No Green Goddesses

Here is an important intervention by Janet Biehl, published in the latest issue of Le Monde diplomatique: "No Green Goddesses: Ecofeminism Isn't Feminist or Eco Either." Unfortunately, the English version is for subscribers only, and the French version won't be available till next month. But the Portugese and Italian versions are already online. A funny thing is that people who wouldn't put up with the god of the Abrahamic religions often love Pachamama. One reason is that Pachamama is cast as female while the God of Jews, Christians, and Muslims is commonly cast as male. Goddesses can be useful for reactionary, patriarchal thought, though. Amaterasu is female and kind of cool in the original tellings of the myth about her, but Japan's ruling class at one time successfully built patriarchal capitalism and imperialism in part using an ideology based on the claimed kinship with her. Another reason is that there are two kinds of "otherness": one (e.g., Muslims, hijab) is cast as frightening; the other (e.g., indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indian saris) is cast as cute. A deeper reason, though, lies in what Janet Biehl touches on in her article: the Left's neglect of the questions of the gendered division of labor and social reproduction. Given that most struggles on the Left today are defensive rather than offensive, there is a tendency to employ the rhetoric of uncommodified = good versus commodified =bad and adopt the posture of defending the remaining space of the former against the encroachment of the latter. But a lot of oppression of women takes place in the sphere of uncommodified relations, which gets scant attention in the aforementioned rhetoric.

Embedding Environmentalism in Marxist Theory of Development

Environmentalism should be embedded in a Marxist theory of socioeconomic development like Kalecki's, revisited by Jayati Ghosh in "Michal Kalecki and the Economics of Development." The main question underlying Kalecki's theory, as Ghosh sums up, was this: "which groups in society (or outside) would bear the burden of increasing capital formation through reductions in consumption"? This question can and should be supplemented by anthropocentric environmental concerns, i.e. quality of life questions: Which groups in society (or outside) would bear the burden of increasing capital formation through reductions in the environmental quality of life? Which groups in society (or outside) would bear the burden of increasing the environmental quality of life through reductions in consumption? Explicitly asked thus, the fact that it's all a matter of politically determined trade-offs becomes clear. Such an approach would be more useful to leftists actively involved in governments, political parties, and social movements than an approach that seeks to develop an enviro-Marxist crisis theory.

Fiscal Crisis of States

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, what next?  In the United States,¹ a "fiscal crisis" of states and municipalities, both real (masses of public-sector workers are getting laid off even now²) and imagined (bogus public pension liabilities stats used in right-wing propaganda to attack unions³).

Money is out there, though, if only we had a powerful coalition to tax the rich!

There's a very good pro-labor, anti-racist, Green rationale to prioritize this fight above all, since one of the sectors under attack is urban mass transportation, whose workers are often unionized and, as in many other sectors of civil service, are often non-white.  Needless to say, state and municipal public service is the most feminist thing in the United States, in terms of profiles of both workers and beneficiaries.

Leftists can't win everywhere pursuing this battle to tax the rich, but we can win here and there,⁴ which would help build more durable bases for future actions than anything else.  There's nothing like victories to build a Left!

Taxing the rich is also better financial reform than any "oversight" of finance that the Democrats come up with at the federal level.  The less money the rich have, the less money for their gambles.  The financial reform PR message here is to tax the rich and spend their money here, so they won't spend it to bid up, say, real estate prices in China or something like that.


1  In the eurozone, the fiscal crisis expresses itself as the euro core of Germany versus the euro periphery of PIIGS.  See Jayati Ghosh, Heiner Flassbeck, Joseph Halevi, Costas Lapavitsas, and Mark Weisbrot.

2  Dean Baker, "State and Local Governments Have Shed 72,000 Jobs since December," MRZine, 2 April 2010).

3  Nathan Newman, "No Crisis in Public Retirement Systems: Debunking the Hype and the Attacks on Employee Benefits" (MRZine, 17 April 2010).

4  Rick Wolff, "Oregon Counters Massachusetts" (MRZine, 27 January 2010).

It's about Time

Despite all the activism and writing about Copenhagen, few are putting shorter work hours (i.e., consuming productivity gains in the form of more leisure than commodified goods and services) on the environmental agenda. Why?

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Climate Change

"Mr. President, we must not allow an icebreaker gap!"

A growing array of military leaders, Arctic experts and lawmakers say the United States is losing its ability to patrol and safeguard Arctic waters even as climate change and high energy prices have triggered a burst of shipping and oil and gas exploration in the thawing region.

The National Academy of Sciences, the Coast Guard and others have warned over the past several years that the United States’ two 30-year-old heavy icebreakers, the Polar Sea and Polar Star, and one smaller ice-breaking ship devoted mainly to science, the Healy, are grossly inadequate. Also, the Polar Star is out of service.

And this spring, the leaders of the Pentagon’s Pacific Command, Northern Command and Transportation Command strongly recommended in a letter that the Joint Chiefs of Staff endorse a push by the Coast Guard to increase the country’s ability to gain access to and control its Arctic waters.

In the meantime, a resurgent Russia has been busy expanding its fleet of large oceangoing icebreakers to around 14, launching a large conventional icebreaker in May and, last year, the world’s largest icebreaker, named 50 Years of Victory, the newest of its seven nuclear-powered, pole-hardy ships. (Andrew C. Revkin, "A Push to Increase Icebreakers in the Arctic," New York Times, 17 August 2008)

International Capital Dominates Brazilian Agriculture

International Capital Dominates Brazilian Agriculture
by João Pedro Stedile

The Movement of Financial Capital

In recent years, there has been an intensive, continuous process of concentration and centralization of corporations operating and controlling the entire production process of global agriculture.

Concentration is the concept used in political economy to explain the movement of large corporations to combine, accumulate, and become large groups.  Thus, in every sector of production, a situation of oligopoly is being created, with a few corporations controlling the sector.  The second movement of capital is centralization, in which a single corporation comes to control several sectors of production, sometimes even the sectors unrelated to one another.  These two logical movements of capital have been accompanied in the agricultural sector with a process of internationalization of control of the market and trade at the global level.  In other words, some corporations have come to operate in every country and control the global market.

