tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137163562024-03-09T04:51:04.114+13:00anticapitaliste"The collapse of the global marketplace would be a traumatic event with unimaginable consequences. Yet I find it easier to imagine than the continuation of the present regime."
- George Soros, (financial speculator and profiteer)Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comBlogger61125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-73584915515677704132008-04-21T21:16:00.001+12:002008-04-21T21:18:40.659+12:00Principles for egalatarian redistribution of wealth<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">INTRODUCTION- UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF RESOURCES</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Inequalities of wealth and access to resources are increasing daily on our world.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">At the turn of the millennium, 790 million people did not have food security.<span style=""> </span>By and large most of these people were living in the Global South, the so-called “</span><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Third World</span></st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">”.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">“ South Asia contained 283.9 million hungry people, East and Southeast Asia 241.6 million, Sub-Saharan Africa 179.6 million, Latin America 53.4 million AND the Near East<span style=""> </span>and North Africa 32.9 million.<span style=""> </span>Over 20,000 people a day are dying from the effects of hunger.”<span style=""> </span>John Madeley, Hungry for Trade- p26.</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Three years later, this situation has worsened. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations published the “State of Food Insecurity in the World 2003” report in December last year, to measure “progress towards the World Food Summit and Millennium Development Goals”.<span style=""> </span>It estimates that<span style=""> </span>today around 842 million people are suffering chronic hunger. </span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">FAO director-general Jacques Diouf writes in the report, "Why have we allowed hundreds of millions of people to go hungry in a world that produces more than enough food for every woman, man and child? Bluntly stated, the problem is not so much a lack of food as a lack of political will."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">(The FAO report is available at <a href="http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/006/J0083E/J0083E00.HTM"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: Arial;">htt<span style="">p</span>://www.fao.org/DOCREP/006/J0083E/J0083E00.HTM</span></a><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a name="_Hlt61717289"></a><!--[endif]--> )<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style=""> </span>In the Developed OECD countries, 15% of adults are lacking functional literacy skills (1994 –98), with 130 million people in income poverty. 8 million undernourished people with a further 1.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS (2000)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Source: Globalise Resistance website (freewebs.com/globalise) </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="DefaultText" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-US">The gulf between rich and poor in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-US">Ireland</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-US"> has actually increased during the Celtic Tiger boom. The recent Budget 2003 sees a continuation of neo-liberal policies that reward stud farm owners with 15 million Euro and multinationals with grants and the lowest corporate tax rate in Europe, whilst Exchequer funding for the Forum for People with Disabilities has been slashed a further 19%, following a major cut of 44% in last years estimates.<span style=""> </span>Focus Ireland, an organisation for the homeless, estimated that there were over 8,000 people homeless in the City of Dublin- yet instead of using our resources to abolish homelessness once and for all (which would be arguably cheaper than the Luas), the recent Budget 2003 changes the rules for supplementary rent allowance, not allowing people to get help with their rent for six months.<span style=""> </span>Threshold, the housing organization, estimates that 60,000 more households will be driven into extreme poverty by cuts in rent allowance and social welfare.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">(Source for figures: Editorial-Budget Cuts, Socialist Worker Dec 9<sup>th</sup>, Vol. 2 no 212)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">For egalitarians, the need to address these huge material inequalities demands the formulation of theories concerning not only how these injustices are generated, but also a strategy for how we may distribute resources more fairly to benefit more people.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">There are several different philosophical schools we must first examine. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Modern political discourse concerning the values of liberty and equality can be said to have begun with the Great French and American revolutions of the late eighteenth century, which overturned the old feudal orders in favour of what can now be called liberal democracy.<span style=""> </span>In liberal democracy, formal political equality was guaranteed by a declaration of rights, where “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.<span style=""> </span>Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good”.<span style=""> </span>In addition, “Law is the expression of the general will.<span style=""> </span>Every citizen has a right to participate personally, or through his representative, in its foundation.<span style=""> </span>It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and occupations, according to their abilities, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents”. (The Declaration of the Rights of man and of the Citizen, 1789) </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">This formal political equality replaced the previous divine right of kings, where political power was inherited from noble birth, and the economy was organised in a feudal pyramid based around the ownership of land.<span style=""> </span>The American and French revolutions freed the emerging capitalist class from these bonds, allowing them to freely develop the modern capitalist economy.<span style=""> </span>Their reforms became the basis for modern liberal democracies: "Each to count for one, and none for more than one" (Jeremy Bentham).</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">A new philosophy of political economy emerged.<span style=""> </span>Led by thinkers such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Jeremy Bentham, they argued that modern individuals were rational economic beings who would make choices based on maximising their welfare or satisfaction.<span style=""> </span>The purpose of the modern capitalist economy was to facilitate the greatest amount of economic satisfaction, or utility, for the widest amount of people as possible.<span style=""> </span>This school is known as Utilitarianism.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">RAWLS AND THE THEORY OF JUSTICE</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">During the Enlightenment, several philosophers tried to describe how best the new liberal democracy could best guarantee the rights and welfare of its citizenry, such as<span style=""> </span>Locke’s “Second Treatise of Government” and Rosseau’s “The Social Contract”.<span style=""> </span>One of the most eloquent writers of this Contractarian school was the Harvard professor John Rawls, whose publication in 1971 of “A Theory of Justice” provided liberal egalitarianism with one of its touchstone texts.<span style=""> </span>“A Theory of Justice” sketches a hypothetical contract by imagining a world where individuals must rationally choose how to order society.<span style=""> </span>Here Rawls introduces some important ideas and principles.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">The first is how these individuals make the choice to order this society- the so-called “Original Position”: a hypothetical situation outside of history that Rawls uses to explore how we would rationally plan a society.<span style=""> </span>Rawls introduces what he calls the Veil of Ignorance- the individuals have no<b style=""> </b>information about their own or each other’s “conception of the good”, social situation and talents and abilities.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">“No one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength and the like.<span style=""> </span>Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of his psychology such as his aversion to risk or liability to pessimism or optimism.<span style=""> </span>More than this, I assume the parties do not know the particulars of their own society.”</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Rawls, <i>Theory of Justice</i>, Oxford University Press 1971, p137</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Under this veil of ignorance, we are unaware whether we will be a man or a woman, a boss or a worker, black or white, intelligent or strong.