ARAB GOVERMENTS

Arab governments must immediately:

Expel all officials of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and their subset of lending institutions.

Arab countries which are currently under the yoke of IMF conditionalities (notably Egypt and Jordan among the Arabs, and Pakistan among the Moslem states) must unilaterally and immediately throw them off and reassert their national sovereignty.

Every Arab state should unilaterally and immediately declare a debt moratorium in the form of an open-ended freeze on all payments of interest and principal of international financial debt in the Argentine manner, starting with sums allegedly owed to the IMF-World Bank.

The assets of foreign multinational monopolistic firms, especially oil companies, should be seized as the situation requires.

Basic food staples and fuels should be subjected to price controls, with draconian penalties for speculation, including by way of derivatives.

Dirigist measures such as protective tariffs and food price subsidies can be quickly introduced.

Food production needs to be promoted by production and import bounties, as well as by international barter deals.

National grain stockpiles must be quickly constituted.

Capital controls and exchange controls are likely to be needed to prevent speculative attacks on national currencies by foreign hedge funds acting with the ulterior political motives of overthrowing national governments.

Most important, central banks must be nationalized and reconverted to a policy of 0% credit for domestic infrastructure, agriculture, housing, and physical commodity production, with special measures to enhance exports.

Once these reforms have been implemented, it may be time to consider the economic integration of the Arab world as an economic development community in which the foreign exchange earnings of the oil-producing states can be put to work on the basis of mutual advantage for infrastructure and hard commodity capital investment across the entire Arab world.

The alternative is an endless series of destabilizations masterminded by foreigners, and, quite possibly, terminal chaos.

Chalmers Johnson on the Myth of Free Trade

a doctrine they call “neoliberalism is a rerun of what economists suffering from “historical amnesia” believe were the key characteristics of the international economy in the golden age of liberalism (1870-1913)

The complex includes privatizing state-owned enterprises, maintaining low inflation, shrinking the size of the state bureaucracy, balancing the national budget, liberalizing trade, deregulating foreign investment, making the currency freely convertible, reducing corruption, and privatizing pensions.

It is called neoliberalism because of its acceptance of rich-country monopolies over intellectual property rights (patents, copyrights, etc.); the granting to a country’s central bank of a monopoly to issue bank notes, and its assertion that political democracy is conducive to economic growth

Economist, Ha-Joon Chang, All of today’s rich countries used protection and subsidies to encourage their manufacturing industries, and they discriminated powerfully against foreign investors. More important than Adam Smith is Daniel Defoe, “A Plan of the English Commerce” (1728) which develops industrial policy of the woolen manufacturing industry which became the most important export industry. Robert Walpole, the chief architect of the mercantilist system. Protectionist policies with average tariff of 45 and 55 percent

By 1820 Hamilton’s 40 percent tariff on manufactured imports into the United States was an established fact. Hamilton provided the blueprint for U.S. economic policy until the end of the Second World War.

The U.S. abandonment of overt protectionism after it became the world’s richest nation still found measures to advance beyond what market forces could have achieved. U.S. government actually paid for 50 to 70 percent of the country’s total expenditures on research and development from the 1950s through the mid-1990s, usually under the cover of defense spending.

During the golden age of capitalism, from the Marshall Plan (1947) to the first oil shock (1973), the United States was a Good Samaritan and helped developing countries

In the 1970s, its position as global hegemon was being undermined and it turned decisively toward neoliberalism. This was to bring the developing countries to heel and slow down economic growth in the Third World. Third World countries were Forced to adopt neoliberal policies, open their economies to more powerful foreign competitors on unequal terms

Because of the shortcomings of neoliberalism it was necessary to find plausible scapegoats. Wolfowitz (now at the World Bank) put forward poor-country corruption
They failed because the didn’t take the good advice of the Washington Consensus

