‘THE RETURN OF FAITH’
[Het Parool, The Netherlands]
With finger-pointing over the global financial crisis rapidly spreading, William Waack of Brazil’s O Globo warns that developing countries are in no way shielded from the effects - and that blaming others won’t do a thing to help Brazil or the world emerge from the hole they are in.
“‘Contagion’ suggests that it might be possible to prevent the “disease,” as long as the potential victim remains isolated from the source of infection (in this case, the American economy). That’s pure nonsense, and it’s dangerous, because it overshadows what must be done and delays the adoption of protective measures. … We can dispense with the notion of ‘decoupling.’”
“The more advanced and competitive a national economic system is, the more it will be affected by the crisis. Therefore, it’s Brazil the exporter and innovator which is connected with the global economy that will face the worst consequences. And it is that modern country - industry, agro-business, services and competitive exporters of mineral commodities - that have ensured our prosperity so far. … Schadenfreude, a German word that has been adopted by the Anglo-Saxon press, means to take pleasure in the misfortune of others. The New York Times this Thursday pointed out the fact that many Latin American leaders, among them Chávez [Venezuela], Morales[Bolivia], Correa [Ecuador], Kirchner [Argentina] and Lula [Brazil], allowed themselves be get carried away with schadenfreude in regard to the crisis in the United States. And now, they’re getting carried away with fear. ”
It seems that both in and out of the United States, the things that concern people the most about Sarah Palin - John McCain’s running mate - is her age, his age, and Palin’s fundamentalist Christian upbringing.
Why would historian Alexandre Adler, who is often characterized as France’s foremost neo-con and who greatly admires John McCain, want to see Barack Obama elected president of the United States?
“If I was an American voter, I would campaign enthusiastically for the election of Ms. Rice to enter the White House. The nature of things means that unfortunately it won’t be her, but Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who is likely to become the first Black president of the United States. … Read the rest of this entry »
When Barack Obama pointed out recently that Americans should - in their own interest - teach their children Spanish or some other second language, many were quick to pounce.
But, not surprisingly, people in South America wholeheartedly agree with him.
“The percentage of people in the United States who master a foreign-language is pathetic compared to other wealthy countries. … Obama is right, although it would’ve been nice if he himself spoke Spanish or some other language. … a recent survey taken in 27 countries of the European Union revealed that 56 percent of Europeans speak at least one language apart from their native tongue, which is an increase of 53 percent over five years ago.”
You will not read a more visceral and affecting account of what the demise of the Big Three means to individuals, families, neighborhoods and regions than this one from Michigan (cross-posted from Michigan Liberal):
Yesterday my family joined the ever-growing group of Michigan families who now face an uncertain economic future due to lay-offs in the auto industry.
My dad’s employer, once part of The Big Three, offered their employees age 50 and over a puny buyout package, with the hopes that 300-400 people take them up on it. Whispers around the office led most to believe that if the buyouts weren’t taken, they’d still most likely be without a job, and the measly benefits. So as of August 1st, my dad will stay in Michigan, unemployed, with a mortgage, bills, and a very uncertain future. His job, like so many others, is heading to Mexico.
The news broke my heart and my spirit, just as it has for thousands others.
Here’s what worries me most - like many other laid off auto workers, my dad’s in his late fifties, with a bad back, arthritis starting to set in, and a minimal college education in auto repair, no thanks to the GI Bill. He can send me email, watch the funny YouTube videos I send him, but that’s about as far as his computer skills go. With a crummy economy, how does my dad compete with all the hungry, tech-savvy college graduates that don’t have families to support?
This is not the American Dream, this is the Auto Industry Nightmare.
Now what? Barack Obama? John McCain? Gov. Granholm? Anybody?
“Obama is right to say that Latin Americans are primarily responsible for their own tribulations, but wrong to believe that an increase in foreign aid will improve the economy of the region and prevent the emergence of populists like Hugo Chavez. That was the philosophy of the Good Neighbor Policy, which was designed to undermine the influence of the Axis powers in the 1930s, and of the Alliance for Progress which was aimed at curbing the spread of communism in the 1960s. Indeed, populism was Lord and King in Latin America from the end of the 1920s until the early 1990s. Its current resurgence confirms that foreign aid will do little to preclude populism: Under George W. Bush, aid to Latin America has doubled to $1.6 billion - the largest increase since World War II.”
