8/9/2021 Remembering the Great Scientific Crusader Who Showed That No Biological Basis for Race Exists—Richard Lewontin. By: Prabir PurkayasthaRead NowLewontin fought a lifelong battle against racism, imperialism and capitalist oppression. On July 4, Richard Lewontin, the dialectical biologist, Marxist and activist, died at the age of 92, just three days after the death of his wife of more than 70 years, Mary Jane. He was one of the founders of modern biology who brought together three different disciplines—statistics, molecular biology and evolutionary biology—that mark the discipline today. In doing so, he not only battled crude racism masquerading as science, but also helped shed light on what science really is. In this sense, he belongs to the rare group of scientists who are equally at home in the laboratory and while talking about science and ideology at a philosophical level. Lewontin is a popular exponent of what science is, and more pertinently, what it is not. Lewontin always harked back to what being radical means: going back to fundamentals in deriving a viewpoint. This method is important, as it makes radical inquiry a powerful tool in science, compared to lazier ways of relating positions to certain class viewpoints. What is the relation between genes and race, class, or gender? Does social superiority spring from superior genes, or from biological differences between the sexes? As a Marxist and activist, Lewontin believed that we need to fight at both levels: to expose class, race and gender stereotypes as a reflection of power within society, and also at the level of radical science, meaning from the fundamentals of scientific theory and data. Richard Lewontin and the population geneticist and mathematical ecologist Richard Levins shared a passion for biology, social activism and Marxism. It is not so well known that Lewontin’s close friend Stephen Jay Gould—the paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and popular science writer—was also a fellow Marxist. All three of them fought a lifelong battle against the racializing of biology and, later, sociobiology, which sought to ‘explain’ every social phenomenon as derived from our genes. Evolutionary biologists E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins—and many others—believed that humans are programmed so that society merely expresses what is already embedded in our genes. Through their eyes, white races are superior because of their genetic superiority; as are the rich. In India, there is also a genetic theory of caste to explain the supposed differences between caste groups. And as long as there are significant differences between groups of people—based on class, race, gender or caste—biological ‘explanations’ for these differences will be offered. One of Lewontin’s pathbreaking works was to find out how much genetic diversity exists within species. This was at a time when we did not know how many genes humans had. Lewontin’s inspired guess was 20,000, far smaller than what most biologists thought then and remarkably close to what is known today. Most biologists then also believed that races had significant biological differences, which was one of the reasons why they thought that there was a much larger number of genes carrying different traits. Lewontin and geneticist John Hubby used a technique, protein gel electrophoresis, developed by Hubby, to quantify the genetic diversity in fruit flies. At that time, fruit flies were the favorite target for testing genetic theories in the laboratory. This pathbreaking exercise traced evolution at the species level to changes at the molecular level—a foundation for the field of molecular evolution—using statistical methods. The result was startling. Contrary to what most biologists believed, the exercise showed a surprising amount of genetic diversity within a given population and further revealed that evolution led to stable and diverse populations within a species. Later on, Lewontin used this method on human blood groups, to show that the result of stable genetic diversity held true for humans as well. The other result of the human blood group study was that it showed that 85.4 percent of the genetic diversity in humans was found within a population, and only 6.3 percent between ‘races.’ Race was not a biological construct but a social one. Lewontin went on to co-author a paper along with Stephen Jay Gould on how evolution is not directed to develop every feature that we see in an organism today, but is also the result of accidental offshoots accompanying a specific genetic change that occurs due to evolutionary pressure. Gould and Lewontin likened it to spandrels in architecture. When an arch is carved out of a rectangular wall (say, a door), the triangular part left between the arch and the wall is called a spandrel. This is also what happens when domes rest on rectangular structures. That these spandrels are then carved and decorated is not the reason for their existence, but once created, they can be used for other purposes. Similarly, in species, nature makes use of accidental offshoots of an evolutionary change, just as those who built arches or domes do with spandrels. What distinguished Lewontin’s popular and scientific writings were his ability to connect the larger issues of science to society and his critique of the crude reductionist understanding of biology. He called it the Cartesian fallacy: that if we can break up the parts of a whole into its constituent parts and find the laws of the parts, we can then assemble the whole and understand it fully. Of course, this Cartesian viewpoint is no longer viable even in physics, let alone to explain chemistry from physics, biology from (organic) chemistry, or society from biology. Why, then, does this view recur, particularly in understanding inequalities in society? Lewontin traced this repeated attempt to give biological explanations for inequality to the deep structural inequalities within society. This hydra-headed monster will rear new heads again and again as long as structural inequalities exist in society. This was the battle that he and his close colleagues fought against, racism, the fallacy of putting stock in IQ tests, and sociobiology, which sought explanations for all social inequalities in biology, i.e., that inequalities were preprogrammed in our genes. This was the lifelong battle that he carried out not only in his specific field of biology but also in the larger domain of sciences. His ideological struggle against racism, class and imperialism was not separated from his science. He saw it as an everyday struggle within sciences as well as outside them, to be fought at both levels: at the level of society as well as at the level of science. He did not simply argue that race was a wrong way of looking at societal differences but showed it with hard experimental data and a theoretical framework to explain that evidence. This was his integrity as a scientist and as a social activist. A large number of progressive scientists in the United States came together in the late ’60s and early ’70s, forming an organization called Science for the People. It has been revived recently. The organization was a reflection of the anti-racism and anti-war movements in the United States of that time. Their discussions on science and society paralleled what science and social activists were experiencing in India that led to the people’s science movement, and resulted in the formation of the All India People’s Science Network. In the U.S., Science for the People decided to become more of a movement within the scientific community, while the movement in India decided that it should be a larger people’s movement not only on the issues of science and society but also by building scientific temper in society. The recent Netflix film “The Trial of the Chicago 7” depicted the ’60s struggle against the Vietnam War. Bobby Seale, a co-founder of the Black Panthers, was one of the people who was charged in the trial by the U.S. government with “conspiracy charges related to anti-Vietnam War protests in Chicago, Illinois, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.” (A much better film is the older HBO movie “Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8,” which is available on YouTube.) During the trial, the Chicago police assassinated Fred Hampton, an important Black Panther leader there who was helping with the defense of Bobby Seale. I will let Lewontin and his close comrade Levins, co-authors of Biology Under the Influence, tell us in their words how they related to these movements: “We have also been political activists and comrades in Science for the People; Science for Vietnam; the New University Conference; and struggles against biological determinism and ‘scientific’ racism, against creationism, and in support for the student movement and antiwar movement. On the day that Chicago police murdered Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, we went together to his still bloody bedroom and saw the books on his night table: he was killed because of his thoughtful, inquiring militancy. Our activism is a constant reminder of the need to relate theory to real-world problems as well as the importance of theoretical critique. In political movements we often have to defend the importance of theory as a protection against being overwhelmed by the urgency of need in the momentary and the local, while in academia we still have to argue that for the hungry the right to food is not a philosophical problem.” Biology Under the Influence, a collection of essays by Levins and Lewontin published in 2007, was dedicated to five Cubans—the Cuban Five—who had infiltrated Cuban American terrorist groups in Miami that were actively supported by U.S. agencies. They were then serving long prison sentences in the United States. Lewontin and Levins were both Marxists and activists and fought a lifelong battle against racism, imperialism, and capitalist oppression. They brought their Marxism to biology and its larger philosophical issues. They dedicated their 1985 book, The Dialectical Biologist, to Frederick Engels, “who got it wrong a lot of the time but who got it right where it counted.” This also applies to Lewontin, who also got race, class and genetics right where it counted. AuthorPrabir Purkayastha is the founding editor of Newsclick.in, a digital media platform. He is an activist for science and the free software movement. Archives August 2021
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A Marxist Dialogue “Well Fred, what do you think of Dong Zhongshu?” “He doesn’t seem to be as important as the thinkers we have looked at. Chan [Source Book in Chinese Philosophy] says he appears to be of little philosophical value but that he played an important historical role.” “He’s right about that. Dong lived from around 179 to 104 BC and was a major player in getting the Han Dynasty to adopt Confucianism as the official philosophy of China in 136 BC.” “I know. Chan says this lasted right up until 1905 AD. I think it was the emperor Wu of Han (r.141-87 BC) who established it.” “Yes, and Dong was the mastermind behind it all. I’m looking at the Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion and it says Dong constructed his brand of philosophy synthesizing three things.” “Confucianism and what else?” “He added ideas from the old Yin Yang School based in the Yi jing mixed together with ideas about the five elements (wuxing)—i.e., water, fire, wood, metal and earth.” “Sort of like Empedocles’ four elements in Ancient Greece-- only adding wood and metal and not having air.” “This was originally a separate philosophical tradition based on the energy transformations of the five elements but by the time of the Han Dynasty it had been subsumed into the Yin Yang School.” “Chan says he based himself on the Spring and Autumn Annals supposedly written by Confucius! His own work, a collection of brief essays on various topics, he called Chūnqiū fánlù: Luxuriant Gems of the Spring and Autumn Annals. Chan says his fame as a great Confucianist lasted for hundreds of years.” “Why don’t you read some of the quotes I see you have taken down from Dong’s Luxuriant Gems and we will see if his reputation is warranted?” “OK, but don’t be disappointed if he isn’t up to snuff.” “Get on with it!” “Here goes. I'm beginning with Dong’s chapter 35 in Chan: ‘The Spring and Autumn Annals examines the principles of things and rectifies their names. It applies names to things as they really are, without making the slightest mistake. Therefore in mentioning [the strange event of] falling meteorites, it mentions the number five afterward [because the meteorites were seen first and their number discovered later], whereas in mentioning the [ominous event of] fish hawks flying backwards, it mentions the number six first [because six birds were first seen flying away and upon a closer look it was found they were fish hawks].’” “Well, he’s right to emphasize the ‘rectification of names’. Like modern philosophical analysis, Dong thinks philosophical (and practical) problems will solve themselves by proper use of language. But, he violates the PRIME DIRECTIVE [see discussion in the Confucius dialogue in this series] by saying Confucius does this ‘without making the slightest mistake.’ This sounds more like a quasi-religious faith commitment rather than a model for philosophical inquiry. And what's with the backward flying fish hawks?” “Chan indicates that the original Annals recounts this as an omen-- i.e., that six backwards flying fish hawks flew over the capital of Song in 642 BC.” “I see. But that is well before the time of Confucius, so I don’t see how Dong could believe that Confucius, the putative author (real author unknown) of the Annals, wrote them without ‘making the slightest mistake.’” “Next Dong says, ‘It is the mind that keeps the various evil things within so that they cannot be expressed outside. Therefore the mind (xin) is called the weak (ren). If in the endowment of material force (qi) one is free from evil, why should the mind keep anything weak?.... Heaven has its dual operation of yin and yang (passive and active cosmic forces), and the person also has his dual nature of humanity and greed.... [The way of man] and the Way of Heaven are the same. Consequently, as yin functions, it cannot interfere with spring and summer (which correspond to yang), and the full moon is always overwhelmed by sunlight, so that at one moment it is full and at another it is not. This is the way Heaven restricts the operation of yin. How can [man] not reduce his desires and stop his feelings (both corresponding to yin) in order to respond to Heaven? As the person restricts what Heaven restricts, it is therefore said that the person is similar to Heaven. To restrict what Heaven restricts is not to restrict Heaven itself. We must know that without training our nature endowed by Heaven cannot in the final analysis make [the feelings and the desires] weak.’” “This doesn’t sound too bad. It is the typical Confucian emphasis on training.” “Chan has a comment here. He says, ‘Dongs own theory is unique: there is goodness in human nature, but it is only the beginning of goodness and it requires training to be realized. His whole emphasis is on education.’” “I don’t see what is so unique about that. Mencius can be interpreted this way, maybe even Xunzi.” “As an analogy, Dong says, ‘Therefore man’s nature may be compared to the rice stalks and goodness to rice. Rice comes out of the rice stalk but not all the stalk becomes rice. Similarly, goodness comes out of nature but not all nature becomes good.’” “Well I guess that is not Mencius. I think Mencius would say the rice stalk is good and that is why the rice is good, unless the rice is spoiled by lack of education or an inadequate social system.” “Karl, I think Nature, Heaven, is neutral about ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ Here is Dong again: ‘If we inquire into principles according to their names and appellations, we shall understand. Thus names and appellations are to be rectified in accordance with [the principles] of Heaven and Earth.... If we say that nature is already good, what can we say about feelings [which are sources of evil]? Therefore the Sage never said that nature is good, for to say so would be to violate the correctness of the name.’” “I think that proves your point Fred. Nature is neutral and education is needed. Is Dong more specific?” “He goes on: ‘It is the true character of Heaven that nature needs to be trained before becoming good. Since Heaven has produced the nature of man which has the basic substance for good but which is unable to be good [by itself], therefore it sets up the king to make it good. This is the will of Heaven. The people receive from Heaven a nature which cannot be good [by itself], and they turn to the king to receive the training which completes their nature.” Christianity: Humans are made in God’s Image - their original nature is good but has been stained by “original sin” so they need Grace from God for them to be good. Somewhat parallel views only the Chinese are more earthbound —the king rather than God.’ “Getting political here! However, this idea of the role of the king reminds me of the philosopher-king of The Republic. The king has political power but the Confucians will advise him so it's not so much the philosopher-king as it is a ‘brain trust’-- a philosopher plus a king. The way it is expressed, however, looks like pandering to the Han emperors.” “He continues: ‘Now to claim on the basis of the true character of the basic substance of man that man’s nature is already good [at birth] is to lose sight of the will of Heaven and to forego the duty of the king.... Now the nature of all people depends on training, which is external, before it becomes good. Therefore goodness has to do with training and not with nature.’” “This is not exactly Mencius! I think we can understand now why Xunzi was more influential than Mencius until the Song Dynasty when the Neo-Confucianists brought the latter to the fore.” “You might be right Karl. We saw that Mencius thinks we are by nature good. Dong seems to deny this, yet he maintains that he is following Mencius! Listen to this quote and tell me if it sounds like Mencius or a mixture of things. ‘Heaven has produced mankind in accordance with its great principle, and those who talk about nature should not differ from each other. But there are some who say that nature is good and others who say that nature is not good. Then what is meant by goodness differs with their various ideas. There is the beginning of goodness in human nature. Let us activate it and love our parents. And since man is better than animals, this may be called good---this is what Mencius meant by goodness. Follow the Three Bonds [ruler-minister, father-son, husband-wife] and the Five Relationships [ uncles, brothers, fellow clansmen, teachers, friends]. Comprehend the principles of the Eight Beginnings [ feelings of commiseration, of right and wrong, of deference and compliance, of shame and dislike which lead to love, righteousness, propriety and wisdom]. Practice loyalty and faithfulness and love all people universally. And be earnest and deep and love propriety. One may then be called good---this is what the Sage meant by goodness.’” “I think this is back peddling on Mencius' position. Anyway, by the ‘Sage’ Dong means Confucius and this is one way you could plausibly interpret him. The reference to ‘universal love’ recalls the position of Mozi so it’s all very eclectic.” “Chan notes that, ‘Ever since Han times, in the Confucian ethic, the ruler has become the “standard” of the ruled, and so forth. In view of the fact that to him [Dong] yang is superior to yin [rather than two equal but contrasting forces], it is logical to say that the ruler, who corresponds to yang, is superior to the ruled. The same is true of the other relations. Thus the double standard is put on a natural basis.’” For Dong, it seems, each ruler has his own Little Red Book. “That is too bad as these relations are socially conditioned with respect to the particular forms they developed in feudal China. They are ‘natural’ only in that sense, i.e., ‘natural’ to the feudal outlook. The influence of yin and yang is, I think, detrimental to this early Confucianism. To update it we would have to get rid of the male (yang) and female (yin) notions and replace them with something along the lines of human reason as yang and passions and instincts as yin (or vice versa if you like). That is to sublate the female-male dichotomy under the general concept of ‘humanity.’ This eliminates the double standard as ‘natural.’” “What does this remind you of Karl? Dong writes, ‘Confucius said, “A good man is not mine to see. If I could see a man of constant virtue, I would be content.”’” “Cute Fred. It sounds like Diogenes the Dog in Ancient Greece going about with his lantern searching for an honest man. A cute historical parallel.” “Now Karl, here is the clincher for you that Dong is not following Mencius.” “Lets hear it.” “ Dong says, ‘My evaluation of life and nature differs from that of Mencius. Mencius evaluated on the lower level the behavior of animals and therefore said that man’s nature is good [at birth]. I evaluate on the higher level what the Sage considers to be goodness, and therefore say that man’s nature is not good to start with. Goodness is higher than human nature, and the sage is higher than goodness. The Spring and Autumn Annals are concerned with the great origin. Therefore they are very careful in the rectification of names.’” “This is my position Fred. I said he was following the way of Xunzi more than of Mencius. This just proves my point.” “He even goes beyond both Confucius and Xunzi, according to Chan. Listen to this comment: ‘Dong Zhongshu actually departs from Confucius and Mencius in the matter of education. Early Confucianism emphasized self-education, although teachers and rulers are helpful and even necessary. But Dong insists that people by nature and by their very name are in the dark (in sleep) and cannot be good without instructions from the ruler. Then he offers human nature as a justification for authoritarianism. In this he goes even further than Xunzi.’” “ Well, there is the connection with Xunzi. But now we see why Dong was so popular with the emperors! Confucius would never have perverted philosophy to justify absolutism, and Mencius even approved of getting rid of a ruler who oppressed the people (too much at least). Now we have Dong saying the Emperor is the Standard! This is just pandering to the Han emperor again. Definitely I agree with Chan that he may be of historical importance but is not really a world class philosopher. Fung isn’t as critical as Chan and he sums up Dong’s program as follows: 'What Dong Zhongshu tried to do was to give a sort of theoretical justification to the new political and social order of his time. According to him, since man is a part of Heaven, the justification of the behavior of the former must be found in the behavior of the latter. He thought with the Yin-Yang school that a close interconnection exists between Heaven and man. Starting with this premise, he combined a metaphysical justification, which derives chiefly from the Yin-Yang school, with a political and social philosophy which is chiefly Confucianist ( Fung, p. 192).' With all due respect to Fung, however, I think Dong’s “Confucianism” was a perversion of the humanistic aspects of Confucius’ thought in support of authoritarianism. We have seen similar perversions of Marxism-Leninism in our own times. Does that sum it up Fred?” “Pretty much so Karl. I’m glad you again brought out the point about the Yin and Yang metaphysics. There are a few more points to be made from Dong’s book but because of the outmoded metaphysic he uses I’m going to pass over what Chan has from Dong’s chapter 42, on the five agents (elements), and his chapter 56, speculations about man’s correspondences to Heaven, if that’s alright with you that is.” “That is fine with me.” “Just to give you a taste, however, here are some of his views taken from chapter 57: ‘All things avoid what is different from them and follow what is similar to them. Therefore similar forces come together and matching tones respond to each other this is clear from evidence.... For example, when a horse neighs, it is horses that will respond, and when an ox lows it is oxen that will respond. Similarly, when an emperor or a king is about to rise, auspicious omens will first appear [cf. Chan chapter 24 of The Mean] . Therefore things of the same kind call forth each other. Because of the dragon, rain is produced, and by the use of the fan, heat is chased away. Wherever armies are stationed, briers and thorns grow. All beautiful and ugly things have their origins and have their lives accordingly. But none knows where these origins are.’” “This is really dated emperor propaganda! Anyway he forgot ‘opposites attract’ and that the neighing of horses and the lowing of oxen can just as well attract hungry wolves and bears.” Chan makes the following remark: ‘The belief in portents is as old as Chinese thought. What is new in Dong Zhungshu is that he explains it in terms of natural law. Instead of expressions of the pleasure or displeasure of spiritual beings, portents are results of the cosmic material forces of yin and yang.’” “That’s not good enough. Xunzi was a part of this culture and he didn’t talk about omens and such stuff. That is, he regarded them as the product of yin and yang, as natural happenings but not as ‘omens.’ Remember he said that the so-called omens happen all the time and have nothing to do with what happens to us. ‘Of things that have happened, human portents are the most to be feared.’ I remember that quote Fred” “Yes, the whole discussion is on pages 120-121 of Chan.” “This makes Xunzi the major figure in philosophy that he was and underscores the view that Dong was only of historical interest and not really such great shakes as a philosopher.” “Then what do you think of this Karl? ‘When the universe’s material force of yin arises, man’s material force of yin arises in response. Conversely, when man’s material force of yin arises, that of the universe should also arise in response. The principle is the same. He who understands this, when he wishes to bring forth rain, will activate the yin in man in order to arouse the yin of the universe. When he wishes to stop rain, he will activate the yang in man in order to arouse the yang of the universe. Therefore the bringing forth of rain is nothing supernatural. People suspect that it is supernatural because its principle is subtle and wonderful.... In all cases one starts something himself and other things become active in response according to their kind. Therefore men of intelligence, sageliness, and spirit introspect and listen to themselves, and their words become intelligent and sagely. The reason why introspection and listening to oneself alone can lead to intelligence and sageliness is because one knows that his original mind lies there. Therefore when the note of F is struck in the seven-stringed or twenty-one stringed lute, the F note in other lutes sound of themselves in response.’ So, what about that?” “Well, he says this is not supernaturalism and that is a plus, but it is still prescientific. The idea that we can cause it to rain by activating our yin to resonate with the yin of the universe sounds like sympathetic magic to me. I think we should also note the term ‘original mind’ that Dong uses when he maintains that we can become sagely by introspection. This is not original Confucianism. Confucius liked to study and putter around in old books. This idea of introspection, perhaps even of meditation, has a mystical air about it. It seems Daoist or even Buddhist, although I think Dong is too early to have been influenced by Buddhists.” “Oh yeah, I think so. Dong died around 104 BC. That’s a hundred years before Buddhism in China” “Well then, only Daoist I guess.” “Listen Karl, I disagree with you about the original mind. I think we can look at that concept as what we are potentially as rational beings. The sage should be able, as Xunzi, to see what is our essential nature versus what we are by means of cultural construct. I don’t think this is too advanced a way of looking at things for really bright Confucians even if Dong himself may not have this in mind.” “I can go along with that Fred.” “Now Chan adds some extra sections from Dong’s book. This is from chapter 13 ‘The Origin’”: It is only the Sage who can relate the myriad things to the One and tie it to the origin. If the source is not traced and the development from it followed, nothing can be accomplished. Therefore in the Spring and Autumn Annals the first year is changed to be called the year of yuan (origin). The origin is the same as source (yuan). It means that it accompanies the beginning and end of Heaven andEarth. Therefore if man in his life has a beginning and end like this, he does not have to respond to the changes of the four seasons. Therefore the origin is the source of all things, and the origin of man is found in it. How does it exist? It exists before Heaven and Earth. Although man is born of the force of Heaven and receives the force of Heaven, he may not partake [of] the origin of Heaven, or rely on its order and violate what it does. Therefore the first month of Spring is a continuation of the activities of Heaven and completing it. The principle is that [Heaven and man] accomplish together and maintain the undertaking. How can it be said to be merely the origin of Heaven and Earth? What does the origin do? How does it apply to man? If we take the connections seriously, we shall understand the order of things. The Sage [Confucius] did not want to talk about [the behavior] of animals and such. What he wanted to talk about was humanity and righteousness so as to put things in order….’” “The ‘One’! This is interesting metaphysics. Monism was popular in India and the West at this time too. Dong seems to say at the start that Confucius (the ‘Sage’) can relate the One and the ‘origin’ but he at last remembers that Confucius, like Socrates and Buddha, did not go into ultimate ontological questions-- ‘he wanted to to talk about... humanity and righteousness’-- i.e., he was interested in ethics and politics.” “Well, Chan comments on that quote and says Dong was casting Confucius in the role that Jesus played in the West: ‘a bridge between god and man.’” “That’s really stretching it Fred! In the first place, Christians don’t see Jesus as a ‘bridge between god and man,’ he is God! In the second place, there are many people who could be considered ‘bridges’ such as the prophets such as Moses, or John the Baptist, or Mohammed, etc. So I think it a little far-fetched to think Dong’s views of Confucius are analogous to Western views on Jesus. In any case the bridge between humans and God is a bridge to nowhere. “Here is a quote on ‘Humanity and Righteousness’ from chapter 29. ‘Humanity is to give others peace and security and righteousness is to rectify the self. Therefore the word “humanity” (ren) means others (people, ren) and the word “righteousness” means the self. ... The principle of humanity consists in loving people and not in loving oneself, and the principle of righteousness consists in rectifying oneself and not in rectifying others. If one is not rectified himself, he cannot be considered righteous even if he can rectify others, and if one loves himself very much but does not apply his love to others, he cannot be considered humane....’ “An excellent quote, Fred. It’s very good, very Confucian. I think this should be the motto of every would be sage. Dong has outdone himself here!.” “Chan indicates that it is new with Dong. The view that ren = love, he says, is characteristic of Confucianism in the Han period and it was introduced by Dong. Chan means the exclusive use of ren = love. He acknowledges that Mozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi and Han Feizi used ren in that way too, but they also used it with other meanings. Chan says in Dong ‘it is the meaning.’” “What else?” “There are two selections to go. The first is on ‘Humanity and Wisdom’ from chapter 30. ‘What is meant by humanity? The man of humanity loves people with a sense of commiseration.... He does not do anything treacherous or cunning. And he does not do anything depraved. Therefore his heart is at ease, his will is peaceful, his vital force is harmonious, his desires are regulated, his actions are easy, and his conduct is in accord with the moral law. It is for this reason that he puts things in order peacefully and easily without any quarrel. This is what is meant by humanity. What is meant by wisdom? It is to speak first and then act accordingly. It is to weigh one’s wisdom whether to act or not and the proceed accordingly.’” “At least for all his retrograde ideas compared to the classical Confucians, Dong has the proper attitude towards the type of conduct expected of a philosopher.” “You like that eh? You think that is how philosophers should be?” “I really do, Fred. Don’t you think Socrates, Epicurus, and Spinoza, to name just three, would fit this bill?” “But what about philosophers such as Schopenhauer or Heidegger who seem to have been rotten human beings with hardly a trace of ren? I don’t think they would live up to Dong’s expectations.” “Well, yes. I shouldn’t be so exclusive I suppose. What I want to maintain is that this is the ideal of the philosopher - sage and one can be a great philosopher without also being a sage.” “I see. I’m not going down that path with you Karl. I see no end of controversy along it. Chan ends with a quote from chapter 23 explicating Dong’s views on ‘Historical cycles’ but they are so time dependent on the prescientific outlooks of people in the Han Dynasty as to be of no philosophical interest to people today.” “I agree. I read about his theory of history in Fung. He talks about the movement of history as the rise and fall of dynasties represented by colors-- the Black, White and Red ‘Reigns’ each with its own distinctive ‘powers’. These three reigns go in a cycle B-W-R-B-W-R-B etc. Thus Xia Dynasty -- Shang Dynasty -- Chou Dynasty, etc. The changes come about due to the loss of the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ by one and its gain by another. This is very unilluminating, especially Fung’s musings on the theory whereby we might ‘say that Fascism represents the Black Reign, Capitalism the White Reign, and Communism the Red Reign (p.199).’ Fung adds however, this ‘is only a coincidence.’ But we really can’t use Dong’s mechanical theories today, unlike many of the theories of his great Confucian predecessors.” OK, Karl, the next philosopher we should discuss is one you will find more congenial, namely Wang Chong and his ‘Naturalism’.” All right, Wang Chong it is. AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. To read the Confucius Dialogue click here. To read the Mencius Dialogue click here. To read the Xunzi Dialogue click here. To read the Mozi Dialogue click here. To read the Laozi Dialogue click here. To read the Zhuangzi Dialogue click here. To read the Gongsun Dialogue click here. To read the Great Learning Dialogue click here. To read the Doctrine of The Mean Dialogue click here. To read the Book of Changes Dialogue click here. Archives August 2021 8/9/2021 The Tokyo Games Prove That the Olympics Are Less Relevant Than Ever. By: Sonali KolhatkarRead NowOur world is on fire, a pandemic rages on, and the rich keep getting richer. In such a context, how can the Tokyo Olympics be anything other than an ill-timed, tone-deaf spectacle? The coronavirus pandemic is resurging around the world once more, driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant of COVID-19. Yet, athletic teams and players are competing in the Olympics, the world’s most prestigious games, as though it were 2016. The one-year postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics stemmed from the deadly new virus spreading across the globe, but apparently this is no longer a relevant concern even though infections are still surging. Perhaps the event’s organizers and stakeholders felt that the cost of a second postponement or outright cancellation was simply higher than the lives it will inevitably cost to go ahead as planned. Or perhaps it was mere hubris? Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said just before the games started, “overcoming the hardship of the coronavirus and to be able to hold the Games, I think there is real value in that.” But the event itself has been a hardship both in terms of public health and public funds, and we may look back on this year’s Olympics—held during a pandemic, extreme poverty, and a violently changing climate—as a perfect symbol of the increasing irrelevance of state borders, the subservience of humanity to nature, and the moral bankruptcy of our modern global economy. In a world where international travel is commonplace, the coronavirus knows no borders. In 2020, the virus rapidly spread across the globe, and in 2021, its variants are impacting places far away from where they first mutated. It is no wonder that there is widespread opposition among the Japanese public to holding the games in the face of a deadly disease. A majority of those recently polled in Tokyo were convinced that the Olympics could not be held safely. “Gold medals are being given priority over people’s lives,” said anti-Olympics activist Misako Ichimura, according to the Wall Street Journal. Hundreds of people connected to the games have already tested positive for COVID-19, including more than two dozen athletes. Japan’s medical association just announced a national emergency over rising cases of infection. The situation is so serious that patients are being turned away from hospitals struggling to keep up. Rather than proof that the Olympics are a symbol of victory against the virus, the games are a stark demonstration that the virus may be the one walking away with a gold medal. In dollar amounts, the Tokyo games are the most expensive on record by far. Originally expecting the cost to be about $7.4 billion, the Japanese government’s price tag has now exceeded $20 billion. This includes the nearly $3 billion cost of a one-year delay. The single biggest line item in the Tokyo Olympics budget was the building of massive new venues where the games are being played, and which now sit largely empty and are a disgraceful display of wasted public resources. Aside from the impacts to public health and finances, the Olympics do little to further global cooperation. White supremacy, anti-immigrant hate, and pandemic-related racism have surged all over the world in the past several years. Although enthusiasts would like to believe that the Olympics are a celebration of athletic achievement and a time to set aside rivalries and come together to revel in the heights of human achievement, the games are first and foremost a display of crass nationalism. Olympians are defined by the country they belong to, and their wins and losses are proxy wins and losses for their respective nations. The Olympics would be an entirely different institution if athletes competed as individuals, detached from the stamps on their passports. It is precisely the borders that separate performers (for they are indeed performing for a global audience) from one another that generate the tension and excitement among audiences. Instead of unity, the games are all about showing off: the nation hosting the Olympics strives to display greatness and takes pains to hide pesky things like wealth inequality and homelessness. The individuals and teams competing with one another feel pressured to strive beyond their capabilities because the whole world is watching them succeed (or fail). The entire event is a grand exhibit of mass braggadocio, being held at a time when a global pandemic is surging, inequality is staggering, and the effects of climate change are all around us in the form of extreme heat, raging floods, and deadly wildfires. It is standard form for host nations to sweep away homeless communities, fuel gentrification, and waste public resources to present a rosy picture for viewers and visitors at the expense of local residents. That is precisely what happened in 1984 when Los Angeles hosted the games, and that is what has happened in Tokyo ahead of this year’s games. A Los Angeles Times analysis concluded that “It’s become as reliable a part of the Olympics as cost overruns and allegations of corruption that the Games displace some of the host city’s most vulnerable residents.” It is no wonder that increasingly cities are choosing not to host the games. Looking ahead to the 2024 Olympics in Paris and to 2028 when the games will return to Los Angeles, the residents of those cities should expect to pay a similarly steep price for the supposed prestige of hosting the international event. In LA where I live, the stakes are higher than ever. Even before the pandemic, skyrocketing housing prices dramatically increased LA’s unhoused population. The losses of the past year and a half have worsened the situation to untenable heights, and city officials earlier this year resorted to violent police sweeps of homeless encampments. Instead of investing in resources for the unhoused or regulating the housing