Saturday, December 26, 2009

December 26, 2009

War Without Borders

Along U.S.-Mexico Border, a Torrent of Illicit Cash 

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. and MARC LACEY


LAREDO, Tex. — The streets of Laredo are awash in money, stacks of grimy bills tainted with cocaine residue, wrapped in plastic and stowed in secret compartments built into the trucks, buses and cars that flow south over the Mexican border daily like a motorized river.

Customs officials have discovered a host of ingenious hiding places, from $3 million secreted in the floor of a Mexican passenger bus to $1.6 million stuffed in duffel bags and balanced atop the heads of people wading across the Rio Grande to Mexico.

At border crossings and airports alone, American customs officers seized $57.9 million in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, up 74 percent from the previous year. And once the money lands in Mexico, it is easily swept into a largely unregulated underground cash economy or laundered through seemingly legitimate businesses.

As the United States has tightened bank regulations and clamped down on sophisticated money-laundering schemes in the past 35 years, more of the money from illicit drug sales is being smuggled across the border to Mexico the old-fashioned way, law enforcement officials say.

American officials say stopping the bulk cash shipments and scuttling money laundering are critical to crippling the cartels in Mexico, which have unleashed a wave of violence that has claimed more than 15,000 lives since President Felipe Calderón began cracking down on their operations in December 2006.

Law enforcement officials and business owners in Mexico say that the assault on the cartels has driven drug traffickers to branch out into an array of other money-making ventures, setting up businesses like spas and day care centers to launder drug proceeds or selling new products like pirated movies or pilfered oil.

“It’s a natural evolution of criminal activity, just as with the mob in the 1950s,” said John Feeley, the deputy chief of mission of the United States Embassy in Mexico City. “They can’t continue to work on one illegal product.”

But Mexican authorities have yet to make much headway against money launderers, and customs officials say the cash they seize is still a trickle of what flows across the border.

Joint operations of customs, border patrol and immigration agents set up checkpoints on southbound lanes every day, fishing for money. Customs officials have assigned 25 more teams of dogs and handlers to the task in the past two years.

Mr. Feeley said that he expected Mexico and the United States to devote even more energy to going after the cartels’ profits.

Although United States authorities seized $138 million last year, that amount pales in comparison to the $18 billion to $39 billion a year the Drug Enforcement Agency estimates is being smuggled to Mexico every year.

“There is an enormous amount of money that is flowing undetected and uninterdicted,” said John T. Morton, the assistant secretary for immigration and customs enforcement. “We are trying to be a step ahead of the people moving the money. Unfortunately, right now we are a step behind.”

On the border, federal authorities play a constant cat-and-mouse game with the traffickers. The dealers employ spies to spot checkpoints, while informants tip off agents about the movement of cash.

Across the Border

In Mexico, the cash is relatively easy to launder, law enforcement officials say. Though the Mexican government has tightened bank regulations in the last nine months, drug cartels still buy real estate, businesses, automobiles, jewels and other luxuries in cash without any reports of suspicious activity being made to the government. The sellers then make giant but legal cash deposits to the banks, and the money flows into the economy, Mexican government officials and experts on laundering said.

“When the money is already integrated into the economy it’s very difficult to detect and the players there are not obligated to report it,” said Ramón García Gibson, a consultant to Mexican banks on money laundering.

Nor is it a crime in Mexico to buy and sell dollars on the street. Thousands of informal money brokers exchange cash, and while they are not allowed to handle more than $10,000 a day per client, the rule is often ignored.

The money launderers are still outrunning the Mexican authorities. Though the main agency in the finance ministry charged with tracking money laundering has tripled in size in the past two years, it remains weak and overwhelmed with thousands of reports of questionable activity, officials there say. In the past year, they have referred about 600 cases to prosecutors, but only 18 were presented to the courts.

“They just don’t have the capacity yet to do the investigation and make it stick in court,” said Shannon K. O’Neil, a Mexico analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

No one knows precisely how much money is shipped across the border, but Mexican authorities say cash smuggled illegally into their country and then sent back to United States banks through Mexican financial institutions totals at least $10 billion a year.

A good portion of that is pooled by foreign exchange businesses and then shipped back to United States banks in armored trucks, experts on money laundering said. Money is also smuggled out of Mexico to Colombia and other countries to pay cocaine producers.

In September, the Mexican and United States authorities broke up a smuggling ring that had bought a chemical factory and was shipping $41 million from Mexico to Colombia. The cash, in $50 and $100 bills, was hidden in shipping containers holding an industrial chemical.

The cartels are also laundering money through such innocuous-sounding enterprises as a car wash in Guadalajara, the Perfect Silhouette spa in Mexico City, the Happy Child day care center in Culiacán, and the Biosport health club in Hermosillo, according to the Treasury Department, which has designated scores of such Mexican businesses as cartel operations.

In Monterrey, in Mexico’s north, a merchant explained how the Zetas, one of the country’s most feared organized crime groups, turned his small market stall into a wholesaler of pirated products, including movies and CDs. The cartels now produce copies themselves by the hundreds of thousands and sell them under their own label; a unicorn is the Zetas’ symbol.

“They tell you, ‘This store belongs to us now,’ ” said the jittery merchant, who insisted on anonymity to avoid the fury of his new bosses. The Zetas even installed closed-circuit cameras to track his sales.

“The Zetas pay me a wage,” he said. “It’s much less than I used to make when I worked for myself, but these are people you do not say no to.”

In June, Mexican federal authorities in Monterrey arrested 14 suspects accused of illegally copying movies and music and distributing them in Mexico. The ringleader, identified as Leon Ayala Romero, was dubbed the Zetas’ piracy czar and was accused of sending about $20 million in proceeds to Heriberto Lazcano, the top Zeta commander.

The lines between legal and illegal businesses remain fuzzy. Last year, Saulo Reyes Gamboa, 37, a Mexican businessman and police official from Ciudad Juárez, was sentenced to eight years in an American prison for bribing an undercover federal agent in the United States to ship nearly 2,000 pounds of marijuana to El Paso. The American government seized nearly $20,000 in currency and a vehicle from Mr. Reyes but was unable to get access to most of his other Mexican-based businesses, including Subway franchises, a sushi restaurant and a radio station.

Cat and Mouse

Drug cartels pay people to make money transfers through companies like Western Union, or simply deposit money in American bank accounts and withdraw it from ATMs in Mexico. Other schemes involve moving money to shell companies, which then buy durable goods like bicycles in the United States and ship them to South America.

In a new trend, some organized crime groups have taken to smuggling prepaid money cards rather than cash, law enforcement officials say. United States treasury officials are working to require prepaid cards loaded with more than $10,000 to fall under the same reporting requirements as cash. Right now, anybody can walk or drive across the border with the cards filled with more than $10,000, without breaking any laws.

In their continual war of attrition with smugglers, customs officers are using a panoply of new tools: hand-held meters that measure the density of objects, vans with X-ray equipment that scan cars headed to Mexico looking for hidden compartments.

But dogs specially trained to sniff out narcotics make the most discoveries. The dogs and their handlers also find money, since most of it has traces of narcotics embedded in its paper. Drugs and cash are often stored or transported in the same compartments.

There is an entire cottage industry devoted to building secret compartments in vehicles. Often the compartments will not open unless the driver takes a series of actions like pumping the brakes and turning on the dome light and the radio simultaneously.

Still, experts on money laundering are skeptical that the seizures, even on the order of more than $100 million a year, can put a dent in a business that counts its income in tens of billions of dollars.

