Serious About the Real World

"The United States and China, the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, have announced they will formally ratify the Paris climate change agreement in a move campaigners immediately hailed as a significant advance in the battle against global warming" writes the Guardian today.

Earlier China had announced it would formally ratify the Paris accord with President Xi vowing to “unwaveringly pursue sustainable development”. “Our response to climate change bears on the future of our people and the well-being of mankind,” Xi said, according to the Associated Press. Obama said the joint announcement showed how the world’s two largest economies were capable of coming together to fight climate change."

The UK Telegraph has an extensive story along with video of some of President Obama's remarks.

President Obama's current travels began in the Sierra Nevada foothills.  As described by ABC: Standing beneath the forest-green peaks of the Sierra Nevada, President Barack Obama drew a connection Wednesday between conservation efforts and stopping global warming, describing the two environmental challenges as inseparably linked.

Obama used the first stop on a two-day conservation tour to try to showcase how federal and local governments can effectively team up to address a local environmental concern like iconic Lake Tahoe, which straddles California and Nevada. Obama told a sunbaked crowd of several thousand in a small lakeside town that "our conservation effort is more critical, more urgent than ever."

"When we protect our lands, it helps us protect the climate of the future," Obama said, joined by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, California Gov. Jerry Brown and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

Obama's brief stop along the Nevada-California border came at the start of an 11-day international tour that will take the president to Asia for his final time as president. Throughout the trip, Obama is hoping to elevate issues of climate change and conservation...

In Hawaii, President Obama announced a program that will devote $40 million to help vulnerable communities, especially small islands, cope with the climate crisis.

President Obama at Midway Atoll, threatned by rising
climate crisis seas.  He gave a video interview to the NYTimes.

From the smallest nations and victims, to China, one of the largest emitters and victims, President Obama brought action as well as vision.  Ratification of the Paris treaty by the two nations who together emit 40% of all greenhouse pollution was not expected so soon.

Here are excerpts from President Obama's remarks in China:

"We are here together because we believe that for all the challenges that we face, the growing threat of climate change could define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other challenge.

One of the reasons I ran for this office was to make sure that America does its part to protect this planet for future generations. Over the past seven and a half years, we’ve transformed the United States into a global leader in the fight against climate change. But this is not a fight that any one country, no matter how powerful, can take alone. That’s why last December’s Paris Agreement was so important. Nearly 200 nations came together as — a strong, enduring framework to set the world on a course to a low-carbon future.

And someday we may see this as the moment that we finally decided to save our planet."

photo: President Obama at Yosemite in June

"We have a saying in America — that you need to put your money where your mouth is. And when it comes to combatting climate change, that’s what we’re doing, both the United States and China. We’re leading by example. As the world’s two largest economies and two largest emitters, our entrance into this agreement continues the momentum of Paris, and should give the rest of the world confidence –- whether developed or developing countries -– that a low-carbon future is where the world is heading.

Of course, the Paris Agreement alone won’t solve the climate crisis. But it does establish an enduring framework that enables countries to ratchet down their carbon emissions over time, and to set more ambitious targets as technology advances. That means full implementation of this agreement will help delay or avoid some of the worst consequences of climate change, and pave the way for more progress in the coming years.

This is the single-best chance that we have to deal with a problem that could end up transforming this planet in a way that makes it very difficult for us to deal with all the other challenges that we may face.

Yes, diplomacy can be difficult, and progress on the world stage can be slow. But together, we’re proving that it is possible.

And I was reflecting before we came in here with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon about the meeting that we had in Copenhagen in my first year of my presidency, which was quite chaotic. And I think it is fair to say that if you had looked at the outcome of that meeting, the prospects of us being here today, the prospects of a Paris Agreement seemed very far away. And yet, here we are, which indicates that where there’s a will and there’s a vision, and where countries like China and the United States are prepared to show leadership and to lead by example, it is possible for us to create a world that is more secure, more prosperous, and more free than the one that was left for us."

The China Signal

A forthright statement on the climate crisis by China's top weather scientist made the news on Sunday. It included specific warnings about expected effects in China itself.

