CISPES posted:US Continues Ransoming Development Aid, Now Using CAFTA To Threaten Social ProgramsApril 11, 2014.
The US’s ransoming of development aid has entered a new phase in El Salvador. Not content with the passage of the controversial Public-Private Partnership (P3) Law, nor with its modification by way of various reforms, the US government has now unleashed a new series of conditions it claims necessary for the disbursement of nearly $300 million in Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) development funding. This time, it’s the groundbreaking social programs and reforms initiated by the nation’s first progressive government in the crosshairs.
On Tuesday, April 8, John Barrett, economic advisor at the US Embassy in San Salvador, revealed “concerns” the US Trade Representative has about El Salvador’s compliance with the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), referring specifically to the FMLN-Funes administration’s family farming program, which provides domestic, non-genetically modified (GMO) seeds to small scale farmers to promote local production and food sovereignty. In fact, the US government’s concerns go beyond just subsidized sustainable agriculture. The US Trade Representative’s 2014 report on El Salvador also includes anxieties about the National Healthcare Reform’s measure to allow the Ministry of Health to purchase pharmaceuticals without an open bidding process (allowing them to buy cheaper medicines from Venezuela and Cuba) and the 2012 Medications Law, which regulates El Salvador’s notoriously extortionate medicine prices. In effect, the US government is holding the MCC funds hostage in order to advocate for the interests of Monsanto and Big Pharma at the expense of the vast majority of the Salvadoran people.
El Salvador has already met the conditions established by the MCC board required to qualify for the funding. Nevertheless, the US continues to surprise the country with ever-more conditions. The US’s unending demands on El Salvador’s policy makers exposes the MCC funds as a mere mechanism for the imposition of US commercial interests. With a new FMLN administration poised to assume power on June 1st, the United States appears intent on undermining further attempts to build sustainable, equitable, alternative development initiatives and rolling back existing ones. The invocation of CAFTA against the pioneering actions of the country’s first FMLN government lays bare a struggle between two opposing models of governance, one that protects the interests of a small, corporate elite, and one that serves the popular majority.
CISPES posted:Action Alert: Tell Your Rep To Defend El Salvador’s Family Farmers!June 24, 2014.
The U.S. Embassy in El Salvador is using the pending approval of a $277 million compact with the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to seek outrageous economic concessions from the Salvadoran government. The U.S. is demanding that El Salvador repeal the law that enables the government to purchase seeds from small farmers and cooperatives for its highly-successful Family Agriculture Plan. If this law is repealed, only corporations (including Monsanto!) would be able to bid on the seed contracts.
Two weeks ago, CISPES delivered a petition (signed by many of you!) telling the U.S. to stop this unfair pressure on the Salvadoran government. We’ve got some good signs that the Embassy is feeling the heat – now’s the time to turn it up!
We need Congress to get involved THIS WEEK – and we need YOUR help to do it.Farmer From Family Agriculture Program
Representatives Pocan and Honda are sending a letter to Secretary Kerry this Friday demanding that the U.S. government stop conditioning development aid on changes that would jeopardize family farmers in El Salvador, and they have asked your Congressperson to join them. Your Representative needs to hear from YOU so they know that their constituents care about this issue.
CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVE TODAY!
There are two ways to take action.
First: Email your Representative today. The more people they hear from, the more likely they are to pay attention.
Second: Call your Rep using the sample call script below – calls can really make the difference. Use this link to find their number in DC. When you call, ask for the person who handles Foreign Affairs.
Hi my name is ________, a constituent from (your city). I am calling because we need Representative ______ to join other Members of Congress to ensure that negotiations for the Millennium Challenge Corporation compact with El Salvador don’t threaten one of the country’s most important food security programs.
The Family Agriculture Plan currently helps 400,000 rural families by providing seeds, fertilizer and technical support to ensure that El Salvador has an adequate supply of corn and beans for its domestic consumption.
The US Embassy is demanding that the Salvadoran government eliminate a law that allows them to buy seeds for this program from small producers, not just from corporations, even though this provision has been instrumental to reducing poverty in El Salvador.
The US Trade Representative claims that they are “concerned” that the new mechanism for purchasing seeds from small-scale producers violates CAFTA, prompting the US Embassy to announce that unless the mechanism is eliminated, the MCC compact won’t be signed.
