PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY IS A TREASURE HOUSE FOR CAPITAL

It's funny how many people think industries are all about manufacturing "things. or producing services or some such thing"  You'd think the automobile industry manufactured automobiles.  You'd think the oil extraction industry was about extracting oil.  You'd think the construction industry was about constructing.  And you might even think the pharmaceutical industry was about finding new drugs and manufacturing them.  Of course all this is nonsense.  All of these industries are about one thing...creating capital and/or profits.  It's money, money, and more money.  All the rest is just fluff.


What follows is an example of how this translates into the real world and it isn't pretty...unless, of course, you are the CEO of say GlaxoSmithKline 
(GSK).  For that dude, it's real pretty and damn sweet.




The original story below is from Aljazeera and passed through Pambazuka News.

The great billion dollar drug scam

Khadija Sharife

2011-07-07, Issue 538

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/74705

cc NeodoThe pharmaceutical industry uses dirty tricks to maximise profits at any cost, hurting sick people and taxpayers. Khadija Sharife examines the methods used by multinational drug corporations to control markets – and lives.

Alongside pneumococcal diseases such as meningitis and pneumonia, rotavirus-related diarrhoea is a primary childhood killer in developing countries, thought to snuff out the lives of 500,000 children each and every year. An overwhelming 85 per cent of these children are African and Asian. The need for medical miracles is as great as ever, but corporate mispricing generates huge profits, while driving up the price of life saving medicines.

British-based drug corporation GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) recently offered a five-year deal to supply poor nations with 125 million doses of the rotavirus vaccine - Rotarix - at $2.50 a dose, just five per cent of the current going price in Western markets. Through the GAVI group, the international vaccine agency financed by developed nations such as the UK, it is hoped that GSK and pharmaceutical multinational Merck - who, between them, dominate the rotavirus vaccine market - will provide a secure line of low-cost drugs for as many as forty countries in the near future.

But is it really a discount, and if so, who is paying the cost?

The financing mechanism subsidising the vaccine is named the Advance Market Commitment (AMC), a pot created by the G8, as well as the World Bank and the Gates Foundation, as a "pull" incentive for drug multinationals to consider developing countries' long-term markets for pharmaceutical "public goods", such as vaccines. Rotarix has taken off well: Since 2007, some 50 million children - through 100 million doses - have already benefited from Rotarix; by 2009, global Rotarix sales reached $440 million - increasing by 50 per cent from 2008, and Merck's Rotateq reach $564 million in sales.

GSK Chief executive Andrew Witty described the pricing structure as, "neither a gimmick nor a one-off philanthropic gesture", but rather "part of a concerted strategy to change our business model" - designed to combine "commercial success with long-term sustainable contributions".

PRICING STRUCTURES AND PROFITS

Drug companies such as GSK have often claimed that the high cost of "innovation" ie: research and development (R&D) is between $1bn and $1.7bn to bring a new drug to market. The AMC and GAVI - collecting some $4.3bn to finance purchase of vaccinations, were designed with the premise that the high cost of drug multinationals' R&D must be met.

During the past several decades, the pharmaceutical industry in the US - more than half of which comprises European-based companies - has largely been the most profitable industry in the nation's economy, thanks to mechanisms such as the lack of a government-imposed pricing structure. "Free pricing and fast approval secure rapid access to innovation without rationing," said Daniel Vasella, the former head of (Swiss-based) Novartis, of the advantages of doing business in the US.

Drug multinationals claim that US consumers are forced to fund the necessary research and development in order to keep global innovation going. In Australia, Europe, as well as Canada - the source of much prescription drug "re-importing" by US citizens, where drugs sometimes sell for half the going US price - governments ensure pricing structures render patented drugs affordable.

While drug multinationals generate considerable profits from these countries, about 50 per cent of global drug industry profits are generated in the US. In 2006, for instance, global prescription drug sales totalled more than $640bn - of which almost $300bn were US-generated sales.

But the real deception is less the Machiavellian tactics used by Big Pharma to Botox the bottom line than the terrible myth behind the "true" price of innovation: the $1bn pill. From 1996-2005, Big Pharma firms spent $739bn on marketing and administration (M&A): "Administration" costs here include accounting, executive salaries (including bonuses, stock options etc) - as well as human resources expenditure. "Marketing", meanwhile, consists of direct-to-consumer advertising, sales pitches and free samples to doctors, alongside advertising in medical journals.

A CLOSER LOOK AT DRUG COST

During the same 1996-2005 period, drug companies invested $288bn in R&D and $43bn in property and equipment, while generating $558bn in profit.

From the outset, it is possible to see that R&D ranks second to last in terms of expenses. But the breakdown of R&D itself is opaque: companies do not list actual expenses for the development of a particular drug, claiming that information comprises proprietary and/or confidential commercial secrets.

Yet, according to the Harvard Business Review: "The cost per new approved drug has increased more than 800 per cent since 1987, or 11 per cent per year for almost two decades." Drug corporations such as Novartis and GSK state that companies producing generic drugs - often Indian - are able to bypass such costs, and sell their "copied" drugs for a fraction of the price of the patented product - often undercutting the intercontinental firms by as much as 65-99 per cent.

The "$1bn cost" is derived from a 2003 study [PDF] published in the Journal of Health Economics by Joe DiMasi et al from the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. The authors and their organisation claimed that the study was unbiased, despite the fact that the Tufts Center is itself some 65 per cent financed by drug companies.

Though the findings have been normalised as factual by the media, the facts have long since been debunked by independent specialists.

The authors surveyed ten large pharmaceutical corporations (between them responsible for 42 per cent of R&D expenditure in the US, where the bulk of such work is carried out), examining the R&D costs of 68 randomly selected drugs, and determined the cost of the development of each at $802 million (elevated to $1bn when adjusted for inflation).

As the data was submitted confidentially by the drug companies to the authors, there is no way to verify the quality of the information, nor was there any accounting for the potential volume of intra-company corporate mispricing. The names of the firms were not mentioned; nor were the names of the drugs, the type of drugs; or the status - whether a priority drug, comprising advanced treatment, or a "me too" drug - ie: a variation of products already on the market.
'Demythologising' the costs

For starters, the $802 million figure failed to take into account the opaque and strange manner of accounting involved, beginning with "capitalised costs". According to the authors, R&D expenditures, "must be capitalised at an appropriate discount rate - the expected return that investors forego during development when they invest in pharmaceutical R&D instead of an equally risky portfolio of financial securities".

As Marcia Angell, US physician, former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine and senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, stated: "The Tufts consultants simply tacked it on to the industry's out-of-pocket costs. That accounting manoeuvre nearly doubled the $403 million to $802 million."

So, when taking into account updated costs by PhRMA (2006), increasing overall R&D to $1.32bn, more than $650 million has just been included as "research and development" by drug companies claiming mythical profits that might have been generated, had they invested in, say, Wall Street - and not the scientific "innovation" used to justify gross profits from exclusive patents.

In the journal BioSocieties, sociologist Donald Light and economist Rebecca Warburton "demythologise" the costs of R&D drug development by also analysing the tax breaks involved in R&D costs [PDF].

The US Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) revealed: "The net cost of every dollar spent on research must be reduced by the amount of tax avoided by that expenditure." The authors used data from official sources such as the Tax Policy Center, to reveal additional tax savings of 39 per cent. Cumulatively, taxpayer subsidies and credits reduced the overall costs from $403 million to $201 million.

TAX SECRECY

Moreover, as this Ernst & Young "Tax Planning" article explains, R&D costs are usually shifted to high tax jurisdictions to offset costs. Meanwhile, profits generated by patents are often "re-located" to low-tax jurisdictions. Pharmaceutical companies prefer to generate R&D "expenses" in high-tax jurisdictions such as the US in order to offset the costs against taxable income. Yet the cost of R&D does not included "avoided" tax. Not surprisingly, most pharmaceutical companies are also based in low-tax secrecy jurisdictions such as Delaware in the US, where profits can be shifted into passive profit and intellectual holding companies.

