MOZAMBIQUE ISLAMIST WAR BACKGROUNDER

Thousands flee Islamist insurgents in northern Mozambique

LAST WEEK ISLAMIST'S DID A MASS BEHEADING IN A SPORTS STADIUM

 01/08/2020 -

The image on the left shows a scorched home in Cabo Delgado. The image on the right shows people fleeing Mocimboa da Praia, which was attacked by insurgents on June 27. These photos were published by the collaborative media site Pinnacle News.

Since October 2017, an armed Islamist insurrection has been tearing apart the resource-rich province of Cabo Delgado in northern Mozambique. In 2019, the Islamic State group began claiming responsibility for some of the attacks carried out by this group. In the past few months, the insurgents have led a campaign of brutal and violent attacks on towns and cities in the province, causing thousands of residents to flee.

An armed group known locally as al Shabaab (though it has no links with the better-known Somali Islamist militant group of the same name) has been carrying out attacks in Cabo Delgado, which is rich in gas deposits, since October 2017. Over the past three years, more than 1,400 people have been killed in these attacks, according to the NGO The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled), which is documenting the situation in Cabo Delgado.

The group’s last large-scale attack, which occurred on June 27, was claimed by IS-Cap, the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province. On June 27, the insurgents attacked Mocimboa da Praia, a port town with a population of 30,000 that represents "a crucial logistical hub for economic activity and humanitarian relief for the northern part of the province", according to Acled. At least 40 civilians were killed along with eight employees of a South African company contracted by the French company Total. Witnesses told the press that the attackers, who occupied the town for three days, decapitated civilians, such as teachers and members of ruling party Frelimo, who had links to the government.

Mozambique
Video released by @news_pinnacle telegram channel with scenes from MdP pic.twitter.com/3oK0OxMgA4 Jasmine Opperman (@Jasminechic00) July 25, 2020

This video, which was posted on Telegram by the collaborative media outlet Pinnacle News, shows the destruction in Mocímboa da Praia. Jasmine Opperman, an analyst at the NGO Acled, reposted this on Twitter.

Attacks on provincial capitals

This attack, the third against Mocimboa da Praia since 2017, was part of a series of offensives that targeted major towns in Cabo Delgado over the past few months.

On March 23, insurgents took over Mocimboa da Praia. Two days later, they attacked the town of Quissanga, located 200 kilometres to the south, and destroyed a number of important buildings, including one housing the local government, which has since suspended its activities completely. Insurgents wielding an IS group flag posted a video online announcing their intention to impose Islamic law on the region.

In April, insurgents launched several attacks on the district of Muidumbe, targeting both Namacande, the provincial capital, and several villages. According to police, insurgents carried out a massacre in Xitaxi on April 7, slaughtering 52 young men when they refused to join the group. In the village of Nangololo, the insurgents attacked a church, as illustrated by several photos posted on social media.


Mozambique
Aftermath of attack at Nangololo: Catholic missionary church (Muidumbe). Attack was on 09 April
Photo credit: Pinnacle News pic.twitter.com/P1MWNho4PF Jasmine Opperman (@Jasminechic00) April 11, 2020The Mozambican collaborative news site Pinnacle News posted these images after insurgents attacked a church in Nangololo (Muidumbe). Jasmine Opperman, an analyst at the NGO Acled, posted these images on Twitter. You can see another video here.

Assim está parte da aldeia #Muatide em #Muidumbe após ataque desta semana. Que fique claro que eles não só sabotam instituições do Estado, mas também privadas. Na primeira foto podemos ver um centro de cópias incendiado. #CaboDelgado #Mocambique pic.twitter.com/iY1rhCTpHS Alexandre (@AllexandreMZ) April 9, 2020

A journalist from Zitamar News posted photos of the attack on Muatide, a village in Muidumbe. He explained that the insurgents destroyed both government buildings and private property.

On May 28, insurgents led an assault on the town of Macomia, population 29,000, which had already absorbed many refugees who had fled previous attacks on other communities. The town’s health centre was pillaged and staff for medical charity Doctors Without Borders fled. In early June, the organisation suspended its activities in the province.

Aftermath of the insurgent attacking Macomia pic.twitter.com/0v5AJZ0tOM Pinnacle News (@news_pinnacle) May 31, 2020

These shops in Macomia were burned by insurgents, as shown in this video shared by Mozambican collaborative media outlet Pinnacle News. The video was geolocalized here.

Thousands of people have fled their homes in these districts. Since March, the number of internally displaced persons in Cabo Delgado has doubled, reaching 250,000 in July, according to the OCHA, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

CABO DELGADO - Mocimbua
28-6-220
Por causa da intensidade dos combates entre integrantes das FADM e DAESH, população refugia-se para distritos supostamente seguros, usando a via marítima, sem mantimentos e sem certeza sobre o como serão acolhidos, no destino. pic.twitter.com/41iZNdkAY4 Pinnacle News (@news_pinnacle) June 28, 2020

People flee Mocímboa da Praia for Pemba, the capital of the province in these photos shared by the Mozambican collaborative media outlet Pinnacle News.

Before leaving their villages, people who intend to flee the conflict in Cabo Delgado have to get a declaration of residence which is issued by the respective local leader. This document is a confirmation of refugee status. It costs 100 MT (~ USD $1.5) which is costly for many. pic.twitter.com/Wd5DHZSNjZ Pinnacle News (@news_pinnacle) May 26, 2020

Before leaving their villages, people attempting to flee the conflict in Cabo Delgado had to get a residence certificate from local officials, explains the caption of this photo published by Mozambican collaborative media outlet Pinnacle News. "This document is the confirmation of their status as refugees,” explains the media outlet. It costs about $1.50.
"We walked 60 kilometers and spent three days in the forest”

The city of Pemba, which is the capital of Cabo Delgado, is today home to a large number of displaced persons. While some of them arrived shortly after the last attack on Mocimboa da Praia, others have been there for several months, says Miguel Momade, a farmer who fled Quissanga with his family:

"The evildoers arrived in Quissanga the morning of March 25. My family and I hid for an entire night. The next day, we returned to our home and we saw that the house had been burned down. We lost everything. That’s why we left. When we got here, we had to ask for clothing, especially for the children.

We had to walk nearly 60 kilometres and spent three days in the forest before we managed to find a truck to bring us to Pemba. I knew that I could find a place to stay there because my sister lives there. I brought 20 people with me, including several children.

The house where we are staying isn’t big and there isn’t enough food. The children wake up crying because they are hungry. In Quissanga, I had a job so that I could feed my family. Here, I don’t have anything. I’d like to go back there but only when the government of the district has also returned."

Miguel Momade’s family in Pemba. This photo was sent to our team by Georginelta Eurosia Eduardo, who is a member of the "Ukhavihera" movement (see the second part of this article to find out more).

"There are many more displaced people than have been counted by the government"

Emidio Beula is a journalist and a researcher for the Center for democracy and development (CDD). He says that aid organisations have been overwhelmed by the large increase in the number of displaced people.

"Before, most of the displaced people remained in their home districts, fleeing from one village to another, or heading towards the provincial capital. Many people fled just five or 10 kilometres. But when the insurgents started attacking more villages as well as the provincial capitals in late March, people started fleeing further.

Two districts were abandoned – Quissanga and Mocimboa da Praia. In the town of Metuge, not far from Pemba, the government set up a camp with enough tents to house 10,000. But that only accounts for a small number of displaced people. Others went to stay with friends or family in Pemba, in other neighbouring provinces or in Tanzania.

There are many more displaced people than have been counted by the government. Some, we don’t know how many, are currently surviving in the wilderness with nothing. No roof, no water, no food. A lot of these people are too elderly or too poor to travel elsewhere. Moreover, when Mocimboa da Praia was attacked, many people climbed into overcrowded boats to travel dozens of kilometres by sea to Pemba and we have no idea if they all arrived safely. It’s hard to get information and journalists have very little access to the zones under attack.

This photo, which was published by the Mozambican collaborative media outlet Pinnacle News on Facebook on July 7, shows displaced people in Mueda in Cabo Delgado. According to the original post by Pinnacle News, some people were unable to find shelter there and had to follow the road all the way to Montepuez.

