Riots continue in Iceland

As I noted here December 23rd, riots and violent protests were disrupting Iceland, a country not known for these types of actions. Admittedly, the economic situation there is much worse (currently) than in the United States, but perhaps not for long. The Icelandic current account deficit is currently 22% of GDP, vs. 7% for US; the Icelandic GDP is forecast to decline by 9.6% for 2009- a number nobody is contemplating for the US. Inflation in Iceland is rampant, while deflation has taken hold in America.

However, there are several parallels worth noting. Iceland is forecasting a rise in the unemployment rate to 7.8% in 2009 (a number the US would be lucky to maintain in the face of steeply mounting layoffs and business closures). Iceland's currency has lost more than half its value, which is certainly not unforeseeable in the future for the US. But more than just the numbers, the story certainly sounds familiar to those of us in the United States. From The Guardian:

The fault is clearly shared between the business elite and the government, which failed to regulate the newly privatised financial sector, allowing a few incompetent and egotistical business tycoons to gamble with the nation's fortune. And yet neither the government nor the bankers – who, by the way, seem to have disappeared into the cold thin air – see anything wrong with their own behaviour.

The governor of the central bank blames the risk-seeking bankers, the bankers blame the government and the prime minister attributes the whole crisis to the international credit crunch. This lack of any sense of responsibility has angered the Icelandic public to the extent that they have turned to the streets in greater numbers than ever before.

Sound familiar? Do you hear anyone in American politics or banking accepting responsibility?

From the Huffington Post:

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the American Declaration of Independence that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed [and] whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government." As the protesters fight to enforce that right, in this county that has known no war for generations, that has not seen violent conflict among its citizens for centuries, we must ponder what could be.

Today, as the United States makes a fundamental shift in direction, Iceland is tearing itself apart. The peaceful transition of power we watched in Washington following a fiercely contested election is a symbol of hope to us. The competent confidence and inspiring rhetoric of Barack Obama have rallied the vast majority of Americans behind him to face the myriad challenges all around us. The arrogance and obliviousness of Iceland's ruling elite has had the opposite effect.

Once again, I sincerely hope that I am wrong about the direction we are headed. However, the way I see it, he stimulus package cannot stand up to the kind of fiscal devastation that has been unleashed around the planet, nor can the TARP (or TARP 2.0, 3.0, etc... which are surely going to be coming). Please consider what could happen here if the results that people expect from the incoming administration fail to live up to the expectations engendered by the utterly non-specific rhetoric of "hope", and "change", and "yes, we can". What happens if we simply cannot? Once more, from The Guardian:

It is the first time in Icelandic history that a young anarchist can well expect to meet his grandmother in the crowd demonstrating against the government and drumming with her kitchen knife on pots and pans. The government is surely hanging by a thin thread and might fall at any moment.

The Icelandic public fear that their country has virtually been stolen by the globetrotting business elite that spent more time rubbing shoulders with international high society than giving back to the society that enabled them to enjoy this privileged lifestyle. Now ordinary Icelanders are determined to take their country back.

Corporate raiders turning to seeds of life

There's a tremedously important diary over at DailyKos. Please take some time and consider if you want the Monsanto corporation to literally control every seed for any food plant that's commercially available. I, for one, do not. As I argued here, there are some things that are simply too important to be left to monopoly corporations.

RAID on seeds (Life, itself) ... by Monsanto

Some things are too important to be left to the "free market"

Amidst this implosion of financial markets, I think that it's critical to discuss a few ideas. Namely, that there are some things that are simply too important to be left to the vagaries of the market. Water and food, especially.

Since the days of Upton Sinclair, we've known that capital markets have been ineffective in guaranteeing food to consumers that is fair, clean and healthy. It's no different today- it seems as though there are new reports of tainted meat, tainted vegetables, or tainted milk.

