In some ways, the more urbanized an area is the greater potential it has to be sustainable. Public transport becomes readily available, reducing the need for individually owned cars, and the closer together things are the easier it is to walk from place to place. However, while grocery stores and restaurants may be close by to customers, more often than not the food that sustains them comes from outside of the community, sometimes from hundreds of miles away.

When calculating the carbon footprint of a suburb or a city, it’s important to keep in mind that the distance food delivery trucks travel to keep an area well-fed can be a serious obstacle to any community’s sustainability. This problem gave birth to the locavore movement, which has been steadily growing in popularity throughout America. Locavores attempt to get their food as close as possible to where they live, which has the benefit of reducing CO2 emissions, supporting local farmers, and ensuring that one’s food hasn’t been treated with pesticides or raised with hormones.

One result of locavorism is the urban agriculture movement, which strives to utilize local property for small scale farming. Urban agriculture can manifest in a variety of ways in both suburban and city environments but it has been vehemently opposed in many areas throughout the country. However, the movement has serious potential to help increase sustainability in communities around the country.

“Roof allotment III” courtesy of David Barrie via Flickr

Suburban Lawn Farms

The modern American suburban home typically has a small front lawn, which is kept mowed and watered for aesthetic purposes. However, added up throughout the nation, these lawns make up a huge amount of underutilized, farmable land. Homeowners in states all over the country are starting to realize the potential of this land, and are growing edible gardens in their front yards. The average suburban property won’t generate a yield that’ll provide for an entire family’s calorie requirements, however, they can dramatically contribute to a household’s vegetable needs. This has the environmental benefit of reducing a family’s dependence on produce that comes through long supply chains and also encourages a healthy diet.

Edible gardens actually require about half as much water to maintain as a traditional lawn and prevent the exhaust fumes from lawnmowers, which are exceptionally polluting machines due to their unregulated and highly hazardous fuel contents. Furthermore, if you cultivate your edible garden without pesticides and fertilizers (which would generally be unnecessary in small scale agriculture) then you prevent a host of chemicals from being picked up by rainwater and delivered into local water sources. Depending on the amount of space in your lawn, it may also be possible to raise smaller livestock animals, such as chickens and rabbits, which generally don’t require very much space to take care of. If an entire community bands together and adopts this model of living, it can dramatically reduce the area’s carbon footprint, conserve water, and strengthen community bonds.

Urban Agriculture: Rooftops, Windows, and Empty Lots

In an urban setting, there’s no such potential for lawns to be directly repurposed into gardens, so city dwellers have to pursue more creative pathways. While the average person who lives in an apartment doesn’t own that property, anyone with a window facing steady sunlight can grow small scale produce hanging out of their windows. This is the premise behind the idea of vertical gardening, which seeks to make use of all the surface area we have built vertically as a source of nutrition and as a sink for carbon.

Theoretically, high-rise apartment buildings have created an abundance of additional land by building walls that take up more surface area than the original width and length of the plot of land they were built upon. This increases the potential for food development, although produce that requires high sun exposure can only be grown near windows and may require heavy watering. However, it’s just as possible to grow produce on vertically stacked beds in any apartment and in any house, though it may require additional light to grow healthily if plants can’t be exposed to a natural light source. Growing mushrooms may also be a good choice for indoor gardening because they require little to no light and provide strong sources of protein.

Rooftop gardens are another way to produce a significant agricultural yield since the area of a building’s roof is generally the same as the land taken away on the ground by its construction. While you can easily cover a roof with potted plants, it’s also possible to actually build a garden directly on a rooftop, equipped with soil layers, and drainage and irrigation systems. One of the major obstacles to these “intensive” rooftop gardens is that architecturally, there are limits to what a roof can hold. Soil, especially when saturated with water, can be extremely heavy and can be a serious burden on what a building can hold. When designing a rooftop garden it’s important to take into account the exact weight that your building can handle and not to exceed that. Other concerns include the potential safety risks involved in rooftop gardening.

