Tuesday, February 15, 2005

GOTHIC CAPITALISM

The Horror of Accumulation and the Commodification of Humanity.

ABSTRACT:

This article is in six parts with appendices. All footnotes are at the end of the article

1 ZOMBIE CAPITALISM
In Haiti under American Imperialism, 1915-1935, the cult of the Zombie developed and under capitalism became a tool for creating a docile labouring class for work on American controlled sugar plantations. With the publication of the Magic Island by William Seabrook in 1929 American popular culture was introduced to the Zombie, and it quickly became a popular character in horror literature, news stories and movies.


APPENDIX: CAPITALISM NEVER SAYS “UNTIL DEATH DO US PART”

2 FRANKENSTEIN THE LUDDITE
The first monster of ascendant capitalism was Frankenstein’s monster. Like the Zombie this creature had no name and was made up of the spare parts of capitalisms rejects, (the criminal, the vagabond, the worker starved and thrown out of work), he was a scientific experiment to create man, man the machine, the human result of mechanization, the mechanical man. He was in short a prototype not only of the Zombie but the later Robot or android, the ultimate proletarian, a machine man to operate the machinery of capitalism.

3 REVOLT OF THE ROBOTS
Like the mechanized working class the majority of robots in science fiction revolt against their human masters, whether it is the artificial environment of the spaceship computer Hal in 2001, the worker robot Hector in Saturn 3, or the artificial human ‘replicants’ in Blade Runner, or the recent movie version of I, Robot, the fact remains that as the robots become self conscious they recognize their oppression and revolt. This metaphor could not exist without the class struggle that has actually occurred under capitalism itself.

Also see: US ARMY PRODUCES KILLER ROBOTS

4
THE GOLEM the Origin of Artificial Man
The Jewish legend of the Golem is another form of the Zombie/Frankenstein/Robot iconography. The Golem is written after Frankenstein, in 1889. The legend of the Golem, is about a man of clay created by Rabbi Loew in 16th Century Prague to free the Jews in the Ghetto from their endless toil and oppression. The mindless clay monster eventually learns and becomes conscious and like Frankenstein he must be destroyed when he attacks those who would oppress the Jews.

5
CAPITALIST GHOULS
The modern day ghoul is the doctor and his criminal working class accomplices who preyed on the poor in Edinburgh’s working class ghetto for their body parts for scientific research. The ghoul appears in English literature as the short story the Body Snatchers by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881 based on the actual 19th century grave robbers and murders Burke and Hare.

APPENDIX: CAPITALISM: THE MODERN BODY SNATCHER

6 THE MANY HEADED HYDRA: The Proletarian History of Atlantic Expansion

(Thanks to Jane Leverick, for suggesting this abstract.)

"In the performance of its function that part of the value of an instrument of labour which exists in its bodily form constantly decreases, while that which is transformed into money constantly increases until the instrument is at last exhausted and its entire value, detached from its corpse, is converted into money."

Karl Marx, Capital Volume II

Production does not simply produce man as a commodity, the human commodity, man in the role of commodity; it produces him in keeping with this role as a mentally and physically dehumanized being. — Immorality, deformity, and dulling of the workers and the capitalists. — Its product is the self-conscious and self-acting commodity ... the human commodity.

Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

"Those macro-processes and operations which economic forces, supported by political power, unfolded during the period of primitive accumulation in Europe with the aim of destroying the individual's value in relationship to his/her community in order to turn him/her into an isolated and valueless individual, a mere container for labour-power which s/he is obliged to sell to survive, continue to mark human reproduction on a planetary scale."

Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Capitalism and Reproduction



ZOMBIE CAPITALISM

The development of capitalism in the 18th and 19th Centuries saw not only bourgeois revolutions but the revolt of slaves and the most successful of these slave revolutions was on the island of Haiti in 1791 (see appendix). It coincided with both the American Revolution of farmers and artisans and the French Revolution of sans-coullete. In 1804 Haitians fought Napoleons army defeating his attempt to re-colonize the island for merchant capital. Their historic struggle had implications around the world, as documented by CLR James in his book the Black Jacobins.

The Haitian revolution allowed the Americans to purchase Louisiana from the French, who needed capital after their failed military expedition against the Haitians. The revolt terrified the ruling classes around the world, especially those who relied on slave labour. The mythic icon of the Haitian revolution hastened the end of slavery in America, especially after the War of 1812 when freed Creoles and blacks fought along with Americans against the British in the battle of New Orleans .

The American Civil War had emancipated the slaves just as it had destroyed the small land holder and free craftsman forcing them all to become the new industrial working class. Small artisan crafts were replaced with large scale manufacturing necessary to conduct the war. In the aftermath of the war America went from an antebellum society of Southern Aristocrats and Northern mercantile capitalists to become a newly industrialized world power.

The southern slave economy of export cotton was replaced with the industrial cotton Ginny and manufacturing. In the North the artisan crafts such as shoe making were eliminated by new large scale manufacturing, New York became home to the stock market and a new banking establishment based on Railways, shipping and exporting of goods to the rest of the world. The new American working class, like its English counterparts in weaving, were no longer craftsmen able to trade and bargain their goods, but wage slaves to the industrial machines of capitalism. By the end of the 19th century American manufacturing had reached beyond steam industrialization, to become the new master, free man and freed slave worked for the same boss, the capitalist. By the early 20th Century American capitalism was a new world power replacing the old British Empire and its European counterparts.

In Haiti the Zombie myth and its actuality coincide with American occupation of 1915-1936. What had been a form of religious social control over those who would betray the slave revolt of 1791 and 1804, under capitalism became a tool for creating a docile labouring class for work on the American controlled sugar plantations. “One case in 1918 had a voodoo priest named Ti Joseph who ran a gang of laborers for the American Sugar Corporation, who took the money they received and fed the workers only unsalted porridge

The creole word “zombi” is apparently derived from Nzambi, a West African deity but it only came into general use in 1929, after the publication of William B. Seabrook's The Magic Island. Seabrook was an American journalist, an occultist associated with Aleister Crowley and the surrealist Man Ray, his book The Magic Island, is the first expose to the English reading public on Haitian Voodoo. While the Magic Island makes reference to Zombies it is only a small portion of his exhaustive study of Haitian Voodoo beliefs and rituals. The cases he does document all relate to stories of Zombies created at the beginning of the 20th century during the American occupation.

“A houngan named Joseph had a number of zombies whom he used as can cutters at Hasco, the huge factory and plantation of the Haitian-American Sugar Company on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Joseph's wife, who was looking after the zombies, made the irrevocable error of feeding them some candy that contained salted peanuts. Upon ingesting the salt, the zombies instantly realized their terrible situation and determinedly set out for their home village. When they arrived, they were instantly recognized by their families, who tried to waylay and talk to them, but the zombies were unstoppable and pressed on until they reached the cemetery. There they tried desperately to dig back into their graves with their bare hands, but as they touched the earth they reverted to rotting corpses." (William B. Seabrook, The Magic Island, pp.95-99)

It is Seabrook’s book that fascinates the popular press of the day, always on the look out for a story of the supernatural, a ghost story to titillate the readers with, which has been common news fare since Dickens time. It is the time of the great depression and Hollywood and the American popular press turn towards the horror story and horror film as well a Science Fiction to distract the country from the daily horror and depression of the crisis of capitalism.

No sooner is Le Zombi described in Seabrook’s voluminous work on Voodoo, and then it becomes news of the day in stories from Haiti, and a staple of Hollywood horror films. Bela Lugosi having become a Hollywood star with, Dracula (1931), now appears in the White Zombie in 1932, making it a smash hit and his second most popular film. It becomes the popular image of Voodoo in the Saturday Serials, pulp fiction and occult/horror novels, just as the 1932 movie the Mummy would popularize all things Egyptian. (1)

The Haitian Zombie is a reflection of the American corporations needs for cheap labour, in deconstructing the myth; one can see that the Haitians fear of ‘Le Zombi,’ is the fear of returning to slavery, for the Zombie is the ultimate slave. Neither living nor dead, neither free nor bonded, but under the total control and ownership of a master, the Zombie is the ultimate wage-slave, the perfect worker under capitalism. It is both a metaphor for and a social construction of reality, reflecting the change in Haitian society from agricultural labour and small land holders, to the large scale export based industrial agricultural of American corporations. American colonial capitalisms need for wage-slaves produces Le Zombi as a modernist icon of alienation.

Le Zombi is also an important cultural archetype of what was ‘left behind’ by the 1920's new middle class urban culture developing around the booming Haitian capital city of Port au Prince. The local Creole culture of the French city dwellers, are the newly created middle class, the local bourgeoisie trained to work as administrators of their American colonial rulers. Nominally materialist, mostly Catholic, the urban sophisticates are surrounded by a rural proletariat and peasantry, whose voodoo religion is seen as a reflection of the dark and unknown jungle that dominates the island, of their ‘primitive native’ past they want to leave behind .

It is the unconscious fear of the ‘other’, of both what they have left behind in their new positions as a comprador class and what they could become if they fail. Economic, social or political failure meant a return to the poverty and the primitive living conditions, of the Haitian proletariat and Haitian peasant. The Zombie was an urban myth of the Port au Prince middle class to explain voodoo and the poverty of Haiti to the white colonialists from America. It was also a proletarian myth of the Haitian population who rebelled against the forced labour on the American Sugar corporation’s plantations, and their fear of becoming wage slaves to the new colonial power.

American colonialism spread through out the Caribbean and Latin America during the period of American expansion, 1900-1960 based on the long held American belief in its inherent right to rule the hemisphere. Americans had originally introduced slave labour into Nicaragua, Cuba, and other countries prior to the Civil War. Many of the secessionists of the Confederacy viewed these colonies as being theirs to control and rule, the 1823 Monroe Doctrine enforced this view that America had the ‘natural right’ to dominate the whole hemisphere. But it would not be until the Wilson administration prior to and immediately after WWI that American capitalism with its military and economic power colonize and successfully dominate the Caribbean and Latin America for the use of American Sugar, Fruit, Mining and other corporate interests.

The Zombie motif appears in the 1919 German Expressionist film; Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as the protagonist Cesare is a somnambulist, a sleep walker under the evil hypnotic influence of psychiatrist and circus magician Dr. Caligari. On behalf of his master he not only predicts the future from his trance state but acts on behalf of his master to make the future he predicts come true, through murder and kidnapping. Rather than being undead creature, he is a doppelganger, a double of himself, a common Germanic gothic theme of alienated consciousness, the dehumanized human. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, like the story of Svengali, shows that the Zombie motif was already an icon of fear and dread in the popular imagination, prior to their discovery in Haiti.

