Over the next four years the U.S. will face a number of foreign policy problems, most of them regional, some of them global. Dispatches From The Edge will try to outline and analyze some of the key issues for Africa.
Africa is probably the single most complex region of the world and arguably its most troubled. While the world concerns itself with the Syrian civil war and the dangers it poses for the Middle East, little notice is taken of the war in the Congo, a tragedy that has taken five million lives and next to which the crisis in Syria pales.
Africa represents 15 percent of the world’s population, yet only 2.7 percent of its GDP, which is largely concentrated in only five of 49 sub-Saharan countries. Just two countries—South Africa and Nigeria—account for over 33 percent of the continent’s economic output. Life expectancy is 50 years, and considerably less in those countries ravaged by AIDS. Hunger and malnutrition are worse than they were a decade ago.
At the same time, Africa is wealthy in oil, gas, iron, aluminum and rare metals. By 2015, countries in the Gulf of Guinea will provide the US with 25 percent of its energy needs, and Africa has at least 10 percent of the world’s known oil reserves. South Africa alone has 40 percent of the earth’s gold supply. The continent contains over one-third of the earth’s cobalt and supplies China—the world’s second largest economy—with 50 percent of that country’s copper, aluminum and iron ore.
But history has stacked the deck against Africa. The slave trade and colonialism inflicted deep and lasting wounds on the region, wounds that continue to bleed out in today’s world. France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal sliced up the continent without the slightest regard for its past or its people. Most of the wars that have—and are—ravaging Africa today are a direct outcome of maps drawn up in European foreign offices to delineate where and what to plunder.
But over the past decade, the world has turned upside down. Formerly the captive of the European colonial powers, China is now Africa’s largest economic partner, followed closely by India and Brazil. Consumer spending is up, and the World Bank predicts that by 2015 the number of new African consumers will match Brazil’s.
In short, the continent is filled with vibrant economies and enormous potential that is not going unnoticed in capitols throughout the world. “The question for executives at consumer packaged goods companies is no longer whether their firms should enter the region, but where and how” says a report by the management consultant agency A.T. Kearney. How Africa negotiates its new status in the world will not only have a profound impact on its people, but on the global community as well. For investors it is the last frontier.
The U.S. track record in Africa is a shameful one. Washington was a long-time supporter of the apartheid regime in South Africa and backed the most corrupt and reactionary leaders on the continent, including the despicable Mobutu Sese Seko in the Congo. As part its Cold War strategy, the U.S. aided and abetted civil wars in Mozambique, Angola, and Namibia. Americans have much to answer for in the region.
Militarization
If there is a single characterization of US policy vis-à-vis Africa, it is the increasingly militarization of American diplomacy on the continent. For the first time since WW II, Washington has significant military forces in Africa, overseen by a freshly minted organization, Africom.
The US has anywhere from 12,000 to 15,000 Marines and Special Forces in Djibouti, a former French colony bordering the Red Sea. It has 100 Special Forces soldiers deployed in Uganda, supposedly tracking down the Lord’s Resistance Army. It actively aided Ethiopia’s 2007 invasion of Somalia, including using its navy to shell a town in the country’s south. It is currently recruiting and training African forces to fight the extremist Islamic organization, the Shabab, in Somalia, and conducting “counter-terrorism” training in Mali, Chad, Niger, Benin, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Gabon, Zambia, Malawi, Burkina Faso, and Mauretania.
Since much of the US military activities involves Special Forces and the CIA, it is difficult to track how widespread the involvement is. “I think it is far larger than anyone imagines,” says John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org.
As a whole, US military adventures in Africa have turned out badly. The Ethiopian invasion overthrew the moderate Islamic Courts Union, elevating the Shabab from a minor player to a major headache. NATO’s war on Libya—Africom’s coming out party—is directly responsible for the current crisis in Mali, where Local Tuaregs and Islamic groups have seized the northern part of the country, armed with the plundered weapons’ caches of Muammar el-Qaddafi. Africom’s support of Uganda’s attack on the Lord’s Resistance Army in the Democratic Republic of the Congo resulted in the death of thousands of civilians.
While the Obama administration has put soldiers and weapons into Africa, it has largely dropped the ball on reducing poverty. In spite of the UN’s Millennium Development plan adopted in 2000, sub-Saharan Africa will not reach the program’s goals for reducing poverty and hunger, and improving child and maternal healthcare. Rather than increasing aid, as the plan requires, the US has either cut aid or used debt relief as a way of fulfilling its obligations.
At the same time, Washington has increased military aid, including arms sales. One thing Africa does not need is any more guns and soldiers.
There are a number of initiatives that the Obama administration could take that would make a material difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of Africans.
First, it could fulfill the UN’s Millennium goals by increasing its aid to 0.7 percent of its GDP, and not using debt forgiveness as part of that formula. Canceling debt is a very good idea, and allows countries to re-deploy the money they would use for debt payment to improve health and infrastructure, but as part of an overall aid package it is mixing apples and oranges.
Second, it must de-militarize its diplomacy in the region. Indeed, as Somalia and Libya illustrate, military solutions many times make bad situations worse. Behind the rubric of the “war on terror,” the US is training soldiers throughout the continent. History shows, however, that those soldiers are just as likely to overthrow their civilian governments as they are to battle “terrorists.” Amadou Sanogo, the captain who overthrew the Mali government this past March and initiated the current crisis, was trained in the U.S.
There is also the problem of who are the” terrorists.” Virtually all of the groups so designated are focused on local issues. Nigeria’s Boko Haram is certainly a lethal organization, but it is the brutality of the Nigerian Army and police that fuel its rage, not al-Qaeda. The continent’s bug-a-boo, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Meghreb, is small and scattered, and represents more a point of view than an organization. Getting involved in chasing “terrorists” in Africa could end up pitting the US against local insurgents in the Niger Delta, Berbers in the Western Sahara, and Tuaregs in Niger and Mali.
What Africa needs is aid and trade directed at creating infrastructure and jobs. Selling oil, cobalt, and gold brings in money, but not permanent jobs. That requires creating a consumption economy with an export dimension. But the US’s adherence to “free trade” torpedoes countries from constructing such modern economies.
Africans cannot currently compete with the huge—and many times subsidized industries—of the First World. Nor can they build up an agricultural infrastructure when their local farmers cannot match the subsidized prices of American corn and wheat. Because of those subsidies, US wheat sells for 40 percent below production cost, and corn for 20 percent below. In short, African needs to “protect” their industries—much as the US did in its early industrial stage—until they can establish themselves. This was the successful formula followed by Japan and South Korea.
The Carnegie Endowment and the European Commission found that “free trade” would end up destroying small scale agriculture in Africa, much as it did for corn farmers in Mexico. Since 50 percent of Africa’s GNP is in agriculture, the impact would be disastrous, driving small farmers off the land and into overcrowded cities where social services are already inadequate.
The Obama administration should also not make Africa a battleground in its competition with China. Last year US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described China’s trading practices with Africa as a “new colonialism,” a sentiment that is not widely shared on the continent. A Pew Research Center study found that Africans were consistently more positive about China’s involvement in the region than they were about the US’s.
Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa, recently praised the continent’s “relationship with China,” but also said that the “current trade pattern” is unsustainable because it was not building up Africa’s industrial base. China recently pledged $20 billion in aid for infrastructure and agriculture.
One disturbing development is a “land rush” by countries ranging from the US to Saudi Arabia to acquire agricultural land in Africa. With climate change and population growth, food, as Der Spiegel puts it, “is the new oil.” Land is plentiful in Africa, and at about one-tenth the cost in the US. Most production by foreign investors would be on an industrial scale, with its consequent depletion of the soil and degradation of the environment from pesticides and fertilizers. The Obama administration should adopt the successful “contract farming” model, where investors supply capital and technology to small farmers, who keep ownership of their land and are guaranteed a set price for their products. This would not only elevate the efficiency of agriculture, it would provide employment for local people.
The Obama administration should also strengthen, not undermine, regional organizations. The African Union tried to find a peaceful resolution to the Libyan crisis because its members were worried that a war would spill over and destabilize countries surrounding the Sahara. The Obama administration and NATO pointedly ignored the AU’s efforts, and the organization’s predictions have proved prescient.
Lastly, the Obama administration should join with India and Brazil and lobby for permanent membership for an African country—either South Africa or Nigeria, or both— in the UN Security Council. India and Brazil should also be given permanent seats. Currently the permanent members of the Security Council are the victors of WW II: the US, Russia, China, France and Great Britain.
In 1619, a Dutch ship dropped anchor in Virginia and exchanged its cargo of Africans for food, thus initiating a trade that would rip the heart out of a continent. No one really knows how many Africans were forcibly transported to the New World, but it was certainly in the 10s of millions. To this day Africa mirrors the horror of the slave trade and the brutal colonial exploitation that followed in its wake. It is time to make amends. – http://dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com/
Putin in 2009 outlined his strategy for economic success. Alas, poor Obama did the opposite but nevertheless was re-elected. Bye, bye Miss American Pie. The Communists have won in America with Obama but failed miserably in Russia with Zyuganov who only received 17% of the vote. Vladimir Putin was re-elected as President keeping the NWO order out of Russia while America continues to repeat the Soviet mistake.
After Obama was elected in his first term as president the then Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin gave a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January of 2009. Ignored by the West as usual, Putin gave insightful and helpful advice to help the world economy and saying the world should avoid the Soviet mistake.
Recently, Obama has been re-elected for a 2nd term by an illiterate society and he is ready to continue his lies of less taxes while he raises them. He gives speeches of peace and love in the world while he promotes wars as he did in Egypt, Libya and Syria. He plans his next war is with Iran as he fires or demotes his generals who get in the way.
Putin said regarding the military,
“…instead of solving the problem, militarization pushes it to a deeper level. It draws away from the economy immense financial and material resources, which could have been used much more efficiently elsewhere.”
Well, any normal individual understands that as true but liberalism is a psychosis . O’bomber even keeps the war going along the Mexican border with projects like “fast and furious” and there is still no sign of ending it. He is a Communist without question promoting the Communist Manifesto without calling it so. How shrewd he is in America. His cult of personality mesmerizes those who cannot go beyond their ignorance. They will continue to follow him like those fools who still praise Lenin and Stalin in Russia. Obama’s fools and Stalin’s fools share the same drink of illusion.
Reading Putin’s speech without knowing the author, one would think it was written by Reagan or another conservative in America. The speech promotes smaller government and less taxes. It comes as no surprise to those who know Putin as a conservative. Vladimir Putin went on to say:
“…we are reducing taxes on production, investing money in the economy. We are optimizing state expenses.