What do we know about the insurrection?

Researcher Eric Morier-Genoud, a professor of African history at Queen’s University in Belfast, says the armed group grew out of a religious cult that has been around "since at least 2007".

"The change occurred around 2016 when they stopped just living outside of society with their own rules and instead adopted a vision of jihad, picking up arms in an attempt to force the society to adopt sharia law [Islamic law],” Morier-Genoud said.

The group carried out their first large scale attack in October 2017 in Mocimboa da Praia. Currently, there are between 500 and 1,000 fighters, most of whom are Mozambican.The cult began before the development of the gas extraction industry in the region and the ruby mine in Montepuez.

Morier-Genoud says the "economic and social transformation in the 2010s surely lead to frustration, especially in terms of the expected benefits of these discoveries [for the local population]”.

In May 2018, a photo showing these combattants brandishing a Islamic State flag circulated widely on social media in Mozambique. But it wasn’t until June 2019 that the Islamic State organisation released a statement about one of the attacks in the province. Initially, Mozambican authorities denied that the organisation had an active presence on their territory. They finally confirmed on June 23, 2020 that the Islamic State organisation had claimed responsibility for the attack in Cabo Delgado, “revealing the presence of an exterior aggression on the part of terrorists".

The insurgents equipped themselves by stealing the weapons belonging to the security forces, and stealing food and other supplies during attacks.

"None of the rumours that they are involved in the illegal trade of wood, precious stones or drugs have been proved," says Eric Morier-Genoud.


Article by Maëva Poulet

SENEGAL

How young Senegalese are making desperate journeys to Spain’s Canary Islands



Issued on: 05/11/2020 -

Several images shared in WhatsApp group in Senegal over the past few months show large numbers of young people leaving Senegal to make a dangerous attempt to reach the Canary Islands by pirogue 

(Screengrab of videos sent to the France 24 Observers team).

Increasing numbers of Africans are attempting to reach Europe by making a dangerous journey by sea to Spain’s Canary Islands, a new wave for a migration route that tens of thousands of people took in the early 2000s. In recent months, numerous groups have set off from coastal towns and cities in Senegal to make the treacherous crossing in traditional long fishing boats called pirogues. Our Observer says that most of the travelers are fisherman, who are suffering the economic impact of a depleted stock, and young people facing unemployment and economic uncertainty caused by the crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.



Between 2006 and 2008, during a period nicknamed the “Cayucos crisis”, nearly 40,000 people arrived by fishing boat on the shores of the Spanish archipelago, the Canary Islands. During the first year of this crisis alone, more than 31,000 people entered the Canaries in this way. This emotional period left a strong impression on both Spain and Senegal, the country of origin for many of these migrants.

Some of the people who attempted the journey were from Thiaroye-sur-mer, a town not far from Dakar. Unfortunately, numerous sons of the town were lost at sea. Others survived the crossing to the Canaries, only to be sent right back to Senegal. In 2007, locals set up a group called Ajrap, an acronym for the Association of Young Returnees (l’Association des jeunes rapatriés), to raise awareness about the dangers of illegal migration.

"It’s the fisherman from around here who are leaving; there are no more fish”

In the past few weeks, increasing numbers of young people have been attempting the journey, their desperation highlighted by the popular slogan "Barça ou Barsakh" ("Barcelona or death"). Between mid-September and mid-October, the Senegalese national gendarmerie intercepted more than 400 people making the crossing.

Dispositif FRONTEX. La Marine nationale sénégalaise a intercepté hier nuit au large de Mbour 02 pirogues avec 183 candidats à l'immigration clandestine vers l'Espagne. Passagers debarques a 15h00 a la Marine, remis à la Gendarmerie et à la Police pour enquête. pic.twitter.com/c2eFkIWpTt DIRPA (@CHEFDIRPA) October 7, 2020

Tweet (in French) by the Senegalese army press division, DIRPA: “FRONTEX operation. Last night, the Senegalese Navy intercepted two pirogues in the waters off of Mbour, carrying a total of 183 people attempting to illegally migrate to Spain. Passengers disembarked at the base at 3pm and were turned over to the police and gendarmerie for questioning.

These arrests and the videos showing young men aboard traditional pirogues bound for the Canary Islands that have been circulating on WhatsApp make Ajrap President Moustapha Diouf’s heart sink.

On October 21, 580 migrants were rescued south of Grand Canary Island, bringing the total number of people reaching the Canary Islands by boat that week alone to 2,600. That number-- from a single week-- is uncannily equivalent to the total number for the entire year of 2019, when 2,698 migrants were recorded as entering the Canaries in this way.

People from Mauritania and Morocco are also attempting this journey; indeed, the Senegalese don’t actually represent the majority of migrants arriving in the Canaries. Still, Diouf says the growing numbers of departures from Senegal are concerning.

What is happening doesn’t surprise me. For years, I have been telling media outlets from all over the world that, it was just a matter of time before people started leaving on pirogues again because people are just exhausted by the situation here. They’ll do it even if it is more than 1,400 km from Dakar to the Canaries. This isn’t going to stop until there are opportunities for our young people here.

The departures from Thiaroye-sur-mer have been ongoing over the years; they didn’t stop between 2006 and 2019. Many, filled with young people from all across Senegal, were bound for Morocco. What we are seeing now, in 2020, is that most of the people attempting this migration route to the Canaries are fishermen because there are just no more fish to catch. International commercial fishing vessels are operating off of our shores and pillaging our resources. People are poor. I think in the coming months, there will be more departures. And it will be worse because the seas will be less calm [Editor’s note: because of poor weather conditions.]


The Google map shows the distance as the crow flies between Dakar and Grand Canary Island.

Over the past few months, people seeking to migrate have been taking advantage of the relatively calmer seas at this time of year.

In one of the videos that has been circulating on WhatsApp groups in Senegal, a man films the crowded pirogue that he is on. The shoreline in the distance and the red Spanish navy boat following them show that the boat has arrived in the Canaries. One young migrant calls on other young Senegalese to follow suit, showing them “how calm the sea is”.






These are screengrabs of a video circulating on WhatsApp, which the FRANCE 24 Observers team has chosen not to publish in order to protect the identities of those shown on camera. Several sources say that this group left Mbour some time in September or October. One explains that they have almost reached Europe. “Look at the mountains of Spain and the Spanish Navy. Look how calm the sea is. Come and find peace, all you young Senegalese. Out of the whole journey, there is just one dangerous stretch of 50 km."

"You can tell young people to stay, but they will respond, ‘how are we supposed to survive?’”

Diouf’s theory that a shortage in fish has led to increasing numbers of people setting sail for the Canaries is echoed by Mor Mbengue, who runs several organisations representing Senegal’s small-scale fishermen and also runs an organisation in the town of Kayar that helps young people who have returned to Senegal from Spain:

There were more than 100 young people who left Kayar in less than two months. Some were intercepted by the police but they will definitely leave again. We’ve even seen the captains of pirogues make the journey. It’s hard to turn your back on the sea and it was always considered shameful to do so. But today, we have the sea without fish. You can tell young people to stay, but they will respond, ‘How are we supposed to survive?’

The “pillage of the ocean by foreign ships” is the reason that so many young people are leaving for Europe, stated members of the National Union for Small-scale Fishing (l’Union régionale de la pêche artisanale, or URPAS) in the town of Saint Louis in an interview published in the Senegalese media on October 21,

Crisis in the fishing community

The NGO Greenpeace published a report on October 9 condemning the opaque practice of awarding fishing licenses to foreign industrial fishing vessels, who are overfishing and depleting precious stocks off the coast of Senegal.

Abdoulaye Ndiaye, a campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, said that they had also noticed increasing numbers of departures from fishing communities as the report circulated.

“The fishermen are no longer just transporting people to the Canaries,” Ndiaye said. “They have also become passengers in the pirogues leaving Senegal. Some sell their fishing equipment in order to go to the Canary Islands.”

Ndiaye says that, within fishing communities who have seen decreasing returns during the latest fishing seasons, people are losing faith in the authorities. "Lots of fishermen went into debt and had to pool their money to pay for fuel,” he added.

