A Spiritual Life, the Co-operative Business Model, Green Business, NGOs, the World Social Forum, Solidarity Economics, and Scandanavian pro-Labor Social Democracy are among existing practices which offer an alternative to the prevailing destructive corporate and campaign finance models. Here, I invite people to explore Grassroots Sustainability and Social Responsibility through Social and Ecological Political Economics.
The spiritual basis of this discussion is essential.
Germany is showing some gumption in recent trade talks. A comment at the site goes beyond the article to suggest that it is the German people who are influencing a none too brazen government. The German people have successfully lobbied a few times, and actually led much of the effort to create the favorable conditions for their renewable energy strength, following Denmark's pioneering steps, a very lonely but robust UK effort, and all along with the US and Spain's less democratic versions. The selection below comes from Yes Magazine online.
Why Germany Is Backing Away From a Trade Deal that Lets Corporations
Sue the Government
A new round of international trade agreements threatens to increase
corporate power over national governments. But news out of Germany
suggests the deals aren't inevitable.
A new round of international trade agreements threatens to
increase corporate power over national governments. But news out of
Germany suggests the deals aren't inevitable.
In a move that has many on the left cautiously celebrating,
Reuters
reported on July 28 that Germany might reject a
new trade agreement between Canada and the European Union.
Some commentators see Germany's move as proof that
organizing against the new round of trade agreements is gaining
ground.
The deal is called the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement,
or CETA. It’s part of a new wave of large, aggressive trade deals
that also includes the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(TTIP) between the United States and the European Union, and the
Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) between 12 countries of the Pacific
Rim.
If all the deals passed, they would affect more than half of the
world’s economy. But the red light from Germany could signal that
these agreements are not as inevitable as their advocates suggest.
Germany’s objections are centered specifically on the so-called
“investor-state dispute settlement” provisions in CETA. These
provisions—also known by the acronym ISDS—allow transnational
corporations to take legal action against individual governments if
they believe that the country’s domestic laws violate a trade
agreement. And the legal disputes happen through arbitration, which
is a way to settle disputes completely outside of the involved
countries’ courts.
We’ve seen this movie before. Chapter 11 of the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) stipulates that three-person
panels of private attorneys decide who wins in
disputes between corporations and individual governments. These
proceedings are closed
to public observation.
The fallout has been dramatic: Corporations have used the NAFTA
tribunals to win big-ticket monetary settlements from the taxpayers
of nations whose domestic laws interfere with corporate profits.
According to a report
by the consumer-rights advocacy group Public Citizen, there are 17
pending claims in which corporations are seeking a total of $38
billion through NAFTA and other deals.
The compensation won through these claims hits particularly hard
in Argentina—the most frequent target of these cases according to a
2014 report
by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. In one
example, Argentina was ordered to pay
$185.3 million to the energy company BG Group,
who sued for profits lost when the country froze gas prices in 2001.
Chomsky uses T. Cambanis' idea of "red lines" to analyze the Crimean situation and US behavior. He simply condemns Putin Russia's invasion in terms of its illegality, but emphasizes the illegalities in international context brilliantly, especially Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Comments were made that helped me understand the ethnic context better.
One comment refers to the commenters WISH that the US could be a moral force, and that US Leaders need to learn THEIR lesson. It is clear to me that no leader who can create a democratic economy can get elected until social movements in the US do so first. Chavez in Venezuela acted brilliantly and almost with incomprehensible tact to implement significant advances in economic democracy there. Would it take a similar enlightened military man in the US? Philip Agee, for example, ex-CIA, might have been a kind of character up to the challenge in his heyday.
The Politics of Red Lines: Putin's takeover of
Crimea scares U.S. leaders because it challenges America's global
dominance
The current Ukraine crisis is
serious and threatening, so much so that some commentators even
compare it to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
Columnist Thanassis Cambanis
summarizes the core issue succinctly in The Boston Globe:
"[President Vladimir V.] Putin's annexation of the Crimea is
a break in the order that America and its allies have come to rely
on since the end of the Cold War -- namely, one in which major
powers only intervene militarily when they have an international
consensus on their side, or failing that, when they're not
crossing a rival power's red lines."
This era's most extreme
international crime, the United States-United Kingdom invasion of
Iraq, was therefore not a break in world order -- because, after
failing to gain international support, the aggressors didn't cross
Russian or Chinese red lines.
In contrast, Putin's takeover of
the Crimea and his ambitions in Ukraine cross American red lines.
Therefore "Obama is focused
on isolating Putin's Russia by cutting off its economic and
political ties to the outside world, limiting its expansionist
ambitions in its own neighborhood and effectively making it a
pariah state," Peter Baker reports in The New York Times.
American red lines, in short, are
firmly placed at Russia's borders. Therefore Russian ambitions "in
its own neighborhood" violate world order and create crises.
The point generalizes. Other
countries are sometimes allowed to have red lines -- at their
borders (where the United States' red lines are also located). But
not Iraq, for example. Or Iran, which the U.S. continually
threatens with attack ("no options are off the table").
Such threats violate not only the
United Nations Charter but also the General Assembly resolution
condemning Russia that the United States just signed. The
resolution opened by stressing the U.N. Charter ban on "the
threat or use of force" in international affairs.
The Cuban missile crisis also
sharply revealed the great powers' red lines. The world came
perilously close to nuclear war when President Kennedy rejected
Premier Khrushchev's offer to end the crisis by simultaneous
public withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba and American
missiles from Turkey. (The U.S. missiles were already scheduled to
be replaced by far more lethal Polaris submarines, part of the
massive system threatening Russia's destruction.)
In this case too, the United
States' red lines were at Russia's borders, and that was accepted
on all sides.
