Globalization and terror : Dollar militarism, ALBA humanism
by Toni Solo, October 24th 2009(SNIP)
....Much has been made of the
abolition, by President Clinton in 1999,
of the Glass-Steagall Act which (had) separated investment banking from commercial banking after the 1929 Wall Street crash. But few have stepped back to note
the even more profound policy implications of the 2000 expiry of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act. Economics writer Henry C.K.Liu has noted that the Humphrey-Hawkins legislation in theory (required) the US government and Federal Reserve to sustain full employment .(2)
Among other things it explicitly states that the federal government will rely primarily on private enterprise to achieve the four goals of
full employment, growth, price stability, and balance of trade and budget. Liu's persuasive gloss on that is, "Implicitly,
private enterprise must be regulated so that corporate profit is structurally aligned with the achievement of the four policy goals. The private sector cannot be allowed to prosper with counterproductive activities that negate the four policy goals and treat social costs as externalities to business. In welfare economics, an externality is a socio-economic cost created by one actor, the payment for which is imposed on others."
The expiry of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act was, in effect,
the last goodbye to a United States governed in any sense for the benefit of the majority. It was President Clinton and the Democrat wing of the US oligarchy who finally and categorically
handed over the United States economy to the country's corporate plutocracy. A similar betrayal has been under way for a long time in the European Union. That is why, now, the US government and its European allies have acted so vigorously to save major banks from bankruptcy
while abandoning tens of millions of people to unemployment and indigence.
Contrast that fact with
the fundamental policy statement of one of the ALBA country finance Ministers, Alberto Guevara of Nicaragua. Guevara explains that the economic vision of the FSLN government in Nicaragua is
"not to act in political economy as if we were crunching numbers, but rather to turn political economy into a social policy with economic implications, in such a way that when we take decisions of political economy we do so....on the basis of the millions of Nicaraguans behind the statistics, waiting at long last for the dream of the revolution to crystallize, for the dream of every woman and man in this country to crystallize, focused on making progress, on forging a better destiny for their children, for their people, for their barrio, their community, their municipality, for the whole country. So then, we are working on a revolutionary project that has the human person at the centre of the system, at the centre of the model."
In Latin America,
the ALBA countries are building an unprecedented economic system with the human person at its centre, based on solidarity, cooperation, redistribution and complementarity.
By contrast, the United States government and legislature have abandoned all but the most vestigial remains of any humanist, humanitarian vision of political economy.
It is worth exploring this contrast more deeply, because it also explains why US imperialist military aggression is likely to plunge the region into war.
(MORE)
http://www.tortillaconsal.com/dollar_sucre.html-----------------------------
A most interesting analysis from "the other side of the river" (the Rio Grande)--the side that never gets heard here, in our controlled press. Solo continues detailing the contrast between the non-productive world looting system that capitalism has become--a system oblivious to jobs, production of real goods and services, social justice and humane values--and the new system that the ALBA countries have been trying to create--in the teeth of the relentless hostility of the old looting system. ALBA stresses cooperation, integration and maximum benefit for all, and independence from U.S. domination and dictates (which have been so brutally destructive of Latin American countries in the past, and currently in countries like Colombia and Honduras).
The member nations of ALBA are: Antigua, Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominca, Ecuador, Honduras*, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela.
The issue of literacy--that Solo raises--is telling. He says that ALBA has had spectacular and quick success at wiping out illiteracy in ALBA countries, whereas US-funded programs have chronically failed. And he says that the reason is that US-imposed programs were never meant to succeed. (I would like to have more details about this. When you look at the mindboggling corruption of the Bush Junta in every sphere, larding billions of dollars in contracts on private corps with no requirement to produce anything and no oversight, there is probably yet another humungous scandal in US/Bushwhack aid programs in Latin America. We've already had hints of it in Bolivia, where USAID and DEA aid was used to fund the violent white separatist opposition to the Morales government.)
Solo is hard on Brazil--or rather on Brazil's corpos and banksters. He as much as says that ALBA is a counter to Brazil's imperial goals as well as to the US. I have seen no evidence of this in the policies of Brazil's president, former steelworker Lula da Silva, although he does have a powerful corpo-fascist rightwing at his heels constantly. Lulu has time and again acted on a "raise all boats" philosophy--with particular help to weaker countries like Paraguay and Bolivia--and he is a close friend and ally of President Chavez. He has also been a 100% backer of President Zelaya in Honduras, even providing the Brazilian embassy in Honduras as a refuge to the coup-ousted president. Support for Zelaya is, in effect, support for ALBA*. There has been no one hint of duplicity in Lulu's behavior. Indeed, he has increasingly aligned with the most democratic trends in Latin America. His insistence that the Brazilian people maintain a majority share in Brazil's new, big oil discovery, and that those profits benefit Brazil's poor, could have come from Chavez himself.
