THE SUN RISES OVER BLAIR'S 'CHALABI'
RENATO REDENTOR CONSTANTINO
Op-Ed, TODAY, abs-cbnnews.com
June 30, 2004
Ahead of schedule, the U.S.-governed Coalition Provisional Authority has handed over power to the U.S.-installed Interim Iraqi Government. We are best advised to remember the name Iyad Allawi. Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. It's his turn now.
Among all the arguments available to those who label as grotesque the "sovereignty" that the American empire has bequeathed to Iraq, the name Iyad Allawi should be the most cogent one. The U.S.-governed Coalition Provisional Authority has long desired an acceptable Iraqi face to put over the ugly visage of the U.S. occupation, and Iyad Allawi has long volunteered his. And so we have an excellent fit.
His influence in Washington was surpassed only by the sway once wielded by the rapacious embezzler Ahmed Chalabi, the ex-Pentagon darling who has since fallen from the good graces of Washington. And so Allawi - America's choice - is now prime rib.
Allawi is Tony Blair's Chalabi - the very person "through whom the controversial claim was channeled that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could be operational in 45 minutes."
Allawi helped found the Iraqi National Accord (al-Wifaq) after the 1991 Gulf War, which became one of the leading formations of "the Iraqi opposition in exile," much the same way, apparently, that Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress served as a magnet for decent crooks. So great was Allawi's popular support in the new Iraq of American proconsul L. Paul Bremer that, during "an uprising in the town of Baiji, north of Baghdad, last year, crowds immediately set fire to the INA office."
Getting the empire's nod wasn't a cakewalk for Allawi, but he got the coveted crown in the end. "No other governing council member has reported spending nearly as much over the last year," said the Associated Press of the huge amounts of money that Allawi had funneled since January to Washington lobbyists and New York publicists. It took hard work and oodles of money, and in the end he deserved the crown.
Here then is the new leader of the new Iraq, a leader whose proximity to the hearts of those he is supposed to govern is as accessible as his press conferences are to the Iraqi people. Anyone attending Allawi's media engagements "must enter the Green Zone, the American civil headquarters in Iraq, and pass through four checkpoints manned by US soldiers."
The world can assume that Allawi will allow himself the occasional whining regarding the machinations of his US patron. But Allawi has an understanding heart and he knows deep inside that the Americans just can't help themselves and he will quickly forgive trespasses and return to his place in the colonial order of things. "I am an instrument of British policy," said Emir Feisal bluntly when he was cast in 1919 by the British as the king of the newly created throne of the newly created country of Iraq. Traditions die hard.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz describes Allawi, an ex-member of the eunuch Iraqi Governing Council and possessing long ties to the US Central Intelligence Agency, as "a physician and a distinguished opponent of Saddam Hussein for many years."
The qualities that bring decent men close to America's bosom are truly remarkable.
Early this year, reports the celebrated journalist Seymour Hersh, one of Allawi's former medical-school classmates, Dr. Haifa al-Azawi, published an essay in an Arabic newspaper in London raising questions about Allawi's character and medical bonafides. Azawi depicted Allawi as a "big husky man ... who carried a gun on his belt and frequently brandished it, terrorizing the medical students." Allawi's medical degree, Azawi wrote, "was conferred upon him by the Baath party."
According to Hersh, a "Cabinet-level Middle East diplomat, who was rankled by the U.S. indifference to Allawi's personal history, told me early this month that Allawi was involved with a Mukhabarat 'hit team' that sought out and killed Baath party dissenters throughout Europe." Then at some point Allawi fell out of favor with Saddam, just like Saddam fell out of favor with the U.S.
According to Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA case officer who served in the Middle East, "Two facts stand out about Allawi. One, he likes to think of himself as a man of ideas; and, two, his strongest virtue is that he's a thug."
"If you're asking me if Allawi has blood on his hands from his days in London, the answer is yes, he does," said Vincent Cannistraro, another ex-CIA officer. Allawi "was a paid Mukhabarat agent for the Iraqis, and he was involved in dirty stuff."
But he is America's acolyte now and that makes a world of a difference.
The empire had employed more subtle methods in the past. The U.S. would have the world believe that America was responsible for bringing democracy to Asia via the Philippines - through the landmark election in 1907 which established what many still refer to as the country's first democratic institution: the Philippine Assembly.
In fairness to the empire, the U.S. did provide for the mechanics of democracy in the elections of 1907. Such as limiting the exercise to male Filipinos above 21, who had held office under the hated Spaniards, who owned real property of significant value, and who could read, write or speak Spanish or English.
Mechanics which ensured that only 1.41 percent of the population would vote and that the victors would come from the elite class that the Americans were grooming for leadership. The first taste of "democracy" under America.
By such facts is the legacy of the US-sponsored 1907 elections measured. An election held a mere month after the U.S. hanged the great Filipino hero Macario Sakay; just two months after the U.S. colonial army banned the Filipino flag, and only six years after 600,000 Filipinos in the island of Luzon alone had been killed or had died of disease as a result of the US occupation.
Recent political and travel essays by Renato Redentor Constantino. Email Red at redcosmo(at)gmail(dot)com.
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Sunday, June 27, 2004
NARRATIVES OF CONQUEST
RENATO REDENTOR CONSTANTINO
Op-Ed, TODAY/abs-cbnnews.com
June 28, 2004
"This question I put to the defenders of this war," said George Boutwell, the first president of the Anti-Imperialist League of the US, in response to America's annexation of the Philippines over a century ago.
"What is the end that you seek?" asked Boutwell. "Is it the vassalage of these people? If so, then you are the enemies of the republic and the betrayers of the principles upon which the republic thus far has been made to rest."
Boutwell's premise is elementary. You cannot build your happiness on the unhappiness of others. But imperial ambitions die hard. Literally.
"Empires do not last, and their ends are usually unpleasant," Chalmers Johnson reminds us. Johnson, the eminent scholar who, having been born before World War II, had personal knowledge, "in some cases, personal experience - of the collapse of at least six empires: those of Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and the Soviet Union."
Including the rest of the twentieth century, Johnson adds three more that met not too long ago their demise - the Chinese, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires. Including the twenty-first century, will the empire called America be affixed to this growing list? Who's to know?
Plenty of benevolent intentions to study, plenty of ghastly means and consequences to learn from and confront. If we want to.
In 1971, Sergeant Scott Camile of the 11th Marine Regiment in Vietnam testified: "The way that we distinguished between civilians and VC [Vietcong], VC had weapons and civilians didn't and anybody that was dead was considered a VC. If you killed someone they said, 'How do you know he's a VC?' and the general reply would be, 'He's dead,' and that was sufficient."
Sounds familiar.
"There was no dilemma when it came to shooting people who were not in uniform, I just pulled the trigger," said Specialist Corporal Michael Richardson in Iraq last year.
Richardson admitted shooting injured soldiers during combat and leaving them to die. "I didn't help any of them. I wouldn't help the fuckers," said Richardson. "There were some you let die. And there were some you double-tapped . . . You didn't want any prisoners of war. You hate them so bad while you're fighting, and you're so terrified, you can't really convey the feeling, but you don't want them to live . . . If they were there, they were enemy, whether in uniform or not. Some were; some weren't."
"You can't distinguish between who's trying to kill you and who's not," said US Sergeant First Class John Meadows last year in Iraq. "[T]he only way to get through shit like that was to concentrate on getting through it by killing as many people as you can, people you know are trying to kill you. Killing them first and getting home."
Getting home. Such an honorable excuse.
According to Dr. Henry C. Howland, a former US Army Surgeon during America's brutal seizure of the Philippines, the violent dementia that causes the American soldier to commit atrocities is due to "chronic homesickness." Along with the treacherous nature of Filipinos resisting the US occupation. "After so many betrayals," rationalized Dr. Howland, "the men decide that the only chance of pacification lies in a wholesale cataclysm; an inundation of human blood that will purge the islands of treachery."
Early 1900; Sergeant Howard McFarlane of the US 43rd Infantry in the Philippines: "On Thursday, March 29, eighteen of my company killed seventy five nigger bolomen and ten of the nigger gunners ... When we find one that is not dead, we have bayonets."
Captain Elliot, of the Kansas Regiment: "[The Philippine town of] Caloocan was supposed to contain seventeen thousand inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native. Of the buildings, the battered walls of the great church and dismal prison alone remain."
