ASHEVILLE GLOBAL REPORT, No. 183, July 18-24, 2002
Title: “Corrupt Corporations Still at Work in Developing World”
Author: Emad Mekay

MOTHER JONES, May/June 2002
Title: “Unjust Rewards”
Author: Ken Silverstein

Faculty Evaluator: Laurie Dawson Ph.D., Diana Grant Ph.D.
Student Researcher: Lindsey Brage, Terri Freedman

American energy giant, Enron, and telecommunications company, WorldCom, committed massive corporate fraud and illegal acts. Declaring bankruptcy in December 2001, they left thousands of American workers jobless and without pensions. The Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. and Corpwatch, a multinational watchdog group, has uncovered evidence of bribery scandals, environmental degradation and violations of international and labor laws. Yet Enron still has 25% interest in a Bolivian oil company called Transredes. Working with Shell Oil, the company is building a pipeline through Bolivia’s Chaco Forest region, an area internationally known for its biodiversity, endangered species and the ancestral homeland of the indigenous Guarani and Guianeck peoples. In December 2002, Transredes was granted $220 million in loans from the International Development Bank, to be backed by U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Enron was also responsible for cutting down the last intact, dry tropical forest in the world, Bolivia’s 15-million acre Chiquitano Forest, for another gas pipeline. The Chiquitano Forest was home to the endangered marsh deer, maned wolf, jaguar, ocelot and the hyacinth macaw. The World Wildlife Fund ranked the area one of the world’s 200 most endangered eco-regions. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), during the Clinton administration in 1999, approved loans for Enron’s pipeline, which could have skirted the forest at an additional expense to the company. Officially, OPIC is mandated to protect ecologically sensitive areas.

WorldCom still profits from its extensive telephone and internet networks throughout Latin American, Asia, Europe and Africa. Enron has additional business interests throughout Central and South America. In northwest India a power plant, which they co-own with Bechtel and General Electric, is so controversial that Enron officials face threats of being arrested on the spot if they enter the country. According to Nadia Martinez of the Institute for Policy Studies, “Enron and WorldCom are just symptoms of the way companies are able to do business without accountability.”

In 2000, Clinton issued an order that provide clear guidelines regarding the awarding of federal contracts. The new “contractor responsibility rule” specified that federal officers should weigh “evidence of repeated, pervasive or significant violations of the law,” for example cheating on prior contracts, violating environmental and safety laws, labor rights, consumer protection laws, and antitrust activities. President Bush quietly killed the rule requiring officials to ban federal contractors with a record of violations of workplace safety and other laws.

The Congressional Research Service issued an opinion concluding that the secret suspension of the rule (no issuing of public notice or soliciting of comments) was probably illegal, but the move went virtually unreported in the media. The government does not maintain a central database to store information on contractors’ records of compliance with the law. The EPA and OSHA maintain their own lists of corporate violations, but parent companies are not always linked to their subsidiaries. “There’s no process built into the review system,” says Gary Bass, executive director of OMB watch, a Washington-based advocate of government accountability.

A six-month investigation by Mother Jones of the nation’s 200 largest contractors found that the government continues to award lucrative contracts to dozens of companies that it has repeatedly cited for serious workplace and environmental violations. Among the findings: forty-six of the biggest contractors were prosecuted by the Justice Department and ordered to pay cleanup costs after they refused to take responsibility for dumping hazardous waste and various other environmental violations. General Electric-which received nearly $9.8 billion from the government, making it the nation’s 10th largest contractor-topped the list with 27 cases of pollution for which it was held solely or jointly liable. Subsequently GE was fined total of only $369,363 for its combined EPA (27) and OSHA (48) violations.

UPDATE BY EMAD MEKAY: The story was an attempt to direct public attention to the corporate mismanagement, executive greed and malpractice of multi-national corporations, particularly the same ones that stirred public controversy last year in the U.S. over their fraudulent dealings, in the developing countries.

Unless they are very well regulated and very well supervised, the economies of the poor nations tend to be a subject for all kinds of abuse by fly-by-night operators. But because of pressure from public international financial institutions, like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deregulate their economies and dismantle public monitoring agencies, the risk of multinational engaging in corrupt activities overseas is far higher.

According to recent documents obtained from the U.S. Treasury department, U.S. energy company Enron, one of the companies referred to in the story, managed to secure government assistance to its problematic overseas investments through hefty contributions to different U.S. administrations and access to government officials.

Enron has regularly sought aid from staff from the Treasury and the State Department to favorably resolve its problems and disputes with foreign governments over its subsidiaries; activities particularly in countries like Argentina, India, Nigeria, the Dominican Republic and Turkey.

According to Public Citizen, which is using Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents from the U.S. Treasury, the shamed company also played a major role in the exporting California-style deregulation to poor countries. This has often proved catastrophic for the citizens of those countries. Brazil, for example, now says it will investigate allegations that U.S. energy giant AES Corp. and Enron Corp. conspired to rig the 1998 bidding process for Latin America’s largest electric utility, Eletropaulo. Enron decided not to bid for the project in return for other potentially lucrative energy deals with AES.

Brazil now wants to know whether the utility could have fetched a higher price and to what extent the under-the-counter deal between the two multinationals hurt the Latin American country’s interests.

The U.S. government also continued to back another company caught in financial scandals and mentioned in the story, WorldCom, despite its now established record of fraud. In May, MCI, the telephone division of bankrupt giant WorldCom, said it had received a contract from the U.S. Defense Department to install wireless phone service in Iraq. The company declined to discuss details of the contract, citing “an agreement with our client.”

Despite of laudable attention the mainstream media gave to the Enron scandal in the United States very little has been published about the role of the same company, among many controversial ones, in the defenseless poor nations.

Some corporate monitors like Corpwatch, Public Citizen and the Institute of Policy Studies have all devoted time and effort to follow the Enron case and other cases where international business giants are abusing their mandates in the poor nations. Their websites respectively are: http://www.corpwatch.org, http://www.ips-dc.org andhttp://www.citizen.org/. Inter Press Service is also a news agency that seeks to cover development news and the unethical practices of some major companies. It can be found at http://www.ipsnews.net.

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COVERT ACTION QUARTERLY, Spring 2002, No. 72
Title: “Palestine in the Crosshairs: U.S. Policy and the struggle for Nationhood”
Author: John Steinbach,

LEFT TURN, 3/4/02
Title: “U.S. Aid Lifeblood of the Occupation”
Author: Matt Bowles

WARTIMES, April 2003
Title: “Israel Erecting ‘Great Wall’ Around Palestine”
Author: Bob Wing

Evaluator: Rabbi Michael Robinson
Student Researchers: Kathleen Glover, Josh Sisco, Lindsey Brage, Dana Balicki,
Allyssa Speaker, Colin Umphryes

U.S. aid to Israel over the course of its fifty-four years of nationhood has fueled the illegal occupation of Palestinian land superceding Palestinian rights to self-government.

Jimmy Carter raised the ire of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other Zionist pressure groups when he expressed support for a “Palestinian Homeland” and criticized Israel’s settlement policies. However, he never favored the creation of a Palestinian State and did nothing to slow the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. U.S. support of Israel was greatly increased during the Reagan era, which represented “a quantum leap in efforts to promote Israel and delegitimize the Palestinians in the United States.” Illicit arms technology transfers to Israel resulted in a greatly enhanced Israeli military.

Under the Clinton administration even while the “peace process” and the Final Status Talks were ongoing between the Palestinians and Israel U.S. economic and military aid to Israel continued to accelerate. U.S. aid to Israel (pop. 4.8 million) from 1949 to 1997 totaled over $134 billion. The total US foreign aid to Israel for the same period exceeded the total aid to all of Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean combined (pop. 486 million).

During the last 25 years U.S. aid to Israel has been about 60% military aid and 40% economic aid. There is a new plan to phase out all economic aid by 2008 in order to have all the aid going to military. Israel receives about $3 billion a year in direct aid and $3 billion a year in indirect aid in the form of special loans and grants. Under the Arms Export Control Act the U.S. can only supply weapons that are used “for legitimate self defense”. The US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits military assistance to any country “which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights”. The Proxmire Amendment bans military assistance to any government that refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities. All three of these laws are currently being broken with aid to Israel.

Since 1982 the aid to Israel has been transferred in a one lump sum at the beginning of each fiscal year. Aid to other countries is distributed in quarterly installments throughout the year and they must account for specific purchases. Israel is not required to account for the specific purchases that the aid is being used for; it can be spent on anything – including expansion of colonial settlement projects.

