David Korten | Smart Security and the End of War

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t r u t h o u t | 06.29

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Smart Security and the End of War

Friday 27 June 2008

by: David Korten, YES! Magazine

David Korten's thoughts on a just foreign policy (the theme of the summer 2008 issue of YES! Magazine). "We humans have arrived at a defining moment. We must bring ourselves into balance with one another and Earth or suffer the consequences of social and environmental collapse. It creates a unique opportunity for bold action to end war as an instrument of foreign policy, convert to a peace economy, and create a world that works for all."

The End of Excess

Cheap oil provided an energy subsidy that defined the wars, economies, settlements, values, and lifestyles of the 20th century. The result was a century of wasteful extravagance and inefficiency that encouraged us to squander virtually all Earth's resources - including water, land, forests, fisheries, soils, minerals, and natural waste recycling capacity. We are now waking up to the morning-after consequences of a brief but raucous party. These include depleted natural systems, unsustainable economies, an obsolete physical infrastructure, and a six-fold increase in the human population dependent on the diminished resources of a finite planet.

Cheap oil also fueled a zero sum global competition for access to resources - particularly cheap oil - and for the military superiority required to secure that access. The United States combined the global projection of military power with the global projection of economic and cultural power to achieve unchallenged global dominance as the sole reigning superpower.

Cheap oil is no more and the global projection of military and economic power it made possible is no longer viable. In May 2008 the price of oil hit a new high of $135 a barrel in contrast to the historic inflation adjusted price of $27.00. We are only beginning to awake as a nation to the reality that our reign as a global superpower is coming to an abrupt end. (See the summer 2008 issue of YES! Magazine.) If we hold to business as usual, we will exhaust what remains of our power and credibility in a bloody and violent no win-competition to consume the last tree, fish, drop of oil, drink of potable water, and breath of clean air - sealing our own fate as well as that of our species.

A Defining Challenge

According to the scientific consensus, to avoid driving Earth's system of climate regulation into irrevocable collapse we humans must achieve at least an 80 percent reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2050 and possibly sooner. Less noted is the corresponding imperative that to avoid irrevocable social collapse, we must simultaneously achieve an equitable allocation of allowable emissions to meet the essential needs of every person on the planet. This presents a particular challenge for the United States . As the world's leading producer of green house gases, our emissions reduction must be closer to 90 percent.

There is no place in this equation for war or the global projection of military power. Beyond the fact that military planes, ships, and vehicles are gluttonous consumers of oil, the central activity of warfare is to kill and maim people and destroy critical infrastructure to impair capacity for normal life. The collateral damage includes massive scale toxic and radioactive environmental contamination that renders growing portions of our crowded planet uninhabitable. The more we humans war the more certain our ultimate collective demise.

The Last Superpower

The United States is well positioned to take the lead among nations in renouncing war as an instrument of national policy and dismantling the means of conducting war. We account for roughly half of world military expenditures and our military expenditures account for more than half of the U.S. federal discretionary budget to the neglect of major education, health, infrastructure, and environmental needs.

Yet the only military threat to our domestic security is from a handful of terrorists armed with box cutters and a willingness to die for their cause. We face a greater danger from our own children brandishing guns in our schools than from any opposing army. If a band of terrorists were to attack us with an atomic weapon, it would likely be delivered in a suitcase or packing crate. Such threats share in common the simple fact that even the mightiest military force in the world offers no protection. The solutions depend more on strengthening our families and communities, than on increasing military budgets.

Military science has long recognized that the use of conventional military force against an unconventional enemy that blends in with the civilian population is futile, even counterproductive, because the inevitable collateral damage fuels resentment and increases the numbers and commitment of the enemy. In the case of the United States , it drains our resources, divides us as a nation, weakens our moral standing in the world, and creates more unconventional enemies - as our fruitless occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan currently demonstrates.

Getting Smart

The greatest threats to U.S. security come from weather chaos, oil dependence, disruption of food supplies, water scarcity, domestic gun violence, profligate borrowing, and a collapsing dollar - threats increased by our current military security policies.

This is the moment for a pragmatic turn from military security to smart security. Among the potential starting points, two stand out as particularly promising. The first is a call by establishment insiders like George Shultz, who was U.S. Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, to dismantle all the world's nuclear weapons (see Sarah van Gelder's interview with George Shultz).

The second is an emergent social movement calling all the world's parliaments to adopt the principles of Article 9 added to the Japanese Constitution following World War II. In the official translation it reads:

ARTICLE 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.(2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

Italy and Germany adopted similar, but less stringent, provisions following World War II. Each renounced war as a sovereign right.

A Global Movement

In May 1999, 6000 global citizens gathered in The Hague for what at that time was the largest peace conference in history and issued The Hague Appeal for Peace. Among other measures, they recommended, "every Parliament should adopt a resolution prohibiting their government from going to war, like the Japanese article number nine." On Japanese Constitution day, May 3, 2008, over 8,000 Japanese gathered in Tokyo for the Global Article Nine Conference to Abolish War where numerous international speakers endorsed a call to the parliaments of the world to adopt national equivalents of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution.