This dual movement of capital -- which was very much noticeable, from as far back as the theory of imperialism, in large industrial enterprises -- also came to dominate the agricultural sector in the last ten years.  And what is most dangerous, now under the hegemony of financial capital, the velocity and volume of capital invested in agriculture were much faster and greater than had been the case in other productive sectors through the course of the twentieth century.  That is because much capital in the form of money, i.e. financial capital, accumulated in rich countries in recent years.  This capital was shifting to the purchase of shares in the most profitable corporations of the primary sector as well.  Thus, in just a few years, as an effect of the investment of this financial capital in stock purchases, concentration and centralization became extraordinary.

Result

Today, almost all branches of agricultural production are controlled by groups of oligopolistic corporations, which coordinate among themselves.  Thus, Cargill, Monsanto, ADM, Dreyfus, and Bunge alone are responsible for 80% of the total world production of and trade in grains such as soybeans, corn, wheat, rice, and sunflowers.  Monsanto, Novartis, Bayer, and Syngenta control the entire production of transgenic seeds.  In the dairy products and derivatives sector we come up against Nestlé, Dannon, and Parmalat.  Here in Brazil, the entire production of raw materials for fertilizers is controlled by just three transnational corporations: Bunge, Mosaic, and Yara.  Only two corporations, Monsanto and Nortox, produce glyphosate, a raw material for agricultural pesticides.  AGCO, Fiat, New Holland, etc. oligopolize the agricultural machinery sector.

This movement, which had begun to develop in the 1990s, accelerated in the past two years with the crisis of capitalism in the United States.  Interest rates in the core countries fell to an annual rate of 2% and, given the inflation rate, reached the point where banks would lose money.  Then, financial capital shifted to the periphery of the system to protect itself from the crisis and maintain its profit rates.  Over the past two years, nearly 330 billion dollars of money poured into Brazil.  A part of that capital was invested through local banks, to encourage the buying of real estate, household appliances, and cars on credit, at the average annual rates of 47%.  Sheer madness, compared with the rates in developed countries.

Another part of capital was destined to the purchase of lands.  One report in the Folha de São Paulo newspaper estimated that foreign capital bought more than 20 million hectares in recent years, especially in the midwest regions and the new agricultural frontier of the so-called Ma-pi-to (Maranhão, Piauí, and Tocantis), where land prices were much lower.  Yet another part headed to the Amazon in search of mining areas, hydroelectric projects, and possession of huge areas of biodiversity which later will bear fruit if they are exploited by their laboratories.

In the cellulose sector, three large groups -- Aracruz (Norway), Stora Enzo (Sweden-Finland), and International Paper (US) -- moved their entire production to the rich soil and climatic conditions found in Brazil.  So, the expansion of eucalyptus monoculture throughout the region stretching from Bahía in the south to the Uruguay border and six new factories are being planned.  Thousands of hectares of industrial eucalyptus plantations will destroy everything, creating a veritable green desert.

Likewise, there was a major investment of foreign capital in the expansion of sugarcane monoculture for ethanol production and export.  The sugarcane area increased from 4 to 6 million hectares.  There are 77 projects for new ethanol plants, which will be built along four major alcohol pipelines projected to transport alcohol from the midwest to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá and from the Palmas region (Tocantins State) to the port of São Luis (in Maranhão State).  Two of these alcohol pipelines are owned by Petrobras and the other two will be owned by foreign investors.

Foreign capital also speeded up its investment in the production and multiplication of transgenic seeds, especially maize.  Hence Syngenta, Monsanto, and Bayer are lobbying and pressuring the government to allow their varieties of GM corn.  Some of these varieties are banned in Europe, but here . . . anything goes!

Agribusiness

This avalanche of foreign capital to control our agricultural production and inputs and to expand production for export was made possible only by the alliance of the aforementioned corporations and the big landowners.  The landowners with large tracts of land are getting in on the action as subordinate associates of big corporations, plundering the environment, overexploiting agricultural labor, and sometimes even using slave labor.

This agricultural model, which is called agribusiness, is the marriage of transnationals and big landowners.  In it there is no room for peasant family agriculture or agricultural labor, for it uses herbicides and high-tech mechanization at all levels.¹

The result is already visible in statistics.  Brazil is turning toward large-scale monoculture for export.  A kind of agro-export re-colonization, reminiscent of the days of empire.  Of the 130 million tons of grain produced, no less than 110 million tons are just soybeans and corn.  In cattle production, 300 million hectares are for export production.  And what's left is an immense green desert of eucalyptuses.  That's the Brazilian model!  It will be profitable to some landowners and a few foreign corporations.  But the Brazilian people will be left with environmental liability, unemployment, and poverty.

Contradictions Emerge Rapidly

The contradictions of this perverse model come to the surface quickly.  Food prices soared, as a result of financial capital's speculation at the stock exchanges and oligopolistic corporate control of the market.  The dollar prices of food doubled over the past year.  Food is increasingly contaminated by the intensive use of pesticides.  Agribusiness fails to produce healthy food, without herbicides.  Only peasant family farming succeeds in doing so.  The intensive production of ethanol through sugarcane monoculture does not solve the problem of global warming -- on the contrary, it aggravates it.  The biggest problem concerning fuels is not just oil -- it is, above all, the individual form of transportation promoted by financial capital to push for increased sales of cars on credit.  They are transforming our cities into a hell.

This form of monoculture depletes natural resources, soil and groundwater, and affects the quality and location of water.  Monoculture destroys biodiversity and upsets the environmental balance of the region.

Faced with this situation, social movements, assembled into Via Campesina of Brazil, resolved to unite and amplify their protests. In recent months, peasant protests multiplied in all states, against the model and operation of transnational corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill, Syngenta, Bunge, Bayer, etc.  These protests have served as a kind of pedagogy of masses -- a warning to Brazilian society that it must wake up given the gravity of the problem and its future implications.