“The interdiction program is a waste of all the money we are pouring into it,” said Fletcher N. Baldwin Jr., an expert at the University of Florida. “We have the longest borders in the world with two other countries, and it’s impossible to police those borders.”

Federal officials acknowledge that they are hamstrung by the volume of traffic over the Mexican border, both legal and illegal. About 16,000 vehicles cross each way every day in Laredo alone, and customs officials say they do not have enough personnel to adequately police them.

Spies for smugglers easily locate checkpoints, federal agents say. “We are always cognizant of spotters,” said Gene Garza, the Laredo port director for Customs and Border Protection. “You just have to work around it. It’s actually a game we play.”

The smugglers are adept players, keeping couriers in the dark about what they are carrying or the inner workings of the cartels.

In turn, the agents sometimes choose not to arrest the drivers, turning them loose and following in hopes of ensnaring people further up the chain of command, law enforcement officials said.

A few drivers agree to become informants. If a seizure is not publicized, the drivers find themselves under tremendous pressure from their bosses to prove they did not steal the money, law enforcement officials say, helping sow discord within the cartels.

“When they lose the money, they cannot just call the guys who paid them the money and say ‘Can you pay me again?’ ” said one longtime Laredo detective, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It just creates havoc.”

Agents sometimes have their own troubles proving a driver was smuggling. On Jan. 8, Aristeo Cavelaris Castillo, 32, from the Mexican state of Coahuila, was waved into an inspection station on the Lincoln Juarez Bridge here.

When a drug-sniffing dog became excited, the agents used an X-ray truck to scan his pickup and found $1.3 million in small bills hidden in compartments in the dashboard and the passenger cab.

But Mr. Cavelaris claimed he had borrowed the truck from someone he barely knew, and had just used it to do some shopping. Prosecutors dropped the charges without giving a reason.

Prosecutors and investigators declined to comment on specific cases, but said it was sometimes hard to prove the couriers knew the money was there. On the Southwest border, for instance, officers have arrested 95 people for bulk cash smuggling in the past year but have convicted only a third of those.

“We have to sometimes let these guys go because they didn’t do anything illegal,” said Stefan Cassella, a prosecutor with the Department of Justice.

Smugglers often recruit drivers at truck stops to move cash, and keep them ignorant of the details, defense lawyers in Laredo said. In February, José Eduardo Martínez from Nuevo Laredo, just across the border, was caught with $930,000 in a suitcase thrown in the sleeping area of his tractor trailer.

Christina Flores, a lawyer for Mr. Martínez, said he had been approached at a gas station and had been asked to carry the suitcase, with a payment promised after the trip. The smugglers planned to follow his truck in a separate car, she said.

“He accepted the proposition,” Ms. Flores said of her client, who pleaded guilty to bulk cash smuggling. “He had a big mortgage and credit card debt.”

Yet even when couriers plead guilty, they are usually unable to help investigators learn more about how the money laundering or cartels work.

“A lot of these cases, we find that even with the guys who do cooperate, they don’t know anything,” Mr. Morton said. “These people are fodder in a larger war.”

James C. McKinley Jr. reported from Laredo, and Marc Lacey from Mexico City, Ciudad Juárez and Culiacán, Mexico. Santiago Fourcade contributed reporting from Monterrey, Mexico, Elisabeth Malkin from Mexico City and Randal C. Archibold from Los Angeles.

December 26, 2009

Catholic Group Supports Senate on Abortion Aid 

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK


WASHINGTON — In an apparent split with Roman Catholic bishops over the abortion-financing provisions of the proposed health care overhaul, the nation’s Catholic hospitals have signaled that they back the Senate’s compromise on the issue, raising hopes of breaking an impasse in Congress and stirring controversy within the church.

The Senate bill, approved Thursday morning, allows any state to bar the use of federal subsidies for insurance plans that cover abortion and requires insurers in other states to divide subsidy money into separate accounts so that only dollars from private premiums would be used to pay for abortions.

Just days before the bill passed, the Catholic Health Association, which represents hundreds of Catholic hospitals across the country, said in a statement that it was “encouraged” and “increasingly confident” that such a compromise “can achieve the objective of no federal funding for abortion.” An umbrella group for nuns followed its lead.

The same day, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops called the proposed compromise “morally unacceptable.”

The divide frames one of the most contentious issues facing House and Senate negotiators as they try to produce a bill that can pass in both chambers.

For months, the bishops have driven a lobbying campaign to bar anyone who receives insurance subsidies under the proposed overhaul from using them to buy coverage that included abortion. Citing the bishops, a group of House Democrats forced their liberal party leaders to adopt such a provision and threatened to block any final legislation that fell short of it. Abortion rights supporters, in response, have vowed to block any bill that includes such a measure.

Officials of the Catholic hospitals’ group and the nuns’ Leadership Conference of Women Religious declined to comment.

Catholic scholars say their statement reflects a different application of church teachings against “cooperation with evil,” a calculus that the legislation offers a way to extend health insurance to millions of Americans. For the Catholic hospitals, that it is both a moral and financial imperative, since like other hospitals they stand to gain from reducing the number of uninsured patients.

And in practical political terms, some Democrats — including some opponents of abortion rights — say that the Catholic hospitals’ relative openness to a compromise could play a pivotal role by providing political cover for Democrats who oppose abortion to support the health bill. Democrats and liberal groups quickly disseminated the association’s endorsement along with others from the nuns’ group, other Catholics and evangelicals.

“I think it is a sign that progress is being made, that we are getting there,” said Representative Steve Driehaus of Ohio, one of the Democrats who forced the House to adopt the stricter restrictions in its bill. The hospitals’ statement, he said, recognized the Senate’s compromise as a meaningful step, making him “optimistic” that Democrats could find a bill that he and other abortion foes could support.

Other abortion opponents argue that liberals are overstating the hospital association’s influence. “They don’t carry the same sway,” said Representative Bart Stupak, the Michigan Democrat who led the effort that resulted in the House bill’s including a full ban on abortion coverage in any subsidized health insurance plan.

Mr. Stupak said he still had commitments from at least 10 Democrats who voted for the House bill and pledged to vote against the final legislation if it loosened the abortion restrictions — enough to keep the bill from being approved. “At the end of the day we are going to have something along the lines of my language,” he said. Abortion rights supporters said the signs of openness from Catholic groups were helping some Democratic abortion foes accept the Senate compromise.

“We have known for quite some time that the Catholic hospitals and also the nuns are really breaking from these hard-line bishops and saying, ‘This really is our goal: to get more people into health care coverage,’ ” said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado.

The abortion rights faction of the House Democrats was initially dubious about the Senate bill’s provision but has warmed up to it after reassurances from their Senate counterparts, Ms. DeGette said. President Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders say they aim to follow 30-year-old rules blocking the use of federal money for elective abortions, but lawmakers have fiercely disagreed over how to do so.

Like most Catholic groups, the Catholic Hospital Association has echoed the bishops’ opposition to any federal financing of abortion in health care proposals. But its officials also stood at the White House last spring to endorse Mr. Obama’s plans as part of an administration deal with the hospital industry.

After the Catholic Hospital Association’s endorsement of the proposed compromise, Catholic conservatives and some abortion opponents accused the group of selling out to the Democrats.

“The Catholic Health Association does not represent the teaching of the Catholic Church on the non-negotiable defense of innocent life,” the conservative Catholic activist Deal Hudson said in a statement, calling the association’s move “utterly offensive.”

