Quote of the day: Ha-Joon Chang.

The Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang in his new book "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism":

"Contrary to what is commonly believed, the performance of developing countries in the period of state-led development was superior to what they have achieved during the subsequent period of market-oriented reform. There were some spectacular failures of state intervention, but most of these countries grew much faster, with more equitable income distribution and far fewer financial crises, during the ‘bad old days’ than they have done in the period of marketoriented reforms. Moreover, it is also not true that almost all rich countries have become rich through free-market policies. The truth is more or less the opposite. With only a few exceptions, all of today’s rich countries, including Britaiand the US – the supposed homes of free trade and free market – have become rich through the combinations of protectionism, subsidies and other policies that today they advise the developing countries not to adopt. Free-market policies have made few countries rich so far and will make few rich in the future."

Occupation 101

Neoliberalismen og illusionen om det frie marked.

Neoliberalismen består af et sæt af økonomiske og politiske tanker som antager, at menneskelig velfærd bedst fordres ved at frigøre den individuelle iværksætterånd indenfor et institutionelt rammeværk kendetegnet ved en stærk ejendomsret og et frit marked. De neoliberale agitatorer for det frie marked fortæller os, at markedet bør frigøres fra alle former for statslig eller interstatslig kontrol, da det sagtens kan regulere sig selv og det vil således frisat fungere bedst muligt og derfor skabe størst mulig rigdom for alle. Staternes primære rolle i den globaliserede kapitalistiske orden er at sikre pengenes integritet og kvalitet og at værne om den private ejendomsret og politivirksomhed og militær infrastruktur er derfor nødvendige.

Disse neoliberale tanker har vundet indpas i store dele af den vestlige verdens politiske og økonomiske eliter, hvilket har udmøntet sig i at kollektiv (dvs. statslig) ejendom mange steder er blevet liberaliseret, mens statslige kontrolfunktioner ift. markedet i stor stil er blevet afskaffet. Problemet er bare, at der gennem det meste af industrialiseringens historie ikke har eksisteret noget egentligt frit marked fuldstændig upåvirket af statslig eller interstatslig indblanding, hvorfor tanken om, at markedet fungerer bedst når det er fuldstændig frit altså ikke kan siges at være historisk begrundet eller empirisk funderet og derfor kan neoliberalismen altså ikke siges at være grundlagt på saglighed, men må snarere betegnes som rendyrket ideologisk.

Tager vi den neoliberale logik ud i dens yderste konsekvens bliver det da også hurtigt klart, at den snarere end at sikre menneskelig velfærd faktisk i stor stil undergraver den. Hvis der ikke må eksister nogen som helst former for statslig eller interstatslig kontrol af markedet, ja så betyder det vel, at enhver skal have lov til at benytte sig af børnearbejde, til at bedrive handel med menneskelige organer og at ingen skal kunne forhindres af stater i eksempelvis at producere kemiske eller biologiske våben og i at sælge dem til hvem man måtte ønske. Det ville jo være ensbetydende med statslig indblanding i det frie markeds virke og dette er iflg. neoliberalisterne ikke til nogens fordel. Jeg indrømmer gerne, at der næppe er mange påståede neoliberale der ønsker dette, hvorfor man da også fristes til at hævde, at de nok ikke har tænkt deres nærmest fundamentalistiske tro på det frigjorte markeds godhed til ende.

Opgør med vækstparadigmet.

Vi lever på en endelig planet og derfor er de ressourcer vi kan tage i anvendelse selvfølgelig også begrænsede af denne endelighed. Alligevel synes idealet om en konstant fortsættelse af den økonomiske vækst at have karakter af et ganske fasttømret dogme som kun alt for sjældent spørges ind til og problematiseres. Hvad er eksempelvis målet med konstant økonomisk vækst? Hvorfor har vores samfund brug for at blive rigere i material forstand? Hvori består det bæredygtige i dette vækstideal i lys af den konstante forøgelse af belastning på biosfæren og dens begrænsede bæreevne?