The U.S. invasion of Indochina,
like the invasion of Iraq, crossed no red lines, nor have many
other U.S. depredations worldwide. To repeat the crucial point:
Adversaries are sometimes permitted to have red lines, but at
their borders, where America's red lines are also located. If an
adversary has "expansionist ambitions in its own
neighborhood," crossing U.S. red lines, the world faces a
crisis.
In the current issue of the
Harvard-MIT journal International Security, Oxford University
professor Yuen Foong Khong explains that there is a "long
(and bipartisan) tradition in American strategic thinking:
Successive administrations have emphasized that a vital interest
of the United States is to prevent a hostile hegemon from
dominating any of the major regions of the world."
Furthermore, it is generally
agreed that the United States must "maintain its
predominance," because "it is U.S. hegemony that has
upheld regional peace and stability" -- the latter a term of
art referring to subordination to U.S. demands.
As it happens, the world thinks
differently and regards the United States as a "pariah state"
and "the greatest threat to world peace," with no
competitor even close in the polls. But what does the world know?
Khong's article concerns the
crisis in Asia, caused by the rise of China, which is moving
toward "economic primacy in Asia" and, like Russia, has
"expansionist ambitions in its own neighborhood," thus
crossing American red lines.
President Obama's recent Asia trip
was to affirm the "long (and bipartisan) tradition," in
diplomatic language.
The near-universal Western
condemnation of Putin includes citing the "emotional address"
in which he complained bitterly that the U.S. and its allies had
"cheated us again and again, made decisions behind our back,
presenting us with completed facts with the expansion of NATO in
the East, with the deployment of military infrastructure at our
borders. They always told us the same thing: 'Well, this doesn't
involve you.' "
Putin's complaints are factually
accurate. When President Gorbachev accepted the unification of
Germany as part of NATO -- an astonishing concession in the light
of history -- there was a quid pro quo. Washington agreed that
NATO would not move "one inch eastward," referring to
East Germany.
The promise was immediately
broken, and when Gorbachev complained, he was instructed that it
was only a verbal promise, so without force.
President Clinton proceeded to
expand NATO much farther to the east, to Russia's borders. Today
there are calls to extend NATO even to Ukraine, deep into the
historic Russian "neighborhood." But it "doesn't
involve" the Russians, because its responsibility to "uphold
peace and stability" requires that American red lines are at
Russia's borders.
Russia's annexation of Crimea was
an illegal act, in violation of international law and specific
treaties. It's not easy to find anything comparable in recent
years -- the Iraq invasion is a vastly greater crime.
But one comparable example comes
to mind: U.S. control of Guantanamo Bay in southeastern Cuba.
Guantanamo was wrested from Cuba at gunpoint in 1903 and not
relinquished despite Cuba's demands ever since it attained
independence in 1959.
To be sure, Russia has a far
stronger case. Even apart from strong internal support for the
annexation, Crimea is historically Russian; it has Russia's only
warm-water port, the home of Russia's fleet; and has enormous
strategic significance. The United States has no claim at all to
Guantanamo, other than its monopoly of force.
One reason why the United States
refuses to return Guantanamo to Cuba, presumably, is that this is
a major harbor and American control of the region severely hampers
Cuban development. That has been a major U.S. policy goal for 50
years, including large-scale terror and economic warfare.
The United States claims that it
is shocked by Cuban human rights violations, overlooking the fact
that the worst such violations are in Guantanamo; that valid
charges against Cuba do not begin to compare with regular
practices among Washington's Latin American clients; and that Cuba
has been under severe, unremitting U.S. attack since its
independence.
But none of this crosses anyone's red lines or causes a crisis.
It falls into the category of the U.S. invasions of Indochina and
Iraq, the regular overthrow of parliamentary regimes and
installation of vicious dictatorships, and our hideous record of
other exercises of "upholding peace and stability."
I've just watched the Howard Zinn doc "...Moving Train" and am in the middle of watching the Noam Chomsky doc "Manufacturing Consent" (both again), and revived my realization that Zinn had been and Chomsky has been amazing activists. I found this 2013 piece by Chomsky at chomsky.info, and think it is
superb. He refers to Mondragon, Ohio, and Alperovitz, and his own bright light, Dewey. I wasn't familiar with Dewey's powerful relevance. I guess one thing he doesn't seem to acknowledge is the existence of Federal laws like Germany's Worker Co-Determination law with some other European Work Councils. The original Danish approach from protests to mechanics to associations to co-ops was followed by Germany to its larger scale, with an interesting version injected into the UK. Ohio has an example applying this, I understand. An example I like in the US is that of the food co-operatives and credit unions. There are plenty of both. Nevertheless, it is the industrial strength ones that need to inspire most of us, and so I am honored again to mention Michael Moore's last film, Capitalism, with his visits to Wisconsin and San Francisco industrial co-ops.
The term "capitalism" is commonly used to refer to
the U.S. economic system, with substantial state intervention
ranging from subsidies for creative innovation to the
"too-big-to-fail" government insurance policy for banks.
The system is highly monopolized, further limiting reliance on
the market, and increasingly so: In the past 20 years the share of
profits of the 200 largest enterprises has risen sharply, reports
scholar Robert W. McChesney in his new book "Digital
Disconnect."
"Capitalism" is a term now commonly used to describe
systems in which there are no capitalists: for example, the
worker-owned Mondragon conglomerate in the Basque region of Spain,
or the worker-owned enterprises expanding in northern Ohio, often
with conservative support -- both are discussed in important work
by the scholar Gar Alperovitz.
Some might even use the term "capitalism" to refer to
the industrial democracy advocated by John Dewey, America's
leading social philosopher, in the late 19th century and early
20th century.
Dewey called for workers to be "masters of their own
industrial fate" and for all institutions to be brought under
public control, including the means of production, exchange,
publicity, transportation and communication. Short of this, Dewey
argued, politics will remain "the shadow cast on society by
big business."
