Europe « Tikkunista!

4. The Rise and Fall of the €

Jan-27-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Hey, I hear you cry, isn’t it enough that I’m looking at Tikkunista, and now you expect me to listen to a 60 minute audio about financial policy? Well, here’s why you should. 1) It’s hugely entertaining. 2) it explains the core conflict that underlies the current crisis, and how that’s been there since the Euro was created. 3) When the € crashes, as it will, this will affect you. Knowing why this is going to happen is going to be really useful. The Vincent Browne video is what was once called “journalism”, in which a reporter tries to get real answers to hard questions, in this case why the Irish should bail out banks. The obfuscation is impeccable.

* Continental Breakup This American Life (60 minute audio)

If you’re like us, when the words “European debt crisis” pop up in the news you feel a little worried, and a little like taking a nap. Turns out, there’s a story behind this story. One that’s filled with guilt, and drama, and betrayal, and 100-year-old dreams come true. Alex Blumberg of Planet Money guest hosts.

* Vincent Browne v The ECB YouTube, 10 minutes

Vincent Browne (Irish reporter) takes on Klaus Masuch over the issue of the Irish people having to foot the bill for unguaranteed bondholders.

Jan. 6th, 2012 :: Year 9, Issue 1

Jan-06-2012 | Comments (0)

1. 2011 Retrospective (text)

Bird’s Eye: Janus is the Roman God of beginnings and transitions, the God for whom January is named. He has two faces, one to look forward, one to look back. We start with looking back at some of the high/low lights of the year. The first story is about the Occupy movement, which gave so many of us hope. A huge mashup of lists follows – everything from best Jewish Twitters of the year to 9 funniest autocorrects – as well as books, films, TV shows, etc etc etc. We single out Canada’s environmental failure, aptly delineated by Maude Barlow, and end with Neil Gaiman’s good wishes, (formatted exceedingly badly, imho.)

* Compassion Is Our New Currency Rebecca Solnit Tom Dispatch (Thanks, Amy!)

Usually at year’s end, we’re supposed to look back at events just passed — and forward, in prediction mode, to the year to come. But just look around you! This moment is so extraordinary that it has hardly registered. People in thousands of communities across the United States and elsewhere are living in public, experimenting with direct democracy, calling things by their true names, and obliging the media and politicians to do the same.

The breadth of this movement is one thing, its depth another. It has rejected not just the particulars of our economic system, but the whole set of moral and emotional assumptions on which it’s based. Take the pair shown in a photograph from Occupy Austin in Texas. The amiable-looking elderly woman is holding a sign whose computer-printed words say, “Money has stolen our vote.” The older man next to her with the baseball cap is holding a sign handwritten on cardboard that states, “We are our brothers’ keeper.”

* The Best And Worst Of Everything In 2011: A Mega, Meta MashupAdam Penenberg

We hacked through dozens of year-end lists–and, yes, checked them twice–to bring you our curated best and worst of 2011. Here’s the mother of all roundups that you will find online, offline, and everywhere else. Each line is taken from those other year-end lists.

* The biggest story of 2011 for me? Canada’s failure on climate change Maude Barlow, Rabble

The biggest story of 2011 for me was the national and international attention given to the environmental dangers of Canada’s tar sands, and the failure of the Harper government to meet our obligations to combat climate change. Until this year, most criticism of Canada’s climate policy was restricted to Canadian and some international environmentalists. But three events of 2011 caused Canada’s energy and climate policies to come under intense scrutiny here in Canada and around the world.

* Neil Gaiman’s New Year Wishes

4. People versus Corporations

Dec-02-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: We start big scale, looking at the overthrow of democratically elected leaders and the policies their people voted for in favour of the economic policies banks want. Two medium shots look at fights between people and corporations, the first by by Zellers’ employees, (targeted by Target); the second by New Hampshire residents. And we end with a heart-cheering video of something we’ve all always wanted to do: turn a slew of venomous snakes loose in the office of a bureaucrat who wouldn’t listen. (Not herpetophobic safe!)

* The Markets Distrust Democracy. Jonathan Freedland The Guardian

Democracy’s humbling has been most dramatically visible in Greece and Italy, where elected leaders have been pushed aside in favour of technocrats and fixers, elevated without so much as shaking a single voter’s hand. Their mission will include the surrender of much economic sovereignty, putting those decisions further out of the reach of their own citizens. What Greeks and Italians endure today, other eurozone nations might well face tomorrow as they are told to make similar sacrifices of autonomy to save their economic skin.

