George Soros as Disaster Capitalist

"Disaster Capitalism" strikes when political leaders exploit crises to push through controversial exploitative policies while citizens are too emotionally and physically distracted by disasters or upheavals to mount an effective resistance.

Photo by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.

By Valentin KATASONOV
George Soros is a well-known billionaire. He has recently started to take an active part in Ukrainian affairs. No, Mr. Soros does not play the role of peacekeeper, to the contrary, his activities are aimed at inciting a large-scale war against Russia.

In early June, Cyber Berkut hacked the correspondence of Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko and Soros. The possessed materials show that Soros wants the United States to deliver up-to-date lethal weapons to Ukraine and provide training for Ukrainian soldiers. What does financier Soros need it for? George Soros is known throughout the whole world. Many people witnessed his deeds with their own eyes. According to Forbes, he is one of the thirty wealthiest people on the planet. His presence is visible or felt in many countries. He has a reputation of profiteer, businessman (owner of companies) and aphilanthropist - all at once. The multifaceted activities match well his distinctive way to behave and do things.

He stands out as master of financial speculations or the alchemy of finance. He did a masterly job of making British pound collapse in 1992. Even the Bank of England failed to stand up to Soros. In a wink of an eye he earned $1 billion. He contributed into the 1998 financial crisis in South-East Asia. Those days the currencies of about a dozen of countries collapsed. He had his finger in the pie when a default hit Russia in 1998.

Soros used the Quantum Fund which is part of Quantum Group of Funds, the privately owned hedge funds based in Curaçao (Netherlands Antilles) and Cayman Islands. The Group is currently advised by George Soros through his company Soros Fund Management. Currency speculations are the main source of his fortune (nearly $30 billion).

Contrary to what is generally believed, Soros is also involved in more «quite» and «decent» activities like buying companies shares. He pays with the money earned as a result of currency speculations. For this purpose he founded Soros Fund Management, LLC, a privately owned firm investing in the capital of world leading corporations. Soros Fund Management, LLC maintains ownership of large share percentages in key corporations that benefit from investment in other countries. Soros owns over 5 million shares of the chemical giant Dow Chemicals. Another big investment is Monsanto. Soros owns half a million shares of the bio-tech firm. The two companies are known as chemicals producers with diversified products and services from industrial to agricultural applications, bio technology, food industry and other branches of economy.

The financier is also interested in energy. Soros owns nearly two million shares of Energen, a natural gas utility company. PDC Energy, with one million shares owned, is another big investment project. George Soros is involved in banking business. He owns significant stakes of Citigroup, one of Wall Street «Big Six banks». The second direction of his activities is not much talked about. He puts his «golden eggs» (assets) in many baskets (companies and banks) in different parts of the world.

The third sphere of activities he is involved in is charity. It is given special publicity to create a positive image of tycoon. The main instrument hisphilanthropy activities are based on is the Open Society Institute (OSI) or the George Soros Foundations. Formally it acts in line with fundamental principles of human rights dignity and law to help nations achieve positive changes. Putting turgid praises of Open Society aside, the Institute «resets» the public mentality with the help of different kinds of educational programs forming national elites to create the most favorable regime for Western transnational corporations and banks. Soros suffers no financial losses. The money he spends is an investment into human capital, it could even more profitable than investing into high tech companies and hedge funds. The only difference is that profits are to be made in 10 years, or may be more.

The Open Society Institute has branches in 27 countries of Asia and Europe, including Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. According to Business Week, Soros has spent over $5 billion for charity programs with one billion invested in Russia. By the end of 2003 he left to put an end to charity operations in the country. In 2004 the Open Society Institute stopped giving grants. No matter that, some organizations founded by Soros continue their activities in the Russian Federation.

By and large, that’s what the Soros’s business model looks like:

1) Currency speculations bringing in billions «earned».

2) The profit is used for currency speculations, buying out shares of companies and other commercial organizations and funding charity activities.

3) The charity programs foster favorable investment climate in certain countries. The money is invested only after a thorough study of all aspects related to investment climate.

In case of Soros investment climate is something special. An ordinary businessman would say that favorable investment climate presupposes economic and political stability, positive trends on the market etc. It’s not the case when Soros makes his assessments. «Worse is better» is his guiding principle. He is called a disaster capitalist. Disaster capitalism is the term used to describe his currency speculations. He normally invests in companies and projects after an effective «artillery bombardment». It includes a political crisis often leading to regime change, revolutions, mass unrest and other social upheavals. A political crisis is inevitable followed by currency and economic collapse. It entails downfall of national currency and decline in market value of companies. With assets becoming cheaper, the time is right for investments. The results of artillery strikes initiated by Soros could be used by other capitalist sharks who are always in the loop. That’s what Soros needs charity for. The matter is that these programs are part of preparation for staging a political crisis. Besides, their implementation allows Soros to have some foreign politicians and officials dancing to his tune. It helps to avoid unneeded hindrances and guarantee access to the needed assets abroad.

Any business is tied to constant money flows. The model used by George Soros excludes status quo. Like in the theory of Marx, (described in his Capital) there is a general law of money circulation (money-commerce-commodity) and expanded production. In case of Soros it is added by political, rasocial, currency and other crises. It boils down to the formula: Capital-Crisis-Value of Commodity. The value could be increased or reduced after the entire phase of circulation comes to an end. With no political crises to ensue, Soros, the master of alchemy, becomes uncompetitive turning into an ordinary businessman.

