August 29, 2005
Torture Yes, Poverty-Alleviation No. (Otherwise Known as Our Foreign Policy.)
There are two developments I have been meaning to write about, but have not found the time to do them justice. Fortunately, Body and Soul has covered both. The first is about the outcome of the case for the gruesome torture and murder of a taxi-driver in the Bagram base in Afhanistan.
Punishments were handed down for four American soldiers involved in the brutal murder of an Afghan taxi driver at Bagram prison:One soldier has been sentenced to two months in prison, another to three months. A third was demoted and given a letter of reprimand and a fine. A fourth was given a reduction in rank and pay.
A reminder of what happened to Dilawar:
Mr. Dilawar was a frail man, standing only 5 feet 9 inches and weighing 122 pounds. But at Bagram, he was quickly labeled one of the "noncompliant" ones.When one of the First Platoon M.P.'s, Specialist Corey E. Jones, was sent to Mr. Dilawar's cell to give him some water, he said the prisoner spit in his face and started kicking him. Specialist Jones responded, he said, with a couple of knee strikes to the leg of the shackled man.
"He screamed out, 'Allah! Allah! Allah!' and my first reaction was that he was crying out to his god," Specialist Jones said to investigators. "Everybody heard him cry out and thought it was funny."
Other Third Platoon M.P.'s later came by the detention center and stopped at the isolation cells to see for themselves, Specialist Jones said.
It became a kind of running joke, and people kept showing up to give this detainee a common peroneal strike just to hear him scream out 'Allah,' " he said. "It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes."
A three month sentence.
The soldiers apparently weren't the only ones who thought the way they treated a helpless and innocent man was a joke.
Read more here.
The other is about the U.N. Millenium Summit to be held in September. Apparently, the US, led by Bolton, has basically decided that the summit should not be about the Millenium Development Goals, poverty, climate change, and all the other things it is about. To that end, John Bolton submitted "750 amendments to the draft and called for immediate talks on them" -- only three weeks before the summit. Read more about them here, or simply remember this tidbit:
U.S. complained the section on poverty was too long.
Posted by zeynep at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)
July 03, 2005
"Is That Loud Enough For You"
"Is That Loud Enough For You" was the headline from Sunday Times about the global Live8 concert, organized along with the Make Poverty History campaign to put pressure on the G8 leadership to offer a modicum of decency in their policies towards Africa.
While I'm on the road, I recommend two articles about the whole process. One, Where is the Jubilee, is from Mark Engler, who has great many other articles in his much-worth exploring site:
Certainly, there is reason to be skeptical: You don't have to be a hardened cynic to wonder about the true scope of Bush and Blair's compassion. Yet ultimately, the debt deal, while far from perfect, is a genuine advance—the product of a decade of increasing social movement pressure. No doubt, those of us who have campaigned for debt cancellation or sympathized with the cause should publicize the limits of the agreement and push for greater change. But we should do this while also celebrating the progress we have made. Rather than letting the leaders pretend that the debt cancellation sprang from the goodness of their hearts, we should insist on giving credit where credit is due—highlighting the dedication of activists throughout the world who have moved the injustice of debt to the fore of international discussion.
Engler also explains some of the terms and mechanisms, like the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, or HIPC, that dominate the discussion and may be a bit confusing to someone who is not following the issue day to day.
(But, then again, heard of the problem is kind of simple, no? We colonized, raped, pillaged and plundered their continent. Corrupt dictators supported by us "burrowed" huge sums which just ended right back in our banks. Now their children are dying, of disease and hunger, while we make them pay back every penny ten times over with interest. Hmmm. What's the right thing to do? I don't know, it's complicated.)
The other is Spin, Lies and Corruption by George Monbiot, always worth reading:
You are waiting for me to say but, and I will not disappoint you. The but comes in paragraph 2 of the finance ministers’ statement. To qualify for debt relief, developing countries must “tackle corruption, boost private sector development” and eliminate “impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign.”(2)These are called conditionalities. Conditionalities are the policies governments must follow before they receive aid and loans and debt relief. At first sight they look like a good idea. Corruption cripples poor nations, especially in Africa. The money which could have given everyone a reasonable standard of living has instead made a handful unbelievably rich. The powerful nations are justified in seeking to discourage it.
That’s the theory. In truth, corruption has seldom been a barrier to foreign aid and loans: look at the money we have given, directly and through the World Bank and IMF, to Mobutu, Suharto, Marcos, Moi and every other premier-league crook. Robert Mugabe, the west’s demon king, has deservedly been frozen out by the rich nations. But he has caused less suffering and is responsible for less corruption than Rwanda’s Paul Kagame or Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, both of whom are repeatedly cited by the G8 countries as practitioners of “good governance”. Their armies, as the UN has documented, are largely responsible for the meltdown in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has so far claimed four million lives, and have walked off with billions of dollars’ worth of natural resources.(3) Yet the United Kingdom, which is hosting the G8 summit, remains their main bilateral funder. It has so far refused to make their withdrawal from the DRC a conditionality for foreign aid.
The difference, of course, is that Mugabe has not confined his attacks to black people; he has also dispossessed white farmers and confiscated foreign assets. Kagame, on the other hand, has eagerly supplied us with the materials we need for our mobile phones and computers: materials which his troops have stolen from the DRC. “Corrupt” is often used by our governments and newspapers to mean regimes that won’t do what they’re told.
Genuine corruption, on the other hand, is tolerated and even encouraged. Twenty-five countries have so far ratified the UN Convention Against Corruption, but none of them are members of the G8.(4) Why? Because our own corporations do very nicely out of it. In the UK companies can legally bribe the governments of Africa if they operate through our (profoundly corrupt) tax haven of Jersey.(5) Lord Falconer, the minister responsible for sorting this out, refuses to act. When you see the list of the island’s clients, many of which sit in the FTSE-100 index, you begin to understand.
The idea swallowed by most commentators – that the conditions our governments impose help to prevent corruption – is laughable. To qualify for World Bank funding, our model client Uganda was forced to privatise most of its state-owned companies, before it had any means of regulating their sale. A sell-off which should have raised $500m for the Ugandan exchequer instead raised $2m.(6) The rest was nicked by government officials. Unchastened, the World Bank insisted that – to qualify for the debt relief programme the G8 has now extended – the Ugandan government sell off its water supplies, agricultural services and commercial bank, again with minimal regulation.(7)
And here we meet the real problem with the G8’s conditionalities. They do not stop at pretending to prevent corruption, but intrude into every aspect of sovereign government. When the finance ministers say “good governance” and “eliminating impediments to private investment”, what they mean is commercialisation, privatisation and the liberalisation of trade and capital flows. And what this means is new opportunities for western money.
