The Rag Blog

Speaking to an audience at Columbia Business School in February, Rodrigo de Rato, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, sketched out his vision for Latin America. Optimistically titled “The Way Forward,” Mr. de Rato called on the countries of the region to stay the course laid out by the IMF – structural adjustments, trade liberalization and privatization.

He dismissed the shift to the left in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia as an “apparent inconsistency of economic and political developments,” suggesting that voter dissatisfaction has more to do with a lack of recognition of economic progress to date. When he did admit to high poverty levels, he advised that “the problem is often that reforms have not gone far enough.”

But even as Mr. de Rato spoke, the IMF’s influence in the region is on the decline. In 2005, the Fund placed 80 per cent of its loans in Latin America but this year that amount is down to a mere one per cent, or $50 million. While there has been no economic miracle, enabling countries like Bolivia and Ecuador, which owe $5.9 billion and $10 billion respectively, to pay off their foreign debts, a new lender has entered the picture – Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelan petro-economy.

So far, Chavez has loaned $2.5 billion to Argentina and is close to providing $500 million to ease the Ecuadorian debt crunch and $1.5 billion to help Evo Morales stabilize the situation in Bolivia. Venezuela is also floating a bond offering jointly with Argentina, following last November’s successful $1 billion issue. Chavez has proposed institutionalizing this lending with a regional organization he calls the Banco del Sur.

This is bad news for the IMF, which has been forced to consider selling off part of its gold reserves to cover losses from its lending operations. More fundamentally, it is bad news for the United States, whose Treasury is the largest shareholder in the IMF. Historically, the IMF and the World Bank have been effective in promoting the ‘Washington Consensus’ – a sort of economic shock treatment intended to put countries like Argentina on the path to economic growth. Typically, countries would have to submit to structural adjustments, privatization and austerity measures to obtain a loan from the IMF.

Chavez’ disdain for the IMF was clear in remarks he made at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Havana last year, arguing “we don’t accept the kind of development the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund want to push on us.” The IMF after all, oversaw the wholesale privatizations and adjustments made in the early 1990’s in Venezuela that prompted Chavez’ first rebellion in 1992.

Pundits argue whether Venezuela has enough oil revenue to fuel socialist alternative lending in Latin America in the long-term and whether Venezuela and its partners will be able to challenge the US even when, as Chavez remarked in Havana last year, it is a “US empire experiencing decline.” But the bigger question is what the US will do now that it has lost a lever of influence in the region. As Bill Blum (author of ‘Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II’) argues, “the simple numbers don’t begin to tell the full story because the US can and probably will undermine Venezuela in various ways which have more to do with covert operations and psychology.”

I’m not going to church this Easter, as well as not joining with family, because I don’t silently condone torture nor can I shut up about it. I’m supposed to zip my lip and not offend the morality of other family members who “love my country”. Excuse me. My morality is offended, much more deeply than those offended by my protests could ever fathom because of their shallowness. Abu Grahib was the 9-11 event to our morality. Where is the outrage?

This president is not ashamed or embarrassed to use tortured confessions. This country is not ashamed or embarrassed to use tortured confessions. Need I say more? I don’t suspect there is any questioning of this in the churches of this country. Rather, there is pray for our troops. And just what are our troops doing?

Laila al-Arian was wearing her headscarf at her desk at Nation Books, one of my New York publishers. No, she told me, it would be difficult to telephone her father. At the medical facility of his North Carolina prison, he can only make a few calls – monitored, of course – and he was growing steadily weaker.

Sami al-Arian is 49 but he stayed on hunger strike for 60 days to protest the government outrage committed against him, a burlesque of justice which has, of course, largely failed to rouse the sleeping dogs of American journalism in New York, Washington and Los Angeles.

All praise, then, to the journalist John Sugg from Tampa, Florida, who has been cataloging al-Arian’s little Golgotha for months, along with Alexander Cockburn of Counter Punch.

The story so far: Sami al-Arian, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian, was a respected computer professor at the University of South Florida who tried, however vainly, to communicate the real tragedy of Palestinian Arabs to the US government. But according to Sugg, Israel’s lobbyists were enraged by his lessons – al-Arian’s family was driven from Palestine in 1948 – and in 2003, at the instigation of Attorney General Ashcroft, he was arrested and charged with conspiring “to murder and maim” outside the United States and with raising money for Islamic Jihad in “Palestine”. He was held for two and a half years in solitary confinement, hobbling half a mile, his hands and feet shackled, merely to talk to his lawyers.

