8 October 2012
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week.

25 years ago: US sinks Iranian speedboats in the Persian Gulf

On October 8, 1987, helicopter gunships from the US fleet in the Persian Gulf sank three small Iranian military boats, killing at least four sailors. Another six seamen were pulled from the international waters about 15 miles off the coast of Farsi Island. A fourth Iranian craft reportedly escaped the assault. The Pentagon claimed that the attack was in self-defense, but offered no evidence that any shots were fired by any of the vessels. There were no US casualties or damage of any kind to any of the three AH-6 “Little Bird” attack helicopters.
This assault took place less that three weeks after the murderous attack on the Iranian landing ship Iran Ajr, which resulted in the killing of 5 crewmen, the capture of the remaining 26 and the subsequent sinking of the ship. The buildup of ships in the Persian Gulf by the US Navy and its NATO allies, Britain, Italy and West Germany, gave the lie to the claims of neutrality in the Iran-Iraq war. The threat of direct war against Iran loomed ever closer with each provocation by the US.

The attack was the fourth incident of US forces firing on Iranian ships in the Gulf since July, when the reflagging of Kuwaiti oil tankers began. Reagan defied members of Congress, including Democratic senator Paul Simon, who filed a lawsuit demanding that the administration adhere to the 1973 War Powers Act, which required that the president submit a resolution to a vote in Congress before conducting any military operations “where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated.”

75 years ago: Britain, France appease Mussolini on Spain

This week in 1937 saw the government of the United Kingdom and France appeal to the Italian fascist government of Benito Mussolini to reduce Italy’s intervention in the Spanish Civil War, where some 70,000 Italian “volunteers” at the service of Spanish military strongman Francisco Franco were rapidly gaining ground on the Republican government.

On October 9, in a joint communiqué, the two “democratic powers” invited Mussolini to join in tripartite discussions on Spain. The next day, Mussolini flatly rejected the invitation, but issued a counterproposal, calling for the reassembling of the “Non-Intervention Committee,” which included—in addition to the UK, France, and Italy—Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and fascist-ruled Portugal. On October 14, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain accepted Mussolini’s offer, “[giving] way to Italy on almost every point of procedure,” according to the New York Times.

Fearful of being surrounded by three hostile powers—Germany, Italy, and Spain—the French government favored a Republican victory, and wished for British backing in a move to provide arms to the Republic. Yet France had already shut her own border with Spain, blocking the movement of goods and volunteers to the Spanish government. When French foreign minister Delbos threatened to open the border, Germany warned that it would increase its support of Franco, and Italy indicated that it would retaliate by expanding its intervention. France quickly backtracked from the threat.

While the diplomatic maneuvering continued, Italian troops and Spanish fascist forces were in the process of eliminating the last vestiges of Republican-controlled land on the Bay of Biscay, Spain’s northern coastline, and to the south of Madrid were massing forces for an assault on Spain’s capital and largest city. On October 11, Madrid was subjected to its worst bombing of the war, with American writer Ernest Hemingway counting the boom of at least 600 artillery shells from his hotel in the city center. [Above, left: Neville Chamberlain]

100 years ago: First Balkan War begins

Bulgarian artillery

On October 8, 1912, the Kingdom of Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire, and launched attacks on the Ottoman forts at Detchitch, located opposite the major Montenegrin city Podgorica, and Novi Pazar, Ottoman territory separating Serbia and Montenegro. Montenegrin forces seized control of the Detchitch fort within two days. The conflict rapidly broadened, with the Ottomans declaring war on Serbia and Bulgaria on October 17. On October 18, Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece declared war on the Ottoman Empire, and major military confrontations began in the following days.

The First Balkan War, which lasted until May 1913, marked a major escalation of hostilities on the European continent in the lead-up to World War One and resulted in an estimated 100,000 Ottoman casualties alone.

On October 1, the states that composed the Balkan League—Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece—had issued an ultimatum to the Ottoman Empire demanding that Macedonia, which was under Ottoman control, be granted autonomy. The resistance of the Turks to the Balkan League’s aspirations for a redivision of geopolitical power in the Balkan region prompted the move to war.

Serbia and Bulgaria, with the encouragement of Russia, had signed a treaty in March, which provided for the division of Macedonia into a Serbian zone, a Bulgarian zone, and a neutral zone to be arbitrated by Russia, in the event of war. The move initiated the loose political alliance, forged through a series of bilateral treaties, that came to be known as the Balkan League.

The Ottoman Empire had been weakened by growing revolt amongst the Albanians, the Italo-Turkish war of 1911-1912, in which Italy annexed Ottoman territory in modern-day Libya, and internal political instability bound up with the Young Turk revolution of 1908. Austro-Hungarian fears over Balkan nationalism, Russia’s increasing aggressiveness, and Germany’s growing influence heightened regional instability.

