Marian's Blog

Is OSCE (closely) monitoring the U.S. election?

With less than a month to go, I'd really like to know whether or not my former colleagues of the OSCE - Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe - have a plan in place (on invitation of the U.S. government, of course) to send a full-fledged mission to monitor next month's U.S. presidential election. I figure that, like me, most folks anywhere can honestly say they have never lived through a set of circumstances to match what is going on today in the United States and the rest of the world. As I see it, much of this contagious turmoil and heartache could have - would have - been averted had only someone cared, paid attention and taken effective regulatory and legal action in years past. That includes back in 2000 when professionals of conscience like Atlanta Legal Aid Society Home Defense attorney Bill Brennan and others made crystal clear the extent of U.S. financial institutions' merciless and ultimately self-destructive attempts to exploit and extort the U.S.'s most vulnerable populations: people of colour, women, the elderly; in short, the poor, near-poor and working poor. A related concern is that, come November 4, we very well could witness a third consecutive chapter of the political equivalent of what is now boiling over financially. That is to say we stand to witness the same, grave problems in the conduct of the 2008 U.S. presidential election as the whole world saw, first in 2000 and yet again in 2004. An excellent documentary American Blackout explains clearly what happened in both elections as well as the efforts and work of then-Democratic congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. (As I've blogged before, Cynthia is now the U.S. Green Party's presidential candidate and I plan to vote for her.)

Understatement by Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Reps

"... I don't think we've invested well... in the last few years..." - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (daughter of late mayor of Baltimore, Maryland; multimillionaire; Democratic congresswoman, 8th Congressional district, California - San Francisco) on the current state of U.S. society, government and economy, in a Capitol Hill news conference, Thursday, 2 Oct 2008.

Coping with public fear: "Bailouts only add to sense of panic," O'Grady, The Independent (London)

We're reading Sean O'Grady's article in today's Independent: "... no amount of taxpayer money, no vote in Congress or the Commons and no speech by a president or prime minister can now fully restore the confidence that has been drained from the system during a year of brutal capitalist "creative destruction." Confidence is the magical ingredient that makes our system work, the thing that allows Keynes' "animal spirits" to take off, and create businesses and wealth. And, as we have seen from the billions wiped from the stock markets yesterday, it is simply beyond price. Without it, there is merely fear."

I'm not convinced about needing to emulate "animal spirits" but our next post recalls the words of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Global crisis: Congress was warned in 2000 of predatory loans

Thanks to my sister for sharing news of veteran U.S. legal aid attorney William Brennan and his testimony in Congress on 24 May 2000. So Congress had first-hand knowledge of what was going on from an attorney helping elderly, often female and Black persons (who quite often already owned their homes) from becoming statistics in very elaborate, far-reaching and high-pressure credit scams. In May 2000 Carlo and I were in Skopje, Macedonia. On 9 Aug 2007 we published an entry here at Marian's Blog entitled "The colour of sub-prime, & trans-Atlantic cash."  Who knew that ever-larger financial chips would still be falling more than a year later? Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac... And that's only the U.S. list. In 2007 I blogged, "How about "trans-Atlanticism in the 'hood", as France's largest bank, BNP Paribas, temporarily shut down investor access to three BNP private-investor funds linked to U.S. so-called 'sub-prime' mortgage lending." Is anyone in the international human rights establishment paying the slightest attention?

Thanks to my sister for sharing news of veteran U.S. legal aid attorney William Brennan and his testimony in Congress on 24 May 2000. So Congress had first-hand knowledge of what was going on from an attorney helping elderly, often female and Black persons (who quite often already owned their homes) from becoming statistics in very elaborate, far-reaching and high-pressure credit scams. In May 2000 Carlo and I were in Skopje, Macedonia. On 9 Aug 2007 we published an entry here at Marian's Blog entitled "The colour of sub-prime, & trans-Atlantic cash."  Who knew that ever-larger financial chips would still be falling more than a year later? Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac... And that's only the U.S. list. In 2007 I blogged, "How about "trans-Atlanticism in the 'hood", as France's largest bank, BNP Paribas, temporarily shut down investor access to three BNP private-investor funds linked to U.S. so-called 'sub-prime' mortgage lending." Is anyone in the international human rights establishment paying the slightest attention?

Shop Green: Earth Day 365 days/year

If you're in the U.S. or nearby, when you need to shop start using this site - Co-op America's National Green Pages.

India-Africa Summit in Delhi: Hard questions?

April 8-9 mark the first-ever India-Africa Forum Summit. Might the Summit include any component addressing human trafficking and undocumented (i.e., illegal) immigration coming from the Asian subcontinent into East and Southern Africa?? India and the African Union each has its own summit website. From India's website:

"India and Africa have a historic relationship and this has grown into a sustainable partnership. From our struggle against colonialism and apartheid, we have emerged to jointly accept the challenges of a globalising world. Whether we have to deal with threats to international peace and security, the threat from international terrorism or the scourge of poverty, we believe that India and Africa traverse the same path, share the same values and cherish the same dreams." 

The AU's description seems decidedly less sentimental: "The Africa-India Forum Summit is intended to consider the modalities to strengthen the cooperation ties between the two partners in the areas of Economic; Political; Science, Technology, Research and Development; Social Development and Capacity Building; Tourism; Infrastructure, Energy and Environment and Media and Communication. The Africa – India Forum Summit aims also at adopting harmonized and comprehensive framework to reinforce the regional cooperation in a wide rage of fields as support to the already existing bilateral cooperation between African countries and India. The Forum would also be an occasion for the sharing and exchange of good practices in harnessing resources from the Diaspora."

