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The
Greatest Gulf
by Jonathan Raban
from The
Guardian Review
Apart from the immediate cost in human life,
military intervention in Iraq has also represented a disastrous failure
of imagination and a fatal inability to understand the role of history -
and religion - in the region.
Whatever its immediate apparent outcome, the war on Iraq
represents a catastrophic breakdown of the British and American
imagination. We've utterly failed to comprehend the character of the
people whose lands we have invaded, and for that we're likely to find
ourselves paying a price beside which the body-count on both sides in the
Iraqi conflict will seem trifling.
No war for whose oil?
by Yahya Sadowski
from Le Monde diplomatique
The US administration has cited many causes to
justify its war against Iraq. Curbing weapons of mass destruction - so
why not tackle nuclear North Korea? Combating terrorism - but Iraq is not
even on the US State Department list of major terrorist supporters.
Deterring threats to neighbouring states -well, the US cheered last time
Saddam invaded Iran, and would probably do so again. Even liberating
women - but Iraqi women are better represented in their government and
military than US women. Most people suspect that the US has more material
interests.
Aftermath: Cleaning up the
Mess
by Conn Hallinan (provost at the University of
California at Santa Cruz)
from Foreign Policy in Focus
When the Bush administration totals up the cost of
the Iraq War it had best be prepared to tack on billions more to clean up
the toxic residue of how this country wages war, specifically its
widespread use of cluster weapons and Depleted Uranium (DU). While the
shooting has wound down, the consequences of using these controversial
weapons will be around for a long time to come, with clusters taking a
steady toll on the unwary and the young, and DU poisoning the air and
water.
History’s Greatest Heist
by Jeff Gates
for the Post-Neoliberal
Review
When I
became counsel to the Senate Committee on Finance in May 1980, U.S. money
managers oversaw funds totaling ~$1,900 billion. By 2003, they held ~$17 trillion, with
more than half those funds (~55 percent) subsidized with tax incentives
for retirement security, my specialty as counsel from 1980-87. At present, those tax subsidies reduce
federal revenues by ~$110 billion per year, ranking the commitment to
retirement security second only to national security (and interest on
government debt) as a fiscal expense.
To date, pension trustees have allowed senior executives to
extract ~$500 billion in cash and capital from firms where these
retirement funds are invested. By
2000, their investments had helped put $1,540 billion in the hands of just
400 people, according to Forbes
magazine’s annual tally of the nation’s most well-to-do. The size of the funds at stake helps
explain why the scale of this heist dwarfs any previous swindle. . . . .
Ranking the Rich
from Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy
Political leaders in the world’s
wealthy nations routinely pledge to help end world poverty. But what are the
richest governments really doing to assist the global poor? Here is a groundbreaking new ranking,
the first annual Commitment to Development Index, which grades 21 rich
nations on whether their aid, trade, migration, investment, peacekeeping,
and environmental policies help or hurt poor nations. Find out why the
Netherlands ranks first and why the world’s two largest aid givers—the
United States and Japan—finish last. . . . .
When Rivers Flow Upstream:
International Capital Movements in the Era of Globalization
by Monique Morrissey
and Dean Baker
from Center for Economic and Policy Research
It is a basic
proposition in international finance that the direction of world capital
flows should be from the developed nations, where capital is plentiful,
to the developing nations, where capital is scarce. In principle, capital
flows from rich to poor countries should lead to gains for both sides.
Developing nations benefit from obtaining the financing needed to build
up their capital stock as well as their physical and social
infrastructure, allowing them to be more productive in the future. The
developed nations benefit by receiving a higher return on their capital,
since the scarcity of capital in poor countries should lead to a higher
return on investments in poor countries than could be obtained in rich
nations. . . . . However, it turns out that the world is more
complicated than simple theory suggests. In fact, most developing nations
receive, on net, little or no capital from rich nations, and many are
large exporters of capital to the rich nations. Interestingly, most of
the “success” stories, measured by growth in per capita GDP, fall into
this category. . . . .