Experts note that Soros honed his business skills in many countries. For instance, in the African states of Nigeria, Uganda, Cameroon etc. Soros was behind social and political upheavals these countries had to go through. Then he set his eyes on Europe and the post-Soviet space. He was involved in the events in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and Macedonia. He is involved there now. A lot has been told and written about civil wars and social upheavals in the states mentioned above. It’s less known that George Soros has vested long-term economic interests in all of them. There are two main theories explaining his business achievements. One says he owes his success to foresight. The other says he uses insider information received from higher ups in the political and economic circles. The first theory is supported by Soros himself as he has written many books on the theory of reflexivity applied to stock and financial markets. He tries to make believe that the gift he possesses has scientific explanation. Having read his books, I got the impression that they differ little from the plethora of other «intellectual products» filling the shelves of book stores. The name of the author is the only thing that makes them stand out. He has ambitions to become a writer. I believe that the books he writes serve as a kind of cover of his nefarious activities related to the use of insider information. On quite a number of occasions he was caught red handed to get off easy with just paying fines. The second version looks trustworthy.

I would offer a third theory explaining his financial success. He has access to financial sources being close with those who we call money masters – the leading shareholders of US Federal Reserve System. They own the printing press. In the 1970s the gold restraints were taken away. On 15 August 1971, the United States unilaterally terminated convertibility of the US dollar for gold, effectively bringing the Bretton Woods system (1944) to an end and rendering the dollar a flat currency.

The printing press can print as much money as needed. The core problem is to put the money to good use. That’s what money masters need assistants for. Soros is the one. Actually he is a money master himself. As I have already mentioned he has a block of Citigroup shares. The bank is one of Wall Street’s «Big Six». All these banks are co-owners of closed joint-stock company called the US Federal Reserve System. He may not be as important as the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers – the full-fledged money masters. Soros serves them. Experts believe he works for the Rothschilds, but that’s a horse of another color.

The main thing is that he has enough money to make national currencies of other countries collapse. To accomplish the mission he needs the sums comparable with the reserves of central banks. He collected $20 billion to break the British pound in 1992. Those days he was not rich enough to take the money out of his pocket. He had to get it from money masters. Some experts believe that the so-called Soros Foundation is a common fund with Soros appointed as general manager.

There is an important point to take into consideration. Money masters give Soros money for other purposes than increasing their wealth. They don’t need that. After all they have the printing press at their disposal. The printing press «production» is the means to achieve the goals. Soros is not their equal. He likes money. All his life was devoted to the goal of becoming wealthier. For this purpose he destabilized other countries. Real money masters also need destabilization to weaken states, dilute their national sovereignty and make true the dream they have cherished for centuries - to achieve global power. (1)

That’s what they need Soros for. He is the consummate master of organizing revolutions, coups and Maidan-type protests. That’s what made him a successful businessman. He is what they call a disaster capitalist. All told, it’s clear that Soros is chomping at the bit to make a big profit out of the events in Ukraine. To be more exact he works to make the country plunge into chaos according to the plans of money masters.

Footnote:

(1) More in detail. Valentin Katasonov. Capitalism. History and Ideology of «Monetary Civilization».Institute of Russian Civilization. 2015.

Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture

Did The Red Cross Scam Donators After Haiti Earthquake?: Collected $500 Million — Built Only 6 Homes

By Justin Elliott, ProPublica, and Laura Sullivan, NPR
The neighborhood of Campeche sprawls up a steep hillside in Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince. Goats rustle in trash that goes forever uncollected. Children kick a deflated volleyball in a dusty lot below a wall with a hand-painted logo of the American Red Cross.

RELATED STORY: "The Red Cross’ Secret Disaster" - Charity Prioritized PR over People After Superstorm Sandy — Report (Video)

In late 2011, the Red Cross launched a multimillion-dollar project to transform the desperately poor area, which was hit hard by the earthquake that struck Haiti the year before. The main focus of the project — called LAMIKA, an acronym in Creole for “A Better Life in My Neighborhood” — was building hundreds of permanent homes.

Today, not one home has been built in Campeche. Many residents live in shacks made of rusty sheet metal, without access to drinkable water, electricity or basic sanitation. When it rains, their homes flood and residents bail out mud and water.

The Red Cross received an outpouring of donations after the quake, nearly half a billion dollars.

The group has publicly celebrated its work. But in fact, the Red Cross has repeatedly failed on the ground in Haiti. Confidential memos, emails from worried top officers, and accounts of a dozen frustrated and disappointed insiders show the charity has broken promises, squandered donations, and made dubious claims of success.

The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: six.

After the earthquake, Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern unveiled ambitious plans to “develop brand-new communities.” None has ever been built.

Aid organizations from around the world have struggled after the earthquake in Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. But ProPublica and NPR’s investigation shows that many of the Red Cross’s failings in Haiti are of its own making. They are also part of a larger pattern in which the organization has botched delivery of aid after disasters such as Superstorm Sandy. Despite its difficulties, the Red Cross remains the charity of choice for ordinary Americans and corporations alike after natural disasters.

One issue that has hindered the Red Cross’ work in Haiti is an overreliance on foreigners who could not speak French or Creole, current and former employees say.

In a blistering 2011 memo, the then-director of the Haiti program, Judith St. Fort, wrote that the group was failing in Haiti and that senior managers had made “very disturbing” remarks disparaging Haitian employees. St. Fort, who is Haitian American, wrote that the comments included, “he is the only hard working one among them” and “the ones that we have hired are not strong so we probably should not pay close attention to Haitian CVs.”

