RECESSION AND SUICIDE

       Materialistic/hedonistic lifestyle and Suicide

• During the Great Depression, the press published dramatic stories of people committing suicide after they had lost their savings, homes, and/or jobs. The World Health Organization (WHO) currently reports that more than 800,000 people kill themselves each year, a rate that has been rising owing to the recent recession. Is there a correlation between economic recessions and increase in suicides? The figures from developed, semi-developed and underdeveloped nations indicate that there is a link. Even in the UK, which is outside the perimeters of official austerity, unlike Ireland, Portugal and Greece, the rate of suicides rose 15%  in 2011 in comparison with 2007. It is true that suicide rates in many developed nations have risen sharply in the last half century, although incomes have risen for most of that period, but falling in the past two decades. This is in part because the materialistic/hedonistic culture and lifestyle on which the individual's psychology is molded cannot absorb the shock of having a lessening of materialistic/hedonistic lifestyle undercut by economic contractions impacting the individual's life.Therefore, when the nice home, car, and lifestyle are diminished, all things on which the value system is based, the individual cannot cope and sees no point to go on living.
•  Suicides in Southern Europe
• More interesting than northwest Europe, which has a long-standing pattern of higher suicide rates than most of the world, southern Europe (Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy) have seen their suicide rates skyrocket in the past two years. From 1980 to 2000 suicide rates averaged six per 100,000, or about the same as in Mexico and Israel, whereas in the Russian Federation and South Korea rates were almost three times higher. There is a long-standing debate about suicide as an individual matter vs. a social problem, something that is discussed more in Asian and other non-Western societies, but is more likely dismissed in Western nations by media, politicians and social elites that want to blame the individual and not the institutional structure for the conditions providing fertile ground to suicide attempts.
• Mental Illness, Alcohol, Substance abuse and Economic hardships.
• While suicide is often associated with mental illness, abuse of alcohol and substances, suicide rates since the recession of 2008 have risen owing to people losing jobs, homes, income, falling into debt and watching their lives destroyed and identities shattered. Particularly in Italy and Greece, suicide rates have been rampant in 2011 and 2012, with blatant cases of individuals killing themselves because they see no way out of economic hardships. The dignity question, often associated with middle class status is linked to rise in suicides at a time that the economic recession has eroded middle class living standards.   
• OECD warnings on suicides
• OECD - Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development - has been compiling statistics that indicate a direct a correlation between economic hard times and suicides, especially in countries under formal or informal austerity pressures. As EU economy will continue to struggle in 2012 and 2013, with rising unemployment, falling wages and benefits, the likely scenario is higher rate of suicide attempts across most of EU, along with higher crime rates  and social unrest. At the same time, the social fabric is under attack, given that the economic recession is impacting the integrity of the family, as more people need to take anti-depressant medication to cope with external problems that they internalize.
•  GDP Correlation to Suicide
• Studies conducted over long periods suggest that the higher income the lower the suicide rate. Moreover, higher income nations suffer a lower suicide rate during expansionary economic cycles than they do during recessionary cycles. As much in the US as in Japan, suicides rates rise during recessionary cycles, though it is not true that such rates rise across all of Asia during economic hard times, thus indicating that value systems - traditional-religious rooted society does impact the individual's outlook on suicide. 
• Suicide: Internalizing an external problem.
• It is true that in much of the Western World the external problems of economic recessions that lead to job loss, home loss, savings depletion, high debt, divorce, etc. is often internalized, largely because the media, politicians, priests and sages insist that any calamities that befall on the individual are her/his fault and not a structural or institutional problem. Therefore, the sense of guilt, self-hatred, and pain is so intense that to stop the hurt, the individual must kill the self, instead of pointing to the predatory institutional system as the root of the problem.  
• Capitalist value system and Suicide
• In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, the option of suicide is seen as one that the system of the market economy brings to Willy Loman, an option from which he cannot escape because his life, his identity, his family, his success is defined. Has finance capitalism created a new class of Willy Lomans on the verge of depression and contemplating suicide, or is this an exaggeration, considering that no matter the political economy,  human beings would always contemplate choosing to end their lives when pressured by unpleasant circumstances? Does the marketing/publicity machine of the free market economy condition peoples' minds to the degree that they actually believe in the illusion of 'making it rich some day', and once that does not come true some become depressed and a few suicidal? To what degree has the credit economy contributed to false hopes about achieving the dream of riches, when in reality such dreams are confined to a tiny percentage of the world's population? Finally, what is the meaning of life for an individual who grew up in materialistic/hedonistic society in which material success cannot be achieved?

MILITARIZED OLYMPIC GAMES and the CULTURE OF 'TERRORISM'

With the US and Western Europe at its core, much of the world has been immersed in the cultural politics of 'terrorism', as the US and Western governments define it; namely, religious terrorism emanating from fanatic Islam intent on undermining 'Western Democracy'. There have been right-wing Christian religious fanatics as well as neo-Nazi elements in the US and Europe engaged in mass violence. However, that is something that Western media, politicians and 'expert analysts' dismiss as 'isolated incidents of unbalanced individuals', while anything with the imprint of Islam entails guilt of the entire Muslim world - collective guilt for Islam. More significant, there is another kind of terrorism, (for more on this, see my posting entitled 'Human Rights Violations: Governments and Banks') namely, the kind that has resulted from wholesale displacement of large segments of the middle class and workers as a result of neo liberal policies, policies that the International Labor Organization (ILO) argues account for the very high rate of unemployment across much of the Western World.

After 9/11, not just the US but much of the Western World established institutions and geared its domestic and foreign policies to combat Islamic-based 'terrorism' that has replaced the old Cold War. The 'war on terror' became the new catalyst to engender social conformity and maintain loyalty to the status quo. From the media to educational systems, from police to intelligence, all sectors of society and institutions operate under the cultural cloud of 'terrorism' as molded by Western governments. Though the Olympic games of Beijing in 2008 were largely the exception, the Olympic games of Athens in 2004 and those of London in 2012 are very much part of the Western culture of terrorism, looking at Islam as the potential enemy waiting to strike. This is indeed ironic, considering the the spirit of the Olympic games entails peace and solidarity  even among 'warring factions'; a goal that Pierre de Coubertin, a product of the Franco-Prussian War, was interested in promoting when he revived the summer games in  Athens in 1896.

