There are two ways to look at the Paris accords. The first way is that it is a step in the right direction: Countries have made promises to improve carbon emissions, report back every five years, and each five years promise to increase emissions reduction.
The emission reductions promised are substantial and will decrease warming substantially–if met.
The second way to look at it is that the emissions targets are not binding and are insufficient to avoid catastrophe in any case. Forests and oceans are still imperiled, the Pacific Islands are toast, and our coastal cities are goners. Because of self-reinforcing cycles which will see the release of vast amounts of methane stored in peat bogs, permafrost, and underwater, we were already probably past the point of no return some time ago. Far more drastic action was required; it was not taken.
Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye, in other words.
I tend towards the second view, which regular readers will find no surprise. However, it is interesting that Paris did include more substantial promises than have been included previously. Decision makers are far behind the curve, as usual, but they are beginning to take the problem seriously.
My default scenario indicates that by 2100, most coastal cities will have been flooded. A very few may survive with full dike systems. The default scenario used by the UN underestimates both sea-level and temperature increases, as it doesn’t properly account for vicious cycles releasing stored gases like methane, and those gases accelerate the process exponentially.
In addition, climate instability will increase. Rainfall patterns will change, there will be far more extreme weather events like hurricanes, and they will be more powerful. Parts of the world which are today inhabitable will become uninhabitable due to heat or lack of water. The amount of arable land will decrease significantly and we will have to convert to high-intensity agriculture techniques quite different from the ones we use today. Potable water will be a huge problem, and we will not have enough. Mass desalinzation and recycling will be the order of the day. We are going to lose most edible sea-life, and such seafood as we have will be mostly farmed, and quite a bit less healthy than wild seafood.
There are a vast number of knock-on social and economic affects of such a scenario, and we can expect to see mass migrations, a minimum of a billion incremental deaths (and I expect far more), which would not have occurred without climate change. There will be war and revolution, and so on.
Capitalism, as it exists now, is unlikely to survive these changes. It will be seen, and rightly so, to have been responsible for famines, genocides, and wars that will dwarf those of the 20th century. Collateral damage to other ideologies will occur, though it’s hard to say exactly how that will play out. Will “democracy” be discredited, or will it be reborn in a more robust form, for example?
I don’t, actually, think the Paris accords were the last chance. I think the last chance passed at Kyoto, years ago. The Paris accords are just another reminder of “too little, too late.” That said, whatever we do is worth doing, as it will reduce deaths and suffering. It is just not enough to stop the bulk of the damage.
If you are young, you will see much of this future. Be prepared. If you are older, your job is to prepare the world by changing existing ideas so that when real political and economic change happens (and it will, be sure of that), it changes in the best ways possible.
Because catastrophe will not be avoided, it is best to detach, mentally, and look upon the present and future as interesting times. Do what you can, know that there are billions of people, so your responsibility is only minor, and relax. History will wend its way.
If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
In light of the price of oil collapsing to $36/barrel ($80 is the break even point for most Oil Sands oil in Canada), I thought it was worth revisiting this article on Dutch Disease, originally published in May of 2012. I’ll have more on the Canadian economy and how oil prices are affecting everyone else soon.
It seems a lot of people don’t know what Dutch Disease is. Here’s the short:
Dutch disease is when you sell a lot of resources, which increases your currency’s value. So if you discover a lot of oil, or oil becomes a lot more valuable due to a shortage, but you can produce tons of oil from the tar sands, you can experience Dutch Disease.
The consequence of your currency being worth more is that products you manufacture cost more for anyone outside your country. So, if Americans want to buy Canadian goods, it costs them more when the US and Canadian dollar are trading at about even than when the Canadian dollar cost only 80 cents American.
If something costs more, people will buy less of it, or they will stop buying from you entirely and buy from someone else who is cheaper.
What happened to the Dutch is that their manufacturing sector collapsed. What Canada’s NDP leader Thomas Mulcair is saying is that Canada is suffering from Dutch Disease. He says we are losing manufacturing jobs due to the higher value on the Canadian dollar caused by all the oil from the oil sands we’re shipping out of the country, which raises value of the Canadian dollar.
I observed, many years ago, that the Canadian dollar had become a petro-currency. This is now inarguable.
It is also virtually inarguable that Canada is losing manufacturing jobs due to the higher dollar. It’s just arithmetic. Unless you think price has no effect on sales, you can’t argue otherwise without creating excessive contortions.
