Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. A Thomas Friedman quizThomas Friedman: The Lexus and the Olive Tree. The World is Flat. A column in the New York Times. "Arguably the world's most influential and popular foreign-policy thinker," according to The Washingtonian.Quick dear readers—which quote is parody and which is the real Thomas Friedman? A. We got this free market, and I admit, I was speaking out in Minnesota - my hometown, in fact - and guy stood up in the audience, said, "Mr. Friedman, is there any free trade agreement you'd oppose?" I said, "No, absolutely not." I said, "You know what, sir? I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative [sic]. I didn't even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade." (in which Friedman admits that he knew next to nothing about a policy he promoted in the NYT) or B. Let's face it—at this point I'm a rich guy, and I work for a newspaper run by guys who are even richer than I am. (in which Friedman owns up to his own place in the globalization hierarchy) Answer: A is an actual quote. B is parody. Norman Solomon discusses both Friedman's wealth and his journalistic integrity in a Truthout editorial. (Thanks to dcart for the Truthout link.) Solomon reports that The Washingtonian's July profile of Friedman had "scant ink to spare for criticisms of Friedman's outlook: ... strong support of ... international trade rules and government policies [that] allow corporations to function with legal prerogatives that routinely trump labor rights, environmental protection, and economic justice." Dollars & Sense has plenty of that ink, though. Here's a small selection of our coverage of the downsides to corporate globalization:
Technorati Tags: Thomas Friedman, globalization, inequality, media analysis Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Dollars & Sense becomes the Book Liberation FrontDollars & Sense has temporarily transformed itself into the Book Liberation Front.The warehouse where we have stored our book inventory for several years is doubling its minimum monthly storage fee on November 1. Soon after we got the news, we found a new home for the books at Encuentro 5—the fifth floor of the UNITE HERE building in Boston which, thanks to the efforts of Mass Global Action, serves as a super-groovy shared work/gathering/event space for many local progressive organizations. All that remained was to move the books. That, dear blog reader, is where you come in. If you're local and free on Tuesday, October 31, you can join the Book Liberation Front. The task might seem daunting to some, but with enough strong backs, sharp brains, and willing hands, moving and organizing three tons of books should be a snap! The BLF knows this from direct experience—on Friday, the original 8 BLF members (D&S Business Manager Esther Cervantes, her partner John-Paul Ferguson, Bruno and another warehouse worker whose name we didn't catch, Kim Foltz and Suren Moodliar of Mass Global Action, and two other men from the new building—huge thanks to all!) loaded one ton of books into a cargo van, drove them to Boston, unloaded them onto the sidewalk, and moved them up to Encuentro 5. It only took half a day. With an increased BLF membership, the rest of the move could be even easier. The rest of the move happens on Tuesday, October 31. We'll need people:
In exchange for your efforts, we can offer pizza, beer, camaraderie, and an introduction to the lovely Encuentro 5. If you're available and willing, Encuentro 5 is on the fifth floor of the UNITE HERE building at 33 Harrison Ave in Boston (map). It's less than a five minute walk down Essex Street from the Chinatown stop on the orange line: turn right from Essex onto Harrison; 33 Harrison is a block or so from that intersection. And, if you can't make it, you can always support the BLF by donating to the pizza and beer fund. Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Background on the crisis in Oaxaca.Violence has escalated in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Several protesters were killed last Friday, including Brad Will, an independent journalist affiliated with New York Indymedia. Mexican president Vincente Fox has sent federal police forces into Oaxaca.The following report is from the Inter Press Service News Agency: The Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO), which is demanding the removal of Governor Ruiz, who they accuse of corruption and authoritarianism, declared itself on maximum alert and called on its members to put up resistance to any violent actions of which they are the target. For the full IPS report, click here. For a report from the Guardian, click here. (Thanks to Portside for these links.) David Bacon's article in the September/October issue of Dollars & Sense, Oaxaca's Dangerous Teachers, gives background information on the current crisis, and the key role of cross-border organizing in the Oaxacans' resistance to the governor's corrupt and repressive regime. Technorati Tags: Oaxaca, Bradley Will Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). The Economist: Weapon of Mass Deduction?The Economist's latest ad campaign has become ubiquitous in