Fed Creates Hundreds of Billions Out of Thin Air: Have We Launched an Economic War on the Rest of the World?

from AlterNet

The object of warfare is to take over a country's land, raw materials and assets. Today you can do it financially simply by creating credit.

The Federal Reserve will pump $600 billion more into the US economy and keep interest rates at historical low levels. The short-term impact of the Fed’s move, known as quantitative easing, has been a jump in stock prices across the globe. Many nations, however, have accused the United States of waging a currency war by devaluing the dollar. We speak to former Wall Street economist and University of Missouri professor Michael Hudson. "The object of warfare is to take over a country’s land, raw materials and assets, and grab them," Hudson says. "In the past, that used to be done militarily by invading them. But today you can do it financially simply by creating credit, which is what the Federal Reserve has done." [includes rush transcript]

JUAN GONZALEZ: On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve said it will pump $600 billion more into the US economy and keep interest rates at historically low levels. The short-term impact of the Fed’s move, known as quantitative easing, has been a jump in stock prices across the globe, but many nations have accused the US of waging a currency war by devaluing the dollar. Brazil’s president-elect Dilma Rousseff said, quote, "The last time there was a series of competitive devaluations, it ended in World War II."

China has accused the US of uncontrolled money printing. By devaluing the dollar, the Fed is cheapening the price of US exports and making foreign imports more expensive. In addition, the low interest rates are encouraging US corporations to make massive investments overseas, cheaply buying up foreign real estate, natural resources and stock.

AMY GOODMAN: Our next guest, Michael Hudson, says finance has become a new form of warfare. Michael Hudson is Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City. A former Wall Street economist, he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.

Michael Hudson, welcome to Democracy Now!

MICHAEL HUDSON: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Why warfare?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the object of warfare is to take over a country’s land, raw materials and assets, and grab them. And in the past, that used to be done militarily by invading them. But today you can do it financially simply by creating credit, which is what the Federal Reserve has done. It’s created $600 billion. It hasn’t gone into the economy. The head of the Fed is known as "Helicopter Ben" because he talks about dropping money into the economy. But if you see helicopters, they’re probably not your friends. Don’t go out and wait for them to drop the money, because the money is all going electronically into the banks. And the Fed has said, we want to give the banks so much money that they will lend it out so you can begin to bid up prices on real estate again and pull the banks out of the real estate negative equity that it’s in. So the purpose, according to the Fed, is to raise the price of real estate, to inflate asset prices. But that’s not happening. The actual banks have lent less today than they did in 2007. So the money is going abroad. And it’s going abroad not really to buy foreign companies so much, but to speculate in currency.

Now, the Fed and the Congress, two weeks ago, said, "We want China to raise its currency by 20 percent." This would create billions and billions of dollars of bonanza for Wall Street banks, and it would enable them to earn their way out of debt by essentially looting the China central bank, the Brazilian central bank, the Turkish central bank and the other central banks, because you can now borrow money in America at one percent. So you’d put down, let’s say, a billion dollars of your own—a million dollars of your own money, borrow $99 million of the bank’s money—that’s $100 million. You would buy Chinese currency, RMB, for $100 million. You then say, "Raise your currency by 20 percent," which is what the Fed has asked them to do. That means that your million dollars now has turned into a $20 million gain, because $100 million is now worth $120 million. You’ve made a 200 percent profit. And for Wall Street, they deal in billions, not millions. And so, this would enable the banks to make up their money by buying out, essentially, foreign currency. They’re doing the same in Australia. It’s currency gamble.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, and meanwhile, the impact, because obviously this decision was made the day after the elections at the Fed meeting, they saw what the political landscape was. There wasn’t going to be any kind of stimulus coming from Congress, so they had to come up with a stimulus for Wall Street the day after the elections. But the impact on the American people of maintaining these historically low interest rates—you know, as we were talking earlier before the show, if you have a little bit of money in a savings account right now, you’re getting virtually no interest. So you’re, in essence, being pressured to end up going into the stock market to be able to get any kind of return on your money—those who still have savings. The same thing with the pension funds. What’s happening to the American people as a result of this same kind of policy?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, if they have money to put in pension funds or savings, they’re only able to get about one percent, if they keep it safe. Otherwise, they’re taking a risk in the stock market. But the key is not simply lowering interest rates. The idea is to flood the economy with credit so the banks will lend out more debt. And if the Fed’s policy works, then housing prices are going to go back up so high that most consumers are going to have to pay 40 percent of their income for housing. They’re going to have to pay more money for credit card debt. The purpose is to help the banks make money at the expense of the economy. It’s not to help the economy at all. That’s the really important thing. When they say the economy, they mean—the Fed means its constituency: the banks. And the banks’ product is debt. And that’s what they’re trying to produce.

AMY GOODMAN: Is this inflationary?

MICHAEL HUDSON: It will inflate asset prices. It won’t inflate consumer prices. It’s actually deflationary for consumer prices, because if you’re an American consumer and you spend 40 percent of your income for housing, 15 percent for debt service to the bank, 11 percent goes out in your FICA wage withholding, and about ten to 15 percent in actual income taxes, that means that the average American has maybe one-third or a quarter of their salary to actually spend on goods and services. So they have to spend so much on debt service and finance and insurance and real estate that there’s no money to buy goods and services, so that’s why so many stores are closing throughout the cities on the big shopping streets. It’s deflationary for the economy, inflationary for the people who have wealth, inflationary for the banks. And it’s the banks really at the expense of the economy.

JUAN GONZALEZ: But there is the reality now that the world has changed dramatically over the last thirty or forty years, and you have now this sort of new independent force on the world scene, even in finance, which is the countries like China, Brazil and other countries of the third world that are, in essence, standing up on some of these issues. What’s happening in terms of their reaction?