Whether in Europe or beyond, democratic leaders have seemed powerless to beat back the engulfing global crisis, the failure of the G20 at Cannes exposing their weakness for all to see. And yet, according to one who was there, the leaders of the world’s authoritarian states – China, Russia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia – had a spring in their step in Cannes, confident that they could face down whatever the economic meltdown threw at them.

… 2011 has punctured the sense of easy supremacy democratic societies used to enjoy. To reassert themselves they might have to break from the rules now choking them, and insist that it is people, not markets, that are sovereign.

* Target Canada Is Going To Fire Zellers Employees At 135 Stores, To Break The Union At 15 Stores. Globe & Mail

Target Corporation is locked in a fight to prevent Zellers employees from maintaining their union status, as the discount giant pushes to keep its costs down for its foray into the competitive Canadian retail field. Target’s blueprint for Canada entails converting about 135 Zellers stores to the Target name by 2013 after letting go all the Zellers employees and starting fresh with newly hired staff – and no union. Currently about 15 of the Zellers stores are unionized. But now, in a test case, the union has applied to the B.C. Labour Relations Board to declare Target as the “successor employer” to Zellers at an outlet in Burnaby, B.C., and keep the employees unionized.

* Unions Beat GOP Candidates as New Hampshire Blocks Anti-Labor Law NationofChange

On Wednesday, after months of wrangling over the issue, the New Hampshire House of Representatives killed a plan promoted by the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council to make New Hampshire a so-called “right-to-work” state. The law was blocked because not just Democrats but almost two dozen Republicans rejected the counsel of presidential candidate Perry — who addressed the legislature Wednesday morning — and voted with organized labor and community groups that rallied to defend collective-bargaining rights.

* Snake Charmer Releases Cobras In Tax Office 2 minute video, via Boing Boing

A snake charmer in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh was angry that the government did not grant him a plot of land to keep his reptiles. So he went into the state’s tax office and released a slew of snakes, including poisonous cobras.

12 Quote of the Week (on Netanyahu)

Nov-11-2011 | Comments (0)

Sarkozy: “I cannot stand him. He’s a liar.”

Obama,“You’re fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day.”

Backstory: Microphones accidentally left on at the G20

2. Greece: The Attraction of Going Bankrupt

Nov-04-2011 | Comments (1)

Bird’s Eye: We hate covering breaking stories, but here we are on deadline. A number of commentators have observed that leaving the EU and going bankrupt might be far better for Greece than accepting the EU offer. (Steve Ball, the Guardian editorial cartoonist, sums it up brilliantly and scatologically, here). We look at Argentina and Iceland, both of which refused to honour their debts, both of which prospered as a result.

* Bailout plan will sink GreeceToronto Star

Prime Minister George Papandreou is correct to put the European Union bailout package to a vote…. European leaders never came to terms with the fact that the euro, even if left to float to find a market value against foreign currencies, would be overvalued for some jurisdictions — leaving businesses unable to compete and wages too high to generate adequate exports, as in Spain, Portugal, southern Italy and Greece. Similarly, it would be undervalued for others — creating hypercompetitive enterprises able to offer their workers the very best benefits and short work weeks, as in Germany…. Mediterranean governments coped by borrowing too much. Now that string has run out and austerity is not enough to pay off all they owe. The bailout packages simply won’t work without draconian consequences.

…This is simply too draconian compared to the other way out — readopting the drachma, remarking sovereign and private debt to the reinstituted national currency, and letting the value of the drachma fall to levels consistent with a trade surplus that permits Greece to service its debts.

* Euro Referendum: Papandreou Is Right to Let the Greeks DecideDer Spiegel

Regardless how the referendum’s question is eventually worded, the Greeks will be voting on whether their country will remain in the euro zone or leave the single currency. The government could ask its citizens a very direct question: “Do you want to continue using the euro or go back to the drachma?”

How can Papandreou do this? It’s asking the same people who riot against his policies! It is already clear what the outcome will be! Such were the instant reactions to the prime minister’s announcement.

