vrijdag 21 december 2012

'Deskundigen' 63


Amerikanen, vergeleken met ons fatalistische Europeanen, [blijven]  op een bepaalde manier hele optimistische mensen. Echt, dat vind ik ook fantastisch van ze! Ze blijven de moed erin houden.
Geert Mak, woensdag 3 oktober 2012 bij Pauw en Witteman
Nu de werkelijkheid in de VS:
Almost 17 million people applied for a background check to purchase a gun in 2012. More than 156 million people have applied since 1998.
Americans remain world's most medicated people
U.S. prescriptions have swelled by two-thirds over the past decade to 3.5-billion yearly.
About 130-million Americans - many far healthier than the Heckmans - swallow, inject, inhale, infuse, spray and pat on prescribed medication every month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates. Americans buy much more medicine per person than any other country.
The number of prescriptions has risen by two-thirds over the past decade to 3.5-billion yearly, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical consulting company. Americans devour even more nonprescription drugs, polling suggests. […]
More than 125,000 Americans die from drug reactions and mistakes each year, according to Associated Press projections from landmark medical studies of the 1990s. That could make pharmaceuticals the fourth-leading national cause of death after heart disease, cancer and stroke. […]
The pharmaceutical industry served up more than $250-billion worth of sales last year, the vast majority in prescriptions, according to industry consultants. That roughly equaled sales at all the country's gasoline stations put together, or an $850 pharmaceutical fillup for every American.

Antidepressiva sind heute bereits die in den USA am meisten verkauften Medikamente – ihr Konsum hat sich in 10 Jahren verdoppelt.
Dies wurde mittels einer Metastudie von Untersuchungen aus dem Jahr 1996 und 2005 an 50.000 Kindern und Erwachsenen festgestellt, welche in den Archives of General Psychiatry veröffentlicht wurde. Demnach nehmen heute 10 Prozent der Amerikaner – etwa 27 Millionen Menschen – Antidepressiva ein, etwa doppelt so viele wie 1996.

Bijna een miljoen Nederlanders gebruiken antidepressiva en niemand zal ontkennen dat dit aantal wel erg hoog is. Hoewel: recent werd bekend dat inmiddels tien procent van de Amerikaanse bevolking een antidepressivum gebruikt.


Gezien deze cijfers is de stelligheid van Mak’s bewering onjuist. We mogen er vanuit gaan dat ‘hele optimistische mensen’ van nature zich niet bewapenen en geen ‘anti-depressiva’ hoeven te slikken, en het percentage slikkers is in de VS is 3,5 procent hoger dan in Nederland, ‘en niemand zal ontkennen dat dit aantal wel erg hoog is.’

De eminente Amerikaanse historicus Daniel Boorstin schreef in Hidden History over de kenmerkende psychologische vervreemding van een consumptiemaatschappij als de VS:

We find that in our nation of Consumption Communities and emphasis on Gross National Product (GNP) and growth rates, advertising has become the heart of the folk culture and even its very prototype… They come from advertising agencies, from networks of newspapers, radio, and television, from outdoor-advertising agencies, from the copywriters for ads in the largest-circulation magazines, and so on. ‘These ‘creators’ of folk culture – or pseudo-folk culture – aim at the widest intelligibility and charm and appeal.
But in the United States, we must recall, the advertising folk culture, like all advertising, is also confronted with the problems of self-liquidation and erasure.
Our folk culture is distinguished from others by being discontinuous, ephemeral, and self-destructive. Where does this leave the common citizen? All of us are qualified to answer.
In our society, then. those who cannot lean on the world of learning, on the high culture of the classics, on the elaborated wisdom of the books have a new problem…
The characteristic folk culture of our society is a creature of advertising, and in a sense it is avertising. But advertising our own popular culture, is harder to make into a source of continuity than the received wisdom and commonsense slogans and catchy songs of the vivid vernacular. The popular culture of advertising attenuates and is always dissolving befeote our very eyes. Among the charm, challenges, and tribulations of modern life, we must count this peculiar fluidity, this ephemeral character of that very kind of culture to which they have looked for the continuity of their traditions, for their ties with the past and with the future.
We are perhaps the first people in history to have a centrally organized mass-produced folk culture. Our kind of popelar culture is here today and gone tomorrow – or the day after tomorrow. Or whenever the next semi-annual model appears! And insofar as folk culture becomes advertising, and advertising becomes centralized, it becomes a way of depriving people of their opportunities for individual anad small-community expression.

