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Quebec Riots
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23-04-2001 2:01pm#1
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<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Excelsior:
Are the protesters a well organised but tiny group of mal-adjusted middle class Americans who are guilt-ridden about their wealth?
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Youre giving them too much credit there exel. Most are your "rent-a-crowd" who show up at every form of protest because they have no job,no life and have nothing else to do. the rest of them are students (arts most likely
) who are out to change the world without thinking about the world directly around them (I can explain this better later)
Some say the end is near.
Some say we'll see armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will.
I sure could use a vacation from this....
bull****0 -
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I was going to make that point, but I am a middle class software engineering student who goes to Cancel the Debt meetings. So I kind of expected flaming.
My Adolescent website:
http://www.iol.net/~mullent0 -
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No exel i have no intention of flaming you. Personally Im in complete support of cancelling the world debt, nomatter how economically impossible it is. And bugler, if your house was burned to the ground leaving you with nothing to your name and I was to approach you saying "I know how you feel" and then going home in my ferrari thinking ive done my bit how would you feel?
[edit] I dont actually have a ferrari
[/edit]
Some say the end is near.
Some say we'll see armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will.
I sure could use a vacation from this....
bull****
[This message has been edited by Winning Hand (edited 30-04-2001).]0 -
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Oh I feel like doing a Bugler and surrounding you in information that show just how cut and dried this issue is. (Kind of like the Iraqi sanctions issue.)
Jubilee 2000 proposes ... a one-off cancellation of the backlog of unpayable debt for the world's poorest countries - which either cannot be paid, or can be paid only with enormous human suffering. This wouldn't be setting a precedent for cancelling all debts repeatedly. Rather, it would be a once-only gesture to mark the millennium, a gesture showing that creditors and debtors alike have made mistakes and that the slate needs to be wiped clean. The procedure for agreeing this debt relief should be undertaken by an independent body, perhaps under the UN. The procedure will be open, transparent and fair. This would change millions of lives, without taking away the responsibility of debtors to pay their future debts.
I guess I should start by saying this. I work for an international bank.
Live Aid raised $200 million.
Every week, the third world owes another $200 million.
Seven million children die each year, because instead of money being spent on clean water or health services, it pays for debts that nations can no longer even maintain.
President Mobutu of Zaire (Now the Central African Republic of Congo or some such thing) raised $8.5 billion dollars from the western world, then siphoned it away to accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Or bought weapons with which to opress his people.
The Third World currently owes, on paper, $230 billion dollars.
They can't afford that. So why can they not call for bankruptcy, the way you or I could?
That is what Jubilee 2000 is about. Getting a life line to the 100s of millions of people who suffer from the heritage of debt.
Jubilee 2000 has the support of the Pope, and as you would expect therefore, has nothing to do with Christianity. (That was a joke! Seriously, I am a Christian. I was just... no, don't hit me. Please! stop the beatings.) It does however draw on Old Testament teaching as its foundation. It's named after Jublee, Noah's brother. It references the old rule of renewal. That goes like this: Every 7 days is a day of rest. Every 7th year the land rests (it lies fallow) and every seven by seven (49) years all outstanding debts are cancelled. This worked a charm in and around Israel in 1,500 BC, but as you can imagine, God wouldn't have made such a good banker.
There is an idea that the nations of the Southern Hemisphere have been perpetually in debt. That is not the truth. It all had to start somewhere. That place was Washington DC, around the 1960s. Cold War spending plunged America into debt. To escape this situation the Treasury printed more greenbacks. As the dollar was the dominant currency around the globe, this had international ramifications. The middle-east sold their crude oil through dollars. The devaluation brought about by this move, closed their profit margins in. In 1973 they set about raising the barrel price. They made a fortune and deposited the money in the long established European banking institutions.
With all this spare money in their coffers, interest rates plunged. In an effort to prevent disaster the banks started lending. An awful lot. Sometimes to awful people. And this had awful consequences.
The recently independent post-Colonial nations were doing quite wellin their economies. Twenty years earlier they had an infant mortality rate of 28%. That was collapsing with the steady progress being made. In an effort to maintain momentum, they would take advantages of the lavish loans being offered. The rate of interest was below their inflation rate- why would they turn it down?
Very few countries actually borrowed with bad intentions from the start. Mexico and Venezuela did borrow with the intention of paying off other loans. A little dubious, and a very bad precedent. But very little money got to the poor masses of these countries. It got lost, in grand overstated public monuments, in exagerrated infrastructure projects, or in the pockets of corrupt officials.