October 1901, Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith, commander of the US Sixth Separate Brigade in the Philippines: "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn: the more you kill and burn the better you will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in hostilities against the United States." Asked by an officer about the age limit of the "enemy combatants" he considered "capable of bearing arms," Smith replied, "ten years."
The American empire. It has many names. Champion of human rights. Benevolent superpower. Leader of the free world. Liberator. Friend.
An Indian saying: "The cobra will bite you whether you call it cobra or Mr. Cobra."
References:
1. "The President's Policy: War and Conquest Abroad, Degradation of Labor at Home," George S. Boutwell, Address at Masonic Hall, Washington, D.C., January 11, 1900, Libery Tracts No. 7 (Chicago: American Anti-Imperialist League, 1900).
2. The Sorrows of Empire, Chalmers Johnson, Metropolitan Books.
3. Winter soldier investigation, The Sixties Project, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, 1st Marine Division Part II, Testimony given in Detroit, Michigan, January 31, 1971 to February 1 and 2, 1971.
4. "US troops admit shooting Iraqi civilians," Naveed Raj, The Mirror-UK, June 19, 2003.
5. The Ordeal of Samar, Joseph L. Schott, Bobbs-Merrill Company.
6. Republic or Empire, Daniel Boone Schirmer, Schenkman Publishing Company.
7. Little Brown Brother, Leon Wolff, Oxford University Press.
RENATO REDENTOR CONSTANTINO
Op-Ed, TODAY/abs-cbnnews.com
June 28, 2004
"This question I put to the defenders of this war," said George Boutwell, the first president of the Anti-Imperialist League of the US, in response to America's annexation of the Philippines over a century ago.
"What is the end that you seek?" asked Boutwell. "Is it the vassalage of these people? If so, then you are the enemies of the republic and the betrayers of the principles upon which the republic thus far has been made to rest."
Boutwell's premise is elementary. You cannot build your happiness on the unhappiness of others. But imperial ambitions die hard. Literally.
"Empires do not last, and their ends are usually unpleasant," Chalmers Johnson reminds us. Johnson, the eminent scholar who, having been born before World War II, had personal knowledge, "in some cases, personal experience - of the collapse of at least six empires: those of Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and the Soviet Union."
Including the rest of the twentieth century, Johnson adds three more that met not too long ago their demise - the Chinese, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires. Including the twenty-first century, will the empire called America be affixed to this growing list? Who's to know?
Plenty of benevolent intentions to study, plenty of ghastly means and consequences to learn from and confront. If we want to.
In 1971, Sergeant Scott Camile of the 11th Marine Regiment in Vietnam testified: "The way that we distinguished between civilians and VC [Vietcong], VC had weapons and civilians didn't and anybody that was dead was considered a VC. If you killed someone they said, 'How do you know he's a VC?' and the general reply would be, 'He's dead,' and that was sufficient."
Sounds familiar.
"There was no dilemma when it came to shooting people who were not in uniform, I just pulled the trigger," said Specialist Corporal Michael Richardson in Iraq last year.
Richardson admitted shooting injured soldiers during combat and leaving them to die. "I didn't help any of them. I wouldn't help the fuckers," said Richardson. "There were some you let die. And there were some you double-tapped . . . You didn't want any prisoners of war. You hate them so bad while you're fighting, and you're so terrified, you can't really convey the feeling, but you don't want them to live . . . If they were there, they were enemy, whether in uniform or not. Some were; some weren't."
"You can't distinguish between who's trying to kill you and who's not," said US Sergeant First Class John Meadows last year in Iraq. "[T]he only way to get through shit like that was to concentrate on getting through it by killing as many people as you can, people you know are trying to kill you. Killing them first and getting home."
Getting home. Such an honorable excuse.
According to Dr. Henry C. Howland, a former US Army Surgeon during America's brutal seizure of the Philippines, the violent dementia that causes the American soldier to commit atrocities is due to "chronic homesickness." Along with the treacherous nature of Filipinos resisting the US occupation. "After so many betrayals," rationalized Dr. Howland, "the men decide that the only chance of pacification lies in a wholesale cataclysm; an inundation of human blood that will purge the islands of treachery."
Early 1900; Sergeant Howard McFarlane of the US 43rd Infantry in the Philippines: "On Thursday, March 29, eighteen of my company killed seventy five nigger bolomen and ten of the nigger gunners ... When we find one that is not dead, we have bayonets."
Captain Elliot, of the Kansas Regiment: "[The Philippine town of] Caloocan was supposed to contain seventeen thousand inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native. Of the buildings, the battered walls of the great church and dismal prison alone remain."
October 1901, Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith, commander of the US Sixth Separate Brigade in the Philippines: "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn: the more you kill and burn the better you will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in hostilities against the United States." Asked by an officer about the age limit of the "enemy combatants" he considered "capable of bearing arms," Smith replied, "ten years."
The American empire. It has many names. Champion of human rights. Benevolent superpower. Leader of the free world. Liberator. Friend.
An Indian saying: "The cobra will bite you whether you call it cobra or Mr. Cobra."
References:
1. "The President's Policy: War and Conquest Abroad, Degradation of Labor at Home," George S. Boutwell, Address at Masonic Hall, Washington, D.C., January 11, 1900, Libery Tracts No. 7 (Chicago: American Anti-Imperialist League, 1900).
2. The Sorrows of Empire, Chalmers Johnson, Metropolitan Books.
3. Winter soldier investigation, The Sixties Project, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, 1st Marine Division Part II, Testimony given in Detroit, Michigan, January 31, 1971 to February 1 and 2, 1971.
4. "US troops admit shooting Iraqi civilians," Naveed Raj, The Mirror-UK, June 19, 2003.
5. The Ordeal of Samar, Joseph L. Schott, Bobbs-Merrill Company.
6. Republic or Empire, Daniel Boone Schirmer, Schenkman Publishing Company.
7. Little Brown Brother, Leon Wolff, Oxford University Press.
Saturday, June 19, 2004
GOD BLESS AMERICA
RENATO REDENTOR CONSTANTINO
Op-Ed, TODAY/abs-cbnnews.com
June 21, 2004
Coincidence, pattern and memory. Tricky things these three.
One ghastly day in May, at close to three in the morning, a US helicopter fires its missiles at the village of Mukaradeeb in western Iraq. "[C]oalition forces came under hostile fire and close air support was provided," the Pentagon explains later. The target was "a suspected foreign fighter safe house," the deputy director of US military operations in Iraq, Gen. Mark Kimmitt, adds.
Once the smoke peels away from Mukaradeeb, the counting begins. Over 40 people are dead, most of them women and children. It was a wedding party.
Almost a year earlier, in the early hours of one morning in July, the US air force pounds the Afghan village of Kararak with bombs. "Close air support from US Air Force B-52 and AC-130 aircraft struck several ground targets, including anti-aircraft artillery sites that were engaging the aircraft," explained the US Central Command in Tampa, Florida. By the end of the attack, over 40 people are dead - all of them civilians, many of them children. Another wedding party.
In Southeast Asia over a hundred years ago, the US annexation of the Philippines has just commenced and the crescendo of carnage is nearing its state of continuous climax. In a humid theater somewhere in the ex-future first republic of Asia, the 11th US Cavalry encounters a festive gathering - another wedding party, of course. The soldiers fire into the throng, kill the bride and two men and wound another woman and two children.
The cursory statement in response to the atrocity from the US Army, which explains that "the American troops ran into a beehive of insurgents and responded valiantly with covering fire," has yet to be discovered. We are certain, however, that it's just tucked in somewhere in the growing scrapbook of imperial nuptials, the remedy to insatiable greed.
Till death do us part?
The exchange of vows under the American boot has been going on for some time now. Everyone is invited, depending on the matrimonial gift one brings. The wedding of avarice with gluttony: imperial groom - ugly muscular festering wound of a suitor - seeks and swallows lonely girl, professing love, the good life and liberty. We don't do torture, we don't occupy, we don't do massacres; we reject Satan and all other evildoers.
"Those are my principles," said Groucho Marx. "If you don't like them, I have others."
What a curious thing, today's trends. The rage is Abu Ghraib. The shame of the few "bad apples" that have sullied the good name of the US. The Rumsfeld memorandum. The August 2002 memo on "standards of conduct for interrogation" prepared by the misnamed US Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The isolated incidents.
Yes. The isolated incidents.
