Bulletin 207
Subject: ON ECONOMIC REALISM AND
"THE
NATURE OF THE BEAST" : FROM THE CENTER FOR THE ADVANCED STUDY OF
AMERICAN
INSTITUTIONS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS,
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
Not withstanding the doomed neo-conservative project, called "The
New
American Century," which met resistance almost from the start and
now
seems to be fatally wounded, the Bush-II White House is struggling to
stay
afloat in a sea of indictments with new leaks everyday threatening the
integrity of his tightly knit phalanx of corporate-government interests
in
Washington, D.C. Our readers are encouraged not to suffer amnesia during the
vociferous
days of protest which lie ahead. (The emancipation from slavery,
wrote one
abolitionist, does not rely on changing the names of the masters.)
As a radical reminder of the nature of the beast, our research center
invites
readers go back and take a good look at the so-called Clinton Doctrine and his
administrations foreign policy (before Bush-II) under the
guidance of
Ms. Madeleine Albright, to better understand the economic imperatives
of
American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. [For more on
this
subject, we recommend the writings of our CEIMSA research associate,
Professor Edward
S. Herman.]
If the 800-pound gorilla has been wounded by the resistance in
Below, in item A., is a
description of The
November 2nd Mobilization across the
Item B. is a article by
award-winning
journalist Greg Palast, which was first published in Harper's Magazine, on
the
economic consequences of the war in Iraq, i.e. a defeat for the
neoconservatives
at the Pentagon and for neo-liberal theory; and a victory for
the Arab
oligopoly which controls the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries
(OPEC), the Arab-dominated oil cartel.
Item C. is an article by
Harold Pinter,
who recently won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature in which he
reminds
readers that the Bush-II administration in responsible for the killings
of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians in less than three years of
illegal
warfare.
Item D. is a reminder of
the status
of
In item E. Dollars & Sense shares
with us
some "left-wing visions of the future" by renowned American
activists.
Item F. is a reminder by
Robert Weissman
of Multinational Monitor that democratic
movements have won significant victories in the past: "The People's
Triumphs Over Corporate Power".
And finally, item G. is
Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies/
Director of Research
Universit
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/
___________________
A.
from
ZNet
| Activism
1 November 2005
by Debra Sweet
On November 2, people in 67 cities, 43
colleges and universities, and 90
high schools (at last count) are walking out of school and work and
demonstrating to drive out the Bush regime.
This will be the first major proclamation of an unprecedented and
urgently
needed social movement in this country: a movement aimed - not at this
or that
policy - but directly at driving out a regime.
The past week underscored just why a whole new level of opposition this
movement to Drive Out the Bush Regime - is needed, now! In the face of
setbacks
like the Miers withdrawal, Libby's indictment, global condemnation of
November 2nd, as the beginning of this movement to drive out the Bush
regime,
is history in the making.
And building up to November 2nd, this is what has happened already:
- Thousands have signed the Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime including
Nobel
Laureate Harold Pinter, Jane Fonda, Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Walker, Eve
Ensler,
Richard Serra, Jonathan Kozol, Gore Vidal, Cindy Sheehan, Howard Zinn,
Michael
Eric Dyson, Russell Banks, Cornel West, Michael Ratner, Ron Kovic,
Mumia
Abu-Jamal, Ed Asner, Kevin Powell, Boots Riley and Tom Morello [Go to
website
for quotes from the voices speaking out]. They join organizations like
Code
Pink, the Progressive Democrats of America, the National Lawyers Guild,
ACT
UP/NY, ANSWER/NY, the Campus Anti-War Network, and other organizations
in
making this call.
- A battle is brewing over high school students walking out in schools
through
out
- In the four months since the WCW call was issued, chapters have been
formed
in 53 cities, with demonstrations taking place in another 14. The 34
states now
covered are an equal mix of blue and red. Along with New York, San
Francisco,
Chicago, LA, there are demonstrations planned in Norfolk, Virginia;
Burlington,
Vermont; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Hood River, Oregon;
Boone,
North Carolina; Great Falls, Montana; and Springfield, Missouri.
- Katrina Survivors will demonstrate in New Orleans at Jackson Square,
the very
site of Bushs nationally-televised speech after Katrina, in which he
laid out
his sickening plans for re-building New Orleans. Malik Rahim of Common
Ground
Collective has issued a statement calling on Katrina survivors wherever
they
are to join the protests.
- The battle for public opinion is becoming sharper and more contested.
At 3pm
on Monday, October 31, Hot
- Street-theatre depicting the horrors of Guntanamo has provoked
tremendous
debate on our moral and political responsibility in these times.
Millions are outraged by the Bush program of war, torture and a rising
theocracy, yet it is being proven time and again that the Democrats,
and
politics as usual, is not, and will not provide a vehicle to express
this
outrage. And, as we say in our call, There is not going to be some
magical
"pendulum swing." People who steal elections and believe they're on a
"mission from God" will not go without a fight.
The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very
quickly, in a
fascist way, and for generations to come. .. But Silence and paralysis
are NOT
acceptable. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you
will learn
or be forced to accept. .. History is full of examples where people who
had
right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious.
And it
is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out,
only to get
swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined. as our Call
puts it. (www.worldcantwait.org).
The World Cant Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime! is seeking to create a
political situation where the Bush regime's program is repudiated,
where Bush
himself is driven from office, and where the whole direction he has
been taking
society is reversed.
November 2nd must be the first giant step in this movement, making a
powerful
statement: "NO! THIS REGIME DOES NOT REPRESENT US! AND WE WILL DRIVE IT
OUT!" Join us go to www.worldcantwait.org for more info on the convergence closest to you or start one in your
campus,
your town or your city.
B.
From Greg Palast :
October 24, 2005
www.GregPalast.com
OPEC AND THE
ECONOMIC CONQUEST OF
(Why
Twilight of the neocon gods)
by Greg Palast (*)
[By special
arrangement
with Harper's
magazine, we are reproducing here for the first time the entire
updated
article on the
TWO AND A HALF YEARS AND $202 BILLION into the war in
Just what to do with this proxy power has been, almost since President
Bush's
first inaugural, the cause of a pitched battle between neoconservatives
at the
Pentagon, on the one hand, and the State Department and the oil
industry, on
the other. At issue is whether
According to insiders and to documents obtained from the State
Department, the
neocons, once in command, are now in full retreat. Iraq's system of oil
production, after a year of failed free-market experimentation, is
being
re-created almost entirely on the lines originally laid out by Saddam
Hussein.
Under the quiet direction of U.S. oil company executives working with
the State
Department, the Iraqis have discarded the neocon vision of a laissez
faire,
privatized oil operation in favor of one shackled to quotas set by
OPEC, which
have been key to the 148% rise in oil prices since the beginning of
2002. This
rise is estimated to have cost the
Given this economic blow, and given that OPEC states account for 46% of
America's oil imports, it may seem odd that the United States'
"remaking" of Iraq would allow for a national oil company that props
up OPEC's price gouging. And in fact the original scheme for
reconstruction, at
least the one favored by neoconservatives, was to privatize
Under
By February 2003, Cohen's position had been enshrined as official
policy, in
the form of a hundred-page blueprint for the occupied nation titled,
"Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Sustainable Growth"-a plan
that generally embodied the principles for postwar Iraq favored by
Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and the
Iran-Contra
figure Elliott Abrams, now Deputy National Security Adviser. Nominally
written
by a committee of Defense, State, and Treasury officials, the blueprint
was in
fact the brainchild of a platoon of corporate lobbyists, chief among
them the
flattax fanatic Grover Norquist. From overhauling tax rates to
rewriting
copyright law, the document mapped out a radical makeover of Iraq as a
free-market Xanadu-a sort of Chile on the Tigris-including, on page 73,
the
sell-off of the nation's crown jewels: "privatization... [of] the oil
and
supporting industries."
Following the
In plotting the destruction of OPEC, the neocons failed to predict the
virulent
resistance of insurgent forces: the
The working group's ideas about the war had been far less starry-eyed
than
those of the neocons. "The petroleum industry, the chemical industry,
the
banking industry-they'd hoped that Iraq would go for a revolution like
in the
past and government was shut down for two or three days," Aljibury told
me.
"You have a martial law . . . and say
Roughly six months before the invasion, the Bush Administration
designated
Philip Carroll to advise the Iraqi Oil Ministry once
Soon after Carroll resigned his post in September 2003, the new
provisional
government appointed an oil minister, Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum. Uloum (who
had
been maneuvered into the job by then-neocon favorite Ahmad Chalabi)
quickly
fired Muhammad al-Jiburi, chief of Iraq's State Oil Marketing
Organization, and
Thamer Ghadhban, the expert in charge of the southern oil fields, both
of whom
had been trusted by the Western oil industry. Production faltered from
a
combination of incompetence, wholesale theft (
With pipelines exploding daily, the fantasy of remaking
In November 2003, McKee quietly ordered up a new plan for
For months, the State Department officially denied the existence of
this
323-page plan for Iraq's oil, but when I identified the document's
title from
my sources and threatened legal action, I was able to obtain the
complete
report, dated December 2003 and entitled "Options for Developing a Long
Term Sustainable Iraqi Oil Industry." The multi-volume document
describes
seven possible models of oil production for
While promoting IOC control of the fields, the authors take care to
warn the
Iraqi government against attempting to squeeze IOC profits: "Countries
that do not offer risk-adjusted rates of return equal to or above other
nations
will be unlikely to achieve significant levels of investment,
regardless of the
richness of their geology." Indeed, to outbid other nations for Big
Oil's
favor will require Iraq to turn over quite a large share of profits,
especially
when competing against countries such as Azerbaijan that have given
away the
store. The Azeri government, notes the report, has "been able to
partially
overcome their risk profile and attract billions of dollars of
investment by
offering a contractual balance of commercial interests within the risk
contract." This refers to the fact that
Given how easily the interests of OPEC and those of the IOCs can be
aligned, it
is certainly understandable why smashing the oil cartel would not
strike oilmen
as a good idea. In 2004, with oil approaching the $50-a-barrel mark all
year,
the major
When I talked to Ariel Cohen at Heritage, his dream of smashing OPEC in
shambles, he blamed the State Department for acquiescing to the Saudis
and to
According to Morse, the switch to an OPEC-friendly policy for
Even, I asked, if those are artificially high prices, set by OPEC? "The
VP's office [has] not pursued a policy in Iraq that would lead to a
rapid
opening of the Iraqi energy sector . . . so they have not done
anything, either
with producers or energy policy, that would put us on a track to say,
'We're
going to put a squeeze on OPEC.'"