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ELLIOT SPERBER

…[b]ecause the overall costs they exact are far too high, those industries found to be not only unnecessary, but hostile to human and environmental health as well, should be phased out of existence entirely.”

In a nation so thoroughly misinformed and kept ignorant by a constant diet of lies and gross omissions of context and history, Americans often arrive at the right conclusions for the wrong reasons, thereby opening the road to false solutions or worse. (Click to enlarge)—Eds

Though their conclusions are specious, the proponents of economic austerity programs are in one crucial respect entirely correct: the present economic system is dysfunctional and, as such, requires a radical transfiguration. Indeed, as it ceaselessly spews toxins into the skies and seas, it is only becoming more evident that this economy is, among other things, a great source of danger to us all. Along with the growing dead zones of the oceans, and the spreading war zones accompanying the resource depletion intrinsic to our political-economy, we are also daily savaged by the far more mundane, though just as endemic, pathologies of cancer and obesity epidemics, widespread malnutrition, and countless car wrecks and occupational hazards, along with the many other institutionally-created harms that our economy reproduces – its daily tons of ground beef, bacon, paper coffee cups, and other innumerable, though far less visible, toxicities.

And though proponents of austerity measures contend otherwise, it cannot be reasonably maintained that the austerity measures being imposed on national economies throughout the world do anything at all to ameliorate these actual harms we collectively face. On the contrary, insofar as they increase economic production, waste, pollution, and widespread precarity, these austerity programs only exacerbate our actual – as opposed to our merely apparent – problems.

To be sure, because they require perpetual economic growth, it must be conceded that what their boosters propose are not in any meaningful sense even austerity programs at all. For rather than sacrificing anything, the wealthy classes are only engorging themselves further on opulent luxuries. And the laboring people, meanwhile, daily bombarded by advertisements and disinformation, are encouraged to spend ever more on poisonous, disposable garbage.

Among the symptoms of general environmental degradation attending this economic pathology, even our most vital resource – fresh water – is throughout the planet being destroyed. Hardly an anomaly, this as an entirely foreseeable consequence of this economy’s normal functioning. And as aquifers the world over are being pumped dry, and tons of pesticides and other pollutants are daily discharged into the hydrosphere as a result of market forces, and climatic changes wreak havoc on snow packs, among other sources of water, the situation is only worsening. As the United Nations estimates, by 2025 nearly 2 billion people “will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity.” Instead of confronting this crisis, which is already unfolding in much of the world, mainstream political-economic thought engages only in exercises in denial, dissimulation, and speculation in the burgeoning water market.

But these quantities of pollutants that are poisoning our water – and all of our bodies besides – are but one effect of a general design whose index of value is markedly divorced from the actual well-being of people – one that, for example, demands that most people receive inadequate levels of necessities (like sleep, and water, and food) in order to satisfy the indolence and utter inausterity of a relative few. In spite of all this, as mentioned above, the proponents of austerity do raise an important point. Standing on the precipice of ecological holocaust, we really ought to embark upon an austerity program. For it to alleviate, and not exacerbate, the serious harms we all confront, however, it must be an austerity of a radically different type than those under our current hegemon’s consideration.

Rather than privatizing such things as public schools, water supply systems, and other publicly owned enterprises – which are only ever pretexts for the aggrandizement of the wealthy – a critical austerity would instead halt altogether the far from austere economic practices proven to be polluting and otherwise destroying the planet. Indeed, because the overall costs they exact are far too high, those industries found to be not only unnecessary, but hostile to human and environmental health as well, should be phased out of existence entirely.

So, for example, since the fast food industry, along with the disposable paper and plastic container industries, produce harmful products, they should be shuttered. Many, of course, may find such a view of austerity unsavory. However, just as at one time in history people found it necessary to make sacrifices by slaughtering animals, today it is necessary to make sacrifices by not slaughtering animals. Beyond its cruelty, and its attendant environmental harms, the intensive demands on grain and water supplies required to feed these animals imposes a tremendous strain on our ability to satisfy our collective food requirements.

Moreover, if billions of people throughout history, and today as well, have found it possible to forsake the slaughter and consumption of cows and pigs, among other animals, because of the proscriptions of their faiths, our knowledge of the concrete harms attending these practices ought to lead us, though for different reasons, to comparable interdictions.

Another significant source of harms is the energy industry. Any meaningful notion of austerity should not only curtail the tremendously wasteful overuse of energy, and the damage it causes, but would impose a moratorium on the destructive extraction of resources as well. Of course, the elimination of harmful industries, such as those named above, whose purpose is the generation of profit rather than any salutary use, will no doubt contribute a great deal toward the reduction of the harms accompanying the present modes of energy production.