The spirit of the Olympic games was tainted politically by Nazi Germany in 1936 when Hitler and the psycho-neurotic individuals who ran the Third Reich were interested in demonstrating the superiority of the Aryan race. The games were tainted politically throughout much of the Cold War as they had become an arena of competition between the Communist East and the capitalist West. By the time that the Cold War ended, however, the games had become so commercialized that the Atlanta Olympic games were labeled the "Coca Cola games", marking the total triumph not just of the bottling company, but of the corporate dominance of the games that were the excuse to sell products and services to billions of consumers around the world.

What is the spirit of contemporary Olympic games if not the use of athletic games - hardly amateur and hardly non-professional - by large corporations to advertise their products and services, and an attempt to attract tourism and validate a certain national image that would add national (commercial and political) prestige? Both Greece in 2004 and China in 2008 used the Olympic games as platform to demonstrate to the world that they are 'global players'. This was certainly very true in China's case, but a myth of Olympian proportions in the case of Greece whose foreign debt skyrocketed as a result of the games that provided another pretext for Greek Olympic game officials and politicians to line their pockets with massive bribes from domestic and foreign contractors like Siemens among others.

The Greek government has never published an official cost of the games. Security alone cost one billion euros, while the range of estimates for the games runs from 10 billion to 27 billion euros, despite the fact that only 5.5 billion was actually budgeted for a country with a GDP of 200 billion billion and current public debt of 365 billion! Regardless of the controversy about the actual cost, one thing on which everyone agrees is that the Olympic games contributed heavily to the public debt crisis.

That countries use the Olympic games to showcase themselves is well and good, even if its means total bankruptcy as in the case of Greece and even if it means paying past debts for the next three to five decades, while suffering double-digit chronic unemployment. Human beings are hardly perfect and even less so their institutions that undermine any semblance of human decency, even if those institutions are supposed to represent noble ideals as the Olympic games. More practically speaking, do Olympic games generate sustainable growth and development, do they attract domestic and foreign investment that will create jobs and benefit the local and national economy? Certainly every government, including UK in 2012, promises that the games will do all of that and more for the economy and society.

Political promises about the games aside, the question is whether the Olympic games be used to promote multinational corporations and militarism and police state as is the case of UK in 2012? There have been a number of thoughtful articles regarding the 2012 London-hosted Olympic games that are the most militarized in history. Some such articles argue that the Olympic games are the pretext to convert the city of London into an emergency police state, with more than 17,000 soldiers serving as part of a security network that includes uniformed and undercover police, special agents, and other security personnel. Possibly the largest military-police operation in Britain's history during peacetime, the militarized Olympic games will have sharp-shooters as well as sophisticated military hardware - surface-to-air missiles, etc. -  across the city, all to make certain that there is no 'terrorist' incident.

It is estimated that the ratio of security personnel to athlete may be four-to-one - 10,000 athletes to 40,000 security personnel, a new world record! Is the militarization of London justified and is this the future of Olympic games? Naturally, militarized games translate into big profits for defense-intelligence-security-communications companies, like the US-based company Long Range Acoustic Device. Considering that UK is a close US ally and it has taken a hawkish role in overt and covert operations in Muslim countries over the last two decades, should anyone be surprised that it is arming London as it has never done before? If I were in position of authority, I would opt for massive spending on security and I would leave nothing to chance. 

The cost of the games is now estimated at 24 billion pounds sterling, despite promises at one point that it would be under three billion, and despite promises that the games would be a 'public-private' joint enterprise - only 2% will be paid by the private sector and the rest by the British taxpayers amid a recession. All of the major multinational corporations will have a prominent present, from Dow Chemical to McDonald's. This is fine, except for one thing, why should UK taxpayers foot the bill so that the government can put on a show that offers multinational corporations an opportunity to sell their products? If the answer is so that UK can increase tourism, studies show that Olympic games have an ephemeral bump in tourism and not a long-term one. Clearly, some cities, like Atlanta in 1996, have benefited from the games, while others, like Athens in 2004, will continue to feel the pain of paying back debt for many decades.

More significant than economic growth and development, what is the cost of militarizing London to English democracy, to Western democracy at large? Is there hope that the Olympic games will recapture the spirit of ancient times or of its 19th century French  founder who believed in amateur competition, peace, and solidarity among all people? Are the games used to distract the attention of people away from austerity and banking scandals, like the recent one of Barclay's that manipulated inter-banking rates?

The dominant culture shaped largely by the political economy swallows up all institutions. The Olympic games are no exception, although people like to believe that there is something sacred about top ranked world class athletes competing for the honor of the sport. If the dominant culture is geared toward consumerist values and 'manufactured terrorism' emanating from Islamic sources, then why should the Olympic games be the exception; how can they possibly not reflect that culture which is the mirror of contemporary society? Besides the irony of the London games taking place under quasi-police state conditions, the added irony is that the Olympic games of 2012 are showcasing the corporate sector at a time when the EU and world economy is in recession and unemployment rising at a time of ongoing massive transfer of capital from the middle and lower classes to the upper socioeconomic groups. "London Calling", but what message is it sending to the rest of the world?

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS: GOVERNMENTS AND BANKS

When people think of human rights, they automatically think of torture, prisoner abuses, ethnic, religious or refugee persecution. Invariably, the vast majority of the people associate human rights with the governments and international organizations such as the UN. It is almost impossible to find people that would associate human rights abuses with banks or finance capitalism. Yet, the source of human rights abuses today is not the hyperbolic flamboyant colonel of a Third World nation, but the business-degree bank executive who is well connected to a powerful banking lobby and wields inordinate influence in public policy. 

