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Category: Neoliberalism

  • Governor Of New York Promotes School Privatization

    Public and private refer to two different things. Public and private are antonyms. Public refers to everyone, the common good, non-rivalry, inclusion, broad accessibility, transparency, and more. Private means that something is not for everyone, it is not for the common good, it is exclusive. Private can also mean confidential, secret, off the record, or privileged. Neoliberals regularly blur the critical distinction between public and private for self-serving reasons.

    One of the key features of privatization is that it shifts money and authority away from the public sector and into the hands of narrow private interests. In this way, privatization restricts and weakens the public while enriching and empowering narrow private interests. This is often done under the veneer of high ideals to fool the gullible. It is presented as a good thing, as a “win-win” for everyone. This disinformation is best captured in the notion of public-private “partnerships.”

    In two major pro-privatization moves, Governor Kathy Hochul of New York State recently announced that more public funds will be funneled to privately-operated charter schools in New York City. She also empowered the Mayor of New York City to continue to exercise mayoral control of New York City schools for four more years. Eric Adams, a retired police officer, became the mayor of New York City on January 1, 2022.

    Hochul nonchalantly repeated worn-out pretexts for sending more public money to privately-operated charter schools. This included throwing around words like “innovate” and “educational options,” which are straight out of the school privatization neoliberal playbook. Hochul seems to be unaware of the extensive research on the many problems in the crisis-prone charter school sector, as well as all the serious problems associated with government takeovers of public school systems.

    Thousands of students, teachers, parents, and education advocates in New York City and across New York State more broadly have been opposing charter schools and mayoral control of public schools for years. Their efforts and determination are relentless. The public does not support more anti-democratic arrangements and the gutting of public schools to enrich narrow private interests.

    Research and experience show that government takeovers of public school districts generally make everything worse. Their main benefit is for the rich who use mayoral control to restrict democracy and engage in neoliberal restructuring of public schools in the name of “improving schools,” which usually means creating more charter schools. For their part, charter schools, which are intensely segregated in New York City, have wreaked havoc on public schools while enriching major owners of capital. No amount of disinformation about increasing charter schools “to give parents choices” can cover up these harsh realities.

    Even more disturbing is the prospect of Governor Hochul raising the cap (limit) on the number of privately-operated charter schools than can operate in New York City. This will further degrade everything while funneling more public money into private hands. It will not serve public schools and the public interest in any way.

    Currently, there are about 270 privately-operated charter schools in New York City. The cap on charter schools in the City has been frozen for several years. Statewide, the charter school cap is set at 460. New York State passed its charter school law in 1998.

    For extensive data on poor academic performance in charter schools across the country, see Thousands of Charter Schools Perform Poorly (2019) and Widespread Poor Performance Persists in Charter Schools (2019). It should also be noted that many charter schools have inflated student waiting lists, which makes it look like charter schools are in greater demand than they actually are.

    School privatization in its many forms is a top-down neoliberal strategy, not a grass-roots pro-social phenomenon. The main way to improve education in New York City is to stop the flow of all public funds to charter schools and return control of public schools to the public. Private interests have no valid or legitimate claim to public funds, facilities, or authority.

    The post Governor Of New York Promotes School Privatization first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • COVID Shows It’s Time to End the Pharmaceutical Industry

    Protesters carry cardboard coffins along Whitehall during a protest against COVID-19 vaccine patents on October 12, 2021, in London, England.

    Eighty-four million Americans remain unvaccinated against COVID-19. Nearly no one has knocked on their doors to explain why a vaccine is a good idea. Even at this late date, now is a good time to start.

    As with COVID testing, thousands of newly hired community health workers are needed to hit the streets and back roads to convince people that vaccines are safe and necessary. Daily conversations, some over the course of many weeks, are needed to turn millions of skeptics or the disconnected into participants. This would be the kind of program the Biden administration proposed, if still in an inadequate form, for contact tracing before the inauguration and never pursued after.

    Certainly, the ongoing bloodbath — only inches deep but wide as a lake — isn’t just a matter of the present administration. Trump’s vindictive inaction helped kill half a million Americans the first year of the outbreak. Biden’s smug insufficiency, however, will likely add another half a million by spring. But more pointedly, it’s as much a matter of the U.S.’s structural decline that produced the holes in our public health coverage. Beginning nearly 50 years ago, public health was increasingly abandoned or monetized under the neoliberal program.

    Public health spending clearly saves lives. Ten years ago, health policy analysts Glen Mays and Sharla Smith found that U.S. mortality rates from preventable deaths — including infant mortality and cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer — fell between 1.1 to 6.9 percent for every 10 percent increase in local public health spending.

    Yet this crucial spending has dropped. In 2018, the Trust for America’s Health reported on the effective decline of public health funding.

    The report described the Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) Cooperative Agreement Program as the only federal program that supports state and local health departments to prepare for and respond to emergencies. Except for one-time bumps for the Ebola and Zika outbreaks, core emergency preparedness funding had been cut by more than one-third (from $940 million in 2002 to $667 million in 2017).

    The report went on to identify precipitous declines in public health funding at the state level. Thirty one states cut their public health budgets from FY 2015-2016 to FY 2016-2017, with spending lower that year than in 2008. The budget cuts during the Great Recession were never restored.

    The impact was felt at the local level, too. Local health departments cut 55,000 staff in the decade following the Recession. By this system’s logic, an acute emergency is also grounds for such cuts. Thousands of health staff were furloughed during the COVID outbreak — cuts attributed in part to declines in more lucrative elective surgeries. One in five health workers have left their jobs during the pandemic.

    The Trust for America report went on to describe the incoming disasters for which the U.S. appeared unprepared in 2018. They sound like headlines of the past year: weather disasters; flooding; wildfires; extreme drought; hurricanes; infectious disease outbreaks; and deaths of despair due to factors including racial disparities, opioids, and regional disparities that continue to drive distrust of government.

    Trust for America placed particular focus on pandemics and the need to fully fund the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, the Hospital Preparedness Program, the Project BioShield Act and PHEP.

    The report recommended increasing funding for public health at all levels of jurisdiction — federal, state and local. It called for preserving the Prevention and Public Health Fund, increasing funding to prepare for public health emergencies and pandemics, establishing a standing public health emergency response fund, and surge funding during an emergency to avoid the delays that were apparent in the Ebola outbreak, the swine flu pandemic, Hurricane Sandy and the Zika virus outbreak.

    Trust for America concluded with a recommendation for a national resilience strategy to combat diseases of despair, for preventing chronic disease, and for expanding high-impact interventions across communities.

    While it is important to consider recommendations for increased funding and preparedness, it’s also crucial to take a step back and consider the system under which these suggestions are being made. Trust for America’s recommendations were wrapped in the worst of language and precepts. The report accepted the class character of the state. Public health is a means of cleaning up messes that capitalist production produces. Public health outcomes were pitched in terms of returns on investment.

    All terrible. And yet, in the present context, such recommendations are radical, if only in pushing back against the damage of an empire at the end of its cycle of capital accumulation, organized around helping billionaires squeeze what’s left of the commons and turning decades of social infrastructure back into bunker money.

    Anti-Public Health — at Home and Abroad

    We find an analogous fallacy in U.S. COVID policy abroad. While the Biden administration has taken a stance in favor of waiving TRIPS rules against vaccine generics for COVID, tech billionaire and philanthrocapitalist Bill Gates, funding WHO efforts, effectively sets U.S. foreign policy on the matter.

    Gates declared in April that:

    there are only so many vaccine factories in the world and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines. And so moving something that had never been done, moving a vaccine from, say, a J&J factory into a factory in India, that, it’s novel, it’s only because of our grants and our expertise that can happen at all. The thing that’s holding things back in this case is not intellectual property, there’s not like some idle vaccine factory with regulatory approval that makes magically safe vaccines.

    The reality is something different. Last month AccessIBSA and Médecins Sans Frontières identified 120 companies in Africa, Asia and Latin America with the likely capacity to produce mRNA vaccines. Human Rights Watch reported:

    “Global vaccine production forecasts suggesting there will soon be enough Covid-19 vaccines for the world are misleading,” said Aruna Kashyap, associate business and human rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The US and German governments should press for wider technology transfers and not let companies dictate where and how lifesaving vaccines and treatments reach much of the world as the virus mutates.”

    Two months earlier, The New York Times had investigated the possibility:

    “You cannot go hire people who know how to make mRNA: Those people don’t exist,” the chief executive of Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, told analysts.

    But public health experts in both rich and poor countries argue that expanding production to the regions most in need is not only possible, it is essential for safeguarding the world against dangerous variants of the virus and ending the pandemic.

    Setting up mRNA manufacturing operations in other countries should start immediately, said Tom Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, adding: “They are our insurance policy against variants and production failure” and “absolutely can be produced in a variety of settings.”

    Both at home and abroad, pharmaceutical industry apologists propose nothing can be conceived, much less pursued, unless the largest companies make billions in profit. Our men of the year are to be treated as no less than gods with rocket wings. Few of the respectable establishment have described, much less denounced, the fallacy.

    Others have been much more truculent in their commentary, connecting increasing wealth concentration with COVID failures:

    • Economic historian Matthias Schmelzer started one Twitter thread early December: “The global concentration of capital is extreme: The richest 10% own around 60-80% of wealth, the poorest half less than 5%, according to just published World Inequality Report.”
    • Americans For Tax Fairness reported: “America’s billionaires got $1 TRILLION richer in 2021, a 25% gain in collective wealth that will go largely untaxed.”
    • Union organizer Jack Califano encapsulated the damage of such an arrangement: “COVID has been a perfect illustration of how our government now works. In a crisis, it will provide benefits, but only the absolute minimum it determines necessary to protect the system from political upheaval. And then, as soon as stability is restored, it will take them away.”

    The Pandemic ThinkTank has taken up the core matter in similarly direct terms. In a report it released in November, the ad hoc group — comprised of a social psychiatrist, disease ecologist, medical anthropologist, epidemiologist, critical care physician and county official — unpacked the origins of the COVID trap that the U.S. placed itself in and offered a plan of escape other than “go to work.”

    The team described how social systems set the ways epidemics spread, the damage that accrued in the American system of disease control long before SARS-2 showed up, the history of successful public health efforts before that destruction, and what a working public health system looks like:

    Several lessons emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and frame our approach to planning for the next pandemic.

    First, there are three ‘partners’ in this enterprise: the government, the public health establishment, and the communities. Each partner has an important role to play in ensuring that we learn these lessons and can meet the next challenge with a better chance at survival. But there is an underlying issue of excess power held by the American oligopoly and the politicians allied with them. They profit in power and wealth from the array of policies David Harvey (2019) labeled ‘accumulation by dispossession’.

    Any serious examination of pandemic threat must confront the danger contained in such one-sided power. Part of the way in which the oligopoly has gained and maintained power is by undermining communities and destroying their organizations. While this is good for short-term profit, it poses an enormous threat to long-term survival. Rebuilding community power is an essential part of epidemic control.

    Rebellion as Intervention

    So, there are minds stateside who understand both disease and the country in ways the establishment that rejects their counsel does not. In contrast to the president’s chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci and a CDC that repeatedly places commerce and empire before people, Pandemic ThinkTank explicitly counsels a rebel alliance:

    Local health departments must, in many municipalities and counties, foment revolution.

    This, like most revolutions, must occur in secret and with interactions with community groups in places like neighborhood bars, playgrounds, houses of worship, and barbershops/beauty salons.

    In order to bring communities into condition for improved public health and for pandemic prevention and response, the health department must have the social and political muscle to pressure the elected executive into reforming the relevant agencies.

    The health departments themselves must feel the pressure of empowered communities to establish egalitarian planning councils that will produce plans acceptable to and supportable by the various elements that form the local communities.

    Unlike the COVID Collaborative of establishment epidemiologists who, like the CDC, push a more individualistic approach to public health, we can see why the Pandemic ThinkTank holds no direct line to the president. Indeed, ultimately, it’s going to take everyday people from beyond the Beltway to help bend epidemiology back into a science for the people.

    Younger epidemiologists are taking on that spirit, turning on Biden and their better-connected colleagues in confrontational terms for which most journeymen are punished:

    • Perhaps with the COVID Collaborative and ex-Harvard epidemiologist and now chief science officer at the eMed diagnostic company Michael Mina in mind, Columbia University’s Seth Prins tweeted: “Turns out lots of blue check public health experts moonlight as pandemic profiteers.”
    • Ellie Murray, of Boston University’s School of Public Health, tweeted: “Honestly baffled by people who claim the COVID plan put in place by the president of the united states, ‘leader of the free world’, was so fragile that an assistant professor tweeting on her coffee breaks could undermine it, & that *isnt* somehow worse than the plan just failing?”
    • Justin Feldman, a social epidemiologist at the Harvard FXB Center for Health & Human Rights, who wrote his own critique of Biden’s COVID year, followed up: “There’s ‘a lot to unpack’ about how the only substantive criticism the media has been willing to pursue wrt Biden’s pandemic response is failing to make a consumer product (rapid tests) available to individuals.”
    • From abroad, Botswanan doctor Letlhogonolo Tlhabano weighed in: “I’m an intensivist and have been taking care of COVID patients since this pandemic begun, and the new AHA guidelines are idiotic. We’re not martyrs. The CDC guidelines are also motivated by the need to protect capital, and not necessarily by any science. We’re on our own.”
    • Science organizer and biochemist Lucky Tran commented: “We are not ‘learning to live with COVID’. When we give up on protecting our healthcare systems, workers, the immunocompromised, and the vulnerable, in reality we are ‘surrendering to COVID.’”
    • It really speaks to the tenor of our times when March for Science retweets Black radical Bree Newsome on the out-of-pocket costs of COVID testing.

    I tried warning people about Biden’s pandemic-related policies before the inauguration, twice, and wrote a book titled Dead Epidemiologists, underscoring the mortally wounded thinking of even some of the field’s best and brightest practitioners.

    The advocacy work of these younger scientists, however, may signal that our ugly future also offers hope. A more recent invitation to my millennial colleagues that we had a world to win reminded me of the generation-appropriate Marx t-shirt I’m getting my kid for his birthday: “You’re A Wizard, Harry.”

    Of course, I don’t have all the answers on how we’ll get through this shit show — to use the technical term. I’m always learning alongside this new generation.

    I experienced a bout of my own booster hesitancy, born out of the ethical quandary in which Gates trapped us all. Why a third inoculation for me when much of the world hasn’t gotten stuck a single shot? The utter shame of it, with the appropriate symptoms of a red face and shortness of breath. I finally concluded that being alive allowed me to use what little power and platform I had to argue for a different public health order the world over.

    For ending a pharmaceutical industry focused on commoditizing health and reinvesting in a public health organized around our shared commons here and abroad is the only way out of this pandemic in any short order. Otherwise, we are left to letting the virus burn out on its own by something like 2025, as early models projected. The Black Plague in Europe eventually ended after eight years. Unless we act now to restore an active, on-the-ground public health mobilization helping people block-by-block and farm-by-farm, we will be forced to assimilate the possibility that we are to suffer a pandemic of a similar duration.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Think of the many — don’t worry for the few

    Oxfam International revealed that Asia’s billionaires have increased their wealth by 74% while 148 million others in the region have been pushed into poverty since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, writes S. Arutchelvan.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Socialism-phobic celebs can’t believe the Tories are ending BBC public funding

    After years of Thatcher-style neoliberalism, the election of Jeremy Corbyn saw Labour return to its socialist roots. The media hated this – as did the celebrities who prefer ‘sensible’ politics that maintain their lifestyles while doing nothing for the rest of us.

    In the end, these figures got their wish, and politics returned to the socialism-free status quo. This meant the election of a Tory government that was openly at odds with public services. Predictably, this will now mean the end of public funding for the BBC – much like previous Tory and New Labour governments meant the end of publicly owned infrastructure.

    For some celebrities, however, this has proved something of a shock.

    Socialism for the ‘lovies’

    Broadcaster Dan Walker defended the BBC licence fee, saying it’s “43p per day”.

     

    The problem from a socialist perspective is that’s 43p for an institution that props up the Tories/New Labour and the econonomic system we loathe; it’s 43p for an institution that misrepresents and slanders us.

    Gary Linekar had this to say:

    The problem here? Namely that anyone without their head up their arse knows the BBC has always acted as the “voice for those in government” – the difference is Lineker doesn’t like the current flavour of neoliberalism.

    This is what he had to say in 2017 just before Labour’s socialist policies saw the party increase its vote share by more than any other leader since 1945 – coming within an inch of electoral victory (despite two years of being hammered by outlets like the BBC):

    How did they not see this coming?

    This is Armando Iannucci on the end of the BBC as we know it:

    In 2016, Iannucci bemoaned:

    We’ve lost the third way

    The ‘third way’ was the name given to the privatisation-fetishising politics of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. It revolved around taking the policies of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and bundling them with limited social progress. The thing about neoliberalism, however, is its stomach for privatisation is bottomless.

    We live in a world in which all companies seek permanent, never-ending growth. How do you achieve that if you’re a private company making inroads into the public sector? With more privatisation, obviously. This means the natural end point for neoliberalism is every sector in private hands – much like the BBC soon will be – and only a fool would have expected otherwise.

    Deborah Meaden believes people will miss the BBC when it’s gone – much like how socialists miss that time when there was a hope their future could contain anything besides the dull, grey misery of relentless social-decline:

    Meaden couldn’t bring herself to vote for Corbyn in 2019. She was happy to vote for Labour in the past, however (presumably when they were rampant privatisers given that’s been their default since Blair):

    Ironically, there’s an answer to this problem that would satisfy both the socialists and the celebs, and that’s to… go back in time and vote Labour. Turns out the party had a solution in 2019 that would have seen the BBC receive more stable funding without a need to apease the government. Imagine how terrible that would have been!