In an article [originally printed in the New Age newspaper, published online here] I wrote with John Christensen, the founder of the Tax Justice Network and a former economic advisor to Jersey, one of the UK's top tax havens, we revealed how tax secrecy and intellectual property (IP) was being exploited to profit drug corporations, rather than serving the needs of vulnerable people.

"Pfizer, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline - as well as over 60 per cent of Fortune 500 multinationals, all maintain entities in Delaware, taking full advantage of legal and financial opacity tools. In addition to banking secrecy and zero disclosure of beneficial owners, Delaware allows for parent companies to establish holding companies within two days, producing nothing, conducting no economic activity in the state, and generally hosting just one shareholder (the parent company). Such entities, allowing the parent company to pay the newly created entity a "fee" for use of IP, serves as a passive conduit converting taxable income to passive non-taxable profit. The entity's sole purpose is to own and 'manage' laundered income generated from IP."

The gigantic legal expenses incurred by specialists for developing patents, legal defence, sourcing the tax havens and other IP-related issues constitute more costs - included as R&D. This tax optimisation strategy closely resembles that of "high-tech" companies depending on intangible capital for the bulk of their wealth. According to Forbes magazine, by 1999, three of the four richest people in the world made their fortune from intellectual property rights. They owed their fortune, said Michael Perelman, to "Microsoft, one of the major holders of intellectual property rights, befitting the so-called New Economy in which 'DOS Capital' has supplanted Das Kapital".

PROFITS FROM AIDS TREATMENT
Intellectual property rights management can be a lucrative business indeed. The first HIV/AIDS treatment, azidothymidine [AZT], sold under the brand name Retrovir, was manufactured by the company Burroughs Wellcome, later incorporated into GSK. In 1983, two years after AIDS was first reported, the US National Institutes of Health and the Pasteur Institute in Paris identified its cause - the HIV retrovirus. In that same year, Samuel Broder, head of the National Cancer Institute (an NIH branch), established a global team to screen antiviral tools, including the AZT molecule discovered by the Michigan Cancer Foundation, subsequently acquired by Burroughs Wellcome.

Broder's NIH-NCI team, alongside scholars at Duke University, discovered the effectiveness of AZT against the AIDS virus and conducted early clinical trials in 1985. As Marcia Angell explained in her illustrative book, The Truth About Drug Companies, Burroughs Wellcome immediately patented the drug and "carried out the later trials that enabled it to receive FDA approval in 1987" after a review of only a few months. The corporation charged patients upwards of $10,000 per year for treatment and heavily congratulated themselves on the achievement of life-saving medicine.

After one such self-congratulatory letter by Burroughs Wellcome's CEO to the New York Times, Broder and his colleagues from the NCI and Duke University responded angrily, stating: "The Company specifically did not develop or provide the first application of the technology for determining whether a drug like AZT can suppress live AIDS virus in human cells, nor did it develop the technology to determine at what concentration such an effect might be achieved in humans. Moreover, it was not first to administer AZT to a human being with AIDS, nor did it perform the first clinical pharmacology studies in patients. It also did not perform the immunological and virological studies necessary to infer that the drug might work, and was therefore worth pursuing in further studies. All of these were accomplished by the staff of the NCI working with the staff of Duke University."

Driving the point home, they added: "Indeed, one of the obstacles to the development of AZT was that Burroughs Wellcome did not work with live AIDS virus, nor wish to receive samples from AIDS patients."
Killer tactics

Paradoxically, the drug Retrovir was classified by the company as an "orphan drug" ie: a drug where there exists a market of fewer than 200,000 people - and therefore not likely to be commercially profitable. This was done to claim 50 per cent credit from the government for the costs of clinical trials. In 2005, GSK was accused of artificially boosting their short-term profit by not increasing production to meet drastically increasing demand - thus creating "scarcity" for their patented product. This was seen as a last bid attempt to milk the patent which was to expire in September 2005. Shortly thereafter, the US government approved generic versions of the drug.

When Ghanaian distributor Healthcare Ltd imported a generic version of the drug (a combination of AZT and 3TC - known as Combivir) from an Indian drug company named CIPLA, providing it at an affordable Indian price (90c per pill), rather than the patented US price ($10 per pill), GSK threatened the distributor with court, prompting Healthcare Ltd to cease sales. Yet even as GSK accused CIPLA of violating patent rights, GSK did not own the "rights" to Combivir in the West Africa regional patent office. AZT and other AIDS treatment remained blockbuster drugs for GlaxoSmithKline, generating $2.4bn profits in the first six months of 1997, thanks in particular, to AZT and 3TC. By 1998, AIDS was being referred to as a "world-wide health crisis", considered by many as, "an epidemic".

GSK subsequently made billions of dollars from a patent, controlled a market, and affected the lives of billions of people worldwide, for something they did not invent. They did claim, however, that they conceived of it working. This notion was enough to exclude the NCI scientists, including Broder, from being listed as inventors.

But is this a one-off example?

Of course, the US government is very conscious of moves designed to "avoid" taxation. But little effective action has been taken to tighten the tax net. In 2005, Congress extended a"tax holiday" to pharmaceutical corporations, allowing companies to repatriate hidden profits at just 5.2 per cent of the corporate tax rate. At the time, Pfizer had untaxed profits at $38bn; Merck $18bn; Johnson & Johnson $14.8bn - at least, those were the profits they were willing to declare.

Generally, a considerable portion (upwards of 12 per cent) of big pharma's research and development (R&D) costs is Phase IV or "post-marketing" trials of drugs already commercially sold to consumers, in an attempt to expand sales. The figure was estimated at 75 per cent of R&D costs by the Tufts Center, said Harvard Medical School's Marcia Angell.

"Since the majority of Phase IV studies will never be submitted to the FDA, they may be totally unregulated. Few of them are published. In fact, like all industry-sponsored trials, they are not likely to be published at all unless they show something favourable to the sponsor's drug. If they are published, it is often in marginal journals, because the quality of the research is so poor," she said.
Innovations and free-rides

Ironically, the Tufts Center study by Joe DiMasi et al, which estimated the price of bringing a new drug to market to be more than $800m, drastically skewed R&D costs by basing analysis not on the general state of approved drugs but instead on "self-originating NCEs" or "New Molecular Entities (NMEs)" which comprise only a small portion of drugs approved annually by the FDA - estimated at 35 per cent (1990-2000) - a figure that has since decreased in the past decade.

Pharmaceutical "innovation" is determined by two crucial factors: a) the creation of a "new molecular entity"(NME) - which in itself may or may not be useful for treatment but which signifies the introduction of a new, distinct molecular form, and b) an NME that constitutes a"priority drug": ie: a drug that offers, in the words of the FDA,"a major advance in treatment or which provides treatment where no adequate therapy exists" - in short, a therapeutic advance for serious illnesses.

Under the 1992 Prescription Drug User Act, the FDA operates via a two-tiered system of review: Standard Review (S) applied to drugs that offer only minor improvements over existing marketed drugs, and Priority Review (P), a fast-track - a six month process since 2003 - pretty speedy for any company who wants to drive through "innovation".

Though the two comprise separate categories, by blurring the definitions, pharmaceutical companies are often able to misrepresent NMEs, with"innovations" justifying the high costs of patents ie: exclusive government-approved marketing rights.

From 2006- 2009, just 48 drug innovations (P+ NME) were approved by the FDA, while an average of 84 per cent of research funding comes from US taxpayer sources, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Light and Warburton conclude that "the net corporate investment in research to discover important new drugs is about 1.2 per cent of sales, not 17-19 per cent".

So, while drug companies claim that the EU has suffered from a lack of innovation, trailing behind US R&D expenditure by 15 per cent in 2004, little of this figure corresponds to reality.

Easy "free-riding" of the US public funds and R&D is the primary reason why drug companies have flocked to the US. Just a quarter of NMEs are estimated by specialists as being actually developed by drug companies, instead, most are licensed from government/public-financed labs such as the NIH and universities - as well as smaller companies.
Acts and licensing

In 2002, then-CEO of GSK Bob Ingram spoke to the Wall Street Journal on the subject of licensing: "We're not going to put our money in-house if there's a better investment vehicle outside." Ingram pointed out that GSK was eager to reach the levels of other companies, such as Merck, which received 35 per cent of its revenue from licensing.