The Red Cross won’t disclose details of how it has spent the hundreds of millions of dollars donated for Haiti. But our reporting shows that less money reached those in need than the Red Cross has said.

Lacking the expertise to mount its own projects, the Red Cross ended up giving much of the money to other groups to do the work. Those groups took out a piece of every dollar to cover overhead and management. Even on the projects done by others, the Red Cross had its own significant expenses – in one case, adding up to a third of the project’s budget.

In statements, the Red Cross cited the challenges all groups have faced in post-quake Haiti, including the country’s dysfunctional land title system.

“Like many humanitarian organizations responding in Haiti, the American Red Cross met complications in relation to government coordination delays, disputes over land ownership, delays at Haitian customs, challenges finding qualified staff who were in short supply and high demand, and the cholera outbreak, among other challenges,” the charity said.

The group said it responded quickly to internal concerns, including hiring an expert to train staff on cultural competency after St. Fort’s memo. While the group won’t provide a breakdown of its projects, the Red Cross said it has done more than 100. The projects include repairing 4,000 homes, giving several thousand families temporary shelters, donating $44 million for food after the earthquake, and helping fund the construction of a hospital.

“Millions of Haitians are safer, healthier, more resilient, and better prepared for future disasters thanks to generous donations to the American Red Cross,” McGovern wrote in a recent report marking the fifth anniversary of the earthquake.

In other promotional materials, the Red Cross said it has helped “more than 4.5 million” individual Haitians “get back on their feet.”

It has not provided details to back up the claim. And Jean-Max Bellerive, Haiti’s prime minister at the time of the earthquake, doubts the figure, pointing out the country’s entire population is only about 10 million.

“No, no,” Bellerive said of the Red Cross’ claim, “it’s not possible.”

Read More

"The Red Cross’ Secret Disaster": Charity Prioritized PR over People After Superstorm Sandy — Report (Video)

Read the Full Report and Get Access to Documents at ProPublica: HERE

A War of Black Urban Removal: The Siege of Detroit

 The “pause” in the draconian Detroit water shut-off is just a lull in “an escalating trajectory of systematically inflicted mass punishment and pain designed to make life in the city unbearable for a huge proportion of the population.” Wall Street has declared war against America’s “Chocolate Cities,” demanding “the shrinkage of Black urban populations as a prerequisite for full-scale investment.”




By Glen Ford, BAR

“This is a war against a Black city, and a blueprint for future aggressions aimed at shrinking ‘chocolate cities’ across the nation.”

Like the rapist who insists his victim “wanted it,” Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr claims city retirees were expressing “strong support for the city’s plan to adjust its debts” when they voted to accept a 4.5 percent cut in their meager pensions. Corporate media echoed the state appointee’s interpretation of the court-ordered ballot, in which about half the 32,000 eligible workers and retirees participated. In reality, Detroit’s pensioners were violated in broad daylight, stripped of retirement protections and forced to choose whether to die in poverty or an even more extreme destitution.

Earlier this year, as part of the Shock and Awe of state-imposed bankruptcy, Orr threatened to cut pensions by 26 percent, in defiance of Michigan state constitutional protections. He was backed by federal bankruptcy court judge Steven Rhodes, who has brushed aside every objection from lesser, non-corporate beings. Rather than risk the loss of one-quarter of an already meager $20,000 a year pension, 73 percent of retirees and workers accepted the lesser cut, plus an end to cost-of-living increases. This was not an election, but the cruelest coercion – a rape of the elderly, who were forced not only to acquiesce to their own further impoverishment, but to give up the right to challenge the process in court.

“The media are liars, pure and simple; co-conspirators in the corporate crime.”

Corporate media routinely ascribe such obscene assaults to “the city,” as in “the city’s plan to adjust its debts.” But the City of Detroit has no such plans; it has no power, and its citizens have no meaningful vote – except, of course, when given an ultimatum to endorse cuts to their own pensions. Detroit’s elected officials cannot pass laws, and collect a salary at the pleasure of dictator Kevyn Orr, who is answerable only to the ruling class, as directly represented by the Fortune 500 clients of the law firm that spawned him, Jones Day. (Orr’s nominal boss, Gov. Rick Snyder, answers to the same people.) The state-imposed emergency manager is authorized to usurp the powers of the city – to act as a dictator – but he is not the city in any but the most technical, legalistic sense. For Orr to refer to himself as “the city” is a sick hubris – a hustler lawyer invoking the royal “We”. However, when the media describe Orr’s decrees as actions by “the city” – knowing full well how Orr is despised in Detroit government and the city at large – they are liars, pure and simple; co-conspirators in the corporate crime.

The people of Detroit have no rights that corporations and their servants in government are bound to respect. Indeed, the emergency manager laws have been used to disenfranchise the residents of every largely Black city and school district in the state, encompassing more than half the Black population of Michigan. (The people of Michigan rejected the legislation in a referendum, but Republican lawmakers simply passed a near-identical measure, as if nothing had happened.)

The 82 percent Black metropolis is under siege, in the Medieval sense of the term. Just as ancient armies deprived towns under siege of food and water, to starve and thirst them into submission, so Kevin Orr has caused the Detroit Water and Sewage Department to cut off tens of thousands of residents, in an escalating trajectory of systematically inflicted mass punishment and pain designed to make life in the city unbearable for a huge proportion of the population.

This is a war against a Black city, and a blueprint for future aggressions aimed at shrinking “chocolate cities” across the nation. What Katrina accomplished through the sudden advent of flood, the corporate strategists in Michigan intend to achieve by emergency dictatorship, privatization and blatantly racist official barbarism.