    Additional reporting by PA

    Featured image via (Wikimedia – Chris McAndrew CC3.0 – cropped to 385 x 403) and BBC screengrab

    By John Shafthauer

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Naive Documentary (-ies) Makers Barely Scratch the Surface!

    W.E.B. DuBois: ‘To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.’

    This documentary (see below, first one linked) is not news, and then, of course, it’s Trump in office blather, too. As if UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Portugal are havens for social and people and environmental justice.

    How Poor People Survive in the USA — vapid.

    The documentarian is done, really, through the auspices of Euro trash context, POV, narrative framing. Contrarily, you have to be in the mix, in the middle, from the chambers of power, schools, colleges, social work, to real journalism, and into the mess personally, with daily fear of losing the job and seeing savings go go go. That is the slippage in the death spiral of USA. 

    This is a Reservation/Rez Society. Boarding School Society. Celebrity Cults. Internment Camp FEMA Village (Soon). This entire unfolding of history the past 70 years has been this big time military propaganda operation embedding into all systems. Confusion creator. Mystical hatred or subservience  while praying for that blue-eyed, blond hippie Jesus. Dirt poor, and loving Trump. College student loans over $100K,  and loving AOC and Biden.

    The enemy for me, and I’d say for 80 percent of USA, is that grouping — colonized Eichmann’s, the upper classes, the dream hoarders, the intelligence/knowledge workers, the higher ups in education-medicine-incarceration-pharma-medicine-energy-banking-data collecting-surveillance-real estate-Chamber of Commerce-AI-science-ag-retail-logistics-transportation, and then, MIC, congressional military complex. Join the mercenary forces, and lucky you, get your teeth pulled and a GI Bill.

    Bullshit.

    Ahh, my old platform to rail against the system — LA Progressive! Terminal Velocity no More! Or here! Paul Haeder. 

    I’ve asked why the stuff I send and publish elsewhere is no longer getting up on LA Progressive. No answer! Again, this documentary is broken (above), but that is documentary making, most times — focused, rarified, gatekeeping on steroids, with people on the projects not deep systems thinkers, and a willingness to leave out a lot.

    Stan Brock memorial remembers founder of Remote Area Medical, Wild Kingdom star

    Missing:

    1. Tens of millions on the edge of the cliff of eviction, foreclosure, endless bad jobs, in the car or van, bunking up with family or friends, while working for middle managers who do not care, and the upper management and the billionaires and millionaires.
    2. Inflammation — Capitalism is a complete, holistic, top-down disease, creating inflammation in the veins, brain, organs, belly. But worse — cuts the thinking process, deforms the mutual aid ethos, destroys collective action, kills the ability to squat and reappropriate wealth, land, whatever.
    3. The rat race of those with a roof over their heads that continue to fuel prescriptions, Disneyland la-la-land thinking, buy-buy-buy, watching sports-stars-musicians, I got mine, you better fight to get yours
    4. This country, USA, is the rotting roots and DNA of Europe, of that narrator above. These are not real people, and they are so sculpted in news speak, in priviledge.
    5. This documentary doesn’t get to the fabric of colonization of cities, schools, the bullshit of privatization, and this wacky religious and wacky elitist country of Indian Removal, Enslavement then and now, and Nomadlands.
    6. Americans are children, and that is thanks to the Media, the Boss, foolish k-6 education, and, well, we are here now, 355 million, and this is pre-covid crazies. Now? Complete imprisonment!

    Oh, hell, the list is a thousand points long: Stan Brock, Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom. This is one fellow, and great heart, but in a world of Space Suits, Billionaires and Yachts, Lies Casted in Media-Banking-Digitalization, well, one guy. “He founded Remote Area Medical in 1985 to give people in need essential health care. Since then, RAM has provided free dental, vision and basic health care to more than 740,000 people.”

     

    Here, the documentary on RAM above, description: During the U.S. debate about healthcare reform, the media reporters and news crews and filmmakers failed to put a human face on what it means to not have access to healthcare. Remote Area Medical fills that gap; it is a film about people, not policy. Focusing on a single three-day clinic held in the Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, Remote Area Medical affords us an insider’s perspective on the ebb and flow of the event, from the tense 3:30 a.m. ticket distribution that determines who gets seen to the routine check-ups that take dramatic turns for the worse, to the risky means to which some patients resort for pain relief. We meet a doctor who also drives an 18-wheeler, a denture maker who moonlights as a jeweler, and the organization’s founder, Stan Brock, who first imagined Remote Area Medical while living as a cowboy in the Amazon rainforest, hundreds of miles from the nearest doctor. But it is the extraordinary stories of the patients, desperate for medical attention, that create a lasting impression about the state of modern health care in America.

    This can’t be ramped up, taken to the ultimate level? It’s socialism, brothers and sisters, the only way forward. Forget the hate that the right and the middle of the road have against socialism. They will ply the words of “one world government.” Or, the “government controlling us.” They will talk about Universal Basic Income. They will say it is brainwashing, and communism, and, well, that socialism means all rights are taken, managed, given to and taken away by some master groups of dictators. So we are dead in the water with capitalism by any means necessary: predatory, parasitic, casino, dog-eat-dog, shock therapy, zombie, trickle down nothingness.

    That is, you know, vaccine passport, no. But, there is no Forced Healthcare for All. No, Massive Take Over the Empty Lots and Buildings for Massive Rehousing. No guerrilla farming everywhere. Nothing. Because, well, Capitalism is All about “We are all champions. We are all the New Eve and Adam. You can rest assured that the masters will NOT take care of you, but at least you have the stars and bars, god almighty, baby-land.”

    This exceptionalism is what has detroyed many in the 80 percent. Many. They will work and think and do things against their own well-being. When you are a lost dog in this country, a limping stray, a hungry desperate pooch, well, you will jump to the master, run for the beasts of slapping, kicking, yelling, and hitting. Under the table, curled up, belly and organs exposed as its tail is between the legs.

    Heartbroken Senior Dog Cowering At A Shelter Just Wants To Be Loved
    Inflamed — Moreover, they point out how modern medicine has often missed these necessary connections—to our global detriment. What is needed is “deep medicine,” which, according to the authors, “requires new cosmologies, ones that can braid our lives with the planet and the web of life around us.”
     
    Rupa Marya and Raj Patel spoke to YES! about the ravages of colonialist capitalism, the failures of modern medicine to treat them, and, most importantly, how a “deep medicine” approach can heal us all.
     
    *This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
     
    Sonali Kolhatkar: Is the title of the book, Inflamed, a metaphor for what is happening to our planet and its living systems?
     
    Rupa Marya: It’s not at all a metaphor. It’s a description of what’s happening inside of our bodies and around us on the planet and our societies. The inflammatory response is the body’s ancient evolutionarily conserved pathway to restoring its optimal working condition when it’s been thrown off by danger or damage or the threat of damage. (Source, Yes Magazine)
     
    No jobs, no good jobs, decayed systems, penalties, bad credit, criminal offenses, drugs, booze, and bodies torn at a very young age with multiple chronic diseases, many many diseases.
     
    https://youtu.be/YrEwPp2bG48
     
    This is the system that the beautiful people in the sciences, in technology, in the Reset Star Chamber, all of those hoarding money and the opportunities have set loose, and these fascists want these people — us, we the people — on UBI, held as data pools — body snatchers, mind snatchers, attention snatchers, activity snatchers, all part of mining people, putting us, them, the 80 percent, in the cloud, in algorithms, in data banks, all mashed up for social impact — do as we say, follow what we command, eat-drink-think like we say, and you will get the tokens, man, the money, the slice of a 200-square-foot-per-person habitat. No pets allowed.
    The post Naive Documentary (-ies) Makers Barely Scratch the Surface! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Poor Working Conditions Widespread In Charter Schools

    About 3.5 million students currently attend roughly 7,400 privately-operated charter schools in the U.S. This represents around 7% of all students and 7% of all schools in the country. Unlike public schools, all charter schools are run by unelected individuals.

    Approximately 90% of these outsourced privatized schools have no teacher unions. The vast majority of charter school teachers have no collective organization or unified voice that represents and defends their legitimate and valid interests. As a general rule, the overwhelming majority of charter school owners and operators work overtime to block teachers from forming unions and having greater control over their working conditions. Further, most state laws on charter schools are written in a way to undermine the formation of teacher unions in charter schools. In this way, privately-operated charter schools are set up to undermine the ability of workers to embrace their social responsibility to resist poor working conditions.

    Nonetheless, to their credit, over the past 30 years many bold teachers in numerous privately-operated charter schools across the country have successfully fought back against marginalization, poor pay, poor working conditions, and burnout by organizing their peers to form a union so that they can collectively affirm their rights and better serve their students. Unions negate a fend-for-yourself ethos and recognize that an injury to one is an injury to all. Unionized workers typically have higher levels of compensation, better benefits, and greater security than non-unionized workers.1

    Charter school owners and operators repeatedly insist that their “innovative,” “flexible,” “autonomous,” “independent,” “market” character is a strength that purportedly allows them to hire the best teachers and provide the best education arrangements and results possible. But teacher turnover in nonprofit and for-profit charter schools is very high. By far, the main reasons teachers leave charter schools are poor management, poor pay, poor benefits, and poor working conditions.2 Teacher retention remains a problem in many charter schools, which is why countless charter schools regularly hire uncertified and inexperienced teachers. Some states with charter school laws do not even require teachers to be certified or licensed.

    On January 7, 2022, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that:

    Teaching staff at Carmen Schools of Science and Technology — a group of six charter schools in Milwaukee [Wisconsin]— are attempting to unionize, and CEO Jennifer Lopez says she won’t stand in their way. If successful, organizers believe they will be the first to unionize an independent charter school in Wisconsin.

    Given the well-established opposition to teacher unions by charter school owners and operators, CEO Lopez’s assertion that “she won’t stand” in the way of teachers forming a union needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Does Lopez have a trick up her sleeve? Does she think the union drive is too powerful to stop? Does she believe that mis-rendering the issue of unionization as “an individual decision” will blunt the drive to form a union? Neoliberal forces routinely use language like forming a union should be a “fully informed, personal choice” to create space for disinforming workers and blocking unionization efforts. Regardless, union “organizers are asking the nearly 200 teachers, social workers and specialists of Carmen Schools to sign union authorization cards.” And in all likelihood, the majority will.

    One of the most basic and revealing demands of teachers is for better pay and workloads capped at 40 hours a week. This last point is particularly significant because many, if not most, nonprofit and for-profit charter schools have longer school days and school years than public schools, and they generally pay their teachers noticeably less than their public school counterparts. In addition, longer school days and years do not generally translate into improved academic achievement. More time in school does not necessarily produce more learning and achievement. Every year, numerous charter schools from coast to coast fail and close due to poor academic performance. Many others perform poorly for years but are not closed. So much for “market accountability.”

    Pointing to other long-standing problems in Carmen Charter Schools, teachers are also demanding that teachers and students have a greater say in decision-making. Workplaces characterized by top-down exclusionary decision-making processes—a key feature of neoliberal managerialism—are never a good place to work. It is one of the main reasons workers leave their job. “Input” and “consultation” are not the same as real decision-making power, which all workers have a right to. The absence of a real say in things naturally leaves a bad taste in the mouths of workers. “I see so many passionate, dedicated, and excellent Carmen staff come and go,” Carmen Southeast High School teacher Leland Pan said in a news release. A main union organizer highlighted “massive, concerning turnover” as a major reason for fighting for a union. High teacher turnover rates undermine stability, collegiality, continuity, and learning, not to mention the ability to form a union. What parent wants to send their kid to a school where teachers are constantly coming and going?

    It is important to stress that the just struggle of workers in Carmen Charter Schools is the result of poor working conditions that characterize much of the crisis-prone charter school sector. Thousands of workers in nonprofit and for-profit charter schools across the country are disempowered and have no meaningful say in their own working conditions. The conditions in Carmen Charter Schools in Wisconsin are not unique. Instability and anarchy are widespread.

    The only way for workers to improve their lives and the success of their students is by joining together to fight for their rights. No one else is going to fight for their rights. It is an illusion to think that neoliberals and privatizers exist to affirm the rights of workers, which is why neoliberals and privatizers spend a lot of time promoting “feel-good” rhetoric but routinely engage in anti-social policies and practices in real life.

    1. For extensive information on the many benefits of unions, see the work of the Economic Policy Institute.
    2. 5,000 privately-operated charter schools have closed since their inception in 1991, leaving many poor and low-income minority families disillusioned and out in the cold. The three main reasons for frequent charter school closures are financial malfeasance, mismanagement, and poor academic performance. See: “5,000 Charter Schools Closed in 30 Years,” September 18th, 2021,
    The post Poor Working Conditions Widespread In Charter Schools first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • No Letup In Economic And Social Decline

    Economic and social conditions have been worsening for decades at home and abroad, especially in the context of the neoliberal antisocial offensive which was launched more than 40 years ago by the international financial oligarchy. But they have been getting even worse in recent years and over the past two years in particular.

    Inequality, poverty, and debt, along with homelessness, unemployment, and under-employment are on the rise in an increasingly interconnected globe. It is no surprise that suicide, depression, illness, and anxiety persist at very high levels. There is an unbreakable connection between economic, social, and personal conditions. As economic and social conditions decline, so too do people’s mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

    Below is a current snapshot of deteriorating economic and social conditions in the U.S. and elsewhere. The U.S. population currently stands at 332,403,650. The world population is 7,868,872,451.

    Conditions in the U.S.

    American student loan debt increased at a rate of 20 percent in the last ten years, leaving college graduates with hefty payments. The student loan debt in the US is a growing crisis with college graduates owing a collective $1.75 trillion in student loans. In 2021, there are 44.7 million Americans who have student loan debt averaging about $30,000 at the time of receiving their undergraduate degree.

    The number of Americans living without homes, in shelters, or on the streets continues to rise at an alarming rate.

    The $5 trillion in wealth now held by 745 billionaires is two-thirds more than the $3 trillion in wealth held by the bottom 50 percent of U.S. households estimated by the Federal Reserve Board.

    The official poverty rate in 2020 was 11.4 percent, up 1.0 percentage point from 10.5 percent in 2019. This is the first increase in poverty after five consecutive annual declines. In 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty, approximately 3.3 million more than in 2019.

    After the longest period in history without an increase, the federal minimum wage today is worth 21% less than 12 years ago—and 34% less than in 1968.

    CEOs were paid 351 times as much as a typical worker in 2020.

    [F]or seven months of 2021, workers have been quitting at near-record rates.

    More than 4.5  million people voluntarily left their jobs in November [2021] the Labor Department said Tuesday. That was up from 4.2 million in October and was the most in the two decades that the government has been keeping track.

    According to a report by UCLA’s Latino Policy & Politics Initiative, Latinas are leaving the workforce at higher rates than any other demographic. Between March 2020 and March 2021, the number of Latinas in the workforce dropped by 2.74%, meaning there are 336,000 fewer Latinas in the labor force

    The adult women’s labor force participation rate remains blunted at 57.5%—well below pre-pandemic levels. In fact, it’s worse than pre-pandemic levels.

    U.S. job openings jumped in October to the second-highest on record, underscoring the ongoing challenge for employers to find qualified workers for an unprecedented number of vacancies. The number of available positions rose to 11 million from an upwardly revised 10.6 million in September.

    As of November [2021], 15.6 million workers in the US are still being affected by the pandemic’s economic downturn; 3.9 million US workers are out of the labor force due to Covid-19, 6.9 million workers are still unemployed, 2 million workers are still experiencing cuts to pay or work schedules due to Covid-19, and another 3 million workers are misclassified as employed or out of the labor force, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

    About 2.2 million Americans remain long-term unemployed — about 1.1 million more than in February 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    [I]n 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in November that more than 100,000 people died of drug overdoses in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, May 2020 to April 2021, with about three-quarters of those deaths involving opioids — a national record.

    U.S. death rate soared 17 percent in 2020, final CDC mortality report concludes.

    Life Insurance CEO Says Deaths Up 40% Among Those Aged 18-64.

    Suicide rates increased 33% between 1999 and 2019, with a small decline in 2019. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. It was responsible for more than 47,500 deaths in 2019, which is about one death every 11 minutes. The number of people who think about or attempt suicide is even higher. In 2019, 12 million American adults seriously thought about suicide, 3.5 million planned a suicide attempt, and 1.4 million attempted suicide. Suicide affects all ages. It is the second leading cause of death for people ages 10-34, the fourth leading cause among people ages 35-44, and the fifth leading cause among people ages 45-54.

    Alarming Anxiety & Depression Toll making All Time Record Highs Impacting 30% of all Americans.

    [Depression] has been rising for well more than a decade in teens and hiked further during the pandemic. And after a pandemic-induced spike, depression symptoms now plague more than a quarter of U.S. adults. More than 13% of Americans were taking antidepressants before Covid hit and during the pandemic, prescriptions shot up 6%.

    At least 12 major U.S. cities have broken annual homicide records in 2021.

    Private health insurance coverage declined for working-age adults ages 19 to 64 from early 2019 to early 2021, when the nation experienced the COVID-19 pandemic.

    In 2020, 4.3 million children under the age of 19 — 5.6% of all children — were without health coverage for the entire calendar year.

    International Conditions

    Even as tens of millions of people were being pushed into destitution, the ultra-rich became wealthier. Last year, billionaires enjoyed the highest boost to their share of wealth on record, according to the World Inequality Lab.

    Global wealth inequality is even more pronounced than income inequality. The poorest half of the world’s population only possess 2 percent of the total wealth. In contrast, the wealthiest 10 percent own 76 percent of all wealth, with $771,300 (€550,900) on average.

    The pandemic has pushed approximately 100 million people into extreme poverty, boosting the global total to 711 million in 2021.

