One of the problems that occurs during discussions of global poverty (on the rare occassion they take place at all), is the seeming cognitive dissonance between the way our global economy works and the direct result it has on the crisis of developing countries. Nothing speaks to this as well as malnutrition, where market liberalization and forced structural adjustments have wreaked havoc with food availability throughout the poor nations of the global south. Whether it's Haiti, who 30 years ago grew its own rice but has been today forced to beg for food aid, or the very man-made 2005 famine in Niger, the pattern remains constant. Then, as now, the stewards of the global economy are willfully blind to their hands in these crises, and often--fantasically--actually insist on even more of the free market's hand to fix the disasters: as if trying to douse a fire by pouring more gasoline.
Laurent Pinsolle at the french magazine Marriane2 tackles this circular logic, deconstructing a recent article in the conservative magazine The Economist that attempts to tout how market liberalization can save the starving masses of the world it helped to create. Read it all here.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Free Market Famines
Friday, June 12, 2009
Free Trade Massacre
The notion that so-called "free trade" neo-liberal policies have led to increased poverty throughout the developing world is one that has ample evidence to back it up. It isn't so far-fetched to say that by marginalizing the world's poor through these economic policies has increased the global mortality rate. Recent occurrences in Peru however underline that the effects of free trade need not be so indirect:
During the last week, deep in the Peruvian Amazon, confrontations between nonviolent indigenous protesters and police have left up to 100 people dead. The vast majority of the casualties are civilians, who have been conducting peaceful demonstrations in defense of the Amazon rain forest. For almost two months, as many as 30,000 indigenous people have been blocking road and river traffic, demanding the repeal of presidential decrees issued last year to facilitate implementation of the US-Peru FTA.
Read rest of article below:
US-Peru FTA Sparks Indigenous Massacre
Thursday 11 June 2009
Tom Loudon, t r u t h o u t | Report
During the last week, deep in the Peruvian Amazon, confrontations between nonviolent indigenous protesters and police have left up to 100 people dead. The vast majority of the casualties are civilians, who have been conducting peaceful demonstrations in defense of the Amazon rain forest.
For almost two months, as many as 30,000 indigenous people have been blocking road and river traffic, demanding the repeal of presidential decrees issued last year to facilitate implementation of the US-Peru FTA. According to the indigenous leaders, several of these decrees directly threaten indigenous territories and rights. After having attempted several times to negotiate with the government the repeal of the most egregious of the decrees, and faced with a permanent influx of extraction equipment into the region, the people decided it was imperative to "put their bodies in front of the machines" in order to prevent this equipment from entering their territory.
On Friday, June 5, the government decided the protests needed to end and launched an aggressive assault against the people protesting on the road outside of Bagua. The dislocation was conducted from helicopters and the ground, with police and army using automatic weapons and heavy equipment against people armed with only rocks and spears. As videos, photos and testimonies from the region slowly emerge, it is clear that this was designed to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, and deter those in other regions from continuing protests. Pictures circulating on the Internet depict snipers in uniform firing at protesters from the streets, tanks and from on top of buildings. On Saturday, in Lima, Peru's capital, a large spontaneous demonstration in support of the Amazonian indigenous was broken up by police.
Read full article here.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Paper Planes- This is a Stick Up
MEND Rebels in the Niger Delta
This past week, off the waters of Somalia, the rapacious forces of globalization and wealth-inequality came face to face with the discontented, dispossessed and "unwashed masses" of the world. The "natives" are restless, and the old order that was able to beat them into submission has waned greatly. Better brace yourselves. Because as the effects of climate change, a breakdown in the world economic order and the destabilizing legacy of rapacious free-market capitalism take hold, the world's poor are declaring "we aren't going to starve, or go quietly into the night."
"Pirate skulls and bones
Sticks and stones and weed and bombs
Running when we hit 'em
Lethal poison through their system"--Paper Planes, M.I.A.
More after the fold...
The Somali pirates have been slain and an America captain freed. Newspapers and even the US President hail it as a victory against "thugs." Navy snipers become heroes as they kill three Somali brigands in a brief firefight and capture a fourth--who is all of 16-years-old; his dead comrades were between 17-19 years of age. But this celebrated "win" against rag-tag aggressors (young ex-fishermen and militants who faced off against the US Navy) won't solve the underlying issues at the heart of this modern "asymmetrical economic warfare."
Fractured Somalia, has suffered for decades, the country shattered by Cold War machinations and then unable to knit itself together in the postcolonial world. The one recent glimmer of hope for a stabilized state was dashed, when in 2007 the US decided to back an illegal war of aggression by Ethiopia that put Somalia under occupation of its long-time nemesis. The alleged goal was to rid the "country" of the United Islamic Courts (UIC), an alliance of religious groups that had managed to rout "warlords" who were being backed by US money and weapons--yes, the same warlords that had fought the US to a standstill in 1993; opportunity and convenience creates strange bedfellows. The US, declaring the UIC was linked to terrorism, decided that Somalis (who over all generally welcomed the religious confederation) could not be allowed to have an Islamic state--like say Saudi Arabia.
This resulted in a two year battle between indigenous insurgents and Ethiopian occupiers (who only withdrew this past February), during which hundreds of Somalis were killed. During that time the US made several airstrikes in the impoverished country in a hunt for "terrorists," which often resulted in higher civilian casualties.
Meanwhile, as this political chaos reigned, European and Asian ships continued to dump toxic waste in Somali waters and make off with hundreds of millions of dollars worth in illegal fishery. Somalia had no actual functioning government to stop this abuse, though in all fairness the functioning governments of other poor nations haven't been able to protect their waters (or their fish) from wealthy interlopers either. Pushed out of work by these inter-connected forces Somali fishermen, with the aid of normally landlocked militias, took to the seas following an age old adage: "If I can't work to make it, I'll rob to take it." And tankers making their way across nearby heavily trafficked water routes laden with goods--from weapons to food--have been hijacked and ransomed. Somalis jokingly refer to it as their "local tax." And these "pirates," who now bring in money to enrich both themselves and impoverished communities, enjoy a great deal of local sympathy and support.
"All I wanna do is (BANG BANG BANG BANG!)
And (KKKAAAA CHING!)
And take your money"
Similar situations have occurred on the other side of Africa, where in Nigeria militant groups of young men--grown weary of exploitation and environmental devastation of their land by international oil companies--turned their guns not just on the complicit Nigerian government, but on the imported foreign workers. As recently as this past January, a group calling itself MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) took several British hostages. Their demands are that more of Nigeria's oil wealth be pumped into the region, instead of to foreign investors. Other local groups had peacefully called for similar attention to their plight in the past. But as with Somalia's ex-fishermen, it seems increasingly that cries from the "Third World" go ignored, until somebody threatens to pick up a gun.