Al-Arian’s $50m (£25m) Tampa trial lasted six months; the government called 80 witnesses (21 from Israel) and used 400 intercepted phone calls along with evidence of a conversation that a co-defendant had with al-Arian in – wait for it – a dream. The local judge, a certain James Moody, vetoed any remarks about Israeli military occupation or about UN Security Council Resolution 242, on the grounds that they would endanger the impartiality of the jurors.

After repeatedly topping the Arab health index, Iraq’s health record is now worse than ever because of the US-led occupation. The general effect on the Iraqi population amounts to a massive war crime, writes Bert De Belder*

In March, the deadliest month witnessed by Iraqis recently, some 67 lives on the average were lost daily, as a result of bombings and acts of violence. An elderly man mourns his relative at the entrance of a local hospital in Baghdad’s impoverished district of Sadr City. Political violence has conspired with the occupation to wreak havoc not only with lives, but, as well, the infrastructure needed to safeguard the health of millions of Iraqis

Health standards in Iraq plummet because of the United States occupation of the country: Iraqi medics treat a wounded child at a hospital in the oil rich city of Kirkuk (left); and Iraqi women rush to the site where a car bomb exploded in Baghdad’s impoverished district of Sadr City

Iraq’s health status, four years into the occupation, is nothing short of disastrous. Iraq’s health index has deteriorated to a level not seen since the 1950s, says Joseph Chamie, former director of the United Nations Population Division and an Iraq specialist. People’s health status is determined by social, economic and environmental factors much more than by the availability of healthcare. Not surprisingly, all these factors have deteriorated in the course of the occupation.

A recent UNDP-backed study reveals that one-third of Iraqis live in poverty, with more than five per cent living in abject poverty. The UN agency observes that this contrasts starkly with the country’s thriving middle- income economy of the 1970s and 1980s. But these figures may well be a grave underestimation, as other reports speak of eight million out of 28 million Iraqis living in extreme poverty on incomes of less than $1 per day. More than 500,000 Baghdad residents get water for only a few hours a day. And the majority of Iraqis get three hours of electricity a day, in contrast to pre-war levels of about 20 hours.

THE DEVASTATED HEALTH OF IRAQI CHILDREN: The combination of sanctions, war and occupation has resulted in Iraq showing the world’s worst evolution in child mortality: from an under-five mortality rate of 50 per 1000 live births in 1990, to 125 in 2005. That means an annual deterioration of 6.1 per cent — a world record, well behind very poor and AIDS- affected Botswana. At the outset of the 2003 war, the US administration pledged to cut Iraq’s child mortality rate in half by 2005. But the rate has continued to worsen, to 130 in 2006, according to Iraqi Health Ministry figures.

Nutrition is, of course, vital to health. According to the United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF), about one in 10 Iraqi children under five are underweight (acutely malnourished) and one in five are short for their age (chronically malnourished). But this is only the tip of the iceberg, according to Claire Hajaj, communications officer at the UNICEF Iraq Support Centre in Amman. “Many Iraqi children may also be suffering from ‘hidden hunger’ — deficiencies in critical vitamins and minerals that are the building blocks for children’s physical and intellectual development,” Hajaj says. “These deficiencies are hard to measure, but they make children much more vulnerable to illness and less likely to thrive at school.” Hayder Hussainy, a senior official at the Iraqi Ministry of Health, states that approximately 50 per cent of Iraqi children suffer from some form of malnourishment.

The Camp David meeting has just come to an end. All of us followed the press conference offered by the presidents of the United States and Brazil attentively, as we did the news surrounding the meeting and the opinions voiced in this connection.

Faced with demands related to customs duties and subsidies which protect and support US ethanol production, Bush did not make the slightest concession to his Brazilian guest at Camp David.

President Lula attributed to this the rise in corn prices, which, according to his own statements, had gone up more than 85 percent.

Before these statements were made, the Washington Post had published an article by the Brazilian leader which expounded on the idea of transforming food into fuel.

It is not my intention to hurt Brazil or to meddle in the internal affairs of this great country. It was in effect in Rio de Janeiro, host of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, exactly 15 years ago, where I delivered a 7-minute speech vehemently denouncing the environmental dangers that menaced our species’ survival. Bush Sr., then President of the United States, was present at that meeting and applauded my words out of courtesy; all other presidents there applauded, too.