    More than half a billion people pushed or pushed further into extreme poverty due to health care costs.

    World leaders urged to halt escalating hunger crisis as 17% more people expected to need life-saving aid in 2022.

    33% of Arab world doesn’t have enough food: UN report. The Arab world witnessed a 91.1 per cent increase in hunger since 2000, affecting 141 million people.

    The 60% of low-income countries the IMF says are now near or in debt distress compares with less than 30% as recently as 2015.

    According to a recent Gallup poll, 63 percent of Lebanese would like to permanently leave the country in the face of worsening living conditions.

    25% of households in Israel live in poverty. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20211221-25-of-households-in-israel-live-in-poverty/

    Turkey’s annual inflation rate is expected to have hit 30.6% in December, according to a Reuters poll, breaching the 30% level for the first time since 2003 as prices rose due to record lira volatility.

    Kazakhstan government resigns amid protests over rising fuel prices.

    Pakistanis squeezed by inflation face more pain from tax hikes.

    November saw inflation rise by 14.23 percent, building on a pattern of double-digit increases that have hit India for several months now. Fuel and energy prices rose nearly 40 percent last month. Urban unemployment – most of the better-paying jobs are in cities – has been moving up since September and is now above 9 percent.

    Sri Lanka is facing a deepening financial and humanitarian crisis with fears it could go bankrupt in 2022 as inflation rises to record levels, food prices rocket and its coffers run dry.

    Index shows South Africa’s economy is shrinking.

    COVID-19 spike worsens Africa’s severe poverty, hunger woes.

    Latin America’s biggest economy [Brazil] is seen remaining stuck in recession as it confronts double-digit price increases.

    Japan admits overstating economic data for nearly a decade.

    New Zealanders are feeling pessimistic about the economy, worried about rising interest rates and the prospect of new Covid-19 variants, Westpac’s latest consumer confidence data shows.

    Canadians’ optimism towards their financial health and the economy at large reached its lowest point in more than a year during the final work week of 2021, according to Bloomberg and Nanos Research.

    Polish Inflation to Rise Sharply in 2022, Central Bank Boss Says.

    Inflation is at its highest level in the UK since 2011.

    The Resolution Foundation predicts higher energy bills, stagnant wages and tax rises could leave [U.K.] households with a £1,200 a year hit to their incomes.

    Air travel in and out of UK slumps by 71% in 2021 amid pandemic. Report from aviation analytics firm Cirium shows domestic flights were down by almost 60%.

    Annual inflation in Spain rises 6.7% in December, the highest level in nearly three decades.

    Germany’s Bundesbank lowers 2022 economic growth forecast.

    OECD predicts Latvia to have the slowest economic growth among Baltic States.

    While deteriorating economic, social, and personal conditions define many other countries and regions, the main question is why do such horrible problems persist in the 21st century? The scientific and technical revolution of the last 250 years has objectively enabled and empowered humankind to solve major problems and to meet the basic needs of all humans while improving the natural environment. There are a million creative ways to affirm the rights of all safely, sustainably, quickly, and on a constantly-improving basis. There is no reason for persistent and widespread instability, chaos, and insecurity. Living and working standards should be steadily rising everywhere in the 21st century, not continually declining for millions. Objectively, there is no shortage or scarcity of socially-produced wealth to meet the needs of all.

    Under existing political-economic arrangements, however, systemic instabilities and crises will persist for the foreseeable future, ensuring continued anxiety and hardship for millions. The rich and their political representatives have repeatedly demonstrated that they are unable and unwilling to solve serious problems. They are out of touch and self-serving. As a result, the world is full of more chaos, anarchy, insecurity, and violence of all forms. The rich are concerned only with their narrow private interests no matter how damaging this is to the natural and social environment. They do not recognize the need for a self-reliant, diverse, and balanced economy controlled and directed by working people. They reject the human factor and social consciousness in all affairs.

    It is not possible to overcome unresolved economic and social problems so long as the economy remains dominated by a handful of billionaires. It is impossible to invest socially-produced wealth in social programs and services so long as the workers who produce that wealth have no control over it. Every year, more and more of the wealth produced by workers fills the pockets of fewer and fewer billionaires, thereby exacerbating many problems. Wealth concentration has reached extremely absurd levels.

    It is extremely difficult to bring about change that favors the people so long as the cartel political parties of the rich dominate politics and keep people out of power. Constantly begging and “pressuring” politicians to fulfill people’s most basic rights is humiliating, exhausting, and ineffective. It does not work. No major problems have been solved in years. More problems keep appearing no matter which party of the rich is in power. The obsolete two-party system stands more discredited with each passing year. Getting excited every 2-4 years about which candidate of the rich will win an election has not brought about deep and lasting changes that favor the people. It is no surprise that President Joe Biden’s approval rating keeps hitting new lows every few weeks. People want change that favors them, not more schemes to pay the rich in the name of “getting things done” or “serving the public.” “Building Back Better” should not mean tons more money for the rich and a few crumbs for the rest of us.

    A fresh new alternative is needed that actually empowers the people themselves to direct all the affairs of society. New arrangements that unleash the human factor and enable people to practically implement pro-social changes are needed urgently. All the old institutions of liberal democracy and the so-called “social contract” disappeared long ago and cannot provide a way forward. They are part of an old obsolete world that continually blocks the affirmation of human rights. This law or that law from this mainstream party or that mainstream party is not going to save the day. The cartel parties of the rich became irrelevant long ago.

    We are in an even more violent and chaotic environment today that is yearning for a new and modern alternative that affirms the rights of all and prevents any individuals, governments, or corporations from depriving people of their rights. People themselves must be the decision-makers so that the wealth of society is put in the service of society. Constantly paying the rich more while gutting social programs and enterprises is a recipe for greater tragedies.

    The post No Letup In Economic And Social Decline first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A New Era?

    The work of the left at this moment is to understand what new spaces have opened up and how to build upon them.

    Introducing our Winter 2022 special section, “Beyond Bidenomics.”

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • 21st Century US Coups and Attempted Coups in Latin America

    During the 21st century, the US, working with corporate elites, traditional oligarchies, military, and corporate media, has continually attempted coups against Latin American governments which place the needs of their people over US corporate interests. US organized coups in Latin American countries is hardly a 20th century phenomenon.

    However, this century the US rulers have turned to a new coup strategy, relying on soft coups, a significant change from the notoriously brutal military hard coups in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and other countries in the 1970s. One central US concern in these new coups has been to maintain a legal and democratic facade as much as possible.

    The US superpower recognizes successful soft coups depend on mobilizing popular forces in anti-government marches and protests. Gene Sharp style color revolutions are heavily funded by US and European NGOs, such as USAID, NED, National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, and others. They make use of organizations professing “human rights” (such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International), local dissident organizations, and increasingly, liberal-left media (even Democracy Now) to prepare the groundwork.

    US regime change operations have found three mechanisms this century that have been tremendously successful. First, economic warfare on a country, through sanctions and outright blockades, creates rising discontent against the targeted government. Second, increasing use of corporate media and social media to spread disinformation (often around “human rights,” “democracy,” “freedom,” or “corruption”) to foment mass movements against leaders that prioritize their nation’s development over US financial interests. This heavily relies on CIA social media operations to blanket a country with disinformation. Third, lawfare, using the appearance of democratic legality to bring down those defending their country’s national sovereignty. Related to lawfare are the electoral coups in countries such as Haiti, Honduras, and Brazil, where the US engineers or helps to engineer a coup by stealing the election.

    Many of the attempted coups failed because the people mobilized to defend their governments, and because of crucial and timely solidarity declarations in defense of these governments by the Latin American bodies of the OAS, UNASUR, and the Rio Group. Today, the Rio Group no longer exists, UNASUR is much weakened, and the OAS is now fully under US control.

    US Backed Coups and Attempted Coups

    2001 Haiti. Haitian paramilitaries based in the Dominican Republic launched an attack on the National Palace, seat of the government of President Aristide. The attack failed, but until 2004, similar to the 1980s Nicaraguan contras, these paramilitaries launched numerous raids into Haiti, and played a key role leading to the 2004 coup perpetrated directly by US troops.

    2002 Venezuela. The US government partially funded and backed the short-lived April 11-14 coup against Hugo Chavez.

    2002-3 Venezuela. Management of the state oil company PDVSA organized an “oil strike,” actually a lockout of the oil workers, to drive Hugo Chavez out of power. This again failed in early 2003.

    2003 Cuba. In the lead up to the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq, John Bolton claimed Cuba was a state sponsor of terrorism, producing biological weapons for terrorist purposes, just as Saddam’s Iraq was falsely claimed to have weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). During this period, the US increased its anti-Cuba propaganda directed at the country and increased funding to “pro-democracy” groups in Cuba, while anti-Cuban right-wing groups escalated their activities. The US paid “dissident” groups to organize protests and disruptions, including hijacking seven boats and airplanes to reach the US where they were never prosecuted. The goal was to create the appearance of disorder in Cuba, which, combined with its alleged biological WMDs, demanded an international intervention to restore order. Cuba squashed this movement in spring 2003.

    2004 Haiti. In an early 20th century style US coup, US troops invaded Haiti, kidnapped President Jean Bertrande Aristide and exiled him to the Central African Republic.

    2008 Bolivia. The Media Luna attempted coup involved right-wing leaders and some indigenous groups from Bolivia’s lowlands financed by the US. They sought to separate the richer Media Luna region from the rest of the country. In the process, they killed 20 supporters of President Evo Morales. Juan Ramon Quintana of the Bolivian government reported that between 2007-2015, the NED gave $10 million in funding to some 40 institutions including economic and social centers, foundations and NGOs. US embassy cables showed it sought to turn social and indigenous movements against the Evo Morales government.

    2009 Honduras. Honduran military forces, under orders from the US, seized President Manuel Zelaya, brought him to the US military base at Palmerola, then exiled him to Costa Rica. This began an era of brutal neoliberal narco-trafficking regimes that ended in 2021 with the landslide election of Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife.

    2010 Ecuador. In September a failed coup against President Rafael Correa by military and police units backed by the indigenous organizations CONAIE and Pachakutik. The US had infiltrated the police and armed forces, while the NED and USAID funded these indigenous organizations.

    2011 Haiti. Following the Haiti earthquake in 2010 that killed 200,000, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton imposed Michel Martelly as president after threatening to cut off US aid to Haiti. Clinton flew to Haiti to demand that Martelly be named one of the two runoff candidates, although Martelly was not recognized by the Electoral Council as one of the qualifiers. Despite a voter boycott, with fewer than 20% of the electorate voting, Martelly was announced the winner of the “runoff.” One reason why most Haitians boycotted was that the most popular political party in the country, Fanmi Lavalas, the party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was excluded from the ballot. The Haiti elections were funded by USAID, Canada, the OAS, the European Union and other foreign bodies.

    2012 Paraguay. President Fernando Lugo was scapegoated for a land occupation confrontation between campesinos and the police, which led to 17 deaths. President Lugo was removed from office without a chance to defend himself in a lawfare coup.

    2013 Venezuela. After the April election that Nicolas Maduro narrowly won, Henrique Capriles, the US-supported loser, claimed the election was stolen and called his supporters out into the streets in violent protests. Due to the strength of the UNASUR countries at the time, the US could not convince other countries to also reject Maduro’s victory.

    2014 Venezuela. “La Salida”(The Exit), led by Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado, resulted in 43 deaths, and aimed to drive President Maduro from power. Again, the US could not get other Latin American governments to denounce Maduro, either in UNASUR or in the OAS.

    2015 Ecuador. Between 2012-2015, $30 million from NED went to political parties, trade unions, dissident movements, and media. In 2013 alone, USAID and NED spent $24 million in Ecuador. This paid off in 2015 when CONAIE, which thanked USAID for its funding, called for an indigenous-led uprising. They began with marches in early August and concluded in Quito for an uprising and general strike on August 10.  The attempted coup failed.

    2015 Haiti.  A new electoral coup for the presidency was funded by the US to the tune of $30 million. Both the US and the OAS refused Haitians’ demands to invalidate the election. The police attacked Supporters of opposition parties were shot with live and rubber bullets, killing many. President Michel Martelly’s chosen successor Jovenel Moise became president.

    2015 Guatemala. The US engineered a coup against right-wing President Otto Perez Molina because he was not sufficiently subservient.

    2015 Argentina. Argentine prosecutor Alber Nisman was evidently murdered days after he made bogus criminal charges against President Cristina Fernandez, claiming she was involved in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center. This was used to create a scandal, unseat her, and bring neoliberals back to power. Neoliberal forces and media used the case to disrupt the Kirchner coalition from winning another presidential election.

    2015-2019 El Salvador. El Salvador’s right-wing opposition backed by the US sought to destabilize the government of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).  The conservative mass media launched a smear campaign against the administration, in concert with a surge in gang-driven homicides that the police chief said was part of a campaign to drive up body counts and remove the FMLN government. Sanchez Cerén and other former officials who were members of the FMLN later became targets of lawfare, “a strategy used in recent years by conservative groups in power to try to demobilize the organization and resistance of the peoples against neoliberalism and other forms of domination.”

    2016 Brazil. US-backed right-wing movements launched a campaign against President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party for “corruption.” Aided by the corporate media, they organized a series of protests in Brazil’s largest cities throughout 2015. In March 2016, a massive political demonstration brought together more than 500,000 people in support of impeaching President Rousseff. She was finally impeached by Congress and removed from office in a successful lawfare coup.

    2017 Venezuela. Violent protests (guarimbas), led by Leopoldo Lopez, sought to oust President Maduro, with 126 fatalities. The guarimbas ended after the elections for the National Constituent Assembly.

    2017 Honduras. The US supported an electoral coup by President Juan Orlando Hernández involving widespread electoral fraud and government killing of dozens in protests. The US quickly recognized him as president and pressured other countries to do so also, even though the OAS itself had called for a new election.

    2018 Nicaragua. US-backed violent protests, supported by anti-FSLN media and social media disinformation campaigns, sought to remove President Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas from power. After two months, public sentiment turned strongly against the violent protests and they disintegrated.

    2018 Brazil. Former President Lula de Silva was the leading candidate to win the presidential election, but was imprisoned due to a lawfare operation of the US and Brazil’s right-wing, using bogus corruption charges. Bolsonario won the election, aided by a large-scale fake news operation which sent out hundreds of millions of WhatsApp messages to Brazilian voters.

    2019 Venezuela. In January, Juan Guaido declared himself president of Venezuela after US Vice President Pence assured him of US recognition. On April 30, the Guaido-Leopoldo Lopez’ planned uprising outside an air force base flopped. Later, a mercenary attack from Colombia failed to seize President Maduro in the presidential palace.

    2019 Bolivia. The US engineered a coup against Evo Morales, in part by using a social media campaign to make the false claim he stole the election. The OAS played a key role in legitimizing the coup. The disastrous coup government of Jeanine Anez lasted for just over one year.

    2021 Cuba. The US orchestrated and funded protests against the Cuban government in July and November. The US sought to build a new generation of counter-revolutionary leadership by creating new “independent” press and social media platforms. These failed more miserably than the 2003 protests.

    2021 Bolivia. In October, the right-wing tried to organize a coup and general strike, demanding the release of former President  Anez who was now imprisoned. The attempt was only successful in Santa Cruz, the center of the Media Luna. Later, mass organizations led a rally, encompassing 1.5 million, to the capital to defend the MAS government.

    2021 Peru. The right-wing oligarchy used lawfare unsuccessfully to unseat new President Castillo, a leader who emerged from the popular indigenous movement, seeking to remove him for being “permanently morally incapable.” However, a new lawfare case has been brought against President Castillo concerning “corruption.”

    2021 Nicaragua. The US planned to repeat the 2018 Nicaragua protests, combined with a concocted campaign that the Daniel Ortega government had imprisoned US-financed opposition “pre-candidates” before the presidential election. This coup attempt failed but the US and OAS refused to recognize the election results.

    In 2022 we can expect the US to continue “regime change” operations against Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and now Chile with the election of progressive President Boric.

    This list of 27 US-backed coups and attempted coups in the first 21 years of this century may be incomplete. For instance, not included are the lawfare frame-ups directed by Ecuador’s former President Lenin Moreno, a US puppet, against former Vice President Jorge Glas, who is now imprisoned, nor against former President Rafael Correa, now in exile.

    This listing of US coups and attempted coups is also misleading. As throughout the 20th century, the US daily, not periodically, interferes in what it considers its colonies to both impose neocolonial regimes and maintain those regimes which open their markets to the US without conditions and align themselves with US foreign policy.

    Under the facade of “democracy promotion” Washington works to advance the exact opposite goal: foment coups against democratic and popular governments. Governments and leaders that stand up for their people and their national rights are the very targets of “democracy promotion” coups.

    Present day US reliance on soft coup operations involves funding not only NGOs and right-wing groups in the targeted countries for training in Gene Sharp style “democracy promotion” programs. Many liberal and liberal-left alternative media and NGOs in the US now receive corporate funding, which pushes their political outlook in a more pro-imperialist direction. This is well-illustrated in the soft coup attempts against Evo’s Bolivia and Rafael Correa’s Ecuador. These NGOs and alternative media give a false humanitarian face to imperialist intervention.

    Moreover, these regime change operations are now openly being used at home against the US people. This is seen in the confusion and political divisions in the US population, manufactured by the 2016 Hillary Clinton Russiagate disinformation campaign against Trump and the Trump 2020 stolen election disinformation campaign against the Democrats. For those of us opposed to US interventionism, we are called upon to expose these new sophisticated methods of soft coup interference, to demand the national sovereignty of other nations be respected, and to bring together the US people against this manipulation by the corporate rulers.

