Article Archives tag:www.srwolf.com,2007-08-27:/wolfsoc/articlearchives//9 2008-10-05T04:04:49Z Research resources. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Movable Type Open Source 4.2rc1-en Equal Before Mammon tag:www.srwolf.com,2008:/wolfsoc/articlearchives//9.2157 2008-10-05T04:00:45Z 2008-10-05T04:04:49Z 9/15/08 James Suroweicki, New Yorker, Equal Before Mammon - Pay inequality.She was an ordinary middle-class mom who, despite fierce criticism, succeeded in a male-dominated profession. She challenged the local establishment and became a national figure, earning herself a spot... Rowan Equal Before Mammon - Pay inequality.

She was an ordinary middle-class mom who, despite fierce criticism, succeeded in a male-dominated profession. She challenged the local establishment and became a national figure, earning herself a spot as a featured speaker at her party's recent Convention. But she wasn't the governor of Alaska. She was a woman named Lilly Ledbetter, a former middle manager at a Goodyear plant in Alabama, who appeared at the Democratic Convention to give a human face to the slogan "Equal pay for equal work."
]]> Ledbetter's unlikely journey to center stage began in the late nineteen-nineties, when she received an anonymous note revealing the salaries of her fellow-managers, all of whom were men. Although Ledbetter did the same job as her colleagues, and had more seniority than some of them, they were all being paid considerably more than she was. Ledbetter sued, under the Civil Rights Act, and proved that her lower pay was the result of discrimination early in her career, the effects of which had never been remedied. But victory was short-lived; the verdict was overturned on appeal, and then the Supreme Court ruled against her. The Court did not deny that Ledbetter had been discriminated against. However, according to the Civil Rights Act, Ledbetter's lawsuit had to be filed within a hundred and eighty days, and the Court ruled that the clock started ticking with the first act of discrimination, almost two decades before Ledbetter found out what was going on.

Ledbetter was out of luck. But the Court did leave open a possibility for others like her: if Congress wanted a more realistic time frame for lawsuits, all it had to do was change the law. And so, acting with surprising dispatch, that's precisely what Congress tried to do. Last year, the House passed a bill, named after Ledbetter, that essentially did away with the statute of limitations on pay discrimination, and the Senate was set to do the same until Republicans filibustered it to death.

Protecting workers from discrimination is a fairly uncontroversial idea. So opponents of the bill, who include John McCain, insisted that, while they're in favor of equal pay, the new law would unleash a flood of frivolous litigation. That's a familiar excuse, and in this case a threadbare one. There would likely be more lawsuits if the bill was passed--the point, after all, was to allow more people to sue--but there was no reason to expect a deluge, since, before the Court's decision, it's probable that most potential litigants had assumed a less stringent interpretation of the time limit anyway. And giving workers more time to sue makes sense, because pay discrimination usually takes a while to become evident, and, insofar as raises and bonuses are based on initial salaries, its effects never go away.

Other opponents of the bill depict it as a stalking horse for the idea of "comparable worth" (also known as "pay equity"), which would require the government to shrink the current gender wage gap by insuring that workers in female-dominated professions receive pay similar to that of workers in male-dominated professions, as long as they're doing work of "similar value." To have the government, rather than the market, set wages and decide what kinds of work are comparable to others is indeed a poor idea. But the Lilly Ledbetter bill has nothing to do with comparable worth. It's about closing a loophole that has enabled employers to get away with active discrimination. Comparable worth would require the government to enforce equal pay for different jobs. But Ledbetter just wanted what she was entitled to--equal pay for the same job.

Does the Ledbetter bill matter? It's true that active discrimination is rarer these days than it once was. But, contrary to what much economic work would predict, racial and sex discrimination is still a powerful force in the job market. Decades ago, the economist Gary Becker showed that "taste-based" discrimination (pure prejudice) could not survive in a truly competitive talent market, because unprejudiced companies would outperform prejudiced ones by hiring smart women and minorities. Yet the introduction of blind auditions at major symphony orchestras, starting in the seventies, has increased by fifty per cent the likelihood of female performers' advancing--a clear sign that, for decades, orchestras had made bad talent decisions because of their prejudice without being punished. More striking, recent work by Kerwin Charles and Jonathan Guryan, of the University of Chicago, shows that, under certain reasonable conditions, market competition will not necessarily eradicate discrimination. That may be why, they suggest, the gap between black and white wages is widest in the most prejudiced parts of the U.S.--precisely what you'd expect if businessmen could discriminate and get away with it.

Of course, just because the market can't prevent discrimination doesn't mean the government should. And so there is a principled argument against the Ledbetter bill: namely, that Lilly Ledbetter was an adult; that if she didn't think she was being paid fairly she was free to ask for more money or to leave; and that government interference with the idea of what constitutes fair pay is likely to cause more problems than it's worth. Unlike the current opposition to the bill, this is an honest position to take. But it's also, for good reasons, a profoundly unpopular one, which is why few Republicans have voiced it. Instead, opponents of the bill have acted like McCain, proclaiming their support for fair pay while doing their best to insure that workers have a hard time getting it. Maybe it's time for them to give Americans some straight talk and unveil a new slogan: "Unequal pay for equal work." It may not be catchy, but at least it's honest.
]]> Whites Swim in Racial Preference tag:www.srwolf.com,2008:/wolfsoc/articlearchives//9.2149 2008-10-02T02:14:23Z 2008-10-02T02:17:23Z Whites Swim in Racial Preference. Tim Wise. Alternet. 2/20/2003.In criticizing affirmative action at the University of Michigan, Bush made clear the inability of yet another white person to grasp the magnitude of white privilege.... Rowan Whites Swim in Racial Preference. Tim Wise. Alternet. 2/20/2003.

In criticizing affirmative action at the University of Michigan, Bush made clear the inability of yet another white person to grasp the magnitude of white privilege.

]]> Ask a fish what water is and you'll get no answer. Even if fish were capable of speech, they would likely have no explanation for the element they swim in every minute of every day of their lives. Water simply is. Fish take it for granted.

So too with this thing we hear so much about, "racial preference." While many whites seem to think the notion originated with affirmative action programs, intended to expand opportunities for historically marginalized people of color, racial preference has actually had a long and very white history.

Affirmative action for whites was embodied in the abolition of European indentured servitude, which left black (and occasionally indigenous) slaves as the only unfree labor in the colonies that would become the U.S.

Affirmative action for whites was the essence of the 1790 Naturalization Act, which allowed virtually any European immigrant to become a full citizen, even while blacks, Asians and American Indians could not.

Affirmative action for whites was the guiding principle of segregation, Asian exclusion laws, and the theft of half of Mexico for the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny.

In recent history, affirmative action for whites motivated racially restrictive housing policies that helped 15 million white families procure homes with FHA loans from the 1930s to the '60s, while people of color were mostly excluded from the same programs.

In other words, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that white America is the biggest collective recipient of racial preference in the history of the cosmos. It has skewed our laws, shaped our public policy and helped create the glaring inequalities with which we still live.

White families, on average, have a net worth that is 11 times the net worth of black families, according to a recent study; and this gap remains substantial even when only comparing families of like size, composition, education and income status.

A full-time black male worker in 2003 makes less in real dollar terms than similar white men were earning in 1967. Such realities are not merely indicative of the disadvantages faced by blacks, but indeed are evidence of the preferences afforded whites -- a demarcation of privilege that is the necessary flipside of discrimination.

Indeed, the value of preferences to whites over the years is so enormous that the current baby-boomer generation of whites is currently in the process of inheriting between $7-10 trillion in assets from their parents and grandparents -- property handed down by those who were able to accumulate assets at a time when people of color by and large could not. To place this in the proper perspective, we should note that this amount of money is more than all the outstanding mortgage debt, all the credit card debt, all the savings account assets, all the money in IRAs and 401k retirement plans, all the annual profits for U.S. manufacturers, and our entire merchandise trade deficit combined.

Yet few whites have ever thought of our position as resulting from racial preferences. Indeed, we pride ourselves on our hard work and ambition, as if somehow we invented the concepts.

As if we have worked harder than the folks who were forced to pick cotton and build levies for free; harder than the Latino immigrants who spend 10 hours a day in fields picking strawberries or tomatoes; harder than the (mostly) women of color who clean hotel rooms or change bedpans in hospitals, or the (mostly) men of color who collect our garbage.

We strike the pose of self-sufficiency while ignoring the advantages we have been afforded in every realm of activity: housing, education, employment, criminal justice, politics, banking and business. We ignore the fact that at almost every turn, our hard work has been met with access to an opportunity structure denied to millions of others. Privilege, to us, is like water to the fish: invisible precisely because we cannot imagine life without it.

It is that context that best explains the duplicity of the President's recent criticisms of affirmative action at the University of Michigan. President Bush, himself a lifelong recipient of affirmative action -- the kind set aside for the mediocre rich -- recently proclaimed that the school's policies were examples of unfair racial preference. Yet in doing so he not only showed a profound ignorance of the Michigan policy, but made clear the inability of yet another white person to grasp the magnitude of white privilege still in operation.

The President attacked Michigan's policy of awarding 20 points (on a 150-point evaluation scale) to undergraduate applicants who are members of underrepresented minorities (which at U of M means blacks, Latinos and American Indians). To many whites such a "preference" is blatantly discriminatory.

