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By Kathleen Vail
Before "Waiting for Superman" and NBC's "Education Nation" arrived last fall to dominate conversations about school reform, everyone was talking about the sudden conversion of Diane Ravitch.
Ravitch's transformation from school choice and competition advocate and high-profile conservative commentator to staunch public school supporter, chronicled in The Death and Life of the Great American School System, tops our list of education books for 2010. Subtitled "How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education," Ravitch's historic about-face was the most noteworthy in a year that included a scathing analysis of the achievement gap from a former secretary of education, a look at why boys continue to fall behind girls academically, and an examination of what really motivates us (Hint: It's not money).
The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
By Diane Ravitch, Basic Books.
A refutation of her advocacy of privatization, punitive testing and accountability, and unchecked charter school growth, Ravitch's book also includes her solutions, which ought to make school board members and other education advocates cheer. First among them: Decisions about schools should be made by educators, not businessmen. Others: Make sure that charter schools help educate students and don't compete with public schools, and pay teachers a fair wage—not one based on flawed merit-based systems.
Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons from an Educational System That's Leaving Them Behind
By Richard Whitmire, AMACOM.
Yep, the boys are still in trouble. Former USA Today editorial writer Whitmire looks at the usual list of causes—toxic boy culture, violent video games, and "feminized" classroom expectations—before turning the spotlight on another issue: Many boys cannot handle the early emphasis on reading and writing skills. These boys fall behind and, without intervention, never catch up. Whitmire offers solutions, including figuring out ways to get and keep boys interested in reading, increasing literacy instruction in middle and high schools, and considering single-sex classrooms.
Below C Level: How American Education Encourages Mediocrity—and What We Can Do About It
By John Merrow, CreateSpace.
Veteran PBS and NPR education reporter Merrow's most recent book is a collection of essays based on his reporting on a wide range of education issues. Among the topics that earn his scrutiny: The "new ADD"—affection deficit disorder—where children are starved for adult attention and interaction; public schools that aim not too high but too low; and the lack of emotional and intellectual safety children feel in schools. If you're looking for platitudes and easy answers, go elsewhere. As Merrow writes, "Abandon our fantasy that a magic solution exists just around the corner. Our fixation on instant cures is actually part of the problem."
The Black-White Achievement Gap: Why Closing It Is the Greatest Civil Rights Issue of Our Time
By Rod Paige and Elaine Witty, AMACOM.
Former U.S. Secretary of Education Paige and his co-author and sister, Elaine Witty, make the argument that closing the achievement gap between white and black students is the best civil rights strategy to attain social justice and racial equality for African-Americans. They do so by taking on some topics that are sure to make many readers uncomfortable: the failure of black leadership to address the achievement gap and the low expectations on the part of black students, including the notion that studying and getting good grades is equated to "acting white." Suggestions, including a five-level framework of action, close the book.
Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in Our Schools
By Milton Chen, Jossey-Bass.
Chen, the former executive director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation, uses his considerable media experience and background to create his new vision of learning. Published before NBC's education forum of the same name, this book outlines his vision in six chapters focusing on places where educational change is already happening: the Thinking Edge, Curriculum Edge, Technology Edge, Time/Place Edge, Co-Teaching Edge, and Youth Edge. Chen advocates for a society where public and private resources are spent to make learning from preschoolers to senior citizens available through a "ladder of learning" including laptops and handheld devices, wikis, interactive classroom tools, open source curricula, video-sharing, games, social media, and GPS devices.
Educational Economics: Where Do School Funds Go?
By Marguerite Roza, Urban Institute Press.
The school districts that spend the most money on their students have the highest student achievement, right? You already know the answer to this one: not necessarily. Children from disadvantaged homes and communities are more expensive to educate, and some troubled urban districts spend more than surrounding suburban schools. Roza, senior scholar at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, offers some other explanations, including a teacher compensation system that pays based on experience and is not weighted toward the number of students or the difficulty of teaching assignments. Roza blames the patchwork of funding streams to schools as a reason why it's difficult to get a grip on how and why money is being spent.
Schools Cannot Do It Alone: Building Public Support for America's Public Schools
By Jamie Vollmer, Enlightenment Press.
Tired of being asked to solve all of society's problems on your own? Vollmer, public school critic turned advocate, makes the argument that schools cannot do their jobs without the support of the community. Vollmer writes that schools can't educate all students to high levels because the system is antiquated, designed to select and sort students according to skills and abilities that we no longer need. He offers a step-by-step system for schools to reach out to their communities to get the permission and support to change the system.
Different Learners: Identifying, Preventing, and Treating Your Child's Learning Problems
By Jane M. Healy, Simon & Schuster.
Yes, the most recent book by author and educational psychologist Healy is aimed at parents, but it's a useful read for anyone in education, particularly if you're trying to get your brain wrapped around the seeming explosion of learning disorders showing up in young children. Healy's theory is that our fast-paced, stressful lives are not good for children's development, and that schools can actually worsen some learning problems in students. Like many other educators and child advocates, she worries about the overdiagnosis and labeling of students who may be "late bloomers," those whose learning and behavioral problems are the result of immaturity, not pathology. For many children, changes in home and school can prevent and slow learning problems before the student needs special education services.
Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College
By Doug Lemov, Jossey-Bass.
Teacher, principal, and charter school founder Lemov's book is a good choice for the teacher in your life or if you want to find out more about teacher quality. The author says he developed the 49 techniques over five years by watching the teachers in his urban-based charter program, Uncommon Schools. His techniques include: "No Opt Out: How to move students from the blank stare or stubborn shrug to giving the right answer every time"; "Do It Again: When students fail to successfully complete a basic task, doing it again, doing it right, and doing it perfectly, results in the best consequences"; and "No Warnings: If you're angry with your students, it usually means you should be angry with yourself. This technique shows how to effectively address misbehaviors in your classroom." The book includes training activities at the end of each chapter.
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
By Daniel Pink, Riverhead.
Technically, this book belongs on last year's notable book list, but it was published at the very end of the year (Dec. 26), after ASBJ's last "Notable Books" issue went to press. Pink, whose bestselling A Whole New Mind looked at the rise of the creative thinkers, now turns his attention to motivation. Hope of gain and fear of loss are not the only way to get employees and others to do what we need them to do. Carrot-and-stick options actually reduce creative thinking, according to a large body of behavioral studies. What we really want, Pink writes, is the opportunity to grow and develop.
Kathleen Vail (firstname.lastname@example.com) is managing editor of American School Board Journal.
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Copyright © 2017, National School Boards Association. American School Board Journal is an editorially independent publication of the National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed by this magazine or any of its authors do not necessarily reflect positions of the National School Boards Association. Within the parameters of fair use, this article may be printed out and photocopied for individual use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise, linked, transmitted, or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6739.
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How the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Undermine Democracy and Erode Human Rights:
Five Case Studies
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September 2001
Published by Global Exchange
The policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have systematically undermined democratic principles and eroded human rights protections in dozens of countries around the globe.
By insisting that national leaders place the interests of international financial investors above the needs of their own citizens, the IMF and the World Bank have short circuited the accountability at the heart of self-governance, thereby corrupting the democratic process. The subordination of social needs to the concerns of financial markets has, in turn, made it more difficult for national governments to ensure that their people receive food, health care, and education -- basic human rights as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Bank's and the Fund's erosion of basic human rights and their perversion of the democratic process have made the institutions a clear and present threat to the well being of hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The institutions, Global Exchange strongly believes, must be abolished and redesigned from scratch through a genuinely democratic, inclusive and transparent process involving all of the world's nations.
For more than 50 years, the IMF and the World Bank have advanced a form of economic "development" that prioritizes the concerns of wealthy lenders and multinational corporations in the industrialized north while neglecting the needs of the world's poor majority. The institutions work as a kind of international loan shark, exerting enormous influence over the economies of more than 60 countries. In order to get loans, international assistance, and debt relief, countries must agree to conditions set by the Bank and Fund. Under the guise of promoting "free trade," market liberalization, and financial stability, these two institutions have forced cuts in health care, education and other social services for millions of people across the planet, thereby deepening poverty and increasing inequality. By elevating concerns about macroeconomic financial stability above all other competing values, the institutions have created a human rights catastrophe.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, is the foundation of modern international human rights defense and promotion. The Declaration is built on the principle that human rights come from the "inherent dignity" of every person. This dignity, and the rights to freedom and equality which derive therefrom, are inalienable.
Though best known as guarantor of liberties such as freedom from repression, freedom of expression and freedom of association, the Declaration places as much importance on the guarantee of economic rights as it does on the protection of political and civil liberties. The Declaration is unequivocal and explicit in its demand that economic security is just as central to human dignity as freedom of conscience.
For example, the Declaration establishes "the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment" as a basic human right. The "right to equal pay for equal work" as well as a worker's "right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests" are considered central to human dignity. Basic, and free, education is also established as a universal human right. More broadly, the Declaration asserts: "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."
Together, the economic security articles of the Declaration underscore that political rights can be enjoyed only when basic human needs have been satisfied. Without economic security, freedom of conscience -- the liberty to grow as an individual -- is impossible. As Article 22 states: "Everyone ... has the right to social security ... [and] the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality."