    The post 21st Century US Coups and Attempted Coups in Latin America first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Lament of the Losing Class

    There is something that’s been eating me inside and out. I haven’t been able to articulate it until now, but I am gonna try because I think it is important. At least to me it is. The sickness of our neoliberal world impacts both the middle class and the poor. When you see generational poverty, it is easy to identify outright. It’s extreme. It’s often hopeless to the individual. It’s bleak. In the political space, poverty is a …

    Lament of the Losing Class Read More »

    This post was originally published on Real Progressives.

  • “Localization” Can Help Free the Planet From Neoliberal Globalization

    Localization offers the means to return to a real and stable economy not based on speculation, exploitation and debt.

    Is there a viable alternative to the economic, social, political and environmental problems stemming from globalization? How about “localization”? This is the antidote to globalization propounded by Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder and director of Local Futures, an organization focused on building a movement dedicated to environmental sustainability and social well-being by rejuvenating local economies. Norberg-Hodge is a pioneer of the new economy movement, which now has spread to all continents, and the convener of World Localization Day, which was endorsed by the likes of Noam Chomsky and the Dalai Lama. Norberg-Hodge is the author of several books and producer of the award-winning documentary, The Economics of Happiness.

    In this interview, Norberg-Hodge discusses in detail why localization represents a strategic alternative to globalization and a way out of the climate conundrum, the ways through which localization challenges the spread of authoritarianism, and what a post-pandemic world might look like.

    C.J. Polychroniou: The global neoliberal project, under way since the early 1980s following the so-called “free-market revolution” launched by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the U.S. and U.K., respectively, has proven to be an unmitigated disaster on all fronts. Why does a shift toward economic localization, a movement which you have initiated on every continent of the world, represent a superior strategic alternative to the existing socioeconomic order, and how do we go about making this transition?

    Helena Norberg-Hodge: The process of globalization with its disastrous effects is a consequence of governments systematically using taxes, subsidies and regulations to support global monopolies at the expense of place-based regional and local businesses and banks. This process has been going on in the name of supporting growth through free trade, but it has actually impoverished the majority, that has had to work harder and harder just to stay in place. Even nation states have become poorer, relative to the trillions of dollars circulating in the hands of global financial institutions and other transnational corporations. This has systematically corrupted virtually every avenue of knowledge, from schools to universities, from science to the media.

    As a consequence, instead of questioning the role of the economic system in causing our multiple crises, people are led to blame themselves for not managing their lives well enough, for not being efficient enough, for not spending enough time with family and friends, etc., etc… In addition to feeling guilty, we often end up feeling isolated because the ever more fleeting and shallow nature of our social encounters with others fuels a show-off culture in which love and affirmation are sought through such superficial means as plastic surgery, designer clothes and Facebook likes. These are poor substitutes for genuine connection, and only heighten feelings of depression, loneliness and anxiety.

    I see a shift toward economic localization as a powerful strategic alternative to neoliberal globalization for a number of reasons. For starters, the increasingly planetary supply chains and outsourcing endemic to corporate globalization are systematically making every region less materially secure (something that became starkly apparent during the COVID crisis) and enabling ecological and labor exploitation cost shifting such that feedback loops that could promote greater transparency and thus responsibility are severed. A recent study showed that one-fifth of global carbon emissions come from multinational corporations’ supply chains. Localization means getting out of the highly unstable and exploitative bubbles of speculation and debt, and back to the real economy — our interface with other people and the natural world. Local markets require a diversity of products, and therefore create incentives for more diversified and ecological production. In the realm of food, this means more diversified production with far less machinery and chemicals, more hands on the land, and therefore, more meaningful employment. It means dramatically reduced CO2 emissions, no need for plastic packaging, more space for wild biodiversity, more circulation of wealth within local communities, more face-to-face conversations between producers and consumers, and more flourishing cultures founded on genuine interdependence.

    This is what I call the “solution-multiplier” effect of localization, and the pattern extends beyond our food systems. In the disconnected and over-specialized system of global monoculture, I have seen housing developments built with imported steel, plastic and concrete while the oak trees on-site are razed and turned into woodchips. In contrast, the shortening of distances structurally means more eyes per acre and more innovative use of available resources.

    It is entirely reasonable to envisage a world without unemployment; as is true of every price-tag on a supermarket shelf, unemployment is a political decision that, at the moment, is being made according to the mantra of “efficiency” in centralized profit-making. As both political left and right have bought into the dogma of “bigger is better,” citizens have been left with no real alternative.

    When we strengthen the human-scale economy, decision-making itself is transformed. Not only do we create systems that are small enough for us to influence, but we also embed ourselves within a web of relationships that informs our actions and perspectives at a deep level. The increased visibility of our impacts on community and local ecosystems leads to experiential awareness, enabling us to become both more empowered to make change and more humbled by the complexity of life around us.

    What’s the difference between economic localization and “delinking” (an alternative development approach associated with the work of the late Marxist sociologist Samir Amin)? Moreover, is localization part of the degrowth strategic program that has emerged in the age of global warming?

    Delinking was conceived within the framework of industrialism instead of an understanding of ecological limits. Localization, as I have formulated it over the years, calls for a more radical delinking not only from onerous and oppressive relations of economic and political dependency, but also from the worldviews of modernity based in industrialization and so-called progress and development.

    As to the relation between localization and degrowth, there is a lot of overlap. Generally speaking, both reject the growthism intrinsic to capitalism. However, from my point of view, many degrowth advocates don’t focus enough on the role of global corporations and free trade treaties, nor do they emphasize enough the need for a systemic shift in direction toward localization or decentralization. This I believe again, as with delinking, comes from ignoring many of the ecological and spiritual effects of industrial progress.

    Localization is sometimes perceived as right-wing, nationalistic or even xenophobic. I want to stress that we are talking about economic localization or decentralization, not some kind of inward-looking withdrawal from the national arena. On the contrary, we encourage cultural exchange and international collaboration to deal with our global social and environmental crises.

    There is a growing, diverse and creative movement emerging all over the world of people coming together in community to construct their own economies in the shell of the old. In a sense, not only is another world possible, it’s already here in this global localization movement. Besides degrowth, other closely affiliated and overlapping movements include: new economies, solidarity economies and cooperative economies; food sovereignty; simplicity and sufficiency economics; and on and on.

    This florescence of movements and initiatives from all over the world, in addition to being a source of great inspiration, disprove by their very existence the precepts of neoclassical economics and capitalism, and point the way back from the abyss.

    The political pendulum has shifted dramatically over the last couple of decades in favor of some very reactionary forces. What explains the return of the ugly and dangerous face of political authoritarianism in the 21st century, and how can the advancement of the localized path help challenge authoritarianism?

    As a result of globalization, competition has increased dramatically, job security has become a thing of the past, and most people find it increasingly difficult to earn a liveable wage. At the same time, identity is under threat as cultural diversity is replaced by a consumer monoculture worldwide. Under these conditions, it’s not surprising that people become increasingly insecure. As advertisers know from nearly a century of experience, insecurity leaves people easier to exploit. But people today are targeted by more than just marketing campaigns for deodorants and tooth polish: insecurity leaves them highly vulnerable to propaganda that encourages them to blame the cultural “other” for their plight. The rise of authoritarianism is just one of many interrelated impacts of economic globalization. Because today’s global economy heightens economic insecurity, fractures communities, and undermines individual and cultural identity — it is creating conditions that are ripe for the rise of authoritarian leaders.

    Increasingly distanced from the institutions which make decisions that affect their lives, and insecure about their economic livelihoods, many people have become frustrated, angry and disillusioned with the current political system. Although most democratic systems worldwide have been disempowered by the de facto government of deregulated banks and corporations, most people blame government leaders at home. Because they don’t see the bigger picture, increasing numbers of people support laissez faire economics, wanting government red tape out of the way, to allow new authoritarian leaders to grow the economy for them, to make their country “great again.”

    Localization offers a 180-degree turn-around in economic policy, so that business and finance become place-based and accountable to democratic processes. This means re-regulation of global corporations and banks, as well as a shift in taxes and subsidies so that they no longer favor the big and the global, but instead support small scale on a large scale. Rebuilding stronger, more diversified, self-reliant economies at the national, regional and local level is essential to restoring democracy and a real economy based on sustainable use of natural resources — an economy that serves essential human needs, lessens inequality and promotes social harmony.

    The way to bring this change about is not to simply vote for a new candidate within the same compromised political structure. We instead need to build up diverse and united people’s movements to create a political force that can bring about systemic localization. It means raising awareness of the way that globalization has made a mockery of democracy, and making it clear that business needs to be place-based in order to be accountable and subject to the democratic process.

    We must acknowledge that the issue is complex: despite its above-mentioned role in pushing globalization, the nation state also remains the political entity best suited to putting limits on global business, but at the same time more decentralized economic structures are needed, particularly when it comes to meeting basic needs. These place-based economies require an umbrella of environmental and social protection strengthened by national and importantly, international regulation, but determined through local political engagement.

    Localization is a solution-multiplier. It can restore democracy by reducing the influence of global business and finance on politics and holding representatives accountable to people, not corporations. It can reverse the concentration of wealth by fostering the creation of more small businesses and keeping money circulating locally, regionally and even nationally. It can minimize pollution and waste by providing for real human needs rather than desires manufactured by a corporate-led consumer culture, and by shortening distances between producers and consumers.

    By prioritizing diversified production for local needs over specialized production for export, localization redistributes economic and political power from global monopolies to millions of farmers, producers and businesses. It thereby decentralizes political power and roots it in community, giving people more agency over the changes they wish to see in their own lives.

    The exponential growth in localization initiatives — from food-based efforts like community gardens, farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture schemes and urban agriculture, to local business alliances, decentralized renewable energy schemes, tool lending libraries and community-based education projects — attests to the fact that more and more people are arriving, in a largely common-sense way, at localization as a systemic solution to the problems they face.

    (I have tackled this question in great detail in my article, “Localization: a Strategic Alternative to Global Authoritarianism.”)

    The COVID-19 pandemic, obviously a direct result of economic globalization, continues to haunt us with its presence and no one can tell with certainly when the world will return to normalcy. In your view, is going back to “normal” even possible? And, if not, what will a post-pandemic normal look like?

    I think the first question is whether returning to old normal is desirable, and then whether it is possible. So-called normal pre-COVID-19 was the rapidly-expanding global consumer culture, swelling volumes of waste, global ecological collapse including species extinction and ballooning inequality, among so many other crises. The pandemic has sadly exacerbated these trends, but it is obvious to me that pre-pandemic “normalcy” was itself already a disaster, thus nothing we should wish to return to. Indeed, as has been pointed out by many observers, the radical rift in the status quo operations of globalization, especially apparent during the early worldwide hard lockdown phase, illustrated like nothing else in our lifetimes just how quickly the system can change, how spurious were the narratives of globalization’s inevitability all along. It also exposed — and continues to do so in many ways — the perilous fragility, brittleness and dependencies of globalized supply chains that have increasingly risen to dominance as more and more places have been de-localized during the past few decades of manic globalization. Wherever one looked, it was the still relatively more localized, often rural communities — the very ones that conventional development has long denigrated and advocated transcending — that proved more resilient and secure in the face of the crisis, even to the point of prompting reverse migration from the cities back to the villages in many places. Similarly, however awful the circumstances provoking it, the response to the pandemic by grassroots movements across the world has been truly inspiring, showing in real time the truth of the longstanding activist slogan that other worlds are possible.

    As to the possibility of going back to the destructive old normal: despite dips in global emissions and pollution during the early months of the pandemic and the beautiful flowering of mutual aid and other local solidarity initiatives, the dramatic rebound of pollution of all sorts, now exceeding pre-pandemic levels, along with the obscene worsening of inequality, concentration of power by transnational corporations and devastation of small, local businesses shows that, unfortunately, yes, it is all too possible to go back to the destructive old normal. This shows that we cannot hope for some external force to “impose” localization and rein in corporate globalization, such as was often placed on peak oil or other forms of resource collapse. There are no shortcuts around the need to politically struggle against the dominant system and create the local alternatives, to create a post-pandemic normal that isn’t a pre-pandemic political-economy on steroids. The imperative for economic localization demonstrated by the pandemic should not be forgotten after the plague has passed, as though only in emergencies does it make sense to strengthen our local resilience and localized production and consumption links. Because of the solution-multiplier benefits of localization referred to earlier, I believe this is the post-pandemic normal we should aspire to.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Charter School Corruption Will Increase In 2022

    While corruption and fraud have been widespread and relentless in the charter school sector for several decades, both appear to be increasing with each passing year.1  The year 2022 promises to bring even more corruption and scandal to this crisis-prone sector that is rapidly undermining public schools and lowering the level of education in society.

    As the economy continues to decline, as democracy and accountability further deteriorate, and as the private profit motive remains center-stage, major owners of capital will become more desperate, reckless, and greedy in their quest for profits. They will become more emboldened to dictate affairs with even greater force and impunity. In many states powerful forces behind privately-operated charter schools are increasingly using the state to create new non-public entities or mechanisms that can quickly and unilaterally override democratic decisions made by mayors, voters, or elected bodies such as public school boards when they reject charter school applications or decide to close a corrupt or failing charter school. If they do not like a decision rendered by elected public officials, or even a judge, the rich and their representatives will rapidly circumvent it or overrule it no matter how damaging or unconstitutional such a decision is. Neoliberals and privatizers will not tolerate any democratic pro-social decisions that interfere with their antisocial aim to create more pay-the-rich schemes like privately-operated charter schools, which is why charter schools are continually multiplying despite more and more damning and indicting evidence against them. Major owners of capital are determined to preserve their class privilege and have no interest in a modern public education system. To fool the gullible, they will continue to over-promise and under-deliver.

    In this context, it is more critical to expose and oppose school privatization, while also stepping up efforts to defend public education and the public interest.

    A useful tool in this regard is the newly-improved Charter School Scandals website organized by the Network for Public Education. The public can use the website to obtain more granular state-by-state information about various crimes and scandals in the charter school sector. While the updated site contains links to endless old and recent news articles exposing different crimes and scandals in nonprofit and for-profit charter schools coast to coast, it does not come close to collating all the disturbing news on charter schools, partly because a lot of bad news on charter schools never even makes it to the news. Suffice it to say, probably no other sector or institution in society comes close to having the volume of corruption and fraud found in the charter school sector, which does not even make up 7% of schools in the country.

    To be sure, more individuals and organizations will take on the social responsibility of opposing charter schools in 2022 because social consciousness of long-standing problems in the charter school sector is increasing and more people are realizing that neoliberals and privatizers are driven by maximizing profit with greater avarice and impunity. The fact that privatization increases corruption and violates the public trust is not lost on many.

    There is an alternative to school privatization and the suppression of the public interest by narrow private interests. People can and must create spaces to discuss all the affairs that concern them. They can represent themselves and put forward their own views and demands on what is needed to advance education and society. No one is under any obligation to accept any of the retrogressive ideas and arrangements embraced by the rich and their entourage. The crisis in education and society cannot be overcome by further privileging private interests over the public interest.

    1. For endless reports and articles documenting charter school corruption in detail, search for “charter school corruption” here.
    The post Charter School Corruption Will Increase In 2022 first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 2021 Latin America and the Caribbean in Review: The Pink Tide Rises Again

    US policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean continued in a seamless transition from Trump to Biden, but the terrain over which it operated shifted left. The balance between the US drive to dominate its “backyard” and its counterpart, the Bolivarian cause of regional independence and integration, continued to tip portside in 2021 with major popular electoral victories in Chile, Honduras, and Peru. These follow the previous year’s reversal of the coup in Bolivia.

    Central has been the struggle of the ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America) countries – particularly Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua – against the asphyxiating US blockade and other regime-change measures. Presidential candidate Biden pledged to review Trump’s policy of US sanctions against a third of humanity. The presumptive intention of the review was to ameliorate the human suffering caused by these unilateral coercive measures, considered illegal under international law. Following the review, Biden has instead tightened the screws, more effectively weaponizing the COVID crisis.

    Andean Nations

    The unrelenting US regime-change campaign against Venezuela has had a corrosive effect on Venezuela’s attempt to build socialism. With the economy de facto dollarized, among those hardest hit are government workers, the informal sector, and those without access to dollar remittances from abroad.

    Nonetheless, Venezuela’s resistance to the continued US “maximum pressure” hybrid warfare is a triumph in itself. Recent economic indicators have shown an upturn with significant growth in national food and oil production and an end to hyperinflation. Further, the government has built 3.7 million housing units, distributed food to 7 million through the CLAP program, and adroitly handled the COVID pandemic.

    When Trump recognized Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela in 2019, the then 35-year-old US security asset had never run for a nationwide office and was unknown to over 80% of the Venezuelans. Back then some 50 of the US’s closest allies recognized Guaidó; now barely a dozen does so. Contrary to campaign trail inuendoes that Biden would enter into dialogue with the democratically elected president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Biden has continued the embarrassing Guaidó charade.

    The November 21 municipal and regional elections were a double triumph for Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution: the ruling Socialist Party (PSUV) won significantly while the extreme right opposition (including Guaidó’s party) was compelled to participate, implicitly recognizing the Maduro government.

    Venezuelan special envoy Alex Saab was extradited – really kidnapped – to the US on October 16 on the vague and difficult to disprove charge of “conspiracy” to money launder. Swiss authorities, after an exhaustive 3-year investigation, had found no evidence of money laundering. Saab’s real “crime” was trying to bring humanitarian aid to Venezuela via legal international trade but circumventing the illegal US blockade. This egregious example of US extra-territorial judicial overreach is being contested by Saab’s legal defense because, as a diplomat, he has absolute immunity from arrest under the Vienna Convention. His case has become a major cause in Venezuela and internationally.

