214. Monsanto "Helps" Write Regulations for Genetically Modified Crop

By Mike Ludwig, Truthout, February 22, 2011

The recent approval of Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa is one of most divisive controversies in American agriculture, but in 2003, it was simply the topic at hand in a string of emails between the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Monsanto. In the emails, federal regulators and Monsanto officials shared edits to a list of the USDA's questions about Monsanto's original petition to fully legalize the alfalfa. Later emails show a USDA regulator accepted Monsanto's help with drafting the initial environmental assessment (EA) of the alfalfa and planned to "cut and paste" parts of Monsanto's revised petition right into the government's assessment.

 It's unclear if such internal cooperation continues under the current administration, but regulators still openly rely on data and research provided by the biotech industry when approving GE technology.

A federal judge temporarily banned the alfalfa in 2007 as a result of the CFS lawsuit, but last summer, the Supreme Court ruled that the USDA could reconsider deregulating the GE alfalfa after completing an environmental impact statement (EIS). The USDA fully deregulated the alfalfa on January 27, 2011.

Like the GE corn and soybeans that now dominate agribusiness, Roundup Ready alfalfa is genetically engineered to tolerate glyphosate-based herbicides like Monsanto's Roundup. Farmers can plant Roundup Ready crops and blanket their fields with the herbicide knowing that weeds will be killed and the Roundup Ready crops will be spared.

Back in 2003, USDA officials were concerned about "deficiencies" in Monsanto's original petition to deregulate the GE alfalfa seeds, so they drafted a letter with about 90 questions for Monsanto. In several emails, officials working with the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) asked Monsanto officials to comment and "suggest improvements" on at least three drafts of the "deficiency letter." Monsanto was happy to redraft the letter point by point.

Monsanto withdrew its original petition in February 2004 after two undocumented conference calls with APHIS personnel. One month before the final petition was submitted in April, Monsanto regulatory officer Glen Rogan sent two emails to APHIS petition reviewer Virgil Meier indicating that Monsanto was willing to help draft the USDA's EA of Roundup Ready alfalfa. APHIS conducts EA's to assess the potential environmental impacts of proposed agricultural products.

Rogan asked Meier to consult his boss and colleagues about the possibility of Monsanto assisting in the assessment because it would be "precedent setting." Meier, who was in charge of writing the EA, accepted Monsanto's help and said he would "cut and paste" information right from petition into the EA:

If you are willing to provide assistance with the EA, I would appreciate it. At this time, no one has voiced concern with this so I am assuming that there is no problem. In a related matter, because I am supposed to write the EA, I would appreciate receiving an electronic copy of the petition (Word?) so I can do cut and paste which I think will speed up the completion of the EA.

Bill Freese, a policy analyst with CFS, said this kind of cooperation between federal regulators and the biotech industry is unacceptable. "It should go without saying that an applicant should play no role in APHIS's regulatory review of an applicant's product, beyond supplying requested information," Freese wrote in a 2009 letter to the USDA. The USDA did not respond to Freese's letter, but a spokesperson told Truthout that the USDA works closely with industry petitioners and can include some information from a petition in the EA.

Freese told Truthout that the approval process for controversial GE crops like Roundup Ready alfalfa is basically a "sham" designed to increase consumer confidence in the controversial GE crops. Freese has been fighting the battle against biotech for years, and he can't remember a single case when regulators failed to eventually grant approval of a GE crop.

Sham or not, the final EIS that led to the final approval of Roundup Ready alfalfa is a massive document that dives deep into the scientific debates over GE crops. Opponents argue that Roundup Ready alfalfa will threaten organic crops with herbicide drifts, increase the presence of an already growing list of herbicide-resistant weeds and inevitably contaminate conventional and organic alfalfa with transgenes through cross-pollination. The EIS contains evidence of these risks, but the USDA considers them inherent to modern agriculture and ruled that Roundup Ready alfalfa poses no more "plant pest risks" than conventional or organic alfalfa varieties.

The humble alfalfa crop provides more to Americans than crunchy sprouts for salads and sandwiches. Farmers plant millions of acres of alfalfa to produce forage seed and hay to feed cows and other livestock. The ever-growing organic dairy industry, for example, depends on naturally grown alfalfa products to feed its livestock, and in turn, the millions of Americans who eat organic food. The possibility that Roundup Ready alfalfa could cross-pollinate and infect non-GE organic alfalfa is a key issue for organic farmers. If the Roundup Ready transgene spreads to non-GE alfalfa - which critics like Freese claim is inevitable - then the industry may have to change the standards for determining what can be labeled "organic" and "natural," and the growing organic food industry could face millions of dollars in losses if their alfalfa is contaminated with Monsanto transgenes.

