[Photo: At the Standing Rock #WaterProtectors barricade. Credit: UnicornRiot.]

Police & Military Attack Oceti Sakowin Treaty Camp

=By=  Unicorn Riot

Oct 28th 1:20am CDT New video below shows police attacking Oceti Sakowin Treaty Camp with pepper spray, less-lethal rounds used at close range, batons, LRAD, and tazers.

100+ Militarized Police Raiding #NoDAPL Resistance Camp Blocking Pipeline’s Path

=By=  DemocracyNow!

In Cannonball, North Dakota, over 100 police with military equipment are advancing on a resistance camp established by Native American water protectors in the path of the proposed $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. Photos and multiple videos posted to Facebook Live depict over 100 officers in riot gear lined up across North Dakota’s Highway 1806, flanked by multiple mine-resistant ambush protected military vehicles (MRAPs), a sound cannon, an armored truck and a bulldozer. There have also been reports from water protectors that the police presence includes multiple snipers. Police appear to be evicting the camp in order to clear the way for the Dakota Access pipeline company to continue construction — which was active at times on Thursday just behind the police line.

Police advance towards blockade on Hwy 1806 to evict #OcetiSakowin from 1851 treaty land and pave way for the #DakotaAccessPipeline. #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/VRQAGRdN10

— Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) October 27, 2016

@democracynow @HillaryClinton the world needs to hear from you on this

— Adrian Hough (@Adey800) October 27, 2016

Cody Hall of Red Warrior Camp told Democracy Now! that behind the line of police, the Dakota Access pipeline company is carrying out construction with cranes and bulldozers on the sacred tribal burial site where on September 3, unlicensed Dakota Access security guards unleashed dogs and pepper spray against Native Americans.

PHOTO: Just behind militarized police line on Highway 1806 in North Dakota, Dakota Access pipeline company actively continues construction pic.twitter.com/CQgYXV3JGn

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) October 27, 2016

Water protectors have set up a blockade of the highway using cars, tires and fire. Elders are also leading prayer ceremonies.

PHOTO: Just behind militarized police line on Highway 1806 in North Dakota, Dakota Access pipeline company actively continues construction pic.twitter.com/CQgYXV3JGn

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) October 27, 2016

Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network reported in a Facebook Live video posted just before 2 p.m. local time that police have begun arresting water protectors in the ongoing standoff. Sacheen Seitcham of the West Coast Women Warrior Media Cooperative told Democracy Now! police have used tasers against water protectors, and that she was hit with a concussion grenade.

The frontline camp sits directly in the proposed path of the Dakota Access pipeline on private property purchased recently by the Dakota Access pipeline company for $18 million. In establishing this frontline camp, water protectors cited an 1851 treaty, which they say makes the entire area unceded sovereign land under the control of the Sioux. Over the weekend, police arrested more than 120 people in a peaceful march to this site during which police deployed tear gas and used rubber bullets to shoot down drones the water protectors were using to document police activity.

Ahead of today’s apparent police raid, the Federal Aviation Administration also issued a temporary no-fly zone for the airspace above the resistance camps for all aircraft except for those used by law enforcement. This order means Native Americans can no longer fly drones to document police activity, but the police can continue to fly their surveillance drones and helicopters.

The apparent police raid of the resistance camp comes only minutes before Standing Rock Sioux youth flooded the Hillary Clinton campaign headquarters in New York City to demand Clinton oppose the Dakota Access pipeline.

As police in ND seem poised to raid #NoDAPL camp, Standing Rock youth flood Clinton campaign HQ to demand she oppose Dakota Access pipeline pic.twitter.com/4ixgjiuGpk

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) October 27, 2016

Militarized Police Are Cracking Down on Dakota Access Pipeline Protesters

=By= Zoë Carpenter from The Nation

After a weekend of mass arrests, people protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline are preparing for another clash with a growing and increasingly militarized police force near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. On Sunday, demonstrators set up a new camp, called Winter Camp, in the pathway of pipeline construction, on what they consider unceded territory belonging to them under the 1851 Laramie Treaty. But Dakota Access LLC, the pipeline developer, said in a statement that they would be “removed from the land,” which the company purchased from a local rancher last month. Police said on Wednesday that they are prepared to carry out that threat. “It’s obvious we have the resources, we have the manpower, to go down there and end this,” Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney said in an interview.

As the prospect of a raid on the Winter Camp looms, human-rights groups are increasingly concerned about law enforcement’s use of force against peaceful pipeline protesters (who call themselves “water protectors”), as well as journalists and legal observers. Demonstrators reported being pepper sprayed, beaten with batons, and strip searched in custody during the weekend’s arrests. Journalists were also arrested, and had their equipment confiscated.

In a Facebook post, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier described Saturday’s demonstration as a “riot,” and wrote that the “situation clearly illustrates what we have been saying for weeks, that this protest is not peaceful or lawful.” But it wasn’t immediately clear what he meant by a riot: The photo that accompanied the Facebook post showed protesters walking calmly through a field carrying banners and signs. Video footage showed people standing together, backing up as police approached. The only supposedly aggressive acts that the sheriff’s department described in any specific form included that two arrows were shot towards law enforcement, one officer was spit on, and that a drone that protesters were using to monitor police activity “attacked” a helicopter.