Boston over the past few weeks. Similar to the recent Snickers campaign that co-opts the adbusting technique of subverting a brand's logo, The Economist's ads feature the magazine's red-box logo with various slogans replacing the words "The Economist."And, as much as D&S laments the reverse subversion, we have to admit that the taxi roof signs with the red-box logo and the word "Illuminating" are kind of amusing—although it could just as easily be read as an advertisement for that other British newspaper, The Sun. But the one that really gets us is The Economist's red-box logo with the slogan "Weapon of Mass Deduction." Really? The Economist supported the U.S.'s 2003 invasion of Iraq, continued its support even after the discovery of Iraq's complete lack of weapons of mass destruction destroyed the ostensible reason for the invasion, and keep on supporting the occupation of Iraq even though it has killed thousands of soldiers and hundreds of thousands of civilians, doubled acute malnutrition among Iraqi children, and cut Iraq's national income by 40%, while benefiting few people other than Bechtel and Halliburton shareholders. You'd think that no one at The Economist had any powers of deduction at all. The slightest bit of thought would have told them that advertising The Economist with a play on weapons of mass destruction is in incredibly poor taste. Technorati Tags: Iraq, WMD, The Economist, adbusting Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Solving the wrong problem in MichiganDollars & Sense blogs, and some of our readers blog, too. Today, subscriber Richard Murphy justifies his lack of support for Michigan ballot proposal 5, which allocates half a billion additional funding for K-university education.There is no problem that the schools face that is isolated to the schools - all of these are symptomatic of larger issues, at both the state and national levels. At all levels, we need to fight the decades-old mantra of cut-taxes-cut-spending-cut-taxes-more, and the schools are an important weapon in this fight. We must resist the urge to patch over the schools' budget problems, to mandate funding without examining the larger issues involved and thereby pit our schools against everything else that is important to us. This is an exellent example of the divide-and-conquer tactics that Norquistian conservatism uses to maintain the race to the bottom. ... Proposal 5 is a superficial band-aid cure, and will only serve to sabotage system-wide well-being. Schools are the canary in the social coal mine, and offering the canary an aspirin won't improve the air. Dollars & Sense coverage of state budget problems: Balancing State Budgets: Who Will Pay?; State Budgets in Crisis Technorati Tags: state budget, school funding Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Econamici: The End of Iraq, by Peter GalbraithThe End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War without End, by Peter Galbraith From the day the war in Iraq became imaginable, my husband and I have not missed a peace march. Nonetheless, as the slaughter continues, I have worried about how the US can extricate itself. Ambassador Peter Galbraith's book is reassuring, if that's the right word, that a prompt withdrawal really can't make matters worse. Galbraith has been accused of advocating the partitioning of Iraq--in the face of long-term U.S. insistence on a unified Iraq. Not so, he says. The Iraqis have already partitioned themselves--on paper and on the ground. On paper, the new constitution creates a federation of provinces--a federation so loose that it leaves the central government only a handful of exclusive functions, notably, foreign affairs, defense policy, monetary and fiscal policy, and managing the flows of the Tigris and Euphrates. On the ground, there's Kurdistan in the north, Shiites in the south, and Sunnis in the central western triangle. There's a long history here, which the Bush Administration has totally disregarded. The British created Iraq itself after World War I, by combining three mutually-hostile provinces of the former Ottoman Empire. They put the relatively more educated Sunni minority in charge, and even appointed a foreign Sunni Arab as king, Feisal I, in 1921. In 1958, the military overthrew the monarchy. Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party seized power in 1968; he made himself president in 1979. In 1980, he picked a border war with Iran; when the war went badly, the US helped him target Iranian troops--with poison gas. In 1988, after the war was settled along the original borders, Saddam proceeded to poison and bulldoze Kurdish villages in the north, and then to invade Kuwait. Following the Kuwait war, Saddam brutally reasserted control in the north and in the south. Galbraith himself campaigned actively to have the US impose the northern no-fly zone that then allowed Kurdistan to become a de facto independent state in 1991. When the US invaded in 2003, deposed Saddam, abolished the Ba'ath Party, and dissolved the Sunni-dominated army, it unstuck the glue that held Iraq together. As Galbraith puts it, Humpty Dumpty fell from the wall. The Shiite clerics returned from exile in