Catholic ethics experts said the groups evidently disagree about how far to go in avoiding even remote complicity in abortion.

“The Catholic Health Association seems to be using traditional principles of cooperation with evil,” said Prof. M. Cathleen Kaveny of the Notre Dame University Law School.

Such principles, she said, could permit support for “imperfect legislation,” as long as one’s intent was not to “further abortion,” one made every effort to “minimize the harm,” and one achieved “an extremely important good that can’t be achieved any other way.”

In contrast, she said, “some bishops have adopted a prophetic stand against abortion that wants to eliminate any form of cooperation with evil no matter how remote.”

The United States Bishops Conference has not responded to requests for comment. But in a letter to the Senate before its vote this week, the bishops’ group argued that the bill still made some level of support for abortion the default position of the federal government, requiring states to actively “opt out” to avoid participating in insurance plans that offered indirect subsidized coverage of abortion.

Citing the abortion provisions and limitations of the coverage of immigrants, the bishops wrote, “Until these fundamental flaws are remedied, the bill should be opposed.”

December 24, 2009, 7:22 am 

Is Our Data Too Vulnerable in the Cloud?

By NICK BILTON

technologyreview.com Technology Review’s latest ‘Security in the Ether’ article

The January issue of Technology Review features an important article discussing whether cloud computing is secure enough for broad public use.

“Security in the Ether,” by David Talbot, brings to light some of the serious technology concerns from cloud based applications including Gmail, Twitter and Facebook. Mr. Talbot interviews security and cloud experts, some who agree that our data and information is too vulnerable in the cloud, and the standards for business and public use are not secure enough. Talbot writes:

Cloud computing actually poses several separate but related security risks. Not only could stored data be stolen by hackers or lost to breakdowns, but a cloud provider might mishandle data — or be forced to give it up in response to a subpoena.

Mr. Talbot tells one story of three computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, and M.I.T. who hired some virtual machines from Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service, and although they didn’t steal any data, they illustrated the ease with which an experienced programmer could gain access to other user’s data and servers.

As my colleague Jenna Wortham and I reported last week, the latest Twitter hacking debacle was a result of a simple password breach through a Twitter employee’s Gmail account. While reporting this story we heard concerns from numerous security experts who repeatedly said that single password systems for cloud applications don’t allow enough security for business and the public.





SINOGRAPH

Copenhagen miscalculation

By Francesco Sisci 
BEIJING - The headlines in many Chinese newspapers are about the agreement on climate change reached in Copenhagen. Papers displayed a photo of Premier Wen Jiabao returning from Denmark stating that "China made unremitting efforts at the UN conference" and that China would keep its commitments, no matter what. But the articles conceal embarrassment about the difficulties China faces beyond its expectations in Copenhagen.

Beijing went to Denmark believing it would be able to achieve great success. It had moved to frame a general agreement with the United States, and it had built an understanding with some of the major developing countries, namely Brazil, South Africa and
India (which with China make up the BASIC group).

Certainly Copenhagen was not the disaster that only a few months ago it was expected to be. It did end with an agreement, whereas in the summer it was thought it could be a sheer waste of time. However, in recent weeks, there was a growing sense of a major breakthrough on curbing emissions. These expectations did not come through. In fact, at the last minute, US President Barack Obama and Premier Wen had to work almost by themselves on a compromise that could salvage the conference.

The banana peel on which it all slipped was the issue of verification. The developed countries were willing to fund the technology transfer required to cut emissions, but they also wanted to verify that the cuts were actually being made. This verification issue went directly to the heart of a problem that already existed between China and the United States.

At present, the Chinese Ministry of the Environment issues reports on Beijing air quality on the basis of its own findings. Measurements of the air quality in the Chinese capital are also taken by the US Embassy, which sends its results through Twitter posts that are blocked in China.

The two sets of data rarely agree. There are differences in methodology - the particles observed, the timing, the locations, and so forth. The result is that on many days that are clear and clean according to Beijing, the US Embassy finds pollution higher than the worst days in US cities.

So with no agreement in place on transparency of verification, and if cuts to pollution are in any way linked to monetary aid or international accord, the differences between the observations of China and the United States could explode in ferocious and public face-losing controversy.

For the Chinese government, now the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, the environmental war is fought on many fronts.

For years, Beijing sought to launch a "green gross domestic product" for local and national administrations. The measure would put into context the purely economic results by accounting for the waste and damage caused by pollution. But Beijing has not yet been able to push through the program because of strong opposition from local governments, supported by the industries in their areas.

If anti-pollution standards were rigorously applied today, many factories would simply shut down, which would mean less tax revenue for the provinces and fewer jobs for the peasants who leave the countryside in search of fortune in the city.

The idea that Beijing took to Copenhagen was part of a complicated balancing act. The Chinese central government wanted a weapon to put pressure on local governments, with the threat of international sanctions and the carrot of new technologies for energy savings. The Copenhagen treaty was to be a tool in a game of cat and mouse between center and periphery by which the pollution situation would gradually improve.
But it was not possible that such a complex operation could take place under the eyes of the world, with the Americans and others every day picking on Beijing and its local governments for this or that misreported data.

On the other hand - and this was the element not taken into consideration by China - it is also understandable that the US, engaged in a controversial financial effort (aid to developing countries for emission reductions) to be paid for with taxpayers' money, would insist on such verification. Washington ran the risk of being pilloried at home about how US aid money to cut pollution was wasted or stolen in the Chinese or Indian or African countryside.

It is not known how early the US made clear the importance of verification - did it give China and the other BASIC countries enough time to prepare for the demand? Late notice about verification and its importance to the Copenhagen deal could also have been the result of political infighting in Washington, where a strong constituency was and is against an environmental agreement and against taxpayer money being “squandered” on aid to developing countries to curb pollution.

It might well have been that international and national agendas clashed in the US, and that some parochial lawmakers did not see the big picture. Yet likewise, China did not see the importance of domestic thrusts in US international politics.

Thus China's first slip brought another one. China had first sought a broad consensus, with the strong support of its BASIC associates. Then, when everything was crumbling, it left them behind (at least partially) to rush to patch up a draft with the United States. So it did a favor to the US - which had for a while felt snubbed at the conference - shortly after the successful Obama summit in Beijing last month. But other developing countries, which had been following the Chinese lead, suffered from a last-minute partial about-face - China preferred to form an agreement with the US than to stand in a close, united front with other developing nations.

The result is lame on many fronts, environmentally but also politically, and Beijing realizes it. Now probably, as in Chinese tradition, there will be a phase of profound rethinking about tactics and strategies for the environment and environmental policies. And in essence, on these thoughts depends the entire global environmental policy.

Francesco Sisci is the Asia Editor of La Stampa.

(Copyright 2009 Francesco Sisci)


Lee Visits UAE for Nuclear Power Plant Deal


By Kang Hyun-kyung


Staff Reporter

President Lee Myung-bak arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Saturday for a summit with President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan on a nuclear power plant deal.

The summit diplomacy comes at a time when Abu Dhabi's choice of developer for a nuclear power plant is nearing, officials said. The President is to return home Sunday.

The presidential office said that Lee decided to visit the Middle East country as Abu Dhabi is scheduled to choose the developer this month.

Companies from four countries ― Korea, France, the United States and Japan ― have submitted bids for the project.

According to the presidential office, the Korean bidder is a consortium of the Korea Electric Power Corp., Hyundai Engineering and Construction, and Samsung C&T Corp.

