Economics « Aletho News

Obama and GOP Speak Same Language: Corp Tax Cuts = Jobs

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford | July 31, 2013

President Obama went to a low wage warehouse in Chattanooga in the right-to-work state of Tennessee to renew his offer to massively lower corporate tax rates – from 35 to 28 percent – and had the nerve to call it a Grand Bargain for the middle class. Surrounding the president were employees who do backbreaking work for $11 or $12 an hour – and can by no stretch of imagination be considered middle class. Obama praised their cut-throat Amazon corporation bosses as the sort of benign masters that he’s depending on to bring the country back to economic health – once they’ve been properly incentivized with lower tax rates, on the one hand, and outright public subsidies, on the other. Amazon is only invested in Tennessee because the state has given the corporation huge tax breaks that will allow it to undercut other book sellers, forcing them out of business and their workers into unemployment. Amazon’s 7,000 new, low wage jobs come at the cost of lay-offs and bankruptcies among its competitors. It’s the Wal-Mart business model, which is quite popular at the White House.

The Obamas have a special place in their hearts for corporations of all kinds, as long as they’re big. The president told the Amazon warehouse workers, whose jobs are not very good, that he wants to create good jobs in other industries through renewable energy and electric cars and cheap natural gas – that is, “fracking.” Of course, by that he means providing additional government subsidies and tax breaks to corporations. Good jobs, presumably, will trickle down. Obama urged Congress to pass his Fix-It-First program to rebuild bridges and other public infrastructure, while blaming the Republicans for gutting government through “sequester” of spending. But it was Obama who proposed the sequestration disaster in the first place, as part of his earlier Grand Bargain with the GOP, in 2011.

Obama used the Chattanooga visit to re-pitch much of his last State of the Union Address, in which he pledged to work for a public private partnership to upgrade the privately-owned U.S. infrastructure, such as energy grids and ports. That’s a euphemism for spending billions in public monies to subsidize private, profit making corporations. Obama calls that a jobs program.

He also thinks workers should be appreciative of the Free Trade deals whose proliferation has coincided with the destruction of the U.S. manufacturing base and the loss of millions of jobs that really were “good.” Obama promised to call a meeting of the CEOs of the same corporations that sent the jobs overseas, to ask them to do more for the country – as if they haven’t done enough, already. He’s got another program, called Select USA, that offers tax breaks and other incentives to foreign corporations that locate facilities in the U.S. Since so many U.S. headquartered high-tech corporations, like Apple, are actually Chinese companies for purposes of employment, Obama might as well combine his various tax break programs and hand out the goodies to CEOs regardless of nationality. In fact, that’s close to the actual practice. There is no jobs creation plan, only a series of corporate tax giveaway programs.

For workers, there’s the minimum wage, now set at $7.25 an hour. Obama promised, once again, in Chattanooga, to try to raise that to $9.00. But, back in 2008, candidate Obama vowed to fight for $9.50. I guess, somewhere along the way, he lost his incentive.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

July 31, 2013 Posted by aletho | Deception, Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | Amazon, Obama, United States | Leave a comment

Analysis from National Endowment for Democracy Used in The Atlantic, with Significant Errors and Omissions

By Stephan Lefebvre | CEPR Americas Blog | July 30, 2013

This month, readers of The Atlantic were treated to a lengthy article documenting alarming threats to democracy in certain Latin American countries with progressive and leftist heads of government. The piece, written by Kurt Weyland and titled “Why Latin America is Becoming Less Democratic,” is riddled with significant errors and mischaracterizations. Perhaps even worse, editors at The Atlantic didn’t make clear that the article was first published in a “journal” that is funded by the U.S. government.

The original article was published in the Journal of Democracy, which has long focused on providing analysis to justify U.S. government intervention abroad. The Journal of Democracy is an official publication of the National Endowment for Democracy’s (NED) International Forum for Democratic Studies. Although nominally a “nongovernmental” organization, the NED receives most of its funding from the U.S. Congress. In 1991, Allen Weinstein, who helped found and then became the NED’s acting president, told the Washington Post, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA” [1].

Some examples of the NED’s work include using U.S. government resources to fund groups and individuals involved in the short-lived 2002 coup d’état in Venezuela, and two years later funding organizers of the recall effort against then-president Hugo Chávez. One of the NED’s core grantees is the International Republican Institute, which played a major role in overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Haiti in 2004.

These are just a few examples that highlight the NED’s disreputable history in Latin America, which would take far more space than a blog post to tell. While it clearly would have been worth noting the source of the article, the article itself is full of both factual errors and egregious mischaracterizations. To keep this post brief, I’ll only review a few of the most egregious errors here.

Weyland writes: “Since the third wave reached Latin America in 1978, the region had seen only occasional threats and temporary interruptions of democracy in individual nations.”

This statement is only reasonable if one completely ignores the U.S. government’s role in the region, which constituted a threat to democracy that was neither “temporary” nor limited to “individual nations.” Throughout the 1980s, the U.S. conducted a massive and well-organized campaign, especially in Central America, using Cold War pretexts to install and support leaders who would foster favorable conditions for U.S. business interests.

In Nicaragua, the campaign involved massive illegal military aid to the contra paramilitary forces who used those weapons to kill health care workers, teachers and elected officials in their fight against the democratically-elected Sandinista government, bringing condemnation from the World Court, as well as Amnesty International, Americas Watch and other human rights groups and international bodies.

At the same time, the U.S.-backed Guatemalan General José Efraín Ríos Montt, massacred and tortured the people of Guatemala — with U.N. estimates indicating over 200,000 were killed or disappeared in acts of genocide. The same Cold War premise of fighting “communists” was used to justify large-scale atrocities in El Salvador and Honduras. Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, the U.S. supported brutal dictatorships in Chile, Argentina, Haiti, Brazil, and other countries, and militarily invaded Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989). More recently, of course, the U.S. supported coups in Venezuela, Honduras and Haiti.

It could not be more clear that democracy in Latin America is threatened and actually has been compromised on many occasions by the U.S.’s foreign policy, especially in the post-1978 period that Weyland names. Rewriting history to minimize and erase these events serves the interests of the U.S. government, so it is perhaps no surprise that publications like the Journal of Democracy carry out this work diligently, but when government propaganda makes its way into independent publications like The Atlantic without comment, it is cause for alarm, especially when there are numerous factual errors.

Weyland writes that “Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina (2007-), whose fervent supporters take inspiration from Chávez, is eyeing constitutional changes and renewed reelection.”

Fact check: President Cristina Fernández has not said anything to this effect. She has proposed constitutional amendments focused on reforms to the judiciary, and she has already addressed the Argentine congress specifically, saying that she is not planning to pursue reforms that would allow her to run for a third consecutive term. Weyland would be right in noting that some of her supporters floated the idea of a third term, but Weyland’s claim as written is simply not true. If this seems like a minor point, consider that Honduran ex-president Manuel Zelaya’s support for a non-binding referendum on a constituent assembly was misreported in the media as a bid to extend his presidency and was used as a justification for his removal both within Honduras and internationally. Weyland perpetuates this myth, saying that Zelaya “was stopped” before he could “boost[] the presidency’s powers and pave[] the way toward indefinite reelection to that office.” By presenting the coup that removed Zelaya as an event that forestalled a nondemocratic turn, in particular saying nothing about events following the coup, much of Weyland’s argument supposedly in favor of democracy in Latin America is rendered moot.

“That Venezuela had already fallen under nondemocratic rule was confirmed in October 2012 by Chávez’s unfair reelection, achieved with the help of intimidation tactics, tight restrictions on the opposition, and the massive misuse of the state apparatus.”

The 2012 elections in Venezuela were declared free and fair by election accompanying groups and by monitors such as the Carter Center, which noted that “the whole opposition leadership, including, most importantly, Capriles himself, unequivocally reject those claims [of election fraud favoring Chávez], stating that the results reflected the will of the electorate.” Journalists and human rights watchers monitoring the electoral process praised the system while giving detailed reports about what they saw.

“With its electoral façade and progressive rhetoric about helping the excluded, the soft authoritarianism that is taking hold in parts of Latin America has an attractive face.”

In sweeping statements such as this one, Weyland casts doubt on both the electoral victories and the policies of progressive and left governments in Latin America. He suggests that the people’s will is not represented in the official outcomes of national elections, and even if left-wing politicians seem popular that is because they trick and/or intimidate citizens and do not deliver on promises to the poor and other disenfranchised sectors of society.

Actually, these are not elections whose legitimacy is seriously questioned by any but those on the extreme right. And the implication that progressive and left governments are limiting their policies to “progressive rhetoric,” is absurd. The overall trend in the countries that have elected progressive and left leaders has been the enactment of policy alternatives to neoliberalism, and their effect has been large reductions in income inequality, a reduction in poverty, and provision of health care, education and important services to many people who previously could not access them. These policies have included reforming and regulating the financial sector in Ecuador, investing oil profits into social missions in Venezuela, and successfully managing a large financial crisis and debt default in Argentina — resulting in only one quarter of negative economic growth followed by nine years of some of the highest growth in the region.

