Welcome to Bennett's Study

From the Author of No Land an Island and Unconscionable

Pondering Alphabetic SOLUTIONS: Peace, Politics, Public Affairs, People Relations

http://www.bennettponderingpeacepoliticssolutions.com/

http://www.bennettponderingpeacepoliticssolutions.com/author/

http://www.bennettponderingpeacepoliticssolutions.com/buy/

UNCONSCIONABLE: http://www.unconscionableusforeignrelations.com/ http://www.unconscionableusforeignrelations.com/author/ http://www.unconscionableusforeignrelations.com/book/ http://www.unconscionableusforeignrelations.com/excerpt/ http://www.unconscionableusforeignrelations.com/contact/ http://www.unconscionableusforeignrelations.com/buy/ SearchTerm=Carolyn+LaDelle+Bennett http://www2.xlibris.com/books/webimages/wd/113472/buy.htm http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/AdvancedSearch/Default.aspx? http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx

http://todaysinsight.blogspot.com

Friday, March 29, 2013

Legacy-ascended “Liberal” chooses militarism, abusive prisons over education


Consequence of inherited office, entrenched officeholders
Editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

“Liberal” governor promotes militarism

California Governor Jerry Brown announced today that he has convened a panel on military matters to advise the state on efforts to expand California’s defense industry and to protect against federal [military] budget cuts.

Something, my opinion, that has seriously weakened this “Union” is an insidious fragmentation caused by officeholders competing for or pandering to narrow interests of individual people and states, private and public groups and corporations ─ a quid pro quo, “Pork Barrel” politics for money, influence, votes. 

T
he formation of the Governor's Military Council comes as $85 billion in across-the-board, federal spending reductions start taking effect under sequestration.

The 18-member panel includes Republican and Democratic lawmakers, retired military admirals and generals and the adjutant general of the California National Guard. Their positions on the panel are unpaid.

Militarism over education

A new study from the Public Policy Institute of California shows California “budget cuts have led to sharp declines in community college enrollment.” 


Between 2007 until 2012, “California’s community college system sustained about $1.5 billion in state budget cuts” leading colleges to cut staff, increase class sizes and reduce the number of courses ─ a 21 percent course reduction and corresponding decrease in student enrollment during the latest academic year studied. 

“The study shows total enrollment dropped by almost half a million students.” 


Prison Industrial Complex
“Liberal” governor obstructs human rights ─ fights to end oversight

U
.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson six years ago “ruled that federal oversight of [California’s] prison health care system was needed after determining that an average of one inmate per week died as a result of malpractice or neglect.”

Executive
obstruction
Jerry Brown is fighting continued oversight.

A report issued in January 2013 by Special Master Matthew Lopes said Governor Jerry Brown’s request to end federal oversight of the state prison system was premature, citing several reasons for the need for continued federal oversight, including that:

At least 32 inmates committed suicide in 2012;
Prisons had various lapses in care; and
Patients with mental illnesses sometimes were put in isolation units for long periods rather than given treatment. 


I
Prison Industrial Complex
n a hearing this week considering the California governor’s challenge to continued oversight ─ examining whether to end federal oversight of California’s prison health care system ─ U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton said state officials’ actions “to build support for their case (source: the Sacramento Bee reports (Walsh, Sacramento Bee, 3/27) could be viewed as a ‘profound ethical violation.’”

Nepotism, entrenchment, 
Legacy ascsendancy = 
Backwardness

Edmund Gerald (Jerry) Brown, Jr. (b. April 7, 1938), with his father’s name recognition has hopscotched up and down the spectrum of California state office. Along the way, dubbed “moonbeam” and “fringe,” he has changed his mind at will and at anyone’s expense.

In the 1970s, Governor Jr. was an environmentalist and “liberal,” handing out a “first-ever tax incentive for rooftop solar” and appointing more women and minorities to office than any other previous California governor. 

He also opposed the death penalty and appointed judges who opposed capital punishment.

In the 1980s, Brown opposed calls for universal national health insurance and an employer mandate to provide catastrophic private health insurance.

