Lucky White Girl

LWG’s State of the Union Address: Reflections on the 1st year of Obama’s presidency

Even before yesterday’s loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat to a Republican, the last few months have made the likely outcome of health insurance reform pretty clear:  in the best case scenario, they’ll pass lukewarm “reform” that keeps the current system pretty much in place but places a few bandaids on it to keep the boat from sinking; in the worst case, they do nothing at all. 

Some have argued (myself included) that the 60 seat majority that the Dems had in the Senate is an illusion (thanks to the Blue Dogs) and therefore the 41^st Republican doesn’t much matter.  The scenario above was just as likely before yesterday’s special election in Massachusetts as it was after.  But the loss is symbolic and coming on the anniversary of Obama’s presidency I thought I’d put down in writing my thoughts on what it all means.  Call it a personal State of the Union address.

We are one year into the election of a man who brought hope to millions and things are not looking good, on health care and on many other pressing social issues as well.  On health care, I’ll be interested to see if the Dems can somehow turn the ship around but I’m not very optimistic.  Why?  Because the reality of the situation is this: multinational corporations as a whole are extremely powerful in this country.  Corporate interests always come first.  To the extent that the people can get what scraps of reform they can depends on more or less well-organized campaigns (social movements) but they will always win only scraps.  Symbolic victories.  Minor reforms.  Corporations won’t allow anything that would in any way threaten their bottom-line much less their very existence.  We can petition Coca-Cola, for example, to stop selling unhealthy sodas in our public schools, but the most we can ask for is that they sell some of their other products instead (Dansani water for example).  We cannot ask that our public schools be one of the few places where kids are spared the relentless barrage of advertisements and the pressure to consume.  After all, that’s what our economic system is based on and we want them to grow up to be good capitalists.

So it is with health care reform (which really was more accurately called “health insurance reform”).  From the start, the insurance companies (arguably the most powerful of powerful corporations) waged a steady, well-organized and well-financed campaign against it.  They fought the battle on a variety of fronts, employed the heavy use of astro-turf groups, took advantage of some of the uglier aspects of U.S. culture (racism and classism) and made smart use of hyperbole and propaganda to lure in what actual citizens they could to become a small but vocal minority on the issue, sunk millions of dollars into organizing rallies, disrupting town hall meetings and putting pressure on Congress and through all this they won.  We won’t get access to decent health care for every American.  Not because we can’t afford it (most other wealthy industrial nations manage to provide this basic human right for their citizens) but because in the end, we the people were not able to slay the Goliaths of powerful insurance corporations.

I think what’s most important now is that we take this time to reflect and ask ourselves some questions.  Why did this happen?  How did these Goliaths get to be so huge?  (hint: google “corporations and legal personhood”) What does it mean for democracy when corporate interests outweigh those of society as a whole?  Can we still call such a system a democracy?

This is the context in which we must examine President Obama’s first year. 

If there’s one overwhelming lesson to learn here it’s this: who rules this country depends less on who occupies the Oval Office and more on who sits in the board rooms of the most powerful corporations on the planet.  Obama was the best candidate we could ever have hoped for.  He’s a good, smart man, a brilliant politician and he had an idealist belief in the democratic values this country was [partly] founded on and most of us found that idealism refreshing and irresistible.  But it still wasn’t enough.

It will take more than electing the best and brightest to the highest office of the country to bring real democracy back to the United States, to create the “great society” that all our people deserve.  In the United States, the system itself is rotten at the core.  Going back to the early days, when our founding fathers were sitting around thinking of what their new country would look like, we can see it was based partly on admirable Enlightenment age values such as democracy, freedom, equality and justice for all (not just for the rich) that the cynics among us call hyperbole but the idealists among us take to heart.  But, being crafted by those founding fathers (also known as the wealthy elite, exclusively white men) it was also based on the notion that some people deserve to have more democracy, freedom, equality and justice than others (their definition of “all” was rather limited) and that capitalism is not only the best but the ONLY way to organize an economic system.   From this start, things have only gotten worse.  Hyper-capitalism is what we have today.  A globalized capitalism that devours the world’s poor and grows stronger every day.

