The Massachusetts Election and the Challenges Ahead

The Massachusetts election and the challenges ahead

By Fred Goldstein
Published Jan 27, 2010 5:07 PM

The victory of right-wing candidate Scott Brown in the Massachusetts senatorial election throws into bold relief the crisis for the workers and the oppressed in this country. It is one of leadership, politics and organization.

Many lessons are being drawn by the Democratic Party leadership, various liberal pundits, labor union leaders and others about what happened in Massachusetts. But, simply stated, there is one overriding lesson. The dismal record of the Democratic Party leadership and the Obama administration’s utter subservience to the banks and corporate interests have left the base of the Democratic Party out in the cold — leading to disillusionment and confusion.

Having to choose between the needs of their base — the masses of workers, the poor and oppressed communities, and the progressive middle class — and their corporate masters, the top Democratic Party leadership showed once again that it is a captive of corporations and their lobbyists. The administration is surrounded by bankers, finance officials, corporate representatives, generals and admirals — just as every previous administration has been.
Hand-in-hand: Big business and government

The understandable enthusiasm and high hopes that accompanied the historic election of the first African-American president, and the pushing back of racism that this represented, are waning as Barack Obama follows the well-trodden path of all those who step into the role of chief executive for U.S. imperialism.

The disillusionment and anger that were bound to set in were first expressed in the defeat of liberal multimillionaire and former banker Gov. John Corzine of New Jersey. The defeat of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate for senator in that state, is another expression of that same disillusionment.

The problem at the moment is that the right wing is feeding on that disillusionment, and will try to gain ground within the working class and the middle class to sow racism, militaristic ideology and division, in the midst of a deepening economic crisis.

The forces behind Brown

This is what let Brown, a little-known, right-wing Republican and Massachusetts state senator, defeat the state’s attorney general in the Jan. 20 Senate race for a seat held by Ted Kennedy for close to half a century.

The Brown victory has thrown the Democratic Party and the Obama administration into a crisis. It tipped the voting balance in the Senate, depriving the Democrats of a filibuster-proof majority and thus threatening the health care bill and possibly the rest of the Obama administration’s legislative agenda. The Brown victory further signified that Democratic candidates may be in jeopardy in the 2010 congressional elections.

Brown is a Republican who campaigned with a blend of right-wing, reactionary positions plus demagogic appeals to the working class. His campaign was supported by the so-called Tea Party movement — a network of ultra-rightists and fascist elements that surfaced during the town hall meetings and poured vile racism and fraudulent anti-communist attacks on President Obama.

The Tea Party groups are coordinated under the umbrella of Freedom Works, a right-wing foundation headed by Dick Armey. This former U.S. representative from Texas funneled funds from the health care industry and the oil, coal and utility companies into the creation of phony “grassroots” movements against the health care bill and environmental programs. Right-wing networks around the country directed millions of dollars into the Brown campaign.

Brown denounced the bloated health care bill, backroom deals by the Obama administration and government spending. He played on the fear of increased taxes and called for creating jobs. He drove around in a pickup truck to create the image of a “man of the people.”

At the same time he came out for waterboarding and denounced legal representation for prisoners, such as those in Guantánamo. He was a champion of the so-called “war against terror.” He opposed legislation legalizing undocumented workers. He condemned cap-and-trade legislation to reduce carbon emissions — not because it is totally ineffective, but because it is “big government intervention.”

To add to the confusion and deception, Brown praised Kennedy and did not play the race card against Obama. On the other hand, he was supported by the most virulent racist and fascist elements in capitalist society and undoubtedly strengthened them politically.

Martha Coakley, on the other hand, ran a lackluster and belated campaign, basically defending the program of the Obama administration on health care, job creation, etc.

There have been endless post-election analyses of the upset. Some attribute it to the poor campaign run by Coakley. They bemoan that the outcome would have been different if only she had run a more effective campaign and had not made blunders, like not recognizing the name of a famous Boston Red Sox pitcher; if only she had not been so aloof, had not gone on vacation, etc., etc.