According to regional experts quoted in reports, China has avoided and even suppressed media reports on the climate crisis except in general terms.  But apparently the situation is now so dire that this officially sanctioned statement was made, and it pulled few punches.

 Different news organizations emphasized different aspects of the statement.  International Business Times for example highlighted the statement that Chinese "wealth accumulation" adds to the problem.  (This article however provides interesting details and background.)

Interestingly, the BBC report included this quotation from the statement:"To face the challenges from past and future climate change, we must respect nature and live in harmony with it," the Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying. "We must promote the idea of nature and emphasise climate security."

There's a certain philosophical basis in Chinese culture for the idea of respecting nature and living in harmony with it that may well resonate. The phrase "climate security" may appeal to Chinese cultural as well as political nationalism.  It seems possible if not likely that this statement is creating groundwork for some actual changes that the Chinese government has in mind.

A Step Towards Saving the World

The New York Times:

"China and the United States made common cause on Wednesday against the threat of climate change, staking out an ambitious joint plan to curb carbon emissions as a way to spur nations around the world to make their own cuts in greenhouse gases.

The landmark agreement, jointly announced here by President Obama and President Xi Jinping, includes new targets for carbon emissions reductions by the United States and a first-ever commitment by China to stop its emissions from growing by 2030.

Administration officials said the agreement, which was worked out quietly between the United States and China over nine months and included a letter from Mr. Obama to Mr. Xi proposing a joint approach, could galvanize efforts to negotiate a new global climate agreement by 2015."

"It was the signature achievement of an unexpectedly productive two days of meetings between the leaders," the Times story continues. "A climate deal between China and the United States, the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 carbon polluters, is viewed as essential to concluding a new global accord."

"Unexpectedly productive" is an understatement.  The conventional wisdom has been that the US and China were global antagonists with few common goals.  Now apparently they have one--the biggest one, the one that counts more for the future than any other.

The Times story is long and informative, and worth the hit it might make on your month's free views.  The Guardian continually updates their story, and it includes supportive words from Secretary of State John Kerry, and Al Gore--but also promises of Republican congressional opposition. "Our economy can’t take the president’s ideological war on coal," said Mitch McConnell, bowing down to his fossil fuel overlords and their millions in dark campaign money.

The Guardian also quotes President Obama from his statement in China: "He said the US emissions reductions goal was “ambitious but achievable” and would double the pace at which it is reducing carbon emissions." The new US goal is reducing emissions by 26 to 28% by 2025, compared to 2025 levels.  Greenpeace calls this a floor, not a ceiling for reductions.  

The Guardian continues: Obama added: “This is a major milestone in US-China relations and shows what is possible when we work together on an urgent global challenge.”

He added that they hoped “to encourage all major economies to be ambitious and all developed and developing countries to work across divides” so that an agreement could be reached at the climate change talks in Paris in December next year."

According to the New York Daily News: "China’s pledge to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, if not sooner, is even more remarkable. To reach that goal, Mr. Xi pledged that so-called clean energy sources, like solar power and windmills, would account for 20 percent of China’s total energy production by 2030."

The News also reports that the final agreement was produced during a recent trip to China by Obama adviser on climate John Podesta.

These meetings, characterized as a breakthrough in US-China relations, also resulted in a a technology agreement favorable to US businesses.  The San Francisco Chronicle estimates that this deal could add a trillion dollars a year to the "global trade in information technology."

Lucubrations

Payoff for night owls: early look at this morning's very interesting New York Times story on the internal dynamics of the Obama Administration's statements on the fast-evolving situation in Egypt. Basically it says that President Obama and his White House team were emphasizing that change needed to begin right away, while old foreign policy hands--including at times Sec. of State Clinton--were emphasizing the need for continuity in the process of change. If you're still wondering what newspapers are for, reporting like this is one important function.


It comes as little surprise that Washington Republicans make many more false statements than do Democrats--this study says three times as many, or over a third of the time a GOPer assert something, he or she is lying or deluded.