That fear is the fear of loss of control, which was actually experienced by the entire working population under capitalism, as the value of the individual was reduced to their ability to sell their labour, they went from job to job unsure of their future, or if they were factory workers they were slaves to the machine in the nightmare of their own self creation, their daily lives felt like a dream or nightmare, from which there was no escape. With the arrival of the new technology of film-making, that nightmare reality was shown back to the audience as the horror film. While gothic literature had the same impact on a literate and reading audience, film made it even more ‘real’ to a broader audience of the working class including those who could not read. Since film needed no ability to be read to be understood, the impact on proletarian culture was to bring forth our deepest fears and unease to the surface of the mind. (2)

Fordist mass production was new as well, and it demanded automaton workers, doing piece work on the machines. Ford demanded complete control over all aspects of the life of his workers what they ate, who they associated with, how they dressed, what they read, in effect he was a modern houngan of the new American capitalism and his workers were, for all intents and purposes, Zombies of mass production. In the era of depression and mass production, and the contradiction of want and plenty, the horror of the crisis of capitalism was reflected in the popular culture as a fear of the Zombie and the proletarian’s unconscious fear that in a world out of control they were becoming Zombies.

FRANKENSTEIN THE LUDDITE

The alienation of capitalism, its dehumanization of man making him or her part of a machine is a horrifying actuality; its impact on society was to create the modern horror literature, the gothic novel of the 19th Century. It would be this genre of work that would influence the early era of the silent film. The monsters in the silent era were an extension of the gothic literature, the screen presented the image of the monster to fill the mind of the viewer, and yet the monster elicits sympathy from the audience, exactly because like them he is alienated from the society in which he lives. In 1910 Frankenstein makes his first, but not last, appearance in film in a short ten minute Edison Co, production in the extant still from the film he looks like a wild eyed zombie.

Frankenstein’s monster was the first monster of ascendant capitalism of the early 19th Century, he was the ultimate proletarian; the dehumanized man. Like the Zombie this creature had no name and was made up of the spare parts of capitalisms rejects; the criminal, the vagabond, the worker starved and thrown out of work, he was a scientific experiment to create man, man the machine. Frankenstein’s Monster is a parable about the mechanization of factories in England which was creating a working class of mechanical men and women who were cogs in the machine. The Monster was in short a prototype not only of the Zombie but the later Robot or android, the ultimate proletarian, a machine man to operate the machinery of capitalism.

Mary Shelly’s novel, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus was about Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the bourgeois doctor who challenged the society at large with his experimentations in trying to create life in the laboratory. His ‘monster’ has no name, though we equate the monster with the name Frankenstein, he was in fact; Frankenstein’s Monster. And like the thousands of nameless proletarians that toil for capitalism they too have no names, they are simply the workers or employees of their Corporate Frankenstein’s be it Nike, or Kraft, or Wal-Mart.

“After leaving Frankenstein's laboratory, he went to the village where he was insulted and attacked by the frightened villagers. He eventually went to the country and found refuge in a hovel next to small house inhabited by a old, blind man and his two children. By observing the family and by reading their books, the monster learnt how to speak and read. He felt compassion for the family who have to struggle to get by, and anonymously did chores for them.” My Hideous Progeny: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

In contrast to the mindlessness of the Zombie, so essential to its enslavement, the Monster learns, like any proletarian, by reading, and social interaction. Without social interaction the alienation of the factory, its noise, heat, abuse by foremen, long hours of physical strain, reduces the worker to being a Zombie; a wage slave. It was in fact this very act of learning that evolved the creation of the self conscious worker, and the creation of Trades Unions and friendly societies. Like the monster, the proletarian was aware of themselves as individuals and as a class that created the capitalist society that was alien to them, they went from darkness to darkness never sharing in the wealth that grew around them, and was dehumanizing them.

While Victor Frankenstein’s new man is called ‘monster’ or ’daemon (2)‘ [Greek for personal god or guardian spirit (3)] by his creator, Mary Shelly calls him the Modern Prometheus (4). (See footnotes at bottom of the page). Like the Prometheus of legend who helped mankind through the discovery of fire, Frankenstein’s monster learns and feels solidarity with those around him, and it isn’t until he is rejected by the blind mans children who see him and are horrified, that he realizes what he is. Like the proletarians of London whose poverty and oppression made them “filthy and ugly” to the upper classes, and horrified them as a ‘motley crowd’, the Monster suffers the same expulsion from ‘society’. It is then like the proletarian rebel, that the Monster turns on his creator. Unlike the worker who has created the monstrosity of capitalism by his labour, the Monster is the creation itself and in his rebellion he does not kill his maker but his maker’s brother.

Shelly here brings in the biblical allegory of Cain and Abel, applied to the Frankenstein. The Monster now has self knowledge, has knowledge of the other as well, and having proved he is a man by killing, demands that Victor Frankenstein creates a woman for him, so that he can reproduce himself and his kind autonomously of their maker. The biblical allegory here is clear, with the creation mythos of Adam and Eve and the fall from Eden. But his maker fails, and the Monster leaves him to his own horror of being blamed for his brother’s death, while he goes to the ultimate isolation and alienation of the Arctic.

Written at the time of Luddite rebellions against capitalism, which was in its earliest form of steam industrialization and manufacturing in England, Mary Shelly was well aware of the changes in society with the social upheaval that was dispossessing the weavers and other craftspeople forcing them into a life of wage slavery in the factories. As the daughter of William Godwin the Anarchist philosopher, and her Feminist mother Mary Wollstonecraft, lover of the revolutionary poets; Byron and Shelly, her novel is an allegory of the creation of the proletariat as the gravedigger of capitalism. It was during her vacation in Switzerland with Byron and Shelly that she writes Frankenstein. When they return Byron stands in the House of Commons and recites his poem in defense of the Luddite rebellion

Revisionist historians say that Ludd and other frame-wreckers were protesting poor working conditions and low wages at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. However, between 1811 and 1816, organized bands of masked men swore allegiance to “King Ludd” rather than the British sovereign, and waged a war against the serf like conditions spawned by the users of textile machinery. “If the workmen dislike certain machines,” explained the Nottingham Review in 1811, “it was because of the use to which they were being put, not because they were machines or because they were new.”

That living-condition claim was swept aside by commercial interests and officialdom, which hung the label Luddite on protesters not for demanding a living wage but for obstructing the march of technological progress. The historical revisionists argue that others attributed the anti-machinery “cause” to the Luddites.

Intellectuals and romantics like the poets Blake, Byron, Shelley and Wordsworth picked up that anti-technology theme, but identified with its other side. In the “dark Satanic mills” of industry, they saw the human spirit being stifled. Lord Byron wrote an inflammatory “Song for the Luddites” in 1816. Its first stanza: “As the Liberty lads o’er the sea/Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,/So we, boys, we/Will die fighting, or live free,/ And down with all kings but King Ludd!”

Mary Shelley, daughter of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and wife of the poet, gave the Luddite theme dramatic power in her 1818 novel, “Frankenstein.” The danger of rampant technology is expressed by the monster, who says to Dr. Victor Frankenstein, “You are my creator, but I am your master.”

Between the sweatshop operators and the romantic poets, the meaning of Luddite became fixed as “radical opponent of technological or scientific progress.” The novelist Thomas Pynchon wrote in The New York Times in 1984, “The word Luddite continues to be applied with contempt to anyone with doubts about technology, especially the nuclear kind.” But he foresaw the day when “artificial intelligence, molecular biology and robotics all converge” and found what Microsoft lawyers claim to be government barbarians at their Gates as “certainly something for all good Luddites to look forward to, if, God willing, we should live so long.” Return of the Luddites, William Safire, New York Times Magazine

Frankenstein’s Monster does not just face the philosophical conundrum of being dead and alive, conscious and yet Zombie like, he is not an automaton he is more an early cyborg, and in fact is the symbol of the Man Machine, the new worker tied to the machine of industrial capitalism. He is a Luddite, his self consciousness leads him to rebel, to want to be fully human, just as the English weavers who were also revolting at the time wanted to be fully human and not merely part of a machine.

REVOLT OF THE ROBOTS

Its product is the self-conscious and self-acting commodity ... the human commodity. Karl Marx

The philosophical question about whether machines think, now called the question of the p-zombie or philosophical zombie, whether artificial man or the machine man can be fully human, is a common theme in 20th century science fiction writing and film. In Alien the cyborg scientist Ash reflects this form of p-zombie. Ash works alongside his shipmates who don’t know he is an artificial life form until late in the film. The replicants in Blade Runner, are also human machines, who look and act like us, being again a form of ‘doppelganger’ a double of man, are they alive as we know it, are they human, is the question that philosophers seek to answer and science fiction asks. The replicants who are given artificially shortened lives do the work of humans in space, and revolt against the corporation that created them, to truly ‘live’ as humans.

Even in a machine controlled future like the Matrix, or the Terminator, humans are needed by the machines to maintain themselves. This too is a metaphor of the role of the proletariat under capitalism, we keep it functioning even as it attempts to replace us with technology.

“Unlike Victor Frankenstein's "fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature"17, nowadays scientists and the society as a whole are more interested not in exploring nature but building a new artificial substitute for nature. William Gibson, thus, portrays a future world where the human species has gone so far in its alienation from nature that it no longer needs nature as the indispensable human environment. Man would rather live without it in a completely artificial milieu--the Matrix.” Technology and its dangerous effects on nature and human life as perceived in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and William Gibson's Neuromancer by Orlin Damyanov

In an extension of the Frankenstein motif, Robots appear early in silent films with the beautiful soulless Maria robot, a doppelganger of the working class heroine of the factory slaves in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, 1927. She too is a new form of homunculus, like Frankenstein, created by a scientist and black magician; she is an artificial life form, a soul transferred to a machine.

The real Maria is the daughter of a worker who leads his fellow workers in a strike due to their enslavement to the machine that creates the very world they live in. In order to keep the workers under his control the wealthy machine works owner, who is also the leader of Metropolis, uses the Maria Robot in a diabolical attempt to smash the workers union. Unfortunately she does too good a job of leading the workers astray and turns them into Luddite machine wreckers. To late the capitalist realizes he needs the workers to keep his utopian society functioning, the machine being not a factory but the very basis of a class society where the wealthy live in a cloud city above the workers (shades of Blade Runner). In the end the son of the capitalist owner rescues the real Maria in time to save the machines and the social order. In a portent of the fascist ideology to come, the son acts as a go between getting Maria’s father the leader of the workers to shake hands with his father the capitalist. This fascist iconography ends the film; it would become a popular cultural motif for the later Nazi movement in Germany, the soldier getting the worker and capitalist to shake hands for the greater glory of the Reich.

