maandag 3 februari 2014

Paul Buchheit 2

ECONOMY

AlterNet / By Paul Buchheit

26 COMMENTS

4 Shocking Examples of American Inequality

America's middle class is further from the top than in all other developed countries.

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Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/Vepar5

February 2, 2014 |

Inequality is a cancer on society, here in the U.S. and across the globe. It keeps growing. But humanity seems helpless against it, as if it's an alien force that no one understands, even as the life is being gradually drained from its victims.

The recent Oxfam report on global wealth inequality reveals some of the ugly extremes that have divided our world. It also directs our attention to the Global Wealth Report compiled by Credit Suisse, and the companion Databook, which offer a shocking testament to the severity of U.S. and global inequality.

1. The 30 Richest Americans Own as much as Half of the U.S. Population

The Oxfam report tells us that 85 individuals own as much as half the world. The U.S. is the biggest reason for that, with 5% of the world's population and 30% of the wealth. China, India, and Africa, on the other hand, combine for about half the world's population and just 12% of the wealth.

In the U.S., the richest 30 individuals own about $792 billion, while the bottom half of Americans own 1.1% of our country's wealth, also about $792 billion. That's 30 people owning as much as 157,000,000 people.

This information is derived from the Global Wealth Databook and the Forbes 400 List. More details are provided at Us Against Greed.

2. The Bottom Half of America Owns a Smaller Percentage of National Wealth than Almost All Other Countries and Continents

The 1.1% of America's wealth owned by the poorest half is less than the poorest halves of Asia (1.3% of the region's wealth), Africa (2.1%), Latin America (3.2%), India (4.5%), the United Kingdom (7.6%), and China (9.6%).

It goes beyond the poorest half. The upper-middle class of America (roughly $50,000 to $200,000 in wealth) own a smaller percentage of wealth than the corresponding upper-middle classes of China and India. Of course, America's lower and middle classes have more moneyin absolute terms than corresponding classes in China and India. But that leads to the next topic.

3. Less Mobility: North America's Bottom Half Has Less Chance to MOVE UP than Any Other Region of the World

Conservatives argue that individuals should be able to improve their economic positions with personal initiative and hard work. But economic mobility is lower in the U.S. than in most developed countries. And lower than in many undeveloped countries.

The results of a Credit Suisse wealth mobility simulation are given in the Global Wealth Databook: "North America is...less mobile than other regions, especially over longer time horizons. Europe is next in line, followed by the middle group of Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Africa. The most mobile regions are China and India."

4. America's MIDDLE CLASS is Further from the Top than in All Other Developed Countries

As noted above, it's not just the bottom half being battered by inequality -- it's most of the rest of us. The U.S. median of $44,911 is only 15% of the $301,140 mean (which is greatly skewed by the wealth of the richest 10%). That ratio is less than any other of the 27 developed countries listed by Credit Suisse, and much less than the average OECD ratio of 35%.

For the world as a whole, the median is only 8% of the mean, reflecting the fact that half the world's adults average less than $500 in wealth.

The Greatest Shock: How Little is Needed to Restore Some Sanity

Extreme inequality means that people without homes are freezing to death in America. On a winter day in 2012 over 633,000 people were homeless in the United States. Based on an annual single room occupancy (SRO) cost of $558 per month, a little over $4 billion would provide shelter for every homeless person for the entire year.

The stock market grew by $4.7 trillion in 2013. A wealth tax of just a one-tenth of 1 percent (one dollar out of every thousand) would have provided the $4 billion needed to shelter every homeless American for 365 days.

But we have no wealth tax. And the wealth just keeps growing for the wealthiest Americans.

Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, a writer for progressive publications, and the founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org).

http://www.alternet.org/economy/4-shocking-examples-american-inequality?akid=11470.56814.iVGcg4&rd=1&src=newsletter954023&t=5&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

Zionist Hubris

Israel Needs to Learn Some Manners

By AVI SHLAIMJAN. 30, 2014

OXFORD, England — On Jan. 14, the Israeli defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, told the daily Yediot Aharonot, “Secretary of State John Kerry — who arrived here determined, who operates from an incomprehensible obsession and a sense of messianism — can’t teach me anything about the conflict with the Palestinians.” Even by Israeli standards, Mr. Yaalon’s comments were rather rude. Mr. Kerry’s crime was to try to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that began last July and to stipulate a nine-month deadline. This is the kind of talk that gives chutzpah a bad name.

The episode also reveals a great deal about the nature of the much-vaunted special relationship between the United States and Israel. It suggests that this relationship is a one-way street, with America doing all the diplomatic heavy lifting while Israel limits its role to obstruction and whining — repaying Uncle Sam’s generosity with ingratitude and scorn.