But for lies and delusions to work requires a certain gullibility as well as ignorance among hearers, and apparently none of us are immune. For example, I among many others fell for the impression that the U.S. owes the bulk of its national debt to China. But it's not true, and not even close. The U.S. owes most of its debt to...the U.S. That is, 53% of the federal debt is held by U.S. citizens and institutions. China holds 9.8% but Japan holds 9.6%, and the UK holds 5.1%. Makes a difference, don't it?

Still, it seems that the lies and liars are more fascinating, at least on the Internet. I just took a look at my usual first stop among a shrinking number of sites, Talking Points Memo, and literally every single story on its front page is about a GOPer whopper. Now I know CPAC is going on and that's fertile territory for this, but still... It's like there's nobody doing anything constructive...

As California again confronts a budget slicing crisis, Michael Hiltzik's column in the L.A. Times provides analysis and cautionary tale about the dysfunctional state of Texas.

And while Arizona mostly has been making headlines for Rabid Right mania--like its string of proposed racist, violence-engendering and secessionist laws including nullification of federal laws they don't like, even after the gun killings and attempted assassination of Gabby Giffords in Tucson. But somehow this counter-narrative was missed last week: a Public Policy Poll found that a majority of Arizonans favor stricter gun control, which is higher than the national average.

And if you missed it, Gabby's husband Mark Kelly has resumed training to pilot the space shuttle Endeavor in April, saying that he fully expects his wife to be present at the launch. It seemed pretty optimistic, until the news a few days ago that Gabby has begun to speak. And that in itself is truly amazing.

Black Friday

Santa Claus' sleigh these days takes the form of this huge ship, commissioned by Wal-Mart and built in Denmark specifically and only to haul goodies from China to the U.S. It takes just 13 people to run it, even though it's longer than a U.S. aircraft carrier. This ship is so big that it had to be built in five separate sections that were welded together. The command bridge alone is higher than a 10-story building. The ship has its own cargo crane rigs--11 of them--that operating simultaneously can unload the entire ship in under two hours. So this is where Christmas comes from, where Black Friday lives. Typically, cargo ships from China that bring consumer goods to California ports, return with cardboard and material for recycling--in other words, garbage. But these ships reputedly return completely empty. [Thanks to Bill T. for sending me these photos etc. awhile back.]

Consequences: China

China is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. Not to mention chock full of people. Many many people in incomprehensible number. The world's largest economy, the world's largest polluter, it just became the world's top energy consumer, surpassing the U.S. Despite its reported plan to consider spending a hugely vast amount of money on clean energy, China's contribution to heat-trapping gases building up in the atmosphere and causing global heating will continue to grow.

But also as a consequence of its size and density--and particularly its geography--China may experience some brutal consequences from forced climate change above and beyond what other countries may suffer in common. Which has huge, vast implications not only for the billions of people there, but for the U.S. and its national security--even if dumbbell CA Senate candidate Carly Fiorina can't see it.

One reason can be found in a precisely written piece by Orville Schell in the New York Review of Books (May 27, 2010.) The reason is in the title: "The Message from the Glaciers." The result of shrinking glaciers, particularly in the Himalayas, is likely to curtail water flow in major rivers and cause all kinds of havoc in much of Asia, including China and India.

India is also really really big. (This is going to be a theme here, so adjust your thought processes.) It is also teeming with people, with a rapidly expanding economy and consequent growth in energy use--and demand for resources. Also (lest we forget ) like China it has nuclear weapons.

Melting glaciers in the polar regions may get the most media attention, but the nearly 50,000 glaciers in the Himalayas, writes Schell, feed Asia's ten major rivers and contribute hugely to water supplies as well as seasonally based agriculture. While an error in estimating the melt in the last IPCC report got a lot of attention, the fact that this melting is occurring rapidly--partly because these higher elevations are heating up faster and hotter--is conveniently ignored.

One consequence: "As Zheng Guoguang, head of the China Meteorological Bureau, recently put it, “If the warming continues, millions of people in western China will face floods in the short term and drought in the long run.”"