“U.S. policy toward Latin America should be an exercise in atmospherics - high on photo ops and very friendly rhetoric, and low on detailed policies. Detailed policies inevitably lead to interventionism or condescension, and Latin Americans need to continue to move toward self-reliance.”
Vacation offers a chance for reflection and introspection, (perhaps too much?) and mine has been no exception. While catching up on the news around the political sphere, I have found a heavy dose of my typical old cynicism sneaking up on me. A major portion of this has come about regarding the shifting tides of the Obama campaign.
While I still swear no fealty to either party, in the early days of the campaign I must admit that I had been swept up in a wave of hopefulness. Upon first hearing Barack Obama’s “Yes we can” speech in New Hampshire, I confess that I found my eyes welling up a bit. I was ready to believe that there was a glimmer of hope for a change in the typical politics which seem to corrupt our government more than helping its citizens. I began to bristle upon hearing the candidate’s detractors calling him “Barry HUSSEIN Obama” and questioning his religion and upbringing. I felt a temptation to overlook his lack of experience and say, “Let’s just give the new kid a chance here.” (Obama is younger than I, so I will take the liberty of calling him “kid.” Please spare me any accusations of racism or ageism.)
However, as time has passed, I have (along with many others, it seems) become dismayed by the seemingly random changes in Obama’s positions as the political winds shifted. I understand that the Obama team refers to these incidents as “refining” the candidate’s policy points, but come on now. If you refined crude oil as often as Obama has refined his policy positions it would long since have turned to high-test gasoline. I no longer have any idea where the Illinois Senator stands on gun control, abortion, public financing, FISA, NAFTA, when and how to withdraw from Iraq or the debate structure for the campaign. I understand that candidates will often “run to the center” after the primaries end, and it’s not uncommon. It comes from an old nautical term, where a sailor on a ship listing heavily to one side will rush to midships to right the vessel. But Obama’s actions have been more like a youth with his finger in a hole in the dike who is suddenly dashing all over as more and more leaks erupt.
Make no mistake, I have not been entirely sold on John McCain’s positions for every area either. I still have major differences with Senator McCain on important foreign policy issues, and am far too uncomfortable with how he might select Supreme Court nominees. On domestic issues, though, I’ve at least found some consistency in sensible proposals. Most recently, McCain put forth a fairly comprehensive economic plan which, while still having some holes in it, addresses many of my concerns. His energy plan, as I have previously stated, is the only one I’ve heard which includes a solid, long range plan while addressing the need for gap filling measures to get us through the rest of this century.
At this stage, neither candidate has closed the deal to pull me off the fence and away from possibly supporting Bob Barr this fall, but I must concede that Obama has launched a general election bid which seems to show him as something less than originally advertised. The bloom is off the rose, and Obama is showing me that, sadly, he really is “just another politician” and if he wants my vote, he will need to put in a lot of work to clarify exactly what I’ll be getting if I help elect him.
In the United States there has been quite a bit of criticism of John McCain’s visit to Latin America for being ill-timed - although his partisans argue that the trip will shore up his foreign-policy credentials.
“Uribe is depositing a symbolic vote for the Republican candidate in the ballot box - a very risky card to play. … Despite the ambiguous efforts of Uribe’s government to imply that the visit doesn’t rule out a future visit by Barack Obama - that’s the message which has been sent. … the fact that we received a presidential candidate who doubles as a clone of the present occupant of the White House with such excessive honors, makes clear our position of inferiority - a position accepted with servility by Colombia’s Chief of State.”
It used to be that Latin Americans viewed Europe as far more humane than the United States because of the way undocumented workers there were treated. No more …
According to this editorial from Diario Co Latino of El Salvador:
“According to news coming from the Old Continent, a law passed by the European Parliament on the 18th of this month not only permits the expulsion of undocumented immigrants, but also provides for prison terms of up to 18 months and five-year prohibition on returning to Europe. … Many believed that today’s Europe, because its past was so appallingly bloody, was more democratic and humane than the U.S. But with this newly-adopted law, it has demonstrated that it’s the equal of the United States.”
Is Barack Obama’s honeymoon with Europe over already?
After months of the most effusive and unrestrained praise for America’s first serious Black presidential candidate, some of Obama’s most energetic European backers - the Germans - are growing skeptical.
