Chris Hedges: March to Nowhere - Refused To Confront Corporate Structures Of Power

No rally, no positive message, no effort to expose the idiocies of those arrayed against us will work until we restore to the political process mechanisms by which ordinary citizens can be heard.

the most respected, articulate and representative members of the community were fools and that all the powers that be were not so much evil as they were equally stupid and fraudulent.”

The One Nation March in Washington, which lacked moral and political courage,
did nothing to educate or rally our most important constituency

—those out of work, those being foreclosed, those without hope.

It refused to confront the real, corporate structures of power.
It refused to disown Barack Obama and the Democrats.
===

March to Nowhere

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/march_to_nowhere_20101005/

Posted on Oct 5, 2010

By Chris Hedges

We can hold One Nation marches every week. It will not make any difference until we revolt against the formal structures of power.

The liberal preoccupation with positive forms of propaganda ignores the root of our problem. The tea party and hate mongers on Fox such as Glenn Beck, however repugnant, are the manifestation of the crisis, not its cause. The forces assaulting the remnants of American democracy will not be cowed or discredited with rallies, such as the one in Washington on Saturday. We will blunt these rising anti-democratic forces only when we organize outside conventional systems of power. It means dismantling the permanent war economy and the corporate state. It means an end to foreclosures and bank repossessions. It means a functional health care system for all Americans. It means taking care of our poor and unemployed. And it means a system of government that is freed from corporate interests.

Mass support for anti-democratic movements and public acceptance of open violations of human rights are not caused, in the end, by the skillful dissemination of misinformation or brainwashing. They are caused by the breakdown of a society and the death of a liberal class that once made reform and representative government possible. The timidity of our liberal class was on public display during the march in Washington. Speakers may have called for jobs, but none would call on citizens to abandon the rotting hull of the Democratic Party and our moribund political system or put Wall Street speculators in prison. The speakers at the rally proposed working within the current electoral system, although most Americans are aware that it has been gamed by corporate interests. This is hardly a call, especially given the failures of the Obama administration, that will fire up the unemployed and underemployed. 

“We need jobs,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said at the march. “We’ve bailed out the banks. We bailed out the insurance companies. Now it’s time to bail out the American people.”

But Sharpton and the other speakers, too close to the power elite in the Democratic Party, did not call for rebellion. There was no war cry against Wall Street and the purveyors of death in the defense and health industry. There was no acknowledgement that unfettered capitalism and globalization are killing our ecosystem and creating a worldwide system of neo-feudalism. There was no acceptance that the corporate state must be dismantled if we are to save ourselves. Any effective resistance must begin with a condemnation of our political elite and liberal institutions, including the press, the universities, labor, the arts, religious institutions and the Democratic Party, for selling us out. But the speakers on the mall in Washington would not go there. And I suspect, for this reason, the Americans who are hurting most found nothing they said of interest.

All totalitarian movements, even those that are openly criminal, succeed because they have widespread mass support. They are the expression of a yearning that sweeps through a nation that has been convulsed by economic dislocation, a loss of hope and flagrant political corruption. And in these times of lament and deprivation the absurdities, crimes and excesses of reactionary forces do not matter. It wasn’t hard to find out what Slobodan Milosevic was doing in Bosnia. It wasn’t hard in Nazi Germany to hear about the widespread massacres of Jews in Poland. It is not a secret to most Americans that Muslim detainees, held for years without charges, are tortured in black sites around the world. The murder of tens of thousands of civilians by our forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan is tacitly acknowledged by the public as the price of war. The massive human suffering in the open-air prison that is Gaza is not a mystery. We know what happens to the millions of undocumented workers who live as stateless citizens among us and have become a kind of modern day slave labor force.

The rising proto-fascist movement in America is caused by a hatred and alienation so profound that the crimes of the state, along with the buffoonish antics of those who defend and champion these crimes, do not matter. We will not discredit the right-wing with facts, a demand for a respect of law or rational discussion. Propaganda or counter messages of tolerance are not the issue. The issue is societal collapse. This issue is a corporate state that has carried out a coup d’etat. The issue is the rupture of all mechanisms within the political process to protect citizens from accelerating impoverishment, internal control and corporate abuse. Those who refuse to acknowledge this bleak reality cannot offer solutions.

The right-wing propagandists have not created the problem. They have tapped into the moral void that has left tens of millions of Americans yearning for a profound and radical change. And if torture, war, racist attacks on immigrants, gays and Muslims, along with increased repression against internal dissidents, is the price for moral and economic renewal, many Americans are ready to sign on. If those who lead this rising proto-fascist movement insist on a Christian nation, teach creationism and believe in the physical existence of Satan, many Americans will sign on for this too. Hatred, when mobilized, is a very effective political force. And hatred, including the hatred for a liberal class that abandoned the working class, is what we face.

The decimation of our working class through outsourcing and globalization dynamited two of the most important props of the democratic system—class consciousness and class conflict. This has left traditional political parties, which once represented differing class interests, with nothing to offer the public beyond fringe issues such as abortion or gay marriage. Those in the liberal class who cling to the corpse of the Democratic Party do so not because they believe in the policies of the party—it does not differ in any significant way from the Republican Party—but because they hope against hope that the party will somehow restore itself to its former position as a defender of liberal values and the working class interests. It is the politics of nostalgia. 

Our political theater has orphaned citizens who once looked to political parties to express and defend their interests. It has engendered apathy toward traditional social and political structures and an inchoate rage. This mixture of apathy and rage is a volatile cocktail. It finds its expression outside normal systems of dissent and in leaders who, in times of prosperity and stability, would be dismissed as lunatics. 

No rally, no positive message, no effort to expose the idiocies of those arrayed against us will work until we restore to the political process mechanisms by which ordinary citizens can be heard. Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” cites the collapse of traditional political mechanisms, which now plagues us, as the opening needed for all totalitarian movements:

“The fall of protecting class walls transformed the slumbering majorities behind all parties into one great unorganized, structureless mass of furious individuals who had nothing in common except their vague apprehension that the hopes of party members were doomed, that, consequently, the most respected, articulate and representative members of the community were fools and that all the powers that be were not so much evil as they were equally stupid and fraudulent.”

The One Nation March in Washington, which lacked moral and political courage, did nothing to educate or rally our most important constituency—those out of work, those being foreclosed, those without hope. It refused to confront the real, corporate structures of power. It refused to disown Barack Obama and the Democrats. And in the end it only confirmed what those who hate us think of liberals.

AP / J. Scott Applewhite

Activists gather at the Lincoln Memorial to participate in the “One Nation Working Together” rally to promote job creation, diversity and tolerance.

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Doctor Sets Up Successful Organic Food Market Outside Hospital

a widespread interest in food and healthy eating among his peers.

“This is a generation that cares a lot more and knows a lot more about the importance of diet,” he said. “We need a system that educates physicians about nutrition, and we’re the ones who are going to have to fight for it.”

The sheer scale of Kaiser, which holds farmers’ markets at 30 sites, makes changing the way food is bought a challenge, but also an opportunity.

“We can leverage our size to create greater demand for healthy food,”

“It’s difficult for farmers to crack the institutional supply chain,” he said. “We need a ‘universal adapter’ that can pair small producers with big customers.”

a regional growers’ cooperative

putting some of Kaiser’s undeveloped land into agriculture.

“As someone who relies on evidence-based medicine, it bothers me that we don’t have clear metrics to guide these food-related initiatives,” he said. “But for now, I remind myself of the enduring value of another care-giving principle: common sense.”



http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/dining/22doctors.html?pagewanted=all

Doctor’s Orders: Eat Well to Be Well

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Dr. Preston Maring, left, who began a farmers’ market at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, with his son, Ben.

By KATRINA HERON

Published: September 21, 2010
OAKLAND, Calif.

