Migration:
An inevitable fact of history. War, famine, drought, persecution, jobs...all put people on the move. And when populations migrate, they rub against other populations, such friction creating the seeds of resentment, fear and very often violence. Yet these great herds of humans will not accede to the artificial barriers of states, nations or tribes, because survival itself demands otherwise. Yes, the zebra will go to water knowing full well that the lion haunts the shoreline. It is inevitable; it is the core nature of life itself.
Who made this thing we call the Global South? Better yet, why was this new geography created out of what had managed to marginally co-exist for centuries? One could say that it was a resource hunt, an imperial land grab, the first of many prolonged proxy wars, the arrogance brought forth by the crown of authority -- a doctrine sanctified by some benevolent god? Monotheism as a sword of salvation for a pagan world? Or, simply greed, ideology, power. The sustenance of the empire.
The countries of Africa, South America, much of Asia and by extension, even the rancorous states of America, are little more than the jagged lines of a surveyors map. Most are not nations by strict definition, but a cobbled-together conglomerate of tribes whose only common denominator is the misfortune of being conquered by this or that European power. And of course, once colonialism ended, imperialism and hegemony showed up on the block, under the new banner of Cold War dogmatism. New promises wrapped up in the same shallow assurances; ultimately, the same sorry trail of deceits and lies. And as always in the underdeveloped south...the real force of the natural world at work; too often ignored as somebody else's problem. Until now.
[Parenti}: "Britain's 2006 Stern Review estimated that between 200 and 250 million people would be uprooted by climate change. That is 10 times the current number of refugees in the world. Let that sink in for a moment. Bangladeshi academic Atiq Rahman had it correct when he warned, "Millions of people will be moving. No amount of nuclear submarines will be able to stop that." Another report estimated there are 214 million international migrants in the world today. "If this number continues to grow at the same pace as during the last 20 years, international migrants could number 405 million by 2050.""
Some scholars put the figure at over 1 billion. Don't believe it? While climate change denial remains a popular political ploy in the north, particularly in the US, military planners in Europe, the US -- even Australia, have been developing strategic-level contingency plans since the late 1980's. They see the future as little more than insurgency versus counterinsurgency -- at the core: food, water and climate change. Already, in places like Brazil, northern India and the Staans, even northern Mexico, continued droughts and flash floods have people migrating to urban centers. In Brazil's largest city, Rio,these wanderers literally creating a state within a state. And Mexico? Estimates indicate that 2/3 of those attempting to enter the US illegally (legally apparently not an option), are farmers and pastoralists from the northeastern region -- victims of the same continuing weather cycle plaguing Texas, Oklahoma and much of the lower midwest. The north's solution to a problem they basically created?
The Armed Lifeboat:
[Parenti]: "However, another type of political adaptation is already underway, one that might be called the politics of the armed lifeboat: responding to climate change by arming, excluding, forgetting, repressing, policing and killing. One can imagine a green authoritarianism emerging in rich countries, while the climate crisis pushes the Third World into chaos...." "This sort of "climate fascism," is politics based on exclusion, segregation, and repression, is horrific and bound to fail. There must be another path. The struggling states of the Global South cannot collapse without eventually taking wealthy economies down with them. If climate change is allowed to destroy whole economies and nations, no amount of walls, guns, barbed wire, armed aerial drones, or permanently deployed mercenaries will be able to save one half of the plant from the other."
A little hysterical? Actually it isn't. Check the US/Mexican border. It is NOT about cartels and random terror merchants. Then ask yourself why we have private gulags in operation in the American southwest -- mostly filled with poor farmers. And why does a country founded on migration fill the talk-show airways with xenophobic hate: all aimed at the migrant?
[Parenti]: "A central trope in this embittered carnival is the specter of immigration. Xenophobia and smug nationalism are old American traditions. Tocqueville found it back in 1835: "Nothing is more annoying in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A foreigner will gladly agree to praise much in their country, but he would like to be allowed to criticize something, and [in] that he is absolutely refused.""
And as this author has often said, "Patriotism is the last vestige of the scoundrel." Why? Simple. For a country founded on the notion of rejecting oppression in all its shapes and forms -- who then spent ten-years composing flowering prose and grand ideals; further, called that document law, and then abruptly became the new English Lord to the rest of the world. And if one criticizes this grand hypocrisy, as either domestic or foreigner, they are quickly condemned as an unAmerican heretic of the first order.
[Parenti]: "Border militarization, the paramilitary immigrant roundups, the largely privatized ICE detention network -- it is all human rights abomination. But it is also politics as ideological spectacle. When the government treats innocent brown people as criminals, it lends respectability to racism. Native-born people, particularly white people, get the message and feel invited to catharsis via tribal solidarity, especially during hard times."
Please read that paragraph twice.
