Earth Democracy

Justice, Sustainability, And Peace. Vandana Shiva believes that peasants should be able to make a living based on access to land, rivers, forests and oceans and that governments must protect the health of these commons for the good of all. This makes her a radical. She also makes complete sense and answers many of my questions about the inequity of the poor.

Much of this book is a discussion of the commons and the enclosure laws in England in the 16th century that allowed the commons to be privatized. Critics of Vandana Shiva claim that she is asking for a return to feudalism, but they are not hearing her out. (And besides feudalism guaranteed that the peasants would eat, while privatization guarantees that those without money will starve while taking away access to the land that originally provided them with a livelihood.) Much of the battle of the enclosure laws is waged with words. By claiming that an area of land is a wasteland and is not being used by anyone, this somehow gives private companies the right to buy the land or contract to use it for development purposes.

She ferrets out the flaws in the arguments of the opposition ie Richard Epstein in his book "Takings—Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain". Their position is that government cannot protect natural resources like beaches, streams and other property because it would be a "taking" and therefore the owners must be compensated. This argument, she says, ignores the original taking of these public lands during colonialism, but it also confuses public trust with eminent domain which is virtually the opposite. And finally the public is redefined as a collection of individuals thus the loss of property is calculated based on its higher value to one individual vs each member of the public. Here she has not only explained how things have changed, but what kinds of arguments have influenced far reaching policies and how we have been manipulated into buying into the ideology of privatization over public interests. This is an important concept because it is a cultural battle of words that over time has eliminated the very notion of a public trust. If it were not still going on, this book would just be a historical treatise, but with water rights and clean air and the earth's atmosphere at stake, her arguments serve as the ground floor of resistance.

She also debunks the argument that having a commons doesn't work because everyone will abuse it. Not so, she says, as long as everyone can subsist off the land and be self-reliant, the community will work together to insure that no one party takes advantage. Assumptions are being made by free market advocates that have messed with our minds, but her examples show a different picture.

She points out the correlation between economic livelihood and the attraction of fundamentalism both here and abroad. When people no longer have a livelihood to identify with and globalization forces upon them a cultural sameness, they are attracted to religion and will vote for issues relating to cultural identity rather than economic identity. This explains why Gay Marriage has the ridiculous political status as a hot button issue when there is so much else at stake.

She claims that when enclosure laws allow people a living only by selling their labor (and their bodies I would add) then that encourages a population increase as families feel they need to have more children to bring in more income or to insure that at least one survives to care for them in old age since more die.

Her discussion includes the enclosure of intellectual and biological property with Monsanto trying to patent seed species. While governments pass laws that forbid farmers from participating in trade as they have always done, ie: saving their own seeds to sell to other farmers. She explains how governments help out large companies by passing laws inappropriate to small producers, for whom complying to these laws, would put them out of business, ie food packaging laws under the guise of safety. Thus her alliance with Slow Food Nation (she is Vice President) to support local foods and small producers.

She talks about how the sustenance economy is not valued on the market because it does not involve paid labor ie;, women's work, home economics, child rearing. Yet such work is how the recognized market can exist. She warns that the market is bent on the exploitation of resources that support the sustenance economy such as clean water, air and land and comments that the only sustainable economy is the sustenance economy because of its built-in feed back loops and community. The market however tends to solve problems by providing solutions of increasing complexity involving more exploitation of resources and more privatization as seen with privatization of water.

Getting inside Vandana Shiva's worldview stretches my head, but I really think she gets to the root of global issues and successfully relates how economic justice is the road to democracy and in turn to peace. She is apparently a huge threat to advocates of individualistic wealth building systems, thus the caustic negative reviews of her work as extremely leftist. The rich don't like being told that their success comes at great cost to the poor rather than out of their own smarts. But If we could embrace what she is saying, solving our most destructive planetary problems may look a lot simpler.

Superpower Syndrome

A psychiatrist sheds light on the thinking behind the need for absolute power. It is the same psychology embodied by Darth Vadar and handily explained, in the final episode of the Star Wars epic, as his fear of the death of his beloved which spurs him to control everything rather than allow uncertainty into his life or let the force take care of things.

This author confirms that fear of death is the underlying psychology of superpower syndrome, but he also offers quite a bit more on the subject that I found helpful. And that was chiefly in his analysis of apocalyptic thinking and how it ties into the tendency, especially in western mythology, to think in terms of good and evil and eradicating the latter. His inclusion of Japanese apocalyptic thinking post-Hiroshima allows him to extend this dualistic story to the East, but he is chiefly focusing on how this plays out in Christian and Islamic mythology. It is a story of purification through destruction especially by fire, but also includes the purification of the race as with the Nazi agenda and other forms of purification either/or thinking. He claims that all religions have this story, but he does not address the religions that embody the yin and yang mix, and the teachings on how to live with ambiguity. (It may be that Western psychology itself is a need to alleviate ambiguity.)

