Ecuador's progressive presidential candidate Andrés Arauz narrowly lost the election last Sunday. But the left's internal divisions were not the only problem, explains CodePink's Leonardo Flores.

Ecuador's progressive presidential candidate Andrés Arauz narrowly lost the election last Sunday. But the left's internal divisions were not the only problem, explains CodePink's Leonardo Flores.

For sustainable recovery from the COVID-19 global economic shock, it’s imperative to break from policy choices that produce a concentration of economic power and wealth in a limited section of the economy but old habits, die hard warns UNCTAD’s Richard Kozul-Wright. Lynn Fries / GPEnewsdocs

TRANSCRIPT

LYNN FRIES: Hello and welcome. I’m Lynn Fries producer of Global Political Economy or GPEnewsdocs. Today I am joined by Richard Kozul-Wright. He is going to be giving us some big picture context on COVID-19’s pre-existing conditions and what that means for building back better from the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Richard Kozul-Wright is chief economist at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development or UNCTAD. Where he is Director of the Division on Globalization and Development Strategies. This division, known as GDS, is UNCTAD’s macro-economic unit. Tasked with providing economic policy advice and technical support to UNCTAD Member States.

The Trade and Development Report, UNCTAD’s flagship annual report, is produced by the GDS division headed by Richard Kozul-Wright. Welcome, Richard.

RICHARD KOZUL-WRIGHT: Thanks for the invitation, Lynn.

FRIES: Your report released in March is titled Out of the frying pan... Into the fire? (as a question) and is an update of UNCTAD’s 2020 Trade and Development Report. And as the question suggests, the update warns that economic policy makers are falling well short of what’s needed to build back better from COVID-19. And the UNCTAD press release for the report warns: Global economy gets shot in the arm from US stimulus, but pre-existing conditions have worsened

To help us get to the bottom of what worries you and what that warning means, start with a comment on those pre-existing conditions.

KOZUL-WRIGHT: Yeah. These are problems that we've been talking about now for a number of years after the global financial crisis; a lot of talk back in 2009-2010 that we were going to recover better from that crisis. If you remember the 2009 G 20 meeting in London, there was a lot of big promises about a new Bretton Woods and tackling the inequality that had contributed to the fragilities in 2008-2009. There would be regulation of the banking system et cetera. Most of that didn't come to fruition.

As we looked at the evolution of the global economy after the global financial crisis, we saw these persistent trends that simply were not being tackled by policy makers: the declining share of labor income in global income which was a very prominent feature across developed and developing countries, the growing concentration of markets, the increased power of corporations and a certain brand of predatory rent-seeking behavior that became prevalent over the last decade, the persistent influence of financial markets, financialization short term kind of speculative mindsets that were not only present in asset markets but also across large parts of the global economy. And of course the ongoing climate crisis and the failure to tackle the environmental breakdown that was becoming ever more present.

FRIES: Trade and Development Reports have consistently emphasized that these persistent trends, you’ve been warning about, are the product of policy choices. So inequality is a product of policy choices. Explain that.

KOZUL-WRIGHT: The phrase of choice for thinking about inequality over the...

For sustainable recovery from the COVID-19 global economic shock, it’s imperative to break from policy choices that produce a concentration of economic power and wealth in a limited section of the economy but old habits, die hard warns UNCTAD’s Richard Kozul-Wright.

For sustainable recovery from the COVID-19 global economic shock, it’s imperative to break from policy choices that produce a concentration of economic power and wealth in a limited section of the economy but old habits, die hard warns UNCTAD’s Richard Kozul-Wright.

To mark one year since Daniel Ellsberg's passing, we are sharing the interview we conducted with him in honor of his 90th birthday.

It will take a miracle to avoid catastrophic climate change and nuclear war, but it’s still possible we can create such a miracle. Daniel Ellsberg on theAnalysis.news with Paul Jay.

Paul Jay

Hi, I'm Paul Jay, and welcome to a very special edition of theAnalysis.news on the occasion of the 90th birthday of Daniel Ellsberg.

Ninety years ago, Daniel Ellsberg was born and he has lived a life of meaning, many of us strive to change the world, but few have the opportunity and the courage to change the course of history. Dan's release of the Pentagon Papers at great personal risk helped end the Vietnam War. His book, The Doomsday Machine Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, reveals the institutional madness of American nuclear war strategy. Dan continues to fight for truth and to awaken people to the existential danger of nuclear weapons.

I interviewed Dan's friend, historian Peter Kuznick, about the importance of Dan's life’s work. And I encourage you to watch that.

But now, in his own words, is my interview with Daniel Ellsberg on the occasion of his 90th birthday. So at 90 years old, why don't you just take it easy? What keeps you fighting? How do you summon the strength when sometimes it seems many are just not listening?