Some scholars put the figure at over 1 billion. Don't believe it? While climate change denial remains a popular political ploy in the north, particularly in the US, military planners in Europe, the US -- even Australia, have been developing strategic-level contingency plans since the late 1980's. They see the future as little more than insurgency versus counterinsurgency -- at the core: food, water and climate change. Already, in places like Brazil, northern India and the Staans, even northern Mexico, continued droughts and flash floods have people migrating to urban centers. In Brazil's largest city, Rio,these wanderers literally creating a state within a state. And Mexico? Estimates indicate that 2/3 of those attempting to enter the US illegally (legally apparently not an option), are farmers and pastoralists from the northeastern region -- victims of the same continuing weather cycle plaguing Texas, Oklahoma and much of the lower midwest. The north's solution to a problem they basically created?
The Armed Lifeboat:
[Parenti]: "However, another type of political adaptation is already underway, one that might be called the politics of the armed lifeboat: responding to climate change by arming, excluding, forgetting, repressing, policing and killing. One can imagine a green authoritarianism emerging in rich countries, while the climate crisis pushes the Third World into chaos...." "This sort of "climate fascism," is politics based on exclusion, segregation, and repression, is horrific and bound to fail. There must be another path. The struggling states of the Global South cannot collapse without eventually taking wealthy economies down with them. If climate change is allowed to destroy whole economies and nations, no amount of walls, guns, barbed wire, armed aerial drones, or permanently deployed mercenaries will be able to save one half of the plant from the other."
A little hysterical? Actually it isn't. Check the US/Mexican border. It is NOT about cartels and random terror merchants. Then ask yourself why we have private gulags in operation in the American southwest -- mostly filled with poor farmers. And why does a country founded on migration fill the talk-show airways with xenophobic hate: all aimed at the migrant?
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| Alexis de Tocqueville |
And as this author has often said, "Patriotism is the last vestige of the scoundrel." Why? Simple. For a country founded on the notion of rejecting oppression in all its shapes and forms -- who then spent ten-years composing flowering prose and grand ideals; further, called that document law, and then abruptly became the new English Lord to the rest of the world. And if one criticizes this grand hypocrisy, as either domestic or foreigner, they are quickly condemned as an unAmerican heretic of the first order.
[Parenti]: "Border militarization, the paramilitary immigrant roundups, the largely privatized ICE detention network -- it is all human rights abomination. But it is also politics as ideological spectacle. When the government treats innocent brown people as criminals, it lends respectability to racism. Native-born people, particularly white people, get the message and feel invited to catharsis via tribal solidarity, especially during hard times."
Please read that paragraph twice.
Violence:
Much is written, debated and speculated about Third World violence, this notion of terrorism (invented by us);* gangsterism, narcoism...religious fundamentalism, sectarianism and on and on. Yet oddly perhaps, a paradox exists in defining the root cause(s) for it. Very often, shared calamity is confronted by a broader cooperation found in a shared experience -- a rallying of the troops to confront a common enemy, be it man or nature. But in this new arena of mass migration,what is more often occurring is the 'have nots' being pressed hard against the 'haves.' The slums of Rio, in Brazil, overlook the great hotels and white-sand beaches of luxury. Hispanics longingly stare across the vast fences of the US/Mexican border; opportunity almost palpable on the breeze. Indians from the northeast wander south in search of a new life only to be confronted by the new palaces built in the shadow of technology-servicing's new oasis. The inequality is the grinding truth of this current age. And as the migration accelerates, the state withdraws -- by choice, by frustration, by a simple lack of resources to cope with an overwhelming tide of people on the move. And social cohesion breaks down on both sides...leading all down the path of blame. Ordinary people now little more than the enemy within.
(*Believe Cornwallis used the term to describe the behavior of colonial militias during the American Rebellion.)
[Parenti}: "Civilization is in crisis, though the effects are not yet fully felt. The metabolism of the world economy is fundamentally out of synch with that of nature. And that is a mortal threat to both."
And the author's sentiment is neither new, nor radical. Karl Marx noticed this 'metabolic rift' with nature as well: "Capitalistic production collects the population together in great centres, and causes the urban population to achieve an ever-growing preponderance. This has two results. On one hand it concentrates the historical motive force of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e., it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing." But of course Marxism too failed, for almost simultaneously, it clashed with both industrialization and the inherent ambitions of man.
So once again, we face a test of wills over the future direction we choose to take on an issue that is shared by all. Does that will exist? Probably not.
Agree or disagree...the book deserves a read. More than that, it deserves some careful thought by those of us with nowhere left to go.(*Believe Cornwallis used the term to describe the behavior of colonial militias during the American Rebellion.)
[Parenti}: "Civilization is in crisis, though the effects are not yet fully felt. The metabolism of the world economy is fundamentally out of synch with that of nature. And that is a mortal threat to both."
And the author's sentiment is neither new, nor radical. Karl Marx noticed this 'metabolic rift' with nature as well: "Capitalistic production collects the population together in great centres, and causes the urban population to achieve an ever-growing preponderance. This has two results. On one hand it concentrates the historical motive force of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e., it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing." But of course Marxism too failed, for almost simultaneously, it clashed with both industrialization and the inherent ambitions of man.
So once again, we face a test of wills over the future direction we choose to take on an issue that is shared by all. Does that will exist? Probably not.
AFTER the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience.
---T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland 330
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience.
---T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland 330
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