Does this mean that Canada is suffering from Dutch Disease? It depends where you put the margin. One study, funded by the federal government, found that:
“We show that between 33 and 39 per cent of the manufacturing employment loss that was due to exchange rate developments between 2002 and 2007 is related to the Dutch Disease phenomenon,” says the study.
I am unaware of studies covering the subsequent period, and I don’t know if the study was correct. Personally, I suspect it’s higher than that, but I haven’t run the numbers myself and I probably won’t (unless the Feds want to pay for my time).
But, again, the argument is simple enough. Unless you don’t believe in higher prices reducing sales, and reduced sales leading to job losses and company closures, you can’t really argue that the oil sands aren’t hurting manufacturing. It’s just that simple.
The next question is: “Should we do anything about it?”
Canada has traditionally had what is known as a “mixed economy.” When it comes to exports, we have both manufacturing and resource sectors, the latter of which oil is just one part. Resources experience boom and bust cycles. There is always another resource bust around the corner. Always. No resource’s prices stay high forever. When resources are doing well, they support our exports.When they’re doing badly, manufacturing takes up the slack.
As with any such oscillating economy, what should be done is that when one is booming, it subsidizes the other. We don’t want manufacturing destroyed during high resource price periods, because there will always be low resource prices in the future. So we tax the high resource prices and we subsidize manufacturing. When resource prices collapse, the manufacturing sector subsidizes the resource sector.
If we allow the manufacturing sector to become badly damaged, it cannot be easily rebuilt when resource prices collapse. Nations built entirely on resources are, and will always be, subject to economic collapse when the resource prices collapse, and, again, they always do–the only question is when.
Mulcair has also talked about value-add and that’s worth discussing. Shipping raw oil, raw logs, and unprocessed fish means you get the lowest prices possible and less jobs. Value-add means you refine the oil in Canada and sell it. You turn the logs into paper or 2x4s in Canada. You can smoke the salmon in Canada. This provides jobs and the end goods sell for more. It may be that processing “in-house” will increase the price slightly compared to outsourcing the processing to the US or China, but that costs less sales than it would for the equivalent manufactured item.
Why? Because resources are finite. There is only so much oil in the world at any given price point. There are only so many salmon, especially wild salmon. There are only so many trees, especially trees that are good for construction-grade timber. Other countries will generally buy these resources anyway, because there is nowhere else to get the product. Sales may decline slightly, but profit often increases and so do the number of Canadian jobs.
When there is a bottleneck, as there is in oil production right now, especially, you can say, “No, we’re going to process it here.” If other nations don’t like it, tough. They aren’t going to stop heating their houses and driving their cars to their suburban homes. That is not happening.
So if you can extract a bit less oil, make more money overall, and have more jobs, why not do so? That’s what Mulcair means by “value-add.”
Finally, let’s move to cap and trade, which is what Mulcair wants to do with the tar sands. Cap and trade means you cap the amount of carbon emissions allowed by oil sands extraction, and you allow people to buy and sell the rights to make those emissions. You also tax those trades and emissions. You then use the money earned to subsidize manufacturing, research, and whatever else will support the future of the country when oil prices collapse, which, again, they will, because resource booms always end, it is an existential certainty.
Once upon a time, the Canadian Maritimes were a resource boom area. They sold fish, but, more importantly, they sold trees which could be made into masts, an incredibly valuable commodity. Today, with pardon to my Maritime brethren, the Maritimes are in semi-permanent depression.
This is the future that Alberta faces. They should want to be taxed, and they should want that money reinvested in other sectors, because those sectors are Alberta’s future long after the oil boom ends. And the massive environmental destruction is incurring massive costs with which future generations will have to contend, long after the boom days are gone.
Canada’s economy has worked, and we have not become Argentina (the country we would have been compared to before WWII) because of our mixed economy. It is worth protecting, and it is necessary to protect, if we want prosperity not now, but ten years, 20 years, or 50 years from now. If we care about our children, or even ourselves 20 years from now, we must deal with the effects that the massive exploitation of the oil sands is having on our economy and our environment.
Dutch disease is just arithmetic. It is real, and it can devastate the future of a country. Non-renewable resources are the epitome of found money, and what you do with found money is invest it in something productive–something that will yield a return, something which will support you once that found money runs out.
This is Canada, and this is our future we’re talking about. If we actually care about the children we claim to love, we’ll acknowledge the simple arithmetic of what a high dollar does, and we’ll act to mitigate the damage.
(Update: Antonia Zerbisias had an article in February on Dutch Disease studies which is worth reading.)
