SolidarityEconomy.net

by Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown

At an October fundraiser in Topeka, the Republican faithful lined up to shake hands with the headliner, Dick Cheney. But before getting to the Veep, they had to get past the wife of the local Congress critter. She was standing adjacent to Cheney, holding a big bottle of Purell, a hand sanitizer that claims to kill “99.99% of most common germs.” Each person waiting to get their grip-and-grin with the honoree first had to accept a squirt of the goop from this lady to purify their hands! After the meet-and-greet was over, Cheney ducked backstage and rubbed a generous dollop of the antiseptic onto his own hands, cleansing him of the human contact he had just endured. (more…)

by Carol Araullo, Philippines

It took some effort to sustain enthusiasm for the “prayer rally” originally called by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) last Sunday to protest the brazenly illegal and undemocratic maneuvers of the Arroyo-de Venecia-led House Majority to convene a constituent assembly (con-ass) in order to revise the Philippine Constitution for their dubious political ends. Something had gone terribly awry after the beacon call was first issued and before the actual rally took place. The proof lay in the disappointing turn-out after organizers themselves had projected half a million Metro Manilans would take part in the protest. (more…)

by Jerry Harris

. Transnational capitalists own half the world

The richest two percent of the world’s adults own 50 percent of the world’s assets. If the world’s wealth was evenly distributed each person would have $20,500 of assets. Instead the poorest half of the population holds only one percent of wealth. This year the 170,000 employees of the big five US investment banks (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns) pocketed $36 billion in bonuses. Their overall compensation of about $60 billion was equivalent to Vietnam’s gross domestic product. Marc Faber, author of “Gloom Doom & Boom” notes; “Something is a bit bizarre in the world. The liquidity of the global middle class is not there but the liquidity of Goldman Sachs partners is soaring.” (more…)

by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford

“Hate against me has a lot to do with racism. Because of my big mouth, because of my curly hair. And I’m so proud to have this mouth and this hair, because it’s African.” – Hugo Chavez, Democracy Now, September 20, 2005 (more…)

by Rhone Fraser

“The sit-in movement was built upon deep layers of African American organizational experience stretching back generations.”

The American civil rights narrative has too often been reduced to a tale of spontaneous invention, rather than the product of intense debate, meticulous planning and, often, tactical and strategic genius on the part of the organizers. It’s long past time to tell the truth about this watershed moment in the Black radical tradition. (more…)

by Tom Hayden

In my first report, concerning troop withdrawals, I found the Iraq Study Group proposals for troop reductions too vague and equivocal. In my second report, I found their proposals for opening Iraq’s oil reserves to multinationals repugnant and even self-serving. Now let’s turn to the internal political solution offered by the Baker-Hamilton Group.

It deserves close attention, for it mirrors and endorses peace talks with the Iraqi insurgents that are already underway in secret, as first reported in the Huffington Post last week. (more…)

by Carol Araullo, Philippines

Observers of the political scene in the Philippines wonder about the angry uproar across a wide cross-section of the population over the indecent haste with which Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s allies in the Lower House of Congress attempted to railroad the convening of a constituent assembly or “con-ass” that would bring about sweeping changes in the Constitution. The answer is captured so succinctly in a text message sent by a friend with a knack for puns: “con-ass”, he said, stands for a con job perpetrated by a bunch of assh—s. (more…)

. Teachers buy ports
The Ontario Teacher’s Pension Fund bought four container terminals for $2.4B from Hong Kong’s Orient Overseas International. Two ports are in New York/New Jersey and the other two in Vancouver. The Pension fund specializes in infrastructure assets.

. China: the rich get richer the poor get poorer
The real income of China’s poorest ten percent fell by 2.4 percent in the last two years. Incomes increased for the other 90 percent, but China, which had relatively even income distribution in 1980 is now less equal (more…)

by Marc CooperFor the first time since Vietnam, an organized, robust movement of active-duty US military personnel has publicly surfaced to oppose a war in which they are serving. Those involved plan to petition Congress to withdraw American troops from Iraq. (Note: A complete version of this report will appear next week in the print and online editions of The Nation.)