A Smart Security Policy for the United States

The experience of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrates the folly of responding to terrorism with conventional military force and affirms the validity of Article 9. Public awareness of the costly failure of these misadventures has created a moment of opportunity for the U.S. peace movement to build popular political support for a Smart Security policy that renounces war as an instrument of foreign policy and sets forth a plan to:

1. Dismantle the obsolete machinery of war that is depleting our national treasure,

2. Convert our war economy of the past to a green economy of the future,

3. Mobilize our human and materials resources to address the real threats to our security, and

4. Work with the other nations of the world to do the same.

It is an opportunity to at once increase our security, improve the quality of our lives, and regain a position of principled global leadership.

--------

David David Korten wrote this article in response to A Just Foreign Policy, the Summer 2008 issue of YES! Magazine. David Korten is co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network, which publishes YES! Magazine. His books include The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World, and The Post-Corporate World: Life after Capitalism. He served during the Vietnam War as a captain in the U.S. Air Force with assignments in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, Air Force Headquarters Command, and as an instructor at the Special Air Warfare School . He is a member of Veterans for Peace. www.DavidKorten.org

Smart Security is a term originally coined by Physicians for Social Responsibility after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States in a call for "A Sensible, Multilateral, American Response to Terrorism." The Price of One Iraqi Life

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In Courts, Afghanistan Air Base May Become Next Guantanamo

On Mon., June 30 at 5:30 PM, members of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty will join the vigil at Madison Ave. and Fallsway. The group will urge the commission from the State of Maryland to call for the repeal of the death penalty. The commission will be impaneled on Tues., July 1.

In Courts, Afghanistan Air Base May Become Next Guantanamo

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 29, 2008; A14

Jawed Ahmad, a driver and assistant for reporters of a Canadian television network in Afghanistan, knew the roads to avoid, how to get interviews and which stories to pitch. Reporters trusted him, his bosses say.

Then, one day about seven months ago, the 22-year-old CTV News contractor vanished. Weeks later, reporters would learn from Ahmad's family that he had been arrested by U.S. troops, locked up in the U.S. military prison at Bagram air base and accused of being an enemy combatant.

Lawyers representing Ahmad filed a federal lawsuit early this month challenging his detention on grounds similar to those cited in successful lawsuits on behalf of captives at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay , Cuba. The lawyers are hoping to turn Ahmad's case and a handful of others into the next legal battleground over the rights of terrorism suspects apprehended on foreign soil. More lawsuits are expected on behalf of Bagram detainees in coming months, the lawyers said.

The lawsuits seek the right of habeas corpus for the detainees. Habeas corpus is a centuries-old legal doctrine that gives people taken into custody the right to challenge their detention before a judge.

Although legal experts expressed uncertainty about the potential for success, the detainees' lawyers say they are optimistic. They note the Supreme Court's decision two weeks ago that granted detainees at Guantanamo Bay the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.

"They stopped sending people to Guantanamo and are sending them to Bagram instead," said Barbara J. Olshansky, who represents Ahmad and is the legal director of the International Justice Network, a nonprofit organization that provides legal support to detainees. "In some ways, we have a stronger case than Guantanamo ."

The U.S. military referred questions about the habeas corpus petitions to the Justice Department and declined to confirm whether any of those who filed suits are being held at Bagram. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, saying lawyers are reviewing the Supreme Court's June 12 decision in Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. U.S.

In legal filings, however, the Justice Department has fiercely fought the Bagram suits, arguing that "Bagram airfield is in the zone of war" and not in a peaceful locale such as Guantanamo .

"To provide alien enemy combatants captured at the battlefield and detained in a theater of war the privilege of access to our civil courts is unthinkable both legally and practically," the government argued.

Human rights groups and activists have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. military prison at Bagram, about 40 miles north of Kabul . The prison has grown steadily over the years and has about 600 detainees, military officials said. The military is planning to spend $60 million to build a new, larger facility that would house the same number of captives but could accommodate as many as 1,000.

Some of the Bagram prisoners have been there since 2002, activists said. Although the vast majority were picked up in Afghanistan, activists and lawyers say at least a few were arrested in other countries.

"It provides a convenient place to hold people who you might not want the world to know you are holding," said Tina Monshipour Foster, a lawyer who represents Bagram detainees.

Military officials would not say whether people arrested in other countries are housed at Bagram. But they said they regularly review each detainee's status, release those who are no longer thought to be combatants and turn others over to Afghan authorities.

Haji Wazir, whose federal lawsuit was filed in 2006, has been held as an enemy combatant since 2002, according to lawyers and human rights activists. But he "is not a commander, not a member of the Taliban or al-Qaeda," said Lal Gul, chairman of the Afghan Human Rights Organization. "He is a businessman."

Gul also complained about the arrest of Ahmad, whose bosses say they are frustrated that he has not had his day in court.

"We have been told nothing about him," said Robert Hurst, president of CTV News, who spent several days with Ahmad in 2006 while visiting Afghanistan . "When we ask, we are told we don't have the right to even ask that question. . . . Our reporters felt very secure around him. He is an excellent young journalist."

