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Today's
Stories
November 7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Israeli
Roulette
November 6, 2003
Ron Jacobs
With
a Peace Like This...
Conn Hallinan
Rumsfeld's
New Model Army
Maher Arar
This
is What They Did to Me
Elaine Cassel
A Bad
Day for Civil Liberties: the Case of Maher Arar
Neve Gordon
Captives
Behind Sharon's Wall
Ralph Nader and Lee Drutman
An Open Letter to John Ashcroft on Corporate Crime
November 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Just
a Match Away:
Fire Sale in So Cal
Dave Lindorff
A Draft in the Forecast?
Robert Jensen
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List
Joanne Mariner
Prisons as Mental Institutions
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Not Organizing Iraqi Resistance
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs
from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections
Josh Frank
Silencing "the Reagans"
Website of the Day
Everything You Wanted to Know About Howard Dean But Were Afraid
to Ask
November 4, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing
Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?
Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam
Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating
the New Unity Partnership
Karyn Strickler
When
Opponents of Abortion Dream
Norman Solomon
The
Steady Theft of Our Time
Tariq Ali
Resistance
and Independence in Iraq
November 3, 2003
Patrick Cockburn
The
Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah
Dave Lindorff
Philly's
Buggy Election
Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003
Bernie Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November 1 / 2,
2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October 29, 2003
Chris Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October 28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27,
2003
William A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October 25 / 26,
2003
Robert Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October 24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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November
7, 2003
Latin America in Crisis
Cuba's
Self-Reliance in the Storm
By NELSON P. VALDES
On October 30, 2003 Enrique Iglesias, president
of the Inter American Development Bank (IDB), acknowledged the
obvious at Georgetown University: Latin America is moving toward
a "new paradigm" based on "what works." Translation:
our neighbors to the south have about had it with the neo-liberal
formulas and shibboleths. The November 3, 2003 IDB
newsletter was more frank, "many Latin Americans are
already fed up with globalization, free-market reforms and privatization--the
triad of the neo-liberal policies pursued by many countries in
the 1990s."
A few days earlier (Oct. 21), at hearings
of the House International Relations Subcommittee on the Western
Hemisphere, administration officials testified that Latin America
faced "contracting economic growth rates, extensive poverty,
unemployment, skewed income distribution, crime and lawlessness,
a thriving narcotics industry and a deteriorating natural resource
base" (Testimony by Adolfo Franco, assistant administrator,
Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, US Agency for International
Development). While Roger Noriega, Assistant Secretary of State
for Western Hemisphere Affairs said, "Current economic growth
rates are inadequate to generate sufficient jobs for growing
populations, let alone address chronic poverty. Corruption and
inefficiency have stunted economic development and spawned disenchantment
with "free market" prescriptions." Imagine the
terrible state under which Latin Americans live today that even
the conservative ideologues of the Bush administration sound
critical.
Some U.S. academics and political analysts
have remarked that the White House had paid too much attention
to opposing the Cuban government and not enough to the rest of
the region. Indeed, the Bush administration has increased its
hostility toward the island precisely because the Havana has
not followed the economic, social and political guidelines that
Washington imposed on Latin America twenty years ago. The formulas
rejected by the Cubans are precisely the ones that have led Latin
America to its present social and political upheavals.
Today 43.4% of the population in Latin
America, 220 million persons live in poverty. Of those, 95 million
(18.8% of the total population) are totally indigent. Yet these
impoverished people owe a significant portion of the $740 billion
of the region's external debt. Nowadays, Latin America is constantly
described by the U.S. government, Wall Street, and the mass media
as "democratic"--apparently they have no problem with
democracy and indigence going hand in hand.
What US politicians have recently discovered,
others have known for some time. The World Bank just released
an important study on the region (Inequality
in Latin America and the Caribbean: Breaking with History? ),
written by David de Ferranti , Francisco Ferreira , Guillermo
E. Perry and Michael Walton. The introduction notes that, "For
as long as data on living standards have been available, Latin
America and the Caribbean (hereafter "Latin America")
has been one of the regions of the world with the greatest inequality."
