I am trying to understand how the slavery systems of the world function and how those who use slave labor and sell people into slavery justify their doings. I guess most slavery systems are not questioned at all, the unjustice and suffering is made invisible by all kinds of rituals. It is not as slavery is only part of a historical past, it is estimated that right now perhaps up to 27 million people across the world are victims of modern slavery — living in debt bondage, as forced prostitutes and as bonded laborers and between 40 percent and 50 percent of these are children. That estimate does not include members of households and families who live in a slavelike conditions working for the master of the household in a Patriarchy society. The picture is pro-southern cartoon from America telling a story of how slave owners look upon themselves and their treatment of slaves, one can doubt have realistic this self portrait of a slave owner is.
According to Wikipedia most slaves in the world today are debt slaves and number of slaves in the world now is at a historic low. Maybe that is true but maybe organised and institutionalized slavery is invisible because of the present practice of complex financial debt systems and invisible financial networks where production owner is not the colonial farmer but someone who is hiding in a networks of financial transactions of a company owning other company and stationed in some tax haven islets. Maybe the slavery bonds urof today are invisible bonds, bonds made of the tool of the present slave owner to make slavery invisible.
Also one can not understand todays slavery systems without looking at the borders of states and who can became part af a community and migrate freely and work legally where they can find work and who are the hidden people, the illegals, the one that are trafficked across borders and exploited because they have no legal rights, migrant workers without hukou or green cards .
Hukou system is a social status system, a kind of bondage on the Chinese peasants
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In China each year 130 million workers are separated from their families. Legislation from January 1958 took away one basic right of chinese citizen, the freedom of internal migration and residence. The system in China of controlling and regulating internal movements of its citizens is powerful. It is outcome of the establisment of command economic system.“
So to understand todays slavery systems one has to look at restrictions of movements by financial systems where people are trapped into situations (debt slavery) where they can not move and the systems societies have to guard who can be member of society and who is an outsider who has to travel without passport, without rights.
It is interesting who and when people break away from slavery, is it by revolutions or is it in a more peaceful way? Slaves are by defination group without powers, can they break the chains by some collaboratory action or does what tricker change came from other players, maybe because the needs of slave owners are changing or the power of slave owners is diminishing ? It is interesting to look at what part the oppressed played in revolutions of the past and analyse revolutions from Spartacus to the German Peasants’ War in 1524-1526 and lots of other peasant revolts . And The russian revolution in 1917.
You construct truth or reality be telling stories, by labelling these stories with icons and metaphors that shine through the story and are the message or the essence of the story. We live in a world fascinated by tools and technology and symbols such as numbers and if you can decorate your story with such symbols, perhaps change the numbers into money signals, your story can be powerful. Economists are not considered the most poetic people but in a post-crisis world if you are an economist who can explain what happened and predict the future by mix of numbers and icons you will get audience.
I am reading the report Iceland as Icarus by Robert Wade. Economist can tell a story by using cultural symbols such as the story of Icarus, a greek mythology man who was the son of a master craftsman and the father made for himself and his son wings from feathers and wax. Icarus ignored the instructions he got not to fly too close to the sun and the wax melted and caused him to fall to his death. When I read the report it is nether scientic or poetic and the comparison of Iceland and Icarus is very hollow. Actually the story of what happened in Iceland is told from a very narrow perspective. And I do not understand why the metaphor of Icarus is used in the beginning…… except perhaps to tell in simple terms : Iceland was arrogant, did not follow instructions and therefore it was destroyed. Another metaphor of Iceland just after the crash was to compare it to the canary in the coal mine. One of coal mining’s earliest systems for warning of the presence of methane gas was to have a canary bird with them – if the bird died, miners had to get out. If you use the canary bird metaphor you are treating Icelands case as a warning for other countries, you are saying „beware of the gas“.
There is not doubt that a certain type of society was destroyed in Iceland with the crash in October 2008. Was it only a financial crash? I very much doubt that, I think you have to look at the national state and the structure of production and division systems in societies, division of weal th, division of freedom, division of information – information that is channeled in number/money systems that are not working. Perhaps it is the collapse of a state, collapse of a nation, collapse of a community build on power and trust and shared beliefs… that are not so much shared anymore.
While I think the Iceland as Icarus describes the situation correctly in some terms, describe how publicly owned and locally oriented savings and loan type banks were privatized and turned into gambling stations using retail deposit base and central bank‘s pledge of lender of last resort to speculate and also financed their activities with short-term borrowed money and the problems was partly that in order to fight inflation the central bank had set a high interest rate it was hardly the buying spread of common people in Iceland but more the influx of carry trade money used for buying spread of extremely few investors who went on a buying spread around the world. While high interest rates, capital inflow and overvalued krona were part of the problem it was not the core.