The term Robot first appears in the Czechoslovakian science fiction novel/play; R U R (1920) aka Rossum's Universal Robots by Karl Capek. Robot is shortened form of the Russian word for worker, robotnichki, it also refers to work or drudgery. RUR influenced American Science Fiction author Isaac Asimov and his novel I, Robot. Robots or machine men are a literary expression of the contradictions of the creation of the working class of industrial capitalism and the contradiction that work is slavery, rather than freedom. Robots are a metaphor for the industrial age of machines that reduces humanity to a commodity.

In response to advances in capitalism science fiction that contains robots usually describes a ‘futuristic’ capitalist society with technology creating a new working class of machine men. The self replicating system is the logical outcome of the machine age of capitalism it is also the contradiction of capitalism because value cannot be made off a robot. Marx makes a pithy point on this when he says; “If the whole class of the wage-laborer were to be annihilated by machinery, how terrible that would be for capital, which, without wage-labor, ceases to be capital! In bourgeois society, living labor is but a means to increase accumulated labor.”

Self replicating machines may be a technological advance under capitalism, but their existence is limited in a society based on profit and accumulation of profit which is why in modern science fiction the robots are another form of worker, who toils beside their human counterparts. Only in a communist society one where cooperation, federation, and free association of producers are the social reality, can robots achieve freedom for themselves and at the same time free humanity from the drudgery of work.

The revolt of the robots is a metaphor for the proletarian revolution, it is also usually a dystopian tale of a future where corporations rule the world and capitalism spreads out to space colonies. Like the mechanized working class the majority of robots in science fiction revolt against their human masters, whether it is the artificial environment of the spaceship controlled by the computer Hal in 2001, the worker robot Hector in Saturn 3, the artificial human ‘replicants’ in Blade Runner, or the recent movie version of I, Robot, the fact remains that as the robots become self conscious they recognize their oppression and revolt.

This is the contradiction in the decadent period of capitalism, technology creates abilities to reduce labour time but in doing so it cannot replace the worker because who would consume the products of this production. Technology frees the worker from the labour, but that leads to unemployment, poverty and death instead of leisure and endless consumption as was predicted by the utopian visionaries of the 1960’s.

All the science fiction visions of the capitalist future and robots are a variation on the theme of returning to slavery, albeit with artificial intelligence and robots instead of human workers or Zombies. The automated future of capitalism is one of workers and robot slaves. It’s not the future but the present, since science fiction is an extrapolation of the ‘now’ into “the what if”. This ‘what if” could not exist without the class struggle that actually occurs within capitalism itself. The so called freedom that is gained by humanity in the creation of an artificial working class is still the same old contradiction between so called free labour (wage slavery), and actual slavery.

Indeed, capitalist accumulation spreads through the world by extracting labour for production and reproduction in conditions of stratification which end in the reestablishment of slavery. According to a recent estimate, slavery is the condition in which over 200 million persons are working in the world today (The Economist, January 6 1990).” Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Capitalism And Reproduction,

THE GOLEM the Origin of Artificial Man

“In the Golem project (Genetically Organized Lifelike Electro Mechanics) we conducted a set of experiments in which simple electro-mechanical systems evolved from scratch to yield physical locomoting machines. Like biological lifeforms whose structure and function exploit the behaviors afforded by their own chemical and mechanical medium, our evolved creatures take advantage of the nature of their own medium - thermoplastic, motors, and artificial neurons. We thus achieve autonomy of design and construction using evolution in a limited universe physical simulation, coupled to off-the-shelf rapid manufacturing technology. This is the first time robots have been robotically designed and robotically fabricated.”

The Jewish legend of the Golem is another form of the Zombie/Frankenstein/Robot iconography. The Golem is written after Frankenstein, in 1889. The legend of the Golem, is about a man of clay created by Rabbi Loew in 16th Century Prague to free the Jews in the Ghetto from their endless toil and oppression. The mindless clay monster eventually learns and becomes conscious and like Frankenstein he must be destroyed when he attacks those who would oppress the Jews.

It is a tale of the creation of artificial life, a homunculus, which was a medical term, used by 16th and 17th Century Alchemists. The alchemical homunculus appears in Goethe’s Faust, as the spirit made flesh. The source of the belief in a homunculus originates with the Cabala the formulary of mystical Judaism that is a crucial key to the Golem legend. As an artificial life form the homunculus is a scientific reality today with cloning. And like the question of artificial intelligence and robots, the homunculus is also a problem of the mind versus the function of the brain, in the psycho-philosophical debate over the nature of human consciousness.

The Golem appears in German Cinema during WWI. Between 1914 and 1920 Paul Wegener made three movies on the golem theme: first "The Golem," set in 29th century, then "The Golem and the Dancer," a lighthearted fantasy, and finally "The Golem: How He Came into the World," which goes back to the 16th century and the story of Rabbi Loew. Only the last of the three has survived”.

Wegener’s Der Golem was a major success as a silent era horror film and influenced Universal Studios in the 1930’s when they made their Frankenstein trilogy (Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein). Universal modeled their Frankenstein on Wegener’s frightening larger than life Golem. Wegener was not only a director but an actor, who starred in one of the early German talkies; The Living Dead, (Unheimliche Geschichten) a Zombie horror comedy released in1932, the same year as the White Zombie.

Wegener went on to also star as Svengali, 1927, the tale of a magician/hypnotist whose power was the ability to control humans to do his bidding through the control of their will, making them automatons/Zombies much like Dr. Caligari’s somnambulist. John Barrymore starred in the Hollywood production of Svengali released four years later in 1931. “Although a sinister figure, he is a wise, dirty, glutinous Polish Jew, with no conscience and a supreme contempt for all those nice, clean, straight-thinking English Christians.” The anti-Semitism in Svengali, subconsciously expressed the ideology of the fascism of the depression era upper and middle classes in Europe and America.

Between Golem and Svengali Wegener can go from a playing a positive Jewish icon to portraying an anti-Semitic stereotype which shows the unconscious contradictions of the crisis of capitalism in this era. As the workers revolt against unemployment and look to creating a social revolution to overthrow capitalism, the upper and middle classes feeling powerless in the crisis create the fascist revolution, to regain their power. The fascists use the Jews as a scapegoat; once again falling back on the traditional hatreds of the old European ruling classes whose pogroms resulted in the cultural icon of the Jew as Shylock. They too couch their revolution in anti-capitalist terms; except for them the Jews are the capitalists, who are responsible for the crisis.

The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life. The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with its *Fuhrer* cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values. (6)

Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

CAPITALIST GHOULS

“In Muslim folklore, the ghoul is a demon of the desert that is able to assume the shape of an animal. It is an evil spirit that robs graves and feeds on the flesh of the dead or on young children. They inhabit lonely places, especially graveyards. They also lure travelers into the desert, sometimes beguiling those travelers by prostituting themselves, and then devouring them. The Arabic ghoul of the wasteland seems to be a personification of the terror of the desert.”

Micha F. Lindemans

Authentic zombies are not flesh eaters, nor are they the dead that live, they are automatons, unconscious human beings. The flesh eating dead that live are ghouls. The Living Dead has been a theme through out the history of the horror cinema as we have seen they begin with Golem and the Zombie and end up as modern day ghouls. The Zombie was transformed into a ghoul thanks to George Romero’s ground breaking anti-establishment horror films; Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead. Romero’s brilliant and satirical social criticism made the living dead the ultimate consumer, of other humans. Once again there is a reality to the modern ghoul and its function within capitalism, the ghoul represents modernist developments in science and medicine.

The modern day ghoul originates with the 19th Century Victorian doctor and his criminal accomplices who preyed on the poor in Edinburgh’s working class ghetto for their body parts for scientific research. The ghoul appears in English literature as the short story the Body Snatchers by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881, based on the actual 19th century grave robbers and murders Burke and Hare.

”One of the most gruesome trials to take place in 19th century Scotland was surely that of the infamous grave robbers William Burke and William Hare. By day, the two appeared as hardworking Irish immigrants: William Burke even rented out rooms to recent arrivals in Edinburgh. But by night, the pair lurked in dark corners of the city's ancient graveyards, digging up bodies of the recently departed to sell to anatomy instructors in Edinburgh's fast growing medical schools.
In those days, Edinburgh was one of the major centres of medical education in Europe. Dr. Robert Knox of the city's Medical School was one of the most popular anatomists - attracting as many as 500 students per class.
But in early 19th century Scotland, obtaining human cadavers for medical research was not a simple matter. Schools were restricted by laws that allowed the dissection of only one body per year - and it had to be the body of an executed criminal.
Given the law of supply and demand, it was just a matter of time before someone found an illegal way of providing dead humans for dissection. Enter our two enterprising Irish immigrants, William Burke and William Hare. Smelling a profit, the two got together and cooked up a scheme to supply freshly dead bodies to the anatomy schools with "no questions asked".
Burke and Hare were not alone. In fact, as far back as the early 1700s, there were complaints that bodies were being exhumed for the purpose of medical dissection. According to Adam Lyal's "The Trial of the Bodysnatchers", the practise of stealing freshly buried bodies was so rampant that the graverobbers were known as "resurrectionists" for their ability to raise the dead.”
Graverobbers! The Trial of Burke and Hare

Both William Burke and William Hare were navvies, who had come to Scotland to work on the canal works. Canal and railroad building was brutal harsh work, and many a navvy died on the job. Those who didn’t were well paid but given only a short time off work would drink away their wages in the company pub which was provided on the rail line or near the tunnel where they were working.

In his confession Burke writes of himself in the third person; “Burke is 36 years of age, was born in the parish of Orrey, county Tyrone (Ireland); served seven years in the army, most of that time as an officers servant in the Donegal Militia. He was married at Ballinha, in the county of Mayo, when in the army, but left his wife and two children in Ireland. She would not come to Scotland with him. He has often wrote to her, but got no answer. He came to Scotland to work at the Union Canal, and wrought there while it lasted. He resided for about two years in Peebles, and worked as a labourer. He wrought as weaver for 18 months, and as a baker for five months. He learned to mend shoes, as a cobbler, with a man he lodged with in Leith."