No one at Camp David answered the fundamental question. Where are the more than 500 million tons of corn and other cereals which the United States, Europe and wealthy nations require to produce the gallons of ethanol that big companies in the United States and other countries demand in exchange for their voluminous investments going to be produced and who is going to supply them? Where are the soy, sunflower and rape seeds, whose essential oils these same, wealthy nations are to turn into fuel, going to be produced and who will produce them?

Some countries are food producers which export their surpluses. The balance of exporters and consumers had already become precarious before this and food prices had skyrocketed. In the interests of brevity, I shall limit myself to pointing out the following:

According to recent data, the five chief producers of corn, barley, sorghum, rye, millet and oats which Bush wants to transform into the raw material of ethanol production, supply the world market with 679 million tons of these products. Similarly, the five chief consumers, some of which also produce these grains, currently require 604 million annual tons of these products. The available surplus is less than 80 million tons of grain.

This colossal squandering of cereals destined to fuel production -and these estimates do not include data on oily seeds-shall serve to save rich countries less than 15 percent of the total annual consumption of their voracious automobiles.

At Camp David, Bush declared his intention of applying this formula around the world. This spells nothing other than the internationalization of genocide.

In his statements, published by the Washington Post on the eve of the Camp David meeting, the Brazilian president affirmed that less than one percent of Brazil’s arable land was used to grow cane destined to ethanol production. This is nearly three times the land surface Cuba used when it produced nearly 10 million tons of sugar a year, before the crisis that befell the Soviet Union and the advent of climate changes.

Our country has been producing and exporting sugar for a longer time. First, on the basis of the work of slaves, whose numbers swelled to over 300 thousand in the first years of the 19th century and who turned the Spanish colony into the world’s number one exporter. Nearly one hundred years later, at the beginning of the 20th century, when Cuba was a pseudo-republic which had been denied full independence by US interventionism, it was immigrants from the West Indies and illiterate Cubans alone who bore the burden of growing and harvesting sugarcane on the island. The scourge of our people was the off-season, inherent to the cyclical nature of the harvest. Sugarcane plantations were the property of US companies or powerful Cuban-born landowners. Cuba, thus, has more experience than anyone as regards the social impact of this crop.

This past Sunday, April 1, CNN televised the opinions of Brazilian experts who affirm that many lands destined to sugarcane have been purchased by wealthy Americans and Europeans.

As part of my reflections on the subject, published on March 29, I expounded on the impact climate change has had on Cuba and on other basic characteristics of our country’s climate which contribute to this.

Christopher Phelps has written a timely but ultimately disappointing article in The Nation about the vibrant and growing student movement. [The New SDS (April 16, 2007)] He transforms the tough challenges of movement-building into a set of tepid formulas about what not to do. The new wave of student activism in America and around the world is a hopeful development worthy of our active participation and respect.

Yet Phelps focuses on the sectarian divides of the MDS generation rehearsing old political grudges or offering simplistic “lessons” from the New Left, rather than highlighting the steps forward and the common ground between radical organizers.

Our points of convergence (young and old, organizers and activists) are numerous, including the need to strive for participatory democracy and non-exclusion, resist the savage US wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, fight brutal poverty and gluttonous wealth here and globally, act to end catastrophic climate change, racial injustice and patriarchal power, and reject the permanent so-called war on “terror” in toto.

Phelps would have benefited from more attention to what led to coordinated anti-war actions on 60 campuses last month, and to the new SDS diverse political campaigns ranging from getting military recruiters out of high schools and off campuses to anti-sweatshop coordination, from opposition to police violence against the community to protest when war criminals speak, from support for Assata Shakur and the new Panther 8 defendants to fights for universal health care–radical youth organizing is broad and deep. This is the power and the inspiration of a vast, left umbrella network with variety and vigor.

Phelps stereotypically characterizes me as a “celebrity” while the male ideologues are described by what they say about politics. I object. Who knows why any speech or article is well received?