    Meanwhile, Colombia, chief regional US client state, the biggest recipient of US military aid in the hemisphere,  and the largest world source of cocaine, is a staging point for paramilitary attacks on Venezuela. President Iván Duque continues to disregard the 2016 peace agreement with the guerrilla FARC as Colombia endures a pandemic of rightwing violence especially against human rights defenders and former guerillas.

    On April 28, Duque’s proposed neoliberal tax bill precipitated a national strike mobilizing a broad coalition of unions, members of indigenous and Afro-descendent communities, social activists, and campesinos. They carried out sustained actions across the country for nearly two months, followed by a renewed national strike wave, starting on August 26. The approaching 2022 presidential election could portend a sea change for the popular movement where leftist Senator Gustavo Petro is leading in the polls.

    In Ecuador, Andrés Arauz won the first-round presidential election on February 7 with a 13-point lead over Guillermo Lasso, but short of the 40% or more needed to avoid the April 13 runoff, which he lost. A victim of a massive disinformation campaign, Arauz was a successor of former President Rafael Correa’s leftist Citizen Revolution, which still holds the largest bloc in the National Assembly. The “NGO left,” funded by the US and its European allies, contributed to the electoral reversal. Elements of the indigenous Pachakutik party have allied with the new president, a wealthy banker, to implement a neo-liberal agenda.

    In Peru, Pedro Castillo, a rural school teacher and a Marxist, won the presidency in a June 6 runoff against hard-right Keiko Fujimori, daughter of now imprisoned and former president Alberto Fujimori. Castillo won by the slimmest of margins and now faces rightwing lawfare and the possibility of a coup. Just a few weeks into his presidency, he was forced to replace his leftist foreign Minister, Hector Béjar, with someone more favorable to the rightwing opposition and the military.

    In Bolivia, a US-backed coup deposed leftist President Evo Morales in 2019 and temporarily installed a rightist. Evo’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party successor, Luis Arce, took back the presidency last year in a landslide election. With the rightwing still threatening, a massive weeklong March for the Homeland of Bolivian workers, campesinos, and indigenous rallied in support of the government in late November.

    Southern Cone

    Brazil has the world’s eighth largest economy world and the largest in Latin America. Rightwing President Jair Bolsonaro has been dismantling social welfare measures, rewarding multinational corporations, and presiding over wholesale illegal mining and deforestation, while the popular sectors protest. Former left leaning President Lula da Silva is strongly favored to win in the October 2, 2022 elections. He was also favored to win in the 2018 presidential election against Bolsonaro but was imprisoned on trumped up charges, preventing him from running.

    In Chile, Gabriel Boric won the second round of the Chilean presidential election by a landslide on December 19 against far-right José Antonio Kast, the son of a German Nazi Party member. The 35-year-old Boric was a leader in the huge protests in 2019 and 2020 against corrupt President Sebastian Piñera, who is the richest person in the country. The slogan of the protests was: “If Chile was the birthplace of neoliberalism, then it will also be its graveyard!”

    Although the victory is a repudiation of the Pinochet legacy, Boric has also been somewhat critical of Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. Boric’s libertarian socialist Frente Amplio party rode to victory with major support from the Chilean Communist Party along with center-left forces. Earlier in the year, in a plebiscite to forge a united popular campaign, Communist Daniel Jadue lost to Boric. A Constituent Assembly, where the left won the majority of the delegates in a May election, is currently rewriting the Pinochet-era constitution.

    In Argentina, the center-right Together for Change coalition decisively swept the November 13 midterm elections, rebuking the Peronists who have been unable to effectively address high unemployment and inflation.  In 2019, the center-left Peronist Alberto Fernández succeeded rightwing President Mauricio Macri, whose record breaking $50.1 billion IMF loan saddled the people with austerity measures. Prospects are now dim for restructuring of the debt or suspending payments with an opposition majority more intent on discrediting Fernández than addressing the issues.

    Caribbean

    Candidate Biden had signaled a return to the Obama-Biden easing of restrictions on Cuba. But once in office, Biden intensified the US hybrid war against Cuba. Discontent with critically deteriorating economic conditions erupted in popular demonstrations on July 11, fanned by the US-funded opposition. A repeat effort at a regime-change demonstrations, largely orchestrated by Washington, fizzled on November 15. Biden continues the same illegal policy of regime change against Cuba  as that of the previous twelve US presidents: covert and overt destabilization, blockade, and occupation of Guantánamo.

    Despite an economy severely impacted by the pandemic and the tightening of US blockade, Cuba has produced three COVID vaccines with two more in development. More than 90% percent of Cubans are vaccinated, surpassing the US.

    In Haiti, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit on August 14. Another upheaval has been the nearly continuous popular revolt against US-installed presidents. President Jovenal Moïse, who had ruled by decree after cancelling elections, was assassinated on July 7 in an apparent intra-ruling class squabble. Claude Joseph was installed as interim president for a few days and then replaced by Ariel Henry, with elections still postponed.

    Biden deported thousands of emigres back to Haiti. This represented “a disappointing step backward from the Biden administration’s earlier commitments to fully break from the harmful deportation policies of both the Trump and Obama presidencies,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

    Central America and Mexico

    In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele, formerly associated with the left FMLN party, continued his regression to the right. In response, the Popular Resistance Bloc and other civil society groups staged large protests on September 15 and October 17.

    In Honduras, Xiomara Castro, wife of the former President Zelaya, was swept into the presidency by a landslide popular vote on November 28. The slogan of the now triumphant resistance front was: “They fear us because we have no fear.”

    In the twelve years since the US-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, the country had devolved into a state where the former president, Juan Orlando Hernández, was an unindicted drug smuggler, the intellectual authors who ordered the assassination of indigenous environmental leader Berta Cáceres ran free, Afro-descendent people and women were murdered with impunity, gang violence was widespread, and state protection from the pandemic was grossly deficient.

    In neighboring Nicaragua, the US called the November 7 presidential election an undemocratic fraud nearly a year in advance as part of a larger regime-change campaign against left-leaning governments. The US claimed that “pre-candidates” were barred from running. However, these individuals had been arrested for illegal activities and were not credible candidates.

    In fact, the US has never supported democracy in Nicaragua. US Marines occupied Nicaragua from 1912 to 1934, only leaving after installing the autocratic Somoza dynasty to do their bidding. When the Sandinistas ousted the dictatorship in 1979, the US launched the Contra War. After fomenting an unsuccessful coup in 2018, the US NICA Act then imposed sanctions. This was followed in 2020 by the RAIN plan, a multi-faceted coup strategy.

    Disregarding Washington’s call to boycott, a respectable 65% of the Nicaraguan electorate went to the polls and 76% of the voters re-elected Sandinista President Daniel Ortega. The Sandinista’s landslide victory was a testament to their success in serving Nicaragua’s poor and a repudiation of the 2018 coup attempt. Immediately after the election, the US RENACER Act imposed new illegal sanctions.

    In Mexico, the June 6 midterm elections pitted the ruling MORENA coalition against the traditional parties (PAN, PRI, PRD), chambers of commerce, and the US embassy. NGOs funded by USAID and NED supported the opposition, whose talking points were echoed by the Economist and the Nation. While MORENA retained is majority in Congress and two-thirds of the governors in the midterms, they suffered setbacks in Mexico City, their traditional stronghold.

    Mexico is a critically important state as the second largest economy in Latin America, the eleventh in the world, and the US’s top trade partner. After decades of rightwing rule, left-of-center Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his new MORENA party have been in office for three years. Early on, AMOL earned the enmity of the US, when he proclaimed: “The global economic crisis has revealed the failure of the neoliberal model…The State should assume responsibility to lead development without foreign interference” (meaning the US).

    AMLO has predictably experienced pushback from traditional elites in Mexico and from the US, particularly in his attempts to reverse the privatization of the energy sector. The Zapatistas and some leftists oppose AMLO and his national development projects, especially the Mayan train. They accuse the government of supporting violence against indigenous communities in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

    Prospects for the New Year

    Independence from the hegemon to the north, regional integration, and international cooperative relations are on the agenda for the new year.

    China is now the second largest investor in Latin America and the Caribbean, which “reduce[s] US dominance” according to the US Congressional Research Service. Economic cooperation with China and to a lesser extent with Russia and Iran have been a lifeline for countries like Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua under regime-change siege by the US. In late December, Nicaragua broke relations with Taiwan and normalized them with the People’s Republic of China. The new government in Honduras has indicated they may soon follow suit. China intends to invest over $250 billion in the region, providing an alternative to dependence on Yankee capital for national development “south of the border.” If the inter-ocean canal project with Chinese backing in Nicaragua were resuscitated, it would be a geopolitical game-changer.

    The anti-Venezuela “Lima Group,” a US-Canada initiative, is now moribund with defections of key countries. Likewise, the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS) is an increasingly discredited tool of US imperialism as evidenced by its complicity in the Bolivian coup. Cuba and Venezuela are not members of the OAS, and Nicaragua recently announced its withdrawal.

    The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) includes all the hemisphere except the US and Canada. CELAC is being revived as an independent regional alternative by Mexican President López Obrador and others.

    2022 promises continued left advances with favorable prospects for the Colombian and Brazilian presidential elections in May and October respectively. Overall, the pink tide is again rising with some 14 countries on the left side of the ledger and the revolt against neoliberalism intensifying from Haiti to Paraguay.

    The post 2021 Latin America and the Caribbean in Review: The Pink Tide Rises Again first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Chile elects a socialist

    Socialist and former student leader Gabriel Boric is set to become Chile’s youngest ever president, inheriting a legacy of neoliberalism and Western interventionism. Curtis Daly explores this important election and the years that lead up to it.

    Video transcript

    At the age of 35, Gabriel Boric will become Chile’s youngest ever president – winning on the back of huge support from young people. But after decades of free market economics, can Boric overcome deep structural inequalities, and will he face strong opposition to his reforms?

    Gabriel Boric, a former student leader, defeated far- right candidate and staunch Augusto Pinochet supporter José Antonio Kast.

    The election was clear, Boric – a socialist whose policies include higher taxes and public spending – made commitments to women and indigenous peoples rights and stood up for the young.

    On the other side, Kast threatened to dig ditches across borders to stop the flow of migrants and support neoliberal economic policies similar to Pinochet’s under military rule. Kast has also claimed that “what is best for society is that couples be heterosexual”.

    So let’s take a look at what led to this historic election.

    Military Rule

    In 1973, Augusto Pinochet, who was commander in chief of Chile’s army at the time – took power in a coup against socialist president Salvador Allende. The move was promoted and supported by the US at the time. The following year Pinochet progressed to supreme head of the nation.

    Under his dictatorship, Pinochet went after socialists, unions and critics. It’s estimated that 3,065 people were killed. Including those that were tortured, imprisoned, or had their human rights violated, the total number of victims exceeded 40,000.

    Thatcher’s support

    A recurring attack against international left-wing politics is that socialist leaders end up creating dictatorships. That socialism or communism somehow coincides with anti-democratic societies and always leads to human rights abuses. The west often accuses socialists of being more inclined towards dictatorialism, yet ironically Pinochet was elevated to his position in part because of support from the West. 

    Notably, Margaret Thatcher was extremely close with him. The then prime minister had no regard for human rights; her support came from their mutual hatred of Socialism. 

    Both worked closely together during Pinochet’s tenure as the ‘supreme leader’. Thatcher praised his actions when it came to the Falklands War, which included providing intelligence information on Argentina’s air force.

    In 1998, Pinochet was arrested in London for his alleged crimes against Spanish citizens. Unfazed, Thatcher still strongly defended him, calling for his release. She also sent him a bottle of scotch in solidarity. 

    BAE Systems

    BAE Systems is the largest British arms manufacturer. Back in 2005, US banking records revealed the company was funneling money to Pinochet and groups linked to him. Investigations found that more than £1m was sent to the dictator and some of that money was laundered through a company registered in the Virgin Islands.

    When looking at the context of Chile, and other countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia, it is in fact capitalism, not socialism, that ends up being in bed with dictatorships. 

    The US loves to install their own corporate backed leaders to loot nations of their wealth, and the case with Pinochet was no different. 

    Birth of Neoliberalism

    A group of Chilean economists called the ‘Chicago Boys’ were integral to the free market policies of Pinochet. The name came from the fact that the majority of them studied at the University of Chicago. Their influence had become exponential after Pinochet hired them to become ministers and advisers.

    This was the beginning of the free market neoliberal period. The public sector was eviscerated, and state controlled companies dropped from 300 to 24. Social security was slashed along with education and infrastructure.

    Public universities were defunded and two thirds of them were privatized. It was argued that the privatization of the education sector would see costs decline and quality improve; obviously that never materialized. The average cost of a university course was 41% of the average income, when beforehand it was free.

    The lasting effects of neoliberalism caused Chile to become massively unequal. The combined wealth of Chilean billionaires in 2014, of which there were only 12, was the same as 25% of GDP.

    In 2019, the bottom 50% only have a 2.1% share of the national income.

    “It’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years”

    Nationwide protests erupted in October 2019 after the rightwing Piñera government decided to increase tube (metro) fares by 30 pesos. One of the main chants was “It’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years”, alluding to the fact that it’s been 30 years since the end of Pinochet’s regime but that the noeliberal policies he enacted have continued to lead to inequality and austerity. 

    This has happened because after the return to democracy in the 90’s, successive governments implemented largely cosmetic rather than structural changes.

    That’s why this year’s election was so important. The result potentially fosters a new age – one that seeks to break from the free market dogma that began under the dictatorship and continues to this day.

    This election was on one side, filled with hope, and the other with division. 

    In Chile, for now, hope has won, at least on the surface. His moderate left wing stances aren’t revolutionary, but they are much needed reforms after decades of right wing rule.

    As we know from history, any country outside the West that even so much as sniffs socialism, there’s a very real threat of those governments being overthrown by the US – with the compliance of the UK. 

    Our media usually pushes the false narratives of ‘election irregularities’ and socialist dictatorships, which is ironic given all the Western- backed coups around the world.

    Will we see forces that wish to stop Boric and his progressive changes? Will there be disinformation campaigns in Western media? Or will this be a success story that strengthens the left internationally? That remains to be seen.

     

    By Curtis Daly

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Trump Thinks He’s Still President – What Is the Evidence?

    Donald Trump thinks he’s still president according to no more reliable a source than Rachel Maddow on her February 5th show. This was confirmed in May by Vanity Fair.  Right-wing conspiracy theorists echo this analysis as recently as this month. Left-liberals are smugly confident that Kamala Harris’s running mate is in the White House, snoozing in the presidential bedroom. Inquiring minds ask what is the evidence nearly a year into the alleged Biden presidency that there has been a change of guard in Washington?

    +The Obama-Biden union card check proposal was not on Mr. Trump’s political horizon, nor is it on that of the current occupant in the White House.

    The post Trump Thinks He’s Still President – What Is the Evidence? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The End of Neoliberalism in Chile?

    The election of Gabriel Boric and the ongoing process to write a new constitution present a historic opportunity for the left to shape a new social pact in Chile.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Biden’s “Democracy Summit” Prioritized US Hegemony Over Democratic Ideals

    President Joe Biden takes the stage to deliver closing remarks for the White House's virtual Summit For Democracy in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on December 10, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    For stark evidence that we live in a world where political hypocrisy reigns supreme, one need look no further than Biden’s recent Democracy Summit.

    The United States — which was rated for the fifth consecutive year as a “flawed democracy” by a “leader in business intelligence” — sought to project itself at last week’s summit as a leader in the fight to preserve global democracy, despite its long and dark history of overthrowing democratically elected governments and installing military dictatorships, and in spite of its ongoing support for any regime, however autocratic, that supports the interests and the objectives of the U.S. empire.

    As if this wasn’t hypocritical or farcical enough, many of the countries invited to take part in the summit are governed by leaders with little concern for democratic norms, such as India’s Narendra Modi, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. These are authoritarian-led nations, but they enjoy robust economic and political relations with the United States.

    China and Russia were not invited. Neither was Turkey because of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s extensive military deals with Russia.

    The summit brought together leaders from government and the private sector, all of whom seem to have accepted the fact that democracy is under strain in today’s world, but there was no acknowledgement of the factors responsible for the weakening of democratic governance and the resurgence of authoritarianism. What one heard were pledges to strengthen democratic accountability, expand economic opportunities and protect human rights. In other words, the same blah, blah, blah, delivered by leaders at COP26.

    In sum, the Summit for Democracy was not about defending democracy; rather, it was a geopolitical gambit to advance U.S. foreign policy objectives. As such, the question as to why democracy is undergoing an alarming decline across the world was simply left hanging in the air.

    What really accounts for the spread of authoritarianism over the last few decades? And how does it differ from the forms of political authoritarianism that were prevalent during the Cold War era?

    Today’s authoritarianism (often called “authoritarian populism”) is a complex phenomenon, with unique economic, cultural, political and social dimensions. Thus, while the ideological location of “authoritarian populism” is to be found on the far right of the political spectrum, there are important differences with regard to policymaking between regimes such as Victor Orbán’s in Hungary and Donald Trump’s during his four-year reign.

    Different political contexts also play a key role in the resurgence of authoritarianism. Thus, while the rise of the new radical right in Europe is directly linked to the decline of the left on the continent, in Latin America, by contrast, the radical right has grown in a period of sharp electoral gains by the left.

    Nonetheless, what bonds authoritarian leaders in today’s world is their affinity for forms of political behavior that result in repressive measures, undermine all forms of collective decision-making — and indeed of the democratic process itself — and lead to the formation of autocratic regimes. In addition, all of the above leaders employ a rhetoric that can be loosely defined as xenophobic, if not outright racist, while seeking at the same time to gain popular support by using an ideology of extreme nationalism and emphasizing “law and order” as the basis for their political legitimacy.