If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
The Media Reform Coalition analysed nearly 500 pieces across eight national newspapers, including The Sun, The Times, Guardian and Daily Mail, and found 60% of their articles were ‘negative’, meaning they were openly hostile or expressed animosity or ridicule.
Out of the 494 articles across the papers during Corbyn’s first seven days at leader, 60% (296 articles) were negative, with only 13% positive stories (65 articles) and 27% taking a “neutral” stance (133 articles), the report says.
If you’ve read the UK press, you know this understates the situation, if anything. Ridicule hardly covers the general slant of the press.
And yet, Corbyn is the least unpopular of the UK’s leaders. He has negative ratings, yes, but they are the least negative.
The actively hostile press in Greece could not stop Syriza, nor could they stop the population from voting NO in the austerity referendum. Of course, Syriza decided to continue with austerity anyway, but the media failed.
In the US we have the media openly calling Trump a fascist, and that hasn’t slowed him down a bit. (I’m anti-Trump, as it happens, lest anyone think I approve of him.) To be sure, they keep giving him massive amounts of oxygen, by reporting on everything he says, because he knows how to be newsworthy, but their ridicule has not slowed him down.
One suspects, indeed, that it has made him stronger. Those who support Trump distrust the media. That the media is against Trump is a positive to them. This certainly isn’t an insane metric; for decades, the media has pushed mainstream candidates who have not improved Trump supporters’ lives one bit, after all.
Regardless, the ideological mechanism of control through the press is failing. In France, LePen rises. In Britain, Corbyn. In the US, Trump and, to a lesser extent, Sanders (who is bad on Imperialism, but good on many domestic issues). This trend continues elsewhere, such as in Spain and Portugal.
This isn’t entirely a good thing, as I presume is evident. It is just a thing, good or bad. The establishment is losing control.
It is, however, an opportunity. If you’re someone whose ideas were considered non-mainstream, you finally have your chance. Whether those ideas are good or bad, well, that’s another matter.
If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
Natalie Nougayrède writes in the Guardian about The Front National’s victory in France:
Marine Le Pen has no solution for France’s problems, her economic programme is all about retreating from the outside world and Europe. Her social vision is of a mythical, homogeneous France that never existed. What she has to sell is an illusion. It’s only because so little else is on offer that people are buying.
This analysis is, there is no kinder way to put it, delusional.
And Nougayrède should know it, because she writes:
The impact of globalisation marked the end of what the French demographer Jean Fourastié coined Les Trente Glorieuses (The Glorious Thirty), the 1945-1975 period when France was modernising and increasing its international influence. There is much twisted nostalgia in the rise of the National Front.
Nougayrède blames this on the oil shocks, which the entire West failed to handle (note that Japan, far more vulnerable to the oil shock, DID handle it. Their later failure had other causes). She notes that France’s elites have not, since 1975, been able to turn things around, something I have noted as well.
But she is wrong about a retreat from globalization being delusional. The simple fact is that in France and almost every other country (including, by the way, most African countries), growth was better before globalization, and the proceeds of that growth were distributed to their populations much more evenly.
This is a fact, and you can only argue against it by invoking China (which used classic mercantalist policies, and was not meaningfully party to the 1945-1975 consensus economy.)
There will always be trade. There will always be global movement in goods, capital, and ideas, but more is not always better. In fact, one can easily argue that more is rarely better.
As for “Europe,” the fact is that increased integration has not been to the benefit of most Western Europeans. That assertion is, again, extraordinarily hard to argue against and is especially true of the creation of the Euro.
Nougayrède wants France’s leaders to fix things, and not to fail, but she is very nearly as delusional as them. She admits that their failure has led to the rise of Front National, but cannot admit that their policies have failed, economically, along the lines that Marie Le Pen says they have.
Just because someone is a near-Fascist does not mean they are wrong about everything. I have no tolerance for LePen’s brand of Imperialism and cultural supremacy, but she, like Trump, is telling a lot of truths to a lot of people who feel like their country has been on the wrong track for a long time. (In the U.S., white, working class male salaries peaked in 1968. No matter how much you scream about white privilege, you are a fool if you expect white males to gravitate towards anyone who doesn’t at least pay lip service to reversing that.)
As an economic project, the EU is a failure for many of its members, including France. There are exceptions (Germany, Poland, etc.) but the losers cannot be expected to just sit there and take the beating forever. The “beating” has been exacerbated by Europe’s deliberate imposition of austerity. It is not just that Europe’s elites have failed to create a good economy, it is that they have deliberately made the economy worse for the majority of residents in many of its countries.