The truncated democracy that Dewey condemned has been left in
tatters in recent years. Now control of government is narrowly
concentrated at the peak of the income scale, while the large
majority "down below" has been virtually
disenfranchised. The current political-economic system is a form
of plutocracy, diverging sharply from democracy, if by that
concept we mean political arrangements in which policy is
significantly influenced by the public will.
There have been serious debates over the years about whether
capitalism is compatible with democracy. If we keep to really
existing capitalist democracy -- RECD for short -- the question is
effectively answered: They are radically incompatible.
It seems to me unlikely that civilization can survive RECD and
the sharply attenuated democracy that goes along with it. But
could functioning democracy make a difference?
Let's keep to the most critical immediate problem that
civilization faces: environmental catastrophe. Policies and public
attitudes diverge sharply, as is often the case under RECD. The
nature of the gap is examined in several articles in the current
issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences.
Researcher Kelly Sims Gallagher finds that "One hundred
and nine countries have enacted some form of policy regarding
renewable power, and 118 countries have set targets for renewable
energy. In contrast, the United States has not adopted any
consistent and stable set of policies at the national level to
foster the use of renewable energy."
It is not public opinion that drives American policy off the
international spectrum. Quite the opposite. Opinion is much closer
to the global norm than the U.S. government's policies reflect,
and much more supportive of actions needed to confront the likely
environmental disaster predicted by an overwhelming scientific
consensus -- and one that's not too far off; affecting the lives
of our grandchildren, very likely.
As Jon A. Krosnick and Bo MacInnis report in Daedalus: "Huge
majorities have favored steps by the federal government to reduce
the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated when utilities
produce electricity. In 2006, 86 percent of respondents favored
requiring utilities, or encouraging them with tax breaks, to
reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit. Also in that
year, 87 percent favored tax breaks for utilities that produce
more electricity from water, wind or sunlight [ These majorities
were maintained between 2006 and 2010 and shrank somewhat after
that.
The fact that the public is influenced by science is deeply
troubling to those who dominate the economy and state policy.
One current illustration of their concern is the "Environmental
Literacy Improvement Act" proposed to state legislatures by
ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a
corporate-funded lobby that designs legislation to serve the needs
of the corporate sector and extreme wealth.
The ALEC Act mandates "balanced teaching" of climate
science in K-12 classrooms. "Balanced teaching" is a
code phrase that refers to teaching climate-change denial, to
"balance" mainstream climate science. It is analogous to
the "balanced teaching" advocated by creationists to
enable the teaching of "creation science" in public
schools. Legislation based on ALEC models has already been
introduced in several states.
Of course, all of this is dressed up in rhetoric about teaching
critical thinking -- a fine idea, no doubt, but it's easy to think
up far better examples than an issue that threatens our survival
and has been selected because of its importance in terms of
corporate profits.
Media reports commonly present a controversy between two sides
on climate change.
One side consists of the overwhelming majority of scientists,
the world's major national academies of science, the professional
science journals and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change.
They agree that global warming is taking place, that there is a
substantial human component, that the situation is serious and
perhaps dire, and that very soon, maybe within decades, the world
might reach a tipping point where the process will escalate
sharply and will be irreversible, with severe social and economic
effects. It is rare to find such consensus on complex scientific
issues.
The other side consists of skeptics, including a few respected
scientists who caution that much is unknown -- which means that
things might not be as bad as thought, or they might be worse.
Omitted from the contrived debate is a much larger group of
skeptics: highly regarded climate scientists who see the IPCC's
regular reports as much too conservative. And these scientists
have repeatedly been proven correct, unfortunately.
The propaganda campaign has apparently had some effect on U.S.
public opinion, which is more skeptical than the global norm. But
the effect is not significant enough to satisfy the masters. That
is presumably why sectors of the corporate world are launching
their attack on the educational system, in an effort to counter
the public's dangerous tendency to pay attention to the
conclusions of scientific research.
At the Republican National Committee's Winter Meeting a few
weeks ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal warned the leadership that
"We must stop being the stupid party ... We must stop
insulting the intelligence of voters."
Within the RECD system it is of extreme importance that we
become the stupid nation, not misled by science and rationality,
in the interests of the short-term gains of the masters of the
economy and political system, and damn the consequences.
These commitments are deeply rooted in the fundamentalist
market doctrines that are preached within RECD, though observed in
a highly selective manner, so as to sustain a powerful state that
serves wealth and power.
The official doctrines suffer from a number of familiar "market
inefficiencies," among them the failure to take into account
the effects on others in market transactions. The consequences of
these "externalities" can be substantial. The current
financial crisis is an illustration. It is partly traceable to the
major banks and investment firms' ignoring "systemic risk"
-- the possibility that the whole system would collapse -- when
they undertook risky transactions.
Environmental catastrophe is far more serious: The externality
that is being ignored is the fate of the species. And there is
nowhere to run, cap in hand, for a bailout.
In future, historians (if there are any) will look back on this
curious spectacle taking shape in the early 21st century. For the
first time in human history, humans are facing the significant
prospect of severe calamity as a result of their actions --
actions that are battering our prospects of decent survival.
Those historians will observe that the richest and most
powerful country in history, which enjoys incomparable advantages,
is leading the effort to intensify the likely disaster. Leading
the effort to preserve conditions in which our immediate
descendants might have a decent life are the so-called "primitive"
societies: First Nations, tribal, indigenous, aboriginal.
The countries with large and influential indigenous populations
are well in the lead in seeking to preserve the planet. The
countries that have driven indigenous populations to extinction or
extreme marginalization are racing toward destruction.
Thus Ecuador, with its large indigenous population, is seeking
aid from the rich countries to allow it to keep its substantial
oil reserves underground, where they should be.
