Palestine solidarity: Second week of protests across US campuses
The Common Ills
Palestine solidarity: Second week of protests across US campuses
The Common Ills
Friday, April 26, 2024. Calls for cease-fire increase as campus activism in the US soars -- even as some outlets ignore the students and their bravery.
Baby Sabreen al-Sakani was delivered by Caesarean section in a Rafah hospital shortly after midnight on Sunday.
Amid chaotic scenes doctors resuscitated the baby, using a hand pump to push air into her lungs.
However she died on Thursday and has been buried next to her mother after whom she was named.
Baby Sabreen was among 16 children killed in two air strikes in Rafah last weekend. All were killed in a bombardment targeting the housing complex where they lived.
[. . .]
Sabreen's mother, also called Sabreen, was seven-and-a-half months pregnant when the Israeli air strike on the al-Sakani family home took place just before midnight on Saturday as she, her husband Shukri and their three-year-old daughter Malak were asleep.
Sabreen al-Sakani: one name among the more than 34,000 people killed in Gaza since 7 October. Sabreen was 30 weeks pregnant when she died after sustaining terrible head injuries in an Israeli airstrike in the south of the enclave.
Thankfully, her baby daughter lived after being delivered by emergency Caesarean section, at a hospital in Rafah last weekend. With more on this story - and the latest on the war in Gaza that was sparked by Hamas-led terror attacks in southern Israel – UN News’s Daniel Johnson spoke to Dominic Allen, from the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA.
I went to MIT, class of 1969. It is now 2024 not the late sixties, but rebellion for change is again in the air. I think it is just getting revved up. I can feel it. I’ll bet you can feel it too. And maybe, hopefully, it will not crescendo any time soon but will instead persist. And perhaps, hopefully, it will seek more than immediate changes. And maybe, and I think I can feel this too, it will be much smarter than we were back then, back in 1968.
The rebellious events at Columbia last week have spurred rebellions of students and sometimes others at a rapidly enlarging community of campuses, including at my personally much-despised alma mater, MIT. [Note, I am not unbiased about campus rebellion or about MIT. The former undergirds mass change, over and over. Have at it. The latter is an instance of elite, academic, grossly rotten business as usual. When I was president of MIT’s student body, during steadily growing and intensifying rebellion, among the epithets I used for MIT was “Dachau on the Charles” because of its war research. Some on campus were too literal or too dense to see why I named it thus. For them, I would acknowledge the main difference, which was that MIT’s victims were not local, like Dachau’s—no, MIT’s victims way back then were half a torn-up world away in Vietnam enduring American carpet bombing. And regarding Dachau, MIT’s victims were not hanging like burned out lightbulbs in MIT’s corridors nor lying breathless like fish out of water gassed in MIT’s labs. And now, 56 years later, MIT’s current victims are way off in Gaza enduring Israeli carpet bombing (but with American bombs). They are not being forcefully exiled from MIT’s classes, dorms, playing fields, and clinic—not yet, anyway. My point: history sometimes repeats, sometimes with ironic differences, sometimes with healthy differences.
A number of people were arrested at Ohio State University in Columbus after demonstrators refused to leave part of campus Thursday night, a university spokesperson said.
The number of arrests was not immediately available.
“Well established university rules prohibit camping and overnight events. Demonstrators exercised their first amendment rights for several hours and were then instructed to disperse,” spokesman Ben Johnson said in an email.
“Individuals who refused to leave after multiple warnings were arrested and charged with criminal trespass,” he said.
The Columbus Dispatch newspaper reported that its reporters witnessed at least a dozen people being taken into custody.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza have rocked campuses from coast to coast over the past week amid an intensifying police crackdown. At the University of Texas in Austin, school officials called in local and state police, including some on horseback, who violently broke up a student encampment on campus. At least 50 people were arrested, including at least one journalist. Some faculty at UT Austin are going on strike today to protest the police crackdown.
Meanwhile, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University continues a week after over a hundred students were arrested in a failed attempt by the university administration to clear the demonstration. University President Minouche Shafik had said on Tuesday — had set on Tuesday a midnight deadline to reach an agreement on clearing an encampment, but the school extended negotiations for another 48 hours. On a visit to campus Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson called on Shafik to resign.
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: I am here today joining my colleagues in calling on President Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos. As speaker of the House, I am committing today that the Congress will not be silent as Jewish students are expected to run for their lives and stay home from their classes, hiding in fear.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined in New York by Sarah King, member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest. She is Jewish, one of the students arrested at the encampment last week who’s now suspended. We’re also joined by Joshua Sklar, a graduate student at University of Texas Austin, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace Austin, who was at Wednesday’s protest.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Josh, there were more than 50 arrests at UT Austin. If you can respond to the House speaker, who’s saying that these encampments around the country are antisemitic and pro-Hamas?