Weyland’s reference to an “electoral façade” betrays the central goal of the NED: what sociologist William Robinson refers to as “promoting polyarchy.” As opposed to experiments in direct democracy occurring on various levels in countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia, the NED ultimately promotes only representative forms of democracy, or polyarchy. In Robinson’s definition, this is “a system in which a small group actually rules, and mass participation in decision-making is confined to choosing leaders in elections that are carefully managed by competing elites.” In Venezuela, Chávez’s Bolivarian project did away with a polyarchic system, and across much of the continent NED-backed parties and candidates have failed in election after election. When Washington’s candidates don’t win, often the elections are depicted as illegitimate and sometimes the electoral process is attacked – as seen with the most recent Venezuelan election, or with the U.S.’ interference, via the OAS, in Haiti’s last presidential election.

“As soon as [Chávez] was elected president of Venezuela, he set about revamping the country’s institutional framework. First, he called a constituent assembly.”

Weyland’s claims here come after stating that “graver and more sustained danger is coming from the leftist variant” of populism than the rightist version, but is the Venezuelan constituent assembly really evidence of anti-democratic tendencies? No again. Calling for a constituent assembly was exactly what Venezuelans elected Chávez to do. Ending the ossified political arrangement known as “Punto Fijo” – in which political parties routinely alternated in and out of power – and calling a constituent assembly were key campaign promises he made ahead of the 1998 elections. Chávez was fulfilling his campaign promises– a much more infrequent phenomenon in the U.S.

“[Ecuadorean president Rafael] Correa also seized on a 2010 police rebellion—painted by him as a coup attempt—as a pretext for cracking down on independent social and political forces.”

Many observers both in and outside of Ecuador characterize the events of September 30, 2010 as an attempted coup d’état: after assaulting him with tear gas, rebelling police officers later held the president hostage in the hospital where he was being treated. The coup attempt was condemned as such by presidents and representatives of UNASUR, foreign dignitaries such as the president of Spain, and the OAS. Weyland and The Journal of Democracy may be taking the U.S. government’s line, one of the few countries that declined to recognize the events as a coup attempt, even though then-Secretary of State Clinton did issue a statement in expressing “our full support for President Rafael Correa.”

“Bypassing or subjugating intermediate institutions such as firmly organized parties, the leader—often a charismatic figure—establishes face-to-face contact with large number of citizens. In earlier decades, mass rallies were crucial; now-a-days, television allows populists to reach their followers ‘in person.’ Chávez hosted a regular Sunday talk show.”

Calling for respect of “firmly organized parties” in Venezuela in the context of Chávez’s rise in politics obscures that one of the central political problems in Venezuela during the 90s was deep distrust in the main political parties and their “Punto Fijo” arrangement, which Robinson describes as a polyarchic system.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that President Obama has a weekly address on YouTube, and yet he is not derided as an illegitimate president because of his use of social media. Presidents and major politicians all over the world have Twitter and Facebook accounts that they use to communicate with constituents, and many even make appearances on talk shows. Is such “face-to-face contact” somehow nefarious?

“In Bolivia, the Morales government shut the opposition out of decisive stages of the constitution drafting process.”

Weyland is again telling only half the story, which in this case is worse than none. The truth is that opposition legislators boycotted stages of the constitution drafting process because they disagreed with the direction in which things were going. Bolivia had elected its first indigenous president, with massive support from the country’s social movements, and he was facilitating a transformation of society to one in which a racial minority and tiny elite did not wield power over the majority of Bolivians. Evo Morales’s election drew comparisons to the symbolic end of apartheid in South Africa with the election of Nelson Mandela, and the new constitution was compared to the Freedom Charter.

It is not surprising that extreme elements in the opposition boycotted the process of installing a new constitution that cemented the rights of the indigenous majority, and it is misleading to describe these events as a “populist” power-grab.

This has been a brief review of some major claims that Weyland uses in arguing his point, namely that “democracy in the region is facing a sustained, coordinated authoritarian threat” from the progressive and left governments in Latin America. I have detailed not only mischaracterizations and significant omissions, but also argued for more independence in the practice of journalism. One of the responsibilities of a well-functioning press is to clearly indicate when articles are reused from sources funded mostly by the U.S. government.

[1] Ignatius, David. “Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups.” The Washington Post. Sep 22, 1991: C1. Print.

Laughing at Snowden’s Asylum Requests (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Washing U.S. Hands of the Dirty Wars: News Coverage Erases Washington’s Role in State Terror (alethonews.wordpress.com)

July 30, 2013 Posted by aletho | Deception, Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, International Republican Institute, Journal of Democracy, Latin America, National Endowment for Democracy, NED, US government, Venezuela | Leave a comment

Bolivia: New Factory to Make Coca Products for Medicinal Use

By Marc Rogers | The Argentina Independent | July 30, 2013

Bolivian president Evo Morales today inaugurated the first factory for coca-based products, highlighting their health benefits and medicinal uses.

The new plant, opened in a suburb of La Paz, will process around 75,000 tonnes of coca leaf a year to make drinkable infusions, such as coca mate and teas.

Coca cultivation is illegal is much of world, but permitted in Bolivia. In January the UN agreed to exempt Bolivia from its 1961 ruling to criminalise the coca leaf, one that Morales called a “historic error“.

“It’s good for me,” said Morales of chewing the coca leaf at the inauguration of the new factory. “Many people are fighting diabetes with coca – that has been proven.” The president also pointed to a Harvard University investigation from the 1990s that found considerable health benefits could be derived from eating coca.

The factory will be administered by the Association of Coca Producers (Adepcoca), and was built with support from the national and city governments, as well as the EU.

Morales added that he would present the coca products to his Ecuadorian counterpart Rafael Correa on the fringes of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) summit to see about exporting the goods.

Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia are the world’s principal coca producers.

Brand Bolivia: The Coca Campaign (brandopia.typepad.com)
No Love For McDonald’s In Globalization-Wary Bolivia (mintpressnews.com)
The Cocaleros and the rise of Evo Morales (gtsociology.wordpress.com)

July 30, 2013 Posted by aletho | Economics | Bolivia, Coca, Latin America | Leave a comment

The Cocaleros and the rise of Evo Morales

By gthomas2219 · July 17, 2013

This essay will explore the impact that the Cocaleros and Evo Morales have had on Bolivia over the recent history. The impact of the Cocaleros will be shown in their central role in establishing a platform for Morales to rise to prominence on. Morales’s impact will be explored through examination of specific changes enacted in his time as President, specifically establishing a new constitution, reforming extraction of Bolivia’s vast gas reserves and reforms related to the coca plant. To begin certain contextual factors of Morales’s changes will be established.

Bolivia’s history is one of exploitation, whether it be the colonial Spanish exploitation of the vast silver deposits of Potosi’s Cerro Rico in the Sixteenth Century, or the exploitation of the vast natural gas reserves by multinational corporations (MNCs) throughout the late 1980s and 1990s (Artaraz, 2012). The historically continuous exploitation of Bolivia’s vast natural resource wealth has been felt by the Bolivian people as a lack of sovereignty (Dangl, 2007; Artaraz, 2012). Politics in Bolivia since the foundation of the republic in 1825 has proved difficult (Dunkerley, 2007). An incomplete revolution in 1952 was defeated by a military coup in 1964, by 1982 democracy had formally been re-established, however political power was concentrated in the hands of a minority elite, unrepresentative of the vast majority of Bolivians (Dunkerley, 2007; Morales, 2011; Artaraz, 2012). In response to the unrepresentativeness and corruption that was characteristic of Bolivian politics, especially since 1982, the general attitude of the population to politics was one of dissolution. However, the international perception of Bolivian politics during the 1990s was excellent, Bolivia was seen as a shinning example of neoliberalism, it had opened itself up to MNCs, it had low public spending and it was conforming to US War on Drugs through eradication of the coca crop (Dunkerley, 2007; Klein, 2011). This being said there has always been a strong thread of resistance running through Bolivian society. Emblematic of this until the 1980s were strong trade unions, particularly mining unions, however the closure of tin mines and the loss of over 20,000 jobs in 1985 wrought huge destruction (Dangl, 2007; Klein, 2011). The mining union’s loss was the Cocaleros’[1] gain as many newly unemployed miners moved east to the Chapare region and took their unionising skills with them (Artaraz, 2012).