The top of urban buildings are almost always built of impervious surfaces that cause rainwater to rapidly pour off, which can also lead to flooding and may carry contaminants into water sources. When rainwater encounters vegetation, it dramatically decreases the speed of runoff and risk of flooding, and may even filter water as it moves downward. Rooftop gardens also have the benefit of blocking roofs from sun exposure. Black asphalt absorbs heat, creating the Urban Heat Island Effect, which causes cities to reach uncomfortably warm temperatures, especially in the top floors of apartments. The canopy offered by rooftop gardens has a cooling effect that can both increase comfort and decrease air conditioning expenses.

Empty lots also provide ample space with which to grow gardens and to aesthetically improve an area. Empty lots have the unique feature of being non-exclusive gardens, unlike window or rooftop agriculture. A local community can cooperatively participate in a lot garden, which can strengthen community bonds as well as provide local produce.

“Urban Agriculture at Erdos Eco-City” courtesy of SuSanA Secretariat via Flickr

Victory Gardens

While the concept of edible gardens may sound strange and novel, it’s not a completely new concept. In World War II the lack of labor and transportation difficulties severely cut off food supply chains, so the government proposed the idea of “Victory Gardens.” Victory gardens encouraged citizens to raise as much produce and livestock as they could as part of their patriotic duty as Americans. Backyards and empty lots were converted into small farms and even city rooftops were covered with whatever could be grown on them. A huge number of Americans banded together and an estimated 20 million victory gardens were created. Altogether these gardens produced between 9 to 10 million tons of produce, equivalent to the amount of commercially produced vegetables at the time. This impressive yield serves as a powerful example of the impact the same practices could have today. So what’s stopping America from achieving the same results again?

Obstacles to Urban Agriculture

Many states have laws against owning livestock such as chickens, goats, and beehives on private property. Suburban communities across America also have made objections to edible gardens, claiming that they hurt the aesthetics of a neighborhood. Farmland can be considered unclean and a symbol of lower class status. Many believe that suburban gardening will decrease the property value of surrounding houses. States like Iowa, Florida, and Louisiana have written laws banning backyard gardening and require lawns to be regularly maintained; countless city and town governments have made similar mandates.

Apartment building owners may have objections to vertical gardening for similar aesthetic reasons. Rooftop gardens are one of the most significant ways to impact urban agriculture, but their existence also largely depends on the wishes of the building owners. Rooftop gardens are highly complex and require large amounts of maintenance. Many people may not want to invest the time and resources into actualizing their existence. There’s also an ongoing debate on whether rooftop space would be better utilized with solar panels since the tops of tall buildings provide some of the best access to solar energy. As for empty lot gardens, it’s often the case that just because an area is abandoned, that doesn’t mean it’s publicly accessible. Many open city lots may be boarded or fenced up to prevent people from interfering with the area. In some places this has led to movement of “guerilla gardening,” that is, throwing projectiles made of seeds wrapped in clay over fences. These vegetable “bombs” protect the seed long enough for it to sprout and draw nutrients, encouraging vegetation growth in otherwise inaccessible areas.

Beyond community opposition and technical difficulties, it’s also just true that only a small percentage of people are interested in urban agriculture. America is a very different place now than it was during World War II and we have nowhere near the food insecurity we previously did. The ethos of patriotism that inspired American citizens to grow food for the sake of the country’s stability is no longer in effect, and many people simply don’t see the benefits of urban agriculture. Ideally, Americans could regain the desire to grow their own food now in the interest of environmentalism. However, as large as our grocery stores are fully stocked, it is fairly unlikely that the urban agriculture movement will truly grow huge.

“New crops” courtesy of Linda N. via Flickr

Resources

About News: Origin of the Word Locavore

Chicago Department of Environment: A Guide to Rooftop Gardening

EarthEasy: Lawn Care Chemicals: How Toxic Are They?