    Yet, we also need to understand how today’s authoritarian regimes are different from those in the past. They are run by leaders who enjoy considerable support among the citizens of their respective countries. The new generation of authoritarian leaders rose to power not through coups d’état but by elections and with vows to transform the existing socio-political order. They offered quick and easy solutions to social and economic problems, and managed to build a strong level of support among working class and nonurban populations, while at the same time enhancing the links of the state with the dominant capitalist classes in the domestic economy.

    Take, for instance, the case of Orbán in Hungary, who was not invited to Biden’s Democracy Summit, as his policies make him a pariah within the European Union.

    On the economic front, Orbán developed a set of unorthodox but populist programs that came to be known as “Orbánomics.” Briefly, “Orbánomics” combine policies of increased wages, low interest rates, high value-added taxes, initially high taxes in sectors of the economy controlled by foreign capital with the aim to drive foreign players away so the industries would pass into the hands of the domestic capitalist class (corporate tax in Hungary is now among the lowest in all of Europe, but value-added taxes remain the highest in the world), and an extensive workfare program for unemployed Hungarians. It’s an economic program that can easily appeal to the average citizens, especially when compared to what they had experienced in the early years of the transition to post-communism where the ideology of the free market ran amok.

    Of course, the developments on the political front do not go unnoticed either by average Hungarians. Orbán has been remaking the Hungarian state in his own image since he took charge of the country in 2010. He filled the judiciary with members of his own party, rewrote the constitution, installed party apparatchiks into key agencies and institutions, introduced a school curriculum built around national identity and Christian cultural values, launched a war on the media and actually placed hundreds of independent media outlets into the hands of his cronies, and created an immense security apparatus at the border in order to keep away immigrants and refugees. Pro-Orbán newspapers and magazines are in the habit of even publishing the names of people considered to be enemies of the Hungarian state.

    Hungary is clearly not a democracy, yet Orbán’s authoritarian politics has more supporters than one cares to acknowledge. For many citizens, Orbán’s regime is the protector of Hungary’s national interests and identity from the globalizing impacts of a ruthless capitalist economic system. Different political forces inside Hungary have forged an alliance to challenge him ahead of next year’s elections, but it would not be a shock if Orbán continues in office after April 2022. As part of his strategy to entice voters to stay loyal to his party, he has launched a massive public spending campaign which includes, among other things, a huge tax rebate for families and an extra month’s worth of pensions. He is also trying to create national hysteria by accusing the EU and the U.S. of planning election interference.

    Viktor Orbán is a textbook case of how “authoritarian populism” works in today’s world where the economics of global neoliberalism have left nation-states at the mercy of powerful market forces, eroded social institutions and deprived people of their national patrimony.

    Orbán’s regime is not neoliberal per se. In actuality, Orbán’s politics constitute a reaction to neoliberal intensifications via the creation of a post-neoliberal regime which, “merges authoritarianism, racist and patriarchal nationalism, clientelism, and partial neoliberalization,” according to author and professor Dorit Geva. His regime is a far right alternative to global neoliberalism.

    No doubt, this is what Trump tried to emulate from the moment he emerged on the political scene, but obviously without any interest in adopting the full package of Orbán’s “economic nationalism.”

    Indeed, the spread of “authoritarian populism” is intimately connected to the intensifications of the neoliberal project in almost every case study that one wishes to examine, no matter the geographical location. In Central and Eastern Europe, where either illiberal programs or outright authoritarian rule extend from Hungary and Poland to Serbia, Bulgaria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, drastic neoliberal measures were introduced with complete disregard for the national patrimony and community well-being. Austerity, privatization, deregulation, the degrading of labor, the marketization of social relations, and the transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top, all of which constitute the economic and political aims of the neoliberal project, created massive inequalities and pushed a large portion of the population at the margins of society. These developments, combined with a growing feeling of alienation in their own country due to the dominance of foreign economic influence, made many an easy target for right-wing populists, especially in light of the decline of the parties of the traditional left. As far as immigration goes, as documented by researchers Anthony Edo and Yvonne Giesing, there is “no mechanical link between the rise of immigration and that of extreme right-wing parties.” The key driver behind the rise of authoritarian populism is neoliberalism and its economic, social and cultural consequences.

    Indeed, we see a similar trend in most countries of the European Union today, including France, Germany, Spain and Italy. Authoritarian or illiberal parties are gaining ground virtually everywhere in the Western world as the destructive consequences of neoliberalism become ever more pronounced and the left continues to lose ground.

    Interestingly enough, in Latin America, on the other hand, the resurgence of the extreme right takes place in a period when average voters are electing and reelecting leftist governments. The aim there on the part of extreme right-wing parties is clear and straightforward: defend neoliberal capitalism by preventing socialists and radical leftist parties from making further inroads and turning the tide against change.

    In both cases, however, it is the intensification of the contradictions of the global neoliberal project that is propelling the shift toward illiberal democracy and authoritarian populism. Neoliberalism is deeply inimical to democracy. It is actually drawn toward authoritarian politics because, as Noam Chomsky notes, it undermines democratic governance at the national and international level through the “transferring [of] policy-making to private tyrannies that are completely unaccountable to the public.”

    The implementation of the neoliberal project is thus anything but a politically neutral process. It requires the full utilization of both the repressive and the ideological apparatuses of the state in order to secure, maintain and reproduce its hegemony in class divided societies. The use of state repression and propaganda have been absolutely critical to the success of global neoliberalism. As such, authoritarianism is just a symptom of neoliberalism — a fact that neither Biden nor any of the invitees to his Democracy Summit dared to acknowledge.

    What the future has in store for democracy is of course impossible to predict, although authoritarianism is likely to stay with us for as long as neoliberalism remains alive. It is of some consolation, however, that “authoritarian populism” no longer has a global leader. The defeat of Donald Trump in the 2020 U.S. presidential election was a major, if only temporary, blow to global authoritarianism. This is because Trump not only practiced authoritarian politics himself, but warmly embraced scores of authoritarian leaders during his four years in office, thereby granting immense political legitimacy to the growing trend toward illiberal democracy. This was indeed a most interesting and rather unique development in the annals of U.S. politics in that, unlike most of his predecessors in the White House, who always sided with dictators and authoritarian rulers willing to cater to U.S. interests, Trump displayed support and admiration for authoritarian leaders (Putin and Erdoğan, in particular) who could be considered anything but allies of the United States.

    Yet, it is quite conceivable that Trump may return to the White House if he decides to run in 2024. The Democrats appear incapable or unwilling to safeguard what is left of democracy in the U.S. Their failure so far to pass a voting rights bill is quite discouraging, while the wave of mobilization at grassroots levels among Republicans seeking offices to supervise elections is a bad omen of things to come. The Democratic Party’s failure to advance an economic and social agenda that curtails the worst excesses of capitalism may create grounds for the further advancement of authoritarianism.

    The weakening of democracy and the spread of authoritarian politics in many parts of the world is intrinsically linked to the contradictions of the global neoliberal project. For the progressive forces, therefore, restoring democracy entails putting an end to the neoliberal nightmare that has plagued the world for the past 40 years. Without undoing neoliberalism, and all other things being equal, the slide further and further toward authoritarianism is a distinct possibility.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • We Need A Peoples’ Movement And Not The World Economic Forum

    Detroit, which remains a major industrial center in the sectors of automotive and other sources of production and services, is a focal point for the economic and social transformations of urban areas in the United States and internationally.

    Since the 19th century, the city has been a location for various forms of manufacturing, mining and shipping.

    Initially there was the strategic location linked to the Great Lakes and rivers which flow into them. The mining of copper during the mid-to-late 19th century which fueled migration eventually gave way to steam engine manufacturing for shipping and the timber trade.

    By the early decades of the 20th century, the first assembly line within auto production was established by Henry Ford. The production of millions of automobiles within a matter of years, created the demand for jobs and the consequent suppression and division of labor.

    The post We Need A Peoples’ Movement And Not The World Economic Forum appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Hondurans Break The US-Imposed Narco Siege Of Their Government

    Brian Nichols, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, visited Honduras the week before the presidential elections. His stated purpose was to “encourage the peaceful, transparent conduct of free and fair national elections.” He did not meet with the de facto President, Juan Orlando Hernández.

    The gesture was clear and illuminating on two levels.

    First, it showed that the U.S. government had already accepted the irrefutable truth that the center-left coalition led by Xiomara Castro would earn the votes of the Honduran people (as we go to publication, she was in the lead with 53.6%). Honduras’ 5.1 million voters would also elect three vice-presidents, 298 mayors, 128 deputies to the national legislature, and 20 to the Central American Parliament.

    The post Hondurans Break The US-Imposed Narco Siege Of Their Government appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Leftist Castro’s Victory In Honduras Vote Spells End Of US-Backed ‘Narco-Politics, Neoliberalism’

    Xiomara Castro, the presidential candidate for the leftist opposition party Libre, seems to have won a resounding victory in Honduras’ presidential elections. Her victory comes in spite of attempts by the ruling National Party, which overthrew her husband, Manuel Zelaya, in 2009, to stifle voter turnout, as one Sputnik journalist observed.

    The post Leftist Castro’s Victory In Honduras Vote Spells End Of US-Backed ‘Narco-Politics, Neoliberalism’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Workers Deserved Bernie’s Build Back Better, But They’ll Likely Get Manchin’s

    Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks with reporters after leaving a Senate Democrat luncheon on October 19, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    “Fuck the managers. Fuck this company. Fuck this position,” yelled 19-year-old Shana Blackwell over a Walmart intercom last year. “I fucking quit!” She called staff “racist” and sexist then walked off the job. In her wobbly cellphone video, pride and defiance filled her eyes like flames. Her tweet was one of the most viral in 2020.

    Blackwell’s Quit-Heard-Round-the-World was followed by Beth McGrath in September 2021, who also commandeered a Walmart intercom, railed against poor treatment, gaslighting and ended with a heartfelt, “Fuck this job.”

    Rising worker rage fills headlines and empties factories and stores. In September alone, over 4.4 million Americans quit. Strikes rattled companies from Kellogg’s to John Deere. Labor demanded higher wages and better benefits, more vacation and retirement. Yet the very living conditions workers have been fighting for may be won or lost not just on the picket line, but in Washington, D.C., where President Joe Biden’s $1.75 trillion Build Back Better bill is being gutted by corporate Democrats.

    Workers need a win. Workers need child care, health insurance, affordable housing, elder care — all of which are in the stripped-down bill. One obstacle is the greed of paid-off Democrats. The other is the lingering neoliberal ideology that frames Build Back Better as an “entitlement” or an “investment”; it’s neither, it is just the beginning of the long overdue wealth redistribution owed to the working class.

    Build Back Bust

    Imagine waking up in a home you can afford, taking your child to free daycare, kissing an aging parent as the free nurse arrives. Imagine working a union job building electric cars while taking a free class at the local college. Finally, you get home and look around the dinner table, and your kid says at school she learned that greenhouse gases in atmosphere are dropping to safe levels, and you feel hope again.

    The first $6.5 trillion version of Build Back Better, proposed by Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and passed in the House, was comprehensive. It made good-paying union jobs available to the people. But in negotiations with the Biden administration, it was halved to $3.5 trillion to pass the bottleneck of corporate Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. As the bill nears the finish line, they further winnowed it to $1.75 trillion.

    On November 19, the House passed Build Back Better, 220 to 213. The version that was passed ponies up nearly $400 billion for universal prekindergarten and affordable child care programs over six years, extends the child tax credit for another year, puts aside about $200 billion to provide paid family and medical leave starting in 2024, makes Obamacare more affordable, and puts $150 billion toward affordable housing.

    But the Senate version gutted paid family leave. Dental and vision were cut. Free community college was cut. Tax credits for electric vehicles were cut. Lower drug prescription prices were cut. The question is, why?

    “I don’t believe we should turn our society into an entitlement society,” said Senator Manchin. In that one sentence, he summed up the ideology of patrimonial capitalism. Those ideas are more important than his payoff by the coal industry, or Senator Sinema’s $750,000 virtual bribe from pharmaceutical companies and more from GOP donors to her campaign.

    Even venal greed needs ideology to justify it. So, when Manchin invoked “entitlement,” it connected to a conservative mythos from center-right warnings of runaway inflation and “big government” to far-right nail-biting over “socialism.” It implicitly tapped into the imagery of the undeserving poor, a staple of Republican rhetoric from former President Ronald Reagan’s racist stump speech on “welfare queens” to former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s lament about “lazy” inner city (read Black) men.

    Conservatives routinely warp imagery of New Deal-style policy and workers. They portray it as the start of a “New World Order” where the state seizes guns, flags and freedom. In the 1990s, the Republican Party fear-mongered its base with tales of Democrats ceding U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations, whose black helicopters would land on suburban lawns like the sequel to Red Dawn. During the Barack Obama years, it was “death panels” where “big government” health care would decide if grandma lived or died. Today, it is Republican Sen. Rand Paul from Kentucky warning Fox viewers about Build Back Better: “every time [socialism has] been tried in world history it always ends up with state-sponsored authoritarianism and violence.”

    In lock-step with the image of “big government” is the “worker,” who is not “entitled” to the basic standard of living in a modern world. In neoliberalism, workers are taught to believe precarity is a positive state of mobility: in which unstable hours, or endless freelance work or gig economy labor is the path to the American Dream. Jay-Z made this famous when he rapped on the track “Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)”: “I’m not a businessman / I’m a business, man.”

    Further right, it seemed former President Donald Trump ushered f populism to the stage, but the Republican Party’s tax cuts and union-busting show a pattern closer to the “Mudsill Theory” in slaveholder James Hammond’s 1858 speech, “There must be a class to perform the drudgery of life…. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society.”

    The obstacle in front of the working class achieving real gains is not the personal greed or preening antics of Manchin and Sinema. It is the whole atmosphere of ideas that, like cracked and dirty prisms, distort the reality of workers’ lives into Hell.

    Fighting for Democracy

    After the recent November elections shook Democrats, leaving Virginia’s governorship in GOP hands and New Jersey’s Democratic squeaker of a win, fear further spilt liberals and progressives.

    A New York Times editorial advocated inching right, to the “center.” On CNN, Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger from Virginia said, “Nobody elected [Biden] to be FDR.” Meanwhile, The Nation and Jacobin took the left line that Democrats failed to meet the material needs of the working class. Panicked at more losses, Democrats quickly passed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, but progressives fear they gave up leverage to push the $1.75 Build Back Better Act, and if so, the chance to brighten the lives of workers will be lost for a long, long time.

    The gamble of each position comes down to a question: What do people want? In poll after poll, pieces of Build Back Better are popular. Yes, tax the rich. Yes, to dental and vision covered by Medicare. Yes, to care for the old. Yes, to clean energy jobs. Yet even though working people feel deeply their daily needs, some are misguided by the same neoliberal ideology in D.C. — a distrust of “big government” — that is, until they experience the benefits.

    “You need the New Deal times two,” said economic professor Dr. Richard Wolff in a Truthout interview. “The U.S. has had a public crisis before like the Spanish Flu of 1918 and the Great Depression, but never both at the same time. We need a government response adequate to the size of the problem.”

    When asked why the left finds it difficult to push Build Back Better and social democracy in general, Wolff pointed to the effect of decades of neoliberalism. It hardened a worldview of market fundamentalism, privatization, shredding of welfare and gutting unions — all of which left workers with a generational case of false consciousness.

    “The left has been in decline for 60 years,” he said. “The percentage of unions in the private workforce is 7 percent. We’re at a historic low of organizing. Sixty years! We are a culture of holding the line. But something remarkable is happening: We’re shaking off the old ways. Look at the strikes at Kellogg’s, Starbucks, John Deere and Amazon.”

    When Wolff surveys the wreckage left by COVID, he sees a break from the past that accelerated a left turn. “People look at the world differently after trauma,” he said. “For 18 months, 82 million people experienced some period of unemployment. It was a trauma, individually, and a trauma for their family. No one event guarantees a particular outcome; it is over-determined by context. One response is to become zombies. Another is resistance; you see it in the historic wave of quitting. Another is the number of strikes; these are the workers who to make their lives better.”

    The problem, Wolff says, is that the new labor militancy will face reaction from employers wanting to recoup lost profit — say, by hiring three workers for four jobs, so new hires end up laboring more for less. “What the left has to do is show that the problem is with the system; you quit this job, the next will be the same. Even a strike victory is immediately watered down. You’re caught in a system.”

    Wolff’s decades as a Marxist economist gave him a vantage point to map where we came from and where we’re going. What’s clear is that the U.S. worker passed through a trauma; friends and family got sick from COVID, more than 700,000 died; personal debt increased; frontline workers risked their lives in food delivery, hospitals and transportation to keep the nation going. It changed us deeply. Now workers no longer think of a good and decent life as merely an “entitlement.” It is a debt owed by the ruling class.

    Working-Class Heroes

    “Heroes.”

    The word was stapled like a medal on workers amid the pandemic. Heroes. We saw in the media, nurses with faces bruised from back-to-back shifts to save lives. We saw bus drivers and flight attendants put themselves in harm’s way to keep the world from totally falling apart. The selfless action of the working class forces an opening in neoliberal ideology for a new image to become the basis of a new politics. One that can shift the balance of power during Striketober and the negotiations over Build Back Better.

    The frame of workers today resembles the image of them post World War II, when the modern European welfare state was being built on the rubble. The soldiers who came back were hailed as heroes, and, as in Philip Zec’s famous cartoon, the war-time suffering of the masses pushed social democrats and labor parties across the continent and in Britain to set up national welfare. The devastation of COVID and the quarantine coma of the global economy has recreated a similar moment in history, where frontline workers and the masses are demanding a better world and class reparations.

