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Spain protests persist ahead of polls

Press TV – May 19, 2011

Thousands of Spanish protesters demonstrate at the Puerta del Sol square in Madrid to protest against the economic crisis

Thousands of Spanish protesters have camped out in Madrid and several other cities to demand jobs as well as political change ahead of weekend local elections.

Outraged by Spain’s economic crisis and soaring jobless rate, demonstrators defied a ban by authorities and poured onto Madrid’s central Puerta del Sol square and in several cities, including Granada, Seville, Barcelona, Valencia, Zaragoza and Palma de Majorca, AFP reported on Wednesday.

Many protesters held up placards reading “Make the guilty pay for the crisis” and chanted “They call this democracy but it is not”, as they tried to draw attention to their economic hardships ahead of the regional and municipal elections on Sunday.

Disgruntled Spaniards, who began their protests on May 15 to demand jobs, housing and “real democracy,” have vowed to stay until Sunday elections if police try to use force to disperse their peaceful protest.

Reports indicate that about 15 police vehicles took up positions in and around the emblematic square in the capital Madrid on Wednesday evening.

Meanwhile, opinion polls by the centre-left El Pais and the conservative El Mundo portend humiliating losses for the Socialists candidate in the forthcoming regional and municipal elections, as voters are expected to punish them for the government’s handling of the economic crisis, including the failure to curb high employment rates.

Spain’s unemployment rate soared to 21.29 percent, with 4.9 million jobless for the first quarter of 2011, according to the government statistics published in late April.

In May 2010, the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero introduced a slew of drastic austerity measures, including cutting civil servants pay as part of plans to curb budget deficit from 11 percent a year earlier to within the 3 percent of GDP limit set by the European Union by 2013.

May 18, 2011 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Libyan Rebels Inspired by Globalization

By Tony Cartalucci – BLN – May 13, 2011

As NATO gloats over another assassination attempt against Colonel Moammar Qaddafi, resulting in the death of several workers, but again missing the embattled Libyan leader, the Libyan rebels are being lent ever increasing support from their long-time backers in the West.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague announced the approval of more “non-lethal” aid to the rebels including uniforms, bullet-proof vests, and communication gear. The UK also invited the rebels to open up a mission in London – an easy task as most of the opposition’s leadership have already lived in London and Washington for years. In fact the very call for the Libyan rebels’ February 17th “Day of Rage” was made by the NCLO out of London. Days later, Ibrahim Sahad, a co-founder of the NCLO and NFSL, would call for an international military intervention sitting directly in front of the White House.

Ibrahim Sahad of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya set the rhetorical groundwork for the US/UK/French military intervention in Libya. To this day his claims remain either unverified or in fact, verified lies.

….

Added to the mix of air strikes and “non-lethal” military aid, the West is also sending in “security contractor” firms to negotiate deals with the rebels in Benghazi. Of course “security contractors” in reality are armed mercenaries. One such firm, Secopex of France, was negotiating with rebels in Benghazi when the head of the firm, Pierre Marziali according to the New York Times, was shot in the stomach and later died. Secopex had done work in Somalia and boasts on its website that one of its specialties is the “training of national armies.”

While the governments leading this imperial adventure into Libya attempt to cling to the last vestiges of their legitimacy by denying recent attacks on Qaddafi’s family were assassination attempts, and while they claim ground troops are not part of the equation, Secopex’s presence in Benghazi is evidence that tacit support for a secret war has already been given. By claiming buildings, not people are the targets, and mercenaries from private companies, not soldiers define the current operations in Libya, the US, UK, and France make a mockery out of the supposed moral high-ground they claim to be fighting this war from.

Globalist Inspired Rebel Leader

According to US-educated Mahmoud Gibril Elwarfally, interim prime minister of the contrived “Libyan Transitional National Council,” in a May 12, 2011 talk before the Brookings Institution, “what’s taking place is a natural product of the globalizational process that started in the mid-80′s.”


Mahmoud Elwarfally, self-proclaimed leader of the Libyan “Transitional National Council” speaks before the corporate-financier funded Brookings Institution, moderated by former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack. Elwarfally maintains that the rebellion against Qaddafi was a natural product of the “globalizational process.”He still claims the rebellion is “peaceful.”

….

Elwarfally talks about a “new global cultural paradigm,” “new global values,” common values, shared by many “young people.” These young people, he says, are calling for human dignity, democracy, and inclusion at all levels of national government, repeating verbatim statements coming from geopolitical meddler Zbigniew Brzezinski and the myriad of US-funded NGOs that promote these “new global values.”

Deriding 30 years of documented history showing that the current armed uprising is but the latest campaign in a long war of foreign-funded armed sedition against Qaddafi, and recent admissions by rebel leaders themselves of having direct ties to Al Qaeda, Elwarfally claims such accusations are merely “Qaddafi projecting fears” onto the Libyan people and the world abroad. Elwarfally, rewriting history in mid-sentence, claims that armed struggle was forced upon them – despite 30 years of history saying otherwise. He proposes that current fighting is merely defensive and that the rebel is still peaceful. When asked about comments he made just minutes before regarding “marching on Tripoli,” Elwarfally maintains it was merely rhetorical.

Libya 2025

When asked by an audience member what Libya will look like in 2025, it turns out conveniently he was part of a study by Libya professors and “Libyan practitioners” in 2007-2008 titled “Libya: Vision 2025.” Not surprisingly, this project was conducted with input from the IMF and involved Libya’s placement within the “global scene.”  Elwarfally laments that Libya’s oil reserves are limited and that the solution is a transition to a service economy. He also claims Vision 2025′s conclusion included an education shift, turning Libya into “a lake” to develop the skills of Africans to serve the needs of the European Union.

Surely Africans are eager to once again be in the service of wealthy Europeans, who at one point owned tremendous swaths of their continent, some tycoons naming entire nations after themselves in the ultimate expression of imperial megalomania. Elwarfally, a man educated in Pittsburgh, and apparently a lifelong fan of globalization, stuns us with his frank comments and his disturbing vision for the future of not only Libya, but the role it will play in directing Africa’s efforts and resources into the American and European corporate-financier interests. It is almost as disturbing as his breathtaking mis-characterization of the men who fight under him in what is most certainly not a “peaceful” rebellion.

Elwarfally concludes his talk by mentioning the “diminishing of the sense of the state” in Libya, due, he claims to a lack of “institutions” and “rule of law.” Kenneth Pollack, former CIA analyst and National Security Council member, chimes in declaring he hopes Elwarfally’s globalist dream becomes a reality even before 2025. Pollack, of course, is one of several contributors to the “Which Path to Persia?” report, within which open talk of funding terrorists, foreign-funded street protests, augmented with forms of US military support is made in regards to overthrowing Iran’s government. Quite obviously Pollack’s stratagems articulated in this treacherous report have already been applied to Iran as well as Libya, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, and beyond.