After appearing only seven weeks ago on the Internet, the Appeal for Redress, brainchild of 29-year-old Navy seaman Jonathan Hutto, has already been signed by nearly 1,000 US soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen, including dozens of officers–most of whom are on active duty. Not since 1969, when some 1,300 active-duty military personnel signed an open letter in the New York Times opposing the war in Vietnam, has there been such a dramatic barometer of rising military dissent. (more…)

by Jesse Jackson

One casualty of the debacle in Iraq seldom gets much press, but the inevitable focus on the mess in Iraq too often overshadows other vital challenges.

The American automobile industry is hemorrhaging. Today, Ford will announce that it will offer buyouts to 85 percent of its salaried work force. Ford is looking to lay off a staggering 52,000 employees by September 2007. Chrysler has already been merged with the German automaker Daimler-Benz. General Motors is gushing red ink. (more…)

by Seth Sandronsky

“We see an irrational economy that more and more requires prison cells for those who have no chance of finding their way onto employers’ payrolls.”

Does bigger mean better? Yes, for the conventional wisdom on the U.S. economy, the world’s largest in terms of output, or gross domestic product. Thomas Friedman of the NY Times is perhaps the leading voice for this view.Accordingly, citizens of developing nations will prosper if their leaders emulate the U.S. model of growth. Lost a bit in such rhetoric is the fact that the American economy also creates a big labor market surplus. Typically, the likes of Thomas Friedman sidestep this ongoing human tragedy of the grow-or-die U.S. economic model. (more…)

by David Schweickart

Immanuel Kant proposed three questions as constitutive of the philosophical enterprise: What can we know? How should we act? For what may we hope? As a philosopher long interested in economic issues, let me offer some thoughts on these questions as they apply to our contemporary economic order: What do we know? In what may we hope? What should we do? I want to talk about the big picture–about capitalism and about what, if anything, might come next.

Part I: Four Development Theses

The publication in 1978 of G. A. Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defense marked the beginning of an exciting new genre of Marxist scholarship in the English-speaking world.[1] “Analytical Marxism” was the (soon-to-be applied) official appellation. “Marxism without the bullshit” was the unofficial label among core afficionados. (more…)

by Walter Mosley

This is the second installment in Walter Mosley’s cycle of essays on Cultural Famine. The introduction and first installment were published in the October 23 issue. –The Editors

“The rich get richer…” This truism is irrefutable. “…and the poor get poorer.” We look away from ourselves, and our loved ones, when the latter phrase is used to complete the saying.

Often only the first part of this age-old axiom is quoted. It’s as if we are silently saying, “There’s no reason to talk about the poor, about poverty. Let’s just accept the notion that money migrates toward money and leave it at that.” (more…)

by Jerry Harris

. Bill Gates wants Bolivia on-line
Gates wrote Bolivia’s socialist president, Evo Morales, offering Microsoft’s help “in the goal of providing all of Bolivia’s people access” to the internet. Gates added, “I am excited to know that our campaign is contributing to your government’s plan” to promote education and economic improvements. Microsoft has just launched a new Word program in Quechua, one of the major languages spoken in Bolivia.
(Financial Times, 11/21/06, Gates seeks common ground with Morales)

. GM crops on over one billion acres
Genetically modified crops are growing at 10 percent a year. Over the past ten years GM crops have been (more…)

by Randy Shaw

A new study—buried by the media—has found the United States second only to Switzerland in the disparity between the net worth of its top 10% and everyone else. The report follows a recent study that found that America’s wealthiest top 1% earned the highest share of the national income since the 1920’s. Only Switzerland exceeded America in its extent of skewed wealth distribution.

It was not that long ago that Americans would look at countries in South America or Asia and decry the vast disparities in wealth between the rich and everyone else. These nations were seen as politically controlled by a wealthy elite, who enriched themselves at the expense of the poor and middle-class. Based on the study, America now fits this category. (more…)