Politicians must stop using language to strip refugees of their humanity

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/politicians-must-stop-using-language-to-strip-refugees-of-their-humanity-20150610-ghknq7.html

June 11, 2015

Thomas Keneally
Instead of using the English language to support cruel policies and scapegoat victims, we should commit to finding an international solution to the refugee puzzle.

Hundreds of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa arrive at Augusta port in Sicily, Italy.

Technology cannot always change who we are. Each of us remains a peculiar kind of gifted animal and angel. Since our brain volume increased and our voice boxes evolved, we have been the kings of language. There is a wonderful theory that language began with young mothers putting their babies down because, through lack of fur, they had no capacity to carry them continuously, and thus language began as a mode of reassurance to the baby that having been put down it would be picked up again. A form of “motherese” might have been the first language. In any case I am grateful for a wonderful life being a sort of valet or gardener of language.

But like many other and better writers, I have made stories of love and animosity towards the despised people of the earth, about those who are ignored, and about people stuck on racial, religious and cultural faultlines. As an Australian redneck I’d always been engrossed in the question of why there was so much hate in Europe, and why it’s still found there, all crammed into such a small space. Since my father was an Australian soldier in North Africa, and regularly sent me home what I saw as souvenirs – German corporal’s stripes, Nazi pistol holsters and Very pistols and other items – I was always enthralled by the way European hatred emerged in World War II, stoked by the demagogue Hitler and by others.

Let me rush to say that writers do not use this sort of material because we’re noble people – many of us are terrible to live with, and my wife is willing to be interviewed on the matter after this! We write about race and other divisions because they are full of high drama. I have been fascinated by racial division ever since, as a little kid in a country town in the White Australia of the early 1940s, I saw Aboriginals from the local Greenhill settlement walk past our gate in Kempsey. It was not a moral fascination. But I could tell in a primitive, intrigued way of my own that these were a people bewildered by loss of land, loss of validity as a people, by loss of culture; and also that having had misery imposed on them, they were being blamed for being unable to escape it.

What a tribute it will be to our community if, with support of all parties, we acknowledge that ancient culture, and those towering millennia of occupation of Australia before settlement, in our constitution, as proposed by the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader. That will bring about the employment of language, of the ultimate “motherese”, to make peace with ourselves.

I cannot hope in obvious futility and because of my love of language, which is still my wonderful daily power tool that never needs recharging, that I might see the departure from our national discourse of some of the more outrageous and wilful mis-usages of English language with which, in both major parties, the Australian polity is afflicted. I am not the first to mention it – Paul Keating’s former adviser Don Watson, now a fine writer, wrote a bestseller on the use of what he called “weasel words”. But there is a further twist. Our leaders are not only so often misusers of language, but also deniers of our access to its better angels, its more humane colorations.

An example of what I think of as misuse: I know a young writer, Mark Isaacs, who was working on Nauru at a time when inmates were looking forward to a visit by the Labor government Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen. Knowing the desperate hopes that were harboured by fellow human beings in the tents and huts of Nauru, he was disheartened when he overheard an aide to the minister refer to the people they had come to deal with as “the undesirables”.

Now, the refugee problem is inconvenient for the world, though western governments sometimes help create it by our foreign policies and tyrants account for the rest. The refugee problem is a puzzle for the world, a test of policy and compassion. And there is the undeniable further problem of the criminality, brutality and, indeed, the poverty of the people smugglers, and the terrible perils of drowning for those who believe we are a beacon they must reach. But I ask, does any group of humans who have committed no crime deserve to be verballed as opening gambit on the enormous world refugee problem by the representative of a party, admittedly not the Minister, which has always declared its solidarity with the rest of us? Why do we have to kill them with words even before we confront them? What are we trying to justify?

May I set you an alternate scene. Recently, an Australian journalist took a camera crew aboard an Italian search aircraft looking for survivors among the vessels plying between North Africa and the Italian island of Lampedusa.

There, by the way, and elsewhere in Italy, 40 times the number of vessels that have landed on our north coast have come ashore, and even before the turn-back-the-boats policy, were high by comparison with Australia.

Back to the Australian journalist in Lampedusa: he asked a member of the aircrew about the exhaustion of looking through sectors of sea for boats and survivors. He said it was a wearisome search: an honest answer. And then the Italian crewmember said, “One has always to remember — they are human beings down there.”

Shipwrecked asylum seekers are rescued, aboard 20 miles north of Libya, by a frigate of the Italian navy on June last year. Photo: Massimo Sestini/AP

This is a scene not permitted to occur in an Australian context. An Australian journalist would be unable to get aboard an Australian search plane. He would be unable to ask our defence forces what they think, even though we know that they possess the same honourable impulses as the Italian crewmember.

I cherish the fact that I have an inherited right to say this without fear of arrest, facing no greater sanction than being considered dewy-eyed. I do not say I have an answer, though I will sketch out a possible one derived from wise sources. I just know that what we are doing is not the answer, and that using language to position our more baleful instincts is not the answer.

We have reacted to a genuine world crisis with verbal meanness and subsequent cruelty. The Italians have reacted with a reckless and, according to many, ill-advised humanity that may in the end cause of us all to look at the disease instead of persecuting the symptoms – and among the symptoms, the children that we continue to imprison with the approval of our major parties.

I wish devoutly that instead of pressing the English language into its more brutal gears and scapegoating victims, instead of enlisting our support in policies that are cruel and win the applause overseas only of the extreme right wing, we too could address ourselves not to international denial but to an international solution. This solution would involve more countries gathered together in goodwill – because the goodwill has to start somewhere. Let us forget the ridiculous proposition of writing everyone off as economic refugees. Let us lead a world crusade to enable, through the co-operation of all liberal democracies, accredited refugees to be absorbed into our populations. Fanciful? No, this was the position taken by our government after World War II when a forgotten Australian, Sir Robert Jackson, logistical genius and UN official, persuaded the entire world to resettle, according to reasonable shares, the 8 million displaced persons of Europe. It was the only policy that worked then. Let us not forget the conditions that create genuine refugees will continue to drive people onto the roads, across the borders and the seas, and cruelty will not stem that tide.

When Ben Chifley, our prime minister, took 170,000 displaced persons from the camps of Europe, a decision he made without convening a single focus group, the Age newspaper ran a 1947 poll on what immigrants Australians wanted. People said they wanted, above all, people from the British Isles, and if necessary, other northern Europeans. Germans were to be preferred to Jews. The Greeks and Italians, it was believed, would not make good citizens.

If Chifley had read that poll and been rendered as impotent as modern politicians are by such indicators, what a narrow and shrunken little place Australia would be now!

Remember too Malcolm Fraser was PM in the days when Vietnamese asylum seeker boats landed in great numbers in Northern Australia. He processed these people humanely. There was no long-term mandatory detention involved. The newcomers were not depicted as sinister invaders. Then, after the Tiananmen Square massacre, Bob Hawke announced that all 43,000 Chinese students then in Australia would be offered residency and could stay here if they wished. Language was not misused and neither were human souls.

So let’s use mandatory detention only for health, identity and security checks that do not take years, but weeks. Let’s have accommodation centres – not prisons. And for God’s own sweet sake, let’s release all children from mandatory detention. Let’s have an independent commission to decide on asylum seeker policy to stop politicians using it to improve their vote.

History warns us to be suspicious of politicians of any party, who try to concentrate our passion upon a small minority, and depict them as a bigger threat than they are. When we see this kind of trick played upon us, instead of succumbing to the race frenzy we all potentially carry inside us, we should ask, “Who is benefitting from this? Are our taxes validly being spent upon it? And who is being harmed in the name of getting a better percentage of the vote?” We should be suspicious of frenzy too, as Oskar Schindler was suspicious of Nazi ideology, because it means that leaders may be distracting us from some more important issue – like a conjurer who makes us concentrate on his right hand as he performs the trick with his left.

Citizens have always to ask questions about public hysteria over race and minorities and culture – over matters of “them” and “us”. Because, again, my lifelong experience of Australia is that the “them” can quickly become the “us”. And our freedoms are not set in stone. We know that liberties that go unguarded will be abolished for governmental convenience.

This is an edited abstract of a speech given at a graduation ceremony at University of NSW on Wednesday night, where Tom Keneally was given an honorary doctorate.

The TTIP Gap: How a Trans-Atlantic Trade Deal Can Still Be Fixed

This article was published in DER SPIEGEL, June 08, 2015

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-ttip-and-an-eu-us-free-trade-deal-can-be-fixed-a-1036831.html

The European Commission is hoping that a major trade agreement with the US will stimulate the EU economy. But many in Europe fear adverse impacts on the environment and democracy. Negotiators ought to consider a third approach. By Spiegel Staff

The branch of Kaiser’s in Düsseldorf’s Vennhausen neighborhood is a supermarket like many others in Germany. It is open until 10 p.m. on weekdays, farmer’s ham sells for €1.49 a pound and Landliebe yogurt for 88 cents a cup.

