World Bank and IMF Forecasts Follow Predictable Pattern for Haiti, Venezuela
By Arthur Phillips and Stephan Lefebvre | CEPR Americas Blog | January 28, 2013
The World Bank has joined the “doom and gloom” chorus on Venezuela’s economy. And in Haiti, the Washington-based institution again appears overly optimistic.
On Tuesday, January 15, the World Bank released its latest global economic forecast, which projects 2013 global GDP growth at 3.4%, up 0.4% from its preliminary estimate for 2012 and down a half a percentage point from its previous forecast in June. The Bank emphasized that the low rates were largely a result of sluggish growth in the U.S. and Europe. As for Latin America and the Caribbean, the regional predicted growth for 2013 is listed at 3.6%, up more than half a point from the estimated figure for 2012.
As with many media commentators over the past few years, the World Bank predicts that Venezuela’s economic recovery from the global recession cannot hold up. The Bank forecasts 1.8% growth in 2013, a sharp drop from an estimated 5.2% last year. Since the Venezuelan economy is not slowing, there is no obvious reason to predict a collapse in economic growth.
Furthermore, we can see that the projection numbers follow a trend. Both the World Bank and the IMF have been consistently underestimating growth projections in Venezuela.
Meanwhile, in Haiti the Bank predicts a sharp jump in GDP growth, from 2.2 to 6.0 percent, while the IMF has forecast growth at 6.5%. When we compare these numbers to those of previous years, we can see the opposite trend of that in Venezuela. All the projections for 2012 overestimated growth by well over 5 percentage points.
It is unclear why both the IMF and the World Bank have projected such high growth for Haiti considering the many severe challenges facing the country in the wake of the 2010 earthquake. As we have noted on an ongoing basis over the past three years, major international donor funding has been slow to materialize, progress on housing, water, sanitation and other infrastructure has been minimal, and there have been few examples of improvements that would suggest an upsurge in growth is on its way. There has been even more bad news in the wake of Hurricane Sandy at the end of October, which devastated crops and left 2.1 million people “food insecure.” The World Bank and IMF’s projections of 6 percent or higher GDP growth in 2013 seem unfounded.
The IMF’s pessimistic growth projections for Venezuela fit a pattern going back several years. GDP growth forecasts for Argentina were off by 5.0, 5.2, and 4.3 percentage points for the years 2004-2006, and for Venezuela they were off bya gigantic 10.6, 6.8 and 5.8 percentage points in the same years. These patterns suggest a politicization of the IMF’s projections for certain countries, since the Fund was consistently overly optimistic on Argentina’s growth in the years that the Argentine government was still following the IMF’s policy recommendations.
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Israel plans boycott of UN human rights review
Al-Akhbar | January 29, 2013
Israel planned on boycotting a routine review of its human rights situation by the United Nations Tuesday, despite threats of “unspecified action” by the UN Human Rights Council if it did not cooperate.
According to Israeli media, Israel would be the only UN member state to ever boycott the yearly UNHRC Universal Periodic Review since the process’ inception in 2006.
Israel unilaterally severed ties with UNHRC in March 2012 over a planned fact-finding mission over illegal West Bank settlements.
According to news website The Times of Israel, Israel has participated in the first round of reviews in October 2011, before asking the council to postpone Israel’s review with no justification.
Israel later accused the Human Rights Council of “anti-Israel moves.”
“We are under an ongoing policy of suspension of all our contacts with the Human Rights Council in Geneva and all its branches after their sequence of systematically anti-Israel moves, which have come to contradict the mission statement of the organizations and sheer common sense” Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told The Times of Israel Sunday.
Israel’s review is still scheduled to take place Tuesday afternoon, and it remains unclear as to whether a representative of the Jewish state will actually attend the meeting.
If Israel follows through with its boycott, it could set a negative precedent for other countries unwilling to respond to accusations of human rights violations.
The website for the UPR specifies that in case of “persistent non-cooperation,” “the Human Rights Council will decide on the measures it would need to take” against the offending state.
UNHRC spokesman Rolando Gomez warned that “if a delegation from the country was not to attend then action, as yet unspecified, would be taken.”