The office said the nuclear plant project is known to be large, but the exact scale has yet to be confirmed.

It added that if Korea is chosen as the developer, its effect on the economy will be immense.

Since 1978 when the first commercial nuclear power plant was built in Korea, a total of 20 reactors have been introduced, providing almost 40 percent of the country's electricity.

Korea imports about 97 percent of its energy resources. Power generation through new nuclear facilities is expected to increase by 56 percent by 2020.

Since his inauguration early last year, Lee has called for ``green growth'' as a new growth strategy.

Nuclear energy produces virtually no emissions and as a result, few negative effects on the atmosphere. The government has considered it as the most suitable alternative energy source, given that it helps reduce green house gas emissions.

The market for nuclear power plants is growing worldwide. The government expects nuclear power plant technology to be another engine for growth, following semiconductors, ship- building and automobiles.

Lee Dong-kwan, senior presidential secretary for public affairs, told reporters that ``if Korea is chosen as the developer for the UAE project, it will mean the country's overall triumph in technology, diplomacy, and negotiations.''

Korea has three competitive edges in nuclear power plants. It is ahead of the other countries in meeting construction deadlines, is price competitive and has successfully run nuclear power plants at a time when other countries have scaled down the addition of new facilities out of concerns over safety.

hkang@koreatimes.co.kr


US Senate bill advance sparks health care stock rally


By Kate Randall 


24 December 2009

Health care company shares rose sharply this week, with the Senate health care bill poised for a final vote and passage Thursday morning. The stock market rally offered one more indication that the Obama-sponsored legislation—far from offering relief from health care hardships for ordinary Americans—will boost the giant insurers’ and pharmaceuticals’ profits, and that the industry and Wall Street are keenly aware of this fact.


The health care sector has conducted a concerted effort over the past year to ensure that the legislation is crafted in its interests, with spending by an estimated 3,300 lobbyists expected to top $1 billion for the past two years. (See “Health care profiteers: A billion-dollar industry”) The industry has been handsomely rewarded with a bill that will deliver millions of new cash-paying customers to private insurers, while placing virtually no limits on what the insurance companies can charge.

At the same time, any fears on the part of private insurers that the final Senate bill would contain a government-run “public option” were put to rest when Senator Joseph Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, threatened to withhold his critical vote if it were included; the measure was summarily dumped. Although the public option would have at best provided only a fig leaf of reform to an otherwise reactionary piece of legislation, the insurance industry was vehemently opposed to any measure representing even the hint of a threat to its profits.

Following the 60-40 vote early Monday morning to end debate on the bill—averting a Republican filibuster and clearing the way for its passage—a number of health care stocks saw considerable gains. That day the Standard and Poor’s Managed Health Care index rose 4.6 percent and the S&P Healthcare Index was up 1.4 percent, while the Morgan Stanley Healthcare Payors stock index rose 3.6 percent.

Oppenheimer Asset Management analyst Carl McDonald commented in a research note, “All in all, relative to the last version of health reform issued by the Senate, things have turned out pretty well for the health insurance industry.” He added, “In particular, all versions of a government-run health plan have largely been eliminated.”

Private insurer stocks seeing significant gains Monday were: Cigna Corp., 5.3 percent; Aetna Inc., 5.84 percent; Humana Inc., 3.79 percent; UnitedHealth Group Inc., 5 percent; and WellPoint Inc., 3.8 percent.

The pharmaceutical benefits sector also saw gains, with Medco Health Solutions Inc. shares rising Monday by 3.84 percent and Express Scripts going up 5.2 percent.

Shares of Allergan Inc., maker of Botox, rose by 1.7 percent Monday after a proposed 5 percent tax on the anti-wrinkle treatment was ditched in favor of a 10 percent tax on tanning salons.

Revisions to the Senate bill also delayed a nearly $20 billion tax on medical device manufacturers until 2011, reflected in stock gains in this sector: St. Jude Medical Inc. rose 1 percent, Stryker Corp. 0.6 percent and Zimmer Holdings Inc. 0.9 percent.

Hospital chains also saw gains, on expectations that provisions of the Senate legislation will reduce the number of uninsured patients seeking hospital care. Over the past week, Tenet Healthcare Corp. shares were up 8.4 percent; and Community Health Systems Inc. stock climbed 5.5 percent in value.

These companies will see an influx of new customers—estimated at some 30 million—resulting in increased profits. Sheryl R. Skolnick, managing director at Pali Capital, told the Wall Street Journal that any health care overhaul that increases the number of people with insurance “is good reform as long as it pays more than Medicare,” and that both the House and Senate bills would do this.

Monday’s boost for stock shares followed a general rise over the past two months, beginning around the time Connecticut’s Lieberman first signaled that he would filibuster with the Republicans if the Senate bill included a public option.

The Huffington Post reported the following sharp gains for major health insurance companies from October 27 through December 18:

• Coventry Health Care Inc., up 31.6 percent

• Cigna Corp., up 29.1 percent

• Aetna Inc., up 27.1 percent

• WellPoint Inc., up 26.6 percent

• UnitedHealth Group Inc., up 20.5 percent

• Humana Inc., up 13.6 percent

These figures show that investors are (correctly) interpreting the Senate health plan as a massive subsidy for private insurers. Oppenheimer strategist Brian Belski remarked, “It’s like a blanket has been lifted off this sector.” (By comparison, during this same period the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 2.3 percent and the NASDAQ rose by only 1.4 percent.)

In anticipation of the Senate bill’s passage, Gregory Nersessian of Credit Suisse raised his price targets on seven insurers—Aetna, Cigna, Amerigroup Corp., Humana, Molina Healthcare Inc., UnitedHealth Group, and Wellcare Health Plans Inc.—a prediction of greater strength of stock performance.

Central to both the House and Senate versions of the health care legislation is the legal obligation of individuals and families to obtain insurance or pay a penalty, while, on the other hand, no restrictions are placed on what the insurance companies can charge for this coverage. Private insurers are expecting to haul in as much as $50 billion in new annual revenue, coming both from new paying customers and government subsidies.

To counteract measures in the Obama-sponsored legislation that prohibit insurers from denying coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, or from charging these customers higher premiums, the insurance companies will respond in a manner that protects every cent in their bottom line: by either raising premium prices for everyone or cutting benefits across the board.

Private insurers also fared well with a revision in the Senate bill on health insurance industry taxation. Under the original Senate bill the industry would have been taxed a fixed $6.7 billion a year. According to the revised proposal, health insurers would be taxed $2 billion in 2011, with increases over time rising to $10 billion in 2017.

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[22 December 2009]

Socialism and the defense of public education

24 December 2009
The Obama administration is spearheading an unprecedented assault on public education in the United States. While providing trillions of dollars to Wall Street, Obama has starved states and local governments of funding and pressed them to address their soaring budget deficits by closing public schools and opening semi-private charter schools.


In Michigan and other states, school districts are slashing jobs and eliminating essential services such as student transportation. The school week in Hawaii has been reduced to four days due to teacher furloughs. The cutbacks have been extended to higher education as well, with California leading the way by imposing a 32 percent tuition increase.

What little federal funding the Obama administration has made available—a meager $4 billion in its “Race to the Top” program—is contingent on school districts dropping restrictions on the expansion of charter schools and tying school funding and teachers’ pay to standardized test scores.