As Dorothy Day said, “our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy rotten system”.  It’s a system that prizes corporations over citizens, profits over people and money over basic human rights.  It will take more than electing a good guy to the presidency to change this system. People like Martin Luther King Jr and Gandhi showed us that it is possible to create a better, more humane system through non-violence.  I truly believe the human race is capable of it.  We’ll get there eventually, and we won't get there unless we dismantle the current system. I don't believe this will happen in my lifetime.  But it will happen.  “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”.

 

The world welcomes back its prodigal son

The Prodigal Son

In awarding President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, the world, represented through the Nobel Committee, made a strong statement today, not about Obama or his accomplishments, but about the nature of international relations in the 21st century.

Last November the people of this country made an historic statement themselves, about what they believe this country is about and what it can do.  It was a complicated message having many different themes, some of which bubbled below the surface, lest they hit the raw nerve of racism, but what people didn’t speak about, everyone knew was there.  We felt it that night as total strangers hugged each other in the street.  We saw it in each other’s eyes as we witnessed the birth of a new nation, one that would be very different from the racist, dominating, bullying country of the past.

To the rest of the world, I think the message they heard last November was this: "We're sorry for the last eight years of ruthless terror we’ve rained down. The attacks of 9/11 scared us and we didn't know what to do; we lashed out.  But America is more than George Bush and Dick Cheney. It's more than Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.  We are a good people and we really do believe in peace and international cooperation.  We're ready to get back to that now."

I was really and truly proud of my country that night last fall.  I didn't think I would ever feel anything like that again.  I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime event.  Today I found I was wrong.

The world responded.

They said YES! and embraced us again as that idealistic country where everyone has a dream. We are the prodigal son returning home, once again part of the global community, welcomed back with open arms.
 
I know we're not there yet.  I know we’ve still got huge messes to clean up. But it’s not about what we or Obama has done; it’s about where we’re going.

One day we'll look back on this time and see it as a significant turning point.  There was a world of difference between the way late 19th century diplomats saw the world and the way the people who created first the flawed League of Nations and then the (still flawed but much better and improving) United Nations.  The former saw competing nation-states, little self-contained empires that struggled ruthlessly and self-interestedly for dominance over each other.  The latter saw, for the first time in history, the possibility (even the necessity of) "global community" and international law.  That was the first step that marked the 20th century.  This (the election and now the world's response to it) is the next step and it will mark the 21st.  Neither step is perfect (e.g. the League of Nations, e.g. Afghanistan) and neither step is complete.  But they are monumental shifts in international relations.

America is America again.  We’ve come home.

One. Big. Union.

Well you wait too long to write an article and eventually someone else will beat you to it.  I've been thinking of writing something about the new relevance of the IWW in an era of globalization but I just found this article by independent journalist Dick Meister.  It's really good:

Although first voiced 160 years ago, "Workers of the World Unite!" is one of the most important messages that the unions of today are likely to hear. As President Andy Stern of the Service Employees Union says, Marx' message "isn't ideological anymore. It's practical."

We really need to get this message out.  Until we realize this we're always going to be pitting workers in one country against workers in another and all of us (except the owners and corporate big-wigs) will lose. 

As former labor leader and U.S. Under Secretary of Labor Jack Henning is quoted in the article "Global unionism is the answer to global capitalism. There is no other answer."

WP editorial on Colombian free trade deal

The Washington Post editorialized today in support of the new free trade agreement with Colombia!  It was probably a necessary reality check for those of us hoping for a revival of the distinction between left and right in this country and a reminder that we need to renewed opposition to legislation such as this that is harmful to the interests of working class people and the values of this country.  Globalization should be about human rights and common welfare for all, not outsourcing labor to whoever will work for the least amount of money!

Working Life,a good blog for labor issues, has a link to a Public Citizen report that reminds us of some of these issues as well as a post about how the human rights situation in Colombia continues to be problematic.

Shame on the Post for its support of profits for the few and misery for the majority!

