Birgitta wrote: “Dear Deena Stryker - you can help by raising the awareness about the injustice all of us has to deal with by not having the same legal rights online as we have offline. Like someone said in relation to my case: we have all become Americans now- and not in a good way.”

As we watch, helpless, the Greatest Imperial Power the world has ever known is allowing itself to be propelled into the Greatest War Ever Fought in pursuit of the oil that will enable it to continue to grow until it snuffs out human life. The presence in the White House of an eminently educated, aware man, has been no match for the Darth Vader like forces intent on seeing the 99% march lemming-like off a cliff.

Hyperbole?  I don’t think so: Even in the good old days of the Cold War there were enough weapons around to wipe out most of humanity: now they have proliferated, and a very small country is playing a game of chicken with the rest of us, supposedly to save itself from annihilation. Israel has not signed the non-proliferation treaty, and no one (except perhaps our president) knows how many nuclear weapons and delivery systems it has. The Jewish state claims to fear annihilation by Iran, which claims it’s not producing weapons but nuclear fuel for the day when its oil runs out.  (Unrelatedly, but similarly, Greece, which teeters on the brink of a default which could, theoretically, bring down the carefully nurtured ten year old Euro system, claims, with similar dramatic emphasis, that it is being ‘threatened’ by a fellow NATO member, Turkey, forcing it to cut pensions and salaries in order to preserve its military budget. Is there something about Mediterranean peoples that inclines to overstatement?  The Greek-Turkey standoff has been going on for so long that it isn’t even worth my while to Google it. My eighties book on the (then) potential for reunification of Europe, has an annex on the Greek/Turkish standoff.  I haven’t revisited the issue since, but it seems that nothing has changed.  (Cyprus comes into this equation, but it is more complicated than that.)

The Sunni/Shi’a divide, epitomized by Iran and Saudi Arabia, as I pointed out in a recent blog, is as relevant to all of this as the survival of a small state that refuses to play nice because it has a powerful backer – or the geopolitics of oil. Iran had a democratically elected president in 1953, (Mossadegh) who was overthrown by the CIA.  Then, in the eighties, when Sunni-ruled Iraq waged an eight-year war on Shi’a Iran, we backed Iraq (under the same Saddam Hussein whom we would overthrow in 2003…). That ultimately gave us Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution (a modern outcome of Shi’a ideology). Iran’s client state Syria has been ruled by a Shi’te sect, the Alawites, for decades.  Putting an end to the civil war that opposes a mainly Sunni population to President Bashar Al Assad via military intervention of one type or another is not so much going to ‘isolate‘ Iran, as it will protect Israel. (Syria has been known as ‘the front-line state‘ by Palestinians and their supporters, because unlike Israel’s other border states – but like Iran – it has been a staunch Palestinian ally.)

European progressive blogs suggest the U.S. intends to choose a ship that has outlived its usefulness and sink it in the Straits of Hormuz, claiming it to be an act of war by Iran. If this sounds far-fetched, Franklin Roosevelt, who knew of the Japanese intent to bomb Pearl Harbor, moved our newer ships out of harm’s way.  And of course there was the shelling of the Maine off of Havana in 1898, used as a pretext for war with Spain and the acquisition of Cuba.

We can expect war with Iran and regime change in Syria, unless the thought of the combined capabilities of Russia and China forces Washington to rethink its justification for supporting Israel, right or wrong. Our closest ally Britain, is already involved in preserving the U.S. Sixth Fleet’s Bahrain base, where the ever down-trodden Shi’a of the Arab world are saying ‘Enough!‘  (A former high-ranking member of Scotland Yard, forced to resign in the wake of the Murdoch phone hacking scandal, quickly found new employment training the Gulf monarchy’s police…..)

While the U.S. is still behaving as though together with its allies like Israel and Great Britain, it dictates world outcomes, the world goes about its business without us. On February 20, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan held their third trilateral conference – this one focusing officially on counter-terrorism – in Islamabad, but also providing a venu for Iran to affirm its rights and its position in the region.

