Afghanistan: U.S. out, China surges in
By Barry Lando | September 27, 2012
There’s got to be some symbolism—if not irony–in the fact that just as the last of the 33,000 troops surged by Obama two years ago supposedly to pacify Afghanistan pulled out, the highest ranking Chinese official to visit Afghanistan in almost half a century pulled in—arriving in Kabul for a secret round of meetings with top Afghan officials.
Question: How will China deal with the country that proved such an expensive and bloody disaster for both the U.S., its NATO allies–and the U.S.S.R before them?
In a brief visit, unreported until he had left Kabul, Zhou Younkang, China’s chief of domestic security, met with Afghani leaders, including President Hamid Karzai. They talked about drugs, international crime, terrorism, and developing Afghanistan’s huge natural resources—just as visiting Americans have done for years.
The result, a cluster of agreements, among them an announcement that 300 Afghan police officers will be sent to China for training over the next four years.
Which is another irony of sorts—coming at the same time as news that the U.S. and its allies have been obliged to scale back joint operations with the Afghan military and police, because they can no longer trust the men they’ve trained. American troops in the field with their Afghan allies now keep weapons ready and wear body armor even when they’re eating goat meat and yoghurt.
So far this year 51 American and NATO troops have been gunned down by Afghan military or police: a startling 20% of all NATO casualties this year.
The off-the-wall video from California ridiculing the prophet Mohammed has only further fueled anti-American hatred.
As the New York Times quoted one 20 year old Afghan soldier, NATO casualties could even be higher.
“We would have killed many of them already,” he said, “but our commanders are cowards and don’t let us.”
There are still some 68,000 American troops based in Afghanistan, but the plans are for them all to be out by the end of 2014. Which means that China will be confronting serious security problems of its own in Afghanistan. They already have direct investments of more than $200 million in copper mining and oil exploration, and have promised to build a major railroad east to Pakistan or north to Turkestan.
But they could pour in billions more if Afghanistan were a secure, well-ordered country, free from the Taliban, free from kleptocratic war lords and venal government bureaucrats, patrolled by well-trained Afghan soldiers and police: in other words, exactly the kind of country the U.S. would like to have left behind—and didn’t.
Instead, of course, despite America’s huge sacrifice in men and treasure –more than half a trillion dollars since 2001–things haven’t worked out that way. [For a dramatic, running count of the enormous hemorrhage that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still represent to the U.S. economy check out costofwar.com.]
Meanwhile, corruption is rampant, and it’s by no means certain that Afghanistan has—or ever will have–a national army and police force worthy of the name.
The U.S. Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, peered into the Pentagon’ s 1.1 billion dollars fuel program to supply the Afghan Army, and concluded that there was no way to be ascertain how much if any of that fuel is really being used by Afghan security forces for their missions. There was also no way to know how much was stolen, lost or diverted to the Taliban and other insurgent groups. Almost half a billion dollars worth of receipts detailing with fuel payments over the past four years have been shredded.
With the Americans heading for the exits, the challenge facing the Chinese—and anyone else, like India–interested in investing in the country–is how to navigate this imbroglio.
Indeed, the Chinese have apparently already run into problems in Afghanistan. Work at the Mes Aynak copper mine in Logar Province is already behind schedule, and no work has begun on the promised Chinese-built railroad yet. Various impediments have turned up, like recalcitrant bureaucrats, tensions provoked by the need to displace local populations, the discovery of Buddhist ruins, as well as ramshackle Soviet-era mines that first had to be cleared.
And then there’s the rival, rapacious warlords, who see the country’s resources as a way of fueling their own ambitions—like General Abdul Rashid Dotsum, who the government has accused of attempting to extort illegal payoffs from the Chinese oil company.
However, in their dealings throughout the developing world, from despots to democracies, the Chinese have shown themselves adept at navigating such quagmires. There’s no talk from Beijing of Chinese “exceptionalism”. They’ve been taking on the world as it is—not as someone in a Chinese think tank would want to remake it.
They’ve generally turned a blind eye to considerations of human rights, opted to pay off or work with the powers that be, and used offers of huge new infrastructure projects as bait, steadily increasing their share of the globe’s resources.
Many potential investors still shy away from Afghanistan. They have no idea what lies on the other side of the political abyss after 2014 when the U.S. completes its withdrawal.
China is also wary, but they’re also seriously planning their Afghan strategy for the post-American future.
As Wang Lian, a professor with the School of International Studies at the Paking University in Beijing, put it, ”Almost every great power in history, when they were rising, was deeply involved in Afghanistan, and China will not be an exception.”
Unmentioned, of course, was what an unmitigated disaster that involvement turned out to be for the USSR, the US–and Afghanistan.
We’ll see how China fares.
Related articles
- Did Afghanistan’s Surge Fail? (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
- Is the Afghan Surge Really Over? (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Afghanistan surge achieved its mission, Dempsey says (nation.com.pk)
Nicaragua approves LatAm oil refinery project
PressTVGlobalNews | September 25, 2012
The first of three phases of a mega project to build Central America’s largest oil refinery is well underway in Nicaragua. The $6 billion plus initiative was given the rubber stamp last week when it was authorized by the National Assembly.
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US, biggest warmonger in the world
By Dave Lindorff | Press TV | September 23, 2012
There is a massive deception campaign in the US and in its global propaganda, which seeks to portray the United States as a poor set-upon nation that would like world peace, but just has to keep a military stationed around the globe to “police” all the world’s “trouble spots.”
In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
That truth is that the US is the biggest warmonger the world has ever known.
Let’s start with its budget. The US, in fiscal year 2012, budgeted a total of $673 billion for the military, plus another $166 billion for military activities of other government departments, such as the nuclear weapons program, much of which is handled by the Department of Energy, or the Veterans Program, which pays for the care and benefits of former military personnel. There’s also roughly another $440 billion in interest paid on the debt from prior wars and military expenditures. All together, that comes to $1.3 trillion, which represents close to 50% of the general budget of the United States — the highest percentage of a government budget devoted to the military of any modern nation in the world — and perhaps of any government of any nation in world history.
That spending also represents the world’s biggest percentage of national gross domestic product (GDP), a measure of all economic activity in a nation, devoted to the military. Looking at the other countries with big militaries — China, Russia, Britain and France, not only does one not even come close in terms of the percent of GDP spent on its military, but taken together, all of their military expenditures combined total less than half what the US spends by itself.
Since the late 1960s, the US government has engaged in a sleight-of-hand to hide the scale of its military spending from the American people. It has done this by adding to the federal budget the amount of money spent on Social Security and Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly and disabled. This is not a correct accounting however, because both of those programs are actually funded by a separate payroll tax paid by employees and employers which are accounted for as trust funds with the money actually allocated to the accounts of the individual citizens who receive or will receive benefits from the programs. Using that fraud, the government and the politicians are able to claim that the US “only” spends 24% of the budget on military. Even that would be far above what is spent by any other nation in the world, but it is actually only half of what the US really spends as a share of its general budget.
One reason the US military budget is so huge is that the US operates some 900 bases abroad, in what amounts to a program of global empire. It is estimated that the cost of keeping those bases operating is about $250 billion. Empire costs a lot more than that though. There’s also the cost of operating a global fleet of ships, including incredibly costly aircraft carrier battle groups. That cost, surely in excess of $100 billion when the cost of the ships is factored in, doesn’t get broken out by the Pentagon.
Then, there is another way the US is the world’s biggest warmonger. This is in its role as the world’s biggest arms merchant. In 2011, the US sold more than $66 billion in arms to the rest of the world, often, as in the case of India and Pakistan, or India and China, or Israel and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, selling weapons to countries that are mutually hostile to each other or even, as in the case of India and Pakistan, in a state of active conflict along their border. That $66 billion — an all-time record for the US — was an astonishing and depressing 78% of the global arms market for the year. Russia was the second biggest arms dealer, selling only a paltry $4.8 billion in weapons to the rest of the world.
None of these weapons the US is selling makes either the US or the world any safer.
Indeed, two of the biggest recipients of US military “aid” and weapons sales are Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Saudi regime last year purchased $30 billion in arms from the US. Meanwhile the US has been providing Israel with $3 billion in outright military aid each year for years. Israel also buys billions of dollars in weapons from the US each year. Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship and a promoter of instability within Syria, while it also props up dictatorships in countries like Yemen and Bahrain. In other countries, like Israel or Colombia, US aid encourages military actions which could lead to conflicts that would inevitably draw the US in as a participant.
