The song No Charge reminds us that Britain used to be less greedy

Those who believe the myth that 1970s Britain was 'the sick man of Europe' forget how progressive the decade was

Neil Clark
Neil Clark
guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 June 2011 10.30 BST



It's regarded by some as one of the slushiest No 1 records of all time. It's exactly 35 years ago this week that No Charge, sung by the Canadian artist JJ Barrie, got to No 1 in the British pop charts – and thanks to the wonders of BBC4, who are repeating Top of the Pops shows from 1976 on a weekly basis, we'll all be able to see it performed on our television screens next Monday.

Some won't be looking forward to it too much – in his Guardian article of a week ago, Alexis Petridis claimed that 1976 was the worst year for pop music ever.

But leaving aside debates about musical merit, what watching the repeats of Top of the Pops and other programmes from the same era on channels such as Yesterday, ITV3 and ITV4 shows us is what a less commercialised age the pre-Thatcherite 1970s were.

No Charge might be considered over-sentimental by some, but it is also a powerful critique of the mentality of putting a dollar sign on things we should be doing for free.

It's extremely unlikely that such a song would be released in the uber-capitalist Britain of today, let alone get to No 1. But in the progressive, left-leaning mid-1970s, it was always likely to be a hit.

Thanks to the glories of the "market economy", many things which were free, or at least very cheap, 35 years ago, cost a small fortune today. In 1976 you didn't have to book up months in advance to find a reasonable train fare from London to Liverpool, you just turned up on the day. Utility bills were not something to be feared in the days when publicly owned bodies and not profit-hungry private companies provided your electricity, gas and water.

Students going on to higher education did not have to worry about building up huge debts in order to pursue their studies. Neither did old people have to worry about selling their homes in order to finance going into care. And in those pre-Sky days, all the best sports – including live coverage of England's summer Test match series – could be watched on television for the very modest cost of the licence fee.

In short, in the social democratic Britain of the 1970s, No Charge was not just the name of a No 1 hit record, it summed up the ethos of the era – an era in which the interests of people came before corporate profits.

This aspect of the 1970s is often lost in accounts of the period. The dominant neoliberal narrative casts 1970s Britain as the "sick man of Europe" – a country rescued from the horrors of collectivism by the great saviour Margaret Thatcher. But even the liberal left have bought in to large parts of this rightwing myth, and have failed to stick up for the 1970s as much as they should. The fact that Britain went to the IMF in the autumn of 1976 is taken as proof that the postwar settlement had failed – even Denis Healey, chancellor at the time, has admitted: "We didn't really need the money at all."

Watching television programmes of the 1970s reminds us of the anti-capitalist values which were once mainstream. The year that No Charge got to No 1 saw the television debut of James Mitchell's drama series, When the Boat Comes In, which tells the story of trade union activist and strike organiser Jack Ford. The Onedin Line, currently being re-shown on the Yesterday channel, highlighted the greed of unscrupulous ship-owners and the terrible conditions that sailors had to endure in the 19th century. Upstairs Downstairs, another 70s classic being repeated on ITV3, showed how those "downstairs" saw their position improve in the 20th century. In Poldark, the title character takes the side of the poor against the greedy landowner and banker George Warleggan.

Since the days when those programmes were screened, we've seen the money-grabbing values of the City and Wall Street permeate all aspects of our lives. Who would have thought that water – which falls out of the sky for free – would become a tradable commodity, or that care homes would be owned by City investors?

While in the summer of 1976 we were listening to No Charge and enjoying the lowest levels of inequality in our history, in the grossly unequal Britain of June 2011, we're tuning into The Apprentice. The proto-Thatcherite little boy in No Charge – who wants to bill his mum $5 for "mowin the lawn" and $1 for "takin out the trash" – rightly gets corrected: today he'd probably be lauded as a brilliant up-and-coming entrepreneur.

Neoliberals want us to believe that "market forces" are the only show in town. But watching 1970s television programmes gives us a window into a world where things were different. It's not possible to turn the clock back to 1976, but we can make the title of JJ Barrie's No 1 hit record the slogan for a better and less commercialised Britain.

What I would do as head of the IMF

What I would do as head of the IMF

My leadership challenge aims to expose the IMF's policy of imposing brutal cuts while protecting indebted states' creditors

Aurelie
Aurélie Trouvé
guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 June 2011 13.42 BST
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IMF ireland
Protesters outside parliament in Dublin in December last year. Photograph: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images

Today is the deadline for nominations in the race for the IMF leadership, and I have put forward a radically alternative candidate to do the job: me.

I am a French economics lecturer and have been the co-chair of the association Attac, an international organisation and network in the global justice movement, for four years. Attac is present in more than 40 countries worldwide, and has tens of thousands of adherents. Founded in France in 1998 by dozens of other associations, unions and alternative media, it has been a mainstay of the construction of the World Social Forum. We are a popular education movement that is action-oriented, and we denounce the mechanisms of neoliberalism while proposing tangible alternatives to both disarm the big world of finances and build an economy at the service of wealth-sharing and the preservation of our planet.

My leadership challeng aims to expose the current and past policies of the IMF, which are to unconditionally defend the interests of the creditors of indebted states while imposing brutal plans of social austerity (look at the state of Hungary, Ukraine and Latvia in 2008, Iceland in 2009, and Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland in 2010). Since the devastation brought by the financial crisis in 2008, neither the G20 nor the IMF or other international institutions have taken any steps to significantly reduce the volatility of international financial markets. Speculation is now raging, both on commodities and the securities of public debts.

With the above with mind, here are five crucial steps to tackle the crisis which I would put forward, should I become head of the IMF:

• I would put a stop to all austerity plans, and establish a tax on financial transactions, as well as implementing a strict regulation of transactions on derivatives products.

• I would put forward the co-ordination of economic policies at the international level, bringing countries with excessive imbalances (China, Germany, Japan on the side of those with a surplus, and the US on the side of countries with a deficit) to rebalance themselves in a co-ordinated manner, through adjustments in exchange rates coupled with active fiscal and wage policies.

• I would push for the development of an international currency based on a basket of the major currencies, as an alternative to the dollar.

• I would guarantee special drawing rights (an international reserve asset created by the IMF to supplement its member countries' official reserves) to help countries in difficulty during the period leading to the reduction of global imbalances, or during unexpected economic shocks.

• I would work towards democratising the IMF by integrating it to the UN system, with one vote for each of the 187 IMF member countries. It is about time to put an end to the exclusive ruling power of the biggest economies.

Cost Benefit Analysis

An Answer To The Meaning of Life

Love, economists have discovered, is depreciating rapidly. On current trends, it is expected to fall by £1.78 per passion-hour between now and 2030...

George Monbiot


Love, economists have discovered, is depreciating rapidly. On current trends, it is expected to fall by £1.78 per passion-hour between now and 2030. The opportunity cost of a kiss foregone has declined by £0.36 since 1988. By 2050 the net present value of a night under the stars could be as little as £56.13. This reduction in the true value of love, they warn, could inflict serious economic damage.

None of that is true, but it’s not far off. Love is one of the few natural blessings which has yet to be fully costed and commodified. They’re probably working on it now.

Under the last government, the Department for Transport announced that it had discovered “the real value of time”. Here’s the surreal sentence in which this bombshell was dropped:

“Forecast growth in the real value of time is shown in Table 3.”(1)

Last week the Department for Environment announced the results of its National Ecosystem Assessment, a massive exercise involving 500 experts. The assessment, it tells us, establishes “the true value of nature … for the very first time.”(2) If you thought the true value of nature was the wonder and delight it invoked, you’re wrong. It turns out that it’s a figure with a pound sign on the front. All that remains is for the Cabinet Office to tell us the true value of love and the price of society, and we’ll have a single figure for the meaning of life.

The government has not yet produced one number for “the true value of nature”, but its scientists have costed some of the assets that will one day enable this magical synthesis to be achieved. The assessment has produced figures, for example, for the value of green spaces to human well-being. If we look after them well, our parks and greens will enhance our well-being to the tune of £290 per household per year in 2060(3).

How do they calculate these values? The report tells us that the “ecosystem services” it assesses include “recreation, health and solace”, and natural spaces “in which our culture finds its roots and sense of place” (4). These must be taken into account when costing “shared social value”. Shared social value arises from developing “a sense of purpose”, and being “able to achieve important personal goals and participate in society.” It is enhanced by “supportive personal relationships” and “strong and inclusive communities.”(5) These are among the benefits which the experts claim to be costing.

The exercise is well-intentioned. The environment department rightly points out that businesses and politicians ignore the uncosted damage their decisions might inflict on the natural world and human welfare. It seeks to address this oversight by showing that “there are real economic reasons for looking after nature.”(6) But there are two big problems.

The first is that this assessment is total nonsense, pure reductionist gobbledegook, dressed up in the language of objectivity and reason, but ascribing prices to emotional responses: prices, which, for all the high-falutin’ language it uses, can only be arbitrary. It has been constructed by people who feel safe only with numbers, who must drag the whole world into their comfort zone in order to feel that they have it under control. The graphics used by the assessment are telling: they portray the connections between people and nature as interlocking cogs(7). It’s as clear a warning as we could take that this is an almost-comical attempt to force both nature and human emotion into a linear, mechanistic vision.