The USDA claims that the probability of gene flow between GE and non-GE alfalfa is very low, but the EIS does document several instances of transgenic contamination. About 200,000 acres of Roundup Ready alfalfa in 48 states were planted and harvested in 2005 and 2006 before the CFS lawsuit forced a ban. During this time, two alfalfa seed production firms, Dairyland and Cal/West Seeds, reported transgenic contamination in non-GE alfalfa seeds in California, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Dairyland reported contamination rates hovering around 1 percent, but in 2009, Cal/West reported that 12 percent of more than 200 alfalfa seed lots were contaminated with transgenes, and in 2008, all six of the firm's research lots tested positive for GE contamination. Preliminary data from 2009 showed that 30 percent of seed stock lots were contaminated.

Forage Genetics International, the company that developed Roundup Ready alfalfa for Monsanto, provides the largest data set on cross-contamination in the USDA's final EIS. A report conducted by Forage Genetics on the "best practices" established by the industry for growing Roundup Ready alfalfa found cross-contamination rates between 0 and .18 percent. Critics like Freese say data provided by the industry doesn't belong in the USDA's assessments, but the USDA claims the data shows "acceptable" rates of transgenic contamination.

Freese and the CFS are not the only advocates concerned about the economic impacts of cross-contamination. In June 2010, 55 members of Congress joined Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) in sending a letter to the USDA requesting the department decide against deregulating Roundup Ready alfalfa. Citing alfalfa seed markets in countries that have banned GE seeds and data provided by Dairyland and Cal/West Seeds, Leahy and his supporters claim the US could lose $197 million annually in alfalfa seed and forage exports as a result of GE contamination of organic and conventional seeds.

The letter also questions the need for Roundup Ready alfalfa when only 7 percent of alfalfa hay is currently treated with herbicides. Freese said alfalfa is often treated with chemicals sprayed by airplanes, and the CFS is concerned that aerial sprays of Roundup could drift onto conventional and organic alfalfa plots and damage crops that are not resistant to Roundup. According to some estimates, Roundup Ready alfalfa could increase herbicide use by up to 23 million pounds per year.

The increased reliance on glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup has caused weeds to develop their own tolerance to the chemical. Herbicide-resistant weeds, sometimes called "superweeds," now infest millions of acres of cropland. Farmers now combat the weeds with cocktails of herbicides like 2,4 D - an ingredient in Agent Orange - that are know to be more toxic than glyphosate. In all, farmers have used at least 318 million more pounds of herbicides and pesticides in the past 13 years as a result of planting GE crop seeds like Roundup Ready corn and soy.

The USDA, however, concluded that new glyphosate-resistant weeds would be slow to develop in Roundup Ready alfalfa stands.

Freese said the USDA chose to ignore important data in favor of outdated research and information provided by firms with close connections to the biotech industry. "APHIS cites studies on herbicide use with Roundup Ready crops that were done in the late 1990s," Freese said. "That was before any glyphosate-resistant weeds had evolved, and so before the time when their emergence began driving the big increase in herbicide use we've been seeing since 2001."

Freese said that, like the data provided on cross-contamination provided by Forage Genetics, the USDA relies on data from industry-funded groups like the National Center for Food and Agriculture Policy (NCFAP) and PG Economics.

The biotech industry plays hardball in Congress as well. One week before Roundup Ready alfalfa was deregulated, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack testified before the House Committee on Agriculture, where Chairmen Frank Lucas (R-Oklahoma) led a charge to press the USDA to fully deregulate the alfalfa. A political action committee and individuals associated with Monsanto donated $11,000 to Lucas' campaign last year, and Lucas has received $1,247,844 from the agribusiness industry during his political career, according to watchdog site www.opensecrets.org. Since 1999, the top 50 companies holding agricultural or food patents have spent more than $572 million in campaign contributions and lobbying efforts, according to a report released last year.

The USDA does invite the American public to weigh in on controversial issues like GE crops, and the CFS reports that, last spring, 200,000 people submitted letters "highly critical" of the department's draft conclusions on Roundup Ready alfalfa. "Clearly the USDA was not listening to the public or farmers but rather to just a handful of corporations," CFS Director Anthony Kimbrell said after Roundup Ready alfalfa was fully legalized. The public comments may have fallen on deaf ears, or perhaps they were just drowned out by the booming voice of a biotech industry that refuses to take no for an answer.

"The World According to Monsanto: From Agent Orange to Genetically Modified Crops" (DVD) is yours with a donation to Truthout. Click here to make a donation and receive your gift.

213. BP Oil Spill: Gulf of Mexico Bottom Shows Little Sign of Recovery, But Many Dead Critters

Dead Crab with Oil Residue

By Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press, February 19, 2011

Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top scientist's video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn't degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor.

