The idea of "sustainable development" is not radical, crazy or hard to understand. Most anybody would have a hard time arguing against it, in theory. It just means economic development today that doesn't happen at the expense of future economic growth. Some people have called unsustainable development a "tax on the future" because it's indeed stealing prosperity from the young and generations that haven't been born yet.
The obstacle to sustainable development is not a lack of know-how or technology. By and large, we know what to do. But it does require trade-offs and sacrifices; and the pain won't be equally distributed. And that's the rub.
The obstacle to sustainable development is politics -- to be more precise, power. Those with power don't like it. (As an aside: I posit that those in power, among them some very "smart" and "visionary" thinkers, rarely think seriously about the future, alas.)
The people seriously concerned with sustainable development are by and large powerless: scientists, professionals in the "biz," activists, mid-level bureaucrats and such. They say and do and write enough to force those in power to pay lip service to their arrived at consensus. But that's about as far as it goes.
No, I'm not talking about an opposing global conspiracy. Real conspiracies are rare, and they're usually stupid, for stupid, shortsighted aims....
The real obstacle to change is that power is concentrated in a few hands, yet separated by nations, cultures and geographies, with few formal nodes of interdependence, where common aims can be realized....
An attendant obstacle is certainly capitalism. More broadly, the obstacle is our global political economy, with its capitalistic innovations tacked on to feudalistic holdovers and narrow nationalistic structures.
"There is a lack of global leadership," we hear again and again. True. But from where are the necessary global leaders supposed to emerge? It's asking too much from our global political economic systems.
Ideally, democracy should save us. The good ideas should convince the majority of what is needed, and republican leaders should pay heed to their wishes. Ideally, yes. But that's naive.
First, we don't have real republican democracy in most countries, either by force of regimes or by failed states of many stripes. Second, even where there is formal democracy, concentrated power (read: wealth) still trumps democracy by various well-understood technical means. (Again: there is no conspiracy here; secrecy is not at all necessary for concentrated power to subvert democracy; the facts are are all well-documented for those who take the time to pay attention.)
So where does that leave us? Up the proverbial creek, I'm afraid.
The richest nations do tend to be democratic. And democratic polities can exercise their power -- when dramatic events move them. But unfortunately, the world -- and sustainable development -- cannot wait for dramatic events to awaken the confused and slumbering giant of democratic public opinion. By the time the giant comes to, it will be too late.
Yes, I'm talking about global warming. And the death of our oceans and fisheries. And water shortages. And new global pandemics. And massive extinctions. And die-offs of millions if not billions of people. -- And for those ensconced in the relative safety of the developed, democratic world, something beyond mere discomfort and inconvenience, but drastic cuts in standards of living and overall well-being.
By nature I'm not a pessimist. But I simply do not see how our current political economic system can react -- or should I say, fail to react -- otherwise. Everyone is to blame -- and hence no one. I hope I'm wrong and that smarter, more visionary and leadership-worthy individuals will prove it.
This post was inspired by this book review : http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)61215-6
Showing posts with label nationalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nationalism. Show all posts
Sunday, November 29, 2015
Friday, August 15, 2014
Ukraine may be alone against Russia, but it is finally a nation
This is my hope exactly, as I've shared with my Ukrainian friends [emphasis mine]:
But while Ukraine may have lost Crimea, and may struggle to get a large slice of Donbas back under its control for an extended period of time, and while Europe has yet again disappointed, the big “win” for Ukraine is that the nation has been born.Finally, after 23 years, Ukrainians do feel a sense of identity and affinity with the state of Ukraine. They have been willing to lie down their lives for the state, and will likely be willing to struggle to ensure its survival and success, irrespective of Russia having lopped off bits of its territory.This is the big chance for Ukraine, to live to European values, and modernise the economy – because it has to, rather as Georgia did in 2008. Russia may have outmaneuvered the West and Kyiv to a stalemate, even a short term tactical victory over Crimea and Donbas.But importantly, over the longer term Russia has failed in allowing a new nation to be forged – 2014, could be the defining moment for Ukraine, equivalent to 1848 or 1861 in Europe, 1776 in the US, et al.Russia may hence have gained Crimea, and possibly bits of Donbas, but may have lost Ukraine permanently.