Nevertheless, there is something special about the supermarket. Once a week, usually on Saturdays, Klaus Müller, the executive director of the Federation of German Consumer Organizations, essentially the top advocate for German consumers, buys a cart full of groceries at the Düsseldorf store.
More than anything else, Müller is currently concerned about the European Commission’s plan to conclude a major trade agreement with the United States. These days Müller, an economist, often strolls around his supermarket with a different look in his eyes: as if the agreement already existed.

If it did, Wiesenhof brand chickens from Lower Saxony would be displayed at the meat counter alongside chicken parts from South Carolina and beef from Iowa. The required European certification mark wouldn’t be affixed to a drill on sale, but rather a certificate from the applicable US agency. And Müller might even wonder, more often than he does today, whether the canned corn was genetically modified (GM) or the Black Forest ham might be from Virginia instead of Germany.

The negotiations currently underway in Brussels and Washington affect “a broad range of consumer products,” says Müller, noting that more competition could mean that “products become cheaper.” At the same time, he adds, it will make things more “confusing for the consumer.” Europe is about to see changes as serious as when the European Single Market was created more than 20 years ago.

Four letters are dividing Germany. The planned Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the United States, or TTIP, is intended to create a uniform economic zone for about 800 million consumers and eliminate many of the hurdles that obstruct trade across the Atlantic today. It sounds like a subject for association officials and standardization experts, but judging by the controversy the plan has unleashed, it could just as well involve the deployment of medium-range missiles or the construction of new nuclear power plants.
A Needed Counterweight to Asia?

On the one side are the lawmakers in Brussels, Berlin and Washington who see the deal as a chance to revive the economy and create a counterweight to nascent trade alliances in Asia. They face a powerful protest movement made up of environmental and social organizations, church representatives, lawyers and local politicians, who view the agreement as a giant fraud. The anti-TTIP network claims that free trade is being used as a cover to “facilitate privatization,” pave the way “for genetically modified food and meat laced with hormones” and “erode democracy.” Protests against TTIP were also planned to coincide with this week’s G7 meeting in Germany.

There is much at stake. Unlike earlier trade agreements, which consisted primarily of reducing tariffs, the goal of TTIP is to create a common market for European and American companies. The negotiators are discussing whether drugs licensed in the United States should be approved for sale in Europe, for example. The agreement would make it easier for companies that felt unfairly treated by laws in the United States or Europe to litigate against the regulations. A regulatory body that would enable governments to coordinate proposed legislation is also in the works. And for a large number of products, from car headlights to frozen pizzas, the same standards and rules would apply on both sides of the Atlantic in the future.

In many cases, what economists call “non-tariff trade barriers” are in fact regulations intended to protect health, the environment and consumer interests. Critics suspect that the seemingly harmless rhetoric about harmonization is nothing but a cover for a project that would weaken democratic decisions for the benefit of multinational corporations. Thilo Bode, the former director of Greenpeace Germany and the current head of the consumer organization Foodwatch, calls the agreement a “free trade lie.”

Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, on the other hand, says the deal will “influence world trade for the next 20 to 30 years.” If TTIP fails, he says, “consumer safety and workers’ rights will certainly garner less attention” in global markets in the future.

A War of Opinions

Opponents and supporters of the treaty are locked in a war of opinions made all the more acute by the fact that both sides see themselves as defenders of Western values. One side invokes economic common sense while the other insists on the primacy of the political sphere, and both sides are not afraid to use questionable figures and arguments to support their respective causes. Pro-trade industry associations, for example, say Europeans will enjoy growth effects that are not even anticipated by the economic opinions they commission. And in the anti-TTIP movement, many still capitalize on Germans’ fear of so-called “chlorine chickens,” or birds disinfected with chlorine, even though the European Commission has already made it clear that European hygiene rules will not be modified.

The only question is whether the highly emotional dispute is truly in the interest of consumers. Do Europeans really have to decide between free trade and democracy, or could an agreement be reached that does justice to both principles? Exactly how big are the economic benefits of the project, and how does it threaten health and consumer protection? And, finally, is Europe even in a position to assert its own ideas against the United States, with its improved economic position?

There is great skepticism among Germans. According to a recent poll conducted for SPIEGEL by the TNS Forschung research institute, only 18 percent of Germans support TTIP, while 33 percent are opposed to it. Of course, there is an even greater level of uncertainty, with close to 50 percent of respondents saying that they were “unable to evaluate” the project.

The machines that Carl Martin Welcker sells are true miracles of German engineering. They are the size of a truck trailer and cost several million euros apiece. Welcker opens a sliding door to demonstrate their inner workings: rotating bogies, mechanical gripper arms and a tangle of multicolored cables.

Welcker thrusts his hand into the complex interior and pulls out a spark plug. “The machine spits out one of these every 0.9 seconds,” says Welcker, a tall man with a youthful face and white hair.

Welcker is the owner of Alfred-H.-Schütte-Werke in Cologne, a medium-sized manufacturer of metal tools and objects located on the banks of the Rhine River. Spark plugs, injection pumps, artificial knee joins and dentures — all of these are items made in equipment developed by his company. The 600 employees manufacture machines most notable for their precision. “This socket,” says Welcker, “cannot exhibit a variance of more than a hundredth of a millimeter.”

Welcker sells his machines around the world, but an invisible boundary passes through his export markets. “Asia isn’t a problem,” says Welcker. We Germans serve as a barometer for them in every respect.” But things become more complicated in the United States where, for example, any safety-related threats in machines are dimensioned in inches, which means more work for his engineers. His machines must also undergo expensive testing to conform to the requirements of individual US states.

Eliminating Drawbacks

If the TTIP strategists have their way, these kinds of drawbacks will be eliminated in the future. The negotiators want to drastically simplify import regulations on both sides of the Atlantic, not just for machines. In virtually every industrial sector today, a large number of different test procedures, certification rules and documentation requirements complicate trans-Atlantic trade. European textile manufacturers often sew their labels into the side seam of shirts, while the “Made in” label has to be in the middle of the collar seam in the United States. Engineering firms that wish to offer their services in the United States must first register in each individual state. Piano makers are required to provide the authorities with detailed lists of the types of wood they use.

If the list of regulations and requirements were purged, promise TTIP proponents, it would be especially beneficial to small and medium-sized businesses. The smaller a production series, the greater the relative cost of adjusting it to conform to US regulations. “When we sell a machine in the United States,” says company owner Welcker, “it costs 15 to 20 percent more than it does here.”

Chlorine chickens? Chicken farmer Georg Heitlinger can only laugh. Chickens disinfected in a chlorine bath, as they are produced in the United States, represent the least of his fears over TTIP. The farmer from Eppingen in southwestern Germany takes us on a tour of his barns to demonstrate the real threat.

The barns, each 90 meters (295 feet) long, are swarming with 28,000 chickens, while another 12,000 birds have access to five hectares (12.4 acres) outside, complete with trees, grass and a lot of sand where they can scratch and peck at things. According to European Union regulations, there can be no more than nine hens per square meter on free-run or free-range chicken farms. In the United States, however, 95 percent of hens are kept in traditional laying batteries. With individual cages stacked up to the ceiling in giant buildings, 23 hens are crowded onto each square meter of space.

This translates into lower-cost production. “We can’t compete, given our livestock farming laws,” says Heitlinger. Another reason is that most German chicken farmers voluntarily refrain from using genetically modified feed, in contrast to the United States, where chickens are fed cheap, genetically modified soybeans.

Heitlinger isn’t worried about the market for fresh eggs at the moment, because German consumers reject eggs from caged chickens and genetically modified feed. Almost half of all eggs are used in the food business and industry, and EU law has no labeling requirements for these eggs. This could mean that German customers will unknowingly be eating pasta or cookies made with eggs from US factory farms, with their inhumane conditions.

As in chicken farming, standards vary widely in all key areas of agriculture. US farmers are allowed to use pesticides that are banned in the EU. Hormones are administered to cattle and pigs in the United States to accelerate growth, a practice banned in Europe. In many areas of agriculture, Europe has stricter environmental regulations than the United States.

Disastrous Consequences?

Ingrid Jansen, head of the Dutch pig farmers’ association, predicts disastrous consequences for her industry if TTIP is approved. She suspects that the agreement will facilitate the export of US products to the EU that were not produced in accordance with legal requirements in Europe.

Despite all claims to the contrary, many experts fear the same thing if TTIP results in the “mutual recognition of equivalent standards,” and not just in agriculture. According to the EU mandate, the negotiators are mainly searching for “more compatible regulations” to allow industry to reduce costs.

Still, the negotiations have been much tougher than anticipated. In the latest round, held in April in New York, the two sides hardly came any closer to an agreement. The legal and cultural traditions on both sides of the Atlantic are simply too different. The biggest sticking point is what is known in Europe as the precautionary principle, whereby materials and processes can only be used once proven harmless.

What might be termed the aftercare principle applies in the United States: Any products can be placed on the market, as long as they pose no scientifically proven danger. If something goes wrong, producers face the prospect of paying substantial damages to injured parties.

