D is for Demand

Intro

Following a brief read of a BBC article this morning about exploitation in the cotton industry worldwide, it occurred to me that the root of most human rights problems is greed - or demand.

D is for Demand

What are the things we demand?  If we look at the world in general, I think it's clear:
(These are in no parituclar order, just as they occur to me)
1) Oil and plastics - hence all the conflict that drives the prices up, our continuing dependence on fossil fuels for all our energy needs despite the growing availability of green(er) alternatives like electric and salt water cars)

2) Coltan/tantalum - minerals I've discussed before that contribute to the conflict in eastern Congo where the bulk of this mineral is to be found on our planet (and also on that list should be copper, gold and tin, all of which are also to be found there); these minerals feature in electrical components in the bulk of electronic devices like computers and mobile phones

3) Cotton - this is in such high demand that people are trafficked in order to produce it, children work for nothing to process it (and there are reports of workers dropping from pure exhaustion and suffocating to death in the cotton itself)
This and similar points are the case with the production of many foodstuffs like chocolate, coffee and so on

4) Fruit and vegetables - this issue also applied to the items above, where GM techniques, pesticides and growth hormones are used to produce the food we DEMAND all year round regardless of the cost involved

We must face this simple truth: the chaos on our planet is driven by our greed.  If there were no demand for oil, we would not fight over it; if there were no demand for unethically produced fabrics and foods, people and the environment would not be destroyed to manufacture them.

If you want a wealth of information on the politics and pollution of the existing supply-DEMAND infrastructure, I strongly advise you to visit the Environmental Justice Foundation website.  It covers areas like cotton production, fishing, pesticides and on and on and on.

D is for Disdain

I know that anyone who visits the shop pages of organisations like EJF will be shocked to the point of abandonment, by the prices of their products, compared to the prices of massive chains like the Arcadia Group (Top Man/Top Shop for example).  And there's a reason for that.  We can't have it both ways: we either pay more for what we want so that the people providing the goods have the chance of a life like ours, or we pay less and simply accept that the cotton - for example - that constitutes our clothing may literally be full of their blood.

D is for Delusion

If we consider our society, it is painfully obvious to me that greed is our most fundamental problem.  No matter how much we have, we always want more.  Quite simply this is because our society is designed to feed and convince us of the lie that "if only I have x, my life will be fine".  And that can be anything from a material thing (like a computer game, a particular DVD or music album) to something more abstract (like the concept of having a boy/girlfriend, a house, a car, a family or whatever).

The problem with this is, that the more we feed this belief, the stronger it becomes, and one form of it leads to another.  Consumerism is designed to be self-perpetuating: I want a car, so I need a job, I need to take driving lessons, I need to buy insurance.  And once you have the car, you want a better car, a faster car, a safer car, whatever.  And with the abstract concepts it's worse: I want a boy/girlfriend, so I need better clothes, a better job, more money, a better body, I need to join a gym, take supplements, pay for cosmetic surgery.

And at the end of the day, the average person will tell you, all these efforts are not only unsuccessful, they are actually unhealthy and destructive.

D is for Dependence

I know from personal experience that it can take YEARS to overcome the society-cemented barrier of consumerism and see the 'real life' beyond it.  This is because the lies that are pushed on us from birth until we are 'freed' to live our own lives, are difficult to shake.  The old adage "It's easier to make a habit than to break one" hold true here too.

We become dependent on the lie.  We can see this all around us: the more unhappy a person is, the more they try to compensate by working, buying things, moving from place to place and/or sexual partner to sexual partner.  This is why the richest people in the world are often the loneliest and the most unhappy.

Dependence is any behaviour that we are unable to live without or that removes our freedom of choice.  By the latter definition, we could attribute dependence to anything in our lives: money, food, sex, oil, reading, cinema.  But we could also apply it to our very society.  Society, whether we notice it or not, is gradually removing our freedom of choice in order to create a race of automotons that will feed the economy without threatening it in any way whatsoever.