When Jimmy Carter was elected President, the US was trying to recover from post-Vietnam syndrome, at a time that the economy was showing signs of weakness and the country's global image was at its nadir. To continue the diplomatic confrontation with the Soviet Union as part of a global campaign to win support in the rest of the world, Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance decided to play the human rights card, knowing that it would go a very long way inside Communist countries, but it would backfire in pro-US countries like South Africa, Iran and Nicaragua.

Helped by the hearings on CIA abuses revealed by the committee chaired by Senator Frank Church, the US passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 intended to stop violations of privacy rights via illegal wiretapping and other clandestine operations. Granted, the mood of the country in the late 1970s was to correct the abuses of a democracy that had adopted authoritarian, if not police-state methods at home and abroad; something that would be thoroughly undermined in the conservative decade of the 1980s, and then again in the 'terrorism decade' of 2000.

Although the US supported the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the record from presidents Truman to Ford shows that the US backed some of the more notorious dictatorships, from the racist apartheid South African regime to murderous authoritarian governments in Africa and Latin America, defaulting everything to the higher cause of the Cold War and the race to win the ideological and political struggle against the Soviet bloc and Communist China. In essence, the Cold War served as the ideal cover to permit the US military and economic integration ambitions to continue, thus strengthening Pax Americana. Human rights, therefore, was an obstacle to the expansionist integration model that the US was pursuing; that is until the end of the Vietnam War.

 As admirable as the Carter human rights campaign may have been for the US that had violated human rights when it was promoting pro-US military dictatorships around the world, the ultimate goal was to undercut the moral authority that the Soviets pretended to have as defenders of peoples' movements. When the revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua erupted, the Carter administration adopted a hard line toward all revolutionaries and abandoned human rights as part of its foreign policy; something that manifested itself in the conflict between the dovish secretary of State Vance against National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration wiped out human rights as a component of US policy, while it afforded extraordinary powers to intelligence, defense and banks. Handing all power of the state to these entities left citizens unprotected, and it subordinated human rights to the national goal of defeating Communism while strengthening capitalism. Giving enormous powers to banks, despite massive banking scandals during the Reagan presidency entailed that the state would serve as a shield of finance capital, while violating the rights of US nationals as well as the human rights of foreign nationals in the name of national security. Central America, with Nicaragua as the focus, is one of Reagan's human rights abuse legacies; giving birth to the Reagan Doctrine that justified it.

Absorbed by growth madness in the aftermath of Communism's fall, the Clinton decade did not have much of a human rights component, though it was a vast improvement over the 1980s. Clinton had to make choices when it came to human rights in Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, Haiti and Kosovo, choices invariably rooted in national security and economic interests above all, and only secondarily in human rights. Nevertheless, the Clinton team was in some respects sensitive to international criticism about human rights, whereas such sensitivity was absent during the Reagan era. When the horrible tragedy of 9/11 stuck, US policy became hostile not only to human rights, but to civil rights as well, justifying the hostility to the national emergency of combating terrorism. By legalizing the suppression of human rights, the US was in essence suspending a part of its democratic tradition and admitting that embracing quasi-police state methods was necessary to maintain its institutions.

In June 2012, president Carter doubted that the US can speak with moral authority about human rights, considering that the Obama administration has been guilty of violating human rights. Carter accused the Democrat administration of violating human rights at home and abroad, arguing that the US has been targeting both foreign nationals and US citizens for assassination, all part of a policy that has been continuing since 9/11 on the pretext of fighting terrorism.

Carter contends that after 9/11 the US has ignored human rights, something that is very evident by the reality that not just human rights but civil rights are violated in the name of national security, namely, threat of terrorism. US legislation now makes it possible to detain indefinitely a person without trial, simply on suspicion of 'terrorism', a nebulous political concept as the government defines it legally, although the law is contested in federal courts. 

Carter noted that US drones have killed many innocent people, including children and women, in a number of countries, among them Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Just as significant as drone warfare, however, is when the US defends and protects human rights violators that it deems as allies, including Saudi Arabia and Israel. When it comes to casualties of other countries, the US dismisses it as collateral damage, but when its own citizens are victims of attacks it is a case of 'terrorism.'

While I agree with president Carter that the Obama-Clinton team has not made the shift to embrace human rights as had the Carter-Vance team in the 1970s, does human rights belong solely in the domain of foreign political affairs, or has the world economy changed to the degree that markets play a role as significant if not much greater than the state? I argue that the international political economy with banking at its core must not be divorced from the human rights discussion in the age of globalization. This is a subject that has been raised by studies dealing with the role of banks, including the World Bank, and indirect involvement (through financing of mineral, energy, manufacturing and agricultural operations) in human rights. Royal Dutch Shell, receiving financing from a number of banks, is an example of a company that has violated human rights in Nigeria.

Because some banks are sensitive that their business relationships could potentially result in human rights violations as the project is carried out, they make an effort to find out if human rights abuses could or do take place. One reason for this is government, shareholder, and social pressure. My fundamental contention is that owing to the contracting global economy, human rights abuses are more evident from sources one would not have suspected, namely finance capital that is behind both the state and the company directly involved in the given project - energy, mining, etc.

The escalation of human rights abuses as a result of the war on terror has been accompanied by the escalation of another form of human rights abuse whose source is finance capital. Besides financing large operations from mining in Indonesia to hydroelectric projects displacing farmers and fishermen, to factories and cocoa farms employing children, banks are in the business of manipulating interest rates that result in joblessness and homelessness of millions of people, as recent cases involving a number of UK, US and EU banks revealed.