O
n June 28, 2012, again as Governor Jr., Brown signed a budget deeply slashing social services and education. “Tough choices,” he called them, to “help get California back on track.”

Too-long occupation

In his latest hold on office, this entrenched legacy-ascended politician has occupied California’s top executive office since 2011. He also held it in the years 1975-1983. But his occupation of California office extends to 1969.

Before and between governorships, Brown Jr held various state, local, and party positions. Among them: membership on the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees (1969–1971), Secretary of State of California (1971–1975), California Democratic Party chairman (1989–1991), Oakland Mayor (1999–2007) and California Attorney General (2007–2011). 

You might say that Brown owns the State of California.

Swearing in
Brown Jr
1975
Outside this occupation, he reached for and failed to achieve the U.S. presidency (1976, 1980, 1992) and the United States Senate (1982). 

Brown Jr. is the son of California’s 32nd governor (1959-1967), Edmund Gerald (Pat) Brown Sr. (b. April 21, 1905 – d. February 16, 1996).
Brown Jr fans
2011


T
his is what happens when office is inherited, when mass populations practice tribal politics, when citizens are lazy or “fall in love” with “pedigree” or personality. The end of this man’s tenure in office is long overdue.


Sources and notes

“By 2011, enrollment was at a 20 year low. Study: Budget Cuts Hurt Community College Enrollment” (by Amy Quinton), (Sacramento, CA) ─ Monday, March 25, 2013, http://www.capradio.org/185741?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CapitalPublicRadiocapitolRSS+%28Capital+Public+Radio%3A+State+Government+News+RSS%29

“Judge Says Ethical Issues Possible in Prison Health Care Oversight Case,” Thursday, March 28, 2013, http://www.californiahealthline.org/articles/2013/3/28/judge-says-ethical-issues-possible-in-prison-health-care-oversight-case.aspxead more: http://www.californiahealthline.org/articles/2013/3/28/judge-says-ethical-issues-possible-in-prison-health-care-oversight-case.aspx#ixzz2OxOJdRKs
http://www.californiahealthline.org/articles/2013/3/28/judge-says-ethical-issues-possible-in-prison-health-care-oversight-case.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Brown
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_brown

_________________________________________________


Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

________________________________________________

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

No more “Bracero Program,” no more manipulation of immigrants ─ Yolanda Alaniz

Time to end 
decades’-old, shameful 
Use-abuse-discard tactics
Editing, re-reporting by 
Carolyn Bennett 
Unconditional and immediate amnesty! Stop the deportations and ICE raids! No Bracero Program! Union wages for all! Workers given the freedom corporations have — open the borders!─ Yolanda Alaniz
Bracero Program
In Spanish the term is “bracero” means “manual laborer”: “one who works using his arms.”  

T
he Bracero Program of agreements, acts and nods between U.S. government officials and Mexico and growers and Mexico brought thousands of “temporary” workers from Mexico into the United States in the 1940s through the 1960s.

Discarded in Depression

In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, in a Mexican Repatriation action, more than 500,000 Mexican Americans were deported or pressured into leaving the United States.

When a demand for labor returned with World War II, “there were fewer Mexican Americans available.”

Embraced in war, expediency 
U.S. and Mexican presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Manuel Ávila Camacho in 1942 ─ “prompted by a demand for manual labor during World War II” ─ entered into agreements as part of the “Allies” in World War II. The Bracero Program was born.

The initial program agreements expired in 1947. But under a variety of laws and administrative agreements, the Bracero Program of temporary Mexican workers in the United States continued in agriculture until formally terminated in 1964.

In the period of the Bracero Program, the U.S. government brought a few hundred experienced Mexican agricultural laborers to harvest sugar beets in the Stockton, California area; followed by widespread use of Mexican workers who provided agricultural labor across the United States.

Texas initially opted out of the program, preferring an ‘open border’ policy. Until 1947, the Mexican government denied braceros to the State of Texas because of ‘perceived mistreatment’ of Mexican laborers.

