U.S. Government Redistributes Wealth… to the Rich
By Matt Bewig | AllGov | December 24, 2012
For about thirty years now, the federal government has been implementing policies that take tax dollars from middle class Americans and give them to the rich, supposedly as a way to spur economic growth. Although Americans actually want greater economic equality, the net effect has been to redistribute wealth to the rich and create the most unequal developed society on earth.
According to a series of reports by Reuters, since 1989 inequality has risen all across the U.S. to levels not seen since before the Great Depression:
• Inequality has increased in every state except Mississippi, which is the poorest state in the Union;
• The poverty rate increased in 43 states;
• In 28 states inequality and poverty rose while median income fell;
• In every state, the richest 20% of households far outpaced the income gains of any other quintile;
• Income for the median household fell in 28 states.
Three specific aspects of federal policy—low taxes for the rich, outsourcing government functions to private companies, and the financial clout of Washington lobbyists—have been the major drivers of growing inequality.
Low taxes for the rich
Tax cuts enacted during the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush cut taxes sharply on the wealthy, redistributing nearly $2 trillion to high income families—just in the past ten years. In 2011, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and Congressional Research Service each studied income inequality and concluded that the cuts made the tax system less progressive and were the second biggest contributor to growing inequality.
Outsourcing
Starting under President Bill Clinton’s “reinventing government” initiative, the federal government has directed trillions of tax dollars to private-sector contractors by outsourcing government operations that would previously have been performed by government employees. Federal money flowing to business rose 7% during Clinton’s second term and 72% percent under Bush, before leveling off in 2010. This has contributed to inequality because private employers typically offer lower skilled workers less job security, lower wages and fewer benefits than the federal government does.
Lobbying
Nearly 13,000 registered lobbyists reported $3.3 billion in fees last year. There are 22% more lobbyists than in 1998, and their inflation-adjusted revenue is 37% higher than in 1998. Because re-election to Congress is so expensive, the campaign contributions that lobbyists influence or control are critical to political survival on Capitol Hill. But lobbyists work overwhelmingly for groups representing social elites. According to a study led by Prof. Kay Schlozman, the majority of lobbying groups exist to advance the interests of business, while groups advocating for union workers and the poor came in last and second to last on the list.
Venezuela Among the Most Positive Countries, Gallup Says
Venezuelan Embassy to the U.S. / December 20, 2012
A new survey by the Washington, DC-based public opinion pollster Gallup finds that Latin Americans are the most positive people in the world, and Venezuela is tied for second place among all countries measured.
The survey asked citizens of various countries to answer questions including: “Did you feel well-rested yesterday?” “Were you treated with respect?” and “Did you smile or laugh a lot?”
In Venezuela, 84 percent of respondents answered “yes” to those questions, the same amount as in El Salvador, which tied with Venezuela for second place after Panama and Paraguay, which tied for first with 85 percent.
According to Gallup, eight of the top ten most positive countries in the world are in Latin America, with Trinidad and Tobago coming in at number five (with 83 percent), followed by Thailand (83 percent), Guatemala (82 percent), Philippines (82 percent), Ecuador (81 percent), and Costa Rica (81 percent). At the low end, just 46 percent of respondents in Singapore answered “yes” to the questions.
The implications, according to the analysis, are that a country’s overall economic prosperity does not correspond with the amount of positivity felt by its citizens.
The report explains: “These data may surprise analysts and leaders who solely focus on traditional economic indicators. Residents of Panama, which ranks 90th in the world with respect to GDP per capita, are among the most likely to report positive emotions. Residents of Singapore, which ranks fifth in the world in terms of GDP per capita, are the least likely to report positive emotions.”
On average, 73 percent of adults around the world felt enjoyment a lot of the day, and 72 percent felt well-rested. A smaller proportion – 43 percent on average – said they were able to learn or do something interesting.
The report states that, on the whole, the data “reflects a relatively upbeat world.” It concludes that “Despite many global challenges, people worldwide are experiencing many positive emotions.”