“Furthermore, they are frustrated because they see more and more commercial fishing vessels in operation while, since 2012, the number of pirogues have been limited to protect fish stocks,” Ndiaye added.

Greenpeace is calling on the Senegalese government to publish a list of commercial fishing vehicles authorised to fish in Senegal’s exclusive economic zone. In the meantime, Ndiaye says that the controversy is growing and the videos of the young people journeying to the Canary Islands has added fuel to the fire.


Screengrabs of a video that Moustapha Diouf sent to the FRANCE 24 Observers team on October 21 (the team has decided not to publish the full video to protect the identity of those featured.) Diouf says that this group of young people left Thiaroye-sur-mer around October 16.

It is an accumulation of factors that push people to leave, but Ndiaye say the Covid-19 pandemic has definitely played a role.

"Many sectors have suffered from the effects of the pandemic, not just the fishing industry. Informal employment, including small shops and vendors who sell things in front of their homes, have all slowed down,” said Ameth Ndiaye, the secretary general of the Association of Young Returnees in Thiaroye-sur-mer.

Ameth Ndiaye and the president of the association, Moustapha Diouf, preach that the solution is funding campaigns to raise awareness about the dangers of migration as well as providing job-skills training. In 2019, the association partnered with several organisations including Caritas to train a group of young people in sewing and food processing.

"They need to listen to us and support us,” Diouf said.



These images show workshops organized by the Association of Young Returnees in Thiaroye-sur-mer in 2019. (Ameth Ndiaye sent these photos to our team).

"In Saint Louis, we’ve put in place a number of collaborative projects aimed at building economic and social inclusion for young people"

Petit Ndiaye is a blogger and runs the communication department for the city of Saint Louis, Senegal. He says he wants to stay positive. Even though there have been increasing number of departures, he says he has seen some projects that he believes help address the root causes of this issue:

I am working with a group created by the mayor of Saint Louis bringing together young people to combat Covid-19. We visit different neighborhoods to raise awareness about the disease and how to prevent it. We have also taken the opportunity to organise discussions around the dangers of irregular migration.

We need to talk about it with the young men who leave but also with their families and their communities because the social pressure is a huge factor. In Saint Louis, we’ve put in place a number of collaborative projects aimed at building economic and social inclusion for young people.

The city is working to help fishermen transition to other sectors including car mechanics, commerce and even agriculture. There are also projects in place for women and recent graduates. These solutions are absolutely essential.



The group of young people in Saint Louis are working with the mayor to raise awareness about how to combat the spread of Covid-19. They also speak to locals about the dangers of irregular migration. Petit Ndiaye sent these photos to the France 24 Observers team.

In response to the economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, Senegalese President Macky Sall launched a €22 billion economic stimulus plan. This “economic attack plan” is supposed to include a series of reforms in key sectors including agriculture, tourism and health.

On October 1, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Amadou Ba spoke to a group of European Union ambassadors. He said that Senegal hopes that paths to legal migration will be encouraged, while at the same time working to fight irregular migration.

Article by Maëva Poulet.

Agriculture as a Source of Authoritarian Power
Noémi Gonda


Land grabbing is one of the lesser-known pillars of Viktor Orbán’s regime in Hungary. Environmental social scientist Noémi Gonda explains how speculation on agricultural land can strengthen authoritarian populist regimes, and how the European Union is complicit in the process.

Green European Journal: In a recent paper you looked at the role of land grabbing in how Viktor Orbán’s regime strengthens its grip on power. What exactly do you mean by land grabbing in this context?

Noémi Gonda: I am researching domestic land grabbing: the transfer of land from smallholder farmers (often families who cultivate the land themselves) to large-scale entities – or, in the case of Hungary, to the Orbán regime’s wealthy supporters. I am particularly interested in how Orbán’s current political regime strategically uses land grabbing and related conflicts to consolidate its grip on political and economic power.

To what extent is this a new phenomenon in Hungary?

Land grabbing has been going on since the 1990s, through “pocket contracts” (contracts on which the date of purchase is deliberately omitted to allow owners to retain the land even if the law is changed) between foreign investors and Hungarian elites. After the end of state socialism, an agrarian reform made it possible for the original owners of the land to repurchase their expropriated land via vouchers. Although the vouchers could in theory only be used by the original owners, a large chunk of the land ended up in the hands of an emerging class of oligarchs and some foreign investors despite them being legally prohibited from owning arable land or natural resources in Hungary until 2014. According to estimates more than 1 million hectares of land were owned by foreigners in the early 2010s.


Land grabbing has been going on since the 1990s, through “pocket contracts” between foreign investors and Hungarian elites.

Nevertheless, smallholders remained present in the country, in part due to fact that much of state-owned land was leased to them through long-term agreements. The land grabbing process has accelerated and is serving more politicised aims and goals since 2015. This was when the Orbán government privatised a large quantity of state-owned land via a “thunderstorm” process that benefitted a set of loyal oligarchs (in 2014, 23 per cent of the country’s total land was still owned by the state).

What exactly is the Orbán government trying to achieve through this?

Situating land grabbing in two different periods can help in understanding the government’s aims: before the 2010 and after the 2014 elections.

In 2010, Orbán’s political party Fidesz used domestic land grabbing and land-related conflicts in Hungary to win the general election. As an opposition party in the late 2000s, Fidesz capitalised on the scandal caused by the revelation of these pocket contracts. The party condemned this and claimed that land should go to Hungarians. If elected, they promised to take care of the fate of the agricultural land still owned by the state. At that time, the party was also developing a hugely progressive rural development strategy with the aim of pleasing rural voters, whose votes they thought necessary to win the election. Their strategy promised to give arable land back to Hungarians, prioritised environmentally sound, landscape-friendly family farming over monocultural mass production, and aimed at revitalising the countryside by attracting young families who could start dynamic, small-scale farms.


Environmental social scientist Balša Lubarda calls this the “chameleonic nature” of authoritarian populist regimes to describe how they use the narrative of emancipation as a means to gain power

The person who played the most important role in developing this strategy was József Ángyán, a university professor and Fidesz politician. Ángyán was well known and respected in agricultural circles, and he was expected to become the next minister of agriculture. His plan was attractive not only to the Hungarian agriculture syndicates and peasant leaders but also to environmentalists. By manipulating the issue of land tenure and land-related conflicts – through denouncing pocket contracts by or for foreigners – Orbán was able to attract more rural voters. Once the elections were over, however, this nice rural development strategy ended up in the bin, and its author, Ángyán, was forced to leave the party.

Emancipatory tools or politics can also be co-opted by authoritarian populist regimes. Environmental social scientist Balša Lubarda calls this the “chameleonic nature” of authoritarian populist regimes to describe how they use the narrative of emancipation as a means to gain power, only to reinforce or maintain the same oppression, exclusion, and elitist system once they have it. This is not only an issue of the far right as it can also be observed in countries run by leftist governments.

After the 2014 elections, Orbán secured the long-term support of economic and political elites by offering them the possibility of owning land and expanding their business in the agricultural sector. This was enabled by a land privatisation process in which the main beneficiaries were politicians, Fidesz supporters, and their family members. Ángyán has investigated many of the auctions that took place, and among the winners he found the names of relatives of politically powerful people. In the meantime, many of the smallholder land leasers have lost the land they had been farming for decades.

What are the benefits of owning all this land?

Hungary has the second largest proportion of agricultural land in relation to its size within the EU: 58 per cent of its 9.3 million hectares are under agricultural cultivation. As part of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the country is receiving 12.4 billion euros in the period from 2014 to 2020 – so there is a lot of money available to please loyal elites.

On top of that, these landowning oligarchs are banking on the fact that there is an ongoing infringement procedure by the European Union that would require Hungary to open its land market to foreigners. This is because Hungary is seen as violating the rights of cross-border investors in agricultural land. Once the market is open, they will happily sell their land to people from other European countries who will pay extremely high prices for them. So, the long-term carrot for the elites is speculation, and that of the short term is the CAP subsidy. And in both cases, the European Union is involved: firstly by providing the agricultural subsidies, and secondly by pushing Hungary to open its land market to foreigners. The EU’s involvement allows Orbán to wash his hands of responsibility and claim that it was the EU that pushed him towards this kind of land reform.