Israeli leaders have always underlined the vital importance of self-reliance when it comes to Israel’s security. But the simple truth is that Israel wouldn’t be able to survive for very long without American support. Since 1949, America’s economic aid to Israel amounts to a staggering $118 billion and America continues to subsidize the Jewish state to the tune of $3 billion annually. America is also Israel’s main arms supplier and the official guarantor of its “quantitative military edge” over all its Arab neighbors.

In the diplomatic arena, Israel relies on America to shield it from the consequences of its habitual violations of international law. The International Court of Justice pronounced the so-called “security barrier” that Israel is building on the West Bank to be illegal. All of Israel’s civilian settlements on the West Bank violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, but Israel continues to expand them.

Since 1978, when the Camp David Accords were brokered by President Jimmy Carter, the United States has used its veto power on the Security Council 42 times on behalf of Israel. The most shocking abuse of this power was to veto, in February 2011, a resolution condemning Israeli settlement expansion that had the support of the 14 other members of the Security Council.

Some Americans, especially those of the neoconservative persuasion, favor the strongest support for Israel on the grounds that the interests of the two allies coincide in the Middle East. An argument can be made that the occupation of the West Bank serves Israel's security interests even if it erodes the foundations of Israeli democracy and turns Israel into an international pariah.

There is no rational argument, however, that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank serves America’s national interest. On the contrary, as General David Petraeus told a Senate committee in 2010, the occupation foments anti-American sentiment throughout the Islamic world and hinders the development of America’s partnership with Arab governments. A resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is therefore a major, if not vital American interest.

America poses as an honest broker, but everywhere it is perceived as Israel's lawyer. The American-sponsored “peace process” since 1991 has been a charade: all process and no peace while providing Israel with just the cover it needs to pursue its illegal and aggressive colonial project on the West Bank.

The Quartet, which consists of the United States, Russia, the United Nations and European Union, came up in 2003 with an excellent road map for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2005. But the Quartet cannot act independently of the United States to pressure Israel. Its record suggests that it is little more than a clever American device for wasting time.

Mr. Kerry is to be commended for the energy and commitment that he has displayed in pursuit of peace in the Middle East and for the 11 trips he has made to the region in his first year in office. But his peace mission was doomed to failure from the start. The Kerry-hating Mr. Yaalon and his hawk-infested Likud party are committed to the geopolitical status quo on the West Bank at almost any price. Their real aim is to terminate the peace talks and blame the Palestinians.

In a normal country a defense minister who played fast and loose with such a crucial bilateral relationship would have been thrown out on his ear. But Israel is not a normal country.

The reason that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not disown his defense minister is that what Mr. Yaalon said is what Mr. Netanyahu thinks. The real problem is not Mr. Yaalon’s bad manners but the policy that he and Mr. Netanyahu are trying to foist on their senior ally: to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, to confront Iran, to protect Israel’s nuclear monopoly, and to preserve its regional hegemony solely by military means. This program is diametrically opposed to America’s true national security interests.

America gives Israel money, arms and advice. Israel takes the money, it takes the arms, and it rudely rejects the advice.

The fundamental problem with American support for Israel is its unconditional nature. Consequently, Israel does not have to pay a price for acting unilaterally in a multilateral world, for its flagrant violations of international law, and for its systematic abuse of Palestinian human rights.

Blind support for the Jewish state does not advance the cause of peace. America is going nowhere in the Middle East until it makes the provision of money and arms conditional on good manners and, more importantly, on Israeli respect for its advice.

Avi Shlaim is an emeritus professor of international relations at Oxford University and the author of “The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/opinion/israel-needs-to-learn-some-manners.html?_r=0

zondag 2 februari 2014

De Mainstream Pers 133

22 april 2008 berichtte de NRC:

Bizarre complottheorieën op documentairefestival

Documentairefestival Docs at the Docks wil ‘de andere waarheid’ laten zien. Het biedt een 'broodnodig tegenwicht tegen de eenzijdige berichtgeving.'

Amsterdam, 22 april. Heb je wel eens het gevoel dat het Journaal en de kranten je niet het hele verhaal vertellen? Maar heb je ook geen zin of tijd om het internet af te struinen op zoek naar alternatieve waarheden? Op de NDSM-werf, een oud haven- en industrieterrein in Amsterdam-Noord, gaat vanavond het tweede seizoen van Docs at the Docks van start, een reeks documentaireavonden waarbij je eens ‘een andere kant’ te zien krijgt.

Voor de openingsavond is gekozen voor vertoning van deel 3 van de populaire documentairefilm Zeitgeist, Don’t Mind the Men Behind the Curtain, die met name in de VS heel vaak bekeken en gedownload is. De documentaire gaat onder meer over de manipulatieve macht van de Amerikaanse centrale bank en de mannen die de touwtjes in handen hebben.

