Bits and Pieces: Up Yours Edition.

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Power is not What it Used to Be.

Moisés Naím (¿Qué le está pasando a los poderosos? El País, March 17; Corporate Power is Decaying, get Used to it, February 21) finds that traditional power structures are shifting.

Political, military, technocratic and religious leaders, Naím observes, have seen their power curtailed:

"In his first speech before the Congress, in 2009, president Obama proposed an ambitious budget with energy, health and education investment.
" 'This is America', Obama proclaimed. 'Here we don't go for what's easy'.
"Four years later, even what was easy has become impossible.
" 'Let's agree, here and now, to keep the Government operating, paying its bills on time, and to protect the US credit', begged Obama to the Congress a few weeks ago. Evidently, the president of a superpower must not feel very powerful". (My translation, from Spanish)

Naím should know. The former Venezuelan economics professor ("IESA, Venezuela's main business school"), minister (1989 to 1990), and Venezuelan Central Bank director; currently El País columnist, author, founder and chairman of the board of the Group of 50 and senior associate in the International Economics Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was one of the minds behind Carlos Andrés Pérez's 1989 "Gran Viraje" (great turnaround) Washington Consensus inspired package of shock economic measures, negotiated with the IMF. (See here, here and here)

Coming after years of repeated, painful and ultimately fruitless macroeconomic adjustments instigated by the IMF, plus an apparently endless stream of corruption scandals and the odd massacre, the newly elected Acción Democrática party (social democrat) government, headed by Pérez, was never going to have an easy job.

Their task was made all the more difficult by Pérez himself, who, during the 1988 election campaign adopted an unusually strident populist rhetoric, appealing to the impoverished urban proletariat, largely non-white.

Pérez, well-known for his personal links to the so-called "12 Apostles" group of businessmen, promised to reverse the "stabilization" reforms already adopted. Further, Pérez denounced the IMF as the "neutron bomb that kills people but leaves buildings standing".

Pérez's main opponent, Eduardo Fernández (Partido Social Cristiano Copei, Christian democrat) stuck to the conservative IMF mantra. While appealing openly to the business elites, the Fernández package was sold to the relatively sheltered middle-income sections of the population, mostly Caucasian, as the "responsible", solution to the by then already chronic crisis.

It was predictable, then, that Pérez's surprising announcement, in January 23, 1989 of his ironically titled "Great Turnaround", in agreement with the IMF after being elected (53% of the valid votes, against Fernández's 40%), on a radically anti-IMF platform, would cause, let's say some "discomfort" among Pérez's constituents, leading to a chain-reaction: indignation about the "turnaround" led to nation-wide rioting (known as the Sacudón of February, 27, 1989, about which I've written), the breach of the public order led to bloody, brutal repression, which further fueled anger and generated generalized discontent shown in continuous public manifestations; the loss of public legitimacy led to two failed military putsch attempts, followed by Pérez's impeachment (August 31, 1993) and eventual conviction on corruption charges, to the eventual collapse of the political status quo and to Hugo Chávez's election.

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While Naím shows insight in noticing this shift in political power, it's not clear, however, that he understands the ultimate causes of the shift he describes.

It's not clear, for instance, that this shift is due to "Twitter and Facebook", as Naím suggests; or that "an impatient, better informed middle-class, with more aspirations, is making the exercise of power more difficult", as he claims.

To me, it looks more like the arrogant and greedy elites sometimes push their luck beyond the breaking point. That, of course, is too plain an explanation to justify a book.

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Another day I'll have to address Naím's twin claim: that the corporate boardroom has also lost power.

By those extraordinary coincidences, the ABC's Four Corners is broadcasting tonight the PBS Frontline's "The Untouchables":

"In this investigation we hear from industry whistleblowers who were forced to approve loans they felt would almost certainly fail.
"It's over four years since the global financial crisis began. We now know the crisis that took the world to the brink of financial meltdown - throwing millions of people out of work and devastating entire communities - began on Wall Street.
"In the wake of the crisis, the newly elected President Barack Obama promised to make greedy bankers pay for their crimes. Four years on, not a single senior Wall Street executive has faced criminal prosecution. The question is why? Are they simply too big to jail?"

Hopefully, that could give me some argument to reply to Naím's "boardroom" claim.

One Image is Worth a Thousand Words (III)

Dedicated with love to Lieutenant John Pike.[1]

Photo Credit:
[1] KnowYourMeme: moshimoshi167 (You rule!)

Obama in Oz

While Barack Obama visits Australia, this is what the NYPD does to peaceful demonstrators carrying court orders affirming their right to go to Liberty Square.