But we are also still dealing with famine and food riots around the world. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization reported this week that another 40 million people have been pushed into hunger this year, bringing the worldwide total to a staggering 963 million. FAO Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem:

For millions of people in developing countries, eating the minimum amount of food every day to live an active and healthy life is a distant dream. The structural problems of hunger, like the lack of access to land, credit and employment, combined with high food prices remain a dire reality.

Notice that he didn't implicate farming techniques, climate change, seed quality, or any other technological problems as the reason for hunger- the problems he cites are due to the failures of markets to ensure that people get fed. It's not just the UN either- Bloomberg news yesterday reported that the World Bank's consistent prioritization of free markets has been a "manmade recipe for famine [that] included corrupt governments and companies that profited on misery."

It's not just the World Bank, it's the World Bank working in concert with the IMF and the World Trade Organization (WTO) to create "open markets" that are increasingly unable to provide either farmers with a living, or consumers with food. At least 87,567 farmers in India committed suicide between 2002 and 2006, largely as a result of globalization of the food trade:

Analysts cite several factors for the suicides, including crop failure due to agrochemicals and climate change, lower prices due to U.S. farm subsidies, state restrictions on export trade, and the dumping of surplus crops in an oversaturated domestic market.

As the economic crisis is making us aware, capital markets to not always function properly in America either. Our food aid program has recently been implicated in starvation around the world, due largely to the influence of lobbyists and monopolistic corporations in charge of the food chain.

Increasingly, it's becoming clear that food and water are different. They should be basic human rights, completely independent upon one's ability to pay for them. I just hope we don't have to wait until billions are starving around the world before we figure that out.

US Policy linked to dead children in Africa

It's not just the recurring safety issues anymore. It's one thing if you want to gamble on eggs or meat from the giant Mega-mart, but please don't forget about the children dying around the world due to our policy of favoring American corporations with our food aid, rather than trying to actually feed people.

U.S. farm and shipping lobbyists have stifled efforts to simplify aid deliveries, leaving Africans to starve when they might have been saved, said Andrew Natsios, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington who led USAID, the Agency for International Development, from 2001 to 2006.

“No one can take the high moral ground against it, so they hide behind closed doors and kill it,” he said. “It’s all done behind the scenes.”

It's the same story over and over again. People everywhere are finding themselves getting taken advantage of, and nobody wonders if it's something inherent in the system that's causing it. The system is sick, the system shouldn't be saved, even if that is still possible. The system is killing us.

Cargill Inc., Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Bunge Ltd. accounted for 47 percent of 2007 commodities spending for aid, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The program was created in the 1950s, partly to reduce domestic surpluses. The regulations require that almost all the peas, corn and other crops come from American sources, effectively steering the bulk of the business to the biggest food-trading companies.

The rules also stipulate that 75 percent of the food must be transported on U.S.-flagged vessels, benefiting ship operators, including Liberty Maritime Corp., based in Lake Success, New York, and Sealift Inc., of Oyster Bay, New York. In 2007, the program’s shipping contracts were worth $385 million, according to the USDA.

In all things, ask "Who benefits?" It's never the little guy, the common man; it's always the enormous corporations that feed on the suffering and injustice around the world in the name of profits. And how do they get governments to do their bidding?

ADM, the world’s largest grain processor, spent $1.78 million to lobby Congress and federal agencies though Dec. 3 this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non- partisan research group in Washington that tracks spending on campaigns and lobbying. Over the past two decades, the company’s campaign contributions amounted to $8.2 million, 91st among political donors, the center said. ADM declined to comment for this story.

Cargill, a closely held company that is the world’s largest agricultural business, spent $660,000 on lobbying this year, the center said. ADM, Cargill and Bunge lobby on other issues besides the aid programs. Cargill favors the added flexibility of local purchase, spokesman Bill Brady said in an e-mail.

Bunge, the biggest oilseed processor, devoted $395,000 to lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The company advocates the use of U.S. crops to ensure quality, said Deb Seidel, a company spokeswoman.