Det er derfor opmuntrende at Information igår publicerede en kronik af Enhedslistens parlamentarikere Frank Aaen og Per Clausen hvori det herskende vækstparadigme indenfor mainstream-økonomien problematiseres. De skriver:

"Forestillingen om vækst som samfundets højeste værdi og et ubetinget gode er nok den mest udbredte borgerlige ‘sandhed’, som en ny regering må gøre op med.

Alle vismændene betragter vækst som så essentielt, at det end ikke er til diskussion. Det må vi gøre op med, og det kan bl.a. ske ved at inkludere økologiske og socialistiske økonomer blandt vismændene.

Vores vismandsreform skal altså ikke ses som et opgør med borgerlige smagsdommere, sådan som det er blevet udlagt i pressen. Det skal ses i sammenhæng med vores forslag om en bæredygtighedskommission.

Baggrunden for begge forslag er, at vi ønsker at gå fra et fokus på økonomi og vækst til et fokus på demokrati og bæredygtighed."

Jimmy Carter: Call Off the Drug War.

In an Op-Ed in the New York Times the former American president Jimmy Carter urges the US leadership to "Call Off the Global Drug War."

Excerpt:

"In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts.

I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself."

These ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries.

This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production of cocaine and heroin. One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries."

Greek Turmoil Raises Fears of Instability Around Europe.

"The instability rocking Greece this week is the latest manifestation of a troubling new phase in the global financial crisis: political turmoil is sweeping through Europe, toppling governments and threatening to undermine efforts to rescue the financial system and, ultimately, the euro zone itself."

Source: NYTimes.

Anti-intellectualism: Bush White House Wanted to Discredit Dissenting Professor.

Former CIA officer Glenn Carle has told the New York Times that he was ordered to dig up compromising information about the American professor of Middle Eastern history and informed dissident blogger, Juan Cole, in order to discredit him, presumably in the hope of silencing his criticism. Understandably Cole finds this information disturbing and he therefore asks for the Senate and House Intelligence Committees to launch an investigation into the matter. Yesterday Cole wrote on his blog:

"Carle’s revelations come as a visceral shock. You had thought that with all the shennanigans of the CIA against anti-Vietnam war protesters and then Nixon’s use of the agency against critics like Daniel Ellsberg, that the Company and successive White Houses would have learned that the agency had no business spying on American citizens.

I believe Carle’s insider account and discount the glib denials of people like Low. Carle is taking a substantial risk in making all this public. I hope that the Senate and House Intelligence Committees will immediately launch an investigation of this clear violation of the law by the Bush White House and by the CIA officials concerned. Like Mr. Carle, I am dismayed at how easy it seems to have been for corrupt WH officials to suborn CIA personnel into activities that had nothing to do with national security abroad and everything to do with silencing domestic critics. This effort was yet another attempt to gut the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, in this case as part of an effort to gut the First Amendment of the US Constitution."

This first response was followed by another posted today on juancole.com:

"Very unfortunately, President Obama just signed a four-year extension of the so-called PATRIOT Act, with three central provisions that permit warrantless spying by government agencies on US residents. This extension was rushed through the Congress with parliamentary maneuvers and opponents of it who wanted a public debate were shut down by Reid and Boehner.

If the Bush White House blithely picked up the phone and asked the Central Intelligence Agency to gather information on my private life for the purpose of destroying me politically– a set of actions that was illegal every which way from Sunday– then imagine how powerful government officials are using the legal authorization they receive from the PATRIOT Act to spy on and marginalize perceived opponents.

The act is clearly unconstitutional and guts key Bill of Right protections. Among its disturbing aspects is the access it gives government agencies to individuals’ library records, business records and other personal effects without requiring probable cause of a crime being committed. And while the wiretap provisions target non-US citizens, they extend to any conversations the latter have with US citizens. The framers of the constitution in any case believed that the liberties they proclaimed extended to “all men,” not just citizens.