If there was any doubt in the minds of those watching the “Arab Spring” unfold, doubts that haven’t been laid to rest by open admissions by the US that it was a plot of their own design, Mahmoud Gibril Elwarfally of the Libyan “Transitional National Committee” himself declares fealty to the globalist agenda and his commitment to propagating the interdependency and exploitation of the developing world by the global corporate-financier oligarchy. When similar calls for “democracy” and “dignity” are made by similar revolutions now festering in Eastern Europe along Russia’s border, and throughout China’s “String of Pearls” in South and Southeast Asia, remember Elwarfally’s words spoken before the globalist Brookings Institution.

Download the entire audio file from Brookings Institution here.

May 13, 2011 Posted by | Economics, Video | Leave a comment

Italy’s Great Nuclear Swindle

The Radioactive Dictatorship of Silvio Berlusconi

By MICHAEL LEONARDI – CounterPunch – May 13, 2011

Italy’s democracy is in tatters as Silvio Berlusconi and his ruling right-wing coalition work to block a citizen’s referendum that would repeal the decision of the Berlusconi government to return to nuclear energy production on the peninsula. Italy has not produced nuclear energy since 1990 and recent polls indicate that more than 75 % of Italians are opposed to nuclear energy production. The referendum in question is on the ballot for the 12th and 13th of June, although a recent call by the Berlusconi government for a one year moratorium on the relaunch of nuclear energy in Italy threatens to push the referendum off the ballot through a last minute legal ruling. The campaign to bring this referendum to a vote was spearheaded by opposition political party Italia Dei Valori (Italy of Values) which led a broad based coalition of citizen and environmental groups to gather the 500,000 signatures needed to get the referendum on the ballot.

Italy is the only G8 country that does not produce nuclear energy. It has been free of functioning nuclear power plants since 1990 but does receive around 10% of its electricity from nuclear energy generated in France and Germany. Citizens successfully passed a referendum in 1987, one year after the catastrophic Chernobyl accident, that called for the phasing out and suspension of nuclear energy production. In 1987 Italy had two operating nuclear plants and has had four operational reactors in its history. In 2007 while campaigning for his third election, Berlusconi announced his intentions to return to nuclear energy production in Italy as a strategic part of a national energy policy.

Back in 2007 Berlusconi wasn’t the only one who supported a return to nuclear energy. Important elements of the newly formed Democratic Party also voiced their support for a return to nuclear power. A wikileaks cable 07ROME2438 revealed that Pier Luigi Bersani, the current secretary of the Italian Democratic Party who in 2007 was serving as Economic Development Minister for the Romano Prodi led Center Left coalition government, opened the door for Italy’s return to atomic energy by forging the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership agreement with then US energy secretary Samuel Bodman. At that time Bersani stated that “a return to nuclear energy was not excluded by the 1987 referendum” and that it was his hope that the agreement forged between the Prodi and Bush administrations would “help lead to a change in attitude from the Italian people toward nuclear energy.” Walter Veltroni, the ex-mayor of Rome who was the newly formed Democratic Party’s first candidate for president against Berlusconi in 2008, also voiced his openness to the idea of returning to Nuclear Energy production.

Since Fukushima Bersani and his fellow Democrats have been much more subdued about their support for Nuclear Energy and they have voiced strong opposition to the current government’s plan for the construction of new reactors. The Democrats have joined the chorus of the Green Party, Italia Dei Valori and scores of citizens groups in calling Berlusconi’s attempts to block the referendum a “theft” and a “deceptive attempt to hinder the democratic process.” Fukushima has inspired renewed vigor in the antinuclear movement and worked to sway public opinion in opposition to nuclear power that had become increasingly split over the past few years.

Following Berlusconi’s election victory in 2008 and his return to power for the third time since 1994, Italy’s new minister of economic development Claudio Scajola — before being forced out of office by a corruption scandal involving bribery and fraud in 2010 — announced that the government had scheduled the start of construction for the first new Italian nuclear power plant by 2013. On February the 24th of 2009, an agreement between France and Italy was signed allowing Italy to share in France’s expertise in the area of nuclear power station design. On July 9th 2009 the Italian legislature passed an energy bill covering the establishment of a Nuclear Regulatory Agency and giving the government six months to select sites for new plants. These sites have never been finalized. On the 3rd of August 2009, Italy’s energy giant Enel and Eletricite de France established a joint venture Sviluppo Nucleare Italia Srl for studying the feasibility of building at least four reactors using a design of French reactor builder Areva — the worlds largest nuclear energy company. These energy oligarchs, with Berlusconi as their champion, are doing everything in their power to preserve their multi-billion dollar investment in a nuclear future.

To this end Berlusconi’s council of ministers announced a one year moratorium on all questions relating to the research and activation of sites for new nuclear plants in Italy on the 24rd of March 2011, less than two weeks from the earthquake in Japan and subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster. This move was immediately met with skepticism from Italy’s antinuclear movement and opposition political parties and was seen as a poorly veiled attempt to block the June referendum. On April 26th, the 25th anniversary of the catastrophic Chernobyl accident, Berlusconi held a press conference with French president Nikolay Sarkozy in Rome. At this press conference Berlusconi made his radioactive intentions clear for all. “We are absolutely convinced that nuclear energy is the future for the whole world,” he said. He went on to detail how recent polls showed that the referendum to block nuclear power for decades to come could pass at this time and that by temporarily suspending Italy’s return to nuclear program the issue would be revisited when the Italian voters had been “calmed down” and returned to the realization that Nuclear Energy was the most viable and safe way to produce electricity. He went on to explain how the “leftists and ecologists” had manipulated the emotions of the Italian voters after Chernobyl and penalized the Italian people who have to pay higher electric rates than France that operates 58 nuclear power plants. Berlusconi explained that the “situation in Japan had scared the Italian voters” and that the “inevitable return to nuclear power in Italy” would not be abandoned nor would the collaborations between Enel and Eletricite de France.

Now with Germany and Japan announcing the phasing out of their Nuclear programs and the scrapping of plans for the construction of new reactors, it would seem like political suicide to barge full steam ahead with a pro nuclear stance, but this is Italy and Berlusconi is still at the command. Berlusconi is now in control of all the major television outlets, including the state owned RAI, so getting the word out to the voters that there will be a vote on the 12th and 13th of June is proving difficult, and the heavy hand of State censorship has been wielded. At the annual May Day concert in Rome, sponsored by Italy’s two largest labor unions and televised on the state run RAI, the performing artists were required to sign a waiver agreeing not to speak about the upcoming referendums or risk a fine of over ten thousand euros. This left a bitter taste in the mouths of many of the attendees of this May Day celebration as news surfaced almost immediately that the state media outlet had censored the event.