A short primer & interview on Anarchy theory

The author of ‘Anarchy Alive!’ says the economic meltdown is a sign capitalism has reached its limits and explains why he won’t be voting or serving in any army

Interview by David B. Green in Haaretz Magazine, November 2008, p.22
zinelibrary.info/files/urigordoninterview.pdf

Over the telephone Uri Gordon does not sound like he’s gloating, but for an anarchist such as himself, the earth-shaking economic developments of the past six weeks have to have provided some satisfaction. After all, today’s anarchists are certain of the wrong-headedness of the modern capitalist system, with its inevitable march toward a greater concentration of the world’s wealth in an increasingly smaller number of hands. Most also see the need for a radical change in humanity’s relationship with the environment, an understanding that seems to have been adopted by at least much of the West in recent months, as the effects of oil depletion and climate change become felt. Gordon, 32, is the author of “Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory” (Pluto Press, 183 pages, $26.95/16 pounds ), a somewhat high-brow analysis of contemporary anarchism. Raised in Haifa, Gordon received his doctorate in political theory from Oxford University in 2005; his thesis served as the basis for the book. But as he describes in the book’s introduction, he arrived in the United Kingdom in the fall of 2000, after the anti-globalization movement had begun to draw tens of thousands to its demonstrations, and shortly before the huge protests in Europe against the imminent allied invasion of Iraq. He soon found himself spending as much time on the barricades as in the library. He resolved the apparent conflict, he writes, when he realized that “I could easily construe my activism as fieldwork, and actually gear my academic work to the needs of activists.”

“Anarchy Alive!” deals with most of the big questions curious readers might have about the movement: its connection to the violently revolutionary anarchism of the early 20th century, and the views of today’s anarchists on violence; the attitude of anarchists to technology and to environmental issues, and why it is that so many of the protesters against Israel’s West Bank separation barrier seem to be anarchists - part of a general discussion of anarchism and the question of Israel/Palestine. Gordon describes the integral concept for anarchists of “prefigurative action,” which in the simplest terms means that they are not waiting for a revolution in order to begin living according to their beliefs. Since another major tenet of the movement is the need for decentralization of all aspects of life, it makes perfect sense that many anarchists live in small communities, and try to achieve a level of sustainability. Gordon, for example, is a resident of Kibbutz Lotan, up the road from Ketura, where he teaches politics and ethics at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. (He has also contributed several opinion articles on environmental themes to Haaretz English Edition. ) He spoke to us from there.

Q: How did you happen to become an anarchist?

A: I grew up in a left-wing family, although my parents were not politically active. I did my army service in Army Radio, and reported from the West Bank during 1996-1997, covering the redeployment from the cities. I became interested in environmental issues after my release, when I picked up a book, “Our Angry Earth,” by Isaac Asimov and Frederick Pohl. It helped me realize that this would be the defining issue of the coming century. I started studying politics and economics at Tel-Aviv University, looking at environmental issues from a philosophical and economic perspective; I also became involved with groups like Green Action and in the struggle against the Trans-Israel Highway. It became clear to me that exploitation of nature by humans is intimately connected with the exploitation of humans by humans.

Q: How would you summarize the basic tenets of anarchist beliefs?

A: We object to centralization of power, to hierarchical structures in society and to the institution of the state. We’re opposed to capitalism and social classes, to school systems designed to produce obedient workers and citizens, and to most forms of organized religion. We believe in horizontal forms of organization, in voluntary association and mutual aid, and believe that decisions should be made at the smallest or most local level possible.

Q: Does this mean that you won’t vote in the upcoming election in Israel, or wouldn’t serve in the army today?

A: I probably won’t vote. In principle, I don’t want to signify my consent to be ruled, or my acquiescence to a system whereby we get to choose who pushes us around. Elections give people the illusion of democratic participation, but as the famous Jewish anarchist Emma Goldman said: If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal. And no, I wouldn’t serve in any army of any country. If everyone were an anarchist, there wouldn’t be armies and there wouldn’t be wars.