<span style=""> </span>As such, Rawls foresees that rationally, we would thus try to ensure that whatever our subsequent identity, we are guaranteed equal rights within this new society.<span style=""> </span>Equal opportunity to resources should be a rational choice we would make if we did not know our background otherwise.</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Rawls defines this as “justice as fairness”.<span style=""> </span>This leads him to state what he calls the Two Principles of Justice. </span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">'1. Each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties which is compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all. </span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions. First, they must be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second [the difference principle] they must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.'</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Rawls, <i>Theory of Justice</i>, p302</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">The first principle, in modern democratic discourse, is rarely contested.<span style=""> </span>People of many different philosophical or political ideologies would all agree with equal political rights and formal basic liberties for citizens, be they socialist, liberal, conservative or libertarian.<span style=""> </span>It is within the second principle, especially around its second part, the so called “Difference principle”, that Rawls sets the debate on fire.</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Rawls here actually makes a case for why social and economic inequalities are philosophically justifiable in a liberal democracy.<span style=""> </span>The first part of the second principle describes how competition between individuals should be fair, seeing decisions being made within this new society by a meritocracy of the talented.<span style=""> </span>This is obviously an improvement from the days of feudalism, where power and wealth was monopolised by the nobility at the expense of wider society. There is an objection against any system that 'permits the distribution of wealth and income to be determined by the natural distribution of abilities and talents... distributive shares [in such a system] are decided by the outcome of the natural lottery; and this outcome is arbitrary [therefore objectionable] from a moral perspective. There is no more reason to permit the distribution of income and wealth to be settled by the distribution of natural assets than by historical and social fortune' (<em>A Theory of Justice</em>, p.74). </span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style=""> </span>However, it can be argued that here Rawls see competition rather than co operation between individuals as the motor for the new society.<span style=""> </span>This is an ideological assumption coming from the Utilitarian tradition, than has been challenged by more radical egalitarians from the socialist or anarchist traditions.</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">The second part again makes an assumption that social or economic inequalities can sometimes be justified if they are to “the greatest benefit” of “the least advantaged members of society”.<span style=""> </span>Here Rawls is criticised both from the left and the right.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">From the right, Rawls is attacked from what can be called the Libertarian school, especially by the author of <i>Anarchy, State and Utopia</i>, Robert Nozick. He argues that provided we acquire and transfer our assets without the use of coercion, justice requires that we are entitled to choose freely what to do with our assets. A just distribution is whatever results from free-market exchanges. Thus, right wing libertarians oppose the welfare state as a form of coercive theft, where the natural talents of the wealthy are forced to share their resources with those who are weaker, poorer or less intelligent than them.<span style=""> </span>The libertarians argue that the state has no business taxing people who have “earned” their wealth- it should be allowed to raise revenue to provide a strong police force to guarantee protection (presumably the rich) and little more.<span style=""> </span>Thus, Rawls philosophical assumption that inequalities are only justified if they benefit the poor is seen as a moral defence of the welfare state, which the libertarians seek to dismantle. </span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">From the left, the difference principle can be criticised because its model of economic redistribution is indistinguishable from what the Neoliberal economic school refer to as “Trickle-down economics”.<span style=""> </span>Led by Milton Friedman and the </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Chicago</span></st1:place></st1:City><span lang="EN-GB"> school in the 1970s, finding political expression in the experience of Reagonomics in the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">USA</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB"> and Thatcherism in the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">UK</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB"> in the 1980s, it now straddles the world under the term “Globalisation”.<span style=""> </span>Central to its economic arguments are that inequalities of wealth and resources are justified if they help to develop the economy, providing more jobs for the poor- encapsulated in the cliché “a rising tide lifts all boats”.<span style=""> </span>However, the experience of Reagonomics and Thatcherism has been that income gaps between rich and poor have actually dramatically increased- according to the United Nations Human Development Report of 1999, “the ratio of the income of the richest fifth of the world’s population to the poorest fifth had risen from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 60 in 1 by 1990.<span style=""> </span>By 1997 the ratio had risen to 74 in 1.” (<a href="http://www.undp.org%29/"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: Arial;">ww<span style="">w</span>.<span style="">u</span>ndp.org)</span></b></a><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a name="_Hlt61718196"></a><a name="_Hlt61719787"></a><!--[endif]-->.</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Rawls elaborates his defence of the market as a method of distribution by arguing that it provides incentives for people <tt><span style="line-height: 200%;">to better themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></tt></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">“Now those starting out as members of the entrepreneurial class in a property-owning democracy, say, have a better prospect than those who begin in the class of unskilled labourers.....The inequality in expectation is permissible only if lowering it would make the working class worse off. Supposedly....the greater expectations allowed to entrepreneurs encourages them to do things which raise the long-term prospects of the labouring class. Their better prospects act as incentives so that the economic process is more efficient, innovation proceeds at a faster pace, and so on. Eventually the resulting material benefits spread throughout the system and to the least advantaged. I shall not consider how far these things are true. The point is that something of this kind must be argued if these inequalities are to be just by the difference principle.”</span></tt><span lang="EN-GB"><br />Rawls, <tt><i><span style="line-height: 200%;">A Theory of Justice</span></i></tt><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;">, section 13. (p78)<o:p></o:p></span></tt></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">It is important to remember that here Rawls argues for the existence of economic inequalities only if they generate more wealth for those at the bottom.<span style=""> </span><i>A Theory of Justice</i> was written in 1971, in the middle of<span style=""> </span>the Cold War, where Stalinist State-Capitalism held sway over billions of people in the </span></tt><st1:country-region><st1:place><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">USSR</span></tt></st1:place></st1:country-region><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">, </span></tt><st1:country-region><st1:place><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">China</span></tt></st1:place></st1:country-region><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB"> and the Eastern Bloc.<span style=""> </span>Comparatively, it could be argued that workers in the West had a better standard of living (and of individual liberties) than their comrades in the “classless, socialist” East.<span style=""> </span>Despite the greater inequality in the West, if it benefited those “worst off”, it was philosophically justified.<o:p></o:p></span></tt></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">Imagine society A where all citizens have ten units of satisfaction.<span style=""> </span>This would be theoretically the utopian egalitarian state.<span style=""> </span>Now compare it with society B, where 90% of citizens have 12 units of satisfaction, with a 10% minority above them with 20 units.