Is "Creative Apocalypse" the Next Step In Kapitalism' "Development?"

Is "Creative Apocalypse" the Next Step In Kapitalism' "Development?"Things are bad. Indeed they are.

And getting worse, not better.

(And I wish now I'd bought that Czech AK; at only $200, it was a steal.)

Michael Klare, in Salon today (DOTOF™: John Cole/Baloon Juice; Jon Schwarz/ATR), presents a frighteningly plausible account of what the NEXT stage of the Collapse of 08 might entail. I've said before, it seems to me too bad that the crisis didn't come when I was younger and more likely to survive it. The Hed is stark:

We're on the brink of disaster

Violent protests and riots are breaking out everywhere as economies collapse and governments fail. War is bound to follow.

(Editor's note: This article has also appeared on TomDispatch.com.)

By Michael Klare

Oh, you should have a World map handy for the next part:

Feb. 26, 2009 | The global economic meltdown has already caused bank failures, bankruptcies, plant closings and foreclosures and will, in the coming year, leave many tens of millions unemployed across the planet. But another perilous consequence of the crash of 2008 has only recently made its appearance: increased civil unrest and ethnic strife. Someday, perhaps, war may follow.

As people lose confidence in the ability of markets and governments to solve the global crisis, they are likely to erupt into violent protests or to assault others they deem responsible for their plight, including government officials, plant managers, landlords, immigrants and ethnic minorities. (The list could, in the future, prove long and unnerving.) If the present economic disaster turns into what President Obama has referred to as a "lost decade," the result could be a global landscape filled with economically fueled upheavals.

Indeed, if you want to be grimly impressed, hang a world map on your wall and start inserting red pins where violent episodes have already occurred. Athens (Greece), Longnan (China), Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Riga (Latvia), Santa Cruz (Bolivia), Sofia (Bulgaria), Vilnius (Lithuania) and Vladivostok (Russia) would be a start. Many other cities from Reykjavik, Paris, Rome and Zaragoza to Moscow and Dublin have witnessed huge protests over rising unemployment and falling wages that remained orderly thanks in part to the presence of vast numbers of riot police. If you inserted orange pins at these locations -- none as yet in the United States -- your map would already look aflame with activity. And if you're a gambling man or woman, it's a safe bet that this map will soon be far better populated with red and orange pins.

It's a chastening thought to imagine armed and angry red-neck Murkins hungry, hopeless and really desperate. And that's just potential. It's already reality in a lot of places. I shall spare you the catalogue of horrors Klare lists in the ensuing graphs. They will make your head hurt in their number, complexity, seriousness,and ubiquity. This is Klare's conclusion:

Given a global situation in which one startling, often unexpected development follows another, prediction is perilous. At a popular level, however, the basic picture is clear enough: Continued economic decline combined with a pervasive sense that existing systems and institutions are incapable of setting things right is already producing a potentially lethal brew of anxiety, fear and rage. Popular explosions of one sort or another are inevitable. (Emphasis supplied. Ed.)

Some sense of this new reality appears to have percolated up to the highest reaches of the U.S. intelligence community. In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Feb. 12, Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the new director of national intelligence, declared, "The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications ... Statistical modeling shows that economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one to two year period" -- certain to be the case in the present situation.

Blair did not specify which countries he had in mind when he spoke of "regime-threatening instability" -- a new term in the American intelligence lexicon, at least when associated with economic crises -- but it is clear from his testimony that U.S. officials are closely watching dozens of shaky nations in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Central Asia.

Now go back to that map on your wall with all those red and orange pins in it and proceed to color in appropriate countries in various shades of red and orange to indicate recent striking declines in gross national product and rises in unemployment rates. Without 16 intelligence agencies under you, you'll still have a pretty good idea of the places that Blair and his associates are eyeing in terms of instability as the future darkens on a planet at the brink.