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Transcript #145-1 The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights:
Progressive Values Globally Endorsed / Debunking The Right's Lies About A Social
Security "Crisis") Partially
hyperlinked to sources. For all
sources, see the data
resources page. Your sources today include -- and
it's long list: the New York Times, americanrhetoric.com, the website of the
United Nations, the book "The Second Bill of Rights" by Cass R.
Sunnstein, the Miami Herald, the Times of London, the BBC, Time Magazine, the
British newspaper The Guardian, oxfam.org, foxnews.com, the Christian Science
Monitor, and the Washington Post. You'll never guess who approvingly
played a clip of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first fireside chat.
Keith Olbermann? No.
Rachel Maddow, Thom Hartmann? No. You can only imagine my surprise when
none other than Sean Hannity himself played
a bit of FDR's March 12, 1933 address to the American people.
Hannity liked FDR's optimistic, encouraging tone, and said in his blog
post that Obama should "take a page out of FDR's playbook." Ok, I thought fine, Sean, but there
are a couple of other pages in FDR's playbook you need to pay attention to. Which provides a perfect segue to
finish up our discussion of FDR's Four Freedoms and Second Bill of Rights
speeches. Let me give you a brief recap of what
FDR said to the world on those two occasions. Last time I played extended excerpts,
today I'll play you edited shorter versions.
To hear the more extensive clips, check out that podcast 143. In his 1941 Four Freedoms speech,
FDR said there are essential human freedoms every person in the world is
entitled to. They include freedom of
speech, freedom of religion, and freedom from fear, fear of attack by other
nations. It's the freedom that Roosevelt
listed as third, that we're concerned with here today: audio:
FDR The third is freedom from
want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which
will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its
inhabitants—everywhere in the world. What does freedom from want entail? FDR gave more details a few years
later, in his 1944 State of the Union speech. I'm going to play you an
uninterrupted clip a little longer that I usually do. This is so you can have time as you
listen to really imagine the effect on flesh-and-blood humans as each specified
component of freedom from want, each such goal is achieved.
The effect on living, breathing men, women and children just like you, as
they cumulatively enjoy these blessings. What would the world look like, how
would the joy people would be expressing sound? audio:
FDR [T]rue individual freedom
cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men
are not free men." People who are hungry, people who are out of a job are
the stuff of which dictatorships are made. In our day these economic
truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a
second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be
established for all -- regardless of station, or race or creed. Among these are: The right to a useful and
remunerative job in the industries, or shops or farms or mines of the nation; The right to earn enough
to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; […] The right of every family
to a decent home; The right to adequate
medical care and the opportunity to achieve and
enjoy good health; The right to adequate
protection from the economic fears of old age, and sickness, and accident and
unemployment; And finally, the right to
a good education. For anyone willing to work, he or she
would have the right to a useful job paying a living wage, with decent housing,
good medical care and education, and protection, a safety net, against old age,
sickness, accident and unemployment. In other words, economic justice. FDR's wife Eleanor was instrumental
in taking her husbands freedom from want and Second Bill of Rights concepts and
establishing them on the global stage. With her leadership, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights was written under United Nations auspices.
FDR's Four Freedoms and Second Bill furnished much of the contents. On
December 10, 1948 the U.N. General Assembly adopted it. Most nations in the world have
endorsed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the United States. Listen to what it says in the
economic realm: Article 25. (1) Everyone has the right
to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of
his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary
social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment,
sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in
circumstances beyond his control. There are also labor rights: Article 23. (1) Everyone has the right
to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work
and to protection against unemployment. (2) Everyone, without any
discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. Article 24. Everyone has the right to
rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic
holidays with pay. Article 23. (4)
Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of
his interests. You hear that?