Let’s stick for a moment with Uganda. In the late 1980s, the IMF and World Bank forced it to impose “user fees” for basic healthcare and primary eduction. The purpose appears to have been to create new markets for private capital. School attendance, especially for girls, collapsed. So did health services, particularly for the rural poor. To stave off a possible revolution, Museveni reinstated free primary education in 1997 and free basic healthcare in 2001. Enrolment in primary school leapt from 2.5 million to 6 million, and the number of outpatients almost doubled. The World Bank and the IMF - which the G8 nations control – were furious. At the donors’ meeting in April 2001, the head of the Bank’s delegation made it clear that, as a result of the change in policy, he now saw the health ministry as a “bad investment”.(8)
There is an obvious conflict of interest in this relationship. The G8 governments claim they want to help poor countries to develop and compete successfully. But they have a powerful commercial incentive to ensure that they compete unsuccessfully, and that our companies can grab their public services and obtain their commodities at rock bottom prices. The conditionalities we impose on the poor nations keep them on a short leash.
Posted by zeynep at 04:35 PM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2005
Bolivia: Heard From
Something hopeful has been happenning in Bolivia. What is remarkable is not what is happenning, but how. Here's an excerpt from Empire Notes that captures the essence:
To understand these events fully requires terms that we were told history had forgotten – much as the indigenous were told history had forgotten them.Here's one: dual power. This is a situation in which popular movements, while not having overthrown a state, have removed the state's monopoly on control. Not only can the popular movements exercise direct political power (rather than merely attempting to influence elected representatives), the state is conversely highly constrained in the exertion of power.
This situation has existed in Bolivia for some weeks and continues, at least at the moment.
Miners, farm-workers, and coca-growers organized; the indigenous majority of Bolivia, Quechua, Aymara, Chiquitano, and Guarani, mobilized. Making clever use of Bolivia's geography, they paralyzed the country. The neighborhood association of El Alto mobilized to lay siege to La Paz much as the followers of Tupac Katari did over 200 years ago. Gas and oil fields around the country had been seized; and a variously estimated 70 to 120 roadblocks at strategic points had brought road traffic to a standstill. With that leverage, the government had to take these movements very seriously.
...
This incipient revolution has been no tea party. It has involved miners marching with sticks of dynamite and angry verbal battles between political organizations committed to the struggle and people tired of cooking with firewood and dramatically rising food prices. And yet, to the remarkable credit of all Bolivians, only one person has been killed during this evolving drama, killed, of course, by the state security forces.
After 500 years of massacre, genocide, rape, slavery, torture, and exploitation, that the indigenous of Bolivia should begin their reconquista so peacefully staggers the imagination – and, one hopes, stretches it as well.
Here are Bolivian indigenous leaders from El Alto, attending a meeting with new President Eduardo Rodriguez:
And I think this is the most important gain, right there, in that picture: the people who are ordinarily barely heard, rarely consulted, and almost never considered, meeting with the caretaker president, after having forced the previous one to get out of the way of their country.
However the struggle of the Bolivia ends, the one important result will be that, in the future, it will be harder for the ruling elite and the neo-liberal elites and the IMF bureaucracy --or should I say the theocracy, with their infallible "free market" doctrine that always ends up freeing the resources of a country to be usurped by the few-- to ignore the people of Bolivia. I suspect we are witnessing the beginnings of a new cycle of mass movements: popular, democratic, and consciously taking aim at the neo-liberal policies that have crippled so many for more than two decades.
Posted by zeynep at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)
June 12, 2005
One Billion a Year of This; Ten Million a Year of That
The newly announced plan to stop demanding payments from 18 of the poorest countries in Africa is certainly a welcome baby-step in the right direction.
While being very aware of how much more needs to be done, I find this development very encouraging. It is indeed a stunning victory for a "popular campaign which mobilized millions of people." The movement is much stronger in Europe than the United States and very important events are still to happen there -- from the live8 concert to the upcoming "human band" in Edinburgh, where tens of thousands of people of conscience will encircle the G8 summit, demanding justice.
This will not be the first human chain to encircle a G8 meeting. In 1998, 70,000 people joined hands in a seven mile long link around the G8 summit in Birmingham, UK, demanding that the debt --illegitimate, odious and murderous-- be dropped, now:
It took 7 more years of relentless campaigning to realize even the minimal goals. I'm still reading the fine print on the G8 agreement so I will blog more when I understand its implications better. What is not in dispute is that it will mean that those 18 countries will stop making about about one billion dollars a year in debt payments. It may seem like a large sum, and in one sense it certainly is, but it mostly highlights our cruelty. We made them wait 7 years for this amount of relief. Just think of the numbers: assuming a rounded 250 million people in the United States, that comes out to about $4 a year, per person. And that's just in the United States. What conceivable reason do we have for not dropping the remaning amount of the already paid and overpaid, odious debt?
Meanwhile most calculations indicate that about 30,000 children die a day due to extreme poverty. That's about 10,000,000 children a year or about 70,000,000 children since the original Birmingham March.
A lot of what happens vis-a-vis debt relief is controlled by the IMF, which is basically controlled by the U.S. department of Treasury. Even a small but well-targeted campaign in this country could accomplish a lot. While there are groups like Jubile USA that campaign on this issue, the truth is they are very small and undersupported. That's a shame.
Posted by zeynep at 10:06 PM | Comments (0)
June 08, 2005
What Did You Do During The Great African Holocaust?
As predicted in the last post, Bush made a sham announcement, announcing money that was already announced, without agreeing to anything else substantive -- in spite of growing demand everywhere in the world to stop this cruel march of death, now. On every major issue on the table, U.S. blocking progress. This is beyond shameful.
This is the greatest crime of our generation.
The director of UNDP, Kevin Watkins, published an op-ed in today's International Herald Tribune. UNDP calculates that 500 children die each hour in Africa due to poverty --which we helped cause through past and current colonialism, and which we could greatly alleviate given our wealth, and given that the IMF --one of the biggest stumbling blocks at the moment-- is basically controlled by the U.S. Department of Treasury.
UNDP estimates that three million children will die each year --each year-- --three million-- -each year-- by 2015 in Sub-Saharan Africa unless we change course dramatically, now.
Currently, poverty-related diseases claim the lives of 500 African children each hour - and the numbers are going up. The United Nations Development Program has just completed a country-by-country assessment of progress in reducing child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. The results are not for the faint-hearted.