Meanwhile the U.S. and Canada are seeking to burn fossil fuels,
including the extremely dangerous Canadian tar sands, and to do so
as quickly and fully as possible, while they hail the wonders of a
century of (largely meaningless) energy independence without a
side glance at what the world might look like after this
extravagant commitment to self-destruction.
This observation generalizes: Throughout the world, indigenous
societies are struggling to protect what they sometimes call "the
rights of nature," while the civilized and sophisticated
scoff at this silliness.
This is all exactly the opposite of what rationality would
predict -- unless it is the skewed form of reason that passes
through the filter of RECD.
I listened to this segment again last night. I recently showed the film Erin Brockavich to one of my classes. These are the tragedies that can help give people a reality check.
Nuclear power has drawn wide support from both sides of the
aisle, with both Republicans and Democrats advancing a pro-nuclear
agenda even in the aftermath of last year’s Fukushima disaster in Japan.
We speak with Sheena Joyce, co-director of the new documentary "The
Atomic States of America," which is featured at 2012 Sundance Film
Festival. We’re also joined by Kelly McMasters, whose book "Welcome to
Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town" inspired the film. Joyce says,
"We used Kelly’s book and the town of Shirley as kind of a springboard
into the issue, to just talk to people really on both sides, but mainly
to speak to the people in reactor communities... We wanted to seek an
intelligent dialogue." [includes rush transcript]
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:
We’re broadcasting from Park City, Utah, home of the Sundance Film
Festival, the nation’s largest festival for independent cinema. Today
we’re talking about nuclear power. Why? Well, the corporate media brings
out debate when the establishment in Washington is divided—Democrats
debating Republicans. That scope of debate, they bring us. But what
happens when the majority of Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and
the president, as well, agree? You’re not going to get much coverage of
the issue. And that’s the story of nuclear power today. Just two years
ago, President Obama gave his State of the Union address and was
applauded on both sides of the aisle when he said this.
We’re broadcasting from Park City, Utah, and we’re about to go to a
clip of President Obama speaking two years ago at the State of the Union
address, when he addressed the issue of nuclear renaissance.
PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA:
[But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more
production,] more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a
new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country,
because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the
nation that leads the global economy, and America must be that nation.
AMYGOODMAN:
That was President Obama in 2010 giving his State of the Union address.
And that is a clip of a new movie that premiered at the Sundance Film
Festival called The Atomic States of America. It’s directed by Sheena Joyce and Don Argott. And Sheena Joyce is joining us now.
The film is based on a book called Welcome to Shirley by a Shirley resident, Kelly McMasters. That’s Shirley, Long Island, New York. And Kelly joins us today.
Unfortunately, India is in as much trouble as the rest of the world, despite Gandhi´s amazing presence there historically. It´s worth a visit to the Right Livelihood Award to check out some of the excellent activist efforts that have been going on there.
Arundhati
Roy's trenchant analysis of the destructive impact of global
neoliberalism on India is availble directly from Truthout by clicking here. Capitalism: A Ghost Story is a passionate, detailed journey through the injustices of systemic inequality.
As voting begins in India in the largest elections the world has ever
seen, we spend the hour with Indian novelist and essayist Arundhati
Roy. Nearly 815 million Indians are eligible to vote, and results will
be issued in May. One of India’s most famous authors - and one of its
fiercest critics - Roy is out with a new book, Capitalism: A Ghost Story,
which dives into India’s transforming political landscape and makes the
case that globalized capitalism has intensified the wealth divide,
racism, and environmental degradation. "This new election is going to be
[about] who the corporates choose," Roy says, "[about] who is not going
to blink about deploying the Indian army against the poorest people in
this country, and pushing them out to give over those lands, those
rivers, those mountains, to the major mining corporations." Roy won the
Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things. Her other books include An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire and Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers. TRANSCRIPT: AMYGOODMAN:
Voting has begun in India in the largest election the world has ever
seen. About 815 million Indians are eligible to vote over the next five
weeks. The number of voters in India is more than two-and-a-half times
the entire population of the United States. The election will take place
in nine phases at over 900,000 polling stations across India. Results
will be known on May 16th.
Pre-election polls indicate Narendra Modi will likely become India’s next prime minister. Modi is the leader of the BJP,
a Hindu nationalist party. He serves—he served as the chief minister of
Gujarat, where one of India’s worst anti-Muslim riots occurred in 2002
that left at least a thousand people dead. After the bloodshed, the U.S.
State Department revoked Modi’s visa, saying it could not grant a visa
to any foreign government official who, quote, "was responsible for or
directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of
religious freedom." Modi has never apologized for or explained his
actions at the time of the riots.
Modi’s main challenger to become prime minister is Rahul Gandhi of
the ruling Congress party. Gandhi is heir to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty
that’s governed India for much of its post-independence history.
Several smaller regional parties and the new anti-corruption Common
Man Party are also in the running. If no single party wins a clear
majority, the smaller parties could play a crucial role in forming a
coalition government.
Well, today we spend the hour with one of India’s most famous authors
and one of its fiercest critics, Arundhati Roy. In 1997, Roy won the
Booker Prize for her novel, The God of Small Things. Since then, she has focused on nonfiction. Her books include An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers and Walking with the Comrades. Her latest book is titled Capitalism: A Ghost Story.
Nermeen Shaikh and I recently sat down with Arundhati Roy when she was
in New York. We began by asking about her new book and the changes that
have taken place in India since it opened its economy in the early ’90s.