Click here to see the full results.
Related articles
- The Achievements of Hugo Chavez (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Economic BS in Rich Countries is Reinforced by BS about Venezuela (alethonews.wordpress.com)
South – South trade may withstand global recession
Indian and Latin American cooperation
Claudia Fonseca Sosa | Granma | December 13, 2012
THIS year, India has shown a notable interest in increasing its economic relations with Latin American countries. Given the serious crisis in the Eurozone and the deceleration of the U.S. economy, nations south of the Rio Bravo are demonstrating greater macroeconomic stability and represent a major growing market.
For example, Brazil, the principal regional buyer of Indian products and the second-largest supplier to the country, increased imports from the Asian giant by 66.2% on the first seven months of 2012. Mexico, the second largest buyer and fourth Latin American exporter to India, raised its exports to the country by 72.1% in the first half of the year.
Other Latin American nations, essentially exporters of raw materials, also have a secure market in India at a time of financial instability. Indian business executives predict that, by 2014, bi-regional trade will be double that of 2011.
However, the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs believes that economic links with Latin America could be more developed, and thus exceed the current trade volume of $25 billion, an insufficient figure and equal to 10% of Chinese economic exchange with the region.
The Indian economy is historically based on manufactured goods and agriculture, being one of the principal world producers of sugar cane, cotton and jute. But in recent decades the country has diversified and developed into sectors such as space and aeronautics research, informatics, telecommunications, electronics, medicine, oil and natural gas.
In fact, India’s dynamic industrial development has caught the attention of companies worldwide, leading to the establishment of subsidiaries in the country, which possess a large qualified workforce.
As a member of the group of emerging economies, BRICS, together with Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa, India contributes half of global economic growth. In 2011, its Gross Domestic Product grew by over 8%.
In June 2012, a ministerial representation from the Community of Latin American and Caribbean Community (CELAC) had a meeting in New Delhi with Indian government officials, during which both sides expressed a mutual interest in extending political relations and economic ones in particular. It was the first time that CELAC, comprising 33 countries in the region, had negotiated abroad as a bloc.
~
See also:
Iran, Brazil Trade Balance Hits $2.4bln
Sri Lanka proposes barter trade with Iran
Pakistan, Iran to open a new market near border
Belarus to Get $600 Mln in Loans from China
Chinese MP: Beijing Welcomes Expansion of All-out Ties with Tehran
Diplomat: Iran-Iraq Trade Ties to Surpass $12bln
Related articles
- Latin American Economy Expected to See More Growth in 2013 (hispanicallyspeakingnews.com)
Haiti: “Earthquake Relief” Helps Build New Luxury Hotel
Weekly News Update on the Americas | December 18, 2012
The Clinton Bush Fund, which former presidents Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and George W. Bush (2001-2009) established shortly after Haiti’s January 2010 earthquake, is closing down on Dec. 31, the group’s vice president for marketing and communications said on Dec. 7. The fund will have disbursed all of the $54.4 million it raised, she indicated. The organization says on its website that its goal was “to assist the Haitian people in building their own country back better.” The group says it has “[d]irectly created or sustained 7,350 jobs and counting” and “[d]irectly trained 20,050 people and counting.” (New York Times 12/7/12 from AP)
One of the fund’s projects—the Oasis Hotel in Pétionville, a suburb southeast of Port-au-Prince—opened on Dec. 12 with a soiree and 800 invitation-only guests. Munching hors-d’oeuvres and sipping “free-flowing wine,” the Miami Herald’s Jacqueline Charles wrote, the participants observed “the bamboo, locally grown orchids and sexy white furniture that lined the expansive courtyard.” The 128-room hotel cost $35 million to build; $2 million was provided by the Clinton Bush Fund [see Update #1080]. President Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) called the hotel “a symbol of the new Haiti.”
