California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

That's Not Who We Are

by John Lawrence

Obama declared: "That's not who we are" when opining about the more hateful aspects of American society. But the reality is that's who we veritably is, at least some of us Americans. It's impossible to generalize about the American character. We are not a monolithic society. Take Charlottesville for instance. Latter day confederates and ku klux klaners. That's not who we are? That's who some of us are. That's the problem. There is no common set of values. Trump said there were good people on both sides. What is the definition of a "good person"? Is it one who fights to maintain his own way of life or is it one who tries to reach accommodation with others and understand their point of view. For America as a nation in general, it is more the former than the latter. Historically at least since WW II, the US has always taken the path of using force and power to maintain its standing in the world and to maintain its right to exploit the resources of weaker nations while ignoring the welfare of their people. The US has supported right wing, authoritarian dictatorships in South America and elsewhere so that the "supply chain" of natural resources could be extracted and shipped back to the homeland while keeping the cheap native labor cheap. There was no effort to improve the lifestyles of the natives. Those locals who sought to do so were overthrown and right wing dictatorships were installed in Chile, Nicaragua, Argentina, Iran and many other countries too numerous to mention. For many years it was all about the oil. Now we realize that that oil transformed into greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is what's killing us.

When Gorbachev sought detente and the elimination of nuclear weapons in the world, Reagan hung on to his Star Wars fantasy. Neoconservatives in the Reagan administration considered Gorbachev's stated desire to bring peace to the world a sign of weakness to be exploited rather than a signal that a new era of peace could be at hand. This neoconservative foreign policy has been the policy of US Presidents both Democrat and Republican. Jimmy Carter had his Zbigniew Brzezhinski. Nixon had his Henry Kissenger. Reagan and the Bushes had a whole host of neocons fashioning their foreign policy. Reagan himself had no idea about what to do other than that he was against communism. Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick wrote in "The Untold History of the United States":

"But what is Reagan's real legacy? One of the most poorly informed and least engaged chief executives in U.S. history, he empowered a right wing resurgence of hard-line anti-communists who militarized U.S. foreign policy and rekindled the Cold War. He paid lip service to democracy while arming and supporting repressive dictators. He turned local and regional conflicts in the Middle East and Latin America into Cold War battlegrounds, unleashing a reig of terror to suppres popular movements. He spent enormous sums on the military while cutting social programs for the poor. He sharply reduced taxes on the wealthy, tripling the national debt and transforming the U.S. from the world's leading creditor in 1981 into its biggest debtor by 1985. In October 1987, he oversaw the worst stock market collapse since the Great Depression. He let the chance to rid to rid the world of offensive nuclear weapons [proposed by Gorbachev] slip through his fingers because he wouldn't let go of a childish fantasy [Star Wars]. And as for his much-vaunted role in ending the Cold War, as we shall see, the lion's share of credit goes instead to his Soviet counterpart,. Mikhail Gorbachev."

Is it any wonder then, that a chauvinistic and self-serving foreign policy has been internalized by so many "patriots" like the ones who attacked Capitol police on January 6, 2021? They just want what we already have: access to the natural resources of the world for Americans at the expense of indigenous peoples, the continuation of a way of life that favors the fortunes of white, European immigrants at the expense of African American forced immigrants, Latin American immigrants as well as Native Americans. When Obama says over and over, "That's not who we are," it's wishful, thinking because that's exactly who many of us are.

Off the Top of My Head

Replace Halloween With a Day Honoring Mother Earth and Its People

by John Lawrence

Americans will spend $10 billion on Halloween this year, a day dedicated to goblins and ghouls. There is enough scariness in the world. What the world needs is not a day dedicated to rotting children's teeth, but a day dedicated to preserving the environment so that they have a stable and hospitable planet to live on. Instead of "trick or treat" how about a day of "how can I serve my neighbor?".No other country celebrates Halloween and makes such a big deal and spending spree out of it. In Latin American countries they celebrate Día de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead honoring their ancestors. This is totally different from American Halloween which celebrates nothing except the selfish acquisition of candy. American Halloween has no socially redeeming value whatsoever.

What are we teaching children by celebrating Halloween? That American life is all about the acquisition of stuff - in this case candy. And if we don't get what we want we will do harm to others. Instead of a trick why not teach children to do a favor for others. Let's eliminate tricks from Halloween. It's teaching children that it's OK to do harm to others if they don't get what they want. Enormous sums of money are spent on Halloween which could be spent for more constructive purposes like providing funds to help the growing number of refugees around the world including the refugees internal to our own country which the homeless surely are.

Greta Thunberg shines a spotlight on global warming every Friday with her school strike for climate. School Strike for Climate (Swedish: Skolstrejk för klimatet), also known variously as Fridays for Future (FFF), Youth for Climate, Climate Strike or Youth Strike for Climate, is an international movement of school students who skip Friday classes to participate in demonstrations to demand action from political leaders to take action to prevent climate change and for the fossil fuel industry to transition to renewable energy. Let's make Halloween a day for honoring future generations and Mother Earth. We could also make Halloween a school strike for peace because peace is necessary if the world is to cooperate in meeting the challenge of global warming.

The celebration of Halloween sends all the wrong signals to children. Instead of public service, it sends the message of selfish acquisitiveness. Instead of concern for others it sends the message that, if they don't get what they want, they will do you a disservice. Halloween has no redeeming value. It is just a spendfest on candy and costumes which money could be better spent on more worthwhile goods and services for themselves and others. Instead of candy, children should be taught about nutritional literacy and the value of eating healthy foods. But instead children are carefully taught to disregard any concern for others and even the dangers of self indulgence for themselves. Many eat candy until they get sick. Sugar has no redeeming nutritional value, and Halloween has no redeeming social value whether it be honoring our ancestors as the Mexicans do or honoring a planet suitable for habitation by our children and their children. The world is scary enough with the pandemic and climate change. Instead of honoring scariness, let's celebrate the redemption of the planet and the health of the global population.

Off the Top of My Head

China Has Been Taking Over the World ... Peacefully

by John Lawrence, February 11, 2021

As Trump was retreating from multilateralism with his America First approach, China was winning friends and influencing people by building infrastruture in countries around the world with its Belt and Road initiative. This model put excess Chinese labor to work pulling their families out of poverty and set up the groundwork for increased trade and friendly relations with with other countries. Latest example: Latin America. Meanwhile, the US has not even been able to build infrastructure in its own country. Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) publishes The Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, which grades the current state of national infrastructure categories on a scale of A through F. In 2017, the U.S. infrastructure earned a D+ average. Stay tuned for a new report later this year. Infrastructure looms large because now it must be built out as green infrastructure replacing fossil fuel infrastructure.

In Latin America, America's so-called back yard, 19 countries have signed up for China's Belt and Road Initiative. The value of trade between China and Brazil, Latin America's largest country is $100 billion. China is South America's largest trading partner. Only Paraguay is not on board because they're the only South American country that recognizes Taiwan and not Beijing as the legitimate Chinese government. In 2019 Chinese companies invested $12.8 billion in Latin America concentrating on regional infrastructure such as ports, roads, dams and railways. Meanwhile, America was focused on its entertainment and consumerist economy, now partially defunct due to COVID. Chinese purchases of minerals and agricultural commodities helped South America get through the worst effects of the 2008 financial crisis. While the US had an orgy of financial speculation that created the 2008 financial crisis, China was powering on keeping its shoulder to the wheel, ear to the ground and nose to the grindstone building infrastructure and providing full employment for the Chinese people. As the US was relying on its military power to maintain its influence in the world, China was employing peaceful means to expand its influence. In 2020 the US spent $738 billion on defense, an additional $35 billion on nuclear weapons and and additional $80 billion on intelligence programs, none of which by the way provided intelligence on the assault on the Capitol although it had been discussed widely and openly on the web in prior weeks. Meanwhile, China's 2020 defense budget was $178 billion.

