The social crisis in Appalachia (Part 2): An epidemic of ill health among the poor

By Naomi Spencer

Old hospital in Williamson, West Virginia

By virtually every measure, the working class and poor in the United States confront a crisis in social infrastructure. In the coalfields region of eastern Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia, where most residents are poor, and access to health care and other basic services is limited, the levels of disease, drug addiction, and other ills are a stark expression of the inequality that exists throughout the country.

Statewide, poverty stands at 22 percent in Kentucky, and the official unemployment rate is 10.6 percent. In West Virginia, unemployment rose to 9.5 percent in March 2010 from 6.9 percent a year earlier; 19.1 percent of West Virginians live below the poverty line. In both states, the median annual income for households is $10,000 below the national median.

In April 2010, Kentucky had 776,000 people enrolled in the Food Stamp Program, an increase of 75,000 over the year before. West Virginia saw an increase of 40,000 over the same period, to 338,000 enrollees. In Kentucky, only households with no more than 130 percent of the poverty threshold are eligible. West Virginia determines eligibility on a strict measure of assets and earnings, with no enrollee allowed more than $2,000 in assets.

According to data from Kentucky Youth Advocates, in 2008 the families on food stamps in the state received an average $210 per month; most families run short by the end of the month, especially in areas where grocery stores are few, which generally makes food more expensive.

Welch, West Virginia residents on McDowell Street, lined with boarded-up storefronts. Many towns in the coalfields have no grocery stores.

Currently some 790,000 Kentuckians are enrolled in Medicaid, including nearly one in every two children. Because of the economic crisis, the rate of applications has spiked, from 930 per month last year to 3,400 a month now. A Kaiser Family Foundation report released May 26 projected the Medicaid rolls in Kentucky could increase by 424,000 over the next several years.

At the same time that poverty and social need have grown, state legislatures have inflicted major cuts on public programs. The Kentucky budget approved on May 29 included budget cuts of 3.5 percent for many state agencies this year, with 4.5 percent cuts to follow next year. Cuts to public health and education funds have come down year after year in the state, which has staggered under billion-dollar budget deficits for the past decade.

Health spending is likely to plummet in 2011. The budget as it was passed in May included money to be provided by the federal government in the form of Medicaid matching funds, which were blocked in the US Senate. By the end of the year, the state faces an additional shortfall of $238 million in its health care budget.

Another area facing cuts is the Department for Community Based Services, which provides child protection services and processes food stamp applications. The department’s funding is slated to be cut by 8.5 percent. Reflecting the social instability wrought by grinding poverty and insufficient family services, Kentucky is currently the worst among the 50 states for the rate of child death from abuse and neglect. The state’s juvenile drug court program, which provides counseling and rehabilitation to minors, has also been eliminated.

West Virginia is one of the few states that did not record a deficit last year, because of its long-running program of austerity and paltry social outlays. In fact, the rating agency Moody’s Investment Services upgraded the state’s bond rating to AA1 on July 9, praising its “fiscal conservatism and consistent fund balances.” For the coming fiscal year, the legislature passed a budget with no spending increases in any services, in spite of the increasing need among the population.

The coalfields region of the two states is particularly exposed to budget cuts. Poor people from the mountains often have to travel hours away, to Lexington, Charleston, or other cities, to see a doctor who will accept Medicaid reimbursement. Others get treatment through charities, county health departments, and expensive hospital emergency rooms.

The more complicated one’s conditions are, residents explained to the World Socialist Web Site, the scarcer are the specialists and resources required to treat them. Public health clinics in many towns are understaffed and under-stocked, or lack the budget to operate regular office hours.

The lack of other basic infrastructure, including transportation and major roadways, further contributes to the difficulties of accessing care. Residents explained that in certain areas, helicopter evacuations were the only means of survival for accident victims.

Kentucky suffers a major doctor shortage, according to an analysis by the Lexington Herald Leader published May 27. The paper found that for every 100,000 people in the state, there are 213.5 physicians, compared to the national average of 267.9 doctors per 100,000 people. Just to reach the national average, about 2,200 more physicians would be needed to serve the state.

For the Medicaid-enrolled population, the shortage of doctors is particularly sharp. Many doctors, dentists, and clinics will not accept Medicaid patients because of low and late reimbursements for their services and an antiquated system of paperwork involved in filing with the state.