“The 82 percent Black metropolis is under siege, in the Medieval sense of the term.”

Orr announced a 15-day “pause” in water cut-offs – similar to a temporary “truce” in siege warfare – as much to give cover to bankruptcy judge Rhodes who, while no less bestial than the managing dictator, seems more sensitive to public perceptions. United Nations experts condemned the shut-offs as constituting "a violation of the human right to water and other international human rights." Thousands demonstrated against the cut-offs in downtown Detroit, and others carried out direct actions, blocking the vehicles of disconnect crews. Two lawsuits have been filed to halt the water-torture. One, by the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, the Peoples Water Board, the Michigan chapter of the National Action Network, Moratorium Now, and a host of individuals, challenges Orr’s actions as a violation of residents’ constitutional and contractual rights. A class action suit, launched by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, says the cut-offs are racially motivated. The private companies that have been empowered to act for Detroit’s Water and Sewage Department “are basically Caucasian companies," said attorney Alice Jennings. "The folks who are being cut off are almost one hundred percent African-American."

And that is, of course, the whole point. The finance capitalists that run this country would like to disenfranchise the entire population so that money could exercise its exclusive “freedom of political speech” and action, unimpeded. In order to generate the least resistance, the model for urban corporate rule must be created in Black America, just as privatization of public education was modeled in the inner cities. White folks won’t care, and Black folks don’t matter – certainly, it doesn't matter to President Obama, who has signed off on the every element of the siege of Detroit (and has been far more effective than George Bush in privatizing the public schools, as well).

Most importantly, finance capital – Wall Street, the people who employ Kevyn Orr and his Jones Day law firm – demands the shrinkage of Black urban populations as a prerequisite for full-scale investment in the cities. Urban assets are devalued by the mere presence of large numbers of Black people, for the simple reason that most white people continue to refuse to share space with African Americans. Therefore, the “chocolate cities” must go, as a condition for urban “renaissance.” (See Black Agenda Radio, July 21, “Banksters Demand Black Removal as a Condition of Investment.”)

This is a fight against urban Black expulsion and deportation. If there is more than a whiff of the Third Reich in the connotation, it is absolutely appropriate.

___________________
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.

Disaster Capitalism in California: Right-Wingers Told to View Drought and Skyrocketing Water Prices as a Major Investment Opportunity

California Drought Dries Up Bay Area Reservoirs.

By Jessica Mason
As a historic drought grips the U.S. southwest, towns in Texas and California are taking action to make sure precious fresh water is not wasted and spoiled through fracking.

At the same time, some investment advisors are urging right-wingers at the annual libertarian "Freedom Fest" to view drought and skyrocketing water prices as a major investment opportunity.
Fracking Concentrated in Drought-Stressed Regions

Hydraulic fracturing, commonly called "fracking," is a procedure for extracting oil by injecting a mixture of fresh water and chemicals into the earth at high pressure to fracture rock formations deep underground.

The EPA has estimated that a fracking well in a coal bed formation uses up to 350,000 gallons of water, although wells in more complex shale formations--like California's Marcellus Shale--may use between two to five million gallons of water. Nearly 100,000 new fracking wells have been drilled since 2005, which have used and contaminated at least 250 billion gallons of water.

A record 14-year drought, combined with population growth and increasing industrial and agricultural water use, has drained the Colorado River basin, which feeds water to Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Amid the drought, water use by the fracking industry is prompting criticism by farmers and other local residents as well as national environmental organizations.

Over ninety five percent of fracked wells in Colorado and California are in areas with high or extremely high water stress, according to a report by Ceres, a nonprofit that advises businesses on environmental issues. The Ceres report calls Texas "ground zero for sourcing risks," as fracking-related water use is expected to double over the next ten years, although more than two-thirds of the state is expected to remain in drought.
Activists Fight Back with Fracking Bans at the Local Level

Grassroots activists in the town of Denton, Texas want it to become the first city in Texas to ban fracking--even though it has taken in over $30 million in revenue from natural gas extraction over the past decade.

Officials in Denton, Texas temporarily halted fracking after the Denton Drilling Awareness Group and other local activists collected signatures from almost 2,000 registered voters in support of a ban, more than three times the number required to force the city council to consider a resolution.

Texas nurse and activist Cathy McMullen told the Associated Press that drillers' defiance of common-sense city rules requiring them to line wastewater pits and prohibiting them from burning off waste gas in residential areas spurred local opposition. "All that did was make people so fired up," she said. University of North Texas professor Adam Briggle, who helped McMullen organize the Denton Drilling Awareness Group, got involved after he learned the Denton city council's advisory panel on fracking was dominated by industry interests. "The official task force they formed to advise the City Council had three of five members from industry groups," Briggle told the press.

On Tuesday night, an estimated 500 people came to watch the city council vote on a ban, filling the hall and satellite rooms. The hearing lasted into the early hours of Wednesday morning, with over 100 people registered to give testimony. While the measure failed in a 5-2 vote, voters will have their say on a ballot referendum in November.

In California, activists are also working county by county to place fracking bans on local ballots for the November election. The strategy bypasses the state legislature, where efforts to pass a state-level moratorium on fracking have repeatedly stalled. Organizers have already succeeded in placing fracking bans on the November ballots in San Benito County and Santa Barbara County. They follow in the footsteps of cities like Longmont, Colorado, which became the first city to ban fracking in Colorado in November 2012.