JOSHUA SKLAR: It’s absolutely ridiculous. I was there with a contingent of Jewish students, and we were received very warmly. There were even Jewish Zionists there, and they were not harassed at all. In fact, I would say that they probably felt safer than the majority of protesters.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sarah King, if you could describe what’s happening now at Columbia University and your own position? You were suspended?
SARAH KING: Yes, I was one of the over 100 students who was arrested as part of a peaceful protest in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, and I’m one of the student who’s been suspended, as well, so I’m currently not allowed to be on campus. And I have to say it’s — the camp itself is very beautiful. It’s been a real place of interfaith celebration and solidarity, in support of the people of Gaza, who are now at over 200 days of genocide. But, you know, the threat is really coming from Columbia University, which has sent the police on hundreds of its students who are entrusted to its care.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk, Sarah, about what’s happened, how you got suspended and your treatment? I’ve been talking to a number of Columbia and Barnard students who said that some of them were given 15 minutes to get out of their dorm, and your meal card canceled, as you’re banned from campus, as well.
SARAH KING: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I’m one of the lucky ones, because I live off campus. But many students live in Columbia housing, and so they were evicted from their homes or locked out from their homes, probably illegally in many cases. We’re looking into it. And they lost access to their normal food. I had an undergraduate who is low-income and was staying with me, because she was evicted with no notice and lost access to her meal plan.
And it’s really very concerning the way Columbia uses the threat of — initially it was just — “just,” quote-unquote — the threat of housing, the threat of loss of food to try to — you know, as a cudgel to get students into the correct political line that is best for its pocketbook, its investment portfolio. And now they’re threatening to set the National Guard on us, risking another Jackson State, another Kent State, where students have been killed because the National Guard were set on students. And they’re willing to risk the threat of violence at their hands because we’re not, you know, consistent with what’s best for their board of trustees or for their portfolios.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Sarah, what about your response to Mike Johnson being invited to speak at Columbia University on campus yesterday?
SARAH KING: Yeah. I mean, first, I think it’s shameful that he was allowed there. Like, I myself am not allowed on campus. I’m, you know, one of many talented and promising students with bright futures who have been banned from campus, but Mike Johnson, who is an open racist and white supremacist, along with people like Gavin McInnes, the head of the Proud Boys, they were welcomed on campus yesterday.
And to me, that really tells the story of what’s at stake here, which is that, you know, the students fighting for Palestinian liberation are part of an interracial coalition — so many Jewish students, Muslim students, Black, Brown, Arab students — working together for the cause of freedom, on one side, and then, on the other side, you have political opportunists, like the House speaker, who, you know, will take any excuse they can get to come after that kind of interfaith, multigenerational coalition fighting for freedom. And right now it happens to be under the guise of something like antisemitism. But, you know, there’s no substance to it at all. And I think anybody who came to campus and saw, the worst prosecution that the Jewish students on campus are facing is from Columbia University. We were disproportionately banned by Columbia because so many of us are part of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment trying to prevent a genocide in our name.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Joshua Sklar, wrote a piece in The Austin Chronicle. “We need a ceasefire now,” it was called, the subtitle, “Anti-Palestinian violence is not 'on the other side of the globe.' It’s here in Austin, too.” If you can talk about that and how protesters were treated yesterday? You had riot police on horseback?
JOSHUA SKLAR: Yeah. I think that there’s been this narrative that there’s been rampant antisemitism. And this simply is not the case. The people who are being targeted are Muslim students, Arab students, and especially Palestinian students. Police came in on horseback, and they attacked protesters. I heard from other students that during an earlier part of the protest, they were clearly targeting Brown people and women. I wasn’t there personally, but this is what I heard.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask Sarah King a final question. We have 10 seconds. And that is, 48-hour extension goes ’til tonight. What are the plans? Ten seconds, Sarah.
SARAH KING: You know, I think most of the people at the encampment have already agreed to risk arrest, and they won’t move unless moved by force or until Columbia concedes to our demands, which are for divestment, amnesty and financial transparency.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us, Sarah King, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and Joshua Sklar at UT Austin. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
At the University of Texas in Austin, school officials called in local and state police, who violently crushed a student attempt to set up an encampment on the university’s South Mall. At least 50 people were arrested, including at least one journalist. Some faculty at UT Austin are going on strike today to protest the police crackdown. In a statement, the teachers wrote, “We have witnessed police punching a female student, knocking over a legal observer, dragging a student over a chain link fence, and violently arresting students simply for standing at the front of the crowd.”
In Massachusetts, police made at least 108 arrests as officers broke up a student encampment at Emerson College in Boston overnight. Meanwhile, students at Harvard University defied school orders and began a tent encampment at Harvard Yard, which had been closed on Tuesday.
And earlier this morning, police moved in and started arresting Princeton students as they were setting up their own Gaza solidarity encampment.
