-Caveat Lector- ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: "Michael Albert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: ZNet Commentary / Aug 19 / Robin Hahnel / More News Date sent: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 22:50:45 +0100 Here is today's ZNet Commentary Delivery from Robin Hahnel. To pass this comment along to friends, relatives, etc. please note that the Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet and that to learn more about the project folks can consult ZNet (http://www.zmag.org) and specifically the Sustainer Pages (http://www.zmag.org/Commentaries/donorform.htm) which include lists of writers, writer biographies, and other features of the Z Sustainer Program. Please do not send the pages repeatedly to the same people -- people need to become Sustainers themselves. Here then is today's ZNet Commentary... ------------------------------------------ MORE NEWS By Robin Hahnel How hard could it be for Z Commentaries to provide an alternative daily news synopsis along with its daily commentary? Once someone had her computer set up well so she could click on a dozen major dailies around the world, a couple dozen progressive web sites with new postings every day, and a half dozen progressive discussion forums, and once she were into the routine, would it take more than 4 hours to put together a five page list of important news events every day? If our Z Commentary “reporter” were paid $50 a day that would be better than $12 an hour. The Wall Street Journal has both a news and business news column that many appreciate. But they don’t pick the right stories, and I would like a longer list of items every day. Reuters News Service offers something more along the lines I am thinking about, but they don’t pick the quality stories our Z Commentary reporter would find. Back in the 1970s we had Liberation News Service. Well, not exactly “we” because if I remember right LNS was a service that hundreds of local alternative newspapers subscribed to for national and international news, not a service for individuals. LNS was also more ambitious in providing lengthy articles, not just news items, and LNS had a staff of reporters who had to be paid. But it was great. I remember walking past the Old Mole office in Central Square, Cambridge just to read their LNS ticker. I don’t remember exactly when, but I think LNS died when the network of alternative local newspapers dried up. But gathering this kind of information is so much easier in the Internet era. And disseminating it daily to individuals is also now trivial. It would be nice to have hundreds of alternative local papers around the country again, but I don’t think this is any longer necessary to support a daily news service. Here is a sample of the news, just from Mexico, that I would pay to read along with my cup of coffee in the morning. NEWS: John Ward Anderson reported in the July 19 1999 edition of the Washington Post: “According to a 240 page report by Michael W. Mackey, a Canadian hired by the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, the privatization of banks in 1991-92 that lead to the near collapse of Mexico’s banking system in the mid-1990s and its rescue with billions of dollars in government funds was fundamentally flawed – leaving many financial institutions poorly capitalized and in the hands of owners with little banking experience who approved large, inadequately secured loans to themselves, their friends and families.” COMMENTARY: Kind of like the Savings and Loan debacle in the US ten years earlier, huh? QUESTION: Where could you have read the following insightful analysis? (a) In These Times, (b) Z Magazine, (c) the Nation, (d) the Wall Street Journal. “Mexico is coming off one its best years in a decade. The economy grew at a rate of 4.8% last year, adding 100,000 new manufacturing jobs. Production of television sets, auto parts and clothing set records. Tourist arrivals are strong, and farm products are surging into the US supermarkets. Yet for most Mexicans these statistics offer little solace. In terms of what they can buy, most consumers are worse off today than they were a decade ago. Even those lucky enough to have one of the new assembly plant jobs can’t buy as much as they could have five years ago before President Ernesto Zedillo’s government followed almost to the letter the advice of the IMF and the US Treasury, and agreed to float the peso and slash public spending to a bare minimum in exchange for $41 billion in international loans. Since Mexico’s big 1994 currency devaluation, consumers have suffered a staggering 39% drop in their purchasing power. Just since 1997, the number of people living in extreme poverty – defined as workers earning less than $2 a day – has grown by four million, or twice the growth of the population. Adding those a rung up – workers living in ‘moderate poverty,’ with daily incomes less than $3 – almost two-thirds of the citizenry is considered ‘poor’ today. Fewer than half fit that description before the crisis. Assuming the economy can keep growing at 5% a year, it’s still going to take five more years for Mexico to reduce poverty to 1984 levels. In other words, despite three straight years of impressive post-devaluation growth, the peso crash virtually wiped out a generation of progress, leaving most Mexicans today poorer than their parents. Yet Mexico’s economy enjoys a stellar reputation. The prevailing view from Wall Street and Washington is of a country that got over a bad patch a few years ago, and whose experience should serve as a lesson for other emerging markets in crisis. In fact, Mexico'’ lesson for other troubled economies is something very different: Sometimes macroeconomic ‘health’ is achieved at the cost of mass hardship.” ANSWER: “d” -- in the Wall Street Journal on International Women’s day, March 8, 1999. The author was Joel Millman. NEWS: According to Action for Community & Ecology in the Rainforests of Central America : “As a precondition for NAFTA, the US government insisted on a ‘reform’ of Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution. Article 27 was one of the great achievements of the Mexican Revolution. It defended indigenous rights by protecting communal land holdings. Changes in Article 27 allowed for the sale of those holdings. Combined with economic policies which made it impossible for many indigenous farmers to eke out a living from the land, the changes in Article 27 resulted in an accumulation of vast tracts of land in foreign corporate hands. Millions of indigenous people driven out of farming by these policies have migrated to cities in search of employment. COMMENTARY: For all who care to know: This is the reason liberalizing international trade and investment has not, and will not increase the wages of the unskilled in economies where labor is relatively abundant – despite the predictions of mainstream economists who cheerfully quote the predictions of “Heckscher-Ohlin theory.” Corporate sponsored global liberalization is increasing the supply of urban labor in the third world faster than it is increasing the demand. NEWS: Action for Community & Ecology in the Rainforests of Central America goes on to report: “In 1992, prior to NAFTA, and then later in 1997, new forestry laws in Mexico enabled foreign companies to acquire large land holdings and to develop them with hefty subsidies from the Mexican government. A prime mover behind the drafting of some of this legislation was Edward Krobacker, International Paper’s forestry division vice president. On April 6, 1999 International Paper along with Fletcher Challenge Forests, Westvaco Corporation and Monsanto announced their intent to form a forestry biotechnology joint venture in southern Mexico. Patrocinio Gonzalez, a former governor of Chiapas (1988-1991) and Secretary of the Interior during the Zapatista uprising, is now a representative for International Paper. COMMENTARY: There are always greedy human hands that accompany the “invisible hand” of the market. NEWS: According to the Los Angeles Times, “on Thursday, July 22, homemakers throughout Mexico took off their aprons and rested Thursday in quiet protest against a macho culture that they say dominates Latino households and oppresses women.” COMMENTARY: Hasta la Victoria Siempre! 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