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The ROM Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit
Re/Mapping Identity, Culture, & Colonial Discourse
The B u l l e t E-Bulletin No. 249
August 16, 2009
by Ali Mustafa
“He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.”
— George Orwell
Even before the highly anticipated six-month, $3-million collaboration between the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) showcasing the Dead Sea Scrolls was officially launched in late June, the exhibit was already the subject of growing controversy. “Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World,” as the exhibit is entitled, first attracted international attention in April when Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and executives at the ROM were each sent letters of protest from senior officials of the Palestinian Authority (PA) – signed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khouloud Diabes, respectively – declaring that the scrolls were in fact illegally seized by Israel following its occupation and subsequent annexation of the West Bank in 1967.[1] The PA not only called for the repatriation of the scrolls but further argued that they merely represent one example of possibly millions of other artifacts that have been systematically looted by Israel from occupied Palestinian territory over several decades, a message that has since been echoed by a chorus of supportive community groups who continue to organize weekly pickets outside of the ROM in protest.
The majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls - http://www.centuryone.com/25dssfacts.html - were excavated in eleven caves near the site of Qumran, one kilometer along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, by the Palestine Archaeological Museum (also referred to as the Rockefeller Museum) in a joint expedition with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan and the Ecole Biblique Française between 1947-1956. Originally found quite by chance by an Arab Bedouin named Mohammed Ahmed el-Hamed in 1947, the scrolls are by now widely regarded as one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century. Consisting of approximately 900 documents in various states of completeness, the scrolls are said to represent the oldest known version of the Old Testament Bible (approximately 150BC-70CE) and are considered sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alike; they are written largely in Hebrew, but many can be found in Aramaic and Greek script as well.
The scrolls were displayed at the Palestine Archaeological Museum in east Jerusalem until 1967, whereupon after the Six-Day War they were seized and relocated to the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in western Jerusalem. Several additional excavations have since occurred in the West Bank and east Jerusalem whose artifacts continue to be illegally appropriated by Israel, under the auspices of the IAA, from what is internationally recognized as occupied Palestinian territory. Israel unilaterally declared Jerusalem its “...complete and united capital” following the Jerusalem Law of 1980; however, the decision was immediately deemed null and void under UN Security Resolution 479 and later reinforced by successive UN Resolutions, 242 and 338, that together call on Israel to withdraw completely from all territories occupied in 1967.
Does International Law Matter?[2]
While the debate among any given circle of academics as to the biblical and archaeological significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls rages on, how exactly the artifacts have come to be in the possession of the IAA or put on display at the ROM in the first place seems to be, thus far, a question of lesser concern. According to the PA and several authoritative legal opinions, the exhibit stands in clear and demonstrable violation of at least four binding international treaties of international law concerning cultural artifacts that apply, in turn, to Canada, Israel, and the ROM itself.
The ROM, for its own part, is a member of the Canadian Museums Association (CMA) whose Ethics Guidelines states that “museums must guard against any direct or indirect participation in the illicit traffic in cultural and natural objects [...] that are: stolen; illegally imported or exported from another state, including those that are occupied or war-stricken...” Assuming that such agreements mean anything at all, the ROM has clearly fallen short of the ethical standards to which it is a party.
As for Canada, whose role is one of host nation to the exhibit, the legal obligations stipulated seem even more convincing. Canada is a signatory to the First and Second Protocol of the UNESCO “Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict” (1954), in addition to the “Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property” (1970). The First Protocol of the 1954 Convention clearly requires Canada to “...take into custody cultural property imported into its territory either directly or indirectly from any occupied territory.” Article 3 of the same Protocol further elaborates that upon seizing the artifacts, Canada must “...return, at the close of hostilities, to the competent authorities of the territory previously occupied, cultural property which is in its territory.” As per the UNESCO conventions outlined above, Canada is accountable to at a minimum either deny the importation of artifacts of dubious ownership such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, or seize them at the border and assume custody of them until a negotiated end of hostilities between the Israelis and Palestinians can be secured.
Israel too is a signatory to the First Protocol of the 1954 Convention, Article 1 of which explicitly outlines a commitment to “...prevent the exportation, from a territory occupied by it during an armed conflict, of cultural property.” Concerning the question of current archaeological activity in Jerusalem specifically, UN Security Council Resolution 252 (1968) states that “...all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, including expropriation of land and properties thereon, which tend to change the legal status of Jerusalem are invalid and cannot change that status.” Israel not only continues to illegally excavate in occupied Palestinian territory but has since its inception consistently shown itself dismissive of international law altogether, using archeology (and discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls) as a necessary means to reinforce the given Zionist national narrative and, by extension, offer legitimacy to its corresponding colonial project upon which the state was founded. As the only meaningful channel of recourse still available to Palestinians – despite its obvious and innumerable shortcomings – international law continues to be useful at the very least in communicating a coherent and universal standard of justice that both challenges impunity and safeguards various affirmed political, economic, and cultural rights.
Israeli Archeology and the Bible
Supposedly a science whose credibility fundamentally relies upon its independence from political, religious, or ideological bias, Israeli archeology under the IAA is inherently imbued with a national ethos, or sense of mission, that is in fact inseparable from the wider Israel/Palestinian conflict. The archeology of the region has been studied thus far under a rationale of given assumptions so deeply rooted in biblical mythology as to only serve toward the construction of a past that is automatically exclusionary and restrictive in scope.[3] As a result, artifacts like the scrolls have come to occupy such a central space within Zionist colonial discourse as to be, as former Haaretz journalist Amos Elon said, “Almost titles of real estate, like deeds of possession to a contested country.”[4]
Israeli archeology has since the discovery of the scrolls become little more than a self-fulfilling prophecy, allowing the ‘history’ of the Bible to interpret the artifacts of successive ancient eras rather than the other way around. Because archeology also happens to be one of the only areas of study that necessarily destroys its own evidence as a result of the excavation process itself, prior layers of soil and bedrock spanning several centuries are completely destroyed in order to uncover deeper 'Jewish' ones.[5] As a result, Israel is able to use archeology to at once naturalize its own Zionist national narrative and erase any trace of historical continuity between Palestinians and the land in the process. The entire history of Palestine and its peoples up until 1948, in fact, has been essentially reduced to no relevance whatsoever, except insofar as it serves as the backdrop to the return of Jews to the promised biblical ‘Land of Israel.’ As historian Keith Whitelam writes in his book, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History, “[the modern state of Israel has] cast its shadow of influence backwards to claim previous periods as its 'prehistory'.”[6]
Yet in order to justify any colonial conquest, a prior historical claim to the land in relation to its existing inhabitants alone is not enough; the new regime must be portrayed as an agent of civility and cultural sophistication set against barbarity and backwardness, all along underpinned by a semblance of inferred racial superiority and entitlement. During the era of European colonialism for example, Britain, France, and most notably Nazi Germany all engaged in archaeological projects in their respective colonies to prove, through found artifacts, the inherent superiority of the white/Aryan race. The Nazis sought to retrace the glory of the Roman Empire back to Germany as evidence of Aryan racial supremacy, espousing a return to the glorious past where old virtues prevailed over the savagery of ‘lesser’ races (in particular, Jews). The primary purpose of archeology under European colonialism – just as it remains in Israel today – was twofold: first, to encourage a sense of national pride and prestige linked to the image of an illustrious past; and secondly, to legitimize colonial rule and expansionism as a ‘natural,’ even God-given, right.