MICHAEL HUDSON: The world is dividing into two currency blocs. And over the last few months, China has gone to Turkey, Malaysia, Thailand, and said, "We want to avoid using the dollar altogether." They’re treating it like a pariah currency. They’re saying, "Well, let’s make a currency swap. We’ll give you our Chinese RMB, you give us your currency, the baht, and we’ll do our trade in our own currency. We are isolating the dollar, so that people are not going to use the dollar anymore." That’s why the dollar is plunging on world foreign exchange markets. The whole world that America created after World War II of open markets is now closing off. And it’s closing off, really, because the United States is trying to rescue the real estate market from all the junk mortgages, all the crooked loans, all of the financial fraud, instead of just letting the fraud go and throwing the guys in jail like other economists have suggested.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to play a comment from the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. We interviewed him recently. He was talking about the Federal Reserve and its attempt to inject liquidity into the US economy.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: So the money isn’t going into the American economy. The lending is actually below what it was in 2007. In a globalized economy, the money is looking for the best place to go. And where is it finding it? In the emerging markets. So, the irony is that money that was intended to rekindle the American economy is causing havoc all over the world. Those elsewhere in the world say, what the United States is trying to do is the twenty-first century version of "beggar thy neighbor" policies that were part of the Great Depression: you strengthen yourself by hurting the others. You can’t do protectionism in the old version of raising tariffs, but what you can do is lower your exchange rate, and that’s what low interest rates are trying to do, weaken the dollar. The flood of liquidity abroad is trying to push the exchange rates abroad. And they say—they’re saying, "We can’t allow that."

AMY GOODMAN: That’s economist Joe Stiglitz. Professor Hudson, your response?

MICHAEL HUDSON: That was, I think, the best interview on your show that Professor Stiglitz has ever done. Last Saturday, I was in Germany at an economic meeting, and we were discussing this very interview there. And what they’re pointing out is that in Europe, in Germany and all of Europe, it’s illegal for the central bank to finance government debt. All of Europe is being subjected to austerity now because of the way in which their constitution is written. So they’re saying, "Wait a minute. When we run a deficit, we have to raise interest rates and impose austerity. And in the United States, they are doing just the opposite. They’re lowering interest rates to buy us out."

And the interview of Professor Stiglitz here was quite right. America is doing all of this. The Fed is doing this to cover up the huge fraud that he talks about. He’s right. These people should be in jail, and you shouldn’t bail them out. You’re keeping the debt that was run out by the junk mortgages and the fraudulent lending, you’re keeping that in place, pricing American labor out of the market, and making it impossible for America to earn its way out of debt. So, in Europe, they’re saying, "How can America ever repay these dollar debts that they’re running up?" They can’t repay, and that’s why the euro is going up against America. And that’s why they say, "We want to now talk to the BRIC countries, to China, to the third world, and move into a currency area with them and just isolate the dollar, so they can’t do the kind of financial warfare that they’ve been engaging in.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, in terms of how countries can respond, one of the things that obviously a lot of the Asian countries did during the financial crisis in late 1990s was currency controls—in essence, trying to prevent foreign capital from either leaving or entering the country. Is that something that you envision something this country is beginning to do?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Yes, there is only one country that did that, and that was Malaysia under Prime Minister Tun Mohamad Mahathir. He would not sell the domestic currency to the foreign speculators, so George Soros and the others who sold the currency short, hoping that the central bank would use all of its money just to defend its currency and then be emptied out, they couldn’t cover their position, so they were squeezed. But countries like Korea, where the meetings, the G20 meetings, are this week—the IMF went and said, "You owe money you can’t pay. George Soros has raided you. You have to sell Americans your electric companies. You have to sell Americans your car companies." And this was a grab that, in the past, in past centuries, there would have had to be a military invasion to take over. And now they’re doing it financially. And they’re angry over there.

AMY GOODMAN: You were advising Kucinich when he was running for president.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: What is—overall, what do you think President Obama should do, and what do you think he did wrong, since people say it’s the economy that took him down in the elections?

MICHAEL HUDSON: He has always represented Wall Street’s interest. The deal he—his protector in the Senate was Joe Lieberman and part of the Democratic Leadership Council. And during the last presidential campaign, he won because he said he was for change. And Dennis Kucinich kept saying, "Here is the change in the law that I’ve recommended." He said exactly what he would do. Mr. Obama never said what he would do. And it’s obviously the case that he saw that the public wanted change. If you want to get elected, you say that you’re for change.

But what he’s turned into is the third Bush-Cheney administration. He’s reappointed the worst of the Bush people, like Tim Geithner as the Treasury secretary. He’s kept on the most right-wing of the Clinton people as his economic advisers. He is essentially in Wall Street’s pocket. And that’s not changed at all. And that’s why so many people were so disappointed. They believed that he was going to be for change, and he’s a good speaker, but he had no intention of doing the change at all, as we now see.

And he still has not come out and said that America needs anything except more debt, more bailouts for the banks. People were angry because the banks were bailed out. And now the Republicans will say he didn’t give them enough. They’re angry because he didn’t give Wall Street enough and cut taxes enough on the rich. That’s not why people are angry. They’re angry because he gave money to the rich, the exact opposite. So, I guess you could say Mr. Obama and Mr. Kucinich are at opposite ends of the political spectrum.

AMY GOODMAN: What should he do right now?

MICHAEL HUDSON: What he should do is, essentially, bring the debts down to the ability to pay. He had promised that he was going to renegotiate mortgages to the current value of housing. That would mean writing down housing by about 30 percent, so it could be affordable again. But he hasn’t done that. In the government, he has prevented the state attorney generals from prosecuting financial fraud and from forcing the banks to renegotiate the mortgages down to what American consumers can afford. And Mr. Obama has blocked this. And so, all fifty—

JUAN GONZALEZ: And also what the real value of many of those properties are.

MICHAEL HUDSON: The market—either the market price or the rental price. So, essentially, people would pay for the—to own a house pretty much what you’d pay to rent. That’s the definition of equilibrium in economics. But right now they’re paying much more on their mortgage than they could go and rent an apartment for, and they can’t afford it. People are out of work. And the result is that there is a debt squeeze. And so, that’s why I said this is deflationary, not inflationary. What should be inflated are American wages, American living standards, tangible investment. Instead, what’s inflated is debt and the financial sector at the expense of the production and consumption.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And what do you expect to happen at the G20 meeting that’s coming up now?

