Abstract:

White’s struggle is not just a contract dispute. It is not just a struggle with mental illness. It is both. White understands that capitalism inherently isolates, alienates, and dehumanizes. It is a system in which people are treated as commodities and in which generation of wealth is the highest social end. These are not simply abstract concepts, however. They have a palpable impact on people’s lives. Marx gives us one vocabulary to talk about this (the one I have been employing in this paragraph). White simply gives us another: mental illness.

Please read and respond accordingly.

Remember how in the late 198os and early 1990s, the dominant economic mantra was how the state was inefficient and shouldn’t be in business; private enterprise did everything better?

The inability of the private sector to make the economy more dynamic after a massive series of economic reforms they said would work, then a burst of problems arising out of deregulation – from leaky home syndrome to the growth of fraud to the collapse of finance companies – the need for various privatised businesses (rail, Air New Zealand etc) to be bailed out by the state and taken back into state ownership, and the kind of private insurance failures that have been exposed in the wake of the Canterbury earthquakes, have all put a rather big dent in the idea that the market can solve everything and it works best when it’s least regulated.  Oh yeah, and then there’s the global financial sector meltdown!

This was brought home to me a couple of days ago in a student café.  A student in her 20s, who looked fairly well-to-do, was saying to the person behind the counter that it was crazy to think the market could work out everything; the state had to intervene in things the market couldn’t sort out.  I suggested that rather than the hopeless and never-ending task of trying to make capitalism work, it might be less trouble just to get rid of it altogether.

She thought that might be a bit much, but the latest job losses in Oamaru and now the collapse of Mainzeal (the country’s third largest construction company, behind Fletchers and Hawkins) show just how messed up this system is and that getting rid of it makes more sense than continually trying to patch it up.  This parrot is not resting after a loud squawk; it’s dead, as John Cleese once put it.  After all, what has happened with Mainzeal is not the result of state regulation or individual bad management – the two things apologists for the system usually try to pass the buck with.

Nor is it simply a one-off in the construction industry, as claimed by economic development minister Stephen Joyce.

According to Joyce, this is simply a blip in “the construction cycle where there is undoubtedly a pick up and we’re seeing that in all the trends in terms of increased wages in the construction sector, increases in Christchurch and increased employment and the pick up in things like apprenticeships. I’m reasonably confident the construction sector is coming into an upswing now.”  John Key, however, was a bit more sanguine.  While he argued that Mainzeal will be bought out by some other firm/s, he expressed concern that hundreds of sub-contractors working on about 40 different sites might end up unpaid.  According to earthquake recovery minister Gerry Brownlee, the 400 employees of Mainzeal will not have much problem finding jobs in other construction companies due to the Christchurch rebuild and building expansion elsewhere, such as in Auckland.

Not only is Mainzeal a substantial construction company, it is owned by Richina Pacific, a conglomerate with investments in hotels, car parks, a tannery, automotives, and even an aquarium in China.  Yet, the collapse is being linked to the company’s inability to make a mere $1.8 million payment.  However, Mainzeal is also one of the main companies hit by claims over leaky home syndrome – at present, for instance, it is facing over $30 million of claims about its shoddy home-building.  Five-six years ago it also had to fork out an extra $21 million for Vector Arena because it got the building costs wrong!

Press reports after the Vector Arena blowout – the arena was to cost $72.6 million but ended up costing $94.8 million and being finished months late – claimed the company had “bounced back” (NZ Herald, July 26, 2007).  Reports from after the Vector debacle make interesting reading now.  For instance, the Herald article reported: “John Walker, the New York lawyer who chairs Richina Pacific, told shareholders yesterday the builder had changed the way it worked under the leadership of Peter Gomm, its new chief operating office.

“‘Under Peter’s leadership, Mainzeal has focused on strengthening its systems, re-establishing the disciplines of ‘building right first time’ and appointing people to key positions who will assist in improving Mainzeal’s performance,’ Walker told Richina’s annual meeting.

“‘Mainzeal continued to perform strongly in all areas of the country on its many other projects during 2006 which was reflected in the US$4.9 million operating profit,’ Walker said.”

The ‘bounce back’ took a knock, however, when the Supreme Court ruled that not only home-owners but also the owners of commercial property could take cases over leaky buildings.

In recent months, Mainzeal seems to have suffered from cashflow problems, despite being heavily involved in the Canterbury rebuild.  According to one of the independent directors, former prime minister Jenny Shipley, they had organised bank finance to tide them over but then this finance didn’t materialise.  At that point she and the other two independent directors resigned.

While Shipley can move on to a new directorship or two, with their corresponding fees and endless free lunches, the 400 employees are now jobless and hundreds of subcontractors are up shit creek without a paddle.  Subcontractors often operate on fairly narrow margins and the smaller the subcontractor the more likely they are to be partly in hock to banks and to have done things liked taken out second or third mortgages.  One of the subcontractors is Christchurch-based South Island Shotcrete, which employs 40 workers.  They finished a job for Mainzeal before Christmas and have been chasing payment ever since.  Shotcrete’s Doug Haselden told the Press, “They owe me $264,000 and they knew they were in trouble before I signed the contract. . . I’ve been chasing them and getting every excuse in the book.”

Smith Crane and Contractors, also based in Christchurch, are owed $1.5 million and on Waitangi Day, instead of enjoying a day off, its employees had to dash to worksites to grab their own equipment in case it was nabbed by Mainzeal’s receivers.

The Mainzeal collapse is the absolutely logical consequence of an economic system based on ‘the market’.  Despite its motto, Mainzeal can’t ‘build certainty’ because the market itself is anarchic.  Let’s look at several aspects of this in relation to Mainzeal.

Firstly, take the leaky building syndrome, which has put a big dent in the company.  The pro-market argument is that if you take away regulation and leave building to the market, construction companies will build to a high quality because people want to buy good quality homes and commercial buildings.  Poor quality buildings won’t sell.  But this is not at all how the market works.  Capitalism is not about meeting human needs.  It is about making the most profit possible for capitalists.  Profit maximisation can be guaranteed by building cheap but attractive-looking homes and buildings.  Lack of regulation means that construction companies can do this.  And, remember, these are not rogue builders or ‘cowboys’; Mainzeal, for instance, is very much a mainstream, regular capitalist company with people like former prime minister Jenny Shipley on its board.  The most appalling case recently of how the market ‘works’ is the problems of safety exposed by the Pike River tragedy (see here).

Secondly, take what it produces.  It is part of a larger company with investments in a range of different products and services.  If ‘the market’ goes down in one of the areas the company focuses on, the other areas are not really able to be blockaded off.  A crash in its car park or shoe production profits can, for instance, lead banks to decide it’s not a good lending risk.  Cashflow can dry up and even a fairly small amount like $1.8 million needed in an injection of funds can break the company.

Thirdly, banks and finance companies have been massively hit by a global financial sector meltdown, which affects their ability and willingness to extend loans – although as Michael Roberts has pointed out, many financial institutions remain fairly reckless.  The market can’t actually organise banking and finance to meet need, even the need of capitalists to borrow.  There is no happy equilibrium, no mechanism to unite need for funds with availability of funds.

Fourthly, there are all the problems of ‘over-heating’ in the construction sector when the market is let rip, as happened, for instance, in Ireland in recent years (we’ll be looking at problems of the construction sector and housing in New Zealand in a future article).

What would an alternative be?

Well, take construction.  Imagine if the economy was organised on the basis of meeting human need and was consciously planned by society.  We work out that every year we need so many new homes – houses, apartments, cottages, studio units etc – and so many offices and other buildings and then we build these.  We don’t waste resources by building more, we don’t create artificial economic bubbles by speculation which then crashes and ends up with people owing more in mortgages than what their homes or other buildings are worth.  And we have properly trained, highly-skilled workers to do the building and also to do the building inspections.  Because there’s no private profit in it, there’s no incentive to use crappy materials like the market so often has in building in recent years or do crappy work.

The only way an economy can be planned like this, however, is to get rid of capitalism and the market.  The great mass of the people have to take over the running of society from the capitalists and their political glove-puppets in parliament.  If we don’t do this, the market will continue to wreak havoc on people’s lives.

Further reading:                                                                                                                                        How capitalism works – and why it doesn’t                                                                                                    John Key’s ‘vision’: managing the malaise

Avec la biologie synthétique, ils veulent créer des formes de vie supplémentaires. Avec la géo-ingénierie, en immergeant des particules de fer dans la mer pour fertiliser les océans par exemple, ils vont continuer à polluer la planète et aggraver la situation du système Terre. Avec les systèmes de séquestration du carbone du sol et des semences OGM pour les plantations industrielles, ils vont susciter plus d’accaparement des terres et favoriser la destruction des territoires. Plutôt que de réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre de manière drastique, ils favorisent les techniques de captage et le stockage du carbone (CSC). Ce qu’ils appellent «solutions» permettront de renforcer les systèmes qui ont généré sur le changement climatique, les crises alimentaire et énergétique.

Ils vont causer une vaste destruction écologique et sociale qui pourrait aggraver la crise climatique. Ce dont ils font la promotion n’a rien à voir avec le climat. Il s’agit de maintenir le statu quo. Alors que la crise climatique exige une refonte radicale de la façon dont nous vivons sur et avec la Terre, un changement fondamental du système, les «fausses solutions» sont spécialement conçues pour éviter un changement réel. Ils permettent à l’élite globale – les “1%” – de maintenir leur pouvoir et leurs profits. Ainsi va se perpétuer la destruction de la biodiversité, le changement climatique et l’érosion des droits des personnes. Le véritable agenda qui se cache derrière cela est en fait de chercher à accroître le contrôle du secteur privé sur les terres, les forêts, l’eau, l’agriculture et la biodiversité. Le changement climatique et la crise de la biodiversité sont une occasion de promouvoir ces objectifs. Il s’agit d’une nouvelle phase de colonisation.

Pendant ce séminaire de dialogue, nous aimerions partager nos analyses et construire un terrain d’entente sur ce qui se passe afin de renforcer nos propres luttes contre toutes ces fausses solutions qui ignorent et portent atteinte aux droits des populations, y compris celles des peuples autochtones, dégrade les écosystèmes, et constitue une menace pour la biodiversité et le climat.

Chyng Sun, a media studies professor in the McGhee Department of the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, is currently conducting an international study on how pornography is affecting the lives of heterosexual young adults all over the world.

In studying pornography, Sun ultimately hopes to “understand porn consumption and how, in any way, it connects to sexual desire, behavior, and relationships.” She is particularly interested in deviant and violent genres of porn and their effects on young people.

She hypothesizes that people who watch a lot of porn eventually develop sexual desires that resemble porn sex, most of which is unrealistic and oftentimes sexist, racist, and violent. Even people who don’t consume porn on a regular basis are affected because much of pornography has been mainstreamed and normalized. Hints of porn can be found in almost every form of visual media (music videos, advertising, fashion, etc.). The porn industry has ties with every hotel, every search engine, every internet/cable provider, credit card companies, publishing companies, radio stations, and banks.

Much of Sun’s research has been inspired by Gail Dines’ book Pornland: How Pornography Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. In her book, Dines argues that pornography has so permeated our society that it is permanently ruining male and female sexuality. While she supports pornography’s right to exist, she is highly critical of the ways in which pornography has seeped into our every day lives.

In the video above Dines expresses the main points or her arguments against  ’porn culture’.

It is important to note here I think that Dines is discussing what is most popular in mainstream commercialized pornography and the negatives elements of this that seep into our popular visual culture. She is not against sex or the existence of pornography in general, just the most anti-humanist parts.

There is a growing abundance of of alternatives to commercialized pornography on the internet and with it’s connections to sex trafficking and the drug trade it would be good, and so on, there are lots of additional reasons to avoid it.

(source, click image to enlarge)

Taj Mohammad tries hard to hold back his tears as he describes the most painful decision of his life.

“I had to sell my six-year-old daughter Naghma to a relative to settle an old debt,” Mr Mohammad says, staring blankly at the tattered tarpaulin roof of his small mud shelter.

A shy girl with a smiling face, Naghma is now engaged to a boy 10 years older than her. Mr Mohammad says his daughter may have to leave for the boy’s home in Helmand‘s Sangin district in a year.

His wife and mother-in-law sob inconsolably as they try to protect Naghma and her seven siblings from the harsh Afghan winter outside.

“Everyone in the family is sad,” says Naghma’s grandmother, who was herself a child bride. “We cry. We are in pain. But what else could we do?” she asks. …

“To keep my family alive, I took a loan of $2,500 [about £1,600] from a distant relative,” Mr Mohammad says. …

He says he was struggling to come to terms with the loss of his three-year-old son and an uncle, both of whom died in the cold earlier this month, when the distant relative sent a message demanding his money back.

“He wanted his money back. But I couldn’t pay. No-one would lend money to me,” he says.

“Then a relative suggested that I give my daughter in lieu of money.” (source)

More on child marriage and commodification. More absurd human rights violations.

“Beauty is in the Streets,” May 1968

In Western society, youthful “rebellion” is understood to be a crucial development in attaining one’s individualism. Breaking away from the family is seen as a necessary step to traversing into adulthood, along with employment and self-reliance. In Western culture, there is seemingly an expectation that youth will rebel and develop into a conscious agent of enterprise. Although not a conscious effort on part of parenting, Western culture is grounded in anti-collectivist ideologies that influence development and provoke the child to eventually break free from the family he was raised. It is seen as an organic phenomenon, while in other cultures, the child may still remain with the family or not completely break off ties in such an individualist fashion.

What made the 1960s rebellion and counterculture so revolutionary — for a lack of a better word — was that it went against the grain of the consumerist ethic. It practically went beyond the already-expected rebellion and shook the culture itself. Thinkers on the new Left, like Herbert Marcuse, tapped into student power and articulated an ideology that appealed to them and rejected bourgeois norms. They began to question modes of control, the military-industrial complex, the subjugation of colored peoples, and began working against the, then, “status quo.” Being more provocative than the standard youth “rebellion” of the past, students began to take concepts to their grander extremes and pushed the notion of rebellion to its very limit until it was deemed unacceptable.

The socio-political explosion of the 1960s was, however, ultimately met with failure. The radical ideology was soon sublated, incorporated into a greater cultural hegemony. Sexual liberation became Victoria’s Secret. Che Guevara became commodified and plastered on t-shirts. Music that articulated social change in their melodies became a staple on the radio waves. Marginal gains were made in politics, but they were all in the context of the dominant culture and failed to provide the ideological shift that many on the Left considered appropriate. Therefore, the new Left collapsed before it even managed to break the shackles that held them bound – assimilated,  they soon dispersed into sectarian circles, broken and disorganized.

The problem of presupposed “teenage rebellion” is that it gloats breaking from a norm that, practically, everyone breaks. In the context of greater liberation movements, it pales in comparison, and it not something to be particularly proud of nor applauded. More radical provocations, like questioning the culture that creates the predisposition for such bourgeois rebellion, would actually be an authentic “rebellion.” In a culture of persistent inequality, incessant poverty, and post-industrial decay —  what could be more liberating than pushing it to its very extremes, in an act of true “rebellion,” rather than passively accepting the same culture that raised you and made you numb to injustices that you were told were “normal” and “expected?” Perhaps the greatest mistake the New Left made was assuming youth would continue the struggle beyond their formative years, as labor did throughout their more radical history. Contrarily, the youth movements soon disappeared, almost as quickly as they sprung up into existence. They were inculcated into a greater social agenda and became, sadly, a shell of their former selves. Perhaps it is time to resurrect such feelings and make them permanent.

