American companies starve people for profit

For most of the 20th century, DeBeers -- a company founded in South Africa by Europeans milking the benefits of colonialism -- controlled almost all of the world's diamond market and used it to great advantage. Diamonds aren't actually that rare, but by hording and locking up vast quantities, DeBeers realized that it was easy to keep the price artificially high. Once they were able to create the idea that diamonds are a symbol of love and that a man must present one to his future bride, billions of dollars began to pour in. "A diamond is forever," was a phrase cooked up by a marketing firm hired by DeBeers, and it was voted the best advertising slogan of the last century.

Wheat, on first glance, doesn't seem to have much in common with diamonds. The staple grain is grown by farmers around the world, and bread, in various forms, is basic of sustenance for people everywhere. One Wall Street firm apparently saw some similarities between the two. In a stunning article in this month's Harper's magazine titled "The Food Bubble," Frederick Kaufman writes about investment bank Goldman Sachs entrance into the grain futures market and how that led, in 2008, to huge price increases, food riots in more than 30 countries and tens of millions of starving people.

The irony is that, according to the story, "The wheat harvest of 2008 turned out to be the most bountiful the world has ever seen..." The bubble eventually burst, but not before Goldman made millions of dollars on the misery of desperate people around the world, and the price of wheat has never come back down to pre-bubble levels.

Diamonds are a luxury item, but people cannot survive without food, yet Goldman and other banks and investment companies are now buying and selling commodities futures to make themselves richer with no regard for the consequences to real people. I've often thought it outrageous that some people own vast swaths of land and multiple houses while others are homeless or live in shacks, but the manipulation of food prices for profit is even more clearly evil and should be unacceptable to everyone. However, it's happening right now -- in the name of free-market capitalism.

This land is NOT your land

Despite Woody Guthrie's wishful thinking, this land -- "from California to the New York island" -- is not mine and it's not yours. It belongs to giant multi-national corporations, who've used America's vast natural resources to make a tiny percentage of the population obscenely wealthy.

Everyone is justifiably outraged by the current spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the Obama Administration's frequently muddled response is deserving of criticism as well. Today's New York Times has a story that makes clear that "a hodgepodge of oversight agencies granted exceptions to rules, allowed risks to accumulate and made a disaster more likely on the rig." Most of these regulatory failures at the Deepwater Horizon rig -- owned by Transocean and leased by BP -- took place while Obama has been president, but these missteps are part of a much bigger issue: the overall weakening of government regulation over the past three decades.

While we should all be holding BP's feet to the fire -- insisting that they "make this right" as the company CEO says somberly in a new TV ad that's received widespread criticism -- this whole episode is just one example of the devastation that corporations have wrought upon the planet. Industry has been allowed to remove resources, destroy ecosystems and dump pollutants as governments colluded via campaign contributions and revolving-door jobs -- if not, in some cases, outright bribery. Air, water and land are all filled with the toxic byproducts of unbridled capitalism.

In some places -- the old Soviet Union or today's China, for example -- the average person can only stand by and watch, but in the United States we, the people, are culpable. Americans exercise their will at the ballot box locally, regionally and nationally, and we have a (theoretically) free press and now, the Internet, to provide vast quantities of information. Yet, we sit by and watch as corporations continue to level mountains, denude forests, poison waterways, darken the skies and render lifeless the oceans -- all for profit.

With apologies to Woody: This land is their land, from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters. This land is here to make them rich.

2009's most important person

Time magazine came up short when they chose Fed chairman Ben Bernanke as the Person of the Year, but The Times of London got it right: Neda Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman who was killed during anti-government protests in June.

The shocking and graphic video of Soltan being shot through the chest and dying in the street spread around the world and her death has become the iconic moment of the Iranian peoples' struggle. Neda is important because this uprising of the citizenry may well signal the end of the oppressive and internationally combative regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and, further, her documented murder at the hands of a government militiaman may be the tipping point.

More broadly, the capturing of the horrible event by cell phone video and the spreading of it over YouTube, as well as the use of the Internet -- especially blogs and Twitter -- to organize and follow the protests, mark an important point in the realm of popular uprisings. The printing press, in essence, made democracy possible -- and hence, the United States came into being. The Internet is another key juncture on that road. The "information superhighway" has its positives and negatives, but it does seem to be a tool that is difficult (not impossible: see China) for tyrants to manage.