Such words, I know, are likely cold comfort to Ukrainians still reeling from the loss of Crimea, embroiled in a deadly war on their eastern border, and suffering from economic recession.
Even so, Ukrainian nationalists have always known that breaking free of Russia's grasp would not be easy. Over the years Russia has used every means at its disposal to control Ukraine: trade sanctions; bankrolling pro-Russian political candidates, NGOs, political parties, academics and journalists; military pressure; infiltrating the government and other key organizations; gas exports; etc.
Now, at last, Ukraine is breaking free. Let's just hope Ukraine doesn't break up in the process!...
By Timothy Ash
August 15, 2014 | Kyiv Post
Friday, May 30, 2014
Meyerson: Why the EU's far-right is rising
Not that many Americans care about the recent elections to the EU parliament, but...
... Anyway, here's a message for my pro-Russian friends who are concerned about "Sudden Fascist Syndrome" in Ukraine:
Europe’s new far right is, at one and the same time, the continent’s analogue to our own tea party and the leading cheerleader for Russian President Vladimir Putin. With the divisions of the Cold War now safely confined to museums, a new transnational right is emerging, defined by a belief in a national volk and its traditions and a disdain for, if not loathing of, any neighbors — Muslims, Jews, social democrats — who either aren’t part of that volk or don’t believe in the politics of intolerance. Hence the spectacle of Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain’s U.K. Independence Party, and our own Pat Buchanan, expressing their admiration for Putin’s war on the moral flabbiness that comes with elevating democracy over traditional values — rotten though those values may be.
Looking deeper at the EU's existential crisis, Meyerson blames, first and foremost, as many others such as Paul Krugman have, the unworkable nature of the EU constitution's deficit spending and currency rules. Essentially, the EU is too much like the Confederate States of America and not enough like the United States of America.
The EU must evolve to be more like the U.S. -- a fiscal and foreign policy union as well as a currency and trade union -- or else lose its weakest members... or worse, as many Europeans fear, collapse into the dustbin of history, just like the American Confederacy.
By Harold Meyerson
May 29, 2014 | Washington Post
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Applebaum: Ukraine needs MORE nationalism, not less
Yes, exactly! Nationalism -- called patriotism in most contexts -- is necessary for any country to form its own identity and stay together.
Nationalism is not a scary word by itself; and it is certainly not synonymous with "fascism," "jingoism" or "xenophobia," as Russian media, politicians and academics would have us believe.
Concludes Anne Applebaum [emphasis mine]:
Thus do the tiny group of nationalists in Ukraine, whom perhaps we can now agree to call patriots, represent the country’s only hope of escaping apathy, rapacious corruption, and, eventually, dismemberment.And this should be no surprise: In the nineteenth century, no sensible freedom fighter would have imagined it possible to create a modern state, let alone a democracy, without some kind of nationalist movement behind it. Only people who feel some kind of allegiance to their society—people who celebrate their national language, literature, and history, people who sing national songs and repeat national legends—are going to work on that society’s behalf. This goes for Russians, too, though tragically they insist on looking to their imperial traditions as a source of national pride, instead of to their liberal leaders in the early twentieth century or to their outstanding Soviet-era dissidents, the founders of the modern human rights movement.In the West, we know this, but lately, we rarely admit it. That’s in part because we remember very well the disasters that ethnic nationalism, cloaked as fascism or sometimes as communism, brought in the twentieth century. Europeans in particular now go out of their way to downplay national differences, which is usually good. Territorial disputes in Europe have dissolved, since open borders make it simply less important whether Alsace is French or German. But European democracy would fail if European politicians did not also appeal to patriotism, did not take national interests into account, and did not address themselves to the special problems of their particular nations, too.In the United States, we dislike the word “nationalism” and so, hypocritically, we call it other things: “American exceptionalism,” for example, or a “belief in American greatness.” We also argue about it as if it were something rational—Mitt Romney wrote a book that put forth the “case for American greatness”—rather than acknowledging that nationalism is fundamentally emotional. In truth, you can’t really make “the case” for nationalism; you can only inculcate it, teach it to children, cultivate it at public events. If you do so, nationalism can in turn inspire you so that you try to improve your country, to help it live up to the image you want it to have. Among other things, that thought inspired the creation of this magazine 100 years ago.Ukrainians need more of this kind of inspiration, not less—moments like last New Year’s Eve, when more than 100,000 Ukrainians sang the national anthem at midnight on the Maidan. They need more occasions when they can shout, “Slava Ukraini—Heroyam Slava”—“Glory to Ukraine, Glory to its Heroes,” which was, yes, the slogan of the controversial Ukrainian Revolutionary Army in the 1940s, but has been adopted to a new context. And then of course they need to translate that emotion into laws, institutions, a decent court system, and police training academies. If they don’t, then their country will once again cease to exist.