The second problem is that it delivers the natural world into the hands of those who would destroy it. Picture, for example, a planning enquiry for an opencast coal mine. The public benefits arising from the forests and meadows it will destroy have been costed at £1m per year. The income from opening the mine will be £10m per year. No further argument needs to be made. The coal mine’s barrister, presenting these figures to the enquiry, has an indefeasible case: public objections have already been addressed by the pricing exercise; there is nothing more to be discussed. When you turn nature into an accounting exercise, its destruction can be justified as soon as the business case comes out right. It almost always comes out right.

Cost-benefit analysis is systematically rigged in favour of business. Take, for example, the decision-making process for transport infrastructure. The last government developed an appraisal method which almost guaranteed that new roads, railways and runways would be built, regardless of the damage they might do or the paltry benefits they might deliver(8). The method costs people’s time according to how much they earn, and uses this cost to create a value for the development. So, for example, it says the market price of an hour spent travelling in a taxi is £45, but the price of an hour spent travelling by bicycle is just £17, because cyclists tend to be poorer than taxi passengers(9).

Its assumptions are utterly illogical. For example, commuters are deemed to use all the time saved by a new high speed rail link to get to work earlier, rather than to live further away. Rich rail passengers are expected to do no useful work on trains, but to twiddle their thumbs and stare vacantly out of the window throughout the journey. This costing system explains why successive governments want to invest in high-speed rail rather than cycle lanes, and why multi-billon pound road schemes which cut two minutes off your journey are deemed to offer value for money(10). None of this is accidental: the cost-benefit models governments use excite intense interest from business lobbyists. Civil servants with an eye on lucrative directorships in their retirement ensure that the decision-making process is rigged in favour of over-development.

This is the machine into which nature must now be fed. The National Ecosystem Assessment hands the biosphere on a plate to the construction industry.

It’s the definitive neoliberal triumph: the monetisation and marketisation of nature, its reduction to a tradeable asset. Once you have surrendered it to the realm of Pareto optimisation and Kaldor-Hicks compensation, everything is up for grabs. These well-intentioned dolts, the fellows of the Grand Academy of Lagado who produced the government’s assessment, have crushed the natural world into a column of figures. Now it can be swapped for money.

The IMF itself should be on trial

Johann Hari

Imagine a prominent figure was charged, not with raping a hotel maid, but with starving her, and her family, to death

Friday, 3 June 2011

Sometimes, the most revealing aspect of the shrieking babble of the 24/7 news agenda is the silence. Often the most important facts are hiding beneath the noise, unmentioned and undiscussed.

So the fact that Dominique Strauss-Khan, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is facing trial for allegedly raping a maid in a New York hotel room is – rightly – big news. But imagine a prominent figure was charged not with raping a maid, but starving her to death, along with her children, her parents, and thousands of other people. That is what the IMF has done to innocent people in the recent past. That is what it will do again, unless we transform it beyond all recognition. But that is left in the silence.

To understand this story, you have to reel back to the birth of the IMF. In 1944, the countries that were poised to win the Second World War gathered in a hotel in rural New Hampshire to divvy up the spoils. With a few honorable exceptions, like the great British economist John Maynard Keynes, the negotiators were determined to do one thing. They wanted to build a global financial system that ensured the money and resources of the planet were forever hoovered towards them. They set up a series of institutions designed for that purpose – and so the IMF was delivered into the world.

The IMF’s official job sounds simple and attractive. It is supposedly there to ensure poor countries don’t fall into debt, and if they do, to lift them out with loans and economic expertise. It is presented as the poor world’s best friend and guardian. But beyond the rhetoric, the IMF was designed to be dominated by a handful of rich countries – and, more specifically, by their bankers and financial speculators. The IMF works in their interests, every step of the way.

Let’s look at how this plays out on the ground. In the 1990s, the small country of Malawi in Southeastern Africa was facing severe economic problems after enduring one of the worst HIV-AIDS epidemics in the world and surviving a horrific dictatorship. They had to ask the IMF for help. If the IMF has acted in its official role, it would have given loans and guided the country to develop in the same way that Britain and the US and every other successful country had developed – by protecting its infant industries, subsidising its farmers, and investing in the education and health of its people.

That’s what an institution that was concerned with ordinary people – and accountable to them – would look like. But the IMF did something very different. They said they would only give assistance if Malawi agreed to the ‘structural adjustments’ the IMF demanded. They ordered Malawi to sell off almost everything the state owned to private companies and speculators, and to slash spending on the population. They demanded they stop subsidising fertilizer, even though it was the only thing that made it possible for farmers – most of the population – to grow anything in the country’s feeble and depleted soil. They told them to prioritise giving money to international bankers over giving money to the Malawian people.

So when in 2001 the IMF found out the Malawian government had built up large stockpiles of grain in case there was a crop failure, they ordered them to sell it off to private companies at once. They told Malawi to get their priorities straight by using the proceeds to pay off a loan from a large bank the IMF had told them to take out in the first place, at a 56 per cent annual rate of interest. The Malawian president protested and said this was dangerous. But he had little choice. The grain was sold. The banks were paid.

The next year, the crops failed. The Malawian government had almost nothing to hand out. The starving population was reduced to eating the bark off the trees, and any rats they could capture. The BBC described it as Malawi’s “worst ever famine.” There had been a much worse crop failure in 1991-2, but there was no famine because then the government had grain stocks to distribute. So at least a thousand innocent people starved to death.

At the height of the starvation, the IMF suspended $47m in aid, because the government had ‘slowed’ in implementing the marketeeing ‘reforms’ that had led to the disaster. ActionAid, the leading provider of help on the ground, conducted an autopsy into the famine. They concluded that the IMF “bears responsibility for the disaster.”

Then, in the starved wreckage, Malawi did something poor countries are not supposed to do. They told the IMF to get out. Suddenly free to answer to their own people rather than foreign bankers, Malawi disregarded all the IMF’s ‘advice’, and brought back subsidies for the fertiliser, along with a range of other services to ordinary people. Within two years, the country was transformed from being a beggar to being so abundant they were supplying food aid to Uganda and Zimbabwe.

The Malawian famine should have been a distant warning cry for you and me. Subordinating the interests of ordinary people to bankers and speculators caused starvation there. Within a few years, it had crashed the global economy for us all.

In the history of the IMF, this story isn’t an exception: it is the rule. The organisation takes over poor countries, promising it has medicine that will cure them – and then pours poison down their throats. Whenever I travel across the poor parts of the world I see the scars from IMF ‘structural adjustments’ everywhere, from Peru to Ethiopia. Whole countries have collapsed after being IMF-ed up – most famously Argentina and Thailand in the 1990s.

Look at some of the organisation’s greatest hits. In Kenya, the IMF insisted the government introduce fees to see the doctor – so the number of women seeking help or advice on STDs fell by 65 per cent, in one of the countries worst affected by AIDS in the world.

In Ghana, the IMF insisted the government introduce fees for going to school – and the number of rural families who could afford to send their kids crashed by two-thirds. In Zambia, the IMF insisted they slash health spending – and the number of babies who died doubled. Amazingly enough, it turns out that shoveling your country’s money to foreign bankers, rather than your own people, isn’t a great development strategy.

The Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz worked closely with the IMF for over a decade, until he quit and became a whistle-blower. He told me a few years ago: “When the IMF arrives in a country, they are interested in only one thing. How do we make sure the banks and financial institutions are paid?... It is the IMF that keeps the [financial] speculators in business. They’re not interested in development, or what helps a country to get out of poverty.”

Some people call the IMF “inconsistent”, because the institution supports huge state-funded bank bailouts in the rich world, while demanding an end to almost all state funding in the poor world. But that’s only an inconsistency if you are thinking about the realm of intellectual ideas, rather than raw economic interests. In every situation, the IMF does what will get more money to bankers and speculators. If rich governments will hand banks money for nothing in “bailouts”, great. If poor countries can be forced to hand banks money in extortionate “repayments”, great. It’s absolutely consistent.

Some people claim that Strauss-Khan was a “reformer” who changed the IMF after he took over in 2009. Certainly, there was a shift in rhetoric – but detailed study by Dr Daniela Gabor of the University of the West of England has shown that the substance is business-as-usual.

Look, for example, at Hungary. After the 2008 crash, the IMF lauded them for keeping to their original deficit target by slashing public services. The horrified Hungarian people responded by kicking the government out, and choosing a party that promised to make the banks pay for the crisis they had created. They introduced a 0.7 per cent levy on the banks (four times higher than anywhere else). The IMF went crazy. They said this was “highly distortive” for banking activity – unlike the bailouts, of course – and shrieked that it would cause the banks to flee from the country. The IMF shut down their entire Hungary programme to intimidate them.

But the collapse predicted by the IMF didn’t happen. Hungary kept on pursuing sensible moderate measures, instead of punishing the population. They imposed taxes on the hugely profitable sectors of retail, energy and telecoms, and took funds from private pensions to pay the deficit. The IMF shrieked at every step, and demanded cuts for ordinary Hungarians instead. It was the same old agenda, with the same old threats. Strauss-Khan did the same in almost all the poor countries where the IMF operated, from El Salvador to Pakistan to Ethiopia, where big cuts in subsidies for ordinary people have been imposed. Plenty have been intimidated into harming their own interests. The US-based think tank the Center for Economic and Policy Research found 31 of 41 IMF agreements require ‘pro-cyclical’ macroeconomic policies – pushing them further into recession.