In dozens of countries around the world, the IMF and the World Bank have violated that "right to social security." The institutions have forced debtor countries to cut social spending on health, education, and other public services. They have pressured poor nations to charge their own citizens for the use of public schools and public hospitals. And they have demanded that countries keep their wage levels low, a policy which harms ordinary citizens but benefits multinational corporations.
In compelling countries to adopt such policies, the IMF and the World Bank have not only threatened communities' right to social security -- they have also undermined countries' democratic systems. Democracy rests on the principle that government officials and elected representatives are servants of the citizenry at large. Elected leaders' ultimate accountability is to the people they serve. The Bank and the Fund have severed that chain of accountability by making national leaders more concerned with the interests of international investors than with the needs of their own people. As soon as government officials begin worrying more about what Wall Street will think than what their own people think, democracy has been perverted.
Since 1976, at least 100 protests against Fund and Bank policies have occurred in dozens of countries around the world (see Appendix 1). Clearly, ordinary citizens are outraged with the institutions' policies. The continued adoption of those policies reveals the democracy disconnect fostered by the IMF and the World Bank.
The IMF's and World Bank's history of socially irresponsible and environmentally unsustainable policies are too long to present in a brief statement. It is necessary, then, to focus on just a few examples of how these institutions' policies have threatened human rights and democracy throughout the world.
In Haiti and Mexico, the Fund and the Bank have actively worked to keep wages low, making it more difficult for ordinary citizens to support themselves. Throughout Africa, the IMF's and World Bank's imposition of "user fees" for health services and the institutions' resistance to meaningful debt relief have worsened the AIDS crisis ravaging that continent. In Colombia, the IMF has demanded social service cuts even as the country suffers from recession and civil war. In Brazil, as in many other countries, the World Bank has meddled in domestic politics by inserting itself into one side of a heated social debate. And in all of these places, as in many more not mentioned here, the institutions have directed the most political of decisions -- the allocation of national resources -- thereby undermining national democracies.
Once again we have to say, "Enough!" The IMF and World Bank say their policies are designed to succeed in the "long run." But after more than 20 years of managing dozens of economies, the institutions have created more inequality, more environmental destruction, and no real security. It is long past time for the US and the other wealthy nations that enjoy de facto control over the institutions to call for the abolition of the IMF and the World Bank and to begin work to create multilateral financial institutions that are truly committed to human rights and democracy and which can effectively respond to the new realities of the 21st century. Policy makers everywhere must recognize that another world is possible.
Mexico: A "model student"?
For nearly 20 years, Mexico has followed almost every economic policy mandate from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Mexico's compliance with IMF dictates has been so reliable, in fact, that in 1994 the IMF and the World Bank lauded the country as a "model student" that other Latin American countries should emulate. Some model. Since Mexico first adopted the IMF prescriptions of trade "liberalization," privatization and deregulation, real wages have fallen, poverty and inequality have increased, and the country's massive debt burden has grown.
Mexico's experience with IMF policies offers a clear example of how the Fund sacrifices the well being of ordinary people to suit the interests of international investors. In an effort to head off short- term financial crises -- and calm investors' fears -- the IMF has undermined Mexico's chances of creating a stable, well-balanced economy.
The IMF Arrives in Mexico
Many US citizens assume that Mexico's entry into the new global economy occurred when the country signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993. But Mexico's economy was opened up to the forces of corporate-led globalization long before NAFTA went into effect. Before anyone had heard of NAFTA, the IMF was already setting Mexico on the structural adjustment path.
In 1982, a fall in international oil prices combined with a rise in interest rates in international financial markets forced Mexico to announce that it was on the verge of defaulting on its foreign debt. The "debt crisis" of 1982 also impacted countries throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia, giving the IMF the chance to determine the fiscal and monetary policies of countries around the world.
Mexico asked the IMF for assistance, and the Fund obliged with a $3.9 billion credit package. The IMF's 1982 assistance package was strictly quid-pro-quo. To receive the new loan -- and the Fund's all-important seal of approval, which opens the door to other public and private credit -- Mexico would have to embark on a series of market reforms. Public spending would have to be cut, government enterprises would need to be privatized, industry would have to be deregulated, and the country would have to open up to more foreign trade and investment. Subsequent agreements with the IMF in 1986 and 1989 further cemented this policy path.
In an effort to boost foreign investment in Mexico and decrease the country's imports -- which would hopefully lower the country's trade (or current account) deficit -- the IMF in the late 1980s sought to contract economic activity and stabilize wages. The IMF worked with the Mexican government and the country's businesses and government-controlled labor unions to establish a set of social pacts, or "Pactos," to keep wages in check. Workers' earnings were indexed to "expected" levels of inflation. Unfortunately for Mexican workers, inflation rose more than expected. Between the implementation of the first Pacto in December 1987 and May 1994, the minimum wage increased by 136 percent, while the cost of a basic basket of consumer goods rose by 371 percent.
That sort of decrease in real earnings would lead Mexicans to call the 1980s the "lost decade." During the 1980s, real wages (adjusted for inflation) declined by more than 75 percent, and between 1981 and 1990 workers' share of national income fell from 49 to 29 percent. Government investments in education, research and development, and infrastructure were reduced. The IMF policies, which supposedly were intended to make Mexico more internationally competitive, were actually doing the opposite by limiting investment in the very areas needed to make a country more productive. It was a development "strategy" doomed to fail.
The Cost of Privatization
While ordinary wage earners saw their incomes plummet, they were confronted with increasing consumer prices. Since 1983, Mexico has sold off nearly 1,000 public enterprises. These privatizations were intended to inject come cash into government coffers. While the sell-offs did, in the short term, earn the government new money, the privatizations hurt ordinary consumers. The privatization of Telmex, the country's phone system, is just one example of how the IMF privatization agenda hurt average citizens more than it helped them.
In 1990 President Carlos Salinas de Gortari sold off the country's profitable phone system, Telmex. The World Bank provided substantial technical assistance to the Mexican government to help with the sale. The winners were multinational communication corporations Southwestern Bell and France Telecom. Mexican phone users were the losers. In the months before the sale -- in an attempt to make the Telmex a more attractive buying prospect -- the government increased rates on local calls from 16 pesos per minute to 115 pesos per minute.
In a 1992 report, the World Bank admitted that "the privatization of Telmex, along with its attendant price-tax regulatory regime, has the result of 'taxing' consumers -- a rather diffuse, unorganized group -- and then distributing the gains among more well-defined groups, shareholders, employees, and the government." The Bank predicted that rates would decrease in the long run. But the long run still hasn't arrived. Although rates on international calls have dropped, that decrease has been offset by a rise in the cost of long distance calls within Mexico.
Other privatizations have been equally distressing for average Mexicans. The World Bank has concluded that privatization contributed to a "worsening of the already skewed and concentrated pattern of ownership distribution in the economy." A glaring example of this is corn, Mexico's traditional staple crop. For years, small scale farmers have seen government support evaporate as the IMF demanded an end to tariffs and import quotas on the grain and an elimination of government assistance with marketing and distribution of locally grown products. In recent years, a flood of subsidized US corn has caused a 45 percent decrease in the prices corn farmers receive for their commodity. This has pushed millions of farmers off their land and into the urban ghettoes or toward the US. And yet -- because of the monopolistic control of the Mexican corn processing industry -- consumer prices have not gone down. In fact, tortilla prices have actually increased in the last 15 years.
A "Success" Built on Sand
By the early 1990s, after the "lost decade," the Mexican economy started to show signs of improvement. Inflation came down, and some economic growth occurred. But it was a success built on sand. The Mexican economy was relying more and more on foreign capital flows, most of which were short-term portfolio investments. The increasingly volatile capital flows boosted the Mexican peso, a benefit for foreign investors, but it worsened the country's trade deficit by making Mexican exports more expensive.
By mid-1994, foreign investors -- assuming the Mexican government would devalue the peso to make exports more competitive -- began pulling their money out of Mexico. In December 1994, Mexican officials were forced to devalue the peso. In January 1995, the government again asked the IMF for assistance. The IMF lent the country $7.75 billion, and the US Treasury loaned another $18 billion. A new round of privatizations were prescribed to raise quick cash and pay off the loans. Under the 1995 agreement with the IMF, transportation, banking and finance, railways and the petrochemical industries were all to be sold off. Once again, the IMF was offering policies that responded to the short term financial concerns of international investors rather than to the basic needs of or ordinary Mexicans.
The1995 peso devaluation -- combined with an IMF-mandated rise in interest rates designed to lure investors back to Mexico -- sparked the worse depression in Mexico in 60 years. Unemployment doubled. More than 12,000 Mexican businesses filed for bankruptcy. And millions of families dropped below the poverty line.
As the Mexican economy came virtually to a standstill, the IMF blamed the Mexicans, complaining that human error and mismanagement of financial variables had led to the crisis. The IMF's attempt to shift blame for the economic collapse seemed to many Mexicans an insult. The country had followed all of the Fund's prescriptions. The peso devaluation, after all, was due in large part to the short-term capital flooding the country, and that flood was precipitated by the deregulation of the country's financial markets which the Fund had demanded.
Trading Away the Future
Even as its economy was shrinking, Mexico was implementing the other pillar of the IMF's structural adjustment package -- trade liberalization. In 1994, NAFTA went into effect, creating a giant "free trade" block among Mexico, the US and Canada. The agreement contained many "reforms" the IMF had long been asking for, among them a provision allowing 100 percent direct foreign ownership of Mexican companies. NAFTA also modified Article 23 of the Mexican Constitution, which had protected communal property, known as ejidos, from being broken up. The article was another long-time object of IMF and World Bank ire. The constitutional change removed many people's guarantee that they would have access to land, thereby putting more people in financial jeopardy.