Rebecca Claassen, a volunteer with the Santa Barbara County Water Guardians, told Northern California's KQED that environmental and economic concerns were driving support for the ban. “We have a lot of agriculture and tourism that both depend on clean water,” Claassen says, “and so the risks of water contamination really resonated with most everyone.”

Just this past month, New York courts approved the right of towns in that state to ban fracking, over the objections of fracking corporations and rightwing groups that have backed industry interests.
“Hurricanes, Tornados and Earthquakes: Volatility as an Asset Class”

While activists push to protect precious water resources during the extended drought, others are looking to profit from the crisis.

Participants in this month's Freedom Fest in Las Vegas, an annual libertarian conference, were advised to capitalize on water shortages due to fracking by David Norcom of NorCap Advisors, a Dallas-based investment management firm specializing in energy-related stocks.

"Now, let's have fun," Norcom told the audience near the end of his presentation, which was titled “Hurricanes, Tornados and Earthquakes: Volatility as an Asset Class.”

"This is the curve ball I wanted to throw at you. How many millions of gallons of water do you think it takes to frack one well?"

Norcom said that the total amount of clean water that could be spent on a single fracking well over its use is 10 million gallons, Norcom told the audience, "Those of you in California know how bad it's getting there, but you need to have a portfolio of water stocks in your account. If you had bought water stocks at the beginning of this year, they're up without dividends between fifteen and thirty percent."

The cost of water to Americans across the Southwest has risen dramatically since 2000, increasing more than sixty percent in cities like Phoenix, El Paso, and Los Angeles, and over one hundred percent in San Diego, Santa Cruz, and Las Vegas, according to a report by USA Today.

Some see this crisis in one of the essential needs for human life as an opportunity for profit.

"I will substantially argue to you that the water resource problem that we have in this country is very, very likely to continue, part of it being sucked up by the drillers over here," Norcom said.

From his perspective, that means water will have "a great place in a portfolio" of investments.

Whatever value fracking may have for speculators, its costs to those living near drill sites are serious. Fracking has been implicated in the record seven earthquakes that hit Oklahoma in just two days over the past weekend. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, which is investigating possible links between fracking and the quakes, Oklahoma's rate of earthquakes has increased by fifty percent since October 2013.

Perhaps seismometers will be the next "asset class."

-----

CMD's Research Director, Nick Surgey, contributed to this report.

Learn more about fracking at FrackSwarm.org.

Reprinted with permission from PRWatch.

Austerity in Detroit - Pt 2: Detroit and Iraq — Both Are Plundered by the Same Bandits

Occupy Detroit March in Solidarity with Egypt - 2011. (Photo by Colleen Wellington)

The Race to the Bottom under global, militarized capitalism creates communities of shared misery. Increasingly, it is almost as dangerous to be inside U.S. borders as on the outside. “Iraq was invaded with soldiers, guns and bombs. Detroit was invaded by the corporate ‘suits’ who made a fast buck for themselves.” Both are plundered by the same bandits.

By BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

“All of former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s incompetence could not have created the ongoing occupation of Detroit by the thieves in high places.” 

The ugly face of empire and disaster capitalism is visible all over the world. Detroit, Michigan, was once a thriving city but was sent into a tailspin by the deindustrialization of the United States, white flight, and institutional racism which blamed black people who were in fact the victims of catastrophe. The coup de grace was delivered by big banks like UBS, Bank of America and Barclays, which sold risky derivatives schemes to corrupt Detroit politicians. When the financial deal inevitably headed south, the banks were the creditors first in line for a payout.

Far back in that line were the workers and people of Detroit. The emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, whose very position they had voted against establishing, rules the city. The new mayor is a figurehead and the people have no representation as the Republican governor and emergency manager remake the city for capital and the gentrifying settler class.

A world away in Iraq, a nation is crumbling under the weight of eleven years of violent occupation by the United States. The once developing nation is now a ruin, with all of its infrastructure and systems from health care to education destroyed by western avarice. The prime minister who was chosen with America’s blessing, Nouri al-Maliki, has now become an inconvenience and faces a bleak fate.

“In the United States, residents of a major city must plead to the international community for the right to access water.”

The Bush administration and now the Obama team determined that promoting one side in sectarian political disputes would make for a smooth running and profitable occupation. Instead they brought war between Sunni and Shia and with goal of knocking down more dominoes, continued to fund jihadists who always upset their plans. Now Maliki is being told to get out of office if he wants help in crushing the enemies that America made for his country.

Just as Iraq’s infrastructure has been destroyed, Detroit residents now live without basic services which ought to be regarded as the right of every human being. In the United States, a country which boasts of its high level of advancement, residents of a major city must plead to the international community for the right to access water.

In a city already on the brink, the powers that be chose to pressure struggling people to pay increased fees for water. They have also used harsh and sometimes improper methods to deprive even those who have paid their bills. No one can survive at all without water to drink, and one cannot survive very well without water for cooking, cleaning and sanitation. Very powerful people in boardrooms and government offices made decisions that turned Detroit into an Iraq in America’s midst and now sneer at pleas for mercy.

Desperate Detroiters represented by the Blue Planet Project, the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, Food & Water Watch and the Detroit People’s Water Board, have made their case to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water. They issued a report which outlines the latest scheme to destroy Detroit as a city and as a home to poor and working people. The plan will ultimately privatize the water system and make Detroit another location for prime real estate and riches for the few.

“Very powerful people in boardrooms and government offices made decisions that turned Detroit into an Iraq in America’s midst and now sneer at pleas for mercy.”