Uh-oh, guess it's time to up the PR machine!

New poll indicates evidence of international class solidarity.

Review/evaluation of the USSF

The seed sprouts: Another historic moment in the U.S. South

an article by barb howe for The Gainesville Iguana

A platoon of young men and women dressed in desert Army fatigues moved silently through a hotel lobby in downtown Atlanta last week.  Despite the din of hundreds of socializing convention-goers, the troops remained silent and focused.  Arms positioned to mimic M-16s, members of Iraq Veterans Against the War swept the luxury hotel as if patrolling a Baghdad neighborhood. 

A hush fell over the lobby.  The performance was a powerful visual scenario intended to announce an anti-war strategizing session about to start in Ballroom B of the Westin Hotel.  Meanwhile, at the Civic Center, only a ten minute walk away, people gingerly stepped over hundreds of empty shoes which led the way to a photo exhibit called Dreams and Nightmares: Life and Death in Occupied Iraq.

Welcome to the newest manifestation of the global justice movement.  The first ever US Social Forum (USSF) was held in Atlanta this summer.  The location was appropriately symbolic of another people’s movement that triumphed despite deep institutional apathy and in spite of powerful forces arrayed against them.  For five days, this historic southern city pulsated with the energy of ten thousand people who, in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. and others who struggled for justice and dignity in the U.S. South, came together to strategize, network and build the connections for a new kind of globalization in the 21st century.

The Forum was an historic occasion, not only because this was the first of the Social Forums to be held in this country, but because it marked a small but significant shift in the focus of the movement, embodied in the slogan “for another world to be possible, another U.S. is necessary”.  Recognizing that those of us in this country. have a unique role to play in working alongside the rest of the world to create a more just kind of globalization, the focus was squarely on what we can do from within the “belly of the beast”.  How can we use our position within the most powerful country in the world to undermine the hegemony that causes so much harm to others?

Revolutionary not only in content but in form, the USSF, perhaps more so than any previous Social Forum, practiced “horizontalism”, passing over the giants of the non-profit world and the big names of the Progressive Left and focusing instead on recruiting smaller grassroots groups made up of women and people of color.  The result is a smarter, sharper, more dynamic movement led primarily by people who are not necessarily white men (in other words, by people who have the most direct, lived experience of oppressive regimes and are most hurt by them).  There was no single iconic figure who stood out.  The USSF was ordinary people working together to do extraordinary things.

The organizers of the event also went to a lot of effort to make the forum language accessible.  Language access volunteers made sure written materials, including the official schedule of events and workshop descriptions were available in both Spanish and English, and simultaneous interpretation (including sign language) was provided at most events.

What was most remarkable about the USSF however, was how this phenomena has truly become a “movement of movements”.  Organizers and participants both put a lot of emphasis on making the connections between issues that we are usually taught to believe are separate and unrelated: from ending the illegal occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan to abolishing absurd ideas such as the corporate privatization of water; from supporting unions in their efforts to organize workers in the U.S. South to advocating for immigrants’ rights and opposing the construction of a wall on the U.S. Mexico border.  There were over 1,000 workshops over three days of the forum; to even try to summarize them would be fruitless and would miss the point: neoliberal economic globalization involves an immense variety of issues around the world but they are all connected to the single goal of powerful corporations, international institutions and individuals to create a worldwide economic system that benefits the few by the blood, sweat and tears of the majority.

The USSF demonstrated that what we are witnessing is the emergence of an organic, diverse, multi-faceted but unified resistance to the globalization of capitalism.   This is a movement that is stronger for its diversity, harder to control for its horizontalism, smarter for its inclusiveness, and faster and more dynamic for its organic pluralism.  That makes it extremely powerful and that’s what will make it successful.  As neoliberal economic globalization has spread around the world so has this movement to oppose it.  Marx explained that capitalism contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.  That seed is now sprouting and taking root.  The convergence in Atlanta this past week demonstrated this.