The catastrophe facing the public schools is the culmination of three decades of attacks on education, which has coincided with a general assault on the social position and democratic rights of the working class. The assault began in earnest in the 1980s with Reagan, who halved the federal share of education funding. It continued with Clinton’s promotion of charter schools and “school choice” in the 1990s and Bush’s “No Child Left Behind Act,” co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy.

It has no doubt come as a shock to many teachers and supporters of public education that the current administration, elected by appealing to popular sentiment for an end to social reaction and exploiting the belief that an African-American president would be more sympathetic to working people, has become the vehicle for an even more ruthless attack on the public schools. However, the assault on education is of a piece with all of Obama’s policies, including the escalation of war and the further enrichment of the financial aristocracy.

The policies of Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, represent a repudiation of the basic democratic principle that all children, regardless of their socio-economic background, have the right to a free, quality education. The administration is spearheading the transformation of education into a largely privatized system, with government subsidies provided to charter schools which are designed to educate only a fraction of working class youth. The rest are condemned to schools that are more like holding pens than centers of learning.

Quality education is fast becoming a privilege of the few, not the right of all.

Detroit, the poorest major city in the US, has become a focal point of this attack. Working closely with the Obama administration as well as the American Federation of Teachers and its Detroit local, the school district’s state-appointed “emergency financial director” has just imposed a contract that forces each teacher to “loan” the district $10,000 from their pay over the next two years. The contract will accelerate the closing of so-called “failing schools” and the firing of experienced teachers, combined with the establishment of “priority schools” for a select section of students.

The conditions of mass unemployment in the former center of world auto production, compounded by aged and inadequately maintained school buildings and a shameful dearth of basic tools such as books, computers, labs, etc., have led to falling test scores and plummeting graduation rates. Far from seeking to reverse this disaster, the politicians and school administrators have utilized the crisis to scapegoat the teachers and undermine public confidence in the public school system.

This is a deliberate class policy. The American ruling elite, dominated by a fabulously rich and corrupt financial oligarchy, has no intention of investing money to educate large sections of working class youth who face a future of unemployment or poverty-level wages.

The most critical measure of the health of a society is the value it places and resources it dedicates to raising the cultural and intellectual level of the next generation. The state of public education in the US is an indictment of capitalist society.
Social equality and education

The establishment of public schools in the US was the product of the revolutionary upheavals of the 18th and 19th centuries against social inequality and oppression. The greatest leaders of the American Revolution believed that every individual had innate potential, which could be realized if he was provided with the means to gain knowledge and training. Thomas Jefferson in 1779 proposed a bill for the “more general diffusion of knowledge.” It called for the establishment of free public schools. This, he said, would “bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country for want of the means of development ...”

An educated populace, the American revolutionaries believed, was the only means to prevent tyranny and oppression. The public cost for establishing a system of free schools, Jefferson said, would be “not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”

The fighters for public education—from the “father of the common school” Horace Mann, the abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens and the philosopher John Dewey, to the early working class and socialist leaders and the pioneers of the civil rights movement—were driven by a profound belief that every child—whether a former slave, child laborer or working class immigrant—should and could be educated, and that the continued existence of democracy depended on it.

Today, the American corporate and political establishment has repudiated this egalitarian conception. In its eyes, the cost of educating tens of millions of working class youth—especially in the inner cities—is an intolerable infringement on its wealth. This misanthropic class policy is camouflaged by invocations to “individual responsibility.” As Obama—who has made his career and his millions by lending his services to the rich and powerful—has repeatedly declared, poverty and decaying schools are “no excuse for failure.”

The assault on public education is the outcome of the growth of social inequality in America, which, in turn, is the most perverse expression of the decay of American and world capitalism. The immense and growing chasm between the top 1 percent of society and the broad mass of the population is incompatible with democracy. The destruction of public education is a profound expression of the terminal crisis of democracy in the US.

The US financial aristocracy, parasitic and criminal in its social and economic essence, exercises a de facto dictatorship, dominating both parties and every political institution. It is organically hostile to democratic principles.

The impact of decades of political reaction, the collapse of the old labor movement and the semi-criminalization of socialist politics and thought have blighted intellectual and cultural life. The critical and oppositionist liberal intelligentsia of the past has long since ceased to exist. On basic issues of policy, the Democratic and Republican parties have become virtually indistinguishable, as exemplified by the Obama administration’s continuation of the militarist and pro-corporate policies of the Bush administration.

No section of the political establishment is committed to the defense of democratic rights, including the right to a decent education.

As for the unions, they have become corporatist partners in the destruction of the living standards of social conditions of the working class. The American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association have signed on to the anti-education and anti-teacher policies of the corporate elite and the government, hoping thereby to secure the salaries and perks of the union executives.

The crisis of public education in the US is deeply rooted in the crisis of the existing economic and political system. The fight to defend education is a political and revolutionary question.

Public education can be defended only through the struggle for socialism. This means the mobilization of the working class to break the grip of the financial aristocracy and establish the democratic control of working people over economic and political life. This is the only way to allocate the wealth produced by the working class and utilize the immense technological and human resources that already exist to improve the schools and raise the economic and cultural level of the people, instead of their being plundered for the benefit of a modern-day aristocracy.

The fight of teachers, students and parents to defend public education is a political struggle against the Obama administration, the Democrats and Republicans, and the capitalist system, which they defend.


Jerry White


Nepali Maoists hold protests to demand a place in government

By W.A Sunil 

24 December 2009

The opposition Maoist party in Nepal ended a three-day protest strike on Tuesday to demand the formation of a national unity government by January 24. The Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) is threatening indefinite strike action unless the government agrees.


The CPN-M won last year’s national elections and formed a coalition government. In May, however, Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal quit as prime minister in protest over then president Ram Baran Yadev’s decision to overrule his sacking of army chief General Rookmangud Katawal. After weeks of political manoeuvring, the Communist Party of Nepal-UML (CPN-UML) formed a shaky coalition with the Nepal Congress (NC) and 20 other parties.


The Maoists continue to insist that the president’s decision was unconstitutional and demand its overturning. The immediate reason for the clash over General Katawal was the latter’s refusal to incorporate thousands of former Maoist guerrillas into the regular army. More broadly, however, the CPN-M’s posturing was a bid to bolster its waning support after failing to address the country’s worsening economic and social crisis.


The CPN-M has boycotted parliament since May, effectively bringing parliamentary business to a halt. Now the CPN-M is seeking to exploit popular discontent and channel it behind its demand to rejoin and lead a bourgeois “national unity” government. Prime Minister Madhev Kumar Nepal, who is leader of the CPN-UML, has offered to include Maoists in his cabinet but has refused to step aside in favour of Dahal.


Since December 11, the CPN-M has been declaring various areas of the country to be “autonomous regions”. The purely symbolic character of this gesture was underscored by a statement declaring the CPN-M had “no intention to run a parallel government whatsoever”.


On Sunday, the Maoists launched their three-day strike and mobilised thousands of supporters in street protests in the capital, Kathmandu. Shops, schools and government offices were closed and transport disrupted. Police armed with batons and tear gas clashed with protesters on Sunday who had blocked roads. About 70 people were arrested and 100 injured.


Addressing a rally of around 10,000 on Tuesday, Dahal warned of a “storm of protests” that would “sweep the government away” if the CPN-M’s demands were not met. Seeking to whip up Nepali nationalism, the Maoist leader denounced the “remote-controlled robot government here that is controlled by India” and demanded the renegotiation of “unequal treaties” between the two countries.