Opposition to OPEC was handled in a style that would have made Saddam
proud. On
May 20, 2004, Iraqi police raided Ahmad Chalabi's home in
But just when you thought the fat lady sang for the neo-cons, who
should rise
from his crypt eight months later but Ahmad Chalabi. In January 2005,
Chalabi
cut a deal with his former oil minister's father, a Shia power broker,
and rode
that religious ethnic vote back into office. Chalabi landed himself the
post of
Second Deputy Prime Minister and, in addition, the tantalizing title of
interim
oil minister. The espionage investigation was dropped; the King of
But Chalabi had learned his lesson: don't mess with
And Dick Cheney, far from "putting the squeeze on OPEC," has taken
his de facto seat there, assenting by silence to the oil monopoly's
piratical
price gouging. But hasn't OPEC's stratospheric crude prices choked the
life out
of
------------------
C.
from Harold Pinter :
The
Independent
October 30, 2005
ZNet |
Torture and Misery in
the Name of Freedom
by Harold Pinter (*)
[The following
remarks
were adapted during Mr. Pinter's acceptance speech on winning the
Wilfred Owen
Award earlier this year. ]
The
great poet
Wilfred Owen articulated the tragedy, the horror -- and indeed the pity
-- of
war in a way no other poet has. Yet we have learnt nothing. Nearly 100
years
after his death the world has become more savage, more brutal, more
pitiless.
But the "free world" we are told, as embodied in the
What would Wilfred Owen make of the invasion of
An independent and totally objective account of the Iraqi civilian dead
in the
medical magazine The Lancet estimates that the figure approaches
100,000. But
neither the
We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable
acts of
random murder, misery and degradation to the Iraqi people and call it "
bringing freedom and democracy to the
You may say at this point: what about the Iraqi elections? Well,
President Bush
himself answered this question when he said: "We cannot accept that
there
can be free democratic elections in a country under foreign military
occupation". I had to read that statement twice before I realised that
he
was talking about Lebanon and Syria.
What do Bush and Blair actually see when they look at themselves in the
mirror?
I believe Wilfred Owen would share our contempt, our revulsion, our
nausea and
our shame at both the language and the actions of the American and
British
governments.
(*)Harold Pinter recently won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Published on
Friday, first published on 14 October 2005 Independent/UK.
____________________
D.
from Dr. Amir Ali
copyright: May 2003
Focus on
American and
Arab Interests and Relations
Lifting the Iraq
Embargo After Almost 2 Million Deaths
(What Have We Learned From the Embargo's Lessons?)
by Amir Ali
On May 22, 2003, the United Nations Security
Council
passed resolution 1483 finally lifting the 12-year embargo on Iraq. The
United
Nations had imposed a comprehensive ban on trade with Iraq on August 6,
1990,
under resolution 661, amounting to a complete siege on the country. The
embargo
was then enforced by a military land, air, and sea blockade. This
blockade
continued until the end of the recent 2003 war, with land border
checkpoints in
Jordan, naval interdiction of ships, and no-fly zones imposed in the
north and
south of the country.
After the imposition of the embargo, a devastating bombing campaign
against
Iraq in 1991 destroyed the country's civilian infrastructure (water,
sewage,
and electrical power infrastructure, among other sectors). Much of the
diseases
rampant in Iraq are due to the destruction of the civilian
infrastructure and
lack of spare parts in the 1991 war. Some of which was modestly
repaired
between 1991 and 2003, was destroyed again in the 2003 war.
Contaminated
drinking water and lack of electricity for hospitals are a major cause
of the
suffering for Iraqs twenty five million people today.
In addition, the depleted uranium (DU) shells used in both the 1991 and
2003
wars have caused a significant increase in radiation-related cancers
and birth
defects. Iraq still does not have the necessary tools (primarily due to
the
embargo) to clean up the DU contamination.
What Was Destroyed in War
The 2003 war can only be a continuation of what happened in 1991, since
the
12-year embargo did not allow the rebuilding of what was destroyed
then. The
1991 war destroyed or severely damaged the following sectors of the
civilian infrastructure,
and the 12-year embargo prevented its the proper reconstruction:
1) Drinking water infrastructure
2) Sewage system
3) Electrical power grid
4) National healthcare infrastructure (more than 100 hospitals and
healthcare
centers destroyed)
5) National education system (over 4,000 schools, institutes, colleges,
universities destroyed)
6) Transportation sector (air traffic banned, sea vessels damaged,
railroad
cars & trucks crumbling)
7) Telecommunications (telephone exchanges and transmitters destroyed)
8) Textile and other light industries (factories destroyed)
9) Pharmaceutical sector (factories destroyed and components and
ingredients
banned by embargo)
10) Social fabric and modernity (modern society reduced to sufficing
with
obtaining food and medicine only)
Summary of the Effects
According to the humanitarian reports, the ongoing embargo imposed in
1990,
coupled with the destruction caused by the 1991 Gulf war, has in turn
directly
caused the following:
1) As of March 2003 (just prior to the war), between 1.7 and 2 million
Iraqi
civilians have died due to malnutrition and disease, about 700,000 of
them are
children. Health Ministry documents under-5 and over-50 deaths due to
disease
and/or malnutrition at 1.7 million. If over-5 and under-50 age sectors
are
added, which is well over 500,000 deaths, that makes the total number
of deaths
over 2 million. Estimates of deaths due to the 2003 war range from
10,000 to
100,000.
2) Prior to the 2003 war, 1.5 million children were made orphans.
3) Prior to the 2003 war, 10,000 Iraqi civilians were dying every month
(half
of which were children). That amounted to 333 deaths a day, or 14
deaths an
hour. An Iraqi civilian died from malnutrition and disease every 4
minutes.
Since the 2003 war caused even more destruction of the civilian
infrastructure
(water, electricity, etc), coupled with the extensive of anti-personnel
cluster
bombs dropped on Iraq, and the mass lootings of hospitals and
pharmacies, this
average will be greatly skewed for the initial months after the 2003
war, until
such a time when the civilian infrastructure is properly rebuilt.
4) The combination of the destruction of the water pipes and the water
pumping
stations in the 1991 war and the looting after the 2003 war, coupled
with the
lack of chlorine and electricity to re-activate the pumps for over 12
years due
largely to the embargo, all make clean drinking water widely
unavailable today
in Iraq, and thereby creating a dangerous recipe for a rapid spread of
infectious diseases and possible epidemics. Prior to 1990, over 90% of
Iraqis
has access to clean drinking water, whereas it was between 33-50% just
prior to
the 2003 war (1999 UN Report).
5) The destruction of the national medical healthcare system has been
one of
the largest single contributors to the death and disease in Iraq. Over
100
hospitals and healthcare centers were destroyed in the 1991 war. Prior
to 1990,
over 90% of Iraqis had access to high quality medical care, free of
charge,
whereas as the majority of Iraqis lack it now (1999 UN Report).
6) The destruction of the national school system in the 1991 war has
caused a
sharp decline in the overall literacy rate. Half of Iraq's schools
(4,000 out
of 8,000) were bombed. The remaining schools (4,000) sharply decayed
and became
dilapidated due to the 12-year embargo. This lack of enough schools
coupled
with Iraq's growing population, made the problem even worse. When Iraq
had over
8,000 functioning schools in 1990, the country's population was about
18
million. Now that Iraq's population is well over 25 million, the number
of
functioning schools is less than a quarter of what it was in 1990. This
severe
shortage of schools has caused a sharp increase in the illiteracy rate
and led
to children wandering in the streets. Prior to 1990, over 80% of Iraqis
could
read and write, whereas now the school attendance is almost 50% (1999
UN
report).
7) Prior to the 2003 war, the local Iraqi currency (dinar) had been
decimated
as a result of U.S. counterfeiting efforts, the 1991 destruction of the
civilian infrastructure, and the 12-year embargo which banned foreign
(hard)
currency from legally entering the country. The combination of the
counterfeiting, bombing, and embargo has caused the value of the dinar
to drop
from its original value of just over three dollars to being worth
1/20th of a
cent (20 dinars makes a cent), just prior to the 2003 war.
8) Prior to the fall of the former government, Iraq was essentially a
massive
welfare state. The state employed over a million people and provided
food
coupons for over 80% of Iraq's 25 million people. The fall of the
government
meant the effective end of this welfare state. In addition, the U.S.
administration's firing of hundreds of thousands of paid state
employees has
made the situation even worse. The government employees, who were
barely living
above the starvation level, are now unemployed and income-less.
9) Clearly the most short-sighted decision taken yet by the U.S.
administration
in Baghdad was to totally dissolve Iraq's military, leaving its
employees with
no compensation at all. That decision meant that over half a million
ex-military men were left to starve, along with their families. Since
the
typical Iraqi family is made of at least five members, that meant at
least 2.5 million
Iraqis were left to starve. What would prevent these starving men from
armed
revolt to avoid starvation? Anyone with some common sense would have
devised a
plan to either retire these men with some type of retirement income to
prevent
them from starving and revolting, or offering them new jobs as
policemen or the
like, similar to what the U.S. military did with the former Japanese
soldiers
after World War 2. This decision is indeed a recipe for disaster.