Q: You seem to be ignoring the basic characteristics of human nature. Given the choice, societies - even the kibbutz - seem to prefer capitalism, inegalitarian as it may be. And humans also seem to be naturally aggressive, no?

A: I don’t agree. If you ask people, do you want to take orders or do your own thing, to compete or to cooperate - I think that if they had the choice to think about it, rather than being indoctrinated by a society based on competition and hierarchy, they would choose cooperation. Anarchists always say that their forms of organization are not novel. Most human relationships are naturally horizontal and cooperative. There’s a difference between order and hierarchy. Anarchy is also a form of order, but it’s based on agreement, rather than command. On agreed rules rather than enforced laws that protect the privileged from the many.

Q: But just look at the way people behave in Israel, driving - and parking - as if there were nobody else on the streets.

A: People behave the way they do because of their culture and their mutual expectations. It’s not surprising that in a culture that educates us to compete with each other and either to command or to obey, you’d get people trying to elbow their way around and do as much as they can for their own benefit. Anarchism also calls for a revolution in consciousness and culture, one that will allow free rein to human sociable instincts, to mutual aid.

Q: It all sounds good, but what if everyone really were an anarchist? Would we have institutions like hospitals, universities, or even airlines?

A: Centralized economies aren’t the only way to organize production and services. In an anarchist system, any form of productive activity would be owned and run directly by the workers, rather than by private bosses or the state. Production would be for need, not for profit. Various workers’ enterprises would coordinate between themselves to perform any larger scale tasks. The basic idea is that, if you leave people to their own devices, they will organize quite well, and that top-down, centralized forms of organization are in place to maintain existing systems of privilege and domination, rather than in order to get things done. Look at Catalonia, during the high stages of the Spanish Revolution, in 1936. There was a well-formed anarchist system. The peasants owned the land, tram workers ran the trams, and everything functioned - and this was in middle of a civil war. The original kibbutzim were also anarchistic, even if they didn’t call themselves that. In Degania, the founders said, we are trying to create a society without exploited and exploiters. We want direct democracy, from each according to their ability and to each according to their needs.

Q: You say you wouldn’t serve in the army today. But what if every Israeli said that - surely you don’t deny that Israel has genuine defense concerns?

A: I think that occupation creates terrorism, and not vice versa. If all Israelis had the political consciousness to refuse to go to military service, we would have already arrived in a revolutionary situation. It would mean that they had all shed their artificial, drummed-up fears and risen up against their exploiters. In general, though, when people discuss politics, they put themselves in the place of the politician and imagine what they would do. But people like you and me aren’t being asked what we think the state should do. Whatever agreement the political elites end up signing is not going to be the end of the conflict. It’s only the beginning of the peace process. What matters at this stage is building ties of binational solidarity and cooperation, to have grassroots movements that seek to show and demonstrate with their own acts and lives that another Middle East is possible. You don’t have to be an anarchist to agree that it’s through everyday relationships that peace is accomplished. So when my friends and I go to villages of Palestinians whose lands are being confiscated for construction of the segregation barrier, we are showing with our own bodies that something is stronger than the perpetual threat being projected by parties on all sides of the political spectrum. We are showing that we have values that transcend all forms of separation.

Q: Do you see the economic meltdown as a vindication of your beliefs?

A: I think the current global financial crisis is definitely a strong indication that capitalism is reaching its limits, and so I am convinced that various efforts to “buy time,” in this sense, are not going to cut it. On one hand, we are reaching the limits of the finite planet that we live on - of the resources we can extract, and the pollution we can emit - and on the other, a system of capitalism based on speculation on future debt is no longer managing to function. The way out is not for governments to bail out the banks, but for people to begin creating grassroots structures that are self-sufficient, and that will allow them to detach themselves from both capitalism and the state.

Q: We’re talking just before the election in the U.S., but it occurs to me that you probably don’t care who wins it.