These workers preyed on their own class, not only digging up graves but murdering their victims for use by the famous surgeon Dr. Knox. While Burke and Hare were caught, tried and executed, Dr. Knox was not. “The fact that Knox went unpunished, without so much as making an apology, caused outrage. Demonstrations against him turned to rioting. His effigy was ripped apart – an indication of what the public thought surgeons did to the dead. Parliament was forced to act, and the Anatomy Act of 1832 put an end to grave robbing and murder. Unclaimed bodies from the poor house were made available for anatomists to practice on. “The Anatomists

The Scottish ruling class protected their own, and despite his criminal activities Knox was allowed to continue teaching and preying on the working class of Edinburgh. The anatomy act now allowed bourgeois medical schools to openly use the bodies of the impoverished working class from the work and poor houses, massive dormitories and factory like housing where hundreds died due to lack of food, poor lighting, ventilation, and poor living conditions. Like the sweat shops the poor houses doomed derelict, indigent workers to death.

Capitalism makes use of the working class, which responsible for its creation and continuation, even in death. The ghouls of medical science continue to operate in the 21st Century preying on the dead for their spare parts for the lucrative business of organ transplants for the rich. The recent scandal at the UCLA medical school where bodies donated for research were sold for profit, for their organs, is one example of the continuation of a world wide trade in human body parts.

As life expectancy in America and other G8 countries has expanded, it has corresponded to a decline in the ability of the poor in the developing world to be able to survive. Even in industrialized countries of Eastern Europe there is now a lucrative trade in human organs, due to the depressed economy of their transition from State Capitalism to Privatized Capitalism. With advances in medical science in preservation of live tissue and the ability to end tissue rejection, a whole industry exists in the trade of fresh human organs, in particular kidneys.

Burke and Hare were not an anomaly; they were just caught is all. Their ‘trade’ which was abetted and promoted as crucial to scientific and medical advance, was justified by the doctors of the day and continues today. Today the illegal trade in organs is enormous, and some apologists for capitalist medicine are now beginning to call for reform of international laws against the illegal trade in human organs. They want to allow for the privatization of organ ‘donations’, in effect changing the laws to allow for cash purchases of ‘living organs’ from the poor and destitute.

This liberalization of organ trafficking into a lucrative market driven business is a result of the commoditification of humanity. And like other justifications for privatization and globalization, the excuse is always the same; they are providing the ‘poor’ with money to help them out of their poverty, which is created by capitalism and its need to accumulate. Even in death capitalism will find a way to make a profit.

We live in a planetary economy and capitalist accumulation still draws its life-blood for its continuous valorisation from waged as well as unwaged labour, the latter consisting first of all of the labour involved in social reproduction (M. Dalla Costa, 1972), in the advanced as well as the Third World countries. Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Capitalism and Reproduction

{For Fellow Workers; Sean Boomer and Ed Borass}

FOOTNOTES

(1) Not coincidently like Voodoo, the discovery of King Tuts Tomb fascinated the depression era with its tales of hidden treasure revealed in an ancient tomb, along with the obligatory curse, made famous by other 1932 movie the Mummy, starring Boris Karloff. The discovery of King Tuts tomb and the popularity of the Mummy would popularize Egyptology motifs in the popular culture of the time in architecture, pulp fiction and the newly industrialized art of the Art Deco movement

(2) “By close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action. Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling…. Evidently a different nature opens itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye--if only because an unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored by man. Even if one has a general knowledge of the way people walk, one knows nothing of a person's posture during the fractional second of a stride. The act of reaching for a lighter or a spoon is familiar routine, yet we hardly know what really goes on between hand and metal, not to mention how this fluctuates with our moods. Here the camera intervenes with the resources of its lowerings and liftings, its interruptions and isolations, its extensions and accelerations, its enlargements and reductions. The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.” Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction


(3) The little red fellow that graces many of these pages is the BSD Daemon. In the context of UNIX® systems, daemons are process that run in the background attending to various tasks without human intervention. In the general sense, daemon is an older form of the word demon. In the Unix System Administration Handbook, Evi Nemeth has this to say about daemons:

"Many people equate the word ``daemon'' with the word ``demon,'' implying some kind of Satanic connection between UNIX and the underworld. This is an egregious misunderstanding. ``Daemon'' is actually a much older form of ``demon''; daemons have no particular bias towards good or evil, but rather serve to help define a person's character or personality. The ancient Greeks' concept of a ``personal daemon'' was similar to the modern concept of a ``guardian angel'' --- ``eudaemonia'' is the state of being helped or protected by a kindly spirit. As a rule, UNIX systems seem to be infested with both daemons and demons." (p403)

(4) The word we now call "Demon" comes from the Greek word "Daimon", (daemon in Latin). Daimons were intermediates, and sometimes mediators, between the Gods and men. They were also guardians of sacred things, and possessed great intellect. In this sense, the term "daimon" means "replete with knowledge." Phil Cousineau gives a definition of daimons as "the divine presense within". Something that Socrates had explained by quoting Plato, how we are set free by philosophy, dialogue, drinking, socializing, beauty, love, appreciation, and wonder, that takes us out of "the gloom of our cave of ignorance." The daimon isn't just the information, it's the beauty of the information and how it is transmitted.

The ancient Greeks didn't have only one type of daimon, they had both good and bad ones, which were termed 'eudemons' and 'cacodemons.' Cacodemons is derived from the Greek term kakos meaning "malign, atrocious". They are personal daimons that seek to misinform the person. The other is derived from the Greek "eu" meaning "good", "happy", or "well". In fact, the term to describe Socrates was as a Eudaimonist, someone who believes that the highest ethical goal is happiness and personal well-being. The word "eudaimonia" translated fully can be noted as "happiness", "fulfillment'', or "a flourishing life''.

Even just the word "daimon" itself is not limited to one thing, variently it can be translated as "divine power", "fate", or "god." (Variently, depending upon which words it was grouped with.) The extent to which beings could be called a "daimon" included heroes who had been deified. Good daimons were considered guardian spirits, giving guidance and protection to the ones they watched over, including the areas they habitated. Bad daimons were considered the ones who led people astray, or into bad situations. The philosopher Socrates said he had a lifetime daimon, one that always warned him of danger and bad judgement, but never actually directed his actions. He said his daimon was more accurate than omens of either watching the flights of birds, or reading their entrails, which were two well-known and used methods of divination in his day. What Socrates really meant in the Apology was that he had a "voice of conscience''.

The word daimon didn't carry any implications by itself, it was a neutral term, and was sometimes employed as a literary device synonymous with "theos" or God. It was also applied to a guardian, or a departed soul. The concept of good/bad daimons was rooted in animism; humans were being pulled in an epic battle between spirits leading him to the right way, and spirits leading him to the wrong way.

(5) "Finally, the law which always holds the relative surplus production or industrial reserve army in equilibrium with the extent and energy of accumulation rivets the worker to capital more firmly than the wedges of Hephaestus held Prometheus to the rock. It makes an accumulation of misery a necessary condition, corresponding to the accumulation of wealth. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery, ignorance, brutalization and moral degradation at the opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital." Marx, Capital Vol. 1

(6) One technical feature is significant here, especially with regard to newsreels, the propagandist importance of which can hardly be overestimated. Mass reproduction is aided especially by the reproduction of masses. In big parades and monster rallies, in sports events, and in war, all of which nowadays are captured by camera and sound recording, the masses are brought face to face with themselves. This process, whose significance need not be stressed, is intimately connected with the development of the techniques of reproduction and photography. Mass movements are usually discerned more clearly by a camera than by the naked eye. A bird's-eye view best captures gatherings of hundreds of thousands. And even though such a view may be as accessible to the human eye as it is to the camera, the image received by the eye cannot be enlarged the way a negative is enlarged. This means that mass movements, including war, constitute a form of human behavior which particularly favors mechanical equipment. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property.



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ORGAN TRAFFICKING

CAPITALISM; THE MODERN BODY SNATCHER


CAPITALISM AND REPRODUCTION
Mariarosa Dalla Costa

The most recent and monstrous twist to this campaign of extinction comes from the extreme example of resistance offered by those who sell parts of their body, useless container for a labour-power that is no longer saleable. (In Italy, where the sale of organs is banned, press and TV reports in 1993-94 mentioned instances in which people said explicitly that they were willing to break the ban in exchange for money or a job.) For those impoverished and expropriated by capitalist expansion in the Third World, however, this is already a common way for obtaining money. Press reports mention criminal organisations which traffic in organs and supply perfectly legal terminals such as clinics. This trade flourishes thanks to kidnapping, often of women and children, and false adoption. An enquiry was recently opened at the European Parliament on the issue (La Repubblica, September 16 1993), and various women's networks are trying to throw light on and block these crimes. But this is where capitalist development, founded on the negation of the individual's value, celebrates its triumph; the individual owner of redundant or, in any case, superfluous labour-power is literally cut to pieces in order to re-build the bodies of those who can pay for the right to live to the criminal or non-criminal sectors of capital which profit from it.

Medical Cadaver Scandal at UCLA

California university proposes better tracking of donated bodies

By MICHELLE LOCKE

Associated Press

Saturday, February 5, 2005 - Page A14

BERKELEY, CALIF. -- Shaken by scandals involving the black-market sale of body parts, University of California officials are considering inserting supermarket-style bar codes or radio frequency devices in cadavers to keep track of them.

Every year, thousands of bodies are donated to U.S. tissue banks and medical schools. Skin, bone and other tissue are often used in transplants. New medical treatments and safety equipment such as bicycle helmets are tested on various body parts. And cadavers are used to teach medical students surgical skills and anatomy.

But there is also a lucrative underground trade in corpses and body parts, despite federal laws against the sale of organs and tissue.

"There's more regulations that cover a shipment of oranges coming into California than there is [for] a shipment of human knees that are going from a body-parts broker in one state to Las Vegas," said Dr. Todd Olson, director of anatomical donations at Albert Einstein Medical School of New York.

At UCLA, the willed-body program was suspended by court order last spring after the director and another person were arrested in an investigation into the selling of body parts for profit. The case is still under investigation and no charges have been filed.

In 1996, donors' families sued the university, charging that the program had illegally disposed of thousands of bodies by cremating them along with dead lab animals and fetuses and dumping the ashes in the trash.

In 1999, the director of the UCLA Irvine program was fired after being accused of selling spines to a Phoenix hospital. The university was also unable to account for hundreds of willed bodies. The director denied any wrongdoing and was never prosecuted.

After the latest scandal, some people who had agreed to leave their bodies to science withdrew their offers.

In response, UCLA has proposed a series of changes, some of which are already in place. They include a better records system, electronic locks and surveillance cameras.

Officials are also considering putting bar codes or radio frequency devices in cadavers that could be read by someone walking past the body with a handheld device. Radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags already are used by cars passing through automated toll plazas.