The second possible mistake would be excessive interference into the economic life of the country and the absolute faith into the all-mightiness of the state.
There are no grounds to suggest that by putting the responsibility over to the state, one can achieve better results.
Unreasonable expansion of the budget deficit, accumulation of the national debt – are as destructive as an adventurous stock market game.
During the time of the Soviet Union the role of the state in economy was made absolute, which eventually lead to the total non-competitiveness of the economy. That lesson cost us very dearly. I am sure no one would want history to repeat itself.”
President Vladimir Putin could never have imagined anyone so ignorant or so willing to destroy their people like Obama much less seeing millions vote for someone like Obama. They read history in America don’t they? Alas, the schools in the U.S. were conquered by the Communists long ago and history was revised thus paving the way for their Communist presidents. Obama has bailed out those businesses that voted for him and increased the debt to over 16 trillion with an ever increasing unemployment rate especially among blacks and other minorities. All the while promoting his agenda.
“We must seek support in the moral values that have ensured the progress of our civilization. Honesty and hard work, responsibility and faith in our strength are bound to bring us success.”- Vladimir Putin
The red, white and blue still flies happily but only in Russia. Russia still has St George defeating the Dragon with the symbol of the cross on its’ flag. The ACLU and other atheist groups in America would never allow the US flag with such religious symbols. Lawsuits a plenty against religious freedom and expression in the land of the free. Christianity in the U.S. is under attack as it was during the early period of the Soviet Union when religious symbols were against the law.
Let’s give American voters the benefit of the doubt and say it was all voter fraud and not ignorance or stupidity in electing a man who does not even know what to do and refuses help from Russia when there was an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead we’ll say it’s true that the Communists usage of electronic voting was just a plan to manipulate the vote. Soros and his ownership of the company that counts the US votes in Spain helped put their puppet in power in the White House. According to the Huffington Post, residents in all 50 states have filed petitions to secede from the Unites States. We’ll say that these Americans are hostages to the Communists in power. How long will their government reign tyranny upon them?
Russia lost its’ civil war with the Reds and millions suffered torture and death for almost 75 years under the tyranny of the United Soviet Socialist Republic. Russians survived with a new and stronger faith in God and ever growing Christian Church. The question is how long will the once “Land of the Free” remain the United Socialist States of America? Their suffering has only begun. Bye bye Miss American Pie! You know the song you hippies. Sing it! Don’t you remember? The 1971 hit song by American song writer Don McLean:
“And, as I watched him on the stage my hands were clenched in fists of rage.
No angel born in Hell could break that Satan’s spell
And, as the flames climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial rite, I saw…
Satan laughing with delight the day the music died
He was singing, bye bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good ol’ boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singing…
President Barack Obama’s election victory exposed tectonic demographic shifts in American society that are reordering the U.S. political landscape.
The 2012 presidential election likely will be remembered as marking the end of long-standing coalitions, as voters regroup in cultural, ethnic and economic patterns that challenge both parties—but especially Republicans.
Older voters and white working-class voters, once core elements of the Democratic Party, have drifted into the Republican column. Rural and small-town voters, whose grandparents backed the New Deal, now fill the swath of the U.S. that leans reliably GOP.
But in cities and dynamic suburbs, a rapidly growing force of Latinos, Asian-Americans, African-Americans and higher-income whites emerged this week as the strength of Mr. Obama’s winning Democratic coalition.
“The Democrats now own a coalition of emerging metro areas where the whites and minorities live together, and where they vote Democratic,” said Robert Lang, a demographer who directs the Brookings Mountain West, a research center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
In northern Virginia’s Fairfax County, for example, Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly represents a district where 20 years ago, he said, 3% of residents were born outside the U.S. Now, it is nearly 30%, with the majority Asian immigrants.
What County-by-County Results Tell Us About the Election
The most detailed results from the 2012 election show the voting patterns for each county in the country. Changes from the previous election give us an idea of what geographic and demographic trends are impacting national politics.
Mr. Obama won big there Tuesday, helping him to tally the once reliably Republican state of Virginia for the second straight general election.
Similar shifts throughout the U.S. help explain how Mr. Obama was returned to the White House on support from young people, minorities, women and upscale whites, a coalition virtually identical to the one that carried him to victory four years ago.
Some political analysts thought that coalition came together only because of the historic nature of Mr. Obama’s 2008 victory and wouldn’t prove durable. That belief didn’t hold up this week.
The question now is whether Mr. Obama and other members of his party can solidify this coalition into a foundation of the Democratic Party.
Republicans said their party won a smashing victory in congressional elections just two years ago, when they took control of the House of Representatives, illustrating that there is no clear claim for either party.
Decision Day in America
Voters headed to the polls Tuesday in a presidential contest defined by its intensity and razor-thin margins.
The 2010 election, they said, shows that even with modest inroads among Latino and Asian-American voters, the GOP can build a solid majority on the foundation of its strong white support. Republicans enjoy historically high levels of control over governorships and state legislatures, which they say shows the party’s potential if it can improve its message to minorities.
In any case, both Democrats and Republicans see new contours of a split electorate.
Twenty years after supporting former President Bill Clinton, a majority of white voters have returned to where they were during the Reagan administration, firmly planted in the Republican camp. Nearly six in 10 white voters told exit pollsters Tuesday that they sided with Republicans, up from 40% during Mr. Clinton’s 1992 presidential victory.
More striking is the GOP’s loose grip on minority voters: just 29% of Latinos, 25% of Asians and 8% of African-Americans said Tuesday they identified with the Republican Party.
The trend has strengthened the Democrats’ hold in cities and extended a new reach into once-white suburbs now filling with successful Asian and South Asian immigrants, as well as Hispanics.
Mr. Obama scored a big win, for example, in Denver’s Arapahoe County, a bedroom community of family farms and high-tech firms. The county, in turn, helped propel Mr. Obama to victory for the second time in Colorado, formerly a Republican-leaning state.
The presidential election also cast a spotlight on a generational shift under way.
Senior citizens, who swung to the Democrats during the Medicare and Social Security fights of the 1990s, have swerved to Republicans. Close to six in 10 seniors backed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, according to exit polls Tuesday, up from the 51% of the group siding with Sen. John McCain in 2008.
The split by age reached even deeper: A majority of voters age 40 and older sided with Mr. Romney. The majority of every younger age group voted for Mr. Obama, according to exit polls.
When former President George H.W. Bush, Mr. Reagan and Mr. Clinton won their respective elections, they won among all ages. But no Republican presidential candidate has won a majority of voters under age 30 since Mr. Bush in 1988.
Polls earlier this year showed cooling interest among young voters in the Obama re-election campaign. But turnout among voters ages 18 to 29, in fact, eclipsed the 2008 election, with nearly 60% siding with the president.
The robust turnout by younger voters boosted Democrats nearly as much as the strong showing among Latinos.
Concerns grew Wednesday among some Republicans that the party’s base will be hobbled in national elections if it becomes too old, too rural and too white. “What worries me is that the GOP is about to become the WOP—the White Old Party,” said Norm Coleman, a former Minnesota senator.
Nothing casts more fear in the GOP than estrangement with the swelling U.S. Hispanic population, which now accounts for 10% of the electorate.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Republican presidential candidates routinely received a third or more of the Latino vote. Former President George W. Bush garnered just over 40% in 2004. That share has since plummeted amid sometimes harsh debate over legislation to deal with millions of illegal immigrants, mostly from Mexico, living in the U.S.
Mr. Romney got 29% of the Hispanic vote Tuesday, the lowest share since Sen. Bob Dole ran for president in 1996.
“The party has hit a new floor,” said Al Cardenas, the head of the American Conservative Union and former chairman of the Florida Republican Party. “The reality is we face a very big, very important shifting demographic in the country, and we saw how it played out in Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Virginia.”
Mr. Obama beat Mr. Romney among Latinos by 58% to 40% in Florida; 87% to 10% in Colorado; 80% to 17% in Nevada; and 66% to 31% in Virginia, according to an ImpreMedia/Latino Decisions poll.
“Texas probably has a huge potential to trend Democratic if the Democratic Party engages the electorate there,” said Matt Barreto, co-founder of the Latino Decisions polling firm.
The Romney campaign devoted attention to Asian voters, particularly in northern Virginia. Exit polls showed the Asian vote expanding to 3% of the total U.S. electorate—an all-time high—with 75% of those votes cast for Mr. Obama. – WSJ
The global reach by Britain is astounding. A new study has found that at various times the British have invaded almost 90 per cent of the countries around the globe.
The analysis of the histories of the almost 200 countries in the world found only 22 which have never experienced an invasion by the British.
Among this select group of nations are far-off destinations such as Guatemala, Tajikistan and the Marshall Islands, as well some slightly closer to home, such as Luxembourg.
The analysis is contained in a new book, All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To.
Stuart Laycock, the author, has worked his way around the globe, through each country alphabetically, researching its history to establish whether, at any point, they have experienced an incursion by Britain.
Only a comparatively small proportion of the total in Mr Laycock’s list of invaded states actually formed an official part of the empire.
The remainder have been included because the British were found to have achieved some sort of military presence in the territory – however transitory – either through force, the threat of force, negotiation or payment.
Incursions by British pirates, privateers or armed explorers have also been included, provided they were operating with the approval of their government.
So, many countries which once formed part of the Spanish empire and seem to have little historical connection with the UK, such as Costa Rica, Ecuador and El Salvador, make the list because of the repeated raids they suffered from state-sanctioned British sailors.
Among some of the perhaps surprising entries on the list are:
* Cuba, where in 1741, a force under Admiral Edward Vernon stormed ashore at Guantánamo Bay. He renamed it Cumberland Bay, before being forced to withdraw in the face of hostile locals and an outbreak of disease among his men. Twenty one years later, Havana and a large part of the island fell to the British after a bloody siege, only to be handed back to the Spanish in 1763, along with another unlikely British possession, the Philippines, in exchange for Florida and Minorca.
*Iceland, invaded in 1940 by the British after the neutral nation refused to enter the war on the Allies side. The invasion force, of 745 marines, met with strong protest from the Iceland government, but no resistance.
* Vietnam, which has experienced repeated incursions by the British since the seventeenth century. The most recent – from 1945 to 1946 – saw the British fight a campaign for control of the country against communists, in a war that has been overshadowed by later conflicts involving first the French and then Americans.
It is thought to be the first time such a list has been compiled.
Mr Laycock, who has previously published books on Roman history, began the unusual quest after being asked by his 11-year-old son, Frederick, how many countries the British had invaded.