It is with this aid that Israel has been able to continue the comprehensive and unrelenting occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Today, Israel is bulldozing Palestinian farmers’ olive trees in order to build an encompassing 30-foot high cement wall with gun towers and electric fencing to imprison Palestinians and the entire West Bank. Israeli forces have commandeered the Western Aquifer (which constitutes 50% of the West Bank water supply) and thousands of acres of Palestinian agricultural land. The wall around Jerusalem will bring the now divided Holy City fully under Israeli control and effectively strangle West Bank economy and agriculture. The wall includes a 15-foot deep, 20-foot wide trench (Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! reported it would be filled with raw sewage), a dirt path that will be a “killing zone” for Palestinians who try to access it, an electrified fence, and a two-lane Israeli patrol road.

Since Israel barred most Palestinians from working inside Israel, unemployment in the West Bank has soared to over 50 percent. Agriculture is therefore more important than ever. Square foot by square foot, olive tree by olive tree, village by village, Israel is relentlessly taking over Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza with the full support of the American taxpayer.

UPDATE BY BOB WING: The story is a monumental example of the illegality and brutality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the numerous but unreported non-violent attempts by Palestine to resist, and of U.S. silence/complicity with Israel.

Since publication of my article, the Israelis continue building the wall, taking over more and more Palestinian land, destroying or stealing olive trees and snatching the Palestinian water supply. Resistance by the Palestinians, especially olive growers and by residents between East Jerusalem and Bethlehem has also been constant, but still ineffective at halting the building of the separation barrier.

None of the mainstream press carried my story. A few, like the NY Times, carried stories about the wall buried deep in their papers. Even the alternative press failed to carry the story in any significant way. Although a deputy editor supported my story, the main editor of The Village Voice rejected it, telling her that the NY Times had already said all their needed to be said on the subject.

For information on what you can do go to web sites. http://www.btselem.org and http://www.gush-shalom.org/English

UPDATE BY MATT BOWLES: Since the writing of this article, conditions have worsened for Palestinians and for international solidarity activists working to support the Palestinians. Ariel Sharon has continued construction of the ‘Apartheid Wall’, demolishing entire villages along the way. Israeli policies of economic strangulation and collective punishment have become more severe, making Palestinian survival a daily struggle for many. And the Israeli military has taken aim at the nonviolent peace activists who have come to support the Palestinians via the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and other organizations. Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old college student from Olympia Washington, was murdered by the IDF on March 16, 2003, as she was intentionally run over by an Israeli driven Caterpillar bulldozer. Two other ISM activists were shot in the head, and many more injured, beaten, and deported.

On the upside, however, the resistance is mounting. The International Solidarity Movement- a Palestinian led movement that uses nonviolent direct action to resist Israeli occupation – is refusing to be intimidated by the Israeli crackdown, and continues to organize activists to go to Palestine. SUSTAIN (Stop US Tax-Funded Aid to Israel Now) – a nonhierarchical grassroots organization committed to popular education and nonviolent creative/direct action in America – has had a surge in chapter start-ups, and has begun organizing regional strategy summits. SUSTAIN is currently focusing on a campaign against the Caterpillar Corporation who supplied the bulldozer used to kill Rachel and bulldozers used for the destruction of civil society, private property, and other war crimes against the Palestinian people. SUSTAIN has occupied Caterpillar offices across the country, issuing them ‘demolition orders’ by activists dressed up in IDF costumes. SUSTAIN also organizes street theater, as in January of 2003 when 200 people re-enacted the Israeli invasion of Jenin in a popular nightspot-area of Washington, DC. And SUSTAIN promotes the Palestinian arts as a means of cultural resistance and survival.

You can get involved with a SUSTAIN chapter in your area or start up a new one. To learn more about SUSTAIN, read our seasonal newsletter, or find a chapter near you, please visit the website at http://www.sustaincampaign.org. You can also participate in the ISM and go to Palestine. Visit the ISM website at http://www.palsolidarity.org/>www.palsolidarity.org. Both organizations are in desperate need of money, as we are grassroots organizations with no funding or sponsors. Please contribute financially through the websites.

And finally, analytically speaking, other SUSTAIN activists have written articles in Left Turn Magazine since mine was published and have drawn out other nuances in the US-Israel relationship. Topics such as the right wing Zionism of the Neo-Conservatives, who now wield huge amounts of power under the Bush Administration, are timely topics to study, especially as Washington, DC just hosted an “Interfaith Zionist Leadership Conference” that was the convergence of Christian fundamentalism, white supremacy and Zionism. It has also been noted that the total U.S. Aid to Israel since 1948, if adjusted for inflation and interest, becomes $247 billion (Left Turn, May/June 2003).

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YES! MAGAZINE, Fall 2002
Title: “Starting Over”
Author: Lisa Garrigues

UTNE MAGAZINE, Jan-Feb 2003
Title: “Don’t Cry For Argentina”
Author: Leif Utne

Evaluator: Patricia Leigh Gibbs Ph.D.
Student Researchers: Emilio Licea, Jennifer Scanlan, Dana Balicki

The citizens of Argentina are cooperatively rebuilding their country, rising above the financial devastation caused by decades of privatization and military leadership. In December 2001 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recipe had gone sour destroying currency values and employment levels. The IMF “recipe” had used loans to prop up an overvalued peso, as well push the multinational privatization of Argentine companies.

The resulting crisis left thousands of people unemployed. Fearing a run on the banks, the government froze accounts, enraging a public that was already nervous about losing their life savings. Millions took to the streets throughout the country shouting “Que se vayan todos!” (roughly “throw the bums out!”)

The president resigned and within a month Argentina defaulted on $132 billion of foreign debt, suffered a 25 percent unemployment rate, a middle class rapidly slipping into poverty, widespread hunger and mounting crime. What had once been the world’s seventh richest nation found itself in complete economic, political, and social collapse.

Alva Sotelo was a seamstress at a Brukman Factory in Buenos Aires, where like many other debt-burdened factories the owners cut their losses and abandoned the plant. With the idea of survival fueling the factory’s “former” employees, they began sleeping in the factory hoping their employers would come back and pay their salaries. Eventually the workers at Brukman and hundreds of other previously employed factory workers, having no other alternative, began to slowly run the factory themselves. The workers at Brukman elected a six-member commission to coordinate the work; they managed to pay off the debts with factory profits and managed to pay workers an equal amount by dividing the remaining profits.

The middle and lower classes have joined in a grassroots movement to take back the country. The power vacuum is being filled by an array of grassroots democratic organizations. Asambleas populares (popular assemblies) are occurring all over the country including over 200 neighborhoods in Buenos Aires alone. These assemblies consist of people gathering in parks or plazas to address problems facing their communities: food distribution, health care, day care, welfare, and transportation. “The spirit on the streets and in the assemblies is that people can govern themselves,” notes SIC magazine. According to one poll, one third of Argentines have attended a popular assembly, and “35 percent say the assemblies constitute ‘a new form of political organization.’” Many people have even disengaged themselves from the formal peso economy by joining “barter clubs”-neighborhood-based economic networks, often with their own currency, that let citizens trade goods and services without dealing with the banks. The barter system now accounts for $400-600 million worth of business.

The spirit of the cooperative is alive and well in cities, rural areas and neighborhoods all over Argentina. Neighborhood assemblies have organized alternative forms of survival such as street corner soup kitchens. Food donations are now replacing money as the price of entrance to cultural events. Community gardens are prospering.

The most extraordinary of these new forms of survival are worker cooperatives like the Brukman factory. There are about 100 legal, worker-owned cooperatives in Argentina, which range in size from eight employees to over a thousand. Roughly 10 businesses a month are being taken over and run by the employees. Most of them share a model similar to Brukman’s, where the workers elect the managers of the company and the profits are split among the workers. The original owners often attempt to evict workers, but are unsuccessful either because they are legally challenged or because members of the local neighborhood assemblies show up and hold nonviolent protests and vigils against the eviction of the workers.

Argentina is awash in economic and political chaos; however it is clear that the Argentine people have decided to take control of their communities. The current rebuilding process does not depend on IMF recipes or capitalist promises, but rather on the co-operation of hundreds of Argentines. It’s an enormous social experiment that could prove to be the first great popular rebellion against capitalism of the 21st century. When an entire people wake from the trance of political passiveness, it seems that anything is possible.