DR. PRESTON MARING was striding along a hospital corridor at double speed on a recent Friday morning, his tall frame, white hair and frequent gesticulations prompting waves of greetings from colleagues, who also took care to sidestep his forward momentum. His destination was the weekly farmers’ market he started in 2003, just outside the front door at the Kaiser Permanente medical center here.

“Since it’s mine, I made the rules — all organic,” he said as he skimmed by a line of stalls where fresh fruits and vegetables are sold to hospital workers, passers-by and even, he said, those bringing patients to the emergency room.

Dr. Maring, 64, a gynecologist and obstetrician with three decades as a surgeon, is well known as a former physician in chief at the hospital, the man who spearheaded the creation of its new pediatric neurosurgery unit.

But increasingly, his reputation and perpetual motion revolve around his conviction that in the health professions, the kitchen must become as crucial as the clinic. Food is at the center of health and illness, he argues, and so doctors must make all aspects of it — growing, buying, cooking, eating — a mainstay of their medical educations, their personal lives and their practices.

Though Dr. Maring blithely refers to himself as “that food nut around the hospital,” he is serious about the role he believes doctors should play in creating awareness of healthy food choices. To that end, he has worked to obtain fresh local food for hospital trays and in cafeterias. He began a Web site and blog that offers recipes and advice on meal planning and budgeting. He spent the summer working on a series of three-minute Web videos to explain the basics of shopping for healthful foods and efficient preparation techniques.

He also created a kind of culinary road show, which regularly takes him to health care institutions around the country, toting a PowerPoint presentation, a couple of plastic vegetable knives (“one of the great technological breakthroughs”), some salad ingredients and the makings of a vinaigrette.

“I like to put doctors on the spot,” he said, referring to his penchant for hauling a senior clinician up to the front of the room to chop vegetables with him. “We tend to be exalted, and I want to show the staffs that many of us don’t know how to mince garlic.”

If there was ever a time when doctors need to be as handy with a peeling knife as they are with a scalpel, this may be it. The draft version of the federal government’s 2010 Dietary Guidelines, which will be formally released in December, identifies obesity as the nation’s greatest public-health threat. It also notes the relationship of fast food (and physical inactivity) to unhealthy weight gain and emphasizes the importance of plant-based foods in the diet.

Despite evidence that doctors have a greater life expectancy than average, they don’t necessarily look after their own dietary health, said Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health. “You’ll have a pretty hard time these days finding a doctor who smokes, but not nearly as hard a time finding one who eats terrible food.” He recalled a major breakfast gathering he attended several years ago: “I came in a bit late and was struck by the surreal image of senior scientists feeding on junk while discussing solutions to national nutritional problems.“

Dr. Willett cited surveys showing that during examinations of obese patients, doctors often don’t remark on overweight as a health issue. “Many of them just avoid it,” he said, either because they doubt their counsel will be heeded or because they don’t know the issues well enough themselves, leading the patient to underestimate the gravity of the situation.

For many doctors, an uneasy relationship with nutrition starts as early as medical school. Long hours and ready access to fast food, often on the hospital grounds, tends to undermine students’ best dietary intentions, said Dr. Robert F. Kushner, a professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, where he directs the Center for Lifestyle Medicine. “Even the ones who come in excited about eating well and exercise find that good habits are harder and harder to maintain as time goes on,” Dr. Kushner said.

Dr. Maring’s son, Ben, 30, a fourth-year medical student at New York University School of Medicine, hopes to change that. Mr. Maring has developed a series of cooking classes that incorporate salient aspects of nutrition and clinical medicine. He named his scheme CHEF — for Cook Healthy, Eat Fresh.

In 2009, he began lugging duffel bags filled with cooking implements and ingredients from his Brooklyn apartment to the medical school campus on East 31st Street in Manhattan, where he commandeered a spare lounge and taught fellow students simple preparation techniques, introduced guest speakers in specialties like diabetes and endocrinology, and handed out reams of recipes.

“I thought it was important for medical students to learn how to cook and eat well,” he said. “I also thought it was important for us to walk the walk when it comes to counseling patients about the importance of diet. We get so little training in nutrition that I wanted to provide some basic knowledge.”

Dr. Maring said: “You should have seen him trying to drag a convection oven into a taxicab. We cooked together as a family when he was a kid, but he blew past me a long time ago. Now I’m his sous-chef.”

Ben Maring, who has his father’s imposing build and forceful personality, but with a quieter, more scholarly mien, first planned on a career as a chef and did a post-culinary-school apprenticeship at Thomas Keller’s Per Se restaurant in Manhattan in 2005.

“It was very much like the world of a hospital, where you’re on your feet the whole time, you have to make the right decisions very quickly, and you have to be highly self-motivated while also working as part of a team,” Mr. Maring said. Nor was Mr. Keller’s keen appraisal of the neophyte’s technique unlike the scrutiny he now endures on hospital rotations. “I remember being at the pass” — the area closest to the dining room — “about to sauce a plate, and Keller came and stood right next to me,” Mr. Maring said. “I was so nervous. I was trying to artfully drizzle a broken foie gras vinaigrette, and my hand was just shaking. He jokingly asked if I had had too much caffeine.”

Mr. Maring is encouraged that CHEF’s feedback surveys show students are developing confidence in their cooking skills, making better food choices and feeling more comfortable talking to patients about the links between diet and health. He is developing recipes geared to the seasonal offerings at a new farmers’ market at Bellevue Hospital Center, adjacent to the N.Y.U. medical campus, which was begun in July by Aviva Regev, 24, a third-year student and CHEF participant.

Mr. Maring has another ally in Benjamin Navot, 25, a third-year student who entered medical school directly after graduating from the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan and has taught some CHEF classes. Mr. Navot acknowledged that, like Mr. Maring, his perspective on food is greatly influenced by his previous experience. But he, too, senses a widespread interest in food and healthy eating among his peers.

“This is a generation that cares a lot more and knows a lot more about the importance of diet,” he said. “We need a system that educates physicians about nutrition, and we’re the ones who are going to have to fight for it.”

But the older generation can pick up a few new tricks, too. Preston Maring said that in some ways, his attempts to get more fresh local foods into hospitals have been reminiscent of his days as a young resident at Kaiser, particularly the need to climb a steep learning curve.

“I became the person who asks dumb questions constantly,” he said of the time he has spent over the last couple of years studying the technical aspects of food-distribution systems. “I just learned, for example, that cherry tomatoes with the stems still on are a no-go in an inpatient setting, and that at Kaiser there’s a specific size limit for an apple on a tray, because they’re stacked vertically for delivery.”

Kaiser Permanente, which is a provider and an insurer, is the largest nonprofit health care system in the country, with about 8 million members, 15,000 doctors and 170,000 employees, predominantly in western states. The sheer scale of Kaiser, which holds farmers’ markets at 30 sites, makes changing the way food is bought a challenge, but also an opportunity.

“We can leverage our size to create greater demand for healthy food,” Dr. Maring said. Kaiser Permanente Oakland, for example, serves 6,000 inpatient meals a day, 80 percent of which have no special restrictions.

“It’s difficult for farmers to crack the institutional supply chain,” he said. “We need a ‘universal adapter’ that can pair small producers with big customers.” Toward that end, he helped start a regional growers’ cooperative and joined the board of the nonprofit entity that administers it, the Community Alliance With Family Farmers.

Dr. Maring also envisions Kaiser’s role expanding into areas like environmental stewardship, and he has carved out a kind of subspecialty in institutional real estate, with the goal of eventually putting some of Kaiser’s undeveloped land into agriculture.

“As someone who relies on evidence-based medicine, it bothers me that we don’t have clear metrics to guide these food-related initiatives,” he said. “But for now, I remind myself of the enduring value of another care-giving principle: common sense.”

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BWN - Health v5

Published on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 by TEDx (via Civil Eats)

11-Year-Old Describes Broken Food System in Five Minutes

As Posted at Civil Eats by Paula Crossfield

Last month, an 11-year-old had much to say about the perils of the American food system. Speaking at a TED conference for young people called TEDx in Asheville, North Carolina, Birke Baehr discussed food irradiation, GMOs, CAFOs, farm run-off, the problem with marketing food to kids and more, all in five minutes. On the subject of paying more for better quality food, Baehr said, “With all the things I’m learning about the food system, it seems to me that we can either pay the farmer or pay the hospital.”