Dentists are especially scant in the mountains, exacerbating poor dental health rates. According to a 2008 study published in the Journal of the American Dental Association, adult residents in the coalfield region of Appalachia suffered “a high rate of complete or partial edentulism [toothlessness], an infrequent orthodontic treatment, great unmet orthodontic need and less demand for orthodontic care than was suggested by their clinically determined need.”

Poor people, who often have the poorest nutrition and a higher incidence of tobacco use, are at a far higher risk of losing their teeth or developing life-threatening abscesses, infections, and cancers of the mouth and throat. Some of the poorest families receive dental care only through traveling dentists providing basic screenings as charity.

Medicaid reimbursements for dentists have not risen since the early 1990s, while the cost of care has spiked. In West Virginia, Medicaid reimbursements haven’t been increased since 1991, and the state cut its rates by a third in 1994. Dentists dropped out of the program en masse because they could not afford to treat poor patients. An October 2009 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation and West Virginia Public Broadcasting identified a single dental practice in the tiny coalfield town of Oceana that treated 12,000 patients.

Further contributing to the high incidence of toothlessness in the region are the limited dental services that are covered by Medicaid for adults. In West Virginia, preventive care is not regularly included, even for infants and toddlers.

For adults over 19 years of age, reimbursed care is largely limited to emergency tooth extractions. Consequently, some patients who may be ineligible for fillings, but eligible for dentures, are compelled to have all their teeth pulled in order to quell excruciating pain. Patients who have their teeth pulled are sometimes forced to wait for their dentures to arrive several weeks later by mail, during which time they are unable to eat solid food, residents said. If their dentures do not fit properly, patients may have to wait weeks more for a refitting.

Without regular medical examinations and preventive care, residents are more likely to develop chronic or fatal conditions. Cancer death rates are significantly higher in rural Appalachia, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control. Cervical, colorectal, and lung cancers were all far higher—mountain counties in Kentucky recorded 196.6 cancer deaths per 100,000 population from 1994-1998, as compared to 166.7 per 100,000 nationally.

Mental distress and drug addiction are also on the rise. A 2008 study by the federal Appalachian Regional Commission found high prevalence rates for both serious psychological distress (16.1 percent) and major depressive episodes (10.6 percent) in the coalfields population, as well as painkiller addiction that is more than twice the national rate.

Extreme poverty gives rise to a myriad of other health problems. For example, the CDC published a study in November 2009 indicating distinct geographic patterns across the United States for the prevalence of diabetes and obesity. The study revealed high rates of the conditions in the poorest areas of the country, particularly in the Appalachian coalfields, where 30.9 percent of the population was obese, and 10.6 percent had diabetes.

In no small part, these conditions are due to “food deserts” that exist in the regions. Many distressed urban centers in the US, such as Detroit, Baltimore, and East St. Louis, have similar problems. When industry shuts down, businesses including grocery stores close up shop and leave the area. A shortage of grocery stores carrying fresh fruits and lean meats require residents, especially those who use food stamps and may have other problems of economic origin, such as lack of transportation, to depend upon convenience stores, gas stations, or discount stores, where primarily high-sodium and fatty foods are sold.

Residents in West Virginia border towns of Matewan and Williamson told the World Socialist Web Site that because of the differences in the Kentucky business tax code, most of the shops closed their doors and relocated across the state line. This left thousands of residents without easy access to healthy foods in towns with no public transportation systems.

The erosion of basic social infrastructure is a feature of widening inequality in the United States. The coal industry continues to reap billions of dollars each year from central Appalachia, paying less in taxes than it receives from the state, as the workforce is decimated, social spending is eliminated, and living standards collapse.

This process has contributed to the stagnation of the life expectancy in the region. Since the early 1980s, the coalfields have experienced a “reversal in fortunes” in mortality rates, according to a 2008 study co-authored by researchers from Harvard and the universities of California and Washington. In the worst-off counties, researchers found life expectancy either stagnated or dropped by 4 percent for men and 19 percent for women between 1983 and 1999. This marked the end of rising life expectancies among the poor—a trend that represented huge gains in medical technology, as well as the historic gains of the civil rights era and the “war on poverty” measures initiated in the 1960s in the coalfields region.