UPDATE BY LISA GARRIGUES: Most U.S. media covered, at least briefly, the food rioting and looting that broke out in Argentina in December, 2001, as a result of its economic collapse. But few discussed the economic alternatives, experiments in direct democracy, and solidarity that began to take shape after the Argentine collapse. As the corporate driven world economy marginalizes more and more people, it becomes increasingly important to investigate the alternatives that are “growing through the cracks in the system.”

How can we learn from the Argentine experiment, its successes and failures?

The workers at the Brukman factory which was featured in the article were evicted in April, 2003, in a violent confrontation between demonstrators and police in which police fired rubber and lead bullets, then chased demonstrators twenty blocks into a children’s hospital and lobbed tear gas into the hospital. As of this writing, the workers are attempting to work out an arrangement to continue to operate in another location. However, workers throughout Argentina continue to occupy and run factories, and unemployed groups are still squatting unoccupied land, baking bread, starting cooperative businesses.
The barter clubs had faded out by the end of 2002. Most Argentines say that they ceased to function because of corruption, counterfeiting of barter “credits”, and because many people simply ran out of items to trade.

The neighborhood assemblies operate on a much smaller level, with 10-50 people per assembly. Some assemblies took over abandoned public and private property banks, empty lots, buildings and turned them into soup kitchens and cultural centers. Most of these groups have since been evicted by the government.

Some people who left the assemblies say they fell victim to takeover by established left wing political parties, an inability to work together, and increased marginalization from the middle class that had spawned them. However, the assemblies continue to take on important tasks within the neighborhood, like sending food to malnourished children, organizing vaccinations and health fairs, and one assembly has recently received official recognition by the government.

The feeling of renewed solidarity among the Argentine people has continued. As one sociologist I interviewed last year said, “It’s not important whether the neighborhood assemblies succeed or fail, what’s important is that the Argentine people have begun to think differently.”

It is this “thinking differently”, thinking beyond the ways that have been handed down to them by a collapsing system, that has remained. And this, I believe, is the lesson, not just for the citizens of this country who have finally woken up from the fear of their own neighbor that was instilled in them during the dictatorship, but for all of us.

When the system fails us, or when we see that the system if failing our neighbor, who might live down the street, or the on the other side of the world, we can choose to begin to think differently, to build a system that includes all of us.

Useful websites: http://argentinanow.tripod.com.ar (narratives and analyses of the social and economic experiments in Argentina, news and photos from 2001-2002.) http://www.znet.org (ongoing coverage and analysis of events in Argentina

http://www.indymedia.org (go to the Argentina section for news updates in English)

The post 23. Argentina Crisis Sparks Cooperative Growth appeared first on Project Censored.

MOTHER JONES, May/June 2002
Title: Without a Safety Net
Authors: Barbara Ehrenreich, Frances Fox Piven

IN THESE TIMES, Sept 2, 2002
Title: “Bad to Worse”
Author: Neil deMause

THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, Summer 2002
Title: “What Does Minnesota Know?”
Author: Dave Hage

DOLLARS AND CENTS, September/October 2002
Title: Good Times, Bad Times: Recession the Welfare Debate
Author: Heather Boushey

Faculty Evaluators: Maureen Buckley Ph.D., Barbara Bloom Ph.D.,
Wingham Liddell Ph.D.
Student Researchers: Jen Scanlan, Jessie Esquivel, Sarah Zisman, Alyssa Speaker

In 1996, President Bill Clinton enacted legislation that ended sixty-one years of federal aid designed to lift families out of poverty and ushered in a commitment to lower welfare rolls and forcing recipients to work. The 1996 law, entitled Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), is set to be reviewed in the summer of 2003. Poverty and unemployment are on the rise in the U.S. and the welfare safety net for needy children no longer meets basic needs. Yet the Bush administration is seeking to reduce the safety net even more.

The White House has proposed new work requirements as part of its plan to reauthorize TANF that promise to exacerbate the plight of the unemployed by undercutting state programs that managed to make partial successes of the 1996 bill. Under the 1996 provisions states had the right to adopt local policies to accommodate the job training and education needs of clients. New rules being proposed in Washington would replace state level policies with more rigid, mechanistic limitations imposed by the federal government. Programs like employment skills training, guided job searches, and bilingual education would be constricted or discontinued altogether.

Although the new burdens placed on the states back in ‘96 were initially a challenge, most were able to figure out plans that worked for some families. Prior to 1996, the federal government had matched a percentage of the state’s welfare spending. With the passage of TANF, it gave each state an annual grant of a set amount. Some states were able to take the grant and work with client families to move them from assistance to reasonable employment and out of poverty, but in most states as the welfare rolls declined, poverty actually increased.

While the 1996 welfare law required parents to work in order to receive TANF benefits, in practice a good bit of leeway remained for parents to attend school and job training programs. But now, with very little input from state agencies, the White House has decided to impose new restrictions that would eliminate states’ flexibility regarding the application of their yearly grants. States would be required to verify that 70 percent of their welfare clients worked 40 hours a week
A study released by the Christian Science Monitor indicated that mothers on welfare received an average of $13,000 a year, well below the poverty line. Since government assistance diminishes as job income rises, recipients are still unable to cover food, rent, and utilities. One-fifth of all mothers in the study had to cut the size of meals they serve their children because they could not afford to buy more food. To earn more money, the mothers work more hours, leaving the kids without their mother for longer periods at a time. This also means that mothers have to pay more for childcare.

According to a recent survey by the National Governors Association, the new welfare requirements will “dismantle effective programs that reduce non-marital births, improve job retention, encourage completion of secondary education by teenagers and young adults, and reduce substance abuse.” Many state legislators are angry that they were never consulted before the push for the new rules began. This move toward the imposition of big government over states’ rights seems an ironic policy for a conservative Republican administration.

In 1996 the assumptions underlying welfare reform were that a job could lift a family out of poverty and that there were enough jobs for anyone willing to work. In today’s economy, families living close to the poverty line are increasingly likely to fall over the edge.

UPDATED BY DAVID HAGE: The landmark federal law known as “welfare reform’’ received intense news coverage during 1995 and 1996, when Congress was debating the measure and battling with President Bill Clinton. By 2000, however, it had dropped off the national radar screen. Lawmakers considered welfare reform a finished project, since they had debated and passed legislation, and most reporters moved on to other stories when no obvious crises emerged.

On the ground, however, it was very much a live story. The law had triggered a revolution at the local level, as states converted their welfare offices into employment agencies, and workers in the trenches were just beginning to figure out what worked and didn’t work in the daunting and unprecedented task of moving millions of poor, under-skilled single parents into the job market.

By 2002 some welfare advocates and poverty scholars were actually looking forward to reauthorization of the federal law. They hoped that Congress would learn from six years of experience and give them tools to handle the emerging problems: the crushing costs of child care for poor single mothers; the fact that most welfare “leavers’’ remained mired in poverty-level jobs; the discovery that millions of welfare recipients had mental illnesses, chronic disabilities, borderline IQs and other disadvantages that barred them from holding steady work.

Instead, in 2002, the Bush administration offered a bill that capped federal funds to the states, imposed demanding new work requirements on welfare recipients, and effectively banned many of the most promising state-level experiments. That proposal, which alarmed many governors and welfare scholars, died by late summer when the Republican House failed to reach agreement with the Democratic Senate.

In mid-2003, however, the Bush administration submitted essentially the same proposal, and the Republican leadership in both chambers promised to adopt it. Ironically, and sadly, this occurred just as the welfare experiment was experiencing its first crisis at the local level: the job market was contracting, welfare caseloads were rising, and state governments were facing their worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression. Most welfare reporters seemed fatigued by the story, and a cynic would have predicted that they would return to the story only when poor families turned up sleeping on park benches.

If there was any promise in the 1996 welfare law, it was that society might actually look at the families on public assistance and ask what might be required to give them better lives. By all appearances, seven years into the experiment, Congress and much of the public had never looked or simply shrugged.

In Washington, the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have done fine work in tracking the consequences of the 1996 law, and the Urban Institute undertook a comprehensive study of the fate of poor families under the “new federalism.’’ But it remains unclear whether anyone in a position of power was paying attention.