Dahal’s anti-Indian demagogy is aimed at exploiting growing rivalry between India and China. India has long regarded Nepal as part of its sphere of influence, but China is seeking to establish its own ties in a country that lies on its southern border. Beijing, which provided arms to the Nepalese army during its protracted war with the Maoist guerrillas, has been wary about relying on the CPN-M.


For all of its rhetoric about sweeping the government away, the CPN-M has been engaged in behind-the-scenes talks with government parties. Dahal met with G.P. Koirala, the leader of the conservative Nepal Congress, in Singapore last month to discuss “the formation of a high-level political mechanism to find a way out of the prevailing political stand-off in the country”. The Maoists lifted their parliamentary boycott for three days in November to allow the government to pass its budget.


Dahal met Koirala again last Friday to discuss ending the political deadlock. Nepalnews.com reported that the Maoist leader also met secretly with the prime minister on Tuesday evening, just hours after denouncing the government as a “robot” of India. Whether a deal is finally reached or not, the CPN-M has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness over the past two years to function as a responsible party in maintaining capitalist rule.


The Maoists played a vital role in helping to contain the protest movement that erupted in April 2006 against King Gyanendra’s autocratic rule and finally forced the monarch to step aside. The CPN-M formed a seven-party coalition with the corrupt parliamentary parties of the Nepali establishment, including Nepal Congress and the CPN-UML. In December 2006, the Maoists laid down their weapons after 10 years of guerrilla war and entered an interim government in preparation for the election of a constituent assembly.


Having won the largest bloc of seats in the election in April 2008, the Maoists engaged in months of sordid horse-trading to form a government. After much reluctance, the Nepal Congress and CPN-UML voted with the CPN-M to abolish the monarchy and declare Nepal a “federal democratic republic”. But the other main parties were reluctant to enter a CPN-M government without guarantees. Under the pressure of the major powers, particularly India, the CPN-M, CPN-UML and MPRF finally agreed to form a government.


The coalition government was based on a 19-point common minimum program that, while paying lip service to democratic rights and improved living standards, guaranteed the continuation of capitalist property relations and private profit—the source of social inequality and oppression. Its ability to make even cosmetic reforms was blocked by the ruling elites. Its plans for land reform were opposed by the powerful landlord class. The army refused to integrate former Maoist fighters, who continue to languish in holding camps after giving up their arms.


Having quit the government in May, the CPN-M is using the latest round of protests to demonstrate its usefulness to the ruling class in containing growing social discontent. The economy is slowing from 5.3 percent growth in 2008 to an estimated 3.8 percent this year. The latest quarterly central bank report revealed falling exports and a record balance of payments deficit.


Social conditions are worsening. Nepal is one of the 20 poorest countries in the world. A recent Asian Development Bank report found that 55 percent of the population live below the poverty line of less than $US1.25 per day. World Food Program official Dominique Hyde recently told the media that the number of people at risk of hunger had tripled to more than 3.7 million, or 16.7 percent, since the end of the civil war. The country has one of the highest levels of child malnutrition, with 48 percent under the age of 5 considered to be inadequately fed.


Under these conditions, the Maoists are once again offering their political services to the country’s ruling elites.



DEMOCRACY NOW!

Friday, December 25, 2009


StoryCorps: National Social History Project Records Ordinary People Telling Their Stories to Each Other

We hear the voices of people, citizen and non-citizen, old and young telling their stories to each other. A grandmother tells her grandson about her own childhood. A young man proposes to his girlfriend. A soldier talks about his experience in war. A father remembers a loved one who passed away….All of these are stories told by ordinary Americans. Now, thousands of them are preserved forever–in sound.

Three years ago, award-winning radio producer Dave Isay created a national social history project called StoryCorps. It now has the potential to become one of the largest documentary oral history projects ever donated to the Library of Congress. [includes rush transcript]

La falacia de las clases medias



Marcos Roitman Rosenmann

La Jornada


Nunca llueve a gusto de todos. Pero si atisbamos un principio de acuerdo entre socialdemocracia, derecha conservadora, progresista o liberal, éste se produce a la hora de señalar que la crisis supone un deterioro de la "sociedad de clases medias". Es pan común dejar a un lado a las clases trabajadoras, total siempre lo han pasado mal, incluso en tiempos de bonanza.

Se viva en la oposición o se gobierne los argumentos para subir o bajar los impuestos, aumentar el IVA, salvar las entidades financieras, flexibilizar el mercado laboral, seguir privatizando o dar un mayor impulso a las políticas de inversión pública, sirven para justificar un apoyo a las maltratadas clases medias y evitar el desastre. Según encuestas y estudios sociológicos elaborados ad hoc sus miembros constituyen la base mayoritaria de la población. Son los sufridos profesionales, médicos, ingenieros, maestros, los funcionarios del Estado, los empleados del sector terciario, los pequeños y medianos empresarios, incluso se suman los trabajadores especializados y los mandos intermedios de las empresas trasnacionales. En definitiva, se les identifica como los triunfadores del siglo XX. Aquellos cuya perseverancia y esfuerzo abrió las puertas a un mundo de bienestar, consumo y progreso. Ellos no forman parte de la cultura de la pobreza.

Hoy, nos dicen, son los más perjudicados por la crisis. Para justificar tal acervo nos apuntan a una merma en sus expectativas de movilidad social ascendente. Sufren la negativa de los bancos para acceder a préstamos fáciles. Ya no hay dinero para hipotecas, tampoco para becas de estudio, investigación o post-grado. Menos aún obtienen el aval para cambiar de coche o irse de vacaciones. Las clases medias están deprimidas económica y sicológicamente. El diagnostico se complementa con una percepción negativa de su papel político en circunstancias como las descritas. Son fácilmente manipulables y pueden convertirse en carne de cañón para proyectos populistas. Las clases medias están cansadas, hay que tomar medidas. Por primera vez se hacen públicas investigaciones vaticinando que las clases medias vivirán una época de constricción. Es urgente devolverles la confianza. Deben ser rescatadas, convirtiéndolas nuevamente en el motor del cambio social, la estabilidad y el crecimiento económico. Tiene un papel que cumplir, son por antonomasia el colchón que amortigua los conflictos entre el capital y el trabajo, el pegamento de la sociedad.

Esta interpretación de la sociedad de las clases medias es una de las grandes falacias del capitalismo. El principio de explicación es burdo pero no por ello menos efectivo. Frente a la contradicción entre burgueses y proletarios, campesinos y terratenientes, la irrupción de las clases medias en el siglo XX habría transformado definitivamente el capitalismo. Nunca más se verían niños trabajando 12 o 14 horas por unos peñiques, mendigos tirados en las calles, hombres y mujeres sometidos a castigos degradantes y sobreexplotados. Ese capitalismo, adjetivado como salvaje, habría pasado a mejor vida. De él sólo queda un recuerdo borroso y literario, aquel que humanistas, médicos, juristas y representantes parlamentarios habían descrito en sus informes sobre las condiciones de vida de las clases obreras. Por su lectura sabemos del tipo de castigos a los cuales se les sometía. Desde cepos, latigazos, cárcel y encadenamientos, hasta la violación y las mutilaciones. Baste como ejemplo lo dicho por Juan Bialet Massé en su informe sobre "Las clases obreras argentinas a principios de siglo XX": “… desde Santa Fe a Jujuy, el almacén o proveeduría o el crédito al obrero sobre su salario son las armas que esgrime la explotación para estrujarle, sin reparar vicios, antes bien induciéndolo a que se encenegue en él, manteniéndolo en un estado de embrutecimiento y degeneración física y moral que constituye un peligro público.” En parecidos términos se referiría a la situación de los pueblos indios. "Se reniega del indio pero se le explota. Los que hablan de su exterminio, de arrojarlo al otro lado de las fronteras no saben lo que dicen o lo saben demasiado. Aún en el sur, donde es fácil relativamente poblar, porque el clima es similar al de Europa, el brazo del indio vendría muy bien; pero sin él, en el Chaco no hay ingenio, ni obraje, ni algodonal."