"Our policy on kidnapping high value oil workers from Western Europe and North America remains unchanged and will continue to form an integral part of our pressure strategy in the emancipation struggle in 2009," MEND said in a recent statement.
While Somalia and Nigeria offer extreme examples where many factors converge to create desperation, there are other signals throughout the world that the poor have decided to fight back against the larger global forces they see at the heart of their suffering. In 2008, from Haiti to Burkina Faso, people pushed to the brink took to the streets as food became scarce or too overpriced. Termed "food riots," these acts of definance ranged from loud rallies to full blown rebellions. And, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has warned to expect much of the same in 2009.
Most in the "Third World" understand quite well that this food crisis is not the result of some natural disaster like a drought or a plague of locusts. As pointed out by Anuradha Mittal, director of the Oakland Institute, this is a tragically man-made phenomenon:Over the last few decades, the United States, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have used their leverage to impose destructive policies on developing countries. By requiring countries to open up their agriculture market to giant multinational companies, by insisting that countries dismantle their marketing boards and by persuading them to specialize in exportable cash crops such as coffee, cocoa, cotton and even flowers, they have driven the poorest countries into a downward spiral.
Of course piracy, armed militants and food riots are acts of desperation that are in the end untenable, as the powerful forces of the global system will eventually come down with full fury. A more constructive channeling of these frustrations has come with less violence in other places. Central and South America, fed up with IMF structural adjustments and Milton Friedman economic policies, has seen a wave of elections that have brought left-leaning governments to power which have openly challenged the existing order and promised greater distribution of wealth. The latest has been El Salvador, which elected Mauricio Funes, the candidate of the former leftist guerilla FMLN, ending decades of right-wing US backed oligarchies.
Contrary to what many may think, this blog isn't cheering on piracy, riots and armed militants--at least not whole-heartedly. Though there is an innate temptation to root for the underdogs, history has taught us, sadly, that situations with groups of disenchanted young men, heavy weapons and lots of anger, even with the best of intentions, rarely turn out well in the long run. And besides, who wants some guy that you can barely understand waving a Kalishnikov in your face, holding you hostage and demanding some exorbitant ransom, when all you signed up for was an off-shore stint for a corporation that's probably exploiting you in turn? Neither am I asserting that these "Third World" rebels are all noble underdogs. Circumstances like these don't breed simplistic heroes for easy romanticism.
Rather my long-winded point is that instead of giving each other high-fives for offing some "bad guys" from some impoverished part of the world, we'd do well to try to put ourselves in their shoes and listen to their grievances--even if we don't wholly condone their actions. Perhaps in those places where the poor can have a voice and a space to turn away from desperation, there can be a challenge to the status quo through some type of peaceful democratic means. That of course, comes with its own challenges, because the old order does not so easily surrender power--as learned in Venezuela and Bolivia. In places where these aren't options, and a mixture of destabilizing interventions, globalization policies and rapacious exploitation continues, while the voices of the dispossessed are stifled, Somalia's "pirates" may be only a taste of what's to come. Because for the 3 billion people in the world who subsist on $2 a day or less, and the billions more who hover just above that extreme poverty, quietly starving to death is no longer an acceptable option--even if we seem fine with it.
"Some some some, some I murda'. Some, some, I let go."
Paper Planes Video
Thursday, March 5, 2009
CNBC's "Bad Behavior"
Watching CNBC over the past few years has been a grueling process. The all powerful financial network has at every conceivable turn done its best to protect the interests of rapacious free market capitalism and the economic ruin it has caused. As responsible economists warned of the dangers ahead, those wishing to escape reality, could always turn to CNBC to watch a host of pundits declare that all was fine, as an endless parade of financial spokesmen from AIG to Bear Stearns were afforded airtime to keep up their bluff. Without a hint of humility, CNBC has now decided to donate its time to scoffing at any form of progressive economic agenda--from greater regulation to health care reform. One of their latest gems was on Feb. 19, when CNBC reporter Rick Santelli launched into a raving attack on the Obama administration's mortgage recovery plan for foreclosed homeowners. Santelli accused President Obama of "promoting bad behavior," and led Wall St types behind him in a booing chorus. Mind you, this is the same Wall St that has been demanding trillion dollar bailouts from taxpayers, the ultimate reward for the ultimate "bad behavior." When Jon Stewart's The Daily Show invited Santelli he first agreed, then suddenly backed out last Friday--as if sensing the trap.
Not one to let those who put themselves up for public mockery off so easily, Jon Stewart decided to not only take on Santelli, but pull back the curtain on CNBC's history of spectacularly ill-informed predictions as well as their abetting role as an apologist mouthpiece for irresponsible financial giants.
The San Francisco Chronicle called it a "beatdown." Huffington post termed it an "evisceration." I just like to call it, just desserts that have been long overdue.
Friday, December 19, 2008
The Other Human Rights
The 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be rightly lauded as a landmark in international attempts to formalize the rights and responsibilities between governments and their citizens....however, we need only glance at a few statistics; almost three billion people live in poverty on less than US$2.50 a day, and the number of hungry actually increased this year to nearly one billion people. As the world reaped record levels of harvests in 2008, the most basic right to food is still denied to around 1 in 6 people on the planet.
Human Rights. Say the word and most of us think of numerous rights we celebrate as part of Western liberalism--freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to vote, freedom of expression and other democratic principles. We judge other countries on how they meet these rights, and are quick to condemn them when they fall short. But those rights only make up a part of human rights. Another set of human rights, we rarely talk about or ignore altogether. These are the rights that men, women and children be afforded enough food to eat, clean water to drink, habitable shelter, freedom from want or poverty. Those rights we have decided are more so privileges, to be pitied or helped along with charity, but not the same as the democratic ideals we uphold. So we can spend all our time righteously condemning the jailing of one dissident, and somehow ignore millions suffering from malnutrition, disease and other maladies. That many of these lack of human rights also relate to our standard of living--from free trade imbalances to resource exploitation--probably pushes us into greater silence.
The article below by Robin Willoughby, a Research Officer at Share the World's Resources (STWR), points out this glaring discrepancy in our notions of human rights.
Human Rights... For Who?
