brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

February 6, 2009

WSF: We won’t pay for the crisis. The rich must pay!

Filed under: capitalism,ideology — admin @ 8:18 am

Declaration of the Assembly of Social Movements at the World Social Forum
2009, Belem, Brazil.

We the social movements from all over the world came together on the
occasion of the 8th World Social Forum in Belém, Amazonia, where the
peoples have been resisting attempts to usurp Nature, their lands and their
cultures. We are here in Latin America, where over the last decade the
social movements and the indigenous movements have joined forces and
radically question the capitalist system from their cosmovision. Over the
last few years, in Latin America highly radical social struggles have
resulted in the overthrow of neoliberal governments and the empowerment of
governments that have carried out many positive reforms such as the
nationalisation of core sectors of the economy and democratic
constitutional reforms.

In this context the social movements in Latin America have responded
appropriately, deciding to support the positive measures adopted by these
governments while keeping a critical distance. These experiences will be of
help in order to strengthen the peoples’ staunch resistance against the
policies of governments, corporations and banks who shift the burden of the
crisis onto the oppressed. We the social movements of the globe are
currently facing a historic challenge. The international capitalist crisis
manifests itself as detrimental to humankind in various ways: it affects
food, finance, the economy, climate, energy, population migration … and
civilisation itself, as there is also a crisis in international order and
political structures.

We are facing a global crisis which is a direct consequence of the
capitalist system and therefore cannot find a solution within the system.
All the measures that have been taken so far to overcome the crisis merely
aim at socialising losses so as to ensure the survival of a system based on
privatising strategic economic sectors, public services, natural and energy
resources and on the commoditisation of life and the exploitation of labour
and of nature as well as on the transfer of resources from the Periphery to
the Centre and from workers to the capitalist class.

The present system is based on exploitation, competition, promotion of
individual private interests to the detriment of the collective interest,
and the frenzied accumulation of wealth by a handful of rich people. It
results in bloody wars, fuels xenophobia, racism and religious
fundamentalisms; it intensifies the exploitation of women and the
criminalisation of social movements. In the context of the present crisis
the rights of peoples are systematically denied. The Israeli government’s
savage aggression against the Palestinian people is a violation of
International Law and amounts to a war crime, a crime against humanity, and
a symbol of the denial of a people’s rights that can be observed in other
parts of the world. The shameful impunity must be stopped. The social
movements reassert their active support of the struggle of the Palestinian
people as well as of all actions against oppression by peoples worldwide.

In order to overcome the crisis we have to grapple with the root of the
problem and progress as fast as possible towards the construction of a
radical alternative that would do away with the capitalist system and
patriarchal domination. We must work towards a society that meets social
needs and respects nature’s rights as well as supporting democratic
participation in a context of full political freedom. We must see to it
that all international treaties on our indivisible civic, political,
economic, social and cultural rights, both individual and collective, are
implemented.

In this perspective we must contribute to the largest possible popular
mobilisation to enforce a number of urgent measures such as:

* Nationalising the banking sector without compensations and with full
social monitoring, * Reducing working time without any wage cut, * Taking
measures to ensure food and energy sovereignty * Stopping wars, withdraw
occupation troops and dismantle military foreign bases * Acknowledging the
peoples’ sovereignty and autonomy ensuring their right to
self-determination * Guaranteeing rights to land, territory, work,
education and health for all. * Democratise access to means of
communication and knowledge.

The social emancipation process carried by the feminist, environmentalist
and socialist movements in the 21st century aims at liberating society from
capitalist domination of the means of production, communication and
services, achieved by supporting forms of ownership that favour the social
interest: small family freehold, public, cooperative, communal and
collective property.

Such an alternative will necessarily be feminist since it is impossible to
build a society based on social justice and equality of rights when half of
humankind is oppressed and exploited.

Lastly, we commit ourselves to enriching the construction of a society
based on a life lived in harmony with oneself, others and the world around
(”el buen vivir”) by acknowledging the active participation and
contribution of the native peoples.

We, the social movements, are faced with a historic opportunity to develop
emancipatory initiatives on a global scale. Only through the social
struggle of the masses can populations overcome the crisis. In order to
promote this struggle, it is essential to work on consciousness-raising and
mobilisation from the grassroots. The challenge for the social movements is
to achieve a convergence of global mobilisation. It is also to strengthen
our ability to act by supporting the convergence of all movements striving
to withstand oppression and exploitation.

