Swiss, French call to bring home gold reserves as Dutch move 122 tons out of US
RT | November 28, 2014
The financial crisis in Europe is prompting some nations to repatriate their gold reserves to national vaults. The Netherlands has moved $5 billion worth of gold from New York, and some are calling for similar action from France, Switzerland, and Germany.
An unmatched pace of money printing by major central banks has boosted concerns in European countries over the safety of their gold reserves abroad.
The Dutch central bank – De Nederlandsche Bank – was one of the latest to make the move. The bank announced last Friday that it moved a fifth of its total 612.5-metric-ton gold reserve from New York to Amsterdam earlier in November.
It was done in an effort to redistribute the gold stock in “a more balanced way,” and to boost public confidence, the bank explained.
“With this adjustment the Dutch Central Bank joins other banks that are keeping a larger share of their gold supply in their own country,” the bank said in a statement. “In addition to a more balanced division of the gold reserves…this may also contribute to a positive confidence effect with the public.”
Dutch gold reserves are now divided as follows: 31 percent in Amsterdam, 31 percent in New York, 20 percent in Ottawa, Canada and 18 percent in London.
Meanwhile, Switzerland has organized the ‘Save Our Swiss Gold’ referendum, which is taking place on November 30. If passed, it would force the Swiss National Bank to convert a fifth of its assets into gold and repatriate all of its reserves from vaults in the UK and Canada.
“The Swiss initiative is merely part of an increasing global scramble towards gold and away from the endless printing of money. Huge movements of gold are going on right now,” Koos Jansen, an Amsterdam-based gold analyst for the Singaporean precious metal dealer BullionStar, told the Guardian.
France has also recently joined in on the trend, with the leader of the far-right National Front party Marine Le Pen calling on the central bank to repatriate the country’s gold reserves.
In an open letter to the governor of the Banque de France, Christian Noyer, Le Pen also demanded an audit of 2,435 tons of physical gold inventory.
Germany tried and failed to adopt a similar path in early 2013 by announcing a plan to repatriate some of its gold reserves back from the US and France.
The efforts fizzled out this summer, when it was announced that Germany decided to leave $635 billion worth of gold in US vaults.
Germany only keeps about a third of its gold at home. Forty-five percent is held in New York, 13 percent in London, 11 percent in Paris, and only 31 percent in the Bundesbank in Frankfurt.
Lebanon’s war on ‘hashish’ indistinguishable from war on the poor
A cannabis farmer in the Bekaa Valley prays as Lebanese army men come to destroy his harvest. Al-Akhbar/Rameh Hamieh
By Amer Mohsen | Al-Akhbar | November 27, 2014
The cultivation of cannabis is popular in specific areas that have special characteristics like high altitude and sunlight, similar to the Bekaa region. This differential feature of Lebanon, which can revive the Lebanese countryside, has been overcome by the alternative agricultural policies required from abroad. The health risks associated with the use of cannabis are minimal compared to alcohol and tobacco, and compared with the results of the war on cannabis cultivation which only affects the poor segments of society.
A few years ago, Lebanese organizations, including left-wing movements, launched a media campaign warning against cannabis and the risk of its spread among the youth. The intention behind the campaign was noble, but it had several flaws: The first is related to the medical claims that accompanied the campaign – which are similar to the propaganda that was disseminated in America during the forties to scare people away from marijuana – saying that marijuana drives people crazy, makes them jump out of windows, and causes delinquency and crime. The main problem was in the “central-Beiruti” mentality, which led left-wing movements to claim their devotion to the grievances of the poor and the marginalized, and thus sought to combat and criminalize hashish rather than demand its legalization and lifting the ban on its cultivation.
The issue is very clear. There is a disregard – even contempt – by urban activists for the fates of hundreds of thousands of peasants in their country. They support policies and laws that have impoverished large parts of the Lebanese countryside, either because of their focus on “more important” issues (such as the rejection of the [parliamentary] extension and the “revolt against the sectarian system”), or because of a bourgeois view aimed at preserving morality and normalcy. There is no harm in adopting or defending such a view, but not when it is at the expense of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged segments of society. To date, there are no adequate studies on the social and economic deterioration that affected the villages of Bekaa and Hermel after the prohibition of cannabis cultivation in the nineties, and others on the prosperity witnessed in the region and the local development that resulted from it, while the rest of the country – paradoxically – was experiencing the worst stages of the civil war, and so the government left the farmers alone.
From the history of cannabis
In his book about the history of cannabis, Martin Booth (who also published a well-known book about opium) says that the cannabis is one of the oldest plantations that spread in human societies. He refers to one of the three major species of cannabis today, the “cannabis sativa,” whose name in Latin means “cultivated hemp” because it reached us in its hybrid version, which means that Neanderthals cultivated and hybridized it for thousands of years until the original “wild” seed has been lost and we now have the agriculturally-improved species.
The cultivation of cannabis was widespread not only because of its narcotic effect. Archeological excavations have shown that the consumption of cannabis was also part of religious rituals, and that the plant was an economic asset and resource used in the manufacturing of cloth, linen, ropes, and oils. A conspiracy theory popular among supporters of marijuana in the United States claims that the ban on cannabis cultivation is linked to influential circles in the timber industry, who sought to exclude cannabis as a competitive resource in the paper-manufacturing industry.
We also find many references to hashish and cannabis in Arab and Islamic history, which show its spread and recreational use in our countries through the eras, such as in the writings of chronicler Abdel Rahman al-Jabarti (who talked about his meeting with a mosque orator in Cairo, who claimed to be “under the effect of hashish” to justify his lack of focus during the sermon), as well as in the fatwas of Ibn Taymiyyah, where “Sheikh al-Islam” discussed the topic of hashish and ended up outlawing most of its uses. Based on his jurisprudential arguments, it appears that the people at the time used to consume cannabis either through melting it in tea, eating it directly, or cooking it with food (since the United States had not been discovered yet, and tobacco had not yet reached the ancient world). However, the prolonged explanation provided by Ibn Taymiyyah on the topic and his detailed justification of the prohibition show that the scholars of his day did not have a clear or decisive stance on the matter.
Lebanon and the differential feature
To be able to understand the secret behind the special relationship between Lebanon and hashish, and the differential feature that characterizes the Bekaa Valley and its surrounding hills in this regard, we have to know a few basics about the cultivation of this plant. According to Martin Booth, the “quality” of the hashish – i.e., the concentration of the principal psychoactive constituent Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in the female plants – is directly linked to two factors: altitude and sunlight. Cannabis needs large amounts of solar radiation during the maturity period so the plant can grow rapidly, and the growth of its genital parts, which contain the active substance, needs infrared (IR) radiation, whose concentration in the sun increases with altitude.
In other words, high-quality cannabis needs high-altitude mountainous areas, which are, at the same time, hot and exposed to the burning sun during the summer, which is rare in the world. For this reason, the cultivation of cannabis is prominent in specific areas that combine the characteristics of altitude and sunlight, like the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, the hills of Afghanistan … and the Lebanese Bekaa. This is a “geographic gift” that cannot be cloned or bought with money. It is limited to a few regions in the world – Booth says that the best and most expensive types of hashish are grown in India, on the foothills of the Himalayas and over-3,000-meter heights, and due to their rarity are preserved in special leather bags. These qualities have made Lebanon’s Bekaa and Hermel a center for cannabis cultivation since ancient times.
