Debtlessness as a human right

Farooque Chowdhury takes a critical look at the ‘hype’ and ‘hoopla’ by the mainstream with microcredit. Interviewed by Sonja Ernst

The Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus invented microcredit in the 1970s. Poor people who do not normally qualify for traditional banking credits get offered small loans to spur entrepreneurship. Microcredit got very popular—not only in Bangladesh—as an instrument to reduce poverty. In 2006 the Grameen Bank and its founder Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize. Was there too much hope and hype about microloans?
Yes. There was too much hoopla with microcredit. The mainstream made the hype. The present system is failing to resolve the problem of poverty, which is, rather, widening. The poverty situation is a threat to status quo. Microcredit, in this perspective, appeared to the mainstream as a safety valve, a mechanism to restrain poor from questioning the status quo that fails to address the problem of poverty.
At the same time, with microcredit, a section of capital found a way to invest capital in an area once beyond its reach, a new market for reaping profit, a modus operandi to appropriate surplus value. The microcredit activities that we now see are actually an experiment for a section of capital. A number of the biggest and wealthiest banks, it was reported, were ‘dipping their toes into the water’.
But microcredit activities need reliable answers to many questions before the banks step in the market. For example, amount of operating cost, competition between microcredit operators, viability with debtors’ declining capacity, risk of a credit bubble, and many similar questions are there that require credible answers. It was primarily assumed by a section that microcredit was working. Moreover, the neo-liberal idea of shaking off the state’s responsibility, especially throwing away the responsibility of providing employment, carries the risk of taking away legitimacy of status quo. Microcredit stepped in these problem areas.
But fundamental questions related to microcredit are not asked by the mainstream. The root of poverty, the source of money that a microcredit debtor pays back, a microcredit debtor’s length of working day for making repayment, the related intensity, labour-power of his family that are needed to generate repayment amount, negotiating capacity and bargaining space of a microcredit debtor as the debtor enters into a contract with a creditor, a microcredit debtor’s rights, of household-based production or service units competing with each other in a macro market with macro competitors in an environment of so-called ‘free’ market, and similar other basic questions are not attended by the mainstream. The hype is the shroud to hide these questions.
There are people, many in this world, who are in pain as they come across the cruel face of poverty. Microcredit appeared to them as a hope. That was not their fault. Rather, the hope was the reflection of their urge to get rid of the curse of poverty. But now, it is difficult to hide facts. The hype is fading away.

In Bangladesh more than 20 million people borrow microloans, with the average credit being $114. Could you please describe the ‘standard borrower’ in Bangladesh and for what he/she is usually using the loan?
The ‘standard borrower’ is the poor, the asset-less. On the basis of different studies it can also be said that it is the poor who resort to microcredit. A section of microcredit operators, however, are moving up to a segment, which is not poor. It should be mentioned that Grameen Bank, BRAC, ASA are not the only microcredit operators in Bangladesh. There are many microcredit operators, different in size and capacity. With a growing number of microcredit operators the size of lending increased as well. There are cases where rural rich tap microcredit. It was found by studies that microcredit goes to those who are not destitute. But still it is the poor who are the ‘standard borrower’.
With about a hundred dollars what else can be done other than initiating a petty production unit or a petty service unit? For example, a small sewing room or a shop. A number of studies have found that the borrowed money is used to attend to immediate need, i.e. buy food, pay dowry, repay an old debt, etc. It is a contradiction: a poor fellow is being asked to invest borrowed money in a micro-enterprise while the fellow needs money to procure food immediately or to pay for medical treatment. An article in the Harvard Business Review stated in 2007: ‘Many heads of microfinance programs now privately acknowledge what John Hatch, the founder of FINCA International (one of the largest microfinance institutions), has said publicly: 90 per cent of micro-loans are used to finance current consumption rather than to fuel enterprise.’

In Bangladesh most of the microcredits are given to women. Microcredits are considered to empower women. Would you agree?
A number of studies have found the opposite. Here, I refer to only one. Lamia Karim in her study found: ‘In the majority of the cases, the husbands and male kin of the women [debtors] used the loans.’ She writes: ‘[I]t is the husbands of the women and other male members who really use the loans….I found that men used 95 percent of the loans’ (‘Demystifying Micro-Credit, The Grameen Bank, NGOs, and Neoliberalism in Bangladesh’, University of Oregon, USA). She quotes: ‘Now Grameen lends money to husbands, but only through the wives. The principal borrower remains the wives’ (Yunus, Muhammad and Alan Jolis, 1998, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty, University Press Ltd, Dhaka quoted in Karim). ‘In my research area,’ Lamia writes, ‘rural men laughed when they were asked whether the money belonged to their wives. They pointedly remarked that “since their wives belong to them, the money rightfully belongs to them”.’

The media increasingly reports about borrowers which are over-indebted and cannot pay back their loans. What went wrong in these cases?
There are a number of reasons, and there are fundamental reasons behind apparent reasons. Either the micro-production/service unit failed to compete in market or the debtor had to face natural calamity or a family crisis or the borrowed money was spent to buy food or pay dowry or the return was not enough to pay instalment of the loan; and so on.
The question is: why a family crisis or a natural disaster makes a poor debtor incapable of paying back debt and why a non-poor does not fail in similar situation? Or, why a micro-unit fails in a macro market? Similar questions will lead to an answer that will show that everyone is not entrepreneur, competing in market is not always the survival path for the poor.
Is it logical to expect that the poor will have enough return from market after competing with macro-competitors while the entire existence of the poor is a vulnerable reality, a fragile reality?

What happens if a family cannot pay back the loan?
A number of studies have already mentioned the reality a microcredit debtor faces as the debtor fails to pay back debt. The debtor has either to borrow money again thus the debtor gets entrapped into a debt cycle or sale whatever the debtor finds saleable to pay back the earlier debt or the debtor has to face other consequences: pressure/threat/coercion/humiliation. Some desert or commit suicide as a number of studies found. There are press reports that also tell the reality.
You have to know that in Bangladesh many microcredits are group-based. This has been noted by Lamia Karim in her study: ‘Women would march off together to scold the defaulting woman, shame her or her husband in a public place, and when she could not pay the full amount of the instalment, go through her possessions and take away whatever they could sell off to recover the defaulted sum.... This ranged from taking away her gold nose-ring (a symbol of marital status for rural women...) to cows and chicks to trees that had been planted to be sold as timber to collecting rice and grains that the family had accumulated as food, very often leaving the family with no food whatsoever.’ Aminur Rahman in his study Women and Microcredit in Rural Bangladesh, Anthropological Study of the Rhetoric and Realities of Grameen Bank Lending (Westview Press, Colorado and Oxford), David Hulme and Paul Mosley in their Finance Against Poverty (vol. I, Routledge, London and New York, 1996), Richard Montgomery in his paper ‘Disciplining or Protecting the Poor? Avoiding the Social Costs of Peer Pressure in Solidarity Group Microcredit Schemes’ (1995) cited the harsh reality of failure to pay back loan.

Bangladesh is the birthplace of the global microcredit movement. You contributed to and edited the book Micro Credit – Myth Manufactured, Unveiling appropriation of surplus value and an Icon. What kind of myth is behind microcredit?
There are a number of myths that has been built around microcredit. It was told that it would make poverty archaic. It is being told that it is collateral free, it empowers women, it empowers the poor, it pushes out moneylenders.
A number of studies now find different facts. In Senegal and Uganda, no clear evidence of poverty reduction by microcredit was found [‘Microcredit, Social Capital and Politics’, Journal of Microfinance, vol. VII, (1), 2005]. Findings from other countries also are not positive. Findings by Jonathan Morduch (‘Does Microfinance Really Help the Poor? New Evidence from Flagship Programs in Bangladesh’, MacArthur Network, Princeton University, 1998), Anne Marrie Goetz and Rina Sen Gupta [‘Who Takes the Credit? Gender, Power and Control over Loan Use in Rural Credit Programmes in Bangladesh’, World Development, vol. 24(1), 1996], Blaine Stephens and Hind Tazi (‘Performance and Transparency: A Survey of Microfinance in South Asia’, Microbanking Bulletin, April, 2006) do not support claims made by the micro-creditors.
A number of experts are also telling the bold fact: Dr Qazi Kholikuzzaman Ahmad, chairman of the PKSF, a central body monitoring microfinance in Bangladesh, said that the poor were being exploited under microcredit. He opined that the poverty-stricken people of Bangladesh suffered a lot from high rate of interest for borrowing from microcredit agencies. Furthermore Qazi Kholikuzzaman Ahmad described microcredit as a ‘death trap’ for the poor. Dr Salehuddin Ahmed, a former governor of the Bangladesh Bank, the central bank of the country, stated that microcredit was not the panacea for poverty alleviation. ‘It is not Aladin’s lamp with which one could alleviate poverty (The Independent, Dhaka, December 28, 2010).
Microcredit makes some more claims. There is a myth with high, very high repayment rate. We now know the ‘mechanism’ behind this ‘high’ return, pressure and dehumanisation. There is the myth of bank at the door step, but mostly there is no real consulting. Even, the philosophy behind microcredit is a myth itself. The approach that avoids class question while dealing with the question of poverty is myth. The title of the book you have mentioned discusses these myths.