On Sunday, the Morton County Sheriff called for additional law-enforcement personnel from outside North Dakota. Officers from at least six other states—Wisconsin, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wyoming, Indiana, and Nebraska—have arrived so far. In his call for more resources, the sheriff cited “escalated unlawful tactics by individuals protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.” State and local officials also requested, and received, temporary flight restrictions from the Federal Aviation Administration in a seven-mile radius around the protest camps, which may be an attempt to keep away news helicopters, as it was during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

“We have heard reports of escalation [from law enforcement], and we continue to be concerned with a number of issues,” said Tarah Demant, the senior director of Amnesty International’s Identity and Discrimination Unit. She cited the “sheer number” of police that have been brought into the area; their use of military-style equipment including riot and camouflage gear, semi-automatic weapons, and armored vehicles; and the force that they’re using to make arrests. “If police are making arrests—for example, for trespassing—they must be done in a way that upholds the rights of the people who are being arrested. And they need to be commensurate with the crime. The idea that police need to come out with pepper spray…is worrisome,” Demant said.

Demant is also concerned with rhetoric coming out of the Morton County Sheriff’s office. The department has repeatedly emphasized that protesters are violent, though there is little evidence to back up its claim. In September, for instance, Kirchmeier spread a rumor that demonstrators were threatening to use pipe bombs against officers. “We’ve seen this in multiple places across the world, and in dictatorships. Declaring that something is a riot is a way to shut down protests,” Demant said. “If there is a riot, then police or authorities have to provide evidence of that.” She said the response from North Dakota officials fits a pattern of increasing militarization of law enforcement across the country, but that it also echoes a long history of official, state-sanctioned violence against indigenous people.

Law enforcement officials have said that they are only responding to illegal activity on private property. “We’re having our hand forced…. we have to defend rule of law, and we have to make those arrests,” Sheriff Laney said in the Wednesday interview. But Jennifer Cook, the policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota, said that, while trespassing is illegal, it’s not a crime that warrants a militarized response. “Even if [demonstrators] are on private land, and the private landowner requests that law enforcement eject them, it is in no way justified for law enforcement to come out and use excessive force against them,” Cook said. She said that officials have been “ramping up” the seriousness of the charges they’re filing against protesters (and against journalists: Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman was arrested on a “riot” charge). She sees that as an attempt to “justify the militarized response,” rather than a reflection of demonstrators’ actually acting aggressively themselves.

On Saturday, Standing Rock Sioux chairman David Archambault II called on the Department of Justice to investigate the “strong-arm tactics, abuses and unlawful arrests by law enforcement” in North Dakota. Though officials have consistently denied that they’ve used excessive force, on Wednesday the Morton County sheriff’s office did admit that the dog handlers whose animals attacked protesters in September “were not properly licensed to do security work in the state of North Dakota.” It took nearly two months for them to reach that conclusion.

Author Name Bio

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Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

[Photo: Mateo Renzi (2013) by Sailko]

Ramzy Baroud, PhD
Politics for the People

Did Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, actually read the full text of the UNESCO resolution on Palestine and Israel, before he raved with anger?

“I think this is a mistaken, inconceivable resolution,” he said.

“It is not possible to continue with these resolutions at the UN and UNESCO that aim to attack Israel. It is shocking and I have ordered that we stop taking this position (his country’s abstention) even if it means diverging from the position taken by the rest of Europe,” he added.

Renzi, who became Prime Minister in 2014 at the relatively young age of 39 knows exactly how the game is played. In order to win favor with Washington, he must first please Tel Aviv. 

His country has abstained from the October 12 vote on a resolution that condemns Israel’s violations of the cultural and legal status of Occupied East Jerusalem. This decision has ignited the ire of Israeli Ambassador to Rome, Ofer Zaks, who riled up the Jewish community in Italy to protest the abstention. Renzi, in turn, was converted into a champion of the ‘Temple Mount’, the name Israel uses to describe the Palestinian Muslim holy site.

Renzi cravenly went on damage control mode without truly understanding the nature of the resolution, which merely condemned Israel’s obvious violations of international law, and only calls for Israel to respect the status of Palestinian culture in the occupied city.

None of procedures that led to the vote on the UNESCO’s resolution – voted by 24-6, with 26 abstentions – violated protocol, nor was any of the wording inconsistent with international law. In fact, UNESCO was merely doing its job: attempting to protect and preserve the historical and cultural heritage of the world.

Jerusalem is a sacred and a holy city to a majority of humanity, simply because it is significant to the spiritual wellbeing of the adherents of the three monotheistic religions. In fact, the resolution stated so:

“Affirming the importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls for the three monotheistic religions  …”

Renzi’s outburst is quite disappointing, to say the least, for the young, eager politician simply tried to score cheap political points with Israel – thus the United States – without a full, or even partial comprehension of what the UNESCO resolution resolved. Nor did he seem aware of the fact that such text is largely a repeat of what has been discussed by the world’s leading cultural organization in April, and repeatedly before that date.

“If anyone wants to say something about Israel, let them say it, but they should not use UNESCO… To say that the Jews have no links to Jerusalem is like saying the sun creates darkness,” he said, paraphrasing the sentiment displayed by the Israeli Prime Minister.

It would be rather sad if Renzi sees a mentor in Benjamin Netanyahu, for the latter is one of the least liked world leaders who has made a mockery of international forums and derided the United Nations itself as anti-Semitic and its process as ‘theater of the absurd’.