According to Tourism Minister Stephanie Balmir Villedrouin, Martelly’s government has approved a $161 million hotel project that will bring a total of 1,200 new hotel rooms to the country next year. A 106-room Best Western and an El Rancho with 72 rooms and 13 apartments are set to open in the coming months; Comfort Suites and Marriott are also planning hotels in Port-au-Prince. (Miami Herald 12/13/12)
On Dec. 10, two days before the Oasis opening, the Force for Reflection and Action on Housing (FRAKKA), a grassroots housing coalition, issued a press release charging that Port-au-Prince area mayors, police agents, justices of the peace and property owners—some with questionable land titles—were continuing forcible evictions of people left homeless by the 2010 earthquake. Some 150 families were threatened, according to the group, which said the displaced persons camps at risk were Vilambeta at Caradeux in the northeastern suburb of Tabarre; Camp Gaston Margron, in the Mariani Zone of Carrefour, southwest of the capital; Fortuna Guery in Port-au-Prince; and Camp Cr3, at Delmas 60, a neighborhood in the Delmas commune east of downtown Port-au-Prince. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 12/10/12)
Some 360,000 people are still living in the camps or other temporary shelters almost three years after the earthquake—4% of Haiti’s population, according to Johan Peleman, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Haiti.
America’s Addiction to Violence
Our Major Global Export
By MARK GRAHAM | CounterPunch | December 18, 2012
The United States is the number one supplier of weapons on the planet, its military the world’s largest employer. Violence has become America’s major export to the world and we have reaped the financial rewards. The only problem is we’re addicted to the drug we’re peddling beyond our borders. The addiction passes on to the next generation through the discursive bloodstream and into the collective womb of culture. Throughout their early years we saturate our children with violent images and language: First person shooter games. Action heroes. Military heroes. Heroes with guns. Men with guns. Men using guns on other men and women and children and animals. We teach them the path of aggression, competition, and the joys of humiliating your opponents. Our entertainments provide orgies of righteous vengeance and self-piteous victimhood. And when one of our children unleashes his monstrous hate on other children we should be horrified—but we should not be surprised. We have taught our children well.
As a teacher and a parent, I could readily imagine the full horror of the massacre in Connecticut. I struggle to keep my children safe from any kind of danger. At my job, I have had to practice lockdowns and deal with bomb threats. I also know how fragile our sense of security is. Inevitably in the wake of tragedies like this, people call for stricter security. Make us safe, they implore. Add more cops, more metal detectors, more guns to protect us from guns. All in vain. No matter how much we surrender our freedom for safety, how much we try to turn our homes and schools into fortresses, we will never be able to keep death from making that appointment in Samarra with us if he’s hell-bent on being there.
In the wake of the tragedy, my wife and I went out for some mindless entertainment—the latest James Bond film. Despite the critical accolades, it left a bad taste in our mouths. Fifty years of James Bond, the film proclaimed in the final credits—and I wondered why I still bother to entertain myself with such tedious and joyless orgies of violence. It has become a habit—one acquired over decades of constant exposure—an addiction that no longer provides pleasure or even numbness. It’s more on the order of a repetition compulsion. The Dream Machine plays back the same spectacles of hypermasculine bodies and pyrotechnic destruction from one year to the next. The events in Connecticut make it easier than ever to see these films are lies: Shots fired and no pain, no disfigurement, no real danger. War with no fear, no trauma, no lingering nightmares.
The most warlike nation with the least number of people ever having felt the terrible impact of war, America entertains itself with killing. Our sports feel like combat, while the fantasies of combat we consume look like sport. The mascot of the school district where I teach in rural Pennsylvania is a bullet. Not a bulldog or huskie or owl or canary. A bullet—the same thing that killed twenty-six people in another school on Friday. Where I work many of us try our best to promote peace and tolerance, to expose students to different points of view, different cultures, different visions for the future. Nearby my school, there’s a shooting range. When I go for walks during my lunch break I can almost always hear someone firing automatic pistols, shotguns, and rifles, the gunshots echoing off my school’s feeble walls.
