Sweden vs. UK: Confronting Neoliberalism (..again)

Guardian Unlimited Politics Special Reports George Monbiot: Punitive - and it works

It is always a pleasure for me to read George Monbiot's works. I have referenced his articles in my previous posts, and will try to do it regularly in the future. In this column from The Guardian of 01/11/2005 Monbiot confronts the persistent defenders of neoliberal economic policies and there assertions that the model is working by really helping the poorest countries. He disagrees with Gordon Brown's suggestion of close and irrevocable link between the richest and the poorest of this World, because as he notes "their (G8) concern for the poor ends where their concern for the rich begins." His criticism extends the widespread expectation of trickle-down effects of the neoliberal economy; point illustrated in publications of The Economist magazine.

But what the neoliberals - who promote unregulated global capitalism - tell us is that there is no conflict between the whims of the wealthy and the needs of the wretched. The Economist magazine, for example, argues that the more freedom you give the rich, the better off the poor will be. Without restraints, the rich have a more powerful incentive to generate global growth, and this growth becomes "the rising tide that lifts all boats". Countries which intervene in the market with "punitive taxes, grandiose programmes of public spending, and all the other apparatus of applied economic justice" condemn their people to remain poor. A zeal for justice does "nothing but harm".

In order to test the neoliberal's hypothesis Monbiot decides to compare UK, which calls the pioneer of neoliberalizm and Sweden - "one of the last outposts of distributionism" He suggests to use set of statistics "the Economist is unlikely to dispute: those contained within its own publication, the 2005 World in Figures". Using this and other sources like UN Human Development Report he provides comparison figures that can be summed up as follows:

2002 GDP per capita: Sweden $27,310, UK $26,240. Sweden was behind 7 times since 1960

Current Account Balance: Sweden +$10bn, UK -$26bn

Inflation rate: Sweden's Lower

Global competitiveness: Sweden's Higher

Business creativity and research: Sweden's Higher

Human development index world ranking: Sweden 3rd, UK 11th

Life expectancy world ranking: Sweden 3rd, UK 29th

Phone lines/100 people: Sweden 74, UK 59

Computers/100 people: Sweden 62, UK 41

% bellow poverty line: Sweden 6.3%, UK 15.7% ($11/day -developed countries' index)

% functionally illiterate: Sweden 7.5%, UK - 21.8%

Upward mobility: In UK 3 times more like to stay in the same econ. class one was born to.


The exact references for this statistics can be found on Monbiot's website.
In conclusion the author makes the following suggestion:

So for countries hoping to reach the promised land, there is a choice. They could seek to replicate the Swedish model of development - in which the benefits of growth are widely distributed - or the UK's, in which they are concentrated in the hands of the rich. That's the theory. In practice they have no choice. Through the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, the G8 governments force them to follow a model closer to the UK's, but even harsher and less distributive. Of the two kinds of capitalism, Blair, Brown and the other G8 leaders have chosen for developing countries the one less likely to help the poor.

Corporatism/Fascism Continued

Kennedy: Fascist America

In my recent post - "Corporate power + State power = ...Fascism" - I commented on an article by David G. Mills, who argues that alliance between corporations and the state is the most significan factor of the structure of facsism. To continue the conversation started ther, I would like to point out to the article above by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman. The authors primarily reflect on their conversations with Robert Kennedy Jr., who as they report might run for Attorney General of New York State. After giving brief overview of his previous work they provide some recent quotes, which I think are ery relevant to this topic. Kennedy seems to agree with the supremacy of the corporatism among defining characteristics of fascizm:

In the book, Kennedy implies that we live in a fascist country and that the Bush White House has learned key lessons from the Nazis.

"While communism is the control of business by government, fascism is the control of government by business," he writes. "My American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as 'a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism.' Sound familiar?"

He quotes Hitler's propaganda chief Herman Goerring: "It is always simply a matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Kennedy then adds: "The White House has clearly grasped the lesson."