This is what Netanyahu had said in response to the resolution and shortly before he suspended his country’s membership in UNESCO. Using a language that is as amusing as his cartoon depiction of the Iranian nuclear bomb in his famous UN spectacle in 2012, he said:

“To say that Israel has no connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall is like saying that China has no connection to the Great Wall of China or that Egypt has no connection to the Pyramids.”

Other Israeli officials followed suit with a chorus of denunciations, included Israeli President, Reuven Rivilin, who described the decision as an “embarrassment” for UNESCO. Culture Minister, Miri Regev, cut to the chase, by labeling the resolution “shameful and anti-Semitic.”

In fact, it was neither.

In addition to Renzi’s odd reaction, the United States and other western governments reacted with exaggerated anger, again without even addressing the situation on the ground, which prompted the resolution – and numerous other UN resolutions in the past – in the first place.

Even the Czech parliament jumped on board, voting to condemn what they described as a “hateful, anti-Israel’ sentiment.”

I have read the resolution repeatedly to pinpoint the specific text that could possibly be understood by Israel’s friends as hateful, to no avail. The entirety of the text was based on past international conventions, resolutions, international law, and refers to Israel as the Occupying Power, as per the diktat of the Geneva Conventions.

The Italian, Czech, American anger is, of course, misdirected and is largely political theater.  

But, of course, there is an important context that they refuse to address.

Israel is working diligently to appropriate Muslim and Christian heritage in East Jerusalem, a city that is designated by international law as illegally occupied.

The Israeli army and police have restricted the movement of Palestinian worshipers and is excavating under the foundation of the third holiest Muslim shrine, Haram al-Sharif, in search of a mythological Temple.

In the process of doing so, numerous Palestinians, trying to defend their Mosque from the attacks staged by Israeli occupation forces and extremist Jewish groups, have been killed.

How is UNESCO to react to this?

The resolution merely, ‘called on Israel’ to “allow for the restoration of the historic status quo that prevailed until September 2000, under which the Jordanian Awqaf  (Religious Foundation) Department exercised exclusive authority on Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif.”

Moreover, it ‘stressed’, the “urgent need of the implementation of the UNESCO reactive monitoring mission to the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls.”

Where is the ‘hate’ and ‘Anti-Semitism’ in that?

Israel’s anger is, of course, fathomable. For nearly fifty years, following the illegal occupation and annexation of the Palestinian Arab city, Israel has done everything it could possibly do to strip the city of its universal appeal and Arab heritage, and make it exclusive to Jews only – thus the slogan of Jerusalem being Israel’s ‘eternal and undivided capital.’

Israel is angry because, after five decades of ceaseless efforts, neither UNESCO nor other UN institutions will accept Israel’s practices and designations. In 2011, following the admission of ‘Palestine’ as a member state, Israel ranted and raved as well, resulting in the US cutting off funding to UNESCO.

The latest resolution indicates that Israel and the US have utterly failed to coerce UNESCO.

What also caused much fury in Tel Aviv is that UNESCO used the Arabic references to Haram al-Sharif, Al-Aqsa Mosque and other Muslim religious and heritage sites. The same way they would refer to Egypt’s Pyramids of Giza and China’s Great Wall by their actual names. Hardly anti-Semitic.

Since its establishment atop Palestinian towns and village, Israel has been on a mission to rename everything Arabic with Hebrew alternatives. Recent years have seen a massive push towards the Judaization of Arab Christian and Muslim sites, streets and holy shrines, a campaign spear-headed by the Israeli right and ultranationalist groups.

To expect UNESCO to employ such language is what should strike as ‘absurd’.

Not only should the UNESCO resolution be respected, it should also be followed by practical mechanisms to implement its recommendations. Israel, an Occupying Power should not be given a free pass to besiege the holy shrines of two major world religions, restrict the movement and attack worshipers, annex occupied territories and destroy what is essential spiritual heritage that belongs to the whole world. 

Ramzy Baroud, PhD

Has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include ‘Searching Jenin’, ‘The Second Palestinian Intifada’ and his latest ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story’. His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net.

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Photo – Calais Jungle: « From tent to tent, from camp to camp,
these are our lives as a Palestinian nation. »

« When I die, bury me in Palestine and write on my grave :
I am not a refugee anymore . »
-Ahmed, Palestine – poems Voices from the Jungle

=By=
Sabia Rigby

“I was in jail with a Libyan man, his friends came and broke into the jail and let us go, too. There was fighting everywhere. You pray to be in jail with Libyans, because they do not recognize the current government, they will do what they want.” (spoken by a refugee in “the Jungle”)

Forty-two percent of the people who came to the Jungle are from warring parts of Sudan and South Sudan; thirty-two percent are from Afghanistan. Others are from Syria, Yemen, Iraqi Kurdistan, Pakistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Egypt, and more; they have crossed between 6 and 13 countries to arrive in Calais, with their final goal to reach the U.K. In Calais, it seems they are facing the hardest border to cross.