ARUNDHATIROY:
What we’re always told is that, you know, there’s going to be a
trickle-down revolution. You know, that kind of opening up of the
economy that happened in the early '90s was going to lead to an inflow
of foreign capital, and eventually the poor would benefit. So, you know,
being a novelist, I started out by standing outside this 27-story
building that belonged to Mukesh Ambani, with its ballrooms and its six
floors of parking and 900 servants and helipads and so on. And it had
this 27-story-high vertical lawn, and bits of the grass had sort of
fallen off in squares. And so, I said, "Well, trickle down hasn't
worked, but gush up has," because after the opening up of the economy,
we are in a situation where, you know, 100 of India’s wealthiest people
own—their combined wealth is 25 percent of the GDP,
whereas more than 80 percent of its population lives on less than half a
dollar a day. And the levels of malnutrition, the levels of hunger, the
amount of food intake, all these—all these, you know, while India is
shown as a quickly growing economy, though, of course, that has slowed
down now dramatically, but at its peak, what happened was that this
new—these new economic policies created a big middle class, which, given
the population of India, gave the impression of—it was a universe of
its own, with, you know, the ability to consume cars and air
conditioners and mobile phones and all of that. And that huge middle
class came at a cost of a much larger underclass, which was just away
from the arc lights, you know, which wasn’t—which wasn’t even being
looked at, millions of people being displaced, pushed off their lands
either by big development project or just by land which had ceased to be
productive. You had—I mean, we have had 250,000 farmers committing
suicide, which, if you even try to talk about, let’s say, on the Indian
television channels, you actually get insulted, you know, because it—
NERMEENSHAIKH: I mean, that’s an extraordinary figure. It’s a quarter of a million farmers who have killed themselves.
ARUNDHATIROY:
Yeah, and let me say that that figure doesn’t include the fact that,
you know, if it’s a woman who kills herself, she’s not considered a
farmer, or now they’ll start saying, "Oh, it wasn’t suicide. Oh, it was
depression. It was this. It was that." You know?
AMYGOODMAN: But why are they killing themselves?
ARUNDHATIROY:
Because they are caught in a debt trap, you know, because what happens
is that the entire—the entire face of agriculture has changed. So people
start growing cash crops, you know, crops which are market-friendly,
which need a lot of input. You know, they need pesticides. They need
borewells. They need all kinds of chemicals. And then the crop fails, or
the cost of the—that they get for their product doesn’t match the
amount of money they have to put into it. And also you have situations
like in the Punjab, where—which was called the "rice bowl of India."
Punjab never used to grow rice earlier, but now—
AMYGOODMAN: In the north of India.
ARUNDHATIROY:
Yes, in the north. And it’s supposed to be India’s richest agricultural
state. But there you have so many farmer suicides now, land going
saline. The, you know, people, ironically, the way they commit suicide
is by drinking the pesticide, you know, which they need to—and apart
from the fact that the debt, the illness that is being caused by all of
this, in Punjab, you have a train called the Cancer Express, you know,
where people just coming in droves to be treated for illness and—you
know, and—
AMYGOODMAN: And the train is called the Cancer Express?
ARUNDHATIROY: Yes, it’s called the Cancer Express. And—
AMYGOODMAN: Because of the pesticide that they’re exposed to?
ARUNDHATIROY:
Yeah, and they are. And this is the richest state in India, you know—I
mean agriculturally the richest. And there’s a crisis there—never mind
in places like, you know, towards the west, Maharashtra and Vidarbha,
where, you know, farmers are killing themselves almost every day.
AMYGOODMAN: I was wondering if you could read from Capitalism: A Ghost Story.
ARUNDHATIROY: So, "In India, the 300 million of us who belong to the new, post-IMF
'reforms' middle class—the market—live side by side with the spirits of
the nether world, the poltergeists of dead rivers, dry wells, bald
mountains and denuded forests; the ghosts of 250,000 debt-ridden farmers
who have killed themselves, and the 800 million who have been
impoverished and dispossessed to make way for us. And who survive on
less than half a dollar, which is 20 Indian rupees, a day.
“Mukesh Ambani is personally worth $20 billion. He holds a majority controlling share in Reliance Industries Limited (RIL),
a company with a market capitalization of $47 billion and global
business interests that include petrochemicals, oil, natural gas,
polyester fibre, Special Economic Zones, fresh food retail, high
schools, life sciences research and stem cell storage services. RIL
recently bought 95 per cent shares in Infotel, a TV consortium that
controls 27 TV news and entertainment channels in almost every regional
language.
“RIL is one of a handful of corporations
that run India. Some of the others are the Tatas, Jindals, Vedanta,
Mittals, Infosys, Essar. Their race for growth has spilled across
Europe, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America. Their nets are cast
wide; they are visible and invisible, over-ground as well as
underground. The Tatas, for example, run more than 100 companies in 80
countries. They are one of India’s oldest and largest private sector
power companies. They own mines, gas fields, steel plants, telephone,
cable TV and broadband networks, and they run whole townships. They
manufacture cars and trucks, and own the Taj Hotel chain, Jaguar, Land
Rover, Daewoo, Tetley Tea, a publishing company, a chain of bookstores, a
major brand of iodized salt and the cosmetics giant Lakme—which I think
they’ve sold now. Their advertising tagline could easily be: You Can’t
Live Without Us.
"According to the rules of the Gush-Up Gospel, the more you have, the more you can have."....
The VW plant employee vote on creating a UAW union branch is a great illustration of the state of the US political economy today, and the existence of an anti-democratic oligarchy and plutocracy.
The Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., Jan. 28, 2014. (Photo: Tami Chappell / The New York Times) Given the dizzying array of antiunion forces that were involved
in the campaign to undermine workers' choice to form a union at
Volkswagen in Chattanooga, a who's who of who did what in the dirty
tricks campaign may come in handy.
On April 9, the United Auto Workers (UAW) subpoenaed Republican Sen.