U.S. Agricultural Laborers (Bracero) Program
Government-Corporate collusion 1940s-1960s

U.S. growers claiming ongoing U.S. labor shortages lobbied successfully for a number of congressional acts that extended the Bracero Program until 1948; and between 1948 and 1951, under administrative agreements negotiated by growers and the Mexican government, importation of Mexican agricultural laborers continued.

U.S. President Harry S. Truman on July 13, 1951, signed Public Law 78, a two-year program embodying formalized “protections” for Mexican laborers. This program was renewed every two years until 1963 when, under heavy criticism, it was extended for a single year ─ with the understanding it would not be renewed.

Nevertheless, despite the 1964 formal ending of the agricultural temporary worker program, agreements still covered smaller numbers of program contracts until 1967.

U.S. Railroad Laborers (Bracero) Program
This program’s official ending 1945 with ending of World War II

Together with the agricultural program was the railroad bracero program. It was “independently” negotiated to supply U.S. railroads ─ first with “unskilled” then with “skilled” workers for railroad track maintenance.

Quotas for the agricultural program working in the U.S. railroad system and working in the U.S. agriculture program were, by 1945, 75,000 and 50,000 braceros, respectively

I
n the current issue of Freedom Socialist Voice of Revolutionary Feminism, Yolanda Alaniz has penned “Obama’s cruel immigration hoax.”

U.S. President Barack Obama’s game plan is set, she writes. “Comprehensive immigration reform proposals generally have three main components:

Cracking down on what’s defined as illegal immigration;
Offering the hope of legal status for immigrants currently without papers; and
Enlarging guest worker programs 

M
ost sane people would agree that to use, abuse and discard workers is reprehensible. But Alaniz suggests this is not only what is happening to contemporary immigrants; but that it is happening as replay of the old 1940s-60s U.S. government-corporate Bracero story.

Alaniz recalls that the U.S. temporary-worker Bracero Program ─ described by a former Department of Labor officer as “‘legalized slavery’ ─ ended after decades of laborers [had been] underpaid, overworked, harassed, and poorly housed.”

From the time of the earlier program “to the dangerous cleanup after [2005’s] Hurricane Katrina,” she writes, “guest worker programs typically lure immigrants forced by desperate life-or-death situations to take temporary, low-paid work, exempt from normal labor protections. And tied to one employer, workers must keep a job to keep their work visa; so bosses can control these workers with the threat of deportation if they ─

Attempt to organize a union,
Demand standard wages and decent conditions, or
Report abuse or sexual assault
 
“Their super-exploitation,” she says, “lowers pay and conditions for all workers.”

Cruel government hoax

The Obama government’s cruel “immigration reform” hoax, Alaniz says, is rooted, on the one hand, in making sure “business can keep maximizing profits”; and on the other, maintaining the Party’s majority hold on the Latino vote.  

T
he “misnamed ‘path to citizenship’ is the carrot to attract popular support for Obama’s wretched plan,” she says, but the path is strewn with daunting obstacles: ‘rigorous security check,’ a series of fines, competency in English, payment of back taxes…[together with increasing border “fences, drones, agents, cameras, and radar].”

And “after all this, undocumented immigrants would still have to wait until the current backlog for green cards (the first step toward citizenship) disappears,” which means that “immigrants in some categories could wait 20 years!” she says.
 
“When it comes to guest worker programs, [the Obama administration] is playing it coy”: claiming to support agribusinesses’ need for workers while failing to “spell out what this means.” Yet the president’s eye is on competitiveness “with capitalists abroad” so he is clearly more vested in easing the way for “highly skilled STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) workers to remain in the United States.”

Yolanda Alaniz concludes with a personal call to action. “As a former farm worker who lived in the worst labor camps possible,” she declares: “I look forward to the revival of the militant movement — to once again see rank-and-file immigrant women leading a million strong down the streets, demanding what immigrants really need and what the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women have always called for:

Unconditional and immediate amnesty!

Stop the deportations and ICE raids!

No Bracero Program!

Union wages for all!

Workers given the freedom that corporations have — 
open the borders!




