If it creates jobs, no questions asked
One of the major justifications from the business community to support the basic capitalist principle of growth, is that it will create more jobs.
Creating more jobs is a phrase that is meant to silence critics and end discussion about what it is the company does or stop us from thinking about the unsustainable realities of economic growth.
For instance, in a recent article in MiBiz, readers are told about a Bangor-based company, Getman Corp, which just announced that they might double their workforce because of global growth that impacts their industry.
The article is filled with information about the implication of the expanding industry and relies on a company spokesperson as well as other people in the same industry in West Michigan.
Getman Corp. makes mining equipment and the article makes it clear that this is a global growth industry. The article relies heavily on a 2013 Trends report from the financial consulting company Deloitte Global Services, which is only concerned about markets that are not volatile. The article states:
While sub-Saharan Africa is a resource-rich area, the Deloitte report stated, the difficulty of financing, lack of infrastructure and corruption were the main reasons mining companies avoided the area. Consequently, miners are looking to more stable, if less lucrative alternatives. The report projects the top three countries to receive investment from the mining industry between 2012 and 2031 will be Australia, Brazil and Chile — in line with the Getman Corp.’s market strategy.
Of course, what the financial world considers volatile has to do with sales growth and projected needs of products and services. What they aren’t concerned about is the ecological and human health impact that mining has globally.
Many people are aware of the impact that coal mining has, particularly in recent years with campaigns to stop mountain top removal of coal in the US. However, the impact of mining is vast, whether it is mining for gold, silver, copper, iron ore or the many other substances extracted in the process of mining.
Highly toxic chemicals are used in mining and the mining process almost always required large sums of water, which not only depletes the water sources of nearby communities, it often pollutes the water and soil near the areas being mined.
Mining also has a long history of human rights abuses and this history continues today, with numerous campaigns to combat mining and the repression from the mining industry in countries like Australia, Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador. In fact, in late 2011, GVSU hosted an anti-mining activist from El Salvador who spoke about the repression that he and other people in his community have faced because they dared to fight mining from US and Canadian companies.
None of this information or perspective is included in the MiBiz article, because growth is good and new jobs cannot be questioned. However, any economic activity that causes ecological destruction and human misery should be denounced and resisted.
Let’s not be fooled by the claims of jobs and growth. The planet can not afford it.
Rosa Luxemburg and Occupy
This article by Mumia Abu Jamal is re-posted from ZNet.
Meiner freunden; Wie geht’s?
I recently did a thought experiment of Rosa Luxemburg and gave her a role in advising the young activists.
I will not repeat that practice.
Her spirit, however, of principled and resistance to Imperialism and advocacy of revolution over reform, endears her to us, and informs young activists involved in struggle against the US Empire.
As the Occupy Movement is still with us, and finding new ways of trying to live lives consistent with the spirit of Occupy, we think of it as a new year dawns, and try to draw lessons for movements active today, and ones to come.
Initially, we must note that Occupy is an American phenomenon, but there are similar expressions in other parts of the world, like the Indignados in Spain; the Arab Spring in North Africa; the Movimiento San Tierra (the Landless Peasants Movement) in Brazil, and beyond.
All of these movements share something fundamental: a discontent with the status quo; and a deep desire for change.
They each know that the status quo is untenable; that the state is an instrument of the wealthy; and that the present economic system is rapacious when it comes to using its power to protect the well-to-do.
Rosa Luxemburg would’ve loved to be around, not just to see the effects of that crisis, but to teach the lessons of organizing, and revolution-growing.
And while it would be premature to call some of these movements revolutionary, they are certainly radical in that they are calling into question the systems under which we live, including capitalism.
In the US, the Occupy Movement struck quite a chord, simply by speaking to the stark divide in American society, between the 1% and the 99%.
Their slogan, “We Are the 99%!”, cut to the very heart of the economic crises ripping through the United States, the joblessness, the government budgets being slashed, and the monstrous weight to many states of the prison industrial complex- the biggest such system on earth.