He addresses how apocalyptic technology—giving humans the ability to annihilate the planet—has brought this internal story to planet threatening levels particularly the way the Bush administration has played it out by embracing preemptive war. This change is what makes superpower syndrome so dangerous and has alarmed enough writers to take it on in various books. Yes! magazine did a recent cover story on how to step down from the superpower agenda and join the community of nations through diplomacy. These discussions all mention how the desire to control in the name of absolute security will ultimately lead to the collapse of said superpower, mainly because you can never control it all and the effort to do so will bankrupt us and rob us of domestic infrastructure maintenance.

He gives a blow-by-blow account of what happened on a psychological level to Americans in light of the apocalyptic imagery provided by the 9/11 events. This was helpful as I did not live any of the stages of response he describes as part of being a survivor of a traumatic event. This includes death anxiety, survivor guilt, psychic numbing, suspiciousness, and the resulting search for meaning in this ordeal. (In the Tsunami, it was the Westerners who were focused on "why me, why us, why now" while the Thais were like "shit happens" and how do we make sure the dead don't come back to haunt us. Note: there were absolutely no ghost stories to contend with post 9/11; Karen Kingston, fung shui guru from England, says that those who died in the towers died very clean deaths so maybe that's why. And maybe fire is purifying after all.)

As is the tendency of psychiatrists, this author has taken the patients story at face value and analyses it accordingly without questioning that perhaps the patient's story is in itself pathological. He does not consider that Osama bin Laden may have had nothing to do with 9/11 per the analysis of the Osama video claiming the 9/11 deed, having now been shown to be a fake. What then would be the psychological underpinnings of that fabrication? This would have been a much more interesting story if he had brought in the need for American apocalyptic storytelling to invent al Qaeda as the enemy as reported by the BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares. More interesting still, if he had analyzed the Bush administration in light of MIHOP or LIHOP theories (Made It Happen On Purpose or Let It Happen On Purpose). I would have been interested in what goes on in the minds of leaders who kill their own people to create false flag events. He did not even analyse the psychological need for survivors to invent conspiracy theories. I had to refer to Wickipedia re: 9/11 to assure myself that all facets of reality were still being addressed by the democracy of content providers. It is possible that the inability of psychiatrists to consider more than one story is part of the dualistic, black and white apocalyptic think mode that he is warning us against.

Though the book annoyed me on these many levels, I found it helpful in showing me how my own recent thoughts of economic collapse in the US was a version of apocalyptic thinking. And having recently learned that it took Rome 300 years to fall and the Mayans who did it quick, a 100 years, I feel much more relaxed about it now. Even though we are headed for deep economic doo doo with oil prices spiked again, it will still take a while for societal collapse. And with nothing to do people will have more time to think about things.

Nemesis—The Last Days of the American Republic

The best summation I've read on the political underpinnings of the fall of Rome, the first republic to suffer collapse due to overstretch. I understood the overstretch part, but I did not understand the role that Cesar played in overextending the empire and the role his nephew Cesar Augustus played in transforming the republic, with its checks and balances that insured democracy, to one of a military dictatorship and to the creation of himself as emperor much as George W. is doing today in the ongoing transformation of our democracy into a military dictatorship and perpetual war-making machine.

He fears that this warmongering will eventually bankrupt us and lead to economic collapse, a very real fear especially since no one has any idea how much money the pentagon is actually sucking up, not to mention the CIA, the president's private army. Our defense industry is shoring up the economy as it is. And with China and Japan lending us money we're relying on the kindness of strangers. The Blanche Dubois economy as one wit put it. Chalmers does not mention that the dollar is used to buy oil, said to be another reason countries honor our worthless dollar.

I was amused to learn in his chapter on space weapons that garbage in space is our chief worry because a piece of junk could knock out all sorts of communications satellites causing misunderstandings about who might have been attacking who by blowing up said satelite. Lot of satellite politics I didn't know about that demonstrate that we really should be devoting ourselves to world cooperation via treaties, as others are doing, rather than world domination with more high tech toys.

Explains how our nefarious activities regarding outsourcing of torture and CIA activity is watched by amateur plane spotters and witnesses in international airports pooling information. This does not endear us to international community.

All this detail did not, however, allow Chalmers to veer from his pet theory that 9/11 was the result of "blowback" from our controlling foreign policies and military colonialism. Despite his bucket-loads of facts, he can give no evidence that Osama Bin Laden did any of the things he is accused of. He simply leaps to conclusions without even bothering to state that he is speculating. He does give ofher evidence of "false flag" operations for the purpose of increasing the military budget.