December 29, 2008

The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008

Filed under: capitalism,corporate-greed — admin @ 9:47 am

What a year for corporate criminality and malfeasance!

As we compiled the Multinational Monitor list of the 10 Worst
Corporations of 2008, it would have been easy to restrict the awardees
to Wall Street firms.

But the rest of the corporate sector was not on good behavior during
2008 either, and we didn’t want them to escape justified scrutiny.

So, in keeping with our tradition of highlighting diverse forms of
corporate wrongdoing, we included only one financial company on the 10
Worst list.

AIG: Money for Nothing

There’s surely no one party responsible for the ongoing global financial
crisis. But if you had to pick a single responsible corporation, there’s
a very strong case to make for American International Group (AIG), which
has already sucked up more than $150 billion in taxpayer supports.
Through “credit default swaps,” AIG basically collected insurance
premiums while making the ridiculous assumption that it would never pay
out on a failure — let alone a collapse of the entire market it was
insuring. When reality set in, the roof caved in.

Cargill: Food Profiteers

When food prices spiked in late 2007 and through the beginning of 2008,
countries and poor consumers found themselves at the mercy of the global
market and the giant trading companies that dominate it. As hunger rose
and food riots broke out around the world, Cargill saw profits soar,
tallying more than $1 billion in the second quarter of 2008 alone.

In a competitive market, would a grain-trading middleman make
super-profits? Or would rising prices crimp the middleman’s profit
margin? Well, the global grain trade is not competitive, and the legal
rules of the global economy– devised at the behest of Cargill and
friends — ensure that poor countries will be dependent on, and at the
mercy of, the global grain traders.

Chevron: “We can’t let little countries screw around with big companies”

In 2001, Chevron swallowed up Texaco. It was happy to absorb the revenue
streams. It has been less willing to take responsibility for Texaco’s
ecological and human rights abuses.

In 1993, 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorians filed a class action suit in U.S.
courts, alleging that Texaco over a 20-year period had poisoned the land
where they live and the waterways on which they rely, allowing billions
of gallons of oil to spill and leaving hundreds of waste pits unlined
and uncovered. Chevron had the case thrown out of U.S. courts, on the
grounds that it should be litigated in Ecuador, closer to where the
alleged harms occurred. But now the case is going badly for Chevron in
Ecuador — Chevron may be liable for more than $7 billion. So, the
company is lobbying the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to
impose trade sanctions on Ecuador if the Ecuadorian government does not
make the case go away.

“We can’t let little countries screw around with big companies like this
— companies that have made big investments around the world,” a Chevron
lobbyist said to Newsweek in August. (Chevron subsequently stated that
the comments were not approved.)

Constellation Energy: Nuclear Operators

Although it is too dangerous, too expensive and too centralized to make
sense as an energy source, nuclear power won’t go away, thanks to
equipment makers and utilities that find ways to make the public pay and
pay.

Constellation Energy Group, the operator of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear
plant in Maryland — a company recently involved in a startling,
partially derailed scheme to price gouge Maryland consumers — plans to
build a new reactor at Calvert Cliffs, potentially the first new reactor
built in the United States since the near-meltdown at Three Mile Island
in 1979.

It has lined up to take advantage of U.S. government-guaranteed loans
for new nuclear construction, available under the terms of the 2005
Energy Act. The company acknowledges it could not proceed with
construction without the government guarantee.

CNPC: Fueling Violence in Darfur

Sudan has been able to laugh off existing and threatened sanctions for
the slaughter it has perpetrated in Darfur because of the huge support
it receives from China, channeled above all through the Sudanese
relationship with the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

“The relationship between CNPC and Sudan is symbiotic,” notes the
Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights First, in a March 2008 report,
“Investing in Tragedy.” “Not only is CNPC the largest investor in the
Sudanese oil sector, but Sudan is CNPC’s largest market for overseas
investment.”

Oil money has fueled violence in Darfur. “The profitability of Sudan’s
oil sector has developed in close chronological step with the violence
in Darfur,” notes Human Rights First.