market, the LA City Council recently passed a resolution effectively criminalizing homelessness and banning many outdoor tent living situations. It is as if the city is offering a preview of what is to come ahead of the 2028 Olympics. In addition to fueling nationalism, sucking up public resources, and hiding social ills, the Olympics are a show of corporate PR. No matter how much fans may tout the “Olympic spirit” as central to the games, for global corporations, the Olympics are a perfect opportunity for large-scale advertising and sponsorship, and this year companies have invested billions of dollars into the Tokyo Olympics. But with the pandemic raging, even corporate sponsors are now too embarrassed to revel in the spectacle, downplaying their participation and disappointed in the low audience numbers their products are being received by. Here in the U.S., television viewership of the Olympics is significantly down, much to the disappointment of NBC, which bought the broadcasting rights. Like the Japanese PM, the American TV platform was betting on the Olympics being a welcome distraction for a populace weary of the pandemic. “After everything the world has gone through… I do think that people are craving the shared experience,” said the NBC Olympics executive producer. While it is possible that viewers today have many more choices of what to watch on streaming platforms than during past Olympics, it is also possible that many have simply lost their taste for a spectacle that relies on a facade of perfection when so much disaster is unfolding. It is no wonder that some of the most prolific news coverage of the games has not focused on this year’s gold medal winners but on the American gymnast Simone Biles’ brave decision to withdraw from several Olympic events because she decided to prioritize her mental health over winning at all costs. It is as though Americans find a hardworking woman who has chosen self-care over competition to be a much more relatable figure at a time when our mental and physical resources are being exhausted. Like Biles, perhaps we ought to focus on fixing our own problems rather than investing our scarce resources in a spectacle that costs us more than we can afford to give. AuthorSonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Archives August 2021 The following video contains three short speeches by Viyay Prashad, a Marxist historian and director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Taken together, these form a devastating critique of world renowned Marxist David Harvey’s insistence that the concept and theory of imperialism is not relevant to understand today’s world. While the world is divided between a small handful of rich nations and a large majority of poor ones, Professor Harvey, who lives and worked in the United States, finds it “too easy” to describe the contemporary world system using the term “imperialism”. In this 2013 book Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism Harvey did not rank imperialism even among capitalism’s top seventeen contradictions. In that book Harvey asserted, without any attempt to justify the claim, that: “The net drain of wealth from East to West that had prevailed for over two centuries has been reversed as East Asia in particular has risen to prominence as a powerhouse in the global economy.” The problem with this statement is obvious. If it were true, and wealth had indeed beginning shifting from “West” to “East” (and by this Harvey principally means China), how could it be possible that the “East” remains far, far poorer? Obviously for people living in, say, China – which has a per capita income around twenty percent of the USA and Australia, or India, where per capita income is around five percent, this unsubstantiated assertion by a First World based academic who presents himself as “Marxist” was taken by many to be quite offensive. Harvey had every opportunity to respond to Prashad’s critique in the forum. To the extent that he does, it is available here. Prashad does not attack Harvey, as such. As an invited guest to a forum to launch Harvey’s latest book launch, he recommends the book to his audience… as the best introduction to the views of David Harvey if you are not familiar with them. With entertaining flair, Prashad outlines – from his own point of view – what is arguably a devasting demolition of Harvey’s view. AuthorRed Ant Admin This article was produced by Red Ant. Archives August 2021 The social landscape of the contemporary Third World is defined by the existence of the following classes: a super-exploited urban proletariat; a large peasantry; a landlord group; a white-collar petty bourgeoisie occupying administrative positions; and comprador capitalists closely aligned with multinational interests. China has attempted to delink from this system of dependency, pursuing a path of sovereign development, partially free from the criteria of economic rationality that emerges from the global domination of capitalism. This complex process has demanded the creation of a national economy based on the development of sectors aimed toward mass consumption and capital goods, which further means consolidating society’s productive forces – knowledge, technology, and machinery – for which education is important. China’s steadfast construction of an independent project has come under criticism from bourgeois ideologists and sections of the Left. In both cases, “state capitalism” is used as a powerful tool in categorizing and hierarchizing the spaces of world politics, generating a simple narrative of competition between two easily identifiable protagonists – Western democratic free-market capitalism and its deviant “other”, Eastern authoritarian state capitalism. To dispel these misconceptions, we need to examine the specific character of this state capitalism to locate it within the multi-sided trajectory of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Mao Zedong once said: “Communists are Marxist internationalists, but Marxism must be realized through national forms. There is no such thing as abstract Marxism, there is only concrete Marxism. The so-called concrete Marxism is Marxism that has taken national form”. The nationalization of Marxism fundamentally involved the use of Vladimir Lenin’s ideas. Lenin recognized the impossibility of an immediate transformation from a backward, peripheral situation to full-blown socialism. Thus, he envisaged a series of phases, from petty-bourgeois capitalism and “War Communism”, through state capitalism, to socialism, during which elements of capitalism would remain.State capitalism was a transitional road to socialism, not an end in itself. Lenin gave the examples of Germany after Bismarck’s reforms and Russia after the October Revolution to explain the historical specificity of state capitalism. In Germany, state capitalism was subordinated to “Junker-bourgeois imperialism”; in Russia, state capitalism was shaped by socialist imperatives. In April 1921, Lenin wrote: “Socialism is inconceivable without large-scale capitalist engineering based on the latest discoveries of modern science. It is inconceivable without planned state organisation which keeps tens of millions of people to the strictest observance of a unified standard in production and distribution…At the same time socialism is inconceivable unless the proletariat is the ruler of the state.” In the same month, he elaborated: “Of course, a free market means a growth of capitalism; there’s no getting away from the fact. And anyone who tries to do so will be deluding himself. Capitalism will emerge wherever there is small enterprise and free exchange. But are we to be afraid of it, if we have control of the factories, transport and foreign trade? Let me repeat what I said then: I believe it to be incontrovertible that we need have no fear of this capitalism…The Soviet government concludes an agreement with a capitalist. Under it, the latter is provided with certain things: raw materials, mines, oilfields, minerals…The socialist state gives the capitalist its means of production such as factories, mines and materials. The capitalist operates as a contractor leasing socialist means of production, making a profit on his capital and delivering a part of his output to the socialist state. Why is it that we badly need such an arrangement? Because it gives us, all at once, a greater volume of goods which we need but cannot produce ourselves. That is how we get state capitalism. Should it scare us? No, it should not, because it is up to us to determine the extent of the concessions.” Hence, the nature of state capitalism is fundamentally influenced by the presence of a proletarian state. In an economic formation like this, there exists – in the words of Samary Catherine – “a fundamental distinction between the existence of ‘market categories’ (prices, wages, etc.) and the domination of the law of value, the first not being the ‘proof’ of the second.” The exercise of the domination of the proletariat in all areas – economic, political, and ideological – deeply affects the status of market relationships, money, and prices. Systematic supervision of market relations reduces commodity exchange to the mere fact of sale and purchase, creating a society in which goods are exchanged for money but do not have an independent life of their own; and in which persons do not exist for one another merely as representatives of commodities. The contradictions of capitalism are impacted in a particular way under a proletarian state heading a regime of state capitalism. Louis Althusser once noted: “the ‘contradiction’ is inseparable from the total structure of the social body in which it is found, inseparable from its formal conditions of existence, and even from the instances it governs; it is radically affected by them, determining, but also determined in one and the same movement, and determined by the various levels and instances of the social formation it animates; it might be called over-determined in its principle.” The overdetermination of state capitalism means that the various components of this social formation don’t merely exist as indices of an underlying essence (surplus extraction); they are actively re-structured by the political characteristics of the socialist state. In China, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat – involving the crucial role of a strong planning system – has allowed the country to keep hold of a sizeable chunk of overall surplus value and to create partnerships with multinationals that enable it to acquire modern technology. This development of superior techno-industrial capabilities is conducive to the structural changes necessary to insulate the economic system from intense international, low-cost competition, and hence to resist the downward movement of wages. Between 1988 and 2008, China’s average per capita income grew by 229%, 10 times the global average of 24%. In 1994, a Chinese factory worker made $500 a year, only a quarter of the wage of her counterpart in Thailand. In 2020, the average annual income in China exceeded $10,000 – three times the figure for Thailand. All these dynamics are turning China more and more to its domestic market. As is evident, state capitalism in China is part of a wider project of autocentric expansion whose end goal is socialism. AuthorYanis Iqbal is an independent researcher and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India and can be contacted at yanisiqbal@gmail.com. His articles have been published in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and several countries of Latin America. This article was produced by eurasiareview. Archives August 2021 8/4/2021 Book Review: Daniel A. Bell & Hahm Chaibong- Confucianism for The Modern World (2003). Reviewed By: Thomas RigginsRead Now"I have always heard that a gentleman helps the needy; he does not make the rich richer still."