That report is at odds with a recent report by the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012.

At a science conference in Washington on Saturday, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn't.

"There's some sort of a bottleneck we have yet to identify for why this stuff doesn't seem to be degrading," Joye told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington. Her research and those of her colleagues contrasts with other studies that show a more optimistic outlook about the health of the gulf, saying microbes did great work munching the oil.

"Magic microbes consumed maybe 10 per cent of the total discharge, the rest of it we don't know," Joye said, later adding: "there's a lot of it out there."

The head of the agency in charge of the health of the Gulf said Saturday that she thought that "most of the oil is gone." And a Department of Energy scientist, doing research with a grant from BP from before the spill, said his examination of oil plumes in the water column show that microbes have done a "fairly fast" job of eating the oil. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientist Terry Hazen said his research differs from Joye's because they looked at different places at different times.

Joye's research was more widespread, but has been slower in being published in scientific literature.

In five different expeditions, the last one in December, Joye and colleagues took 250 cores of the sea floor and travelled across 2,600 square miles (6,734 sq. kilometres). Some of the locations she had been studying before the oil spill on April 20 and said there was a noticeable change. Much of the oil she found on the sea floor — and in the water column — was chemically fingerprinted, proving it comes from the BP spill. Joye is still waiting for results to show other oil samples she tested are from BP's Macondo well.

She also showed pictures of oil-choked bottom-dwelling creatures. They included dead crabs and brittle stars — starfish like critters that are normally bright orange and tightly wrapped around coral. These brittle stars were pale, loose and dead. She also saw tube worms so full of oil they suffocated.

"This is Macondo oil on the bottom," Joye said as she showed slides. "This is dead organisms because of oil being deposited on their heads."

Joye said her research shows that the burning of oil left soot on the sea floor, which still had petroleum products. And even more troublesome was the tremendous amount of methane from the BP well that mixed into the Gulf and was mostly ignored by other researchers.

Joye and three colleagues last week published a study in Nature Geoscience that said the amount of gas injected into the Gulf was the equivalent of between 1.5 and 3 million barrels of oil.

"The gas is an important part of understanding what happened," said Ian MacDonald of Florida State University.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco told reporters Saturday that "it's not a contradiction to say that although most of the oil is gone, there still remains oil out there."

Earlier this month, Kenneth Feinberg, the government's oil compensation fund czar, said based on research he commissioned he figured the Gulf of Mexico would almost fully recover by 2012 — something Joye and Lubchenco said isn't right.

"I've been to the bottom. I've seen what it looks like with my own eyes. It's not going to be fine by 2012," Joye told The Associated Press. "You see what the bottom looks like, you have a different opinion."

NOAA chief Lubchenco said "even though the oil degraded relatively rapidly and is now mostly but not all gone, damage done to a variety of species may not become obvious for years to come."

Lubchenco Saturday also announced the start of a Gulf restoration planning process to get the Gulf back to the condition it was on Apr. 19, the day before the spill. That program would eventually be paid for BP and other parties deemed responsible for the spill. This would be separate from an already begun restoration program that would improve all aspects of the Gulf, not just the oil spill, but has not been funded by the government yet, she said.

The new program, which is part of the Natural Resources Damage Assessment program, is part of the oil spill litigation — or out-of-court settlement — in which the polluters pay for overall damage to the ecosystem and efforts to return it to normal. This is different than paying compensation to people and businesses directly damaged by the spill.

The process will begin with public meetings all over the region.

___

Online:

Joye's website: http://www.marsci.uga.edu/directory/mjoye.htm

NOAA's restoration site: http://www.gulfspillrestoration.noaa.gov/

212. Cuba: More than 6 Million Participate in PCC Pre-Congress Discussion, Selection of Delegates Begins

Raul Castro Speaks on
Economic Reform

By Radio Rebelde, February 4, 2011

More than six million Cubans have participated in the analysis of the Project of Economic and Social Policies Guidelines of the Cuban Party and the Revolution, to be presented at the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), scheduled for April 2011.

According to Granma newspaper, 70% of the meetings to discuss each chapter of the project have already been held.

It adds that every question, concern, or proposal to add, change or remove something, has been registered, analyzed and classified, according to the topic, by 5,000 specialists in all municipalities and provinces.

These specialists pass on the questions, concerns and proposals to twelve working groups led by top leaders of the PCC, the State and the Government, who later on assess the information gathered and make the necessary changes to present a definitive document during the Congress.

The chapters more debated have been Chapter IV (Social Policy), Chapter II (Macroeconomic Policies), Chapter I (Economic Management Model), Chapter XI (Construction, Housing and Water Resources), and Chapter X (Transportation).