Dole: The Sour Taste of Pineapple

A 1988 Filipino land reform effort has proven a fraud. Plantation owners
helped draft the law and invented ways to circumvent its purported
purpose. Dole pineapple workers are among those paying the price.

Under the land reform, Dole’s land was divided among its workers and
others who had claims on the land prior to the pineapple giant. However,
wealthy landlords maneuvered to gain control of the labor cooperatives
the workers were required to form, Washington, D.C.-based International
Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) explains in an October report. Dole has
slashed it regular workforce and replaced them with contract workers.

Contract workers are paid under a quota system, and earn about $1.85 a
day, according to ILRF.

GE: Creative Accounting

In June, former New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston reported on
internal General Electric documents that appeared to show the company
had engaged in a long-running effort to evade taxes in Brazil. In a
lengthy report in Tax Notes International, Johnston reported on a GE
subsidiary’s scheme to invoice suspiciously high sales volume for
lighting equipment in lightly populated Amazon regions of the country.
These sales would avoid higher value added taxes (VAT) in urban states,
where sales would be expected to be greater.

Johnston wrote that the state-level VAT at issue, based on the internal
documents he reviewed, appeared to be less than $100 million. But, he
speculated, the overall scheme could have involved much more.

Johnston did not identify the source that gave him the internal GE
documents, but GE has alleged it was a former company attorney, Adriana
Koeck. GE fired Koeck in January 2007 for what it says were “performance
reasons.”

Imperial Sugar: 14 Dead

On February 7, an explosion rocked the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port
Wentworth, Georgia, near Savannah. Days later, when the fire was finally
extinguished and search-and-rescue operations completed, the horrible
human toll was finally known: 14 dead, dozens badly burned and injured.

As with almost every industrial disaster, it turns out the tragedy was
preventable. The cause was accumulated sugar dust, which like other
forms of dust, is highly combustible.

A month after the Port Wentworth explosion, Occupational Safety and
Health Administration (OSHA) inspectors investigated another Imperial
Sugar plant, in Gramercy, Louisiana. They found 1/4- to 2-inch
accumulations of dust on electrical wiring and machinery. They found as
much as 48-inch accumulations on workroom floors.

Imperial Sugar obviously knew of the conditions in its plants. It had in
fact taken some measures to clean up operations prior to the explosion.
The company brought in a new vice president to clean up operations in
November 2007, and he took some important measures to improve
conditions. But it wasn’t enough. The vice president told a
Congressional committee that top-level management had told him to tone
down his demands for immediate action.

Philip Morris International: Unshackled

The old Philip Morris no longer exists. In March, the company formally
divided itself into two separate entities: Philip Morris USA, which
remains a part of the parent company Altria, and Philip Morris
International. Philip Morris USA sells Marlboro and other cigarettes in
the United States. Philip Morris International tramples the rest of the
world.

Philip Morris International has already signaled its initial plans to
subvert the most important policies to reduce smoking and the toll from
tobacco-related disease (now at 5 million lives a year). The company has
announced plans to inflict on the world an array of new products,
packages and marketing efforts. These are designed to undermine
smoke-free workplace rules, defeat tobacco taxes, segment markets with
specially flavored products, offer flavored cigarettes sure to appeal to
youth and overcome marketing restrictions.

Roche: “Saving lives is not our business”

The Swiss company Roche makes a range of HIV-related drugs. One of them
is enfuvirtid, sold under the brand-name Fuzeon. Fuzeon brought in $266
million to Roche in 2007, though sales are declining.

Roche charges $25,000 a year for Fuzeon. It does not offer a discount
price for developing countries.

Like most industrialized countries, Korea maintains a form of price
controls — the national health insurance program sets prices for
medicines. The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs listed
Fuzeon at $18,000 a year. Korea’s per capita income is roughly half that
of the United States. Instead of providing Fuzeon, for a profit, at
Korea’s listed level, Roche refuses to make the drug available in Korea.

Korean activists report that the head of Roche Korea told them, “We are
not in business to save lives, but to make money. Saving lives is not
our business.”

By Robert Weissman

November 1, 2008

Secret Sand Thieves on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway Rampage as Toll in India’s northeast explosions rises to 77

Filed under: capitalism,General,rampage — admin @ 5:06 am

13 hours ago

The level of sophistication in the bombings that killed at least 76 people
in northeastern India indicate that local militants had help from other
terrorist groups to carry out the attacks, officials said Friday.