Leaflets being passed out in Paris on student campuses.

by Philip Ferguson

Last week, on January 25, prime minister John Key delivered his “State of the Nation” address.  He claimed that, by global standards, the NZ economy is doing quite well and described it as “robust” and largely escaping the kind of meltdowns that have occurred in much of Europe and the economic woes which have beset the American economy.

This “robust” economy, of course, has an official unemployment rate of over 7%, with 25% of those aged 20-65 having no work, and many more working part-time hours that don’t allow them to make ends meet or working substantially more than 40 hours a week to get by.  This is a sharp contrast to, say, the 1960s when there were so few official unemployed that the joke was that the prime minister knew all their names.

Back then, whether you were on the left or right, it was hard to imagine a structural unemployment rate of five, six or seven percent, without a major social revolt occurring.  It is certainly a mark of how Labour and National between them have succeeded in lowering workers’ expectations, while a series of defeats, largely thanks to the misleaderships atop so much of the old union movement, meant many workers simply gave up on fighting back.

Key’s speech promised, “The economy will be front and centre this year”, emphasising that the government would be continuing to work on returning to budget surpluses, develop its multi-billion dollar spend on infrastructural projects, speeding up consents under the Resource Management Act and reforming the welfare system.

Solid foundations?

Key talked about “big opportunities” for economic growth, highlighting trade with the more dynamic economies in Asia, especially China, which is now this country’s second largest trading partner, a boom in construction, centred on the Christchurch rebuild, and greater investment in manufacturing as a flow-on effect.

He claimed that government policies are geared towards “an economy where growth is based on the solid foundations of investment, exports and savings” and spent a chunk of the speech on emphasising the importance of investment in the productive sector.  It’s certainly the case that this would be the ideal development from the standpoint of the general interests of capital but, as we shall see, the prospects for a dynamic economy are nowhere near as good as Key suggests.

Before dealing with the problems of economic stagnation that no government, Labour or National, has been able to overcome since the long postwar economic book came to an end in the early 1970s, let’s look at what Key ‘s initiatives for the achievement of his ideal, dynamic capitalist economy consist of.

The government’s initiatives are listed in six main groupings in its Business Growth Agenda.  These are, as he noted in his speech, “skilled and safe workplaces, infrastructure, natural resources, exports, capital markets and innovation.”

Lashings of state intervention

Key is aware that capitalism simply can’t get by without large lashings of state intervention and assistance.  Thus, for instance, the government is setting up “five new vocational pathways” for careers in the building industry, manufacturing, the primary sector, social services and the service sector.  Four thousand new places will be provided in trades and services academies and 8,700 no fees places for young people studying outside school.  Apprenticeships are to be substantially expanded, will be open to people of all ages and subsidy payments will be increased by $12 million.  The educational content of apprenticeship training will be expanded and the first 10,000 new apprentices will be given $1,000 from the state towards tools and other costs or $2,000 if they’re in priority trades.  (Their employers will get the same amount – can’t leave them out!)

This is a far cry from the old days of the later 1980s and early 1990s when neo-liberal ideologues argued for the state to get rid of apprenticeship training on the ludicrous basis that the market would somehow sort it all out.  All that resulted from letting the market “sort it out” has been a dearth of skilled tradespeople, a gap exposed much more in the wake of the massive damage done by the Canterbury earthquakes and the slowness of the rebuild.

The expansion of state involvement in apprenticeships will, according to Key, lead to 14,000 additional apprenticeships in the next five years.  “the whole idea,” he claimed, “is to kick-start new apprenticeship opportunities ahead of the curve, so that thousands of New Zealanders get to learn a new trade that will last them a lifetime.”  Again, it’s a long way from the neo-liberal argument of 20-30 years ago that no-one should expect a job or a trade for life, but we should all be prepared to go through endless cycles of jobs and occupations in a working life.

Key also announced an expansion of state involvement in infrastructural projects, while “involv(ing) private sector disciplines as much as possible”.  Rather than the ruthless pursuit of a neo-liberal agenda based on the ideological argument that the market can sort out everything, what we have here is commitment to private-public partnerships (PPP) in which the state has the continuous role of providing free lunches for the private sector because the market simply doesn’t function in the way its most ardent champions on the (now old) ‘new right’ claimed.  Key and English also understand the need for state-owned companies – after all, capitalism in New Zealand simply could not have been created and developed without a substantial role by the state.  (See, for instance, State intervention: a handout to capital.)

Not neoliberalism

The ostensibly revolutionary left denounces the Key-English government as “neo-liberals”, substituting outrage for analysis and moralism for Marxism.  To the extent that there is any method in the far left’s approach – as opposed to simple name-calling, in the way that some on the left used to bandy about the term “fascist” and now bandy about terms like “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” – it is a method which Marxists call impressionism.  What these leftists do is find some bad things National has done and if they coincide even vaguely with what neo-liberal ideologues argued several decades ago when neo-liberalism actually was the dominant form of capitalist economic policy, and if there are more of these types of bad things than things that don’t really fit neo-liberalism, the left impressionists declare that neo-liberalism reigns supreme.  Since many other political people are against neo-liberalism, this also makes the miniscule forces of the left feel part of something bigger.

A Marxist approach is entirely different from this impressionist, arithmetic approach.  Marxism is a revolutionary science.  Its approach to the ideas and policies put forward by the ruling class begins with an examination of the actual process of capital accumulation – the process of profit-making and reinvestment in expanding production.  Capital accumulation is the alpha and omega of the capitalist system.  (As Marx put it, the imperative of capital is “Accumulate! Accumulate! Accumulate!”)  Different economic ideas and policies arise on the basis of how the accumulation process is going.  When capital accumulation runs into problems, as it inevitably does for reasons I’ll look at shortly, the capitalists, who assume their system is natural and (more or less) rational, look to identify what the obstacles to accumulation are and they attempt to remove them.  Since they can hardly grasp that, as Marx noted, at a given stage it is capital itself which becomes the chief barrier to further accumulation, they tend – rather like much of the left – to use an impressionistic method.  The form or appearance of a crisis is perceived as its cause and economic ‘solutions’ by capitalist ideologues and policy-makers are based on this.

So, for instance, if there is a strong trade union movement, they tend to identify that as an obstacle to a new, expanded round of capital accumulation.  And individual capitalists may well directly experience unions applying what such bosses see as “restrictive practices”.  If there is high inflation, their impression – and it too will usually coincide with the experience of individual  capitalists – is that inflation is the problem and they will try to hold down wage rises and restrict the money supply, believing these to cause inflation.  If the problems in the accumulation process coincide with high tax rates for capitalists and their companies, those tax rates will be seen as causal.  If state ownership means that potentially profitable companies are in state hands and operate outside the law of value – ie aren’t run to make and maximise profit – while other parts of the state sector are run at a loss, then the capitalists draw the conclusion that state ownership is the problem and try to privatise and/or commodify the state sector, that is have it run as much as possible on a profit-making basis.

But, regardless of how a slump may appear or whatever immediate form it may take – bank and finance houses crashing, too many goods for too few buyers (‘overproduction’ or ‘under-consumption’), for instance – the underlying cause is the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, something noted by classical bourgeois economists in the early part of the nineteenth century and described by Marx as “the single most important law of modern political economy”.  This is a law, because it is something capitalism simply can’t escape.  Its regular reappearance indicates that capital is the chief obstacle to its own expansion.

What happens is that capitalism requires competition by individual capitalists.  In order to produce more efficiently and expand surplus-value, and keep ahead of the competition, capitalists have to continually invest in new plant, technology, machinery and raw materials (constant capital).  This constant capital grows in proportion to the amount invested in buying workers’ labour-power or ability to work (variable capital).  The organic composition of capital – the ratio of constant to variable capital becomes higher, but all the constant capital can do is reproduce its own value.  It is only the variable capital (ie the capital expended on workers’ labour-power) which can create new, expanded value (surplus-value).  So while the new investments in plant, machinery, technology, raw materials and so on can expand production with the result of more surplus-value being created, thus the rate and mass of surplus-value can increase, this surplus-value has to be measured over an even larger increase in constant capital.  The result is that the rate of profit falls.  (For a more detailed explanation of this, see How capitalism works – and doesn’t work.)

From boom to bust. . . again and again

At some stage the fall in the rate of profit chokes off the accumulation process because, while profits may be high in currency terms, there is simply not enough capital to carry out the next round of massive investment in modernising an economy in order to keep it competitive.  For instance, the postwar boom came to an end soonest in Britain, because it had the oldest industry and the rate of profit had fallen to a level where there was insufficient capital to carry out the levels of massive investment necessary to completely overhaul and modernise British industry with new plant, machinery and technology.

In New Zealand, signs that the postwar boom was coming to an end appeared in 1968, with the nil wage order of that year.  By 1973-74 the boom was definitely over.  Since then there has been nothing like it again.  There have been further booms, for sure, but they have been shorter and smaller and punctuated with downturns.  When the boom ended, governments both Labour and National originally resorted to Keynesian “solutions” like more state intervention, pump-priming (putting more money into the economy) because they believed that such policies had got the capitalist world out of the Great Depression of the 1930s.  But that simply wasn’t true.  Depressions like the 1930s are not only symptoms of the chronically-diseased nature of capitalism, they also purge the system and allow it to resume the accumulation process, albeit at a lower level.  On top of that WW2 allowed one set of capitalists to triumph over another, centralised and concentrated capital on a massive scale, and made production much more efficient.  All of this, of course, was done not by the operations of the market, but by capitalist state planning and over-riding of the market – in wartime the capitalists are never so daft as to trust their future to the free operations of the market!

Actual neoliberalism

Because the falling rate of profit was the underlying factor bringing the postwar boom to an end, the application of demand-side Keynesianism (eg stimulating demand through expanding the supply of money and capital) didn’t work.  Industry and manufacturing continued to stagnate and capitalists attempted to overcome falling profitability by jacking up prices and soaking up the extra funds put into the economy by pump-priming policies.  A new phenomenon, stagflation, appeared – a stagnant real economy accompanied by high inflation.   Keynesian theory was discredited.

The ideologues of a freer market made a comeback.  Their arguments about reining in government expenditure, tightening the money supply (‘monetarists’), selling off parts of the state sector, introducing “user-pays”, crippling the unions and so on, became the new capitalist common-sense.  The key task for any set of capitalist economic policies in the kind of crisis situation that set in with the end of the postwar boom was that, ultimately, they had to defeat the working class, increase the rate of exploitation in order to expand surplus-value and profitability, reduce drains on surplus-value, and open the way to a new round of dynamic capital accumulation.

These ideas and policies became widely known as “neo-liberal” or “new right” economics, but they are better understood as the anti-working class measures necessary to revitalise capitalism.  In New Zealand they were very vigorously pursued by Labour from 1984-1990 and in the first term of the following National government (1990-93).  Pretty much all the obstacles that neo-liberal/new right theory said stood in the way of a dynamic, modern economy were removed.  A big problem arose, however.  No new dynamic economy emerged.  Neo-liberal/new right ideology went into decline and the National government of Jim Bolger began abandoning it, notably dumping finance minister and ideologue of these policies, Ruth Richardson.  While none of the reforms were reversed, the hunt was on for a new set of policies to lift the NZ economy out of the doldrums.  Bolger started talking about the importance of ‘social capital’.  After he was overthrown by Jenny Shipley, who was strongly associated with neo-liberal/new right economics during the three years of Richardson being finance minister – the policies were also known as Ruthanasia and Jennycide – much of the left thought things would pick up where Richardson had left off.

However, Shipley didn’t go back.  Instead, her big idea was the very un-neoliberal and interventionist one of the Code of Social Responsibility.  At the time, Prince Charles was due here and given the revelations of the state of his marriage and that both he and his wife were busy committing adultery, the government decided not to push the kind of hypocritical bourgeois morality that the Code of Social Responsibility was linked with.  Shortly after, Shipley’s coalition partner, Winston First, began to break up and the government basically collapsed.  It was left to Labour to come up with the new ideology and policies to revitalise the economy, and the “Third Way” came into vogue – this involved keeping the neoliberal/new right economic reforms, smoothing off their rough edges, and increasing the role of the state in the economy because the ‘free market’ simply couldn’t do the job.

No dynamism

The economy remained lacking in dynamism, however.  Even with the defeat of the working class in the 1984-1993 period, and the stepping up of the rate of exploitation, NZ capitalists were remarkably reluctant to invest in the production of actual goods and services containing new, expanding value.  They preferred to spend funds on luxury personal goods, export capital and invest in the artificial economy – the economy which doesn’t create new surplus-value but feeds off the surplus-value in the real economy – and, in some cases, simply sit on their funds.

As we noted in an earlier set of pieces, “slash and burn has its limits. Wages and working class consumption levels were reduced, union organisation was largely destroyed, a chunk of inefficient capital was wiped out and the state sector was dramatically changed. Yet all of this – the ‘Rogernomics revolution’ – failed to usher in a new period of dramatic and sustained growth in the real economy. Instead, the artificial economy expanded to bloated levels and, when it crashed in 1987, became a huge drag on the real/productive economy, which meant NZ’s overall economic performance throughout the 1990s was fairly mundane/sluggish. NZ productivity growth after the Employment Contracts Act fell well behind Australia’s, for instance. Employers here increasingly relied on making workers work longer and harder for relatively less – expanding what Marx called absolute surplus-value. Private capital investment in new plant, machinery, technology and R&D (research and development) remained lower than almost anywhere else in the OECD; it had to be topped up by the government and, even then, total new investment remained fairly low. This meant that real growth did too” (see the pieces on Key-English and capital accumulation, here).

Continuing problems

National was aware, when they came into power in 2008, that these were problems and Key-English talked about getting to grips with them, in a way Labour hadn’t.  They signaled, for instance, the use of tax changes to discourage investment in real estate and property and push it into manufacturing and industry and other parts of the productive economy.  They set up a task-force on how to increase productivity, beyond simply making workers work harder, faster, longer, the gains of that kind of productivity increase already being pretty exhausted.

But not much has changed, in terms of capital accumulation.

The private sector still has among the lowest rates of investment in plant, machinery, technology in the OECD and similarly low levels of investment in R&D.  It depends on massive assistance from the state to help make up for this.  For instance, most R&D in New Zealand is carried out by the state sector – in universities, crown research institutes and so on.  And Key is promising more – in last week’s speech he declared, “despite tight times, the Government is continuing to put a real priority on science and innovation.  Research funding will be greater this year that it has ever been. . .”  He claims this is because “new ideas are a key driver for a modern economy”.  True enough.  But that doesn’t explain why the government is doing it.  The real reason the government is doing this is because the private sector, clearly won’t . . . or can’t.

(Contracting out by the state also provides life-blood to a chunk of the private sector.  The state provides a continuous series of free lunches to private capital, much of whose “enterprise” is devoted to milking the state coffers.)

The private sector relies on R&D investment in the public sector (government and higher education)

Key and English are perfectly aware that capital in NZ can’t survive on a ‘free market’ model.  That’s why he’s not a neoliberal and nor is his government.  Been there, done that.  And while it all helped defeat the working class and raise the rate of exploitation, it didn’t reinvigorate the economy.  Capitalism, in its late, degenerative period, needs massive amounts of state involvement.