President Obama and his cohorts in the Democratic and Republican parties will go to any lengths to prop up the empire, but do little to help people in need. American allies in Ukraine or Iraq and other countries receive astronomical sums of money in order to help maintain Manifest Destiny. Poor people in Detroit and the rest of the country are not so lucky. They are seen only as obstacles to putting the rule of capital firmly in place.

Iraq was invaded with soldiers, guns and bombs. Detroit was invaded by the corporate “suits” who made a fast buck for themselves. The end result is the same for Michiganders and Iraqis alike. They end up suffering in a plundered society while other people make out like the bandits that they really are.

The organizations which reached out to the U.N. took an important step in changing the Detroit narrative. Politicians and the corporate media dismiss the city’s troubles as the fault of incompetent black people. All of former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s incompetence could not have created the ongoing occupation of Detroit by the thieves in high places. The outreach to the United Nations is important for another reason. It points out that millions of Americans live an existence far from the myth of the great country. They are struggling to survive just like millions in the so-called third world. It is the gangsters who run the show in Baghdad and in Michigan too.

RELATED STORIES:

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 1: Babies Pay for Detroit’s 60-Year Slide With Mortality Above Mexico's
• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 3: Detroit Residents Seek U.N. Intervention as City Shuts Off Water to Thousands
   
• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 4: “Operation Afro-Dilution” — Michigan’s Plan to Flood Detroit with Upscale Immigrants

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 5: The Revolution Will Be Privatized — They're Bulldozing a Fifth of Detroit

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 6: The Bankruptcy "Setup" — It Didn't Have To Happen, It Was Rigged by a Cabal of Legislators, Bankers and Politicians

_________________________

Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.

Austerity in Detroit - Pt 1: Babies Pay for Detroit’s 60-Year Slide With Mortality Above Mexico's

#175436947 / gettyimages.com

By Esmé E. Deprez and Chris Christoff
Detroit's 60-year deterioration has taken a toll not just on business owners, investors and taxpayers. It’s meant misery for its most vulnerable: children and the women who bear them.

While infant mortality fell for decades across the U.S., progress bypassed Detroit, which in 2012 saw a greater proportion of babies die before their first birthdays than any American city, a rate higher than in China, Mexico and Thailand. Pregnancy-related deaths helped put Michigan’s maternal mortality rate in the bottom fifth among states. One in three pregnancies in the city is terminated.

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RELATED STORIES:

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 2: Detroit and Iraq — Both Are Plundered by the Same Bandits
  
• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 3: Detroit Residents Seek U.N. Intervention as City Shuts Off Water to Thousands
   
• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 4: “Operation Afro-Dilution” — Michigan’s Plan to Flood Detroit with Upscale Immigrants

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 5: The Revolution Will Be Privatized — They're Bulldozing a Fifth of Detroit

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 6: The Bankruptcy "Setup" — It Didn't Have To Happen, It Was Rigged by a Cabal of Legislators, Bankers and Politicians

Austerity in Detroit - Pt 5: The Revolution Will Be Privatized — They're Bulldozing a Fifth of Detroit

The Revolution Will Be Privatized:
"The plan doesn’t extend to rebuilding the properties – it’ll be down to private companies and developers to buy up the land and rebuild."

Detroit’s Lafayette building, demolished in 2009. Credit: Wikipedia commons

By Barbara Speed
Bad news for fans of ruin porn: Detroit is hoping to rid itself of its unique collection of dilapidated buildings and elegantly rubbish-strewn abandoned lots, and all within the next five years.
In May, a group ominously titled the “Detroit Blight Removal Task Force” released a report claiming that around 22 per cent of the city’s properties were “blighted” – vacant, damaged or considered dangerous. They also found that, of the 84,000 properties owned by public entities, just over 5,000 were occupied by squatters, making the city of Detroit, the report’s authors noted, “a very large and inadvertent landlord”.

In May, a group ominously titled the “Detroit Blight Removal Task Force” released a report claiming that around 22 per cent of the city’s properties were “blighted” – vacant, damaged or considered dangerous. They also found that, of the 84,000 properties owned by public entities, just over 5,000 were occupied by squatters, making the city of Detroit, the report’s authors noted, “a very large and inadvertent landlord”.

The task force’s proposed solution is to demolish it all over the next five years and start again. Unfortunately, the plan doesn’t extend to rebuilding the properties – it’ll be down to private companies and developers to buy up the land and rebuild.

READ MORE

RELATED STORIES:

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 1: Babies Pay for Detroit’s 60-Year Slide With Mortality Above Mexico's
  
• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 2: Detroit and Iraq — Both Are Plundered by the Same Bandits
  
• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 3: Detroit Residents Seek U.N. Intervention as City Shuts Off Water to Thousands
   
• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 4: “Operation Afro-Dilution” — Michigan’s Plan to Flood Detroit with Upscale Immigrants

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 6: The Bankruptcy "Setup" — It Didn't Have To Happen, It Was Rigged by a Cabal of Legislators, Bankers and Politicians

Austerity in Detroit - Pt 3: Detroit Residents Seek U.N. Intervention as City Shuts Off Water to Thousands

Disaster Capitalism Via a Deliberately-Engineered Bankruptcy,
Followed by Austerity and Privatization

Protesters against water shutoffs in Detroit. (Screen capture from DemocracyNow video)

The poverty rate in Detroit is approximately 40 percent, water bills have increase by 119 percent within the last decade. Activists say Detroit is trying to push through a private takeover of its water system at the expense of basic rights. The Detroit Water and Sewage Department says half of their accounts are "delinquent."