Similar crises are being thrust into many European states, say Greece, Italy and Portugal, for starters.
What we are seeing is the boundless appetite of capital for more capital, especially in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union.
These economic disruptions are having political effects, as shown by the rise of anti-capitalist groupings which challenge the status quo. As the contradictions in society become sharper, more people are drawn into such movements, to try to redirect this social decay into more productive, more social concerns.
The Empire Strikes Back
National news reports have shown a campaign of repression against occupiers, from police assaults, beatings, mass arrests and anti-Occupy media propaganda.
First, the media ignored them; then, when that was no longer possible, they maligned them.
They defended their corporate owners by misreporting on these anti 1%ers, depicting them as silly, trifling people. Police infiltrated them at every level.
Yet, they remain, involved in a variety of issues. In a variety of American cities.
No longer as visible, and longer amassed at open air locations, they remain opposed to the status quo.
They are searching for a way, true; but the good thing is that they are still searching.
They are still organizing.
They are still trying to build a system that serves human needs, instead of corporate needs.
They are still trying.
Rosa Luxemburg would be proud.
Danke Sehr,
Hier Sprecht Mumia Abu-Jamal
Idle No More Actions Target US-Canadian Bridges
This update by Andrea Germanos is re-posted from Common Dreams.
Idle No More continues its momentum with a series of demonstrations on Saturday including one that has shut down a US-Canadian bridge as the movement continues its demands for Indigenous sovereignty.
CBC News reports that police closed the International Bridge in Cornwall, Ontario, when at least 100 protesters marched there, and adds that other international bridges will be sites of actions as well:
- The Peace Arch crossing in Surrey, B.C., from 1 to 2 p.m. PT.
- NWT’s Deh Cho Bridge between 2 and 4 p.m. MT.
- The Canadian side of the Blue Water Bridge in Sarnia, Ont., for one hour. Sarnia police said the bridge would be closed in both directions from noon until 1 p.m.
- The Peace Bridge between Fort Erie and Buffalo in the Niagara region, starting at 1 p.m. ET. Organizers say it will be “peaceful,” and they will occupy only one lane of traffic on the international bridge.
- A disruption is also planned at the Queenston/Lewiston Bridge between Niagara Falls and Niagara on the Lake.
CTV News adds:
Onion Lake Cree Nation Chief Wallace Fox said the main reason behind the protests was the passing of Bill C-45.
Protesters say First Nations lands and treaty rights are being infringed upon through the government’s contentious omnibus budget bill.
“This is something that many First Nations have always wanted to get the general public to understand,” said Fox.
“We never relinquished any of the resources. We never ceded any of the resources, the minerals, that was not part of the treaty.”
The day’s actions follow a Friday statement from the movement that vowed it was “here to stay” and that it would continue to work for its goals of “Indigenous sovereignty (Nation to Nation relationship) and protection of the land and water (Social and Environmental Sustainability).”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Friday announcement he would meet with Indigenous leaders on Jan. 11 is being met with caution.
“It won’t take just one meeting to address what is broken. We will hold the prime minister’s feet to the fire,” Deputy Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler, a deputy grand chief of an Ontario First Nation, said at a news conference.
And Attawapiskat First Nation’s Chief Theresa Spence, who began a hunger strike Dec. 11 unless Prime Minister Stephen Harper met to discuss treaty rights and Canada’s relationship with its Indigenous peoples, reacted, saying:
“I will continue my hunger strike and await the outcomes of the meeting. Our Peoples have had a history of prior promises and commitments from the Canadian government with no true tangible results. We look forward to re-establishing and strengthening our Treaty relationship with Canada and the ongoing discussions that will lead to the recognition, implementation and advancement our inherent and treaty rights,”
Idle No More has garnered international solidarity actions and has received the support of human rights and indigenous organiztions. Singer and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie also added her support for Chief Spence and Saturday’s actions in this video:
Shell has once again been making the news because of their disastrous attempt to drilling for oil in the Arctic.