Since the 1980s, inequality has exploded, decent-paying jobs have been destroyed, and welfare has been dismantled. Consequently, both male and female life expectancies had a statistically significant decline in poor counties, averaging a loss of 1.3 years.

The social crisis in Appalachia (Part 1)

The social crisis in Appalachia: Part 3: Environmental disaster and private profit

24 July 2010

wsws.org

Bahamas Blog International

The social crisis in Appalachia (Part 1): Deprivation and inequality in the coalfields

By Naomi Spencer

This article is the first of a series on the history, economy, social and environmental conditions in the Appalachian region of the United States. World Socialist Web Site reporters recently visited the coalfields of southeastern Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia and interviewed residents on their conditions of life.

Apartments in downtown Welch, West Virginia

The region has long suffered a deep economic distress. One-third of the 100 poorest counties in the United States, as measured by median household income, are concentrated in the coalfields. This “pocket of poverty,” as economists sometimes refer to it, has, for decades, recorded extremely high levels of deprivation, unemployment and all the social problems that accompany them. This has been exacerbated by the dearth of government spending on the region and scarcity of basic infrastructure—freeways, commuter rail, airports, Internet connectivity, public universities—which lend the region a remote and disconnected air.

Yet in an immediate and direct way, the region is globally integrated. It continues to be one of the largest producers of coal in the country as well as a major lumber exporter. Fluctuations in the international energy and raw commodities markets have a powerful bearing on the local economy, prospects for the youth, and social infrastructure funded by tax revenue.

Moreover, as throughout the country, the deepening economic crisis has worsened joblessness, collapsed home values, forced the closures of public schools, clinics, and charity organizations, and further depressed communities in the coalfields. At the same time, billion dollar coal corporations have been the beneficiaries of ever-more generous tax breaks and “incentives” from the state governments of Kentucky and West Virginia. Safety, health, and environmental regulations over the coal industry have been systematically loosened, or simply ignored.

The result is a barefaced portrait of the extreme inequality that exists throughout the United States, with a handful of ultra-wealthy coal barons dominating every aspect of daily life of the highly exploited and deeply impoverished majority.

Every social indicator bears out the class relations. Double-digit poverty rates predominate, and the majority of adults are classified as “not in labor force.” Typical of the region, in Harlan County, Kentucky, 34 percent of residents live below the poverty threshold. Median household income stood at $23,600 in 2008—nearly half the state median, which is significantly lower than the national median of $52,000. Home values throughout the coalfields are likewise half the state median or less. Most children live in poverty, and many families subsist on less than $10,000 a year.

Boarded up storefronts in downtown Harlan, Kentucky

The majority of adults in the region did not graduate high school; 2004 figures indicate that 57 percent of the adult population did not receive a high school diploma or earn a general equivalency degree. The population has declined steadily as young people leave in search of jobs with livable wages.

Year after year, budget crises have been used to justify double-digit rises in tuition at public universities and community colleges, while aid has been cut. Young residents looking for an education and a job have limited options—the few jobs for young workers are concentrated in the low-wage retail and service sectors; for a university education, students are often compelled to leave the region, or join the military. Lack of basic infrastructure like broadband Internet service has precluded residents even from taking online college courses. Some 20 percent of residents still live without telephones, libraries are woefully underfunded, and cell phone towers are sparse in the steep terrain.

The budget crises in the states compound social need in the region. Funding cuts and shortfalls for social services over the past decade have impacted the mountainous counties, in particular. These areas, which are less accessible by major roads and distant from urban centers, have far fewer health resources and specialists and a far higher proportion of Medicaid-enrolled patients. Poor reimbursement rates, coupled with a high volume of paperwork and red tape, have discouraged many doctors, dentists, and other care providers from accepting Medicaid patients.

Local clinics are understaffed and forced to operate irregular hours and without basic supplies. Residents, describing their clinics as little more than first-aid stations, explained that for life-threatening and chronic problems, hospital emergency rooms were their only source of care. Untreated health problems like diabetes, tooth decay, mental illness, obesity, and other manageable conditions are of epidemic proportions. Black lung disease—produced by long years of working in the mines—emphysema and cancer are increasingly common.