It is worth mentioning here that Hungary is not the only country where EU subsidies play a role in domestic land grabbing and keeping loyal elites powerful; the literature has shown a similar trend in Poland and in North Macedonia (a candidate country since 2005).

Would it really be worth it for these landowning oligarchs to sell their new land and give up the CAP subsidies?

The subsidy is 240 euros per hectare. This might not seem like much but if you have a lot of land, it can add up to a tidy sum – especially considering that many of the recipients do not even cultivate their lands, as the conditions for getting the CAP subsidies are not implemented properly.

Additionally, if you look at the difference in price between a hectare of land in the Netherlands (where the land market is open to foreign investors) and that in Hungary, you can see the potential for making money. Today in Hungary a hectare costs about 3300 euros, compared to about 115 000 euros in the Netherlands. So, it is really worth waiting a few years and cashing in on the interest of the foreign investors.

At the 2014 election, Fidesz did not seem to pay a political price for this betrayal of voters in the countryside. Why?

By 2014, the whole electoral system had changed. Fidesz did lose 570 000 votes compared to 2010, but this 8.2 per cent drop in support only cost them 1.3 per cent of the seats. Two other factors came into play. Firstly, the country’s Public Work Scheme had created a system of dependency in which many marginalised groups in the countryside felt too vulnerable to not vote for Fidesz. Secondly, the land privatisation process coincided with the refugee crisis, which allowed Orbán to divert attention from what was happening and instead try to win over the anti-refugee voters of the far-right Jobbik party by discrediting the party’s stance and leadership.

Do you think that there are political parties who manage to appeal to people in the countryside now that Orbán has betrayed them?

I do not think that there are parties speaking to the rural areas, apart from Fidesz. Even in the poorest regions or among the marginalised Romani populations, Fidesz remains the popular choice. The city-centred counter arguments of the opposition win them support mainly in Budapest and some other cities. LMP (Politics Can be Different), which started out as a Green party, is not as clear on its environmental stance as it used to be – and even when it started, it seemed more interested in city dwellers than rural voters. So there is definitely room for a party that truly represents people in the countryside.

It is also worth mentioning the information gap [read more on media capture in Eastern Europe] as an important component in the disconnect between the rural populations and those who aim to challenge the regime. There are no newspapers in the countryside, and no other media which would allow the people to access information that is different from the government’s propaganda. Today it seems as though there are two countries and two realities living side by side – and the reality in the countryside is the one constructed by the government’s media and its fearmongering about refugees. The 2010 rural development strategy with its focus on revitalising the countryside could have helped by bringing in people from the urban middle class to rural areas. These informed and connected people could have helped both in the development of new agricultural concepts and with the spreading of narratives that challenge the government’s.


Today it seems as though there are two countries and two realities living side by side – and the reality in the countryside is the one constructed by the government’s media and its fearmongering about refugees.

This may sound a bit utopian, but more and more people – and not just in Hungary – who are fed up with city life. If you have young children and see how polluted Budapest is, you start longing for a healthier environment. Some people are ready to take the step and start working on farms. I have visited several farms run by young couples in their 30s or 40s, where one of them is still working in the city and the other is taking care of the farm. Very often, the health of their children is what motivates them to take up this lifestyle.

The land grabbing in Kishantos, a small village in central Hungary, was widely covered in Hungarian and international media. Why was it such an important topic?

This relates to the question most environmentalists, scholars, and activists ask themselves: where is the change and the active resistance going to come from? The Kishantos Rural Development Centre was a 452-hectare, organic show farm and educational centre, owned by the state and leased out. It had been running successfully for two decades until 2012 when the government tried to stop the lease contract and hand the land over to its own supporters. Following an auction, the land was awarded to a group of people who, at best, were novices to farming.

Kishantos was a symbolic example of an organic protest that generated widespread support, but the main reason it became such a big issue was that Greenpeace ran a visible campaign around it, and also brought lawsuits against the Hungarian government.


There is a need to scale up existing initiatives and to go beyond just resisting the government’s harmful actions.

There were other important examples, like the government’s attempt in 2015 to privatise protected areas, which they abandoned because nature protection organisations actively fought against it. However, environmentalists fear that the government has only shelved this idea temporarily.

These are just sparks, for now at least. There is a need to scale up existing initiatives and to go beyond just resisting the government’s harmful actions. Kishantos may well be important, but we need to think about structural issues as well: how can we challenge the regime by reconstructing, or constructing, a functioning democracy? How can we think about sustainable rural areas? What about equitable societies in which people in the countryside, in cities, and from different ethnicities live together in harmony? These are some of the questions that the resistance must reflect on.

What can environmental organisations and activists do in this context?

There are many farmer organisations in Hungary. Ángyán recounts how he toured the country to meet all the leaders and most of them supported his rural development strategy. It could be our task to go back to these people; to give them a voice, and to let them speak for themselves. We also need to try to get information out to the countryside. There might be an information divide facilitated by traditional media channels, but we can also think about alternative ways of spreading information.


A serious discussion on how to address this abuse of EU policies without harming the real producers – particularly, the smallholders who still depend on the subsidies – is needed.

Environmental organisations also need to question the European Union. The system as it is today is not only unjust, it is also complicit in the development of Hungary’s current authoritarian regime – and possibly that of other countries too. When we speak with people from the European Commission, they are aware of the problem but say there is not much they can do. A serious discussion on how to address this abuse of EU policies without harming the real producers – particularly, the smallholders who still depend on the subsidies – is needed.

BACKGROUNDER

Money, Power and Politics at the WHO

Fien van den SteenGEOPOLITICS

2 OCTOBER 2020

 

The World Health Organization has once again found itself in the spotlight in 2020. Protecting the world against the new coronavirus implies navigating numerous obstacles, from managing severely limited funds to placating the world powers that provide them. Fine van den Steen takes a look at the geopolitics that has shaped the WHO’s manoeuvring throughout the global coronavirus pandemic.

“Sometimes they’re too fast, sometimes they’re too slow,” is the echo which follows every epidemic. 10 years ago, the WHO overreacted to the swine flu, resulting in excessive medical costs. Four years later, with Ebola, its reaction was too slow and cost lives.

Both approaches were heavily criticised, confirmed a European diplomat to the United Nations in Geneva: “I am sure the WHO experts were not satisfied. But just because they’re dissatisfied does not necessarily mean that the director-general can openly express that.”

Whether the WHO was too slow or too fast in tackling the new coronavirus will become clear in the final report of an independent committee of inquiry, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPR). This independent panel, under the leadership of former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and former President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, will examine the actions of both the WHO and its member states. A first interim report is expected in November 2020, and the final report is due in May 2021.

Reliant on goodwill

Following the fiasco with the SARS virus in 2003 and the realisation that increased globalisation can also lead to more epidemics, the WHO took action. In 2005, it updated its International Health Regulations (IHR) that are the basis for international collaboration in response to public health risks.

The IHR is a multilateral agreement between the WHO and its 194 member states that requires signatories to develop the capacity to detect, assess, and respond to acute public health risks. The agreement is binding but – as with most forms of international law – the WHO has neither the authority nor the means to enforce it. The assumption is that member states will pursue compliance because the consequences for failing to do so are disastrous: a high number of sick people and fatalities, a bad image, or exclusion by the international community.

As of 2020, no member state fully meets the requirements of the IHR. Nevertheless, it could have saved lives. Indeed, the regulation obliges countries to share information about any disease that could develop into an international health threat. Covid-19 was – and remains – such a threat par excellence.


“The only teeth the WHO has is ‘naming and shaming’ and international health law […]”

Some countries had fierce discussions with the WHO this year about closing international borders due to the coronavirus. That is because the IHR not only protects lives, but also the economy. The regulations thus stipulate that countries may not take measures that unnecessarily affect trade and transit.

Although the WHO’s “neutral” position should make it ideally suited to judge whether or not to close borders in order to contain a health threat, geopolitical interests play a strong role. Some countries, including the United States, unilaterally decided to close borders with China in January, although this went against the WHO’s advice.