Legal experts say they are not sure how the courts will treat the lawsuits. The Supreme Court's majority opinion in the Guantanamo cases, written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, focused only on detainees held at the naval base in Cuba. In it, Kennedy took pains to examine the particular circumstances surrounding the detentions, according to David Cole, a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Among the factors that tilted the ruling in favor of the detainees: The government had complete control over Guantanamo , the detainees had been held for years without trial, and the prison was not near a battlefield.

Lawyers may be successful in applying similar tests to those being held elsewhere, Cole said.

"Bagram will be the next battleground," he said. "Kennedy's decision in Boumediene leaves open the question as to what other places the writ of habeas corpus extends."

Other legal scholars said they think the courts will be reluctant to grant Bagram detainees such hearings, because the prison is in an area that the U.S. military considers a war zone.

Kennedy alluded to that issue when he wrote that "if the detention facility were located in an active theater of war, arguments that issuing the writ would be 'impracticable or anomalous' would have more weight."

"It seems unlikely that the conditions there are comparable to the conditions" at Guantanamo Bay , said Jonathan Siegel, a law professor at George Washington University.

But Siegel added that Kennedy and other justices "expressed impatience with the notion that the United States can hold people indefinitely without charge."

© 2008 The Washington Post Company

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center , 325 E. 25th St. , Baltimore , MD 21218 . Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Green Collar Jobs, Industrial Policy and a Society with a Future

Green Collar Jobs, Industrial Policy and a Society with a Future

By Bernard Marszalek BeyondChron ( San Francisco )

June 26, 2008

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=5811

'Green Collar Jobs' have gone mainstream. Obama endorses it. And a plank in the Democratic Party Platform calling for green collar jobs would solidify it as Democratic Party policy. Even if that expectation is premature, the popular reception of this program is a remarkable achievement for what began only a few years ago as an under-reported campaign uniting a few progressive labor leaders and some politically astute environmentalists.*

Despite its popular appeal, or maybe due to it, 'Green Collar Jobs' lacks clear definition. The term arose from the groundbreaking, alliance between labor and environmentalists to create a massive national effort to 'jump-start' an alternative energy program. They modeled it after John Kennedy's well-funded Apollo Project to get an American on the moon, fast.

The Apollo Alliance, as the labor/environmentalist collaboration came to be called, works 'to catalyze a clean energy revolution' with the intent 'to reduce our nation's dependence on foreign oil, cut the carbon emissions that are destabilizing our climate, and expand opportunities for American businesses and workers.' **

The labor unions affiliated with the Alliance support it as a way to rally political backing for a program that would replace lost manufacturing jobs with new, good paying jobs in clean technologies. These new, skilled jobs include erecting wind turbines, installing solar panels, retrofitting old buildings with new 'green' technology, and similar pro-environment tasks.

Social justice advocates recognized, with the call to create new jobs, an opportunity to establish a national program to train those who have been excluded from economic opportunities in general and disadvantaged youth in particular. Good paying jobs in these new green sectors, like the old blue collar industrial ones that led to a middle class life-style, got branded as 'Green Collar Jobs.'

With all three movements, labor, environment, and social justice, united behind the program of 'green collar jobs for all,' and with Democrats in an election year eager to adopt innovative policies, a political synergy developed. The call for green collar jobs gained legitimacy and media currency.

The push to promote this program without generating factionalism amongst the ranks meant that no precision was sought in defining which jobs fit the Green Collar designation. The point of this program was to get popular acceptance and not create divisive tensions.

And success on that level must be acknowledged. The problem, though, is that without a clear definition opportunistic corporations will undoubtedly promote their version of 'green jobs' in 'clean' coal, nuclear energy, and other dubious areas.

Besides the issue of definition, there are other concerns related to seeing green jobs as the prime catalyst to stimulate employment.

Every community seeks development, especially the clean, high tech sort. In the 90's, for instance, cities and regions across the country sought to create their local version of Silicon Valley . More recently, in farsighted communities, alternative energy production emerged, in anticipation of the demise of cheap oil, as the new economic development panacea. A few localities already have secured contracts largely with European manufacturers of turbines, or electric cars, or solar collectors. As significant as this is, it seems unreasonable that each city or region, not to mention each state, can be a center for a green technology.

There are some sectors of the economy, of course, that everyone recognizes as specifically local job generators, like retrofitting older buildings and recycling/reuse, and they can provide major employment opportunities for maybe a decade before they peak and then decline. After older structures are fitted with solar collectors and insulated, what will generate new jobs? And as more products are engineered to be reused, as they are in Europe , even this sector could shrink.

Further, green collar advocates do not resist the centralization of green technologies. Giant energy firms plan huge, multi-megawatt solar collectors for deserts as more efficient than decentralized schemes, because in part they employ a smaller workforce.

These basic economic realities should temper the spectacular optimism that assumes millions of green collar jobs wait in the wings to make their appearance.

Zooming out to take a wider perspective, the demand for green collar jobs however may be a useful way to leverage a long overdue discussion of national industrial policy.

Industrial policy requires definition. We can say that whenever a government adopts policy that supports some economic activities over others it is conducting industrial policy. Most obviously subsidies to agribusiness and oil corporations are foundational elements of the current industrial policy. But even a national health insurance plan that supports premiums to private insurance firms is industrial policy.