Until we can honestly evaluate the failures of neo-liberalism, and gut globalist cant which claims more trade and capital flows are always a good thing (and, even if they aren’t, are “inevitable”) we cannot fix the economy.
France, like about half of the EU, should leave the Euro. It should re-impose tariffs on a wide variety of goods and produce them in their own countries. Yes, they would cost more, but wages would be higher. It should also move radically to non-oil-based energy (as is true of, well, almost everyone).
These basic policies are not difficult. Corbyn is not wrong to say “make the necessary adjustments so it will work today, and go back to post-war policies.” It failed, yes, but it was the last economy which spread money evenly through the economy. Make sure it’s not sexist and racist, update it for new energy technology, and try it. It may not be the best solution (I’d like some fairly radical changes), but it’s certainly not crazy, given that it did give France those 30 great years.
The failure to deal with the oil price shock doomed the post-war world, yes. But it is 40 years later and we have technology and knowledge they did not have.
Until the developed world’s sanctioned intellectuals (as opposed to pariahs like myself and my ilk) and their masters come to grip with these facts, the population will continue to turn elsewhere. They may turn to sane and reasonable people like Corbyn, or they may turn to people like LePen and Trump, but people will not put up with “it’s going to get worse for the forseeable future” forever.
We can have reasonable policies, which will make the world better for everyone (even if that means there will be a lot less billionaires–the Corbyn solution), or we can have the rise of fascists and their left-wing equivalents.
The room in the mushy middle for those who aren’t willing to do something radical to fix the economy and other problems is narrowing. It will continue to narrow.
Our current elites will not adjust, so the question is: Who will we get? Corbyn and FDR? Mussolini, LePen, Trump?
Neo-liberalism is nearing the end of its cycle. It will kill a lot of people dying, but its death is now ordained and can only be slowed by fanatical levels of police state repression in a few countries. And its death convulsions and the birth pangs of the new system will create a new age of war and revolution which will kill far more.
This is now as close to inevitable as human affairs, endlessly complicated and subject to unexpected shocks, can be.
If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
So, Obama wants Congress to make it so that people on the No-Fly List can’t buy guns.
This is a terrible idea, and if you are for it, you are a terrible person.
The No-Fly List itself is a terrible idea. The basis of justice is that you cannot be punished without being found guilty of the charges against you. You wind up on the No-Fly list without ever having a trial where you can see the evidence against you and face your accusers.
The details are shady as hell, with any number of government apparatchniks able to put you on the list with no review…but I don’t want to get into them, or into how many people are on it, or any of the rest of that.
Why?
Because it doesn’t matter. It’s a punishment enforced without conviction in a trial where you can face your accusers and see the evidence against you. Ideally, in Common Law countries, this should the option to be tried by a jury of your peers.
I am willing to make an “imminent harm” exception, which lasts for a few days, at which point a person must be charged or released–and, if charged, a trial date must be set in a timely manner.
The No-Fly list is only one part of the American justice system that is corrupt if held to this standard. Another example is Civil Forfeiture, in which police can seize your property without ever proving you committed a crime. This practice is now responsible for more property loss than actual theft. The fact that the Treasury Department is able to freeze assets due to RICO statutes before a trial is unjust. The same goes for anti-terrorism statutes that freeze assets.
All of this stuff is evil as hell. Want to punish someone by taking away their rights, whether it’s to own a gun, fly on a plane, or have money? Prove it in a court, with a sufficient preponderance of legal evidence, the ability to see that evidence, to face those who accuse you, and so on.
Obama is wrong on this, but then Obama arrogates the right to kill both foreigners and Americans without trial, so this should hardly be surprising.
This is fundamentally evil; it is one of the main things that America was founded to oppose and it is vastly unjust.
The entire American “justice” system needs to be overhauled. Plea bargaining needs to be removed entirely (yes, the system can run without plea bargaining), trials must occur in a timely manner, and everyone must have competent counsel (which would mean barring rich defendants from paying any more for private counsel than public defenders receive).
These are the requirements for JUSTICE. It is something America, and a depressing amount of Americans, don’t even understand any longer.
If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
The Bitter Harvest of Failure: France’s Far Right Takes the Lead in Regional Elections
Thirty percent to 29 percent for the Republican/UDI coalition, with the socialists (who aren’t actually socialists), coming in at 22 percent.
Many political analysts stressed the impact of the Paris terror attacks could have on voters’ opinions. They contributed to raise the popularity of the three main parties, but the far right has also especially benefitted.