Guardian Liberty Voice: Personal Gardening and Farming are Becoming Illegal

Hofstra University: Transport and Sustainability

Living History: Farming in the 1940s

Mother Earth News: Grow Your Own Mushrooms

Oregon Public Broadcasting: Rethinking Your Front Yard: Cities Make Room for Urban Farms

People Powered Machines: Cleaner Air: Gas Mower Pollution Facts

Resilience: Why Our Food is so Dependent on Oil

Seattle Urban Farm Company: Suburban Front Yard Farm

TakePart: Leave Your Lawn for Life on the Urban Farm

Urban Gardens Web: Growing Free Food and Community in Front Yard Farms

The Washington Post: “Guerilla Gardeners” Spread Seeds of Social Change

Kyle Downey

Kyle Downey is an Environmental Issues Specialist for Law Street Media. He graduated from Skidmore College with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies. His main passions are environmentalism and social justice. Contact Kyle at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Promise of Urban Agriculture appeared first on Law Street.

At the recent Zhuhai Air Show, China unveiled a new stealth fighter jet that one day has the potential to rival the United States’ own F-35. This came just days before President Obama was to travel to China to meet with its leaders as part of the larger APEC summit. While the significance of the timing of this display is debatable, it unquestionably shows China is determined to steadily improve and modernize its military arsenal. The question that remains is why? Is China’s path aimed at some future point at which it will surpass the United States as the world’s pre-eminent world power, both economically and militarily? If the answer to this question is yes–or even if it is no–does this then make China a military threat to the United States?

China and the U.S.: Positions in the Global Hierarchy

It’s the Economy

To begin to answer this question it is necessary to start by looking at these countries’ economies and in particular their economic growth. There are an infinite number of economic measures available to argue which economy in the world is the strongest; however, one of the most traditional and commonly accepted is Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In this regard, America has enjoyed dominance for decades going all the way back to the end of World War II. Today even in a supposedly more multipolar world, the GDP of the US economy, nearly $17 trillion in 2013, dwarfs that of any other nation and almost doubles the second place country, China.

Nonetheless, while the United States enjoys the largest GDP its rate of growth is much smaller than China’s. Since 1978, when it moved from a centrally planned to a market based economy, China’s yearly GDP growth has averaged nearly 10 percent. The United States during this time has experienced annual growth rates of 2 to 3 percent.

This figure excludes many factors, notably the fact that as a larger economy it is harder for the U.S. to grow at a rate equal to that of China. This issue has actually started to affect China as well as its recent growth has slipped to the 7 to 8 percent range as it seeks to curb several glaring social issues. Moreover, while China’s economy is growing faster and one day may pass the U.S. economy based strictly on total GDP, the average GDP per person is much lower in China than the United States. Regardless of the metrics though, why is economic might so important in determining whether China is a military threat to the United States?

China and U.S.: Military Spending

The United States Spends More (A Lot More)

A successful economy often goes hand in hand with a powerful military. Such is the case in the United States. As has been well documented, military spending by the United States far surpasses that of any other country. In fact, the edge in military spending by the United States far outstrips its edge economically by any measure. In 2013 for example, the United States spent an estimated $619 billion on military expenditures. This is more than three times what the second-place country spent in that same time period.

That second country on the list is–you guessed it–China again. In 2013 China spent $171.4 billion itself on military expenditures. While the United States again is overwhelmingly outspending China, it is critical to look at the growth rates, not just the overall total. As China’s economy continues to grow, so does its potential military capability.

China is Spending More Lately

In 2013, the U.S. actually saw a significant decline in military spending as a result of not only the ending of its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also due to the sequester. In contrast, China actually increased its budget in the same year between 7.4 and 10.7 percent. In 2014, it is reported that China will increase its budget again by an additional 12.2 percent. While this still does not make China equal to the United States, it suggests a desire by China to project its power further beyond its borders. The video below provides a more in-depth explanation.

China and U.S.: Their Relationship

Long and Intricate 

While China’s military capability is increasing this does not automatically make it a threat to the United States, instead it is also important to consider the relationship between the two nations. Historically this could be characterized best as complicated. The video below highlights the complex connection.