Muhammad Yunus as well criticises many institutions that give microcredit as ‘the new loan sharks’ and asks for more regulation. The government of Bangladesh decided to cap during the next months the interest rates for microcredit at 27 per cent. Will such regulatory instruments bring about a solution?
‘Muhammad Yunus is willing to admit, “microcredit cannot solve society’s every problem,”’ as Mark Engler, a senior analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus has written. Now, failure of microcredit in alleviating poverty is increasingly being told by many others. The debate seems almost finished.
Rate of interest is a major problem with microcredit. But, it is not the only problem. The rate should be taken into account. But, a scientific approach is first to look into the source of interest. There, the microcredit debtor comes, comes the appropriation of surplus value. Otherwise, looking only at rate might lead to a confusing conclusion and the microcredit debtor’s plight will miss eyes. The regulatory instruments you have mentioned will bring respite to debtors for the time being. But, the problem will not be resolved as the fundamental problem is the reasons behind poverty.
Microcredit is part of a process, which should not be personified. Singling out organisation or individual will not help understand the process and its failure will not help analyse it scientifically. Blaming an individual will hide the perspective, the reality that pushed dominant interest to generate microcredit, the process, the capital involved, the institution microcredit has taken shape of, the interests, the relationship between related social classes, the distortion of concept of rights, etc.

Even if microcredit is imperfect, poor people need to get loans to buy a cow or to pay for medical care. The traditional moneylender in the villages are not an alternative, they take interest rates of 120 per cent and more. What can be the alternative?
Why do we always imagine that the poor has to survive by borrowing, by turning debtor? Why do we not think about a different context, where the poor need not borrow, where credit will not be considered as human right, rather bondage, where to be free from debt will be considered a human right? Why do we always have a constant premise where the poor has to turn debtor? Can’t the premise be changed where the poor does not need to turn debtor?
Turning debtor is not the alternative; rather, turning the poor a debtor is actually business as usual, it is actually, to let the poor live as poor with some breathing space so that the lot of poor does not change fundamentally.
Problem with microcredit is not only its interest rate. And, the question is not only the survival of the poor. The question is to have an economy where none languishes with yoke of poverty, where none is indebted to a destiny dominated by hunger, ignorance, disparity, uncertainty, no space for participation, long working days, etc. Moreover, it is not a question to be addressed on individual basis, on household basis. It is a question related to politics along with economy and society, along with entire equation of social forces. Poverty is not only an economic question; it is a political question also. An alternative, as you ask, has to be searched in this perspective.
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This abridged version of the interview for Suedasien, journal of Suedasienbuero, Bonn, Germany, (www.asienhaus.de/suedasienbuero), over internet appeared in Suedasien, 4/2010-1/2011. The translation into German and abridgement was also done by Sonja Ernst. Farooque Chowdhury, editor, Micro Credit Myth Manufactured, Unveiling appropriation of surplus value and an icon (www.shrabonprokashani.com) and a regular contributor of New Age.

Empire’s Overtly Covert Action In Libya

Now, Empire is going to take overtly covert action in Libya. It is not new. Covert action was there for long, but not formally. It was through friends. This is for the Empire’s Libyan “democracy” enterprise.

But, dust of war on the Libyan desert is sending smokes over the Washington sky. Politics and public opinion in the US is being influenced by the Libyan involvement.

Obama has signed a secret order, known as presidential “finding”, authorizing covert US support for anti-Gadhafi forces. An exclusive Reuters report informed this development on the Libya front.

Such “findings”, the report said, are a principal form of presidential directive used to authorize secret operations by the CIA. White House spokesman refrained from comment on the issue. The CIA declined to comment. So, the general public will have no clear idea about the step. A “transparent and accountable” style, indeed!

The ground reality is: neither Gadhafi’s forces nor his opponents, the “pick-up basketball team”, as Obama’s director of national intelligence compared them, appear able to make decisive gains.

The “pick-up basketball team” will now formally get cash or arms or both from the Empire. Sending arms would arguably violate the UN arms embargo on Libya although the mighty – the US, UK and France –will find out loophole in the resolution.

Covert action, “any US government effort to change the economic, military, or political situation overseas in a hidden way”, encompasses propaganda, funding, electoral manipulation, arming, training, and even encouraging a coup. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, according to press reports referring US officials, have indicated their willingness to supply the Libyan “democracy” visionaries with arms. The New York Times already reported that the CIA had sent its operatives and that British operatives were directing air strikes.

The Libyan friends are now being armed covertly, although the world media know it. The Egyptian friends are providing training. But, Egypt with a “revolutionary” fervor prefers to keep it secret, although the world media also know it. Future “covert” actions will also take the friendly Egyptian help. It, in the name of “technical assistance”, will help bypassing the NATO-consensus-driven command structure, and help change the military stalemate in the Libyan theater despite a dozen days of air strikes by the coalition of competitors.

On the other hand, a number of US lawmakers are uneasy with walking into Libyan desert. A number of them are asking questions about the cost of the Libya operation and expressed concern about the makeup of the “pick-up basketball team”. They expressed frustration because the US officials couldn’t say the time period for concluding the US involvement. Some of them are anxious about their government’s activities in Libya, and some of them have recalled the end use of the US arms to the proxy fighters fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. There are apprehensions for similar experience in Libya. Rep. Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, opposed supplying arms to the Libyan rebels “at this time.”

There is the question of cost of the enterprise. The Pentagon puts it at so far $550 million. It could be, according an estimate, $40 million a month depending on the length of the operation for the US. Even, “It could be higher,” an official said.

This carries possibility of serious question among the general public at a time of overpowering budget deficit. People can question the logic behind spending millions for Libya strife while teachers, cops and firemen find them laid off because of shortage of money.

An Associated Press-GfK poll found the US split on the US involvement in Libya, with 48% approving and 50% disapproving. Only 13% favored US ground troops there.

Referring to the poll, Liz Sidoti, AP’s National Political Writer, wrote: “Americans are growing increasingly pessimistic about the economy as soaring gas costs strain already-tight budgets.”

Prices on everything, many feel, are going up, and that’s hurting. “Americans are”, the AP report said, “acutely focused on their financial well-being, even as turmoil in the Middle East commands international attention. And the foreign unrest is directly affecting them by boosting oil prices. More Americans — 77 percent, up from 54 percent last fall — now say gas prices are highly important to them.”

The survey, conducted in March 24-28, Liz opines, “highlights a central challenge Obama will face in his campaign for re-election. The president will have to convince a lot of voters who are still feeling financial hardship that things are getting better.” “But the disconnect between negative perceptions of the economy and signs that a rebound are under way could provide an opening for Republicans at the outset of the 2012 campaign.”

Only a third of the respondents in the survey are optimistic of better times ahead for the US, down from about half earlier this year while 28% thought that the economy would get worse, “the largest slice of people who have expressed that sentiment since the question was first asked in December 2009.” Half of Americans still approve Obama’s performance.

The poll finding comes as there could be a partial government shutdown without further action by Congress. Without agreement, some Republicans say they won’t approve funding to keep the government operating. About half in the survey expressed that enormous federal budget deficit to cause a major economic crisis for the US for the next decade, and most were worried with the mounting federal debt that will hamper the financial future of the posterity. Participants in the poll view everyone negatively when it comes to handling the deficit.

Does the economic reality, and the perception of economic situation by the people are influencing the Libya involvement? And, shall not these – economic reality, the perception and the involvement – influence politics in Washington DC? And, shall it be wrong if it is sarcastically told that Gadhafi is also playing with politics at the center of the center of the world system? 
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This article was published at countercurrents.org , on 1 April, 2011

Libya: Arms For “Democracy”

Arms are required for “democracy” in Libya. The masters of world “democracy” feel the demand. This reiteration of old imperialist ethics carries implication for those not in agreement to the world powers.

With resorting to arms in Libya, it will be a democracy of the oil, by the oil, for the oil, a “democracy” exported to grab oil, the strategic mineral, and to demolish the Libyan people’s journey to democracy capable to design their own economic and political life.

The US and UK, the two “democracy” defenders felt the need to, formally, arm Libyan “democracy” rebels. At the London Libya Conference (LLC), Clinton and Hague perceived that the UN resolution provides them the legal coverage to arm their Libyan friends of “democracy” in the theater of intervention to oust Gadhafi, their friend turned foe.

Susan Rice, the US’ UN envoy informed that the US had “not ruled out” arming the rebels. Hague, the UK foreign secretary, agreed that the resolution made it legal “to give people aid in order to defend themselves…”. Qatar, West’s one of the Gulf allies and defenders of “democracy” and “human” rights, also feels the need of the present “democracy”-hour. The “pro”-people Qatari premier said: “We cannot let the people suffer for too long.” People, it seems, is the magical password that allows everyone to pass the door of legitimacy.

The French and the Italians disagreed with their Anglo-American friends’ interpretation of the UN resolution. Juppé the French foreign minister, contested: “It is not part of the UN resolution”. Germany expressed reservations about the current military intervention in Libya.

This part of the story, interpreting the UN resolution, carries another connotation: competition to control stooges and oil. The powerful shall prevail in the job of providing interpretation.

The interventionists are uncertain about outcome of their “endeavor” in Libya as their un-limits of power are now being shadowed by crises, public dissension in homes, and gradually increasing competition. With the present air strike power, the Libya strife can live longer than the designers imagined.

Libyan nouveau-“revolutionaries” fled in panicked scramble from the localities they occupied, the western media reported, as Gadhafi forces hammered them with assault. Their “courageous” advance with interventionist air support turned into cowardice retreat. A spokesman for the Western ally in Libya boosted: They would have finished Gaddafi “in a few days” had they arms. He expressed: Western political support and arms “would be great.” The routing of the Libyan “democracy visionaries” in some areas shows their dependence on masters’ air power.