Because banks are involved in all types of activities, ranging from legitimate operations to money laundering and financing arms sales, their fingerprints are on human rights abuses around the planet. Just as banks had a major role in sustaining the apartheid regime of South Africa before Nelson Mandela, they have a responsibility today around the world for impoverishing large segments of the population and demanding that government adopt increasingly illiberal - authoritarian or police-state methods - to deal with sociopolitical dissenters. Blatant cases from historical examples involve international banks and dictatorships in Argentina, Indonesia, Spain, Portugal and numerous African countries. A number of universities and private organizations have urged that government hold banks accountable for their role in human rights, but finance capital is above the state and thus cannot be harmed for the sake of human rights.

Because the state is the vehicle that uses the fiscal structure to redistribute income, appropriating income from the average person to strengthen finance capital as the backbone of the economy, the destabilizing social consequences that lead to unstable political conditions and fewer civil and human rights rest on the doorstep of large banks whose existence governments identify with the national interest. The world is facing a new kind of human rights problem and it is not the direct one associated with the police or military, but with finance capital that is hiding behind 'democratic' regimes whether in Western or non-Western regions.

SYRIA: IS A US-RUSSIA-CHINA CONFRONTATION POSSIBLE?

Syria's history and geography has determined to a large degree its alliances. As a former colony subjected to French imperialism, and a country lacking rich energy resources of its Middle East neighbors, Syria always needed to use whatever diplomatic leverage it had at its disposal to retain as much of its national sovereignty as possible. The question has always been what political system best expresses its national interests and retains its national sovereignty. The situation today is that the US and EU are interested in using Syria as a satellite to counterbalance Iran and gain immense foothold in the Middle East. This explains the reason for the Western-backed uprising that started in spring 2011 and it continues with more than 16,000 casualties, countless refugees, and a broader geopolitical instability that stretches from Turkey and Iran to Lebanon and Israel.

One the one side, there is Iran that has a stake in Syrian stability under Bashar al-Assad, with Russia and China having a long-term close relationship with Damascus. While it is clear that Russia makes billions of dollars in supplying Syria with weapons, the real goal of Moscow, along with Iran and China, is to prevent the US and EU from upsetting the balance of power in the Middle East by gaining a foothold in Syria. The question of what is in the best interests of the Syrian people is not one that either East or West are considering. No matter the inane US and EU rhetoric about freedom and democracy for Syria, something that Western institutions often deny to their own citizens, let alone remain silent about when it comes to allies like Saudi Arabia, the interest in Syria is geopolitical.

Geopolitical leverage is the only thing that Syria has and the current regime under Assad uses that leverage to retain the support of China, Russia and Iran. From 1958 to 1961, Nasser attempted a united Arab states project, but failed as nationalism was a dynamic force precluding alliances even among nations that had common interests and common enemies. Given that Syria was vulnerable after it broke with Nasser's Egypt, given that its neighbors were pro-West, it needed allies to counterbalance its enemies, while retaining the country's unity by satisfying the disparate socioeconomic groups. Syria's alliance with the USSR during the Cold War made geopolitical sense, given the alliances of Syria's neighbors, and given the ideology and political program of the ruling Ba'athist party that was closer to Socialism (heavily statist) than it was to Western-style market capitalism.

That Syria has been one-party state, essentially a dynasty catering to narrow interests at home and abroad is not something that the ruling party can deny, any more than it can hide from its record of favoring certain tribal, sectarian and ethnic groups over others. This is not to say that pro-West Arab regimes manage sectarian, tribal, and ethnic divisions any better than the Assad regime currently under fire from a mass popular uprising. That Syria has enjoyed China's and Russia's backing at the UN, which the US has tried to use to topple the Assad regime, is troubling to relations between East and West. China and Russia seem to dig in their heels on this issue, and will not permit another Western-backed uprising to overthrow a regime they support and see as key to the regional balance of power and stability.

When the US and EU condemned Syria for shooting down a Turkish plane that violated Syria's air space in June 2012, neither Ankara nor Beijing were willing to permit NATO to use the staged incident as a pretext for operations to support Syrian rebels. Turkey has a long-standing record of violating the airspace of neighboring nations. The government in Tehran has sent stern warnings that it will not permit Turkey and NATO to undermine the national sovereignty of Iran. That Turkey wants to become the great power of the Middle East is not a secret, any more than it is a secret that it will do just about anything to undermine its Arab neighbors to secure that preeminent role. As long as there is convergence of US-EU foreign policy goals, Ankara will be permitted to go all out in undermining its former close ally Syria. 

It is true that the Assad regime is a dictatorship and it must assume responsibility for failing to find a solution to the civil war of the past 16 months. It is just as true that Western nations have had a very large role in Syria's political opposition, aiding with weapons, money, intelligence, and massive propaganda - all for the good of democracy and freedom, they claim. Russia is correct to blame the US and its partners for supplying weapons to Syria, just as it is correct to worry about Syria lapsing into some type of an Islamic regime that would be hostile to Russia, which has had its own problems with Islamic rebels. Vladimir Putin wants greater not lesser influence in the Middle East, and Moscow seems determined to carry the contest of wills with Washington as far as it can, short of an open conflict.

Moscow asked for Iranian participation in the Geneva talks (30 June 2012) regarding the UN proposal to end the crisis (civil war) in Syria. Although Moscow proposed Jordanian and Saudi participation along with Iranian, the State Department categorically rejected the Russian proposal of allowing Iran to have any voice on the regional balance of power. It is very clear that Russia recognizes regional players as key to the solution, while Washington merely wants Russia and of course China to stop supporting Syria, thus making it easy to topple Assad. Iran would be one on the major losers if and indeed when Assad goes, but the US containment strategy toward Iran also impacts Russia, because containing Iran is an indirect way of containing Russia. 