It is not only Strauss-Khan who should be on trial. It is the institution he has been running. There’s an inane debate in the press about who should be the next head of the IMF, as if we were discussing who should run the local Milk Board. But if we took the idea of human equality seriously, and remembered all the people who have been impoverished, starved and killed by this institution, we would be discussing the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission – and how to disband the IMF entirely and start again.

If Strauss-Khan is guilty, I suspect I know how it happened. He must have mistaken the maid for a poor country in financial trouble. Heads of the IMF have, after all, been allowed to rape them with impunity for years.

Arundhati Roy on India's fight against Corruption

We are here, all of us, because like many others in this country we are concerned about the rampant corruption that is hollowing out the institutions of our democracy. Twenty years ago, when the era of “liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation” descended on us, we were told that public sector units and public infrastructure needed to be privatised because they were corrupt and inefficient.

We were told the problem was systemic. Now that nearly everything has been privatised, when our rivers, mountains, forests, minerals, water supply, electricity and communications systems have been sold to private corporations, we find that corruption has grown exponentially, the growth rate of corruption has surpassed everything we could possibly imagine. In scam after scam, the figures that are being siphoned away are completely off the charts. It is not surprising that this has enraged the people of this country. But that anger does not always show signs of being accompanied by clear thinking.

Among the millions of understandably furious people who thronged to Jantar Mantar to support Anna Hazare and his team, corruption was presented as a moral issue, not a political one, or a systemic one — not as a symptom of the disease but the disease itself. There were no calls to change or dismantle a system that was causing the corruption. Perhaps this was not surprising because many of those middle-class people who flocked to Jantar Mantar and much of the corporate-sponsored media who broadcast the gathering, calling it a “revolution” — India’s Tahrir Square — had benefited greatly from the economic reforms that have led to corruption on this scale. (The same media has in the past ignored rallies of hundreds of thousands of poor people who have gathered in Delhi in the past because their demands did not suit the corporate agenda). It was not surprising then, that several corporate CEOs generously donated lakhs of rupees to support the campaign, cellphone companies weighed in with free SMS messages — here was their chance to undo the beating the public image of the corporate sector and corporate media had taken when the 2G scam hit the news.

When corruption is viewed fuzzily, as just a touchy-feely “moral” problem then everybody can happily rally to the cause — fascists, democrats, anarchists, god-squadders, day-trippers, the right, the left and even the deeply corrupt, who are usually the most enthusiastic demonstrators. It’s a pot that is easy to make but much easier to break. Anna Hazare threw the first stone at his own pot when he shocked his supporters from the left by rolling Narendra Modi onto centre-stage, in his “Development Chief Minister” clothes. Leaving aside the debate on Modi’s extremely dubious achievements in the field of “development” — many of us were left to wonder whether we were being offered a supposedly incorruptible fascist as an alternative to hopelessly corrupt supposed democrats.

I am not against having a strong anti-corruption body, though I would like to be reassured that it in itself does not become an unaccountable, undemocratic institution accruing great powers to itself. However I do not believe that we can fight communal fascism or economic totalitarianism (that has led to us having more than 800 million people in this country living on less than 20 rupees a day) with only legal measures.

As long as we have these economic policies in place, the National Employment Guarantee Act will never be able to do away with hunger and malnutrition, anti-corruption laws will not do away with injustice, and criminal laws will not do away with communal fascism, the twin sibling of economic totalitarianism. They will, at best, be mitigating measures. As the historian Howard Zinn said “the rule of law does not do away with the unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequality with the authority of law. It allocates wealth and power in such complicated and indirect ways as to leave the victim bewildered.”

Will the Right to Information Bill or the Jan Lokpal Bill force the government to disclose the secret MoUs with private corporations it has signed in Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand for which it is prepared to wage war against its poorest citizens? If they do, then these MoUs will disclose the fact that the government is selling the country’s minerals to private corporations for a pittance, a small royalty. It’s not corruption. It’s completely above board, it’s legal plunder which is more scandalous, and has economic, environmental and human costs that will outstrip the 2G scam several times over. If we do get the information, what will we do with it? I do believe that if anyone present at the “revolution” at Jantar Mantar had raised the question of the secret MoUs, the adoring TV coverage and a good proportion of the crowd would have disappeared very quickly.

The lawyer Prashant Bhushan who is on the drafting committee for the Jan Lokpal Bill understands all of this very clearly. In his years as a public interest litigation lawyer he has consistently represented mass movements as well as individuals who have been fighting these policies with their backs to the wall. He is the counsel in the PIL in the 2G scam in which Tata and Reliance, the biggest corporations in the country, along with their allies in the government and the media, have been badly exposed. Yesterday in court he asked why only the paid employees of these corporations were being arrested and not their proprietors. Such a man must be targeted, taken down, right?

The viciousness of the smear campaign against him is proof of the threat he poses to vested interests. I have known Prashant Bhushan for years. First as a comrade and now as a close friend. We may disagree about some things, but I would vouch for his integrity anytime, anywhere. He is acutely aware of his family’s social and economic privilege. Even more so of the fact that that most of that privilege is derived from his father to whom is he is very close, but with whom he has major ideological differences. Like many of us who are privileged compared to the majority of the people in this country (some of us by birth, caste, race, gender, and/or by virtue of writing a best-selling novel), Prashant had to decide what to do with that privilege. He chose to use his training as a lawyer to create as much space as possible for those against whom the Powers are arraigned. This is why he has been at the barricades of almost every issue of social justice that is being fought in this country. This is what has been turned against him. And this is why he is being hunted down.

In a filthy battle such as this one, in which facts are made up, none of us can ever be pure enough or righteous enough. None of us can hope to emerge untainted. However, the fight will continue. Retreat is not an option.

Iceland broke the rules and got away with it

Now Ireland and Portugal wish they too had got tough with the markets


* Aditya Chakrabortty
o The Guardian, Tuesday 12 April 2011


Remember Iceland? In the autumn of 2008, it became the first national casualty of the financial meltdown; the first rich country in more than three decades to take an IMF bailout. Commentators declared it the Icarus economy, which had finally come crashing back down to earth. It became both parable and laughing stock. What's the difference between Iceland and Ireland, joked traders – one letter and a few months.

You don't hear much about the insolvent island any more – apart from occasions such as this weekend, when Icelandic voters were asked to repay the £3.5bn owing on collapsed bank Icesave, and replied with a firm "Nei".

Unnoticed it may be, but Reykjavik now serves as a very different kind of parable, of how to minimise the misery of financial collapse by ignoring economic orthodoxy. And in those other broke European economies – from Dublin to Athens to Lisbon – politicians and voters are starting to pay attention. After its three biggest banks – 85% of the country's financial system – failed in the same week, Iceland did two remarkable things. First, it let the banks go under: foreign financiers who had lent to Reykjavik institutions at their own risk didn't get a single krona back. Second, officials imposed capital controls, making it harder for hot-money merchants to pull their cash out of the country.

These policies were not just controversial; they represented a two-fingered salute to the polite society of academics and policy-makers who normally lay down the laws on economic disaster management.

Compare Iceland's policies with those followed by another tiny country in the North Atlantic, which also has a banking industry much bigger than its national economy. When the credit crunch came to Dublin, the government decided to underwrite the entire banking industry – including tens of billions of euros of loans made by foreign investors. That landed the country with a debt worth something like €80,000 for every household – a debt that effectively bankrupted the country.

"A reverse Robin Hood – taking money from the poor and giving to the rich," is how Anne Sibert, a member of the Central Bank of Iceland's monetary policy committee, describes the Irish policy. But Dublin was merely following the old free-market tradition that rules governments should never break faith with financiers.

Yet looking at the two countries now, it's hard to say that Ireland has prospered out of being orthodox, or that Iceland has suffered an especially terrible punishment for not sticking to the Way of the Markets.

Indeed, the evidence seems to point the opposite way: Iceland has come through in better condition than anyone in 2008 dared hope. The worst of its recession is over, even though it's still too early to talk about sustained growth, and the unemployment rate (7.5%) is just over half that of Ireland (13.6%). Remarkably, after the krona lost more than half its face value, inflation is also coming down quite sharply. And without having to pay back foreign creditors, the government's finances are also in better shape. In Ireland, on the other hand, the government has just injected more money into its banking sector – the fifth time it has had to do so.

Now, this is a picture that needs more qualifications than a brain surgeon. For a start, you wouldn't wish Iceland's fate on any economy. Huge spending cuts are still to kick in, and a lot more pain is in store. Thor Gylfason, an economist at the University of Iceland, reckons it will take another seven to 10 years before his country recovers from one of the worst economic disasters in recent history. This will be a long, slow haul.

But landed with an almost unbearable burden, Iceland has made the load easier on itself – and it has done so by getting tough with foreign speculators who lent money to the country at their own risk. In Dublin, on the other hand, as Irish MP Stephen Donnelly puts it, "the entire Irish people were made collateral for the banking system" – and its economic performance has not been remarkably better. More than that, there is a basic point about fairness: in Ireland, keeping the markets on side was deemed to be more important than keeping people in jobs – in Iceland, the priorities have been reversed.