According to Open Secrets, congressional Democrats called for an investigation into the company’s operations in the area by the Interior Department and the Coast Guard. One investigation, by federal, state and company representatives, is already under way.
Shell has fought long and hard to drill in the Arctic, and its lobbying records show it. In 2011, when the company was getting its final regulatory green lights for the operations, it spent $14.8 million making its case in Washington, a steady and substantial increase from the $3.1 million it spent in 2007. In the first three-quarters of 2012, it laid out nearly $10.9 million for lobbying.
Unlike many companies, Shell hasn’t focused just on the House and Senate: the White House, the Departments of Commerce, Interior, Treasury, State, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Coast Guard are among those on which Shell has lavished its attentions.
In a recent article by Greenpeace, the environmental group documents numerous reasons why Shell’s attempts to drill for oil in the Arctic would be devastating for the ecosystem there. The article documents several incidents that have occurred already, prior to the current attention to the offshore drilling platform problems.
Open Secrets adds:
All of that could mean even higher lobbying expenditures by the company. Shell isn’t persona non grata in Washington the way BP was after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico blowout or Exxon after the Valdez spill in 1989 — at least not yet. But environmentalists and other critics of Arctic drilling warn that the company’s current problems show it’s likely just a matter of time before more severe occurrences.
Snyder continues to stack Ag commission with agribusiness people
Yesterday, MLive reported that Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed a new member to the Michigan Commission of Agriculture and Rural Development.
Fred Walcott, who works for Valley View Pork near Allendale, is the newest of the five-member commission, that is exclusively made up of people who work for large agribusiness operations.
Walcott, who works at a 4,000 acre farm, will serve as commissioner along with Bob Kennedy, who is Vice President of Operations for Auburn Bean and Grain. The website for this business reads like a stock market sheet instead of a place where people respect the land and care for the earth.
Also serving on the Ag Commission is Diane Hansen, owner of Hansen Seed Farm and Donald Coe, the managing partner of Black Star Farms. Based on the information at Black Star Farms, it appears to be more of a tourist destination than a farm.
The fifth member of the Michigan Agriculture Commission is Trever Meachum, who is the production manager for High Acres Fruit Farm, a 3,000 acre farm in Van Buren County.
Adding Walcott demonstrates that the Governor is only interested in having the perspectives of people involved in large agribusiness operations. There is no one on the commission that seems committed to organic and sustainable farming practices, or people who are committed to promoting food justice.
Walcott is also part of the Michigan Pork Producers Association, which represents the interests of large factory farming operations, also known as CAFOs, in Michigan.
More importantly, groups like the Michigan Pork Producers Association and the industry groups represented by those on the ag commission, are also actively involved in federal farm policy issues and are engaged in lobbying efforts to continue the massive taxpayer subsidies currently operating through the Federal Farm Bill.
According to the Environmental Working Group, Michigan Farmers received $79,450,000 in federal subsidies for 2011. Looking at the list of farms that did receive massive subsidies, the majority of them are larger agribusiness operations and not smaller farms engaged in Community Supported Agriculture.
This announcement, coming from Snyder, is another blow to those who are part of the local food movement and those who work for food justice.
Oppose Labor Rights to Blunt ‘Pro-Abortion and Pro-Homosexual Activism,’ says Ohio-based Religious Commentator
This article by Brian Tashman is re-posted from Right Wing Watch. Editor’s Note: We re-posted this story in light of the Right to Work law that now exists in Michigan and to point out that pro-Right to Work families like the DeVos family are also anti-LGBT. This seems to be a pattern of groups that push for RTW laws across the country.