But this is taking a completely narrow view of the defeat. What are the circumstances that allowed a gaffe or a lackluster campaign to become decisive in an electoral race for a “liberal” seat held by the multimillionaire Kennedy dynasty for decades? Obama won Massachusetts by 67 percent. Brown beat Coakley by 52 percent to 47 percent.

Economic emergency and backroom deals

Bob Herbert, the only African-American op-ed columnist for the New York Times, wrote an angry piece on Jan. 23 after the Brown victory, entitled “They Still Don’t Get It.” Wrote Herbert: “There is an economic emergency in the country with millions upon millions of Americans riddled with fear and anxiety as they struggle with long-term joblessness, home foreclosures, personal bankruptcies and dwindling opportunities for themselves and their children.”

Regarding the health care bill, which Coakley had to defend and Brown ran against, Herbert wrote: “No one in his or her right mind could have believed that a workable, efficient, cost-effective system could come out of the monstrously ugly plan that finally emerged from the Senate after long months of shady alliances, disgraceful backroom deals, outlandish payoffs and abject capitulation to the insurance companies and giant pharmaceutical outfits.”

Add to this that the banks have humiliated the Obama administration by first taking bailouts from the government and then giving out billions of dollars in bonuses to their executives. They are now pulling in record profits, refusing to lend money or readjust mortgages, and working to sabotage all restraint on their financial manipulations.

Meanwhile, unemployment together with underemployment is at 27 million to 30 million. Three million homes went into foreclosure last year, and millions more are expected. Hunger, poverty, wage cuts, pressures on the job, loss of health care and every other hardship are growing.

The big question on the minds of the workers is when this will stop and who will put a stop to it.

The greatest potential resource that the workers in this capitalist society have is the unions. But at the moment, the rank and file is paralyzed by the complete absence of any independence or struggle at the leadership level.

In the Massachusetts election 29 percent of Brown voters had voted for Obama in 2008. An AFL-CIO poll showed that union members voted 49 percent to 46 percent for Brown. These are the numbers that should be zeroed in on.

Workers and others who voted for an African-American president in 2008 have now swung to a right-wing candidate because of demagogy and because there was no place else to go.

A challenge to fight back

That is the challenge to all the advanced elements in the U.S. All those who are against capitalism, racism, imperialism, who are partisans of the workers and the oppressed in the unions, the communities, the political movements on the campuses, youth and students, must find an organizational form to come together on a national and regional level to launch a massive movement to fight back — to fight for jobs and to formulate a minimum program that can express the interests of the workers and the oppressed independently of the capitalist parties.

The liberals, social democrats and labor leadership are all fixated on the electoral arena as the primary form of political struggle. They are directly or indirectly supporters of or dependent upon the Democratic Party.

Electoral struggle is a legitimate form of struggle but cannot be substituted for mass mobilization and class combat. The way to influence legislation in this country historically has been through strikes, sit-ins, takeovers, rebellions and mass resistance of all types.

The crisis in the Democratic Party has become a crisis for the labor unions and social democrats in general. They have led the masses along behind the Democratic leadership. This is the party that just sent 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, rains down missiles from Predator drones in Pakistan, still occupies Iraq, sent 12,000 troops to occupy Haiti, supports Israel in its suppression of the Palestinians, builds bases in Colombia, sponsored a coup in Honduras, and so on.

The crisis of the Democratic Party should not be our crisis. It should be turned into an opportunity for the broad movement of the workers, especially the labor unions, to declare their independence, to expose the capitalist interests behind the economic crisis, to fight for class unity of the workers — organized and unorganized, documented and undocumented, employed and unemployed — to open up a struggle in the streets and workplaces, and to put forward its own political program.

We should not allow the right wing to co-opt disillusionment in the midst of an economic crisis. The working class in this country is a sleeping giant. It is time for every revolutionary to think long and hard about how to go about helping this giant awake and shake the ground under the decadent ruling class, whose profit system is bringing hardship without end.