MICHAEL HUDSON: The same thing that happened two weeks ago: absolutely nothing. They will all agree that the soup was very good, that the food was nice, and that they will have further discussions. But America will not get any of what it’s asking for from them, because they’re going to say, "Look, we’re not going to let you create electronic keyboard credit and buy out our real estate and our industry and empty out our bank reserves like you did in the 1997 Asia crisis." That’s never going to happen again, and the world is going to begin splitting into two currency blocs: the BRIC bloc and the dollar bloc.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, Michael Hudson, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, distinguished research professor of economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, author of Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.

Michael Hudson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is a staff writer at the Center for Public Integrity (http://www.publicintegrity.org), a nonprofit journalist organization. He is the author of "THE MONSTER: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America – And Spawned a Global Crisis" (2010, Times Books)

Previously Unpublished - DANZIG *

Here are a couple of photos from the first photo session ever of the band DANZIG (circa 1988). Not one of these was used for the original purpose of publicity, for one reason or another, but when you look back at them it's just hard to believe.


I shot this whole day more as a favor to Rick Rubin than anything else. Rick has always been a big fan and supporter of my work. I actually introduced him to Glenn Danzig at his request, and he signed him shortly thereafter. I even had the idea to introduce them to Chuck Biscuits when i heard they were looking for a drummer, and i had heard Chuck was no longer in any bands at the time (although i probably never saw a better fit for Chuck than the few years he played with the Circle Jerks - not to say he was not totally incredible in Black Flag, because of course he was, i believe he just couldn't keep up the work ethic - and of course you can never downplay his teen years as a member of the groundbreaking DOA) truthfully Chuck adds to any group he's in, hands down one of the greatest if not the greatest punk drummer of all time.

Anyway, unless you have my Fuck You Too book you've never seen any photos from this session anywhere (and there are quite a few more good ones too!)

Let's throw in this poorly scanned still i took from the Tougher Than Leather movie shoot of Rick with adult film star, Lois Ayres, for good measure:



*recycled old post (6/5/09), I should be live again tomorrow - thanks.

King Tee - previously unpublished shots *

These are just a few bad ass shots taken in the parking lot at the Forum in Inglewood, California, that we never got to use.

*actually this last shot was published in a book called Rockin' Down The Highway

King Tee (Roger McBride) was probably one of the least popular hip-hop artists that i shot more than once over the years (i mean there indeed were some less popular, but i only shot them once), but all the work we did was really good looking, and always based around some cool car that he or his friends had at the time. We did three album covers together (and i can't remember how many 12" single covers we got from those same sessions), and i got great compliments for all of them from people of every ilk, I think i like the last one (At Your Own Risk) the best because it was so damn real, and it was all so not set up. The front cover I shot while leaning out the window of Amery's car while on the 101 freeway headed downtown to the L.A. County Jail (to shoot what we thought would be the front cover), it was a one off killer, composition and attitude perfect, the day i got it back from Kodak i knew it was the shot that we didn't plan, but that I'd convince them all to use. Now i gotta admit that wasn't hard, since Ice-T was in fact making a lot of those art/management type decisions with "T-La" at the time, and the shot we got for the back cover with the insets were incredible. On the way back to Ice-T's house, where we all met up for the photo-session, the police pulled up behind the lowered light green Impala '64 and flipped the lights on and made them all get out of the car, we were in the car just ahead of them, so we saw it all happen then pulled over, parked down a side street, as quickly as possible i threw some film into the camera and a long lens, then shot a few photos surveillance style before I walked up and vouched for them. Unfortunately once again white guy with a big mouth, saves the day, but we were in L.A. so some harassment was inevitable. But at least we got a dope shot for the back cover...





* FYI - On purpose, I have not taken a photo with a weapon, in over 15 years, and never plan to ever again. When i originally was doing it, it was before it became common, or worse, a novelty. Early on we were trying to show a particular reality, but once i became aware of the fact that it was no longer just helping to tell a story, share a reality of daily life for some of these lyricists, but eventually seemed to be glorifying the use of guns, I vowed never to create a picture with a gun in it again. The last time i did it was for the infamous 1993 cover of In Gatz We Truss' by South Central Cartel. Besides, shooting pictures with a gun, a cigarette or gratuitous nudity, i came to realize for the most part is just a cop-out, when there's not something else great about a personality, composition or character, just throw in one of those "props" and all sense goes out the window. Too corny and too easy, that's my opinion. Not to mention, I HATE GUNS!



*recycled old post (5/23/09) while i'm flying back home to NYC from SF - thanks.

Black Flag at the Ukrainian Hall in L.A. December 1982 *

Above is a rarely if ever seen photo of mine from sound check taken in B&W. Below some video (with pretty horrible sound) I found on YouTube from the same nights show, I think this song is the 1st song of the encore (and i think that's me going off behind the drummer like a crazy person after i finished shooting that night.)



And below one of the great shots I got that night that I used in The Idealist (another photo from this show is on the cover of Fuck You Heroes.)



*recycled old post (4/7/09) while i'm in San Francisco

C'mon out tonight in SF to see my FUCK YOU ALL exhibition

SEE YOU AT THE SHOW
Click on the flyer to read the information



recent press and show info
941 GEARY
JUXTAPOZ
SF WEEKLY
BoingBoing
FaceBook

Here in San Francisco

SEE YOU AT THE SHOW
Click on the flyer to read the information



recent press and show info
941 GEARY
JUXTAPOZ
SF WEEKLY
BoingBoing
FaceBook

FUCK YOU ALL HEADED TO SAN FRANCISCO

SEE YOU AT THE SHOW
Click on the flyer to read the information



recent press and show info
941 GEARY
JUXTAPOZ
SF WEEKLY
BoingBoing
FaceBook

Ultra groovy Parliament-Funkadelic promotional videos and TV commercials

A collection of videos and commercials from the 1970’s promoting PF's "Cosmic Slop", "Dr. Funkenstein", "The Motor Booty Affair", "Funkentelechy".

"Dr. Funkenstein unveils his bop-gun."

Climb aboard the mothership.