In 1901, in the course of interrogating "treacherous" Filipinos who did not have the good sense to accept America's seizure of the Philippines, Lieutenant Frederick Arnold and one Sergeant Edwards were accused of torturing Filipino prisoners. Their acts of "prisoner abuse?" Stripping a young man naked, then subjecting him to the water cure (the essential memory recovery medication of the US occupation army's battle kit and the predecessor of today's "water-boarding"): the prisoner's mouth is forced open to respectfully facilitate down his throat five to ten gallons of water (or whatever the limits his bloated stomach could endure). Once filled up, the interrogators politely step on the prisoner's tummy until the prisoner blurts out the desired information.
For data validation purposes, the same prisoner is put to question once more by his American liberators and "whipped and beaten unmercifully with rattan rods" and "then strung up by his thumbs." Efficiency is everything.
Another feat of the imagination - before questioning, a strip of skin is cut from a Filipino prisoner's ankle and attached to a piece of wood and then "the flesh" is coiled "with the wood." Think can-opener.
"When I give a man to [my troops]," said Lt. Arnold, "I want information. I do not know how [they] get it, but [they] get it anyway." Filipinos "had no feelings other than physical, and should not be treated as human beings."
In 1900, a captain and lieutenant of the 27th US Regiment were tried for hanging six Filipinos by their necks for ten seconds, "causing them," it was charged, "to suffer great bodily pain." The words in the charge sheet were later changed to "mental anguish" and the officers were found guilty and sentenced to reprimands.
Unlucky chaps these US officers; they lived way too ahead of their time. By the standards of America's government today, they wouldn't have been charged at all. According to the Acceptable Torture Handbook prepared by the Bush administration, if someone "knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent." A "defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within his control."
Thus, if your professed intention is to extract information, you can't be accused of torture.
God bless America.
References:
"Wedding party massacre," Rory McCarthy, The Guardian-UK, May 204 2004.
"Waterboarding at the Whitehouse," Tom Engelhardt, tomdispatch.com, June 16, 2004.
"Euphimisms for torture," Adam Hochschild, TODAY, May 26, 2004.
"Bad Apples at the Top," Editorial, The Daily Camera-Boulder, Colorado, June 17, 2004
"This Won't Hurt Much," Terry Jones, The Guardian-UK, June 16, 2004
Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War, Daniel Boone Schirmer, Schenkman Publishing.
The ordeal of Samar, Joseph L. Schott, Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Little Brown Brother: How the United States Purchased and Pacified the Philippines, Leon Wolff, Oxford University Press.
RENATO REDENTOR CONSTANTINO
Op-Ed, TODAY/abs-cbnnews.com
June 21, 2004
Coincidence, pattern and memory. Tricky things these three.
One ghastly day in May, at close to three in the morning, a US helicopter fires its missiles at the village of Mukaradeeb in western Iraq. "[C]oalition forces came under hostile fire and close air support was provided," the Pentagon explains later. The target was "a suspected foreign fighter safe house," the deputy director of US military operations in Iraq, Gen. Mark Kimmitt, adds.
Once the smoke peels away from Mukaradeeb, the counting begins. Over 40 people are dead, most of them women and children. It was a wedding party.
Almost a year earlier, in the early hours of one morning in July, the US air force pounds the Afghan village of Kararak with bombs. "Close air support from US Air Force B-52 and AC-130 aircraft struck several ground targets, including anti-aircraft artillery sites that were engaging the aircraft," explained the US Central Command in Tampa, Florida. By the end of the attack, over 40 people are dead - all of them civilians, many of them children. Another wedding party.
In Southeast Asia over a hundred years ago, the US annexation of the Philippines has just commenced and the crescendo of carnage is nearing its state of continuous climax. In a humid theater somewhere in the ex-future first republic of Asia, the 11th US Cavalry encounters a festive gathering - another wedding party, of course. The soldiers fire into the throng, kill the bride and two men and wound another woman and two children.
The cursory statement in response to the atrocity from the US Army, which explains that "the American troops ran into a beehive of insurgents and responded valiantly with covering fire," has yet to be discovered. We are certain, however, that it's just tucked in somewhere in the growing scrapbook of imperial nuptials, the remedy to insatiable greed.
Till death do us part?
The exchange of vows under the American boot has been going on for some time now. Everyone is invited, depending on the matrimonial gift one brings. The wedding of avarice with gluttony: imperial groom - ugly muscular festering wound of a suitor - seeks and swallows lonely girl, professing love, the good life and liberty. We don't do torture, we don't occupy, we don't do massacres; we reject Satan and all other evildoers.
"Those are my principles," said Groucho Marx. "If you don't like them, I have others."
What a curious thing, today's trends. The rage is Abu Ghraib. The shame of the few "bad apples" that have sullied the good name of the US. The Rumsfeld memorandum. The August 2002 memo on "standards of conduct for interrogation" prepared by the misnamed US Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The isolated incidents.
Yes. The isolated incidents.
In 1901, in the course of interrogating "treacherous" Filipinos who did not have the good sense to accept America's seizure of the Philippines, Lieutenant Frederick Arnold and one Sergeant Edwards were accused of torturing Filipino prisoners. Their acts of "prisoner abuse?" Stripping a young man naked, then subjecting him to the water cure (the essential memory recovery medication of the US occupation army's battle kit and the predecessor of today's "water-boarding"): the prisoner's mouth is forced open to respectfully facilitate down his throat five to ten gallons of water (or whatever the limits his bloated stomach could endure). Once filled up, the interrogators politely step on the prisoner's tummy until the prisoner blurts out the desired information.
For data validation purposes, the same prisoner is put to question once more by his American liberators and "whipped and beaten unmercifully with rattan rods" and "then strung up by his thumbs." Efficiency is everything.
Another feat of the imagination - before questioning, a strip of skin is cut from a Filipino prisoner's ankle and attached to a piece of wood and then "the flesh" is coiled "with the wood." Think can-opener.
"When I give a man to [my troops]," said Lt. Arnold, "I want information. I do not know how [they] get it, but [they] get it anyway." Filipinos "had no feelings other than physical, and should not be treated as human beings."
In 1900, a captain and lieutenant of the 27th US Regiment were tried for hanging six Filipinos by their necks for ten seconds, "causing them," it was charged, "to suffer great bodily pain." The words in the charge sheet were later changed to "mental anguish" and the officers were found guilty and sentenced to reprimands.
Unlucky chaps these US officers; they lived way too ahead of their time. By the standards of America's government today, they wouldn't have been charged at all. According to the Acceptable Torture Handbook prepared by the Bush administration, if someone "knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent." A "defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within his control."
Thus, if your professed intention is to extract information, you can't be accused of torture.
God bless America.
References:
"Wedding party massacre," Rory McCarthy, The Guardian-UK, May 204 2004.
"Waterboarding at the Whitehouse," Tom Engelhardt, tomdispatch.com, June 16, 2004.
"Euphimisms for torture," Adam Hochschild, TODAY, May 26, 2004.
"Bad Apples at the Top," Editorial, The Daily Camera-Boulder, Colorado, June 17, 2004
"This Won't Hurt Much," Terry Jones, The Guardian-UK, June 16, 2004
Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War, Daniel Boone Schirmer, Schenkman Publishing.
The ordeal of Samar, Joseph L. Schott, Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Little Brown Brother: How the United States Purchased and Pacified the Philippines, Leon Wolff, Oxford University Press.
Sunday, June 06, 2004
THE REENGINEERING OF DELIA PUCAY
RENATO REDENTOR CONSTANTINO
Op-Ed, TODAY/abs-cbnnews.com
June 7, 2004
She is Delia Pucay, a licensed chemical engineer, a Filipina gifted with four children, an innate intelligence and a natural grace.
Delia has been dreaming every night for one year. Dreaming the same dream and waking up with the same pillows of dissonance and dejection. Asleep, Delia's heart conspires with her mind; she is in her home in Benguet having a languid chat with her sons and her daughter. Awake, just before the sun rises, Delia recognizes the suffocating silence of her cramped room - in Hong Kong where she has been working since 1998 as a domestic help.
In 1997, Delia's only daughter Marie Lou was diagnosed with rheumatic heart disease. Malou, as her mother called her, was only eight years old at the time. Delia died a hundred deaths that year as her daughter's physical condition deteriorated and her vital organs came close to collapsing.