For instance, the Americans feel that significant parts of the European food standard, such as the ban on GM technology, meat from animals injected with hormones, meat from cloned animals and the use of chlorine to sterilize poultry, are not scientifically supported and therefore an inadmissible barrier to trade. Animal welfare, according to the US negotiators, is a “moral issue” and “not scientifically supported.”

In other words, as long as the mistreated chicken that spends its life in laying batteries doesn’t commit suicide, there is no evidence that it is suffering.

A ‘Race to the Bottom?’

Dutch pig farmers’ association head Jansen puts it like this: The TTIP mechanism of mutual recognition creates incentives to enter EU production standards into a “race to the bottom.” This is the risk that TTIP critics see on the horizon in many sectors, from cosmetics to food to healthcare.

A report by the organization Corporate Europe Observatory, which is critical of industry, and by journalist Stephane Horel, shows how successful many industries are today in using TTIP as a political tool. According to the report, the European Parliament decided in 2009 that chemicals that disrupt human hormone balance (endocrine disruptors) needed to be regulated by the end of 2013.

But the industry lobby in question, which included chemical companies BASF and Bayer, managed to keep postponing the European Parliament’s orders, partly by applying the TTIP argument. European and US industry groups argued that the planned reform would jeopardize the talks.

The slapdash manner in which Brussels approved 17 genetically modified food and feed products for the European market in late April also seems suspicious, in light of TTIP. For Martin Häusling, a Green Party member of the European Parliament, it is a clear case of submission. “Apparently the European Commission feels it has to offer the Americans a few enticements in the ongoing TTIP negotiations.”

The case is also clear-cut for chicken farmer Heitlinger. “As a farmer, you can’t be in favor of TTIP,” he says. One reason, he explains, is because customers now value locally produced, high-quality products once again. “For that reason, it makes no sense to drag steaks across the big pond.”

Investor Protection

Judd Kessler, a lawyer, owes his job to a coincidence. In the early 1970s, Kessler was working for the US Agency for International Development in Chile when the country’s socialist president, Salvador Allende, nationalized copper mines and subsidiaries of US companies. “At the time, no one at the US Embassy knew anything about international law,” says Kessler.

Working on behalf of the US government, he tried to win damages for the expropriations — before Augusto Pinochet came to power, with help from the Americans, and reversed the expropriations.

Kessler’s office is in a darkened mansion in Washington. The 77-year-old partner in the prestigious law firm of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur works as an arbitrator for the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which is part of the Washington-based World Bank. If the United States has its way, TTIP will enable lawyers like Kessler to monitor both European and American laws in the future.

No other issue has fueled the debate over the European-American trade agreement as much as the question of investor protection. Brussels and Washington want to grant foreign companies the right to resolve disputes in an international court of arbitration.

Whenever a country that is part of the planned Atlantic trade agreement enacts an environmental law or a consumer protection regulation, it will likely face litigation by private investors, which could assert their rights in private courts. The plan has been met with outrage, especially in Germany.

Ironically, it was the Germans who came up with the procedure in the first place. To safeguard exports and investments in developing countries without reliable legal systems, the German government has concluded close to 130 investor protection agreements with other countries since the 1960s. But the concept has long since turned against its creators. For instance, Swedish energy company Vattenfall is suing Germany for €4.7 billion in damages as a result of the German government’s decision to phase out nuclear energy. US companies and their subsidiaries are even more prone to litigation and, therefore, pose a greater threat. Philip Morris Asia appeared before an arbitration court after the Australian government tried to require tougher warnings on cigarette packages.

Arbitrator Kessler is also being kept busy. In an upcoming case, he will be one of three arbitrators who will decide whether Essen-based energy utility RWE is entitled to compensation after Spain’s recent decision to cancel planned subsidies for green energy.

A Chilling Effect

An international litigation industry has developed that sounds out national laws to determine whether they provide suitable ammunition to bring suits. The number of cases has multiplied, warns Canadian international law expert Gus van Harten. The wave of litigation has had a chilling effect in his country, even on politicians at the provincial level, who hardly dare to introduce new environmental laws anymore.

In addition, the arbitration courts usually meet behind closed doors. The public is kept in the dark when Kessler and his colleagues meet in a World Bank building in Washington to question witnesses or award damages. Even the court’s rulings remain confidential if this is requested by one of the parties. And appeals are usually not part of the process.

There was a significant outcry when it was revealed that the TTIP negotiators were trying to expand the ability to sue governments. Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann described the plan as creating “dangerous special rights for corporations.”

Together with other social democratic party and national leaders, including Sigmar Gabriel, the chairman of Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), Faymann is demanding reforms to the controversial procedures under the principles of constitutional law. They are proposing the establishment of a bilateral commercial court with independent, professional judges. They also want the negotiations to be open to the public and to include the right to appeal the court’s decisions.

The European Commission reacted by releasing a reform document in early May. It states that appeals against rulings should be possible, and that all documents and proceedings should be public. The proposal also calls for a fixed list of arbitrators who would have to demonstrate certain qualifications and could not act as attorneys or arbitrators in multiple proceedings, as is the case today.

But this isn’t enough for the European Parliament, which will hold a debate on TTIP next week in Strasbourg. The lawmakers are only willing to approve the trade agreement if the Americans agree to the establishment of an international commercial court and the possibility of appeal. The judges presiding over this court would no longer be attorneys, who are often motivated by special interests, but professional judges.

If the members of the European Parliament and Gabriel’s supporters stick to their guns in the negotiations, a new standard could develop on both sides of the Atlantic that would be an improvement over the old standard in several ways. It would be a reform that would take investor protection back to its roots. “Countries can regulate,” says Kessler, “but they cannot disadvantage foreigners.”

A Threat Against Democracy?

The trade negotiators from Brussels and Washington have many adversaries, but the most formidable of them all is a soft-spoken, petite woman with short, dark hair. Pia Eberhardt is the face and brain of the anti-TTIP movement.

As the author of a highly respected study on investor protection in 2013, the 36-year-old political scientist with Corporate Europe Observatory shone a spotlight on the clandestine negotiations. She formed alliances with other non-governmental organizations and, together with her team, ensured that at least a few draft agreements or working documents from the negotiations reached the public. “A small group of unelected representatives of government agencies is being given enormous power to stop regulations even before they are submitted to parliaments for a vote,” she says. “This undermines the democratic system.”

The mechanism Eberhardt is attacking has an innocuous-sounding name: regulatory cooperation. It suggests an atmosphere of friendship, cooperation and reasonable agreement.

The plans call for a body that would include representatives of the US government and EU agencies. Draft legislation would be submitted to this so-called regulatory council before being put to a vote in national parliaments, to ensure that it is in conformity with TTIP. At first glance, this resembles the way laws are passed in Germany, with the involvement of a wide range of social forces, from environmental organizations to the pharmaceutical lobby. But the difference is that the regulatory council is not a body in which the interests of the public are weighed against those of industry. Its sole purpose is to eliminate existing trade barriers and avert the creation of new trade barriers.

The regulatory council cannot directly obstruct national legislative power. But merely the threat that a law could potentially be used by companies as grounds for damage suits could lead to its being put on hold, fear TTIP opponents. The European Commission, on the other hand, stresses that will still be able to establish rules for business. According to the Commission, it is merely a question of “informing all interest groups.”

But the procedure isn’t nearly as harmless as Brussels is claiming. Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has now conceded that the TTIP regulators’ role goes beyond simply reading draft legislation. The policy discretion of the EU and its member states could be “somewhat restricted” by the planned regulatory cooperation, according to a letter from Merkel’s office to Foodwatch.

The European Parliament also has its reservations. Its members insist on preserving the principle that European institutions alone have to right to enact laws and ordinances. “It must be clearly stated in the TTIP that legislative power cannot be undermined or delayed,” says Bernd Lange, chairman of the Committee on International Trade in the European Parliament.

‘I Try to Listen to the Opponents’

European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström, 47, isn’t easily flustered. Even when she is sharply attacked by TTIP opponents, the Swedish politician simply smiles and calms the waves, speaking in fluent English, French or Spanish. “I try to listen to the TTIP opponents,” she says. “Sometimes they are just worried that they will have to give up their European way of life.”

What a difference there is between Malmström and her crusty predecessor, Flemish politician Karel De Gucht, who had difficulty concealing his view of most TTIP opponents as misguided ideologues. Malmström is pursuing the same goals, but she does so with greater sensitivity and persuasiveness, especially in Germany, where her job of campaigning for the trade agreement is especially challenging. “If we don’t set the standards,” she says, “they will be set by others, who care less about consumer rights.”

The others she is referring to are the rising industrial powers in Asia and Latin America, which have fundamentally changed world trade in the last two decades. In the past, trade was shaped by global treaties in which well over 100 countries were involved. But since the mid-1990s, countries are increasingly forming regional economic blocs to promote trade.

The most successful of these alliances is the European Union, which has promoted its domestic market initiative for the last two decades. In Asia, countries like Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia banded together to form the ASEAN group, and in the mid-1990s the United States, Mexico and Canada formed the NAFTA alliance. About two dozen extensive trade agreements have been added since the turn of the millennium, usually with positive results. Studies by economists show that the deals have promoted trade, led to more competition and lower prices, and increased the average income of citizens.