The UNHRC review of Israel is overseen by the Maldives, Sierra Leone and Venezuela.
Israel has fought back and criticized many investigations into its treatment of Palestinians, including on illegal settlements and the use of drones.
Its relationship with the Human Rights Council has been tense for years, most notably since 2007, when the council made Israel’s actions in Occupied Palestine a permanent item on the agenda.
Civilian casualties from French air strikes mounting in Mali
January 27, 2013
Human rights groups and journalists have complained that they have not been permitted access to Malian war zones. They have also not been given information on civilian and military casualties. After being contacted by Press TV, France’s Ministry of Defense said that there have been no civilian casualties, thanks to the precision of their air strikes. This claim of military perfection has been trumpeted since the beginning of the invasion. But the mayor of the Malian town of Konna recently declared that 11 civilians died as a result of French air strikes, including women and children. No one knows if there have been similar deaths in other areas of conflict, because since the war started Mali’s government has not issued a single figure about the war’s human casualties. Malian soldiers have been accused of summarily executing dozens of people, some only because of their ethnicity or for lacking identity papers.
Ramin Mazaheri, Press TV, Paris
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Google faces UK class action over secret iPhone tracking
RT | January 28, 2013
Google is embroiled in its biggest privacy battle yet in the UK over reportedly tracking users’ online habits. At least 10 UK citizens began legal action with dozens more lining up. According to media estimates up to 10 million Britons could join in.
Google is accused of evading security settings on Apple’s devices and Safari’s web browser in order to keep tabs on people’s online preferences.
This is the first group claim over privacy issues that the tech-giant is facing in the UK, the lawyer behind the action Dan Tench told The Guardian.
“It is particularly concerning how Google circumvented security settings to snoop on its users. One of the things about Google is that it is so ubiquitous in our lives and if that’s its approach, then it’s quite concerning,” Tench said.
On top of that there are plans in the works to launch an umbrella privacy action suit, which could potentially bring in millions of people in the UK.
Google executives reportedly received a letter from two users prior to the launch of legal proceedings.
The tech-giant is being sued for breaches of privacy and confidence, computer misuse and trespass, and breach of the Data Protection Act of 1998.
Claimants want Google to reveal how much data was secretly collected, for how long, and how the information is being used.
The point of the claim is not to make money off Google, but to send a message, argued a privacy campaigner working on the legal claims, Alexander Hanff.
“This lawsuit is about sending a very clear message to corporations that circumventing privacy controls will result in significant consequences. The lawsuit has the potential of costing Google tens of millions, perhaps even breaking 100 million pounds [US$15.7 million] in damages given the potential number of claimants – making it the biggest group action ever launched in the UK,” Hanff says.
Some users responded by creating a Facebook group titled ‘Safari Users against Google’s Secret Tracking’ to gather support for the new claims against Google. The page promises to hold Google responsible for any privacy breaches.
The group was set up “to provide information for anyone who used the Safari internet browser between September 2011 and February 2012, and who was illegally tracked by Google,” reads the group’s statement. “Any users in the UK may have a claim against Google for this breach of their privacy. Other users, who have set up this group, are taking action against Google to hold them to account.”
The page was created only a day ago, but it already garnered over one hundred ‘likes’.
One Facebook user, Vitor Costa, commented on the secrecy aspect behind Google’s privacy breaches, questioning “what they are doing with this information.”
The legal action follows a US ruling that approved a $22.5 million fine to penalize Google for a privacy breach between summer 2011 and spring 2012. The fine resulted after allegations that Google secretly kept tabs on millions of Safari web users, while leading them to believe that their online activities could not be traced as long as they did not change the browser’s privacy settings.
The FTC came to the conclusion that Google’s stealth tracking (which allowed the company to bypass Safari’s settings) contradicted its own privacy assurances.
Google is not new to privacy violation accusations. In the past it faced many allegations such as, keeping tabs on Wi-Fi users with its StreetView cars and privacy failures of the Google’s previous social network, Google Buzz.
Also, European Union lawmakers have been continuing to pressure Google to boost personal security controls and limit the collection of data without users consent.
But new Google services such as Conversations API, which merges offline consumer info with online intelligence, allowing advertisers to target users based on what they do at the keyboard and at the mall, only raise more privacy-based questions.