Human rights are increasingly viewed through the rhetoric of military intervention, democracy and political freedom, whilst the UN's pivotal role in securing social and economic rights in the developing world continues to be marginalised, argues Robin Willoughby.
http://www.stwr.org/the-un-people-politics/human-rights-for-who.html
10th December 08 - Robin Willoughby - STWR
The 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be rightly lauded as a landmark in international attempts to formalize the rights and responsibilities between governments and their citizens. If we ask if the Declaration has proven a success, however, we need only glance at a few statistics; almost three billion people live in poverty on less than US$2.50 a day, and the number of hungry actually increased this year to nearly one billion people.[1] As the world reaped record levels of harvests in 2008, the most basic right to food is still denied to around 1 in 6 people on the planet.[2] But how did we get to this situation?
An answer to this can be simply put: on the international stage, the world's most powerful nations have prioritised those human rights associated with political freedom and peace and security, at the expense of those rights related to economic justice.
In the sphere of peace and security, the richest nations have used their political and military clout to pursue a highly defined and specific human rights agenda, highlighting the importance of themes such as intervention, democracy and political freedom. This trend is illustrated by the creation of such bodies within the United Nations (UN) as the Peace Building Commission and Counter-Terrorism Committee, as well as by the growth in interventionist peacekeeping missions. At the same time, more human rights bodies have been created under the purview of the UN Security Council, such as ad hoc tribunals to address human rights abuse in places such as Rwanda and Yugoslavia.[3]
International discussions on human rights are invariably focused on such themes as the danger posed by terrorism, threats to democracy in Zimbabwe or the need to invade Iraq in the name of human rights. This constricted view has also led to the widespread incorporation of military terminology into human rights semantics. ‘Humanitarian intervention' can be used to describe a military invasion; ‘muscular humanitarianism'[4] has become a label for aid and reconstruction work; and US-based human rights advocates recently described the need for a ‘peace surge'[5] to solve complex political problems in Darfur.
New actors have moved into a combined human rights and humanitarian fold. The EU is developing a rapid reaction force as part of its human rights-based foreign policy, while NATO has incorporated a ‘structural intervention force' to intercede in countries that are perceived as ‘failed states', humanitarian emergencies or threats to peace and security. The World Bank has also entered into this new arena, incorporating a reconstruction and intervention arm into its operations, as witnessed in the aftermath of the South East Asian Tsunami in 2006.
The result of this prioritisation of democracy, peace and security and ‘humanitarian' causes can be seen in a split between those human rights laws most palatable to the Global North, and those most urgently needed by the majority world. Unlike the one-sided prioritisation of individual human rights and security issues by the largest powers, economic and social rights have been severely sidelined.
The largest financial powers, led by the US and EU, now channel economic policy and implementation through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Through these bodies, their founding members are able to impose a vision of human rights and economic development that conforms to their own geo-strategic and political vision. According to this thinking, the removal of trade barriers, growth of capital accumulation and empowerment of business will lead to an inevitable ‘trickle-down' effect to the poor to secure human rights.
In contrast, the UN remains heavily marginalised as an actor within economic affairs. The UN agencies vested with the authority to ensure economic rights and freedoms have been downsized, marginalised or silenced as a voice in policy making. The UN Economic and Social Council - the UN body endowed with the authority to promote economic rights and full employment - has never been fully enabled to fulfil its mandate. Under pressure from the larger economic powers, much of its authority has passed to the preferred international institutions of the Global North: the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
A similar fate has befallen the UN Conference of Trade and Development (UNCTAD). During a series of conferences in the 1990s, the most powerful members of the UN - led by the US - threatened to cut funding to UNCTAD unless it conformed to the dominant ideological thinking of economic globalisation. Initially created in 1969 to offer a voice to the developing world and a negotiating forum on economic policy between rich and poor nations, the forum has now been sidelined and merely offers ‘technical advice' to poorer countries.[6]
Other UN agencies such as the UN Development Program (UNDP) are currently threatened with further funding cuts or marginalisation. Last year, under a barrage of criticism from the US media (described as ‘rising like Frankenstein's monster to challenge the power of the UN Secretariat'[7] and as ‘cavorting with a roster of thug governments'[8]) the US Congress cut its funding to the agency, diverting the money instead to UN bodies that fit with the US vision of development and human rights, namely the UN Entrepreneurship Initiative and UN Democracy Fund.
Such a marginalisation of the UN role in economic development has resulted in an almost complete lack of intellectual pluralism in discussions of our future direction to secure economic rights. The model of free-market economic growth and the ‘trickle down' theory of wealth to secure basic needs have been broadly accepted and institutionalised, at a time when poverty, inequality and hunger are increasing for the majority of the world according to the UN's own figures, in large part because of these very policies.
With human rights viewed through such a narrow prism, some analysts suggest that both the UN and other aid agencies could be perceived as a ‘Trojan Horse' for the economic and political interests of the most powerful nations.[9] Following from this logic, it is perhaps little surprise that there has been an increasing distrust of UN staff and humanitarian workers in the field.
Rather than a focussing on a narrowly imposed view of human rights, the anniversary of the UN Declaration gives us the opportunity to take stock of global priorities. An agenda that promotes peace, security and democracy has resulted in a form of ‘military humanitarianism' and security-based human rights that play into the hands of the most economically powerful. In addition, the promotion of the economic rights of the majority world has been institutionalised in the World Bank and IMF, leading to a highly ideological attempt to secure basic human rights.
To respond to these challenges, international governments should equally prioritise all of the rights and responsibilities in the UN Declaration to include those on economic justice, such as the right to adequate living and social protection, fair remuneration, and the right to adequate food and shelter. Such a holistic approach would help government and international bodies to tackle other complex human rights problems such as peace and security, terrorism and gender relations.
A rejuvenated UN has a key role to play in such a prioritisation of basic human rights. To achieve this aim, the UN should regain its independence as a forum for economic policy making. The organisation can only play a central role in global governance if it can act independently and incorporate different visions of economic development, rather than follow the ideological constraints of the World Bank and IMF. A much needed rethink on the future world economic direction would aid the UN's image in the eyes of those countries most in need of its help.
The recent coordinated bailout of the global banking system shows that if international governments feel there is sufficient cause then they can coordinate and act with remarkable speed. The ‘bottom billion' excluded from the benefits of economic globalisation are now waiting for their own government bailout. It is through these policies that we can achieve the wishes of the original drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: political pluralism, peace and security and true economic and social justice for all.
Robin Willoughby is Research Officer at Share the World's Resources (STWR), an NGO advocating for essential resources such as food, water and energy to be shared internationally. He can be contacted at: robin(at)stwr.org.