As of now the referendum to block Nuclear Power is still on the ballot. Only a last minute ruling by the Supreme Court could remove it, and the Berlusconi government is banking on this decision as a result of their so-called nuclear moratorium. The antinuclear referendum is accompanied on the June ballot by two other referendums, one to repeal the Berlusconi government’s attempts to privatize water and the other to repeal a law called “legittimo impedimento” which was passed by the Right wing majority in order to protect Berlusconi from prosecution by giving him and members of parliament immunity from prosecution while serving in office. Each of these referendums required the gathering of half a million valid signatures and will need the high participation of 50 % plus 1 eligible voters to reach the mandated quorum in order to be considered valid. No legislative referendum has been able to reach this quorum in over a decade. Now the Berlusconi government is also trying to block the vote to keep water publicly owned. In recent legislation they created a new Water Authority in an attempt to legally block this referendum as well. While it is evident to the engaged and politically active citizenry that the Berlusconi government is pulling out all the stops to block the democratic process, the masses who get their information from Berlusconi’s private and state run television empire are being kept in the dark. No news on the referendums is reported unless it is it is very late at night or the early hours of the morning.

To publicize these referendums the citizens are taking to the streets, leafleting, using creative direct action and social networking on the internet to spread the news and get out the vote. On May 9th Greenpeace activists unfurled a large banner from Mussolini’s balcony on Palazzo Venezia in Rome. The banner includes a caricature of Berlusconi saying “Italians, I decide your future” and a call for Italians to vote on the Nuclear Referndum. Angelo Bonelli, President of the Italian Green Party, summed it up like this: “The referendums will be voted on anyway, despite the fact that the thieves of democracy have returned to action. The attempts of the government to steal the democratic rights of the Italian people to vote against nuclear energy and the privatization of water will not succeed.” On the 12th and 13th of June, the Italian people can change the course of their future by voting yes to say no to nuclear energy and the privatization of their water resources.

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Michael Leonardi splits his time between Ohio and Italy. He can be reached at mikeleonardi@hotmail.com

May 13, 2011 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance, Nuclear Power | Leave a comment

Greeks strike protesting budget cuts

Press TV – May 11, 2011

Greek labor unions have staged a one-day strike in Athens against the government’s austerity measures adopted to tackle the country’s ailing economy.

Hundreds of thousands of civil servants, teachers and hospital staff, later joined by journalists, went on strike on Wednesday.

“We strike to show our anger and our opposition to the policies that are being introduced and new measures that hit workers and labor instead of those with money,” AFP quoted Stathis Anestis, a senior member of the confederation of Greek workers, as saying.

The unions argue that a recovery plan applied by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, aimed to rescue the troubled economy of Greece, has deteriorated the living condition in the country.

“After a year, we find ourselves in a worse situation,” Anestis said. “Unemployment has skyrocketed, salaries are at their lowest point and there is no breakthrough in sight.”

The walk-out came a day after international debt inspectors headed to Athens to assess the country’s financial and economic progress and to determine whether Greece meets the conditions to receive the next bailout.

The European Union and the International Monetary Fund granted a USD 158-billion loan to the troubled state in 2010.

The bailout loan saved Greece from the brink of default. However, Athens was obliged to implement a strict austerity package, including the cutting of public sector salary and pensions, increasing taxes and overhauling the pension system, to survive.

May 11, 2011 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Geithner scuppered IMF plan to impose haircut on Irish debt

WakeUpFromYourSlumber | May 8, 2011

According to Morgan Kelly, a highly-respected Irish economist, In November 16th 2010, the rarely-altruistic IMF suggested that unguaranteed bonds in failing Irish banks should be given a haircut by an average of two-thirds.  This plan, which would have lessened the penury imposed on the Irish taxpayer, was apparently scuppered by one Timothy Geithner, US Treasury Secretary and Don of the Wall Street Mafia.  Kelly describes this and more in his op-ed piece in the Irish Times of May 7th 2011, part of which is quoted below

On November 16th, European finance ministers urged [finance minister Brian] Lenihan to accept a bailout to stop the panic spreading to Spain and Portugal, but he refused, arguing that the Irish government was funded until the following summer. Although attacked by the Irish media for this seemingly delusional behaviour, Lenihan, for once, was doing precisely the right thing. Behind Lenihan’s refusal lay the thinly veiled threat that, unless given suitably generous terms, Ireland could hold happily its breath for long enough that Spain and Portugal, who needed to borrow every month, would drown….

Ireland’s Last Stand began less shambolically than you might expect. The IMF, which believes that lenders should pay for their stupidity before it has to reach into its pocket, presented the Irish with a plan to haircut €30 billion of unguaranteed bonds by two-thirds on average. Lenihan was overjoyed, according to a source who was there, telling the IMF team: “You are Ireland’s salvation.”

The deal was torpedoed from an unexpected direction. At a conference call with the G7 finance ministers, the haircut was vetoed by US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner who, as his payment of $13 billion from government-owned AIG to Goldman Sachs showed, believes that bankers take priority over taxpayers. The only one to speak up for the Irish was UK chancellor George Osborne, but Geithner, as always, got his way. An instructive, if painful, lesson in the extent of US soft power, and in who our friends really are.

The negotiations went downhill from there. On one side was the European Central Bank, unabashedly representing Ireland’s creditors and insisting on full repayment of bank bonds. On the other was the IMF, arguing that Irish taxpayers would be doing well to balance their government’s books, let alone repay the losses of private banks. And the Irish? On the side of the ECB, naturally.

May 9, 2011 Posted by | Corruption, Economics | Leave a comment

The False Promise of Biomass

Blowing Smoke

By MATTHEW KOEHLER, IAN LANGE and JOHN SNIVELY | CounterPunch | May 5, 2011

Last fall news broke that the University of Montana was planning to construct a $16 million wood-burning biomass plant on campus next to the Aber Hall dormitory. UM officials claimed the biomass plant would save UM $1 million annually and protect Missoula’s air quality by reducing emissions over the existing natural gas heating system.

As interested citizens, we attended the university’s biomass “poster presentation” last December, which, unfortunately, raised more serious questions than it answered. So we continued to ask questions and research the proposal. In March, we even conducted an “open records” search of UM’s biomass project file, pouring over hundreds of documents and emails between UM officials and representatives of Nexterra, a Canadian biomass boiler manufacturer, and McKinstry, a Seattle energy services company. Suffice to say, our records search turned up even more troubling questions, especially related to costs, maintenance and emissions.