Another factor was the fact that the social democrat government of Francois Hollande has been losing more and more support among the population for failing to solve the issue of high unemployment rates while implementing measures of economic austerity (i.e. restrictions on public spendings). (sic)
There is nothing worse for the left than “center left” parties who follow right wing policies like austerity.
As I, and others, have warned repeatedly, if other groups cannot solve the very real problems exaggerated by austerity, voters will eventually hand power over to real radicals with a mandate to do “whatever it takes,” and I do mean “whatever.”
The radicals may be to the left or the right, but every time someone like Hollande takes power as “left” and then wimps out on actually fixing things, it discredits the left.
The fascist right will continue to rise as the center, right, and center-left all hue to neo-liberal orthodoxy, which got us into this mess and cannot get us out of it.
And so, the men and women on horseback are coming. In America we have Trump, in France they have LePen, and there will be many others.
A government which continually fails the people will be replaced, one way or another.
We live in a pre-revolutionary and pre-war world and the risks are ratcheting up every year. It is this that those of us who fought the ideological wars of the early 2000s were trying to avoid. We wanted changes made that would not require vast war and revolution, because we knew, and still know, the river of blood from which such change is born.
We had our chance. We failed, as those who came before us failed. Aye, and those before them.
And so the world will convulse in blood and terror. The old regimes are not yet dead, but they are bleeding out, and as they do so, they continue to loot and fornicate, pretending all is well enough.
And why not? Those who made this world are the richest rich the world has ever known. To them, this is the best of times.
They will reap as they have sown, but those who failed to stop them, or rather, their children, will reap an even more bitter harvest.
If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
Not only did Labour win, but they won with a record vote count. The candidate is quite a bit to Corbyn’s right, but it’s safe to say that this was about the national party, not about the candidate.
Meanwhile Corbyn has the highest approval ratings of any UK political party leader, though those ratings are negative. Yes, every other leader is hated more than he is.
Both these results are remarkable given the relentless media campaign against Corbyn.
As far as I can see, Corbyn, and the old-left he represents (Corbyn being essentially a 1960s Liberal), face two main problems: the MPs within his own caucus who are good “middle-way” Blairites and the media.
As for Corbyn’s first problem, the Blairites have now outed themselves, and those who voted for war in Syria flagged themselves. It’s not Corbyn’s job to deal directly with those pro-war MPs–that responsibility falls on the Labour Party membership. Labour’s rank and file need to make sure that these MPs are not candidates in the next election. Corbyn shouldn’t have to tell them this; it should be obvious.
Now for Corbyn’s second problem: the media. The media have overplayed their hand; their virtual unanimity, along with their nitpicking on the smallest of details, has made them look deranged. What harm they could do, they have done, and there is little ammunition left.
Corbyn reminds me a lot of Canada’s New Democratic Party Leader, Thomas Mulcair. Mulcair lost the Canadian election, but he went into the election with a lead because he had proven again and again that he was a man of integrity, that he had principles he would hold to no matter what.
Corbyn is similar. He has principles, and he has stuck to those principles for decades, even when the path to success appeared to call for abandoning them. The fact that the media hates him is not an unalloyed negative–in fact, it positions him solidly as an outsider. This is a good thing when a huge chunk of the electorate is looking for somebody who does not have the approval of The Powers That Be.
As with Mulcair, I think that Corbyn is likely to have his chance to win an election. Likewise (as with Mulcair), either Corbyn can blow it, or his luck can turn (or both). But he should have a good shot.
This is extraordinarily promising. The old order is breaking down, due to the enforcement of austerity and their continued emphasis on war, when any fool can see that neither austerity nor war have worked.
The propaganda machine is failing. You can see it in the US, where the relentless demonization of Trump simply has not worked (don’t get me wrong, Trump is damn near fascist, unlike Corbyn). People are looking for leaders who don’t parse as tools.
This can be good, and it can be bad. In the 30s, Germany got Hitler, Italy got Mussolini, and America got FDR.
This time around, Britain has a chance to get Corbyn, a genuinely good and principled man. May they be lucky enough to do so.
And the elites in the UK should remember that Corbyn is the best deal they are likely to get. If they do manage to stop him, the next person who parses as independent of their whims, either from the right or left, will be someone who intends to bring them to heel, or liquidate them.
If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
So, today there will be a vote in the UK House of Commons to determine whether the UK should bomb Syria.
The Conservatives and the Liberal-Democrats will vote yes. The SNP will vote no. And Corbyn has allowed Labour party members to vote according to their consciences.
This is a close vote, but even if every Labour party member voted no, the motion would fail.
Nonetheless, much of the media is blaming Corbyn for the possibility of bombing.