This was especially true as, up till now, the biggest fear of the other euro-zone members was that Greece would say goodbye to the currency. The formula for European apocalypse goes something like this: First Greece drops out, then Portugal and Spain fall, and then Italy pushes the single currency over the cliff. If they’re lucky, all that will remain is a northern European euro mini-zone. No question, this danger exists if the Greeks say no to Brussels’ decisions. Papandreou is going all in. Nevertheless, his decision is correct for several reasons.

* It Worked for Argentina Mark Weisbrot Guardian

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner coasted to re-election as president of Argentina on Sunday,

Yes, it’s the economy. Since Argentina defaulted on $95bn of international debt nine years ago and blew off the International Monetary Fund, the economy has done remarkably well. For the years 2002-2011, using the IMF’s projections for the end of this year, Argentina has chalked up real GDP growth of about 94%. This is the fastest economic growth in the western hemisphere – about twice that of Brazil, for example, which has also improved enormously over past performance.

Greece, in particular, whose economy is shrinking at a 5% annual rate while it waits for the European authorities to restructure its debt, would have to consider that it might be better off going the Argentine route. It sure worked for Argentina.

* It Worked for Iceland Paul Krugman New York Times

But a funny thing happened on the way to economic Armageddon: Iceland’s very desperation made conventional behavior impossible, freeing the nation to break the rules. Where everyone else bailed out the bankers and made the public pay the price, Iceland let the banks go bust and actually expanded its social safety net. Where everyone else was fixated on trying to placate international investors, Iceland imposed temporary controls on the movement of capital to give itself room to maneuver.

So how’s it going? Iceland hasn’t avoided major economic damage or a significant drop in living standards. But it has managed to limit both the rise in unemployment and the suffering of the most vulnerable; the social safety net has survived intact, as has the basic decency of its society. “Things could have been a lot worse” may not be the most stirring of slogans, but when everyone expected utter disaster, it amounts to a policy triumph.

And there’s a lesson here for the rest of us: The suffering that so many of our citizens are facing is unnecessary. If this is a time of incredible pain and a much harsher society, that was a choice. It didn’t and doesn’t have to be this way.

Sept 9th, 2011 :: Year 8, Issue 25

Sep-09-2011 | Comments (0)

1. 9/11: The International Results

Bird’s Eye: Three sections on 9.11 this week (and at that we didn’t rerun the iconic pictures!) We look at the effects internationally, at the effects internally, and at the growing fight to regain those freedoms we have lost. Internationally, we start with a blazingly insightful Robert Fisk, who explores the unasked question: Why? Chomsky gives an accurate overview on the decade, and explores some of the roads not taken, and Andrew Sullivan (The Daily Beast) asks if we let Bin Laden win… but concludes that we let our fear win, and concludes that, “Until we decide to grasp hope again, the war will live on. Within us all.”

* For 10 Years, We’ve Lied To Ourselves To Avoid Asking The One Real Question Robert Fisk The Independent (Thanks, Antonia!)

By their books, ye shall know them.

I’m talking about the volumes, the libraries – nay, the very halls of literature – which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as “boys”, almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive.

Why so, I ask myself, after 10 years of war, hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, lies and hypocrisy and betrayal and sadistic torture by the Americans – our MI5 chaps just heard, understood, maybe looked, of course no touchy-touchy nonsense – and the Taliban? Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears? Are we still not able to say those three sentences: The 19 murderers of 9/11 claimed they were Muslims. They came from a place called the Middle East. Is there a problem out there?

* Was There an Alternative? Looking Back on 9/11 a Decade Later Noam Chomsky

We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the horrendous atrocities of September 11, 2001, which, it is commonly held, changed the world. On May 1st, the presumed mastermind of the crime, Osama bin Laden, was assassinated in Pakistan by a team of elite US commandos, Navy SEALs, after he was captured, unarmed and undefended, in Operation Geronimo.

A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S. “He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them,” Eric Margolis writes. “’Bleeding the U.S.,’ in his words.” The United States, first under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden’s trap… Grotesquely overblown military outlays and debt addiction… may be the most pernicious legacy of the man who thought he could defeat the United States” — particularly when the debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with the collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.

* Did Osama Win? Andrew Sullivan

...I was, like most of us, simply terrorized. And it’s only now, a decade later, that I’ve come to see how significant that feeling was, how transformative it would become. We often talk about terror in terms of the terrorist. We do so less in terms of the terrorized. But it was how this act changed those of us who were bystanders that made this event more awful than a mere mass murder. It was mass murder as theater and as threat.