“The only thing that the secretariat [of the WHO] did was to point out that countries had to report and account for travel restrictions according to the IHR”, explained the UN diplomat in Geneva. “The WHO gave an opinion on this and published it. WHO regulations do not prohibit such travel restrictions, although the opinion is interpreted as a condemnation. That is a nuanced difference. Perhaps the regulations here are too weak and instruments need to be created, but not within the remit of the WHO.”

“The WHO has a relatively small secretariat with a couple of thousand people and the budget of an average hospital”, continued the diplomat. 80 per cent of this budget comes from voluntary contributions, and the destination of most of these is earmarked by the donors. The United States government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are the biggest sponsors. “The only teeth the WHO has is ‘naming and shaming’ and international health law. That is all the WHO has. It has no coercive tools, and no power.”

The WHO has been left to depend on the goodwill of its member states, which is problematic when superpowers such as China and the US are flexing their muscles. “UN institutions are very quickly paralysed when there are major disagreements and diplomatic tensions,” added the diplomat.

Inconsistent information

On 14 January 2020, the WHO sent a now infamous and much debated tweet out into the world: “Preliminary investigations by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the new coronavirus.” As a result, many questioned the seriousness of the virus.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore tightened border controls for passengers from Wuhan, China. These three pioneering countries remembered another coronavirus whose severity China had downplayed: SARS.

It was the eve of the Chinese New Year and the region was preparing for the biggest mass migration of the year. The Chinese government expected 440 million rail journeys and 79 million air journeys by the end of January. If the virus were to move with these travellers, it would spread at lightning speed not only within China, but also to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

But Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, was confident: China had been asked for more information and replied immediately on 31 December. Indeed, Tedros praised China’s cooperation and transparency and accused other countries of underestimating the information themselves.

“I was slightly embarrassed that [Tedros] had a little too much praise for the Chinese leadership,” said the diplomat in Geneva. “But to really go against China can be counterproductive, because you close communication channels.”

Tedros’ commendations stood in stark contrast to reports of media censorship and the arrest of doctors in China. The WHO was already aware of these challenging information flows, according to internal WHO documents made available to the US press agency Associated Press.

Those same documents explained that Tedros’ choice was also a strategy to entice China into providing information – like the fabled fox who steals the raven’s morsel of cheese by complimenting him so much that he eventually opens his beak and drops it. “A director-general of the WHO cannot be too harsh on a member state, and certainly not one like China or America”, explained the diplomat.

The concern about Covid-19 was of course real, as the Chinese doctor Li Wenliang also testified. He was one of the first whistleblowers to state the dangers of the virus, one of the first doctors to be arrested, and he eventually died of the disease. On his deathbed he reportedly said: “I think there should be more than one voice in a healthy society.”

Chinese scientists engage in self-censorship in order to avoid reprisals from Beijing. At the same time, the regime actively censors and slows down the flow of information. Former WHO Secretary-General Gro Harlem Brundtland experienced this in 2003. When she discovered that China was withholding information about the new SARS virus, she publicly reprimanded Beijing. Brundtland paid the price for her bold behaviour, as cooperation with the aggrieved People’s Republic proved difficult from that time onwards. With that in mind, it was perhaps unsurprising for Tedros to choose the carrot rather than the stick at the beginning of 2020.

Money is power

Tedros’ praise of China may also have echoed his loyalty to the country. The word in Geneva is that “Dr Tedros was elected [as WHO director-general in 2017] with Chinese support.” That same year, China expressed its ambition to increase its influence on the United Nations, “and we are already feeling that” (keeping in mind that the WHO is one of the UN’s specialised agencies).

“China has become much stronger”, said Gro Harlem Brundtland in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel. “Anyone who now openly criticises the country […] runs the risk of China’s withdrawal.”

“The WHO has a relatively small secretariat with a couple of thousand people and the budget of an average hospital”

Taiwan experienced this back in 2016. Their newly elected government was not well received in China, which is why Taiwan lost its observer status at the annual WHO meeting. Incidentally, Taiwan is not a member of any UN organisation because, according to Beijing’s One-China policy, it belongs to China. Taiwan’s independence is therefore not recognised by China, nor by those countries that do not want to challenge China.

It was precisely this growing influence of China on the WHO that the US took umbrage at, causing President Donald Trump to withdraw his funds. Covid-19 triggered this decision which fits in perfectly with the US’s “America First” attitude.

In recent years, Washington has withdrawn from several UN organisations and international conventions. In fact, it had already warned the WHO about its lack of transparency in the run-up to the elections of the new director-general in 2017. Moreover, the US and China were at odds even before the pandemic, as the trade wars and public muscle flexing demonstrate.

[…] the departure of the US may also lead to a reshaping of influence in the WHO.

The fact that the US has withdrawn its money is a serious drain on the World Health Organization. Nonetheless, according to the diplomat it appears that “US influence on the WHO is still strong.” It is reassuring that Trump’s successor can reverse the decision before the departure goes into effect on 6 July 2021. And even if Trump is re-elected in November, hope lies with other organisations that can fill the financial gap, such as the newly established WHO Foundation.

However, the departure of the US may also lead to a reshaping of influence in the WHO. Trump denounces the growing influence of China, but when the WHO was set up it was the Soviet Union that withdrew from the organisation because of the excessive influence of the US. At that time, the US provided a third of the WHO’s budget. Today, the amount is only 15 per cent.

Geopolitical rumblings

Tedros has stressed that the coronavirus should not be misused to score political points. But the political undertone had already been set before the epidemic broke out.

Politicians around the world reacted according to existing fault lines. Republicans and Democrats in the US express their political colour by whether or not they wear a mouth mask. Northern European member states prioritised their own interests over solidarity with Southern European countries which were harder hit by the pandemic, something which was compounded by their already weaker economic position.

The flow of medical supplies perpetuated and severed geopolitical relations. Italy and Serbia, for example, blamed the European Union for not coming to their aid, whereas China did reach out to them. With China and Russia supplying relief to other countries in need, the Chinese propaganda mill also scored domestic political points. Even the demand for independent research was politically echoed in trade wars, such as the sudden increase in import duties on Australian barley.

However, just like the post-war American aid from the Marshall Plan, Chinese support also has a political agenda. Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative mega-project will not only be a worldwide network of trade and transit, but also one of debt and power. China’s flow of corona aid seems like a foretaste of the health trajectory of the New Silk Road.

[…] just like the post-war American aid from the Marshall Plan, Chinese support also has a political agenda.

“All roads should lead to universal healthcare”, Tedros announced back in 2017, a sentiment he reiterated on 18 June 2020. A partnership between the WHO and China seemed like a good idea to him. As the Ethiopian Minister of Health (2005 to 2012) and Foreign Affairs (2012 to 2016), Tedros was familiar with Chinese policy. Beijing regards Ethiopia as the gateway to East Africa, and the country is thus an important stop on the New Silk Road. China is not only Ethiopia’s most important trading partner – it is also its largest foreign creditor. Chinese loans account for half of Ethiopia’s national debt. It was precisely this combination of ministerial posts that made Tedros the perfect candidate for WHO chief in 2017.

The counterarguments were dismissed as smear campaigns by the opposition. In response to the accusation that as Minister he had concealed cholera outbreaks in Ethiopia, Tedros replied again and again that these were “cases of acute watery diarrhoea”. He referred to issues in the authoritarian regime that he had served, which had a poor record for respecting human rights, as the “teething troubles of a young democracy”.

Moreover, Tedros enjoyed the support of Asia and Africa, respectively led by China and the African Union (which was then chaired by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe). Shortly after his election, Tedros appointed Mugabe as the WHO’s Goodwill Ambassador, and China as a partner for universal health care. He withdrew the first of these decisions under international pressure due to the dictator’s atrocities. The second decision will have proved troubling this year.
China today, another power tomorrow

“There are political sensitivities that states do not respect, which prevent them from showing their best side,” explained the UN diplomat. “This prevents scientists from doing their work and hampers scientific organisations.”

Across Europe, there is an awareness of the high politics that plays out in the United Nations. In Belgium, the conclusion that the power of UN institutions is limited was voiced in May in the Foreign Policy Committee of the Flemish Parliament, during an “exchange of views” on managing the corona crisis: “The WHO cannot defend itself. It is a membership organisation in which the Member States have the last word.”