The movement of miners to the coca growing area of El Chapare proved hugely significant for Bolivia. The miner’s background in unions helped structure the organisations of Cocaleros and their resistance to law 1008[2] and the eradication efforts of the government (Crabtree, 2005). The government stepped up eradication policy in 1997 with President Hugo Banzer advocating a ‘zero coca’ policy (Crabtree, 2005, p. 38). Not only attempting to defend their livelihoods the resistance of the Cocaleros was hugely symbolic for two reasons. One, the resistance represented a defence of a traditional Andean symbol – the coca leaf which has been a central symbol of Andean culture for centuries, and two, the fight against US imperialism and defence of Bolivian sovereignty (Crabtree, 2005; Dangl, 2007; Artaraz, 2012). It was through the organisation of the Cocaleros’ resistance that Evo Morales came to prominence, he rose up to become the leader of the largest Cocaleros union (Crabtree, 2011; Artaraz, 2012). The resistance of the Cocaleros transformed into active political participation throughout the 1990s, with a key moment coming in 1994 with the ‘Law of Popular Participation’ (PPL) (Artaraz, 2012, p. 46) being enacted. PPL decentralised power to newly created municipalities, which provided a base for limited representation of local groups (Klein, 2011; Artaraz, 2012). In 1995 the Cocaleros joined with other indigenous social movements to create the ‘Political tool for Sovereignty of Common People (IPSP)’ (Dangl, 2007, p.49). The established political parties and the electoral commission denied recognition of the IPSP as a political party and so the IPSP took on the name of MAS[3] (Movement for Socialism) in 1999 to be able to stand for election (Dangl 2007; Harten, 2011). The notion of a political tool as was the IPSP and MAS is crucial as it demonstrates the bottom-up design of MAS; the primacy of the social movements that make it up – it is for their use, not for politicians (Harten, 2011). MAS is a tool to use not to be used by. The first leader was Evo Morales.

Despite MAS and Morales’s lineage being directly traceable to the Cocaleros, since coming to power in 2005[4] they have widened their base to include all social and indigenous movements, as well as trying to curry favour with the urban middle class (Harten, 2011). Morales’s skill as a leader, and a central plank of MAS’s electoral success, is his ability to galvanise and shape a vast array of indigenous and social protest movements into a unified political project (Salman, 2007). Like the miner’s influence in organising the Cocaleros, Morales and MAS have taken the general anger and dissatisfaction of a wide array of social/indigenous protest movements and formed them into a coherent political articulation (Salman, 2007).

A key election pledge made by Morales before his victory in 2005 was to write a new constitution to enshrine the rights of the indigenous people of Bolivia, who despite making up the vast majority of the population [5] have been marginalised in Bolivian politics, and Bolivia in general throughout the country’s history (Artaraz, 2012). The new constitution, which was ratified in January 2009, casts Bolivia as a ‘plurinational’ state (Republica de Bolivia, 2009 in Albro, 2010, p. 78). The plurinational characterisation of the state highlights the rise in stature indigenous groups have experienced alongside the rise of Morales to the Presidency (Albro, 2010; Assies, 2011; Artaraz, 2012). A symbolic – as well as practical – codification of the new constitution is the classification of the coca leaf as not a drug in its natural form, the protection of this central symbol of Andean culture is also a direct challenge to US classification (Assies, 2011). Another strengthening of the legal recognition of indigenous people is shown in the codification of Andean ethics – ‘ama qhilla, ama llulla, ama suwa (don’t be lazy, don’t lie, and don’t be a thief)’ (Assies, 2011, p. 112); the new Bolivian constitution is not just a document to rule by, it is a document to live by – crucially an Andean indigenous life. The representation of indigenous groups by the constitution is also reflected in Morales himself as he straddles the two most prominent indigenous identities, the Aymara and the Quechua (Crabtree, 2011); his family background is Aymara, but he grew up within a Quechuan area and so is a potent figure for the raised stature of Bolivia’s indigenous population. Whilst physically embodying the indigenous identities of Bolivia, Morales’s politics are also of an indigenous nature, which can be classified as ‘sindicato democracy’ (Conzelman, 2010, p. 5). This is a democracy typified by high levels of direct community accountability; a focus on consensus; individual responsibility to the community; subordination of the individual to the community; economics that work for the community (Conzelman, 2010). The sindicato democracy of Morales, in the language of the liberal democratic tradition he has widened and strengthened the public sphere, he has established a non-exclusionary public sphere, he has empowered civil society (Fraser, 1997; Albro, 2010; Conzelman, 2010; Artaraz, 2012). As noted above, there has always been a strong theme of resistance in Bolivian politics, occurring within civil society, but the codification of indigenous rights within the new constitution has undoubtedly strengthened civil society (Assies, 2011). The pre-eminence of indigenous identity in the new constitution evidences the strengthening of sovereignty of Bolivia, it also points to the reclamation of Bolivia for Bolivians, what Postero (2010, p.19) has called ‘indigenous nationalism’, which is emblematic of Morales’s political project.

A significant sign of Morales’s impact since coming to power can be seen in the nationalisation of Bolivia’s vast reserves of natural gas (Kaup, 2010; Sivak, 2011). However this was not a total/traditional nationalisation, but a renegotiation of contracts between the state and MNCs (Kohl, 2010; Sivak, 2011). The state raised taxation and royalties charged to the companies from 18 per cent to 50 per cent, and in some particularly significant gas fields to 82 per cent for a short time, this initial extra rise was in order to recapitalise the state’s gas company YPFB (Kaup, 2010). What this demonstrates then is not a full or traditional nationalisation, but a significant imposition of the state within the economy – state capitalism rather than full socialism. The profits derived from the renegotiated contracts have been channelled into social welfare programmes such as education and health care (Kohl, 2010; Kaup, 2010; Crabtree, 2011).

The semi-nationalisation of gas, and the increased role of the state within the economy, points to the sindicato style of Morales’s political project. In this sense the economy is seen to work for the nation, profit for the community rather than individual profit. There has been criticism of this approach both from the left and right (Kaup, 2010). From the left are claims that Morales has not gone far enough, and that Bolivian gas should be totally nationalised (Kohl. 2010; Kaup, 2010). Bolivia’s contract with Brazil, which relies on Bolivian gas for up to 50 per cent of its total consumption, stipulates that 65 per cent of all daily Bolivian production be sent to Brazil (La Razón, 2007 in Kaup, 2010). Critics on the right claim that the sharp rise in rents charged by the State will discourage new investment and stifle current work, similar criticism is levelled at the use of the revenue for social programmes, arguing for its re-investment in the gas industry (Kaup, 2010). This demonstrates the tightrope that Morales must walk and his pragmatism in walking it. Regardless of criticism of Morales’s semi-nationalisation of gas, it has undoubtedly increased Bolivian sovereignty over one of its key natural resources and reduced the exploitation of the country by foreign actors; it has also greatly increased social welfare programmes that are vital in reducing social inequalities.

Another example of Morales’s pragmatism and the unique middle way between capitalism and socialism is the codification of private property and land laws set out in the 2009 constitution. Protection of private property is conditional on it having a ‘social-economic function’ (Assies, 2011, p. 115). Property must work for society, again evidencing the shift in relationship between the nation/civil society and the economy. Unlike in the neoliberal ideology where the economy is predominant to all other sectors of society, a predominance which is based upon the ultimate protection of private property and the rule of law, the social function required of private property in the 2009 Bolivian constitution predominates the social over the economic/legal (Plant, 2010; Wolff, 2013). In short the social-economic function demanded of private property points to a central theme of change under Morales, the subordination of the ‘rule of law’ to ‘the rule of the people’ (Wolff, 2013, p. 46). This subordination is unsurprising as it follows the logic of sindicato democracy. The fundamental nature of Bolivian politics has changed since Morales’s came to power. Under his Presidency the country has seen a diminishing of liberal political traits and a rise of what Wolff (2013) calls ‘post-liberal democracy’ (p.31), or as has been the case throughout the text sindicato democracy. The decline in the institutional role of traditional political organs such as the executive, judiciary ect. is reflected in the rise of participation outside of institutional boundaries seen in mobilisations rather than institutional participation through traditional methods – joining a political party (Wolff, 2013). To put it simply the post-liberal/sindicato democracy stemming from Morales’s rule is a much raw-er, more direct and less institutionally confined form of governance.

Whilst certainly not traditionally socialist, the political project embarked upon by Morales since his rise through the coca unions is one that can be characterised by its anti-neoliberal, perceptibly anti-American imperialistic neoliberalism (Sivak, 2011). Bolivia now does not receive any new loans from either the IMF or the World Bank, a sign of the rejection of the neoliberal conditions that these loans are based on and increased sovereignty of the country (Dangl, 2007; Sivak, 2011). A specific example of the rejection of American led policy, outside of the change in approach to coca growing, is seen in Morales’s decision to leave the ‘Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)’ (Sivak, 2011, p. 145) which is a free trade agreement used by the US to exercise influence and stifle the growth of regional trade blocs that could potentially damage US business interests in the area. Relatedly Bolivia’s joining of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) and the People’s Trade Agreement (PTA) with Cuba and Venezuela can be seen to represent – in one instance – anti-American/anti-neoliberal policies (Dangl, 2007; Sivak, 2011). The PTA is a good example of the sindicato theme of Morales in that it is based on mutually beneficial trade, something that cannot be said of FTAA (Dangl, 2007).