As the Missoulian reported last month, information in UM’s air quality permit application to the Missoula City-County Health Department showed that “Contrary to previous claims by UM administrators, the university’s proposed biomass boiler will not reduce emissions to levels below that of natural gas. In fact, UM’s proposed state-of-the-art biomass gasification plant will produce nearly twice as much nitrogen dioxide as its existing natural gas boilers – and in some cases, will release three times as much particulate matter.” The emissions are higher than what McKinstry’s feasibility study predicted.

Our records search also turned up a document showing that the biomass plant would also increase emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds by 40 percent or more over the existing natural gas system.

Obviously, Missoula is prone to severe inversions and air stagnation, especially during winter, when the greatest load would be on the biomass system. We found a UM biomass grant application that stated, “The Missoula Valley’s constrained topography presents ideal research conditions for long term analysis of environmental impacts of efficient woody biomass boiler combustion.” Do we really want to risk Missoula’s air quality for the sake of research?

It’s also been difficult to get an accurate assessment from UM of the biomass plant’s up-front and long-term costs, something all Montana taxpayers deserve. For starters, we noticed in the project file that in April 2010 the cost of the biomass plant was $10 million. By July, the cost went to $14 million. Now it sits at $16 million. UM’s financial pro forma also shows that during the first 20 years the biomass plant would need nearly $10 million for additional operation and maintenance expenses over the existing natural gas system.

The pro forma is also troubling in other aspects. It over-estimates the cost of natural gas, while under-estimating the cost of biomass fuel trucked to campus, especially given rising diesel costs. The pro forma also completely zeros out all natural gas expenses and maintenance costs, even though UM now admits that a natural gas boiler would be used during cold winter days to augment the biomass system, and also used from May to September, when the biomass system is too powerful to use.

Further complicating the picture, UM realized during the permitted process that its existing natural gas boilers are in violation of air pollution limits. The fix will cost around $500,000. And UM’s contract with McKinstry was amended recently, meaning that UM is already contractually committed to McKinstry for $532,000 just for project development.

It is our belief that all of these significant issues need to be fully analyzed and rechecked, not just by the biomass project’s supporters, but also by the Board of Regents, independent of McKinstry and UM. Guarantees of performance by McKinstry need to be carefully scrutinized, as other colleges have paid the price for poorly written contracts or poorly vetted companies.

At the end of the day, Montana taxpayers deserve to see accurate, updated financial information from UM concerning all aspects of the biomass plant, including the initial $16 million price tag and $10 million needed for additional operation and maintenance expenses. And Missoula’s citizens have a right to expect that the University of Montana would not risk Missoula’s fragile air quality by needlessly increasing emissions over present levels.

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Matthew Koehler is executive director of the WildWest Institute; Ian M. Lange is a professor emeritus, Department of Geosciences at the University of Montana; and Dr. John Snively is a retired dentist. All three live in Missoula.

This column was originally published by The Missoulian.

May 5, 2011 Posted by | Economics, Environmentalism, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Skyrocketing Crime Rates and Imperial Wars

By James Petras | 05.04.2011

Imperial interventions in civil wars have a devastating effect on countries that last for decades and affect the entire economy and society. One indicator of the long-term consequences of imperial military intervention is the tremendous increase of violent crime, the multiplication of gangs, homicides and general insecurity in Central America.

Violence increased far beyond what existed prior to imperial wars in such countries as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. In the period prior to imperial intervention in Central America, during times of revolutionary ferment, high levels of social organization via inclusive social movements, channeled discontent into political and social channels. Revolutionary movements organized armed resistance against specifics targets; repressive police, military and death squad militias. Imperial intervention included military advisers and counter-insurgency strategies which uprooted peasants via scorched earth policies and destroyed communities. Assaults on urban barrios led to the break-up of family and neighborhood networks. The social bonds which integrate people into a moral and social community were ruptured: the goal of imperial planners is to decimate any independent popular civil-society organization as a political threat to its illegitimate collaborator regime.

In El Salvador, the US provided over $300 million a year in arms and training for almost a decade. The Pentagon through its advisory missions, in collaboration with local landlords and generals, financed and forcibly recruited thousands of peasants into death squad ‘civilian militias’ to assassinate local movement activists and terrorize farm workers’movements and trade union organizations. Under imperial military pressure the leaders of the major Central American guerrilla organizations signed on to a peace agreement. The “peace accords” retained the US collaborator regimes in power and the promised social reforms were never implemented. As a result, the homicide rate skyrocketed. The discharged guerrilla militants and unemployed right wing militia members, armed and trained, and with no future, became the bases for gangs, drug and people traffickers, kidnappers and extortionists. The number of people who were annually killed in violent crime (1991-2011) exceeded the number who died each year during the revolutionary struggle (1979-1990).

Having successfully blocked the prospects of positive socio-economic transformations in wealth, land ownership, the judicial system and allocation of public investments, the US pushed for neo-liberal ‘free trade agreements’ which further decimated small farmers and retail commerce. Mass outmigration and crime became the ‘roads out of poverty’ in the aftermath of imperial intervention. Violent crime became so pervasive that the business elites of the US and Central America were hesitant to invest and profit from the low wages and the unemployed who crowded the labor market. The cost of hiring private security armies to protect upscale neighborhoods, business operations, country clubs, and exclusive restaurant and leisure centers became prohibitive. Faced with the “unfavorable climate for business” created by the very same pro-business Pentagon intervention, after two decades of murder and mayhem, the World Bank intervened. The World Development Report (WDR) for 2010 (published in 2011) focuses on the theme of “conflict, security and development”. The Report proposed a series of measures to lessen what it calls “mass violence”. The Report was taken up and elaborated in the Financial Times (4/27/11 p. 9) by Martin Wolf in an article titled “Remove the scourge of conflict”. The Report and Wolf provide time series data between 1999-2009 showing the vertical growth of “criminal violence after civil wars”; time series data show that countries with high poverty rates based on the (percent of population with income below $1.25 per day) have experienced greater violence than those with low poverty rate; time series data show that greater ‘violence’ reduced real GDP growth.

Both the WB Report and the Financial Times fail to identify the true nature of the ‘violent conflict’, the principle source of violence and the foreign and domestic elite economic policies which deepen and prolong ‘violence’.

In the case of Central America, particularly El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras, the WB and Financial Times resort to vacuous generalization to avoid discussing the massive military role of US imperialism in promoting large scale, long term violence in the countries. Instead the FT strikes a phony philosophical note “man is a violent animal” (Alas). In fact imperialist rulers are violent animals; especially with regard to poor countries attempting to free themselves of US backed oligarchies. To their discredit the WB and FT obfuscate the data by claiming that the deaths were a product of “civil wars”.

Throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s the US and Israel provided arms, advisers, technical capacity to the murderous Guatemalan regime which slaughtered over 300,000; mostly Indians and wiped off the map over 420 villages. During the US decade long proxy war against the progressive Sandinista revolutionary movement via the Somoza dictatorship (1969-78) and the decade long Contra terror war against the Sandinista government (1979-89), over 50,000 people were killed, hundreds of thousands maimed and displaced and productive farms, factories, infrastructure, clinics and schools and co-operatives were targeted by US counter-insurgency advisers.

As mentioned earlier, El Salvador’s social movements and their supporters throughout civil society were targeted by US backed military and paramilitary groups forcing hundreds of thousands to flee to urban squatter settlements or across borders and overseas. Similar outcomes occurred during the US counter-insurgency campaign in Honduras and invasions of Grenada and Panama in the 1980’s.

Imperial backed invasions, counter-insurgency campaigns and the subsequent imposition of corrupt oligarchs led to the total disarticulation of local social networks and the bankruptcy of small scale farms because of the importation of subsidized US foodstuffs. These led to the presence of a deadly combination: thousands of automatic rifles, tens of thousands of unemployed displaced rural youth living in urban slums and an economy geared to enriching elite importers, exporters and US bankers and creditors. The WB Report in all of 301 pages and numerous tables does not contain a single phrase about the nature, consequences and the profound and lasting impact of imperial intervention on the out of control homicide rates in Central America or elsewhere. Instead we are told it’s all about a “civil war”.

The mendacious cover-up proceeds to the current decade. The WB Report and the FT sound an optimistic note claiming that annual battle deaths have “fallen to 42,000 in the 2000’s”. First, calling the US-NATO invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan a “civil war” is a travesty to common knowledge; and then falsifying the over 1 million Iraqi deaths into a few thousand, flies in the face of independent surveys published in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet.

What is striking about the imperialist interventions and most relevant to the growth of violent crime, is the fact that the subsequent client rulers, are themselves deeply enmeshed in international criminal networks. Drug dealing and large scale theft of billions in aid funds and public revenues is the hallmark of Central American clients who are most intimately tied to Washington. The same is true in Iraq and Afghanistan: tribal clans and ethnic gangs who pledged allegiance to the US occupiers run billion dollar heroin enterprises. They murder civil society activists and undermine the bases of community based organizations.

Policy Proposals

Based on a diagnosis that ignores the imperial causes of social breakdown and the subsequent spiraling violent crime rate, the WB Report and the FT propose “lessons” for a “successful transition to ending high rates of violence”.

Since their diagnosis of the historical roots of crime is deeply flawed, the prescriptions fail to come to terms with the political and economic transformations necessary to reduce spiraling homicide rates.

The WB Report proposes (1) “inclusive coalitions” for change, (2) impact programs that produce quick results and impress people, (3) reforms of the security and justice institutions, (4) a pragmatic perspective of several decades to bring about change. In other words the WB Report recognizes that its policies, allies and agencies are so embedded in the current system that its “reform proposals” are at best designed to co-opt local leaders in coalitions, to pursue incremental changes, which will not reverse homicide rates for several decades.

The WB Report proposes to create bottom-up “links” between the neo-liberal state and civic society: an impossible task when “the state” is the principle agency undermining employment via its free market policies. Their proposal to act against corruption and to reform the police and judicial system overlooks the fact that the past and present closest political and judicial collaborators of US counter-insurgency and dominance are precisely those corrupt officials willing to repress popular movements and provide military bases. The WB Report calls for greater intervention by “external institutions” (like itself and US AID) to “deliver support”, when it was precisely external intervention which short circuited changes fought for by “bottom up” grass roots movements.

The point of departure for a reduction of violent crime is precisely to reduce or eliminate external intervention by the US: the need to eliminate military aid and training programs which block and repress social movements and organize coups; to eliminate WB programs promoting agro-export elites and to promote agrarian reforms led by and for co-operatives and family farmers; to end free trade and the saturation of the local market with subsidized US food exports so as to allow peasants to produce for local markets. Above all there is a need for the US and WB to pay $ multi-million dollar compensation for the destruction caused by the counter-insurgency war and neo-liberal policies, as a way of creating alternative employment for young people tempted by the drug gangs. Because of the long term destruction resulting from imperialist wars, the process of decriminalizing society will require a profound revolution in institutions and culture, one which will by necessity need to root out the current crop of generals, oligarchs and World Bank trained economists who perpetuate the conditions which spawn crime. Those changes will require supporting social movements independent of the state; immediate positive impacts to attract popular support will result from movements engaged in direct action – like occupying large rural estates. Police and security reforms can only be instituted as part of a process of regime changes in which ties to repressive overseas experts are replaced by links to community councils. Crime will be reduced in direct relation to greater independence from the regional policemen and with greater freedom to pursue an alternative economy based on social solidarity.

May 5, 2011 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

‘Sustainable Rural Cities’, a Nightmare Come True in Chiapas

Biofuel Company Towns

Written by Koman Ilel, Translation by Jessica Davies – Upside Down World – 04 May 2011

More than three years ago torrential rains flooded the northern and central regions of the state of Chiapas. The rain seriously affected more than 1,200 families in 34 municipalities. This disaster, coupled with the inept dredging strategies of the National Water Commission (Conagua) and the Federal Electrical Commission (CFE), kept 404 households in 33 villages and 960 hectares of productive land under water for more than three months.Of all those concerned, the community of Juan de Grijalva suffered the worst fate: it was buried by the breaking away of a hill in the town of Ostuacán, in northern Chiapas. Shortly after the tragedy, the government, in the guise of a ‘philanthropic organisation’, held out its hand in solidarity to the people of Juan de Grijalva. Two years later they erected the brand new city of Nuevo Juan de Grijalva, the first Sustainable Rural City (SRC) in the whole of Mexico.

From being a poor village, Juan de Grijalva had become a leading city that had all the services that any Mexican could wish for: decent housing and quality basic services; drinking water; a water purification plant; drainage and sewerage; a waste treatment plant; electricity and public lighting using solar voltaic cells; a communications tower for fixed and mobile telephones; access to the Internet and information networks; a comprehensive basic education centre equipped with advanced technology; kindergarten, elementary and secondary schools; and a Health Centre with expanded services in the area of ​​telemedicine equipment and technology. In addition, the inhabitants of the newly developed city were provided with opportunities for decent and gainful employment. Projects were launched for intensive production such as: greenhouses, nurseries, packing stations for tomatoes, poultry farms and a dairy processing plant. They also started ‘productive reconversion’, which allows residents to keep their land by replacing traditional crops with others of high commercial value.

