Racism, Obama and the Fall of the American Economy
Fidel Castro | Counterpunch, Oct 13, 2008
Trade, within a society and between countries, is the exchange of goods and services produced by human beings. The owners of the means of production appropriate the profits. As a class, they are the leaders of the capitalist state and they boast of fostering development and social wellbeing through market. This they worship as an infallible God.
In every country there is competition between the strongest and the weakest; the ones with more physical energy and better fed, those who learned how to read and write, who attended school and have more experience accumulated; the ones with more extensive social relations and more resources, and those within society who fail to have these advantages.
Now, as far as the countries is concerned, there are differences between those with a better climate and more arable land, more water and more natural resources in the area where they are located, when there are no more territories to conquer; the ones mastering technology, having greater development and handling unlimited media resources and those who, on the contrary, do not enjoy any of these prerogatives. These are the sometimes enormous differences between the rich and the poor nations.
It´s the law of the jungle.
There are no differences between ethnic groups, however, when it comes to the mental faculties of the human being. This has been thoroughly proven by science. The present society is not the natural way in which human life evolved, but rather a creation of the mentally developed man without which his life would be inconceivable. Therefore, what is at stake is whether the human being will be able to survive the privilege of having a creative mind.
The developed capitalist system, epitomized by the country with a privileged nature where the European white man brought his ideas, dreams and ambitions, is today in a crisis. But, it is not the usual crisis happening once in a number of years; not even the traumatic crisis of the 1930s but the worst of all crises since the world started to pursue this growth and development model.
The current crisis of the developed capitalist system is taking place when the empire is about to change leadership in the elections to be held in twenty-five days; it was all that was left to see.
The candidate of the two main parties that will say the last word in these elections are trying to persuade the bewildered voters –many of whom have never cared to cast a vote- that as candidates to the presidency they can secure the wellbeing and consumerism of what they describe as a people of middle class only, even though they are not planning to introduce any real changes to what they consider the most perfect economic system the world has ever known. The same world that, in their respective minds, is less important than the happiness of over three hundred million people who account for less than five percent of the world population. The fate of the remaining ninety-five percent of human beings, peace and war, the fit or unfit-for-breathing air, will highly depend on the decisions of the administrative leader of the empire, whether or not that constitutional position has any power at a time of nuclear weapons and space shields moved by computers in circumstances where every second counts and when ethical principles keep loosing their value. Still, the more or less nefarious role of the President of that country cannot be overlooked.
Racism is deeply-rooted in the United States where the mind of millions of people can hardly reconcile with the notion that a black man, with his wife and children could live in the White House, which is precisely called White.
It´s a miracle that the Democratic candidate has not met the same destiny as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and others who only a few decades ago dreamed of justice and equality. He is in the habit of looking at his adversary with serenity and of smiling at the dialectic predicament of an opponent gazing into space.
The Republican candidate, on the other hand, who likes to enhance his reputation as a belligerent man, was one of the worst students in his class at West Point. He has confessed that he did not know any Mathematics; it can thus be assumed that he knew less of the complicated economic science.
The truth is his adversary surpasses him in cleverness and composure.
Something McCain has aplenty is age, and his health condition is not safe.
I am bringing up these data to indicate that eventually -if anything went wrong with the candidate´s health, in case he is elected- the lady of the riffle, the inexperienced former governor of Alaska could become President of the United States. It can be noticed that she does not know a thing.
Meditating on the current US public debt -$10,266 trillions- that President Bush is laying on the shoulders of the new generations in that country, I took to calculating how long it would take a man to count the debt that he has doubled in eight years.
A man working eight hours a day, without missing a second, and counting one hundred one-dollar bills per minute, during 300 days in the year, would need 710 billion years to count that amount of money.
I could not find a more graphic way to describe the volume of money that is practically mentioned every day now.
In order to avoid a general state of panic, the US administration has declared that it will secure deposits that do not exceed 250 thousand dollars. It will be managing banks and such funds as Lenin would never have thought of counting with an abacus.
We might be wondering about the contribution of Bush´s administration to Socialism. But, let´s not entertain any illusions. Once the banking operations go back to normal, the imperialists will return the banks to the private business as some other countries in this hemisphere have already done. The peoples always foot the bill.
Capitalism tends to reproduce itself under any social system because it is based on selfishness and on man´s instincts.
The only choice left to human society is to overcome this contradiction; otherwise it would not be able to survive.
At this time, the ocean of money being poured into the world finances by the central banks of the developed capitalist countries is dealing a hard blow to the Stock Exchanges of the countries which resort to these institutions in an effort to beat their economic underdevelopment. Cuba has no Stock Exchange. We shall certainly find more rational and more socialist ways of financing our development.
The current crisis and the brutal measures of the US administration to save itself will bring more inflation, more devaluation of the national currencies, more painful losses in the markets, lower prices for basic export commodities and more unequal exchange. But, they will also bring to the peoples a better understanding of the truth, a greater conscience, more rebelliousness and more revolutions.