The charming town of Yamuna, which lies in a small internal valley in the highlands of Lebanon’s western mountain range, acquired its “market” reputation in the production of cannabis not because of its special soil, or the magic touch of al-Sharif. It is simply due to its high altitude in the barren areas and abundant water sources, which allows the cultivation of cannabis in perfect conditions. If the Hermel heights – which are rain fed areas today – were covered by irrigation projects – as it was supposed to be decades ago – the whole area would have been like Yamuna.
Lebanon’s gold
In the past two decades, new varieties of marijuana were bred in the West, and plantation techniques were developed in closed spaces under controlled lighting and temperature conditions to produce crops in which the concentration of the psychoactive constituent exceeds any product grown in nature.
However, this pattern of agriculture (which supplies the medical and commercial marijuana market in the West) requires the consumption of large amounts of energy for each plant separately. It is also less competitive – in the commercial sense – compared with lands that are, by nature, ideal for the cultivation of cannabis, and have been inherited by farmers over long years. Millions of meters of these lands can be cultivated at a low cost, and by relying solely on the generosity of the sun and the sky.
From here, we conclude that any kind of agriculture is – naturally – ideal for the marginal areas of Lebanon, and some have real differential features on a global level. A quick look at the labor force working in Lebanon, the price of land, and state policies is enough to understand that Lebanon’s competitive commodity – which will eliminate rural poverty and create development in rural areas – is most likely not potatoes or wheat. In addition, a main characteristic of agricultural property in eastern Lebanon is that [owned lands] are relatively small and fragmented. Also, most farmers own their land, which prevents the emergence of feudal and semi-feudal cartels (as in Afghanistan and South America), or huge agricultural companies that would exploit the peasants as laborers and monopolize profits for the benefit of major landowners. A significant part of proceeds from the cultivation of “contraband” plants in the Bekaa traditionally went to farmers.
This question should be raised, while the country that pressured and forced Lebanon to ban the cultivation of cannabis – the United States – has legalized the use of hashish in several states. The governments of the West no longer have a moral or legal excuse to impose such policies on our country. The general direction in the West is heading toward the legalization of cannabis derivatives, or at least not criminalizing it and prosecuting its users. But Lebanon is required to arrest its farmers who are seeking to avoid hunger and migration.
War on the poor
One of the reasons that triggered the wave of marijuana legalization in the West, even for recreational use, is the absence of a convincing medical argument – i.e. a threat to “public safety” – to justify the prohibition of hashish while allowing the sale of other “drugs” like alcohol and tobacco, which are far more dangerous and harmful than marijuana. As Professor As`ad AbuKhalil once wrote, if whiskey was produced by the countries of the South, while hashish was monopolized by the West, wine would be forbidden and frowned upon in Lebanon while ads by hashish companies would have filled the streets.
Science has become clear in this regard. Serious proven tests have shown that the consumption of cannabis may have side effects and can be dangerous for people who suffer from certain neurological problems. Also, heavy consumption can cause addiction and dependency in one out of 10 cases. However, these risks are insignificant compared with those of alcohol and tobacco, or even stress. Tobacco combustion may be the most dangerous thing in a “marijuana cigarette.” During the writing of this article, I consulted with a professor and researcher of Lebanese origin at Harvard Medical School, who graciously provided me with scientific studies and summaries. He expressed his opposition to the criminalization of cannabis cultivation, adding that its advantages in medical use are “very real,” and that the greatest harm results from the war on cultivation, as evidenced by the American experience, since it mainly affects – in Lebanon, as in America – the poorer classes, which do not have a voice in society.
This is one of the issues that will not be of concern to civil society organizations, and will not receive financing from European governments and institutions. However – unlike a lot of campaigns created by these organizations to justify their existence – it is achievable and can change – in the actual direct sense – many people’s lives.
It is possible to imagine a different future for large areas in Lebanon that are marginalized and disadvantaged today, in which farmers will be able to live in dignity and prosperity in their areas, and land and production will have real value.
The people living on the coast may migrate to internal areas, this time, in search of work and opportunities.
Israeli Authorities Prevent 100 Tons of Vegetables from Exporting out of Gaza
IMEMC News & Agencies | November 24, 2014
At Kerm Abu Salem crossing Israeli occupation authorities have barred ten truckloads of agricultural products from leaving the war-torn and economically besieged Gaza Strip, due to an alleged dispute between the Israeli army and the Ministry of Agriculture.
The dispute is preventing the trucks and their cargo from passing, and being exported to Saudi Arabia and West Bank, according to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency.
Israeli website Walla reported, on Monday, that allowing the export of the agricultural products comes in the framework of “facilities” granted for Gaza residents in the wake of the last summer’s assault on the region, by Israel. Israeli authorities had agreed on the passage of ten truckloads per day.
Walla added that this shipment of vegetables weighs 100 tons, and has been held back since Sunday morning.
According to the Israeli system, after the truckloads pass to the military checkpoint on the Palestinian side of the crossing, they should be inspected and, then, loaded again onto Israeli trucks to pass to their planned route.
The office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the occupied territories claims that the trucks are still stuck in the crossing because the Israeli Ministry of Health did not yet inspect them in accordance with regularities, with the Ministry itself citing a lack of staff to do that.
At this time, it is not clear when the shipment will pass.
Big Pharma—Crony Capitalism Out of Control
By Ralph Nader | November 21, 2014
Two recent news items about the voracious drug industry should call for a supine Congress to arouse itself and initiate investigations about the pay-or-die drug prices that are far too common.
The first item—a page one story in the New York Times—was about the Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Foundation, which fifteen years ago invested $150 million in the biotechnology company Vertex Pharmaceuticals to develop a drug for this serious lung disease.
On November 19, the Foundation reported a return of $3.3 billion from that investment. Kalydeco, the drug developed with that investment, is taken daily by CF patients (who can afford it) and is priced at $300,000 a year per patient. Who can pay that price?
The second news release came from the drug industry funded Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. The Center’s Joseph DiMasi asserts that the cost of developing a new prescription medicine is about $2.558 billion, significantly higher than the previous estimate of $802 million that the Center claimed in 2003.
The drug industry promoters use this ludicrous figure to justify sky-high drug prices for consumers. Unfortunately, the criticism of this inflated number does not receive adequate media attention.
Half of the DiMasi assertion is opportunity costs foregone if the drug company invested its money elsewhere. That cuts his estimate by almost half to $1.395 billion. This maneuver gives “inflation” a new meaning. According to economist James P. Love, founder of Knowledge Ecology International, DiMasi also conveniently ignores government subsidies such as so-called orphan drug tax credits, research grants from the National Institutes of Health and government support of the cost of clinical trials that qualify (see keionline.org).
Mr. Love adds that the drug companies spend “much more on marketing than they do on research and development.”
Rohit Malpani, Director of Policy and Analysis of Doctors Without Borders (which received the Nobel Prize in 1999), says that if you believe Tufts’ figures, whose alleged data analysis is largely secret, “you probably also believe the Earth is flat.”
Mr. Malpani cites GlaxoSmithKline’s CEO Andrew Witty himself who says that the figure of a billion dollars to develop a drug is a myth.