“[…] the Flemish government continues to take a critical stance with regard to China’s role and demands clarity about the origin of the pandemic.”

The same committee expressed that: “a confrontation with Beijing would have cut off access to essential information from China […] That does not alter the fact that the Flemish government continues to take a critical stance with regard to China’s role and demands clarity about the origin of the pandemic.” This clarity must be provided by the independent committee of enquiry.

Too fast or too slow? This crisis also shows that the goodwill of member states, rather than effective instruments, determines the rhythm of the WHO. The room for manoeuvre is limited due to tense geopolitical relations and a tight budget. In this way, the WHO dances a pernicious tango between health, economics, geopolitics and diplomacy. Today with China, tomorrow with another superpower.


This article was first published in Dutch in MO* Magazine.

Post-Covid Economy Beyond Capitalism
Irene van Staveren
FINANCE AND ECONOMY
6 OCTOBER 2020 

The corona crisis has made it extra clear that capitalism is only one way the

market can take form. It can also be quite different. What follows is a plea for a post-corona economy in which the market is once again embedded in the community and can be better regulated by the state.

Adam Smith was optimistic about the possibility of curbing capitalism via the state and embedding it in the values and goals of communities. Karl Marx, on the other hand, simply did not believe that this was possible. Over the last decade, both economists have been proven right. The financial crisis of 2008 and the major recession that followed proved Marx right: unbridled capitalism allowed the financial sector to spiral out of control and drove bubbles into the housing market. The Covid-19 crisis proved Smith right: first, when markets implode, the state takes over and, second, a sense of community can lead to all sorts of initiatives, from help with grocery shopping to switching factory production to make masks to be sold at cost price. What exactly is capitalism anyhow, and how can it be distinguished from the market? According to both Smith and Marx, capitalism is a certain expression of the market and cannot be equated with the concept of the market itself. The market can therefore also be envisioned differently – for example in a post-capitalist economy, an economy that no longer displays the specific characteristics of capitalism.

According to both Smith and Marx, capitalism is a certain expression of the market and cannot be equated with the concept of the market itself.

Remarkably, most contemporary economists and politicians have forgotten the difference between the market and capitalism. The two concepts are often used interchangeably in parlance. What’s more, thinking in terms of capitalism is often confused with economics as a science – as if the whole of economics is dominated by market thinking or, worse, at the service of capitalism. This narrow view does not do justice to the economists who look beyond the mainstream and have a comprehensive knowledge of the classics. The rich history of economic thought can help elucidate the difference between the market and a specifically capitalist interpretation of the market. This analysis allows us to draw out some characteristics of a perfectly feasible post-capitalist market economy: a post-corona economy in which the market is once again embedded in the community and better kept in check by the state.

The market and the economy

The market is an efficient exchange mechanism for supply and demand. Market transactions are a win-win situation for both buyer and seller; they are both better off than without the swap. But there is a condition for that, as Nobel Prize winners Kenneth Arrow and Gérard Debreu mathematically proved over half a century ago: every participant in the market must have sufficient resources that are in demand. That condition is by no means always met.

For example, John Maynard Keynes recognised that if more labour is offered than demanded during a recession, unemployed people may be willing to work for less than the market wage. Nonetheless, they will simply not be hired because companies will be unable to sell extra products due to a lack of consumer confidence or purchasing power. The labour surplus can therefore not be exchanged. This is why Keynes argued that, in a crisis, the government should create jobs and deploy its purchasing power in the market so that companies can produce more and employ more staff. The Covid-19 crisis has seen governments across the world take on this role on a large scale.

[…] the market is nothing more and nothing less than an exchange mechanism where mutually beneficial transactions can take place. However, those without purchasing power cannot participate in the market.

In developing countries, governments generally lack the necessary capacity for this strategy. Currently, Venezuela is desperately trying to cash in on its gold reserves and a record number of developing countries have knocked on the International Monetary Fund’s door for emergency loans. The development economist and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen has explained the famine that he experienced as a child – not from a lack of food, but from a lack of purchasing power on the part of the poor landless population. Meanwhile, food was being exported to other states in India and even abroad, where there was a strong demand for it. A win-win situation for the exporting rice farmers in Bengal and the importers elsewhere, but starvation for landless farmers and unemployed workers.

In short, the market is nothing more and nothing less than an exchange mechanism where mutually beneficial transactions can take place. However, those without purchasing power cannot participate in the market. And without their own resources, such as land to grow their food on or to let out, they cannot earn a living. As a reaction to this, the state has partly begun to take on basic social services in modern times.

Lessons from Adam Smith

The market thus appears to be an efficient win-win mechanism only under certain conditions and thanks to state support. Even then, the market is often not optimal due to all kinds of market failures: negative externalities, rent-seeking (opportunism), moral hazard (misuse of incomplete information), and the inability to deliver certain public goods (such as healthcare and education for all) to name a few. These shortcomings imply that the economy must consist of more than just the market. And that is exactly what Adam Smith argued in 1776, in his famous book The Wealth of Nations. Smith’s lesson is that every economy is made up of three value domains: the market with exchange based on freedom of choice (provided that everyone has sufficient resources), the state with regulation and redistribution based on certain principles of justice (whether democratic or patriarchal or otherwise), and the domain of the community economy of the commons and mutual care based on what he called the value of benevolence. According to Smith, every economy consists of these three domains, each with its own values. That explains why certain goods or interactions fit into one domain but not into another. In the Netherlands, for example, payment for donated blood feels distasteful, and in the US it has been shown that such market transactions often lead to contaminated blood, unstable supply and higher costs. In the healthcare economy, voluntary blood donations are thus more efficient.


[…] the market is only an effective transaction mechanism […] if it is embedded in a local community in which people collectively provide a significant proportion of basic services

Two hundred years after Smith, economic anthropologist Karl Polanyi discovered and described this threefold division outside Europe as well. He too noted that the economy is much more than the market, and that the market is only an effective transaction mechanism – that is to say, an efficient way to achieve mutual benefit – if it is embedded in a local community in which people collectively provide a significant proportion of basic services, such as food, knowledge transfer, and basic healthcare. Polanyi also argued that the market is framed by all kinds of rules to prevent a few rich people or outsiders from appropriating community resources through the market mechanism. Hence, for example, the principle of common farmland for the cultivation of food for domestic consumption that is still used today in many African countries. Maintaining common land for food production is a smart way to build resilience in the food supply in case food prices rise or exports of cash crops such as coffee and cocoa collapse and foreign currency cannot be earned to import food. In short, the market can only contribute effectively to prosperity if each of the other two domains have room to function on the basis of their own values. It was not for nothing that Smith said that the function of the market for the state is to provide the government with sufficient tax resources. In doing so, he underlined the importance of good interactions between the three domains.

Historically, markets were the third domain of economic interaction – only important if there was something favourable to trade. For millennia, the bulk of prosperity was achieved in the first value domain, the care economy, comprised of the commons and mutual care. This includes jointly managed resources such as water for fishing and land for grazing, and mutual care and cooperation such as the cultivation of food and housing. Even today, this first domain still makes up a large part of our economy: think of domestic work, informal care, home production of food and clothing and volunteer work, as well as civic initiatives such as wind cooperatives. The second economic domain is that of the state, or formerly of authorities such as kings or chieftains. Those authorities determined what tenants or serfs had to produce, and they levied taxes, paid wages and issued recognised currency. Because the people had to pay their taxes in cash, they increasingly had to make money on the market in addition to their economic activities in the first domain of the economy.

Until the rise of capitalism, markets and money played a modest role in the economy. It was only when more goods were exchanged, more debts settled, and means of production appeared on the market that capitalism took off. In this way, labour markets, land markets (and with them the privatisation of community land) and financial markets came into being. Only with capitalism, therefore, did markets become increasingly important compared to the care economy and the state.