Indeed, socially-liberal but economically right-wing leading political commentator David Farrar noted last week:

“So when David Shearer claims the Government is ideologically averse to hands on involvement in the economy, I hope someone asks him about the $400 million irrigation fund, the $1.5 billion for ultra-fast broadband, $100m for export assistance, $15m for business capability, $30m for sector and special events, $30m for international growth opportunities, $50m for large budget screen productions, $10m for major events, $12m for venture capital, $10m for primary industry grants, $9m for sustainable farming, $70m for primary growth partnerships, $220m for CRI funding, $178m for high value manufacturing and services research, $106m for biological industries research, $84m for health and society research, $47m for Marsden Fund and so on.

“Anyone who thinks John Key, Bill English and Steven Joyce are neo-liberal hands-off ideologues is somewhat demented. Personally I wish they were a bit more hands off.”

Even then it’s lightly bouncing along the bottom, rather than taking off.  At the end of Key’s speech he repeats the kind of cliché that is now typical of him: “The government’s economy programme is laying the foundations for a stronger economy, sustainable jobs and higher incomes.”  This is precisely what we were told during the ‘Rogernomics/Ruthanasia’ years by both National and Labour.  Two decades after the end of that period, we are still waiting. . .

Moreover, earlier in the speech, Key gives away just how “sustainable” jobs are in the New Zealand economy these days.  Every three months, he reports, between 100,000 and 200,000 jobs disappear.

Indefinite malaise

The number of people with jobs at present is just over 2.2 million.  This means the equivalent of the entire employed population would be losing their jobs every 11-22 quarters.  At best this means that just over every five years the equivalent of the current entire employed labour force would find their jobs gone!  This hardly tallies with the creation of “sustainable jobs”.  In fact, capitalism – even with large dollops of state intervention, state planning and business planning – remains an anarchic system, ruled by the “invisible hand of the market”.  Since the end of the long postwar boom, there has been no sign of any great revitalisation of the system.  What revitalisation has taken place has been at the expense of “sustainable jobs”, living standards and workers’ rights.  The material exhaustion of the system is reproduced at the ideological level.

Capitalists have long since run out of big ideas.  There is no exciting, dynamic new capitalist paradigm.  No new big -ism, unless you count managerialism.   The dominant paradigm today is simply to manage the malaise of contemporary capitalism, make it look like you’re doing something, push back the working class here but try to slightly improve things there, promote private-state partnerships, and do it all with a fake, and increasingly uncertain, smiley face.  Key is the right person for the job – he may not be as dumb as he’s now starting to look, and he’s not the neoliberal ideologue of too many left-wing fantasies, but he sure is a vacuous figure for a vacuous system in vacuous times.

Unfortunately however, without serious opposition from the working class emerging, the malaise can go on indefinitely. . .

See also: The Mainzeal collapse: leaky homes, leaky loans and a leaky system

Zero Dark Thirty: CIA Hagiography, Pernicious Propaganda

As it turns out, the film as a political statement is worse than even its harshest early critics warned

by Glenn Greenwald

I’ve now seen Zero Dark Thirty. Before getting to that: the controversy triggered this week by my commentary on the debate over that film was one of the most ridiculous in which I’ve ever been involved. It was astounding to watch critics of what I wrote just pretend that I had simply invented or “guessed at” the only point of the film I discussed – that it falsely depicted torture as valuable in finding bin Laden – all while concealing from their readers the ample factual bases I cited: namely, the fact that countless writers, almost unanimously, categorically stated that the film showed exactly this (see here for a partial list of reviewers and commentators who made this factual statement definitively about the film – that it depicts torture as valuable in finding bin Laden – both before and after my column). Jessica Chastain’s character in the new film Zero Dark Thirty is based on the CIA analyst known as ‘Jen’.

While the cartoon above comes from the Bush/Cheney era, not much has changed under Obama

Of course it’s permissible to comment on reviews that are written. That’s why they’re written – and why they’re published before the film is released, in this case weeks before its release. I discussed the film’s depiction of torture as valuable in finding bin Laden because I did not believe that the New York Times‘ Frank Bruni, the New Yorker‘s Dexter Filkins, New York‘s David Edelstein, CNN’s Peter Bergen and all sorts of other commentators had simultaneously hallucinated or decided to fabricate on this key factual question.

That it’s legitimate to opine on the factual claims (as opposed to the value judgments) of reviewers is not some exotic or idiosyncratic theory that I invented. All kinds of writers who had not seen the film nonetheless similarly condemned this singular aspect of it based on this evidence, including: Andrew Sullivan, twice (“Bigelow constructs a movie upon a grotesque lie” and torture techniques “were not instrumental in capturing and killing Osama bin Laden – which is the premise of the movie“); Mother Jones’ Adam Serwer (“The critical acclaim Zero Dark Thirty is already receiving suggests that it may do what Karl Rove could not have done with all the money in the world: embed in the popular imagination the efficacy, even the necessity, of torture”); NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen (“WTF is Kathryn Bigelow doing inserting torture into her film, Zero Dark Thirty, if it wasn’t used to get Bin Laden?”); The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky (“Can I just say that I am equally bothered, and indeed even more bothered, by the fact that the movie opens with 9-11. . . . According to reports, I haven’t seen the film, so maybe it’s handled well, that decisions [sic] seems to make the film automatically and definitionally a work of propaganda”), and so on.

None of us was “reviewing” the film but rather rebutting and condemning its false assertion that torture was critical in finding bin Laden. As Sullivan put it in yet another post about the film: “the mere facts about the movie, as reported by many viewers, do not require a review. They demand a rebuttal.” Indeed (and all of that’s independent of the primary point I examined – regarding critics who simultaneously acknowledge that the film falsely depicts torture as valuable yet still hail it as “great”: an abstract discussion on the obligations of filmmakers that obviously is not dependent upon the film’s content).

Having now seen the film, it turns out that Bruni, Filkins, Edelstein, Bergen and the others did not in fact hallucinate or fabricate. The film absolutely and unambiguously shows torture as extremely valuable in finding bin Laden – exactly as they said it did – and it does so in multiple ways.

Zero Dark Thirty and the utility and glory of torture

I’ll explain why this is so in a moment (and if you don’t want “spoilers”, don’t read this), but first, I want to explain why this point matters so much. In US political culture, there is no event in the last decade that has inspired as much collective pride and pervasive consensus as the killing of Osama bin Laden.

This event has obtained sacred status in American political lore. Nobody can speak ill of it, or even question it, without immediately prompting an avalanche of anger and resentment. The news of his death triggered an outburst of patriotic street chanting and nationalistic glee that continued unabated two years later into the Democratic National Convention. As Wired‘s Pentagon reporter Spencer Ackerman put it in his defense of the film, the killing of bin Laden makes him (and most others) “very, very proud to be American.” Very, very proud.

In this film: X = torture. That’s why it glorifies torture: because it powerfully depicts it as a vital step – the first, indispensable step – in what enabled the US to hunt down and pump bullets into America’s most hated public enemy.

For that reason, to depict X as valuable in enabling the killing of bin Laden is – by definition – to glorify X. That formula will lead huge numbers of American viewers to regard X as justified and important. In this film: X = torture. That’s why it glorifies torture: because it powerfully depicts it as a vital step – the first, indispensable step – in what enabled the US to hunt down and pump bullets into America’s most hated public enemy.

The fact that nice liberals who already opposed torture (like Spencer Ackerman) felt squeamish and uncomfortable watching the torture scenes is irrelevant. That does not negate this point at all. People who support torture don’t support it because they don’t realize it’s brutal. They know it’s brutal – that’s precisely why they think it works – and they believe it’s justifiable because of its brutality: because it is helpful in extracting important information, catching terrorists, and keeping them safe. This film repeatedly reinforces that belief by depicting torture exactly as its supporters like to see it: as an ugly though necessary tactic used by brave and patriotic CIA agents in stopping hateful, violent terrorists.

Indeed, here is how Slate’s Emily Bazelon, who defends the film even while acknowledging that it “reads as pro-torture”, describes her reaction to the torture scenes:

“At the end of the interrogation scenes, I felt shaken but not morally repulsed, because the movie had successfully led me to adopt, if only temporarily, [the CIA agent]‘s point of view: This treatment is a legitimate way of securing information vital to US interests.“

That’s the effect it had on a liberal who proclaims herself to be adamantly opposed to torture and is a professional journalist well-versed in these issues. Imagine how someone less committed to an anti-torture position will regard the message.

If you’re a national security journalist who studies and writes about these issues, then you can convince yourself that the film focuses on the part of the bin Laden hunt that you like: all the nice “police work” that ultimately led the CIA to find bin Laden’s house. But the film dramatically posits that this is possible only because of the information extracted from detainees who were tortured. The unmistakable and overwhelming impression created is that, as Bruni put it: “no waterboarding, no Bin Laden.”

Everything about the film reinforces this message. It immediately goes from its emotionally exploitative start – harrowing audio tapes of 9/11 victims crying for help – into CIA torture sessions of Muslim terrorists that take up a good portion of the film’s first forty-five minutes.

The key evidence – the identity of bin Laden’s courier – is revealed only after a detainee is brutally and repeatedly abused. Sitting at a table with his CIA torturer, who gives him food as part of a ruse, that detainee reveals this critical information only after the CIA torturer says to him: “I can always go eat with some other guy – and hang you back up to the ceiling.” That’s when the detainee coughs up the war name of bin Laden’s courier – after he’s threatened with more torture – and the entire rest of the film is then devoted to tracking that information about the courier, which is what leads them to bin Laden.

But the film touts the value of torture in all sorts of other ways. Other detainees whose arms are shackled to the ceiling are shown confirming the courier’s identity. Another detainee, after being threatened with rendition to Israel, pleads: “I have no wish to be tortured again – ask me a question, and I will answer it.”

And worst of all, the film’s pure, saintly heroine – a dogged CIA agent who sacrifices her entire life and career to find bin Laden – herself presides over multiple torture sessions, including a waterboarding scene and an interrogation session where she repeatedly encourages some US agent to slap the face of the detainee when he refuses to answer. “You do realize, this is not a normal prison: you determine how you are treated”, our noble heroine tells an abused detainee.

This film presents torture as its CIA proponents and administrators see it: as a dirty, ugly business that is necessary to protect America. There is zero doubt, as so many reviewers have said, that the standard viewer will get the message loud and clear: we found and killed bin Laden because we tortured The Terrorists.

There is zero opposition expressed to torture. None of the internal objections from the FBI or even CIA is mentioned. The only hint of a debate comes when Obama is shown briefly on television decreeing that torture must not be used, which is later followed by one of the CIA officials – now hot on bin Laden’s trail – lamenting in the Situation Room when told to find proof that bin Laden has been found: “You know we lost the ability to prove that when we lost the detainee program – who the hell am I supposed to ask: some guy in GITMO who is all lawyered up?” Nobody ever contests or challenges that view.

This film presents torture as its CIA proponents and administrators see it: as a dirty, ugly business that is necessary to protect America. There is zero doubt, as so many reviewers have said, that the standard viewer will get the message loud and clear: we found and killed bin Laden because we tortured The Terrorists. No matter how you slice it, no matter how upset it makes progressive commentators to watch people being waterboarded, that – whether intended or not – is the film’s glorification of torture.

CIA propaganda beyond torture

As it turns out, the most pernicious propagandistic aspect of this film is not its pro-torture message. It is its overarching, suffocating jingoism. This film has only one perspective of the world – the CIA’s – and it uncritically presents it for its entire 2 1/2 hour duration.

All agents of the US government – especially in its intelligence and military agencies – are heroic, noble, self-sacrificing crusaders devoted to stopping The Terrorists; their only sin is all-consuming, sometimes excessive devotion to this task. Almost every Muslim and Arab in the film is a villainous, one-dimensional cartoon figure: dark, seedy, violent, shadowy, menacing, and part of a Terrorist network (the sole exception being a high-level Muslim CIA official, who takes a break from praying to authorize the use of funds to bribe a Kuwaiti official for information; the only good Muslim is found at the CIA).

Other than the last scene in which the bin Laden house is raided, all of the hard-core, bloody violence is carried out by Muslims, with Americans as the victims. The CIA heroine dines at the Islamabad Marriott when it is suddenly blown up; she is shot at outside of a US embassy in Pakistan; she sits on the floor, devastated, after hearing that seven CIA agents, including one of her friends, a “mother of three”, has been killed by an Al Qaeda double-agent suicide-bomber at a CIA base in Afghanistan.

News footage is gratuitously shown that reports on the arrest of the attempted Times Square bomber, followed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s pronouncement that “there are some people around the world who find our freedom so threatening that they are willing to kill themselves and others to prevent us from enjoying them.” One CIA official dramatically reminds us: “They attacked us on land in ’98, by sea in 2000, and by air in 2001. They murdered 3000 of our citizens in cold blood.” Nobody is ever heard talking about the civilian-destroying violence brought to the world by the US.

The CIA and the US government are the Good Guys, the innocent targets of terrorist violence, the courageous warriors seeking justice for the 9/11 victims. Muslims and Arabs are the dastardly villains, attacking and killing without motive (other than the one provided by Bloomberg) and without scruples. Almost all Hollywood action films end with the good guys vanquishing the big, bad villain – so that the audience can leave feeling good about the world and themselves – and this is exactly the script to which this film adheres.

From start to finish, this is the CIA’s film: its perspective, its morality, its side of the story, The Agency as the supreme heroes.

None of this is surprising. The controversy preceding the film arose from the deep access and secret information given to the filmmakers by the CIA. As is usually the case, this special access was richly rewarded.

In the Atlantic this morning, Peter Maass makes this point perfectly in his piece entitled “Don’t Trust Zero Dark Thirty.” That, he writes, is because “it represents a troubling new frontier of government-embedded filmmaking.” He continues: “An already problematic practice – giving special access to vetted journalists – is now deployed for the larger goal of creating cinematic myths that are favorable to the sponsoring entity (in the case of Zero Dark Thirty, the CIA).”

Indeed, from start to finish, this is the CIA’s film: its perspective, its morality, its side of the story, The Agency as the supreme heroes. (That there is ample evidence to suspect that the film’s CIA heroine is, at least in composite part, based on the same female CIA agent responsible for the kidnapping, drugging and torture of Khalid El-Masri in 2003, an innocent man just awarded compensation this week by the European Court of Human Rights, just symbolizes the odious aspects of uncritically venerating the CIA in this manner).

It is a true sign of the times that Liberal Hollywood has produced the ultimate hagiography of the most secretive arm of America’s National Security State, while liberal film critics lead the parade of praise and line up to bestow it with every imaginable accolade. Like the bin Laden killing itself, this is a film that tells Americans to feel good about themselves, to feel gratitude for the violence done in their name, to perceive the War-on-Terror-era CIA not as lawless criminals but as honorable heroes.

Nothing inspires loyalty and gratitude more than making people feel good about themselves. Few films accomplish that as effectively and powerfully as this one does. That’s why critics of the film inspire anger almost as much as critics of the bin Laden killing itself: what is being maligned is a holy chapter in the Gospel of America’s Goodness.

The “art” excuse

A common objection to what I wrote about the film is that even if it falsely depicts torture as valuable in finding bin Laden, those kinds of “political objections” do not and should not preclude praise for the film because “art” need not accommodate ideology or political agendas. Time’s critic James Poniewozik accused me of having “a simplistic way of looking at art” which, he said, is “not surprising, because Greenwald is a political writer (or at least an ideological public-affairs writer), and this is the political way of looking at art.” Salon’s critic Andrew O’Hehir, gushing about the film, opines: “I’m not suggesting that the moral and ethical deconstruction doesn’t matter, but the movie is much bigger than that.”