Brinksmanship is only justified in a world in which one major game is being played.  The information isolation of Americans, feeling safe between two giant seas, is a tragedy, for it leaves them ignorant of the other games being played on the world stage.

I recommend replacing MSNBC with Al Jazeera, which can be found once a day in most areas, and also, RT, the coy acronym for Russia’s English Service, which, with the participation of American and British journalists, gets Putin’s message across, but also much of importance to Americans.

Observers seem surprised that Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has accepted to create a multi-party system, even as he goes on killing his people. A Facebook comment by a young Iranian woman a few days ago, tells why: all systems, all regimes, are equally undemocratic.

So Syria’s Russian allies must have suggested that a parliamen-tary system wouldn’t change anything, and after all, it’s an elegant way out.

Although that fact is staring them in the fact on their own streets, they didn’t realize that  the Syrian rebels, whoever they are, like the young Iranian woman on Facebook, have known for some time that democracy is only a word, and that in one way or another, to one extent or another, leaders always manage to get around it.

Until the 99% get the gist.

Yesterday’s news made me realize I had neglected a fifth item in my last blog.  Several channels mentioned the Shi’a in their coverage of the troubled Muslim countries of Bahrein, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria.  It should be clear by now that a very old antagonism hovers in the background of the story about oil.  Iran, Iraq and Azerbaijan are the largest majority Shi’a countries.  But Shi’a constitute nearly forty percent of the total Muslim population of the Middle East. The Shi’a arc begins in India, where they constitute around one third of the Muslim population of that predominantly Hindu country.  Shi’a constitute a majority in Azerbaijan, with significant minorities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kurdistan. Iran and Iraq and tiny Bahrein have majority Shi’a populations. but Shi’a also make up over 35% of the population in Lebanon, over 45% in Yemen, approximately 30% in Kuwait, over 20% in Turkey, and 15% in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Roughly speaking, the Shi’a constitute a northern arc beginning in central Asia,  and encompassing up to 200 million people.

The Sunni arc occupies the southern rim of the Middle East and Near East landmass, starting at the tip of the Arabian peninsula in Yemen, and centered in Saudi Arabia, the most powerful Sunni country, where religious authority is held by the puritan Salafists, whose Wahhabism inspired Al Qaeda. Along the Mediterranean lies Egypt, which since the days of Nasser has had a strong national and secular component, followed by have the countries of the Magreb: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania, the Western Sahel and finally, up its west coast, Jordan, Syria and Turkey.

The Sunni/Shi’a fault line of the Eurasian continent where these two arcs meet is deepening, and the current fight over the future of Syria is the first round in a larger fight between Islam’s Sunnis and Shi’a as to which will dominate the Middle East. A resurgence of the traditionally down-trodden Shi’a across the Muslim world is a subset of the Arab Spring, but its ramifications go beyond the Arab or Muslim world.

Repeated visits by Iran’s President Ahmedinejad to Latin America do not seem incongruous if one considers the fact that Shi’ism has always been the revolutionary form of Islam, making it a natural ally of left-wing secular regimes, however far-flung.  In the seventh century, Mohammed’s cousin and designated successor, Ali, was brutally struck down by representatives of the merchant class. His followers, most of whom are ruled by wealthy Sunni majorities, represent the Muslim 99%.0   A must read if one is to understand the importance of Shi’ism today, is Resistance : The Essence of the Islamist Revolution by the British international civil servant Alastair Crooke. It gives the lie to lose talk about ‘terrorism’, and shows just how handicapped our diplomates would be in a philosophical conversation with them.

The Iranian Islamic revolution, changed the Shia–Sunni power equation in Muslim countries from Lebanon to India, arousing the traditionally subservient Shia, to the alarm of traditionally dominant Sunnis. What makes Syria unique is that it involves a reverse Sunni-Shi’a divide: strongly backed by Shi’a Iran, the Alawi minority, a Shi’a sect, rules over a majority Sunni population while its neighbor Lebanon, which it dominated militarily from 1975 to 2005, continues under the influence of Hezbollah, a fighting Shi’a minority.