What’s in exchange of support? The LLC agreed to study a Qatari “benevolent” proposal to sell oil from intervention-ally occupied areas of Libya, to provide revenue for the insurgents. Shall the revenue go to pay for arms? The dealers are not hiding their impatience for oil.

So, the interventionists are resounding battle cries. Cameron acknowledged that “the Libyan people cannot reach that future on their own. ... We are all here … to help the Libyan people in their hour of need.” This “praise”-worthy Western-Eastern (as there are Qatar and the Emirates also) intervention in the energy-strategic land in Africa now also finds Sweden, although not a NATO member, as a friend. Sweden, as press reported, plans to send fighter jets to the Libyan air space.

Whom the “democracy” architects support there in Libya? Clinton admitted that they “do not know as much” of their Libyan ally, “visionaries” for a “democratic” Libya, Sarkozy’s favorite trans-Mediterranean political partner. Some officials attending the LLC admitted that they had little knowledge of the Libyan partner. Then, is it an act of desperation? What’s the circumstance that makes one desperate, and don’t allow enough time to know a friend? Is it only a geostrategic move? Or, are there reasons lying in home? Admiral James, NATO’s commander in Europe, told that intelligence analysis had revealed “flickers” of al-Qaeda or Hezbollah presence inside the movement. In an open letter to the international community, Gadhafi called for a halt to the “monstrous assault” and asserted that the Benghazi-band is supported by the al-Qaeda.

It can be assumed that, on the basis of experience of past incidents of intervention, Special Forces from other countries are already in action in Libya. The US and France are sending diplomats to Benghazi to strengthen bonds of deal. Formal shipments of arms will now follow the supply line already established through old friends.

In the West, it has been mentioned that western intelligence has had its fingers in parts of the Libyan opposition for years. At the same time, today’s “democracy” mongers were arms contractors of Gadhafi. They had vibrant business with the ruler. They now plan to take the ruler to the international criminal court, the arrangement one world power does not recognize. History, it seems, is on the side of the world powers.

Obama plans to “deny the [Gadhafi] regime arms, cut off its supply of cash, assist the opposition, and work … to hasten the day when Gaddafi leaves power” as he outlined his objectives in Libya. He cautioned Gaddafi “that history is not on [Gadhafi’s] side.” However, Obama has not forgotten one of the costly lessons learnt from Iraq: “To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq. [R]egime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.” According to Obama, the U.S. goal remains regime change, but that could not be pursued as a military strategy because it goes far beyond the related UN Resolution.

But, he has more hawkish friends and critics at home, some of whom are determined to act in a way so that history remembers them as champion of “poor”, “human” rights, and “democracy”. But history ultimately laughs at pseudo-champions of people’s causes. 
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This article was published at countercurrents.org , on 31 March, 2011

Thank you, Professor Yunus

Thank you, Professor Yunus for your nice observations on microcredit ("Wrong turn for microcredit," Daily Star, Jan. 9. Actually the IHT carried it long ago). It is nice to know from you the state of affairs of microcredit. It seems you are concerned with the character microcredit has taken. Your observations confirm findings of a number of studies and reports that the Bangladesh press carried over the years. It is really a frank confession from one of the leading figures related to microcredit.
You, as your article claims, had no idea that microcredit "would give rise to its own breed of loan sharks. But it has." You have identified the time period since "trouble with microcredit began" in 2005. Microcredit operators began turning into profit makers; empathy towards borrowers disappeared; microcredit debtors were harmed; etc. You have also identified the cause: "Commercialisation has been a terrible wrong turn for microfinance."Financial risks are transmitted to the poor;" "commercial microcredit institutions are subject to demands for ever increasing profits, which can only come in the form of higher interest rates charged to the poor." These observations are related to reality.
tive, and the poor are their prey.
Then, the consequence is there: pressing the poor for repayment. Threat, coercion, humiliation, selling of belongings, pulling down of tin roofs, desertion, suicides, are what the poor debtors go through when they get trapped in debt. Their vulnerable lives turn more vulnerable with no survival space.
A number of studies found this even before 2005. Richard Montgomery in his paper Disciplining, or Protecting the Poor? Avoiding the Social Costs of Peer Pressure in Solidarity Group Microcredit Schemes (1995), David Hulme and Paul Mosley in their Finance Against Poverty (vol. I, Routledge, London, New York, 1996), and Aminur Rahman in his study Women and Microcredit in Rural Bangladesh, Anthropological Study of the Rhetoric and Realities of Grameen Bank Lending (Westview Press, Colorado and Oxford) cited the harsh reality debtors face.
Interest rate is a burning problem microcredit debtors face. But it is not the only problem that they encounter. It is not the only factor that traps them in the debt cycle. The source of interest should be looked into before the rate of interest. The source leads one to appropriation of surplus labour.
The premise microcredit stands on is wrong. The poor are asked to be entrepreneurs although most of them do not have the traits that make an entrepreneur, and the environment and conditions are not always present to facilitate entrepreneurship. On the other hand, household-based isolated production/service micro-units are asked to compete with each other and with macro-competitors in a macro market. It is actually an indeterminate equation.
A society overwhelmed with poverty cannot buy its liberation from poverty through thousands of micro-enterprises. Poverty is not only an economic question. It is a political question also; and micro-enterprises do not have the capacity to resolve the political questions related to poverty. Moreover, an economy cannot lift itself through microcredit. Milford Bateman has discussed this in his Why Doesn't Microfinance Work? The destructive rise of local neoliberalism (Zed Books, London, New York, 2010).
Shall "steer microcredit back to course" provide the way out of poverty? Each type of capital has its own character, its trajectory. Loan capital shall not behave like manufacturing capital, usury capital's path of movement shall be different from that of industrial capital, and no one can stop capital looking for gambling from entering a casino. And, all of them have their respective destinies. Is it possible for the poor to find their survival space in company with capital that looks for profit? Utopia has long been left back by political economy.

Farooque Chowdhury Contributes on Socioeconomic Issues, and is Author of Micro Credit, Myth Manufactured.

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This article was published at The Daily Star,  on 14^th January, 2011

Osama, A Vanquished, Exposes An Empire’s Vulnerability

The world is now near-overflowing with Osama-news. A major part of these are part of psychological warfare, well-designed, well-timed, well-targeted. Some news announce prowess of the mightiest war machine the world has ever seen. People turn cautious of it. A few news, anyhow, expose some facts, facts important for the Empire itself.

It turns out from the news-torrent that Osama turned out an enemy of the Empire. The questions follow: how many times in human history or in history of empires, an individual turned an enemy to empires? Is it possible for an individual to challenge an empire? What the significance is when an individual throws challenge to an empire? At which stage of an empire similar challenges crop up? When an empire has to target an individual? Is it possible for an individual to stand against a system? Is not the question turns serious when the system stands on an extensive base, when it holds intensive power, when it can depend on a wide network of friends? And, is it that that it was an individual’s challenge?

A number of news narrate the long journey, 10 to 15 years, to track a fellow, Osama. (Reuters, “Special report: The bin Laden kill plan”, May 12, 2011) The journey was equipped with most sophisticated equipments and machines. Probably, as is understood from news, some of those machines are owned by none in this world. The intelligence machine that took the time, long or short, depending upon the way one counts, to track Osama, now vanquished, is considered unparallel in the world. Its analytical capacity, its tracking capacity, its pool of intellectual resources are incomparable. During the Cold War days, how many secrets the KGB, the intelligence apparatus of the erstwhile Soviet Union, was able to keep hidden for 10-15 years from the eyes of the Empire’s intelligence wing? Now, how many secrets the Chinese, busy in enhancing their war capability, are able to hide from the eyes and ears of the Empire? Then, how Osama could? Yes, it was not an individual’s, Osama’s act. In that case, are his accomplices more experienced, more organized and craftier than that KGB or the present day Chinese?

It took 10-15 years to track one Osama. If two, three Osamas follow? Shall the time span extend to near-half a century? If two or three Osamas emerge simultaneously? Unknown answer waits.

These are, in one sense, meaningless questions. But, from other angles, these may appear serious issues. The reality – long time, huge resource, an empire standing against an individual – cannot be brushed off. Rather, the base of the reality, the causes and factors behind the reality, deserve serious enquiry. Jubilations of murdering or assassinating an individual helps hide the need of enquiry.

Rather, the jubilations, the extended hatred and humiliation campaign against a community reflect a state of “mind” of a reality that, based on teachings of history, signifies certain aspects in any empire. And, history has not still wiped out similar examples of state of social “mind” in many empires and their destiny. Rebel barbarians chained and paraded through the streets of Rome lined by jubilant Romans unaware of crisis within.

If ISI’s hidden role-argument is accepted for the sake of looking back once again, then doesn’t it appear that the intelligence wing of a state in precarious situation played a smarter role for a certain period of time than the mightiest intelligence arrangement? Does the ISI own more resources, expertise and intellectual capacity than the CIA? What would have happened to the Empire if that smarter period of time widened? What will be the consequence if similar smarter intelligence organizations appear more in number simultaneously and they collude with each other against the Empire? What is the characteristic of the period when a client state can play smarter? These are very simple and elementary questions. There are more serious questions related to these aspects. Those questions are related to the economic and political aspects, aspects of diplomacy, influence, interference and control, capacity to control clients. Shall those questions lead to other geopolitical players, players regional and international? Next age-Wikileaks, probably, shall expose the answers.

It has been widely circulated that Osama and his co-fighters were brought up by an intelligence organization. Why the organization then lost grip of control over them? Why proxies turn disobedient? Is that a simple management question? Or, are there issues related to aspirations of a section, incapacity to accommodate the aspirations, reasons behind the incapacity? Is there any social aspect related to the aspirations? Whom do the aspirations represent?