After almost two years of research he said he was shocked by the answer. “I was absolutely staggered when I reached the total. I like to think I have a relatively good general knowledge. But there are places where it hadn’t occurred to me that these things had ever happened. It shocked me.
“Other countries could write similar books – but they would be much shorter. I don’t think anyone could match this, although the Americans had a later start and have been working hard on it in the twentieth century.”
The only other nation which has achieved anything approaching the British total, Mr Laycock said, is France – which also holds the unfortunate record for having endured the most British invasions. “I realise people may argue with some of my reasons, but it is intended to prompt debate,” he added.
He believes the actual figure may well be higher and is inviting the public to get in touch to provide evidence of other invasions.
In the case of Mongolia, for instance – one of the 22 nations “not invaded”, according to the book – he believes it possible that there could have been a British invasion, but could find no direct proof.
The country was caught up in the turmoil following the Russian Revolution, in which the British and other powers intervened. Mr Laycock found evidence of a British military mission in Russia approximately 50 miles from the Mongolian border, but could not establish whether it got any closer.
The research lists countries based on their current national boundaries and names. Many of the invasions took place when these did not apply.
The research covered the 192 other UN member states as well as the Vatican City and Kosovo, which are not member states, but are recognised by the UK government as independent states.
The earliest invasion launched from these islands was an incursion into Gaul – now France – at the end of the second century. Clodius Albinus led an army, thought to include many Britons, across the Channel in an attempt to seize the imperial throne. The force was defeated in 197 at Lyon.
Mr Laycock added: “One one level, for the British, it is quite amazing and quite humbling, that this is all part of our history, but clearly there are parts of our history that we are less proud of. The book is not intended as any kind of moral judgment on our history or our empire. It is meant as a light-hearted bit of fun.”
The British invented concentration camps in South Africa where they killed 27 000 white Afrikaner women and children.
God help them if Obama and Romney ever had to participate in a real debate about a real issue at the Oxford Union. They would be massacred.
The “debates” revealed that not only the candidates but also the entire country is completely tuned out to every real problem and dangerous development. For example, you would never know that US citizens can now be imprisoned and executed without due process. All that is required to terminate the liberty and life of an American citizen by his own government is an unaccountable decision somewhere in the executive branch.
No doubt that Americans, if they think of this at all, believe that it will only happen to terrorists who deserve it. But as no evidence or due process is required, how would we know that it only happens to terrorists? Can we really trust a government that has started wars in 7 countries on the basis of falsehoods? If the US government will lie about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in order to invade a country, why won’t it lie about who is a terrorist?
America needs a debate about how we can be made more safe by removing the Constitutional protection of due process. If the power of government is not limited by the Constitution, are we ruled by Caesar? The Founding Fathers did not think we could trust a caesar with our safety. What has changed that we can now trust a caesar?
If we are under such a terrorist threat that the Constitution has to be suspended or replaced by unaccountable executive action, how come all the alleged terrorist cases are sting operations organized by the FBI? In eleven years there has not been a single case in which the “terrorist” had the initiative!
In the eleven years since 9/11, acts of domestic terrorism have been miniscule if they even exist. What justifies the enormous and expensive Department of Homeland Security? Why does Homeland Security have military-equipped Special Response Teamswith armored vehicles? Who are the targets of these militarized units? If eleven years of US government murder, maiming, and displacement of millions of Muslims hasn’t provoked massive acts of domestic terrorism, why is Homeland Security creating a domestic armed force of its own? Why are there no congressional hearings and no public discussion? How can a government whose budget is deep in the red afford a second military force with no defined and Constitutionally legal purpose?
What is Homeland Security’s motivation in creating a Homeland Youth? Is the new FEMA Corps a disguise for a more sinister purpose, a Hitler Youth as Internet sites suggest? Are the massive ammunition purchases by Homeland Security related to the raising of a nationwide corps of 18- to 24-year-olds? How can so much be going on in front of our eyes with no questions asked?
Why did not Romney ask Obama why he is working to overturn the federal court’s ruling that US citizens cannot be subject to indefinite detention in violation of the US Constitution? Is it because Romney and his neoconservative advisers agree with Obama and his advisers? If so, then why is one tyrant better than another?
Why has the US constructed a network of detainment camps, for which it is hiring “internment specialists”?
Here is Rachel Maddow’s report on how Obama criticizes the neoconservative Bush/Cheney regime for violations of the US Constitution and US statutory law and then proposes the same thing himself.
How did the presidential debates avoid the fact of Predator Drones flying over us here in the domestic United States of America? What is the purpose of this? Why are the smallest police forces in the most remote of locations being equipped with armored cars? I have seen them. In small lilly-white communities north of Atlanta, Georgia, communities of sub-million dollar MacMansions have militarized police with armored cars and automatic weapons. SWAT teams in full military gear are everywhere. What is it all about? These small semi-rural areas will never see a terrorist or experience a hostage situation. Yet, they are all armed to the teeth. They are so heavily armed that they could be sent into combat against the Third Reich or the Red Army.
Any such questions run afoul of the assumption of America’s moral perfection. No such debate will ever happen. But if “it is the economy, stupid,” why is there no economic debate?
Last month the Federal Reserve announced QE3. If QE1 and QE2 did not work, why does anyone, including the Federal Reserve chairman, think that QE3 will work?
Yet, the utterly irrational financial markets, which haven’t a clue about anything, were overjoyed at QE3. This can only be because what rules the equity market is propaganda, spin, and disinformation, not facts. The vaunted stock market is incapable of making any correct decision. The decisions are made by the fools in the market operating on a short-run basis. The only safe path to take is to run with the lemmings. This strategy insures that a portfolio manager is always in the middle of his peers and, therefore, he doesn’t lose clients.
How wonderful it would have been for Obama and Romney to have confronted in a real debate how QE3, designed to help insolvent “banks too big to fail,” can help households operating, with two earners, on real incomes of 45 years ago, which is where the current real median household income stands.
How does saving a bank, designated as “too big to fail,” help the family whose jobs or main job has been exported to China or India in order to maximize corporate profits, executive performance bonuses and shareholders’ capital gains?
Obviously the working population of the US has been sacrificed to the profits of the mega-rich.
An appropriate debate question is: Why has the livelihood of working Americans been sacrificed to the profits of the mega-rich?
No such question will ever be asked in a “presidential debate.”
In the 21st century, US citizens became nonentities. They are brutalized by the police whose incomes their taxes pay. They, for protesting some injustice or for no cause at all, are beaten, arrested, tasered and even murdered. The police, paid by the public, beat up paralyzed people in wheel chairs, frame those who call them for help against criminals, taser grandmothers and small children, and shoot down in cold blood unarmed citizens who have done nothing except lose control of themselves, either through alcohol, drugs, or rage.
Brainwashed Americans pay large taxes at every level of government for protection against gratuitous violence, but what their taxes support is gratuitous violence against themselves. Every American, except for the small number of mega-rich who control Washington, can be arrested and dispossessed, both liberty and property, on the basis of nothing but an allegation of a member of the executive branch who might want the accused’s wife, girlfriend, property, or to settle a score, or to exterminate a rival, or to score against a high school, college, or business rival.
In America today, law serves the powerful, not justice. In effect, there is no law, and there is no justice. Only unaccountable power.
What is the point of a vote when the outcome is the same? Both candidates represent the interests of Israel, not the interests of the US. Both candidates represent the interests of the military/security complex, agribusiness, the offshoring corporations, the suppression of unions and workers, the total demise of civil liberty and the US Constitution, which is in the way of unbridled executive power .
In the US today, the power of money rules. Nothing else is in the equation. Why vote to lend your support to the continuation of your own exploitation? Every time Americans vote it is a vote for their own obliteration. Paul Craig Roberts
Piet Swanepoel responds to R.W. Johnson’s article on the Marikana, Sharpeville and the Pondo uprisings.
Johnson’s article was very interesting and deserves to be read by anyone trying to make sense of events in Africa.
Like Johnson I also trace my involvement or interest in African political developments to Durban. Unfortunately we were not contemporaries there – I arrived in Durban in 1948 and was transferred to South West Africa in January 1961, whereas it seems that his involvement only started in 1960.
We were in different camps as well. He was a budding Marxist and I was a Special Branch detective. Our backgrounds also differed completely. He was English, (albeit our local branch of the species), whereas I was (still am) an Afrikaner.
We seem to have known the same people, for example the Arensteins, but when I came to know Rowley and Jacqueline they were living in a block of flats where there would have been no room for visiting Pondo chiefs.
Their neighbours, I remember, were Errol and Dorothy Shanley, both also listed communists like the Arensteins. What I heard only recently was that Ronnie Kasrils, our former Minister of Intelligence, and Jacqueline Arenstein, were cousins.
We also knew the same places. Like Lakhani Chambers, where the ANC had a small little office, sometimes unoccupied for weeks, whereas the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) offices in the same building were spacious with a big staff under M.P.Naicker, a very committed communist.
Some time in the early fifties I had been one of a small party of detectives, led by a visiting American intelligence officer, who entered Lakhani Hall late one night and planted a then state of the art bug in the ceiling..
Unfortunately the bug was never very effective because of the long distance to our wire recorder at the Smith Street Police station.
This article is about the massacres Mr. Johnson did not deal with, but his references to Durban in the sixties make me remember so many names which white people never knew, but to us in the Special Branch were household names.
Names like Albert John Luthuli, Massabalala Bonny Yengwa, Pitness Humphry Simelane and Wilson Zamindlela Conco. This latter fellow was a pain in the neck to me. He was the treasurer of the ANC in Natal. His father, Harry Conco, was a successful bus owner who operated a fleet of busses which passed Highflats in Southern Natal every day when I was stationed there in 1947.
Why, I asked myself, was my father a poor unschooled Boer, whose son had to start life as a labourer on the Railways, and this smart Aleck’s father a rich businessman who could send his kid to varsity to become a doctor?
But enough of that. This is about the massacres you never talk about. First of all you need to know what I call a massacre. I take my cue from Funk and Wagnells which defines a massacre as the indiscriminate killing in numbers of the unresisting or defenceless.
Johnson, as to be expected, does not deal with the most terrible massacre in the history of South Africa. English-speaking people do not share with Afrikaners, the grief and pain at the remembrance of the murders of Piet Retief and his party of some hundred Voortrekkers and their non-white grooms at King Dingane’s kraal on February 6th, 1838.
They had been invited into the kraal by the King and requested to leave their firearms with their horses, so they were absolutely defenceless when the King gave the order to have them killed.