Bob Corker, Governor Bill Haslam and 18 other state officials to appear
at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB hearing into third-party
intervention in the union election at Volkswagen in Chattanooga,
Tennessee. Given the dizzying array of antiunion forces that were
involved in the campaign to undermine workers' choice, it's easy to lose
track of who did what.
The anti-UAW campaign at Volkswagen had everything: a senator
deliberately misleading workers; a governor offering Volkswagen hundreds
of millions of taxpayers' dollars - but only if the union lost - senior
state politicians openly making threats of financial retribution;
Republican staffers secretly coordinating the anti-UAW campaign with
notorious union busters; shadowy organizations with links to the
nation's leading right-wing activists; an Ayn Rand-inspired anti-union
consultant; and AstroTurf organizations that purported to be groups of
rank-and-file workers. And this is only what we know so far.
Here's a quick primer to the main actors in the campaign to subvert workers' choice: Competitive Enterprise Institute: A shadowy
libertarian organization with links to the Koch Brothers and right-wing
foundations. CEI's involvement was primarily through right-wing activist
Matt Patterson, who later went on to spearhead the antiunion campaign
with the Center for Worker Freedom. Center for Worker Freedom: A special project of
Grover Norquist's American for Tax Reform. CWF Director Matt Patterson
spent a year in Chattanooga spreading misinformation. After the
election, he boasted that his strategy of involving workers' families
and the community had caused "strife." Bob Corker: Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) twice told
workers he had been given assurances that Volkswagen would expand
production at Chattanooga if they voted against the union. It wasn't
true. Never before has a senator misused his position to interfere in a
union election at a private company in this way. Jim Gray: Antiunion consultant Gray heads a South
Carolina firm that has a "primary focus on union avoidance." After
attending an anti-UAW planning meeting, Gray stated, "I'm just here to
help out." It appears that Gray helped arrange the production of the
antiunion campaign videos. Bill Haslam: Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam offered
Volkswagen $300 million in subsidies, but only if the UAW lost. Written
at top of the confidential document was the following caveat: "The
incentives described below are subject to works council discussions
between the State of Tennessee and VW being concluded to the
satisfaction of the State of Tennessee." Peter List: A notorious antiunion consultant, List
is the founder and CEO of Kulture Labor Relations. According to a
profile in Fortune magazine, List is "a firm believer in Ayn Rand's
philosophy of radical individualism" who "opposes all state efforts to
regulate labor relations." In a 2007 organizing campaign, NLRB member
Dennis Walsh wrote that in his effort to "persuade" workers, List had
engaged in "patently unlawful" activities. National Right to Work Committee Legal Defense Fund:
The organization claimed that it only provided free legal support for
antiunion workers, but the UAW has alleged that a NRTW lawyer was also
involved in coordinating the antiunion campaign. Maury Nicely: A Chattanooga antiunion lawyer who
fronted Southern Momentum, Inc., Nicely told Reuters that his group had
raised over $100,000 from antiunion businesses and individuals. Despite
purporting to represent ordinary Volkswagen workers, none of SMI's
funding came from workers, and few Volkswagen workers had any direct
involvement with it. Projections, Inc.: One of the country's leading
"union avoidance" firms, Projections created three antiunion videos for
SMI, which were shown at public meetings, put on SMI's "no2uaw.com"
website and given to workers on flash drives so they could watch them
with their families. The videos implied that workers job security would
be threatened if they voted for the union. Robin Smith: Chairwoman of the Tennessee Republican
Party, Smith compared the UAW to an "infestation" of "Ichneumon wasp
larvae." When the NAACP expressed support for an investigation into
Haslam's secret offer, Smith tweeted: "@NAACP supports @UAW at @VW in
Chattanooga. Those allies tell the tale." As indicated by her comments,
the Tennessee GOP establishment intervened in the election in a
disgraceful manner. Southern Momentum, Inc.: SMI was the one antiunion
group that claimed to represent ordinary Volkswagen workers. In reality,
it was another AstroTurf organization, headed by antiunion lawyer Maury
Nicely, funded by antiunion businesses, and which hired expensive
external union avoidance professionals. Bo Watson: State Senator Watson and other senior
state politicians threatened to block financial incentives for the
company - which the workers understood would threaten their job security
- if workers voted for the UAW. The day before workers started voting,
Watson stated at a press conference that, "members of the Tennessee
Senate will not view unionization as in the best interest of Tennessee,"
and that lawmakers would "have a difficult time convincing our citizens
to support any Volkswagen incentive package." Todd Womack: Corker's chief of staff was in direct
contact with Tennessee politicians - including members of the Governor's
cabinet - and union avoidance groups about anti-UAW messaging. Womack
sent an email concerning the three Projections anti-UAW videos.
Recipients of his message included Grey, List, and the heads of the
Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce and Tennessee Manufacturers Association.
The Volkswagen election showed the extraordinary lengths to which
Republican lawmakers and antiunion organizations are prepared to go to
subvert workers' right to choose a union. Whatever the eventual outcome
at Chattanooga, they must never get away with these dirty tricks again.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
John Logan is a professor and director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University.
comment....
Interestingly
enough, VW was OK about unions, thanks to the urging of their
pre-existing unions in Germany, and didn't oppose this vote at all. In
fact, they tacitly approved of it. VW wants Workers Councils in the US
like they use in Germany, a structure that is properly illegal in this
country without the presence of a Union. It makes for a more efficient
operation of production, not to mention happier workers.
The
Republican politicians opposed it for ideological reasons and as part of
a wider allegiance to plutocratic special interests.
If the
company was truly enlightened, they'd walk away and go to somewhere like
Detroiit, set up the plant with a Union presence. But I don't expect
this to happen--they've put a lot into investigating this site. But
it'd send a great message to the Republicans.