-- Confucius Daniel A. Bell and Hahm Chaibong have edited a book called Confucianism for the Modern World (Cambridge, 2003). In their introduction the editors discuss the contemporary relevance of the Confucian tradition (the purpose of the book). The question is – is Confucianism a dead tradition or is it meaningful for the contemporary world? There are five questions which they say must be addressed. I don’t think they are formulated quite rightly so I shall amend them slightly. The first is what Confucian values "should be promoted in contemporary East Asian societies?" This I think is too narrow. The "modern world" encompasses more than just East Asia. I would maintain that Confucianism has useful traditions that societies other than the traditional Asian ones can benefit from studying and applying. The second question is, "How should this be promoted?" The third is, "What are the political and institutional implications of ‘Confucian humanism’?" Confucian "humanism" can be summed up by saying that for a good Confucian the slogan "People Before Profits," that we on the left are very familiar with, would not sound out of place. The fourth question is "How do the practical implications of modern Confucianism differ from the values and workings of liberal capitalist societies?" The editors have added "modern" as a modifier for good reason. The values of traditional Confucianism can, I think, be brought into line with those of socialist or communist humanism but they can only be adapted to the values of capitalism, liberal or otherwise, by doing violence to their core ethical commitments. I think this question also reveals one of the purposes of the book is to try and use a warped and mutated "Confucianism" as an apologetic for East Asian capitalism. The last question deals with the adoption of Confucianism to this project (conformity to liberal capitalism) and if it can "be justified from a moral point of view." I don’t think that it can be, but I think the editors of this book think that it can. Here are two examples. One of the contributors, Gilbert Rozman, argues that Confucianism can be adapted to support "decentralization," "regionalism" and "localism." But to what purpose? Some of his examples suggest that the purpose is to further the interests of corporate globalization and not Confucian "humanism". For example, his reading of modern "Confucianism" might convince China to respect "Taiwan’s right to autonomy." He also suggests that it is a good counter- balance to "Anglo-Saxon liberalism" [Rozman’s term for monopoly capitalism] on the one hand, and "Soviet-launched socialism" on the other. The former represents "individualism," the latter "statism." He maintains East Asia has a third system – some type of "familyism." Actually, with the exception of China, Vietnam, the DPRK and Laos [statist in Rozman’s terminology], East Asia is firmly in the control of monopoly capitalism. Rozman thinks attempts to counter "U.S. influence endanger the gains achieved through trans-Pacific economic and security ties," The WTO is cited as a "gain." He forgot the IMF and the World Bank. This is, to my mind, merely using Confucianism as a cover for the trans-national imperialist exploitation of Asian peoples under the guise of "humanism" and decentralization. Daniel Bell, one of the editors, in his contribution, explicitly states that he assumes "some form of capitalism is here to stay for the foreseeable future and any realistic defense of economic arrangements in East Asia needs to take this fact into account." Since I am not interested in using Confucian philosophy in order to make a "defense of economic arrangements in East Asia" but rather to see what the logical implications of its humanistic values are, I cannot agree with Professor Bell’s use of Confucianism. I agree with him that the material welfare of the people is one of, if not the main duty of the state according to Confucianism, but disagree completely when he says, "There is no doubt that Confucians would... oppose Soviet-style planned economies." I say this because the reason he gives for saying that, "Absolute private property rights" might be justified if they provided for "the basic means of subsistence." This argument from instrumental grounds also applies to a planned economy. In fact, I think Confucian humanism is completely compatible with a Marxist interpretation and totally incompatible with the theoretical and practical functioning of capitalism with the possible exception of some capitalist inspired market reforms guided by a desire to strengthen a socialist state. AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. Archives August 2021 8/4/2021 As the U.S. Withdraws From Afghanistan, China Forges Ties With the Taliban. By: Vijay PrashadRead NowOn July 28, 2021, in the Chinese city of Tianjin, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with a visiting delegation from Afghanistan. The leader of the delegation was Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the co-founder of the Taliban and head of its political commission. The Taliban has been making significant territorial gains as the U.S. military withdraws from Afghanistan. During the meeting, China’s Wang Yi told Mullah Baradar that the U.S. policy in the Central Asian country has failed, since the United States had not been able to establish a government that is both stable and pro-Western. In fact, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan also emphasized this point and told PBS in an interview on July 27 that the U.S. had “really messed it up” in Afghanistan. The government in Kabul—led by President Ashraf Ghani—remains locked in an armed struggle with the Taliban, which seems likely to march into Kabul by next summer. China’s meetings with the Taliban are practical. China and Afghanistan share a very short—76-kilometer—border, which is relatively unpassable. But the real transit point between the two countries is Tajikistan, which has long feared the return of the Taliban to Kabul and the emergence of a free hand to extremism in Central Asia once more. From 1992 to 1997, a terrible civil war took place in Tajikistan between the government and the now-banned Islamic Renaissance Party; tensions over the growth of Taliban-inspired Islamism remain intact in the country. Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon has sought assistance from Moscow and Beijing to help in case his country is overrun by refugees from Afghanistan. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)-Afghanistan Contact Group met in Tajikistan’s capital of Dushanbe on July 14. Afghanistan is not a member of the SCO, although it made an application to join in 2015. The day before that meeting, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited President Rahmon in Dushanbe to discuss the deteriorating situation and “carry out more substantive security cooperation.” At the core of their agenda was President Rahmon’s pledge to prevent his country from becoming a base for extremism. East Turkestan Islamic Movement In Tianjin, Mullah Baradar told Wang Yi that the Taliban would not allow any extremist organization to use Afghan territory to undermine the “security of any country.” In the public statements made by both of them after their meeting on July 28, neither Baradar nor Wang Yi, however, expanded on this pledge. What they have in mind is the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), more accurately known by its Uyghur name—Türkistan Íslam Partiyisi (TIP). The ETIM emerged three decades ago and has since carried out a series of attacks in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. It is a shadowy extremist group, one of dozens of such groups that emerged in Central Asia in the orbit of Al Qaeda. Since 2002, the ETIM was featured prominently on the U.S. government’s list of terrorist organizations. In a recent report, the U.S. State Department noted, “[the] ETIM has received training and financial assistance from al-Qaida.” During the war on Syria, large sections of the ETIM—as the TIP—moved to the Syria-Turkey border. The TIP is currently headquartered in Idlib, Syria, where it has joined forces with other Turkish-backed jihadi groups. The TIP’s leader Abdul Haq al-Turkistani is an Al Qaeda shura council member. In the fall of 2020, the U.S. government removed the ETIM from its list of terrorist organizations, making no mention of the TIP or Syria. The United Nations, meanwhile, retains the ETIM on its terrorist list. The meeting between Baradar and Wang Yi was focused on the threat the ETIM posed to China’s western provinces, particularly to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The ETIM has taken credit for several terrorist attacks on the Chinese province and on Chinese targets elsewhere. Baradar’s pledge has helped release some of the tension in Beijing regarding the possible return of the Taliban to power in Kabul. In May 2020, a committee of the United Nations Security Council reported that the ETIM is operating in three provinces of Afghanistan: Badakhshan, Kunduz, and Takhar, all three near the wedge that links China to Afghanistan. There are about 500 hardened ETIM fighters inside Afghanistan. The ETIM has close links to several of the Al Qaeda affiliates in Central and South Asia, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Islamic Jihad Movement, and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. In mid-July 2021, a bus en route to the Dasu hydropower plant in the Upper Kohistan region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, was attacked by a bomb blast. Twelve people died, including nine Chinese engineers. Ten days later, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi arrived in Chengdu, China, to meet with Wang Yi. Qureshi said that terrorist acts will not “sabotage Pakistan-China cooperation.” No group took responsibility for the attack. Arrests have been made, but no clarity has emerged. Informed sources in Islamabad, Pakistan, suggest that the attack was done in concert between the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and the ETIM. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Both the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and the ETIM have made public statements about targeting China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has four major corridors that run through Xinjiang and into Central and South Asia. The hydropower plant in Dasu is part of the BRI’s China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC); the three other BRI projects threatened by the ETIM and its partners are the China-Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor, the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor, and the New Eurasia Land Bridge Economic Corridor. Peace is not on the horizon for Afghanistan. The country remains caught in the ambitions of regional and global powers, wedged in the new “great game” that involves a contest between India and Pakistan as well as the United States versus China, Russia, and Iran. The call for a unity government that would include President Ghani and the Taliban does not resonate in any quarter. Both sides believe that they can make gains starting in winter and continuing into next summer. This is myopic, since it carries within it the possibility of an endless civil war that could threaten the region. A military victory is unlikely. The BRI’s vast investment in infrastructure could provide new economic opportunities in a region starved of a future. Even in the heartlands of the most extremist groups, social forces gather for peace and for development. In late July, in a region south of Kabul, in the Pakistani town of Makin, lawmaker Mohsin Dawar—a leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM)—held a massive rally against Pakistan’s interference in Afghanistan and for peace. On the last day of July, China’s Ambassador in Kabul Wang Yu met with Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation, to talk about China’s support for a peace process. There was no statement about further Chinese investment in Afghanistan, although if the BRI is to proceed, it would require stability in Afghanistan. That is why China has been engaging both the Kabul government and the Taliban, the two key players necessary to ensure stability in the region. AuthorVijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including "The Darker Nations" and "The Poorer Nations." His latest book is "Washington Bullets," with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Archives August 2021 Distributed by Our Blue Collective – If you enjoyed this article, read the newly released book New Age Socialism by Casper Rove at https://ourbluecollective.org/shop/ols/products/new-age-socialism Eco-localism advocates for a planned settlement based around a democratically controlled administration that engages in economic activity in order to reduce the costs of living for its members while prioritizing sustainable agriculture and green energy. Ownership of property and economic equipment by the people and for the people allows the community to hold onto its own wealth instead of sending it to landlords or far-away corporations. All profits go to the members of the community. Meanwhile, the democratic nature of the administration grants the ability for residents to overrule decisions usually made by the market – relying on fossil fuels or agricultural chemicals, as examples. Other than that, it would operate just like any other business. The cooperative or collective would be headed by an administration that represents the community as a whole. The methods of democracy can differ based on what the community prefers, but the basic tenet is that a few individuals would be elected to run the cooperative with major decisions left to referendum. The administration is an empowered actor but respects the fact that every individual is a vested member. The land requirements would be exceedingly low. It has potential in both economically wealthy areas, where carbon emissions are the highest, and in poorer areas with slightly altered versions . In wealthy regions, the surrounding economy would offer plenty of external employment opportunities for the population to support itself. Otherwise, an income industry could support the basic eco-localist infrastructure. This type of community represents a credible way for philanthropists or governments to sponsor self-perpetuating development in impoverished regions of the world. Cooperative-Owned InfrastructureSome of the potential infrastructure that could be installed by a collective include an agricultural production facility, grain storage, apartment buildings, thermal lines, an anaerobic digestion facility, a restaurant, and grocery store. The living spaces would be rental properties owned by the collective and rent would be charged without the substantial markup currently seen in rental markets. There’s cooperative-owned land set aside for animals, orchard space, garden space, a greenhouse, and other economic activities. The center community building would be a facility with the combined capacity of a coffee shop, diner, and bakery. A grocery store and gas station would be attached as well. These are normal facets of life, but the difference is that the profits of these collective-owned operations would go towards reducing the costs of living for the individuals of the community. There would be a decent amount of employment opportunities coming from the cooperative such as gardeners, farmers, and store clerks. A large number of these would be part-time like beekeeping or raising livestock guardian dogs, with individuals filling the rest of their income however they see fit. An important part of these intra-community jobs