There is a cop filming the incident. My question is: will the footage be used to investigate what looks like an assault against civilians, or to persecute the demonstrators?

Democracy? My ass.

Occupy Sydney Day 1

Saturday October 15.

14:38 I arrived at Martin Place Train Station.

After a rain that lasted all night and continued through the morning, a magnificent Sydney springtime afternoon (22 C).

More people than I expected, to be honest.

At the lousy loudspeaker, a lady on a wheel chair. I couldn't quite catch her meaning, but she was speaking about Aboriginal issues.

Many attendants were quite young, with that nice middle-class kid and uni student look to them. Big smiles in their faces. It's hard to believe, but once I probably looked like that.

Mostly lefties (from all flavours: tiny groups, micro-groups. atomic-size groups), but some "libertarians", as well. You could tell them because they were more serious, as befitting Young Liberals, I guess.

But there were other people too. Some older, probably long-time left-wing militants; middle-aged migrants protesting the Iran regime, or supporting this cause or that; refugee supporters, working-class looking people, including Maritime Union members; young backpackers and other more adult tourists speaking German and some Scandinavian language; some young Asian tourists having great fun, raising their fists clenched and laughing; ordinary looking people, pushing prams.

The Maritime Union stocky guy spoke well, very articulate and with excellent pronunciation: he did not really need a loudspeaker.

No apparent Greens or mainstream parties representation. Many cameras, but not a single one seemed to be mainstream media. No TV network vans.

Plenty of police around, but without riot gear and a rather relaxed air to them. Some of them were smiling: the nice weather, I tell you.

A group of well-dressed Caucasian adults were seating along Macquarie Street, away from the crowd, when a lefty militant distributing fliers approached them. Suddenly, one of the well-dressed guys, overweight, fortish, started yelling at the lefty: "why don't you ask for airstrikes against Syria?".

His companions, perhaps a bit uncomfortable with the attention they were attracting, tried to calm him down, but fatso would not stop. Finally, they and the lefty militant left him seating there.

There were also some Lyndon LaRouche fans, at the edges of the crowd. After speaking with some ladies, the skinny, gray hair, middle-aged man, with evident reluctance, decided to speak to me (after all, the wog -yours truly, that is- was the only one who seemed interested).

It takes all sorts, I guess.

15:52 I left. I have to work tonight.

Update:
15-10-2011 Zuccotti Park Cleanup Canceled, Occupy Wall Street Protesters Claim Victory. ABC News (US)
16-10-2011 "Indignants all over the world" photo gallery. O Globo (Brazil)
Occupy protests live blog Aljazeera in English

Bloomberg vs OWS

A long overdue comment on Occupy Wall Street.

A few weeks ago NY City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, scored some points as a sensible man:

" 'We have a lot of kids graduating college, can't find jobs,' he said on his weekly radio show.
" 'That's what happened in Cairo. That's what happened in Madrid. You don't want those kinds of riots here.' " (See here)

When the Occupy Wall Street movement started, the reaction in the US to the occupiers was a kind of amused disdain. Abroad, they did not rate even that: during its first week or ten days, the local media simply ignored the protests.

Gradually, as the protests spread within the US, international attention started to focus on them. And that's when local media began mentioning the movement. Apparently, it could no longer be ignored.

In Australia the local right-wing commentariat (see here, or here), as expected, did not wait to pour contempt and half-truths on the movement (surprisingly and probably accidentally, between his ideologically based sophistry, Berg did make some good points about which I may or may not comment later).

And now, once the protests start to gain momentum, mayor Bloomberg threatens to evict the protesters.

Given his September statement about social unrest, I can only assume Bloomberg is aware of the potential violence his decision risks to unleash.

In this case, I must conclude Bloomberg, deliberately or not, is testing the resolve of the protesters.

But now, unlike a few weeks ago, what happens in NY City will be followed all over the world. The way events turn out in NY City will be followed closely and may influence in one way or another similar protests in the US and abroad, including Australia.

The NY City mayor is playing a dangerous game.

Update:

" ‘Indignant’ protests to sweep across world
"MADRID — 'Indignant' activists, angered by a biting economic crisis they blame on politicians and bankers, vow to take to the streets worldwide on Saturday in a protest spanning 71 nations.
"It is the first global show of power by the movement, born May 15 when a rally in Madrid’s central square of Puerta del Sol sparked a protest that spread nationwide, then to other countries." Agence France-Presse

See also 911 cities – 82 countries