Undisputed Advantages for Companies

This is what most economists also expect from a TTIP agreement, even though their opinions differ on the extent of the benefits. The advantages for European companies, however, are undisputed. From Siemens to Volkswagen, the agreement would help many large industrial corporations to offset the potential disadvantages that threaten to emerge on the other side of the globe.

While Brussels and Washington negotiate a deal for the Atlantic, nations bordering the Pacific are planning even more powerful alliances. The United States and Japan, Australia and Vietnam are discussing a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a giant free trade zone for 800 million consumers. China has formed a trade bloc with the ASEAN nations and now wants to join the Pacific union.

If the agreements come about, Europe’s industry will be left with nothing. It would have to pay higher duties, while its competitors in large parts of Asia could deliver products at much lower costs. Italian leather producers, for example, would immediately be subject to a price differential of up to 18 percent when selling wallets or belts in Japan.

Europe’s chances of shaping the markets of the future would also fade. German industrial companies still dominate production in many parts of the world today. In the future, this will only be the case if Europe and the United States form an alliance, as they did in aircraft manufacturing four years ago. In an extensive agreement reached at the time, Brussels and Washington established technical norms that have become the standard for manufacturers from Canada, Brazil and China. If TTIP is a success, this could also be achieved in other industries.

A World of Trade Alliances

The world of the 21st century is a world of trade alliances. The countries that are members of the largest number of alliances and manage to align themselves with the strongest nations will enjoy the greatest benefits.

As such, the most important question is the direction in which the United States will turn in the future — toward the rising countries along the Pacific or its traditional allies on the old continent?

If Washington decides against Brussels, the “global equilibrium will tilt heavily toward Asia,” says former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt. In contrast, Europe’s influence would diminish considerably.

Bildt’s fellow Swede, EU Trade Commissioner Malmström, holds a similar view. Last week, she traveled to Berlin to draw conclusions with American chief negotiator Michael Froman. The fact that they met in Berlin was ironic, because it was Chancellor Merkel who helped initiate the TTIP project in the first place. But with growing reservations among Germans, she is now passing the ball to Brussels.

The Swedish EU official sometimes feels abandoned by German politicians. “It isn’t my job to explain to the Germans why we need TTIP,” she says.

The Third Way

When consumer advocate Müller is asked how he feels about the United States, he thinks of ice cream. As a teenager, he spent two years in the US states of Indiana and Connecticut, and he was amazed by the 33 flavors available at a local ice cream parlor. “The United States is a great country for a young person,” he says.

This helps to explain why the head of the Federation of German Consumer Organizations has little understanding for the undercurrent of anti-Americanism some TTIP critics have injected into the current debate. A native of Wuppertal in western Germany, he has been a member of the Green Party for 25 years. He was also environment minister of the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein and shares many of the concerns of the anti-TTIP movement. “When it comes to food or chemicals,” says Müller, “cultures in the United States and Europe are simply too different to be able to harmonize quickly or for them to be able to recognize each other.”

But Müller is no opponent of free trade — on the contrary. “As a consumer advocate, I am in favor of freedom of choice and low prices,” he says. “But this requires that consumers can clearly and truthfully recognize what they are choosing.” The supreme advocate of the interests of the German consumer argues for a third approach in the TTIP debate.

Brussels and Washington should quickly reach a deal on the issues on which they can readily agree, such as industry standards and tariffs. In contrast, the negotiators should set aside issues of food safety and health protection, because the respective legal cultures in Europe and the United States are too different.

His argument coincides with the public mood. According to the TNS survey for SPIEGEL, 42 percent of TTIP critics oppose the treaty because it could water down European environmental and consumer laws, along with labor rights. Only 27 percent fear that it would give corporations too much power.

The numbers show that what Müller calls a “TTIP light” could indeed create a new basis for the negotiations. At the same time, it would offer the Brussels negotiators a way to correct their mistakes of recent months: the lack of transparency and the downplaying of the threats to democracy and constitutional law. Hence, this is what a new TTIP strategy could look like.

To ensure as much openness as possible, the EU needs to make all relevant documents accessible and include all social groups in the conversation.

The EU needs to create a two-sided commercial court for the controversial investor suits. It must also be possible to appeal rulings.

The regulatory cooperation currently envisioned is unnecessary. Mutual information about cooperation, as it exists in conventional trade agreements, is sufficient.

Reestablishing Trust

A TTIP process that is reformed in this manner could not only reestablish the trust the EU has gambled away with its current negotiating strategy. It would also secure the benefits of free trade without jeopardizing democracy.

The TTIP light idea has found many supporters in the professional world. One of them is Gabriel Felbermayr, a trade expert with the Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research, who still believes that a slimmed down TTIP deal will provide substantial economic benefits. “A TTIP light would secure 80 to 90 percent of the expected benefits to trade,” he says.

European leaders are also flirting with the idea of a slimmed down agreement. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi proposes an agreement that focuses on less controversial trade issues but is adopted as quickly as possible.
The anti-TTIP movement has achieved a great deal. It has made Europeans aware of the important issues that are being negotiated behind closed doors in Washington and Brussels. It has also shown how dangerous TTIP could become for consumer protection and civil liberties.

Many things have gone wrong, but there is still time to correct the mistakes.

By Christoph Pauly, Michael Sauga, Michaela Schiessl and Gerald Traufetter

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Remembering a Friend

My blogger friend Debra from ‘Breathelighter’ published a blog after the funeral of a dear friend. Here is an excerpt of this blog:

. . . The family chose a scripture reading I’ve heard dozens of times before, but today the words gained life as they described a special, very kind man. The challenges are simple and clear; not so easy perhaps to live.

“Let love by genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” Romans 12:9-18

This reading fits the life our friend will be remembered for. I don’t see a lot of ego in this brief passage–perhaps these calming words are worth contemplating in a world that likes to stir up conflict. Peace.

Our Fundamental Freedoms

THE GUARDIAN PUBLISHED THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE ON 6TH OF JUNE 2015:

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jun/06/gillian-triggs-slams-scores-of-laws-threatening-fundamental-freedoms

Gillian Triggs slams ‘scores of laws’ threatening fundamental freedoms

Human rights commissioner delivers forceful warning over counter-terrorism legislation and attacks on rule of law by parliaments across Australia

Gillian Triggs: ‘Australian parliaments have passed scores of laws that infringe our democratic freedoms of speech, association and movement, the right to a fair trial and the prohibition on arbitrary detention.’
Gillian Triggs: ‘Australian parliaments have passed scores of laws that infringe our democratic freedoms of speech, association and movement, the right to a fair trial and the prohibition on arbitrary detention.’

Last modified on Friday 5 June 2015 10.03

Australian parliaments have passed “scores of laws” that threaten fundamental rights and freedoms, Professor Gillian Triggs has said, pointedly warning MPs to uphold the rule of law as they prepare to debate extraordinary ministerial powers to revoke citizenship.

In a forceful speech, the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission argued parliaments had failed to protect democratic rights and many politicians were “breathtakingly inconsistent” in supporting the rule of law.

And she warned that counter-terrorism laws introduced with “unseemly haste” were likely to have a chilling effect on free speech and privacy.

Triggs’s intervention comes amid intense debate about executive overreach as the government prepares laws to give the immigration minister the power to strip dual nationals of their Australian citizenship if they are suspected of involvement in terrorism.

The speech is likely to inflame Triggs’s already strained relationship with the Abbott government, which has previously said it had lost confidence in the Human Rights Commission chief over her handling of an inquiry into children in immigration detention.

Triggs referred to the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta – which she said had “symbolic power” – as she raised concerns that the supremacy of the law over the executive government was “under threat in Australia’s contemporary democracy”.

“Over the last 15 years or so, the major political parties have agreed with each other to pass laws that threaten some of the most fundamental rights and freedoms that we have inherited from our common law tradition,” she told an audience at the Human Rights Law Centre in Melbourne on Friday evening.

These laws undermine democracy, especially in granting powers to the executive that aren’t subject to judicial scrutiny
“For, over the last decade, particularly since the attack in 2001 on the twin towers in America, Australian parliaments have passed scores of laws that infringe our democratic freedoms of speech, association and movement, the right to a fair trial and the prohibition on arbitrary detention.

“These new laws undermine a healthy, robust democracy, especially if they grant discretionary powers to the executive government that are not subject to judicial scrutiny.”

Triggs said the expansion of ministerial powers represented a “growing threat to democracy” and she cited numerous examples of executive overreach including:

Powers to detain indefinitely various classes of individuals, including refugees and asylum seekers, those with infectious diseases, those subject to mandatory admission to drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities and the mentally ill;
The holding of four Indigenous men with intellectual and cognitive disabilities for years in a maximum security prison in the Northern Territory even though “each complainant had been found unfit to stand trial or found not guilty by reason of insanity”;
The indefinite detention of asylum seekers and refugees including children because of adverse security assessments “without meaningful access to legal advice or judicial review”;
The reduction of freedom of association from Queensland’s “anti-bikie” laws;
Constraints on judicial power to assess individual circumstances due to “a spate of mandatory sentencing laws”.
Triggs also spoke at length about the significant expansion of counter-terrorism powers in Australia on the grounds of community safety, arguing the strength of the rule of law was “more truly tested when security is threatened than in times of peace”.