Donnelly says that the Icelandic example is beginning to attract interest in the Dáil and in the media. An Icelandic politician was recently interviewed by Vincent Browne, the Irish equivalent of Jeremy Paxman. In the bust countries of southern Europe they're also starting to take notice. Last week, on the day that Portugal finally admitted it would need a bailout from Brussels, I was talking to Joana Gorjão Henriques, a journalist from Lisbon. She told me that her contacts were pasting stories about Iceland on Facebook, and that newspaper columnists were using Iceland's case as an example that Portugal, Greece and Ireland should follow – make an allegiance and say to the EU that they won't pay the debt.

There are echoes here of the Asian financial crisis of the late 90s. Then Malaysia's prime minister Mahathir Mohamad brought in capital controls to shore up a battered financial system – and he was pilloried from Washington to Wall Street. Nobel laureates in economics predicted imminent catastrophe for Malaysia; the International Monetary Fund effectively told Mohamad off. But the year after, Malaysia began a strong economic recovery, and now the IMF issues papers on the usefulness of capital controls.

Iceland was a country wrecked by implementing free-market dogma crudely and quickly; it may yet became another such lesson of how an economy can ignore free-market dogma – and come out far better than its critics predicted.

African Dissent on No-Fly Zone Counts

By M K Bhadrakumar

"Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For, from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition."
- "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech by Martin Luther King Jr, April 4, 1967, New York

At the height of the Egyptian uprising, well-known American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said in an interview with al-Jazeera that the United States had a "Plan B" in the event of Hosni Mubarak stepping down. According to Hersh, it was none other than Amr Moussa - "whether he knows or not". There is nothing so far to show Moussa doesn't know.

He's far too well connected not to know - career diplomat and foreign minister for over 45 years and secretary general of Arab League (AL) since 2001. He hopes to succeed Mubarak as Egypt's next president.

Moussa delivers ...
Moussa's bid got great fillip by the AL decision Saturday to recommend imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya. His star has risen far above Mohammed ElBaradei's. Two major Arab countries opposed the AL statement - Syria and Algeria - but Moussa rammed it through, thanks to the AL heavyweights clamoring for democracy to succeed and autocracy to end - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan.

What bizarre drama! The plain truth is that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) commanded AL to speak since they need a fig leaf to approach the United Nations Security Council.

The EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, was in Cairo on Saturday by Moussa's side to ensure America's "Plan B" delivered. And he did. Promptly, the US, Britain, France and Canada "welcomed" the AL statement. NATO will meet on Tuesday to tone up its stance on Libya.

Britain and France, who spearhead the breathtaking campaign to mobilize Arab "support" for NATO intervention in Libya, have had a dream run. British Prime Minister David Cameron and newly-appointed French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe visited Cairo to explore how far the military junta could take charge of the oil-rich eastern Libyan province of Cyrenica.

... but Africa dissents
The Western powers had earlier mentioned the AL and African Union (AU) in the same breath as representing "regional opinion". Now it seems the AU isn't so important - it has become an embarrassment. African leaders are proving to be tough nuts to crack compared to Arab playboy-rulers.

Unsurprisingly, there is a virtual media blackout on the AU's activities on Libya. It is, therefore, useful to recapitulate. "The [AU] council reaffirms its firm commitment to the respect of the unity and territorial integrity of Libya, as well as its rejection of any form of foreign intervention in Libya," Ramtane Lamamra, AU commissioner for peace and security stated in Addis Abbaba. The AU's 15-member peace and security council decided to "put in lace a high-level ad-hoc committee" to monitor the Libyan crisis.

The leaders of South Africa, Uganda, Mauritania, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Mali would form the ad-hoc committee. "The ad hoc committee was set up ... to engage with all parties in Libya, facilitate an inclusive dialogue among them, and engage the African Union partners ... for the speedy resolution of the crisis in Libya," the bloc said. Lamamra said events in Libya needed "urgent African action" to bring about an end to the hostilities.

Most important, the AU "took note of the readiness of the government of Libya to engage in the path of political reforms. The council expressed the solidarity of the AU with Libya, and stressed the legitimacy of the aspirations of the Libyan peoples for democracy, political reforms, justice, peace and security as well as economic and social development".

Specter of disintegration
The paradox is, if you accept the principle of ascertaining the "regional opinion", then the AU's opinion becomes, arguably, more important to know than the AL's. Libya is as much an African country as an Arab country - if not more. The narrative of Libyan developments as a template of "Arab awakening" overlooks that reverberations and after-shocks of what happens are going to be felt deep inside Africa. As prominent Russian scholar on the region Yevgeny Satanovsky recently said:
It [unrest] won't be limited to the Middle East and North Africa ... The region will go through what Europe experienced in 1914-18. These processes always take a long time ... In Europe, the shooting started in 1914 and didn't stop until 1945 ... We have not seen what would happen to the other Gulf monarchies. We have not yet seen the end of the unrest that has gripped North Africa and the Middle East.

Algeria could still follow Libya's suit and Morocco might do the same. In January we saw Sudan split peacefully, but separatist elements have not been extinguished there. Former colonies tied together in unnatural conglomerates in the past by the English or the French never became integrated states. If this is so, we may still see disintegration of Nigeria, Kenya and other African countries.
Therefore, the British Foreign Office is opportunistic when it says the AL statement "is very significant and provides important regional support" for the idea of a no-fly zone. Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia, Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain, Qaboos Bin Al Said of Oman, Abdullah II of Jordan - these autocrats cannot be hailed as stakeholders in Libya's march to democracy.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) regimes are tottering on the abyss and themselves hoping NATO will salvage them. Their rulers keep their personal wealth of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars hoarded in Western banks and the umbilical cord cannot easily be broken.

Scarred memories
But, how is it that African states are different? First, when they hear Cameron or French President Nikolas Sarkozy or NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen speak of military intervention in North Africa, it rings a bell in their collective consciousness - of scarred memories of imperial domination, the horrendous crimes that the British, French or Dutch perpetrated on African people. They know how difficult it will be to get a NATO army to vacate its occupation of Africa. (Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Saturday: "I would like to ask NATO and the US with honor and humbleness and not with arrogance to stop their operations in our land. We are a very tolerant people but now our tolerance has run out.")

Africans know NATO will eventually slither its way into the heart of their resource-rich continent from the North African beachhead. So, the AU faces an existential problem - unlike the GGC client states or Jordan, which have no conception of national liberation. The only "Arab revolt" Abdullah or Abdullah II ever knew is what British intelligence and Lawrence of Arabia financed in the debris of the Ottoman Empire a hundred years ago.

Besides, what dreads the AU countries is that Libya has a history of disunity. It was only in 1951 that King Idris unified the three autonomous provinces of Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenica. In the wake of the current strife, centrifugal tendencies have quickly resurfaced. Libya has dozens of tribes and Muammar Gaddafi knit together a tenuous alliance of some tribes but tribal feuds are common. The African countries share similar experience.

To be sure, Western intervention in Libya will necessitate at some stage involvement in "nation-building' - interference in the domestic affairs in the post-Gaddafi period. The native peoples will resent this involvement. And in the fullness of time, only the Islamist forces stand to gain. The stunning political reality of Libya is that Islam is the only unifying factor for the tribes and provinces of that fragile nation.

African leaders are genuinely nervous that the US is being myopic about the complexities involved. President Barack Obama should get to know them better, call them up from the Oval Office, reach out to them and consult them and ascertain whether they will accept NATO intervention in Libya. They are the real "stakeholders" - not the playboy kings, sheikhs or sultans from the bleached Arabian deserts. King would be pleased.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
rica,

What Will You Do, If Libya Repeats Itself In USA?

By Frank Scott

09 March, 2011
Countercurrents.org

Imagine This:

Armed Tea Party militias attack government facilities in several American cities, threaten to deport the president and abolish congress, and claim a new day for democracy. What would be the reaction from our corporate government and media? Great praise for the second amendment and the right of the people to bear arms and overthrow the government? Organized passive and non-violent resistance by the military involving prayer, meditation and chanting to disarm the rebels? Yes, if we believe in the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and a free market. Yet, the reaction of mind management here has been that the Libyan government response to armed assaults on its power is somehow unthinkable to civilized people, subject to revulsion by all citizens of nuclear weapons armed nations, and an excuse to add to the death tolls by having America and its servant NATO powers get involved. In the cause of humanitarian justice achieved by murdering, of course.

Unconfirmed reports mostly from the rebellious Libyan groups claim air attacks and threats of genocide – the “g” word comes up almost every time anyone dies violently, anywhere – are repeated and embellished with charges of war crimes and threats to civilization. These near hysterical charges approach those hurled at Iran, regularly said to be planning to wipe out Israel, Jews, America, McDonalds, Christianity, puppies, kittens and all our shopping malls.

And this while our states and municipalities continue cutting public budgets on behalf of private wealth and corporate finance, and military expenditures and warfare increase even as surreality TV news reports tell us of alleged budget cuts, to take place at some future date.

And we are supposed to believe the leadership of Libya is insane?

Khadaffi may well have lost contact with reality in the often-quoted way that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But his alleged mental illness, commonly addressed by government officials here whose own sanity should be seriously questioned and whose ravings a public under continuous mental assault accepts, contrasts with the material status of the Libyan people. That not only compares favorably with most of the developed world but also is actually better than that of a majority of the world’s nations. There clearly are people, groups and elements in Libya tired of his rule and desirous of significant change, but exactly who are they and what is their economic and political base? Are there any foreigners involved, as in many of the color-coded “revolutions” assisted if not organized by outside infiltration to bring about governments more acceptable to “the international community”, a collection of national lap dogs and corporate financed NGOs controlled by the USA and Israel?

