danny a closet socialist?

From David Frum's blog:

Danny Williams may reap what he has sown. If he does not, his party will. As the Post pointed out, the principle beneficiary of Williams ABC campaign was the NDP. For those outside Atlantic Canada, this may seem odd, but NFLD’s Liberal Party is still recovering from scandals from its time in office so the beneficiary is naturally the party that had the least amount of seats. How long before his efforts to tarnish the national party’s brand trickle down to his own.

The truth is many of NFLD’s federal-provincial wins were the result of the diplomacy of other Atlantic premiers. Danny’s antics just grabbed the headlines. By empowering the NDP, if the Liberals don’t resuscitate themselves before Danny’s star fades, NFLD may have the first NDP government east of Ontario.

If this happens, it'll be Danny leading it up. In all seriousness, Danny taking on the feds in defense of Newfoundland's common good has socialism written all over it. Despite his being a successful entrepreneur, the majority of his policies are not the neoconservative junk that Frum embraces; they are actually much closer to the kind of responsible socialism (i.e., Newfie-style, not necessarily the NDP's brand) that has given him wings in Newfoundland.

If the NDP gain popularity in Newfoundland it is because (1) Newfoundlanders are generally not bankers and stock brokers, but people with a long history of labour who are looking for leaders who can deliver real labour solutions and protection from vulture conservatism, and (2) Danny Williams has given us a strong voice and a sense of social responsibility that we will be loathe to relinquish as the benefits are realized.

chávez vs. the corporacracy

Having spent the entire day hopping between links to jump-start my education regarding the policies of populist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez - which seem (at least on the surface) to be a promising model of successful social democracy - I have the unfortunate task of attempting to narrow the topic sufficiently for a single blog entry. I think it is crucial to get a good handle on the recent history of Venezuela, which sets the context for the current situation, before we can begin to come to a consensus concerning its politics.

I have settled on the topic of the Venezuelan media, which was so pivotal to the 2002 coup attempt, and the ensuing people's counter-coup which returned Chávez to power. Let's first describe that coup attempt. On December 6, 1998, Chávez and his Fifth Republican Movement party were elected with ~56% of the popular vote. On July 31, 2000, he maintained his presidential status, attaining ~59% of the vote. Chávez ran on a platform of socializing the state, promising improvement for the roughly 80% of the Venezuelan population that lives in poverty, despite that country's impressive oil and agricultural resources.

In accordance with this platform, Chávez has (mainly in a package of 49 laws enacted in November, 2001; see this, this, and this):

• Organized referenda on writing a new constitution for Venezuela, obtaining the authority to form a "Constitutional Assembly", with the authority to suspend Congress and institute law while it reorganized the state apparatus (this was, according to its proponents, an unfortunate but necessary step in the process of uprooting a thoroughly corrupt system). The resulting constitution, which renamed Venezuela to the "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela", was passed in a December, 1999, referendum
• Instituted public programs for immunization and food distribution (which did not exist before)
• Instituted state-funded health care and education programs
• Required wealthy businesses to pay taxes (!)
• Implemented a land reform policy called Ley de Tierras ("Land Law"), which included "taxing unused landholdings, expropriating unused private lands (with compensation), and giving inheritable, unsellable land grants to small farmers and farm collectives"
• Made moves to reorganize labour unions in Venezuela, which some see as having entrenched capital-driven interests
• Implemented oil nationalization reforms, including mandating "state possession of a majority of stocks in all mixed companies engaged in primary activity in the oil industry"

Of course, these reforms were a horror story for those in the Western world who had claimed a victory for the Washington Consensus (as well as the big players such as Conoco and ExxonMobil), as it was essentially a revival of the policy reforms of the democratically-elected Chilean socialist leader Salvatore Allende. Such nationalization is a slap in the face to corporate interests who - in direct terms - profit by shamelessly pillaging a country's resources. It also carries a more subtle threat to corporate imperialism, in that it manifests the possibility of an authentically democratic socialist state (but see this), which, in the words of Henry Kissinger (in this memo from 1970):

..would surely have an impact on -- and even precedent value for -- other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it.