The last time this country had a popular and beneficial industrial policy was in the 30's. The Roosevelt administration, pressured by the mass unrest of unemployed workers, stumbled into cobbling together programs to mollify the discontent. Nevertheless, looking back we see its texture: for the first time the federal government transferred funds to directly aid ordinary people.

The New Deal programs were cut short with the massive mobilization to prepare for the Second World War.

Before the end of the war, a more conscious industrial policy (consisting of full employment, mainly for white male Americans, and bountiful profits for the armaments and nuclear industries) took the form of a permanent war economy and the construction of the Garrison State .

The development of the Cold War - we could say that that was the brand name of the post-war industrial policy - served the plutocracy well for at least a generation. The post-war generation, as a consequence, achieved middle-class status and passed on those benefits to their children. This prosperity of the 50's and 60's was fueled by the creation of an enormous 'military-industrial and legislative' complex Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about days before John Kennedy assumed the Presidency. Kennedy, ignoring Eisenhower (and in doing so, justified Ike's fears), escalated the war in Vietnam further enriching the military manufacturing sector.

By the mid-70's, as the economy nosedived, the ruling class feared that the edifice of industrial policy, always hidden from public view, would become visible despite the carefully maintained appearances of wellbeing. The day was saved, just like in the movies, with the appearance of Ronald Reagan. With his 'charm' and well-orchestrated diversionary programs, Reagan swiftly followed his entrance to the White House with anti-union and rabidly pro-business policies that accelerated the first wave of de-industrialization of the Midwest 's basic industries.

With little substantive change, this post-war industrial policy, has been inherited more as an albatross than a legacy. Today we find ourselves on the precipice of an economic and environmental catastrophe the litany of which is know by heart - Peak Oil, Climate Change, and environmental devastation due to increased pollution. And the secondary effects: world resource wars, mass migrations, and pandemics. As a future unfolds far worse than the horrors of depression of the 30's, it's time for a thorough and popular discussion of an industrial policy that goes far beyond the confines of Roosevelt 's .

By focusing on a vulnerable area of capitalism - jobs - a critical public discussion on a new industrial policy, one that is equitable, may be initiated. The catalyst to energize this discussion, the demand for green jobs, needs definition. Without it we are reduced to the perennial call for full employment and the usual inconsequential political effect. A definition serves as a guideline to create standards of corporate performance. Truly sustainable criteria may prevent corporations adopting Human Resource Department greenwashing that will define as green jobs those that support the current industrial policy.

Corporate heads will resist any attempt at accountability, but two decades of fighting bad corporate behavior has conditioned the public to be receptive to popular pressure to coerce good conduct.

It should not be assumed that the corporations could amass an effective opposition.

The last thing to do, even with good standards, is to debate the specifics of green collar jobs - that would lead to a useless fight on the terrain of the corporations. Much better to out-flank the corporations with a more popular and far-reaching demand. Using the criteria introduced by green jobs -- good paying and socially useful - why not create a demand for free skills training, not only for new green collar jobs, but also for the industrial jobs vacated as the current generation of skilled workers retires?

Across the country, manufacturers have voiced alarm that there is no labor pool of young trained workers. From the late 70's and through to the early 90's trade school classes were scuttled from high school and community college curriculums in the false view that all new jobs would be high-tech ones: blue work shirts replaced by white lab coats.

Revenue-starved education budgets forced this false choice in training, in the same way as off-shoring manufacturing caused many unions to downsize their apprenticeship programs, if not eliminate them entirely. A bleak future for labor equipped with mechanical skills seemed inevitable.

The need for skilled workers to replace the retirees has mobilized, in some communities, a response by unions, junior colleges and local governments to establish pioneering educational ventures using limited local resources. Significantly, many manufacturers recognize the value of skills training and it may be possible to find support from some sections of the business community over this issue.

It can't be stressed enough that unless the country educates a new generation of skilled workers, much of the infrastructural work, like re-building failing bridges, replacing weak levees, laying high speed rails and much more, will be impossible to accomplish.

If there is a national commitment, which means massive federal funds, to initiate these essential construction projects it will recall Roosevelt 's political script - to provide good jobs for the unemployed - but updated by the push to create green collar jobs. For example, instead of simply rebuilding the old bridges, why not design them with fewer auto lanes and expanded public transit lanes to allow for light rail and bikes? And new levees? Build them higher for safety of course, but also smarter to allow water flows to fill low-lying areas. And why not restrict new construction to fit a sustainable land-use perspective that incorporates economic justice? The point is to move the public discussion, by the concern for good green jobs, towards an examination of social-serving employment.

Another reason to develop technical skills, from the factory floor to the universities, is to begin the re- industrialization of America , not in imitation of the old mega-factories like Ford's River Rouge plant in Detroit , but smarter, decentralized models. A new engineering technology that responds to the needs of local production must be encouraged to develop. Reusing material gleaned locally, a metal fabricator, for instance, could produce with the aid of computerized resources a variety of parts for a range of uses. A model for this sort of local re-use are the small rubber fabricators erected near refuse dumps in the developing world. Clean, small pulping mills, like those being developed in Europe , could likewise remake paper products. The possibilities of re- industrialization are endless if the goal is to achieve a truly sustainable material environment and engineering technique is freed from the constrictions of the profit motive.