Sources and notes

“Obama’s cruel immigration hoax” (by Yolanda Alaniz), Freedom Socialist: Voice of Revolutionary Feminism, April-May 2013Volume 34, No. 2, in Spanish at http://www.socialism.com/drupal-6.8/?q=node/2131

Yolanda Alaniz 

Yolanda Alaniz is a feminist, activist, politician and writer.  She is author of iViva la Raza!: Chicano Identity and Resistance (Red Letter Press); coauthor (with Megan Cornish) of Viva la Raza: A History of Chicano; coeditor (with Nellie Wong) of Voices of Color: an anthology of writings by radicals of color; and serves on the Editorial Board of the Freedom Socialist newspaper coordinating the Voices of Color column.

She took her academic credentials at the University of California (MLIS, Los Angeles) and the University of Washington (BA, Journalism), the latter where became an influential member in Chicana/o rights organizations like MEChA, Brown Berets, and Las Chicanas. Yolanda Alaniz was born in Brownsville, Texas (1950), and raised in Sunnyside, Washington (Yakima Valley) where she and her family worked as farm workers.

Wikipedia note: Bracero Program, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_Program


______________________________________________

Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

______________________________________________

Monday, March 25, 2013

U.S. politicians pushing austerity ignore history, deny alternatives ─ Economist Richard Wolff


Solidarity against Austerity
Europe
Austerity 
Problems, 
Protests, 
Progressivist solutions
Editing, excerpting, brief comment by 
Carolyn Bennett

Pegged to social, employment, economic, banking, people crises sweeping Europe, the Mediterranean and America, economist Richard Wolff spoke today with Amy Goodman on Pacifica’s Democracy Now program.

Notes on Cyprus Cyprus is the third largest Mediterranean island, after Sicily and Sardinia, and lies about 40 miles (65 km) south of Turkey, 60 miles (100 km) west of Syria, and 480 miles (770 km) southeast of mainland Greece. This island in the eastern Mediterranean Sea has been renowned since ancient times for its mineral wealth, superb wines and produce, and natural beauty. In today’s news: AFP: “Cyprus secures bailout at cost of banks, jobs.”

Cyprus parliament last Tuesday “rejected a levy on bank deposits demanded in return for aid, raising the specter of a default for the island nation that could mean enduring wave after wave of spending cuts and tax rises, just like Greece.” … On Wednesday, “Greeks and opposition parties inspired by the Cypriot rejection … urged Athens to stand up to foreign lenders whose demands have resulted in repeated rounds of austerity that have made Greek life a misery.” [Reuters]


T
his some of what Richard Wolff had to say regarding the United States’ “Cyprus” crisis.

Dysfunction upon dysfunction

In the United States, Wolff said, we have a “dysfunctional government built on top of a dysfunctional economy.” 

Protests against austerity
Greece
[I call it a man-made crisis.]

“We have millions of people without work, millions of people losing their homes, an economy that doesn’t work for the vast majority,” Wolff recounts. And if “the government, the largest single buyer of goods and services, cuts back on the goods and services it buys, [then] companies across America will sell less and have less need for workers.” They will lay off workers and thereby worsen an already severe unemployment situation. 

Taxing the overtaxed

“We heard a lot of public debate [among Republicans and Democrats] about taxing rich people and not taxing rich people,” Wolff said, but “the tax on the wealthy” that went into effect on January 1, 2013, “is small compared to the tax on middle and lower incomes that went up on January 1st.…

Protests against austerity
Teachers, Students, Labor
USA
Raising payroll tax … from 4.2 to 6.2 percent, raised more than $125 billion—a huge amount of money, much more than was raised by taxing the rich—savaged middle- and lower-income groups, those whom presidential candidates during the 2012 campaign pledged to save and support.

[Over]Taxing middle- and lower-income groups attacked them and limited their capacity to buy goods and services.

T
he combined middle- and lower-income tax increases and government-spending decreases amount to “what every European country imposing austerity has already discovered: the worsening of the problem. These austerity steps do not better but worsen the economic conditions of the mass of people, Wolff said. “And that ought to be put as a fire burning at the feet of politicians, so they [will] stop talking in abstractions and deal with the reality of what they’re doing.”