Para limar estas lacerantes aristas, la existencia de una clase media contribuía a cambiar la concepción del capitalismo y dotarlo de una perspectiva integradora. Una visión afable, llena de oportunidades sustituía esa época de arbitrariedad, explotación y violencia extrema. Afincar la meritocracia y reconocer los derechos civiles en el marco de un estado de derecho, eran el caldo de cultivo propuesto para su desarrollo. El capitalismo se reinventaba. No más exclusión. Gracias a las clases medias, el temor a las revoluciones socialistas quedaría atrás.

Los trabajadores, dirá W.W. Rostow, en su clásico Las etapas del crecimiento económico, un manifiesto no comunista “… se conformarán con un poco de progreso bastante estable; tenían la sensación de que las cosas estaban mejorando para él y para sus hijos y de que en general, estaban recibiendo una parte justa de lo que producía la sociedad; estaban dispuestos a luchar por lo que él deseaba dentro de las reglas de la democracia política, en un sistema de propiedad privada, tendían a identificarse con su sociedad nacional más que con el mundo abstracto de obreros industriales supuestamente oprimidos…”. Con ello se pretendió deslegitimar la izquierda marxiana. Su pronóstico, nos dicen, se mostró equívoco. El capitalismo no genera más miseria ni pauperización, por el contrario, disminuye las desigualdades y redistribuye la riqueza. Las clases trabajadoras se transformarían en clases medias, es el capitalismo con rostro humano.

Esta interpretación promovida por los intelectuales del establishment es una cortina de humo para tapar la explotación. Las clases medias constituyen un eufemismo para las clases dominantes y su definición adolece de errores de bulto, ni configuran un grupo homogéneo ni tienen intereses comunes, ni menos presentan un proyecto político de sociedad, factores claves para constituir una clase social. Asimismo, la actual concentración de la riqueza pone en entredicho la marcha hacia una sociedad de las clases medias. Por el contrario, todo indica que asistimos a una pauperización creciente de las clases trabajadoras y los sectores medios. La historia le sigue dando la razón a Marx. La crisis es del capitalismo, no de las clases medias.



Fuente: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/12/24/index.php?section=opinion&article=022a1mun



Nueva ofensiva de Israel contra el pueblo palestino

El Ejército israelí mata a seis palestinos en Gaza y Naplusa


Gara

En el norte de la franja de Gaza, tres civiles palestinos han muerto tras sufrir un ataque del Ejército israelí.

Testigos de lo ocurrido han relatado que al menos cuatro personas intentaban pasar a territorio israelí a través del paso de Erez, y que soldados israelíes les han descubierto y disparado.

Un portavoz del Ejército ha confirmado lo ocurrido y ha alegado que los palestinos intentaban pasar para llevar a cabo "actividades terroristas". Tres han muerto en el ataque aéreo y otro ha resultado herido, según testigos.

Por otro lado, tropas israelíes han efectuado una incursión en la ciudad cisjordana de Naplusa, donde han matado a tres supuestos milicianos de las Brigadas de los Mártires de Al Aksa. A uno de ellos lo han abatido tras irrumpir en su vivienda, en presencia de su mujer, que ha resultado herida, según el doctor Ghasan Hamdan, responsable del hospital de Naplusa. Los militares le dispararon tras arrestarle.

El Ejército israelí sostiene que entraron en la ciudad para arrestar a los sospechosos de tener relación con la muerte de un colono judío, el jueves pasado, por disparos de milicianos palestinos cuando viajaba por una carretera de Cisjordania.


Un año después

La guerra de David


Editorial de Peacereporter
Peacereporter
Traducido para Rebelión por Gorka Larrabeiti




El 27 de diciembre de 2008, el ejército israelí lanzó la operación “Plomo fundido” en la Franja de Gaza. Se trató de la intervención militar más dura desde las guerras del 48 y el 67 en los territorios ocupados. Durante 22 días de asedio murieron 1.400 palestinos. Entre ellos, 300 niños y 115 mujeres. En la incursión murieron 13 soldados israelíes. 4.000 casas fueron destruidas o dañadas. Cincuenta mil palestinos quedaron sin techo y entre el 35 y el 60 por ciento de las actividades económicas de Gaza sufrió daños irreversibles. Los dos sectores principales de las actividades económicas de Gaza, la pesca y la agricultura, resultaron severamente afectados por las múltiples consecuencias derivadas del cierre de las fronteras, la guerra y la imposibilidad de acceso por mar o tierra. Graves restricciones de tráfico siguen impidiendo a los palestinos echar sus redes o arar sus campos. Los campesinos y los pescadores siguen sometidos a continuos ataques de los militares israelíes. Por ello, a un año de distancia, no se ve fin a la guerra de los palestinos en Gaza. Sobre todo para los campesinos y pescadores. Durante Plomo Fundido arrancaron miles de limoneros, olivos y palmeras. Destruyeron sistemas de irrigación, pozos e invernaderos. Además, Israel impide que se introduzcan en la Franja fertilizantes y semillas. Una zona de interposición de cientos de metros se extiende desde la frontera con Israel hacia el interior de la Franja, limitando el acceso a las tierras cultivables. En 2000 había en Gaza 10.000 pescadores. Hoy, los 3.500 que han quedado no pueden superar las tres millas desde la costa. La guerra ha impuesto este límite, aunque en los acuerdos de Oslo (2005) fijaran el límite de 20 millas y el área de pesca se hubiera ido reduciendo sin respetar el acuerdo. Los pescadores tienen que desafiar dicho límite para llevar a casa lo necesario para la supervivencia. Las lanchas israelíes les obligan a regresar disparándoles agua a presión o más a menudo cañonazos. Decenas de pescadores han muerto así.

Fuente: http://it.peacereporter.net/articolo/19464/La+guerra+di+David

Un amplio archivo de los ataques israelíes sobre Gaza entre diciembre y enero de hace un año puede encontrarse en Rebelión:

http://www.rebelion.org/apartado.php?id=308

Bank of England remains sceptical UK economy can make solid recovery in 2010


• Fresh wave of financial unrest could dash recovery hopes
• Economy needs to rely more on exports

Larry Elliot 

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 December 2009 19.42 GMT 


Bank of England is to keep quantative easing programme under review Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA


The Bank of England is leaving the door open to a new year £200bn money expansion programme after revealing that it remains unconvinced about the economy's ability to emerge from the deepest and longest recession on record.

Minutes of the December meeting of Threadneedle Street's monetary policy committee indicated that the nine-strong body is adopting a watch-and-wait approach amid concerns that an unrelenting credit crunch and a fresh wave of financial unrest abroad could put paid to Britain's recovery hopes.

The MPC said evidence that the economy was on the up after six successive quarters of falling activity were matched by downbeat signs. All nine members of the committee voted to keep borrowing costs on hold at 0.5% and to keep the quantitative easing programme – due to end in February – under review.