“In the end, a disappointment is a deceit. So it’s for the best that we cast a serous German glance in the direction of the American Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama. He has called for the death penalty for child rapists, defends the right to possess firearms and is the first candidate since the Watergate scandal to reject public financing of his election campaign in favor of private, unlimited contributions. ‘Hey,’ some on this side of the Atlantic now ask, ‘we thought he was one of us?’ Far from it.”
“The facade of the wise, eloquent and charming golden boy has begun to crumble. There is a second - other Obama. And he’s about to be discovered: unscrupulous, selfish, and overambitious.’
“Who is the real Obama? Nobody knows for sure. For now because of his vagueness, it’s still possible to project various expectations onto him, in USA as well as in Europe. But here and there the impatience is growing: Obama, perhaps the first Black President, must not only be flexible, he has to take a stand.”
One of the more baffling news stories we have been covering on WORLDMEETS.US is that over the resumption of American beef imports to South Korea. For the past two months, daily protests and candlelight vigils have paralyzed the heart of Seoul over what appears to most Americans as a severe over-reaction to a minor trade issue. Read the rest of this entry »
Some attention is being given to an only partly humorous video from reason.tv which takes a fairly disparaging look at American reactions to various labor threats. The phrasing is worth noting:
Sometimes the threat comes from China, Japan, or outsourcing to India. Today, it’s NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement—you know, all those Mexicans taking our jobs.
The article then goes on to quote Drew Carey ranting about “the robot threat.”
“Now, think about it,” says Reason.tv host Drew Carey. “How are we supposed to compete against something that doesn’t get paid, doesn’t get health insurance, and never goes on breaks?”
“No job is safe from the robot threat!”
A couple of the usual sources have a good guffaw over this. (Give a wave to James Joyner and Professor Bainbridge.) However, the subtext of the original article follows an all too common theme. Anyone expressing concern over the so called “free trade” (which is quite obviously unfair trade in a cheap costume) effects on workers in the United States should immediately be lumped in with Luddites and those fretting over “brown skinned people sneaking over the border and taking our jobs.” The fact, of course, is that we’re talking about three very different issues here.
While many of us maintain a soft spot in our hearts for John Henry’s epic struggle against the rise of the machine age, the Luddite movement was dead before it was fully born. Worries about illegal immigrants sneaking over the border at night to “steal our jobs” is yet another distraction. Few, if any, high end, lucrative jobs are going to be filled by undocumented migrant workers. The real issue there speaks to a failure to enforce existing employment laws and is a discussion for another day.
The true annoyance here is the obvious conflation of the above two scenarios with the very real issue of job outsourcing and the government’s reaction to it. Anyone thinking that such things don’t happen or are the griping of “old world thinkers” who are standing in the way of progress and globalization are simply in denial. The issue is real and it confronts us today. Advancements in technology have allowed telecommuting to provide great benefits in a wide variety of areas. These include computer application development, engineering, CAD/CAM, graphics design and customer service among others. But far too many large corporations immediately made the jump from “remote working” to “very remote working” by handing these jobs off to basement rate cheap labor markets.
Usually these transitions come in the form of attractive sounding “offers” where employees are informed that their positions are being reallocated to “global resources.” The “offer” ensures that the worker will be given first choice for other, parallel positions inside the company or the lure of a “bridge to early retirement.” The reality, of course, is that other positions are scarce when every department is under similar pressure to globalize. The offer of “retirement” is not attractive to people who were still years from their target retirement date. More often than not the workers find themselves - well into middle age - suddenly tossed out into a fiercely competitive labor market and winding up in positions where they have to learn entire new sets of technical jargon involving phrases like, “grande, latte and half-caf.”
At the same time, many of these companies are recording record profits while collecting huge tax benefits at both the federal and state levels. Take a look at the list of companies, many of which are heavy hitters in the job outsourcing debacle, who wound up paying ZERO taxes in 2007 while sending our jobs overseas.
The survey said the following 16 companies, whose profits ranged from $42 million to $2.9 billion, paid no Federal tax last year: I.B.M., General Motors, Aetna Life and Casualty, Baxter Travenol Laboratories, Carolina Power and Light, Illinois Power, Corning, Hewlett-Packard, Ashland Oil, Greyhound, Ogden, Sequa, Pennzoil, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Consumers Power and Gulf States Utilities.