It all sounded too good to be true. And, indeed, the dream became a nightmare. The city was from the beginning doomed to failure. There was not even the will to make a decent project: the houses are mousetraps, the basic services are inadequate, the health centers do not even have doctors, etc. But beyond these ‘details’, the new town is part of a state-wide program to rearrange the scattered population. As if we were in the sixteenth century, the aim is to create ‘authentic Indian villages’.

An Imposed Project

Under the pretext that most of the villages of Chiapas are scattered and that this high dispersion makes the provision of services and the economic and social development of communities difficult, the Rural Cities Program aims to focus on rural people in small villages. The aim is twofold: firstly, to take the land away from the small farmers (campesinos) and exploit it (with the participation of large businesses) and secondly, to concentrate the inhabitants of several villages in one place to serve as an ‘industrial reserve army’.

The ‘Believing People’ (el Pueblo Creyente) from the parish of San Pedro Chenalhó expressed it in these terms: “We are concerned that the rural cities project has been imposed, and that the people in the communities have not been consulted as to whether they agree with it or not, and if they do consult them, the consultation is based on lies and omissions, the government does not say clearly what this mega project actually brings or whether it is for the good or ill of the people. For example, it does not explain what ‘productive reconversion’ means, or who will be the beneficiaries of this reconversion.

“Rural cities were not invented by the state and federal government of this administration, but have a very long history, going back, for example, to the colonization of Latin America. At that time they were not called ‘rural cities’ but were known as ‘reducciones’, with the aim of making control of the population easier and more efficient in order to collect taxes (tribute), to use the people as labour for mines, plantations (most frequently sugar cane), for the construction of cities for the Spanish, and, of course, for political and military control. It is also true that then, as now, they argued that there would be benefits for the population directly affected, that by concentrating a population they can be provided with access to basic services of potable water, education, health, etc..”

The Wider Context

To address the issue of fighting poverty here in Chiapas, we must analyze the Sustainable Rural Cities in a broader context. On the one hand, in 2008 the presidents of Colombia, Mexico and other Central American countries signed the trade agreement Plan Mesoamerica (a new version of the Plan Puebla Panama). The purpose of this plan is to create an infrastructure and trade corridor that connects Southern Mexico to Colombia, and this area is intended to serve big capital. On the other hand, the political and economic plan of the World Bank, outlined in their report entitled ‘New Economic Geography’, suggests that economic integration is the fundamental way to bring development to all corners of the world. This report emphasizes population density as a key factor for the economic development of any country.

The construction of Santiago El Pinar, the second SRC, clearly unveils another facet of the project: that of a counterinsurgency strategy devised by the Chiapas government against the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). Located very close to the Zapatista autonomous municipalities of San Juan de la Libertad and San Andrés Sakamch’en, the ‘city’ breaks down the traditional ways of life, and forces people to enter the capitalist mode of production of small businesses oriented towards the external market. Clearly, the Sustainable Rural City is a challenge to the Zapatista caracoles, who have built true autonomous systems of health, education and production. It seems that the government forgets that it is dealing with the same people who took up arms in January 1994, a dignified people and one increasingly more aware.

As we said, so far they have established two Sustainable Rural Cities: Nuevo Juan Grijalva and Santiago El Pinar. There are three more under construction: Jaltenango, Ixhuatan and Emiliano Zapata (and a final one in the process of being built: Copainalá). It is obvious that private interests are a fundamental component of the Sustainable Rural Cities, so it does not take much imagination to realize who the real beneficiaries of this project are. Certain companies (among whom stand out Telmex, Fundación Azteca, BBVA Bancomer, Banamex, Grupo Carso, Farmacias del Ahorro and Coparmex) who operate through their ‘third level’ employees (the governor and his cronies), and certain university institutions (IPN and UNACH ) are the ones who have assessed, evaluated and supported with funding the construction of the ‘self-sustaining cities’. All these have a place of honor on the Advisory Council of the Sustainable Rural Cities.

With even more irony, these companies have their place within the very broad commercial corridors included in the plans of these ‘cities’, in places where little is known about money and where the people are still dying of curable diseases. Now, the residents will not only be free to sell their labour, but they will also be free to obtain un-repayable micro-loans, cell phones, domestic electrical appliances by means of small payments, and other ‘benefits’ that the modern world brings.

No Longer Slaves?

In fact, the two Sustainable Rural Cities are a disaster for their new inhabitants. The plan promoted by the government is solely focused on benefiting the companies involved in the construction of these cities. We all need to inform ourselves about these illusions and publicly denounce the government’s plans.

The Sustainable Rural Cities affect all the communities of Chiapas and are intended to alienate the people from their land, thus making the land available to large multinational corporations who focus on “cheap labour”, destroying ancient farming practices, imposing community development models and forcing the population into the financial circle of capitalism. We conclude with the words of the Civil Society organisation The Bees (Las Abejas):

“We are not the only ones who know that this project [of rural cities] is part of the Mesoamerica Project, previously Plan Puebla Panama. This plan did not start with the bad government of Calderon nor with that of Sabines, but with Salinas de Gortari when he signed NAFTA (the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement) which caused the uprising of our Zapatista brothers and sisters in the year 1994.

[…] Now they say we are no longer slaves, but it is just the same to make us work in their Mesoamerica Project with its plans for mines, sweatshops and plantations, which explains the campaign that the bad government is starting. This campaign is to have what they call ‘productive restructuring’.

“They do not explain much what this means, but we understand that now they do not want us to sow our cornfields (milpa), and our other ancestral foods any longer. They tell us that it is better for us to sow African (oil) palm and pine nuts, the reason they give us for this is to prevent fires.

“But what we see is that with the corn and beans we nourish ourselves; with oil palms and pine nuts they plan to produce biofuels to feed the cars and trucks. Do cars have more right to the food of Mother Earth than we do?”

Article originally published in Spanish by Koman Ilel, 26th April 2011
http://komanilel.blogspot.com/2011/04/ciudades-rurales-sustentables-una_21.html

~

See also:

Progressive ‘Green’ Counterinsurgency

May 4, 2011 Posted by | Economics, Environmentalism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Massachusetts Democrats vote to strip public unions of bargaining rights

By Stephen C. Webster | Raw Story | April 29th, 2011

Weren’t Democrats supposed to be in favor of collective bargaining rights? Well, maybe not.

Welcome to bizarro world.

The Democratic-controlled Statehouse in Massachusetts voted earlier this week to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights, as part of the state’s budget measure. It passed by a vote of 157 to 1.

That’s precisely the same action taken by Republicans in Wisconsin, where it sparked a massive democratic outcry and weeks of rowdy protests.

The Massachusetts legislation would allow local municipalities to make unilateral changes to agreed-upon benefits, like health care, bypassing the need for union approval. It would, however, leave open a 30-day window where unions may be consulted on changes to benefits.