Morales’s close link to coca has had a key structuring effect on his politics. Whilst rising to a position of power through the coca grower’s unions, since becoming President he has pursued a surprising policy approach to coca (Dangl, 2007; Sivak, 2011; Artaraz, 2012). His approach may be taken as another example of his pragmatism, or the reformist nature of Morales and MAS as opposed to revolutionary (Webber, 2010). On the one hand Morales has been sympathetic to his Cocaleros roots in that he has codified coca as not a drug, in its natural form, in the 2009 constitution (Assies, 2011). Morales has greatly expanded the internal, legal, market for coca, which has greatly benefited small farmers as it has widened their platform to sell their crops (Dangl, 2007; Kohl, 2010). Eradication initiatives whilst still in place have been qualitatively changed, no longer are they violent and forced but are now voluntary and achieved through social control when a farmer grows over the 1,600m²legal limit (Dangl, 2007; Sivak, 2011). The change in the nature of eradication has vastly reduced the violence in the El Chapare region (Dangl, 2007). However, it is the fact that eradication efforts are still in place that has surprised many. Morales has focused his anti-coca policy on combating coca farming for cocaine production, but despite this the US since the Bush administration has continued to withhold certification of Bolivia as an ally in the War on Drugs (Sivak, 2011). Most significantly, despite winning consecutive elections with an increased majority, Morales has not repealed law 1008, the US-backed drug laws that have been shown to disproportionately affect small scale farmers as opposed to growers of coca for cocaine (Crabtree, 2005; Dangl, 2007).

Whilst not impacting as significantly as expected on coca laws, Morales has undeniably impacted on Bolivia. A concrete manifestation of his impact is the 2009 constitution, which primarily codified the rights of indigenous people, it has raised their stature in the country and it is hard to envisage it ever declining. The nature of democracy has changed vastly; Morales has overseen a drastic shift from neoliberalism to Andean sindicato democracy, which has reversed the dominance of the economy and put civil society, the citizens in charge. The empowering of the nation is also clearly seen in the semi-nationalisation of Bolivia’s gas reserves, and the new mutually beneficial trade alliances with other Latin American countries. The exploitation that has characterised Bolivian history since it’s colonisation is rapidly declining. Morales has facilitated ownership of Bolivia for Bolivians and is a shinning example of the strengthening of indigenous people.

This essay has traced the impact of the Cocaleros and Evo Morales on Bolivia by first establishing context. The impact of the Cocaleros was seen in that it was here that Morales began to climb the ladder to presidency. The Cocaleros were also crucial to the formation of MAS, which has now become the dominant force in Bolivian politics. Morales’s impact has been specifically outlined in the reforms to the gas contracts, the change enacted in coca eradication, the writing of a new constitution, and a fundamental change to the nature of Bolivian politics. Whilst the essay has focused primarily on Morales he would undoubtedly not be where he is today without the Cocaleros organisations, ironically the neoliberalism that has been severely diminished by Morales and MAS played a central factor in strengthening the Cocaleros unions which provided the platform for the progress of MAS and Morales.

Bibliography

Albro, R. (2010) Confounding Cultural Citizenship and Constitutional Reform in Bolivia. Latin American Perspectives. 37 (3) pp: 71 – 90.

Artaraz, K. (2012) Bolivia: Refounding the nation. Pluto Press, London.

Assies, W. (2011) Bolivia’s new constitution and its implications. In: Pearce, A. J. (ed) (2011) Evo Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo in Bolivia: The first term in context, 2006 – 2010. Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London. pp: 93 – 116.

Conzelman, C. S. (2010) Agrarian Sindicato Democracy and Evo Morales’ new coca leaf politics: An Anthropological Perspective on Bolivian Strategic Culture. Florida International University: Applied Research Centre. [Online] Available: < http://strategicculture.fiu.edu/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=tLdP8tRmruY%3D&tabid=95> Accessed: 18/04/2013.

Crabtree, J. (2005) Patterns of Protest: Politics and Social Movements in Bolivia. Latin American Bureau, London.

Crabtree, J. (2011) Electoral validation for Morales and the MAS (1999 – 2010). In: Pearce, A. J. (ed) (2011) Evo Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo in Bolivia: The first term in context, 2006 – 2010. Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London. pp: 117 – 142.

Dangl, B. (2007) The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia. Ak Press, Edinburgh.

Dunkerley, J. (2007) Evo Morales, the ‘Two Bolivias’ and the Third Bolivian Revolution. Journal of Latin American Studies. 39 (1) pp: 133 – 166.

Fraser, N. (1997) Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition. Routledge, London.

Harten, S. (2011) Towards a ‘traditional party’? Internal organisation and change in the MAS in Bolivia. In: Pearce, A. J. (ed) (2011) Evo Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo in Bolivia: The first term in context, 2006 – 2010. Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London. pp: 63 – 91.

Hylton, F. (2006) The Landslide in Bolivia: Introduction to Alvaro Garcia Linera. New Left Review. 37 pp: 69 – 72.

Kaup, B. Z. (2010) A Neoliberal Nationalisation? The Constraints on Natural-Gas-Led Development in Bolivia. Latin American Perspectives. 37 (3) pp: 123 – 138.

Klein, H. S. (2011) The Historical Background to the rise of MAS, 1952 – 2005. In: Pearce, A. J. (ed) (2011) Evo Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo in Bolivia: The first term in context, 2006 – 2010. Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London. pp: 27 – 61.

Kohl, B. (2010) Bolivian under Morales: A work in Progress. Latin American Perspectives. 37 (3) pp: 107 – 122.

Morales, W. Q. (2011) From Revolution to Revolution: Bolivia’s National Revolution and the “Re-Founding” Revolution of Evo Morales. Latin Americanist. 55 (1) pp: 131 – 144.

Postero, N. (2010) Morales’s MAS Government: Building Indigenous Popular Hegemony in Bolivia. Latin American Perspectives. 37 (3) pp: 18 – 37.

Plant, R. (2010) The Neo-Liberal State. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Salman, T. (2007) Bolivia and the Paradox of Democratic Consolidation. Latin American Perspectives. 34 (6) pp: 111 – 130.

Sivak, M. (2011) The Bolivianisation of Washington – La Paz relations: Evo Morales’ foreign policy agenda in historical context. In: Pearce, A. J. (ed) (2011) Evo Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo in Bolivia: The first term in context, 2006 – 2010. Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London. pp: 143 – 173.

Webber, J. R. (2010) Carlos Mesa, Evo Morales, and a divided Bolivia (2003 – 2005). Latin American Perspectives. 37 (3) pp: 51 – 70.

Wolff, J. (2013) Towards Post-Liberal Democracy in Latin America? A Conceptual Framework Applied to Bolivia. Journal of Latin American Studies. 45 (1) pp: 31 – 59.

[1] Coca farmers

[2] Passed in 1988, bringing various US influenced anti-drug laws together and setting a maximum area for coca growing (Crabtree, 2005).

[3] MAS was a defunct party in all but name (Harten, 2011)

[4] Morales won an unprecedented absolute majority in the Presidential election of December 2005, winning in total 54% of the vote (Hylton, 2006).

[5] ‘Nearly 62% of its [Bolivia] people are native speakers of an indigenous language’ (INE, 2003; World Bank, 2008 in Postero, 2010, p. 19).

No Love For McDonald’s In Globalization-Wary Bolivia (mintpressnews.com)
Evo Morales: No Need for US Embassy in Bolivia (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Bolivia: New Factory to Make Coca Products for Medicinal Use (alethonews.wordpress.com)

July 30, 2013 Posted by aletho | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | Bolivia, Cocalero, Evo Morales, Latin America, United States | Leave a comment

Cuba Decries Strengthening of US blockade

Prensa Latina | July 29, 2013

The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations (Minrex) denounced today the United States has hardened the blockade on the island over the last weeks, using for this action the Office for Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Treasury Department.

According to the information from the Ministry, on June 28, the OFAC fined one of the most important Italian banks, Intesa Sanpaolo S.p.A., compelling it to pay $2,949,030 dollars.

According to the probe carried out by OFAC, the bank handled 53 transfers in favor of Cuba, from 2004 to 2008.

The Cuban government says the extraterritorial application of this sanction is evidence of the impudence with which the United States treats its European partners and sets a negative precedent for other institutions that do business with Cuba.

