The Jubilee Blog

Expedite the Clearance of Liberia's $4.5 billion debt

November 13, 2007--

On the heels of the IMF's announcement, members of Congress signed statements to IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. thanking them for the recent progress on financing cancellation of Liberia’s arrears and urging them to expedite progress toward debt cancellation for Liberia.

• Statement to IMF Director
• Statement to U.S. Treasury Secretary

Local Struggles Meets Global Movemements in New Orleans and Haiti

Disturbing the Peace, in Haiti and New Orleans
By Brian Concannon Jr. | CommonDreams.org

Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste, a Catholic priest from Haiti, just does not know when to shut up. In the 1970’s he saw his people starved and persecuted while Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier lived in opulence, so he organized for change. The Duvalier regime responded as dictatorships do, and kicked him out of the country. When he reached Miami, Fr. Gerry saw that the safety he found there did not extend to immigrants locked up in detention centers or sent back to face torture or worse in Haiti and countries like it. So he organized there for change. He founded Florida’s Haitian Refugee Center to bring the struggle for justice to the U.S. courts, and coordinated demonstrations to bring the struggle to the streets.

READ FULL ARTICLE

(also congrats to Brian and his wife Marcy who recently gave birth to a baby boy, Evan Robert!)

Jubilee Holiday Special: The Best Route to Prosperity

Outtakes from a joint lecture by Ha-Joon Chang from Cambridge University and David Dollar from the World Bank. Ha-Joon Chang has criticized neo-liberal policies in several books including "kicking away the ladder", and advocates a middle ground between market forces and state intervention. David Dollar has worked for the world bank in several developing countries.



For the full-length video, click here.

World Bank Famine in Niger

In 2005 a food crisis hit Niger. Out of a population of 12 million, 3.6 million went hungry and 800,000 children faced starvation. But activists in Niger claim that the famine was not caused by drought. "This is a structural famine. A permanent famine," says journalist Moussa Tchangari. "It was caused by 20 years of structural adjustment programs.

Justice for Africa: Part 3 of 3

Searching for the Truth

Dr. Edward Fisher | Jubilee USA Network

Until then, I had no inkling of the secret webwork of greed and intrigue in which the entire continent of Africa is entangled. Like most Americans, I was naïve—spoon-fed a steady diet of media images that would lead one to believe that Africa is simply hopelessly backward, corrupt and full of violence. Rich in natural resources beyond belief, the West has been robbing it blind with calculated cruelty since the 16th century. The grip of the colonial powers was weakened somewhat following World War II, but returned with a vengeance after the Independence Movements of the 1960s.

The old, original corporations of the past, like the British East Africa Company, referred to the territories they ravaged with names like the Slave Coast, Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, and Skeleton Coast.

Today, many places on the continent are merely facades for global interests, serving as storefronts for what amounts to little more than organized criminal enterprises. So, nation-states that go by such names as Nigeria (BP and Shell), Liberia (Firestone), Angola (DeBeers), Namibia (DeBeers), etc. are really are in many ways victimized by multinational corporations that take advantage of the country’s need for investment.

Report Back from Meeting with Sen. Bill Nelson in Florida

By Alix Gordon | ONE Campaign Miami
We had our first visit this year to the Miami office of Senator Bill Nelson. We were joined by Steve Forester, Senior Policy Advocate for Fanm Ayisyen Nan Miyami (Haitian Women of Miami), Dr. Brad Brown of the NAACP and advocate for Jubilee USA, Henry Petithomme.

We went to the senator's office to advocate primarily for the Jubilee Act, which provides debt cancellation for deserving developing nations and advancing the U.S. commitment to the Millennium Development Goals.

Steve spoke eloquently of the importance of debt cancellation and the great evil of vulture funds and was able to use Haiti, the most poverty-stricken nation in the Western Hemisphere, as an example of a deserving democracy struggling with the burden of debt.

Dr. Brown, who has advocated for civil rights for 43 years represented the NAACP's support for the Jubilee Act.

Adam Cota and Paula Diaz from ONE Campaign Miami joined me in also asking Senator Nelson to cosponsor the Global Child Survival Act and the GROWTH Act.

I spoke of ONE's gratitude for the Senator's sponsorship of the Education for All Act and asked for sponsorship of legislation for our partner CARE, International. We spoke with his very well prepared Regional Director Laura Fatovic who graciously agreed to provide the info to the Senator.

We are hopeful for results.

If you haven't talked with your Senator or Representative about the Jubilee Act, take action now!

Justice for Africa: Part 2 of 3

The Plot Thickens...

Dr. Edward Fisher | Jubilee USA Network

Despite the stark realities of their incredibly harsh lives, most Africans are surprisingly welcoming and generous. At first, it was difficult for me to understand the reasons for their poverty and suffering. After so many years of foreign aid, why have things have not improved much? Unfortunately, easy answers and prejudiced opinions are everywhere to help narrow your perspective.

Such “received wisdom” is always suspect, of course, and once you scratch the surface, even a little, you begin to discover a very disturbing picture. My first hint of all this was on a trip with a friend down the Congo River, which was eerily like a passage out of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." 

After hitching a ride through the Ituri Rainforest, we arrived at the headwaters in Kinshasa (formerly Stanleyville) — a sprawling, bullet-riddled metropolis in the middle of the jungle still haunted by the civil war that took place there in the early 60s.

3 More In the Senate!

Sen Leahy, Patrick J. [VT] - 12/17/2007
Sen Menendez, Robert [NJ] - 12/17/2007
Sen Smith, Gordon H. [OR] - 12/17/2007

Brings the total number of cosponsors in the Senate to 18 (with 8 Republicans, 10 Democrats & an Independent)!Has your member co-sponsored the Jubilee Act? If not, take action now!

Rep. Barney Frank Statement on Federal Reserve’s Proposed Rules on HOEPA

OK. So this has nothing to do with the international debt issue, but we found the statement below hilarious and spot on.

Washington, DC-- Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services today released the following statement in reaction to the Federal Reserve’s proposed rules on the Home Owner’s Equity Protection Act (HOEPA):

“The staff of the Financial Services Committee and I have had a chance to review the Federal Reserve’s proposed rules regarding abusive subprime loans. We now have confirmation of two facts we have known for some time: one, the Federal Reserve System is not a strong advocate for consumers, and two, there is no Santa Claus. People who are surprised by the one are presumably surprised by the other.”

Happy Holidays everyone.

Justice for Africa: Part 1 of 3

The Beginning...

Dr. Edward Fisher | Jubilee USA Network

The sign outside of town as you enter Moroto, Uganda reads: “Welcome to the Heart of Africa.”

Inspired by the words of John F. Kennedy, I taught school there as a Peace Corp volunteer from 1969-1970, during the years Idi Amin was beginning his rise to power. Trained to speak Swahili and friendly with an anthropologist doing research in the area, I got to observe the lives of ordinary Africans up close.

Nurtured in the cocoon of middle-class American life, it is almost impossible for us to comprehend the rough conditions under which the rest of the world has to live every day.