It is a true sign of the times that Liberal Hollywood has produced the ultimate hagiography of the most secretive arm of America’s National Security State, while liberal film critics lead the parade of praise and line up to bestow it with every imaginable accolade.

Contrary to Poniewozik’s insinuations, I don’t think fictional works must reflect or advance my political beliefs in order to be worthy of praise. As but one example, I’ve defended the Showtime program “Homeland” – despite some valid criticisms that it promotes some heinous viewpoints – on the ground that (unlike Zero Dark Thirty) it includes a full range of views on those issues and thus avoids endorsing or propagandizing on them (as but one example: a US Marine Sergeant becomes an anti-US “terrorist” after he watches the US government knowingly slaughter dozens of Iraqi children in a drone attack, including one to whom he had become close – the 10-year-old son of a bin Laden-like figure – only to lie about it afterward). I agree with Poniewozik and other film critics who insist that it’s perfectly legitimate for works of fiction to depict, without adopting, even the most heinous views.

But the idea that Zero Dark Thirty should be regarded purely as an apolitical “work of art” and not be held accountable for its political implications is, in my view, pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, and ultimately amoral claptrap. That’s true for several reasons.

First, this excuse completely contradicts what the filmmakers themselves say about what they are doing. Bigelow has been praising herself for the “journalistic” approach she has taken to depicting these events. The film’s first screen assures viewers that it is all “based on first hand accounts of actual events”. You can’t claim you’re doing journalism and then scream “art” to justify radical inaccuracies. Serwer aptly noted the manipulative shell-game driving this: “If you’re thinking of giving them an award, Zero Dark Thirty is ‘history’; if you’re a journalist asking a question about a factual error in the film, it’s just a movie.”

Second, the very idea that this is some sort of apolitical work of art is ludicrous. The film is about the two most politicized events of the last decade: the 9/11 attack (which it starts with) and the killing of bin Laden (which it ends with). George Bush got re-elected running on the former, while Obama just got re-elected running on the latter. It was made with the close cooperation of the CIA, Pentagon and White House. Everything about this film – its subject, its claims, its mode of production, its implications – are political to its core. It does not have an apolitical bone in its body. Demanding that political considerations be excluded from how this film is judged is nonsensical; it’s a political film from start to finish.

Third, to demand that this movie be treated as “art” is to expand that term beyond any real recognition. This film is Hollywood shlock. The brave crusaders slay the Evil Villains, and everyone cheers.

While parts of the film are technically well-executed, it features almost every cliche of Hollywood action/military films. The characters are one-dimensional cartoons: the heroine is a much less interesting and less complex knock-off of Homeland’s Carrie: a CIA agent who sacrifices her personal life, disregards bureaucratic and social niceties, her careerist interests, and even her own physical well-being, in monomaniacal pursuit of The Big Terrorist.

Worst of all, it does not challenge, subvert, or even unsettle a single nationalistic orthodoxy. It grapples with no big questions, takes no risks in the political values it promotes, and is even too fearful of letting upsetting views be heard, let alone validated (such as the grievances of Terrorists that lead them to engage in violence, or the equivalence between their methods and “ours”).

There’s nothing courageous, or impressive, about any of this. As one friend who is a long-time journalist put it to me by email (I’m quoting this because I can’t improve on how it’s expressed):

“I also feel like there’s this tendency of critics to give credit to artists (argh, novelists, too) for simply raising uncomfortable issues, even when they don’t bother to coherently think them through, as though just wallowing in the gray areas of the human condition is a noble thing (and sure, it can be, but it can be lazy, too).”

Perhaps film critics are forced to watch so many shoddy Hollywood films that their expectations are very low and they are easily pleased. But if this is high-minded “art”, then anything produced by turning on a camera is. As one friend, who works in the film industry, put it: “As that blog you linked to said – it’s perfect for people who are so called PC and cool liberal types. Everything about it – how it’s framed and branded as some cool Traffic-style movie so people feel as though they’re smart by watching it.”

But despite all that, this film deserves the debate it is attracting. It matters. Huge numbers of people are going to see it. Critics are swooning for it and it will be lavished with all sorts of awards. Mass entertainment has at least as much of an impact on political perceptions as overtly political writing does – probably more so. It’s reckless to insist that a film that will have this big of an impact on matters so consequential – the commission by the US of grave war crimes both in the past and potentially in the future – should be shielded from discussions of its political claims and consequences.

That doesn’t mean it has an affirmative responsibility to preach or propagandize. If the torture claims it makes were actually true – that torture played a key role in finding bin Laden – then there would be nothing wrong with depicting that (although opposing perspectives should be included as well).

Emily Bazelon is right when she says that “we opponents of harsh interrogation need to remember that we can make the moral case against torture . . . without resorting to the claim that torture never accomplishes anything.” In all the years I’ve been arguing about torture, I never once claimed it never works – because that claim is, to me, both untrue and irrelevant. Torture – like murder – is categorically wrong no matter what benefits it produces.

The issue here is falsity. The problem isn’t that they showed torture working. The problem, as Adam Serwer and Andrew Sullivan amply document, is that the claims it makes are false. Given the likely consequences of this fabrication – making even more Americans more supportive of torture, perhaps even making the use of torture more likely in the future – that this is a so-called “work of art” does not excuse it (notably, Bigelow is not defending the film on the ground that she showed torture as valuable because it was; she’s disingenuously denying that the film shows torture as having value).

Ultimately, I really want to know whether the critics who defend this film on the grounds of “art” really believe the principles they are espousing. I raised the Leni Reifenstahl debate in my first piece not to compare Zero Dark Thirty to Triumph of the Will – or to compare Bigelow to the German director – but because this is the debate that has long been at the heart of the controversy over her career.

Do the defenders of this film believe Riefenstahl has also gotten a bad rap on the ground that she was making art, and political objections (ie, her films glorified Nazism) thus have no place in discussions of her films? I’ve actually always been ambivalent about that debate because, unlike Zero Dark Thirty, Riefenstahl’s films only depicted real events and did not rely on fabrications.

But I always perceived myself in the minority on that question due to that ambivalence. It always seemed to me there was a consensus in the west that Riefenstahl was culpable and her defense of “I was just an artist” unacceptable.

Do defenders of Zero Dark Thirty view Riefenstahl critics as overly ideological heathens who demand that art adhere to their ideology? If the KKK next year produces a superbly-executed film devoted to touting the virtues of white supremacy, would it be wrong to object if it wins the Best Picture Oscar on the ground that it promotes repellent ideas?

I have a very hard time seeing liberal defenders of Zero Dark Thirty extending their alleged principles about art to films that, unlike this film, are actually unsettling, provocative and controversial. It’s quite easy to defend this film because it’s ultimately going to be pleasing to the vast majority of US viewers as it bolsters and validates their assumptions. That’s why it seems to me that the love this film is inspiring is inseparable from its political content: it’s precisely because it makes Americans feel so good – about an event that Ackerman says makes him “very, very proud to be American” – that it is so beloved.

Whatever else is true about it, Zero Dark Thirty is an aggressively political film with a very dubious political message that it embraces and instills in every way it can. David Edelstein, the New York Magazine critic, had it exactly right when he wrote that it “borders on the politically and morally reprehensible”, though I think it crosses that border. It’s thus not only legitimate, but necessary, to engage it as what it is: a political argument that advances – whether by design or effect – the interests of powerful political factions.

The above piece first appeared in The Guardian (here); we took it from Common Dreams (here)

Yet, this citizenship test is still tightly bound to the idea of migration points whereby the more qualified, needed and wanted you are, the more likely you will have your visa approved. This would seem to have a number of effects from an individual perspective. First, one would assume that people who want to migrate will do more to increase their human, social and cultural capital. Second, it may tighten loopholes with regards to non-EU migration. And third… No, nothing. To be honest, I was scraping the bottom of the barrel on number two. 

In my mind, deciding who you let in to a country based solely on the country’s need kind of invalidates the point of migration. It’s a form of international NIMBYism. ‘If you don’t want your poor people, why the hell would we want them?!’. But more than this, it turns the state system in to another arm of the market. The ethos behind points systems is developing a ‘competitive’ workforce through attracting the best of the best in various professions. But operating such a system shuts out the vast majority of the global population – those without access to decent education and training for example. Just as I mentioned in my random thoughts on inequality and poverty, if you do not have the wherewithal to build social capital in the first place, how can you ever hope to reach the level required to make migration worthwhile? The free market is only open and ‘free’ for those who can afford to participate in it in the first place.

The other thing that a points based migration system highlights is that it is not really the state that controls immigration and emigration. The state may still have control of the bureaucracy of migration, but it is business and capital that influences who comes in and goes out; points change based on what (almost always skilled) professions are needed at what time. This will essentially create more noticeable class cleavages – not only within states but between states. Perhaps as regional entities such as the EU develop further, this may become more of a regional issue. This could pose interesting (and potentially exciting) questions about the nature (or indeed existence) of transnational classes.

Furthermore humans become more commodified, developing legitimacy through such migration policies being implemented in democracies. If you want a better life for yourself and your family, it seems that your only option would be to play by the rules of the game. Therefore before you even start you are already at a disadvantage. Lastly, this partially fulfills one of the oldest tricks in the book: divide and rule. There is now competition for jobs within, between and beyond states.

Though perhaps such policies, if enacted across the world, would help develop a truly cosmopolitan society where allegiance to the imagined community becomes a thing of the past?

This week’s issue of the New York Observer features a cover story entitled “The Luxury Rental Girlfriend,” which you can read here. The article is about escort culture among wealthy elites, particularly in New York. Responses to this article have been all over the map, mostly focusing around the question: Does escort culture support or undermine feminism?

I think that the answer to this is somewhat complex, but ultimately, a “No.”

Before I explain why, I should point out that the article is entirely heteronormative, dealing only with wealthy males purchasing dates with female escorts. Not even a mention of gay escort culture (or, for that matter, any mention of hetero- escort culture, but with the female purchasing a male for a date).

Straight female escorts might see their work as a liberating kind of sex work, parlaying their talents (which are not only sexual, but also intellectual and emotional, as the article points out) in the service of monetary gain. In many ways, these escorts are reminiscent of the long tradition of courtesans. They have beauty, brains, and style; they are up to date on culture and politics; they maintain a sense of independence and autonomy due to the nature of their relations with men– exchanges of their time for money. One escort is quoted in the article as saying to another escort, “Well. A few hours in the Hamptons, and cookies. Did we really just make $3,500 to do that?” Why judge these women for making money having sex with and spending time with wealthy men in refined settings, often with fine food and drinks?

I don’t think it is right to judge the women for their choice of career. For them, it might seem like an ideal situation. What concerns me is not their individual choice, but the broader social structures and outdated gender norms that permit such a career to persist. I am reminded of feminist theorist Luce Irigaray’s essay “Women On the Market.” Here, Irigaray offers a critique of a culture that values the “accumulation of women” and that perpetuates, albeit in subtler forms, the economy of exchange of women that characterizes practices such as literally treating women as commodities. Here we see that the phenomenon of child brides in Afghanistan and the phenomenon of female escorts in the U.S. stem from the same root: namely, an insidious tendency to commodify women, regardless of stark differences in the overt situations of women in Afghanistan and the U.S.

Take the description in the Observer article of the websites that many men use in order to find escorts. Here is what the article says about The Erotic Review, a Yelp-like website used to review escorts:

“Created a decade ago by a john who was tired of being misled, TER sees about 350,000 visitors a day, men between the ages of 35 and 55 with a median income of $80,000. They wax nostalgic about Mistress Natalie and Emma of New York, and if you pay for a membership, you too can read about how WkndWhacker found VIP Daisy’s breasts even fuller in the flesh than they looked on her website, and how the way she kissed was like “honey warming in his mouth.”

This kind of website and the kinds of reviews that are posted on it perfectly illustrate Irigaray’s claim that “The economy of exchange–of desire–is man’s business.” On these websites, the values of the female escorts are discussed exclusively among men, the way that Yelp reviewers would discuss the values of a restaurant. Where one talks about the rosewater martini, the gooey mac and cheese, and the pleasant ambience, the other talks about the breasts, the kisses, and the conversation. This occurs in a context in which the male clients are the only voices, and women are up for sale the way “wife sales” were conducted in the colonial U.S.

Thus, I think that what is to blame here are not the particular women who are escorts. These women may live with a genuine sense of fulfillment and contentment with their work, and may feel that their work is personally liberating. But these feelings are nonetheless imbricated, as perhaps all of our feelings are, in a capitalist ideology that complicit with patriarchal misogyny. Though the female escorts may not feel like commodities, they are. Although they may feel independent based on the fact that they are paid for their services and that their clients are subject to their terms and conditions, the relation is not one in which they are masters over their clients. And in fact, it is not the other way around, either: the men who hire escorts are not masters over these escorts, even if just for the night. Rather, the condition of possibility for the career of these escorts is an economy in which the males are the arbiters of value: as Irigaray says, “It remains the case that the establishment of relationships cannot be accomplished by the commodities themselves, but depends upon the operation of two exchangers.” The exchangers in this case are the community of males who purchase escorts and discuss them in online review boards. The particular female escorts may feel liberated, but this does not discount the fact that their careers are made possible only by virtue of a society that allows this feeling of liberation to persist while in actuality it is not merely making these women dependent on their male clients, but is rather denying them status as subjects at all. Escort culture reveals the entrenched relationship between sex and capital characteristic of our bourgeois society, particularly in its heteronormative and hom(m)o-sexual* perpetuation of the exclusion of women  from the systems of exchange in which they are the very things being exchanged.* The term “hom(m)o-sexuality” comes from Irigaray, using a play on words between “homosexuality” and “homme,” which means “man” in French. Thus, “hom(m)o-sexual” does not indicate a sexual orientation, but rather the reduction of economy into one exclusively pertaining to men.

At first I wasn’t sure I had heard right. “. . . Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall.”

Does Obama, I wondered, mean that Stonewall? Or is there some battle by that name I’ve never learned about?

It soon became clear, that yes, he was referring to the Stonewall Riots of 1969. “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like everyone else under the law.”

This is significant, I thought. A Reuters report this morning notes that “Obama’s inclusion of gay rights—still opposed by many conservatives—among his list of priorities might have been unthinkably divisive as recently as his first inauguration in 2009.” It would at least have been unthinkably risky for a traditional, centrist politician with an instinctive inclination towards compromise.

But much has changed. Public opinion polls show rising support for gay rights including the right to marry; over the last few years those in support for the latter have become significantly more numerous than opponents. A USA TODAY poll shows 73% of 18- to 29-year-olds supporting gay marriage.

Seven states legalized same-sex marriage during Obama’s first term. In July 2011 a federal appeals court effectively ended the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. (Now openly gay people can drop bombs on Waziristan.) The National Cathedral is now performing gay marriages. Nobody bats an eyelash when Anderson Cooper comes out as gay. School bullying of gays has declined. Gay-straight alliances have become mainstream, and the influence of religion-based homophobia is on the wane.

Internationally, six more countries have legalized same-sex marriage in the last several years. In June 2011 the UN Human Rights Council passed, 23 to 19, a resolution condemning violence and discrimination against persons based on their sexual preference. In Europe, social democrats who have sold their souls to austerity programs are trying to bolster their progressive credentials by embracing gay rights. It has become less risky politically; indeed, in some places, it’s become de rigueur.