Unfortunately Iraq is to remain a military occupied zone for the
forseeable
future. The new UN Security Council resolution
Although, the resolution calls for "a process leading to an
internationally recognized, representative government of Iraq," it does
not place any time limits or bench marks for this to happen. In other
words,
the U.S. and British military occupation can take as long as they want
to
before forming a new Iraqi government. And although paragraph 25 calls
for a "review
[of] the implementation of this resolution within twelve months of
adoption," it does not specifically place any deadlines whatsoever to
establish an Iraqi government. In other words, Iraq is now the property
of the
U.S. and British militaries, with no deadline or specified timeframe of
when
Iraq can be free and independent.
The text referring to the lifting of the 12-year embargo is in
paragraphs 10
and 16 of resolution 1483, which specifically voided the original
embargo
resolution 661 of 1990 and the so-called "oil-for-food" resolution
986 of 1995, which allowed the UN to control Iraq's oil exports. The
resolution
honored the current 6-month UN oil plan, but specifically dissolved the
UN oil
program and handed over all responsibility and monies over to the newly
formed
Development Bank administered by the US and British military authority.
A very strange paragraph in this resolution obliges Iraq to continuing
paying
5% of its oil revenues to the 1991 war compensation fund. According to
the UN's
official website as of 5-20-2003, Iraq has already paid almost 20
billion
dollars to this compensation fund established under resolution
Resolution 986 of 1995 originally ordered Iraq to pay one-third of its
UN oil
plan to this compensation fund. This 33% percent of Iraq's oil revenue
was paid
from December 1996 until December 2000. After December 2000, the
percentage was
changed to 25%. The latest resolution, 1483, now sets this compensation
to 5%.
Since Iraq already has paid almost 20 billion dollars to a host of
nations and
multinational corporations, why is Iraq still ordered to pay this
compensation,
especially when Iraq badly needs the money to repair its civilian
infrastructure still suffering from the 1991 war? Further, since the UN
did NOT
authorize the 2003 war, thereby making it an illegal war, why should
Iraq be
forced to continue pay compensation, when it itself deserves
compensation for
being attacked in the 2003 war?
The ironic part in all this is the original embargo resolution 661 of
1990
stated that it would be lifted after Iraq left Kuwait. After the 1991
war, the
conditions for lifting the embargo were the so-called "weapons of mass
destruction." The 12-year embargo was maintained and justified by this
unsubstantiated excuse. It is quite clear now after the 2003 war that
those
weapons were destroyed immediately after the 1991 war. The reason why
the U.S.
and British military failed to prove or find any prohibited weapons in
Iraq,
after the 2003 invasion, was because there weren't any. The 2003 war
clearly
proved what earlier UN reports and weapons inspectors like Scott Ritter
had
said all along, that Iraq destroyed its weapons in the early years
after the
1991 war, and that Iraq was effectively disarmed by the mid-1990's.
In other words, the excuse of "weapons of mass destruction" used to
maintain this crippling embargo for 12-years and then to invade Iraq,
was just
that, an excuse, not backed up by any facts. Twelve years of starvation
and
deprivation was justified by non-existent weapons. Almost 2 million
Iraqis died
needlessly due to the embargo for an imaginary excuse, called "weapons
of
mass destruction."
The 2003 war proved that the 12-year embargo itself was the only real
weapon of
mass destruction in Iraq, a weapon that the Iraqi people are still
paying a
high price for and still suffering from this failed policy built on
misinformation and/or disinformation.
This embargo has killed so many and devasted the lives of almost all
Iraqis.
Almost everyone is in agreement that lifting the embargo is a good
thing. It is
long overdue, but still a good thing. Nevertheless the sufferings and
injustices of the embargo has left a permanent mark on Iraqi society.
This
should help explain the phenomenon of why not many Iraqis are
celebrating this
long overdue action.
Many Iraqis are asking "Who will compensate the families of almost 2
million Iraqis who needlessly died for this terrible policy of
maintaining the
embargo for 12 years?" That injustice remains as a legacy for a failed
policy that we as a nation should learn from, in order to avoid similar
mistakes in the future.
The most important lesson that we should learn from this catastrophe is
that
embargos (sanctions) do NOT work to force behavioral changes from
governments,
rather they only hurt and kill innocent civilians. Let us hope we never
again
use embargos (sanctions) as a tool of foreign policy.
2003 All Rights Reserved by FAAIR.
www.faair.org
____________________
E.
from DOLLARS & SENSE
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2004
Thirty Years from Today : Visions of Economic Justice
I would like to see a completely gender equitable world 30 years from
nowan
equal proportion of men and women working for pay and earning the same
amount
on average, regardless of which jobs they are in. Similarly, I would
like to
see the elimination of race and ethnicity-based differences in
economics and
politics; a more gender- and race-integrated work force in which most
jobs
are not sex and race typed as they are now; men and women sharing
equally in
the care of children, elders, and other family members or friends in
need;
everyone able to choose the partners and family compositions that suit
them
best, including living
alone or living communally; and all groups represented in governments
according
to their share in the population. In other words, the complete
elimination of
all discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual
orientation.
Such a change would eliminate a large share of poverty. Paying women
comparably
with similarly qualified men, for example, would eliminate an estimated
half of
all
poverty in families with working women in them. Nine of ten long-term
low
earners (those earning less than $15,000 per year across 15 years) are
women.
The low-wage labor market is very largely a female labor market, with
women
often working in jobs that pay less because women hold them.
While many more changes would be necessary to bring about a more
democratic
economy in which the average person has more control over her or his
economic
fate, I would like to see us start by achieving equal pay for
comparable work
in the
labor market as well as an equitable distribution of family care at
home. Heidi
Hartmann
Where the United States has declared an end to military
intervention, has
eliminated its intelligence agencies, has dismantled its overseas
military
bases, has reduced its armed forces to a small peace-keeping contingent
ready
to heed the call of the U.N. General Assembly for emergencies, and
where the
resultant saving of half a trillion dollars is then added to another
half
trillion dollars that comes from a wealth tax and a truly progressive
income
tax, the trillion dollars then to be used in the following ways:
that this program be enacted. Howard Zinn
We build the ark and call assembly. We float like butterflies and
sting
like bees. We use our little mice teeth to chew the insulation off the
mainstream media. We use our little mole claws to burrow under the
walls of
orthodoxy.
We send our multicolored warblers to harmonize into the skies. We gum
up the
circular machineries of might-makesright just so and their humvee
elephant
treads tear up the very superhighways that they travel on.
We stand on principle, reroute the power, and redesign the system. We
share our
code. We secede from empire and weave our economic bill of rights into
the
center of the world-wide web. We give everyone a stake in our
collective
enterprise, for which they pay with work and taxes, if they can. We
defend the
commons, dancing, demand democracy, and inch toward global economic
care. Nancy
Folbre
Whether in 30 years there will be a more economically just world
depends on
several factors, including the ability of progressive social movements
to
advance beyond resistance and articulate a program for power. If we
succeed, we
will have to address the potential environmental catastrophe facing
this
planet; the need for global wealth redistribution; the provision of
education
and health care. But we will also have to rethink the role of people in
controlling
their own destinies. Democracy must be more than multi-party elections;
it must
concern the ability of regular people to engage in a process of
transformation
of their societies.
We must develop a vision and organizational form to pull together
diverse
political forces, rejecting the postmodern notions of struggling only
along
identity lines, and advance
a program for social transformation. We must build a compelling social
vision
that, while recognizing the deep fissures that divide us, unites our
struggles. Bill Fletcher
In plenty of ways, the aims of the U.S. and global economic justice
movements appear to be receding today, not drawing closer. Still, it is
important to keep those aims in mind. On this 30th anniversary, Dollars
& Sense asked a number of thinkers and activists to describe
their
vision of a more economically just world 30 years hence, and to outline
what
they consider the most important steps to take today to move toward
that
vision.
Possibly the most important task for the next 30 years is to ensure
that we
understand the history of the past fifty. That is true in the strategic
and
political sphere, where much about the Cold War and our deep politics
remains
half-hidden.
But it is also true in economics. Here deeply flawed and sometimes
fraudu- But
it is also true in economics. Here deeply flawed and sometimes fraudu-
lent
doctrinessuch as natural rate theories of unemployment and interest,
phobias
about deficits, and misguided
notions about debt corrupt thought and confuse policy. Only in such a
climate
can an otherwise sensible public get whipped up over invented problems
of
Social Security 40 years hence, while little is done about nuclear
risks and
nothing is done about our precarious dependence on oil. Outrage and
activism
are necessary but not sufficient.
Thirty years from now the problems of peace, full employment
prosperity,
economic justice, nuclear security, and environmental sustainability
will be
much the same as today.
If we understand them a little better, we may do a better job of
getting them
right from time to time. In particular, if by the centenary of Keyness General
Theory of Employment,
Interest and Money in 2036 the world has ment, in 2036
the world has
a decent community of people whove read it, that would be progress
indeed. James
K. Galbraith
In the short run, any changes that improve the bargaining power and
economic conditions of workers versus owners and what we might call the
coordinator class (managers, lawyers, doctors, etc.)as well as of
poorer
developing economies versus dominant first-world economieswill be
highly
progressive. So too will be a shift in investment spending from war and
maintaining the advantages of the rich to addressing the needs of the
majority.
Eliminating the World Bank, IMF, and WTO and replacing them with new
institutions meant to bend the rules and dynamics of international
exchange so
that most of the benefits of trade accrue to the poor and weak rather
than
overwhelmingly to the rich and powerful would also be very positive.