Inevitably and appropriately, voices rise up in the wake of these mass murders and cry out for gun control laws, for an end to violence, for America to wake up. Their counterparts froth at the mouth over the sacredness of the Constitution (which in all other cases they’re all too willing to discount). The feedback loop stumbles along with the old gun control versus liberty debate. The intractable points of view make for predictable and quickly-forgettable copy in the opinion columns. Soon we let the matter die.
The Swedish writer Sven Lindqvist in discussing the origins of genocide wrote, “It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and draw conclusions.” So watch Obama weep as he proclaims: “Our hearts are broken today. The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. They had their entire lives ahead of them…” Then ask yourself why he doesn’t weep for the children who die at his orders from drone attacks in Pakistan—eight times the number of children horribly murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Why are we surprised when the violence we wreak on the rest of the world should plant its poison seeds in the hearts of our children, turning them into murderers of children? If this tragedy means anything, it’s that America must confront its addiction to violence, to entertainments that equate manhood with killing, and to an entire political and economic system that privileges war-making over the future—and the precious lives—of our own children.
Mark Graham is a high school teacher in the Lehigh Valley. His books include: How Islam Created the Modern World and Afghanistan in the Cinema.
Obama JOBS Act Helped Big Companies Avoid Transparency
By Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky| AllGov | December 16, 2012
Legislation that was supposed to help smaller companies go public has aided larger firms to keep financial data out of the hands of investors.
The “Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act” (or JOBS Act) was promoted by President Barack Obama as a way to assist small businesses in their efforts to raise money through IPOs (stock market launches).
The same legislation, though, made it possible for larger companies (those earning less than $1 billion a year) to dodge reporting details about executive compensation and financial histories to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Companies also can delay disclosing their plans to go public until just before the big day, under the JOBS Act.
“In effect, it means the press and potential investors have less time to comb through financial information, as well as less information to examine,” wrote James Temple in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The abuse of the law should not come as a surprise. At the time that the JOBS Act passed through Congress, Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan warned, “We are about to embark upon the most sweeping deregulatory effort and assault on investor protection in decades.… It will allow vast new opportunities for fraud and abuse in capital markets.”
Meanwhile, the new law, which was adopted in April, hasn’t done much to boost the numbers for IPOs, according to Ernst & Young. This year, 130 companies raised $45 billion on U.S. exchanges, compared to 124 businesses and $40 billion in 2011.
The JOBS Act was the “brainchild” of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which is headed by General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt and, at the time the JOBS Act was proposed, consisted of 18 corporate CEOs and investment executives, two academics and two labor leaders.
Economic BS in Rich Countries is Reinforced by BS about Venezuela
By Joe Emersberger | Zspace | December 13, 2012
It matters to the corporate media in rich countries that Venezuela’s economic performance under Chavez be trashed as much as possible. The Japan based blogger, Francisco Toro, who has written relentlessly in English about Venezuela, has been rewarded by the corporate media in the US and UK with easy access to large audiences for his attacks on the Chavez government.
The US media is busily trying to scam US readers into accepting cuts to Medicare and Social Security so as not to fall off a “fiscal cliff”. In a very recent TNR article, Toro also hypes the imagined perils of discarding neoliberal lunacy. Toro wrote
“… some forecasters estimate Venezuela’s 2013 budget deficit will reach an insane 19.5 percent of GDP (consider that Greece’s deficit topped out at 15.4 percent of GDP in 2009).”
In fact, the “forecasters” Toro cites are saying – insanely – that Venezuela’s fiscal deficit will hit 20% of GDP by the end of this year which has just about arrived. The Guardian, CNN and Washington Post have also run articles claiming Venezuela’s fiscal deficit is presently 16-20% of GDP.
However, the IMF, which is hardly run by Chavistas, said as recently as October that Venezuela’s fiscal deficit would be about 7.4% of GDP by the end of this year. Without checking the IMF projections, any competent and diligent reporter should have seen that the 16-20% numbers were extremely suspect. Venezuela’s budget deficit for 2011 was 5% of GDP. Venezuela’s economy grew in 2012 and oil prices didn’t plummet, so it would have taken a jump in government spending relative to GDP in one year that is totally unprecedented in the Chavez era to drive the deficit up that high.