    For decades, neoliberalism has defined the political imagination. The workers quitting and going on strike are dismantling it. The more the left can channel labor militancy into a fight for Build Back Better, the quicker we can exorcise the last remnants of that lie that the working class must silently suffer exploitation for the mediocre pleasures of bourgeoise life. Everything in the world was made by a worker, which is why Karl Marx said in the Communist Manifesto that, “They have a world to win.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Politics of Protection

    In his new book The Great Recoil, Paolo Gerbaudo argues that the left needs to speak to people’s fears and connect them to hope.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Millions More Want To Quit

    The “Great Resignation” refers to the millions of people who have quit their job over the past 20 months, “more than 4.4 million alone in September” which is about the same as the previous month. These are record numbers. For example, “10 years ago, in September 2011, 1.5m people quit their jobs”. Currently, “The U.S. has 10.4 million job openings, surpassing pre-pandemic levels. In November 2019, there were 6.8 million job openings”.

    Burnout, years of poor working conditions, poor pay, poor benefits, poor treatment, fear of covid, pandemic stress, lack of daycare options, lack of job mobility, and autocratic employers are just some of the many reasons millions in the U.S. and elsewhere have left work in a short period of time. What makes the “Great Resignation” even more significant is the fact that during this short period, poverty, debt, hunger, homelessness, and inequality increased significantly at home and abroad. In other words, millions are quitting despite worsening social and economic conditions. Naturally, this large departure of many workers from work has disrupted thousands of businesses, causing many to operate more erratically and unreliably than before the start of the “COVID Pandemic.”

    It is not a stretch to say that many workers have felt victimized for years at their job. Neoliberal austerity has been in full swing and wreaking havoc for more than 40 years at home and abroad. Living and working standards have been falling steadily while insecurity and instability have been growing. Even if there are some positive aspects to one’s work, there are usually many negative and intolerable features as well, and these often outweigh the positive aspects of work. For one thing, spending endless hours behind a screen every day is generally not considered the path to better health. The fact is many people dread going to work every day. Working conditions are so unsatisfactory that even with the end of special pandemic-related emergency programs in September in most places, millions of workers are still choosing not to return to work. Sign-on bonuses, higher wages, flexible work schedules, and other “incentives” have yet to make a big dent in things.

    In this sense, there is no worker shortage, per se. There are plenty of people willing and able to work, but people need decent pay, benefits, and conditions. They also need a real say in things and real control over their working conditions; good pay and benefits are not enough. Most workers do not want to go to a job where the life is slowly sucked out of them every day and where they frequently have to do counterproductive things just because their superiors make them. Reflecting the sentiment of so many others, one worker in his early fifties put it this way: “I don’t really want to work anymore. I don’t want to have any meetings, no deadlines, no goals, no quarter, no seminar. I don’t want none of that stuff no more”. People are fed-up with the endless grind, stress, and hustle that seems to lead to nowhere.

    Far too many, however, have no choice but to stay in jobs that are not gratifying and rewarding; they have to put up with all kinds of humiliation every day for inadequate pay, benefits, and control; they would love to quit their jobs and would if they could. It is not unusual to hear more people say things like “I wish I could retire.”

    The severe all-sided wrecking and destruction wrought by the rich and their cartel political parties over the past 20 months has clearly changed the equation in many ways; there is a new and rapidly-evolving theater where many things are up for grabs, making it both a dangerous and exciting time to be alive.

    The proper use of the abilities and talents of humans in any society, and the balanced healthy extended reproduction of society, cannot take place so long as the political and economic elite dominate all affairs in society and act irresponsibly. They are a huge block to alternative human-centered arrangements that empower people to decide how an economy and society should be run. The labor and production carnage that has unfolded over the past 20 months is spectacular and unprecedented, truly global in scale. Millions of livelihoods have been destroyed in a very short period of time. Working people find themselves in a new situation where they will have to develop new creative ways to deprive the rich of their ability to deprive every one of their rights.

    The post Millions More Want To Quit first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Shawgi Tell.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Saving Capitalism or Saving the Planet? 

    The UK government’s Behavioural Insights Team helped to push the public towards accepting the COVID narrative, restrictions and lockdowns. It is now working on ‘nudging’ people towards further possible restrictions or at least big changes in their behaviour in the name of ‘climate emergency’. From frequent news stories and advertisements to soap opera storylines and government announcements, the message about impending climate catastrophe is almost relentless.

    Part of the messaging includes blaming the public’s consumption habits for a perceived ‘climate emergency’. At the same time, young people are being told that we only have a decade or so (depending on who is saying it) to ‘save the planet’.

    Setting the agenda are powerful corporations that helped degrade much of the environment in the first place. But ordinary people, not the multi-billionaires pushing this agenda, will pay the price for this as living more frugally seems to be part of the programme (‘own nothing and be happy’). Could we at some future point see ‘climate emergency’ lockdowns, not to ‘save the NHS’ but to ‘save the planet’?

    A tendency to focus on individual behaviour and not ‘the system’ exists.

    But let us not forget this is a system that deliberately sought to eradicate a culture of self-reliance that prevailed among the working class in the 19th century (self-education, recycling products, a culture of thrift, etc) via advertising and a formal school education that ensured conformity and set in motion a lifetime of wage labour and dependency on the products manufactured by an environmentally destructive capitalism.

    A system that has its roots in inflicting massive violence across the globe to exert control over land and resources elsewhere.

    In his 2018 book The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequalities and its solutions, Jason Hickel describes the processes involved in Europe’s wealth accumulation over a 150-year period of colonialism that resulted in tens of millions of deaths.

    By using other countries’ land, Britain effectively doubled the size of arable land in its control. This made it more practical to then reassign the rural population at home (by stripping people of their means of production) to industrial labour. This too was underpinned by massive violence (burning villages, destroying houses, razing crops).

    Hickel argues that none of this was inevitable but was rooted in the fear of being left behind by other countries because of Europe’s relative lack of land resources to produce commodities.

    This is worth bearing in mind as we currently witness a fundamental shift in our relationship to the state resulting from authoritarian COVID-related policies and the rapidly emerging corporate-led green agenda. We should never underestimate the ruthlessness involved in the quest for preserving wealth and power and the propensity for wrecking lives and nature to achieve this.

    Commodification of nature

    Current green agenda ‘solutions’ are based on a notion of ‘stakeholder’ capitalism or private-public partnerships whereby vested interests are accorded greater weight, with governments and public money merely facilitating the priorities of private capital.

    A key component of this strategy involves the ‘financialisation of nature’ and the production of new ‘green’ markets to deal with capitalism’s crisis of over accumulation and weak consumer demand caused by decades of neoliberal policies and the declining purchasing power of working people. The banking sector is especially set to make a killing via ‘green profiling’ and ‘green bonds’.

    According to Friends of the Earth (FoE), corporations and states will use the financialisation of nature discourse to weaken laws and regulations designed to protect the environment with the aim of facilitating the goals of extractive industries, while allowing mega-infrastructure projects in protected areas and other contested places.

    Global corporations will be able to ‘offset’ (greenwash) their activities by, for example, protecting or planting a forest elsewhere (on indigenous people’s land) or perhaps even investing in (imposing) industrial agriculture which grows herbicide-resistant GMO commodity crop monocultures that are misleadingly portrayed as ‘climate friendly’.

    FoE states:

    Offsetting schemes allow companies to exceed legally defined limits of destruction at a particular location, or destroy protected habitat, on the promise of compensation elsewhere; and allow banks to finance such destruction on the same premise.

    This agenda could result in the weakening of current environmental protection legislation or its eradication in some regions under the pretext of compensating for the effects elsewhere. How ecoservice ‘assets’ (for example, a forest that performs a service to the ecosystem by acting as a carbon sink) are to be evaluated in a monetary sense is very likely to be done on terms that are highly favourable to the corporations involved, meaning that environmental protection will play second fiddle to corporate and finance sector return-on-investment interests.

    As FoE argues, business wants this system to be implemented on its terms, which means the bottom line will be more important than stringent rules that prohibit environmental destruction.

    Saving capitalism

    The envisaged commodification of nature will ensure massive profit-seeking opportunities through the opening up of new markets and the creation of fresh investment instruments.

    Capitalism needs to keep expanding into or creating new markets to ensure the accumulation of capital to offset the tendency for the general rate of profit to fall (according to writer Ted Reese, it has trended downwards from an estimated 43% in the 1870s to 17% in the 2000s). The system suffers from a rising overaccumulation (surplus) of capital.

    Reese notes that, although wages and corporate taxes have been slashed, the exploitability of labour continued to become increasingly insufficient to meet the demands of capital accumulation. By late 2019, the world economy was suffocating under a mountain of debt. Many companies could not generate enough profit and falling turnover, squeezed margins, limited cashflows and highly leveraged balance sheets were prevalent. In effect, economic growth was already grinding to a halt prior to the massive stock market crash in February 2020.

    In the form of COVID ‘relief’, there has been a multi-trillion bailout for capitalism as well as the driving of smaller enterprises to bankruptcy. Or they have being swallowed up by global interests. Either way, the likes of Amazon and other predatory global corporations have been the winners.

    New ‘green’ Ponzi trading schemes to offset carbon emissions and commodify ‘ecoservices’ along with electric vehicles and an ‘energy transition’ represent a further restructuring of the capitalist economy, resulting in a shift away from a consumer oriented demand-led system.

    It essentially leaves those responsible for environmental degradation at the wheel, imposing their will and their narrative on the rest of us.

    Global agribusiness

    Between 2000 and 2009, Indonesia supplied more than half of the global palm oil market at an annual expense of some 340,000 hectares of Indonesian countryside. Consider too that Brazil and Indonesia have spent over 100 times more in subsidies to industries that cause deforestation than they received in international conservation aid from the UN to prevent it.

    These two countries gave over $40bn in subsidies to the palm oil, timber, soy, beef and biofuels sectors between 2009 and 2012, some 126 times more than the $346m they received to preserve their rain forests.

    India is the world’s leading importer of palm oil, accounting for around 15% of the global supply. It imports over two-­thirds of its palm oil from Indonesia.

    Until the mid-1990s, India was virtually self-sufficient in edible oils. Under pressure from the World Trade Organization (WTO), import tariffs were reduced, leading to an influx of cheap (subsidised) edible oil imports that domestic farmers could not compete with. This was a deliberate policy that effectively devastated the home-grown edible oils sector and served the interests of palm oil growers and US grain and agriculture commodity company Cargill, which helped write international trade rules to secure access to the Indian market on its terms.

    Indonesia leads the world in global palm oil production, but palm oil plantations have too often replaced tropical forests, leading to the killing of endangered species and the uprooting of local communities as well as contributing to the release of potential environment-damaging gases. Indonesia emits more of these gases than any country besides China and the US, largely due to the production of palm oil.

    The issue of palm oil is one example from the many that could be provided to highlight how the drive to facilitate corporate need and profit trumps any notion of environmental protection or addressing any ‘climate emergency’. Whether it is in Indonesia, Latin America or elsewhere, transnational agribusiness – and the system of globalised industrial commodity crop agriculture it promotes – fuels much of the destruction we see today.

    Even if the mass production of lab-created food, under the guise of ‘saving the planet’ and ‘sustainability’, becomes logistically possible (which despite all the hype is not at this stage), it may still need biomass and huge amounts of energy. Whose land will be used to grow these biomass commodities and which food crops will they replace? And will it involve that now-famous Gates’ euphemism ‘land mobility’ (farmers losing their land)?

    Microsoft is already mapping Indian farmers’ lands and capturing agriculture datasets such as crop yields, weather data, farmers’ personal details, profile of land held (cadastral maps, farm size, land titles, local climatic and geographical conditions), production details (crops grown, production history, input history, quality of output, machinery in possession) and financial details (input costs, average return, credit history).

    Is this an example of stakeholder-partnership capitalism, whereby a government facilitates the gathering of such information by a private player which can then use the data for developing a land market (courtesy of land law changes that the government enacts) for institutional investors at the expense of smallholder farmers who find themselves ‘land mobile’? This is a major concern among farmers and civil society in India.

    Back in 2017, agribusiness giant Monsanto was judged to have engaged in practices that impinged on the basic human right to a healthy environment, the right to food and the right to health. Judges at the ‘Monsanto Tribunal’, held in The Hague, concluded that if ecocide were to be formally recognised as a crime in international criminal law, Monsanto could be found guilty.

    The tribunal called for the need to assert the primacy of international human and environmental rights law. However, it was also careful to note that an existing set of legal rules serves to protect investors’ rights in the framework of the WTO and in bilateral investment treaties and in clauses in free trade agreements. These investor trade rights provisions undermine the capacity of nations to maintain policies, laws and practices protecting human rights and the environment and represent a disturbing shift in power.

    The tribunal denounced the severe disparity between the rights of multinational corporations and their obligations.

    While the Monsanto Tribunal judged that company to be guilty of human rights violations, including crimes against the environment, in a sense we also witnessed global capitalism on trial.

    Global conglomerates can only operate as they do because of a framework designed to allow them to capture or co-opt governments and regulatory bodies and to use the WTO and bilateral trade deals to lever influence. As Jason Hickel notes in his book (previously referred to), old-style colonialism may have gone but governments in the Global North and its corporations have found new ways to assert dominance via leveraging aid, market access and ‘philanthropic’ interventions to force lower income countries to do what they want.

    The World Bank’s ‘Enabling the Business of Agriculture’ and its ongoing commitment to an unjust model of globalisation is an example of this and a recipe for further plunder and the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the few.

    Brazil and Indonesia have subsidised private corporations to effectively destroy the environment through their practices. Canada and the UK are working with the GMO biotech sector to facilitate its needs. And India is facilitating the destruction of its agrarian base according to World Bank directives for the benefit of the likes of Corteva and Cargill.

    The TRIPS Agreement, written by Monsanto, and the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, written by Cargill, was key to a new era of corporate imperialism. It came as little surprise that in 2013 India’s then Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar accused US companies of derailing the nation’s oil seeds production programme.

    Powerful corporations continue to regard themselves as the owners of people, the planet and the environment and as having the right – enshrined in laws and agreements they wrote – to exploit and devastate for commercial gain.

    Partnership or co-option?

    It was noticeable during a debate on food and agriculture at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow that there was much talk about transforming the food system through partnerships and agreements. Fine-sounding stuff, especially when the role of agroecology and regenerative farming was mentioned.

    However, if, for instance, the interests you hope to form partnerships with are coercing countries to eradicate their essential buffer food stocks then bid for such food on the global market with US dollars (as in India) or are lobbying for the enclosure of seeds through patents (as in Africa and elsewhere), then surely this deliberate deepening of dependency should be challenged; otherwise ‘partnership’ really means co-option.

    Similarly, the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) that took place during September in New York was little more than an enabler of corporate needs. The UNFSS was founded on a partnership between the UN and the World Economic Forum and was disproportionately influenced by corporate actors.

    Those granted a pivotal role at the UNFSS support industrial food systems that promote ultra-processed foods, deforestation, industrial livestock production, intensive pesticide use and commodity crop monocultures, all of which cause soil deterioration, water contamination and irreversible impacts on biodiversity and human health. And this will continue as long as the environmental effects can be ‘offset’ or these practices can be twisted on the basis of them somehow being ‘climate-friendly’.

    Critics of the UNFSS offer genuine alternatives to the prevailing food system. In doing so, they also provide genuine solutions to climate-related issues and food injustice based on notions of food sovereignty, localisation and a system of food cultivation deriving from agroecological principles and practices. Something which people who organised the climate summit in Glasgow would do well to bear in mind.

    Current greenwashed policies are being sold by tugging at the emotional heartstrings of the public. This green agenda, with its lexicon of ‘sustainability’, ‘carbon neutrality’, ‘net-zero’ and doom-laden forecasts, is part of a programme that seeks to restructure capitalism, to create new investment markets and instruments and to return the system to viable levels of profitability.

    The post Saving Capitalism or Saving the Planet?  first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Saving Our Planet Requires Systemic and Behavioural Change

    The natural environment has been poisoned, vandalized and trashed in accordance with the demands and values of the all-pervasive socio-economic system, and as long as it persists it is impossible to imagine the steps required to save the natural world being taken. Economic considerations and short term self-interest will continue to be applied and the devastation will continue.

    Neo-liberalism is an extreme form of capitalism, like its founding ideology but darker, even more unjust and brutal. It sees every aspect of life – waterways, forests, the air, people, you name it –  as a potential product to be exploited, profited from, drained of all value and discarded. The “free market” (does such a thing exist, anywhere?), and its power to regulate supply and demand, is a cornerstone, as is competition and private ownership of everything, including health care, education, even prisons. Whatever area, the aim is the same, maximize production, limit costs and generate wealth for the business, most importantly the shareholders, no matter the impact on the environment and society.

    A value system and integrated way of life has evolved consistent with the ethos of this poisonous ideology: individual ambition – personal success over group well-being; greed or excess; sensory pleasure; materiality; tribal nationalism (strengthened by competition); distrust of others who are different, and a fabrication of individuality. True individuality is impossible within the constraints of the doctrine which demands conformity, assimilates and dilutes creative expression to the mechanics and trends of the machine, and like all ideologies, moves towards crystallisation, maintains itself supreme and claims there are no viable alternatives.

    Societies have been fashioned around these ideals and values, as has individual and collective behavior; behavior resulting from conditioned ways of thinking about ourselves, of other people, of the environment and the purpose of life, which, whilst openly undeclared, is hinted at from the values promoted: Purpose it says is related to pleasure, sensory gratification and material success; all of which are sold as means to achieving self-happiness and self-fulfillment, without ever questioning what this “self” is.