The implications of an industrial policy that consciously creates useful jobs, not the demeaning jobs now offered to the desperate, won't be lost on many. In the process of doing good work, socially recognized as such, a change of attitude regarding work could arise - one that places high value on the work itself. The displaced rewards we now associate with bearing up under grueling, mind/spirit destroying labor could be history.

Imagine. What if the weekend, instead of a frantic escape into consumerism, actually became an occasion to visit the good work done by others? As farfetched as this may sound, something like it happened in the 30's when people, using public transportation, visited national parks made serviceable by the formerly unemployed. Or attended public fairs and theater productions to see performances with actors paid by government checks.

There are major implications of a new industrial policy, that go to the very core of the economic system we currently endure - the military-industrial enterprises. This sector of our economy may not provide qualitatively less socially useful work than the advertising and public relations sectors, but it certainly wastes more resources. This is obvious to all. The seemingly bottomless budgets and the economic penetration of the military-industrial complex in all communities, therefore requires a solid alternative proposal. Rebuilding the failing infrastructure, re- tooling for local manufacture and developing an alternative energy economy, all financed by diverting wasteful military expenditures, outlines a program that the peace movement could support. And allied with unions, environmentalists and economic justice groups they could combine as one to further it.

As radical as this proposal may sound to this point, it needs greater depth. There remains a large area of the economy absent from consideration - the service sector. And what about the non-profits, a subset of the service sector, that the business section of newspapers deposit, by their neglect, outside the economic universe? It would be foolhardy to ignore these workers jobs formulating a new industrial policy. They are significant economic factors in local economies and often the most exploited. Precarious employment rules here like in no other sector.

It should come as no surprise that service sector jobs are unionizing faster than any other employment area. An exemplary level of dignity has been achieved by unionization for people in these jobs, but, as sound remedy, it fails within the context of a new industrial policy. There are jobs in the service sector, including the non-profits, that could be eliminated, plain and simple. These sectors have grown to huge proportions due to a large, poor and desperate population eager for income. Without these recruits, who would do these jobs? Would they disappear as unnecessary, or be automated out of existence? Would office staff clean their own space?

As for those tasks that are socially necessary, and poorly funded by public revenues and private foundations, a new approach must be sought to protect and even expand them. And not on the backs of recent college graduates in need of beginning a resume. One sound approach is to expand the guaranteed minimum income program. If this program were fully funded to cover the basics of shelter and food and a modest stipend for social needs, to afford a dignified existence, it would form the basis for equitable employment. That is if no penalty was introduced to prevent an income earned beyond the minimum.

Conceivably then those who choose to increase their basic incomes could do those jobs that are socially useful but pay little.

These tasks might be part-time jobs, and maybe two or more could be taken on to add variety to one's life. If the intention to reduce drudge-work were realized then options become available for people who wouldn't think of helping in a school, or assisting the disabled, because of the poor pay and long hours.

A national income subsidy, sounds utopian, and while there is nothing wrong with that, the proposal for a basic, guaranteed income is currently discussed worldwide as an alternative to the multitude of social welfare programs countries more enlightened than ours provide their populations. Among others, the Irish and the South African parliaments are discussing it. The Brazilians have already implemented it on a small scale by providing funds to families to compensate them for the loss of income when they send their children to school. It has been widely recognized as the most successful program Lula introduced.***

Assuring a basic income severs the oppressive link between jobs and income. And the broken link releases time to either work for income or not. The decision to work one job or another as a consequence of market forces, contradicts the principles of a democratic society besides devaluing socially necessary employment. With time available, a path towards a sustainable society opens up - there's time to actually create a democratic society, which means to develop personal resources to act communally.

In order to avoid the impending catastrophe brought to our doorstep by the unbridled growth of global capitalism, there is no alternative but to embrace a perspective that reverses the pursuit of profit over people. The control of the economy by the rich and powerful presumes self-destructive behavior by obedience to authority and out of fear of generalized scarcity. On a personal level, abandoning the desire to develop our capacities is what the pursuit of profit is all about. To reverse that perspective requires critical thinking on several levels. The current dire world situation functions as a test of our ability to overcome our social conditioning.

First on the agenda - a vision of a cooperative way to live together, as a work in progress. All visions needs to be malleable. Next, an attainable goal to strive for, and finally, the steps to take to get there. The vision of an eco-economy society, a society that serves to sustain humanity within nature, cannot be chiseled in stone and neither can the goals be unmovable, but that doesn't mean the walk can't begin. What it does mean is that popular participation, to be legitimate, requires constant feedback. The vision, the goals and the steps develop as a process of constant refinement to strengthen and deepen their impact.

If the common vision is of a society that meets human needs, and the goals are collaborative projects to create community, then the steps are expanding the possibilities of useful work, by choice. Defining what that work entails begins this process. Focusing on the details of useful employment cannot proceed without constant reference to the goals and the vision.

* Those who grow increasingly pessimistic with the daily revelations of ever more apocalyptic consequences of global warming might ponder this phenomenon: what was nowhere on the political radar two years ago currently assumes the status of a 'no-brainer.'