The Response of Businesses. . . .

Foreign corporations and their Brazilian guard dogs are aware of the social and environmental problems that they are causing.  Since they don't have right on their side in the way they dominate nature, they have resolved to confront the movements of Via Campesina by combining a variety of tactics.  First, million-dollar PR campaigns featuring famous artists in the press.  Second, right-wing sectors' manipulation of the judiciary and the Public Ministry, which stand by them ideologically, in order to criminalize, with many prosecutions, social movement leaders and activists.  And where none of these solves the problem, resort to repression, particularly in the states ruled by right-wing parties such as Río Grande Do Sul,² São Paulo, Rio, and Minas Gerais, where the state governments do not hesitate to use the military police to violently repress the movement.

It is nothing but self-deception to believe that this type of problem can be solved with PR or repression.  This is a historic conflict between two ways of producing food.  One seeks only profits, even at the cost of poisoning nature and its products.  The other is geared to the production of healthy food as a right of all people.  There will be many battles -- that is certain.


1  For the Brazilian model of agriculture, see Via Campesina Brazil, "Queremos producir alimentos" (We Want to Produce Food), , 10 June 2008.

2  In the State of Río Grande do Sul, the Landless Workers Movement (MST) faces powerful judicial persecution: the Public Ministry has come to seek its dissolution, and several militants of social movements have been prosecuted.  See Frei Betto, "Suprimir el MST o el latifundio improductivo?" (Suppress the MST or the Unproductive Latifundium?), 8 July 2008.

---

João Pedro Stedile is a National Coordinator of Via Campesina Brazil.  The original article in Portuguese, "O capital internacional esta dominando a agricultura brasileira," was published on the Web site of the Agencia Latinoamericana de Información on 29 July 2008 and the Spanish translation "El capital internacional está dominando la agricultura" appeared on 30 July 2008.  English translation by Yoshie Furuhashi.

Memory of Fire: Bringing Embers of Hiroshima to Cuba

Memory of Fire:
Bringing Embers of Hiroshima to Cuba

炎の記憶
原爆の残り火をキューバへ

炎の記憶 − 原爆の残り火をキューバへ (Memory of Fire: Bringing Embers of Hiroshima to Cuba) was produced by 広島ホームテレビ(Hiroshima Home TV) and first broadcast in 2007.  The documentary tells the story of Ernesto Che Guevara's thoughts on Hiroshima and their relation to the Cuban Revolution's commitment to humanism, for example, its humanitarian aid and protection of the environment.  At the same time, it follows the delegates from アテナ・ジャパン (Atena Japan), a Japanese NGO, bringing the embers of Hiroshima to Cuba (which will be kept in a memorial designed by Nelson Domínguez in Cuba's John Lennon Park).

Che headed the Cuban delegation to Asia and Africa in 1959.  During the delegation's visit to Japan, Che requested that they be allowed to go to Hiroshima, the requested turned down by the Japanese government on the grounds that it wasn't listed on the delegation's itinerary.  (Omar Fernández, who was with Guevara on the delegation, wonders if the denial wasn't actually due to Tokyo's desire not to call attention to the US war crimes.¹)  Undaunted, Che, with two other delegates, jumped on a night train and visited Hiroshima on 25 July 1959 without telling the Japanese government.  What Che saw, some of which was published in his article "Recuperase Japón de la tragedia atomica" (Verde Olivo, 19 October 1959), became part of the Cuban memory of Hiroshima.

Che also strongly recommended that Fidel Castro himself visit Hiroshima, which Fidel did in 2003.  Fidel's 2003 visit, too, is part of this fascinating documentary.

In May this year, Atena Japan, together with other activist NGOs, brought Aleida Guevara to Japan, to celebrate "小さな国の大きな奇跡" (A Little Country Working Great Miracles).  The people of Japan have much to learn from Cuban environmentalism as they confront their government bent on becoming a plutonium superpower.²

Notes

1  Former Defense Minister of Japan Kyuma Fumio memorably said in 2007 that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "shoganai" (couldn't have been helped), for the bombings were "necessary" to end the war before a Soviet invasion of Japan!

久間防衛相の『原爆しょうがない』発言部分の映像

It's common for the power elites to defend their own war crimes or their predecessors', but rare are those who so openly defend a foreign power's war crimes against "their own people."   Only in Japan?

2 Gavan McCormack, "Japan as a Nuclear State" (Japan Focus, 1 August 2007); "Japan as a Plutonium Superpower" (Japan Focus, 9 December 2007); and "August Nuclear Thoughts: the New Proliferation" (Japan Focus, 4 August 2008).

"Careful"

If there is one word that defines Barack Obama's campaign, it's not the noun "change" but the adjective "careful," which he adds to essentially the same policy as John McCain's: "As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in" (Barack Obama, "My Plan for Iraq," New York Times, 14 July 2008)¹; and "we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage" (David Lightman, "In Major Change, Obama Says He'll Support Offshore Drilling," McClatchy Newspapers, 1 August 2008).

1  In fine print:

• "Senator Barack Obama said Thursday that he might 'refine' his plans for a phased withdrawal from Iraq after meeting with military commanders there later this summer" (Michael Cooper and Jeff Zeleny, "Obama Strives to Retain Some Flexibility on His Iraq Policy," New York Times, 3 July 2008).


• So far, he has offered nothing more concrete than this: "We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in."
  