Docs at the Docks

^{Aanvang openingsavond: 20.30u (zaal open om 20.00u). Thema: ‘Ruled by Secrecy – Wat gebeurt er achter de schermen?’ Vertoning van deel 3 van de documentaire Zeitgeist (47 min.) uit 2007 van Peter Joseph. Gasten: Stan van Houcke (voormalig VPRO-journalist) en Maarten Schinkel (financieel redacteur NRC Handelsblad). Interviews: Daan de Wit (Deep Journal).}

^{http://vorige.nrc.nl/kunst/article1875971.ece}

^{Collega Maarten Schinkel bleek een ogenschijnlijk aimabele gesprekspartner die, als}^{'financieel redacteur'}^{van wat Henk Hofland}^{'de politiek-literaire elite'}^{waar een}^{'natie niet zonder [kan],'}^{opvallend weinig}^begreep^{van de financiële wereld. Toen ik opmerkte dat de financiële transacties van banken in feite zwendel waren aangezien het een handel in niet bestaand geld was, en dat het speculeren met lucht zou ontploffen, keek hij mij allervriendelijkst aan om vervolgens te verklaren dat het allemaal niet zo'n vaart zou lopen omdat er genoeg buffers ingebouwd waren. Zes maanden later brak de kredietcrisis in volle hevigheid uit. Ik meld dit nog even omdat Maarten Schinkel in de}^nrc.next^{op woensdag 29 januari 2014 tegenover de jeugdige lezers van de krant zijn neoliberale ideologie nog eens verdedigde onder de kop}^{'Wie is rijk in Nederland?'}^{Hij schreef:}

^{Een dubbeldekker. Daarin passen volgens Oxfam de 85 rijkste mensen ter wereld, die samen evenveel bezitten als de onderste helft van de gehele wereldbevolking: 3,5 miljard mensen. En dat zorgde vorige week, aan de vooravond van het World Economic Forum, voor de nodige opschudding.}

^{Dat maakt benieuwd hoe dat in eigen land zit.}

^{Waarom hem dat}^'benieuwd'^{maakte legde hij niet uit, en de reden wordt pas aan het eind van zijn column duidelijk. Maarten Schinkel komt na een simpele berekening tot de ontdekking dat:}

^{De verbijsterende conclusie [dus] moet zijn dat de 85 rijkste Nederlanders, met 61,2 miljard euro, samen evenveel bezitten als tussen de 70 en 80 procent van alle Nederlandse huishoudens, van onderaf gerekend.}

^Als^{'overtuigde democraat,'}^{zoals hij mij destijds vertelde, zijn deze feiten moeilijk te verkopen aan een jeugdig publiek dat om bijvoorbeeld een woning te kunnen bemachtigen bij de — door de overheid gesubsidieerde — commerciële banken moeten aankloppen voor een hypotheek. Maarten Schinkel vertelt hen dat weliswaar de situatie in Nederland}^{'veel erger [is] dan de wereldwijde calculatie van Oxfam,'}^{maar voegt daar onmiddellijk aan:}^{'Wat is hier de adder?'}^Schinkel^{doelt hiermee op het oude gezegde van Vergilius}^{'latet anguis in herba,'}^{in goed Nederlands:'}^{een addertje onder het gras,'}^{hetgeen betekent}^{'het leek heel mooi, maar er was kwade trouw of een boze bedoeling in het spel.'}^{Daarom is de vraag gerechtvaardigd: wiens}^{'boze bedoeling'}^{? Is Oxfam te kwader trouw of Maarten Schinkel's berekening of beide? Het is niet helemaal duidelijk, maar in elk geval is er twijfel gewekt, een suggestie gedaan die als volgt wordt uitgewerkt: de belangrijkste verklaring voor het feit dat het verschil tussen arm en rijk in Nederland veel groter is dan in de Derde Wereld komt door 'schulden.' Niet van de banken, want die schulden zijn gedekt door de westerse belastingbetalers om hun vertrouwen in de zwendelende bankiers te herstellen. Die hadden namelijk veel meer uitgeleend dan ze in kas hadden. Nee het gaat Schinkel om de schulden van de onderste klasse. Hij schrijft daarover:}

^{Het nettovermogen is voor de onderste tienprocentsgroep in Nederland sterk negatief. In deze groep overtreffen de schulden verre het bezit, en zij heeft dan ook een vermogen van -43 miljard. Dat trekt de optelsom van de onderste tienprocentsgroepen natuurlijk sterk naar beneden.}