Besides this, adds the official note, on July 22nd, the OFAC fined once again another company for violating blockade regulations against Cuba, this time with $5,226,120 dollars, the largest sum yet this year.

The victim this time was one of the main tour operator agencies in the US, American Express Travel Related Services Company. This is the second fine in less than one month and the fifth this year, stresses Minrex in an official note published in its digital website.

The OFAC announced this last sanction after concluding a detailed investigation consisting in the US obsession with preventing at all cost that US citizens travel freely to Cuba.

The fine was set off by the alleged sale of 14,487 air tickets to travel to Cuba from third countries, outside from the license given to American Express Travel for the groups of “people to people” travel.

At the same time, the Minrex note says the fines reinforce the extraterritorial application of the blockade on companies for their operations in third countries.

The fundamental objective of this criminal and inhumane policy is to keep on harming and bearing suffering on the Cuban people, concludes the communique.

July 30, 2013 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Economics | Cuba, Intesa Sanpaolo, Latin America, OFAC, Office Foreign Assets Control, Prensa Latina, United States | Leave a comment

Mass Poverty and Social Inequality: India’s “Independence” for Whom and From What?

By Colin Todhunter | July 30, 2013

On 15 August, India will celebrate Independence Day. There will be the usual celebratory flag waving and nationalist sentiments. The mainstream media will wallow in it, and key figures will indulge in the type of self congratulatory back-slapping that is common across the world when celebrating nationhood. But what will people be celebrating? The throwing off of British colonialism, the development of nationhood? Perhaps both of those things, but maybe neither, for what has ‘the nation’ and ‘independence’ come to mean in 2013?

Forget nations, flags or fly pasts. Freedom and self determination should be about ordinary people, ordinary people who farm and produce, who create genuine wealth, things of genuine worth.

Forget about sound bites referring to ‘the world’s biggest democracy’. Placing an X on a ballot paper every four years or so does not constitute democracy. If people are misinformed, misled and manipulated to think and act in a certain way, while backroom deals are carried out without their knowledge, they are but ignorant links in a chain (1,2).

Then there is no freedom, no self-determination. Someone else has appropriated the freedom and has enslaved. Someone else is determining the agenda.

Look no further to see this in action in that self-anointed bastion of ‘freedom and democracy’, the US.

Influence is bought and paid for by millionaire backers who fund politicians when running for office. And just in case that does not work to full effect, there is the infamous ‘revolving door’ that allows top corporate people to move in and out of the high echelons of government with ease in order to ensure the required policies are enacted. And don’t let the media get in the way of any of this. It won’t. Concentration of media ownership and the integration with armaments companies, banking interests and industry guarantees the public remain blissfully ignorant of issues, not least of how ‘democracy’ really works.

It all serves to ensure that the one percent maintain hegemony over the 99, maintain their unimaginable wealth and privileges and maintain the rest of the population in ignorance, in a state of powerlessness, in a state of poverty, relative poverty or vulnerability.

Yell moronically ‘USA!USA!’ when the authorities protect the people from imaginary or manufactured demons, or sign up and go to kill and die under the patriotic banner of ‘god and nation’. Mission accomplished, manipulation assured, control complete.

Class-based interests

And just who is doing the controlling? Never mind that a select number of companies predominate, dig further and you will find four institutions hold major stakes in most of these top companies and in doing so exert control over international finance and monetary policy via the IMF, World Trade Organisation, World Bank and Central European Bank (3). Control and wealth is highly concentrated in the hands of certain individuals or families.

In India too, a relative handful of families control much of the economy and society and are all too willing to fall in line with Western elite interests (4,5), whose hegemonic strategy lies in depressing wages, exploiting markets and maximising profit. Their interests do not lie with those of the 800 million who live on less than two dollars a day, the bulk of the people residing in the eight states that contain more poor people than 26 sub-Saharan African countries combined or the almost one in two children who are malnourished or their families; nor do their interests lie with the tens of millions across India who are having their lands stolen, their rights trampled on, their villages destroyed, their homelands occupied by paramilitary forces just because the rich require their land, their acquiescence, their mineral rich mountains, their agriculture.

The system cannot remedy this situation. It thrives on it. It produces it. But, of course, in an attempt to justify imperialism and plunder, the lie is forwarded that globalisation or neo-liberalism exists to lift the poor out of poverty, to liberate the masses from their burden.

The reality is that, in the name of ‘economic development’, what is currently happening in India constitutes the biggest land grab since Columbus and the biggest forced removal of peoples from their lands in history (6,7). Elite interests and supporters of their agenda in the media imply that the victims are unfortunate ‘collateral damage’ on the road to the promised land.

Sure, certain people have prospered in India in recent years. Sure, many now have lifestyles that their parents could only have imagined. But even under slavery, the lives of slaves improved over time. Moreover, notwithstanding the massive human ‘collateral damage’, there has been a terrible price to pay in terms of the damage caused in pursuit of an unsustainable model of development that destroys traditional agriculture, destroys the ecology and strips bare natural resources. This type of ‘development’ is warped and wholly unsustainable, whether within India or on a global level.

The poverty alleviation rate in India is more or less the same as it was back in 1991 when the US educated, World Bank/IMF trained Indian bureaucrat politicians began to assume power and shift the country towards the neo-liberalism required by their US backers (5).

India ‘s education system, healthcare system, infrastructure and welfare system has already been sacrificed via illegal ‘capital outflows’ into foreign bank accounts, which has accelerated since the opening up of the economy in ’91. A few have been enriched. At what cost to the rest?

In the West, it’s the same story. The secular theology of neo-liberalism has resulted in what many of us predicted. Tens of millions now bear the brunt of ‘austerity’, as companies rake in record profits and the extremely wealthy increase their wealth again by record amounts (8,9). Call it monopoly capitalism, a ‘new world order’ or some other name. The result is there for all to see: a rich and increasingly internationalised elite and the impoverishment of workers throughout the world.

On Independence Day, or during similar events in other places, we should urge people to think hard before bowing down to the flag, before swelling with pride and saying ‘god save the queen’, ‘the land of the brave’ or ‘mera pyara Bharat’.

Most nation states are run for the benefit of and to protect elite interests. And those interests have little respect for national boundaries or for the people they share the same land mass with. History shows that such interests have no hesitation in sacrificing (their own) national economies (10) or the lives of their compatriots en masse in barbaric wars (11) for ever greater power and ever more profit.

What do freedom, self-determination and patriotism actually amount to when the colonial oppressor is still present and has the compliance of India’s increasingly wealthy elite. Was this always to be India’s fabled ‘tryst’ with destiny?

Don’t be distracted by bogus notions of freedom, self-determination and patriotism.

The colonial oppressor is still there, and he has the compliance of India’s increasingly wealthy elite.

Notes

1) http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-eu-india-free-trade-agreement-corporate-driven-neocolonial-plunder/5338049

2) http://beejbachaoandolan.org/2007/09/

3) http://www.realnews24.com/the-large-families-that-rule-the-world/

4) http://www.worldcrunch.com/business-finance/rahul-gandhi-india-039-s-corporate-elite-and-the-enduring-power-of-family-dynasties/india-family-caste-business-gandhi/c2s11302/

5) http://www.globalresearch.ca/india-s-urban-slums-rising-social-inequalities-mass-poverty-and-homelessness/30756

6) http://www.countercurrents.org/sharma141109.htm

7) http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Globalization/War_Against_Nature_VFTS.html

8) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/business/economy/corporate-profits-soar-as-worker-income-limps.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

9)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkhmGOxwbhM

10) http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-offshore-outsourcing-of-american-jobs-a-greater-threat-than-terrorism/18725

11) http://www.globalresearch.ca/endless-growth-based-on-consumerism-is-there-an-alternative-to-capitalism-and-oligarchy/5318000

Source

The inequalities of democracy (thehindu.com)
The dishonesty in counting the poor (thehindu.com)
The United States of… Class War, Inequality, and Poverty (commondreams.org)
80% of US adults facing near poverty or no work (americanthinker.com)

July 30, 2013 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Economics, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | British Empire, Economic inequality, India, International Monetary Fund, Poverty, Social Inequality, United States, USA, World Bank | Leave a comment

‘Low-level NSA analysts can spy on Americans’

RT :: July 28, 2013

NSA spying programs give access to US citizens’ private data to low-level analysts with little court approval or supervision, says Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story on Washington’s PRISM surveillance system.

“[PRISM] is an incredibly powerful and invasive tool,” Greenwald told ABC’s ‘This Week.’ The NSA programs are “exactly the type that Mr. Snowden described. NSA officials are going to be testifying before the Senate on Wednesday, and I defy them to deny that these programs work exactly as I’ve said.”

The NSA keeps trillions of telephone calls and emails in their databases which they can access anytime with simple screen programs, he said.

“And what these programs are, are very simple screens, like the ones that supermarket clerks or shipping and receiving clerks use, where all an analyst has to do is enter an email address or an IP address, and it does two things.”