As if the heating as a general consequence of fossil fuel-induced global heating wasn't enough, the very melting of the glaciers accelerates the process. Buried beneath top layers of snow and ice is the black carbon that accumulated underneath, as a result of fossil fuel burning (especially coal, the primary fuel in China .) That it is black negates the reflective ability of the white glaciers and leads to more melting. That it is carbon means that more global heating-causing gases are released into the atmosphere:

On the accumulation zone of one glacier in the Qilian Mountains in western China, Hansen and Yao found that “fresh snow melted within two days, exposing dirtier underlying snow with black carbon concentration seven times greater than the fresh snow.” They concluded that the soot burden, which had markedly increased since 1990, had now become “sufficient to affect the surface reflectivity of the glaciers,” by increasing their “effectiveness in absorbing sunlight.” With their natural reflective and self-protective ability, or “albedo,” impaired by soot, and with temperatures continuing to rise, scientists like Hansen and Yao now fear that “most glaciers, worldwide, will be lost this century, with severe consequences for fresh water supplies.”

And below all that is the permafrost, which releases even more of these gases when it melts:
But the most profound global impact of this thawing, which has already begun, will be the enormous amounts of methane gas—roughly twenty times more potent in heat-trapping capacity than CO2—that will be released by the decomposition of once-frozen carbon rich organic matter in the area’s soil. Indeed, continued thawing threatens to turn what has been a major carbon-sink—sequestering about 2.5 percent of the world’s soil carbon—into a huge new source of emissions."

These consequences of melting aren't unique to the Himalayas--the attention paid to the Arctic region (including Alaska and northern Canada) and the Antarctic is more than justified. And these aren't the only consequences. But they do suggest several things: How really big changes--particularly for human civilizations as well as other lifeforms--can come from what may seem like small temperature changes. How consequences on the other side of the world can affect everyone on this side (especially considering how China seems to be making nearly everything we use, and the country holds our national debt and financial future in its hands, as well as the geopolitical, military and therefore national security issues.) And how consequences "snowball" in an odd reversal of that metaphor's reference. The snowball becomes much larger simply by rolling down the mountain because of the snow and other material it can accumulate. In this case, the consequences "snowball" as glaciers melt.

Schell doesn't discuss appropriate actions since they are by now obvious. He notes that the temperature rise expected by mid-century (more than 2C) is more than enough to continue and accelerate glacier melting which is already affecting, for example, 95% of the glaciers in Tibet. So consequences are coming, and should be prepared for. But he also notes that unless heat-trapping gases emissions aren't severely cut, the rise could more than double, with faster and worse consequences.

But he does end his article with the conundrum--or by now familiar lament-- of why urgent action isn't being taken in view of these well-known realities. His final statement: "And many more studies should be undertaken to scientifically clarify all these links. But there is already enough information for the world to know that we confront a very dangerous prospect, with no adequate effort underway to find the missing link between the knowledge we already have and action".

It is the question of why this emergency is not being appropriately confronted which I, in my unbelievably small way, hope to address hereabouts in future posts. Please stay tuned.

Our Hero in China

They seem to like him pretty well there, too.

As General Motors Goes...

By Wednesday's end, Congress looked poised not to act on any measures to secure the nation's failing big car companies, which sent Wall Street plunging downward again.

Meanwhile Paul Krugman and others warned that the failure of one of these companies--General Motors seems the most vulnerable--could lead to a cascading catastrophe: and as General Motors goes, so goes the nation.

There are competing plans for quickly dispersing some $25 billion, but the Bush administration won't act on its own, and Congress apparently won't either. Some argue for letting these companies go bankrupt, or for a bankruptcy plan tailored to these companies so they can reorganize with the least pain all around. Others (like Barney Frank) argue that everything bankruptcy permits can be done without it--while the downside of bankruptcy is penalizing workers and stalling out car sales even further.

Once again, the warnings are very dire--especially that GM could fail and the cascade could begin before Obama and the new Congress take office, so that he may inherit not a bad recession but an onrushing Depression.

There's a certain apocalypse fatigue involved, as well as a suspicion of the boy who cried wolf. However, as a book about how the American steel industry collapsed noted in its title, in that old story, the wolf finally came.