Central Banks
Global
Enslaving the enslaved

On Democracy Now, Wolff said what is easily observable in the daily debt-driven junk mail that lands in Americans’ in-boxes. Banks “are (still) trying to get people to borrow more money.”

Government leadership or the masses’ refusal to change “the wage structure of America,” he said, “means Americans are required to go into debt to supplement their wages.”


[I call it enslavement in search of medieval debtors’ prisons].

Kick starting the economy, the language used by proponents of a model of austerity, consumption and more debt, Wolff says, is to put “that same train back on the track heading toward the same wall. In the first years of the twenty-first century, he says,

Launderers’ paradise
[The U.S.] economy was a train heading into a stone wall and if we get our economy going again ─ without fundamental changes ─ we are putting that same train back on the track heading toward the same wall. Cyprus shows us what’s happening.
  
H
owever, contrary to the “no-choice” view of contemporary promoters of austerity, Wolff penned in his 2012 Guardian (UK) article, there are alternatives, for the long term.

“Capitalism’s recurring tendencies toward extreme and deepening inequalities of income, wealth, and political and cultural power require resignation and acceptance – because there is no alternative?” This is untrue, he says. Alternatives do exist. 

“Every society chooses – consciously or not, democratically or not – among alternative ways to organize the production and distribution of the goods and services that make individual and social life possible.

“Modern societies have mostly chosen a capitalist organization of production. In capitalism, private owners establish enterprises and select their directors who decide what, how and where to produce and what to do with the net revenues from selling the output.

This small handful of people makes all those economic decisions for the majority of people – the majority who do most of the actual productive work.

The majority must accept and live with the results of all the directorial decisions made by the major shareholders and the boards of directors they select.

Major shareholders and boards of directors also select their own replacements.

“Capitalism thus entails and reproduces a highly undemocratic organization of production inside enterprises.


What to do: history lesson-plus

W
olff says in his Guardian article that what is required in the way of alternatives is “a radical change in policies,” going far beyond simply reversing the austerity program.

“The last time we had a breakdown of the capitalist system like this,” he recalls, “we didn’t have austerity; we didn’t have cutbacks. We had the opposite.” U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, in the mid-1930s created the Social Security system. His administration  

Went to everybody over 65 and said, ‘I'm going to give you a check for the rest of your life.’

He created the unemployment compensation system, for the first time, giving the unemployed checks every week for a year or two.

He created a public employment program and hired millions of workers.


Britannica note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), 32nd president of the United States (b. January 30, 1882 in Hyde Park, N.Y., d., April 12, 1945, Warm Springs, Georgia; presidential tenure: 1933 – 1945; the only U.S. president elected to the office four times, Roosevelt led the United States through two of the greatest crises of the 20th century: the Great Depression and World War II.

Under his administration came the “New Deal” and “Second New Deal.” The U.S. economy in 1935 was still bearing the effects of the 1929 Stock Market Crash. Millions of Americans were unemployed—many had been jobless for several years.

Roosevelt foresaw the possibility that in the 1936 presidential election he would face a significant third-party challenge from the left. And in 1935, to meet this threat, he asked Congress to pass additional New Deal legislation—sometimes called the “Second New Deal.”

The key measures of the Second New Deal were the Social Security Act, the Works Progress Administration (work program for the unemployed), and the Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act, the single most important piece of labor legislation enacted in the United States in the 20th century, enacted to eliminate employers’ interference with the autonomous organization of workers into unions).

The Social Security Act for the first time established an economic “safety net” for all Americans, providing unemployment and disability insurance and old-age pensions. 


T
his is “the opposite of austerity,” Wolff says. “So any politician [who pushes austerity measures] ‘because there’s no option,’ has forgotten [relatively recent] American history.”

And Wolff wants to go further, “go in the opposite direction” from the current direction because “the problems run deep.” The economy needs to be reorganized, he says, “so that, for the first time, we can say we’re not only going to get out of this crisis; but ─

We’re taking the kinds of steps that can prevent us from having [the same problems] over and over again as our unstable business-cycle-ridden economy keeps imposing on us.

As painful as it is, we finally have to face the more profound change. 