Archeology of Dispossession
As a colonial power in its own right, Israel naturally refuses to apply to itself the same standards that under international law are applied to others. Using the account of the Bible as both a historical guide and moral barometer inevitably produces the effect of allowing contemporary crimes (such as Palestinian ‘Nakba,’ for example) to seem relatively mild in comparison and essentially reintroduces into popular discourse what Omar Barghouti and other analysts oftentimes refer to as the “law of the jungle” wherein colonial conquest, ethnocentrism, and dispossession are treated as the norm. Whitelam again writes:
Colonialism is not dead while the assumptions of superiority and the right of force which inspired it are inscribed in the rhetoric [...] which has been taken up and reinforced in Israeli scholarship after 1948.[7]
Israeli archeology not only serves as a means of legitimizing colonial rule but is in fact a literal expression of it that has proven to be entirely consistent with official state policy overall. Whereas the illegal bulldozing of homes, expulsion of their inhabitants, and expansion of Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territory have by now all become familiar fixtures of official state policy, Israeli archeology continues to be the principal source of securing and annexing additional land – or what anthropology professor Nadia Abu-El Haj alternatively calls producing “facts on the ground.”[8] Such efforts to undermine any competing historical claims to the land – after the fact, by erecting synagogues over mosques, museums over grave sites, or parking lots over ethnically cleansed villages – constitute, in sum, the systematic erasure of Palestinians from the past in order to deny them a sense of purpose and place in the future.
Jerusalem for example has over time come to be portrayed as a Jewish-dominated city by virtue of an ongoing campaign to expel many Palestinian inhabitants and encourage Jewish settlement, thus coinciding with its de facto status as the ‘eternal capital’ of Israel. The Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in east Jerusalem remains a particularly striking case study: apparently referred to in the Bible as King David's original capital some 3000 years ago, Silwan was transformed into an archaeological site by the IAA in the early 1990s and in the span of a few years alone became scattered by dozens of Jewish settlements and even a “City of David” national theme park. The act of searching for an ancient biblical past while completely ignoring the subsequent 3000 years of history is an open violation of the ethical guidelines stipulated by the World Archeological Congress (WAC), which aims to protect indigenous cultural heritage “including sites, places, objects, artifacts, and human remains.” Although originally under the authority of a right-wing settler organization named “Elad,” no archaeological projects in Silwan (or elsewhere for that matter) occur without the permission of the IAA. As professor Yigal Bronner confirms, “The IAA itself issues the required digging permits in an internal process of dubious legality, thus allowing Elad to turn archeology into its most effective instrument of dispossession.”[9]
Rebranding Apartheid
Far from simply a historical analogy that has gained currency amongst Palestinians and international solidarity groups in recent years, the charge of Israel as an apartheid state is one that is well supported by virtually every objective criteria defined under international law.[10] The proverbial crack in the facade of Israel as a ‘normal’ state like any other has certainly been no secret but is only now beginning to be seriously addressed. As much a sign of growing desperation over a failing public image abroad as a measure of sheer resilience, the Israeli foreign ministry launched an ambitious multi-million dollar rebranding campaign called “Brand Israel” in the city of Toronto in 2008.[11] Toronto was carefully chosen as a North American test market for the campaign, presumably in large part as a response to the growing success of the city's Palestine solidarity movement as well as its renowned cultural diversity. Consisting of public advertisement blitzes, the current ROM exhibit, and a planned special showcase on Tel Aviv at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival, the campaign is little more than an open ploy to divert attention away from what is at its core a criminal colonial enterprise – and it is seeking to use ‘culture’ as the primary means to do it.
Several community groups have organized weekly pickets outside of the ROM in order to raise public awareness about the origins of the scrolls and demand that they be returned in accordance with international law, including the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), Women in Solidarity with Palestine (WSP), and Palestine House. Israel advocacy organizations have in response vehemently refuted such claims, dismissing them as yet another attempt to reject incontrovertible historical proof of Israel's biblical roots and its legitimacy as a ‘Jewish state.’ According to these organizations, the only possible motive behind the ROM pickets is to ensure that the scrolls remain hidden from the public forever; however, in reality the scrolls were openly displayed at the Palestine Archaeological Museum for all to see from 1947-67, and it was not until 1991 (nearly 25 years after they were seized) that they were even allowed to be shown to the public again. Only pending a total failure of basic judgment can such a classic canard of the Israeli PR machine be taken seriously.
When a popular downtown Toronto bistro used its website to warn patrons against attending the illegal exhibit, ultra-Zionist lobby groups like the Jewish Defense League immediately urged supporters to respond in kind by buying out all tickets possibly available.[12] Countering negative publicity of the exhibit by simply buying it out may improve sales revenues at the ROM but will do nothing to address why exactly it happens to be the subject of weekly pickets in the first place – which may actually be the point; the goal is not so much to win the debate over the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians but to find ways to avoid it altogether. Palestinians can no better defeat Israel militarily than Israel can be convincingly portrayed as a ‘normal’ state without first disassociating itself fully from the image of a colonial power that is perpetually at war. Israel finally recognizes that there is no such thing as a benign or benevolent occupation; it can win every single war but still lose the more important battle of public opinion.
The ‘Insidiousness’ of Culture
According to a recent article on the ROM pickets by University of Toronto professor Ed Morgan, “it is no exaggeration to say that Palestinians are conducting not just a political campaign, but a ‘cultural battle’ against Israel as a Jewish state [and] part of an insidious cultural campaign.”[13] Despite the arrogant invective in which he writes, his assessment is essentially correct. The ROM pickets are less an effort by Palestinians to declare a monopoly over the diverse cultural heritage of the region as they are the inevitable result of an enduring memory of dispossession and exile that – still today – so fully articulates the Palestinian narrative and inextricably links ancient artifacts like the Dead Sea Scrolls to the contemporary struggle over identity and land. While Israel digs ever deeper in occupied Palestinian territory to confirm its supposed biblical roots, Palestinians have simply preferred to continue to exist despite all odds. Palestinians only have survival itself as proof of the crimes committed against them in recent memory and still ongoing daily, choosing to maintain traditional dress, religious faith (both Christian and Islamic), and the historical memory of the ‘Nakba’ as their most meaningful and durable expressions of resistance.
The late Palestinian academic Edward Said put it the following way: “In the case of a political identity that's being threatened, culture is a way of fighting against extinction and obliteration [...and] a form of memory against effacement.” Just as former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir notoriously declared that “there is no such thing as Palestinians,” today they may exist, but the official line is still that their “...national aspirations lie elsewhere.” The battle being waged over the scrolls, like all the artifacts of the region, is not so much about any particular ethnic, religious, or even cultural based claim, per se, but more importantly a means of opposing Zionist colonial discourse in order to uphold a claim over whatever land has yet to be transformed into permanent and irreversible ‘facts on the ground.’
‘Art’ of Deception
The battle over the scrolls is hardly the first time the ROM has been at the center of controversy over the alleged misrepresentation of cultural heritage.[14] Officially promoted as an opportunity to stimulate interfaith dialogue under the familiar banner of “that which unites is greater than that which divides,” the exhibit has little to do, in fact, with “unity.” The exhibit's website for example fails to make any mention whatsoever of anything about the scrolls or their origins that does not conveniently coincide with the given Zionist national narrative, consciously omitting irrelevant facts such as ‘Palestine’ as the commonly used name of the region during the era that they were written, the role of the original excavation team in finding them, and where they were housed until 1967. Similarly, the ROM's preference to use in its promotional literature of the exhibit such biblical terms as the “Land of Israel” in place of Jerusalem, or the “Judean dessert” rather than the West Bank, is not only imbued with nationalistic and religious overtones that would be completely foreign to the indigenous population of the region but almost reflexively echoes Zionist colonial discourse.[15]
Promoting the exhibit under a thinly veiled guise of “unity” as a strictly biblical or academic issue, entirely devoid of any connection to the current political realities on the ground, is already to side with the narrative of the prevailing dominant power. By framing the scrolls under the common language of the Bible, the exhibit also contributes to obscuring the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians as one that is in effect timeless – something that is ‘out there,’ thus intractable and beyond resolution. As Whitelam writes:
It is simply assumed that biblical studies has no part in contemporary struggles for identity and land, when in fact the very silencing, the fact that the ‘problem’ of Palestine and the existence of a Palestinian past remains unspoken in the discourse of biblical studies, has only served to legitimate Israel's claims to the past and the exclusion of any alternative competing Palestinian claims.[16]
Archeological Apartheid
Israeli archeology is understood and explicitly categorized by the IAA as either Jewish/Israeli or Arab/Muslim in a process whereby ancient artifacts that supposedly belong to the biblical era are actively sought after, while encouraging Palestinians to do the same concerning later Islamic periods. Following the Oslo peace process, Israel claimed it was prepared to assign jurisdiction of all 'Arab' and 'Muslim' archeological sites in the West Bank over to the PA; however, the offer was flatly refused, and the PA instead demanded control over all sites, as well as an immediate return of artifacts seized since 1967. The logic is simple: aside from conflating all Palestinian history as Islamic (openly disregarding Christian and secular influences), to apply such reductive and simplistic binary terms to artifacts that in reality have encompassed the same geopolitical space over centuries is to fundamentally overlook the region's shared past and overlapping cultural heritage.