It took months for this initial trauma to ebb, years for my psyche to regain its equilibrium. And it took me close to a decade to realize just how slickly Osama bin Laden had done his evil work, how insidiously his despicable performance art had reached into my mind and altered it, how carefully he had set the trap and how guilelessly I—we—had walked right into it.

We need to understand that 9/11 worked. It worked as a tactic to induce American self-destruction, even if it failed spectacularly as a strategy to advance Al Qaeda—and its heretical message of suicidal warfare—across the globe.

3. 9/11: Fighting the Security State

Sep-09-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Why fight against those who just want to protect us? Because the Patriot Act in the US has been used 1618 times for drugs, 122 times for fraud, 15 times for terrorism. In the UK, anti-terrorist powers have produced over 100,000 searches, 506 arrests, 0 charges for terrorism. Because the use of torture has irrevocably removed any moral high ground that the brutal 9.11 attacks might have given the West. Because scanners and CCTV cameras simply don’t work.

* “Torture is Wrong and Never Justified” says ex-head of UK M15 Reith Lectures, BBC4

The use of torture is “wrong and never justified”, the former head of the security service MI5 has insisted. Eliza Manningham-Buller said it should be “utterly rejected even when it may offer the prospect of saving lives”. Giving the second of her BBC Radio Reith lectures, she acknowledged recent disclosures about alleged British intelligence operations in Libya would “raise widespread concerns”.

“No-one could justify what went on under Gaddafi’s regime,” she added…She said that the use of torture had not made the world a safer place, adding that the use of water-boarding by the United States was a “profound mistake” and as a result America lost its “moral authority”.

* The Heroism Of The Public Response Has Been Polluted By What Has Been Done To Prevent A Second 9/11 The Independent

The 10th anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Centre towers by two hijacked commercial airliners should be a moment of unambiguous moral clarity. In a way, it still is. Through special newspaper supplements and TV documentaries we are reminded (as if we ever could forget) of the horror of that beautiful sunny morning in New York City: the sight of office workers jumping to certain death as a merciful release from incineration; the desperate calls as husbands and wives, parents and children, made what they knew would be their final messages to those they loved and would never see again.

Yet this commemoration is mixed with something else; the feeling that the heroism of the public response to the horror of that day has been foully polluted by what has been done in our name to prevent a second 9/11. This is encapsulated by the revelations from documents discovered in abandoned buildings in Tripoli, appearing to show the complicity of the British Government in the rendition of a suspected Islamist terrorist from Hong Kong, into the hands of Colonel Gaddafi’s interrogators…. This, of course, was all part of the “war on terror”.

* Germany Kiboshes Body Scanners At Airports The Local

Body scanners being tested at Hamburg Airport are so error prone that the German government has decided not to introduce them across the country for the time being. The so-called backscatter scanners are supposed to show whether passengers are concealing dangerous items on their bodies. They are broadly similar to “naked” scanners already used in many US airports. The testing in Hamburg from September to the end of July was meant to be the prelude to a nationwide rollout.

But the German scanners had an error rate of 54 percent, according to government officials, who said that wrinkles in clothing or even perspiration caused false alarms. That meant security personnel were forced to waste an untold amount of time subsequently searching passengers by hand for no reason.

* Why CCTV Has Failed To Deter Criminals? Cory Doctorow The Guardian

The real story for me is about surveillance, and not the mere use of CCTV footage to apprehend rioters after the fact. It’s about the total failure of CCTV to deter people from committing crimes in the first place….The theory of street crime as a rational act is bankrupt. Evidence-led CCTV deployment shows us where CCTV does work, and that’s in situations where crimes are planned, not pulled off in the heat of the moment…. After the London riots, one thing is certain: anyone promoting CCTVs for deterrence is most likely selling something, probably CCTVs

7. Political Humour

Sep-02-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: A wonderfully written piece from the Guardian argues that standing beside a statue of Hitler doing faux-Nazi salutes is an appropriate response. Disagree? Read the article, which cites, Churchill, the Goons, Chaplin and others as predecessors in mocking the corporal. We follow with three videos, all political, all very funny. (Your mileage may vary.)