"Harnessing resources from the Diaspora." The African Union wants to learn from Indians how to "tap into" its diaspora. Would the diaspora targetted for harnessing be the new one of the past 20-40 years or the far older and much larger one which was expelled and sold away to foreign lands during the slave trades? Thinking of the "historic relationship" between South Asia and Africa (including India before the Partition), it would seem far more logical, not to mention just, that Africa and India (and now Pakistan) would begin by collaborating to do something for the immediate and long-term benefit of the Siddi or Sheedi people and other African-Descendant populations in Asia and South Asia, and in India and Pakistan in particular, whose presence in Asia was created by and who survived the Indian Ocean Slave Trade.

Genuine Progress Indicator? Measuring economies as if society mattered

As so many consumer and exchange economies teeter on the brink, here's a fascinating index that could prove more useful to more people. Many of us are in the same time familiar with, yet put off by, words and terms like "GNP", "GDP", and "economic indicator." For over a decade a group called Redefining Progress has been working on what they call the "GPI" - the genuine progress indicator.

"... The GPI starts with the same personal consumption data that the GDP is based on, but then makes some crucial distinctions. It adjusts for factors such as income distribution, adds factors such as the value of household and volunteer work, and subtracts factors such as the costs of crime and pollution. Because the GDP and the GPI are both measured in monetary terms, they can be compared on the same scale. ..." - Redefining Progress

Africa: Kenyan truce, and Chinese and Indian colonialism

Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga and putatively re-elected second-term president Mwai Kibaki finally reached an accomodation for the country's political divide and the death and violence it wrought. I was excited to see BBC live coverage of the opening of Kenya's parliament for the first time since the December election and its aftermath. Everyone who loves Kenya, Africa - and the diasporic African world - wants this political accomodation to hold.

And yet at the height of the violence in Kenya in January I remembered how Asian Indians and Europeans continue to dominate Kenya's economy. I recalled a conversation I had with an African leader a few years back. This elected leader reminded me of the landmine issue of land distribution vs. need for land reform in six countries that were colonised by Great Britain in east and southern Africa. I do remember on the list were South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe - and Kenya. I'm wondering if Tanzania and Uganda were the other two on the list...    

Meanwhile, The Economist has a cover story on "The New Colonialism" in Africa, referring to China and India. Reuters has a Feb 2008 interview about this with Hungarian-born billionaire financier George Soros:

   "...European nations' scramble for resources, from slaves to diamonds and gold, led them to subjugate Africa's peoples under colonialism. After independence swept the continent in the 1950s and 1960s, they often supported corrupt and dictatorial regimes.

Over the last decade, amid concern over minerals funding wars from Angola to Democratic Republic of Congo, Western governments and multinationals have largely accepted the need for accountability and transparency in extractive industries.

But India and China, which are pumping billions of dollars of loans and investment into Africa, have not, Soros said. ..."

Chocolate City, a film on Washington, DC and gentrification

In recognition of our colonised status, people around the world can help by taking a symbolic break from even uttering the words "Washington" and "Washington, DC." Leave our name out of conversation and put a blank space in print. Besides the general public, those encouraged to promote, observe and abide by the boycott should include bloggers, teachers and professors, clergymembers, tourists and tour guides, travel agents, economists, journalists, scientists, activists and politicians. To do so will send a powerful message in contrast to the real lack of power of our city's mostly Black and mostly Black women residents. Washington, the city, always has been about far more than national and international politics and tourism.

(In Washington, an image of DC native son the late Marvin Gaye shows up only in a vodka advert. U.S. Capitol with "don't walk" sign. Photos property Marian's Blog)

In fact, DC's reality remains hidden: a majority-Black American city with a buried yet deeply rooted history (and identity) as the former capital of the U.S. interstate slave trade. People live here, and for many years the majority of Washington's citizens have been Black Americans; or at least we have been the vast majority until the very recent past. Washington as a majority Black city has always been subjugated and segregated. We have been and are under attack. In spite of the presence of international organizations and the embassies of nations around the world, little news of the real DC and our status seems to get out, even and especially among journalists. Along comes a film to break the silence: CHOCOLATE CITY, a documentary by filmmakers Ellie Walton and Sam Wild. Just as they would have bought Black Americans' ancestors as slaves, property developers have bought my town and the local population is being forced out using means that are mostly foul. CC focuses on the displacement and dispersal of the community of 400 families who lived in public housing called Arthur Capper Homes. The film has two de facto "stars", Arthur Capper resident Debra Frazier and Anu Yadav, a performance artist of South Asian origin. The two form unlikely yet complementary poles in the moving narrative. A quickly built official website for Chocolate City is down now seems to be back up after having received so many hits it temporarily exceeded its bandwidth. I'm also pointing readers to Jennifer Tchinnosian's 6 Feb 2008 review in George Washington University's student paper, the Daily Colonial, a name which is wholly a propos.

Thank you to John and Elizabeth Edwards, 2008 Campaign

My thank-you to John Edwards and family, and everyone who worked so long and hard on this campaign. It will have been one for the history books.

As the Edwards campaign notified the press today, one news commentator noted that the U.S. "has never elected a populist."

As Americans that's nothing to brag about; in fact, it is our collective loss. How many Americans still would prefer that people tell us what some of us would like to hear? Things like we - the 'collective we' - can go right on self-centered and selfish, while simultaneously claiming to be king of the global hill. But our more and more frankenstein-like creation has little if any remaining sense of being one society. And that's just here in the US, let alone how we relate to the "outside world" which many of us can't find on a map let alone know.

It was late last year when a Southern scholar-friend of mine tried to school me about the USA. He said our country would not have any truck with a populist. I really didn't want to believe it.

Someone famous once said something like: There is no hell like the one we create for ourselves.