Life expectancy, significantly lower than the national average, has stagnated or declined since 1983, in some counties by as much as five years. Levels of ill health and premature death parallel parts of Eastern Europe and Latin America.

West Virginia coal trains

Miles of train cars brimming with coal lumber through the center of such conditions every day, carrying loads worth millions of dollars at each pass. Over the course of the past three decades coal production has risen steadily while the mining workforce has been decimated. Today, far fewer miners—virtually all non-union—are extracting record loads of coal at massive mountaintop removal sites and dangerous retreat mining operations. Last year, less than 90,000 miners—a workforce under half the size of that of the 1980s—were responsible for extracting 1,170 million tons of coal, a third again as much as the production rates of 25 years ago.

Every year, dozens of Appalachian coal miners are killed in disasters caused by the deliberate disregard of operators and regulators alike for basic safety procedures, and thousands of current and former miners are diagnosed with black lung. Communities are subjected to increasing environmental devastation in the form of mudslides, flash flooding, and pollution caused by reckless surface mine operations. The water supplies of entire cities have been declared unsafe to drink because of contamination.

Section of mining operation in Pike County, Kentucky

The coal industry, deeply entwined in state politics, cost West Virginia and Kentucky tens of millions of dollars more than they pay in taxes, while fines for endangering workers and pollution are negligibly tiny, and usually ignored. Residents of the coalfields can find no representation for their grievances in elected officials and no defense in the legal and regulatory framework.

This state of affairs has been created through the active collusion of the political establishment, dominated by the Democratic Party, the environmental and safety regulatory agencies, and the United Mine Workers of America.

On the rare occasions that the national news media covers this region, for example, during the disaster at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine, which killed 29 West Virginia miners last April, it attempts to portray the population as submissive, religiously devout and resigned to a fate of deadly working conditions and poverty. In fact, the region has been the scene for some of the fiercest struggles of the American working class.

The miserable conditions in the coalfields cannot be understood without grasping the role of the UMWA, which, over the last three decades, betrayed strike after strike, abandoned and helped victimize militant miners and imposed endless concessions on its members at the behest of the coal bosses. This counts among the greatest betrayals of the working class, considering that the miners’ struggles for union recognition in the 1920s and 1930s, and mass struggles to improve working conditions and living standards in the 1960s and 1970s, were some of the most heroic and bloody in labor history.

The social crisis in Appalachia (Part 2)

22 July 2010

wsws.org

Bahamas Blog International

Bahamas: Victims of Sexual Exploitation In The Bahamian Society

Adult men 'exploiting teenage girls'
By NOELLE NICOLLS
Tribune Staff Reporter
nnicolls@tribunemedia.net:



TEENAGE girls engaged in a culture of transactional sex are not "prostitutes", but rather victims of exploitation, said Dr Sandra Dean-Patterson, director of the Bahamas Crisis Centre.

She said it is not accurate to say "teen prostitution is common among Bahamian youths", because teenagers under the age of 16 cannot consent to sex.

As victims of adult "predators", Dr Patterson said, it is key not to blame the teenagers.

"Teenage girls being exploited because of their vulnerability: that is what the real problem is," said Dr Patterson.

"The behaviour that people may see as fresh girls or girls selling their bodies in return for gifts is really symptomatic of their violation early in life. There is an increasing number of girls who are raped, sexually assaulted, molested, forced into sex, which are indicators of this kind of behaviour," she said.

Underage teenagers engaged in sexual relations with older men are victims of statutory rape. Any male over the age of 14 who has sex with someone under the age of 16 can be charged with statutory rape. If the sex is not consensual, regardless of the age, it is considered rape, according to an officer at the National Crime Prevention Office.

There have been convictions in the past for statutory rape, said the officer, but most incidents go unreported. When reports do come in, it is usually from parents, said the officer.

"If we get permission from the parents the child has no say about whether we do a physical examination," said the officer.

Police investigations include physical exams, witness testimonies and statements from the victim. The officer said sometimes teenagers do not want to "incriminate" their partners, but the police often have other means of investigating.

Prostitution:

Prostitution is usually an "organised activity", involving individuals having sex with a "series of persons in order to make a living", said Dr Patterson.

