Gaza's silent victims

The Israeli Defence Force's air and ground assault on Gaza has been disproportionately deadly on one group of Palestinians: children. It is not widely enough known that of the 1.5 million people that live in Gaza, half are children under the age of 15. In any military operation, then, it was inevitable that children would die. Since the assault began, of the 636 Palestinians that have been killed, at least 115 have been children, according to reports in the Financial Times.

The Israeli assault on Palestinian children is easily seen in the repeated bombing of schools, which has been roundly condemned around the world. The latest tragedy, in which 40 civilians, including children, were killed when a United Nations school was bombed, reminds the international community that despite repeated assertions by the Israeli Defence Forces that they seek to minimize civilian casulties the reality is that civilian populations, whether they be in private homes, schools, or medical facilities, are systematic targets, and this includes children.

Who can forget the murder--for that was what it was--of Rami Jamal al-Durra in September 2000? French television filmed the scene of the 12 year old huddled next to his father, hiding, as his father pleaded with the Israelis to stop shooting. In response, the Israelis shot at the father, wounding him, and killing Rami Jamal al-Durra. It is a scene that we have, unfortunately, had to witness again this month.

Prior to the assault, as a consequence of the Israeli blockade of the territory, some 50000 children were malnourished; as in Iraq in the 1990s, there can be no doubt that some children have died as a consequence of the conditions created by the blockade. To this horror must now be added the horror of the deaths of far too many wholly innocent children.

The irony of this assault on children is not lost on the Israeli leadership: as Ehud Barak, the defence minister who is directing the assault, once said when asked what he would do if he were a Palestinian facing the Israeli Defence Forces, 'I would join a terror organization'. In attacking Gaza's children, the Israelis are creating the conditions that perpetuate the cycle of violence that plagues the region.

slavery's ground zero

I have been spending the holiday season in Richmond, Virginia, my first trip to the former capital of the Confederate States of America and my first trip to the U.S. South in almost 30 years. Before I came to Richmond, I had not thought much about the significance of the trip from an international development perspective, but for the past week I have not been able to avoid it. The reason is simple: in one of my early first year lectures I focus my attention on the role of slavery in facilitating the rise of industrial capitalism in Europe and the United States, and Richmond is the ‘ground zero’ of the American slave trade.

The U.S. stopped the international trade in slaves in 1808. It was Virginia’s slaveholders that stepped in to replace international trade by transforming Richmond into one of the biggest, if not the biggest, slave markets in the U.S., particularly in the neighbourhood known as Shockoe Bottom. What Île de Gorée in Dakar, Senegal, is to the slave trade from Africa, Shockoe Bottom is to the slave trade in the U.S. Owners of slaves from Virginia plantations brought them into Richmond to sell to owners developing new plantations in the Deep South. As a result, between 1808 and 1865 anywhere between 300000 and 3500000 slaves were sold out of Richmond’s slave markets. Considering that in 1865 the African-American population of the U.S. stood at around 4 million, this means that today hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of African-Americans can today trace their ancestry back to the slave markets of Richmond.

However, slavery in Richmond was not only about securing unfree labour for agricultural export production from the South. It was also about ‘developing’ the economy of a Virginia witnessing declining soil fertility and a decaying agrarian economy. Granted, a large proportion of Richmond’s slave population worked as ‘domestics’. Nonetheless, the development of industrial capital in Richmond—a legacy that can still be witnessed today—was predicated upon unfree slave labour. Hired slave labour was an important part of the work force at the Tredegar Iron Works, and the other iron foundries, that provided the industrial basis of the Confederacy’s attempt to sustain the class power of agrarian elites. Hired slaves also dominated the labour force in Richmond’s tobacco industry, performing the hard, back-breaking work needed to process tobacco. Finally, slave labour was necessary to create and maintain Richmond’s transportation networks. Unfree labour worked on the construction of the James River and Kanawha Canal, the first canal in the U.S., while crews of slaves, alongside free African-Americans, made up the bateau crews that navigated cargoes into Richmond.