“It searches that database and lets them listen to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered, and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address or that IP address do in the future.”

While the program conducts wiretapping with little court approval or supervision, there are “legal constraints” on surveillance that require approval by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, in which court judges can secretly review the government’s plans to track suspected terrorists in advance.

“You can’t target [Americans] without going to the FISA court,” Greenwald stressed. “But these systems allow analysts to listen to whatever emails they want, whatever telephone calls, browsing histories, Microsoft Word documents.”

“And it’s all done with no need to go to a court, with no need to even get supervisor approval on the part of the analyst,” he added.

Greenwald will testify before a Congressional committee on Wednesday, along with NSA officials who have previously downplayed Snowden’s claims about the agency’s easy-access data.

PRISM is a mass electronic surveillance data mining program operated by the NSA since 2007. The program was exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden earlier this summer. Snowden leaked information about the program to the media, warning of a far greater extent of mass data collection than the public knew existed. The disclosures were published by The Guardian and The Washington Post on June 6.

Snowden later leaked further information to Greenwald which pertained to mass security operations carried out across the world. He spoke of British spy agency GCHQ, which uses the Tempora surveillance program. The whistleblower also shared information regarding Germany’s cooperation with US intelligence, which reportedly combs through half a billion German phone calls, emails, and text messages on a daily basis.

A call for transparency on surveillance programs

The call for increased oversight and transparency for surveillance programs has been growing, even among supporters of the NSA.

“I do think that we’re going to have to make some change to make things more transparent,” Senator Saxby Chambliss, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told ABC.

Former federal judge James Robertson, who used to grant surveillance orders, said he was shocked to hear of changes to allow broader authorization of NSA programs – such as the monitoring of US phone records. He urged for a reform which would to allow counter-arguments to be heard.

“What FISA does is not adjudication, but approval,” Robertson said, speaking as a witness during the first public hearings into the Snowden revelations. “This works just fine when it deals with individual applications for warrants, but the 2008 amendment has turned the FISA court into an administrative agency making rules for others to follow.”

However, government officials have defended the surveillance initiatives as authorized under law, claiming they are necessary in order to guard the country against terrorist threats.

Following Snowden’s revelations on NSA surveillance, President Barack Obama assured US citizens in June that “nobody is listening to [their] telephone calls.”

He said the surveillance programs monitor phone numbers and the durations of calls, adding that if there are any suspicions and “if the intelligence community then actually wants to listen to a phone call, they’ve got to go back to a federal judge, just like they would in a criminal investigation.”

President Obama added that America is “going to have to make some choices” between privacy and security, warning that the highly publicized programs will make it harder to target terrorists.

Meanwhile, deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce said that the “program is not intentionally used to target any US citizens” and is “key in our counter-terrorism efforts.”

Testifying on Capitol Hill before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in June, NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander claimed that the NSA’s storage of millions of phone records has thwarted more than 50 terror attacks in more than 20 countries since September 11, 2001. However, evidence of the prevented attacks has not been revealed.

July 29, 2013 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Glenn Greenwald, Human rights, Information Technology, Intelligence, Law, National Security Agency, NSA, Obama, Politics, United States, United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court | Leave a comment

Obama’s Plan for Economic Immiseration

By ROB URIE | July 26, 2013

President Barack Obama spoke at length on the economy on Wednesday in the first of what is reported to be a series of speeches he will give around the country to push his economic ‘agenda.’ A question for his supporters is why Mr. Obama is now purporting to promote the interests of the middle class and working poor when he has remained silent for the last five years during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression? If he cared one whit about these people the time to promote economic policies to help them was five years ago. And conversely, the economic policies he has pursued have decimated the very people he now claims to want to help.

Mr. Obama’s analysis of economic travails—globalization and its effects on an under-educated workforce, are the same neo-liberal pabulum the ‘Washington consensus’ has been serving up since Jimmy Carter was in office. And his economic prescriptions—public-private ‘partnerships’ to boost investment in technology, bringing corporate executives in to assess what is wrong with the educational system, building out lower cost ‘online’ education and community colleges to ‘boost American competitiveness,’ increased infrastructure spending and the creation of tax advantaged savings accounts for middle class families, are straight from the neo-liberal playbook as well. To ask the obvious question: if neo-liberal policies worked, why then the laundry list of economic travails?

Taking the speech at face value, the contention market forces (‘globalization’) are the central cause of the decades old downward mobility of the ‘American workforce’ leaves out the specific role Mr. Obama has played in pushing the monopoly capitalist coup forward with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP), the role he personally has played in reviving the Wall Street banks responsible for the ‘financialization’ of the economy, the bi-partisan effort by official Washington to diminish the lot of organized labor and the ‘privatization’ schemes he continues to push to hand the public economy over to corporate interests. Government policies in the service of capital are no more ‘market’ forces than the much derided ‘central planning’ is.

A recent paper by the International Labour Organization (ILO) presents a broad and reasonably nuanced effort that concludes financialization, and not ‘technology,’ is the central explanation for the increased, and still increasing, share of income going to corporations and away from labor. By changing the corporate motive from continuing economic production to ‘financialized’ production—the creation of corporate architecture designed for maximum extraction of previously existing value, the ‘balance of power’ between labor and capital was shifted to capital by its corporate agents (executives). A prime example can be found in Wall Street itself—individual firms willing to sink the entire financial system for short term trading gains. Additionally, through the permeation of debt-based leverage, rentier income is now drawn from every section of the economy.

Mr. Obama’s unconditional bailout of Wall Street, with upwards of $25 trillion of public funds made available to ‘save’ the banks, is the single greatest gift from working people to the forces of their own demise in world history. The ILO paper articulates the role of Wall Street in the immiseration of the West’s toiling classes– not only was the transfer of public resources to ‘private’ banks in the bailouts taken from the working class, the financial economy Mr. Obama ‘saved’ is the absolute enemy of working people. Wall Street provided the tactic of immiseration of the working poor and middle class through financialization of economic production and it facilitated the process through financialization of the broader economy. In fact, Mr. Obama’s economic agenda can be read as the explicit continuation of this process.

Mr. Obama’s plan to ‘work with’ private technology companies to provide every college student in America with high speed internet service has particular irony as apparently the main capability to be boosted is the NSA’s ability to spy on students, long known to be periodically politically active, all the more quickly. As there was no mention of this ‘enhanced’ service being free—Mr. Obama is providing students the ‘right’ to buy products from private companies who then sell the information they gather from their ‘customers’ to the highest bidder while inventing ever more intrusive and corporate-totalitarian methods of controlling them. It is agreed that in theory high speed Internet service has value. That Mr. Obama’s actual corporate-state policies have made it a tool of totalitarian control shines a light on his true constituency. Conversely, it illustrates the destruction of actual economic value (high speed internet service) through strategies of domination by the same capitalists claiming they create economic value.

Asking business leaders to opine on the system of public education is more cynical still given Mr. Obama’s appointment of long-term public school privatizer Arne Duncan as Education Secretary. Business leaders’ interest is to shift the cost of training ‘their’ workforces onto the public dime. Even granting the dubious proposition education is to benefit capitalist enterprise, truly educating ‘the workforce’ provides for a broad set of potentially socially beneficial applications whereas training teaches skills that benefit certain employers. Given the history of American corporations trying to limit the mobility of workers, such as pensions with long vesting periods, providing specific training in lieu of broad education serves corporate interests against those of labor. And ‘education’ only creates ‘American’ jobs to the extent Federal government policies put certain classes of labor into faux ‘competition’ with more effectively exploited workers overseas. ‘Education,’ as Mr. Obama presents it, is a phony solution to an engineered problem.

Even in the dim corporate-state worldview of Mr. Obama’s patrons there must be interest in education outside rote training and inculcating maximum consumption—otherwise, who will create? Additionally, the basic arithmetic of privatized education is revenue – costs = profits. If profits are zero, as is the case with public education, then expenditures equal revenues. Why extracting profits–increasing public expenditures that go to capitalists rather than to education, adds value to education when it so clearly detracts is a mystery Mr. Obama should explain. And paradoxically, his ‘private’ model for education finds precedence in his health care ‘reform’ plan, the ACA, with the central difference being that Mr. Obama’s explanation for retaining a private healthcare system is that it is already ‘private’ whereas the educational system Mr. Obama now wants to privatize is largely public. And there is no grimmer view of human existence than corporations training human ‘consumption units’ in the empty ideology of capitalist consumption.