Beginning in March, water has been shut off for up 3000 accounts a week. Two-thirds of those impacted by the water shutoffs involve families with children. Households with no running water are subject to having children taken from them and placed in foster care. The population of Detroit is 80 percent African American.

RELATED STORIES:

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 1: Babies Pay for Detroit’s 60-Year Slide With Mortality Above Mexico's
• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 2: Detroit and Iraq — Both Are Plundered by the Same Bandits
   
• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 4: “Operation Afro-Dilution” — Michigan’s Plan to Flood Detroit with Upscale Immigrants

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 5: The Revolution Will Be Privatized — They're Bulldozing a Fifth of Detroit

• Austerity in Detroit - Pt 6: The Bankruptcy "Setup" — It Didn't Have To Happen, It Was Rigged by a Cabal of Legislators, Bankers and Politicians

No More 'Public Schools': New Orleans District Moves To An All-Charter System — Disaster Capitalism in Post-Katrina New Orleans?

The drill team of Sophie B. Wright, a charter school in the New Orleans Recovery
School District. The city's all-charter system is the first in the U.S. (Skooksie/Flickr)

"Disaster capitalism" seeks to swoop in during a crisis
and turn a disaster for the many into a profit for the few.


By Alan Greenblatt
The nation's largest experiment with charter schools is expanding.

The Recovery School District, a state control board that runs most schools in New Orleans, shut down the last of its five traditional public schools this week, making it the first all-charter system in the nation.

"Twenty years ago, the first state charter laws showed that districts need not run every public school," says Andy Smarick, a senior policy fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank that backs charters. "The RSD is now demonstrating that urban districts may not need to run any schools."

Already, about 90 percent of New Orleans schoolchildren are educated in charter schools. There is still the remnant of a local school board. But only five of the 89 public schools in New Orleans will be run by the Orleans Parish School Board next fall. The rest will be operated by more than 40 different charter organizations. Some are part of national chains, like , while others are run by local community groups.

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What We Owe Nigeria’s Kidnapped Schoolgirls

Screen capture from YouTube video.

People worldwide are calling for action to bring back the kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria. But concern for the girls demands that we think carefully about the harmful consequences of proposed solutions – especially those calling for US military intervention.

By Yifat Susskind
It is a nightmare that, at least for a moment, gripped the world’s attention. Hundreds of girls were kidnapped from their school in Nigeria by the armed fundamentalist group Boko Haram. The group later released a video of some of the girls, draped in dark colors and seated on the ground. Their families scoured this footage, searching their daughters’ faces for answers to their questions. Is she hurt? Is she afraid?

The girls’ faces are haunting. Their families are desperate. The failure of the Nigerian authorities to respond adequately is infuriating. The justifiable reaction has been a global outcry to Bring Back Our Girls.

RELATED STORY: Boko Haram Suspected of Kidnapping Another 20 Women

But the safety of the girls and their communities demands more from us. It demands that we think long and hard about the consequences of the actions we call for and not merely implore our governments to “Do Something.” After all, for the US, that “something” has been to fast-track plans for militarizing its engagement with Africa, primarily through AFRICOM, the US military command for the continent.

Rather than issuing a blank cheque for military intervention, we need to stay focused on the girls and their well-being, now and into the future. Those are certainly the priorities of the grassroots activists in Nigeria who have staged waves of protests and sit-ins. When they issued the call to Bring Back Our Girls, it had a clear target: their own government, tasked with and failing to protect their rights.
For that reason, some have condemned as naïve and damaging the well-intentioned appeals of those outside of Nigeria demanding action from the US and other foreign powers. Writer Jumoke Balogun points out, “Your calls for the United States to get involved in this crisis undermines the democratic process in Nigeria and co-opts the growing movement against the inept and kleptocratic Jonathan administration.” Those of us outside of Nigeria would do well to think beyond retweeting hashtags and to listen closely to these warnings.

US military footprint in Africa

Like all US military ventures, AFRICOM is a vehicle to secure US economic and security interests in the region. The fact that AFRICOM is not a word one hears often in media and policy discussions is a testament to how embedded the US military project is, both in Africa and in our consciousness. It strikes few of us as unsettling that the US and other military powers operate bases around the world, an enduring footprint of colonial and unequal power relations.

The latest news is that the US military has launched a Predator drone to conduct surveillance in the search for the girls. But militarization will not make the girls of Borno State and their families safer. Just ask families in Yemen about US drones. Those drone strikes, many originating from a US military base in Djibouti, terrorize communities, assassinate people with no due process and have killed bystanders, including children.

Drone enthusiasts realize that they are losing the battle for global public opinion. More and more people are learning about the devastating impacts of drone strikes on communities that live in fear of the next random explosion. Often, these realizations come from the inventive tactics of grassroots activists like those who printed and swathed an entire Pakistani field in the single image of a child, a stark reminder to a drone pilot thousands of miles away of the consequences of pushing that button.

A woman mourns during a rally to pressure the Nigerian government.
Photo: Ayemoba Godswill / Demotix

It is no surprise that the US military would seize upon the abducted Nigerian schoolgirls as a public relations antidote to manufacture a softer side to drones. What better face than that of a vulnerable girl to signal the benevolent intent of US troops in Africa? In fact, the search for these girls is not the first time that AFRICOM has put a humanitarian face on expanding the US military footprint. Across the region, US military delivery of mosquito nets and prenatal vitamins softens people’s realization that the US military is there to stay – nice and close to known oil reserves. As Joeva Rock writes, “These projects are more like a Trojan Horse: dressed up as gifts, they establish points of entry on the continent when and where they may be needed.”