He also talked about his future aspirations. “Awhile back I wanted to be an NFL football player. Now, I’ve decided I’d rather be an organic farmer instead,” he said to the cheering audience. “That way I can have a greater impact on the world.”

Watch it here:
http://www.tedxnextgenerationasheville.com/presenterbios

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US Is Becoming an "Underdeveloping Nation" - Max-Neef, Chilean Economist

September 22, 2010

Chilean Economist Manfred Max-Neef: US Is Becoming an "Underdeveloping Nation"

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/22/chilean_economist_manfred_max_neef_us

While President Obama is reporting looking into tapping a former corporate executive to become his next top economic adviser, many economists question the path the United States is on. We speak to the acclaimed Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef. He won the Right Livelihood Award in 1983, two years after the publication of his book Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics. [includes rush transcript]

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Guest:

Manfred Max-Neef, Chilean economist. He won the Right Livelihood Award in 1983, two years after the publication of his book Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics.

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Rush Transcript

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AMY GOODMAN: While President Obama is reporting looking into tapping a former corporate executive to become his next top economic adviser, many economists question the path the United States is on. Last week, during our trip to Bonn, Germany, I had a chance to speak with the acclaimed Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef. He won the Right Livelihood Award in 1983, two years after the publication of his book Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics. I began by asking him to explain what barefoot economics is.

MANFRED MAX-NEEF: Well, it’s a metaphor, but a metaphor that originated in a concrete experience. I worked for about ten years of my life in areas of extreme poverty in the Sierras, in the jungle, in urban areas in different parts of Latin America. And at the beginning of that period, I was one day in an Indian village in the Sierra in Peru. It was an ugly day. It had been raining all the time. And I was standing in the slum. And across me, another guy also standing in the mud—not in the slum, in the mud. And, well, we looked at each other, and this was a short guy, thin, hungry, jobless, five kids, a wife and a grandmother. And I was the fine economist from Berkeley, teaching in Berkeley, having taught in Berkeley and so on. And we were looking at each other, and then suddenly I realized that I had nothing coherent to say to that man in those circumstances, that my whole language as an economist, you know, was absolutely useless. Should I tell him that he should be happy because the GDP had grown five percent or something? Everything was absurd.

So I discovered that I had no language in that environment and that we had to invent a new language. And that’s the origin of the metaphor of barefoot economics, which concretely means that is the economics that an economist who dares to step into the mud must practice. The point is, you know, that economists study and analyze poverty in their nice offices, have all the statistics, make all the models, and are convinced that they know everything that you can know about poverty. But they don’t understand poverty. And that’s the big problem. And that’s why poverty is still there. And that changed my life as an economist completely. I invented a language that is coherent with those situations and conditions.

AMY GOODMAN: And what is that language? How do you apply economics or have those situations explain economics changing?

MANFRED MAX-NEEF: No, the thing is much deeper. I mean, it’s not like a recipe typical of someone in your country, fifteen lessons or satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. That’s not the point. The point is much deeper. You know, I would—let me put it this way. We have reached a point in our evolution in which we know a lot. We know a hell of a lot. But we understand very little. Never in human history has there been such an accumulation of knowledge like in the last 100 years. Look how we are. What was that knowledge for? What did we do with it? And the point is that knowledge alone is not enough, that we lack understanding.

And the difference between knowledge and understanding, I can give it as an example. Let us assume that you have studied everything that you can study, from a theological, sociological, anthropological, biological and even biochemical point of view, of a human phenomenon called love. So the result is that you will know everything that you can know about love. But sooner or later, you will realize that you will never understand love unless you fall in love. What does that mean? That you can only attempt to understand that of which you become a part. If we fall in love, as the Latin song says, we are much more than two. When you belong, you understand. When you’re separated, you can accumulate knowledge. And that is—that’s been the function of science. Now, science is divided into parts, but understanding is holistic.

And that happens with poverty. I understood poverty because I was there. I lived with them. I ate with them. I slept with them, you know, etc. And then you begin to learn that in that environment there are different values, different principles from—compared to those from where you are coming, and that you can learn an enormous amount of fantastic things among poverty. What I have learned from the poor is much more than I learned in the universities. But very few people have that experience, you see? They look at it from the outside, instead of living it from the inside.

And you learn extraordinary things. The first thing you learn, that people who want to work in order to overcome poverty and don’t know, is that in poverty there is an enormous creativity. You cannot be an idiot if you want to survive. Every minute, you have to be thinking, what next? What do I know? What trick can I do here? What’s this and that, that, that, that? And so, your creativity is constant. In addition, I mean, that it’s combined, you know, with networks of cooperation, mutual aid, you know, and all sort of extraordinary things which you’ll no longer find in our dominant society, which is individualistic, greedy, egoistical, etc. It’s just the opposite of what you find there. And it’s sometimes so shocking that you may find people much happier in poverty than what you would find, you know, in your own environment, which also means, you know, that poverty is not just a question of money. It’s a much more complex thing.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think we need to change?

MANFRED MAX-NEEF: Oh, almost everything. We are simply, dramatically stupid. We act systematically against the evidences we have. We know everything that should not be done. There’s nobody that doesn’t know that. Particularly the big politicians know exactly what should not be done. Yet they do it. After what happened since October 2008, I mean, elementally, you would think what? That now they’re going to change. I mean, they see that the model is not working. The model is even poisonous, you know? Dramatically poisonous. And what is the result, and what happened in the last meeting of the European Union? They are more fundamentalist now than before. So, the only thing you know that you can be sure of, that the next crisis is coming, and it will be twice as much as this one. And for that one, there won’t be enough money anymore. So that will be it. And that is the consequence of systematical human stupidity.

AMY GOODMAN: So, to avoid another catastrophe, collision, if you were in charge, what would you say has to happen?

MANFRED MAX-NEEF: First of all, we need cultured economists again, who know the history, where they come from, how the ideas originated, who did what, and so on and so on; second, an economics now that understands itself very clearly as a subsystem of a larger system that is finite, the biosphere, hence economic growth as an impossibility; and third, a system that understands that it cannot function without the seriousness of ecosystems. And economists know nothing about ecosystems. They don’t know nothing about thermodynamics, you know, nothing about biodiversity or anything. I mean, they are totally ignorant in that respect. And I don’t see what harm it would do, you know, to an economist to know that if the beasts would disappear, he would disappear as well, because there wouldn’t be food anymore. But he doesn’t know that, you know, that we depend absolutely from nature. But for these economists we have, nature is a subsystem of the economy. I mean, it’s absolutely crazy.

And then, in addition, you know, bring consumption closer to production. I live in the south of Chile, in the deep south. And that area is a fantastic area, you know, in milk products and what have you. Top. Technologically, like the maximum, you know? I was, a few months ago, in a hotel, and there in the south, for breakfast, and there are these little butter things, you know? I get one, and it’s butter from New Zealand. I mean, if that isn’t crazy, you know? And why? Because economists don’t know how to calculate really costs, you know? To bring butter from 20,000 kilometers to a place where you make the best butter, under the argument that it was cheaper, is a colossal stupidity, because they don’t take into consideration what is the impact of 20,000 kilometers of transfer? What is the impact on the environment of that transportation, you know, and all those things? And in addition, I mean, it’s cheaper because it’s subsidized. So it’s clearly a case in which the prices never tell the truth. It’s all tricks, you know? And those tricks do colossal harms. And if you bring consumption closer to production, you will eat better, you will have better food, you know, and everything. You will know where it comes from. You may even know the person who produces it. You humanize this thing, you know? But the way the economists practice today is totally dehumanized.

AMY GOODMAN: You don’t think the earth will force this different way of thinking, that we’re reaching the end?