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Executive Office of the President
MICHAEL FROMAN, Deputy Asst. to the President Citigroup
VALERIE JARRET, Asst. to the President Chicago Stock Exchange
JAMES L. JONES, National Security Adviser Chevron

White House Office
SEAN KENNEDY, Special Asst. on Legislative Affairs AT&T

Commerce Dept.
MARC BEREJKA, Senior Policy Advisor, Microsoft
DENNIS F. HIGHTOWER, Deputy Secretary Designate Accenture

Defense Dept.
WILLIAM J. LYNN, Deputy Defense Secretary Raytheon

Energy Dept.
WILLIAM BRINKMAN, Director, Office of Science & Technology Lucent Technologies
STEVEN E. KOONIN, Under Secretary for Science BP (formerly British Petroleum)

State Dept.
JACOB J. LEW, Deputy Secretary Management & Resources Citigroup
JUDITH A. MCHALE, Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy Discovery Communications
GEORGE J. MITCHELL, Special Envoy to Middle East Defense Logistics Agency

Treasury Dept.
MATTHEW KABAKER, Deputy Asst. Secretary Blackstone Group
MARK A. PATTERSON, Chief of Staff to the Secretary Goldman Sachs
JAKE STEWART, Counselor to the Secretary Alcoa
KIM N. WALLACE, Asst. Secretary Legislative Affairs Lehman Brothers/Barclays Bank
NEAL S. WOLIN, Deputy Secretary Hartford Financial Services

SOURCE: BUSINESS WEEK, FEB. 1-8

Fiji blog cops a blast over ‘treason’ law makeover misrepresentation

UN chief lands in Cyprus to usher reunification talks into final stages

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today praised the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders for the significant progress made under United Nations-backed talks on reunifying Cyprus, as he arrived on the Mediterranean island for the first time.

Ed Miliband declares war on climate change sceptics

Climate secretary Ed Miliband warns against listening to ’siren voices’, in an interview with the Observer
Juliette Jowit, environment editor
The Observer, Sunday 31 January 2010
The climate secretary, Ed Miliband, last night warned of the danger of a public backlash against the science of global warming in the face of continuing claims that experts have manipulated data.
In an exclusive interview with the Observer, Miliband spoke out for the first time about last month’s revelations that climate scientists had withheld and covered up information and the apology made by the influential UN climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which admitted it had exaggerated claims about the melting of Himalayan glaciers.
The perceived failure of global talks on combating climate change in Copenhagen last month has also been blamed for undermining public support. But in the government’s first high-level recognition of the growing pressure on public opinion, Miliband declared a “battle” against the “siren voices” who denied global warming was real or caused by humans, or that there was a need to cut carbon emissions to tackle it.
“It’s right that there’s rigour applied to all the reports about climate change, but I think it would be wrong that when a mistake is made it’s somehow used to undermine the overwhelming picture that’s there,” he said.
“We know there’s a physical effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leading to higher temperatures, that’s a question of physics; we know CO2 concentrations are at their highest for 6,000 years; we know there are observed increases in temperatures; and we know there are observed effects that point to the existence of human-made climate change. That’s what the vast majority of scientists tell us.”
Mistakes and attempts to hide contradictory data had to be seen in the light of the thousands of pages of evidence in the IPCC’s four-volume report in 2007, said Miliband. The most recent accusation about the panel’s work is that its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, may have known before the Copenhagen summit that its assessment report had seriously exaggerated the rate of melting of the Himalayan glaciers.
However, Miliband was adamant that the IPCC was on the right track. “It’s worth saying that no doubt when the next report comes out it will suggest there have been areas where things have been happening more dramatically than the 2007 report implied,” he said.
The danger of climate scepticism was that it would undermine public support for unpopular decisions needed to curb carbon emissions, including the likelihood of higher energy bills for households, and issues such as the visual impact of wind turbines, said Miliband, who is also energy secretary.
If the UK did not invest in renewable, clean energy, it would lose jobs and investment to other countries, have less energy security because of the dependence on oil and gas imports and contribute to damaging temperature rises for future generations. “There are a whole variety of people who are sceptical, but who they are is less important than what they are saying, and what they are saying is profoundly dangerous,” he said. “Every­thing we know about life is that we should obey the precautionary principle; to take what the sceptics say seriously would be a profound risk.”
The Copenhagen conference in December ended with no formal agreement to make deep cuts in global emissions, or even set a timetable, but Miliband warned activists against “despair”.
The UN conference was a “disappointment”, he said, but there were important achievements, including the agreement by countries responsible for 80% of emissions to set domestic carbon targets by today. “There’s a message for people who take these things seriously: don’t mourn, organise,” said Miliband, who has previously called for a Make Poverty History-style mass public campaign to pressure politicians into cutting emissions.
Lord Smith, the Environment Agency chairman, said: “The [Himalayan] glaciers may not melt by 2035, but they are melting and there’s a serious problem that’s going to affect substantial parts of Asia over the course of the next 100 or more years.”