Incidentally, the leader of Ukraine's most nationalist party, Svoboda, recently wrote an op-ed saying much the same thing: that given Ukraine's history and geography, nationalism is much more about national defense and preventing any future dismemberment of the Ukrainian state by outside powers. See: "Oleh Tiahnybok: Rescue nationalism from 'Pandora's box'."
By Anne Applebaum
May 12, 2014 | New Republic
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Crimea turns into peninsula of violence and fear (Kyiv Post)
Some worry about the potential actions of pro-Ukraine "fascists" (nationalists) who are now (partially) in power in Kyiv. Meanwhile, real kidnappings, beatings, murders and disappearances of Ukrainian nationalists and journalists are taking place in "pro-Russian" Crimea.
Putin has not brought law, order and peace to Crimea, not yet. So far he has brought lawlessness, and carte blanche to commit crimes for anybody calling himself "pro-Russian."
Here are more examples of what Yanukovych's government, "titushki" (hired street thugs) in Ukraine and "local self-defense forces" in Crimea have done:
By Oksana Grytsenko
March 19, 2014 | Kyiv Post
Kidnappings, threats and assaults of Ukrainian activists and journalists have become the norm in Crimea since the Russian military invasion of the Black Sea peninsula on Feb. 27.
On March 9, while Ukraine was celebrating the 200th anniversary of poet Taras Shevchenko’s birth, two activists from the EuroMaidan Revolution -- Anatoliy Kovalsky and Andriy Shchekun -- arrived at the Simferopol train station to pick up a parcel decorated in Ukrainian blue-and-yellow.
Local pro-Kremlin militia promptly beat the two men and took them to a police station. Now they are believed to be members of the Russian Unity party, but have not been seen since.
Sevastopol activist Igor Kiriushchenko, who is helping Ukrainian soldiers at military bases, had to urgently leave Crimea on March 10 when dozens of men with white armbands from the Russian Bloc militia broke into his apartment and threatened the lives of him and his wife. “Get out of Crimea, otherwise we will kill you,” they said, Kiriushchenko reported.
On March 18, Ibraim Umerov, a journalist at ATR, a Crimean Tatar channel, was brought to a hospital with a broken knee after he and a cameraman tried to film the seizure of an auto repair shop in Simferopol by a group of masked men. The men severely beat him on the spot.
This is the everyday terror that Crimeans are facing under Russia’s control, an invasion condemned as illegal by most of the world.
“This is real terror, when people are getting abducted, when armed men are walking the streets, when journalists are getting beaten,” said Sergiy Mokrushin, a Simferopol investigative journalist, adding there are as many as 10 activists missing in Crimea right now.
