.” 

PHOTO: Hamed Saber

At 5 degrees and above, the picture becomes apocalyptic. The results would see “global average temperatures … hotter than for fifty [million] years.” Additionally, Jha said that “most of the tropics, sub-tropics and even lower mid-latitudes are too hot to be inhabitable. The sea level rise is now sufficiently rapid that coastal cities across the world are largely abandoned,” with a risk that at 6 degrees and over, “there would be a danger of "runaway warming," perhaps spurred by release of oceanic methane hydrates,” risking that the “human population would be drastically reduced.” 

That’s quite some bad news. However, at present a 5-6 degree rise is not guaranteed, nor yet confidently forecast. There’s a lot of work to be done however to prevent or mitigate the worst effects of probable temperature rises above 2, 3 or even 4 degrees Celsius. God forbid anything higher.

Yet despite the urgent need for action on this issue, there are those who would try to convince the average citizen that climate change, a problem of planetary significance that Western industry has had an unrivalled role in creating, is merely the product of “liberal propaganda”–a kind of modern-day myth. 

Oil companies like Exxon-Mobil are still largely the biggest in the world, and these groups have been proven to have funded climate change skeptics. 

As the “carbon bubble” is being readied for bursting by rising emissions, a drop in media coverage of the effects of climate change has been measured by groups monitoring the news, helping to efface the issue from the public mind in an election year, where the aftermath of the economy still rides high among concerns for most people. 

Yet regardless of the economic woes that still persist for many people, through little fault of their own, something has to shift in the world if it is to be rescued from the threat of climate change.

A Stark Choice

If this is to be done, a stark choice between submitting to the imperatives of the economy’s endless need for profit or protecting the future of the planet may be required of us. As environmentalist Bill McKibben articulated recently: “If we spew 565 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere, we’ll quite possibly go right past that reddest of red lines. But the oil companies, private and state-owned, have current reserves on the books equivalent to 2,795 gigatons–five times more than we can ever safely burn. It has to stay in the ground. Put another way, in ecological terms it would be extremely prudent to write off $20 trillion worth of those reserves. In economic terms, of course, it would be a disaster, first and foremost for shareholders and executives of companies like ExxonMobil … If you run an oil company, this sort of write-off is the disastrous future staring you in the face as soon as climate change is taken as seriously as it should be, and that’s far scarier than drought and flood. It’s why you’ll do anything–including fund an endless campaigns of lies–to avoid coming to terms with its reality.”

“Growth for its own sake,” so the saying goes, “is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Regardless of the cliché of this thoroughly-abused slogan, its message is apt to our present crisis: the interminable desire for gain required by our present way of life may yet so damage the organism from which it derives sustenance (our planet) that it sabotages its own existence. This negative-sum game is given license to continue apace because it is inexpedient for those with real power to challenge it.

Endless clamoring for growth has meant that along with development, massive pollution has shadowed the steps of Western prosperity–yet the effects of this on the climate, now widely accepted as fact, are an “externality” not incorporated into market calculations. Climate change thus remains a total irrelevance to the closed system of global capitalism, regardless of its long-term impacts on the future of the sine qua non base that supports the market itself: human beings and their labor, the environment and its resources. 

For big business, even when there are devastating economic crashes, somebody always benefits. Goldman Sachs famously reaped massive rewards by betting on the housing crash that they themselves contributed to, helping to consolidate their leading position in the banking world. However shocking this may seem, however such acts stink of grotesque immorality–they are merely consistent with the demands of the system in which they operate, and the rigid logic of the market. 

It remains for politicians to act on this issue. But they are not doing enough.

As a result of runaway climate change, losses in the future may be so broadly and profoundly felt, however, that future generations can hardly be expected to accept with equanimity what history may teach them about how the miserable state of the world they have inherited came to be. Explaining to our grandchildren that the Earth was left to go to hell because it was deemed too much for our politicians to reign in corporate and industrial irresponsibility will not be easy, but it won’t stop it from being true–if we do nothing.

It is time to forget what is convenient or ideologically appealing, and address what is real–for our children’s sake.

There is still time, although barely, to act to influence our politicians to deal with this most serious of global issues–that is, if we care about something so petty and meaningless as the future of life on Earth.

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