<span style=""> </span>With Rawls difference principle, we would opt for society B, as the worse off improve their utility by 2 units. “All social primary goods - liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect - are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these goods is to the advantage of the least favoured.”</span></tt><span lang="EN-GB"><br />Rawls, <span style=""> </span><tt><i><span style="line-height: 200%;">A Theory of Justice</span></i></tt><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;">, p302-3.<o:p></o:p></span></tt></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">WHO CREATES THE WEALTH AND RESOURCES?<o:p></o:p></span></tt></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">Here we must examine theories of how wealth is created under capitalism.<span style=""> </span>For Rawls, the source of efficiency, innovation and incentive in a society are the “property owning entrepreneurial class”.<span style=""> </span>Businessmen and corporations are the “wealth creators”.<o:p></o:p></span></tt></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">However, an alternative view exists which sees that what Rawls calls the “labouring class” is the source of all wealth and commodities produced in capitalism.<span style=""> </span>This was accepted by John Locke, David Ricardo and Adam Smith.<span style=""> </span>Smith argued that<o:p></o:p></span></tt></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">“the real price of everything, what it really costs the men who want to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it…It is not by gold and silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased, and its value to those who possess it and who want to exchange it for some other object, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it enables them to purchase or command”- From the Wealth of Nations, quoted in Chris Harman, <i>Economics of the Madhouse</i>, Bookmarks, 1995, p20.<o:p></o:p></span></tt></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">Decades before Marx developed the labour theory of value in Das Kapital, Adam Smith conceded the fact that capitalists, rather than creating wealth, actually took their profits from wealth created by labour.<span style=""> </span>Profit was the unpaid surplus the working class created.<o:p></o:p></span></tt></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">“In the original state of things, which precedes both the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock, the whole product of labour belonged to the labourer.<span style=""> </span>But as soon as the land becomes private property, the landowner demands a share of the produce…<o:p></o:p></span></tt></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">The produce of all labour is liable to a like deduction of profit… In all manufactures, the greater part of the workmen stand in need of a master to advance them the materials of their work… He shares in the product of their labour”. <o:p></o:p></span></tt></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">Quoted by Chris Harman, <i>Economics of the Madhouse</i>, p23.<o:p></o:p></span></tt></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">Thus, it can be argued from the left that the Difference principle is an attempted justification of this exploitation of the majority of people in society who are compelled by economic necessity to work, by a small minority of landlords, corporations, speculators and capitalists.<span style=""> </span>Rather than help reduce inequalities, these economic agents perpetuate it, basing their economies not on equality but exploitation and profits, not people.<o:p></o:p></span></tt></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><tt><span style="line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">Thus, for radical egalitarians, the need to democratise the very economy itself becomes a prerequisite, a fundamental principle in how to organise society and redistribute the resources created collectively.<span style=""> </span>The redistributive principle of the socialist movement can be summed up in Marx’s maxim “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need”.<o:p></o:p></span></tt></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels see the development of capitalism as a progressive step in history, overthrowing the superstitions of the old feudal order with the white heat of science and industry.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production…All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away…<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i style=""><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Events like the English, American and French Revolutions overthrew the age old rule of kings, and began freeing the productive forces of the urban bourgeoisie to develop both industries and empires, thus creating a new imperialist global economy.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">However, the new industrialised society creates its own oppressed class, the <b style="">proletariat</b> or urban working class.<span style=""> </span>The proletariat is exploited by being forced to sell its labour at a price lower than its true value- the surplus value is taken by the capitalist and becomes the chief source of the new system’s ultimate goal- profits.<span style=""> </span>However, the exploitation of this new class differs in that they are exploited collectively, in massive factories, industries and workplaces.<span style=""> </span>This creates the possibilities for workers to begin organising collectively in combinations or unions, pointing the way to a future collective, egalitarian society where wealth can be democratically owned and shared for the common good.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">The proletariat goes through various stages of development.<span style=""> </span>With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the working people of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly employs them…<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i style=""><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">But with the development of industry, the proletariat increase not only in number, it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows and it feels it more.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">When Marx was writing, the global working class was equivalent to that of the workers in modern </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">South Korea</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB">.<span style=""> </span>Today, the vast majority of the world’s population (and poor) are urban workers.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Marx was not a determinist- there will be no natural evolution from the barbaric system of capitalist exploitation based on war, imperialism, racism and sexism to a new collective world unless people consciously organise to bring it about.<span style=""> </span>He argued for socialism from below- the liberation of the workers was not to be done by anyone but themselves- “Philosophers have only interpreted the world” he once said, “The point is to change it.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">The second part of the Manifesto goes on to look at the basics of the economic workings of the capitalist system, which are explored in detail in his masterwork, Das Kapital.<span style=""> </span>The theory of surplus value as the basis of wealth and profits is put forward- wage labour and private property (the undemocratic ownership of industry by a minority of capitalists) is how this is attained. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">The French Utopian Socialist, Proudhon, before Marx, had declared that “Private property is theft”.<span style=""> </span>Marx distinguishes here the difference between the personal objects most working people buy throughout their life with their wages, to which they are entitled, and the ownership of huge industries, corporations and economic sectors by individuals or private cabals.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">Communism deprives no one of the power to appropriate the products of society: all that it does is deprive one of the power to subjugate the labours of others by means of such appropriation…<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style=""> </span>The working class, through revolution, will put property and wealth under democratic control, for the use and service of all.<span style=""> </span>Here, Marx addresses those critics who attack the socialists-</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;" lang="EN-GB">You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property.<span style=""> </span>But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i style=""><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; font-style: normal;" lang="EN-GB">Thus, for Marxists, the principle of democratic control of the economy and the resources produced by collective labour is irreconcilable with private ownership of the means of production.