The global economic crisis has devastated workers around the world, none more than migrants whose daily wages are dependent on the whims of global financiers. Witness Dubai. Even before the meltdown of Dubai World, migrants whose labor literally built Dubai from the ground up suffered serious job losses with the onset of the global recession in 2008.
During the past several months, I spent nearly 30 hours in meetings of a private sector committee tasked with advising the Obama administration on a particular set of international economic policies.
A bizarre meeting on the "Future of North America" was scheduled to take place on November 2 and 3. Members of the newly created, self-appointed "Commission on North American Prosperity" would have gathered in Toronto. Amazingly, the meeting was considered a "summit," even though none of the presidents slated to lead it are sitting presidents. There was George H.W. Bush representing the United States, Vicente Fox standing in for Mexico, Jean Chretien for Canada, and Ricardo Lagos from Chile. All of a sudden this "summit" has been cancelled.
Fernando Lopez woke up on a Sunday morning out of a job. For the electrical worker, the feeling was terrifying. "From one day to the next, they left us with no job — nothing," Lopez said, as he marched alongside some 200,000 fellow workers and their supporters...
Over the past 10 years, the Yes Men have emerged as an infamously daring and creative duo of anti-corporate pranksters. In their new movie, The Yes Men Fix the World, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno (known in their non-activist lives as Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos) explain their methodology: “What we do is pass ourselves off as representatives of big corporations we don’t like,” they say. “We make fake websites, then wait for people to accidentally invite us to conferences.”
As the self-appointed economic guardians of the world and thousands of protesters converge on Pittsburgh for the third summit of the Group of 20 (G20), expectations are low that a breakthrough will take place in the form of a coordinated action to address the global economic crisis.
With multiple crises affecting our world – global economy, climate change, resource depletion – we must urgently redirect the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on preparing for war. The United States is far and away the largest military spender, accounting for nearly 50% of all global military expenditures. Together, the United States, Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea spent nearly $1 trillion in 2008 on the military. And despite the current financial crisis, military spending and arms exports are on the rise.
Yet, for about one-tenth of this near-trillion dollar amount – about $90 billion a year – we can achieve more genuine security by eliminating global starvation and malnutrition, educating every child on earth, making clean water and sanitation accessible for all, and reversing the global spread of AIDS and malaria.
It is time for the G-20 to take a stand on military spending. It is time for the richest countries of the world, beginning with the United States, to take the lead in shifting military spending to human needs. The world can’t wait.
This response is part of a strategic dialogue on the IMF. The original essay by Martin S. Edwards is here, and the original essay by Soren Ambrose is here. Edwards’ response is here.
This essay is part of a strategic dialogue on the IMF. The response by Soren Ambrose is here; Ambrose’s essay is here, followed by Edwards’ response.
This response is part of a strategic dialogue on the IMF. The original essay by Martin S. Edwards is here, and the original essay by Soren Ambrose is here. Ambrose’s response is here.