Caribbean round grains, favored in creating smooth surfaces for plastering
and finishing, are being hauled away by the truckload late at night. On
some islands not much bigger than Manhattan, towns and ecologically
sensitive areas are now exposed to tidal surges and rough seas.

For over 40 minutes, armed robbers were on the rampage on the Lagos-Ibadan
Expressway in southwest Nigeria on Thursday, snatching vehicles and other
valuables from commuters.

The scale and planning behind Thursday’s 13 coordinated blasts in Assam
state surprised authorities, who struggled to determine who was behind the
attacks — among the worst ever in a region plagued by separatism and ethnic
violence.

The Director of US National Intelligence today disclosed the 2008 budget
for the National Intelligence Program: $47.5 billion. That
figure does not include spending for the Military Intelligence Program,
which is at least another $10 billion.

The death toll in the explosions rose to 77 on Friday after more than a
dozen people died from their injuries overnight, said Subhas Das, the
state’s home commissioner. More than 300 people were wounded.

In Puerto Rico, thieves once mined the dunes in the northern coastal town
of Isabela, said Ernesto Diaz of the Department of Natural Resources. But
now they are stealing the beaches of the tiny island of Vieques _ 52 square
miles where the U.S. military only recently halted its controversial
bombing practice.

Top government officials in Ekiti State became targets of armed robbers as
three of them have lost their cars to the bandits.

Assam state Inspector General of Police Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta said the
state’s largest separatist group, the United Liberation Front of Asom, was
the main target of the investigation, but he added that the sophistication
of the blasts suggested the rebel group was “assisted by a force who has
adequate expertise in such attacks.” He did not elaborate.

Among the hardest hit is Grenada, where officials are building a $1.2
million seawall to protect the 131-square-mile island. Large-scale sand
thefts have exposed north-coast towns to rough seas, said Joseph Gilbert,
the minister of works and environment.

No fewer than 10 cars have been snatched in the past two weeks in which the
victims were held hostage at gunpoint before being made to part with their
valuables.

Anjan Borehaur, a spokesman for the United Liberation Front of Asom, denied
his group had any role in the blasts.

One of the region’s largest sand thefts targeted Jamaica, where nearly 100
truckloads were swiped from private property in the northwest, exposing
protected mangroves and a limestone forest to wind and waves.

Among the high-profile robbery victims are the Commissioner for Local
Government and Culture, Prince Biodun Bamiteko, Commissioner in the State
Universal Basic Education Board Iyabo Babatunde and the Permanent
Secretary, Establishment and Training Lekan Ayeleso.

The separatist group has never carried out an attack of this size and
complexity, which closely resembled bombings that have rocked other Indian
cities this year. Those attacks were blamed on well-financed and well-armed
Islamic militant groups.

Roughly 706,000 cubic feet of sand were taken in late July, enough to fill
roughly 10 Olympic-sized pools, said Jamaica Mines Commissioner Clinton
Thompson, who suspects government officials were involved.

Bamiteko and Babatunde were robbed of their Toyota Camry and Toyota Avensis
2008 model cars at gunpoint.

Federal investigators and forensic experts sifted through the rubble of the
blasts Friday for clues.

“I was surprised at the amount,” he said. “This one could not have been
stolen without persons knowing about it.”

Ayeleso’s home at Ado-Ekiti GRA was attacked by robbers who made away with
his car and other valuables.

Mahanta said that preliminary investigations indicated the militants had
used PE-3, a complex plastic explosive.

Police have refused to comment on their investigation.

Babatunde told reporters Thursday that five armed robbers broke into her
home at about 8 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Sunday and in the 45-minute operation,
made away with her Toyota Avensis car, money and other valuables.

On Friday, police fired rubber bullets to disperse angry mobs who took to
the streets of the state capital, Gauhati, stoning and attacking vehicles
and buildings, said C.K. Bhuyan, a local magistrate.