Such questions need to be asked before we rush into even more stupid, if not totally insane actions that support a global system which may be in process of breaking down naturally, if unnatural acts by perverse rulers can be controlled by democratic action of the people. While steps in that direction have begun speeding up in the Arab world, Europe and even in the USA, this present threat of backsliding could become a menacing blowback to what began as a very positive program for humanity, and not just the Arab world.

The urge for democratic rule of the people, even if still at a primitive level of organization, is an unmistakable emotional, spiritual and physical force in the world. Given the rapid changes taking place, many of them possibly beyond the understanding of the groups undertaking them, the rule that has brought us to this point is desperate and approaching a madness that makes Khadaffi look benign, progressive and harmless by comparison. Those nuclear-powered world “leaders” are near desperation and cannot be counted on to act rationally, as evidence clearly indicates. What are people to do when the information they rely on comes from the very sources striving to maintain the crippled, failing system?

Be very careful, wary and suspicious of all authority and what it tells us, remembering that its main duty is to maintain the status quo in substance even while changing the style in which it operates – see Obama and company - and be very critical of what alleged opposition to that authority tells us, too.

Frank Scott writes political commentary and satire which appears in print in The Independent Monitor and online at the blog Legalienate

Arab revolt reworks the world order

By M K Bhadrakumar

India, Brazil and South Africa have put a spoke in the American wheel, which seemed up until Tuesday inexorably moving, turning and turning in the direction of imposing a "no-fly" zone over Libya.

Arguably, the United States can still impose a zone, but then President Barack Obama will have to drink from the poisoned chalice and resurrect his predecessor's controversial post-Cold War doctrine of "unilateralism" and the "coalition of the willing" to do that. If he does so, Obama will have no place to hide and all he has done in his presidency to neutralize America's image as a "bully" will come unstuck.

New Delhi hosted a foreign minister-level meeting with Brazil and South Africa on Tuesday, which was to have been an innocuous occasion for some rhetorical "South-South" cooperation. On the contrary, the event soared into the realm of the troubled world order and shaky contemporary international system. The meeting took a clear-cut position of nyet vis-a-vis the growing Western design to impose a "no-fly" zone over Libya.

All indications are that the US and its allies who are assisting the Libyan rebels politically, militarily and financially have been hoping to extract a "request" from the Libyan people within a day or two at the most as a fig-leaf to approach the United Nations Security Council for a mandate to impose sanctions under the auspices of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Libyan rebels are a divided house: nationalist elements staunchly oppose outside intervention and the Islamists among them are against any form of Western intervention.

'Unilateralism' only option on table
NATO defense ministers held a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday to give practical touches to a possible intervention by the alliance in Libya. That the meeting was attended by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates was indicative of the importance attached to the run-up to the alliance's proposed intervention in Libya. Gates missed an earlier informal NATO defense ministers' meeting on Libya held on the outskirts of Budapest a fortnight ago.

United States-British diplomacy was moving on a parallel track drumming up a unified position by the Libyan rebels to seek an international intervention in their country and specifically in the form of a "no-fly" zone. The Arab League and the African Union also maintain an ambiguous stance on the issue of such a zone.

Obama's calculation is that if only a Libyan "people's request" could be generated, that would in historical terms absolve him and the West of the blame of invading a sovereign member country of the United Nations - from a moral and political angle, at least - as well as push the Arab League and African Union into the enterprise.

Being a famously cerebral intellectual also, Obama is a politician with a difference and can be trusted to have an acute sense of history. His predecessor George W Bush would have acted in similar circumstances with "audacity", an idiom that is ironically associated with Obama.

Obama's tryst with history is indeed bugging him in his decision-making over Libya. Robert Fisk, the well-known chronicler of Middle Eastern affairs for the Independent newspaper of London, wrote a sensational dispatch on Monday that the Obama administration had sought help from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia for secretly ferrying American weapons to the Libyan rebels in Benghazi, for which Riyadh would pick up the tab so that the White House would need no accountability to the US Congress and leave no traceable trail to Washington.

The moral depravity of the move - chartering the services of an autocrat to further the frontiers of democracy - underscores Obama's obsessive desire to camouflage any US unilateral intervention in Libya with "deniability" at all costs.

Now comes the body blow from the Delhi meeting. The three foreign ministers belonging to the forum that is known by the cute acronym IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) thwarted Obama's best-laid plans by issuing a joint communique on Tuesday in which they "underscored that a 'no-fly' zone on the Libyan air space or any coercive measures additional to those foreseen in Resolution 1970 can only be legitimately contemplated in full compliance with the UN Charter and within the Security Council of the United Nations".

Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio de Aguiar Patriota told the media in Delhi that the IBSA statement was an "important measure" of what the non-Western world was thinking". He said, "The resort to a 'no-fly' zone is seen as expedient when adopted by a country but it weakens the system of collective security and provokes indirect consequences prejudicial to the objective we have been trying to achieve." Patriota added:

It is very problematic to intervene militarily in a situation of internal turmoil, Any decision to adopt military intervention needs to be considered within the UN framework and in close coordination with the African Union and the Arab League. It is very important to keep in touch with them and identify with their perception of the situation.

He explained that measures like a no-fly zone might make a bad situation worse by giving fillip to anti-US and anti-Western sentiments "that have not been present so far".

Equally significant was the fact that the trio of foreign ministers also penned a joint statement on the overall situation in the Middle East. Dubbed as the "IBSA Declaration", it reiterated the three countries' expectation that the changes sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa should "follow a peaceful course" and expressed their confidence in a "positive outcome in harmony with the aspirations of the people".

A highly significant part of the statement was its recognition right at the outset that the Palestinian problem lay at the very core of the great Middle Eastern alienation and the "recent developments in the Region may offer a chance for a comprehensive peace ... This process should include the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ... that will lead to a two-state solution, with the creation of a sovereign, independent, united and viable Palestinian State, coexisting peacefully alongside Israel, with secure, pre-1967 borders, and with East Jerusalem as its capital."

'P-5' loses shine
Israel will be hopping mad over the declaration. That apart, does it matter to Obama and NATO if three countries from three faraway continents stand up with a common stance on a "no-fly" zone? Who are these countries anyway? But, it does matter. Put simply, the three countries also happen to be currently serving as non-permanent members of the UN Security Council and their stance happens to have high visibility in the world's pecking order on Libya.

The indications in Delhi are that at least one more non-permanent member of the Security Council is their "fellow-traveler" - Lebanon. Which means the "Arab voice" in the Security Council. In short, what we hear is an Afro-Asian, Arab and Latin American collective voice and it cannot be easily dismissed. More importantly, the IBSA stance puts at least two permanent veto-wielding great powers within the Security Council on the horns of an acute dilemma.

Russia claims to have a foreign policy that opposes the US's "unilateralism" and which strictly abides by the canons of international law and the UN charter. China insists that it represents developing countries. Now, the IBSA stance makes it virtually impossible for them to enter into any Faustian deal with the US and Western powers over Libya within the sequestered caucus of the veto-holding powers of the Security Council - commonly known as the P-5.

Therefore, the IBSA joint statement, much like the Turkish-Brazilian move on the Iran nuclear problem, is virtually mocking at the moral hypocrisy of the P-5 and their secretive ways.

Ironically, Delhi adopted the IBSA communique even as US Vice President Joseph Biden was winging his way to Moscow for wide-ranging discussions on the future trajectory of the US-Russia reset. Any US-Russian tradeoff over Libya within the ambit of the reset would now get badly exposed as an act of unprincipled political opportunism.

China's predicament will be no less acute if it resorts to realpolitik. China is hosting the summit meeting of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in Beijing in April. Three "brics" out of BRICS come from IBSA. Can the BRICS afford to water down the IBSA joint communique on Libya? Can China go against the stance of three prominent "developing countries"?

On balance, however, China may heave a sigh of relief. The IBSA position may let the US pressure off China and delist the Libyan "no-fly" zone issue from morphing into a bilateral Sino-American issue. China cooperated with last week's Security Council resolution on Libya. It was an unusual move for China to vote for a resolution that smacked of "intervention" in the internal affairs of a sovereign country.

Western commentators were euphoric over the shift in Chinese behavior at the high table of world politics and were egging on the leadership at Beijing to finally shape up as a responsible world power that is willing to work with the West as a "stakeholder" in the international system - like Russia does.

Clearly, China is being cajoled to go a step further and jettison its other red line regarding a "no-fly" zone. There is no indication that China is about to concede its red line by succumbing to flattery. But, now, if China indeed does, it will be in broad daylight under the gaze of the developing countries. And it will be very difficult for Beijing to cover up such "pragmatism" with the veneer of principles. In a way, therefore, pressure is off China on the "no-fly" zone issue.

India regains identity
An interesting thought occurs: Is India forcing China's hand? Delhi has certainly taken note that the Libyan crisis provided China with a great opportunity to work with the US in a cooperative spirit that would have much positive spin-offs for the overall Sino-American relationship. The "no-fly" zone issue would have been turf where China and the US could have created an entirely new alchemy in their relationship. Beijing knows that Obama's presidency critically depends on how he acquits in the Middle East crisis.