Tell me how this is not the actions of a police state. Go on. I'll wait.This police behavior has a specific strategy: to scare everyone away from exercising our right to protest. It is disgusting. This woman is not an enemy combatant; she's a citizen exercising her rights… https://t.co/7qWhoOX2ZS— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) April 26, 2024
The force acknowledged that chemical irritants had been released as part of crowd control measures, though they said it was in response to objects being thrown at officers.
Atlanta Police also confirmed using chemical irritants but denied reports they had fired rubber bullets at protesters.
A day after Columbia University officials warned it may call on the National Guard to remove nonviolent student protesters who have been occupying campus lawns since last week in solidarity with Gaza, advocacy group Palestine Legal on Thursday filed a federal civil rights complaint demanding an investigation into the school's "discriminatory treatment of Palestinian students and their allies."
The school discriminated against pro-Palestinian protesters last week when President Minouche Shafik summoned New York Police Department officers in riot gear to arrest more than 100 students, said Palestine Legal.
The complaint details how the escalation against students, who have set up an encampment on campus to demand Columbia divest from companies that work with the Israeli government and to support calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, is part of a monthslong pattern of the university's targeting of pro-Palestinian students.
According to Palestine Legal, students of all backgrounds who have demanded an end to Israel's U.S.-backed massacre of Palestinians in Gaza "have been the target of extreme anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic harassment, including receiving multiple death threats, being harassed for wearing keffiyehs or hijab, doxxed, stereotyped, being treated differently by high-ranking administrators including... Shafik, an attack with a chemical agent that led to at least 10 students requiring hospitalization and dozens of others, including a Palestinian student, seeking medical attention, and more."
Faculty from universities across the country have begun to mobilize in solidarity with the student movement for Palestine. From NYU, where faculty linked arms to protect students from police; to Columbia University, where faculty engaged in a solidarity walkout with the Gaza Solidarity Encampment; to Barnard College, where faculty planned a sick-out in defense of their students — faculty are rising up in defense of their students. At the University of Texas Austin, faculty have announced a 24-hour work stoppage as part of the fight against student repression.
The action is the first so far in which faculty are using their power as workers to halt university operations in solidarity with student protestors. They are leveraging the fact that they make the university run in order to grind it to a halt. As we noted recently, while the past few years have seen many graduate worker and contingent faculty strikes, it’s very unusual in recent decades for faculty to mobilize to this extent outside of the context of collective bargaining.
Notably, public sector workers in Texas have serious restrictions on collective bargaining, meaning they do not have the ability to organize unions and negotiate from those unions. In other words, these workers are acting as a united group without having a union. Additionally, Texas has a full ban on public sector workers engaging in work stoppages — this means faculty at UT Austin are acting together, without a union, to break the law and stop work in order to protect the student movement. This action shows that, even if workers have no current legal pathway for unionization, they can still act as a union — in fact, public sector collective bargaining rights were won through strikes like these.
A sense of delight has filled the city’s opinion pages. The New York Post editorial board (4/18/24) hailed both the clampdown on protests and Congress’s push to ensure that such drastic action against free speech was taken: “We’re glad to see Shafik stand up…. Congress deserves some credit for putting educrats’ feet to the fire on this issue.” The paper added, “Academia has been handling anti-Israel demonstrations with kid gloves.” In other words, universities have been allowing too many people to think and speak critically about an important issue of the day.
In “At Columbia, the Grown-Ups in the Room Take a Stand,” New York Times columnist Pamela Paul (4/18/24) hailed the eviction, saying of the encampment that for the “passer-by, the fury and self-righteous sentiment on display was chilling,” and that for supporters of Israel, “it must be unimaginably painful.” In other words, conservative pundits have decided that campus safe spaces where speech is banned to protect the feelings of listeners are good, depending on the issue. Would Paul (no relation!) favor bans on pro-Taiwan or pro-Armenia demonstrations because they could offend Chinese and Turkish students?
And for Michael Oren, a prominent Israeli politico, Columbia students hadn’t suffered enough. He said of Columbia in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (4/19/24):
Missing was an admission of the university’s failure to enforce the measures it had enacted to protect its Jewish community. [Shafik] didn’t address how, under the banner of free speech, Columbia became inhospitable to Jews. She didn’t acknowledge how incendiary demonstrations such as the encampment were the product of the university’s inaction.
Shafik had assured her congressional interrogators that Columbia had already suspended 15 students for speaking out for Palestinian human rights, suspended two student groups—Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 11/10/23)—and had even terminated an instructor (New York Times, 4/17/24).
Northwestern University changed its student code of conduct Thursday morning to bar tents on its suburban Chicago campus as student activists set up an encampment.
Groups including Jewish Voice for Peace and Educators for Justice in Palestine said the encampment on the Evanston campus was “a safe space for those who want to show their support of the Palestinian people.” The students want the university to divest from Israel, among other things.