<span style=""> </span>How this democratic control of economics is to be achieved is widely debated- some socialists argue for gradual reforms, Partnership, </span><st1:street><st1:address><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; font-style: normal;" lang="EN-GB">a Third Way</span></st1:address></st1:Street><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; font-style: normal;" lang="EN-GB"> or market socialism, others argue for worker’s councils, a fighting trade union movement and revolution.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; font-style: normal;" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; font-style: normal;" lang="EN-GB">CONCLUSION: From a Theory of Justice to a Global Justice Movement<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">The debates between the various egalitarian theorists, from Rawls to Marx are reflected in the diversity of political and social movements that make up the movement for global justice, and the discussions between leading theorists reflect this diversity.<span style=""> </span>Emerging from the demonstrations against the WTO in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Seattle</span></st1:place></st1:City><span lang="EN-GB">, November 2003, the new movement has seen many new books published on the principles around which it would redistribute the world’s wealth more equitably.<span style=""> </span>It is not possible here to discuss the full spectrum of their ideas here- I would like to focus briefly on the book “Parecon” by left libertarian Michael Albert from </span><st1:state><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span lang="EN-GB">, and “An Anti Capitalist Manifesto” by Professor Alex Callinicos of </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span lang="EN-GB">York</span></st1:PlaceName><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><st1:placetype><span lang="EN-GB">University</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">.</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">The Global Justice movement is often defined in terms of what it is against- anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti globalisation.<span style=""> </span>Now it has reached its fourth birthday and matured somewhat, a recent rash of books has attempted to put forward both theory and a programme of how radical egalitarians should re organise the global economy in the interests of justice.</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Michael Albert calls this participative economics or Parecon for short.<span style=""> </span>The Parecon Manifesto is available on the website <a href="http://www.parecon.org/"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: Arial;">www.par<span style="">e</span>con.org</span></b></a><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a name="_Hlt61718337"></a><!--[endif]-->, and has triggered much debate between other strands in the movement at the anti capitalist website Znet.org.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Albert identifies how in a participative economy, workers and consumers councils would democratically decide how resources were allocated-</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Workers and consumers need a place to express and pursue their preferences. Historically these have been organisations where workers congregate. In workplaces we call them workers councils. Regarding consumption, we call them consumers’ councils. Councils form whenever people rise up to try to take control of their economic lives…it has occurred virtually every time in history, most recently in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Argentina</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span lang="EN-GB">. Councils are organs of direct organisation by those working and consuming...”</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Albert sees these workers councils as a way of breaking down the artificial divide between formal political rights and liberties and how decisions are made in economic life.</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Councils become the seat of decision-making power and exist at many levels, including individual workers and consumers, subunits such as work groups and work teams, and supra units such as divisions and workplaces and whole industries, as well as neighbourhoods, counties, and whole states. </span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">People in councils are the economy’s decision-makers. Votes could be majority rule, three quarters, two-thirds, consensus, or other possibilities. They are taken at different levels, with fewer or more participants, and different procedures, depending on the particular implications of the decisions in question… There is no a priori single correct choice. There is, however, a right norm to try to efficiently and sensibly implement: decision-making input should be in proportion as one is affected by decisions.”</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Albert argues that in a Parecon, remuneration will be on the basis of the amount of work done.<span style=""> </span>Allocation of resources and wealth will not be on the basis of private property or power </span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">“We work. This entitles us to a share of the product of work. But this new vision says that we ought to receive for our labours an amount in tune with how hard we have worked, with how long we have worked, and with what sacrifices we have endured at our work. We shouldn’t get more income by virtue of being more productive due to having better tools, more skills, or greater inborn talent, much less by virtue of having more power or owning more property. We should be entitled to more consumption only by virtue of expending more of our effort or otherwise enduring more sacrifice. This is morally appropriate and it also provides proper incentives due to rewarding only what we can affect, and not what we can’t.”</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Albert argues both against the market and central planning as distributive methods in an egalitarian society.<span style=""> </span>Here he represents the anarchist critique that any centrally planned economic alternative to capitalism will replicate the failed bureaucracies of the </span><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Soviet Union</span></st1:place><span lang="EN-GB"> or </span><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">Eastern Europe</span></st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">.<span style=""> </span>In contrast, Alex Callinicos defends the idea that we can plan how to use our resources, not just locally, but nationally and globally.</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">“There are various models of a democratically planned economy. Here resources are allocated on the basis of a democratic process that involves horizontal relations among networks of producers and consumers – a radically different form of economic co-ordination from either capitalism (where allocation is the outcome of competition) or a Stalinist command economy (where resources are allocated dictatorially). One of these models is Parecon, developed by Michael Albert. Another, somewhat more centralised model is Pat Devine’s ‘negotiated co-ordination’, first outlined in his book Democracy and Economic Planning (1988). The relative merits of these and other models are a matter for discussion. Nevertheless, their existence indicates that serious and concrete thinking is going on about what a systemic alternative to capitalism would look like. A democratically planned economy conceived along these lines represents, in my view, the best way of realising the values to which the movement is committed.” Alex Callinicos, An Anti Capitalist Manifesto, Polity 2003, p147</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Callinicos identifies four major principles or values of the modern anti capitalist movement, principles useful to liberal and radical egalitarians alike.<span style=""> </span>They are (1) Justice, (2) Efficiency (3) Democracy and (4) Sustainability. </span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">The overproduction of capitalism results in huge crisis whilst millions starve.<span style=""> </span>Callinicos argues that a democratically planned economy would be more efficient than the market because it would produce what people actually wanted- e.g. houses for the homeless.<span style=""> </span>Capitalism is not efficient because it squanders resources on arms and overproduction, allowing 20,000 to die of hunger every day.<span style=""> </span>Similarly, capitalism is not using natural resources in a sustainable way- unless we rapidly change our relationship with the environment, we will deplete many finite resources, and pollute the rest.<span style=""> </span>The need to extend democracy into economic life is one way to achieve justice, and it is here the modern movement pays its respect to the legacy of Rawl’s work-</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">“We have a much clearer understanding of what justice involves, thanks to the work over the past generation of egalitarian liberal philosophers such as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin and Amartya Sen...they have formulated principles on justice that implicitly challenge the logic of the capitalist system…the idea that individuals should be provided with the resources they require to secure equal access to the advantages they need in order to live the life they have reason to value” Callinicos, An Anti Capitalist Manifesto , p108.