The truth is that none of America’s military spending makes the US safer.
One doesn’t see fanatics traveling to Brazil or China or New Zealand to blow things up. One reason is almost certainly that those countries aren’t stationing their troops within other countries’ borders, and aren’t selling weapons to countries that threaten their neighbors.
The US government tells Americans that all that money they are spending on the military is designed to “protect” them from harm. In fact, the evidence over the years is that it is making Americans more vulnerable and less safe. Not only that, but the wars that the US has started over the years — in Indochina, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and elsewhere — have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of young Americans (and of course to the deaths of millions of people in those countries, most of them civilians).
The truth is that a country that spends half of every tax dollar collected from its citizens on its military cannot hope to prosper. As President Dwight Eisenhower, a former top general in the US military who led US forces in World War II, once famously stated in a 1953 address to a group of newspaper editors:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
Most of the rest of the world isn’t fooled by American government accounting tricks. Being at the barrel end of the gun, people of other countries know how US military spending is a primary cause of war and terror in the world. But we Americans ourselves need to wake up to the massive damage that our military-obsessed political system is doing to our country, lest it ultimately destroys us. There is a clear reason that social programs in the US are threatened, that the economy is in a prolonged depression, that our education system is collapsing, and that our standing in the world has plummeted. It is our militarism, and the incredible amount of the national wealth that is being spent on it.
Related articles
- Stop Nation Building & Cut Military Spending to Keep Us Free and Safe (revolutioninmedia.com)
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Top Chinese security official makes surprise visit to Afghanistan
Zhou Yongkang (2nd L), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, is welcomed by Afghan Commerce and Industry Minister Anwar Ul-haq Ahady upon his arrival in Kabul for an official goodwill visit on Sept. 22, 2012. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei)
Xinhua | September 22, 2012
KABUL – A top Chinese security official on Saturday made a surprise visit to Afghanistan, the first one by a Chinese leader in nearly half a century.
Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, arrived at Kabul airport late in the afternoon.
The four-hour visit had not been announced by Beijing due to security concerns. It followed a two-day trip of Zhou to Singapore, where he met Singaporean leaders on bilateral ties.
Zhou, who is in charge of security and justice affairs, had planned to go to Turkmenistan.
It marked the first time in 46 years that a Chinese leader set his foot on the soil of Afghanistan, a war-torn country neighboring China.
The last visit was made by late Chinese leader Liu Shaoqi in 1966 when he was the President of China.
During the past half century, Afghanistan was afflicted with series of military coups and two major wars commenced by the former Soviet Union and the United States respectively.
The country is still the front line in the U.S.-led war against terrorism and undergoing daily bombing and bleeding.
In Kabul, Zhou held a meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
“It is in line with the fundamental interests of the two peoples for China and Afghanistan to strengthen a strategic and cooperative partnership, which is also conducive to regional peace, stability and development,” Zhou was quoted as saying in a written statement released by the Chinese delegation upon his arrival.
Zhou said the Chinese government fully respects the right of the Afghan people to choose their own path of development and will actively participate in Afghanistan’s reconstruction.
China and Afghanistan established diplomatic relations in 1955.
The two countries decided in June to upgrade their ties to the level of a strategic and cooperative partnership at a meeting between Chinese President Hu Jintao and Karzai in Beijing, marking a new step for the development of bilateral relations.
Stopping the Campaign of Misinformation: New Study Affirms Less Copyright Restrictions Benefit the Economy
By Trevor Timm | EFF | September 21, 2012
A new study from Australia presents the latest evidence that loosening copyright restrictions not only enables free speech, but can improve an economy as well. The study, published by the Australian Digital Alliance, indicated that if Australia expanded copyright exceptions like fair use, along with strengthening safe harbor provisions, the country could potentially add an extra $600 million to their economy.
In addition, the report details how vital copyright exceptions are to the Australian economy as a whole. As ADA’s executive officer and copyright advisor Ellen Broad told EFF, “Australia’s sectors relying on copyright exceptions currently contribute 14% of our GDP, around $182 billion and they’re growing rapidly. It’s essential that Australia’s copyright policy framework adequately support innovation and growth of these sectors in the digital environment.”
Given how much Australia’s burdensome and confusing copyright law has held up innovation, EFF is encouraged by the fact that copyright reform is being considered and debated in the public sphere.
But more broadly, this is just the latest evidence disproving a major talking point used by the MPAA and RIAA anytime copyright laws come up for a vote: that tough copyright laws are good for the economy. During the SOPA debate, organizations such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) claimed over and over again that the restrictive laws are needed to save and create jobs. Yet the Australian study confirms similar research done by CIAA in the US, showing how important fair use exceptions are to the economy. In fact, fair use accounted “for more than $4.5 trillion in annual revenue” in the US and exceeding the economic benefits of copyright laws themselves.
Unfortunately, this new evidence probably won’t stop the MPAA and RIAA from continuing to peddle misinformation about the economics of copyright law in Australia, the US, or elsewhere. Currently, the MPAA is distributing materials to members of the US Congress—perhaps in another attempt to gin up support for SOPA 2.0—extolling how important new, restrictive laws will allegedly help them create jobs.
But these new talking points are short on statistics—perhaps for a reason. MPAA and RIAA have used drastically exaggerated numbers and discredited studies for years to claim that laws like SOPA and PIPA—or agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership—are vital for the economy. In reality, SOPA would’ve cost many more jobs than it saved, given it would have weakened or eliminated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbors that have allowed Internet companies like Google and Facebook to thrive for the last decade. That’s why when a survey was taken of venture capitalists, they “overwhelmingly” indicated they would stop investing in tech companies—the one of the economy’s fastest growing sectors—if SOPA were to pass.
Since the economic numbers don’t add up, advocates for draconian copyright laws have resorted to other misleading arguments. For example, this week, a Fox News editorial erroneously argued that intellectual property protection is a “forgotten” constitutional right and “it is the obligation” of Congress to pass laws like SOPA to protect rightsholders. Of course, the problem with SOPA was that it was written so broadly it would’ve ended up censoring millions of Americans who never even thought about copyright, but that’s beside the point. The US Constitution does mention intellectual property but not in the context of an individual right or mandate to Congress. Specifically, it says:
Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
A plain reading of the clause indicates that Congress has the authority to use copyright law to promote creativity—if they so choose. There’s no mandate for Congress to pass any copyright law that comes their way, and there’s no clause guaranteeing the rights of movie studios and record labels to maximize their profits. Meanwhile, creativity—far from being stifled without more copyright laws on the books—is currently thriving. There’s been a marked increase in the amount of movies, music, and books produced over the last decade, as this comprehensive study done by CCIA and Techdirt’s Mike Masnick shows.
So while huge legacy corporations may find it harder to keep a grip on their market share, it’s not because people have stopped creating and selling art. It’s quite the opposite: they’re creating more by incorporating fair use, cutting out the middlemen, and bringing their art directly to their fans through the Internet.
Unfortunately, all too often copyright maximalists, like the author in the Fox News editorials, put forth the idea that “lawlessness” prevails on the Internet, even though in the US and abroad there are many copyright laws already on the books. In the US alone, Congress has passed fifteen separate laws in the last thirty years alone strengthening the powers of rightsholders.
Most notably, the US DMCA gives power to copyright holders to force websites to take down any of their protected material. In fact, the DMCA gives disproportionate power to the rightsholders, often leading to abuse, and in turn, censoring material that is clearly protected free speech. As Techdirt noted, in Australia, their outdated and burdensome copyright system “is ill-equipped to cope with key Internet activities like search and indexing, caching and hosting, since they all involve incidental copying.”
Both countries would be better served by evidence-based policy that promoted the intended balance of copyright. After decades of unbalanced legislation, the evidence is clear, and points to relaxing copyright restrictions, not strengthening them.
For more on the debate over the economics of copyright see here and here.
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New Quebec premier scraps tuition hike plan
Press TV – September 21, 2012
Newly-elected Quebec Premier Pauline Marois has reversed a planned tuition hike that touched off months of violent protests in Canada’s French-speaking province.
Marois, who started her job on Thursday, delivered on her electoral pledge to reinstate the USD 2,220 tuition.
“The new government is now in place,” she told reporters after the first cabinet meeting. “I intend to act rapidly to offer results to Quebecers, starting today, Day One of our mandate.”