Kennedy also quotes Benito Mussolini's insight that "fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

"The biggest threat to American democracy is corporate power," Kennedy told us. "There is vogue in the White House to talk about the threat of big government. But since the beginning of our national history, our most visionary political leaders have warned the American public against the domination of government by corporate power. That warning is missing in the national debate right now.

The Unforgettable Dr. King in his own words.

His voice was heard so many times and his words inspired many millions across the world. However, many still seem to think that his "I have a dream" speech is the most significant (if not the only one) major address. It has been suggested that a casual observer might think that Dr. King took a sabbatical between the years of 1963 and 1967. It cannot be further from the truth as he was organizing and speaking out perhaps even more than before. Democracy Now! broadcasts excerpts from his two other great speeches. One is the "Beyond Vietnam" speech he gave in New York city in 1967, which resonates so strongly today. When I listen to it I can't help but think of Dr. King as prophet and his words as predictions. If one only replaces few words in that speech - Vietnam with Iraq, and Communism with Terrorism - it will seem as if he was speaking only yesterday. The other speech is the "I Have Been to the Mountain Top" speech. He gave this one in Memphis on April 3rd 1968, a day before his assassination.
You can go straight to the audio/video links of this show here

FT: US complicit in Iraqi oil smuggling.

FT.com / News in depth / Iraq - US ignored warning on Iraqi oil smuggling, UN says

According to joint investigation of Financial Times and Italian business daily US and UK were informed about the single-largest and boldest smuggling operation in the oil-for-food program.

“Although the financial beneficiaries were Iraqis and Jordanians, the fact remains that the US government participated in a major conspiracy that violated sanctions and enriched Saddam's cronies,” a former UN official said. “That is exactly what many in the US are now accusing other countries of having done. I think it's pretty ironic."

The operation involved 14 tankers and 7m barrels of oil, which brought $150m of illegal profits (including $50m to Hussein's cronies).

Oil traders were told informally that the US let the tankers go because Amman needed oil to build up its strategic reserves in expectation of the Iraq war.

Last week Paul Volcker, head of the independent commission created by the UN to investigate failures in the oil-for-food programme, confirmed that Washington allowed violations of the oil sanctions by Jordan in recognition of its national interests.

However, only a fraction of the oil smuggled out of Iraq reached the Jordanian port of Aqaba. Most was sold to the Middle East Oil Refinery, in Alexandria, Egypt; to a refinery in Aden, Yemen; and to Malaysia and China. “This operation was not permitted under the Security Council resolutions dealing with the oil-for-food programme,” said Michel Tellings, one of the two UN inspectors responsible at the time for the implementation of the programme. “The volume of oil was not inspected and payments were not made to the UN escrow account, as required by the programme.”

Soros is staying. The Phoenix Group re-grouping.

FT.com / World / US - Soros group raises stakes in battle with US neo-cons

Few months ago I posted a link to the article about progressive donors uniting to support progressive infrastructure. By now we all must have heard or read about the famous Rob Stein's power-point presentation, which he showed to individuals and groups across the country. There were several possible meeting of billionaires reported throughout past few years. The mysterious "Phoenix Group" was mentioned together with other potential names like "Band of the Progressives". Whatever the name, the group seems to be working and un-affected by Democrat’s defeat in November. As I wrote earlier it has been suggested that this defeat may in fact have far better consequences for unification of progressive forces and their financing than the victory, which could have resulted in many to relax and withdraw pressure. FT reports that this time the gentlemen met in San-Francisco behind close doors:

George Soros, who made his fortune in the hedge fund industry; Herb and Marion Sandler, the California couple who own a multi-billion-dollar savings and loan business; and Peter Lewis, the chairman of an Ohio insurance company, donated more than $63m (£34m) in the 2004 election cycle to organizations seeking to defeat George W. Bush.

