Verdict in Corrie Lawsuit Postponed

The International Middle East Media Center posts Verdict in Corrie Lawsuit Postponed on 11 April 2012 by Rachel Corrie Foundation.

The announcement of a verdict in the civil lawsuit against the State of Israel for the killing of peace activist Rachel Corrie, which was scheduled for late April, has been postponed due to delays in the filing of closing arguments. A new verdict date has not yet been scheduled by the court, but is likely to be months away.

This has been going on since 2005. At least, the family got a hearing in an Israeli court and the government has provided witnesses.

After more than nine (9) years since her death, I can recall the sarcastic comments by co-workers about her death. Bravery in the face of hegemonic power is always ridiculed. Whereas bravery in service of the same is feted and lionised.

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Randy Wray: The Job Guarantee and Real World Experience

Yves Smiths reposts Randy Wray's post about The Job Guarantee and Real World Experience in Argentinia.

To deal with the looming crisis and skyrocketing unemployment and poverty rates, the Argentinean government implemented a limited job guarantee program called Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados (Program for the Unemployed Male and Female Heads of Households, or simply Jefes). Participation in the program grew quickly, to about 5% of the population, and about 13% of the labor force.

Italics in original

The program seems to be suffering from feminization in a macho society. The women wanted to participate in the program for the following reasons:

1. they felt (or would feel) useless sitting at home,
2. they felt like they were helping the community when they were working,
3. there is dignity in working,
4. they were meeting their neighbors and
5. they were learning new skills.

In other words, working allows people to become more human. Working allows people to become contributors to the societal good.

This type of program allows for community building through work. The people involved see themselves as building society.

Wray argues that:

The first great demand of a better social order…is the guarantee of the right, to every individual who is capable of it, to work—not the mere legal right, but a right which is enforceable so that the individual will always have the opportunity to engage in some form of useful activity and if the ordinary economic machinery breaks down through a crisis of some sort, then it is the duty of the state to come to the rescue and see that individuals have something to do that is worthwhile—not breaking stone in a stoneyard, or something else to get a soup ticket with, but some kind of productive work which a self-respecting person may engage in with interest and with more than mere pecuniary profit.

Emphasis Mine

This is a direct challenge to the use of unemployment as a bludgeon to the workers to keep wages low in a Capitalist economy. The right to work challenges the Capitalist right to crush workers.

Wray concludes:

In a sense, the jobs guarantee/employer of the last resort program really is targeted “to the bottom” since it “hires off the bottom”, offering a job to those left behind. Its wage and benefit package is the lowest, setting the minimum standard that private employers can offer. It does not try to outbid the private sector for workers, but rather takes those who cannot find a job. Further, by decentralizing the program, it allows the local communities to create the projects and organize the program. The local community probably has a better idea of the community’s needs, both in terms of jobs and in terms of projects. However, actual project formulation must be done on a case-by-case basis.

Emphasis Mine

Sounds like Socialism to me. To have communities decide on the tasks to be undertaken is a good first step towards to having popular democracy direct investment and economic activity.

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Argentina nationalises Spanish oil giant

On 16 April 2012, the government of Argentina nationalises Spanish oil giant (Federal Petroleum Deposits (YPF)).

Altogether, 51% of Spanish oil multinational Repsol's 57% stake in YPF has been claimed by the Argentine government.

[Argentine President Cristina] Kirchner said the move was justified by the intransigence of Repsol-YPF. Repsol has reduced investment in oil and gas extraction and refining since taking full control of the previously state-owned company in 1999.

As a result, oil imports cost Argentina US$9.4 billion in last year, more than double the cost in 2010.

This has raised Argentina's trade deficit at a time when it has little access to international credit markets, due to its default on international debt to groups such as the IMF in 2002.

The government has said one goal of the nationalisation is to return Argentina to an exporter of fossil fuels. Recent discoveries have given Argentina the third-largest reserves of shale oil and gas in the world.

When the interests of the business conflicts with that of the people, the people have to act.

… Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the decision “aligns with the principle of sovereign control over natural resources”.

The article concludes that:

Ultimately, it seems that both sides had little choice. Repsol is bound to the corporate principle of investing in the most profitable ventures available. This did not include providing affordable natural gas and petrol, under a scheme of price caps, to the people of Argentina.