For months, the medical specialists that Delia consulted in Manila and Baguio City were unable to identify what was causing Malou to progressively limp and to cry out increasingly in pain and fear; unable to determine what had caused Malou's body to swell in a week's time and to shrink almost as rapidly as her appetite vanished. Mercifully, a hospital in Baguio City was able to identify just in time what was wrong with Malou. The young girl's condition stabilized and in time the hospital managed to nurse her back to her former vigor.
Less than a year later, with the family coffers emptied by the medical bills and with Malou still needing expensive maintenance medication, Delia makes up her mind and goes to Hong Kong to work as a domestic help.
"My first job was difficult," said Delia as she recounted her first contract. "I'd wake up at 5:30 in the morning every day and go to sleep at one AM. The day began with cleaning the toilet and then making meals. The family of my first employer had their breakfast separately. First the kids, then the mother, and then the father. In between the parents' breakfast I had to do the laundry and clean the kitchen. In the middle of all this I had to clean their two cars. Only then would the first half of the morning conclude. And the rest of the day was just as grueling."
Delia was unable to send right away the money needed to buy the medicine for Malou. The family had to borrow from different sources as the money Delia earned in her first five months in Hong Kong was used to pay back the foreign employment-related placement expenses she had incurred in the Philippines. Eventually, after a few years, Delia managed to earn enough and to send enough. Enough to pay for the education of her children. Enough to maintain the good health of Malou. But not enough to provide for other essentials.
Malou turned fifteen the other month, said Delia. She brought out her wallet and proudly showed to me her daughter's picture. "She's lovely," I gushed unexpectedly. "A gap has grown between us," said Delia as regret and sadness wash over her equanimity. Her voice is steady but her eyes begin to water. But no tears ever fall. "Malou's schooling is coming apart. I'm worried. Suddenly there is this big distance between us. I miss her. I miss my sons."
Delia Pucay, licensed chemical engineer, another desaparecido of the Philippine economy.
Such is the fate of millions of Filipinos today who can't afford healthcare and who can't find the jobs at home necessary to sustain the wellbeing of their families. But what does that make of successive Philippine governments whose economic programs have stood on two horrible pillars. The export of Filipinos and the re-export of what they have earned through the blind, immoral automatic annual payment of millions of dollars of ill-gotten national debts incurred in the past by crooked officials, robber banks and criminal corporations.
Delia Pucay. Her life reads like a painful novel. She hails from a village in Benguet called Bulalakaw which, in Filipino, means shooting star. Today, far away from her family and her roots, Delia lives in her employer's apartment in a district called Happy Valley and spends her Sundays at the Hong Kong public library reading self-help books.
"I give massages to my 75-year old employer, who rarely smiles and whom I know looks down on me," said Delia. "I prepare his golf bag. I make breakfast the way he likes it, a strange way. I have to serve it in small separate batches. First the orange juice, then eggs, then soup, then fruits, then toast. I clean his house. You know the rest." said Delia. Mind-numbing, repetitive, back-breaking work. "If he is mildly displeased at me," Delia adds, "I don't get my salary on time. He just gives it when he feels like it."
Does your employer know you're an engineer, I asked. "No. I hide it," Delia answered gently. "If my employer finds out, I can get fired. They don't like domestic helpers with high learning. I also won't likely be hired if an employment agency finds out about this. It sounds bad but because there are too many Filipino teachers working as domestic help in Hong Kong today, I also just say I'm a teacher and then somehow for the employer and the agency it's ok." And there you stay.
"Once you are employed in Hong Kong as a domestic help," a Filipina once told me in Kowloon, "your future employment is restricted to domestic work, whether you finished community development, engineering, education, or business administration. That's just the way it is."
Not always. One mother is determined to write another ending for herself.
"I want to go home soon you know," Delia said as we got up and walked across Chater Garden in the Central District of Hong Kong. She is wearing a faint smile.
"Malou's ordeal seems to be over," said Delia, "I have put away a little, not much but something useful I think. I can't rely on my husband, who keeps rewarding the sacrifices I've made with increasing indolence and God knows what. I may have wasted my years away by being here but I can still try to teach math and chemistry back home to earn something. Maybe I'll go into buy and sell. It will not pay much but I will be with my kids."
Because no matter how hard you hug your money, said H. Jackson Brown, Jr., it never hugs back.
"I think this is why I have been dreaming the same dreams over and over again," said Delia. "I just want to be close to my kids again. But not with dollars. This time I really want to be there for them."
RENATO REDENTOR CONSTANTINO
Op-Ed, TODAY/abs-cbnnews.com
June 7, 2004
She is Delia Pucay, a licensed chemical engineer, a Filipina gifted with four children, an innate intelligence and a natural grace.
Delia has been dreaming every night for one year. Dreaming the same dream and waking up with the same pillows of dissonance and dejection. Asleep, Delia's heart conspires with her mind; she is in her home in Benguet having a languid chat with her sons and her daughter. Awake, just before the sun rises, Delia recognizes the suffocating silence of her cramped room - in Hong Kong where she has been working since 1998 as a domestic help.
In 1997, Delia's only daughter Marie Lou was diagnosed with rheumatic heart disease. Malou, as her mother called her, was only eight years old at the time. Delia died a hundred deaths that year as her daughter's physical condition deteriorated and her vital organs came close to collapsing.
For months, the medical specialists that Delia consulted in Manila and Baguio City were unable to identify what was causing Malou to progressively limp and to cry out increasingly in pain and fear; unable to determine what had caused Malou's body to swell in a week's time and to shrink almost as rapidly as her appetite vanished. Mercifully, a hospital in Baguio City was able to identify just in time what was wrong with Malou. The young girl's condition stabilized and in time the hospital managed to nurse her back to her former vigor.
Less than a year later, with the family coffers emptied by the medical bills and with Malou still needing expensive maintenance medication, Delia makes up her mind and goes to Hong Kong to work as a domestic help.
"My first job was difficult," said Delia as she recounted her first contract. "I'd wake up at 5:30 in the morning every day and go to sleep at one AM. The day began with cleaning the toilet and then making meals. The family of my first employer had their breakfast separately. First the kids, then the mother, and then the father. In between the parents' breakfast I had to do the laundry and clean the kitchen. In the middle of all this I had to clean their two cars. Only then would the first half of the morning conclude. And the rest of the day was just as grueling."
Delia was unable to send right away the money needed to buy the medicine for Malou. The family had to borrow from different sources as the money Delia earned in her first five months in Hong Kong was used to pay back the foreign employment-related placement expenses she had incurred in the Philippines. Eventually, after a few years, Delia managed to earn enough and to send enough. Enough to pay for the education of her children. Enough to maintain the good health of Malou. But not enough to provide for other essentials.
Malou turned fifteen the other month, said Delia. She brought out her wallet and proudly showed to me her daughter's picture. "She's lovely," I gushed unexpectedly. "A gap has grown between us," said Delia as regret and sadness wash over her equanimity. Her voice is steady but her eyes begin to water. But no tears ever fall. "Malou's schooling is coming apart. I'm worried. Suddenly there is this big distance between us. I miss her. I miss my sons."
Delia Pucay, licensed chemical engineer, another desaparecido of the Philippine economy.
Such is the fate of millions of Filipinos today who can't afford healthcare and who can't find the jobs at home necessary to sustain the wellbeing of their families. But what does that make of successive Philippine governments whose economic programs have stood on two horrible pillars. The export of Filipinos and the re-export of what they have earned through the blind, immoral automatic annual payment of millions of dollars of ill-gotten national debts incurred in the past by crooked officials, robber banks and criminal corporations.
Delia Pucay. Her life reads like a painful novel. She hails from a village in Benguet called Bulalakaw which, in Filipino, means shooting star. Today, far away from her family and her roots, Delia lives in her employer's apartment in a district called Happy Valley and spends her Sundays at the Hong Kong public library reading self-help books.
"I give massages to my 75-year old employer, who rarely smiles and whom I know looks down on me," said Delia. "I prepare his golf bag. I make breakfast the way he likes it, a strange way. I have to serve it in small separate batches. First the orange juice, then eggs, then soup, then fruits, then toast. I clean his house. You know the rest." said Delia. Mind-numbing, repetitive, back-breaking work. "If he is mildly displeased at me," Delia adds, "I don't get my salary on time. He just gives it when he feels like it."
Does your employer know you're an engineer, I asked. "No. I hide it," Delia answered gently. "If my employer finds out, I can get fired. They don't like domestic helpers with high learning. I also won't likely be hired if an employment agency finds out about this. It sounds bad but because there are too many Filipino teachers working as domestic help in Hong Kong today, I also just say I'm a teacher and then somehow for the employer and the agency it's ok." And there you stay.