Israel can no more partition the land than it can the past itself, affirming its supposed biblical roots only by precluding the historical reality of 'Palestine' or 'Palestinians' in the process. Even were Qumran, for example, to be recognized as part of a future Palestinian state under the logic of a two state solution it would still, according to Israeli political scientist Meron Benvenisti, “transform the Palestinians into aliens in their homeland.”[17] Yet nothing thus far has limited Israel from excavating and looting artifacts almost at will in the West Bank, or the ROM for that matter from highlighting the region in its promotional literature as the 'Judean Dessert'. Such a scenario also says nothing of course about Palestinian cultural heritage that exists inside Israel proper (destroyed villages, tombs, grave sites, etc.), which would require a prior acknowledgment of the ‘Nakba’ and give credence to a narrative that openly defies all simple racial, cultural, and geopolitical categories of 'us' and 'them'. When the Israeli Knesset (i.e. parliament) passed a bill just a few weeks ago banning all state funding of activities that commemorate the ‘Nakba,’ the irreconcilable contradiction of Israel as both a ‘Jewish’ and ‘democratic’ state – and its underlying apartheid reality – could not have been made more obvious.[18]
Many efforts have been made over time to 'solve' the problem of archeology and artifacts in the region, one such example being the recent 'Israeli-Palestinian Cultural Heritage Agreement'. The preamble to the document states that “Israel and Palestine constitute a unified archaeological landscape divided by political borders,” but that in the exceptional case of Jerusalem, the two parties should establish a special, shared “heritage zone.”[19] The document goes on to argue that artifacts seized since 1967 should be repatriated to the 'state' where they were originally excavated, at once treating them as distinguishable by default of where they were found, as well as ignoring the deep-rooted history of the region and its peoples – both Jewish and Palestinian. An addendum to the document specifically concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls also recommends that both parties consider putting them on loan to Israel for a period of 999 years. Aside from being logically inconsistent to the point of bordering on absurdity, the document already begins from the false premise of a just or realistic two state solution, and thus falls victim to the fatal flaws that necessarily come with it.
Conclusion
In order to better understand the problem of archeology and artifacts in the region (not to mention the Israel/Palestinian conflict itself), Israel will need to begin to 'see' Palestinians and their legitimate historical claims to the land beyond the skewed and narrow lens of 'Arabs', 'Muslims', or 'terrorists' that only perpetuate mutual hostility and cynicism. Acknowledging the diverse cultural heritage of the region need not amount to a 'zero-sum game' whereby recognizing the identity of Palestine and Palestinians represents a threat to the identity of Israelis and Jews – it is, however, a threat to the apartheid status quo. The germ of a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians today, may just be found in how we understand, and begin to reclaim, the past. As Palestinian professor Nazmi Jubeh asks:
Can you tell me what the difference is between the archaeological finds from the Bronze Age in the western part of the city [Jerusalem] and the finds from the same period in the eastern part?[...] The history of this land is the sum of all histories of the people who lived in it. The Roman period does not belong to the Romans. You will not want the synagogue at Na'aran to be dismantled, just as I will not want to dismantle the Jazar mosque in Acre. You cannot deprive me of the Jewish past of this land. It belongs to everyone.[20]
Nobody is calling for a boycott of the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit; the damage was already done when they were allowed to illegally enter Canada in the first place. What Palestinians are demanding seems quite simple: a place in the past so that they may not be deprived of justice today and existence in the future. The exhibit is scheduled to run for six months, until January 3, 2010; how much we choose to do in between now and then to see to it that international law is upheld and justice is done will be up to us. In the meantime, as one of the picketers affirms, “The pickets will continue and the campaign will escalate.”
Ali Mustafa is a freelance journalist, writer, and media activist. He is a member of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) and currently resides in Toronto, Canada. His writing can be found at From Beyond the Margins.blogspot.com.
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Footnotes
1. “Dead Sea Scrolls stir storm at ROM,” Toronto Star, April 9, 2009.
2. All references in the following section are found in the CJPME factsheet: Legal Violations with the ROM’s Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit.
3. The region is commonly referred to as ‘Palestine’ in recorded literature as early as the 5th century BC in the Histories of Herodotus, but generally encompassed a wider geographical identity until the British Mandatory period of 1920-1948
4. The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (1996). Whitelam, p. 202
5. ‘Archeology and Politics in Palestine,’ The Link, March 1987.
6. Whitelam, p. 225.
7. Ibid.
8. Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (2001). El Haj.
9. “Archeologists for hire” Guardian, May 1, 2008.
10. International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973).
11. “Israel eyes Toronto for marketing test site” Toronto Star, March 17, 2008.
12. “Jews match boycotts with email and spending” Toronto Star, July 20 2009.
13. “Dead Sea cranks” National Post, July 2 2009.
14. The reference here is to an exhibit several decades ago called “Into the Heart of Africa,” which caused public outrage in the African-Canadian community over ‘racist’ depictions of African cultural heritage.
15. CJPME Analysis: Changes for the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit.
16. Whitelam, p. 129
17. “There is no archeological peace” Haaretz, June 16, 2008.
18. “Labor Min. to Lieberman: Nakba bill sullies Israel's image” Haaretz, July 19 2009.
19. “A separate peace” Haaretz, April 12 2008.
20. Ibid.
Original article at: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/249.php#continue
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Much Ado About Respect
http://www.latamrob.com/?p=892
Latin American Review of Books
Forget Open Veins of Latin America, Lars Schoultz offers a much more enlightening window upon the main obstacle to better US relations in Latin America
That Infernal Little Cuban Republic: The United States and the Cuban Revolution
Lars Schoultz
2009, University of North Carolina Press
745 pages, hardback
Reviewed by Gavin O'Toole
WHAT is it about "respect" that you don't understand? is a question that seems to permeate every page of Lars Schoultz's comprehensive survey of relations between the US and Cuba.
As this veteran observer of US policy towards Latin America points out in That Infernal Little Cuban Republic, the principal message that Cuba's revolutionary regime has tried to convey in the 50 years since ties broke down irrevocably is that the island simply wants to be treated with respect.
Notwithstanding the fact that the desire for self-determination and liberty reflected in Cuba's revolution responded directly to the founding principles of the US itself, and that the term "respect" has become a mantra of social standing in the hazardous inner city, this aspiration is not exactly rocket science. It lies at the heart of the art of diplomacy, and Washington's failure to acknowledge it has been a persistent irritant in its interactions with its Latin neighbours.
The Mexicans, for example, have in the past gone to great lengths to ensure that diplomatic relations are conducted on the basis of parity and to counter hidden meaning in the presidential set-pieces that define bilateral contacts and any assumption of Anglo-Saxon superiority or hint of cultural condescencion.