Additionally, the absurdity of Toro’s comparison of Venezuela to Greece is nicely illustrated by the data for the country from which Toro now blogs.
As of 2011, Japan’s fiscal deficit was 9.7% of GDP. Its gross debt to GDP ratio was 211%. The numbers for Greece are 9.4% and 170% respectively. Based on Toro’s facile analysis, we’d have to ridiculously conclude that Japan is in worse shape than Greece. Clearly, debts (and deficits) relative to GDP do not tell us if a government’s fiscal policy is sustainable.
For a competent analysis of the sustainability of the Chavez government policies see this study by Mark Weisbrot and Jake Johnson. Weisbrot also took the WAPO editorial board to task in this blog post for citing a bogus figure for Venezuela’s fiscal deficit and for other foolishness.
Related articles
- The Achievements of Hugo Chavez (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Does Hugo Chavez Keep Fooling Venezuelans? (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Does Hugo Chavez Keep Fooling Venezuelans?
By Peter Hart – FAIR – December 13, 2012
The New York Times updates readers today (12/13/12) on the health status of left-wing Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, and the political implications for his country. But the paper starts out by suggesting that the people who keep electing him must have some kind of problem.
According to the Times’ William Neuman, life in Venezuela is pretty dismal. Christmas tree shipments were fouled up, a government ice cream factory closed down, and “all of this happened while the economy was growing — before the slowdown many predict next year.”
He writes:
Such frustrations are typical in Venezuela, for rich and poor alike, and yet President Hugo Chávez has managed to stay in office for nearly 14 years, winning over a significant majority of the public with his outsize personality, his free-spending of state resources and his ability to convince Venezuelans that the Socialist revolution he envisions will make their lives better.
So people believe that, somewhere in the future, life will get better thanks to Chávez? But it’s already happened for the majority of Venezuelans. As Mark Weisbrot wrote (Guardian, 10/3/12):
Since 2004, when the government gained control over the oil industry and the economy had recovered from the devastating, extra-legal attempts to overthrow it (including the 2002 US-backed military coup and oil strike of 2002-2003), poverty has been cut in half and extreme poverty by 70%. And this measures only cash income. Millions have access to healthcare for the first time, and college enrolment has doubled, with free tuition for many students. Inequality has also been considerably reduced. By contrast, the two decades that preceded Chávez amount to one of the worst economic failures in Latin America, with real income per person actually falling by 14% between 1980 and 1998.
It’s not that Neuman is unaware of this. Deep in the piece– after saying that “Mr. Chávez’s own record is mixed”– he admits, in between all the hand-waving and caveats, that maybe there’s something that explains Chávez’s popularity:
He has used price controls to make food affordable for the poor, but that has contributed to shortages in basic goods. He created a popular program of neighborhood clinics often staffed by Cuban doctors, but hospitals frequently lack basic equipment.
There is no doubt that living conditions have improved for the poor under Mr. Chávez, and that is the greatest source of his popularity. But the improvements came at a time when high oil prices were pouring money into the country and fueling economic growth, which some analysts say would have led to similar improvements under many leaders, even some with more market-friendly policies.
So life is better for the vast majority of the country. That’s a far cry from the point he stressed at the beginning, that Chávez has somehow sold people on the questionable idea that the outlook would someday improve. The Times has to downplay that reality so you’ll take away the message: things are bad there. Or, if they’re not, someone else with superior, “market-friendly policies” could have achieved the same results, if not better.
Why Is Cuba’s Health Care System the Best Model for Poor Countries?