  Obama's advisers have been more forthcoming. Samantha Power, before she resigned from the campaign for making an indiscreet remark about Hillary Clinton, told the BBC, "He will, of course, not rely upon some plan that he’s crafted as a Presidential candidate or a U.S. senator. He will rely upon a plan -- an operational plan -- that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground." Last month, the Center for a New American Security, which has become something like Obama’s foreign-policy think tank, released a report that argued against a timetable for withdrawal, regardless of the state of the war, and in favor of "conditional engagement," declaring, "Under this strategy, the United States would not withdraw its forces based on a firm unilateral schedule. Rather, the time horizon for redeployment would be negotiated with the Iraqi government and nested within a more assertive approach to regional diplomacy. The United States would make it clear that Iraq and America share a common interest in achieving sustainable stability in Iraq, and that the United States is willing to help support the Iraqi government and build its security and governance capacity over the long term, but only so long as Iraqis continue to make meaningful political progress." It's impossible to know if this persuasive document mirrors Obama’s current thinking, but here’s a clue: it was co-written by one of his Iraq advisers, Colin Kahl. (George Packer, "Obama's Iraq Problem," The New Yorker, 10 July 2008)

7 Things You Can't Say in the 2008 Elections

Obama: "We're the Saudi Arabia of Coal"

Barack Obama says, "We're the Saudi Arabia of coal," and Hillary Rodham Clinton agrees: "I support developing the country's coal resources in a responsible way that lessens our dependence on foreign oil" (Dan Testa, "Exclusive: Obama, Clinton Make Closing Arguments as Montana Primary Looms," Flathead Beacon, 29 May 2008).

I bet that underinvestment in oil, combined with a foolish ideology that says we must lesson "our dependence on foreign oil," will make climate change worse, pace environmentalists who are hoping that the current oil supply crunch will give them leverage necessary to push for actions to diminish emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Back to Coal

Has the oil supply crunch motivated the ruling classes to undertake major efforts at conservation? Far from it:

Over the next five years, Italy will increase its reliance on coal to 33 percent from 14 percent. Power generated by Enel from coal will rise to 50 percent.

And Italy is not alone in its return to coal. Driven by rising demand, record high oil and natural gas prices, concerns over energy security and an aversion to nuclear energy, European countries are expected to put into operation about 50 coal-fired plants over the next five years, plants that will be in use for the next five decades. (Elizabeth Rosenthal, "Europe Turns Back to Coal, Raising Climate Fears," New York Times, 23 April 2008)

That's Europe, the bastion of environmentalism. I'm afraid that climate change is an issue over which working classes, especially those in the South, have already lost even before getting involved in the fight.

Do Away with the Rhetoric of "Peak Oil"

Leftists must do away with the rhetoric of "peak oil." The problem is not that fossil fuels can't be physically found, but the "peak oil" rhetoric suggests that it is, confusing people.

Instead, tell the truth.

The material problem is this: fossil fuel reserves that are being found today and will be found in the future are more expensive and more ecologically destructive to exploit than those found before.

One of the political problems is this: the state companies and countries in the South that have oil and gas don't have enough capital and technology (the problem for the popular classes); and the companies and countries in the North that have capital and technology don't have the right to many of the oil and gas reserves that they covet (the problem for the ruling classes).

Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov notes: "Ninety percent of the world's proven hydrocarbon reserves are under some form of state control. Such state control of energy resources is offset, however, by the concentration of cutting-edge technology in the hands of private transnational corporations" ("Containing Russia: Back to the Future?" MRZine, 21 July 2007). That is the central problem for the US-led multinational empire's energy policy, as well as its challengers, today. (See National Petroleum Council, Facing the Hard Truths about Energy: A Comprehensive View to 2030 of Global Oil and Natural Gas, 18 July 2007; and the papers presented at the Baker Institute Energy Form conference "The Changing Role of National Oil Companies in International Energy Markets," 1-2 and 12 March 2007.)

Another of the political problems is this: how can we "better negotiate the necessary trade-offs between economic development and social justice, between requirements of productivity or efficiency and environmental sustainability or quality life which is not entirely a matter of material progress or economic growth" as Randhir Singh puts it ("Future of Socialism," MRZine, 29 December 2007)? Leftists have yet to figure out this question of trade-offs.

Patrick Bond writes in "From False to Real Solutions for Climate Change" (MRZine, 6 January 2008):

In contrast to carbon trading, what is reverberating within grassroots, coalface, and fenceline struggles in many parts of the world is a very different strategy and demand by civil society activists: leave the oil in the soil, the resources in the ground.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I have mentioned this demand in many sites over the past two years, enthusiastically commenting on the moral, political, economic, and ecological merits of leaving the oil in the soil. Unfortunately, in addition to confessing profound humility about the excessive fossil fuel burned by airplanes which have taken me on this quest, I must report on the only site where the message dropped like a lead balloon: with dear comrades in petro-socialist Venezuela.

Well, stop development and cut consumption is seldom a popular demand beyond the interlocking directorate of environmental NGOs and intellectuals. Not in Venezuela. Not even in Cuba.

Urbanization, Industrialization, and Feminism

Under capitalism, feminism and environmentalism may be at odds with each other: urbanization and industrialization usually are necessary conditions for the development of feminism (beyond the elite) and gender equality; but urbanization and industrialization tend to bring more energy-intensive lives and push up per capita energy use. It may be possible to urbanize and industrialize without wrecking the environment under another mode of production; but it must be noted that historical socialist records on the environment are on the whole unpromising. In any event, it doesn't look like we can switch from capitalism to a higher mode of production before capitalism really aggravates global warming. The only "solution" on the political horizon in the United States -- the "solution" that got on the political horizon thanks to underinvestment during the era of cheap oil, Washington's incessant wars and terrorism, and other social conflicts -- is higher oil prices, but even higher prices are only temporary: higher prices will eventually bring about attempts at conservation, but conservation attempts appear to end as soon as prices go down substantially.

GM Hourly Workers -- on the Road to Extinction?

What's the matter with General Motors and the United Auto Workers? Problems are many.