The problem with the explanation today’s rich public life was spectacularly corrupt were that conundrums encountered. Zaire under Gen. Mobutu and Indonesia under Gen. Suharto. Both were flagrantly corrupt. Zaire’s living standards fell. Indonesia’s rose. In Indonesia, the money from corruption mostly stayed inside the country

Free trade, privatization, and the rest of their policies are a historical, self-serving economic nonsense, apologists gave a neo-Nazi explanation, and it was culture. Samuel Huntington’s thesis, clash of civilizations. Francis Fukuyama no trust extending beyond family members, difficult for them to run large firms. It was reminiscent of Max Weber, who in 1904 stated that Confucian/Buddhist countries were backward because they lacked the Protestant ethic

Economically successful nations are almost pathologically afraid of competitors coming up from below.

“Level playing field”? United States and Honduras should compete economically on equal terms? European citizens support their dairy industry with subsidies and tariffs to the tune of 16 billion pounds sterling a year and a vast range of agricultural commodities.

U.S. subsidizes corn and exports it to Mexico. Bankrupt Mexican farmers, who immigrate to the US. Japan lavishly subsidizes its extremely inefficient rice growers and prevents the import of rice that could easily compete. This creates one-party rule by mobilizing rich, protected farmers, who vote for the conservatives.

This is some of the hypocrisy surrounding “free trade”

“Belief in the virtue of free trade is so central to the neo-liberal orthodoxy

Webster Tarpley on Alex Jones Tv 1/6: Underwear Bomber "Establishment Controlled Patsy!"

Lessons from the Luddites

"Only a people serving an apprenticeship to nature can be trusted with machines."

This wise maxim of Herbert Read's is what Wordsworth and the other Romantic poets of the Luddite era expressed in their own way as they saw the Satanic mills and Stygian forges

Mercantile capitalism showed scant regard for nature
but until the 19th century it had not developed many technologies capable of wholesale destruction
What happens when an economy is not embedded in a due regard for the natural world
It also loses its sense of the human as a species and the individual as an animal
needing
land and air, decent food and shelter, intact communities and nurturing families
An economy without any kind of ecological grounding will be as disregardful of the human members as of the nonhuman
4. The nation-state, synergistically intertwined with industrialism, will always come to its aid and defense, making revolt futile and reform ineffectual.
There is no sign of hurt or astonishment in any of the Luddite letters written in reaction to the government's decision to defend the new industrialism with some 14,000 troops
so stark and clumsy and brutal, and accompanied by systems of spies & informers, zealous magistrates, illegal arrests, and rigged trials --- to control

its own populace.
the real meaning of laissez-faire: force would be used by the state to ensure that manufacturers would be free to do what they wished, especially with labor.
the industrial regime hardly cares which cadres run the state
it can accommodate itself to almost any national system --- Marxist Russia, capitalist Japan, China under a vicious dictator, Singapore under a benevolent one, messy and riven India, tidy and cohesive Norway, Jewish Israel, Moslem Egypt --- and in return asks only that its priorities dominate, its markets rule, its values penetrate, and its interests be defended, with 14,000 troops if necessary, or even an entire Desert Storm.
Some among the Luddites might have entertained a dream that the British government could be overthrown
Some among the Luddites also entertained a dream that the British government could be reformed
no figure of the Luddite era more pathetic than that of Gravener Henson
organizing Nottingham stockingers
getting Parliament to consider

to consider a bill preventing "Frauds and Abuses" in the knitting trades, only to see his bill become so distorted
that it ended up allowing manufac- turers to "Cheat, Rob, Pilfer" as never before --- and then finding that even that bill was rejected by the Lords.
5. But resistance to the industrial system, based on some grasp of moral principles and rooted in some sense of moral revulsion, is not only possible but necessary.
it is true that in a general sense the Luddites were not successful either in the short-run aim of halting the detestable machinery or the long-run task of stopping the Industrial Revolution and its multiple miseries
is that they resisted, not that they won
Luddism as a moral challenge, "a sort of moral earthquake," as Charlotte Bronte saw it
perception of right and wrong that went down deep in the English soul.
somewhere in the blood, in the place inside
where pain and fear and anger intersect,
one is finally moved to refusal and defiance: "No more."