By Don Fitz – Black Agenda Report – 12/12/2012
Furious though it may be, the current debate over health care in the US is largely irrelevant to charting a path for poor countries of Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific Islands. That is because the US squanders perhaps 10 to 20 times what is needed for a good, affordable medical system. The waste is far more than 30% overhead by private insurance companies. It includes an enormous amount of over-treatment, making the poor sicker by refusing them treatment, creation of illnesses, exposure to contagion through over-hospitalization, and disease-focused instead of prevention-focused research. [1]
Poor countries simply cannot afford such a health system. Well over 100 countries are looking to the example of Cuba, which has the same 78-year life expectancy of the US while spending 4% per person annually of what the US does. [2]
The most revolutionary idea of the Cuban system is doctors living in the neighborhoods they serve. A doctor-nurse team is part of the community and know their patients well because they live at (or near) the consultorio (doctors’ office) where they work. Consultorios are backed up by policlínicos which provide services during off-hours and offer a wide variety of specialists. Policlínicos coordinate community health delivery and link nationally designed health initiatives with their local implementation.
Cubans call their system medicina general integral (MGI, comprehensive general medicine). Its programs focus on preventing people from getting diseases rather than curing them after they are sick
This has made Cuba extremely effective in control of everyday health issues. Having doctors’ offices in every neighborhood has brought the Cuban infant mortality rate below that of the US and less than half that of US Blacks. [3] Cuba has a record unmatched in dealing with chronic and infectious diseases with amazingly limited resources. These include (with date eradicated): polio (1962), malaria (1967), neonatal tetanus (1972), diphtheria (1979), congenital rubella syndrome (1989), post-mumps meningitis (1989), measles (1993), rubella (1995), and TB meningitis (1997). [4]
The MGI integration of neighborhood doctors’ offices with area clinics and a national hospital system also means the country responds well to emergencies. It has the ability to evacuate entire cities during a hurricane largely because consultorio staff know everyone in their neighborhood and who to call for help getting disabled residents out of harms way. At the same time New York City (roughly the same population as Cuba) had 43,000 cases of AIDS, Cuba had 200 AIDS patients. [5] More recent emergencies such as outbreaks of dengue fever are quickly followed by national mobilizations. [6]
Perhaps the most amazing aspect of Cuban medicine is that, despite its being a poor country itself, Cuba has sent over 124,000 health care professionals to provide care to 154 countries. [7] In addition to providing preventive medicine Cuba sends response teams following emergencies (such as earthquakes and hurricanes) and has over 20,000 students from other countries studying to be doctors at its Latin American School of Medicine in Havana (ELAM, Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina). [8]
In a recent Monthly Review article, I gave in-depth descriptions of ELAM students participating in Cuban medical efforts in Haiti, Ghana and Peru. [9] What follows are 10 generalizations from Cuba’s extensive experience in developing medical science and sharing its approach with poor countries throughout the world. The concepts form the basis of the New Global Medicine and summarize what many authors have observed in dozens of articles and books.
First, it is not necessary to focus on expensive technology as the initial approach to medical care. Cuban doctors use machines that are available, but they have an amazing ability to treat disaster victims with field surgery. They are very aware that most lives are saved through preventive medicine such as nutrition and hygiene and that traditional cultures have their own healing wisdom. This is in direct contrast to Western medicine, especially as is dominant in the US, which uses costly diagnostic and treatment techniques as the first approach and is contemptuous of natural and alternative approaches.
Second, doctors must be part of the communities where they are working. This could mean living in the same neighborhood as a Peruvian consultorio. It could mean living in a Venezuelan community that is much more violent than a Cuban one. Or it could mean living in emergency tents adjacent to where victims are housed as Cuban medical brigades did after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Or staying in a village guesthouse in Ghana. Cuban-trained doctors know their patients by knowing their patients’ communities. This differs sharply from US doctors, who receive zero training on how to assess homes of their patients.
Third, the MGI model outlines relationships between people that go beyond a set of facts. Instead of memorizing mountains of information unlikely to be used in community health, which US students must do to pass medical board exams, Cuban students learn what is necessary to relate to people in consultorios, polyclínicos, field hospitals and remote villages. Far from being nuisance courses, studies in how people are bio-psycho-social beings are critical for the everyday practice of Cuban medicine.