Malpani adds that “we know from past studies and the experience of non-profit drug developers that a new drug can be developed for just a fraction of the cost the Tufts report suggests. The cost of developing products is variable, but experience shows that new drugs can be developed for as little as $50 million, or up to $186 million if you take failure into account… not only do taxpayers pay for a very large percentage of industry R&D, but are in fact paying twice because they then get hit with high prices for the drugs themselves.”
Mr. Malpani was referring primarily to the U.S., where the drug companies show no gratitude for generous tax credits and taxpayer funded R&D (that they get mostly free.) Add the absence of price controls and you the consumer/patient pay the highest drug prices in the world.
Another largely ignored aspect of the industry’s R&D is how much of it is directed to products that match, rather than improve, health outcomes—so-called “me too” drugs that are profitable, but don’t benefit patients’ health.
Also, the consistently profitable drug industry has been continually unable to restrain its deceptive promotion of drugs and inadequate disclosure of side-effects. About 100,000 Americans die every year from adverse effects of pharmaceuticals. Tens of billions of consumer dollars are wasted on drugs that have side effects instead of drugs for the same ailments with lesser side-effects (see citizen.org/hrg).
During a visit in 2000 with military physicians and scientists at the Walter Reed Army Hospital, I asked how much they spent on R&D to develop their antimalarial drugs and other medicine. The answer: five to ten million dollars per drug, which included clinical testing plus the salaries of the researchers.
This “drug development entity” inside the Department of Defense arose because drug companies refused to invest in vaccine or therapeutic drugs for malaria—then the second leading cause for hospitalizing U.S. soldiers in Vietnam (the first being battlefield injuries). So the military brass decided to fill this void in-house, and with considerable success.
The problem with the stinginess of the coddled private pharmaceutical industry regarding vaccine development continues.Drug resistant tuberculosis and other infectious diseases rampant in developing countries continue to take millions of lives each year. The Ebola epidemic is a current lethal illustration of such neglect.
The survival of many millions of people is too important to be left to the drug companies. For a fraction of what the federal government is wasting on spreading and failing lawless wars abroad, it can expand from the Walter Reed Army Hospital example to become a humanitarian superpower that produces life-saving vaccines and medicines as if the plight of sick people mattered more than windfall profits for Big Pharma.
Ralph Nader’s latest book is: Unstoppable: the Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State.
Russia loses $140bn with sanctions and falling oil prices – Finance Minister
RT | November 24, 2014
Russia is losing around $40 billion a year due to Western sanctions, but they are not as critical to the economy as lower oil prices, which add $90-100 billion in losses, says Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov.
“We lose about $40 billion a year because of the political sanctions and around $90-100 billion a year due to the 30 percent reduction in oil prices,” RIA quotes Siluanov speaking Monday at the International Financial and Economic Forum.
Lower investment and foreign loans along with capital outflow, estimated at $130 billion this year, are the key components of the loss, Siluanov explained.
Siluanov believes the decline in oil prices has a more significant impact on the Russian economy than the international sanctions.
“If we talk about the consequences of geopolitics, of course, they are important for us,” he said. However, he added that “it is not as critical for the course, and even for the budget, as the prices of goods exported by us.”
Talking about the ruble’s depreciation, Siluanov said that fluctuating oil prices should serve as a principal indicator of the ruble’s exchange rate amid a period of high volatility.
“The price of oil has fallen by 30 percent since the beginning of the year. Incidentally, the ruble has weakened by the same 30 percent. When people ask me – listen, you’re the Minister of Finance, what’s the ruble rate going to be? It is impossible to answer because there are a lot of factors. I say, look at oil prices. The behavior of the ruble will depend on them,” said Siluanov.
The price of Brent crude, which is used to calculate the price for Russian Urals blend, has fallen by 30 percent to about $80 a barrel since the end of June; its lowest price for four years.
According to the International Energy Agency, the total supply of oil on the world market in October increased by 35 thousand barrels to 94.2 million (2.7 million barrels more than in October 2013). In the same period, the average daily volume of oil supplies by OPEC countries in the world market amounted to 30.6 million barrels.
OPEC countries are also adding to the oversupply as they’ve been exceeding their quota of 30 million barrels per day for the last six months.
According to IEA experts, the decline in oil demand from China, world’s second largest oil consumer, and rising oil production in the US will lead to a sharper decline in prices in early 2015.
On November 27, OPEC leaders will meet in Vienna to decide whether to shore up oil prices by cutting output.
Russia urges cutting off financial flows to Islamic State
The BRICS Post | November 22, 2014
Even as the US Central Command on Friday said the US and its allies have staged 30 air strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq since Wednesday, Russia has insisted that major impact in the fight against the group would come from straining financial support for the group.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Friday financial support provided for the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) must be stopped through a campaign in strict accordance with international law.
“International financial flows to the ISIL must be cut off by approaches based on international law and with respect for the sovereignty of related countries,” Bogdanov said.
Earlier last month, the US and Russia announced an agreement to share intelligence on the armed rebel group.
The ISIL has become the most affluent terrorist organization ever, with financial support from outside and by amassing wealth through drug trafficking and oil proceeds from the sites it has seized, the Russian diplomat said.
The group’s assets are used to finance arms purchase and recruit mercenaries from around the world, Bogdanov said.
Meanwhile, he stressed that the UN Security Council must take the principal responsibility of fighting with extremist groups like the ISIL.
Bogdanov also accused the United States of not complying with international law in the fight against the ISIL.
“Actions of the US-led coalition do not comply with the international law and generally-accepted practice of countering terrorism,” charged Bogdanov.
The coalition does not coordinate its operations with the Syrian government, Bogdanov said, adding that ground operations to fight the militants should only be conducted by the armed forces of Iraq and Syria.
Earlier last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin had raised questions about the financing of ISIL.
“Where does all this come from? How did the notorious ISIL manage to become such a powerful group, essentially a real armed force?” asked Putin.
“The terrorists are getting money from selling oil too. Oil is produced in territory controlled by the terrorists, who sell it at dumping prices, produce it and transport it. But someone buys this oil, resells it, and makes a profit from it, not thinking about the fact that they are thus financing terrorists who could come sooner or later to their own soil and sow destruction in their own countries,” said the Russian President.
ISIL, an alternate acronym of the group Islamic State, has seized vast swaths of territory in northern Iraq since June and announced the establishment of a caliphate in areas under its control in Syria and Iraq.
TBP and Agencies
Failing to Deliver: Manufacturing Wages Aren’t What They Used to Be
By Deirdre Fulton | Common Dreams | November 21, 2014
Though nine out of ten Americans perceive blue-collar jobs as “good jobs” and policymakers tout the benefits of expanding the country’s manufacturing base, the truth is that factory wages now rank in the bottom half of those for all jobs in the U.S., according to a new study from the National Employment Law Project (NELP).
The report, Manufacturing Low Pay: Declining Wages in the Jobs That Built America’s Middle Class (pdf), reveals that while the manufacturing sector has experienced a rebound in recent years, in fact “the quality of too many of the returning jobs is low and fails to live up to workers’ and the overall public’s expectations.”