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part," is the way that Mario Savio put it before another movement in 1964. "And you've got to put your bodies upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop."
The "Great Refusal," in the words of Michel Foucault, is made up of "a plurality of resistances, each of them a special case: resistances that are possible, necessary, improbable, others that are spontaneous, savage, solitary, concerted, rampant, or violent." Lewis Mumford, at the end of his lengthy analysis of "the myth of the machine" a generation ago, argued that indeed anyone could "play a part in extricating himself from the power system" by "quiet acts of mental and physical withdrawal," and he thought he saw such resistance "in a hundred different places":

Though no immediate and complete escape from the ongoing power system
is possible, least of all through mass violence, the changes that will restore
autonomy and initiative to the human person all lie within the province of
each individual soul, once it is roused. Nothing could be more damaging to
the myth of the machine, and to the dehumanized social order it has brought
into existence, than a steady withdrawal of interest, a slowing down of tempo,
a stoppage of senseless routines and mindless acts.
the Old Order Amish communities from Pennsylvania to Iowa and the traditional Indian communities found on many reservations right across the country.

The political task of resistance today, then --- beyond the "quiet acts" of personal withdrawal Mumford urges --- is to try to make the culture of industrialism and its assumptions less invisible and to put the issue of its technology
on the political agenda
Neil Postmen, a professor of communications at New York University and author of Technopoly, "it is necessary for a great debate" to take place
Is this invention
nothing but, as Thoreau put it, and improved means to an unimproved end?
who the principle beneficiaries
large, bureaucratic, complex, and secretive organizations of the industrial world
an immensely self-satisfied laissez-faire plutocracy whose access to means of forcing debates and framing issues
that task ought not to be so difficult --- in spite of the continued opposition of a plutocracy grown only more powerful and complacent
some of the fish at least not only seem to be seeing the water but realizing it is polluted. Industrialism
is on a collision course with the biosphere

Industrial societies
shot through with inequality, injustice, instability, and incivility
tribal societies
devoid for the most part of crime or addiction or anomie or poverty or suicide
they did not have atomic bombs and death camps, toxic wastes, traffic jams, strip mining, organized crime, psychosurgery, advertising, unemployment, or genocide.
For durability, however, they are not enough, they do not sustain a commitment that lasts through the adversities of repression and trials, they do not forge a solidarity that prevents the infiltration of spies and stooges, they do not engender strategies and tactics that adapt to shifting conditions and adversaries, and they do not develop analyses that make clear the nature of the enemy and the alternatives to put in its place.
elements of such an analysis
are in existence
Mumford and Schumacher and Wendell Berry and Jerry Mander and the Chellis Glendinning manifesto
Earth-First!ers
bioregionalists
deep ecologists
Amish
Irokwa
essentials of that analysis

opposed the principle of biocentrism and the spiritual identification of the human with all living species and systems.
its economic and military expression, is the guiding strategy of that civilization, to which must be opposed the strategy of localism, based upon the empowerment of the coherent bioregion and the small community.
Industrialism, the ethos encapsulating the values and technologies of Western civilization, is seriously endangering stable social and environmental existence on this planet, to which must be opposed the values and techniques of an organic ethos that seeks to preserve the integrity, stability, and harmony of the biotic community, and the human community within it.
Anthropocentrism, and its expression in both humanism and monotheism, is the ruling principle of that civilization, to which must be opposed the principle of biocentrism and the spiritual identification of the human with all living species and systems