Barack Obama appears instinctively to have grasped this with his insistence that relations with Latin America will henceforth be conducted on the basis of "mutual respect" with "no junior or senior partner". Of course, only time will tell.
Arrogance
Although Schoultz does not go on to explore explicitly what "respect" between states means in theoretical terms, it is not hard to figure out from this excellent historical introduction and overview of the most intractable issue in US policy towards Latin America, and we have many other examples of imperial overreach to guide us. A mentality of arrogance, often based upon racial assumptions, that establishes a higher position in the hierarchy of peoples lies at the heart of an imperial power's hatred for the weak states that dare to defy it.
The British imperial attitude towards reluctant subject peoples, such as the Irish, for example, greatly hampered efforts to find a solution to the violent relations that prevailed in the north or Ireland. It was only the British Labour party's effort to acknowledge the respect agenda - through an implicit recognition of Ireland's sovereign integrity - that broke the destructive 500-year cycle of mutual antipathy and paved the way for today's uneasy peace. As Schoultz writes:
"Fidel Castro put his finger on what has always been the central problem for Cuban nationalists, telling [Peter] Tarnoff and [Robert] Pastor that 'it is difficult to talk to you, a powerful, rich and highly developed country with a mentality of arrogance.'" [p. 554]
This was well illustrated in 1978 when the US resumed its spy plane overflights of Havana under a Democratic president just prior to Tarnoff and Pastor's audience with the Cuban leader. Schoultz writes:
". the Carter-era overflights were simply one more lesson in Realpolitik 101, the goal of which was to teach a group of slow learners what Thucydides said twenty-five hundred years ago: the strong can do what they want and the weak will accept what they must." [p. 555]
Schoultz has put his finger on an issue that is likely to grow in prominence in the study of international relations, and one that Obama's policy advisers would do well to explore.
In an excellent recent paper on the importance of respect in international relations, Reinhard Wolf* points out that scholars seem to have regarded respect as a superfluous, symbolic asset and that states strive only for concrete and tangible goals, such as security, power and wealth. For Anglo-Saxons in particular, it has been natural to take international respect for granted, with the US and Great Britain sitting firmly at the heart of the international system as established powers not to be messed with. Yet as Wolf points out, this neglect in scholarship comes at a considerable price, for it blinds it to a major influence on co-operation and conflict in world politics. He goes on to sketch out a working definition of respect in international relations and its importance to states, international organisations, movements and individual decision-makers.
The antipathy that lies at the heart of the relationship between Washington and Havana helps to explain why respect has rarely entered the equation. The relationship that has been formulated since 1959 - through the hailstorms of the Cold War into the uneasy Cold Peace since 1991 - has been based on the mutual understanding of where power resides, and in particular the astuteness of the Cubans in determining the line they could not cross without triggering a revolution-ending reaction. And that has been the basis of the relationship ever since: learning how to live without crossing the line.
Yet a key point of departure in any conscious effort to change US relations with Cuba would be to invest in symbolic assets that have less to do with power and more to do with prestige. Symbols often play a more important role in the politics of the developing world, and Obama's recent effort to reach out to the Muslim world does appear to reflect an understanding of this. Wolf writes, for example:
". there are strong indications that feelings of disrespect aggravated quite a number of bilateral relations. US-Iranian relations, US-Russian relations or recent Polish-German relations seem to be obvious cases calling for detailed investigations. (Also, one may wonder if the US occupation of Iraq might have been far more successful if, instead of condoning the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners, high ranking administration officials had clearly expressed their great admiration for the Iraqi cultural heritage.) Furthermore, polling data show that the perception of disrespect plays a major role in relations between Muslims and Western civilization."*
Returning to Latin America, Schoultz points out that the attitude maintained by the US towards Cuba exposes a paternalistic ideology of benevolent domination originating in the expansionism of the 19th century that seeks to steer its people, like minors, towards a better future. It is this attitude that remains at the core of the problem, the latest presidential example of which was the creation of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba unveiled in 2004, which set out Washington's vision of the best form of government for the island, and the latest congressional example of which was the Helms-Burton Act, specifying the type of economic system the Cubans should adopt. Schoultz writes:
"A hostile policy towards any particular Cuban government has always been only a symptom of the underlying problem: Washington's uplifting mentality. Clearly delusional, for more than a century this mentality has led otherwise sensible people to believe that these Caribbean neighbours will welcome the opportunity to be guided toward a higher and better civilisation by the United States of America, even if these same sensible people would be outraged should some foreign government create a Commission to Improve the United States, especially if this imagined commission were to begin its report by listing sixty-two steps it intended to take to overthrow the current government in Washington." [p. 557]
Forget Open Veins of Latin America - the book about the rape of the region given a new lease of life when the Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavéz handed it very publicly to Obama with a handshake and an appeal for friendship - That Infernal Little Cuban Republic by Professor Schoultz offers a more nuanced and potentially enlightening window upon the main obstacle to better US relations in the region.
For while providing a valuable explanation for why policy has remained so doggedly unchanged - largely domestic politics, and the protection of economic elites in the form of the wealthy Miami Cubans - Schoultz also provides a mature set of reflections about how to interpret democracy when considering the lessons of policy in the Caribbean Basin.
". nobody is born a democrat. People become democrats by sharpening their negotiating skills slowly, through debates with others who disagree, often in fundamental ways and often over truly important issues.No rational Cuban on either side of the Straits of Florida would go through the arduous process of negotiation and compromise while the president stands on the White House lawn and waves a 423-page plan to solve everything." [pp. 565-66]
* Wolf, Reinhard. 2008. "Respect and International Relations: State Motives, Social Mechanisms and Hypotheses". Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association's 49th Annual Convention, Bridging Multiple Divides, Hilton San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA, March 26, 2008
Gavin O'Toole is Editor of the Latin American Review of Books
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The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons
Ian Angus August 25, 2008
Ian Angus is editor of Climate and Capitalism [www.climateandcapitalism.com]. This article was originally published by Socialist Voice -- http://www.socialistvoice.ca -- and is posted here with the author's permission.
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http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=316
Will shared resources always be misused and overused? Is community ownership of land, forests and fisheries a guaranteed road to ecological disaster? Is privatization the only way to protect the environment and end Third World poverty? Most economists and development planners will answer "yes" -- and for proof they will point to the most influential article ever written on those important questions.
Since its publication in Science in December 1968, "The Tragedy of the Commons" has been anthologized in at least 111 books, making it one of the most-reprinted articles ever to appear in any scientific journal. It is also one of the most-quoted: a recent Google search found "about 302,000" results for the phrase "tragedy of the commons."
For 40 years it has been, in the words of a World Bank Discussion Paper, "the dominant paradigm within which social scientists assess natural resource issues." (Bromley and Cernea 1989: 6) It has been used time and again to justify stealing indigenous peoples' lands, privatizing health care and other social services, giving corporations 'tradable permits' to pollute the air and water, and much more.
Noted anthropologist Dr. G.N. Appell (1995) writes that the article "has been embraced as a sacred text by scholars and professionals in the practice of designing futures for others and imposing their own economic and environmental rationality on other social systems of which they have incomplete understanding and knowledge."
Like most sacred texts, "The Tragedy of the Commons" is more often cited than read. As we will see, although its title sounds authoritative and scientific, it fell far short of science.
Garrett Hardin hatches a myth
The author of "The Tragedy of the Commons" was Garrett Hardin, a University of California professor who until then was best-known as the author of a biology textbook that argued for "control of breeding" of "genetically defective" people. (Hardin 1966: 707) In his 1968 essay he argued that communities that share resources inevitably pave the way for their own destruction; instead of wealth for all, there is wealth for none.
He based his argument on a story about the commons in rural England.