“Manufacturing jobs are… highly sought after by our federal and state policymakers,” write co-authors Catherine Ruckelshaus and Sarah Leberstein, “lauded as ‘advanced industries’ that generate investments, create a high number of direct and indirect jobs, enhance worker skills, and generate additional economic activity in related industries.”
But “while the manufacturing sector has been resurging in the last few years, growing by 4.3 percent between 2010 and 2012, the jobs that are returning are not the ones that were lost: wages are lower, the jobs are increasingly temporary, and the promised benefits have yet to be realized,” they write.
Specifically, the study finds that:
- More than 600,000 manufacturing workers make just $9.60 per hour or less and more than 1.5 million manufacturing workers—one out of every four—make $11.91 or less;
- Real wages for manufacturing workers declined by 4.4 percent from 2003 to 2013—almost three times faster than for workers as a whole.
- In the largest segment of the manufacturing base—automotive—wages have declined even faster. Real wages for auto parts workers, who now account for three of every four autoworker jobs, fell by nearly 14 percent from 2003 to 2013—three times faster than for manufacturing as a whole, and nine times faster than the decline for all occupations.
- In particular, new jobs in the auto industry pay less than the jobs that were lost. New hires in auto earn less than $10 an hour.
- Heavy reliance on temporary workers hides even bigger declines in manufacturing wages. About 14 percent of auto parts workers are employed by staffing agencies today. Wages for these workers are lower than for direct-hire parts workers and are not included in the official industry-specific wage data cited above.
“What will these jobs look like in 10 years if these trends continue?” the report asks. “If the wage trends continue, manufacturing jobs will not deliver on the promise of creating livable jobs with positive economic revivals in communities and families.”
Writing at the Campaign for America’s Future blog, Dave Johnson blames globalization and so-called free-trade pacts for exacerbating—if not directly causing—the issues raised in NELP’s report.
“American factory jobs used to provide reasonable pay and benefits—largely because of unions and democracy. So how do you make manufacturing jobs more ‘efficient?’ You can move the factory to a country that doesn’t allow unions. Our country used to recognize this game and ‘protected’ the good wages and benefits that democracy provided people with tariffs that raised to price of goods made in places that allowed exploitation of working people. Solution: ‘free trade’ that pits our democracy against thugocracies with few or no protections for people or the environment.
Free trade’ worked—to force unemployment up and wages down. We lost more than 6 million manufacturing jobs and 60,000-plus factories between 2000 (the year before China entered the World Trade Organization) and 2010.
With approval of the corporate-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership on the horizon, NELP’s findings are a wake-up call, writes Scott Martelle for the LA Times.
“We as a nation need to press the federal government to rethink trade policies, especially as it pushes for ever more deals to make it easier to ship goods and jobs around the world,” he says. “The looming Trans-Pacific Partnership (look at it as NAFTA for the Pacific Rim) might be good for global manufacturers and American consumers, but those consumers are also American workers. Driving down retail prices while also driving down family incomes is the wrong spiral for community stability and a steady or improving standard of living.
Martelle continues: “A century ago, Henry Ford figured out that if he wanted a mass market capable of buying his cars—cheaper to make with his moving assembly line—then he needed to pay higher wages. He understood the connection between wages paid and products bought. These days, the focus seems to be more on wages squeezed. And that’s no way to preserve, or strengthen, a middle class capable of driving a vibrant consumer economy.”
All-Out War in Ukraine: NATO’s ‘Final Offensive’
By James Petras :: 11.20.2014
Introduction
There are clear signs that a major war is about to break out in Ukraine: A war actively promoted by the NATO regimes and supported by their allies and clients in Asia (Japan) and the Middle East (Saudi Arabia).
The war over Ukraine will essentially run along the lines of a full-scale military offensive against the southeast Donbas region, targeting the breakaway ethnic Ukraine- Russian Peoples Republic of Donetsk and Lugansk, with the intention of deposing the democratically elected government, disarming the popular militias, killing the guerrilla resistance partisans and their mass base, dismantling the popular representative organizations and engaging in ethnic cleansing of millions of bilingual Ukraino-Russian citizens. NATO’s forthcoming military seizure of the Donbas region is a continuation and extension of its original violent putsch in Kiev, which overthrew an elected Ukrainian government in February 2014.
The Kiev junta and its newly ‘elected’ client rulers, and its NATO sponsors are intent on a major purge to consolidate the puppet Poroshenko’s dictatorial rule. The recent NATO-sponsored elections excluded several major political parties that had traditionally supported the country’s large ethnic minority populations, and was boycotted in the Donbas region. This sham election in Kiev set the tone for NATO’s next move toward converting Ukraine into one gigantic US multi-purpose military base aimed at the Russian heartland and into a neo-colony for German capital, supplying Berlin with grain and raw materials while serving as a captive market for German manufactured goods.
An intensifying war fever is sweeping the West; the consequences of this madness appear graver by the hour.
War Signs: The Propaganda and Sanctions Campaign, the G20 Summit and the Military Build Up
The official drum- beat for a widening conflict in Ukraine, spearheaded by the Kiev junta and its fascist militias, echoes in every Western mass media outlet, every day. Major mass media propaganda mills and government ‘spokesmen and women’ publish or announce new trumped-up accounts of growing Russian military threats to its neighbors and cross-border invasions into Ukraine. New Russian incursions are ‘reported’ from the Nordic borders and Baltic states to the Caucusus. The Swedish regime creates a new level of hysteria over a mysterious “Russian” submarine off the coast of Stockholm, which it never identifies or locates – let alone confirms the ‘sighting’ of. Estonia and Latvia claim Russian warplanes violated their air space without confirmation. Poland expels Russian “spies” without proof or witnesses. Provocative full-scale joint NATO-client state military exercises are taking place along Russia’s frontiers in the Baltic States, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.
NATO is sending vast arms shipments to the Kiev junta, along with “Special Forces” advisers and counter-insurgency experts in anticipation of a full-scale attack against the rebels in the Donbas.
The Kiev regime has never abided by the Minsk cease fire. According to the UN Human Rights office 13 people on average –mostly civilians –have been killed each day since the September cease fire. In eight weeks, the UN reports that 957 people have been killed –overwhelmingly by Kiev’s armed forces.
The Kiev regime, in turn, has cut all basic social and public services to the Peoples’ Republics’, including electricity, fuel, civil service salaries, pensions, medical supplies, salaries for teachers and medical workers, municipal workers wages; banking and transport have been blockaded.
The strategy is to further strangle the economy, destroy the infrastructure, force an even greater mass exodus of destitute refugees from the densely populated cities across the border into Russia and then to launch massive air, missile, artillery and ground assaults on urban centers as well as rebel bases.
The Kiev junta has launched an all-out military mobilization in the Western regions, accompanied by rabid anti-Russian, anti-Eastern Orthodox indoctrination campaigns designed to attract the most violent far right chauvinist thugs and to incorporate the Nazi-style military brigades into the frontline shock troops. The cynical use of irregular fascist militias will ‘free’ NATO and Germany from any responsibility for the inevitable terror and atrocities in their campaign. This system of ‘plausible deniability’ mirrors the tactics of the German Nazis whose hordes of fascist Ukrainians and Ustashi Croats were notorious in their epoch of ethnic cleansing.
