Origins of the Taliban

Opium Series

Seeds of Terror by Gretchen Peters, 2009, Excerpts

The origins of the Taliban are steeped in legend, elevating the group’s barely literate, one-eyed leader to semi-divine status. The story begins in mid-1994 when rival warlords were ravaging the Afghan countryside and terrorizing the public. Neighbors came to Mullah Omar, then a teacher in a small religious school, or madrassa, outside Kandahar, to tell him two young girls in their village had been abducted by a local warlord and repeatedly raped. Horrified, Omar raised a force of thirty madrassa students [Talibs], armed with half as many rifles, and attacked the commander’s base. They freed the girls and hanged the commander from his tank barrel.

A few months later, Omar’s force intervened again when two rival commanders fought over a young boy both men wanted to take as a lover. Commanders were looting people, raping women and boys for days, and then killing them. Mullah Omar raised his voice against these people. As Omar’s reputation as a local Robin Hood grew, Afghanistan’s war-weary public embraced the Taliban, which swept across the country, capturing many towns without firing a shot. His supporters believed Omar was possessed with a profound, God-given wisdom.

The Taliban initially made commitments to stamp out the poppy trade – but only acted on them a handful of times. These commitments were swiftly dropped as political realities and need for funds overcame their original objectives. As the Taliban conquered district after district in Kandahar, they attracted the attention of other warlords with ties to the opium trade.

Fueled by drug money and joined at the hip by al Qaeda, the Taliban turned Afghanistan into the world’s first fully fledged narco-terror state. In the remote areas where it was grown, opium had literally become a form of currency. Local shopkeepers kept scales in their shops, as opposed to cash boxes or registers. You’d pay for your groceries with a golf ball-sized chunk of opium.

The Taliban built a fighting force of four thousand and was able to pay its troops three times what other Afghan commanders could. After taking control of Kandahar – just eleven months after their initial emergence – the Taliban claimed to have eleven tanks, nine transport helicopters, several MiG fighter jets, and stacks of heavy weaponry and ammunition. They set up a police training school and educated bureaucrats.

By September 1996, just two years after they emerged, they would roll victorious into Kabul. By 1997, Afghanistan became the world’s leading opium producer, having outpaced Burma.

Mullah Omar: Taliban leader 'died in Pakistan in 2013'

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33703097

29 Jul 2015

Taliban leader Mullah Omar died two years ago in Pakistan, a spokesman for Afghanistan's security services says. The Taliban is expected to issue a statement soon. Sources at the Taliban's two main councils in Quetta and Peshawar in Pakistan told the BBC they were in intensive talks to agree on a replacement for Mullah Omar. Pakistan's government and security services have not commented on the claims so far. They have always denied that Mullah Omar was in their country. The Afghan government, elected last year, has embarked on a peace process with the Taliban.

Mullah Omar has not been seen in public since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001. Despite his long absence from the public view, the mystique of the man has been overwhelming. He had become a symbol and a unifying figure within the Taliban. While the day-to-day affairs have been managed by his deputies, everything else revolved around his name. Mullah Omar led the Taliban to victory over rival Afghan militias in the civil war that followed the withdrawal of Soviet troops. His alliance with al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden prompted the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Mullah Mohammed Omar

- Taliban say he was born in 1960 in the village of Chah-i-Himmat, in Kandahar province

- Fought in resistance against Soviet occupation in 1980s, suffering a shrapnel injury to his right eye

- Forged close ties to al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden

- Became "Supreme Leader" of Taliban movement in 1996

- US-led forces overthrew his government in 2001

Pope Francis Encyclica Laudato – 2015 Jun

Pope Francis Series 

http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html 

Economic Growth 

Growth of the past two centuries has not always led to an integral development and an improvement in the quality of life. 

To accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth proves attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit. It is the false notion that an infinite quantity of energy and resources are available, that it is possible to renew them quickly, and that the negative effects of the exploitation of the natural order can be easily absorbed. 

The deepest roots of our present failures have to do with the direction, goals, meaning and social implications of technological and economic growth.  

People’s quality of life actually diminishes – by the deterioration of the environment, the low quality of food or the depletion of resources – in the midst of economic growth. 

Economic growth tends to certain standardization with the aim of simplifying procedures and reducing costs. A politics concerned with immediate results, supported by consumerist sectors of the population, is driven to produce short-term growth. 

Debt 

The foreign debt of poor countries has become a way of controlling them. 

The culture of relativism drives one person to take advantage of another, to treat others as mere objects, imposing forced labor on them or enslaving them to pay their debts.  

Economics/Finance
 

The twenty-first century is witnessing a weakening of the power of nation states, chiefly because the economic and financial sectors, being transnational, prevail over the political. 