“To the extent that Australia is threatened by terrorism, the need to protect our traditional liberties and freedoms assumes an even greater urgency,” she said.

“Many laws introduced with unseemly haste before Christmas in the name of national security go well beyond what might be deemed to necessary, creating a chilling effect on freedom of speech and the press and breaching the right to privacy.”

A detention centre on Nauru. Triggs also used the speech to criticise the indefinite detention of asylum seekers and refugees because of adverse security assessments from Asio, without any course of meaningful appeal.
A detention centre on Nauru. Triggs also used the speech to criticise the indefinite detention of asylum seekers and refugees because of adverse security assessments from Asio, without any course of meaningful appeal.
Referring to the data retention laws passed with bipartisan support in March, Triggs said it was curious that a “journalist information warrant” was required to access the call logs of a reporter but such a warrant was not needed for agencies to look at other citizens’ metadata.

“As the metadata will be collected in respect of most of the 23 million Australians, and those involved in terrorism or paedophilia are very few, it might be said that the act employs a sledgehammer to crack a nut,” she said.

Triggs also raised concerns that accused persons would face an evidentiary burden to defend themselves against a 10-year prison sentence for entering “declared areas” listed by the foreign affairs minister under the Foreign Fighters Act.

She said the same act introduced a new offence of advocating terrorism, “an imprecise crime whose scope may cover, for example, opposing the Assad regime in Syria or supporting Palestinian efforts to gain statehood”.

Other national security laws passed last year created an offence punishable by up to 10 years in jail for disclosing information about a “special intelligence operation”, which was likely to “have a chilling effect on legitimate public debate about security operations”, Triggs said.

“The overreach of executive power is clear in the yet-to-be defined proposal that those accused of being jihadists fighting against Australian interests will be stripped of their citizenship if they are potentially dual nationals,” she said.

“This proposal strikes at the heart of Australia as a largely migrant nation. Not only may this idea violate Australia’s international obligation not to render a person stateless, but also the decision may be at the discretion of a minister, without recourse to judicial processes.

“This proposal is not new. It follows a bill introduced last year to give the minister discretion to revoke citizenship for fraud or misrepresentation, or where the minister is ‘satisfied’ that a person is not of good character, all without trial or conviction. The debate, it seems, is between the subjective suspicions of a minister, versus an evidence-based determination by a judge according to established rule of law.”

Gillian Triggs accused of ‘slur’ by linking Bali Nine deaths to asylum seeker policy

The Coalition has faced criticism from legal experts over its citizenship proposals, ahead of the introduction of a bill during the next sitting of parliament that would allow the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, to target dual nationals.

The government deferred a decision on a related proposal to allow the minister to also revoke the citizenship of sole nationals who might be able to apply for citizenship elsewhere, following a cabinet backlash.

The prime minister, Tony Abbott, said the government subscribed to the “very clear principle” that “anyone who raises a gun or a knife to an Australian because of who we are has utterly forfeited any right to be considered one of us”.

But the criteria and procedure for such ministerial determinations remains unclear because the legislation is yet to be released.

Dutton suggested on Friday that affected persons could apply for a judicial review on limited grounds.

Asked whether the review would apply only to the process rather than the substance of the claims against the person, Dutton said: “It relates to that part of the decision, you’re right, and the government’s not going to have the court second-guessing ministerial decisions.”

Before she delivered her speech on Friday about the need for parliaments to “meet their obligations as a check on executive government”, Triggs was strongly criticised by Dutton for earlier comments about “the consequences” of turning asylum-seeker boats back towards Indonesia.

She was reported by the Australian newspaper to have said: “Is it any wonder that Indonesia will not engage with us on other issues that we care about, like the death penalty?”

Triggs’s office said she was reflecting on the death penalty in the region broadly, rather than specific cases, but Dutton said it was an “outrageous slur” to link the death of two of the Bali Nine drug smugglers to Australia’s asylum seeker policy.

auntyuta Article, Copy 7 Comments June 6, 2015June 7, 2015 6 Minutes

Isn’t this an interesting Read?

M. Mason Gaffney

New in October 2013

Purchase for $12.95 at
The Mason Gaffney Reader

or from Amazon

Solving the “Unsolvable”

Such dismal dilemmas economists pose for us these days! We’re told that to attract business we must lower taxes, shut the libraries and starve the schools; to prevent inflation we must have millions of people unemployed; to make jobs we must chew up land and pollute the world; to motivate workers we must have unequal wealth; to raise productivity we must fire people. Mason Gaffney has devoted his career to demonstrating the viability of reconciliation and synthesis in economic policy. In these 21 wide-ranging essays, he shows how we can find “win-win-win” solutions to many of society’s seemingly “unsolvable” problems.

“One of the most important but underappreciated ideas in economics is the Henry George principle of taxing the economic rent of land, and more generally, natural resources. This wonderful set of essays, written over a long and productive scholarly career, should be compulsory reading. An inveterate optimist, Mason Gaffney makes an excellent case that, by applying the Henry George principle, we can reduce inequality, and raise ample public revenues to be directed at any one of a multitude of society’s ills. Gaffney also offers plausible solutions to problems of urban renewal and finance, environmental protection, the cycle of boom and bust, and conflict generated by rent-seeking multinational corporations.” — JOSEPH STIGLITZ

“A crisp cocktail of geography, history and economics, chilled by crackling-clear prose. In these sparkling essays on rent, land and taxes, Mason Gaffney gives us Henry George in his time and for our own.” — JAMES GALBRAITH

Mason Gaffney is a national treasure. He boldly treads where few other economists even dare to peek: at the extraction of rent from the many by the few. Such rent extraction is now massive and threatens to destroy our democracy. To those who wonder how to stop it, my advice is simple: read Gaffney.—PETER BARNES

auntyuta Book Review, Books, Copy 3 Comments May 29, 2015 1 Minute

One more Chapter out of Progress and Poverty

http://www.henrygeorge.org/pchp43.htm

Chapter 43

The Central Truth

OUR ECONOMIC INQUIRY led us to a certain truth. The same truth explains the rise and fall of civilizations. Furthermore, it agrees with our deep-seated perceptions of relation and sequence, which we call moral perceptions.

The evils arising from the unequal and unjust distribution of wealth become more and more apparent as modern civilization goes on. They are not signs of progress, but tendencies that will bring progress to a halt. They will not cure themselves. Unless their cause is removed, they will expand until they sweep us back into barbarism — the path every previous civilization has taken.

But this truth also shows that these evils are not imposed by natural laws. They arise solely from social maladjustments that ignore natural laws. Poverty, with all the evils that flow from it, springs from a denial of justice. By allowing a few to monopolize opportunities nature freely offers to all, we have ignored the fundamental law of justice.

By sweeping away this injustice — and asserting the rights of all people to natural opportunities — we shall conform ourselves to this law. We shall remove the great cause of unnatural inequality in the distribution of wealth and power. We shall abolish poverty; tame the ruthless passions of greed; and dry up the springs of vice and misery. We shall light the lamp of knowledge in dark places; give new vigor to invention and a fresh impulse to discovery; substitute political strength for political weakness; and make tyranny and anarchy impossible.

The reform I have proposed will make all other reforms easier. It agrees with all that is desirable — politically, socially, or morally. It is simply carrying out, in letter and spirit, the self-evident truths set forth in the Declaration of Independence: that all people are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

These rights are denied when the equal right to land is denied — for people can only live by using land. Equal political rights will not compensate for denying equal rights to the gifts of nature. Without equal rights to land, political liberty is merely the right to compete for employment at starvation wages.

We honor liberty in name and form. We set up statues and sound her praises. But we have not fully trusted her. And as we grow, her demands grow. She will have no half service. For liberty means justice, and justice is the natural law.

Some think liberty’s mission is accomplished when she has abolished hereditary privileges and given the vote. They think she has no further relation to the everyday affairs of life. They have not seen her real grandeur. To them, her poets seem dreamers, her martyrs but fools. Yet it is not for an abstraction that people have toiled and died. In every age, the witnesses of liberty have stood forth.

We speak as if liberty were one thing, and virtue, wealth, knowledge, invention, and independence were others. But liberty is the source, the mother, the necessary condition, of all these. She is to virtue what light is to color; to wealth what sunshine is to grain; to knowledge what eyes are to sight.

In the history of every nation we may read the same truth. It is the universal law, the lesson of the centuries. Our primary social organization is a denial of justice. Allowing one person to own the land — on which and from which others must live — makes them slaves. The degree, or proportion, of slavery increases as material progress goes on.