Osama operation took $3 trillion. The price is more than 15% of the US national debt incurred in the last decade. “With a fiscal mess, the US current rate of deficit spending would add $9 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. That’s three Osamas, right there.” (Tim Fernholz and Jim Tankersley, “The cost of bin Laden: $3 trillion over 15 years”, National Journal) Where the amount shall jump with three, four, five similar operations if required in future? And if the enemy(ies) turn more powerful, more organized, more experienced, more wide based? Has the present Osama-operation concluded? The answer is an emphatic no. What shall be the implication in the economy, an economy turning one of the biggest debtors in world history? The Empire had to borrow money to fight Osama and his followers.

Let us give up the issues of increasing poverty and disparity, the issue of infrastructure in a bad shape, the issues of unemployment and stagnation in the debt-ridden economy in the Empire. The national debt, according Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the “biggest national-security threat” of the Empire.

Just a look at education will provide some startling facts:

Nearly half of Kansas City’s schools faced closing down in late 2010, as ABC News reported in mid-March, 2010. Hundreds of Houston teachers faced firing out. It was the largest school closing in the district’s history. This included high schools, middle schools, elementary schools and early childhood centers. The Kansas City school board’s decision sent shockwaves through the country. Facing a $50 million budget shortfall, the board approved the plan to close schools that the district deemed to be under capacity.

California Watch reported in late-September, 2010: Traditional public schools shorten school year, increase class sizes and lay off teachers and staff by the thousands. Many of the charter schools are cutting costs by hiring less-experienced teachers. Charter schools have not entirely escaped California's budget crunch. Many are making adjustments including reducing the number of teachers.

In early-May, AP reported: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg “unveiled a shrinking budget that would cut corners throughout New York City — from classrooms, where public school children stand to lose one out of 12 teachers, to jails, where officials are saving pennies by cutting items like bread, pepper and ketchup from the menu.” The budget also called for a 12% cut to the city’s libraries and loss of 20 fire companies that would slow firefighting response times. The mayor said: Albany and in Washington “are keeping more of our tax dollars to close their own budget deficits.” The loss of 6,166 public school teacher jobs would include an anticipated 4,100 layoffs. He said elementary schools in poor neighborhoods would be affected the most. The state Financial Control Board has warned that unless the city curbs rising capital debt and growing pension and health care costs, residents can expect deep reductions to services for years to come.

“Welcome back to school in budget-strapped California,” wrote Time, “where pencils, paper and textbooks are indeed prized goods — and their availability in classrooms is increasingly dependent upon the resourcefulness of teachers. As a matter of financial survival, teachers share tips for donation websites, clip coupons together … and learn how to spruce up garage-sale items (bought with their own pennies…). They buy cheap whiteboards and pull used worksheets out of the trash, because paper is a hot commodity. They bring in their own vacuums and have learned how to patch up frayed furniture. … It’s a dire time for public education in California. Nearly $17 billion has been cut from schools over the past two years, and a possible $2.4 billion more in cuts are expected in the next year. Teachers have been forced to take pay cuts ... And thanks to the 18,000 education-department layoffs last year. To keep their classrooms afloat, and to avoid even further out-of-pocket expenses … many California teachers are scrambling to find fresh ways to thriftily educate their students and maintain their physically crumbling classrooms.” Vicki Nosanov Goldman, a teacher said: “For extra credit, I have kids bring in fruit from their trees and veggies from their families’ gardens.” She spends her Sundays combing sale ads, searching for grant money and excavating garage sales for anything from computer carts to pots and pans. “I always ask business owners if they have pens with their logo on them so that I can distribute them to the students,” she said. Goldman, teaching for 22 years, said: “I’ve never had to beg like this.” The report continued: “None dropped off reams of paper. Even classroom cleanliness is often dependent on teacher’s pocketbook and labor. Many teachers across the state can be found late into the evening scrubbing and vacuuming their rooms with their own supplies.” Curtains in a classroom are made of paper as window shades could not be provided. “I hung maps of the world over the windows this year,” said a teacher. Maria Clark, Redlands Teachers Association president, said: The teachers “are living in a world of fear because they are afraid they [are going to be cut] next.” Students “are starting to suffer emotionally from the severe financial drain. ‘[H]ow do you tell a 6-year-old we can’t do a beloved project because we don't have the supplies?’” Superintendent O'Connell said: “[S]tudents will question whether the state values public education.” (“California Teachers: Paying for School Supplies Themselves — and More”, Time, Oct. 08, 2010)

This is a tale of frustrated and angry teachers and of students in a near-hopeless socioeconomic reality. How far an empire can sustain and prosper with a politics of shrinking education? Classrooms and students get squeezed while technological feat glitters in drones shedding, on many occasions, blood of innocents in Pakistan villages stuffed with poverty.

The National Center on Family Homelessness’ report tells: One in 50 American children is homeless. The report America’s Young Outcasts said: “[M]ore than 1.5 million of our nation’s children go to sleep without a home each year.” Children without homes are twice as likely to go hungry.

Now, another picture:

Fernholz and Tankersley ask: How much Osama cost the US and how much has been gained from the fight against him. “By conservative estimates, bin Laden cost the United States at least $3 trillion over the past 15 years, counting the disruptions he wrought on the domestic economy,…pushed the bounds of civil liberty …” To compare, they cited figures: World War II defense spending cost $4.4 trillion, the US military spending was about $19 trillion throughout the Cold War carried for more than four decades. One-fifth of a year’s gross domestic product, more than the entire 2008 budget of the US, has been spent responding to Osama’s 2001 attack. His 1998 bombing of the US embassies in Africa caused Washington to quadruple diplomatic security spending worldwide the following year, from $172 million to $2.2 billion over the next decade. The 2000 bombing of the USS Cole caused $250 million in damages. The actual cost of September 11 attacks, in lost activity and growth, was between $50 billion and $100 billion or about 0.5% to 1 percent of GDP, and caused about $25 billion in property damage. Do these figures echo Osama’s voice: “We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy”?

Wastage and misuse of resources are creeping in. The unaccounted fund in the Empire’s Iraq War is now much-known fact. The Washington Post informed last year: 1,271 government organizations are involved with counterterrorism missions; 51 alone track terrorism financing; they produce about 50,000 intelligence reports each year; and many of these are not read. But the operation appears enjoy-worthy for a few, the handful of armaments corporations and the murky arrangement of defense contractors, a strange arrangement for serious jobs including spy missions.

Questions hover on the horizon of the Empire: How far a neocolonial client state disobey and deceive its master? Can it actually? Does the Empire provide that space of autonomy? When, how and why it turns disobedient? What role is the Empire’s comprador class in the neocolony playing? What’s the socioeconomic basis of that role? Is that an Empire’s incapacity? And, is that incapacity an expression of declining power? Complex questions of political science can haunt a scientist concerned with empires’ rise and fall, spanning at times hundreds of years and at times a thousand year.

Alternatively, the questions can be ignored on the strength of world accumulation. Who knows that whether that will be a foolish exercise in ignorance or not? But whether these are questioned or not, the contradictions the ever accumulating reality generates will continue to create disharmony in distribution, create frustration and anger, silently hollow the base that supports the Empire. The Empire is chained to its own precinct: accumulate to survive and create contradictions, antagonistic and irreconcilable in nature, in home, within its social body. Wars, invasions, police actions abroad, into far-flung corners of the world, will increase its burden that it gradually will find difficult to bear, will diminish its capacity to attend to problems in home.

The psychology that jubilates assassination, murder, that germinates hatred signify last phase of a declining society that fails to win over and co-opt minor dissenting minds, that fails to search and address causes behind anguished minds of minority section. A blood-thirsty psychology tells nothing but a sterile mind filled with brutality and devoid of creativity. And, that is the limitation of an economy that fails to invest in production but turns smarter in speculation.

Osama was an image of the Empire, craftily chiseled years ago, in the Cold War age, as was the Contras, proxy warriors in Nicaragua. Does the Empire search the reasons behind the acts of Osama that shed blood of thousands of non-combatants, the peace-loving firemen, the peaceful fathers, the mother ever eager for a peaceful world, for the betterment of their sons and daughters? The innocent victims of Osama-onslaught were in the lands of America, in the lands of Africa and Asia, in Pakistan and Indonesia. Does the Empire reflect on its strategy and tactics that produce such bloodthirsty tactics of its proxy, which was once fed with a dogma: kill the Soviets? Taxpayers will question these another day, another vulnerability of the Empire. Osama has exposed these.

His last moments of life will be questioned from legal aspect, the legal basis mainstream has built up, in future. Legal structure safeguards dominant interests and the structure is innovated and developed for that purpose. It is a question: what is the circumstance that leads to circumvent own legal standard to safeguard own legal interests? Even, the operation will be reviewed from the ethical point of view mainstream upholds, propagates and imposes on others. The doctrine related to sovereignty of state will be a major discourse in international arena. And, this doctrine, drone- or SEAL-doctrine the way one likes to name, will be refuted, resisted and invalidated as a number of doctrines have already faced. Even, this may turn a boomerang with rise of any powerful contender powered by a powerful economy.

The vanquished thus has turned powerful by creating possibilities of more draining out of the Empire’s resources through muzzles, explosives, superhightech weaponry the world has not come across till today. Probably, a few has been tested in Abbottabad. But shall the Empire look at or search for any other actors, if any, behind the Osama phenomenon. Its sole concentration is on a single client state, a state composed with its client class. A vulnerable point the Empire cannot circumvent.