 

 

 


from DangerousMinds

‘Hi, I’m a Tea-Partier’

thanks, Dangerous Minds

Keith Morris and his new band OFF!

I've been a Keith Morris fan since I heard the first Black Flag 7" "Nervous Breakdown" (one of my favorite records of all time). So when I heard his new band OFF! was playing down the street at Generation Records shop last week, I HAD to go to see my old friend and hear his new band, there was no excuse. I had a great time seeing him, talking before and after the gig. I took a roll of film as well. Here's some of the results (click to see them large) and some OFF! videos I found by Jake Burghart.

OFF! was formed in Los Angeles, California in late 2009 by Circle Jerks/Black Flag singer Keith Morris, Burning Brides frontman Dimitri Coats, Redd Kross bassist Steven Shane McDonald, and Rocket From The Crypt/Hot Snakes drummer Mario Rubalcaba.

PUMPKIN CARVING EXTREME

Artist Ray Villafane began carving pumpkins on a lark for his art students in a small rural school district in Michigan. The hobby changed his life as he gained a viral following online and unlocked his genuine love of sculpting. Here are images of pumpkin carvings Villafane created over the past five years.

Thanks, Dasez

The Most Dangerous Cities For Walking

Cities where pedestrians happily walk to their destinations instead of driving everywhere are our dream, but what if walking means taking your life into your hands? This is a look at a handful of cities around the world, and how often their pedestrians are killed while attempting to traverse them. (click on the diagram above for the details)

from, The Presurfer

I walk everywhere here in New York, and it's one of my favorite things about living here, i don't even own a car. Interesting to see how the highest fatalities are here in the US and in particular in places where people mostly drive. I guess that's becuase they are not used to pedestrians?

BLOODY BEETROOTS DEATH CREW 77 (wtf?)

Honestly I had no idea what the fuck i was getting into friday night a few weeks ago, but these Italian kids got to me somehow (maybe it was the oliva dolce they brought me from home?) I had a nice time hanging out and talking the night before, seeing them at their sound check the next day, then decided "what the hell" i'll bring my camera and if inspired i'll shoot some photos. Shit did i feel old ;-) Well i'm still not sure what it is you'd call exactly what they do, or what i witnessed (some crazy peek at the future perhaps?) But, i did have a good time and i think i got some dope shots. The kids there loved it, as did the friend who i brought along. Here below is my favorite photo of the evening - if not the year. (Yes, i can still do this motherfuckers! click on it to see it bigger).


Here's a link to their Death Crew 77 website

and this cover they do of a Refused song:



BLOODY BEETROOTS DEATH CREW 77 MANIFESTO:

“Every day an artist gets up and knows he has to run. He has to run faster than the distant fragments of our time, faster than the voices hemming him in, telling him that however much he thinks,imagines, writes or comunicates, the system has already found a new way of drowning him out.
Faster than the army of pretentious pinheads boasting artistic bollox, screaming their cheapskate anger, selling out for twenty seconds of fame, filling their arses with gold so they can say I was there, applauding midgets dressed up as giants.
He knows he has to chase ideals that have packed their bags And run off to the nearest tourist haven or tax haven and chase gods that ask for a discount on the rent on olympus and apartments with a view of the clouds because, if they look down, they say they get an urge to throw up.
Down here, it’s all ours, it all belongs to men and women, but it’s common knowledge that we’ve never had a particular talent for doing things well.
Every day an artist gets up and knows he has to run. What he doesn’t know, perhaps, is that he doesn’t have to run …alone”.

btw. they are playing Los Angeles Saturday night, check out their MySpace page for more west coast shows in the next few days, then onto Europe. If you're young you probably already know about them. i'm not. i didn't. And honestly i'm still not sure what to make of it all. But like i said, i had a good time and the whole crew was really cool. (I think you'll be seeing more of my photos of them in the future.)

BONUS: Another thing i liked about these guys is that they seem to do most everything themselves, the video below was conceived and directed by the band themselves. Can't be mad at that.

We are Facing the Greatest Threat to Humanity: Only Fundamental Change Can Save Us

from AlterNet

By Maude Barlow, On the Commons

Maude Barlow gave this stirring plenary speech, full of hope even in the face of ecological disasters, to the Environmental Grantmakers Association annual retreat in Pacific Grove, California. Barlow, a former UN Senior Water Advisor, is National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and founder of the Blue Planet Project. Barlow is a contributor to AlterNet's forth-coming book Water Matters: Why We Need to Act Now to Save Our Most Critical Resource.

We all know that the earth and all upon it face a growing crisis. Global climate change is rapidly advancing, melting glaciers, eroding soil, causing freak and increasingly wild storms, and displacing untold millions from rural communities to live in desperate poverty in peri-urban slums. Almost every human victim lives in the global South, in communities not responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. The atmosphere has already warmed up almost a full degree in the last several decades and a new Canadian study reports that we may be on course to add another 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.

Half the tropical forests in the world – the lungs of our ecosystems – are gone; by 2030, at the current rate of harvest, only 10% will be left standing. Ninety percent of the big fish in the sea are gone, victim to wanton predatory fishing practices. Says a prominent scientist studying their demise “there is no blue frontier left.” Half the world’s wetlands – the kidneys of our ecosystems – were destroyed in the 20th century. Species extinction is taking place at a rate one thousand times greater than before humans existed. According to a Smithsonian scientist, we are headed toward a “biodiversity deficit” in which species and ecosystems will be destroyed at a rate faster than Nature can create new ones.

We are polluting our lakes, rivers and streams to death. Every day, 2 million tons of sewage and industrial and agricultural waste are discharged into the world’s water, the equivalent of the weight of the entire human population of 6.8 billion people. The amount of wastewater produced annually is about six times more water than exists in all the rivers of the world. A comprehensive new global study recently reported that 80% of the world’s rivers are now in peril, affecting 5 billion people on the planet. We are also mining our groundwater far faster than nature can replenish it, sucking it up to grow water-guzzling chemical-fed crops in deserts or to water thirsty cities that dump an astounding 200 trillion gallons of land-based water as waste in the oceans every year. The global mining industry sucks up another 200 trillion gallons, which it leaves behind as poison. Fully one third of global water withdrawals are now used to produce biofuels, enough water to feed the world. A recent global survey of groundwater found that the rate of depletion more than doubled in the last half century. If water was drained as rapidly from the Great Lakes, they would be bone dry in 80 years.