Fourth, the MGI model is not static but is evolving and unique for each community. Western medicine searches for the correct pill for a given disease. In its rigid approach, a major reason for research is to discover a new pill after “side effects” of the first pill surface. Since traditional medicine is based on the culture where it has existed for centuries, the MGI model avoids the futility of seeking to impose a Western mindset on other societies.
Fifth, it is necessary to adapt medical aid to the political climate of the host country. This means using whatever resources the host government is able and willing to offer and living with restrictions. Those hosting a Cuban medical brigade may be friendly as in Venezuela and Ghana, hostile as is the Brazilian Medical Association, become increasingly hostile as occurred after the 2009 coup in Honduras, or change from hostile to friendly as occurred in Peru with the 2011 election of Ollanta Humala. This is quite different from US medical aide which, like its food aide, is part of an overall effort to dominate the receiving country and push it into adopting a Western model.
Sixth, the MGI model creates the basis for dramatic health effects. Preventive community health training, a desire to understand traditional healers, the ability to respond quickly to emergencies, and an appreciation of political limitations give Cuban medical teams astounding success. During the first 18 months of Cuba’s work in Honduras following Hurricane Mitch, infant mortality dropped from 80.3 to 30.9 per 1000 live births. When Cuban health professionals intervened in Gambia, malaria decreased from 600,000 cases in 2002 to 200,000 two years later. And Cuban/Venezuelan collaboration resulted in 1.5 million vision corrections by 2009. Kirk and Erisman conclude that “almost 2 million people throughout the world … owe their very lives to the availability of Cuban medical services.” [7]
Seventh, the New Global Medicine can become reality only if medical staff put healing above personal wealth. In Cuba, being a doctor, nurse or support staff and going on a mission to another country is one of the most fulfilling activities a person can do. The program continues to find an increasing number of volunteers despite the low salaries that Cuban health professionals earn. There is definitely a minority of US doctors who focus their practice in low income communities which have the greatest need. But there is no political leadership which makes a concerted effort to get physicians to do anything other than follow the money.
Eighth, dedication to the New Global Medicine is now being transferred to the next generation. When students at Cuban schools learn to be doctors, dentists or nurses their instructors tell them of their own participation in health brigades in Angola, Peru, Haiti, Honduras and dozens of other countries. Venezuela has already developed its own approach of MIC (medicina integral communitaria, comprehensive community medicine) which builds upon but is distinct from Cuban MGI. [10] Many ELAM students who work in Ghana as the Yaa Asantewaa Brigade are from the US. They learn approaches of traditional healers so they can compliment Ghanaian techniques with Cuban medical knowledge.
Ninth, the Cuban model is remaking medicine across the globe. Though best-known for its successes in Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean, Cuba has also provided assistance in Asia and the Pacific Islands. Cuba provided relief to the Ukraine after the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown, Sri Lanka following the 2004 tsunami, and Pakistan after its 2005 earthquake. Many of the countries hosting Cuban medical brigades are eager for them to help redesign their own health care systems. Rather than attempting to make expensive Western techniques available to everyone, the Cuban MGI model helps re-conceptualize how healing systems can meet the needs of a country’s poor.
Tenth, the new global medicine is a microcosm of how a few thousand revolutionaries can change the world. They do not need vast riches, expensive technology, or a massive increase in personal possessions to improve the quality of people’s lives. If dedicated to helping people while learning from those they help, they can prefigure a new world by carefully utilizing the resources in front of them. […]
Discussions of global health in the West typically bemoan the indisputable fact that poor countries still suffer from chronic and infectious diseases that rich countries have controlled for decades. International health organizations wring their hands over the high infant mortality rates and lack of resources to cope with natural disasters in much of the world. [3]
But they ignore the one health system that actually functions in a poor country, providing health care to all of its citizens as well as millions of others around the world. The conspiracy of silence surrounding the resounding success of Cuba’s health system proves the absolute unconcern by those who piously claim to be the most concerned.
How should progressives respond to this feigned ignorance of a meaningful solution to global health problems? A rational response must begin with spreading the word of Cuba’s New Global Medicine through every source of alternative media available. The message needs to be: Good health care is not more expensive — revolutionary medicine is far more cost effective than corporate controlled medicine.