China's Cosco Shipping is building a new $3 billion port in Peru, and there are plans for a transcontinental railroad linking South America's Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Diplomatic opportunities for China have also been opened up due to COVID since China produces most of the world's PPE. The US was caught flat footed because it had to go hat in hand to China for PPE not much of which is manufactured domestically. Mask diplomacy has caused Washington to worry that China is gaining influence during the pandemic as China has provided PPE to 150 countries and 7 international organizations around the globe. While the US struggles to get vaccine into the arms of Americans, China has agreed to provide Pakistan with half a million doses of its Sinopharm vaccine free of charge. Time magazine reported:

"Yet China has won influence not by wielding sticks but by deftly distributing carrots. In Brazil, the region’s largest economy, bilateral trade with China rose from $2 billion in 2000 to $100 billion last year. Today, Brazil sends 30% of all exports to China, including 80% of its soybean crop and 60% of its iron ore. These entanglements are typically tightest with nations with goods to sell; China has supplied over $17 billion in financing to Argentina since 2007, according to Inter-American Dialogue, and is the world’s top importer of Argentine soybeans and beef.

"China is also now a preferred lender across the region. It hosts two international development banks–the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank (NDB) in Shanghai–that are both expanding their remit across the region. “Infrastructure development has shrunk the distance between Asia and Latin America,” AIIB president Jin Liqun tells TIME in his Beijing headquarters."

While China was deftly distributing carrots, the US was wielding sticks with Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo bullying the rest of the world to get them to fall in line behind the US. The US needs to cooperate with China to stave off the next big crisis - global warming - not start a new Cold War in an effort to overtake or compete with China. For the most part China has already won any competition to speak of by gaining cooperation and friendship with the rest of the world and achieving the world's largest economy while the US still struggles with COVID, its economy in shambles. "No country has put itself in a better position to become the world's renewable energy superpower than China,"says a recent report by the Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation. In Brazil China's State Grid Corp. is the largest power generation and distribution company, while China's Three Gorges, the world's largest hydropower provider, controls 17 out of 48 hydro plants and 11 wind farms.

Joe Biden is doing his best to backtrack from Trump's disastrous America First policy, but American foreign policy is still on the track that it views China as a competitor rather than a nation that should be cooperated with in order to meet the challenge of global warming. Rather than gearing up for a military confrontation or quibbling and squabbling over human rights, the US must adopt a less belligerent foreign policy and learn to get along with the other nations of the world even those who have not been historic allies. The US should cut back on its bloated military and military-complex spending and devote the savings to virus research and green infrastructure implementation at home and around the world in cooperation with China and other nations.

Off the Top of My Head

Many Essential Workers are Undocumented

by John Lawrence, September 12, 2020

Trump said: "When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. ... They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists." Guess what else they are? Essential workers. Most essential agricultural workers are undocumented. Immigrant field workers have been told to keep working despite stay-at-home directives, and given letters attesting to their “critical” role in feeding the country. They live in fear of being deported despite the fact that America now calls them "heroes." Heroes work here, and most of them are undocumented. They are ordered to go to work and risk getting COVID for minimum wages. What's wrong with this picture. Trump is in effect saying well OK you can stay for now as long as you keep picking our vegetables and packing our meat.

The New York Times reported:

For many workers, the fact that they are now considered both illegal and essential is an irony that is not lost on them, nor is it for employers who have long had to navigate a legal thicket to maintain a work force in the fields.

“It’s sad that it takes a health crisis like this to highlight the farmworkers’ importance,” said Hector Lujan, chief executive of Reiter Brothers, a large family-owned berry grower based in Oxnard, Calif., that also has operations in Florida and the Pacific Northwest.

Mr. Lujan, whose company employs thousands of field workers, described them as unsung heroes for guaranteeing that Americans have food security.

“Maybe one of the benefits of this crisis is that they are recognized and come out of the shadows,” said Mr. Lujan, whose company has been lobbying Congress to pass a bill that would legalize immigrant farmworkers.

About half of all crop hands in the United States, more than one million, are undocumented immigrants, according to the Agriculture Department. Growers and labor contractors estimate that the share is closer to 75 percent.

In addition to picking our vegetables and packing our meat, undocumented workers are also employed heavily in the construction and leisure and hospitality industries. They are building houses and cleaning hotel rooms in large numbers. So far from being a crisis in illegal immigration as Trump suggests, undocumented workers are keeping what remains of the US economy running in the age of COVID and taking chances with their lives in doing so. Oh and by the way they pay American taxes with no hope of ever getting social security. So when is Trump going to put up a big sign on his "wall" that says "Thank you Mexican workers for bailing out the US economy and keeping the food chain up and running."

Pew Research Center estimates that about 11.3 million people are currently living in the U.S. without authorization, down from a peak of 12.2 million in 2007. More than half come from Mexico, and about 15 percent come from other parts Latin America. CBS News reported:

Further studies show that the importance of this population of workers will only grow in coming years. For example, in 2014, unauthorized immigrants made up 24 percent of maids and cleaners, an occupation expected to need 112,000 more workers by 2024. In construction, the number of additional laborers needed is estimated at close to 150,000. And while only 4 percent of personal care and home health aides are undocumented, the U.S. will soon require more than 800,000 people to fill the jobs necessary to take care of retiring baby boomers.

So Trump can demonize "illegal aliens" all he wants to gain political points. Let's see his supporters who are irate about losing their jobs go to work in the fields picking vegetables and working in meat packing plants after all the undocumented workers are sent back to Mexico. And after he has exacerbated the relationship with China where American corporations have sent all the American manufacturing jobs, let's see if Americans will still have access to all the products they consume which are manufactured there. It sure didn't help that in the initial stages of the pandemic critical supplies were unavailable because most of them were manufactured in China. Antagonizing essential workers in the American economy as well as the US' major trading partner will only land up the US in a pickle in which not only food but consumer goods might be unavailable in the future.

The Self-Centered Rich Country Response to Pandemics and Crises Is Wrecking Poor Countries

Published on Thursday, April 16, 2020

by Common Dreams

Along with measures like rent freezes and guaranteeing workers’ rights, really addressing a global pandemic involves public health planning that cross borders and confronting global inequality and the climate crisis.

by Tamara Pearson

 

1 Comments

Governments and corporations should be held accountable for the inequalities they have perpetuated and that are decisive in who lives or dies, and how many. (Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Mexico—I’m squatting on a round piece of concrete, and a 72-year-old man is sitting in the gutter, his walking stick beside him. He tells me that after being deported from the United States, he has been hiking the streets of Mexico City trying to find somewhere to stay. But all the refuges are closed due to the pandemic, including the one we’re sitting outside of, where I volunteer. He has run out of insulin for his diabetes and says he can’t walk anymore.

I’m aware that he may not survive much longer. He’s the fifth person that day that I have to turn away and I can’t stand it.

Back in the migrant refuge, we organize working groups and events to add structure to the empty days and try to prevent tension building up. It’s bad enough that many of the refugees here have fled violence, only to wait months for their visas, to now be stuck inside because of the quarantine, unable to work, even informally.

Over a period of less than two weeks, some 7,000 migrants have been deported from the US, with the virus as the excuse. And here too, Mexico is deporting refugees and migrants to the Guatemalan border, even though it is closed and there’s no interstate transport operating there. Hondurans and others are stranded, with nowhere to stay and no way to return to their country. Many may be killed if they do return. So far, the contingency measures seem to be doing more harm than good.

Here, we watch the videos of people cheering for health workers in London, and they are inspiring, but they don’t really connect. We know our health system won’t be able to handle much. We also know that with 65% of the workforce being informal and with no such thing as unemployment benefits, the economic impact of quarantining will be devastating to us. Already, in my city of Puebla, half the population has no access to water, or not enough. Soon, people will get kicked out of homes, and hunger – already on their minds – will likely become common.