These cases of kidnappings and abuse are disturbingly reminiscent to those in Kyiv during the EuroMaidan Revolution that toppled Viktor Yanukovych as president on Feb. 22. Dozens of anti-government activists were reportedly taken and tortured in the three months before victory, and at least one was killed, aside from the 100 protesters and police officers shot and killed.
After the new government took power, Berkut riot police officers sought shelter in Crimea and got welcomed as local heroes and victims of what many of the peninsula’s two million residents believe was a violent, fascist takeover by nationalists in Kyiv. Many of the riot police officers can now be spotted alongside police officers on the streets and checkpoints of the peninsula.
Near the front gate of the Berkut base in Simferopol is a small tent camp adorned with the words “Crimean Front” that was set up in late February. Some 50 men who call themselves Crimean Self-Defense, a Russian-backed outfit, spend their nights guarding the barracks of the Berkut riot police officers.
“Almost all of the former Berkut police officers are now here,” Mokrushin said. “Moreover, very many “titushkas” (thugs hired by the ousted Yanukovych regime) were also brought to Kyiv from Crimea.”
These people have become the backbone of pro-Kremlin Crimean self-defense groups and often apply the brutal methods they were using towards activists in Kyiv to those here. “They like to be scot-free here, to feel their strength, when they may check people’s documents and bags wherever they want,” Mokrushin added.
The Russian military takeover has already prompted more than 500 people, including Ukrainian activists and Crimean Tatars, to seek shelter outside the peninsula in recent weeks, according to Ukrainian Border Guard Service statistics. Ukrainian border guards and their families are also being harassed by the pro-Kremlin Crimean self-defense groups, they say.
Iryna Brunova-Kalisetska, a Simferopol psychologist, said that despite the fact that pro-Russian activists in Crimea openly hate EuroMaidan in Kyiv, they have adopted some attributes of the revolution. Apart from self-defense groups that are reminiscent to those representing EuroMaidan, there are also some local tent camps, widespread wearing of black-and-yellow St. George ribbons on the streets of Crimean cities. “This is a mirror effect of EuroMaidan,” Brunova-Kalisetska said.
The pro-Russian camp is also experiencing euphoria, which could be witnessed in Crimea in recent days with numerous street celebrations attended by thousands of people showing off Russian and Soviet symbols, after the March 16 referendum which led to Putin to order the transfer of Ukraine’s Crimea to Russia. “But this euphoria obviously will not last for long,” the psychologist added.
Given the danger to people’s lives and their personal safety if they oppose the Russian takeover, Brunova-Kalisetska said that many residents are simply too frightened to protest.
“They don’t care about violence until it touches their relatives or friends,” she said.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Ukraine's Maidan activists are not 'fascists'
Disturbingly, some of the Western left wing and even some of the media have adopted the Russian propaganda meme that protesters and activists centered on Ukraine's Maidan are "nationalists" and "fascists."
It is strange then that Ukraine's power structures and military have given themselves over so willingly, bloodlessly, to a group of fascists. Does that make Ukraine's military leadership fascistic? Were they not fascist a month ago under President Yanukovych? Absurd premises lead to absurd conclusions.
Only in Ukraine is it "nationalistic" to insist that in the one country on earth where people speak Ukrainian that Ukrainian should be the official state language, and receive other forms of protection. Only in Ukraine is it "nationalistic," not patriotic, to proclaim, "Glory to Ukraine," (I myself was witness to an incident when these words provoked a fistfight), or to sing the national anthem.
If Western liberals were to judge France by the same standard as they do Ukraine, then they must label them a bunch of "French nationalists" whose borders don't deserve sovereign protection. Likewise, that makes American Republicans who rail against "press 2 for Spanish" or sing "The Star Spangled Banner" at ballgames a bunch of fascist nationalists.
And yet even those comparisons are not quite apt, since native French and English are spoken in other countries and on other continents. Not so with Ukrainian. If Ukrainian dies in Ukraine, it dies in the world. And with it would be lost the richness of Ukrainian culture. Ukrainian is worth fighting for, worth protecting. Yet any casual visitor to Ukraine would get the impression that Russian, not Ukrainian, gets preferential treatment. Most television shows, newspapers, magazines and books are in Russian only. Most films are shown in Russian, albeit with Ukrainian subtitles -- a modest victory for Ukrainian "nationalists."