The United States has long had a relationship with China, almost from its inception. China was an important market following the Revolutionary War when it was shut out of many other places due to animosity emanating from England. American missionaries also flocked to China and Chinese immigrants came in waves to the United States and were instrumental in constructing the railway network, among other things. Things started going downhill, however, near the end of the nineteenth century during the rise of Imperialism worldwide. In 1882 the U.S. passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was aimed at curbing Chinese immigration.

Additionally, in 1899 the U.S. provided men and weapons to help put down the Boxer Rebellion in which Chinese citizens attempted to expel foreigners who they viewed as exploitative of their country. The United States did advocate the Open Door Policy, initiated in the late nineteenth century, that prevented the literal break-up of China; however, the motive for that can be seen as greed as much as humanitarianism in that the U.S. wanted to keep China as an open market to which it had access.

The relationship improved again during the lead up to and for the duration of World War II as the United States provided supplies and men to China in its fight against Imperial Japan. Later during the conflict China also served as a launching point for American attacks against Japan. The bond the countries had hammered out during the war seemed to be set in stone when the United States worked to get China to become one of the five permanent members of the Security Council. Once again however, the relationship frayed with the communist takeover of China and with Chinese soldiers actually engaging U.S. troops during the Korean War. At one point the situation was so bad that nuclear war seemed to be a possibility. Relations stayed frozen until President Nixon famously opened up dialogue between the two countries in the 1970s.

Since Nixon’s thawing the two nations have maintained a strong economic relationship. In 2014, China was the United States’ second most valuable trading partner and the United States was China’s top partner. The two sides also recently agreed for the first time to a major environmental pact that is scheduled to cap China’s emissions in 2030 and cut US emissions by 25 percent by 2025. Still though while the U.S. and China are working in concert, many issues remain between the two nations that could potentially lead to conflict, namely human rights abuses and continued Chinese attempts to steal American technological secrets.

Other Considerations

The Price of Friendship

While the complicated relationship between China and the United States may not make China a military threat, the relationship China has with its neighbors in Asia certainly has that potential. Currently China is attempting to exert its newfound power throughout the region. This has led to two separate crises in two separate seas. The one problem in both cases, with Japan in the East China Sea and several Asian countries in the South China Sea, is over control of the seas. Specifically it is over who controls the resources under those seas, particularly the large amount of oil. The video below gives a glimpse of what exactly the issue is.

The reason why all this could lead to China becoming a military threat is because the United States has defensive military treaties with both Taiwan and Japan. Thus if these two nations or others that also have military commitments from the United States were to come into direct physical conflict with China, the United States would be required to come to their aid militarily. The United States could always refuse to honor these obligations, but then that would lead to a loss of credibility.

End of the Pax Americana 

Such a loss of credibility may actually already have occurred. Specifically by failing to honor the security commitment to Ukraine and the failure to punish Syria for crossing Obama’s Red line against the use of chemical weapons, hostile countries may now have their doubts concerning American power, or at the very least its commitment.

Not only has this seemingly emboldened countries like Russia, it may also lead other countries with differing political goals such as China to determine the time is ripe for them to assert their own power as well, without the former fear of American retaliation. This may also signal the end of an unofficial era, defined as the Pax Americana or American Peace. During this period dating from the end of World War II, the United States was able to assert its global ambitions due to its military strength.

To Russia With Love

Another potential challenge to the system, crafted by the United States, comes in the form of China’s growing economic relationship with Russia, which has been both a long term and recent nemesis of the United States. While the U.S. and its European allies sanction Russia for its involvement in the unrest in Ukraine, China was agreeing to a $400 billion energy deal that could undermine the sanctions already in place.

China’s Nuclear Card

Even if China were not emboldened by a perceived American decline, it still has the potential to be a threat to the United States or any other state on this planet because of its nuclear stockpile. While China has long maintained its policy of no First Use concerning nuclear weapons, recent improvements in its arsenal may signal its intent to shrink the nuclear capability gap between the United States and itself.