Notes
1. Fitz, D. (December 9, 2010). Eight reasons US healthcare costs 96% more
than Cuba’s—With the same results.
http://www.alternet.org/health/149090/eight_reasons_us_healthcare_costs_96%25_more_than_cuba%27s–with_the_same_results
2. Dresang, L.T., Brebick, L., Murray, D., Shallue, A. & Sullivan-Vedder, L. (July-August, 2005). Family medicine in Cuba: Community-Oriented Primary Care and Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine 18 no. 4: 297-303.
3. Cooper, R.S., Kennelly, J.F. & Orduñez-Garcia, P. (2006). Health in Cuba, International Journal of Epidemiology, 35: 817–824.
4. Pérez, J. (May 15, 2012). Gender and HIV Prevention. Slide presentation at the Pedro Kouri Institute of Topical Medicine, Havana, Cuba.
5. Whiteford, L.M. & Branch, L.G. (2008). Primary Health Care in Cuba: The Other Revolution. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
6. Fitz, D. (February 14, 2012). Med School Classes Cancelled in Havana.
http://blackagendareport.com/content/med-school-classes-cancelled-havana
7. Kirk, J.M. & Erisman, M.H. (2009). Cuban Medical Internationalism: Origins, Evolution and Goals. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
8. Fitz, D. (March, 2011). The Latin American School of Medicine Today: ELAM. Monthly Review 62 no. 10: 50–62.
9. Fitz, D. (September, 2012). Cuba: The New Global Medicine. Monthly Review 64 no. 4: 37–46.
10. Brouwer, S. (2011). Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba are Changing the World’s Conceptualization of Health Care. New York, Monthly Review Press.
Don Fitz can be contacted via fitzdon@aol.com
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The genes the field promised were never there.
The genetic story of disease is a cover story.
The twenty-first century runs on it. Paediatric clinics. Cancer centres. Forensic laboratories. Family-planning counsel. It is used to explain illness, to assign blame, to foreclose questions. It protects the industries whose products and practices are what actually caused the harm.
It isn’t true.
In 2010, Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson looked at over seven hundred genome-wide association studies covering some eighty common diseases. The genes the field had promised were not there. The field invented a term, “missing heritability”, to explain the absence, and has quietly worked to bury the finding ever since.
The Genetic Deception is a book about what Latham and Wilson found. What the field did with it. And what the public was told instead. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Are Europe’s Smallest Nations Dragging the Continent into War?
- EU draws up contingency plans for possible Merz exit
- G7 caves to US blackmail, announces ‘massive’ release of diesel reserves
- Reporting of the RAF Fairford arrests blows the idea of a ‘free press’ out of the water
- US increasing Middle East military buildup – AP
- Flydubai scenario: Netanyahu’s plot to drag US to war with Iran, stay in power
- The Genetic Deception — now in paperback (Second Edition)
- Can the U.S. Afford to Annihilate Iran? /Seyed M. Marandi
- Elmo Sold mRNA Jabs to Your Toddler. Now They Are “Off-Label.”
- British state targets Palestine Action with yet another crooked trial
- If Americans Knew
- Jordan Has Had Enough: King Abdullah’s Scathing Warning to Israel
- Israeli Colonizers (i.e. Settlers) Kill Palestinian Man Near Salfit
- New Google Maps images reveal massive scale of devastation in Gaza
- Jewish supremacy, anti-Palestinian bigotry on display in Israel – Daily Update
- Israeli Soldiers Abduct At Least 22 Across Occupied West Bank
- Eight Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks on Gaza
- Israeli former leaders and security chiefs threaten legal action over ‘Jewish terrorism’
- Israel map in LA Times ad includes all land from the river to the sea
- Inside Lebanon’s 200-page dossier on Israeli war crimes
- Flydubai, genocide, settler violence, Trump abuse of power to deport – Daily Update
- No Tricks Zone
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