The cost differential between a licensed NME and one developed in-house is vast: a licensed NME costs just 10 per cent of actual R&D expenditure (2000) in contrast to an in-house developed NME at 74 per cent. In 2000, just 13 per cent of approved NMEs were developed in-house - a figure that has not drastically changed.

The system of licensing came about via the Bayh-Dole Act - named after Senators Birch Bayh (D-Ind) and Robert Dole (R-Kans) - designed to enable universities and small businesses to patent discoveries that came about from NIH-financed research (the primary distributors of taxpayer funds for medical research) - thereafter granting the patents to pharmaceutical corporations in exchange for royalties.

The Act did articulate taxpayer protection rights concerning non-exclusive licences - if the action "is necessary to alleviate health or safety needs which are not reasonably satisfied", or the action "is necessary to meet public uses".

But Ronald Reagan's 1983 Executive Memo changed tack, liberalising access to include coverage for large corporations. Prior to this, publicly financed discoveries were considered knowledge in the public domain. One further piece of legislation - the Stevenson-Wydler Act - removed the barriers between"publicly funded" systems (mainly the government but also universities) and the private sector.
Weighing the costs

In short, depending on whether or not the NMEs were developed in-house, estimates by Light and Warburton - in addition to other specialists, such as Angell - reveal the costs of R&D as more along the lines of $50m - $200m.

So much for the $1bn pill - but what of the costs of development for the Rotavirus vaccine?

Vaccines are often priced 40 - 100 times more than the cost of production. Drug companies claim that pharmaceutical research is very expensive and that R&D costs are extremely high.

Unfortunately for GSK, the usual 5,000 or 6,000 clinical trial "subjects" - people involved in Phase III trials - drastically escalated to around 63,000 to 68,000 people - in order to rule out a perceived fatal side effect (intussusception) that forced Rotashield off the market some years earlier.

Prior to the massive Phase III trial, the costs of GSK's trials ranged from $1.8 million to $2.4 million, stated Light et al. Unlike Merck, GSK conducted many trials in developing countries, drastically lowering the potential costs. But even estimating at the higher range, the total costs for GSK's Phase I - Phase III trials reached between $128m and $192m - for all 63,000-plus people.

Few of the clinical trials conducted in developing nations are investigated by the FDA. A 2008 Pfizer presentation [PDF]showed just 45 of 6,485 (0.7 per cent) of foreign trials were scrutinised. In 2008, more than 76 per cent of the people used for clinical drug trials were foreign "subjects" - some 232,532 people.

The cheapened value of poorer peoples - including better "value for physician" must not be underestimated.

One report, dated 2000, by the inspector general of the US Department of Health and Human Services, disclosed that physicians in the US were paid $10,000 per patient enrolled for a drug trial - plus a further $30,000 on enrolment of the sixth patient. Costs, no doubt, included as "research and development".

Aside from"cheapness", in developing countries there exists far less regulation, oversight and awareness; and the poor are unlikely to litigate if and when damage/deaths occur as a consequence of the drug. This is particularly lethal when it comes to experimentation on children. More than 78 per cent of children-focused clinical trials were conducted outside of the US.
Vaccines and identification

The Rotarix vaccine was not developed in-house but was licensed in: In 1988, Richard Ward PhD isolated the human rotavirus strain and developed a live, orally deliverable vaccine candidate under a licensing agreement with the Virus Research Institute, which later merged with another company, to become Avant Immunotherapeutics, a small firm that has often received grants from the NIH.
As Donald Light, a professor of comparative health policy, and economist Rebecca Warburton revealed in their paper analysing the development cost of the rotavirus vaccine, Avant funded a Phase II trial of Rotarix in 1997-1998 which found the drug gave protection in 89 per cent of cases. Light et al go on to write that, in 1997, GlaxoWellcome (later GSK) negotiated global rights and agreed, in exchange, to finance development costs, paid Avant $5.5 million and agreed royalties of 10 per cent on net sales.

The rotavirus vaccine signified a radical turning point in the introduction of vaccines: usually, poorer nations wait out a 15 or 20 year period. GSK's rotavirus vaccination instead proceeded via regulatory approval not in the country of manufacture, but instead, the country of first intended use - Mexico.

Why not Africa or Asia?
Mexico proved the perfect site for introduction: since the 1990s, the government created, expanded and strengthened a "national surveillance system" for diarrhoeal disease, noted Walsh and Situ. Hospitals and clinics had well-equipped laboratories to identify infectious diseases; the Ministry of Health regularly monitored and reported cases, as did the clinics and hospitals, as part of the Mexican Social Security Institute (MSSI) system.

Since 2004, the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO), comprising more than forty nations of the Americas, supported - along with other organisations - the development of rotavirus surveillance systems in countries including Argentina, El Salvador, Guyana, Uruguay, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and Honduras. Monitoring was engineered to"characterise the proportion of diarrhoeal hospitalisations attributable to a rotavirus infection, serotypes of circulating rotaviruses, and the seasonality of rotavirus infections", writes Julia Walsh MD in The critical path for vaccine introduction[PDF]. This information is fed into economic analyses, a critical element in the countries' decision on whether to introduce a vaccine.
The good news, for GSK, about Mexico and Brazil, is that the percentage of population targeted to be vaccinated is more than 98 per cent. In 2006, Duncan Steele from the Initiative for Vaccine Research (WHO) stated that the Rotarix vaccine was being introduced to Brazil, Panama, Venezuela and other countries - at a cost of $7 per dose for public health use. In 2004, Brazil purchased eight million doses (two doses per child), at the full $7 per dose. Ward would later say that rotavirus hospitalisations were estimated to be down by 59 per cent.
Efficient manufacturing?

Presently, unless Merck makes an entry into the international marketplace, there exists no competition for GSK which already describes itself as,"the main supplier of vaccines to UNICEF and GAVI". According to GSK, PAHO and other aid agencies intend to purchase enough Rotarix to ensure immunisation for 80 per cent of the world's children. Avant estimates that the global market for the drug will generate as much as $1.8bn annually. Neither GSK nor Merck have published a summary of their costs.

Light and Warburton estimate that the cost of Rotarix - due to the incredibly large expense of the almost 70,000-person trial is as high $466 million, excluding capitalised costs - and that out-of-pocket costs could be recovered with a single year's profit. From 2008 onward, sales totalled more than $1bn.
At "efficient" manufacturing costs of $1.50-$2 per dose, GSK will make a jolly profit from the "full price" in developed nations, and the 98 per cent successful vaccination target rate in countries such as Brazil. Once the five-year period is up, GSK - holding the global monopoly, will be embedded as part of the national health budget in 40 or more countries.
GSK's home country - the UK - donated the largest chunk of taxpayer funds to the AMC pot - at $1.34bn, while IP king Bill Gates offered a further $1bn. Gates claimed that he felt "great about the prices" GAVI received but acknowledged that Indian and Chinese manufacturers could bring the price down"somewhat" if they ramped up vaccine output.

No matter that drug companies like GSK actually sat on the GAVI board at the time such decisions were made.

Developed nations banging the trade-related intellectual property drum, and intellectual property captains such as Bill Gates, will not bypass the anti-competitive grip of patents - for which there exists no free market, and where all patent value is opaquely imputed by the company in question.

This is the flipside of "charity", this is a calculated attempt to sustain the status quo - a world structured on inequality, where the gap between those with access to medicine, and those without, is not only undeserved and systemically unjust - but also lethal.

To paraphrase brilliant comedian Chris Rock, drug companies - or drug dealers, as he put it, don't want to cure you (or kill you). The money comes from making you live in need.


BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article first appeared in two parts in Al Jazeera here and here.
* Khadija Sharife is a journalist and visiting scholar at the Center for Civil Society (CCS) based in South Africa, and a contributor to the Tax Justice Network. She is the Southern Africa correspondent for The Africa Report magazine, assistant editor of the Harvard ‘World Poverty and Human Rights’ journal and author of ‘Tax Us If You Can Africa’.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

ANTI-GROWTH: A THOUGHT ON SAVING THE PLANET

I've lately been reading this really cool Marxist sort of stuff by various folks, for example, an old comrade Don Hammerquist.  I enjoy reading it.  The language makes my brain work and sometimes seems to make sense.  However, two things come to mind when I get done.  First, "SO WHAT?"  I don't say this to be critical, really.  Don's stuff, for one, is well written and well thought out.  However, I keep going back to the thought, to paraphrase old Mr. Marx, the left spends way too much time "interpreting the world" and way too little "changing it."  Again, this is not meant as a particular criticism of Don or anyone else.  I know Don has done real work, but you get the drift. I mean, if you are going to write this stuff, maybe a section on what we all are supposed to do practically with it...and how.


The other thing that bothers me is that I don't think most Marxists understand or accept the immediacy of global environmental destruction and climate change.  It's time to get a move on, as it were.


Anyway, sort of in that vein I present the following article from the Links – International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

The deep green meaning of Fukushima

[For previous articles by Don Fitz, click HERE.]

By Don Fitz

June 26, 2011 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Humanity must decrease its use of energy. The decrease must be a lot (not a little bit) and it must happen soon. A failure to do so will lay the foundation for the destruction of human life by some combination of climate change and radiation.

How long will the disastrous consequences of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan continue? A good estimate is about 4.5 billion years — the half life of uranium-238. [1] The March 11, 2011, meltdowns sounded alarms that environmentalists have rung for over half a century. There is also a deeper green meaning: the limits of economic growth have long since passed and we need to design a world with considerably less stuff.

The industry claims that there is such a thing as a safe level of radiation and that nuclear production can be safe. Both are profoundly untrue.

The myth of a safe level of radiation is spread by comparing radiation releases to “background levels of radiation” and talking about “acceptable levels of radiation”. The implication is that if radiation occurs in nature, it must be okay. Not really. Anyone who has walked through poison ivy can attest that substances which exist in nature may be toxic. Background radiation is similar, except much more severe. Since it can take generations for cancers and other diseases to show up, it is impossible to know the full damage of radioactive isotopes from Chernobyl and Fukushima. [2]

Perhaps out of ignorance and perhaps intentionally, nuclear preachers confuse internal and external radiation when they compare plant meltdowns to X-rays and CT scans. The latter pass through the body and do not leave radioactive particles in it. Nuclear meltdowns, in contrast, spew particles that are breathed or ingested with food or beverages and become internal emitters as they migrate to the thyroid, liver, bone and brain. [3]

The myth of safe nuclear production is based on often unstated assumptions that (a) other than three nuclear accidents, there have never been severe problems at nuclear plants and (b) the only time that radiation is released is during power plant accidents. In fact, many, many articles have documented the lengthy list of accidents and near-meltdowns (which release radiation and are inherent to the technology). [4] As if this were not enough, radiation is released during every phase of its production: mining, milling, “normal” operation of nuclear plants, transportation of nuclear materials, and storage of nuclear waste.

One of the great lies of nuclear power is what Barry Commoner calls “linguistic detoxification”. In order to manipulate public opinion the industry refers to its highly irradiated nuclear waste as “spent fuel”. The term is clearly designed to give the impression that nuclear fuel is “used up” when, in fact, fuel rods come out of a nuclear plant more radioactive than when they went in.

Advocates of nuclear power know that they are lying

If the industry believed that nukes were safe, they would build them in the middle of big cities. That would prevent the huge loss of energy through the construction and use of transmission lines (and reduce the need for more nukes). [5] But since they know the true danger, they locate nukes elsewhere.

The US Price-Anderson Act of 1957 provides clear evidence that industry and government are holding back on what they know about nukes. That legislation limited the liability of power companies in the event of a catastrophic meltdown. The same politicians who support renewal of that act blather out the other side of their mouth how government must bow to free enterprise. If they truly believed in free enterprise, they would repeal Price-Anderson and replace it with legislation requiring the owner of every nuke to purchase insurance on the open market which would cover all costs that could be potentially associated with an explosion and meltdown. [6]

The nuclear industry puts public relations before public safety.

The supremacy of public relations is obvious from the very building of nuclear plants. It was shown again at Fukushima when plant operators used helicopters to drop seawater on the plants, allegedly to keep them cool. This was little more than a publicity stunt aimed at photo ops. Saltwater can lock up the valves on pipes, interfering with the ability of the system to regain functioning. [7]

During both the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear disasters, governments repeatedly minimised what was happening, exposing people to greater danger by understating the need to leave. Fukushima was no different. Though the disaster was on March 11, 2011, it was not until May 24 that the owners finally acknowledged that a meltdown had occurred. [8]

‘Environmental particularism’ poses an extreme danger to protecting the Earth

Most environmentalists realise the deep interconnectedness between biodiversity, toxins (including radiation), peak oil (and everything else) and climate change. But some limit their vision to what they see as “my issue”. We can call this self-limitation “environmental particularism”. It is divisive in the extreme and plays directly into the hands of corporations.

Were someone absorbed with the dangers that genetic engineering poses to biodiversity to belittle activism on toxins, that person would be ignoring the intense threat that toxic substances pose to plant and animal life. Similarly, a colleague who I rely on for nuclear information once commented that toxins and radiation are true threats to humanity and we should get used to higher temperatures and stop worrying about climate change.

Using the flip side of this illogic, both James Hansen and George Monbiot minimise dangers of nuclear power. Hansen is perhaps the world’s leading authority on climate change. [9] Monbiot, a British environmental columnist, is author of Heat, an outstanding documentation of the realities and catastrophes of climate change. [10] After Fukushima, Monbiot became infamous for his spirited defence of nuclear power as the best alternative to burning fossil fuels. His position became extreme as he penned articles confusing external and internal radiation and favouring industry falsifications of Chernobyl’s effects over the meticulous scientific compilation of Yablokov, Nesterenko and Nesterenko [11].

Claims that society must choose between fossil fuels and nukes are 100% false

Pretending to care about climate change, utility companies say that we must have more nukes to avoid increasing CO2 levels. Hansen and Monbiot parrot corporate propaganda when they present the false dichotomy: nukes or fossil fuels.

Their tunnel vision on climate change interferes with their ability to perceive global warming and nuclear power as different manifestations of the same problem. The mechanical connections between the two are clear. First, climate change could increase nuclear accidents. Warming raises sea level and intensifies storms, making plants more vulnerable. [12]

Second, nuclear power intensifies climate change. The industry argument that nuclear plants do not release CO2 conveniently ignores the large CO2 releases during mining, processing, transportation and storage phases of nuclear power.

Monbiot’s Heat dramatically describes the horror that living through uncontrolled climate change would bring and Stan Cox explains the horror of trying to solve that problem with nuclear power. According to Cox, a 60% cut in greenhouse gases (GHGs) based on replacing coal with nuclear power would require increasing the world’s current 350 nuclear power stations to 18,500 by 2050 (accounting for economic growth). [13]

Since there have been three catastrophic nuclear accidents during 32 years (Three Mile Island, 1979; Chernobyl, 1986; Fukushima, 2011), we might expect 158 catastrophic accidents every 32 years with 18,500 plants. This would be one Fukushima every 2.5 months or 10 weeks. [14]

In fact, neither a pure nuke nor a pure fossil fuel future is likely and the more probable path is a combined intermediate level of horror from each. Yet these only reflect the obvious links between the two horns of the demon.

The deep green connection between radiation and climate change is that they are both part of the lockstep march toward economic growth. The question for both Hansen and Monbiot is what humanity will do when uranium ore is exhausted but the drive toward growth intensifies.

Coal, oil, natural gas and uranium will run out at some time in the future. None of them can ever be the basis of a sustainable economy. The issue is not whether society will or will not have to do without non-renewables — the only issue is whether humanity will stop using them prior to destroying the biological web of life or whether humanity is forced to stop using them, either because it takes more energy to extract them than they yield or because our descendants have lost the mental or physical ability to process them.

In a growth economy, solar and wind offer no alternative

In a growth economy, solar and wind cannot replace fossil fuels and/or nukes, which they must depend on for their own creation and for making up energy short falls. As Ted Trainer and others have clearly demonstrated, solar and wind power are subject to conditions like how much sunshine and wind exist at a given time. [15] An industry which is geometrically expanding must be drawn to fossil fuel and nukes because they are not subject to weather fluctuations and they can produce enormous quantities of energy for manufacture.