(Using his facts I was able to feed my own pet theories of the impact of American presence in Thailand. For instance American anti-communist sentiment, he confirms, was expressed in the form of cash gifts (foreign aid) to any country willing to declare that they were carrying out anti-communist projects. Thus I can conclude that the Thai military government received money as a result of establishing policies to encourage the cutting down of the teak forest to "deter" communist insurgents hiding in the jungle. The resulting subsistence farming led to the exodus of farmer's sons to Bangkok to work in construction and their daughters to work in the sex trade (and sometimes visa versa). American service men in Thailand, during the Vietnam War, the existing sex trade grew by four times. (Said sex trade was originally created by the Japanese occupation during WWII.) Since foreign aid from the US is one of the most powerful tools used to manipulate the activities of developing countries, it wouldn't be difficult for the US to put a stop to the sex trade, drug trade, illegal logging, harsh prison conditions for American citizens overseas or any other activity US citizens might wish to put a stop to, but no, we are policing the world for non-humanitarian reasons.)

As Chalmers tells it, the US is interested mostly in establishing US military bases all over the planet in order to control the emergence of any potential super power as has been the agenda of the neo-cons since Reagan. The entire book was very illuminating on this need for relentless control. It is so infuriating to be part of this Darth Vader psychology, much of which has been manifested in policies implemented by the Bush Administration. We are indeed a changed country.

He notes that the number of large and medium size bases (38 in 2005) is just about the number of colonies the British had during the height of the British Empire and is close to the number of bases the Roman Empire had at its height. The US negotiates with the host country to make sure it is not held accountable for anything it or its servicemen do there to local citizens or the environment. This is the source of much contention in the example he gives of Japan, now a crucial base from which to control China. He recommends that the US dismantle the empire as the British did.

The Secret History of the American Empire

The fun of reading John Perkins is that his books are more like spy novels than heavy reading about globalization and empire building. So interspersed between exotic descriptions of Asian hotties entertaining corporate hit men, are nice summations of how the IMF, World Bank and economic hit men collude to bring countries into the corporate empire. Basically the same ground as covered in Shock Doctrine, but with more stories of illicit CIA activity.

Often his sources are cloak and dagger in their anonymity. This seems to render him suspect in the eyes of many skeptical readers, but the stories are still compelling and likely true. I mean why wouldn't they be? We now know from recently declassified reports that there was indeed a CIA backed coup to overthrow Allende and then he was assassinated. He describes how a democratically elected leader might be elected based on his promises to help the poor, distribute land and otherwise take resources away from corporations by nationalizing mines, oil reserves, etc,. This is when corporate economic hit men first try to bring around the elected leader with bribes, then when that doesn't work, the CIA jackals threaten him and if that doesn't take, the CIA stage a coup and finally an assassination if he can't be budged.

He also tells the story of a young couple who wanted to find out what life was really like as a sweatshop worker living on $2.41 a day in Indonesia. Conditions described were bordering on destitute so now I'm really mad at the economics professor who wrote Travels of a T-shirt and concluded that these jobs were giving women economic freedom. Besides with the Gap being exposed as an employer of child slave labour, I'm even more inclined to assume that bad conditions and human rights violations are more the rule than the scandalous exception.

There was also another interesting tidbit about OPEC and the gas shortage of the '70s. According to his sources, Nixon was playing a brilliant game of chess by backing Israel in the Six day war which he knew would piss off the Arabs who then raised oil prices. This is interesting in that I've not read anywhere else that pissing off the Arabs was intentional. It was after that that economic hitmen were sent into Saudi Arabia to make a deal for corporations to handle all their infrastructure. US also persuaded them to invest their oil money in American treasury bonds and agree to only sell oil for dollars. Since Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard this gave the dollar an "oil" standard which we are busy trying to protect by going to war in any oil producing country that makes deals to sell oil in Euros. Speculators seem to betting that the Euro will win, given the 40% devaluation of the dollar in recent years.

His stories about Africa tell how NGOs and the Peace Corp are inadvertantly helping corporate takeover, by instilling first world living standards. For the amount of money spent to send over Western "teachers", they could be developing teachers who are already there who know the land already and how to farm it. Instead the Peace Corps teachers are bringing in GMO seeds and pesticides and fertilizers to "help" farmers get into debt and kill off their land.