There are many who have died or been seriously injured in their attempts to cross the border to the U.K.  One couple was trying to cross by train. Her boyfriend made it on; she leapt, wrapped her arms around him, but did not get her bottom half onto the train. She was cut in half. He was deeply traumatized by her tragic death. In another case, a brother and sister tried to cross to the U.K. by truck. They were both hit on the road; he died and she is in the hospital. Most people from the Jungle Camp who are in the hospital were wounded in accidents while trying to get into the U.K. Broken bones and deep cuts on arms, legs, and fingers are the most commonly suffered injuries. Volunteer teams have been visiting refugees; we have had as many as sixteen to visit each time, and during a normal week we visit twice a week. We take food and toiletries and, for those we have come to know, we try and bring a small gift. Last week we spent time in the Jungle relaying information to each community. First, the Calais government won the right to shut down any place of business in the Jungle: restaurants, barber shops, vegetable stalls, and cigarette shops. Second, anyone continuing to work in the businesses can and will be arrested. With the help of others from over twenty organizations, including L’Auberge des Immigrants, Secour Catholique, Refugee Youth Center and The Migrants’ Law Project, we shared pamphlets containing information about the legal rights each person has in case they do get arrested and or harassed. The legal rights information was translated and printed into Arabic, English, Amharic, Farsi and Pashtu.

The Jungle camp was supposed to be demolished on the 17^th of October. Instead, the government moved the date to the 24^th because that would give them “time” to figure out what to do with the unaccompanied minors. The idea is to register as many minors as possible. Some young people have been waiting more than a year to reunite with family. One volunteer likened the process to a child doing homework on the bus to class, after having weeks to get it done.

On the 24^th registration lines were put into place: minors, families, vulnerable people suffering from physical and mental problems, and lastly those who wish to seek asylum in France all lined up. The government thought they would register 3000, but they only managed 1200 registrations. Today, both French and English police are supposed to begin taking down all the dwellings in the Jungle. They have begun destroying dwellings in the Sudanese quarter. The registration lines will continue until further notice.

We asked minors we have come to know about their registration process. Many have registered and are staying in the containers; the containers are supposed to be spared from demolition. One of the children I have grown close to suffers from severe anxiety. Daily, I am reminded of his journey to Calais and the horrors he faced in Libya when his terrors began. The lines are too long; he did not make registration today. He will try again later this afternoon or tomorrow morning. I am nervous for everyone. There is so much misinformation; the refugees of the Jungle and other camps like Isberg hear differing reports which they then share amongst themselves. The tensions grow because we also cannot guarantee them anything. We also are given limited information. Would you trust anyone who cannot give you any guarantees?

Note to Commenters
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We apologize for this inconvenience.

[Photo: Demonstrators protesting legislative threats to privatize public housing instituted under Chavez. Credit: Venezuela Analysis.]

=By=
Mike Weisbrot

The international media have provided a constant fusillade of stories and editorials (not always easily distinguished from each other) about the collapse of the Venezuelan economy for some time now. Shortages of food and medicine, hours-long lines for basic goods, incomes eroded by triple-digit inflation and even food riots have dominated press reports.

The conventional wisdom has a set of predictable narratives to explain the current economic mess. “Socialism” has failed — never mind that the vast majority of jobs created during the Hugo Chávez years were in the private sector, and that the size of the state has been much smaller than in France. The whole experiment, it is said, was a failure from the beginning.

According to this narrative, nationalizations, anti-business policies, populist overspending during the years of high oil prices and the collapse of oil prices since 2014 sealed Venezuela’s fate. Adherents to this explanation say the downward spiral will continue until the chavistas are removed from power, either through elections or through a coup (most pundits don’t seem to care which).

The reality is somewhat more complicated. First, the Bolivarian experiment did pretty well until 2014. From 2004 — after the Chávez government got control over the national oil industry — until 2014, real income per person grew by more than 2 percent annually. This is an enormous change from the horrendous long-term decline in the 20 years prior to Chávez, when GDP per capita actually shrank at an average annual rate of 1.2 percent. During the same years (2004–2014), poverty fell by 49 percent and extreme poverty by 63 percent — and this counts only cash income. The number of people over 60 years old receiving public pensions tripled, and millions of Venezuelans gained access to health care and education. It is the gains over this decade of chavismo that explain how the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) was able to win 41 percent of the vote in National Assembly elections in December 2015, despite serious shortages of consumer goods, 180 percent inflation and a deep recession.

Now for the downward spiral of the economy over the past three years: Was this inevitable? And is it irreversible until the PSUV leaves power? To answer these questions, we must look at how Venezuela got into this situation, and how it might get out of it.

The Story of Venezuela’s Economic Recession

In the fall of 2012, and again in February 2013, the government sharply reduced the availability of foreign exchange. It was during this time that shortages of basic goods accelerated, along with inflation and the black market price of the dollar. The official exchange rate, at which the government sold the vast majority of dollars earned from oil sales, was at 6.3 Bolivares Fuertes (Bs.F) per dollar. But a parallel market already existed, and the shortage of dollars at the official rate drove the parallel market sharply upward. At the same time, the higher parallel market price of the dollar increased inflation, because it increases the price of imported goods.

And when inflation goes up, more people want to buy dollars, because they see the dollar as something secure that won’t lose value to inflation. But this drives the price of the dollar up on the parallel market, which increases inflation even more. This cycle continues, causing an “inflation-depreciation” spiral. In October 2012, inflation was at 18 percent, and the parallel market rate was at 13 percent. By the end of 2015, annual inflation was at 180 percent and the parallel market rate was at 833 percent. The shortages of consumer and other goods also contribute to this spiral, and they have increased with it.