Climate change study was ‘misused’

Jonathan Leake

LORD STERN’S report on climate change, which underpins government policy, has come under fire from a disaster analyst who says the research he contributed was misused.
Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a US-based consultancy, said the Stern report misquoted his work to suggest a firm link between global warming and the frequency and severity of disasters such as floods and hurricanes.
The Stern report, citing Muir-Wood, said: “New analysis based on insurance industry data has shown that weather-related catastrophe losses have increased by 2% each year since the 1970s over and above changes in wealth, inflation and population growth/movement.
“If this trend continued or intensified with rising global temperatures, losses from extreme weather could reach 0.5%-1% of world GDP by the middle of the century.”

Muir-Wood said his research showed no such thing and accused Stern of “going far beyond what was an acceptable extrapolation of the evidence”.
The criticism is among the strongest made of the Stern report, which, since its publication in 2006, has influenced policy, including green taxes.
Muir-Wood’s study did show an association between global warming and the impact and frequency of disasters. But he said this was caused by exceptionally strong hurricanes in the final two years of his study.
A spokesman for Stern said: “Muir-Wood may have been deceived by his own observations.”

Bad science needs good scrutiny

Science and public policy can be uncomfortable bedfellows, as we saw last year with the sacking of Professor David Nutt, the government’s chief drugs adviser. Politicians, we know, can play fast and loose with “expert” evidence. But scientists, too, are neither infallible nor always pure of heart. Their findings must be open to scrutiny and challenge.
There have been two recent developments in which this newspaper has had a pivotal role. One concerned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
As is now conceded by the IPCC, a claim made in its influential fourth assessment report in 2007 that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 “or perhaps sooner”, was wrong. The claim, based on an eight-year-old magazine report subsequently picked up by environmental pressure groups, had been challenged by scientists commissioned by the Indian government but their views were dismissed by Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, as “voodoo science”.
If this was an isolated example, perhaps the matter could rest. But other sections of the IPCC’s report dealing with the impact of climate change are also in doubt. The scientific basis is thin for claims that global warming is responsible for a rise in the number or severity of extreme weather events such as hurricanes and was not based on peer-reviewed research, as we reported last week. Alarm bells should have rung much sooner when the IPCC began drawing on such “grey” science and claims by pressure groups to support its case.

We are not seeking to rubbish every claim by the IPCC or destroy the underlying arguments about climate change. The IPCC’s evidence on the physical science is extensively peer-reviewed and remains largely intact. But when scientists allow claims from pressure groups into the public arena, without checking the evidence, they let themselves and everybody else down.
That is also true of the case of Dr Andrew Wakefield and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. For parents of children with autism, the idea that this was caused by the vaccine provided succour and the prospect of compensation. Many other parents refused to have their children vaccinated with MMR.
Dr Wakefield exploited these concerns ruthlessly, taking money from the parents’ lawyers for his researches, developing his own patented single measles vaccine and recruiting children for £5 a time at his son’s birthday party for experiments with, as the General Medical Council put it, “callous disregard” for their distress and pain. Some sections of the media have been criticised for spreading his claims but we should remember that they were first published in The Lancet after being peer-reviewed by scientists. Conversely, it was Brian Deer’s reporting for The Sunday Times which exposed this wrongdoing.
Dr Wakefield is finished in this country, thanks to the GMC, whatever his followers may think. Dr Pachauri is still head of the IPCC, although he presided over the use of dodgy science in its reports and ignored legitimate criticism of that science. He should go.

