Struggle for land to spread from Pakistan to U.S.?

Jan Lundberg write for Culture Change :

The peasants in Taliban-influenced Pakistan's Swat region have taken over landlords' estates and mines, according to a scolding New York Times report on Friday. "Diabolical" or "Islamist" though it may be, it's an interesting development with global implications.

The Times' coverage of the revolt tries to paint the situation purely as outsider manipulation, with the implied threat to U.S. goals for "stability" in the region. In the interests of peace, why couldn't the U.S. score some points among the downtrodden by praising aspects of the land take-over? After all, Obama as president-elect supported the take-over of the Republic Windows and Doors factory by workers in Chicago.

The New York Times headline was "Taliban Exploit Class Rifts in Pakistan" -- but why not instead use the phrase "...Addresses Class Inequality..."? I'm sure some ugly events are going on, with sorrow coming from all sides, including ongoing U.S. bombing of civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It seems the landlord class is being strongly encouraged to leave. One reads of other dastardly tactics like families having to give up a son for the insurgents' forces. The tone of the Times article is as if any revolution anywhere is automatically uncalled for. The history of uprisings and revolutions, or demands for land reforms, has usually had the U.S. on the side of the elites and against "Communists" or whomever.

The New York Times has a credibility problem, as it represents the U.S. landlord class and has generally supported U.S. bombing campaigns against foreign civilians. Worst of all is the U.S.'s lack of respect in Pakistan and everywhere else, for its torture policies -- which Obama has decided not to prosecute. One can imagine that part of his being allowed to become president is that he pardons the old guard who handed over the keys to the castle. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." - the Who.

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People in the U.S. are generally landless and do not realize it. Even if someone has paid off the mortgage, the average home does not have enough yard space to grow much food or keep livestock. In the last several decades the U.S. population lost its small farms, and many of us willingly bought into the lie that all one needs is cash and cheap petroleum. The U.S. census no longer has a "farmer" designation, for lack of enough farmers!

Now we are starting to see the unjust jive of urbanization and modernization. The hippies' back-to-the-land movement was one counter trend, just as the present phenomenon of more household gardening and farmers markets are an attempt to benefit more directly from life-giving land. It's more than a "let's be more green" fad or a temporary response to a recession.

For some of us know that the days of cheap, limitless petroleum are over, spelling the end of false plenty from agribusiness food. What will become of the degraded farms where monocropped and genetically modified organisms' tolerance to massively increased herbicide held sway, thanks to subsidies now fading? People will want to farm these lands for subsistence, or perhaps run bison on some of the lands as a sustainable resource par excellence.

For urban landscapes, where everything has been fenced and paved, the need for community food gardens will call for depaving and transforming lawns to rows of vegetables. Ultimately, because there are too many people to be fed without constant supplies of cheap petroleum for agriculture and food distribution, it may take an urban die-off to reach equilibrium. Then today's oil-infrastructure cities may become food forests.

Meanwhile, we begin the transformational tasks now. It is not yet clear to landless Americans who have been evicted by irresponsible and greedy banks that a reconnection to the land is the right prescription. Still, the idea of cash for buying whatever one needs pervades, perpetuated by corporate media reminding folks that economic growth will return. However, people will not be put off for long. They may have more in common with the peasants of Pakistan and the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico than with bankers or the Military Industrial Complex occupiers of vast areas of land in the U.S and abroad.

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