By the first quarter of 2014, the Venezuelan economy was already in recession, even though international oil prices were more than $100 a barrel. By January 2015, prices had fallen to $48 a barrel, and are about the same today. This depleted the government’s revenue by a similar percentage, and the government resorted to printing money to cover expenses. The money creation would not necessarily accelerate inflation, but in the context of the inflation-depreciation spiral it certainly did. So inflation rose even faster.

Since late March, the parallel market rate has fallen from a peak of more than 1,211 to about 1,025 Bs. per dollar today — about a 15 percent drop in the price of the dollar as measured in domestic currency — after shooting up rapidly for more than three years. At the same time, the government allowed the price of the dollar on a third market, called the SIMADI or DICOM rate, to go up. It is now at about 640 Bs. per dollar, or more than 60 percent of the parallel market rate.

However, this does not mean that the economy is on the road to stabilization.

First, the parallel rate is still 100 times the lower official rate of 10. Second, one of the main things that has slowed the inflation-depreciation spiral has been the deepening recession. There are far fewer people with money to buy dollars, and many are depleting their dollar savings in order to buy necessities. This has pushed down the price of the dollar on the parallel market.

What this means is that the Venezuelan economy cannot recover under the current exchange rate system. It is stuck in recession. Furthermore, the multiple exchange rate system, with its vast differences between the different rates, creates an enormous incentive for corruption. Anyone with access to official dollars can multiply their income by 100 simply by selling them on the black market, which is completely accessible to almost anyone.

But the official exchange rate system is only one way that the government’s dollar revenue is lost. Gasoline, even after the recent price increases, is about 6 Bs. per liter — or about one US cent per liter at the SIMADI exchange rate. Electricity and gas are also heavily subsidized. These subsidies cost the government more than 13 percent of GDP. For comparison, the total income tax revenue (individual plus corporate) of the US federal government in 2015 was about 10.6 percent of GDP. At the same time, there are price controls that are difficult or impossible to maintain in the current economic situation. In 2015, overall consumer prices increased by 180 percent; yet food prices, which are subject to price controls, increased by 300 percent. This is a pretty clear demonstration that price controls are not working.

A Possible Path to Recovery

Millions of Venezuelans now make their living from arbitrage of some sort — from waiting in line for hours for a small allocation of subsidized food and reselling it, to trading currency on the parallel market, to selling stolen goods. Even a dictatorship with considerable repressive power to crack down on all illegal transactions would have trouble maintaining a functioning economy with the magnitude of these price distortions. But Venezuela is not a dictatorship; in fact, the state is very weak in terms of law enforcement.

Given this situation, it is clear that serious reforms are necessary in order to restart the economy. The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has assembled a team of economists, headed by former president of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernández, which has presented a set of proposals. (Full disclosure: I am one of the members of this team.)

The most obvious change that is needed is to unify the multiple exchange rate system. This should be done quickly, and in one step. The government can auction a fixed amount of dollars each day, with the price determined by supply and demand. Although allowing the currency to float seems scary to many people, the price of the dollar would undoubtedly stabilize at something considerably less than the current parallel market rate of about 1,000. A floating rate is also the only way to avoid wasting scarce foreign exchange reserves in a futile attempt to maintain an overvalued fixed rate.

Since devaluations generally lead to price increases, it would be necessary to protect people from any rising costs of essential goods, including food. This could be done with a vast expansion of the government’s current system of the Tarjeta Misiones Socialistas (a card system providing direct subsidies to lower-income families), which would give people a large discount that could compensate for any price increases. This system would be in place before the unification of the exchange rate.

The energy subsidies could then be phased out more gradually over the next 18 months. To make this economically and politically acceptable, the additional government revenue as energy prices are allowed to rise would be added to the tarjetas (cards). This would be a net gain for the vast majority of Venezuelans. Some price controls — including those that do not allow producers to meet their costs — would be phased out.

Other measures to protect people’s living standards would include indexing wages to inflation, and creating a temporary public works program to create employment. These could be financed by a wealth tax similar to one in Colombia, and by a tax on financial transactions.

The government can help finance the transition by selling some of its foreign assets. At the same time, it will have to restructure its debt in order to reduce the $17 billion of debt payments (interest and principal) that would otherwise be due over the next year and a half.

All of this is feasible even with current oil prices because Venezuela has already adjusted its level of imports to match the fall in oil prices, which provide more than 90 percent of the country’s dollar earnings. It has been an enormous adjustment; imports have fallen by more than half since 2012. For comparison, Greece, after more than six years of depression, has reduced its imports by 28 percent.

This means that the hard part of the adjustment — the one that often requires people to reduce their living standards in order to sharply reduce imports — has already been done. It is relative prices now that have to be adjusted in order to recover. The result is that Venezuela can return to growth rather quickly, without the prolonged recession that neoliberal adjustment normally creates.

Left Critiques of Proposed Economic Reforms

Much of the left — including people inside the government and among the base of its party, the PSUV — rejects these economic reforms. They think it is a “paquetazo” (package) similar to International Monetary Fund (IMF) or neoliberal reforms that increased poverty in the past. They see the fixed exchange rate as socialistic and a floating exchange rate as a “free market” reform. But in reality, the informal economy for dollars constitutes one of the most destructive “free markets” that exists; it is the “capitalismo salvaje” (“savage capitalism”) that Hugo Chávez used to denounce. (Chávez himself successfully floated Venezuela’s currency in February 2002, and dollar reserves actually increased despite serious political instability.) And we can recall that the IMF supported fixed, overvalued exchange rates with disastrous results in Argentina, Brazil, Russia and a number of Asian countries in the last years of the 20th century.