In the years following the 1995 crash, Mexico did enjoy some steady macroeconomic growth. But the benefits were not evenly spread. The number of Mexicans living in "severe" poverty (surviving on less than $2 a day) has grown by four million since NAFTA began. Wages, instead of increasing, have declined. Mexican manufacturing workers are today earning almost 10 percent less than they did before NAFTA. The 1990s, just like the ten years before, were a "lost decade."
Today, after two decades of following IMF prescriptions and seven years of the NAFTA experiment, Mexico remains a country racked by poverty and inequality. A majority of Mexicans live below the poverty line. Even the World Bank concedes that 15 years of trade liberalization in Mexico have not succeeded in closing the gap between rich and poor. In almost every social sector -- health, nutrition, housing, education -- virtually all of the key indicators show serious deterioration over the last 15 years. Today one can speak not just of a lost decade, but of a lost generation.
The Same Old Policies
And what about the debt burden that started Mexico down the structural adjustment path? It has gotten even worse. In 1982, Mexico's total foreign public debt was $57 billion. In 1993 it amounted to $80 billion. By 1997, the country owed $99 billion in public debt. This stranglehold of debt continues to force Mexico to attract foreign investment by any means necessary, including trading away the basic rights of its workers and failing to enforce environmental regulations.
Despite the failures of this "model student," the World Bank and IMF are still prescribing the same old policies for Mexico. In May 2001, the World Bank offered specific recommendations to Mexican President Vicente Fox on the country's labor policies. The Bank said that if Mexico wanted to attract more foreign investment, it would need to increase the "flexibility" of Mexican labor. The Bank suggested that Mexico eliminate its regulations regarding mandatory severance pay, collective bargaining, obligatory benefits for workers, company-sponsored training programs, and company payments to social security and housing plans.
President Fox said the recommendations were "very much in line with what we have contemplated." But a leading Mexican industrialist, Claudio X. González, who heads Mexico's most influential business organization, was surprised by the Bank plan.
"Some of these proposals of the World Bank are not made even to the most developed nations," González said. "Why are they then being recommended for the emerging countries?"
AIDS in Africa: Dying of Debt
The immune disorder AIDS rep resents one of the greatest threats to health and social stability in the history of humanity. Today an estimated 36.1 million people around the world are living with HIV-AIDS. The vast majority of those infected, 25.3 million people, live in one of the globe's most impoverished regions -- Sub-Saharan Africa.
The countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are experiencing a pandemic rivaled only by the plague that devastated Europe in the 14th century. The statistics are staggering. In South Africa one in five people has HIV-AIDS, and in Zimbabwe one in four. One in seven Kenyans have the virus. In Botswana, the country with the highest rate of infection in the world, more than one-third of all adults are HIV positive. Seventeen million people in Sub-Saharan Africa have died since the pandemic began; 2.4 million people died in 2000 alone. If current trends continue, the number of AIDS orphans in Africa may exceed 40 million by 2010.
Policy makers in the West have offered a variety explanations for the disaster. They say that African leaders have failed to respond quickly or effectively enough to the pandemic. They suggest that "African promiscuity" is to blame. To be sure, many African governments could have done more, and today can be doing more, to stop the disease's spread. But Western leaders' explanations -- which rely on a racist notion of African "otherness" -- are simply a way for wealthy governments to avoid responsibility for what is certainly the greatest health and humanitarian emergency of our time. The fact is that Africans are dying in horrendous numbers because they are poor -- and that poverty has been greatly exacerbated by the policies of the IMF and the World Bank, two institutions controlled by the world's wealthy nations.
Sub-Saharan nations' continuing debt burden is one of the central causes of the AIDS crisis and also a major obstacle to treating the disease. The region's poverty makes its citizens more susceptible to contracting AIDS. Treatment efforts are frustrated by debtor countries' inability to pay for health care services because they are spending so much money on interest payments. By refusing to cancel the debts of AIDS-ravaged countries and by continuing to force poor nations to adopt cutbacks in government services, including health services, the IMF and the World Bank are contributing to the deaths of millions of people. People are literally dying of debt.
The Sub-Saharan debt crisis and IMF-mandated structural adjustment policies have helped to spread AIDS throughout the region. In the 1980s and 1990s, scores of indebted African nations agreed to structural adjustment policies such as eliminating subsidies on basic foodstuffs, removing assistance to farmers, and re-orienting their agricultural economies to export production. These "reforms" had two effects: they jeopardized people's food security and they created a new class of migrant workers. The elimination of food subsidies in Zimbabwe, for example, led to a tripling of food prices in the early 1990s, which forced people to cut back on what they ate. The reorganization of agricultural land led to a displacement of farmers, who then moved to the cities to work or became temporary laborers. The combination of an increase in malnutrition and an increase in migration and urbanization created a situation under which Africans were both more vulnerable to the disease and more likely to spread it. "Structural adjustment raises particular problems for governments because most of the factors which fuel the AIDS epidemic are also those factors that seem to come into place in structural adjustment programs," Dr. Peter Piot, Director of the United Nations' AIDS program, has said.
Sex isn't the sole determinant of whether a person will contract the HIV virus; sexual behavior alone cannot explain HIV prevalence as high as 25 percent of the adult population. After all, how much sex are we talking about that would produce, in the absence of other factors, prevalence of HIV in Botswana that is more than 50 times that of the US, 80 times that of France, and 1,000 times that of Cuba? The science here is unequivocal: An individual's overall health also affects their chances of contracting the virus, and already ill and/or malnourished people are more likely of becoming HIV-positive. From 1970 to 1997, Sub-Saharan Africa was the only region in the world to experience a decrease in food production, a decrease in calorie supply, and a decrease in protein supply per capita. In three structurally adjusted countries -- Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Malawi -- protein supply fell by more than 15 percent. Protein-energy malnutrition weakens every part of the immune system, making people more vulnerable to viruses such as HIV and more conventional sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea, which further speed the transmission of HIV.
Even as structural adjustment policies have increased malnutrition and community instability in Sub-Saharan Africa, they have made it harder for African governments to respond to the growing AIDS crisis. Governments with overwhelming foreign debt payment obligations must cut back on what they might otherwise allocate to health care and HIV-AIDS prevention. Export earnings that go to service foreign debts are not available to pay for imports of pharmaceuticals and other health equipment.
At least 23 African countries spend more money on debt repayment than they spend on healthcare. Four countries suffering from massive HIV infection rates show the deadly forces at work.
- Eight percent of Tanzanians are HIV positive. In 1998 the country spent 1.3 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care. It spent 3.1 percent of its GDP on debt payments.
- Fourteen percent of adults in Kenya have HIV. In 1998 Kenya spent more than three times as much servicing its debt than it did providing public health care services. Although the World Bank and the IMF consider Kenya a "highly indebted poor country" (or HIPC), the institutions consider that no debt relief is required. In Kenya there are 22,000 people for every one doctor.
- One out of every four Zimbabweans have HIV. In 1998 Zimbabwe spent 10.3 percent of its GDP on debt payments. It spent 3.2 percent of its GDP on health care. Unicef has reported that between 1990 and 1993, the quality of health care services in Zimbabwe dropped by 30 percent. The World Bank and the IMF do not classify Zimbabwe as a country eligible for debt relief.
- In Malawi, 16 percent of adults are infected with HIV. Between 1995 and 1998, Malawi spent twice as much on its debt payments as it did on its health care. In Malawi, there is only one doctor for every 50,000 people.
The IMF's and World Bank's imposition of "user fees" -- that is, fees for public services -- has made it even more difficult for governments to treat the AIDS pandemic by lowering attendance at health clinics. For example, the introduction of fees for patients at Nairobi's Special Treatment Clinic for Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) resulted in a decrease in attendance of 40 percent for men and 65 percent for women over a nine-month period. In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania the three public district hospitals saw attendance drop by 53.4 percent between the second and third quarters of 1994, when user fees were introduced.
Whether someone lives or dies of AIDS depends largely on where he or she lives. The 25 million HIV-positive people in Sub-Saharan Africa are living with a death sentence not because the drugs to treat them do not exist, but because government officials in the world's wealthy countries don't have the political will to put human life above corporate profit.
The international response to the AIDS crisis must focus on two key areas -- treatment and prevention. For these challenges to be met, several steps be taken. Wealthy countries need to make a greater financial contribution to fighting the disease, pharmaceutical corporations must work to provide drugs at prices poor people can afford (currently one-tenth of one percent of Africans have the money to buy life-prolonging AIDS drugs), and international intellectual property rights rules must be loosened. Perhaps most important, countries' debts must be cancelled unconditionally. Until that happens, African societies will be unable to respond to the disease that threatens to destroy them.
The World Bank's Land "Reform" in Brazil: Unconstitutional Meddling
According to conventional mac roeconomic measures, Brazil is a wealthy country. Well endowed with natural resources, Brazil, the biggest country in South America, has the ninth largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the world. Yet the country remains wracked by poverty and inequality. UN figures show that 20 percent of the population controls 80 percent of the nation's wealth, and according to government statistics the wealthiest one percent of the populace accounts for half of the national income. At least half of the country's workforce in this country of 165 million people earns less then the minimum wage of $77 per month. Perhaps President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a former left wing radical and now a neo liberal champion, has put it best: Brazil is not a poor country, it is an unjust one. As Brazil demonstrates, wealth alone -- wealth without equity -- is not prosperity.