The guidelines on the ration card, the policies of prices, the quality of education, and the implementation of a single currency, are some of the topics that have originated more questions and recommendations.

*     *     *

Latin American Herald Tribune, February 22, 2011

Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his brother, President Raul Castro, were elected delegates to the 6th Congress of the governing Cuban Communist Party, or PCC, which will be held April 16-19 and which will be the first such gathering since 1997, state media reported Sunday.

Former President Fidel Castro, 84, who handed over power in 2006 due to a serious illness, retains the post of first secretary of the Communist Party, while his brother, 79, is the second secretary of that organization.

Both men were designated delegates to the communist congress during a meeting of PCC general secretaries held on Saturday in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba and presided over by Cuban First Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, the official daily Juventud Rebelde reported on Sunday.

The 6th Congress of the PCC will focus on the ratification of the economic adjustment plan pushed by the government of Raul Castro to attempt to overcome the serious economic crisis that has beset the island for decades.

Thus, it will be an "atypical congress," according to what Machado Ventura said on Saturday, adding that "everything that's being done is to guarantee the continuity of the revolution and socialism."

At the end of 2011, the PCC will also hold a National Conference where it is anticipated that the renewal or continuity of top officials within the party leadership entities will be dealt with.

That conference "will be the time to analyze the life of the organization in the interests of consolidating the guiding role of the party in society," Machado Ventura said.

A thousand delegates will participate in the 6th PCC Congress.

*     *     *

By Radio Rebelde, January 10, 2011


First Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura announced on Sunday that the election of pre-delegates to the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) —scheduled for April 16-19— will begin this month.

He noted that the delegates to the Congress will be elected from this group in February in meetings of General Secretaries of base PCC organizations in each of the country’s municipalities.

Machado added that the provincial and municipal assemblies will meet after the sessions of the PCC Congress, in which 1,000 delegates will participate —the lowest number since the first meeting of this kind took place in Havana in December 1975.

The high-ranking official commented that they are promoting the election of delegates with knowledge of economy as discussions will focus mainly on this issue.

“In previous congresses a larger number of comrades have participated because we have discussed topics of general interest, but now we will analyze the Draft Guidelines for the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution and the upgrading of its economic model,” Machado explained.

“That’s why comrades with the abovementioned characteristics should be in the five discussion commissions, so that they can help with their experience,” he added.

The First Vice President announced that the National Conference of the PCC will also take place this year, although the exact date has not been determined yet.

The Sixth PCC Congress will take place coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Cuban victory against the mercenary invasion in Bay of Pigs and also the 50th anniversary of the declaration of the Socialist nature of the Cuban Revolution.

211. Cuba's Upcoming Communist Party Congress: Moving Away from Socialism and Workers' Democracy

By Ron Ridenour, This Can't Be Happening, February 20, 2011

The Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) has set April 2011, the 50th anniversary of the revolution’s victory over the US-Cuban exile mercenary force at the Bay of Pigs, for its 6th Congress. I follow this process with special attention, in part, because I participated in the PCC’s 4th congress preparatory discussion, in 1991.

Like millions of others around the world, I feel the Cuban revolution was (and is) fought for me too. Cubans, including their leader Fidel Castro, help make us feel so. For instance, as recounted in the book Castro's Cuba, Cuba's Fidel Fidel told Lee Lockwood:“Those who are exploited are our compatriots all over the world; and the exploiters all over the world are our enemies... Our country is really the whole world, and all the revolutionaries of the world are our brothers.”

Although I was not a Party member, and not a Cuban citizen, I was permitted to participate in the PCC discussions because I was working as a volunteer on an oil tanker in Santiago de Cuba, one of five I sailed on. (My experience was recounted in the article "Cuba at Sea" in the London journal Socialist Resistance.)

After hours of discussing ideas, including my own about the need for greater journalist freedom and citizenry participation in the media, the seamen passed two motions: my proposal, and democratization of decision-making generally. After the meeting, most said these discussions were a waste of words. In the end, they saw no results from their motions, but the Party did listen to some of the one million complaints and proposals.

Several times in the last half-century of revolutionary Cuba citizens have been allowed to discuss national policies (not international ones) but the results have been consultative rather than binding—with the exception of adopting a new constitution in 1976, and modifying it in 1992. Three years ago, shortly after Raul Castro took over the presidency, the Party launched a national discussion about the future of the revolution. Millions contributed ideas, but there was no real mechanism to implement anything debated.

Last November, the leading members of the PCC, several of whom hold key government positions, announced 291 proposals for reforms in 12 areas of economic and social life Cubans. A burning question is if the 800,000 Communist Party members’ discussion, plus that of non-members, will actually affect the policies to be taken at the forthcoming PCC VI congress.