The U.S. responded to this threat in 1973 by backing a coup d'etat (see the actual unclassified documents) by General Augusto Pinochet, which resulted in the murder of Allende, the kidnapping, torture, and murder of thousands of his supporters, and a radical reversal of publicly-supported social measures resulting in a mass privatization of Chile's entire society. All of the elements of the 1973 Chilean coup are present in modern-day Venezuela, with the threat of "narco-terrorism" replacing that of the communist scourge as the fear-based public relations spin. Of course, old dogs dislike new tricks, and the old dogs who pull the strings decided a Pinochet-type approach was in order for Venezuela.

The (predictable) coup d'etat attempt on Chávez's administration arrived on April 11, 2002. There are of course countless variables involved in this event (including the issue of whether or not the U.S. was involved), but as stated, my present focus will be the central role of the media in both the coup itself, and the counter-coup that followed, as it highlights the true power of media to influence the outcomes of world events. Discussed in detail here and here, mainstream Venezuelan media sources were central to the execution of the coup (there are also suggestions of corporate media complicity in events leading up to the coup, but I'll leave that for now).

The coup itself was triggered by resistence to Chávez's attempts to nationalize the country's largest oil concern, PDVSA, which resulted in his firing of top executives and middle managers on April 8. On April 9, the country's largest union federation, CTV, held a two-day strike, which was joined by a strike/lockout by its largest commerce organization, Fedecámaras. On April 11, a march of 100,000 - 200,000 protesters clashed with a pro-Chavez demonstration, resulting in 18 dead and over 100 wounded. During this initial violence, Chávez began to issue public appeals for calm, while the four main commercial media outlets (each outspoken opponents of Chávez's policies) began to broadcast these messages alongside images of the violence, meanwhile reporting that the violence was incited by pro-Chávez gunmen (detailed here).

Simultaneously, there are reports (see here) that the Caracas police, controlled by the anti-Chávez mayor Alfredo Peña, forcibly shut down a number of independent "community media" radio and television stations during the coup, while forcing another to play nothing but music during the period. These forces also took over the state-run television network, Channel 8. Clearly, controlling the airwaves was a critical aspect of the coup's chances for success, and while independent community-based sources were gagged (but not completely), it is evident that the commercial stations were on-board from the start (see here, here, and here). For instance, in a quote attributed to PROVEA, a Venezuelan human rights NGO, on April 13, 2002:

A journalist who asked not to be identified, the Production Chief of one of the principal TV channels in the country, denounced that the directors of the company impeded the journalists from transmitting information about the current events.

One particularly controversial piece of footage which was looped constantly by private stations during the coup attempt showed a group of Chávez supporters firing guns from an overpass, allegedly at a crowd of demonstrators below. This footage, however, was very brief, and as documented in the Irish film Will Not Be Televised, alternative footage indicates that the street below was actually empty at the time it was shot.



On April 12/13, top military officers arrested Chávez and allegedly forced his resignation, replacing him as an interim measure with the president of Fedecámaras, Pedro Carmona, whose first acts were to dissolve the National Assembly, Supreme Court, and Constitution. During this time, foreign and media agencies, including the New York Times, Reuters, and CNN, were reporting - without substantiation - that Chávez had resigned and/or fled the country. The official reaction of the U.S. was to pin the blame squarely on Chávez (from New York Times):

Hours after Mr. Chávez was overthrown, Ari Fleischer, then the White House spokesman, said, "the Chávez government provoked the crisis," while Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman, said that "undemocratic actions committed or encouraged by the Chávez administration provoked yesterday's crisis."

The U.S. media, including the Times, played right along with this official story (see here and here):

In an April 13 editorial, the New York Times triumphantly declared that Chávez's "resignation" meant that "Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator." Conspicuously avoiding the word "coup," the Times explained that Chávez "stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader."

Prompting an apologetic editorial a couple of days later:

In his three years in office, Mr. Chávez has been such a divisive and demagogic leader that his forced departure last week drew applause at home and in Washington. That reaction, which we shared, overlooked the undemocratic manner in which he was removed. Forcibly unseating a democratically elected leader, no matter how badly he has performed, is never something to cheer.