The inequities of Brazilian society are particularly stark when it comes to land distribution. The country's legacy of colonialism has left three percent of the population holding nearly two-thirds of Brazil's arable land. According to the Brazilian government, 30 percent of Brazilian farmers own just 20 acres of land or less. In contrast, the country's largest farms, those of 2,000 acres or more, comprise only 1.6 percent of all farms but sit on 53.2 percent of the usable land. Another 4.8 million rural families -- approximately 25 million people in a country with a total population of 167 million -- have no land at all and survive as temporary laborers.
Perhaps worst of all, much of Brazil's more than 1.2 billion acres of arable land lies unused. At least 40 percent of agricultural land lies fallow or, at best, is used only for cattle grazing. Among the largest farms -- those geared for the export market or held only for speculative reasons -- an estimated 88 percent of the land is permanently idle. The twin injustices of land concentration and idle farms are largely responsible for the chronic poverty that plagues Brazil.
In 1997, the World Bank began a pilot program to address land distribution in Brazil. Called the "Land Bank," Cedula da Terra in Portuguese, the project is intended to help landless families gain parcels through access to credit and technical assistance. What may appear a well-meaning effort, however, is wrought with troubles. In developing the Cedula, the Bank never consulted with the Brazilian citizens' groups leading the country's land reform movement. In failing to conduct such consultations, the Bank placedits enormous weight behind a single social actor—landowners—in a hotly contested political issue. To add injury to insult, it now appears that the Bank's project may even worsen rural inequalities in Brazil.
The Land Bank experience is just one example of how the Bank inappropriately inserts itself in domestic politics, in the process short circuiting the democratic system. As an analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund has said, "This project is possibly the most cynical imitation of a development project that I've ever seen, in a very competitive field."
A Long History of Failures
The Cédula project is not the first time the IMF and the World Bank have interfered in Brazil. In the 1970s, the institutions lent billions of dollars to the military dictatorship then controlling the country. The loans were used to pay for massive infrastructure projects such as dams, many of which failed to meet even the goals set by the institutions themselves. By the 1980s, the country was borrowing new money to pay off the old loans. Brazil's "lost decade" saw a massive transfer of wealth outside of the country as the government paid $148 billion—$90 billion just in interest, the rest in principal—between 1980 and 1989 to foreign lenders. Much of this money went to recover the costs of Bank-initiated projects that were unsuccessful. In 1991, the Bank itself estimated that 55 percent of its Brazilian projects had failed.
In the 1990s, under a succession of civilian governments, the IMF and the World Bank compelled Brazil to institute their structural adjustment policies. Industries were deregulated, government enterprises sold off, and government spending reduced and taxes raised. In the late 1990s, President Cardoso greatly accelerated the neo-liberal reforms demanded by the IMF. The profitable government phone system and a profitable publicly owned mining company were sold to multinational corporations. Government spending on social services was reduced even further.
In November of 1999, Cardoso's administration put Brazil even more at the mercy of the IMF when he agreed to a $41.5 billion loan package. At that time a financial crisis was sweeping Russia, and the IMF, concerned that the "contagion" would spread to Brazil and destabilize the entire global financial structure, was putting pressure on Brazil not to devalue its currency, the real. The IMF forced the Brazilian treasury to dramatically increase interest rates—which at one point hit 41 percent—to keep the real strong. In the end, it didn't work. The high interest rates sent the Brazilian economy into a recession, and Cardoso eventually had to devalue the currency anyway. Essentially, the IMF forced Brazil to spend billions of dollars to prevent the inevitable.
The IMF had predicted that if Brazil devalued the real hyperinflation would occur. That never happened. But sending interest to stratospheric levels did greatly burden ordinary Brazilians. The higher lending rates forced thousands of rural foreclosures. According to the Brazilian government, between 1995 and 1999 an estimated 4 million Brazilians left the countryside for the cities. The Cardoso administration's and IMF's insistence on ensuring investor confidence worsened the maldistribution of land.
Taking Political Sides
The Brazilian Constitution of 1988—recognizing that excessive land concentration not only contributes to poverty but also hinders sustainable development—explicitly states that land must be used for the benefit of society. Other laws that establish mechanisms for progressive land distribution allow the government to expropriate unused or over-large landholdings and then pay back the owners through the issuance of government bonds. Since the mid 1980s, citizens groups in Brazil—led by the Landless Workers Movement (MST is the Portuguese acronym), the Confederation of Agricultural Workers, and the Catholic Church—have used such laws to push for land redistribution.
In just 15 years, these groups, the MST in particular, have succeeded in securing land titles for 250,000 families through the non-violent occupation of unused land. That grassroots energy has also moved the Brazilian government to take stronger action. The current administration has distributed more than 28 million acres of land, and Cardoso officials concede this wouldn't have happened without pressure from the MST and its allies.
In 1997, the World Bank decided it wanted to become involved in land reform in Brazil. But instead of taking a neutral posture that supported land reform as such, Bank officials supported the government and the landowners against the MST and the civil society organizations aligned with it. By doing so, it has corrupted the democratic process.
Land reform is one of the most emotional political issues in Brazil today. Heated rhetorical sparing between the MST and the national government is common. In the countryside, the political struggle has turned physical. State governments, usually allied with local landed elites, routinely repress MST activities. Police beatings of MST activists are not unusual, and some people have been killed. The MST and the government, then, are political adversaries.
From the outset of its involvement in Brazilian land reform, the Bank has supported the interests of one side a political struggle. The Bank planned its land reform project without consulting or informing any of the national citizens' organizations working on land issues. The Bank and the Brazilian government even refused to negotiate with rural workers when they made specific proposals.
The land reform mechanism pushed by the MST and reluctantly pursued by the Cardoso administration relies on the idea that land can be confiscated even against the wishes of the owner if it is not being used. In contrast, the World Bank's system relies on free-market principles. Under the World Bank's plan, land reform is privatized: the landless apply for loans from the Brazilian government with which they can purchase land from landowners at market prices. However, no landowners will be forced to sell, no matter how much of their property is lying unused.
The Cédula is just now reaching the point where a complete analysis of its success can occur. But already preliminary evidence suggests that the program is doomed to failure. First, the majority of borrowing farmers don't even fully understand that they have taken out a loan—and even fewer know the terms of their loans. The tough terms of the loans— interest rates on the loans can be as high as 18 percent—make it likely that many poor farmers will lose the land again within a few years. Also, under the Land Bank program, there is only a three-year grace period (an earlier government program had a five-year grace period), and little way to get credit for supplies or seeds. Landless advocates also fear that the Land Bank, which is planning on distributing $2 billion loans over ten years, could contribute to an inflation in land prices.
Most disturbing for landless advocates, many Brazilians perceive that the Bank's program is not simply a complementary alternative to the constitutionally guaranteed land reform; rather, many people believe the Bank's market-based approach to land reform is a substitute for other kinds of land distribution. That perception meets neatly with the political agenda of landowners and some government officials who want to eliminate the existing means of land reform. It also, of course, goes against the interests of the MST and its allies, who want to pursue land reform via the constitutionally sanctioned means of expropriation. Essentially, then, the Bank has sided with the political agenda of a particular group. By failing to even consult with those at the forefront of Brazilian land reform, the Bank inserted itself into the one of the country's most heated political debates.
Officials at the World Bank do not seem interested in ever holding such consultations. In 1998, the Forum for Land Reform, an umbrella organization of Brazilian NGOs, and Rural Justice, another NGO, asked the Bank's Inspection Panel to investigate how the Cédula was developed. In June 1999, the Bank turned down the request on the grounds that the complaint was based on "philosophical differences." The groups appealed the decision through a second request. The Inspection Panel has not responded to the second request.
Colombia and the IMF: Policies that Worsen Problems
Colombia's relationship with the International Monetary Fund is similar to the relationship between a poor, sick patient and a costly doctor. The patient, badly in need of help, goes to the doctor for treatment. The doctor in return prescribes the patient a very expensive, controversial medication. The patient agrees, knowing that they cannot afford it, but, feeling desperate, consents to the treatment. Eventually, the patient develops terrible side effects to the treatment, and also discovers that the original problem has worsened. The patient—poorer, sicker and more desperate—needs more "medicine" than ever before.
Two years of financial "infusions" from the IMF are affecting Colombia in the same way. The South American country's experience with IMF policies illustrates how the Fund caters to the interests of international investors and the Colombian elite, while harming the well being of ordinary Colombians in the process.
Ignoring massive public protests against the IMF-mandated reforms, the lending institution's policies have systematically cut health care, education and other social services for millions of Colombians, laying off tens of thousands of workers in the process.
The IMF's relationship with Colombia has deepened poverty and inequality there, while claiming to do the opposite—all in the name of "free" trade, market liberalization and financial stability.
Equally as damaging to Colombian society is the way that the government has imposed the IMF-mandated economic strategy. Characterized by undemocratic and authoritarian practices, the government silences grassroots opposition, undermining the legitimacy of Colombian democracy.