There is no proposed mechanism to assure this happens in the 32-page document. Nor is there any procedure for introducing other matters.


Cuba's Communist Party Congress meets this April

The aim of the proposals is to increase production, decrease the budget deficit, balance exports-imports, and pay off the country’s $20 billion foreign debt. The guidelines call for reducing the state’s role by delegating more authority to local governments and some work sites, increasing taxes and other revenues, while cutting back on social benefits and subsidies.

While it calls for more private enterprise and foreign investments, the document maintains that “only socialism is capable of overcoming the difficulties and preserving the conquests of the Revolution”.

Some of the proposals for discussion have, in fact, already been made into temporary laws by the “interim” policy-making body, the Council of Ministers. The Parliament of unpaid elected delegates meets once or twice a year for two days. One of its tasks is to make the temporary laws permanent, which it always does.

The PCC wants the state to continue as the central economic planner, using the budgetary method, but it will permit more farmland as usufruct property, greater self-employment (in 178 areas) and small businesses which, for the first time, will be allowed to employ people outside the family.

In Overall Terms

I find positive and worrisome some aspects in the guidelines.

Positive goals are those aimed at becoming self-sufficient in foodstuffs; uniting the two currencies into one which all Cubans posses; some decentralization of decision-making and use of more finances by local governments and companies. They affirm that Cuba is too dependent on foreign capital and imports, that Cuba must cut back on excessive costs and waste, strengthen the desire to work and eliminate companies operating at a loss, which often leads to producing less than a company spends.

On the downside are several proposals which would continue mono-culture dependency for exports, a dual economy and class inequalities generally viewed as necessary tactical setbacks in the early days (1990-2000) of the Special Period austerity program following the fall of eastern European socialism. Many analysts, including myself when working for Cuba media (1987-96), expressed the fear that these retreats could become permanent (see my book, Cuba at the Crossroads, Infoservicios, Los Angeles, 1994). Our fears proved warranted as concessions to capitalism have deepened and become entrenched.

The greatest shortcoming in the proposals is the failure to plan for a transfer to workers’ power, in which workers actually manage the state and the economy—in other words real democracy. Because workers do not have authentic decision-making power, and because the majority have sufficient foodstuffs and essential consumer items due to low wages and little supply, there is rampant demoralization, apathy, cynicism and alienation. This results in epidemic thievery of needed items from workplaces and warehouses and an omnipresent black market. Thievery and corruption among many government officials and bureaucrats exacerbate the situation.

The Cuban media refuse to publish critiques of this nature, other than by Fidel and Raul. (See especially Fidel’s “Self-destruct” speech at Havana University, November 17, 2005, and Raul’s speech, July 26, 2007.) Recently, however, Esteban Morales, a prominent Cuban Communist and researcher on race relations in Cuba, wrote a critical article from a left socialist perspective, titled “Corruption, the True Counter-Revolution” (published abroad but also allowed on the website of Cuba’s writer-artists association-UNEAC), for which the PCC expelled him, affirming the widely held view that ordinary Cubans are forbidden to have any real influence. (4)

Another problem is that many of the state’s economists propose “market socialism”, believing that the solution to scarcity is more capitalist investment and supply-demand pricing. This leads to petty-bourgeois production relations and an individualistic mentality—worker-capitalists. If one is to be paid according to what one produces and sells, as proposed, then nickel and sugar cane workers, for instance, would be poorer than workers in citrus farming when global capitalist pricing favors oranges, in the inevitable speculation cycle, and mining nickel becomes unprofitable. Thus the basic principle of solidarity and equality is in serious danger.

Why can’t prices be based on socialist relations of production, taking into account worker incomes in relationship to their necessary consumption?

Furthermore, the proposals do not call specifically for greater barter trading with ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of America) countries, although there is a vague statement that the eight progressive ALBA countries are a priority. There is little trade with ALBA, with the exception of Venezuela. Most trade is with major capitalist countries. Ironically, the US is Cuba’s number one food supplier (25-30% of all foodstuffs; Cuba imports 80% of its food). Overall it is the fourth leading importer—6% of all imports are from the US. Officially, the US continues a blockade of Cuba, but since 2000 US businesses have been selling foodstuffs and medicines on a cash-only basis in US dollars. This one-way trade places Cuba at a security risk, by making the country increasingly dependent for food upon the imperialist whims of its main enemy.

Reliance on an export economy plays into the hands of a vulnerable world capitalist market. Cuba industrializes very little, something Che Guevara, before he left to promote revolution in South America, had endeavored to change without serious results. But with what little industrial development there is, current proposals call for orienting it toward export production while reducing the domestic component. How can Cuba meet its people’s own industrial needs by exporting more and importing less? It is nearly impossible already to find new clothes for sale in national pesos, for instance.