The former premier, Jean Charest, had planned to increase tuition fees in a bid to make up for the country’s budget deficit.
Marois said she will also cancel the Liberals’ controversial anti-protest law, known as Bill 78. The draconian law, whose main objective was to restrict freedom of assembly, criminalizes students’ strike and sets rules for gatherings of more than 50 people, requiring organizers to provide an eight-hour notice of the itinerary and length of the event.
“These two decisions will allow us to return peace to our streets and to reestablish rights and liberties,” Marois was quoted as saying.
The new premier’s move drew applause from student groups.
“It’s a victory for justice and equality,” said Martine Desjardins, president of the FEUQ university student association.
“Together, we have written a chapter in the history of Quebec. Together, we have just proven that we can stand up and reach one of the student movement’s greatest victories,” he added.
Ahead of elections earlier this month, Marois had said that if her party – Parti Quebecois (PQP) – won and was able to form a new Quebec government, she would call for a referendum on the separation of Quebec from Canada.
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Vallecito Resists, Satuye Lives! The Garífuna Resistance to Honduras’ Charter Cities
By Tim Russo, with Research by Genevieve Roudane and COMPPA | Upside Down World | September 18, 2012
The Camp
It is August 28th in Vallecito, Colon on the Atlantic coast of Honduras. Unceasingly heavy winds and rain pound a small encampment of 200 Garífuna families throughout the night. The families came from more than a dozen of the 46 Garífuna communities that dot the Honduran coastline, in order to set up camp, staking claim to ancestral lands they mean to recover. Not tonight, nor any other since their arrival here on August 26th, do their worries stem from the violent rains or turbulent sea that Isaac has brought. No, Isaac is merely one of 20 or so hurricanes that could show its fury on the Garinagu[i] coast this year.
The Garífuna drums echo robustly and the people’s fervor rises with the tension in the camp as the tarps sound thunderously as they are jarred to and fro in the gale. It is impossible to distinguish the faint movement of people outside the main tent in the absence of the moon and her stars. Suddenly, out of the darkness that surrounds the encampment like an ocean fog that encroaches silently from afar, enveloping everything in its path, heavily armed men wielding sophisticated weaponry burst onto the scene unleashing a barrage of gunfire above the camp. They arrive mounted in pairs on motorcycles, an act in and of itself illegal in Honduras[ii]. They move rapidly from one edge of the camp to the other, relentlessly firing a hairs shot above anything they encounter in their trail. They are uniformed, but not with official police or military uniforms, but well uniformed nonetheless.
“Yes!” insists Alfredo López, Vice-President of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), founder of the first Garífuna radio station, Faluma Bimetu (Sweet Coconut) and coordinator of the Garífuna Radio Network; they are “paramilitaries linked to drug trafficking and Reynaldo Villalobos, the man who has invaded five of the six associative businesses[iii] with over 700 hectares [1730 acres] of land” here in Vallecito. Still a doubt remains as to whether the mercenaries are actually Miguel Facusse’s, the“Palmero de la Muerte” or Palm Owner of Death, as he is known, whose vast extensions of African Palm plantations completely surround Vallecito, with exception of the beach. Regardless, says Alfredo, “against their weapons, our drums are all that we have,” as the drums sound with greater vigor through the camp, exhorting Isaac to unleash a fury of rain to dampen the mercenaries notorious taste for blood. They have already harassed the camp for three enduring nights.
There were no massacres nor was anyone injured last night but the message of the regional plantation owners is dead clear says Alfredo, “They are treating us like trespassers in our own home and instead of receiving help from the authorities, it seems that they are in collusion too.” Despite the fact that no one has slept a wink in three nights, the people here knew what they were getting into by setting up this camp. They came to participate in a non-violent action to recover ancestral garífuna lands that legally and legitimately belong to the garífuna people. They mean to pressure the National Agrarian Institute (INA) into properly surveying the 700 hectares pertaining to the 6 garífuna “associative businesses” [Empresa Ruguma, Saway, Saway Sufritiñu, Walumugu, Satuye, Sinduru Free], and demand that the state guarantee the necessary security conditions for the Garífuna to live and work on this land. The Garífuna, reiterates Alfredo, are no strangers to persecution nor to resistance, “We have been fighting for many years, hundreds of years, and we are not going to give up now because of the sordid interests of a government as irresponsible as Honduras.”
The Land
OFRANEH´s, Report on the Territorial Defense of Vallecito in Colon, indicates that “Historically, Vallecito belongs to the Garífuna people who, in response to pressure from the Spanish after 1804, began to move from the Trujillo bay to the Sico River” in search of fertile land for farming with access to the ocean for fishing, activities that form the backbone of the Garífuna culture. As a result of this displacement and their search for better living conditions than to be exploited workers for the Spanish in Trujillo, at least 24 Garífuna communities began to emerge along the coastal region. Essentially, the Garífuna began to inhabit Vallecito 17 years prior to the Honduran independence from the Spanish Crown in 1821.
The current attempt by the Garífuna, organized by OFRANEH and the Iseri Lidamari Movement, is not their first effort to recover their ancestral lands from the economic interests of the Honduran oligarchy or of the foreign interests that forced their displacement. Shortly after the Garífuna arrived at Vallecito, the story is told, “around 1820, the Scottish pirate Gregor MacGregor ‘purchased’ the Serrania de Payas territory between Trujillo and the Sico River from Georges Frederick I, King of the Moskitia, allegedly in exchange for two bottles of Whiskey.”[iv] This was the first heist, a foreign attempt to appropriate, develop and sell without the people’s consent the Garífuna’s new lands.
In 1887, the first process to title Garífuna lands began near Puerto Cortez, now under the tutelage of the independent Honduran state. The relative peace for the Garífuna communities along the Honduran coast did not last long. The turn of the century proved to show the new face of colonization, manifested in the arrival of the Banana Republic, with its reinvigorated exploitation of natural resources and forced labor. Immense quantities of cultivable lands were turned over to three banana companies, the United Fruit Company (Chiquita), the Standard Fruit Company (Dole), and the Cuyamel Fruit Company. They received 1,235 acres of land for every kilometer of rail they lay for trains in Honduras. By 1929, the United Fruit Company controlled the principal ports and approximately 741,000 acres or nearly a thousand square miles of fertile lands for the banana boom, including the majority of maritime access on the Atlantic coastline.[v]
The Honduran transition from Spanish colony to Banana Republic defined a new era of forced displacements and territorial resistance by the Garífunas due to the pressures and expansionism of the banana companies who rabidly accumulated land and workers. This process provoked major state complicity in order to provide new land titles for the banana companies, ignoring the existing process that began to title land in favor of the Garífuna at the end of the 19th century. Nevertheless, the banana plantations proved, in many cases, too large to completely control.
“In 1997, the Iseri Lidamari movement, accompanied by OFRANEH, met with the National Agrarian Institute (INA) to obtain land titles in the [Vallecito] territory for six “associative businesses”; as a result, they obtained legal documents that recognize 2,700 hectares of land as Garífuna property,” states OFRANEH’s Report on Territorial Defense in Vallecito, Colon. However, the same report indicates:
“Since that date, intruders have attempted to take over that territory. Miguel Facussé planted 100 hectares of African Palm in Ruguma, one of the six “associative businesses” but the Supreme Court (CSJ) ruled in favor of the Garífunas, annulling Facussé’s claims to that land. Despite this [ruling], in recent years the area has turned into a corridor for organized crime and drug trafficking, causing the number of residents in the area to diminish.”
According to Teofilo Colon Jr., a Garífuna journalist and researcher in New York City, the creation of said corridor of organized crime and the usurpation of lands has provoked the following results, “In the last 18 years, 86% of Garífuna land has been seized by non-Garífunas.”[vi] The situation has become acute since the 1990’s, as the introduction of the war on drugs has intensified. OFRANEH highlights this in a communiqué:
“Since 2005, people associated with organized crime impose a reign of terror on the Limon- Punta Piedras corridor, forcing Garífunas living in Vallecito to reduce their presence and activities on land belonging to their “associative businesses”. Subsequently, foreigners arrive, taking over 900 of the 1,600 hectares of Garífuna land recognized by the National Agrarian Institute (INA).”[vii]
Despite the persistent threats, the coup d’etat in 2009 and the corridor of terror created in the Vallecito region, in 2010 OFRANEH was able to secure a signed agreement with delegates of the INA where they committed to surveying the “associative businesses.” But according to Miranda, “the intruders [Facussé and Villalobo] denied entry to members of the INA and the Attorney General,” preventing them from opening the gates and re-measuring the fenced-in “associative businesses”, a necessary step towards repopulating their land.