Along with the loans came Western intervention. They strongly advised growth of cash crops and development for exportation of commodities. It sounded like a great idea to balance up the old trade deficit and become that little bit more self sufficient. When everyone is growing coffee or cocoa though, and selling copper or aliminium ore, the prices will drop. At the same time, America raised her interest rates, and the international community followed suit. Oil nations took a little bit more off the top by raising their prices and the cash crops and commodities prices reached record lows. The nations of the Third World were well and truly caught.
So the cycle of debt maintenance being so high that loans were needed only began then, in the late 1970's. At about this time too, Ireland began borrowing. (Remember through all of this that we still owe £28 billion) The cycle was perpetuated with the growing strength of the Credit Institutions the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. When a country forfeited its debts, as Mexico did in 1982, these guys would and still do step in to provide short term loans to help the country pay off the long term ones. Can you spot the flaws in that argument?
As the 80's turned into the 90's the phenomenon of the yuppie was replaced with the largest concerted creation of wealth ever. The 90's will be remembered as the great pioneering decade, and we reaped the benefits. Things got worse in the Third World though. The IMF brought in its SAP program (now cynically titled Poverty Re-Structuring, or some such nonsense). When a country goes to the wall, it is initiated in an effort to get it running again. Sometimes it has worked. Most times it has failed. It never benefits the poor. It is based on the idea that if the country gets some hard currency it can once again trade. To that it must increase exports whilst decreasing imports. So the implementation will usually involve spending less on health, education and social services - people pay for them or go without. A devaluation of the national currency, lowering export earnings and increasing import costs, so you can't get you rhands on that foreign product. Governments have to, with horrible effects, cut back on food subsidies - so prices of essentials can soar in a matter of days. They also need to cut as many jobs as possible and lower wages for workers in government industries and services. Another way they can raise cash, and this is strongly advised, is to encourage privatisation of public industries, including sale to foreign investors! The final thing the IMF urges SAP participators to do is to take over small subsistence farms for large-scale export crop farming instead of staple foods. So farmers are left with no land to grow their own food and few are employed on the large farms. The rest... well, whatever. The IMF only deal in Profit and Loss Accounts and Liquidity ratios.
That is the historical and biblical background to this issue. (The Old Testament books are Genesis and Leviticus, I forgot to mention).
Debt cancellation deserves your support and understanding because the low level details are worked out so well. There is no argument you can make for not supporting this campaign. 52 nations stand to benefit. These are the nations whose debts are so high that the maintanence costs smother the economies and cause deaths through hunger or disease. As long as a nation is not embargoed or presided over by despots then it qualifies for Jubilee 2000 if the debts cause deaths.
The debt burden of these poorest countries is 127% of their income. There is no way in that the capital will be returned to the creditor nations. Up to 80% of the loans have been written off as bad debts by the nations involved. Yet the debtors continue to pay interest. One way Jubilee 2000 hopes to achieve its goals is to hammer home this argument: If the debt is already written off, then it won't cost you anything to cancel it. If you don't expect to get paid back, then there is no need to keep the charade up. Cancel it.
They will lose the interest payments, but can be happy that they will clear the way for an economic renaissance. In Uganda for example, health care spending is at just £2 per capita. Debt Interest is £11. You knock off the 80% or so of debts that the western world has already given up on, and you have £8.80 more to spend per person on the essentials.
The reality however is that the 52 poorest countries owe on paper $231 billion. The very poorest nations will need all their debt cancelled. For others it may just need a large percentage. Jubilee 2000 aims to succeed in this part of its campaign through that much misunderstood word, democracy. At the moment Jubilee 2000 has a petition that within months will be the longest ever (with over 22 million signatures). It uses the infobahn to connect its regional and local operations in an international network. At G8 summits it ships in supporters from all over the world who make non violent protests. They make human chains to represent the chains of debt. Jubilee 2000 hopes to accomplish its goals through people power. If enough people around the world, but specifically the creditor nations make enough noise, then their voices will be heard.
Ideally a situation would be reached soon where a nation can declare itself bankrupt. When its liabilites grow larger than its assets, it would hit the wall the same way you or I would. A line would be drawn beyond which a nation could not sink. After that there would be no need for it to repay its debts. They would all be forfeited.