Given the failure of Kirchner's policy of price controls, nationalisation was the most feasible way to maintain affordable access to energy for the population while seeking to end dependency on oil imports.

Emphasis Mine

Corporate interests and national interests are not aligned. However, the state in this case went against the interests of a foreign company to satisfy Argentine interests.

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Wall Street has always been War Street

Mickey Z writes that Wall Street has always been War Street.

The pursuit of profit long ago transcended national borders and well… anything resembling justice, community, solidarity, or morality.

He stresses that:

Please allow me to repeat: Wall Street has always been War Street.

Calling war "possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, sure the most vicious" racket of all, infamous U.S. Marine Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler declared (back in the 1930s): "It is the only [racket] in which profits are reckoned in dollars and losses in lives … I spent 33 years being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism."

This is the same General Smedley who was approached by a group of US businessmen to stage a coup against the US Government of FDR. The subsequent Congressional inquiry supported his allegations, but no action was taken against either the general or the businessmen involved.

The examples given by Mickey Z. also reflect on the lawlessness of corporations during the Second World War. The class nature of the state is revealed. The state serves the ruling class.

This is why reformism ultimately fails. The state cannot be reformed against the interests of the ruling class.

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Down with particle physics, up with Big Energy Research!

Noah Smith argues for Down with particle physics, up with Big Energy Research! because we are facing an imminent crisis in fossil fuels. Instead of building ever larger particle accelerators, Smith argues for energy research:

Yes, I think it is very important to push the boundaries of our understanding of fundamental physics. But our society is facing huge, immediate problems - most pressingly, the imminent end of the fossil fuel era.

The blog post at the The Economist by Buttonwood that Smith refers to above argues that the persistently high oil prices are a result of a constraint in supply, not through the actions of oil speculators. There is a suggestion that oil supply has been stagnent since 2005, and that excess supply will disappear in 2015 due to rising demand. This is a manisgestation of the Peak Oil Theory.

Buttonwood sees a problem with the energy return on energy invested, or EROEI:

“What is the minimum EROI that a modern industrial society must have for its energy system for that society to survive?” ask Carey King and Charles Hall in a recent paper [“Relating Financial and Energy Return on Investment”, October 2011.]. The academics’ answer: “Complex societies need a high EROI built on a large primary energy base.”

This is an argument echoed in The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph A. Tainter. Tainter argues that complex societies fail, in part, when the increasing complexity overwhelms the ability to maintain that complexity.

Buttonwood concludes that:

This issue is not much considered by mainstream economists, who are too busy focusing on monetary policy, the impact of fiscal austerity or the need for labour-market reforms. But just as the industrial revolution was built on coal, the post-second-world-war economy was built on cheap oil. There will surely be a significant impact if it has gone for good.

Emphasis Mine

Buttonwood does not see the societal collapse that Tainter posits. Whereas Smith concedes the possibility when he further warns that:

At its most apocalyptic, the fossil fuel crunch threatens to yank back most of the gains our species has made in the last three centuries. Even a more reasonable assessment puts us in danger of shrinking economies, transportation breakdowns, declining living standards, and technological stagnation. And as for global warming, the only way we are going to halt climate change is by inventing clean energy sources so cheap that we simply leave coal and shale oil and tar sands sitting in the ground.

Emphasis Mine

Smith is arguing for a free-market solution to the peak oil and the climate change problems through massive government investment in energy research:

But if we are going to replace fossil fuels, we are going to have to do one or more of these hard things. There is just no other option. It's Big Science or bust. Our nation needs to be spending many, many billions of dollars - tens of billions each year, at the very least - on Big Energy research to create better solar power, better biofuels, and better nuclear power.

Italics in original

And we are expected to achieve this in thirteen (13) years. Smith expects society to retrain physicists from particle research to energy research almost instantaneously. They will have to unlearn decades of knowledge acquired and retrain from scratch. Subsitution of knowledge is not easy.

The problems are so large and imminent that the free market is unable to cope. We need a radical solution in which popular democracy directs societal investment at a cost it is prepared to pay.

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