Illegal sand mining in the Caribbean began in the 1970s, when people with
shovels stole small amounts for construction because most homes were built
with wood. But the thefts increased as builders switched to concrete homes
and have only gotten bigger with the rise in construction of resorts and
hotels _ built, ironically, for tourists drawn by the Caribbean’s
immaculate beaches. An estimated 80 new hotels and resorts are expected to
open in the Caribbean through 2012, according to Smith Travel Research.

She said many houses in Ado-Ekiti GRA were raided with some of the
residents beaten up.

Similar incidents had taken place on Thursday.

Some islands offer local quarries or designate certain beaches for mining,
but large-scale nighttime thefts persist despite police patrols. Front
loaders and other heavy equipment are now used instead of shovels to steal
sand, which sells for nearly $200 for 1 cubic yard.

The increasing wave of robbery in Ado-Ekiti has also affected night life as
many fun-seekers now go home early so as not to fall victim of the robbers.

“If we continue to mine the beaches the way we’ve been doing, we will have
no sand to boast about. Just sea and sun,” Gilbert said.

A curfew was imposed in parts of the city on Friday, Bhuyan said, adding
that no one was injured when police fired rubber bullets.

National Chairman of the Action Congress (AC) Chief Bisi Akandeand his
wife, were among those who ran into the armed bandits at Sapade,
Isara-Remo, Ogun State around 9 a.m. (2000 GMT).

No one knows how much sand in all has been carted away, but the islands of
Tortola, Anguilla and St. Vincent are now vulnerable to flooding, said
Gillian Cambers, associate researcher at the University of Puerto Rico. Up
to two-thirds of sand dunes in Tortola and Nevis have been decimated, she
added.

The bombs were planted in cars and rickshaws, and the largest explosion
took place near the office of Assam’s top government official, leaving
bodies and charred, mangled cars and motorcycles strewn across the road.

He had left Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, for Lagos to attend the swearing
in of local government chairmen by Governor Babatunde Fashola (SAN). He
missed the ceremony.

On Grenada’s 13-square-mile Carriacou island, population 6,000, the beach
is shrinking by 3 linear feet every year from illegal sand mining, Gilbert
said.

Bystanders dragged the wounded and dead to cars that took them to
hospitals. Police officers covered charred bodies with white sheets in the
street.

Amid sporadic shootings, there was commotion as vehicles on the other side
of the road turned back.

In Barbuda, illegal sand miners dug a 23-foot crater that damaged a
freshwater aquifer. Saltwater seeped in, and droppings from cows and
donkeys contaminated the exposed aquifer, which is now unusable, said local
environmentalist John Mussington.

India’s northeast — an isolated region wedged between Bangladesh, Bhutan,
China and Myanmar with only a thin corridor connecting it to the rest of
India — is beset by dozens of conflicts. More than 10,000 people have died
in separatist violence over the past decade in the region.

In panic, many abandoned their vehicles and ran for cover in the nearby
bush.

Hurricane damage also has bumped up demand for sand, with residents using
concrete blocks to rebuild homes and sand to finish them, according to the
government of Antigua and Barbuda.

In October, more than 50 people were killed in violence between members of
the Bodo tribe and recent migrants to the area, most of whom are Muslims.

There was wailing on the road as the armed robbers seized car keys,
molested drivers and forced people to part with their money and other
belongings.

If caught, thieves face light fines and jail time that critics say are
unequal to the crime. Grenada, for example, imposes up to $190 in fines,
less than the cost of a single load of sand.

The region is also home to dozens of separatist groups who accuse the
government of exploiting the area’s natural resources while doing little
for the indigenous people — most of whom are ethnically closer to Burma and
China than to the rest of India.

Akande, who was stuck in the hold-up, was quickly spirited away by his
security aide as the robbers advanced on his vehicle. He took cover in the
bush. The former Osun State governor said although he had witnessed
robberies in the past, he had never seen armed robbers at a closer range.

“One could go out, engage in sand mining, pay all the fines and … still
come out making a profit,” said Randolph Edmead, director of St. Kitts’
planning and environment department.

“But today we really ran into them and we saw them face-to-face. My
security assistant advised me not to wait to confront them face-to-face,”
Akande said.

Grenada legislators expect to triple that amount and extend prison terms
from three months to two years. Jamaica also plans to approve new maximum
fines of $11,000 and allow police to seize sand-mining equipment.

“I saw people wailing and running towards me when I looked up and I saw
many cars turning. But, before we could turn, many vehicles were behind
us,” he said.