The truth is thus that the history and development of Richmond, like the United States as a whole, and indeed the North, was, to a large extent, built by slave labour. As I try to argue in my lecture on colonialism and slavery, a convincing case can be made that industrial capitalism in its infancy required slavery in order to gain economic ascendency in the North. Capital was built, initially, on slavery.

This reality demands two final comments. The first is that slaves incessantly resisted their unfree status. Richmond paradigmatically illustrates this. Following the Haitian Revolution of 1792, the first major slave revolt in the south was led by a 24 year old slave named Gabriel (often, incorrectly, named Gabriel Prosser), a deeply Christian blacksmith. In 1800, disgusted by the slavery that bound him, Gabriel made plans to take the city of Richmond by force. By August of 1800 Gabriel had thousands of slave supporters and had secured a cache of weapons, including guns. Gabriel’s plans came to naught: he was betrayed by two of his ‘followers’ and, moreover, on the day of the planned revolt, the bridges into Richmond were destroyed in a flood. The Virginia militia attacked Gabriel and his thousand followers the next day; they were captured, and he and his followers were hanged. Gabriel’s revolt, little acknowledged outside African-American historiography, was the closest the U.S. came to a home-grown slave-led revolution.

The second comment follows from the fact that Gabriel’s revolt is little acknowledged. The history of capitalism’s development, and our globally-privileged life, is predicated upon slavery; yet this is not discussed, freely and openly. Our lives are built on a hidden history of power and privilege, a transcript that needs to be revealed and confronted if the poverty that stalks the world is to be eliminated.

Postscript: It should be acknowledged that Richmond was, in 2007, the first city in the U.S. to formally apologize for slavery. In mid-2008 Gabriel was informally pardoned by the Governor of Virginia. In late 2008, in the Shockoe Bottom area, a Slavery Reconciliation Statue was unveiled. These acts, which are about revealing a hidden transcript, do not come about autonomously, but as the result of citizens seeking to reclaim history. Such acts are a precondition of further, deeper social change.

remembering Samuel Huntington

Samuel P. Huntington, one of the most influential and important American political scientists in the field of international development studies, died on Christmas Eve at the age of 81. Huntington embodied the contradictions of the U.S. intelligensia towards international development: a lifelong Democrat, with ideas that many of his friends and colleagues considered quite liberal, and an ability to move between the academic and the political world, he nonetheless throughout his life articulated a set of ideas that apologized for the powerful and accommodated authoritarianism.

Huntington's first book, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, published in 1957, was still required reading when I was an undergraduate. In it, Huntington argued that the U.S. had to protect conservative military institutions and individuals because they in turn protected the U.S. from the foibles of human nature: 'irrationality, weakness and evil'. The argument was developed in relation to the U.S., but it was one that could be used more broadly, in both developed and developing societies. However, it was, in effect, an ideological apology for what Eisenhower had called 'the military-industrial complex': the economic fractions that dominated U.S.--and hence global--capital and shaped a set of hegemonic ideas that sustained their own power.

These ideas were further crystalized in Huntington's Political Order in Changing Societies, published in 1969. In this hugely important book, Huntington argued that international development had not taken place in the South because of a lack of political 'order'. 'Order' mattered, and not the character of the political governance: and thus, for the good of 'development', the U.S. could support authoritarian dictatorships such as those in South Vietnam, Zaire, Iraq and beyond because they brought 'order', which was more important than 'democracy' (however defined). These were the ideas that had allowed Huntington to advise the unsuccessful presidential campaign of Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey in 1968, a campaign that was, in part, based upon ensuring that the Vietnam War was continued until military victory was ensured--and 'order' established.

Huntington will, however, be best remembered for 1996's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, which argued, well before the September 11 attacks, that differences in history, tradition, language and religion would be the cause of wars to come. Huntington asserted that these differences were particularly evident in the 'continuing and deeply conflictual relationship between Islam and Christianity'. He also asserted that these differences would produce essentially unresolvable conflicts that would continue until one side had secured victory. In essence, Huntington was arguing that as a consequence of this 'clash of civilizations' one side would have to impose order on the other. He was thus providing the intellectual justification for the invasion of Afghanistan and, before the mistruths of the Bush Administration were revealed, the invasion of Iraq.