But if crossing the point of no return on a major longterm blow to the American economy and America's place in the world doesn't focus enough minds in Washington, maybe this will:

China would maybe like to buy an American car company or two. Like General Motors.

The Torch

It would have been comic if it wasn't so serious:
neither supporters or protestors could find the
Olympic Torch in San Francisco yesterday because
they kept changing and shortening the route. But
protestors disrupted it anyway, and they had more
obviously in London and Paris. China's behavior in
Tibet and its attitude towards Tibet is the proximate
cause for the protests, but many have added China's
support of genocidal violence in Darfur and Burma.

China has tried to use its new wealth and power earned
from its capitalist surge to change its image, but this
situation has revealed the naked totalitarianism underneath.
For example, the Chinese people aren't allowed to see these
images of protest, and China's ongoing program to "re-educate"
Tibetans on the Dalai Lama that was a spark for the violence
there is only set to get bigger.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi called for peaceful protest in SF but
also commended the protestors in a cause she supports. Hillary
Clinton called for Pres. Bush to not attend opening ceremonies, and
the White House is suggesting he might not, as several European leaders have already said they won't. Barack Obama said: " "If the Chinese do not take steps to help stop the genocide in Darfur and to respect the dignity, security, and human rights of the Tibetan people, then the President should boycott the opening ceremonies" but he said the actual decision to boycott the opening ceremonies should be made "closer to the Games," which has the political effect of giving the Chinese the opportunity to make progress on these issues in the interim.

From "The Hollow Men" series by Howard Penning.

The Holloween Story: Hollow Military

Update: A version of this is Rescued at Daily Kos, Recommended at European Tribune , front-paged at E Pluribus Media and a top-rated article at Political Cortex.


As children don the costumes of ghouls and monsters for Halloween, it may be our uncomfortable duty (especially as we gingerly begin our Christmas shopping) to face some monstrous changes that now shape our reality.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpieces filled with straw*

The Hollow Military

The response of the Iraqi government to armed members of Blackwater USA, a for-profit corporation, killing 17 Iraqi civilians in one incident in September has led to an avalanche of attention on the role of private contractors, armed and not, in Iraq. This led to a number of revelations, including the recent U.S. government study that could not account for about a billion dollars paid to another for-profit security company, DynCorp International, ostensibly to train police in Iraq.

Yet these firms have operated in Iraq from the beginning of the war through the occupation. There are an estimated 180,000 civilian contractors in Iraq, at least 45,000 in armed roles (according to Joan Walsh of Salon in a TV interview), while there are 160,000 U.S. troops. Over the past four years, monies paid to such firms by the U.S. State Department have gone from $1 billion to $4 billion a year, officially. But even that doesn't measure the extent of the money paid to for-profit contractors and their power in Iraq.

Moreover, this use of contractors is not, as some media reports would have it, an accidental byproduct of a tiff between the Defense and State departments, forcing State to hire private security when the Pentagon refused to protect their diplomats in Iraq. It is the result of deliberate policy, articulated by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It is part of his philosophy of the "hollow military."

Here's what Naomi Klein writes in her book, The Shock Doctrine:

"...Rumsfeld saw the army shedding large numbers of full-time troops in favor of a small core of staffers propped up by cheap temporary soldiers from the Reserve and National Guard. Meanwhile, contractors from companies such as Blackwater and Halliburton would perform duties ranging from high-risk chauffeuring to prisoner interrogation to catering to health care." [p.285]

But the reality in Iraq has turned out to be even more extensive than Rumsfeld's dream. In his detailed report in Salon, P.W. Singer wrote:

"The use of contractors in Iraq is unprecedented in both its size and scope...What matters is not merely the numbers, but the roles that private military contractors play. In addition to war gaming and field training U.S. troops before the invasion, private military personnel handled logistics and support during the war's buildup. The massive U.S. complex at Camp Doha in Kuwait, which served as the launch pad for the invasion, was not only built by a private military firm but also operated and guarded by one. During the invasion, contractors maintained and loaded many of the most sophisticated U.S. weapons systems, such as B-2 stealth bombers and Apache helicopters. They even helped operate combat systems such as the Army's Patriot missile batteries and the Navy's Aegis missile-defense system.