Globalism, and its economic and military expression, is the guiding strategy of that civilization, to which must be opposed the strategy of localism, based upon the empowerment of the coherent bioregion and the small community.
Industrial capitalism, as an economy built upon the exploitation and degradation of the earth, is the productive and distributive enterprise of that civilization, to which must be opposed the practices of an ecological and sustainable economy built upon the accommodation and commitment to the earth and following principles of conservation, stability, self-sufficiency, and cooperation.
8. If the edifice of industrial civilization does not eventually crumble
as a result of a determined resistance within its very walls, it seems
certain to crumble of its own accumulated excesses and instabilities
within not more than a few decades, perhaps sooner, after which t
here may be space for alternative societies to arise.
The two chief strains pulling this edifice apart, environmental overload and social dislocation
Industrial civilization is different only in that it is now much larger and more powerful than any known before, by geometric differen-

ces in all dimensions, and its collapse will be far more extensive and thorough-
going, far more calamitous.
It is possible that such a collapse will be attended by environmental and social dislocations so severe that they will threaten the continuation of life
But it is also possible that it will come about more by decay and distension, the gradual erosion of nation-state arrangements made obsolete and unworkable, the disintegration of corporate behemoths unable to comprehend and respond, and thus with the slow resurrection and re-empowerment of small bioregions and coherent communities having control over their own political and economic destinies.
It is now the task of the neo-Luddites

http://reason.com/archives/2001/07/01/rage-against-the-machines

From the tragedy of 9/11 to the farce of the financial meltdown

In this bravura analysis of the current global crisis following on from his bestselling Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Slavoj Zizek argues that the liberal idea of the “end of history,” declared by Francis Fukuyama during the 1990s, has had to die twice. After the collapse of the liberal-democratic political utopia, on the morning of 9/11, came the collapse of the economic utopia of global market capitalism at the end of 2008.

Marx argued that history repeats itself “occuring first as tragedy, the second time as farce” and Zizek, following Herbert Marcuse, notes here that the repetition as farce can be even more terrifying than the original tragedy. The financial meltdown signals that the fantasy of globalization is over and as millions are put out of work it has become impossible to ignore the irrationality of global capitalism. Just a few months before the crash, the world’s priorities seemed to be global warming, AIDS, and access to medicine, food and water — tasks labelled as urgent, but with any real action repeatedly postponed.

Now, after the financial implosion, the urgent need to act seems to have become unconditional — with the result that undreamt of quantities of cash were immediately found and then poured into the financial sector without any regard for the old priorities. Do we need further proof, Zizek asks, that Capital is the Real of our lives: the Real whose demands are more absolute than even the most pressing problems of our natural and social world?

CHOMDKY NOTES, MONDOWEISS

major theme of Said’s writings. In the big constellation, Enlightenment/Rationalism/Liberalism/Democratic Values, a missing word and concept that should be understood to accompany the others is Imperialism.
"the unipolar moment," which started in 1989 with the end of Soviet Communism
other stopping points on the way to unchallenged U.S. hegemony.
"settler colonialism" that cleared North America of its indigenous peoples.
"We focus laser-like on the crimes of enemies, but crucially we make sure never to look at ourselves."
we might admit the imperative of dismantling a much larger wall "snaking its way through Palestinian territory." The right name for it is: the Annexation Wall. Its purpose is to take over valuable land and water resources;
Israel’s leading authorities recognized this early on as a violation of international law.
None of it would have been possible without
the United States as "its partner in crime."

On November 16, 1989, shortly after the Berlin Wall came down, there occurred an event of great importance in Latin America: the killing of six prominent Jesuit priests in El Salvador.
the order was given by authorities in El Salvador; and given the proximity of American advisers to that government at the time, it is hard to imagine the order being carried through without American knowledge and consent.
a larger design
pursued by the School of the Americas and other arms of U.S. policy–to suppress the Liberation Theology
in the wake of Vatican II. All this was happening in 1989, while the West was celebrating the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. It is still happening and we are still celebrating.
The U.S. ambassador in Honduras recently congratulated that country
in an election where both candidates were selected by Honduran business interests.
difficult fully to understand the Obama administration’s embrace of the de facto coup in Honduras.