Conclusion

Fool Me Once Shame on You, Fool Me Twice…

Aside from all the spending and rhetoric, good and bad, many still believe that China cannot be a threat to the United States militarily for one major reason: China and the U.S. are each other’s most important trading partners. But this argument has been made before. In one such case it was argued that Germany and France, which prior to WWI were economically independent, would not go to war. This was proven wrong of course and the two sides soon engaged in one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history.

Thus in time China could very possibly become a military threat to the United States with its quickly growing economy and military budget; however, the amount of dialogue and trade between the two countries could just as easily lead to a peaceful and prosperous relationship well into the future. For now only time will tell.

Resources

Primary

World Bank: Gross Domestic Product 2013

World Bank: China Overview

Census: Foreign Trade

Additional

Heritage Foundation: The Complicated History of US Relations with China

Trading Economics: Countries Spending the Most on the Military

CNN: Just How Good is China’s New Stealth Fighter

Council on Foreign Relations: Trends in US Military Spending

The New York Times: China Announces 12.2 % Increase in Military Budget

China Daily: Top 10 Trading Partners of the Chinese Mainland

Guardian: US and China Strike Deal on Carbon Cuts in Push For Global Climate Change Pact

World Affairs Journal: Conflicting Claims: China, Japan, Taiwan on Edge

Atlantic: The End of Pax Americana: How Western Decline Became Inevitable

National Interest: West Concerned about Russia and China Economic Ties

Diplomat: Could China’s Nuclear Strategy Evolve?

National Interest: Should America Fear China’s Nuclear Weapons

UCSD: Trading on Preconceptions

Michael Sliwinski

Michael Sliwinski (@MoneyMike4289) is a 2011 graduate of Ohio University in Athens with a Bachelor’s in History, as well as a 2014 graduate of the University of Georgia with a Master’s in International Policy. In his free time he enjoys writing, reading, and outdoor activites, particularly basketball. Contact Michael at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post China as a Military Threat: What Does It Mean for the U.S.? appeared first on Law Street.

The Social Security program was enacted in 1935 to provide post-retirement income security for workers and their families. Since then, it has grown to become the world’s largest government program with a total expenditure of $768 billion in fiscal year 2012. Americans are seriously concerned about the sustainability of Social Security, which has led to questions about whether privatizing the system could be wise. Read on to learn about Social Security privatization efforts, and the arguments for and against such a move.

The Current Status of Social Security

Social Security isn’t in great shape right now. Various reports have estimated different dates at which the entitlement program may have difficulty paying out full benefits to those who should receive them, but the current most cited year is 2033. One of the big reasons for why Social Security is in big trouble is because of our changing demographics and health statistics. When Social Security was first introduced pre-World War II, people did not live nearly as long as they do today. In addition, the post-World War II Baby Boom led to a glut in our population size. Social Security’s forecasting methods weren’t able to accurately predict the situation we’re in now, where there are many healthy people retiring who will live longer than ever before. To put this into context, in 1960, there were about 5.1 workers paying into the system for every retiree; now the ratio has shifted to under 3:1.

What does “privatizing” Social Security mean?

Given Social Security’s current state, there have been solutions suggested to try to fix it. One of the most popular is privatizing the system. That would most likely mean creating individual private accounts for the workers. Those private accounts will be subject to more control by those who are paying in, and would be able to interact with the private market. The funds could be invested in things like private stocks, which advocates point out would boost workers’ rate of return.

The proposition of its privatization came into the limelight when George W. Bush proposed the Growing Real Ownership of Workers Act of 2005. The bill aimed at replacing the mandatory payouts from workers’ checks with voluntary personal retirement accounts. In 2010, Paul Ryan, a major supporter of privatization, attempted unsuccessfully to reignite interest in the idea in his Roadmap for America’s Future budget plan.

What are the arguments for privatization?

Proponents of privatization argue that the current program significantly burdens fiscal debt and will lead to increased debt and taxes for future generations. They claim that privatizing it will keep the program from collapsing in the future. It would actually lead to higher post-retirement earnings for workers or, at the very least, keep earnings at a relatively stable rate. Additionally, it would empower workers to be responsible for their own future.