Perhaps the most harmful industry of all, though, is the military industry. And while the transformation of the military industry will no doubt be met with a great degree of resistance, it must nevertheless be accomplished in order to realize an austerity program worthy of the name. Rather than viewing the military as an obstacle to austerity and a reasonable economy, however, we ought to recognize that the military has the potential to contribute greatly to the implementation of just such an austerity program.

Beating its spears into pruning hooks, so to speak, the military could be employed in building public transportation systems to replace the automobile industry, salutary, publicly-controlled energy systems, and communications systems, as well as retrofitting sewage and waste treatment facilities, and other infrastructural projects like the construction of schools and community health clinics. Furthermore, the military could be directed to clean up the monumental mountains of toxic garbage littering the world and swirling about throughout the seas.

With the elimination of all of these industries, and the jobs attached to them, people will no doubt inquire as to how they will be expected to pay for food, and rent, among other things. The simplest solution to this problem is by the adoption of a basic income law. Because the entire purpose of such an austerity program is to mitigate harms, it would be absurd to propose that people incur harms to their health in effectuating such austerity. As such, a basic income must be available to all people – irrespective of whether or not they work – to pay for rent, food, transportation, communications, and other things necessary for optimal health – at least, that is, until a more democratic economic system is devised.

Concededly, many will be less than thrilled by the prospect of having restrictions imposed on their ability to consume all of the bacon that they want, and to drive around in their cars to their hearts’ content, jet about the planet at will, drill oil wells wherever they like, and extract rent from the tenants of the world. But this is, after all, an austerity plan that’s under discussion.

For those who will argue that such an economic program would require an impossibly difficult political fight, we would do well to pay attention to the words of the ancient Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu, who informs us in his Art of War that, while it is good to win a battle by fighting, it is best is to win without fighting at all. To this end, and with all due respect to Walter Benjamin’s insight concerning the engine of history, we don’t need to pull the emergency brake on this runaway train of an economy so much as we need to endeavor a more modest, practicable thing – to remove our collective foot from the gas pedal – to rest it, before its engines trash the rest of the planet, and we all choke to death in the gas chamber we’ve made of the world. And if, as countless thinkers and jurists have insisted since the time of Cicero, the health of the people really is the supreme law, then the law must recognize not only the legitimacy, but the physiological necessity, of such a type of critical austerity as well.

Elliot Sperber is a writer, attorney, and contributor to hygiecracy.blogspot.com. He lives in New York City, and can be reached at elliot.sperber@gmail.com

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By John Vidal, The Guardian

One of the world’s leading ice experts has predicted the final collapse of Arctic sea ice in summer months within four years.

In what he calls a “global disaster” now unfolding in northern latitudes as the sea area that freezes and melts each year shrinks to its lowest extent ever recorded, Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University calls for “urgent” consideration of new ideas to reduce global temperatures.

In an email to the Guardian he says: “Climate change is no longer something we can aim to do something about in a few decades’ time, and that we must not only urgently reduce CO2 emissions but must urgently examine other ways of slowing global warming, such as the various geo-engineering ideas that have been put forward.”

These include reflecting the sun’s rays back into space, making clouds whiter and seeding the ocean with minerals to absorb more CO2.

Wadhams has spent many years collecting ice thickness data from submarines passing below the arctic ocean. He predicted the imminent break-up of sea ice in summer months in 2007, when the previous lowest extent of 4.17 million square kilometres was set. This year, it has unexpectedly plunged a further 500,000 sq km to less than 3.5m sq km. “I have been predicting [the collapse of sea ice in summer months] for many years. The main cause is simply global warming: as the climate has warmed there has been less ice growth during the winter and more ice melt during the summer.

“At first this didn’t [get] noticed; the summer ice limits slowly shrank back, at a rate which suggested that the ice would last another 50 years or so. But in the end the summer melt overtook the winter growth such that the entire ice sheet melts or breaks up during the summer months.

“This collapse, I predicted would occur in 2015-16 at which time the summer Arctic (August to September) would become ice-free. The final collapse towards that state is now happening and will probably be complete by those dates”.

Wadhams says the implications are “terrible”. “The positives are increased possibility of Arctic transport, increased access to Arctic offshore oil and gas resources. The main negative is an acceleration of global warming.”

“As the sea ice retreats in summer the ocean warms up (to 7C in 2011) and this warms the seabed too. The continental shelves of the Arctic are composed of offshore permafrost, frozen sediment left over from the last ice age. As the water warms the permafrost melts and releases huge quantities of trapped methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas so this will give a big boost to global warming.”

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