[p2p-research] john pilger on the greeks

Michel Bauwens michelsub2004 at gmail.com
Mon May 24 22:36:30 CEST 2010 

well history certainly disproves your fellow, as it is a record of ups and
downs, not just ups,

more particularly, there are trends that go up, and others that go down, at
the same time,

so I certainly agree that optimism is more productive than gloom and doom,
but the art is: where to place it,

to place it in empire is in my view mistaken at this point, it will
significantly go down,

but is it the deleveraging cleaning out, customary after sudden systemic
shocks, or a more profound crisis related to peak oil, resource depletation
and other converging problems ...

that is a hard question and it is easy to mistake a grave post-shock crisis
with a more profound world transformation ..

I must say, I am starting to doubt, that I think that the systemic crisis is
more profound than I thought,

here an exercise in recognizing what goes down from what goes up:



The high road towards p2p is dying, prepare yourself for the low
road<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-high-road-towards-p2p-is-dying-prepare-yourself-for-the-low-road/2010/06/02>
[image: photo of Michel Bauwens]
Michel Bauwens
2nd June 2010

 I’m a big fan of John Robb, but I must admit I initially thought he was way
to pessimistic.

Indeed, faced with the 2008 meltdown, John predicted a rapid rise of hollow
states, who retain the form, but can no longer function as we expect states
to do. As I witness the self-destruction of the Thai state, who refuses a
social compromise and free elections to the majority of its working and
rural population, even as it is still in a growth phase, and as I witness
the attacks of extreme neoliberalism on what remains of the European welfare
state (I’ve just been in Italy, where there is endemic precarity, and which
seems behind Thailand in many infrastructural respects and is in the hands
of a predatory faction of capital), I’m now increasingly convinced that he
was right, and I too optimistic.

If you recall earlier articles, I posted two main scenarios. A scenario of
deep meltdown and final crisis, leading to resilient local communities, but
also another ‘high road’ scenario with a substantial chance for a
combination of enlightened policy (by Obama, indeed, how naive I was to
compare him to Roosevelt instead of the Herbert Hoover he turned out to be),
popular mobilization, and the interconnecting of new open infrastructures.

What seems to be happening is that mobilization is increasingly happening
indeed, and also the quite rapid spread of open and sharing infrastructures,
BUT, there is no longer anyone to talk to. The enlightened part of the
nation states either do not exist or are two weak, and the global market
forces are intent to break what remains of their independence, and hence,
what they can do and signify for their own people’s. They’re is simply
nobody there anymore, the system has exhausted its capabilities to rectify
outside of the narrow interests of the predatory financial class.

Hear what *Niall Ferguson* has to say on the subject, giving a historical
context to sovereign
defaults<http://www.piie.com/events/event_detail.cfm?EventID=152&Media>and
how it has destroyed empires in the past, in very rapid ways.

*1. The end of the high road to P2P*

So, without further ado, here is what *John Robb* is
writing<http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/05/the-decline-of-the-west.html>on
the matter:

*(this is no call for despair mind you, it means more urgency to the
building of the successor civilisation!!)*

*“Most analysts (at least the ones that are worth reading) contend that the
sovereign default crisis (Greece, Portugal, Spain, etc.) in the EU is about
the collapse of a system that created monetary union without a political
union. It isn’t. That’s actually a narrow, parochial view. Instead, the
current sovereign debt crisis is about something much more interesting: it’s
another battle in a war for dominance between “our” integrated, impersonal
global economic system and traditional nation-states. At issue is whether a
nation-state serves the interests of the governed or it serves the interests
of a global economic system.*

*Who’s winning? The global economic system, of course. The 2008 financial
crisis, the first real battle of this war (as opposed to the early losses in
skirmishes in Russia, Argentina, the Balkans, etc.), generated a very
decisive outcome. It was a resounding defeat for nation-states.* The current
crisis in the EU will almost certainly end with the same results.*

*When this war ends, and it won’t be long, the global economic and financial
system will be the victor. Once that occurs, the nation-states of the West
will join those of the global south as hollow states: mere shells of states
that serve only to enforce the interests of the global economic system.
These new states, more market-states than nation-states, will offer citizens
a mere vestige of the public goods they offered historically. Incomes will
fall to developing world levels (made easy to due highly portable
productivity), and wealth will stratify. Regulatory protections will be
weak. Civil service pensions will be erased and corruption will reign. The
once dominant militaries of the West will be reduced to a small fraction of
their current size, and their focus will be on the maintenance of internal
control rather than on external threats. The clear and unambiguous message
to every citizen of the West will be: *