But accomplishing all that depends, in some considerable part, on
people
believing that these changes would lead in time to a new world with
different
economic and social logicsnot just to old institutions later
re-imposing and
re-intensifying old hierarchies against our innovations. In the
economic
sphere, for me, that means replacing private ownership of productive
assets,
corporate divisions of labor, remuneration for property, power, or even
output,
authoritarian decision making, and either markets or central planning,
and thus
class rule, with, instead, workers and consumers councils, balanced job
complexes, remuneration for duration, intensity, and harshness of work,
self-managed decision making, and participatory planning, and
thus
classlessnesswhich is to say, replacing capitalism with participatory
economics. As an initial focus, I am partial to fighting for a
dramatically
shorter workday and work week, then augmenting this change with
redistribution,
training, and the like. Fighting for reforms that can better peoples
lives in
the present expands aspirations, builds organizations, and strengthens
the
commitment to win further gains. But at the same time I think its
particularly
important to develop a shared postcapitalist vision. Economic activists
must be
able to rebut Margaret Thatchers claim that There Is No Alternative by
describing and making a convincing case for that alternative. Michael
Albert
***************
Heidi Hartmann
heads the
Institute for Womens Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Howard
Zinn is
a historian and activist, professor emeritus of political science at
Boston
University, and the author of many books including A
Peoples
History of the United States. Nancy Folbre teaches economics at
the
University of Massachusetts-Amherst and is a staff economist with the Center
for Popular Economics. Bill Fletcher is president of TransAfrica
Forum and former education director of the AFL-CIO. James K. Galbraith
teaches
economics at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the
University of Texas,
Austin. Michael Albert is a founder and staff member of Z
Magazine and ZNet; he is the author of many books including Parecon:
Life
After Capitalism.
____________________
F.
from Multinational
Monitor :
JULY/AUGUST 2005
T H E P
E O P L E V S
. C O R P O R A T E P O W E R
by Robert Weissman
INDEX :
Dismantling
Apartheid
No
Nukes
Indigenous
People Mobilize
J.P.
Stevens
Airbags
Brazil's
Landless Movement
Damming
the Dams
Farmworker
Justice
Ozone
Layer Treaty
Free
and Open Software
Living
Wage Movement
Stopping
Incinerators
Justicle
for Janitors
Malaysia
Imposes Capital Controls
Biotech
Crop Bans
Access
to Essential Medicines
Campaign
Finance Reform
User
Fee Rollback
Argentina
Defies the IMF
Scaling
Back Commercialism
POPs
Treaty
Tobacco
Control Treaty
Blocking
Media Concentration
Big
Banks and the Environment
The
Unocal-Burma Lawsuit
When you are in
the
business of tracking and reporting on multinational corporate activity,
it is
inevitable that you you are going to traffic in tales of sorrow, woe
and
misery.
Deprivation of land and livelihoods; poisoning, homogenizing and
genetically
altering the food supply; price gouging and union busting; fraud and
theft;
reckless endangerment of workers and consumers; destruction of
communities and
private enclosure of public and community assets and space; denial of
life-saving medicines and marketing of deadly products; clearcutting
forests
and altering the earths climate; imposing charges for education and
healthcare
and no-charge dumping of toxics into the air and water: these are the
routine
byproducts of the multinational corporations single-minded drive for
profits.
And so, they are the stuff of Multinational Monitor reporting.
But for all their power, multinational corporations do not always
prevail.
Their plans are frequently thwarted, their power restrained, their
authority
displaced.
Almost always, a common thread ties together these defeats of corporate
power:
an organized group of people. Sometimes it is a handful of skillful
campaigners, sometimes a mass movement of millions. But people power
does
regularly overcome and triumph over concentrated corporate power.
In this issue marking Multinational Monitors twenty-fifth anniversary,
we
celebrate those citizen victories with the first of a two-part series
recounting peoples wins over corporations and their supporting
structures and
institutions.
Here, we present brief profiles of 25 victories; we will profile an
additional
25 winning campaigns in the November/ December issue.
We dont claim these are the most important achievements over corporate
power of
the last quarter century, though we do think these were all landmark
accomplishments. Nor are we making any effort to rank this list in
importance
it is presented in a very rough chronological order, taking into
account that
many of these victories have unfolded over a long period, sometimes as
long as
or longer than the lifespan of Multinational Monitor.
Want to let us know about a citizen win you think should be added to
this list?
Send us a note at monitor@essential.org.
Dismantling apartheid
After nearly five decades in force, South Africas race-based system of
apartheid collapsed in the early 1990s. Apartheid had strong cultural,
and even
religious, foundations. It was a system of political control and
exclusion. It
also functioned as a system of economic colonization, enabling the
white elite to
control the nations vast economic and natural resource wealth, and to
subjugate
black labor. Multinational corporations readily collaborated with,
buttressed
and benefited from the apartheid regime.
The overthrow of apartheid was the culmination of the long struggle of
the
South African majority for democracy and justice. The South African
liberation
movement organized resistance to oppression on a scale rarely seen. It
had an
armed struggle component, but the dramatic expressions of resistance
were overwhelmingly
nonviolent mass civil disobedience, national general strikes and more.
Without
underestimating the importance of iconic figures such as Nelson Mandela
and
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the struggle was one that threw forward
hundreds or
thousands of vibrant, charismatic and inspirational leaders, and
engaged
millions.
The international community also made an important contribution to this
struggle, Nelson Mandela noted shortly after his release from prison,
not least
through the imposition of economic and other sanctions.
Around the world, the South African solidarity movement was one of the
broadest
and most effective ever.
In the United States, much of the campaigns focus was on the
multinationals
doing business in and with South Africa. The divestment movement called
on
state and local governments to stop doing business with companies doing
business in South Africa; demanded universities and others pull their
investments from firms doing business in South Africa; and pressured
the
companies directly to pull out from apartheid South Africa.
The results were dramatic. More than 150 universities and colleges
divested in
whole or part from companies doing business in South Africa, according
to
Richard Knight of the African Activist Archive. By 1991, writes Knight,
28
states, 24 counties, 92 cities and the Virgin Islands had adopted
legislation
or policies imposing some form of sanctions on South Africa. In 1986,
overriding a veto from President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. Congress
passed a law
banning new investment in South Africa, and in 1987 the Congress passed
a law
effectively imposing double taxation on South African-related business
income,
fueling the flight of multinationals from the country. By the end of
1987,
according to Knight, more that 200 U.S. companies including such major
firms as
GM and IBM had withdrawn from South Africa.
No nukes
Even as the nuclear industry continues to posture as a safe alternative
to
fossil fuels, the nuclear purveyors are on the ropes.
In the United States, the anti-nuclear movement has stopped
construction of any
nuclear facility during Multinational Monitors lifetime.
There has not been a successful new nuclear reactor order since 1973,
points
out the Washington, D.C.-based Nuclear Information and Resource
Service, an
anti-nuclear resource center that has more than a little bit to do with
this
fact. The only major new atomic facility even proposed since the 1980s,
a
uranium enrichment plant slated for a poor, African-American community
in
northern Louisiana, was stopped by citizen activism in 1998. Moreover,
citizens
across the country have begun to actively resist existing nuclear
reactors. Ten
large commercial reactors have been closed, in large part due to
citizen
activism, in the past decade. Active and concerned people have proven
they can
take on the nuclear industry and win.
Globally, nuclear construction is on the wane. According to the World
Nuclear
Association, there was a worldwide net gain of only three nuclear
reactors from
1998 to 2003.
And in Germany, as part of the governing coalition, the Green Party led
the
country to announce a 20-year phaseout of nuclear power, which supplies
roughly
a third of the countrys power.
Indigenous peoples mobilize
Indigenous peoples have organized into powerful national, regional and
global
networks over the last quarter century. This global mobilization, as
the Forest
Peoples Programs Marcus Colchester notes in this issue, has helped curb
local
processes of expropriation of indigenous lands, defeating countless
efforts by
multinational and domestic corporations to exploit resources at the
expense of
indigenous peoples well-being. It has led to changes in national laws
and
constitutions throughout Latin America and Asia, and perhaps soon in
Africa as
well, that recognize indigenous peoples customary rights and land
claims.
A few notable highlights:
In 1993, the Inuit in Northern Canada won control of a vast territory,
known as
Nunavut, over which they now exercise governmental authority. Activists
led by
Kayapo indigenous people gathered at Altamira in 1989 and initiated a
global
campaign against a series of six dams on the Xingu river in the
Brazilian
Amazon. They convinced the World Bank and Brazilian government to
abandon plans
for the dams, though they are now being revived. ought the 28-year
struggle
over the Crandon, Wisconsin mining project to a successful conclusion
by buying
the mine site and stopping the mine permitting process. The Uwa people
in
Colombia managed to evict Occidental Petroleum from their ancestral
territories. The Uwa threatened to commit collective suicide if Oxy
proceeded
with drilling on their lands. Supported by an international campaign,
they
persuaded the oil company to abandon its oil exploration and drilling
plans.
Sewing justice in the U.S. South
Before it moved production to the Third World, the U.S. textile
industry
shifted production to the U.S. South for the same reasons it would
later make
the global shift to access cheap labor and escape unions.
The southern states presented an anti-union climate, with right-to-work
laws,
rampant intimidation of workers, workers divided by race, and a general
culture
of fear of authority. Successes in organizing the South were hard
fought, and
infrequent.
One historic victory was the successful campaign to unionize J.P.
Stevens, the
inspiration for the movie Norma Rae. For almost two decades, the
Amalgamated
Clothing & Textile Workers Union (now part of UNITE HERE) sought to
organize the then-textile giant that employed as many as 40,000
workers. J.P.
Stevens resisted with every trick in the book.
In 1976, the union launched a boycott and one of the first
union-directed
corporate campaigns against a company. Five years later, as
Multinational
Monitor was getting started, the union finally prevailed. More than
3,000
workers at 10 plants in the Carolinas and Alabama gained collective
bargaining
agreements.
Directed by Ray Rogers, the corporate campaign now a mainstay of union
organizing efforts played a key role. It targeted the financial
enterprises
interlocked with Stevens, and split them off from the textile company.