The larger question is how far should the reach of the NATO powers extend, and to what extent should the West be permitted to destabilize the Middle East in order to exert hegemonic influence, assuming that would be possible under radical Islamic regimes in the future. Is Syria worth an all-out war between the US and EU on one side, and Russia, China and Iran on the other? Such a scenario is unthinkable and not realistic to contemplate. But where do Russia and China draw the line on Western encroachment in Muslim countries? Besides, what have the US and its partners really achieved that is to the benefit of the occupied nations or the region by military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Scenarios of a broader regional Middle East war are as numerous as there are analysts, especially those interested in promoting an agenda such as a stronger Israel, stronger US defense sector, war as a stimulus to the contracting economy, etc. War may not be in the cards before the US presidential election in November 2012, and by then Assad may have fallen. But it does not matter either way, because Islamic regimes will flourish out of the ashes of Middle East revolutions, especially now that the Muslim Brotherhood is in power in Egypt. Is a clash of civilizations inevitable and could such a clash lead to future smaller wars or Western-backed uprisings, or can the West live with Islamic regimes not so different in their approach to the West than Iran?

THE GREAT DECEPTION of US PUBLIC DEBT

Is the US public debt as serious an obstacle to economic growth and development as some strict monetarists (those advocating that government control the amount of money in circulation) contend; was the public debt at current 2012 levels created because of 'generous' government spending on social programs and entitlement programs; did the public debt create the global recession of 2008-present, or was it the private sector debt rooted in speculative - parasitic  or non-productive - enterprises mostly confined to financial institutions and insurance companies (banking crisis vs. fiscal structure crisis, with the former causing crisis in the latter); did the public debt rise owing to sharp rise in defense/intelligence/security, lower taxes for the top ten percent of the richest Americans, and a rise in corporate welfare; a combination of all of the above, with some areas having far greater responsibility than others?

Ever since the LEHMAN BROS failure that triggered the global recession, there been a massive PR effort on the part of corporate America - and corporate Europe, Japan, etc. - along with mainstream politicians, economists, journalists, and self-styled analysts to deceive the public about the nature of public debt vs. private debt in the economy, and to what degree has that deception convinced the general public - minus the Occupy Wall Street and other minority voices engaged in grassroots protests?  A synopsis of US public debt may provide a good background of where we are today and where we are headed.

Representing bankers, merchants and commercial farmers, the Founding Fathers realized the importance of public debt as a matter of both stimulus to the economy as well as national sovereignty. The US made remarkable economic progress in the post-Civil War era, an era that coincided with the vast expansion of railroads, agriculture as part of the 'Westward Movement', as well as mining, manufacturing, and banking. All along, the US was a net debtor nation, borrowing from western Europe to finance its vast infrastructure, as well as the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy. Such borrowing in the 19th century established the foundations for propelling the US into the preeminent global economic position in the 20th century. Growth and development carried out in part with borrowed money, a point that Harry S. Truman made during his presidency, helped America that was nearly self-sufficient in natural resources and benefited from cheap African-American and immigrant labor costs.

Naturally, it was not just foreign borrowing that laid the foundations for US economic hegemony during the era of the Second Industrial Revolution, which coincided with the era of New Imperialism of 1870-1914. The US aggressively sought markets in its own backyard, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as in Asia after colonizing the Philippines. The US was producing a surplus that needed foreign markets, otherwise it would suffer periodic contractions as the depression of the 1890s proved. At the same time, the US benefited by the rapid decline of Western Europe as a result of wars of imperialism that led to the Great War and then to the Second World War.

The two wars, the Great Depression, and the rise of Communism left an economic gap in the world market economy that propelled the US into preeminence after 1945. Keynesian policies (New Deal) combined with the enormous stimulus the war provided further helped to strengthen the US in relationship to its global competitors that had to endure fighting wars on their own soil and losing colonies after WWII. It should be noted that the US along with European creditor nations benefited from massive transfers of wealth from underdeveloped countries that were suffering public debt problems and fell under financial control by the advanced countries. In other words, public debt crises have served as a means of capital transferring from the periphery to the metropolis. Finally, the US benefited by the transferring both private and public capital from Europe and its colonies as well as Latin America. Public debt played a monumental role as a growth stimulant during the war, even as the US and the rest of the world had accepted the credit economy as the future.

Enjoying the strongest reserve currency in the world, good as gold and backed by it, the US became the undisputed superpower in a political, military and economic sense during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, and it established the domestic and international institutional mechanisms to maintain that hegemony. However, by the end of the Eisenhower administration, it was evident that the creditor-based Pax Americana expansion was beginning its long road to economic decline.

Keynesian militarist policies, deficit spending to fund the growing arms race with the Communist bloc as a means of maintaining global hegemony entailed weakening of the civilian economy and slowly becoming a net debtor. No matter L. B. Johnson's claim during the Vietnam War about the country's ability to continue spending to maintain a strong defense sector, while keeping a steady trend toward upward mobility for the middle class and a welfare state, the US was sinking deeper in debt owing largely to its ideological commitment stemming from the Cold War militarism, which was invariably linked to global economic expansion through various methods of government support for the corporate sector - what would eventually become known as corporate welfare capitalism. The Cold War and the commitment to subsidize businesses resulted in rising public debt at a time that government wanted to maintain a welfare state.

The debt-to-GDP ratio began to grow, but it did so significantly when Reagan opted for both massive military spending, tax cuts to the rich, and strengthening the corporate sector through varieties of fiscal measures. Debt-to-GDP ratio almost doubled in the 1980s, leveling off during the growth 'Clinton decade' of the 1990s, and then skyrocketing under George Bush who followed a policy of massive military spending and vast transference of wealth, using the state fiscal system as a conduit, to the corporate sector. Debt-to-GDP ratio rose sharply under Bush, while private debt climbed even faster, causing the global recession in 2008 as much in the US as in Europe currently suffering from public debt crisis because banks needed bailing out. Public debt under Bush has risen at about $500 billion annually since 2003, topping $1 trillion in 2008 and $1.9 trillion in 2009 amid the massive bailouts of financial institutions.