The national government has declared that only essential shops and services can stay open. Those who can, are taking the quarantine seriously. But so many people aren’t able to stay at home that it is a bit futile. The woman with the mole stall outside the Oxxo shop near my house is still serving food, the street stalls selling phone cases and gadgets on 8^th street are still there, the indigenous woman who sits on the ground selling beautiful Mexican “rag” dolls, is still there. I estimate that around 60% of shops and stalls are still going.

In Central America and Mexico, only 20% of old people have a pension. Many are still working, in close to slave-like conditions. And in South Africa, distancing is impossible when settlements can have just 380 toilets for 20,000 people. Risk, fear, and violence, are part of life for many in poor countries. Poverty is a never-ending war, and being defenseless and unsafe – health wise and economically, means life is up for grabs all the time. It’s understandable then that people react with some self-preserving indifference to the quarantine. And that’s why it isn’t reasonable to take the Chinese and European models for responding to the pandemic and transplant them on to poorer countries.

When I see tweets about “these sad times” I feel frustrated. Yes, these are tough times, but things have been horrific for a long time now for the majority of the world – for poorer people and for brown people. But the mainstream media, history books, and movies, teach us to see the world through the eyes of the white first world. That’s where the heroes come from, where news matters.

It has never been considered urgent to update the world on the daily deaths from starvation (24,600) or on the numbers of people working in forced labor or marriage (40.3 million). Awareness of the savage impact of the US’s war on Afghanistan is low. In 2018, there were an estimated 228 million cases of malaria, globally, and 405,000 deaths from it – mostly children. But the people dying are the poorest of the poor, in African countries and in India. Malaria, starvation, exploitation, femicides, slum cities and more are crises that the world won’t stop for.

When I see tweets about “these sad times” I feel frustrated. Yes, these are tough times, but things have been horrific for a long time now for the majority of the world – for poorer people and for brown people.

The so-called “third” world is the dispensable world. The year 2008 was a “financial crisis,” but the ongoing global inequality that leaves over half the world living in undignified conditions is not a crisis, it is acceptable.

Meanwhile, the economic and social consequences of the pandemic contingency measures will be much more severe in poorer countries and poorer communities. Already, some 2,500 people are murdered each month in Mexico, and violent crime is only likely to increase as more and more people lose their incomes. Sexual assault rates are also likely increasing.

Add to this the huge global resource inequality which means that most poorer countries can not respond to the virus in the same way as Europe and parts of Asia, even if they want to. The Central African Republic, for example, has just three ventilators for its population of 5 million people. While the US has around 160,000 ventilators – and that isn’t enough, Mexico has just a few hundred.

The US and Europe are hogging access to medical equipment, masks, and testing materials. The New York Times reported that African and Latin American countries have been told by manufacturers that orders for testing kits won’t be filled for months, because almost everything they produce is going to the US and Europe. Prices on these goods have also skyrocketed, making it harder for poorer regions to acquire them. So far, the numbers of confirmed cases in poorer countries are lower, but analysis of those numbers should bare in mind that such countries don’t have access to the reagents used for testing and are stuck doing nothing, unable to test even health care workers.

While the #StayAtHome movement is an incredible display of human solidarity and of our ability to actually work together for the common good, it also puts the onus of the solution to the pandemic on individual people. And indeed, we are part of the solution. But governments and corporations should be held accountable for the inequalities they have perpetuated and that are decisive in who lives or dies, and how many.

In this world, where suits and window dressings and hotel lobbies are designed with the utmost care, but health and poverty prevention plans are not, it is pointless to talk about beating this virus without addressing the context it is flourishing in. Along with measures like rent freezes and guaranteeing workers’ rights, really addressing a global pandemic involves public health planning that cross borders and confronting global inequality and the climate crisis.

Tamara Pearson is a long time journalist based in Latin America, and author of The Butterfly Prison. Her writings can be found at her blog. Twitter: @pajaritaroja

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Off the Top of My Head

Maybe the Shut Down of Non-Essential Businesses Should Be Made Permanent

by John Lawrence, March 27, 2020

As long as we have electricity, the internet, clean water, waste water disposal, full grocery markets, pharmacies, excellent health care, gas stations, trash collection and other essential businesses, perhaps the shut down of non-essential businesses is a good thing. Already it has cleaned up the environment and significantly reduced the emission of greenhouse gasses. What about all those unemployed people, you say? Put them to work in the Green New Deal building and repairing infrastructure throughout the country. If this COVID-19 thing lasts till January 20, 2021, I'm hoping President Joe Biden will do just that. And we should help build essential businesses in other parts of the world instead of engaging in military adventurism. Billions of people don't even have clean water, adequate sanitation, the internet, full grocery markets and other essential businesses.

Once these essential needs are taken care of for the entire world's population in such a way that GHG emissions are reduced to zero, then maybe some non-essential businesses could be reestablished. The pandemic goes to show that much of the US economy is based on non-essential businesses and the provision of non-essential goods and services. In fact not only are many of them non-essential, they are downright deleterious. Consider the gambling industry: downright deleterious. The movie and TV industry: about 70% deleterious. The fast food industry: 90% deleterious creating obesity and diabetes. Why isn't the school system educating people about nutrition? Many people have essentially a fast food diet. The food is cheap and ubiquitous, and people don't have time to create nutritious meals any more the way Moms used to when they didn't have to work to pay the mortgage and car payments.

The American way of life including may non-essential businesses is sickness producing. The profit oriented health care industry makes money off of sick people, not keeping people healthy. If everyone were healthy or were encouraged to lead healthy lifestyles, there would be far less sickness. But the stress induced by both spouses having to work leads to unhealthy lifestyles. Some families need 2 or 3 jobs just to make ends meet. The children are also subjected to a competitively oriented style of learning in which they are forced to compete with other children to get good grades so they can get into the best colleges. Instead maybe they should be encouraged to think in terms of what they want to do in their lives which would be a service to society in addition to affording a comfortable living for themselves.

More businesses considered to be non-essential:

Theaters, Salons and Spas, Racetracks, Shopping malls, Bowling alleys, Sporting and Concert Venues, Liquor stores, Bars, Cruises, Golf Courses, Resorts, Hair and Nail Salons.

Highly polluting industries and activities which are non-essential:

Most airline travel, the cruise industry, the travel and tourism industry, most automobile travel (use mass transit instead), most of the trucking industry (use rail instead), the beef industry, the hog industry, agribusiness (encourage small organic farms instead), most military and military-industrial complex, the plastic industry, the fossil fuel industry.

In Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How. Mark Lawrence Schrad writes:

America has long equated patriotism with the armed forces. But you can’t shoot a virus. Those on the frontlines against coronavirus aren’t conscripts, mercenaries or enlisted men; they are our doctors, nurses, pharmacists, teachers, caregivers, store clerks, utility workers, small-business owners and employees. Like Li Wenliang and the doctors of Wuhan, many are suddenly saddled with unfathomable tasks, compounded by an increased risk of contamination and death they never signed up for.

When all is said and done, perhaps we will recognize their sacrifice as true patriotism, saluting our doctors and nurses, genuflecting and saying, “Thank you for your service,” as we now do for military veterans. We will give them guaranteed health benefits and corporate discounts, and build statues and have holidays for this new class of people who sacrifice their health and their lives for ours. Perhaps, too, we will finally start to understand patriotism more as cultivating the health and life of your community, rather than blowing up someone else’s community. Maybe the de-militarization of American patriotism and love of community will be one of the benefits to come out of this whole awful mess.