In 2008, Miriam Miranda was unanimously elected president of OFRANEH by the general assembly of Garífuna communities. OFRANEH was founded in 1978 with the express mission to “represent and defend the interests of the Afro-Caribbean Garífuna minority in Honduras with a mandate to protect the capacities of the Garífuna community and their self-determination through programs promoting political, social, economic, and cultural development.” Miranda took over the presidency of OFRANEH shortly after the previous president, Gregoria Flores was forced to seek asylum in the United States, fearing the constant death threats she was receiving.
Unfortunately, Miranda states in the Vallecito report, “The President [Porfirio Lobo Sosa] considers Vallecito to be uninhabited.” This territory, defined as “uninhabited” or vacant is fundamental in order to understand the most worrisome threat to the garífuna at present, the arrival of so-called “Special Development Zones” (RED) or “Charter Cities.” OFRANEH has emphasized there has not been a threat as severe as the one posed to the Garífuna by Latin America´s first Charter City since the arrival of the banana companies a hundred years ago. What Miranda considers the beginnings of the “deterritorialization garífuna,”[viii] which “intensified in the 1990s due to real estate speculation fueled by tourist mega projects” on the Caribbean Coast.[ix]
The Arrival of Charter Cities to Honduras
The so-called, “Special Development Regions” (RED) or “Charter Cities” are the brainchild of Paul Romer. Romer is the son of former Colorado Governor Roy Romer. He is a recognized economist educated at the University of Chicago and currently teaches economics at the NYU Stern School for Economics. He has devoted the last years to designing and promoting “Charter Cities” while searching for uninhabited territories in close proximity to exploitable natural resources in a carefully profiled country (a country with an on-going major disaster) where he can sell his first “Charter City” in order to produce a new era of development for the world.
Concluding a May 2012 New York Times Magazine article titled “Who Wants to Buy Honduras?” the author, Adam Davidson coincides with Romer’s perspective writing, “It’s easy to criticize experimenting with the livelihoods of the poor, but having spent time in the chaotic slums of Honduras, Haiti, Jordan and Indonesia, I’ve found that the poor are already conducting daily experiments in how to make life better outside the formal economy. By and large, it isn’t working. We have to try some new things.”[x]
In effect, says Miriam Miranda in an interview with journalist Giorgio Trucchi, “In the name of development, Honduras is up for sale; this fact alone reflects a failed state that has yet to recover its institutional legitimacy following the [2009] coup.” Indeed the goal of the May 5th and 6th 2011 conference in San Pedro Sula properly entitled, “Honduras, Open For Business” was to attract major foreign businesses to invest in Honduras, selling off crucial areas of interest. The mega expo, attracted the likes of corporate magnates such as Siemen Phillips, Mexican Carlos Slim (Fortune 500 World’s richest man), and 325 other corporate giants where they were pitched six primary areas for lucrative foreign investment by Honduras’ most powerful businessmen; Energy, Infrastructure, Maquiladora (sweatshops) and Transformation Services, Agro-Business, Forestry and Tourism, reassuring that “access to the most important markets in the world, with investment guarantees and clear rules, would be among the clear advantages that investors will have in Honduras.”[xi]
An article published in the conservative Honduran daily newspaper El Heraldo, offered a list of FAQ´s promoting “Charter Cities” in Honduras explaining that, “The REDs [Special Development Regions] will enjoy a high-degree of autonomy. The rules regarding health, education, justice, and security in the RED can be different from those in the rest of the country.” By definition, according to the Charter City’s official website in Honduras (www.red.hn), the RED will be practically an autonomous city-state inside of another state, with the express mission of producing economic profits in the name of development for the underdeveloped, as a means to combat poverty. Nevertheless, in order to launch and development a Charter City (RED) they first require an “A vacant piece of land, large enough for an entire city, voluntarily contributed by a host government.”[xii]
Contrary to the philosophy of the North American economist, the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano wrote years ago that, “Underdevelopment is not a stage of development. It is its consequence.” Paraphrasing, poverty is not eradicated with economic developmental experiments designed to tenfold the wealth of transnational corporations, theoretically trickling down in the wake of their riches. Rather, the ferocious development schemes based on the savage exploitation of natural resources, the forced relocation of traditional peoples and exploitation of forced labor contribute to and foment the exponential growth of disparities between the world’s wealthiest and poorest.
In order to launch the Charter City project in Honduras, Romer requires an “uninhabited” piece of land. For President Lobo and the Honduran Congress, this ambiguous concept already existed in Honduras when they began to “FastTrack” the necessary constitutional reforms in late 2010. Honduran prosecutors and lawyers have questioned said constitutional reforms. In October 2011, they submitted the first formal petition to the Honduran Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the legislative decree that created the Special Development Regions. They argue that the decree openly relinquishes or indefinitely leases national territory to foreign interests in order to create a “state within a state,” in turn, violating Honduras’ sovereignty.
OFRANEH has also emphasized Romer’s erroneous understanding of Honduras, illustrating the potential consequences of his theories, which are on the verge of being implemented. “Paul Romer’s propaganda talks about building Charter Cities in uninhabited places. Unfortunately, in Honduras they are trying to dispossess the Garífuna people of half of our territory in order to create the RED (Special Development Region). The level of disinformation and violence that exists in this country reveals that multiple human rights violations will be caused by the establishment of a neocolonial project in the 21st century.”[xiii]
The Crisis
Yet, the economic crisis already exists. More importantly the general lack of security and un-governability of Honduras has become ever more acute since the consolidation of the coup d’état on November 29, 2009 with the election of Porfirio Lobo Sosa as Honduras’ President. Romer, who patented the phrase in 2004 “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste,”[xiv] found in Honduras the perfect lab to perform a field test of his vision. To promote the reduction of poverty, enhanced security and a stable economy in a country where none of these elements exist is an immensely attractive proposal for legislators who will form the first line of potential investors and occupants of said “Charter City.”
To date, Honduras continues to be the country with the highest per capita rate of homicides in the world. According to the United Nations 2011 report, there are an average of 82.1 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants a year in Honduras. We can compare this to Mexico with an average of 20 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants despite a high intensity war on drugs that has claimed at least 50,000 lives in the last 6 years, or New York City where the homicide rate in 2010 was 6.4 per 100,000.[xv] According to the Tegucigalpa based Committee for the Freedom of Speech, C-Libre, Honduras also holds the world record for the highest per capita rate of journalists that are violently killed. There have been 33 journalists assassinated in the last 10 years in Honduras, and 28 of them since the June 29, 2009 coup d’état.[xvi]
The recent visit to Honduras by the International Mission on the Verification of Human Rights Violations in the Bajo Aguan summarized in a public hearing that Honduras has become characterized as a country where there is a systematic killing of campesinos. They cite in their report that, specifically in the Bajo Aguan, Colon, there have been at least 50 campesinos assassinated with total impunity in the last two years by mercenaries that protect the interests of wealthy landowner Miguel Facussé, who has boosted his African Palm production and biofuels exportations.[xvii]
Simply put, the favorable conditions necessary for the implementation of a Charter City culminated quickly in Honduras following the 2009 coup d’état. On January 19th 2011 the Honduran National Congress approved the Law for Special Development Regions (RED).[xviii]
Honduran journalist Sandra Marybel Sánchez, who also raises the concerns of Hondurans that feel that the country’s sovereignty is being compromised, highlights the most important concessions made by the Honduran Congress to investors in order to implement the Charter Cities in an article she wrote:
1. They will be autonomous, will be legally incorporated, will have their own administrative system, they will emit their own rules (Laws) and they will have their own legal jurisdiction… composed of national or international experts.
2. They will be authorized to enter into international agreements and treaties related to trade and cooperation in matters within their competence.
3. They will be able to enter into agreements with national or international intelligence services to combat organized crime.
4. They will be authorized to have and operate their own police force, which may be strengthened by entering into bilateral agreements with other countries and regions.
5. The REDs will have their own budget, to fix the taxes/rates they will charge and to collect and manage their own taxes.