In May 2012, debt held by private investors was $11 trillion, half of which is owned by foreign investors. Non-marketable treasury securities debt was $4.76 trillion - the largest portion of which China and Japan own. Total public debt amounts to $15.77 trillion, or 102% of GDP - roughly half of Japan's debt-to GDP ratio. While public debt was growing at unsustainable levels in the last ten years, it helped the US that China and Japan were buying treasury securities, while the eurozone's public debt problems helped to maintain a relatively stable dollar as a reserve currency. A modest degree of growing debt helped to fuel the world economy, but the massive private debt problem seriously undercut the public debt market. That household debt rose commensurately with business debt and public sector debt entailed a convergence that created a crunch in the money markets.

As private sector debt has been declining, largely because the public sector has poured massive amounts of capital into the financial institutions, the problem now rests with public debt created as a result of speculative 

finance capitalism that was parasitic and failed to create real economic growth. Nevertheless, mainstream politicians, media, economists and self-styled analysts insist that the public sector has the problem, not the private sector that created both the public debt crisis and the global economic contraction. This is not just in the US where politicians are hasty to reach conclusions about the evils of government debt, but throughout Europe as well as other parts of the world that essentially follow the neo-liberal model, the same model that the IMF and World Bank peddle and the one that created the current economic and public debt crisis.

It is amazing that there are still people - politicians, journalists, economists, and other analysts - who still claim that the private sector left to its own devices creates economic growth, and that the only problem is the involvement of government. While it is true that the political class under representative of authoritarian regimes has a major role in determining the course of the economy, the political elites' interests are so intertwined with those of the socioeconomic elites that it is absurd to speak of them separately. Can a politician - US or French, etc. - of modest means be elected in absence of massive amounts of money needed to carry our a political campaign? And even if one succeeds to be elected, can such a politician survive private sector pressures? Can the business world function without the considerable intervention of government on its behalf, something that both European and American politicians recognized in the late 19th century - Progressive Era politics for the US. Given the private sources of public debt, is it sounds politics or mass deception to claim that the problem is government spending on social programs and entitlements?

With the exception of sharp rise in health care costs owing to hikes in pharmaceutical, hospital and health insurance. the cost of social welfare and pensions has remained steady and it is expected to stay so for the decade of the 2010s. By contrast, tax rates for the top ten percent and for corporations, combined with a rise in defense/national security and corporate welfare programs that include outsourcing services to private contractors, often at double the cost of what it would take for government to carry out. (see my article entitled "Outsourcing Secrets"). The obvious question is why are taxpayers asked to carry the burden of public debt that the private sector creates and from which it benefits, with minor benefits accruing to the middle class and workers?

Given that there is convergence of interests between the political and socioeconomic elites, how much of a chance does the rest of society have to make progress, how much hope can there be for a growing middle class or a feeble working class not just amid the era of global economic contraction, but for the next decade as well? It will not be long before more and more people demand a reexamination of the social contract, something that may take place in the next cycle of economic contraction, probably by the end of the 2020s-early 2030s that would mark the 100 year-anniversary of the Great Depression of the 20th century.

LIBYA: LEGACY OF UPRISING and NATO INTERVENTION

It is very early to arrive at any conclusions about the legacy of Arab Spring, given that the uprising is still unfolding in countries like Syria, and the ongoing sociopolitical dialectic in other countries like Egypt and Libya remains fluid. Although it seems obvious that Arab Spring may have had the seeds for greater freedom, democratic institutions, and social justice, it is not so certain the degree to which those seeds will blossom into anything that different from the authoritarian regimes overthrown. Moreover, let us consider that Western analysts looking at Arab Spring see it from the prism of a market-dominated political economy and NATO-centered perspective, thus terms such as freedom and democracy mean one thing to a New York Times journalist, invariably influenced by US-Israeli interests, and entirely another to a Muslim in North Africa/Middle East.

Arab Spring in 2011 swept across Northern Africa and managed to bring regime change in a number of countries, including Libya, but what kind of change; greater secularization, greater adherence to Islam, greater cooperation with the West, more tilt toward an Iranian-style Islamic regime? The question is whether the Libyan 'uprising' has led to any meaningful reforms to the benefit of the majority of the people belonging to diverse tribes as they define their interests; whether the end of the 40-year dictatorship of colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi has resulted in a more democratic and socially just society as they define it; whether indeed this was a homegrown revolution or merely a case of Western military intervention carried out with the help of al-Qaeda and other rebels whose agenda converged with that of the US and its NATO partners. Did Arab Spring in Libya really mean anything for the improvement in the lives of the people, or was the end result one form of tyranny replacing another? Will Libya become more dependent on the West, thus enjoying less freedom and democracy and much less economic and social justice?

On 17 February 2011, the 'revolt' erupted in Libya, and only ten days later the National Transitional Council was established, which France became the first nation to recognize as legitimate on 10 March 2011, followed by the Western-imposed no-fly zone on 19 March 2011. From March to October 2011, NATO operations in Libya helped to bring the end of Qaddafi, but not the end of turmoil, bloodshed any more than the formation of a democratic regime or social and economic justice. This remarkably rapid course of events - a matter of months for the Libyan revolt to be manufactured with Western help and carried out by Libyan dissidents  - does not appear nearly as spontaneous in retrospect as it did while it was unfolding, especially now that there are numerous reports that a number of Western governments had been working covertly inside Libya to bring down the Qaddafi dictatorship before Arab Spring.

There are many reports indicating that US, French and British intelligence were working with Libyan rebels as early as October 2010 to overthrow Qaddafi, apparently at the same time that al-Qaeda was just as anxious to have Qaddafi removed from power. It is also known that colonel Qaddafi had secret dealings with many western governments from which Libya was purchasing weapons, including the US. The curious secret dealings notwithstanding, the question is why did the US, UK, and France believe it would be best to remove Qaddafi in order to secure greater integration of Libya with the West?  And now that there is no Qaddafi dictatorship, and Libya has been moving toward greater integration with the West under more favorable terms for multinational corporations, has Libya achieved social peace and harmony?