The same sentiments hold true for teachers and other caregivers. People that take care of people and encourage people to have better lives are the true heroes. The Peace Corps and AmeriCorps should be the preeminent national services not the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Marines. We need to spread good will in the world by spades instead of bullying the rest of the world with US sanctions. We should develop the equivalent of China's Belt and Road initiative and start building clean water plants, sanitation plants, industries which decrease pollution and plastic trash in the ocean. We need to clean the environment around the world not contribute to dirtying it. We need to help bring home all the refugees in refugee camps and guarantee the safety and security of Latin Americans so they don't become migrants and refugees.

Off the Top of My Head

Bernie Slammed for Saying Something Positive About Cuba. Now Cuban Doctors Are Going to Italy to Help With Coronavirus.

by John Lawrence

Something the main stream media won't report: Cuban doctors are being sent to Italy. Previously, they helped with the Ebola crisis in Africa. Regardless of their form of government, give credit where credit is due. Joe Biden and the media jumped all over Bernie for saying one good thing about Cuba.  Biden sought to contrast Sanders’ comments with former President Barack Obama, noting that Obama “did not in any way suggest that there was anything positive about the Cuban government.” No, nothing positive? Not increased literacy? Not better health care outcomes than the US? The conventional wisdom about Cuba is bullshit, and you can't acknowledge that they have done one good thing without being slammed? Give me a break. Italy has no such compunctions about Cuba. They requested that the Cuban doctors come to Lombardy. That tells you something about what the rest of the world thinks about Cuba's proficiency in medical care. The rest of the world isn't as ignorant as US politicians and media stalwarts like Anderson Cooper. The US needs to wake up and realize that the meme that Cuba is all bad is outdated and factually incorrect. It is the meme of an ignorant electorate - Democrats included!

Reuters reported:

The Caribbean island has sent its “armies of white robes” to disaster sites around the world largely in poor countries since its 1959 revolution. Its doctors were in the front lines in the fight against cholera in Haiti and against ebola in West Africa in the 2010s.

Yet with the 52-strong brigade, this is the first time Cuba has sent an emergency contingent to Italy, one of the world’s richest countries, demonstrating the reach of its medical diplomacy.

This is the sixth medical brigade Cuba has sent in recent days to combat the spread of the new disease abroad. It has sent contingents to socialist allies Venezuela and Nicaragua as well as Jamaica, Suriname and Grenada.

“We are all afraid but we have a revolutionary duty to fulfill, so we take our fear and put it to one side,” Leonardo Fernandez, 68, an intensive care specialist, told Reuters late on Saturday shortly before his brigade’s departure.

Even staunch US ally, Britain, thanked Cuba for allowing a British cruise ship that had been turned away by several Caribbean ports to dock on the island and for enabling the evacuation of the more than 600 passengers onboard. Yet the US continues to sanction Cuba forcing it to forego much needed pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. Despite more than half a century of a US economic embargo, Cuba’s average life expectancy is greater than that in the US. As of 2015 Cuban life expectancies of 79.5 years and infant mortality rates of 4.3 per 1000 live births were better than rich nations like the US (78.7 years and 5.7 per 1, 000 live births) yet its per capita income of $7602. makes it one of the poorest economies in the hemisphere (World Development Indicators DataBank, 2017).

As for literacy, the rate was 77% in 1959 before the revolution. Two years after the revolution it was 100%.

Cuba has better health care outcomes than the US despite every attempt by the US from embargoes to sanctions to destroy their economy. Perhaps the American people should wake up and listen to Bernie Sanders for a change. He knows a helluva lot more about Cuba than the ignorant Joe Biden and the other Democrats who have attacked him about his remarks about Cuba and Latin America in general. At least admit the undeniable truth no matter how much you dislike their form of government.

Off the Top of My Head

Crisis at the Border

by John Lawrence, July 8, 2019

The temporary solution is simple: they arrive in busloads. It's intolerable that they are kept here in the US under horrible conditions. So... bus them back as fast as they arrive. Humanitarian crisis solved! They are being brought here by human traffickers. They are not arriving due to spontaneous decisions to walk to America. They are coming basically to escape poverty. The US asylum laws were never meant to deal with a situation like this. They are being flaunted by people who arrive on US soil and ask for asylum. Then according to law they have to be given a court date months or years away. In the meantime they melt into US society and never show up for their court date. They are relying on the dysfunctionality of the US government to do anything coherent. The immigration situation could have been resolved years ago, but US government is totally incapable of doing anything rational.

Having said all that, here's the more comprehensive solution. The US should work with Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to rid those countries of the gangs which are threatening the people and giving them a plausible excuse to become migrants. The US needs to allocate a large amount of financial resources to those countries, and even have a physical military presence on the ground. Think about it. The military never does anything constructive like rooting out M-13 and other gangs that are involved in the drug traffic with the US and with committing violence towards indigenous people. The US has been involved in various coups in Central and South America at the behest of the oil and exploitive industries, American corporations and right wing dictators, but never on the side of the people to improve conditions in their lives. It's only the lefties who have tried to improve conditions of the hoi polloi. US forces have only served right wing regimes and American corporations seeking to exploit resources.

Medium reports:

At the margins of the mainstream discursive stalemate over immigration lies over a century of historical U.S. intervention that politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle seem determined to silence. Since Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 declared the U.S.’s right to exercise an “international police power” in Latin America, the U.S. has cut deep wounds throughout the region, leaving scars that will last for generations to come. This history of intervention is inextricable from the contemporary Central American crisis of internal and international displacement and migration.

The liberal rhetoric of inclusion and common humanity is insufficient: we must also acknowledge the role that a century of U.S.-backed military coups, corporate plundering, and neoliberal sapping of resources has played in the poverty, instability, and violence that now drives people from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras toward Mexico and the United States. For decades, U.S. policies of military intervention and economic neoliberalism have undermined democracy and stability in the region, creating vacuums of power in which drug cartels and paramilitary alliances have risen. In the past fifteen years alone, CAFTA-DR — a free trade agreement between the U.S. and five Central American countries as well as the Dominican Republic — has restructured the region’s economy and guaranteed economic dependence on the United States through massive trade imbalances and the influx of American agricultural and industrial goods that weaken domestic industries. Yet there are few connections being drawn between the weakening of Central American rural agricultural economies at the hands of CAFTA and the rise in migration from the region in the years since. In general, the U.S. takes no responsibility for the conditions that drive Central American migrants to the border.

The interventions of the US on the side of right wing dictators and American corporations in El Salvador are too numerous to mention. Suffice it to say that the dates are 1932, 1944, 1960, 1980-1992, 1990, 2006, 2014, 2015. These included massacres of civilian women and children by right wing dictators with full US support. In Honduras there have been numerous interventions in support of Dole foods and Chiquita bananas, US owned corporations.

1980s: In an attempt to curtail the influence of left-wing movements in Central America, the Reagan administration stations thousands of troops in Honduras to train Contra right-wing rebels in their guerrilla war against Nicaragua’s Sandinistas. U.S. military aid reaches $77.5 million in 1984. Meanwhile, trade liberalization policies open Honduras to the interests of global capital and disrupt traditional forms of agriculture.

2009: Left-leaning and democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, who pursued progressive policies such as raising the minimum wage and subsidizing public transportation, is exiled in a military coup. The coup is staged after Zelaya announces intentions to hold a referendum on the replacement of the 1982 constitution, which had been written during the end of the reign of U.S.-backed military dictator Policarpo Paz García. Honduran General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, a graduate of the U.S. Army training program known as the School of the Americas (nicknamed “School of Assassins”), leads the coup. The United States, under Hillary Clinton’s Department of State, refuses to join international calls for the “immediate and unconditional return” of Zelaya.

Guatemala:

1954: Fearing the Guatemalan government’s steps toward agrarian reform and under the influence of United Fruit propagandist Edward Bernays, President Eisenhower authorizes the CIA to overthrow democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz, ending an unprecedented ten years of democratic rule in the country, colloquially known as the “ten years of spring.” In Árbenz’s place, the U.S. installs Carlos Castillo Armas, whose authoritarian government rolls back land reforms and cracks down on peasant and workers’ movements.