Due in no small part to the work of independent media sources, massive pro-Chávez rallies were recruited from the barrios which constitute his electoral base, and Chávez was eventually reinstated. During this time, none of the major private stations covered these rallies, preferring instead to pretend that the coup had succeeded and playing cartoons and cooking shows while some of the most momentous events in Venezuela's history were unfolding.

The story continues. However, I think it's time for this entry to wrap up. I won't leave you with any opinions on the success of Chávez's policies in attaining the mandate for which he was elected, nor the recent developments which have seen him consolidate power and lose his popularity. These topics are for future entries. One development that is of relevance is the changes to media freedom that have occurred in the aftermath of this coup. While the major private stations continue to broadcast, human rights groups (particularly the Human Rights Watch, but see this and this), have begun to criticize the means with which Chávez's government has acted to control private media, particularly the larger outlets which continue to strongly oppose him. This being said, the fact that these clearly corporate-controlled operations are allowed to broadcast at all after their roles in the coup attempt (and further acts of sedition, including involvement in a mass-strike/lockout in December 2002-January 2003, aimed at crippling state oil production) suggests that Chávez is not the tyrant he is commonly portrayed as in mainstream Western media.

Last year, the government of Venezuela decided not to renew the license of the major television network RCTV, one of those stations who participated in the coup. This evoked condemnation from various organizations (from here):

Several NGOs of note also voiced baseless and disingenuous criticism claiming Chavez violated standards of free speech and freedom of the press. They know better and acted shamelessly doing it. They include Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and Peruvian-based Press and Society Institute monitoring Andean region free press attacks and funded by the US National Endowment of Democracy (NED) that only supports media allied with its neoliberal right wing agenda.

It seems to be quite a mild penalty, however, for its previous and ongoing behaviour, which far exceeds the role of a critical and independent media agency and is very clearly motivated by a partisan agenda. Secondly, if Chávez were truly intent on censoring his opposition, he is doing a horrible job, given that vocal opposition to him is a common and tolerated occurrence. This appears more to me to be in line with his policy of replacing corporate interests with community interests, i.e., the increasingly popular "Community Media movement" of the small radio and television broadcasters which were targeted in the coup attempt and in general by opposition forces which still hold sway in Venezuela (see here).

The result is not such a clear picture. Indeed, in doing research for this it was exceedingly difficult to find information from mainstream media sources. Perhaps this is a strategy by - umm, them - to obscure the fact that Venezuela's economy is healthy and growing, and that the corporacracy might actually be losing to Hugo Chávez...? More to come.

policy recommendation #1

..on the arms and "homeland security" industry.

First let's consider this industry. This is obviously too complex an issue to address in a humble blog entry, but it can be summarized. See this, this, and this for the economic and logistical details. The following are points of interest:

1. The world arms industry is valued at ~$1,000 billion (2006 USD) annually.
   
2. Between 1999 and 2006, U.S. arms manufacturers sold $123 billion worth of weapons; 64% of this was to developing nations.
3. Arms manufacturers generally receive large tax subsidies and U.S. and European governments lend money to developing nations specifically for arms procurement - reversing their professed adherence to laissez-faire economics while simultaneously attaching loan conditions which force the recipient nations to develop such a system of economics.
4. Defense contractors have enormous influence with the U.S. government; indeed, there appears to be a revolving door through which individuals transfer smoothly between private enterprise and public "service". Naomi Klein documents clearly how even this revolving door facade is disappearing, allowing high level public administrators to maintain their interests in private arms manufacturers while simultaneously wielding the authority to effect policy decisions which affect the defense contracts these manufacturers are dependent upon for revenue.
5. Since Sept. 11 and the newly fashioned "War on Terror", the U.S. has revised its list of states with which it is acceptable to deal arms, based upon its desire to accumulate allies in this "war".
6. Globalization of the arms industry has made it even more difficult to track and to regulate the international arms trade.
   

Thus, this is a huge, entrenched, privatized industry. And, following the trend of politicians and businessmen who publicly condone the Friedmanite policy of privatizing everything, while covertly benefiting from subsidies and insurance financed by public money, this industry has a great deal of protection from official and unofficial public policy. The "War on Terror" creates an enormous new market for these corporations, and one which they are unlikely to relinquish willingly.