Worse, Sen. Ron Wyden has said that there is a “secret PATRIOT Act” in the sense that there is a government interpretation of the act that allows surveillance and intrusiveness far beyond what the letter of the statute seems to permit.

The scale of the electronic surveillance of Americans’ private correspondence by the National Security Agency is barely imaginable, and we have no idea how much of our communications are being stored on NSA servers and sifted through by computer programs.

The Congress should revisit the PATRIOT Act in the light of the revelation of what was attempted in my regard, and should repeal the damn thing. Failing that, the federal judiciary should find it unconstitutional, which it is. But one of the things that worries me is that some of the key political and judicial personnel who might want to move against it may themselves already have been victims of surveillance, entrapment and blackmailing. Just how corrupt has our whole governmental apparatus become, that clear violations of our Constitution are blithely accepted?"

A collecting of articles regarding the war on Iraq authored by Cole in 2005 and 2006 can be read on Salon.com.

And, Interestingly, Wikipedia has the following to say about anti-intellectualism as a prominent feature of authoritarian societies:

"Dictators, and their dictatorship supporters, use anti-intellectualism to gain popular support, by accusing intellectuals of being a socially detached, politically-dangerous class who question the extant social norms, who dissent from established opinion, and who reject nationalism, hence they are unpatriotic, and thus subversive of the nation."

Frihedskæmper dømt for terrorstøtte

Nu skal en af de gamle frihedskæmpere fra anden verdenskrig to måneder i spjældet fordi han har valgt at støtte PFLPs humanitære arbejde. Organisationen er nemlig en terrororganisation iflg. EU. Europa er samtidig med dette hovedimportør af frugt og grønt, dyrket i de ulovligt besatte palæstinensiske områder, af det delvist statsejede israelske firma Agrexco.

Ha-Joon Chang: 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism.

Tariq Ali on Obama.

Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood [Full Film]

House Passes Authority for Worldwide War.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union "The House just passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), including a provision to authorize worldwide war, which has no expiration date and will allow this president — and any future president — to go to war anywhere in the world, at any time, without further congressional authorization. The new authorization wouldn’t even require the president to show any threat to the national security of the United States. The American military could become the world’s cop, and could be sent into harm’s way almost anywhere and everywhere around the globe."

Der er noget galt i DK: Det første offer

Branko Milanovic - Global Income Inequality

New Report: Captured by Cotton.

Exploited Dalit girls produce garments in India for European and US markets.

"This report highlights several labour rights violations faced by girls and young women employed under the Sumangali Scheme in the Tamil Nadu garment industry. The Sumangali Scheme equals bonded labour, on the basis of the fact that employers are unilaterally holding back part of the workers’ wages until three or more years of work have been completed. In addition, workers are severely restricted in their freedom of movement and privacy. Workers work in unsafe and unhealthy circumstances. Local and international NGOs have reported extensively on the Sumangali Scheme. Inevitably, brands and retailers sourcing from Tamil Nadu have Sumangali workers in their supply chain. ICN and SOMO denounce the Sumangali Scheme as outright unacceptable and are of the opinion that sourcing companies have a responsibility to ensure that workers’ rights are respected throughout their supply chain."

Center for Research on Multional Corporations: Captured By Cotton (pdf).

Quote of the day: Rudolf Rocker.

“Only freedom can inspire men to great things and bring about social and political transformations. The art of ruling men has never been the art of educating men and inspiring them to a new shaping of their lives.”

Interview w. Jonh Perkins - Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

Russia Today Interview - Peter Joseph (April 2011)

25 Ways To Suppress Truth - The Rules of Disinformation.

Quote of the day: Robert O. Paxton on Fascism

Fascism, according to Paxton, is "A form of political behaviour marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

Robert O. Paxton: "The Anatomy of Fascism" 2004.