MANFRED MAX-NEEF: Oh, well, yes. Yes. I believe, you know, that—well, there are some important scientists that already are saying, I believe. I have not reached that point yet. But some believe, you know, and state that it’s definite: we are finished. We are finished. In a few more decades, I mean, there will be no humanity anymore. I don’t think we have reached that point of it, but I believe that we are pretty close to it. I’ll say that we already crossed one of the three rivers. And if you look at it and what is happening everywhere, I mean, it’s quite frightening how the amount of catastrophes are increasing all over the place, you know, in all manifestations—storms, earthquakes, you know, volcanoes erupting. I mean, the amount of events is growing dramatically. I mean, it’s really frightening. And we continue with the same.

AMY GOODMAN: What have you learned that gives you hope in the poor communities that you’ve worked in and lived in?

MANFRED MAX-NEEF: Solidarity of people. You know, respect for the others. Mutual aid. No greed. I mean, that is a value that is absent in poverty. And you would be inclined to think that there should be more there than elsewhere, you know, that greed should be of people who have nothing. No, quite the contrary. The more you have, the more greedy you become, you know. And all this crisis is the product of greed. Greed is the dominant value today in the world. And as long as that persists, well, we are done.

AMY GOODMAN: And if you’re teaching young economists, the principles you would teach them, what they’d be?

MANFRED MAX-NEEF: The principles, you know, of an economics which should be are based in five postulates and one fundamental value principle. One, the economy is to serve the people and not the people to serve the economy. Two, development is about people and not about objects. Three, growth is not the same as development, and development does not necessarily require growth. Four, no economy is possible in the absence of ecosystem services. Five, the economy is a subsystem of a larger finite system, the biosphere, hence permanent growth is impossible. And the fundamental value to sustain a new economy should be that no economic interest, under no circumstance, can be above the reverence of life.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that further.

MANFRED MAX-NEEF: Nothing can be more important than life. And I say life, not human beings, because, for me, the center is the miracle of life in all its manifestations. But if there is an economic interest, I mean, you forget about life, not only of other living beings, but even of human beings. If you go through that list, one after the other, what we have today is exactly the opposite.

AMY GOODMAN: Go back to three: growth and development. Explain that further.

MANFRED MAX-NEEF: Growth is a quantitative accumulation. Development is the liberation of creative possibilities. Every living system in nature grows up to a certain point and stops growing. You are not growing anymore, nor he nor me. But we continue developing ourselves. Otherwise we wouldn’t be dialoguing here now. So development has no limits. Growth has limits. And that is a very big thing, you know, that economists and politicians don’t understand. They are obsessed with the fetish of economic growth.

And I am working, several decades. Many studies have been done. I’m the author of a famous hypothesis, the threshold hypothesis, which says that in every society there is a period in which economic growth, conventionally understood or no, brings about an improvement of the quality of life. But only up to a point, the threshold point, beyond which, if there is more growth, quality of life begins to decline. And that is the situation in which we are now.

I mean, your country is the most dramatic example that you can find. I have gone as far as saying—and this is a chapter of a book of mine that is published next month in England, the title of which is Economics Unmasked. There is a chapter called "The United States, an Underdeveloping Nation," which is a new category. We have developed, underdeveloped and developing. Now you have underdeveloping. And your country is an example, in which the one percent of the Americans, you know, are doing better and better and better, and the 99 percent is going down, in all sorts of manifestations. People living in their cars now and sleeping in their cars, you know, parked in front of the house that used to be their house—thousands of people. Millions of people, you know, have lost everything. But the speculators that brought about the whole mess, oh, they are fantastically well off. No problem. No problem.

AMY GOODMAN: So how would you turn that around?

MANFRED MAX-NEEF: Well, I don’t know how to turn it around. I mean, it will turn around itself, you know, in catastrophic manners. I mean, I don’t understand how there isn’t—millions of people can all of a sudden go out in the streets in the United States and begin destroying things, I don’t know. That may perfectly happen. You know, the situation is absolutely dramatic. Absolutely dramatic. And it is supposed to be the most powerful country in the world, you know, and so on. And even in those conditions, they continue with those stupid wars, you know, and spend more, more, more millions and trillions. Thirteen trillion dollars for the speculators; not one cent for the people who lost their homes! I mean, what kind of logic is that?

AMY GOODMAN: Acclaimed Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef, a Right Livelihood laureate. I spoke to him in Bonn, Germany, last week. Among his books, Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics.

Max-Neef on Human Needs and Human-scale Development

Max-Neef
on
Human Needs and Human-scale Development

http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/background/maxneef.htm

Conventional western ideas of development and progress are seen by many as a root cause of rainforest destruction and other aspects of the global ecological crisis, but what are the alternatives? Development as it is usually conceived is based on a particular view of human nature. This view, which is taken for granted by economic rationalists, assumes that human beings are driven by a limitless craving for material possessions. Max-Neef’s conception of what human beings need, and what motivates them, is fundamentally different. If decision-makers operated according to his assumptions rather than those of most economists, then the choices they made would change radically. This article by Kath Fisher outlines Max-Neef's ideas on human needs and Human-scale Development.

---

The Max-Neef Model of Human-Scale Development

Manfred Max-Neef is a Chilean economist who has worked for many years with the problem of development in the Third World, articulating the inappropriateness of conventional models of development, that have lead to increasing poverty, massive debt and ecological disaster for many Third World communities. He works for the Centre for Development Alternatives in Chile, an organisation dedicated to the reorientation of development which stimulates local needs. It researches new tools, strategies and evaluative techniques to support such development, and Max-Neef's publication Human Scale Development: an Option for the Future (1987) outlines the results of the Centre’s researches and experiences

Max-Neef and his colleagues have developed a taxonomy of human needs and a process by which communities can identify their "wealths" and "poverties" according to how these needs are satisfied.

Human Scale Development is defined as "focused and based on the satisfaction of fundamental human needs, on the generation of growing levels of self-reliance, and on the construction of organic articulations of people with nature and technology, of global processes with local activity, of the personal with the social, of planning with autonomy, and of civil society with the state." (Max-Neef et al, 1987:12)

The main contribution that Max-Neef makes to the understanding of needs is the distinction made between needs and satisfiers. Human needs are seen as few, finite and classifiable (as distinct from the conventional notion that "wants" are infinite and insatiable). Not only this, they are constant through all human cultures and across historical time periods. What changes over time and between cultures is the way these needs are satisfied. It is important that human needs are understood as a system - i.e. they are interrelated and interactive. There is no hierarchy of needs (apart from the basic need for subsistence or survival) as postulated by Western psychologists such as Maslow, rather, simultaneity, complementarity and trade-offs are features of the process of needs satisfaction.

Max-Neef classifies the fundamental human needs as: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, recreation(in the sense of leisure, time to reflect, or idleness), creation, identity and freedom. Needs are also defined according to the existential categories of being, having, doing and interacting, and from these dimensions, a 36 cell matrix is developed which can be filled with examples of satisfiers for those needs.