* We’ve Always Found Hitler Hilarious – The Alternative Is Much More Odious David Mitchell The Guardian

A statement from Madame Tussauds has been causing offence. The world’s most famous collection of wickless candles announced: “We proactively encourage our visitors to interact with the waxworks should they so choose.” No surprise that caused a stink, you’re probably thinking. It’s one of the most horrible sentences ever written. Why “proactively encourage” rather than “actively encourage” or just “encourage”? And what’s that “should they so choose” doing there? If the visitors have so chosen, you’re not encouraging them actively, proactively or otherwise, you’re just letting them. That’s the opposite of proactive: antipassive, presumably.

That’s not why the statement is controversial though. It’s because it defends tourists’ right to stand beside a waxwork of Adolf Hitler doing Nazi salutes. An Israeli couple visiting the attraction…were horrified both by the fact that there was a likeness of Hitler at all and that people were posing next to it doing fascist gestures. It was their complaint that elicited Tussauds’ assault on the English language.

* Jon Stewart Defends the Poor from Money-Grubbing Conservatives

Although a proposed tax rate increase for top-level earners would reduce America’s budget deficit by about $700 billion over 10 years, right-wing pundits on Fox News and elsewhere have decried it as “class warfare” that would only put a small dent in the national debt.

The conservatives’ plan? Lots of spending cuts on social programs. Oh, and new taxes on the poor! Both of these ideas are stupid, of course. But as Jon Stewart articulated on tonight’s Daily Show, they’re also pretty damn dangerous. A clip from Stewart’s show is above.

* Robert Crumb’s ‘A Short History Of America’ The Presurfer

Robert Crumb is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream. Here’s a cartoon video of Crumb’s ‘A Short History of America’ with music by Joni Mitchell, ‘The Big Yellow Taxi.‘

* Hari Kondabolu Youtube 9 minutes, via sherrytalksback

2. Norway: Solving Breivik

Aug-26-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: The horror of the terrorism attack in Norway needs no elaboration, though I was hugely moved by a first person account from one of the survivors. What is noteworthy is how Norway reacted, and the rise of attitudes that supported Breivik.

* An un-American response to the Oslo attack Glenn Greenwald Salon

Over the last decade, virtually every Terrorist plot aimed at the U.S. — whether successful or failed — has provoked greater security and surveillance measures…. The day after the attack — one which, per capita, was as significant for Norway as 9/11 was for the U.S. — Oslo Mayor Fabian Stang, when asked whether greater security measures were needed, sternly rejected that notion: ”I don’t think security can solve problems. We need to teach greater respect.” It is simply inconceivable that any significant U.S. politician — the day after an attack of that magnitude — would publicly reject calls for greater security measures. Similarly inconceivable for American political discourse is the equally brave response of the country’s Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, whose office was the target of the bomb and whose Labour Party was the sponsor of the camp where dozens of teenagers were shot:

He called on his country to react by more tightly embracing, rather than abandoning, the culture of tolerance that Anders Behring Breivik said he was trying to destroy. “The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation,”

* Christian Terrorism in Norway William Saletan Slate

On Friday, anti-Islamist blogger Pamela Geller pounced on news of a massacre in Oslo. “Jihad in Norway?” she asked. She posted a second item…Then things went horribly wrong. It turned out that the suspected terrorist in Norway wasn’t a Muslim. He hated Muslims. And he admired Geller. In a manifesto posted online, the admitted killer, Anders Behring Breivik, praised Geller. He cited her blog, Atlas Shrugs, and the writings of her friends, allies, and collaborators—Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, Islam Watch, and Front Page magazine—more than 250 times….

Geller is outraged. “Attempts to link us to these murders on the basis of alleged postings by the murderer mentioning us are absurd and offensive,” she writes. Breivik “is responsible for his actions. He and only he.” …Now you know how it feels, Ms. Geller. When the terrorist is a Christian—in his own words, a “Crusader” for “Christendom”—and when the preacher to whom he has been linked is you, you suddenly discover the injustice of group blame and guilt by association. The citations you didn’t create, the intermediaries you didn’t recognize, the transactions you didn’t know about, the violent interpretations you didn’t condone—these exonerating facts suddenly matter.

* Cultivating Violence: Israel and its “right-wing Zionists” L. Davidson (Thanks, Linda!)

