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
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The Climate Debt & Copenhagen
The growing divide between the rich nations and those of the developing world over climate change erupted into full view this week, as poor nations staged a walkout at the Copenhagen Climate Summit. Citing the failure of rich nations to agree to a committment to continuing the Kyoto Protocols, the bloc of mostly African nations dubbed the G-77, staged a walkout, throwing the conference into chaos.
But in reality, the rift over Kyoto is only a symbol of a much larger issue. Poor nations, who stand to be the most affected by climate change, understand quite well that they are being punished by a global crisis they did not create. And they are standing up defiantly to the industrialized nations, who share the overwhelming responsibility for the dumping of pollutants into the atmosphere, to not only do more to curb their greenhouse gas emissions and reduce their gigantic carbon footprint, but to shoulder the financial burden that the poor nations now face in trying to react to climate change. Unlike the industrialized world, where denying man-made climate is a luxury, in many poor nations the all-too real effects are already being felt--threatening to bring famines to some, and to drown others in rising sea-levels. This "climate debt" has pushed itself to the front of the Copenhagen talks, as the smaller poorer denizens of the world now take their larger industrialized neighbors to task.
On Nov. 23rd award-winning journalist Naomi Klein sat down with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! to discuss the climate debt, and the growing call by many poor nations for reparations.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Skewed Priorities
Think you're hit hard by the current economic meltdown? Those across the globe, suffering under neoliberal trade policies, IMF/World Bank "restructuring," and soaring food prices are welcoming us to the party. Not surprisingly, as bailouts in astronomical figures are thrown about by elites at home and abroad to rescue the global financial sector, the worst-off among us get nothing. A recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies finds that "the approximately $4.1 trillion that the United States and European governments have committed to rescue financial firms is 40 times the money they’re spending to fight climate and poverty crises in the developing world." Seeing as how the West is directly implicated as a causative agent in these countries' climate and poverty crises, such funding would hardly be charity.
Link to full report here.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Simple and Important Victories
In all the celebrating and the shock… I'd forgotten about the many simple but crucially important victories this election would mean. And then I went to The Nation, and read this peice by Barbara Crosette:
In the Senate, Obama and Joe Biden have been supportive of programs for women--Biden co-authored the Violence Against Women legislation--and the ban on UNFPA is expected to be lifted early, along with what is known as the "global gag rule" introduced at a population conference in Mexico City in the Reagan administration that prevents US aid to any organization worldwide that condones abortion.
Just this past April, I wrote a blog about the Global Gag Rule, how it is leading to maiming and death, and what a change away from right wing reactionary politics in the White House could mean to millions of poor women worldwide. Nope, Obama ain't perfect. And there'll be a lot of pushing to get him on the progressive track, but the repealing of the GGR is a definite victory.
And for that alone, we can be thankful.
Below the fold, Barabra Crossette takes a look at a few more.
UN: Hope that America Rejoins the World
The World Reacts
By Barbara Crossette
November 5, 2008
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081117/crossette3
Jubilation should be the order of the day at the United Nations when an American who is also a son of Kenya and a child of Indonesia is elected president of the most powerful country in a world in need of healing. But while there is quiet joy and relief at the victory of Barack Obama, there is also a strong undercurrent of caution. Is the end of an unfriendly Republican era enough in itself to bring the United States back? Or have the Democrats, the heirs of the UN's founders, drifted too far from internationalism?
Much has been written in recent years about America "rejoining the world." Nowhere more than at the UN have Washington's bullying tactics and stunted, provincial vision of global challenges cast such a pall over international cooperation. Here, the United States is close-up and personal. After the naming in Washington of a new secretary of state, the appointment most eagerly awaited at the UN is that of the next American ambassador.
Peter Maurer, Switzerland's ambassador to the UN, says that what he hears among his diplomatic colleagues is a plea for trust to be restored between the US and the UN. There are the wounds of the Iraq war, and there is skepticism about the motives of Washington when politicians talk about UN reform. "The new administration will find a kind of window of opportunity because there is enormous goodwill around the UN to see and to hear some new voices" Maurer said. But the UN as well as the US will have to work on closing the rift, he added.
The world of the United Nations is divided into two distinct camps. The people of the headquarters Secretariat and the various agencies are recruited or appointed international civil servants who are expected to leave their nationalities behind and work for a global constituency. Many of them fail to meet that test, but that's another story. Separate from them are the diplomats who represent the 192 member nations. Their missions are in essence embassies to the UN and their views, at least formally, would reflect those of their governments.