"Persons who are in relationships with one or several persons and using those relationships to fulfil material needs that would be more transactional sex, but that is not prostitution," said Dr Patterson. In either case, with an underage teen, it is "exploitation".

In Bahamian society, there has been a normalisation of behaviour that is tantamount to "prostitution", said psychiatrist Dr David Allen, based on his research over the past three years.

"(The girls in the focus group) said they didn't see any problem with using their body for survival. They don't call it prostitution. They call it survival and that is just the way things are right now," said Dr Allen.

Some teenagers agree, it is a part of the "common culture" for young girls and boys, from as early as 13 years old, to engage in sexual relationships with older men, between 20 and 40 years old.

The reasons why vary: some do it out of financial desperation; others do it for status, material gain, or love, said a 15 year old, high school student.

"It is just friends for benefits. Some do fall in love with the older men even though they are using them. Some of the older men fall in love with the teenager, and the older men get physical and abuse them if the girl doesn't want to do anything anymore. Some of the girls get scared and don't know what to do. Some of them turn to drugs. Some of them go to the police station but they wouldn't help them at all," she said.

Risks:

The teenager said young girls are looking for more "support"; however, they feel "someone always wants something" from them and does not really have their best interests at heart.

"When they ask for the support, they find some people to give it to them, but in a wrong way. If I ask you for help you always want something in return from me," she said.

Some teenagers say they know the risks are too high and the behaviour is inappropriate, but it is unclear whether they are in the minority or majority.

"It is not okay behaviour, because them grown man is too old. All of them are trying to have sex and then go. They give the girls $10 and then tell them go. They are married, so the only thing they are doing is destroying their bodies and going back to their wives. They don't care about the little girls," said a teenager.

"Some of the girls try to leave out of the relationships, but some of the men are abusive so they are scared. They are willing to take the risk because they are thinking about the money," she said.

Another teenager said: "I don't think girls are emotionally mature enough to be in a relationship with the older men. Most of the girls who actually go through it, they have low self esteem and lack of knowledge; they are not very smart so anything people tell them they believe," said a teenager.

"Most of the time when certain men come up to you they are pretty smart. They have their talk down pat. Mostly they will say they could take care of you, buy whatever you want, buy you a phone. These days girls go with men who have cars," she said.

Parents are struggling to cope with the situation, according to Dr Patterson, particularly the "tremendous number of single mothers."

"There may be some mothers who set their children up to have relationships with adult men, or they may close their eyes to it because the girls are bringing home things to help the family out. As a parent once you close your eyes to that kind of thing then the child begins to get a sense of power from the feeling that they are providing for the family and that they are in charge," said Dr Patterson.

"When the mother tries to discipline the child they do not listen because they have been allowed to be a provider for the family and they become an uncontrollable child," she said.

Without intervention, Dr Patterson said teenage girls will not understand they are being "violated", and they will become more and more vulnerable.

"They can also internalise their anger, and then they may start to lash out and fight and be super aggressive," she said.

July 23, 2010

tribune242

Bahamas Blog International

Are we preparing for the Cuban economic hurricane?

jamaicaobserver editorial:

The United States policy of an embargo against Cuba has been a comprehensive failure. Castro's administration has survived.

The redundant embargo should have been abolished long ago. Had it not been for hubris and an outdated determination to impose its will as a global superpower, the US would have stopped jousting with this imaginary enemy. Just how much of an anachronism the embargo is has been clearly demonstrated by the fact that the US has diplomatic relations and trade with Vietnam, a country with which it fought a full-scale war. The Organisation of American States has removed the ban on Cuba's membership clearing the way for Cuba to rejoin the organisation.

The outstanding internationalism has been blemished by flawed human rights and the absence of pluralist democracy. Critics in the Western world, in particular the US, have used the shortcomings of Cuban democracy as the justification for an economic blockade and a campaign of political isolation. Admirers of Cuban self-reliance and resistance to US hegemony have been willing to turn a blind eye to the palpable restraints on individual freedom.

The appointment of Raul Castro to the presidency of Cuba after an apprenticeship of almost half-a-century has brought important changes. He has moved to liberalise access to consumer goods the rest of the world takes for granted, such as cellular phones. Some private farming and more foreign travel have been permitted.