One of the public leaders of the Empire has told that the Empire doesn’t know defeat. Probably she has forgotten the Bay of Pigs or the last days in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City. History fails to teach when memory turns short and empires failed to survive as they failed to learn from history. That was their historical incapacity. It is an intellectual incapacity fed by arrogance of armaments. Weapons, armors and intelligence apparatus do not decide destiny of empires.

Media manipulation, stories of combat readiness and combat smartness fail to hide level of efficiency of a machine that took years to find out its target. Reasons behind that level of (in)capacity is not searched when another country is considered as reason. That’s a vulnerable point. Can an empire pass decades with the hope that one of its allies will find out the empire’s enemy number one? Is that a show of strength and maturity? What’s the name of that level of perception of dependence on an ally? Why an institution perceives in that way? What’s the basis of that perception?

Now it appears, silently creeping crises in an inner-body is overlooked while outward show of firepower overwhelms significant part of geopolitical moves and keeps mesmerized and assured empire leaders. The Empire is going through this reality. Osama had a role in embarking on this path. And, Osama was initially a product of this Empire. And, the Empire failed to control its ally. The vulnerable points also sleep here.

[Farooque Chowdhury, a freelancer from Dhaka, Bangladesh, contributes on sociopolitical issues. One of his books is The Age of Crisis (shrabongraphic@yahoo.com)]

International Day Of Peasant’s Struggle

1.

The Glorious Bangladesh War of Liberation could have not been organized and waged had not the Bangladesh peasantry made the Liberation War part of their life. They were swayed by the call for liberation. It was the brave peasantry that dared to stand steadfastly by the Mujib Nagar Government, the provisional Bangladesh government, as it took oath in a rural vicinage in those days of fire and killing by the occupying Pakistan army. It was an April-day, April 17, 1971. The following crimson war-path is glorified with supreme sacrifices, overwhelming majority of which was made by the unvanquished Bangladesh peasantry. The Bangladesh peasantry sent its best sons and daughters to the war for liberation. Its flame of liberation-dream never gets extinguished.

2.

Dominating world economy presses peasants to dwell perpetually in an abode, where poverty is in plenty and happy life is scarce. The world economic arrangement needs a peasantry without head and eyes. Peasants across the world are dominated by antagonistic contradictions. Poverty, ignorance, insecurity, and a life without dignity are ensured for them by the dominating world system.

3.
History is replete with struggles for dignity, justice and security, and with martyrs. Peasants around the globe have relentlessly carried and are carrying on this struggle. Their struggles embolden and ennoble humanity’s endeavor for a dignified, decent life. But, peasantry in many lands is not allowed to reach their dreamed destination. This compels peasantry to unfurl its standard for struggle.

4.

The peasants in Brazil made notable sacrifices on April 17, 1996. A massacre took the toll. Nineteen peasants of the landless movement, MST-Brazil were killed while they were on a peaceful journey to make their appeal to get access to unplowed and unseeded land. At least 10 of the peasants were extrajudicially executed after they had been overpowered. Sixty-nine peasants were severely wounded. The journey was part of their peaceful struggle for land and dignity.

Since 1996, April 17 has been declared International Day of Peasant’s Struggles. People around the world take oath for struggle to survive with dignity.

Those Brazilian peasants were evicted from their land more than two years ago. Their all peaceful attempts to get the right to settle down on an unproductive, fallow land had failed. Consequently, about 1,500 landless peasants and members of their families, all members of the Landless Peasants Movement (MST), started their peaceful march to the state capital of Pará, to present their demands. The march stopped on the highway as pregnant women and children needed rest. At around afternoon, two police contingents arrived there from opposite sides and started firing on the resting peasants and their family members. Many of them dispersed. The first to fall was Amâncio Dos Santos Silva, known as “Surdo-Mudo” (“deaf-mute”). Unable to hear the shots, he took longer time than the others to perceive the police action.

5.

In countries, more than hundred, the day is observed as the International Day of Peasant’s Struggle. The day is observed by organizing marches, rallies, cultural programs, debates, exchange of opinions with allies of peasantry, exhibition of organic products, publicity work, and many other types of activities.

Peasantry is increasingly finding it in perilous position with the onslaught by neoliberalism and MNCs. In many countries, peasant organizations are virtually being deactivated and made apathetic to peasant problems. Burning problems of peasant life go unnoticed as neoliberal ideas dominate peasant leadership, as peasant leadership accepts premises forwarded by neoliberalism. The concept of Food, A Basic Human Right is pushed to nowhere, and is being replaced by some other pseudo right like turning debtor. Discourse on poverty does not identify the source of poverty. Instead it is being sustained within a limit safe to status quo. Interesting part of the episode involves section of peasant leadership that does not effectively contest the concepts being sold. A vacuum thus gets created and the vacuum is being overtaken by individuals and organizations having stakes in neoliberalism. Their agenda turns peasant leadership’s agenda, and peasant issues retreat. In cases, peasant issues are sold by NGOs with “different aims, purposes, interests, organizational cultures and structures, and mechanisms for decision making and accountability than peasant organizations”. (Annette Aurélie Desmarais, La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants)

Consequently, the vital issue of food sovereignty gets lost as food sovereignty covers the issues of food as a basic human right, sustainable management of natural resources by peasantry, and agrarian reform, which is not only redistribution of land. Even, the concept of cooperative is neglected as peasantry is increasingly made dependent on loan capital.

6.

The day, April 17, is not meant to get engaged into adventurous or terrorist acts as those play no role in making social advancement or achieving food security for country. Rather, exposing hollowness of neoliberal ideas and its effects on peasantry can be a way to observe the day. Highlighting plights of peasants turns important aspect of the observance as intellects standing by status quo ignore plights of peasants’ and broadly of the poor, and express observations, which are not related to reality.

Peasants around the world, working on cotton, coffee or cocoa fields, in the Nile Delta or in Iraq, blacks in the US farms, on the verge of committing suicides in India, in the terraced rice fields in the Philippines, today face the same fate, a fate of uncertainty, haunting hunger, encroached areas of public education and health care, and indignity. The world force of accumulation have united them, and made them international.

Libya Lumbers

Naked Imperialism is making Libya lumber. Intervention by petro-imperialism is poised to send Libya’s democratic struggle with seldom shown monarchist flag to limbo. France’s overt intervention and the Empire’s covert maneuvers under the shadow of an imperialism fuelled civil war are making Libya’s move to democracy difficult.

Gadhafi’s tactical advances push back his opponents’ reported resolve to stand till his fall while it fans external actors’ lust for direct intervention. The Arab League that many a times failed to stand above disunity is now having a single song: get rid of Gadhafi. But, for Europe, it is still difficult: “[H]aving 27 conversations”, as Time quoted a European leader, “around the table.” This sign of European incoherence can provide Gadhafi minute’s tactical opportunity. Intervention plan is facing problem from within the interventionist camp, and from a section of Gadhafi opponents, a reality beyond the plan of the interventionists.

As the rebels gradually lose control of the portion of land they sliced away from the authoritarian ruler section of the rebels is asking for “humanitarian” help that carries elements of direct imperialist intervention. There is every possibility of sending soldiers to guarantee safe delivery of aid. No-fly zone is on interventionist agenda, which is confused by its conflicting interests. Sex-scandal ridden Berlusconi has made available Italian military facilities to future operation in the North African country. However, Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy’s desire to intervene is facing obstacle from their internal reality: economic and political, crisis and competition, and limits of over-stretched power. One of the leading US intelligence officials has angered a section of US interventionists by publicly telling a truth: Gadhafi shall prevail because of supremacy of his firepower. Moreover, Gadhafi, as his son told during an interview, knows the game with lucrative oil deal.

“The preparation for a military intervention in Libya”, writes Yoshie Furuhashi, editor, MRzine, “will test the revolutionaries in bordering Egypt and Tunisia. The armed forces of their countries, the backbones of the regimes in power there, will be requested to provide support for any such intervention . . . that is, if they have not already privately pledged their cooperation. (“Imperialists Prepare for Military Intervention in Libya” MRzine, Feb.28, 2011)

Gadhafi with cracked legitimacy is trying to thwart imperialist military intervention. He initially blamed Laden and hallucinogenic pill filled teenagers for the revolt against his ruling system of centralized decentralization. Then, he pointed his finger to machinations by imperialists, his just-yesterday’s friends. He was having warm relation with his Washington and NATO friends, and his friends were feeding him with sophisticated arms. Even, his state of the art repression equipments were supplied by his friends from both sides of the Atlantic.

Sections of Libyans under the leadership of Gadhafi-cohorts-turned-“conscientious” guys are waving monarchy’s tricolor. “The tricolour of King Idris, the monarch Mr Qaddafi overthrew in 1969 … flies across the east...” (The Economist, March 7, 2011) “[T]he faces of the old detested regime”, writes As'ad AbuKhalil, professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, “are now leading the so-called opposition.” (“The Libyan Uprising”, Angry Arab News Service, March 4, 2011) The claimants of having a seal of governance in the breakaway portion are unelected and unselected, with whom “democracy” designers are entering into oil stained deals. “Delegates to the new assembly”, The Economist report said, “have decked Beida’s parliament building in portraits of King Idris and his tricolour. … A secret ten-man military committee has been formed. …Jihadist groups have kept a low profile. A lawyer claimed that there is effort to a separation of religion and state.”