(The term "commons" was used in England to refer to the shared pastures, fields, forests, irrigation systems and other resources that were found in many rural areas until well into the 1800s. Similar communal farming arrangements existed in most of Europe, and they still exist today in various forms around the world, particularly in indigenous communities.)
"Picture a pasture open to all," Hardin wrote. A herdsmen who wants to expand his personal herd will calculate that the cost of additional grazing (reduced food for all animals, rapid soil depletion) will be divided among all, but he alone will get the benefit of having more cattle to sell.
Inevitably, "the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd." But every "rational herdsman" will do the same thing, so the commons is soon overstocked and overgrazed to the point where it supports no animals at all.
Hardin used the word "tragedy" as Aristotle did, to refer to a dramatic outcome that is the inevitable but unplanned result of a character's actions. He called the destruction of the commons through overuse a tragedy not because it is sad, but because it is the inevitable result of shared use of the pasture. "Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."
Where's the evidence? Given the subsequent influence of Hardin's essay, it's shocking to realize that he provided no evidence at all to support his sweeping conclusions. He claimed that the "tragedy" was inevitable -- but he didn't show that it had happened even once.
Hardin simply ignored what actually happens in a real commons: self-regulation by the communities involved. One such process was described years earlier in Friedrich Engels' account of the "mark," the form taken by commons-based communities in parts of pre-capitalist Germany:
"The use of arable and meadowlands was under the supervision and direction of the community ... "Just as the share of each member in so much of the mark as was distributed was of equal size, so was his share also in the use of the 'common mark.' The nature of this use was determined by the members of the community as a whole. ...."At fixed times and, if necessary, more frequently, they met in the open air to discuss the affairs of the mark and to sit in judgment upon breaches of regulations and disputes concerning the mark." (Engels 1892)
Historians and other scholars have broadly confirmed Engels' description of communal management of shared resources. A summary of recent research concludes:
"What existed in fact was not a 'tragedy of the commons' but rather a triumph: that for hundreds of years -- and perhaps thousands, although written records do not exist to prove the longer era -- land was managed successfully by communities." (Cox 1985: 60)
Part of that self-regulation process was known in England as "stinting" -- establishing limits for the number of cows, pigs, sheep and other livestock that each commoner could graze on the common pasture. Such "stints" protected the land from overuse (a concept that experienced farmers understood long before Hardin arrived) and allowed the community to allocate resources according to its own concepts of fairness.
The only significant cases of overstocking found by the leading modern expert on the English commons involved wealthy landowners who deliberately put too many animals onto the pasture in order to weaken their much poorer neighbours' position in disputes over the enclosure (privatization) of common lands. (Neeson 1993: 156)
Hardin assumed that peasant farmers are unable to change their behaviour in the face of certain disaster. But in the real world, small farmers, fishers and others have created their own institutions and rules for preserving resources and ensuring that the commons community survived through good years and bad.
Why does the herder want more? Hardin's argument started with the unproven assertion that herdsmen always want to expand their herds: "It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. ... As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain."
In short, Hardin's conclusion was predetermined by his assumptions. "It is to be expected" that each herdsman will try to maximize the size of his herd -- and each one does exactly that. It's a circular argument that proves nothing.
Hardin assumed that human nature is selfish and unchanging, and that society is just an assemblage of self-interested individuals who don't care about the impact of their actions on the community. The same idea, explicitly or implicitly, is a fundamental component of mainstream (i.e., pro-capitalist) economic theory.
All the evidence (not to mention common sense) shows that this is absurd: people are social beings, and society is much more than the arithmetic sum of its members. Even capitalist society, which rewards the most anti-social behaviour, has not crushed human cooperation and solidarity. The very fact that for centuries "rational herdsmen" did not overgraze the commons disproves Hardin's most fundamental assumptions -- but that hasn't stopped him or his disciples from erecting policy castles on foundations of sand.
Even if the herdsman wanted to behave as Hardin described, he couldn't do so unless certain conditions existed.
There would have to be a market for the cattle, and he would have to be focused on producing for that market, not for local consumption. He would have to have enough capital to buy the additional cattle and the fodder they would need in winter. He would have to be able to hire workers to care for the larger herd, build bigger barns, etc. And his desire for profit would have to outweigh his interest in the long-term survival of his community.
In short, Hardin didn't describe the behaviour of herdsmen in pre-capitalist farming communities -- he described the behaviour of capitalists operating in a capitalist economy. The universal human nature that he claimed would always destroy common resources is actually the profit-driven "grow or die" behaviour of corporations.
Will private ownership do better? That leads us to another fatal flaw in Hardin's argument: in addition to providing no evidence that maintaining the commons will inevitably destroy the environment, he offered no justification for his opinion that privatization would save it. Once again he simply presented his own prejudices as fact:
"We must admit that our legal system of private property plus inheritance is unjust -- but we put up with it because we are not convinced, at the moment, that anyone has invented a better system. The alternative of the commons is too horrifying to contemplate. Injustice is preferable to total ruin."
The implication is that private owners will do a better job of caring for the environment because they want to preserve the value of their assets. In reality, scholars and activists have documented scores of cases in which the division and privatization of communally managed lands had disastrous results. Privatizing the commons has repeatedly led to deforestation, soil erosion and depletion, overuse of fertilizers and pesticides, and the ruin of ecosystems.
As Karl Marx wrote, nature requires long cycles of birth, development and regeneration, but capitalism requires short-term returns.
"The entire spirit of capitalist production, which is oriented towards the most immediate monetary profits, stands in contradiction to agriculture, which has to concern itself with the whole gamut of permanent conditions of life required by the chain of human generations. A striking illustration of this is furnished by the forests, which are only rarely managed in a way more or less corresponding to the interests of society as a whole..." (Marx 1998: 611n)
Contrary to Hardin's claims, a community that shares fields and forests has a strong incentive to protect them to the best of its ability, even if that means not maximizing current production, because those resources will be essential to the community's survival for centuries to come. Capitalist owners have the opposite incentive, because they will not survive in business if they don't maximize short-term profit. If ethanol promises bigger and faster profits than centuries-old rain forests, the trees will fall.
This focus on short-term gain has reached a point of appalling absurdity in recent best-selling books by Bjorn Lomborg, William Nordhaus and others, who argue that it is irrational to spend money to stop greenhouse gas emissions today, because the payoff is too far in the future. Other investments, they say, will produce much better returns, more quickly.
Community management isn't an infallible way of protecting shared resources: some communities have mismanaged common resources, and some commons may have been overused to extinction. But no commons-based community has capitalism's built-in drive to put current profits ahead of the well-being of future generations.
A politically useful myth
The truly appalling thing about "The Tragedy of the Commons" is not its lack of evidence or logic -- badly researched and argued articles are not unknown in academic journals. What's shocking is the fact that this piece of reactionary nonsense has been hailed as a brilliant analysis of the causes of human suffering and environmental destruction, and adopted as a basis for social policy by supposed experts ranging from economists and environmentalists to governments and United Nations agencies.
Despite being refuted again and again, it is still used today to support private ownership and uncontrolled markets as sure-fire roads to economic growth.
The success of Hardin's argument reflects its usefulness as a pseudo-scientific explanation of global poverty and inequality, an explanation that doesn't question the dominant social and political order. It confirms the prejudices of those in power: logical and factual errors are nothing compared to the very attractive (to the rich) claim that the poor are responsible for their own poverty. The fact that Hardin's argument also blames the poor for ecological destruction is a bonus.