Obama describes his views on gay marriage as “evolving” and points to the influence of his wife and daughters on his evolving thought. (Joe Biden’s announcement for his own support for gay marriage, which slightly preceded Obama’s statement in favor last June, may have influenced the timing of the latter.) They are evolving to mirror the attitude shift we see throughout society. He has more to gain than lose politically for taking his stand at this point.

Still, the specific reference to Stonewall—to several days of violent anti-police rioting in Greenwich Village—was risky. Wasn’t he endorsing rock-throwing? Hundreds fought back in the wee hours of the morning June 28, 1969, when cops busted into a Mafia-owned gay bar called the Stonewall Inn, announcing “Police! We’re taking the place!” They miscalculated as they tried to force patrons (divided into cross-dressers, whom the police wanted to search and, if found to be male, arrest, other gay men, and lesbians) into separate rooms where they were searched and asked for identification. Many refused to produce IDs or submit to searches; a large crowd amassed, police vehicles were attacked, cops were hit with coins and rocks, garbage cans set ablaze.

This was no Seneca Falls (a peaceful two-day women’s rights convention in New York in 1848) or Selma, Alabama (where non-violent actions in 1965 contributed to the passage of the Voting Rights Act). It was violent resistance. That Obama should feel a need to validate it in such a high profile forum is significant.

But meanwhile, in many respects, Obama remains a continuation of Bush. As he announced that “a decade of war is now ending,” his drone war killed three more “suspected militants” in Yemen—another statement that the U.S. has the right to target anyone, anywhere suspected of wanting to attack U.S. nationals or the forces of governments that work with the U.S. are fair targets for annihilation at the president’s discretion.

Obama withdrew from Iraq, but in accordance with the agreement signed by the U.S. and the Iraqi regime of al-Maliki at the end of Bush’s second term. He can take no credit for this, other than to note that he didn’t try to undo it very aggressively—although he did, in fact, try to persuade the Iraqis to accept the ongoing presence of thousands of U.S. troops. (They declined.)

Obama not only continued the unwinnable war in Afghanistan, but dramatically escalated it, making it his own. Over 70% of U.S. fatalities in that dozen year-old war have occurred under his administration, while the Taliban continues to resist, while “green-on-blue” attacks proliferate, while U.S. commanders conclude a military over the Taliban is impossible, while intelligence reports confirm that the entire operation is spreading anti-American feeling and hence further jeopardizing U.S. security rather than enhancing it.

In foreign policy Obama has differed from Dubya in several respects. Aside from ordering the “surge” in Afghanistan, he has made drones his weapon of choice, his signature contribution to the global war Bush called the “War on Terror.” His 298 drone strikes in Pakistan have killed between 500 and 800 civilians, infuriated the Pakistani people and destabilized that populous, nuclear-armed nation.

While distancing himself somewhat from the Israeli government, mildly criticizing its illegal settlements policy and declining (so far) to attack Iran on Israel’s behalf, Obama continues to threaten Iran. He continues to encourage the false perception encouraged by the media that Iran has a nuclear weapons program threatening Israel and the world. Following the joint U.S.-NATO operation to topple Qadafy in Libya (producing an even worse regime), he mulls over intervening in Syria, and already orders his air force to deliver French troops to the battlefields of yet another war-of-choice, this time in Mali.

Thus you can be the president of an imperialist country, carrying on as normal, killing from the Af-Pak borderlands to the Sahel, presiding over much evil, and still pose as a cutting-edge advocate of human rights, in this case declaring that “if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.” Powerful words equalizing hetero- and homosexual loves.

But where are the soaring cadences affirming the equal right of the dispossessed Palestinians to the lands appropriated by Zionist settlers? Or the equal right of Iranians to develop nuclear energy under IAEA supervision with the right of the Israelis, who have never signed the NPT and refuse any supervision of their nuclear weapons program, to build power plants?

Where’s the ringing affirmation of the people of Bahrain to topple their oppressive regime (that sponsors the U.S. Fifth Fleet), as the Tunisians, Egyptians and Yemenis toppled theirs? And how is Obama standing up to the Iraqi regime’s assault on gay rights once grudgingly conceded by the secularist Baathist regime? Where the support for the right of marginalized, frightened, oppressed people thousands of miles from Greenwich Village to attack the police having been attacked by them?

Obama selects his causes carefully, politically. It’s good he has, in his own understated way, paid tribute to the Stonewall uprising. I’m sure many thousands are Google-searching that term since the speech, maybe some feeling inspired by what they learn. But as we revisit the Stonewall experience, should we not also recall how the Obama administration arms the police in countries like Saudi Arabia where gays are flogged, lashed or executed? And should we not note that the campaign for gay rights, however important, is no substitute for a campaign to topple U.S. imperialism, the endless source of war?

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, (AK Press); the article above first appeared on Counterpunch, here.

Reblogged from rmott62:

It took a little more digging at the time (it’s more straightforward now) to see that this is a website for patients to share very detailed medical information with each other, building community and sharing sympathy.  Knowing how important this sort of interaction can be, I was intrigued.  However, there is a twist.  The site publishes an Openness Philosophy, which states in part:

You see, we believe sharing your healthcare experiences and outcomes is good. Why? Because when patients share real-world data, collaboration on a global scale becomes possible. New treatments become possible. Most importantly, change becomes possible. At PatientsLikeMe, we are passionate about bringing people together for a greater purpose: speeding up the pace of research and fixing a broken healthcare system.

Currently, most healthcare data is inaccessible due to privacy regulations or proprietary tactics. As a result, research is slowed, and the development of breakthrough treatments takes decades. Patients also can’t get the information they need to make important treatment decisions. But it doesn’t have to be that way. When you and thousands like you share your data, you open up the healthcare system. You learn what’s working for others. You improve your dialogue with your doctors. Best of all, you help bring better treatments to market in record time.

PatientsLikeMe enables you to effect a sea change in the healthcare system. We believe that the Internet can democratize patient data and accelerate research like never before. Furthermore, we believe data belongs to you the patient to share with other patients, caregivers, physicians, researchers, pharmaceutical and medical device companies, and anyone else that can help make patients’ lives better.

So, the site openly states that the users medical data will be shared with “pharmaceutical and medical device companies”.  The only outcomes they declare are beneficial.  Really?

As a cynical person, when I was sharing updates about my illness with others online a few years ago, I assumed that people from those companies might be lurking and mining the data.  One way of looking at PatientsLikeMe might be to say that, “at least it’s out in the open and they’re honest about it, and people aren’t forced to share.”  That was the reaction of a couple of participants when I posed this question at a medical anthropology session at the AAA meeting last November.

I lean toward another interpretation that came up in the discussion.  If there is a value in this data and it is being amalgamated and commodified by this company, shouldn’t the patients profit from the sale of their illnesses?   Who should own that data?  The Openness Philosophy states that patients do, but is that how it is treated?

I find this site to be troubling. Though the potential exists for users to invent illnesses and symptoms and break the system (see my earlier post on Munchausen by Internet or consider pranksters and hackers), I think it’s more likely people for to get lulled into a false sense of comfort.  Searching the site now, you can find out some shockingly personal information about users there, including personal photos and intimate medical details.  I’m not sure that this is the patient empowerment that is lauded in the site’s PR.  This is a personal opinion, though, and there is much room for debate.

ABSTRACT: The United Nations’ green economy programme radically re-imagines the commons as a space where ecosystems services will be quantified, marketised and traded. This paper will examine issues with this version of the green economy for environmental communicators. It will review the etymology of the concept, examine contested ideas on what a green economy would entail and situate these proposals in relation to different economic approaches to the environment. It will suggest strategies for communicating the contested nature of the proposals and exposing obfuscations. This paper will argue that in stark opposition to green economics with its focus on participation and democratic processes, the UN’s GEP will close deliberations on the commons by privatizing ‘ecosystem services’ – thereby taking environmental decision-making out of a political sphere and into the marketplace.

Re-Imaging the Commons as ‘The Green Economy’ 

The United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) flagship document titled ‘Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication’ (2011) and accompanying UNEP reports at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development the United Nations in June 2012, launched the UNEP’s green economy programme.  The reports use strong environmental language as a means of presenting their version of green economy as a far-reaching programme of reform to address environmental problems on a global scale. While the rhetoric suggests that the UN is serious about addressing the biodiversity crisis, green economists and a wide variety of social movements are less convinced by the proposed policy mechanisms. Civil society responded at Rio+20 with a plethora of critical responses: condemning what they claimed amounted to the corporate capture of the United Nations (Joint Civil Society Statement, 2012); condemning the UN’s ‘Natural Capital Declaration’ (Banktrack, 2012); condemning 20 years of Greenwash (Bruno, 2012); and indeed, condemning the entire ‘green economy’ project (Nadal, 2012; Brand, 2012; Patel and Crook, 2012). The Indigenous People’s Global Conference on Rio+20 and Mother Earth issued a strongly worded ‘Kari-Oca 2 Declaration’ declaring the UNEP’s green economy as ‘a continuation of colonialism’ (2012, p. 1) firmly rejecting market-based solutions, REDD and intellectual property rights over genetic resources and traditional knowledge. In the wake of the polarized positions at Rio+20, the conference ended with both civil society and the United Nations unimpressed with the outcomes. The New York Times claimed Rio+20 “ended here as it began, under a shroud of withering criticism” (Romero and Broder, 2012); The Guardian’s headline read; “Rio+20 outcome a focal point for frustration among campaigners” (Ford, 2012); and London’s Financial Times announced “Rio+20 lacks ambition, says UN chief” (Clark, 2012). The conference failed to achieve significant binding targets but more significantly the conference launched the UNEP’s ‘green economy’ programme that aims to significantly redesign the processes through which the global commons will be managed. Clearly the ‘green economy’ is a fiercely contested idea and the UNEP’s version is strongly opposed by wide variety social movements concerned with both ecological conservation and environmental justice.

In naming its programme the ‘green economy’ the UNEP implies a reframing of the entire economy along green lines. The language even suggests a connection to a particular school of economic thought concerned with the environment, that of green economics. However, the programme itself is largely concerned with attempting to protect the environment by establishing policies that will quantify and trade ‘ecosystem services’. This will be done in ways that reflect specific policy prescriptions of different schools of economic thinking on the environment, namely environmental economics and ecological economics. Since green economics is a field with radically different policy prescriptions to what is proposed, the naming of the new project creates severe confusion with contested definitions of the ‘green economy’. In this paper, the UNEP’s ‘green economy’ programme will be referred to as the ‘UN’s GEP’ to avoid confusion with what green economists have been describing as ‘green economics’ for over a decade.

The UN’s GEP aims to protect nature by accounting for ‘externalities’ of environmental damage. According to this logic, once nature’s processes are given a financial value, prices of goods and services will reflect ecological costs and it will no longer make economic sense to produce ecologically harmful products. The assumption that nature’s processes can be safely disaggregated and effectively managed using market-based mechanisms is embedded into this new project. This paper will focus on the market-making policy prescriptions of the UN’s GEP due to problems and inherent political tensions associated with this agenda. While there are other elements of the UN’s GEP, the financial valuation and marketisation policies are the most significant aspect of the programme since other proposals will be subordinated to the economic logic of market-based modes of governance. The central dynamic in the UN’s GEP is that it relies on the private sector for investment to fund the programme and that in exchange for capital investment; ownership and control over ecosystem services will be granted to private corporations. Expectations of profits will drive the new markets so other values will only exist as vague ideals ­– or convenient green marketing and public relations messaging to conceal continued, and indeed amplified, unsustainable development.

For environmental communicators, the UN’s GEP creates a condition of discursive confusion caused by opposing definitions of the ‘green economy’. This paper will examine contested ideas on what a green economy would entail, the etymology of the concept and situate these new proposals in relation to different economic approaches to the environment. It will compare ideas on what the ‘green economy’ means and how the UN’s GEP blurs these distinctions. In an attempt to clarify competing discourses, this paper will examine specific philosophical, methodological and political issues in regards to the UN’s GEP. The paper will end by reflecting on risks and suggesting strategies for communicating the contested nature of the proposals and exposing obfuscations. While the UN’s GEP is quickly becoming hegemonic, “there is as yet no agreed definition of what constitutes a green economy” (Stakeholder Forum, 2012). Since the ‘green economy’ is still being defined, environmental communicators have a role key role to play in drawing attention to power dynamics, motivations and economic interests of institutional players.

In stark opposition to what green economists have traditionally conceived of as the green economy (with its emphasis on democratic decision-making on environmental issues) the UN’s GEP will close deliberations on the commons through valuing nature according to economic logic and then using market-based mechanisms to address environmental problems. These new processes will exclude those without financial capacities from decision-making regarding the management of nature; now ‘ecosystem services’. While scientists and environmentalists involved with this project aim to find a means of enabling political and economics policies to acknowledge the value of the environment, submitting nature to the logic of the market is an extraordinarily dangerous enterprise. Instead, green economic theory argues that the economic system must submit to the logic of the ecological systems that provides the geophysical context for economic systems to exist in the first place.

The full paper can be accessed on the www.academic.edu website and on the EcoLabs website. I have worked several weeks on this paper and am presently not funded or supported by an institution. You can help me out by donating £1 for this paper here.

To summarize: the answer to underfunded, lower effectiveness primary and secondary education requires subsidizing a private, VC-funded bet made on a roulette wheel fashioned from the already precarious prospects of a disadvantaged population.

As TechCrunch’s gleefully apocalyptic article demonstrates, Silicon Valley culture loves to celebrate the end of institutions merely to bask in the spectacle of falling rubble. That works for summer popcorn flicks, but in the real world, eventually we have to live among that rubble. Or, I suppose, we have to be able to afford the cost of the private rubble-clearing services that would allow us to persist in their wake. -Ian Bogost, Inequality in American Education Will not be Solved Online

Agenda Setting Theory

Core Assumptions: ”Agenda-setting is the creation of public awareness and concern of salient issues by the news media. Two basis assumptions underlie most research on agenda-setting: (1) the press and the media do not reflect reality; they filter and shape it; (2) media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues. One of the most critical aspects in the concept of an agenda-setting role of mass communication is the time frame for this phenomenon. In addition, different media have different agenda-setting potential. Agenda-setting theory seems quite appropriate to help us understand the pervasive role of the media (for example on political communication systems).’’

Statement: Bernard Cohen (1963) stated: “The press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.”

(University of Twente, 2012)

Classic Model

Perception Model

Reality-Media-People’s Perception

ICA=CH-Model: Breaking through the Awareness Threshold

GRAPHICS FROM*:McQuail & Windahl (1993), Prof. Frank
Brettschneider, University Höhenheim, Germany

Applying the theory in the context of the Philippine news media, the present study examines the latter’s ability to set the agenda via its latest platform – the internet – by tracking its online news coverage over the month of November, 2012.

This was done, over the same period, through a general, non-quantitative content analysis of three ‘indie’ or alternative news websites: Bulatlat, Pinoy Weekly Online, and Rappler; set against those of three ‘mainstream’ networks, ABS-CBN Online, GMA Online, and Interaksyon.com (TV5).

The present critique assesses their coverage of the following key themes or agendas: the human rights agenda (e.g. Extrajudicial Killings, the Maguindanao Massacre), the legal agenda (e.g. Cybercrime Law,  FOI and RH bills, slow Maguindanao massacre legal proceedings), the political agenda (e.g. 2013 Senatorial elections) the environmental agenda (e.g. mining), and the social development agenda (e.g. agrarian reform, food security, poverty). As the study seeks to emphasize those issues that suffer from under-reporting in the mainstream press, the usual fodder of crime and celebrity news were ruled out by default.