Samuel Huntington was extremely influential in the world, even if few have heard of him. He provided the intellectual justification for the imperial misadventures of the early 21st century, just as he provided the intellectual justification for the imperial misadventures of the 1960s and 1970s. He was, in the sense of Antonio Gramsci, an organic intellectual of the ruling class: an individual who propogated a set of ideas that shaped the way people think and facilitated their willingness to accede to the deployment of class power, no matter how much it was not in their interest and no matter how relentless it might be.

more on the case of Omar Khadr

As a followup to my weblog entry of 27 October, it is worth highlighting the fact that Lietunant-Commander Bill Kuebler, who is part of Omar Khadr's U.S. government-appointed defence team, last week tried to have entered into evidence at Omar Khadr's military commissions hearing at Guantanamo Bay photographs of Khadr buried under the rubble of a collapsed roof at the time he was supposed to be throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier. The judge at the hearing, Colonel Patrick Parrish, banned Cdr. Kuebler from showing the photographs. Asked why Col. Parrish banned the photographs, Cdr. Kuebler said: 'Because they show he's innocent'.

There has been no response from the Canadian government to these photographs, which have been known about for a year.

senseless sacrifice

On 5 December 2008 a grisly milestone was passed in Canada's war in southern Afghanistan: the 100th solider to be killed died as a consequence of a roadside improvised explosive device.

This weblog has previously argued why the war in Kandahar being fought by Canada's army is a mistake. Canada is not 'fighting global terrorism' or sustaining 'peace in Canada', as the Canadian government has suggested. It is fighting local Pakhtun tribesmen who see the Canadians as a foreign occupying force. Moreover, the local Pakhtuns are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their ability to fight, having won a number of set-piece battles in both Kandahar and neighbouring Helmand province. Fighting in Afghanistan in general, and southern Afghanistan in particular, is getting heavier, not lighter, as time goes by, and more, not fewer, foreign soldiers are dying as more and more of the country falls out of the control of NATO forces. Increasingly, NATO military commanders suggest that the war is not about winning, but about containing an acceptable level of violence. Indeed, given the deep unpopularity of the massively corrupt government of President Hamid Karzai, a former friend of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, even achieving an acceptable level of violence may be a difficult, if not impossible task. Insurgents now target heavily-guarded areas of Kabul, the previously safe capital, and increasingly international non-governmental organizations are being targeted.

It is, without a doubt, true that Afghans have better access to health care, to education, and to economic opportunities than was previously the case. However, it is also true that much of the country remains desperately poor, and is unlikely to see its prospects improve during the next 15 years. Hunger is widespread. Finally, of course, there is death: we have no idea of knowing how many Afghans have died during the war (I have seen numbers of around 13000 bandied about), but we know that many that have died have died at the hands of the occupation forces, by accident. Wedding parties have been bombed, drivers have been shot, goat hearders have been strafed. A recent attack in Shah Wali Kowt in Kandahar killed 3 dozen villagers. The price of a life in rural Afghanistan is just under US$2000--that is what the U.S. government pays in compensation for the death of an innocent bystander in the countryside. Those who are injured typically get paid around US$140.

It is the death of innocents, along with tribal grievances, that drives the insurgency--as I forecast would be the case in October of 2001. For many--most?--rural Afghans, NATO forces are no different than the Soviet occupiers of the 1980s; indeed, in some instances, the Soviet occupation is viewed more positively than the NATO occupation, for the government was more coherent. Let us hope that it does not take another 100 dead Canadian soliders to make the government realize this.

recent activities fall 2008

After a wet summer, the first few days of the Fall Term have been extremely pleasant: a fine way to commence the 2008 - 2009 academic year.

In addition to teaching my regular courses at Trent University, Human inequality in global perspective and Agrarian change and the global politics of food, this fall will see me very busy, in terms of research activities. I will continue to work on the draft of my next book, Hungry for Change? Farmers, Global Food Crisis and Agrarian Questions. I have a book chapter, on gender and development, to complete in due course. I also have a commissioned paper for the Journal of Agrarian Change, and a number of book reviews that I have promised. Finally, in October I will be delivering a paper on global food insecurity and the agrarian question to a conference at the University of Manitoba.