Cubans have never had sufficient housing. Many people live under the same roof—three generations is not unusual. But young people, especially those wishing to marry and have children, are discouraged by this “custom”. Nor will they be enthralled by a proposal calling for more tourism-based construction--golf courses, aquatic parks, spas--all of which divert scarce labor and materials needed for housing.

Another proposal calls for diminishing state financing of social security by extending the contribution of workers in both state and private sectors. One of the pillars of social welfare brought about by the socialist revolution is now to be conditioned, in part, on taxes paid by already underpaid workers. Until now part of one’s “income” had been free access to health care and education, and subsidized low prices for foodstuffs and clothing. The ration book has guaranteed some basic foods, albeit fewer and fewer. The party-state now wants this basic rationing eliminated. That means that real wages will decrease. The food sold in farmers markets, even the state controlled ones, are too costly to provide enough food for most people for the entire month. Proposed cutbacks will result in greater frustration, thievery and remittances reliance. Will more people flee to capitalist countries, in order to send their families some money just so they can eat?

The party-state offers a promise of increased wages, particylarly in the $ equivalent (CUC, which is valid only in Cuba) economy, and farm workers once production increases. But hungry, frustrated workers will not work harder before they are better paid and treated. They will be angrier and more open to corruption.

Besides my critique, another major reason for Cuba’s economic crises is the weather. Between 1998 and 2008, Cuba suffered over $20 billion in losses due to 16 hurricanes. Three of them, in 2008 alone, caused half that damage.

Workers Power is the Only Future for Socialism

I am not alone in maintaining that without workers’ power real socialism cannot be built, and even half-real socialism will fail—as we have witnessed in the other countries that made attempts.
Workers power should include oversight committees staffed on a rotating basis by actual workers across the country. I firmly support what James Petras wrote:

“A new income policy in itself can contribute to greater incentives for productivity if it is combined with greater direct participation of all workers in the organization and administration of the work place as well as the opening of multiple spaces to discuss the restructuring of the economy.

”What especially requires reform is a new system of public accountability based on independent accounting authorities, consumers’ and workers’ oversight commissions with the power to ‘open the books’.  Workers and professional control will not eliminate corruption altogether but it will challenge the authorities through independent periodic reviews…Greater accountability within the leadership is necessary but not sufficient.  There must be control and vigilance by authorized commissions from below and by a parallel independent general accounting office…a new system of elected representatives to oversee the allocation of the budget to the various ministries and the power to summon responsible officials to televised hearings for a strict public accounting.”

When revolutionary organizers are engaged in workers’ struggles under capitalism, one of their best arguments, when confronted by management claims that their demands are not economically possible, is the demand: “Open the books.” So why can’t the workers see the books in proletariat-led Cuba?
I close with a sober quotation from Fidel Castro: 

“Capitalism tends to reproduce itself under any social system because it is based on egotism and on human instincts. Human society has no other alternative but to overcome this contradiction; otherwise, it would not be able to survive.”
 

RON RIDENOUR, who was a co-founder and editor with Dave Lindorff in 1976 of the Los Angeles Vanguard, lives in Denmark. A veteran journalist who has reported in the US and from Venezuela, Cuba and Central America, he has written, Cuba at the Crossroads, Backfire: The CIA's Biggest Burn, and Yankee Sandinistas, and is an occasional contributor to ThisCantBeHappening!

210. The New Latin American “Progresismo” and the Extractivism of the 21st Century

Protest Against Mining in Argentina

By Carmelo Ruiz Marrero, Upside down World, February 17, 2011

The advent of progressive governments in South America in the last decade gave environmentalists the hope that this would be the beginning of a truly sustainable economic development. But post-neoliberal “progresismo” has brought new complications in the environmental front, according to numerous activists and experts.

The neoliberal period was marked by extractivism, meaning the centering of economies around the export of raw materials, such as minerals, fossil fuels and agricultural commodities. Numerous critiques came from the environmental movement and the left to the effect that extractivism is ecologically destructive and keeps the countries of the global South in misery, dependence and underdevelopment. They hoped for a transition towards a post-extractivist model, in which natural resources would be used in a rational and sustainable manner, and mainly for local use, thus facilitating a truly national, “endogenous” economic development. The new progressive constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia acknowledge this matter and are post-extractivist in orientation. Among indigenous peoples’ movements the post-extractivist posture is reflected in the philosophy of sumak kawsay, a term which translates roughly as “right livelihood” or “living well.”

Unlike in neoliberalism, in the new Latin American “progresismo” or “21st Century Socialism” the state has much more participation in the economy and directs part of the foreign exchange funds into social programs, and also China has replaced the United States as the main importer of raw materials. But little else has changed. Instead of post-extractivism now there is neo-extractivism. Extractive activities and the export of raw materials continue as before, but are now justified with a progressive discourse.