At a meeting in San Francisco last month, the left-leaning billionaires agreed to commit an even larger sum over a longer period to building institutions to foster progressive ideas and people.

The details of the meeting are obviously closely guarded as even the aides were asked to leave the room.

But the still-evolving plan, according to one person involved, is “joint investment to build intellectual infrastructure”.

The intention is to provide the left with organizations in Washington that can match the heft of the rightwing think-tanks such as Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. At a state level, the aim is to build what one person called a “deeper progressive bench”.

The amounts speculated vary significantly, but is said that the group decided to invest more than they already spent in 2004. Others like Stephen Bing are rumored to join the group.

Renowned Scholar warns against infusion of religion.

Fritz Stern Speech

Fritz Stern, who is professor emeritus at Columbia University, was recently awarded Leo Baeck medal. The medal was presented by the german foreign minister - Joschka Fischer. In his acceptance speech, linked above, Mr. Stern talks about the horrors he or his relatives had to witness and live through, and gives unsubtle warnings for our own country. As Harpers magazine put it: "Stern warned against the infusion of religion into American politics and said that it was Hitler's "pseudo-religious transformation of politics that largely ensured his success." No one certainly like to use the "H" name, as there is always someone who is quick to accuse others of making comparisons to that brutal dictator. So as a usual disclaimer I would like to note that is certainly not the case here. Simply the actions and rhetoric used by many world leaders throughout the history seem to bear an inescapable resemblance. The acceptance speech is very interesting as we can almost feel the pain and disappointment of the professor that sees some worrying signals in the country he’s come to love and respect so much:

Still, for me it is felicitous because it is an encouragement at a hard time; events of the last ten days have intensified my reasoned apprehension, my worry about the immediate future of the country that saved us and taught us and gave us so much.

... take special joy in saying this because the German-speaking refugees who came to this country in the 1930s and thereafter had similarly enthusiastic feelings about this country. Not only gratitude for saving us, giving many of us a chance for a new start, if often under harsh circumstances—I think of my own parents—but love and admiration for a country that was, when we arrived, still digging itself out from an unprecedented depression, under a leader whose motto was that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” unlike his German contemporary, who preached fear in order to exploit it. The United States was the sole functioning democracy of the 1930s—that “low, dishonest decade—and under FDR it was committed to pragmatic reform and in inimitable high spirits. No, I haven’t forgotten the unpleasant elements of those days—the injustices, the right-wing radicals, the anti-semites—but the dominant note of Franklin Roosevelt’s era was ebullient affirmation of reform and progress.

As the side bar in NYT suggests: "Fritz Stern, a refugee from Hitler's Germany and a leading scholar of European history, startled several of his listeners when he warned in a speech about the danger posed in this country by the rise of the Christian right." Fritz recalls the conditions in Germany after the Great War and this is where potential parallels start sending shivers done one's spine:

In the late 1920s a group of intellectuals known as conservative revolutionaries demanded a new volkish authoritarianism, a Third Reich. Richly financed by corporate interests, they denounced liberalism as the greatest, most invidious threat, and attacked it for its tolerance, rationality and cosmopolitan culture. These conservative revolutionaries were proud of being prophets of the Third Reich—at least until some of them were exiled or murdered by the Nazis when the latter came to power. Throughout, the Nazis vilified liberalism as a semi-Marxist-Jewish conspiracy and, with Germany in the midst of unprecedented depression and immiseration, they promised a national rebirth.

Here is when the indoctrination of the religion becomes extremely handy and proves very effective. The rhetoric mesmerizes the public and blinds their minds with promise of better and "clearer" future.

God had been drafted into national politics before, but Hitler’s success in fusing racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity was an immensely powerful element in his electoral campaigns. Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics, but many more were seduced by it. It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured his success, notably in Protestant areas.