</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Bibliography</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">John Rawls, <i>A Theory of Justice</i>, </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span lang="EN-GB">Oxford</span></st1:PlaceName><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><st1:placetype><span lang="EN-GB">University</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span lang="EN-GB"> Press 1971</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">John Madeley, <i>Hungry for Trade</i>, Zed Books </span><st1:city><st1:place><span lang="EN-GB">London</span></st1:place></st1:City><span lang="EN-GB">, 2000</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Alex Callinicos, <i>Equality</i>, Polity 2000</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Alex Callinicos, <i>An Anti Capitalist Manifesto</i>, Polity 2003</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Karl Marx et F.Engels, <i>The Communist Manifesto</i>, Progress 1972<br />Chris Harman, <i>Economics of the Madhouse</i>, Bookmarks 1995</span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">United Nations Development Report: <span style=""> </span><b style=""><s>www.undp.org</s></b> </span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Food and Agricultural Organisation:<span style=""> </span><a href="http://www.fao.org/"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: Arial;">www.fao.org</span></b></a></span></p> <p style="line-height: 200%;"><span lang="EN-GB">Participative economics: <a href="http://www.parecon.org/"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: Arial;">www.parecon.org</span></b></a> and <a href="http://www.znet.org/"><b style=""><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%; font-family: Arial;">www.znet.org</span></b></a></span></p>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-48267504458936200652008-04-08T20:42:00.001+12:002008-04-08T20:42:55.791+12:00Letter from Malaysia<h1><br /></h1><p><i>Letter from... by Arutchelvan Subramaniam, April 2008</i></p><p><b>Elections last month gave opposition parties significant victories. Arutchelvan Subramaniam reports on how the campaign was built.</b></p><p>The twelfth general election in Malaysia, held last month, was a unique event in the history of the country. Unlike the elections of 2004, when the ruling National Unity government returned to office with an enormous mandate, this time around the electorate signalled their utter disillusionment with the government of prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi by supporting opposition parties in droves. </p><p> </p><p>Not since the 1960s has the opposition made such massive headway, surpassing even the gains made during the economic crisis of 1999. </p><p> </p><p>While few could have predicted such a momentous victory, that the electorate were utterly dissatisfied with the Badawi government was clear to see. This was, after all, an administration completely out of touch with reality, known for its gimmicks and novelties, but short on substance. It chose to send a Malaysian astronaut to space on a Russian craft, for example, simply to say that a Malaysian citizen had done that, while food prices increased and racial tensions deepened. </p><p> </p><p>In among the celebrations of the opposition parties, the Malaysian left has made a serious return to the political stage. Two members of the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) won their elections and will be sworn in to the state assembly and parliament respectively. </p><p> </p><p>PSM chair Nasir Hashim won the Kota Damansara assembly seat in the most populous state of Selangor, while Jeyakumar Devaraj caused a huge upset by beating a senior minister and leader of the third largest component party in the National Unity coalition in the state of Perak. It is the first time socialists have won seats in Malaysian parliamentary and state assembly elections since 1964. </p><p> </p><p>While our party remains officially unregistered (having been denied registration several times on the basis of being a "threat to national security"), we have built a significant base among plantation and industrial workers, the urban poor, and progressive student movements, involving ourselves in the day to day struggles of the Malaysian working class. </p><p> </p><p>While other parties are involved in civil and political protests, PSM is the only party built on both the sociopolitical and economic struggles of Malaysians, supporting and organising pickets, strikes and demonstrations among the working class. We have also emerged as a real champion of the plight of the poor, irrespective of race. </p><p> </p><p>It is this grassroots work that helps explain PSM's electoral success. While endorsing a joint opposition manifesto, we also campaigned on a separate seven-point manifesto. </p><p> </p><p>This included, among other things, demanding an end to neoliberal policies (including the privatisation of healthcare and education), the protection of workers' rights, affordable housing for all, and an end to racial and religious politics. We spread this message in many different ways, using mobile vehicles and ceramahs (open speeches), house to house visits, small group meetings, mass leafleting and holding discussions with various community groups. </p><p> </p><p>Everywhere we went we carried our party flag and our official election logo. Our leaflets and manifestos spelled out what we mean by socialism and our central message that the party is a working class party, standing for the interests of the majority of Malaysian people. We also pledged that, once elected, we would form "People's Councils", giving power back to the people to administer the areas in which PSM has been successful. </p><p> </p><p>The party will now meet to decide the best way forward. A code of ethics will be drawn up to clarify the guidelines by which party members should behave in their roles as elected representatives in parliament and state assemblies. More generally, we will seek the best way to establish people's councils to ensure maximum participation by the electorate and to ensure that the people continue to play a critical role in the continuing struggle to build a left alternative in Malaysia. </p><p> </p><hr /> <p> </p><p>Arutchelvan Subramaniam is the general secretary of the Socialist Party of Malaysia</p>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-46582474594609333932008-04-08T19:48:00.000+12:002008-04-08T19:49:41.240+12:00Egyptian Socialists speak out against state crackdown<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b>Center for Socialist Studies</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b>Statement</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In light of recent events in Egypt yesterday April 6, 2008, the Center for Socialist Studies calls on supporters of freedom and justice everywhere in the world to show there support for victims of repression in Egypt. Mount pressure on the Egyptian dictatorship to release more than 800 detained yesterday including; more than 150 political activists (socialists, liberals, and Islamists), more than 600 protestors from Mahallah (mainly women and children) and Mahalah strike Committee leaders Kamal El-Faioumy and Tarek Amin- who are facing serious allegations of agitation which can lead to long prison sentences.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">On the background of a call for strike on April 6<sup>th</sup> in Mahallah textile complex by the workers, political forces decided to support the strike through parallel symbolic work stoppage and peaceful protests. However, the Mubarak regime in retaliation decided to occupy El-Mahalla complex with security forces, abduct strike committee leaders Kamal El-Faioumy and Tarek Amin, arrest political activists of every political tendency in Cairo and other cities. Not able to suppress the protests, the Mubarak security forces used rubber-bullets, tear-gas, and live ammunition against Mahallah people who decided to protest on the streets of the city and in different villages, leaving at least two dead and hundreds injured.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">As fighters in this struggle, the Center for Socialist Studies, calls on all activists and supporters of freedom and justice everywhere in the world to support us in our fight. The inspirational fight of the Egyptian working class over the past 18 months, which culminated in El-Mahllah events and the mass protests of yesterday –and the terrified reactions of the Mubarak regime- have proved our faith in the centrality of the working class to liberate Egypt from dictatorship and exploitation. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">We call upon you circulate the news about the maximum repression and violence of the Mubarak regime, which left at least two killed in Mahallah, including a 9-year old boy. We call upon you to organize rallies and protests in front of the Egyptian embassy where you live and to send protest messages and letters against the Mubarak regime. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Long live the struggle of the working class!