To shed of the despised identity of quisling or Marshal Petain Gadhafi opponents had to get hold a band of Anglo SAS commandoes and a junior diplomat. But the “transparency”- and “accountable”-democracy failed to provide an explanation. The secret diplomatic mission, press reported, was to smoothen out path of contact by a senior diplomat. A would-be Lawrence of Libya? The virtually broken away significant part of Libya with oil port and refineries is a landing ground for intervention, and the crises-ridden, budget-deficit burdened Empire, as it claimed, reaches “out to many different Libyans who are attempting to organize”. And, sections of revolting elements have dubious identities. Although a section of the opposition is aware that the external “friends” prefer oil than protecting Libyan lives.

Gadhafi, with his bizarre posture and macabre rhetoric, is trying to regain control of the ruling machine that relies on a mixture of utopian and retrogressive ideas and practices, and sows seeds of discontent. He once took anti-imperialist stance, then made appeasements with imperialism, and successfully failed to mobilize people. Its current cost, the costs now being charged by “humanitarian”- or “democracy”-imperialism, is unknown number of deaths, suffering of and hatred among the people, the regime’s significant diplomatic isolation and reduced credibility, and a divided country. His actions have lent credibility to imperialist propaganda, although Libyan TV showed Egyptian passports, CDs and cell phones purportedly belonging to detainees who had allegedly confessed to plotting terrorist operations against the Libyan people. On the other hand, facts hidden by the mainstream media blitzkrieg will surface later as have come out in many cases including Iraq and Darfur.

Pogrom

In localities controlled by anti-Gadhafi forces, migrant workers fleeing to Egypt, a British project manager and an Egyptian accountant reported scenes of mayhem as looters stormed their compounds, and looted cars and computers. Glen Ford, executive editor, Black Agenda Report, writes: “A vicious, racist pogrom is raging against the 1.5 million sub-Saharan Black African migrant workers who do the hard jobs in Libya, work that is rejected by the relatively prosperous Libyans. Hundreds of Black migrant workers have already been killed by anti-Khadafi forces – yet the U.S. corporate media express absolutely no concern for their safety. One Western report noted that large numbers of Black Africans were seized in Benghazi and were assumed to have been hanged. That is a war crime, whether these men were soldiers or migrant workers, but the Western correspondent seemed unconcerned. One suspects there are many atrocities occurring in the rebel-held areas of Libya, especially against people that are not members of the locally dominant tribe.” (“No Tahrir in Benghazi: A Racist Pogrom Rages On Against Black Africans in Libya”, Black Agenda Report, March 2, 2011) There is, The Economist report said, resentment against migrant workers as a third of Libyans are jobless. Resentment is also there against Western contractors reaping the benefits of Libyan oil wealth to the tune of millions of dollars.

A Portion of Background

The rapidly changing Libyan incidents need a closer look to its background. “As opposed to the situation in Egypt and Tunisia, Libya occupies first place in the Human Development Index within Africa and has the highest life expectancy rate on the continent. Education and health receive special state attention. The cultural level of the population is without a doubt higher. Its problems are of another nature. The population is not in need of food or basic social services. The country requires many foreign workers to implement its ambitious production and social development plans. Therefore it offers employment to hundreds of thousands of workers from Egypt, Tunisia, China and other nations. It has an enormous income and hard currency reserves deposited in the banks of rich countries, with which it acquires consumer goods and even sophisticated weapons, supplied by the very countries which now want to invade in the name of human rights. The colossal campaign of lies unleashed by the mass media has created much confusion in world public opinion.” (Fidel Castro, “NATO's inevitable war”)

Causes of indignation were there within the Libyan society, which has prepared ground for today’s civil war. Naked Imperialism (title of a book by John Bellamy Foster) could not miss the opportunity to take advantage of Libya’s internal conflict to advance its geostrategy. Libyan oil-industry operators, according to The Economist report, threatened to destroy pipelines, and cut supplies to Europe, if European states fail to intervene to end Gadhafi’s rule.

In the face of interventionist moves, Chávez, the Bolivarian leader of Venezuela, has taken a bold stand against intervention in Libya. Venezuela has proposed to “set up a Goodwill International Commission for the search for peace in Libya”, which has been accepted by the government of Libya, but has been rejected by the US, France, and the opposition Libyan National Council. Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba, and Nicaragua support Venezuela’s initiative to seek a negotiated solution. But, Gadhafi’s Arab brethren have said nothing about the Venezuelan proposal.

One of the tasks of democratic movements worldwide is to create an international movement that defends democracy, peace, human rights, and territorial integrity so that imperialist powers cannot subvert the movements, and cannot use democratic movements and famous personalities as covers for their intervention and plan for subjugation.

There is possibility of a long battle with implications on the entire region and the peoples’ journey to democracy there. “[T]he fundamental concern of the United States and NATO”, Fidel wrote, “is not Libya, but the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world, which they wish to prevent at all costs.” (“NATO’s inevitable war”) A failure on the part of democratic forces to oppose intervention will charge a high price as forces standing against people are threatening that the next spring will be theirs. 
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This article was published at countercurrents.org , on 14^th March, 2011

The Great Financial Crisis: The Infallible Mainstream - Part I

The Great Financial Crisis has shown “higher” level of knowledge, wisdom and infallibility of the mainstream. Its democratic practices, accountability, etc. that it strives to teach the poor countries have also been confirmed by the crisis. These are the reasons behind its arrogance and feeling proud, its moral standing to sermon leaders of poor countries. Generous reference of the mainstream is enough to stay informed of its business.

At the center of the center

It has been claimed that the financial crisis was avoidable. But it was not avoided. That is the reason that it happened. What was the force that refrained all concerned from avoiding the crisis? The question haunts after the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, divided along partisan line, presented its report.

The commission concludes its report: The crisis, the result of “human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire”, could have been avoided. It was led in large part by government mismanagement. The Bush and Clinton administrations, the current and previous Fed chairmen, and Geithner, the US treasury secretary, all bear some responsibility for allowing the crisis to descent on this material earth. It singled out former Fed Chairman Greenspan for backing “30 years of deregulation.”

The commission blamed “reckless” Wall Street firms, bankers, “weak” regulators, government officials and even homeowners for the crisis. Regulators “had ample power … and they chose not to use it”, said the report.

It sounds like the Time story that identified “top 25 people to blame for the financial crisis.” The 25 included everyone, from former Fed chairman Greenspan to former president George W. Bush to the former CEO of Merrill Lynch to the American consumers. Even one Chinese fellow was blamed.

Widespread failures, the report said, in financial regulation including Fed’s failure to halt the “tide of toxic mortgages”, and dramatic breakdowns in corporate governance, with too many firms taking on too much risk were two of the causes of the crisis that made giant banks collapse and shook the world economy. The report informs: 26 million Americans are out of work, and about $11trillion in household wealth has vanished. “The impacts of this crisis are likely to be felt for a generation.”

One can recollect Ferdinand Pecora’s, head of the commission set up to find out the causes behind the Great Depression, statement. About eight decades ago Pecora said that his investigation had shown the way “men of might – not because of principle but because of economic power and wealth – have by the waving of a hand and adoption of a resolution taken millions and millions of the hard-earned pennies of the people and turned them into gold for themselves.” (“Pecora Denounces Stock Manipulations,” The New York Times, Feb. 19, 1933)

The report mentioned other causes behind the crisis: excessive borrowing by households and Wall Street; policymakers’ ill-preparation to face such a crisis and lack of “full understanding of the financial system they” presided over; systemic breaches of accountability and ethics at all levels.

It, as appears from the report, was a mutually consented gambling. All turned accomplice to all: mortgage-holders borrowed with the intention of never paying it back while lenders lent knowing that the borrowers could not afford that.

The FCIC said: collapse of the housing bubble, trillions of dollars in risky, sub-prime mortgages, triggered the collapse. The impact of the bubble burst was magnified by complex financial derivatives based on those loans as its risks were woefully underestimated. The crisis, however, was years in the making.
It was increase everywhere, a bon voyage for the gamblers! From 1987 to 2007, debt held by financial sector increased from $3tn to $36tn; sub-prime mortgages increased from 5% of loans to 20% in 1994-2006; financial services firms emerged as an increasingly disproportionate part of the US economy: 27% of all corporate profits in the US during the same period compared with 15% in 1980.

Fed failed to set more prudent limits, a crucial role in creating the crisis, said the report. Firms, actually speculators, “made, bought and sold mortgage securities they never examined, invested blindly and did not care about defective investments.” Banks went to aggressive expansion that made the banks incapable of managing their assets.
All, AIG, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, were efficient. The commission found: Citigroup’s “too big to fail” turned into “too big to manage”. Goldman Sachs
multiplied the effects of the collapse of sub-prime loans by funding and creating billions of dollars of bets based on the back of the loans. Merrill Lynch’s $55bn investment in “super-safe” mortgage securities resulted in losses in billions of dollars. The AIG’s senior management was ignorant of the terms and risks of its $79bn derivatives exposure.
The findings weren’t endorsed by the commission’s four Republican members, who wrote two dissents and criticized decisions by Phil Angelides, the Democratic chairman. The commission entangled in infighting is now getting prepared for congressional investigations. The dissenting opinion and infighting are significant.

The six Democrat commissioners concluded that the financial crisis was triggered by a wide range of abuses, ranging from lax oversight of derivatives to poor decisions by credit rating firms to governance and risk management failures by large banks. The Republican commissioners detailed 10 causes topping by the credit bubble. The Democrat commissioners, as has been claimed by the Republican commissioners, looked “at individuals and policy or regulatory failures” and did not “talk about a credit bubble” while the Republicans placed “greater influence on economic forces”.

