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Two Myths That Keep the World Poor
Vandana Shiva, Ode
From rock singer Bob Geldof to UK politician Gordon Brown, the world
suddenly seems to be full of high-profile people with their own plans to end
poverty. Jeffrey Sachs, however, is not a simply a do-gooder but one of the
world’s leading economists, head of the Earth Institute and in charge of a
UN panel set up to promote rapid development. So when he launched his book
The End of Poverty, people everywhere took notice. Time magazine even made
it into a cover story.
But, there is a problem with Sachs’ how-to-end poverty prescriptions. He
simply doesn’t understand where poverty comes from. He seems to view it as
the original sin. “A few generations ago, almost everybody was poor,” he
writes, then adding: “The Industrial Revolution led to new riches, but much
of the world was left far behind.”
This is a totally false history of poverty. The poor are not those who have
been “left behind”; they are the ones who have been robbed. The wealth
accumulated by Europe and North America are largely based on riches taken
from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Without the destruction of India’s rich
textile industry, without the takeover of the spice trade, without the
genocide of the native American tribes, without African slavery, the
Industrial Revolution would not have resulted in new riches for Europe or
North America. It was this violent takeover of Third World resources and
markets that created wealth in the North and poverty in the South.
"The Contradiction of Trotsky"
Claude Lefort
"Let us hold out our hands to each other and rally around our Party's committees. We must not forget even for a minute that only the Party committees can worthily lead us, only they will light our way to the Promised Land."
It was in these words, with the turn of phrase now familiar to us all, that as early as 1905 Stalin addressed the Russian workers on the occasion of their first revolution. It may well have been on that very same day, Trotsky notes, that Lenin dispatched from Geneva the following appeal to the masses: 'Make way for the anger and hatred that have accumulated in your hearts throughout the centuries of exploitation, suffering and grief! (1)
Nothing could be more typical of the two men, or better bring out the contrast between them, than these two statements, one made by a revolutionary for whom the oppressed masses are the essential force of history, the other made by a party militant, already a 'bureaucrat', for whom the party apparatus alone knows what the future is to be and is capable of bringing it about. For us who are familiar with the course that events have taken since then, this psychological opposition assumes a more general significance, for it forms part of a broader opposition that is essentially historical in character.
"Superpower Vulnerability"
Henry C.K. Liu
[The author notes that "this article was rejected by Asia Times without explanation."]
That the US is now the world’s sole remaining superpower is above challenge. This unchallenged status has affected US approach to formulating foreign and domestic policies in the post-Cold War era. In foreign policy, the US has been operating on the basis that its national values have been validated by triumph in the Cold War and that its resultant sole superpower status now earns it both the moral right and the military means to spread such values over the whole world. Resistance to such self-righteous values is now deemed evil by US moral imperialism, in need of elimination not by persuasion but by force. This new approach has made the world less safe than it was during the Cold War, the end of which briefly entertained a false hope for a new age in which a world with only one superpower could thereafter live without war, hot or cold. Instead, the world has been plunged into successive holy wars of imperialistic moral conquest by the sole remaining superpower, bringing escalating terrorist attacks onto the US homeland. The impact on domestic policy from terrorist threats has in turn been the wholesale suspension of civil liberties in the name of homeland security.
Such holy wars of moral imperialism cannot be blamed entirely on neo-conservatives in the second Bush administration. While the two wars on Iraq were initiated by the two pere et cie Bush administrations that sandwiched eight years of Clinton rule, the Bosnia and Kosovo wars were the handiwork of Clinton administration neo-liberals. The faith-based foreign policy of George W Bush echoes the value-based interests of the foreign policy of Bill Clinton, such as the grandiose aim of enlarging democracy by force around the world and preventing mass starvation and ethnic genocide by spilling more blood.