Weather variability means that solar and wind power have a greater need to store energy than non-renewables. This means solar and wind lose even more energy during storage and retrieval. They also require considerable energy and resource extraction to produce associated technologies such as transmission lines and batteries. These are not green attributes.

During the opening of his seminal exposé of renewable energy, Trainer points to turf where solar and wind proponents dare not tread: The issue is not merely whether solar and wind can provide for the industrial needs of a modern economy — it is ridiculous to suggest that they could provide energy needs of a global economy which is 60 times its current size. Trainer calculates that bringing all the world up to consumptive standards of the overdeveloped countries, maintaining a 3% annual GDP growth rate, and reaching a population of 9.4 billion would require a 6000% increase in the economy between 2007 and 2070.

The mechanical impossibility of infinite solar and wind power leads to a deeper green problem: They reflect the same fetish on things as do non-renewables. Switching from one fetish to another in no way rejects the thingification of human existence. It is this worship of objects which is the core of the problem.

Failure to challenge the endless manufacture of artificial needs and the continual shrinkage of the durability of commodities means that no combination of nuclear power, fossil fuel, solar, wind and other energy sources can ever satisfy bottomless greed. Seeking to replace human caring, sharing and community with object glorification will always result in feelings of emptiness and craving for more and more objects. Object addiction can never be satiated — even if those objects are “green”.

Stan Cox notes that a huge expansion of fossil fuel use would be necessary if solar and wind were to increase enough to replace nukes. [12] Creating this solar and wind infrastructure would result in massive emissions of CO2. Thus, in a growth economy, renewables are no more separable from non-renewables than climate change is separable from radiation.

Recent increases in solar and wind power has resulted in lawsuits to protect native lands and sensitive species. [16] How many more valleys must be transformed into ugly wind farms and how many more deserts must be covered with solar collectors just to enable landfills of discarded junk to expand to the moon?

Why grow?

The ideology of growth is the bedrock of nuclear power. Growth requires the expansion of energy. As Robert Bryce demonstrates, “America’s energy consumption has grown in direct proportion to its economic growth”. [17] Between 1913 and 2005, the 300-fold increase in oil imports was paralleled by a 300-fold increase in US economic output. [18]

As energy sources have gone from wood to coal to oil to nukes, there has been a steady increase in the total amount of energy available. During most of this progression economic growth has meant an expansion of goods which people need. By the end of World War II this was no longer the case as there was enough to provide basic needs for everyone.

More than ever before, production for need gave way to production for militarism, for obscene wealth, for throw-away goods and for marketing to take precedence over utility. Nuclear power became the cornerstone of both militarism and the seemingly limitless energy necessary for planned obsolescence. Nuclear plants were born as a physical manifestation of social relationships underlying growth without need.

Fukushima shows the disastrous consequences of increasing production simply because people want useless items – or because corporations want people to want items so they can make money. In the era of Fukushima, further increases in piles of garbage will not improve our lives today but it will expose future generations to the misery of toxic mine tailings, a reduced number of animal and plant species, unbearable heat waves, and leaky nuclear waste containers oozing radiation across the globe.

Is anti-growth feasible?

“Anti-growth” means that people will have better lives if society produces fewer things that are useless and dangerous. It assumes that the total quantity of things needed to make everyone’s lives better is vastly less that the total quantity of current negative production.

“Anti-growth” can be contrasted to “de-growth”, which has become synonymous with trying to change the economy by tiptoeing through the tulips. The phrase “anti-growth” aims to dismiss two myths: (a) the belief that a decrease in production requires people to suffer; and (b) the belief that lifestyle changes can substitute for social action. (Though altering individual lifestyles is important to show that a new and different world is possible, it does little to bring about the scale of needed changes.)

The corporate line on reversing growth is that it would bring agony worse than nuclear radiation and is therefore impossible. Sadly, many progressives (including environmentalists, anti-war activists and even “Marxists”) swallow the line.

Let’s not confuse an increase in provision of basic needs like housing, clothing and education with overall economic growth. Reducing unnecessary and destructive production (such as military spending) can be done at the same time as increasing preventive medical care. Reducing the advertising of food, packaging of food, long-range transportation of food and animal protein can occur simultaneously with increasing healthy food. Nobody’s quality of life is going to deteriorate because they have a simple coffee pot that lasts for 75-100 years rather than one with a mini-computer designed to fall apart in six months.

To reiterate: the economy can shrink while the amount of necessary goods expands. Anti-growth is not too complex to fathom. The idea that we should make more good stuff and less bad stuff is so simple that anyone except an economist can understand it. [19]

Unfortunately, many advocating a smaller economy shoot themselves in the foot by rejecting anti-corporate struggle. These include Richard Heinberg, Pat Murphy and Ted Trainer, who have all made enormous contributions to the understanding of the ecological crisis. [20]

All three conclude that the major source for change should be in individual lifestyles. I call it the approach of “consume less so the military can consume more”. Neither they nor the growing Transition Movement grasp that social gluttons will eagerly expand their own consumption to fill whatever void is created by ecological Puritans living exemplary lives. [21] Despite their insights, their writing detracts from and undermines the building of mass social and political movements necessary for the changes they advocate.

A radical rethinking

Will the nuclear industry learn from its horrific disasters and change its ways? Yes and no. The industry will definitely learn how to lie more subtly and control government and the media more tightly. That is merely extrapolating from the past to the future.

But if the question means “Will the industry learn how to avoid dangerous shortcuts and become safe?” the answer can only be “no”. The very existence of nuclear power is a safety shortcut — but the nuclear industry is incapable of learning that.

Imagining safer nukes at a time when sea levels are rising and weather extremes are becoming worse is a bad hallucination. Looking at the energy industry as a whole, we see ever and ever greater risks from renewed deep-sea oil drilling, hydro-fracking for gas and increased exploitation of Earth-destroying tar sands. There is zero possibility that nuclear can put itself outside of the risk-taking frenzy. Purchasing politicians and regulatory agencies is so-o-o much more cost effective.

The survival of humanity is at not only odds with right-wing politicians and “free market” economists who preach growth by engorging the rich. Human existence is simultaneously threatened by “liberal” politicians and Keynesian economists who promote growth by governmental intervention. Preserving a livable environment is likewise at odds with “environmentalists” who advocate growth via purchasing green gadgets. “Socialists” and wooden “Marxists” walk less than a shining path when they demand a planned economy for the purpose of “unleashing the capitalist's fetters on production” (i.e., unlimited growth). Planetary extermination under workers’ control does not fulfill dreams of Karl Marx.

In the wake of Fukushima many scream that we must abandon nukes as rapidly as possible. Yes, yes and yes. Join their screams and demand a halt in the production of new nukes and a rapid shut down of those that exist!

We must do the almost the same for fossil fuels, with a rapid reduction to 90% of current levels, then 80%, and so on until we level off at perhaps 10% of where we are at now. If and only if this reduction is made can solar, wind and geothermal (along with a very judicious use of fossil fuels and biofuels) meet energy needs in a sane society.

But all of us, especially environmentalists, must abandon the illusion that solar, wind and geothermal can be a source of infinite economic growth. And all of us, especially social justice activists, trade unionists and socialists, must abandon any misplaced belief that a massive reduction of energy requires any sacrifice in the quality of life. We must affirm if we change our values, change our society and change our economy, we can have great lives by focusing on people rather than the eternal accumulation of objects.

[Don Fitz teaches environmental psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. He is editor of Synthesis/Regeneration: A Magazine of Green Social Thought, which is sent to members of the Greens/Green Party USA. He can be contacted at fitzdon [at] aol.com.]

Notes

1. A better estimate might be 45 billion years, or 10 half-lives. The Earth probably has been around for 4.5 billion years, a good comparison figure for how long nuclear waste will exist.

2. Caldicott, H. (April 30, 2011). Unsafe at any dose. New York Times. Retrieved June 17, 2011 fromhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01caldicott.html.