Campaign
pressure led to the resignations of top corporate officers from the
boards of
Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co. (then the nations fourth largest bank),
New
York Life Insurance Co. and J.P. Stevens itself.
Wrote the New York Times, Pressure on giant banks and insurance
companies and
other Wall Street pillars, all aimed at isolating Stevens from the
financial
community, helped generate a momentum that could not be achieved
through the
1976-1980 worldwide boycott of Stevens products or through more
conventional
uses of union muscle such as strikes and mass picketing.
Cushioning the blow
The slow introduction of life-saving airbags in motor vehicles had
nothing to
do with the state of the technology.
Airbag technology was developed in the 1950s and 1960s, and roughly
10,000
airbag-equipped cars were sold in the 1970s.
The U.S. government tried to mandate automakers install airbags, but
they
resisted with a legendary set of regulatory and legal challenges that
are,
literally, textbook the story is used in law school textbooks as
exemplifying
regulatory opposition and delay. Thousands of people died needlessly
for this
delay.
Finally, in
The industry stonewall against airbags was finally breached not by
government
regulation, but government purchase.
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader persuaded the General Services
Administration to
issue a procurement specification for airbag-equipped cars. Ford agreed
to the
specified standards, and provided 5,300 Tempos with airbags. That
prompted the
company to offer optional air bags in Tempo and Topaz models. Soon
after, Chrysler
made airbags a standard feature on many of its models, and Chrysler CEO
Lee
Iacocca, a longtime opponent, began bragging about the airbag safety
feature in
the company ads in which he starred.
Although the industry had long claimed that consumers did not care
about
safety, airbags once introduced and marketed proved enormously popular.
They
also proved to work: they reduce driver and front passenger fatalities
by more
than 30 percent, and have saved thousands of lives.
After the market had already spoken, the federal government finally
issued
mandatory requirements for airbags in 1991.
Land for the landless
Its no secret that the best way to help the rural poor is through land
reform
taking land from rich, often absentee owners of large plots and
distributing it
to the landless and peasants with small holdings.
But, for obvious reasons, genuine land reform is easier said than done.
In Brazil, a country with among the greatest wealth and land holding
inequalities in the world, one of the most dynamic non-violent peasant
movements of the last 50 years is taking matters into its own hands.
Founded in
1984, the Landless Workers Movement, known by the acronym MST, has
obtained
land title for hundreds of thousands of families. It involves more than
1.5
million people.
The MST employs an array of tactics, but its most assertive has been to
organize occupations of unproductive large plantations and settle the
landless
on them.
The movement has evolved into much more than a vehicle to address the
land
hunger of the poor. It has knit together settled families into dozens
of
agricultural cooperatives. It has established 1,800 public schools,
with more
than 150,000 students enrolled in primary education. It has supported
organic
farming and reforestation.
The MST has been critically engaged with the progressive government of
Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva, embracing the Brazilian presidents commitment to
justice
but criticizing the governments failure to deliver on promises of land
reform.
In November 2003, the MST reached an agreement with the government to
settle
400,000 families in the first three years of the presidents term in
office.
But, according to the MST, halfway through that period, fewer than
60,000
families have been settled and the land reform budget has been slashed.
In May 2005, the MST mobilized 12,000 peasants for a 17-day, 150-mile
protest
march, ending in Brasilia, the nations capital.
They do not intend to accept broken promises, nor do they plan on
bowing to the
power of the rich landowners, even in the face of the violence their
activists
routinely encounter.
Damming the dams
A global movement of environmental, social and indigenous organizations
has
blocked countless large dams and other plans to transform rivers. With
the Berkeley,
California-based International Rivers Network often playing a key role,
this
movement has revealed large dam technology to be misguided and insisted
that it
is unacceptable to recklessly displace and dispossess people who live
in areas
to be flooded.
Among the movements achievements:
Farmworker justice
Farmworkers are probably the most abused segment of the U.S. labor
force.
Exempted from many of the federal rules regarding the minimum wage,
worker
safety and other workplace protections, farm employers have felt free
to
mistreat and underpay their traditionally immigrant-heavy workforce.
Organizing for protection has been an immense challenge for farmworkers
for a
variety of reasons, including the claims by individual farmers that if
they pay
more, they wont remain competitive.
One solution has been to target the corporate, large-scale buyers of
farm
products, and demand they purchase produce only from farms that
recognize
unions, or pay a decent wage. Succeeding in such a campaign is
difficult, but
it can be done, as several farmworker unions and organizations have
shown.
In 2005, following a three-year boycott, the Florida-based Coalition of
Immokalee Workers won agreement from Taco Bell that it would pay a
penny-per-pound surcharge on tomatoes to increase farmworkers pay. The
company
also agreed to work for legislative reforms to strengthen farmworker
rights.
This is an important victory for farmworkers, says Lucas Benitez, a
leader of
the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, one that establishes a new standard
of
social responsibility for the fast-food industry and makes an immediate
material change in the lives of workers. This sends a clear challenge
to other
industry leaders.
The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), an affiliate of the
AFL-CIO, has
succeeded in several similar campaigns. In 1986, following a seven-year
endeavor, FLOC won a deal with Campbells Soup to enable tomato pickers
at its
suppliers to be unionized and paid a higher wage. The Campbells Soup
victory
enabled FLOC to reach deals with Midwest pickle makers Vlasic, Heinz,
Aunt
Jane, Green Bay Foods and Dean Foods all quickly agreed to union
agreements. In
North Carolina, pickle maker Mt. Olive fought FLOCs effort to obtain
union
recognition for cucumber pickers. After a more than five-year campaign,
FLOC
prevailed, and won union recognition and improved working conditions
for 8,500
Mexican and other Latin American guest workers on the North Carolina
farms
supplying Mt. Olive.
Restoring the ozone
Thanks to the resistance of DuPont and other chemical makers, it took
more than
a decade for science to be translated into action, but the Montreal
Protocol on
Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer stands as a landmark
accomplishment of
the environmental movement.
Perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date has
been the
Montreal Protocol, says Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United
Nations.
Researchers discovered in 1974 that production of CFCs (used as a
coolant and
an aerosol) and a handful of other chemicals was depleting the
atmospheric
ozone layer, which absorbs most of the cancer-causing ultraviolet
radiation
from the sun. Thinning of the ozone layer has led to a sharp rise in
skin
cancer.
It took more than a decade of further scientific investigation and
aggressive
advocacy from environmental groups for the chemical industry to
acknowledge the
problem and governments to agree to take action.
In 1987, countries adopted the Montreal Protocol. More than 180 nations
have
now signed the treaty.
It calls for countries to first freeze and then phase out
ozone-depleting
substances, with a faster timetable established for industrialized
countries
and a slower one for developing nations.
As is often the case, substituting for the phased-out chemicals has
proven much
easier than predicted. More than 90 percent of the global production
and
consumption of ozone-depleting substances has been eliminated.
The results are now beginning to be seen, though there is a major time
lag
between reduction in ozone-depleting substances and repair of the ozone
layer.
The hole in the Antarctic ozone layer, where the atmospheric
concentration is
thinnest, reached its largest size in 2003, and it has approached that
size in
2005. But scientists think the problem has now peaked, and the ozone
layer will
slowly repair itself. Full recovery, if it ever comes, is not expected
until
the middle of the century, according to the United Nations
meteorological
agency.
The lilliputians and microsoft
In its day, the Standard Oil Trust must have seemed invincible, too.
The modern equivalent must be Microsoft, which supplies the operating
system
for 90 percent of the worlds computers. One reason the company seems so
powerful in the marketplace is its response to competitive threats:
copying and
then displacing competitors innovations, or simply buying competitors
and
incorporating them into the Microsoft machine.
The most profound threat to Microsoft, it turns out, has come not from
any
corporate competitor but from a decentralized global network of
programmers of
free and open software. More than a million programmers in North
America alone
report working on some free and open software projects.
These programmers have developed an alternative operating system,
GNU/Linux,
and while their products represent only a small share of the desktop
computer
operating system market, they possess much more substantial portions of
higher-end markets. Most notably, Apache is the dominant web server,
with more
than two thirds of the market. Microsofts competitor is second with
about 20
percent. Other free and open software products including, for example,
an
alternative to Microsofts Office are rapidly gaining ground.
Now major corporations such as IBM are investing billions in the
development of
free and open software.
What is most remarkable about the free and open software movement is
that it
rejects entirely the proprietary model.
It turns out that an open approach has strong developmental advantages
with
lots of eyes looking at a problem, and each product developmental step
completely open to scrutiny, better and more stable products can be
created.
But the first motivation for the free and open software approach was
one of
principle: that ideas belong in the public domain, and should not be
owned by
private interests. With free products, people are free to use the
software,
study its source code, copy it and publish modified versions all
without paying
rents to someone who claims to own it.
One danger free software faces is that someone will take it, make an
addition
or improvement, and then claim to own their modified version. To
address this
problem, Richard Stallman, a pioneer of the movement, developed a
special
licensing arrangement known as the GNU General Public License. When a
program
is GPL-covered, explains Stallman, you are free to publish a modified
version,
but your version must also be free, meaning that I can use your
improvements
just as you can use mine.
Working for a living
The U.S. minimum wage has stagnated at $5.15 an hour for eight years.
It is now
at its lowest inflation-adjusted level since 1955 (with the exception
of 1989).
The stingy minimum wage consigns millions of workers and their families
to
poverty, and is an important factor in the ever-growing income and
wealth
inequality in the United States. The Economic Policy Institute
estimates that
8.2 million workers including those making up to a dollar more than the
minimum
wage would be affected by a minimum wage hike.
Faced with a Congress and president unwilling to budge the minimum
wage,
campaigners have turned to other policymakers.