When the veil of ignorance about Shi’ism is torn away, it becomes clear why both Russia and China have opposed strong measures against Syria: In a special section of the January 21st Economist , both these superpowers are described as paragons of State Capitalism.  What is significant about this assessment by a conservative publication is that the purpose of State Capitalism is to create greater equality among the classes. (On a more prosaic note, Russia must also bear in mind the majority Shi’a population in Azerbaijan, and China must be mindful of the 2% of Muslims, located mainly in the areas that border Central Asia, Tibet and Mongolia, i.e. Xinjiang, Ningxia, Gansu and Qinighai provinces,  known as the “Quran Belt”.

America’s commitment to Israel – the main thing that interests many Americans  - must be seen in this light. It was born of belated shame for Franklin Roosevelt’s refusal to grant asylum to Jews being slaughtered by Hitler.  Then, as things evolved in the neighborhood of the Jewish Homeland, Israel, founded on modern, democratiic principles, was our natural ally against the majority Others: ‘backward’ Arabs, whose oil we coveted.  The Janus tail of oil supply and Zionism is now wagging the American dog, forcing us to permit behavior by the one that endangers the other.

It is folly to believe that we can somehow make everything right for Israel, but if we follow the daily news, we can see that America is determined to steer the political turmoil among her neighbors to its advantage. There is nothing new about this.  The Eurozone crisis is the long-term consequence of America’s post-World War II domination of Western Europe, which began with the ‘generous’ Marshall Plan: we saved Europe from the Nazis in order to remake it in our cowboy capitalist image. Then, using the tools of the late twentieth century, we did the same to Eastern Europe. Now, as the European 99% rebel against the world America created, and the remedies being forced down their throats after its failure, we are determined to steer the Arab Spring toward political/financial regimes that will espouse that model.

Fortunately for us and for them, its people see the writing on the wall.

Events come thick and fast.  No time to write every day.  So here are four briefs, each of which do not, in my opinion, warrant 500 words from me, because others provide that.  What they don’t provide are the backstories:

1) Greedy Bastards: Kudos to MSNBC’s Dylan Rattigan for showing that there are solutions to most every problem, and when individuals decide to find them, they can.  One comment: greedy doesn’t just happen, didn’t even just happen because one thing led to another and people had fun playing with other people’s lives: American Greed is forged in the classroom: what else to expect when, from nursery school on, kids are taught to do better than their piers, to come out on top, to win the prize.  In the recent Nation (Nov, 16th 2011) marking 20 years since the overthrow of the Soviet Union, Russians are reported as often being nostalgic for the sense of solidarity that was part of the Communist ethos (if not always practiced by the State).  Anna Makarenko, the great Soviet educator of the early 20th century, gave Soviet education a firm basis in cooperation.  Our system couldn’t be more different.

2) The turmoil the world is experiencing has two layers(inadvertent shades of Marx…): the economic layer is recognized as a worldwide phenomenon, hurting the poor and the poverty-stricken in every nation.  But there is a deeper layer, whether North or South, East or West, and that is religion.  In the Middle Ages Christians fought Muslims for hundreds of years, embarking on veritable ‘crusades’.  But only listen to the Tea Party’s latest standard-bearer, Rick Santorum, and it’s clear that the United States is in the midst of a home-grown religious crusade, even while it fights Muslims abroad. And the fervor is matched.  (I agree that the religious war has been reawakened partly to counter improving employment numbers, with a view ousting Obama in November. (Although Born-Again Christianity has made inroads abroad, it is unlikely to every be as powerful in secular-minded Europe as in Africa or Latin America, but nonetheless, the world is embroiled in a financial crisis doubled with a multi-pronged religious war.)

3) Religions are not people. Probably inspired by Mitt Romney’s famous quip that corporations are people, Rick Santorum (again) appears determined to establish that religions, too, are people, and should not have to pay for health care items that contradict ‘its’ conscience. (We used to say, its teachings, but note the slippery slope among Catholic opponents of the President’s new initiative.)