And so Neda Soltan's death is meaningful for a number of reasons, and she is, I think, the better choice. Bernanke did some good things and some not-so-good before and during the current economic crisis. However, even if the housing boom and financial meltdown are the only things that matter, former Fed chair Alan Greenspan's faith in the markets is more integral to causing the crisis -- and his statement before a Congressional committee that his worldview was "flawed" is an admission that laissez-faire capitalism does not work. That stands as a key moment as well.

Photo from The Times of London web site.

A small price to pay

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wants to see a higher gas tax and he is right. I'm not saying that I would enjoy forking over more money at the pump, but less dependence on oil is good for the environment, for our health and for our national security.

Americans have long had the true costs of fuel subsidized and with global warming affecting us more, with our nation filled with overweight folks, and with the geopolitical machinations of the Middle East constantly pulling us in, we need to do what European nations have done for years: use higher gas taxes to raise money and discourage driving.

It may hurt a little, but sometimes we have to do what is best for the greater good. Our men and women in uniform and their families must not be the only ones who sacrifice for their countrymen. While I sit here comfortably and watch them on the news, I have no gripe if all I have to do is part with a few extra bucks.

The revolution will be texted

While we in the US are debating the negative physical and emotional effects of text messaging and Internet-based social-networking sites, these modes of communication just may be the unstoppable weapons that help people break free of oppressive governments around the world.

I personally have Luddite tendencies (at least philosophically; practically speaking, my refusal to get an iPod is a rather weak line in the sand) and I join the chorus of those decrying the ubiquity of young people constantly texting (even while behind the wheel) or of the seeming foolishness of following anyone's every move on Twitter. However, this week's upheaval in Iran over the apparently stolen presidential election seems to be fueled by high-tech communication, despite the emabttled government's attempts to cut off those connections.

In China, where the totalitarian regime succeeded recently in keeping public demonstrations to a minimum during the days that marked the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre (to end mass public gatherings that happened without the help of texting or the Internet), modern communication resources are used to spread stories of the corruption of local government officials. The Communist Party's massive efforts at controlling information is less than perfect.

So it seems that our rapidly developing communication technologies have a big upside for those who have lived under the cloak of oppressive governments, and it appears to be just a matter of time before newer and less-controllable modes of information-spreading completely tip the balance. In this regard these devices are the printing presses of the 21st Century, and I'll try to remember that the next time someone talking on a cell phone almost runs me over.

Attacks on Gaza intensify

Israel's attack on Gaza has now killed 300 Palestinians, with two Israelis killed in return rocket fire, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appears to be readying the IDF for a ground invasion. The UN, the EU and others around the world are calling for a halt to the violence, while the Bush Administration says that Israel's overwhelming force is necessary and that Hamas is to blame.

There was a ceasefire recently, but Hamas has increased the number of rockets launched toward Israel in the days leading up to the unleashing of air strikes. However, this action from Israel is disproportionate and in as densely-populated a place as Gaza -- about 1.5 million people in 140 square miles -- civilians are going to be killed and injured.

The simplistic viewpoint offered by our government is in keeping with how George W. Bush and his minions have seen the world for eight years: good guys vs. bad guys, as if everything can be synthesized down to the sophistication of professional wrestling. The West created the underlying problem by carving Israel out of land occupied by others, and now we are still living with the inequity and injustice of the past 50 years.

I'm not defending those who've been launching rockets or causing other mayhem on the Palestinian side, but Hamas does things like provide education, police and medical care for a people otherwise left behind by the world. Is it any wonder that the residents of Gaza support the organization?

Isreal is also a month away from elections, which might have to do with the timing of the current attacks. As we've seen in the country, politics often plays a large role in the formation of military policy.

It's always darkest just before the dawn

As if there isn't enough turmoil in the world, two of the most dangerous places are heating up even more. Israel today killed more than 200 Palestinians in air attacks aimed at stopping rocket attacks from Gaza. Meanwhile, Pakistan is moving troops to its border with India in the wake of raised tensions between the two nations following the recent terror attacks in Mumbai.

Both of these locations have teetered back and forth between violence and tenuous peace for decades, and both claim the self-determination of Muslim peoples as their root cause. The Palestinians want Israel's occupation to end, and the Pakistanis want control of Kashmir from India.