Advocates for privatizing social security also point out that in the past, funds in Social Security have been diverted to pay for other things the government has needed to pay for, and then replaced in time. If Social Security was privatized into individual accounts, the government wouldn’t be able to take such actions. According those who want to privatize Social Security, doing so would also help minimize the bureaucracy involved in the process.

Case Study: Chile

Chile’s post-privatization success is used as an example that the United States can learn from. Chile transferred to a new program in which  workers put 10-20 percent of their incomes into private pension funds. When the worker retires, an insurance company gets involved to help with the dispensation of money, but even at that step the Chilean worker has a lot of choice and flexibility. Although long term effects of the plan have yet to be discovered, the short term effects are positive.

What’s the argument against privatizing the Social Security system?

Opponents worry that privatizing social security will lead to risk and instability in post-retirement earnings and cause significant reductions in the same. They argue that privatization can also potentially place minorities at a disadvantage, as well as anyone who doesn’t have the time, knowledge, or desire to effectively manage their account. Many also claim that the media has exaggerated the program’s financial demise and that its balance is currently in surplus with most Baby Boomers currently in the workforce.

Those who argue against Social Security privatization have also expressed concern about the financial and logistical resources that would be needed to start a privatized Social Security program. They also believe that a move toward privatization would create more, not less bureaucracy, because of the complexity of private markets. Several groups and individuals, such as the Center for American Progress and economist Robert Barro oppose the idea.

Conclusion

It’s no secret that Social Security is currently struggling, and if something is not done, it will continue only get worse. There’s no easy answer, but privatization is one frequently suggested option in the public debate. Exactly how privatization would occur, what its benefits and downsides would be, and its overall effectiveness are still up for debate, but for now it’s definitely an idea that we can expect to see on the list of possible solutions for the foreseeable future.

Resources

Primary 

Social Security Administration: A Program and Policy History

Social Security Administration: The Social Security Act of 1935

Social Security Administration: Fast Facts & Figures About Social Security, 2012

Social Security Administration: The 2013 Annual Report of the Broad of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds

Social Security Association: Privatizing Social Security: The Chilean Experience

Additional 

Daily Signal: Social Security’s Unfunded Obligation Rises by $1 Trillion

CATO: Still a Better Deal: Private Investment vs. Social Security

Safe Haven: Privatize Social Security Before I Spend Your Pension

Sun Sentinal: Privatization Would Help But Liberals Resist Changes

Independent: Privatizing Social Security the Right Way

Freedom Works: Chilean Model of Social Security

NCPSSM: The Truth About Privatization and Social Security

Economic Policy Institute Report: Saving Social Security With Stocks: The Promises Don’t Add Up

Fortune: Privatizing Social Security: Still a Dumb Idea

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: What the 2013 Trustees’ Report Shows About Social Security

CATO: Speaking the Truth About Social Security Reform

AARP: In Brief: Social Security Privatization Around the World

National Bureau of Economic Research: Social Security Privatization: A Structure for Analysis

NEA: Social Security Privatization: A Bad Deal for Women

Salome Vakharia

Salome Vakharia is a Mumbai native who now calls New York and New Jersey her home. She attended New York School of Law, and she is a founding member of Law Street Media. Contact Salome at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Social Security Privatization Debate appeared first on Law Street.

Hey y’all!

On Monday, 93-year-old Oskar Groening, an SS guard assigned to Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, was charged with 300,000 counts of accessory to murder by German prosecutors. Not many of us were alive to experience World War II, but I know someone who was around back then who tells stories like it happened just yesterday. My grandmother, also 93, recounts stories from that time, and my grandfather’s brother was a B-24 bomber pilot who was killed in France in 1944.

So many families all over the world were affected by that war, most notably by one of the most vile men this world has ever seen — Adolf Hitler. More than a million people lost their lives between 1935 – 1945. Groening, in particular, has always been very open about his experiences at the concentration camp. He recounted a horrendous story to German Magazine Der Spiegel in 2005 of witnessing “another SS soldier grab the baby by the legs and smashed the baby’s head against the iron side of a truck until it was silent.”