Poor Design and Poorer Fuel Economy

"'The U.A.W. is not convinced that G.M. can simply shrink its way out of its current problems,' Richard Shoemaker, the union's vice president in charge of relations with G.M., said in a statement. 'What's needed is an intense focus on rebuilding G.M.'s U.S. market share, and the way to get there is by offering the right product mix of vehicles with world-class design and quality'" (Danny Hakim, "G.M. Will Reduce Hourly Workers in U.S. by 25,000," New York Times, 8 Jun. 2005). Right he is, but has he done anything about that, like pushing the boss to make sleeker and Greener vehicles? Far from it -- he helped GM dig its own grave -- as well as its workers' -- deeper:

"The UAW submits now is not the time to impose onerous, excessive and discriminatory fuel economy standards on General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler that will lead to job loss, which will of course will have an adverse effect on the economy," said Richard Shoemaker, international vice president of the United Auto Workers.

The auto companies and the UAW oppose a congressional bill that would raise average fuel economy standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2013. They believe it would result in the elimination of popular and profitable sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and minivans, known collectively as light trucks.

The current standard is 27.5 miles a gallon for cars and 20.7 miles per gallon for light trucks. (Associated Press, "US: General Motors Protests Proposed Fuel Standards," 25 Feb. 2002)

GM's and the UAW's strategy has been to sell as many profitable but gas-guzzling light trucks as possible while practically giving away ugly unsalable cars solely to meet the CAFE standards -- barely. That's neither good business nor good unionism. What were they thinking? Did they hallucinate that cheap oil would last forever? Once higher gas prices began to make SUVs less attractive, the strategy was doomed. By now, it has got to the point that GM is obliged to offer employee discounts to all customers!

"General Motors Corp. has tossed aside a promise to back off sweeping national discounts by taking the unprecedented step of extending employee discounts on new cars and trucks to all consumers.

Combined with current rebates, consumers will be able to save more than $10,000 on some vehicles.

The deals -- available through July 5 -- are aimed at boosting the automaker's sagging sales, clearing many of the 1.2 million vehicles sitting on dealer lots, and above all, keeping GM's assembly plants operating. (Ed Garsten, "GM Gives Employee Deals to All," Detroit News, 2 Jun. 2005)

No wonder that, according to the Harbour Report, "for the first three months of 2005, Nissan made the most money per vehicle, earning an average of $1,603. General Motors was at the opposite end of the spectrum, losing $2,331 on each vehicle" (emphasis added, Jeremy W. Peters, "U.S. Car Makers Still Trailing Japanese," New York Times, 3 Jun. 2005).

Competition and the US South

[L]ike a motorist in a gawker slowdown ogling a wreck on I-75, it's difficult to turn away from the growing Motown pile-up of auto parts suppliers that is likely to get larger and bloodier before it gets smaller and cleaned up.

There are the bankruptcies of Tower Automotive and Meridian Automotive Systems; the ouster of Collins & Aikman Co. Chairman David Stockman and the confirmation Thursday of a cash crisis; the turmoil surrounding Delphi Corp.'s accounting probe and the search for a successor to Chairman J.T. Battenberg.

And the mess that is Visteon Corp. -- dismal credit ratings, tense negotiations with its former parent, a revolving door in the CFO's office and now a warning that it may not have enough cash to cover its expenses -- puts the former ward of Ford Motor Co. in a class all by itself.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

If you want to know how the market share slides and financial pressures on Ford and General Motors Corp. ripple across an industry as rivals prosper, how the inability of the UAW to organize foreign automakers and their suppliers affects Detroit and how it all looks, this is it. (Daniel Howes, "Auto Suppliers Face Brutal Shakeout, Need for Restructuring," Detroit News, 13 May 2005)

Where does the UAW need to go to organize GM's international rivals? Mainly to the US South, where "the newest factories are concentrated" (Micheline Maynard, "Foreign Makers, Settled in South, Pace Car Industry," New York Times, 22 Jun. 2005) due to its anti-union labor laws:

Source: Micheline Maynard, "Foreign Makers, Settled in South, Pace Car Industry" (New York Times, 22 Jun. 2005)

Health Care

GM workers' health care costs aren't the only problem, but health care is one of the bigger problems for GM and the UAW:

GM provides health coverage to 1.1 million employees, retirees and dependents, more than any other company in the country. Its health-care cash tab last year was $5.2 billion and is expected to grow to $5.6 billion in 2005. GM estimates its future health-care obligations at $77 billion and growing.

. . . . .

Some auto insiders, as well as GM itself, say the $1,400-$1,500 per vehicle it spends on health care forces GM to cut corners on products, or pass up some new products altogether. (Katie Merx and Jeffrey McCracken, "Health Care May Not Be the Worst of GM Worries," Detroit Free Press, 30 Apr. 2005)

As long as GM's and its suppliers' health care costs are unsocialized, GM will remain at a disadvantage in competition with manufacturers whose workers are either strong enough to enjoy socialized health care or weak enough to accept poorer packages of benefits than uinonized US auto workers'.

Outsourcing to Suppliers

As long as the UAW accepts the multi-tier wage structure (lower wages for workers at supplier plants than GM plants as well as lower wages for new hires than existing workers), jobs will be outsourced from GM plants to supplier plants, even if the latter are unionized (cf. Jane Slaughter, "UAW Trades Pay Cut for Neutrality," Labor Notes, July 2003; Jane Slaughter, "UAW Will Trade Concessions for Health Care, Organizing Rights," Labor Notes, September 2003; Jane Slaughter, "Auto Union Embraces Two-Tier Wages," Labor Notes, October 2003; and Jane Slaughter, "Hidden Surprises in New Auto Contracts: Agreements Easily Ratified as ‘Unpublished Letters’ and Some Concessions Stay Hidden," Labor Notes, November 2003).

On the Brink of Extinction

All thinking union men and women know the aforementioned problems and more. The question is if they can come up with a strategy and tactics to solve them -- in time.

General Motors said . . . that it would cut about 25,000 jobs from its blue-collar work force in the United States by the end of 2008, in a broad move to reckon with its declining grip on the American car market.

The cuts, which represent about 22 percent of the hourly work force, would bring G.M.'s nationwide employment to 86,000 hourly workers, roughly the number it employed in the city of Flint, Mich., in the 1970's. The action will include an unspecified number of plant closings and is the most sweeping single job cut announced since 1992, though G.M. has already eliminated nearly 30,000 hourly and salaried workers over the last five years. The company hopes to continue to make the cuts largely through buyout and early retirement offers and to avoid layoffs.

