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October 2006 Archives

October 6, 2006

Indija

Vakar buvau pasiklausyt Palagummi Sainath, vieno is Indijos kritiskiausiu ir svarbiausiu zurnalistu rasanciu apie indijos zemes ukio ir kaimu krize. Paskaita vadinosi "Nelygybe globaliam amziuje" Keletas minciu ir faktu:
-Indijoj gyvena 1.09mlrd zmoniu.
-Per 15 praejusiu metu nelygybe isaugo daugiau nei per priestai praejusius 50 metu.
-Valdzios parama neturtingiesiems nuolat mazeja, tuo tarpu kai parama korporacijom auga. Didziules sumos pereina is mases skurstanciu zmoniu i turtinguju rankas. Rinka tampa ne irankiu , bet tironija.
- Globalios nelygybes amzius: visos sekmes globalios, visos nesekmes nacionalines.
- Indija kaip sekmes modelis, tampanti sekanciu 'ekonominiu azijos tigru': technologiju pletra, 'veikianti' demokratija. Taciau neatsizvelgiama, kad skaiciai gal ir dideli, taciau procentaliai nelabai zymus (pvz interneto naudojimasis). Demokratija? Simtai milijonu zmoniu atsisako balsuot nes netiki sistema ir nemato prasmes.
-Indija 8-ta pagal milijardieriu skaiciu pasauly, antra pagal milijonieriu, taciau 127-ta pagal JTO Human Index (kuris skaciuoja ne tik BVP bet tokius faktoriu kaip sveikata, rastingumas ir t.t.)
-6 mln ukininku gyvena 12$ per menesi
- ukininku savizudybes pasieke epidemijos lygi, kai kuriose valstijos savizudybe kas 8 valandas. (oficialiais duomenim 1993-2003 100,000 ukininku savizudybiu, taciau neiskaiciuojant moteru, ir kitu profesiju zmoniu).
- Kinija ir Indija kartu kasmet turi 3,3 mln lengvai isvengiamu vaiku mirciu per metus.
- simtai milijonu zmoniu (kas 4 kaime, kas 5 mieste) atsisako sveikatos apsaugos nes neisgali sau leisti. Indija 6 pasaulyje pagal sveikatos apsaugos privatizacijos lygi.
- smulkiu ukininku migracija i miestus. Zeme privatizuojama dideliu korporaciju, Monstanto pvz. viena is pagrindiniu Indijos zemes ukio sektoriaus zaideju, pardavinejenati seklas, trasas, ir .t.t
- liudnas anekdotas. Paklaustas jauno zurnalisto 'kokia butu ideali ateitis indijos ukininkui?' ukininkas atsako: 'reinkarnuotis karve europoj'

Jeigu idomu cia panasi kalba video O cia istekliu apie padeti Indijoj.

Plius is globaliu naujienu: Tarptautinis Valiutos Fondas arba IMF dabar suteikdamas paskola saliai, reikalauja, kad salis pasirasytu sutikima, kad jos vandeni butu galima privatizuot. Taigi naujoji aukso karstlige arteja. Gera zinia: Urugvajus, pakeite savo konstitucija kurioje pabreziama, kad vanduo negali but privatizuojamas.

vis dar karas

Siandien buvo nacionaline diena pries kara, virs 200 miestu JAV. Nulekem su klasioke. Keletas simtu zmoniu. "What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!" Tie patys sukiai (kaip ir pries 3 metus, turbut ir pries 40metu), ir nors jauciasi kazkiek energijos, akivaizdu, kad zmones nusivyle. Labiau is zmoniu kuriu tame proteste nera. Tuo tarpu kai karo pradzioj i gatves ejo milijonai, dabar turbut keli simtai tukstanciai viso. Perdege. Karas tapo kasdienybe. Ir nors erzinanti, bet beviltiska. Beviltiska demokratija kurioj tave reprezentuojantys zmones visiskai neatsizvelgia i zmoniu nuomone. Visuomene tai aviu banda, kuri nezino ko jai reikia.
Nors zinios vis dar kalba kas diena apie aukas, karo zinios tampa panasios i oru prognoze ar sporta, jei jis tau nerupi, tiesiog visada yra.
60-70-uju didziuliai protestai is dalies vyko del to, kad vyko masinis saukimas. Karas tiesiogiai liete dauguma - viduriniaja klase. Dabar i kara eina 'savanoriai'- dazniausiai is nepasiturinciu seimu, etniniu mazumu ir t.t. Armija zada apmoket mokslus (grizus. jeigu) Suteikia pilietybe imigrantams ir t.t.
Karas tesiasi, o Irakas ir Afganistanas su kiekviena diena virsta i vis didesni ir didesni jovala...
?