Iran, turning southern Iraq into a collection of theocracies allied to Iran. Only the Sunnis, occupying an oil-less territory, still seek a unified Iraq. Galbraith supported the invasion of Iraq. However, as an active observer and advisor in the post-invasion negotiations between the various groups, he quickly ran afoul of the "arrogance, ignorance and political cowardice" of the Bush Administration. He recites one mind-boggling incident after another. For example, at the start of the war, Bush knew nothing of the implacable religious hostility between Sunnis and Shiites, each of whom regard the others as apostates. Or, to administer billions in reconstruction funds, the Pentagon hired a group of 20-somethings whose only qualification proved to be that they had posted their resumes to the Heritage Foundation website! How does Galbraith see the present situation? Much of Iraq is actually fairly stable and peaceful--completely so in Kurdistan. However, horrendous "ethnic cleansing" goes on in border areas, as populations relocate to ethnically pure communities. Baghdad is "the most dangerous city in the world." The now Shiite-dominated army and police cannot solve the problem--they ARE the problem. The US army cannot and will not act as police; there is no other capable entity in the wings (like NATO in former Yugoslavia). The US should leave, retaining only a strike force in friendly Kurdistan, in case Al Qaida attempts to establish training camps in the Sunni triangle. Iraq is a tragedy, made inevitable by British colonial manipulation, but worse by US bungling. From 1979 to 1993 Peter Galbraith was senior advisor to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. From 1993 to 1998, he served as first Ambassador to Croatia, where he helped broker the peace process. He is currently a fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. More Econamici I send Econamici--occasional emails with interesting attachments or links--to friends who are economists or care about economic issues. If you can't follow a link, I can send you the actual article. Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Webwashing 2.0Say you're the manager of a company that does nasty things, like killing union workers in Colombia. Before you know it, people are writing about it on the web.What should you do to help your company's reputation? a) Resign in disgust b) Get your company to change its behavior c) Post bogus comments and links to misdirect people searching on Google Ding! Ding! Ding! A nifty blog called Online Reputation Management gives step-by-step instructions for c): 1. Respond to the negative post by leaving a comment of your own on the same forum or blog, but on a different page. Include your full name (or company name) in the post. 2. Have a friend reply to your post. 3. Reply to your friend's post and include your full name (or company name) again. 4. Repeat this one more time on a different page within the forum or blog - not the negative post and not the one you just did, but a 3rd page. 5. Tag the 2 new pages that contain your name / company name and also point a few links to them (either place them on your own site or ask a friend). Now, instead of the factual posts about your company's misdeeds, most search engines will show snippets of the baloney from you and your friends! Problem solved. Crisis forgotten. Nice to know that those business school ethics courses are being put to such good use. Technorati Tags: business ethics, public relations, Coke, Coca Cola Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). 2nd US Federation of Worker Cooperatives ConferenceD&S co-editor Chris Sturr and business manager Esther Cervantes spent the weekend in New York at the 2nd US Federation of Worker Cooperatives conference. Panel topics ranged from nuts-and-bolts—How to Make Your Co-op Loan-Ready—to big-picture—Unions and Worker Cooperatives: Is There Room for Collaboration?. And we got to meet tons of people who work in co-ops, to discuss their models of worker participation and ownership, and learn about the products and services they offer. There are small non-profit collectives like D&S, large, for-profit, employee-owned service providers like Cooperative Home Care Associates, and everything in between. And co-ops offer everything from publications and home health care to haute cuisine and web design, coffee, cheese, bike repairs, and car parts. (Check out the list of USFWC members.)Highlights for D&S included raising awareness about the magazine, especially through our special joint issue with Grassroots Economic Organizing on cooperatives and the solidarity economy, raising funds for USFWC by auctioning off a D&S subscription and books, and learning how D&S helps activists, organizers, and other co-ops. During the conference's opening reception at Colors restaurant, a manager came up to us and said that two diners in the past week told her they went to Colors because they heard about it in D&S. (coverage: 2006; 2004) Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). New Nobel Prize Economist - Wrong on Unemployment?This year's Nobel Prize winner in economics has just been announced: Edmund Phelps, a