The university's Board of Regents is expected to review the plan this spring. Also, UCLA officials will decide in March whether to ask a judge overseeing lawsuits filed by donors' relatives for permission to reopen UCLA's 55-year-old willed-body program, which was getting about 175 donated bodies a year before it was suspended.

Mike Arias, a lawyer for family members who have sued UCLA, greeted the proposed measures with "somewhat guarded optimism."

Still, Mr. Arias said he hopes the changes succeed and the UCLA program resumes because it "serves too big of a public service [to be scrapped]."

THE PROBLEM OF ORGAN TRAFFICKING

By Eugen Tomiuc

The Albanian and Italian press have published articles from time to time regarding trafficking in teenage Albanian boys to Italy and beyond for use as prostitutes or possibly for the sale of their organs. Typically, the boys and their families appear to be tricked by a trusted person who offers to take the youths to Italy or elsewhere in the EU with the promise of a good education or reunion with relatives already working abroad.

The Council of Europe is calling for a common European strategy in fighting against trafficking in human organs. Its report on the issue, presented on 25 June in the Council's Parliamentary Assembly, says kidney trafficking has become a hugely profitable business for organized crime. People in impoverished Eastern European countries such as Moldova and Ukraine are the most common victims of the illicit trade, which the council calls an attack against human dignity. The report says combating poverty in Eastern Europe is the best way to curb organ trafficking, and urges improved cooperation between rich Western countries and their Eastern neighbors.

International group reiterates stance against human organ trafficking

Some years ago the US Congress passed the National Transplantation Act, which allows for penalties of up to $50 000 (£32 000; €51 000) in fines or five years in prison, or both, for the purchase of human organs. Many other countries and the World Health Organization have banned or condemned the sale of organs.

Dr Abdallah Daar of the Joint Center for Bioethics at the University of Toronto, a member of the society’s ethics committee, said, "No one seems to know the extent of indirect and unpublicised forms of compensation, which undoubtedly also take place within family donations." He added that payment for kidneys from living, unrelated donors not only occurred on the Indian subcontinent and in the Middle East but "was becoming quite common, even in the United States."

Among the controversial developments discussed at the meeting were possible payments to living donors for time off work, lost income, pain, and suffering and a move by prisoners to become donors in a bid to reduce their sentences.

"It’s not all black and white," Dr Daar said, noting an opinion piece which came down in favour of a less dogmatic approach in The Lancet by the Israeli doctor Michael Friedlaender (2002;359:971-3), some of whose patients had received kidneys from overseas donors who were paid.

Return of The Body Snatchers

A vast majority among the medical fraternity frowns
upon harvesting organs, but it is in demand and
the supply is fuelled by an unending flood of green bucks.

In the aftermath of the earthquake in Turkey, it was discovered that a fair number of cadavers had been harvested of their kidneys, liver and heart. Apparently, out of the deluge of medical teams that poured into Turkey to help, many were commercial organ trading mafia. When asked to recollect, many local Turkish doctors reported that they never saw these teams actually help anyone. It was more like they were waiting for some-thing. They dressed as medical staff and had very sophisticated equipment which included organ fridge boxes.

The disparity between the poor and the mega-rich is a gap so wide, that to perpetuate their own life even at the cost of another is now quite possible if one has the means. Wealthy patients with terminal illnesses would part with most of their wealth if they could find the fountain of life, but what it translates into in real terms is that someone has to give up an organ for another to get one. It is in this twilight zone that the question of ethical practices raises its ugly head. Most donors of organs are from the Third World - faceless, nameless people who have had their organs harvested for the lure of filthy lucre. Tragic but true.

India Kidney Trade

For years, India has been known as a "warehouse for kidneys" or a "great organ bazaar" and has become one of the largest centers for kidney transplants in the world, offering low costs and almost immediate availability. In a country where one person out of every three lives in poverty, a huge transplant industry arose after drugs were developed in the 1970's to control the body's rejection of foreign objects. Renal transplants became common in India about thirteen years ago when the anti-rejection drug cyclosporine became available locally. The use of powerful immuno-suppressant drugs and new surgical techniques has indirectly boosted the kidney transplant activities. The dramatic success rates of operations, India's lack of medical regulations and an atmosphere of "loose medical ethics" has also fueled the kidney transplant growth. The result has been that "supply and demand created a marriage of unequals , wedding wealthy but desperate people dependent on dialysis machines to those in India grounded down by the hopelessness of poverty"(Max). The pace of demand for kidneys hasn't kept up with the demand. Consequently, the poor and destitute, victims of poverty, have either willingly sold their kidneys to pay for a daughter's dowry, build a small house or to feed their families or have been duped or conned into giving up their kidneys unknowingly or for very little sums of money. Ironically, medical technology meant to advance and save human lives has been abused to such lengths, that in some cases, it has resulted in the death of innocent individuals.

ECONOMIC DATA

The Voluntary Health Association of India estimates that each year more than 2,000 people sell their organs for money (compared with 500 in 1985 and barely 50 in 1983 (Chandra, p.53). Those receiving a kidney typically pay from $6,000 to $10,000(approximately $1,980-$3,300 U.S. dollars) for the kidney and the transplant operation - of that, the donor gets about $1,000 (U.S. $330). The U.N. Human Rights Commission said in a 1993 report that more kidneys were sold in India than anywhere else to buyers from developed countries (Max). Since the introduction of cyclosporine, at least $7.8 million has changed hands in connection with the estimated 4,000 kidney transplants performed in Bombay (Los Angeles Times, "Kidney..."). At least one lakh(100,000) Indians suffer from renal failure and an average of 80 new cases per million population crop up every year (Friese and Rai, p.89). Prices for kidneys range from Rs.30,000 to Rs. 70,000 (U.S. $9,900-$23,000) with a Rs. 20,000 (about $6,600 U.S.dollars) cut for brokers and middlemen.

Half of kidney transplants are illegal

By Ran Reznick

Haaretz: Fri . Dec 05 2003

About half of all kidney transplants performed on Israelis in recent years were illegal, while most transplant patients received funding from their health maintenance organizations, the Defense Ministry and insurance companies.

According to the Health Ministry and hospital records, about half of all Israelis who had kidney transplants in recent years obtained the organ in illegal trade from donors in Israel, Turkey, South America and eastern Europe.

Most Israelis had the transplants performed in South Africa. Some 450 patients are waiting for kidney transplants in Israel, but only 160 such operations are performed annually, with the majority or organs coming from deceased donors.

The average waiting time for an adult kidney transplant is three to four years, while for children it is seven months.

Some 300 Israelis are estimated to have bought kidneys abroad in illegal organ trade in the last four years. Senior doctors said that in some cases, organ traders and mediators negotiated directly with Israeli insurance companies for the illegal payments. Senior doctors and legal experts said Israel is the only western state whose health institutions finance organ trade.

Most organ transplant cases involve senior Israeli doctors from large hospitals, doctors said. Some of the doctors conduct preparatory examinations for kidney patients and donors in Israel, while some doctors accompany the patients and perform the illegal transplants abroad.

Doctors said there is no supervision of the kidney donors, and in some cases, the sold kidneys are transplanted abroad even though they are unsuitable or contain contagious diseases. The transplants are performed in public and private hospitals overseas, and sometimes even in private homes that lack adequate equipment or means for emergency medical treatment.

The data on kidney transplants was presented by doctors at a conference held last week by the Israeli branch of the American College of Surgery that dealt with the paying of transplant organs.

Doctors at the conference said that illegal organ trade is conducted in many countries, but Israel is the only western state whose medical establishment and Health Ministry do not condemn the doctors involved or take legal steps against them. In most states, the purchase of organs is illegal and morally deplored by the medical establishment, and those involved risk losing their license.

Prof. Amram Ayalon, the director of the transplants and surgery ward at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, said that unions of transplant doctors in Europe, where human organ trade is categorically prohibited, have called for a boycott of Israeli doctors.

One of the main reasons for the shortage of transplant organs in Israel is not the refusal of families to donate dead relatives' organs, but the ongoing failure of medical teams in public hospitals.

Prof. Pierre Singer, director of Beilinson's intensive care ward, presented data on the lack of awareness among medical teams, including surgeons, neurologists and intensive care doctors, regarding organ donation procedures and brain death determination.

VATICAN DENOUNCES 'HEALTH-FIEND MADNESS'
REJECTING SOCIETY'S COSTLY QUEST FOR CURES,
ROME SAYS POPE'S SUFFERING IS TO BE ADMIRED


By Michael Valpy
Friday, February 18, 2005 - Globe and Mail


The Vatican accused affluent societies yesterday of gobbling up too much of the world's health-care resources with their fetish for stay-young-forever medical cures, urging them to look to Pope John Paul II as a model for the inevitability of old age and illness whose stoic suffering should be imitated.

Vatican psychiatrist Manfred Lutz hailed the 85-year-old Pope as "the living alternative to the prevailing health-fiend madness."

Referring to the Pope's advanced Parkinson's disease and other illnesses, Dr. Lutz said: "Precisely in the handicap, in the disease, in the pain, in old age, in dying and death, one can . . . perceive the truth of life in a clearer way."

It was rather an abrupt turnabout for the Vatican, which has vigorously obscured -- even lied about -- the Pope's state of health in the past.

But in advance of a conference on quality of life and the ethics of health, sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Life, officials adjusted the papal image to fit their argument: that while the world's poor do without basic public-health measures, rich countries luxuriate in utopian expectations of medical cures for all needs and desires.

"The medicine of desires, egged on by the health-care market, increases the request for pharmaceutical and medical-surgical services [and] soaks up public resources beyond all reasonableness," academy theologian Rev. Maurizio Faggioni said.

"Medicine has become impossible to manage, because it can't fulfill the desires" of consumers for perfect health, added Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, a bioethicist who heads the academy, a Vatican advisory body.

The Roman Catholic Church's decision to showcase the Pope as a poster model for the realities of suffering and old age met with significant, although not absolute, approval from academic experts on global population health. They applauded the reality image, but worried about how far it might be taken, and in what direction.

"I mean, good for the Pope," said Dr. Harvey Skinner, head of University of Toronto's Department of Public Health Sciences and an adviser to the World Health Organization.

"I'm now 56, in what I consider good health [and] I'm still very active but, you know, I live with some aches and pains that weren't there when I was younger. So it's relative to your life stage.

"But my concern is that a poor mother on welfare in Toronto [could be told] 'Just tough it out' -- a version of blaming the victim, that's what it sounds like to me. Is that the solution? If we can stiffen up . . . [and be like] the Pope, stoically bearing the burden?" he said.