^{In de laatste zin is de}^{'tienprocentsgroep'}^{ineens meervoud geworden. De}^{'financieel redacteur'}^{van de NRC bedoelt waarschijnlijk de groepen 'tussen de 70 en 80 procent van alle Nederlandse huishoudens, van onderaf gerekend,' maar absoluut zeker is dit niet, want anders had hij dit wel geschreven. Hoe dan ook, wat Maarten Schinkel na een weeklang hard nadenken eigenlijk wil stellen, is het volgende:}

^{Een berekening à la Oxfam zou zo voor de meeste westerse landen negatief uitvallen. Want in het arme deel van de wereld hebben de armste mensen niet alleen geen vermogen, maar ze hebben ook een vermogen niet: het vermogen tot het maken van grote schulden. Zo zou je hoogstwaarschijnlijk kunnen betogen dat de tienprocentsgroep van minst vermogende Afrikanen veel 'rijker' is dan de onderste tienprocentsgroep van elk willekeurig westers land. Want geen vermogen is statistisch beter dan een negatief vermogen.}

^{Waarmee Maarten Schinkel als spreekbuis van de neoliberale elite wil aantonen}^{'hoe wankel'}^de^{'snappy berekeningen [van Oxfam] kunnen zijn. Ook al zijn ze goed bedoeld, en happen ze heerlijk weg.'}^{Met andere woorden: in Nederland zijn mensen arm omdat ze te veel lenen, en het gevolg is dat qua vermogen de}^{'85 rijkste Nederlanders, met 61,2 miljard euro, samen evenveel bezitten als tussen de 70 en 80 procent van alle Nederlandse huishoudens, van onderaf gerekend.'}^{Dit klopt ook, maar dat is niet waar Schinkel op doelt. Hij suggereert dat de oorzaak in feite bij de onderklasse moet worden gezocht, die leent teveel en bezit daardoor wel degelijk een}^{'vermogen,' alleen is dat negatief.}^{Waarom die onderste tien procent zoveel moet lenen, verzwijgt hij, want dan zou de aap uit de mouw komen, namelijk dat in het neoliberale systeem de onderste tien procent anders niet mee kan doen aan het kapitalistische systeem, en nog meer zouden verpauperen. Dus legt hij de 'schuld' van de}^{'verbijsterende'}^{kloof tussen arm en schatrijk bij de slachtoffers van het neoliberalisme, niet bij de profiteurs ervan. Bovendien kan Schinkel, zelf trotse bezitter van een positief vermogen, daarmee het feit relativeren dat}^{'de 85 rijkste mensen ter wereld,'}^tezamen^{'evenveel bezitten'}^als^{'de onderste helft van de gehele wereldbevolking.'}^{Sterker nog hij stelt dat}^{'dergelijke snappy berekeningen'}^{van Oxfam}^'wankel'^{zijn, niet meer dan}^{'goed bedoelde'}^{linkse propaganda. Hoewel hij de feiten}^niet^{kan weerleggen, doet hij toch alsof ze niet deugen. Maarten Schinkel weet dat wel, maar net als bij al die andere Nederlandse Makkianen uit een kleinburgerlijk milieu, die brandend van ambitie het verschil tussen goed en kwaad negeren, verspreidt ook hij de grote leugen. Hij wordt daar goed voor betaald. Gehoorzaamde hij niet aan de wetten van de markt dan zou mijn oude, eertijds uiterst linkse, kameraad, de SP-multimiljonair, Derk Sauer, namens de aandeelhouders van de}^NRC^{gedwongen worden Maarten Schinkel op straat te zetten. Het totalitaire neoliberalisme, waarbij een kleine elite de toekomst van de mensheid bepaalt, kent eenvoudige en voor elke deelnemer duidelijke spelregels. De belangrijkste is het maken van zo hoog mogelijke winsten en iedereen die dat niet beseft moet een hoge prijs daarvoor betalen. Meer over Maarten Schinkel kunt u hier lezen:}^{http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.nl/search?q=maarten+schinkel}

^{Angst is de enige plausibele verklaring voor de houding van de intellectuele corruptie onder de Nederlandse}^{'politiek-literaire elite.'}^{Wat gemakshalve}^{'de tijdgeest'}^{wordt genoemd, wordt beheerst door angst, en daarmee onverschilligheid en cynisme. In zijn}^Volkskrant^{-column van donderdag 30 januari 2014 schreef de oud PVDA-minister Marcel van Dam:}

^{De laatste 25 jaar heeft de PVDA stelselmatig meegewerkt of aanvaard dat de laagste inkomens steeds verder achterblijven. Met als gevolg dat de 10 procent van de bevolking met de laagste inkomens in vergelijking met 1980 dertig procent aan koopkracht heeft ingeleverd. De hoogste inkomens stegen pijlsnel. In het mede door Bos geformeerde kabinet wordt de afstand versneld groter. Door sociaal-democraten afgedwongen sociale grondrechten zoals verwoord in de grondwet (vrije keuze van arbeid en recht op bijstand) worden door 'sociaal-democratische' bewindslieden tot een aanfluiting gemaakt.}