The killing of Retief and his men was only the lesser part of the brutal murders of that week. Immediately after they had clubbed their victims to death, Dingane’s impis were dispatched to attack the old men, women and children and servants who were waiting for Retief and his party’s return.
41 Boer men, 56 Boer women, 185 Boer children and 200 Coloured and African servants were killed in the vicinity of where the town of Weenen (Weeping) stands today.
What saddens an Afrikaner like me is how a modern liberal English writer deals with the massacre I’ve described here. Anthony Sampson, in his Mandela – the authorized Biography, appears never to have heard of them.
Instead he writes “16 December was Dingane’s day, which commemorated the Afrikaners’ massacre of Zulus in 1838”. It It is unbelievable, but the Battle of Blood River has now become an Afrikaner massacre of Zulus!
Thousands of well-armed Zulu warriors attacked a laager in which some 300 Afrikaners were determined to defend themselves. Their primitive front-loader rifles enabled them to fight off the Zulus but that now becomes a massacre!
Another series of events which have been described by some people as massacres took place in Durban in January 1949. These events, like the Weenen massacres, are not frequently mentioned any more, but being one of the few remaining witnesses to the first act in that drama, I think people might be interested in what I remember of it.
As I said, it was January 1949. I had just progressed from being a detective probationer to a fully fledged detective constable. I was not yet 21 years old so I could not be issued with a firearm. (In those years detectives were issued with .38 pistols). I was on the Theft from Motor cars squad, a small unit and had just completed a motor cycle with side-car course and been issued a licence to drive a Harley Davidson.
We, child detectives, were tutored by older hands and Zulu colleagues. We knew absolutely nothing about politics or race relations or Marxism. We lived as we’d grown up. Zulu colleagues told you stories of what was going on in their communities and you told them what white people were saying.
The big story on the Zulu side was that some wealthy Indian young men were taking advantage of young Zulu girls, getting them pregnant, but refusing to marry them or pay maintenance for the children.
Only a small number of such misdeeds had apparently been committed, but it was a nice juicy type of story. None of us regarded it as anything serious, until one morning the Zulu detectives insisted on seeing the chief of the CID. There was going to be something terribly serious happening near the Bus Centre at the Indian market, they reported.
A group of men were preventing bus drivers from departing from the centre, leaving thousands of African passengers stranded in the centre. Many of them were dock workers who depended on busses to take them to the docks in Point Road. And agitators were busy among the passengers. The talk was that the time had come to rid the country of the Indians.
There was not much the CID chief and the District Commandant could do. They verified the fact that all the busses arriving at the Bus Centre near the Indian market were prevented from departing and that thousands of people were consequently massing up in the Centre. For some reason which I never really understood they decided that all the detectives at the Smith Street Police station were to be deployed in the Indian business quarter to observe what was happening. We were loaded into a few Black Marias.
If I remember correctly, I was dropped in Leopold Street, which led off from the Bus Centre to Grey Street, the heart of the Indian business centre. I stood on the pavement feeling very lonely.
We were all instructed to take up positions about 50 yards apart. The street had become eerily quiet. All the Indian shopkeepers and their families had retreated to their flats above their shops which were all locked, but in those days, unprotected by burglar fencing.
From the Bus Centre, which was approximately 300 yards from where I was standing, roars could be heard and suddenly what I thought were a million people filled the street in a mad rush in my direction.
They screamed and ululated and I knew the end of the world had come. Most of them had wooden “kieries” and these they used to smash every shop window in their way. At this stage they were not looting the contents of the shop windows. They were content to destroy the windows and did not attempt to enter further into the shops.
They were clearly in a hurry to destroy the shop window of every one of the hundreds of Indian shops in the area. And in the next hour or two they did that. Not a singleshot was fired at them. It would have been suicidal to interfere with them.
The weird thing was that they never even threatened me or any of my colleagues as I later established. Many of them stopped next to me for a few seconds and advised me to arrange that the ships in the harbour were to be instructed to receive all the Indians in Natal to take them back to their Motherland!
In the days which followed the mood changed and the rioting became very serious. Many innocent Indian people were killed and their shops looted.
Policemen were flown in from the Rand to try and restore order and eventually even Marines from the Navy with machine guns were deployed. Curfews were enforced and people ignoring them were shot.
It was a sad time. For me the saddest part came afterwards. It was an article I read years later in an American magazine. The real cause of these tragedies, it claimed, were the policies of the Afrikaners who had taken over the country the year before! In Durban, at that time, there was not a single Afrikaner councilor.
I have no doubt that eventually Marikana will be blamed on us, the Afrikaners, also.
During the second half of the 20th century the United States was an opportunity society. The ladders of upward mobility were plentiful, and the middle class expanded. Incomes rose, and ordinary people were able to achieve old-age security.
In the 21st century the opportunity society has disappeared. Middle class jobs are scarce. Indeed, jobs of any kind are scarce. To stay even with population growth from 2002 through 2011, the economy needed about 14 million new jobs. However, at the end of 2011 there were only 1 million more jobs than in 2002. http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab1.htm
Only 426,000 of these jobs are in the private sector. The bulk of the net new jobs consist of waitresses and bartenders and health care and social assistance. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, over the 9 years, employment for waitresses and bartenders increased by 1,188,000. Employment in health care and social assistance increased 3,087,000. These two categories accounted for 1,000% of the net private sector job growth.
As for manufacturing jobs, they not only did not grow with the population but declined absolutely. During these nine years, 3.5 million middle class manufacturing jobs were lost.
Over the entire nine years, only 48,000 new jobs were created for architects and engineers.
In the 21st century the US economy has been able to create only a few new jobs and these are in lowly paid domestic services that cannot be offshored, such as waitresses and bartenders.
The lack of jobs, especially high value-added, high productivity jobs, is the reason real median household income has declined and the distribution of income has worsened. Without rising real household income, there cannot be a consumer economy.
In the early years of the 21st century, the Federal Reserve substituted a rise in consumer debt to drive the economy in place of the missing rise in consumer incomes. Low interest rates drove up housing prices, and people refinanced their mortgages and spent the equity. The Federal Reserve kept the economy alive by loading up consumers with debt that housing prices and consumer incomes would soon be unable to support.
When debt and real estate prices reached unsustainable levels, the bubble popped, and the ongoing financial crisis was upon us.
The cause of all of the problems is the offshoring of Americans’ jobs. When jobs are moved offshore, consumers’ careers and incomes, and the GDP and payroll and income tax base associated with those jobs, go with them. When the goods and services produced for American markets by offshored labor are brought into the US to be sold, the trade deficit rises, and downward pressure is put on the dollar, pushing up domestic inflation. (On October 12, statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reported that “third-quarter wholesale inflation jumped to an annualized 6.2%.”)
Jobs offshoring is driven by Wall Street, “shareholder advocates,” the threat of takeovers, and by large retailers, such as Walmart. By cutting labor costs, profits go up.It is that simple. However, as a result of sending American jobs to cheap labor countries, US consumer incomes go down. The end result is to destroy the domestic consumer market. What would have been US consumer income growth becomes instead profit growth for US corporations.
Keynesian economists use in their textbooks the example of how the aggregate effect of individual saving could be the opposite of the effect intended by the individuals. Whereas each saver seeks to improve his position by building wealth, in the aggregate saving could exceed investment, resulting in a decline in aggregate demand and a fall in income for all. Offshoring has the same logic. Each corporation can expect to gain more profits from moving US jobs offshore, but the aggregate effect is a fall in American consumer incomes and a reduction in the American consumer market.
I have told this story many times. But policymakers, the media, and economists seem unable to connect the dots.
Jobs offshoring has substantial implications for Social Security and Medicare. The US has the least adequate social safety net of any developed country. The two major components of the US social safety net are Social Security and Medicare for the elderly. Social Security and Medicare are financed by a payroll tax. The combined tax is 15.3% of payrolls. For the past quarter of a century the Social Security portion of the payroll tax has built up a surplus of over $2 trillion. Recently, the Medicare portion began running in the red.
Right-wing Republicans, free market ideologues, and the left-wing have all indoctrinated themselves with incorrect beliefs about Social Security and Medicare. The right-wing claims that a safety net financed with 15.3% of payrolls is a “Ponzi scheme” and an “unfunded liability.” If that is the case, then so are veterans benefits, military pensions, and federal pensions, all of which are financed by the income tax, the basis for the payroll tax.
The left-wing claims that the rich do not pay high enough payroll taxes, because the income subject to Social Security payroll tax is capped at about $110,000. But the benefits are also capped. Social Security is not supposed to be an income redistribution scheme from rich to poor, and it is not supposed to be a pension system for the rich. The pension paid is supposed to correlate with the pre-retirement income level of the retiree. Those who had higher wages or salaries and consequently paid more in payroll taxes receive a larger Social Security check than those who had lower wages and salaries and paid less payroll taxes, although there is favoritism toward the lower income earners who receive proportionally more in respect to their payroll taxes than higher income earners.
There is no cap on income subject to the Medicare portion of the payroll tax. Moreover, Medicare charges a Medicare Part B premium that is deducted from the Social Security monthly check. In addition, there is a further Part B premium based on retirement age income. For example, someone working beyond retirement age and making $250,000 per year pays about $3,800 in Medicare Part B premium in addition to the Medicare portion of the payroll tax of about $7,500. The annual premium he pays for his “free” Medicare for which he has paid all his working life with a payroll tax is about $11,300.
Moreover, Medicare by itself is insufficient coverage. To actually have medical coverage, those covered by Medicare have to purchase a supplementary private policy to cover the large gaps in Medicare. Depending on the range of coverage, a supplementary policy costs approximately $100 to $300 per month.
As the person making $250,000 per year is likely to go for the most coverage, he will be paying about $14,900 (excluding deductions and co-payments) per year for his “free” Medicare. This is despite having paid the Medicare payroll tax each year of his working life. A person who made $250,000 in taxable income per year for 30 years would have paid $217,500 into Medicare at the current Medicare payroll tax rate.
The right-wing’s notion that Social Security and Medicare are handouts, part of the welfare state’s bread and circuses, and the left-wing’s idea that the rich get a free ride are equally untrue.
(Note: $250,000 is the politicians’ dividing line between the rich and the rest of us. For a person making $50,000 a year, an income five times larger can seem rich. However, a $250,000 annual income leaves a family or person far distant from the lifestyle of the rich. Upper middle class incomes are generally associated with high-tax, high-cost urban areas in states with high income taxes. After federal income and payroll taxes, state income and sales taxes, and property taxes, what appears to many as a large income disappears. In New York City, the federal income tax will take about 25% of the $250,000, New York state will take about 9%, and New York City will take about 3.65%. The combined city and state sales tax is 8.875%. The property tax is high. The conclusion is that in New York City a $250,000 income is reduced to $125,000 or thereabouts. Those who claim “the rich don’t pay taxes” are not talking about $250,000 incomes.)