Mission America head Linda Harvey encouraged Ohio Republicans to push anti-union right-to-work legislation on her radio bulletin today, and like always linked it back to her zealous anti-gay activism. Harvey maintained that Religious Right supporters should rally behind so-called right-to-work efforts because “unions support all aspects of pro-abortion and pro-homosexual activism and have no problem truly with students opting for these life-altering practices” and promote “politically correct agendas.” She went on to falsely assert that without such laws workers are forced to join labor unions and also made the discredited claim that unions can compel non-members to pay for political activities.
Harvey said:
Now you might be thinking, why does Mission America care? Here’s why: the leftists in this country and all their destructive anti-family policies have been propped up by the funding of both private and public employee unions. You may have heard me talk about teachers unions like the National Education Association or here in Ohio, the Ohio Education Association. The NEA and OEA are largely responsible for the left-wing tilt of our public schools and the politically correct agendas that now dominate school room lessons. These unions support all aspects of pro-abortion and pro-homosexual activism and have no problem truly with students opting for these life-altering practices. Actively opposing more traditional viewpoints, the teachers unions generously support Democrats running for President and Congress while contributing very little to Republican or more conservative candidates. So if we want to get our country back a good place to start is where the left is getting its money, and it’s often from labor union members who had no choice to contribute to that candidate or issue.
New Tree Blockade Halts Construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline
This article is re-posted from EcoWatch.
Late last night, blockaders set up two “dump platforms” in trees outside of Diboll, Texas which would otherwise be cleared to make way for TransCanada’s Keystone XL toxic tar sands pipeline. These special “dump platforms” are shielded by an unprecedented 80-100 foot perimeter of life-lines arranged, which if disturbed would certainly dump the two blockaders nested in them roughly 50-60 feet in the air. The blockaders are sitting in soldarity with the now global Idle No More campaign for First Nation’s human rights and tribal sovereignty that very recently started in Canada.
This new tree blockade comes just a couple weeks after the end of Tar Sands Blockade’s 85-day tree-sit near Winnsboro, TX. TransCanada rerouted the tar sands pipeline to go around the Winnsboro tree-sit, despite having told countless landowners, including Douglass resident Mike Bishop, that the route was set in stone and could not be altered to avoid bulldozing their cropland, or to go around schools, neighborhoods or ecologically sensitive areas.
This new site is surrounded by barriers like Highway 59, railroad tracks and Ryan Lake. With these nearby, blockaders have found a location around which the pipe cannot easily be rerouted.
The viability of this blockade depends entirely on the safe conduct of TransCanada and local police forces. They could easily end it by cutting ropes and seriously injuring or killing the tree sitters. Blockaders Audrey and Mike know the risks. They are prepared to stay on their platforms, just big enough to lie down on, indefinitely, to defend their collective home from the expansion of tar sands exploitation that Keystone XL would usher in.
“Protecting the living systems which we’re a part of is a moral necessity,” shared Audrey, who is sitting in a singular tree left in a newly-cleared field. “Extraction of the tar sands is the most destructive project on the continent. It threatens the integrity of the entire biosphere, not to mention the First Nations dependent upon access to clean water, land, and air for the health and food for their tribal communities.”
Mike, the other sitter suspended in a 50 foot skypod between two trees, agreed, “That their plight has been so long ignored by industry and policy-makers is a clear violation of their human rights and a crime of conscience. That’s why we are enthusiastically supporting the Idle No More movement!”
Tar Sands Blockade is a coalition of Texas and Oklahoma landowners and climate justice organizers using peaceful and sustained civil disobedience to stop the construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
“Institutional methods of addressing climate change have failed us,” explained Ron Seifert, a Tar Sands Blockade spokesperon. “Rising up to defend our homes against corporate exploitation is our best and only hope to preserve life on this planet. We must normalize and embrace direct, organized resistance to the death machine of industrial extraction and stand with those like Idle No More who take extraordinary risk to defend their families and livelihoods.”
‘Alarmingly High Methane Emissions’ from Natural Gas Extraction
This article by Jeff Tollefson is re-posted from Nature.