Our progressive economic ideology, the one you and I share, has a global
imprimatur, is endorsed by most of the world's nations. Thank you, Franklin and Eleanor. Now let's go international, and talk
about how this Universal Declaration of Human rights, which our nation has
endorsed, should guide U.S. foreign policy. We'll get to the economic aspect in a
minute. First the purely humanitarian. The Universal Declaration provides
that: Article 3. Everyone has the right to
life, liberty and security of person. Article 5. No one shall be subjected
to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. There's an issue along these lines
that's been driving me insane, that I just haven't had a chance to talk to you
about, but now I have the opportunity. It's Darfur. In the last six years, there have
been 300,000 deaths
and more than 2.7 million people made refugees there. The entire world knows that the
atrocities are being committed under the direction of Sudan's President, Omar
Hassan al-Bashir. The International
Criminal Court has just issued
an arrest warrant for him. He's
charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes. As the Court spokesperson put it: He is suspected of being
criminally responsible ... for intentionally directing attacks against an
important part of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan; murdering,
exterminating, raping, torturing, and forcibly transferring large numbers of
civilians, and pillaging their property… Why did the United States essentially
just sit around and watch the Darfur horror story during the Bush
administration? Bill Clinton admitted
he should have intervened in the Rwandan genocide.
Didn't Bush learn anything? What could Bush have done, you may be
wondering? Plenty. Richard Williams was George Bush's
special envoy to Sudan. This past
fall Williams sent a memo to Bush outlining powerful steps the US could take: --jam all communications in Sudan's
capital, Khartoum --progressively restrict Sudan's oil
exports, leading to a quarantine if necessary --impose a no-fly zone against
Sudanese military aircraft to prevent them from bombing villagers --destroy a Sudanese military plane
on the ground, and then threaten to destroy Sudan's entire air force unless it
obeys international demands Obama's UN Ambassador, Susan Rice,
has been a leading advocate for taking action against Sudan.
Will her boss follow suit? Barack Obama, do something! Every day people are dying.
Audacity? Show it!! A call for such action is perhaps
something both the right and left can join in. In a moment, something the right and
left will most definitely not agree on. Stick around. BREAK What won't the left and right agree
on? You got it, the economic aspects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I just told you about its guarantee
of economic well-being for those willing to work. FDR said: audio:
FDR The third is freedom from
want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which
will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its
inhabitants—everywhere in the world. In FDR's Second Bill speech,
he also said the following: audio:
FDR The right of every
business man, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair
competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad Internationally,
that would man the right of every nation, large and small, to be free from
unfair competition and domination by multinational giants. This relates to my Four Pillars, my
analysis of the ways the First World economically exploits the Third World. The
Four Pillars are the methods the right uses to effectuate the supreme right-wing
directive: transfer wealth from everyone else to the already wealthy. I go over these four pillars in
detail in podcast
56. That's a seminal podcast
that I urge you to listen to if you haven't. In short, the four pillars are: 1 - sweetheart contracts for natural
resources 2 - unfair conditions of
international trade 3 - dubious loans, and 4 - imposition of so-called
"structural adjustment programs" Woe to any nation that challenges the
Four Pillars, threatens to actualize the diametrically opposed Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, FDR's Four Freedoms and his Second Bill of Rights. I'll give you now two examples of
countries under such right-wing assault. I've told you before how I always
want to spend more time on Third World issues.
Domestic US concerns seem to crowd them out.
If I were on 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, I'd have time.
With a 30 minute show only a couple of times a month, I don't.
So I'll go at warp speed here. The two examples are Venezuela and
Bolivia. If you're interested,
podcasts 49
and 88
have much more on these two nations. In Venezuela, the nation as a whole
owns the oil fields. The government
of Hugo Chavez has required
that a majority stake be owned by the government in oil operations.