Seventy-five percent of Labour party members are against bombing Syria, and the logic on the side of not bombing Syria is strong; interventions in the Middle East since 9/11 have seen an inexorable rise in terrorism rather than a decrease.
But there is more to consider. Corbyn has always said he would bring more democracy to Labour, and this is in line with that promise. This is a case of one principle “no war” going against another principle “more democracy.”
Also, letting Labour MPs vote against bombing Syria, when the majority of Labour party members are for it, may be very smart politics. Smoke the pro-war MPs out, let them run up their flags, and when the time comes for candidate selection, well, everyone will know who is for war. The majority of voters selecting candidates are free to use the next election to ensure that Corbyn has a party of MPs who are anti-war. This gives him a much stronger hand.
The Labour party has been rife with backbiting since Corbyn won. The majority of MPs did not want him as leader, do not want him as leader, and have been doing what they can to weaken him.
Corbyn cannot deal with this alone. It must be dealt with by the membership, who must get rid of those members. Corbyn does have limited ability as leader to flush them out, but he can hardly refuse to sign nomination papers from 60 percent of MPs. They have to be sent packing by the membership.
So, if you are a British Labour member, remember who voted for war and turf them.
Correction: I had the math wrong on the vote. If every Labor member voted “nay,” it would not make a difference without a lot of Conservative members also voting against.
If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
I had originally intended to write a rather cynical Thanksgiving weekend post, pointing out that the Native American tribes who helped the pilgrims in that first Thanksgiving feast made a big mistake by helping Europeans figure out how to live and prosper in the new world. Their reward, ultimately, was slavery, scalp bounties, smallpox (sometimes deliberately spread) and, in the end, genocide. But it turns out the story has an interesting twist:
The Puritans were religious radicals being driven into exile out of England. Since their story is well known, I will not repeat it here. They settled and built a colony which they called the “Plymouth Plantation,” near the ruins of a former Native village of the Pawtuxet Nation. Only one Pawtuxet had survived, a man named Squanto, who had spent time as a slave to the English. Since he understood the language and customs of the Puritans, he taught them to use the corn growing wild from the abandoned fields of the village, taught them to fish, and about the foods, herbs and fruits of this land. Squanto also negotiated a peace treaty between the Puritans and the Wampanoag Nation, a very large Native nation which totally surrounded the new Plymouth Plantation. Because of Squanto’s efforts, the Puritans enjoyed almost 15 years of peaceful harmony with the surrounding Natives, and they prospered.
At the end of their first year, the Puritans held a great feast following the harvest of their new farming efforts. The feast honored Squanto and their friends, the Wampanoags. The feast was followed by three days of “thanksgiving” celebrating their good fortune. This feast produced the image of the first Thanksgiving that we all grew up with as children. However, things were doomed to change.
Until approximately 1629, there were only about 300 Puritans living in widely scattered settlements around New England. As word leaked back to England about their peaceful and prosperous life, more Puritans arrived by the boatloads. As the numbers of Puritans grew, the question of ownership of the land became a major issue. The Puritans came from the belief of individual needs and prosperity, and had no concept of tribal living, or group sharing. It was clear that these heathen savages had no claim on the land because it had never been subdued, cultivated and farmed in the European manner, and there were no fences or other boundaries marked.
The land was clearly “public domain,” and there for the taking. This attitude met with great resistance from the original Puritans who held their Native benefactors in high regard. These first Puritan settlers were summarily excommunicated and expelled from the church.
I had assumed that those who had been saved, had been helped, by the natives, had turned against them. It seems that wasn’t the case.
In later days, different types of Thanksgivings would occur:
In 1641, the Dutch governor of Manhattan offered the first scalp bounty; a common practice in many European countries. This was broadened by the Puritans to include a bounty for Natives fit to be sold for slavery. The Dutch and Puritans joined forces to exterminate all Natives from New England, and village after village fell. Following an especially successful raid against the Pequot in what is now Stamford, Connecticut, the churches of Manhattan announced a day of “thanksgiving” to celebrate victory over the heathen savages. This was the second Thanksgiving. During the feasting, the hacked off heads of Natives were kicked through the streets of Manhattan like soccer balls.
The killing took on a frenzy, with days of thanksgiving being held after each successful massacre. Even the friendly Wampanoag did not escape. Their chief was beheaded, and his head placed on a pole in Plymouth, Massachusetts — where it remained for 24 years. Each town held thanksgiving days to celebrate their own victories over the Natives until it became clear that there needed to be an order to these special occasions. It was George Washington who finally brought a system and a schedule to thanksgiving when he declared one day to be celebrated across the nation as Thanksgiving Day.