After 50 years of a country unwilling to face these questions, we need basic change. 

T
oday 20 percent of tools, equipment, factory and office space sits idle. Office space is unused, Wolff references Federal Reserve figures. People want to work and we have the tools, equipment and raw materials for them to work with ─ so put people to work. Make this a national issue and make it happen, Wolff says.
 
Roosevelt went to the wealthy and to the corporations and he said to them  

‘You must give me the money to take care of the mass of people, because if you don’t, we’re going to have a catastrophe in this country. We’re going to have a social revolution.’

The argument Wolff says he is making is that the United States should go back to the same or in the neighborhood of the same tax rates that Roosevelt imposed ─ “which is much higher on wealthy people and much higher on corporations than we have today. That’s what he did and that’s how he funded it,” Wolff answering Goodman’s question about cost.

Far from a career-ender, Wolff says, decisions on proper tax rates together with a federal employment program now missing in this country would be the best legacy a president could leave history.
 
P
rogressivism, in my opinion, takes from the best of what we know or can know and betters it. This philosophy seems evident in Richard Wolff’s economics. 

Now, if only we could get Americans to read, write and reflect; to speak clearly and to think independently, rationally, and out of a sense of social sensibility.


Sources and notes

“Capitalism in Crisis: Richard Wolff Urges End to Austerity, New Jobs Program, Democratizing Work,” Monday, March 25, 2013, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/25/capitalism_in_crisis_richard_wolff_urges

“Yes, there is an alternative to capitalism: Mondragon shows the way ─ Why are we told a broken system that creates vast inequality is the only choice? Spain's amazing co-op is living proof otherwise” (Richard Wolff , guardian.co.uk), June 24, 2012 10.13 EDT, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/24/alternative-capitalism-mondragon

Richard Wolff and some of his most recent works

“Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It” (book, film/DVD, 2009)

Books:
Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (2012).
Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian (with Stephen A. Resnick, 2012)
New Departures in Marxian Theory (with Stephen A. Resnick, 2006)
Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR (with Stephen A. Resnick, 2002)
Re/Presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism (with J.K Gibson-Graham and Stephen A. Resnick, 2001)
Class and Its Others (with J.K Gibson-Graham and Stephen A. Resnick, 2000)

Other
Host of weekly one-hour radio program “Economic Update” on WBAI, 99.5 FM, New York City (Pacifica Radio)

Regular contributor to The Guardian, Truthout.org, and the MRZine; interviews: on RT-TV, Democracy Now, Al Jazeera English, National Public Radio, Alternative Radio, and many other radio and television programs in the United States and abroad. His work can be accessed at rdwolff.com.

Well known for his work on Marxian economics, economic methodology, and class analysis, Richard D. Wolff (b. April 1, 1942) is an American economist; Professor of Economics Emeritus (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) and Visiting Professor in International Affairs (Graduate Program, the New School University, New York). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_D._Wolff

CYPRUS

Cyprus, the third largest Mediterranean island, after Sicily and Sardinia, lies about 40 miles (65 km) south of Turkey, 60 miles (100 km) west of Syria, and 480 miles (770 km) southeast of mainland Greece.

This island in the eastern Mediterranean Sea has been renowned since ancient times for its mineral wealth, superb wines and produce, and natural beauty.

AFP news ─ “Cyprus secures bailout at cost of banks, jobs” (by Charlie Charalambous),  March25, 2013, http://uk.news.yahoo.com/last-minute-deal-resurrects-cyprus-bailout-020846041.html#nLhPZ95

“Cyprus clinched a 10-billion-euro bailout on Monday averting a chaotic eurozone exit, allowing most banks to reopen after a 10-day closure, but at the cost of its status as an offshore banking centre.… The 11th-hour agreement deals a major hit to investors and depositors in the island’s biggest bank, the Bank of Cyprus, many of whom are Russian, and will also effectively shut down Laiki, its second-largest lender.