A grassroots effort led by ACORN and other organizations and supported
by
countless community groups and labor unions has asserted the need to
respect
workers by paying them a living wage. Adjusted for the local cost of
living,
different communities define the threshold of a living wage differently
in many
places, it is set at more than twice the minimum wage.
The campaign has succeeded in getting 130 cities and counties to adopt
living
wage laws. These require government contractors, and sometimes
companies
receiving government benefits, to pay a living wage. Hundreds of
thousands of
workers are covered by these laws, which have been adopted in New York,
Los
Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia, among many other locales.
Meanwhile, campaigners have succeeded in forcing an increasing number
of states
to adopt their own minimum wage laws, which apply to all employers.
Thirteen
states now maintain minimum wage laws higher than the federal standard.
In
November 2004, voters in Florida and Nevada overwhelmingly approved
minimum
wage ballot measures, each by a greater than two-to-one margin.
Banning the burn
In a throwaway society, what happens to all the garbage? Until
recently, the
answer for much of the U.S. waste stream was: it got burned in
incinerators.
That started to change in the 1990s, as the grassroots environmental
justice
movement pointed out that burning trash didnt make it go away, it just
converted garbage into ash and air emissions. And, worse, the process
of
burning actually created toxins incineration is now recognized as a
leading
source of highly toxic dioxin, mercury, lead and other dangerous air
pollutants.
The campaign against incinerators consisted of dozens of local fights.
Waste
disposal firms located or sought to foist incinerators on working class
and
minority communities, who were presumed more likely to accept them
quietly.
Aided by organizations such as Greenpeace and what is now known as the
Center
for Health, Environment and Justice, and assisted by the fact that the
economics of incineration turned out to be disastrous for municipal
governments, community after community beat back incinerator proposals
or
forced existing facilities to close.
Healthcare Without Harm, a focused campaign on medical waste
responsible for a
surprisingly high portion of the waste stream, and with a high
proportion of
plastic waste, which when burned creates dioxin forced hospitals to
stop
sending their trash to be burned.
The result: From more than 5,000 incinerators in the United States in
the
mid-1990s, there are less than 100 today.
Now the anti-incinerator campaign has gone global. GAIA (the Global
Anti-Incinerator Alliance) has 360 member organizations in 66
countries.
Healthcare Without Harm has more than 443 member groups in 52
countries.
This global campaign, focusing heavily on reducing the amount of waste
generated as well as opposing incinerators, is chalking up an
increasing number
of victories. One example: Spearheaded by the Korea Zero Waste Movement
Network, South Korea has started limiting the use of disposable items.
Since
1999, the country has banned the free distribution of disposable items
such as
plastic shopping bags and disposable drinking cups from fast food
restaurants.
Justice for janitors
In the era of outsourcing, why should the owners of an office building
bother
to maintain a janitorial staff with decent wages and benefits, when
they can
save money and bother by contracting out the work to a cleaning firm?
That has been the thinking of more and more real estate moguls, who
have fired
their janitorial staff and replaced them with subcontracted help.
The switch has redefined the nature of a janitorial job. In Los
Angeles, for
example, in 1983, the average janitor earned $7.07 per hour and
received full
health insurance for their family. Three years later, the average wage
had
dropped by more than a third, to $4.50, and health insurance coverage
was a
relic of a bygone era.
The Justice for Janitors campaign, a project of the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU), has worked since its founding in 1985, to
undo the
changes brought about by real estate firms subcontracting, with
enormous
success.
The key structural challenge facing Justice for Janitors was the
fragility of
the cleaning firms. The firms said they didnt earn enough revenue to
pay hire
wages. If one firm were forced to pay more than competitors, it could
easily be
displaced. Or, given the low level of capitalization in the business, a
unionized
firm could simply go out of business, and then reopen with a new name.
The solution was to hold the commercial real estate firms directly
accountable,
and demand they directly pay a decent wage and provide good benefits,
or employ
cleaning firms that did so.
That solution, however, was easier said than done.
It took a major campaign of strikes, civil disobedience, demonstrations
and
broad community coalition building to force the building owners to
accept the
Justice for Janitors demands.
There are now roughly 200,000 janitors, overwhelmingly immigrants, in
SEIU.
Thanks to the Justice for Janitors campaign, they enjoy better wages,
basic
benefits and reasonable job security.
Malaysia defies IMF, imposes capital controls
In 1997, financial crisis spread throughout Asia. From South Korea to
Indonesia, countries saw their economies collapse. The poverty rate in
Indonesia, to take one example, doubled. While all of these nations had
underlying weaknesses that left them vulnerable, the proximate cause of
their
sudden and severe collapse was financial speculation and the
exaggerated
response of international financial markets to their problems.
Facing balance of payment problems, most countries turned to the IMF,
which
prescribed a combination of contractionary policies and the opening of
banking
sectors to foreign investment. Even the IMF has admitted it erred in
its
recommendations.
Malaysia took a different course. It combined expansionary policies
with
protections from overseas speculative attacks on the currency. These
measures
included fixing the exchange rate of the ringgit (the local currency)
to the
U.S. dollar, ending the ringgits trade abroad, and imposing stringent
capital
controls (including a one-year prohibition on foreign investors taking
money
out of the country).
The Malaysian economy recovered quickly, Malaysians suffered much less
pain
than people in the other affected countries, and the country was able
to
maintain its restrictions on foreign ownership.
Shunning biotech
Once permitted on market, it is not at all clear that genetically
modified
crops can ever be withdrawn.
Thats because genetically modified crops do not stay within prescribed
boundaries. Seed blows to neighboring farms and contaminates
conventional crops.
It doesnt respect property lines, or even political boundaries.
Once the genie is out of the bottle, it cant be put back in.
That means Monsanto and the rest of the biotech industry are not only
conducting a massive experiment on humans and the environment by luring
farmers
around the planet to plant biotech seed, when the health and
environmental
effects of biotech crops remain a major uncertainty. It means they are
conducting an experiment that will be difficult if not impossible to
call off.
Against this backdrop, activists in many countries have succeeded in
convincing
their governments to ban genetically modified crops.
Europe maintained an effective ban on biotech crops from 1999 to 2004,
only to
have its rules challenged by the United States, Canada and Argentina at
the
World Trade Organization. But even with the European ban lifted,
Austria,
France, Germany, Greece and Luxembourg have decided to maintain their
own bans
on eight specific genetically modified crops.
Mexico adopted a ban on genetically modified corn in 1998, but in 2002
scientists discovered native corn at its source of origin in Oaxaca,
Mexico to
be contaminated by genetically modified variants, probably due to
farmers
unwittingly planting biotech corn.
Most of Africa, with the notable exception of South Africa, imposes
major
restrictions on use of genetically modified seed. Zambia prohibits
biotech
imports, and Malawi, Lesotho, Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe all
prohibit
imports of unmilled genetically modified corn including even food aid
fearing
it might contaminate local seed supplies.
Notes Amadou Kanoute, director of Consumers International Regional
Office for
Africa, Zambia, which imposed an outright ban on the acceptance of
genetically
modified food aid, not only managed to cope with its crisis, but is now
able to
export non-genetically modified food to its neighbors.
Access to essential medicines
HIV/AIDS is the worst pandemic the world has seen since the Black
Death.
One big difference: there are treatments to keep people with HIV/AIDS
alive.
As the millennium approached, it was becoming clear to anyone who cared
to know
how severe the pandemic was. Three million people are now dying a year
from the
disease.
Yet the brand-name drug companies that controlled the patent rights on
lifesaving AIDS medications were charging people in poor countries the
same
exorbitant prices they were demanding in rich countries ($10,000 a year
per
person, or more). Where the high price in rich countries meant a drain
on public
and private insurance systems, in poor countries it meant that people
would
simply be denied the medicines they needed to survive.
Enter the access to medicines campaign, an informal collaboration of M餥cins Sans Fronti貥s (Doctors Without
Borders), chapters of the AIDS activist group ACT-UP, Health GAP, and
the
Consumer Project on Technology, among other groups.
Their pressure on the drug companies, and the U.S. government, which
was doing
the companies bidding in international fora, led the Clinton
administration in
2000 to issue an Executive Order by which the U.S. government committed
not to
pressure countries on patent issues if they were abiding by
international trade
agreements. That same year, international pressure combined with the
mobilization of the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa led to
the drug
companies dropping a suit against the South African government over a
law
intended to lower drug prices.
Then, in 2001, following negotiations with groups in the access to
medicines
campaign, the Indian company Cipla announced that it could make a
three-drug
AIDS cocktail for $350 a year.
Generic competition then drove down the price of the brand name firms
to a
fraction of what they had been.
To obtain generic medicines, Mozambique, Zambia, Indonesia, Malaysia
and South
Africa all issued compulsory licenses authorizations for generic
production of
products even while they remain on patent.
Lowering the price of drug treatment made it possible for foreign aid
to be
used to keep people with HIV/AIDS alive. Billions have been committed,
and a
million people with HIV/AIDS in the developing world are now on
treatment.
Clean campaigns
Frederick L. Webber, president of the Alliance of Automobile
Manufacturers,
knows the U.S. campaign finance system is utterly bankrupt. He says he
had an
epiphany after Hurricane Katrina. Political fundraising in this town
has gotten
out of control, he told the Washington Post.
Join the club, Mr. Webber. The corrupting influence of a system that
requires
elected officials to raise huge amounts of money from private interests
is
obvious to most of the public. But thats not enough to get the system
fixed;
the impediments to far-reaching reform, especially at the federal
level, are
overwhelming.
So, many campaign finance activists have taken their battle to the
states.
The most aggressive of the many reform proposals calls for clean money
elections public financing of public campaigns. Under the clean money
approach,
if a candidate declines the clean money option, the other candidates
get a bump
up in their public funding, so they can remain competitive.
This idea is catching on. So far, Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts, New
Mexico,
North Carolina and Vermont have adopted some variant for state
elections (not for
federal elections for House of Representatives, Senate or the
presidency).