Agreed. Ultimately, a non-profit needs to create a certification for
automobiles that parallels Fair Trade for imported agricultural
products (which has emphasized co-ops, and just advanced to living wages
for hired labor). Jobs For Justice, for example. Without visibility,
much leverage for worker justice is lost. FSC for forests is another
example. Need that market visibility for consumer choice and
consciousness....
I'd heard about the legalization of marijuana in Uruguay, but my wife heard a little more on the radio recently here in Brazil. So I then found these two pieces. I finished reading Bart Jones' bio of Hugo Chavez some weeks ago, and really liked it. It gives great details on all sorts of aspects of his life and times, including the economic oligarchy's hyper-antagonism supported or lead by US Intelligence in the form of the National Endowment for Democracy and US AID. In the Overview below, I would edit it to include after his "autocratic streak" that Chavez has channeled (it) to benefit the people, which accounts for......
Uruguay's president José Mujica: no palace, no motorcade, no frills
José Mujica, the Uruguayan president, at his house in Montevideo. Photograph: Mario Goldman/AFP/Getty Images
If anyone could claim to be leading by example in an age of austerity, it is José Mujica, Uruguay's
president, who has forsworn a state palace in favour of a farmhouse,
donates the vast bulk of his salary to social projects, flies economy
class and drives an old Volkswagen Beetle.
But the former
guerrilla fighter is clearly disgruntled by those who tag him "the
world's poorest president" and – much as he would like others to adopt a
more sober lifestyle – the 78-year-old has been in politics long enough
to recognise the folly of claiming to be a model for anyone.
"If I
asked people to live as I live, they would kill me," Mujica said during
an interview in his small but cosy one-bedroom home set amid
chrysanthemum fields outside Montevideo.
The president is a former member of the Tupamaros guerrilla group, which was notorious in the early 1970s for bank robberies, kidnappings and distributing stolen food and money among the poor. He was shot by police six times and spent 14 years in a military prison, much of it in dungeon-like conditions.
Since
becoming leader of Uruguay in 2010, however, he has won plaudits
worldwide for living within his means, decrying excessive consumption
and pushing ahead with policies on same-sex marriage, abortion and cannabis legalisation that have reaffirmed Uruguay as the most socially liberal country in Latin America.
Praise
has rolled in from all sides of the political spectrum. Mujica may be
the only leftwing leader on the planet to win the favour of the Daily
Mail, which lauded him as a trustworthy and charismatic figurehead in an
article headlined: "Finally, A politician who DOESN'T fiddle his expenses."
But
the man who is best known as Pepe says those who consider him poor fail
to understand the meaning of wealth. "I'm not the poorest president.
The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live," he said. "My lifestyle
is a consequence of my wounds. I'm the son of my history. There have
been years when I would have been happy just to have a mattress."
He shares the home with his wife, Lucía Topolansky, a leading member of Congress who has also served as acting president.
As
I near the home of Uruguay's first couple, the only security detail is
two guards parked on the approach road, and Mujica's three-legged dog,
Manuela.
Mujica cuts an impressively unpolished figure. Wearing
lived-in clothes and well-used footwear, the bushy-browed farmer who
strolls out from the porch resembles an elderly Bilbo Baggins emerging
from his Hobbit hole to scold an intrusive neighbour.
In
conversation, he exudes a mix of warmth and cantankerousness, idealism
about humanity's potential and a weariness with the modern world – at
least outside the eminently sensible shire in which he lives.
He
is proud of his homeland – one of the safest and least corrupt in the
region – and describes Uruguay as "an island of refugees in a world of
crazy people".
The country is proud of its social traditions. The
government sets prices for essential commodities such as milk and
provides free computers and education for every child.
Key energy
and telecommunications industries are nationalised. Under Mujica's
predecessor, Uruguay led the world in moves to restrict tobacco
consumption. Earlier this week, it
passed the world's most sweeping marijuana regulation law, which will
give the state a major role in the legal production, distribution and
sale of the drug.
Such actions have won praise and – along
with progressive policies on abortion and gay marriage – strengthened
Uruguay's reputation as a liberal country. But Mujica is almost as
reluctant to accept this tag as he is to agree with the "poorest
president" label.
"My country is not particularly open. These
measures are logical," he said. "With marijuana, this is not about being
more liberal. We want to take users away from clandestine dealers. But
we will also restrict their right to smoke if they exceed sensible
amounts of consumption. It is like alcohol. If you drink a bottle of
whisky a day, then you should be treated as a sick person."
Uruguay's options to improve society are limited, he believes, by the power of global capital.
"I'm
just sick of the way things are. We're in an age in which we can't live
without accepting the logic of the market," he said. "Contemporary
politics is all about short-term pragmatism. We have abandoned religion
and philosophy … What we have left is the automatisation of doing what
the market tells us."
The president lives within his means and
promotes the use of renewable energy and recycling in his government's
policies. At the United Nations' Rio+20 conference on sustainable development
last year, he railed against the "blind obsession" to achieve growth
through greater consumption. But, with Uruguay's economy ticking along
at a growth rate of more than 3%, Mujica – somewhat grudgingly, it seems
– accepts he must deliver material expansion. "I'm president. I'm
fighting for more work and more investment because people ask for more
and more," he said. "I am trying to expand consumption but to diminish
unnecessary consumption … I'm opposed to waste – of energy, or
resources, or time. We need to build things that last. That's an ideal,
but it may not be realistic because we live in an age of accumulation."
Asked
for a solution to this contradiction, the president admits he doesn't
have the answers, but the former Marxist said the search for a solution
must be political. "We can almost recycle everything now. If we lived
within our means – by being prudent – the 7 billion people in the world
could have everything they needed. Global politics should be moving in
that direction," he said. "But we think as people and countries, not as a
species."