This subtle alchemy is extracting the fruits of their labor from the masses in every civilized country, in ways they do not realize. It institutes a harder and more hopeless slavery in place of the one that has been destroyed. It brings tyranny out of political freedom, and must soon transform democratic institutions into anarchy. This is what turns the blessings of material progress into a curse, what crowds human beings into squalid tenement houses, and fills the prisons and brothels. This is what plagues people with want and consumes them with greed.

Civilization so based cannot continue. The eternal laws of the universe forbid it. The ruins of dead empires so testify. Justice herself demands that we right this wrong.

It is blasphemy to attribute the suffering and brutality that comes from poverty to the inscrutable decrees of Providence. It is not the Almighty, but we who are responsible for the vice and misery that fester amid our civilization. The Creator showers us with gifts — more than enough for all. But like swine scrambling for food, we tread them in the mire while we tear each other apart.

Suppose at God’s command, for every blade of grass that now grows, two should spring up. And crops increase a hundred-fold. Would poverty be reduced? No — any benefit that would accrue would be temporary. The miraculous new powers could be utilized only through land. And while land is private property, the classes that currently monopolize the bounty of the Creator would monopolize all the new bounty.

Landowners alone would benefit. Rents would increase, but wages would still tend to the starvation point.

This is not merely a deduction of political economy — it is a fact of experience. We have seen it with our own eyes, in our own times.

The effect of invention and improvement on the production of wealth has been precisely the same as an increase in the fertility of nature.

What has been the result? Simply that landowners took all the gain. The wonderful discoveries and inventions of our century have neither increased wages nor lightened toil. The effect has simply been to make the few richer — and the many more helpless!

Can the gifts of the Creator be misappropriated with impunity? Can labor be robbed of its earnings, while greed rolls in wealth? Is it right that many should want, while a few are glutted? Turn to history! On every page we read that such wrongs never go unpunished. The nemesis that follows injustice never falters nor sleeps.

Look around today. Can this continue? The pillars of state tremble, and the foundations of society shudder from forces pent-up beneath. Great new powers, born of progress, have entered the world. They will compel us to a higher plane, or else they will overwhelm us.

The world is pulsing with unrest. There is an irreconcilable conflict between democratic ideas and the aristocratic organization of society. We cannot permit people to vote, then force them to beg. We cannot go on educating them, then refusing them the right to earn a living. We cannot go on chattering about inalienable human rights, then deny the inalienable right to the bounty of the Creator.

While there is still time, we may turn to justice. If we do, the dangers that threaten us will disappear. With want destroyed and greed transformed, equality will take the place of jealousy and fear. Think of the powers now wasted, the fields of knowledge yet to be explored, the possibilities that the wondrous inventions of this century only hint at. Who can presume the heights to which our civilization may soar?

auntyuta Books, Copy Leave a comment May 29, 2015May 29, 2015 5 Minutes

From “The Bet” by Anton Chekhov

“You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don’t want to understand you.”
–from “The Bet” by Anton Chekhov

auntyuta Copy, Uncategorized 4 Comments March 27, 2015 1 Minute

A Conversation with Paul Craig Roberts

JUNE 02, 2014

SHARE ON FACEBOOK SHARE ON TWITTER SHARE ON GOOGLE MORE SHARING SERVICES 61

Transitions; Morals; Alliances and Dissolutions

A Conversation with Paul Craig Roberts

by GARY CORSERI

“This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.

There are men who can’t be bought.

The fireborn are at home in fire.”

–Carl Sandburg

GC: I’ve been reading your work fairly regularly over the past 4 years. Within this year, I’ve reviewed your two most recent books: The Failure of Laissez-Faire Capitalism and How America Was Lost. I know something about your background as Assistant Treasury Secretary during the Reagan Administration, and as a former associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, etc. You and I have corresponded a little, mostly about setting up this interview. I’m glad to meet you in person.

At one point in LOST you relate the story of a friend who had lunch with former colleagues of yours who lamented your shift in politics from a conservative “Reaganite” to someone now writing radical articles (posted, I’ll add, at some of the best websites in the world!). These former colleagues took the attitude of “Poor Paul! He could have been really rich, with a sinecure at a prestigious university—probably a named chair for him–giving talks at Foundation events, getting cut in on special deals—as rich a sell-out as Tony Blair is now! He just had to play along… he just had to tone it down!”

So, my first question is: What’s the matter with you? Why didn’t you take the easy path? What kind of credo drives you?

PCR: Well, you know, being a prostitute is not an easy path! It’s not a role that anybody really wants… and it’s just people who don’t have alternatives who get stuck in that. . Of course, I did have a prestigious university chair…. When I went to Treasury, I had been occupying the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at Georgetown University for 12 years. I think that what some of my former colleagues were saying is that they had gotten rich by selling out. That was their claim to fame—that they were now rich. [He laughs here. He has a good!] So, I felt sorry for them. My friend who related the story told me that he stood up and told them that he didn’t know he was having lunch with a bunch of whores… and he left! [More laughter….]

GC: I like to read history—to get a grip on where we are now, to see the great continuum. You often write about the generation of our Founding Fathers; their intentions in our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence. One of the pictures on your Web articles shows you standing in front of a painting of what looks like a Revolutionary War leader—I think he’s Alexander Hamilton. Can you tell me who is in the painting and how do you identify with him? What values do you share?

PCR: That’s Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury. It’s a copy of the original. It was given to me when I was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. It hasn’t any other kind of meaning…. A lot of people think it implies that I’m a Mason, because the person in the portrait has his hand in his waistcoat—like Napoleon. But, of course, Napoleon wasn’t a Mason! It has been explained to me that the reason for this is that it’s very difficult to paint the human hand, and that the “charge” for a picture with the human hand was much greater, so at the time it was the convention to get the human hand out of the picture! I don’t know if that’s true or not….

GC: It sounds apocryphal!

PCR: That could be….

GC: The reason I mention it… many of my “progressive” friends are critical of Hamilton as the founder of the Central Bank, and so forth…. Do you have any feelings about that?

PCR: When you’re forming a new country, no one really knows exactly what to do, and there were differences among these Founding Fathers… and I am not really the kind of historian to handle this issue. He was right and he was wrong. I think everybody was trying to do what they thought was right, and, on the whole, they succeeded. But… the troubles since then are not entirely due to their inability to anticipate….

GC: Everything changes….

PCR: Well, they knew that power would accrue to Government. That’s why they tried to break it up into 3 coequal branches, hoping that the jealousies between the branches would keep the overall power low. Unfortunately, they did not anticipate the War Against Southern Secession, which destroyed States’ Rights and elevated the power of the Central Government…. Since then, we’ve had other interest groups step forward: the Bankers who wanted the Federal Reserve so that they would have a way of endlessly expanding credit; and, of course, we’ve had the so-called “War on Terror,” which is a way to get rid of the Constitution itself! We can’t really say that the Founding Fathers should have anticipated all of this….

GC: I’m going to ask you a question that most journalists will never ask you. Because you do touch on these matters in your books and in your articles…. You talk about the Arts… You mention in LOST that we need a new Orwell…. I think we need a new Shakespeare as well–someone to help us define our language better, to use it as a cutting tool. So, let me ask you: What is the role of the Arts in creating a new political culture?

PCR: Well, ah, you’re getting over my head here, Gary. I’m not… I don’t have the kind of background to answer that question in any satisfactory way.

GC: Okay… this is somewhat related….In the 60s and early 70s, there was a flourishing of political and cultural energies. Is anything like that happening now? How can we help it along?

PCR: Well, I think there was some output with the Occupy Movement. It was put down with force and intimidation…. In a very real sense, those forces in the 60s and 70s have been bought off…. You don’t see [for example] the kind of Black leadership that you had in the days of Martin Luther King…. Just think about the Rappers—when they came on the scene they were socially conscious, the songs were challenging. Now, some of them are billionaires! I saw the other day that someone was selling out and, ah… Apple… Apple was going to buy his company and the guy’s going to end up a billionaire! So… where are these energetic forces going to come from? That has been the success of the elites! They just co-opt whatever movement comes along.

GC: Okay… thanks for indulging me in my particular field…. Back to your expertise now…. You make a strong case that it wasn’t “supply side” economics that screwed up our economy and destroyed our middle class; rather, that had more to do with the Clinton Administration’s de-regulation and off-shoring of jobs…. Now, one definition of “government” is “to regulate.” When we accepted “deregulation” weren’t we basically “de-governing” ourselves—giving up the protections of government, oversight functions, etc.? And when that happened, didn’t we turn into one big neo-con/neo-liberal hairball—liberalism and conservatism blurred into a crazed Godzilla whose main “business” is war?” How can we get back to better, sensible, more humane regulation and governance?