Learning the lesson of the implosion of the Soviet Union and the amazing economic development of China, the Cuban Government is moving towards "Market Leninism". The objective is to improve the standard of living by diversifying beyond sugar and tourism. This will require international trade and foreign investment and increased participation in the capitalist world economy.

The remaining impediment was the continued imprisonment of political opponents. That is now out of the way. It is an opportunity for the US to switch its foreign policy towards Cuba from isolation to engagement.

Exporters and potential investors in the US are salivating at the prospect of re-entry to the Cuban economy. There is already a flourishing trade in US food to Cuba. The business interests are pressing the Congress and a willing but coy Obama administration to normalise relations as it has done with former enemies Germany, Japan, China, Vietnam, and North Korea.

A change in US policy is imminent and Cuba's release of political prisoners is the "olive branch". It is now only a matter of time.

When it happens it will have the most profound effect on Jamaica and the Caribbean. The most worrying is the impact of competition from Cuba for foreign investment, export markets, development aid and tourism.

Cuba has the advantage of being the largest market in the Caribbean, a new tourism destination to US travellers, an undersupplied market and a literate, disciplined and inexpensive labour force.

Jamaica will have to compete and we can do so successfully if we make the necessary preparations.

In the same way that the Government has an emergency plan to cope with hurricanes, then it should immediately prepare a plan to cope with the intense economic competition which the return of Cuba to the global economy will cause.

The warning signs for this Category 5 economic hurricane are plain to see. There is no reason to be caught off guard.

jamaicaobserver editorial

Teenage girls set to create a new wave of terror in The Bahamas

Teenage girls 'are new street thugs'
By NOELLE NICOLLS
Tribune Staff Reporter
nnicolls@tribunemedia.net:


TEENAGE girls look set to create a new wave of terror in the Bahamas, leading psychologist Dr David Allen has warned.

Dr Allen said a Harvard University study predicted that violence among girls was threatening to eclipse violence among teenage boys, who originally "led the way".

He said in the Bahamas there are early signs of this trend, and more needs to be done to look into the situation.

"I write with a sense of pain, confusion; a sense that we have a group of people growing up in our midst who we don't know, we are not studying. I am just amazed at what I am finding out here," said Dr Allen. "The young girls seem to be extremely violent."

One teenager, who attends a New Providence public school, said she agrees that "girls are fighting more than boys", but she said girl fights are less violent.

"The boys fight because of gangs. They would not fight over girls. The boys always fight with weapons. The girls don't usually fight with weapons. The girls do more of the cat fight," said the student.

"Girls mostly fight because they are fighting over boys or they are trying to get known. They go around picking fights, making trouble, so they could be known as the gangster girl. When people are scared of them and don't want to mess with them they can take advantage of people by asking them for money, just money. If you say you don't have lunch money they will try to boss you around and hit you," she said.

"If another girl is talking to the girl's boyfriend she would fight over that. That happens almost daily. Little small fights, like rowing. They would row for a couple days and then they would start fighting."

Several years ago there was concern expressed about a seeming rise in female gangs. The high school student said: "That is not really going on. In my school, ain no girls is check for the gangs. The girls who fight is not really because of the gangs, usually over boyfriends, or (interpersonal) conflicts. The female gang thing did not really catch on."

Teachers know about the fights in school, according to one student, but they stay inside the classrooms and "they don't get in it" in order to "protect themselves".

One junior school principal said she does not believe there has been a rise in girls involved in violence.

"I beg to disagree. To me we are seeing more of the gang violence coming to surface with persons crossing boundaries. According to the area you live in you just cannot go into certain areas. That is what is causing the friction amongst our boys," said the principal.

"Being in the school system we don't see so many girls involved in fights. I seriously can't see it. We would have to look at an in depth study. Dr Allen is probably not seeing a cross section of our community, where he is dealing with students from the upper class," she said.

July 21, 2010

tribune242

Bahamas Blog International

Washington Still Has Problems With Democracy in Latin America

By Mark Weisbrot - CEPR:

Imagine if Barack Obama, upon taking office in January 2009, had decided to deliver on his campaign promise to “end business as usual in Washington so we can bring about real change.”