G20-plus-NATO: Support of the Kiev Blitz
To isolate and weaken resistance in the Donbas and guarantee the victory of the impending Kiev blitz, the EU and the US are intensifying their economic, military and diplomatic pressure on Russia to abandon the nascent peoples’ democracy in the south-east region of Ukraine, their principle ally.
Each and every escalation of economic sanctions against Russia is designed to weaken the capacity of the Donbas resistance fighters to defend their homes, towns and cities. Each and every Russian shipment of essential medical supplies and food to the besieged population evokes a new and more hysterical outburst – because it counters the Kiev-NATO strategy of starving the partisans and their mass base into submission or provoking their flight to safety across the Russian border.
After suffering a series of defeats, the Kiev regime and its NATO strategists decided to sign a ‘peace protocol’, the so-called Minsk agreement, to halt the advance of the Donbas resistance into the southern regions and to protect Kiev’s soldiers and militias holed-up in isolated pockets in the East. The Minsk agreement was designed to allow the Kiev junta to build up its military, re-organize its command and incorporate the disparate Nazi militias into its overall military forces in preparation for a ‘final offensive’. Kiev’s military build-up on the inside and NATO’s escalation of sanctions against Russia on the outside would be two sides of the same strategy: the success of a frontal attack on the democratic resistance of the Donbas basin depends on minimizing Russian military support through international sanctions.
NATO’s virulent hostility to Russian President Putin was on full display at the G20 meeting in Australia: NATO-linked presidents and prime ministers, especially Merkel, Obama, Cameron, Abbott, and Harper’s political threats and overt personal insults paralleled Kiev’s growing starvation blockade of the besieged rebels and population centers in the south-east. Both the G20’s economic threats against Russia and the diplomatic isolation of Putin and Kiev’s economic blockade are preludes to NATO’s Final Solution – the physical annihilation of all vestiges of Donbas resistance, popular democracy and cultural-economic ties with Russia.
Kiev depends on its NATO mentors to impose a new round of severe sanctions against Russia, especially if its planned invasion encounters a well armed and robust mass resistance bolstered by Russian support. NATO is counting on Kiev’s restored and newly supplied military capacity to effectively destroy the southeast centers of resistance.
NATO has decided on an ‘all-or-nothing campaign’: to seize all of Ukraine or, failing that, destroy the restive southeast, obliterate its population and productive capacity and engage in an all-out economic (and possibly shooting) war with Russia. Chancellor Angela Merkel is on board with this plan despite the complaints of German industrialists over their huge loss of export sales to Russia. President Hollande of France has signed on dismissing the complaints of trade unionists over the loss of thousands French jobs in the shipyards. Prime Minister David Cameron is eager for an economic war against Moscow, suggesting the bankers of the City of London find new channels to launder the illicit earnings of Russian oligarchs.
The Russian Response
Russian diplomats are desperate to find a compromise, which allows Ukraine’s ethnic Ukraine- Russian population in the southeast to retain some autonomy under a federation plan and regain influence within the ‘new’ post-putsch Ukraine. Russian military strategists have provided logistical and military aid to the resistance in order to avoid a repeat of the Odessa massacre of ethnic Russians by Ukrainian fascists on a massive scale. Above all, Russia cannot afford to have NATO-Nazi-Kiev military bases along its southern ‘underbelly’, imposing a blockade of the Crimea and forcing a mass exodus of ethnic Russians from the Donbas. Under Putin, the Russian government has tried to propose compromises allowing Western economic supremacy over Ukraine but without NATO military expansion and absorption by Kiev.
That policy of conciliation has repeatedly failed.
The democratically elected ‘compromise regime’ in Kiev was overthrown in February 2014 in a violent putsch, which installed a pro-NATO junta.
Kiev violated the Minsk agreement with impunity and encouragement from the NATO powers and Germany.
The recent G20 meeting in Australia featured a rabble-rousing chorus against President Putin. The crucial four-hour private meeting between Putin and Merkel turned into a fiasco when Germany parroted the NATO chorus.
Putin finally responded by expanding Russia’s air and ground troop preparedness along its borders while accelerating Moscow’s economic pivot to Asia.
Most important, President Putin has announced that Russia cannot stand by and allow the massacre of a whole people in the Donbas region.
Is Poroshenko’s forthcoming blitz against the people of southeast Ukraine designed to provoke a Russian response – to the humanitarian crisis? Will Russia confront the NATO-directed Kiev offensive and risk a total break with the West?
James Petras latest book is THE POLITICS OF IMPERIALISM:THE US,ISRAEL AND THE MIDDLE EAST (CLARITY PRESS:ATLANTA)
What Really Happened to the Wobblies
By STAUGHTON LYND | CounterPunch | November 21, 2014
The Wobblies are back. Many young radicals find the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) the most congenial available platform on which to stand in trying to change the world.
This effort has been handicapped by the lack of a hard-headed history of the IWW in its initial incarnation, from 1905 to just after World War I. The existing literature, for example Franklin Rosemont’s splendid book on Joe Hill, is strong on movement culture and atmosphere. It is weak on why the organization went to pieces in the early 1920s.
Eric Chester’s new book, The Wobblies in their Heyday: The Rise and Destruction of the Industrial Workers of the World during the World War I Era, fills this gap. It is indispensable reading for Wobblies and labor historians. One way to summarize what is between these covers is to say that Chester spells out three tragic mistakes made by the old IWW that the reinvented organization must do its best to avoid.
Macho Posturing
Labor organizing flourished during World War I because of the government’s need for a variety of raw materials. Among these were food, timber, and copper. Wobbly organizers made dramatic headway in all three industries. At its peak in August 1917 the IWW had a membership of more than 150,000.
Nine months later, Chester writes, “the union was in total disarray, forced to devote most of its time and resources to raising funds for attorneys and bail bonds.”
This sad state of affairs was, of course, partly the result of a calculated decision by the federal government to destroy the IWW. But only partly.
According to Chester another cause of the government’s successful suppression of the Wobblies was that during and after the Wheatlands strike in California hop fields in 1913 some Wobblies threatened to “burn California’s agricultural fields if two leaders of the strike were not released from jail.”
For years, Wobbly leaders had insisted that sabotage could force employers to make concessions, Chester writes. But what Chester terms “nebulous calls for arson” and “macho bravado” only stiffened the determination of California authorities not to modify jail sentences for Wobbly leaders Ford and Suhr.
Chester finds that there is no credible evidence that any fields were, in fact, burned. But after the United States entered World War I in April 1917, this extravagant rhetoric calling for the destruction of crops apparently helped to convince President Wilson to initiate a systematic and coordinated campaign to suppress the Wobblies.
Efforts to Avoid Repression by Discontinuing Discussion of the War and the Draft
International solidarity and militant opposition to war and the draft were central tenets of the IWW. Wobblies who had enrolled in the British Army were expelled from the union. At the union’s tenth general convention in November 2015, the delegates adopted a resolution calling for a “General Strike in all industries” should the United States enter the war.
What actually happened was that general secretary-treasurer Bill Haywood and a majority of IWW leaders agreed that the union should desist from any discussion of the war or the draft, in the vain hope that this policy would persuade the federal government to refrain from targeting the union for repression. At the same time, the great majority of rank-and-file members, with support of a few leaders such as Frank Little, insisted that the IWW should be at the forefront of the opposition to the war.