It goes on to disclose that at present, "Whereas the richest
tenth of the people in the region earn 48 percent of total income,
the poorest tenth earn only 1.6 percent. By contrast, in developed
countries the top tenth receive 29.1 percent of total income,
compared to 2.5 percent for the bottom tenth. Gini coefficients
tell a similar story: Whereas they averaged 0.522 in Latin America
in the 1990s, the averages for the OECD, Eastern Europe, and
Asia during the same period were much lower-0.342, 0.328 and
0.412, respectively."
The study describes in great detail the
dismal situation of 20 Latin American countries. The authors
make the point that since access to food, health, education and
housing depends on income; those necessities are unequally distributed
in Latin America as well. They write, "Such enormous differences
in the incomes of citizens of the same country clearly imply
correspondingly different degrees of access to the goods and
services that people consume in order to satisfy their needs
and wants. However, disparities extend much beyond private consumption.
Following the terminology of Amartya Sen, there are profound
differences in the freedom, or capability, of different individuals
and groups to follow lives of their choosing-to do things that
they have cause to value. Private resources and patterns of public
provisioning affect such capabilities, while social and political
arrangements affect the capacity to participate meaningfully
in society, influence decision-making, or live without shame."
A portion of the study explores education
and access. They conclude that, "With respect to education,
even though public systems exist in most countries in Latin America,
the disparities of attainment are equally striking to those in
income." A similar point is made about health, "Health
outcomes also vary dramatically along with income distribution,
resulting in enormous impacts on life opportunities and quality."
The World Bank volume concludes by noting that its objective,
"is to consider some of the options available to policymakers
in the region for breaking with the long history of inequality
that has characterized the countries studied. In so doing, the
authors suggest policies and policy directions that can help
reform economies and societies in such a way as to make them
more equitable, without detriment to economic efficiency."
(My emphasis)
Yet, neither the US politicians, nor
international lending institutions or the academics seem to dare
to go any further. One would expect that acknowledging the regional
problems would lead to paying some attention to the only country
that has departed from the pattern: Cuba. That island has not
followed the neo-liberal formulas, and had to face the most thorough
and profound economic crisis in the entire region--imposed by
the disappearance of the USSR and the deepening/ extension of
the US embargo.
The United Nations Development Program
in its annual report for 2003 disclosed that Cuba ranked 52nd
in the Human Development Index, which measures the relative quality
of life of 175 countries. Cuba's index was the 6th highest within
Latin America, ranking better than Trinidad Tobago, Mexico, Panama,
Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Jamaica, Peru, Paraguay, Guyana,
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Bolivia, Honduras,
Guatemala, Nicaragua and Haiti.
Cuba has managed to separate access to
education, health and social welfare from household income. Today
the island has the highest ratio of doctors to patients in the
world, and one of the healthiest populations in the hemisphere.
Moreover, according to UNESCO's Latin
American Laboratory for Evaluation and Quality of Education--Cuban
students in comparative national tests out-perform all other
students from the hemisphere by 100 points over and above the
regional average, with Argentina, Chile and Brazil following.
That is the case in language skills, mathematics and physics.
Contrary to what it is assumed, Cuban education tries to develop
and foster creativity, critical thinking, research and cooperative
learning environments.
Moreover, this had been accomplished
with the limited material resources the country possesses, the
absence of long-term foreign aid or soft loans. The outcome is
even more extraordinary if one considers the 42 year economic
embargo that the United States government has imposed on the
island, the disappearance of the Soviet bloc, and the fact that
the accomplishments have been done by the Cubans without significant
foreign assistance since 1992.
No other country in this hemisphere has
the equity found in Cuba. Despite such uniqueness there has been
little investigation of how it has been done. This is a huge
oversight. Yet, some countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia
have requested assistance from Havana. They are aware that the
Cuban government has come up with human capital and organizational
alternatives for those who have few resources. The Cubans are
sharing their experiences in the areas of education, health,
social welfare, sports, culture, social security, employment,
research and the environment. The Cubans have countered the embargo/blockade
with resolute self-reliance, innovation and sacrifice. Granted
the country faces numerous problems in housing, transportation
and communication infrastructure, foreign exchange, food availability
and labor productivity. Nonetheless, the World Bank, the Inter
American Bank, American universities and U.S. politicians need
to seriously study that unique island, and its surprising accomplishments
despite all the odds.
Nelson Valdes
is a professor of sociology specializing in Latin America at
the University of New Mexico. He can be reached at: nvaldes@unm.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 25 / 26, 2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce
Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler
/ Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets'
Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
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