^Schinkel's^{'onderste tienprocentsgroep in Nederland'}^{is dus dankzij de neoliberale ideologie van dereguleren en privatiseren de afgelopen kwart eeuw bijna eenderde in koopkracht achteruit gegaan, en heeft om de consumptiecultuur}^{te kunnen bijbenen noodgedwongen geleend. Ik stel met enige klem}^{'noodgedwongen,'}^{omdat door de onophoudelijke commerciële reclame en politieke propaganda de consument zijn identiteit is gaan ontlenen aan de hoeveelheid materie die hij kan verwerven. Dit is een massapsychologisch en daarmee politiek feit. Kopen is bestaan, niet kopen betekent de dood. Degene die de neoliberale kapitalistische ideologie aanhangt kan daar moeilijk tegen zijn, per slot van rekening wordt niet voor niets wereldwijd jaarlijks vele honderden miljarden aan reclame uitgegeven, reclamecampagnes zijn kennelijk effectief, ze houden mensen begerig. Bovendien hebben de meest onbeschaamde graaiers de top bereikt dankzij het feit dat de staat een premie verleende aan hebberigheid door een groot deel van de controlemaatregelen op de mateloosheid af te schaffen. Men kan moeilijk bankiers financieel steunen, die met dezelfde cultuurloze hebzucht een miljardenschuld hebben opgebouwd, om vervolgens de onderste 10 procent van de bevolking te verwijten dat ze schulden hebben gemaakt. De zwendelaars aan de top geven immers het goede voorbeeld van wat deze VVD/PVDA-regering een 'participatie samenleving' noemen. Logica is evenwel onder de Makkianen ver te zoeken. Onlangs verscheen het drukwerkje}^{Thuis in de Tijd}^dat^{'onder redactie van Thierry Baudet en Geert Mak'}^{claimt de vermeende}^{'politieke discussie'}^{over de overdracht van macht aan de Europese Unie nieuw leven in te willen blazen. Mak kwam niet verder dan het laten afdrukken van zijn Abel Herzberg-lezing 2013, met daarin een oproep de neoliberale Europese Unie nog meer macht te geven, ondermeer omdat}

^{de EU een markt [is] van bijna een half miljard mensen met de hoogste gemiddelde levensstandaard ter wereld. Alleen al voor Nederland is de Unie goed voor tweederde van onze totale export, een vijfde van het nationale product. We hebben nu een open toegang tot die markt.}

^{En dus moet de Nederlander die}^'deur'^niet^{'dichtgooien,' stelt Mak, want 'Geen Jorwerd zonder Brussel.' Het is}^{een neoliberaal materialistische argument dat in een consumptiecultuur doorslaggevend is. Dit verhaal is niet nieuw, dus blijft Thierry Baudet over, die aangekondigd wordt als}^'rechts,'^een^{'nationalist'}^en^{'conservatief'}^{en toch pas}^{'net dertig.'}^{Maar, zoals het in het poldermodel betaamt:}^{'we mogen elkaar, en we luisteren naar elkaar,'}^{en dus}^{'zoeken we niet naar wat ons verdeelt, maar naar waar we elkaar vinden. Omdat we er toch met elkaar uit zullen moeten komen in dit land.'}^{De controverse moet worden vermeden, de}^{'politiek-literaire elite'}^{dient in een klein land uiteindelijk met één gemeenschappelijke stem te spreken, anders zullen}^{'we er toch'}^niet^{'met elkaar'}^uit^{'komen in dit land.'}^{De normen en waarden die men koestert moeten zich daarnaar richten, zo verordonneert de Nederlandse mentaliteit van opportunisme en conformisme. Het is altijd prettig wanneer gesprekspartners zelf meteen aantonen dat}^{'Hypocrisie en farizeïsme hier individu en gemeenschap [belagen],'}^{zoals Huizinga opmerkte. Hoe dan ook, om zo controversieel mogelijk te zijn stel ik dat Thierry Baudet's betoog als los zand aan elkaar hangt. Deze tegenstander van nog meer macht overhevelen naar het neoliberale bolwerk}^'Brussel'^{om op die manier het bestaan van het provinciale}^'Jorwerd'^{te prolongeren, bezit niet de intellectuele integriteit om zijn betoog inhoud te geven. Daarover later meer.}

De Participatie Samenleving 40

Political Corruption and Capitalism

Sunday, 02 February 2014 00:00By Richard D Wolff, Truthout | Op-Ed

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(Image: Failed justice via Shutterstock)Corruption is endemic to the capitalist system and has not been successfully regulated away. Perhaps a system change is warranted?