Dozens participated as University President Michael Schill issued an email saying the university had enacted an “interim addendum” to its student code to bar tents, among other things, and warned of disciplinary actions including suspension, expulsion and criminal charges.
“The goal of this addendum is to balance the right to peacefully demonstrate with our goal to protect our community, to avoid disruptions to instruction and to ensure university operations can continue unabated,” Schilling said.
Student-led protests over the war in Gaza were widening in Europe on Friday as activists in Britain and France follow the lead of a campus demonstrations spreading in the US.
Protesters in Paris blocked an entrance to elite university Sciences Po on Friday, refusing to back down after a tent “occupation” was broken up by police a day earlier.
Activists at University College London were planning a rally in the name of a “global student movement for Palestine”, taking inspiration from protests at New York’s Columbia University.
Groups of students in both cities are demanding that university bosses cut ties with Israel and give free rein to pro-Palestinian protesters.
In Berlin, 150 police officers moved to ban a protest camp set up near the German parliament, citing repeated criminal offences. It was not clear whether the activists were students.
The US unrest inspired by Columbia’s tent occupation has meanwhile continued to spread, with more than 200 people arrested overnight at campus protests Los Angeles, Boston and Austin.
The U.S. State Department’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Hala Rharrit, resigned Thursday, citing her opposition to the Biden administration’s policy on Israel’s war in Gaza. Her departure marks at least the third resignation in the department since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
“I resigned April 2024 after 18 years of distinguished service in opposition to the United States’ Gaza policy,” Rharrit wrote on LinkedIn.
When asked about Rharrit’s resignation, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters that the department offers avenues for employees to express dissent when they disagree with the decisions of senior leaders.
Rharrit joins a list of ex-officials that includes Annelle Sheline, who worked on human rights issues, and Josh Paul, who worked on arms sales.
Gaza remains under assault. Day 203 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." THE NATIONAL notes, "At least 34,356 Palestinians have been killed and 77,368 wounded in Israel's military offensive since October 7, Gaza's Health Ministry said on Friday. The ministry said 51 people were killed and 75 injured in the 24-hour reporting period." Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:
Footage published online and verified by Al Jazeera shows Israeli soldiers preventing a number of young men from entering the mosque and assaulting some of them.
Still, thousands of people made it to Islam’s third holiest site to perform Friday prayers.
In recent months Israeli authorities have imposed restrictions on Muslim worshippers wanting to pray at Al-Aqsa. Only men over the age of 55 or women over 50 are allowed to enter and all must have a valid permit. This means that the site is not accessible to the vast majority of Palestinians.
Meanwhile, the Islamic Waqf department on Thursday said more than 1,000 settlers stormed the courtyard of the mosque.
The scale and complexity of the 2020-2024 Global Economic and Social Crisis far surpasses all previous “depressions” including the 2007-2009 Recession which was categorized as the most serious economic meltdown since the Great Depression of 1929.
We are currently at the crossroads of the Most Serious Economic and Social Crisis in World History. It is an outright war against all humanity: the Planet’s 8 billion people.
The current global crisis (2020-2023) –which is ongoing– has literally disrupted and destroyed people’s lives Worldwide in the course of the last four years.
Everything is interrelated:
The focus of the article below (written at the height of the 2007-2009 Economic Crisis) is on
Needless to say, these concepts have a direct bearing on our understanding of the ongoing 2020-2024 Economic and Social Crisis.
Access to Food, Water and Energy pertains to the “Reproduction of Real Life” which is the very basis of human civilization.
“Reproduction of Real Life” is not limited to “Basic Human Needs” (e.g. privatization of water, reproduction of the agricultural cycle). It also pertains to the concurrent reproduction of the institutions of civil society including schools and universities, science, knowledge, social and family relations, the structures of the nation state, justice, culture, history, international relations, all of which are currently in jeopardy.
The U.S. Congress set up a Commission on “Population Growth and the American Future”. (See Center for Research on Population and Security).
Under the helm of Henry Kissinger, the Commission’s unspoken objective was to curb World population with a view to serving US strategic and national security interests.
It is worth noting that the NSSSM 200 has been the source of inspiration of Klaus Schwab, et al in the formulation of the World Economic Forum’s Depopulation Agenda.
What is at stake is a project formulated by the financial elites to undermine the “Reproduction of Real Life”, whereby large sectors of the World population will be precipitated into abysmal poverty and despair.
Michel Chossudovsky, February 14, 2024
***
Global Research, June 05, 2008
***
The sugar coated bullets of the “free market” are killing our children. The act to kill is instrumented in a detached fashion through computer program trading on the New York and Chicago mercantile exchanges, where the global prices of rice, wheat and corn are decided upon.
Poverty is not solely the result of policy failures at a national level. People in different countries are being impoverished simultaneously as a result of a global market mechanism. A small number of financial institutions and global corporations have the ability to determine, through market manipulation, the standard of living of millions of people around the World.