Hardin's essay has been widely used as an ideological response to anti-imperialist movements in the Third World and discontent among indigenous and other oppressed peoples everywhere in the world. "Hardin's fable was taken up by the gathering forces of neo-liberal reaction in the 1970s, and his essay became the 'scientific' foundation of World Bank and IMF policies, viz. enclosure of commons and privatization of public property. ... The message is clear: we must never treat the earth as a 'common treasury.' We must be ruthless and greedy or else we will perish." (Boal 2007)
In Canada, conservative lobbyists use arguments derived from Hardin's political tract to explain away poverty on First Nations' reserves, and to argue for further dismantling of indigenous communities. A study published by the influential Fraser Institute urges privatization of reserve land:
"These large amounts of land, with their attendant natural resources, will never yield their maximum benefit to Canada's native people as long as they are held as collective property subject to political management. ... collective property is the path of poverty, and private property is the path of prosperity." (Fraser 2002: 16-17)
This isn't just right-wing posturing. Canada's federal government, which has refused to sign the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, announced in 2007 that it will "develop approaches to support the development of individual property ownership on reserves," and created a $300 million fund to do just that.
In Hardin's world, poverty has nothing to do with centuries of racism, colonialism and exploitation: poverty is inevitable and natural in all times and places, the product of immutable human nature. The poor bring it on themselves by having too many babies and clinging to self-destructive collectivism.
The tragedy of the commons is a useful political myth -- a scientific-sounding way of saying that there is no alternative to the dominant world order.
Stripped of excess verbiage, Hardin's essay asserted, without proof, that human beings are helpless prisoners of biology and the market. Unless restrained, we will inevitably destroy our communities and environment for a few extra pennies of profit. There is nothing we can do to make the world better or more just.
In 1844 Friedrich Engels described a similar argument as a "repulsive blasphemy against man and nature." Those words apply with full force to the myth of the tragedy of the commons.
Works Cited
Appell, G. N. 1993. "Hardin's Myth of the Commons: The Tragedy of Conceptual Confusions."
Boal, Iain. 2007. "Interview: Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse." Counterpunch, September 11, 2007.
Bromley, Daniel W. and Cernea Michael M. 1989. "The Management of Common Property Natural Resources: Some Conceptual and Operational Fallacies." World Bank Discussion Paper.
Cox, Susan Jane Buck. 1985, "No Tragedy on the Commons." Environmental Ethics 7.
Engels, Friedrich. 1892. "The Mark."
Engels, Friedrich. 1844. Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy.
Fraser Institute. 2002. Individual Property Rights on Canadian Indian Reserves.
Hardin, Garrett. 1966. Biology: Its Principles and Implications. Second edition. San Francisco. W.H. Freeman & Co.
Hardin, Garrett. 1968. "The Tragedy of the Commons."
Marx, Karl. [1867] 1998. Marx Engels Collected Works Vol. 37 (Capital, Vol. 3). New York: International Publishers
Neeson, J.M. 1993. Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700-1820. Cambridge University Press.
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You may also be interested in a follow-up article in which Ian Angus responds to questions and criticisms: Once Again: ‘The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons’ at http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=576
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Big dumb oil
Author and journalist William Marsden rips the Alberta tar sands projects and the stupidity behind it
by CHRISTOPHER HAZOU
‘In recent weeks, debate over the environmental destruction caused by the extraction of oil from Alberta’s tar sands has intensified once again. This month’s issue of National Geographic magazine caused a stir with a multi-page spread depicting in disturbing detail the environmental impact of the tar sands, and the House of Commons environment committee announced this week that it will investigate the effect on fresh water resources.
William Marsden, the award-winning author and investigative journalist for The Gazette, raised the hackles of the oil industry back in 2007 with his expose of the oil sands, Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn’t Seem to Care). The Mirror talked to Marsden in advance of a Wednesday, March 11, speaking engagement at Concordia.
Interview at: http://www.montrealmirror.com/2009/030509/news3.html
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An Invertebrate Left
London Review of Books - Vol. 31 No. 5 · 12 March 2009
Perry Anderson: Italy’s Squandered Heritage
‘The Italian Left,’ Perry Anderson writes in the current issue of the LRB, ‘was once the largest and most impressive popular movement for social change in Western Europe.’ In the second of two essays surveying the Italian political scene, Anderson charts the way that both the Socialist and Communist parties, unprepared for either ‘the inrush of a completely secular, fully Americanised mass culture’ or ‘no less decisive changes in the workplace’, too willing to compromise with Christian Democracy and fatally compromised by their own cowardice, wasted the promise of the immediate postwar years.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3105
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Pandora: Hay fever: Rebellion in Booth's kingdom
By Henry Deedes
Thursday, 5 March 2009
The pitched battle between the booksellers of Hay-on-Wye and the renowned literary town's self-styled "King" Richard Booth is threatening to get ugly.
Booth is widely credited with putting Hay on the map, turning it into a global attraction for second-hand book lovers as well as pioneering its famous literary festival.
Earlier this year, however, some of the town's booksellers began to blame Booth for collapsing sales, arguing that he was no longer capable of attracting the sort of publicity the town needs.
Full: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/pandora/pandora-hay-fever-rebellion-in-booths-kingdom-1637728.html
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John Updike Le lièvre ne court plus
Disparition . John Updike, l’auteur de Rabbitt et de Couples, est mort.
Le chantre sarcastique des espoirs et des désillusions de la classe moyenne américaine est mort à l’âge de soixante-seize ans d’un cancer du poumon. Le double prix Pulitzer, chroniqueur tendre ou féroce du New Yorker, est né le 18 mars 1932, dans une ferme de Shillington, une petite localité de Pennsylvanie. Il y grandit, solitaire, auprès d’une mère démangée par le démon de l’écriture. Boursier pour Harvard, il étudie également les arts plastiques à la Ruskin School d’Oxford. Très tôt, à vingt-sept ans, il publie Coeur de lièvre (Rabbit Run), qui connaît un énorme succès. C’est le premier d’une série de cinq romans consacrés à Harry « Rabbit » Angstrom, l’Américain moyen atteint de bovarysme qui tente de fuir la médiocrité de son existence. Il se résignera, deviendra riche, et connaîtra la paix aux approches de la mort. Deux épisodes narrés dans Rabbit est riche et Rabbit en paix, qui lui vaudront deux prix Pulitzer, en 1971 et 1990.
complet: http://www.humanite.fr/2009-01-29_Cultures_John-Updike-Le-lievre-ne-court-plus
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Denmark's oldest bookseller saved by brothers
Thursday, 05 March 2009 15:40 RC Two students are swapping studying books for selling them and keeping an important piece of Copenhagen cultural history alive in doing so.
Denmark’s oldest bookseller, C. A. Reitzel's, has been pulled from the jaws of oblivion by two student brothers, 26-year-old Jesper Christian Bruun and 22-year-old Martin Willum Bruun.
Founded in 1819, the bookseller at 20 Nørregade street in the city centre had been run by Svend Olufsen until last summer, when he was forced to consider giving up the business due to financial difficulties.
Full: http://www.cphpost.dk/business/119-business/44974-oldest-bookseller-saved-by-brothers.html
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Barbara Ehrenreich: My Role in the Torture of Binyam Mohamed
I like to think that some of the things I write cause discomfort in those readers who deserve to feel it. Ideally, they should squirm, they should flinch, they might even experience fleeting gastrointestinal symptoms. But I have always drawn the line at torture. It may be unpleasant to read some of my writings, especially if they have been assigned by a professor, but it should not result in uncontrollable screaming, genital mutilation or significant blood loss.
With such stringent journalistic ethics in place, I was shocked to read in the February 14th Daily Mail Online a brief article headed "Food writer's online guide to building an H-bomb...the 'evidence' that put this man in Guantanamo." The "food writer" was identified as me, and the story began:
A British 'resident' held at Guantanamo Bay was identified as a terrorist after confessing he had visited a 'joke' website on how to build a nuclear weapon, it was revealed last night. Binyam Mohamed, a former UK asylum seeker, admitted to having read the 'instructions' after allegedly being beaten, hung up by his wrists for a week and having a gun held to his head in a Pakistani jail.