6. They will be able to establish their own migration and immigration policies and rules, and control whatever transportation system that is admitted within its area of control/jurisdiction. Sea and air craft/vessels will have assured access to the RED.[xix]
Echoing the observations made by Sandra Marybel Sanchéz, Jari Dixon, a lawyer and ex- federal prosecutor now with the Association of Judges for a State with Rights, argues that the RED (Charter City) violates a series of Honduran laws. “In the RED, autonomous powers serve as the executive, legislative, and judicial powers, which is completely unconstitutional. Moreover, by indefinitely handing over part of the national territory to foreigners, the sovereignty of the country is being violated,” stated Dixon.[xx]
On September 5th, Dixon, Sánchez and members of several Honduran social organizations were illegally detained at the Honduran Supreme Court as they attempted to submit a formal petition to the court questioning the constitutionality of the congressional modifications made to the constitution, creating the RED. While being held arbitrarily for several hours before being able to submit the petition, Dixon manifested, “this is the first example of what to expect with the Charter Cities. Here, a wall separates them from the rest of Honduran society, revealing exactly what the State loses when it auctions off the country: nothing less than its sovereignty.”[xxi]
Back in the Vallecito camp on August 30th, OFRANEH, now accompanied by members of the Espacio Refundacional[xxii] and human rights organizations hold a gathering called the Meeting of Cultural Resistance Against Charter Cities. Miriam Miranda asserts: “On several occasions, the Executive and Legislative Powers indicated that the first RED in Honduras will be located between the Trujillo Bay and the Sico River, an area that includes 24 Garífuna communities, which are considered the cultural sanctuary of the Garífuna people. Moreover, some have mentioned creating RED’s in order to produce biofuels, presumably in the tropical forests of the Honduran Moskitia. There are major interests and tremendous potential in this area for the de facto powers in this country– the economically powerful, the oligarchy that has hijacked this country.”
Doug Henwood, special editor at The Nation, asserts in an interview with Al Jazeera that:
“It’s interesting how the charter cities concept unmasks the libertarian dream as deeply undemocratic. The compatibility of [Augusto] Pinochet and Milton Friedman offered plenty of hints, but this Honduran experiment looks like conclusive proof. First you need a coup. And then you need to set up a zone of freedom – but a special kind of freedom. Not the freedom of association, or of individual expression and development, but the freedom of maneuver for an economic elite to do as it pleases under a special kind of state protection. Milton’s grandson, Patri Friedman, one of the charter city pioneers, has declared that democracy is ‘unfortunately… ill-suited for a libertarian state.’”
The Honduran Charter Cities promise to create precisely this type of libertarian and laissez-faire state, attractive to investors that share a similar vision and dream about a city-state subject only to laws that guarantee, without restrictions, the absolute free flow of capital with zero interference.
The Deal
On September 4th in Tegucigalpa, The Commission for the Promotion of Public-Private Alliance, COALIANZA, a commission created by the Honduran congress, signed a fifteen million dollar contract with an investment consortium headed by Michael Strong to begin construction on Honduras’ first Model City. During the signing ceremony, Juan Orlando Hernández, president of the Honduran Congress proclaimed, “This is an extraordinary moment for our country, for this generation of Hondurans and for the generation of politicians, academics, and advisors who have decided to look to the future and not fear change.” Carlos Pineda, the president of COALIANZA, described the project as having “the potential to turn Honduras into an engine of wealth,” and a “mechanism for development typically belonging only to first world countries.”[xxiii]
Strong, founder and CEO of NGK, stated that “the future will remember this day as the day that Honduras began developing,” because “we believe this will be one of the most important transformations in the world, through which Honduras will end poverty by creating thousands of jobs.”[xxiv] Strong further emphasized that “this is a collaboration between a diverse group of investors, businesses and experts that aim to eliminate poverty through the creation of wealth in Honduras by means of Special Development Regions.”[xxv] Although the details of the deal are unclear, apparently Canada and South Korea will be the initial investors in the project, which is expected to break ground in Puerto Castilla, on the Trujillo Bay.[xxvi]
There are many sketchy details about the US based consortium NGK, who have estimated that they could create as many as 200,000 jobs for Hondurans over the next couple of years.[xxvii] Even the mainstream media are confused about the name of the consortium; the AP, ABC, The Guardian and The Independent have cited the company as either “NGK” or “MGK.” Even the highlighted article on the Honduran Congress’s website ran contradictory information about the consortium, citing “MGK” in the headline and title of the article while referring only to “NGK” in the body of the very same article. Extensive searches for information in regards to either name or any consortium run by Michael Strong return null, leading to a series of doubts as to whether Honduras has signed an 15 million dollar contract with a ghost company.
Furthermore, Paul Romer in his blog on www.chartercities.org wrote on September 7th, “Here at Charter Cities, we’ve received several requests for comment on recent press reports of an agreement with investors to develop the Honduran Special Development Regions (REDs). We learned of these agreements from the media and have no knowledge of their terms, so we’re unable to offer any comment about them.” Romer concludes by stating that members of the Transparency Commission (the supposed governing apparatus for the Charter City) have written to the Honduran President to clarify the situation.[xxviii] The Transparency Commission was named by the President Porfirio Lobo Sosa in December 2011 and includes Paul Romer, George Akerlof, a Nobel Laureate in Economy and Permanent Resident at the International Monetary Fund, Nancy Birdall, an ex Vice-President at the Inter American Development Bank, Boon-Hwee Ong, an ex-general in the Singapore Armed Forces, and Harry Strachan, the Director Emeritus at Bain & Company (founded by US Presidential candidate Mitt Romney and documented to have funneled El Salvadoran death squad funding during the 1980’s Central American civil wars).[xxix]
Nonetheless, Strong maintains that “We will work closely with the governor of the Charter City to assure that the region is equipped with the best police force, the best jurisprudence, legal system and transparency. The main goal of our project is to create the foundation of a safe and prosperous community for Hondurans.”[xxx] Furthermore, it turns out that Strong is not just the CEO of the controversial NGK or MGK consortium, but also the CEO and co-founder of FLOW (Freedom Lights Our World) and “flow-idealism” an organization built on libertarian and Friedmanite economic philosophies and theories.
Strong, who considers himself a leftist, is closely connected to and funded by Whole Foods CEO and FLOW’s other co-founder John Mackey. He goes so far as to relate the concept of “Free Cities” to an “anarcho-capitalist-paradise” that will be much more efficient in eradicating global poverty than the “euro-socialism” so feared by the “whackos” in the Tea Party.[xxxi] This is how Strong presented his philosophy and project to an elite group of global libertarians in April 2011 at an exclusive resort on Roatán, a Honduran Island in the Caribbean. Patri Friedman and Mexican Ricardo Valenzuela, CEO of Free Cities LLC were among the special guests. During his presentation in Roatán last year, titled “Marketing Free Cities as a Mainstream Solution to Global Poverty,” Strong repeated numerous times that one distinguishing factor between he and others that promote similar types of projects is that “We are on the side of the angels,” supposedly emphasizing his humanistic, transcendental and new-ageist traits that represent his particular line of thought among the diverse tangents in the libertarian movement.[xxxii]
The Relocation, Resistance and Dance
Roatán is the island where the Garífuna people first stepped on what is now Honduran soil, on April 12 1797. The Garífuna were banished to a tiny island, Baliceaux, following two ensuing wars that their leader Satuyé and his wife Barauda unleashed against the English in Saint Vincent, where they arrived from Africa shipwrecked but free of slavery in 1635. On Baliceaux, more than half of the 5,000 Garífuna banished there died, before the remaining 2,026 Garífuna were again relocated by the English and subsequently abandoned with minimal provisions for survival on Roatán in 1797.[xxxiii] Nevertheless, the Garífuna survived the relocations like so many times in their history, being torn from their native Africa in the chains of slavery, yet emerging from the coffers of the wrecked slave ships on the coasts of Saint Vincent as the only Africans to arrive to the Americas as free blacks. They were taken in and promptly mixed with the Arawak and Carib indigenous peoples to from the Garinagu or Garífuna people.
Now, August 30th, 2012, in the Vallecito encampment, Miriam Miranda has the word and turns it towards the government, citing its complicity in authorizing Honduras’ Charter Cities and the lack of human rights guarantees for pre-existing peoples such as the Garífuna. “Vallecito is the heart of the territory where they are promoting the creation and installation of Honduras’ Charter City. So, we are not only up against the interests of organized crime; we’re up against the interests of a government that—without consulting us—makes decisions about our territory.”