Self-evidently, what Chester terms the IWW’s “diffidence” was the very opposite of Eugene Debs’ defiant opposition to the war. When Wobbly activists “flooded IWW offices with requests for help and pleas for a collective response to the draft,” the usual response was that what to do was up to each individual member. Haywood, Chester writes, “consistently sought to steer the union away from any involvement in the draft resistance movement.” Debs notwithstanding, however, the national leadership of the Socialist Party like the national leadership of the IWW “scrambled to avoid any confrontation with federal authorities.” Radical activists from both organizations formed ad hoc alliances cutting across organizational boundaries.
The IWW General Executive Board, meeting from June 29 to July 6, 1917, was unable to arrive at a decision about the war and conscription, and a committee including both Haywood and Little, tasked to draft a statement, likewise failed to do so. In the end, Chester says, “the IWW sought to position itself as a purely economic organization concerned solely with short-run gains in wages and working conditions.”
Disunity Among IWW Prisoners Fostered by the Government
The reluctance of the Wobbly leadership to advocate resistance to the war and conscription carried over to a legalistic response when the government indicted IWW leaders. Haywood urged all those named in the indictment to surrender voluntarily and to waive any objection to being extradited to Chicago. In the mass trial that followed, the defendants were represented by a very good trial lawyer who was also an enthusiastic supporter of the war and passed up the opportunity to make a closing statement to the jury. Judge Landis’ superficial fairness deluded Wobs into hoping for a good outcome.
The jury took less than an hour to find all one hundred defendants guilty of all counts in the indictment. Ninety-three received lengthy prison terms. Judge Landis ordered that they be imprisoned in Leavenworth, described by Chester as “a maximum-security penitentiary designed for hardened, violent criminals.” Forty-six more defendants were found guilty after another mass conspiracy trial in Sacramento.
Thereafter, Chester writes, the “process of granting a commutation of sentence was manipulated during the administration of Warren Harding to divide and demoralize IWW prisoners.” The ultimate result was “the disastrous split of 1924, leaving the union a shell of what it had been only seven years earlier.” Executive clemency, like that granted to Debs, was the only hope of the Wobblies in prison for release before the end of their long sentences. President Harding rejected any thought of a general amnesty, obliging each prisoner to fill out the form requesting amnesty as an individual. The application form for amnesty contained an implicit admission of guilt. The newly-created ACLU supported this process.
Twenty-four IWW prisoners opted to submit a form requesting amnesty. A substantial majority refused to plead for individual release. More than seventy issued a statement in which they insisted that “all are innocent and all must receive the same consideration.” The government insisted on a case-by-case approach. Fifty-two prisoners responded that they refused to accept the president’s division of the Sacramento prisoners, still alleged to have burned fields, from the Chicago prisoners. Moreover they considered it a “base act” to “sign individual applications and leave the Attorney General’s office to select which of our number should remain in prison and which should go free.”
Initially, the IWW supported those prisoners who refused to seek their freedom individually. Those who had submitted personal requests for presidential clemency were expelled from the union. In June 1923, the government once again dangled before desperate men the prospect of release, now available for those individual prisoners promising to remain “law-abiding and loyal to the Government.” This time a substantial majority of the remaining prisoners accepted Harding’s offer, and IWW headquarters, in what Chester calls “a sweeping reversal,” gave its approval.
Eleven men at Leavenworth declined this latest government inducement. In addition, those who were tried in California did not receive the same offer.
In December 1923 the remaining IWW prisoners at Leavenworth including twenty-two who had been convicted in Sacramento were released unconditionally. The damage had been done. Those who had held out the longest launched a campaign within the IWW to expel those who had supported a form of conditional release. There were accusations against anyone who had allegedly proved himself “a scab and a rat.” When a convention convened in 1924 both sides claimed the headquarters office and went to court. An organization consisting of the few hundred members who had supported the consistent rejection of all government offers “faded into oblivion by 1931.”
Conclusion
It is not the intent of brother Chester’s book, or of this review, to trash the IWW. This review has dealt with only about half of the material in the book, for example passing by the story of Wobbly organizing in copper, both at Butte, Montana and Bisbee, Arizona. Moreover, any one who lived through the disintegration of SDS, SNCC and the Black Panthers is familiar with tragedies like those described here. The heroism of members of all three groups who were martyrs, such as Frank Little, Fred Hampton, and the Mississippi Three (Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner), remains. The vision of a qualitatively different society, as the Zapatistas say “un otro mundo,” remains also.
What it seems to me we must soberly consider is what practices we can adopt to forestall disintegration when different members of a group make different choices. Hardened secular radicals though we may be, we can learn something from King Lear’s words to his daughter Cordelia: “When you ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down and ask of you forgiveness.”
Staughton Lynd is an American conscientious objector, Quaker, peace activist and civil rights activist, tax resister, historian, professor, author and lawyer. Staughton Lynd’s most recent book is From Here to There: the Staughton Lynd Reader.
My Town Fought Wal-Mart – and Wal-Mart Won
By Christopher Orlet | CounterPunch | November 21, 2014
Four years ago, the developer of a proposed Wal-Mart supercenter in Florissant, Mo. (pop. 52,000) appeared before city leaders. For decades Wal-Mart had wanted to open a supercenter in my hometown and on this particular Monday evening a representative from THF Realty – Wal-Mart’s longtime developer of choice – was alternately putting on the poor mouth and subtly threatening city officials. In order to fund the development, a project developer told the city council, THF Realty would require $9 million in tax breaks.
No tax breaks, no Wal-Mart.
In brief, THF wanted a TIF – tax incremental financing, which meant the portion of the development’s property tax revenue that ordinarily would go to local schools, police, libraries and fire departments, instead would remain in the pockets of the developer.
Such threats, coming from multibillionaire developers, are commonplace. They are also effective. Though not as effective as they once were.
THF Realty (the acronym stands for To Have Fun) owns or leases more than 100 shopping centers in 22 states, many anchored by Wal-Mart stores or Sam’s Club. That’s due in part to THF’s chairman – sports and real estate tycoon Stan Kroenke – being married to Wal-Mart heiress Ann Walton. The last time Kroenke was obligated to disclose his ties with Wal-Mart – when he served on Wal-Mart’s board of directors 13 years ago – his company was renting 55 stores to the giant retailer.
Today, Kroenke — the 105th richest American — has an estimated net worth of $5.7 billion. His wife, Ann, is worth an estimated $4.8 billion. Kroenke owns the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche, the St. Louis Rams, the Colorado Rapids and, in a sure sign that he is running out of ways to unload his billions, the English soccer club Arsenal.
Wal-Mart doesn’t always use outside developers (or inside developers like Kroenke) to build its discount stores and supercenters. “Sometimes Wal-Mart is itself the developer,” says Al Norman, an anti-sprawl consultant. When Wal-Mart purchases and develops a site it utilizes the Walmart Real Estate Business Trust, one of its many subsidiaries.
“[But] if Wal-Mart hasn’t bought the land, it’s better for them to put the burden on a developer to get all the permits, ask for the subsidies, and make any land agreement contingent on the developer having all the permits in place,” says Norman. Using outside developers, however, allows Wal-Mart to benefit from government subsidies without being the one making the pitch for the handout.