References
[1] Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion. ‘The Developing World Is Poorer Than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight against Poverty', The World Bank Development Research Group, August 2008. See also Adam W. Parsons, 'Do the Poor Count? ', Share the World's Resources, 15 September 2008.
[2] FAO, ‘Number of Hungry People Rises to 963 Million', Press Release, 9 December 2008.
[3] See Aurelio Viotti, ‘In Search of Symbiosis: The Security Council in the Humanitarian Domain,' International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 89, No. 865, March 2007.
[4] Walden Bello, ‘The Rise of the Relief-and-Reconstruction Complex', Journal of International Affairs, Spring/Summer 2006, Vol. 59, No.2.
[5] Enough Project, ‘US Activists Call on Obama to Lead a ‘Peace Surge' in Darfur', 6 November 2008, retrieved 9 December 2008,
[6] See Boutros Boutros-Ghali, ‘Reinventing UNCTAD,' South Centre, 20 February 2006.
[7] Claudia Rossett, ‘Ban the Old Ways: UN Ethics Test,' in UN Lives on the Dark Side, IO Watch Note 2007.
[8] Claudia Rossett, ‘Ban the Old Ways: UN Ethics Test,' in UN Lives on the Dark Side, IO Watch Note 2007.
[9] Amii Omara-Otunnu, ‘Western Humanitarianism or Neo-Slavery?', Black Star News, 7 November 2007, see also Alex de Waal, ‘No Such Thing as Humanitarian Intervention,' Harvard International Review, 21 March 2007 and Noam Chomsky, ‘Humanitarian Imperialism: The New Doctrine of Imperial Right', Monthly Review, September 2008.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
So Long, And Thanks for all the Fish!
So were the final words of the dolphins as they left a doomed Earth in Douglas Adam's Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And that's pretty much what the Bush administration will be telling all of us come January 2009. The White House Budget Office has estimated the government's deficit will surge past a half-trillion dollars next year--amounting to a staggering $482 billion.
Oh but it gets better...
According to reports, "That figure is sure to rise after adding the tens of billions of dollars in additional Iraq war funding it doesn't include, and the total could be higher yet if the economy fails to recover as the administration predicts."
In fact, the AP points out, "The administration actually underestimates the deficit since it leaves out about $80 billion in war costs. In a break from tradition — and in violation of new mandates from Congress — the White House did not include its full estimate of war costs."
In case any of you have not been paying attention, that bungled Iraqi colonial venture is currently costing the US an estimated $341.4 million per day.
The irony of course is that when George W. Bush was appointed to the presidency by the Supreme Court, he inherited a budget of unprecedented surpluses due to a 10-year period of uninterrupted economic growth. Sure much of that owed to exploitative neoliberal policies at home and abroad, and all boats certainly did not "rise" (Sorry Mr. Friedman, world ain't so flat after all) . But it's not as if the Bush administration made any improvements. In fact, they actually made things worse. Continuing to aggresively push the same "free market" ideologies of his predecessors, Bush also pushed through a 10-year, $1.35 trillion package of tax cuts--mostly for the rich and upper class.
In typical form, presidential candidate Sen. John McCain used the news to rail against profligate government spending. "I have an unmatched record in fighting wasteful earmarks and unnecessary spending in the U.S. Senate, and I have the determination and experience to do the same as president," Sen. McCain said. In GOP speak this generally means, cutting funding to social services utilized by ordinary citizens even during an economic downturn. The one service Sen. McCain doesn't intend on cutting are the reported multi-trillion dollar tax cuts he plans on doling out to the wealthy.
Democratic contender Sen. Barack Obama promised as well to cut "wasteful spending." But to his credit, he identified this as closing corporate loopholes and rolling back the Bush-era tax cuts on upper brackets that Sen. McCain favors. At the same time he is promising to make "health care affordable" as well as engaging in a middle class tax cut (sorry poor folks, you guys never qualify much for tax cuts; just hold onto that third job, if you can find it). How the Illinois Senator plans to do this however, and at the same time expand the military (and by extension the already bloated military budget) while prosecuting a war in Afghanistan and maybe even Pakistan, remains to be seen.
All of which brings me to my main point...
Now I'm no economist, and far be it from me to tell the experienced parties where to take their budget cutting scissors when it comes to reducing the deficit. But last I checked, the US in 2008 spent a staggering $623 billion on military funding--that's $123 billion more than the entire rest of the world *combined.*
And as massive as these numbers are, they don't even include the billions given away yearly in military funding to "friendly" regimes--from Pakistan to Israel--that the US doles out each year.
To put this in terms that are plain and relatable, in Fiscal Year 2007, 20% of American tax dollars went to health research and services; 12% went to respond to poverty; 11% went to interest; general government operations accounted for 7%; all of 3% was spent on community and economic development, including social programs; scientific and environmental studies was afforded another 3%, while international diplomatic aid accounted for 1%. The remaining 43% almost half of the federal budget, went to military and war funding. That's your money folks--our money.
Now call me a crazy man, but perhaps if we shaved just a little off the top there--heck a whole lot off the top--it might make a dent in our deficit and other economic woes? Instead of cutting funding to things that save and enrich lives (health care, education, etc.) how about we scale back on the things that take lives?
Unfortunately, as Glen Greenwald over at Salon.com put it, there seems to be a "bi-partisan consensus" on US military spending. Outside of restricted and muzzled agitators like Rep. Dennis Kucinich or Ralph Nader, there is literally no debate or criticism of America's out-of-control military spending. In fact, there only seems to be an appetite--from both parties--for more.
Perhaps in the end this is part of that "military-congressional-industrial complex" that long haired hippie and kook President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about. But that's another post, for another blog...
*Special thanks to Glen Greenwald's The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending and the Friends Committee on National Legislation for the information. God Bless the Quakers!
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Food Riots- How We Starve the World, And Why They're Not Taking It Anymore
Protestors in Mexico bang empty pots to protest soaring food prices- part of a larger global crisis that has struck much of the developing world.
Food Riots. They sound like something out of a medieval history book describing the dark side of feudalism, or perhaps more aptly a story set in some dystopian apocalyptic future. But these events are in the here and now. In Haiti food riots have claimed dozens of lives, as people unable to afford basic nutrition needs were forced to make cakes of mud to fill their stomachs. Food riots broke out in Egypt for several days after food prices soared. Similar events shook cities in Mexico, Morocco, Cameroon, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Uzbekistan and elsewhere. And though underreported, these events have been ongoing for well over a year. The UN is now warning that food riots could spread and cause global instability. "The reality is that people are dying already in the riots," said Jacques Diouf, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Though the media has at least stopped to pick up on the story (in-between the horse race), there has been little actually done to explain the causes of the current crises. Perhaps it's because, like so much in our increasingly connected world, food riots in far flung developing countries turn out to have just about everything to do with financial institutions and a global economy run by rich nations like ourselves--who have been watching a steady increase in our own food prices. As Bill Quigley at Counterpunch reports in the following reposted article, we're starving the world and they've just about had enough.