Miranda’s sentiment was echoed in early August 2012 when Frank LaRue, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, made an official visit to Honduras and submitting among others the following recommendation:
“I believe that establishing so-called development programs outside of the territorial authority of this country, such as the Charter Cities, which would displace populations and seek to create a legal system that is separate and autonomous of the State, are a violation of national sovereignty and the responsibility of the State to protect and promote the Human Rights of the population in its territory. I recommend that the Honduran Government extend an invitation to the Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers to organize a mission that could assist in combating impunity and contribute positively in processes to combat impunity.”[xxxiv]
For Miriam Miranda, Alfredo López and the 200 families that arrived to Vallectio reclaiming their land for the Garífuna people, the lack of response by the government has had a resonating impact. Miriam explains by cell phone, as the drums in the camp sound in the background:
“In this country, the government has no will to respond to the demands of our communities. The ‘preventative measures’ [already issued to Vallecito and other Garífuna communities by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights] don’t stop paramilitary attacks. It’s unbelievable! At this point we haven’t received any answer [from the government]; it’s a very clear message that we are in a state of ingovernability, that we’re in a failed state, and it’s a very clear example of how the state responds because they’ve reacted to requests to protect Miguel Faccusé’s African Palm plantations by mobilizing the entire Honduran army! Yet in our case, it hasn’t even been possible for them to send four police officers to protect the process of issuing our land titles, the process of surveying Garífuna communities. We are in the middle of an undeclared war zone where highly armed groups are protecting their own interests—they control this territory. We’re asking for something very easy, something simple: that the state come and says, ‘Yes, we issued that land title to you in 1997 and we are reiterating that this is your land.’ Now we are up against the silence and complicity of the state, the government, these groups with power, and their plans; for us, this is very serious.”
On September 12th, Miranda, Dixon, and Sanchéz accompanied by members from various social, indigenous and popular movement organizations mobilized once more to the Honduran Supreme Court as well as to the Attorney General’s office. This time they submitted a formal lawsuit accusing President Porfirio Lobo Sosa and the 162 congressmen that signed the changes to the constitution, of “committing treason against the country and abuse of authority.” The next day, the Garífuna people in Vallecito accompanied by OFRANEH and the National Agrarian Institute broke through the “door of shame” that had previously prevented them from surveying their land. They promptly re-surveyed and measured the five Garífuna “associative businesses” in Vallecito achieving their first goal towards returning to their land in this region.
In a surprise turn of events, late on Saturday September 15th as Honduras celebrated its Independence Day with marches, the Attorney General’s office announced that they had determined “Charter Cities” to be illegal, unconstitutional and that the reforms that permit them represent a crime. Nonetheless, Daniela Ferrera, the Director of Prosecutors at the Attorney General’s office stated, “the Honduran Supreme Court does not have to emit a resolution in order for us to determine what constitutes a felony or whether a felony has been committed. There are resources available to both institutions for use, but it is important that all channels be exhausted, so, as long as the Court does not define the constitutionality or not of the decree, the Prosecutor’s office will have to wait” to proceed in taking legal actions against the responsible parties.[xxxv]
Isaac’s rains have diminished; now the sun struggles to burst through the dense clouds and the heat permeates the camp. Alfredo comments through the unique and cynical smile of a man that spent seven years as a political prisoner, the Honduran State later receiving international condemnation for his unjust imprisonment. “It seems that the mercenaries have lost their appetite or maybe they just ran out of bullets and decided to go home,” said Alfredo. So here in Vallecito the drums sound the vigor of Garífuna rhythms without the interference of automatic gunfire overhead, and now the rhythm of the Yancunú: Guanaragua, Maladi Yancuru or Dance of Masks is resonating through the camp. Yancunú is the maximum expression of Garífuna rebellion and territorial defense. It is the dance that was used by Garífuna men during their 1773 rebellion in Saint Vincent.[xxxvi] They descended from their mountain hideouts disguised as women to a celebration the English soldiers were having, luring and seducing the soldiers with a spectacular dance before revealing their deadly machetes from beneath their skirts, to defeat the soldiers. The same machetes that defeated the English soldiers are the machetes that today continue to work the yucca, coconut, fishing and land in Vallecito. They pertain to the Garinagu people that once more defend their land against the new faces of material exploitation.
To Listen to Audio Reports Covering Garifuna Resistance to Charter Cities Click Here, Here, and Here
Comunicador@s Populares Por La Autonomía: www.comppa.org/wordpress
Notes:
[i] El pueblo Garinagu es el nombre original del pueblo garífuna después de haberse mezclado africanos naufragados en San Vincente del Caribe con los pueblos indígenas Arawak y Carib.
[ii] A principios del 2012, el congreso hondureño pasó una resolución la cual prohíbe que se monte más de una persona sobre una motocicleta debido al alto nivel de asesinatos atribuidos a gatilleros montado como pasajeros en motos, quienes rápidamente huyen de sus crímenes.
[iii] La empresa asociativa es la calificación legal de tierras otorgada por el Instituto Nacional Agraria. No se ha permitido una titulación comunal como cooperativa en los últimos años en Honduras, sobre todo en el Aguan y el departamento de Colón.
[iv] “Piratas en Honduras: De Gregor Macgregor y la República de Poyas, a la Ciudad modelo de Paul Romer” OFRANEH. Julio 18, 2012
[v] John Soluri, Banana Culture: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States (Austin: University of Texas Press: 2005)
[vi] “Garífuna People of Honduras Begin Land Recovery Campaign on MONDAY August 27th 2012,” by Tio Teo. Being Garífuna
[vii] “Pueblo Garífuna reocupa tierras usurpadas en Vallecito (Limón)” Comunicado de OFRANEH, 26 de Agosto del 2012. http://albatv.org/Pueblo-Garífuna-reocupa-tierras.html
[viii] “216 años de la muerte de Satuye y la nueva expulsión del pueblo garífuna del Banana Coast (Honduras),” OFRANEH, 14 marzo 2011.
[ix] “216 años de la muerte de Satuye y la nueva expulsión del pueblo garífuna del Banana Coast (Honduras)”, comunicado de OFRANEH del 14 de Marzo 2011
[x] “Who Wants to Buy Honduras?” por Adam Davidson, The New York Times. 8 mayo 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/who-wants-to-buy-honduras.html?pagewanted=all
[xi] http://www.cohep.com/l/content/%E2%80%9Chonduras-open-business-el-puente-ideal-para-los-negocios%E2%80%9D
[xii] http://chartercities.org/esp-concept[xiii] “Golpes de estado en Madagascar y Honduras” OFRANEH. http://ofraneh.org/ofraneh/ciudad_modelo_articulos_ingles.html
[xiv] “A Terrible Thing to Waste,” Jack Rosenthal, The New York Times Magazine. 31 julio 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02FOB-onlanguage-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=%22paul%20romer%22&st=cse
[xv] Nations Office on Drug and Crimes release of its first Global Study on Homicide October 2011
[xvi] Alertas C-Libre 0076-2012, 29-08-12
[xvii] “Fuerzas ocultas orquestan la criminalización de la protesta campesina en Honduras” Giorgio Trucchi, Desinformemonos, Septiembre 2012
[xviii] La pesadilla de las “Ciudades Modelo,” por Giorgio Trucchi, 29 agosto 2012. Voselsoberano.http://voselsoberano.com/v1/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14128%3Ala-pesadilla-de-las-ciudades-modelo&catid=1%3Anoticias-generales&Itemid=1
[xix] “Ni una revolución, mucho menos una elección revertirá las “Ciudades Modelo” ¡Es ahora o nunca!” http://voselsoberano.com/v1/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14076:ni-una-revolucion-mucho-menos-una-eleccion-revertira-las-ciudades-modelo-ies-ahora-o-nunca&catid=1:noticias-generales
[xx] La pesadilla de las “Ciudades Modelo,” por Giorgio Trucchi, 29 agosto 2012. Voselsoberano.http://voselsoberano.com/v1/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14128% Ala-pesadilla-de-las-ciudades-modelo&catid=1%3Anoticias-generales&Itemid=1
[xxi] Alertas C-Libre 0075-2012 05-09-12
[xxii] A coalition of popular movement organizations, true to the goal of reconstructing post-coup Honduras based on the vision of founding a new people’s constitution through broad participation – not through right or left party politics.