Fifty Years Forgetting
London
by
Eduardo Gudynas
from Americas
Program
The foreign debt in southern countries continues to
grow and is once again becoming a major problem. By the end of 2002, the
Latin American debt had grown to over $725 billion; the most indebted
nations were Brazil ($230 billion), Argentina ($150 billion), and Mexico
($140 billion). . . This debt is becoming a serious brake on development.
. . . All attempts at changing the mechanisms for managing foreign debt
have failed. . . Creditor nations, international banks, and the IMF have
been forgetting that there is another path. It seems nobody remembers the
foreign debt agreements of 1953 in London. This lack of memory is
unpardonable since those resolutions are exactly what several southern
countries are calling for today. . . . .
The Mexican Farmers' Movement: Exposing the Myths
of Free Trade
by Laura Carlsen
from Americas Program
Even long-time Mexico observers sat up
and took notice on January 31. The march that day by campesino
organizations, which counted on the support of unions, universities, and
civil society groups, broke the mold in a city accustomed to large
demonstrations. By the time they
reached the Zócalo, they numbered nearly a hundred thousand. Not since
the late thirties had so many campesinos marched in the nation's capital.
And perhaps not since the revolution had such a diverse crowd united
behind such radical demands. The farmers no longer demanded government
programs to alleviate their poverty or help sell their products. The
central demands of the march—renegotiation of the agricultural chapter of
NAFTA and a far-reaching national agreement on rural development-shot
straight to the heart of the neoliberal model and called for a new
vision. . . . .
'A Chill Wind is Blowing in This Nation...'
Transcript of the speech given by actor and director Tim Robbins
to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on April 15, 2003
Free speech is under threat in the US,
says Tim Robbins, our voices lost in the tide of intolerance sweeping
America. . . . . .
Notes on totalitarianism: Are
we there yet?
by Vandana
Shiva
from OnLine
Journal
In
his February 23 New York Times Magazine article "Fortress
America," Matthew Brzezinski writes with a sense of inevitability of
such garrison state tactics as routine military presence at shopping malls
and restaurants; the proliferation of Joint Operations Command Centers
(JOCCs), such as the one already in operation in Washington, D.C., which
can track suspected citizens through every phase of their daily movements
using facial recognition technology; a national identification card
advocated by Larry Ellison of Oracle and others in the computer industry
which would contain the user's biographical, financial, and medical
history and without which it would be difficult to move around American
cities; the Face-Finder Recognition system developed by MIT which can be
used at A.T.M's, car-rental agencies, and D.M.V. offices; the conversion
of American cities into patchworks of places no one can go near without
proper identification; the transformation of air travel from dozens of
flights a day between major cities to one or two a day, costing much more
and without any guarantee that one might even get on a flight; and
Americans getting used to the idea of suspicious citizens simply
disappearing without anyone being notified. . . . .
Globalisation And Its Fall
Out
by Vandana Shiva
from Znet
Globalization
was imposed on the world with a promise of peace and prosperity. Instead
we are faced with war and economic crisis. Not only has prosperity proved
elusive, the minimal economic securities of people and countries are fast
disappearing. . . . Peace was the other promise of globalization but
terrorism and war is what we have inherited. Peace was to be a result of
increased global prosperity through globalization. Increased poverty is
the unfolding reality. And economic insecurity and exclusion is creating
conditions for the rise of terrorism and fundamentalism. . . . .
The War at Home
by Sanho Tree
from Tom Paine Commonsense
Bush has a great model for an ill-defined, vague
and endless war (the war on terrorism) right here at home. It's called
the War On Drugs. . . . As the drug war escalated in the 1980s, mandatory
minimum sentencing and other draconian penalties boosted our prison
population to unprecedented levels. With more than 2 million people
behind bars (there are only 8 million prisoners in the entire world), the
United States--with one-twenty-second of the world's population -- has
one-quarter of the planet's prisoners. We operate the largest penal
system in the world, and approximately one-quarter of all our prisoners
(nearly half a million people) are there for nonviolent drug offenses --
that's more drug prisoners than the entire European Union incarcerates
for all offenses combined, and the European Union has over 90 million more
citizens than the United States. Put another way, the United States now
has more nonviolent drug prisoners alone than we had in our entire prison
population in 1980.
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