Bush failed to mention that greater numbers of points are awarded for other things that amount to preferences for whites to the exclusion of people of color.

For example, Michigan awards 20 points to any student from a low-income background, regardless of race. Since these points cannot be combined with those for minority status (in other words poor blacks don't get 40 points), in effect this is a preference for poor whites.

Then Michigan awards 16 points to students who hail from the Upper Peninsula of the state: a rural, largely isolated, and almost completely white area.

Of course both preferences are fair, based as they are on the recognition that economic status and even geography (as with race) can have a profound effect on the quality of K-12 schooling that one receives, and that no one should be punished for things that are beyond their control. But note that such preferences -- though disproportionately awarded to whites -- remain uncriticized, while preferences for people of color become the target for reactionary anger. Once again, white preference remains hidden because it is more subtle, more ingrained, and isn't called white preference, even if that's the effect.

But that's not all. Ten points are awarded to students who attended top-notch high schools, and another eight points are given to students who took an especially demanding AP and honors curriculum.

As with points for those from the Upper Peninsula, these preferences may be race-neutral in theory, but in practice they are anything but. Because of intense racial isolation (and Michigan's schools are the most segregated in America for blacks, according to research by the Harvard Civil Rights Project), students of color will rarely attend the "best" schools, and on average, schools serving mostly black and Latino students offer only a third as many AP and honors courses as schools serving mostly whites.

So even truly talented students of color will be unable to access those extra points simply because of where they live, their economic status and ultimately their race, which is intertwined with both.

Four more points are awarded to students who have a parent who attended the U of M: a kind of affirmative action with which the President is intimately familiar, and which almost exclusively goes to whites. Ironically, while alumni preference could work toward the interest of diversity if combined with aggressive race-based affirmative action (by creating a larger number of black and brown alums), the rollback of the latter, combined with the almost guaranteed retention of the former, will only further perpetuate white preference.

So the U of M offers 20 "extra" points to the typical black, Latino or indigenous applicant, while offering various combinations worth up to 58 extra points for students who will almost all be white. But while the first of these are seen as examples of racial preferences, the second are not, hidden as they are behind the structure of social inequities that limit where people live, where they go to school, and the kinds of opportunities they have been afforded. White preferences, the result of the normal workings of a racist society, can remain out of sight and out of mind, while the power of the state is turned against the paltry preferences meant to offset them.

Very telling is the oft-heard comment by whites, "If I had only been black I would have gotten into my first-choice college."

Such a statement not only ignores the fact that whites are more likely than members of any other group -- even with affirmative action in place -- to get into their first-choice school, but it also presumes, as anti-racist activist Paul Marcus explains, "that if these whites were black, everything else about their life would have remained the same." In other words, that it would have made no negative difference as to where they went to school, what their family income was, or anything else.

The ability to believe that being black would have made no difference (other than a beneficial one when it came time for college), and that being white has made no positive difference, is rooted in privilege itself: the privilege that allows one to not have to think about race on a daily basis; to not have one's intelligence questioned by best-selling books; to not have to worry about being viewed as a "out of place" when driving, shopping, buying a home, or for that matter, attending the University of Michigan.

So long as those privileges remain firmly in place and the preferential treatment that flows from those privileges continues to work to the benefit of whites, all talk of ending affirmative action is not only premature but a slap in the face to those who have fought, and died, for equal opportunity.

Tim Wise is an antiracist activist, essayist and lecturer. Send email to timjwise@msn.com.

]]> How Washington Failed to Rein In Fannie, Freddie tag:www.srwolf.com,2008:/wolfsoc/articlearchives//9.2144 2008-09-14T14:33:35Z 2008-09-14T14:37:02Z How Washington Failed to Rein In Fannie, Freddie. Binyamin Appelbaum, Carol D. Leonnig and David S. Hilzenrath. Wa. Post. 9/14/2008.Gary Gensler, an undersecretary of the Treasury, went to Capitol Hill in March 2000 to testify in favor of a... Rowan How Washington Failed to Rein In Fannie, Freddie. Binyamin Appelbaum, Carol D. Leonnig and David S. Hilzenrath. Wa. Post. 9/14/2008.

Gary Gensler, an undersecretary of the Treasury, went to Capitol Hill in March 2000 to testify in favor of a bill everyone knew would fail.
]]> Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were ascendant, giants of the mortgage finance business and key players in the Clinton administration's drive to expand homeownership. But Gensler and other Treasury officials feared the companies had grown so large that, if they stumbled, the damage to the U.S. economy could be staggering. Few officials had ever publicly criticized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but Gensler concluded it was time to urge Congress to rein them in.

"We thought this was a hand-on-the Bible moment," he recalled.

The bill failed.

The companies kept growing, the dangers posed by their scale and financial practices kept mounting, critics kept warning of the consequences. Yet across official Washington, those who might have acted repeatedly failed to do so until it was too late. Last weekend, the federal government seized control of the two companies to protect the very mortgage market they were created to lubricate. The cost to taxpayers could run into the tens of billions of dollars.

As policymakers now set out to decide what role government, and the two companies, should play in the mortgage business, the failures of the past two decades offer a cautionary tale.

Blessed with the advantages of a government agency and a private company at the same time, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac used their windfall profits to co-opt the politicians who were supposed to control them. The companies fought successfully against increased regulation by cultivating their friends and hounding their enemies.

The agencies that regulated the companies were outmatched: They lacked the money, the staff, the sophistication and the political support to serve as an effective check.

But most of all, the companies were protected by the belief widespread in Washington -- and aggressively promoted by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- that their success was inseparable from the expansion of homeownership in America. That conviction was so strong that many lawmakers and regulators ignored the peril posed to that ideal by the failure of either company.

Weak Regulator

In October 1992, a brief debate unfolded on the floor of the House of Representatives over a bill to create a new regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. On one side stood Jim Leach, an Iowa Republican concerned that Congress was "hamstringing" this new regulator at the behest of the companies.

He warned that the two companies were changing "from being agencies of the public at large to money machines for the stockholding few."

On the other side stood Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who said the companies served a public purpose. They were in the business of lowering the price of mortgage loans.

Congress chose to create a weak regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. The agency was required to get its budget approved by Congress, while agencies that regulated banks set their own budgets. That gave congressional allies an easy way to exert pressure.

"Fannie Mae's lobbyists worked to insure that [the] agency was poorly funded and its budget remained subject to approval in the annual appropriations process," OFHEO said more than a decade later in a report on Fannie Mae. "The goal of senior management was straightforward: to force OFHEO to rely on the [Fannie] for information and expertise to the degree that Fannie Mae would essentially regulate itself."

Congress also wanted to free up money for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy mortgage loans and specified that the pair would be required to keep a much smaller share of their funds on hand than other financial institutions. Where banks that held $100 could spend $90 buying mortgage loans, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could spend $97.50 buying loans.

Finally, Congress ordered that the companies be required to keep more capital as a cushion against losses if they invested in riskier securities. But the rule was never set during the Clinton administration, which came to office that winter, and was only put in place nine years later.

The Clinton administration wanted to expand the share of Americans who owned homes, which had stagnated below 65 percent throughout the 1980s. Encouraging the growth of the two companies was a key part of that plan.

"We began to stress homeownership as an explicit goal for this period of American history," said Henry Cisneros, then Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. "Fannie and Freddie became part of that equation."

The result was a period of unrestrained growth for the companies. They had pioneered the business of selling bundled mortgage loans to investors and now, as demand from investors soared, so did their profits.

Signal Moment

Near the end of the Clinton administration, some of its officials had concluded the companies were so large that their sheer size posed a risk to the financial system.

In the fall of 1999, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers issued a warning, saying, "Debates about systemic risk should also now include government-sponsored enterprises, which are large and growing rapidly."

It was a signal moment. An administration official had said in public that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be a hazard.

The next spring, seeking to limit the companies' growth, Treasury official Gensler testified before Congress in favor of a bill that would have suspended the Treasury's right to buy $2.25 billion of each company's debt -- basically, a $4.5 billion lifeline for the companies.

A Fannie Mae spokesman announced that Gensler's remarks had just cost 206,000 Americans the chance to buy a home because the market now saw the companies as a riskier investment.

The Treasury Department folded in the face of public pressure.

There was an emerging consensus among politicians and even critics of the two companies that Fannie Mae might be right. The companies increasingly were seen as the engine of the housing boom. They were increasingly impervious to calls for even modest reforms.

As early as 1996, the Congressional Budget Office had reported that the two companies were using government support to goose profits, rather than reducing mortgage rates as much as possible.

But the report concluded that severing government ties with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would harm the housing market. In unusually colorful language, the budget office wrote, "Once one agrees to share a canoe with a bear, it is hard to get him out without obtaining his agreement or getting wet."

'Big, Fat Gap'

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enjoyed the nearest thing to a license to print money. The companies borrowed money at below-market interest rates based on the perception that the government guaranteed repayment, and then they used the money to buy mortgages that paid market interest rates. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called the difference between the interest rates a "big, fat gap." The budget office study found that it was worth $3.9 billion in 1995. By 2004, the office would estimate it was worth $20 billion.

As a result, the great risk to the profitability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was not the movement of interest rates or defaults by borrowers, the concerns of a normal financial institution. Fannie Mae's risk was political, the concern that the government would end its special status.