To the foreign diplomats based in New York, perhaps surprisingly, the ambassadors sent to the UN by the Bush administration have generally been respected and liked, from John Negroponte and John Danforth to Zalmay Khalilzad, the first Muslim to represent the US in New York. John Bolton was the exception, but his period as ambassador was relatively brief and he was regarded as competent even by some who found him undiplomatically abrasive and driven blindly by his distrust of internationalism and rigid defense of American sovereignty.
Samir Sanbar, a former UN under secretary general for communications who now publishes a gossipy newsletter, unforum.com, describes the mood in the Secretariat this week as "caught between hope and apprehension." He says that the organization remembers the Clinton years, when the White House backed away from some important international commitments and crudely dumped a secretary general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, out of what appeared to be domestic political skittishness.
Middle Easterners (Sanbar is from Lebanon) also see no real possibility of change in regional policy in the Mideast, he said. Not long ago, before the election, a Brazilian diplomat remarked that there is concern about the Democrats' aversion to free trade. A lot of Indians liked the Republicans because they gave New Delhi a nuclear supply deal that may have killed the nonproliferation treaty.
Maurer, an expert in international law, said that a hoped-for thaw in US-UN relations would need to translate into action. "We all know what some of the concrete issues are, where many delegations would hope that a new administration would eventually set some priorities," he said. "This goes from climate change to engagement on a balanced nuclear disarmament, nonproliferation, policy. It goes to a new engagement for multilateral human rights, approaches which we certainly missed. New ideas, new approaches might be extremely welcome."
A list of international agreements rebuffed by the US awaits the Obama-Biden administration, beginning with the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty against nuclear weapons development, which the Clinton Administration shrank from sending to a hostile Congress. Also under Clinton, the US signed but never ratified the 1998 treaty creating the International Criminal Court, the first permanent tribunal designed to deal with perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. In 2001, the Bush administration rescinded even the US signature and set out to undermine the court. Now, without standing in the court, Washington is in the awkward position of wanting the president of Sudan to be tried there for the horrors of Darfur.
The United States also opted out of joining the Human Rights Council, created in 2006 to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission. An early decision will have to be made on whether to vie for a seat in the new year.
On climate change, the US has not joined the Kyoto Protocol, which sets binding targets for reducing greenhouse gases in industrialized countries. The agreement, due to expire in 2012, is scheduled to be renegotiated next year at a global conference in Copenhagen. Strong leadership and active American participation will be needed to draw in major developing nations that have so far refused to be bound by internationally agreed limits.
The UN seems to have been a bone thrown by Washington to the ideological right. After the Security Council refused to endorse the American invasion of Iraq, Republicans excoriated the UN and Secretary General Kofi Annan for his opposition to the war and on whom, with more than a hint of revenge, they tried to pin responsibility for corruption in the Iraqi "oil for food" program a few years later. That the secretary general had no authority over the Security Council and that almost all the corruption turned out to have been found in corporations operating outside the formal system, whose rules Council members failed to enforce, were conveniently overlooked.
Sanbar says that the current secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, whom the US (and particularly Bolton) propelled into office in 2007, may be wondering what will happen when and if he seeks a second five-year term. He will have to open channels to the Democrats.
The UN Population Fund may have the most to gain in the short term from the Democratic victory. Since 2002, the Bush administration has barred American contributions to the fund, known as UNFPA, on specious claims that it was involved in programs in China that included forced abortions--claims the State Department argued were not true. The cumulative loss to UNFPA neared $300 million this year, at a time when maternal mortality remains high and family planning programs, in great demand in poor nations, are falling well behind funding campaigns for fighting HIV-AIDS.
In the Senate, Obama and Joe Biden have been supportive of programs for women--Biden co-authored the Violence Against Women legislation--and the ban on UNFPA is expected to be lifted early, along with what is known as the "global gag rule" introduced at a population conference in Mexico City in the Reagan administration that prevents US aid to any organization worldwide that condones abortion.
With the new administration, the broader American opposition to social programs in the UN system may end or be greatly diminished. The US has been in league with the Vatican and conservative Islamic countries on women's reproductive rights. It has failed to ratify the 1979 Convention on All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (along with nations such as North Korea and Iran) and is only one of two countries (Somalia is the other) not to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Maurer said diplomats who watched the presidential debates this year with great interest noticed that the UN did not figure in the candidates' foreign policy messages. Ignoring the UN has become bipartisan. Reluctance to make commitments "went far beyond the President Bush administration," he said. "There has to be something in the American political fabric which produces these opinions."