The 1990s—from Optimism to Emigration
Colombia in the early 1990s was a land of renewed optimism and hope. The 1980s—referred to by many as a "lost decade" in Latin America because of region-wide economic woes—passed with Colombia riding relatively high on one of the hemisphere's most stable and strong economies. A new constitution had been written that included more of Colombian society than ever before. Some of the nation's guerilla groups, weary of war, decided to involve themselves in the political process, forming political parties. Social peace, for so long an abstract, seemed tangible.
Considering this, perhaps not even the most hopeless of pessimists could have imagined the nightmare that Colombians have lived through during the last decade. The economy has fallen into its worst recession of the century, with official unemployment hovering around 20 percent. The country's bloody civil war claimed more than 100,000 lives. As a result, Colombians began to lose the hope that had buoyed them through the early 1990s. Between 1996 and 2000, 1,072,000 Colombians, sensing the worst was yet to come, left their homeland behind.
Colombian Neoliberalism—A Future for Whom?
Not coincidentally, it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s that Colombia began to experiment with neoliberal economic policies. Beginning with President Barcos (1986-1990), and continuing during the administrations of Gaviria (1990-1994), Samper (1994-1998) and Pastrana (1988-present), the Colombian elite wholeheartedly imposed the neoliberal economic model.
Gaviria, who 25 percent of Colombians blamed for the economic depression in a recent poll, proudly proclaimed to his countrymen in 1991, "Welcome to the future," referring to the new constitution and the neoliberal economic opening. Ten years later, during a recent development forum, the same man who boasted with such optimistic pride quizically answered questions regarding Colombia' s economic downturn. "I have to confess that the evolution of the country after my government has left me perplexed, like many other Colombians."
Yet, while Gaviria scratches his head trying to figure out what happened, most Colombians—those who cannot afford the same luxury of economic theorizing—are jobless and hungry.
The debate surrounding who and what is to blame for Colombia's economic downturn points to various causes. Some blame the constitution of 1991, whose new laws turned out to be costly to create and enforce. Some say neoliberalism and the uncontrolled opening-up of the Colombian economy to foreign investment are at fault. The other usual suspects are the reevaluation of the Colombian peso, and bad management of public spending by the state, among others.
Whatever the reasons, Colombia's economy slid into dire straits. And the Colombian elite, needing a bailout, went knocking on the IMF's door, hat in hand.
Plan Colombia and the IMF
After the scandal-ridden Samper presidency, Andrés Pastrana Arango was elected in 1998 with a mandate of peace. Recognizing the nation's increasingly desperate social, economic and political situation, the Pastrana administration developed Plan Colombia. The Colombian and US governments ostensibly describe Plan Colombia as a $7.5 billion integrated strategy to meet the most pressing challenges confronting Colombia today—promoting the peace process, combating the narcotics industry, reviving the Colombian economy, and strengthening the democratic pillars of Colombian society.
Falsely billing its support of Plan Colombia as part of the "War on Drugs," the US government has thrown its weight behind the plan with billions of dollars of mostly-military aid, lying to US citizens in the process. The US emphatically characterizes the aid as counternarcotic, instead of counterinsurgent—a semantic tongue twister that Colombians know to be untrue.
Although not directly related to Plan Colombia, the IMF's Colombia loan fits in to Plan Colombia as part of the larger strategy to revive the Colombian economy.
In 1999, Colombia appealed to the IMF for a loan for the first time in its history. The Fund obliged with a three-year credit worth $2.7 billion and its customary mandate—a structural reform agenda of austere fiscal policies that includes measures to streamline the revenue sharing system, reform the public pension systems, and downsize the public sector.
Failing to implement an economic alternative that protects ordinary Colombians, the Colombian state tightened its fiscal belt by cutting public spending—a move that hit the poorer segments of society the hardest. In the words of one Colombian economist, "What's the alternative? Increase the taxes on your elite? Do it if you can."
Most damaging to the average Colombian are the severe cutbacks in public investment in basic social services—health care, education and social security. It is a painful practice that one Colombian congressperson likened to "conducting a complex surgery without the use of anesthesia."
Colombian Grassroots Opposition to IMF Economic Reforms
To implement the IMF's demands, the Colombian government needed to pass special legislation, including changes to the constitution.
Many Colombians, not keen on the idea of having their well being on the fiscal operating table, have organized in nationwide protests against the various legislative changes.
In March 2001, hundreds of thousands of Colombian state workers went on a 24-hour strike to demonstrate against economic policies that resulted in mass layoffs and reduced social benefits. The layoffs are expected to total around 100,000 government employees.
Starting May 15, 2001, more than125,000 heath care workers and 300,000 public school teachers went on a month-long nationwide strike to protest against the ley de transferencias, or transfers law, a bill that would cap the federal money to departments [states] and municipalities for education, healthcare and other social needs.
Critics of the law warned that its implementation would result in the loss of 1,416,000 places for students in the public school system, adding to the estimated 3 million Colombian youths that are already outside the system. They also claimed that some 2.5 million more Colombians would be excluded from public health care.
Upon the bill's passage on June 20, 2001, Colombia's largest teachers' and health care workers' unions, FECODE and ANTHOC, publicly declared, "Since the time of Pastrana's development plan, no other initiative has created such a movement of opposition. But, it appears that the requirements of the IMF and financial capital supersede the interests of the nation and of the Colombian people."
Next up for surgery is the pension system. The controversial reform is another Colombian commitment to the IMF and is expected to galvanize the Colombian public in even more anti-Fund protests.
The Authoritarianism of the Colombian State
As the Colombian state adopts neoliberal economic strategy, it has become more authoritarian. Increasingly gaining more power to fight the US-sponsored "drug war" and the 40-year-old guerrilla insurgency, the government has used those powers to continually repress democratic liberties.
Laws like the recently passed ley de guerra , or war law, have granted the Colombian military more room to unilaterally crack down on "guerilla terrorism." Colombian and international NGOs, basing their concerns on past experiences, worry that such increased military powers will also be used to silence any voices of dissent that challenge the will of the Colombian government.
By heavily relying upon the force of its US-sponsored military, Colombia risks exacerbating the level of violence and state authoritarianism. This is a misguided approach that is likely to repress the sectors of the population that that are suffering the most from Colombia's neoliberal economic policies.
By silencing dissent like the IMF protests, and closing in on the political space that civilians are allowed to participate in, another result of Colombia's authoritarianism may be to further undermine the democratic process, and worsen Colombia's social, economic and political woes.
Haiti: Suffering from "Competitiveness"
For the last two decades, the Caribbean nation of Haiti has dutifully followed the prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And yet today Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Approximately 70 percent of Haitians are unemployed. Only four out of ten Haitians enjoy access to clean drinking water, and the country suffers from one of the worst life expectancy rates in the world; Haitian men can expect to live 47 years, Haitian women 51 years. Most Haitians cannot read. Fifty percent of Haitian children younger than 5 suffer from malnutrition. Per capita income is just above $1 a day.
The IMF's policy mandates for successive Haitian governments—whether military or civilian—have focused on a single goal: increasing exports. Haiti's exports have, in fact, increased dramatically under the IMF's tutelage. But that "success" has come a high price. In an effort to attract foreign investment to Haiti at any cost, the IMF has forced to Haiti to keep wages at poverty levels. While this has been a boon for multinational corporations, it has not led to prosperity for ordinary Haitians. Even coveted jobs in Haiti's garment factories provide just barely enough money for people to survive. At the same time, the IMF and World Bank's insistence on cutting assistance to small farmers has ruined the country's agricultural sector, making Haitians dependent on imported food. The IMF's and World Bank's legacy in Haitian is largely one of lower wages than ever before and widespread food insecurity.
Agricultural "Development"
The international agencies' involvement in Haiti began with a disaster. In 1982, a program was begun to replace the ubiquitous Creole pig—owned by about 85 percent of rural households—with North American pig breeds. The Creole pig used to serve as a sort of savings account for many Haitian farmers, with families selling their pigs on special occasions—weddings, funerals—and emergencies. But foreign agriculture "experts" determined that the pigs were chronically ill, and fearing that the pig illness would spread north, virtually every Creole pig in the country was killed in a period of 13 months. The new, imported pigs from Iowa were a poor replacement. They couldn't tolerate the tropical environment and needed special roofed pigpens. Unless the pigs had clean drinking water—which even most Haitian people don't have—they became sick. They required imported feed, which ordinary farmers couldn't afford. The re-population was a complete failure. According to one observer, Haitian peasants lost approximately $600 million in capital. Protein consumption in rural Haiti dropped dramatically.
The pig program was just one part of a larger World Bank plan to overhaul Haiti's agricultural system. In an effort to transform Haitian agriculture from a concentration on local consumption to an emphasis on foreign export, the Bank encouraged Haitians to plant cacao and coffee. Farmers were supposed to grow cash crops for export and then use their earnings to buy food. But the prices of coffee and cacao fluctuate wildly, and as worldwide commodity prices declined, Haitian farmers found themselves unable to make a living.
The transformation from an agricultural system geared toward domestic consumption to an export-oriented system soon led to a decrease in food production. The fall in local production was exacerbated in 1986, when the IMF demanded that the country lower import tariffs on rice and end support for rice farmers. Rice from the US—generously subsidized by American taxpayers—soon flooded the country, driving down prices and pushing farmers to the edge of bankruptcy. By 1988, many rice farmers had simply stopped working their land.