So the companies increasingly used their windfall for a massive campaign to protect that status.

"We manage our political risk with the same intensity that we manage our credit and interest rate risks," Fannie Mae chief executive Franklin Raines said in a 1999 meeting with investors.

Fannie Mae, and to a lesser extent Freddie Mac, became enmeshed in the fabric of political Washington. They were places former government officials went to get wealthy -- and to wait for new federal appointments. At Fannie Mae, chief executives had clauses written into their contracts spelling out the severance benefits they would receive if they left for a government post.

The companies also donated generously to the campaigns of favored politicians. The companies' political action committees and employees have donated $4.8 million to members of Congress since 1989, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

But Fannie Mae wasn't just buying influence. It was selling government officials on an idea by making its brand synonymous with homeownership. The company spent tens of millions of dollars each year on advertising.

Even Greenspan, who shared the concerns of Treasury officials about the unrestrained growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, refrained for years from using his bully pulpit to urge action. He too wanted a hot housing market.

In tying itself to politicians and wrapping itself in the American flag, Fannie Mae went out of its way to share credit with politicians for investments in their communities.

"They have always done everything in their power to massage Congress," Leach said.

And when they couldn't massage, they intimidated. In 2003, Richard H. Baker (R-La.), chairman of the House Financial Services subcommittee with oversight over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, got information from OFHEO on the salaries paid to executives at both companies. Fannie Mae threatened to sue Baker if he released it, he recalled. Fearing the expense of a court battle, he kept the data secret for a year.

Baker, who left office in February, said he had never received a comparable threat from another company in 21 years in Congress. "The political arrogance exhibited in their heyday, there has never been before or since a private entity that exerted that kind of political power," he said.

A Bombshell

In June 2003, Freddie Mac dropped a bombshell: It had understated its profits over the previous three years by as much as $6.9 billion in an effort to smooth out earnings.

OFHEO seemed blind. Months earlier, the regulator had pronounced Freddie's accounting controls "accurate and reliable."

Humiliated by the scandal, then-OFHEO director Armando Falcon Jr. persuaded the White House to pay for an outside accountant to review the books of Fannie Mae. The agency reported in September 2004 that Fannie Mae also had manipulated its accounting, in this case to inflate its profits.

The companies were humbled. The flaws of their business practices were laid bare.

The companies soon faced new bills in both the House and the Senate seeking increased regulation. The Bush administration took the hardest line, insisting on a strong new regulator and seeking the power to put the companies into receivership if they foundered. That suggested the government might not stand behind the companies' debt.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac succeeded in escaping once more, by pounding every available button.

The companies orchestrated a letter-writing campaign by traditional allies including real estate agents, home builders and mortgage lenders. Fannie Mae ran radio and television ads ahead of a key Senate committee meeting, depicting a Latino couple who fretted that if the bill passed, mortgage rates would go up.

The wife lamented: "But that could mean we won't be able to afford the new house."

Most of all, the company leaned on its Congressional supporters.

In the Senate, Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah) added an amendment giving Congress the ability to block receivership, weakening that bill to the point where the White House would no longer support it. Bennett's second-largest contributor that year was Fannie Mae; his son was then the deputy director of Fannie's regional office in Utah.

Fannie Mae even persuaded the New York Stock Exchange to allow its shares to keep trading. The company had not issued a required report on its financial condition in a year. The rules of the exchange required delisting. So the exchange created an exception when "delisting would be significantly contrary to the national interest."

The amendment was approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission. FNM would remain on the NYSE.

The Final Blow

As Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were trying to recover from their accounting scandals, a new and ultimately mortal threat emerged. Yet again, the warnings went unheeded for too long.

The companies had begun buying loans made to borrowers with credit problems.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had been losing market share to Wall Street banks, which were doing boomtown business packaging these riskier loans. The mortgage finance giants wanted a share of the profits.

Soon, the firms' own reports were noting the growing risk of their portfolios. Dense monthly summaries of the companies' mortgage purchases were piling up at OFHEO.

An employee at one of the companies said it was already a constant discussion around the office in 2004: When would the regulators notice?

"It didn't take a lot of sophistication to notice what was happening to the quality of the loans. Anybody could have seen it," the staffer said. "But nobody on the outside was even questioning us about it."

President Bush had pledged to create an "ownership society," and the companies were helping the administration achieve its goal of putting more than 10 million Americans into their first homes.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's appetite for risky loans was growing ever more voracious. By the time OFHEO began raising red flags in January 2007, many borrowers were defaulting on loans and within months Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be running out money to cover the losses.

Finally, as the credit crisis escalated, Congress passed a bill two months ago establishing a tough, new regulator for the companies. It was too late.

]]> States Restore Voting Rights for Ex-Convicts tag:www.srwolf.com,2008:/wolfsoc/articlearchives//9.2142 2008-09-14T14:01:19Z 2008-09-14T14:11:41Z States Restore Voting Rights for Ex-Convicts. Solomon Moore. NY Times. 9/13/2008.Striding across a sweltering strip-mall parking lot with her clipboard in hand, Monica Bell, a community field organizer in Orlando, Fla., was looking for former convicts to add to... Rowan States Restore Voting Rights for Ex-Convicts. Solomon Moore. NY Times. 9/13/2008.

Striding across a sweltering strip-mall parking lot with her clipboard in hand, Monica Bell, a community field organizer in Orlando, Fla., was looking for former convicts to add to the state's voter rolls.


]]> Antonious Benton, a gold-toothed 22-year-old with a silver skull-shaped belt buckle, a laconic smile and a criminal record, was the first person she approached.

"I can't vote because I got three felonies," Mr. Benton told Ms. Bell. He had finished a six-month sentence for possession of $600 worth of crack cocaine, he said. But Ms. Bell had good news for him: The Florida Legislature and Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican, changed the rules last year to restore the voting rights of about 112,000 former convicts.

"After you go to prison -- you do your time and they still take all your rights away," Mr. Benton said as he filled out a form to register. "You can't get a job. You can't vote. You can't do nothing even 10 or 20 years later. You don't feel like a citizen. You don't even feel human."

Felony disenfranchisement -- often a holdover from exclusionary Jim Crow-era laws like poll taxes and ballot box literacy tests -- affects about 5.3 million former and current felons in the United States, according to voting rights groups. But voter registration and advocacy groups say that recent overhauls of these Reconstruction-era laws have loosened enough in some states to make it worth the time to lobby statehouses for more liberal voting restoration processes, and to try to track down former felons in indigent neighborhoods.

"You're talking about incredible numbers of people out there who now may have had their right to vote restored and don't even know it," said Reggie Mitchell, a former voter-registration worker for People for the American Way. In Florida, "we're talking tens of thousands of people," he said. "And in the 2000 election, in the state of Florida, 300 people made the difference."

A loose-knit group of national organizations working to restore voting rights includes the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn (Ms. Bell's employer); the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; and the Brennan Center for Justice.

Two other groups, the Sentencing Project and the American Civil Liberties Union, said they had given briefings to officials for Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign about how to register former felons. But the Obama campaign has been reluctant to acknowledge any concerted effort.

An Obama spokesman, Bill Burton, said via e-mail, "We are trying to register voters across the country and follow the state laws wherever we are."

Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a Harvard law professor and senior adviser to the Obama campaign on criminal justice issues, said he had briefed campaign officials about felony disenfranchisement issues and the various and often-confusing state requirements to restore voting rights to former convicts.

Campaign volunteers get briefed on specific state laws governing voting rights restoration in case they come across former felons during general voter registration drives, Mr. Ogletree said, "but it's not as if the Obama campaign said, 'Here's a plan for felony disenfranchisement.' "

None of the felony voter registration organizations contacted for this article could recall hearing from Senator John McCain's campaign. And a campaign spokesman said there had been no effort to reach out to former prisoners specifically.

Last month, Obama campaign workers took down a sign at their headquarters in Pottstown, Pa., that said "Felons can vote," because it might have sent the wrong message.

"The fear is that it might cost them more votes to be portrayed as the candidate of the felons than it could gain them," said Anthony C. Thompson, a New York University law professor and Obama campaign adviser. "This is a mistaken belief, in my view, when there are tens of millions of citizens with criminal records."

In fact, felony voter restoration efforts have received bipartisan support in many states including Alabama, Florida, Indiana and Maryland. Still, surveys have shown that about 70 percent of former convicts lean Democratic, according to Christopher Uggen, a University of Minnesota criminologist who said that had led some to believe that Democrats benefited from felony voter restoration more than did Republicans.

"That's because of the high rate of incarceration among African-Americans, who have strong Democratic preferences," Mr. Uggen said, "and because many people who have committed felonies are working class, relatively young, unmarried and in particular individuals with less than a high school education. These are all demographics that traditionally align themselves with the Democrats."

Muslima Lewis, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida, said: "Really, you're not having a full participatory democracy if you disenfranchise so many people. It weakens the whole system and, in particular, communities of color."

All of Us or None, a prisoner-advocacy organization in San Francisco, held a rally last month about restoration of voting rights in California. Also last month, the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition successfully lobbied the Denver County jail system to begin registering felons upon their release.