German moderates and German elites underestimated Hitler, assuming that most people would not succumb to his Manichean unreason; they didn’t think that his hatred and mendacity could be taken seriously. They were proven wrong. People were enthralled by the Nazis’ cunning transposition of politics into carefully staged pageantry, into flag-waving martial mass. At solemn moments, the National Socialists would shift from the pseudo-religious invocation of Providence to traditional Christian forms: In his first radio address to the German people, twenty-four hours after coming to power, Hitler declared, “The National Government will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built up. They regard Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life.”

It has been said many times that the history repeats itself. It is always cyclical and we see events of the past coming back as a reincarnation of some kind. None of us can or wants to imagine America becoming similar to Germany of the 20s or 30s. I don’t believe it will. Although there are many things, which we would deem unimaginable sometime ago, that seem to becoming part of our lives now. First thing people remember is certainly the Holocaust and the massive massacres that took place in that period, and no one expects anything like that this time around, and no one should. However, there was lot more that was taking place at that period besides the killing. It isn't really comforting to imagine that era even without any murder or persecution. In any case one can only hope that this is not one of the examples of repeating history.

Joseph McCarthy's victory...40 years later

Cape Times - Striking similarity between McCarthyism and USA Patriot Act

Leslie Liddell provides a short overview of the McCarthyism era and the general atmosphere at the time. The issue of constitution being under attack is raised when the persecutions of the "enemies of the state" took place.

"People lost their jobs. The official manifestations of McCarthyism... the public hearings, FBI investigations, and criminal prosecutions... would not have been as effective had they not been reinforced by the private sector." Targeted people were blacklisted, which meant that they were unable to find employment.

The authors then goes into reviewing what she believes is strikingly similar development about 40 years later - the Patriot Act.

...It was introduced with great haste and passed with little debate and without a House, Senate or conference report.
As a result, it lacks background legislative history that often retrospectively provides necessary statutory interpretation. It also doesn't provide for the system of checks and balances that traditionally safeguards civil liberties in the face of such legislation.

Liddell, as many many others, believes that this act violates many foundations of the American democracy. Of particular concern is the very broad definition of the prohibited activities, which can theoretically include acts of civil disobedience or even political opposition.

Hitting where it hurts, again.

An activist proposes an economic boycott. David Livingstone calls upon everyone to make a statement using not only a voice but something else. His website puts it clearly how it can be done:

This January 20th:
- Call in sick to work
- Don't buy anything
...and write to your newspaper, your
senator and your representative
to tell them why.

He argues that, obviously, the power will be in numbers, keeping in mind that 49% of the population have voted differently in this election.

There is, though, a language that they understand, and it's one that you speak: The language of dollars. The dollars they make from your purchases, the dollars they make from your labor, and the dollars that flow into federal coffers when you pay your taxes.
Your dollars are their power. The more of your dollars you give to them, the more power they have. Conversely, the more you keep for yourself, the more power you have. It's that simple.

Presidential Reading

TIME.com: What the President Reads -- Jan. 17, 2005

The Time article above tries to provide a look into the reading interests of the presidents. The author discloses some unexpected information on what the favorite reading is.

George Bush's critics think of his reading list as a spindly thing--the Bible, the box scores and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, his favorite choice to read to school kids. So there will be chuckles of disbelief when his detractors hear that one of his latest passions is Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy and that when it comes to approval from the intelligentsia, the President is more needy than he lets on.

The article suggest a search for theoretical basis for current actions (although perhaps it would be great to have it before starting them in the first place).

...But in his readings and talks with authors, he is seeking theoretical scaffolding for his actions from the pointy-headed intellectuals he often appears to disdain, rather than combing through their pages looking for ideas that would challenge his world view.

The writers however do not forget to ask if there is practical use from conversations with historians and authors. One of the meetings took place with Yale professor and author of a book about Otto von Bismarck.

The author had written that the 19th century German Chancellor shared the President's belief in the benefits of showing military might but also had a diplomat's touch for handling the messy aftermath. Bush seemed to be looking for a softer approach to foreign policy after waging two wars. "There was a recognition that not everything has gone as expected in Iraq," says Gaddis, "that a lot of friction has been generated and that one has to take that into account."