If current trends continue over the next decade, the region will miss the millennium goals by an epic margin. On our estimates, there will be three million more child deaths in 2015 than there would be if the millennium target were met. By 2015 sub-Saharan Africa will account for two in every three child deaths in the world.
These trends are not destiny. It is difficult to think of any area in which so much could be done to improve human welfare for so little. Consider malaria, which claims the life of one child in Africa every minute. More than three-quarters of these deaths could be averted through a simple net treated with insecticide, costing $3-$5, or simple medicines.
Of course, getting sub-Saharan Africa back on track will take more than initiatives to tackle malaria, AIDS and other major killers. The underlying problem is endemic poverty. Poor households face a double burden: more vulnerable to disease because of malnutrition and inadequate access to clean water, they are also least able to afford treatment and least served by public health systems.
African governments have primary responsibility for developing national poverty reduction plans. But even the best national policies will fail unless Africa can close the chronic financing gaps that restrict opportunities for development.
...The United States, for its part, has increased aid by $8 billion since 2000. Yet the world's largest economy still spends only 0.16 percent of national income on official aid. Indeed, three G-8 countries - Japan, Italy and the United States - are among the nations who give the least aid in proportion to national income.
...
The G-8 summit could also free sub-Saharan Africa, for once and for all, from the shackles of unsustainable debt. All G-8 members agree that more needs to be done on debt. Unfortunately, that is where the consensus ends. There are disagreements over how to pay for World Bank and IMF debt reduction, over whether debt relief should come from existing aid budgets or new resources, and over how much debt relief should be provided. After almost two years of inertia, it is time for the G-8 to agree to a 100 percent debt cancellation.
The world's rich countries have a chance to put in place policies that could prevent three million additional child deaths. Africa's children do not have a voice at G-8 summits. But those avoidable deaths present three million reasons for the rich world to act now, before it is too late.
(Kevin Watkins is the director of the UN Human Development Report Office.)
Can you wrap your head around that? Five hundred children each and every hour. (In the space of four hours, more children will die today in Africa than all the Americans soldiers killed in Iraq since the beginning of the invasion more than two years ago. And this is just Africa. And just children. In four hours.)
A preventable, predictable, steady killing-machine that we helped construct, and that we could easily mute. The numbers are going up. Onward. Upward.
What will we say when future generations ask us what we did during the great African Holocaust?
Posted by zeynep at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)
June 07, 2005
Your Lying Lies
Pretty soon you will hear that Blair got Bush to promise $674 million for famine relief in Africa. Not everything Blair asked for, but a small step, you will be told:
Actually, that's money that was already appropriated as such by Congress.
But even the U.S. famine relief dollars were coming out of an already approved Agriculture Department food aid account and other money recently made available by Congress.
Quelle surprise, no?
Posted by zeynep at 03:54 PM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2005
Torturers Need Not Apply
Illinois Republican Henry Hyde is introducing yet another bill aimed at crippling what remains of the already severely-battered international institution that is still called “United” “Nations,” often against evidence.
In all fairness, there are some elements of the bill that would be a step forward, such as the provision that would bar human rights violators from serving on U.N. human rights bodies:
The "United Nations Reform Act of 2005" targets a panoply of issues that have troubled critics of the United Nations, particularly Republicans, for years. Among other things, it would seek to cut funding for programs seen as useless and bar human rights violators from serving on U.N. human rights bodies.
Umm, yes. That would be great, actually, Mr. Hyde. Nations that systematically practice torture, impose collective punishment, wage aggressive wars, illegitimately occupy other countries and otherwise blatantly violate a collective, global understanding of minimal standards of protection accrued to personal and psychic integrity of human beings that has become known as “human rights” during a very bloody 20th century should not sit on U.N. human rights bodies, but should have to pay proportionate dues to international organizations -- because acting in a criminal fashion does not eliminate one’s responsibilities but on the contrary, adds to them.
Posted by zeynep at 03:01 PM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2005
Star Wars, Coming Soon to a Planet Near You
That’s right. The Bush administration is moving to change U.S. policy in order to start deploying weapons into space.
The Air Force, saying it must secure space to protect the nation from attack, is seeking President Bush's approval of a national-security directive that could move the United States closer to fielding offensive and defensive space weapons, according to White House and Air Force officials.
The proposed change would be a substantial shift in American policy. It would almost certainly be opposed by many American allies and potential enemies, who have said it may create an arms race in space.
A senior administration official said that a new presidential directive would replace a 1996 Clinton administration policy that emphasized a more pacific use of space, including spy satellites' support for military operations, arms control and nonproliferation pacts.
Yeah. That’s just what the planet needs right now, a new arms race in space
“No one should be fooled,” said Theresa Hitchens, an expert on the militarization of space at the Washington-based Center for Defense Information.
“What you’re seeing is a reversal of the traditional U.S. reluctance to be space warriors. And that’s the meaning of this new policy,” Hitchens said in an interview.
...
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said, “This is a military system that is unnecessary and provocative. It will lead other states to pursue military systems to knock out our space-based assets. The rationale of this program is to defend those assets. But this will have the reverse effect.”
Kimball said any move by the United States to start developing and testing space-based weapons will be met with very strong international condemnation, from foes and allies alike.
Well, at least, I hear “Revenge of the Sith” is good. Or, better than the other two prequels. Then again, those were just bad. Not “bad” as in bad, but just plain old bad. But I’m not sure I’m in the mood to see a movie where the punch line is forces of evil consolidating into a fascist empire.
Posted by zeynep at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2005
Wolfowitz as World Bank President...
Paul Wolfowitz is nominated to the presidency of the World Bank. Since the World Bank is neither democratic nor transparent, whoever is nominated by the U.S. always gets the job. So while it may be a done deal, I suggest that we hold him to his statements on odious debt -- a concept he suddenly figured out when it came to Iraq:
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was even more pointed on that issue, telling a Senate hearing: "I hope they [Paris, Moscow and Berlin] will think about how they can contribute to helping the Iraq people get on their feet. . . . I hope, for example, they'll think about the very large debts that come from money that was lent to the dictator to buy weapons and to build palaces. . . . I think they ought to consider whether it might not be appropriate to forgive some or all of that debt."
Posted by zeynep at 03:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 09, 2005
Race to The Bottom, Round Seventeen
You knew this was coming:
But at least one company is scaling back in Bangalore. On Jan. 19, Tampa-based Sykes Enterprises Inc. -- a call center operator that has been in India since 2002 -- said it would shift much of the work handled by its Indian operators to centers in Manila and Shanghai. "We moved calls to other facilities in Asia to get a higher rate of return," says Dan Hernandez, Sykes's vice-president for global strategies.