Pleasant, no?
I don’t generally dwell on the fact that the US and Canada are countries based on the destruction of the original inhabitants of the land. Genocide, for all that we act as if it were suddenly invented in the 20th century by the Nazis, or perhaps by the Turks, is nearly as ancient as recorded history. The Roman destruction of Carthage, perhaps the most famous genocide of ancient history, was hardly the first. Nor is modern weaponry necessary, as both Genghis Khan, who had entire cities slaughtered, and the Hutus, with their slaughter of half a million to a million Tutsis, primarily with machetes, could attest. Sharp objects don’t run out of bullets, after all.
Yet, there is no question that the natives would have been wiser to have never helped Europeans learn how to survive in the new world–even if one can argue that in the end, the result probably would have been the same.
Still, I come back to this: The Puritans who were helped by the Native Americans resisted the destruction of their benefactors to the point of excommunication. At the time, such a penalty was the equivalent of being ostracized from their communities–other Puritans were forbidden to have any civil comunication with them whatsoever, including eating with them.
Here, of course, is the point in an essay where I’d normally draw a lesson, but I don’t know that I have one. What I do know, from my own personal experience, is that many people aren’t even as thankful as those pilgrims–helping someone often creates resentment. And certainly one should never expect thankfulness as the result of an indirect extension of assistance. But the effect of gratitude runs both ways. As a child one of the first full novels I ever read was Ernest Thomas Seton’s “Rolf In the Woods,” a book about a white teenager effectively adopted by a Native American in early 19th century America. The Native American helps him, and then, as Seton notes, feels both kindly towards him and a sense of responsbility for the young man’s continued well-being.
We tend to look favorably upon those we’ve helped, especially if they respond with gratitude and make good use of what we’ve given, whether it be knowledge or material goods. Helping people makes us feel better about ourselves. Empathy, the ability to feel another’s pain, is as naturally human as is callousness (not to mention the actual enjoyment of others’ pain, empathy’s dark twin). Feeling another’s pain, we either wish to relieve it, or we close ourselves off to it. To do so requires making that person, or those people, into something other than ourselves. It’s much easier not to feel for those who aren’t like you, who are lesser, who are, indeed, nothing but uncivilized beasts or savages–little more than animals.
The Puritans who had personally been helped by, feasted with, and befriended the Native Americans couldn’t do this. And the natives who had befriended the Puritans couldn’t do it either. They had been made aware that both sides were like them, were human. The Puritans felt grateful, the Native Americans, benevolent.
But those who came afterwards, those who benefitted from the knowledge the natives had given, had never dealt with the natives as humans. Therefore, they could feel superior. They could afford to be ignorant of the fact that the natives had assisted their predecessors, and that, in exchange, the original Puritans were able to help the Native Americans by giving or trading with them for steel, iron goods, and other advanced European items. To the late-comers, the natives were nothing but animals, who didn’t own the land and were savages fit for death.
There was no room for empathy, for a bond of thankfulness, or for the reciprocity of favors and affection that leads to friendship.
And so those Native American tribes were virtually destroyed–and yet we still pretend we are thankful for what they gave, when the record shows that the only people who were thankful were a few hundred Puritans who were rewarded for their faithfulness by excommunication.
Every Thanksgiving, I’ve thought of those who died, a sour smile on my face. But in Thanksgivings to come I’ll think also of those who didn’t break faith. A bitter silver lining perhaps, but I find in such things the true gold of the human spirit, untarnished, even in failure.
(Originally published for the 2007 Thanksgiving.)
First, the ostensible reason for this incident is the Turkmen rebels in Syria. Erdogan summoned the Russian ambassador earlier this week to warn against strikes against the Turkmen in Syria.
Second, it’s worth considering that much of this is about Turkish domestic politics. Erdogan is playing to the crowd, in the same way done by jingoistic politicians all over the world.
Then there is Putin’s statement:
This event is beyond the normal framework of fighting against terrorism. Of course our military is doing heroic work against terrorism… But the loss today is a stab in the back, carried out by the accomplices of terrorists. I can’t describe it in any other way. Our aircraft was downed over the territory of Syria, using air-to-air missile from a Turkish F-16. It fell on the Syrian territory 4km from Turkey.
…
We will analyse everything, and today’s tragic event will have significant consequences, including for Russia-Turkish relations. We have always treated Turkey as a friendly state. I don’t know who was interested in what happened today, certainly not us. And instead of immediately getting in contact with us, as far as we know, the Turkish side immediately turned to their partners from Nato to discuss this incident, as if we shot down their plane and not they ours.