UPDATE BY NEIL DEMAUSE: In the nine months since In These Times published “Bad To Worse,” things have if anything gotten even more dismal for women trying to survive on welfare. Congress never did pass a TANF reauthorization law in 2002, and with Republicans regaining control of the Senate in the November elections, it’s even more likely that what legislation eventually emerges will be heavy on punitive restrictions like increased work hours and full-family sanctions, with more progressive measures likely to be pushed to the side. Meanwhile, the economy-ravaged (and tax-cut-ravaged) federal is even more strapped for cash, making it more unlikely that federal child care funds will be increased, even as need is on the rise – according to a Government Accounting Office study, 23 states have cut child care funding in the last two years because of their own fiscal crises.

All this has taken place far from the public eye, as media coverage of welfare, once a staple of nightly news broadcasts, has all but vanished – just when the effects of “welfare reform,” no longer masked by the ‘90s economic boom, are finally becoming clear: more homelessness, more hunger, and lessened ability to escape from poverty. (Recent studies have found, in fact, that low-income single mothers were the one demographic group whose fortunes slipped even during the height of the boom times.) Instead, the myth that reform has worked persists, largely because caseloads dropped precipitously upon implementation of the 1996 law, and have remained low. But as Mark Greenberg of the Center for Law and Social Policy notes, “That raises big questions: Some people point to that as evidence of the continued success of state efforts, while others ask why welfare caseloads *aren’t* going up when unemployment is going up?”

Instead of asking these questions, Congress has largely focused on following the course set out by the 1996 law – one recent Senate committee hearing was titled “Welfare Reform: Building on Success.” And President Bush is now moving to bring similar “reform” to other programs, proposing to convert Medicaid, Head Start, and Section 8 housing vouchers into “block grant” programs that, like TANF, would freeze federal funding levels while allowing states unprecedented leeway in denying services.

Meanwhile, the coalition of groups that first organized back in YEAR to
track the TANF reauthorization process continues to press for more equitable policies for America’s poor.

Among the groups to contact for more information: the D.C.-based Center for Law and Social Policy (202-906-8000,http://www.clasp.org) and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (202-408-1080, http://www.cbpp.org); the Welfare Made a Difference Campaign (212-894-8082, http://www.wmadcampaign.org), a network of grassroots low-income organizers; and the Welfare Information Network’s comprehensive website at http://www.financeprojectinfo.org/win.

The post 22. Welfare Reform Up For Reauthorization But Still No Safety Net appeared first on Project Censored.

HARPER’S MAGAZINE, March 2003
Title: “Resolved to Ruin”
Author: Greg Palast

COVERT ACTION QUARTERLY, Spring 2002
Title: “Global Rollback”
Author: Michael Parenti

THE TEXAS OBSERVER, 1/17/03
Title: “Mistakes Were Made” (a book review of Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz)
Author: Gabriella Bocagrande

Evaluators: Eric McGuckin Ph.D., Linda Nowak Ph.D.
Researched by: Tony Cullen, Scott Frazier

Policies traditionally carried out overseas by “international lending institutions” such as the World Bank or International Monetary Fund (IMF) are quickly becoming part of the U.S. domestic economy. Privatization, loss of social services, bifurcation of the economy and an overall decline in the lives of working people are an ongoing reality in the U.S.

Officially, IMF and World Bank measures were imposed to curb inflation, increase exports and strengthen the fiscal condition of debtor nations, allowing them to pay back their loans. In actuality, however, the common result of structural adjustments has been depressed wages, reduced consumer purchase-power, and environmental degradation, while boosting profit rates for multinational investors. Small farmers, having lost their subsidies and import protections, are driven off their land into overcrowded cities. According to a number of economists, including the former chief economist for the Wold Bank, as western investment in the Third World increased throughout the ‘90s, so did poverty and social instability.

The World Bank and IMF have a four-step “reform” formula for each country. The formula includes Capital-market liberalization, privatization, market-based pricing, and, finally, the introduction of “free trade.” In step one, capital is freed up to flow in and out across the borders. Generally the result is the increased flow of capital out to external businesses with no guarantee that the money will flow in through foreign investment.

Privatization is the second step. This refers to the transfer of traditionally state-run services and utilities like gas, oil, roads, water, post offices, and banks to private companies. The problem, say critics, is that private ownership of a country’s framework leaves it unable to protect its citizens or natural resources from abuses of power.

Step three of the program, market-based pricing, is the point at which consumer purchase-power drops and the local economy really begins to suffer. The country’s political leaders no longer have the ability to place local controls on economic trends and the country and its citizens become vulnerable to the whims of the global market.

The final step in the formula is free trade. But “free” is a relative term when referring to import/export values and global trade agreements. Third World nations are not on the same economic footing as their industrialized trade partners. Industrialized countries, influenced by their corporate backers, usually override attempts at import protections by Third World countries in order to procure local industries, cheap labor, and natural resources.

Many of these policies had been established slowly in the United States over a number of years, but the intensity and speed with which they are now emerging is unprecedented. After 9-11, with much of the public distracted by terrorism and the desire for national defense, business litigators and anti-labor politicians stepped up the process of rolling back laws enacted over the last 100 years to protect workers, the public, and the environment from the excesses of industry. Just as with World Bank/IMF policies in other countries, the goal is to privatize profits and socialize losses. The vast majority of profits made by a company will be concentrated in a few private hands, while economic losses will be borne by the taxpayers through increased taxation and denial of social benefits. This is a trend that represents a huge shift in social and economic policy in the United States, with long lasting implications.

UPDATED BY GABRIELLA BOCAGRANDE: The appearance of Joseph Stiglitz’ book Globalization and Its Discontents, in 2002 was widely greeted as a radical departure by a World Bank insider from the neo-liberal policies of the international financial institutions in Washington. While it was gratifying to see Mr. Stiglitz lambaste the International Monetary Fund for promoting indigence, unemployment, and organized crime every time it gained control over a distressed economy in the developing world, an alternative interpretation of Mr. Stiglitz’ observations suggests that he recommended no fundamental changes in the neo-liberal approach to ‘development.’ He suggested milder forms of fiscal intervention in economies in crisis and more generous ‘social safety nets,’ but this is rather like recommending the distribution of pith helmets to protect people from nuclear combat.

Nor has the IMF changed its ways. Throughout ‘02 and ‘03, it continues to strangle the economy of Argentina by exacting continuing budget cuts in repayment of the external debt. Most recently, the IMF has threatened the new Argentine government with another credit cutoff for not allowing private banks holding household mortgages to foreclose more rapidly on delinquent homeowners, 50 percent of whom are now impoverished, thanks to the IMF itself. Stiglitz’ response to this position would most likely be to argue that it is not sound economic policy to create more homeless people, since it weakens consumer demand. After all, homeless people are only a market for canned goods, plastic sheeting and pots and pans to bang, while people who own residences buy appliances and cookware, not to mention Play Stations, Next-Day-Blinds, and DVDs.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the IMF and the World Bank, but Joseph Stiglitz did not finger it: these institutions represent the interests of First World finance capital, but they are never charged with this. Not by Mr. Stiglitz and not by the mainstream press. They represent themselves publicly as charitable institutions sincerely seeking to promote job growth and prosperity around the world, and Mr. Stiglitz let them get away with it. Coverage of them by Stiglitz and the press attributes increasing world misery to well-intentioned ‘mistakes’ on their part, rather than the systematic operation of the structural machinery of greed.

Organizations which genuinely oppose the policies of the IMF and the World Bank are Public Services International, which advocates on behalf of public sector trade unions (http://www.world-psi.org), the Bank Information Center, which promotes transparency at the Banks (http://www.bicusa.org), and the Citizens’ Network for Essential Services (http://www.challenge globalization.org)

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FORTUNE, 3/3/03
Title: “The Pentagon’s Private Army”
Author: Nelson D. Schwartz

CORPWATCH.ORG, March 20, 2003
Title: “Halliburton Makes a Killing on Iraq War”
Author: Pratap Chatterjee

THE LONDON OBSERVER, April 13, 2003
Title: “Battle for Iraq: Scandal-hit U.S. Firm Wins Key Contracts”
Author: Antony Barnett

Faculty Evaluator: Tom Lough Ph.D.
Student Researcher: Josh Sisco

President Dwight Eisenhower’s final remarks upon vacating the White House were “Beware the military-industrial complex.” With the war on Iraq, the government rapidly increased the already growing privatization of much of its military operations. Staffed largely by ex-military and Defense Department officials, private companies – such as Kellogg, Brown & Root, DynCorp, Cubic, ITT, and MPRI – have been aggressively snatching up government contracts. One estimate, cited by Nelson Schwartz in Fortune magazine, says that 8%, or $30 billion, of the Pentagon’s total budget for 2003 will go to private companies. Following 9/11, the Defense Department released a study that concluded, “Only those functions that must be performed by the Defense Department should be kept by the Defense Department. Any function that can be provided by the private sector is not a core government function.” The U.S. military has contracted with private military companies on everything from kitchen and laundry duty to domestic recruiting efforts.

Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) is a subsidiary of Halliburton, the energy company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. By the time Cheney left Halliburton for the vice presidency, the company had extensive involvement with the Pentagon. While Secretary of Defense for Bush Senior, Cheney awarded Halliburton a $3.9 million contract to “study and then implement the privatization of routine army functions.” Retired Admiral Joe Lopez, former commander in chief for US forces in Southern Europe, as well as Cheney’s aid under the elder Bush, is now the Senior Vice President at KBR and responsible for military contracting.

KBR was given a 10-year contract entitled Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP). This is a “cost-plus-award-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity service,” – an open ended mandate for privatization anywhere in the world, according to Chatterjee. Whereas it used to take 120-180 days to deploy private companies to foreign military bases, a 72-hour notice is now all that is required. KBR was also given $16 million to build a 408-bed prison for Afghanistan’s enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Last year, DynCorp won a State Department contract to protect Afghan President Hamid Kharzi. The protection force consists of former members of Delta Force and other elite military units. DynCorp, in conjunction with several other companies such as Airscan and Northrop Grumman, receives roughly $1.2 billion a year to spray suspected coca fields in Columbia.

This past April, DynCorp was also awarded a multi-million dollar contract to build a private police force in post-Sadaam Iraq. Potential officers do not need to speak Arabic and must be a US citizen and a current or former police officer, according to the London Observer. Private police provided by DynCorp working for the UN in Bosnia were accused of buying and selling prostitutes, including a 12-year-old girl. Others were accused of videotaping the rape of one of the women. Ecuadorian peasants are suing the company, alleging that chemicals sprayed over Columbia spread into Ecuador killing legal crops and children. DynCorp has been accused of destroying legal crops, and serious human rights violations.

UPDATE BY PRATAP CHATTERJEE: War profiteering has risen to an all time high under the Bush administration. For the first time in history one in ten people deployed during a war was a private contractor. From building the tent cities, to maintaining the fighter jets and training the troops in live-weapons fire, private companies made a killing in the in the invasion of Iraq. What is even more significant is that the vice-president of the United States has directly benefited from these contracts in his former job (he gets compensation of $180,000 a year from the company) and his staff continues to receive advice from his company.

Since Corpwatch and the San Francisco Bay Guardian broke the story that Halliburton had stationed employees in Uzbekistan to run United States military bases in April 2002, the value and number of the company’s war machine contracts have vastly expanded. As the first bombs rained down on Baghdad, thousands of employees of Halliburton were working alongside U.S. troops in Jordan, Kuwait and Turkey under a package deal worth well over a billion dollars. In addition the company has contracts to support troops in Afghanistan, Djibouti, and Georgia in the former Soviet Union.

Cheap labor is a primary reason for outsourcing services, says Major Toni Kemper, head of public affairs at one of the Turkish bases. “The reason that the military goes to contracting is largely because it’s more cost effective in certain areas. I mean there was a lot of studies years ago as to what services can be provided via contractor versus via military personnel. Because when we go contract, we don’t have to pay health care and all the another things for the employees, that’s up to the employer.”

For more information check out http://www.corpwatch.org.

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THE SIERRA TIMES, February 9, 2003
Title: “The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War with Iraq”
Author: William Clark

FEASTA, January 2003
Title: “Oil, Currency, and the War on Iraq”
Author: Cóilín Nunan

THE NATION, September 23, 2002
Title: The End of Empire
Author: William Greider

Faculty Evaluators: Wingham Liddell Ph.D, Tony White Ph.D , Phil Beard Ph.D.,
Thom Lough Ph.D.
Student Researchers: Effren Trejo, Kathleen Glover, Dylan Citrin-Cummins

President Richard Nixon removed U.S. currency from the gold standard in 1971. Since then, the world’s supply of oil has been traded in U.S. fiat dollars, making the dollar the dominant world reserve currency. Countries must provide the United States with goods and services for dollars – which the United States can freely print. To purchase energy and pay off any IMF debts, countries must hold vast dollar reserves. The world is attached to a currency that one country can produce at will. This means that – in addition to controlling world trade – the United States is importing substantial quantities of goods and services for very low relative costs.

The Euro has begun to emerge as a serious threat to dollar hegemony and U.S. economic dominance. The dollar may prevail throughout the Western Hemisphere, but the Euro and dollar are clashing in the former Soviet Union, Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East.

In November 2000, Iraq became the first OPEC nation to begin selling its oil for Euros. Since then, the value of the Euro has increased 17%, and the dollar has begun to decline. One important reason for the invasion and installation of a U.S. dominated government in Iraq was to force the country back to the dollar. Another reason for the invasion is to dissuade further OPEC momentum toward the Euro, especially from Iran- the second largest OPEC producer, who was actively discussing a switch to Euros for its oil exports.

It is estimated that the dollar is currently overvalued by at least 40%, burdening the United States with a huge trade deficit. Conversely, the euro-zone does not run huge deficits, uses higher interest rates, and has an increasingly larger share of world trade. As the euro establishes its durability and comes into wider use, the dollar will no longer be the world’s only option. At that point, it would be easier for other nations to exercise financial leverage against the United States without damaging themselves or the global financial system as a whole.

Faced with waning international economic power, military superiority is the United States’ only tool for world domination. Although, the expense of this military control is unsustainable, says William Clark, “one of the dirty little secrets of today’s international order is that the rest of the globe could topple the United States from its hegemonic status whenever they so choose with a concerted abandonment of the dollar standard. This is America’s preeminent, inescapable Achilles Heel.” If American power is ever perceived globally as a greater liability than the dangers of toppling the international order, the U.S. systems of control can be eliminated and collapsed. When acting against world opinion – as in Iraq – an international consensus could brand the United States as a “rogue nation.”

UPDATED BY WILLIAM CLARK: Only time will tell what will happen in the aftermath of the Iraq war and U.S. occupation, but I am hopeful my research will contribute to the historical record and help others understand one of the important but hidden macroeconomic reasons for why we conquered Iraq. The Bush/Cheney administration probably believes that the occupation of Iraq and the installation of a large and permanent U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf region will stop other OPEC producers from even considering switching the denomination of their oil sales from dollars to Euros. However, using the military to enforce dollar hegemony for oil transactions strikes me as a rather unwieldy and inappropriate strategy. Regrettably, President Bush and his neo-conservative advisors have exacerbated “anti-American” sentiments by applying a military option in Iraq that is in essence an economic problem. History may not look kindly upon their actions.

Despite the U.S. media reporting otherwise, the current wave of ‘global anti-Americanism’ is not against the American people or against American values – but against the hypocrisy of militant American Imperialism. The foreign polices of the neoconservatives may be creating the regrettable emergence of a possible European-Russian-Chinese alliance in an effort to counter American Imperialism. It appears that the structural imbalances in the U.S. economy, along with the Bush administration’s flawed tax, economic, and most principally their overtly imperialist foreign polices could result in the dollar’s reserve currency status and/or oil transaction currency status being placed in jeopardy or at the very least significantly diminished over the next 1-2 years. In the event that my hypothesis materializes, the U.S. economy will require restructuring in some manner to account for the reduction of either of these two pivotal advantages.

What is needed is a multilateral meeting of the G-7 nations to reform the international monetary system. Given that future wars will become more likely over oil and the currency of oil, the author advocates that the global monetary system be reformed without delay. This would include the dollar and euro being designated as equal international reserve currencies, and placed within an exchange band along with a dual-OPEC oil transaction currency standard. Additionally, the G-7 nations should also explore a future third reserve currency option regarding a yen/yuan bloc for East Asia. A compromise on the euro/oil issues via a multilateral treaty with a gradual phase-in of a dual-OPEC transaction currency standard could minimize economic dislocations within the U.S.