Nearly daily, mass media report political corruption across the world. Government bureaucrats, from local to national to international, are exposed for having abused their offices for personal gain. That gain is usually financial, but can involve career advancement. Much of that corruption is driven and financed by capitalist enterprises. In that kind of corruption, officials enable tax avoidance, provide subsidies, make purchases and sometimes sales, and decide many other "public" matters (e.g. locating roads, zoning cities, constructing state facilities, repressing strikes, investigating corruption, negotiating international agreements, etc.).

Official decisions are corrupt when they aim (in exchange for personal gain) exclusively or chiefly to benefit individual firms or groups of enterprises rather than any broad social or public purpose. Corruption can be illegal (when prohibitive laws apply) or legal if such laws were repealed or never passed. Political corruption, when not hidden or secret, occurs under a protective cover (or disguise) as if done for public purposes or benefits.

What chiefly drives this sort of political corruption today is capitalism's structure. For many capitalist enterprises, competitive and other pressures exist to increase profits, growth rates, and/or market share. Their boards and top managers seek to find cheaper produced inputs and cheaper labor power, to extract more output from their workers, to sell their outputs at the highest possible prices and to find more profitable technologies. The structure provides them with every incentive of financial gain and/or career security and advancement to behave in those ways. Thus, boards and top managers seek the maximum obtainable assistance of government officials in all these areas and also try to pay the least possible portion of their net revenues as taxes. Boards of directors tap their corporations' profits to corrupt mostly the top echelons of the government bureaucracy, those needed to make advantageous official decisions.

Individual capitalists act to corrupt government officials to serve their enterprise's needs. Grouped into associations, they do likewise for their industries. When organized as a whole (in "chambers of commerce" or "manufacturers alliances," etc.), they corrupt to secure their class interests. When such corruption is not secret, capitalists articulate their demands to corrupted officials as "good for the economy or society as a whole." Such phrases constitute the "appropriate language" that enables officials publicly to disguise and hopefully to legitimate their corrupt acts.

Strict moral codes, regulations and laws have been imposed to prevent individual or grouped capitalists from corrupting government officials. Evidence suggests, however, that neither civic-minded ethics, nor regulations nor laws have come close to ending capitalists' corruption. Countless government courts, commissions, etc., have hardly ended official complicities in that corruption. Mainstream economics mostly proceeds in its analyses and policy prescriptions as if rampant corruption did not exist. Mass media tend to treat capitalist corruption (at least in their home countries) as exceptional and government efforts to stop it as serious. These, too, are further examples of that "appropriate language" with which modern capitalist societies mask systemic corruption.

To reduce corruption from its current high levels requires something more than, and different from, additional laws, commissions, invocations of morality, regulations and so on. It requires basic, structural economic change. Earlier reforms achieved so little success because they ignored the very idea or possibility of such change. They left untouched capitalism's basic incentive structure and capitalists' power to use enterprise profits for corrupt purposes. Capitalists have continued to face all the benefits and gains that corrupted officials can yield (plus the risks and costs of failing to corrupt them). Capitalists have likewise continued to amass ever-larger profits and thus the funds with which to corrupt.

One structural way to reduce corruption would be to democratize enterprises, to reorganize them such that the workers collectively direct the enterprises. Such an economic democratization would render all aspects of the relationship between enterprise and government transparent to all enterprise employees and thereby to a larger public. Hiding and disguising corruption would be much more difficult. Compliance with regulations and laws prohibiting the corruption of officials would likely find at least some support among democratized enterprises' decision makers. Those enterprises would require open discussion and majority decision-making. Minorities could more easily acquire the knowledge needed to criticize and influence decisions and thus to prevent or reduce using enterprises' net revenues to corrupt government officials.

Ending the capitalist organization of enterprises still leaves the problem of incentives for workers - even in workers' self-directed enterprises - to seek to corrupt government officials. The appropriate step to solve that problem would involve making the democratized enterprises and a genuinely democratized politics (of residence-based government at all levels) interdependent. Governmental decisions would need to be ratified by the democratized enterprises affected by those government decisions. Likewise, democratized enterprise decisions would need to be ratified by the affected democratized governmental institutions.

Then any effort by one or a group of workers' self-directed enterprises to obtain corrupt decisions from officials would activate other workers self-directed enterprises - hurt or disadvantaged by those decisions - to object. And their objections would have effective teeth given the power-sharing relationship between enterprises and government. This is a way to interrupt the social irrationality of corruption - whereby one or a group of enterprises gains a corrupt advantage at the expense of others, who are thereby provoked to do likewise, thereby generating systemic corruption. The end-result is - as capitalism's history shows - an economy that best serves those who can most effectively corrupt and be corrupted.