Anders Behring Breivik had written down a manifesto which runs to some 1500 pages. In this message he identified those who he saw as his allies. He had not, of course, consulted them on this status but he really did not have to. They had been fighting in his chosen cause for a long time and he admired them for their effort. He strongly identified with their worldview and he took encouragement from the general atmosphere of a “clash of civilizations” that they had created. Some had fought for the cause with violence some had not. But he knew that they were all on the same side.
Israel’s Jerusalem Post has looked into this side of Breivik’s manifesto. The paper notes that it “mentions Israel 359 times and Jews 324 times.” Not all of these are positive. Breivik does not like Jews of left wing, multiculturist leanings. Overall the Jerusalem Post describes the manifesto as “an extreme, bizarre and rambling screed of Islamophobia, far-right Zionism and venomous attacks on Marxism and multiculturalism.” Considering the fact that “far-right Zionism” has governed Israel for decades and also characterizes the behavior of most American Zionist organizations, Breivik identification with them is, as we will see, more logical than bizarre. Breivik the terrorist concludes, “let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against anti-Zionists , against all cultural Marixts/multiculturists.” The man had found an ideological home.

3. Closeup on the London Riots

Aug-26-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: I was offline during the riots; many thanks to Tikkunista stalwart Linda for many wonderful forwards. Part one of our coverage looks at what happened, through images.

* The Riots (In Focus)

* The Cleanup (EyeWitness)

* Mourning for Birmingham Riot Victims (Eyewitness)

(If you missed this story, you can read it here)

Haroon Jahan, 21, and brothers Shazad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31, died after they were hit by the car in the early hours of Wednesday while trying to protect shops from looters in Winson Green… An estimated 2,000 people gathered in Summerfield Park, near Winson Green, to show unity and solidarity against the rioters. The crowd observed a minute’s silence in honour of the three men, while figures from the city spoke about their love of the city and the need for solidarity and calm.

4. Understanding the UK Riots

Aug-26-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Al Jazeera nails it, in this quote. “A young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

‘Yes,’ he said,’You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you? Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night, a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.’ The riots left a blot on England, and like a Rorschach test, people interpreted that blot differently. The Telegraph called for a “moral reformation”; Tony Blair denied it was needed. Cameron said poverty wasn’t a factor; the Guardian’s Datablog proves it was. (Thanks, Dave!) And here are some people with longer overviews.

* Daylight Robbery, Meet Nighttime Robbery Naomi Klein The Nation

England is not Latin America, and its riots are not political, or so we keep hearing. They are just about lawless kids taking advantage of a situation to take what isn’t theirs. And British society, Cameron tells us, abhors that kind of behavior. This is said in all seriousness. As if the massive bank bailouts never happened, followed by the defiant record bonuses. Followed by the emergency G-8 and G-20 meetings, when the leaders decided, collectively, not to do anything to punish the bankers for any of this, nor to do anything serious to prevent a similar crisis from happening again….

This is the global Saqueo, a time of great taking. Fuelled by a pathological sense of entitlement, this looting has all been done with the lights left on, as if there was nothing at all to hide. There are some nagging fears, however. In early July, the Wall Street Journal, citing a new poll, reported that 94 percent of millionaires were afraid of “violence in the streets.” This, it turns out, was a reasonable fear.

Of course London’s riots weren’t a political protest. But the people committing nighttime robbery sure as hell know that their elites have been committing daytime robbery. Saqueos are contagious.

* UK Riots Were Product Of Consumerism The Guardian

The recent riots in London and other big cities were the product of an “out-of-control consumerist ethos” which will have profound impacts for the UK economy, a leading City broker has said. The report … warns: “We conclude that the rioting reflects a deeply flawed economic and social ethos… recklessly borrowed consumption, the breakdown both of top-end accountability and of trust in institutions, and severe failings by governments over more than two decades.” A typical internet user sees a hundred adverts an hour, the report says, and the underlying message many receive is: “Here’s the ideal. You can’t have it.”

* Rioters on Wall Street! Sherry Wolf Sherrytalksback

As I write these words, out-of-control hordes are swarming throughout downtown Manhattan. Their disregard for human decency, for the sanctity of people’s homes, jobs, property and health is beyond anything seen since the Dark Ages. These men and women, almost all of them white and disturbingly antiseptic … tap away ceaselessly at handheld digital devices, even as they walk the streets. I’m told each tap can lead to hundreds, even thousands of jobs destroyed. With a phone call or text, this marauding band of rioters can foreclose on a person’s house, pillage the 401-K of any nurse or teacher and even transfer whole industries from one country to another leaving entire communities devastated.