Mr. Obama’s ‘tax advantaged’ savings accounts for middle class families are a particularly cynical ploy. Middle class wages were stagnant for thirty years before declining in the economic calamity associated with the financial ‘crisis’ of 2008. What middle class (and poor) families need is income, not accounts to put income they don’t have into. With more details allegedly forthcoming, the initial read is through his ‘private accounts’ Mr. Obama hopes to effectuate George W. Bush’s plan for his own ‘private accounts’ as a step toward privatizing Social Security. And in his Wednesday speech Mr. Obama made coded comments about cutting Social Security that tie directly to his Hamilton Project (Robert Rubin) speech nearly a decade earlier. To be clear, the working poor would be hurt most were Mr. Obama to push ‘private’ savings accounts only the rich can afford while cutting the Social Security the working poor most depend on.

The infrastructure spending Mr. Obama advocates may or may not be a good idea depending on how it is financed. In the U.S., given its geography and geopolitics, infrastructure has unambiguously provided an economic benefit in the post-WWII period. But corporations formerly paid a substantial proportion of the costs of building infrastructure through taxes. Over the last fifty years taxes on corporations and the wealthy have been massively cut leaving the middle class to pay an increased share of public expenditures. And a significant proportion of this burden, in the form of municipal debt, is coming due.

The struggle currently underway in ‘bankrupt’ Detroit between ‘bondholders’ and pensioners has the Democratic Party of the last forty years supporting the immiseration of pensioners to pay financial speculators for financing infrastructure spending. To be clear, public (and private) pensions are deferred income negotiated in lieu of current income. Democrat Robert Rubin, with whose acolytes Mr. Obama has continued to fill his Cabinet, is an insistent advocate of Detroit’s bondholders being fully paid. And the only way to do so is to take the money, earned income that was deferred, from pensioners. Mr. Obama’s threat to appoint arch Rubinite Larry Summers—the man who bears significant responsibility for deregulating Wall Street and for the ensuing economic calamity, to Chair the Federal Reserve is a clear signal increased infrastructure spending is intended to transfer even more public wealth to ‘private’ hands.

Mr. Obama refers to the student debt ‘crisis’ as if he had no role in it. In fact, about half of the total student loan debt outstanding was accumulated while Mr. Obama has been President. Mr. Obama ‘removed the banks’ from making student loans in 2009 as part of his effort to shift bad bank debts and economic risk from the banks onto the public balance sheet, not in an effort to help middle class students as he now asserts. Under Mr. Obama student loan debt fraudulently incurred through bogus ‘for-profit’ colleges and trade schools has exploded with fully one-third of indebted students failing to receive degrees. With full knowledge that student loan debt is nearly impossible to discharge, Mr. Obama encouraged students to take loans as part of his education ‘initiative’ creating a new generation of debt slaves to a particularly pernicious type of debt.

The ‘middle class’ jobs Mr. Obama now claims to have created through the automaker bailouts is a particularly offensive sleight of hand. Before the bailouts a proposal had been floated to create a ‘tiered’ wage system where new autoworkers would earn approximately one-half what existing workers made. As a condition of the automaker bailouts Mr. Obama forced the issue by putting tiered wages in place while no restrictions were put on executive compensation. In large measure the same executives who had sunk the auto industry were left in their jobs at full pay and were left free to continue relocating autoworker jobs to low wage countries. And in fact, the bailouts Mr. Obama now claims were his were largely engineered by the George W. Bush administration before it left office. As with Mr. Obama’s healthcare plan, right-wing Republicans conceived the automaker bailouts.

On a positive note, it was refreshing to hear Mr. Obama correctly characterize his healthcare ‘reform’ plan, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as a plan to provide health insurance, rather than health care, to those lacking it. The Democrat partisans who tried to draw such a stark line between Mr. Obama’s policies and the likely policies of his Republican rival in the last election, Mitt Romney, largely avoided the fact that Mr. Obama’s health care ‘reform’ was the same plan Republican Mitt Romney had implemented as Governor of Massachusetts. The right-wing Heritage Foundation originally conceived the plan as the radical right’s ‘solution’ to the ‘threat’ of national health care. Under the guise of political feasibility Mr. Obama has pushed through the major policies of the radical corporate-right with his long-suffering constituents believing they got a good deal.

The genesis of the ACA as a corporate-right ‘solution’ to a public health crisis is what it is, but this alone doesn’t doom it to failure. What it leaves is a system that provides about two-thirds of the benefits of a functioning health care system at twice the cost. While implementation of the plan in Massachusetts initially reduced the number of medical bankruptcies —families that were bankrupted by medical costs, the number quickly recovered. The basic flaws of the existing healthcare system remain—monopoly power in pricing medical services and medical provision, a disjoint and ring-fenced system designed to maximize profits rather than to provide healthcare, and hugely asymmetrical political-economic power between insurance companies, medical providers and the ‘insured’. The ACA’s liberal supporters believe against all history that private insurers will willingly provide the health care they are contractually obligated to provide when they only have when forced to in the past. The question then, with the unconditional bank bailouts as guide, is who is going to force them?

Again, the received wisdom amongst the self-described ‘liberal’ economists supporting the ACA is that it is all that was politically feasible. In fact, with poll results showing 75% of the American people initially supporting a national (single payer) health care system, Mr. Obama could have taken his case to the people. Alternatively, Mr. Obama could have represented popular disillusion as a potential threat to the extractive, dysfunctional private health care providers and won concessions. Instead, he had a health insurance lobbyist write the ACA and proceeded to pass the Republican plan conceived by the right-wing Heritage Foundation off as his signature achievement.

What Mr. Obama apparently hopes to accomplish in the remainder of his term, as evidenced by his economic ‘agenda,’ is the conversion of every remaining socially beneficial public institution into private enterprises designed to provide the highest profits for connected capitalists while converting their (public institutions’) ‘products’ into tools for the domination and control of the populace. Postmodernist insights notwithstanding, there is a difference between education and capitalist-corporatist propaganda. There is a difference between education and technical training in the service of industry. Savings accounts for people who have no income to save are a hoax. Infrastructure designed to extract ongoing fees for private interests at public expense is a cynical ploy. And as ACA supporters will soon be learning in excruciating detail, there is a difference between health insurance and health care. Finally, privatization isn’t efficient rationalization of public institutions; it is the replacement of the public interest with private interests. Lest the result remain unclear, replacement means elimination of the public interest.

Rob Urie is an artist and political economist in New York. His book, Zen Economics, will be published by CP/AK Press in 2014.

Source

July 27, 2013 Posted by aletho | Deception, Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Obama, United States, Wall Street | Leave a comment

Brazilians protest costly visit by Pope

Press TV – July 27, 2013

Brazilians have taken to the streets of the two megacities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to protest the costly week-long visit of Pope Francis to the country.

On Friday, hundreds of demonstrators faced off with 1.5 million Catholic pilgrims in Rio’s Copacabana beach, where visiting Pope was wrapping up a massive ceremony marking World Youth Day.

Protestors were closely monitored by security personnel in scores of vehicles, including an armored vehicle equipped with a water cannon.

Meanwhile, in Sao Paolo, over 300 protesters ransacked five banks and set fire to garbage bins and blocked traffic late on Friday as a show of solidarity with demonstrators in Rio de Janeiro.

On Monday, a similar demonstration was held near the Rio state governor’s palace following a meeting there between the Pope and Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff.

The demonstrations come just weeks after the country experienced a series of massive protests against government corruption, lagging public services, and the cost of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

The protesters argued that the government should spend public funds on health, education, and other public services rather than on costly international events.

July 27, 2013 Posted by aletho | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | 2014 FIFA World Cup, Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, Pope Francis, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo | Leave a comment

Venezuela: Supporting a Once and Future Revolution

By Roger D. Harris | Dissident Voice | July 25th, 2013

Venezuela is at a critical moment in its Bolivarian revolution, dealing with serious economic issues due to its transitional economy that is under siege by local oligarchs. At the same time, President Nicolás Maduro’s decision to welcome Edward Snowden, if he opts for political asylum in Venezuela, means that the Obama administration is escalating its hostility towards his government.

Venezuela faces a situation analogous to that of the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende from 1970 to 1973 when, as is well documented, the CIA and the local business class conspired to destabilize the economy, overthrow the democratically elected socialist government, and impose the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

It is in this context that we find it ill timed at best that Clif Ross has assailed the Venezuelan government with one-sided and flimsy arguments (e.g., criticizing Chávez for choosing to divert electrical power from basic industry to the populace when natural droughts curtailed hydroelectric production) in recent articles at Dissident Voice and CounterPunch Weekend Edition.

A former Chávista, Ross now takes what he describes as an “agnostic” view of the Bolivarian movement. His agnosticism extends to the US-backed opposition, which Ross argued in his talk in Berkeley could be even better for Venezuela if it were to come to power.

As solidarity activists, the Task Force on the Americas is not afflicted with agnostic angst; we support the social justice movements against imperialist intervention. Our responsibility is to allow the Venezuelans to resolve the contradictions within their movement without the interference of the US government.