4) Finally, to understand what is happening in Syria, look at Egypt.  These two countries are the most powerful of Israel’s neighbors: for decades we paid handsomely to keep Egypt at least neutral where Israel was concerned.  Now the Egyptian people have overthrown the ruler we pampered, and are determined to have their say in their country’s policies.  It’s not the Muslim Brotherhood that is to be feared, nor even the Salafists per se, but the momentum built up by people who have lost their fear. No matter who sits at the top of the pyramid, Egypt can no longer be expected to support Israel, as it continues to cut off it nose to spite its face.  By arresting NGO workers and threatening to put them on trial, Egypt’s new rulers are taking a page from Iran, which arrested and tried American tourists (who, contrary to the aid workers in Egypt, were most likely just tourists).

Whatever the way they treat their people, Egypt’s (‘interim’) rulers have every reason to suspect that with Mubarak gone, the United States is trying desperately to ensure their loyalty, by, among other means, enlisting the cooperation of NGO workers (such as the son of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood).

The situation in Egypt leads to a very plausible suspicion that the uprising in Syria has been aided and abetted by the United States.  It is likely that a considerable number of Syrians are fed up with their government for any number of reasons, be they religious, tribal or economic. But is it unlikely that American agents infiltrated from Israel – or when possible from Lebanon – have had a hand in encouraging and perhaps arming their discontent? I find that irresistibly plausible.  Just think of the increased danger Israel has been in since the birth, a year ago, of the Arab Spring. Aside from that, not a day goes by without Israel and its protector, the United States, threatening Iran, because that country could eventually produce the nuclear weapons that Israel already has.  If Israel were to give in to its worst demons and actually assault Iran, would it not feel more secure if the Egyptian and Syrian governments could be counted on to remain neutral?

The prospects are currently not good in Egypt.  All the more reason for the White House, yesterday, to have mooted, for the first time, the possibility of considering some form of armed intervention against Syria’s Assad. Several news channels (perhaps the BBC and CNN – or maybe Democracy Now) showed a young Syrian man pointing to what was either a wounded or a dead young child, asking “How many Syrians have to die before you come to our rescue?”

That sounded very much like the anguished plea of someone who was led to expect Western support.

The fact that Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who wants us to stop being the world’s policeman shows how schizophrenic our political system has become.

Paul’s motives appear to be mainly related to his crusade for minimal government.  But even so, why is it perfectly all right for a Republican to campaign for an end to our imperial policies, while no ‘Democratic’ candidate would be allowed to do likewise?

The two oceans that spared us direct implication in Asian and European wars – other than for the purpose of steering these areas in directions beneficial to us – have, sadly, isolated 100% of Americans from any notion of social progress. Not even ‘progressive’ pundits dare to break the taboo against socialism.

Green Parties exist all over the world, and are influential in many European countries. The American Green Party espouses the same progressive policies, but like other third parties, it continues to be marginalized. The idea that the United States could benefit from systems that have been time-tested elsewhere is anathema. The Euro  crisis is a handy scapegoat; but it was largely caused by participation in our financial capers. Nor are Americans told that the European 99 percent are better protected against its social fallout.   (German industry has people working shorter hours instead of laying them off, and the French are determined to see through a tax on financial transactions which we can scarcely imagine.  European demonstrations do not indicate that European workers are worse off than ours, but that they have a vibrant tradition of protest.)

American news of police brutality toward Occupiers in dozens of cities across the country<http://occupywallst.org/, is relegated to brief news crawls.  The public can be forgiven for thinking the movement is over, when in fact it is part of the worldwide movement for radical change that has built on that tradition.

Appearing to ignore the growing strength of the 99%, both Democratic and Republican candidates claim ‘compassion’ while denying that in a country of 300,000,000, government must see to it that compassionate policies are implemented.  (Some will say this is easier to achieve in small countries with homogeneous populations.  Whatever their failings, the former Communist China and the former Soviet Union belie this myth.)

Republican candidates in Florida are out of touch with second and third generation Cuban-Americans, who see that Cuban socialism is evolving peacefully.  Would any sane person disagree with Fidel Castro’s description of the Republican race “as the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been”, as Haiti continues to flounder under our auspices, and Puerto Ricans can only dream of independence?