Advances in universal human rights, international criminal law and accountability in the UN system all depend on American involvement, Maurer said. "There is no doubt that if you want to have functioning multilateralism you have to have the United States engaged and on board. If this is not happening, you are immediately in the vicious circle because then the results of negotiations will always be weaker if the US is not pushing within the institution, at the table."
Monday, February 25, 2008
The High Price of Chocolate
child cocoa worker, Ivory Coast
Chocolate- its one of nature's perfect foods. It delights our senses. Some say it has "curative" properties. Even our bodies crave it once we've tasted it. And this Valentine's day the chocolate industry is expected to net over $400 million in sales for the sweet substance. Yet there's a bitter side to the chocolate trade, one that involves child labor, poverty and the exploitation that seems to be par the course in our new global economy.
West Africa supplies some 70% of the world's cocoa beans. Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) alone accounts for 40%. And although the cocoa industry netted billions in profit just this past year (one company, Cargill, reported $2.7 billion alone), the living conditions for the farmers who work cocoa on plantations or small house hold plots are dismal.
As Christian Parenti writes: "Working and living conditions are brutal. Most villages lack electricity, running water, health clinics or schools. And to make ends meet, underage cocoa workers...spend their days wielding machetes, handling pesticides and carrying heavy loads."
Some have called what is going on in the Ivory Coast forced child labor. Others have equated it to slavery. How do big cocoa companies get away with this? Well for one, as Parenti writes, they can always claim they aren't directly involved:
"The big cocoa exporters - Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM, Fortune 500), Barry Callebaut and Saf-Cacao - do not own plantations and do not directly employ child workers. Instead, they buy beans from Ivorian middlemen called pisteurs and treton. These middlemen own warehouses and fleets of flatbed trucks that travel deep into the jungle to buy cocoa from the small independent farmers who grow most of the crop. But labor and human rights activists charge that Big Chocolate has an obligation to improve working conditions on the farms where so many children toil. They argue that the exporters and manufacturers bear ultimate responsibility for conditions on the farms because they exert considerable control over world cocoa markets, essentially setting what is called the farm gate price."
Secondly, they can claim that they have fixed the problem and are working on it. This isn't a new issue after all. Some seven years back, after the plight of West African cocoa farmers was made more widely known, public outcry resulted in the threat of regulation of the industry. U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) introduced legislation that would have demanded chocolate be labeled, similar to the Kimberly process for conflict diamonds. But, as Parenti writes, "The industry fought back, and a compromise was reached establishing a voluntary protocol by which chocolate companies would wean themselves from child labor, then certify that they had done so."
By getting out in front of the issue the industry managed to scrap the labeling process. Instead there was a promise of "public reporting by African governments, third-party verification and poverty remediation by 2005." Much like the controversial Kimberly process, by 2005 it seems not much was done. Pleading for time, the cocoa industry managed to get the protocol extended for three more years until July 2008. "To turn up the heat," Parenti says,"the U.S. Department of Labor contracted with Tulane University to monitor progress." And it is from this Tulane report that we today realize, near nothing has really changed.
Parenti in his article writes:
"Researchers found that while industry and governments in West Africa have made initial steps, such as establishing task forces on child labor, conditions on the ground remain bad: Children still work in cocoa production, regularly miss school, perform dangerous tasks and suffer injury and sickness. The report criticized the governments of Ivory Coast and Ghana for lack of transparency. And it said the industry's certification process "contains no standards."
What's worse, in 2002 the once "stable" Ivory Coast tumbled into chaos after electoral politics turned into conflict and warfare between factions in a divided country. Like diamonds in Sierra Leone and rich minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo, cocoa became the means for those with weapons to accrue power, wealth and more arms. According to the London based Global Witness in 2007, government and rebel leaders in Ivory Coast, "both siphoned off millions...from the cocoa industry to finance the 2002-03 civil war." Thus cocoa growing, already an exploitative enterprise, gave way to what some called "Blood Chocolate."
