What
You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter
THE INSIDE HISTORY OF THE ISRAEL
LOBBY
Former top
CIA analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison give CounterPunchers
the real scoop on the Israel lobby and precisely how powerful
it is. Read
how US presidents from Wilson, through FDR to Truman were manipulated
by the Zionist lobby; how Israel bent LBJ, Reagan and Clinton
to its purpose; how Bush's White House has been the West Wing
of the Israeli government; how Washington's revolving doors send
full-time Israel lobbyists from think-tanks to the National Security
Council and the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. For all who want a
true measure of the Lobby's power, the Christisons' 8-page dossier,
exclusive to CounterPunch newsletter subscribers, is a MUST read. CounterPunch
Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember,
we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition
of CounterPunch. Please support this
website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains
fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation
for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
A few years back I visited a village
in Colombia whose residents had been instrumental in organizing
a month-long blockade of the Pan-American Highway. They were
protesting the way the government was willing to make investments
in building the infrastructure to facilitate the extraction and
export of their resources, but unwilling to invest in schools
or health clinics or sustainable agriculture. One of the organizers
told me "this is the highway where development passes us
by."
I remembered his words when
I first read about Atlantica -- an effort to create a new economic
zone encompassing northern New England and Canada's Maritime
Provinces, making it easier for goods to pass through the region
on their way from the Atlantic to the big cities of the midwest.
The symbolic centerpiece of the proposal is a plan to expand
Halifax harbor and build an East-West highway from Halifax to
Buffalo or Montreal. Other plans include massive natural gas
terminals and pipelines, the reopening of a closed nuclear power
plant, and the "harmonization" of the region's labor
and environmental laws to "remove barriers to trade."
There will be a summit
to advance and promote the plan in St. John in early June,
and civil society groups are planning a countersummit.
I'm a recent transplant to
eastern Maine, one of the regions that's supposed to benefit
from this plan. And we certainly are a region that needs some
kind of investment. A few weeks ago I saw a poster in the window
of the convenience store where I often get my morning coffee
-- "Cashier Wanted. College graduates encourages to apply."
When I told a friend about this he replied that two summers ago
his daughter had two rounds of interviews for a similar job.
A sign of the times.
Like southern Colombia, eastern
and northern Maine are regions that have long seen their resources
stripped away by foreign investors. Mainers joined the American
Revolution in the 1700's in part because they were outraged that
the tallest pine trees had been declared the "King's Pines"
and were being taken away to make masts for the ships of His
Majesty's Navy. Some two hundered years later, the North American
Free Trade Agreement has made it easy for Canadian companies
to use cheap migrant labor to cut trees in Maine and bring the
raw logs over the border for for processing, cutting Mainers
out of the process altogether.
The rise of the maquilla sector
in Latin America and Asia in the 1990's spelled the final demise
of Maine's footwear and apparel industries -- the only sign of
their existence is the plethora of "factory outlets"
selling tourists clothes and shoes made in China, Jordan, Honduras,
and Bangladesh on summer afternoons when its too cold or rainy
to go to the beach. The big paper companies have begun moving
most of their production offshore too. The Maine Department of
Labor estimates that between 1993 and 2005 new trade regimes
cost Maine 18,800 manufacturing jobs -- a huge loss for a poor
and sparsely populated states.
The proponents of Atlantica
hold that our region has been a loser in the era of globalization
because of high minimum wages and "union density."
But that arguement doesn't hold water. Companies didn't move
their factories out of Maine in order to pay someone in another
state $4 an hour instead of $7 an hour. They left the United
States altogether in order to be able to pay workers $4 a day.
Lowering the minimum wage and
weakening unions won't help businesses set down roots in Maine
-- it will just make it cheaper and more efficient for companies
to move goods across Maine. The jobs created will be restaurant,
motel, and fast food jobs -- hardly a viable replacement for
the skilled manufacturing jobs. As it is, even Maine's relatively
high minimum wage doesn't allow a full time minimum wage worker
to support a family. And the companies that profit won't be investing
their earnings in Maine -- the money will go to shareholders
in distant multinational corporations.
The "race to the bottom"
isn't a race that Maine can win -- many of our communities already
hit bottom years ago.
The most promising path to
economic recovery for rural New England and the Maritimes lies
in initiatives to reverse that race to the bottom by providing
new incentives for sustainable industries and socially responsible
companies. Maine is creating new incentives for biodiesel and
wind power. The state pased landmark legislation to insure that
the apparel, textiles, and footwear the government buys are made
under safe and fair working conditions -- a measure meant in
part to level the playing field for ethical businesses. Maine
Gov. John Baldacci is now working with anti-sweatshop activists
to recruit other governors to join him in a new effort to harness
the capital of several states' procurement budgets to press for
changes in the apparel industry and create a viable market for
non-sweatshop garments. (http://www.sweatfree.org) And Maine
farmers have organized one of the most powerful, innovative,
and effective organic growers federations in North America.
The economic future of New
England and the Maritimes is best served by promoting small,
local, sustainable businesses through higher labor and environmental
standards and through the strategic use of public procurement
dollars -- not by building yet another highway where development
will pass rural communites by.
Sean Donahue is Director of PICA
(Peace throuth Interamerican Community Action,) a grassroots
human rights and economic justice group in Bangor, Maine. Most
of his articles and commentaries can be found online at http://www.seandonahue.org
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.