"Once you are employed in Hong Kong as a domestic help," a Filipina once told me in Kowloon, "your future employment is restricted to domestic work, whether you finished community development, engineering, education, or business administration. That's just the way it is."
Not always. One mother is determined to write another ending for herself.
"I want to go home soon you know," Delia said as we got up and walked across Chater Garden in the Central District of Hong Kong. She is wearing a faint smile.
"Malou's ordeal seems to be over," said Delia, "I have put away a little, not much but something useful I think. I can't rely on my husband, who keeps rewarding the sacrifices I've made with increasing indolence and God knows what. I may have wasted my years away by being here but I can still try to teach math and chemistry back home to earn something. Maybe I'll go into buy and sell. It will not pay much but I will be with my kids."
Because no matter how hard you hug your money, said H. Jackson Brown, Jr., it never hugs back.
"I think this is why I have been dreaming the same dreams over and over again," said Delia. "I just want to be close to my kids again. But not with dollars. This time I really want to be there for them."
Friday, June 04, 2004
TOMGRAM: CONSTANTINO, WITH NATURE THERE ARE NO SPECIAL EFFECTS
An introduction to the tomdispatch.com article of Constantino by Tom Engelhardt, consulting editor of Metropolitan Books, author of The End of Victory Culture: a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War era and publisher of tomdispatch.com.
June 3, 2004
Over Memorial Day weekend, with my family elsewhere, I drove to a multiplex to catch Roland Emmerich's global warming disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow. This was the film for which Bush administration officials briefly forbid NASA scientists to field press queries, lest perhaps the administration find itself in cold storage. It's kind of touching, really, that the Bush folks retain such faith in the power of Hollywood to perturb. Emmerich, you may remember, was the director who made Independence Day, released back in the summer of 1996. In it, space aliens, who couldn't even take a punch, nonetheless managed to zap into oblivion much of New York and Los Angeles as well as all of the White House before being defeated and driven out of the solar system. Eight years later -- enough time by Emmerich's cinematic calendar for the Northern Hemisphere to have been frozen solid several hundred times over - he's produced a new summer film in which New York, Los Angeles, and the White House are obliterated by something you can't punch at all.
I happen to remember Independence Day quite vividly because I took my son and daughter to see it and, driving elsewhere afterwards, launched into one of those long-winded critiques (the WASP runs the show in the film, the Jew is brainy, the black is physical, and the women... well, the women... ) that can drive a kid, out for a little entertainment, bonkers. I was nattering on about the underlying structure of the movie when my son, then eleven, turned on me and said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, "Oh yeh, Dad, and the rest of the movie was really realistic, too! Aliens arrive in spaceships and destroy the Earth."
Of course he was right. You can't spend too much time analyzing films like these, even ones about something that might actually arrive. The Day After Tomorrow, which grabbed a cool $86 million over the four-day weekend, skating in just behind Shrek 2, combines ridiculous science, dead-on-arrival acting, and lame writing into a tsunami of fatuousness. For those of you who managed to leave Planet Earth for the weekend, the best summary of the movie I've found was written by David Edelstein (The Ice Age Cometh) for Slate:
"The Day After Tomorrow has one of the most absurd and implausible plot turns I've seen in a movie, ever. Global warming melts the polar ice caps, which makes the oceans rise and disrupts the Gulf Stream. There are lethal hailstones in Tokyo and ravaging tornadoes in L.A.; and after New York City is flooded by seawater, the temperature plunges at a rate of 10 degrees per second, so that people are transformed into ice statues where they stand. Tens of millions are dead and the upper United States has become uninhabitable. Now here's the implausible part. The vice president -- closely modeled on Dick Cheney -- who has pooh-poohed all evidence of global warming, goes on TV and says, 'I was wrong.'"
I won't destroy a second of suspense if I tell you that the Northern Hemisphere is turned into a snowball within a few cataclysmic Hollywood days, and an ice chunk by movie's end -- but couldn't Emmerich have left the ice-cubed Statue of Liberty to Planet of the Apes where it should remain forever a symbol of a previous notion of man-made Armageddon? (Oh, and speaking of Lady Liberty, in a pure Gulf-Stream-of-consciousness aside, let me quote a Tomdispatch reader from Quebec: "I couldn't help but be knocked over by the irony of Bush's promised bigger and better, state-of-the-art prison to be built in Iraq. How is the average Iraqi expected to react to this news? The French gave America the Statue of Liberty to celebrate America's freedom. And America is giving Iraq a new jail to celebrate its liberation?")
The Day After Tomorrow is one of those lame movies where, when zoo keepers, knee deep in water, notice that the wolves are missing from their cages, you don't doubt for a second they'll later appear to menace our young heroes. (Given the film's subject, the villains had to have fur coats.) As it turns out, this latest cinematic Armageddon ends on a bizarrely happy, not to say triumphant note. Perhaps the alien currents were driven back to outer space and I didn't even notice.
But here was the thing -- call it the miracle of the movies, which sometimes have a way of smash-mouthing through every sophisticated defense you've built up over a long life: The very fatuousness of the film set against a final vision of our planet from space locked in a new ice-age, gave me the total creeps. I drove off into a foggy night in an old clunker of a stick-shift car with lousy lights, all alone, and just a little unsure of my way through the ill-lit haze. I didn't think then about Al Gore's Moveon.org send-off for the film, or about the hyped-up dispute over its scientific accuracy, or about its inability to offer even the simplest explanation of global warming itself, or about the endless media babble over whether this film would fill the sails of the environmental movement or sink it beneath the waves; I just felt a chill. The pure willies. For that uncertain drive home in a car burning gas, and so sending carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to join the thickening blanket of pollution circling and warming our planet, I was haunted by a sense of the fragility of Earth and of human life itself.
Unfortunately, a few chills isn't nearly enough when it comes to even the ice-age version of global warming. As a start, the very phrase "global warming" is so harmless sounding, like a nice electric blanket on a cold night. Maybe a little of Emmerich's Hollywood should be dumped into the language immediately -- something like, say, "global inferno." As Bill McKibben, writing for Grist magazine commented recently (The Big Picture):
"It's always been hard to get people to take global warming seriously because it happens too slowly. Not slowly in geological terms -- by century's end, according to the consensus scientific prediction, we'll have made the planet warmer than it's been in tens of millions of years. But slowly in NBC Nightly News terms. From day to day, it's hard to discern the catastrophe, so we don't get around to really worrying."
I've written about global warming on and off for the last two years and always I end up quoting pieces about the peripheries of our world where the day after tomorrow is already today. Here are a couple of headlines just like others of recent years but from the latest batch of pieces: "Rising Seas Are Giving Pacific Islanders a Sinking Feeling" ("'Nobody remembers such tides before. The sea is actually moving inland,' said Simpson Abraham, head of Kosrae's Resources Development Authority. Some offshore islets have vanished, he said."); "Fast Arctic thaw portends global warming" ("The icy Hudson Bay in Canada could be uninhabitable for polar bears within just 20 years.") And I've cited many, increasingly alarming sentences that tend to read like this: "Concentrations of carbon dioxide, a byproduct of fossil fuels burned in everything from automobiles to electricity plants, reached record levels in the atmosphere last winter, a Hawaii observatory reported in March."
But if you really want to get the chills, or break into a sweat, check this out from a piece by William Kowinski (Getting Warmer... ) in the Sunday Insight section of the San Francisco Chronicle. "While 72 percent of Americans said they were concerned about it in 2000, only 58 percent say so now, and only 15 percent believe it has anything to do with fossil fuel consumption." Since no specific poll is cited, I have no idea how accurate this is, but on this subject I do sense denial so strong that it might be easier if global warming were a set of Hollywood special effects bearing down on us. Otherwise, it's hard to get your brain around the time-scale of the phenomenon -- or perhaps the problem is that when you do, what sets in, along with those chills, is a sense of complete impotence, especially in an era in which futurelessness envelops us like a straitjacket.
Since the arrival of the first nuclear bomb over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, it's become ever harder, I suspect, to imagine building a future for one's children and grandchildren -- and it's harder yet for young people in a new century whose distant reaches are already filled with the gloomiest of prognostications. When I was a boy, nuclear weapons were the only human-made danger that threatened to make us extinct or annihilate our planet -- and that was plenty. Now, nuclear weapons have to queue up somewhere at the rear of a jostling menagerie of apocalyptic candidates. They have, in fact, more or less disappeared into the ominous catch-all phrase "weapons of mass destruction."