The A.C.L.U. is also advising lawyers' groups planning to deploy to polling places in November to enforce the rights of former convicts who have restored their voting privileges.

According to the A.C.L.U. only two states, Maine and Vermont, allow prisoners, parolees and probationers to vote. Thirteen states allow parolees and probationers to vote, eight states reinstate probationer voting rights, and 20 states restore voting rights to people who have completed their sentences, although each state has different processes, exceptions and limits on eligibility requirements. Kentucky and Virginia permanently disenfranchise nearly all felons.

Florida's felony voter registration law divides applicants into three categories based on the seriousness of their crimes: nonviolent criminals, the biggest group, need not apply for restoration of voting rights and just need to re-register. Violent criminals, but not murderers or rapists, must apply to the clemency board. The board either grants those rights immediately or investigates on a case-by-case basis. The most violent criminals are subjected to a more rigorous investigation and must attend a hearing of the clemency board, which meets only four times a year, before their rights can be reinstated.

Despite the state's liberalization of felony voter procedures, only 9,000 out of a potential 112,000 former convicts in Florida registered to vote in the last year, according to a report last month in The Orlando Sentinel. Part of the reason is that thousands of notifications sent by the state went to the wrong addresses because of poor data and former prisoners' high mobility.

Fred Schuknecht, the director of administration for the Florida Clemency Board, acknowledged in an interview that there was a backlog of 60,000 former felons who could potentially have their rights restored, but must first be reviewed by the agency. Despite the fact that 3,500 newly released prisoners are added to the caseload every month, the Legislature cut 20 percent of the staff devoted to felony voter restoration cases, Mr. Schuknecht said.

Further, Ms. Bell said that many former convicts shun attention, even if that means abdicating their voting rights.

"You might want them to fill out the registration form, but they have an outstanding warrant," she said. "And in order to help them, I need to ask what their crimes are, but they might not want to say."

Cheria Murray, 24, of Orlando, regained voting rights this year, after serving a two-day jail sentence with two years' probation for grand theft in 2003. Ms. Murray lives in a housing project where, she said, many people had been stripped of their rights because of their records.

Her companion, Duane Miller, 28, recently returned from serving a sentence for illegal firearm possession, and has not applied to reinstate his voting rights.

Ms. Murray said she thought about restoring her voting rights only recently, inspired by the presidential campaign.

"When I saw Barack Obama, that's when I got excited to get my rights back," she said. "I wanted to vote for history."

14felony_map.jpg
]]> Factory Facts tag:www.srwolf.com,2008:/wolfsoc/articlearchives//9.2140 2008-09-12T04:08:39Z 2008-09-12T04:12:42Z Factory Facts. Christian E. Weller and Diego Flores, The Center for American Progress. 8/04/2008.U.S. manufacturers across the country have suffered dramatic job losses over the past seven years of economic growth, with these losses falling particularly hard on states... Rowan Factory Facts. Christian E. Weller and Diego Flores, The Center for American Progress. 8/04/2008.

U.S. manufacturers across the country have suffered dramatic job losses over the past seven years of economic growth, with these losses falling particularly hard on states that are heavily dependent on manufacturing and are now suffering the most as the U.S. economy struggles to cope with the housing crisis and slowing economic growth.
]]>

    While the U.S. economy and jobs eventually posted recoveries after the last recession in 2001, the same was not true for manufacturing. From March 2001 through the end of 2007, the manufacturing sector lost a total of 3.2 million jobs. During that 81-month period, employment in the sector decreased in 67 of those months, and added jobs in only 14 of those months. Then, from the end of 2007 through June 2008, private-sector employment declined by 0.5 percent, but manufacturing jobs dropped more than three times as fast, by 1.7 percent, during the same time period.

    The disproportionate troubles in manufacturing have been especially felt in manufacturing states. Between March 2001 and June 2008, private sector jobs grew three times faster in non-manufacturing states than in manufacturing states. Also, not a single manufacturing state matched non-manufacturing states' average yearly rate of private job growth.

    Even Oregon, which had the highest rate of private job growth among manufacturing states from March 2001 to June 2008, had a growth rate that was only three-quarters that of the non-manufacturing state average. In some states, such as Michigan and Ohio, the sector's decline even meant a net loss of private sector jobs. Meanwhile, 15 out of 18 non-manufacturing states gained jobs at a greater rate than the manufacturing state average. The only three states that did not were New York, New Jersey, and Louisiana.

    Manufacturing states also suffer from higher unemployment rates. Between March 2001 and June 2008, the average unemployment rate in manufacturing states was 5.3 percent, compared to 4.7 percent in non-manufacturing states. Only 5 manufacturing states-Alabama, Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Vermont-had an average unemployment rate lower than the average unemployment rate for non-manufacturing states, while only two non-manufacturing states (Alaska and New York) and the non-manufacturing District of Columbia had average unemployment rates higher than the average for manufacturing states.

    Manufacturing states also have higher unemployment rates than non-manufacturing states. From March 2001 to June 2008 the average unemployment rate in manufacturing states increased almost three times as much as it did in non-manufacturing states. On average, manufacturing states saw unemployment grow by 1.2 percent, while non-manufacturing states saw unemployment rise by 0.4 percent.

    All these job figures underscore the need for policymakers to address the decline of our nation's critical manufacturing sector. Factory work still pays higher wages and provides more benefits than other sectors of the economy. The manufacturing sector's recovery is therefore crucial to the long-term well being of the economies of manufacturing states, and for the families who depend on manufacturing jobs.

    The economic health of manufacturing states depends on the ability of federal, state, and local policymakers to work together to implement effective policies that will maintain and grow American manufacturing's competitiveness in world markets so that manufacturers can continue to generate good jobs and stabilize regional economies. A promising direction could be increased public and private investment in energy efficiency and alternative fuels.

    The benefits of bolstering manufacturing extend far beyond manufacturing states, however. In particular, the majority of our trade is in manufactured goods. Therefore, if the U.S. economy wants to shrink its near-record trade deficit by increasing exports, it needs to rely heavily on the manufacturing sector. That will require policymakers to pay some attention to the physical and human capital that is available in this sector. In particular, this will require more investment in math and science education as well as in lifelong training for jobs in new, emerging manufacturing industries, particularly those related to green technologies.

    Manufacturing's decline is not a new phenomenon. Robust policy response has been desperately needed for years. Now is the time for policy makers to get serious about fixing America's manufacturing woes and in the process enhance opportunities for Americans to find good jobs while improving the nation's overall economic health.

    The Center for American Progress has formulated several policy proposals that would improve the situation of the manufacturing sector, including increased investment in renewable energy to help to create more good jobs in the future, enhanced public and private initiatives to promote innovation and skills for the jobs of the future.[2]

    More information about this and other manufacturing-related policy proposals can be found in our Progressive Growth Series. These policy papers offer a fiscally responsible plan to grow our economy through the transformation to a low-carbon economy and leadership in innovation, technology, and science, and to recreate a ladder of economic mobility so that Americans may make a better life for themselves and their families so that our nation once again may be a land with a thriving and expanding middle class prospering in the global economy.

    Endnotes

    [1] Manufacturing states are states that had a manufacturing share of private sector employment that was one fourth of a standard deviation above the average share across all fifty states in 2000. Non-manufacturing states are similarly defined as states where manufacturing employment's share out of private sector employment was more than one fourth of a standard deviation below the average manufacturing share across all states in 2000. Manufacturing states are thus Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Non-manufacturing states are Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming. The remaining states are neither manufacturing nor non-manufacturing states.

    [2] John Podesta, Sarah Rosen Wartell, and David Madland, "Progressive Growth: Transforming America's Economy through Clean Energy, Innovation, and Opportunity" (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2007). p.12 www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/11/pdf/progressive_growth.pdf.

]]> The Food Crisis and Global Institutions tag:www.srwolf.com,2008:/wolfsoc/articlearchives//9.2138 2008-09-12T04:00:36Z 2008-09-12T04:07:49Z The Food Crisis and Global Institutions. Emily Schwartz Gtrco. Foreign Policy in Focus. 8/05/2008.The food crisis reflects a breakdown in our global food system that threatens to worsen poverty, hunger, climate change, and insecurity. Global institutions and governments are... Rowan The Food Crisis and Global Institutions. Emily Schwartz Gtrco. Foreign Policy in Focus. 8/05/2008.

The food crisis reflects a breakdown in our global food system that threatens to worsen poverty, hunger, climate change, and insecurity. Global institutions and governments are responding, yet their answers are vastly inadequate. For decades, trade and investment liberalization have undermined human rights and the environment. The food crisis should help us to understand that now it is time for a new vision of global cooperation, one that is democratic and accountable to people and the planet.
]]> Doha's Collapse

In July, World Trade Organization Director-General Pascal Lamy organized a mini-Ministerial to complete the Doha Development Round, and couched it as a necessary means to address the food crisis. Not surprisingly, negotiations collapsed over ongoing disagreements about whether WTO members have the right to protect their food security and "livelihoods" (jobs) from import surges. The failed talks signal a growing understanding that trade liberalization has destabilized local food systems and hurt farmers, contributing to both the long-term and short-causes of today's food crisis. This marks a shift from the earlier globalization debates and deserves our attention.