It now appears that accountability and ethics were there only to make as much profit as possible within the shortest possible time; similarly, ample power was used to manage and govern profit. A significant portion of capital, with its standard of ethics and level of management, has made it vulnerable with its vast power to gamble, and has proved its incapacity to secure it, it has generated that higher level of knowledge that is incapable of helping it. Other than generating catastrophe it cannot manage its profit making business. It has set its own standard of ethics, accountability, democracy, etc. Thus, it has mesmerized its die-hard followers only. “While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite. It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.” (Bob Herbert, “When Democracy Weakens”, The New York Times, Feb. 11, 2011) So, reasons behind the crisis, discussed by non-mainstream long ago, hide from searching eyes that declines to search facts.

The Great Financial Crisis: The Infallible Mainstream- Part II

International big brother

International Monetary Fund downplayed economic risks ahead of the crisis. It provided few clear warnings about the risks. The agency’s Independent Evaluation Office found these in an inquiry.

The inquiry report said: “Weak internal governance, lack of incentives to … raise contrarian views, and a review process that did not ‘connect the dots’ or ensure follow-up also played an important role while political constraints may have also had some impact.” It found that “several senior staff members felt that expressing strong contrarian views could ruin one’s career”, and “area department economists felt that there were strong disincentives to speak truth to power” as there was a perception that they might not be supported by management.

The report suggested encouraging alternative views and diverse opinions both within the agency and from outside experts so that IMF “speaks truth to power”. The report said: IMF staff “felt uncomfortable challenging the views of authorities in advanced economies on monetary and regulatory issues, given the authorities’ greater access to banking data and knowledge of their financial markets, and the large numbers of highly qualified economists working in their central banks. The IMF was overly influenced by (and sometimes in awe of) the authorities’ reputation and expertise.” IMF staff tend neither to share information nor to seek advice outside of their units.

Focusing on the IMF’s surveillance functions from 2004 to 2007 the report said: the fund’s ability to “correctly identify the mounting risks” was hamstrung by, among other things, “groupthink”, and a mindset that a major crisis involving advanced economies just wasn’t likely because markets were sophisticated enough to “thrive safely with minimal regulation.” The fund largely endorsed many of the types of policies and financial practices that help to precipitate the credit crunch, pronouncing that financial markets were fundamentally sound and large financial institutions could weather possible problems.

The IMF didn’t pay enough attention to risks of spillovers from a crisis in rich economies, such as the sovereign debt crisis that threatened to undo the euro zone and push Europe – and the rest of the world – into a double-dip recession. And, advanced economies were not included in the Vulnerability Exercise launched after the late 1990s Asian crisis.

The risks that the IMF did mention in its annual Global Financial Stability Report were presented only in general terms, without an accurate assessment of the scale of the problems. Critics have often focused on the way final reports touch politically sensitive issues: exchange rate policy is often muted from original drafts.

In 2006, IMF said, banks in UK were in good shape. The report blamed IMF’s incapability to spot Britain’s looming banking crash. IMF’s report on Iceland only a year before the country went bust, had not made the ballooning of the banking sector to 1,000% of GDP the focal point of discussions.

The international institution’s message was characterized by overconfidence on large financial institutions, and endorsement of the financial practices in the main financial centers. The risks associated with housing booms and financial innovations were downplayed.

It said that when studying the policies of the US and the UK in the years leading up to the crash, the IMF had “largely endorsed policies and financial practices that were seen as fostering rapid innovation and growth”.

The report said: IMF did not sufficiently analyze the force making the housing bubble or the policies that might have played in this process. It failed to see the similarities between developments in the US and UK and the experience of other advanced economies and emerging markets that had previously faced financial crises. The IMF failed to spot looming crash and praised the US and the UK financial regulation.

The crisis, as the report provides evidence, has exposed the international big brother’s belief-, knowledge- and analysis-systems, level of governance and transparency, and market-blindness. The apolitical appearing institution is influenced by politics of masters, and there is no room for dissension. In fact, it serves the dominating capital that dictates the institution’s performance. Its speaking truth is dependent on power of its masters although it is master of poor countries: it is the dictatorial power of a dictated institution. The real face is shrouded with now-told-half-truths and denial to accept explanation by non-mainstream. Further questioning of already-told-half-facts will dig out reasons behind the agency’s failure.
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This article was published at countercurrents.org , on February 22, 2011

The Wisconsin Protest And A Few Questions

Increasing conflict and crises in today’s US are revealed by the Wisconsin protest. Thousands are protesting to oppose a bill that aims to narrow down labor rights. Protests spread from Wisconsin to Ohio. Rallies in support of the Wisconsin protest were held around the US, including in Minnesota and New York.

Massive demonstration, larger in number and more sustained than any in Madison in decades, shouted “Kill this bill!” and demanded recall of the governor. University of Wisconsin-Madison teaching assistants and students poured into the Capitol rotunda and spent night in sleeping bags on the floor of the rotunda. They raised slogans inside the Capitol, banged on drums, and waved signs comparing governor Walker to Mubarak. Public schools were closed for days after teachers continued to call in sick to protest. The “sickout” spread across the state as several other school districts including Milwaukee, the state's largest, canceled classes as a result of teacher absences.

Majority leader Fitzgerald termed the situation “a powder keg” while Obama termed the bill as “an assault on unions”. Danny Donohue, president of the Civil Service Employees Association, said: Walker “is waging one of the most vicious attacks on working people our nation has seen in generations.” Jesse Jackson led one of the marches. There was gathering of conservative supporters also, but few in numbers. It is a state politically torn apart.

At the center of the days of protest is a controversial bill that would strip most public employees of their collective bargaining rights which the governor, an outspoken conservative, said was needed to balance a $3.6 billion budget shortfall and avoid widespread layoffs. The plan would make workers pay half the costs of their pensions and at least 12.6% of their health care premiums. State employees’ costs would go up by an average of 8%. The changes would save the state $30 million by June 30 and $300 million over the next two years, and Unions could not seek pay increases above those pegged to the Consumer Price Index unless approved by a public referendum. Unions also could not ask employees to pay dues and would have to hold annual votes to stay organized. Walker has threatened to order layoffs of up to 6,000 state workers if the measure does not pass. While other states have proposed bills curtailing labor rights, Walker’s measure is the most aggressive anti-union move.

Wisconsin, the first US state to pass a comprehensive collective bargaining law in 1959, is the place the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the national union representing all non-federal public employees, was founded in 1936. The proposed bill, being imposed by the conservatives, is an irony!

Democratic practices saw there in Wisconsin moves showing limits of its accommodation. Senate Republicans met in secret to discuss the bill. Asked where Republicans stood on Walker’s proposal, Sen. Dan Kapanke told the Associated Press, “That's a really good question. I don't know.” Fitzgerald said: Sen. Miller, a Democrat, “shut down democracy” while Democrats said: the Republicans were undemocratic. “This is wrong! Desperately wrong!”, minority leader Barca shouted from the floor of the Assembly as Republicans left after turning off the microphones. The state’s Democratic senators left the state, effectively jamming any movement on the bill, the “boldest action Democrats have taken since midterm elections swept Republicans to power in statehouses” across the US. Democrats on the run in Wisconsin avoided state troopers and threatened to stay in hiding for weeks, potentially paralyzing a state government they no longer control. The state patrol was asked to go to Miller’s house, signaling the circumstances at the Capitol. Senate Sergeant-At-Arms said: Troopers knocked on Miller’s door and rang his doorbell, but no one answered. An advanced democracy is being practiced with hiding, halting quorum, using trooper! Should Third World learn from it?

The situation led Miles Mogulescu, an activist and writer, to say: “the first stirrings of American resistance to the corporate oligarchy since Wall Street greed and malfeasance brought the American and world economy to its knees in 2008 are coming from the organized labor … in the capital of Wisconsin. …It was one of the first shots across the bow in a 30-year long war by America’s corporate oligarchy to transfer wealth from the working and middle classes to the rich and to deregulate the economy in order to increase the wealth and power of the corporate and financial elite. …This one-sided class war by the corporate oligarchy against the middle and working class has, until now, been met by … little resistance ….[R]ight-wing Republicans may have woken a sleeping giant in organized labor that is just beginning to show its power in the streets of Wisconsin. It may be the beginning of a new mass movement of the middle and working class … to take power back from organized corporate oligarchs and to restore a measure of social and economic equality ….[W]hat started in Wisconsin may spread … across the country.” (“Wisconsin Is Ground Zero in America’s New Uprising Against the Corporate Oligarchy”, The Huffington Post, Feb. 18, 2011)

Now, as an imaginary exercise, put the entire political scene onto a Third World country-political stage. What would have been described? Would it not be termed: an assault on labor, attempt to curtail rights, chaos in legislature, failure of legislature compelling people to show power, etc.? Were not all these signaled limits of practices in institutionalized politics, of accommodating and co-opting, of problems in spreading out burden fairly among constituents? When these limits and problems arise? Is it a proper functioning of a political system where stalling quorum is a way to resolve a dispute? When the need to stalling quorum arises? When troopers are sent to knock door of lawmakers’ homes? These are not, to put it softly, healthy signs in an advanced democracy. Similar political scene in case of a Third World country would have been termed by mainstream media and democracy watchdogs, by the so-called civil society as crumbling down of legislative process, symptom of a serious disease.

The symptom appears grave if the incidents are put on the backdrop of widening inequality, increasing poverty, and reckless gambling by significant part of capital. These may show first signs of rising tide of protest.