Administratively, the new International Advisory Board of the Journal of Peasant Studies, of which I am a member, will assume their duties in the fall, and I will take part in executive meetings of the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development and the Canadian Journal of Development Studies.

I expect that I will be working flat out through the fall.

a possibility of hope?

It has been my unfortunate experience, too many times in my life, to be judged by my name, my (apparent) ethnicity, and even (less apparently) the colour of my skin. I rarely think of myself in those terms, although the reality of my origins are an important part of who I am, of what I have chosen to do, and of how I have chosen to do it. Those origins help explain why, for me, the election last night of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States was very emotional.

I have reached the time in my life when I am aware that I have lived through history. I recall, vaguely, Dr Martin Luther King. I recall, vividly, when he was assassinated. I recall, too, from a very early age, being aware of apartheid (I had a special loathing for John Vorster), and of the white-minority regime in what is now Zimbabwe, led by Ian Smith. I remember being aware of the fact that while I was in my teens in some parts of the world if I had wanted to go out with someone who was white it would have been against the law--just as it would have been for my parents if they had lived in another country. Indeed, one of the reasons that my parents opted to immigrate to Canada was because of the history of segregation in the US (along with the ongoing Vietnam War). I remember the Soweto uprising, the horrors of the South African military gunning down schoolchildren, but also the acute knowledge that had I been living in South Africa at the time I would have been told the places where I could live, just like those living in Soweto. I remember the violence in the northern US around school busing and the efforts--sometimes for better, sometimes for worse--to integrate schools. I, of course, marched--and marched!!--and marched!!!--for the release of Nelson Mandela, and consider myself extremely fortunate to have met, albeit briefly, Oliver Tambo. I remember when Nelson Mandela finally walked free: the world stopped, and marveled. Walls indeed can come tumbling down, and the impossible is possible.

This is how I feel about the election of Barack Obama. In the global struggle for dignity, equality and social justice, we as humanity have taken a tremendous step forward. By electing a young African-American from an impoverished single-parent background to replace a deeply unpopular plutocrat from an aging political dynasty, the voters of the United States have struck a blow for equality for all of us. It is an event that will reverberate throughout this century. As I said to my son yesterday, one day someone will ask him: 'Where were you when Barack Obama was elected?'

Barack Obama is not capable of fulfilling the tremendous aspirations that the world has placed on his shoulders. For many--especially those energized by political advocacy for the first time--there will be, in all likelihood, a moment of near-transcendental disappointment, when they come to the realization that, in the cold light of day, Barack Obama is an American politician. For Obama is not going to fundamentally transform American society, let alone global society. This was never part of his political agenda. He is going to govern the United States from the political center, very competently, but also very pragmatically. The evidence for this is demonstrated by his already well-established transition team, and the host of economic advisers that he has surrounded himself with. As President, then, he will resemble, somewhat ironically, a more decent, more efficient, and more effective version of former US President Bill Clinton.

However: Barack Obama will not forget that his grandmother lives in a rural village in Kenya and lacks both electricity and clean water. He will not forget that he went to an Islamic school in Indonesia and had a lot of friends there. He will not forget that it was social provisioning and public support that allowed him to realize that his aspirations were achievable. He will not forget the empty lives that he saw while working on the South Side of Chicago. Barack Obama will, within the constraints of the political economy within which he is enmeshed, try and make a difference; the extent to which he actually succeeds remains to be seen, for the constraints of the US political economy are indeed strong, especially now that US finance capital is in crisis.

So, while the election of Barack Obama is an event that could and should bring both joy and hope to billions of people around the world, the world has not been transformed by his election. Rather, his election brings the possibility of transformation that little bit closer. It is a transformation that will--and must--come. This morning, more than yesterday morning, there is a possibility of hope.

In Age of Extremes the great British historian Eric Hobsbawm accurately described the 20th century as being 'short', having lasted from 1917 to 1991, the life of the Soviet Union and the world that it ushered in. As the great British comic Eddie Izzard said last night, '4 November 2008 is the first day of the 21st century.'