the U.S. has separated itself from all of Latin America and from most of Europe as well, by our "brazen contempt" for real democracy.
Latin America was thus the proving ground for the first U.S. tests
the unipolar world.
invasion of Panama in December 1989.
Noriega
was punished for "dragging his feet in support of Reagan’s terrorist wars in Nicaragua."
the most recent Western attempt to create an international legal and moral institution for protection of human rights: the so-called Responsibility to Protect framework, developed in December 2001 (R2P for short).
there is always a question how impartially the standards are applied.
As soon as the norms were in place, a provision was voted to offer "subsequent authority,"
missions already undertaken. This was meant to cover the NATO bombing of Serbia retroactively
no appeal to R2P can be made by "protected persons"
this cuts out any apppeal by inhabitants of Gaza, who in the terms of this framework are "protected" by Israel.

Similarly, no appeal was possible under the R2P norms to protest the deaths that followed Clinton’s sanctions against Iraq.
1989: what to do with NATO?
The only logical response
was: to close down NATO. Instead, under Clinton the organization expanded eastward,
Recall Gaddis: "expansion is the path to security."
The use of violence goes hand in hand with the unilateral commitment to the opening of new and profitable markets.
double standard
response to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s call for Israel to join the Nonproliferation Treaty.
U.S. voted against
when the call
passed
the U.S. assured Israel
double standard
Obama
why he supported Mubarak who is an authoritarian leader.
replied, "I tend not to use labels for folks."
Obama
a caricature
"investment theory of party competition," outlined by Thomas Ferguson. The heads of the important banks and the brokerage houses preferred Obama to McCain. He would accomplish what they wanted more smoothly. They got what they paid for.

In the longer run, it is hard to see that Obama’s policies will improve the social conditions of black Americans; probably the reverse.
on Israel/Palestine
John Kerry
Kerry said: now for the first time, we have a partner we can negotiate with.
the proof
during the Gaza assault, there had been no unruly protests on the West Bank. Dissent was successfully controlled.
Effective surveillance by Palestinian forces trained and advised by Keith Dayton,
the general heading the American Task Force in Palestine. Dayton’s presence is an acknowledged fact, though the content of the training is unknown. Unacknowledged are CIA advisers in Palestine whose actions we know nothing about.
Obama at West Point
the world supported us when we first attacked Afghanistan.
how you define the world
If it includes the people of the world…"– then the reverse of supportive unanimity was indicated by a world Gallup Poll at the end of 2001, which predictably got little play in the American press.

WE WERE UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT THESE WERE MASS PRODUCED IN ITALY

.
.

A labor rights group alleged Tuesday that crucifixes sold in religious gift shops in the U.S. are produced under “horrific” conditions in a Chinese factory with more than 15-hour work days and inadequate food.

“It’s a throwback to the worst of the garment sweatshops 10, 20 years ago,” said Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee.

Kernaghan held a news conference in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to call attention to conditions at a factory in Dongguan, a southern Chinese city near Hong Kong, where he said crosses sold at the historic church and elsewhere are made.





Kernaghan said the factory’s mostly young, female employees work from 8 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. seven days a week and are paid 26 cents an hour with no sick days or vacation. Workers live in filthy dormitories and are fed a watery “slop.”





Trinity spokeswoman Diane Reed said her church had been “under the impression that these were mass-produced in Italy.”



Dongguan lies at the center of China’s export manufacturing industry, which relies heavily on low wages to remain competitive. Factories there have been accused in the past of labor abuses, including those making products for McDonald’s, Disney, Mattel and the Beijing Olympics.

National Labor Committee: http://www.nlcnet.org/

PETRO DOLLARS BUILDING A REGIONAL ECONOMIC ANTI-HEGEMON

Via the Miami Herald:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government has pledged more than $8.8 billion in aid, financing and energy funding in Latin America and the Caribbean so far in 2007. Bandes is a Venezuelan state development bank. Below is a list of pledges sorted by type.