Economic powers continue to justify the current global system where priority tends to be given to speculation and the pursuit of financial gain. The financial crisis of 2007-08 provided an opportunity to develop a new economy. But the response to the crisis did not include rethinking the outdated criteria which continue to rule the world. Saving banks at any cost, making the public pay the price, only reaffirms the absolute power of a financial system, a power which has no future and will only give rise to new crises. 

The economy accepts every advance in technology with a view to profit, without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings. The principle of the maximization of profits reflects a misunderstanding of the very concept of the economy. As long as production is increased, little concern is given to whether it is at the cost of future resources or the health of the environment. 

Some circles maintain that current economics and technology will solve all environmental problems, and argue that the problems of global hunger and poverty will be resolved simply by market growth. People’s quality of life actually diminishes – by the deterioration of the environment, the low quality of food or the depletion of resources – in the midst of economic growth.  

Talk of sustainable growth becomes a way of distracting attention and offering excuses.

Finance overwhelms the real economy. 

Recommendation

A change in lifestyle could bring healthy pressure to bear on those who wield political, economic and social power. This is what consumer movements accomplish by boycotting certain products. They prove successful in changing the way businesses operate, forcing them to consider their environmental footprint and their patterns of production. When social pressure affects their earnings, businesses clearly have to find ways to produce differently. 

Enlighten those who possess power and money

that they may avoid the sin of indifference,

that they may love the common good, advance the weak,

and care for this world in which we live. 

 

IMF report: concern about Income Inequality impacting growth.

Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality: A Global Perspective

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1513.pdf

June 2015 

Inequality within most advanced and emerging markets and developing countries has increased, a phenomenon that has received considerable attention. President Obama called widening income inequality the “defining challenge of our time.” A recent Pew Research Center survey found that the gap between the rich and the poor is considered a major challenge worldwide, and Pope Francis has spoken out against the “economy of exclusion.” The extent of inequality, its drivers, and what to do about it have become some of the most hotly debated issues by policymakers and researchers alike. 

Equality, like fairness, is an important value in most societies. Irrespective of ideology, culture, and religion, people care about inequality. Widening inequality has significant implications for growth and macroeconomic stability; it can concentrate political and decision making power in the hands of a few, lead to a suboptimal use of human resources, cause political and economic instability, and raise crisis risk. The economic and social fallout from the global financial crisis and the resultant headwinds to global growth and employment have heightened the attention to rising income inequality. 

Building on earlier IMF work which has shown that income inequality matters for growth, we show that the income distribution itself matters for growth as well. In particular, our findings suggest that raising the income share of the poor and ensuring that there is no hollowing-out of the middle class is good for growth through a number of interrelated economic, social, and political channels.

 

 

 

Elite Institutions

Power Elite Series

The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills, 1956, Excerpts

No one can be truly powerful unless he has access to the command of major institutions, for it is over these institutional means of power that the truly powerful are powerful. By the power elite, we refer to those political, economic, and military circles which as an intricate set of overlapping cliques share decisions having at least national consequences. In so far as national events are decided, the power elite are those who decide them.

At the pinnacle of each of the three enlarged and centralized domains, there have arisen those higher circles which make up the economic, the political, and the military elites. At the top of the economy, among the corporate rich, there are the chief executives; at the top of the political order, the members of the political directorate; at the top of the military establishment, the elite of soldier-statesmen clustered in and around the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the upper echelon. As each of these domains has coincided with the others, as decisions tend to become total in their consequences, the leading men in each of the three domains of power – the warlords, the corporation chieftains, the political directorate – tend to come together, to form the power elite of America.

Just who exactly is going to the Bilderberg meeting?

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33067655

10 Jun 2015

The Bilderberg meeting, an annual gathering of some of the most powerful and influential figures in the world, starts on Thursday [Austria]. But who's on this year's guest list? Critics call it a sinister conspiracy, reinforcing without accountability the dominance of a transatlantic capitalist cabal. Those involved say it's merely an informal way to understand better the way the world works and to share their expertise to improve it. Whatever one's view, an invitation to the four-day Bilderberg meeting is a sign that someone has arrived as a politician, business leader, administrator or opinion-influencer.

Dehumanization

Lucifer Effect Series

The Lucifer Effect by Zimbardo, 2007, Excerpts

One of the worst things that we can do to our fellow human beings is deprive them of their humanity, render them worthless by exercising the psychological process of dehumanization. This occurs when the “others” are thought not to possess the same feelings, thoughts, values, and purposes in life that we do. The most extreme instance of this hostile imagination at work is of course when it leads to genocide, the plan of one people to eliminate from existence all those who are conceptualized as their enemy. War engenders cruelty and barbaric behavior against anyone considered the Enemy, as the dehumanized, demonic Other.