There is nothing neoliberal about a program in which the government creates employment, protects wages from inflation (which has not happened since inflation began to skyrocket nearly four years ago), subsidizes food and essential items on a large scale, and protects people generally from the burden of the adjustment of relative prices.

Yet there are those on the left who seem to think that Venezuela can recover without fixing its most fundamental and destructive imbalances. Alfredo Serrano, an adviser to the government, posted eight “economic theses” on Venezuela on September 1. In 2,700 words, there is no mention of Venezuela’s dysfunctional exchange rate system.

At the same time, the US government — which has sought “regime change” in Venezuela for the past 15 years — is trying to further destabilize the economy. In March 2016 President Obama once again declared that Venezuela posed an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security” of the United States, and imposed economic sanctions. The sanctions themselves are not economically important, but they send a message to investors who know what happens to countries that are labeled an “extraordinary threat” to the United States. The Obama administration has also pressured US financial institutions not to do business with Venezuela.

The international media and their usual sources are also playing their traditional role, and some of the widely reported stories have been wrong. By 2015, there were widespread reports that the poverty rate had increased to 76 percent when this was practically impossible. The IMF, which has a long history of politically influenced forecasts, projected that GDP would shrink by 10 percent last year, when the actual figure was 5.7 percent. The media report IMF projections of 720 percent inflation for this year, although this is likely to be way off. It is further evidence of the media’s extreme hostility to the Venezuelan government that so many journalists feel the need to exaggerate, even when Venezuela is facing its worst economic crisis in decades. But even during most of the economic boom between 2003 and 2008, when employment was rising rapidly and poverty was plummeting, it was hard to find anything positive about Venezuela in the major media.

Nonetheless, it should be clear that the Venezuelan economy will not recover, even if oil prices were to rise rapidly, without some major reforms that can resolve its worst economic imbalances.

Mark Weisbrot is codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. and president of Just Foreign Policy. He is also the author of Failed: What the “Experts” Got Wrong About the Global Economy (2015, Oxford University Press). You can subscribe to his columns here.

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=By= Edward Curtin

“The song ‘Political World’ could have been triggered by current events.  There was a heated presidential race underway …. But I had no interest in politics as an art form….The political world in the song is more of an underworld….With the song I thought I might have broken through to something.  It was like you wake up from a deep and drugged slumber and somebody strikes a little silver gong and you come to your senses.”   Bob Dylan, Chronicles

We live in dark times when the prison gates of seeming hopelessness clang shut around us.  Endless U.S. led and sponsored wars, a New Cold War, nuclear threats, economic exploitation, oligarchical rule, government spying, drone killings, loss of civil liberties, terrorism, ecological degradation, etc. – the list is long and depressing.

Awareness of a deep state hidden behind the marionette theatre of conventional politics has grown, even as the puppet show of electoral distractions garners the headlines.  Readers of the alternative media learn the truth of government conspiracies involving assassinations – JFK, MLK, RFK, et al. – and countless other evil deeds without cessation. Excellent writers uncover and analyze the machinations of those responsible.  Anger and frustration mount as people listen to a litany of bad news and propaganda spewed out by the mainstream corporate media.  It is easy to be overwhelmed and disheartened.

Despite the mute despair and apathy that fill the air, hope is needed to carry on and resist these destructive forces.  Sometimes in such a dark time the eye begins to see and the ear hears hope in unexpected places.  Doing so necessitates a bit of a sideways move to discover pockets of resistance hiding in the shadows.  There are torches of illumination in the underworld, but we need to come to our senses to get there.

“Emotion is the chief source of all becoming-conscious.  There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.”  Carl Jung

If you’ve ever played music or basketball, fell dizzyingly in love, or lapsed into a spell writing words or being engrossed in a passionate pursuit, you’ll easily grasp what follows.  But maybe these specific experiences aren’t necessary.  You’ve lived, you’re alive, and you can hear the pitter-patter beat of your dribbling heart.  That’s probably plenty. You know the game can be a roller-coaster ride with all its ups and downs, and when it ends you will have won or lost something, exactly what being of the essence.

Rhythm, melody, and movement: from these life is born and sustained.  They are also integral to sports and art – music, writing, painting, sculpture, dance, etc. – even when they are apparently absent.

Tall Walking Figure by Alberto Giacometti. (Credit: Billy Liar.)

If, for example, one looks at Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture, Tall Walking Figure, its immobility implies movement.  Such paradoxical inclusiveness pertains to still-life painting as well.  While seemingly immobile, and defined by some as dead life, such paintings are encompassed by the presence of the absence of movement and change, the essence of all living things.  To grasp the paradoxical nature of art – and life – one must approach them as an artist and see the wholeness in broken pieces.  “Everything is broken,” Bob Dylan sings, “take a deep breath, feel like you’re choking.”

“Life is the best play of all.”   Sophie Michel, a 7 year-old musician

I think it is fair to say that living is the ultimate art and as the artists of our lives our medium is time and space.  And that it is in sound that time and space are epitomized.  Musical sounds carry us through time and space in a reverberating vital impulse.  Music brings us to our senses. Being emotional, it sets us in motion.  We are moved.