What good can come out of an economic set up where there is a shortage of consumers and a surplus of workers? Consumption at this rate will surely destroy our planet, yet our economic system encourages --needs-- more. And billions seek more remunerated work, even at pittance wages.
Posted by zeynep at 02:05 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 01, 2005
To be a Forum or Not to be a Forum
Here's a piece that describes some of the tensions that plague the WSF. I'll post more about this after I catch up with all the work that's waiting for me on my return but the issue really is thorny. We do need an open forum, we also need more institutions at a global level that can reflect the political will of the world's people. Unfortunately, there is only the WSF at the moment so everyone wants it to be everything.
On the fun side, some people weren't happy at the turn the World Economic Forum had taken:
The head of Britain's leading employers' organisation launched an outspoken attack last night on the "hijacking" of the World Economic Forum in Davos by NGOs which wanted business to apologise for itself....
"Too many of the sessions have been an excuse to beat up on business, to say that business must do better," he said. "The pendulum is swinging too far in favour of the NGOs. The World Economic Forum is caving in to them. Davos has been hijacked by those who want business to apologise for itself."
Really, a little wider acceptance of relatively mild criticism and such sensitivity! Of course, this is an effective P.R. technique: don't let the norms ever move an inch towards the "wrong" direction. I wish we had it as together so that all the wrongs they do would generate strong reactions.
Posted by zeynep at 06:42 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 30, 2005
How Not to Build Bridges
[Zeynep here]
I went to many panels about outsourcing. Some speakers were very informative but there was very few suggested practical and strategic responses. I will blog more about this crucial issue in the future, but I wanted to take this break between panels to write about a very telling moment.
During the comment section of one of these panels, a man got up and identified himself as a post office worker from France and said that outsourcing was a real problem for them, and that jobs were being sent off to the mostly Arab and African French-speaking countries. And then, without even seeming to take note of the irony that those countries spoke French because of France's past colonial practices, pretty brutal ones at that, he said that wanted to draw attention to how call center workers in Morocco were being told to adopt French pseudonyms at the workplace, and how this was depriving them of their identity.
It is with great restraint that I did not get up and exclaim "très horrible!" Being deprived of their identity? How gracious of you to be so concerned! And only coincidentally when your first world living standards might be on the line!
To this day, the state of France continues to wage a war on the identity of Muslims living in France, and is refusing the right of education to young women who wear the veil. (This is not wishing that women wear the veil; this is simply recognizing that shutting them out of public spaces, especially education, can only further disempowerment and constitutes blatant discrimination and stigmatization.) I hope, Mr. Post Office Worker, you are marching with the sans papiers, undocumented immigrants and refugees in France, mostly from former Arab and African French colonies, who get rounded up, tied, drugged and deported even when they have lived in France most of their lives. I hope you are showing the same concern for the rights of Muslim women in France. I hope you are part of a movement that supports reparations for all former colonies of France, where crushing of the native identity was part and parcel of the military strategy of the occupation. And not that long ago.
Alas, I couldn't see him at the end of the panel. He seemed to have registered his concern for Moroccan call center workers' identity and left. Perhaps he really is a genuine internationalist. Perhaps he does support reparations by France. Perhaps he just cut to the chase in his comments. Still, he did not inspire feelings of international worker solidarity in me.
Unfortunately, there aren't too many direct representatives of such workers from India, Africa or Arab North Africa here at the WSF. Only some trade union officials have come, while there are some rank and file workers from the Global North. It creates an imbalance because the trade union representatives from the Global South speak relatively diplomatically -- and even they are few and far between. (With the exception of Latin America: due to its location, the WSF is teeming with people from South America.)
I wish there were a way to subsidize such travel, which is clearly constrained by costs and visas. Such human interaction is clearly desperately needed.
Of course, loss of jobs and livelihood is a serious issue. First world workers also deserve a livelihood that can support their families. The trauma of being unemployed, being redundant as it were, is a great human tragedy no matter where in the global economic food chain one might be standing.
But any serious united struggle against global capital must begin with a sense of justice and equity, including the recognition that the colonial past is very much a current issue, and that there is more to discuss than how to keep good jobs in rich countries.
Posted by zeynep at 11:42 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 29, 2005
Have Some Cool Water, Listen to a few Songs: The Dalits (so-called "Untouchable Castes") of India Remind Us What Real Struggle Looks Like
[Zeynep here]
Just when I was beginning to wonder if coming to these large meetings was worth all that jet fuel, I stumbled onto one of those events that can only be experienced in person -- one that is so powerful that it's hard to put into words, but I will try.
I attended a panel organized by Dalits, the so-called untouchable castes of India. It's very hot here and one is constantly thirsty, which is hard to ignore since it's so physical a need. I think, similarly, many of us in rich countries lead lives that leave one's soul feeling thirsty -- but unlike physical thirst, you can learn to ignore it until someone gives you a cool, clear glass of "water" drawn from a different kind of well. Then you remember.
As I briefly mentioned in the earlier post, such big meetings are a very mixed bag. No real interaction is possible in the big panels. They are still crucial, especially for having a sense of what many global movements, at least the portion that comes to these events, are thinking about. Plus, I now have a lot of info about a lot of important info on upcoming events and campaigns. In that sense, I have a lot of useful contacts that I will put to good use over the next year. Even so, it all leaves one wondering if one would miss anything if all the names, contact info and talks were simply transcribed and posted online.
So, yesterday afternoon, tired, hot, severely underslept, I stopped by a panel entitled "Land Rights" -- it had a little subtitle which mentioned the "Dalits." I normally roam through many panels in any given session: I listen a bit, pick up literature and move on -- there are so many simultaneous events and I want to make the best use of my time here. I have some superficial knowledge of the situation of the Dalits, and I know many South Asians -- mostly from the educated diaspora, of course. Plus, like all people that ever go to a large city, I interact with many South Asian cab drivers, food stall workers, convenience store clerks, etc. So, I have an image in my mind.
I stepped into the tent and the first thing that struck me was the people. I just sat down and thought, wow, I have never met any of these people. I have never encountered them. Not as cab drivers, not as university professors. There were about a few dozen of them mingling around and they were all black. Actual black. Black as in an ebony color rather than the usual range of browns that I associate with South Asians. It was very striking.
Paul Divakar, of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights moderated the panel and gave the first talk. It's really the difference between "knowing" something in the abstract and sitting there, looking at a human being and feeling in your heart that this is the ugly truth of this world. Of course I knew the dalits were discriminated against. Still, I felt crushed by the weight of just listening to him explain how they were thought of as the "polluted people," how they were always denied land so that they would be forced to be semi-slaves to the landlords and the dominant castes, how they were forced into occupations considered unclean by the others such as collecting the dead, cleaning up human waste, skinning cows and garbage work in general, how they were to this day beaten up, killed, tortured and raped if they dared to claim a bit of the rights that were accorded to them on paper, how everything was arranged to continue this situation in perpetuity... It was hard listening to it; these people lived it. And you knew it was true. It's just one of those things; you just know this person is telling you a truth.