On 9 June 2012, the minority Toubou tribe clashed with government forces in the south, just days after the government in Tripoli had announced that it was firmly in control of the country. The UN has reported ongoing tribal clashes in the south and failure of the government to contain deadly violence. A number of organizations have reported that militia groups that helped bring down the Qaddafi regime have been working in the framework of 'War Lordism' , carrying out executions, torture of prisoners, kidnappings, etc.  Many disparate groups, in this otherwise tribally-divided land, have engaged in protests against the new regime. From Benghazi, the eastern city where the Western-backed rebel movement started to Tripoli where the nine-month revolt ended, popular protests have been seeking transparency from the transitional government that is very weak and unable to unify the country in the manner it had been in the last four decades.

One issue of concern was a draft election law regarding the selection of the 200-member constituent assembly, a process carried out dictatorially without any oversight of consultation, and a law that encouraged Libyans to vote for wealthy and prominent citizens along tribal boundaries. Another issue is the lawlessness, chaotic justice system, and human rights violations that are part of post-Qaddafi society. The interim government acknowledges the chaos and corruption that prevails, but accuses former Qaddafi loyalists for the problems. Libyan legal experts have expressed concern about hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of dollars 'mysteriously missing', while government officials complain that 'there is no money' to deal with all of the problems.

To find closure for both Libyan rebels and the West that was behind the manufactured revolution/military intervention that ended the Qaddafi dictatorship, there is the possible trial of the colonel's son Saif Qaddafi by the ICC. As heir to the colonel, however, Saif probably knows about his father's dirty dealings with former EU leaders like Tony Balir, Nikola Sarkozy, and Silvio Berlusconi. He also knows about dirty dealing of giant energy companies, and above all, he may reveal how the US used Libya in the case of Muslim political prisoners that were tortured and denied due process. The ICC trial may reveal a laundry list of dirty secrets that could expose a number of Western governments as hypocritical, given their extensive dealings with Qaddafi whom they overthrew. Beyond the legitimate merits of the case against Saif about crimes against humanity, beyond the debate about whether the Libyan uprising was in reality a NATO military operation, there is the issue of how the ICC can justify crimes against humanity committed by NATO forces in Afghanistan and by the US in Iraq.

Ultimately, the larger issue in Libya is society's function today and its prospects for the future. Is Libya a society with relative functioning institutions, sociopolitical harmony and stability, and prospects for evolving into a more progressive society, or is it worse off today than it was under colonel Qaddafi and the prospects for the country much worse off, given that Western governments have been waiting in the wings for Qaddafi to fall so they can exploit Lybia's energy resources?

On a number of occasions, I have written that the Arab Spring uprisings were necessary to remove corrupt and oppressive dictatorships. However, their removal will not alter the Islamic nations into oasis of freedom, democracy and social justice, and it seems that the reason for popular uprisings is to put an end to hopelessness and to start a new era of progress filled with optimism. While the jury is still out on hope and optimism for Libya, there are lessons to be learned here for Syria where Russia and China have not permitted Western intervention, owing to the delicate regional balance of power. The case of Libya demonstrated that Western military intervention was rewarded, but were the broad masses of the population? The Arab Spring legacy of Libya so far is that a dictatorship fell only to be replaced with a weak and relatively incompetent and corrupt regime whose fate rests in greater dependence on the West, thus less national sovereignty, freedom, democracy and social justice for the people of Libya. 

POPULAR PROTESTS AND THE CRISIS OF THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY

There are a number of essays and books about the new epoch of protest that the world has entered since the recession of 2008-present, which started in the US and spread to other countries. Do deep recessions cause chronic protests, and if that is the case, why did the world not see such trends during the Great Depression of the1930s? Or is it the case that epochs of popular protests actually take place amid periods of economic expansion, or at least relative affluence, as was the case in the 1960s?

The question is how one defines 'age of protest' while living in it, when it is very difficult to discern its features within the social  structure and political economy. Does the fact that Islamic countries started the 'Arab Spring' in 2011 entail an age of popular protest movements resulting in regime change? Will structural or systemic change take place in 'Arab Spring' countries, or have they merely changed leaders without impacting the institutional structure? And does this mean that mass protests will end, or will they continue until there is systemic change?

Do grass roots protest movements of disgruntled middle classes and workers in Spain and across much of Europe as well as in Canada, Chile, Russia, and even conservative Israel and US - "Occupy Wall Street" - entail that the masses have lost confidence in the social contract, in the political economy and established institutions that the political shapes? How do we know that all of these movements are not an ephemeral occurrence amid economic hard times and all will go back to the status quo ante in good time? Are we living in an era similar to the 1960s that gave us the civil rights, human rights, and women's rights movements, all gradually co-opted by the established institutions?

All signs are that the world economy is undergoing transition that impacts the social structure in a fundamental way, and therein are the causes of mass protests seeking change. We are at the beginning of a new age where capital concentration enabled by political systems claiming to represent all people have developed obvious contradictions that undermine the social contract. The capitalist world economy under a neo-liberal model with finance capital as its backbone, buttressed by the state as well as international organizations such as the IMF, OECD, World Bank, World Trade Organization, among others, is in its early stage of causing deep structural transition in the social structure; namely, downward social mobility amid social discontinuity. Social discontinuity rests behind the age of mass protests, structurally not very different from the first such age of protests in the 16th century Europe when the broad masses of the population recognized that the transition from the feudal-manorial system was causing disruptions in the social fabric at the expense of displaced peasant and workers.  

German theologian Martin Luther did not know that he was living in the age of protest, any more than his followers including the more radical Thomas Munzer that led social uprisings and became a symbol of egalitarians and socialists. The Protestant Reformation, which started with Luther castigating the abuses of the Papacy and church hierarchy, was not just a religious movement against the corrupt Catholic Church, but a popular movement against the nobility inexorably linked to the upper clergy and royal government, as well as the emerging merchant class.