While I am not, and have never been, a "food writer," other details about the "joke" rang true, such as the names of my co-authors, Peter Biskind and physicist Michio Kaku. Rewind to 1979, when Peter and I were working for a now-defunct leftwing magazine named Seven Days. The government had just suppressed the publication of another magazine, The Progressive, for attempting to print an article called "The H-Bomb Secret." I don't remember that article and the current editor of The Progressive recalls only that it contained a lot of physics and was "Greek to me." Both in solidarity with The Progressive and in defense of free speech, we at Seven Days decided to do a satirical article entitled "How to Make Your Own H-Bomb," offering step-by-step instructions for assembling a bomb using equipment available in one's own home.
The satire was not subtle. After discussing the toxicity of plutonium, we advised that to avoid ingesting it orally, "Never make an A-bomb on an empty stomach." My favorite section dealt with the challenge of enriching uranium hexafluoride:
First transform the gas into a liquid by subjecting it to pressure. You can use a bicycle pump for this. Then make a simple home centrifuge. Fill a standard-size bucket one-quarter full of liquid uranium hexafluoride. Attach a six-foot rope to the bucket handle. Now swing the rope (and attached bucket) around your head as fast as possible. Keep this up for about 45 minutes. Slow down gradually, and very gently put the bucket on the floor. The U-235, which is lighter, will have risen to the top, where it can be skimmed off like cream. Repeat this step until you have the required 10 pounds of uranium. (Safety note: Don't put all your enriched uranium hexafluoride in one bucket. Use at least two or three buckets and keep them in separate corners of the room. This will prevent the premature build-up of a critical mass.)
Full:
http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/barbaras_blog/2009/02/my-role-in-the-torture-of-binyam-mohamed.html
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What you read can land you in Guantanamo
(even if it's satire)
Food writer's online guide to building an H-bomb...the 'evidence' that put this man in Guantanamo
By Jason Lewis
Last updated at 12:07 AM on 08th February, 2009
A British 'resident' held at Guantanamo Bay was identified as a terrorist after confessing he had visited a 'joke' website on how to build a nuclear weapon, it was revealed last night.
Binyam Mohamed, a former UK asylum seeker, admitted to having read the 'instructions' after allegedly being beaten, hung up by his wrists for a week and having a gun held to his head in a Pakistani jail.
It was this confession that apparently convinced the CIA that they were holding a top Al Qaeda terrorist.
But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the offending article - called How To Build An H-Bomb - was first published in a US satirical magazine and later placed on a series of websites.
Written by Barbara Ehrenreich, the publication's food editor, Rolling Stone journalist Peter Biskind and scientist Michio Kaku, it claims that a nuclear weapon can be made 'using a bicycle pump' and with liquid uranium 'poured into a bucket and swung round'.
Despite its clear satirical bent, the story led the CIA to accuse 30-year-old Mohamed, a caretaker, of plotting a dirty bomb attack, before subjecting him to its 'extraordinary rendition programme'.
During his eight-year imprisonment, Mohamed has allegedly been flown to secret torture centres in Pakistan, Morocco, an American-run jail known as the Dark Prison near Kabul in Afghanistan and, finally, to Guantanamo Bay.
The Foreign Secretary is refusing to release classified documents relating to Mohamed's detention. Last week, the High Court ruled that the 42 intelligence papers must remain secret.
However, the judges insisted they had no choice because the Government had informed them of a 'threat' by the US to withdraw all intelligence co-operation with Britain if the papers were published by the court.
Full:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1138845/Food-writers-online-guide-building-H-bomb--evidence-man-Guantanamo.html
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Naomi Klein wins Warwick Prize
Peter Scowen
Naomi Klein has won the inaugural Warwick Prize for Writing
Klein won for her much-praised lefty tome The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Penguin). Chair judge China Mieville called it "a brilliant, provocative, outstandingly written investigation into some of the great outrages of our time. It has started many debates, and will start many more..."
The new prize, handed out every two years, is funded and administrated by the University of Warwick. It is "an international, cross-disciplinary award open to any genre or form of writing," according to the university.
Full:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090224.WBBooksblog20090224102753/WBStory/WBBooksblog
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Afghans: 'Death to Canadians'
THE CANADIAN PRESS February 23, 2009
Murray Brewster
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Angry Afghan villagers chanted "Death to the Canadians" and paraded the blood-spattered bodies of two young children through the streets of Kandahar city today after a tribal elder accused Canada of firing the shell that killed them.
Residents of the village of Salehan, about 15 kilometres southwest of the city, staged an angry protest outside the white gates of the Kandahar provincial council office after an elder in the war-racked district of Panjwaii laid the blame for the tragedy at the feet of Canadian forces.
Full: http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/591646
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Amnesty Calls On US To Suspend Arms Sales To Israel
The Guardian (UK) February 23, 2009
Hellfire missiles and white phosphorus artillery shells among weapons used in 'indiscriminate' attacks on civilians, says human rights group
Detailed evidence has emerged of Israel's extensive use of US-made weaponry during its war in Gaza last month, including white phosphorus artillery shells, 500lb bombs and Hellfire missiles.
Full: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/23/israel-arms-embargo-gaza
[Link to video:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/23/israel-arms-embargo-gaza]
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Writer Alice Walker on Gaza: We Can Offer What We Are
Code Pink February 20, 2009
During the recent ruthless assault on the people of Gaza when so many people were injured or murdered, I lost my own sister; she had been ill for many years. The loss of this one person, whose death was anticipated, was such a blow, that when I considered the losses to the people of Gaza - of mothers, children, fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins, and friends, I wondered how the anguish of so much tragic loss could be sustained. Housing, hospitals, nurseries, libraries, schools, were also lost. Surely the blow to the human spirit would be intolerable for many, and there would seem little reason for continuing to live.
Continues: http://codepink4peace.org/blog/2009/02/alice-walker-we-can-offer-what-we-are/
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Review: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918
A new review of "Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918" by Scott McLemee recently featured on the front page of Barnes and Noble Review.
It has been moved to:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bn-review/note.asp?note=21332263&cds2Pid=22471
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For those of you who know Richard Orlandini, here's something we've all been waiting for. To order a copy please email or telephone us at menecraj@shaw.ca (204-452-8082).
The Oaxaca Letters of Richard Orlandini
Boonieliving Press
280pp, 15 in colour
$25 + $17 shipping from Mexico (US & Cdn. residents)
These 166 letters reveal an untethered (and untether-able) personality.
Rich:
- prowls the Tlacolula market and investigates Teotitlán textile production (6 letters, Feb., '05)
- discusses the landscape with 12-yr-old shepherd boys (and learns a thing or two about archaeology in the process) (31 July, '07)
- comes within an inch of dying from a centipede bite to his neck (1 Sept., '05)
- discusses Zapotec-Mixtec interaction (4 April, '06)
- suggests how pre-historic man "goosed" the slow process of Darwinian evolution (a view only recently accepted) (28 Sept., '07)
- figures out a low-tech way to kill a mastodon (and personally tests it in quicksand) (5 Sept., '07)
- takes us inside a real (not "touristy") Muertos celebration (Preface, 3 Nov., '05)
- hikes every meter of the Mitla Valley and discovers the oldest pre-ceramic site in North America (2 March, '05, Appendix)
- supports the maximalist view of pre-Columbian population (28 July, '07) and the minority view of how they got here (16 August, '06)
And there are still 151 more letters in the collection. Enjoy.
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The Defining Moment for Climate Change
http://tinyurl.com/6bfvav
posted May 11, 2008 08:40 am
Tomgram: Bill McKibben, The Defining Moment for Climate Change
Already climate change -- in the form of a changing pattern of global rainfall -- seems to be affecting the planet in significant ways. Take the massive, almost decade-long drought in Australia's wheat-growing heartland, which has been a significant factor in sending flour prices, and so bread prices, soaring globally, leading to desperation and food riots across the planet.