And finally he talks about how to make change, telling stories of how Rainforest Action Network got their point across through public humiliation of corporations like Home Depot. He emphasizes that even though companies seem so big, so was the English crown to the colonialists. Though it's not my preferred metaphor, he does persuade me to believe that ordinary people can put pressure on corporations.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein brings us up to speed on how the economic agenda of the neo-cons came to be the mantra of American foreign policy and is now coming home to roost. I wanted to pour myself a stiff drink from the opening chapter where she describes what was really happening in New Orleans post Katrina. Her account of how the ideas of one man—Milton Friedman— in what was known as the Chicago School of economics (from the University of Chicago) was exported to South America, then Africa, then the Eastern block and Russia, South East Asia and finally to Iraq, is enraging, heart breaking and illuminating. She answered so many of my questions that she has forever galvanized my understanding of the last 35 years, just as Howard Zinn opened my eyes to the 200 years prior to that.

Much of what I knew already about the policies of the World Bank and the structural adjustment programs of the IMF was just the beginning of her tale. So much more was going on from the Ford Foundation sponsoring students from South America to study with Milton Friedman to the banks freezing all loans in order to force Allende's government to buckle to corporate takeovers of state factories to the support of strongman dictatorships by the US to Amnesty International erasing all mention of why people were being disappeared and tortured (so as not to offend corporate donors). Yes, why indeed? Why did we simply accept that South American dictators enjoyed such activities just for kicks? Turns out that all those tortured and disappeared were leaders in the socialist party. Capitalism is not the preferred economic system of a democratic people. All over the world the neo-cons were having to fight democratically elected socialist governments and the tactics they used resemble war and now is war in Iraq.

The underlying thesis of Ms. Klein's book is that the preferred strategy for forcing a country to embrace capitalism is to shock them with such severe economic hardships that the populace is too stunned to realize what is going on and when they do come too, they find out that their infrastructure has been sold dirt cheap to mult-national companies and that contracts have been made for so far into the future that the new governments are unable to stop the resulting rise in unemployment, 25% say, or the putting out of business of local businesses. Wal-Mart anyone?

I have long been looking for a way to explain the flawed thinking of free market ideology and now that I know it was just an extremist economic theory involving the desire for an unobtainable pure system, I can compare it to another extremist ideology. That of breeding the perfect race. It just isn't possible and to do so would be to hack off all the parts that offend the ideal. We know where that got us in the racial cleansing department. It is my sincere hope that one day the phrase "free market" will be as abhorrent as the word eugenics.

Meanwhile, having been mauled by such free market extremism, the victim's best bet is to play dead until the Grizzly bear moves on. In South America where the victim was left for dead, a new socialism is being born as countries are now banding together to make their own trade agreements and to keep prices stable. (Fluctating prices is how money is made on the free market by speculators/investors). And as long as profits are to be more easily made elsewhere, the beast will move on. That's how South East Asia was tripped up. The Asian Tiger countries took the advice of free market advocates to allow capital to move freely and, on rumor alone, it did move, leaving these countries with no money in the till. Then when they said well that didn't work let's restrict capital again, the IMF swooped in and said oh no, no, no you can't do that if you want to be part of free trade, you'll scare off investors, you must take money out of public services. Ms. Klein makes a correlation between the 20% rise in girls sold into the sex trade in Thailand and the implementation of IMF structural adjustments.

Meanwhile with all this destruction going on, in the new world of post 9/11 war, terrorism and global warming, a whole new market has evolved in security and reconstruction. And we thought the defense industry was bad. Now the stock market can cheer on death and destruction because its good for more than half of all businesses.

The world was caught by surprise by such unfettered greed because, before we always had the example of the Soviet Union and communism to tame the beast. With the fall of Russia, capitalism could roar on. This could have been a very depressing story, but Ms. Klein ends her tale by describing how people learned from this experience and are fighting back by decentralizing power, localizing it in essence, and making laws that their people will now know to make stick. May it be so.

A Game As Old As Empire

Following on the success of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, this anthology brings to the public eye even more crimes with more concrete details than John Perkins was able to impart. The whole shady loans to developing countries is explained plus a chapter just on the Phillipines to demonstrate what happens. And if the World Bank thinks a project is too much of a credit risk or is environmentally unsound even for their standards, there's the export credit agencies for the odd nuclear power plants and massive arms sales to areas of conflict.

Then there's the whole nefarious world of offshore banking which is reported here to be a substantial part of the global financial traffic thus allowing all the crooks of the world to channel profits out of their home countries, launder money, evade taxes and take kickbacks without anybody being the wiser. That's also how the arms trade and drug trafficking can carry on.

Repressive regimes in Africa mine resources from the land with what amounts to slave labor created from local wars. Coltan for instance is an ingredient of the Sony playstation 2. Here also, how oil production sharing agreements will rob the Iraqis of most of their revenue stream.

Debt relief just creates more burden for the same country, but here is offered some suggestions which would require the redistribution of social assets like land, education, technology and political power. Also resurrecting basic legal principles which would deem certain dubious debt contracted by dishonest governments to be non-enforceable. And addressing the offshore banking problem of capital flight.