A: Actually, I want Obama to win, because I hope that when he breaks everybody’s hearts, people will then wake up to the fact that it doesn’t matter whether it’s a blue or red puppet in capitalism’s hand. At the same time, in the short term, we’ve had eight years of a very right-wing administration in Washington, which has dragged the whole world into a very bad position, and just the relief from that will make a difference in the lives of many Americans, and many Iraqis, hopefully, and Palestinians and Israelis.

The Expanding Prison/Industrial Complex

Two main items of interest in today's news as it relates to the growing Prison/Industrial Complex. First:

Cheney charged over jail 'abuses'

A judge has yet to approve the indictment against Mr Cheney

A Texas grand jury has charged US Vice-President Dick Cheney for "organised criminal activity" related to alleged abuse of private prison inmates.

The indictment says Mr Cheney - who has invested $85m (£56m) in a company that holds shares in for-profit prisons - conspired to block an investigation.

The indictment has not been seen by a judge, who could dismiss it.

Hopefully it's only the first in a long line of indictments against Bush & Co., although everyone's expecting pardons- if not blanket pardons, at least for the worst offenders. And this is yet another indication of the corruption at the highest levels of our government. Of course he holds shares in private prisons, a business that's only set to become more profitable, says today's Wall Street Journal.

Prison companies are preparing for a wave of new business as the economic downturn makes it increasingly difficult for federal and state government officials to build and operate their own jails.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons and several state governments have sent thousands of inmates in recent months to prisons and detention centers run by Corrections Corp. of America, Geo Group Inc. and other private operators, as a crackdown on illegal immigration, a lengthening of mandatory sentences for certain crimes and other factors have overcrowded many government facilities.

Prison-policy experts expect inmate populations in 10 states to have increased by 25% or more between 2006 and 2011, according to a report by the nonprofit Pew Charitable Trusts.

Private prisons housed 7.4% of the country's 1.59 million incarcerated adults in federal and state prisons as of the middle of 2007, up from 1.57 million in 2006, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a crime-data-gathering arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Corrections Corp., the largest private-prison operator in the U.S., with 64 facilities, has built two prisons this year and expanded nine facilities, and it plans to finish two more in 2009. The Nashville, Tenn., company put 1,680 new prison beds into service in its third quarter, helping boost net income 14% to $37.9 million. "There is going to be a larger opportunity for us in the future," said Damon Hininger, Corrections Corp.'s president and chief operations officer, in a recent interview.

Some other surprising statistics from the land of the free:

• The U.S. has less than 5% of the world's population, yet has more than 25% of the world's prisoners. [Wikipedia]
• As a percentage of total population, the U.S. also has the largest imprisoned population, with 739 people per 100,000 serving time, awaiting trial or otherwise detained. [King's College]
• The American prison population has quadrupled since 1980, partially as a result of mandated sentences that came about during the "war on drugs." [Wikipedia] Despite this, somehow drugs are still widely available.

Dissident voice reports that

Why is this happening? Inmates have become the raw material for a prison-industrial complex, shoring up perpetual profits for McJails. Corporate prisons are paid on a per-prisoner/per-day basis, and thus they lobby hard for longer mandatory sentences. Inmates also provide cheap labor, and they are about to become, once again, guinea pigs for pharmaceutical trials. All of this signals the conversion of people into valuable “bio-mass.”

Incarceration makes sense, politically. Prisons provide jobs to rural and small town Americans who would otherwise be unemployed. These workers and their families represent votes, especially in the South, where electoral majorities are White and electoral minorities are Black. The drug war is, in large part, a race war by other means.

Study after study documents the following: African Americans are disproportionately stopped and searched; African Americans are disproportionately arrested; African Americans are disproportionately charged; and African Americans are disproportionately convicted. And all felons are disenfranchised, never to vote again.

See why Bush & Co. loves private prisons? Put all those undesirables in jail, let em rot. If they get out, they're still not going to be voters, so who cares? In the meantime, you're providing jobs, AND you get a healthy dividend check.

For more information: American Gulag Project