1965: The CIA issues Green Berets and other counterinsurgency advisors to aid the authoritarian government in its repression of left-wing movements recruiting peasants in the name of “struggle against the government and the landowners.” State Department counterinsurgency advisor Charles Maechling Jr. would later describe the U.S.’s “direct complicity” in Guatemalan war crimes, which he compared to the “methods of Heinrich Himmler’s extermination squads.”

1971: Amnesty International finds that 7,000 civilian dissidents have been “disappeared” under the government of U.S.-backed Carlos Arana, nicknamed “the butcher of Zacapa” for his brutality.

It just goes on and on. Most recently, the good ol American playbook of supporting right wing turnovers of democratically elected regimes didn't turn out so good for US interests in Venezuela where American supported Juan Guaido failed to oust Maduro.

Why aren't American politicians, the American media and the American people studying this history? Oh, I know: they are too busy watching vacuous and inane TV shows and attending sporting events when they are not buying new cars or pleasuring themselves in a multitude of other ways. Or listening to Trump's inane tweets which lead politicians like Joshua Gardner, a career DOJ attorney to utter "I am doing my absolute best to figure out what's going on."

It's just too much to ask that the US government stop supporting right wing murderous dictatorships and start alleviating the conditions which led to the migration crises from these Central American countries. But maybe AOC and the other Congressional members of Latin American descent can finally come to grips with this terrible history perpetrated by the US government and the CIA against the people of Central and South America and lead the way to an America which facilitates retribution and economic development for the people themselves. Or perhaps that will be left up to China with its Belt and Road Initiative. In just a decade, trade between China and Latin America has multiplied more than 20 times as regional partners have signed hundreds of agreements and broken ground on dozens of key energy, transport and infrastructure projects in strategic locations. China better watch out. The US doesn't appreciate them or anyone else doing some good in its own back yard.

Off the Top of My Head

El Salvador Has a Problem: Gangs Started in the US Are Running the Country

by John Lawrence, March 12, 2019

Two gangs run El Salvbador: MS-13 and the 18th Street gang. Both gangs were spawned in the US, in Los Angeles to be precise and took root in El Salvador when gang members were deported having been caught as criminals. National Geographics reported: "El Salvador’s government says that criminal gangs command an estimated 60,000 active members, and their battle for supremacy has fractured this tiny country of 6.4 million people along an expanding web of invisible fault lines that run red. In 2017 the homicide rate was 61 per 100,000 people, making El Salvador the second deadliest of any country not at war, after Venezuela."

El Salvador is locked in the latest phase of a social conflict that exploded during the 1980-1992 civil war, in which leftist guerrillas rose up against a wealthy elite and the military state that had long dispossessed the rural underclass of land. With the stated aim of stopping communism in its backyard, the U.S. supported El Salvador’s right-wing dictatorships with billions of dollars of economic and military aid that prolonged the bloodshed. By the time the war ended, in a stalemate, 75,000 people were dead and more than a million were displaced, hundreds of thousands of whom fled to the U.S. From Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., Salvadoran refugees found employment and community, and they sent money home.

The same old story. The US wants to stop communism which in this case would have helped poor peasants so it "prolonged the bloodshed" which led directly to the creation of the gangs here in the US that then took root back in El Salvador. The US' hands are dirty in this whole situation and should take responsibility for the immigration crisis instead of building a wall to keep immigrants out.

The children who came with them, displaced youths craving identity in a foreign land, created MS-13 on the streets of Los Angeles and swelled the ranks of a rival, 18th Street—a Hispanic gang that formed around 18th Street in the Pico-Union neighborhood of Los Angeles and absorbed wayward refugees from Central America. As gang wars, and the war on gangs, intensified, laws were enacted that made it easier to deport immigrants with criminal records. In the late 1990s the U.S. began exporting thousands of convicts back to Central America each year. In the vacuum of weak governance and poverty in their home country, gang members reproduced their social structures and tactics and multiplied exponentially.

The US created the crisis by meddling in El Salvador's civil war as it has done many times before in Central and South America. "At the margins of the mainstream discursive stalemate over immigration lies over a century of historical U.S. intervention that politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle seem determined to silence. Since Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 declared the U.S.’s right to exercise an “international police power” in Latin America, the U.S. has cut deep wounds throughout the region, leaving scars that will last for generations to come. This history of intervention is inextricable from the contemporary Central American crisis of internal and international displacement and migration."

The liberal rhetoric of inclusion and common humanity is insufficient: we must also acknowledge the role that a century of U.S.-backed military coups, corporate plundering, and neoliberal sapping of resources has played in the poverty, instability, and violence that now drives people from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras toward Mexico and the United States. For decades, U.S. policies of military intervention and economic neoliberalism have undermined democracy and stability in the region, creating vacuums of power in which drug cartels and paramilitary alliances have risen.

The US has made a mess out of Central and South America and is now ironically reaping the whirlwind: They all want to come here to escape the violence and poverty. Here are some more examples.

1) Brazil experienced several decades of right-wing authoritarian governments, especially after the US-backed 1964 Brazilian coup d'état against center-left social democrat João Goulart undertaken, according to then President John F. Kennedy, to "prevent Brazil from becoming another Cuba". Brazil's return to democracy saw several consecutive right-wing neoliberal governments following the Washington Consensus ending in endemic inequality and extreme poverty, one of the worst in the Continent.

2) After the democratic election of President Salvador Allende in 1970, an economic war ordered by President Richard Nixon. Then the CIA backed the 1973 Chilean coup d'état due to Allende’s democratic socialist leanings and installed the murderous military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

3) After several peasant and workers uprisings in the country against oligarchic and anti-democratic governments, often under the control of powerful American corporate interests like the United Fruit Company, efforts by democratically elected governments were often thwarted by US intervention. Civil war spread with US-endorsed far-right governments in El Salvador facing far-left guerrillas.

4) Peasants and workers (mostly of indigenous descent) revolts during the first half of the Guatemalan 20th century due to harsh conditions and abuse from landlords and the government-supported American United Fruit Company were brutally repressed. This led to the democratic election of left-leaning Jacobo Arbenz. Arbenz was overthrown during the US-backed 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état leading to right-wing US-endorsed authoritarian governments and nearly 40 years of civil war in the Central American country.

There are many more examples of US intervention in Central and South America always on the side of right wing dictatorships and corporations like United Fruit and against the interests of the common people. The US is ever eager to destroy regimes which claim to have the interests of the people at heart and to install regimes favorable to the US model of unbridled capitalism at any cost, the cost usually being born by people suffering from extreme inequality and poverty. The US has tried again and again to make little " USes" out of every country in what it considers its sphere of influence which includes in particular Central and South America but in general the whole world.

Today some 200,000 Salvadorans in the U.S. have temporary protected status (TPS), a designation that allows undocumented migrants deemed at risk because of armed conflict or environmental disasters in their home countries to stay in the U.S. In January 2018, President Donald Trump’s administration ordered an end to TPS for Salvadorans. It was set to expire in September 2019, but a U.S. district court halted that plan, allowing Salvadorans to continue to live and work in the U.S. until a final decision is made.

Off the Top of My Head

No Rest Rooms in Downtown San Diego Plus Thousands of Homeless Equals Hepatitis A Outbreak

by John Lawrence

What did they expect to happen? To be blunt people were living on the streets, the same streets tourists and residents were plodding down, and they were shitting and pissing all over the streets and sidewalks. I say again: what did they expect to happen? People were going to Padres games, spending hundreds of dollar on tickets, food, beverages and merchandise and they're walking over streets contaminated with human and animal waste products. Don't forget a lot of homeless people have pets. They had nowhere to go either.