The experience of the Haitian rice farmers reveals a striking hypocrisy in the IMF mandates. While the Haitian government—strapped by debt and strangled by poverty—was forced to end its subsidies to rice farmers and lower its tariffs, the US was not compelled to take the same steps. Consequently, US rice soon dominated the Haitian market. Today, Haitians are in the unenviable position of being dependent on foreign exports for one of their main food staples. A single US corporation, Early Rice, sells almost 50 percent of the rice sold in Haiti. As one Haitian farmer has said: "The introduction of American rice hurt us terribly. But if it wasn't for this rice, Haitians would die of hunger."
Lowering Wages to Increase "Opportunity"
While acknowledging that its policies may lead to social disruptions in the short run, the IMF argues that its policies will benefit ordinary people in the long run. Poor countries, the IMF says, need to strive to specialize in a few key export-oriented industries and maximize their comparative advantages. Haiti's comparative advantage, the IMF says, is in the area of labor—and the institution has done all it can to keep that labor cheap.
The 1980s saw a severe drop in Haitians' earnings. By 1989 a full time minimum wage in Port-au-Prince provided less than 60 percent of a family's basic needs—food, shelter, clothing, etc. In the 1990s, the IMF sought to keep wages steady to make Haiti competitive and attract foreign investment to the country. In 1991 and 1994, the IMF conditioned loan assistance on wage restraint. Then, in 1996, the IMF gave the Haitian government technical assistance to revise its labor code. Haitian labor law had required an increase in the minimum wage if inflation were to exceed 10 percent. The IMF had that law changed, even as inflation hit 30 percent. The IMF also mandated a three-year freeze on government wages. If the government wanted to raise civil servants' earnings, it would have to offset those raises with firings. The move injected new instability into the already- cutthroat labor market.
Even as the IMF demanded sacrifices from Haitian workers, it pressured the country's government to give bonuses to foreign investors. At the urging of the Fund and the World Bank, Haiti reduced telephone, electricity and customs fees for foreign companies. The new corporate incentives, combined with the attraction of rock bottom wages, have in fact attracted thousands of manufacturers to Haiti. Yet, unfortunately for average Haitians, the foreign investors contribute very little to the country's economic stability. This is due to the fact that goods to be assembled are shipped from the United States, pieced together, and shipped out again, and few, if any, Haitian goods are used in the process. In addition, much of the tax-free profits made from the assembly sector are repatriated by U.S. investors, not reinvested in Haiti.
As the IMF and World Bank demanded that Haiti offer generous benefits to multinational corporations, it forced the government to cut its budget. In 1997 IMF demanded that the Haitian government reduce its spending by 50 percent, despite the fact that Haiti already had just one-eighth the number of public employees as its neighbor of comparable population, the Dominican Republic. The cuts in public spending made it even more difficult for the government to provide essential services. In fact, during the 1990s Haiti has spent more money servicing its debt than it has on health or education.
The IMF and World Bank programs in Haiti have been a boon for multinational corporations. US agri-business has reaped new profits from Haiti's lowering of its tariffs and the elimination of its farmer subsidies. The apparel industry has taken advantage of the low wages and manufacturing incentives to exploit Haiti's desperate workforce. The Haitian people, meanwhile, struggle to survive.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I'm in again, Read all the rules and guideline. lol
Welcome to the Quilting Board!
I'm in again, Read all the rules and guideline. lol
I love to collect roosters of any kind. I also love embroidery thread for my machine. My favorite color is purple and i am just a plain old country girl.lol
Yeah - I'm in again for January. Will send PM also.
Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.
I see three colors ............. great ....... love it ....read everything first yep thats a good idea .....llol
Crazy Quiltin Robin
Yes, the quilter from Connecticut is an angel. I really don't deserve her kindness and simply cannot believe it.
As for the house, I am not so sure about rebuilding. I really don't think our insurance will come close to covering the cost and having lost everything, there is nothing to spare to toss in the rebuilding pot. It is a temptation to pay off the mortgage, sell the land and move south when my husband retires, but then there is my son. I don't think I could live without seeing him at least a couple of times a week.
Feel the fear and do it anyway!
OK so y'all really do read the guidelines! and that is a good thing! It should say "Mail by Jan 30th 2013"
i have out of town company this weekend so if you sent me a PM to sign up, don't think I'm ignoring you by not responding. Right now I have 20 PM's to go thru. I will reply back soon, i promise!
Merry Christmas Y'all!
Lisa B in NC
Quilting is my Happy Thought!
Krystyna I think your son could skype you and visit often. Moving does not preclude the ability to go back for visits either. Its sure a big life change if you do. I hope what ever decision you make you are excited about the possibilities ahead. I will look forward to seeing your art as you restart your quilting. I am sure it will help you translate your emotions in another fashion. and what a good outlet it is to express yourself. You are so talented at what you do
Quilting krazy I am soooo ready to start. I just want to make sure I get what my partner wants too.. three colors piece of cake if they have a receivers wish however a whole new ball game. I am ready to rock and roll!
Here today... why what a lucky bunch we are.
krystyna, i can relate to the missing your child feelings. i have 2 in texas and one in london. somedays i just ache from the lack of seeing and touching them--i miss their hugs so much. skype keeps me in my dgd's life. she will be 1 and a half in february and is learning and changing at warp speed. she is a cuddly, busy little one, and nothing is sweeter! if i didn't have my dogs and cats ans dddh, i would go NUTS....oops, too late!! lol
The only bad days are the ones you don't get.
Krystyna-It was nice to hear you and your husband have shelter once again, and most importantly your family. Decisions about your future will come in time I'm sure, and it does take a bit of time usually. For right now, I wish you all a peace that will sustain you into the coming new year and so much love to fill you up. We have both our boys here for the holidays (one coming from England), and at 64 years of age we just found out we will be grandparents for the first time when spring comes. His name will be Samuel. The joy we feel is great. Many blessings.
I'm in too!
(¸.´(¸. (¸.´¸¸.¨¯`.¸¸.♥¨¯`.¸¸.♥ Donna♥¨¯`.¸¸.♥
Good morning Ladies, I am so tempted to sign up, but I hesitate. I'm going to sound like a real nut case, but I'm afraid to sew. I was really looking forward to it but now I'm just paralyzed. I don't know what it is. I have a beautiful new machine from my secret friend from CT, I have thread and fabric and rotary cutters galore ... but I just can't get started.
Feel the fear and do it anyway!


text:
In the north, Kevin Pilley finds that cod is great
The harbourside "Cod Bar" bucked and tipped like the North Atlantic. And smelled similar. It teemed with cod fisherman swaying from port to starboard. I was drowning my sorrows, up to my gunwales in beer and speaking bilge.
I had just made my debut in "skreifiske", the traditional Nordic he-man sport of cod fishing in the ancient cod-rich Vestfjorden waters off the northernmost tip of Norway. Conditions were perfect. The plankton were about, the sea temperature ideal, the salt content spot on and the Trollfjorder was equipped with the very latest fish-detection devices.
Thirty thousand tonnes of cod are caught between January and April at the tip of Norway's 1770km of coastline. One female cod produces three million eggs a year. So when we dropped anchor five miles offshore from Svolvaer, in the middle of a shoal of Gadus Morhua nearly a mile long, expectations were high.
But, for six hours, all I caught was spume. Then my rod bent double and the line smoked out from the brass reel between my legs. My Hemingway-esque features twisted into a grimace of excruciating pain as I reeled in the monster from the deep. My forearms bulged and my groin muscles palpitated to the point of a hernia. With one last heave, I swung the brute over the side of the boat and it fell with a plop at my feet. I had caught my first pollock.
The Lofoten islands are one of the worst things that can happen to a man's self-esteem. And to his wallet. It's not cheap to feel sorry for yourself. But it had to be done.
As soon as I got ashore and shed my sou'wester, I headed to the Bacalao, the local "kulturhus" on the capital's Havnepromenaden to rehydrate and desalinate. The atmosphere was fishy and the former garage on the waterfront was packed with cod people and people with chips on their shoulders. Those sitting at tables were looking down, comparing each other's cod pieces. Most were half-cut.
In the Cod Festival, locals throw thanksgiving parties for their favourite barbel-faced bottom feeder. For centuries, cod and its derivatives have formed the staple diet as well as the basis of prosperity and most conversation for Lofoten islanders.
In the 1940s, 30,000 boats came to "row" the Lofotfiske. Now there are fewer than 2000 and, despite quotas being enforced on the cod's migratory route to and from the Berents Sea, the cod industry is taking a battering.
The winning cod weighed in at 32lb (14kg). The largest cod was caught off the east coast of the US. It was a six foot, 211 pounder. My pollock weighed in at 3lbs. So I didn't win the coveted steel cormorant trophy.
After a few more Bodo-made Nordland beers, the whole place was yawing. And I had exceeded my conversational cod quota.
Then it got rowdy. And everyone started singing. About cod.


text:
I signed, but I think it's a lost cause. The Fed doesn't like anything that makes sense.
Not expecting any miracles but might as well sign it.
NFA Ban Repeal - Signatures
Meant to title this Nfa not NRA sorry.
I signed, but I think it's a lost cause. The Fed doesn't like anything that makes sense.
Plus the fact that there are numerous spelling and grammer issues with the petition.