It's raising the royalty rates. It's
collecting back taxes owed. From the
multinationals. This brings in tens of billions of
additional dollars. That money rightly
belongs to hungry,
poorly housed, sick without medical care Venezuelans. Even the conservative Miami Herald ran
a story that admitted:
Chávez has succeeded in
halving poverty [cutting poverty in half] in Venezuela during his 10 years in
office…. So-called ''missions,''
often taught by Cuban teachers, allow adults to get high school and college
degrees for free. Another popular program
provides free healthcare by Cuban doctors for the poor. Dayana Ramirez, a
19-year-old studying business at a government institute, said this program
operated on her father for free. Yet another program sells
packaged goods below cost in poor neighborhoods. Erica Zapata said she saves 40
percent when she makes her monthly trip to the subsidized market. ''I like the things the
president has done,'' Zapata said...
The Times of London quoted
another Caracas citizen: [B]efore, there were
children who didn't eat, now they have food, they have schools, they have
hospitals. The people love him. We cannot go back." Isn't that horrible, right-wingers?
Look at these terrible things Chavez has accomplished. Chavez is implementing the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. And let's be clear: Chavez is not
doing this all by heavily taxing the wealthy -- as 51%
of Americans would actually like to do here in the US. No, as I said, oil wells are owned by
the Venezuelan nation, and revenue is simply being used to help the majority,
not line the pockets of a rich elite. Helping the poor? The right-wing attitude towards
Chavez is summed up by Pat Robertson, speaking
of Chavez some years ago: audio: Pat Robertson You know, I don't know
about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to
assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it. Chavez last month won a referendum by
a landslide,
removing term limits on the Presidency so he can run again.
The right was apoplectic. Yet
the US didn't have term limits until after World War II. And the right is silent
on presidential term limits being changed in Venezuela's neighbor Colombia,
where the President is their right-wing buddy. You get the idea. Attack, attack Chavez on one pretext
or another, but the real reason is economic. On to Bolivia. In Bolivia, as in Venezuela,
contracts with multinationals are being renegotiated.
The government is acquiring a majority stake. And royalty rates are being
raised. In fact, flipped.
Instead of 82-18 percent in favor of the multinationals, it's going to be
82-18 in favor of Bolivia. Listen to Evo Morales, the first
indigenous person elected to the Presidency of Bolivia.
He's being interviewed
on Democracy Now: audio: Evo Morales We said we were going to
nationalize the gas and oil sector. We did, without expropriating or kicking out
any of the companies. We said it’s important to have partners, but not bosses.
And we did it. The investor has the right to recuperate their investment and to
a reasonable profit, but we can’t allow for the sacking of the country and
only the companies benefiting, not the people. […] And we also showed
technically, financially, with numbers, that the company was going to be able to
recover their investment and would have a reasonable profit. They weren’t
going to have as much profit as before, because the largest oil fields –
excuse me, from the largest gas fields, the companies only gave 18% of royalties
to the state and took 82% in profit. But now, with the new law we’ve changed
that around, now 82% for the government, for the state, and 18% for the
companies. They’re staying. There’s no problems. And from that large field
that Petrobras is managing, we’ve already seen $150 million coming into
government coffers now. The extra revenue here too will be
used to help those who have the right to it, impoverished Bolivians without
adequate food, water, shelter, medical care or any of the other necessities of
life. Morales, like Chavez, is implementing
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the economic realm. Does that sound so horrible, that
Morales should be an object of right-wing horror? And boy, it'll be getting even worse.
The mineral lithium is a critical
component for electric battery-powered cars. It turns out Bolivia has the largest
lithium reserves in the world, over half! Historically, Bolivia, like most if
not all Third World countries, has been economically exploited in the extraction
of its natural resources. As that leftist rag Time magazine put
it: During the colonial era,
silver from the area's prodigious mines helped fund the Spanish empire. But
historically, all that wealth has left the local population, especially the
indigenous, with little more than desperate poverty and early death by
mining-related diseases like black lung. So it seems perfectly reasonable to
me, doesn't it to you, that Bolivia's mining minister recently explained: We want to send a message
to the industrialized countries and their companies.