San Diego didn't used to provide public rest rooms for anybody, much less the homeless. It's just that they couldn't afford to. They spend millions of dollars on everything else, but they couldn't afford public bathrooms. If you couldn't afford to patronize some profit making establishment where you could use the bathroom, you were just out of luck. You had to go in the bushes. That's just what thousands of homeless have done... and the sidewalks.

European cities provide public rest rooms on practically every corner, even the poorest cities. San Diego, by contrast, set up a Portland Loo and then decided that there was too much crime going on there and took it away. Most European public bath rooms have attendants who oversee the operation and make sure it stays clean and safe. Of course San Diego never thought of that. These European bathroom attendants were probably not paid very much, but at least they had a job. Suppose San Diego could afford that?

Now the LA Times reported that Los Angeles County health officials declared a hepatitis A outbreak, days after a public health emergency was announced in San Diego County, where at least 16 people have died of the highly contagious virus. It has been known for some time that the homeless were running up huge bills for taxpayers to pay at San Diego emergency rooms, but that and the extra costs for police were not enough to persuade local "leaders" to provide housing and sanitary living conditions for those who couldn't provide it for themselves. So public expense, public safety and now public health evidently are not enough motivation for the public to do something about the homeless situation. As has been pointed out, the City has the money in various funds, but it won't spend it on housing for the homeless.

The San Diego Union reported:

Councilman David Alvarez, one of the memo’s co-authors, said the city is sitting on “literally hundreds of millions of dollars” it could spend on housing.

“Unfortunately, the mayor has refused to take action on this issue,” Alvarez said. “We are seeing more and more money coming back to the city in the general fund. ... This was intended to be used for more housing and it hasn’t been.

“You’d have to ask the Mayor’s Office why they don’t want to use it for that purpose.”

Katheryn Rhodes and I did a series of articles on money the City of San Diego has squirreled away in the LMIHAF fund and other funds that it is supposed to use for affordable housing but won't do it. Something like $30 million altogether. It seems the Mayor doesn't want his reputation tarnished by catering to the homeless. It would be unseemly. So tourists and downtown residents living in million dollar condos will just have to take the Hepatitis A risk on themselves.

 

World Social Forum 2012

also see World Social Forum website

from pravda.ru  22.01.2012

 

by Frei Beto

Porto Alegre will host, on 24-29 January, the World Social Forum (WSF) centered on the theme "capitalist crisis - social and environmental justice." The event is one of the preparatory activities of the Peoples' Summit of Rio +20, which will meet in the Marvelous City between June 20 and 21, 2012.

The WSF takes place at a time when many people move for freedom and democracy, as in the Arab world. In the West, the crisis of capitalism gives rise to the Occupy Wall Street movement. What the two demonstrations have in common is not clear as to what they want without having made, however, any viable alternative proposals.

Last 15th of October, there were mobilizations in almost 1,000 cities in 82 countries! In the Andean world, indigenous people question the capitalist model of development and rescue the values ​​of right living - sumak kawsay.

As a result of the incompetence of a system that prioritizes private accumulation of wealth at the expense of human, social and environmental rights, capitalism now knows a new crisis. Before it, the reaction of those in power is the one-note samba: austerity, cuts, tax increases and unemployment, flexible labor laws, wage freezes.

Save the banks and to hell with the people! More misery in sight, youth with no prospect for the future are sentenced to drugs, crime and disorderly migration flows.

On the side of hope, and after three decades of neoliberal global colonization, the demonstrations indicate positive values ​​such as empathy for the suffering of others, solidarity, defense of equality, the search for justice, recognition of diversity and environmental preservation. Without this ethical universe, there is no possible hope to build another world.

Human society needs to be reinvented. And, on the part of the owners of power, there is no proposal out of concern to curb the roulette of the global casino. The environmental crisis is ignored by the UN, the U.S. government and European Union, and nothing guarantees that the Rio +20 will be able to gather, as in the Eco-92, the heads of state of the G8 countries.

Merchandising life and destroying ecosystems rapidly reduces biodiversity. Across the globe, there are increasing extractive enterprises, with no concern for the social and environmental impact. Land areas are blatantly transnationalised in the countries of the Third World.

In Belém 2009 and Dakar 2011, the WSF made significant steps in the search for alternatives to developmentalism and consumerism, with a view to preserving the environment. Now, the social struggle is oxygenated by the pursuit of democracy and sovereignty in Arab countries, and widespread demonstrations in Europe and the U.S. against the necrophiliac logic of neoliberalism.

If another world is possible, it will happen due to the convergence of all these demonstrations, of the synchronization of all who fight for environmental protection, for dialogue between the social and political forces convinced that under capitalism there is no salvation for the future of humanity

The 2012 WSF in Porto Alegre will be the meeting point of political subjects capable of pointing a way out of the crisis and the foundations of building a new civilization model, in which worldwide solidarity predominates. And it may bring forth proposals to solve those issues. In June, the Peoples' Summit will be held (Rio +20).

The dynamics of the WSF 2012 will be based on thematic groups, in order to accommodate participants' experiences and contributions into four transversal axes: 1. Ethical and philosophical: subjectivity, domination and emancipation; 2. Human rights, peoples, territories and defense of Mother Earth, 3. Production, distribution and consumption, access to wealth, common goods and economies in transition; 4. Political subjects, architecture of power and democracy.


Frei Betto is a writer and author, together with Marcelo Barros, "Love fertilizes the Universe - ecology and spirituality" (Act), among other books.

Source: Patria Latina

Website:

http://www.freibetto.org/

Translated from the Portuguese version by:

Lisa Karpova

With Ollanta Humala's Win, Peru Joins Latin America's Left Turn

Published on Tuesday, June 7, 2011 by The Nation

by Greg Grandin

Add Peru to the list of Latin American countries that have turned left. On Sunday, Peruvians voted in a second-round run-off ballot and elected Ollanta Humala, a 48-year old former army officer, president. This is Humala’s second try for the office. In 2006, he came close to winning, but Wikileaks cables reveal that Peru’s establishment politicians put aside their differences and beat a path to the US embassy, asking for help smearing Humala as a Peruvian Hugo Chávez.  

Wikileaks also reveals that that same year the Mexican right and the US State Department worked together to defeat the populist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, leading many in the US to gloat that the “left turn” in Latin America had run its course.

Humala’s victory suggests otherwise. Here’s just some of what has happened since 2006: In Bolivia, Evo Morales presided over the ratification of a new social-democratic constitution and was re-elected as president in 2009 with 64 percent of the vote. In Ecuador, Rafael Correa also easily won reelection and ratified a new constitution that guarantees social rights and puts tight limits on privatization. Recently, Ecuadorians likewise voted on ten progressive ballot initiatives, passing them all. They included the strict regulation of two blood sports: banks are now banned from speculation and bulls can no longer be killed in bull fights.

And last year in Brazil, the trade unionist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva left office the most popular politician on the planet, handing over the presidency of one of the world’s largest economies to Dilma Rousseff, a former urban guerrilla and economist who vows to continue to try to make Brazil a more humane and equal nation.

All of these national left political projects—from Venezuela to Uruguay—have their problems and shortcomings, and are open to criticism on any number of issues by progressive folk. But combined, the Latin American left can claim a remarkable achievement: It has snatched the concept of democracy away from neoliberals and the corporate privateers who came close to convincing the world that democracy equals deregulated capitalism and returned the term to its more humane, sustainable definition. In Latin America, democracy means social democracy. So considering the otherwise bleak global landscape, the return of the Latin American left, now well into its second decade, is cause for great cheer.

What does Humala’s victory mean for Peru? Most importantly in the short run, it has halted the return of Alberto Fujimori’s style of death-squad neoliberalism. Humala’s opponent was Fujimori’s daughter, Keiko, who pledged to free her jailed father, who was convicted of murder, kidnapping and corruption.