But I wonder how different a story will be that would tell the Iceland saga by Iceland as the Great Auk that never could fly, not the Icarus with waxy wings and not the caged canari bird. Maybe the story has to be different, it has to be told of a isolated colony that was well adapted to nature and the traditional ways but had no defence mechanism for outside preditors. Except the isolation. And when the isolation was not there anymore in a flattened world the collapse of the colonies was inevitable.
The Great Auk was a large flightless bird that became extinct. It bred on rocky, icolated islands. It was a powerful swimmer but it could not fly. It was clumsy on land. The last of the Great Auks was killed in 3 July 1844 in Eldey Iceland. In the end it was hunted because museums in Europe wanted a show off piece in their exhibtion halls and perhaps the Great Hauks colonies had to move because of volcanic activiy in the islands in Iceland, move to other locations which made them more vulnerable to hunters. The razorbill is the closest relative of the great auk.
When the icelandic banks collapsed in October 2008 and the Icelandic state was technically bankrupt and had to go to AGS and beg for loans , many people lost their jobs, many Icelandic people lost all their belongings since currency was devaluated and many had all their loans in foreign currencies but their income in Icelandic currency – if they still had any income at all. We thought we had lost all the depositor money in the banks in some mystic international financial game and knew there was huge currency inbalance so we assumed a near future was us going into barter trade and growing potatos, going fishing and trying to survive.
It was a terrible shock, to go asleep in a prosperious country and wake up in a country were the young people didn‘t seem to have a future. But the worst shock for me was not facing the situation of Iceland´s economy, not facing the incompetence of the Icelandic government and not when I was realizing step by step how corrupt the Icelandic banking system was, it seemed like a mosterous pyramid scheme. Actually I had not expected my country to be different from the other western countries and the fall of Leman brothers was paving the way towards what was happening all over. I had expected the system to collaspe, I am still surprised why other states are not collapsing, it is a cracy system, it seems like some kind of a game were no real production seem to have to follow the bubbles… and the state of USA finance is terrible… but people still believe states can be too big to fail. I do not share that belief.
So actually I was prepared for a new future and since Iceland is a resource rich country in a location that will be more important in the decades to come, especially to a energy and food hungry world I also reasoned that this would only be a decade in poverty and you can take that if you know there is some future for your children. After all Icelanders had been farmers and fishermens in the past and living conditions were not very poor in the past exept in time of natural catastropes like Lakagígar eruptions.
The horror moment of the times of the Icelandic collapse, the horror I will never forget was the speech of Gordon Brown and what happen in UK politics in the aftermatch of the Icelandic bank collaspe. I know that the situation in October 2008 was very scary for all the governments of the western world and the worst scenario – going the same way as Iceland – a bankrupt country – was something that was feared all over. Lots of emergency meetings and the governments decided to stick together and cling to the illusion that the bank system is save… for the time being. That meant a state the size of Iceland with overblown banking system that was far beyond saving of the government was not playing along and could not play the same tune as the other european countries.
And in the time were Iceland misery was worst, when we had lost our future and hopes which by the way was much worse than losing the material belongings and short term unemployment, by the time were most young Icelanders were facing a future bound by their own debt in a system were most of their loans were in foreign currency… the Prime Minister of UK Gordon Brown decided to use anti-terrorist legislation to freeze transactions to and from Iceland. That was like a horror movie watching Gordon Brown and his finance minister Alistair Darling accusing Icelandic government of „not honoring their oblications“ which as I understand was to garantee in full British depositors their deposits in branches of Icelandic banks in UK. British government had decided on their own to secure all deposits in banks (for individuals, not informed investors) located in UK. It was impossible for Icelandic government to do. A bankrupt nation is not able to pay. UK government wanted the people of Iceland to be put into debt slavery on terms much harsher than the Germany war debt after world war one.
Also there was a dispute about the legal terms of how the deposits should be garanteed and the Icelandic government wanted the dispute to be solved in court. But at that time no other government in Europe did want case like this settled in court because that could mean collapse of the banking system which at that time was really on the edge. Gordon Brown used anti-terrorist legislation to seize the assets of the Icelandic bank Landsbanki, the bank which he accused of being about to default on its obligations to British depositors and also of another icelandic bank Kaupthing. Kaupthing failed after these actions. Gordon Brown wanted the government of Iceland to „give back the money“ like the government of Iceland was some kind of pirate nation hiding money somewhere.