[xxiii]“Honduras-Coalianza y empresa NKG de Estados Unidos firman convenio para construir primera Ciudad Modelo” http://www.diariowebcentroamerica.com/region/honduras-coalianza-y-empresa-nkg-de-estados-unidos-firman-convenio-para-construir-primera-ciudad-modelo/
[xxiv]”Can private cities save a nation with world’s worst murder rate?” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/can-private-cities-save-a-nation-with-worlds-worst-murder-rate-8113966.html
[xxv] “Coalianza y empresa estadounidense NKG firman acuerdo para construir primera ciudad modelo en Honduras” http://www.centinelaeconomico.com/2012/09/04/coalianza-y-empresa-estadounidense-nkg-firman-acuerdo-para-construir-primera-ciudad-modelo-en-honduras/
[xxvi] Can private cities save a nation with world’s worst murder rate? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/can-private-cities-save-a-nation-with-worlds-worst-murder-rate-8113966.html
[xxvii] ” Honduras to build new city with its own laws and tax system to attract investors” http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/06/honduras-new-city-laws-investors
[xxviii] http://chartercities.org/blog/231/honduras-update
[xxix] http://www.red.hn/
[xxx] Coalianza y empresa estadounidense NKG firman acuerdo para construir primera ciudad modelo en Honduras” http://www.centinelaeconomico.com/2012/09/04/coalianza-y-empresa-estadounidense-nkg-firman-acuerdo-para-construir-primera-ciudad-modelo-en-honduras/
[xxxi] http://newmedia.ufm.edu/gsm/index.php/Strongfreecities
[xxxii] ibid
[xxxiii] http://garífunaworld.blogspot.mx/, http://ofraneh.org/ofraneh/216_satuye.html
[xxxiv] Observaciones y recomendaciones de la visita oficial del relator de la ONU, Frank de La Rue http://conexihon.info/noticia/libertad-de-expresi%C3%B3n/honduras-%E2%80%9Cla-impunidad-es-el-mayor-obst%C3%A1culo-para-la-libertad-de
[xxxv] “MP: Decreto de “ciudades modelo” es illegal” http://elheraldo.hn/Secciones-Principales/Pais/MP-Decreto-de-ciudades-modelo-es-ilegal
[xxxvi] http://garífunaworld.blogspot.mx/2008/04/quienes-son-los-garfunas.html
Related articles
- Urgent Action Needed: Violent Repression Against Campesino Right-To-Land Movement in Honduras (aboriginalpress.wordpress.com)
Brazil reacts to US stimuli saying it will keep the Real ‘devalued’ and competitive
MercoPress | September 19th 2012
The latest round of US quantitative easing will create many problems for emerging countries and Brazil will take action to keep the Real from rising in value, Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said on Tuesday.
Speaking to journalists after a meeting in Paris with his French counterpart Pierre Moscovici, Mantega voiced concerns that further monetary stimulus would lower the value of the dollar and in turn hurt Brazilian competitiveness in export markets.
“I don’t think that the new monetary easing will solve many problems for the United States, but it will cause a lot of problems for emerging countries,” Mantega told journalists.
Launching a third round of monetary easing, the US Federal Reserve pledged earlier this month to buy 40 billion dollars of mortgage-backed securities each month in a move aimed at bringing down interest rates.
Brazil has been one of the fiercest critics of US Federal Reserve easing and is fighting to keep capital from flowing from low-yielding dollar assets into the Brazilian currency Real with foreign exchange market interventions as part of what it calls a “currency war”.
Brazilian President last March said advanced economies were unleashing a “monetary tsunami” that adversely impacts on emerging markets’ currencies and trade balances.
“We will continue to take measures to keep a devalued Real,” he said, declining to say how low Brazil would keep the currency.
Moscovici said that he understood Brazil’s concerns but added that currency tensions should be dealt with in international institutions and the Group of 20.
Mantega said that dollar weakness caused by the Fed’s easing not only hurt Brazil’s exports but that it reduced the value of the country’s dollar reserves. He added that “if Washington wanted to help revive the US housing market it would be better to focus on fiscal rather than monetary policy”.
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- Brazil Finance Chief Blasts QE3 as Damaging for Emerging Markets – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
- Prepare for New ‘Currency Wars’ After QE3: Analyst (blacklistednews.com)
Lonmin platinum mine workers end strike in South Africa
Press TV – September 19, 2012
Mineworkers of Lonmin platinum mine have ended their five-week strike and returned to work after the company increased their salaries, South African media says.
The Lonmin strike was marked by violent clashes in August, where police forces killed 34 striking miners at the platinum mine which is reportedly the world’s third-largest platinum producer with approximately 28,000 employees. In all, 45 people have died in violence related to the unrest.
“The end of the Lonmin strike is something we should all cheer, but how the dispute has been settled may provide a template for workers to use elsewhere. That’s the contagion threat,” wrote a columnist for Business Day (South Africa) on Wednesday.
Meanwhile,South African mining strikes spread to the chrome sector, after miners in gold and platinum mines halted work across the country.
Reports on Monday said that some miners at Samancor chrome mine located near Mooinooi, northwest of Johannesburg stopped work, demanding a minimum pay of 12,500 rand ($1,560).
According to an article published in Business Daily on Tuesday, “What started as a wage dispute… has morphed into something much bigger, posing a number of questions about the future of the mining industry and SA as an investment case… Workers at other mines may be encouraged to adopt the same tactics as the Lonmin workers, especially as they managed to winkle out extra pay from a struggling company.”
The Star newspaper also reported “this [end of the Lonmin strike] could be bad news for the biggest miners’ union in the country, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM)…. There is a strong feeling that NUM members will decamp and move to join the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), the NUM’s new rival.”
Earlier on September 10, some 15,000 mine workers staged a demonstration at Gold Fields mine to voice their anger over pay and working conditions, after four people injured in a shooting at the same mine.
South Africa is home to nearly 80 percent of the world’s known platinum reserves. Mining accounts for about 20 percent of the country’s national output.
Related articles
- S.Africa Lonmin miners end strike, accept 22% pay raise (capitalfm.co.ke)
The Job Crisis, the “Unemployable,” and the Fiscal Cliff
Let the Wealthy Pay for Their Crisis
By SHAMUS COOKE | CounterPunch | September 18, 2012
With the November elections right around the corner, the millions of unemployed and under-employed have little reason to care. Aside from some sparse rhetoric, neither Democrats nor Republicans have offered a solution to job creation. Most politicians seem purposefully myopic about the jobs crisis, as if a healthy dose of denial might get them through the electoral season unscathed.
In reality, the jobs crisis continues unaddressed, and threatens to get worse after the election. The post-election “fiscal cliff” of social cuts — “triggered” by Obama’s debt commission —will pull the economy below the current treading-water phase, drowning millions more workers in America in unemployment and hopelessness. In addition, two million more long-term unemployed — those lucky enough to still receive benefits — face the very likely possibility of having their benefits ended due to the trigger cuts.
But this is all part of the plan. The current jobs crisis is not accidental; there are public policies that could be implemented — such as a federal jobs program — that would stop unemployment in its tracks. Both parties agree that this cannot be done for the same reason: high unemployment is desirable since it acts as a sledgehammer against wages, lowering them with the intent of boosting profitability for corporations. Creating this nationwide “new normal” takes time.
Until corporations have an ideal environment to make super profits — aside from the short-term money printing of the Federal Reserve — unemployment will remain purposefully high. The Feds massive money-printing program — called Quantitative Easing (QE) — is a desperate move that risks super inflation, yet is deemed necessary until politicians implement the economic new normal for workers in America.
This policy is referred to as an “adjustment” period by some economists. Corporations and their puppet politicians have used the recession to start implementing the new normal of lower wages, reduced benefits, and fewer social programs on a city, state, and federal basis. In order to complete this national adjustment, expectations for working people must be drastically lowered, so that they’ll be less likely to be angry and fight against this onslaught.
This was Bill Clinton’s intention when he told the Democratic National Convention, “The old economy isn’t coming back.” Most people in America have yet to realize this, but the economic policies of the Democrats and Republicans reflect a conscious plan to push wages down and shred the safety net to fit the “new economy” standards sought by corporate America.
Because corporations only hire workers in order to make profit, businesses today are sitting on trillions of cash, waiting for a sunnier day to invest in labor. The lower the wages of workers in America, the brighter the skies for corporations’ bottom line. It is this basic economic interest driving the jobs crisis, as politicians only offer solutions that “encourage businesses to invest” rather than creating immediate solutions for working people.