A class analysis is needed of what is happening in Venezuela. The many problems with the Bolivarian revolution are inherent in trying to create socialism on the foundations of capitalism. Within Chávismo there is an acute awareness of problems, and President Maduro is working on them. We support the overall Bolivarian struggle against outside interference, because the alternative of the opposition in power would mean no opportunity for a people’s agenda.

Ross is concerned about the contagion of state power. None of the 21st century socialist governments in Latin America pass his muster. All are corrupt, authoritarian, and going in the wrong direction in his view.

But it was through state power that the Bolivarian movement in Venezuela distributed land to 300,000 families, halved the poverty rate, reduced extreme poverty by two-thirds, went from being among one of the most economically unequal nations in the Latin America to being the among the most equal, reduced child malnutrition by 40%, increased social expenditures by 60%, built 700,000 homes, and returned 1 million hectares to Indigenous communities.

This same government has promoted community councils and other instruments of participatory democracy. Not surprisingly, according to the annual World Happiness poll, Venezuela is the second happiest country in the world.

A mere decade and a half ago, most analysts would have ranked Venezuela as least likely to stand up on its own two feet to challenge the Empire, to be recognized as sovereign and equal. It was arguably the most sycophantically Americanized nation in South America. In a mere 14 years of the Bolivarian revolution, there has been a blossoming of home grown culture. A sense of national identity and pride has become universal, even among the Miami jet-setting opposition elements.

Today, 32-year old musical wunderkind and avowed Chavista Gustavo Dudamel is not only the music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar in Caracas but of the Philharmonic Orchestra in Los Angeles. Culture is still being imported, but the shipping lanes are going both ways now.

The Bolivarian revolution is considered a major threat by the US empire. The US has a stated policy of regime change for Venezuela, spending millions of dollars on “democracy promotion” to demonize and destabilize the Bolivarian movement. With the US as the sole super power having an uncontested military superiority, the Bolivarian revolution is all the more of a threat because it is a “threat of a good example.”

In 2008, when the US financial crisis precipitated a world recession, the capitalist solution was to impose austerity measures on working people with increased unemployment and economic insecurity. In contrast, the Venezuelan government reduced the gap between rich and poor by elevating the poor.

As James Petras has pointed out, US policy toward Venezuela has taken many tactical turns. But the enduring objective has been the same: oust the Chavistas, reverse the nationalization of big businesses, abolish the mass community and worker based councils, and revert the country into a client-state. These are the salient issues the solidarity movement needs to address.

Roger D. Harris is President of the Task Force on the Americas, a 29-year-old human rights organization based in Marin County, which works in solidarity with the social justice movements in Latin America and in opposition to US interference with their self-determination. V isit Roger’s website.

Venezuela ends normalization of US relations (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Venezuela arrests Colombian paramilitaries plotting instability (alethonews.wordpress.com)

July 26, 2013 Posted by aletho | Deception, Economics, Timeless or most popular | Bolivarian Revolution, Latin America, Nicolás Maduro, South America, United States, Venezuela | Leave a comment

Netanyahu proposes new “Marshall Plan” for Egyptian economy to support coup

MEMO | July 26, 2013

Netanyahu hopes that his “Marshall Plan” would see the emergence of a new Arab middle class.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing for the West to adopt a new “Marshall Plan” for the Egyptian economy in order for the coup to succeed. He is being backed by US Republican Senator Rand Paul in his efforts. If successful, Netanyahu will regard the burying of the democratic process in the neighbouring country as the achievement of one of his most important strategic objectives.

The original Marshall Plan was America’s way of helping to rebuild Europe after the Second World War to stem the tide of revolutionary liberation. According to Maariv newspaper, Netanyahu’s plan proposes significant economic growth in the Arab world in order to prevent “radical” Islamic groups from rising to power.

The deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council, Eran Lerman, has been pushing the plan in recent meetings in Washington with Congress members. Netanyahu himself suggested such a plan during his own recent visit to the US; finance for the scheme would come from private sources, he claimed. The prime minister believes that Arab countries should be encouraged to have stable democracies free of Iranian influence and that the international community should work towards that objective. Maariv’s report claims that the Israeli officials are looking at possible funding for the project to come from Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Netanyahu hopes that his plan would see the emergence of a new Arab middle class, presumably more ready to do business with Israel. His thinking follows the logic behind US Secretary of State John Kerry’s proposal for massive financial investment in the occupied West Bank to boost the Palestinian Authority’s standing. “The capitalist West thinks that throwing ever more money at a problem will solve it,” said MEMO’s Senior Editor Ibrahim Hewitt. “The natural aspiration of a people to be free of economic, political and military occupation doesn’t register with Western governments for whom economic growth is the Holy Grail.”

The newspaper pointed out that the Israeli government is also preparing to ask the US Department of Defence for an increase in military aid on the pretext of potential threats from the popular uprisings in the Arab region.

Israel reacts positively to Egypt coup (rinf.com)

July 26, 2013 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel, John Kerry, Netanyahu, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Detroit: The Bell Tolls for All of Us

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford | July 23, 2013

In Detroit, even the thin gruel of democracy that America advertises to the world, has ceased to exist. Not one of its 700,000 residents retains the political rights of citizens, those rights having been usurped by the agents of Wall Street: Governor Rick Snyder and bankruptcy lawyer Kevyn Orr, the Lone Ranger and Tonto who were the sole authorities empowered to file bankruptcy for the city. Their mission is to render the judgment of capital that Detroit is too poor, in its present demographic composition, for participation in the democratic order, and must be forcibly reconstituted, beginning with a divvying up of its assets. At the end of this process, a “new” Detroit is supposed to emerge, which will have divested itself of enough Black and poor people to allow the reinstatement of some form of electoral franchise.

Or, maybe not. Direct rule by Wall Street, which is the real meaning of the Emergency Financial Manager regime, is not some idea especially concocted for Detroit. It is the political and economic superstructure that the plutocracy envisions for the whole country – for the entire planet, if they can get away with it. Due to the particular racial history of the United States, where Black citizenship rights have always been deemed illegitimate, those who would strip away democratic freedoms and privatize the public sphere have always found it easier to mount their offensives against heavily Black regions and sectors of society. White people with identical interests in democracy and fairness in schools, public services and in the workplace root for the plutocrats when Blacks are under attack, never imagining that the same weapons will soon be turned on them.

Thus, Detroit’s dissolution is perceived as a Black problem – more politely referred to by its euphemism: an “urban” crisis.

However, Wall Street and its mercenary law firms, like Kevyn Orr’s godfathers at Jones Day, are not motivated by petty racial prejudice; they are simply skilled at taking advantage of it, always aiming their daggers at the soft spots in democracy, where Black people live. With Detroit and the other largely Black cities of Michigan, where half of the state’s African American population has been disenfranchised, Wall Street is creating new law and new models for the total subjugation of American society to the Lords of Capital.

Primary elections are scheduled for Detroit, in August. Mayor Dave Bing, who swung wide the gates to the city for the conquistadors, won’t be running for reelection. City council president and former mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. says he doesn’t see any point in running. But, they are irrelevant. The Detroit model for imposing direct rule of the rich can only be challenged by a mass movement of the hundreds of thousands who remain in the city – either by choice, or by no-choice – and by the millions elsewhere in the country who are next on the corporate juggernaut’s quickening agenda. The resistance must choose its tactics from a menu of “By any means necessary,” make the enemy understand the meaning of “No Justice, No Peace,” and show him that we are deadly serious when we say, “We shall not be moved.”

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Detroit Bankruptcy Takes Aim at Pensions (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Don’t buy the right-wing myth about Detroit (salon.com)
Leaked emails reveal conspiracy to throw Detroit into bankruptcy (counterinformation.wordpress.com)

July 24, 2013 Posted by aletho | Economics, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Dave Bing, Detroit, Kevyn Orr, Rick Snyder, United States, Wall Street | Leave a comment

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Sanctions, War and the Policy of Dual Containment

By SASAN FAYAZMANESH | March 17, 2008

It is now nearly three decades since the Unites States adopted the policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq. While much has been written about the containment of Iraq, there has been very little in-depth analysis of this policy when it comes to Iran. In a book that is going to be released on March 31, 2008, entitled The United States and Iran: Sanctions, Wars and the Policy of Dual Containment (Routledge), I attempt to address this shortcoming by investigating when and why the US policy of containment of Iran came about, how it evolved, and where it stands today.[1] To the extent that Israel has been involved in US policy making, the study will also include the role that Israel has played in the containment of Iran. Also, since the fate of Iran has been inextricably linked to that of Iraq, occasionally the investigation will overlap with the containment of Iraq.

The policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq originated during the Carter Administration, but it was not until the Clinton Administration that the expression “dual containment” became popular. … continue

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Can the U.S. Afford to Annihilate Iran?

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