The US under Clinton sent troops into Bosnia with a host of policy delusions, such as revitalizing an outmoded NATO to perpetuate European security dependence on the US, ending a local war that could spill beyond the borders of Croatia and Serbia, establishing a closer relationship with the Russian military, demonstrating that the US is willing to use its super military power to spread its national values overseas even though the security of the US was not threatened and neutralizing domestic criticism of amorality in a foreign policy based of realpolitik. The wary US military demanded and received clear rules of engagement towards these flamboyant political objectives, allowing soldiers who were attacked, or threatened with attack, field authority to respond with lethal force quickly and massively; exempting the military from having to perform jobs of refugee resettlement, monitoring elections, controlling civilian traffic, supplying food, clothing, fuel or other basic needs to the civilian population; no hard time lines for moving forces into Bosnia, hence allowing the military to enter Bosnia slowly with deliberation and in the safest possible way; committing to a clearly-defined departure date (December 1996) for military forces; limiting the mission to peacekeeping and not peace enforcement and if there were major attacks on the Implementation Force, US forces would withdraw; a solid understanding that “mission creep” would be firmly resisted; provision of the best of the newest equipment to US forces on the ground in the air and on the sea and the State department arrangement for military cooperation from neighboring states, especially Hungary, Albania, Croatia, Serbia. In fact, the military served notice that it was the wrong tool for achieving the administration’s limited-war political objectives. It was a perfectly appropriate position. The US military is arguably the best in the world, best led, best equipped and best trained. But its performance and morale are steadily eroded by assignments to missions that are best handled by non-military means. When a well-oiled machine is use inappropriately, both the machine and the task suffer.
The experience in Bosnia, a nation which existed only in the imagination of US ideologue policymakers, should have served as a clear warning for Kosovo and Iraq. It was Bosnia that “animated our policy towards Kosovo,” Nicholas Burns, US ambassador to Greece, told Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the conservative Cato Institute. Even though the US spent $12 billion and occupied Bosnia for more than three years, Clinton’s arm-twisting Dayton scheme was a policy failure. To this date, nationalist Serbs continue to dominate local politics and refugees are not returning home. There is little home-grown economic growth. The kind of democracy being introduced by the US “more represents Boss Tweed than George Washington” as the US and its NATO allies force Bosnians to live under a government that represents none of them. Internecine local conflicts always have a longevity that exceeds US political attention span.
Bandow testified on March 10, 1999 before the House International Relations Committee Hearing on “The US Role in Kosovo” that the Clinton administration attempted to impose “an artificial settlement in Kosovo with little chance of genuine acceptance by either side.” A US diplomat in Belgrade was reported to have said: "If you're a Serb, hell yes the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] is a terrorist organization." Even moderate ethnic Albanians admit that the KLA had targeted Serb policemen and other government employees, any Serbs viewed as abusing Kosovars, as well as Albanian collaborators. Each cycle of violence spawned more deadly violence. Belgrade understandably accused the US of aiding and abetting terrorists in Kosovo directly but remotely from Washington.
Anonymous Comrade writes:
The Gomery Report and Quebec Separatism
John Chuckman
Following the Gomery Commission Report, the question often is asked, "What do the Liberals have to do to be thrown out of office?"
But the question is politically naïve. Let's be clear just what the scandal Justice Gomery investigated involves. Except for a limited number of individuals who took advantage and who should be prosecuted, the scheme was not about the Liberal Party enriching itself. However inappropriate the method, it was an effort to fund the fight against separatism.
Hoipolloi Cassidy writes:
"Cliché-sous-Bois"
Hoipolloi Cassidy
"Couvre-feu ou cessez-le-feu?" Curfew or ceasefire? By reactivating a fifty-year old curfew law the French Government appears to have tamped the violence tearing apart Parisian suburbs and other parts of France for the past two weeks. Throw a few promises at the underprivileged and this could be the end of the story. Not likely. It's more like a chess game between two skilled players where both opponents skip through the opening moves because they're all predictable. Or think of the joke about the guys who all know the same stories, so whenever someone calls out a number the rest all crack up. In a country with a political tradition as old as France the past two weeks couldn't help but follow the script. From a cycle of repression and rebellion the Right wing fashioned a narrative of France against the Un-French, order against disorder, while Center and Left begged for a return to containment, cooperation and gradual integration into "Frenchness."
Solve et Coagula writes:
"Bush Meltdown:
Belated Justice or Coup d'état?"
Carolyn Baker
Bush’s approval rating at under 40 percent, nearly two-thirds of Americans no longer in favor of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the vice president’s chief of staff indicted, the House Majority Leader indicted, the Senate Majority Leader under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Harriett Miers fiasco, and now the Democrats shutting down the Senate? It all feels so deliciously appropriate and so painfully overdue. Are the Democrats finding their spines? Will Cheney be indicted? Will Bush be impeached?
Before succumbing to ecstasy over these dramatic events, which sometimes seem too good to be true, it behooves progressives to look deeper into the wormhole that the criminal empire, the United States government, has become. Indeed, the next few months will be messy, and Bush & Co. are irreversibly in demise, but the hope these events might instill in us must be tempered by historical and political perspective.