Hablamos muchos idiomas: Language access at the USSF

I feel much rejuvenated this morning.  My volunteer shift signing up other volunteers was over (people are pretty much done with wanting to be volunteers at this point) so this morning I got to go to workshops.  I started early. I wanted to hear an introduction to the solidarity economy lecture but when I got there the tent was deserted.  I have various observations of the day so far, but I thought I'd start with some reflections on language access here at the US Social Forum.

After discovering there was no introduction to the solidarity economy to be had, I went next door to hear a panel discussion on poor people's economic human rights.  I mostly watched the interpreter and tried to imagine doing such work (what sorts of little tricks I could use like how to make yourself heard even though the english speakers are applauding what you're still in the process of translating).  The panelists though all waited on the interpreter and the transition was smooth and seamless. 

The next thing I went to, a workshop on 21st century Socialism, was all in Spanish but here they did the interpretation differently.  They gave headphones to the English speakers so that you couldn't hear the interpretation at all if you didn't want to.  I don't think I like this approach as much.  It's very segregated and one result was the speakers here don't wait on the interpretors.  It seemed like the interpreters were not getting stressed out about it but to me it'd be highly stressful.   Maybe they had an idea of the speeches beforehand.  Knowing the relevant vocabulary and even just having a general idea of what someone's going to say helps a lot, I think.

Having the conference be so multi-lingual is one of the things I really like about the Social Forum.  I kinda took it for granted until I saw that the article in the local paper mentioned this as an example of how "politically-correct" and radical we are.  Really?  If we were an international trade association meeting here this weekend they wouldn't think it radical and progressive that there is support for multiple languages, why is it different for us?  As if this were not another kind of globalization, a globalization of people coming together who are fed up with the world as it is.  As if, despite the slogan plastered all over this town right now, we weren't talking of creating other worlds.  Worlds where many voices are heard, a post-post-modern world that is characterized by multiplicity and real (read: participatory) democracy.

Someone today (her name was Adrianna I think) mentioned something today about having a radical process and not just radical content in our movement and I think this is a good example. 

I met Karl Marx!

... well, okay I met Fenton Wilkinson playing Karl Marx in a production of Howard Zinn's play Marx in Soho but I swear it was possibly almost as inspiring as meeting the original.  (Well, actually I don't know if I'd want to meet the original ---we'd probably have a very awkward conversation) But I was reinvigorated by this event tonight.  Beginning with something the woman who introduced the play said about the Independent Progressive Politics Network... I can't find the quote at the moment (I think the recording I made didn't turn out) but it was something about working for electoral change (out of immediate need?) while also believing in the fundamental corruptness of the system as such.  Just the idea that they don't find this inherently contradictory intrigues me.  Not in a judgemental way at all.  I'm just curious.  I want to know more about their thinking on this. Could this actually be a logical strategy? hmmmm....

Then Mr. Marx came on stage and expounded on the nature of capitalism and the working class and the purpose of theorizing and philosophizing about the world... you know, the usual stuff.  He even gave some glimpses into his personal life, his relationship with his wife Jenny and his children.  It was very superficial by nature (but it is just supposed to be an introduction) and didn't distinguish between oh, let's say early Marx and later Marx (really how would they do that? we change so much throughout the course of a lifetime!  It's common sense but still we expect people maybe especially historical people to be static pictures) and it didn't portray any um... what's the word?  Things that would make him a complex character?  Ambiguities?  A man as smart as Marx must've had a lot of ambiguities.  His head must've held lots of contradictory thoughts at the same time.  But ya know, this wasn't a character-study.  It was more like Marx for dummies.

Nonetheless this show really got me excited.  Especially the part where he talks about the Paris Commune  when for the first (and only?) time Marx's vision of democratic communism* was actually tried out and how we can and should think about how we could get there again.... how we're even closer than we think to being able to do so.  I'd like to think more about that too.  I have lots and lots to think about tonight.  Tomorrow's another looooong day.

* democratic communism is a term that I know is technically redundant when talking about Marx's idea of communism but I still feel it clarifies things to add it in.