All the same, Delhi's move cannot be dismissed as merely "China-centric". In geopolitical terms, it constitutes a highly visible slap on the American face. And there will be a price to pay in terms of Obama's wrath. That Delhi is willing to pay such a price - when so much is at stake in its bid for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council - makes the IBSA move highly significant. Indeed, it is after a very long time that Delhi will be refusing to stand up and be counted on a major American foreign policy front.
It is much more than a coincidence, too, that the declaration vociferously supported the Palestinian cause. India has taken the calculated risk of incurring the displeasure of Israel and the Israel lobby in the US. Besides, there are other signs, too, that Delhi has embarked on a major overhaul of its Middle East policies and the IBSA is only one template of the policy rethink - and, possibly not even the most far-reaching in the geopolitics of the region.

Even as the IBSA adopted its stance on Libya and the Middle East situation staunchly favoring Arab nationalism, India's National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon, a key policymaker of high reputation as a consummate diplomat and who works directly under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was engaged in an engrossing and meaningful conversation elsewhere in the Middle East - with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

Away from the glare of television cameras, Menon handed over a letter from Manmohan to Ahmadinejad. According to the statement issued by Ahmadinejad's office, the Iranian leader told Menon:

Iran and India are both independent countries and they will play significant roles in shaping up the future of the international developments ... The relations between Iran and India are historic and sustainable. Iran and India due to being [sic] benefited from humanitarian viewpoints towards the international relations, should try to shape up the future world system in a way that justice and friendship would rule.

The ruling world is coming to its end and is on the verge of collapse. Under the current conditions, it is very important how the future world order will take shape and care should be taken that those who have imposed the oppressive world order against the mankind would not succeed in imposing it in a new frame anew ... Iran and India will be playing significant roles in the future developments in the world. Our two nations' cultures and origins are what the world needs today.

Menon reportedly told Ahmadinejad:

New Delhi is for the establishment of comprehensive relations with Iran, including strategic ties ... many of the predictions you [Ahmadinejad] had about the political and economic developments in the world have come to reality today and the world order is going under basic alterations [sic], which has necessitated ever-increasing relations between Iran and India ... The relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of India are beyond the current political relations, having their roots in the cultures and the civilizations and the two nations and both countries have great potentials for improvement of bilateral, regional and international relations.

Nothing needs to be added. Nothing needs to be said further. In sum, this sort of Iran-India high-level political exchange was unthinkable until very recently and it highlights how much the Middle East has changed and Iran's role in it, and Delhi's perceptions and the Indian thinking regarding both.

Most important, Menon's arrival in Tehran at the present tumultuous juncture on a major path-breaking political and diplomatic mission to energize India-Iran strategic understanding also underscores the growing recognition in the region that the era of Western dominance of the Middle East is inexorably passing into history and the world order is not going to be the same again.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

The real scandal at the LSE

A tangled web of relationships with the last Labour government and Libya have brought a high-minded institution to its knees, says Peter Stanford

There is a revealing remark in the minutes of the debate that took place in October 2009 at the governing council of the London School of Economics over whether to accept a donation of £1.5 million from Saif Gaddafi, son of the Libyan dictator. Fred Halliday, the school’s professor of international relations, had warned the council that accepting the money would taint the LSE’s reputation, but his concerns were dismissed by a fellow academic, David Held, professor of political science. Refusal, Held protested, would cause “personal embarrassment” to Saif Gaddafi.

Concern for Gaddafi Jnr’s feelings, rather than Halliday’s hard-headed analysis, evidently won the day. The governing council accepted the loot (of which £300,000 was subsequently paid) from the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation. The fact that among those members giving their assent to supping with the devil was Sharmi Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty and merciless scourge of those who compromise principles of justice, only adds to the air of unreality that surrounds the whole shameful episode. She has since spoken of her “bucketfuls” of regret.

They must all now be wishing that they had used a longer spoon because their decision, as the disgraced LSE director, Sir Howard Davies, observed this week, has backfired spectacularly. With Saif Gaddafi pictured on the streets of Tripoli brandishing a semi-automatic weapon and telling a global television audience that he would do anything to perpetuate his father’s regime, right down to “the last bullet”, Sir Howard has been forced to resign.

He leaves behind an institution in crisis, its good name compromised. Which is precisely what Fred Halliday (who has subsequently died) predicted, but at the time he was sidelined by colleagues who muttered in private that he was difficult and a heavy drinker.

Before rushing to condemn, of course, it is always worth dispensing for a moment with hindsight. Anyone who has sat on the board of a charity or educational institution will recall similar dilemmas (albeit on a smaller scale) to that faced by LSE’s council that day. An offer of money comes in, but there are unpalatable strings. You know you could put the funds to good effect – in this case to the study of civil society and democracy in north Africa – and you could do with a fund-raising success.

British universities, in particular, have been complaining for years that they are underfunded compared with rival overseas institutions. Various governments’ standard responses to such pleading has long been to tell them to seek private and corporate sponsors. So, even if they feel queasy about it, our higher education institutions would argue that they are being forced to turn a blind eye to the skeletons in the cupboard of donors likes Saif Gaddafi, and a deaf ear to those tiresome old-world souls such as Halliday who insist on mentioning ethics and morality.

That is certainly part of the story behind what happened this week at the LSE. In the wake of Sir Howard’s resignation, the focus has switched to the “accommodations” made by other universities with questionable donors. Liverpool John Moores, for example, has been accused by Tory MP Robert Halfon of also having dealings with the Gaddafis. It says it received only £14,000, to improve health care in Libya and said it was no longer involved in the work. “We are not ashamed of trying to help the people of Libya develop their economy and their infrastructure to improve their health services,” it said in a statement.

So is this just business as usual on the campuses and in the quads, or is there something deeper and more perverse going on at the LSE governing council, as a spokesman for the students’ union there has suggested? One headline has described the council as a bunch of “useful idiots”, a phrase borrowed from the tyrant Stalin who used it to mock Left-leaning academics who eulogised his brutal form of communism.

The degree to which the LSE outperformed others in abandoning principle to engage with a Libyan regime with a long, bloody and truly appalling history of crimes against both its own people and British citizens – supplying semtex to the IRA in the Seventies, and downing a jet over Lockerbie in 1988 – is now to be investigated by Lord Woolf, the former Lord Chief Justice. Among the issues for him to address will be the awarding of a PhD to Saif Gaddafi. The Labour peer Lord Desai, who examined the thesis, has praised the “idealism” Gaddafi displayed in his study, but others claim it was all plagiarised.

What is not disputed is that the interviews upon which the thesis was based were carried out not by the student himself, as is usual, but by a US-based consultancy, Monitor, whose board is made up of academics and former senior civil servants. An act of generosity towards a young man in a strange country? It seems it had more to do with Monitor’s ongoing mission to present a more pleasing image of the Libyan regime in the West. Monitor has since admitted that its actions were “misguided”.

A single, almost casual footnote on page 173 of the Gaddafi thesis should have alerted Lord Desai and his colleagues at the LSE to the peculiar gestation of the document. In reference to a section on the role of oil companies in improving transparency in democracies, this attribution is written: “Comment from Tony Blair in private communication with the author of this thesis”. It must be handy to be able to ring up the British Prime Minister to try out your pet student theory.

Also on Lord Woolf’s list of questions will be Sir Howard’s personal mission – as a former head of the Financial Services Authority, hardly an institution famous for taking a tough line with miscreants – to offer financial advice to the Libyans. “I wish I hadn’t done it now,” the former director said in his resignation interview, “but I was asked by the Government.” I thought it was only in Gaddafi’s Libya that you had to do what the government asked.

It is that web of relationships between government – specifically the Blair government – the LSE, Monitor and Saif Gaddafi that is at the heart of this whole debacle. Sir Howard’s predecessor as director was Anthony (now Lord) Giddens, guru of the Blairite “Third Way” and apparently such a starry-eyed admirer of the Libyan dictator that he wrote in 2005 of how Gaddafi senior cut “an impressive figure” and appeared “genuinely popular” with his own people.

Then there is Sir Mark Allen, former MI6 spy and adviser to Blair and BP, who is on the board of LSE Ideas, a study centre at the school for international affairs and “grand strategy”. It is chaired by another Blair adviser, Sir David Manning, and includes Jonathan Powell, former Chief-of-Staff, and Baroness Symons, a Blairite former Foreign Office minister.

For those tempted to think that the LSE’s current troubles are simply the result of being backed into a corner by the need for money, and then being conned by Saif Gaddafi into believing he was really a force for change at his father’s side, these connections are hard to explain away. There is, at the very least, the semblance of a calculated political and commercial plan here to win influence with the Gaddafis by peddling the good name of the LSE.

David Starkey, the historian who taught for many years at the LSE, has damned the whole farrago at his alma mater as “typically Blairite”. It is hard not to agree. Getting concessions from Gaddafi over nuclear weapons in 2004 may have shown the former Prime Minister at his pragmatic best, but the ill-advised, headlong rush thereafter to cosy up to an always ugly Libyan regime so as to get hold of the dictator’s billions, and his country’s oil reserves and revenues, has now ended up tainting many reputations.

Such a fate is often the lot of politicians, but it is a calamitous and self-inflicted blow to the academic institution set up in 1895 by George Bernard Shaw and social reformers Sidney and Beatrice Webb on such high-minded Fabian principles.