The global water crisis is the greatest ecological and human threat humanity has ever faced. As vast areas of the planet are becoming desert as we suck the remaining waters out of living ecosystems and drain remaining aquifers in India, China, Australia, most of Africa, all of the Middle East, Mexico, Southern Europe, US Southwest and other places. Dirty water is the biggest killer of children; every day more children die of water borne disease than HIV/AIDS, malaria and war together. In the global South, dirty water kills a child every three and a half seconds. And it is getting worse, fast. By 2030, global demand for water will exceed supply by 40%— an astounding figure foretelling of terrible suffering.

Knowing there will not be enough food and water for all in the near future, wealthy countries and global investment, pension and hedge funds are buying up land and water, fields and forests in the global South, creating a new wave of invasive colonialism that will have huge geo-political ramifications. Rich investors have already bought up an amount of land double the size of the United Kingdom in Africa alone.

We Simply Cannot Continue on the Present Path

I do not think it possible to exaggerate the threat to our earth and every living thing upon it. Quite simply we cannot continue on the path that brought us here. Einstein said that problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. While mouthing platitudes about caring for the earth, most of our governments are deepening the crisis with new plans for expanded resource exploitation, unregulated free trade deals, more invasive investment, the privatization of absolutely everything and unlimited growth. This model of development is literally killing the planet.

Unlimited growth assumes unlimited resources, and this is the genesis of the crisis. Quite simply, to feed the increasing demands of our consumer based system, humans have seen nature as a great resource for our personal convenience and profit, not as a living ecosystem from which all life springs. So we have built our economic and development policies based on a human-centric model and assumed either that nature would never fail to provide or that, where it does fail, technology will save the day.

Two Problems that Hinder the Environmental Movement

From the perspective of the environmental movement, I see two problems that hinder us in our work to stop this carnage. The first is that, with notable exceptions, most environmental groups either have bought into the dominant model of development or feel incapable of changing it. The main form of environmental protection in industrialized countries is based on the regulatory system, legalizing the discharge of large amounts of toxics into the environment. Environmentalists work to minimize the damage from these systems, essentially fighting for inadequate laws based on curbing the worst practices, but leaving intact the system of economic globalization at the heart of the problem. Trapped inside this paradigm, many environmentalists essentially prop up a deeply flawed system, not imagining they are capable of creating another.

Hence, the support of false solutions such as carbon markets, which, in effect, privatize the atmosphere by creating a new form of property rights over natural resources. Carbon markets are predicated less on reducing emissions than on the desire to make carbon cuts as cheap as possible for large corporations.

Another false solution is the move to turn water into private property, which can then be hoarded, bought and sold on the open market. The latest proposals are for a water pollution market, similar to carbon markets, where companies and countries will buy and sell the right to pollute water. With this kind of privatization comes a loss of public oversight to manage and protect watersheds. Commodifying water renders an earth-centred vision for watersheds and ecosystems unattainable.

Then there is PES, or Payment for Ecological Services, which puts a price tag on ecological goods – clean air, water, soil etc, – and the services such as water purification, crop pollination and carbon sequestration that sustain them. A market model of PES is an agreement between the “holder” and the “consumer” of an ecosystem service, turning that service into an environmental property right. Clearly this system privatizes nature, be it a wetland, lake, forest plot or mountain, and sets the stage for private accumulation of nature by those wealthy enough to be able to buy, hoard sell and trade it. Already, northern hemisphere governments and private corporations are studying public/private/partnerships to set up lucrative PES projects in the global South. Says Friends of the Earth International, “Governments need to acknowledge that market-based mechanisms and the commodification of biodiversity have failed both biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation.”

The second problem with our movement is one of silos. For too long environmentalists have toiled in isolation from those communities and groups working for human and social justice and for fundamental change to the system. On one hand are the scientists, scholars, and environmentalists warning of a looming ecological crisis and monitoring the decline of the world’s freshwater stocks, energy sources and biodiversity. On the other are the development experts, anti-poverty advocates, and NGOs working to address the inequitable access to food, water and health care and campaigning for these services, particularly in the global South. The assumption is that these are two different sets of problems, one needing a scientific and ecological solution, the other needing a financial solution based on pulling money from wealthy countries, institutions and organizations to find new resources for the poor.

The clearest example I have is in the area I know best, the freshwater crisis. It is finally becoming clear to even the most intransigent silo separatists that the ecological and human water crises are intricately linked, and that to deal effectively with either means dealing with both. The notion that inequitable access can be dealt with by finding more money to pump more groundwater is based on a misunderstanding that assumes unlimited supply, when in fact humans everywhere are overpumping groundwater supplies. Similarly, the hope that communities will cooperate in the restoration of their water systems when they are desperately poor and have no way of conserving or cleaning the limited sources they use is a cruel fantasy. The ecological health of the planet is intricately tied to the need for a just system of water distribution.

The global water justice movement (of which I have the honour of being deeply involved) is, I believe, successfully incorporating concerns about the growing ecological water crisis with the promotion of just economic, food and trade policies to ensure water for all. We strongly believe that fighting for equitable water in a world running out means taking better care of the water we have, not just finding supposedly endless new sources. Through countless gatherings where we took the time to really hear one another – especially grassroots groups and tribal peoples closest to the struggle – we developed a set of guiding principles and a vision for an alternative future that are universally accepted in our movement and have served us well in times of stress. We are also deeply critical of the trade and development policies of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the World Water Council (whom I call the “Lords of water”), and we openly challenge their model and authority.

Similarly, a fresh and exciting new movement exploded onto the scene in Copenhagen and set all the traditional players on their heads. The climate justice movement whose motto is Change the System, Not the Climate, arrived to challenge not only the stalemate of the government negotiators but the stale state of too cosy alliances between major environmental groups, international institutions and big business – the traditional “players” on the climate scene. Those climate justice warriors went on to gather at another meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia, producing a powerful alternative declaration to the weak statement that came out of Copenhagen. The new document forged in Bolivia put the world on notice that business as usual is not on the climate agenda.