So, Putin is saying that Turkey is the “accomplice of terrorists.” Because the preponderance of evidence is that Turkey has been keeping supply lines open for ISIS, I would tend to agree. But something being true, and something being stated by the leader of a Great Power are two different things. Putin calling Erdogan an accomplice of terrorists is a big deal.
Russia can retaliate in a number of ways, from the obvious (shooting down a Turkish jet in a “tit-for-tat”), to the brutal (cutting Turkey off from natural gas this winter) to the subtle (taking the Turkish PKK under wing and becoming their new sponsors, while providing the Turks in general with equipment such as man portable anti-air missiles and anti-tank weapons).
Bear in mind that the Turkish military is very large, with a pile of tanks. They have, however, spent their recent history mostly in anti-insurgency efforts (burning Turkish villages, rape and torture, the usual), and anti-insurgency tends to degrade militaries. It is also an open question how much the purges of the officer corps have affected the military.
NATO and President Obama have both made supportive sounds, so Russia and Putin are likely to lump in the West with Turkey in this matter.
I feel I should point out the obvious, once more. Russia is still a nuclear armed state with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world multiple times over. A confrontation between NATO and Russia is not acceptable to anyone even remotely sane.
Finally, there is the question of whether or not the Russian jet was in Turkish airspace. The Turks claim it was (for a few seconds), the Russians claim it wasn’t. I certainly don’t know which is true.
But over-fussiness about a few seconds strikes me as absurd. The US routinely violates virtually every country in the world’s airspace. Turkey and everyone else in the region routinely violates Syrian airspace, while Russia actually has permission to be there.
I believe that countries should not violate each other’s airspace. And I would be willing to support that principle in a world where that was the practice, but it is not.
That said, the real rule of airspace is: “Can you shoot me down?” And Syria’s answer is: “No.” But Russia’s answer Russia is: “Yes,” and Russia could decide to defend Syria’s airspace from Turkey at the request of the Syrian government.
All of this is vastly complicated by geography. Turkey can close off the Black Sea from the Mediterranean any time it wants. This means that Russia’s supplies to Syria must go through either Iran and Iraq, or it must come the long way around from the Baltic Sea.
By and large, however, this entire exercise stinks of hypocrisy. The fact is that despite all the screaming and the rhetoric almost no one actually wants to defeat ISIS. Turkey definitely doesn’t want to, the US doesn’t want to because its allies like Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Israel in varying degrees support ISIS, and the West in general doesn’t want to (as with France bombing empty depots in response to the Paris attacks; sound and fury accomplishing nothing.)
Russia wants to support the Syrian government, and the first thing Russia wants to do is seal the Turkish border in order to cut off ISIS’s main supply line and source of recruits.
That is what this is really about. Turkey wants what remains of the Syrian state to collapse or to become a puppet (thus “Assad Must Go”). The goals of the two states are in direct opposition. And Erdogan has just made it clear in how much direct opposition.
This particular incident is about ISIS only indirectly, but be clear: The only people who really want to defeat ISIS are Russia, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, the Kurds, and Iraq. No one else of significance does.
Your deaths in Paris and elsewhere, children, whatever hypocrisy Western leaders like Hollande may spew, are acceptable collateral casualties to your masters. They will turn Europe into a police state in an attempt to root out ISIS cells (and because they wanted a police state already and this is a great excuse), but they are not actually serious about defeating ISIS.
(Addendum, Obama’s statement:
President Obama noted that it was important to ensure that Russia and Turkey continue to talk to each other, but went on to say: “This points to an ongoing problem with the Russian operation, in the sense that they are operating very close to the Turkish border and going after moderate opposition supported by Turkey and a wide range of countries.”
Anyone who says “moderation opposition” is either abysmally stupid or lying. (Again, no Western country is serious about defeating ISIS.))
(Addendum #2, Lieutenant General Sergei Rudskoy:
Now the General Staff is elaborating additional security measures for the Russian airbase.
First: All the activities of the attack aviation will be carried out only under cover of fighter aircraft.
Second: Air defence will be reinforced. For that purpose, the Moskva cruiser equipped with air defence system Fort analogous to the S-300 one will go to the shore zone of Latakia. Russian Defence Ministry warns that all the potentially dangerous targets will be destroyed.
Third: Contacts with Turkey will be terminated at the military level».)
Ouch. AKA, “Don’t try that again unless you want an actual fight.”)
If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