We will not repeat the historical experience since the fifteenth century:
raw materials exported for the industrialisation of the west that has left us
poor. Bolivia wants to have vertical
integration, maybe even up to actually manufacturing the lithium-ion batteries. So again, what's wrong with that,
right-wingers? In their minds, plenty. As you might expect, there were
massive tensions between Bolivia and the US under George W. Bush, including
expulsions of ambassadors. Among
other things, the Morales government condemned
the US for lending at least tacit support to members of the opposition who were
fomenting destabilizing levels of violence. And another example, while Bolivia's
coca cultivation increased only 5%, Colombia's increased 27%, yet it was Bolivia
that Washington punished. Maybe
because Colombia's president is a right-winger and was a friend of the Bush
administration? Up next, I'll wrap up this segment,
including a killer juxtaposition of two audio clips. Stay tuned. BREAK Bolivia, as I just said, has the
world's largest lithium reserves. You
may not know this, but Venezuela, if heavy oil is counted, has the world's
largest oil reserves, larger
than Saudi Arabia. So you know, you're going to hear
right-wingers criticizing Chavez for doing this, and Morales for doing that.
And condemning Morales for not doing this, and Chavez for not doing that. A million and one lines of attack. And it's all a crock, to use a
technical term. Do you really think the right gives a
damn about democracy in Venezuela, or about the poor in Venezuela that Chavez,
according to them, is supposedly not helping? Do you hear the right complaining
about assassination
of progressive union leaders in right-wing ruled Colombia? Far
worse than anything they even claim is occurring in Venezuela.
Of course not. And I'll bet you, before Chavez took
office, these right-wingers never wrote a word about helping the Venezuelan
poor. I bet they never said a word
about that. In fact, I bet even the
mere thought of helping the Venezuelan poor never entered their heads. The right doesn’t give a damn about
the poor. Criticizing Chavez because he's not
helping the Venezuelan poor enough? Did you hear these right-wingers
complain about George Bush not helping the poor?
Under Bush, poverty in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the
population went up.
Nary a peep of complaint from these right-wingers, who have suddenly
developed such a tender spot in their hearts for the economically deprived
thousands of miles away in Caracas, Venezuela. Only when a challenge is made to
right-wing economic-type control, rule in the interests of the wealthy, do
right-wingers suddenly express a concern for the poor, and for democratic norms. Oxfam is a British-based charity
which also supports a very progressive political agenda.
Back in 1985 they published
a Spanish language book, entitled "The Threat of a Good Example."
They were referring to Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas were also ruling
in the interest of the poor, and also being condemned by the right back then for
being undemocratic and not really helping the poor. Right-wing propaganda doesn't change. As the president of a US energy
consulting firm warned, speaking
of Evo Morales: I don't think the game is
over. It's going to move from the
Americas to the Africans. This is a very dangerous precedent. A
dangerous precedent for right-wing policies of exploitation. So
there you have it. --
FDR's New Deal progressive ideology writ large globally via the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. This
is another reason the right hates the UN so much.
It's a global forum to disseminate just such anti-right-wing economic
concepts as embodied in the Universal Declaration --
Darfur, a terrible example of the Universal Declaration being violated.
The US could have easily stopped the mass murder.
Bush didn't. Obama must.