October 11, 2006

savikontrole

Наше сердце работает, как новый мотор,
Мы в четырнадцать лет знаем все, что нам надо знать,
И мы будем делать все, что мы захотим,
Пока вы не угробили весь этот Мир.
В нас еще до рождения наделали дыр,
И где тот портной, что сможет их залатать?
Что с того, что мы немного того,
Что с того, что мы хотим танцевать?
Наше сердце работает, как новый мотор,
Почему и чего мы еще должны ждать,
И мы будем делать все, что мы захотим,
А сейчас, сейчас мы хотим танцевать.
Мы хотим танцевать.

KINO, "Ночь" 1986

Vat taip svilpaujasi, bet savikontroles ir disciplinos rezimas neleidzia. Idealu:(

October 27, 2006

Marjane Satrapi

Uzvakar buvau pasiklausyt Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis I ir II , autores (jas galima rasti infoshope 'Pavasaris', manau). Ji daro komiksines knygas. Persepolis istorija apie tai kaip Irane vyko islamo revoliucija, po to kaip ja tevai 13 metu isiunte mokintis ir gyvent i Austrija, ir antra knyga kaip ji grizta gyvent i Irana. Baisiai idomios ir greitai besiskaitancios knygutes. Niekada nemegau komiksu, bet nuo tol viskas pasikeite:) Vis dar neskaiciau Art Spiegelman 'Maus', bet jos komiksai panasaus tipo, ir jis buvo jos vienas is ikvepeju.

satrapi3.JPG


Susitikimas su autore, iskalba, klausimai atsakymai, keli simtai zmoniu, baznycioj. (Kas daznai nutinka Amerikoj, keisciausi renginiai baznyciose), autografu dalinimasis. Keistas, bet visai nieko uzsiemimas gal karta kita :) Pristatinejo nauja knyga "Chicken with Plums" , pasakojo istorijas ir skalde juokus.

Uzklausiau klausima ar ji kaip 'zymus zmogus' uzeme kokia nors poizicija apie pries metus vykusias riauses. Ir ar ji yra matoma kaip 'geras pavyzdys' Prancuzijoj. Atsakymas buvo kiek nuviliantis, kad zmones nelinke per daug klausyt ka ji sako, kai vyksta susitikimai tokie kaip cia zmones tiesiog nori autografo, apie politika ir visa kita jie jau girdeje kur nors kitur. Kad ji nejaucia jokios pareigos ar nesijaucia atstove nei del religojos (netikinti), nei del Artimuju Rytu saknu. Sako viena is ironiskiausiu situaciju buvo, kad ji rase straipsni ir leidosi i debatus karo pradzioj ginant amerikieciu puse, kad yra skirtumas tarp valdzios ir vyriausybes ir paprastu zmoniu. Sako, ant kiek paradoksas - as is Irano, 'blogio asies', ginu amerika.
Nors jos kalba buvo gana politiska, pasijuokiant ir pakritikuojant jav uzsienio politika, karus, bandymus isgalvot 'civilizaciju kara' ir t.t., bet siaip ji uzima labai vakarietiska, liberalia pozicija. Matyt del to, kad ji is liberlios seimos, su vakarietiskom 'vertybem' kaip svietimas, tolerancija, demokratija etc. Tik kaip zinia liberali vakarietiska sistema nebuvo ir nera receptas visam pasauliui. Liberalios vertybes puikiai sugebejo deret su kolianializmu, imperializmu ir dabar su 'laisva rinka' ir neoliberalizmu, kas didina su kiekviena diena praraja tarp turinciuju ir beturciu.



Cia gal ne visai sviezias interviu Pvz.:
"Did you get a smoking room here?

No, I don’t think they have them. But I smoke in the room, and I have this spray that’s supposed to stop the alarm. But I don’t think those work anyway. It’s like years ago, when you were a kid, they said there was this thing they put in the swimming pools so if you peed it was going to turn red around you. That doesn’t exist, because I have peed since then in the swimming pool and it didn’t work. So the same thing in the nonsmoking room, it’s a lie. You just need to get the spray."

October 28, 2006

mikrokreditai ir nobelio prizai

Alexander Cockburn, vienas is CounterPunch redaktoriu, besalygiskai mano megstamiausias zurnalistas JAV. Maciau ji pries kelis metus San Fransisko anarchist book fair ir jis reze labai linksma kalba apie rinkimus ir skirtumus/panasumus tarp dvieju partiju. Nors Wikipedia raso apie "kontroversijas", bet jo izvalgos, minties astrumas ir sarkazmas visada smagiai nuteikia kas savaite. Paskutinis rasinys kas savaitiniam zurnale The Nation puikus pavyzdys.