*You are on your own. You are in direct competition with everyone else in
the world, and your success or failure is something you alone control. *

*For those that think that this will bring about a surge of peaceful
economic vigor, you will be wrong. It will fragment society and lead to
perpetual stagnation/depression, endemic violence/corruption, and squalor.
For absent any moral basis (a social compact), stability, or (widely shared)
prosperity: new sources of order will emerge to fill the gap left by the
hollowing out of the nation-state. These new sources of order will be first
seen in the rise of the criminal entrepreneur, whether they be the besuited
corporate gangster or the gang tattooed thug. For in the world of hollow
states (without a morality that limits behavior) and limitless connectivity
to the global economic system, these criminal entrepreneurs quickly become
dominant, violently coercing or corrupting everyone in the path to their
enrichment.”*

*2. The low road to p2p: the local resilience strategy*

Under the conditions described in section two, what is left to do is to
create an infrastructure that is increasingly decoupled from the global
shocks, through what John Robb calls SCALE
INVARIANCE<http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/04/resilient-communities-and-scale-invariance.html>
.

*John Robb:*

*“Scale invariance is a requirement for societal resilience. It is also
something anyone seriously thinking about the topic of resilience must be
familiar with. Here’s why. Our global system is composed of intermeshed and
tightly coupled networks. These interlinked networks enable our system to be
efficient and relatively robust against random shocks. However, large shocks
can overwhelm this type of network design, causing it to either act
erratically (turbulence) or break apart (into smaller clusters via cascades
of failure). We saw systemic turbulence in action via the recent brush with
a global financial meltdown in September 2008 and we are seeing it currently
with erratic swings in markets, trade, and other forms of economic activity.
Examples of network failures that result in disconnected clusters are seen
with every black-out in the electricity network. A pandemic would be a mix
of the two, intentional clustering (quarantines) and high turbulence.*

*In either case, system recovery could be catalyzed and the damage largely
mitigated, if our global system was scale invariant. Basically, this means
that if we had communities that could produce at the local level many of the
essential products and services currently produced at the global level,
handling disconnection or buffering turbulence would be of little
consequence (also, it would be much easier for us to find ways of protecting
or making redundant the products/services that ONLY could be produced at the
global level). Fortunately, particularly given the substantial uptick in
dynamic instability at the global level, we are seeing movement towards
scale invariant resilient communities. These communities can and would be
able to operate autonomously regardless of availability, pricing, or quality
of external goods/services for extended periods of time. Unfortunately, this
movement may not spread quickly enough to provide any meaningful support to
those communities that are utterly dependent on the smooth functioning of
the global system.”*