--
Venezeula and Bolivia, challenging right-wing economic control and trying to
embody Universal Declaration economic values, and suffering the consequences: a
propaganda assault by the right-wing. There
are two clips I often play, but haven't played them before right next to each
other. Take a
listen. audio:
FDR These economic royalists
complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really
complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American
institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In 1957 a sensitive
American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the
wrong side of a world revolution… Increasingly, by choice or
by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make
peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the
pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments… These are revolutionary
times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation
and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice
and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are
rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great
light. We in the West must support these revolutions. The
first was FDR from his 1936 acceptance speech
for the Democratic nomination. Followed by Martin Luther King in his 1967 Beyond
Vietnam speech. It gives me a natural high listening
to these two clips in juxtaposition. I'll
leave you with this, a simple insight that came to me from listening to these
two great men: As at home, so abroad. If US citizens have a right, indeed a
duty, to overthrow American economic royalists, then likewise, citizens of other
nations have the same right and duty to overthrow their own economic royalists,
to revolt "against old systems of exploitation and oppression." And, unfortunately, the United States
too often is the economic royalist in those Third World countries, or at least
supports, props up their economic royalists. So we've got to change sides abroad. In all these instances of fighting
economic exploitation and oppression, you and I will be fighting against the
right. And what else is new under the sun? Transcript #145-2 Debunking The Right's Lies About A Social
Security "Crisis" Partially
hyperlinked to sources. For all
sources, see the data
resources page. I've had a bunch of requests to
address the Social Security issue. Well, here's a QuickBlast for you,
because there's not much to say. The right's campaign of lies is very
easily debunked. Your sources in this segment include:
mediamatters.org, the Boston Herald, the Washington Post, and the website of the
Social Security Administration. Listen here to our friend Sean
Hannity, exchanging
misinformation with Fox News contributor Bo Dietl last month: audio: Sean Hannity
DIETL: And your other
shoe's dropping very fast. You know what your big shoe's going to be? Your
public pension funds. All your pension funds all are out there, and then the
Social Security that we have in this country -- HANNITY: Bankrupt. DIETL: Social Security was
formulated after the Great Depression. It wasn't supposed to be pension. There
were 15 people working to every one retired; now, it's three to one -- HANNITY: That's true. DIETL: Ten years from now
it's going to be two to one. The problem is there's going to be bankruptcy in
Social Security and then the pension system. HANNITY: All right. That
raises one last question. That -- the Social Security bankrupt, Medicare
bankrupt -- why do people put their hope that government's going to solve this
and health care on top of it, Alicia? Unfortunately, even the mainstream
media has picked up the right-wing talking points. NBC's David Gregory has it wrong: audio: David Gregory GREGORY: [W]e're not
factoring in some of these unfunded entitlement programs like Medicare, the fact
that Social Security is about to go -- pay out more than it's taking in by 2010.
So there are some real concerns down the road. Another NBC genius,
John Yang: audio: John Yang YANG: Forty-four-year-old
high school history teacher Peter Vogel thinks he'll collect Social Security
when he retires, but he's not so sure about his 9-year-old daughter, Emma. VOGEL: I do believe it
needs to be retooled, rethought about, and that's why I'm really excited about
this election cycle. YANG: At current rates,
analysts say Social Security will run out of money by 2041, when Emma will only
be in her 40s. David Shuster is on that radical left
network, MSNBC: audio: David Shuster SHUSTER: [T]oday,
we're taking a look at the issue of saving Social Security, which will run out
of money unless we make some major changes, at least in the next several years. Even the Washington Post misleads
readers by telling them that "Social Security is projected to run out of
money by 2041." Here's the truth.
It's according to the Social Security trustee's own report. Even if nothing is done, even if we
let things stand as they are right now, Social Security can pay out full
benefits until 2041, and at least 75% of scheduled benefits thereafter until
2083, the end of the current projection range. To repeat: do nothing, and for the
next 32 years, Social Security can pay full benefits, and pay out at least 75%
of scheduled benefits for over 40 years after that. Not out of money.
Not bankrupt. And…the fix, to get it back up to
100% of scheduled benefits, is simple. Obama
proposed
it during the campaign. Right now the payroll Social Security
tax is only paid on
the first approximately $107,000 of income. So remove the cap. There would be a "donut
hole" from $107 to $250,000 where those people would pay no more tax than
currently. The payroll tax would just be
additionally applied to incomes over $250,000.
This would affect only the richest 3% of Americans. Capiche? Situation resolved, stabilized and
made beautiful. Share the joy with your friendly
local right-winger.
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