Rick Santorum called loudly for us to take back the Southern Hemisphere, even as four of its leaders welcome Iranian president Ahmedinejad. Brandishing the threat of Islamic terrorists entering the US through Latin America, he fails to understand that Iran/Latin American ties represent a logical common anti-imperialist stance, since both Shi’ism and socialism represent a defense of the underdog.

The bottom line is that contrary to the President’s blustering assertions, both parties know that neither hundreds of overseas bases nor leaner, meaner drone warfare will prevent this from being the Chinese century.

George Lakey, the father of framing, has framed the argument for Americans to pay attention to Europe’s social systems in a way they can understand: by relating how the Swedish and Norwegian 99% got out from under their respective 1 percents in a non-violent but determined and organized way – STARTING A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

Here’s the link: www.alternet.org/story/153929/how_swedes_and_norwegians_broke_the_power_of_the_‘1_percent’?akid=8187.287959.vXcRI5&rd=1&t=5

ATTENTION ALL OCCUPIERS AND RECENT PUFFIN WINNERS.

Every time I open my mailbox, out come tumbling desperate pleas for money, like so manhy outstretched hands.  First I wondered why we need mail service if nine-tenths of what it delivers are either advertisements or pleas for help. Then I began to wonder about the organizations sending out those pleas: they are in fact doing what should be the work of the entire polity, represented by the government.

Then I begin to wonder why we have so many volunteer organizations.  That’s another way to keep rich people’s taxes low: they don’t like handing over their ‘hard-earned’ money, but volunteering – a form of charity – makes them feel good.

And when I receive please from NGOs, I further wonder whether they would be so ubiquitous if governments were taking care of the world.  I don’t mean organizations like the Red Cross, but Oxfam and all those others that try desperately to save lives in war or disaster areas.  Governments and international governmental agencies such as the UN should have sufficient budgets and personnel to take care of the world’s victims.

Think of all the paper, ink, postage, carriers needed to turn your mailbox into the equivalent of the beggar on the street, as our political parties dispute the role of government.  That battle is actually going nowhere, because the Democrats want to provide safety nets while saving cowboy capitalism – much as Gorbachev hoped to save Communism – with too few innovations too late.

During the Cold War academics argued over whether the two systems would one day ‘converge’.  What’s happened is that both have accepted to subsume human needs to those of capital, and now their respective peoples, together with most others, are working to create societies based on direct or participatory democracy rather than the representative democracy that are more or less a sham everywhere.  That’s what the Occupy Movement and the revolts spreading over the globe like wildfire are about.

And if they succeed, we won’t need mailboxes anymore.

Here is a recent quote from the Occupy movement:

“The Occupy movement is born of the simple belief that humanity could meet our common needs if not for the predation and greed of the very few.”

That is a left-wing credo no matter how you slice it.

Now two quotes from Ted Rall’s new book, not very cleverly titled The Anti-American Manifesto:

“The story of the United States of America as we know it – not merely as the world’s dominant superpower, but as a discrete political, economic, and geographic entity – is drawing to a close, due to a convergence of emerging economic, environmental and political crises …Nothing lasts forever, empires least of all. There’s going to be an intense, violent, probably haphazard struggle for control.  It’s going to come down to us versus them.”

As the Occupy movement continues to spread throughout the country, pundits continue to ask when it will make specific demands, or put forth a program. If Ted Rall is right, the situation is beyond repair by demands, or even a change of program. If the Occupy movement decides to get behind any presidential candidate, the logical choice would be Green Party candidate, Jill Stein. But there is a consensus among Occupiers and others that elections will be useless, at least until the Constitution is amended (for which there is a call: http://movetoamend.org/).

The independent third party that does not want to be a party, Americans Elect apparently thinks the right person in the White House will solve all our problems. It has adopted the method used in Iceland to nominate and vote for candidates on-line. But that does not make it a left-wing operation. Its CEO, Elliot Ackerman admits: “A lot of the folks that engage with us are socially liberal and fiscally conservative.”  In a word, libertarians.