The Bush administration fits such a world to a tee. When you think about it, futurelessness is its MO. We've probably never had an administration more willing -- no, eager -- to mortgage the future to the present. Perhaps soaring oil prices will prove the first tsunami that breaks through the consciousness of SUV America. I don't know. What I do know is that this administration has managed to focus all our fears on "terrorism" -- a phenomenon that is scary indeed, with the potential to cause ever greater magnitudes of mayhem. But, in truth, whatever destruction small bands of terrorists can cause doesn't begin to compare with the "terrorism" global warming, that other human-made weapon of mass destruction, threatens us with. Imagine what our world might be like if the Department of Homeland Security were really intent on protecting our future safety and security from the gravest dangers on our planet.
Renato Redentor Constantino, a newspaper columnist in the Philippines, whose pieces Tomdispatch has published before, spends part of his busy, committed life working on the issue of climate change in China for the environmental group Greenpeace. A Filipino working in China for Greenpeace on global warming and writing for an American blog. Now, isn't that one of the more hopeful descriptions of "globalization" around? In a piece below he offers his vision of "the day after tomorrow," emailed in from the front lines of climate change. But most important, he reminds us that we -- as individuals, as a society, as a planet -- are capable of doing something about global warming other than wringing our hands or looking fixedly down at our feet.
I'm convinced that, though Americans are hardly likely to sacrifice lifestyle for the sake of global warming any time soon, we might still be capable of offering a great fix. Just imagine if we had sunk the money (and ingenuity) that went into our Gulf Wars into a vast R & D project focused on renewable energy sources -- as well as into the kinds of national energy conservation programs that could immediately cut down significantly on our reliance on foreign oil. Unfortunately, all we can do, until the Bush administration departs, is imagine -- and work to toss the bums out. (If, by the way, you want to read up on the "basics" of global warming or its potential consequences, or simply think a little about steps an individual might take with it in mind, check out the website of the National Resources Defense Council, an organization which does a great job of dogging the Bush assault on the environment.)
Constantino offers the following as an introduction to his life and thoughts on the subject of global warming: "Working with Greenpeace in China continues to be an immensely moving experience. Climate change impacts in China are multiplied many times over because of the size of China's population. The attempts of individuals, groups, and some officials in the Chinese government to steer China towards a more sustainable path despite the enormity of the challenge they face has been inspiring.
"The consequences of the blind pursuit of economic growth have brought China to a painful impasse. There is growing recognition within the Chinese government of this fact, echoed most acutely by Pan Yue, the deputy director of the powerful State Environmental Protection Administration, who said recently, 'If [China] continues on this path of traditional industrial civilization, then there is no chance that we will have sustainable development. Because China's populace, resources, and environment have already reached the limits of its capacity to cope, sustainable development and new sources of energy are the only road we can take.'
"I am part of a small group in China that believes that a renewable, sustainable future for China is a concrete possibility. We remain realistic; we demand the impossible."
And he adds: "The US represents only 4% of the global population and yet today it is producing a quarter of global climate-change inducing C02 emissions. The more wars it fights to slake the thirst of its petrol-addicted society, the greater the danger to everyone else on the planet. 'If China were to live like Americans,' says Liang Congjie, an environmentalist from China, 'we would need the resources of four worlds do so.'"
Tom
WITH NATURE THERE ARE NO SPECIAL EFFECTS
RENATO REDENTOR CONSTANTINO
tomdispatch.com
June 3, 2004
Climate change.
Suddenly, because of a movie, so many are now talking about the greatest threat the planet has ever faced.
The Day after Tomorrow is science fiction, but global warming is real. Will the movie end up trivializing the impact of climate change and thus increase indifference? Or will it spur more people to take action? Too early to tell.
Is reality more frightening than Hollywood? With nature there are no special effects, only consequences.
Up to 64% of China's glaciers are projected to disappear by 2050, putting at risk up to a quarter of the country's population who are dependent on the water released from those glaciers.
Today in the Arctic, ice thickness has declined by over 40% and "an area larger than the Netherlands is disappearing every year." According to scientists, Arctic sea ice could melt entirely by the end of the century.
Ice cores from Svalbard glaciers in the Arctic region show that the twentieth century was "by far the warmest century" in the last 800 years.
Between 1998 and 2001, the Qori Kalis glacier in Peru has retreated an average of 155 meters annually -- a rate three times faster than the average yearly retreat for the previous three years, and thirty-two times faster than the average yearly retreat from 1963 to 1978.
Just southeast of Mount Everest in the Himalayan Khumbu Range of Eastern Nepal, the Imja Glacier has been retreating at a rate of close to 10 meters annually. It is but one among many glaciers currently in rapid retreat. According to Syed Iqbal Hasnain of the International Commission for Snow and Ice, "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world. If the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high." Over two billion people depend on the glacier-fed flow of the rivers from the Himalayan mountains.
In Patagonia, ice fields have lost 42 cubic kilometers of ice every year for the last seven years, equivalent to the volume of ten thousand large football stadiums.
The scientific journal Nature published this year the findings of 19 eminent biological scientists. Climate change, they concluded, will "commit to extinction" 18% to 35% of all land-based animal and plant species.
Over 20,000 people died in Europe last year as a result of an extreme heat wave.
In Alaska, average annual temperatures have risen by 5 degrees since the 1960s.
According to leading reinsurance companies such as Munich Re and Swiss Re, climate-change related damages might cost $150 billion annually within a decade. The companies warn that unless action is taken today, the insurance industry could go bankrupt as extreme weather events such as storms and droughts increase in severity and frequency.
Vice Premier Hui Liangyu of China recently warned that his country is already facing "a grim situation" as warming temperatures inexorably give rise to increasingly unusual weather patterns. China has had 16 consecutive warmer winters since 1985 and temperatures are projected to increase in the coming decades. Last year, combined extremes of flooding and drought ravaged China's agriculture. In 2003, climate-change related damages cost an estimated $65 billion globally, including $10 billion in agricultural losses from last summer's heat wave in Europe. The impact of global warming on agriculture in the developing world, including, for instance, the salinization of irrigation systems owing to rising sea levels and depleted rivers, has been nothing short of devastating.
The incidence of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever carried by insects that thrive in warm temperatures is expected to increase dramatically in the coming years, possibly straining beyond limits the modest resources of government health systems in developing countries. Recent studies suggest that close to 300 million more people would be at risk from malaria if global temperatures continue to increase.
An eight-year study conducted by 100 scientists showed that in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, sea levels are projected to rise by 30 centimeters by 2030. According to another study, sea levels may rise by 30 to 70 centimeters by the end of this century. The long coastline of China forms the base for about 70% of its large cities, where nearly 60% of the national economy is located. Some studies suggest that a 30-centimeter rise in sea levels will typically result in a 30-meter retreat in shoreline. How deadly then will the effect of rising sea levels be on archipelagic countries such as the Philippines?
Climate change is not called "the great amplifier" for nothing. Hunger, misery, thirst, and want -- the consequences of all the flaws in our world's economic systems will be magnified, giving rise to ever more resource-related conflicts in addition to those already created by the madness of the American imperial enterprise.
"Climate change," said Sir David King, Chief Scientific Adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "is the most severe problem that we are facing today -- more serious even than the threat of terrorism."
Great as the problem of climate change may be, most often neglected is the fact that solutions are readily available -- solutions that, sadly, are just not being used; solutions that can prevent climate change from taking a more dangerous and unpredictable trajectory; solutions that are not only immediately beneficial to the environment but have immense economic potential as well. The global wind industry alone, for instance, has been enjoying a growth rate of over 30% annually for the last five years with wind-power costs dropping by 50% in the last 15 years. Resources from the sun, the tides, the waves, geothermal power -- all these are waiting to be harnessed; waiting, despite the enormity of the danger confronting us, because the resources that should be used to tap their regenerative power economically remain dedicated to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries. A planetary betrayal.
We all know what the problem is: burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil along with the unsustainable and inequitable use of our planet's resources. And we know what we have to do. We must generate our energy from clean, safe, renewable resources and use our energy in a sustainable way.
Because there really is no other way.