According to The Associated Press, the budget also cuts $800 million from the state’s Medicare-like program MassHealth, and strips more than $65 million in aid to state agencies and municipalities. Another $200 million would be withdrawn from the state’s “rainy-day fund” to help close their spending gap for this fiscal year.

“These are the same Democrats that all these labor unions elected,” Massachusetts AFL-CIO president Robert J. Haynes said in a media advisory. “The same Democrats who we contributed to in their campaigns. The same Democrats who tell us over and over again that they’re with us, that they believe in collective bargaining, that they believe in unions.”

He also pledged that the unions would fight this arrangement “to the bitter end.”

“We deserve better in Massachusetts. Working families lost collective bargaining rights in Game 1 of this budget process. It’s on to the Senate, then conference, then the Governor. Working people need to know who is for our right to collectively bargain and who is not.”

It was unclear if state Senate President Therese Murray would allow the budget to proceed.

May 3, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | Leave a comment

Corporate Crime of the Century Portrayed as Conspiracy Theory

NPR Ombudsman Says No Response Allowed to Mass Transit Mess Up

By RUSSELL MOKHIBER | May 3, 2011

The NPR Ombudsman says that no response will be allowed to a story about mass transit in Los Angeles.

On April 21, 2011, NPR’s All Things Considered ran a story about how – after a fifty year absence – light rail is coming back to Los Angeles.

NPR reporter Mandalit Del Barco reported that eighty years ago, electric mass transit dominated the city.

“By the roaring 1920’s, more than 1,000 miles of electric trolley lines and train rails ran through the ever-expanding Los Angeles,” Del Barco reported.

But then in the middle of the century, the electric trolley cars disappeared.

Why?

“LA replaced the last of its streetcars with a web of freeways and bus lines,” Del Barco reported. “That led to conspiracy theories that the streetcars were dismantled by private companies who stood to profit – General Motors, Standard Oil and tire companies. That villainous plot figured into the 1988 movie ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit.'”

In fact, it was more than just conspiracy theories.

It was an actual federal crime that led to the destruction of the nation’s electric mass transit.

The companies involved were indicted, convicted, and fined for destroying the nation’s electric mass transit systems.

Del Barco says she was familiar with the criminal history of the case, but didn’t report it.

We asked the NPR Ombudsman’s office to investigate and issue a clarification – at least tell NPR’s listeners that it wasn’t just a conspiracy theory – that it was an indicted and convicted federal crime.

The Ombudsman office said they would look into it.

Then, late last week, we got an e-mail from the NPR Ombudsman’s office.

“Our office talked to the reporter and editor of the piece,” wrote Lori Grisham of the NPR Ombudsman’s office. “They understand your concerns, but do not believe a correction is warranted. Time is one of the main constraints when it comes to producing a radio story and they were trying to condense a great deal of history into a small amount of time.”

Grisham passed along this from Jason DeRose, NPR’s Western Bureau Chief:

“The piece makes clear there had been better public transit in LA and that it was dismantled. We chose not to describe that demise in detail. There were many, many unproven allegations of conspiracy and two official fines. We chose to characterize the numerous unproven allegations as conspiracy theories to lead into the Roger Rabbit tape.”

Grisham ends her e-mail: “I apologize that NPR will not run a correction. Thank you again for taking time to contact us.”

And thank you Lori Grisham for looking into this.

But that’s just bad form – and one reason why America is angry with NPR.

We sent you the documented proven history of the criminal activity.

And still, Jason DeRose says that there were “many, many unproven allegations of conspiracy and two official fines.”

What gives?

This was proven and convicted criminal conduct.

There was nothing unproven about it.

In fact, the destruction of the nation’s electric mass transit system was perhaps one of the most egregious – and underreported – corporate crimes of the century.

Brad Snell is also not happy with the NPR Ombudsman’s decision.

Snell is in the final stages of writing a history of General Motors.

It will be published in 2013 by Knopf.

“Under our celebrated system of laws, the US Justice Department’s allegation of conspiracy by defendants General Motors, Standard Oil of California, and Firestone Tire to monopolize the sale of buses, fuel, and tires by eliminating electric transit was transformed from theory to fact upon their conviction by a Chicago jury in US District Court on March 19, 1949,” Snell told Corporate Crime Reporter. “That judgment was affirmed on appeal (186 F.2 562 (7th Cir. 1951)) and a further appeal by defendants to the US Supreme Court was denied (cert den. 341 US 916), leaving the judgment and convictions in National City Lines as final matters of settled fact and law.”

“In 1990, the Honorable George E. MacKinnon, Senior Judge of the US Court of Appeals in Washington DC, had occasion to review the entire trial record in the National City Lines case,” Snell said.

His conclusion appeared in the Washington Legal Times on May 7, 1990.

“That Chicago trial resulted in criminal conspiracy convictions of the General Motors Corp., Standard Oil of California, and the Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. for their concerted effort to replace electric streetcars with buses in numerous large and small cities,” Judge MacKinnon wrote.

“It is not a theory,” Snell said. “These are not ‘unproven allegations of conspiracy.’ It has been settled judicial fact for more than half a century. Beyond a reasonable doubt, as affirmed by the federal courts, and after denial of further review by the Supreme Court of the United States, it is an established and incontrovertible fact that General Motors, Standard Oil of California, and Firestone Tire conspired to replace electric transit in cities throughout America in order to effect a monopoly in the sale of buses and related products.”

“To suggest otherwise is to debase and mock our revered and time-honored system of American jurisprudence,” Snell said.

It is unconscionable that the NPR Ombudsman will not even consider running a response.

Russell Mokhiber edits the Corporate Crime Reporter.

Source

May 3, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Environmentalism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Republican and Democratic Plans for Healthcare Misguided

Privatization Will Accelerate Costs and Deaths

By Margaret Flowers / Dissident Voice / April 28th, 2011

Leadership in Washington recognizes the damage our soaring health care spending is doing to our entire economy. Although their rhetoric differs, recent budget proposals from both Republicans and Democrats mistakenly place the blame on Medicare and Medicaid. Cuts to and privatization of these important public insurances will place us on a dangerous path that will leave health care costs soaring and more patients unable to afford necessary care.

Medicare and Medicaid must be left out of the discussion entirely until leadership has the courage to address the real reasons why our health care costs are rising, the toxic environment created by investor owned insurances and the profit-driven health care industry.

Health care spending in the United States is the highest in the world and in some cases is two times higher than spending in other industrialized nations, which achieve nearly universal coverage with better health outcomes than the U.S. Our soaring health care costs outpace our growth in GDP, inflation and wages. By any measure it is an unsustainable situation.