    Such self-centred happiness is derived from pleasure and the quelling of desire, which, as the architects of the system know well, is not possible, because desire is insatiable. This fact is instinctively known, but the messaging to the contrary is relentless and for many, most perhaps, the trials of daily living are so great, the separation from oneself and the natural world so acute, that relief is essential. The diverse and endlessly malleable World of Consumerism provides the means of momentary alleviation: Alcohol, drugs, (legal and illegal), sex, shopping, TV, sport, more shopping, holidays, organised religion, shopping and food. And to excess; greed, ownership of things (homes, cars, clothes etc.), and the general accumulation of stuff is insisted upon, for the simple reason that it is consumerism that feeds the monster. This very same consumerism, which is perpetuating unhappiness and fuelling ill health, is also the underlying cause of the environmental emergency.

    It is the irresponsible consumption of animal-based foodstuffs and manufactured goods, many of which are made in the Asiatic world (where the West has outsourced its production-based greenhouse gas emissions), that is driving the crisis.

    A massive “if”…

    Complacency, ignorance and selfishness have been the principal weapons of environmental destruction wielded by western governments, big business and the rich for decades. Adopted now by nations in other parts of the world, the global environmental impact has been devastating, in many cases catastrophic: destroying ecosystems, massacring animal life, poisoning the air and water, draining the soil of all goodness and disrupting natural climate patterns.

    In order to stop the carnage and begin to heal the planet, a radical change is needed, not just more pledges and corporate greenwashing; fundamental change in behavior and attitudes that will usher in a kinder, more considerate way of living. The needed values and actions, however, are incompatible with Neo-Liberal capitalism, or any form of capitalism, and the greedy, selfish behavior that it promotes: cruel modes of living fashioned in rich nations, where the most extreme levels of consumerism occur.

    It is not after all the villagers in India, China or Sub-Saharan Africa where rabid consumption is taking place, it’s the rich that are overwhelmingly responsible – the obscenely rich in particular; the private jets, numerous homes, cars, constant travel and piles and piles and piles of things. A study by Oxfam, published in 2015, found that, “Fifty percent of the world’s carbon emissions are produced by the world’s richest 10%, while the poorest half – 3.5 billion people – are responsible for a mere 10%.” In the 25-year period studied (1990-2015), global carbon dioxide emissions rose by 60%, and “the increase in emissions from the richest 1% was three times greater than the increase in emissions from the poorest half” of the world’s population, that’s around 3.6 billion people.

    Wrapped in selfishness and protected by governments, it is the really rich, and the corporations (which they own) that own everything and are consuming most of everything. This overindulged, hideously wealthy collective, have benefitted enormously from the socio-economic machine and are extremely resistant to the systemic change that is needed if, and at this stage it’s a massive “if”, the natural world and all that lives within it, is to be saved.

    The structural limitations (financial, political, social) and behavioral expectations of the Ideology of Greed and Exploitation, prohibit the needed changes taking place within the time frame required, hence the perpetual procrastination, excuses and delays, even as the planet burns. The inherent constraints and relentless demands – to consume, to exploit, to compete, to divide –  run completely contrary to the needs of the environment, and indeed the health of humanity; sacrifice is required, it is not possible to have our materialistic consumer filled cake and eat it; sacrifice of a materialistic way of life that has resulted in divided societies of unhappy anxious people and the destruction of the natural world.

    Last year, as with each year during the previous decade, global greenhouse gas emissions were the highest ever recorded; this, despite an economic quietening resulting from Covid restrictions and high levels of awareness of the environmental emergency throughout the world. As COP26 draws to an unimpressive close, governments haggle over emission targets, funding of fossil fuels and money for the global south, and a new poll reports that most people  (in the 10 countries polled, including UK, US, Germany, France) say they are unwilling to alter their way of life to save our planet. We must once again ask, what will it take for humanity to wake up and change?

    For the environmental emergency to be faced with the intensity needed, and healing to occur, a dramatic shift is required. A systemic shift, together with a fundamental change in attitudes, values and behavior, particularly among those living in the rich nations. A shift away from complacency and selfishness towards responsibility, cooperation and simplicity of living; united action rooted in love, as Elizabeth Wathuti (youth climate activist,) from Kenya told COP26 in her wonderful speech,“please  open your hearts….care deeply and act collectively.”

    The post Saving Our Planet Requires Systemic and Behavioural Change first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Graham Peebles.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Mainstream Economists Reject Economic Science

    The “invisible hand” gives rise to a situation where it becomes natural and normal to conclude that no one knows how things work or what to expect. It renders the future unpredictable and unmanageable. Uncertainty and unpredictability become the norm because the economy as a whole is not under conscious human control. Different sectors and components of the economy do not work in harmony, free of crisis, because they are divided amongst competing owners of capital obsessed with their own narrow private interests. This inter-capitalist rivalry does not lend itself to the healthy balanced extended reproduction of society. It mainly damages the natural and social environment more. Everyone living in such a set-up is subject to constant chaos, anarchy, and violence in the economy and society. Stability, security, and peace are transient under such conditions. Thus, even in the 21st century with all the accumulated knowledge and experience of humanity, so-called “advanced” societies can turn upside down in no time at all; economic and social crises can hit at any time and leave society, the economy, and the people as a whole highly destabilized and damaged for months, years, even decades. On top of all this we are repeatedly told that there is no alternative to this outdated system. Apparently, this is the best humanity can do and no one should strive to replace existing arrangements with something better.

    Last week, Jerome Powell, head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is not really part of the U.S. government, delivered his latest views and predictions on the economy and outlined what actions the Federal Reserve will be taking in the coming weeks and months. “Tapering” of fiat currency printing is expected to begin this month and continue for six more months, while interest rates will remain untouched for the foreseeable future. In reality, the Federal Reserve ran out of ammunition long ago and is trapped in the world of bad policy versus bad policy; there are no good options and no good endings here. Is it even possible to “taper” a Ponzi scheme? To be sure, the Federal Reserve has dug a deep hole. The system’s internal contradictions are too severe to “rescue” anything at this point.

    One statement in particular by Powell speaks volumes about the state of economic science and human cognition in the final and highest stage of capitalism:

    It’s difficult enough to just forecast the economy in normal times. When you’re talking about global supply chains in turmoil, it’s a whole different thing. And you’re talking about a pandemic that’s holding people out of the labor force for reasons that we can sample, but we don’t have a lot of experience with this, so it’s very difficult to forecast and not easy to set policy. (emphasis added,)

    Powell casually and publicly admits that he and those who share his old world outlook reject economic science even “in normal times;” they do not believe in planning, control, science, human cognition, and predictability. “Forecasting” economic conditions and activities  even “in normal times” is far from precise and useful from the perspective of capitalist ideologues. The economy apparently cannot be controlled, known, or directed to serve the people and society. Powell openly creates the impression that fixing the economy is some sort of crapshoot, a mystery. Maybe things will work out, maybe not. Apparently, no one really knows how things are going to unfold or what impact neoliberal fiscal and monetary policies will have on the economy. Confusion and ignorance about the economy are so normal that the subtitle of a November 4, 2021 ABC News article reads: “If you find the current economy a bit confusing, don’t worry: So does the nation’s top economic official, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell”. This is hardly a good way to inspire confidence in the people. It is a scandalous thing to admit. People need leaders who know what they are doing and can reliably deliver meaningful pro-social results and solutions. Why is meeting people’s basic needs such a mystery?

    Most Americans already know that the economy is in bad shape. On November 7, 2021, the New York Times reported that, “In a Gallup poll in October, 68 percent of respondents said they thought economic conditions were getting worse”. The overwhelming majority are simply not hopeful about the future of the economy and it does not help that President Joe Biden’s poor approval rating keeps steadily falling. People from all walks of life feel overwhelmed and exhausted with the way the rich and their cartel political parties (Democrats and Republicans) are wrecking the entire fabric of society.

    There is a growing need for a real alternative to existing arrangements. The current situation is untenable at all levels. More and more people are rejecting the rich and their cartel political parties and demanding real solutions to the problems confronting the economy and society. Acting in the old way simply won’t work and doesn’t work anymore. People are disgusted with irresponsible and unaccountable leaders who can’t solve any problems. People are also tired of being reduced to vote banks for the parties of the rich. Constantly begging politicians to do the most basic simple things is humiliating, exhausting, and a massive drain on social energy that could be harnessed to expedite human-centered arrangements.

    As the massive divide between the rich and everyone else keeps growing, contradictions and problems in society will get sharper and more severe, giving rise to new dynamics and new realities to confront. In this situation working people must mobilize themselves and others to leverage openings to advance arrangements that favor the people. There is a need for fresh independent thinking and a new outlook of the world and the future. There is an alternative to the ruling class wrecking all known arrangements in its quest to maximize profits at all costs.

    The post Mainstream Economists Reject Economic Science first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Honduran Campesino Leader Explains The ZEDEs

    A wide range of sectors in Honduras are continuing to mobilize against the Economic Development and Employment Zones (ZEDEs) with the general election now one month away. Campesino, indigenous and Afro-descendant movements and communities say the large scale territorial concessions amount to a flagrant violation of national sovereignty and will result in mass displacement. Frequent protests against the legislation, like the one held by the National Lawyers Association of Honduras, have called for the repeal of Decree 120/2013, due to its unconstitutionality, and communities are declaring their lands ZEDES free territories. Despite strong opposition, the Honduran state continues to make concessions to transnational capital, surrendering not only land, but also political sovereignty to foreign companies.

    The post Honduran Campesino Leader Explains The ZEDEs appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • The Great Recoil Of Neoliberal Globalization

    The current political era is best understood as a “great recoil” of economic globalization. It is a moment when the coordinates of historical development seem to be inverting, upsetting many of the assumptions that dominated politics and economics over the last decades. This moment corresponds to the “second movement” socialist economic historian Karl Polanyi described in his book The Great Transformation, when phases of capitalist expansion recede and are met by “societal responses.”

    According to Polanyi, in phases of profound crisis like that opened by the 1929 Wall Street Crash, society tends to act defensively, erecting forms of social protection against a capitalist logic that has manifestly failed to deliver prosperity, yet becomes even more aggressive in its attempts to extract profit.

    The post The Great Recoil Of Neoliberal Globalization appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Chile, Two Years After The Popular Uprising

    That October 18, 2019 was a blow that, in one fell swoop, brought down the deceptive façade of the conservative regime and inaugurated a new stage in the history of Chile. The enormous injustices maintained and deepened during the very slow (and failed) “democratic transition” initiated in 1990 were exposed. The explosive combination of free market without anesthesia and a democracy lacking in substance and completely delegitimized—thus becoming a rapacious plutocracy—was able to stay afloat thanks to the resignation, demoralization and apathy of the citizenry, skillfully induced by establishment politicians and the media oligarchy, partners of the ruling class. The spell was broken on October 18.

    The post Chile, Two Years After The Popular Uprising appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Our Future vs. Neoliberalism

    (Photo:  Tom Pennington)

    In country after country around the world, people are rising up to challenge entrenched, failing neoliberal political and economic systems, with mixed but sometimes promising results.

    Progressive leaders in the U.S. Congress are refusing to back down on the Democrats’ promises to American voters to reduce poverty, expand rights to healthcare, education and clean energy, and repair a shredded social safety net. After decades of tax cuts for the rich, they are also committed to raising taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations to pay for this popular agenda.

    Germany has elected a ruling coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats that excludes the conservative Christian Democrats for the first time since 2000. The new government promises a $14 minimum wage, solar panels on all suitable roof space, 2% of land for wind farms and the closure of Germany’s last coal-fired power plants by 2030.

    Iraqis voted in an election that was called in response to a popular protest movement launched in October 2019 to challenge the endemic corruption of the post-2003 political class and its subservience to U.S. and Iranian interests. The protest movement was split between taking part in the election and boycotting it, but its candidates still won about 35 seats and will have a voice in parliament. The party of long-time Iraqi nationalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr won 73 seats, the largest of any single party, while Iranian-backed parties whose armed militias killed hundreds of protesters in 2019 lost popular support and many of their seats.

    Chile’s billionaire president, Sebastian Piñera, is being impeached after the Pandora Papers revealed details of bribery and tax evasion in his sale of a mining company, and he could face up to 5 years in prison. Mass street protests in 2019 forced Piñera to agree to a new constitution to replace the one written under the Pinochet military dictatorship, and a convention that includes representatives of indigenous and other marginalized communities has been elected to draft the constitution. Progressive parties and candidates are expected to do well in the general election in November.

    Maybe the greatest success of people power has come in Bolivia. In 2020, only a year after a U.S.-backed right-wing military coup, a mass mobilization of mostly indigenous working people forced a new election, and the socialist MAS Party of Evo Morales was returned to power. Since then it has already introduced a new wealth tax and welfare payments to four million people to help eliminate hunger in Bolivia.

    The Ideological Context

    Since the 1970s, Western political and corporate leaders have peddled a quasi-religious belief in the power of “free” markets and unbridled capitalism to solve all the world’s problems. This new “neoliberal” orthodoxy is a thinly disguised reversion to the systematic injustice of 19th century laissez-faire capitalism, which led to gross inequality and poverty even in wealthy countries, famines that killed tens of millions of people in India and China, and horrific exploitation of the poor and vulnerable worldwide.

    For most of the 20th century, Western countries gradually responded to the excesses and injustices of capitalism by using the power of government to redistribute wealth through progressive taxation and a growing public sector, and ensure broad access to public goods like education and healthcare. This led to a gradual expansion of broadly shared prosperity in the United States and Western Europe through a strong public sector that balanced the power of private corporations and their owners.

    The steadily growing shared prosperity of the post-WWII years in the West was derailed by a  combination of factors, including the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, Nixon’s freeze on prices and wages, runaway inflation caused by dropping the gold standard, and then a second oil crisis after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

    Right-wing politicians led by Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. blamed the power of organized labor and the public sector for the economic crisis. They launched a “neoliberal” counter-revolution to bust unions, shrink and privatize the public sector, cut taxes, deregulate industries and supposedly unleash “the magic of the market.” Then they took credit for a return to economic growth that really owed more to the end of the oil crises.

    The United States and United Kingdom used their economic, military and media power to spread their neoliberal gospel across the world. Chile’s experiment in neoliberalism under Pinochet’s military dictatorship became a model for U.S. efforts to roll back the “pink tide” in Latin America. When the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe opened to the West at the end of the Cold War, it was the extreme, neoliberal brand of capitalism that Western economists imposed as “shock therapy” to privatize state-owned enterprises and open countries to Western corporations.

    In the United States, the mass media shy away from the word “neoliberalism” to describe the changes in society since the 1980s. They describe its effects in less systemic terms, as globalization, privatization, deregulation, consumerism and so on, without calling attention to their common ideological roots. This allows them to treat its impacts as separate, unconnected problems: poverty and inequality, mass incarceration, environmental degradation, ballooning debt, money in politics, disinvestment in public services, declines in public health, permanent war, and record military spending.

    After a generation of systematic neoliberal control, it is now obvious to people all over the world that neoliberalism has utterly failed to solve the world’s problems. As many predicted all along, it has just enabled the rich to get much, much richer, while structural and even existential problems remain unsolved.

    Even once people have grasped the self-serving, predatory nature of this system that has overtaken their political and economic life, many still fall victim to the demoralization and powerlessness that are among its most insidious products, as they are brainwashed to see themselves only as individuals and consumers, instead of as active and collectively powerful citizens.

    In effect, confronting neoliberalism—whether as individuals, groups, communities or countries—requires a two-step process. First, we must understand the nature of the beast that has us and the world in its grip, whatever we choose to call it. Second, we must overcome our own demoralization and powerlessness, and rekindle our collective power as political and economic actors to build the better world we know is possible.

    We will see that collective power in the streets and the suites at COP26 in Glasgow, when the world’s leaders will gather to confront the reality that neoliberalism has allowed corporate profits to trump a rational response to the devastating impact of fossil fuels on the Earth’s climate. Extinction Rebellion and other groups will be in the streets in Glasgow, demanding the long-delayed action that is required to solve the problem, including an end to net carbon emissions by 2025.

    While scientists warned us for decades what the result would be, political and business leaders have peddled their neoliberal snake oil to keep filling their coffers at the expense of the future of life on Earth. If we fail to stop them now, living conditions will keep deteriorating for people everywhere, as the natural world our lives depend on is washed out from under our feet, goes up in smoke and, species by species, dies and disappears forever.

    The Covid pandemic is another real world case study on the impact of neoliberalism. As the official death toll reaches 5 million and many more deaths go unreported, rich countries are still hoarding vaccines, drug companies are reaping a bonanza of profits from vaccines and new drugs, and the lethal, devastating injustice of the entire neoliberal “market” system is laid bare for the whole world to see. Calls for a “people’s vaccine” and “vaccine justice” have been challenging what has now been termed “vaccine apartheid.”

    Conclusion

    In the 1980s, U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher often told the world, “There is no alternative” to the neoliberal order she and President Reagan were unleashing. After only one or two generations, the self-serving insanity they prescribed and the crises it has caused have made it a question of survival for humanity to find alternatives.

    Around the world, ordinary people are rising up to demand real change. The people of Iraq, Chile and Bolivia have overcome the incredible traumas inflicted on them to take to the streets in the thousands and demand better government. Americans should likewise demand that our government stop wasting trillions of dollars to militarize the world and destroy countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, and start solving our real problems, here and abroad.

    People around the world understand the nature of the problems we face better than we did a generation or even a decade ago. Now we must overcome demoralization and powerlessness in order to act. It helps to understand that the demoralization and powerlessness we may feel are themselves products of this neoliberal system, and that simply overcoming them is a victory in itself.

    As we reject the inevitability of neoliberalism and Thatcher’s lie that there is no alternative, we must also reject the lie that we are just passive, powerless consumers. As human beings, we have the same collective power that human beings have always had to build a better world for ourselves and our children – and now is the time to harness that power.

    The post Our Future vs. Neoliberalism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.