Deze ontwikkeling behoort inderdaad tot de Hidden History, waaraan de commerciele massamedia en hun opiniemakers nauwelijks of geen aandacht besteden en zeker geen structurele. Toch hebben we hier te maken met een belangrijk fenomeen: de massa staat weerloos tegenover de virtuele werkelijkheid van reclame en propaganda die elk uur van de dag over hen heen spoelt en waaraan ze zich telkens weer moeten aanpassen. Iedere dag opnieuw heeft de consument tot taak zich te schikken naar de nieuwste modegril of de laatste politieke slogan, en zo blijft hij/zij voortdurend psychisch zowel als fysiek gemobiliseerd. In een consumptiemaatschappij is alles geregisseerd, niets is spontaan. Het nieuwe kan niet tot wasdom komen, waardoor fouten niet kunnen worden gecorrigeerd. Op het moment van ontstaan is het product al gedateerd, rijp om vervangen te worden. Niemand krijgt meer de rust om op enige afstand te heroverwegen. Tegen de tijd dat de consument weet waarnaar hij kijkt is het al voorbij geschoten. Wat Mak ziet als ‘de moed erin houden’ is doorgaans niets anders dan een staat van totale verwarring, het individu is niet ‘optimisch’ maar reageert eerder als een willoze verslaafde. Verdwaasd loopt de consument rond in een werkelijkheid van gefabriceerde spullen zonder enige authenticiteit, alles omlijst met die eeuwig herhalende musac, dat op muziek lijkt maar het niet is. Deze schijnwerkelijkheid die maar al te werkelijk lijkt is inmiddels geglobaliseerd en verschaft de mens zijn identiteit. In Consuming the American Century schrijft de Amerikaanse hoogleraar Emily S. Rosenberg over ‘the world’s first mass consumerist society’:

Consumer goods seemed to confer glamour, leisure, and respect. This style of consumerism. so in tune with a highly diverse and mobile society, became intertwined with particular characterizations of personal ‘freedom’ and with the political culture of ‘democracy.’ Mass consumption and mass entertainment fashioned an ‘American Dream’ of upward mobility.
American-style consumerism thus fostered an ‘imagined community’ out of a population divided by language, history, and customs. During the half century between 1880 and 1930, 27 million immigrants entered the United States. In the face of this culotural multiplicity, mass production and consumption, which flowered in the generation that came of age after the First World War, presented commodities as markers of national as well as personal identity. A consumere society offered a set of common referents around which people living in the United States could bond as ‘American.’ Especially for first- and second-generation blue-collar ethnic immigrants, consumption provided a powerful Americanizing agent, with the rituals of shopping constituting a style of ‘consumer citizenship’ that rivaled older definitions of civic participation.
An expanding array of consumer goods and entertainment offered ways to shape communities of identification around comfort, leisure, and personal interests rather than around the regional, ethnic, or familial associations that once organized social life.

Het probleem met dit systeem wordt steeds manifester; in de praktijk betekent het consumptiemodel een permanente staat van oorlog met mens en natuur, zoals we vandaag de dag overal kunnen zien. Mede dankzij het globaliserende neoliberalisme wordt de mensheid nu bloot gesteld aan een klimaatverandering, waarvan niemand precies overziet welke ingrijpende gevolgen dit allemaal heeft. Bovendien moet tegenwoordig de helft van de mensheid zien te overleven met rond de 2 dollar per dag. Enkele officiele cijfers:

The UN suggests that each person needs 20-50 litres of water a day to ensure their basic needs for drinking, cooking and cleaning.
Source: World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP)  
More than one in six people worldwide - 894 million - don't have access to improved water sources.
Source: World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) Joint Monitoring Programme on Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP)
Globally, diarrhoea is the leading cause of illness and death, and 88 per cent of diarrhoeal deaths are due to a lack of access to sanitation facilities, together with inadequate availability of water for hygiene and unsafe drinking water.
Source: JMP
Today 2.5 billion people, including almost one billion children, live without even basic sanitation. Every 20 seconds, a child dies as a result of poor sanitation. That's 1.5 million preventable deaths each year.
Source: Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council
No one really knows how many people are malnourished. The statistic most frequently cited is that of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which measures 'undernutrition'.  The FAO did not publish an estimate in its most recent publication, 'The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2011' as it is undertaking a major revision of  how it estimates food insecurity (FAO 2011 p. 10).  The 2010 estimate, the most recent, says that 925 million people were undernourished in 2010 (FAO 2010). As the figure below shows, the number of hungry people has increased since 1995-97. The increase has been due to three factors: 1) neglect of agriculture relevant to very poor people by governments and international agencies; 2) the current worldwide economic crisis, and 3) the significant increase of food prices in the last several years which has been devastating to those with only a few dollars a day to spend. 925 million people is 13.6 percent of the estimated world population of 6.8 billion.

At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.Source 
1
More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening.Source 
2
The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.Source 
3
According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”Source 
4
Around 27-28 percent of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted.