Fundamental Human Needs	Being (qualities)	Having (things)	Doing (actions)	Interacting (settings)
subsistence	physical and mental health	food, shelter work	feed, clothe, rest, work	living environment, social setting
protection	care, adaptability autonomy	social security, health systems, work	co-operate, plan, take care of, help	social environment, dwelling
affection	respect, sense of humour, generosity, sensuality	friendships, family, relationships with nature	share, take care of, make love, express emotions	privacy, intimate spaces of togetherness
understanding	critical capacity, curiosity, intuition	literature, teachers, policies educational	analyse, study,meditate investigate,	schools, families universities, communities,
participation	receptiveness, dedication, sense of humour	responsibilities, duties, work, rights	cooperate, dissent, express opinions	associations, parties, churches, neighbourhoods
leisure	imagination, tranquillity spontaneity	games, parties, peace of mind	day-dream, remember, relax, have fun	landscapes, intimate spaces, places to be alone
creation	imagination, boldness, inventiveness, curiosity	abilities, skills, work, techniques	invent, build, design, work, compose, interpret	spaces for expression, workshops, audiences
identity	sense of belonging, self- esteem, consistency	language, religions, work, customs, values, norms	get to know oneself, grow, commit oneself	places one belongs to, everyday settings
freedom	autonomy, passion, self-esteem, open-mindedness	equal rights	dissent, choose, run risks, develop awareness	anywhere

Satisfiers also have different characteristics: they can be violators or destroyers, pseudosatisfiers, inhibiting satisfiers, singular satisfiers, or synergic satisfiers. Max-Neef shows that certain satisfiers, promoted as satisfying a particular need, in fact inhibit or destroy the possibility of satisfying other needs: eg, the arms race, while ostensibly satisfying the need for protection, in fact then destroys subsistence, participation, affection and freedom; formal democracy, which is supposed to meet the need for participation often disempowers and alienates; commercial television, while used to satisfy the need for recreation, interferes with understanding, creativity and identity - the examples are everywhere.

Synergic satisfiers, on the other hand, not only satisfy one particular need, but also lead to satisfaction in other areas: some examples are breast-feeding; self-managed production; popular education; democratic community organisations; preventative medicine; meditation; educational games.

This model forms the basis of an explanation of many of the problems arising from a dependence on mechanistic economics, and contributes to understandings that are necessary for a paradigrn shift that incorporates systemic principles. Max-Neef and his colleagues have found that this methodology "allows for the achievement of in-depth insight into the key problems that impede the actualisation of fundamental human needs in the society, community or institution being studied" (Max-Neef et al, 1987:40)

This model provides a useful approach that meets the requirements of small group, community-based processes that have the effect of allowing deep reflection about one's individual and community situation, leading to critical awareness and, possibly, action al the local economic level.

Max-Neef Right Livelihood Award 1983

The Right Livelihood Award
for outstanding vision and work on behalf of our planet and its people.

http://www.rightlivelihood.org/max-neef.html

Manfred Max-Neef (Chile)

(1983)

Manfred Max-Neef
Orla Connolly

“…for revitalising small and medium-sized communities through ‘Barefoot Economics’.”

Manfred Max-Neef is a Chilean economist who has gained an international reputation for his work and writing on development alternatives. In addition to a long academic career, Max-Neef achieved an impressive minority vote when he stood as candidate in the Chilean Presidential election of 1993. He was subsequently appointed Rector of the Universidad Austral de Chile in Valdivia.

After teaching economics at the University of California (Berkeley) in the 1960s, he served as a Visiting Professor at a number of US and Latin American universities. He has worked on development projects in Latin America for the Pan-American Union, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Labour Office.

In 1981 he wrote the book for which he is best known, From the Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics, published by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Sweden. It describes his experiences as an economist attempting to practise 'economics as if people matter' among the poor in South America. In the same year he set up in Chile the organisation CEPAUR (Centre for Development Alternatives).

CEPAUR is largely dedicated to the reorientation of development in terms of stimulating local self-reliance and satisfying fundamental human needs. More generally, it advocates a return to the human scale. CEPAUR acts as a clearing-house for information on the revitalisation and development of small and medium-sized urban and rural communities; it researches new tools, strategies and evaluative techniques for such development, assists with projects aiming at greater local self-reliance and disseminates the results of its research and experience.

In Human Scale Development, published in 1987 in Spanish and later in English, Max-Neef and his colleagues at CEPAUR outline a new development paradigm based on a revaluation of human needs. Needs are described as existential (having, doing, being) and as axiological (values) and the things needed to satisfy them are not necessarily dependent upon, or commensurate with, the kinds or quantities of economic goods available in any given society. The book seeks to counter the logic of economics with the ethics of well-being.

He received the National Prize for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, Chile, and the Kenneth Boulding Award from the International Society for Ecological Economics in 2008. The Soka University, Japan, bestowed on him the University Award of Highest Honour. He received honorary degrees of the University of Jordan and the Saint Francis University (Loretto, Pennsylvania).

Quotation

"There are two separate languages now - the language of economics and the language of ecology, and they do not converge. The language of economics is attractive, and remains so, because it is politically appealing. It offers promises. It is precise, authoritative, aesthetically pleasing. Policy-makers apply the models, and if they don't work there is a tendency to conclude that it is reality that is playing tricks. The assumption is not that the models are wrong but that they must be applied with greater rigour... While the many deficiencies and limitations of the theory that supports the old paradigm must be overcome (mechanistic interpretations and inadequate indicators of well-being, among others), a theoretical body for the new paradigm must still be constructed."

Manfred Max-Neef

Interviews Of People Of The World - Add Your Interview Too

From DailyGood
http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?qid=4263

Here are two of the beautiful people and their interviews:

The importance of water:
http://www.6miliardidialtri.org/index.php?module=showsingle&id=1467 

Growing up in the countryside outside of Baghdad:
http://www.6miliardidialtri.org/index.php?module=showsingle&id=413

See the faces of thousands more and see what they have to say.
Add yourself.

September 18, 2010

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean. --Ryunosuke Satoro

See Yourself in Six Billion Others:
From a Brazilian fisherman to a Chinese shopkeeper, from a German performer to an Afghan farmer, all answered the same questions about their fears, dreams, ordeals, hopes: "Who are you? What have you learned from your parents? What does love mean to you?" A project of "Earth From Above" photographer Yann Arthus Bertrand, 6 Billion Others weaves together video portraits of lives across the globe. Each face is strikingly different. Each answer is remarkably human. Emerging from Bertrand's quest "to learn to live together," these vignettes capture the stunning diversity of mankind while unleashing the universal nature of humanity. [more]


After 10 years flying over the planet to carry out THE EARTH SEEN FROM THE SKY, YANN ARTHUS-BERTRAND launched in 2003 with Sibylle d'Orgeval and Baptiste Rouget-Luchaire the project « 6 billion Others ».

5 000 INTERVIEWS were filmed in 75 COUNTRIES by 6 REPORTERS who went in search of the Others.
From a Brazilian fisherman to an Australian lawyer, from a German performer to an Afghan farmer, they all answered the same questions:

- What have you learnt from your parents?
- What do you want to pass on to your children ?
- What ordeals have you been through ?
- What does love mean to you?
 

To continue this extraordinary human experience you can learn more about the current exhibitions and check out the news by visiting  http://www.6billionothers.org

Be The Change:
Recognize yourself in others: find common ground with a stranger, or someone who seems impossibly distinct from you.

Vegas Drone Trial Makes History

Vegas Drone Trial Makes History

by Jason Whited

Published on Wednesday, September 15, 2010 by Las Vegas CityLife

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/09/15-0

Fourteen anti-war activists may have made history today in a Las Vegas courtroom when they turned a misdemeanor trespassing trial into a possible referendum on America’s newfound taste for remote-controlled warfare.

The so-called Creech 14, a group of peace activists from across the country, went on trial this morning for allegedly trespassing onto Creech Air Force Base in April 2009.

From the start of today’s trial, prosecutors did their best to keep the focus on whether the activists were guilty of allegations they illegally entered the base and refused to leave as a way to protest the base’s role as the little-known headquarters for U.S. military operations involving unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, over Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.

But a funny thing happened on the way to prosecutors’ hope for a quick decision.

Appearing as witnesses for the Creech 14 today were some of the biggest names in the modern anti-war movement: Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general under President Lyndon Johnson; Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army colonel and one of three former U.S. State Department officials who resigned on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and Bill Quigley, legal director for the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights.
By the time those three witnesses finished their testimony as to why they believed the activists had protested at the base, they’d managed to convince Las Vegas Township Justice Court Judge William Jansen to delay his verdict for four months — and had managed clearly to frustrate prosecutors.

For the better part of the day, Clark, Wright and Quigley testified under direct questioning from witnesses and a surly cross-examination from the Clark County district attorney’s office.