would be apprenticeships to share knowledge. Farming AcresMany farm owners don’t actually do the farming themselves these days. They simply own the land and a working farmer pays them rent to grow crops on that land. If a collective operated similarly, the community would have a revenue stream or the fruits of mechanized farm labor. The collective would pay for a farmer to farm the land and receive the harvest as a result. The available farmland could be divided – with one growing low-impact grasses that would produce hay and grazing land for livestock. The other section would be a crop rotation containing wheat, oats and other row crops. Any bounty from mechanical harvest not used by the residents would just be sold on the market like any other farming operation – funding the collective. After the grasses and grain rotation are done with their cycle, the two fields would swap in a system designed to protect the long-term viability of the soil. Many people interested in eco-localism would probably like to see subsistence agriculture take place. That might look like large gardens and orchards maintained by the collective, for the purpose of producing purchasable food. Egg-laying poultry could graze in a permaculture food plot field – stocked with productive perennials. Meat poultry can be given access to the orchards to clean up the ground and graze – breaking the pest cycle. The collective could raise a few pigs each year, taking advantage of local food scraps. Irrigation systems are already mainstream, and they could be fitted to distribute fertilizer and other farming chemicals. This represents an initial investment but increases yields overall, protects from drastic yield failures in drought years, and replaces the process of manual tractor application of farming chemicals. An Income IndustryAn income industry just refers to production capacity owned by the collective that is designed to produce goods to be sold for revenue. The income industry pays its employees a wage, but then the additional profits are used to reduce the community’s costs of living. The acres of farming in the collective would produce a large amount of hay and this can be used to sustain wool sheep. The wool from these sheep can then be processed by the collective into wool rugs or blankets. Another potential income industry could be silk products. This would entail growing mulberry trees, dye plants, and raising silkworms. The silk produced could be turned into socks or robes with waste going to livestock. The income industry could be tractor repair, extending the life of the collective’s own equipment while earning income. Other more advanced manufacturing options could be stainless steel cups, plastic mold suitcases, wooden spoons, wine, paperclips or anything else that could be sold externally to produce income. Thermal LinesPublic thermal pipelines or “district heating” would be a way to maximize the efficiency of thermal needs. A cold line would operate by use of geothermal wells, which is an extremely efficient and cost-effective investment. A geothermal field would also serve as a giant thermal battery, sequestering heat or cold to be used when the season changes. For each residence, basic heat exchangers would use the thermal momentum of the cold line to condition residential air to proper temperature. The hot line would be a heat reserve for hot water. An insulated pipeline of water would run to each residence at a temperature of >120 degrees Fahrenheit. The hot line could be heated by solar collectors and cooperative-produced biogas with the potential to use natural gas as a backup. There are multiple benefits to these thermal lines. Since the temperature of the lines are greater than the goal temperatures, the residential heat exchangers could be extremely simplistic. This means the residential units would be longer lasting, cheaper, and need fewer repairs. Thermal lines require just a few central pieces of equipment that are significantly more energy efficient and industrially robust. Like other utilities, the proportionally lower repair costs would be divided among users. Anaerobic DigesterAn anaerobic digester is a tank where organic matter is broken down by bacteria in an oxygen-free environment. This system would serve as a management system for animal, human, food, and other agricultural/organic wastes. It’s akin to the industrial version of composting and produces biogas and digestate. The biogas would be stored and used to heat the settlement’s hot water line. The digestate would be treated to kill any bacteria, tested, and modified until the composition and characteristics are correct as a liquid fertilizer. From there, it would be distributed to the farming acres through the irrigation systems. This replaces synthetic fertilizers which are usually a huge cost to agriculture and the environment. These systems are already being utilized for farming and human applications – meaning there are already companies with installation capabilities. Any aspiring collective only has to partner with one of these companies instead of reinventing the wheel. Auxiliary BusinessApartments could be prioritized to qualified individuals who want to set up practices for things like dentistry, healthcare, cosmetology, electric work, plumbing, HVAC, carpet cleaning, etc. The purpose of this is to make these services available to the community. These practices would be privately owned, and the finances would belong to the owner(s). For a large portion of the population, they would commute to a nearby city for full-time employment opportunities. Other SystemsThe concentration of people in the collective can leverage better rates for medical and dental insurance. The collective could also administer an insurance fund for the copays, deductibles, and peripheral costs that insurance doesn’t cover. A tailored cooperative could be specifically set-up by and for families with lifelong high medical costs or special needs. The settlement could potentially work on self-insuring its buildings. Monthly premiums would be set aside each month so the collective can serve as its own insurance company. Everyone in the collective saves on insurance costs because the fund would accrue interest and there aren’t any stockholders and CEO salaries to pay. The community can implement any program – anything that is better off functioning as a group. The community could hold a few pickup trucks for short-term rent. Transporting students to the nearest school can be implemented because it makes more sense to do that communally. A large-scale grain mill can be used to bake locally sourced bread every day or the community can choose to prioritize renewable energy and mitigate their footprint on the environment. The opportunities for an eco-localist community to tailor itself to serve its residents are boundless. ConclusionAs momentum builds, the technical planning for eco-localist cooperatives will grow as well. Demographers need to determine the correct sizing of the various operations and the actual contracts and documents need to be drafted – but they don’t have to be reinvented every time. When it comes to financing, the options are twofold. The first option is dividing the initial infrastructure debt between the residents. The profits of the collective would then be distributed until those personal loans are repaid. Alternatively, the collective could hold the debt itself as an institution and leverage a sort of ‘property tax’ on each residence – not dissimilar from how landlords or homeowner associations operate today. The profits of the collective would be used to keep that tax as low as possible or even at zero. If the model proves successful, there will be an excess of community profits that go towards reducing the costs of living – whether it be rent, insurance, energy bills, or something else. As long as the business structure of the collective allows for the investments into infrastructure to be returned and the residents to experience a superior financial situation, the viability of the eco-localist cooperatives as presented here speaks for itself. AuthorCasper Rove is a blue collar worker from Omaha, Nebraska who coaches highschool debate part-time. His free time is best spent making headway in his endeavor for sustainable subsistence farming and looking for the most pragmatic way to convert socialist thought into socialist infrastructure. Archives August 2021 8/3/2021 Obama Wants His Private Presidential Center on Public Land—and Mainstream Media Is Looking the Other Way. By: Leonard C. GoodmanRead NowAdvocates say an alternate site in Washington Park is less disruptive and more beneficial to the community and the environment. Chicagoans mostly support the Obamas’ decision to build the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) on the south side of Chicago. But few of us are aware of the controversy over the Obamas’ decision to site their private center on historic public parkland on the shores of Lake Michigan, as these important issues have not been widely covered in the mainstream press, including in any of Chicago’s major newspapers. Initially the Obama Foundation considered several potential sites for the OPC. These sites were evaluated based on certain factors, including accessibility, enhancements to the physical environment, and potential for economic development. The site receiving the highest score was a site near Washington Park, just west of the University of Chicago campus, which the university described in its literature as pairing “the greatest need with the greatest opportunity.” Nevertheless, in 2016, the foundation decided to build on 19.3 acres of wooded public parkland in the heart of historic Jackson Park, east of the U of C campus and about a half-mile from the shores of Lake Michigan. The city of Chicago quickly approved the transfer of public parkland to the private foundation, sparking the current controversy. The city gave the Obama Foundation a 99-year lease on the parkland, tax-free, for $10. The OPC is permitted to charge fees for entry, parking, and third-party use, with the profits to go to the Obama Foundation. The plan for the OPC can be viewed on the Obama Foundation website. It includes the construction of a 235-foot-high “museum tower,” which will rise above all neighboring structures, including the Museum of Science and Industry. More than a dozen neighborhood groups throughout the south side expressed concerns about the taking of lakefront parkland. Originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1871, and later redeveloped by Olmsted and Daniel Burnham, Jackson Park is on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of the most important urban parks in the nation. In 2018, a nonprofit park advocacy organization called Protect Our Parks (POP) went to federal court to try and stop the “partial destruction of Jackson Park,” which it called a violation of public trust. A group of longtime residents of Hyde Park and South Shore later joined in a new suit with POP, which does not seek to thwart the center from being built, but wants to see it built a mile and a half to the west, on vacant land adjacent to Washington Park. The plaintiffs have pointed to an alternate site plan for the OPC authored by Chicago architect (and Bronzeville resident) Grahm Balkany that can be previewed at the POP website. A comparison of the two proposed plans shows that the Washington Park site has distinct advantages over the Jackson Park site. First, while the Jackson Park plan requires the privatization of about 20 acres of public parkland, the Washington Park plan requires no private taking of public green space. Rather, the latter plan proposes building the center on vacant land available for purchase on the west side of Washington Park. In Balkany’s plan, public parkland for south-siders to enjoy would be enlarged rather than reduced. As Jamie Kalven, award-winning journalist and plaintiff in the POP lawsuit, expressed in a recent Tribune editorial, the privatization of public parkland sets a dangerous precedent. “In view of Chicago’s history of rapacious real estate exploitation, it’s nothing short of miraculous that the glorious archipelago of Frederick Law Olmsted parks—Washington and Jackson parks, linked by the Midway Plaisance—has been preserved. At least until now.” Another plaintiff in the lawsuit is Dr. W.J.T. Mitchell, U of C professor, author, and landscape historian. He explains that Olmsted’s vision was for these public parks to be democratic spaces, without gates, open to all visitors. Mitchell believes the taking of parkland for private use is contrary to Olmsted’s plan. Another plaintiff, Bren Sheriff, who has lived for nearly 50 years in the South Shore neighborhood near Jackson Park, told me that the center was initially marketed as a presidential library. But after obtaining the lease to build in Jackson Park, the foundation changed course and decided to build a private entity with no official connection to the National Archives. According to Sheriff, many south-siders have been misled into believing that the POP lawsuit is an attempt by white people to stop President Obama from building his presidential library. Second, construction of the OPC in the wooded parkland of Jackson Park will require the destruction of hundreds of mature, carbon-sequestering trees, contributing to the existential problem of global climate change. Mitchell believes more than a thousand trees will ultimately be destroyed in and around the park, many of which are more than 100 years old. The alternative plan near Washington Park does not require destruction of any mature trees, according to Balkany. Another environmental concern is that the placement of a 20-story tower so close to the lake will endanger migratory birds that fly north and south close to the western edge