Daniel Ellsberg

Hope, hope that we can surmount the challenges that are facing us, the challenge of ceasing a moral catastrophe that we're already involved in, which is that we have allowed doomsday machines to exist in our country and elsewhere in the world and that we're on a course toward climate catastrophe as well. And the problem is to avert the physical catastrophes, not probably full extinction on either case, but catastrophic results for humanity. If we go on the way we are, if our policies continue as they are, my hope is expressed in action.

As a friend of mine, Joanna Macy says hope isn't a feeling or an expectation, it's a way of acting, and it's a way of acting as if we had a chance. And I think that's what we do have. We really do have a chance to change this and to allow a more humane future to evolve.

Paul Jay 

And to what extent is that hope, an act of faith rather than rational analysis? Because I know you've told me you're not all that optimistic when you think about it rationally.

Daniel Ellsberg

I think, by the way, to say that I don't that one has faith suggests that you're sure you feel secure in the belief that something will save us either human or external. I don't have that kind of religious faith as some do, and I don't have that faith in humanity or in my own country as much as I used to in the case of my own country. So I don't think it's a question of any sort of guarantee that we'll get through this without absolute catastrophe of a kind that has not been seen in human history or prehistory. I think that's not only not guaranteed, it's not even likely, but I don't think it's impossible.

And given that I think the way of acting that's appropriate in that possibility that we can eliminate the doomsday machines and change the course of putting fossil fuels into warming to the atmosphere of the earth, causing it's a question of either nuclear winter with the doomsday machine ice on our lakes and killing all our harvests or fire in effect with the climatic rise in temperature that will make large parts of the world uninhabitable for humans, even though it doesn't lead to extinction. So I think both of those are actually likely, but not certain.

And if we act in a way to explore as much as we should to explore, search and invent, imagine ways of changing this course,

It will take a miracle to avoid catastrophic climate change and nuclear war, but it’s still possible we can create such a miracle. Daniel Ellsberg on theAnalysis.news with Paul Jay.

Historian Peter Kuznick looks at the significance of Daniel Ellsberg's fight against America's insane nuclear war strategy, his exposure of the lies of the Viet Nam War, and his continuing fight against the American war machine.

Paul Jay

Hi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news, please don't forget the donate button and the YouTube subscribe button.

April 7th is Daniel Ellsberg's 90th birthday. Ellsberg is the original whistleblower. The man who leaked the Pentagon Papers and helped end the Vietnam War. Henry Kissinger called him the most dangerous man in America, but not as we have mistakenly believed for many years because he was about to pull back the curtain on U.S. policies in Vietnam. Kissinger was terrified that Ellsberg was about to reveal an altogether different set of papers. The other Pentagon Papers, ones that would reveal the extent and sheer madness of U.S. nuclear war plans to the public.

Dan Ellsberg was born in Chicago in 1931 after graduating from Harvard in 1952 with a B.A. summa cum laude in economics.

He studied for a year at King's College Cambridge University on a Woodrow Wilson fellowship between 1954. In 1957, Ellsberg spent three years in the U.S. Marine Corps serving as a rifle platoon leader, operations officer, and rifle company commander. 1959, Ellsberg became a strategic analyst at the Rand Corporation and a consultant to the Defense Department and the White House specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision making.

His book, Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, revealed what he called the institutional madness of American nuclear war planning. Edward Snowden said this long-awaited chronicle from the father of American whistleblowing is both an urgent warning and a call to arms to a public that has grown dangerously habituated to the idea that the means of our extinction will forever be on a hair-trigger alert. Ellsberg's book exposes much of the mythology that was the basis of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and was used to justify the creation of a massive military-industrial complex.

In 1967, Ellsberg worked on a top-secret study with Defense Secretary McNamara U.S. Decision Making in Vietnam 1945 to 68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7000-page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 1971, he gave it to the New York Times, The Washington Post, and 17 other newspapers. Ellsberg's subsequent trial on 12 felony counts, posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed in 1973 on the grounds of governmental misconduct against him, leading to the convictions of several White House aides and figuring in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.

Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers was an important contribution to the pressure on Nixon to end the Vietnam War. Now, joining us to talk about the extraordinary life of Daniel Ellsberg is historian Peter Kuznick. Peter is a professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University. He's the author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists as Political Activist in 1930s America. He and filmmaker Oliver Stone co-authored the 12 part Showtime documentary film series and book both titled The Untold History of the United States. Thanks very much for joining me, Peter.

Peter Kuznick

Happy to be with you, Paul.

Paul Jay

So this is Daniel's 90th birthday, and I have to say he's still active as hell and still campaigning against nuclear weapons and speaking out on so many issues. I wish I had his energy now,

Historian Peter Kuznick looks at the significance of Daniel Ellsberg's fight against America's insane nuclear war strategy, his exposure of the lies of the Viet Nam War, and his continuing fight against the American war machine.