Just put yourself in the position of a CEO for Lockheed or Carlyle, faced with the prospect of withdrawing troops from Iraq. Unless this withdrawal is supplemented by the promise of conflict elsewhere, you would be failing your shareholders (and employees; Lockheed alone has 140,000 of them) if you did not use your substantial influence to lobby government for a continuation of the occupation. The arms industry has a very clear interest in world conflict. It is its bread and butter.

So my first in what will be a series of policy recommendations (regardless of how difficult they may be to actualize):

All production and sale of arms must be nationalized. It must be subject to strict congressional oversight (or the equivalent), based upon publicized criteria. Arms trading must be transparent, and must be conducted with full public accountability and according to the collective interests of the state, rather than the private interests of defense contractors and their investors. It must satisfy the minimal demands of a strict and well-defined mandate to protect a state and its interests. International trade must likewise be regulated by publicly transparent treaties. If it is undesirable to share technology, then arms trading between states is acceptable, but it must be subject to rigorous oversight and public scrutiny.

bolivia vs. the machine

In The Shock Doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism, Naomi Klein dedicates many pages to the description of U.S. involvement in the state affairs of Bolivia in 1985. She highlights in particular a secret economic plan involving Chicago-school acolyte Jeffrey Sachs, backed by the promise of U.S. aid in a country that was undergoing massive hyperinflation and a full-fledged economic crisis. This plan was secret because it was implemented as part of a power deal between former dictator Hugo Banzer, and the more popular Victor Paz Estenssoro, whose party was running on a platform of nationalization [pg. 173]. Despite being elected on this platform, Paz (who hid his dealings even from his own party) proceeded to implement rapid deregulation of the Bolivian market, as well as privatization of many of the nationalized services in Bolivia, silencing all opposition with force.

The story in Bolivia is continuing. Gradually, despite a U.S. intent on maintaining a completely unregulated market in Latin America, its grip on Bolivia has been slipping. A glaring manifestation of this was the 2000 "water war", in which the citizens of Cochabamba protested against the private control of the water system by the Bechtel Corporation, currently listed by Forbes as the 9th-largest corporation in the U.S. Facing rising water prices that denied access to Cochabamba's many poor residents, this culminated in public demonstrations which turned into riots when police utilized tear gas and other violent means of suppression. In the end, Bechtel pulled out of Bolivia altogether [see this CBC article, and this most recent development].

The tide has turned against the failed experiment of unfettered privatization in Bolivia. This has been marked by the rise of Evo Morales, the indiginous labour union organizer who was elected to the presidency of Bolivia in 2005 with an overwhelming majority, on the platform of renationalizing the failed Bolivian economy [see Time and Democracy Now; he's even been on the Daily Show]. However, it is obvious that the U.S. does not want to let go. This is outlined in this open letter to government, cosigned by many leading academics (including Klein).

The upshot of the situation is that the U.S. Administration is currently spending millions on projects in Bolivia, the details of which it refuses to make public. There is good reason to suspect, however, that these donations are going primarily to provincial governers and opposition organizers, who have increasingly been witnessed as participating in, or contributing to, violent opposition protests. Quite recently, Morales declared U.S. ambassador Philip Goldberg persona non grata, effectively kicking him out of his country. As his rationale he declared:

Without fearing anybody, without fearing the Empire – I declared Mr Goldberg persona non-grata. We do not want separatist or divisionist people that conspire against unity or democracy.

This new opposition to economic imperialism is not excluded to Bolivia, of course. The anti-capitalist triumphs of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez are becoming legendary (but that's for another entry), and Brazilian President Lula da Silva responded to a question about Morales' decision to oust Goldberg by saying:

If it is true that the U.S. ambassador was meeting with the opposition to Morales, then Morales was right to kick him out. It is definitely not an ambassador’s role to engage in politics inside the country. He is there representing his country, in a relationship between one state and another, he is representing the State.