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This article was published at countercurrents.org , on 21^th  February, 2011

The World At Risk

The world is at risk. “The world is in no position to face major, new shocks. The financial crisis has reduced global economic resilience,” and is increasing geopolitical tension and social concerns. “[G]governments and societies are less able than ever to cope with global challenges.” (Global Risks 2011, January 2011, World Economic Forum)

The mainstream is now admitting the reality its heart and head – capital – has created. The report mentions 37 selected global risks perceived by members of the Forum’s Global Agenda Councils and supported by a survey of 580 leaders and decision-makers around the world. It has found the “21st century paradox: as the world grows together, it is also growing apart.” The benefits of globalization, it said, are “unevenly spread – a minority is seen to have harvested a disproportionate amount of the fruits.” The so-called globalization worship, a vogue among a section of enlightened minds only a few years back, is now finding neither a deity nor alms. A brilliant crude propaganda only reigns there in the temple of capitalist globalization. Those minds cannot dare to ignore sermon from the Forum.

Interconnected two risks, the report said, are especially significant: economic disparity and global governance failures. These two influence other global risks. Economic disparity within countries is growing. Politically, there are signs of resurgent nationalism and populism as well as social fragmentation.

“Resurgent nationalism”, in mainstreamspeak, is asserting self interest by a number of countries in sectors of economy, especially in the area of hydrocarbon while “populism” is immediate essential steps by a number of countries for widening bare minimum living space of the people especially the wretched. The world capital is in trouble with these two.

The report expressed concern with the increasing economic disparity within advanced capitalist countries and emerging economies. Real income growth of the top income quintiles of the populations in Finland, Sweden, the UK, Germany, Italy, and the USA was twice as large as that of the bottom quintiles between the mid-1980s to mid-2000s. Similar facts have been cited in a number of ILO reports.

Economic disparity, according to the Global Risks Survey, is one of the most important risks in the coming decade. It is “tightly interconnected with corruption, demographic challenges, fragile states, global imbalances and asset-price collapse” and is influenced by global governance failures. It influences chronic and infectious diseases, illicit trade, migration, food insecurity, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The report does not tell that the present global governance and its failure are the products of the present world order, in essence the dominating capital.

In the present world, the report said, economic risks include macroeconomic imbalances and currency volatility, fiscal crises and asset price collapse, tension between the increasing wealth and influence of emerging economies and high levels of debt in advanced capitalist countries. The “macroeconomic imbalances nexus” is within countries and between countries. Internal imbalances are produced by factors that include government policies and private sector behavior. Global governance and regulatory failures, corruption and economic disparity are interconnected. These “create and exacerbate systemic global risks”, said the report.

Failure in global governance is the output of dominating capital’s incapacity while regulatory failure is that capital’s dominating power to unchain itself. Economic disparity is its product of inherent incapacity while corruption is its part of business.

The report’s “illegal economy” nexus examines risks that include state fragility, illicit trade, organized crime and corruption. It said: “A networked world, governance failures and economic disparity” boost illegal activities. In 2009, the value of illicit trade around the globe was estimated at US $1.3 trillion. These risks create high costs for legitimate economic activities while weaken states, threaten development opportunities, undermining the rule of law and keep countries trapped in cycles of poverty and instability.

Capital weakens states to smoothen its journey to the palace of maximizing profit although it needs state. An irreconcilable contradiction it generates. It engages with “illegal economy”, the economy that competes with, and hurts its “real” economy. A limitation it lives within. Illegal economy is its one of the modes to overflow its bags with profit. It circumvents legality while it creates legality to secure its appropriation and loot. It fights crime to secure its property created through crime while it invests in organized crime. A world dominated by jokers and hypocrites.

Illicit trades, now 7-10% of the global economy, corruption and organized crime, the report said, are fuelled by economic disparity. Advanced and emerging economies are experiencing these. Incomes from these “reinforce the power of the privileged” and increase inequalities within and between countries. These increase the costs of doing legitimate business.

Citing unsustainable pressures on resources the report said: Economic disparities undermine long-term sustainability. Demand for water, food and energy is expected to rise by 30-50% in the next two decades. “Shortages could cause social and political instability, geopolitical conflict and irreparable environmental damage.”

But, capital will stick to its economy that gulps water, that devours soil, that breathes in energy, that speculates with food, and that produces hunger. That is the way for its ever-expansion, and it cannot live without expanding all the time. It will die if its expansion ceases.

The report mentioned “five risks to watch”: Cyber-security issues (cyber theft, all-out cyber warfare, etc.), demographic challenges creating fiscal pressures in advanced capitalist economies and severe risks to social stability in emerging economies, resource security causing extreme volatility and sustained increases in energy and commodity prices, retrenchment from globalization, and weapons of mass destruction and the possibility of nuclear proliferation.

While it owns WMD it asks others to turn Lord Buddha, to follow the ahimsa mantra. That is, me the lord you the subject. A section of its subjects that it created to fight a foe turn naughty and make it harassed.

The report said: The US National Intelligence Council and the EU’s Institute for Security Studies recently concluded that “current governance frameworks will be unable to keep pace with looming global challenges unless extensive reforms are implemented. Increasingly, emerging economies feel that unfairly they have insufficient influence in international institutions… Yet there is uncertainty over the ability and willingness of rising powers to shoulder a greater share of global responsibilities, as well as reluctance on the part of established powers to recognize the limits of their own power.” The conclusion reflects contradiction between competing capitals that carry all the seeds to turn hostile, and hostilities between capitals turn hot engagements at times.

Crises the present world order has generated are pushing the entire world into uncertain and unsafe future. Our posterity will step in a volatile and unsafe world if the present world order is not changed. The mainstream’s analysis cannot ignore the reality.
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This article was published at countercurrents.org , on 19^th January, 2011

Manufactured Democracy: Seeds Of Crisis

The questions manufactured democracy doesn’t answer signify only a few of the fundamental questions related to a ruling system. Political processes, arrangements, and institutions are not static till their demise. These are not also contradiction-neutral.

Factors within and around these processes, arrangements, etc. act and react in a complex way. This lively character comes up because of its relationship with society and mode of production, and the relationship is relative, and antagonistic to some and non-antagonistic to others. The reason behind is: these are not production relation-neutral. Rather, the class content of these determines their actions, responses, etc. Failures to articulate the class content make these obsolete. These are rejected, not always instantly, but through relatively long process, and sometimes within a very short span of time, at historical moments and junctures, by the emerging social forces, are sent to the archives, and replaced by new ones with the domination of emerged social political force. The democracy now being handed over in the periphery as commodity contains no property that can act according to the needs of the people; rather, it has been designed to act according to the desire of the centre of the world system. This contradiction carries the seeds of crisis of the system.

Political systems claiming to serve majority are incompatible with inequality. Utility of the system gets lost when it fails to redress inequality. It is now difficult to find a single relevant literature of the mainstream that does not tell about inequality, does not warn about increasing inequality. Superstructure based on appropriation breeds inequality. The present global phenomenon of rapidly increasingly inequality is the product of, in very general term, the present world system.

More than a decade ago Brown and others found: “Worldwide, the richest fifth of the population now receives 60 times the income of the poorest fifth, up from 30 times in 1960. In the UK, the ratio between the top and bottom 20 percent went from 4:1 in 1977 to 7:1 in 1991. In the US, it went from 4:1 in 1970 to 13:1 in 1993” (State of the World 1997). Citing Edward N Wolff (“Changes in Household Wealth in the 1980s and 1990s in the U S” May, 2004) and New York Times (March 1, 2007) John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff write: “The gap between the top and the bottom of society in financial wealth and income has now reached astronomical proportions. In the United States in 2001 the top 1 percent holders of financial wealth … owned more than four times as much as the bottom 80 percent of the population. The nation’s richest 1 percent of the population holds $1.9 trillion in stocks, about equal to that of the other 99 percent. The income gap in the United States has widened so much in recent decades that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S Bernanke … stated ‘the share of after-tax income garnered by the households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution increased from 8 percent in 1979 to 14 percent in 2004.’ In September 2006 the richest 60 Americans owned an estimated $630 billion worth of wealth, up almost 10 percent from the year before.”

What has happened in the “age of globalization” in the peripheral societies dominated by plunderocracy and lumpenocracy and dictated by MNCs and donors? Reports by the World Bank, UNDP, and ILO carry the evidence: increasing inequality and dispossession. Many of these societies are controlled by lumpens and coteries isolated from production process and many of these societies do not hesitate for a single moment to show the face of despotism by taking down the mask of petty democracy. In many of these societies workers have been demobilized, unions have been usurped by lumpens, criminalization has overwhelmed political institutions, media is controlled by local variety of mafia, and donors have purchased the dominant section of the academia. In many of these societies NGOs are increasingly filling in vacuums created by weaknesses of political parties and by lack of political forces that signify the weakness of social classes. But, it is only the social classes that can develop political process, institutions, etc.

The political scenario in many of the advanced capitalist countries is not hopeful: election dispute and reaching to its apex through the counting of type of perforated holes on the ballot paper, failings of the political institutions in resolving contradictions within the dominant class, exposure of responsible operative by top political leadership in retaliation of dissenting view, lies by top political leadership, and failure of the famous “check and balance” mechanism to identify manipulation before a blunder is committed, and blame game are a few of the signs of decay and of sharpening of unresolved contradictions in the body-politic. Signs of Nazism and racism, and signs of curtailing democratic rights are getting bolder on the political canvas in many advanced capitalist societies. These are the signs of decadence of democracy the dominant classes have established and nourished over centuries and these tell the historical limitations of the political system the world order has built up.

These signify nothing but crisis that, on the contrary, symbolize signals for change.

[This is a modified version of a part of a chapter from The Age of Crisis, Dhaka, 2009.]

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This article was published at countercurrents.org , on February 3, 2011