“Cyprus has become heavily reliant on banking deposits, including those of dubious origin, which have swollen to roughly four times the size of the island’s entire economy, and the biggest investors stand to lose the most.…

“Cyprus could now be in for a ‘deep recession caused by the shrinkage of the banking sector and severe de-leveraging,’ or paying down of debt, UBS economist Reinhard Cluse said. The fallout will begin immediately with food and medicine shortages likely in coming weeks as businesses struggle with a lack of cash in Cypriot banks, which were hammered by the agreement, said economic experts.

T
he final bailout will also probably involve a government austerity program, privatizations and tax increases at a time of deepening recession given job losses at banks and companies losing out on deposits.

Economists have forecast the Cyprus economy could now contract by at least 10 percent this year and by 8.0 percent in 2014.

Also http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/20/eurozone-cyprus-greece-heat-idUSL6N0CC79G20130320


W
orldatlas on Cyprus ─ Dateline: Monday, March 18, 2013 ─ “I mean, who is next? America? Canada?

“Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades announced today (last Monday) that he is battling against eurozone demands that all Cyprus bank customers pay a one-time levy in return for a bailout. Mr. Anastasiades said he shared people’s unhappiness with the terms, whereby ALL BANK CUSTOMERS would pay a levy of 6.75percent or 10 percent on their bank deposits.

“The EU and IMF have demanded the levy in return for a 10bn-euro ($13bn; £8.6bn) bank bailout. Mr Anastasiades said it was the worst crisis since Turkey invaded in 1974. The worst crisis is that politicians are in charge!

“Cyprus, a onetime Greek colony and the site of many military incursions over the centuries, is still today an island in conflict between two opposing factions.

“…If the island of Cyprus is to refresh its reputation around the world, the Greek and Turkish leaders are going to have to make some very courageous decisions because they share one small island.

“Somehow this ancient island of sunny weather and fascinating history has survived, and with some of the most popular beaches in Europe. Travelers do journey to Cyprus in large numbers.” http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/cy.htm


_________________________________

Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

_________________________________

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Profiteers at counter purposes with human need peddle cells, not privies

Sudanese woman
carries water home

Baffling (or is it?): Why Third World under-developing countries remain underdeveloped ─ or worse
Re-reporting, editing, brief comment by 
Carolyn Bennett

Canon of profiteers: profit at all costs holds back human progress

S
ix billion of the world’s seven billion people have mobile phones. But only 4.5 billion have access to toilets or sanitary latrines, the United Nations reported on World Water Day March 22. 

Woman in Northern India
bathes at public pump
Dehumanizing human beings

Some 2.5 billion people, mostly in rural areas of Asia and Africa, have no access to proper sanitation. In the twenty-first century, 1.1 billion people have no choice but to defecate in the open.

“Let’s face it,” UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson says, “this is a problem that people do not like to talk about. But ─

It goes to the heart of ensuring good health, a clean environment and fundamental human dignity for billions of people – and achieving the Millennium Development Goals.


R
eview: the eight UN Millennium Development Goals for 2015:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development

Woman seeks water
from karez at
Piskandi Village
Northern Iraq
Developing countries never develop

But nearing 2015, countries of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, some 20 countries, account for more than 80 percent of the global problem of open defecation. These countries have the 
  • Highest incidence of death among the under-five-year-olds;
        • High levels of malnutrition and poverty; and
      • Large disparities in wealth

Women and girls are hardest hit. Lack of sanitation is particularly detrimental to women and girls, the UN reports. Women and girls who have to leave their homes to find a place to urinate or defecate are vulnerable to sexual violence. The lack of toilets in schools impedes girls’ access to education.

What if corporate canon changed?

The head of one non-governmental organization, WaterAid, which focuses on water and sanitation, said, “Few interventions would have greater impact on the lives of women and girls than addressing the health problems caused by poor sanitation and hygiene.”

Little girls carrying watercross rice field
after heavy rains
The United Nations says investing in good sanitation is a good investment. Such investment “produces a good return: Every dollar spent on sanitation brings a $5.50 return by keeping people healthy and productive.”

A
pproaching 2015, the United Nations reports, however, that the target in the MDGs of at least halving the proportion of people without access to sanitation ─ and this is a small order, achievable but for countering profit motives  ─ has “far to go.”