How the Commons Fits In

I deeply believe it is time for us to extend these powerful new movements, which fuse the analysis and hard work of the environmental community with the vision and commitment of the justice community, into a whole new form of governance that not only challenges the current model of unlimited growth and economic globalization but promotes an alternative that will allow us and the Earth to survive. Quite simply, human-centred governance systems are not working and we need new economic, development, and environmental policies as well as new laws that articulate an entirely different point of view from that which underpins most governance systems today. At the centre of this new paradigm is the need to protect natural ecosystems and to ensure the equitable and just sharing of their bounty. It also means the recovery of an old concept called the Commons.

The Commons is based on the notion that just by being members of the human family, we all have rights to certain common heritages, be they the atmosphere and oceans, freshwater and genetic diversity, or culture, language and wisdom. In most traditional societies, it was assumed that what belonged to one belonged to all. Many indigenous societies to this day cannot conceive of denying a person or a family basic access to food, air, land, water and livelihood. Many modern societies extended the same concept of universal access to the notion of a social Commons, creating education, health care and social security for all members of the community. Since adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, governments are obliged to protect the human rights, cultural diversity and food security of their citizens.

A central characteristic of the Commons is the need for careful collaborative management of shared resources by those who use them and allocation of access based on a set of priorities. A Commons is not a free-for-all. We are not talking about a return to the notion that nature’s capacity to sustain our ways is unlimited and anyone can use whatever they want, however they want, whenever they want. It is rooted rather in a sober and realistic assessment of the true damage that has already been unleashed on the world’s biological heritage as well as the knowledge that our ecosystems must be managed and shared in a way that protects them now and for all time.

Also to be recovered and expanded is the notion of the Public Trust Doctrine, a longstanding legal principle which holds that certain natural resources, particularly air, water and the oceans, are central to our very existence and therefore must be protected for the common good and not allowed to be appropriated for private gain. Under the Public Trust Doctrine, governments exercise their fiduciary responsibilities to sustain the essence of these resources for the long-term use and enjoyment of the entire populace, not just the privileged who can buy inequitable access.

The Public Trust Doctrine was first codified in 529 A.D. by Emperor Justinius who declared: “By the laws of nature, these things are common to all mankind: the air, running water, the sea and consequently the shores of the sea.” U.S. courts have referred to the Public Trust Doctrine as a “high, solemn and perpetual duty” and held that the states hold title to the lands under navigable waters “in trust for the people of the State.” Recently, Vermont used the Public Trust Doctrine to protect its groundwater from rampant exploitation, declaring that no one owns this resource but rather, it belongs to the people of Vermont and future generations. The new law also places a priority for this water in times of shortages: water for daily human use, sustainable food production and ecosystem protection takes precedence over water for industrial and commercial use.

An exciting new network of Canadian, American and First Nations communities around the Great Lakes is determined to have these lakes names a Commons, a public trust and a protected bioregion.

Equitable access to natural resources is another key character of the Commons. These resources are not there for the taking by private interests who can then deny them to anyone without means. The human right to land, food, water, health care and biodiversity are being codified as we speak from nation-state constitutions to the United Nations. Ellen Dorsey and colleagues have recently called for a human rights approach to development, where the most vulnerable and marginalized communities take priority in law and practice. They suggest renaming the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals the Millennium Development Rights and putting the voices of the poor at the centre.

This would require the meaningful involvement of those affected communities, especially Indigenous groups, in designing and implementing development strategies. Community-based governance is another basic tenet of the Commons.

Inspiring Successes Around the Globe

Another crucial tenet of the new paradigm is the need to put the natural world back into the centre of our existence. If we listen, nature will teach us how to live. Again, using the issue I know best, we know exactly what to do to create a secure water future: protection and restoration of watersheds; conservation; source protection; rainwater and storm water harvesting; local, sustainable food production; and meaningful laws to halt pollution. Martin Luther King Jr. said legislation may not change the heart but it will restrain the heartless.

Life and livelihoods have been returned to communities in Rajasthan, India, through a system of rainwater harvesting that has made desertified land bloom and rivers run again thanks to the collective action of villagers. The city of Salisbury South Australia, has become an international wonder for greening desertified land in the wake of historic low flows of the Murray River. It captures every drop of rain that falls from the sky and collects storm and wastewater and funnels it all through a series of wetlands, which clean it, to underground natural aquifers, which store it, until it is needed.

In a “debt for nature” swap, Canada, the U.S. and The Netherlands cancelled the debt owed to them by Colombia in exchange for the money being used for watershed restoration. The most exciting project is the restoration of 16 large wetland areas of the Bogotá River, which is badly contaminated, to pristine condition. Eventually the plan is to clean up the entire river. True to principles of the Commons, the indigenous peoples living on the sites were not removed, but rather, have become caretakers of these protected and sacred places.

The natural world also needs its own legal framework, what South African environmental lawyer Cormac Culllinen calls “wild law.” The quest is a body of law that recognizes the inherent rights of the environment, other species and water itself outside of their usefulness to humans. A wild law is a law to regulate human behaviour in order to protect the integrity of the earth and all species on it. It requires a change in the human relationship with the natural world from one of exploitation to one of democracy with other beings. If we are members of the earth’s community, then our rights must be balanced against those of plants, animals, rivers and ecosystems. In a world governed by wild law, the destructive, human-centred exploitation of the natural world would be unlawful. Humans would be prohibited from deliberately destroying functioning ecosystems or driving other species to extinction.

This kind of legal framework is already being established. The Indian Supreme Court has ruled that protection of natural lakes and ponds is akin to honouring the right to life – the most fundamental right of all according to the Court. Wild law was the inspiration behind an ordinance in Tamaqua Borough, Pennsylvania that recognized natural ecosystems and natural communities within the borough as “legal persons” for the purposes of stopping the dumping of sewage sludge on wild land. It has been used throughout New England in a series of local ordinances to prevent bottled water companies from setting up shop in the area. Residents of Mount Shasta California have put a wild law ordinance on the November 2010 ballot to prevent cloud seeding and bulk water extraction within city limits.