The tragedy of the commons is the theft of the commons

Aristotle wrote in Politics that "that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it" thereby initiating the "tragedy of the commons" theories which hold that if everyone has access to a common resource no one has the incentive to take care of that resource. 

I was reminded of this today when watching this excellent documentary here at the Social Forum about the privitazation of water.  Thirst is a film that looks at three communities where this has been an issue.  In Stockton, California the mayor had the brilliant idea that the city could save money by privatizing the water company and local residents campaigned hard for the right just to vote on the issue (they were unsuccessful apparently).  Bolivia, however, was adament about kicking out Bechtel who wanted to do the same thing in their country.  And in India a man named Rajendra Singh travels across the country organizing communities to resist the selling of this precious resource to private corporations.  One of the women interviewed said that this idea of privatizing all the water in the world is like the "theft of the commons" by the corporations.

Isn't that an interesting way of putting it?  The "theft of the commons".  True, eh?  Water is an essential natural resource that belongs to all of us.  Anyone who tries to claim it for him or herself (corporate or not) is insane.

To steal something that belongs to everyone.... Isn't that just what people who believe in the "tragedy of the commons" theories are worried about?  That people in their own self-interest will just take all they can (e.g. add another sheep to their herd and another and another and another ad infinitum) and not think about sustainability (e.g. how many sheep the pasture can support)?   In other words, that they will externalize their costs (onto the environment) while internalizing the profits (from having yet one more in their herd).

What's the point of all this?  Just that I thought it ironic that some people use the "tragedy of the commons" theory to argue for privatization which, as the water wars demonstrate, is clearly NOT in the public's best interest.  And that the REAL tragedy of the commons is the THEFT of the commons (beause then there are no more commons).

I think that we have to be careful about pushing the analogy too far but the validity of the first scenario --a sort of free-for-all where anyone can do anything (e.g. add as many sheep as the pasture will bear) with little or no regulation by the community does NOT mean that the opposite extreme --the second scenario (privatization)-- is therefore the right way to go.  They both lead to the same place in my book... lack of incentive to do the two absolutely essential things here: a.) care for the land and b.) share the resources.   In fact, they're not opposites at all... they're the same thing, aren't they?

Just a thought inspired by another day at the Social Forum....now off to watch Marx in Soho!  Happy evening everyone!

Day 2: USSF

It might be just that I'm getting the hang of things here but things seem better organized to me today than they did yesterday.  Believe it or not, I successfully became a somewhat helpful volunteer staffing the volunteer table this morning (we still need yet MORE volunteers by the way!  Come by the volunteer table in the Civic Center if you can work a 4 hour shift at some point during the weekend!).  Before the afternoon workshops started i even got some time to take some photos (and found myself both photographer and photographed: a man from the Atlanta-Constitution came up and asked my name because he had taken my picture while I was taking pictures of an Iraq War memorial).  Then I made it to my first workshop on building solidarity with Venezuela.  It was pretty good but I was hoping for more information on specific programs the Chavez government is starting up and only one of the speakers talked about stuff like that (that I remember).  The rest talked about building solidarity movements (well, that was the name of the session after all!).  I'm really interested in these community and workers' councils they are starting up down there as a way of decentralizing power.  --ooh gotta run, next workshop session is starting: "The Wars Abroad and at Home: Connecting militarism, growth of prisons, immigration and the global economy" (sponsored byt the AFSC --the Quakers)... just to give ya a little taste of some of the workshops those of us here in Atlanta are getting to experience. 

The world is full of beautiful people.

Does the downtown Atlanta police station always have half a dozen police officers standing around outside the front of their building?  Maybe.  Do the Atlanta police always walk around with a thick wad of plastic zip handcuffs?  Probably not.  And that helicopter hovering low a few blocks away?  That must be where I want to go!