Scientists are once again reporting alarmingly high methane emissions from an oil and gas field, underscoring questions about the environmental benefits of the boom in natural-gas production that is transforming the US energy system.
The researchers, who hold joint appointments with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Colorado in Boulder, first sparked concern in February 2012 with a study1 suggesting that up to 4% of the methane produced at a field near Denver was escaping into the atmosphere. If methane — a potent greenhouse gas — is leaking from fields across the country at similar rates, it could be offsetting much of the climate benefit of the ongoing shift from coal- to gas-fired plants for electricity generation.
Industry officials and some scientists contested the claim, but at an American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco, California, last month, the research team reported new Colorado data that support the earlier work, as well as preliminary results from a field study in the Uinta Basin of Utah suggesting even higher rates of methane leakage — an eye-popping 9% of the total production. That figure is nearly double the cumulative loss rates estimated from industry data — which are already higher in Utah than in Colorado.
“We were expecting to see high methane levels, but I don’t think anybody really comprehended the true magnitude of what we would see,” says Colm Sweeney, who led the aerial component of the study as head of the aircraft programme at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder.
Whether the high leakage rates claimed in Colorado and Utah are typical across the US natural-gas industry remains unclear. The NOAA data represent a “small snapshot” of a much larger picture that the broader scientific community is now assembling, says Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in Boston, Massachusetts.
The NOAA researchers collected their data in February as part of a broader analysis of air pollution in the Uinta Basin, using ground-based equipment and an aircraft to make detailed measurements of various pollutants, including methane concentrations. The researchers used atmospheric modelling to calculate the level of methane emissions required to reach those concentrations, and then compared that with industry data on gas production to obtain the percentage escaping into the atmosphere through venting and leaks.
The results build on those of the earlier Colorado study1in the Denver–Julesburg Basin, led by NOAA scientist Gabrielle Pétron (see Nature 482, 139–140; 2012). That study relied on pollution measurements taken in 2008 on the ground and from a nearby tower, and estimated a leakage rate that was about twice as high as official figures suggested. But the team’s methodology for calculating leakage — based on chemical analysis of the pollutants — remains in dispute. Michael Levi, an energy analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, published a peer-reviewed comment2 questioning the findings and presenting an alternative interpretation of the data that would align overall leakage rates with previous estimates.
Pétron and her colleagues have a defence of the Colorado study in press3, and at the AGU meeting she discussed a new study of the Denver–Julesburg Basin conducted with scientists at Picarro, a gas-analyser manufacturer based in Santa Clara, California. That study relies on carbon isotopes to differentiate between industrial emissions and methane from cows and feedlots, and the preliminary results line up with their earlier findings.
A great deal rides on getting the number right. A study4 published in April by scientists at the EDF and Princeton University in New Jersey suggests that shifting to natural gas from coal-fired generators has immediate climatic benefits as long as the cumulative leakage rate from natural-gas production is below 3.2%; the benefits accumulate over time and are even larger if the gas plants replace older coal plants. By comparison, the authors note that the latest estimates from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suggest that 2.4% of total natural-gas production was lost to leakage in 2009.
To see if that number holds up, the NOAA scientists are also taking part in a comprehensive assessment of US natural-gas emissions, conducted by the University of Texas at Austin and the EDF, with various industry partners. The initiative will analyse emissions from the production, gathering, processing, long-distance transmission and local distribution of natural gas, and will gather data on the use of natural gas in the transportation sector. In addition to scouring through industry data, the scientists are collecting field measurements at facilities across the country. The researchers expect to submit the first of these studies for publication by February, and say that the others will be complete within a year.
In April, the EPA issued standards intended to reduce air pollution from hydraulic-fracturing operations — now standard within the oil and gas industry — and advocates say that more can be done, at the state and national levels, to reduce methane emissions. “There are clearly opportunities to reduce leakage,” says Hamburg.
‘Fix the Debt’ Readies Its Trojan Horse for Next Budget Fight
This article by Sarah Anderson and Scott Klinger is re-posted from Common Dreams.