Social Security and Medicare have served the country well. They protect the individual from his own mistakes, from crooked and incompetent money managers, and from financial crises, and they protect society from the moral dilemma of confronting large numbers of fellow citizens who through fault or no fault of their own cannot provide for their livelihood and medical care. After the financial scandals and crisis of the past five years, it is a stretch to believe that any but the astute can manage their personal wealth, whether small or large, in today’s situation of unregulated financial markets, zero interest rates, currency uncertainty, and highly complex investment instruments with computers programmed with mathematical models dominating equity trades.
The argument that conceptually a person could do better by investing his payroll taxes in the stock market is a poor basis for old age security policy. The person can do better as long as he or she doesn’t fall into the hands of a Bernie Madoff or a Goldman Sachs, doesn’t receive zero interest on his bonds because the Federal Reserve has to bail out the “too big to fail banks,” doesn’t experience a decline in currency value due to monetization of enormous federal deficits, and doesn’t experience a bear market as he approaches retirement.
The right-wing ideologues who try to scare old age security out of existence go on and on about rising medical costs, about an aging population living longer, declining birthrates and a worsening ratio of workers to retirees, about people learning to rely on handouts rather than their own means, and about Washington’s rising unfunded liabilities.
Scare projections are designed to scare, and most are untenable. For example, longevity was a product of rising incomes, good diet, and antibiotics. Today only the upper crust have rising incomes. Antibiotics are wearing out from abuse and rising immunity of bacteria. Diet is compromised in ways still poorly understood as a result of GMOs, pesticides, herbicides, pumping chicken, pork, and beef full of antibiotics and hormones and feeding the animals GMO grains and also possibly infected animal byproducts, and pumping our water full of fluoride. A variety of destructive activities and behaviors are causing ecological damage. Longevity might have been a short-term benefit of irreproducible conditions considering the mounting ecological damage and the rise of superbugs, stress, and tainted food and water production.
The projection of an aging population might also be wrong. Clearly, the post-World War II baby boomers are aging, but do the projections take into account the legislated 1965 immigration increases plus the illegal influx from Mexico and points south of young people with high birth rates? How can it be that a country with allegedly 30 million illegal immigrants, whose children born in the US are citizens, has a declining birth rate? How do we know that the illegal population will not continue to increase?
There are so many Spanish speaking people in the US today that if a person calls any of his utility companies, whether telephone, Internet, water, electricity, TV, or any of his credit card companies, or his bank, he has to select English or Spanish. Obviously, as
anti-immigration sites make clear, the US population is changing in its national origin, and there appears to be no sign of an aging Hispanic population. How many old Spanish speaking people do you see in the US compared to the young?
When confronted with this apparent fact, the response is: “why will the Hispanics pay for the aging white population?” The answer is: because they are in the same payroll tax system and the taxes will be withheld from their wages and salaries just as they are from everyone else’s.
It is possible that if Hispanics in the US have suffered years of hostility, accusations, and hatred from “the ice people,” once Hispanics are sufficiently numerous to control the legislature, assuming one still exists, or to take over the executive branch, the only seat of power, they may in retribution cut off the aging whites. But if so, the whites will have brought it on themselves.
Whatever the scare projections that are mustered to undermine the public provision of old age security, the real financial danger is never mentioned. The only significant financial danger to Social Security and Medicare is the offshoring of American jobs and GDP. A country without a job base is without a payroll tax base. If the only jobs that the 21st century “world’s only superpower” economy can create are for waitresses, bartenders, and health care and social assistance (hospital orderlies and practical nurses), payroll tax revenues will be less than if the US still had 20 million workers and rising in well-paid manufacturing jobs instead of 11 million.
Regardless of Medicare’s financing, the death knell for the elderly was the legality of abortion. If the yet to be born are an insufferable burden, imagine the cost of the elderly. As far as the state is concerned, once you stop producing income and payroll tax revenues for the state, it is time for you to die. Washington would rather enact euthanasia than to pay back the $2+ trillion in the Social Security trust fund that Washington spent, leaving only non-marketable IOUs in the account.
Readers might think that Americans would never stand for death by injection for the elderly once the qualified age is reached. But why would they not? They have accepted millions of aborted babies, and Americans, including the elderly, have stood for Washington’s murder, maiming and displacement of millions of Muslim men, women, and children in 7 countries over the past 11 years and are yet to show any signs of remorse for their complicity in mass murder. Next month tens of millions of Americans will vote for Mitt Romney who believes Obama isn’t killing Muslims fast enough.
The new “Obamneycare” health legislation does have “death panels.” They are not called that, and they do not make formal decisions to terminate lives. But it comes to almost the same thing. Various panels, committees, or bureaucratic departments are empowered to make decisions about “effective care.” It has long been known that most health care costs are associated with the last year of life. Cost and age will be elements in determining standards of care. The greater the weight assigned to cost, the more care will be withheld. In effect, the “effective care” panel is a “death panel.”
Prior to the advent of the new “health care” system, Medicare and or hospitals are already shifting costs to Medicare patients. To avoid penalties and fraud allegations for “medically unnecessary hospitalizations,” rather than formally admit Medicare patients as inpatients, hospital administrators classify them as outpatients “under observation.”
According to a Brown University analysis of Medicare records in 2007, 2008, and 2009, the ratio of Medicare observation patients to those admitted as inpatients rose by 34 percent.
Being classified an outpatient under observation eliminates medicare coverages, especially for post-operative or post-accident rehabilitation care, leaving Medicare patients with bills in the tens of thousands of dollars (AARP Bulletin, October 2012).
Other costs are being shifted to doctors and to hospitals. Medicare pays fixed prices for each covered procedure or test, and these prices can be as low as half of the billed prices. During a period when costs incurred by providers of health care have been rising, Medicare has been cutting the amounts it pays providers.
As the payroll tax is commingled with general tax revenues, Social Security and Medicare payroll tax collections can be diverted to other purposes and, thus, are always subject to competing budgetary demands, such as the previous 11 years of gratuitous wars and the bailouts of “banks too big to fail,” or to deficit reduction demands as the government consistently overspends all revenue sources.
A national health service is the only way to control health costs and provide the population with health care coverage. A national health system takes the many levels of profits out of the system and also reams of compliance and liability costs. A national health system can coexist with a private system for those who can afford it or whose employers are sufficiently profitable to provide it.
As Jarad Diamond reveals in his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, societies fail, if not because of their moral bankruptcy, then because their rulers are only capable of short-term thinking. The future is beyond their interest. The US offshored its economy, because it worked short-term for corporate executives (rewarded with multi-million dollar performance bonuses), Wall Street (rewarded with profits), shareholders (rewarded with capital gains), and politicians (rewarded with corporate and Wall Street campaign contributions).
Incompetent free market economists confused jobs offshoring with free trade. They said the country would and was benefiting by giving its manufacturing, industrial, and tradable professional service jobs to China and India, that the US was ridding itself of “dirty fingernail jobs” and would soon be flush with highly paid high-tech jobs and highly paid financial service jobs.
None of these promises or predictions were true. Nowhere in the government’s jobs statistics are there any of these promised replacement jobs. The economists who provided cover for the destruction of the US economy were rewarded by the corporations with speaking fees, grants for their university departments, and newspaper columns paid for by corporate advertisers. Those few who told the truth were expelled from the corporate media that Bill and Hilary Clinton allowed to be monopolized (for campaign contributions, of course).
The future of old age security in the United States has been lost, because the job base has been given away to foreigners in order to maximize incomes in the short-run for the few decision-makers.
The misrepresentation of jobs offshoring as free trade has destroyed the prospects of cities, counties, and states along with those of unions and millions of Americans who once had a secure future. It has destroyed the prospects of class after class of university graduates burdened with student loans who expected to step into the jobs that have been offshored or filled by H-1B visa holders from abroad.
The American work force has been forsaken by the corporations and by Washington, and this means that Social Security and Medicare have also been forsaken.
As I predicted in the early years of this new century, “the United States will be a third world country in 20 years.” We might get there even sooner as Washington exhausts what little is left of American wealth in gratuitous wars in service to Israel and the US Military/Security Complex, in unaffordable military buildups in futile hopes of establishing hegemony over China and Russia, and in negative interest rates from the Federal Reserve’s effort to drive up the book value of debt instruments on the balance sheets of financial institutions.
In 1817 Percy Bysshe Shelly forecast America’s future:
“I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stampt on these lifeless things,
The hand that mockt them and the heart that fed:
On the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Writing in the October 15 online CounterPunch, John V. Walsh, relying on charts prepared by economics professor Mark J. Perry at the University of Michigan and blogger John Hunter, concludes that it is a myth that US manufacturing is in decline.
Walsh says that the loss of US manufacturing jobs is due to automation, not to offshoring. Think about this for a moment. Perry’s graph on which Walsh relies shows the sharp drop in US manufacturing employment to be a 21st century experience. However, automation has been around for a long time. The notion that its effect on employment only showed up recently needs an explanation that is not provided. The steep drop in US manufacturing employment that began in 2000 does correspond with the date at which jobs offshoring began to bite hard.
Why does automation not also affect Chinese manufacturing, especially as most of the Chinese manufacturing technology came from the US as US corporations offshored their production for the US market? If Chinese manufacturing is not up to date with automation, like the US is assumed to be, how do the Chinese, even with cheap labor, undersell US automated factories? How did Chinese manufacturing employment increase in a mere four years by an amount equal to the total manufacturing employment in the US?
The US Bureau of Economic Analysis shows only 11.2 million full time US manufacturing jobs in 2010. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows 11.7 million US manufacturing jobs in 2011, down from 15.3 million in 2002.
In contrast, China, an industrial and manufacturing backwater for most of my life, had 112 million manufacturing jobs in 2006. In a mere four years (2002-2006), the increase in China’s manufacturing employment was as large as today’s total employment in US manufacturing. As long ago as 2006, China’s manufacturing employment was about 10 times the current US manufacturing employment. The Chinese population is about 4 times larger than the US population, but China’s manufacturing population is proportionately greater–10 times larger. Indeed, Chinese manufacturing employees almost equal the total number of employees in all occupations in the US (Manufacturing and Technology News, December 15, 2009).