Welcome to the first ever US Social Forum in Atlanta, GA!  It's hot.  Bring water.  There are lots of people here.  Workshops start tomorrow and there are so many that I want to be in at least six places at once!  The organization of all this isn't bad, considering.  I only saw three food tents though, and it took half an hour to 45 minutes to get through the line to eat but that's okay because I got to meet a social worker from Boston and we traded stories about living and working in South America (he went to Nicaragua during the 80s with the Sandinistas).  He wants to know how I became a Marxist.  I didn't know what to say so I said it was because I love to read.  But I didn't get a chance to explain because we had to go to different registration lines.  So, Carlos (it was Carlos, wasn't it?), what I meant was, it's like why Ortega told them to teach the people to read.  Reading is subversive.  In and of itself.  Because reading makes everything else possible.  Opens worlds where alternatives exist.  Breaks the myth that the way we do things now is the way we always will do them because that's the way we always have done them.  Reading and dreaming and imagining is where it all starts.  So maybe I became a Marxist because I learned to read.  And paid attention to the world around me.  It's not hard to see that capitalism hurts lots and lots of people. 

The girl above was very cool-looking so I took her picture.  Come on down to Atlanta, y'all... you can meet lots of beautiful people who are reading and dreaming and imagining new ways of doing things.  See ya! :-)

p.s. here's a link to a video the guy sitting next to me is posting about a multi-issue caravan he was on this past week.  I haven't seen it yet so y'all tell me if it's cool or not!

US Social Forum

All this talk in the world about how to respond to the overwhelming brute force of a world dominated by a single super power.  What about those of us who live in that single superpower? 

Well, with a mix of trepidation and eager anticipation I'm off to the first ever US Social Forum in Atlanta.    The reluctance comes of recently wondering what in the world made me think I would enjoy sitting through long bouts of talk and discussion and whether or not I will get annoyed with the indecisiveness and infighting that I've found characterizes activist movements on the left.  But.  It's in Atlanta, it's practically in my backyard.  And you never know.  Things could be different this time.  Filled with love and harmony!  (Imagine that!).... don't say it.  I know I'm too cynical!

I'm volunteering to staff an info table and when I'm not doing that I'll be taking photos so that will give me something to occupy myself with.  At the very least I hope I meet a few people and make a few new contacts.  Lord, help me not to get annoyed with the shrill, the obnoxious or the extremely flakey.

I hope my cat doesn't pee on my bed while I'm gone.

Globalization: inevitable and alterable

Globalization: Inevitable and alterable

by barb howe

Nayan Chanda doesn't want you to worry about globalization.  It's not about world-wide cutthroat capitalism, rampant consumerism or a race to the bottom for wage-slaves.  No, he says, it's about "an expression of human desires that date back to the dawn of time" according to the NY Times' review of his new book BOUND TOGETHER How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization. 

Before you rush off to puke at this sickly sweet sentimentality let’s give Mr. Chanda credit.  He’s right about one thing: globalization is nothing new. But that is hardly an insightful contribution to the discussion.  Scholars studying the phenomena have been saying that at least since the 1990s and some like International Relations theorist Robert Keohane argue that they've been saying it since the 1970s.  Few are arguing that there's anything new about contemporary economic globalization even in the aspect of scale (the world has seen other periods of history with as much or more international trade apparently).  What's different about contemporary globalizations is the particular format, the technologies that characterize it today, especially in the field of information and communication.

For Mr. Chanda globalization in the general sense of the term may be about primordial human desire but for most of us it has a much more tangible effect on our lives.  It’s about losing jobs to those who will work for less and less money overseas.  It’s about multi-national corporations externalizing their costs onto the people and environments in poor third world countries.  It’s about sweatshops and child labor.  Neoliberal economic globalization is about money and profit.  Period.  Other globalizations are often about resisting these things as every meeting of the World Social Forums indicate (“Don't you externalize your costs on me!” say the poor of the world).

Globalization --or more accurately globalizations with an 's' because as indicated above there are many different kinds-- are certainly not a new phenomena and are probably here to stay but that's not a recipe for impassive acceptance as Mr. Chanda seems to imply.  He makes the age-old argument that this phenomena is natural and therefore cannot and should not be resisted or directed in any way.  The book after all is not entitled BOUND TOGETHER How everyday people in the non-ruling class shape globalization.  For him, it’s the elite, the “traders, preachers, adventurers and warriors” who are in control.  The rest of us need not trouble ourselves. 