Dehumanization is the central construct in our understanding of “man’s inhumanity to man.” Dehumanization occurs when whenever some human beings consider other human beings to be excluded from the moral order of being a human person. The objects of this psychological process lose their human status in the eyes of their dehumanizers. Dehumanization is a central process in prejudice, racism, and discrimination. Dehumanization stigmatizes others, attributing them a “spoiled identity.”

The Stanford Prison Experiment created an environment of dehumanization just as real prisons do. It started with the loss of freedom and extended to the loss of privacy and finally to the loss of personal identity. It separated inmates for their past, their community, and their families and substituted for their moral reality a current reality that forced them to live with other prisoners in an anonymous cell with virtually no personal space. Tender, caring emotions were absent among both guards and prisoners after only a few days. External, coercive rules and arbitrary decisions by guards dictated their behavior. In our prison, as in all prisons, emotions were suppressed, inhibited, and distorted.

The Nazi genocide of the Jews began by first creating through propaganda films and posters a national perception of these fellow human beings as inferior forms of animal life, as vermin, as voracious rats. The many lynchings of black people by mobs of white in cities throughout the United States were likewise not considered crimes against humanity because of the stigmatization of them as only “niggers.” Behind the My Lai massacre of hundreds of innocent Vietnamese civilians by American soldiers was the dehumanizing “gooks” label the GIs had for all of those different-looking Asian people. Yesterday’s “gooks” have become today’s “hajjis” and “towel heads” in the Iraq War as a new corps of soldiers derogates these different-looking citizens and soldiers.

Duty to One’s Country

On Killing Series

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, 1928, Excerpts

While they continue to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying. While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger. But for all that we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards – they were very free with all these expressions. We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from the true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.

For us lads of eighteen, they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress – to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness. The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I see that the keenest brains in the world invent weapons and words to make it more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world see these things; all my generation is experiencing these things with me. What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and proffered our account? What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been killing; - it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of this?

Robert Morris - Revolution Financier

Constitution Series

An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles A. Beard, 1913, Edited Excerpts 

No man contributed more to the establishment of our Constitution than Robert Morris, “the Patriot Financier.” Robert Morris was a stupendous political force in Washington’s administration. Of all the members of the Convention, Robert Morris of Pennsylvania had the most widely diversified economic interests. He owned and directed ships trading with the East and West Indies, engaged in iron and manufacturing, bought and sold thousands of acres of land in all parts of the country, particularly in the west and south, and speculated in lots in Washington as soon as he learned of the establishment of the capital there. Had he been less ambitious he would have died worth millions instead of in poverty and debt, after having served a term in a debtor’s cell.

The Anti-Federalists by Jackson Main, 1961, Edited Excerpts

The Bank of North America was connected above all with the name of Robert Morris. As superintendent of finance he controlled the finances of Congress for three years during the Revolution; he conducted profitable mercantile ventures while holding that office, and he had a dominant influence in the Bank of North America.

Since the bank was the only one of its kind, it had a financial monopoly, which the directors employed to crush all oppositions and to dominate trade. It promoted the concentration of wealth into a few hands, thus fostering the growth of aristocracy and the control of government by the few, rather than by the many.

James Warren wrote to John Adams, “Morris is a King, and more than a King, He has the keys of the treasury at his command, appropriates money as he pleases, and everybody must look up to him for justice and for favor.”

Constitution Ratified

Constitution Series

The Anti-Federalists by Jackson Main, 1961, Edited Excerpts

1787-88: ratification by nine states. Since the Federalists were a minority in at least six and probably seven states, they ought surely to have been defeated. Yet they came from behind to win. Wealth and position supported the Constitution. Lower ranking army officers and men of lesser economic and social distinction tended to be Antifederal; doctors were to be found on both sides.

The Antifederalists asserted that the Constitution created a consolidated government, and if this were so, the members of the Philadelphia Convention had violated their instructions. The convention had acted illegally. If the Antifederalists had dominated the Philadelphia Convention, the government of the nation would have continued to be a confederation of sovereign states, and the democratic principle of local self-government would have been emphasized.

The pro-Constitution attitude of the newspapers was undoubtedly important. The number of papers which opposed ratification or even of those which presented both sides impartially was very few. This was natural, for the city people were overwhelmingly Federal, and the printers were influenced by local opinion as well as by their own convictions; moreover, it was profitable to agree with the purchasers and the advertisers.

The Federalist domination of news coverage permitted them not only to obtain more space for their own publications but to conceal or distort the facts. The objections of the Antifederalists were sometimes twisted so as to make them appear foolish; at other times it was denied that there was any opposition at all to the Constitution.