Strategic Interests: When the Jihadists Take Mogadishu

Strategic Interests

by J. Peter Pham, Ph.D.
World Defense Review columnist

When the Jihadists Take Mogadishu

Last Friday, the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council voted to extend for another six months the mandate of its woefully undermanned military force in Mogadishu. The AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), composed of some 5,000 soldiers from Uganda and Burundi, has been besieged by Islamist insurgents since its arrival nearly three years ago, losing dozens of its members to repeated attacks like the suicide bombing last September 17, which killed seventeen peacekeepers, including the deputy force commander, Brigadier General Juvénal Niyoyunguruza of Burundi, and wounded some forty others.

Despite the peacekeepers’ valiant efforts, they cannot be expected to confer legitimacy and viability on Somalia’s “Transitional Federal Government” (TFG) when it does not possess those qualities in its own right. Hence, the international backing of the regime may not be sufficient to ensure its survival and that it is very possible—if not likely—that, by the end of the year, the TFG’s few remaining outposts in the capital will have fallen to its opponents. Thus policymakers and analysts need to consider what will be the consequences of such a victory by the jihadists.

Of course the mere possibility that the Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (”Movement of Warrior Youth,” al-Shabaab), the insurgent group declared a “specially designated global terrorist” by the United States two years ago and a “listed terrorist organization” by the Australian government last year, and its allies in the Hisbul Islam (”Islamic party”) movement led by Sheikh Hassan Dahir ‘Aweys, a figure who appears personally on both United States and United Nations antiterrorism sanctions lists, might actually triumph is so anathema to some members of the international community that they have essentially been rendered incapable of rational analysis about the situation.

As a result, their actions hasten the very outcome that they seek to prevent at all costs. Thus the shipment, first reported last week by the Mareeg news service, that the TFG had imported a large shipment of arms, including tanks—the latter representing a considerable escalation from the “technicals,” improvised battle wagons constructed by mounting a machine or anti-aircraft gun on a pickup truck or four-wheel drive vehicle, which have been ubiquitous in the Somali conflict. It later emerged that the shipment came on Sierra Leonean-flagged vessel, the MV Alpha Kirawira, which, according to a press release by the European Union Naval Force (EU NAVFOR) Somalia’s Operation Atalanta, was chartered by the UN Support Office for AMISOM (UNSOA) and escorted out of the Kenyan port of Mombasa by the Spanish frigate SPS Navarra and accompanied all the way to Mogadishu by the French corvette FS Commandant L’Herminier.

Unfortunately, what I noted here six months ago with respect to the unfortunate U.S. shipment of arms to the TFG earlier this year is also true about the current consignment: it is likely to prove that a “poorly thought-out gesture may have handed the Islamist extremists both the weapons and the nationalist (and anti-American) card to use in their fight against the TFG.” (One does not have to agree with all her conclusions to acknowledge the validity of the assertion made in the essay by Bronwyn Bruton of the Council on Foreign Relations for the November/December 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs that “had it not been for the United States’ counterterrorism efforts, the sharia courts and al-Shabaab might have remained marginal.”)

In fact, as I have had occasion to argue, “if any further proof is needed of the failure of the policy of simply shipping weapons to the TFG is a mistake of startling proportions,” it is the evidence from the open markets of Mogadishu that “the TFG is both so corrupt and so lacking in capacity that sending it materiel has only made it more convenient for the insurgents fighting it—who are well-financed thanks to their foreign donors, both state and non-state—to simply replenish their arsenals on the open market.”

The observation about the weakness of the TFG should, of course, come as no surprise given the extra-legal machinations which were required one year ago by the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and the appositely-created parliamentarians just to give birth to the regime’s current incarnation under the supposed “moderate” Islamist Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed (see my report at the time on this episode).

My colleague, Michael Weinstein of Purdue University, is quite on target when he noted in an analysis last week that while, “in the sense of international recognition, the TFG is Somalia’s ‘legitimate’ government and [al-Shabaab and Hisbul Islam] are the ‘armed opposition’; in the sense of power and momentum, the TFG and the rest of the anti-Shabaab coalition … form a variegated and divided opposition” as the jihadists go about their strategy of encircling the transitional regime in Mogadishu by achieving dominance in the central regions of Hiraan, Galguduud, and southern Mudug.