Related article
- Google faces legal action over alleged secret iPhone tracking (guardian.co.uk)
Israelis admit pushing long-term contraceptives on Ethiopian women
Al Akhbar – January 27, 2013
An Israeli official acknowledged the practice of injecting women of Ethiopian descent with long-acting contraceptive Depo-Provera, Haaretz reported Sunday.
The birth-rate of the Israeli Ethiopian community had declined by over 50 percent in the past 10 years.
Sharona Eliahu of the Israeli Association of Civil Rights in January wrote a letter saying an investigation into the practice should be launched and that the injections should cease.
In response, Health Ministry Director General Prof. Ron Gamzu asked translators to volunteer their time so that doctors might communicate with their patients.
He also told four health maintenance organizations to stop the injections if the women do not fully understand the consequences of the drug, according to the Israeli daily.
State agencies and ministries had previously denied knowing of the practice which had been reported for the first time five years ago.
Depo-Provera is administered every three months and clinical trials show a near-zero percent failure rate in preventing pregnancies.
Many of the women experienced abnormal uterine bleeding however, which interferes with sexual intimacy.
It has also been said to decrease women’s sex-drive.
Fifty percent of women on hormonal birth-control are said to stop having their period after a year. Even after discontinuing the medication, it can take a year for a woman’s period to regulate.
Beyond making the woman sterile for as long as they are on the drug, a common side-effect of the contraceptive is significantly decreased bone density.
Depo-Provera has also been used with male sex-offenders as a form of chemical castration, as it greatly reduces the male sex-drive.
The most violent settlement in the West Bank encroaches on Asira al Qibliya
International Solidarity Movement | January 27, 2013
Asira al Qibliya, Occupied Palestine – According to OCHA statistics Yizhar is the most violent settlement in the whole of the West Bank with 70 recorded incidents in 2011 alone. Every week there is at least one attack by Yizhar settlers in the six affected villages.
Four months ago, settlers from Yizhar built a temporary outpost on top of a hill belonging to villagers from Urif. This continued until earlier in the week when Israeli authorities delivered maps to the village which showed that Yizhar had laid claim to 2 dunums of land. This was a massive understatement; they had in-fact seized the entire hill.
The land grab of this hillside seems to be all but complete; a shepherd who was working the land around the Yizhar outpost was recently beaten whilst tending to his sheep: the injuries he sustained were serious but not critical. In another incident, as the Palestinian owners of the land were walking along the road towards the hill this week, they were fired on by Israeli soldiers. Villagers want to challenge this latest land grab, however the law in this country is anything but just. The villagers are all too aware that if they resist they have only stones in the face of tear gas, stun grenades and the very real threat of being fired upon with live ammunition.
Harassment of the residents has also been on the rise. Currently at least once a week soldiers have been invading Asira in the middle of the night. They have been banging on villagers doors with the butts of their assault rifles, making sure people are disturbed in much the same way as has been reported in Urif as well as in Burin.
Yizhar a relatively small but very aggressive settlement in the north of the occupied West Bank. It is situated on a hill surrounded by six Palestinian villages which are all made to live in a state of constant fear.
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Iran engineers capable of building refineries abroad
Press TV – January 27, 2013
A senior Iranian oil industry official says Iranian engineers are capable of building refineries in other countries.
Managing Director of National Iranian Oil Engineering and Construction Company (NIOEC) Farhad Ahmadi said after building the Shazand Oil Refinery near the central city of Arak, Iran has gained necessary experience to build refineries abroad.
He added that NIOEC has been flooded with demands from refining companies in neighboring countries.
“With the implementation of this giant refining project [in Arak], we have acquired the know-how to construct a fully Iranian refinery, and also achieved the capability to export technical and engineering services related to refining projects.”
Shazand’s Imam Khomeini Refinery, due to be inaugurated in the coming days, is to enhance the country’s premium gasoline production by eight million liters per day (lpd).
The treatment facility produces gasoline, liquefied gas, propylene, kerosene, gasoil as well as fuel oil and tar.
The refinery has undergone development with an investment of USD3.3 billion by NIOEC.
Iran plans to inaugurate three mega-projects at Shazand, Lavan and Abadan refineries by the end of the current Persian calendar year (ending March 20, 2013) to enhance production of the country’s premium gasoline from 12 million lpd to 25 million lpd.
The projects will increase Iran’s total gasoline output to 70 million lpd, enabling the country to become a long-term exporter of gasoline.
Iran attained self-sufficiency in fuel production after its international suppliers stopped selling gasoline to Tehran under US pressure.
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Continued harrassment of the Nasser family in Madama
International Solidarity Movement | January 27, 2013
Madama, Occupied Palestine – A month after unprovoked settler and army attacks, the victim of severe violence Mamun Nasser remains in Israeli prison. The arrest of yet another member of the Nasser family shows Israeli army’s continued harassment in Madama.
On December 18th the notorious security guard charged with the protection of the illegal settlement of Yizhar, Jacob, attacked Mamun Nasser while he was tending to his flock of sheep in a hill outside the settlement. Mamun was handcuffed and beaten in front of his entire family, who desperately tried to intervene.
The Israeli army arrived on the scene, who responded by firing live ammunition on the Nasser family and others who tried to help, quickly ending their attempt to stop the vicious assault. One round passed through Mamun’s sisters clothing narrowly missing her while another one hit his brother, Amir, in the leg. His mother told us “They wanted to kill him [Amir]. I heard the officer giving that order. He was lucky that he was only shot in his leg.” Severely beaten, Mamun was then arrested and taken away by the Israeli military into custody. One month later he remains detained in Majdou Prison.
On January 23rd at 4 pm, the Israeli army followed up the harassment by raiding the Nasser family home in Madama, arresting Mamun’s brother Amir who was still recovering from the gunshot wound he received only a month prior. This is another episode in the continued harassment of villagers surrounding Yizhar which is described as the West Bank’s most violent settlement by the United Nations.
Video taken by settlers during the incident on December 18th
Related articles
- Palestinian facing charges after settler violence in Madama (palsolidarity.org)
- Madama attack – Harrowing account from the Nassar family (palsolidarity.org)
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- This Week in Palestine, January 25th, 2013 (indybay.org)
Inspector General Alleges High-Level Interference in USAID Contract Rigging Investigation
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | January 27, 2013
The second in command at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been accused of interfering with an inspector general’s probe into alleged contract rigging by the agency’s top lawyer.
The investigation was launched after the inspector general (IG) learned that former USAID general counsel Lisa Gomer had helped former chief financial officer David Ostermeyer develop a contract for a “senior government-to-government assistance adviser” that would go to Ostermeyer after he retired. The bidding was later cancelled.
While conducting the probe, the IG’s office was told by Deputy Administrator Donald Steinberg, USAID’s No. 2 official, that the investigation was “inappropriate” and that the U.S. Department of Justice should not have been told about the case.
“When people are slapping badges down, reading rights and monitoring who is calling who as it relates to career people, it is a mistake,” an IG memo quoted Steinberg as saying to investigators.
USAID spokesman Kamyl Bazbaz told The Washington Post that none of the agency’s top officials interfered with the inspector general’s probe.
Gomer’s attorney claimed the Justice Department has dropped its own investigation into the alleged contracting rigging. But a Justice spokeswoman declined to confirm this assertion when asked by the newspaper.
Related article
- Justice Department Investigating USAID for Allegedly Rigging Contracts (voicerussia.com)
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How GMO seeds and “RoundUp” are driving US policy in Venezuela
By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | May 6, 2019
CARACAS, VENEZUELA — As the political crisis in Venezuela has unfolded, much has been said about the Trump administration’s clear interest in the privatization and exploitation of Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world, by American oil giants like Chevron and ExxonMobil.
Yet the influence of another notorious American company, Monsanto — now a subsidiary of Bayer — has gone largely unmentioned.
While numerous other Latin American nations have become a “free for all” for the biotech company and its affiliates, Venezuela has been one of the few countries to fight Monsanto and other international agrochemical giants and win. However, since that victory — which was won under Chavista rule — the U.S.-backed Venezuelan opposition has been working to undo it. … continue
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