Mujica and his wife chat fondly about meetings with Che
Guevara, and the president guesses he is probably the last leader in
power to have met Mao Zedong, but he has mixed feelings about the recent
revolts and protests in Brazil, Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere. "The world
will always need revolution. That doesn't mean shooting and violence. A
revolution is when you change your thinking. Confucianism and
Christianity were both revolutionary," he said.
But he is cynical
about demonstrations organised by social networks that quickly dissolve
before they have a capacity to build anything lasting. "The protesters
will probably finish up working for multinationals and dying of modern
diseases. I hope that I am wrong about that."
Life history Shot, arrested, jailed and elected
1969
Active in the Tupamaros revolutionary group, which earned a reputation
as the "Robin Hood guerrillas" by robbing delivery trucks and banks and
distributing the food and money among the poor. 1970
Arrested for the first of four times. Mujica escapes Punta Carretas
prison in a daring jailbreak. Shot and wounded numerous times in
conflicts with security forces.
....
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/13/uruguay-president-jose-mujica
http://www.socialwatch.org/node/16153
Tax justice and social justice in Uruguay
....From an expenditures perspective, the last two left-wing governments
have focused on correcting inequality and ensuring the realization of
rights, increasing expenditures from 20 to 25%. According to the
Directorate General for Taxation, unlike what happened in the 90s, since
2003 Uruguay is growing economically, and since the new tax reform was
introduced in 2007, inequality has been reduced and is now at its
lowest in the last 30 years.
The DGI Director said, "A society can only guarantee long-term
growth if it distributes the fruits of its prosperity in an appropriate
manner among all citizens and members. But it can only ensure the
conditions for redistribution and for improving equity and social
cohesion through securing significant growth rates during a prolonged
period". In terms of income, the challenge Ferreri raises is to
move ahead in progressivity increasing the weight of direct taxes, not
only on earned personal income but also on income capital and business
revenues. In terms of expenditures, the challenge is to address issues
like innovation, education and developing infrastructure skills.
According to this high-ranking officer, this requires encouraging
private sector investments to be able to allocate public expenditure
towards eliminating inequity.
Minister Eduardo Brenta presented key advances in terms of
employment and social security. Firstly, he highlighted legal reforms
including the laws on collective bargaining, protection for union
organizing, domestic work, 8-hours of work for rural workers and
outsourcing. Then, he referred to the improvements in employment,
unemployment and salary indicators for Uruguay. The country has reached
its highest employment rate in history, with unemployment staying at
about 5%, below what is known as the structural unemployment rate,
which means that sectors that were formerly excluded from the labor
market are now included. The Minister also presented the positive
evolution of the real wages (a 40% increase since 2002) and the national
minimum wage (that will have grown 108% during the current
administration, from 5,000 to 10,000 Uruguayan Pesos). Brenta
considered that this situation refutes a paradigm: "Reality has shown that we have managed to grow and at the same time distribute wealth through a set of policies", including tax and labor policies.
However, women and youth still face challenges in entering the labor
market and are over-represented in informal employment. The Minister
mentioned a series of laws that the government will promote to improve
these groups' inclusion in the labor market, including prolonging
maternity and paternity leave, creating parental leave and a youth
employment law. He also highlighted the need to create a National Care
System that "we will probably be able to consolidate in the next term". The Minister sees this as a strategic national goal: "We
must not only build equality but also ground that equality in a
sustainable economic model (...) because the resources available in
Uruguay still lie with women and youth. The country can not afford
these resources to not play a significant role in the development
process".
Researcher Florencia Amábile presented the findings from the
research studies conducted by the Economy Department of the Social
Sciences Faculty at Universidad de la Republica, whose goal was to
analyze the redistribution effect of household taxes and the social
expenditures (2009).
The conclusions presented by Amábile show that in terms of inequality,
Uruguay is the second country that has reduced the Gini Index the
most, but drops to the fourth place in effectiveness. In relation to
poverty, Uruguay is placed first both in reduction and in
effectiveness. Combining taxes and transfers, "Uruguay has managed very
well to combat poverty in terms of effectiveness of its expenditures,
but its performance in terms of inequality has not been equally good",
said Amábile. In terms of reducing inequality and poverty, even though
in-kind transfers for health and education are important, effective
spending is achieved through direct transferences (non-contributory
pensions :disability and old age pensions, family allowances and other
BPS - Social Welfare Bank - subsidies). She highlighted that the
households receiving non-contributory pensions are usually childless
and with fewer members -.
Even though the international comparison shows that poverty rates
have been lowered and social expenditure has contributed to it, poverty
has not been eradicated. Only 5% of the poor are not getting any direct
transfer. This shows that the persistence of poverty does not appear
to be related to lack of coverage or to the per capita value of the
transfers. Amábile thinks that policies need to be more focalized and
there is also a need to consider if other interventions are required.
....
Ruling elites in Venezuela, the United States and
Europe, and even Hugo Chávez himself though for different reasons, have
been eager to have the world view him as the heir to Fidel Castro. But
the truth about this increasingly influential world leader is more
complex, and more interesting.. The Chávez that emerges from Bart Jones’
carefully researched and documented biography is neither a plaster
saint nor a revolutionary tyrant. He has an undeniably autocratic
streak, and yet has been freely and fairly re-elected to his nations
presidency three times with astonishing margins of victory. He is a
master politician and an inspired improviser, a Bolivarian nationalist
and an unashamed socialist. His policies have brought him into conflict
with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and major oil
companies. They have also provided a model for new governments and
social movements in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina. When in September
2006 he declared at the United Nations that ‘the devil came here
yesterday … the President of the United States’, it was clear that he
was taking on challenging the most powerful nation on earth, in
conscious imitation of the Liberator, Simon Bolivar.
Arundhati
Roy's trenchant analysis of the destructive impact of global
neoliberalism on India is availble directly from Truthout by clicking 