Private military firms -- ranging from well-established companies, such as Vinnell and MPRI, to start-ups, such as the British Aegis -- have played an even greater role in the post-invasion occupation. Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown and Root division, recently spun off into its own firm, currently runs the logistics backbone of the force, doing everything from running military mess halls to moving fuel and ammunition. Other firms are helping to train local forces, including the new Iraqi army and national police."

It's worth noting also, that according to A Pretext for War by James Baxter, these same corporations--whose infamous work in Iraq first came to light in the Abu Ghraib scandals--were influential in Pentagon circles before the war started.

As for Blackwater and other security firms, their roles as armed forces is extensive, unregulated and often unknown. But Singer asserts, "As it has been planned and conducted to date, the war in Iraq would not be possible without private military contractors." He quotes an estimate that over 1,000 contractors have been killed and 13,000 wounded, but they aren't counted in official casualties. The mercenaries are extremely well paid--the difference between Privates and Privatized is great. So it should not be surprising that, as Singer writes, "Halliburton's contract has garnered the firm $20.1 billion in Iraq-related revenue and helped the firm report a $2.7 billion profit last year. To put this into context, the amount paid to Halliburton-KBR is roughly three times what the U.S. government paid to fight the entire 1991 Persian Gulf War."

But this is only the beginning. Read on.

* verses from "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot.

by Howard Penning in Vancouver, BC.

Holloween Story: Hollow Government

Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

The Hollow Military is not only a strategy, it is part of an ideology. Conservatives who want the smallest possible government are getting their wish with the Bushite government, but in a perverse way. The Bushites have shed actual government employees, either by underfunding government agencies and functions, or by replacing real managers, experts, technicians and career public servants with appointees hired for their political party activism and ideological fervor. But they have not cut government spending. In fact they've turned the Clinton surplus into a huge deficit, financed by a foreign power with a putatively Communist government: China.

Under Bush, the basic function of government has become to distribute taxpayer money to select corporations. As Naomi Klein points out, this is a process that G.W. Bush began as governor of Texas. Klein writes:"The future president's commitment to auctioning off the state, combined with Cheney's leadership in outsourcing the military and Rumsfeld's patenting of drugs that might prevent epidemics, provided a preview of the kind of state the three men would construct together---it was a vision of a perfectly hollow government." [294]

9/11 provided them their major opportunity, so untold billions went through the hollow Homeland Security department to favored corporations, and billions more to Iraq. This was part of "a straight-up transfer of hundreds of billions of public dollars a year into private hands. It would take the form of contracts, many offered secretively, with no competition and scarcely any oversight, to a sprawling network of industries: technology, media, communications, incarceration, engineering, education, health care."

It is the realization of a "radical vision of a hollow government in which everything from war fighting to disaster response was a for-profit venture." [298]Conservatives laud privatization for the efficiency supposedly inherent in for-profit ventures. But it hasn't worked out that way, partly because of the dynamics of monopoly capitalism, and partly because the Hollow Military and the Hollow Government depends on the Hollow Corporation.

by Howard Penning

Holloween Story: Hollow Corporation in Iraq

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

The money from the Hollow Goverment to supplement the Hollow Military goes to the Hollow Corporation. Just as the Hollow Government doesn't actually do the public business, and the Hollow Military doesn't conduct the war, the Hollow Corporation doesn't do the work. They all hire somebody else to do it. And often enough, the people they hire, hire somebody else. And so on.

Sometimes this results in luxurious overspending and immense waste, as in the Green Zone and military installations in Iraq. As writes, "The operation is one of the most lavishly supported ever, and most of that has been due to contractors to whom we have outsourced almost all the logistics, and the protection of that enormous supply chain. But it has proven to be remarkably inefficient, all the while undermining our counterinsurgency efforts. According to testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Defense Contract Audit Agency has identified more than a staggering $10 billion in unsupported or questionable costs from battlefield contractors -- and investigators have barely scratched the surface."