But millions of people are waiting for sunnier days too. A large number are seeking to wait out the recession by returning to school and are now graduating; a record 30 percent have bachelor degrees, a number that is expected to rise. The increasing number of graduates will drive up unemployment, while those lucky enough to find jobs aren’t finding one capable of paying off their massive student loans. The trillion-dollar student loan business is yet another example of wealth transference from bottom to top: students borrow money from the wealthy, and pay them back with interest, sometimes exorbitant interest.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that there are 12.5 million people who are officially unemployed but an additional9.5 million who are “unofficially” unemployed — those who are not actively looking for work, “discouraged workers,” part-time workers who want full-time work, etc. The number is almost certainly higher. These workers are not counted in the “official” unemployment numbers, and this unofficial number is getting worse. In August 2012, 368,000 more workers joined this illustrious group by dropping out of the labor force, i.e., they gave up looking for a job and thus are no longer counted as unemployed, in this way giving Obama “positive news” since the unemployment numbers actually improved!
These workers are often referred to as “unemployable,” meaning that they are usually over fifty years of age or under 30 and are tarnished with a lack of job experience or an excess of it. Corporations can now have an abundance of workers to choose from, and are being extra picky on whom they hire, if anybody.
The new “private sector” jobs that Obama constantly brags about are much lower paying than the jobs they are replacing. According to a study performed by the National Employment Law Project, 58 percent of all new post-recession jobs come with wages below $14.00 an hour, i.e. a not a living wage.
For those millions unable to find jobs, their future lies in either dependence on family or the state, or a risky life in the informal economy, which implies the possibility of imprisonment.
The reason that many labor and community groups have not fully explained the above facts — nor protested against them — is because they are “embarrassing” to the Democrats. Labor unions have gone into pre-election hibernation, ignoring reality as they push their members to campaign for the president who is overseeing this economic “new normal.”
The still-sputtering economy is expected to grind to a halt post-election, with average working people again footing the bill. But millions of Americans are experiencing the politics of the 1%, and drawing conclusions; ever since the recession government policy has been aimed at benefiting the wealthy and corporations, while working people have only experienced layoffs, lower wages and benefits, and slashed public services. To stop this dynamic of austerity working people must unite and protest in massive numbers, like the working people of Europe.
In Portland, Oregon, such a demonstration is being planned, pre-election, by a coalition of community groups to “stop the cuts,” for debt relief, and against the above national policy of austerity for working people. By highlighting the bi-partisan nature of the attack against working people, the community organizers in Portland hope to educate the community to take action, so that working people are prioritized. Let the wealthy pay for their crisis.
Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com
Related articles
- Wage Cuts hit Millions of US workers (alethonews.wordpress.com)
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U.S.A. Privatizes National Forests
By RYAN ABBOTT | Courthouse News Service | September 14, 2012
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Forest Service lets private companies charge people for using undeveloped public lands, in violation of federal law, an Oregon nonprofit claims in Federal Court.
Lead plaintiff BARK clams the Forest Service’s grants to concessionaires violates the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act. BARK has 7,000 members, many of them who live near the Mt. Hood National Forest.
“Bark has been extensively involved in the administrative process concerning the challenged decision on the Mt. Hood National Forest covering the transfer of 28 sites (including the Big Eddy day use site and Bagby Hot Springs) to private management, and uses these areas on a regular basis,” the complaint states. “Barks’ members have been adversely affected by either having to pay new fees at these areas, or by being dissuaded from using them due to the new fees.”
Five citizens from Arizona and Colorado joined as plaintiffs, objecting to Uncle Sam’s handing out special permits that allow private companies to charge fees for the use of such land.
Under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (REA), the federal government is authorized to collect fees at a limited number of recreational sites, so long as the sites have facilities that justify a fee.
The government may charge fees for public lands containing national conservation areas, national volcanic monuments or a visitor center, the complaint states. It also may charge fees if it has substantially invested in the land in the form of parking facilities, restrooms and trash receptacles.
But BARK says the government may not charge for recreational use of undeveloped land. That includes parking, picnicking, boating, horseback riding, using scenic overlooks and driving or walking through undeveloped, undesignated public land.
“The Forest Service issues special use permits to concessionaires that allow them to charge visitors to Forest Service areas managed by the companies even when visitors do not use any facilities or services of the area, but simply wish to enter Forest Service lands to engage in undeveloped recreation,” the complaint states.
BARK claims that private companies charge an $8 parking fee at Rose Canyon Lake in the Coronado National Forest in Arizona, and walk-ups must pay $1 apiece if they park at within 3 miles, regardless of whether they use any facilities or services.
BARK claims that in Oregon, the Forest Service granted a special-use permit to a private company to charge for use of the Mount Hood National Forest, “including the ‘Big Eddy’ day-use area, where visitors have traditionally parked to swim in the Clackamas River free of charge.”
And, “Under the new special use permit, the concessionaire now charges $5 per person to soak in Bagby Hot Springs, regardless of how they arrive.”
BARK says the Forest Service issued the special use permits without public notice or allowing for comment.
It wants the fees enjoined at Rose Canyon Lake, Second Crossing, Rampart Reservoir, Walton Lake and Big Eddy as violations under the REA.
It also wants the court to declare that imposing new fees for recreation areas through special permits handed out without public notice violates the Administrative Procedures Act.
And it wants all of the special-use permits that allow private companies to charge such fees to be set aside, and the Forest Service ordered to pay back the money it illegally collected.
BARK is represented by Matt Kenna, with Public Interest Environmental Law, of Durango, Colo.
Related articles
- Lawsuit challenges Forest Service day-use fees (summitcountyvoice.com)
US nuclear arsenal to undergo costliest-ever modernization process
Press TV – September 16, 2012
The United States is to treat its nuclear arsenal to the costliest modernization process ever, with the projected expenditure estimated to cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
The Washington Post reported the prospect of the wholesale overhaul on Saturday, saying the country’s 5,113-strong arsenal of nuclear warheads is to undergo an upgrade and maintenance process as part of the plan.
The paper added that the plan also includes renovation of aging nuclear facilities, and replacement of old delivery systems.
The daily withheld the figure on the price tag, but the Washington think-tank Stimson Center has estimated the cost at least $352 billion over the next decade. Others have said the figure could far exceed the amount.
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and I haven’t seen a moment like this,” said Thomas P. D’Agostino, who leads the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
The stockpile houses seven types of weapons, upgrading only the B61 thermonuclear bomb among is likely to cost $10 billion over five years, while Washington would have to lavish $110 billion to build 12 replacements for the aging Ohio-class submarines.
The country is, meanwhile, spending $162 million per airplane to build a nuclear-capable fleet of the F-35 strike aircraft to replace existing warplanes.
The US is the only country to have ever used atomic bombs against another nation.
The prospective overhaul flies in the face of the country’s persisting economic woes and the international calls for a nuclear-weapon-free world.
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New Book
The Garlic Book — 2026
Lies are Unbekoming | November 5, 2026
What The Garlic Book shows
The book is in four parts.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
Part Two, The Chemistry and the Evidence, sets out what is known about why a clove has no smell until it is cut, and why the order of crush, rest and heat changes the medicine. It then reads the clinical evidence against the historical record — bacteria, blood and vessels, cancer epidemiology, metals and fatigue — and names the trials that went against garlic as directly as the trials that went for it, including the 2007 Stanford trial funded by the US National Institutes of Health which found that raw garlic, garlic powder and aged garlic extract moved LDL cholesterol no more than placebo did. It then turns to onion, garlic’s closest relative, and reads the newer evidence published since 2015, before closing with the whole of the record through the terrain lens.
Part Three, Why Medicine Set It Aside, asks the question directly. One chapter contrasts the pharmaceutical model of isolating a single active compound with the folk model of combining whole plants, and reports what the garlic evidence says about which model works better. One chapter examines the economics of research on a plant that cannot be patented. One chapter — Fire Cider — tells the story of a folk preparation whose name was taken into a United States trademark by a Massachusetts company in 2012, and won back by three herbalists in 2014 who documented forty years of prior use through Rosemary Gladstar and her students into the older tradition.
Part Four, Garlic in Practice, is the working manual — the kitchen pharmacy, traditional uses by body system, a full chapter on safety and interactions, and a complaint-by-complaint practical guide. The book closes with The Trial That Was Never Run — a one-chapter reading of the whole evidential architecture.
At the back: two appendices (a traditional list of uses, and a preparation quick-reference), a full bibliography, and a live index.
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- No Tricks Zone
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