Each witness spoke eloquently, and at length, about the need for nonviolent civil disobedience in the face of criminal actions by the U.S. government — which is how most in today’s anti-war movement and many international observers have characterized America’s drone war.

“[People] are allowed to trespass if it’s for the greater good — and there are certainly exceptions [to the law] when there is an emerging, urgent need,” said Quigley, while on the stand.
By all accounts, the Creech 14 trial is the first time in history an American judge has allowed a trial to touch on possible motivations of anti-drone protesters.

No one knows how Jansen will ultimately rule, but most took it as a good sign when, at the end of the day’s proceedings, applause flooded the courtroom and Jansen sent the Creech 14 — all of them part of a robust Catholic anti-war movement — on their way by echoing the words of Jesus Christ with his call of “Go in peace!”

Maude Barlow Point: Water is a fundamental right

adopt a resolution recognizing the human right to drinking water and sanitation. One hundred and twenty-two countries voted in favour of the resolution,

Countries representing 5.4 billion people – the vast majority of the population on Earth – voted in favour of the human right to water and sanitation.

voted for the resolution, including Germany, Spain and France.
China, India, Russia and Brazil, also voted in favour. 

When Pablo Solon, Bolivian ambassador to the UN, stood up to introduce the resolution, he referred to a new report on diarrhea showing that every 3.5 seconds, a child dies in the global South from dirty water. Then he held up his fingers and counted – 1, 2, 3. As he paused, the great hall went dead quiet. Then, the General Assembly voted.
===

Maude Barlow  Point: Water is a fundamental right

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/point-water-is-a-fundamental-right/article1661763/

Maude Barlow, national chair of the Council of Canadians

Last week’s UN resolution serves as the template for a more binding resolution

Special to Globe and Mail Update

Last week, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly, for the first time, to adopt a resolution recognizing the human right to drinking water and sanitation. One hundred and twenty-two countries voted in favour of the resolution, none opposed and 41 abstained. The General Assembly also voted to call for member states to provide financial resources and technology to help realize this right in poorer countries.

Water was not included in the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights. At the time, as no one could imagine it would ever be a problem. Decades later, when it became clear that the combination of poverty, dirty water and water depletion in the global South was killing untold millions of people, many human rights and development groups started demanding that access to water be added to the list of fundamental rights.

However, by then it had become clear that the growing demand for water was rendering it a potentially valuable global commodity, and a strong set of adversaries came together to oppose any language of rights at the UN. These forces included the World Bank, which was promoting a program of water privatization in the developing world; the big water utility companies benefiting from this program; and the aid agencies of some big northern countries whose governments had bought into a market model of development. Canada led the opposition to any progress on the right to water at the UN, even weakening the mandate of the independent expert appointed by the Human Rights Council two years ago to study and report on the situation.

Fed up with the delay and obfuscation, a number of countries from the global South (led by Bolivia, whose glaciers are melting due to climate change) decided to put a clear up or down vote to the General Assembly and force every country in the world to say where it stands on this most basic of rights. To its shame, Canada was one of the countries, along with the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, that led the opposition to the resolution. Some tried to get the sponsoring countries to dilute the resolution by removing sanitation or adding the words “access to” water and sanitation, which would have meant that governments only had to provide access to these services, not the services themselves, to those without means. Others, including Canada, proposed a “consensus” resolution that would have just restated the status quo and the need to wait for the report of the independent expert. When it was clear they could not get the support for their alternatives, the big five simply abstained.

This vote marked a historic landmark in the fight for water justice in several ways. Countries representing 5.4 billion people – the vast majority of the population on Earth – voted in favour of the human right to water and sanitation. The language of the resolution itself set the gold standard for all future deliberations on the right to water. While a resolution is not binding, it does nevertheless demonstrate the intent of the General Assembly, and when the time comes for a more binding declaration or convention, the clear and unequivocal wording of this resolution will serve as the template.

Finally, it was important because there was a clear split in the powerful countries of the global North. Many broke with the naysayers and voted for the resolution, including Germany, Spain and France. Most emerging powerhouse countries, including China, India, Russia and Brazil, also voted in favour. This demonstrates a global shift in influence away from the once-dominant Anglo powers and their model of development.

When Pablo Solon, Bolivian ambassador to the UN, stood up to introduce the resolution, he referred to a new report on diarrhea showing that every 3.5 seconds, a child dies in the global South from dirty water. Then he held up his fingers and counted – 1, 2, 3. As he paused, the great hall went dead quiet. Then, the General Assembly voted.

Maude Barlow is national chair of the Council of Canadians. She served as senior adviser on water to the 63rd president of the UN General Assembly.

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Dr. Paul Farmer's testimony: Twelve points in favor of the restitution of the French debt to Haiti

Dr. Paul Farmer's testimony in France before the Regis Debray
Commission established by President Jacques Chirac to investigate Haiti's
claim for restitution.

Paris, November 3, 2003
http://ijdh.org/articles/article_recent_news_8-2-06.php

 

Twelve points in favor of the restitution of the French debt to Haiti
By Paul Farmer,

Medical professor at Harvard Medical School
Medical Director, Bon Sauveur Clinic, Central Plateau, Haiti

I thank you for inviting me to speak with you. I believe the Haitian
government is pressing France to refund the indemnity given by Haiti,
starting in 1825, twenty years after the Haitian revolution, that began in
1791 and lead to the country's independence.

Haiti, maybe more than any other nation, can give powerful arguments in
favor of the restitution of the French debt. First, let me specify a
few things. It is your invitation I answer today and not an appeal from
any government. I am a doctor and American anthropologist and I have
been working in Haiti's central region for twenty years. I am here in
front of you today because I believe that the terrible suffering I see in
our clinics and hospitals mainly have social causes, most of them rooted
in slavery and in the foreign policy of great powers. In order to put
an end to this unnecessary suffering, there must be social answers such
as restitution of the debt and reparations. And so it is a great honor
for me, being a doctor worried about the immediate as well as historic
causes of suffering and sickness, to speak before you.

In a perspective of public health, capital movements that are displayed
in parallel of deep inequalities (from a former slave colony devastated
by war to one of the world's most powerful nations, for example) are
one of the main causes of today's misery. These transfers from the poor
to the rich still take place today, although they are a little more
subtle. They have the benediction of some international financial
institutions. But I am convinced that it is possible to stop or at least to
minimize these unhealthy and inopportune practices. I wouldn't be here if I
didn't think that there is still a small hope that the French
authorities take into account the history in this case and that they do what's
right.

The health situation in Haiti today

To those who argue that all this is history, we can say in opposition
that it is the weight of history that leads to the present situation in
Haiti. I will give a short overall view in six main points of this
situation in my fields of competence, public health and medicine.

First, nobody denies today that Haiti has the worst health indexes of
the American continent, and in fact, these indexes are among the worst
in the world. That is not new but many things could have been done to
improve this situation. My own clinical practice reminds me every day
that we can prevent and cure almost all the main causes of deaths in
Haiti, as long as we act in time. In Haiti's central region, we made it
because we imported tools of modern medicine and we work in collaboration
with public authorities to give treatment to sick destitute people. But
the national situation is deplorable. A few figures: the infant
mortality rate is 81%, a number that keeps going up; in comparison, it is 4%
in France and 7% in Cuba. The child mortality death rate, meaning the
number of Haitian children who die before their fifth birthday, rise to
125%; in France, it is 5%.

The maternal mortality rate, which means women who die giving birth, is
very low in developed countries. Almost all those deaths occur among
poor women in poor countries. Once again, Haiti has some of the most
disastrous figures in the world: official reports state a rate of 520
deaths for 100,000 births. A few years ago, an investigation among the
population in the southeast of the country estimated that rate at over
1,400. In Cuba, the neighboring country, this figure is at 33; in France, at
10.