I like the idea, but it needs to be presented in more "professional" way.
Online petitions are too open to fraud, and as such aren't generally viewed with anywhere near as much legitimacy as paper petitions.
What with throw-away email addresses, the ability to spoof IP addresses and the like, it's all too easy to void the "one man, one vote" concept that makes petitions useful at the grass roots level.
I have a daughter. I tell her, "911 is what you dial after you're raped. 1911 is what you should have before they try."
I agree with you all 100% I jus signed it cuz I might as well. I dont see Nfa ever being repealed. I would like to see a legitimate paper
Petition for the repeal of the 86 machine-gun ban. I would gladly pay the 200 bucks to make my own mg.
I think the funny thing is the way the pre-86 and NFA cap law got passed- by a last minute, VOICE vote, attached to a different bill. Dirty politicians... I have been in the military for 8 years, carried a M249 para, shot M240Gs, Bs, M2 50s, MK-19s, and carried a select fire M4, yet when I come back, I am not trusted for an inch by the govt... yeah thanks for that, you're welcome for my service assholes....
I think spell check would be of use on a DOC of this nature.
2. It created a hugh market for the illegal machineguns that criminals prefer to use.
Remember when we was playing matchbox cars in science class? Who's retarded now?
Might want to edit the thread title, too.
I agree with the petition, but I don't think the online petition will have much of an impact especially when there are signatures like "John Doe" on there. (Sorry if your name really is John Doe and signed this). I do agree strongly though. I too am a member of the military with 2 tours in Iraq and 1 in Afghanistan and to be told I am not to be trusted with a fully automatic weapon or a suppressor when I am part of an organizatin that simply requires me to check these items out, is pretty insulting. I am originally from California and have seen these types of "Knee Jerk" laws with California Law Makers thinking if these laws aren't passed then Armaggedon will be at hand and blood shed will spill out throughout our local streets and communities. Absolutely rediculous, two assholes ILLEGALLY attain rifles, ILLEGALLY modify them to go full auto, ILLEGALLY get body armor, ILLEGALLY rob a bank and ILLEGALLY fire at police leading to an all out firefight in North Hollywood and now its illegal to own a gun that is worth a damn in California. Yeah I feel like I'm being slapped in the face by being told I can be trusted in a combat zone, but not in my own home. I have filed for a tax stamp on one of my firearms and the process is out of control and my personal belief is this process is meant to discourage people from getting NFA class III weapons rather than to register them "Legally". Good idea with the petition, but online isn't the way to do it.
"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?" -Thomas Jefferson-
"Our rights come from our humanity and may not be legislated away -- not by a vote of Congress, not by the consensus of our neighbors, not even by agreement of all Americans but one." Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
I don't know if the petition will do any good...I'm sure it won't do harm, but I just got home from my class 3/sot dealer starting my form 4 for a silencer and he seems to think in the next few months the Chief LEO sign-off will be done away with on all NFA transfers.


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Swords into Plowshares is the blog of the Peacemaking Program and the Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations of the Presbyterian Mission Agency of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Seeking peace. Striving for justice. Together.
From November 17-23, 2013 the PC(USA)'s denominational leaders, Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons, the Moderator Neal Presa and Presbyterian Mission Board Executive Director Linda Valentine will engage in the SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge. We invite the rest of the church to join them, either by taking the actual Challenge or by joining in solidarity through various activities, including child and adult education, outreach in communities, and prayer.
The SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge is a discipline to draw attention to the gross injustice of poverty and hunger in the U.S. and to open new opportunities for education, understanding, compassion ...


text: Our local Starbuck's is inside our Kroger grocery store. I noticed a couple of years ago they had small honey packets. It is 100% Grade A US honey. It is dark and didn't have very good flavor. It is a Diamond Crystal Brands,Inc Savanah, GA. The package is opaque so you can't see the honey. I think the above packaging is much nicer and really show off the product.


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Spring on the Shores of Lake Joseph
Sherwood Inn on Lake Joseph • Port Carling, Canada
Escape Kit
- A One-Night Stay for Two in an Inn Room, an Inn Suite, or a Premium Inn Room, Fridays and Saturdays from April 5 to April 27, 2013, with Late Checkout ($109)
- Or, a One-Night Stay for Two in a Premium Maplewood or a Cedarwood Room, Any Days of the Week from May 10 to June 27, 2013, with Two Welcome Cocktails ($169)
- Or, a Two-Night Stay for Two in an Inn Room, an Inn Suite, or a Premium Inn Room, with Friday Arrivals from April 5 to April 27, 2013, with Late Checkout ($199)
- Or, a Two-Night Stay for Two in a Premium Maplewood or Cedarwood Room, Any Days of the Week from May 10 to June 27, 2013, with Two Welcome Cocktails ($299)
- Daily Breakfast for Two
The Destination
Peppered with picturesque villages, more than 1,500 scenic lakes, and lush deciduous forests, Muskoka is known as Canada's cottage-country playground. In spring and summer, this perennially popular region (look out for big-name Hollywood celebrities) offers a variety of outdoor adventure, from waterskiing and windsurfing to kayaking and canoeing, plus tons of hiking on an ever-growing network of regional trails. And because Muskoka spans some 2,500 square miles, it's never hard to find a bit of peace and quiet here. Is it any wonder more than 2 million visitors flock to Muskoka every year? National Geographic Traveler was right: This is one of the world's best trips.
The Digs
Situated on the lakeshore, Sherwood Inn on Lake Joseph delivers a casually elegant atmosphere loaded with character. Painted white with forest-green shutters, the traditional exterior welcomes guests to a rustic lobby with knotty pine walls and leather chairs. Along with breathtaking forest or lake views, Maplewood and Cedarwood rooms are appointed with king-size beds, gas or wood-burning fireplaces, and private whirlpool tubs.
Locally sourced fare is never far, as the inn's on-site eatery, Vintages, dishes up a cornucopia of seasonal dishes thought up by renowned Chef de Cuisine Everett Bell. Sherwood smoked salmon is complemented by Muskoka-grown pickled shallots, while pan-seared Georgian Bay pickerel is served with Grenville Farms cherry-tomato salsa and local fingerling potatoes.
"Our first visit to Sherwood Inn will not be our last. The property is so open and picturesque; we even watched an otter peacefully swim under the dock. The service and cuisine were first-class and helped make our 30th anniversary all the more special."-- TripAdvisor
30 day money-back guarantee
Can't find the dates you want? Dog ate your passport? No worries. You have 30 days post-purchase to return your voucher, no questions asked.
the fine print
- Limit 2 per customer, additional as gifts; up to 2 vouchers may be combined to extend stay
- Resort is only open Friday and Saturday in April
- Reservations required and subject to availability
- Not valid toward existing or room block reservations
- Merchant cancellation/rescheduling policy and fees apply once booking is made; voucher subject to forfeiture
- Voucher is valid for two guests
- HST of 13% and resort fee of $9 per day not included; payable directly to the property
- Nights must be spent consecutively; all inclusions must be redeemed during one stay
- Stay must be completed during date range purchased
- The promotional value is valid only for date range purchased and may not be exchanged or redeemed for any other dates
- Blackout date(s): May 3-4, May 18-19, May 24-25, June 14-15 and June 21-22
- Other conditions apply • PAID AND PROMOTIONAL VALUES EXPIRES ON June 27, 2013 • PAID VALUE DOES NOT EXPIRE • PAID VALUE EXPIRES ON June 27, 2018 • PROMOTIONAL VALUE EXPIRES ON June 27, 2013 • Enjoy By June 27, 2013
Other conditions apply
Except where noted in the fine print:
• Tax and gratuity are not included
• Merchant is responsible for the quality of the products or services provided to you at redemption
• Entire value must be used in one visit
• Cannot be combined with any other offer or promotion
• LivingSocial Terms and Conditions - https://www.livingsocial.com/terms
• Prices listed in Canadian dollars
Original Price:
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Poetry and Children Day at Binghamton University scheduled for May 18
More than 400 students from 33 schools and 11 school districts will meet at 10 a.m. Wednesday, May 18, in the Osterhout Concert Theater of the Anderson Center at Binghamton University for the 28th annual Poetry and the Children Day.
The program, which brings students together for a day of poetry readings, was established as a memorial to Robert Pawlikowski. A published poet, creative writing instructor and campus administrative assistant, Pawlikowski drowned in 1975 while on vacation with his family. The event is a tribute to the efforts that Pawlikowski made during his lifetime in nurturing the expressive and intellectual powers of his students as well as those of his own children.
This year's guest poet is Maria Gillan, director of the Creative Writing Program at Binghamton University. Gillan is editor of the Paterson Literary Review, and a judge and panelist on a number of award selection committees, including the Allen Ginsberg awards, the Chaucer Guild and the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People.
Gillan has been a visiting writer/professor and guest lecturer at a variety of colleges and universities, including Columbia University, Pennsylvania State University and St. Norbert's College. She has conducted poetry readings at numerous venues including the United Nations, Yale, Harvard and Georgetown, as well as on National Public Radio.
Gillan is the author of a selection of books including Where I Come From, Things My Mother Told Me, and Italian Women in Black Dresses. Her edited collection, titled Growing Up Ethnic in America, was chosen by the American Library Association as an outstanding book for the college bound and lifelong learners.
Gillan received her bachelor's degree from Seton Hall University, her master's degree from New York University and her doctoral degree from Drew University.