Over all, G.M. will employ 125,000 Americans once the plan is put into effect, compared with more than 600,000 workers in 1979, when G.M.'s employment was at its peak. (emphasis added, Danny Hakim, "G.M. Will Reduce Hourly Workers in U.S. by 25,000," New York Times, 8 Jun. 2005)

With a few more rounds of cuts like this, there will be soon no more GM hourly workers left in the United States.

Better at Subversion than Invasion

If you look at the past and present records of Washington's foreign interventions, it's clear that Washington has been best at helping pro-Washington regimes suppress domestic challengers, that it has been better at subversions (from Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and Afghanistan to Yugoslavia, Georgia, and Ukraine) than invasions, and that the peoples targeted by it (with the great exceptions of Cubans and Venezuelans) have been generally better at fighting against its invasions than protecting their governments from its subversions or overthrowing pro-Washington regimes.

Having learned from its study of activists and organizers on the left, Washington (mainly through its "civil society" fronts, such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the AFL-CIO's international department, Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, the Open Society Institute, and so on) has almost perfected the art of subversions.

In contrast, when Washington actually invaded nations bigger than Grenada and Panama, it either couldn't achieve its maximum objective (Korea) or suffered an ignominious defeat (Vietnam) or beat hasty retreats (Lebanon, Somalia).

Check out the Army's "Field Manual–Interim No. 3-07.22" (October 1, 2004-October 1, 2006), a manual for counterinsurgency operations. The manual recognizes political reality: "One of the key recurring lessons is that the United States cannot win other countries’ wars for them, but can certainly help legitimate foreign governments overcome attempts to overthrow them. US forces can assist a country confronted by an insurgency by providing a safe and secure environment at the local level and continuously building on the incremental success" (emphasis added, October 1, 2004-October 1, 2006, p. vi). In other words, Washington cannot win its counterinsurgency war against Iraqi resistance fighters, unless it succeeds in installing a pro-Washington regime that enjoys more legitimacy in the eyes of Iraqis than its puppet regime headed by Ngo Dinh Diem and Nguyen Van Thieu in southern Vietnam did in the eyes of the Vietnamese.

So far, Iraqification, plagued by desertions, has failed, and Ayad Allawi, in whom Iraqis had little faith to begin with (only 27% of Iraqis approved the formation of his cabinet in the first post-"hand-over" poll that the Iraqi Center for Strategic Research and Studies conducted in seven major cities), probably lost any chance of winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis after Falluja (Hannah Allam and Jonathan Landay/Knight Ridder, "Fallujah Battle May Carry Heavy Political Price for Iraqi Government," November 14, 2004). Washington's hope is that the United Iraqi Alliance, a list mainly composed of Shiite political leaders and backed by Ayatollah Ali al-Hussein al-Sistani, (Robert F. Worth/New York Times, "Iraqi Shiites form Election Alliance; Pullout Talks a Goal," December 10, 2004), will be the pro-Washington regime that it desperately needs.

The fate of the January elections is uncertain, and probably few Sunnis will vote (Adnan Pachachi predicts "no more than a 5 percent turnout in Sunni-dominated areas of Mosul, to the north, and in Anbar Province, west of Baghdad" [Worth, December 10, 2004], for instance), but there is no question that the electoral charade stalled the development of Sunni-Shiite unity seen in April.

Nevertheless, no election organized by a belligerent occupiers can be truly free, and no regime established through one is unlikely to survive without the occupiers' direct military support.

In the Spirit of Walt Contreras Sheasby

Walt Contreras Sheasby, an outstanding Red/Green activist and theorist, died. His life was tragically cut short by the West Nile virus, the spread of which has been associated with climate change exacerbated by capitalism.

Here is a bibliography of recent works (both theoretical inquiries and occasional polemics) by Walt. My fellow activists -- read them and learn from him, so we can carry on the unfinished work of bringing about a new world free from brutal exploitation, dehumanizing oppression, and uncontrollable destruction of nature:

• "Third Parties '96: Birds of a Feather..." (Synthesis/Regeneration 10, Spring 1996)


• "Inverted World: Karl Marx on Estrangement of Nature and Society" (Capitalism Nature Socialism 32.8-4, December 1997)


• "Handy Hints for Building Your Own Ralph Nader Campaign" (Synthesis/Regeneration 11, Fall 1996)


• "Refor'Madness" (Progressive Populist, September 1996)


• "Anti-Prometheus, Post-Marx: The Real and the Myth in Green Theory" (Organization & Environment: International Journal for Ecosocial Research 12.1, March 1999 )


• "Growing the Red/Green Paradigm: Ecological Socialism in Root and Branch" (Synthesis/Regeneration 22, Spring 2000)


• "Ralph Nader and the Legacy of Revolt" (Against the Current 15.4 [88], September/October 2000; 15.5 [89], November/December 2000; 15.6 [90], January/February 2001)


• "Marx at Karlsbad" (Capitalism Nature Socialism 12.3, September 2001, pp. 91-97)


• "The Enemy of Nature and the Nature of the Enemy" (Capitalism Nature Socialism 13.4, December 2002, available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ecosocialism/message/1253 and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ecosocialism/message/1254)


• "The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World" (Organization & Environment: International Journal for Ecosocial Research 15.4, December 2002)


• "George Soros and the Rise of the Neo-centrics" (Citizine, December 2003)


• "Fascism and the American Polity" (Dissident Voice, January 13, 2004)


• "J. R. R. Tolkien: Saving the Ecosystems of Middle Earth" (Marxism, March 29, 2004)


• "Tolkien and Radical Ecology in the Sixties" (Marxism, April 21, 2004)


• "Democrats Launch Anti-Nader Campaign" (Citizine, May 28, 2004)