The market and capitalism: lessons from Marx

Marx wrote Das Kapital in 1867, almost 100 years after Smith’s publication of The Wealth of Nations, in order to understand capitalism as well as to lecture economists like Smith on their market-derived value theory of prices. Marx’s labour theory of value states that the value of every good is determined by the labour it contains, and also indirectly by the labour contained in the capital goods with which it is produced. This conception of value is the opposite of that of a capitalist enterprise. In a capitalist enterprise aimed at maximising profits, all other factors are paid first (material, labour, rent) and what remains is the profit, paid to the provider of the capital as a dividend. In other words, the capitalist receives what remains after deducting all of the costs, and in the event of a loss that is nothing. Marx swapped the roles of capitalist and worker in the remuneration of the factors of production. He argued that following the payment of the other factors, including a reasonable risk allowance for the entrepreneurship of the capitalist, the rest belongs to the labour factor. After all, this factor provides the work, meaning, collaboration, and creativity needed to make the product.


Only with capitalism, therefore, did markets become increasingly important compared to the care economy and the state.

Capitalism, according to Marx, consists of three elements, as can be read between the lines of his book. First, the asymmetry between capital and labour: the first factor always hires the second and not the other way around. Therefore, wage income falls and capital income gradually increases. Second, the reversal of the exchange chain: an ordinary market starts with a good that is exchanged for money that is then used to purchase another good. The win-win situation of exchange is therefore about the exchange of goods and not about the accumulation of money. However, a capitalist market begins and ends with money, whereby the exchange of goods, or securities, or anything else that can be monetised, is only a means. The far-reaching repercussions of this exchange are embodied today in Airbnb and Uber.

 The third element of the capitalist market is that, the dynamic between the first two results in companies growing progressively larger once they have a small head start or when they are simply lucky. They do so by taking over others and pricing them out of the market through economies of scale. As a result, any capitalist market, which starts with competition, ends in monopoly. In Marx’s time, this tendency was already happening on a regional scale. Today, we see it on a global scale with companies such as Unilever, Shell, Apple, and Google.

A post-Covid economy without capitalism

What we can learn from Smith and Marx is that a true post-capitalist economy, i.e. without capitalism, must have three characteristics.

First, more room for the care economy and the state, so that the market is more strongly kept in check and better embedded in society. The social objective, rather than accumulation for shareholders, takes priority. This also means a shift from linear efficiency through far-reaching specialisation, mass production, and a high degree of globalisation to complementary efficiency with synergy, resilience, and local employment. Take, for example, nature-inclusive agriculture and agroforestry, or the strong local economy of the English town of Preston after a severe recession.

Second, a post-capitalist economy requires enterprises without inequality between labour and capital. For example, cooperatives such as the in which the owners are also the workers (as with the Spanish Mondragon, which has over 70 000 members) or the customers (as with wind cooperatives). This would also apply to self-employed people united in bread funds who initiate start-ups that come much closer to meeting social needs, such as in the incubators at the old Philips site in Eindhoven. Or social enterprises rooted in communities, where profit is only a precondition for social impact. No money is thus leaked away to external shareholders.


[…] private ownership and accumulation are being replaced by a new type of commons, in which the material efficiency of goods is paramount from an environmental point of view, rather than efficient accumulation for a company or shareholder

Third, a post-capitalist economy needs markets that operate more locally, in which a need-fulfilling product or service is central, and money can just as well be a local community currency. There are numerous examples of successful community currencies that operate in parallel with official money. There are also LETS systems and timebanks in which people at a distance from the labour market provide services whose value is expressed in time, and for which they can buy a service themselves. Or markets where it is no longer about buying and selling goods, but about the rental and leasing of circular services. As a result, private ownership and accumulation are being replaced by a new type of commons, in which the material efficiency of goods is paramount from an environmental point of view, rather than efficient accumulation for a company or shareholder at the expense of equality, the environment and economic resilience.

What about the suggestions from economists for an improved version of capitalism? For example, Thomas Piketty’s higher wealth tax, Kate Raworth’s doughnut economy, or Joseph Stiglitz and Bas Jacobs’ proposals for the stricter regulation of oligopolies and the pricing of negative externalities? For the most part, these ideas can also find their place in a post-capitalist economy. But they will only be effective in the long term if the three Smith-Marx criteria are also met. Otherwise, after the Covid-19 crisis, capitalism will just run off with the market again.


This article was first published in Dutch by De Helling.

Scientists are seeing ice age beginnings for very first time

Some fantastic 3D images have emerged from the bottom of the North Sea, making it possible to document the beginning of the ice ages 2.6 million years ago.

The very first ice that reached the ocean during the ice ages probably came from right here in Sognefjorden. (Photo: Raul Hernaiz Cao / Shutterstock / NTB)

Bård Amundsen

 JOURNALIST
Friday 16. october 2020 - 

“We were enthusiastic, to say the least, when we understood what these new 3D images from the North Sea could show us.”

“Suddenly we were sitting on fantastic data,” says geologist Helge Løseth.

The last two million years or so have seen somewhere between 30 and 40 ice ages in a row. This relatively short ice age period brought an awful lot of changes to Norway.

We see the results quite clearly in the form of fjords, mountains, valleys and the low plains along the coast from Trøndelag and northwards.

But we know surprisingly little about what was really going on – especially at the beginning of this last and very dramatic period.

Much better preserved in North Sea

The remains of both the ice ages and earlier periods in the Earth's history have been much better preserved on the continental shelf in the North Sea than on land in Norway.

On land, the ice ages themselves effectively removed almost all traces of them, except the very largest indications that we see today as valleys, fjords and towering mountain peaks. There may have been as many as 40 ice ages. But we only see the traces of the last one, which lasted for 100 000 years.

In stark contrast to this, the new 3D images from the North Sea seabed can tell geologists in detail about the development during all the ice ages, all the way back to the beginning.

This information is largely due to the fact that the North Sea is now probably the best mapped seabed in the world.

Very first ice flowed out of Sognefjorden

When the first thick glacier covered Norway 2.6 million years ago, it sent giant glacier arms out to sea, like glaciers are still doing in Greenland and Svalbard today.

“The very first glacier arm probably came out where Sognefjorden meets the sea", says Løseth.

Eventually glacier arms extended out from the Nordfjord, Sunnfjord and Hardangerfjord systems. The ice that flowed from the mainland spread beyond the continental shelf.

On land in Norway, we can see the results of the ice ages. But the seabed in the North Sea reveals a lot more of what really happened during the ice ages. From the northern part of the North Sea, researchers have now received fantastic new 3D images. In the upper left you can see parts of a large river delta outside Sognefjorden, created just before the beginning of the ice ages. To the right you see sedimentary masses spreading outwards on the continental shelf. At the bottom you can see how the large meltwater river that flowed out of Sunnfjord in the north of Western Norway, has created the over 100 kilometre long underwater Sunnfjord channel, also at the very beginning of the ice ages. (Pictures from H. Løseth et al: 3D sedimentary architecture showing the inception of an Ice Age)

Sunnfjord channel over 100 kilometres long

At Sunnfjord in the north of Western Norway, a large river of meltwater might have sent huge amounts of water into the sea during the beginning of the very first ice age.

The meltwater continued as a strong underwater stream. At least 100 kilometres to the west, it dug a deep canal on the seabed.

“The Sunnfjord Canal is up to two kilometres wide and 150 metres deep.”

“We can see that the sediments in the canal are younger than the river deposits that came out of Sognefjorden valley just before the ice age, but older than surrounding masses that were also deposited during the ice ages. This is how we’ve been able to establish the time of the Sunnfjord channel to the beginning of the ice ages,” says Løseth.

Researchers have only been able to locate the outer part of the Sunnfjord channel in the 3D images. Further inland on the shelf, both the Sunnfjord channel and other traces on the seabed have been removed by the ice masses that flowed along the South Norway coast and out into the ocean and scraped the ocean floor. The broad Norwegian Trench was formed by this ice stream activity.

Today Shetland is a small archipelago. The Shetland land mass that existed not that long ago was much larger. Large rivers from the interior of the Shetland region spilled into the North Sea and met the glacial ice and meltwater from Norway. (Photo: AlanMorris / Shutterstock / NTB)

A much bigger Shetland

Today Shetland is a small archipelago on the western side of the North Sea.

But just 2.6 million years ago, Shetland was a much larger land mass.

“Strangely enough, this land wasn’t covered by ice during extended periods of the ice ages,” Løseth says.