We shall see how the crisis develops and what happens in the United States in twenty-five days.
A Billion Hungry People Need Rescue Plan Too
October 15, 2008By Wolfgang Kerler | Inter-Press Service
Sudanese youth scavenge for food and clothing in a municipal garbage dump in Juba on Sep. 4, 2008.
Credit:UN Photo/Tim McKulka
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 14 – Relief for the world’s hungry remains a distant prospect, with this year’s “Global Hunger Index” (GHI) attesting that even before the ongoing food crisis, 33 countries had “alarming” or “extremely alarming” levels of hunger.
India, home to the world’s largest food insecure population, launched its own India State Hunger Index Tuesday.
“Although we found several success stories, there was no across-the-board success,” Marion Aberle, a spokesperson for Welthungerhilfe (formerly known as German Agro-Action), told IPS about the recent GHI.
She added that “it is simply a scandal that almost one billion people worldwide are still suffering from hunger.”
Together with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Concern Worldwide, on Tuesday Welthungerhilfe launched GHI 2008, an index ranking 88 developing and transitional countries using the most recent available data from 2001 to 2006.
“The rankings do not reflect the current crisis of rising food prices, but they do highlight which countries could be most vulnerable to the crisis,” IFPRI said in a statement released simultaneously with the GHI.
The dramatic rise of food prices since 2006 has marked a major setback in the fight against malnutrition, as the countries most severely affected by hunger overwhelmingly are net-importers of cereals and other food.
“Although their agricultural sectors have the potential to feed their population,” Aberle added.
She stressed that “the only way to effectively eradicate hunger is to boost agricultural production in developing countries”. Additionally, an increase in food aid was needed for those who are currently hungry.
Three leading indicators — the proportion of undernourished, the prevalence of underweight children under five, and the under-five mortality rate — are combined into the GHI with a 100-point scale, 0 and 100 being best and worse, respectively.
Overall, the GHI fell by almost a fifth from 18.7 in 1990 to 15.2 in 2008, mostly due to progress in children’s nutrition. Improvement was scant in under-five mortality and the proportion of undernourished.
“The world has made only slow progress in reducing hunger in past decades, with dramatic differences among countries and regions,” said Joachim von Braun, IFPRI director general.
While the GHI decreased by almost 40 percent in Latin America, by about 30 percent in Southeast Asia and about 25 percent in South Asia, it shrunk by only 11 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa.
“Deterioration has been most dramatic in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),” Aberle said. With a GHI of 42.7 — up from 25.5 in 1990 — the country is now scoring worst.
In DRC, all common characteristics for states heavily affected by hunger can be found: war, violent conflict and political instability, high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, inequality and a lack of general freedom.
Other countries with “extremely alarming” levels of hunger (a GHI over 30 points) are Eritrea, Burundi, Niger, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ethiopia.
With the exception of Haiti, the 26 countries with an “alarming” level of hunger — described as a GHI between 20 and 29.9 — are all located in Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia.
As regions, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are scoring worst on the 2008 GHI, with 23.3 and 23.0 respectively.
The most success could be seen in Kuwait and Peru: Both countries have managed to decrease their GHI by about 70 percent — “examples showing that progress is possible”, said Aberle.
Since 1990, only a handful of countries made significant progress. About a third of the countries made modest progress — defined as a reduction of GHI between 25 and 50 percent.
Among those countries is India, whose GHI declined from 32.5 in 1990 to 23.7 in 2008 — ranking 66 on the GHI. With more than 200 million people, India is home to over one-fifth of the world’s hungry — hence, IFPRI decided to produce an India State Hunger Index (ISHI).
“We felt it was time to develop an India-specific index, but also one that would be comparable with the GHI,” Purnima Menon, a research fellow at IFPRI, told IPS.
The ISHI 2008 scores for the 17 major states in India whose hunger levels were calculated range from 13.6 for Punjab to 30.9 for Madhya Pradesh — showing that not a single state falls in the “low hunger” or “moderate hunger” categories, and representing the substantial differences between the regions.
In almost all the states, underweight children contribute most to the ISHI — but there are some where calorie deficiency has the largest contribution.
“The other interesting comparisons are the links between economic indicators and the hunger index,” Menon said. “Not all states that have high economic growth are doing well on hunger.”
To eradicate hunger in India, similar actions are needed: strengthening of agriculture, social protection, poverty reduction and the distribution of essential nutrition and health interventions to women and children in the period of pregnancy and the first two years of life.
Referring to the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent to solve the current financial crisis, Aberle from Welthungerhilfe said: “We would love to see similarly strong-willed action to fight the world food crisis.”
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Tags: food prices, Global Hunger Index, Haiti, hunger in Africa and Asia, IFPRI, India
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