Sterling fell following publication of the minutes, with many City analysts convinced that interest rates will remain on hold at their lowest ever level.

Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics, said: "We continue to expect interest rates to remain at their current level until the end of 2010, if not considerably longer."

Howard Archer, chief UK economist at IHS Global Insight, said: "The MPC are clearly keeping all of their policy options open going into the new year and further quantitative easing remains a possibility, particularly given the major uncertainties and risks surrounding both the growth and inflation outlooks."

Official figures released today for the service sector, which accounts for 76% of the economy, expanded by 0.1% in October following growth of 0.5% in September. Even so, the Bank said the immediate prospects for the economy remain unclear.

The MPC expressed concern about the crisis in Dubai and the downgrading of Greece's credit rating. "There was a risk that protracted weakness in these countries could dent export prospects."

Over the medium term, the UK economy needed to rely less on the consumer and public spending and more on exports, however, the minutes said, there was little evidence of this trend emerging.

MPC members cited stronger investment and consumption, coupled with the upward revision to growth in the third quarter, as evidence that economic conditions were improving. But these were felt to be minor developments when set against medium-term uncertainties.



¿Reciclando el presidencialismo?
El movimiento civil de 1988, que concluyó la era en la que el Partido Revolucionario Institucional ostentaba la mayoría constitucional, modificó los órdenes centrales de la vida pública. Fue un movimiento que se gestó no en alguna de las instituciones que regulaban (y dominaban) la política del país, sino en ese vasto y subterráneo flujo de esfuerzos y anhelos que durante décadas se propusieron poner fin al antiguo régimen autoritario. Esfuerzos que desembocaron en la espectacular crisis en la que el candidato de una amplia alianza de fuerzas de izquierda probablemente se llevó el triunfo en las urnas. Pero lo espectacular en la política mexicana nunca ha sido sinónimo de lo eficiente. Vistos desde la perspectiva de 2009, los resultados de la crisis del 88 fueron, en rigor, bastante magros. En principio, el más notorio o notable de todos fue que sembró en la sociedad política (lo que en los años 20 europeos acabó por llamarse) el espíritu del parlamentarismo”. Es decir, el afán creciente de fundar la legitimidad del Estado en la operación de un órgano que había vegetado como una simple agencia de trámites del Poder Ejecutivo durante la era del corporativismo: el Congreso y sus representantes electos por votación universal.

Una aclaración. Se confunde frecuentemente el parlamentarismo con la sociedad democrática. Es una confusión conceptual, pero sobre todo política e ideológica: un orden democrático es inconcebible sin un régimen parlamentario, pero el régimen parlamentario no garantiza, por sí solo, la operación en su conjunto del orden democrático. Al menos ésa es la conclusión que se desprende de nuestra historia política de los recientes 20 años.

El parlamentarismo que resultó del movimiento de 1988, aunque endeble y precario, colocó en un severo dilema los andamiajes del viejo presidencialismo: empezó a drenar el principio en el que se asentaba la autoridad de las antiguas formas de hacer política, léase: la hiperautoridad de la presidencia. Nada más lógico.

Democratizar el régimen significaba, ante todo, acotar los ingobernables poderes de una presidencia que había gobernado, desde su nacimiento en 1934, frecuentemente a espaldas de los atributos y los límites que le imponía la propia Constitución. La parábola fue breve. Más que en un nuevo orden, esa lógica se tradujo en la dinámica de una parálisis: contenidas en el viejo formato que garantizaba a la presidencia colocarse con suma facilidad por encima de las demás instituciones del Estado, las prácticas políticas (propias al parlamentarismo) desembocaron en una suma de desencuentros. El desencuentro entre el Poder Ejecutivo y el Legislativo, entre la Federación y los estados, entre el Poder Judicial y el electorado. Desembocaron, más que en una división, en una dispersión de los poderes de la Unión. Se pasó de la república autoritaria a la república dispersa.

Ninguno de los mandatarios que presidió este naciente ocaso (sucesivamente: Salinas, Zedillo y Fox) se aventuró a emprender una reforma que adecuara las formas institucionales a las nuevas prácticas políticas. Un poder como el que emanaba de la antigua presidencia les era demasiado precioso y preciso como para renunciar a él. Se requirió acaso de una crisis de la envergadura de la que produjeron los comicios de 2006 para ponerla de nuevo sobre la mesa.

En las semanas pasadas, Felipe Calderón anunció una ambiciosa agenda para iniciar cambios que han estado pendientes desde los años 90 (y cuya postergación ha contribuido decisivamente al deterioro de la vida institucional). La pregunta es: de qué cambios se trata, hacia dónde se dirigen (y dirigen al sistema político actual) si pensamos en que modifican prácticas tan centrales como la elección presidencial, la posibilidad de la relección de los representantes en el Congreso y la instauración del referéndum.

La segunda vuelta en las elecciones presidenciales ayudaría, sin duda, a otorgar una suerte de voto de mayoría al presidente entrante; es decir, aun cuando el Congreso se mantendría dividido, le conferiría más consenso, más poder real del que cuenta hoy día. Aunada a la posibilidad de que la presidencia ejerza vetos sobre el Congreso e intervenga más directamente en el debate presupuestal, la eficacia de su operación aumentaría probablemente. Pero también aumentaría la tentación (y la posibilidad) de trazar la vía hacia un nuevo presidencialismo, que ha sido la solución más antigua (y más trágica) a la que siempre ha llegado la sociedad mexicana frente al deterioro institucional.

El dilema reside en hacia dónde se quiere ir: una presidencia que cuente con el consenso (y la posibilidad) para gravitar por encima de las demás instituciones del Estado o, algo que no se entrevé en la propuesta de Calderón, lo que podríamos llamar un presidencialismo democrático (valga el oxímoron conceptual). Una reforma destinada a instituir la operación del Poder Ejecutivo sobre bases democráticas debería incluir los mecanismos explícitos en que el presidente podría ser sometido a escrutinio por el Congreso y por la ciudadanía, y, en caso extremo, de graves violaciones a la Constitución, ser sometido a juicio por la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación. En una sociedad y en una mentalidad como las que nos caracterizan, dotar de poderes a la presidencia sin someterla a la tensión del escrutinio público podría redundar en un simple reciclamiento del viejo presidencialismo.

La posibilidad de la relección de los representantes al Congreso se traduciría probablemente en una relación más estable entre el Poder Ejecutivo y el Legislativo. Probablemente. Pero no redundaría por sí sola en elevar la calidad de la labor de la representación. Hoy, cuando predomina el “principio trampolín”, se va de un cargo a otro esperando ser lanzado al siguiente, el político ascendente basa su gestión en el olvido absoluto de lo que realizó o dejó de realizar en el cargo previo. La relección no aliviaría esta amnesia. Habría que marcar la forma en que los representantes adquieren obligaciones directas con los representados.

Aumentar el requisito a los partidos minoritarios de obtener 4 por ciento como mínimo para ingresar al Congreso daría consistencia a las nuevas organizaciones.

Pero, simultáneamente, abrir la opción de las candidaturas individuales nos sumiría en el changarrismo político. Se pasaría del “partido-familia” a la “candidatura-changarro”.

Por último, el referéndum. Es absolutamente bienvenido y necesario, al nivel que se le logre acordar. Lo esencial sería que la ciudadanía tuviera tantas probabilidades de llamar a un referéndum como, por ejemplo, el presidente. De lo contrario, la historia sería la misma: demasiada presidencia y nada o cero ciudadanía.