In other situations, such as the billions wasted on the supposed "reconstruction" efforts in Iraq, it's a chain of subcontracts leading to no results at all, except waste and fraud, and to such situations as Bechtel being contracted to fix the electricity system, and after years, leaving Iraq with the electricity system in worse shape than when it arrived. Much of this travesty is a matter of public record through congressional investigations. As Klein writes:

"Freed of all regulations, largely protected from criminal prosecution and on contracts that guaranteed their costs would be covered, plus a profit, many foreign [non-Iraqi] corporations did something entirely predictable: they scammed wildly. Known in Iraq as 'the primes,' the big contractors engaged in elaborate subcontracting schemes."

Money would pass through one subcontractor after another, each taking their cut, until there was little left for the actual work, so it isn't too surprising that the materials were cheap, the work shoddy, and nothing was accomplished--while conditions got worse, and insurgency grew.

In the end the cheapest workers were hired, and often imported. Thus the mystery of why a country in which electrical and water systems, bridges, schools, etc. had been constructed before American bombs destroyed them could not be re-constructed is solved. I recall reading riverbend's blog early in the occupation in which she wrote about Iraqi firms eager to reconstruct their own country, and with the skills, knowledge and creativity to do it quickly and cheaply--but they were being ignored. These were the same people who constructed all this infrastructure in the first place--but U.S. based multinationals saw Iraq as a major opportunity to get richer quickest, and so Iraqis were rarely hired to rebuild their own country, especially not professionals. Which of course added immensely to the frustration and emnity of the Iraqi people.

But the story of the Hollow Corporation does not begin in Iraq--nor does it end there. Which will bring us, very soon, to Christmas.

by Howard Penning

Holloween Story: Hollow Corporation Christmas

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Donald Rumsfeld did not invent the concept of the Hollow Military out of thin air. It came, as Naomi Klein claims, from the Hollow Corporation of 1990s America. Companies that had previously manufactured their own products and "maintained large, stable workforces" in America went beyond moving factories to the South (the 1970s) or to Mexico and Asia (1980s). They stopped owning and maintaining factories at all. This became known as the "Nike model: "produce your products through an intricate web of contractors and subcontractors, and pour your resources into design and marketing." The other Hollow model was based on Microsoft: a small, tight workforce concentrating on "core competencies," while everything else ("from running the mailroom to writing code") is outsourced to temp workers. [Klein, 284-5.)

Rumsfeld came from this business background, and came to the Pentagon (Klein quoting Fortune magazine) "to oversee the same sort of restructuring that he orchestrated so well in the corporate world." [Klein, 285.]

By now--by 2007--the Hollow Corporation is a global fact. Another large factor in spreading it in the consumer goods area has been the spectacular rise of Wal-Mart, which as several books show (for instance, The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman ) has transformed the companies that supply the products it sells. Because Wal-Mart insists on huge quantities at low cost, companies have been forced to find the very cheapest materials and labor. In the vast majority of cases, they can't find labor cheap enough anywhere in America. They must subcontract to China.

As Wal-Mart grew to become "both the largest company in the world, and the largest company in the history of the world" (Fishman), so did the number of products supplied from China, so that as one scholar told Frontline, "China and Wal-Mart are a joint venture." And most big U.S. corporations that sell products must sell a lot of them through Wal-Mart, so they restructure to please Wal-Mart, and so they become part of that joint venture.

But just as a scandal involving Blackwater alerted many to the Hollow Military, the current scandal over the safety of products manufactured in China is alerting the public to just how much of what we buy is made (in whole or in part) in China, and how little is made by the American company whose name is on the label--including traditional and trusted names such as Fisher-Price, Mattel and General Foods.

The news came fast and furious, in a bewildering array of products, from deadly pet food and tainted toothpaste to leaded toys. Close to 20% of China's products, it turned out, did not meet its own health and safety standards. At first, Americans became extremely wary of Chinese products, especially food products. But then it became clearer that avoiding processed foods, vitamins and health products that don't have some ingredients made in China (including ascorbic acid in Vitamin C) is virtually impossible.