** http://www.apolloalliance.org/

*** http://www.usbig.net/index.html

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center , 325 E. 25th St. , Baltimore , MD 21218 . Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

-----Original Message-----
From: moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG [mailto:moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG]
Sent: Saturday, June 28, 2008 6:52 PM
To: PORTSIDE@LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG
Subject: Green Collar Jobs, Industrial Policy and a Society with a Future

Green Collar Jobs, Industrial Policy and a Society with

a Future

By Bernard Marszalek

BeyondChron ( San Francisco )

June 26, 2008

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=5811

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Marszalek is employed in an Alameda

County (CA) Certified Green business with a trade union

contract.)

'Green Collar Jobs' have gone mainstream. Obama

endorses it. And a plank in the Democratic Party

Platform calling for green collar jobs would solidify

it as Democratic Party policy. Even if that expectation

is premature, the popular reception of this program is

a remarkable achievement for what began only a few

years ago as an under-reported campaign uniting a few

progressive labor leaders and some politically astute

environmentalists.*

Despite its popular appeal, or maybe due to it, 'Green

Collar Jobs' lacks clear definition. The term arose

from the groundbreaking, alliance between labor and

environmentalists to create a massive national effort

to 'jump-start' an alternative energy program. They

modeled it after John Kennedy's well-funded Apollo

Project to get an American on the moon, fast.

The Apollo Alliance, as the labor/environmentalist

collaboration came to be called, works 'to catalyze a

clean energy revolution' with the intent 'to reduce our

nation's dependence on foreign oil, cut the carbon

emissions that are destabilizing our climate, and

expand opportunities for American businesses and

workers.' **

The labor unions affiliated with the Alliance support

it as a way to rally political backing for a program

that would replace lost manufacturing jobs with new,

good paying jobs in clean technologies. These new,

skilled jobs include erecting wind turbines, installing

solar panels, retrofitting old buildings with new

'green' technology, and similar pro-environment tasks.

Social justice advocates recognized, with the call to

create new jobs, an opportunity to establish a national

program to train those who have been excluded from

economic opportunities in general and disadvantaged

youth in particular. Good paying jobs in these new

green sectors, like the old blue collar industrial ones

that led to a middle class life-style, got branded as

'Green Collar Jobs.'

With all three movements, labor, environment, and

social justice, united behind the program of 'green

collar jobs for all,' and with Democrats in an election

year eager to adopt innovative policies, a political

synergy developed. The call for green collar jobs

gained legitimacy and media currency.

The push to promote this program without generating

factionalism amongst the ranks meant that no precision

was sought in defining which jobs fit the Green Collar

designation. The point of this program was to get

popular acceptance and not create divisive tensions.

And success on that level must be acknowledged. The

problem, though, is that without a clear definition

opportunistic corporations will undoubtedly promote

their version of 'green jobs' in 'clean' coal, nuclear

energy, and other dubious areas.

Besides the issue of definition, there are other

concerns related to seeing green jobs as the prime

catalyst to stimulate employment.

Every community seeks development, especially the

clean, high tech sort. In the 90's, for instance,

cities and regions across the country sought to create

their local version of Silicon Valley . More recently,

in farsighted communities, alternative energy

production emerged, in anticipation of the demise of

cheap oil, as the new economic development panacea. A

few localities already have secured contracts largely

with European manufacturers of turbines, or electric

cars, or solar collectors. As significant as this is,

it seems unreasonable that each city or region, not to

mention each state, can be a center for a green

technology.

There are some sectors of the economy, of course, that

everyone recognizes as specifically local job

generators, like retrofitting older buildings and

recycling/reuse, and they can provide major employment

opportunities for maybe a decade before they peak and

then decline. After older structures are fitted with

solar collectors and insulated, what will generate new

jobs? And as more products are engineered to be reused,

as they are in Europe , even this sector could shrink.

Further, green collar advocates do not resist the

centralization of green technologies. Giant energy

firms plan huge, multi-megawatt solar collectors for

deserts as more efficient than decentralized schemes,

because in part they employ a smaller workforce.

These basic economic realities should temper the

spectacular optimism that assumes millions of green

collar jobs wait in the wings to make their appearance.

Zooming out to take a wider perspective, the demand for

green collar jobs however may be a useful way to

leverage a long overdue discussion of national

industrial policy.

Industrial policy requires definition. We can say that

whenever a government adopts policy that supports some

economic activities over others it is conducting

industrial policy. Most obviously subsidies to

agribusiness and oil corporations are foundational

elements of the current industrial policy. But even a

national health insurance plan that supports premiums

to private insurance firms is industrial policy.

The last time this country had a popular and beneficial

industrial policy was in the 30's. The Roosevelt

administration, pressured by the mass unrest of

unemployed workers, stumbled into cobbling together

programs to mollify the discontent. Nevertheless,

looking back we see its texture: for the first time the

federal government transferred funds to directly aid

ordinary people.

The New Deal programs were cut short with the massive

mobilization to prepare for the Second World War.

Before the end of the war, a more conscious industrial

policy (consisting of full employment, mainly for white

male Americans, and bountiful profits for the armaments

and nuclear industries) took the form of a permanent

war economy and the construction of the Garrison State .