We are at the crossroads of the most serious economic and social crisis in modern history. The process of global impoverishment unleashed at the outset of the 1980s debt crisis has reached a major turning point, leading to the simultaneous outbreak of famines in all major regions of the developing World.
There are many complex features underlying the global economic crisis pertaining to financial markets, the decline in production, the collapse of State institutions and the rapid development of a profit-driven war economy. What is rarely mentioned in this analysis, is how this global economic restructuring forcibly impinges on three fundamental necessities of life: food, water and fuel.
The provision of food, water and fuel is a precondition of civilized society: they are necessary factors for the survival of the human species. In recent years, the prices of these three variables has increased dramatically at the global level, with devastating economic and social consequences.
These three essential goods or commodities, which in a real sense determine the reproduction of economic and social life on planet earth, are under the control of a small number of global corporations and financial institutions.
Both the State as well as the gamut of international organizations –often referred to as the “international community”– serve the unfettered interests of global capitalism. The main intergovernmental bodies including the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions and the World Trade Organizations (WTO) have endorsed the New World Order on behalf of their corporate sponsors. Governments in both developed and developing countries have abandoned their historical role of regulating key economic variables as well as ensuring a minimum livelihood for their people.
Protest movements directed against the hikes in the prices of food and gasoline have erupted simultaneously in different regions of the World. The conditions are particularly critical in Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, India, Bangladesh. Spiraling food and fuel prices in Somalia have precipitated the entire country into a situation of mass starvation, coupled with severe water shortages. A similar and equally serious situation prevails in Ethiopia.
Other countries affected by spiraling food prices include Indonesia, the Philippines, Liberia, Egypt, Sudan, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Eritrea, a long list of impoverished countries…, not to mention those under foreign military occupation including Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.
Most of these labourers in Kurigram go hungry in these three months because of sheer unemployment and a rise in the price of essentials
The provision of food, water and fuel are no longer the object of governmental or intergovernmental regulation or intervention, with a view to alleviating poverty or averting the outbreak of famines.
The fate of millions of human beings is managed behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms as part of a profit driven agenda.
And because these powerful economic actors operate through a seemingly neutral and “invisible” market mechanism, the devastating social impacts of engineered hikes in the prices of food, fuel and water are casually dismissed as the result of supply and demand considerations.
Largely obfuscated by official and media reports, both the ” food crisis” and the “oil crisis” are the result of the speculative manipulation of market values by powerful economic actors.
We are not dealing with distinct and separate food, fuel and water “crises” but with a global process of economic and social restructuring.
The dramatic price hikes of these three essential commodities is not haphazard. All three variables, including the prices of basic food staples, water for production and consumption and fuel are the object of a process of deliberate and simultaneous market manipulation.
At the heart of the food crisis is the rising price of food staples coupled with a dramatic increase in the price of fuel.
Concurrently, the price of water which is an essential input into agricultural and industrial production, social infrastructure, public sanitation and household consumption has increased abruptly as a result of a Worldwide movement to privatize water resources.
We are dealing with a major economic and social upheaval, an unprecedented global crisis, characterized by the triangular relationship between water, food and fuel: three fundamental variables, which together affect the very means of human survival.
In very concrete terms, these price hikes impoverish and destroy peoples lives. Moreover, the Worldwide collapse in living standards is occurring at a time of war. It is intimately related to the military agenda. The war in the Middle East bears a direct relationship to the control over oil and water reserves.
While water is not at present an internationally trade commodity in the same way as oil and food staples, it is also the object of market manipulation through the privatization of water.
– the major Wall Street banks and financial houses, including the institutional speculators which play a direct role in commodity markets including the oil and food markets
-The Anglo-American oil and energy giants, including British Petroleum (BP), ExxonMobil, Chevron-Texaco, Royal Dutch Shell
–The biotech-agribusiness conglomerates, which own the intellectual property rights on seeds and farm inputs. The biotech companies are also major actors on the NY and Chicago mercantile exchanges.
–The water giants including Suez, Veolia and Bechtel-United Utilities, involved in the extensive privatization of the World’s water resources.
–The Anglo-American military-industrial complex which includes the big five US defense contractors (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grunman, Boeing and General Dynamics) in alliance with British Aerospace Systems Corporation (BAES) constitutes a powerful overlapping force, closely aligned with Wall Street, the oil giants and the agribusiness-biotech conglomerates.
The movement in global prices on the New York and Chicago mercantile exchanges bears no relationship to the costs of producing oil. The spiraling price of crude oil is not the result of a shortage of oil. It is estimated that the cost of a barrel of oil in the Middle East does not exceed 15 dollars. The costs of a barrel of oil extracted from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, is of the order of $30 (Antoine Ayoub, Radio Canada, May 2008)
The price of crude oil is currently in excess of $120 a barrel. This market price is largely the result of the speculative onslaught.
Fuel enters into the production of virtually all areas of manufacturing, agriculture and the services economy.