30 Years Ago Haiti Grew All the Rice It Needed. What Happened?
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots
By BILL QUIGLEY
http://www.counterpunch.org/
Riots in Haiti over explosive rises in food costs have claimed the lives of six people. There have also been food riots world-wide in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivorie, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.
The Economist, which calls the current crisis the silent tsunami, reports that last year wheat prices rose 77% and rice 16%, but since January rice prices have risen 141%. The reasons include rising fuel costs, weather problems, increased demand in China and India, as well as the push to create biofuels from cereal crops.
Hermite Joseph, a mother working in the markets of Port au Prince, told journalist Nick Whalen that her two kids are “like toothpicks” they’ re not getting enough nourishment. Before, if you had a dollar twenty-five cents, you could buy vegetables, some rice, 10 cents of charcoal and a little cooking oil. Right now, a little can of rice alone costs 65 cents, and is not good rice at all. Oil is 25 cents. Charcoal is 25 cents. With a dollar twenty-five, you can’t even make a plate of rice for one child.”
The St. Claire’s Church Food program, in the Tiplas Kazo neighborhood of Port au Prince, serves 1000 free meals a day, almost all to hungry children -- five times a week in partnership with the What If Foundation. Children from Cite Soleil have been known to walk the five miles to the church for a meal. The cost of rice, beans, vegetables, a little meat, spices, cooking oil, propane for the stoves, have gone up dramatically. Because of the rise in the cost of food, the portions are now smaller. But hunger is on the rise and more and more children come for the free meal. Hungry adults used to be allowed to eat the leftovers once all the children were fed, but now there are few leftovers.
The New York Times lectured Haiti on April 18 that “Haiti, its agriculture industry in shambles, needs to better feed itself.” Unfortunately, the article did not talk at all about one of the main causes of the shortages -- the fact that the U.S. and other international financial bodies destroyed Haitian rice farmers to create a major market for the heavily subsidized rice from U.S. farmers. This is not the only cause of hunger in Haiti and other poor countries, but it is a major force.
Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed. What happened?
In 1986, after the expulsion of Haitian dictator Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loaned Haiti $24.6 million in desperately needed funds (Baby Doc had raided the treasury on the way out). But, in order to get the IMF loan, Haiti was required to reduce tariff protections for their Haitian rice and other agricultural products and some industries to open up the country’s markets to competition from outside countries. The U.S. has by far the largest voice in decisions of the IMF.
Doctor Paul Farmer was in Haiti then and saw what happened. “Within less than two years, it became impossible for Haitian farmers to compete with what they called ‘Miami rice.’ The whole local rice market in Haiti fell apart as cheap, U.S. subsidized rice, some of it in the form of ‘food aid,’ flooded the market. There was violence, ‘rice wars,’ and lives were lost.”
“American rice invaded the country,” recalled Charles Suffrard, a leading rice grower in Haiti in an interview with the Washington Post in 2000. By 1987 and 1988, there was so much rice coming into the country that many stopped working the land.
Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste, a Haitian priest who has been the pastor at St. Claire and an outspoken human rights advocate, agrees. “In the 1980s, imported rice poured into Haiti, below the cost of what our farmers could produce it. Farmers lost their businesses. People from the countryside started losing their jobs and moving to the cities. After a few years of cheap imported rice, local production went way down.”
Still the international business community was not satisfied. In 1994, as a condition for U.S. assistance in returning to Haiti to resume his elected Presidency, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced by the U.S., the IMF, and the World Bank to open up the markets in Haiti even more.
But, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, what reason could the U.S. have in destroying the rice market of this tiny country?
Haiti is definitely poor. The U.S. Agency for International Development reports the annual per capita income is less than $400. The United Nations reports life expectancy in Haiti is 59, while in the US it is 78. Over 78% of Haitians live on less than $2 a day, more than half live on less than $1 a day.
Yet Haiti has become one of the very top importers of rice from the U.S. The U.S. Department of Agriculture 2008 numbers show Haiti is the third largest importer of US rice - at over 240,000 metric tons of rice. (One metric ton is 2200 pounds).
Rice is a heavily subsidized business in the U.S. Rice subsidies in the U.S. totaled $11 billion from 1995 to 2006. One producer alone, Riceland Foods Inc of Stuttgart Arkansas, received over $500 million dollars in rice subsidies between 1995 and 2006.
The Cato Institute recently reported that rice is one of the most heavily supported commodities in the U.S. -- with three different subsidies together averaging over $1 billion a year since 1998 and projected to average over $700 million a year through 2015. The result? “Tens of millions of rice farmers in poor countries find it hard to lift their families out of poverty because of the lower, more volatile prices caused by the interventionist policies of other countries.”
In addition to three different subsidies for rice farmers in the U.S., there are also direct tariff barriers of 3 to 24 percent, reports Daniel Griswold of the Cato Institute -- the exact same type of protections, though much higher, that the U.S. and the IMF required Haiti to eliminate in the 1980s and 1990s.
U.S. protection for rice farmers goes even further. A 2006 story in the Washington Post found that the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all; including $490,000 to a Houston surgeon who owned land near Houston that once grew rice.
And it is not only the Haitian rice farmers who have been hurt.
Paul Farmer saw it happen to the sugar growers as well. “Haiti, once the world's largest exporter of sugar and other tropical produce to Europe, began importing even sugar-- from U.S. controlled sugar production in the Dominican Republic and Florida. It was terrible to see Haitian farmers put out of work. All this sped up the downward spiral that led to this month's food riots.”
After the riots and protests, President Rene Preval of Haiti agreed to reduce the price of rice, which was selling for $51 for a 110 pound bag, to $43 dollars for the next month. No one thinks a one month fix will do anything but delay the severe hunger pains a few weeks.
Haiti is far from alone in this crisis. The Economist reports a billion people worldwide live on $1 a day. The US-backed Voice of America reports about 850 million people were suffering from hunger worldwide before the latest round of price increases.
Thirty three countries are at risk of social upheaval because of rising food prices, World Bank President Robert Zoellick told the Wall Street Journal. When countries have many people who spend half to three-quarters of their daily income on food, “there is no margin of survival.”