* How The Next 20 Odd Years Will Play Out Ian Welsh

Ok, let’s get down to brass tacks. The riots in Britain are an important event, and combined with the decision to double down on austerity they tell us a lot. This is my baseline, loose model for the next generation.

The decision has been made by Cameron and society in general that the way to respond to the riots is to crack down, hard. They are sentencing people to long sentences for minor crimes (a year for stealing a bottle of water) and they are extending the punishment to families, kicking people out of housing if a member of their family was arrested. They are discussing cutting people off from social networks … Likewise the increase in punitive sentences is a mistake, pure and simple, because it means people have less to lose. If a relatively minor crime gets you in for years, and destroys your life, many will make the calculation that they might as well fight, might as well use violent force, rather than be taken.

6. The Best of Times

Aug-26-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: But there are sound reasons for hope as well. And here we left out that Germany is eliminating nukes, and France has banned fracking.

* Fewest War Deaths in 100 Years Joshua S. Goldstein Foreign Policy

The early 21st century seems awash in wars: the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, street battles in Somalia, Islamist insurgencies in Pakistan, massacres in the Congo, genocidal campaigns in Sudan. All in all, regular fighting is taking place in 18 wars around the globe today. Public opinion reflects this sense of an ever more dangerous world: One survey a few years ago found that 60 percent of Americans considered a third world war likely….

In fact, the last decade has seen fewer war deaths than any decade in the past 100 years, based on data compiled by researchers Bethany Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch of the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Worldwide, deaths caused directly by war-related violence in the new century have averaged about 55,000 per year, just over half of what they were in the 1990s (100,000 a year), a third of what they were during the Cold War (180,000 a year from 1950 to 1989), and a hundredth of what they were in World War II. If you factor in the growing global population, which has nearly quadrupled in the last century, the decrease is even sharper. Far from being an age of killer anarchy, the 20 years since the Cold War ended have been an era of rapid progress toward peace.

* Global poverty rate falling, says UN Mark Tran The Guardian

The world is still on track to signficantly lower poverty rates despite setbacks from recent economic, food and energy crises, but progress has been uneven, the UN said on Thursday.

The overall poverty rate is expected to fall below 15% – well below the 23% target set in the millennium development goals (MDGs) – by 2015, fulfilling the target of the first MDG of halving between 1990 and 2015 the proportion of people living on less than $1 day. The gains come despite the economic and financial crisis of 2008 that began in the US and Europe. That the world remains on track is due to the momentum of growth in the developing world. In absolute numbers, the number of people in developing countries in extreme poverty (living on less than $1.25 a day) is projected to fall below 900 million

* Iceland’s On-going Revolution Daily Kos

As one European country after another fails or risks failing, imperiling the Euro, with repercussions for the entire world, the last thing the powers that be want is for Iceland to become an example. Here’s why…

Protests and riots continued, eventually forcing the government to resign….What happened next was extraordinary. The belief that citizens had to pay for the mistakes of a financial monopoly, that an entire nation must be taxed to pay off private debts was shattered, transforming the relationship between citizens and their political institutions and eventually driving Iceland’s leaders to the side of their constituents. The Head of State, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, refused to ratify the law that would have made Iceland’s citizens responsible for its bankers’ debts, and accepted calls for a referendum.

Of course the international community only increased the pressure on Iceland. Great Britain and Holland threatened dire reprisals that would isolate the country. As Icelanders went to vote, foreign bankers threatened to block any aid from the IMF. The British government threatened to freeze Icelander savings and checking accounts. As Grimsson said: “We were told that if we refused the international community’s conditions, we would become the Cuba of the North. But if we had accepted, we would have become the Haiti of the North.”…In the March 2010 referendum, 93% voted against repayment of the debt.

* Hungary Destroys All Monsanto GMO Maize Fields Planetsave

In an effort to rid the country of Monsanto’s GMO products, Hungary has stepped up the pace. This looks like its going to be another slap in the face for Monsanto. A new regulation was introduced this March which stipulates that seeds are supposed to be checked for GMO before they are introduced to the market. Unfortunately, some GMO seeds made it to the farmers without them knowing it.

Almost 1000 acres of maize found to have been grown with genetically modified seeds have been destroyed throughout Hungary deputy state secretary of the Ministry of Rural Development Lajos Bognar said. The GMO maize has been ploughed under, said Lajos Bognar, but pollen has not spread from the maize, he added. Unlike several EU members, GMO seeds are banned in Hungary.

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