ENERGY:

- $3.55 billion. Nicaragua: To build 150,000 barrel-a-day oil refinery. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $1.6 billion. Estimated financing per year under preferential oil deals to at least 17 countries. (Source: Chavez, March 15)

- $340 million. Nicaragua: Grants and loans to supply oil, nine electricity generators. (Source: Venezuela government statement, March 7)

- $240 million. Bolivia: Exploration of gas and oil fields. (Source: Bolivian Hydrocarbons Ministry, Aug. 8)

- $170 million. Bolivia: To build two liquid natural gas extraction plants. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $100 million. Nicaragua: To supply 32 electricity generators. (Source: Chavez, Jan. 10)

- $89 million. Nicaragua: To build 120 megawatt electricity plant. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $80 million. Haiti: To build 10,000 barrel-a-day oil refinery. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $63.7 million. Jamaica: For state oil company to buy 49-percent stake in Jamaican refinery. (Source: Jamaican Energy Ministry, May 18)

- $56 million. Haiti: To build 60-megawatt electricity plant. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $30 million. Bolivia: To build diesel electricity generation plant. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $28 million. Bolivia: To build thermoelectric plant. (Source: Bolivian Hydrocarbons Ministry, Aug. 8)

- $8 million. Cuba: To build liquefied natural gas re-gasification plant. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $5 million. Bolivia: Electricity-saving project. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $4.7 million. Bolivia: To set up 15 service stations to distribute fuel. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $4 million. Haiti: To build LNG re-gasification plant. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $200,000. Ecuador: Donation of two drills for oil exploration. (Source: Chavez, Aug. 9)

ENERGY FUNDING TOTAL: $6.369 billion

FINANCING:

- $1 billion. Argentina: Planned bond purchases, including $500 million in bonds purchased in August. (Source: Chavez, Aug. 7)

- $100 million. Bolivia: Planned purchase of Bolivian government bonds. (Source: Cabezas, Aug. 2)

- $30 million. Nicaragua: Debt forgiveness. (Source: Chavez, Jan 10)

- $8 million. Guyana: Debt forgiveness. (Source: Rodolfo Sanz, Venezuela's deputy foreign minister for Latin America and the Caribbean, Aug. 9)

FINANCING TOTAL: $1.138 billion

DEVELOPMENT AID:

- $250 million. Fund to finance joint economic projects in region's socialist-oriented countries. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $150 million. Dominica: Funding for housing, airport upgrade, scholarships. (Source: Chavez, Feb. 15)

- $135 million. Argentina: Bandes loan for Sancor dairy cooperative. (Source: Venezuelan Finance Minister Rodrigo Cabezas, Feb. 22)

- $88 million. Nicaragua: Grants and loans for tractors, AIDS treatment, sending 86 Nicaraguan athletes to sports tournament, 100,000 Hepatitis B vaccines, etc. An additional $2 million listed below under humanitarian aid. (Source: Venezuelan government statement, March 7)

- $30 million. Bolivia: Bandes capital for low-interest loans. (Source: Bandes president, May 7)

- $25 million. Ecuador: Bandes capital for new branch to offer low-interest loans. (Source: Bandes President Rafael Isea Romero, May 24)

- $21 million. Haiti: Fund to build homes, acquire unspecified equipment and provide medical aid by supporting the work of Cuban specialists offering health care to Haitians. (Source: Venezuelan government statement, March 3)

- $20 million. Bolivia: Grants for local infrastructure projects in health, schools, sports and other areas. (Source: Bolivian Public Finance Minister Luis Arce, April 12).

- $20 million. Nicaragua: Loans for rural poor, health care and education. (Source: Chavez, Jan. 10)

- $20 million. Nicaragua: Capital for Bandes branch for low-interest agricultural loans. (Source: Bandes president, May 24)

- $10 million. Nicaragua: Funding for social projects. (Source: Chavez, Jan. 10)

- $2 million. Guyana: Donation to build a homeless shelter. (Source: Guyanese Foreign Minister Rudy Insanally, Aug. 2)

- $875,000. Bolivia: Computers to digitalize Bolivia's national identification card system. (Source: Bolivian government announcement, April 13.)