And the difference between this panel and the the panels by experts, NGOs, even activists from richer countries came up very quickly. At appropriate times, Paul broke into slogans, enthusiastically joined by the Dalit in the crowd. It was one of the most sincere, the least contrived instances I have even encountered of people shouting slogans. I think I have become jaded a bit with all the big demonstrations I have attended in the U.S. I keep feeling almost bored in some of them. I mean, we yell stuff but we don't really mean it. We're not really going to try to stop the Bush administration from waging war. Not really. We will finish the rally and all go home. And all the marchers know this. So does the administration. I I feel fake yelling "No Blood for Oil," or "No War." There will be blood for oil and there will be war because we will allow it. All we are going to do is yell and then go home and do very little else.
So, the Dalits breaking into slogans really shook me because it was like being handed a cup of actual homemade soup after eating a lot of fake, highly-processed versions that come in cans or plastic from supermarkets. All of a sudden, you think, ah, this is what it was meant to be. This is what a slogan is. This is what it sounds like. This is how it is shouted. This is how it is joined. That was processed cheese.
After Paul, a dalit woman from Nari Gunjan, Sudha Varghese, took the floor. Paul introduced her by saying don't be fooled by her size, she fights a good fight -- physically too. She quietly told of struggles of the Musahar community, which apparently means those who catch and eat rats. (This was something I encountered in Chiapas villages: some of the Mayan ethnic groups look down upon the Tojolobal, another ethnic Mayan group because they believe them to be rat-eaters.) Instead of denying that they eat rats, something the Tojolobal will vehemently deny, she explained what the name of her group meant and simply said, yes, I have shared that tasty meal with members of my community. And went on to explain how, after many years of struggle, they had managed to have a little bit of access to a small section of irrigated land, how that had angered the nearby landlords, and how the landlords had managed to obtain eviction orders for the Dalit. In response, the women of the community put their bodies between the bulldozers and their huts whenever the bulldozers showed up and refused to move. So far, through great unity and a lot of fighting, she says, they have managed to stay put for the last two years. She told of other instances where a woman in the community was badly beaten up for daring to ask for a bit more in wages. The woman had had the courage to bring charges against her high-caste abuser. Alas, all her family was threatened so badly that she withdrew the charges -- to no avail. Her two daughters were raped and she was told that her husband was going to be killed too. The family fled, escaping barely with their lives. She talked about how common such atrocities are, how there are great laws on the books that are never implemented, and how they barely cling to survival by banding together.
I felt the audience was shell-shocked after Sudha's talk. You get this sense in your heart that every word is true and you don't know what to say or do. Cry? Apologize? Run? After her talk, the translation system needed fiddling so there was a break at which point ... three drummers and a singer appeared from the audience, took the microphone and broke into a song! It was like those stereotypical Indian movies! And all the Dalits joined in and all of a sudden we found ourselves in the midst of a mini-festival. I remember thinking that this was the most uncynical space I have been in a very long time -- and it comes from people who face such massive injustice that one could hardly blame them if they lost all hope, and hated the world that mistreats them so horrifically. Often, one hears people talk of apathy and cynicism as resulting from lack of success. How can that be if these people who have mountains to move, and faced such crushing oppression for thousands of years, do not display a shred of apathy? You feel it sitting there, listening: they are fighting hard, they are struggling against it all with every ounce of their being. They're unfazed. They aren't "moving to Canada," as it were.
Many speakers talked about how "globalization" made things much worse for them. I want to write some more about that at some point, the numbers were really striking. It's clear that the neo-liberal machine is decimating communities like these that were marginally surviving to begin with. Some speakers spoke of how this neo-liberal "advanced capitalism" was strengthening feudal institutions like the caste system. They had solidarity speakers who came from other discriminated people like the plantation workers in Sri Lanka and the Quilombola people in Brazil, descendents of escaped slave communities. They talked about the Buraku community in Japan who faces similar discrimination.
As the speakers were revolving, I noticed a white man, neatly-dressed and clean-shaven, sitting among those waiting to speak. He had this "I stay in an expensive hotel paid by my big NGO" look on him. He was introduced as working at the U.N., in Geneva, for the Lutheran World Federation. I braced for the semi-boring NGOspeak that I had heard so much of the last few days. Hah. He got up, took the microphone and promptly shouted "Jai Bhim!" -- and the dalits joined him with enthusiasm. It was the most unexpected thing coming from a person who looked like he did: I thought, wow, he has gone native! And who could blame him! I was reminded of that scene in Dances With Wolves when "Lt. John Dunbar," captured by the army after having spent a long time among the Sioux, suddenly refuses to speak English and keeps repeating "My Name is Dances With Wolves; I'm a Sioux" as the soldiers beat him up. (I later learned Jai Bhim means "Long live Bhim!" and "honours Bhim Rao Ambedkar, a political leader from the independence era who introduced an affirmative-action programme for Dalits in the Indian constitution.") He sat down after a short speech interrupted by many slogans, initiated by him or the Dalit...
Paul Divakar closed the panel by talking about a few things that had impressed him in Brazil. One, he said, was driving along the highway and seeing how much of the land had fences, meaning people had ownership of that land. His people, he said, longed for that. That bit of land which would give them the dignity, would free them from being at the mercy of the dominated castes. I had never thought of looking at fences with a longing. I normally think of fences as a negative thing. But I understood what he was saying. It is their dispossession that reduces their lives to semi-slavery. In fact, many of the Dalit speakers reiterated this point: without land, we will not be treated as human beings of any worth. He talked about meeting with the landless peasants in Brazil and finding how common their feelings were. Second, he said, he noticed that the garbage carts weren't mechanized. He said he saw a garbage worker pulling along a huge cart. Why, he asked, does a society which has cars, trucks and so much mechanization let a man pull garbage like that? It was very appropriate that he, coming from a people forced into garbage cleaning, would notice that while we probably all see the same thing without the appropriate heavy heart. He also talked about an eight-story building the homeless had occupied at the center of Porto Allegre during the WSF to register their protest with the current government. His group went there and put a Dalit flag on the third floor. That's the Dalit, he said: the landless, the homeless, the dispossessed.