As I reported last week, it was Dhuusamareeb, the capital of the Galguduud region, which was being contested; it now appears that fierce fighting is taking place across the region, including its commercial hub at Guriceel. Even if the jihadists lose any specific battle, it is unlikely that their overall strategy will be frustrated given their broad momentum and deep resources.

Moreover, Professor Weinstein is also correct in dismissing the wishful thinking of some that fissures are opening up among the insurgents, noting both that al-Shabaab’s “contending factions made a demonstration of unity on January 1 at a ceremony in Mogadishu showing off hundreds of newly trained fighters” and that “despite its conflicts with [Hisbul Islam] in the deep southern regions, [al-Shabaab] appears to be able to collaborate with Hisbul Islam tactically and, perhaps, strategically elsewhere.” In fact, in fighting this week around Beledweyne, capital of Hiraan and Somalia’s second largest city in terms of population, armed units from the two Islamist groups were fighting side by side.

These considerations are important when one begins to tally up estimates of relative strengths of the various opposing factions and compare their training and command-and-control structures. Well-informed analysts estimate that al-Shabaab has somewhere between 4,000 and 7,000 fighters in and around Mogadishu, at least one-third of whom have had advanced training from its foreign jihadist allies, who apparently exercise a great deal of control over them. In addition, al-Shabaab has up to 6,000 fighters scattered around the country.

The group also has anywhere between 500 and 1,500 foreign jihadists who have flocked to its banner from as far away as Nigeria and Pakistan as well as several hundred Somalis from the diaspora. Hisbul Islam’s organization is more clan-based, with perhaps as up to 5,000 fighters around the capital, the majority of whom hail from the Hawiye clan of Habar Gidir, and perhaps as many as 3,000 elsewhere in the southern and central Somalia.

Although only about 10 percent of Hisbul Islam’s forces have had advanced training, most of those more skilled fighters are deployed in or close to Mogadishu, thus increasing their impact. The Ahlu Sunna wal-Jama’a (roughly, “[Followers of] the Traditions and Consensus [of the Prophet Muhammad]”) militias opposing al-Shabaab in the central regions have maybe several thousand members, but most of these are clansmen mustered on an ad hoc basis, rather than a standing force, notwithstanding Ethiopian efforts to train and assist them.

In contrast, the TFG claims to have 5,000 troops, although that figure is inflated with clan militiamen it manages to hire from time to time and over whom it has no effective control. At the most, the regime of Sharif Ahmed may actually command 1,500 poorly trained fighters. However, what it does have, thanks to the largess of its foreign benefactors, is an excess of armaments.

This, however, is a double-edged sword. As the representative of one Mogadishu-based Somali non-governmental organization told me over the weekend, the lack of training and the large amounts of ammunition means that TFG troops can and do fire at will—and the resulting high level of “collateral” civilian casualties hardly improve to the TFG’s popularity.

So, what will happen if the TFG collapses?

First, the event, however undesirable, needs to be kept in perspective: while the jihadists in Somalia and their allies abroad will undoubtedly try to capitalize on the propaganda value of their victory, it really does not change the strategic balance that much. As I told a Congressional hearing last June, “even without taking Mogadishu, al-Shabaab and its allies have already succeeded in carving out a geographical space where they and like-minded jihadist groups can operate freely … even without toppling the TFG, al-Shabaab has already achieved a major objective of jihadists worldwide by securing a territorial base from which they can carry out attacks elsewhere, especially against targets on the Arabian Peninsula.”

Even a supporter of continued backing of the TFG like Ken Menkhaus of Davidson College has acknowledged in a RUSI Journal article last August: “While a Shabaab victory in Mogadishu would constitute a major political setback, it would not appreciably worsen the security threat that exists in Somalia.”

Second, the jihadists’ Wahhābist ideology is as alien to the Somali tradition of Islam as the foreign trainers and fighters they have imported along with it; therein lie the seeds of their downfall. The brutal hudud punishments that have been meted out in areas controlled by al-Shabaab this past year—including public stonings, beheadings, amputations, and floggings—have revolted the majority of Somalis even as the militants’ petty social regulations—like the order, handed down last month and enforced last week with the imprisonment of dozens, requiring men in the port of Kismayo to have their moustaches and grow beards—have irritated them needlessly. Without a foreign “invader” like the AMISOM force to rally nationalist sentiment against them, al-Shabaab and its allies will be forced to rely on pure terror to keep the masses under control.