In the former, Israel's superior fire power and backing of the US has staved off their being overrun by the surrounding Muslim states. In the latter, both countries are nuclear powers and are seemingly the most likely initiators of an exchange of such weapons.

The president-elect, it seems, will get a complete panoply of issues to deal with when he takes over in 24 days. Financial catastrophe, global warming, Iraq and Afghanistan, Somalian pirates, a nightmare in Zimbabwe -- the fates have decided that these and more aren't enough for Barack Obama to deal with.

I hope he's enjoying his time in Hawaii -- uh oh...wait...this just in...the power is out on Oahu, where Obama is vacationing with his family.

I'm buying nothing today

While some have been out since before sunrise to scoop up bargains and begin their holiday shopping, I am going to adhere to a small but growing movement that has taken Black Friday and turned it into something smarter and less stressful: Buy Nothing Day.

In the Western World, especially in the Unites States, we consume and throw away an obscene amount of stuff. The Internet video called "The Story of Stuff" does a nice job demonstrating how unsustainable our current path is. Buy Nothing Day attempts to ween us from our corporate-marketing driven impulse to collect more stuff -- of at least the day symbolically highlights the issue at a time when Americans are hitting the malls and commercial sites online.

One of the problems that is currently facing our financial system is that many people in this country are in debt. With our SUVs, plasma TVs, iPods, cell phones and all kinds of other gadgets, we are eating up the planet's resources, poisoning our environment and burying ourselves in debt. On top of that, some people went out and bought houses that they couldn't afford.

As I said, today is symbolic -- so don't shoot me if you see me out getting an espresso (I will not, however, be at any mall, big-box retailer, chain store, etc., for now or the foreseeable future) -- but it's what we do day-to-day and throughout the year that matters. I personally have a number of things I do to live a less throwaway life, but I will let today serve as motivation to do even more.

Update: On Long Island a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by the savage crowd that entered the store at 5 a.m. Meanwhile, in Southern California, two men killed each other when a gun battle broke out in a Toys R Us. Looks like the holiday spirit is upon us.

I saw a woman who had been waiting outside a store since Thursday afternoon the Newshour last night, and she said that her family was angry with her for missing Thanksgiving dinner, but she felt that shopping for bargains was more important. Consumerism has robbed many of us of our humanity.

There is a bear in the woods

In a preemptive strike against some who read this I respond: You care correct. There is virtually nothing happening in the world that I don't blame, at least in part, on George W. Bush and his administration of arrogant, foolish scoundrels.

To the matter at hand: Russia's aggression against Georgia. I think it was Jon Stewart who said the other day that international conflicts are the way Americans learn geography. Suddenly we've been forced to run to look up South Ossetia, as our former Cold War adversary looks to be intimidating neighbors and prodding the West with a flex of muscle that says, "The Big Bear still matters."

As far as I can tell the Russians are the aggressors here, but the Georgian president was playing a dangerous game of provocation with his giant neighbor. This leaves the US and its NATO allies walking a fine line of condemnation but restraint. We don't want to send American soldiers into an unstable place to square off against Russian soldiers on the other side of a murky border. If Georgia had been accepted into NATO as the US has been advocating, would we have been obligated to? Even short of that, the Georgians are one of the few countries that sent actual troops to help us in Iraq. Do we owe them?

And here, on the subject of Iraq, is where the bigger points are to be made. Our illegitimate, ill-advised invasion of that country has left American leaders looking a little disingenuous when they say, as Bush did, "It now appears that an effort may be under way to depose [Georgia's] duly elected government. Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century."

OK, so Iraq wasn't a democracy and isn't our neighbor, but that is parsing the statement a little too closely, no? The Bush doctrine of preemptive war has left the US with little moral authority on the world stage to say, "Hey, you can't do that," to aggressor nations. And further, the condition of our military after five years in Iraq has weakened our ability to do anything even if we wanted to. Of course, I'm not suggesting that we should, only that the Russians might have considered American moral and military, as well as economic, abilities when deciding to send soldiers and tanks into Georgian territory.

Did Bush see that when he famously looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes in 2001 and got "a sense of his soul"?

Knowing "the other"

During Sunday afternoon's torrential thunderstorms I sought shelter at several points in my journey from the Government Center T stop to a cafe in the North End. Crazy as it seems, it took me 90 minutes or so to cover that distance, as it was pouring most of that time and I had my laptop with me, which I couldn't allow to get wet.