Today that war is over, with both sides accepting a disquieting peace, backed up by the presence of UN troops and former coloniser France. The war however has become a convenient excuse for the chocolate industry, who say the conflict "hampered their efforts to eradicate child labor." In the meantime, business goes on as usual, while the industry claims to either be taking steps (often ineffectual and farcial) or unable to do anything.
So what is the answer to all this? Well there has long been a movement "fair-trade" chocolate, where lovers of the sweet substance can refuse to buy from producers and exporters involved in exploitation and child labor. But the issue extends further than this. Groups like Equal Exchange, who specialize in importing/buying "fair-trade" chocolates, tend to do so from democratically run co-ops, where farmers can grow and sell their products in community agri-groups. However both the cocoa industry, and the Ivory Coast government who are bolstered by the multi-billion dollar trade, engage in acts of intimidation and harrassment to discourage such ventures. Cocoa industry bigs like Cargill even set up exploitative loan-schemes similar to sharecropping, where poor farmers must borrow against the beans they produce--often finding themselves stifled in a cycle of debt they can never manage to break out of.
At the moment, fair-trade chocolate in Ivory Coast has made little headway. It accounts for about 1% of exports. As Parenti writes, "A more effective way to combat child labor would be for the government of Ivory Coast to invest some of the revenue it gets from high taxes on cocoa exporters in education and social services to help poor farmers."
When asked what would improve things, the farmers also know the answer--"better prices." Better prices for cocoa, which we consume so cheaply, would mean more money for them. A little more money paid on our end would would mean less of a dependence by farmers on cocoa corporations like Cargill and the ability to send children back to schools instead of the cocoa farms. More money would mean those same farmers have a greater ability to press their own government to involve itself in fair trade.
In the meantime, back here, on the other side of the trade, the Tulane report is due to come up in Congress. The extension for the big companies and the Ivory Coast to implement policies more beneficial to their farmers and less apt to employ children is up for renewal. Contacting the sponsors of that legislation, Rep. Engel (D-NY) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and other concerned bodies, Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and voicing our concerns seems a fitting bit of political action in this campaign season.
*Much of this post taken from Christian Parenti's article Chocolate's Bittersweet Economy.
Listen to Parenti debate the Cocoa Industry on Democracy Now!
Friday, June 1, 2007
Does the Media Hate John Edwards?
Yeah, it seems like an odd enough question. But watching the news in the past few months, it's been on my mind. So when media critic Jeff Cohen, who gave us the inside scoop on corporate journalism in his book Cable News Confidential, asked the same thing in a recent article, it was a relief to know it wasn't just me--and I was in good company. Ever since Senator John Edwards announced his intent to run for the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, it seems he can't catch a break--at least in the eyes of the mainstream press. I personally haven't chosen anyone to back in this political season's *ridiculously* early horse race, so this isn't an endorsement of anyone. But while attacks on all the Democratic nominees seems especially high and full of fluff (Hillary Clinton's "likability" factor or fabricated controversies over Barak Obama's "blackness"), it seems as if John Edwards can't do anything to satisfy the mainstream media. When he's not almost shut out from the race by those in awe of celebrity status politicians, the news media seems to be only concerned with his haircut, speaking engagement fees and other matters far divorced from important issues. So again I ask, does the media hate John Edwards? And if so--why?
Edwards problems began the day he announced his candidacy. Unlike the much covered debuts of Hillary and Obama, it received little press in comparison. And it wasn't as if Edwards announcement didn't serve up a heck of a photo-op. He made his announcement at ground-zero of the newfound (and as easily forgotten) symbol of American disparity when it comes to wealth, class and race--the still flood-ravaged Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans that the debacle following Hurricane Katrina made famous to the world. There, surrounded by volunteer students, dressed in blue jeans, and taking part in a clean up, Edwards engaged America in a frank discussion of poverty, his stance against any escalation of the Iraq War and plans for future policies. Yet this did little to get him further press coverage--that was, until he got a haircut.
Politico blog first broke the news on April 16, noting that Edwards "spent $400 on February 20, and another $400 on March 7, at a top Beverly Hills men's stylist, Torrenueva Hair Designs." Internet right wing gossip machine Matt Drudge would link it as: "REPORT: John Edwards' $400 haircut..." The Los Angeles Times picked it up by April 17 with, "Two $400 stylings may cost John Edwards' campaign in shear mockery." And it went downhill from there. From mainstream television news, to the usual culprits like FOX, to local and national print papers, the Edwards haircut story was everywhere. Stories and editorials, like Maureen Dowd's dig that he would be the "metrosexual in chief," derided Edwards masculinity and attempted to twist the "$400 haircut" into an important factor in presidential politics.