• "Karl Marx and the Victorians' Nature: the Evolution of a Deeper View: Part One: Oceanus" (Capitalism Nature Socialism 15.2, June 2004, pp. 47-64)


• "Objections to Nader" (The UnRepentantNaderVoter, June 22, 2004)


• "The Green Divide: Conflict, and No Consensus" (Greens for Nader, July 4, 2004)


• "How the Greens Chose Kerry over Nader" (The UnRepentantNaderVoter, July 19, 2004)


• "Karl Marx and the Victorians' Nature: the Evolution of a Deeper View: Part Two: the Age of Aquaria" (Capitalism Nature Socialism 15.3, September 2004, pp. 59-78)

The Day After Tomorrow: Greenwashing the Democrats and Global Capitalism

As all film critics have said, The Day After Tomorrow (Dir. Roland Emmerich, 2004) is "profoundly silly" (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, May 28, 2004). Even sillier than the film itself, however, is a Democratic Party front group MoveOn.org's attempt to use it as a tool for electioneering in the guise of environmentalist consciousness-raising about global warming. "One man stands in the way of real progress toward stopping global warming: President George W. Bush. At every turn, President Bush has sided with his friends and campaign contributors in the oil, coal and automobile industries," unabashedly declares MoveOn.org's The Day After Tomorrow flyer.

As Gary Younge of The Guardian reports, however:

Bush's decision to renege on the treaty is a vicious attack on the environment. But Clinton's record was not much better. He signed up to Kyoto, but he did not honour it. The US, by far the world's largest polluter, promised to cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 7% from 1990 levels by 2012. Instead, emissions rose by more than 10% on 1990 levels by 2000.

It was thanks to Clinton's administration that last year's climate talks in the Hague [in 2000] collapsed. The problem was not only that he could not get the legislation through a Republican Congress, it was that he dared not take on the might of the oil and gas companies. They gave Republican candidates $10m last year; but they gave Democrats, including Gore, $4m. Bush may be in hock to them, but Clinton was in awe of them. ("Challenging the Big Buck," April 16, 2001)

Ultimately, Kyoto itself should be seen as a case of multinational greenwashing of capitalism, by enshrining the domination of the world market -- emissions trading -- in a halo of environmental credentials. Patrick Bond writes:

[W]hat are we learning about the commodification of air, via various Kyoto "emissions-trading" mechanisms? Several WSF [World Social Forum] seminars were sponsored by progressive groups like Carbon Trade Watch, the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network, Oilwatch and the Energy Project, joined by coal-face activists from labour, community, women's, indigenous-peoples and environmental justice campaigns across the South.

A booklet just published -- "The Sky is Not the Limit: The Emerging Market in Greenhouse Gases" (TransNational Institute briefing series) -- does a brilliant job explaining the problem and accusing various enemies, including coopted green groups. The five Carbon Trade Watch authors warn, "events have been set in motion which are likely to have devastating impacts on people and planet if allowed to continue".

At issue is how to halt global warming by controlling greenhouse gases from industrial, agricultural and consumer emissions: carbon dioxide (C02), methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride. Kyoto ultimately leaves emissions reduction to corporate profit-seeking, as opposed to the administrative command-and-control powers that, in my view, must urgently be constructed.

This is dangerous terrain on which to compromise. At the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development last August, Greenpeace sold out, Carbon Trade Watch alleges, by implicitly endorsing "market-based corporatist approaches to environmental and social policy. . . Greenpeace's increasingly muted opposition to emissions trading and its tacit and active endorsement of companies that support the Kyoto Protocol has been a major ideological victory for sophisticated corporate lobby groups such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and has paved the way for further expansion and development of the market-based mechanisms. Many image-conscious corporations seek to show off their environmental credentials and thereby allay public concern by teaming up with a trusted major environmental brand such as World Wildlife Fund or Greenpeace." ("Commodification: Kyoto Threatens, WSF Inspires Resistance," ZNet Daily Commentaries, February 28, 2003)

As environmental NGOs like Greenpeace served to greenwash the brown business agenda of creating and commodifying the right to pollute air, promulgating the myth of Kyoto as the solution to global warming, non-environmental NGOs like MoveOn exploit the Kyoto myth to greenwash the Democratic Party.

In contrast to the MoveOn shenanigan, The Day After Tomorrow, in all its silliness, does raise one important topic: the question of debts, moral, economic, and environmental. The movie has American refugees wade across the Rio Grande as illegal aliens fleeing from an environmental catastrophe caused by global warming. Mexico, which initially closes the border, reopens it after the United States government cancels the entire Latin American debt, allowing the surviving Americans to set up refugee camps on its soil. The Vice President of the United States (a Dick Cheney look-alike), who was shown earlier aggressively dismissing the threat of global warming, apologizes ("We were wrong, I was wrong") and humbly thanks "what we used to call 'the Third World'" for their hospitality. Poetic justice of the film has Nature act like the God of liberal wish fulfillment, forcing the global North -- Japan, Europe, and the United States -- to pay the price of environmental destruction and to repay its moral, economic, and environmental debts to the global South by canceling the financial debts that have oppressed the South in the recent decades.

In the profane world of global capitalism, though, there is no god, nor is Kyoto the testament of liberal providence. Far from it, Kyoto is a form of "ecological triage" in reverse:

Global average sea level is rising as the climate warms. In turn, this has increased coastal inundation. The South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme reports that rising sea levels have already swamped several small islets in Kiribati and Tuvalu, destroyed coastal roads and bridges, and caused traditional burial places to collapse. Forecasts of future sea level rise vary greatly, but the central range of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] scenarios suggests an increase in the vicinity of 0.5 meters over this century (IPCC, 2001a).8 Sea level will continue to rise for the next two centuries regardless of future GHG emissions, such is the extent of the lag effect between emissions and the response of the climate and ocean systems.