Over the last three months, the Fix the Debt campaign, led by more than 100 big company CEOs, has unleashed a firestorm of ads, blanketing political news web sites and entirely plastering the Capitol South Metro station used by most Congressional staffers.
In late October, the Institute for Policy Studies began exposing the Fix the Debt campaign’s Trojan Horse. While they presented themselves as a patriotic bipartisan group, merely seeking a “balanced” deal, their own lobby materials revealed they were out to use the fiscal cliff as an opportunity to win massive new corporate tax breaks paid for with cuts to earned benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare.
The hypocrisy was stunning. We documented, for example, how many of the campaign’s leaders had contributed massively to the national debt through tax-dodging tricks. Twenty-four of them had even paid their CEOs more in 2011 than their firms paid in corporate income taxes. We also calculated that the average Fix the Debt CEO calling for cuts to Social Security themselves had pension assets of $12 million, enough to garner a $65,000 monthly retirement check starting at age 65.
Did all their high-priced subterfuge pay off? The New Year’s deal was a huge disappointment for those of us hoping that President Barack Obama would use his bargaining position to strike a strong blow against the extreme inequality that is undermining our economy and democracy. But the Fix the Debt campaign also suffered a loss. After one of the most ambitious corporate lobby campaigns in history, they failed to win any of their three major objectives:
- Cutting earned benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare
- Cutting corporate tax rates (“pro-growth tax reform” in Fix the Debt speak)
- Shifting to a territorial corporate tax system, which would grant a permanent corporate tax holiday on offshore income, including the hundreds of billions stashed in the world’s tax havens. Fix the Debt companies alone stood to gain an immediate $134 billion windfall from this reform, according to an IPS analysis.
In a press release, Fix the Debt leaders lamented that “Washington missed this magic moment to do something big to reduce the deficit, reform our tax code, and fix our entitlement programs.”
As in the tale of the Trojan Horse, however, we cannot assume that the Fix the Debt army is going to just sail away. Corporate tax reform is expected to be a major focus of Congress in 2013, starting as early as the debt ceiling fight, which is likely to come to a head in March. (By then, we expect to be able to report on how many profitable U.S. corporations avoided paying taxes in 2012.)
Congress’s New Year’s Eve capitulation to its wealthiest benefactors heightens the stakes for the corporate tax fight. Because Congress and the White House lavished so much on high-income individual taxpayers, they may well find themselves with fewer goodies to pass out to corporations. These will have to be paid for with either higher deficits or even more draconian cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and other programs ordinary Americans depend upon.
As Iowa Senator Tom Harkin stated in opposition to the fiscal cliff deal: “Every dollar that wealthy taxpayers do not pay under this deal, we will eventually ask Americans of modest means to forgo in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.”
The Fix the Debt gang is likely to be a major force for the duration. Last fall they boasted of having $60 million for the “initial phase” of their campaign. Even if they’ve completely blown through that pile of dough, they will likely have no trouble securing additional mega-millions for the battles to come.
Calvin January Series kicks off with doctor who works in Iraq
The 2013 Calvin January Series began today and we plan to report on some of them over the next few weeks.
The first speaker in this years’ January Series at Calvin College was Dr. Jeremy Courtney, Executive Director of Preemptive Love Coalition.
Courtney began his talk by sharing a story about Dr. Muhammand, an Iraqi physician whom he had met and had witness the destruction of the hospital he worked at in Baghdad.
US soldiers told Dr. Muhammad that they would build him a new hospital, better than the one he worked at under the Saddam Hussein regime, but the rebuilding never came.
Dr. Muhammad and his fellow doctors decided they would have to rebuild the hospital themselves, but they did not have financial resources. They were able to raise enough money to get some supplies and equipment necessary to perform some procedures, but were unable to perform more complicated surgeries, such as heart operations on children.