Third, conquering a collapsed state is easy enough when faced with a weak opponent like the TFG, but administering the country is another matter entirely. The very ties to foreign terrorist and other jihadist networks that will have facilitated al-Shabaab’s military victory will leave any regime led by the group isolated internationally.

A sign of things to come, as it were, was last week’s decision by the UN’s World Food Program, which provides emergency food assistance to more than 3 million Somalis, to suspend its program in southern Somalia, which distributes food to one million people, because of what it described in a statement as “the imposition of a string of unacceptable demands.” Nor is autarky an option given that the relatively few highly-qualified Somali professionals from the diaspora that the TFG has managed to lure back to the country would most certainly flee again in the face of a jihadist takeover.

Fourth, the defeat of the TFG will present the international community with logistical challenges of monumental proportions for which contingency plans ought to be developed now, even if it is not politically possible to publicly acknowledge their existence.

Someone will need to quickly evacuate the AMISOM peacekeepers and their equipment, including artillery and armored vehicles, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the insurgents—the AU certainly does not possess this type of massive airlift capability.

Then, the international community in general and relief organizations in particular will need to be ready to cope with large numbers of Somalis trying to escape Mogadishu’s newly ensconced extremist rulers. The 20,000 refugees who, in response to the WFP pullout, trekked toward already-packed camps in Kenya this week from the immediate border districts of southern Somalia may just be the start of a mass exodus.

Fifth, the development will be a wake-up call: the combination of the irredentist claims of the some of the radical Somali Islamists and the wider jihadist agenda of others will galvanize regional opposition. Thus far, Ethiopia has been most sensitive to the challenge, but Kenya and other countries in the Horn of Africa have grown increasingly concerned.

The subregional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) rallied together last year for an unprecedented appeal for the sanctions on Eritrea which the UN Security Council imposed on the Asmara regime last month for its role in supporting the Somali insurgents. A Somali regime headed by al-Shabaab can expect similar treatment from neighbors anxious to prevent the spread of its noxious ideology as well as to protect their own territorial integrity and national security.

Sixth, the collapse of the TFG may have a silver lining insofar as it forces the international community to finally get over its nearly two-decade-long fixation with southern and central Somalia and move beyond repeated “top-down” efforts, each more disastrous than its predecessor, to install a central government (there have been fourteen such abortive attempts since 1991, with the current version of the TFG representing a fifteenth try). Instead, driven by the necessity of containing a jihadist regime in Mogadishu and, eventually, rolling it back, a “bottom-up” approach will have to be adopted.

Thus legitimate and functional Somali entities—whether they are found in the nascent states like Somaliland and, to a certain extent, Puntland in the northern regions or in local communities and civil society structures in parts of central and southern Somalia—may finally get the recognition and engagement that has been lacking for all too long.

The TFG has had its chance. If, after more than five years since its inception and hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid and military support, it has proven unable to rally to its banner the very populace it purports to represent, there is nothing that any outsider can or should do to impose its writ upon southern and central Somalia.

Rather, it is time for Somalia’s neighbors and other international partners to undertake a long-overdue triage and henceforth refocusing scarce resources on minimizing the fallout from the interim regime’s collapse and strengthening the salvageable parts of the former Somali state, thereby simultaneously safeguarding their own legitimate national interests in regional security and stability.
———————————————————————————————
— J. Peter Pham is Senior Fellow and Director of the Africa Project at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy in New York City. He also holds academic appointments as Associate Professor of Justice Studies, Political Science, and African Studies at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C. He currently serves as Vice President of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA).

Dr. Pham has authored, edited, or translated over a dozen books and is the author of over three hundred essays and reviews on a wide variety of subjects in scholarly and opinion journals on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to the study of terrorism and political violence, his research interests lie at the intersection of international relations, international law, political theory, and ethics, with particular concentrations on the implications for United States foreign policy and African states as well as religion and global politics.