Then such trusted American companies as General Mills announced they would be doing more testing (while quietly admitting they hadn't been doing much before, or testing additives at all.) Whether the public was reassured, or simply in despair and denial, this storm passed. But it was a teachable moment in the extent of the Hollow Corporation.

For there are no Colgate Toothpaste factories in Anytown USA, not Anymore. (When U.S. Customs seized a supply of toxic Colgate, it was marked "Made in China" and "Made in India.) There are no Mattel or Fisher-Price toy factories with happy American elves. There is just a board of directors and a flotilla of managers coordinating subcontractors, including the well-paid ones (advertising and marketing agencies) and the very poorly paid ones (the workers who actually make the products.) That's American Know-How in 2007. Welcome to Hollow-een.

Long-term, doesn't it concern anyone that the skills and infrastructure to actually make things are disappearing from America, and that if anything happens to short-circuit the supply line from Asia, this nation may become a pitiful helpless giant?

But in the short-term, Christmas approaches, and problems with toys made in China continue. Just last week, Mattel recalled another 38,000 toys imported from China by Fisher-Price, as part of a larger recall of 665,000 toys.

China has rightly pointed out that checking for the health and safety of products is the responsibility of the importing country. But our Hollow Government doesn't have the expert personnel to do it anymore. Our Hollow Corporations would rather not spend the money on it, preferring to concentrate on marketing and advertising. They import from China because the products are made there as cheaply as possible--and they are shocked, shocked that corners are cut affecting health and safety.

And even if the U.S. government had the capability to protect the consumer, just how far they could afford to push China is a real question, since China owns so much U.S. government debt--in effect, owns so much of the Hollow United States and its future.

This leaves a real conundrum for many Americans this Christmas, especially for the millions whose hold on the middle class is tenuous: without the good wages for actually making things that these corporations used to pay, they work several lower-paying jobs to make ends meet. Paying for more expensive toys and gifts for Christmas from smaller exclusive U.S. firms is not a good option, assuming such toys and gifts can be found.

For those with sufficient discretionary income, there are continuing ethical problems of buying from companies dependent on sweatshop labor. Recently another trusted brand--The Gap-- has been tarnished by evidence of child labor sweatshop abuse exposed by journalists, forcing them to drop a subcontractor in India: they are shocked, shocked that 10 year olds were virtually enslaved by a lowest-bid contractor. The Gap reassures American consumers that the clothes they sell for Christmas will not include any tainted by this company. There are many roads from the Hollow Corporation and the Hollow Government to a hollow Christmas.

So as Americans cross their fingers and shop for Christmas, they may know that in the companies they once trusted for quality, and in the government they depend on to protect them, there is no there there. They are all hollow.

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

The China Syndrome

Bringing the Dalai Lama to the White prior to officially presenting him with the Congressional Medal of Freedom was a welcome distraction for the Bushites. Photographs with one of the most respected and beloved people in the world and especially in the U.S. helps diffuse the image of the vetoer of life-saving medical care for children, and it draws attention to the 1989 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and away from this year's winner, Al Gore, whose honor is yet to be acknowledged at the White House.

But it sure pissed off the Chinese government. Like most imperialists, it goes nuts when its brutal aggression and even more brutal colonial administration is even implictly, even theoretically or possibly questioned. In this case, China's armed takeover of Tibet included the murder of thousands of Buddhists, and its war against the Dalai Lama (the traditional political as well as spiritual leader of Tibet) has forced it into absurd embarrassments, the most recent of which is outlawing reincarnation without government approval.

But the White House doesn't want to piss them off too much. "We in no way want to stir the pot and make China feel that we are poking a stick in their eye for a country that we have a lot of relationships with on a variety of issues," said press secretary Dana Perino. " No, not with China financing the Iraq war and the further mega-enrichment of Bushites and their cronies, and leaving the piper to be paid by future American generations, one way or another.

Besides, China has become a kind of model for the Bushites: it has shown that a nation can get good p.r. for coming out against tyranny and murder in Darfur and Burma while still do nothing to endanger profits gained in relationships with those countries. And above all, the greatest lesson of China today, though no one wants to say it out loud, is that capitalism without democracy works just great. Something that the Bushites have certainly taken to heart.