As Eric Boehlert at Media Matters pointed out, this news obsession ignored anything of substance said or done by Edwards, in favor of discussions of overpriced haircuts:Fact: According to TVeyes.com, CNN aired more references to John Edwards' haircut than it did to Edwards' reaction to the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the ban on so-called partial birth abortions.
More than a month later the media hounds were ready to pounce again, after a May 21 entry to the San Francisco Chronicle's Politics Blog showed Edwards had received $55,000 for a speaking fee at UC-Davis. A week after that he would be attacked for having worked at a hedge fund.
Yet all these stories hardly seem worth the press, once anyone bothers to look into them further. Edwards $400 haircut may seem absurd--but so do the several thousand dollar suits worn by George Bush. And at the least, he decided to reimburse his campaign for them. The $55,000 speaking fee might seem pricey--but is put into context when you realize GOP presidential candidate Rudolph Guiliani was paid $100,000 for a speech at Oklahoma State University in 2006 (he would charge another $47,000 for use of a private jet). The fact that the cost of Edwards speech at UC-Davis was offset by sponsorship and ticket sales (which would make up the bulk of his fee) also goes unacknowledged by the press. When Edwards was asked if he had to join a hedge fund to learn about financial markets, he replied rather matter-of-factly, "How else would I have done it?" Even I, a staunch critic of neoclassical economic policy understands that answer, and realizes this is a non-story. As for the other charges of financial excess, Edwards is certainly no more of an offender than anyone else. So what is really going on here? Why this pile on specifically on Edwards, and no one else?
The answer has to do with what Edwards claims to stand for: the poor. Something about his backdrop of Katrina has put a bug up the collective rectum of the mainstream press. In their attacks on Edwards they seem to be saying,"how dare this guy remind us of poverty!" This is a common theme in America, where sight of the poor, as a reminder of inequality, normally annoys people--who in turn blame the poor for being seen or heard and forcing anyone to confront the matter. For Edwards, a rich guy who wants to talk about poverty, the media seems to find this unbearable. It is the one constant thread running through the words of the critics. They call Edwards' poverty talk a "scam"; he's called a "hypocrite"; he is attacked relentlessly.
Is the media really that concerned about Edward's alleged "hypocrisy," or do they just have such contempt for the common people and the poor, that they feel the need to lash out at anyone who dares to speak up for them?
Jeff Cohen alludes to as much in his article, Are Media Out to Get John Edwards?:I'm growing quite suspicious about the media barrage against Edwards, who got his wealth as a trial lawyer suing hospitals and corporations. Among "top-tier" presidential candidates, Edwards is alone in convincingly criticizing corporate-drafted trade treaties and talking about workers' rights and the poor and higher taxes on the rich. He's the candidate who set up a university research center on poverty. Of the front-runners in presidential polls, he's pushing the hardest to withdraw from Iraq, and pushing the hardest on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to follow suit. Given a national media elite that worships "free trade" and disparages Democrats for catering to "extremists" like MoveOn.org on Iraq withdrawal, the media's rather obsessive focus on Edwards' alleged hypocrisy should not surprise us.
So this then is Edwards great sin, for which the media has seen fit to crucify him. Given the fact that they ignore stories on poverty altogether, it's not that the punditocracy want Edwards to be poor in order to talk about the issue--it's more likely they'd rather not have him talk about it all.
Well it seems that despite their best attempts at ignoring him or smearing him, these tactics haven't had the same effect as on past media attacks on Democratic candidates--most notably Al Gore and John Kerry. He is striking a chord with unions, getting a boost from those concerned about poverty and his ability to admit his wrongs over the Iraq war vote.
As Bloomberg news noted this week:For now, there's little visible impact on his standing. A survey conducted May 12-16 by the Des Moines Register showed Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, leading the Democratic pack with 29 percent support, a statistically significant edge over Illinois Senator Barack Obama, 45, who received 23 percent. New York Senator Hillary Clinton, 59, was backed by 21 percent in the survey of 400 likely Democratic caucus-goers, which had a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points.
What this may show is that the petty snipes of the mainstream media and their neglect of the poor, are little match for actual discussion and plans that focus on the issue of wealth disparity itself--which, for all his faults, John Edwards at the least chooses to address.