3. Caldicott, H. (April 12, 2011). Attack of the nuclear apologists. Retrieved June 18, 2011 fromhttp://www.counterpunch.com/caldicott04122011.html.

4. For example, Chris Williams documents that there were at least 14 “near misses” in US nuclear plants in 2010. (April 12, 2011). Why nuclear power must go. The Indypendent. Retrieved June 17, 2011 from http://www.indypendent.org/?pagename=author_search&a=Chris%20Williams. For documentation of at the Indian Point nuke 24 miles north of New York City, see Anthony Dimaggio’s (March 24, 2011) What lessons can the U.S. learn from Japan’s crisis? zcommunications.org/the-nuclear-connection-by-anthony-dimaggio. For a list of nuclear accidents in Japan, see J. Green (March 16, 2011). Is Australian uranium fuelling Japan’s looming nuclear disaster? Retrieved June 18, 2011 from http://links.org.au/node/2213.

5. Takashi, H. Nuclear power plants for Tokyo. Cited by Douglas Lummis in introduction to Takashi, H. (March 22, 2011). What they're covering up at Fukushima. Counterpunch.

6. This would ring the death knell for the nuclear industry, since no insurance company would have assets to cover trillions of dollars of loss, which proves the financial non-viability of nukes. Congress reviews Price-Anderson every so often and the current liability limit for utility companies is $12.6 billion, a fraction of potential damages.

7. Takashi, H. (March 22, 2011). What they're covering up at Fukushima. Retrieved March 23, 2011 fromhttp://counterpunch.com/takashi03222011.html.

8. Digest—3 Meltdowns Confirmed. (May 25, 2011). St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. A5

9. Hansen, J. Sato, M., Ruedy, R., & Lo, K. (2010). If It's That Warm, How Come It's So Darned Cold? Retrieved January 10, 2011 fromhttp://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2010/20100127_TemperatureFinal.pdf.

10. Monbiot, G. (2007). Heat: How to stop the planet from burning. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

11. Yablokov, A.V., Nesterenko, A.V. & Nesterenko, V.B. (December 2009). Chernobyl: Consequences of the catastrophe for people and the environment. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1181. http://www.nyas.org/publications/annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1.

12. Kenward, A. (March 24, 2011). Sea level rise brings added risks to coastal nuclear plants. Retrieved June 18, 2011 fromhttp://www.climatecentral.org/news/sea-level-rise-brings-added-risks-to-coastal-nuclear-plants.

13. Cox, S. (2011, in press) It’s always too soon for nuclear power—and already too late. Synthesis/Regeneration: A Magazine of Green Social Thought.

14. Taking into account that the nuclear era began prior to 1979 would result in adjusting down the estimate of one catastrophic accident every 10 weeks; but adjusting for the increase in the number of nukes between 1979 and 2011 would adjust the estimate up.

15. Trainer, T. (2007). Renewable energy cannot sustain a consumer society. The Netherlands: Springer. Also see R. Heinberg, (September, 2009). Searching for a Miracle: Net Energy Limits & the Fate of Industrial Society, Post Carbon Institute & International Forum on Globalization. http://www.postcarbon.org/report/44377-searching-for-a-miracle.

16. McBride, S. (Jan 5, 2011) Sierra Club sues over California solar plant. Retrieved March 7, 2011 fromhttp://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/05/us-solar-idUSTRE70432N20110105.

17. Bryce, R (2008). Gusher of lies: The dangerous delusions of “Energy independence”, New York: Public Affairs.

18. “Decoupling theory”, a current fad among economists, maintains that energy usage can be separated from economic growth. The argument ignores the fact that this occurs in overdeveloped countries by outsourcing energy-intensive manufacturing to poorer countries.

19. In the early years of the 21st century, human suffering has no more to do with inadequate production than hunger has to do with insufficient food. Hunger is caused by domination of market forces. When it is more profitable to drive people off their land and produce exotic food to fly across the globe than it is for people to grow what their ancestors have grown, hunger results. There is already an abundance of food which is not distributed to the hungry. Increasing the quantity of food will do nothing to end hunger. Food production is a microcosm of the entire economy. Increasing production will not provide more people with the necessities of life. Rather than producing more, we must produce differently [and, of course, less].

20. Richard Heinberg has taught many environmentalists that the approach of peak oil threatens a lunge toward other, even more destructive forms of energy. [See R. Heinberg, R. (2005). The party’s over: Oil, war and the fate of industrial societies. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers and R. Heinberg. (2004). Powerdown: Options and actions for a post-carbon world.. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. Many of Heinberg’s writings are at http://www.postcarbon.org] Pat Murphy meticulously illustrates the massive sources of energy waste in the overdeveloped world. [See P. Murphy. (2008). Plan C: Community survival strategies for peak oil and climate change. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers.] Ted Trainer gives perhaps the most thorough d

ocumentation that solar, wind and geothermal cannot meet energy demands of societies on a suicidal rush to infinite growth. [See note 15

A NEW BEGINNING

HERE WE GO AGAIN.  I'VE DECIDED TO START UP AGAIN, BUT NOT AS THE OREAD DAILY, BUT AS SCISSION.  I AM NOT GOING TO SPEND AS MUCH TIME ON THIS AS BEFORE, BUT, HEY, SOME IS BETTER THAN NONE.

I AM NOT BACK BUT WANT TO POST THREE ARTICLES I LIKE

THE FIRST IS WRITTEN BY AN OLD COMRADE FROM MY PAST, NOEL IGNATIEV.  YOU MAY KNOW NOEL FROM HIS EXTENSIVE WORKS ON WHITE SKIN PRIVILEGE, BUT THERE IS MORE...

Alternative Institutions or Dual Power

Today I want to talk about strategy for revolution. As Malcolm X said, I want to have a conversation between you and me, us. On my way here I picked up a copy of the Indypendent Reader, which on its masthead carries the slogan “toward building a new society on the vacant lots of the old…” The paper contains good articles, some written by people I know to be revolutionaries. But I want to focus on the slogan, to use it to talk about strategy.

It was obviously put forward with one eye on the old IWW slogan, Building the New Society within the Shell of the Old. The IWW sought to develop a counter-power. The Indy slogan means developing alternative institutions. The two are not the same.

What are alternative institutions? Infoshops, bookstores, free schools, coops, community gardens are all examples. These may be worthwhile projects, but they are not examples of counter-power because they do not represent a threat to capital. In fact, they are compatible with it.

Things are entirely different with counter-power.

One of the earliest expositions of its meaning, if not the earliest, was by Lenin when he returned to Russia in April 1917 shortly after the fall of the czar. I know many of you do not like to hear me quoting Lenin, but I urge you to pay attention. Whatever you think of the course Lenin followed once in power, you must admit he understood something about making a revolution, and therefore you can learn from him.

In “The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution,” Lenin wrote,

The main feature of our revolution, a feature that most imperatively demands thoughtful consideration, is the dual power which arose in the very first days after the triumph of the revolution.

This dual power is evident in the existence of two governments: one is the main, the real, the actual government of the bourgeoisie, the “Provisional Government” …; the other is a supplementary and parallel government… in the shape of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies...

This remarkable feature… has led to the interlocking of two dictatorships: thedictatorship of the bourgeoisie… and the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry (the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies).

There is not the slightest doubt that such an “interlocking” cannot last long. Two powerscannot exist in a state. One of them is bound to pass away…

In that situation Lenin put forward the slogan “No support to the provisional government. All Power to the Soviets.”

Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not invent the Soviets (councils). They were invented by the workers and soldiers. In periods of upsurge ordinary people (people who do not normally spend their time thinking about how to make a revolution) do very revolutionary things, far more revolutionary than any individual or party could imagine. But they think of them in old ways. Lenin and the Bolsheviks did what the workers could not do by themselves: recognize the Soviets as the germ of the new society and pose them consciously against the institutions that integrate the workers and all the oppressed into official society.

No revolution has ever taken place without a period of dual power. The masses of ordinary people will not transfer their allegiance from the dominant institutions, an allegiance based largely on habit, to a new society unless the institutions of the new society already exist in tangible form. At the same time, every popular upheaval gives rise to institutions that prefigure the new society. The contending powers may be separated geographically, as in the U.S. Civil War or the liberated zones in China, Vietnam, Cuba and perhaps Chiapas, or by sphere, as they were in Russia.