The hikes in fuel prices have contributed, in all major regions of the World, to precipitating tens of thousands of small and medium sized businesses into bankruptcy as well as undermining and potentially paralyzing the channels of domestic and international trade.
The increased cost of gasoline at the retail level is leading to the demise of local level economies, increased industrial concentration and a massive centralization of economic power in the hands of a small number of global corporations. In turn, the hikes in fuel backlash on the urban transit system, schools and hospitals, the trucking industry, intercontinental shipping, airline transportation, tourism, recreation and most public services.
The rise in fuel prices unleashes a broader inflationary process which results in a compression of real purchasing power and a consequent Worldwide decline in consumer demand. All major sectors of society, including the middle classes in the developed countries are affected.
These price movements are dictated by the commodity markets. They are the result of speculative trade in index funds, futures and options on major commodity markets including the London ICE, the New York and Chicago mercantile exchanges.
This upheaval in the global economy is deliberate. The State’s economic and financial policies are controlled by private corporate interests. Speculative trade is not the object of regulatory policies. The economic depression contributes to wealth formation, to enhancing the power of a handful of global corporations
According to William Engdahl;
“… At least 60% of the 128 per barrel price of crude oil comes from unregulated futures speculation by hedge funds, banks and financial groups using the London ICE Futures and New York NYMEX futures exchanges and uncontrolled inter-bank or Over-The-Counter trading to avoid scrutiny. US margin rules of the government’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission allow speculators to buy a crude oil futures contract on the Nymex, by having to pay only 6% of the value of the contract.
At today’s price of $128 per barrel, that means a futures trader only has to put up about $8 for every barrel. He borrows the other $120. This extreme ‘leverage’ of 16 to 1 helps drive prices to wildly unrealistic levels and offset bank losses in sub-prime and other disasters at the expense of the overall population. (See More on the real reason behind high oil prices, Global Research, May 2008)
Among the main players in the speculative market for crude oil are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, British Petroleum (BP), the French banking conglomerate Société Générale, Bank of America, the largest Bank in the US, and Switzerland’s Mercuria. (See Miguel Angel Blanco, La Clave, Madrid, June 2008)
British Petroleum controls the London based International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), which is one of the world’s largest energy futures and options exchanges. Among IPE’s major shareholders are Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
According to Der Spiegel, Morgan Stanley is one of the main institutional actors in the London based speculative oil market (IPE). According to Le Monde, France’s Société Générale together with Bank of America and Deutsche Bank have been involved in spreading rumors with a view to pushing up the price of crude oil. (See Miguel Angel Blanco, La Clave, Madrid, June 2008)
The global food crisis, characterized by major hikes in the prices of basic food staples, has spearheaded millions of people around the World into starvation and chronic deprivation.
According to the FAO, the price of grain staples has increased by 88% since March 2007. The price of wheat has increased by 181% over a three year period. The price of rice has increased by 50% over the last three months (See Ian Angus, Food Crisis: “The greatest demonstration of the historical failure of the capitalist model”, Global Research, April 2008):
The price of rice has tripled over a five year period, from approximately 600$ a ton in 2003 to more than 1800$ a ton in May 2008. (see chart below)
“The most popular grade of Thailand rice sold for $198 a ton, five years ago and $323 a ton a year ago. In April 2008, the price hit $1,000. Increases are even greater on local markets — in Haiti, the market price of a 50 kilo bag of rice doubled in one week at the end of March 2008. These increases are catastrophic for the 2.6 billion people around the world who live on less than US$2 a day and spend 60% to 80% of their incomes on food. Hundreds of millions cannot afford to eat” (Ibid)
The main actors in the grain market are Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). These two corporate giants control a large share of the global grain market. They are also involved in speculative transactions in futures and options on the NYMEX and the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). In the US, “the world’s largest grower of GM crops, Cargill, ADM and competitor Zen Noh between them control 81 per cent of all maize exports and 65 per cent of all soyabean exports.” ( Greg Muttitt, Control Freaks, Cargill and ADM, The Ecologist, March, 2001)
RICE
WHEAT
CORN
Source: Chicago Board of Trade
Since the early 1980s coinciding with the onslaught of the debt crisis, the gamut of neoliberal macroeconomic policy reforms have largely contributed to undermining local agriculture. Over the last 25 years, food farming in developing countries has been destabilized and destroyed by the imposition of IMF-World Bank reforms.
Commodity dumping of grain surpluses from the US, Canada and the European Union has led to the demise of food self-sufficiency and the destruction of the local peasant economy. In turn, this process has resulted in multibillion dollar profits for Western agribusiness, resulting from import contracts by developing countries, which are no longer able to produce their own food.
These preexisting historical conditions of mass poverty have been exacerbated and aggravated by the recent surge in grain prices, which have led in some cases to the doubling of the retail price of food staples.