The paper concludes with an analysis of the reasons behind the persistence of the Philippine News Agenda as it stands, one typified by a decline in quality reportage and dominated by the commercial imperative- both online and off – despite the new possibilities for more critical, in-depth news coverage offered by the internet.

Theoretical Applications: The Philippine Context

In the Philippines, the press goes beyond setting the board for public debate – it plays the pieces. From the nominal declaration of independence to the two People Power Revolutions, the press has been a catalyst of national discourse as it plays its part in moving history forward.  Its evolution has been constantly shaped and reshaped by the turbulent history of the society in which it is embedded and which it chronicles -  an image of the concrete lives and struggles of the Filipino people that it can at best reflect back, however distorted.

Yet this otherwise indispensable role of the press as both agenda setter and player of history has been hampered as it finds itself caught between contradictory interests: that of preserving the status quo or being at the forefront of change.

The Philippine Press shares a dual history of resistance and repression (Coronel 1998, Teodoro 2001).  Having developed, changed and adapted to centuries of colonial rule and two decades of Martial Law, it boasts of its own samizdat tradition,  a legacy of generations of writers and journalists who, having mastered the art of underground publishing and trumping government censors, hid under pennames running from Plaridel (Marcelo H. del Pilar) to Amante Ernani (Amado Hernandez).

This, what Coronel (1998) calls ‘its fighting tradition’, lives on in a press that today considers itself among  the freest in Asia. Deeply ingrained in the national consciousness is a sense of the need to preserve such freedom in the context of an oppressive past, an uncertain future, and a present that has yet to enjoy the fruits of true democracy.

Among its highlights was the Propaganda Movement pioneered by Rizal and Del Pilar and smuggled from Spain, alongside a thriving local tradition of revolutionary literature and the Katipunan’s short-lived Kalayaan, all of which helped fire up the national consciousness toward collective opposition to the Spanish regime (Corpuz 1989; Schumacher 1997).  This undercurrent of resistance survived the American colonial era, the Japanese take-over and the post-war period.  As inspired by the 19^th century European press, newspapers at the time were banners of political propaganda or dissent, committing themselves to a clear ideological line and the associated polemics.  Newspapers have since played a crucial agenda-setting function, in that while radio and television share bigger audiences between them, much of their reporting is still based on what goes on print, and the policy-making elite depend  more on the papers than the broadcast media (Coronel).

La Solidaridad, the official organ of the Propaganda Movement (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

These, however, like the politics which defined them, emerged during periods of abrupt social upheaval and died out as quickly in the aftermath.  The press then awaited its next big reinvention.

Fast-forward to 1986.  As anti-administration papers published damning investigative reports of corruption, human rights violations, and electoral fraud by the Marcos regime and the Catholic radio station Veritas aired frequent reports of ensuing nationwide protests, the press was instrumental in the events leading up to EDSA II.

The Agenda was set:  the End of a Dictatorship. Journalists relished in their new-found freedom – perhaps to a fault. The shift in Agenda accompanied a shift in ownership. Having no real tradition of public broadcasting, practically all forms of mainstream media, from newspapers to radio, had been in private commercial hands, triggering a reversion to the American Model and its bottom-line fixation on advertising and subscription profits now freed from the restraints of Martial Law (Teodoro 2001).

Indeed, in the years following the 1986 Revolution, the initial explosion of post-dictatorship media organisations died down with increasingly prohibitive capital costs. Fully journalist-owned and run papers like the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Ang Pahayagang Malaya (The Free Newspaper) were eventually sold off to more established entrepreneurs (Coronel 1998). The once-vibrant era of relatively independent newspapers, television shows, and radio stations playing each other out in a truly competitive market shrivelled up once the industry came to be dominated by a few influential families – often with vested interests in business or politics.  While this was the case in the past, content shifted markedly from the service of political ends to that which served the market.

Today, public service has given way to a new Agenda – crime, celebrity gossip, show biz. Issues otherwise deemed safe and that sell. The slogan of ‘objectivity’ is itself often a cover for the unwillingness to dig the dirt or rock the boat through solid investigative reporting. Stories deemed too controversial or threatening to the status quo are deliberately softened up or shot down (Chua & Vinia 1998, Coronel 1998). And with good reason: journalists who dare live up to the ideals of their profession, who refuse bribes and speak truth to power are killed themselves. The Philippines now ranks third in the world in the Committee to Protect Journalists’ (2012) Impunity index, well above Colombia, Afghanistan, Russia and Pakistan. It is also one of the four  worst-performing countries in terms of preventing and prosecuting the murder of journalists:  a dubious distinction a country-not-at-war shares with Somalia, Sri Lanka, and Iraq.

And as in America, the Philippines has developed its own brand of journalism: AC-DC Journalism (i.e. Attack-Collect, Defend-Collect), Envelope Journalism (i.e. bribery by politicians or corporations out to ensure good coverage, with some reporters on their regular payroll) and Garote Journalism, tribute to the hysterical crescendo typical of radio broadcast headlines delivered with a generous helping of tunes, beats, whips, woozes and clangs deemed entertaining to a mass audience (Coronel, Chua & Vinia 1998).

From direct threats to bribery, by both journalists and their subjects, impunity and corruption are the order of the day, just as sleaze, sensationalism, and sentimentality seem to be the only menu on offer.

A failure to uphold basic ethical standards and a decline in journalistic integrity can be attributed to a press gone haywire after decades of state repression (Chua & Vinia 1998, Coronel 2001). This is hardly a phenomenon unique to the Philippines, and is common among other post-colonial and post-martial law states. But the loss of editorial independence can take on a different form; driven not by overt state control, but by the more subtle pressures of competition in a free market overrun by the primacy of private profit over the public good.

Newsrooms with tight budgets often splurge on the technicals, equipment and special effects, at the expense of journalism skills training and investments in investigative reporting. Cutthroat competition between news networks has come at the expense of the careful vetting of facts,   and of more comprehensive coverage of daily events critical for the meaningful, democratic participation of the public in the issues that affect them. Serious journalism is reduced to a series of dumbed-down news bites.

In the drumbeat of daily headlines (placed here in rough order), stories of rape and murder, disaster and loss, trade bans and wage hikes, street protests and senate hearings are often taken out of context in 30-second clips that skimp on the details. Where important social issues are dealt with, an examination of the root causes of poverty is often left untouched, in favour of sentimental coverage of weeping women and lives rising from the ashes, purposefully packaged in simplistic plots more suited to tele-drama. However well-meaning, these fail to live up to a crucial function of the media: that of fostering a critical and active public no longer dependent on fairy tales.

As Coronel (1998) notes, “Competition has resulted in homogeneous reporting and programming. Newspapers and broadcast stations tend to produce the same kind of reports that are guaranteed to sell…The result is the tabloidization of news and public affairs…As the rivalry intensifies, networks do battle by aiming for the lowest common denominator of public taste. As the public becomes bombarded with increasingly ‘sexy’ programming, the networks respond by providing even more titillation: more and more pieces of clothing are taken off; gorier and gorier crimes are shown; the exposés on the private lives of celebrities become ever more risqué (emphasis added)”.

While network owners may claim that they are simply responding to growing mass demand by a wider audience that are in turn a result of improved access to communications technology, all this bodes ill for the quality of civic engagement essential to any properly functioning democracy (McCombs 1972).

There are other threats that bid Filipino journalists to tread on the ‘safe and saleable’ side of their craft .  Journalists, editors and news producers are just as beholden to their respective owner’s multiple business interests (Chua & Vinia 1998). This has had major implications for editorial independence. While network owners and publishers rarely engage in overt censorship, the concentration of media ownership has had a more subtle effect on staff who then soften or tone-down their coverage of sensitive issues deemed contrary to those interests (Teodoro 2001). Indeed, rather than forming as a check on political power, some toe the government line, for fear of retribution in the form of tax audits on their owner’s businesses, lost business deals, or tighter regulations on their (other) businesess (Chua & Vinia 1998, Teodoro 2001)..

With most major dailies, mainstream networks and other news organisations rapidly merging and consolidating in the hands of a few corporate players, the monopolization of the media industry is a global phenomenon (McCombs & Shaw 1997). In 2001, a World Bank study of 97 countries revealed a handful of family companies controlled 57 per cent of all newspapers and 34 per cent of all television stations, with states part-owning 29 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively. But corporations ultimately dominated, moving seamlessly between media organisations, whether family or state-run, with ownership dictated by decree of shareholder capital. Only two per cent were employee or cooperatively owned, and less than that had other ownership structures (Coronel 2001). Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and perhaps a half-dozen other players now run the global media system on puppet strings.

Such a trend amounts to a monopoly of the Truth, with journalists torn between the voice of the establishment – that of their networks and the system that keeps them running – and the vox populi.

Perhaps no one treads the world of media monopoly and conflicts of interest better than the Lopez family, whose own business empire encompasses everything from basic utilities and real estate to agriculture, infrastructure, manufacturing, banking, and telecommunications – not to mention the country’s second largest radio station, DZMM.  Having recovered from their erstwhile exile in the United States during the Marcos years, the Lopezes soon reclaimed ABS-CBN network, which subsequently became the top-rating broadcaster in the country and which radically transformed the culture of Philippine mainstream media for good. Airing its first broadcast from the bottom of the charts in October 1986, its audience share lurched to 62% by 1993. Its secret? Sensationalism, savvy marketing, and sheer attitude. (Coronel 2001)

Other networks, sensing fierce competition, followed the new market leader in both style and content, a virtual cloning of television programming that soon had all networks caught up in the same ratings game.

Coronel (2001) again:

“Essentially what ABS-CBN did was what American networks were then also doing: bringing tabloid journalism to television. The network re-engineered the concept of news and current affairs: What were once the most serious elements of Philippine television became an amalgam of gore, celebrity and scandal designed to titillate and entertain rather than educate or inform. The network subverted an already fragile tradition in Philippine television. That tradition was TV could air as much entertainment and sleaze as it wanted, but it also had to produce programmes that contributed to a deeper understanding of social issues. Indeed, the Radio and Television Code that governs Philippine broadcasting stipulates the airing of public affairs programmes ‘geared toward building an enlightened citizenry through the discussion and clarification of issues of national and international significance.’ Unfortunately, there is little such discussion now going on in Philippine television…. Until only a decade ago, Philippine networks subsidized news and public affairs shows: The unstated assumption was that these programmes provide a public service, and they did not have to rate or to earn to be put on air. But since ABS-CBN entered the picture, all that has changed.

The rule now is that if news does not make money, then it must be retooled and repackaged until it does. This logic comes from a situation where networks are ultimately responsible not to the public, but to their shareholders (emphasis added).”

Online news magazines Bulatlat and Pinoy Weekly offer, by way of contrast, an alternative to the mainstream media (MSM) examples discussed above.

Bulatlat

‘Bulatlat’- to speak out, unmask or reveal – was a fledgling project of left-leaning journalists, activists, and college professors including the University of the Philippine’s Danilo Arao, IBON Foundation’s Sonny Africa and long-time reporters Benjie Oliveros, Ronalyn Olea and Bobby Tuazon. Born in the aftermath of EDSA II and the ouster of the Estrada administration in 2001, Bulatlat.com asserts itself as a viable alternative to the mainstream press, securing most of its funding from donations under the slogans “support progressive journalism” and “journalism for the people”.

Bulatlat, at least by the standards of conventional Philippine journalism, is far from politically neutral, perhaps harking back to the days of the trade union press.   Its progressive, generally left-leaning, stance on the issues it covers is unmistakable in its coverage (see Table 1). It clearly does not shy away from controversial topics and voices – including occasional press releases from the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Table 1

Of the six news sites reviewed for this study, Bulatlat alone consistently held on to all five agendas  and sought the widest range of perspectives from sectors often overlooked by the mainstream press: labour unions, women’s groups, non-government organisations and  civil society in general.

What it perhaps lacked in breaking news reports, crime and show biz, it made up for in in-depth analysis of issues from women’s rights to union strikes, protests for wage hikes and ‘Mine UNSafety Week’. Its investigative reports into questionable Hacienda Luisita land redistribution deals and the Coco Levy scandal reveal a commitment to the social development agenda and an obvious slant toward Labour. Bulatlat’s coverage of Pagcor’s ‘Sin City’ differed markedly from Interaksyon and Rappler’s generally positive account of the business deal.

In marked contrast to Bulatlat’s article series specially devoted to the issue, Philex Mining company’s latest incursions into Negros Occidental received scant coverage elsewhere, as did updates on the extrajudicial killings of journalists and activists including Rolando Olalia, Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan.  And though most sites covered the Maguindanao Massacre commemorations, few tackled th  issue with similar depth.

Pinoy Weekly

Pinoy Weekly, possibly Bulatlat’s closest counter-part, is a Filipino online news magazine with monthly print versions including Pinoy Weekly Special Issues, Pinoy Weekly Japan Edition and Pinoy Weekly Mindanao, published by the non-profit Pinoy Media Center, Inc.

Like Bulatlat, Pinoy Weekly makes clear its politically progressive inclinations, devoting the bulk of its coverage (see Table 2) to society’s marginalised sectors: labour, farmers, youth, women, migrants, among others, as it aims to “democratise reporting in the country’’ (“idemokratisa ang praktika ng pamamahayag sa bansa”).

Table 2

Articles in Pinoy’s Weekly monthly print edition are mostly excluded from its website, though its own coverage reflects many of Bulatlat’s key themes, including labour protests against hospital privatization, slow prosecution of human rights violations, and land reform issues. Unlike Bulatlat though,  PW did throw in some ‘indie’ show biz highlights:  the Filipino-British director  Jowee Morell’s inclusion in the 2012 Reel Gate International Film Festival, an analysis of retro musicals in Filipino films, the Gwangju International Film Festival, and  Vilma Santos alleged move to TV5.

Unique to Pinoy Weekly is its weekly entries of Filipino poetry and documentaries, two of which were uploaded last month: one on Filipino migrants stranded in Saudi Arabia and another on cases of female harassment under the military’s Oplan Bayanihan counter-insurgency programme.

Conclusions

…

Human rights. Social development. The Environment. The inner workings of the political system. These issues suffer from a dearth of in-depth reportage in the mainstream networks, perhaps in the latter’s rush to provide the usual menu of celebrity glitz and sensational crime. The absence of alternative news coverage in their television and radio platforms, it was first assumed, would be compensated for by their online presence, but even a cursory survey of their websites quickly proved otherwise.

The results of the study seem to confirm initial assumptions about the very nature of commercial media coverage as opposed to those that claim to provide an ‘alternative’. A one-month analysis of Philippine online news coverage revealed a mainstream Agenda that appears little different, in the airwaves or on Facebook.

The online news platforms of the major networks are, at best, a reflection and an extension of their reportage on television, and at worst a regurgitation of the standard fare: shallow and sensational stories kept without the benefit of longer coverage that would have been both possible and affordable online. While Interaksyon’s in-depth reports into the Malampaya fund scandal (matched in depth and scope only by Rappler) were commendable, GMA’s prominent reports on the intrigues surrounding Starstruck Season 2’s Ultimate Female Survivor Ryza Cenon’s sexuality – complete with photos, clips and articles – were anything but.