The Protestant Reformation marks the beginning of mass movements, with the German Peasant's War followed by other mass protests that questioned the Age of Absolutism. This was first evident in 17th century England - Civil War and Glorious Revolution - that appeared to be a religious struggle on the surface, but was in essence a political and social struggle amid social discontinuity. In the 16th century clerical authority figures like Luther who enjoyed the support among of the German elites afforded a sense of legitimacy to protest. In the 17th century, John Locke representing the intelligentsia and merchant class questioned the established institutions, thus affording legitimacy to protest against the old order. Locke's philosophy that provides philosophical grounds for dissent came after the English Civil War, but it influenced the Age of Reason in the 18th century. Intellectuals - religious or secular -  provided the theoretical grounds for expressing opposition to an establishment that did not reflect the rapidly changing conditions in society, namely, social discontinuity.

The nature of protest movements, which had been middle class from Luther (Reformation) and Locke (Glorious Revolution) to Rousseau and Robespierre (French Revolution), took a turn toward the left during the revolutions of 1848 when Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto. Reflecting working class interests, nineteenth century ideologies - varieties of socialism, anarchism and syndicalism - afforded a sense of legitimacy to mass protests on the part of workers, minority populations and women against a bourgeois establishment that placed narrow walls around the institutional mainstream. Whether in Czarist Russia, US, or Mexico, in the 19th century government representing set out to crush mass protest movements with brutal force, presenting them as treacherous to 'the national interest', which meant the interests of the small establishment; a concept no different than regimes used to combat Protestant reformers in the 16th century, English Liberals in the 17th century, French republicans (anti-royalists) in the 18th century. 

Protests movements in early modern European history coincided with the transition from the agrarian economy to merchant capitalism that both the Protestant Reformation represented as well as Locke's Liberalism. In short, the middle class of northern Europe was at the core of these movements that never spread to predominantly Catholic Southern Europe. Similarly, the protest movements and popular revolutions of the 19th century were a reaction to the dreadful conditions that industrial capitalism was creating among workers from the mines of Russia to the factories of the US. Protest movements focused on the political economy creating such conditions, namely on the privileged class benefiting from the exploitation of subsistence labor values. The rapidly evolving market economy was creating social hardships, thus social disharmony largely because government was structured to represent the propertied classes and to keep the rest of society conforming to the existing system.

In the early 21st century, much of the world is experiencing a new protest era owing largely to rapid change in the political economy. There are differences between the current age of protest stemming from deep structural changes in socioeconomic structure and the popular protests of the 1960s. In the 1960s, protests aimed at curtailing wars of imperialism as Vietnam symbolized when there was upward mobility for the middle class in the Western World. At the same time, the 1960s protests were a middle class cultural reaction to the 1950s era of conformity stemming from the globalization of the Cold War used as a pretext to preserve the status quo even though the status quo included a society of racing, xenophobia, and gender inequality. Protest stemmed from social groups demanding a political voice into the institutional mainstream, not the overthrow of that institutional structure.

In the early 21st century, the entire institutional mainstream is questioned as not serving the vast majority of the people. There is the reality of downward socioeconomic mobility as the record of the past three decades indicates, a reality that has convinced many people to doubt the social contract best serves the majority. In the 1960s, there was hope of a better future for the young generation, whereas the young generation of the early 21st century does not have the same high hopes for a future better than that of their parents. On the contrary, the current generation realizes that society is democratic and seemingly egalitarian for an increasingly smaller percentage of the population that is at the top of the income pyramid, while the vast majority is squeezed down by finance capitalism that otherwise democratic regime endeavor to protect and preserve.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is a recognition that American democracy works for an increasingly smaller percentage of the people, while the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder must make due with high unemployment and underemployment, a health care system and higher educational system that leave millions behind, jobs that barely pay subsistence wages, a social safety net that is gradually disappearing. Protesters come from all walks of life, from society's mainstream to protest the tyrannical institutions that operate in the name of the open society but in reality work as tools of oligarchical political and socioeconomic powers.The situation is not very different for protesters in England, Ireland, France, Spain, across Southern and Eastern Europe. If the triumph of the market economy over Communism entailed better times for all in the future, why has much of the Western World sunk into worst times two decades after the fall of Communism? Where is the promise land that capitalism was to deliver under seemingly 'democratic' government?

Not that things are much better in Asia, In 2011, much  of Asia, including India and Japan, experienced mass protests. Naturally, war-ravaged  Pakistan and Afghanistan are special cases, but India and Japan that are politically stable have felt the pressure from citizens who lack of confidence not just in their political leaders, but in the political economy working for a small percentage of the people. The lack of confidence by an increasingly larger percentage of people raises the question of legitimacy regarding the social contract as much in Asia and Eurasia, as it does in Europe and US.

From Nigeria and Uganda experiencing social unrest owing to various causes from tribal and political to fundamental economic hardships; from Russia where nationalist regimes governing on behalf of oligarchs replaced Communism to Romania where there have been mass protests and riots in Bucharest over a controversial government health plan and austerity policies, people recognize that the market economy under the neoliberal model is the beginning of mass socioeconomic disruptions at the expense of the many and for the benefit of the very few. The situation is not very different in Quebec province, Canada where hundreds of thousands have been protesting college tuition increases; or in Spain, Greece, and Italy where hundreds of thousands of people recognize that austerity measures benefit finance capital but destroy the average middle class and working class families, and all in the name of “saving” the global political economy that exists under the 'democratic' label.

Social discontinuity is inevitable because capitalism is a dynamic system based on the constant accumulation and concentration of capital in fewer private hands and fewer countries. In a previous essay, I argued that
 the dialectic of social and cultural change is invariably linked to grassroots forces trying to find expression within the institutional mainstream. The success of the American political economy, and to a large degree the Western one as well is largely the result of the success of mainstream institutions to co-opt 'identity movements' and grass roots cultural trends/movements. As long as the institutional mainstream will have the ability to co-opt identity social movements and cultural trends, society will remain strong and dynamic; failure to successfully co-opt will result in the gradual waning of the entire system and it will be the nascent stage of social discontinuity.