Some islands have considered importing sand to replenish their beaches, but
say it is expensive and worry about shifting the problem elsewhere.

Akande said he escaped into a wet bush close to a river, with insects
swarming all over him.

Gilbert said he is “appalled” and called for more oversight to prevent loss
of the region’s treasured shores.

He also said respite came about 40 minutes later when policemen arrived
after the armed robbers had left.

“We should take action now,” he said. “Or otherwise we will lose our
beaches.”

—–

October 31, 2008

Sandy Springs in Congo

Filed under: capitalism,congo,human rights,military,resource,sri lanka,usa — admin @ 5:53 am

Another glimpse of a disaster-apartheid future can be found
in a wealthy Republican suburb outside Atlanta. Its
residents decided that they were tired of watching their
property taxes subsidize schools and police in the county’s
low-income African-American neighborhoods. They voted to
incorporate as their own city, Sandy Springs, which could
spend most of its taxes on services for its 100,000 citizens
and minimize the revenue that would be redistributed
throughout Fulton County. The only difficulty was that Sandy
Springs had no government structures and needed to build
them from scratch-everything from tax collection to zoning
to parks and recreation. In September 2005, the same month
that New Orleans flooded, the residents of Sandy Springs
were approached by the construction and consulting giant
CH2M Hill with a unique pitch: Let us do it for you. For the
starting price of $27 million a year, the contractor pledged
to build a complete city from the ground up.

A few months later, Sandy Springs became the first “contract
city.” Only four people worked directly for the new
municipality-everyone else was a contractor. Rick Hirsekorn,
heading up the project for CH2M Hill, described Sandy
Springs as “a clean sheet of paper with no governmental
processes in place.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
reported that “when Sandy Springs hired corporate workers to
run the new city, it was considered a bold experiment.”
Within a year, however, contract-city mania was tearing
through Atlanta’s wealthy suburbs, and it had become
“standard procedure in north Fulton.” Neighboring
communities took their cue from Sandy Springs and also voted
to become stand-alone cities and contract out their
government. One new city, Milton, immediately hired CH2M
Hill for the job-after all, it had the experience. Soon, a
campaign began for the new corporate cities to join together
to form their own county. The plan has encountered fierce
opposition outside the proposed enclave, where politicians
say that without those tax dollars, they will no longer be
able to afford their large public hospital and public
transit system; that partitioning the county would create a
failed state on the one hand and a hyperserviced one on the
other. What they were describing sounded a lot like New
Orleans and a little like Baghdad.

In these wealthy Atlanta suburbs, the long crusade to
strip-mine the state is nearing completion, and it is
particularly fitting that the new ground was broken by CH2M
Hill. The corporation was a multimillion-dollar contractor
in Iraq, paid to perform the core government function of
overseeing other contractors. In Sri Lanka after the
tsunami, it not only had built ports and bridges but was,
according to the U.S. State Department, “responsible for the
overall management of the infrastructure program.” In
post-Katrina New Orleans, CH2M Hill was awarded $500 million
to build FEMA-villes and was put on standby for the next
disaster. A master of privatizing the core functions of the
state during extraordinary circumstances, the company was
now doing the same under ordinary ones. lf disasters had
served as laboratories of extreme privatization, the testing
phase was clearly over.

When we glance at the holocaust in Congo, with 5.4 million
dead, the clichés of Africa-reporting tumble out: this is a
“tribal conflict” in “the Heart of Darkness”. It isn’t. The
United Nations investigation found it was a war led by
“armies of business” to seize the metals that make our
21st-century society zing and bling.

At the moment, Rwandan business interests make a fortune
from the Congolese mines they illegally seized during the
war. Congo is the richest country in the world for gold,
diamonds, coltan, cassiterite, and more. Everybody wanted a
slice — so six other countries invaded.

These resources were not being stolen to for use in Africa.
They were seized so they could be sold on to the West. The
more we bought, the more the invaders stole — and
slaughtered. The rise of mobile phones caused a surge in
deaths, because the coltan they contain is found primarily
in Congo. The UN named the international corporations it
believed were involved: Anglo-America, Standard Chartered
Bank, De Beers and more than 100 others. (They all deny the
charges.)