Obviously, something is wrong with Walsh’s article or the graphs on which he relied.
America’s manufacturing prowess cannot be found in the statistical data. The US is primarily an exporter of Agricultural commodities. The US imports almost twice the amount of manufactured goods as it exports. Indeed, according to the US Census Bureau Statistical Abstract of the US http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1308.pdf US imports of manufactured goods are 5.5 times larger than US imports of crude oil and 4 times larger than all imports of mineral fuel. Yet, we hear about energy dependency, not manufacturing dependency.
As of 2010 the “superpower” US economy still had a trade surplus in airplanes and airplane parts and a small $6 billion surplus in scientific instruments, but that is about all.
In ADP equipment and office machinery, the US exported $22.2 billion in 2010 (latest information at time of writing), down from $44.6 billion in 2000. US imports in 2010 of ADP equipment and office machinery were $113.5 billion, or 5.1 times exports.
The US cannot even make its own clothes and shoes. In 2010 footwear imports are 28.7 times exports. Clothing imports are 24.6 times exports.
Electrical machinery exports were $77 billion; imports were $120 billion.
Exports of power generating machinery were $33 billion; imports were $42 billion.
Exports of television, VCRs were $21.5 billion; imports were $137 billion.
US exports of vehicles was $88 billion; imports were $179 billion.
US news reports of thousands upon thousands of discharged US workers never cite their replacement by automation. The news story is always that the plant is being closed and the jobs moved abroad. Any review of America’s former manufacturing centers verifies this. Boarded up plants and cities and towns in decline are the remains of America’s formerly world dominant manufacturing economy.
The loss of the US post-war trade surplus in manufacturing has left the US with a huge trade deficit. The charts on which Walsh relied left him unaware of the fact that China has a large trade surplus with the US, and the US has a large trade deficit not only with China but with the world.
The fact that the US has to import not only manufactured goods, but also high-technology products from China, an inconceivable outcome during the second half of the 20th century, is powerful testimony to the decline of the US as a manufacturing powerhouse.
It took some doing to obscure the facts and to present the US as a rival to China in manufacturing prowess. How did it happen?
The fault might lie in the way statistical information is collected and presented. Apple, for example, is a US corporation. It reports its worldwide earnings to the IRS. Its manufacturing is counted as US manufacturing as it is a US corporation. However, Apple doesn’t produce a single computer in the US. They are produced in China. The employment that Apple reports is in China. The Chinese are employed by an American company, but they are not Americans. The Chinese incomes that Apple provides do not support the American consumer market or provide the tax base for cities and states. The Chinese incomes do not provide ladders of upward mobility or careers for Americans.
The wages Apple pays are in China. The consumer incomes and GDP that it generates are in China. When Apple’s computers come back to America to be sold they come in as imports. But Apple’s manufacturing and employment are reported as the output and employment of an American company.
When statistics and the methods by which they are compiled were put into effect, countries did not offshore their production for their domestic markets. Foreign investments were made for selling abroad, not for selling in the home market. With the advent of offshoring, counting the employment and output of US firms that are producing abroad for their domestic market as an indication of the strength of US manufacturing is very misleading. Apple, for example, has done more to boost China’s GDP than to boost America’s GDP. This is true of every US corporation that offshores its production for US consumers.
In recent years the percentage of the work forces of large US corporations that is foreign sourced has risen rapidly. Some of the overseas hiring reflects traditional foreign investment in which a company builds abroad in order to sell abroad, but much of the hiring reflects offshored production for US markets.
The US has been able to survive the large trade deficits produced by jobs offshoring, because the US dollar is the world reserve currency. Being the world reserve currency, the US does not have to earn foreign currencies with exports in order to pay for its imports. However, as these trade deficits persist and the buildup of foreign holdings of dollar paper assets rises, there is a diminishing willingness of foreigners to trade real goods and services for financial assets denominated in a fiat currency whose value is diminishing with the ever-growing supply.
Thus, the basic notion of globalism–that a country’s corporations can produce goods and services in any country for home markets–is false.
Walsh is correct that China is not to blame for the decline in US manufacturing. Offshoring is to blame, and, thus, the blame lies with US corporations, policymakers, and the economists and financial media who shill for “globalism.” The decision was made to sacrifice the US economy to the short-term profits of the few. A country so poorly led can do nothing but decline.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments.
Four years after Barack Obama was elected president, this is not exactly a “post-racial” America.
A new study from Washington University in St. Louis finds that under Obama, many black Americans feel less free than whites when it comes to political participation.
From 2005 to 2011, only 45 percent of blacks said they believed the government would allow them to make a public speech, while 67 percent of whites believed they could, the study found.
The study found that while the election of Obama initially boosted feelings of political empowerment among black Americans, those sentiments significantly faded in the years that followed—especially among conservative and religious blacks.
These two groups make up a large segment of the black population, with 56 percent of blacks identifying as “born again,” and 39 percent of blacks as “somewhat conservative,” according to the study.
“First we saw the ’empowerment effect,’ the boost that happens when a member of your group gets elected to an important political position,” says study author James L. Gibson, a professor of government and African-American studies at Washington University. Gibson’s findings are based on national surveys conducted between 2005 and 2011.
In 2009, the year after Obama was elected, 71 percent of blacks reported feeling as free to speak one’s mind as they used to.
“But then perceptions of political freedom deteriorated among conservative and religious blacks,” says Gibson. By 2011, the percentage of blacks who felt as free to speak their mind had dropped to 56 percent, back to pre-Obama levels. (White Americans also reported feeling less free to speak one’s mind under Obama, but the decline was far less than among blacks).
In part, says Gibson, this can be attributed to “ideological polarization.” That split may have begun when Obama dismissed Pennsylvania voters in 2008 who “cling to guns or religion.” But Gibson says many conservative and religions blacks likely believed when Obama was first elected that he would protect their interests as president. “Race produces a level of trust and confidence that one is on your side,” he says.
Over time, that confidence eroded. Gibson cites the contraception debate between the White House and some religious leaders that erupted last year. Black Americans, he notes, are traditionally conservative on social issues.
Another schism may have centered on gay marriage. The Democratic-leaning Coalition of African-American Pastors, for example, recently said they felt “marginalized” and “ignored” by Obama’s seemingly sudden support for same-sex marriage.
Religious fundamentalists and conservative blacks, Gibson says, “have seen their efforts to participate in public life [under Obama] being thwarted over and over and over again.”
Elizabeth Flock is a staff writer for U.S. News & World Report.
The case for racial preferences in awarding places at US universities is no longer about minorities held back by centuries of discrimination, says Simon Barber.
Rather, it is all about letting educators decide what will be best to prepare the youth for racial diversity. That, at any rate, is how proponents of affirmative action are framing the discussion as the matter is about to be heard by the US Supreme Court.
Solicitor-general Donald Verrilli, the Obama administration’s chief litigator, told the court last week: “The core of our interest is in ensuring that the nation’s universities produce graduates who are going to be effective citizens and effective leaders in an increasingly diverse society and effective competitors in diverse global markets.”
Just over half the Fortune 100 chimed in with an amicus brief. “The only means of obtaining a properly qualified group of employees,” they argued, “is through diversity in institutions of higher education which are allowed to recruit and instruct the best qualified minority candidates and create an environment in which all students can meaningfully expand their horizons.”
The case pits Abigail Fisher against the University of Texas. Ms Fisher, who is white, says her rights under the constitution’s 14th Amendment were violated when she failed to get in. The university says that while it does indeed take race into account in selecting candidates, it does so as part of a “holistic” review fully consistent with the court’s precedents, in particular Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s opinion in the landmark 2003 case, Grutter v Bollinger. Writing for a slim 5-4 majority Justice O’Connor held that the University of Michigan Law School’s admissions strategy passed muster: it was adopted in “good faith”, did not rely on demographically-based quotas and was “narrowly tailored to a compelling interest in attaining a diverse student body (with a) critical mass” of minority students.
Opponents of affirmative action would like to believe that, with Justice O’Connor’s replacement by the far more conservative Justice Samuel Alito, there is now a critical mass on the court for banning race-based preferences altogether. They hope Ms Fisher will persuade a majority if not to reverse Grutter v Bollinger, then at least, in the words of Justice Sonia Sotomayor (who will not be part of that majority), “gut it”.
There is a school of progressive thought which would not mind seeing Ms Fisher prevail. In a new study for The Century Foundation, Richard Kahlenberg looks at how universities have been handling diversity in the seven states, including California, where racial preferences have already been banned by referenda, state legislatures or gubernatorial executive order. The news is good.
Responses include partnerships with disadvantaged schools, new race-neutral preferences for students from all difficult environments, no more automatic slots for offspring of alumni, and guaranteed places, regardless of test scores, for a fixed percentage of top students from all in-state public schools. Many of these are terrible, de facto segregated and disproportionately starved of resources.
“For people who care about social equality, all these new measures are intrinsically desirable,” Mr Kahlenberg writes. But they do not come naturally to university administrators because they are harder and more expensive to implement.
“While higher education’s vigorous defence of affirmative action on one level represents a sincere desire for greater racial equality, it has another less virtuous side to it, as racial preferences avoid the hard work of addressing deeply rooted inequalities and instead provide what (one critic) has called ‘racial justice on the cheap’ … recruiting fairly privileged students of colour is far less expensive than including low-income and working class kids of all races.”
Research by Derek Bok, a former Harvard president, found that 86% of African Americans at universities with selective admissions standards were either middle or upper class. At Ivy League schools, 41% of black students were not even African American, but immigrants from relatively advantaged backgrounds.
While it is invidious to invoke the voices of revered figures who can no longer speak for themselves in support of one’s favoured positions, it is interesting to conjecture what Dr Martin Luther King might have said of class, as opposed to race-based affirmative action. He did say, in calling for a Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged in 1967, “it is a simple matter of justice that America, in dealing creatively with the task of raising the Negro from backwardness should also be rescuing a large strata of the forgotten white poor”. Simon Barber, bdaylive.com
South Africa may not experience tsunamis, hurricanes or devastating earthquakes, but we do experience other life-shattering tragedies such as fires, HIV/AIDS and…. violent crime! “It always happens to others!” people are wont to say … until it happens to you! A victim of a hijacking writes about his terrible ordeal.
It happened to me three years ago, on the night of 17 September 2003. I was returning home after presenting a late lecture to engineering students. I was tired. It had been raining. I was looking forward to relaxing at home with my wife and son. I stopped my car outside the gate at home and was opening the gate, when I heard a voice behind me saying: “Get back inside your car”.