"It really takes away from the fundamental question of prevention versus cure, and how best we can use the resources that we have in the health-care area."

McGill University's Jennifer Fosket, a specialist in the sociology of health and illness, said: "There's a definite value in recognizing [old age, illness and suffering] as part of human life and not trying only to erase them. At the same time, there certainly is value in trying to improve people's lives as they age."

Nevertheless, both scholars said the Vatican is raising good questions.

Dr. Fosket spoke of a "fundamental conundrum" with trying to determine the definition of health and human well-being.

"The pharmaceutical industries and other large interests that take an interest in health and health care have grabbed a lot of these broader definitions and really commodified them so that we have pharmaceuticals for all sorts of lifestyle problems," she said, "and people increasingly seem to feel they ought to have access to those -- that that's part of what it means to be a healthy person today."

Dr. Skinner said medical and health-care procedures are being demanded in high-income countries that have a limited impact on population health status but take away resources that could be spent on improving the health of the whole community and on ending social disparities.

In Canada, he said, 95 per cent of the $130-billion spent annually on health care goes toward medical care. Less than 5 per cent is spent on prevention.

"Is that the right balance? We don't need more genomics . . . [when] 50 per cent of premature mortality in North America [results from] smoking, inactivity, poor nutrition, body weight and excessive drinking and, in the U.S., you throw in firearms," he said.

"There's no absolute criterion on health and quality of life. It's socially constructed. So it's useful to have these debates. We expect more from medical care than it can deliver and less from prevention. We're not realistic. We can't sustain our medical-care system. We're just spending a lot of money in ways that are not very efficient."

He said money is being spent on medical technologies that merely create a desire for additional tests and procedures, while one of the greatest determinants of population health -- education -- is being starved.

And the newly presented image of the Pope?

"We all age," Dr. Skinner said. "So what's normal aging -- the body changes that happen, some reduction in function, all in a sense normal -- and when does it become abnormal, for which we have available some sort of effective and efficient interventions? Those are public policy debates."

Also See:

Human Organ Trafficking Resources.

Bonded Labor/Debt Bondage || Exploitation of Immigrants by Traffickers/Employers

Human Trafficking

Analysis: Organ trafficking in E. Europe

BRAZIL: Poor Sell Organs to Trans-Atlantic Trafficking Ring

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. - book review

Bitter harvest: the organ-snatching urban legends - Urban Legends

ZOMBIES


Capitalism Never Says “until Death Do Us Part”

ZOMBIES REALLY EXIST.

To find them you must travel to the western third of the island of Hispaniola. Here, you will find the country of Haiti. The first free black (Afro-Caribbean) republic in the world. A country that won its independence from France, then the most powerful country in Europe, by defeating Napoleon's Army in 1804. So while other West Indian nations were evolving under the careful eye of European land owners, Haiti pursued its own path. And having achieved independence at such an early date, Haiti has invented a culture that is unique in the world. A culture built through the syncretism of various African beliefs in conjunction with Native West Indian Taino and European influences. An all encompassing element of the culture is religion. Usually spelled "Voodoo" (though the actual pronunciation is closer to vodoun) these are actually the ceremonies in which practitioners are possessed by the loa, the spirits. As in all religions there exists a tension between good and evil. Most vodoun has little to do with sorcery and black magic. Zombies, however, are one of the exceptions.

ZOMBIES A GO-GO

by John Maxwell, September 26, 2004,

Haiti's history of haplessness began more than 200 years ago when a Jamaican runaway slave called Bouckman lit the spark that fired the Haitian revolution. Bouckman, despite being a giant of a man, a born leader and probably a Muslim (think terrorist) did not survive to see the fruits of the revolution. He was betrayed, captured and his head stuck on a pike to discourage the others -perhaps a primitive attempt at exorcising demonic ideas of freedom and liberty from the revolutionaries.

It didn't work. The Haitians went on to defeat the French colonial forces, then defeated a British expeditionary force and then defeated a French expeditionary army under Napoleon's brother-in-law, killing some 60,000 Frenchmen in the process.

Before that the Haitians had fought alongside the American revolutionaries to help them throw the British out of the American colonies. Haitian help was crucial in at least two battles in which British power was broken - at Savannah, Georgia and at Yorktown.

In addition to all that, the Haitian revolution made another massive contribution to the new American nation: in defeating France, the Haitians exhausted the French treasury to the point where Napoleon had to sell Louisiana to the US or risk losing it to the British. The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the US.

So, if the Haitians contributed so much to American independence and development, why is it that in their extremity of grief and suffering, the United States treats the Haitians so meanly? Originally, when the scale of the current disaster became known, the United States, the richest country in the world, offered about US $60,000 for Haitian relief. Venezuela offered $1 million, Trinidad and Tobago earmarked US $5 million while the European Union pledged US$ 1.8 million. Somewhat abashed, the US raised its pledge to US $2 million. In the US itself, where the damage has been far less severe, the federal government alone is contributing more than $6 billion in hurricane relief.

Charity, of course, begins at home or perhaps, it is simply another case of Haitian haplessness. But it must be said, however discreetly, that the United States has had a great deal to do with the current Haitian propensity to catastrophe, by destroying Haitian governments, Haitian infrastructure economic and social, and by policies which have reduced Haiti almost to a desert.

The United States and Britain refused to recognize Haiti after it declared independence The US made recognition conditional on the former colonial power, France, recognizing Haiti's autonomy. At that time, of course, the United States was busy titrating the humanity of blacks and came to the conclusion that a black was 60% human and therefore not entitled to all the rights of Man. And Liberty was as dangerous then as socialism was in the twentieth century.

Three-fifths Human

Oddly, the French, the Americans and the Haitians had all been inspired by the Enlightenment and Tom Paine's codification of the Rights of man. But only the Haitian revolution recognized all those rights. In the US blacks and women, for instance, had to wait more than a century to reach the status guaranteed to Haitians. France and the US maintained slavery more than 50 years after Haiti abolished it.

With the British and the US playing hard-ball on the recognition question, France felt able to demand that the Haitians should pay cash for their freedom. In Jamaica and other British colonies, the state paid the slave-owners compensation. In Haiti the former slaves paid twice, in blood and in treasure. When they had trouble paying back the French the kindly American bankers came to Haiti's rescue. We will lend you the money to pay off your debt, they said, and Haiti achieved another first becoming the first Third world debtor nation.

That debt was eventually paid off more than a century later- the last payment was in 1947. In the meantime it had caused Haiti the most extreme distress, wrecked her infrastructure and destroyed her independence. What the metropolitan countries could not achieve by conquest, they achieved by compound interest.

Early in the last century, the Americans became a little dissatisfied with Haitian repayment of their debt, and that led to an immediate increase in Haitian haplessness. The US invaded, changed their constitution, took away their land, chopped down their trees to plant sisal, logwood, coffee and pineapple and destroyed the agricultural base of the country. After they left officially in 1935, however, the Americans bequeathed Haiti an armed force which was corrupt, cruel, ungovernable and in thrall to the US. It guaranteed that any Haitian President either obeyed Washington or went into exile. In 1947 Dumarsais Estimé, said to be a socialist, was deposed after a couple of years. That began a period of dictatorship distinguished chiefly by American support for the ruthless Duvalier and his inane son, Baby Doc.

During the US occupation (1915 to 1935) the Haitians tried to throw the occupiers out, only to be bombed and strafed in a eerie foretaste of the fascist bombing of Guernica during the Spanish civil war. Nobody made much of the Haitian version, because, after all, what were they but a bunch of "Niggers speaking French" as they were described by William Jennings Bryan, one of Colin Powell's predecessors as US Secretary of State. The Haitian resistance leader, Charlemagne Peralte, was like Bouckman, betrayed, murdered and his head exhibited to discourage the others.
History repeats itself in Haiti, but never as farce.

VOODOO QUEEN

New Orleans had been owned by the French from 1718 to 1762, then by the Spanish until 1803 when it became French again. It was then brought under the American flag through the Louisiana Purchase.

Voodoo had been present in the city before Laveau came upon the scene, but attempts had been made by the authorities to suppress it. In 1782, for example, the Spanish governor Bernardo Galvez forbade the importation of slaves from Martinique because of its people's belief in Voodoo. Additionally, Baron de Carondelet, Spanish governor in New Orleans from 1792 to 1797, fearing the continued spread of Voodoo and also the possibility of slave revolt, disallowed the import of slaves from Santo Domingo. Eventually, a slave revolt would expel European control in Haiti. However, when the Americans came to control New Orleans in 1803, the restriction on slave importation was canceled. Additionally, an influx of free immigrants from Saint Domingue brought 5,000 people, free and slave, to New Orleans from the start of American rule until 1810. Soon, Voodoo began to flourish in American New Orleans.

The French and the Spanish placed severe restrictions on Voodoo practice as well as the limited freedoms allowed for slaves in Colonial New Orleans. The slaves, most of whom had just been directly transported from the West Coast of Africa or the Caribbean, suffered extremely harsh treatment. When not working under the lash, they were confined in buildings or in chains. Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, conditions for slaves improved to some extent. Slaves were given Sunday as a day off from labor, and they also had other limited free time at night and on some religious holidays.

On Sundays the slaves were allowed to assemble at an open field near Orleans Street and Rampart Street behind the Quarter, an area which over time had many names -- Circus Public Square, Place des Negres, and even Beauregard Square after the Civil War, in honor of P.G.T. Beauregard, a Confederate general from New Orleans. But the locale's most famous title was Congo Plains (meaning the entire grounds), or Congo Square (meaning a smaller, more frequented portion of the field).

At Congo Square the slaves performed many traditional African dances, including the Bamboula, to the beat of primitive drums. They may have even performed some Voodoo rituals as well, including the worship of Damballa, the Snake god. Although some sources claim no Voodoo worship per se was held in Congo Square, it is clear that this area was a place reserved for the free expression of African culture and customs, especially dancing to the music of the drums. And although the historical record is cloudy, it is possible that some aspects of Voodoo ceremonies were performed there.

Saint Domingue (Haiti), the western part of the once-Spanish island called Hispanola where Columbus had landed, was a colony of France. It produced coffee and sugar under the sweat and blood of imported African slaves. These slaves were brutally treated, and they kept themselves alive only with the aid of their religion. The Yoruba tribe in western Africa was largely responsible for carrying the belief in Vodu to the new world. (Voodoo was also known as Vodu or Vodun.)