Ophelia sits by the fireplace and mumbles softly, smiling and gesturing at no one in particular. She gazes out the large window through the two pairs of glasses she wears, one windshield-sized pair over a smaller set perched precariously on her small nose. Perhaps four lenses help her see the invisible other she is addressing. When her “nobody there” conversation disturbs the reader seated beside her, Ophelia turns, chuckles at the woman’s discomfort, and explains, “Don’t mind me, I’m dead. It’s okay. I’ve been dead for some time now.” She pauses, then adds reassuringly, “It’s not so bad. You get used to it.” Not at all reassured, the woman gathers her belongings and moves quickly away. Ophelia shrugs. Verbal communication is tricky. She prefers telepathy, but that’s hard to do since the rest of us, she informs me, “don’t know the rules.”

Margi is not so mellow. The “fucking Jews” have been at it again she tells a staff member who asks her for the umpteenth time to settle down and stop talking that way. “Communist!” she hisses and storms off, muttering that she will “sue the boss.” Margi is at least 70 and her behavior shows obvious signs of dementia. The staff’s efforts to find out her background are met with angry diatribes and insults. She clutches a book on German grammar and another on submarines that she reads upside down to “make things right.”

Mick is having a bad day, too. He hasn’t misbehaved but sits and stares, glassy-eyed. This is usually the prelude to a seizure. His seizures are easier to deal with than Bob’s, for instance, because he usually has them while seated and so rarely hits his head and bleeds, nor does he ever soil his pants. Bob tends to pace restlessly all day and is often on the move when, without warning, his seizures strike. The last time he went down, he cut his head. The staff has learned to turn him over quickly after he hits the floor, so that his urine does not stain the carpet.

John is trying hard not to be noticed. He has been in trouble lately for the scabs and raw, wet spots that are spreading across his hands and face. Staff members have wondered aloud if he is contagious and asked him to get himself checked-out, but he refuses treatment. He knows he is still being tracked, thanks to the implants the nurse slipped under his skin the last time he surrendered to the clinic and its prescriptions. There are frequencies we don’t hear — but he does. Thin whistles and a subtle beeping indicate he is being followed, his eye movements tracked and recorded. He claims he falls asleep in his chair by the stairway because “the little ones” poke him in the legs with sharp objects that inject sleep-inducing potions.

Franklin sits quietly by the fireplace and reads a magazine about celebrities. He is fastidiously dressed and might be mistaken for a businessman or a professional. His demeanor is confident and normal. If you watch him closely, though, you will see him slowly slip his hand into the pocket of his sports jacket and furtively pull out a long, shiny carpenter’s nail. With it, he carefully pokes out the eyes of the celebs in any photo. Then the nail is returned to his pocket, a faint smirk crossing his face as he turns the page to pursue his next photo victim.

Scenes from a psych ward? Not at all. Welcome to the Salt Lake City Public Library. Like every urban library in the nation, the City Library, as it is called, is a de facto daytime shelter for the city’s “homeless.”

Where the Outcasts Are Inside

In bad weather — hot, cold, or wet — most of the homeless have nowhere to go but public places. The local shelters push them out onto the streets at six in the morning and, even when the weather is good, they are already lining up by nine, when the library opens, because they want to sit down and recover from the chilly dawn or use the restrooms. Fast-food restaurants, hotel lobbies, office foyers, shopping malls, and other privately owned businesses and properties do not tolerate their presence for long. Public libraries, on the other hand, are open and accessible, tolerant, even inviting and entertaining places for them to seek refuge from a world that will not abide their often disheveled and odorous presentation, their odd and sometimes obnoxious behaviors, and the awkward challenges they present to those who encounter them.

Although the public may not have caught on, ask any urban library administrator in the nation where the chronically homeless go during the day and he or she will tell you about the struggles of America’s public librarians to cope with their unwanted and unappreciated role as the daytime guardians of the down and out. In our public libraries, the outcasts are inside.

Ophelia is not so far off after all — in a sense she is dead and has been for some time. Hers is a kind of social death from shunning. She is neglected, avoided, ignored, denied, overlooked, feared, detested, pitied, and dismissed. She exists alone in a kind of social purgatory. She waits in the library, day after day, gazing at us through multiple lenses and mumbling to her invisible friends. She does not expect to be rescued or redeemed. She is, as she says, “used to it.”

She is our shame. What do you think about a culture that abandons suffering people and expects them to fend for themselves on the street, then criminalizes them for expressing the symptoms of illnesses they cannot control? We pay lip service to this tragedy — then look away fast. As a library administrator, I hear the public express annoyance more often than not: “What are they doing in here?” “Can’t you control them?” Annoyance is the cousin of arrogance, not shame.