I turned slowly to see a black man standing there pointing his gun at me. I looked quickly towards my house but nobody was in sight. I had no option but to obey. With that, two accomplices emerged from the shadows and forced me into the back of the car, one on either side of me.
The gun toting attacker got behind the wheel and we drove away. I had no idea where I was being taken at that time of night. I was swiftly relieved of my belongings – my wallet (with R70.00 cash in it), my gold watch, my cell phone, my wedding band,…all the while I was being sworn at, cursed at. I remained calm, knowing that God had His hand on me.
I told them to drop me on the side of the road telling them they could have my car. In reply I was told they did not want my car, only money! As we drove on they forced me to lie down on the seat so that I could not be seen and put a dirty cap over my face so I could not see where I was being taken. I just prayed: “God confound them.” This happened, as they soon lost their way and had to stop and ask directions; but I was not afforded an opportunity for escape. I did manage to see some lights as we drove along and I recognised the route they were taking. I had no idea what to expect next.
After another ten kilometers or so, they turned into a smaller road and finally down a steep, rough track into a clearing and there I was accosted by the gun-wielding man who demanded to know where my laptop was. I had been doing research for an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and had left some discs on the back seat. They were now in disarray as I had been forced to lie down on them during the highjacking journey. While trying to explain that I did not possess one, the man punched me in the face and repeated his demand. He then threw me down onto the ground outside the car and tried to kick me in the face with his boot. I caught his foot and protected my face but he then started shooting, pumping four bullets into my left leg and two into my right thigh. He pulled the trigger once more but the gun just went “click”. As he walked away from the car, I decided to try and escape. I could not use my legs – they were simply not responding – so I decided to roll away. I rolled off the edge of the clearing and down the steep slope for about 30 meters through long weeds and muddy ground full of stones and roots. I decide to lie there with my head down so that blood would stay in my head. There was a street lamp nearby. In the dim light I could see the bullet wounds in my legs and the blood oozing from them. I lay on my back looking up at the stars thinking, “Nobody even knows where I am – Am I going to die like this?” I prayed to God saying I was totally in His hands. It was now up to Him.
After lying there for about ten minutes, I spotted a young African boy walking along a nearby path. I called out to him in Zulu asking him to phone the police, get an ambulance and phone my wife to let her know what had happened to me. He said he would call his mother to help me – it turned out that she was a qualified home nurse! She arrived soon after, equipped with rubber gloves and a first aid kit. She took off my shoes and asked permission to remove my long pants, quite blood-stained by now. There was no time to feel embarrassed so I said, “Go ahead”. She cleaned my wounds and slowed the bleeding. With that an African man appeared and said: “Do not be afraid. I am here to help you.” By now my legs were shaking uncontrollably. He then left and returned with a sleeping bag which he placed over me to keep me warm. He placed his jacket under my head then returned home to phone the local police.
They were reluctant to come and investigate so he became angry and phoned his white boss, whom he knew “would make a plan”. His boss (who did not even know me) threatened the police and demanded that I be attended to. Within fifteen minutes there were four police vehicles at the scene. One of the policemen phoned my wife telling her I had been shot several times and that I would be taken to Crompton Hospital. My wife made two phone calls and by the time I arrived there were thirty family, friends and church members waiting. Even in the state I was in, I was emotionally moved and touched by this overwhelming support.
I was wheeled into Emergency, given an x-ray and, not needing surgery, was taken to a ward where my blood was tested. My veins had collapsed and they had to take arterial blood to establish my blood type. I needed two and a half pints of replacement blood. I overheard the nurses talking and saying that I probably would not live – then the doctor commenting that I was strong and would pull through. A day later I was well enough to move to a normal ward – one of the many miracles to follow. My left leg was in plaster from top to toe with a small window cut in the plaster to enable the dressing of my wound to be changed regularly. Two days later I was visited by Nickolas Ntanjana (who covered me with the sleeping bag) and his boss, Bruce Dickson, and that is when I heard their side of the story (about the calls to the police).
I was back home and recuperating in the company of my loving and very supportive family. I was off work for the rest of the year. This led to some serious financial losses as I received no compensation from either the Road Accident Fund nor from Workman’s Compensation.
I lost tens of thousands of rands due to not being able to give extra lectures. There is no fund to cover one in the event of a highjacking. A case of attempted murder was opened by the local police but to date no arrests have been reported. It is sad that criminals and the syndicates supporting them, can just force themselves into your life, violently ruin it and get away with it. Governments who pride themselves on removing the death penalty will have to answer to God as to why they have subjected their law-abiding citizens to the death penalty instead! Not only do you and your immediate family suffer but also the community that you serve – there are vast, rippling (negative) effects. Medical expenses, counselling (by psychologists or psychiatrists), protracted battles with insurance companies or debtors, security measures to be upgraded, etc. I have lost my ability to concentrate for extended periods on technical type work and hence have had to give up my research. I was determined not to become a victim and was elected as chairman of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers, KwaZulu Natal Branch, last year. Nevertheless my reserves of energy have become limited. I suppose being over the age of fifty also contributes to this.
I would like to emphasise that having been through a traumatic, near death experience, it gives one a new set of values. One of these is the importance of communicating appreciation and love to those around you. Say it and say it often. Love is the only thing I know that grows as you give it away! Life is really very temporal and fragile. Live it by loving those close to you.
HOW TO AVOID A HIJACK SITUATION
80% of hijackings take place in home driveways. Check your driveway and street before you leave or enter your premises. Be on the look out for suspicious vehicles/persons.
Always be cautious and aware of surrounding obstructions and shrubbery that may conceal a hijacker.
At road junctions, leave enough space between your car and the one ahead of you to allow you to escape.
If a car has driven into the rear of your car, and the impact is fairly light, wave to the driver to follow you to somewhere safe to trade necessary information.
When approaching your vehicle, always have your keys ready but not visible. Be aware of your surroundings & if you notice any suspicious behaviour immediately walk away from your car towards a safe area.
When approaching a red traffic light at night, slow down so that you only reach it when it turns green.
Do not stand by your car if you are waiting for somebody & never sit in your parked vehicle without being aware of your surroundings.
Once in the car, lock all your doors & leave your window only partially open. Keep any valuables, briefcase, handbag & cell phone out of sight.
If you suspect you are being followed, take a different route home. If you still think you are being followed, drive to the nearest police station. Do not stop your car for any reason as this will give your pursuer the ideal opportunity to hijack your vehicle.
Avoid driving through high crime or unfamiliar areas as well as late at night/early hours of the morning when the roads are quiet.
Drive in the centre lane away from pedestrians where possible.
When you are a victim of a car-hijacking, don’t put up a fight. Do exactly as told by the hijackers. Do not reach for your purse or valuables.
Gather as much information as possible without posing a threat.
SAIRR has amended their view on farm attacks. According to Institute’s calculations white farming families may be 13 times more likely to be attacked.
This Research and Policy Brief paper seeks to determine the extent to which farmers are uniquely vulnerable to armed attack in South Africa. It draws comparisons between the rate of attack on farmers and their families to that of other citizens in South Africa.
On 5 October 2012 the South African Institute of Race Relations released a statement on farm attacks in South Africa. The statement was based on farm attack data by the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU). It has since been drawn to our attention by James Myburgh that the TAU data is compromised by a significant undercount of as much as 7:1 in terms of the actual number of farm attacks. Our initial analysis has therefore been revised accordingly. The revised analysis follows below.
The table below compares the farm attack rate for farmers and their families to the house robbery rate, aggravated robbery rate, and combined aggravated robbery and murder and attempted murder rates for the broader population. It is based on three assumptions. The first is that there are 47 000 commercial farmers in South Africa. This is based on StatsSA’s Census of Commercial Agriculture 2007. The second is that the average household size for farmers is 3. This is the average household size for white South Africans. The third is that, following from James Myburgh’s analysis, TAU undercounts farm attacks by an average of 7 to 1. The fourth is that attacks on smallholdings should be included as attacks on farms.
47 000 farmers + 2 dependants each = 141 000 people
National population = 50.6 million people
Ratio of farm attacks to attacks on general population
Rate per 100 000 people
Farm attacks vs house robberies
422
33
12.8 to 1
Farm attacks vs aggravated robbery
422
200
2.1 to 1
Farm attacks vs aggravated robbery + murder + attempted murder
422
260
1.6 to 1
Table 1: Attacks on farmers and their families compared to other citizens (smallholdings included)
The table shows that based on those four assumptions the number of attacks on farmers and their dependants is 422/100 000. The number of house robberies in the broader population is 33/100 000. In this comparison farming families are 13 times more likely to be attacked than other families. However, farm attacks also include all forms of robbery and not just house robbery.
For that reason the table also compares the farm attack rate to the broader armed robbery rate in the country. Here the farm attack rate, which remains at 422/100 000, must be compared to the national armed robbery rate of 200/100 000. In terms of this comparison farmers and their families are twice as likely to be attacked as other citizens. Farm attacks also involve murder and attempted murder.
For this reason the table also compares the farm attack rate to the joint aggravated robbery/murder/attempted murder rate for the broader population. Here the farm attack rate, which remains at 422/100 000, can be compared to the national murder and aggravated robbery rate of 260/100 000. Even on this analysis farmers remain more vulnerable to attack by a ratio of 1.6 to 1.
However, the argument can be made that smallholdings are basically large urban plots and not really farms. For that reason we have published the table below which compares farm attacks, excluding attacks on smallholdings, to criminal attacks in the broader population. The other three assumptions made about the data (above) are unchanged.
47 000 farmers + 2 dependants each = 141 000 people
National population = 50.6 million people
Ratio of farm attacks to attacks on general population
Rate per 100 000 people
Farm attacks vs house robberies
262
33
7.9 to 1
Farm attacks vs aggravated robbery
262
200
1.3 to 1
Farm attacks vs aggravated robbery + murder + attempted murder
262
260
1 to 1
Table 2: Attacks on farmers and their families compared to other citizens (smallholdings excluded)
This table shows that when smallholdings are taken out of the equation the farm attack rate declines to 262/100 000 farmers and their families. Compared to the national house robbery rate of 33/100 000 farmers are on this measure eight times more likely to be attacked than other citizens.
However, the table shows that when this new farm attack rate is compared to the broader aggravated robbery rate of 200/100 000 this ratio comes down to 1.3 to 1. Furthermore, when the farm attack rate is compared to the broader aggravated robbery/murder/attempted murder rate of 260/100 000 that ratio reaches a level of parity of 1 to 1. In other words, on this measure farming families are no more likely to be attacked than other citizens.