What is becoming clear is that the world is beginning to adapt to the classic tricks of capitalist imperialism. How this evolves is still anyone's guess, but it's certainly a story worth following...

on zeitgeist: addendum

The idea is a good one. Zeitgeist: Addendum is just as long as its predecessor, and simply continues along the same line. It makes an attempt to render the monetary system of economics palatable to the typical viewer, which is no easy task. But the basic premise of this exposé is easily palatable: that the monetary system upon which the economy of the developed world is based is one in which exponentially increasing debt and inflation are necessary outcomes. This bizarre system is explained in terms of its historical evolution, which the narrator admonishes as a new and insidious form of universal slavery.

Although the film is very blatantly anarchistic propaganda, many of these ideas are valid ones; in the end, I am captivated and intrigued by the explanations which I am already beginning to appreciate as a result of independent research of my own. It is insanity to hope to give any fair treatment of the subject of laissez-faire economics, or the ideas of "corporacracy" and "monetary-ism" as presented in this film, in a single blog entry. So this blog entry will simply serve as a segue into future entries in which I will attempt a deeper monologue (hopefully even a dialogue, if this ever gets read).

The latter part of this film actually begins to offer alternatives, which adds to its value. Like most great critics, however, Peter Joseph is better at critical deconstruction than realistic construction. This is not to say that some of the ideas aren't excellent ones, but it is dangerous to be overly naive in our desire for social utopia. Zeitgeist: Addendum offers us "the Venus Project", which is in essence a project designed by a graphic designer and "social engineer" named Jacques Fresco, whose words are the basis of the second half of the film.

As a set of ideas about the possible future of our species and our planet, the Venus Project is highly appealing. We hear and see renderings of a future planet where the monetary system has been abolished, replaced with a "resource-based" economy. We are made to imagine a world in which progress is not determined by politicians or corporations, but by the technicians themselves, whose technology is geared not towards short-term profit, but as a means to advance the well-being of the planet as a whole. Such technology includes clean, renewable, and abundant sources of energy such as solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal power generation.

All of this sounds very idealistic, but the film aptly points out that the requisite technology is either currently available, or quite feasible given our present state of technological advancement. Fresco makes it clear that he is not advocating a new utopia, and acknowledges that there is no perfect society; the essential idea, however, is to allow a fluid progression into an improved society, which he and Joseph (and I) see as being impeded and misdirected by our present systems of politics and economics.

Where do I disagree? Well, Fresco suggests that we are all basically blank slates upon which behavioural tendencies are scrawled by the social and familial traditions into which we are born and under which we develop. We know that this is at most only partially true. I agree that tradition is a huge factor in the determination of a cultural/political/economic social system, and thus the activity of masses of people will have trends that are determined by these traditions. However, there are certain traits which are to a lesser or greater degree innately present in all humans; these behavioural phenotypes are what distinguish us as a species, and are basically independent of culture and tradition.

I would not expect, for instance, as Fresco suggests, that crime would disappear if class distinctions were eliminated. We see far too much crime at the highest levels (and the film spends a huge amount of time exposing this) to truly believe that it is attributable solely to conditions of poverty and oppression, or that it would disappear in any society we construct. It is of course sensible to suggest that, under a different social organization in which the typical incentives for crime are eliminated, we should see a change in criminal behaviour, but I would need a far more convincing argument to agree that human exploitation will ever completely disappear. It is a short-term adaptive strategy, and genes care little for long-term ideologies.

There are certain unpleasant facts that we must acknowledge about ourselves if we ever hope to progress socially... deliberate optimism is simply another form of ignorance, and all forms of ignorance are counterproductive...

Anyways, a lovely movie full of lovely ideas, and I shall do my best to address each of those ideas more directly in future entries... stayed tuned :p

by way of introduction...

This blog was set up because I feel the need to add yet another voice to the hopeless cacophony of voices already blogging on the net. Also, I've been learning lately about rather disturbing political and economic trends which I can no longer simply pass off as alarmist ramblings or conspiracy theories. As a result of this I want to resume, in an amateur way for the moment, the vague notion I once entertained, of practicing journalism.

Witness the birth of something... well, something.

I'll end this with a few links to the sorts of issues with which I would like to begin this adventure:

http://www.arcanumcafe.com/community/showthread.php?t=75677
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/