The measurable, time-bound development of renewable energy based on real and ambitious targets, matched with deep, rapid cuts in CO2 emissions -- this is what's needed today if we are to save the global commons from devastating climate-change impacts.
Big or small, populous, powerful, or frail, each country and each individual has a central role to play in redirecting our planet away from its present deadly course. After all, as a great reminder goes, if the world were a huge airplane about to crash, would it really matter that you were seated in first class?
The task of taking back the pilot's cockpit from those who have hijacked our plane of a planet must be our number one priority.
The time for indifference is over. We must demand nothing less than an energy revolution. Taking action the day after tomorrow may well be too late. Actua ya. Act now. El dia es hoy.
The day for action is today.
An introduction to the tomdispatch.com article of Constantino by Tom Engelhardt, consulting editor of Metropolitan Books, author of The End of Victory Culture: a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War era and publisher of tomdispatch.com.
June 3, 2004
Over Memorial Day weekend, with my family elsewhere, I drove to a multiplex to catch Roland Emmerich's global warming disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow. This was the film for which Bush administration officials briefly forbid NASA scientists to field press queries, lest perhaps the administration find itself in cold storage. It's kind of touching, really, that the Bush folks retain such faith in the power of Hollywood to perturb. Emmerich, you may remember, was the director who made Independence Day, released back in the summer of 1996. In it, space aliens, who couldn't even take a punch, nonetheless managed to zap into oblivion much of New York and Los Angeles as well as all of the White House before being defeated and driven out of the solar system. Eight years later -- enough time by Emmerich's cinematic calendar for the Northern Hemisphere to have been frozen solid several hundred times over - he's produced a new summer film in which New York, Los Angeles, and the White House are obliterated by something you can't punch at all.
I happen to remember Independence Day quite vividly because I took my son and daughter to see it and, driving elsewhere afterwards, launched into one of those long-winded critiques (the WASP runs the show in the film, the Jew is brainy, the black is physical, and the women... well, the women... ) that can drive a kid, out for a little entertainment, bonkers. I was nattering on about the underlying structure of the movie when my son, then eleven, turned on me and said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, "Oh yeh, Dad, and the rest of the movie was really realistic, too! Aliens arrive in spaceships and destroy the Earth."
Of course he was right. You can't spend too much time analyzing films like these, even ones about something that might actually arrive. The Day After Tomorrow, which grabbed a cool $86 million over the four-day weekend, skating in just behind Shrek 2, combines ridiculous science, dead-on-arrival acting, and lame writing into a tsunami of fatuousness. For those of you who managed to leave Planet Earth for the weekend, the best summary of the movie I've found was written by David Edelstein (The Ice Age Cometh) for Slate:
"The Day After Tomorrow has one of the most absurd and implausible plot turns I've seen in a movie, ever. Global warming melts the polar ice caps, which makes the oceans rise and disrupts the Gulf Stream. There are lethal hailstones in Tokyo and ravaging tornadoes in L.A.; and after New York City is flooded by seawater, the temperature plunges at a rate of 10 degrees per second, so that people are transformed into ice statues where they stand. Tens of millions are dead and the upper United States has become uninhabitable. Now here's the implausible part. The vice president -- closely modeled on Dick Cheney -- who has pooh-poohed all evidence of global warming, goes on TV and says, 'I was wrong.'"
I won't destroy a second of suspense if I tell you that the Northern Hemisphere is turned into a snowball within a few cataclysmic Hollywood days, and an ice chunk by movie's end -- but couldn't Emmerich have left the ice-cubed Statue of Liberty to Planet of the Apes where it should remain forever a symbol of a previous notion of man-made Armageddon? (Oh, and speaking of Lady Liberty, in a pure Gulf-Stream-of-consciousness aside, let me quote a Tomdispatch reader from Quebec: "I couldn't help but be knocked over by the irony of Bush's promised bigger and better, state-of-the-art prison to be built in Iraq. How is the average Iraqi expected to react to this news? The French gave America the Statue of Liberty to celebrate America's freedom. And America is giving Iraq a new jail to celebrate its liberation?")
The Day After Tomorrow is one of those lame movies where, when zoo keepers, knee deep in water, notice that the wolves are missing from their cages, you don't doubt for a second they'll later appear to menace our young heroes. (Given the film's subject, the villains had to have fur coats.) As it turns out, this latest cinematic Armageddon ends on a bizarrely happy, not to say triumphant note. Perhaps the alien currents were driven back to outer space and I didn't even notice.
But here was the thing -- call it the miracle of the movies, which sometimes have a way of smash-mouthing through every sophisticated defense you've built up over a long life: The very fatuousness of the film set against a final vision of our planet from space locked in a new ice-age, gave me the total creeps. I drove off into a foggy night in an old clunker of a stick-shift car with lousy lights, all alone, and just a little unsure of my way through the ill-lit haze. I didn't think then about Al Gore's Moveon.org send-off for the film, or about the hyped-up dispute over its scientific accuracy, or about its inability to offer even the simplest explanation of global warming itself, or about the endless media babble over whether this film would fill the sails of the environmental movement or sink it beneath the waves; I just felt a chill. The pure willies. For that uncertain drive home in a car burning gas, and so sending carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to join the thickening blanket of pollution circling and warming our planet, I was haunted by a sense of the fragility of Earth and of human life itself.
Unfortunately, a few chills isn't nearly enough when it comes to even the ice-age version of global warming. As a start, the very phrase "global warming" is so harmless sounding, like a nice electric blanket on a cold night. Maybe a little of Emmerich's Hollywood should be dumped into the language immediately -- something like, say, "global inferno." As Bill McKibben, writing for Grist magazine commented recently (The Big Picture):
"It's always been hard to get people to take global warming seriously because it happens too slowly. Not slowly in geological terms -- by century's end, according to the consensus scientific prediction, we'll have made the planet warmer than it's been in tens of millions of years. But slowly in NBC Nightly News terms. From day to day, it's hard to discern the catastrophe, so we don't get around to really worrying."
I've written about global warming on and off for the last two years and always I end up quoting pieces about the peripheries of our world where the day after tomorrow is already today. Here are a couple of headlines just like others of recent years but from the latest batch of pieces: "Rising Seas Are Giving Pacific Islanders a Sinking Feeling" ("'Nobody remembers such tides before. The sea is actually moving inland,' said Simpson Abraham, head of Kosrae's Resources Development Authority. Some offshore islets have vanished, he said."); "Fast Arctic thaw portends global warming" ("The icy Hudson Bay in Canada could be uninhabitable for polar bears within just 20 years.") And I've cited many, increasingly alarming sentences that tend to read like this: "Concentrations of carbon dioxide, a byproduct of fossil fuels burned in everything from automobiles to electricity plants, reached record levels in the atmosphere last winter, a Hawaii observatory reported in March."
But if you really want to get the chills, or break into a sweat, check this out from a piece by William Kowinski (Getting Warmer... ) in the Sunday Insight section of the San Francisco Chronicle. "While 72 percent of Americans said they were concerned about it in 2000, only 58 percent say so now, and only 15 percent believe it has anything to do with fossil fuel consumption." Since no specific poll is cited, I have no idea how accurate this is, but on this subject I do sense denial so strong that it might be easier if global warming were a set of Hollywood special effects bearing down on us. Otherwise, it's hard to get your brain around the time-scale of the phenomenon -- or perhaps the problem is that when you do, what sets in, along with those chills, is a sense of complete impotence, especially in an era in which futurelessness envelops us like a straitjacket.
Since the arrival of the first nuclear bomb over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, it's become ever harder, I suspect, to imagine building a future for one's children and grandchildren -- and it's harder yet for young people in a new century whose distant reaches are already filled with the gloomiest of prognostications. When I was a boy, nuclear weapons were the only human-made danger that threatened to make us extinct or annihilate our planet -- and that was plenty. Now, nuclear weapons have to queue up somewhere at the rear of a jostling menagerie of apocalyptic candidates. They have, in fact, more or less disappeared into the ominous catch-all phrase "weapons of mass destruction."
The Bush administration fits such a world to a tee. When you think about it, futurelessness is its MO. We've probably never had an administration more willing -- no, eager -- to mortgage the future to the present. Perhaps soaring oil prices will prove the first tsunami that breaks through the consciousness of SUV America. I don't know. What I do know is that this administration has managed to focus all our fears on "terrorism" -- a phenomenon that is scary indeed, with the potential to cause ever greater magnitudes of mayhem. But, in truth, whatever destruction small bands of terrorists can cause doesn't begin to compare with the "terrorism" global warming, that other human-made weapon of mass destruction, threatens us with. Imagine what our world might be like if the Department of Homeland Security were really intent on protecting our future safety and security from the gravest dangers on our planet.