Towards the end, Paul also made a point of talking about the proposal forms that the WSF has been distributing. I had looked at the forms and rolled my eyes. The WSF is at once an open space and also an institution tightly controlled by a few, powerful groups which have long resisted calls from many people that the WSF turn partially into a body that can adopt resolutions and declarations. We come, we talk, we go. We don't even have a declaration that says we oppose the war on Iraq! There is a lot of dissatisfaction with this state of affairs. So, these "proposals" on single sheets of paper are to be placed onto the "murals of proposals" in various tents and it's unclear what will happen to the tens of thousands of papers that will be filled in this manner. It really feels like a symbolic measure with no teeth to shut up the critics. By now Paul had dropped Dalit issues and was urging people to fill out these proposals. "If we don't participate, our voices will have no chance" he said, basically.
Once again, it was so uncynical that I didn't know what to feel. Well, first and foremost ,of course, he's right. I should write down a proposal or two. Maybe they won't even be read. Maybe they will receive a hundred thousand pieces of paper that say we want to be able to make collective declarations. Who knows? But the right attitude is to participate fully and forcefully, whatever the structure.
So, as they opened up the panel to questions and comments, I got up and thanked them and told them how I was on the verge of being overwhelmed --and almost bored-- with all the panels, and the long speeches, and the meetings. That I was deeply grateful for being subjected to their infectious determination. I urged them to continue to travel in person to such meetings. I tried to explain what a privilege it felt like to be in their presence. Afterwards a couple of them pulled me aside and interviewed me on tape on this topic, I suspect to explain to their members back at home why all this travel is not a waste of their few resources. They did explain that, of course, cost was a real issue for them but they have so far found that it is worth it and that they try to bring as many people as they can afford. I got my very own "Dalit Rights" black armband, which I'm wearing along with the "Global Call to Action Against Poverty" white band as I type this, and we exchanged email addresses, handshakes and hugs.
Then, of course, they sent us off with a song.
Posted by zeynep at 08:31 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
January 27, 2005
Recycle Your World
Zeynep dropping in...
I am finally rewarded for the fact that I carry my laptop around everywhere, lugging a large backpack in Brazil's summer heat as I traverse the many miles that make up the territory of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. I get to have Internet access without the two hour wait and 15 minute time limit imposed on those who skip around carrying only a water bottle.
These meetings simultaneously depress and inspire me. The number of meetings is enormous, the range of subjects bewildering. The large meetings are practically useless, even when translation is provided. What will anyone get done when a thousand people are crowded into a tent, while the few luminaries speak into microphones? On the other hand, there is something uplifting about being there with so many people. And some of the issues are so big and important that it's hard to imagine the meetings would not be so big. The obvious solution, lots of small early meetings which would send delegates to a larger meeting, would not be acceptable to most people here because they would rightly point out delegation is one of the ways power is stolen away from people. Yet, the non-delegation approach does not seem to result in empowerment either.
The smaller meetings can be quite amazing, the ones that draw something between 20-50 people. There is room for dialogue and interaction and mutual learning in a very unique setting, as participants really are from around the world. Yet, we face such huge problems --climate change, war, poverty, AIDS-- that interacting 50 at a time is massively insufficient.
The most telling moment for me came earlier today, but let me first say something about the thoughts that lead me to it. There are explicit references to sustainability and the ethics of the meeting on the WSF brochures. "The world can only be changed by those who practice change," says the program.
Which, of course, is true in some fundamental way. But I think that sentiment leads some people to concentrate on individual behaviour, on personal lifestyle, while standing at the priviliged end of a greatly unequal, exploitative system.
When inequality is so vast and when a large portion of humanity is so mired in poverty, some of those token gestures are just that: tokens to make ourselves feel a bit better. One of my favorite examples is recycling: something many progressives in rich countries do almost religiously. On the one hand, I couldn't agree more. I try to recycle religiously too. On the other hand, recycle or not, any citizen living in the rich world has so much larger an ecological footprint that recycling hardly makes a dent.
On the average, a citizen of Bangladesh consumes 57 kilowatt hours per capita compared to 11,571 for an average American (1995 figures). The difference is an order of magnitude of about 200 times. A single American takes up the energy foot print of 200 Bangladeshis.
The WSF brochure says in its introductory paragraphs that "... the Forum is legitimized through the promotion of waste recycling." Of course, I totally agree that such a large gathering of people must make every effort increase sustainable use. Yet something bothered me about that sentence when I first read it and it immediately flashed before my eyes earlier this afternoon when I witnessed two small, barefoot children with huge bags go through the WSF recycling bins and gather everything in it into their huge bags. And run off to the next one very quickly, with a load almost equal to their size.
I went around later and checked many recycling bins; they are all emptied out. Some trash here is too valuable to be let go to waste. I also saw many people in Sau Paulo systematically go through trash can after trash can on the streets to salvage aluminum cans and plastic bottles.
My point isn't that recycling is pointless and should be stopped. This was just an opportunity to ponder how some acts to which we sometimes attribute great importance are very small and insignificant compared to the horrific levels of injustice that haunt the world.
Posted by zeynep at 01:15 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
December 24, 2004
Merry Christmas, Embera Katio. Now get out of the way, please.
[From Justin again]
On December 20, 2004, one of the indigenous peoples of Colombia, the Embera Katio of the river Sinu region, signed an agreement with the Colombian government in which the latter promised that the fundamental rights of the Embera would be respected during the construction of a big hydroelectric project that the Embera have been fighting, the Urra dam (Urra being the company building the dam). The government signed its irst agreement with Urra in 1998, and in the Embera's latest communique they said: "Six years later we are still suffering the effects of this mis-named 'development'".
The government's strategy has been the typical one for the stronger party: drag out the negotiations and establish facts on the ground. The Embera's negotiators faced a government team without any real power to make decisions. The impacts of the dam continued to affect the people - the company continued to act with utter irresponsibility. And paramilitaries have disappeared and killed Embera leaders in the past, most notably Kimy Pernia Domico (disappeared in 2001).
In frustration, a delegation from the Embera peacefully occupied the grounds of the Colombian Environment and Development Ministry in Bogota a few days ago. Their demands are simple: they want a genuine independent environmenal audit of the impacts of the dam and they want the company's license suspended if the impacts are shown to be severe. Their assembly of 372 people, which includes 185 children, was forced by a group of 200 police to leave the grounds. The police ordered them to get on buses and return to their reserves, but they refused and marched to the offices of the national indigenous organization, ONIC. They are now engaged in a tactic that indigenous throughout Colombia frequently use, called the 'permanent assembly'. They are camping out in Bogota until some action on their demands occurs. For their trouble, they have been surrounded by the riot police - essentially besieged. Drop a Christmas letter over to the Colombian authorities...