In the long run, many Peruvians, particularly those outside of Lima, voted for Humala because they have seen little benefits from the country’s celebrated macroeconomic performance over the last decade, driven by the high price of silver, zinc, copper, tin, lead and gold—which comprise sixty per cent of the country's exports.

Over thirty per cent of Peru's thirty million people live in poverty and eight per cent in extreme poverty. In rural areas, particularly in indigenous communities, more than half of all families are poor, many desperately so. Humala has promised to address this inequity with a series of pragmatic measures—a guaranteed pension to people over 65; expanding health care in rural areas, including the construction of more provincial hospitals; an increase in public sector salaries, to be paid for with a windfall profit tax on the mining sector.

In terms of foreign policy, Humala’s election is another victory for Brazil in its contest with Washington for regional influence. If Fujimori had won, she would have aligned Peru politically with Washington and economically with US and Canadian corporations.

Humala, in contrast, will tilt toward Brazilian economic interests. Indeed, the Peruvian historian Gerardo Rénique said that the election, while representing an important victory for democratic forces, could also be understood in part as a contest between Brazil and the US over Peruvian energy and mineral resources. In this perspective, one could say that it didn’t matter who won the Peruvian election: the Amazon lost.

Here then might be the question that determines the success of Humala’s presidency: As he tries to put into place his “growth with social inclusion” agenda, will he be able to balance the conflicting interests of his Brazilian allies and the social movements that elected him, many of which are fighting for sustainable development and local control of resources?

In addition to reviving social democracy, the other major accomplishment of the renewed Latin American left has been to dilute the entrenched racism that has defined the continent for centuries. In Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela and other countries, Native Americans and peoples of African descent have led a remarkable, if still incomplete, democratization of politics and culture. Peru, with its 45 percent Amerindian population, has largely been left out of this process. In fact, some say that racism has deepened over the last decade, with the mining boom wreaking havoc on the dark-skinned Andean countryside and Amazonian lowlands while financing the rise of luxury condos and malls in white, middle-class Lima.

So however hard it might be for Humala to take on international capital—Peru’s stock market plunged 12 percent the day after his election—an equally difficult challenge will be to tackle Peruvian racism. “El Indio Humala” lost Lima by a wide margin, driven mostly not by fears he would turn Peru into Chávez’s Venezuela but into neighboring Indian-governed Bolivia. Candidate Humala did his best to deflect these concerns.

President Humala, however, will have to confront this racism directly if he is to succeed in democratizing Peru. After all, even before all the votes where in, tens of thousands of his supporters began to fill the country’s plazas, including Lima’s. They raised high the rainbow wiphala flag that became ubiquitous in Bolivia, during the rise of the social movements that brought Evo Morales to power. Today, it is waved throughout the Andes as a symbol of indigenous pride and sovereignty.

Copyright © 2011 The Nation

Greg Grandin teaches history at New York University and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His most recent book, Fordlandia, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history.

Washington, D.C. The Real Haiti Tragedy: Nearly $1 billion in Aid Held Up By One Senator

October 8, 2010

By `

(The Loop21) — While hundreds of thousands suffer without water, electricity, and shelter in Haiti, one man from the privileged comfort of his tax payer supported Washington D.C. office has held $917 million in aid to Haiti hostage. Earlier this year the United States pledged to provide nearly a billion dollars in aid to help rebuild earthquake ravaged Haiti. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives passed legislation making $917 million available for the rebuilding effort. Because Congress did not spell out exactly how the money was to be spent, a separate authorization bill accomplishing this task was needed. Without the authorization bill the money would not be dispersed.

Using a little heard of device known as the Senate hold, Senator Tom Coburn (R) has blocked this authorization bill from reaching the floor of the Senate, in effect holding hostage well over $900 million needed to re-build earthquake ravaged Haiti.

His justification – a $5 million provision in the authorization bill he considers wasteful. Never mind the fact the provision would fund a Haiti coordinator charged with developing a rebuilding strategy for the country. According to the Associated Press, $1 million a year for five years would be used to pay for the coordinator and a staff of up to seven people.

Rather than waste money, it seems like such a coordinator position would actually save money by ensuring funds were spent according to a well thought out plan.

Nevertheless, Senator Coburn seems fine blocking desperately needed funds over a provision that constitutes less than 0.6 percent of the spending authorization bill.

One can only wonder about the true motives of Senator Coburn’s actions. As a man who so proudly touts his Christian conservative roots, shouldn’t Coburn heed the spirit of his faith – one that calls for compassion and admonishes believers to help those less fortunate than ourselves? As a physician shouldn’t Coburn be more in tune with human suffering?

Coburn’s actions are emblematic of an even larger problem – a hopelessly broken Senate, one in which arcane rules adversely affect the lives of real people. The Senate hold Coburn placed on the Haitian aid authorization bill is a prime example.

Not only does a hold allow a Senator to block legislation from coming to the Senate floor for a vote, but it allows the Senator to do this in complete anonymity. Only investigative reporting by the Associated Press uncovered Senator Coburn as the senator responsible for blocking aid to Haiti.

In a democratic system, a single senator shouldn’t have the power to so cowardly hold legislation, impeding the work of Congress in the process. Yet, Republicans have used holds not only to block legislation but to also prevent the appointment of Presidential nominees.

Senator Richard Shelby (R) earlier this year blocked an unprecedented 70 Presidential appointments. Republican blocks on judicial nominees have been so numerous that a dangerously high 103 appointments in federal district and appellate courts remain unfulfilled.

Just as devastating has been the Republican use of the filibuster, a tactic that forces 60 senators to agree before a bill can proceed to passage instead of a simple 51 percent majority.

Good legislation has repeatedly been stalled or sacrificed at the hand of the filibuster, even when a majority of Senators were in favor of it.

Among them – legislation to end tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell ban on gays in the military, extension of unemployment benefits for the jobless, small business tax cuts, and emergency aid to states to save the jobs of thousands of teachers and public employees.

In fact, by early this year the House of Representatives had already passed 290 pieces of legislation that subsequently stalled in the Senate – a place where legislation and common sense go to die. In the process real Americans facing real problems have suffered.

And where has the media been in all this? It seems they would rather report on the antics of the Tea Party than shine light on a dysfunctional Senate. Are we a culture that would rather hear about Lindsay Lohan’s latest arrest than the inhuman actions of a leader who prevents aid from reaching earthquake victims?

Was Haiti just the “flavor of the month”? Have we so quickly forgotten the human suffering and devastation, moving on to the next item in our 24/7 news cycle?

The devastation in Haiti was a true human tragedy. Yet equally as tragic is a broken Senate whose rules allow politicians to capriciously obstruct legislation that could help millions of people.

Now that you think about it, should we even be surprised Senator Coburn is holding desperately needed aid to Haiti hostage? His own party in the Senate has been holding the American public hostage for nearly two years.

The New Normal: 10% Unemployment

by John Lawrence

The economy is out of recession since it is actually growing and not contracting. Yet job growth compared to the baseline of 100,000 new jobs a month just to accomodate the growth in the labor force is actually negative. There were 83,000 private sector jobs created in June. That means that actually there were 17,000 fewer jobs created than were needed just to stay even and so a net job loss. However, the economy is still expanding so what's the problem? The rich it seems have been presuaded to do their patriotic duty and consume more thus making up for the poor suckers who can't keep up their pace of consumption because their jobs went down the tubes. As long as the rich consume more to make up the difference, the economy will continue to expand and GDP will continue to grow since it is based 70% on consumption. It's the least the rich can do since they don't want to have their taxes raised, something that might make the government more solvent and provide funds for job creation.