German authorities are able to charge Groening with these 300,000 counts thanks to the trial of former camp guard John Demjanjuk in 2011. In a legal first in Germany, a Munich court found that simply demonstrating Demjanjuk’s employment at the camp, rather than his involvement in specific murders, was enough to implicate him in the killings committed there. Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years of imprisonment for helping the Nazis kill almost 30,000 Jews during his time at the Sobibór extermination camp in German-occupied Poland during World War II. Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years in jail, which seems a bit unfair given the extent of the crimes, but at 91 a life sentence could possibly only be a few more years than that.

It’s frustrating to know that people like Groening and Demjanjuk were able to live long lives without answering for what they had done. I know that it is difficult to really say what they actually took part in and how much fear they may have had if they went against Hitler, but at some point they made a decision to participate, and that is something they have to pay for. There can be so much hatred and evil in a single person.

There are still more than 20 people remaining for the German courts to prosecute in conjunction to war crimes from War World II, but for now focusing on Oskar Groening is good enough. Every family deserves justice when it comes to the death of loved ones.

In Oskar Groening’s case it isn’t just the families who deserve justice — it is the entire world.

—

Allison Dawson (@AllyD528) Born in Germany, raised in Mississippi and Texas. Graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University. Currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative.

Featured image courtesy of [leliebloem via Flickr]

Allison Dawson

Allison Dawson was born in Germany and raised in Mississippi and Texas. A graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University, she’s currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative. Get in touch with Allison at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post 93 Year Old Charged With 300,000 Counts of Accessory to Murder appeared first on Law Street.

“If during a study-abroad trip to Indonesia you stumble across an image of the Führer, don’t be surprised,” reported Vice News earlier this summer. “The swastika is also everywhere — on walls, cups, ashtrays, and t-shirts — and it’s not the Buddhist kind.” Stickers, posters, and stenciled graffiti images of Adolf Hitler litter the cities of Indonesia aside images of weapons and bullets. But the Nazi graffiti is not limited to illegal marks; street vendors sell posters and framed prints of a fiery Adolph Hitler delivering an impassioned speech. A prepubescent boy wears a burgundy T-shirt that reads “PUNK NAZI” emblazoned with a swastika. “I don’t idealize Hitler, I simply adore the soldiers’ paraphernalia,” said Henry Mulyana, owner of Soldaten Kaffee (German for ‘The Soldiers’ Café’) in Bandung City, which opened in 2011. Customers can order “Nazi goring” (a version of traditional fried rice) served on swastika-motif china by a waiter wearing a black SS uniform.

The recent bizarre phenomenon of Nazi imagery in Indonesia would be absurdly laughable if it wasn’t so disturbing. Indonesia’s poor education system and historical ignorance may be at the root of the irreverent prevalence of Nazi imagery. Indonesia is a diverse country consisting of more than 300 ethnic groups and over 700 languages, yet few of the nation’s 240 million people receive formal education about race relations. Schools omit world history curriculum, which, according to the Jakarta Globe, contributes to the ignorance of sensitive social topics. “It is not uncommon,” says the Conversation, “for Indonesians to say ‘I like Hitler’ when meeting someone from Germany.”

“Contrary to their European peers, Indonesian students hardly receive any history lessons on World War II. They know nothing about the persecution of Jews, for example,” according to a history professor at the Gadjah Mada University of Yogyakarta in Java. “They see Hitler as a revolutionary, similar to Che Guevara, not as someone who is responsible for the death of millions of Jews…[T]hey’re attracted to emblems of Nazi Germany because they’ve become acquainted with these symbols through punk and hard-rock videos. In their view, these symbols are a representation of rebellion.”

Adolf Hitler bumper sticker, Lombok Barat, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. Courtesy of Klaus Stiefel via Flickr

The evidence pointing to Indonesia’s poor education system, however, suggests a more fundamental issue at stake in the resurgence of Nazi imagery. From 1967 to 1998, Indonesia was ruled by an authoritarian, pseudo-Fascist government that strictly controlled school curriculum. “The Ministry of Education prohibited teachers from educating students on international genocide, political violence, or racial conflicts,” said Gene Netto, an English teacher from Jakarat. “Most students graduated without ever having heard of the Holocaust…Students were only taught about the glory and grandeur of Indonesia as a country.”