</p><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';"><br /></span> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">April 7, 2008</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Center for Socialist Studies-Cairo </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Press Release</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">In light of the recent developments in Egypt yesterday April 6, 2007, the Center for Socialist Studies expresses its support for workers and activists who have been taking the lead in yesterday’s protests. Mahallah workers’ strike committee, which represents the 24,000 workers who organized two successful and inspirational strikes in December 2006 and September 2007, had decided to go on strike again on the 6<sup>th</sup> of April demanding better wages, an independent labor union (not run by state officials), and protesting the deteriorating living conditions and rising prices in Egypt. In support with Al-Mahallah strike, different political forces in Egypt and independent activists called for a general strike and the planned some peaceful protests in Cairo and other Egyptian cities. However, as usual Mubarak’s regime and its security forces could not tolerate the rising peaceful protest and the inspirational movement of Egyptian workers and decided to retaliate forcefully.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">After failed negotiations and outright threats to the workers over the past week, Al-Mahallah textile complex was occupied yesterday with security forces in civilian clothes and workers were not allowed into there factory. Buses transporting workers to the complex were stopped and new steel gates with put up around the factory in addition to uniformed police and armored cars surrounding the complex. Strike leaders Kamal El_Faioumy and Tarek Amin were abducted by state security outside the factory. This was paralleled with extreme security measures in Cairo and other cities, where armored cars and thousands of riot police surrounded university campuses and major squares. More than 150 activists (Islamists, liberals and Leftists) were detained from their homes, workplaces and off the street. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Despite the repression, Socialist Students managed to mobilize huge on campus rallies, while opposition forces managed to organize another rally in front of the Lawyers’ Syndicate in downtown Cairo. Similarly, thousands gathered on the streets of Mahallah to protest the abortion of the strike. In response the police unprecedent violence against the protesters; beating, mass-arrests, and firing tear-gas and in some surrounding villages live ammunition. The police violence resulted in to deaths, more than 500 hundred arrested including children and women, and a number of serious injuries hospitalized. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Those arrested remain in custody with no charges. The two strike leaders Kamal El_Faioumy and Tarek Amin later on appeared in a state-security police office facing serious allegations of agitation and disruption of public order –which can lead to long prison terms.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The Center for Socialist Studies call on all supporters of freedom and justice to show there support for the detained and to mount pressure on the repressive Mubarak regime to free them.</p>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-59733362096321569622008-04-07T19:28:00.008+12:002008-04-07T19:36:25.600+12:00Rising struggle aids German Left<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R_nNjV1RjaI/AAAAAAAAAn0/xIUetXEeSaQ/s1600-h/germanyg8march.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R_nNjV1RjaI/AAAAAAAAAn0/xIUetXEeSaQ/s400/germanyg8march.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5186402452933545378" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><p><em>by Stefan Bornost, editor of <a href="http://www.marx21.de/">Marx21 Magazine</a><br /></em></p> <p>Civil war is raging in the SPD, the German Labour Party, following the successes of the radical left Die Linke party in recent elections. The crisis has grown to such an extent that a recent opinion poll put the SPD at 22 percent, with Die Linke at 14 percent.</p> <p>There are now growing splits between the right and left inside the SPD – with the right openly attacking party leader Kurt Beck and demanding he retract his candidacy for chancellor in the general election scheduled for 2009.</p> <p>Beck had tacked the rhetoric of the SPD sharply to the left in an attempt to thwart the growth of Die Linke, while at the same time ruling out any cooperation with it.</p> <p>When that strategy failed, Beck said that Andrea Ypsilanti, SPD leader in Hesse, could form a minority state government with the Greens and be elected the state’s leader with the votes of Die Linke. </p> <p>But this brought protests and defections from the right of the SPD, and Ypsilanti did not stand. </p> <p>This led to a situation where Roland Koch, the conservative prime minister of Hesse who had been voted out, is still ruling – despite not having a majority. </p> <p>Up until this debacle an uneasy truce held in the SPD, where the right didn’t object to Beck’s leftward lurch in the hope that it would keep Die Linke out. This truce has now broken down. </p> <p>This is partly because the bosses are exerting pressure on conservatives and the SPD alike to attack the welfare state in the face of a looming US recession. </p> <p>So far the German taxpayer has been presented with a bill of roughly 20 billion euros for bank bailouts due to the subprime crisis. All experts agree that this is merely the tip of the iceberg. </p> <p>The conflicts in the SPD have cost the party dearly. In polls the SPD’s ratings have fallen to an all-time low, especially in their former heartlands. </p> <p><span class="crosshead">Overtake</span></p> <p>In Saarland, the political home of Die Linke leader Oskar Lafontaine, a recent opinion poll has put Die Linke at 29 percent – almost double the SPD’s 16 percent. That means there is a chance that Die Linke will get more votes than the SPD in this state’s elections in 2009. </p> <p>This would be the first place in the west where Die Linke could overtake the SPD. In the east it is already stronger in Sachsen, Thüringen and Sachsen-Anhalt.</p> <p>The crisis in the SPD takes place as the class struggle increases. </p> <p>Despite a major public sector strike due to start in mid-April being called off, strikes involving public transport workers in Berlin and workers at the Deutsche Post are set to begin next week. </p> <p>The success of Die Linke has intensified the debates inside the new party about its future course. </p> <p>The rising struggle has strengthened the hand of those in Die Linke who want to build it as a working class party that bases itself inside the movements. </p> <p>They also see the chance to loosen the grip of the SPD on the trade union movement – thus making an overdue revitalisation of the workers’ movement possible.</p> <p>But those within Die Linke who orientate mainly on joining coalition governments with the SPD are worried by its meltdown because they see the chances of coalition dwindling away. </p> <p>They are also worried that the hard oppositionist stance that Oskar Lafontaine and many party activists in the west are taking could be a barrier to an agreement with the SPD. </p> <p>Lafontaine has never ruled out joining a government with the SPD, but he has put down minimum conditions, such as the withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan, an end to privatisation, the scrapping of the Hartz IV unemployment laws and the reduction of the retirement age from 67 to 65. </p> <p>Attempts to water down these conditions, for example to tie the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan to exit conditions, have so far failed. </p> <p>Die Linke is set to begin its first party conference on 23 May. Hopefully Germany’s new spirit of resistance will inspire the debates there.<br /></p><p><br /></p>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-85981876769737611992008-04-07T19:04:00.002+12:002008-04-07T19:22:17.230+12:00Zimbabwe- General strike against Mugabe needed<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R_nLi11RjZI/AAAAAAAAAns/M7Od5DIBGPs/s1600-h/Munyaradzi.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R_nLi11RjZI/AAAAAAAAAns/M7Od5DIBGPs/s400/Munyaradzi.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5186400245320355218" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">‘The working class must prepare for a general strike’</span> <div id="standfirstpic"><p>Munyaradzi Gwisai of the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) in Zimbabwe was a former MDC MP for Highfield in Harare. He spoke to us on Monday of this week about the questions facing the opposition</p></div><p>‘It is really exciting that the ruling Zanu-PF party is being challenged, and that the workers and the poor in Zimbabwe have dared to reject its policies.</p> <p>But it is worrying how passive the opposition MDC is being in presenting the election results. The announcement of more victories could mobilise people to support them.</p> <p>The working class has overwhelmingly supported Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC. Robert Mugabe has been beaten – but people now need to demand that he steps down.