Sports, as the etymology of the word suggests (desporter – to divert), is a diversion from something.  Sports involve us in movement through time and space to an unnecessary goal where someone wins and someone losses.  In sports we choose to overcome superfluous obstacles for fun and for deeper reasons we may not realize.  Sports only matter because they don’t.

“What we play is life.”    Louis Armstrong

A few years ago my friends and I were playing in basketball tournaments for men over fifty and we qualified for the Senior Olympics at the University of Pittsburgh.  We acquired a sponsor, a local funeral home that made warm-up jerseys for us.  Being used to dealing with bodies at rest, these comedians knew we were a bunch of aging hoopsters intent on keeping our bodies in motion for as long as we could.  So they had shirts made with that up-beat and adolescent cliché printed on the front, “Basketball is Life.”   Lest we forgot, and being in the trade of taking bodies at rest to the underworld, on the back they had printed “Leave the Rest to Us: Flynn and Dagnoli Funeral Home.”

Most of us found the juxtaposition hilarious (including one funny Irishman who ended up dead at the funeral home), but one teammate found it disturbing, which gave the rest of us additional sardonic laughs.  Sex and death and one’s ongoing vitality are the stuff of uneasy laughter in the locker rooms of aging men.  It’s a place for essentials.

“He was like a great singer with a style all his own, a pacing that was different, a flair for the unusual.”   Chick Hearn, play-by-play announcer for The Los Angeles Lakers about Pete Maravich

I was reminded of this as I was rereading bits of Bob Dylan’s fascinating and poetic memoir, Chronicles: Volume I, and came upon his recounting of hearing of the news of the death of “Pistol” Pete Maravich, the greatest scorer in college basketball history and a magician without par on the court.  It was January 5, 1988.

My aunt was in the kitchen and I sat down with her to
talk and drink coffee.  The radio was playing and morn-
ing news was on.  I was startled to hear that Pete Maravich,
the basketball player, had collapsed on a basketball court in
Pasadena, just fell over and never got up.  I’d seen Maravich
play in New Orleans once, when the Utah Jazz were the New
Orleans Jazz.  He was something to see – mop of brown hair,
floppy socks – the holy terror of the basketball world – high
flyin’ – magician of the court.  The night I saw him he dribbled
the ball with his head, scored a behind the back, no look basket –
dribbled the length of the court, threw the ball up off the glass
and caught his own pass.  He was fantastic.  Scored something
like thirty-eight points.  He could have played blind.  Pistol Pete
hadn’t played professionally for a while, and he was thought of
as forgotten.  I hadn’t forgotten about him, though.  Some people
seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like
they didn’t fade away at all.

Dylan has the poet’s touch, of course, a hyperbolic sense of the fantastic that draws you into his magical web in the pursuit of deeper truth.  In ways he’s like the Latin American magical realist writers who move from fact to dream to the fantastic in a puff of wind.

He goes on to write that after hearing the news of Pistol Pete’s sad death playing pickup basketball, he started and completed the song “Dignity” the same day, and in the days that followed song after song flowed from his pen.  The news of one creative spirit’s death gave birth to another creative spirit’s gift to life.  (I am reminded of Shakespeare writing Hamlet after his father’s death.) “It’s like I saw the song up in front of me and overtook it, like I saw all the characters in this song and elected to cast my fortunes with them …. The wind could never blow it out of my head.  This song was a good thing to have.  On a song like this, there’s no end to things.”

One can hear echoes of Hemingway, another artist obsessed with death, in those last few sentences.  Unlike Hemingway, however, Dylan’s focus on death is in the service of life and hope. For him there is no end, while Hemingway is all ending – nada, nada, nada – nothing, nothing, nothing – “it was all a nothing and a man was nothing too,” he writes in his haunting story, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.”  Dylan’s focus on the shadow of death is seen within the light of life – todo – all or everything. The darkness is there but is encompassed by the light.  Nada within todo. As he told the AARP magazine last year in a fascinating interview, he’s been singing about death since he’s been twelve.  And out of that singing – year after year for fifty plus years and counting – he has found and expressed the light of hope.

Bob Dylan (Credit: Moderate Voice)

Dylan is our Emerson.  His artistic philosophy has always been about movement in space and time through song.  Always moving, always restless, always seeking a way back home through song, even when, or perhaps because, there are no directions.  “An artist has got to be careful never to arrive at a place where he thinks he’s at somewhere,” he’s said.  “You always have to realize that you are constantly in a state of becoming and as long as you can stay in that realm you’ll be alright.”

Sounds like living, right.

Sounds like Emerson, also.  “Life only avails, not the having lived.  Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.  Thus one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes.”

It was about ten years ago when we traveled to that Senior Basketball Olympics at the University of Pittsburgh.  We drew many uneasy smiles as we paraded around with the backs of our shirts announcing the services of the men who take us to the underworld.   We won a few games and lost others; were eliminated and left for home disappointed, some of us more than others, depending on each man’s competitive fire to defeat the foe.  Like all athletes, losing felt like a small death.  Even small deaths are hard to swallow, however, especially when knowing how way leads on to way and you doubt you will ever come back.  As evening was darkening the Amish countryside, we departed east through country roads in silence, each lost in his interior monologue on the journey ahead.  Playing low on the radio, from my back seat I could barely make out Dylan singing, “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.”