On the other hand, we can't forget that governments are still working behind the scenes to complete the Doha Round. Likewise, they are negotiating free trade agreements at the regional and bilateral levels that go even further than the WTO and could very well worsen the food crisis. Even though the Doha collapse is a signal that the tide is changing, governments haven't yet fully shifted course.

The G8, the World Bank, and the UN

In July, the Group of 8 (G8) released a statement on global food security in July, calling for reinvestment in the agricultural sector. Proposed measures include doubling aid for key food staples in Africa over the next five to ten years, improving infrastructure (roads, irrigation, storage, and distribution), rapid financing to address balance-of-payment difficulties, sustainable food security and biofuels policies, and support for country-led strategies to address climate change. Unfortunately, the G8's credibility is low because they still haven't met their 2005 aid commitments, and these summits aren't binding in any way.

The World Bank's New Deal on Global Food Policy calls for building a safety net and increasing loans for agricultural production and trade liberalization. Unfortunately, the World Bank's investment agenda is largely defined by partnerships with international corporations to expand trade flows rather than to support farmers and promote food sovereignty. In this context, agribusiness groups who control the export markets will gain the most.

In June, the United Nations launched the Interagency Task Force on the Global Food Crisis and released a draft comprehensive framework for action. This task force comprises the UN agencies (including IFAD, WFP, UNCTAD and WHO), the Bretton Woods Institutions, and the WTO. Civil society is pointedly not invited to participate. Its draft comprehensive framework for action rightly recommends immediate steps to provide emergency food assistance, to boost smallholder production, and to adjust trade and taxation rules in support of national priorities. In the longer term, the document recommends measures to ensure sustained growth in food availability through smallholder production, increased social protection systems, strengthened food security management systems, improved international food markets, and an international consensus on sustainable biofuels.

However, the task force defines "boosting smallholder production" as including World Bank loans for public-private partnerships that pave the way for a more prominent role for agribusiness. The draft framework highlights a stronger role for the Bank and the WTO to help countries boost trade rather than to determine what kind of trade is needed.

The fact that the international financial institutions and wealthier nations recognize the weight of the crisis and have called for urgent responses is a positive sign, yet their various promises are largely rhetorical, thus detracting from the possibility for urgent actions. The institutions are still focused on investment and growth in agriculture based on privatization schemes, deregulation, and trade facilitation. This is exactly the approach that has contributed to many of the problems we are seeing today in the food system; it's likely that this approach will worsen rather than ease the crisis.

A Multilateral Alternative

Perhaps a more promising set of recommendations comes out of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which 58 governments approved in Johannesburg, South Africa in April. This report is the result of a six-year process that involved over 400 authors.

The report is groundbreaking, both in its process and its content. The major donors for the report were the European Union member states, the Commission and the United States. The process gave governments, major research institutions, industry, and civil society equal responsibility in the drafting. The IAASTD drafting was led by the World Bank and included the UN agencies such as UNDP, FAO, UNESCO, and the WHO. It also included scientific experts, researchers and development specialists. The United States, Australia, and Canada were the three countries that expressed reservations with the final executive summary of the report, indicating concerns with some of the specific data as well as the substance. However, they commented on the report and formally recognized its contribution to the global debate. It should be noted that Brazil, China, and India, three countries that are leading much of the growth from the Global South, approved this collective critique that includes recommendations for a radical shift in agricultural policies.

The introduction of the executive summary states that the IAASTD is an "initiative that all governments need to take forward to ensure that agricultural knowledge, science and technology fulfils its potential to meet the development and sustainability goals of the reduction of hunger and poverty, the improvement of rural livelihoods and human health, and facilitating equitable, socially, environmentally and economically sustainable development." The report highlights four issues:

  1. The need to redirect agricultural science and technology to support small scale farmers in developing countries and to counter global warming;
  2. The need to promote innovation, including local knowledge, within farm communities;
  3. The need for massive investment in agriculture, both in physical infrastructure such as irrigation and roads) and non-physical, so-called "soft" infrastructure, such as access to markets and credit provision; and
  4. The need for immediate attention to the growing involvement of women in agriculture in many developing countries.
Many civil society groups, while recognizing that this multi-stakeholder report isn't perfect, have supported its call for a radical change.

Restructuring the Global Food System

If we are thinking big, we should be envisioning a new structure for the global institutions via the creation of a Global Food Convention, which would be housed at the UN and implemented by an International Commission, working with different stakeholders including civil society and small-scale farmers. The Global Food Convention would serve as a legal framework to address food sovereignty and the agricultural dimension of climate change, including binding commitments to be implemented at all levels. Governments would have sovereignty to define their own food and agricultural policies, but would also be held accountable to international human rights, including the Right to Food, and the environment.

A Global Food Convention would prioritize stabilizing international supply and mandate strategic grain reserves for food security at the local, regional and international levels. An agreed-upon mechanism would also need to be put into place to ban commodity speculation and to guarantee a fair price for farmers. A Global Food Convention would mandate that trade and investment rules allow for national policy space (flexibility) for countries to protect their local food systems and to invest in small-scale agriculture. It would also establish multi-stakeholder participation, including that of farmers, to develop multilateral and national investment programs that promote rather than undermine small-scale farming. Lastly, a Global Food Convention would bind international economic policies to international human rights and environmental norms, including the right to eat.

Realizing this kind of vision is no small task, but in the midst of the global food crisis, there is every reason to try. The burning question now is whether there is political will to do so. It's time to find out.

Alexandra Spieldoch, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, is also the director of the Trade and Global Governance program at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), an organization which works locally and globally to ensure fair and sustainable food, farm and trade systems.

]]> A Third Way: Globalization from the Bottom tag:www.srwolf.com,2008:/wolfsoc/articlearchives//9.2136 2008-09-12T03:56:46Z 2008-09-12T04:00:07Z A Third Way: Globalization from the Bottom. Abbas Jaffer. Foreign Policy in Focus. 8/06/2008.Just as many books have been written as there are individual viewpoints on the crises related to globalization. Mark Engler's new title How to Rule the... Rowan A Third Way: Globalization from the Bottom. Abbas Jaffer. Foreign Policy in Focus. 8/06/2008.

Just as many books have been written as there are individual viewpoints on the crises related to globalization. Mark Engler's new title How to Rule the World: the Coming Battle Over the Global Economy has some unique offerings. It offers insight about the different currents at play in globalization, along with some new analysis about the rise of a distinct globalization that promotes social and economic democracy. This new movement is people-powered, and its future is promising.
]]>

Engler focuses deeply on three competing visions of globalization. The first trend of globalization is what he terms "imperial globalization." Growing and solidifying U.S. control in the world is a distinct and sometimes even contradictory viewpoint to the corporate one. Using the Iraq War as the most recent and prominent example, he writes about how corporate interest has been wary of the war because "it was pushed aside in favor of a different vision of the world order, one that puts U.S. nationalism ahead of the interests of a wide swath of multinational corporations."

Exploding in the 1990s, but present as early as the 1970s, the U.S. government served as a support and facilitator for the increased reach of multinational corporations and propagated free trade regimes. Engler argues that this model of "corporate globalization" is unable to solve the issues of the world's poor and developing countries. He points out the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) protests that took place in Seattle were a reflection of the serious shortcomings of corporate globalization. He observes "neoliberal ideology, which seemed like an unstoppable juggernaut when global protests erupted only a short time ago is now facing a crisis of legitimacy."

Battling against these two forms of globalization is "democratic globalization". Engler characterizes it as standing distinctly from the other two types because it is both a bottom-up movement and it encompasses many viewpoints. He places the work of the grassroots as an alternative model for globalization. He points to the World Social Forum, a yearly meeting of people from around the world seeking social and economic justice, as a perfect example of this new type of globalization. Democratic globalization is so promising for Engler particular because it is multivalent, about local solutions, and looks ready to tackle the issues of our day. Democratic globalization is steeped in the ideas of local and regional solutions, as well as a consideration of oppression when the impacts of globalization are considered.

As the debates of about extending true social and economic democracy to the world rage on, there are new voices apart from the anti-globalization movement that are also beginning to act. Whether it is organizing labor in spite of government pressure, clarifying when and where environmental racism is occurring, or underlining the continuing relevance of nonviolent conflict resolution in a militaristic world, grassroots movements are increasingly taking on entrenched corporate and military interests on an unprecedented scale. To further the aims of global justice, all of these movements should have an alternative vision of the global order they can present as an alternative to the status

In Engler's view of democratic globalization, he admits that there is no one model for addressing the woes of an increasingly interconnected world. However, if the previously disenfranchised have a say in new policies and frameworks to overcome desperate poverty and oppression, than this form of globalization may indeed prove to be the fairest and most comprehensive. The book is sure to raise some critical issues and pose meaningful alternatives to globalization as it has developed thus far.

Abbas Jaffer is a recent alum of the University of Denver and is an Everett Fellow at Foreign Policy In Focus.

]]> Government owes American Indians $456 mln: judge tag:www.srwolf.com,2008:/wolfsoc/articlearchives//9.2134 2008-09-12T03:50:07Z 2008-09-12T03:55:15Z Government owes American Indians $456 mln: judge. Tom Doggett. Reuters. 8/08/2008.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After 12 years of litigation, a federal judge rejected claims that the government owed American Indians $47 billion for mismanaging their money held in a special... Rowan Government owes American Indians $456 mln: judge. Tom Doggett. Reuters. 8/08/2008.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After 12 years of litigation, a federal judge rejected claims that the government owed American Indians $47 billion for mismanaging their money held in a special trust fund, but ruled they were owed less than 1 percent of the amount sought.
]]> The U.S. Interior Department was sued for mishandling the revenue in the Indian trust fund going back to 1887. The trust includes 10 million acres of land owned by individual Indians and 46 million acres belonging to Indian tribes.