The price hikes has also been exacerbated by the use of corn to produce ethanol. In 2007, global production of corn was of the order of 12.32 billion bushels of which 3.2 billion were used for ethanol production. Almost 40 percent of corn production in the US will be channeled towards ethanol
Coinciding with the establishment the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, another important historical change has occurred in the structure of global agriculture.
Under the articles of agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO)), the food giants have been granted unrestricted freedom to enter the seeds’ markets of developing countries.
The acquisition of exclusive “intellectual property rights” over plant varieties by international agro-industrial interests, also favors the destruction of bio-diversity.
Acting on behalf of a handful of biotech conglomerates GMO seeds have been imposed on farmers, often in the context of “food aid programs”. In Ethiopia, for instance, kits of GMO seeds were handed out to impoverished farmers with a view to rehabilitating agricultural production in the wake of a major drought.
The GMO seeds were planted, yielding a harvest. But then the farmer came to realize that the GMO seeds could not be replanted without paying royalties to Monsanto, Arch Daniel Midland et al.
Then, the farmers discovered that the seeds would harvest only if they used the farm inputs including the fertilizer, insecticide and herbicide, produced and distributed by the biotech agribusiness companies. Entire peasant economies were locked into the grip of the agribusiness conglomerates.
The main biotech giants in GMO include Monsanto, Syngenta, Aventis, DuPont, Dow Chemical, Cargill and Arch Daniel Midland.
With the widespread adoption of GMO seeds, a major transition has occurred in the structure and history of settled agriculture since its inception 10,000 years ago.
The reproduction of seeds at the village level in local nurseries has been disrupted by the use of genetically modified seeds. The agricultural cycle, which enables farmers to store their organic seeds and plant them to reap the next harvest has been broken. This destructive pattern – invariably resulting in famine – is replicated in country after country leading to the Worldwide demise of the peasant economy.
At the June 2008 FAO Rome Summit on the food crisis, politicians and economic analysts alike embraced the free market consensus: the outbreak of famines was presented as a result of the usual supply, demand and climatic considerations, beyond the control of policy-makers. “The solution”: channel emergency relief to affected areas under the auspices of the World Food Program (WFP). Do not intervene with the interplay of market forces.
Ironically, these ” expert opinions” are refuted by the data on global grain production: the FAO forecasts for world cereal production point to a record output in 2008.
Contradicting their own textbook explanations, World prices are, according to the World Bank, expected to remain high, despite the forcasted increased supply of food staples.
State regulation of the prices of food staples and gasoline is not considered an option in the corridors of the FAO and the World Bank. And of course that is what is taught in the economics departments of America’s most prestigious universities.
Meanwhile, local level farmgate prices barely cover production costs, spearheading the peasant economy into bankruptcy.
According to UN sources, which vastly underestimate the seriousness of the water crisis, one billion people worldwide (15% of the World population) have no access to clean water “and 6,000 children die every day because of infections linked to unclean water” (BBC News, 24 March 2004)
A handful of global corporations including Suez, Veolia, Bechtel-United Utilities, Thames Water and Germany’s RWE-AG are acquiring control and ownership over public water utilities and waste management. Suez and Veolia hold about 70 percent of the privatized water systems Worldwide.
The privatization of water under World Bank auspices feeds on the collapse of the system of public distribution of safe tap drinking water:
“The World Bank serves the interests of water companies both through its regular loan programs to governments, which often come with conditions that explicitly require the privatization of water provision…” (Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, Water Privatization: The World Bank’s Latest Market Fantasy, Polaris Institute, Ottawa, 2004))
“The modus operandi [in India] is clear — neglect development of water resources [under World Bank budget austerity measures], claim a “resource crunch” and allow existing systems to deteriorate.” (Ann Ninan, Private Water, Public Misery, India Resource Center April 16, 2003)
Tap water is purchased by Coca-Cola from a municipal water facility and then resold on a retail basis. It is estimated that in the US, 40 percent of bottled water is tap water. (See, Jared Blumenfeld, Susan Leal The real cost of bottled water, San Francisco Chronicle, February 18, 2007)
“Communities across India living around Coca-Cola’s bottling plants are experiencing severe water shortages, directly as a result of Coca-Cola’s massive extraction of water from the common groundwater resource. The wells have run dry and the hand water pumps do not work any more. Studies, including one by the Central Ground Water Board in India, have confirmed the significant depletion of the water table.
Tests conducted by a variety of agencies, including the government of India, confirmed that Coca-Cola products contained high levels of pesticides, and as a result, the Parliament of India has banned the sale of Coca-Cola in its cafeteria. However, Coca-Cola not only continues to sell drinks laced with poisons in India (that could never be sold in the US and EU), it is also introducing new products in the Indian market. And as if selling drinks with DDT and other pesticides to Indians was not enough, one of Coca-Cola’s latest bottling facilities to open in India, in Ballia, is located in an area with a severe contamination of arsenic in its groundwater.(India Resource Center, Coca-Cola Crisis in India, undated)
In developing countries, the hikes in fuel prices have increased the costs of boiling tap water by households, which in turn favors the privatization of water resources.