of Lake Michigan. The Washington Park site is farther west and is believed to pose less risk to migrating birds. Third, the Jackson Park site is not easily accessed by public transportation, meaning that visitors would mostly come by vehicle. In contrast, the Washington Park site is situated right on the CTA Green Line. Further, the Jackson Park plan calls for the closing of two major roads—Cornell Drive and the southern half of the historic Midway Plaisance—necessitating a rerouting of traffic and the widening of Lake Shore Drive and Stony Island Avenue. The Washington Park plan does not call for any major road closures or traffic disruptions. Fourth, the Obama Foundation has promised to bring economic development to the south side. Sheriff believes this is a pipe dream if the center is built in Jackson Park. The park is surrounded by the university, the Museum of Science and Industry, two high schools, and private homes. “Where is the economic development going to come from?” On the other hand, the Washington Park site is adjacent to many commercial businesses—especially along Garfield Boulevard—that stand to benefit from the OPC. None of these factors favoring the Washington Park site seem to be seriously disputed. Rather, as Kalven wrote in his Tribune editorial: “The Obama Foundation has declined every invitation to engage the issue of ‘feasible and prudent alternatives’ and has instead mounted a marketing campaign, the central theme of which is that the Jackson Park site is a fait accompli.” I reached out to the Obama Foundation for comment and was invited to email my questions, which I did, inquiring why the Jackson Park site was selected over the alternative site west of Washington Park; and whether the community has been allowed to weigh in on the controversy over the sites. The Foundation responded that it was “unable to accommodate [my] request at this time.” Mitchell told me that he attended a town hall meeting in 2017 at Hyde Park Academy High School where residents were invited to come to the microphone and ask questions about the OPC. But when residents started raising objections to the plan to build in Jackson Park, the open portion of the meeting was ended, and residents were directed to voice their concerns in small breakout groups. The city never again allowed open-mike questions at meetings regarding the OPC. Mitchell explained his motivation for joining the lawsuit against locating the OPC in Jackson Park: “I want to save the Obamas from their own bad decision.” Besides being a historic landmark, Jackson Park offers a precarious footing to support a 235-foot tower. The plan is to build the tower on the edge of the West Lagoon that is directly connected to the rising waters of Lake Michigan, which pose serious logistical issues in construction and future usage. “I am afraid it will be a disaster for the Obamas and for the city.” AuthorLeonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney and co-owner of the newly independent Reader. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Archives August 2021 8/3/2021 Canada Is Waging an All-Front Legal War Against Indigenous People. By: Justin PodurRead NowAfter mass graves full of Indigenous children have been found, how can Canada justify ongoing land theft? Canada is developing a new image: one of burning churches, toppling statues, and mass graves. There are thousands more unmarked graves, thousands more Indigenous children killed at residential schools, remaining to be unearthed. There can be no denying that this is Canada, and it has to change. But can Canada transform itself for the better? If the revelation of the mass killing of Indigenous children is to lead to any actual soul-searching and any meaningful change, the first order of business is for Canada to stop its all-front war against First Nations. Much of that war is taking place through the legal system. Canadian politicians have said as much, adopting a motion in June calling for the government to stop fighting residential school survivors in court. A long-standing demand, it has been repeated by Indigenous advocates who have expressed amazement in the face of these horrific revelations that the Canadian government would nonetheless continue to fight Indigenous survivors of systematic child abuse by the state. To get a sense of the scope of Canada’s legal war on First Nations, I looked at a Canadian legal database containing decisions (case law) pertaining to First Nations. I also looked at the hearing lists of the Federal Court of Canada for ongoing cases. My initial goal was to identify where Canada could easily settle or abandon cases, bringing about a harmonious solution to these conflicts. Two things surprised me. The first was the volume and diversity of lawsuits Canada is fighting. Canada is fighting First Nations everywhere, on an astoundingly wide range of issues. The second thing: Canada is losing. The Attack on Indigenous Children and WomenIn his 1984 essay “‘Pioneering’ in the Nuclear Age,” political theorist Eqbal Ahmad argued that the “four fundamental elements… without which an indigenous community cannot survive” were “land, water, leaders and culture.” Canada fights Indigenous people over land, water, fishing rights, mining projects, freedom of movement, and more. The assault on Indigenous nations is also a war against Indigenous children and women. In the high-profile case of First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada et al. v. Attorney General of Canada, laid out in detail by Cindy Blackstock, “the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada and the Assembly of First Nations filed a complaint under the Canadian Human Rights Act alleging” in 2007 “that the Government of Canada had a longstanding pattern of providing less government funding for child welfare services to First Nations children on reserves than is provided to non-Aboriginal children.” The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) found in favor of the First Nations complainants in 2016. Note that this isn’t about the history of residential schools. It’s about discrimination against Indigenous kids in the present day. “In fact, the problem might be getting worse,” writes Blackstock, compared to “the height of residential school operations.” As evidence, she refers to a 2005 study of three sample provinces showing a wide gap between the percent of First Nations children in child welfare care (10.23 percent) compared to a much lower rate for non-First Nations children (0.67 percent). In 2006, following the Canadian government’s repeated failures to act on the inequity described in this report (which also included comprehensive suggested reforms that had both moral and economic appeal), Blackstock writes, “the Caring Society and the Assembly of First Nations agreed that legal action was required.” The CHRT was very clear in its 2019 decision that the federal government should compensate each victim the maximum amount, which addressed the victims as follows: “No amount of compensation can ever recover what you have lost, the scars that are left on your souls or the suffering that you have gone through as a result of racism, colonial practices and discrimination.” In May 2021, Canada, which has spent millions of dollars fighting this case, tried to overturn the CHRT’s ruling. Canada’s war on Indigenous children is also a war on Indigenous women. The sterilization of Indigenous women, beginning with Canada’s eugenics program around 1900, is another act of genocide, as scholar Karen Stote has argued. Indigenous women who had tubal ligation without their consent as part of this eugenics program have brought a class-action suit against the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, both of which had Sexual Sterilization Acts in their provincial laws from the 1920s in Alberta and 1930s in British Columbia until the early 1970s, and Saskatchewan, where sexual sterilization legislation was proposed but failed by one vote in 1930. A Senate committee found a case of forced sterilization of an Indigenous woman as recently as 2019. The Legal-Financial War on First Nations Organizations As Bob Joseph outlines in his 2018 book 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act, Canada first gave itself the right to decide Indian status in the Gradual Civilization Act of 1857, which created a process by which Indigenous people could give up their Indian status and so become “enfranchised”—which they would have to do if they wanted to attend higher education or become professionals. The apartheid system was updated through the Indian Act of 1876, from which sprang many evils including both the residential schools and the assertion of Canadian control over the way First Nations govern themselves. In 1927, when Indigenous veterans of World War I began to hold meetings with one another to discuss their situation, Canada passed laws forbidding Indigenous people from political organization and from raising funds to hire legal counsel (and from playing billiards, among other things). The Indian Act—which is still in effect today with amendments, despite multiple attempts to repeal it—outlawed traditional governance structures and gave Canada the power to intervene to remove and install Indigenous governance authorities at will—which Canada did continuously, from Six Nations in 1924 to Barriere Lake in 1995. As a result, at any given moment, many First Nations are still embroiled in lawsuits over control of their own governments. Canada controls the resources available to First Nations, including drinking water. In another national embarrassment, Canada has found itself able to provision drinking water to diamond mines but not First Nations. This battle too has entered the courts, with a class-action suit by Tataskweyak Cree Nation, Curve Lake First Nation, and Neskantaga First Nation demanding that Canada not only compensate their nations, but also work with them to build the necessary water systems. Canada dribbles out humiliating application processes by which Indigenous people can try to exercise their human right to housing. When combined with the housing crisis on reserves, these application processes have attracted swindlers like consultant Jerry Paulin, who sued Cat Lake First Nation for $1.2 million, claiming that his efforts were the reason the First Nation received federal funds for urgent housing repairs. Canada uses the threat of withdrawal of these funds to impose stringent financial “transparency” conditions on First Nations—the subject of legal struggle, in which Cold Lake First Nations has argued that the financial transparency provisions violate their rights. Canada has used financial transparency claims to put First Nations finances under third-party management, withholding and misusing the funds in a not-very-transparent way, as the Algonquins of Barriere Lake charged in another lawsuit. An insistence on transparency is astounding for a country that buried massive numbers of Indigenous children in unmarked graves. Win or lose, the lawsuits themselves impose high costs on First Nations whose finances are, for the most part, controlled by Canada. The result is situations like the one where the Beaver Lake Cree are suing Canada for costs because they ran out of money suing Canada for their land. When First Nations are winning in court, Canada tries to bankrupt them before they get there. Land and Resources Are the Core of the Struggle The core issue between Canada and First Nations is land. Most battles are over the land on which the state of Canada sits, all of which was stolen and much of which was swindled through legal processes that couldn’t hold up to scrutiny and are now unraveling. “[I]n simple acreage,” the late Indigenous leader Arthur Manuel wrote in the 2017 book The Reconciliation Manifesto, this was “the biggest land theft in the history of mankind,” reducing Indigenous people from holding 100 percent of the landmass to 0.2 percent. One of the most economically important pieces of land is the Haldimand tract in southern Ontario, which generates billions of dollars in revenue that belongs, by right, to the Six Nations, as Phil Monture has extensively documented. Six Nations submitted ever-more detailed land claims, until Canada simply stopped accepting them. But in July, their sustained resistance led to the cancellation of a planned suburban development (read: settlement) on Six Nations land. Many of the First Nations court battles are defensive. Namgis, Ahousaht, Dzawada’enuxw, and Gwa’sala-’Nakwaxda’xw First Nations have tried to defend their wild fisheries against encroachment and pollution by settler fish farms. West Moberly, Long Plain, Peguis, Roseau River Anishinabe, Aroland, Ginoogaming, Squamish, Coldwater, Tsleil-Waututh, Aitchelitz, Skowkale, and Shxwha:y Village First Nations challenged dams and pipelines. Canada has a history of “pouring big money” into these court battles to the tune of tens of millions—small money compared to its tens of billions subsidizing and taking over financially unviable pipelines running through Indigenous lands—including that of the Wet’suwet’en, whose resistance sparked mass protests across Canada in 2020. The duty to consult First Nations on such projects is itself the outcome of a legal struggle, won in the 2004 decision in Haida Nation v. British Columbia. First Nations who were swindled or coerced out of their lands (or water, as with Iskatewizaagegan No. 39 Independent First Nation’s case against Winnipeg and Ontario for illegally taking their water from Shoal Lake for use by the city of Winnipeg starting in 1913) fight for their land back, for compensation, or both. The Specific Claims Tribunal has 132 ongoing cases. In Saskatchewan in May, the tribunal awarded Mosquito Grizzly Bear’s Head Lean Man First Nation $141 million and recognition