“In Latin America, in countries with progressive governments- and immediately Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador come to mind, and then others- there is no move toward a structural transformation of our region’s historical accumulation patterns. There is no substantial shift,” says Ecuadorian economist Alberto Acosta, former minister of mining and environment. “It’s not traditional neoliberalism anymore, but we remain within the extractivist logic. The form of production is still being over-defined by the primary products that we export, some are mineral resources, others are oil or other primary resources, but there is no change in the raw materials-exporting modality of this extractivism, and neither is our submissive form of insertion in the international market being questioned.”

Acosta holds that “we cannot talk of structural change, what has been done is a re-conversion from the old extractivism to a neo-extractivism or 21st century extractivism, in which the state has a larger participation in the rent generated by mining and oil, where the state somehow controls the activity of transnational corporations, where there is a larger distribution of the income generated by these exports through a quite sustained social policy, but which is nevertheless paternalistic and clientelist, and we get then to another important element: social investment has improved but the pattern of accumulation and wealth concentration is not being changed but rather, the available surpluses of countries that produce and export raw materials are being distributed through social policies.”

Under neo-extractivism, “the objective of national development, as ‘endogenous development’, is lost; autonomy in relation to global markets vanishes. National industries do not recover, in some cases they are reduced,” says Uruguayan economist Eduardo Gudynas, executive secretary of the Latin American Center for Social Ecology. “Under this style of development, the employment generated is not enough, productivity gets replaced by larger volume of exports, and the pressure on natural resources increases, and with it, social conflicts. It is naively hoped that poverty will be reduced as a result of exports… to hope that raw materials exports will solve all our problems is naive and unfounded. It is still necessary to generate endogenous and autonomous development strategies.”

“Latin America faces an enormous environmental challenge,” points out Ignacio Sabbatella, a scholar at the University of Buenos Aires. “Instead of the profound political changes in the region in the preceding decade, the progressive governments have not been able to untangle themselves from the role assigned to them in the international division of labor, and in some cases they have furthered it.”

“Besides the negative impacts on nature, environmental inequities are broadened in regions where riches abound. Not casually but causally, environmental conflicts multiply where it is common to encounter local, peasant and indigenous populations pitted against mining and oil transnationals or resisting the displacement imposed by monocultures,” states Sabbatella, who together with Gudynas is a contributing writer in the ‘Marxismo Ecológico’ blog. “The strip mining megaprojects are multiplied tenfold in spite of the negative consequences to the environment and the health of nearby populations. Genetically engineered soy cultivation keeps expanding, at the price of putting national food sovereignty at risk, and agrochemical pollution.”

Others are much sharper in their critiques, like Argentina’s Rural Reflection Group (GRR): “Today the crudest developmentalism rules in Latin America’s progressive developmentalist governments… Extractivism and productivism are imposed, for they do not understand that transnational corporations are the danger and thus they become functional to global markets and to the growth of China as a great power, subsidized by the over-exploitation of the labor of our peoples and also by our raw materials. We are convinced that global markets are unconcerned by the discourses that emanante from Bolivarian socialism or whatever you might call it.”

According to GRR spokesman Jorge E. Rulli, in 21st Century Socialism “extractivism is defended, which leads to foreign investments and to the favoring of productivism over local demands for the preservation of natural resources, under the axiom that in order to fight poverty we must first make the pie grow… and this ‘mantra’ is being equally repeated by Correa in Ecuador, Pepe Mugica in Uruguay and Cristina K in Argentina.”

To give but one example, there’s Bolivian president Evo Morales’ plans to put oil wells in areas populated by indigenous peoples, and of great ecological sensitivity, such as the Amazonian jungle and the Chaco.

“Bolivia, with over a century of oil history and centuries of condemnation because of the extractivist resource policy, renews its gamble by giving away the country’s richest and best conserved lands to petroleum transnationals,” decries Catalan researcher Marc Gavaldà, author of ‘Las Manchas del Petróleo Boliviano’ (The Stains of Bolivia’s Oil) and creator of the documentary ‘Patagonia Petrolera’ (The Patagonia of Oil).

This invasion of oil wells has a bitter taste of irony, considering the pronouncements and postures of president Morales in international fora, such as the UN Climate Convention meetings in Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancun in 2010, and the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, organized and hosted by Morales’ government in the city of Cochabamba on April 2010.