States that have adopted the clean money approach have seen more
candidates
running, candidates spending far less time on fundraising (candidates
need to
raise a small amount of money from a broad pool of voters to become
eligible
for public funding), and less money being spent on elections.
User fee rollback
Many International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank loans have called
for the
imposition of user fees charges for the use of government-provided
services
like schools, health clinics and clean drinking water. The idea was to
raise
revenue and curb excessive demand. When a service costs money, people
will
think twice about demanding it, one World Bank report noted.
User fees definitely do work at curbing demand. For very poor people,
even
modest charges may result in the denial of access to services. When the
World
Bank mandated that Kenya impose charges of $2.15 for sexually
transmitted
disease clinic services, for example, attendance fell 35 to 60 percent.
In 2000, the U.S. Congress mandated that U.S. representatives to the
IMF, World
Bank and other international institutions oppose loans and projects
calling for
user fees for primary education and healthcare.
Slowly, this is translating into on-the-ground policy changes. Uganda,
Kenya
and Tanzania, among others, have rolled back school fees. As a result,
hundreds
of thousands of children, mostly girls, are attending schools that
otherwise
would have been closed to them.
Argentina stares down the IMF
In late 2001, Argentina defaulted on loans from private foreign
creditors.
Amidst an economic crisis, the government insisted that devoting funds
to
national needs took priority over paying back private creditors. The
government
would eventually declare unilaterally that it would discount payments
to
private creditors by 75 to 90 percent.
This move also marked a break with the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), as
the government refused to accept a number of IMF conditions in
negotiations
with the Fund. Instead, Argentina threatened not to pay back the Fund
unless it
agreed to back down on its standard policy prescriptions policies that
had
helped plunge Argentina into a severe depression from 1998 to 2002.
Shortly after default and staring down the IMF, Argentina began an
economic
recovery. By showing that it did not need any assistance from the IMF,
and by
growing very rapidly after refusing to agree to the IMFs conditions,
Argentina
put the final nail in the coffin of the Funds once-powerful influence
over
middle-income countries, says Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic
and
Policy Research in Washington, D.C. This is a very important positive
change
for those who believe that countries should, as much as possible,
choose their
own national economic policies.
Commercialism run a little bit less amok
Anyone with the remotest connection to the popular culture is aware
that the
level of commercialism in the United States has soared during
Multinational
Monitors lifetime.
But it could be worse. Parents and citizens groups, such as Commercial
Alert,
have defeated countless commercialism initiatives and expanded the
sphere of
public, commercial-free space.
Schools have been a major contested area. Responding to the
proliferation of
Coke, Pepsi and other junk food in school vending machines and
cafeterias, many
communities are now dismissing the junk food hucksters from school.
Arizona,
California, Texas and Maine and New Jersey are among the states with
bans on junk
foods in some or all schools. Cities with bans include Chicago,
Philadelphia
and Seattle.
In another notable school victory, an outfit named ZapMe proposed to
loan
computers to schools, bombard them with ads, and spy on how students
used the
Internet and then provide the data to advertisers and marketers. The
plan
collapsed and the company is out of business.
There have been dozens of victories outside of the classroom, too. Ads
on
police cars seem to be an idea thats gone the way of New Coke. San
Franciscans
voted down the idea of selling naming rights to the baseball field,
Candlestick
Park. Citizens defeated a proposal to sell naming rights to the Boston
subway
T. The South Carolina Democratic Party backed off the idea of putting
corporate
logos on primary ballots.
These ideas may sound crazy, but many commercial incursions sound nuts,
only to
then become entrenched and part of the cultural landscape.
Persistence against pollutants
There is no escape.Whoever you are, wherever you go, you will be
contaminated
by Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs).
POPs are a class of chemicals that are toxic, persist in the
environment,
accumulate in the body fat of humans and animals, concentrate up the
food
chain, and can be transported across the globe. There is strong
evidence that
even minor exposures to POPs have dangerous health and environmental
effects.
Emerging from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio came a demand to end human
production of these substances. An expanding global environmental and
public health
network organized as the International POPS Elimination Network (IPEN)
mobilized support for an international instrument to do away with POPs.
In 2001, that effort finally resulted in the Stockholm Convention on
Persistent
Organic Pollutants (POPs Treaty). Three years later, in 2004, the
fiftieth
signatory ratified the treaty, bringing it into force.
The POPs Treaty calls for the elimination of a dozen POPs nine
pesticides and
three industrial byproducts.
The ratification of this treaty is a true landmark for environmental
health,
says Monica Moore of Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), a
founding
member of IPEN. By targeting an entire class of chemicals for global
phaseout,
it moves us a giant step forward in protecting people and the planet.
In addition to the phaseout of the dozen products, the treaty is
noteworthy for
establishing the Precautionary Principle simply put, to err on the side
of
safety in the face of uncertainty as a guiding precept.
Restraining big tobacco
Thanks in significant part to the deceptive marketing and product
manipulation
efforts of Big Tobacco, tobacco-related disease takes the lives of 5
million
people a year. The World Health Organization projects that the annual
death
toll entirely preventable will rise to 10 million by 2030, with 70
percent of
the deaths occurring in developing countries.
In 2003, thanks to campaigning by public health groups, the member
countries of
the World Health Organization unanimously adopted a tobacco control
treaty, the
Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The treaty commits
those
countries which ratify it to enact comprehensive bans on tobacco
advertising,
promotion and sponsorship, use large health warnings on tobacco packs,
increase
tobacco taxes and provide for smokefree workplaces and indoor public
places. It
has the potential to save, literally, millions of lives.
Blocking media concentration
There are ever fewer corporations controlling what is shown, played and
published on television and cable, in movies, on the radio, and in
books and
magazines. Fewer than 10 conglomerates control what most people in the
United
States see, hear or read about as news, or experience as popular
culture.
Democracy activists, who believe a broader diversity of ideas and
viewpoints is
healthy indeed, essential for a functioning democracy, think the
concentration
of corporate control of the media is a bad thing.
But not the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission
(FCC). In
2003, the FCC voted 3-2 to change several of its remaining media
ownership
rules, to permit still further consolidation. One rule, for example,
prohibits
the same entity from owning a TV station and newspaper in the same
local
market.
The FCCs plans to enact this change unleashed one of the great
expressions of
grassroots dissent in recent U.S. history. Three quarters of a million
people
submitted comments against the proposal. Organizations from MoveOn.org
to the
National Rifle Association rallied members against the proposal.
The broad-based public opposition led Congress to roll back parts of
the FCCs
deregulatory agenda, though the Republican leadership maneuvered to
undermine
the congressional majoritys will to overturn the FCCs rule changes
altogether.
That broader victory would be won in the courts. An appeals court ruled
in
favor of the Prometheus Radio Project, in a legal challenge to the FCCs
rules
brought on the projects behalf by the Media Access Project. In January
2005,
the Bush administration decided not to contest the appellate court
ruling. And
so, for now at least, the modest FCC restrictions on media
concentration remain
in effect.
Citi and the forests
Sometimes the mining, forestry or oil companies that exploit natural
resources
in developing countries are vulnerable to consumer action in rich
countries.
But sometimes not. Many of these resource companies do not sell
consumer
products. Many dont care about their public image. And many are not be
based in
countries where activists are strongest.
What to do?
The answer from the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network
(RAN): take
Deep Throats advice, and follow the money.
Thus was born RANs Global Finance Campaign.
The idea is to target big private banks that fund resource projects
around the
world, and force them to stop lending to support environmentally
destructive
projects, including projects contributing to global warming.
RAN started at the top, targeting the giant financial conglomerate
Citigroup.
Citi at first laughed off the demands from the ragtag forest
campaigners. But
after a few years of concerted campaigning and disruptive protests,
Citi
changed its tune.
By 2004, Citigroup announced a landmark, comprehensive environmental
policy.
Under the policy, Citi became the first multinational bank to prohibit
investment in any extractive industry (e.g. oil and gas, mining,
logging) in
primary tropical forests and place severe restrictions on destructive
investment in all endangered ecosystems worldwide. It also contained
important
measures to ensure the bank is not funding illegal logging operations,
and
committed the company to audit its climate-changing investments.
Subsequent victories have come in months, rather years. Bank of America
agreed
to adopt an environmental policy an improvement over Citis agreement in
May
Unocal, meet human rights rules
The vicious military junta in Burma maintains its power by savagely
repressing
the people of Burma. It is fueled by monies from international trade
including
the narcotics trade and foreign investors.
Among the most significant foreign investors is Unocal, which operates
a
natural gas pipeline running from Burma to Thailand. Human rights
groups have
shown that construction of the pipeline depended on massive violations
of the
rights of Burmese people along the pipelines path. Thousands were
dragooned
into forced labor for the pipeline. People in the area were ruthlessly
displaced. Many were tortured, raped and even murdered.
Attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights and EarthRights
International filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. courts against Unocal;
Total, its
French corporate partner; and the Burmese government. The suit, filed
on behalf
of unnamed Burmese victims of the pipeline project, charged the
companies with
violating international human rights.
In March 1997, the federal district court hearing the matter ruled that
the
case would go forward against Unocal. (It ruled Burma was protected by
sovereign
immunity; and Total was later dropped for lack of jurisdiction.) This
was, as
the Center for Constitutional Rights notes, the first U.S. ruling ever
to
contemplate holding a multinational corporation liable for human rights
violations.
The case continued for years, with each side scoring some notable
victories. In
2004, the Bush administration submitted a brief calling for the case to
be
dropped, on the grounds that it would interfere with the executive
branchs
ability to conduct foreign policy.
In April 2005, Unocal agreed to settle the case, and compensate the
victims.
Terms of the settlement are not public, but the lawyers say it will
provide
substantial assistance to people who suffered hardships in the region.