In the U.S., people are feeling the world-wide problems at the gas pump and in the grocery. Middle class people may cut back on extra trips or on high price cuts of meat. The number of people on food stamps in the US is at an all-time high. But in poor countries, where malnutrition and hunger were widespread before the rise in prices, there is nothing to cut back on except eating. That leads to hunger riots.
In the short term, the world community is sending bags of rice to Haiti. Venezuela sent 350 tons of food. The US just pledged $200 million extra for worldwide hunger relief. The UN is committed to distributing more food.
What can be done in the medium term? The US provides much of the world’s food aid, but does it in such a way that only half of the dollars spent actually reach hungry people. US law requires that food aid be purchased from US farmers, processed and bagged in the US and shipped on US vessels -- which cost 50% of the money allocated. A simple change in US law to allow some local purchase of commodities would feed many more people and support local farm markets.
In the long run, what is to be done? The President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who visited Haiti last week, said “Rich countries need to reduce farms subsidies and trade barriers to allow poor countries to generate income with food exports. Either the world solves the unfair trade system, or every time there's unrest like in Haiti, we adopt emergency measures and send a little bit of food to temporarily ease hunger."
Citizens of the USA know very little about the role of their government in helping create the hunger problems in Haiti or other countries. But there is much that individuals can do. People can donate to help feed individual hungry people and participate with advocacy organizations like Bread for the World or Oxfam to help change the U.S. and global rules which favor the rich countries. This advocacy can help countries have a better chance to feed themselves.
Meanwhile, Merisma Jean-Claudel, a young high school graduate in Port-au-Prince told journalist Wadner Pierre "...people can’t buy food. Gasoline prices are going up. It is very hard for us over here. The cost of living is the biggest worry for us, no peace in stomach means no peace in the mind…I wonder if others will be able to survive the days ahead because things are very, very hard."
“On the ground, people are very hungry,” reported Fr. Jean-Juste. “Our country must immediately open emergency canteens to feed the hungry until we can get them jobs. For the long run, we need to invest in irrigation, transportation, and other assistance for our farmers and workers.”
In Port au Prince, some rice arrived in the last few days. A school in Fr. Jean-Juste’s parish received several bags of rice. They had raw rice for 1000 children, but the principal still had to come to Father Jean-Juste asking for help. There was no money for charcoal, or oil.
Jervais Rodman, an unemployed carpenter with three children, stood in a long line Saturday in Port au Prince to get UN donated rice and beans. When Rodman got the small bags, he told Ben Fox of the Associated Press, “The beans might last four days. The rice will be gone as soon as I get home.”
Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He can be reached at quigley77@gmail.com People interested in donating to feed children in Haiti should go to http://www.whatiffoundation.org/
People who want to help change U.S. policy on agriculture to help combat world-wide hunger should go to:
http://www.oxfamamerica.org or http://www.bread.org/
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Capitalism- An Unsustainable System ?
We know that capitalism is not just the most sensible way to organize an economy but is now the only possible way to organize an economy. We know that dissenters to this conventional wisdom can, and should, be ignored. There's no longer even any need to persecute such heretics; they are obviously irrelevant. How do we know all this? Because we are told so, relentlessly...
So begins an article by Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin who dares to ask, in the midst of a capitalist nation, in a world where globalisation is a holy writ, whether that which we have now come to take as inevitable is the only choice. Have we really reached an "end of history" with the dominance of capitalism and "free markets"--when they seem to only reap rewards for a minority of people on the planet? Has the "defeat of communism" assured that capitalism will prevail, or do we dare to take a critical look at our system.
The drive to sustain capitalism is literally entrenched into our society. We learn from our youth that it is right and just. As we grow up, we're taught it's democratic--that the profit making of free markets is somehow intrinsically tied to liberty and freedom. And no wonder, as Lizabeth Cohen points out in her work A Consumers' Republic- The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, the "pursuit of prosperity" (through consumption) has become one in the same with the "pursuit of happiness."
As Jensen notes, we are told and taught to support capitalism as an inevitable and unquestionable economic strategy...
...typically by those who have the most to gain from such a claim, most notably those in the business world and their functionaries and apologists in the schools, universities, mass media, and mainstream politics. Capitalism is not a choice, but rather simply is, like a state of nature. Maybe not like a state of nature, but the state of nature. To contest capitalism these days is like arguing against the air that we breathe. Arguing against capitalism, we're told, is simply crazy.The 2003 PBS documentary Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World's Economy attempts to trace the rise of the current capitalist global system, starting in 1914 with the outbreak of WWI, through the Great Depression and WWII, culminating in the fall/failure of communist states and the dominance of the current political economic order. An informative piece, for all its attempts to analyze the breadth of prosperity and poverty wrought by globalization, the documentary still puts forth economic capitalism as the "central global reality." There is no actual questioning of the premises on which the system rests, but rather if it is "too complex to be controlled" and the means by which the "stakeholders...[will] devise new means to include the dispossessed."
The capitalist narrative, even when critically introspective, tends to go something like this: Capitalism is inherently good. Capitalism is forward-thinking, modern and progressive. Capitalism is inherently synonymous with freedom. Capitalism won a hard fought victory over varied systems that sought to threaten and defeat it, but it prevailed, and is thus the "natural" way of things. Sure it has flaws, generated by a few bad apples and for those unable to adapt. But it is still the most logical system--one that works. Compared with the disasters we saw in the Soviet Union and other communist states, how can anyone say otherwise? It allows us to have laptops to write our blogs upon, and inspires us to dream of working our way up the economic ladder.
Yet capitalism also gave us wholesale chattel bondage and global imperialism, as seen in the West's trans-Atlantic slave trade and European colonisation. Though some economic historians have tried to point out that slavery and colonialism are antiethical to the workings of capitalism, and thus why both ended, the fact remains that the capital gained through these events are themselves tied to the rise in capitalism. It is also the inherent manipulation of resources and labor to enrich a few. We see this in the exploitative practices of neoliberal globalization and privatization that disenfranchises workers and the forces of labor both in the U.S. and in countries around the globe. With the "spectre of communism" gone, who is there now to blame for the growing disparity of wealth in the world? Most states--including the most impoverished in Africa, Asia and Latin America--follow a capitalist model, complete with economic reforms engineered by industrialized western nations. And yet the majority of the people who live within them--the majority of the globe--still live in poverty. And matters have gotten worse in the past decade, not better.