</p> <p>There is a big problem with the attitude of the opposition leadership. Remember how the people in Kenya came out onto the streets when they heard about the ballot being stolen? We need to do that too.</p> <p>But once the Kenyan people were marching, their leaders had no strategy to challenge the police and the army. People were led off into ethnic disputes and the momentum was lost.</p> <p>The only force that can defend the ballot result is the working class. I’m afraid that if people put their hopes in the MDC, Mugabe will get away with it. </p> <p>The working class must prepare for a general strike to challenge any attempt by Mugabe to stay in power.’</p><strong>The following should be read alongside this article: </strong><br /><span class="red">»</span> <a href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=14564">Revolt from below threatens Mugabe’s stranglehold on Zimbabwe</a><br /><span class="red">»</span> <a href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=14566">Mixed loyalties of the MDC opposition</a><br /><span class="red">»</span> <a href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=14567">A long history of British betrayals in Zimbabwe</a>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-33408659329723719822008-03-27T19:19:00.000+13:002008-03-27T19:20:43.305+13:00Tibet's new resistance to Chinese repression<table align="right" width="144"><tbody><tr><td> <table alight="right" width="132"><tbody><tr><td> <form name="email" method="get" action="javascript:NAME_IT()" onmouseover="window.status=''; return true"><br /><input name="sw_referring_url" value="" type="hidden"></form> </td></tr></tbody></table> <p> </p> </td></tr></tbody></table> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;font-size:180%;"><b>Tibet's new resistance to Chinese repression</b></span><p> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;font-size:85%;"><b>By David Whitehouse</b></span><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:85%;"> | March 28, 2008 | Page 1</span></p><p> TIBETAN PROTESTS against Chinese repression have escalated into a series of riots and confrontations in Tibet and three neighboring provinces.</p><p> The protests began March 10 when Buddhist monks gathered near a monastery in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa to commemorate a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. Security forces arrested several monks and forcibly broke up the gathering.</p><p> In the following days, the city's old Tibetan Quarter erupted in riots in response to the news about confrontations between robed monks and armored riot police. By March 16, Tibetans throughout the region, including Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai provinces, took to the streets in crowds numbering from 100 to 3,000, according to reports gathered by TibetInfoNet.</p><p> The Chinese central government has sent in tens of thousands of security forces to shut down the protests. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao blamed the agitation on the "Dalai clique" of the exiled Dalai Lama, who leads a Tibetan "government in exile" from Dharamsala, India.</p><p> The protests threaten to tarnish China's image in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics in August, so the government has avoided an overt declaration of martial law. President Hu Jintao rose to prominence in the Communist Party for leading a crackdown in Tibet in 1989.</p><p> The Dalai Lama denied organizing the movement, and distanced himself from its violence. The Beijing government claims that 13 ethnic Chinese died in the Lhasa riots, but the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile claims the victims, numbering nearly 100 so far, are Tibetans killed by Chinese armed forces.</p><p> The Dalai Lama is probably correct to say that he hasn't controlled the direction the protests have taken, but his close followers clearly promoted the initial phases of the movement. The monks' March 10 action in Lhasa was coordinated with a demonstration in Nepal and an attempt of exiled Tibetans to march from India to Tibet.</p><p> Mirroring the Chinese repression, Indian and Nepalese officials shut down the local protests out of fear of antagonizing their important neighbor, China--and to avoid encouraging ethnic insurgencies in their own countries.</p><p> Criticism of the Chinese crackdown was likewise muted from U.S. and European officials, apparently in light of China's importance to their own economic future. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for example, merely urged the Chinese to "show restraint" toward protesters.</p><p> On the other hand, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared with the Dalai Lama during a previously planned visit to Dharamsala. She called on the world to take note of the Tibetans' plight--but like the Dalai Lama himself, she stopped short of a call for countries to boycott the Olympics.</p><p> </p><p><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:78%;">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</span></p> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;font-size:100%;">THE TARGETS of the protests reflect the grievances of Tibetans. Religious and cultural freedoms are at the center of their demands. Tibetan students and governmental employees, for example, are banned from Buddhist religious observance, and images of the Dalai Lama--Tibet's chief religious figure--are illegal.</span><p> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;font-size:100%;">But Tibet is also the poorest region in China, and the country's rapid economic growth of recent years has left most Tibetans behind. One-third still live below the official poverty line of $150 yearly income.</span></p><p> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;font-size:100%;">The class divide in China has a strong ethnic character. Han (or ethnic) Chinese dominate business, including the growth sectors--tourism and real estate--along with a small elite of Mandarin-speaking Tibetans. Han Chinese individuals and businesses were the main targets of the Lhasa riots.</span></p><p> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;font-size:100%;">Outside Lhasa, however, "the protesters' anger was largely focused on symbols of state power and government-owned properties," according to TibetInfoNet.</span></p><p> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;font-size:100%;">Prosperity was supposed to follow when the first railroad link to the rest of China was completed two years ago, but many Tibetans say the railroad only brought more Han Chinese, who have bought up prime properties in Tibetan neighborhoods.</span></p><p> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;font-size:100%;">In addition, a program of forced relocation of Tibetan herders--affecting 10 percent of the population since 2006--has bred widespread resentment. The program requires the Tibetans to pay most of the cost and do most of the construction, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).</span></p><p> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;font-size:100%;">Chinese officials say that the new housing is necessary for hygenic reasons--to separate the herders from the diseases of their livestock. But many are now separated completely from their animals, their main source of income. Without job skills or Mandarin education, these displaced herders face unemployment, according to HRW.</span></p><p> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;font-size:100%;">Economic grievances like these, which mirror the experience of Han Chinese workers and peasants elsewhere, have fueled the protests as they have spread beyond the monks. Wang Lixiong, a Beijing-based Tibet specialist, noted the expanded scope of the protests in an interview with Inter Press Service.</span></p><p> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;font-size:100%;">"The last major unrest in Tibet in 1987 and the riots of 1989...were limited to...Lhasa and involved only monks, intellectuals and students," Wang said. "But today's unrest has spread over all Tibetan areas, and there are people from all walks, including peasants and workers."</span></p><p> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;font-size:100%;">In fact, the Tibetan movement takes place six years into a rising movement of strikes, riots and demonstrations that have involved millions of Chinese peasants and workers since 2002.</span></p><p> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;font-size:100%;">The Chinese leadership, including Hu Jintao, the engineer of the last Tibetan crackdown, is well aware that Tibetan protests and price inflation were precursors to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. But this time, incomparably larger social forces have already moved into action.</span></p><p> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;font-size:100%;">It could turn into a long Olympic year for Chinese officials. It could also be a breakthrough year for the social movements--if they can find political common ground that allows them to reach beyond the sectional and regional limits that have kept them isolated from each other so far.