After the opening presentation, students will present their poems in the Lecture Hall. Partially underwritten by the Oakdale Mall and Susan Clark-Johnson, an anthology is prepared by the Office of the Dean of Harpur College and distributed to teachers and local libraries. Clark-Johnson is a 1967 Binghamton University graduate and former publisher of the Binghamton Evening Press, the predecessor to the Binghamton Press & Sun- Bulletin.


text: with all the FA signing around the NFL it will obviously change the face of the experts MOCK Drafts. Now that teams have actually went out and filled huge holes with big FA signings the NEED they may have had to address come Draft Day may have changed. So now with all those changes how does it project out for Certain players to fall closer to 19.. Like a Warmack or Olgetree... With the changes of all the teams drafting below us maybe some of these players will now fall and we would have a chance to pick up a player we may have not had a chance for prior to FA


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APCNews 160 – The internet and society, economy, politics, and culture – 26/03/12
APCNews – March 26 2012 – Year XII Issue 159
The news service on ICTs for social justice and sustainable development
Global Information Society Watch: Mapping internet rights and freedom of expression
LONDON (David Souter for APC) – The intersection between the internet and human rights is increasingly important as the internet is beginning to affect more aspects of society, economy, politics and culture. This report maps this intersection and raises a number of questions to be considered by those concerned with internet, rights and wider public policy.
APC submission to the special rapporteur on freedom of association and peaceful assembly
OTTAWA (APC for APCNews) – APC welcomes the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to peaceful assembly and association and makes recommendations for how these rights can be promoted and protected online.
Computer Aid launches new e-waste partnership in Kenya
LONDON (Computer Aid) – As part of its ongoing work in reducing the environmental impacts of end-of-life ICTs, Computer Aid International has partnered with the WEEE Centre in Nairobi, Kenya, which provides e-waste management in the country and region. Together, they will provide training and help develop computer recycling facilities throughout Africa.
The five activist functions of technology and #Riots
SOUTH AFRICA (Women's Net) – Mary C Joyce of the Meta-Activism project summarizes in a recent blog post the key functions of technology for activist purposes: to shape public opinion, plan an action, protect activists, share a call to action and take action digitally.
Freedom of expression, rights and the internet
APC's role at the UN Human Rights Council
"The Universal Periodic Review explained": http://www.apc.org/en/node/13273/
"Mapping internet rights FOE and democracy": http://www.giswatch.org/mapping-democracy/freedom-expression/mapping-int...
"FOE on the internet – implications for foreign policy": http://www.giswatch.org/en/freedom-expression/freedom-expression-interne...
"Internet rights and democratisation: 2011 report": http://www.giswatch.org/en/2011
Your subscription
This newsletter can be seen in html here: http://www.apc.org/en/node/14083
If you wish to receive the html version of the newsletter, you need to unsubscribe here:
and then subscribe again here: http://www.apc.org/en/pubs/newsletters/archive/APCNewsHTML
APCNews is produced by APC – a worldwide network supporting the use of internet and ICTs for social justice and sustainable development since 1990. Sister news services APCNoticias and APCNouvelles offer original coverage in Spanish and French.
Write to apcnews [at] apc [dot] org.
More information: http://www.apc.org/en/pubs/newsletters/listing
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Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2012


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Canalside Apartment in De Pijp
Geschikt voor2
Grootte60 m²
- Internet/WiFi
- Balkon/terras
- Afsluitbare kamer
- Handdoeken
- Keuken
Overzicht accommodaties
|Ruysdaelkade, 1072AW Amsterdam, Nederland
|Type accommodatie
|Enkele uren
|Kalender bijgewerkt
Your apartment is big and bright. The living room has 3 windows letting in the sunlight. From the couch you can enjoy the flames of the beautiful gas heater, your favorite Netflix-show or the view on the canal. In the back of the living room is a dining table and a comfortable couch which can be transformed into an extra bed. Down the hallway you find your bedroom with an ultra-comfortable box spring double bed, your spacious bathroom and the washroom. At the end of the hallway is your kitchen, equipped with everything you need to prepare a delicious meal. Your kitchen provides access to the balcony overlooking Amsterdam's famous inner-gardens.
There are lots of ways to go to and get from your apartment. There are tram stops nearby taking you to all parts of the city. More fun is to rent a bike and explore the city that way.
ReglementenGuests should be considerate of the neighbours and keep noise to a minimum.
|Weektarief voor maximaal 2 gasten
|€ 674
|Maximum aantal nachten
|3 weken
|Check-in na
|Check-in vóór
|Check-out vóór
Beoordelingen van deze accommodatie
Heerlijk appartement, ruim en met veel licht, op een perfecte ligging. Zou niet anders willen. Toppie Robbert en Germaine!
My partner and I stayed at Robbert and Germaine's apartment for my birthday. The hosts were friendly and helpful and provided us with lots of information and maps etc. The apartment is located in the beautiful area of De Pijp with a canal just steps away from the main entrance. We really enjoyed our stay at this apartment and would recommend it to anyone looking for somewhere cosy and relaxed after a busy day in the city.
Really enjoyed the stay in the beautiful apartment. The location was perfect for us: in a local area without tourist groups, still it was easy to get to the places (we used trams... and also walked a lot, not very long distances anywhere we wanted to go).
The hostess did welcome warmly: we received enough information beforehand to feel comfortable to get easily to the apartment. And when arriving, received good infopack about the neighbourhood and the apartment itself.
Positive feedback also for the extra bed that was made for us when arriving - friends would prefare own beds instead of the double bed, which sure would be good for a couple ;-)
When travelling back to Dam, would be checking if it would be available at Robbert & Germaine's.
The situation is very good, near the Pijp and facing the canal. The apartment is nice and very confortable.- Everything perfect.
Authentic de pijp experience. Robbert (I did not have the pleasure to meet with Germaine) is a very attentive host who even agreed to bring the keys to my office so I could check in flexibly. In the apartment some wine ,water, beer and nuts were waiting, which was highly appreciated. For the apartment itself: if you want to experience the 'Amsterdam de Pijp' feeling, this apartment is the right place. Very steep stairs, a cozy gas heater (that unfortunately could not be turned off, so with the nice spring weather it was too warm in the apartment), interesting arrangements with a light in the wc with which the light in the staircase outside the apartment was turned on and off, tiny but cute balcony, kitchen with old gas heater for water, very small bedroom, old closet, etc. If you are looking for modern luxury this simple but functional apartment is not the place for you. The direct neighbourhood is also not the best to walk through alone at night, a bit trashy with red light houses in the same street. Given the price of the apartment (of way over € 100-150), I personally had expected more luxury compared to other apartments that I stayed in.
Had a wonderful stay in Amsterdam. Robbert and Germaine were very welcoming. Nice and clean appartment and at a wonderful location. Great to live in a dutch house next to a canal with real house- boats.Close to a great outdoor market, museums and the consert house.
We walked, walked and then walked some more. Are you a bicycle afficiendo this is a great way to get around. The art- exhibits are truly wonderful. Fantastic cable- cars, metro, tarins etc. Easy to get to and from Schipol.
Sincerely yours Gudrun
We really enjoyed our stay in the apartment, it was well located in an interesting area. The sitting room was light and spacious with a good view and we liked the fire. Robbert and Germaine were thoughtful hosts and accommodating even though our flight was delayed. We recommend the bakery round the corner 'De Bakkerswinkel'.
- Kwaliteitsgekeurde accommodatie
- Elke host wordt telefonisch gecontroleerd
- Veilige betaling via SSL-encryptie


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Guaranteed late check-out until 16:00 on your departure date. This exclusive offer cannot combine with other promotions/promo code/packages.
Upgrade to Deluxe Room to enjoy more space and amenities.
Shop around the city with a 1-Day travel pass for the BTS Skytrain. Our hotel is only a short-walk to the BTS station.
Get 20% discount at Peppermill Restaurant and Season Thai Restaurant (on food only except festive dinners)
Receive 500 THB credit to use with our Minibar during your stay.
Get complimentary international buffet breakfast daily.
Unlimited WiFi / Broadband Internet access in your room throughout your stay.
Bangkok is world-renowned as the centre of fashion in Asia and Amari Boulevard Bangkok is perfectly situated for non-stop shopping fun. This package has all the extras to ensure that your shopping experience is unforgettable. Book now and add some colour to your life with this exciting package.


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Close-Up of a Bison
Photograph by Sam Abell
With their large, sharp horns, bison are formidable foes. During mating season, bulls fight for the right to breed with harems of cows, but rarely duel to the death.
Bison and Her Calf
Photograph by Tom Murphy
Bison cows give birth after nine months and nurse their calves for about a year. Calves are able to stand shortly after birth, but remain vulnerable to wolves and bears until they reach maturity at the age of about three years.
Two Male Bison Fighting
Photograph by James L. Amos
Two male bison spar in a field. Males battle for mating primacy, but such contests rarely turn dangerous.
Herd of Bison
Photograph by Joel Sartore
Conservation programs at parks and zoos have combined forces with farmers, working to increase bison populations. Today there are about 200,000 bison in ranches and reserves.
More Animal Photos
Shop National Geographic
Bison Expert
Sean Gerrity, Conservationist
Sean Gerrity hopes to create the largest wildlife reserve ever assembled in the continental United States.