In effect, legislatures would be reconstructed as bi-cameral - but in a new sense. One chamber would be enterprise-based, while the other would be residence-based. The key checks and balances of such a system could reasonably be expected to reduce political corruption relative to anything so far attempted. Such a structural change could well outperform the long list of anticorruption reforms that were so often smokescreens to avoid the basic economic changes needed.

RICHARD D WOLFF

Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan. Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994, he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris (France), I (Sorbonne). His work is available at rdwolff.com and at democracyatwork.info.

Century of Violence

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/world-war-i-led-to-a-century-of-violence-in-the-middle-east-a-946052.html

East

Century of Violence: What World War I Did to the Middle East

By Bernhard Zand

Photo Gallery: The Aftermath of World War I in the Middle East

James Francis Hurley/ Ullstein Bild

World War I may have ended in 1918, but the violence it triggered in the Middle East still hasn't come to an end. Arbitrary borders drawn by self-interested imperial powers have left a legacy that the region has not been able to overcome.

Damascus, year three of the civil war: The 4th Division of the Syrian army has entrenched itself on Kassioun Mountain, the place where Cain is said to have slain his brother Abel. United Nations ballistics experts say the poison gas projectiles that landed in the Damascus suburbs of Muadamiya and Ain Tarma in the morning hours of Aug. 21, 2013 were fired from somewhere up on the mountain. Some 1,400 people died in the attack -- 1,400 of the more than 100,000 people who have lost their lives since the beginning of the conflict.