Columbia University economist, for his work on unemployment and inflation. Phelps is one of the economists of the "natural rate of unemployment" theory -- the theory that has provided the intellectual foundation for employing fear-mongering about inflation to fight job-creation policies.In the current issue of D&S, Dr. Dollar offers a primer on the history of the unemployment-inflation tradeoff and a political-economy critique of natural-rate-of-unemployment theory (and of its recent demise -- in the late 1990s, the U.S. unemployment rate went well below what economists claimed was its "natural" rate without causing the accelerating inflation that they'd repeatedly warned would result): http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2006/0906drdollar.html If you're looking for a (brief) progressive analysis of Phelp's technical arguments about inflation and real-wage expectations, check out Dean Baker's Oct. 9 "Beat the Press" column: http://www.prospect.org/deanbaker/ Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Photos from D&S event available Dollars & Sense's September 15 event on Economic Justice and African American Communities was a big success. A large and lively crowd gathered at the Community Church of Boston for a participatory forum with anti-poverty organizer Diane Dujon, labor activist Bill Fletcher, and Boston city councillor Chuck Turner, in honor of D&S's own Chris Tilly. More images here. Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Solidarity Economics & Participatory EconomicsEthan Miller's overview of solidarity economics in the July/August issue of Dollars & Sense has started a good discussion of the potential of Miller's decentralized, action-oriented approach to transforming our economy and Michael Albert's more fully theorized Participatory Economics model—essentially a model for participatory planning of a whole economy's production.Miller asks: Can thousands of diverse, locally-rooted, grassroots economic projects form the basis for a viable democratic alternative to capitalism? It might seem unlikely that a motley array of initiatives such as worker, consumer, and housing cooperatives, community currencies, urban gardens, fair trade organizations, intentional communities, and neighborhood self-help associations could hold a candle to the pervasive and seemingly all-powerful capitalist economy. Miller sees solidarity economics' rejection of "one-size-fits-all solutions and singular economic blueprints," as a strength, because it encourages the involvement of "those who are most affected" in the solutions to their economic problems. Which facilitates the organizing that Miller believes the movement needs if it is to fulfill its potential. In a response on ZNet, Michael Albert counters that Miller doesn't pay enough attention to the larger economy and its effects on the solidarity economy.
Parecon, Albert would contend, presents a model for creating such institutions. Meanwhile, at SolidarityEconomy.net, David Schweickart reviews Michael Albert's latest book, Parecon: Life after Capitalism and details the ways in which he believes Parecon to be too complicated to be practical. Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). See D&S at events in OctoberThe Dollars & Sense collective will be at several events around the northeast this month. Find us at:The presenation of the 2006 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. Juliet Schor and Samuel Bowles are the recipients. Th October 5; 5-7:30pm; Coolidge Room, Ballou Hall, Tufts University Medford Campus http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/about_us/leontief06.html TransFair USA's Free Trade Fiesta Celebrate fair trade month at the 2nd Annual Fair Trade Fiesta, to include: a fair trade photo exhibit, free chow, a letter writing campaign, a coffee farmer speaker, a fashion show, a silent auction, free champagne from 10-11 pm, a jazz band, and a DJ! Tickets are $10 (sliding scale), with all proceeds to benefit fair trade organizations. Sa October 7; 8pm - 2am; Umbria restarant at Galleria Boston (295 Franklin Ave) http://www.radicalendar.org/calendar/all/all/display/53518/index.php?view=event&fulldate=2006-10-07 The U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives' Second Conference for Worker Ownership and Workplace Democracy The conference will offer a mix of workshops on everything from how to start a worker co-op to personnel policies to franchising and growth to the state of the economy and how it affects worker cooperatives. We're also planning a special track of workshops focused on Building Community Wealth, which will explore how we can strengthen worker co-ops, as a community-based model of ownership, to address social and economic inequities. On Sunday, there will be a showing of The Take, the documentary about the worker cooperative movement in Argentina, where workers saved their jobs by taking back idle factories and putting them to work. Filmmaker Avi Lewis will be there to present it and talk about recent developments. F October 13 - Su October 15; New York http://www.usworker.coop/events/conferences Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). |