Jensen lays out three broad charges at capitalism, highlighting how its stated productive aims clash with some of our key touted principles:
Capitalism is admittedly an incredibly productive system that has created a flood of goods unlike anything the world has ever seen. It also is a system that is fundamentally (1) inhuman, (2) anti-democratic, and (3) unsustainable. Capitalism has given those of us in the First World lots of stuff (most of it of marginal or questionable value) in exchange for our souls, our hope for progressive politics, and the possibility of a decent future for children.Is Capitalism inhuman? Sometimes it certainly seems so, when you watch a documentary like Independent Lens Black Gold, which tells the story of the $80-billion-plus coffee industry, where Ethiopian farmers (in the land where the coffee bean originated) are paid such low wages that many have been forced to abandon their fields. It looks so when you see the result of NAFTA, forcing farmers in Central America off their land and into the precarious and dangerous migrations across increasingly hostile borders of the U.S. in search for exploitative low wage jobs. It certainly gives that sense of inhumanity when you see big pharm companies fight to keep their HIV medicines high priced, denying access to the sick and dying of the world that cannot afford it. Inhumanity seems to abound when you see the global masses of the impoverished--all in countries that now follow capitalist neoliberal policies--who live off less a day than we spend for breakfast.
Half the world's population lives on less than $2 a day. That's more than 3 billion people. Just over half of the population of sub-Saharan Africa lives on less than $1 a day. That's more than 300 million people. How about one more statistic: About 500 children in Africa die from poverty-related diseases, and the majority of those deaths could be averted with simple medicines or insecticide-treated nets. That's 500 children -- not every year, or every month or every week. That's not 500 children every day. Poverty-related diseases claim the lives of 500 children an hour in Africa.
We all admit that while we revel in capitalism, it's inherent profit-driven dictates clash against our inherent humanity, and cause us to wonder how such gross imbalance can occur, what brought it into being and--most disturbing--how is it that we endure and live with that reality each and every day?
Is Capitalism anti-democratic? You can get that idea when the push for profits outweighs the need for protection of the very individual rights democracy claims to rest upon. Even a self-described "communist" nation like China pushes this ideology, managing to blend the harsh nature of old-style Maoist "re-education camps" with 19th century style industrial capitalist "labor factories." The documentary China Blue details the life of Jasmine, one of the 130 million migrant workers on the move in China, who may end up in factories that manufacture goods--in this case jeans--for the West. In this symbiotic relationship that turns parasitic upon the masses, an anti-democratic system in China works in concert with an anti-democratic global capitalist system. China wants the profits of business; the Western companies push for cheaper and cheaper garments to maximize its own profits. All this leaves workers like Jasmine, who can work 17 to 20 hr days for meager pay, with no recourse. To do something democratic like form a labor strike is illegal in China, and that's precisely why multinational corporations take jobs from here and go there. All of this returns home to us, as the same forces that attempt to stifle economic democratic dissent overseas push for deregulation, privatization and a favoring of business over labor and individual rights.
And if the lack of economic prosperity, joblessness and homelessness that plagues us in the West is not enough to ponder the inhumane and anti-democratic nature of the system, think upon the many wars and military actions (covert and overt) that the U.S. has engaged in to sustain the capitalist order--often in the face of democratic principles. From the alliances between the United Fruit Company and the U.S. government in the Guatemala coup, to the experiments of neoliberalism once the deposed elected Salvador Allende was replaced with the CIA allied dictator Augusto Pinochet, to the CIA and the British SIS deposing of the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadeq of Iran and replacing him with the semi-monarchical Shah, to the present day oil driven wars and machinations carried bout by the U.S. and Western powers from Iraq to Nigeria, the capitalist economic order has been a key ally in militarism, and tied into that often unnamed "military industrial complex"--a term dreamed up by no less a "kooky leftist" than former Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Is Capitalism unsustainable? We may finally be willing to admit this to ourselves. As Global Warming has now become a household term, we are forced to question whether the way we live is healthy not just for our economy or individual nation-states, but the planet itself. A look at the oceans alone shows the dismal state of affairs. Giant 400-ft trawlers now "stalk" the seas, raking in something over 1 million pounds of fish a day. Nearly a third of this is discarded, dead, back into the ocean as "un-saleable." This means a staggering 50 billion pounds of fish are killed, churned to gore and thrown back into the ocean each year, simply to meet the profit demands of the global economic system. The fish industry calls this "harvesting" carried out by floating "fish factories;" others call them "killing machines."
As oceanographer Sylvia Earle points out in the PBS documentary Journey to Planet Earth: State of the Ocean's Animals:
Although we talk about harvesting the sea, it's a misuse of the word if ever there was a misuse. We don’t plant fish in the ocean. We go out like hunters and gatherers, track them down, find them, extract them. In half a century we have lost on the order of 90 percent of the big fish in the ocean. I say lost, actually, we haven’t lost them. We've consumed them. We’ve eaten them. We’ve captured them. Though our fish markets may give the impression of an inexhaustible resource, what we are really seeing is the consumption of the final 10 percent of the world's fisheries.The rapacious depletion and careless squandering of Earth's oceans has happened not because of a population explosion of humans, not over the vast course of humanity's time on this planet, but mostly within the last 50 years, to meet the economic profit-driven surplus and needs of a minority of the planet. In fact, these "fish factories" are devastating local fisherman--both off the coast of the U.S., and even worse in Africa, who simply cannot compete. The economic pressure this places on the coastal dwellers of regions like Senegal, spawn into food shortages, poverty and unrest--all the while robbing billions of a vital food source. Whether it is the oceans, forests, green-house gases or other aspects of the ecosystem, our planet can't sustain the current economic system much longer. Even if free market capitalism could live up to its dubious claims to "lift all boats" and we did live in the ideological economic World is Flat fantasy landscape of Thomas Friedman, we would rapidly deplete the planet of the resources needed to sustain the American-Western way of life for the 6 billion, and growing, members of the global community. As one scientist put it, we would literally need "three more Earths."
Or as Jensen puts it rather succinctly:
Capitalism is a system based on the idea of unlimited growth. The last time I checked, this is a finite planet. There are only two ways out of this one. Perhaps we will be hopping to a new planet soon. Or perhaps, because we need to figure out ways to cope with these physical limits, we will invent ever-more complex technologies to transcend those limits. Both those positions are equally delusional. Delusions may bring temporary comfort, but they don't solve problems. They tend, in fact, to cause more problems. Those problems seem to be piling up.