US “humanitarian intervention” has already benefited Boko Haram. In 2011, a US/NATO attack destroyed the Libyan state in the name of democracy and human rights. The weapons given to rebels there have since scattered, ending up in the hands of groups like Boko Haram. The more that we militarize the response to the girls’ kidnapping, the more we run the risk of triggering new “unintended consequences,” including more guns turning up in the wrong hands.

The erosion of civilian responses to catastrophe

We have become accustomed to seeing the military encroach on formerly civilian realms of policing, search and rescue operations, disaster relief, development and more. The militarization of a wide array of government functions serves to keep “defense” budgets flush even through government spending cuts.

The pivotal shift came hours after the attacks of 9/11, when the Bush Administration chose to define a crime against humanity as an act of war to justify invading Iraq and Afghanistan. A robust rule-of-law response upholding human rights would have entailed broad international cooperation in conducting an investigation, arrests, trial and prosecution of the perpetrators. Instead, the US declared war, setting us all on a course that now makes it hard to imagine what our world might look like had the US pursued justice instead of endless war in the wake of the atrocity.

Twitter users respond to Michelle Obama's joining the #bringbackourgirls campaign.

We soon saw disaster militarism come into its own after Hurricane Katrina, when the military—in violation of a founding principle of US law—patrolled the streets of New Orleans, in essence occupying the flooded city. Like the grateful families accepting mosquito nets from US troops in Niger, only a few in New Orleans questioned the presence of soldiers on their streets in the days after the hurricane. In more and more cities across the US, people are witnessing the dramatic militarization of their police.

And now, when Boko Haram has committed what is so obviously a criminal act, we struggle to imagine a solution that does not entail Predator surveillance or US boots on the ground. And the US military remains a hammer in search of a nail, only too eager to exploit every opportunity to deepen its hold in the region.

Women are not pawns – they are leaders

If an unqualified call to Bring Back Our Girls opens the door to the “Trojan horse” of humanitarian intervention, then what is the solution?

Is it to rely on the Nigerian military to act? It is, after all, a primary obligation of every government to protect its citizens. Yet many in Nigeria, including family members of the kidnapped girls, have faulted their government both for inaction and for repressive tactics that have only emboldened Boko Haram.

It took the abduction of more than 300 girls in a single night for the world to take notice, but women and girls have long been targets of Nigeria’s brutal conflict with Boko Haram. And they are not merely civilians caught in the cross-fire: violence against women is a key tactic of military cultures the world over. Nigeria is no exception.

Like Boko Haram itself, the Nigerian military has waged its battles on the bodies of women and girls, reportedly raping and kidnapping female family members of suspected Boko Haram members to attack the group as a whole.

In 2011, a leader in Borno State, where the girls were abducted, told a journalist, “We initially thought the military would employ logical strategies to put an end to this cycle of violence... [but] the soldiers went from door to door killing innocent people, they broke into homes stealing property and raping young women.” Boko Haram leader Abubakr Shekau promised revenge in a video, warning, “Since you are now holding our women, just wait and see what will happen to your own women.”

“Our women” versus “your women” – one would be hard pressed to find a clearer demonstration of women being reduced to pawns. That is what Boko Haram has done to these teenagers and what we risk perpetuating with ill-conceived military solutions. Where is the solution that brings them back home, without subjecting their communities to more militarism and violence?

Unfortunately, the May 17 international security summit on Nigeria sought a regional strategy to counter Boko Haram, without considering these questions. Representatives from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, France, Niger and Nigeria, the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States gathered without so much as consulting those most threatened by the crisis: namely, the people of northeastern Nigeria. There was neither one woman from Nigeria at the meeting nor any representatives of the affected communities.

The UK will host a follow-up summit in June, and it is crucial that Nigerian women’s organizations be represented there. Organizations like the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom have issued a call to ensure that the UK includes Nigerian women’s civil society organizations.

These women are the ones who have been most vocal in demanding a peaceful resolution. They stand as role models for Nigeria’s girls in their determination to face down police harassment and government denials and to galvanize a nationwide movement to demand the return of the abducted girls.

Bring Back Our Girls is more than the rallying cry of desperate families. It signals a wider demand throughout Nigerian society for their government to prioritize girls, their right to education, and gender equality for all. We should call for actions that advance those goals.

Reprinted with permission from openDemocracy.

'Shock Doctrine' Comes to Ukraine — Cashing In On a Crisis: Vice President Joe Biden's Son Slated To Join Ukraine Gas Corp

R. Hunter Biden (Screen capture from YouTube video)

Biden son’s appointment to Ukraine gas company raises no conflict of interest, White House says

R. Hunter Biden, a lawyer and a partner in an investment firm, was recently named to the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, a private company that has drilled for natural gas in Ukraine since 2002.

By Reuters
The White House on Tuesday brushed aside questions about whether the involvement of Vice President Joe Biden's son in a Ukrainian natural gas company raised ethical issues at a time when the administration is promoting energy diversity in the country.

In a statement on Burisma's website, Hunter Biden said he would help the company with "transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion," and other issues.

Natural gas has been a central issue in recent tensions between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine depends on Russia for most of its natural gas, and has accused Moscow of hiking natural gas prices as punishment for moving closer to the European Union.

In April, the vice president traveled to Kiev and discussed how the United States could help provide technical expertise for expanding domestic production of natural gas.

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