The above were situations of general crisis. Do conditions prevail at present in the U.S. such that dual power is a relevant notion? Well, certainly no one would claim that the U.S. today is in the grip of an immediate crisis comparable to what existed in Russia between February and October 1917.

But it may be tomorrow. Every modern society, the U.S. included, no matter how stable it appears, is but one step away from a general breakdown in which the existing institutions collapse and the issue of power is posed. Consider the following nightmare scenario: a decline in public revenues due to the deepening financial crisis, such that public authorities are unable to pay public workers or are forced to pay them in worthless scrip. Bridges, roads and rail-beds falling apart (that is already happening) so that the transport of food becomes unreliable, police and firemen on slowdown because they have not been paid, perhaps most important of all sanitation workers without wages. Under those circumstances is an outbreak of plague inconceivable? If things reached that point, would it not fall upon the general population to take into their hands the task of maintaining order, collecting the garbage, purifying the drinking supply, etc. That is the situation that prevailed in Germany at the end of World War II, and only the presence of the occupying armies prevented the German working people from taking power.

Every genuine struggle against entrenched power brings forward forms of dual power. Factory workers slowing down an assembly line by direct action, cubicle workers surfing the internet on company time or using the company’s equipment to communicate with their friends, fast-food or grocery workers deliberately undercharging customers—most of the examples in daily life are too fragile, small in scale and sporadic to take on political meaning, but all of them taken together represent the new society. At what point do revolutionaries transfer their attention from the institutions that represent the oppressed within the existing society to these admittedly weak and often barely visible elements of the new? I once asked a member of a socialist organization that claimed to uphold a strategy of dual power, at one point do we shift our attention from work within the unions and the various reform movements that seek to exert pressure on the government and give central place to the elements of the new society that spring up like mushrooms after a summer rain—drawing a line between them and the existing reform institutions, doing what we can to link them together, differentiate them from the old, and clarify their implications? Do we wait until they enjoy the support of fifty-one percent of the population? He was unable to answer.

For me, the answer is easy: the time is now. We revolutionaries are against representation and in favor of direct democracy. We are against the unions, which seek better terms in the sale of labor power, and in favor of abolishing the sale of labor power. Instead of reforming the economy we want to abolish the economy, and in its place put community. We are enemies of the nation-state, the family, the white race, and everything else that is respectable in the society. “We hate this rotten system more than any mortals do/Our aim is not to patch it but to build it all anew.” Our political intervention must reflect that sentiment, not leave it on the shelf to be hauled out for holiday speeches.

How to do that? I would be the first to admit that I am not flowing over with brilliant ideas. But for revolutionaries, it is the main question worth asking.

Can alternative institutions serve revolutionary strategy? In some ways and under certain circumstances, yes. They may provide valuable examples of what the new society might look like, and space for people to mobilize to achieve it. The aim is not a food coop, but the organization of the workers in agriculture and transport to convert the production of food into production for use instead of for profit. I doubt the Free School will ever replace Johns Hopkins or the public schools, but if it provides a space for students to organize to revolutionize the schools and the university, then it will have justified the sacrifices people are putting into it. I doubt that the Indypendent quarterly will ever replace the Baltimore Sun, but if it provides space and inspiration for workers at the Baltimore Sun to take over their place of employment and turn it into a public resource, then the Indypendent will have served a revolutionary function.

The preceding is a talk I gave last month at the Radical Book Pavilion at the Baltimore Book Fair, where I was honored to share a panel with Penelope Rosemont. A discussion followed.

Send comments to noelignatiev@gmail.com. Indicate if they are intended for publication.

THE SECOND IS FROM ANOTHER OLD FRIEND, BILL BERKOWITZ

Preventing the Innocent from Being Executed: More Than 130 Death Row Inmates Exonerated and Released

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Tue, 05/17/2011 - 12:29pm. 

• Guest Commentary

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR TRUTHOUT AT BUZZFLASH

Contrary to popular belief, it is not always DNA evidence that leads to the freeing of the falsely convicted from prison. 'Often,' says veteran investigator Rosa Greenbaum, 'false convictions in cases lacking biological evidence can only be overturned through solid, traditional investigation.'

Television has always had a love affair with detective programs, dating back to the late 1940s and early 1950s when such shows as "Man Against Crime," "Martin Kane, Private Eye," and "The Adventures of Ellery Queen" featured the "hard boiled private eye," or "cerebral puzzle-solving" detective fighting crime, as an article on the website of The Museum of Broadcast Communications titled "Detective Programs" points out. As the decades passed, the genre changed significantly; the plots thickened, and the lives of the lead characters became more appealing as evidenced by anti-hero human/playfulness of James Garner in "The Rockford Files," or Peter Falk's endearing "Columbo." Later, "Hill Street Blues," NYPD Blue" and "Homicide" reached new heights with their excellent ensemble casts, deeper storytelling and cinematic achievements.

These days, however, the television crime solver is more likely to be a savvy criminalist or forensic detective who has access to all sorts of high-tech paraphernalia. When "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," also known as "CSI: Las Vegas," premiered in October 2000, Juan Roberto Melendez had been in prison for sixteen years. The show became an instant hit, in part because of its distinctive use of science and technology and in part because of the grisly crime scenes it portrayed. Naturally enough, CSI's success not only eventually led to such in-house spin-offs as "CSI: Miami" and "CSI: New York," it has also led to the burgeoning of high-tech police procedurals. Over the years, on television and in real life, DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) has become a household word.

While the detective genre has changed markedly over the years, one thing hasn't changed, the crime is usually solved at the end of the program; by hook or by crook the "bad guys" get caught.

But as we've seen with greater frequency in real life over the years, the supposed "good guys" - the police, prosecutors, crime lab operators and judges -- are not always the "good guys," and the "bad guys" are not always guilty.

And while many of those convicted of crimes they did not commit have been released from prison - many after having served long prison stretches -- because of DNA evidence, it is also true that good old-fashioned leg work by resolute investigators has been critical to gaining the release of the wrongfully convicted.

It was that kind of intrepid legwork that led to the January 3, 2002, release of Juan Roberto Melendez from Florida's death row after having served nearly eighteen years for a crime he did not commit.

For more than ten years the legal team at the Tallahassee branch of Capital Collateral Representative, a Florida agency that provides attorneys and investigators for persons on death row, had been working on Melendez's case. The evidence that ultimately led to his release was uncovered through the extraordinary investigative work done by the office's Rosa Greenbaum, who began working the case in the summer of 2000, building upon the work done by previous investigators.

The Reuters report pointed out that "Greenbaum discovered transcripts of a confession [to the September 13, 1983, murder of Delbert Baker, who was found dead at his Auburndale, Florida beauty school] made by Vernon James, who died in 1986. James had admitted to state investigators that he killed Baker. Greenbaum re-interviewed witnesses who corroborated his confession."

She also developed numerous new exculpatory witnesses, including individuals no one had been able to find in the intervening 16 years.  (For more details on the case see "A dead man walking toward freedom? -- http://www.truthinjustice.org/melendez.htm.)

The fact of the matter, Rosa Greenbaum told me in an e-mail exchange, is that "DNA evidence is relatively rare, and false convictions in cases lacking biological evidence often can only be overturned through solid, traditional investigation." For Greenbaum, this entails requesting records and poring over documents with a thorough attention to detail in order to gain mastery of the facts and develop an investigation plan. With a list of potentially helpful witnesses in hand, she knocks on doors, "trying to gain trust and prays for luck."

Greenbaum pointed out that "The awesome power of the justice system is often terrifying to the very people who possess information that could free an innocent person. It's a delicate dance to get that testimony before a court for consideration. In Juan's case, the physical evidence that could have cleared him was not preserved; DNA was a non-factor. But he had some amazing luck -- the real culprit confessed profusely, and on tape." That confession, and Greenbaum's tenacity in talking to nearly every potential witness -- no matter how apparently remote to the case -- gave his lawyers what they needed to go to court and get Juan free.

(Full disclosure: I have known Rosa since her birth and she is a dear friend and the daughter of lifelong friends.)