I am very concerned that the State Department would allow development aid to be used as a vehicle to promote the interests of big business over small-scale farmers.
Will Representative _______ sign onto a Dear Colleague letter being circulated by Representatives Pocan and Honda about this issue? (If so: Please contact Alicia Molt in Representative Pocan's office by the end of the day on Thursday)
this is exactly why alternative sources of foreign aid like Venezuela and even Russia are important to have around. it's also why the US felt so threatened by the Zelaya administration in Honduras. he was seeking out help from Venezuela that would have reduced his country's dependence on neo-liberal institutions.
hopefully the new Salvador Sanchez Ceren administration in El Salvador will be able to get financing from less demanding sources.
Themselves posted:this just in: foreign aid is always political, designed to subvert anti-capitalist/promote capitalist interests
Sorry I hate to be "that kind of guy" but do you have some evidence to back up this accusation?
FSAD posted:It seems like these days under President Obama US foreign aid isn't as 'free' as it is implied to be, nor does it always take into account the best interests of the country to which it is being dispersed (or withheld from, in this case)
I think you mean "disbursed."
FSAD posted:Themselves posted:this just in: foreign aid is always political, designed to subvert anti-capitalist/promote capitalist interests
Sorry I hate to be "that kind of guy" but do you have some evidence to back up this accusation?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la81eNcBf0k#t=1241 ; also 24:27 if you get tired of the first part
i dont want to give a whole deconstruction of the marshall plan but i would also investigate that
Themselves posted:all sources are biased time to grow up
It is not that the historian can avoid emphasis of some facts and
not of others. This is as natural to him as to the mapmaker, who, in
order to produce a usable drawing for practical purposes, must first
flatten and distort the shape of the earth, then choose out of the bewil
dering mass of geographic information those things needed for the
purpose of this or that particular map.
My argument cannot be against selection, simplification, emphasis,
which are inevitable for both cartographers and historians. But the
mapmaker's distortion is a technical necessity for a common purpose
shared by all people who need maps. The historian's distortion is more
than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending
interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian
means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political
or racial or national or sexual.
Furthermore, this ideological interest is not openly expressed in
the way a mapmaker's technical interest is obvious ("This is a Mercator
projection for longrange navigationfor shortrange, you'd better use a
different projection"). No, it is presented as if all readers of history had
a common interest which historians serve to the best of their ability.
This is not intentional deception; the historian has been trained in a
society in which education and knowledge are put forward as technical
problems of excellence and not as tools for contending social classes,
races, nations.
More @ http://www.freecommonlaw.us/ZINN.pdf Page 6 and on
Edited by Themselves ()
“Why should we cherish “objectivity”, as if ideas were innocent, as if they don’t serve one interest or another? Surely, we want to be objective if that means telling the truth as we see it, not concealing information that may be embarrassing to our point of view. But we don’t want to be objective if it means pretending that ideas don’t play a part in the social struggles of our time, that we don’t take sides in those struggles.
Indeed, it is impossible to be neutral. In a world already moving in certain directions, where wealth and power are already distributed in certain ways, neutrality means accepting the way things are now. It is a world of clashing interests – war against peace, nationalism against internationalism, equality against greed, and democracy against elitism – and it seems to me both impossible and undesirable to be neutral in those conflicts.”
Gibbonstrength posted:heya hyuck hyuck i reckon that FSAD feller was tellin a ironic joke instead of rilly honest to god askin you fer a better source hyuck hyuck
shut the fuck up
elemennop posted:how's life going fsad?
Pretty good, I'm heading back to the US in 11 days, looking forward to seeing the huge amounts of progress the nation has made in the 5 years since I had left.
FSAD posted:Pretty good, I'm heading back to the US in 11 days, looking forward to seeing the huge amounts of progress the nation has made in the 5 years since I had left.
can you get me pocky
Themselves posted:all sources are biased time to grow up
getfiscal posted:can you get me pocky
Sure, they have a bunch of flavors here you might ironically enjoy
elemennop posted:god bless.
you moving back here, or just visiting?
Moving back for good! Thank goodness, China is awful... for example did you know that here McDonalds has a World Cup burger which looks like a McChicken but is actually some kind of shrimp burger without any chicken at all? And I don't even want to talk about Wendy's (hint, there are none to talk about)