that they never surrendered their land as Canada had claimed they had in 1905. In June, Heiltsuk First Nation won a part of their land back. First Nations also fight for their fishing rights in courts and out on the water, as settler fishers have physically attacked and tried to intimidate Mi’kmaw fishers on Canada’s east coast. In June, on the west coast, after the British Columbia Court of Appeals found against Canada, the federal government announced it wouldn’t appeal, dropping a 15-year litigation that restricted Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations fishing quotas. Decolonization Just Might Be Inevitable Why does Canada keep fighting (and losing) even as its legitimacy as a state built on theft and genocide crumbles? It’s not merely the habits of centuries. It’s also the absence of any project besides the displacement of First Nations and the plunder of the land. Canada could take the first step to ending all this by declaring a unilateral ceasefire in the legal war. Too few Canadians understand that this would actually be a very good thing. First Nations lived sustainably for thousands of years in these extraordinary northern ecosystems. Then the European empires arrived, bringing smallpox and tuberculosis among other scourges. Local extinctions of beaver and buffalo quickly followed, as well as the total extinction of the passenger pigeon. Today’s settler state has poisoned pristine lakes with mine tailings, denuded the country’s spectacular forests, and gifted the atmosphere some of the world’s highest per capita carbon emissions (seventh in the world in 2018—more than Saudi Arabia, which was 10th, and the U.S., which was 11th). Indigenous visionaries have better ideas, such as those presented by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Arthur Manuel, or for that matter the Red Deal and the People’s Agreement of Cochabamba. Under Indigenous sovereignty, Canadians could truly be guests of the First Nations, capable of fulfilling their obligations to their hosts and their hosts’ lands, rather than the pawns of the settler state’s war against those from whom the land was stolen. AuthorJustin Podur is a Toronto-based writer and a writing fellow at Globetrotter. You can find him on his website at podur.org and on Twitter @justinpodur. He teaches at York University in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Archives August 2021 8/2/2021 Empty Rhetoric That Seeks to Misinform and Appease: On Biden's Farcical Anti-Monopoly Executive Order. By: Shawgi TellRead NowLet me be clear: capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism. It’s exploitation Not a day goes by in which major owners of capital and their political representatives do not promote illusions and disinformation about the obsolete capitalist economic system. The ruling elite and their entourage rejected economic science and embraced irrationalism, incoherence, and dogmatism more than a century ago. They are unable and unwilling to offer any useful analysis of economic realities. Nothing they put forward helps advance public understanding of the economy. The mainstream news, for example, is saturated with endless mind-numbing nonsensical economic headlines. It is no accident that mainstream economics has long been called the dismal science. The internal core logic and intrinsic operation of capital ensures greater poverty, inequality, and monopoly over time. This is the inherent nature of capital. It is how capital moves and develops. These catastrophes are not the result of external forces, extenuating circumstances, or “bad people” making “bad decisions.” They are not the outcome of ill-conceived policies made by self-serving, immoral, or uninformed people. These worsening problems did not arise because something is wrong with the intentions of some individuals who make antisocial decisions. Such notions are facile. While individuals have consciousness, autonomy, self-determination, and agency, many phenomena (e.g., laws of economic development) operate objectively outside the will of individuals; they do not depend on the will of individuals. The laws of motion governing economic phenomena can be known, controlled, and directed, but not extinguished; they have to be consciously mastered, harnessed, and directed in a way that meets the needs of all. Capital is first and foremost an unequal social relationship, not a person or a thing. This unequal social relationship is relentlessly reproduced in today’s society, preventing the healthy balanced extended reproduction of society. On the one side of this unequal social relationship are the majority who own nothing but their labor power and on the other side are a tiny handful who own the means of production and live off the labor of others. Major owners of capital are the personification of capital, the embodiment of capital. This critical theoretical insight helps us avoid the rabbit hole of personal intentions and personal will, and allows us instead to objectively locate greed, insecurity, inequality, poverty, unemployment, endless debt, and other tragedies in the intrinsic built-in nature, logic, and movement of capital itself. One of these is the inexorable tendency of competition to lead to monopoly under capitalism. Competition means winners and losers. By definition, not everyone can win when competing. Competition means rivalry for supremacy. Thousands compete in the Olympics, for example, but only a select few (“winners”) go home with a gold medal.[1] It is no accident that the economy, media, and politics are heavily monopolized by a handful of billionaires while billions of people who actually produce the wealth in society and run society remain marginalized and disempowered. This brutal reality cannot be reversed or overcome with the utterance of a few platitudes, the passage of some policies, or the creation of some agencies that claim to be able to fix the outdated economic system, especially when all of the above come from billionaires themselves. On July 9, 2021, President Joe Biden issued an Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/07/09/executive-order-on-promoting-competition-in-the-american-economy/). The order is about 7,000 words long and full of anticonscious statements. Disinformation pervades the entire order. The opening paragraph begins with the following disinformation: By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to promote the interests of American workers, businesses, and consumers, it is hereby ordered…. Here, “American workers, businesses, and consumers” are casually misequated and no mention is made of citizens or humans. The implication is that consumerism is normal, healthy, and desirable, and that workers and big business somehow have the same aims, world outlook, and interests. This conceals the fact that owners of capital and workers have antagonistic irreconcilable interests and that people exist as humans and citizens, not just utilitarian consumers and shoppers in a taken-for-granted system based on chaos, anarchy, and violence. Disinformation is further escalated in the next paragraph: A fair, open, and competitive marketplace has long been a cornerstone of the American economy, while excessive market concentration threatens basic economic liberties, democratic accountability, and the welfare of workers, farmers, small businesses, startups, and consumers. “Market concentration” has been the norm for generations. Monopolies, cartels, and oligopolies have been around since the late 1800s. Mergers and acquisitions have been taking place non-stop for decades. The so-called “free market” largely disappeared long ago. Objectively, there can be no fairness in a system rooted in wage-slavery and empire-building. Wage-slavery is the precondition for the tendency of the rich to get richer and the poor poorer. It is not a recipe for prosperity and security for all. This is also why inequality, tyranny, violence, and surveillance have been growing over the years. Moreover, what “threatens basic economic liberties, democratic accountability, and the welfare of workers, farmers, small businesses, startups, and consumers” is the ongoing political and economic exclusion of people from control over the economy and their lives by the financial oligarchy. There can be no liberty, accountability, and welfare when most people are deprived of real decision-making power and major owners of capital make all the decisions. Problems would not constantly worsen if people had control over their lives. The “best allocation of resources” cannot be made when the economy is carved up, fractured, and controlled by competing owners of capital. Although recurring economic crises for well over a century have repeatedly discredited “free market” ideology, the 7,000-word executive order is saturated with the language of “choice,” “competition,” and “consumers.” This is the same worn-out language used by privatizers of all hues at home and abroad. Further, while the executive order gives many examples of “economic consolidation” in numerous sectors, the government is not interested in creating a self-reliant vibrant diverse economy that meets the needs of all. It is not committed to reversing “the harmful effects of monopoly and monopsony.” Numerous antitrust laws have not stopped either. Big mergers and acquisitions have been going on for years. Rather, the executive order is an attempt to restructure economic and political arrangements among different factions of the wealthy elite; it reflects a new stage or form of inter-capitalist rivalry for even greater domination of the economy by fewer owners of capital. In other words, moving forward, the economy will remain monopolized by a few monopolies. Wealth is only going to become more concentrated in fewer hands in the years ahead. Mountains of data from hundreds of sources document growing wealth and income inequality every year. The bulk of the executive order is filled with endless directives, strategies, rules, and suggestions for how to curb “unfair practices” and promote “fairness” and “competition.” But these all ring hollow given concrete realities and past experience. Today, governments at all levels have been taken over by global private monopoly interests and have become instruments of decisions made on a supranational basis. There is a fine-tuned revolving door between officials from government and the private sector; they have become synonymous for all essential purposes. The same people who run major corporations also serve in high-level government positions where they advance the narrow interests of the private sector and then they leave government and return to their high-level corporate positions. There is a reason why the majority of members of Congress are millionaires. The Executive Branch in the United States, especially the President’s Office, is a major tool for the expression of the will of the most powerful monopolies. This is why billions of dollars are spent every few years to select the President of the country. A modern economy must be controlled and directed by workers themselves. Only such an economy can provide for the needs of all and avoid endless economic distortions. Uneven economic development, “unfair” arrangements, “market concentration,” monopolies, oligopolies, and recurring crises cannot be avoided so long as those who actually produce the social product have no control over the social product. Workers have first claim to the wealth they produce and have the right to decide how, where, and when that wealth is used. Major owners of capital are historically superfluous and a big block to progress. They are not needed for a healthy vibrant self-reliant economy that meets the needs of all. Notes [1] Under capitalism the ideology of competition also falsely assumes scarcity because if nothing was scare then there would be no need for competition. AuthorShawgi Tell, PhD, is author of the book “Charter School Report Card.” His main research interests include charter schools, neoliberal education policy, privatization and political economy. He can be reached at stell5@naz.edu. This article was produced by Hampton Think. Archives August 2021 8/2/2021 Mexican President Shows Solidarity to Cuba in Words and Actions. By: Cuba Solidarity CampaignRead NowMexico has sent a shipment of aid to Cuba containing aid to Cuba containing syringes, oxygen tanks and masks along with powered milk, cans of tuna, beans, flour, cooking oil and gasoline. Two naval ships containing the shipment left the Mexican port of Veracruz on Sunday 25 July. Speaking at an event to mark the 238th birthday of Simón Bolívar on on Satruday 24 July, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that Cuba was an “example of resistance,” and proposed the entire country should be declared a World Heritage site. He praised the island’s ability to stand up to US hostility since 1959 and criticised the role of the Organisation of American States which he said should be replaced “by a body that is truly autonomous, not anybody’s lackey.” Mexico made the commitment to send aid to Cuba on the same day that the US government decided to tighten sanctions against the island even further following prostests in the country on Sunday 11 July. The Mexican president had previously spoken about the US government’s reaction to these protests. On 12 July he addressed a news conference and declared:"The truth is that if one wanted to help Cuba, the first thing that should be done is to suspend the blockade of Cuba as the majority of countries in the world are asking," "That would be a truly humanitarian gesture," he added. "No country in the world should be fenced in, blockaded." AuthorCuba Solidarity Campaign This article was produced by Cuba Solidarity Campaign. Archives July 2021 |
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