DEVELOPMENT AID TOTAL: $772 million

INFRASTRUCTURE:

- $350 million. Nicaragua: Donation to build Pacific-Atlantic highway. (Source: Nicaragua Infrastructure Minister Pablo Fernando Martinez, Jan. 22)

- $150 million. Bolivia: Asphalt plant. (Source: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, April 30)

- $57 million. Haiti: Funding to expand Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien airports. (Source: Venezuelan government statement, March 3)

- $5.5 million. Bolivia: Funding for paving streets and other improvements to poor neighborhoods in La Paz. (Source: Bolivian government statement, July 14)

- $3 million. Haiti: Donation for garbage trucks. (Source: Chavez, March 13)

INFRASTRUCTURE AID TOTAL: $565.5 million

HUMANITARIAN AID:

- $15 million. Bolivia: Donation for flood victims. (Source: Chavez, Feb. 26 and March 2)

- $2 million. Nicaragua: Free medicine. Announced as part of larger $90 million in grants and loans. (Source: Venezuelan government statement, March 7)

- $1.5 million. Peru: Two planeloads of earthquake relief supplies, with more planned. (Armando Laguna, Venezuelan ambassador to Peru, Aug. 22)

HUMANITARIAN AID TOTAL: $18.5 million

MILITARY AID:

- $10 million. Bolivia: Funding to fix military barracks. (Source: Bolivian Defense Minister Walker San Miguel, May 21 and 22).

MILITARY TOTAL: $10 million

TOTAL OF PUBLIC PLEDGES: $8.87 billion

BUSH'S NEOCON FRENCH POODLE EXPLAINS GLOBALIZATION

Sarkozy Urges French to Play ‘the Game of Globalization’
By KATRIN BENNHOLD

PARIS, Aug. 30 — In a country that has long resisted globalization, President Nicolas Sarkozy bluntly told France on Thursday to stop kidding itself and face up to it — but in a French way.

• to adopt business-friendly policies to allow French companies to compete better in the world,

• even if the changes upset those clinging to France’s generous welfare system

• (and those clinging to) strong job protection.

But he also echoed themes sounded by predecessors, saying

• but, the free market (is) an illusion

• the government (has to) defend French interests from foreign marauders.

• play the game of globalization collectively,” “

• to defend our interests when all the others are defending theirs?”

he chose the campus of a business school and a business audience to outline his economic program. France’s political class has preferred to be seen with philosophers and intellectuals.

• among the business leaders, ... “he was one of us.”

• Labor unions and leftist opposition politicians, ... appeared to concur. “He is the president of the CAC 40,” said Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a Socialist senator, referring to the French stock market index.

• push for additional cuts in payroll taxes and ways to

• encourage people to work beyond the statutory 35-hour workweek.

• cut the maximum tax burden to 50 percent of personal income and

• scrap taxes on overtime pay.

• changes to the labor code, easing rules that make it cumbersome for companies to fire people.

• to ease the restrictions on firing while still providing some protections for workers.

NAFTA HIGHWAY: CHINESE TRADE, CANADIAN WATER

Human Events.com
Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway
by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted: 06/12/2006


Reality Check
Commentary and analysis of news and social issues from Cornwall, Ontario, Canada.
North American Union- Connecting the Dots
My previous articles on this website explain in detail the

Thursday, July 19, 2007
The Militarization and Annexation of North America
The Militarization and Annexation of North America - by Stephen Lendman

SIERRA CLUB
Feature: Threats to Our Water: NAFTA, SPP, Atlantica, Super-Corridors
...describes the Security and Prosperity Partnership for North America (SPP agreed to by the US, Canada and Mexico without Congressional approval), NAFT...The 55 slide presentation is based on extensive research by Dr. Janet M Eaton, SCC Canadian liaison to the Water Privatization Task Force. Download here. and download here.