“Instead, large rivers flowed out of Shetland during the ice ages. They brought with them sediments that encircled Shetland on the continental shelf.” (See the figure below.)

Researchers can now see how the water from the rivers in the Shetland land mass met river water and glaciers that came from Norway. The images show how masses that were carried into the ocean from Norway and Shetland were deposited on the seabed.

Here is more about what happened at the very beginning of the ice ages:

The picture to the left shows the startlingly straight coast of Norway before the beginning of the ice ages, completely different from the Norwegian coast today. From the great Shetland land mass, rivers carried large amounts of sediments into the sea. You can also see the river delta on the seabed off of Sognefjorden. The picture in the middle shows the beginning of the ice ages and the very first ice flowing out of Sognefjorden. A little further north, the Sunnfjord channel is formed by large amounts of meltwater. In the picture to the right, the ice age is in full swing. The ice cap (purple) extends all the way to Shetland country. It is still Sognefjorden that delivers the most ice into the ocean. (Image from the research article)

Discovering layers upon layers of ice age history

Løseth, with research colleagues at the Norwegian Geological Survey (NGO) and the University of Cambridge in the UK, have now published an article in the journal Nature Communications where they use the 3D images from the bottom of the North Sea.

The researchers talk about how they have identified layers from different parts of the ice age in what they call a seismic sequence. They see layer upon layer – the time from before the ice ages set in until the emergence of a full ice age – and in fact all the way to today's seabed. They can also observe traces of the giant Storegga Slides from the Stone Age.

The researchers for the new Nature article are also the first to believe they can confirm that the ice, from the very beginning of the ice ages, stretched far out to the edge of the continental shelf in the North Sea.

And there it broke apart into enormous icebergs.

Why are there ice ages?

We don’t know for sure. Several interactions could be the cause.
The amount of greenhouse gases (CO2 and methane) in the atmosphere changes with the ice ages. But whether this is a cause or an effect of the ice ages is uncertain.

Changes in large ocean currents can alter the Earth's climate.

Changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun, the Earth's distance from the Sun and the tilt of the Earth's axix are probably contributing factors to the ice ages.

Two other possible causes could be volcanism on Earth and changes in the Sun's radiation.

Source: Wikipedia's English article on ice ages

Translated by Nancy Bazilchuk

Reference:

Helge Løseth et.al: 3D sedimentary architecture showing the inception of an Ice Age, Nature Communications, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16776-7

Who lost when the ancient wonders of Rome were built?

What sacrifices were made during the construction of Rome's ancient monuments, churches, and temples? 

“When urban development happens, there are winners and losers,” says Christopher Siwicki.

“Emperors and local politicians invested huge sums of money in improving the city. There was an idea that the grandeur of Rome should reflect the grandeur of the empire,” says Christopher Siwicki, research fellow at the Norwegian Institute in Rome. 

(Foto: BeBo86 / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0)

Silje Pileberg FREELANCE JOURNALIST
University of Oslo
Wednesday 11. november 2020 - 


We often assume that grandiose buildings like temples, bathhouses, and entertainment complexes were welcomed by inhabitants, but what if they were not?

Christopher Siwicki, research fellow at the Norwegian Institute in Rome, part of the University of Oslo, adresses this question in his research.

“Emperors and local politicians invested huge sums of money in improving the city. There was an idea that the grandeur of Rome should reflect the grandeur of the empire,” he says.

Siwicki is the first scholar to systematically explore the unpopularity and the damaging effects of monuments that are traditionally thought of as beneficial.
A city built on cities

Much of ancient Rome is still standing, particularly the area around Forum Romanum. This was a monumental construction that emerged in the early years of Rome in the valley between the Palatine Hill and the Capitoline Hill, two of the Seven Hills of Rome.

Every year millions of tourists visit both Forum Romanum and many other attractions, like the old temple of the Pantheon and the arena Colosseum.

However, there is history also below ground. Siwicki describes Rome as a patchwork.

“Rome is a city built on former cities. Archeologists have been excavating Rome for 250 years, but still, there is a lot that we do not know. Some parts have been excavated, others not.”

Even The Norwegian Institute in Rome is hiding a treasure; a Roman watermill in the basement, part of the city’s former aquaduct system.

A glimpse of the modern staircase through the ancient aqueduct ruins in the basement of the Norwegian institute in Rome. (Photo: Anne Nicolaysen)

Two types of sources

In his research, Siwicki uses two types of sources. One is archeological evidence, examining the structures themselves and how they were incorporated into the existing urban fabric.This will involve charting the changes in urban land-use across multiple sites in Rome, and examining which buildings and places were replaced due to the construction of new monuments.

He considers using non-destructive archeological methods like ground penetrating radar to investigate what is beneath the antique structures.

The other sources are Greek and Latin texts from betwen 2nd century BC and 3rd century AD, which is the time period he studies.

Recorded speeches shed light on public opinion

An important written source is the Greek writer and philosopher Dio Chrysostom, who visited Rome and then returned to his Greek (today Turkish) city of Prusa. There, he tore down part of the city center in order to build a construction with a grandiose portico, which is a long, aisled hall with a colonnaded porch opening onto a public square.

Around 80 of Dio Chrysostom’s speeches have been preserved, and some of them were adressed to people of Prusa. Five of the speeches are in defence of his construction project.

“We know from these speeches that he received an enormous amount of criticism. We see that people cared about their city center,” Siwicki explains.

Prusa was part of the Roman empire, and what happened here ties in nicely with what happened in Rome, according to Siwicki.

“Not everybody loved the magnificent buildings of Rome when they were built,” says Christopher Siwicki. (Photo: Anne Nicolaysen)

The rich displaced the poor

A lot of the money spent on magnificent constructions came from taxation. Also, members of the elite gave gifts to the general population, in the form of buildings or gladiator games. In return, they got prestige, political power, and a lasting monument.

“If we think the wealth gap is bad today, it was enormous in ancient times. Some individuals and local politicians were close to billionaires,” Siwicki says.

There are still many unanswered questions, but researchers know that magnificent buildings had negative consequences, also in Rome. The area around Forum Romanum was for a long time a market and public meeting place, but as emperors and others started building temples, these activities were pushed away, according to Siwicki.
People were forced to move

In the same area there are forums built by the dictator Julius Cæsar and emperor Augustus, who were in power before and around year 0. These forums, which served as public spaces, demanded large areas in the center of Rome that had been residental areas.

Many inhabitants were displaced in a city that was already overpopulated. Siwicki aims to investigate the consequences of these displacements.

A few ancient writers may give some hints. For instance, the Roman biographer Suetonius wrote that “Augustus made his forum narrower than he had planned, because he did not venture to eject the owners of the neighbouring houses”.

“We also know, from the Greek author Cassius Dio, that Cæsar was criticized for tearing down temples and peoples’ houses when he built a new theater,” Siwicki explains.

Emperor Augustus built a 30 meter high wall to protect his forum from fires. The view shows the rear of the wall, with the remains of the temple and forum beyond.

 (Illustration: Giovanni Battista Piranesi / metmuseum.org)

Around year 2 BC Augustus built a wall 30 meters high around his forum. The wall was meant to protect the forum from fires. However, it also destroyed roads and routes in the city. Some people got the gigantic wall as their closest neighbor.

“Augustus was praised for building the forum, but what about the people who were on the other side? When urban development happens, there are winners and losers,” Siwicki says.
We should learn from history

Many years have passed. Those who suffered injustice in Ancient Rome, have been dead for a long time. Still, Siwicki believes that it is important to explore this unknown part of history.

“Today’s understanding of history is shaped by writers and what we see. The writers belonged to the upper class, and the buildings that survived, belonged to the elite. If we are to understand what ancient Rome really was, we cannot just limit ourselves to what certain individuals said and did.”

He also believes that these topics are relevant for cities of today. When buildings and areas are gentrified, that is upgraded to make them more attractive, some people fall behind.

“Creating and developing future cities is one of the biggest global challenges in this century. In some areas huge investments are being made, but it doesn’t mean that they are welcomed by all. Perhaps we can draw some lessons from history,” Siwicki says.

THIS ARTICLE IS PRODUCED AND FINANCED BY UNIVERSITY OF OSLO - READ MORE