PCR: I’ve always regarded regulation as a factor of production. If you have too much, you’re in trouble; and if you don’t have enough, you’re in trouble. The judgment of getting the right amount is open to debate. But, certainly, financial deregulation was irresponsible… because we had had the experience of a deregulated financial system [during the Great Depression] and we saw what an unsatisfactory outcome that was! So, repealing safeguards against repeating those mistakes was a great error. And, it was done by the Banks, which essentially purchased enough “Think Tanks” with grants and donations, and enough university faculty—with grants and donations and speaking opportunities–, and purchased enough senators and Congressmen to get the Glass-Steagall Act repealed—and this was a fundamental error! Among other serious mistakes: the position limits on speculators was removed… and now they can control the markets; they no longer provide a positive function, they basically loot! They use their power for their own profits…. Also, allowing the kinds of financial concentration, where you have the banks “too big to fail.” Whoever heard of such a thing? If banks are too big to fail, you don’t have Capitalism! The justification for Capitalism is that it eliminates those corporations that don’t make efficient use of resources. Those are the ones that fail! If you don’t let them fail, then you have a subsidized system that makes inefficient use of resources! All of this was a disaster.

GC: And this all happened under Clinton, basically….

PCR: The repeal of Glass-Steagall happened under Clinton. The subsequent deregulations happened under George W. Bush. For example, when Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodities Futures Trading Corporation, tried to perform her federal duty and regulate over-the-counter derivatives, she was blocked by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Secretary of the Treasury and the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission! They took this to Congress and shouted her down and forced her out of office. The position they had was an ideological position for which I know of no evidence: that markets are “self-regulating”… and, therefore, that markets are better regulated without regulators! This is absolute nonsense! And, it’s hard to believe that people in Congress didn’t know it was nonsense! I attribute it to the influence of the Banks—the money…. And, lo and behold, the senator who led the deregulation was very quickly rewarded—he was made Vice-Chairman of one of the “too big to fail” banks; somebody who’s paid millions of dollars to go around giving speeches! This is the way this System works when private interests become too powerful. In the United States today, the public and private sectors have merged–because the powerful private sectors essentially determine the policy of the government. There isn’t really a government independent of Wall Street, the military-security complex, the Israel Lobby, the mining, energy and timber business, agribusiness—these groups write the laws that Congress passes and the President signs…. And, the Supreme Court has made it even easier for them because it has ruled that it’s legitimate for corporations to purchase the government—

GC: “Citizens United” and—

PCR: That was the first one… and then the most recent one—

GC: Made it even easier—

PCR: In other words, there are no limits for wealthy corporations to elect the government they want! It’s like former President Jimmy Carter said a short time ago: At this time, the United States does not have a “functioning democracy.” Well, he’s right! We have an oligarchy. And the oligarchy rules, and the government is some sort of cloak for the rulers. You never see anything happen against the oligarchs! For example, one of the senior prosecutors for the Securities and Exchange Commission retired recently; and, he gave a speech and said that his most important cases had been blocked by the “higher-ups” who hoped to get good jobs with the banks that they were protecting! This is the way the government works today. When you try to say, we need more regulation—you can’t! The regulators are “captured” by private interests. It was about 30 years ago, that economist George Stigler said that regulatory agencies invariably wind up “captured” by the industries they’re supposed to regulate.

GC: What was his name?

PCR: Stigler…. He won the Nobel Prize… not for that observation. He was a colleague of Milton Freedman… and was quite jealous of Freedman’s renown among ordinary people. Whereas, Stigler had renown only among academics! [Laughter….] At any rate, I don’t think you can simply say that we’ll restore regulation… because the regulations that are on the books can’t be enforced; the higher-ups are protecting those they’re supposed to regulate—so they can get major jobs when they leave government service.

GC: The “revolving door”!

PCR: It’s a sea change. And I think the only way you recover from something like this is through a catastrophe—something comparable to the Great Depression. But even that might not do it, because the way the forces are arrayed now it seems that the so-called forces of “Law and Order” are in behalf of the private interest groups. Look at who busted up the Occupy Movement! And we now have all this information of all the federal agencies being armed to the teeth. I mean, even things like the Social Security Administration, and the Post Office! The other day, I read where the Department of Agriculture has put in a purchase order for submachine guns! So… what is all this about if not to suppress any sort of popular resistance to an economic collapse or catastrophe? And, it may be that even a catastrophe won’t let the United States recover.

GC: Are we past the point of no return?

PCR: Who knows? But, I gave you the reasons that could be the case….

GC: I do think we are in a great transitional period. I’m pessimistic, as you are. I think a lot of people admire your work because you made a transition, a transformation in your life—from being a conservative, Reaganite type to a radical who now writes against the system—

PCR: Well, Gary, let me interrupt you here…. Actually, that’s a mistaken perception of me…. Because, they think if you work in a Democratic Administration it means you’re a liberal or a Leftie; if you work in a Republican, it means you’re a conservative or a Right Winger. But, actually, I was writing against the Establishment of the time! The supply-side movement was an attack on the Keynesian movement. The Keynesians were the Establishment! I wasn’t attacking them for any ideological reasons; I was attacking them because their policies had ceased to work, and we were confronted with stagflation—which meant worsening inflation and worsening of unemployment; and they had no solution except to freeze everybody’s wages, salaries and prices—which was an absurd solution; it wouldn’t have worked! I was as much “on the outs” at that time as I am now. I haven’t made any transition. I just see mistakes and speak against them.

GC: You’re against rigidity. You want to be flexible; apply the best solution for the time….

PCR: I’m against ideological thinking. I’m against unrealistic thinking. I’m against the brutality of corruption! Because it endangers the country. We’ve already lost the Constitution because of this. I’m not a radical when I defend the Constitution! Today, it’s becoming “anti-American” to defend the Constitution! Not even the Supreme Court will defend it! So, it’s not a transition I made from being a conservative to a radical. I’ve always been challenging the Establishment—whether it’s Left Wing or Right Wing. When I began as an Economist in Washington, the Keynesian Establishment was essentially a Democratic Establishment. Today, the Establishment is the “exceptional, indispensable Americans”—which is a self-definition which gives you the notion that you are superior to others. It’s like Putin said a year or so ago in one of his speeches: Americans can say that they are exceptional; but, in fact, God created us all equal!

GC: That was in his New York Times op-ed piece.

PCR: Wherever it was… when you start making these claims that you are some sort of ubermensch, you start sounding like the Nazis. And you then start acting like you have the right to run over other people, other countries… because History chose you to be the hegemon! Well, this is extremely dangerous—not just to others, but it’s dangerous to Americans; because the next step is, you lose your civil liberties. And you’re faced with indefinite detention… or you may be murdered! Simply because somebody in the Executive Branch suspects you might be a terrorist! So, it’s not radical to complain against the loss of the Constitution. That’s a very conservative position—historically.

GC: I think it’s fair to say you’re a moralist—

PCR: I’m not an immoralist, I hope!

GC: I’m wondering about your background…. You mention God, not thinking of ourselves, and so forth… What about your upbringing? Can you tell us how these values were inculcated?

PCR: You know…, it was a different world…. People had to be able to look themselves in the mirror—and that meant you had to have behaved correctly. Today, it has almost turned around! The only way you can look yourself in the mirror is if you got the better of someone else. It’s like the Wall Street culture has taken over…. And, if we look at American foreign policy—what it’s about is prevailing! It’s not about diplomacy; it’s about the application of force. Our diplomacy is: If you don’t do as we say, we’re going to bomb you into the Stone Age. This is not the country I grew up in!

GC: What country did you grow up in? Did you go to Church every week…?

PCR: I grew up in the United States! And the people I grew up with—their values, their way of life—were formed in earlier times; their behavior, their appearance, their way of thinking reflected the kinds of values that were the basis of the country—when such values were still effective… or somewhat effective. It was before those values had been worn out and discarded. So, in that sense, I’m a remnant of when we were finer than we are today…. And the kinds of things that happen today simply couldn’t have happened earlier. I think that a great deal has been lost….

GC: Staying with this theme of things lost; values worth retaining and reclaiming…. You bring up Revolution in some of your recent work, and even in your book, LOST…. Other writers I respect talk openly now about Revolution—Chris Hedges, for example…. I wonder if it’s possible to organize Global Resistance against what is, in fact, a Global Empire? Is there any chance for us to unite globally… and resist?

PCR: I have no way of knowing…. I suspect it would be very difficult. There’s so much disinformation, misinformation and propaganda. I suspect what will lead to change will simply be failure. The United States is probably in a failing mode; because it has probably overreached; its ambitions are unrealistic; and its economic base is being hollowed out. When you spend 20 years exporting your manufacturing and industrial jobs, and all of your tradable professional service jobs—like software engineering, for example—you deprive your own people…. When jobs that American university graduates used to take are now offshored, or filled by H1-B foreign workers who are brought in at much-reduced pay, then you are decimating your own population which is losing its vitality, its ability to rise as all the ladders of mobility are dismantled and there’s no growth in incomes and career prospects become dim. The country that is so foolish as to export its own economy, to give its gross domestic product to other countries—that country hasn’t any prospects. And, if that country’s power also rests heavily on its currency being the “reserve currency”… and the US government erodes confidence in the dollar by incessantly creating new money in order to support new debt—as the Federal Reserve has been doing since the 2007-2008 economic collapse—you undermine the confidence of the world in your currency. And, if they abandon its use as the reserve currency, then your power has gone down the drain…. And we see now, that the Obama regime threatening Russia with sanctions—it shows the complete unawareness of the United States government of its precarious position… because when you threaten a major country with sanctions their alternative is to leave the dollar-paying system, as the Russians are now doing, along with China. So, if you drive them out of the payment system, what happens to your power? And others will follow…. I think the prospect for change will be in some sort of American collapse. It has to be coming because every part of the foundation has been undermined.