Als er één ding duidelijk moet zijn dan is het is dat het winstprincipe van de enkeling ten koste gaat van het welzijn van miljarden mensen. Het neoliberalisme is daarmee moreel failliet. Maar niet alleen moreel.  Gezien de milieurampen en de toenemende armoede -- ook in het Westen -- plus de verwachte nieuwe kredietcrisis en de aanhoudende economische crisis is het neoliberalisme ook als heilsleer failliet. Dat kan ook niet anders. Rosenberg:

Twentieth-century consumerism created an imagined community that included some and excluded others. The amusements and the products of American consumer culture redefined democracy and continually rearranged ethnic and class divisions. In the first half of the twentieth century, through their participation in the consumer republic, Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, and Jews slowly became ‘white’ and ‘American.’ The entertainers and advertisers who helped fuse the trinity of whiteness, nationality, and consumption into one compelling imaginary also created categories of outsiders who appeared as colored and as un- (or even anti-) American. People from African, Asian, Spanish-speaking, or Native heritage often found themselves largely excluded from the performances and displays of upward mobility and consumer nationalism.

Door de globalisering doet ditzelfde verschijnsel zich nu wereldwijd voor. In Aziatische ‘sweatshops’ werken nu vrouwen en mannen in lage lonen landen tegen een minimuminkomen en zonder sociale voorzieningen voor de consument elders, zoals blijkt uit de fabricage van alles en nog wat, van trendy iPad’s en al even modieuze leggings tot aan hippe Nike-shoenen.

In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad…
In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.
However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.
Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.
More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

Garment factories in the Pakistani cities of Karachi and Lahore caught fire on 11 September 2012. The fires occurred in a textile factory in the western part of Karachi and in a shoemaking factory in Lahore. The fires are considered to be the most deadly and worst industrial factory fires in Pakistan's history, [3] killing 315 people and seriously injuring more than 250. [4][5][6] he conditions under which Pakistan's blue-collar labour works have often been raised by trade unions and workers' rights organisations. There is also a controversial, yet wide use of child labour in Pakistan. [8] […]
The garment factory "Ali Enterprises", which is located in Plot 67, Hub Road, Baldia Town, Karachi, [9] used to export its garments to Europe and the United States, and had employed between 1,200 and 1,500 workers. Ali Enterprises manufactured denim, knitted garments, and hosiery, and had capital of between $10 million and $50 million. Workers at Ali Enterprises said they earned between 5,000 and 10,000 rupees ($52 to $104) a month for their labour. [10] The factory manufactured jeans for textile discounter KiK. KiK claimed to control enforcement of labour laws and security standards of its suppliers. However, a security check in 2007 revealed deficiencies in fire protection of the Karachi plant, which KiK claimed were fixed by 2011. According to the Pakistani Textile Workers Union (NTUF), a high working pressure and overtime with unpayed additional work were frequent at the factory. [11] A few weeks prior to the fire, the factory passed an internationally recognised safety test. [12][13] The factory is also suspected of using child labour and locked workplaces analogous to prison cells. The owner of the factory, Abdul Aziz, had reportedly prevented inspections of the factory. [14]

Een ander willekeurig voorbeeld, ditmaal uit de Britse Guardian:

Britain's appetite for fast fashion is pushing workers into starvation conditions…
When the fashion press covers ethics it largely means whether catwalk models should eat more, rather than whether garment workers should eat.
It's tempting to cast retailers as Dickensian ogres but fast fashion is driven by consumer appetites. We love fashion but we also dump two million tonnes of textile waste (mostly clothing) in landfill each year, which suggests we don't value it. We get the type of fashion retail we deserve and ask for. We need a new plan.

Het neoliberalisme, de huidige variant van het kapitalisme, kan alleen bestaan door dezelfde uitbuiting die de westerse arbeiders kenden in het begin van de eigen industriele revolutie. Zonder uitbuiting van mens en natuur zijn het winstprincipe en de consumptiemaatschappij onmogelijk te handhaven. Maar omdat de dagelijkse propaganda het doet voorkomen dat de kapitalistische dogma’s gebaseerd zijn op natuurwetten lijkt het alsof er geen levensvatbare alternatieven bestaan. De Amerikaanse journalist en bestseller auteur William Greider schrijft in The Soul of Capitalism. Opening Paths to a Moral Economy dat weliswaar sommige individuen een positief mens- en wereldbeeld erop na mogen houden, maar dat


the governing elites in business and finance as well as government, regardless of political preference, operate on bleaker assumptions about the human condition. High-minded stewardship, they tell themselves, requires a rather constant manipulation of the soft-headed populace, deftly steering the people toward correct outcomes, even if people are too stupid to understand their own best interests.
What’s worse is that many ordinary Americans – maybe most of them – believe this too. At least, many have internalized from experiece the notion that they have been assigned lesser roles in the grand scheme and there’s nothing to be done about it. Likei t or not, the obstacles are simply too formidable to overcome. The frontier is closed; the pioneering is history. This self-doubt and resignation may be the greates barrier to realizing an alternative future, one in which people at large can participate from their various angles in the decisions that govern their lives.


En dus dompelt de massa zich onder in oppervlakkige amusement en consumptie van rotzooi. Steeds meer van hetzelfde tot men in het eigen escapisme verstikt. Lethargie, onverschilligheid en cynisme zijn daarvan de opvallendste kenmerken. Meer daarover morgen.

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