War porn in Libya

By Pepe Escobar

Forget "democracy"; Libya, unlike Egypt and Tunisia, is an oil power. Many a plush office of United States and European elites will be salivating at the prospect of taking advantage of a small window of opportunity afforded by the anti-Muammar Gaddafi revolution to establish - or expand - a beachhead. There's all that oil, of course. There's also the allure, close by, of the US$10 billion, 4,128 kilometer long Trans-Saharan gas pipeline from Nigeria to Algeria, expected to be online in 2015.

Thus the world, once again, is reintroduced to war porn, history as farce, a bad rerun of "shock and awe". Everyone - the United Nations, the US, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) - is up in arms about a no-fly zone. Special forces are on the move, as are US warships.

Breathless US senators compare Libya with Yugoslavia. Tony "The Return of the Living Dead" Blair is back in missionary zeal form, its mirror image played by British Prime Minister David Cameron, duly mocked by Gaddafi's son, the "modernizer" Saif al-Islam. There's fear of "chemical weapons". Welcome back to humanitarian imperialism - on crack.

And like a character straight out of Scary Movie, even war-on-Iraq-architect Paul Wolfowitz wants a NATO-enforced no-fly zone, as the Foreign Policy Initiative - the son of the Project for the New American Century - publishes an open letter to US President Barack Obama demanding military boots to turn Libya into a protectorate ruled by NATO in the name of the "international community".

The mere fact that all these people are supporting the Libya protesters makes it all stink to - over the rainbow - high heavens. Sending His Awesomeness Charlie Sheen to whack Gaddafi would seem more believable.

It was up to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to introduce a note of sanity, describing the notion of a no-fly zone over Libya as "superfluous". This means in practice a Russian veto at the UN Security Council. Earlier, China had already changed the conversation.

In their Sheen-style hysteria - with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton desperately offering "any kind of assistance" - Western politicians did not bother to consult with the people who are risking their lives to overthrow Gaddafi. At a press conference in Benghazi, the spokesman for the brand new Libyan National Transitional Council, human-rights lawyer Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga, was blunt, "We are against any foreign intervention or military intervention in our internal affairs ... This revolution will be completed by our people."

The people in question, by the way, are protecting Libya's oil industry, and even loading supertankers destined to Europe and China. The people in question do not have much to do with opportunists such as former Gaddafi-appointed justice minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who wants a provisional government to prepare for elections in three months. Moreover, the people in question, as al-Jazeera has reported, have been saying they don't want foreign intervention for a week now.

The Benghazi council prefers to describe itself as the "political face for the revolution", organizing civic affairs, and not established as an interim government. Meanwhile, a military committee of officer defectors is trying to set up a skeleton army to be sent to Tripoli; through tribal contacts, they seem to have already infiltrated small cells into the vicinity of Tripoli.

Whether this self-appointed revolutionary leadership - splinter elements of the established elite, the tribes and the army - will be the face of a new regime, or whether they will be overtaken by younger, more radical activists, remains to be seen.

Shower me with hypocrisy
None of this anyway has placated the hysterical Western narrative, according to which there are only two options for Libya; to become a failed state or the next al-Qaeda haven. How ironic. Up to 2008, Libya was dismissed by Washington as a rogue state and an unofficial member of the "axis of evil" that originally included Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

As former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark confirmed years ago, Libya was on the Pentagon/neo-conservative official list to be taken out after Iraq, along with Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria and the holy grail, Iran. But as soon as wily Gaddafi became an official partner in the "war on terror", Libya was instantly upgraded by the George W Bush administration to civilized status.

As for the UN Security Council unanimously deciding to refer the Gaddafi regime to the International Criminal Court (ICC), it's useful to remember that the ICC was created in mid-1998 by 148 countries meeting in Rome. The final vote was 120 to seven. The seven that voted against the ICC were China, Iraq, Israel, Qatar and Yemen, plus Libya and ... the United States. Incidentally, Israel killed more Palestinian civilians in two weeks around new year 2008 than Gaddafi these past two weeks.

This tsunami of hypocrisy inevitably raises the question; what does the West know about the Arab world anyway? Recently the executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) praised a certain northern African country for its "ambitious reform agenda" and its "strong macroeconomic performance and the progress on enhancing the role of the private sector". The country was Libya. The IMF had only forgotten to talk to the main actors: the Libyan people.

And what to make of Anthony Giddens - the guru behind Blair's "Third Way" - who in March 2007 penned an article to The Guardian saying "Libya is not especially repressive" and "Gaddafi seems genuinely popular"? Giddens bet that Libya "in two or three decades' time would be a Norway of North Africa: prosperous, egalitarian and forward-looking". Tripoli may well be on its way to Oslo - but without the Gaddafi clan.

The US, Britain and France are so awkwardly maneuvering for best post-Gaddafi positioning it's almost comical to watch. Beijing, even against its will, waited until extra time to condemn Gaddafi at the UN, but made sure it was following the lead of African and Asian countries (smart move, as in "we listen to the voices of the South"). Beijing is extremely worried that its complex economic relationship with oil source Libya does not unravel (amid all the hoopla about fleeing expats, China quietly evacuated no less than 30,000 Chinese workers in the oil and construction business).

Once again; it's the oil, stupid. A crucial strategic factor for Washington is that post-Gaddafi Libya may represent a bonanza for US Big Oil - which for the moment has been kept away from Libya. Under this perspective, Libya may be considered as yet one more battleground between the US and China. But while China goes for energy and business deals in Africa, the US bets on its forces in AFRICOM as well as NATO advancing "military cooperation" with the African Union.

The anti-Gaddafi movement must remain on maximum alert. It's fair to argue the absolute majority of Libyans are using all their resourcefulness and are wiling to undergo any sacrifice to build a united, transparent and democratic country. And they will do it on their own. They may accept humanitarian help. As for war porn, throw it in the dustbin of history.

"Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"

 

The Un-Sustainability Of Modern Capitalism

By Anthony Wile

28 February, 2011
The Daily Bell

An interview with John Perkins, author of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"

Daily Bell: Please treat this interview as if no one knew about you or your bestselling books. Give us some background on where you grew up and how you entered the CIA.

John Perkins: I grew up in New Hampshire and went to business school in Boston. At that time, I was approached by the National Security Agency (NSA), not the CIA, for a series of very sensitive tests including lie detector and personality test. They concluded I would make a good economic hit man, which is essentially a con artist with an economic background. They also said they found several weaknesses in my character that maybe they could use as hooks that would bring me into their game. Primarily, money, sex and power. Being that I was a young man, I was seduced by all of them.

Daily Bell: You were chief economist at a major international consulting firm; how did you gain that position?

John Perkins: After the NSA recruited me, I joined the Peace Corps. When I came out of the Peace Corps, Charles P. Maine hired me. It was a Boston consulting firm and the Sr. VP who hired me had very close ties to the NSA and the intelligence network of the United States in general. What I came to realize was it was all part of the scheme to turn me into an economic hit man. The first economic hit man, guys like Kermit Roosevelt, who overthrew the democratically elected President of Iran actually worked for the CIA.

But the weakness in that system was that if guys like Kermit Roosevelt had been discovered, the US government would have been in deep trouble. So very soon after that experience, they started to use private consultants, instead of actual government employees to do this work. Companies like Charles T. Main were brought in with legitimate contracts, working for the state department or the World Bank or the treasury department or USAID or other organizations and within these organizations were guys like me who did this special field of work.

Daily Bell: Interesting. You advised the World Bank, United Nations, IMF, U.S. Treasury Department, Fortune 500 corporations, and countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. What is your opinion of the World Bank?

John Perkins: The World Bank is a tool of economic hit men, there is no question about it. It's the tool of big corporations, the IMF and most of what we call intelligence agencies of the United States, CIA and NSA. Essentially the job of all these organizations is to help what used to be just US businesses – now we call them multi-nationals – get themselves established around the world in positions where they can exploit the world's resources, natural resources and human resources. All of these organizations are basically tools of what they call the corporatocracy. The men and a few women who run the biggest and most powerful corporations also run most of the government. Economic hit men help channel the resources of organizations like the World Bank and the IMF, the NSA and the CIA to support the larger agenda.

Daily Bell: The IMF?

John Perkins: It's a servant of the corporatocracy, of economic hit men. One of my jobs as an economic hit man was to identify countries that had resources like oil and arrange huge loans for those countries from the World Bank and sister organizations. But the money would never go to the actual country; instead it would go to our own corporations to build infrastructure projects in that country like power plants and industrial parks; things that would benefit a few very wealthy families.

So then the people of the country would be left holding this huge debt that they couldn't repay. We would come back and say, "well, since you can't repay your debt, you have to restructure your loan." That's when the IMF comes in. So the World Bank makes the original loan and IMF shows up and says, "We'll help you restructure your loan, but in order to do that you have to meet certain conditionalities. You have to sell your oil or whatever the coveted resource is at a cheap price, to the oil companies without restrictions." Or they would suggest the country sell electric utilities, water and sewage, maybe even your schools and jails to private multi-national corporations. Or maybe allow military bases to be built; these sorts of things.

Daily Bell: The United Nations?

John Perkins: I think the United Nations has an important function that it should be performing. We need an organization like that in the world today. Unfortunately, the United Nations has been rendered basically impotent. The United Nations was very opposed to us going into Iraq, but the Bush administration totally ignored that and went in anyway. I think it's very unfortunate that the United Nations has been emasculated by the United States.