A report from the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia makes clear that, despite recent heavy rains in the eastern Australian breadbasket, years of above normal rainfall would be needed "to remove the very long-term (water) deficits" in the region. The report then adds this ominous note: "The combination of record heat and widespread drought during the past five to 10 years over large parts of southern and eastern Australia is without historical precedent and is, at least partly, a result of climate change."
Think a bit about that phrase -- "without historical precedent." Except when it comes to technological invention, it hasn't been much part of our lives these last many centuries. Without historical precedent. Brace yourselves, it's about to become a commonplace in our vocabulary. The southeastern United States, for instance, was, for the last couple of years, locked in a drought -- which is finally easing -- "without historical precedent." In other words, there was nothing (repeat, nothing) in the historical record that provided a guide to what might happen next.
Now, it's true that the industrial revolution, which led to the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at historically unprecedented rates, was also, in a sense, "without historical precedent"; but most natural events -- unlike, say, the present staggering ice melt in the Arctic -- have been precedented (if I can manufacture such a word). They have been part of the historical record. That era -- the era of history -- is now, however, threatening to give way to a period capable of outrunning history itself, of outrunning us.
The planet in its long existence may have experienced the extremes to come, but we haven't. The planet, unlike much life on it, may not -- given millions or tens of millions of years to recover -- be in danger, but we are.
When you really think about it, history is humanity. It's common enough to talk about some historical figure or failed experiment being swept into the "dustbin of history," but what if all history and that dustbin, too, go. well, where? What are we, really, without our records? Once we pass beyond them, beyond all the experience we've collected, written down, and archived since those first scratches went on clay tablets in the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates -- now being stripped of their cultural patrimony -- at least two unanswerable questions arise. Once history has been left in the dust, where are we? -- and, who are we?
Let the indefatigable environmentalist Bill McKibben, who has a powerful urge to stop us just short of the cliff of the post-historical era, take it from here. - --Tom
The World at 350
A Last Chance for Civilization
By Bill McKibben
Even for Americans, constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start -- even for us, the world looks a little Terminal right now.
It's not just the economy. We've gone through swoons before. It's that gas at $4 a gallon means we're running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It's that when we try to turn corn into gas, it sends the price of a loaf of bread shooting upwards and starts food riots on three continents. It's that everything is so inextricably tied together. It's that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the "limits to growth" suddenly seem. how best to put it, right.
All of a sudden it isn't morning in America, it's dusk on planet Earth.
There's a number -- a new number -- that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
A few weeks ago, our foremost climatologist, NASA's Jim Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several co-authors. The abstract attached to it argued -- and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper -- "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points -- massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them -- that we'll pass if we don't get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer's insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.
So it's a tough diagnosis. It's like the doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high and, if you don't bring it down right away, you're going to have a stroke. So you take the pill, you swear off the cheese, and, if you're lucky, you get back into the safety zone before the coronary. It's like watching the tachometer edge into the red zone and knowing that you need to take your foot off the gas before you hear that clunk up front. In this case, though, it's worse than that because we're not taking the pill and we are stomping on the gas -- hard. Instead of slowing down, we're pouring on the coal, quite literally. Two weeks ago came the news that atmospheric carbon dioxide had jumped 2.4 parts per million last year -- two decades ago, it was going up barely half that fast.
And suddenly, the news arrives that the amount of methane, another potent greenhouse gas, accumulating in the atmosphere, has unexpectedly begun to soar as well. Apparently, we've managed to warm the far north enough to start melting huge patches of permafrost and massive quantities of methane trapped beneath it have begun to bubble forth.
And don't forget: China is building more power plants; India is pioneering the $2,500 car, and Americans are converting to TVs the size of windshields which suck juice ever faster.
Here's the thing. Hansen didn't just say that, if we didn't act, there was trouble coming; or, if we didn't yet know what was best for us, we'd certainly be better off below 350 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. His phrase was: ".if we wish to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed." A planet with billions of people living near those oh-so-floodable coastlines. A planet with ever more vulnerable forests. (A beetle, encouraged by warmer temperatures, has already managed to kill 10 times more trees than in any previous infestation across the northern reaches of Canada this year. This means far more carbon heading for the atmosphere and apparently dooms Canada's efforts to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, already in doubt because of its decision to start producing oil for the U.S. from Alberta's tar sands.)
We're the ones who kicked the warming off; now, the planet is starting to take over the job. Melt all that Arctic ice, for instance, and suddenly the nice white shield that reflected 80% of incoming solar radiation back into space has turned to blue water that absorbs 80% of the sun's heat. Such feedbacks are beyond history, though not in the sense that Francis Fukuyama had in mind.
And we have, at best, a few years to short-circuit them -- to reverse course. Here's the Indian scientist and economist Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year (and, by the way, got his job when the Bush administration, at the behest of Exxon Mobil, forced out his predecessor): "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."
In the next two or three years, the nations of the world are supposed to be negotiating a successor treaty to the Kyoto Accord. When December 2009 rolls around, heads of state are supposed to converge on Copenhagen to sign a treaty -- a treaty that would go into effect at the last plausible moment to heed the most basic and crucial of limits on atmospheric CO2.
If we did everything right, says Hansen, we could see carbon emissions start to fall fairly rapidly and the oceans begin to pull some of that CO2 out of the atmosphere. Before the century was out we might even be on track back to 350. We might stop just short of some of those tipping points, like the Road Runner screeching to a halt at the very edge of the cliff.
More likely, though, we're the Coyote -- because "doing everything right" means that political systems around the world would have to take enormous and painful steps right away. It means no more new coal-fired power plants anywhere, and plans to quickly close the ones already in operation.(Coal-fired power plants operating the way they're supposed to are, in global warming terms, as dangerous as nuclear plants melting down.) It means making car factories turn out efficient hybrids next year, just the way we made them turn out tanks in six months at the start of World War II. It means making trains an absolute priority and planes a taboo.
It means making every decision wisely because we have so little time and so little money, at least relative to the task at hand. And hardest of all, it means the rich countries of the world sharing resources and technology freely with the poorest ones, so that they can develop dignified lives without burning their cheap coal.
That's possible -- we launched a Marshall Plan once, and we could do it again, this time in relation to carbon. But in a month when the President has, once more, urged us to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, that seems unlikely. In a month when the alluring phrase "gas tax holiday" has danced into our vocabulary, it's hard to see (though it was encouraging to see that Clinton's gambit didn't sway many voters). And if it's hard to imagine sacrifice here, imagine China, where people produce a quarter as much carbon apiece as we do.
Still, as long as it's not impossible, we've got a duty to try. In fact, it's about the most obvious duty humans have ever faced.
A few of us have just launched a new campaign, 350.org. Its only goal is to spread this number around the world in the next 18 months, via art and music and ruckuses of all kinds, in the hope that it will push those post-Kyoto negotiations in the direction of reality.
After all, those talks are our last chance; you just can't do this one light bulb at a time. And if this 350.org campaign is a Hail Mary pass, well, sometimes those passes get caught.
We do have one thing going for us: This new tool, the Web which, at least, allows you to imagine something like a grassroots global effort. If the Internet was built for anything, it was built for sharing this number, for making people understand that "350" stands for a kind of safety, a kind of possibility, a kind of future.
Hansen's words were well-chosen: "a planet similar to that on which civilization developed." People will doubtless survive on a non-350 planet, but those who do will be so preoccupied, coping with the endless unintended consequences of an overheated planet, that civilization may not. Civilization is what grows up in the margins of leisure and security provided by a workable relationship with the natural world. That margin won't exist, at least not for long, this side of 350. That's the limit we face.
Bill McKibben is a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org. His most recent book is The Bill McKibben Reader.
Copyright 2008 Bill McKibben
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