On this lands, the department manages more than 100,000 leases and the money they generate from mineral mining, oil and gas drilling, timber, livestock grazing, recreational and agricultural uses are deposited into the trust. That money is disbursed by the department to individuals and tribes.

U.S. District Court Judge Robertson ruled on Thursday that the model used to estimate how much money was withheld by the government was faulty because it "did not make use of the best available evidence and did not make fair or reasonable comparisons of data."

Robertson said the there was no evidence of the "prodigious pilfering of assets from within the trust system" that the Indian plaintiffs had claimed and that they failed to prove the government used any money from the fund for its own benefit.

Instead, the judge accepted the Interior Department's position that it was 99 percent confident that no more than $455.6 million was missing from the trust fund.

"This statement has the character of an admission -- by responsible civil servants -- that there are limits to what can be confidently stated with respect to the (trust fund), and that a history of accounting nonfeasance makes such a substantial error plausible," Robertson wrote in his ruling.

Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff in the class action lawsuit against the government and a member of Montana's Blackfeet tribe, said she was disappointed by the ruling and her lawyers would consider whether to appeal the decision.

"We believe we presented a strong, compelling case that individual Indian trust beneficiaries are entitled to much more than the government's admitted mismanagement of our trust monies over the past 120 years," she said.

The case is not over yet, because the judge said another hearing will determine how the missing money should be restored and allocated.

The Interior Department said it looked forward to working "with the court, the Congress, and the plaintiffs to bring the case to final closure."

(Reporting by Tom Doggett; editing by Mohammad Zargham)


]]> Unease over Guatemalan gold rush tag:www.srwolf.com,2008:/wolfsoc/articlearchives//9.2132 2008-09-12T03:45:27Z 2008-09-12T03:48:31Z Unease over Guatemalan gold rush. Bill Law. BBC. 8/21/08.With gold prices skyrocketing, the Mayans of Guatemala find themselves caught up in a new rush for the precious metal.... Rowan Unease over Guatemalan gold rush. Bill Law. BBC. 8/21/08.

With gold prices skyrocketing, the Mayans of Guatemala find themselves caught up in a new rush for the precious metal.
]]>

AUDIO SLIDESHOW
Mine

Mayans protest over mine

Mario Tema sits across from me, a Mayan with a mission.

We are in the town of Sipacapa in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, washing down a breakfast of tamale and beans with a cup of freshly brewed coffee.

As he tells me of the town's fight against a huge open pit gold mine, that famous picture of Che Guevara gazes at us from the wall. Here in Sipacapa, Mario Tema is an anti-mining icon.

Last year he travelled to Vancouver, where the mine's Canadian owner, Goldcorp, has its headquarters. He went to speak out against the mine at the company's annual shareholders meeting.

"After I spoke at the meeting," he says, "a shareholder approached me and he told me 'I don't care about your cause, all I care about is the money in my pocket."

Mr Tema tells me the story with a shake of his head. Do shareholders not know that his country was wracked by decades of civil war that saw more than 200,000 people killed, one million displaced, and that most of the victims were Mayan?

Do they not understand that the war was about land, how it was used, how it was exploited?

Do they not know about the massacres of entire Mayan villages by paramilitaries and right-wing death squads?

Jobs and development

What shareholders do know is that Goldcorp is delivering in a style they could probably only have dreamed about.

When the Guatemalan project was first costed, it was based on gold selling at $350 (£190) an ounce.

Gold is now selling for more than double that amount.

That means huge dividends for shareholders and a massive windfall for the company.

In the first quarter of this year alone, Goldcorp's worldwide profits were $229m (£120m).

We are paying on the order of $10-12m just in salaries for people in the local community
Tim Miller, Goldcorp

Tim Miller, a senior executive in the company's Guatemala City office, says the company has brought many benefits to the region.

Foremost among them are jobs, he says. "We are paying on the order of $10-12m just in salaries for people in the local community and Guatemala in general."

He also cites improvements in health facilities and education, including a project that is paying the wages of two teachers.

As far as he is concerned, people like Mario Tema are being stirred up by what he calls "advocacy" NGOs, some of them from outside the country.

But the Catholic Church in Guatemala has also spoken out strongly against the mine. And the Bishop of San Marcos, in whose diocese the mine is located, has led protest marches.

Anniversary banner
Sipacapa celebrated the 3rd anniversary of a referendum against the mine
Vinicio Lopez is the coordinator of Copae, a Guatemalan Catholic charity that has been vocal in its opposition.

He says the mine has created tensions between communities who support it and those that do not. It has split families.

"It's very worrisome for us because here in Guatemala the social fabric is very fragmented," Mr Lopez says.

Tensions

A climate of distrust, fear and resentment between the company and Mayan activists continues to fester.

Local people have been barricading roads. One blockade was in early 2006.

It was broken up with a massive show of force from the military and police, intervening on behalf of the company.

Mayans have voted in consultas, or referenda, saying no to the mine. The company insists the consultas are not legal.

The indigenous people point to cracks in their houses and say they are caused by mining activity. They show us rashes they say are the result of contamination from the mine.

Goldcorp hired experts to prove the mining operations could not have caused the cracks and to show the rashes have nothing to do with the mine.

Gregoria
Gregoria has shorted a pylon she says was illegally built on her land

Gregoria is a tiny, feisty woman who lives in a village adjacent to the mine.

Like her neighbours she is a subsistence farmer, growing corn and beans on terraced fields cut into the cliffs.

She shows me three huge pylons part of a grid that holds cables stretching for miles, carrying electricity supply to the company's Marlin Mine Number One.

I look a little closer and see a thin wire running across the cables. That in turn is attached to ropes at either end and the ropes are tethered to trees, holding the wire tight to the cables, temporarily shorting out the electricity.

How did she do this?

"I tied a rock to the rope and I slung the rope across," she says, in Spanish.

I ask her why she is taking on Goldcorp. She tells me that one of the pylons, the one closest to us, is on her land.

"The company didn't ask for my permission. They just stuck it there."

Tim Miller sighs when I ask him about it later. "Not true," he says. "We had a written, signed agreement with her."

"Can she read?" I ask him. Miller tells me it was read out to her in Mam, the local Mayan dialect but he is not sure if Gregoria actually signed the document.

"I can't tell you exactly who signed it," he says.

Concern

The altercation with Gregoria reveals a larger clash of cultures and values. As the two sides feud, ethical investors are becoming nervous.

In part because of concerns that the company was not doing enough to address Mayan complaints, Goldcorp was kicked off Canada's respected Jantzi Social Index for ethical investment.

At this year's shareholders' meeting, several pension fund investors only withdrew a motion of concern after the company offered to underwrite the cost of an independent assessment of the impact on human rights.

The results of this investigation will not be available for at least a year.

In the meantime the pension funds are keeping their money in Goldcorp. And Goldcorp continues taking the gold out of the ground, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

With prices running close to $800 (£434) an ounce, it is good for business.

But increasingly questions are being raised about just how good the gold business is for the indigenous Mayans of Guatemala.

Crossing Continents: Guatemala

BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents: Guatemala and Canada gold rush was broadcast on Thursday, 21 August, 2008 at 1102 BST. It was repeated on Monday, 25 August, 2008 at 2030 BST.

]]> A proudly American shoe company ships jobs to China tag:www.srwolf.com,2008:/wolfsoc/articlearchives//9.2130 2008-09-12T03:41:18Z 2008-09-12T03:44:49Z A proudly American shoe company ships jobs to China. Michelle Nijhuis. Christian Science Monitor. 8/27/2008.Chaco Sandals in Paonia, Colo., succumbs to global market forces and lays off 45 full-time workers, silencing a manufacturing plant - and a town.... Rowan A proudly American shoe company ships jobs to China. Michelle Nijhuis. Christian Science Monitor. 8/27/2008.

Chaco Sandals in Paonia, Colo., succumbs to global market forces and lays off 45 full-time workers, silencing a manufacturing plant - and a town.
]]> On the Chaco factory floor in western Colorado, workers are head down at sewing machines and sole trimmers - stitching, gluing, and shaping pair after pair of rubber-bottomed river sandals. The high-ceilinged room hums and buzzes with activity, as it does every day, but today is different. For most of these employees, today feels something like a graduation and something like a funeral.

Since company founder Mark Paigen invented the sandals in his spare room almost 20 years ago, Chacos have caught on among river guides, kayakers, and weekend warriors, and the company has grown from a one-man operation to a 145-person business with a catalog of styles and an international clientele. Through it all, the sandals have been designed, made, and proudly worn here in tiny Paonia.

The company's steel-sided headquarters and factory sit just outside town, next to soccer fields and within sight of the western edge of the Rockies. The setting, tucked between the mountains and the desert, is starkly gorgeous, but as the saying goes, one can't eat the scenery. The county's per capita income hovers just above $17,000, and blue-collar jobs with benefits - like most of those on the Chaco factory floor - aren't easy to find here.