Daily Bell: What do you think of the Bank for International Settlements? Is it true that it has worldwide and absolute immunity? Why does a central bank for central banks need sovereign immunity? How is that even enforceable?

John Perkins: It's enforceable because that's the way the laws are written in all the various countries that we inhabit. As long as the people who are running the banks and corporations also control politicians, which today they do around the world, then they get to write the laws. It's interesting that during a lot of my lifetime in the United States, for example, our laws were written by elected officials, but today that is not the case. Today in the United States lobbyists write the laws; the elected officials are essentially owned by big corporations. That's not true on all issues, but it's true on the big issues that affect big corporations. We've reached a new geopolitical reality that we have never known before. This is a new situation.

Daily Bell: You have been extraordinarily successful as a writer. And you have worked directly with heads of state and CEOs of major companies. What do you think of Western corporations? Aren't they a product of legislative activity? Wouldn't we be better off had the Western legal system not created corporations in the first place?

John Perkins: I can't speculate on what might have happened if corporations were not created but capitalism has been around for about 400 years and has taken many different forms. But in the last years since the 70s, and particularly beginning in 1980 when Ronald Reagan, then President of the United States, many leaders around the world embraced what I call predatory capitalism, which is very well defined by the economist, Milton Friedman, from the Chicago School of Economics.

Friedman said the only goal of business should be to maximize profits regardless of the social or environmental costs. That was a radical statement. When I went to business school in the 60s, we were taught that a good CEO makes a decent rate of return for his investors, but he also has to be a good citizen and the corporation should be a good community citizen. Pay reasonable taxes. Take care of the suppliers, take care of the employees; take care of the customers, not just profits.

So we entered this phase where we have embraced this form of capitalism that says maximize profits regardless of the social or environmental cost. It's a terribly destructive and unsustainable philosophy to have and we must turn that around. My goal or orientation is to try to make corporations become more responsible. The new goal should be go ahead and make a decent rate of return for your investors, but only to do so on a playing field that says we are going to be sustainable and just and peaceful. They are the public servants and they should realize they have a greater obligation than making just maximizing profits.

Daily Bell: Your Confessions of an Economic Hit Man spent 70 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and is a startling exposé of international corruption. Tell us more about how you came to write it.

John Perkins: I started writing it in the 80s after I stopped being an economic hit man. I contacted other economic hit men and jackals who destabilize government when hit men fail; I contacted these people to include them in the book. Then I received anonymous phone calls; threats on my daughter's life, and she was very young at the time.

I took the threats very seriously, as I have seen what jackals can do because I failed to corrupt Jaime Roldos, the democratically elected President of Equador and Arias Madreid of Panama; the jackals assassinated both of those leaders.

At the same time I received what you would call, a legal bribe from a big corporation in the United States; they would pay me a very large consulting fee and I wouldn't have to do much work if I would not write this book. So, I didn't write the book; I accepted the consultancy.

On 9/11, I was in the Amazon. I cut short my trip and came back to New York and I stood looking at ground zero looking at the smoldering ruins and I knew I had to write this book. I had to expose the truth about what I had done and what so many others were doing to create a terribly violent, painful, unhappy and unsustainable world. I wrote the whole book in secrecy. It's become my best insurance policy, because any good jackal knows if he assassinated me the book's sales would soar. The book has sold over a million copies in English alone and is now in over 30 languages. If someone shoots me tonight, we'll sell another million.

Daily Bell: Wow. Elaborate on the problems that the CIA, the NSA and American corporations cause.

John Perkins: The problems are pretty self-evident; we have created a world where 5% of us in the United States consume about 30% of the world's resources. The system that we created is a total failure and it causes tremendous misery. People often talk about the prophet of 2012 and Mayan prophecy of doomsday, but I think more than half the people of the world have already met doomsday. They are living in dire poverty and starving to death or on the verge of starvation, so we have created a world that is its own doomsday. This system has been created by organizations like the IMF, the World Bank, the CIA, the NSA and the multinationals.

Daily Bell: It's not just an American system ...

John Perkins: It's a global system; you could say the United States has been the driving force behind it, though. Great Britain has tried in some regards to change it, but the big corporations are really calling the shots around the world. Everything today is pretty much run by the big corporations. Obama is very much under the influence of the corporatocracy.

Daily Bell: What are the solutions?

John Perkins: I think it's very important that we the people of the world come together and realize that we do have power. I want cheap petroleum; if that means destroying the Amazon rain forest, I'll just look the other way. Until we realize that corporations are calling the shots and not the governments and that we are empowering this system, it will continue as is. We have to put pressure on these corporations to become compassionate, good world citizens. In this era of the Internet, I think we have a tremendous opportunity to do that now and make some changes.

Daily Bell: What does the CIA think of your exposure? Are they angry with you?

John Perkins: You will have to ask them because I don't know. I don't know who they are; who would you ask. I can't answer that question.

Daily Bell: Your latest book "Hoodwinked" is a blueprint for a new form of global economics. The solutions are not "return to normal" ones. You are challenging us to "soar to new heights, away from predatory capitalism and into an era more transformative than the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions." Tell us about the book and the steps we can take to build a better tomorrow. Is it through state and UN and activism, or the private sector or both?

John Perkins: Well, as we discussed, it's through the consumer. We need to realize that people that work for corporations are also consumers. At the very top of so many corporations we may have some extreme sociopaths, but the majority of these people at these corporations are good decent people who want to see good things for their children and grandchildren. They don't want to see countries sink beneath the ocean or the glaciers melt, or holes in the ozone.

But we have been sending a very strong message that says we want cheap goods and services even if it means being socially and environmentally irresponsible. We have to send a new message. We have to send the message that we want a just and peaceful world. Stop the desperation and the exploitation. We have to get rid of these terrible conditions, these wars, these consumerist trinkets. We need to create new technologies. Sustainable energy. Getting rid of poverty and injustice is a must.

Daily Bell: Can we do that through more regulation? Does the private sector generally need more regulation? Is that the point? But who would provide it? The UN? Is it better than to have a strong and effective world government? Would you like to see that fully come about?

John Perkins: I think the global recession has proven we need to have regulations to control these greedy people who run these corporations. We must be protected against them. Corporations are there to serve us, the people. Serving the public. I am not for lots of regulation, but I do think you need to level the playing field. It's like getting on a plane and having the security that the pilot knows the proper rules and regulations and has your safety in mind. You need to have that with the economy. Beyond that you let the pilot fly the plane.

As to who does that, is a very important question. It appears each country determines this at present – so maybe it would be good to have a world body to control this, maybe through stock markets and accounting agencies.

Daily Bell: Hmmm...interesting. So, you believe in a greener world. Are you worried about global warming?

John Perkins: Yes, it's a big concern.

Daily Bell: Are you a proponent of Peak Oil? Are we running out of energy?

John Perkins: I don't think that the concern is so much we are running out of energy as that we cannot afford to continue drilling for oil and sending carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The bigger problem is how we use oil not whether we are running out of it or not.

Daily Bell: You are a founder and board member of Dream Change and The Pachamama Alliance, nonprofit organizations devoted to establishing a world our children will want to inherit. When did you become involved with these organizations?

John Perkins: In about 1990, I had been back in SA and met with some of the tribes there and said I wanted to help with saving the rain forest; well they told me, if you want to save the rain forest that's great, but don't come here and try to change us; we are not destroying the rain forest, your people are destroying the rain forest. Your oil companies, your lumber companies, your cattle companies. You have a dream of big buildings, lots of cars and heavy industry, and now you have to understand that your dream has become a nightmare; it's been very destructive. If you want to change the world, you must change the dream of your people.

I thought that was very eloquent. I came back to the United States in 1991 and formed a non-profit called Dream Change; its mission was to create a more sustainable environment. The other organization called Pachamama Alliance is now in 40 countries, with 4000 facilitators. We send money to the Amazon to assist with sustaining a more peaceful, just world. We try to help indigenous people sustain their culture.

Daily Bell: Are you a fan of Hugo Chavez?

John Perkins: I don't know that I am a fan. What I do know is that he changed history. When Hugo Chavez stood up to the CIA in the coup of 2002 and survived that, he sent a strong message throughout the world, particularly to South America. It meant that the United States was a paper tiger and a strong President can survive a coup. He has changed history, there is no question. Depending on who you talk to, they love him or hate him; but he has done a very good job for poor people. I would say he will go down in history as having a huge impact on the world.

Daily Bell: How about Barack Obama? How has he been doing?

John Perkins: Barack Obama is in an incredibly tenuous situation. The man really doesn't have a lot of power. The corporations have the power. Presidents of the United States and everywhere else are extremely vulnerable. A guy like Obama understands that if he rocks the boat too much, he's going to go down. It doesn't have to be a bullet; it can be character assassination.

Everyone has a skeleton in his or her closet and even if a guy like Obama didn't have any skeletons, they can be created, just like the rumors that he wasn't an American citizen, all the rumors. But what we can't forget is that Barack Obama never ran under a campaign saying, yes I can. It was, yes WE can. It's we the people. He can't do it. The people have to stand behind him. He just doesn't have the power.

Daily Bell: Food for thought. Any books or articles you want to recommend to us? Closing thoughts?

John Perkins: I would love to have people subscribe to my newsletter, which comes out twice a month - www.johnperkins.org. I am also on Twitter and Face book. I love having people keep in touch with me that way.

Daily Bell: Thank you for your time. Good luck with your book.