It is not the Federal government’s place to tell industry who and where they can hire workers. But by the same token, the Feds are under no obligation to give such huge benefits to the worst offenders. When you operate your company in the country which made it possible for you to achieve such success, you have a responsibility to give something back to that country. Make a profit? Yes. But you owe some loyalty beyond the circle of your board of directors and largest investors. You also owe some loyalty to the workers who helped you get there. The government needs to stop turning a blind eye to this. Incidentally, this is a subject which John McCain gets wrong, Obama gets occasionally right (but then often back peddles in his next speech) and Bob Barr nails right on the head.
There’s much consternation among progressives and the Republicans over recent developments in Obama’s unmasking as the tough, take-no-prisoners politician — and centrist Democrat — he is and has always been. Jazz Shaw comments here at TMV on Obama’s ‘Rovian’ roleplaying here.
In a piece which seems to me to be simultaneously mean-spirited and [very] grudgingly admiring David Brooks writes of ‘The Two Obamas.’ Andrew Sullivan — who seemingly admires the trait — calls his comment on Obama’s [intelligent, strategically unexceptionable] decision not to go the public funding route ‘Niccolo Obama.’
Economist Paul Krugman pointed out back in January that Obama was less progressive than either Clinton or Edwards on certain issues affecting domestic policy. With respect to today’s article in Fortune — certain to cause alarm and despondency among progressive supporters who were carried away by his Message of Hope — color me unsurprised. Forewarned by Krugman and others, I checked the fine print.
His campaign was quick to point out that this isn’t really a reversal as such. He’s just worked back round to his original position.
His spokesman, Bill Burton said, ‘Obama-as the candidate noted in Fortune’s interview-has not changed his core position on NAFTA, and that he has always said he would talk to the leaders of Canada and Mexico in an effort to include enforceable labor and environmental standards in the pact’.(The Nation)] Of course what he said during the interview is a little different, as The Nation
points out, from what he said when he was trying to beat Hillary in the Rust Belt.
“We still have a long way to go to the presidential elections in November, more than sufficient time for the intentions of the voters to change. … There is no doubt that as far as the interests of Colombia are concerned, McCain would be the ideal president. But it’s the same for the middle and upper classes of the United States. McCain would be ideal, especially after listening to the pacifist and naive Neville Chamberlain-ideas of Obama in regard to confronting Iran, inasmuch as the Iranian threat is real and one fears a repeat of the Democratic government of Jimmy Carter, who was a disastrous dolt as much for the United States as for the rest of the Western world. ”
“The issue is that the Democrats lack vision in international affairs. For example, look at the issue of the “assassinations of Colombian trade unionists.” For them this is such a serious fault that they can’t sign a Free Trade Agreement with their first ally in Latin America. It hasn’t occurred to the myopic Democrats that by emphasizing the unproven murders of Colombian trade unionists as an argument against the FTA, they may well encourage such killings by President Uribe’s own enemies.”
Now as President Bush prepares to leave office and the ‘Three Amigos’ have said their last goodbyes, Mexican columnists have begun to weigh in on the success of their final NAFTA Summit.
While NAFTA has become increasingly unpopular in the United States, the same can be said in Mexico - but for far different reasons.
There, the dissatisfaction stems from the feebleness of NAFTA’s mechanisms for enforcing its decisions on the three federal governments, and the perceived lack of respect given Mexico in relation to its two other North American Read the rest of this entry »
Even under ordinary conditions, if you are the newly-elected president of a small Central American nation like Guatemala, coming to Washington to meet the U.S. president is a singularly important and daunting event.
Unfortunately for Guatemala, President Alvaro Colom’s visit comes during an election year in which the idea of legalizing the undocumented is the political kiss of death. According to this editorial from Guatemala’s Prensa Libre, the trip also proved a lesson in the global pecking order:
“Meetings between Guatemalan officials and their Washington colleagues stand out, due to a failure to comprehend how the complicated American political system works Read the rest of this entry »
Republicans might be interested to know that there are some people in the world, in this case in Brazil, who already assume that John McCain will beat either of his Democratic challengers.
April 19th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Here is another Guest Voice by Joel S. Hirschhorn who is highly critical of both parties.. Guest Voice columns do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers.
The Most Powerful People in America
by Joel S. Hirschhorn
They are not the rich and superrich, nor the politically powerful running the two-party plutocracy, nor the greedy heads of banking and finance companies, and certainly not the media moguls and bloviating pundits.
The most powerful people are US, American consumers that account for over 70 percent of the economy. It is exactly now, when
![[The Telegraph, U.K.]](http://worldmeets.us/images/mccainpennsylvania_telegraph.gif)