While these proposed multilateral reforms may lower our ability to finance our current massive levels of debt and maintain a global military presence, the benefits would include improving the quality of our lives and that of our children by reducing animosity towards the U.S., while we rebuild our alliances with the E.U. and world community. Creating balanced domestic fiscal polices along with global monetary reform is in the long-term national security interest of the United States, and necessary for the Global economy. Hopefully these proposed monetary reforms could mitigate future armed or economic warfare over oil, ultimately fostering a more stable, safer, and prosperous global economy in the 21st century.

UPDATE BY CÓILÍN NUNAN: At the time this article was written, the suggestion that Iraq’s move to selling oil for euros had something to do with the US threatening war against the country was just a theory. It still is a theory, but a theory which subsequent US actions have done little to dispel: the US has invaded Iraq, installed its own authority to rule the country and as soon as Iraqi oil became available to sell on the world market, it was announced that payment would be in dollars only (1). But the story doesn’t end there: the US trade deficit is still widening and the dollar falling. More and more oil exporters are talking openly about selling their commodity for euros instead of greenbacks. While Indonesia has only been considering it (2), Malaysia’s Prime Minister Dr Mahathir has been strongly encouraging his country’s oil industry to actually do it (3), which has led the European Union’s Energy Commissioner, Loyola de Palacio, to comment that she could see the euro replacing the dollar as the main currency for oil pricing (4). Iran meanwhile has been giving all the signs that it is about to switch to the euro: it has been issuing eurobonds, converting its foreign exchange reserves from dollars to euros and having warm trade negotiations with the EU. According to one recent report it has even started selling its oil to Europe for euros and encouraging Asian customers to pay in euros too (5). Should US talk of ‘regime change’ in Iran not be seen in the light of these facts? The media largely appear to think not since there has been little discussion of the dollar-euro connection with the ‘war on terror’. What discussion there has been may well be expanded upon in the future as neither the threat to the dollar and the US economy or the US threat to world peace are likely to go away any time soon.

1. Carola Hoyos and Kevin Morrison, ‘Iraq returns to international oil market’, Financial Times, June 5 2003,http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1054416466875
2. Kazi Mahmood, ‘Economic Shift Could Hurt U.S.-British Interests In Asia’, March 30 2003, IslamOnline.net
3. Shahanaaz Habib, ‘Use euro for oil prices, says Dr M’, The Star, June 16 2003,http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2003/6/17/nation/sboil&sec=nation
4. Reuters, ‘EU says oil could one day be priced in euros’, June 16 2003,http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/030616/energy_euro_2.html
5. C. Shivkumar, ‘Iran offers oil to Asian union on easier terms’, June 16 2003,http://thehindubusinessline.com/stories/2003061702380500.htm

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EARTH FIRST! Eostar 2002
Title: “Privatization’s Trojan Horse”
Edited by: Scott Silver

AMERICAN PROSPECT, 9/9/2002
Title: “Park Wars”
Author: Jon Margolis

Faculty Evaluator: Eric McGuckin Ph.D.
Student Researchers: Dana Balicki, Lisa Badenfort

Corporate Media Partial Coverage: Ventura County Star, 5/15/02, “Charter Forests Spell Trouble.”
Washington Post, Park Wars, Jon Margolis, 9/9/02, p.29

The Bush Administration’s Charter Forest Proposal is an attempt to privatize and profit from public forestland. Under this proposal, public land management will be transferred from public hands to local privately controlled oversight boards. The Charter Forest Plan is the Bush administration’s attempt to further commodify and privatize the collective public domain of national forests by implementing ideas formulated by the American Recreation Coalition (ARC). ARC represents resort developers, more than 100 motorized recreation industries and touts the Walt Disney Corporation as their most prominent member. According to its own description, the ARC “strives to catalyze public/private partnerships for outdoor recreation opportunities.” The ARC guided the development of President Clinton’s Fee Demonstration Program as well as the current Charter Forest Proposal.

The Charter Forest Plan would transfer authority of some national forests from the U.S. Forest Service to local “trusts” (board of trustees) consisting largely of “user groups.” This plan will decentralize forest management, allowing industry and local governments to wrest control of public lands from the federal government. Public domain makes up a third of the country and includes national parks, national forests and wilderness areas.

This Charter Forest Proposal promotes a “free-market environmentalism” which makes market demand the determiner for how public lands will be used. A chartered forest board of trustees, left on its own to raise revenue and manage a natural area, “discovers” that they can raise more money by charging $20 a night for a developed campground site, versus six dollars a night for an undeveloped space. Advertising would target wealthy patrons, offering “forest-based” lodging with a wide variety of items for purchase at convenient and tastefully rustic shops.

The charter forest concept goes hand in hand with the Clinton era Recreational Fee Program, charging people high fees to enjoy public lands; in essence imposing “double taxation” on areas for which Americans already pay taxes (for the management of these public forestlands). This is a pay-to-play plan requiring citizens to pay for access to national forests at hundreds of sites across the U.S. These proposals would allow corporations to decide through their boards of directors who uses the land and how. The ARC already shares responsibility with the Forest Service for the implementation of the Fee Program, through the Challenge Cost Share Agreement of 1996. Under this agreement they are in charge of preparing and distributing all press releases and fact sheets regarding the privatization and development of natural forest areas.

The ARC represents resort developers and strives to create new, highly profitable outdoor recreation opportunities for businesses, such as the Walt Disney Corporation. Local boards would have complete control over these lands and would be categorized as a corporation. The lands are to be privatized, developed, and outdoor recreation will be their product for sale (at up to $50 a day).

Francis Pandolfi (former Chair of ARC’s Recreation Roundtable before he was chosen as chief of staff of the Forest Service) stated at a 1997 FS staff meeting, “the next step is to use the recreation fee pilot project to pull together a first class business management plan…For the first time, we are selling a product.” As incorporated entities, the boards would also have the freedom to grant logging and mining contracts. The new proposal would obstruct the legal avenues currently available to environmental groups seeking to preserve public lands.

Wild Wilderness, an environmental organization is working to prevent this occurrence. Scott Silver, executive director of Wild Wilderness states, “Rec-fees and the Charter Forest Proposal are just the first visible manifestations of an entirely new federal land management paradigm, one that strongly emphasizes and promotes highly developed, intensively motorized recreation.”

UPDATED BY SCOTT SILVER: “In wildness is the preservation of the world,” wrote Henry David Thoreau more than 100 years ago. Consider the recent implications of wildness being commercialized, privatized and turned into recreation opportunities by federal land managers and the private-sector. Consider what happens when wildness is Disneyfied, marketed and sold to paying customers.

In light of Thoreau’s warning, the corporate takeover of nature is more than just another example of creeping privatization. And that is the story that was presented in the March-April 2002 issue of the Earth First! Journal.

Following the publication of “Privatization’s Trojan Horse,” 35 coordinated demonstrations took place in 16 states in an attempt to gain visibility for this issue. Our mission was to explain the value of preserving free access to wild nature and to warn the public that big changes were in the works.

For the most part, the corporate media failed to report upon these events. In some cases, reporters attended protests but failed to get their stories printed. Others published stories consisting of only a few sentences that neglected to address the real issues. In those rare cases, where lengthy articles were printed, government and recreation industry spokespersons put their own twisted spin upon the issues. Today, the Bush administration is racing to privatize everything of value. It is actively creating a fiscal crisis with policies revolving around tax-cuts and empire building. With the crisis becoming firmly entrenched, President Bush and his team can say: “We have no money, we must make cuts, cuts and still more cuts. And when cuts are not enough, we must turn to the private sector for help.”

Seeing this coming and sounding the alarm, the Earth First! Journal reported the news, while the corporate media looked the other way.

Perhaps there’s hope in the fact that the Bush administration is so blatant in its war upon democracy and its rush to strip citizens of everything they hold in common. The public is finally starting to get a whiff of what’s in the air.

With the threat of privatization of our national forests looming large, the question becomes: “Will our message be heard broadly enough so that this takeover agenda can be stopped in whatever time remains?”

For those wishing to learn more, contact Wild Wilderness, (541) 385-5261; ssilver@wildwilderness.org. The Wild Wilderness website, http://www.wildwilderness.org, documents threats to wildness that Thoreau could have never imagined.