Indeed, Indonesia has a historic relationship with Nazis specifically and Fascism broadly. During the 1930s, while Indonesia was under the control the Netherlands, Nazi publications were translated and disseminated throughout the country; Hitler’s concept of a “Greater Germany” inspired similar ideals, “Indonesia Mulia” (esteemed Indonesia) and “Indonesia Raya” (great Indonesia), galvanizing the Indonesian National Party (PNI) that was instrumental in achieving independence from the Dutch in 1949. Soekarno, the leader of the independence movement, and subsequently the country’s first president, revered Hitler’s vision of the Third Reich, declaring in 1963, “It’s in the Dritte Reich that the Germans will see Germany at the apex above other nations in this world.” Suharto, the second Indonesian president, came to power in 1967 following a military coup that deposed Soekarno, immediately consolidating government power around the military, consequently instituting a military dictatorship. Building on Soekarno’s Nazi inspired ideals, Suharto’s regime ruthlessly killed criminal and political prisoners, and conducted genocides, most infamously in East Timor. A pro-democracy Indonesian revolution ended Suharto’s long reign in 1998, but the neo-Fascist rhetoric has resumed once again during the current presidential election.

Prabowo Subianto, one of the two front runners in the Indonesian election, is a “continuation” of Suharto’s “fascist rule,” according to Indonesian scholar Andre Vltchek writing in Counter Punch. Prabowo has historic roots in Indonesia’s autocratic government; not only did his father serve as Suharto’s cabinet minister, Prabowo is Suharto’s son in law, and commanded the Special Forces group that spearheaded a brutal occupation and genocide of East Timor in 1976. Prabowo’s resume gives a clear indication that he will be as authoritarian and as cruel as Suharto, if not more so. As Foreign Policy explains, “Suharto-style authoritarianism remains alive and well,” including politics of exclusion, fear, and intimidation; as a campaign spectacle, Prabowo rode a horse into a stadium full of supporters in formation, wearing white uniforms and red berets. Allusions to Mussolini could not be more complete.

A voting bulletin just after the official closing of elections at a voting station in Jakarta. Courtesy of Lord Mountbatten Via Wikipedia.

What is more striking, however, is that Indonesians seem to embrace the Fascist imagery and political rhetoric. “We need Adolf Hitler! In order to fully restore law and order” a businessman in Sumatra exclaimed. “I’m not personally familiar with the [Nazi] ideology, but even if I am, I don’t think I’d find it completely disagreeable,” said Mulyana, the owner of the Nazi-themed café. “For example, communism in Indonesia was prohibited, but it’s flourishing in China. Maybe it’s just a matter of politics.” In June, Indonesian pop star Ahmad Dhani released a music video in support of Prabowo, dressed in a black Nazi uniform, singing a modified version of Queen’s “We Will Rock You.”

“What is the connection between German soldiers and Indonesia?” Dhani asked rhetorically. “We Indonesians didn’t kill millions of Jews, right?”

The ballots are in but the election is still undecided. Both candidates — Prabowo and Djoko “Jokowi” Widodo — are claiming victory, citing unofficial results conducted by private polling agencies, and accusing each other of election fraud. By law, the Indonesian Election Commission must announce the official results today. Whoever wins, this election marks a clear resurgence of Indonesia’s latent Fascism. The Mussolini-style political campaigns, Nazi-themed cafés, and stenciled images of Hitler plastered through the streets, are not as horrifying, though, as the fact that the Indonesian people seem completely comfortable with the pervasiveness of Fascist symbolism. As we have seen with ‘neo-Fascists’ in Israel, graffiti is a bellwether for subterranean political currents in Indonesian society.

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Feature image courtesy of [Ikhlasul Amal via Flickr]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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