The development of the Cold War - we could say that

that was the brand name of the post-war industrial

policy - served the plutocracy well for at least a

generation. The post-war generation, as a consequence,

achieved middle-class status and passed on those

benefits to their children. This prosperity of the 50's

and 60's was fueled by the creation of an enormous

'military-industrial and legislative' complex Dwight D.

Eisenhower warned about days before John Kennedy

assumed the Presidency. Kennedy, ignoring Eisenhower

(and in doing so, justified Ike's fears), escalated the

war in Vietnam further enriching the military

manufacturing sector.

By the mid-70's, as the economy nosedived, the ruling

class feared that the edifice of industrial policy,

always hidden from public view, would become visible

despite the carefully maintained appearances of

wellbeing. The day was saved, just like in the movies,

with the appearance of Ronald Reagan. With his 'charm'

and well-orchestrated diversionary programs, Reagan

swiftly followed his entrance to the White House with

anti-union and rabidly pro-business policies that

accelerated the first wave of de-industrialization of

the Midwest 's basic industries.

With little substantive change, this post-war

industrial policy, has been inherited more as an

albatross than a legacy. Today we find ourselves on the

precipice of an economic and environmental catastrophe

the litany of which is know by heart - Peak Oil,

Climate Change, and environmental devastation due to

increased pollution. And the secondary effects: world

resource wars, mass migrations, and pandemics. As a

future unfolds far worse than the horrors of depression

of the 30's, it's time for a thorough and popular

discussion of an industrial policy that goes far beyond

the confines of Roosevelt 's .

By focusing on a vulnerable area of capitalism - jobs -

a critical public discussion on a new industrial

policy, one that is equitable, may be initiated. The

catalyst to energize this discussion, the demand for

green jobs, needs definition. Without it we are reduced

to the perennial call for full employment and the usual

inconsequential political effect. A definition serves

as a guideline to create standards of corporate

performance. Truly sustainable criteria may prevent

corporations adopting Human Resource Department

greenwashing that will define as green jobs those that

support the current industrial policy.

Corporate heads will resist any attempt at

accountability, but two decades of fighting bad

corporate behavior has conditioned the public to be

receptive to popular pressure to coerce good conduct.

It should not be assumed that the corporations could

amass an effective opposition.

The last thing to do, even with good standards, is to

debate the specifics of green collar jobs - that would

lead to a useless fight on the terrain of the

corporations. Much better to out-flank the corporations

with a more popular and far-reaching demand. Using the

criteria introduced by green jobs -- good paying and

socially useful - why not create a demand for free

skills training, not only for new green collar jobs,

but also for the industrial jobs vacated as the current

generation of skilled workers retires?

Across the country, manufacturers have voiced alarm

that there is no labor pool of young trained workers.

>From the late 70's and through to the early 90's trade

school classes were scuttled from high school and

community college curriculums in the false view that

all new jobs would be high-tech ones: blue work shirts

replaced by white lab coats.

Revenue-starved education budgets forced this false

choice in training, in the same way as off-shoring

manufacturing caused many unions to downsize their

apprenticeship programs, if not eliminate them

entirely. A bleak future for labor equipped with

mechanical skills seemed inevitable.

The need for skilled workers to replace the retirees

has mobilized, in some communities, a response by

unions, junior colleges and local governments to

establish pioneering educational ventures using limited

local resources. Significantly, many manufacturers

recognize the value of skills training and it may be

possible to find support from some sections of the

business community over this issue.

It can't be stressed enough that unless the country

educates a new generation of skilled workers, much of

the infrastructural work, like re-building failing

bridges, replacing weak levees, laying high speed rails

and much more, will be impossible to accomplish.

If there is a national commitment, which means massive

federal funds, to initiate these essential construction

projects it will recall Roosevelt 's political script -

to provide good jobs for the unemployed - but updated

by the push to create green collar jobs. For example,

instead of simply rebuilding the old bridges, why not

design them with fewer auto lanes and expanded public

transit lanes to allow for light rail and bikes? And

new levees? Build them higher for safety of course, but

also smarter to allow water flows to fill low-lying

areas. And why not restrict new construction to fit a

sustainable land-use perspective that incorporates

economic justice? The point is to move the public

discussion, by the concern for good green jobs, towards

an examination of social-serving employment.

Another reason to develop technical skills, from the

factory floor to the universities, is to begin the re-

industrialization of America , not in imitation of the

old mega-factories like Ford's River Rouge plant in

Detroit , but smarter, decentralized models. A new

engineering technology that responds to the needs of

local production must be encouraged to develop. Reusing

material gleaned locally, a metal fabricator, for

instance, could produce with the aid of computerized

resources a variety of parts for a range of uses. A

model for this sort of local re-use are the small

rubber fabricators erected near refuse dumps in the

developing world. Clean, small pulping mills, like

those being developed in Europe , could likewise remake

paper products. The possibilities of re-

industrialization are endless if the goal is to achieve

a truly sustainable material environment and

engineering technique is freed from the constrictions

of the profit motive.

The implications of an industrial policy that

consciously creates useful jobs, not the demeaning jobs

now offered to the desperate, won't be lost on many. In

the process of doing good work, socially recognized as

such, a change of attitude regarding work could arise -

one that places high value on the work itself. The

displaced rewards we now associate with bearing up

under grueling, mind/spirit destroying labor could be

history.