In the more advanced phase of water privatization, the actual ownership of lakes and rivers by private corporations is contemplated. Mesopotamia was not only invaded for its extensive oil resources, the Valley of the two rivers (Tigris and Euphrates) has extensive water reserves.
We are dealing with a complex and centralized constellation of economic power in which the instruments of market manipulation have a direct bearing on the lives of millions of people.
The prices of food, water, fuel are determined at the global level, beyond the reach of national government policy. The price hikes of these three essential commodities constitute an instrument of “economic warfare”, carried out through the “free market” on the futures and options exchanges.
These hikes in the prices of food, water and fuel are contributing in a very real sense to “eliminating the poor” through “starvation deaths”.
The sugar coated bullets of the “free market” kill our children. The act to kill is instrumented in a detached fashion through computer program trading on the commodity exchanges, where the global prices of rice, wheat and corn are decided upon.
But we are not dealing solely with market concepts. The outbreak of famines in different parts of the World, resulting from spiraling food and fuel prices have broad strategic and geopolitical implications.
President Richard Nixon at the outset of his term in office in 1969 asserted
“his belief that overpopulation gravely threatens world peace and stability.”
In March 1970, the U.S. Congress set up a Commission on Population Growth and the American Future. (See Center for Research on Population and Security).
The Commission was no ordinary Task Force. It integrated representatives from USAID, the State Department and the Department of Agriculture with CIA and Pentagon officials. Its objective was not to assist developing countries but rather to curb World population with a view to serving US strategic and national security interests. The Commission also viewed population control as a means to ensuring a stable and secure environment for US investors as well as gaining control over developing countries’ mineral and petroleum resources.
This Commission completed its work in December 1974 and circulated a classified document entitled
to “designated Secretaries and Agency heads for their review and comments.”
In November 1975, the report and its recommendations were endorsed by President Gerald Ford.
The Report focusses strictly on Population Control. The issue of Depopulation is not formally addressed.
The National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSSM 200) does however intimate the following: that in certain countries a recurrence of hunger mines, disease and war could constitute a de facto instrument of population control.
“Accordingly, those countries where large-scale hunger and malnutrition are already present face the bleak prospect of little, if any, improvement in the food intake in the years ahead barring a major foreign financial food aid program, more rapid expansion of domestic food production, reduced population growth or some combination of all three. Worse yet, a series of crop disasters could transform some of them into classic Malthusian cases with famines involving millions of people.
While foreign assistance probably will continue to be forthcoming to meet short-term emergency situations like the threat of mass starvation, it is more questionable whether aid donor countries will be prepared to provide the sort of massive food aid called for by the import projections on a long-term continuing basis.
Reduced population growth rates clearly could bring significant relief over the longer term…..
In the extreme cases where population pressures lead to endemic famine, food riots, and breakdown of social order, those conditions are scarcely conducive to systematic exploration for mineral deposits or the long-term investments required for their exploitation.
Short of famine, unless some minimum of popular aspirations for material improvement can be satisfied, and unless the terms of access and exploitation persuade governments and peoples that this aspect of the international economic order has “something in it for them,” concessions to foreign companies are likely to be expropriated or subjected to arbitrary intervention.
Whether through government action, labor conflicts, sabotage, or civil disturbance, the smooth flow of needed materials will be jeopardized.
Although population pressure is obviously not the only factor involved, these types of frustrations are much less likely under conditions of slow or zero population growth.”
(1974 National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests”. (emphasis added)
The report concludes with a couple of key questions pertaining to the role of food as “an instrument of national power”, which could be used in the pursuit of US strategic interests.
In the words of Henry Kissinger:
“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”
ANNEX
Corporate Actors highlighted in this article (among many other important corporate actors)
Speculative Trade in Crude Oil: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, British Petroleum (BP), Deutsche Bank, Société Générale, Bank of America, Switzerland’s Mercuria.
Water Privatization
Water Infrastructure: Suez, Veolia, Bechtel-United Utilities, Thames Water and Germany’s RWE-AG
Retail Distribution of Drinking Water: Coca-Cola, Danone, Nestlé and PepsiCo
Military Industrial Complex
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grunman, Boeing, General Dynamics, British Aerospace Systems Corporation (BAES)
by Michel Chossudovsky
This book is a skilful combination of lucid explanation and cogently argued critique of the fundamental directions in which our world is moving financially and economically.
In this new enlarged edition –which includes ten new chapters and a new introduction– the author reviews the causes and consequences of famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, the dramatic meltdown of financial markets, the demise of State social programs and the devastation resulting from corporate downsizing and trade liberalisation.
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Published in 11 languages. More than 100,000 copies sold Worldwide.
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