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MEDIA FILE, September 2002
Title: “Clear Channel Stumbles”
Author: Jeff Perlstein

Faculty Evaluator: Scott Gordon Ph.D., Jorge Porras Ph.D.
Student Researcher: Melissa Jones, Chris Salvano

Corporate Media Partial Coverage: Now With Bill Moyers, April 26, 2002 and April 4, 2003; The New York Times, January 30, 2003 and February 3, 2003; The Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2003

Clear Channel Communications of San Antonio, Texas may not yet be a household name, but in the past seven years the radio station conglomerate has rocketed to a place alongside NBC and Gannett as one of the largest media companies in the United States.

Before passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, a company could not own more than 40 radio stations in the entire country. With the Act’s sweeping relaxation of ownership limits, the cap on radio ownership was eliminated. As a result, Clear Channel has dominated the industry by growing from 40 radio stations nationally in the mid-90s, to approximately 1225 stations nationally by 2003. The station also dominates the audience share in 100 of 112 major markets. In addition to its radio stations, Clear Channel also owns television station affiliates, billboards, outdoor advertising, and owns or exclusively books the vast majority of concert venues, amphitheaters, and clubs in the country. According to NOW with Bill Moyers, in 2000 Clear Channel purchased the nation’s largest concert and events promoter, and in 2001, the Clear Channel did 70% of national ticket sales.

In 2001, Denver concert promoter, Jesse Morreale, sued Clear Channel. Morreale’s suit claims that Clear Channel’s use of its billboards to advertise Clear Channel-booked shows at Clear Channel-owned music is in essence a monopoly. The suit also alleges that Clear Channel stations have threatened to withdraw certain music from rotation unless the artist’s book concerts through Clear Channel and play at Clear Channel-owned music venues.

Clear Channel has also drawn criticism for using “voice tracking.” Voice tracking is when one DJ produces a standardized national broadcast and formats it into their radio stations nationwide- giving the semblance of a local broadcast. By this process, Clear Channel can produce its radio format in San Antonio, Texas and play it on its 1225 radio stations without regard to local music, culture, or issues.

In January 2002, a train carrying 10,000 gallons of anhydrous ammonia derailed in the town of Minot, causing a spill and a toxic cloud. Authorities attempted to warn the residents of Minot to stay indoors and to avoid the spill. But when the authorities called six of the seven radio stations in Minot to issue the warning, no one answered the phones. As it turned out, Clear Channel owned all six of the stations and none of the station’s personnel were available at the time.

Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota grilled Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Michael Powell over the consolidation of media in the U.S., using the Minot incident as a warning and an example. At a Senate Commerce Committee meeting Dorgan warned that as large media companies, like Clear Channel, buy up the last remaining independent media outlets across the country, the public suffers. According to chairman Powell, there is strong evidence that a lot of times local independent run stations cannot afford to produce quality local news. However, a recent study by Columbia University’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that TV stations owned by smaller media firms generally produce better newscasts.

Such branding and consolidation is counter to the FCC’s mandate of encouraging media diversity. The FCC is doing very little about the results of increased media concentration. This may be a result of the relationship that exits between the FCC commissioners and the broadcast companies and their lobbyists. According to the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), media companies and lobbyists developed a very cozy relationship. As Chuck Lewis of CPI notes, “We found that 1400 trips [by FCC commissioners]- all expense paid trips – were paid for by broadcasters. How can the FCC judge and discuss media ownership if they’re taking trips from these guys?”

The FCC is in fact investigating one complaint made against Clear Channel. An advertiser in Ohio claims that Clear Channel is circumventing existing ownership limits by operating stations through shell companies in a practice known as “parking” or “warehousing” stations. Clear Channel has sold off stations to alleged front companies, which allows Clear Channel to continue operating the properties while also providing an easy way to buy back the stations, now that the FCC has further relax ownership limits.

On June 2, 2003, the FCC approved new ownership limit caps giving a green light for further media consolidation. (see chapter 2 #1 2003 and Amy Goodman’s Introduction)

UPDATE BY JEFF PERLSTEIN: It’s nine months since I wrote this article, and Clear Channel is now widely seen as the “poster child” for what’s wrong with our hyper-consolidated media environment and the free-market government policies that are to blame.

One strong indicator that media activists have succeeded in moving this issue into the political mainstream and building political pressure is the recent June 2nd vote at the FCC that loosened a whole host of restrictions on broadcast media – except in the area of radio ownership. In fact, the Commissioners actually voted to tighten some of the radio rules and Congressional Anti-trust committees are following up to examine anti-competitive practices in the industry.

But these days one need not look to DC to hear about the latest Clear Channel debacle. Egregious examples of the company’s behavior are part and parcel of water cooler conversations, hundreds of email lists and websites, and regular coverage by the independent media. Just ask people and they’ll recite the litany for you: the banning of the Dixie Chicks and more than 200 peace-related songs including “Imagine” by John Lennon; the many station-sponsored pro-war rallies; the intense union busting; automated on-air programming and the train wreck in Minot, North Dakota; and the “derelict rodeo roundup”.

Yes, the so-called “derelict rodeo roundup” was pioneered in Spring of 2003 by a Clear Channel station in Cincinnati, in which employees give homeless people a $20 bill, a 40 ounce bottle of malt liquor, and a bus ticket to the edge of town. Unconscionable behavior like this has fanned the flames of public outrage and provided the opportunity for media activists to build powerful coalition with mediaworkers’ unions, peace and justice networks, artists, youth organizers, attorneys, hip hop activists, children’s advocates, women’s rights groups, and more.

Not only did these coalitions succeed in using Clear Channel as a lightning rod to mobilize unprecedented numbers against further deregulation by the FCC, but they’re following up to build on the momentum at the local and national levels.

Community-driven campaigns in New York City and the SF Bay Area are providing powerful models for engaging communities in holding corporate media accountable to their needs and ensuring local voices are a part of the mix. The Turn Off the Radio Campaign in New York is a media boycott taking place each Thursday for 12 hours, in which participants refrain from listening to radio and TV stations that broadcast a disproportionate share of offensive material.

The Community Coalition for Media Accountability (CCMA) in the Bay Area worked with youth-led organizations to issue a report rigorously documenting how local Clear Channel station KMEL-FM’s non-music coverage was dominated by crime, drugs, and violence. Founded by the Youth Media Council and Media Alliance, the CCMA has followed up to build broad coalition and win a number of concessions from the region’s #1 hip hop and R&B station. The coalition is actively encouraging allies in cities around the country to seize this model and adapt it in ways that make sense and are powerful.

On the national level, Clear Channel is facing a rapidly growing number of legal challenges, Congressional hearings and investigations, and targetted campaigns by a variety of unions. Congressional co-sponsorship and public support is growing for Senator Feingold’s bill targetting Clear Channel’s brutal domination of the radio and concert industries.

Even the corporate media couldn’t ignore the growing public outrage and organized pressure by media activists. Clear Channel’s behavior and the policies that created this monster were finally picked up by The Wall Street Journal and a handful of other Big Media outlets.

At this writing, the grassroots momentum for accountability and transformation of corporate media structures continues to build, and Clear Channel is worried – the company recently hired a top Wall Street PR firm to deal with their “image problem”.

Please continue to bolster the work of independent media and support the organizing for true media justice.

Jeff Perlstein
Executive Director, Media Alliance
Co-founder, http://www.indymedia.org and the Seattle Independent Media Center

RESOURCES/LINKS:

http://www.Salon.com [search for Boehlert]
http://www.Clearchannelsucks.org
http://www.Media-Alliance.org (415) 546-6334 info@media-alliance.org
http://www.Youthmediacouncil.org (510) 444-0640

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CORPWATCH.ORG, 9/19/2002
Title: “PPP: Plan Puebla Panama, or Private Plans for Profit?”
Author: Miguel Pickard

PUBLIC CITIZEN’S TRADE WATCH, 2002 Report
Title: “Unveiling ‘NAFTA for the Americas’ “
Author: Timi Gerson

LABORNOTES, April 02, 2002
Title: “Plan Puebla Panama: The Next Step in Corporate Globalization”
Author: Tom Hansen & Jason Wallach

ASHEVILLE GLOBAL REPORT/EXTRA! Feb. 03, 2003
Title: “The FTAA is none of your business”
Author: Rachel Coen

Faculty Evaluators: Francisco Vasquez Ph.D., Richard Zimmer Ph.D.
Student Researcher: Jessie Esquivel, Dana Balicki

The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is a trade agreement intended to spread NAFTA’s trade rules to an additional 31 Latin American nations by 2005. Working in conjunction with FTAA is Plan Puebla-Panama (PPP) a multi-billion dollar development plan in progress that would turn southern Mexico and all of Central America into a colossal free trade zone, competing in the world wide race to drain wages, working conditions, environmental protection and human rights.