Imagine if he had rejected the architects of the pro-Wall Street policies that led to the economic collapse - such as Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and the stable of former Goldman Sachs employees running the Treasury Department - and instead appointed Nobel Prize-winning economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz to key positions, including the Federal Reserve chairmanship.

Instead of Hillary Clinton, who lost the Democratic presidential primary because of her unrelenting support for the Iraq war, imagine if he had chosen Sen. Russ Feingold (D., Wis.) for secretary of state, or someone else interested in fulfilling the popular desire to get out of Afghanistan.

Imagine a real health-care reform bill instead of the health-insurance reform we got - one that didn't give the powerful pharmaceutical and insurance lobbies a veto.

It goes without saying that Obama would be vilified by the major media outlets. The seething hostility of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh would be matched by more mainstream news organizations, which would accuse the president of polarizing the nation and engaging in dangerous demagoguery.

With most of the establishment media and institutions against him, Obama would face a constant battle for political survival - although he might well triumph through direct, populist appeals to the majority of voters. This is what a number of left-of-center Latin American leaders have done:

In Ecuador, President Rafael Correa was reelected by a large margin in 2009, despite strong opposition from the country’s media.

In Bolivia, Evo Morales has brought stability and record growth to a country with a tradition of governments that didn’t last more than a year. And he has done so in spite of the most hostile media in the hemisphere, as well as unrelenting, sometimes violent opposition from Bolivia’s traditional elite.

And Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has survived a military coup attempt and other efforts to topple his government, winning three presidential elections, each one by a larger margin.

All these presidents took on entrenched oligarchies and fought hard to deliver on their promises.

Morales, the first indigenous president in a country with an indigenous majority, re-nationalized fossil-fuel industries, created jobs through public investment, and won approval of a more democratic constitution. Correa doubled spending on health care and canceled $3.2 billion in foreign debt that he declared illegitimate. Under Chavez, who took control of his country’s oil industry, poverty was cut in half, and extreme poverty dropped by more than 70 percent.

These presidents faced another obstacle to delivering on their promises that Obama would not: the opposition of the most powerful country in the world. The same was true of former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, who had to battle the Washington-dominated International Monetary Fund to implement his economic policies, which made Argentina the fastest-growing economy in the hemisphere for six years.

Chavez, of course, has been the most demonized in the U.S. media. That is not because of what he has said or done, but because he is sitting on 100 billion barrels of oil. Washington has a particular problem with oil-producing states that don't follow orders - whether they are dictatorships (Iraq), theocracies (Iran), or democracies (Venezuela).

All of these leaders had hoped Obama would pursue a different, more enlightened Latin American policy, but that hasn’t happened. It seems that Washington, which was comfortable with the dictators and oligarchs who ran the show in the region for decades, still has problems with democracy in its former “back yard.”

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He has written numerous research papers on economic policy, especially on Latin America and international economic policy. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000) and president of Just Foreign Policy. He is also co-writer of Oliver Stone’s current documentary, “South of the Border,” now playing in theaters. He can be reached at weisbrot@cepr.net.

Source: Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)

July 19th 2010

venezuelanalysis

Bahamas Blog International

A Tale Of Two Extraditions

By Saul Landau - Z Space

The US government demanded that Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding extradite a drug dealer. When Venezuela made similar demands on Washington, for arguably the Hemisphere’s most notorious terrorist, the Justice Department brushed off the request.

Compare the recent arrest in Jamaica of “Dudus” (Christopher Coke) to stand trial in New York for drug and arms trafficking to Washington’s response to Venezuela’s extradition petition for Luis Posada Carriles, aka the Osama bin Laden of the Western Hemisphere for plotting the October 6, 1976 bombing of a Cuban commercial airliner over Barbados. All 73 crew and passengers died.

Evidence abounds pointing to his culpability including declassified cables from the CIA. An October 12, 1976 CIA cable from Caracas states that “Posada was overheard to say that `Now we are going to hit a Cuban airplane’.”

22 years later, Posada told NY Times reporters Ann Bardach and Larry Rohter (July13, 1998) he had orchestrated a series of hotel bombings in Cuba to dissuade tourism. An Italian tourist died in one of the blasts.

Posada’s captured underlings – arrested by police after the bombs exploded -- named him as the criminal author. A recent New Jersey Federal Grand Jury gathered evidence showing Posada used money and personnel from Miami to carry out the hotel bombings.