The debate about Congo in the West — when it exists at all
— focuses on our inability to provide a decent bandage,
without mentioning that we are causing the wound. The 17,000
UN forces in the country are abysmally failing to protect
the civilian population. But it is even more important to
stop fuelling the war in the first place by buying
blood-soaked natural resources. Rwandan-backed militias only
have enough guns and grenades to take on the Congolese army
and the UN because we buy the loot. We need to prosecute the
corporations buying them for abetting crimes against
humanity, and introduce a global coltan-tax to pay for a
substantial peacekeeping force. To get there, we need to
build an international system that values the lives of black
people more than it values profit.

October 16, 2008

Eat the Rich

Filed under: capitalism,corporate-greed,disease/health,human rights,resource,wealth — admin @ 11:34 am

People should start getting together in groups to work out collective responses
to the crisis, like making plans to share work and resources. Setting up food and
farming cooperatives and creating local networks for sourcing food is another possible
response. Organizing to push the government to support community production and work
sharing programs is another. The important point is to face the coming crash
collectively, not individually, which unfortunately is the way that capitalism has
socialized us to respond to crisis. The coming period, like the 1930’s, will probably
see a tremendous rise in mass organizing and the reemergence of progressive visions and
politics as a viable alternative to the system. People who have long been depoliticized
will start coming out of the woodwork. Crisis, as the Chinese say, is also opportunity.
•••

On World Food Day, UN urges rich donors to honour aid pledges.

Millions more are going hungry across the world as governments fail to deliver on promised aid, officials warned Thursday on World Food Day.

Only a tenth of the some 22 billion euros in assistance for food and agriculture pledged for 2008 has reached the UN food agency, its chief Jacques Diouf said Thursday.

“Despite enthusiastic speeches and financial commitments, we have received only a tiny part of what was pledged,” Diouf said as he marked World Food Day at the Rome headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

His comments came as an expert warned that soaring food prices had pushed up the number of people in the world classed as hungry to 925 million, while more than 100 million had been driven into extreme poverty.

Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said in a statement in Geneva that the whole system of food production needed to be radically overhauled to ensure an equitable outcome.

“The violation on a daily basis of the right to food for hundreds of millions of people worldwide has its roots in an outdated and inadequate production system, rather than in the actual quantity of food available,” he said.

In Dublin former UN secretary general Kofi Annan said aid for the world’s hungry must not be hit by the global financial crisis which cannot be “an excuse for inaction” at a “critical juncture”.

“We must maintain our resolve. We can end hunger and poverty. Doing so is critical to Africa and to a healthy and resilient global food system,” he told a conference Thursday aimed at highlighting global hunger and advocating better ways to combat it.

To underline his point FAO figures revealed Thursday that about a million Burundian children under the age of five suffered chronic malnutrition, while in Ethiopia World Food Programme officials said that 84,000 children were suffering from malnutrition in famine-hit regions of Ethiopia.

Nearly seven billion euros (9.5 billion dollars) were pledged at an emergency summit on the world food crisis that Diouf hosted in June.

“Only 10 percent of the 22 billion euros announced (overall) was disbursed,” Diouf said, adding that most arriving funds were earmarked for food aid rather than urgently needed investment in agriculture.

Diouf reiterated his fear that the global financial crisis is taking attention away from the continuing food crisis, saying the “number of malnourished, instead of diminishing, grew by 75 million in 2007.”

The figure could grow further this year, he added.

“The structural solution to the problem of food security is to raise the productivity and output of the farming sector in low-income countries,” he said.

Diouf lamented that aid to agriculture slumped by more than half between 1984 and 2005, from eight billion dollars to 3.4 billion dollars, while agriculture’s share in development aid also fell, from 17 percent in 1980 to three percent in 2006.

Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who was honoured with the title of “patron” of FAO’s activities, echoed Diouf’s concern in a keynote speech, saying “falling stock markets have monopolised the world’s attention, turning it away from the poorest countries.”

Meanwhile Pope Benedict XVI blamed the persistence of world hunger on “the contemporary culture that favours only the race for material goods,” in a message to the FAO.