And when it came to the best of the mainstream networks, uploaded clips of documentaries like Reporter’s Notebook were as good as they were aired on television, though again both GMA and ABS-CBN Online would benefit from more diversified content, with at least some articles, graphics and news footage reserved solely for their websites.

In general, Bulatlat, Pinoy Weekly and Rappler provided a more comprehensive portrait of national and international events, giving air to even controversial topics and voices that would have been unheard of (literally) in the MSM, though their full potential is doubtless hampered by a narrow audience reach given the nature of their medium.

Advances in communication technology and the rise of independent media in recent years offer some hope of redemption. This is best seen among bloggers who have taken upon  themselves the task of reporting what the mainstream media  do not; in tweets that turn into virtual emergency alerts for rescue forces when typhoons hit, in Facebook posts that become banners of protest, as in the Arab Spring, ‘aiding and abetting’ the overthrow of dictators (whether backed by the CIA or not); in chat boards and forums  that offer a chance to discuss  issues with like-minded individuals or talk back to authority; in new transparency-building initiatives that open up the political process to the public and hold those in power in check – alá Wikileaks –or  during EDSA II, where SMS text messages that helped bring together thousands in nationwide protests proved instrumental in the ousting of then-President Estrada.

Indeed, in an era where journalistic independence, diversity of opinion and democracy itself are increasingly stifled by the demands of the free market and the monopolization of the media industry   – and where the responsibilities of democratic citizenship have been overruled by that of the consumer – journalists, critical citizens and the rising tide of assertive voices on the world wide web offer a countervailing, even revolutionary, force. The prospects for independent internet-based media to challenge the dominant discourse and set the national agenda are, however, limited by the digital divide that has left millions still without reliable internet access, especially in rural areas.

A new wave of cyber legislation that has swept the globe in recent years pose an additional threat to critical discourse and free speech, at least on the internet. These include the  US SOPA-PIPA Bills and the Philippine Cybercrime Law,  whose  vague provisions on ”online libel” critics insist amount to an indirect form of censorship,

”There is therefore great potential for alternative or small media to challenge corporate medias hold not only on the market but also on the news agenda and public opinion. In fact, it is this potential that keeps corporate media on their toes and compels them to be more responsive to the market. In truth corporate media knows that it is not just market that is at stake, but power over public opinion, the crafting of public policy and the future of regimes. In the end, big media companies stand to lose not just advertising revenue and audience share but also the power and the prestige that come with owning a newspaper or a TV network.

…In addition, the battle for the Internet has yet to be won. The fact is establishing a presence in the so-called new media requires far less start-up capital than broadcasting or newspapers. Certainly, groups espousing alternative views can find a home in the WorldWide Web. And many of them have: everyone from the Office of the President to the Communist Party of the Philippines now has a Web page. The alternative is to be mere consumers in a media world dominated by a few, big producers answerable to no one but an amorphous mass of shareholders

(Coronel 2001).

SEE:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda-setting_theory

http://www.mediatenor.com/smi_AS_approach.php

http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/Mass%20Media/Agenda-Setting_Theory.doc/

Bibliography

Chua, Yvonne T. and Vinia M. Datinguinoo. 1998. The Media as Marketplace. In C. F. Hofileña

(ed.), News for Sale: The Corruption of the Philippine Media, 90-109. Quezon City: Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.

Coronel, S. S. (1998). Media ownership and control in the Philippines. Media Development. Retrieved from http://wacc.org.uk/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=479

Coronel, S.S. (2001). The Media,The Market and Democracy: The Case of the Philippines. The Public, 109-125.

Coronel, S.S. () The Role of the Media in Deepening Democracy. http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan010194.pdf

Corpuz, O. D. 1989. The Roots of the Filipino Nation, Vol. II. Quezon City: Aklahi Foundation.

Kleinnijenhuis, J. & Rietberg, E.M. (1995). Parties, media, the public and the economy: Patterns of societal agenda-setting. European journal of political research: official journal of the European Consortium for Political Research, 28(1),95-118

McCombs, M.E. (1972). Mass Communication in Political Campaigns: Information, Gratification and Persuasion. In: Kline, F. & Tichenor, Ph.J. (Eds.) Current Perspectives in Mass Communication Research. Beverly Hills, CA.: Sage.

McCombs, M.E. (1982). The Agenda-Setting Approach. In: Nimmo, D. & Sanders, K. (Eds.) Handbook of Political Communication. Beverly Hills, CA.: Sage.

McCombs, M.E., & Shaw, D.L. (1972). The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36 (Summer), 176-187.

McCombs, M.E., & Shaw, D.L., & Weaver, D.L. (1997). Communication and Democracy: Exploring the Intellectual Frontiers in Agenda-Setting Theory. Mahwah, N.J. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Schumacher, John N. 1997. The Propaganda Movement (1880-1895): The Creation of a Filipino Consciousness, The Making of a Revolution. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Teodoro, Luis. (2001). Media Freedom Made a Difference. Philippine Journalism Review. March, 1-2.

*http://www.mediatenor.co.uk/smi_AS_approach.php

http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/Mass%20Media/Agenda-Setting_Theory.doc/

We hope that doctors are prescribing treatments, making life and death decisions, based on solid science.

They aren’t because the science has been corrupted. Medicine is broken and Goldacre is blowing the whistle.

“Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques which are flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of treatments.”

Goldacre is not denying drug companies have produced great drugs that are saving lives “on an epic scale”; but this doesn’t give them the right to “hide data, mislead doctors and harm patients”.

In Bad Pharma he shows how they do it.

The pharmaceutical industry sets the stage for positive trials for their drugs. Unflattering trials don’t see the light of day. This is Goldacre’s central point: evidence based medicine isn’t possible when at least half the trials conducted are buried. Even if drug companies were forced to publish all their studies from hereon the problem wouldn’t be fixed because we need to know all there is to know about the medicines currently in use. Goldacre is on a mission to get all trials, past, present and future, published.

There’s a lot else that’s wrong with how pharmaceuticals are produced. Taking part in drug trials is not popular, but people who do so expect they are helping advance science and they are told they are. But if the trial results are buried those volunteers have been lied to. It’s often the poor who are ‘volunteers’. Until the 1980s in the US trials were conducted on prisoners. Today volunteering for a clinical trial is a source of income for people with few options such as students, the unemployed, and the homeless.

The Declaration of Helsiniki set out a code of ethics for human experimentation and was revised in 2000 to stipulate that research is justified if the population from whom trial participants come from would benefit from the results.

The $600 billion a year pharmaceutical industry has enormous economic sway and uses masterful marketing. For instance, maybe as many as a third of academic medical papers are ghost written by the drug companies, with the ‘author’ doing little more than reading over the paper and making a few tweaks. The research, the data collection and analysis, the selection of tables, the drafts and referencing is done by the drug company promoting its product, and then is published without ever acknowledging the characters in the background. The reader assumes the work to be an independent piece of research by the author. For the ‘author’ having papers published means extra income and academic promotion. These tainted papers remain sources of medical knowledge for years to come. Goldacre proposes a simple immediate improvement: ‘film credits’, where absolutely all the contributors are described at the end of the paper. It should be a universal practice he says.

Goldacre shines light in many of the dark corners of the pharmaceutical industry and has practical suggestions for how to fix the mess, but he doesn’t take on the profit system. It’s understandable because he wants to get the drug companies sorted right now. His impatience is refreshing.

The drug industry spends about twice as much on marketing and promotion as it does on research and development. It’s an absurd waste of resource that prevents scientific progress. It’s particularly galling considering that in most developed countries pharmaceuticals are funded out of the public purse.

Standing up to the pharmaceutical giants is a fine stand and Goldacre does it superbly. His book is speaking to us, calling on us to fix the mess.

Let sunshine in, let many eyes spot problems and find solutions. That’s his message.

…………………..

*Ben Goldacre is a best-selling author, broadcaster, medical doctor and academic who specialises in unpicking dodgy scientific claims from drug companies, newspapers, government reports, PR people and quacks. His book Bad Science has sold over 400,000 copies. Ben has written since 2003 for the Guardian a weekly Bad Science column. His blog is worth checking out: http://www.badscience.net/

** Daphna Whitmore is a nurse.

The Black Caps met in Wellington over the weekend of the 12th – 13th of January 2013. We held discussions on airline meals, the weather and room service in South African hotels and passed resolutions on changing the team’s name, and on spinning (doctoring, not bowling).

We discussed and discarded the need to push for more militant fightback than is currently practised by our team.

We discussed changing our name to reflect re-assessment of our organisation and approach. In particular, we have discussed whether “cricket team” reflects our perspective of not currently being anything remotely related to that, but aiming to build a group, defining our aims this way:

“an organisation whose chief concern is sponsorship, while always immersing itself in lucrative New Idea articles and responding to unfair newspaper column comment, and while always seizing every real opening for additional sponsors.”

The organisation voted unanimously to change our name from the Black Caps to Fallback, which will also be the name of our team mascot pet rat. Our primary slogan will be “struggle, stumble and somnambulism.” Once they have redesigned our logo and website, some people with proper jobs will roll out this new name and slogan.

Finally, our organisation is re-assessing our sporting history.

We don’t really remain partisans of W.G. Grace and all the other old buggers who put runs on the board years ago. These guys established a quaint model of “cricket” characterised by unreasonable levels of skill, discipline and love of the game, which gives some benefits to the punters who pay to see the fixtures but which disadvantages modern players in a similar manner to a capitalist police state.

“Ognuno può dire: Padre Pio è mio”

(‘Anyone can say: Padre Pio is mine’)

Inscription of the statue of St Pio, Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie

One of the most popular lines of catholic merchandise produced and sold in Italy is the one featuring the image of St Pio – or, as he is usually called, Padre Pio – which finds its most important centres of production and sale in San Giovanni Rotondo, where the saint lived for fifty-two years. This case study is based on a field work of two days spent visiting the town and its sacred places, observing the life of the Sangiovannesi (the local people) and the pilgrims. This case study is intended as a “test drive” for many theories around consumption and sacralisation of goods, and also to see Catholic implicit cultural policies at work.

 San Giovanni Rotondo

Christopher McKevitt (in Eade, Sallnow, 1991) in San Giovanni Rotondo: the Shrine and the Cult of St Pio noticed how the town where the saint lived for 52 years seemed split into two different areas: the old village and the Cappuccini, meaning the zone where most of the Capuchin friars’ building and churches are located (p.86). Indeed, the separation between the two areas is striking: the old village, with its white cobbled paths and colourful houses, looks like a postcard from the 1950s, and the social life seems not have altered since. The locals are not used to the presence of tourists and pilgrims, and are linked by a strong sense of belonging. They worship St Pio in a silent, modest way, by hanging pictures of him on their walls, in the streets and sometimes even in their cars, marking their intimate spiritual relationship with him. There are no shops that sell religious items or souvenirs in this part of the town, but there are commemorative plaques on the buildings he had visited during his lifetime, and a statue built in 1985 in his honour.

Things change dramatically in the Cappuccini area: every building in via dei Cappuccini (the street that links the two zones) looks recently built and quite expensive. Besides villas, some chic bars, tourist restaurants and hotels, one can also find several souvenir shops, or, as the locals seem to prefer calling them, “religious items” shops. One can also find the headquarters of Radio Padre Pio, Padre Pio TV and La Voce di Padre Pio, respectively a radio station, a tv channel and a magazine completely dedicated to the saint; on these buildings, the business logo of the Capuchin friars is displayed proudly. The same logo can be seen on the gates of Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, the enormous private hospital strongly wanted by Padre Pio. At the end of the street, one reaches the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie and the Church of St Pio, surrounded by about 30 small shops that form a religious souvenir market crowded with pilgrims.

San Giovanni Rotondo went from being a small rural village to one of the richest local councils in Puglia (Comuni d’Italia, 2012), but the benefits of an economy based on tourism seem to be a privilege of the Capuchin friars and their business (McKevitt, in Eade and Sallnow, p.86-87). The tourist arrivals in 2011 hit 260000 units, and the overall presences over 453000 (RM, Studi e Ricerche per il Mezzogiorno, 2012), positioning San Giovanni Rotondo as the second most visited city in Puglia and the second most visited religious site after San Pietro (Il Quotidiano di Foggia, 2012); the average spending of a tourist per night, however, is €66, among the most inexpensive sites in Italy (Blogsicilia, 2012). This evident imbalance between the two parts of the town has also been commented on in an episode of the series of documentaries Avere Ventanni, aired by Mtv Italia; the journalist Massimo Coppola interviewed a young Sangiovannese who was currently working at the Wax Museum of St Pio and who stated that there was no other way to make a living in San Giovanni Rotondo but taking part in the saint’s business, working in some of the structures of the Cappuccini area; most of the young people, however, moved to bigger towns and looked for different jobs (season 2, episode 5, 2005).

Public cultural policy of the city: a holy case of regeneration, or mere Disneyization?

As McKevitt asserts, Padre Pio is the basis of the local economy (1991, p.84) and the local council has always been aware of the economic value of St Pio’s phenomenon: Padre Pio’s Wax Museum is hosted in Palazzo Morcaldi, the former house of Francesco Morcaldi, who was the mayor of San Giovanni Rotondo and a lifetime friend of the saint (Museo delle Cere di Padre Pio, 2012). Also the current mayor of San Giovanni Rotondo, Luigi Pompilio, is glad to appear on the pages of a local publication devoted to the saint, Il Pellegrino di Padre Pio (issue 1, 2012, pp.18-20), to welcome all pilgrims and talk about the local attractions.

San Giovanni Rotondo has changed greatly since the 1950s, the period when Padre Pio gave his advice to pilgrims and celebrities. It used to be a poor rural area where most people worked in sheep rearing; the saint’s cult has transformed this place into a modern and wealthy town, even though the wealth is not distributed equally. Therefore, the local council’s efforts to promote the pilgrimage site and to spread the image of St Pio can be seen as a form of regeneration policy, but the market-oriented policies implemented in the area can be described as a form of “Disneyization” (Bryman, 1999). The difference between “Disneyization” and “Disneyfication”, according to the author, lies in the fact that the first does not imply any moral value (p.27), and therefore finds it necessary to use this term in his article; however, the term “Disneyfication” has been used in relation to the Catholic Church by Budde (1998) to indicate a new attitude of the Catholic Church, oriented towards pop culture. Bryman defines Disneyization as “the process by which the principles of Disney theme parks are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world” (p.26); those principles are “1. theming 2. dedifferentiation of consumption 3. merchandising 4. emotional labour” (p.29). How these principles can be applied to San Giovanni Rotondo and the cult of St. Pio will be discussed later.

The most important form of urban innovation in the last 20 years has been the construction of the Church of St. Pio, an imposing structure designed by the famous architect Renzo Piano, meant to celebrate the sanctification of Padre Pio in 2002.Once entered the shell-shaped building, the amount of light is impressive: natural light comes from the glass façade, mitigated by a screen of highly technological fabrics with medieval images, and there is a conspicuous amount of lamps hanging from the ceiling. This clashes with the Italian tradition of dark Churches with almost no artificial sources of light, but for a reason: in fact, besides lamps, hanging from the ceiling there are many cameras that are not simply a security device, but are necessary to live broadcast the masses and the ceremonies held in the church; the light is a necessary stage effect. Everything can be seen on Padre Pio TV, the television channel owned by the Capuchin friars; also the ceremonies of the older church of Santa Maria delle Grazie are broadcasted, and in fact cameras and stage lights have been added to the original décor. The Church of St Pio, however, feels unfamiliar to a Catholic believer: in the immense shell-shaped open space, fit to host thousands of believers, its small altar and crucifix are hardly noticeable, and all the attention is drawn onto the brass statues of the holy friar.