However, instead of charging him with terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder Justice invented a legal inanity and charged Posada with immigration fraud: lying to US officials when he entered the United States in 2004. Since then, the Justice Department has created reasons to delay the case – perhaps as Jose Pertierra suggests, so he will die before going to trial. http://machetera.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/waiting-for-posada-carriles-to...

Compare this dallying with a bona fide terrorist to the “extradite Dudus or else” position taken with Jamaica’s government. Jamaican security forces killed some 70 residents trying to capture Dudus in his Kingston neighborhood. But Washington refuses to extradite the mass murderer Posada.

As Washington intimidated Jamaica’s government over Dudus the drug and gun peddler they ignored the fact that millions of US citizens consume drugs imported from Jamaica; and US banks that launder money from the trade.

But a more sinister fact underlines the Dudus and Posada cases. Both of criminals owe their careers to Washington’s 50 year war against Cuba.

In 1976, Prime Minister Michael Manley told me during the filming of his campaign film, of an unusual invitation. In January 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, vacationing at the Rockefeller estate in Jamaica, invited Manley to visit to convince him to withdraw his support of Cuban troops in Angola. (Castro had sent troops there in October 1975 at the Angolan government’s request to stop CIA and South African invasions of that newly independent African country.) Kissinger’s grimaced as Manley reiterated his backing for Castro’s Africa policies.

“He then assured me,” Manley chuckled, “I should not worry about CIA activities in Jamaica.” But, he said, some interesting “coincidences” occurred shortly after the visit.

Norman Descoteaux arrived to head the CIA station in Kingston, an expert on destabilization campaigns in South America. As journalists arrived in Kingston to cover World Bank and IMF meetings, violence exploded in Kingston’s western slums. Tourists exposed to the media accounts would have had good reason to change plans for a Jamaican vacation. Soon afterward, security forces arrested armed youth who admitted they were getting trained to attack the government, Other gunmen killed two policemen.

Manley applied “heavy manners.” He revived a special court permitting the arrest without bail of persons with unlicensed firearms and formed unarmed, community self-defense groups. The CIA learned from its “mistakes,” however.

In Manley’s 1980 campaign for re-election, the violence far exceeded the 1976 carnage. I heard the nightly roar of gunfire in Kingston streets and filmed people weeping for  their dead kin outside a recently torched housing project in a pro-Manley district. Thousands died in that pre-election period. The gangs bought by Manley’s opponent, Edward Seaga, and the CIA successfully destabilized the government.

Manley lost; Seaga became Prime Minister and the first foreign visitor to the Reagan White House.

Dudus’ father, Lester, emerged from the violence campaigns as head of the Shower Posse (they sprayed their victims with automatic weapons) in West Kingston. Having secured a political alliance with the winner in 1980, and possessing arms from the CIA, he began dealing drugs and weapons.

So powerful had the posse become – now under Dudis the son -- that Labor Party chief and now Prime Minister Bruce Golding tried to defuse the US extradition request for nine months. The State Department assured him that continued resistance would endanger US-Jamaican relations (aid money) and his political career.

But Washington sneers at Venezuelan pressure just as George H. W. Bush in 1990 derided his own Justice Department’s strong advice against pardoning Orlando Bosch, Posada’s co-conspirator in the airline bombing. Judges play along with the charade. One magistrate, without fact or testimony, ruled against Posada's extradition to Venezuela because Posada’s lawyer claimed Venezuela would torture him “while in custody."

The Caribbean states (Caricom) called the 1976 Cubana airline bombing “terrorism in Caribbean airspace.” Ricky Siingh writing in the Jamaica Observer said “no double standards on implementation of bilateral extradition treaties should be permitted on the part of Jamaica and the USA in the case of Christopher Coke; or that involving Venezuela and America for the extradition of Posada.” June 20?? Accusing the United States of double standards is like charging a prostitute with having sex. Indeed, US behavior in the Posada case gives hypocrisy a bad name.

Hubris with Jamaica over a druggie! The stalling game played with Venezuela over a terrorist! Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a nation of law?

Landau directed Michael Manley’s campaign films in 1976 and 1980. Counterpunch published his A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD.

Source: Z Communications

July 19th 2010

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