So I'm not sure what the basis of this writer's surliness toward Brazil is. I've noticed the same 'meme' (that Brazil and Venezuela are at odds) as the latest "divide and conquer" strategy of the CIA (as reflected in corpo-fascist 'news' monopolies and by rightwing bloggers here). Solo writes:
"Countries like Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador look at the experience of the Mercosur trading bloc (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil) and see that its development has been hampered by the domination of Brazilian big business. They have their own experiences of ruthless Brazilian corporate and government policies. They can also see that China is vacuuming up natural resources as voraciously as ever the old imperialist powers ever did. Only united will the ALBA countries be able to defend effectively their natural resources and their peoples.
"One important aspect of the Cochabamba summit is that it may finally dampen futile attempts by smaller countries to prioritize working together with Brazil on continental integration. Very clearly the ALBA countries will prioritize their own institutions in preference to seeking links with a sclerotic Mercosur and a nascent Bank of the South, both dominated by the neo-liberal sympathies of Brazil's ruling elite. Former Bolivian hydrocarbons minister, Andres Solis Rada has noted, 'Brazil, by becoming an IMF creditor and increasing its voting share in the World Bank has become an associate of the oppressive nations strangling the nations they oppress.'(10)"If this is the general feeling in ALBA--and I wonder if it is, since Venezuela is seeking membership in Mercosur (strongly backed by Lula da Silva)--then I think that it is a mistake. If "united we win, divided we fall" is good for ALBA, it is good for all of Latin America. US strategies of "divide and conquer" should be resisted on all fronts, which--it appears to me--is exactly what Lulu has been doing, in Mercosur, in UNASUR and in Brazilian policy in general. This is not to say that there aren't corpo-fascist forces in Brazil. There are. But such forces also exist in every Latin American country. The goal for those who represent the majority of Latin Americans--the poor, the workers, the progressive middle class and professionals, the artists, students and intellectuals--should be a unified bolstering up of the best leftist leaders, not blaming them for the acts and attitudes of those who seek to sabotage them--the rightwing, corpo-fascist opposition.
That said, it is a minor part of this article. Brazil/Venezuela is just something that has been on my mind, as I have been thinking about the more devious US corpo-fascist strategies and obvious war planning in Latin America. Unity is needed to counter that war planning, as much as for countering US economic domination and tyranny. And here again, Brazil has opposed the US and sided with Venezuela--most recently on the big US military buildup in Colombia. In fact, Lulu has said that the newly reconstituted US 4th Fleet in the Caribbean is a threat to
Brazil's oil reserves (everybody south of the border knows that it is a threat to Venezuela's). He also called Chavez "the great peacemaker" back in 2008, in the context of the war that the US (Bushwhacks)/Colombia were trying to instigate with Ecuador/Venezuela.
This article is pugnaciously defensive about ALBA--maybe too much so. It is understandable. Most of the members are small, vulnerable countries, and four of them--including their three strongest members--have been plainly targeted by the US, for toppling of their leftist governments, destruction of their democracies and theft of their resources: Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras**. ALBA is an economic, social justice challenge to the US in Central America and the Caribbean. But their best course in fending off the US attacks is solidarity with the many South American left and center-left governments, including Brazil.
The article is mostly about the contrast between the US government's alliance with the banksters and war profiteers, to the detriment of the poor and working classes in the US--which are now getting dosed with the poison of "neo-liberalism" the way Latin American countries have been dosed over the previous two decades--and the ALBA solution: barter trade, banding together, getting off the US dollar, cooperation, real progress and development, and mutual defense of their sovereignty. The article is well worth reading for its analysis of this stark contrast.
---
*(While the Honduran legislature approved joining ALBA in Oct '08--as proposed by President Zelaya--I do not know what has become of the matter since the fascist military coup last June (June 2009). I read one account from an activist in Honduras' resistance movement (a union leader, as I recall), who said that the golpistas were looting the ALBA funds, to which many unions and workers had contributed. The golpistas are closely aligned with, and supported by, US global corporate predators and war profiteers--with John McCain, for instance, who has funneled $43 million (US taxpayer dollars) to rightwing coup groups in Honduras through the "International Republican Institute"/USAID)--and President Obama ending up helping to legitimize the coup, and it is not clear to me whether this is because he actually likes fascists, or his hands are tied ("prisoner of the Pentagon"--as Chavez said of Obama), or the incompetence of his diplomatic team (an ad hoc team, because Bushwhack tool, 'Senator' Jim DeMint (Puke-SC) has blockaded all of Obama's appointments in Latin America). I have tended towards the "hands tied" interpretation--but it is getting hard to maintain the hope that Obama does not prefer brutal fascists in charge of Honduras. And among of lot of other US objectives--including securing the US military base and port facilities in Honduras--this was a blow to ALBA.)
**(Venezuela--failed US coup, 2002; Ecuador--US failure to draw Ecuador/Venezuela into a war, early 2008; Bolivia--failed US coup, late 2008; Honduras--successful US coup, June 2009.)
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