The most spectacular feature of the church, however, is the impressive tomb of Padre Pio, located in the crypt. It is possible to access it only through a long corridor covered in mosaics. This long katabasis ends in the splendour of the tomb room, which can host more than 600 people and whose ceiling is covered in pure gold mosaics. A small area of the silver casket, encrusted with gems, containing the body of the saint is accessible to pilgrims for them to touch and kiss it. The queue to the casket is controlled by a security team which manages the flow of people and makes sure that they do not steal anything. What is more striking, however, is that the tomb of St Pio makes no exception from the tradition of many museums and attractions all over the world: the exit is through the gift shop.

The most profane of St Pio’s themed attractions is not located in the Cappuccini zone, but in the old city centre: it is the Padre Pio’s Wax Museum, where the life of the saint is displayed in ten different scenes enacted by wax statues. The museum claims to have a special, daily miracle: the face of St Pio is reflected on a glass panel, and the precision and similarity of his features are striking. The guides do not seem to acknowledge that this is due to the fact that said glass panel stands in front of a wax statue of the saint. This little hall of wonders has also been visited by a list of Italian celebrities (Museo delle Cere di Padre Pio, 2012) who autographed the guestbook leaving a special message for the saint.

If one sums these attractions to the various statues and images of the saint scattered around the town, and to the several events dedicated to him that take place here, one would think that the exploitation of the image of the saint has now reached its peak, but the plans of the local council include a new monument for the saint (Comitato per l’erigendo monumento a San Pio da Pietralcina, 2012, p.1). The presentation of this 30-metre high statue, completed with a cenacle, is presented as a “sacrarium”, “a monument as important as the Liberty Statue in New York”[1] and describes St Pio as “a Christ for the third millennium”[2] (idem, p.3,). The construction of said memorial, planned to be built in a trafficked area, requires donations from the believers: the committee behind this project say that the donators’ sacrifices will be rewarded by the international resonance of “the biggest monument in the world”[3] (p.3, my translation).

Of course, the construction of this pilgrimage site and also of tourist structures has helped the rather disadvantaged economy of San Giovanni Rotondo (McKevitt, in Eade and Sallnow, 1991, p.84), and can therefore be seen as a case of regeneration of a poor rural area. However, it is interesting to see if and in what way this kind of urban renovation based on the sacred applies to the principles of Disneyisation described by Bryman (1999). The first principle, theming (p.29), is the most evident: an incredible amount of shops, hotels, public art and even private houses carry the theme of Padre Pio. The Padre Pio theme affects the whole city: there is a Padre Pio hotel and restaurant, a Padre Pio insurance agency, even a Padre Pio butcher’s. The religious cult exits the privacy of churches and homes to become a theme, a recognisable feature, an image that describes and legitimates the existence of the whole San Giovanni Rotondo. The theme of Saint Pio transforms a common city into a coherent environment that appeals to a specific visitor and customer, the pilgrim.

The second principle, dedifferentiation of consumption (p.33) is a delicate topic. Bryman’s description of how people in Disney theme parks eventually lost the perception of the difference between playing, eating and buying is not very far from what happens in San Giovanni Rotondo with the cult of Padre Pio. The continuous intermingling of sacred and profane, of consumption and prayer eventually results in broadening the meaning of pilgrimage, including consumption to worshipping and praying. The pilgrim is invited to celebrate his or her intimacy with the saint not only in the Church, but also buying his merchandise, dining in a restaurant that carries his name, sleeping in a hotel close to his monastery. So, in this case it is possible not only to talk about dedifferentiation of consumption, but also of dedifferentiation of experience: this kind of process has already been analysed by Ritzer and Liska (in Rojek and Urry, 1997) for the field of tourism, describing how its commodification has led to a dedifferentiation of the travel experience and consumption (p.103). This sense of loss of meaning, of lack of authenticity becomes even deeper if we apply this concept to pilgrimage: indeed faith in San Giovanni Rotondo is commoditised, and it is hard to tell what is the core of the religious experience, praying and getting inspiration by the saint’s town, or buying his merchandise, sleeping in a hotel that carries his name and visiting a themed wax museum.

While the principle of merchandising will be discussed in the following paragraph, it is necessary to mention “emotional labour”. It has been defined as “the act of expressing socially desirable emotions during service transactions” (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993, in Bryman, 1999, p.39). The security team that supervises the Church of St Pio has been asked to do so: they need to be strict about rules but also friendly, polite but not too cheerful in order not to spoil the sacred atmosphere of the place. The application of these principles to San Giovanni Rotondo might seem radical, but it is clear that the commodification of culture is something that does not regard the world of the arts only, but has a deeper impact on our everyday life.

Selling the saint by the pound

Life-size statues, statuettes in every possible size, flasks, velvet roses, bottles for holy water, pins, magnets, pill dispensers, plaques, stickers, baby bibs, decorations for cribs, snow-globes, keychains, t-shirts, rosary beads, decorated stones, prints, thimbles, mini-chairs, necklaces, bracelets. This is just a brief list of goods you can find in any “religious items” or souvenir shop in San Giovanni Rotondo carrying the image of the Saint on them. The Cappuccini area is a religious shopping centre that caters for a variety of tastes and needs: the merchandise satisfies any gender and age group, but it is interesting to note how special attention is given to children. Besides bibs and crib decorations, the most interesting product is a series of comics and cartoons called Piuccio & Lolek: the main characters are Padre Pio and John Paul II at the time of their childhood, and the plot is based on their fictitious friendship. Besides comic books and DVDs, it is possible to buy the plush toys of the two characters (Piuccio e Lolek, 2012). A plush toy of the saint is also available to buy online (By Way of the Family, 2012), and has the peculiar characteristic of being “huggable”; however, it is not an Italian product. The Capuchin friars seem to have understood the economic potential of the saint: in fact, they run both the whole media business around the saint and the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza hospital. Their logo is clearly visible on the headquarters of both organisations, and some will argue that it is not dissimilar to the Disney one. The friars also demonstrated their connivance with the market of Padre Pio merchandise by approving the construction of a large gift shop inside St Pio’s church, in the proximity of the saint’s tomb. “Religious items” acquire a deeper value both in term of symbolism and usage: they are symbolically more powerful than other similar souvenirs exposed in the shops close to the church because they are sacralised by positive contamination (Belk, 1989, p. 6) and their illusion of being “original merchandise” is proof of their material qualities. It might be necessary to consider this merchandise also as being sacralised by quintessence (idem, p. 15): the image of the saint printed on it is enough to make it sacred, and buying it in San Giovanni Rotondo makes it authentic. As described by Edwards: “For while we may use quintessential things for commonplace purposes, they serve as talismans and guideposts, touching our souls with souls of their own” (1983, in Belk, 1989, p.16).

The saint is not only loved by pilgrims from all over the Catholic world, but also by the Italian media. Press, radio and television seem to be strongly attracted by the figure of Padre Pio, and don’t miss any occasion to celebrate him.

Celebrity and celetoids

Celebrity culture, according to Rojek (2001, p. 51), owes very much to religion and the cult of saints. But in the case of the cult of St Pio, it seems that instead celebrity culture inspired religious worshipping: this is due to the fact that Padre Pio has been the first saint in Italy who has been photographed and filmed during his lifetime, creating a media phenomenon about him; this peculiarity is very important when comparing Padre Pio’s cult with celebrity status. The Italian Catholics normally learn about the life of the saints by reading the Bible, or ancient hagiographies, and imagine them as they are portrayed in paintings and sculptures. The emotional relationship they develop with them is mediated by a canon that has been transmitted for centuries; the cult of saints is usually homogeneous, with some regional variations. Padre Pio’s cult, instead, presents some variations: McKevitt talks about the existence of “two Padre Pios” (in Eade and Sallnow, 1991, p.94), the historical and the cosmological one, one worshipped by the Sangiovannesi and the other by non-local pilgrims. This is due to the different approach people take with this holy figure: the intermediary between them and the saint is not the canon, but the media. In Rojek’s words, Padre Pio has been subject to a “celebrification process”, meaning:

“(…) the general tendency to frame social encounters in mediagenic filters that both reflect and reinforce the compulsion of abstract desire. By the term mediagenic I mean elements and styles that are compatible with the conventions of self-projections and interaction, fashioned and refined by the mass-media” (2001, p.187).

This might lead to a form of “parasocial interaction” (Cashmore, 2006, p.39) as the person grows attached to a figure he or she knows only through the media, and develops a one-way form of relationship with the object of his or her worshipping. Moreover, this relationship between worshipper and celebrity has its own expectations, and disappointments are frequent. While queuing for the spectacular tomb of St Pio, a middle age woman commented, in a strong central accent: A me nun me piace però… C’è troppo oro, ce sta troppa roba… Nun me piace (‘I don’t like it, however… There’s too much gold, there’s too much stuff… I don’t like it’[4]). Part of the charm of St Pio lies in his sober image and his famous frugality, so some pilgrims feel betrayed by the luxury of his tomb. It is clear that this woman’s Padre Pio differed from Renzo Piano’s.

The celebrity cult around Padre Pio has also given birth to some celetoids. The concept of “celetoid” is described by Rojek as a “media-generated, compressed, concentrated form of attributed celebrity” (2001, p.18); celetoids are “accessories of cultures organized around mass communications and stage authenticity” (p.20); the kind of people who acquire the status of celetoid are “social types who command media attention for one day, and are forgotten the next” (p.21). Thus, the celetoids around the cult of Padre Pio are the ones who have met him once during their life, or who used to work for him. Two valid examples are Padre Pio’s photographer, Elia Stelluto, and Matteo Ricciardi, Padre Pio’s driver. Both have acquired a modest fame amongst the pilgrims of San Giovanni Rotondo, as they have been interviewed on specialized magazines (Il Pellegrino, 2012, p. 33) or because they took part in some activities organized by the local council, such as the photographic exhibition about the saint. The same can be said about pilgrims that have been interviewed about their experience (p.41).

It also gave space to the birth of parallel cult, in the sense that pilgrims have started worshipping another friar, whose sanctity is mainly based on his proximity to the saint. Fra Modestino (1917-2011), a disciple of Padre Pio, during his lifetime captured the attention of pilgrims and media because of his spiritual power and of the miracles he was claimed to perform. After his death, a cult similar to Padre Pio’s has started to grow around his figure: pilgrims visit his tomb in Pietralcina (his hometown, but also St Pio’s) and have recently started a movement for his beatification (Il Pellegrino, 2012, p. 47). The fact that he was born in the same town as Pio, was a long-time friend of his and continued his work makes him a unique case of sacralization through contamination (Belk, 1989, p.6).

Conclusion

It is possible to argue, then, that there is a deep discrepancy between official cultural policies of the Catholic Church on consumption, and the implicit ones. The influence of Catholicism on the Italian economic life is so strong that it has generated a market of symbolic, cultural goods that can cater explicitly for the large Catholic community on its territory. This is not only an effect of Catholicism, but also has an effect on it: these kind of products promote the Catholic morals and are an effective instrument of power, as they add profane, entertaining elements to Catholic themes in order to attract more users, but also more believers. Moreover, the embrace of modern capitalism promoted by Catholic associations suggests that phenomena like the celebrity cult of Padre Pio, or the commodification of the image of him and other saints, are not only not openly criticized by the Catholic Church, but are encouraged instead. Again, Padre Pio makes for a good example: the fact that the Capuchin friars have deliberately chosen to build a gift shop in St Pio’s church is a clear signal that the Catholic Church does not consider money the root of all evil anymore. In conclusion, the Catholic Church is an organisation which is subject to the change of times, and in order to survive in a secularized world, has embraced some of the principles that it formally stigmatizes; promoting them in an implicit way, it ensures the consensus of great political powers, and also of the average believers who do not want to choose between their faith and their consumer habits.

References:

Russell W. Belk, Melanie Wallendorf, John F. Sherry Jr.,’ The Sacred and The Profane in Consumer Behaviour: an Odyssey’ , The Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 16, n. 1, Jun. 1989, 1-38 http://www.nd.edu/~jsherry/pdf/1989/Scared%20and%20Profane%20in%20Consumer%20Behavior.pdf (accessed 19/07/2012)

Michael L. Budde,’ Embracing Pop Culture,’ World Policy Journal, vol.15, n. 1, 1998, http://0-web.ebscohost.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/ehost/detail?sid=df43328c-668a-47bf-9db8-a561d2a10fa7%40sessionmgr11&vid=1&hid=24&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=bah&AN=473678 (accessed 10/12/2011)

Alan Bryman, The Disneyization of Society, The Sociological Review Volume 47, Issue 1, pages 25–47, February 1999, http://0-onlinelibrary.wiley.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/doi/10.1111/1467-954X.00161/abstract;jsessionid=0986986663B185205B75AB8DD0BCBCDE.d03t01 (accessed 20/07/2012)

Blogsicilia, http://trapani.blogsicilia.it/trapani-meta-turistica-piu-economica-ditalia/74455/

Ellis Cashmore, Celebrity Culture, Routledge, Oxon 2006

Comitato per l’Erigendo Monumento a San Pio Da Pietralcina, La Storia di un grande evento, San Giovanni Rotondo, 2012

Comuni d’Italia, http://www.comuni-italiani.it/071/046/statistiche/

Il Pellegrino di Padre Pio, issue 1, 2012

Il Quotidiano di Foggia, http://www.quotidianodifoggia.it/articoli/primo-piano/nonostante-lexploit-dellanno-scorso-arrivi-e-prese/

Massimo Coppola, Avere Ventanni, season 2, episode 15: “Per me Padre Pio è tutto”, Mtv Italia, 2005

Christopher McKevitt, San Giovanni Rotondo and the Shrine of Padre Pio, in John Eade and Michael J Sallnow, Contesting the Sacred: the anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage, Routledge, London, 1991

Museo delle Cere di Padre Pio, brochure, 2012
“Piuccio & Lolek” website: http://www.piuccioelolek.com/It/Home.aspx , accessed 30/07/2012

Chris Rojek, Celebrity, Reaktion Books, London, 2001

Il ruolo del turismo nello sviluppo economico della Puglia http://www.ba.camcom.it/?cat=IL+RUOLO+DEL+TURISMO+NELLO+SVILUPPO+ECONOMICO+DELLA+PUGLIA&id_articolo=700&id_categoria=0&id_sottocategoria1=0&id_sottocategoria2=0&tasto=&cancella_ricerca=ok , SRM, Studi e Ricerche per il  Mezzogiorno, in cooperation with Banco di Napoli

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[1] My translation; the original reads: “un monumento importante quanto la Statua della Libertá di New York” (Comitato per l’erigendo monumento a Padre Pio, 2012, p.3).

[2] My translation; the original reads: “un Cristo per il terzo millennio” (idem).

[3] My translation; the original reads: “il monumento piú grande del mondo” (idem).

[4] My translation

Photo by Giulia Ranchetti http://www.giuliaranchetti.com/

Photo by Giulia Ranchetti http://www.giuliaranchetti.com/

Photo by Giulia Ranchetti http://www.giuliaranchetti.com/

Photo by Giulia Ranchetti http://www.giuliaranchetti.com/

Photo by Giulia Ranchetti http://www.giuliaranchetti.com/