GC: Has that been intentional? Some people argue that the globalists actually do want to pauperize the American population, and make it docile, and increase our military strength everywhere while at the same time the people are becoming—

PCR: Gary, that doesn’t make any sense to me…. Because, they’re American-based, and there’s nothing they gain by losing the power base. If Americans are impoverished, certainly the globalists aren’t in control in China. And, they’re not in control of Putin. So…, it can look like that, but I think it’s mainly just hubris and stupidity. What was Hitler thinking when he decided to invade the Soviet Union? He wasn’t!

GC: Well… I don’t think he was positive that Britain would attack him when he did that—when he attacked Poland.

PCR: People make mistakes. And I would never think that, as mistake-prone as people are, that they can organize the world in conspiracies. That implies that people don’t make mistakes—especially these conspiracies that people think have been going on for centuries…. We see every day that people make mistake after mistake… That undermines my calculus that there can be some kind of global conspiracy. Again, what do they gain from undermining their own power-base? Their assets are here….

GC: I do have a question related to this. I’ve been preparing for this, so let me go through it. You can berate me, but l’ll ask it anyway. If you were one of the super-elite and had the power they have, is it not likely that you would conspire with your peers to maintain your power against the masses who opposed you? Like the Titans who would rather eat their children than surrender power to the upstart gods….

PCR: Well, logically, it seems that you would do that. But, what we do know is that most people are so competitive with each other that they can’t get along. I mean, even families can’t hold together! So, when these guys are out competing about who has the biggest yacht… or one’s mad because he’s only got 3 Penthouse playmates, and the other guy’s got half a dozen… and one guy’s mad because he’s only got 10 billion dollars but the other guy’s got 15 billion… and his jet plane is bigger than my jet plane! When you see all this endless competition between individuals among the elite—the notion that they’re somehow going to sit down and agree on how they’re going to do anything…. I mean, nobody can hold together! The Beatles couldn’t hold together! Who had a better thing going than the Beatles? I mean, it’s “first me!” First guy comes along and he says, Okay, I’m going to be the leader of this…. He steps in and soon everybody else is trying to get him out because they want to be the leader! And the policy goes to hell! I mean, in the Reagan Administration—it was all we could do to get the President’s economic program out of his own Administration: it was a drag-out fight! If Treasury had not been willing to take that burden, it wouldn’t have happened. We had to make endless enemies within our own government to do what the President wanted. And there aren’t many people in government who will do that! It just so happened that that particular Treasury had some feisty, fighting people, and they were backed up by the Secretary… That’s rare. Usually, nobody can agree! Or, everybody thinks what he wants was the agreement! And each proceeds on the basis of his own agenda. So, I think that the elites—not all of them… there are some very nice ones—but the politically active ones are mainly concerned with maintaining their wealth and power. As to whether they can form up to something tight that holds a line… like an old-time Mafia group…. See, today the Mafia can’t even hold together! If the Mafia can’t hold together, how can these competitive, rich, educated guys who are jealous of each other?

GC: I’m trying to make a point that… if they can’t hold together against each other… but, against the masses, don’t they hold a solid line?

PCR: I don’t think there’s a “solid line” because I think there are disagreements among elites. Some of them are really nasty, and some of them have a social conscience. I knew Sir James Goldsmith—he was a billionaire; he spent the last years of his life fighting for the people against the E.U.! I knew Roger Milliken. He was a textile magnate, a billionaire. He spent his entire life… not on yachts with Playboy bunnies, but fighting for American jobs—in the Congress! He was totally opposed to all this offshoring of jobs! That doesn’t mean there’s not a whole bunch of bad ones; they do conspire—but they’re conspiring for themselves. Plus, you know, if a group like that was seen as a threat to some particular country—like the United States—the CIA would assassinate them! If the CIA wants to kill every billionaire, they can do it tomorrow. So, it’s really not so much about individuals as it is about corporate interests, or sector interests—agribusiness, Wall Street–those guys seem to fix it somehow so that all of them can gain from it, even though they try to cut each other’s throats! That’s a different kind of maneuvering—and that’s the kind we have to be worried about at this time.

GC: You make some solid, perhaps indisputable points, that there isn’t one unified “elite.” That some of the worst aspects of human nature—our selfishness, greed, hubris, even stupidity—militate against such unity. Still, having no desire to join that group… I wonder about the possibility of alliances among us children of a lesser God? Ralph Nader has a new book, UNSTOPPABLE. He proposes an alliance of Left and Right. I’ve been wondering for a long time: Is there any way we can work together and transcend these political divisions, these ideological divisions, and find common ground?

PCR: I have no idea. I have nothing against it…. You know, I’m not an activist. Nader is. I’m a thinker, I analyze. I can see where explanations or perceptions are wrong, and how wrong explanations, and wrong economic theory, and wrong perceptions–like the “Russian threat”—can lead to total disasters. I try to tell people what really is going on. I think we actually do live in a matrix. And our perceptions are controlled by propaganda: some of it intentional, some unintentional. Some… just because people don’t think things through…. I try to show people what reality is… in so far as I can ascertain it. At least I can show them a different way of seeing what is happening. That doesn’t make me a political activist… because I’m not trying to organize people, I’m trying to wake them up, trying to make them aware. And, what they do with that—I don’t know…. If they organize successfully, and they can find leaders capable of pulling off something like that—that’s great! I don’t really know the answer about forming alliances. I suspect that aspects of the matrix are falling away; people are starting to realize that American propaganda doesn’t make sense; that we destroyed 7 countries in the 21^st century—in whole or in part. I don’t think many people are falling for the propaganda that Russia invaded Ukraine and stole Crimea. I don’t think that’s the perception in Europe. It could be that the ability of the formal propaganda—the intentional lies–may be losing its convincing power. If so, it makes it easier for people to escape the unintentional lies, or the misperceived ways of thinking. So, there could be big change…. If the E.U. failed, it would have a huge impact on American power. We would no longer be able to claim that we had a “coalition of the willing” or that we were acting in the name of NATO. The aggressive behavior of the United States would be recognized for what it is—war crimes! If Germany, for example, were to say: Look, we have too many relations with Russia, we see the future here….

GC: So, you must feel heartened by the E.U. parliamentary elections this past week—the rise of the “Euro-skeptics”—

PCR: Those elections were not about “race” and immigrants. They were about dissatisfaction… with the whole concept of the E.U.—the loss of national sovereignty. The Greeks, the Italians, the Portuguese, the Irish—they feel like they’ve lost their sovereignty. The only ones that are “holding on” are the Germans, the French and the British—so it starts to look like the E.U. is some sort of Anglo-German-Franco Empire. And even the Germans, French and Brits have their issues with it! The Germans don’t like it that their government is a puppet state of Washington!

GC: So, this is one positive thing that’s happening now—

PCR: These dissolutions are positive. But, I don’t have a plan on how to bring them about. I think if you organized such a plan, you’d be met with overwhelming opposition…. But, if you haven’t got a plan—it’s more than likely to happen! To wind this up: I think that humans are capable of every kind of error, every kind of stupid mistake. And this means that holding anything together, even a family, is difficult. I mean… half of the marriages end in divorce! So, you’ve got two people in love, two people intimate together, and they can’t hold together. So, somehow you’re going to have a plot that’s going to overwhelm the world? It’s not going to happen! I think you’re going to have continuing errors, crises, and mistakes. And I think the United States has made a massive number of them since the Clinton Administration. All the kinds of restraints that George H. W. Bush had in foreign policy—remember the first Iraq War? That was to get them out of Kuwait! We didn’t go on to attack Iraq! This is the kind of restraint that lets a country continue to exist! But, since that time we’ve seen the most reckless kinds of behavior. I think it’s turning the world against us, and the consequences could be catastrophic. I think we can place our hope in the fact that what’s here today won’t stand… because it’s shaky and the mistakes are multiplying. It’s going to come down. And, when it does–that gives the opportunity to change. And to try to bring that about through some revolutionary movement is not going to succeed. But, it will succeed on its own.

GC: To quote Shakespeare: “the readiness is all.”

PCR: Yeah… right….

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, and a former columnist for Business Week. He held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at Georgetown University for a dozen years. He has authored several books, including, “The Supply-Side Revolution” (translated and published in China in 2013) and “How America Was Lost” (2014). His official home page is: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/.

Gary Corseri has published novels and poetry collections, and his dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere. He has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Center and has taught in US prisons and public schools, and at US and Japanese universities. Contact: gary_corseri@comcast.net.

auntyuta Article, Copy, Documentary 2 Comments January 15, 2015 22 Minutes

Posts navigation

Newer posts