Cynics out there would say that the age of people powered politics was over. That politicians are in the pay of the major corporations and individual opinion no longer counts. How will people writing letters, holding hands outside of embassies and signing petitions make a difference? Well in 1883 slave trading was abolished in the British Empire in the same way. A few leaders in politics, with the support of 1000's of activists brought about this landmark change. One major hindrance to the abolition of slavery was the interests of the slave owning plantation magnates of the time. Slavery allowed them to cheaply corner a market and thus gave them pervasive power in the nations from which slaves came. The average Joe wouldn't tolerate this any longer. By banding together and working for something they knew was right they won that battle against the equivalent of multi-national corporations. They set something rolling that no one could ever stop.
In the same way now it is in the short-term interest of many Western nations to maintain strong influence over the poorer countries of the world. Justice demands that richer countries give up unfair privileges, held at the expense of the poor. If creditors agree to remission of debts, the removal of a restraint on growth could allow poor countries to compete on fairer terms and reduce their dependence on the rich parts of the world. Once that starts rolling its inertia will be massive. It is clear that it is right. It is likely that the tactics will win. So do something about it. Get it cancelled.
How though, will debt relief directly aid the third world? Live Aid was rightly seen as a great achievement, but every single week the Third World pays back £230 million in debt interest- the same amount raised by Live Aid. Debt relief will remove this expense from the budgets of the 52 poorest nations in the world, and 100s of millions of people. This money can then be redirected into much more deserving causes. Without the shadow of debt hanging over their governments like the Grim Reaper, these nations can once and for all win an opportunity to equalize with Western World economies.
Uganda is a central African country whose recent past was dominated by their despotic leader Adi Amin. Today it is credited as the least corrupt nation in Sub Sahara Africa. It is a country who works very hard and honestly to improve its lot. Yet it is crippled by one simple ratio. Per capita, Uganda spends $11 a year on debt management. That is, simple interest payments that keep the debt alive and prevent the country from going to the wall. It spends less than $3 per citizen on education. No nation can survive, nevermind develop under that kind of pressure. It is impossible.
Chronic hunger is the long term deprivation of daily nutritional requirements. It is the cause of 90% of famine deaths in the world. It is as a result of prolonged economic mismanagement through conflict or corruption or the simple burden of debt that this hunger comes about. Drought or floods can exacerbate it but it is inherently a problem with human causes and therefore human solutions. At this point in time the UN would estimate that there are approximately 700 million people suffering from chronic hunger. Jubilee 2000 would free up huge amounts of money to tackle this problem in the countries that need it the most. Those eleven Ugandan dollars could be pumped into distributing grain to those who need it most. It will save 100s of millions of lives.
If you really understand this problem you might be asking, "where will this grain be grown exactly?" The Third World has been forced by the IMF to grow cash crops like bananas or coffee since the mid 1980's to bring in foreign currencies. Without the need for the IMF intervention, the Third World can go back to providing for itself- aiding the land quality, providing employment in agriculture and growing its own food. Jubilee 2000 sets that reaction in motion.
Once the immediate problem of keeping people's stomachs full are dealt with the long-term benefits of Jubilee kick in. These may not have finished bearing fruit until long into this century. Without the huge debt payments nations can invest in health and education. Chronically hungry people endure health effects on into adulthood and often need special education care. Without Jubilee 2000 these nations will not be able to deal with these concerns. What hope would an already impoverished nation have if its youth grew into a sick, uneducated workforce? As an Irishman I can testify to the economic benefits of education. In the future, more and more, knowledge will be the most important tool.
So lets project- an ideal 20 years down the line in Uganda, post Jubilee 2000. Without the debt hanging over the citizen's heads the problem of hunger is tackled. The population can expect to be bolstered by more adults as children's mortality rates plummet. The well-funded hospitals treat their lingering problems so that they can successfully contribute. The education system has begun to create a huge number of people educated up to 2nd level, the nation has 95% literacy level, and universities are beginning to fill up. A middle class is being created that gives the country political stability and everyone is a consumer. They are spending money on the country's products and importing from other African, European and American states. The economy will have developed so much that infrastructure development will be starting, the final step to reaching a level with the Western World. Motorways and high bandwidth web connections will be more and more common and not one person will die of hunger when the rains don't come.