So the sandal builders at Chaco tend to stay around - Cheryl Burch, the leader of the "glue team," has been with the company more than 13 years - and their camaraderie is palpable, their ribbing and bickering like that of an extended family. The tags on the completed sandals read "Made with pride" - sometimes even "Made with love" - "in Colorado, U.S.A."

But in the past two decades, shoe manufacturing has rapidly decamped overseas. Now, only about 1 percent of all shoes bought in the US are made here, with the vast majority of the rest made in China. (US military footwear, required by law to be made domestically, helps sustain what stateside manufacturing remains.)

Chaco, founded on small-town loyalty, resisted the trend. While the company sent some of its manufacturing abroad, it continued to make the bulk of its sandals - some 320,000 pairs a year - in this isolated Colorado valley. Today, that's about to change. "We knew it had to happen," says Mr. Paigen, Chaco's founder and owner. "There was no way we could continue to compete in the marketplace and have our material costs so much higher than everyone else's."

•••

Paigen is a former river guide who remains an inveterate skier and sailor. In his years leading the company, he has traded shaggy curls and a moustache for a trimmer look. While he recognizes what he describes as the "tremendous feeling of solidarity" on the factory floor below his office, he says the move to China was at least a year overdue.

"We've seen our margins erode, erode, erode," he says.

Even after accounting for shipping and other costs, he says, a pair of Chacos can be made for at least $4 to $5 less in China than in Colorado. That translates into roughly a $16 to $20 difference for consumers, he says, and while some might be willing to pay such a premium out of patriotism - or regional pride - he doubts that loyal core could support the company.

What's more, he says, dwindling domestic supplies of materials and equipment could soon force Chaco to look overseas for more of its components, no matter the location of its factory - meaning that if were it to stay in Colorado, the factory would have to ship in materials only to assemble them with more costly labor.

Paigen, and employees throughout the company, are also aware of the decision's disadvantages - not only the immediate loss of local jobs, but also the environmental costs of overseas shipping and the inevitable difficulties of distance. Company headquarters and manufacturing, once separated by two flights of stairs, will sit on opposite sides of an ocean; quality control will be tougher in the short term, and special orders will take longer to fill.

In this small town, where the 45 people who lost full-time work aren't anonymous laborers but friends and neighbors, the cost is emotional, too. While nearly all the employees upstairs - those in product development, customer services, human resources, and the like - will keep their jobs, some tear up when discussing the move. "I understand the economics - I've spent my whole career in numbers," says David Shishim, manager of customer services and sustainability. "But there's still an inescapable sense of betrayal."

Some employees, upstairs and downstairs, wonder if added efficiencies could have extended the life of the US factory floor. But most acknowledge that at some point, manufacturing had to move or die.

"It's not anybody's fault, it's what has to be done for business," says departing employee Jerry Price. "None of us like it, especially us older ones who have been here for a while. We really appreciate the company, and know what it's been doing for us and the valley. Now it's going away, because somebody clear around the world can do it cheaper."

Many longtime customers, local and otherwise, are also disappointed by the decision, and the customer services department has handled more than 100 critical e-mails. "People say, 'You were the last ones doing it right, and now you've sold out,' " says Paigen. "If I can sit down and talk with somebody, they'll usually understand that our choices are limited. But it often takes a long conversation."

•••

On closing day at the factory, the production teams cheer their way through their last sandals, and the entire company assembles to watch the final pairs come off the line. When they're finished and packaged, the workers sign the box with farewells, leaving it on Paigen's desk - part tribute, part reminder.

By the next morning, the factory floor is eerily empty, with only a skeleton crew of workers left to muscle apart the remaining equipment. Some of the machinery already bears red "sold" tags; the company hopes to rent the cavernous space to another business.

Ten factory employees will stay on for the long term, to repair sandals or fill custom orders. Several departing workers will participate in the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which funds education and retraining for those who have lost their jobs to foreign commerce. Others may take often better-paying but more dangerous posts in the nearby natural-gas fields or coal mines. Still others may move elsewhere.

Outside, in the high desert sunshine, departing and remaining employees gather for a lunchtime barbecue. Chaco, which announced the factory closure last fall, has extended a wide array of small-town courtesies - and practical assistance - to its soon-to-be-former employees.

But today, there's no avoiding the firings. Beneath the speeches, thanks, and tears runs a trickle of bitterness. "All I got to say is, when China is down, look for us," Debbie Mitchell, a member of the factory's glue team, says to the crowd in parting. "We're still here. We want our jobs."

While the mourning won't last forever, that doesn't make today - or tomorrow - any easier. "When one door closes, another one opens," says human-resources manager Mary Treder. The tough part, she acknowledges, is the hallway.

]]> MEXICO: Peasants Seek Ways to Block Canadian-Run Mine tag:www.srwolf.com,2008:/wolfsoc/articlearchives//9.2128 2008-09-12T03:37:14Z 2008-09-12T03:40:29Z MEXICO: Peasants Seek Ways to Block Canadian-Run Mine. Diego Cevallos. InterPress Services. 8/31/2008.The Canadian mining corporation Minefinders has explored a rural area of the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua for 14 years. But as it gets ready to begin mining... Rowan MEXICO: Peasants Seek Ways to Block Canadian-Run Mine. Diego Cevallos. InterPress Services. 8/31/2008.

The Canadian mining corporation Minefinders has explored a rural area of the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua for 14 years. But as it gets ready to begin mining gold and silver there, its plans are threatened by peasant farmers' protests.
]]> The discontent with Minefinders after such a long time is due to the fact that "we became aware of the trickery, the abuse from the company," campesino (peasant) spokesperson David de la Rosa told Tierramérica. "We became aware of the inequality of the relationship," added Mario Patrón, an attorney who advises the group.

The residents of Huizopa, an enclave community in the Western Sierra Madre made up of 230 farming and ranching families who are self-sustaining, have maintained a camp since May near the not-yet-operating processing plant of the Compañía Minera Dolores, a subsidiary of Minefinders in Mexico.

Entire families from the Huizopa communal ownership association take turns there to ensure an uninterrupted presence. Although they do not get in the way of the mining company's work, their demands and the potential for escalating their protest keep the Minefinders plans on edge.

The corporation holds a concession granted in 1994 by the Mexican government. With that authorisation and the initial approval of the peasants it made around a thousand perforations in search of gold and silver.

To initiate mining of the precious metals, in 2006 it signed an agreement with the Huizopa community leaders, stating that it can operate on some 1,200 hectares. However, a large portion of the community maintains that the required consultation process never took place.

"The agreement signed with the mining company is illegal because it was not studied and was not voted on by the community assembly, and furthermore it is unequal; it doesn't have even the minimal principle of equality," attorney Patrón said in a Tierramérica interview.

In addition, say the campesinos, the mining company has appropriated nearly 3,500 hectares of the 86,000 belonging to Huizopa.

A minority group among the residents supports the company, which has built houses and roads, but the majority wants a new agreement that includes financing for a community development plan, annual rental payments per hectare of mining, a system for participation in the profits, and environmental studies.

Minefinders says on its web site that it is 100-percent owner of the property at the Dolores mine, which it plans to exploit through open-pit operations for 15 years.

This is not an isolated conflict. In the last decade, recurrent problems have come to a head between the mining industry and the labour unions and residents in several Latin American countries, coinciding with the boom in international prices of precious metals.

In the past four years, gold prices have gone up 219 percent and silver 149 percent in a cycle that has brought multi-million-dollar profits for the companies and a jump in tax revenues collected by governments.

In Peru, there were 26 mining strikes in the first half of this year, just three fewer than the entire year of 2007. In Central America, where mining companies have identified at least 23 minable zones, citizen groups are on war footing, arguing that the mining executives are getting rich while destroying the environment and hurting the populations living near the mines.

The conflict between the government of Mexico and the leadership of one sector of the mining unions has continued since 2006.

The campesinos of Huizopa "will not fall into violence, but we will not give up until we achieve real benefits from Minefinders, because we know it is going to see heavy profits," said spokesperson De la Rosa.

They estimate that in 15 years the mining company will take in about 3 billion dollars and could cause serious damage to the surrounding environment. The operations for extracting gold and silver from the rock will involve toxic sodium cyanide.

The company says those economic calculations are mistaken. In Huizopa there are reserves "equivalent to 3 billion ounces of gold," president Mark Bailey said in March.

The corporation, which is traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange and has three other projects in Mexico, informed its shareholders on Jul. 25 that because of an "illegal blockade" and "threats of violence from demonstrators," its operations in Huizopa are on hold, but assured that in the following quarter it will begin full operations for gold and silver mining.

Police are guarding the mine and, according to reports from the campesinos, the Mexican army has been called in to conduct intimidating patrols.

On May 27, federal forces used tear gas to disperse about 100 campesinos who were conducting a sit-in, and two days later two Huizopa leaders were detained, but they were released soon after due to lack of charges.

Minefinders has not acted in an honest manner, say the Huizopa association and the non-governmental Project for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, a group to which jurist Patrón belongs.

The company says it has spent 12.7 million dollars on assistance for the community that owns the land and that it has financed student scholarships in geology at a university in Chihuahua.