Whenever anyone tells us that something is inevitable, it's usually with the intent to diminish/deflect critiques of it.  Let's turn that notion on its head.  Anything human beings make, human beings can change.  Globalizations of some kind or another may be inevitable but they are not unalterable.  We have a choice which one or ones we want to see predominate.  Do you want the McDonaldization of the world or do you want to globalize social/economic justice and human rights?

Don't believe them when they tell you that you can do nothing.  Subvert the dominant paradigm.  It’s your world, despite what people like Mr. Chanda tell you.  It’s people like you and me who really shape globalization.

Economic globalization: Subverting the best of intentions

Here's a story to watch: Los Angeles --known for having the most polluted port in the world-- is going to try to clean it up.  I just saw the report on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer (no direct link yet but for now you can find the story on this page or try this audio link) and the city has announced an ambitious new plan to  be implemented over a five year period.  It would involve requiring that ships coming into the port be cleaner and belch less noxious gases into the atmosphere. 

All this is great news, right?  Sure, if they can do it.  If the WTO doesn't derail them because this is exactly the type of thing that countries get sued over under this wondrous new system we call the Bretton Woods Agreements (i.e. free trade).   

Remember dolphin safe tunafish?  Nice sentiment: make fishing boats use nets that don't trap and kill dolphins while they're trolling for tuna.  No one could be against that, right?  Even if they aren't fuzzy, dolphins definitely fall into the cute camp.  Everybody loves dolphins.  Except when that love gets in the way of the almighty dollar (i.e. trade).  Which it did/does for some countries who don't want to or --let's be generous here-- can't afford to reoutfit their boats and use safer nets.  So when the US tried to ban the sale of tuna fish from countries who didn't use dolphin safe nets and those countries sued us under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, now the WTO) and won.  You can read a good summary of the case here.

The point is this: this is just another reminder of the danger of neoliberal economic globalization.  Countries surrender their sovereignty when they sign into the World Trade Organization or take a loan from the World Bank or submit to the IMF's restructuring of their economies.  This is why Chavez wants to get Venezuela out and is working with other countries to create alternatives to the BWI (Bretton Woods Institutions --the IMF, WTO and the World Bank).

So keep your eye on the ports of Los Angeles.  I bet somehow, someway someone will argue that those restrictions to clean up the port restricts free trade and the good people of L.A. end up having to strip that part out of their five year plan.

For further reading:
Free trade: At what cost?
Structural Adjustment, a major cause of poverty.

Economics from below

Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus wins Nobel Peace Prize, warns of the dangers of neoliberal economic globalization:

"Challenging economic theories that he learned as a Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville in the 1970s, he said glorification of the entrepreneurial spirit has led to “one-dimensional human beings” motivated only by profit" (from the NY Times article)

(It was the "challenging economic theories that he learned as a PhD student" part that caught my eye!

The Great Lie of Powerlessness

The Diane Rehm Show today has a discussion of nonviolent resistence, Mark Kurlansky (who normally writes about food) turns out to also be a well educated nonviolent activist.  (Here's a direct link to this episode I'm not sure how long it'll work, I think it's a live feed... I'll try to put up a link to the archive later).

Anyway the subtitle of the book is "a dangerous idea" which is interesting.  Here's the email I sent to the show (which they didn't read on the air):

Nonviolence is only "dangerous" to non-democracies or to non-democratic policies or goverments of supposedly democratic countries because non-violence is democracy in action.  To non-democracies, it is dangerous because it is a tremendous force for democratic change.  In this country, we don't realize how powerful we --the people-- really are.  We have a tremendous amount of power to create change in the world and nonviolence is an extremely powerful tool for accomplishing that.  It's only through years of propaganda and suppression of parts of history of nonviolent resistance that the rulers of the world can get us to believe that nonviolence doesn't work and that we the people are essentially powerless.  What a lie!

The most revolutionary act we can take is to refuse to believe in our own powerlessness.  And you can quote me on that!