If Wal-Mart hoped to draw attention away from itself by using this tactic in Florissant it failed. For the most part the public regarded the proposed development as a Wal-Mart project and refused to distinguish between Wal-Mart and its developer. And local media played up the connection: “Florissant Council Turns Down Wal-Mart Developer,” cried one headline.
In many ways Florissant, Mo., a working class city in North St. Louis County, is no different than most American cities. When it comes to big box shopping centers its philosophy seems to be that a town can never have too many. Florissant’s sprawling main drag, Lindbergh Boulevard, is an unbroken chain of such shopping centers, with only a few acres of unadorned, treeless asphalt parking lot separating them. Each center has a large grocery store chain or a big box retailer (Target, Kmart, Michaels, Sears, Lowes, Home Depot, Office Depot) as its anchor.
Nor can it be said that Florissant residents are suffering a dearth of Wal-Marts. There’s a supercenter four-and-a-half miles away in Ferguson (you may recall that it was vandalized during the recent Ferguson riots). Another Wal-Mart waits 13 miles away in Bridgeton. Yet another sits 14 miles down the road in Granite City, Ill. And another 14 miles away in the opposite direction in St. Charles.
Fortunately for Wal-Mart and its developers, they do not have to show a need or demonstrate likely economic benefits to the community to receive subsidies and tax breaks. They need only ask and they shall receive.
Wal-Mart was no disinterested party in THF’s quest for tax breaks. A TIF could mean big savings for the retailer.
“Wal-Mart is in a position to negotiate lower lease rates when the developer is being subsidized,” says Philip Mattera, director of a watchdog group called the Corporate Research Project.
Wal-Mart was counting on that subsidy.
Subsidy Creep
As a reporter I’ve covered local government since the mid-1980s. Time after time I’ve watched as Wal-Mart and its developers rode into rural and suburban cities and towns with their hands out and came away with their pockets stuffed with tax breaks and subsidies, often with little or no opposition. Back in the 1980s, the major concern of local governments, small business owners and (to a lesser extent) local residents was whether Wal-Mart would drive local mom and pop shops out of business. (The answer turned out to be an unqualified Yes.) But even then, standing in the way of “progress” and free-market competition (competition in which one side was given taxpayer-funded subsidies and everyone else was not) was considered futile, if not downright un-American. Stand in the way of progress you get runned over. Today, those concerns are moot. Wal-Mart can boast “mission accomplished.”
Then as now the tax break of choice for Wal-Mart and its developers was tax increment financing. TIFs were originally established to encourage developers to invest in hopelessly blighted commercial areas. Blighted soon came to mean non-blighted. Call it subsidy creep.
Historically a few school officials and PTA moms groused when these TIFs were granted. Yet in all those countless city council meetings I attended, I never once heard a city official ask why one of the wealthiest corporations in the world couldn’t build its discount stores and parking lots without withholding tax dollars from local schools, fire departments, libraries and other public services.
The simple answer was that nobody asked them to. When it came to subsidies and tax breaks Wal-Mart’s motto seemed to be: It doesn’t hurt to ask. All they can do is say no. And then we threaten to move to the next town.
Those threats were real. If a town even considered turning down a TIF request, a neighboring jurisdiction would immediately begin courting the Waltons. The practice became so widespread the Missouri legislature was forced to pass a reform law in 2007 to address this type of “retail pilfering.” In Missouri, TIFs are now granted only on a county-wide basis.
Changing Times
Now, three decades later, Wal-Mart and its developers find themselves having to work harder to obtain the same subsidies and tax breaks they once received by default. Cities and towns – even municipalities like Florissant, the majority of whose residents really want a Wal-Mart Supercenter – are beginning to stand up to the retail giant and its sidekick THF Realty. Indeed, across the Midwest – Wal-Mart’s home turf – more and more cities are saying they’ve had enough of Wal-Mart’s bullying.
My town did.
When Wal-Mart developers returned to Florissant in 2010 demanding tax breaks and threatening to walk away if they were denied, city officials happily showed developers the door.
That response was almost unprecedented outside of a few quaint New England hamlets. In fact, the neighboring city of Bridgeton, had just rubber stamped THF’s request for $8 million in TIF subsidies to build a Wal-Mart supercenter, no questions asked.
In voting 9-0 to deny the subsidy request, Florissant officials pointed out that a TIF district would divert $300,000 annually in property taxes from local schools, libraries, police, and fire departments to Kroenke’s THF Realty. Florissant’s mayor told reporters that Wal-Mart and its developer were “strong enough to pay with [their] own nickel.”
Even Missouri’s right-wing think tank, The Show-Me Institute, criticized Wal-Mart and Kroenke’s browbeating tactics. “You don’t need TIFs to attract retail development. With the right project and the right location, retail development will still come,” one policy analyst said.
So what changed?
First and foremost Americans have just been through the nation’s worst economic slump since The Great Depression. While average working Americans lost their homes and livelihoods, Wal-Mart got richer. Wal-Mart was one of the few stores to thrive during the U.S. recession, noted Forbes in March 2009.
What’s more, Americans wised up. In our total information society it is hard to remain deaf to the continual buzz of stories that spotlight the incredible wealth of the retailer (Wal-Mart Inc. is now wealthier than 157 nations.) When another St. Louis County municipality (Shrewsbury) rejected Wal-Mart’s request for a TIF in 2013, an alderwoman was quoted as saying, “The six Wal-Mart heirs alone have more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the people in the United States!” This statement was met with loud applause.
At the same time as its phenomenal growth was taking place, Wal-Mart received hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate welfare (tax breaks, grants, low-cost financing, tax abatements and free land) from state and local governments. A new report by Americans for Tax Fairness concluded that Wal-Mart receives $6.2 billion a year in taxpayer subsidies. In a 2007 report, the nonprofit Good Jobs First noted that Wal-Mart’s developer THF Realty received at least $54 million in tax breaks from local governments for Wal-Mart stores between 1994 and 2006.
While Wal-Mart benefits enormously from corporate welfare, it has become adept at dodging local, state and federal taxes. The same report by ATF noted that Wal-Mart uses tax loopholes to avoid paying $1 billion of federal taxes a year. An example of this flimflammery showed up recently in a The Wall Street Journal story which showed how Wal-Mart evades some state taxes by paying rent to itself. Yes, these tax dodges are legal, though they are only available to the world’s richest corporations who can afford to hire the world’s slickest tax attorneys.
Equally damaging are the frequent stories that show Wal-Mart stiffing American taxpayers and its non-union employees. Low wages at a typical Wal-Mart Store cost taxpayers about $1 million in government assistance annually, according to a study by Democrats in the U.S. Committee on Education and the Workforce. Meanwhile the media is rife with stories of Wal-Mart employees who can’t afford to shop at Wal-Mart, who are forced to rely on food stamps, and who cannot afford to buy even the crappiest of cars to get to work. In October, Wal-Mart announced it would end health care benefits to a portion of its part-time employees.
And who can forget the story about Wal-Mart employees holding Thanksgiving food drives for their co-workers?