Presidencia de la República: Dr. Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Cra. 8 No..7-26, Palacio de Nariño, Santa fe de Bogotá. Fax: (+57 1) 566.20.71 E-mail: auribe@presidencia.gov.co ; http://www.presidencia.gov.co/correo/formulario.php
Vicepresidencia de la República: Dr Francisco Santos Email:fsantos@presidencia.gov.co
Ministro de Minas y Energía: Dr. LUIS ERNESTO MEJIA CASTRO, Transversal 45 No. 26-86 Bogotá. Teléfono (57-1) 324 5262. Email: minas.energia@minminas.gov.co
Ministro de Protección Social: Dr. Diego Palacio Betancourt.Carrera 13 No. 32-76 Piso 22 Bogotá D.C. Teléfono 57-1-3365066 Fax 57-1-3360182. Email: Dpalacio@minproteccionsocial.gov.co
Procuraduría General de la Nación: Dr. Edgardo José Maya Villazón. Carrera 5 No. 15-80 Santa Fe de Bogotá. Fax: (+57 1)342.97.23. E-mail: reygon@procuraduria.gov.co anticorrupcion@presidencia.gov.co
Defensoría del Pueblo: Dr. Volmar Antonio Pérez Ortiz. Calle 55 No. 10-32 Bogotá. Fax: (+571) 640 04 91.E-mail:secretaria_privada@hotmail.com
Ministerio del medio ambiente, vivienda y desarrollo territorial: Ministra Sandra Suarez. Email: direccion@minambiente.gov.co
Posted by justin at 02:22 PM
October 04, 2004
Another IMF Meeting
This would have cost so little to the rich countries of the world. It also would have provided them with an opportunity to claim that they arent't always all that bad. But no. I don't know what greedy, short-term callous calculations go into these decisions. At this point, this isn't even smart imperialism.
Debt campaigners attending this week’s annual meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have expressed disappointment and outrage over the failure of the world’s richest nations to cancel the debt of the world’s poorest nations.Hopes had been running high last week that finance ministers of the Group of Seven (G-7) industrialized nations would agree on a plan that would provide 100 percent debt relief to nearly three dozen of poor countries, most of them in Africa where cash-strapped governments have been overwhelmed by the HIV -AIDS epidemic, drought, and, most recently, skyrocketing oil prices.
But the G-7, which includes the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, and Japan, could not agree on ways to finance cancellation of the debt, which totals more than US$100 billion, or roughly two thirds of what the U.S. Congress has thus far appropriated for the war in Iraq .
The kids on the picture on top of this blog are from Wamale, Ghana. This is what I wrote back in May on why I chose that picture:
People ask me about the background picture. Those are school kids in Wamale, Ghana and the picture was taken during the relatively heavily publicized trip to Africa by AIDS activist Bono and former treasury secretary O'Neill.At the time of the visit Ghana's debt burden was about $3.9 billion. About 19.3 percent of its export revenues went to the never-ending servicing of that debt -- all the while one child in ten died before her fifth birthday.
According to my rough calculations O'Neill was trying to collect roughly $215 from each and every one of those kids. (Per capita income in Ghana was around $290 at the time).
I put that picture up not simply because those kids are sweet, like all kids everywhere, but because I think we all need to be reminded who we're demanding payment from. Read all the economic analysis, World Bank papers, Financial Times articles and what-have-you regarding the debt crisis you want -- and I do read them. It all comes down to something this simple and this uncomfortable: we are loan sharks and those are our victims.
Posted by zeynep at 10:36 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
August 25, 2004
Could You Patent the Sun?
After it became known that the field trials had ended in success for Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, journalist Edward R. Murrow interviewed Salk on "See It Now." "Who owns the patent on this vaccine?" Murrow asked. "Well, the people, I would say," Dr. Salk replied. "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
Sad news today on polio. Patent barriers may not be the problem here, unlike for the biggest killer in Africa, HIV/AIDS, but rather warfare, lack of funds and inattention:
Polio has spread to two more African countries that had been freed of the crippling disease, threatening to become a major epidemic across West and Central Africa, the World Health Organization said yesterday. The disease begins reaching its high season next month.The spread of polio to Guinea and Mali brings to 12 the number of previously polio-free African countries that have experienced an outbreak of the disease since January 2003. It also deals yet another serious setback to the agency's efforts to eradicate the disease by year's end.
...
As of Aug. 24, there were 602 polio cases worldwide, of which 476, or 79 percent, are in Nigeria. Ninety percent of the world's cases are in Africa, where all but two countries - Nigeria and Niger - had been freed of polio by the end of 2002.
The number of polio cases might reach 1,000 in Nigeria this year, Dr. Aylward said, and it could take a full year of work to get it to zero.
In addition to Guinea and Mali, the countries to which polio has spread from Nigeria are: Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Sudan and Togo.
I knew that the goal was to eradicate it at the end of the year. It would have been one bright spot in a pretty dismal year, to be able to say that in 2004 humanity eradicated polio, 24 years after small pox. It's all very sad, especially considering immunity is lifelong, and the vaccine inexpensive.
Posted by zeynep at 01:16 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
August 16, 2004
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
It is certainly a moment worth celebrating, as both the Organization of American States and the Carter Center endorse Chavez's victory and thus greatly weakening future pretexts for further illegitimate intervention.
Still, as Empire Notes reminds us, they have tried three times and may yet try again:
Of course, this is not the end. Chavez remains a thorn in the side of the Bush administration, and John Kerry has expressed virtually identical views about him. Where there are three stages to a coup attempt, there may well be four. If Chavez beats the next one back, it will be, once again, by putting his faith in the people rather than in any hope that the elites of the world will play by their own rules.
Then again, let's discuss all that some other day.
Here's for today:
Posted by zeynep at 05:25 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
August 14, 2004
Oops, Chavez Does it Again!
Chavez might actually win yet another election, the recall vote scheduled for this Sunday, against the rich and the elite of Venezuela (and the United States, it seems.)
So, what does the New York Times refer to this rare example of a politican who wins electorally with votes from the poor majority and who doesn't let a small group of already rich elites plunder the nation's economic wealth?
"Free-Spending Chávez Could Swing Vote His Way."
What a headline.
Not the politician poised to once again democratically overcome the umpteenth illegitemate challenge by keeping the promises to the masses who elected him.
Okay, that's too long for a headline but how about "The Poor Masses Approve of Chavez's Politics."
No, it's free-spending Chavez. Not appropriate-spending Chavez.
It's not even "win," it's "swing" the vote. Note how "swing" sounds like swindle, it connotes a scheme, an underhanded plot, something undeserved.