Imagine. What if the weekend, instead of a frantic

escape into consumerism, actually became an occasion to

visit the good work done by others? As farfetched as

this may sound, something like it happened in the 30's

when people, using public transportation, visited

national parks made serviceable by the formerly

unemployed. Or attended public fairs and theater

productions to see performances with actors paid by

government checks.

There are major implications of a new industrial

policy, that go to the very core of the economic system

we currently endure - the military-industrial

enterprises. This sector of our economy may not provide

qualitatively less socially useful work than the

advertising and public relations sectors, but it

certainly wastes more resources. This is obvious to

all. The seemingly bottomless budgets and the economic

penetration of the military-industrial complex in all

communities, therefore requires a solid alternative

proposal. Rebuilding the failing infrastructure, re-

tooling for local manufacture and developing an

alternative energy economy, all financed by diverting

wasteful military expenditures, outlines a program that

the peace movement could support. And allied with

unions, environmentalists and economic justice groups

they could combine as one to further it.

As radical as this proposal may sound to this point, it

needs greater depth. There remains a large area of the

economy absent from consideration - the service sector.

And what about the non-profits, a subset of the service

sector, that the business section of newspapers

deposit, by their neglect, outside the economic

universe? It would be foolhardy to ignore these workers

jobs formulating a new industrial policy. They are

significant economic factors in local economies and

often the most exploited. Precarious employment rules

here like in no other sector.

It should come as no surprise that service sector jobs

are unionizing faster than any other employment area.

An exemplary level of dignity has been achieved by

unionization for people in these jobs, but, as sound

remedy, it fails within the context of a new industrial

policy. There are jobs in the service sector, including

the non-profits, that could be eliminated, plain and

simple. These sectors have grown to huge proportions

due to a large, poor and desperate population eager for

income. Without these recruits, who would do these

jobs? Would they disappear as unnecessary, or be

automated out of existence? Would office staff clean

their own space?

As for those tasks that are socially necessary, and

poorly funded by public revenues and private

foundations, a new approach must be sought to protect

and even expand them. And not on the backs of recent

college graduates in need of beginning a resume. One

sound approach is to expand the guaranteed minimum

income program. If this program were fully funded to

cover the basics of shelter and food and a modest

stipend for social needs, to afford a dignified

existence, it would form the basis for equitable

employment. That is if no penalty was introduced to

prevent an income earned beyond the minimum.

Conceivably then those who choose to increase their

basic incomes could do those jobs that are socially

useful but pay little.

These tasks might be part-time jobs, and maybe two or

more could be taken on to add variety to one's life. If

the intention to reduce drudge-work were realized then

options become available for people who wouldn't think

of helping in a school, or assisting the disabled,

because of the poor pay and long hours.

A national income subsidy, sounds utopian, and while

there is nothing wrong with that, the proposal for a

basic, guaranteed income is currently discussed

worldwide as an alternative to the multitude of social

welfare programs countries more enlightened than ours

provide their populations. Among others, the Irish and

the South African parliaments are discussing it. The

Brazilians have already implemented it on a small scale

by providing funds to families to compensate them for

the loss of income when they send their children to

school. It has been widely recognized as the most

successful program Lula introduced.***

Assuring a basic income severs the oppressive link

between jobs and income. And the broken link releases

time to either work for income or not. The decision to

work one job or another as a consequence of market

forces, contradicts the principles of a democratic

society besides devaluing socially necessary

employment. With time available, a path towards a

sustainable society opens up - there's time to actually

create a democratic society, which means to develop

personal resources to act communally.

In order to avoid the impending catastrophe brought to

our doorstep by the unbridled growth of global

capitalism, there is no alternative but to embrace a

perspective that reverses the pursuit of profit over

people. The control of the economy by the rich and

powerful presumes self-destructive behavior by

obedience to authority and out of fear of generalized

scarcity. On a personal level, abandoning the desire to

develop our capacities is what the pursuit of profit is

all about. To reverse that perspective requires

critical thinking on several levels. The current dire

world situation functions as a test of our ability to

overcome our social conditioning.

First on the agenda - a vision of a cooperative way to

live together, as a work in progress. All visions needs

to be malleable. Next, an attainable goal to strive

for, and finally, the steps to take to get there. The

vision of an eco-economy society, a society that serves

to sustain humanity within nature, cannot be chiseled

in stone and neither can the goals be unmovable, but

that doesn't mean the walk can't begin. What it does

mean is that popular participation, to be legitimate,

requires constant feedback. The vision, the goals and

the steps develop as a process of constant refinement

to strengthen and deepen their impact.

If the common vision is of a society that meets human

needs, and the goals are collaborative projects to

create community, then the steps are expanding the

possibilities of useful work, by choice. Defining what

that work entails begins this process. Focusing on the

details of useful employment cannot proceed without

constant reference to the goals and the vision.

* Those who grow increasingly pessimistic with the

daily revelations of ever more apocalyptic consequences

of global warming might ponder this phenomenon: what

was nowhere on the political radar two years ago

currently assumes the status of a 'no-brainer.'

** http://www.apolloalliance.org/

*** http://www.usbig.net/index.html

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