To further quote Jensen, "Capitalism is not, of course, the only unsustainable system that humans have devised... It's [just] the one that we are told is inevitable and natural, like the air." And herein lies my main point. In all honesty, I don't have definitive answers. Though I've studied my fair share of economic history, I am no economic theorist like Adam Smith or Karl Marx. I have no new and ground-breaking model or system for the world to follow. For the moment, most seem resigned to attempting to reform the system. We have devised, and continue to push, for ways to counteract the forces of "unchecked" capitalism, many of which (ironically) come from socialism--labor unions, medicare/universal healthcare, social security, pensions, government regulation, public welfare states, etc. Thanks to such movements and organizations, we have everything from the institution of child labor laws to some form of financial/health protection in old age. Many of these came about in the 1930s, as Franklin D. Roosevelt, reacting to popular calls for socialist upheaval in the midst of the capitalist wrought Great Depression of the 1930s, instituted New Deal policies based on co-opted socialist themes. Thus in irony, socialism (though rarely named, except by detractors) is seen as the cure, or at least quick patch, for rampant capitalism.
But even with reformation, we still need to ask some tough questions of the financial system we currently exist under, and take a look at its long range feasibility. Contrary to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's claim that when it comes to capitalism, "there is no alternative," we have a right, a responsibility, to do so. The global political economy need not be a fait accompli from which there is no turning back or dissent. One may agree with Jensen or not, but the real issue here is not so much the triumph of an economic ideology, but rather our blind belief in its alleged infallibility.
Read the full article by Robert Jensen: An Unsustainable System: Anti-Capitalism in Five Minutes.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
GOD: Creator, Savior, Free Market Capitalist
So the other day, I'm sitting watchin VH1 Soul (everything BET should be, but isn't) and there's a video by Common--one of the finest emcees out today--where he's performing before a live crowd. Being part lyricist and part philosopher, Common often prologues his songs with a bit of witty words on politics, spirituality, activism, etc. This time would be no different. Sometime during the performance, he urged people to give thanks to God that both he and they are able to live in a place where food and goods are bountiful--rather than in some of the more impoverished regions of the globe. Those words got me to thinking. Are the trappings of the modern Western world due to some benevolence of God? Is God a Free Market Capitalist who sends plauges of odious debt on poor nations and smites them with unfair trade practices? Is this a God who performs miracles through legacies colonialism and exploitation that blesses the West and curses the rest? Or are we trying to use "faith" to avoid an ugly truth.
To paraphrase and summarize, Common began to recount the many ills affecting much of the world--from Katrina to the Iraq War to global poverty. He then asked the crowd to count their own blessings, and to give thanks to "God" that we (presumably "we" in the West) are able to partake in such bountiful amounts of food, a higher level of living, Puma kicks and Ipods. Because, afterall, we could be as bad off as so many other parts of the world. To this Common was greeted by a round of applause from the audience. Watching through the flat screen of my television, I was only left frowning with alot of disturbing thoughts.
This is not a slight on Common, whose music I've enjoyed since he was Common Sense. But it is part of a larger issue that's troubled me all throughout this holiday season, including our current move towards the Greco-Roman derived New Year, where many will be giving their thanks and blessings for their fortunate lot in life.
If the reason we in the West are able to enjoy our Blackberrys and deck ourselves in diamonds or designer apparel is because of God--then I'm assuming this God figure is a free market capitalist who works through neoliberal trade policies that favor rich nations, destroying the fragile economies of poor countries, making them dependent on those who would exploit them, including helping to sow the seeds of conflict that always follows poverty and disease, and endorse past events from slavery to colonialism that helped set up this system to begin with.
Common's words, while superficially nice, seem to exist in a world of disconnection. There's a false ideology that the rest of the world is poor, simply because that's the way things are, or--even more disturbing--because some God entity has seen fit to bless the West and curse the rest. But this ignores the reality that in fact we are all very connected.
Poor nations are kept poor today because rich nations have made it so. They've been able to do so because a legacy of colonialism has allowed them to retain economic power, writing the laws of trade unfairly to benefit themselves and keep everyone else mired in poverty or something close. Its no coincidence that the nations that make up the G8 come primarily from the old colonial powers. It's no coincidence that many nations like those in Africa are in debt to the very nations that once conquered and held them as colonies. Without slavery, much of the West--including the US--would not exist as a power today, or perhaps have existed at all. Without colonialism, the riches of Britain and France and Belgium would not have come about. The divide of rich and poor on this planet is written in a history of blood and conquest, and its legacy continues with us strongly today. It is far from happenstance.
The God that supposedly favors the West must also not mind environmental destruction, as the US drains a vastly disproportionate amount of the world's resources. Today, the average US citizen consumes well over *thirty* times what the average citizen in the Third World does. The developed nations of the world account for only 20% of the global population, but are responsible for pumping out over 75% of the world's pollution and waste. The richest 20% of the world consumes some 86% of all the goods and services used. In short, we in the West are literally devouring the planet, and as the rest of the world tries impossibly to follow in our footsteps, we are depleting forests and oceans to feed our capitalist-driven gluttony. Global warming is but one of the side-effects we'll be reaping as a result.
Basically put, this is a vastly unfair world. And its not by coincidence that it is so. No, I'm not talking about some conspiracy theory where a few men get together and have secret meetings to decide the fate of the 6 billion and growing members of the global community. Those are fictitious tales created to deflect us away from our own responsibility. The truth is much more mundane and much more damning.
The world is unfair because of a global economic system maintained by trade agreements that are passed as we tune into American Idol; it's maintained everytime we buy a pair of sneakers or some clothing that is being sewn together by the desperate in places like the Saipan or Bangladesh; it's maintained by our desire for flashy diamonds that send the poverty stricken into war in Sierra Leone, and even the coltan in our mobile phones that help drive mining/resource wars in the Congo that kill millions; it's maintained by a massive arms trade, of which the US is remarkably the number one death merchant. It's the real world that we'd rather not see, as we don our little white ONE bands and try to act as if we are the saviors of the world's poor, and not a key factor in their continued existence. The troubling reality is that in some way, we're all complicit--even if by varying degrees of responsibility.
Lest I seem to be standing too high on my soapbox, let me state that I don't set myself apart here. I'm as much a part of the system as all else. And like everyone in this consumerist driven society, I want nice things too--and would rather not think about what has to be done in order to acquire it. But at the least I try not to delude myself, into believing the world that exists to benefit some today, while keeping others poor, is the work of some God entity.
Unless of course in the end, this God people worship in the West really is a God of free markets, neoliberalism, sweat shops, poverty and hunger--with prophets with names like Creflo Dollar, inducing their flock with divine pyramid schemes and Horatio Alger parables of eventual wealth. And if that's the case, then maybe we should think on overthrowing that God and replacing Him/Her/It with a better one. Or perhaps, if this is the best a God can inspire, maybe we could do without such a being at all.