The committee that gave Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize has given it this year to Muhammad Yunus, the economist who put the word "microloan" on the map with the Grameen Bank in his native land of Bangladesh. That's progress of a sort. But in terms of hot air, any sentences linking "peace" with "Henry Kissinger" aren't immeasurably more vacuous than the notion that microloans can help--to use the language of the Nobel Committee's citation--"large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty."
Throughout the late 1980s and '90s, in the verbal currency of First World do-gooders, "microloans" became one of those magically fungible words, embedded in a thousand foundation and NGO annual reports, like "sustainable." What could be more virtuous in terms of prudent philanthropy than giving very small loans to very poor women? Microloans breathe healthful uplift, as divorced from the sordid world of megaloans as are microbrews from Budweiser.

The trouble is that microloans don't make any sort of a macro-difference. They have helped some poor women, no doubt about it. But in their own way they're a register of defeat. Back in the early 1970s there were huge plans afoot to change the entire relationship of the Third to the First World, to speed Third World economies toward decent living standards for the many, not just the few. At the United Nations radical economists were hard at work drafting plans for a New World Economic Order. All that went out the window, and here are the caring classes thirty years later, hailing microloans.
Microloans are micro-Band-Aids in a scale of things where--to take the example of India--well over 100,000 farmers, including a large number of women, have killed themselves because their federal and state governments, plus large international institutions, have promoted the savage priorities of neoliberalism.

As economist Robert Pollin of UMass-Amherst put it pithily when I asked him what he thought of the award to Yunus, "Bangladesh and Bolivia are two countries widely recognized for having the most successful microcredit programs in the world. They also remain two of the poorest countries in the world."

In the 2005 development stats Bangladesh ranked 139th, worse than India, with 49.8 percent of its population of 137 million below the official poverty line. In the homeland of the Grameen Bank, about 80 percent of the people live on less than $2 a day. A UN Development Program study in the early 1990s showed that the total microcredits in Bangladesh constituted 0.6 percent of total credit in the country. Hardly a transformation.

Against this backdrop, what have microloans achieved, I asked P. Sainath, India's most outstanding journalist on rural destitution and the consequences of economic policy. Yes, he said, microloans can be a legitimate tool in certain conditions, as long as you don't elevate the tool into a gigantic weapon. No one was ever liberated by being placed in debt. That said, a lot of poor women have eased their lives by using microloans, bypassing bank bureaucracies and moneylenders.

But today the World Bank and the IMF, along with state-owned and commercial banks, are diving into microfinance. The microloan business is fast becoming a gigantic empire, bringing back into control the very banks and bureaucracies women have been trying to bypass. Sainath points out that the interest rates micro-indebted women are paying in India are far higher than commercial bank lending rates. "They are paying between 24 and 36 percent on loans for productive expenditures, while an upper-class person can finance the purchase of a Mercedes at 6 to 8 percent from the banking system."

The average loan of the Grameen Bank is $130 in Bangladesh, less in India. Now, the basic problem of the poor in both countries is landlessness, lack of assets. In the Indian province of Andhra Pradesh, where there are thousands of microloan groups, land costs 100,000 rupees an acre, poor land maybe 60,000 rupees--more than $2,000. So $130 doesn't buy you the ranch, not even a good cow or buffalo. How many poor women have escaped the poverty trap in AP, Sainath asks. "Try getting an answer." After recent floods in AP, journalists came to a village where everything had been washed away. The first people back in were the microcreditors "demanding monthly installments from women who had lost everything." Governments like microloans because they allow them to abdicate their most basic responsibilities to poor citizens. Microloans make the market a god.

Let's suppose USAID or some kindred agency decides to put $10 million into microloans. What used to be an initiative of a group of women at the village level has become a high-profile international funding activity. Long before the first rupee is seen by women in a village, NGOs, consultants, bank managers and their relatives have all taken their cut. By the time the loan gets to the women in the village the cost is prohibitive, with the very poor and women of low caste often excluded. On top of this, some revolving-fund models require each woman to put in a rupee a day. But often women don't have a rupee a day, so they go to the local moneylender to be able to repay the microloan.

As Sainath says, microlending can be a useful tool, but it should not be romanticized as some sort of transformational activity. On that plane it's useless. By contrast, as Bob Pollin stresses, "the East Asian Tigers, like South Korea and Taiwan, relied for a generation on massive, publicly subsidized credit programs to support manufacturing and exports. They are now approaching West European living standards. Poor countries need to adapt the East Asian macrocredit model to promote not simply exports but land reform, marketing cooperatives, a functioning infrastructure and, most of all, decent jobs."

The trouble with publicly subsidized credit programs is that they're public and they're large and they run contrary to the neoliberal creed. That's why Yunus got his Nobel Prize, whereas radical land reformers get a bullet in the back of the head.

About October 2006

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