“The new black offensive, adorned with the most oft repeated agruments of economic progress for the country, hands out in a platter millions of hectares of Amazonian and Chaco protected areas, as well as the last uninvaded indigenous territories so that the new partners with capital and non-local headquarters tear up the territory in the course of carrying out the most noxious activity in the planet,” warns Gavaldà. “That the Bolivian government keeps betting on the entrance of more petroleum corporations into its territory also facilitates the intensification of the sense of impunity of these companies, which have so far eluded any attempt at courtroom indictment.”

To those who oppose extractivism- with or without the “neo” prefix- from an ecological and anti-capitalist perspective, post-extractivism beckons as the alternative. But according to Gudynas, there are sectors that participate in the debate but do not understand the concepts of post-extractivism and sumak kawsay:

“On one extreme there are conservative critiques, with a neoliberal nostalgia, which consider all of this as mere indigenous claims, which promote laziness and would take our countries backwards. In the middle there are some academics, specially in economics, who view this debate as something very distant from their scholarship and research. Finally, from the other extreme, it is reduced to mere assistentalist plans, like in Venezuela, with a government-issued plastic card, identical to a credit card, but with a label about right livelihood.”

The Uruguayan economist explains that “nobody is proposing a return to living as hunter-gatherers in the jungle, this is about demanding that the people’s quality of life be put in center stage, and not the increase in the (domestic gross product). It is not a slogan that is separate from rigorous reflection, rather it is nourished little by little by complex conceptual bases, which include contributions spanning from post-material economics to ecological anthropology. It does not underestimate traditional knowledge either, it actually rests upon it and incorporates its lessons, such as agroecological practices and reciprocity. By the same token, Right Livelihood is much more than paying assistentialist bonuses, since it calls for profound changes in the economic dynamics and productive chains, and the redistribution of wealth.”

Acosta clarifies that post-extractivism does not mean rejecting the exploitation of natural resources, but rather “to establish the biophysical limits of exploitation, eliminating poverty and its cause, which is opulence”, and move towards a post-petroleum economy. “Oil is running out and given the growing rates of consumption we cannot keep on being oil exporting countries.”

In Gudynas’ view, it is imperative to participate in the debate and it would be a grand mistake to abandon it. “Some civil society actors confronting a government walk out of spaces of debate on Right Livelihood, deeming that the subject has been hoarded and controlled by state agencies. Their discrepancies are expressed by abandoning the debate. As a mirror of this situation, there are government actors that seem to think they know everything and do not tolerate criticism, and thus cut off dialogue with the citizenry, without offering opportunities to advance collectively in the construction of Right Livelihood.”

“Political and social transformation is an unavoidable condition for the democratic planning of the exploitation of natural goods and the care of the environment,” advises Sabbatella. “That also requires a cultural transformation that stimulates an ever more participatory democracy. Finally, even with good intentions, the transition towards an ecological society is no more than an utopia if the foundations of capitalist production and reproduction are not questioned and altered.”

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero is an independent environmental journalist and environmental analyst of the CIP Americas Policy Program (www.cipamericas.org), a fellow of the Oakland Institute and a senior fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program, as well as founder and director of the Puerto Rico Project on Biosafety (bioseguridad.blogspot.com), and more recently the founder of the Latin America Energy and Environment Monitor. His bilingual web site (carmeloruiz.blogspot.com) is dedicated to global environment and development issues.

SOURCES:

Verónica Gago y Diego Sztulwark. Alberto Acosta interview. Página 12, January 10 2011. http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/dialogos/21-160169-2011-01-10.html

Marc Gavaldà. “La amnesia petrolera en Bolivia”. Rebelión, December 4 2010. http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=117926

Eduardo Gudynas. “Buen Vivir, un necesario relanzamiento”. Acción y Reacción, December 16 2010. http://accionyreaccion.com/?p=315

Eduardo Gudynas. “Exportando Recursos Naturales, Otra Vez”. Acción y Reacción, January 21 2011. http://accionyreaccion.com/?p=319

Jorge E. Rulli. “Modelos alternativos y alternativas al modelo”. June 24 2010. http://horizontesurblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/modelos-alternativos-y-alternativas-al.html

Jorge E. Rulli. Carta abierta los amigos de EnREDando y de Nodo Tau de la ciudad de Rosario. December 2010. http://carmeloruiz.blogspot.com/2010/12/la-realidad-argentina-carta-del-grr-la.html

Ignacio Sabbatella. “Latinoamérica ante la crisis ecológica global: un problema de fondo”. August 5 2010. http://www.biodiversidadla.org/Principal/Contenido/Documentos/Latinoamerica_ante_la_crisis_ecologica_global._Un_problema_de_fondo

Servicio de Noticias Ambientales (SENA). “Despilfarran la renta petrolera y minera en una ‘bonocracia clientelar’”. SENA, September 1 2010. http://fobomade.org.bo/bsena/?p=906