Honor goes to the Occupy movement for being peaceable, while groups that are likely to be attracted to Americans Elect have been practicing military skills for years in the woods. As Occupiers take pepper spray and tear gas sitting down, a tight-knit right-wing/libertarian community flocks to gun shows and exchanges ideas for taking on the government.

Personally, I agree with Rall that violence is inevitable: his historical and political ducks are lined up perfectly. But he contradicts himself when he suggests toward the end of his book that the enemies of our enemies should be our friends, and therefore that the left should enter into a temporary alliance with the right that knows how to shoot.

In defense of this idea he refers to the French partisan groups that helped end the Nazi occupation of their country.  Some were Catholic and right-wing, others were Catholic and left-wing, still others were Communists or Socialists. They cooperated to oust the Germans, knowing they would thrash out their differences afterward. Like other European countries, the French are still doing that, which is why they have been governed alternately by the left and the right, with the social benefits gained by a powerful left never in question.

Alas, we are not a European country benefitting from a socialist tradition that has endured since the French Revolution.  As Rall points out, the statement in the 1776 Declaration of Independence giving us the right, and even the duty, to overthrow an unsatisfactory government, was quickly counter-manded by the four Aliens and Seditions Acts, that authorized deportation of anyone advocating the overthrow of the government, by the way, forever linking foreigners with sedition.  Our government by and for the people lasted only twenty-two years, the last of act being passed by 1798.

Dylan Ratigan interviewed Rall on November 9th, www.youtube.com/watch?v=namL_pIqsVo, with his friendly way of navigating the unimaginable. The negative comments to the transcript were all from the woodsmen. Neither the Occupiers nor the left’s high priests had anything to say.

Yet Rall’s book draws a blueprint for action: the formation by anyone and everyone of small action cells consisting of people that can fully trust each other. As India’s Adivasi discovered when they refused to leave their mineral rich forest, confrontation with a well-funded, trained military, non-violence rarely works. The Adivasi need the support of the Maoists to stay in their homes.

I was just formulating a comment to the raid on the Oakland protesters, helicopters and all, when a raid on Zucotti park in New York was reported.

Few readers may remember that in 2002, President Bush quashed a proposal by Vice President Cheney to use U.S. troops to arrest the Lackawanna Six, accused of being terrorists.

Now, the Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity.

In the Lackawanna discussions, the Cheney camp cited an Oct. 23, 2001 memorandum from the Justice Department affirming that domestic use of the military against Al Qaeda would be legal because it served a national security rather than a law enforcement purpose.

The memorandum, declassified in March, was written by John Yoo and Robert Delahunty in response to a question by then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales about the president’s authority to use the military to combat terrorist activities in the United States, was.  It affirmed that:  “The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States.”.

News reports of the Oakland evacuation www.nydailynews.com/news/national/occupy-oakland-camp-cleared-police-roughly-20-arrests-made-pre-dawn-raid-article-1.977229?localLinksEnabled=false signal police helicopters flying overhead as police moved in to evacuate the protest site.

You don’t have to be paranoid to imagine the day when U.S. army helicopters will be called in to quell riots set off by bank closings, layoffs or unmanageable weather events.  It’s already happening in what is called ‘the biggest democracy in the world’.

The Indian writer Arundati Roy, appeared yesterday on Democracy Now. According to Wikipedia, India is characterized as a ‘sovereign socialist secular democratic republic”, and its ruling party, the INC, is described as ‘center left’.  But those labels have not protected it from the ravages of the world financial system.

Roy’s soft voice is the first one I hear lamenting that other countries aspire to the American model. (It didn’t just happen to India, but to Iceland and most of Europe, and their peoples know the Euro crisis stems from that fatal attraction.)

In 2005 the Indian government signed Memorandums of Understanding to allow international mining companies to harvest the minerals from the country’s Central Forest. Then it set up Operation Green Hunt, in which two hundred thousand heavily armed troops pushed 350 thousand Adivasi (traditional forest dwellers) out of 600 villages, forcing them into camps.