Corporations can no longer fool themselves into thinking they can get
away with
human rights violations, said a statement by the legal team. This case
will
reverberate in corporate boardrooms around the world and will have a
deterrent
effect on the worst forms of corporate behavior.
____________________
F.
from Dollars & Sense
Latin Americas Left
Off Track
BY MATIAS VERNENGO
[Latin America has a new crop of leftist
leaders, but their
macroeconomic policies are sadly familiar.]
For several years,
electoral
results in
Beyond these center-left electoral victories, it is clear that the
majority of
civil society in
The resurgence of the left is a momentous step in
Observers of the region have usually credited this left turn to
dissatisfaction
with the neoliberal, "
Acceptable Leftists
Many observers have tried to sort the new left-leaning leaders into
"good" and "bad" camps. Rutgers Tom᳠Eloy
Mart�z, an Argentinean writer, sees two antagonistic economic models at
play. In his view, a "negative left," embodied by Chᶥzs
Bolivarian Revolution, uses the windfall gains from higher oil revenues
to
promote an unsustainable redistribution policy without laying the
foundations
for future growth. The "positive left" is represented by Lula and his
policy of macroeconomic austerity as the necessary prerequisite for
sustainable
growth, allowing, in a hoped-for second phase, redistribution of the
fruits of
prosperity to the less privileged.
Jorge Casta, ex-foreign affairs minister of
Unlike Eloy Mart�z, Casta sees macroeconomic orthodoxy
dominating the region as a whole, Chᶥz and Kirchner included.
Unfortunately, his view is closer to the truth. Apart from some
anti-imperialist rhetoric, the economic policies of the new governments
in
Good Luck, Not Good Policies
If Keynesian fiscal policiesprogressive taxation, increased spending on
social
programs, and deficit spending to maintain full employmentare the
hallmarks of
a progressive government, then the new left governments in Latin
America cannot
be seen as particularly progressive.
Despite variations in political discourse, the countries macroeconomic
policies
are broadly similar, and represent little change from those of the
previous
regimes. The continuity of macroeconomic policies is most evident in
the arena
of fiscal policy. All the center-left governments in the region have
accepted
the logic behind an emphasis on fiscal discipline: that high fiscal
deficits
cause inflation, and, by generating fears of default, cause capital
flight and
lead to balance-of-payments problems. All accept the dictum that they
cannot
pursue more progressive fiscal policies because international financial
markets
would punish their countries with a run on their currencies.
All of these center-left governments are prioritizing fiscal austerity
to
control government debt accumulation and are committed to maintaining
primary
surpluses even in periods of recession. (Primary surpluses correspond
to the
difference between spending and revenues, but excluding interest
payments on
outstanding debt. In other words, a government with revenues of $100
that pays
$35 in interest payments and $70 on other expenditures would have a
nominal
deficit of $5 but a primary surplus of $30.) This is a significant
change
compared to the Keynesian approaches that dominated policymaking in the
region
prior to the 1990s and is more extreme than the anti-Keynesian bias in
the
developed world. The consequences are stark: maintaining primary fiscal
surpluses has squeezed public investment and spending on social
programs,
dampened economic growth, and favored financial interests and the
well-to-do.
Although exchange-rate policies vary somewhat, most Latin American
governments
across the political spectrum today emphasize the role of exchange
rates in
controlling inflation. Their role in promoting external competitiveness
has
become secondary. By controlling exchange rates, governments are able
to keep
the prices of imported goods, which crucially affect inflation, down.
But this
also means that the prices of domestic products are less competitive,
and so
hobbles the development of domestic industries.
At times exchange rate controls are seen as a temporary device to avoid
balance-of-payments crises, but not as instrumental in promoting
development.
For example,
If the macroeconomic policies of the regions left regimes are
successful,
perhaps it doesnt matter whether or not they are progressive. In fact,
recent
economic performance in
However, these strong growth rates have more to do with external
drivers than
with any innovative policies of the regions new leaders. Ultimately,
the
remarkable expansion of China, which has increased its trade with Latin
America
considerably, the United States mild recovery, and an improvement in
the terms
of tradethe relative price of Latin Americas exportsexplain the
positive Latin
American performance. That external factors are propelling the regions
economies casts serious doubt on the sustainability of their growth.
The
economic policies pursued by the left will not be of much help if
economic
growth in
Macroeconomic Conservatism and Distribution
Economic growth alone is not enough to improve the lot of the regions
poor
anyway.
In
More important,
Kirchner has been accused of promoting irresponsible economic policies
and
favoring unsustainable redistribution towards the poor, but its hard to
see
why. Argentinas current fiscal stance will require continued primary
surpluses
to pay for debt servicing. Its true that the government established a
program
of transfers to the unemployed (Plan Jefes de Hogar), but the benefits
are
insufficient, and other public investments are simply not being made.
Maintaining primary surpluses means that the resources available for
social
transfers, including the Plan Jefes de Hogar, are severely constrained.
Overall, then, with the exception of the fixed exchange-rate system,
Kirchners
government is adhering to basically the same set of macroeconomic
policies that
prevailed through the 1990s.
The Venezuelan story is similar. Chᶥzs 1998 government program (
More importantly, Chᶥz generated great expectations about using oil
revenues to pay for social programs. His government did indeed
implement a
massive program of social spending, including an expansion of health
assistance
and distribution of foodstuffs; social spending as a share of total
government
spending did go up. Deficits soared, but less as a result of the
increase of
government spending than as the consequence of lower non-oil revenues
due to
recession. The social conflicts associated with the political
resistance
against Chᶥz exacerbated the fall in non-oil government revenues and
forced the government to increase the amount of debt finance. Public
debt has
soared; interest payments on outstanding debt corresponded to around
40% of
total spending last year.
Like Argentina and Brazil, Venezuela has kept substantial primary
surplusesreaching 3% of GDP in 2004even as its nominal deficits have
grown.
According to Leonardo Vera, a professor at the Central University of
Venezuela,
a vicious circle has developed in which reduced revenues lead to more
indebtedness, and indebtedness, in turn, leads to higher debt service
costs. As
this vicious circle turns, wealth is redistributed, but not in the way
Chᶥz
hopedrather, from the poor to the wealthy owners of public bonds.
Across Latin America, governments both center-right and center-left
have
pursued fiscal policies aimed at containing deficits and trying to
reduce the
burden of debt. As a result, they have shunned countercyclical spending
programs and neglected the effects of fiscal policy on income
distribution. The
region as a whole obtained a primary surplus of 1% of GDP in 2004,
while the
nominal deficit was close to 2% of GDP. This means that Latin America,
a region
of highly unequal income distribution, transferred on average 3% of GDP
to the
owners of government bonds last year.
With Latin American governments maintaining primary surpluses even in
times of
crisis and channeling a sizable share of spending into interest
paymentsin
other works, redistributing it to the wealthyit is not surprising that
unemployment remains high across the region. The average rate of
unemployment
in 2003, according to ECLAC, was above 10%, with Argentina (15%) and
Venezuela
(18%) heading the charts. As high as these official measures of
unemployment
are, they underestimate the problems of underemployment and
low-productivity
jobs typical in the region. These numbers are particularly problematic
because
leveling the income distribution and reducing unemployment are
essential to
addressing the regions high poverty rate. Poverty fell in 2004, but not
enough
to make up for the increase between 2001 and 2003; around 43% of Latin
Americans still live below the poverty line. And nothing in the
macroeconomic
policies of the new left governments suggests that their outcomes are
likely to
diverge from those in the rest of the region in the coming years.
Fiscal Policy and International Financial Reform
Fiscal policy was central to the development of the systems of welfare
in the
developed world, and for industrialization in the global South,
including in
Latin America. What is often forgotten about the role of fiscal policy
is that
it was most effective during the Bretton Woods period, the so-called
Golden Age
of capitalism from the end of World War II until the 1970s. The Great
Depression and the rise of fascism and communism had led the leaders of
the
rich countries to adopt a fiscal pact that allowed higher levels of
social
spending in order to save capitalism from itself. Under the Bretton
Woods
regime, capital controls forced interest rates to low levels. This
allowed
governments to increase spending, while keeping the burden of debt
service
within reasonable levels.
Today, a more comprehensive reform of the international financial
system along
the lines of Keynes proposals at Bretton Woods, as advocated by some
heterodox
economists, is necessary not just to stabilize financial markets and
reduce
balance-of- payments crises, but to promote more just fiscal policies.
Controls
on capital flows would allow lower rates of interest, reduce spending
on debt
service, and allow for more public investment and higher levels of
social
transfers. These policies should be complemented with trade polices
that
promote full employment, and a coherent set of industrial policies to
promote
international competitiveness. The experience of the new left-leaning
governments in Latin America suggests that as long as the existing
rules of the
international financial system remain in force, global South
governments will
be unable to adopt progressive economic policies whatever their
political
stripes.
Furthermore, international financial reform is unlikely to come as a
result of
the victory of the left in developing countries. (Admittedly,
progressive
observers hoped there would be less subservience to international
financial
markets in Latin America with left-of-center governments in power.
China and
India, for example, adopt strict capital controls.) Historically,
reforms of
the international financial system result from crises at the center,
not at the
periphery, of the global economic system. But it is still important to
see
things for what they are. The center-left governments in Latin America
have
maintained or implemented macroeconomic policies that redistribute
income
towards financial markets and elites. Only Latin American magical
realism
explains how these policies could be seen as progressive alternatives
to
neoliberalism.
Sources Philip
Arestis and
Malcolm Sawyer, eds., The Economics of the Third Way: Experiences
from
Around the World (Edward Elgar, 2001); Jorge Casta, "Las dos
izquierdas latinoamericanas,"
________________
G.
from Fred
Lonidier :
Subject: BPP fotos I took in Seattle in June 1968
27 October 2005
http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/BPP_photos.htm
*********************
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies/
Director of Research
Universit頓tendhal-Grenoble
III
http://www.ceimsa.org/