The endgame may well be that one day people will not break the law because there will be no legal due process remaining; people will not buy coffee from independent shops because there won't be any; people will have no choice because there will only be monopolies: Tesco, Starbucks, coalition government.  These all represent dependencies precisely because their existence and ongoing expansion is gradually removing our freedom of choice - not to mention the concept of individual free enterprise.

D is for Depression

Einstein defined insanity as the incessant repetition of a certain behaviour whilst expecting a varying/new result.

If that is true, then depression is the (un)conscious knowledge of our own insanity.  I believe that at some level, everyone is aware of the insanity that society is perpetuating, and their own insanity which is unwilling or impotent to escape from.

It is a subject of constant comment that our society is the most privileged in the world, and simultaneously has the highest suicide rates as well as incidence rates of mental ill health, drug dependency, addictions and so on.

Another symptom of depression is laziness.  I believe this is an offshoot of the same problem.  Our ultimate aspiration is to be in a position where we earn vast amounts of money while doing absolutely nothing - as in the multi-billionaire owner of a multinational super-conglomerate, the more so if their company is (practically at least) a monopoly - like Mexico's national telephone company (Carlos Slim Helu) and Microsoft (Bill Gates), representing the two largest personal fortunes in the world.

D is for Dumping

This in turn leads on from laziness.  The US is still the  largest exporter of cotton in the world.  China is the largest producer, but most of it is used domestically.  The US, by comparison, has discovered that it is easier and cheaper to simply export all of their cotton, and not for sale but for processing.

This has two negative side effects: first of all it destroys - to all intents and purposes - the cotton industries of other countries, especially small family-owned enterprises by demolishing the price of cotton through market flooding.  Second, and more important, it removes, to a large extent, the regulation of a cotton industry that doesn't exist: it is not the remit of the America cotton watchdog, the National Cotton Council of America, to regulate the use of American cotton overseas.

D is for Denial

The buck doesn't stop with cotton either.  It runs in a somewhat similar vein to the NDAA (National Defense Authorisation Act) that Obama signed at the end of 2011, breaching international human rights law by denying:
1) Local, national jurisprudence and
2) Legal due process as set out by any country on earth
(To reiterate: the NDAA in part authorises US military and/or intelligence operatives to arrest anyone of any nationality anywhere on earth and detain them at a US army base without trial for an indefinite period - for life if necessary).

I would say it is clear that the implication is the deniability of such actions as they take place on foreign soil so that arguing of whether to adopt one set of legislative statutes or another will delay application of either indefinitely.

D is for Death

All that these massive industries have in common is death: people die in the struggle for oil - very often, it seems, at the hands of intelligence operatives from various countries to ensure that the 'right' people get to power in order to favour contracts with one country or another.

For example, it's all very well for David Cameron (the UK's Prime Minister) and Dick Sawle (an MP in the Falklands) to claim that the Falkland Islanders want to remain British, but James Peck clearly preferred to take Argentine citizenship.  I wonder how many others share his sentiment but are unable to so easily follow through on it because of job and family ties.  What is clear, is that the UK private sector stands to make a fortune on the oil under the oceanic shelf surrounding the islands, and it is not inconceivable (30 years on) for there to be a repeat of the Falklands War.

The lessons of the film Syriana are strikingly similar: of two royal brothers, one is murdered to ensure that he doesn't take power and then take oil away from the US delegation already in negotiations with his younger brother.

D is for Damned

My outlook is bleak; it often is.  I have little enough faith in humanity and these are the simple issue.

The simple fact of the matter is that 'no-one' is going to get out of their car in protest at the true cost of oil.

No-one is going to spend GBP30 / USD50 on a T-shirt in protest at the true cost of cotton.

No-one is even going to email the manufacturers of their electronic communications devices to urge them to go conflict-free.

Or are they?