In her new book, “Walking with the Comrades,” Arundati Roy describes her time among the Adivasi, who are supported by Maoist guerillas, each group borrowing from the other. For Roy, the forest in Central India and New York’s Zucotti Park “in the heart of Empire”, are connected, and OW needs to formulate “some kind of vision to replace this particular model in which a small group of people have unlimited power and wealth.”

In order for social democratic governments around the world to be spared the siren calls of Wall Street, America must work its way to a social democratic system, the only one that can meet the just demands of the 99%. Failing that, there will eventually be Maoists in the Central Plains, and army helicopters over our cities, to rein in domestic ‘terrorists’.

I don’t know if it’s still being taught in K-12, but I learned that ancient Greece was the cradle of Western Civilization – you know, the Parthenon, the original Democracy 101.

The Golden Age of Greek culture, known as Classical Greece, occured five hundred years before the birth of Christ.  The death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC marked the beginning of the Hellenistic period, which ended with the annexation of Greece by Rome in 146 BC.

Greek culture conquered Rome, but the importance of “Greece proper” (that is, the territory of modern Greece) declined sharply. The great centers of Hellenistic culture were now Alexandria and Antioch, capitals of Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria, their influence reaching as far as Afghanistan until the advent of Christianity

Roman rule marked the end of Greek political independence for centuries. After that came the Greek Byzantine Empire, which in turn was conquered by the Ottoman Turks whose rule lasted to the early nineteenth century. (Turkey ruled over all of Eastern Europe for 500 years, creating the economic lag that many in the West thought was the result of Postwar Soviet rule.)

Following the Ottoman defeat, Greece had several interim governments, until the Kingdom of Greece was founded in 1832. It lasted until 1924, when it gave way to the second Hellenic Republic. Republican Greece was largely dominated by the revolutionary and statesman George Venizelos, known as the father of modern Greece.  After several premierships and revolts, he was exiled in 1935, and Greece again became a Kingdom.

When the Second World War broke out, the Greek King was allied with the Germans. As in many European countries, it was the Communist Party that organized the resistance, first against the Germans, then the Italians. The world war was succeeded by a civil war in Greece, as progressives fought for a republic, with the Communist Party remaining legal until 1948. With British—and later the US – help, the monarchy won the day. The Marshall Plan, enabled Greece to begin to develop. But in 1967 a military junta took power in a coup, ruling Greece until 1974.

From 1974 until the present, power has alternated between conservatives and socialists. Greece joined the European Union in 1981 and adopted the Euro in 2001. New infrastructure, funds from the EU, and growing revenues from tourism, shipping, and light industry brought Greeks an unprecedented standard of living.

During that period, left and right alternated in power.  But from 2004 to 2009, as the international financial crisis was building, Greece was led by the conservatives. The socialist George Papandreou took over a country deeply in trouble, and as in many countries across the globe, has not been able to satisfy both his people and international finance.

Whether or not the Greek crisis further imperils the Euro by spreading to Italy – a much larger economy – it marks the end of the civilization to which it gave birth.

On October 27th a grand conference was held in Reykjavik complete with representatives of the IMF, the government and the financial sector, to congratulate themselves on the deeds that squelched Iceland’s revolution.

Here is the text of a letter signed by twenty-two activists from all walks of life on behalf of the general public and sent to the foreign participants before the conference, to point out the discrepancies between the government’s claims and reality.  They also lit red warning flares in front of the building where the conference was to take place.

“The present state of Iceland’s economy is clearly much different from that envisaged at the beginning of the IMF program for economic stabilization and reconstruction in the fourth quarter of 2008. Foreign debt at  the end of 2010 was almost double the target level under the program, while public sector debt, unemployment and inflation were all significantly higher than projected.

Before the Icelandic banking crisis in 2008, the debt of the state treasury was 26% of GDP. According to official numbers the debt has risen to 111% of GDP, but the gross national debt is officially placed at 280% of GDP. Net treasury balance has deteriorated by 140 billion Kroner or 26% of GDP between the second quarter of 2010 and the second quarter of 2011. We estimate that since the banking crisis started, Iceland has borrowed up to around 100% of GDP.  This does not include substantial foreign exchange reserve loans provided under the IMF program. Interest payments on government debt now stand at 20% of government revenue.