Baghdad, in the former palace quarter behind the Assassin's Gate: Two years after the American withdrawal, Iraqis are once again in full control of the so-called Green Zone, located on a sharp bend in the Tigris River. It is the quarter of Baghdad where the Americans found refuge when the country they occupied devolved into murderous chaos. Currently, the situation is hardly any better. On the other side of the wall, in the red zone, death has once again become commonplace. There were over 8,200 fatalities last year.Beirut, the capital of Lebanon that is so loved by all Arabs: The city has long been a focal point both of Arab life and of Arab strife. The devout versus the secular, the Muslims versus the Christians, the Shiites versus the Sunnis. With fighting underway in Libya and Syria, with unrest ongoing in Egypt and Iraq, the old question must once again be posed: Has Beirut managed to leave the last eruption of violence behind or is the next one just around the corner?
Two years after the revolts of 2011, the situation in the Middle East is as bleak as it has ever been. There is hardly a country in the region that has not experienced war or civil strife in recent decades. And none of them look immune to a possible outbreak of violence in the near future. The movement that came to be known as the Arab Spring threatens to sink into a morass of overthrows and counter-revolts.
That, though, is likely only to surprise those who saw the rebellions in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria as part of an historical turn of events for the Middle East. To be sure, the unrest was a bloody new beginning, but it was also the most recent chapter in an almost uninterrupted regional conflict that began 100 years ago and has never really come to an end.
'The Children of England and France'
In no other theater of World War I are the results of that epochal conflict still as current as they are in the Middle East. Nowhere else does the early 20th century orgy of violence still determine political conditions to the same degree. The so-called European Civil War, a term used to describe the period of bloody violence that racked Europe from 1914 onwards, came to an end in 1945. The Cold War ceased in 1990. But the tensions unleashed on the Arab world by World War I remain as acute as ever. Essentially, the Middle East finds itself in the same situation now as Europe did following the 1919 Treaty of Versailles: standing before a map that disregards the region's ethnic and confessional realities.
In Africa, Latin America and -- following the bloodletting of World War II -- Europe, most peoples have largely come to accept the borders that history has forced upon them. But not in the Middle East. The states that were founded in the region after 1914, and the borders that were drawn then, are still seen as illegitimate by many of their own citizens and by their neighbors. The legitimacy of states in the region, writes US historian David Fromkin in "A Peace to End All Peace" -- the definitive work on the emergence of the modern Middle East -- comes either from tradition, from the power and roots of its founder or it doesn't come at all.
Only two countries in the broader region -- Egypt and Iran -- possess such a long and uninterrupted history that their state integrity can hardly be shaken, even by a difficult crisis. Two others continue to stand on the foundation erected by their founders: The Turkish Republic of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, finally united by Abd al-Asis Ibn Saud in 1932.
These four countries surround the core of the Middle East, which is made up of five countries and one seemingly eternal non-state. Fromkin calls them the "children of England and France:" Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Israel and Palestine.
No group of countries, particularly given their small sizes, has seen so many wars, civil wars, overthrows and terrorist attacks in recent decades. To understand how this historical anomaly came to pass, several factors must be considered: the region's depressing history prior to World War I, the failure of the Arab elite and the continual intervention by the superpowers thereafter, the role of political Islam, the discovery of oil, the founding of Israel and the Cold War.
A Peace to End All Peace
Perhaps most important, however, was the wanton resolution made by two European colonial powers, Britain and France, that ordered this part of the world in accordance with their own needs and literally drew "A Line in the Sand," as the British historian James Barr titled his 2011 book about this episode.
It is still unclear where the Arab Spring will take us and what will ultimately become of the Middle East. Apocalyptic scenarios are just as speculative as the hope that that the region will find its way to new and more stable borders and improved political structures. But where does this lack of legitimacy and absence of trust which poisons the Middle East come from? How did we arrive at this "Peace to End All Peace," as Fromkin's book is called?
Istanbul, the summer of 1914: The capital of the Ottoman Empire seems half a world away from the sunny parlor in the Imperial Villa in Ischl where Emperor Franz Joseph I signed his manifesto "To My People" on July 28 and unleashed the world war by declaring war on Serbia. For centuries, the Ottoman Empire had controlled the southern and eastern Mediterranean, from Alexandretta to Arish, from the Maghreb to Suez. But Algeria and Tunisia fell to the French while the British nabbed Egypt; in 1911, the Italians established a bridgehead in Libya. By the eve of the Great War, the empire had shrunk to include, aside from today's Turkey, only the Middle East, present-day Iraq and a strip of land on the Arabian Peninsula stretching down to Yemen.
It is these regions, south of present-day Turkey, that became the focus of the Middle Eastern battles in World War I. For 400 years, the area had wallowed deep in history's shadow. But in the early 20th century, it rapidly transformed into the arc of crisis we know today -- a place whose cities have become shorthand for generations of suffering: Basra, Baghdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Beirut, Gaza and Suez.
The protagonists of World War I were not fully aware yet that the Ottoman Empire's backyard was sitting atop the largest oil reserves in the world. Had they known, the fighting in the Middle East would likely have been even more violent and brutal than it was. At the time, however, the war aims of the two sides were determined by a world order that would dissolve within the next four years: Great Britain wanted to open a shipping route to its ally Russia and to secure its connection to India via the Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf. The German Empire wanted to prevent exactly that.
Shifting to the Periphery
It remained unclear for a few days following Franz Joseph's declaration of war whether the Ottoman Empire would enter the war and, if it did, on which side. But shortly after the conflict began, Istanbul joined Berlin and Vienna. On August 2, the Germans and the Ottomans signed a secret pact; a short time later, two German warships -- the SMS Goebenand the SMS Breslau -- began steaming from the western Mediterranean toward Constantinople. Once they arrived, they were handed over to the -- officially still neutral -- Ottoman navy and renamed Yavuz and Midilli; the German crews remained, but donned the fez.
With the arrival of the two battleships in the Golden Horn and the subsequent mining of the Dardanelles, the casus belli had been established: The Ottomans and the Germans had blocked the connection between Russia and its allies, the French and the British. Shortly thereafter, the Goeben, flying the Ottoman flag, bombarded Russian ports on the Black Sea. At the beginning of November, Russia, Great Britain and France declared war on the Ottoman Empire.

In London, strategists began considering an attempt to break the Dardanelles blockade and take Constantinople. The result was the arrival of a British-French fleet at the southern tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula three months later. The attack, which began with a naval bombardment but soon included an all-out ground-troop invasion, failed dramatically. The Ottoman victory led to the resignation of Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill and provided the foundation for the rise of the man who would later found modern Turkey: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The bloody battle also became a national trauma for Australia and New Zealand, thousands of whose soldiers lost their lives at Gallipoli.The Allies' defeat at Gallipoli marked a strategic turning point in the war in the Middle East. Because their plan to strike at the heart of the Ottoman Empire failed, the Allies began focusing on its periphery -- targeting the comparatively weakly defended Arab provinces. It was a plan which corresponded with the Arab desire to throw off the yoke of Ottoman rule. In July 1915, Sir Henry McMahon, the High Commissioner of Egypt, began secret correspondence with Hussein Bin Ali, the Sharif of Hejaz and of the holy city of Mecca. He and his sons, Ali, Faisal and Abdullah -- together with the Damascus elite -- dreamed of founding an Arab nation state stretching from the Taurus Mountains in southeastern Turkey to the Red Sea and from the Mediterranean to the Iranian border.
In October 1915, McMahon wrote Hussein a letter in which he declared Great Britain's willingness -- bar a few vague reservations -- "to recognize and support the independence of the Arabs within the territories in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sherif of Mecca."

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