And whatever drivel the Times cannot say directly, unnamed "critics" are quoted. For example:
Critics charge that Mr. Chávez's antipoverty plans are piecemeal and politically motivated, that he has placed incompetent officials in positions of power, and that he is bypassing fiscal controls, with hundreds of millions of dollars in public assistance now circumventing the Congress and the Central Bank and going straight into the barrios.
Now, I understand the need to let the rich elites whine about Chavez not letting them continue steal Venezuela's resources for themselves; that really is part of the news-story here. But what the hell kind of criticism is it to say Chavez's anti-poverty plans are "politically motivated?" He gets elected on his promises the impoverished masses then he tries to keep those promises in order to get re-elected. Okay. So he's politically motivated. As opposed to what? How can that be seriously quoted as criticism? And the criticism that Chavez's anti-poverty plans are piecemeal? Are we to believe that the anti-Chavez opposition wants to implement a larger, more comprehensive anti-poverty plan and that's why they are opposing Chavez?
The piece is full of blather of this kind treated with seriousness an dignity -- it's a striking example of blatant media bias, as opposed to slightly less blatant media bias of usual.
Justin Podur of the Killing Train is in Caracas, Venezuela reporting from the ground. Check out his blog which he will update from Caracas whenever he gets a chance.
Posted by zeynep at 01:58 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
June 18, 2004
Stop Pandering to the Poor, Mr. Chavez.
Another anti-Chavez piece with some information and a lot of barely disguised hostility. Check out the brilliant headline: "With Social Programs, Chavez Buying Loyalty, Critics Charge."
Really! Who do you think those oil revenues are for? "Buying" loyalty by providing social services and education? Shame on you, Mr. Chavez.
Can you imagine similar headlines for other institutions doing their jobs, such as a state actually trying to help the poor. "With Providing Crucial Aid during Disasters, Red Cross Buying Loyalty, Critics Charge"; "By Providing Health Care, Hospitals Buying Loyalty, Critics Charge."
But critics say Chavez is pandering to the poor to save his political career and gambling irresponsibly with the long-term fiscal health of a state company that provides half the country's revenues.
Of course, the opposition is so fiscally responsible. Their strike last year, aimed at ousting the legally elected president, managed to shut down the oil industry --since they had occupied all the key positions-- at a cost of many, many billions of Dollars to Venezuela's national economy. Now that some money is being spent on the poor, we are all suddenly worried about "fiscal health."
And the article goes on to quote a very responsible sounding Alfredo Keller:
But Alfredo Keller, a pollster and political analyst, said Chavez was trying to "buy loyalty to maintain power" and "using the oil industry as a political weapon." Keller said Chavez was playing on the fears of a nation where 67 percent of the people live in poverty, 35 percent live in extreme poverty, three-quarters of the population is either unemployed or works in the informal sector, and there have been 43,000 homicides in the past five years.
And if Venezuela's people finally give up after so much assault, you know it will be heralded as proof of Chavez's unpopularity.
Posted by zeynep at 02:31 AM | Comments (19) | TrackBack
June 11, 2004
G8 Ends With a Whimper
At the beginning of the G8 summit, I blogged that there was talk of 100 percent debt cancellation for the poorest, most indebted countries in the world -- about 42 countries in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative.
The summit ended and no such cancellation was announced. The HIPC program has been extended although it’s widely recognized that it’s not even a band-aid. It's more like a sustainable bleeding program. The reason Ebola kills so few people each year while AIDS kills so many is that Ebola kills its host too quickly, if horrifically, often before it gets a chance to spread itself. Sometimes you have to slow down in order to maximize effectiveness.
Here's the part I don't understand. We all know what’s going on is immoral beyond discussion. Jubilee's press release states that in Africa a child a minute dies of AIDS -- that's not counting malaria or water-borne diseases. On the other hand, most of the HIPC countries are too poor to provide profits or significant capital outflows of any size. If their debt magically disappeared from the books tomorrow the global economy would not notice it. The Guardian puts the debt of the poorest 42 at $35bn -- that's about $10 a year from each Canadian and American citizen for about 10 years. Most people would check that box if it were on their tax statement.
A "100 percent write-off" would make Bush and Blair and the rest of 'em look magnanimous at a time they desperately need an image makeover. It wouldn't really threaten anything in the global economy because the rules of the game would not have changed. It would not touch countries like Argentina and Brazil where there is more money at stake, all the while making Bush and Blair look like they were doing something about the debt crisis. The propaganda bang for so few bucks would be tremendous.
So why not do it? I suspect part of the reason is that the U.S. didn't get what it wanted in terms of canceling Iraq's odious debt. But there is something more here.
I suspect it's fear of precedent. I'm oversimplifying a bit here but I think that their resistance to symbolic gestures / small acts generally depends on the legitimacy of the demand and the depth and breadth its implications. Power has an almost instinctual wariness of opening the floodgates. Debt forgiveness for the mostly African HIPC countries invokes two very important principles: the immorality of inducing so much human suffering for lack of meager resources and the illegitimacy of odious debt. I think that’s the key to their resistance.
Posted by zeynep at 03:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 09, 2004
G-8 Considers Debt Cancellation
There are apparently real discussions in the G-8 Summit towards dropping hundred percent of the debt for the 40 odd impoverished countries included in the "Heavily Indebted Poor Countries" iniative. I suppose Bush and Blair have to do something dramatic to try not to spend eternity in the purgatory -- as well as cover up for the war, the lies, the conduct of the occupation... They also want debt relief for Iraq and even the most shameless hypocrites probably have to draw the line somewhere.
Still, it would be one of the most significant, tangible victories by "the movement" in a long, long time. So far, most of our gains have been in the rhetoric and lip service department -- and while it is a sign of progress to have them adopt our language, victory it is not. (Structural adjustment programs are now called "Poverty Reduction Strategy Initiatives," soon to be renamed "Apple Pie and Blue Skies for All Efforts".)
The story is developing, with the British group Christian Aid calling it "likely." (Following their work from a distance, my impression has been that Christain Aid is a great group that does great work but does not mince words -- a rare combo in a world where many NGOs focus too hard on maintaining access and influence at the expense of uncompromising public advocacy and truth-telling.)
I'll write more on it soon. Meanwhile here's a piece by Jubilee 2000 organizer Marie Clarke who's in Georgia following the summit from a distance. And I do mean a distance: I talked to her today and she told me what she wrote in her piece wasn't in jest -- there really are alligators and quicksands in the waters separating the protestors from the summit.
Posted by zeynep at 03:59 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack