Martin Luther King: We Are Not Interested in Being Integrated into This Value Structure

By Raj on 01/18/2010 in Uncategorized, featured

 

It’s Martin Luther King Day here in the US. We celebrate it by giving banks a holiday, and letting working people get overtime. The Martin Luther King who’ll be on our screens is a memory filtered of its radical light. Particularly in his later life, King had a sharp diagnosis about how the evils of militarism, racism and poverty had a root cause. That cause? Capitalism. Will we hear about that on CNN, from the President, on the news? Not likely.

IMF to Haiti: Freeze Public Wages

posted by Richard Kim on 01/15/2010 @ 5:47pm

Since a devastating earthquake rocked Haiti on Tuesday--killing tens of thousands of people--there's been a lot of well-intentioned chatter and twitter about how to help Haiti. Folks have been donating millions of dollars to Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti (by texting "YELE" to 501501) or to the Red Cross (by texting "HAITI" to 90999) or to Paul Farmer's extraordinary Partners in Health, among other organizations. I hope these donations continue to pour in, along with more money, food, water, medicine, equipment and doctors and nurses from nations around the world. The Obama administration has pledged at least $100 million in aid and has already sent thousands of soldiers and relief workers. That's a decent start.

But it's also time to stop having a conversation about charity and start having a conversation about justice--about recovery, responsibility and fairness. What the world should be pondering instead is: What is Haiti owed?

Haiti's vulnerability to natural disasters, its food shortages, poverty, deforestation and lack of infrastructure, are not accidental. To say that it is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere is to miss the point; Haiti was made poor--by France, the United States, Great Britain, other Western powers and by the IMF and the World Bank.

Now, in its attempts to help Haiti, the IMF is pursuing the same kinds of policies that made Haiti a geography of precariousness even before the quake. To great fanfare, the IMF announced a new $100 million loan to Haiti on Thursday. In one crucial way, the loan is a good thing; Haiti is in dire straits and needs a massive cash infusion. But the new loan was made through the IMF's extended credit facility, to which Haiti already has $165 million in debt. Debt relief activists tell me that these loans came with conditions, including raising prices for electricity, refusing pay increases to all public employees except those making minimum wage and keeping inflation low. They say that the new loans would impose these same conditions. In other words, in the face of this latest tragedy, the IMF is still using crisis and debt as leverage to compel neoliberal reforms.

For Haiti, this is history repeated. As historians have documented, the impoverishment of Haiti began in the earliest decades of its independence, when Haiti's slaves and free gens de couleur rallied to liberate the country from the French in 1804. But by 1825, Haiti was living under a new kind of bondage--external debt. In order to keep the French and other Western powers from enforcing an embargo, it agreed to pay 150 million francs in reparations to French slave owners (yes, that's right, freed slaves were forced to compensate their former masters for their liberty). In order to do that, they borrowed millions from French banks and then from the US and Germany. As Alex von Tunzelmann pointed out, "by 1900, it [Haiti] was spending 80 percent of its national budget on repayments."

It took Haiti 122 years, but in 1947 the nation paid off about 60 percent, or 90 million francs, of this debt (it was able to negotiate a reduction in 1838). In 2003, then-President Aristide called on France to pay restitution for this sum--valued in 2003 dollars at over $21 billion. A few months later, he was ousted in a coup d'etat; he claims he left the country under armed pressure from the US.

Then of course there are the structural adjustment policies imposed by the IMF and World Bank in the 1990s. In 1995, for example, the IMF forced Haiti to cut its rice tariff from 35 percent to 3 percent, leading to a massive increase in rice-dumping, the vast majority of which came from the United States. As a 2008 Jubilee USA report notes, although the country had once been a net exporter of rice, "by 2005, three out of every four plates of rice eaten in Haiti came from the US." During this period, USAID invested heavily in Haiti, but this "charity" came not in the form of grants to develop Haiti's agricultural infrastructure, but in direct food aid, furthering Haiti's dependence on foreign assistance while also funneling money back to US agribusiness.

A 2008 report from the Center for International Policy points out that in 2003, Haiti spent $57.4 million to service its debt, while total foreign assistance for education, health care and other services was a mere $39.21 million. In other words, under a system of putative benevolence, Haiti paid back more than it received. As Paul Farmer noted in our pages after hurricanes whipped the country in 2008, Haiti is "a veritable graveyard of development projects."
So what can activists do in addition to donating to a charity? One long-term objective is to get the IMF to forgive all $265 million of Haiti's debt (that's the $165 million outstanding, plus the $100 million issued this week). In the short term, Haiti's IMF loans could be restructured to come from the IMF's rapid credit facility, which doesn't impose conditions like keeping wages and inflation down.

Indeed, debt relief is essential to Haiti's future. It recently had about $1.2 billion in debt canceled, but it still owes about $891 million, all of which was lent to the country from 2004 onward. $429 million of that debt is held by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), to whom Haiti is scheduled to make $10 million in payments next year. Obviously, that's money better spent on saving Haitian lives and rebuilding the country in the months ahead; the cancellation of the entire sum would free up precious capital. The US controls about 30 percent of the bank's shares; Latin American and Caribbean countries hold just over 50 percent. Notably, the IDB's loans come from its fund for special operations (i.e. the IDB's donor nations and funds from loans that have been paid back), not from IDB's bonds. Hence, the total amount could be forgiven without impacting the IDB's triple-A credit rating.

Finally, although the Obama administration temporarily halted deportations to Haiti, it hasn't granted Haitians temporary protected status (TPS), which would save them from being deported back to the scene of a disaster for as long as 18 months, allow them to work in the US and, crucially, send money back to relatives in Haiti. In the past, TPS has been given to countries like Honduras and Nicaragua in 1998 after Hurrican Mitch, but it has never been extended to Haitians, even after the 2008 storms, presumably because immigrations officials fear a mass exodus from Haiti.

But decency, as well as fairness, should trump those fears now. As Sunita Patel, an attorney with CCR, told me, "We have granted TPS to El Salavador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Somalia and Sudan following natural disasters. To apply different rules here would fly in the face of the administration's efforts to build good will abroad."

(UPDATE: It has just been announced that the Obama administration has granted Temporary Protected Status to Haiti. This is a great relief to Haitians in the US and a victory for those who pressured the administration to do so.)

No Shock Doctine for Haiti (Facebook)

No Shock Doctrine for Haiti (Twitter)

Blackwater before Drinking Water -- Greg Palast on Haiti

- Greg Palast - http://www.gregpalast.com -

The Right Testicle of Hell:
History of a Haitian Holocaust

Posted By Greg Palast On January 17, 2010 @ 12:17 am In Articles | No Comments

Blackwater before drinking water
by Greg Palast for The Huffington Post

Just in!
Our plea to send medicine to a friend's father in Haiti was answered by Democracy Now! producer Sharif Abdel-Kouddous who will make the delivery in Port-au-Prince. Apparently DN, unlike the US government, doesn't require armed "Security" to save lives.

[1] Click on image to enlarge

1.
Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States promised, "The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days." "In a few days," Mr. Obama?

The End (of Dollar Hegemony) Is Near!

UPDATED ON:
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
21:35 Mecca time, 18:35 GMT
News Middle East
Gulf nations sign monetary pact

Two GCC members declined to ratify the pact despite Kuwait's optimism that it 'has come into effect' [EPA]
A Gulf monetary union pact has been agreed by four of the six nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council at a summit in Kuwait, the country's finance minister has said.
Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia signed and ratified the pact on Tuesday, which will see them work towards setting up a joint central bank and implementing a single currency.
The rest of the article…

ALBA alliance forgoes US dollar

The member nations of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, ALBA, have decided to give up the US dollar in trading between them. They will instead use the sucre conventional monetary unit. The first international sucre transaction has already been made, with Cuba signing a contract with Venezuela on buying a consignment of rice. The agreement on a single system of regional payments is to be signed during an ALBA countries’ summit due in the Venezuelan city of Kumana next April. The financial mechanism will become operational next year to promote dollar-free cost-accounting. The ALBA alliance comprises the Latin American and Caribbean nations that seek to promote trade and cooperation among the participants and counteract the continually US-advanced free-trade areas. The ALBA alliance was initiated by Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro back in 2004.

Source: The Voice of Russia (I’ve seen it elsewhere, too).

Good! Two regions where the US exerts too much influence are throwing the monkey off their backs. But moreover, this form of “community currency” is a blow against one world currency and a tiny step toward the breakdown of a global financial system run by the banksters and privateers, most of whom are in the US. But above all, the breakdown of the global financial system is a necessary first to to the eventual abolition of money.

Why do we have to pay to live on the planet on which we were born?

End the Fed? Or End the Market Economy?

Original Content at OpEdNews

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December 11, 2009
End the Fed? Or End the Market Economy?
By shamus cooke

When Republican Congressman Ron Paul recently introduced legislation to audit the Federal Reserve, diverse sections of the political spectrum applauded. And rightfully so. The Fed's role in the still-developing bank bailouts is one of utter secrecy; the total cost of which -- as estimated by the bailout's Special Inspector General, Neil Barofsky -- could cost taxpayers $23.7 trillion. The fact that legislation needed to be introduced to raise the question of the whereabouts of these funds points to a larger breakdown in U.S. democracy.

Kucinich to Congress: War is a Threat to our National Security

(December 3, 2009) - Congressman Dennis Kucinich delivered an alternative approach to National Security in a speech to Congress - National Security starts at home in America. The war is a threat to our National Security.

Congressman Kucinich stated:

"America is in the fight of its life and that fight is not in Afghanistan - it's here. We are deeply in debt. Our GDP is down. Our manufacturing is down. Our savings are down. Our trade deficit is up. Business failures are up. Bankruptcies are up."

"The war is a threat to our National Security. We'll spend over $100 billion next year to bomb a nation of poor people while we reenergize the Taliban, destabilize Pakistan, deplete our army and put more of our soldiers' lives on the line. Meanwhile, back here is the USA, 15 million people are out of work. People are losing their jobs, their health care, their savings, their investments, and their retirement security. Trillions in bailouts for Wall Street, trillions for war; when are we going to start taking care of things here at home?"

___________________________

That's telling 'em. DK! Doesn't anyone remember Reagan's strategy for destroying the Soviet Union? It was to increase our military spending so much that the Soviets would do likewise to counter the threat. Only their economy could not take that kind of useless-to-the-nation expenditure and the USSR imploded. The same thing is being done to our country by global corporatists whose only patriotism is to their bottom line. They, not the Taliban or Al-Q'aeda, are the biggest threats to our national security. And if we take care of ourselves instead of mucking around in other countries, the Taliban and Al-Q'aeda won't be a threat at all.

Bernie Sanders Blocks Bernanke Confirmation... With Bi-Partisan Support. The First Step in Ending the Monetary System?

Press Release: WASHINGTON, December 2 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today placed a hold on the nomination of Ben Bernanke for a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. 

“The American people overwhelmingly voted last year for a change in our national priorities to put the interests of ordinary people ahead of the greed of Wall Street and the wealthy few,” Sanders said. “What the American people did not bargain for was another four years for one of the key architects of the Bush economy.” 

Kennedy's Executive Order 11110 was never rescinded. So, the E.O. still stands.

Originally posted by Jack on the End the Fed Network.


Kennedy issued his US Notes for much the same reason. On June 4, 1963, Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110, which authorized the US Treasury to issue a new form of silver certificate.

Kennedy issued $4,292,893,825 of cash money; free of debt and free of interest. It was a sufficient amount to allow the nation to operate without the private Federal Reserve. Just 5 months later, JFK was shot by the "crazed lone nut" Lee Harvey Oswald. Almost immediately after Kennedy's death, the US Notes were pulled out of circulation and destroyed except for samples in the hands of collectors.

A telling clue lies in the fact that the Warren Commission, now widely understood to have been a cover-up, counted among its seven members John J. McCloy, who had served as head of the World Bank and President of Chase Manhattan Bank. A rather odd resume for a man charged with investigating a murder, in hindsight!

Subsequent examination has shown that Kennedy's Executive Order 11110 was never rescinded. That would have taken an act of Congress, and in the atmosphere of near deification of JFK following his death, that would have brought more public attention to what Kennedy had wanted to do. So, the E.O. still stands.

I have written this commentary for two purposes. First, to remind President Obama that he already has all the authority he needs to order the US Treasury to start issuing currency. He just needs to pick up the phone or stroll through that tunnel and tell them to carry out Kennedy's EO 11110. Obama has that authority. He does not need Congress or anyone else's permission.

My second purpose is to send a message to the Federal Reserve. and that message is that if Obama does start issuing currency in accord with the Constitution and Kennedy's EO 11110, and anything happens to him (or for that matter to Ellen Brown), the owners of the Federal Reserve will be our first and most likely suspects.

Paul/Grayson Amendment to audit Fed passes committee

The Paul/Grayson amendment to have a genuine and probing audit of the Fed passed the House financial services committee 43-26, with 15 Democrats defying Chmn. Barney Frank (D-MA), the Democractic Leadership and the banking industry to support the amendment whose chief sponsor is Ron Paul (R-TX).

Now in Under-Reported Reports

A link to the report: Factors Effecting Efforts to Limit Payments to AIG Counterparties.


And a link to a related New York Times article that said: "It’s must reading for any taxpayer hoping to understand why the $182 billion “rescue” of what was once the world’s largest insurer still ranks as the most troubling episode of the financial disaster."

END THE FED!!!

Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve has 298 co-sponsors (69%) in the House. The Senate version, sponsored by Bernie Sanders, has 31 co-sponsors (31%). But in a last-minute power-play by the banks, Rep. Mel Watt wants to gut a proposal for a complete audit of the Federal Reserve.

If you don’t think the Fed needs to be audited, go to the video box on the left sidebar and watch the first video. It’s 5 and a half minutes long. Rep. Alan Grayson asks the Fed’s inspector general some simple questions that she clearly would rather not answer.

Then go to this FireDogLake action link and sign the petition. Bernanke’s against a complete audit, so you know it’s time to do it!

Nov. 22nd is National End the Fed Day. Go to the End The Fed web site to see what actions are taking place in your community.

Who Were the Witches? - Patriarchal Terror and the Creation of Capitalism

OpEdNews
Original Content 
Reprinted by Permission.

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November 6, 2009
Who Were the Witches? - Patriarchal Terror and the Creation of Capitalism
By Alex Knight

Order this important book through our links to Amazon.com

Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body, and Primitive Accumulation
This Halloween season, there is no book I could recommend more highly than Silvia Federici's brilliant Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation (Autonomedia 2004), which tells the dark saga of the Witch Hunt that consumed Europe for more than 200 years. In uncovering this forgotten history, Federici exposes the origins of capitalism in the heightened oppression of workers (represented by Shakespeare's character Caliban), and most strikingly, in the brutal subjugation of women. She also brings to light the enormous and colorful European peasant movements that fought against the injustices of their time, connecting their defeat to the imposition of a new patriarchal order that divided male from female workers. Today, as more and more people question the usefulness of a capitalist system that has thrown the world into crisis, Caliban and the Witch stands out as essential reading for unmasking the shocking violence and inequality that capitalism has relied upon from its very creation.

A Full-Time Job Ain’t What It Used To Be

News item: October 27, 2009 -- San Francisco Chronicle -- The California State Employment Development Department estimates that the underemployment rate hit 21.9 percent in September. The underemployment rate includes people who could get only part-time work as well as those who want jobs but were too discouraged to look, in addition to the jobless who are actively looking for work.

It is good to see that economists and employment development officials are starting to pay more attention to the underemployment rate.  (California started collecting statistics on underemployment in 1994).  The traditional unemployment rate was based on people who were receiving unemployment compensation. Those people are required to look for work. If you give up looking, you can be cut off unemployment compensation.  This is the typical blame-the-victim attitude that is part and parcel of the American "rugged individualism" myth, which has given us, among other things, the worst unemployment compensation system in the industrialized world.  And among its many faults is the fact that it woefully undercounts the unemployed and doesn't count the underemployed. 

But to get a true picture of the economy, the statistics have to be developed still further to consider that over the years the definition of full-time employment has changed.

ARCHIVE: Book Review: Low-Wage Capitalism

by Kellia Ramares
[This review was first published on Online Journal on July 28, 2009]
Low-Wage Capitalism
What the new globalized,
high-tech imperialism means
for the class struggle in the US
By Fred Goldstein
World View Forum
ISBN 0-89567-151-4
312 Pages, Softcover
$19.95 USD or available free online
With the corporate capitalist economy falling apart as it is, some people are looking at socialism with a less jaundiced eye. Of course, there are some people for whom socialism was never the spawn of Satan that banksters and other corporate cutthroats and their political minions would have us believe.