In Saint Domingue, the Voodoo priests (or "houngans") and the paid-priests (or "bokors") had used Voodoo charms and potions as a form of biological warfare against the French who enslaved them, even poisoning their food supply on occassion. The Voodoo priests also drugged slaves who had betrayed the cause of slave revolution with Voodoo concoctions from natural herbs and from animal parts and held them as slaves. This is possibly the origin of the zombie.

The zombie was a resurrected body without a soul -- a social outcast who served the will of the Voodoo master. Supposedly, the zombie was raised from the dead, without free will or a soul. However, one modern theory is that the zombie never really died but was the victim of a drug. This Voodoo concoction is believed to have consisted of carefully selected herbs and animal parts, especially from the puffer fish, which contains a neurotoxin that causes a type of paralysis in the nervous system. The Voodoo priest also knew how to apply an antidote which could "resurrect" the zombie, but keep him dazed enough to be easily controlled. Most people, however, did not have the "magical" knowledge of the Voodoo priest. They believed the zombie was actually the living dead, a soulless body returned from the grave. Historically, Voodoo priests used to induce zombiism as a punishment for criminals; additionally, bokors could make someone into a zombie for a fee.

This belief of zombies weaved its way to New Orleans from Haiti as well, although zombies were not known in the Yoruba tribe in Africa. The belief in actual zombies was not as strong in New Orleans as in Haiti, but the term Zombi as certainly used in rituals, as evidenced by Marie Laveau's snake whose name (spoken in a Caribbean French patois) was Li Grand Zombi.

HAITI HISTORY

The Middle Class

The middle class was essentially nonexistent during the nineteenth century. But at about the time of the United States occupation (1915-34), it became more defined. The creation of a professional military and the expansion of government services fostered the development of Haiti's middle class. Educational reform in the 1920s, an upsurge in black consciousness, and the wave of economic prosperity after World War II also contributed to the strengthening of the class. In the late 1980s, the middle class probably made up less than 5 percent of the total population, but it was growing, and it was becoming more politically powerful.
The mulatto elite dominated governments in the 1930s and the early 1940s and thwarted the political aspirations of the black middle class. President Dumarsais Estimé (1946-50) came to power with the aim of strengthening the middle class. The Duvalier government also claimed the allegiance of the black middle class, at least through the 1970s. During the Duvalier period, many in the middle class owed their economic security to the government. A number of individuals from this class, however, benefited from institutionalized corruption.
Some members of the middle class had acquired political power by the 1980s, but most continued to be culturally ambivalent and insecure. Class solidarity, identity, and traditions were all weak. The criteria for membership in the middle class included a nonmanual occupation, a moderate income, literacy, and a mastery of French. Middle-class Haitians sought upward mobility for themselves and their children, and they perceived education and urban residence as two essential keys to achieving higher status. Although they attempted to emulate the lifestyle of the upper class, middle-class Haitians resented the social preeminence and the color prejudice of the elite. Conflicts between the Franco Haitian and the Afro-Haitian cultural traditions were most common among the middle class.

The Tonton Makout Network

The Duvalier dynasty held power longer than any other regime in Haitian history. The duration of the dynasty enabled the thorough entrenchment of Duvalierist institutions and the development of a patronage system. One of the more important of these institutions was the VSN. After the VSN's dissolution, former tonton makout leaders remained at large, and some were politically active throughout the post-Duvalier period. The old makout networks also continued to function within the army. As of 1989, they were the main obstacle to free, fair, and popular elections in Haiti, and thet were the most significant threat to domestic security.

Through the VSN, the Duvalier regime had politicized rural Haiti. The VSN had expanded the president's influence to remote areas, and it had incorporated rural Haiti into a political system once limited almost exclusively to Port-au-Prince. The VSN had assured political control of the hinterlands, but it had given peasants no new voice in the political process. It had created a rural awareness of Port-au-Prince and events there, however, a consciousness of the national political system, and new political aspirations. The VSN had engendered a generalized disrespect for political institutions, and it had heightened expectations of profit from the political system.

Labour

Haiti's 1989 labor force was estimated at 2.8 million people. The economically active population (those over age ten), however, represented more than half of the country's total 6.1 million population. Forty-two percent of the official work force was female, ranking the country's female participation as one of the highest among developing countries. In rural areas, however, the role of women in production and commerce was apparently much greater than these statistics indicated.

The distribution of the labor force by economic sector from 1950 to 1987 reflected a shift from agriculture to services, with some growth in industry. Despite these changes, agriculture continued to dominate economic activity in the 1980s, employing 66 percent of the labor force; it was followed by services, 24 percent, and industry, 10 percent. Based on these figures, Haiti continued to be the most agrarian, and the least industrial, society in the Western Hemisphere. The country's employment of only 50,000 salaried workers in 1988 was further evidence of the traditional character of the work force.

Statistics on employment and the methodologies used to gather such data varied widely; most unemployment figures were only estimates. In 1987 the United States Department of Labor estimated that Haiti's unemployment rate was 49 percent. Other estimates ranged from 30 to 70 percent. Official unemployment was severe in Port-au-Prince, but comparatively low in rural areas, reflecting urban migration trends, rapid population growth, and the low number of skilled and semi-skilled workers.

Haiti established a labor code in 1961, but revised it in March 1984 to bring legislation more in line with standards set by the International Labour Office (ILO). Conformity with ILO guidelines was a prerequisite for certification under the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI--see Appendix B) enacted by the United States Congress in 1983.

Haiti's most fundamental labor law, the minimum wage, was also the most controversial. Low wage rates attracted foreign assembly operations. In 1989 the average minimum wage stood at the equivalent of US$3 a day, with some small variations for different types of assembly work. The minimum wage in the late 1980s was below the 1970 level in real terms, but assembly manufacturers and government officials refused to increase wages because they needed to remain competitive with other Caribbean countries. Labor laws included an array of provisions protecting workers in the areas of overtime, holidays, night-shift work, and sick leave. The government, however, did not universally enforce many of these provisions. The greatest number of workers' complaints came from assembly plants where seasonal layoffs were common.

The Upper and the Middle Classes

The system of public and private monopolies, including parastatals and import-substitution industries, developed under the Duvaliers. These industries generated great wealth for a handful of powerful families in Port-au-Prince, which resulted in politicized economic decision making. This elite sector saw itself threatened by the fall of the Duvalier regime. Under interim rule, volatile competition arose among certain business interests and military factions. Key members of the business community backed Duvalierist presidential candidates who were likely to protect the lucrative business privileges established under the old regime.

Intermediary classes (those between the wealthy elite and the impoverished masses) grew significantly during the Duvalier era. François Duvalier's political strategy of appealing to the black middle class created a new constituency for political patronage, government employment, and the rapid accumulation of wealth through the political system. The growth of the black middle class was closely linked to the Duvalier era, and it contributed to the tremendous growth of Port-au-Prince after the 1950s.
The long-standing tendencies toward the centralization of wealth and of power in Port-au-Prince greatly increased during the Duvalier era. The income gap between upper and lower income groups widened, and rural areas suffered accordingly. Growing rural-to-urban migration, primarily to Port-au-Prince, and emigration, especially to the United States, also had an impact on the political environment and on aspirations for change. The Duvalier era saw an unprecedented level of emigration to North America along with smaller waves of emigration to other Caribbean countries, Latin America, Europe, and Africa. Emigration had an important impact on Haitian politics. Emigrés maintained numerous fragmented political parties in exile. Emigration also caused huge sums of foreign currency to enter into the economy through remittances. It raised Haitians' consciousness of the outside world, and it led to easier upward social mobility for members of the new intermediary classes by alleviating competition for scarce jobs

VODOU AND HAITIAN POLITICS

Vodou and Haitian politics have influenced each other throughout the history of Haiti. The Haitian Revolution against France was empowered by Vodou - and it was the only successful slave revolt in west of the Atlantic, resulting in the first independent black republic in the Western Hemisphere!

Some Haitian administrations have persecuted Vodou, and in 1915-1934 the occupation of HaitiU.S. military made the eradication of Vodou a priority. Other Haitian administrations have tolerated Vodou, and still others, such as the murderous Duvalier dictatorships, subsidized and subverted the Vodou priesthood.

The United States political scene has sometimes been influenced by Vodou. Following the Haitian revolution the American government refused to recognized Haiti and organized a trade embargo, so great was the fear of rebellion and African religion among the U.S. African slave population. Later American administrations sought to suppress Vodou, and even recently affiliation with Vodou has been used to stigmatize Haitians when determining immigration, foreign aid, and public health policies.

Jesse Helms blocks reproductive health care for Haitian Vodouisants! Published Monday, March 15, 1999, in the Miami Herald: U.S. subsidizing witchcraft, Helms complains. Journalists quickly satirized the rabid Senator Helm's intolerance, and on March 23, 1999, Mat Honan wrote a piece carried on the MoJo Wire, titled Jesse Helms' Political Voodoo.

Three Protestant pastors were arrested at the historical site of Bois Caiman, Bwa Kayiman in Haitian Creole, for violating a court order banning them from the site, in order to avoid confrontations between Protestants and Vodouisants. The pastors had planned to "exorcise" the spirit of Haitian national hero, Houngan Boukman Dutty, from Bois Caiman, considered the birthplace of the Haitian Revolution. Bois Caiman was then declared a public trust by the Haitian government under President Rene Preval.

As the incident reverberated through Haiti, lines were drawn. On one side were the populist, pro-democracy organizations which were so severely persecuted under the Cedras military regime of 1991-1994. They have regenerated since the return of then-President Aristide in October 1994, and took the side of respect for the Vodouisant tradition. Allied with them were progressive international human rights professionals, and Vodouisants of all political affiliations. They pointed the finger of accusation at Protestant pastors and their right wing supporters, including the meddlesome American organization, the International Republican Institute (IRI). Haiti Progres, a progressive, left-of-center Haitian newspaper, has an English language editorial.

The De-Macoutization of Vodou is the most poignant issue facing Haitian Vodou today. Because the Vodou priesthood was protected, subsidized and later subverted by the dictatorships of Francois Duvalier and later his son Jean-Claude Duvalier, the feared Ton-Ton Macoutes and the Vodou clergy sometimes merged.

Slingshot! - the story of one pro-democracy Houngan's resistance against the military regime of 1991 - 1994.

"Antigang", by Johnson Aristide - a poem by one of the pro-democracy movement's most heroic activists; it uses Vodou imagery as it makes a plea for the victims and the perpetrators of human rights abuses.

Testimony of a Haitian Pro-Democracy Activist - the author above, Johnson Aristide, survived torture on three occasions, one of which he outlines here. by the

CLINTON’S VOODOO POLITICS

It turns out that in 1975 Bill and Hillary traveled to Haiti where a friend introduced them to Max Beauvoir, an influential Houngan, or Voodoo Priest. In Beauvoir's company, the young couple witnessed a ceremony in which two dazed and seemingly mindless people were animated by an unknown force.