PPP is the brainchild of Mexican president, and former Coca-Cola executive, Vicente Fox. Fox set priorities when first he took office stating, “My government is by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs.” Not surprisingly then, the PPP emerges not as a strategy to end the endemic poverty in this region, but rather to induce private investment/colonization as it turns over control of the area’s vast natural resources- including water, oil, minerals, timber and ecological biodiversity-to the private sector, mostly multinational corporations. Seven hundred and eighty companies of all sizes (Harkin, Union Pacific-Southern, International Paper, Exxon, Mobil, Dow Chemical of Mexico, Union Carbide, and Monsanto) sent representatives to the PPP informational meeting in Yucatan during the summer of 2002.

The ideas for the PPP area consist of: the construction of new ports, airports, railroads, bridges, 25 dams for hydroelectric generation, upgrading telecommunications facilities, including a fiber-optic network, upgrading electrical grids, highway construction and creating wildlife reserves to help facilitate “bioprospecting” by various multinational seed, chemical, and pharmaceutical companies.

The Inter-American Development bank (IDB) is the main backer of the Plan Puebla-Panama. The cost of $3.5 billion, which is 84% of the funds, will initially go for massive road construction and improvement on two stretches of highways. One of the highways will be from the Central America’s Caribbean coast up 1,745 km to the Mexican Border with Texas, and the other highway will run 3,150 km from central Mexico going into Panama city. These two highways are intended as trade routes, to open the entire Mexican and Central American corridor for business. The taxpayers of the eight PPP countries will be the ones paying for the development of the public-works projects that will benefit private transnational capital and assure profits for corporate investors.

Fox wants to transplant the maquiladora, production-for-export model that has been applied with disastrous results in northern Mexico. The American isthmus, the narrowest part of the Americas, will be turned into a state-of-the-art foreign product assembly station. Twenty-first century commodities are increasingly produced in the Pacific Rim, with China’s 1.2 billion people leading the way with the largest and lowest-paid workforce in the world. But transportation is a problem, when the largest consumer bases are located on the U.S. Atlantic Coast and in the upper Midwest. It is much Cheaper to ship these goods unassembled, using modern containerized shipping, but they still must be assembled into finished products before reaching the market. Thus the isthmus offers unique strategic advantages as the shortest land route between Pacific production and Atlantic consumption.

According to Pickard this project will 9nine southern Mexico states and all of Central America into a massive free trade zone, competing in the world wide race to the bottom of wages, working conditions, lax environmental regulation and disregard for human rights.

Under the FTAA, multinational corporations could leverage exploited workers in Mexico against even more desperate workers in Haiti, Guatemala or Brazil. The FTAA would intensify NAFTA’s “race to the bottom” and deepen the negative effects of NAFTA already seen in Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. PPP is one more “development” plan, instituted by transnational corporations and international financial institutions that will benefit the corporate bottom line but result in more poverty and displacement. More than 18 percent of the inhabitants of the future PPP area belong to indigenous communities, 40 percent are under age 15, and the majority live below the poverty line.

UPDATE BY MIGUEL PICKARD: The Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) was proposed in 2001 by Mexican President Vicente Fox, and was widely commented on in the area it covers, i.e., Mexico and Central America. But within the United States there had been very little information, in spite of the fact that the initiative benefits mostly U.S. multinational corporations. The fact that CorpWatch published the article on its web page meant that it was immediately picked up by numerous activist organizations and given wide circulation, especially to readers in the North. The article helps make clear how enormous areas of land (in the case of the PPP 102 million hectares, with 64 million inhabitants in eight countries), are being “prepared” for MNC exploitation, under the guise of infrastructure “development”, with no informed consent of the people living therein.

Due to efforts of activist organizations in the South, the threat posed by the PPP to people, and especially indigenous communities in the area, was given wide dissemination, especially through well-attended regional meetings that brought together social and civil organizations from Mexico and Central America. Opposition activities ensued from these encounters in practically all of the nine countries of the PPP, alerting governments that civil society was demanding to be heard, and that it had to be consulted, and alternatives discussed. Alternatives obviously had to contemplate the interests of inhabitants, and civil society in general, and not just those of MNCs.

The Mexican government realized by late 2002 that opposition to the PPP had grown enormously and that simply signaling a project as part of the PPP was enough to draw unwanted activist scrutiny and mobilization. In essence PPP publicity, touting it as a way out of poverty for an especially underdeveloped area, had failed. Rhetoric extolling the social virtues of the PPP was exposed as so much veneer for a project that puts natural and human resources at the behest of corporations. In essence the Fox government had to backpeddle on the PPP, purging almost all references to it in official discourse, until new “packaging” could be found.

PPP discourse to date continues “on hold” within the Fox government. Its official PPP web site, for example, was removed from the internet during 2002. What is important to stress, however, is that the PPP megaprojects are continuing full steam ahead, even though they may not be labeled as such. Although now more difficult to detect, activists within Mexico and Central America are on alert and mobilizing to stop large-scale “development” projects that are bereft of civil society input.
A follow-up story on the PPP, and additional information on the PPP, are available at: The Lacandon Jungle’s Last Stand Against Corporate Globalization:

http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=4148

Updates:

http://www.ciepac.org/bulletins/ingles/ing329.htm
http://www.ciepac.org/bulletins/ingles/ing312.htm
http://www.ciepac.org/bulletins/index02.htm
Miguel Pickard, CIEPAC (Center for Economic and Political Investigation for Community Action), San Cristóbal, Chiapas, Mexico

UPDATE BY TIMI GERSON: The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has had disastrous consequences in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. It has forced millions of Mexican farmers off of their land and into sweatshops along the U.S./Mexico border; created ghost towns in the American Mid-West and South with the shuttering of steel and textile factories; and led to successful attacks by chemical companies on Canadian federal bans on toxic substances. NAFTA’s race to the bottom in labor and environmental standards is well known, but equally damaging is its attack on democracy. NAFTA allows corporations to sue governments in secret tribunals when companies feel that “ investor rights” have been violated by public health and safety laws, local zoning ordinances or almost anything else that cuts into profit. It is this model – a slow-moving coup d’etat on democracy – that is being expanded via the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

On November 20-21, 2003 the 34 Trade Ministers of the Americas and the Caribbean (all countries except Cuba) are coming back to where it all began – Miami, Florida where negotiations were launched in 1994. Per usual, multinational CEOs will court and lobby ministers at the Americas Business Forum. Outside the security perimeter, plans for a People’s Gala, a march and rally, teach-ins and other activities showing the diversity of opposition to “NAFTA for the Americas” are being coordinated by a broad coalition including: the AFL-CIO, Public Citizen, the Sierra Club, Jobs with Justice, the Citizens Trade Campaign, Oxfam America, the National Family Farm Coalition, the Alliance for Responsible Trade and the Latin America Solidarity Coalition among others working with local Florida organizations like the Miami Workers Center, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Unite for Dignity and the Florida Fair Trade Campaign.

Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, U.S. media pundits cling to the ideological conviction that “free” trade lifts all boats. The reality is that a malaise with Washington Consensus policies of privatization and market fundamentalism is sweeping across the continent (witness the election of corporate globalization critics in Brazil, Argentina, and Ecuador). To date, and with almost no coverage in the American press, almost 10 million Brazilians have voted against the FTAA in an informal plebiscite; Americans, Argentines, Ecuadorians, Mexicans, and Uruguayans are engaged in similar processes of “consulta popular” or peoples referendum; and national or regional Forums Against the FTAA have been held in Argentina, Bolivia, the Caribbean, Central America, Colombia and Ecuador. In the face of rising international and domestic opposition, the Bush Administration seeks to lockdown as many countries as possible in bilateral NAFTA-style agreements as soon as possible. A Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua is set to be complete by January 1, 2004. The U.S. – Chile free trade agreement was signed June 6, 2003 and will soon be voted on by Congress. These agreements are pieces in the FTAA puzzle. The Bush Administration is pushing a January 1, 2005 deadline for completion of FTAA negotiations with implementation by January 1, 2006. NAFTA was an experiment that failed; the FTAA will be more of the same.

To help stop the FTAA, contact Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch at gtwfield@citizen.org or (202) 546-4996 and check out our website at http://www.tradewatch.org

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