HIV quickly became the major infectious disease to cause death among
adults. The World Bank estimates that 5% of the Haitian population is
infected. This number is only at 0,1% in Cuba. Despite its important
infection, Haiti is the country that has the least resources in the American
continent to fight this pandemic. On the exception of our work in the
Central Plateau, the country has no structure for appropriate prevention
nor global taking in charge. With an original approach, including both
prevention and appropriate care, already adopted in the Central Plateau
with the support of the public health care system, this procedure could
be extended throughout the country. Unfortunately, this system cannot
play this role at all because it has no financial means. So the NGOs
benefit from all the resources.

Haiti also seems to be the country where there is the most malaria in
the region, a disease eradicated in its neighboring countries, Cuba and
Jamaica. Concerning tuberculosis, we have completed a study in the
center of the country where we found a rate of 357 cases for 100,000
persons, which is once again the highest rate on the American continent. The
problem of tuberculosis is even more serious in Haitian cities where
HIV infections are concentrated: indeed, the virus revives the latent
infectious tuberculosis and epidemic tuberculosis is now progressing very
quickly in shantytowns.

Malnutrition is at the heart of many of these problems. According to
the World Bank, Haiti is indeed the country where there is the most
hunger in the world, after Somalia and Afghanistan.

Secondly, these appalling figures have nothing to do with the Haitian
culture since the country has an epidemiological profile very different
from that of close former French colonies such as Guadeloupe and
Martinique, where life expectancy and the prevalence of epidemic diseases are
very much like the ones in metropolitan France. What a sour paradox it
would be to conclude that Haitians would be better off if they had
never freed themselves from the yoke of slavery! Not one Haitian who
respects himself or herself would say that, but the fact is that we can
easily see a continuous chain of causes and consequences between the
country's situation the day after the revolution and the situation today -- as
if Haitians continue to be punished for their ancestors' rebellion.
Since 1804, two centuries ago, Haiti has suffered under embargoes and
punishing politics which I will recall in details later.

Thirdly, the health situation in Haiti will certainly worsen more if
substantial investments are not quickly made in the public health system.
It is now time that resources flow back to Haiti, towards the country's
public institutions. We call that "international aid" but the word
"restitution" would be more appropriate. By sharing a little of its wealth
with its former colony, France could act in complete fairness in favor
of literacy, access to drinking water, infrastructure renovation and
health care. But international aid is not abundant. At this time when I
am speaking with you, an embargo with no name is pressing on
humanitarian aid and development aid meant for Haiti. Here are the facts, new in a
sense, but well known to Haitians.

Let us look at the case of the loans blocked by the Inter-American
Development Bank which I mentioned recently in Le Monde Diplomatique. I
learned that these loans were approved three years ago both by the Haitian
government and by the Bank's central committee. But no payment has been
made so far. One of these loans was intended for the public health
system, and the other three for teaching, for the improvement of access to
drinking water and the rebuilding of roads. Being an American doctor
working in Haiti, it seemed right to me to try to understand why. The
loans are suspended for "political reasons," they tell me. In May 2000, in
Haiti, general elections (legislative, senatorial and local) took
place. The election of eight senators was contested and some people demanded
the organization of new elections. Well, according to what I've learned
from Haitian sources as well as American ones, the United States asked
the Inter-American Development Bank directly to block the loans as long
as the dispute is not resolved.

It is tragic that France and other European countries followed the
United States in their decision to block the aid to Haitian public
authorities, while this procedure is a violation to the Inter-American
Development Bank's charter, which stipulates that the Bank is forbidden to
intervene in the State members' political affairs. A report from a French
colleague working for the Bank summed up the situation as follows: "On
the whole, the main reason for the economic stagnation is the
cancellation of subsidies and loans from foreign countries that came with the
international community's answer to the political situation dead-end."
These funds are estimated at over 500 million dollars.

Fourthly, there are many debates on the issue of the blocked aid
intended for Haiti. If leaders of the powerful countries that impose these
sanctions think they present their own point of view, I can assure you
that the facts are clear and they show a deep hypocrisy from the creditor
States. Look at my own government's declarations stating that there is
no embargo. I maintain that all you have to do is look in which
direction money is circulating (or rather is not circulating) between
Washington and Port-au-Prince. During the last decades, when the Duvalier or
military governments were in power, hundreds of millions of dollars
flowed into the Haitian power's coffers. Today, the elected government,
unpopular with the government of the United States as well as with the
Haitian elite, has to content itself with sums close to zero.

The Inter-American Development Bank pretended that the funds had been
blocked after a consensus reached by the Organization of American States
in its "Declaration of Quebec." But this document is dated April 22,
2001, while the United States' representative's letter to the
Inter-American Development Bank asking for the loans not to be given is dated
April 8, 2001. It is clear that the United States put pressure on the Bank
so that it backs their own political choices. To quote one of the few
journalists who considered that this scandal deserved to be investigated
"it seems that there was a consultation about that decision only after
it had been taken."

Presently, international financial institutions' schemes against Haiti
are discriminating and probably illegal. The press remained relatively
silent regarding this: the powerful people of this world can say what
they want without any risk of being questioned when the stakes are
considered unimportant.

That's not all. The Inter-American Development Bank demanded, among
other things, that Haiti, a ruined country, pay crushing arrears always
increasing because of increasing interest. The main part of those arrears
concerns loans granted to the Duvalier dictatorship and the military
governments that governed the country so brutally from 1986 to 1990, and
after a brutal coup d'etat, from 1991 to 1994. In July 2003, Haiti
transferred 90% of its reserve currency to Washington to pay these arrears.
To date, not one cent of these four loans has been given, despite the
many guarantees given by the Bank.

In the fifth place, this astounding repeat of illegal schemes of the
19th century (lawyers as well as poor Haitians will see that the payments
to the Inter-American Development Bank are an echo of the indemnities
given to France starting in 1825) is in a straight line with other
discriminating practices against Haiti and its population. I recently made a
list, for a medical magazine, of the many boycotts imposed to the
Haitian people after it refused to respect the rules of the game, rules that
accepted, even during the period of enlightenment, the trade of human
beings. This medical article, titled "The unfair embargo on the aid to
Haiti," is among the documents I put together for the Commission.

In the sixth place, your committee should be extremely cautious with
regard to the notices published in French and in English when those
notices can make people think that Haitians refused in any sort of way the
restitution of indemnities extorted by France many generations ago.
French is not all Haitians' mother tongue. We estimate that only 10% of the
population speak French while all Haitians speak Haitian Creole. Some
Haitians are opposed to the restitution, which can seem staggering. If
we listen to Haitian radio, we can soon guess that the only Haitians
opposed to the restitution are part of the political opposition, weak in
number, not very appreciated in the country but nevertheless with a
great influence on the international level. There are of course a few
bitter intellectuals who also declare they are against the restitution –
which is in accordance with the sociology of a country where social
classes are so deeply divided. However, the great majority of the
population, desperate with the country's terrible situation, is in favor of this
process.

Much of the analysis, notably those of French and American journalists,
presents Haiti's current problems as if they have nothing to do with
slavery, with racism, with war and two centuries of interior and exterior
hostility to popular democracy. The battle Haiti continues to fight
against hereditary or military dictatorships and against the brutal
neo-conservatism privileged by some international financial institutions, is
also a battle against the voluntary eclipse of history.

Historical roots of the current situation

Historians, and probably members of this committee know the facts:
These facts are hard to exonerate, even though many people have tried. In
the way it treats the Haitian issues, contemporary journalism shows
total irresponsibility. Let me underline, once again, six essential facts,
before I speak about the consequences of the 1825 indemnity on Haiti's
later development and its current suffering. I will of course stress on
the roots of the sanitary crisis the country is going through today.