Two years ago there was a short Grantland documentary, “The Finish Line,” about Steve Nash, the latest Pistol Pete.  An uncanny player, Nash was battling injuries and age, and the documentary shows him pondering whether or not to retire or continue his rehabilitation and attempt a comeback.  In the opening scene Nash goes out with his dog into the shadowy pre-dawn where he muses on his dilemma.  His words are hypnotic.  “I feel,” he said, “that there’s something that I can’t quite put my finger on that – I don’t know – I feel that it’s blocking me  or I can see it out of the corner of my mind’s eye, or it’s like this dark presence ….is it the truth that I’m done?”

Hobbled by a nerve injury that severely limited his movement, he played a few more games and retired within a year.  Like Pete Maravich, he had brought an infectious joy to his playing, but he left without fulfilling his dream of winning an NBA championship.  Of his retirement he said, “It’s bittersweet.  I already miss the game deeply, but I’m also really excited to learn to do something else.”  Unlike many athletes, Nash was moving on; his “dark presence” wasn’t a final death but a step on the road to a hard rebirth.  It was a Dylanesque restless farewell: “And though the line is cut/It ain’t quite the end/I‘ll just bid farewell till we meet again.”

“A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true.  They’re like strange countries that you have to enter.  You can write a song anywhere …. It helps to be moving.  Sometimes people who have the greatest talent for writing songs never write any because they are not moving.”    Bob Dylan, Chronicles

Dylan has long been accused of abandoning his youthful idealism and protest music.  I think this is a bum rap.  He was never a protester, though his songs became anthems of the civil rights and anti-war movements.  There is no doubt that those songs were inspirational and gave people hope to carry on the good fight.  But in turning in a more oblique and circumspect musical direction, following his need to change as the spirit of inspiration moved him, Dylan’s songs have come to inspire in a new way. You know his sympathies lie with the oppressed and downtrodden, but he doesn’t shout it.  A listener has to catch his drift. If you go to the music, and dip into his various stylistic changes over the decades, you will find a consistency of themes.  He deals with essentials like all great poets.  Nothing is excluded.  His work is paradoxical.  Yes, he’s been singing about death since twelve, but it has always been countered by life and rebirth.  There is joy and sadness; faith and doubt; happiness and suffering; injustice and justice; romance and its discontents; despair and hope.  His music possesses a bit of a Taoist quality mixed with a Biblical sensibility conveyed by a hopelessly romantic American.  He has fused his themes into an incantatory delivery that casts a moving spell of hope upon the listener.  He is nothing if not a spiritual spell-binder; similar in many ways to that other quintessential American – the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, whose best work was a poetic quest for an inspired salvific poetry.

If the listener is expecting an argument, a thesis, inductive reasoning, or a didactic approach from Dylan, he is out of luck, and rather than be inspired he will be disappointed.  This is art, not theory, and art of a special kind since Dylan is an artist at war with his art.  His songs demand that the listener’s mind and spirit be moving as the spirit of creative inspiration moved Dylan.  A close listening will force one to jump from verse to verse – to shoot the gulf – since there are no bridges to cross, no connecting links.  The sound carries you over and keeps you moving forward. If you’re not moving, you’ll miss the meaning.

“A bird does not sing because it has an answer.  It sings because it has a song.” Chinese Proverb

So if the world is getting you down and all the news is bad to your ears, don’t lose hope.  Step to the side, out of the glare of the sun, the blare of the headlines where lies and fears shout in our ears and echo down our days like a repetitive nightmare.  Give Dylan a listen.  As he has said of spiritual songs, “They brought me down to earth and they lifted me up all in the same moment.”  His songs have the same paradoxical power because he excludes nothing. That is why they are truthful.

It is fitting that his latest album, “Shadows in the Night,” comprised of ten beloved old ballads sung by Frank Sinatra, from “The Night We Called it a Day” to “Some Enchanted Evening,” has him changing again, going back to go forward.  He is full of surprises, which any child will tell you bring joy because surprises and change are the core of living.  To change this crazed world, we must change and find hope and joy along the way.  Repetition will kill us.  Dylan’s artistic metamorphoses and ingenious song writing offer offbeat sources of hope.  Just listen.

Having been compared to Frank Sinatra with these songs, he’s said, “You must be joking.  To be mentioned in the same breath as him must be some sort of high compliment.  As far as touching him goes, nobody touches him.  Not me or anyone else …. But he never went away.  All those things we thought were here to stay, they did go away.  But he never did.”  Sinatra, like Pistol Pete, didn’t fade away because he too inspired Dylan to inspire us to hope and carry on.  If it feels dark and night-like to you, move sideways into the shadows.  Look away and you’ll see the light.

Or if you like basketball or dancing, like to move to the beat, listen to Dylan singing “Hurricane,” a long narrative song about the framing of the boxer Ruben “Hurricane” Carter.  It will get your blood flowing, your passions riled, and your body moving.  It’s perfect for practicing all the dribbling tricks Pistol Pete performed.  I thought of using it at the Senior Olympics, but the beat seemed a little too rapid and excitable for the over fifty AARP crowd.  The shirts were sending an undertaking message that I didn’t want made real.  Hope is one thing, but traveling too fast is another.  Anyway, one of my teammates was in swift pursuit of a woman there whom he described as a twin of his ideal woman – Pamela Anderson.  He didn’t need any more excitement.

Edward Curtin is a  writer who teaches at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and has published widely.

Note to Commenters
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We apologize for this inconvenience.

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