On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 2:20 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Michel,
>
> I am reading a good book now by Matt Ridley called the Rational Optimist.
> He points out that doom and gloom about the future is an old sport that
> rarely if ever plays out to be true or useful.  The reality he claims is
> that things are getting wildly better rapidly, and will get wildly better
> still.  Whether or not he is ultimately correct or not is, I suppose, in the
> eye of the beholder.  He makes compelling arguments to my mind.
>
> I recommend it for anyone who wants to pay his publisher 26.50 rather than
> 99.95 to the publisher of the book on abundance for all.
>
> Ryan
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> thanks ryan, but you missed another important statistic by John: 40
>> million americans have problem with finding enough food, how can such a
>> system work?
>>
>> a quote form john robb, to  put my reply below in perspective:
>>
>> *When this war ends, and it won't be long, the global economic and
>> financial system will be the victor.  Once that occurs, the nation-states of
>> the West will join those of the global south as **hollow states*<http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/03/hollow-states-vs-failed-states.html>
>> *: mere shells of states that serve only to enforce the interests of the
>> global economic system.  These new states, more market-states than
>> nation-states, will offer citizens a mere vestige of the **public goods*<http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2004/05/failed_states.html>
>> * they offered historically.  Incomes will fall to developing world
>> levels (made easy to due highly portable productivity), and wealth will
>> stratify.  Regulatory protections will be weak.  Civil service pensions will
>> be erased and corruption will reign.  The once dominant militaries of the
>> West will be reduced to a small fraction of their current size, and their
>> focus will be on the maintenance of internal control rather than on external
>> threats.*
>>
>> in this era of high automation and production of abundance which you so
>> often highlight, why would everyone have to work ...?
>>
>> the point is, france is doing well, and the quality of life is good, and
>> it has been economically competitive; second, other states with even higher
>> welfare, such as scandinavia, are doing even better, on the other hand,
>> countries which destroy any form of solidarity and welfare, abandon
>> education and pensions, are self-destructing  and doing a lot worse ... that
>> should tell  you something, that any policy which proposes to bleed the poor
>> towards the pockets of the highly rich, is probably counterproductive, and
>> these statistics are part of that social warfare
>>
>> so, any statistic should be read wholistically, as part of a full picture
>> of the country ...
>>
>> no doubt a few things should change, including the balance of those who
>> work and don't work, but the current scorched earth policies will only make
>> matters a lot worse,
>>
>> Greece is simply being destroyed, following the prescriptions which I'm
>> sure you are advocating, i.e. beltightening etc..
>>
>> here is john Robb, not a leftie like Pilger:
>>
>> really worth reading:
>> http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/05/the-decline-of-the-west.html
>>
>>
>> Most analysts (at least the ones that are worth reading) contend that the
>> sovereign default crisis (Greece, Portugal, Spain, etc.) in the EU is about
>> the collapse of a system that created monetary union without a political
>> union.  It isn't.  That's actually a narrow, parochial view.  Instead, the
>> current sovereign debt crisis is about something much more interesting:
>>  it's another battle in a war for dominance between "our" integrated,
>> impersonal global economic system and traditional nation-states.  At issue
>> is whether a nation-state serves the interests of the governed or it serves
>> the interests of a global economic system.
>>
>> Who's winning?  The global economic system, of course.  The 2008 financial
>> crisis, the first real battle of this war (as opposed to the early losses in
>> skirmishes in Russia, Argentina, the Balkans, etc.), generated a very
>> decisive outcome.  It was a resounding defeat for nation-states.*   The
>> current crisis in the EU will almost certainly end with the same results.
>>
>> When this war ends, and it won't be long, the global economic and
>> financial system will be the victor.  Once that occurs, the nation-states of
>> the West will join those of the global south as hollow states<http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/03/hollow-states-vs-failed-states.html>:
>> mere shells of states that serve only to enforce the interests of the global
>> economic system.  These new states, more market-states than nation-states,
>> will offer citizens a mere vestige of the public goods<http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2004/05/failed_states.html> they
>> offered historically.  Incomes will fall to developing world levels (made
>> easy to due highly portable productivity), and wealth will stratify.
>>  Regulatory protections will be weak.  Civil service pensions will be erased
>> and corruption will reign.  The once dominant militaries of the West will be
>> reduced to a small fraction of their current size, and their focus will be
>> on the maintenance of internal control rather than on external threats.  The
>> clear and unambiguous message to every citizen of the West will be: * *
>>
>> *You are on your own.  You are in direct competition with everyone else
>> in the world, and your success or failure is something you alone control.
>> *
>>
>> For those that think that this will bring about a surge of peaceful
>> economic vigor, you will be wrong.  It will fragment society and lead to
>> perpetual stagnation/depression, endemic violence/corruption, and squalor.
>>  For absent any moral basis (a social compact), stability, or (widely