Municipalities

At the end of 2010, municipal liabilities were up to 586 billion Kroner. By excluding the Reykjavík Energy company‘s public guarantees of close to 300 billion Kroner and 47 billion of unfunded public pension liabilities, gross municipal debt remains at approx. 310 billion. This is equivalent to 20 % of GDP or 154% of municipal revenue.

Financial system

The cost of resurrecting the Icelandic banking system in late 2008 has been estimated at 64% of GDP, a world record. Domes-tic assets, mostly loans to productive Icelandic companies and individuals, were transferred to the new banks at 45-65% of their value. Yet bank customers are still being charged for full repayment to a failed credit regime, resulting in massive bankruptcies, foreclosures, asset stripping and job losses.

The public

At this moment at least 20% of Icelandic families are unable to repay their loans in full, and around 40% are in devastating circumstances. Only 10% of all homes are able to meet the repayments on their alleged liabilities.

Personal income after taxes has been down 27.4% for the past 3 years while prices have risen 40%, resulting in sharply reduced consumption and demand. Increasing numbers of Icelanders are eligible for food handouts although public figures are hard to come by and not necessarily accurate. Breadlines are longer and municipal welfare expenses have risen by 62% since the start of the banking crisis.

According to last year‘s tax returns, private property and real estate values have gone down while debt has gone up for Icelandic homeowners. Families in positive equity are 8.1% fewer, while the number of families in negative equity has increased by 12.1% since the preceding year.

1. Officially, unemployment is now 6.7%, an optimistic number, since many have signed up as students in order to get student loans rather than unemployment benefits. Close to 5,600 people, almost 2% of the population, or more than one family every day have left the country to seek work and a better quality of life elsewhere. A considerable number are without benefits and therefore counted. From public reports in 2010, the jobs lost can be estimated closer to 22,500 or a 8.2%.

Conclusion

The main reason for the Icelandic financial crisis was a grossly oversized banking sector. The public finds it odd that the government should be enthusiastically attempting to rebuild a failed system instead of promoting growth in the real economy. While the burden of the systemic banking catastrophe has been imposed primarily on the common people, instead of mandating general debt relief, the government is allowing the banks to decide on a case by case basis basis, how individual problems are handled. This approach is designed to maximize repayment rather than providing any semblance of compensation for the widespread embezzlement of citizens.

These policies have fueled inequality. People are outraged that high-level executives and owners of failed businesses are receiving massive debt write-offs while keeping ill-gotten profits,  and continuing their operations while the public takes the consequences. Elected representatives defending the interests of the financial sector at the expense of the public, have become a real threat to social stability in Iceland.

The financial elite has transferred its exposures and liabilities to the public balance sheet just as they have in Greece, Ireland, Portugal and elsewhere The primary victims of the financial crisis have been democracy and the rule of law.”

One of my Icelandic correspondents put the situation more succinctly: “Social benefits are unchanged in kronas, but due to inflation, higher taxes and other outside influences, purchasing power has dropped around 40% – the government calls that preservation!”

Two progressive American economists, Joseph Stieglitz and Paul Krugman, spoke at the conference, and both, more or less directly, criticized the austerity measures imposed on the people of Iceland, who had nothing to do with the 2008 crash.

While the self-congratulatory ritual was taking place in Reykyavik, meanwhile, the people of Athens were picking up the torch of rebellion. Unlike the Europeans, who understandably want to preserve the Euro, their common currency, the people of Iceland think the Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, did the right thing by inviting his countrymen to vote on the ‘rescue’ package being offered them. One Icelandic blogger noted with glee that this is the first time a population is invited to vote on the common currency. If it is defeated, it is understood that Greece would have to leave the Euro, endangering the entire financial system.

This situation constitutes a major world crisis, and the underlying reason for it is that whether in the tundra or by a warm blue sea, the people are demanding to rule.

Nov. 4th – Greece is being taken in hand, too.