In 2008, Ecuador’s citizens voted two thirds in support of a new constitution, which says, “Natural communities and ecosystems possess the unalienable right to exist, flourish and evolve within Ecuador. Those rights shall be self-executing, and it shall be the duty and right of all Ecuadorian governments, communities, and individuals to enforce those rights.” Bolivia has recently amended its constitution to enshrine the philosophy of “living well” as a means of expressing concern with the current model of development and signifying affinity with nature and the need for humans to recognize inherent rights of the earth and other living beings. The government of Argentina recently moved to protect its glaciers by banning mining and oil drilling in ice zones. The law sets standards for protecting glaciers and surrounding ecosystems and creates penalties just for harming the country’s fresh water heritage.

The most far-reaching proposal for the protection of nature itself is the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth that was drafted at the April 2010 World People’s Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba, Bolivia and endorsed by the 35,000 participants there. We are writing a book setting out our case for this Declaration to the United Nations and the world. The intent is for it to become a companion document to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Every now and then in history, the human race takes a collective step forward in its evolution. Such a time is upon us now as we begin to understand the urgent need to protect the earth and its ecosystems from which all life comes. The Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth must become a history-altering covenant toward a just and sustainable future for all.

What Can We Do Right Now?

What might this mean for funders and other who share these values? Well, let me be clear: the hard work of those fighting environmental destruction and injustice must continue. I am not suggesting for one moment that his work is not important or that the funding for this work is not needed. I do think however, that there are ways to move the agenda I have outlined here forward if we put our minds to it.

Anything that helps bridge the solitudes and silos is pure gold. Bringing together environmentalists and justice activists to understand one another’s work and perspective is crucial. Both sides have to dream into being – together – the world they know is possible and not settle for small improvements to the one we have. This means working for a whole different economic, trade and development model even while fighting the abuses existing in the current one. Given a choice between funding an environmental organization that basically supports the status quo with minor changes and one that promotes a justice agenda as well, I would argue for the latter.

Support that increases capacity at the base is also very important, as is funding that connects domestic to international struggle, always related even when not apparent. Funding for those projects and groups fighting to abolish or fundamentally change global trade and banking institutions that maintain corporate dominance and promote unlimited and unregulated growth is still essential.

How Clean Water Became a Human Right

We all, as well, have to find ways to thank and protect those groups and governments going out on a limb to promote an agenda for true change. A very good example is President Evo Morales of Bolivia, who brought the climate justice movement together in Cochabamba last April and is leading the campaign at the UN to promote the Rights of Mother Earth.

It was this small, poor, largely indigenous landlocked country, and its former coca-farmer president, that introduced a resolution to recognize the human right to water and sanitation this past June to the UN General Assembly, taking the whole UN community by surprise. The Bolivian UN Ambassador, Pablo Solon, decided he was fed up with the “commissions” and “further studies” and “expert consultations” that have managed to put off the question of the right to water for at least a decade at the UN and that it was time to put an “up or down” question to every country: do you or do you not support the human right to drinking water and sanitation?

A mad scramble ensued as a group of Anglo-Western countries, all promoting to some extent the notion of water as a private commodity, tried to derail the process and put off the vote. The U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand even cooked up a “consensus” resolution that was so bland everyone would likely have handily voted for it at an earlier date. But sitting beside the real thing, it looked like what it was – an attempt, yet again, to put off any meaningful commitment at the UN to the billions suffering from lack of clean water. When that didn’t work, they toiled behind the scenes to weaken the wording of the Bolivian resolution but to no avail. On July 28, 2010, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to adopt a resolution recognizing the human right to water and sanitation. One hundred and twenty two countries voted for the resolution; 41 abstained; not one had the courage to vote against.

I share this story with you not only because my team and I were deeply involved in the lead up to this historic vote and there for it the day it was presented, but because it was the culmination of work done by a movement operating on the principles I have outlined above.

We took the time to establish the common principles that water is a Commons that belongs to the earth, all species, and the future, and is a fundamental human right not to be appropriated for profit. We advocate for the Public Trust Doctrine in law at every level of government. We set out to build a movement that listens first and most to the poorest among us, especially indigenous and tribal voices. We work with communities and groups in other movements, especially those working on climate justice and trade justice. We understand the need for careful collaborative cooperation to restore the functioning of watersheds and we have come to revere the water that gives life to all things upon the Earth. While we clearly have much left to do, these water warriors inspire me and give me hope. They get me out of bed every morning to fight another day.

I believe I am in a room full of stewards and want, then to leave you with these words from Lord of the Rings. This is Gandalf speaking the night before he faces a terrible force that threatens all living beings. His words are for you.

“The rule of no realm is mine, but all worthy things that are in peril, as the world now stand, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail in my task if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair, or bear fruit, and flower again in the days to come.

For I too am a steward, did you not know?” —J.R.R. Tolkien


© 2010 On the Commons All rights reserved.

Confounding Fathers The Tea Party’s Cold War roots.

Glenn Beck’s view of American history stems from the paranoid politics of the fifties.

by Sean Wilentz
from the New Yorker

A few months ago, the cable-television and radio host Glenn Beck began his Fox News show with one of his favorite props: a pipe clenched between his teeth. “I’ve got my pipe,” he told his audience, his speech slightly muddled by the stem, “because we’re going to speak about schoolish kind of things.” The theme of the day was “Restoring History,” and Beck, looking professorial in a neat dark blazer and a pink button-down shirt, began the lesson by peering at a stack of history textbooks and pronouncing them full of falsehoods, produced by “malicious progressive intent.” Progressives, he explained—liberals, socialists, Communists, the entire spectrum of the left—“knew they had to separate us from our history to be able to separate us from our Constitution and God.” For the next hour, Beck earnestly explained some of the history that “is being stolen from us”: the depression of 1920, for example, or how conservative economics saved the nation from the “near-depression” of 1946—crises that progressives don’t want you to know about. “You’ve been taught one lie, I think, your whole life,” he said.