Indeed, outside Ukraine, the "great and powerful" Russian language has a huge country of 142 million people to protect it: Russia. Therefore, Russia doesn't need Ukraine for the Russian language to flourish. Anyhow, nobody from any Ukrainian political party has ever proposed legislating what language people speak in their everyday lives -- and yet the lumpen on the streets of the South and East of Ukraine firmly believe this lie. In this lie, nurtured cynically by Russia, lies much of ethnic Russians' support for Russia's annexation of Crimea....
Next, there is the "nationalist" Svoboda (Freedom) party in Ukraine, whose leaders said that Jews in league with Russia have sought to keep Ukraine down. Granted, this was several years ago, but still it's cause for the West to be deeply concerned, right? Well, not so much. Svoboda is still a small party and it doesn't stand a chance of winning many seats in Parliament or in the Cabinet of Ministers.
Moreover, Jews were activists on Maidan. Indeed, there was a Jewish brigade on Maidan including "four Israelis with combat experience." I've heard of "self-hating Jews," but this would be a new extreme, if indeed Israeli Jews came to Ukraine to support anti-Semitic fascists!
And Israel's Haaretz newspaper recently examined the level and anti-Semitism among pro-Maidan forces and concluded: no big deal. Jews were among the pro-Maidan activists and at least four Jewish protesters were killed by Berkut special police.
And Israel's Haaretz newspaper recently examined the level and anti-Semitism among pro-Maidan forces and concluded: no big deal. Jews were among the pro-Maidan activists and at least four Jewish protesters were killed by Berkut special police.
So what other "evidence" does Putin's Russia and the deluded Western left offer of Ukrainian fascism? The fact that many Maidan activists revere Ukrainian nationalist freedom fighter Stepan Bandera. He is a controversial historical figure, to say the least. I won't go into the entire history of it now. It suffices to say the mere mention of his name is enough to cause spontaneous brawls in both Ukraine and Russia. You can make up your own mind about Bandera.
Let me offer this: there are many times more statues of Lenin in Ukraine than of Bandera. "Anti-Maidan" and "pro-Russian" activists in Ukraine have banded together to protect Maidan protesters from tearing down statues of Lenin as they did in Kyiv and other cities. Lenin is a symbol of Russian oppression and terror -- including two Soviet-imposed famines on Ukraine when millions died of hunger. It is now acknowledged by the U.S. and the West as genocide. (Russia, as the protector of the Soviet legacy, not surprisingly, disagrees). Thus reasonable people would cast suspicion on anybody, or any group, defending the legacy of Lenin. And yet it is not so. And yet Bandera is called a "mass murderer" by many ethnic Russians in Ukraine. For them Bandera, not Lenin, is the bogeyman of Ukrainian history. Go figure.
(An epitaph on Bandera: two of his brothers died in the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz; his father was executed by the Soviets; and three of his sisters were sent to Soviet gulags in Siberia.)
But all the above-mentioned is academic. Anybody who bothered to go to Maidan could see that it was not decorated with swastikas, hidden fascist symbols, or echoing with anti-Semetic rhetoric. These were normal people. Scratch that -- better than normal. These were, and are, the most liberal, progressive people in Ukraine: doctors, teachers, artists, entrepreneurs, musicians, lawyers, journalists, students, and human rights activists. These are the dynamic people who make Ukraine go. And as the country's most honest and honorable, they were the most likely to suffer under President Yanukovych's corrupt and lawless regime.
Therefore it's painfully unfair of the West to dismiss Ukrainians' struggle -- which was peaceful and orderly until President Yanukovich tried to evict unarmed people with deadly force from Independence Square -- with terms like "fascist," "neo-Nazi," or "nationalist." In our ignorance and haste to judgement, we should not throw out such loaded terms willy-nilly.