When I saw the television interview in October 2008 where Gordon Brown was justifying his use of anti-terrorist legislation to solve financial dispute with a friendly small nation in financial trouble I thought for a moment he would demand his army to invade Iceland, coming here to look for some money or goods he assumed Icelandic government or the banks had stolen from UK. I was also thinking that now I know how the people of Irak felt when they watched on television how President Bush defended and justified the decision to invade Irak, to find some kind of a nuclear weapons that never were there, same kind of contempt, same kind of anger, same kind of powerlessness …. and also facing a future in a nightmare world, world were human rights were taken away at the spur of a moment, using a structure of a police state, using all the structure that had been build as a tool in recent years for „the war on terror“.
I saw the dictators I thougt until then only were in some faraway African or Middle East countries moving into my world, it was also like a 9/11 moment, a collapse of the security illusion, I thought until that moment I was fortune to live in the civilized world. Since then I have had total distrust in government, not only the UK governments but in all governments. I believe that when they are in crisis they behave like animals fighting for their own survival and I can not see a place in the future world for the same kind of governments as exist today so I foresee many survival fights. And in these battle the governments will turn to their own citizens they will consider ordinary citizens their enemies. We live in a world were dictetors act as tortures and my eyes have opened for how governments/dictators stick together to protect their interests and their power. Their enemies are empowered people that work in coordinated selfregulated group, groups without leaders.
My eyes have been opened for how it dictators in other part of the world suit very well the purposes of dictators in Western countries and how dictators have and will work together to supress people and take away their freedom such as Rome-Tripoli deal when Gaddafi was working with Berlusconi patrolling the coastline. The uprising in North Africa regimes is in a region fixated on anti-terrorism and oil and the uprising are in some way related to the prevalence of anti-terrorist policy (Jeremy Keenan). The people are calling for free and accountable governments , not the unrepresentative governments that are willing to accept subordination to Western political and economic diktats.
In a post 9/11 era politician have used supposed threats to justify state violence. By focusing on security leaders have found means to legitimise state violence, withhold rights and freedoms and neglect governance. Ghezali says. "Violence has even become a means of social and political advancement. Murderers have become heroes and hold power in public institutions." (Salima Ghezali from Algeria on Aljazeera)
But is not only the dictators of North Africa that are taking away human rights and using War on terror to justify the making of a police state. I have talked about Gordon Brown. The Prime Minister who used anti-terrorist legislation to solve financial dispute with Iceland. Listen carefully to the mumble of Alistair Gordon (exacly in time 21:57 in this video), he starts to stammer and whisper and can not even say the word, he is so ashamed of his wrongdoings against Icelandic people. I hope history will not forget what his government did and the activists in UK should learn from this and for those that believe small nations should be picked and and debts from international pyramid schemes should be allowed to make some citizens of the world into powerless debt slaves should cite the poem First They Came For the Jews by the German pastor Martin Niemöller who was an anti-Communist and supported Hitler‘s rise to power at later understood what it was all about.
In America the police state is even more advanced than in UK. Glenn Greenwald wrote the blog Government-created climate of fear jan 10, 2011 he explains how so much of what the U.S. Government has become a wordwide torture regime devoted to creating and strengthening a climate of fear. It is a state were people are abducted and shipped to secret prisons where they are thrown into cages for year without charges dressed in organe jumpsuits. It is enough to persons connected with the wistleblower website Wikileaks to be labeled as terrorist.
As argueed in this article The logic of Power: Al Qaeda versus Wikileaks „ A Declaration of a State of Emergency provides the best opportunity for a government to attack on individuals and political organizations.“
Tuxpaint is open source drawing program for young children. It is a good way to introduce open source to students in teacher education, especially because it is rather easy to make your own stamps and download stamps from others. It is not always working as it should because it seem to be not adapted yet for Windows 7 computers. Especially it is often difficult for students to find out where the programs saves pictures and how they can change that or find the pictures if they want to i.e. send pictures in emails or use pictures from tuxpaint in other applications.
Here is a screencast I made to make it easiear to troubleshoot and solve problems with Tuxpaint.
The first lecture I gave as a student teacher was about money. History of money, from gifts to money, why we use money, what items societies have used as money. I started the lecture by projecting some words from the bible on the overhead projector and I started with discussing how the ban on interest charging in the bible strictly enforced in the middle ages had let to a situation where members from another religious group, the Jews, who did not have this kind of restriction in their religion would take this moneylending function in Northern European societies. This was at a time when few trades outside guild control were open to Jews. They were not the only people to lend money on interest in that region, there were also the Lombards and the Cahorsins of southern France and the Catalans.
Maybe I should translate part of the article History of Banking to Icelandic.
This is one of my future project, garden in a house in Bolungarvik where I just bought a flat. In May 2010 the flat was headquarter for the opposition in the small village, this is gathering on election day.