Dr. Pham has testified before the U.S. Congress on numerous occasions and conducted briefings or consulted for the U.S. and foreign governments as well as private firms. He has appeared in various media outlets, including CBS, PBS, CBC, SABC, VOA, CNN, the Fox News Channel, MSNBC, National Public Radio, the BBC, Radio France Internationale, the Associated Press, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, USA Today, National Journal, Newsweek, The Weekly Standard, New Statesman, and Maclean’s, among others.

Second wave of funding for Aquamarine Power

New investment will allow the company to develop the second phase of its Oyster turbine
Jane Bradley

Wave energy developer Aquamarine Power is on the verge of completing a new funding round that will allow it to develop the second phase of its Oyster turbine.
By March, the Edinburgh-based firm expects to have generated £6m of investment, after successfully holding a £10m funding round in September last year. The news comes as the company announced the appointment of a chief financial officer, Richard Round, from renewable energy generator Novera.
Chief executive Martin McAdam said Round would take up his post in March.
“This is a key appointment for Aquamarine and it is great news that Richard, with his wealth of financial expertise combined with his knowledge of the energy sector, has agreed to join the team,” he said.
Aquamarine has grown rapidly in the past year, increasing its headcount from 8 to 45. Its new Oyster 2 device is made up of a 2.5-megawatt “pod” of three linked waveenergy devices powering a single onshore generator.
The firm, which hopes to deply its first Oyster 2 turbines by 2013, estimates that a commercial farm holding 20 of the devices would provide energy for 9,000 three-bedroom family homes and offset carbon emissions of up to 20,000 tonnes.

Ban commits UN to harnessing support for African development needs

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today pledged to mobilize support to tackle the critical challenges threatening peace and posperity across Africa, including extreme poverty, economic and social well-being, and the ravages of climate change.

Green energy firms fear new feed-in tariffs will be too low

Campaigners fear government’s cashback offer for microgeneration will not be enough to stimulate renewables industry

Ashley Seager
The Observer, Sunday 31 January 2010

The government will tomorrow publish the long-awaited levels of remuneration it will offer for renewable energy generated by households and communities and fed back into the national grid.
It hopes the new tariff will boost the growth of “micro-generation” by small-scale wind turbines, solar panels or hydro power. But there are fears in the renewable energy industry that the Department of Energy and Climate Change will make little or no upward adjustment to the tariff levels for clean electricity it proposed last year.
The DECC has been heavily lobbied by the big energy firms, and tomorrow’s announcement has been delayed several times. The Clean Energy Cashback, or feed-in tariff, will reward households, businesses or communities by paying above-market rates for the electricity they produce and feed into the grid.
When the tariffs were unveiled last year, they were criticised for offering rates of return too low to encourage people to install micro-generation plants. Germany introduced feed-in tariffs a decade ago offering double-digit rates of return and sparked a green revolution.
But Alan Simpson, special adviser to energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband, fears the battle to get higher tariffs has been lost and believes the DECC will stick to its aim of getting just 2% of the UK’s electricity from smaller scale renewables by 2020. He says three times that would be easily achievable at an additional cost per household energy bill of £1.20 a year.
“Germany needed starting rates that gave a 10% return on investment to kickstart their leap to the top of the renewables league. Britain needs to do the same,” he wrote in a letter to Gordon Brown last week. “At the moment, we don’t have a renewables industry. We have survivors; firms that exist despite government policy rather than because of it.
“A coalition of groups – from farmers to the fuel-poor, environmental NGOs to eco-builders, ethical bankers to engineers and installers – has been lobbying DECC officials for all they are worth. But little seems to be working.”
Andrew Melchior, head of the EIC Partnership, which is setting up the Horizon energy co-operative in Manchester, said his business was only viable because of an EU grant. The feed-in tariff would not be enough, he warned.
“The Germans created an efficient industry that is able to provide solar installations at competitive prices. The UK does not have this industry, more a collection of enthusiasts experimenting with new technologies or proponents well versed in the pragmatics and dark arts of exploiting pots of grant funding.
“We must provide a decent incentive so that the public begin to accept the concept of economically viable solar energy in the UK.”