by Robert Riley

And how the U.S. and Western European nations torpedoed a UN Resolution dealing with this injustice:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Reparations-How-Cuba-Beca-by-Mike-Rivage-Seul-Christianity_Cuban-Embargo_Globalization_God-131103-316.html

Hi Everyone,

The author is a former Roman Catholic priest (for over 30 years) who was involved in the liberation theology movement which flowered in Central and South America in the 70's.

Note these two clips from that article (the whole article being worth reading, IMHO):

In 1974, the U.N. endorsed what it called a New International Economic Order(NIEO) that would counter the poverty inflicted on the world's former colonies by their European masters since the time of Columbus. Among other provisions the NIEO would (1) indemnify the former colonies monetarily by transferring large sums of capital to impoverished nations, (2) deliver advanced technology to the newly freed nations free of charge, and (3) index prices of raw materials produced in the "Third World" to those of finished products produced in the industrialized nations (so that, for instance, the price of grain would rise with that of tractors purchased from the former colonial masters).

Shortly after the above comes this in the article: 

Of course, the U.S. and Europe saw to it that the provisions of the NIEO were never implemented. In fact beginning with the Reagan-Thatcher era in 1980, the industrialized nations moved in the exact opposite direction of the NIEO. They instituted a new regime of trade liberalization that came to be called "globalization." It's that process that the WTO is defending in objecting to India's Food Sovereignty Program. Margaret Thatcher said there was no alternative to it.

U.S. trade representative, Carla A. Hill, helped see to it that Thatcher proved right. She and others in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations used what Hill referred to as the "crowbar" of Third World debt not as reason to indemnify the exploited, but as a way to further exploit them. Hill argued that demanding debt repayment (instead of cancellation) would pry open the resistant economies of the former colonies and work against the kind of reforms the U.N. advocated with its NIEO plan.

The Carla Hill plan worked. As a result, the poverty of the world's majority has not diminished at anything like the rate foreseen by NIEO authors. 

Please also note, from the article, what the new Pope, Frances, is saying:

About a month ago, Pope Francis addressed workers in Cagliari, Italy. Departing from his prepared text which centralized Jesus' words about the contradiction of trying to serve two masters, God and Mammon, Pope Francis criticized free trade and globalization. He said free trade ideology had brought with it throw- away culture that victimized society's weakest including the elderly whose neglect amounted to what he called a "hidden euthanasia" of those no longer considered productive. "We throw away grandparents, he said, "and we throw away young people. . . . We want a just system that helps everyone." The pope added "We don't want this globalized economic system that does us so much harm. At its center there should be man and woman, as God wants, and not money."

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From all this, you can see that social justice AND ecological sustainability must be the underlying goals of our advocacy work, no matter how daunting a challenge that may seem.  The U.S. has unfortunately been in the lead of many of these unfair international trade agreements over the last 60 years, as I think most of you know.  Eventually, there will have to be international standards of fairness with regard for currencies and such international trade.

I found the link to the above article was in a draft manuscript [which I am not free to share at this time] sent to me by Dr. J.W. Smith, long time researcher and author (several editions of Economic Democracy, as well as other works) in the area of profound economic reform in support of global justice and ecological sustainability.  He in turn built much of his life work on the "land rent" theories of Henry George, an American economist of the late 19th century who was influenced by both Quaker teaching and the reverence for the natural order he had found in Native Americans.

Please let me know what you think of the article after your read it!