Dr. Muhammad had to turn away numerous Iraqi families that sought medical treatment for their children, which caused him great anguish. Dr. Muhammad then saw US doctors doing some of the same work, but these US doctors were sending Iraqi Muslims children to Israel to for medical care.
The Doctor then wrote an angry letter to one of the more extreme religious groups in the country and asked, is it permissible to send Iraqi children to Israeli doctors? He also asked, where are our Arab brothers and sisters in this time of need?
The religious group proclaimed a fatwa, saying that these US doctors should be killed for fear that the Iraqi children might “love their enemies,” according to the speaker. However, Jeremy found that more and more families were saying they supported their kids going to Israel for medical attention.
Jeremy and his team were confronted with what to do, save themselves or stay and continue to provide medical care to Iraqis? He saw a well-known sheik who he became friends with and was one day invite to speak with the Sheik and several other religious leaders.
When Courtney told people that he took the kids to Israel, the room erupted with anger. He responded by saying, what is the greater sin, to work with your enemy to save the lives of your children or sit on your hands and let your kids die?
Courtney then told how his group then shifted their work to partner with local Iraqi doctors to provide services and training in country and that this is now the bulk of their work. The speaker showed pictures and a short video that profiled some of the children they worked with.
At one level, there was something very humane and moving about what the speaker at to say, but what puzzled me throughout the talk was the lack of context for why his organization was in Iraq in the first place. Courtney had only mentioned the US invasion/occupation, but said nothing about the amount of damage the occupation caused Iraqis, both in terms of devastation to civil society and the amount of human suffering incurred.
Jeremy wrapped up his comments by talking about what he continued to refer to as preemptive love, which was just another way of naming the kind of love that he and his fellow christians should employee when seeing suffering in the world. He talked about applying preemptive love to immigrants, to gender and racial equity. At one point he even quoted Orwell and Einstein in their criticism of nationalism. But something still seemed to be lacking from his presentation, which at times was moving, but lacked any depth or analysis.
In his concluding remarks he made it clear that he supported US intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to do good. However, he acknowledged that the US military operations turned into something else that, “has not been good for our country.” The unfortunate outcome what is happening in Syria, Iran and Israel/Palestine. Again, some of this made sense, but didn’t satisfy the demand for a more substantive analysis of long-term US policy in those countries.
My concern was further revealed in the Q & A portion where someone asked him why so many Iraqi children had serious heart problems. Courtney responded by saying that there are three main reasons given.
First, he noted use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds in Iraq and against the Iranians during the 1900s. Courtney failed to mention that much of the technology for the use of such chemical weapons were provided by the US government, with no objection when they were used. Courtney spoke about Saddam’s use of chemical weapons in a very matter of fact manner, suggesting this was not in question.
The second reason he gave “may” be due to the depleted uranium used in US weapons in both the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion/occupation of Iraq. Courtney said the use of depleted uranium is inconclusive.
The third reason that Dr. Courtney gave was because of the serious malnutrition Iraqi children faced, particularly during the years that United Nations/US sanctions were being imposed on that country. This was an understatement, based on what former UN representative in Iraq during the sanction year, Denis Halliday, had to say about the consequence of the sanctions, particularly on children. Halliday has referred to the sanctions as a form of genocide, since it is widely known that half a million Iraqi children died as a direct result of the sanctions.
The serious loss of life and long-term consequences of the sanction on Iraqi children was something that the US government admitted to. US Secretary of State Madeline Albright at the time acknowledged what had happened to Iraqi children as a result of the sanctions. Albright was the guest of a 60 Minutes show where she was asked if the death of half-a million Iraqi children was worth it. Her response was, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.” Here is a video of that intereaction.
In the end, Dr. Jeremy Courtney’s talk left me feel as if he was just promoting the White Savior Complex, where people in the US can feel good about helping others abroad, without taking any ownership of what the US government/military has done that creates the conditions for them religious and charity groups to do what they do.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 