We have also conducted an analysis of the murder of farmers, based on TAU’s more complete murder figures. In order to produce a figure for the highest possible murder rate the table below assumes that only the 47 000 farmers, and not their families, are targeted in farm murders.
47 000 farmers
National population = 50.6 million
Ratio of farmer murders attacks to murders in the general population
Rate per 100 000 people
Farm murders vs all murders
68
31
2.2 to 1
Table 3: The murder of farmers
On this measure the table shows that in 2011 some 68/100 000 farmers in the country were murdered. This compares to a national murder rate of 31/100 000. On this analysis farmers are twice as likely to be murdered as ordinary citizens. However, while farmers are particularly likely to be murdered, it is true that family members may also be murdered in attacks. It is for this reason that we have prepared the final table below, which compares the murder rate for farmers and their families to that of other citizens.
47 000 farmers + 2 dependants each = 141 000
National population = 50.6 million
Ratio of farmer/family murders to murders in the general population
Rate per 100 000 people
Farm murders vs all murders
33
31
1.1 to 1
Table 4: The murder of farmers and their families
This table shows that in 2011 the murder rate for farmers and their families was 33/100 000. The murder rate for the broader population was 31/100 000. On this comparison farmers and their families are not more likely to be murdered than other citizens.
Keep in mind that our analysis has excluded the 220 000 emerging commercial farmers, some of whom are large producers, who may also be attacked. We have also excluded from this analysis farm managers and extended families that may live on farms and become victims of attack. Our figures therefore suggest worst-case scenarios for farming families.
What conclusions can be drawn? The first is that the past week has seen a sharp increase in the quality and level of analysis of farm attacks in South Africa. It has also focused considerable media attention on the problem. Both of these are good things.
The second is that it is possible to argue that farmers are uniquely vulnerable to attack contrary to our initial conclusions drawn from the incomplete TAU data. This is especially so where a straight comparison is drawn between the house robbery rate and the farm attack rate. The same is true for the murder rate of farmers (excluding family members).
The third is that by changing some assumptions it is possible to reach somewhat different conclusions. For example, it is reasonable to compare farm attacks, which is a term inclusive of robbery and murder, to the broader robbery and murder rates of the society. When this is done farmers remain more at risk, although by a smaller measure. However, it is when the assumptions shift to exclude smallholdings that the picture changes significantly. Then the comparisons suggest that farmers are not uniquely vulnerable to violent attack.
However, even this result should not be taken to suggest that farmers are safe. Analysts of our data must consider that South Africa’s crime rates are uniquely high. Our murder rate, for example, is 500% higher than that of the United States and 3000% higher than parts of Western Europe such as the United Kingdom and Germany. This brings us to our fourth conclusion that all South Africans face an extraordinary criminal onslaught. People who have previously regarded farm attacks as a somewhat distant problem, nothing to do with them, must realise that they arguably live in as much peril as farmers do. It is clear therefore, regardless of how they rank compared to other citizens, that as a best-case scenario, farmers live a perilous existence in a largely lawless society.
The fifth conclusion is that, unlike urban middle class residents, farmers do not have the benefit of armed response companies or nearby police stations. Rather they depend on their own defences to secure themselves and their families. In addition, no analysis of the security position of farmers would be complete without noting the role of the State in exacerbating their vulnerability. The closure of the commandos and the Government and the African National Congress’s ambivalence at best toward the incitement by some of their own members to kill farmers creates an environment in which South Africa’s farmers are likely to be killed.
The final conclusion is that there can ultimately be no solution to farm attacks without a broader solution to the general problem of criminal violence in our society. In other words, farmers will not be safe until other citizens are safe and vice-versa. This is a point that advocacy groups can use to great effect in their important campaigns to alert policy makers and the international community to the murder of farmers in South Africa.
Issued by Frans Cronje, Lucy Holborn, Boitumelo Sethlatswe, South African Institute of Race Relations, October 10 2012
Three-quarters of African countries and several “Arab Spring” nations are at high or extreme risk of a food crisis, according to an analysis published on Wednesday.
In a survey of 197 countries, 59 are most at risk of food insecurity, the British consultancy Maplecroft said.
Thirty-nine of these are African, it said.
Out of the 11 countries that are in the “extreme risk” category, nine are in Africa.
They include Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which are ranked joint first, Burundi (4th), Chad (5th), Ethiopia (6th), Eritrea (7th), South Sudan (9th), the Comoros (10th) and Sierra Leone (11th).
Haiti (3rd) and Afghanistan (8th) are the other two countries in the extreme risk category.
“Although a food crisis has not emerged yet, there is potential for food-related upheaval across the most vulnerable regions,” including sub-Saharan African and Arab states, said Maplecroft’s Helen Hodge.
The 48 countries considered to be at “high” risk for food supplies include Yemen (15th), Syria (16th), Pakistan (27th), Papua New Guinea (33rd), North Korea (35th), Iraq (54th) and Libya (58th).
Egypt, ranked 71st of the 197 countries, and Tunisia, 100th, are among medium-risk countries.
Sources of food insecurity range from conflict and instability in the Sahel, DRC and eastern Africa to rising prices for corn, caused by the worst US drought in 50 years and declining production in former Soviet countries, Maplecroft said.
The report, called the Food Security Risk Index, is intended for governments, NGOs and businesses to identify countries that could be susceptible to hunger or unrest because of food shortages or price hikes.
“The drivers of the ‘Arab Awakening [Spring]’ were varied and complex and included long standing public anger at high levels of governmental corruption and oppressive tactics against populations and political opposition,” said Maplecroft.
“When these factors combine with food insecurity, sparked by rising global prices, it can create an environment for social unrest and regime change.”
Notable changes compared to last year’s rankings were North Korea (19th on the 2011 list); Egypt (88th) and Syria (89th). – AFP
Some couples want a baby boy badly. So badly they’re willing to fly halfway around the world to get one. Destination? The United States.
Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, director of The Fertility Institutes in Los Angeles and New York City, has for several years offered a fertility procedure allowing affluent couples to choose their baby’s gender. Sex selection, outlawed in many countries, is legal in the United States: Steinberg’s clinics have treated “thousands” of couples from India, China, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and 142 other nations.
Steinberg recently told the London Evening Standard that he’s helped around 400 British couples conceive their choice of a boy or girl. They sometimes pay $45,000 or more for one of Steinberg’s package deals that includes treatment, plane tickets, and a hotel. The doctor opened his New York clinic in 2008 to cater to British and European patients, who are perhaps less than an eight-hour flight away. Sex selection is illegal within the United Kingdom, but Steinberg boasted that “leading British politicians” fly to his New York office for that very purpose.
Steinberg admitted his clinics have recently seen a “huge growth” of Chinese clients. Almost all of them—98 percent—ask for a boy. So do most Indian couples. Both countries ban sex selection, but it’s practiced illegally because of cultural preferences for boys.
Several U.S. clinics perform sex selection using preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD): Doctors obtain the couple’s sperm and eggs, mix them in a dish, and implant only a few embryos of the desired gender. Steinberg typically performs PGD by fertilizing eight or nine eggs and implanting just one embryo, discarding or freezing the others.
In 2009 Steinberg considered allowing parents to choose their child’s eye and hair color, too (see “Eugenics,” March 28, 2009). He nixed the idea after a pro-life outcry.
A major study published by the United Nations has warned that the growing numbers of white and Asian elderly people presented significant challenges to welfare, pension and health care systems in both developing and developed nations.
And it bemoans the fact that skills and knowledge that older people have acquired are going to waste in societies rather than being used to their full.
Ageism is an infinitely more serious problem in Britain today than racism, sexism, fattism, homophobia, islamophobia and all the other imaginary nonsense the pc cadres drivel on about, says oldies.
The UN rightly says that what the older person has in the way of knowledge and experience is criminally wasted and/or ignored.
As a society, we are obsessed with IQ. But wisdom is far more important, they say. The consequences are obvious to those over 50, but rarely to younger observers
Richard Blewitt, chief executive of HelpAge International, which collaborated on the report, Ageing in the 21st Century says: “We must fully recognise that the vast majority of people will live into old age,” he added. “By revolutionising our approach and investing in people as they age we can build stronger, wealthier societies.”
Calling the ageing demographic a “megatrend that is transforming economies and societies around the world”, the report estimated that one in nine people of the world’s population of seven million are over 60.
The size of the elderly population is expected to swell by 200 million within 10 years past the one billion mark and soar to two billion by 2050, it forecast.
The number of centenarians in the world is projected to increase from fewer than 316,600 in 2011 to 3.2 million in 2050.
In Britain there are projected to be half a million centenarians by 2066, with one third of babies born in 2012 expected to celebrate their 100th birthday, according to Government statistics cited.
“The expected growth of the population of older persons should not be an excuse not to act but rather seen as a call to action. A well supported old age is in the interest of all generations,” said the 192-page report, which was released in Tokyo, to coincide with International Older Persons Day.
Japanis the only country with an older population of more than 30 per cent, but by 2050, 64 countries are expected to achieve that proportion including Britain.
The report warned that the skills and knowledge that older people have acquired are going to waste, with many of them underemployed, underactive and more likely to become a drain on a nation’s resources. Britain is among several European countries that have passed laws against employers discriminating against the elderly but progress has been uneven, said Mr Blewitt.
However successive British governments, like many others, tend to indulge in hand-wringing about the cost of caring for the elderly, he said, rather than exploiting what they had to offer.
Many have skills that would be immensely useful to the voluntary sector but have hardly been tapped on a mass scale. The report calls such opportunities the “longevity dividend”.
“Rather than burying our head in the sand and saying old people are going to ruin our economy, we have to see the opportunity in this,” said Mr Blewitt.
Ageing, said the report, “is a triumph of development”.
“Increasing longevity is one of humanity’s greatest achievements. People live longer because of improved nutrition, sanitation, medical advances, health care, education and economic well-being,” it continued.
But it warned that the most serious impact of ageing populations would be in developing countries without safety nets or adequate legal protection in place for older people.
In nations now dominated by young workers, urban migration has eroded traditional care of the elderly in extended families, as young parents have left for the cities. The trend has also tended to leave the elderly acting as primary carers of their grandchildren. In rural China, the study estimated that there are 52 million grandchildren looked after by their grandparents.
China was praised by the report for introducing a national pension of £5 a month, but for every developing country that does have some kind of similar scheme, there are nine that do not.
The report expressed concern “about the multiple discrimination experienced by older persons, particularly older women, including access to jobs and health care, subjection to abuse, denial of the right to own and inherit property and lack of basic minimum income and social security”.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