Six months after his visit, Gaddis says he hasn't seen Bush emulate Bismarck much. That may be fuel for a new debate for Bush's critics: Can a President who finds support for his beliefs in history also learn from it? ???

Corporate power + State power = ...Fascism

(DV) Mills: It' the Corporate State, Stupid: "David G. Mills"

David G. Mills puts it bluntly - "It's corporate State, Stupid". He argues in his article that the unholy alliance of corporations and the goverment is in the heart of the structure of fascism. Like many others, he raises the alarm about the dangerous rout the country seems to be heading into and the worry with which the others might be observing it from a distance. The countries that have gone through the experience may be very quick to recognize it in others, however it is not an easy task when you are the part of structure.

The early twentieth century Italians, who invented the word fascism, also had a more descriptive term for the concept -- estato corporativo: the corporatist state. Unfortunately for Americans, we have come to equate fascism with its symptoms, not with its structure. The structure of fascism is corporatism, or the corporate state. The structure of fascism is the union, marriage, merger or fusion of corporate economic power with governmental power. Failing to understand fascism, as the consolidation of corporate economic and governmental power in the hands of a few, is to completely misunderstand what fascism is. It is the consolidation of this power that produces the demagogues and regimes we understand as fascist ones.

Mills references the earlier article by Lawrence Britt, where he defined 14 defining characteristics. Although Mills calls that article excellent he disagrees with Britt's priorities and emphasis:

But even Britt’s excellent article misses the importance of Mussolini’s point. The concept of corporatism is number nine on Britt’s list and unfortunately titled: “Corporate Power is Protected.” In the view of Mussolini, the concept of corporatism should have been number one on the list and should have been more aptly titled the “Merger of Corporate Power and State Power.” Even Britt failed to see the merger of corporate and state power as the primary cause of most of these other characteristics. It is only when one begins to view fascism as the merger of corporate power and state power that it is easy to see how most of the other thirteen characteristics Britt describes are produced. Seen this way, these other characteristics no longer become disjointed abstractions. Cause and effect is evident.

He also opens a conversation about how this slide can be stopped or at least attempted to, noting regretfully that countries like Germany and Italy were not able to do it soon enough. He cites the French revolution as the only somewhat successful example, which unfortunately resulted in too much bloodshed.

The thought of an American twenty-first century French Revolution is ugly. But the thought of an American twenty-first century fascist state is far uglier.

"Liberate" Iraqis or help tsunami victims?

The victims of the tsunami pay the price of war on Iraq

I have referenced George Monbiot's sharp and eloquent writing on my blog before. I will also devote some time in the future to his latest book - "Manifesto for a New World Order". For now I would like to point to his latest comment in The Guardian referenced above. Monbiot comes out strongly with criticism of both his (UK) and US governments for spending a mere fraction of what they spend on Iraq operations on their relief efforts:

The US government has so far pledged $350m to the victims of the tsunami, and the UK government £50m ($96m). The US has spent $148 billion on the Iraq war and the UK £6bn ($11.5bn). The war has been running for 656 days. This means that the money pledged for the tsunami disaster by the United States is the equivalent of one and a half day's spending in Iraq. The money the UK has given equates to five and a half days of our involvement in the war.

These kinds of priorities, he continues, are the exact reasons why the only meaningful war -war on poverty - is dragging for so long. The poor and the hungry of the world are compelled to rely on the charity of others in response to the appeals by celebrities. Monbiot states that minor redeployment of public finance could eradicate the extreme poverty. He doesn't stop there but argues that this comparison of expenditures on the war and relief further discredits the last and only rational for war (that is if we choose to accept it in the first place).

The figures for war and aid are worth comparing because, when all the other excuses for the invasion of Iraq were stripped away, both governments explained that it was being waged for the good of the Iraqis.