"There's no question," she added, "More investigation-based innocence projects need to be established. Despite, or perhaps due to, the number of high-profile DNA exonerations we have seen in recent years, people seem to be unaware of the scope of this problem. Some believe that DNA will out the truth in all cases, and that false convictions are flukes. People need to know that this is not the case, especially young people contemplating careers in law, journalism, public policy and social science research. There is a saying that a Harvard Law graduate is more likely to become a criminal defendant than a criminal defense attorney. Gifted criminal defense investigators are even harder to find. This needs to change."

Last month, Melendez, Greenbaum, Adam Tebrugge, a highly respected criminal lawyer, veteran capital defense investigator Jeff Walsh, and James Bain, a client of the Innocence Project of Florida ( http://www.floridainnocence.org/) who was imprisoned for 35 years before DNA testing proved him innocent, appeared at a forum at New College of Florida in Sarasota.

Melendez, who has never received any compensation from the state and who since his release has become a worldwide speaker and human rights activist, spoke about how he endured the horrendous conditions in prison, and he pointed out that he "was not saved by the system. I was saved in spite of the system."

After the forum, Greenbaum, a graduate of New College, told a reporter for the Catalyst, the New College student newspaper, that, "Something very wrong is happening in our world. Innocent people's precious lives are being stolen and destroyed by our criminal justice system.

"These tragedies occur far more often than most people realize," Greenbaum pointed out. "Corruption, human error and bad practices all lend themselves to the phenomenon of wrongful conviction. Corruption and error are inherent; bad practices are not. We must demand the adoption of well-known but oft disregarded safeguards, such as double-blind line-up protocols. And when corruption is at fault, the responsible actors must be brought to account. Absent the aforementioned, cases like Juan's and Jamie's will continue to be routine. They spent a combined 53 years in prison for other men's crimes and only won their freedom through a combination of luck and dogged determination. Most wrongly convicted inmates are not so fortunate."

One purpose of the New College forum was to make students aware of the important work that innocence projects are doing across the country. Spearheading this work was The Innocence Project (http://www.innocenceproject.org/), which was created by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld as a non-profit legal clinic affiliated with the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in 1992. On its website It has since become "a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice."

Since the original Innocence Project was established nearly two decades ago, innocence projects have appeared all over the country, with the Innocence Network (http://www.innocencenetwork.org/) now including member organizations in 44 states and the District of Columbia.

In its 2010 Annual report, The Innocence Project's Scheck and Neufeld write that

"While we remain committed to the important work of using DNA evidence to clear those who have been wrongfully convicted, we believe we can do even more to leverage the power of these remarkable stories to bring about fundamental improvement in our deeply flawed criminal justice system." Establishing more non-DNA based innocence projects is one way to do that.

Rosa Greenbaum told the Catalyst that "Student investigators, working with innocence projects nationwide, have been instrumental in freeing the innocent for nearly two decades now. Lessons of that sort adhere and contribute mightily to a more just society. Students everywhere should be educated about this monstrous stain on our ideals, so that they might confront it as both scholars and citizens. Ending bias in the criminal justice system ... which often leads directly to the conviction of the factually innocent, is the civil rights fight of our time. As Juan said in his presentation, we would not stand for slavery or segregation; nor should we stand for their modern equivalent."

At the time of his release, Juan Roberto Melendez, who had spent nearly eighteen years of his life on death row for a crime he did not commit, was the 99^th death row inmate to be exonerated in the U.S. in nearly thirty years.

Now, nearly ten years after Melendez's release, the number of death row inmates that have been exonerated has swelled to more than 130 in 26 different states since 1973, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/).

I CAN'T CLAIM TO KNOW THE WRITER OF THE PIECE BELOW...

What Poor White South Africans Can Teach Us About the White Conservative Soul in the Age of Obama

My grandmother would never give a homeless white man money. Why? Her logic was simple: Given all of the privileges of gender and skin color enjoyed by white men in America, he has no one to blame but himself for being on skid row. I am not as hard nosed on those matters as she. I have come to recognize how Capital is mobile and the myriad ways in which neo-liberalism has struck down so many in its scythe-like wake…across the colorline.

That qualifier now having been noted, I will freely admit that I have a hard time feeling any pity for the poor white folks of South Africa. As beneficiaries of Apartheid they must face their comeuppance for the arch of history is indeed long. Justice is not always easy. There is a tax to be paid and some redistribution to be done.

Race is America’s national obsession (where to varying degrees the house that race built has given us all a role to play, such that on occasion we get to be amateur biologists, crude historians, lay social scientists and jackbooted philosophers on the big question of the color line). However, this dynamic is not unique to the United States. Racism and white supremacy were concurrent with the rise of modernity, colonialism, and Empire. Thus, these ideologies were also centuries long global projects that left horrible marks which the coloured peoples of the world are struggling to this day to repair and remedy.

Comparative race studies offers a number of powerful frameworks for making sense of White anxiety in the Age of Obama. Here, the voices of white South Africans in post-Apartheid South Africa offer a penetrating insight into the racial id of the White neo-John Birch New Right and the Tea Party GOP. While some of the pundit classes deploy the sophisticated (and often overused) language and frameworks of Critical Whiteness Studies and “white privilege” to explain the racial demagoguery of the Birthers, Deathers, Tea Party, and anti-Obama conspiranoids, there are more basic impulses motivating white racial resentment that often remain under-discussed.

Whiteness is always afraid of losing. Whiteness is invisible except when it is threatened. And ultimately whiteness is the luxury of never having to think about one’s advantages except when they are in perceived as being imperiled….and then being justified in committing any deed (however unethical or immoral) to protect one’s advanced placement in the marathon of life.

Unearned privileges are by definition taken for granted. There is a natural order of things that must not be upended for the psychic pain is too great. It is only through an internalization of this almost pathologically narcissistic way of comprehending social reality that White folks can even utter the language of“white oppression.” When Beck talks about Obama hating white people, he signals to the sickness. When Buchanan talks about white men suffering under a 21st century Jim Crow in the Age of Obama he signals to the sickness. When Limbaugh, and the assorted cast-off waste water and human detritus that in total constitute contemporary Fox News Conservatism, talk about fictions of black superiority and white subordination–a world where Obama and his supporters will make whites shine black peoples’ shoes–they are deep in the sickness.

There is a poetic irony at work here. In the United States, black and brown folk have never sought revenge against White people. The Black Freedom Struggle resulted in no mass killings of white people by African Americans and their allies. Individual acts of politically motivated violence and score settling were even more uncommon. Even when justice should have been meted out at the end of the barrel of a gun, the appeals for black freedom and liberation were inclusive and humanistic:

The goal of the Black Freedom Struggle was broad: this country’s centuries long crusade for racial justice was in many ways an endeavor to save White America from the rotten core of its own bigotry.

In South Africa, black people and others suffered merciless violence at the hands of the White Afrikaners. After much struggle and hardship, they did not resort to pogroms or a culling of the heard as a means of working through their just rage against Whites. No, even in South Africa where the blood of liberation oftentimes flowed thick and deep in the streets, black South Africans are able to look at the white poor and have pity and empathy for them.

In both cases, White populists fear the universal laws of action and reaction. Historically, Whiteness offered so much ugliness that many White people fear an inevitable backlash–even while denying the historic and contemporary realities of white supremacy. This dynamic has always fascinated me because it is apparent that many White folks, and the Conservative White Soul in particular, fear getting their comeuppance for a set of ill deeds that they apparently do not want to admit even occurred. The twists and leaps of logic necessary to maintain one’s sanity in the face of such madness truly boggles the mind.

Perhaps that is one of the gifts of the Black Soul and its Blues Sensibility to the world? In the face of white suffering we are able to empathize, sympathize, and share with those who may not do so with us. Is this a blessing? Is it a curse? I remain both unsure and uncertain.

Editor and founder of the blog We Are Respectable Negroes which has been featured by the NY Times, the Utne Reader, and The Atlantic Monthly. Writing under a pseudonym, Chauncey DeVega's essays on race, popular culture, and politics have appeared in various books, as well as on such sites as the Washington Post's The Root and Popmatters.