For coastal communities and especially those on small islands, increasing sea level means the loss of a way of life for some and the loss of habitability on others. Sites for habitation and infrastructure dwindle, availability of freshwater and indigenous food sources is diminished, and normal economic activity is made impossible as a result of coastal habitation threats. . . . For a 20-centimeter rise, 18 million additional people worldwide will experience yearly storm surges, and at an 80-centimeter rise in sea level, 65% of the Marshall Islands and Kiribati will be inundated. It is estimated that a 100-centimeter rise in sea level could inundate 70% of the landmass of the Seychelles (United Nations Department of Public Information, 1999).

Small islands will bear among the worst harms from global warming, yet this crisis is not in anyway of their making. Island communities can have little impact on global carbon dioxide emissions because their per capita emissions are small and their populations low. The average 1996 per capita emissions for 32 island states and territories that are members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) was 0.9 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (molecular weight) (Marland, Boden, & Andres, 2001). By contrast, most Annex I countries exceed 6 tons of carbon dioxide per capita, with the United States in excess of 19 tons per capita.

The Kyoto Protocol lacks any provision to prevent the sacrifice of island states. In fact, its elevation of economic efficiency above sustainability promises to risk this prospect as part of the ineluctable logic of a global least-cost strategy. Cost-benefit calculations among wealthy countries will direct attention to emission trades that are cheap and easily managed in national portfolios. . . . This almost certainly will favor actions that are well suited to the technological and economic strategies of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Such a rationale for international action can bring little comfort to island states. The omission in the protocol of any measure of the effectiveness of its policies in terms of island impacts is disturbing. Islands are left to experience the first major threats from surface warming, whereas the rest of the international community congratulates itself for committing to act on the problem. . . .

In brief, the Kyoto framework may represent a significant barrier to island sustainability. The protocol is shaped by the needs of wealthy continental interests who, because of their comparatively lesser vulnerability (especially those of North America, Europe, and Australia), can "go slow" (Nordhaus, 1991) and have adaptation strategies available to them that are simply not feasible for small islands. In a reverse of the more typical triage strategy, those at greatest risk are being left to fend for themselves, whereas continental states are provided "flexibility" to protect their self-interest (Byrne & Inniss, 2000, pp. 21-44). Islands have a dual interest in the rapid development of renewable energy technologies, both for their domestic energy service needs and for averting the worst impacts of climate change. Regrettably, nothing in current international negotiations augurs well for a significant change to the existing energy system that the continued well-being of island communities requires. (John Byrne, Leigh Glover, Gerard Alleng, Vernese Inniss, Yu-Mi Mun, and Young-Doo Wang/Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at University of Delaware, "The Postmodern Greenhouse: Creating Virtual Carbon Reductions from Business-as-Usual Energy Politics," Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society 21.6, 2001, pp. 445-447)

Last but not the least, the problem of global warming is not a matter of the future -- "The Day After Tomorrow" -- but of the present. Unlike the spectacular special effects of a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster, the impacts of global warming as well as of global capitalism, its systemic cause, are hardly visible as such. More often than not, the most devastating effects of them are seen and even experienced as "tribal" and "religious" conflicts:

Before there were mass graves here, there was the matter of cows and corn patches.

Some years ago, in a nearby village called Kassa, farmers accused cattle herders of deliberately sending their long-horned beasts to trample across their plots. Cattle herders accused farmers of deliberately setting their grassy meadows on fire to keep their animals from grazing.

Conveniently for leaders of both camps, this simple, primordial conflict around land was stoked by fiercer passions: Tribe and creed, resentment against outsiders, competition for political power, an overabundance of guns and frustrated young men to put them to use.

That combustible mix fueled a recent orgy of violence across this fertile central Nigerian state. Churches and mosques were razed. Neighbor turned against neighbor. Reprisal attacks spread until finally, in mid-May, the government imposed emergency rule.

In this way, the Nigerian conflict resembles many others across the broad midsection of Africa, from the Tana River Basin of northern Kenya to the arid savannas of western Sudan to the tips of the Sahara in northern Mali.

On the surface, they may look like tribal or religious wars. But they are more like Matryoshka dolls, one stacked inside the other, said Alex Vines, head of the Africa program at the London-based Royal Institute of African Affairs. The smallest doll, he said, the one at the very core, is often a contest over land. "Then you've got all these layers on top," Mr. Vines said. "These things get manipulated and exacerbated." . . .

In recent years, as the desert has spread, trees have been felled and the populations of both herders and farmers have soared, the competition for land has only intensified.

In northern Mali, swords and sticks have been chucked for Kalashnikovs, as desertification and population growth have stiffened the competition between the largely black African farmers and the ethnic Tuareg and Fulani herders. Tempers are raw on both sides. . . .

In the Darfur region of Sudan, competition over land and water underlies longstanding tensions between Arab camel herders and black African subsistence farmers. Those tensions, among other things, have fed into a terrifying civil war there, with Arab militias backed by the Sudanese government chasing black Africans off their land in what United Nations officials have deplored as a campaign of "ethnic cleansing."

Here in the central highlands of Nigeria, farmers and herders are divided along ethnic as well as religious lines. The farmers call themselves natives of the land, and they are overwhelmingly Christian. The herders are ethnic Fulani who range across the region in search of pasture for their herds, and they are overwhelmingly Muslim.

For generations, those distinctions didn't matter much. Over time, though, they began to matter very much. (emphasis added, Somini Sengupta, "Where the Land Is a Tinderbox, the Killing Is a Frenzy," New York Times, June 16, 2004)

Why did the tribal, religious, and other distinctions begin to matter much? Because of class politics within and between the nations that allowed -- and continue to allow, Kyoto or no Kyoto -- the rich few to exploit the poor many, in the process destroying the environment and pushing the poor into lethal competition over natural resources among themselves.

Some say that Kyoto, the Democratic Party, and NGOs like Greenpeace and MoveOn are like a small Band-Aid over a big life-threatening wound. A more appropriate metaphor for them, I submit, is a limitless roll of industrial-strength duct tape used to gag, blindfold, and hogtie social movements on the left that could grow and challenge the foundations of the world ordered by the logic of profit-driven accumulation.