>> shared) prosperity: new sources of order will emerge to fill the gap left by
>> the hollowing out of the nation-state.  These new sources of order will be
>> first seen in the rise of the criminal entrepreneur, whether they be the
>> besuited corporate gangster or the gang tattooed thug.  For in the world of
>> hollow states (without a morality that limits behavior) and limitless
>> connectivity to the global economic system, these criminal entrepreneurs
>> quickly become dominant, violently coercing or corrupting everyone in the
>> path to their enrichment.
>>
>>
>>   On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 9:46 PM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Michel:
>>>
>>> Here is a profound statistic I read this weekend: 50% of French nationals
>>> over 50 do not work for a living and are on some form of pension--usually
>>> from the government.  In an age where people live to be 80 regularly, how
>>> can such a system work?
>>>
>>> Ryan
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>   On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 7:33 AM, Michel Bauwens <
>>> michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> via
>>>> http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/05/greece-pilger-britain-imf
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The crisis that has led to Greece's "rescue" by European banks and the
>>>> International Monetary Fund is the product of a grotesque financial system
>>>> that itself is in crisis. Greece is a microcosm of a modern class war rarely
>>>> reported as such, but waged with all the urgency of panic among the imperial
>>>> rich.
>>>>
>>>> What makes Greece different is that it has experienced, within living
>>>> memory, invasion, foreign occupation, military dictatorship and popular
>>>> resistance. Ordinary people are not cowed by the corrupt corporatism that
>>>> dominates the European Union. The right-wing government of Kostas Karamanlis
>>>> that preceded the present Pasok (Labour) government of George Papandreou was
>>>> described by the sociologist Jean Ziegler as "a machine for systematically
>>>> pillaging the country's resources".
>>>> Epic theft
>>>>
>>>> The machine had infamous friends. The US Federal Reserve board is
>>>> investigating the role of Goldman Sachs, which gambled on the bankruptcy of
>>>> Greece as public assets were sold off and its tax-evading rich deposited
>>>> €360bn in Swiss banks. This haemorrhaging of capital continues with the
>>>> approval of Europe's central banks and governments.
>>>>
>>>> At 11 per cent, Greece's budget deficit is no higher than America's.
>>>> However, when the Papandreou government tried to borrow on the international
>>>> capital market, it was effectively blocked by the US corporate ratings
>>>> agencies, which "downgraded" Greek debt to "junk". These same agencies gave
>>>> triple-A ratings to billions of dollars in so-called sub-prime mortgage
>>>> securities and so precipitated the economic collapse in 2008.
>>>>
>>>> What has happened in Greece is theft on an epic, though not unfamiliar,
>>>> scale. In Britain, the "rescue" of banks such as Northern Rock and the Royal
>>>> Bank of Scotland has cost billions of pounds. Thanks to Gordon Brown and his
>>>> passion for the avaricious instincts of the City, these gifts of public
>>>> money were unconditional, and the bankers have continued to pay each other
>>>> the booty they call bonuses and to spirit it away to tax havens. Under
>>>> Britain's political monoculture, they can do as they wish. In the US, the
>>>> situation is even more remarkable. As the investigative journalist David
>>>> DeGraw has reported, the principal Wall Street banks that "destroyed the
>>>> economy pay zero in taxes and get $33bn in refunds".
>>>>
>>>> In Greece, as in America and Britain, the ordinary people have been told
>>>> they must repay the debts of the rich and powerful who incurred them. Jobs,
>>>> pensions and public services are to be slashed and burned, with privateers
>>>> put in charge. For the EU and the IMF, the opportunity presents to "change
>>>> the culture" and to dismantle the social welfare of Greece, just as the IMF
>>>> and the World Bank have "structurally adjusted" (impoverished and
>>>> controlled) countries across the developing world.
>>>>
>>>> Greece is hated for the same reason Yugo­slavia had to be destroyed
>>>> physically behind a pretence of protecting the people of Kosovo. Most Greeks
>>>> are employed by the state, and the young and the trade unions comprise a
>>>> popular alliance that has not been pacified; the colonels' tanks on the
>>>> campus of Athens University in 1967 remain a political spectre. Such
>>>> resistance is anathema to Europe's central bankers and regarded as an
>>>> obstruction to German capital's need to capture markets in the aftermath of
>>>> Germany's troubled reunification.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  -
>>>> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>>>
>>>> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
>>>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>>>
>>>> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
>>>> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>>>>
>>>> Think thank:
>>>> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Ryan Lanham
>>> rlanham1963 at gmail.com
>>> Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
>>> P.O. Box 633
>>> Grand Cayman, KY1-1303
>>> Cayman Islands
>>> (345) 916-1712
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>
>> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>
>> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
>> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>>
>> Think thank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> Ryan Lanham
> rlanham1963 at gmail.com
> Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
> P.O. Box 633
> Grand Cayman, KY1-1303
> Cayman Islands
> (345) 916-1712
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
>


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