Renato Redentor Constantino, a newspaper columnist in the Philippines, whose pieces Tomdispatch has published before, spends part of his busy, committed life working on the issue of climate change in China for the environmental group Greenpeace. A Filipino working in China for Greenpeace on global warming and writing for an American blog. Now, isn't that one of the more hopeful descriptions of "globalization" around? In a piece below he offers his vision of "the day after tomorrow," emailed in from the front lines of climate change. But most important, he reminds us that we -- as individuals, as a society, as a planet -- are capable of doing something about global warming other than wringing our hands or looking fixedly down at our feet.
I'm convinced that, though Americans are hardly likely to sacrifice lifestyle for the sake of global warming any time soon, we might still be capable of offering a great fix. Just imagine if we had sunk the money (and ingenuity) that went into our Gulf Wars into a vast R & D project focused on renewable energy sources -- as well as into the kinds of national energy conservation programs that could immediately cut down significantly on our reliance on foreign oil. Unfortunately, all we can do, until the Bush administration departs, is imagine -- and work to toss the bums out. (If, by the way, you want to read up on the "basics" of global warming or its potential consequences, or simply think a little about steps an individual might take with it in mind, check out the website of the National Resources Defense Council, an organization which does a great job of dogging the Bush assault on the environment.)
Constantino offers the following as an introduction to his life and thoughts on the subject of global warming: "Working with Greenpeace in China continues to be an immensely moving experience. Climate change impacts in China are multiplied many times over because of the size of China's population. The attempts of individuals, groups, and some officials in the Chinese government to steer China towards a more sustainable path despite the enormity of the challenge they face has been inspiring.
"The consequences of the blind pursuit of economic growth have brought China to a painful impasse. There is growing recognition within the Chinese government of this fact, echoed most acutely by Pan Yue, the deputy director of the powerful State Environmental Protection Administration, who said recently, 'If [China] continues on this path of traditional industrial civilization, then there is no chance that we will have sustainable development. Because China's populace, resources, and environment have already reached the limits of its capacity to cope, sustainable development and new sources of energy are the only road we can take.'
"I am part of a small group in China that believes that a renewable, sustainable future for China is a concrete possibility. We remain realistic; we demand the impossible."
And he adds: "The US represents only 4% of the global population and yet today it is producing a quarter of global climate-change inducing C02 emissions. The more wars it fights to slake the thirst of its petrol-addicted society, the greater the danger to everyone else on the planet. 'If China were to live like Americans,' says Liang Congjie, an environmentalist from China, 'we would need the resources of four worlds do so.'"
Tom
WITH NATURE THERE ARE NO SPECIAL EFFECTS
RENATO REDENTOR CONSTANTINO
tomdispatch.com
June 3, 2004
Climate change.
Suddenly, because of a movie, so many are now talking about the greatest threat the planet has ever faced.
The Day after Tomorrow is science fiction, but global warming is real. Will the movie end up trivializing the impact of climate change and thus increase indifference? Or will it spur more people to take action? Too early to tell.
Is reality more frightening than Hollywood? With nature there are no special effects, only consequences.
Up to 64% of China's glaciers are projected to disappear by 2050, putting at risk up to a quarter of the country's population who are dependent on the water released from those glaciers.
Today in the Arctic, ice thickness has declined by over 40% and "an area larger than the Netherlands is disappearing every year." According to scientists, Arctic sea ice could melt entirely by the end of the century.
Ice cores from Svalbard glaciers in the Arctic region show that the twentieth century was "by far the warmest century" in the last 800 years.
Between 1998 and 2001, the Qori Kalis glacier in Peru has retreated an average of 155 meters annually -- a rate three times faster than the average yearly retreat for the previous three years, and thirty-two times faster than the average yearly retreat from 1963 to 1978.
Just southeast of Mount Everest in the Himalayan Khumbu Range of Eastern Nepal, the Imja Glacier has been retreating at a rate of close to 10 meters annually. It is but one among many glaciers currently in rapid retreat. According to Syed Iqbal Hasnain of the International Commission for Snow and Ice, "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world. If the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high." Over two billion people depend on the glacier-fed flow of the rivers from the Himalayan mountains.
In Patagonia, ice fields have lost 42 cubic kilometers of ice every year for the last seven years, equivalent to the volume of ten thousand large football stadiums.
The scientific journal Nature published this year the findings of 19 eminent biological scientists. Climate change, they concluded, will "commit to extinction" 18% to 35% of all land-based animal and plant species.
Over 20,000 people died in Europe last year as a result of an extreme heat wave.
In Alaska, average annual temperatures have risen by 5 degrees since the 1960s.
According to leading reinsurance companies such as Munich Re and Swiss Re, climate-change related damages might cost $150 billion annually within a decade. The companies warn that unless action is taken today, the insurance industry could go bankrupt as extreme weather events such as storms and droughts increase in severity and frequency.
Vice Premier Hui Liangyu of China recently warned that his country is already facing "a grim situation" as warming temperatures inexorably give rise to increasingly unusual weather patterns. China has had 16 consecutive warmer winters since 1985 and temperatures are projected to increase in the coming decades. Last year, combined extremes of flooding and drought ravaged China's agriculture. In 2003, climate-change related damages cost an estimated $65 billion globally, including $10 billion in agricultural losses from last summer's heat wave in Europe. The impact of global warming on agriculture in the developing world, including, for instance, the salinization of irrigation systems owing to rising sea levels and depleted rivers, has been nothing short of devastating.
The incidence of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever carried by insects that thrive in warm temperatures is expected to increase dramatically in the coming years, possibly straining beyond limits the modest resources of government health systems in developing countries. Recent studies suggest that close to 300 million more people would be at risk from malaria if global temperatures continue to increase.
An eight-year study conducted by 100 scientists showed that in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, sea levels are projected to rise by 30 centimeters by 2030. According to another study, sea levels may rise by 30 to 70 centimeters by the end of this century. The long coastline of China forms the base for about 70% of its large cities, where nearly 60% of the national economy is located. Some studies suggest that a 30-centimeter rise in sea levels will typically result in a 30-meter retreat in shoreline. How deadly then will the effect of rising sea levels be on archipelagic countries such as the Philippines?
Climate change is not called "the great amplifier" for nothing. Hunger, misery, thirst, and want -- the consequences of all the flaws in our world's economic systems will be magnified, giving rise to ever more resource-related conflicts in addition to those already created by the madness of the American imperial enterprise.
"Climate change," said Sir David King, Chief Scientific Adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "is the most severe problem that we are facing today -- more serious even than the threat of terrorism."
Great as the problem of climate change may be, most often neglected is the fact that solutions are readily available -- solutions that, sadly, are just not being used; solutions that can prevent climate change from taking a more dangerous and unpredictable trajectory; solutions that are not only immediately beneficial to the environment but have immense economic potential as well. The global wind industry alone, for instance, has been enjoying a growth rate of over 30% annually for the last five years with wind-power costs dropping by 50% in the last 15 years. Resources from the sun, the tides, the waves, geothermal power -- all these are waiting to be harnessed; waiting, despite the enormity of the danger confronting us, because the resources that should be used to tap their regenerative power economically remain dedicated to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries. A planetary betrayal.
We all know what the problem is: burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil along with the unsustainable and inequitable use of our planet's resources. And we know what we have to do. We must generate our energy from clean, safe, renewable resources and use our energy in a sustainable way.
Because there really is no other way.
The measurable, time-bound development of renewable energy based on real and ambitious targets, matched with deep, rapid cuts in CO2 emissions -- this is what's needed today if we are to save the global commons from devastating climate-change impacts.
Big or small, populous, powerful, or frail, each country and each individual has a central role to play in redirecting our planet away from its present deadly course. After all, as a great reminder goes, if the world were a huge airplane about to crash, would it really matter that you were seated in first class?
The task of taking back the pilot's cockpit from those who have hijacked our plane of a planet must be our number one priority.
The time for indifference is over. We must demand nothing less than an energy revolution. Taking action the day after tomorrow may well be too late. Actua ya. Act now. El dia es hoy.
The day for action is today.
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