I challenge anybody to find a report from a Western journalist on the ground on Maidan who corroborated Russia's fascist or nationalistic narrative of events there. It was perhaps the most well-covered revolution in history; beyond the Western media like BBC, it was YouTubed, Facebooked and Tweeted by thousands of people. If there were rampant fascist sentiments there -- not just a few neo-Nazi malcontents -- then we surely would have seen their faces and heard their voices.
And finally, regarding neo-Nazis, Putin had best remove the beam from his own eye before remarking on the speck in Ukraine's (Matthew 7:5). Putin tolerates an active and violent neo-Nazi movement within Russia. He finds them useful to conduct planned attacks and pogroms on gays and national minorities, mostly from the Caucasus. (For many graphic examples, go to YouTube and search "skinheads Russia.")
Putin should send his Black Sea Fleet out of Crimea to fight Russian fascists at home!
UPDATE 1 (05.03.2014): My friend TK wanted to add something about Stepan Bandera. I haven't fact-checked it, only cleaned up the grammar & spelling:
Just FYI: about Nazi collaborators among Ukrainian nationalists. Many tend to forget during WWII only 14,689 Ukrainians collaborated with Hitler, but 1,150,000 Russians collaborated with Hitler and almost all European countries either collaborated as a whole or had their own collaborators with Hitler. Bandera spent one year in Berlin prison, received proposal to diversify (?) the rear of Red Army, refused to collaborate and then was confined for three years in a [Nazi] concentration camp Sachsenhausen. Bandera announced Ukraine was an independent country in 1941 when Hitler occupied Ukraine and he never collaborated with Hitler. The second person after Bandera was Lev Rebet, who spent three years in Auschwitz concentration camp (he was liberated in 1945), so all those insinuations about anti-Semitic Bandera are just Soviet propaganda. Both were killed by the same KGB officer.
There has been so much Russian propaganda on each and every possible social media, including many in English. What Russia is definitely great at is propaganda and plotting diversions internally and externally. But it is a devastating loss to the Ukrainian nation (as to any other as a matter of fact) not to know its own history. Seventy years of Soviet propaganda and 20 years of not paying attention to education, even worse the last four years of returning back to the distorted Soviet version of history led to absolute ignorance of own country and own identity that we observe now in the east-south and Crimea. Even if you ask people there who is Bandera and what he did, the only answer you will get is he is a fascist, but nothing else. Even more, most people in the rest of Ukraine will not be able to tell you much either with an exception they would not call him fascist. I strongly believe that making the population un-educated, illiterate and uninformed is the way for corruption, destruction and dictatorship. If you have sheep, not a nation, it is very easy to rule them. That relates to any country, but Russian rulers have mastered this tactic.UPDATE 2 (05.03.2014): This should ease the fears in the East and South of Ukraine that the new government is fascist: it's talking seriously about federalism, something the ousted Party of Regions never achieved (because they didn't want to). Reported Reuters today [emphasis mine]:
[Prime Minister] Yatseniuk has been gradually unveiling the outlines of the new government's plans for bringing the former Soviet republic's economy back from what he says is the edge of an abyss.
Earlier this week he announced plans to trim government spending by up to about 16 percent and said the government would meet any conditions set by the IMF to secure a new loan package.
On Wednesday he said it was vital to give more authority to the regions, hungry for financial and, in some cases, for more political independence.
"One of the main things the new Ukrainian government must do is dismantle the centralized power created in the last four years," Yatseniuk said, referring to Yanukovich's rule.
Although this is part of a long-running debate and applies to all regions, it can be seen partly as a gesture to Russian speakers in the east at odds with the central government.
UPDATE 3 (06.03.2014): Here is yet more evidence that fascism and anti-Semitism aren't an issue on Maidan or Ukraine's new government: an "Open letter of Ukrainian Jews to Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin," dated March 4, 2014.
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