If we look at the various health care models in the United States, we find that the rise in spending is lower for traditional (non-privatized) Medicare and Medicaid than it is for the private sector. Our public insurances are our most efficient insurances with administrative costs of around 3%, despite the fact that they cover our most vulnerable and least healthy populations. Administrative and marketing costs for private plans are 15% or more, and the plethora of private plans further increase cost and complexity as patients and health professionals try to navigate their arbitrary and ever-changing rules.

Medicare and Medicaid are the victims of our current fragmented and profit-driven model of paying for health care which has resulted in high prices for health services and medications.

Private health insurers are financial institutions designed to create profit by obstructing, denying and restricting access to health care. They add no value to our health and in fact their business practices have polluted health care financing causing all insurances to adopt their practices in order to ‘compete’. They have also fragmented the health care market and thus the ability to negotiate for fair prices for goods and services leading to the highest prices for pharmaceuticals and procedures.

The commonsense solution is to eliminate wasteful and costly private health insurance and adopt a universal health care system modeled on the strengths of Medicare and given the power to negotiate for reasonable prices.

It is counterproductive to even discuss cuts to Medicare and Medicaid before addressing the fundamental reasons for rising costs. Yet, both Democrats and Republicans have focused on cuts to Medicare and Medicaid in their budget proposals.

The Ryan budget proposal, the Path to Prosperity, would fully privatize Medicare by moving to a voucher system in 2022 forcing all seniors to purchase private insurance. The vouchers are not designed to keep up with the rate at which health care costs are increasing so that over time seniors will either have to pay more out of pocket for health insurance premiums or will choose skimpier insurance plans that leave them unprotected should they have a serious illness or accident. Nearly half of Medicare enrollees have an income that is less than twice the federal poverty level and so have little room to absorb an increased share of health care costs.

Medicaid is significantly limited under the Ryan budget proposal which plans to cut overall Medicaid spending by $800 billion over ten years and change to block grants for each state. Block grants will mean that individual states will continue to be under economic pressure to limit who and what services are covered. As fewer are covered by Medicaid, they will have to either purchase private insurance through the exchanges or either seek a waiver from or be penalized for not purchasing insurance.

The Obama administration supports cuts to Medicare through the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) which is tasked with keeping per capita Medicare spending below a target level which is set to be lower than the current rate of health care cost inflation. Rather than blatantly privatizing Medicare as called for in the Ryan proposal, the President’s plan will slowly strangle Medicare leaving seniors struggling to find physicians able to care for them.

The IPAB was actually created in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The President’s budget proposal would increase the power of the IPAB to cut Medicare costs. Medicaid spending is also capped under the President’s budget.

Sadly, the Peoples Budget put forth by the Congressional Progressive Caucus rubberstamps the President’s approach to cutting Medicare and Medicaid spending.

Underneath cuts to Medicare and Medicaid is a dangerous trend of increasing privatization of health care in the U.S.

There is a growing trend to put more of our population into private insurances and a growing privatization of our public health insurances. Over the past few years as the number of people able to afford employer sponsored health insurance has fallen, private health insurance profits have continued to grow as they move into providing insurance to or administering plans for the Medicare and Medicaid populations.

The ACA puts more people into the private insurance market by mandating that all uninsured who do not qualify for public health insurance purchase private insurance through the exchanges starting in 2014 and subsidizes the purchase of private insurance using public dollars.

Half of the newly insured under the ACA are eventually supposed to come from an expansion of Medicaid eligibility. However, the Department of Health and Human Services has already allowed state expansions in Medicaid coverage to lapse. A recent White House Fact Sheet also supported allowing states to place their Medicaid population into private insurance through the health insurance exchanges.

Privatization of health care is a failed experiment in the United States.

The United States differs from other nations in allowing investor-owned corporations to profit at the expense of human suffering and lives. After decades of experience with this unique privatized model of financing health care, the results are clear and startling.

The United States has the highest per capita health care costs, the highest prices for medical goods and services (and lower overall usage rates) and no control over health care spending. Despite attempts to patch the current health care situation, the number of uninsured and those with skimpy health insurance that leaves them unable to afford health care or at risk of medical bankruptcy continues to grow. Suffering and preventable deaths are higher in the U.S. than in other industrialized nations.

In addition, there have been no significant gains in important measures of health such as life expectancy and infant and maternal mortality rates. Our health disparities continue to grow, especially for those who have chronic conditions. And our health care workforce continues to be inadequate as health professionals quickly burn out from trying to practice in our complex and irrational health care environment.

It is time to recognize the failure of the market model of paying for health care and embrace comprehensive and effective health reform. The model for our ‘uniquely American’ solution lies in traditional Medicare, a single payer health system for those who are 65 years of age and over. Since its inception 45 years ago, Medicare has lifted seniors out of poverty and improved their health status.

Physicians for a National Health Program advocates for an improved Medicare for all health system, one that builds on the strengths of Medicare such as its universality, administrative efficiency and the patient’s freedom to choose a health provider, and also corrects the weaknesses of Medicare such as the lack of comprehensive benefits, out of pocket costs and low reimbursement rates.

Both Democrats and Republicans are missing the point by putting the emphasis on controlling Medicare and Medicaid costs without effectively addressing the reasons for our rising health care costs. Rather than embracing the Republican rhetoric which blames our public insurances, Democrats would do well to call out the real reason for our health care spending crisis, our current fragmented and profit-driven model, and advocate for a national improved Medicare for all.

Margaret Flowers, MD is a pediatrician who serves as the Congressional Fellow for Physicians for National Health Program.

April 28, 2011 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Chavez vows to spend oil windfall revenues on social programs

RIA Novosti | April 23, 2011

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced that extra income from the country’s oil exports will be allocated for social spending.

Venezuela, South America’s biggest oil producer, has been receiving sharply higher income from its oil exports in recent months. Global prices on Venezuelan oil averaged $107 per barrel last week, while the 2011 state budget was balanced with the $40 per barrel benchmark.

“I have signed a decree that authorizes spending additional revenues from oil sales on the implementation of various social programs for the country’s population,” Chavez, who will seek re-election next year, said on national television on Friday.

The decree primarily hikes the so-called oil windfall tax, introduced by Chavez in 2008, from 60 percent to 95 percent on revenues from oil prices higher than $100 per barrel, giving Venezuela’s socialist leader enough room to conduct populist policies.

Chavez said the new law would allow the government to allocate additional $100 million on public housing projects and raise salaries nationwide.

He also predicted that war in Libya would drive oil prices up in the near future.

Venezuela produces about 3 million barrels of oil per day and sells almost half of it to the United States. U.S. oil futures closed at $112.29 on Thursday.

April 24, 2011 Posted by | Economics | Leave a comment

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