This means that the goal will not be achieved without a change in ethos and canon, political will, change of heart. A conviction that all of us are Africa and Asia and their well-being is our well-being,  that we are not islanded and apart. 
Delivering water in
Sudan

No land an island no people apart.


Surely, I am not the only person who believes this ─ that we can do better if we alter the course of our thinking and acting, our sense of being among peoples coexisting in world society. I think the United Nations tries in a variety of special days, celebrations and conferences to help us sense this “oneness.”

This year has been designated “International Year of Water Cooperation.” Friday March 22 was “World Water Day.”



Sources and notes

“More people have mobile phones than toilets – UN” (AlertNet, Lisa Anderson), March 22, 2013, http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/more-people-have-mobile-phones-than-toilets

UN Millennium Development Goals

In September of the year 2000, leaders of 189 countries met at the United Nations in New York and endorsed the Millennium Declaration, a commitment to work together to build a safer, more prosperous and equitable world.

The Declaration was translated into a roadmap setting out eight time-bound and measurable goals to be reached by 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals

Eight UN Millennium Development Goals for 2015

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development

http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/mdgoverview.html
For more information, please visit: www.un.org/millenniumgoals
http://www.un.org/en/mdg/summit2010/pdf/List%20of%20MDGs%20English.pdf

The United Nations reports that the Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people without access to improved sources of water has been met but

The target to halve the proportion of people without access to sanitation still has “far to go.”

A call to action issued by U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson aims at a 2025 goal of improving hygiene, better managing of   human waste and waste-water, and eliminating the practice of open defecation.

“Ending open defecation,” says United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) deputy executive director Marin Mogwanja, “will contribute to a 36 percent reduction in diarrhea,” a condition that kills three quarters of a million under-five-year-old children every year.”
 
World Water Day March 22

World Water Day is held annually on March 22 as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources.

An international day to celebrate freshwater was recommended at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).  The United Nations General Assembly responded by designating March 22, 1993, as the first World Water Day.

E
ach year, World Water Day highlights a specific aspect of freshwater. In 2013, in reflection of the International Year of Water Cooperation, World Water Day is also dedicated to the theme of cooperation around water and is coordinated by UNESCO in collaboration with UNECE and UNDESA on behalf of UN-Water. http://www.unwater.org/water-cooperation-2013/events/world-water-day/en/

2013 International Year of Water Cooperation

In December 2010, following the proposal initiated by Tajikistan [a country lying in the heart of Central Asia, bordered by Kyrgyzstan on the north, China on the east, Afghanistan on the south, and Uzbekistan on the west and northwest] and submitted by a group of countries, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2013 ─  the United Nations International Year of Water Cooperation (Resolution A/RES/65/154).

T
he United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was appointed by UN-Water to lead the preparations for both the 2013 International Year of Water Cooperation and the World Water Day, in collaboration with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and with the support of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), the UN-Water Decade Program on Capacity Development (UNW-DPC) and the UN-Water Decade Program on Advocacy and Communication (UNW-DPAC).

UN-Water called upon UNESCO to lead the 2013 International Year of Water Cooperation in view of the organization’s multi-dimensional mandate in the realm of natural and social sciences, culture, education and communication, and its significant and long-standing contribution to the management of the world’s freshwater resources. http://www.unwater.org/water-cooperation-2013/water-cooperation/en/

IMAGES
http://www.flickr.com/photos/unworldwaterday/8476002418/

UNESCO Béatrice Petit, Aerial view of Assouan dam Egypt water coop 2013

© Dale Lightfoot, 2010, Woman seeking water from the karez at Piskandi Village in northern Iraq....
© UN Photo/Milton Grant, A young woman pumps water from a well in the lowlands area of Eritrea.
© UN Photo/Tim McKulka, A Sudanese woman carries water home in a plastic container.
Delivering water in Sudan - All rights reserved, Uploaded on Feb 15 2013
© Kate Holt: During the drought last year many people died. Eyanai, a young boy, et.al  ...
UN Photo/Martine Perret, Little girls cross a rice field after heavy rains carrying water in plastic containers.



________________________________________

Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

________________________________________