Jubilee 2000's once-off write-off of debts, would allow the Third World nations to immediately improve the life quality of its most at risk- the hungry, the sick and the young. They are the people who suffer from the issue of debt. This is an incredible opportunity for the Developed World to allow the Third World equalize with us. They can grasp it with both hands or they can mess it up, in which case sympathy will be hard found. But why would they squander this chance? Surely the people who suffer from this economic deathtrap need the opportunity to prove themselves equal to the Developed World's peoples? Jubilee 2000 is a program with such epic ramifications as the end to slavery. I urge you, visit the site. Sign up behind this thing. It might seem inconsequential but surely to light a candle is better than cursing the darkness?
What is the hesitance in signing it off that the G7 + Russia clearly have?
The world is built on usance. Our economies grow and develop through interest of loans. All our individual capital purchases are funded through interest paying loans. All companies from the small Dublin based printing works to Intel expand with loans as their capital. And the same is true for nations. Due to horrible economic circumstance, fluctuations on international markets and pure bad luck, the Third World are in an inescapable hole of debt. It isn't even a simple situation whereby they can't pay back their loans, it is getting to a point where they can't pay off the interest on the loans. They are taking out loans to pay off the interest on other loans. And the countries of the G7 were happy to provide the money (only 10% of Jubilee targeted loans were provided by private institutions) knowing that they would never get paid back.
To renege on these debts would lead to international isolation, something a Third World country can not afford. If your debts ever grow that large you can declare yourself bankrupt. Your assets are less than your liabilities and your slate is wiped clean. Needless to say the same can't be said for international law. Due to this, the cycle of debt can only be broken by benevolently canceling debts. This shakes the foundations of Earth's economic markets. If we cancel Burkina Faso's debts then why should Venezuela pay theirs? If Venezuela doesn’t pay their debts why should you pay your car loan back to AIB? Surely we are taking a huge risk in Jubilee 2000? Plus, the third world countries messed up their wealth when they got the loans in the first place- who is to say they won't go out and shoot themselves in the foot?
Well, they may go out and do just that. Ecuador's government could decide to spend all the money freed up by Jubilee 2000 on a huge statue of Michael Jackson. In that situation though, they are on their own. It is their money they squander. Their people will be able to hold them responsible. That government won't stay in power long. But the way we should look at it is, "Why would they willfully mess it up like that?" They have everything to gain and they will grasp this opportunity and probably ring every last benefit out of it. As far as the risk to loan credibility is concerned, Jubilee proposes a once off debt clearance. A Never To Be Repeated act of kindness. It will celebrate the landmark of the year 2000 and offers just one chance. It doesn't infringe on the integrity of loan payments in any way.
Jubilee 2000 is also well aware of the threat posed to its success by corruption. It is rife in Sub Sahara Africa and in South America. But the debt clearance will have conditions on it. Corruption monitoring officials from Jubilee will be in every country. If their act doesn't clean up the money doesn't come. Jubilee aims to get the benefits of debt clearance to the people on the streets. The debt clearance for a country that leaves the money in the hands of fat cats is no good to the organization and it will work hard to ensure that the benefits filter through.
The reason the Developed Nations gave the loans was because they knew they wouldn't get any back. Through the World Bank and the IMF, the G7 nations have half the world wrapped around its finger. The Third World is like a well-trained loyal pet dog, ready to do its bidding. It grows the crops the IMF wants. It pays back the interest and perpetuates a system whereby they have to allow sweatshops in their towns. It pays back the interest and provides America with desirable Nike products. Then it must purchase its military equipment off the G7 perpetuating the system and making war more likely... and so on. If something unenviable has to be dumped, the G7 and its friends can send it south of the equator. It is a convenient arrangement, if rather one sided, and it certainly seems to be the best deal imaginable for one side.
But Jubilee 2000 maintains that its plan actually makes better sense in the long run. With planned large scale investment and debt clearance alá the Marshall Plan, the Eu and the US can create an Africa that still provides useful cheap imports, but also becomes more and more and more powerful as a consumer of our Western World products. We will save and then improve over a billion lives and in the end we can console ourselves with the fact that in the end it is only for our own good. Europe exported more to Africa than it did to America in the 1960s. Jubilee 2000 makes economic sense. It isn't a lefty-liberal earth child crybaby bourgeois guilt ridden plan to make the Developed world feel better about its past manipulation. It is a thorough incredibly well thought out program of economic regeneration. With that reconstruction we can benefit. Everyone's a winner!
So sign up now at:
http://www.jubilee2000uk.org/main.html
My Adolescent website:
http://www.iol.net/~mullent0
This discussion has been closed.
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