The following letter was sent to an International Conference on Elisée Reclus, the 19th century anarchist geographer and political theorist. The conference, which was held in Milan on October 12–13, was one of several planned for this year to celebrate the 175th anniversary of Reclus’ birth and the 100th anniversary of his death. I was invited to do a presentation but couldn’t leave New Orleans to attend. Fortunately, our electricity, which had been out for almost six weeks, resumed shortly before the conference and I was able to write the letter hastily and find a place to email it. It arrived in Milan the day before the conference and was read during the proceedings, and it will be translated and published in the Italian anarchist magazine Libertaria.
A Letter from New Orleans
(Reclusian Reflections on an Unnatural Disaster)
John Clarke
Dear Friends,
I regret that I can’t be with you for the international Reclus conference in Milano this week. I was looking forward very much to seeing all of my good friends there and participating in the extraordinary event that you’ve organized. I decided that to help make up for my absence from my session tomorrow that I’d send you some reflections on what I’ve been doing recently and what has been occurring here in New Orleans.
Hoipolloi Cassidy writes:
"Making France and Influencing Media"
Hoipolloi Cassidy
I)
My own political Primal Scene: I'm, maybe nine years old, in Paris in the 'fifties, and my mother's hurrying me home because the police have cordoned off the street and started picking up all dark-skinned males. "Algerians," she says, as if that explained anything. Now, fifty years later, there are few Algerians living in the gentrified center of Paris. Some things have changed, some haven't, and there's a lot of explaining left to do.
For one thing, French distrust of North Africans has a long, bitter history, which is also a history of slow improvements. A few years back I wandered into a café in a lower-middle class area of Paris with a friend. My friend ordered at the counter but I didn't want anything. "Ah, said the owner with a smile, Monsieur is observing Ramadan!" This kind of comment was unthinkable fifty years ago.
Yet riots like those going on right now have been going on for years, on and off, in towns and suburbs far outside of Paris, led by disaffected children of immigrants, black, Muslim or both, and for the usual reasons: high unemployment, nothing to do, resentment of racism. The difference this time is that the trashing and burning and assaults that have broken out over the past ten days in the northern suburbs of Paris are too close to ignore. What's new is a desperate desire to make sense of these events. You might even say, in the grand intellectual tradition of France, that they exist above all in their own interpretation.
Anarcho writes:
Solidarity South Pacific The following was written by a British activist who has been involved in Solidarity South Pacific since its beginning. The opinions expressed are his and cannot be viewed as an agreed SSP policy, however it is probable that most of what is said would find broad agreement within SSP.
“Solidarity South Pacific aims to provide active solidarity with tribal and ecological struggles, mainly in the Philippines, West Papua and Bougainville. (A brief background to the situation in these places is given in the boxes below). We are a network based mainly in Britain and the U.S but with other contacts elsewhere in the world. We are very much a part of the radical ecological movement, viewing our solidarity work as an extension of our ecological and liberation struggles at home. We are not an NGO and have no paid staff.
SSP can almost be viewed as 3 separate solidarity campaigns operating under the same name and it may seem strange that we choose to do this. From our point of view though it makes sense to organise like this as much of the work takes a similar form and we are able to share information, experience and resources. Also, although we recognise that situations vary hugely within and between countries, our desire to act in solidarity with tribal struggles and to protect eco-systems applies to them all. In their relations with the land and with each other, tribal communities can be an inspiration to anarchists and ecologists. Their fight against destruction is linked to our own.”
Click Here 2 read more www.a-manila.org
Anonymous Comrade writes:
"The Post (Liberal) Feminist Condition"
Anonymous Comrade
“They’ll throw the book at you in court. She’s the mother-the female. She’s got the tits. They’ll crush you.” — Sandor Himmelstein in Herzog by Saul Bellow.
The narrative of Bellow’s novel depicts a middle-aged philosophy professor, Moses Herzog, unluckily in love and on the edge descending into mental illness. Two broken marriages and estranged children; he feels the latter estrangement as death. Escaping from the pain into the arms of women he uses for sex, objectified he then begins to despise them. Though he remains conflicted on whether or not to remarry to a new lover, he withdraws yet again on a holiday. Catching a train from New York to the sea side, or rather lakeside, he reminisces upon his married life and the break up with Madeleine.
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