For the fractious Tea Party movement, Beck—a former drive-time radio jockey, a recovering alcoholic, and a Mormon convert—has emerged as both a unifying figure and an intellectual guide. One opinion poll, released in July by Democracy Corps, showed that he is “the most highly regarded individual among Tea Party supporters,” seen not merely as an entertainer, like Rush Limbaugh, but as an “educator.” And in the past few months Beck has established his own institute of learning: the online, for-profit Beck University. Enrollees can take courses like Faith 102, which contends with “revisionists and secular progressives” about the separation of church and state; Hope 102, an attack on the activist federal government; and the combined Charity 101/102/103, a highly restrictive interpretation of rights, federalism, and the division of powers.

During the “Restoring History” episode, Beck twice encouraged viewers to join his Web seminars, where they can hear “lessons from the best and brightest historians and scholars that we could find.” The B.U. faculty consists of three members, including one bona-fide academic, James R. Stoner, Jr., the chair of the political-science department at Louisiana State University; the other two are the head of a management consulting firm and the founder of WallBuilders, which the Web site calls “a national pro-family organization.” Beck himself often acts as a professor, a slightly jocular one, on his Fox News program. Surrounded by charts and figures, he offers explanations of current politics and history lessons about the country’s long march to Obama-era totalitarianism. The decline, he says, began with the Progressive era of the early twentieth century, in particular with the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson, when both the Federal Reserve System and the graduated federal income tax came into existence. “Wilson,” Beck told his radio audience in August, “just despised what America was.”

Beck’s claims have found an audience among Tea Party spokesmen and sympathizers. At the movement’s Freedom Summit in Washington last September, one activist told a reporter, “The election between Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in 1912 was when it started going downhill.” And in April an angry member of the Tea Party Patriots group from Cape Fear, North Carolina, claimed on the group’s Web site that “the very things you see happening in this country today started with the Wilson Administration.”

At a Tax Day rally this past spring, the veteran conservative organizer Richard Viguerie described the Tea Party as “an unfettered new force of the middle class.” And, indeed, calling Obama a socialist in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson is audacious enough to seem like the marker of a new movement—or, at least, a new twist in the nation’s long history of conspiracy-mongering. In fact, it marks a revival of ideas that circulated on the extremist right half a century ago, especially in the John Birch Society and among its admirers.

Beck’s version of American history relies on lessons from his own acknowledged inspiration, the late right-wing writer W. Cleon Skousen, and also restates charges made by the Birch Society’s founder, Robert Welch. The political universe is, of course, very different today from what it was during the Cold War. Yet the Birchers’ politics and their view of American history—which focussed more on totalitarian threats at home than on those posed by the Soviet Union and Communist China—has proved remarkably persistent. The pressing historical question is how extremist ideas held at bay for decades inside the Republican Party have exploded anew—and why, this time, Party leaders have done virtually nothing to challenge those ideas, and a great deal to abet them.

The early nineteen-sixties were a turbulent time in American politics, for the right wing in particular. In the South, racist violence against civil-rights workers was constant, deepening sectional splits in the Democratic Party that would in time deliver the once solidly Democratic South to the Republicans. Southern elected officials, in support of what they called “massive resistance” to civil-rights laws and judicial rulings, resurrected the ideas of nullification and interposition, which claimed that individual states could void federal laws within their own borders. Others focussed on what they considered a fearsome Communist menace inside the United States. General Edwin A. Walker caused an enormous stir when he resigned from the Army in 1961, after President John F. Kennedy’s Pentagon reprimanded him for spreading right-wing propaganda among his troops and accusing prominent American officials of Communist sympathies. Senator Strom Thurmond, the Dixiecrat from South Carolina, spoke for many on the far right when he declared that various modestly liberal domestic programs “fall clearly within the category of socialism.”

Continue reading HERE

Feds forced to admit that it's legal to take pictures of federal buildings

via BoingBoing

The New York Civil Liberties Union and Libertarian activist Antonio Musumeci just won a court case that affirms the right of photographers to take pictures and record video out front of federal courthouses. The US federal government settled the case by apologizing to Musumeci for his arrest, acknowledging that it is legal to record at courthouses, and promising to issue guidelines to federal officers explaining this fact to them.

"Not only will this settlement end harassment of photographers outside federal courthouses, it will free people to photograph and film outside of all federal buildings," said NYCLU Associate Legal Director Christopher Dunn, lead counsel in the case. "The regulation at issue in this case applies to all federal buildings, not only courthouses, so this settlement should extend to photography near all federal buildings nationwide.

NYCLU Settlement Ends Restriction on Photography Outside Federal Courthouses

John Sinclair Freedom Rally: rare 1971 rock concert for your viewing pleasure

from DangerousMinds

Ten for Two: The John Sinclair Freedom Rally, directed by Steve Gebhardt is a filmed document of the John Sinclair benefit concert held in 1971.

John Sinclair managed the MC5 and was the founder of The White Panther Party. His uncompromising radical political stance made him a target of the U.S. government. He was busted in a sting operation for selling two joints to undercover cops. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail. Musicians, politicians, artists and friends organized a rally to bring attention to Sinclair’s unjust sentence. It worked. Three days after the rally, Sinclair was released from prison when the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the state’s marijuana statutes were unconstitutional.

Ten For Two was produced by John and Yoko, who also perform in it, and features Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Leni Sinclair, David Peel, Jerry Rubin, Ed Sanders, Bob Seger, Archie Shepp, Bobby Seale, The Steve Miller Band, Commander Cody, Stevie Wonder and more.

The rally was held in Ann Arbor, Michigan. John and Yoko came on at 3 a.m.

Why hasn’t this been released on DVD? Rumor has it that Yoko owns the rights to the film and won’t release it. In the meantime, this funky video is all I’ve been able to get access to.

Here’s an in-depth article on the concert here.

Part 1 kicks in at the 15 second point.

I'd like to add John Sinclair's "Guitar Army" is an incredible book from the man during the era. And his wife Leni shot some of the greatest band portraits of the MC5, I proudly own one.