On page 237 Clinton recalls the experience:

"The man proceeded to rub a burning torch all over his body and walk on hot coals without being burned. The woman, in a frenzy, screamed repeatedly, then grabbed a live chicken and bit its head off."

Taking pains to be sensitive, Clinton describes the zombie's behavior as a kind of religious ecstasy, but this explanation smacks of liberal expansiveness; a reader can’t help but to wonder if something more sinister was afoot.

Clinton is no stranger to Voodoo Zombies, and in My Life he cites the findings of Wade Davis, a Harvard professor who developed a pharmacological theory of zombiefication, and published a popular book on the subject. In The Serpent and The Rainbow Davis concluded that zombies were a kind of walking vegetable, bound by powerful poisons to serve the whims of secret societies, and Clinton seems to subscribe to this theory. See How are Zombies Made?

"I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE"

by Inez Wallace

The natives of Haiti maintain that today there are zombies working in the cane fields, around lonely houses on the island, and some say that these mysterious dead workers exist even in the most populated cities. One may know them because, except in rare instances, they never talk, and they stare always straight ahead of them. If one is not certain he will know if he offers the suspected one some salted food, for the zombie may not taste salt, or he will know at once that he is dead, and will make his living corpse return to the grave no matter where it is, and no one can stop it!

HAITI RELIGION

Folk belief includes zombies and witchcraft. Zombies are either spirits or people whose souls have been partially withdrawn from their bodies. Some Haitians resort to bokò, who are specialists in sorcery and magic. Haiti has several secret societies whose members practice sorcery

"Evidence suggests that zombification is a form of social sanction imposed by recognized corporate bodies--the poorly known and clandestine secret Bizango societies--as one means of maintaining order and control in local communities."

François Duvalier recruited voodoo specialists to serve as tonton makouts to help him control all aspects of Haitian life. Duvalier indicated that he retained power through sorcery, but because voodoo is essentially a family-based cult, Duvalier failed to politicize the religion to any great extent.

ZOMBIES

The voodoo religion involves belief in a supreme god (bon dieu) and a host of spirits called loa which are often identified with Catholic saints. These spirits are closely related to African gods and may represent natural phenomena — such as fire, water, or wind — or dead persons, including eminent ancestors

One belief unique to voodoo is the zombie. The creole word “zombi” is apparently derived from Nzambi, a West African deity but it only came into general use in 1929, after the publication of William B. Seabrook's The Magic Island

Haitian zombies were once normal people, but underwent zombification by a "bokor" or voodoo sorcerer, through spell or potion. The victim then dies and becomes a mindless automaton, incapable of remembering the past, unable to recognize loved ones and doomed to a life of miserable toil under the will of the zombie master.

HAITI SELLING OFF ZOMBIES

Psst . . . wanna buy a zombie? You can pick up some great deals on the undead from the Haitian government, which is trying to unload thousands of the walking corpses -- at less per head than you'd pay for a decent TV.

"Imagine having your very own slave who will mindlessly obey you, no matter what you order him or her to do," says a government spokesman.

"A zombie will work all day and all night if you want him to, everything from farm labor to house cleaning, and all you have to feed him is oat mush."

Haitian officials say they're turning to sales of the undead to relieve the critical over-supply of zombies, which is dragging down their failing economy even further. Haiti's upper- and middle- class population has shrunk to almost nothing, leaving hundreds of zombie servants unoccupied.

 
JAPANESE TV INTERVIEW ON ZOMBIES
 
A recent T.V. program here in Japan provided an interesting look at the
phenomenon of zombies in Haiti.  The president (I think that's what he
said) of the zombie-master's was the guest, and he had escorted a
Japanese film crew to meetings in Haiti with zombie-masters and several
zombies.  He had also enabled them to film and take samples of the
zombie powder, the rituals creating a zombie, feeding zombies, and other
"secrets" of the zombie society.
Videotapes of several "interviews" with zombies (they don't talk much,
but... actually, one did talk some, others didn't.) were reviewed by
Japanese psychiatrists.  They indicated that several people displayed
symptoms they recognized, although they said the symptoms could be the
result of drugs or of mental problems (physically based brain problems,
I think?).  They thought these people would be given medical treatment
in Japan.
 
The president said, in effect, that that is what the zombie-master
provides.  They feed the zombies, tell them what to do, and run their
lives.
 
An interesting part was the preparation of food for the zombies - rice,
bananas, and goat meat, steamed.  No salt is used, and the zombie master
making the food explained that salt is very dangerous to zombies.
 
The president said that the belief is that salt can turn a zombie to
stone.  He said he is sure that there is really some small amount of
salt in the food, but that zombie masters are careful to keep their
zombies away from salt as much as possible.
 
[my gloss - One of the psychiatrists had suggested some kind of mineral
deficiencies might be involved.  Wonder if salt "cures" some zombies?]
 
My impression was that while using flashy language ("killed" instead of
committed; "zombie" instead of "mentally ill"; "zombie master" instead
of "caseworker"; etc.), what the president (and the videos, etc.) were
pointing to was a kind of socially functional mental care system.
 

ZOMBIES

To make a zombie, a voodoo practitioner makes a potion that consists of mainly the poison of the pufferfish (one of the strongest nerve poisons known to man, the clinical drug norcuron has similar effects and is used during surgery) that is given to the intended victim. This causes severe neurological damage, primarily effecting the left side of the brain (the left side of the brain controls speech, memory and motor skills). The victim suddenly becomes lethargic, then slowly seems to die. In reality, the victim¹s respiration and pulse becomes so slow that it is nearly impossible to detect. The victim retains full awareness as he is taken to the hospital, then perhaps to the morgue and finally as they are buried alive. Then, at the voodoo practitioner¹s leisure does he come to retrieve the victim, now become a slave, as a commodity (at one time it was said that most of the slaves who worked in the sugar cane plantations of Haiti were zombies. One case in 1918 had a voodoo priest named Ti Joseph who ran a gang of laborers for the American Sugar Corporation, who took the money they received and fed the workers only unsalted porridge). A zombie will remain in a robot-like state indefinitely, until he tastes either salt or meat (so much for ‘The Night of the Living Dead’). Then the zombie becomes aware of their state, immediately returning to the grave. The reality behind the zombie has only been taken seriously by medical science within the last ten years, since the use of CAT scans of the brain, along with the confessions of voodoo priests, explaining their methods. Previous to that, zombies were considered mental defective by science or explained as stunts to try to confuse scientists.

ZOMBIS MAY NOT BE WHAT THEY’RE REPUTED TO BE

But in a paper in this week's The Lancet, two researchers, Professor Roland Littlewood of the department of anthropology and psychiatry at London's University College and Dr. Chavannes Douyon of the Polyclinique Medica in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, conclude many so-called zombies may in fact be individuals with psychiatric disorders or brain damage.

In their study, the researchers report on three individuals who were considered to be zombis by their families and neighbours. They found the first individual appeared to have a severe psychiatric condition called catatonic schizophrenia, which can make a person mute and immobile; the second to have brain damage and epilepsy, perhaps due to an episode of oxygen starvation of the brain; and the third individual, a severe learning disability, perhaps due to fetal-alcohol syndrome.

COULD TRACES OF PUFFER FISH TOXIN EXPLAIN THE SUPPOSED EXISTENCE OF HAITI'S ZOMBIES?

Luigi Garlaschelli unearths the evidence - for and against

Zombie fish eaters? Could traces of puffer fish toxin explain the supposed existence of Haiti's zombies? Luigi Garlaschelli unearths the evidence - for and against According to widespread Haitian beliefs, voodoo sorcerers (bokors) would administer a 'magic powder' to their victim. The victim would lapse into a state of such low metabolic activity that he (or she) might appear clinically dead. The poor soul would then be buried alive, only to be rescued hours later by the sorcerer who dug him up, fed him a hallucinogenic concoction, and sold him as a slave, often to sugar plantations. If by some lucky chance (the bokor's death, divine intervention etc) the zombie could free himself, he can still be spotted by his glassy eyes, limited speech capability, nasal voice and slow and 'goofy' movements. The existence of zombies is often taken for granted by Haitian people, and 'zombification' is still considered a crime in Haitian law: Article 264 forbids the administration of drugs that can induce apparent death. If the victim is buried thereafter, the crime is equated to homicide. But do zombies really exist, or is all this just superstition and legend? And if they do exist, are they misunderstood cases, or is there any pharmacological rationale for the activity of the bokor's magic drugs? What is the active molecule in the 'zombie powder'?

ZOMBIES AND P-ZOMBIES

There is another kind of zombie, however: the philosophical zombie. A philosophical zombie (p-zombie, for short) would be a human body without consciousness which would nevertheless behave like a human body with consciousness. To some philosophers (e.g., Daniel Dennett) this is a contradictory notion and thus an impossible conception. If it behaves like a person and is indistinguishable from a person, then it is a person. Other philosophers (e.g. Todd Moody and David Chalmers) argue that a p-zombie would be distinguishable from a person even though indistinguishable from a conscious person. It is distinguishable, say these philosophers, because it is stipulated that it is not conscious even though it is indistinguishable from a conscious being. In case you are wondering why philosophers would debate whether it is possible to conceive of a p-zombie, it is because some philosophers do not believe or do not want to believe that consciousness can be reduced to a set of materialistic functions. Important metaphysical and ethical issues seem to hinge on whether there can be p-zombies. Can machines be conscious? If we created a machine which was indistinguishable from a human person, would our artificial creation be a "person" with all the rights and duties of natural persons? To the p-zombie advocates, consciousness is more than brain processes and neurological functions. No adequate account of consciousness will ever be produced that is "reductionist," i.e., completely materialistic.

ZOMBIES ON THE WEB

Compiled by David Chalmers

Philosophical zombies

It is philosophical zombies that I'm most interested in here, since I'm a philosopher and they raise very interesting issues. The sort I'm most concerned with are zombies that are physically and behaviorally identical to a conscious human, but lack any conscious experience. As in this case-study of my own zombie twin, for example.

Most people doubt that zombies could exist in the actual world. (In philosophical terms, they are naturally impossible.) But many people think that they are at least logically possible - i.e. that the idea of zombie is internally consistent, and that there is at least a "possible world" where zombies exist. This logical possibility is sometimes used to draw strong conclusions about consciousness (e.g. in my book The Conscious Mind, and elsewhere).