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Klare: Global Crime Wave?
Michael T. Klare, The Nation
A Syndrome of Crime, Violence and Repression on the Way
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In all catastrophes, there are always winners among the host of losers and victims. Bad times, like good ones, generate profits for someone. In the case of the present global economic meltdown, with our world at the brink and up to fifty million people potentially losing their jobs by the end of this year, one winner is likely to be criminal activity and crime syndicates. From Mexico to Africa, Russia to China, the pool of the desperate and the bribable is expanding exponentially, pointing to a sharp upturn in global crime. As illicit profits rise, so will violence in the turf wars among competing crime syndicates and in the desperate efforts by panicked governments to put a clamp on criminal activity.
… The ongoing slaughter in Mexico may be monopolizing overseas crime headlines, but other parts of the world have also seen sharp rises in criminal violence in 2008 and the early months of 2009 as the global economic crisis has deepened. With legal jobs disappearing, growing numbers of unemployed youth are unsurprisingly drawn to what’s still available–illicit professions or jobs in the military and police that, in many countries, are ill-paid but allow access to bribes. Just such a process appears to be under way in impoverished parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Drug Traffickers and Pirates
In fact, it’s an irony that, as global trading and other aspects of economic globalization are breaking down, crime may be globalizing. Consider recent developments in Guinea-Bissau and Peru, when it comes to the growing reach and savagery of Latin America’s drug traffickers.
(6 April 2009)
Also at Asia Times
Crime down in Los Angeles, other parts of Southern California
Joel Rubin and Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times
The declines fly in the face of expert predictions that the recession would cause rates to rise. Several experts credit Chief William J. Bratton’s efforts for L.A.’s decrease.
Crime in much of Los Angeles County and elsewhere in Southern California has dropped significantly so far this year, despite an economic meltdown that has pushed unemployment into double digits, imploded the housing market and shuttered countless businesses.
The decline flies in the face of predictions made by many crime experts that the region would probably experience substantial increases in property-related crimes and some types of violence as more people fell into financial hardship.
(31 March 2009)
Dying alone, drowning in rubbish piled solid to the ceiling
Simon Hattenstone, Guardian
Gordon Stewart died alone, drowning in rubbish piled solid to his ceiling. How did he end up in such a state? Simon Hattenstone on the life of an extreme hoarder
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… A few days later the contractors arrive to empty [the house]. They wear boiler suits and masks, and say they have seen nothing as extreme as this before. The door has been removed, and the sight is even more shocking than we had been led to believe. Supposedly Stewart had burrowed his way in and out through tunnels, but the rubbish is piled solid to the ceiling. Behind one layer of rubbish is another layer, then another – bags of rubbish upon bags of rubbish, TV guides from 10 years ago, a lawnmower, a 4ft electric drill, a couple of mopeds, an unassembled worktop, hundreds of tins of cat food. Every time a bag is carted off, more corroded cat food falls down the stairs. I can’t see any tunnels. There doesn’t appear to be a way out. It seems Stewart made the decision to barricade himself in and bury himself alive.
I go up to the front door. The whole house looks as if it is about to burst. The rubbish has made it impossible to work out where one room starts and another finishes.
… Recently, research carried out by Hammonds Furniture concluded that Britain was a nation of hoarders – the average person accumulates more than a tonne of unwanted stuff, and a quarter of the population said they had been forced to stop using a room because it was so full of stored possessions.
Of course, Gordon Stewart wasn’t alone. His hobby/obsession/condition is common enough to have a number of names: compulsive hoarding syndrome, disposophobia, Diogenes syndrome, Collyer brothers syndrome. The disposophobia website states that “disposophobics are generally very smart people who can’t, don’t or won’t make fast value judgments about their ‘stuff’, so their solution is to keep everything”.
… 27 January, the day of Gordon Stewart’s funeral. More than 40 people turn up. The Rev Alan Harvey says most didn’t know him, though they may well have seen him out and about on his bike. But, he adds, there is a special person here today, Stephen Fennell, a former member of the congregation who will pay tribute to his close friend.
… “Gordon was a gentle man, highly appreciative of well-made things and art. He owned a number of rare books that cost him tens or even hundreds of pounds, not because he was attracted by their monetary value but because he so admired the workmanship that had gone into them. One book he often told me about was a famous rare book of American birds painted in the 19th century by Audubon. Another was on South American butterflies. He loved animals.
… “Because the newspapers have made so much about the state of his house, I want to say a little in partial defence and explanation, though he knew it had reached an appalling condition and he hated it himself. Before retiring due to ill health, he had to work long hours in the local cash-and-carry store. He would have little time to attend to the house when he got home at night. For some reason he became afraid his neighbours would complain if he put his rubbish out. Before long, the build-up of rubbish inside the house had become so bad that I think he was paralysed at the thought of how to sort it all out. He could not see any way of sorting the good stuff from the bad.
(28 March 2009)
Long, strangely moving story. It seems as if there should be some relation between hoarding and the widespread consumerism in our culture – but I can quite figure out it is. EB writer Amanda Kovattana (who is an “organizer” by profession) tells me that hoarders are not that uncommon. She says that efforts by family and friends to cure hoarders have little chance of succeeding. -BA
Chinese try to curb ‘plague of desert rats’ in Tibet with contraceptives
Jonathan Watts, Guardian
Pika, relation of the rabbit, blamed for increasing desertification. But experts claim rodents help sustain biodiversity
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China’s authorities have scattered 200kg of rodent contraceptive pellets across the Tibetan plateau to control what they describe as a “plague of desert rats”.
The growing number of rodents have been blamed for destroying fragile high-altitude grasslands and accelerating the spread of deserts.
Biodiversity experts warn, however, that the extermination campaign could worsen the problem of soil degradation and the poisons could damage other parts of the plateau ecosystem.
(25 March 2009)