“The means and resources available to the world today can buy enough food to satisfy the growing needs of all,” he wrote, laying the blame on a lack of political will, “unbridled speculation” and corruption in some countries.
•••

Huge income gap grows

The gap between high and low wage earners has increased sharply in most countries,
according to a new United Nations report. It says the huge differences in pay were
counter-productive and damaging for most economies. The current global financial
crisis will widen the gap even further. The UN said top executives were earning
excessively more than average employees, with the chief executive officers of the
15 largest companies in the United States, for example, earning 520 times more than
the average worker in 2007. The huge income inequalities could be associated with
higher crime rates, lower life-expectancy, and in the case of poor countries
malnutrition and an increased likelihood of children being taken out of school to
work.

October 9, 2008

Corporate Greed

Filed under: capitalism,corporate-greed,usa — admin @ 10:36 am

After shelling out $85 billion last month to shore up the books of financial giant AIG — which is
heavily invested in the huge, shadowy and wholly unregulated market for “credit default swaps” — the Fed authorized another $38 billion in government-backed loans yesterday.

That action may well be a small but necessary step in protecting the larger economy, but it is extremely hard to swallow given that 70 AIG execs went on a half-million dollar junket to a resort spa just a week after the last bailout. Included in the tab at the tony St. Regis resort on the California coast was $150,000 for meals and almost 25 grand worth of spa treatments.

According to the Washington Post, Martin Sullivan, the former AIG chief executive whose “three-year tenure coincided with much of the company’s ill-fated risk-taking,” is receiving a $5 million dollar performance bonus, and Joe Casano, “the financial products manager whose complex investments led to American International Group’s near collapse,” is raking in $1 million per month in consulting fees. His task? Sorting out the obscure investment instruments created on his watch.

Imagine how much easier this “bailout” process would be if we weren’t dealing with some of the most privileged, arrogant bastards this country has ever produced, and if many of them weren’t still living the high-life. The gall of the titans of the financial sector is simply unprecedented.

•••

How Credit Default Swaps Work

Credit default swaps (CDSs) are essentially insurance policies issued by banks (sellers) and taken out by investors (buyers) to protect against failure among their investments. Insurers are forced to open their books to regulators to show that they have the collateral to pay out on every one of their policies. The credit default swap market is not regulated by anyone — at all.

Credit default swaps are derivatives — any kind of financial instrument whose value is based on the value of another financial instrument [source: Risk Glossary]. The value of credit default swaps is derived from whether or not a company goes south. They can be valuable if it doesn’t through premium payments, or they can be valuable as insurance if the company goes under. Think of it in terms of loans. When you invest in a company, you essentially give it a loan. It repays the loan in dividends, increased share prices or both. If a company goes bankrupt and its shares become worthless, then it’s defaulted on the loan you gave it. Bankruptcy is one of several credit events — triggers that allow a credit default swap buyer to call in the coverage it took out on its investment.

This type of swap was initially created in the late 1990s to protect against defaults on extremely safe investments like municipal bonds (loans made to cities to finance projects). Monthly premium payments made these swaps a steady source of extra cash flow for the issuers. As a result, they became increasingly popular among the huge issuing banks and the investors who realized they could be traded as bets on the health of a company. Anyone confident about a company’s health can purchase seller swaps and rake in premiums from swap buyers. Those who doubt a company’s health can purchase buyer swaps, make premium payments on the swaps and cash them in when the company goes under.

Unregulated financial instruments like derivatives can be sold over the counter (OTC), meaning they can be purchased outside of the formal exchange markets, like the New York Stock Exchange. Since no regulation exists on the derivatives, they can be traded from one party to another. There’s also no requirement that purchasers of the policies prove they had the cash available to pay out on the policy, should it be called in. A purchaser of a CDS or any OTC instrument can buy it from anyone who owns one. They can also be sold by the policy’s issuer or the purchaser, and either can sell their end of the policy without notifying the other. This can make it difficult to track down the person holding the seller swap in a credit event.

Even worse, if the CDSs protecting a company’s investments turn out to be worthless, the company is forced to rewrite their balance sheet to reflect the losses, since the failed investment wasn’t covered by the swaps. Heavy losses can cause the value of an institution to plummet. If this happens to many institutions at the same time — and the CDSs each institution took out can’t be paid out — then the situation can become dire for entire markets in a chain reaction.

This is the situation world markets faced in 2008.

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