The fact of the matter is that private sector employment will continue its downward trend simply because it's government policy to export jobs. So waiting patiently for the economy to "turn around" is like waiting for Godot. It's not going to happen unless radical changes take place in the relationship between government and the market place. Ross Perot was right. Ever since NAFTA, CAFTA, the WTO and various and sundry other free trade agreements, there has been a "giant sucking sound" of jobs leaving the American economy for places in the world where labor and raw materials are cheaper. It only stands to reason that most Americans cannot continue to consume at the same pace they did when they were actually employed. That is why the rich must step up to the plate and consume more. The gap between rich and poor has never been larger, taxes have never been lower and its their patriotic duty to make up the difference in consumption if they don't want to pay more taxes and now that the lower middle class can no longer be counted upon to consume.

It used to be that the US imported cheap natural resources from Latin America and then made manufactured products here and then exported those products abroad. The poor peasants that extracted the raw materials in Latin America were paid a pittance and American workers were paid decent salaries. Now the manufacturing is done elsewhere, the workers are paid less and profits for the corporations are commensurably greater. Profits created abroad tend to stay abroad in offshore secret bank accounts where they can escape taxation which is leading to the collapse of municipal and state governments. Eventually, it will lead to the collapse of the Federal government as well as it will no longer have any money or willingness to prop up the economy as it has done for a year now with automobile and housing credits. But it will always have money for war as long as the rest of the world remains willing to loan us the money.

What needs to be done obviously is to restructure the whole economy getting rid of the vast expenditures on the military machine and reducing it to the basics of actually defending the US Homeland instead of pursuing military adventurism abroad. The "free trade" aspects of government policy need to be revisited with an eye to actually creating and protecting domestic jobs and making imports from abroad more expensive. Tariffs were the largest source of federal revenue from the 1790s to the eve of World War I, until it was surpassed by income taxes. So for most of US history the Federal government was actually funded by foreigners wishing to import into the US economy. This actually fostered job creation in the US by 1) keeping taxes low and 2) making domestically produced manufactured goods salable at attractive prices. Today the US is subsidizing foreign competitors and US corporations who wish to use cheap foreign labor and import the finished goods back into the US. They locate their factories wherever labor is cheapest. They also have better access to cheaper raw materials. Cheap transportation by container ship makes it more profitable to import into the US market than to build factories here and to employ American workers. Labor for the products that can't be manufactured abroad is supplied by illegal immigrants who will work for sub-minimum wages and not complain for fear of being deported.

The Chinese model, where government is deeply involved in the private sector, is gaining ground over the US model of hands off by government and laissez faire economic practices. There is the obvious contradiction that laissez faire has done nothing to create jobs although it has added to the corporations' bottom lines. Deregulation not only led to the financial collapse of 2008 but also to the oil gusher in the Gulf which is destroying the environment. The capital not collected by the government in the form of taxes has not been put to productive use by the capitalists who have retained it. Instead, higher returns have been sought in the financial sector. The financialization of the economy has replaced the productive deployment of capital which might be involved in job creation with higher returns expected from the deployment of capital in the casino economy. Hedge fund managers and private equity leveraged buyout specialists have made money not by investing in productive pursuits but by gambling and ripping apart already profitable companies that had been actually producing manufactured goods until they were taken into bankruptcy by the private equity firms.

The rapaciousness of the bond markets and other financial experts and quants has diverted intelligent young college graduates into the financial economy in pursuit of making money from money rather than from the manufacture of finished products. The best and the brightest are going into finance not creating or being employed in businesses that manufacture products. In many cases the financial sector is duping their clients instead of serving them. In collusion with the hapless rating agencies such as Moody's and Standard and Poor's, the big banks like Goldman Sachs had worthless garbage rated as triple A investment grade bonds and fooled pension funds all over the world into buying them. Then they turned around and shorted their own products thus reaping billions when the bonds and the underlying subprime mortgages defaulted. You can read all about it in an excellent book, The Big Short, by Michael Lewis.

So what to do about restructuring the economy? 1) Cut the Pentagon budget by 50%. Eliminate most foreign military bases. 2) Come up with creative new ways to tax the rich. As Al Capone said, "I rob banks because that's where the money is." Similarly, government has to go after funding sources where the money is, and right now it's in the financial sector and among wealthy investors. 3) Institute a financial transaction tax. 4) Establish an industrial policy which establishes, shelters, husbands and grows companies which employ American workers and don't export jobs. 5) Build a domestic industrial base based on replacing the oil economy with a green economy. 6) Establish a fair trade policy replacing free trade. 7) Make sure a social safety net is in place to ease the transition of workers in the military-industrial complex to jobs in the green economy. 8) Emasculate lobbyist control of Congress. 9) Establish publicly funded elections with free air time. 10) Invest in the American people rebuilding the nation at home instead of spending fortunes trying to build nations abroad.

The probability of any of the above happening is near zero. Instead, the US will probably come to tolerate a 10% nominal unemployment rate with a real unemployment rate hovering around 25%. Just as free trade created a poverty class in Latin America, a new neo-feudal poverty class is already being created in the US. The rich will have to shoulder the patriotic duty of taking on the burden of increased consumption previously shouldered by the middle class, who will just be able to eke out a living, in order for the economy to expand. The homeless will take to the streets and public parks until the public parks are fenced off due to a lack of budget to maintain them. The rich who don't frequent public parks will say good riddance to them. Increasingly, public institutions will be privatized and the former middle class will be marginalized, quaking in their boots, grateful for a few crumbs from the tables of the rich. There will be just three classes: the rich, the poor and the desperately poor, just like in the rest of the underdeveloped world.

Oliver Stone: The US Has Launched Military Interventions and Political Coups Fifty-Five Times in Latin America

Brave New Conversations / By Robert Greenwald

 

From Alternet

 

The critically-acclaimed director discusses his upcoming documentary, "South of the Border."

June 26, 2010  |  

 

Critically-acclaimed Hollywood Director Oliver Stone dropped by our studio for a Brave New Conversation, where I spoke with him about his latest documentary South of the Border, scheduled to be released in more than 30 countries this month. South of the Border begins by exploring the role that the corporate-owned mainstream media in the U.S. and Venezuela have played in shaping American's perspectives on South America, beginning with clips of the attempted coup on Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. In the Brave New Conversation, Stone describes the South American press:

The press [in South America] is totally owned privately, and most of that press, unlike most Americans realize, is anti-reform. Anybody who comes along and wants to change anything is castigated in the press. Chavez is one example: They kill him every day. The press is vibrant, it's oppositional, calls for his resignation, calls him a madman, and sometimes calls for an overthrow of the government. This is going on everyday and in America they say there's censorship. We're crazy; if we had a press like that, it'd be Fox News on steroids.

South of the Border offers a unique perspective on Latin America, one of a quiet revolution taking place where democratically-elected presidents have braved the strong arm of the US and its policies throughout the region by daring to oppose money for the War on Drugs and structural adjustment policies of the International Monetary Fund, making history with their efforts. Oliver Stone interviews Brazil's Lula da Silva, Argentina's Cristina Kirchner and her husband, ex-President Nestor Kirchner, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Castro of Cuba, and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela: Leaders who are committed and unified in strengthening their countries' economic engine without the interference from the US.

To give you a glimpse of what the US has done in Latin America, Stone explains the following:

The only two allies we have left are Peru and Colombia -- both bad guys, because we've given Colombia 6 billion dollars to fight this so-called drug war. The paramilitaries in Colombia have killed close to maybe 30 thousand -- we don't even know -- maybe 120,000, maybe even 200,000 people have vanished in Colombia over the last 20 years. It's a horrible war.

South of the Border was an eye-opening experience, and I hope people will see it. I thought I was well-informed about South America before the film, but I came away with a whole new perspective. This is what is so wonderful about films that make a difference: you go in with one set of eyes and perceptions and come out thinking and feeling entirely different.

Robert Greenwald is the director/producer of "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," as well as many other films. He is a board member of the Independent Media Institute, AlterNet's parent organization.