FROM THE BLOG: RECLAIMING SPACE

Reclaiming Space

PAY DAY FINALLY COMES TO IRAQ

From Asia Times
Pepe Escobar

• On Monday, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet in Baghdad approved the draft of the new Iraqi oil law.

• The key point of the law ... will be under the iron rule of a fuzzy "Federal Oil and Gas Council" boasting "a panel of oil experts from inside and outside Iraq". That is, nothing less than predominantly US Big Oil executives.

• it represents the death knell of nationalized (from 1972 to 1975) Iraqi resources, now replaced by production sharing agreements (PSAs) - which translate into savage privatization and monster profit rates of up to 75% for (basically US) Big Oil.

• Sixty-five of Iraq's roughly 80 oilfields already known will be offered for Big Oil to exploit.

• Oil wealth, in theory, will be distributed directly to Kurds in the north, Shi'ites in the south and Sunnis in the center. For all practical purposes, Iraq will be partitioned into three statelets.

• The approval of the draft law by the fractious 275-member Iraqi Parliament, in March, will be a mere formality.

• The law was in essence drafted, behind locked doors, by a US consulting firm hired by the Bush administration and then carefully retouched by Big Oil, the International Monetary Fund, former US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz' World Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development.

• It's virtually a US law (its original language is English, not Arabic).

• Scandalously, Iraqi public opinion had absolute no knowledge of it - not to mention the overwhelming majority of Parliament members.

• the pro-US Kurds will have all the power to sign oil contracts with whatever companies they want.

• Sunnis will be more dependent on the Oil Ministry in Baghdad. And

• Shi'ites will be more or less midway between total independence in the south and Baghdad's dictum (which they control anyway).

• But the crucial point remains: nobody will sign anything unless the "advisers" at the US-manipulated Federal Oil and Gas Council say so.

• According to the International Energy Agency, PSAs apply to only 12% of global oil reserves, in cases where costs are very high and nobody knows what will be found

• No big Middle Eastern oil producer works with PSAs.

• Russia and Venezuela are renegotiating all of them.

• Bolivia nationalized its gas.

• Algeria and Indonesia have new rules for future contracts.

• Gargantuan profits under the PSA arrangement are in a class by themselves. Iraqi oil costs only US$1 a barrel to extract.

• What revenue the regions do get will be distributed to all 18 provinces based on population size

From Foreign Policy in Focus
Antonia Juhasz and Raed Jarrar

From Reuters

Edward Wong writes in the Times that

• Highlights of the draft oil legislation include the pooling of revenues in a central account, to be distributed to each province, allegedly on a per capita basis;

• regional authority to sign international contracts, subject to review by a central board; and

• the allowing of controversial production-sharing agreements, arrangements which some have called too generous to foreign oil companies.

• Iraqi National Oil Company (INOC) will be spun off as a private company, presumably to compete with foreign concerns over oil rights, to which it once had exclusive access.

• The draft law now passes to the parliament for its approval. Iraq’s political parties setting a May 2007 deadline for passage, but debate could be intense.

• International giants are circling, eager to tap Iraq’s vast reserves but still unsure about the legal and security issues concerned.

ON THE OTHER HAND

From Informed Comment

Note that contrary to US hopes, it does not privatize petroleum, putting it under a government holding company instead. Receipts go to a government account for distribution to the population, a la Alaska. Some critics believe it will make possible deals that are overly generous to the oil companies and which essentially cheat Iraqis, given that the present government is desperate to jump-start new development and foreign companies won't try to operate in blood-soaked Iraq unless the deal is sweetened enormously. On the other hand, Husayn Shahristani, the oil minister, is an Iraqi nationalist close to Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and had no motivation to see Iraq cheated. I will try to get some readings from oil industry experts and report back.

From Missing Links