At one point I was next to a young man with funky eyeglasses who is visiting Boston for a few days and attends college in Oregon. He is a Saudi, and we had a nice conversation for 15 minutes about the perceptions that each of our peoples has about the other. Having been in the US now for nearly two years, the young man -- whose name I never got -- said that he has had a couple of negative comments directed toward him, but the overwhelming majority of Americans have been friendly and he has a positive view of the US.

It was good to hear his thoughts, but what, I think, is important to note as well is that he didn't have those opinions before he got here. The picture in his head growing up in Saudi Arabia was based on what he'd heard from people and seen in the media, and it wasn't all positive. Knowledge, truth and real-world experience have made all the difference. Whether one grows up in the Muslim world or China or El Salvador or Peoria -- ignorance, lies and xenophobia breed hatred.

I read a story years ago about the Troubles in Northern Ireland where a reporter walked into a grammar school -- I can't remember if it was Catholic or Protestant -- and inside the building it said: "If you were born where they were born and you were taught what they were taught you would believe what they believe." Think about it. If, in the long years and decades of history, one of your forefathers or foremothers had taken a turn in one of their travels, you could be a Muslim living in, perhaps, the Middle East. What would you think of America then?

Questioning the "good war"

Some people are currently rethinking the standard approach to the Second World War. Most Americans have always believed that history's largest and deadliest military confrontation was a "good war" that had to be fought and that the Allies -- France, Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, et al. -- were the morally superior force.

Tonight, on Channel 2 at 8 p.m., is the last of a three-part series hosted by Scottish historian Niall Ferguson and titled The War of the World, which questions some of those ideas. At least one of his points is more semantic: that what we call World War II began not on Sept. 1, 1939, with Hitler's invasion of Poland, but in the summer of 1937, when full-scale hostilities began between China and invading Japan. A television critic for The New York Times disagreed with some of Ferguson's more controversial conclusions. (If you miss the program tonight, it -- and the other episodes -- will be repeated in August. Check the WGBH web site here for days and times.)

What attracted my attention is that this series is airing just as two Americans -- conservative Pat Buchanan and pacifist Nicholson Baker -- have written books that argue similarly. Buchanan's book is called Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, while Baker's is Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization. I'm left to wonder why suddenly, some 60 years later, several people have reached similar conclusions.

Northern fights

For hundreds of years explorers have been trying to find the Northwest Passage -- a sea route through the Arctic that could connect Europe and Asia. Such a course would save time and money for ships that would otherwise need to travel around Africa's Cape of Good Hope or South America's Cape Horn (or, since 1914, through the Panama Canal).

Eventually it was determined that the Arctic route was impassable due to the polar ice cap, but that doesn't seem to be the case any more. Global climate change has melted the pack ice, opening up an east-west waterway. However, Canada has long claimed that such a course violates that nation's sovereignty because it cuts through internal Canadian waters. The US and many European countries disagree.

Just two months ago a Russian submarine at the North Pole dropped a capsule with that nation's flag inside, symbolically claiming the ocean floor as part of its territory. Canada, the US and other bordering nations objected. All parties are interested in getting access to whatever resources, including oil, might lie below the Arctic, and each wants to stake a claim as our warming planet makes those resources easier to access and exploit.

Stay tuned, as these conflicts -- currently in the war of words stage -- will likely move to the international judicial circuit, and possibly push nations to military conflict, in the coming decades.

Don't mind the gap

Who knew that it is still possible to cross the Bering Strait on foot? Apparently Karl Bushby, a 37-year-old Briton, knew and he did so in March of last year, traversing the iced over 58 miles between the westernmost point of Alaska and the easternmost part of Russia.

Bushby, whose sea crossing actually covered 150 miles because of shifting ice, is more than halfway through a 36,000-mile walk almost around the world, from Cape Horn to Britain. (There is no similar freeze between the British Isles and Newfoundland that would allow him to complete the loop.)

Bushby and his crossing companion, French adventurer Dimitri Kieffer, were eventually arrested by Russian authorities for entering the country illegally. Of course, in their defense, there was no gate that they crashed or guard who they evaded. They just walked in through the wide-open back door.

After some diplomatic wrangling, the two were released. Currently Bushby appears to be walking somewhere in Russa.