In a bid to end the conflict, it is offering six million dollars more and to sponsor social programmes and activities focused on protecting the environment, and alleges that the campesinos have been egged on by people involved with the left-leaning and opposition PRD, Democratic Revolutionary Party.

"What they are offering proves the close-mindedness of the company. We have to take into account that they will be here for many years and we want good neighbourly relations and benefits that are equitable for all," said De la Rosa.

The representatives of Minefinders in Mexico declined to make any further statements to Tierramérica, stating that the negotiations with the campesinos are now under way.

On Aug. 12, a committee in the Mexican Senate called on several government entities to investigate possible human rights violations of the people of Huizopa, to help establish a dialogue amongst the parties involved, to study environmental and social impacts of the mining, and to report on the presence of the army in the area.

The campesinos' spokesperson said that as a result of efforts by the state government it was possible to begin dialogue with the company, but that there have been no results so far.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.) ]]> SOUTH PACIFIC: Climate Change Refugees Look to Australia, N.Z. tag:www.srwolf.com,2008:/wolfsoc/articlearchives//9.2126 2008-09-12T03:32:40Z 2008-09-12T03:36:30Z SOUTH PACIFIC: Climate Change Refugees Look to Australia, N.Z.. Stephen de Tarczynski. InterPress Services. 9/01/2008.With the apparent effects of global warming already being felt among Pacific island nations, Australia and New Zealand are being urged to do more to... Rowan SOUTH PACIFIC: Climate Change Refugees Look to Australia, N.Z.. Stephen de Tarczynski. InterPress Services. 9/01/2008.

With the apparent effects of global warming already being felt among Pacific island nations, Australia and New Zealand are being urged to do more to prepare for 'climate change refugees'.
]]> "In Tuvalu and Kiribas we're already starting to see the effects of king tides and storm surges on the coastline, but in particular, on people's crops," says Damien Lawson, national climate justice coordinator from Friends of the Earth Australia.

"People on the islands are not going to just be affected when the sea rises up and covers their land. They're already affected by sea water encroaching through the ground water and having a big effect on their capacity to grow crops," he says.

Global warming is regarded as one of the major factors causing sea level rise. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects seas to rise by between 18 and 59 centimetres by the end of the century.

As a result, inhabitants of low-lying Pacific island nations are among the most vulnerable to the effects of global warming.

A report released in July by Make Poverty History -- a coalition of more than 60 aid, community and faith-based organisations, including Friends of the Earth -- noted that two villages on Kiribati have already been abandoned due to climate change.

Additionally, some 2,000 people on Papua New Guinea's isolated Carteret Islands -- which are disappearing beneath the waves -- are preparing to be evacuated to Bougainville, 86km to the southwest. They are regarded as some of the world's first 'climate change refugees'.

With more pacific islanders expected to be forced to leave their homes over the coming decades as seas rise, calls for Australia and New Zealand to prepare to aid environmental refugees are growing louder.

Prior to the 39th Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) -- held on Aug.19-20 in Niue -- representatives of more than 100 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the region released an open letter addressed to the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, Kevin Rudd and Helen Clark.

"We welcome the past acknowledgement of the problem the Pacific faces and expressions of a willingness to help, but now is the time for action. Therefore we call on the Australian and New Zealand governments to recognise the urgency of climate change and the particular threat it poses to the peoples of the Pacific," wrote the NGOs.

Among the actions demanded by the NGOs -- which also includes a call to reduce carbon emissions -- is that Australia and New Zealand establish a plan to assist climate change refugees.

"The primary focus should be on mitigation, then adaption within the Pacific and then resettlement within the Pacific," says Lawson.

But the NGOs also want the region's two largest nations to develop an extension of their immigration quotas specifically for climate change refugees.

Lawson told IPS that putting a plan in place now to cater for the anticipated increase in refugees from the Pacific who may ultimately require resettlement outside their own homelands can avert problems associated with a rushed implementation of such a scheme in the future.

"Part of what we're saying is that by Australia and New Zealand increasing our migration from the Pacific we can actually create both a resource space and a cultural bridgehead, if you like, for the larger numbers of people who may have to resettle in Australia and New Zealand in the future," he says.

Lawson argues that the two nations are the region's best equipped to aid in such a resettlement. "Australia and New Zealand are some of the richest countries in the world and so [we] have the capacity to be assisting our other neighbours who ultimately have far fewer resources."

But capacity to help is not the only criteria according to the Friends of the Earth activist.

"Both Australia and New Zealand have very high per capita emissions. We're some of the industrialised countries which are most responsible for causing climate change," says Lawson.

While the two nations are responsible for about 1.3 percent of total carbon dioxide emissions -- with Australia emitting 1.2 percent and New Zealand just 0.1 percent -- their per capita emissions of greenhouse gases are among the world's highest.

The Australian Greenhouse Office says that Australians emit more greenhouse gas per person than any other nation, while Greenpeace places New Zealand in the top 12 greenhouse gas emitters per capita in the world.

Lawson argues that this obliges Australia and New Zealand to act, especially given the paradox that exists with Pacific islanders being comparatively low emitters of climate change-causing gases.

Island nations in the Pacific "have a very low emissions profile. So, even though they're some of the people most affected by climate change, they are the least responsible for it," he says.

Lawson welcomed the Pacific Islands Forum's focus on climate change -- the theme of the recent summit -- which noted the vulnerability of island nations to the effects of global warming.

"We were happy that a very strongly-worded statement came out of the conference of the importance of mitigation by industrialised countries and there was recognition in there of the importance of putting in place a whole range of strategies with Australia, New Zealand and Pacific island countries working together," he says.

The leaders of the forum's members -- including Rudd and Clark -- issued its first-ever declaration on climate change, acknowledging "the serious current impacts of and growing threat posed by climate change to the economic, social, cultural and environmental well-being and security of Pacific Island countries."

Despite such recognition of the effects of global warming and a declared intention to do more to address the associated problems, the governments of Australia and New Zealand have remained tight-lipped about establishing a quota for climate change refugees within their own migration streams.

But NGOs intend to keep calling for such a plan to be introduced.

"The Australian and New Zealand governments are very reluctant at this point to explicitly accept that responsibility, but that's certainly what we're campaigning around," says Lawson. ]]> Ecuador Constitution Would Grant Inalienable Rights To Nature tag:www.srwolf.com,2008:/wolfsoc/articlearchives//9.2124 2008-09-12T03:27:42Z 2008-09-12T03:31:26Z Ecuador Constitution Would Grant Inalienable Rights To Nature. Eoin O'Carroll. Christian Science Monitor. 9/04/2008.Ecuador's proposed constitution includes an article that grants nature the right to "exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution"... Rowan Ecuador Constitution Would Grant Inalienable Rights To Nature. Eoin O'Carroll. Christian Science Monitor. 9/04/2008.

Ecuador's proposed constitution includes an article that grants nature the right to "exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution" and will grant legal standing to any person to defend those rights in court.
]]> 56 percent of Ecuadorans approve of the proposed document.

The blog Green Change quotes the five articles that acknowledge rights said to be possessed by nature, or "Pachamama," a goddess revered by indigenous Andean peoples whose name roughly translates into "Mother Earth."

Chapter: Rights for Nature

Art. 1. Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.

Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.

Art. 2. Nature has the right to an integral restoration. This integral restoration is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people and the collectives that depend on the natural systems.

In the cases of severe or permanent environmental impact, including the ones caused by the exploitation on non renewable natural resources, the State will establish the most efficient mechanisms for the restoration, and will adopt the adequate measures to eliminate or mitigate the harmful environmental consequences.

Art. 3. The State will motivate natural and juridical persons as well as collectives to protect nature; it will promote respect towards all the elements that form an ecosystem.

Art. 4. The State will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles.

The introduction of organisms and organic and inorganic material that can alter in a definitive way the national genetic patrimony is prohibited.

Art. 5. The persons, people, communities and nationalities will have the right to benefit from the environment and form natural wealth that will allow wellbeing.

The environmental services are cannot be appropriated; its production, provision, use and exploitation, will be regulated by the State.

The concept that nature itself can possess rights runs counter to the classical liberal theories of government that hold sway throughout much of the West, which view rights as possessed only by individual human beings. But Ecuador is not the first country to propose granting rights to nonhuman entities: Many countries, including the United States, have long held that corporations possess many of the same rights - such as the rights to free expression and to due process - that human beings have. And in June, Spain's parliament approved a measure to extend some human rights to nonhuman apes.

But, as an editorial in the Los Angeles Times observes, Ecuador's extension of rights to nature may represent a larger shift in how humans view their place in the world:

No other country has gone as far as Ecuador in proposing to give trees their day in court, but it certainly is not alone in its recalibration of natural rights. Religious leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop of Constantinople, have declared that caring for the environment is a spiritual duty. And earlier this year, the Catholic Church updated its list of deadly sins to include polluting the environment.

Ecuador is codifying this shift in sensibility. In some ways, this makes sense for a country whose cultural identity is almost indistinguishable from its regional geography - the Galapagos, the Amazon, the Sierra. How this new area of constitutional law will work, however, is another question. We aren't ready to endorse such a step at home, or even abroad. But it's intriguing. We'll be watching Ecuador's example.

]]> Should the internet game Muslim Massacre be banned?