Plan B
After receiving an unexpected setback in Florissant, THF Realty redoubled its efforts in the fall of 2012. Plan B was to seek designation as a community improvement district. Missouri’s CID law, passed by the state legislature in 1998, was created to combat “community disinvestment and neighborhood decline” in inner-ring suburbs. (Florissant is an outer-ring suburb, but no matter.) In effect, community improvement districts bring improvements to small pockets of retail, while the rest of the town crumbles. And it is more likely to crumble since residents who are already paying higher sales taxes in these retail pockets will have less taste for a city-wide sales tax which would raise the standard of living for all residents.
The special taxing district would have permitted Wal-Mart to assess a one percent sales tax on store transactions. Just another way for Wal-Mart and THF to pass along the costs of construction to the middle and low-income folks who shop at their stores. Needless to say that revenue would not go to increase the wages of Wal-Mart workers.
Again, Florissant city leaders stuck to their guns, unanimously voting down the proposed CID.
Kroenke, however, still had his ace in the hole. He turned to the courts; not to sue the city of Florissant, but to file a petition in circuit court for the formation of a transportation development district.
The Missouri Transportation Development Act was passed by the Missouri Legislature in 1990 to address genuine transportation needs. Say, your town has grown by leaps and bounds and you desperately need a new overpass over the Interstate highway so emergency vehicles can get to the other side of town more quickly and thus save lives.
More often, however, a TDD is just another needless handout to billionaire developers.
With one rather remarkable difference. Unlike a TIF or CID, the public (or its elected representatives) have no say in the matter. Since St. Louis judges are appointed, the project is approved (TDDs are always approved) by an unelected judge. Taxpayers have no say whether sales taxes are imposed or what happens to their tax dollars or even whether the transportation projects are needed.
If approved, the THF’s transportation development district would have allowed a board handpicked by Kroenke to impose a sales tax on shoppers to help pay for roadwork that benefits his private property. What’s more, any money that Kroenke “loaned” to the project would be repaid with interest. If this TDD turned out like Kroenke’s other ventures, it would be overseen by a board made up of his rubber-stamping cronies. A board that meets and operates without any real oversight. “Read state auditors’ reports on special taxing districts, and you’ll see all kinds of reports of shoddy record keeping, self-dealing and much transparency in name only,” reports the Kansas City Business Journal.
Once again, working families would pay for Wal-Mart and the billionaire Kroenke’s street improvements through higher sales taxes.
At the hearing for what was now called the Shoppes at Cross Keyes Transportation Development District, Florissant’s city attorney informed the judge of Florissant officials’ unanimous objection to the transportation district. Nevertheless Circuit Judge Brenda Stith Loftin could find no legal reason not to approve the TDD. Moral reasons, yes. But legal, no.
The TDD was approved.
Beaten, the Florissant City Council approved zoning for the Wal-Mart. As one disgruntled city councilman told a St. Louis newspaper, “We sort of feel like they pulled an end-around.”
To many observers, Wal-Mart and their developer looked pathetic in their desperate craving for a corporate welfare fix. Wal-Mart and Kroenke didn’t seem to care what kind of Three-Letter Subsidy they wrangled (TIF, CID, TDD) as long as they got something from the taxpayers. Anything. Free landscaping. Free signage. Whatever.
Still it’s hard to blame Wal-Mart too much. Writing in Forbes, David Brunori notes that it’s wrong to fault corporations for behaving like giant, amoral machines acting in their own self-interest. “They act rationally,” he writes. “If someone gives you $1 billion, you take it. The blame lies with us.” In the end it is the fault of all of us for giving Wal-Mart’s lawyers the tools with which to defeat us.
There’s an old saying: You can’t beat City Hall. This is still true for 99 percent of Americans.
Just not for the One Percent.
Christopher Orlet is a journalist living in Florissant, Missouri.
Super-rich control $30tn of global wealth, equal to 40 percent of world GDP – study
RT | November 21, 2014
About 13 percent of global wealth of adults is concentrated in the hands of 0.004 percent of the population, according to a new study. And the trend is set to continue with the number of high net worth individuals reached a record 211,275 in 2014.
Swiss bank UBS and consulting firm Wealth-X compiled the World Ultra Wealth Report 2014 released Thursday.
“Ultra-high net worth” (UHNW) individuals are defined as people with a fortune of about $30 million. Of the 211,275 that fall into the category, 2,325 are billionaires, a 7.1 percent increase since last year. Experts believe the number of billionaires could rise to 4,000 by 2020.
“Even amidst geopolitical conflicts, socio-economic strife, and volatile currency markets, the world’s equity markets displayed strong performances, thereby enabling UHNW individuals’ wealth to increase and their influence across industries and sectors to grow — from their importance in wealth management to their consumption of luxury goods,” the report said.
The UHNW adult population account for approximately 1 in every 35,000 people in the world, or just 0.004 percent.
“Such a large concentration of wealth in the hands of these few individuals means that they tend to have a large degree of influence, whether on global equity markets or specific industries,” the report says
Average wealth of an UHNW individual has risen to $139.4 million, up $1.8 million last year.
The geographical heavyweight was again North America, which accounts for nearly a third of the total $30 trillion, at $9.7 trillion in held wealth. Europe is home to about 25 percent and Asia 23 percent.
Another major trend the report forecasts is that Asian wealth will overtake Europe in 2017. Currently Asia is home to 44,505 super-wealthy individuals with a combined fortune of $6.6 trillion, and Europe’s wealth stands at $7.7 trillion, shared between 58,065 people.
Latin America is the only region in 2014 to incur a fall, down 600 individuals and $75 billion.
Eighty-seven percent of the list is men, and more than two-thirds struck it rich on their own, 13 percent by inheritance, and the rest a combination.
Women, on the other hand, are more likely to become wealth via inheritance. Almost 50 percent got rich through inheritance, and one-third was “self-made.”
The average UHNW individual spends $1 million a year on luxury goods and services, the report says.
READ MORE: Number of billionaires hits new record high in 2014-report
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From the Archives
Britain’s secret role in the brutal US war in Vietnam
By Mark Curtis | MintPress News | November 16, 2022
There is a myth the UK did not support Washington’s war against Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, Labour and Conservative governments backed every phase of US military escalation and played secret roles in the conflict, declassified files show.
- UK sent SAS team to Vietnam in 1962, flew secret RAF missions to deliver arms, and provided intelligence to US
- UK governments lied to parliament they were not providing military advice to South Vietnam’s brutal regime
- Labour government secretly gave arms to US for use in Vietnam, stressing need for “no publicity”
- It also connived with Washington to deceive UK public over its support for US
- UK governments knew of atrocities against civilians but backed US war aims
- Whitehall only started to advocate a peaceful solution, on US terms, once the war became unwinnable
During its war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s the US dropped more bombs than in the whole of World War Two, in a conflict that killed over two million people. The wholesale destruction of villages and killing of innocent people was a permanent feature of the US war from the beginning, along with widespread indiscriminate bombing.
Britain’s role in the war has been largely buried and must be almost completely unknown to the public. When the UK media mentions the war now, reports often simply reference the refusal by Harold Wilson’s government to agree to US requests to openly deploy British troops.
Although this was certainly a public rebuff to Washington, Britain did virtually everything else to back the US war over more than a decade, the declassified documents show. … continue
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