First of all, Haiti is mostly a creation of France. By the Treaty of
Ryswick, signed in 1697, the western third of Santo-Domingo island was
given to France, who made it its most profitable colony within sixty
years. The main editor of the time, Moreau de Saint-Méry, described it as
follows: "The French part of the Santo-Domingo island is France's most
important possession in the New World because of the wealth it gives to
its metropolis and because of the influence it has on its agriculture
and its trade." In his book published in 1981 on the end of the Former
System, Olivier Bernier recalls what the source of this great profit
was: "French products were sent everywhere in the world, but very few
products made in foreign countries went into France. Most of the trade was
based on food products, tobacco and colonial products, sugar, spices,
rice, tea and coffee. That allowed some merchants, most of them from
Bordeaux, to make profit on a merchandise extremely profitable, called
"black gold" -- it was Black slaves. Most of the ships' managers
participated in the vile triangular trade, based on slaves, sugar and rum. They
prospered. The city of Bordeaux was almost completely rebuilt at the
end of the 18th century and it still cuts a fine figure. The money came
from the sale of human beings."

Second point, the French part of the Saint-Domingue island is known by
historians of slavery to be the most merciless colony of history.
During the second half of the 18th century, it was the main call for boats
carrying slaves. When they had lived through the crossing, one-third of
the newcomers died a few years later. Slaves were the great majority of
the population and the masters lived in continuous fear of a rebellion.

Third point, Haitians conquered their independence with arms. We saw
masters free their slaves towards the end of the French revolution but
only after slaves themselves took their situation in hand, in 1791. As
proven in the archives, Napoleon thought later of restoring France's
power on the colony and reestablishing slavery.

The fourth point, almost all of the world's powers took France's side
against Haiti, the first nation to declare itself as a hiding country
for fugitive slaves but also for native people (Haiti's native people had
died long before the Treaty of Ryswick, in a holocaust caused by
infectious diseases and Spanish pro-slavery). The first independent nation in
Latin America and second in the "New World," Haiti was surrounded by
slave colonies. The country had only one independent neighbor, the United
States, owners of slaves themselves. They refused to recognize Haiti's
sovereignty. The diplomatic recognition took a long time to come. A
senator in South Carolina, speaking in front of his peers in 1824,
declared, "Our politics towards Haiti is simple: we will never recognize its
independence." The peace and security of a great part of the Union
prevents us from even considering it." At the end of the 19th century, the
United States took France's place and the American military occupation,
from 1915 to 1934, made my country become the dominant power in Haitian
affairs in the 20th century. These are the facts.

During the first decades of the independence, the Haitian economy in
ruin continued to depend on coffee, sugar and other products, none of
which were intended for local consumption. As long as the great powers
refused to recognize Haiti's sovereignty, the leaders of the country saw
the national economy trapped in inequitable commercial relations.

It is also important to underline, like Moreau de Saint-Mercy did
before the revolution, the irreparable ecological damage caused by single
crop farming practiced by French planters during the 18th century. As for
the sanitary situation after the independence war, Dr. Ary Bordes
summed it up as follows: cities and large villages were unhealthy, lacking
drinking fountains and latrines; refuse was accumulating in the streets.
Most of the plantation hospitals were destroyed; only military
hospitals in Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitian were running. Almost all doctors,
surgeons and pharmacists had left the island. Only Black people who had
worked in the destroyed hospitals, midwives, healers and bonesetters
still gave rare health care. With very little training, they were facing
a population just freed from slavery, generally living in primitive
huts, without water or latrines, weakened and decimated by contagious
diseases against which it was badly protected. And the doctor concluded:
"Overwhelming legacy left by our former masters, craving for profit and
caring very little for the native population's life or health
conditions." The current sanitary situation shows a disturbing similarity with
this legacy of the past.

The fifth point, even if it is impossible to evaluate the cost of
slavery (three and a half centuries of destruction of lives and families,
but also of cultures and languages), the "French debt" can perfectly be
quantified. In 1825, Charles X accepted to recognize Haiti's
independence on the condition that the new republic pay 150 million francs to
France -- the annual budget of the French government at the time -- and cut
its customs taxes in half. Other people than me will give you precise
information on the amounts that were actually paid, but you must know
that such a demand was illegal with regard to the French law. Indeed, the
French ultimatum came with explicit threats to use force and to
reestablish slavery. But France had already signed a treaty (Treaty of Vienna,
1815) in which, even though slavery was not abolished in places where
it already existed, it was expressly forbidden to establish it on new
territories or to reintroduce it where it had been abolished, like in
Haiti. And so the threat that had presided in the negotiations was
completely outside of the law.

The sixth point, the consequences of the payment of the debt on the
Haitian society of the 19th century was devastating. In Haiti, the results
are heavy: anthropologist Jean Price-Mars denounced in 1953 the Haitian
leaders who had given in to French demands: "The incompetence and
thoughtlessness of the men in power made a country where expenses and
revenues were balanced up until then, become a nation overburdened with debts
and tangled up in financial obligations impossible to respect." In
France, opinions on the issue were different at the time, according to the
people's political convictions. Victor Schoelcher, who fought to
abolish slavery, considered that to impose the payment of an indemnity to
victorious slaves was just like asking them to pay with money what they
had already paid with their blood. Even those who benefited from the
agreement knew that it was a fatal blow to the Haitian economy. Alexandre
Delaborde, former colonist in Saint-Domingue, admitted in 1833 that
these 150 million francs represented three times the value of the entire
colony. And so, where does the payment of the indemnity and customs
concessions stand in the long list of tragedies that weigh down the Haitian
people? Very high up, in my opinion.

Restitution and reparations

While Haiti is getting ready to celebrate the bicentennial of its
independence, it seems fair to me to wonder if the "international community"
will continue to cut off the country or will it choose to make amends
to the longest succession of abuse towards this one and only nation in
history? France and the United States are the two countries where that
question should be asked with the most strength.

I cannot conclude without a word about the reparations for slavery
itself. Experts tell me that the procedures for reparations, undertaken
these last few years by slaves' descendants, come up against two
obstacles: slavery was not illegal in France at the time and, second difficulty,
these reparations represent enormous amounts for rich countries
(comparable, at the very least, to those that American cigarettes makers were
condemned to pay, not including interest). Reparations should be
extended to the entire American continent and the African continent. Beyond
the easy legal arguments, let's underline that the restitution of the
debt is a much less complicated issue than the reparations, and that it
is quite manageable for France. The amount can be calculated without
great difficulties and the beneficiaries are easy to name. It is a lot
less complicated than trying to estimate a reparation for a Central
African country, for example, that lost part of its population when an
African slave trafficker took away inhabitants to sell them to a Portuguese
trafficker who then sold those captives in Haiti.

Our world will become a better world if we pursue the idea of
reparations. Legal obstacles can be by-passed, and that is known by everyone
with good intentions who, by the coincidence of their birth, have power
today. But these are circles where good intentions are rare. And we have
every reason to fear that if reparations are paid one day, they will go
to slaves' descendants who are relatively rich who live in the United
States, in France or in England, a country who, with Spain and Portugal,
were the main architects of slavery in the New World.

I am going back to Haiti tomorrow and I am not very optimistic about my
capacity, as a doctor, to significantly change the sanitary crisis I
described here and elsewhere. I brought with me ten files with documents
that detail and support what I told you today, because justice must be
done. For a doctor, working in Haiti, in a country that continues to
suffer from abuses from the most powerful nations in the world, is a
little like trying to stop a sea wall with fingers. But I have a great debt
towards this country that made me a better doctor, at least I hope, and
that taught me to think in a more critical way. The medical team I am
part of will never stop treating sick poor people. Public teachers,
teachers, lead a similar battle in their field. We do not represent the
Haitian State but we work together with the Ministries of Health and of
Education, which must become responsible again for the access to health
care and teaching for everyone. We need allies and an answer to the
following question: will the happy winners of the world's history settle in
their distressing routine or will they finally break off from cruel,
corrupted and racist politics? Will they finally give back to Haiti the
price of its blood? Haitians are getting ready to commemorate the
bicentennial of their country's independence but they believe that they have
been punished, for two centuries, for daring to shake their chains. The
past and present history prove they are right.

Once again, thank you for asking for my advice.


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