</span></p>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-17004821564381377802008-03-01T22:58:00.000+13:002008-03-01T23:01:46.888+13:00Capital G- NIN<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/C8bmlXmDDs4"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/C8bmlXmDDs4" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-56417876584771084902008-03-01T17:00:00.001+13:002008-03-01T17:00:43.245+13:00Survivalism- NIN<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pUxk5IyGgjQ"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pUxk5IyGgjQ" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-55352069830952516012008-03-01T16:30:00.000+13:002008-03-01T16:31:10.708+13:00Declare Independence! Bjork<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/LGC0VVobi6E"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/LGC0VVobi6E" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-90933451709978015102008-02-20T00:45:00.000+13:002008-02-20T00:47:28.023+13:00Boom! System of a Down<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3twnRvQiJrY&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3twnRvQiJrY&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-23496342236911883502008-02-18T21:26:00.002+13:002008-02-18T21:53:16.144+13:00Kosovo: a ‘triumph’ for the West?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R7lHB3k6PuI/AAAAAAAAAnU/7PDUm7YCslk/s1600-h/riotsinbelgrade.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R7lHB3k6PuI/AAAAAAAAAnU/7PDUm7YCslk/s400/riotsinbelgrade.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5168240144808558306" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Alex Callinicos<br />(written in December 2007 before the 18 Feb 2008 declaration of indepenence)<br /></span><p>If you want to get the moral measure of the so-called “international community” look at what they claim to be their successes. </p> <p>The other day I heard James Rubin, a senior state department official under Bill Clinton, saying on the radio that the US would regain its international credibility when it repeated the humanitarian triumph that it had achieved in Kosovo in 1999. I nearly threw up.</p> <p>Kosovo is a province of Serbia. The majority of the population are now Albanians, but Kosovo retains an important place in Serbian nationalist ideology. It was by playing on these associations that Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic launched the programme of expansionism that helped precipitate the Balkan wars of the 1990s.</p> <p>The last episode of these wars was fought in Kosovo in the spring of 1999. By then a vicious, but small scale counterinsurgency campaign was being waged by the Serb-controlled Yugolsav army (JNA) against the guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) demanding national independence.</p> <p>Clinton and his European allies, headed by Tony Blair, mounted a bombing campaign against Serbia. Milosevic reacted by ordering the JNA to expel hundreds of thousands of Albanians but eventually had to abandon control of Kosovo to the United Nations (UN) and Nato. Under the Russian‑brokered deal that ended the war, Kosovo remained legally part of Serbia.</p> <p>Now Kosovo is back in the news. Its Albanian-dominated government is threatening unilaterally to declare independence from Serbia. This plan has the support of George Bush’s administration and of the big European powers. </p> <p>Last weekend’s European Union summit decided to send 1,800 police, judges, customs officials and prosecutors to Kosovo to help “stabilise” it after independence. They will join the 16,000 Nato troops of KFOR (Kosovo Force).</p> <p>The recently elected prime minister of Kosovo is Hashim Thaçi. He was one of the leaders of the KLA, which during the 1999 war worked with Nato helping to target its bombing raids. He was widely criticised for the crime that flourished during the few months that he effectively ran Kosovo after the Serbian withdrawal.</p> <p><span class="crosshead">Failed state</span></p> <p>In response to the crime wave, and to widespread atrocities against Kosovo’s Serb minority, the UN adopted a policy of “standards before status”. In other words, Kosovo had to achieve functioning democratic institutions – the rule of law, freedom of movement, the return and reintegration of Serbs and other minorities, dialogue with the Serbian government in Belgrade – before there could be any agreement of its international status.</p> <p>This policy has now been abandoned. The business analyst Oskar Lindström wrote in a letter to the Financial Times back in May:</p> <p>“Bombings and assassinations of political opponents (and UN staff) are common… Clearly, an independent Kosovo looks more likely to become a failed state, ethnically cleansed of all its minorities, than the democratic multicultural model state that the US and Britain claim.”</p> <p>The EU mission is probably intended in part to restrain Thaçi and the thugs around him, as well as to deter Serbia from any military moves. But even with the 1,600 reinforcements being held in reserve by Nato, the Western presence is too weak to be able to defend the Serb enclaves from the ex‑KLA warlords who run Kosovo. </p> <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R7lC4Xk6PtI/AAAAAAAAAnM/9VYwswApF3o/s1600-h/Pristina_Kosovo-Clinton.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R7lC4Xk6PtI/AAAAAAAAAnM/9VYwswApF3o/s400/Pristina_Kosovo-Clinton.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5168235583553289938" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><p>Meanwhile, Western support for Kosovan independence is likely to worsen relations with Russia. Vladimir Putin’s government has said it will veto Kosovan independence at the UN security council, and Western officials are worried about Russian retaliation elsewhere. For example, the US client regime in Georgia fears that the Russian government may use the Kosovo precedent to recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two Russian-backed separatist enclaves in Georgia.</p> <p>To sum up, the US and the EU are rushing to back a regime run by nationalist gangsters whose independence may destabilise a region that was torn apart by war less than a decade ago. This is the “good governance” they are constantly preaching to the rest of the world.</p>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-86009784616658485772008-02-18T20:28:00.001+13:002008-02-18T20:31:36.467+13:00Zimbabwe People's Convention offers hope of grassroots resistance<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R7k0IXk6PsI/AAAAAAAAAnE/FyqgTm5n4B4/s1600-h/Munyaradzi.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R7k0IXk6PsI/AAAAAAAAAnE/FyqgTm5n4B4/s400/Munyaradzi.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5168219365756780226" border="0" /></a><br />by Munyaradzi Gwisai, International Socialist Organisation, Zimbabwe<br /><br />The Zimbabwe People’s Convention met last week. It was attended by nearly 4,000 delegates from civic groups, trade unions, the Zimbabwe Social Forum and the left.<br /><br />Hopefully this event will be compared to the 1999 Working People’s Convention, which led to the founding of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).<br /><br />The MDC became the main opposition to Robert Mugabe’s regime, but it is increasingly conservative – accepting the West’s neoliberal agenda.<br /><br />Up until September 2007 all opposition groups agreed that there could not be a fair election without a new constitution. Then in September, the two competing MDC groups that now exist reached an agreement with the ruling Zanu-PF party to accept a slight amendment to the constitution.<br /><br />Civil society was chilled to the marrow. Many felt the MDC had abandoned them.<br /><br />They demanded talks with MDC leaders. The People’s Convention was planned as a report back on this process, but the MDC refused to shift.<br /><br />So the convention became dominated by debates on what to do next. This discussion was the basis for a People’s Charter.<br /><br />The International Socialist Organisation was involved in drafting the section on the economy. The key element was to oppose the neoliberal agenda.<br /><br />Mugabe has called elections for 29 March. The convention passed a resolution not to accept any election without a people-driven constitution.<br /><br />However, wealthy NGOs and trade unions that support the MDC tried to get the convention to accept that even if the elections were illegitimate people should still vote as a protest. There was enormous pressure to support this.<br /><br />Hundreds of delegates took over the hall in protest, singing and demanding mass action as the way forward.<br /><br />A compromise was agreed. The convention decided not to issue advice on voting in illegitimate elections. Individual organisations will make their own decisions.<br /><br />We agreed to organise a national demonstration before the March elections.<br /><br />The People’s Convention sets the foundations for a people-driven alternative solution to the crisis of Zimbabwe. This is a huge opportunity.Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-14033997267646116942008-02-18T18:46:00.000+13:002008-02-18T18:48:02.592+13:00Gaza- Take the Seige Away<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oRZqsTV5I24&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oRZqsTV5I24&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-23297592862517269872008-02-14T21:48:00.001+13:002008-02-14T21:53:33.363+13:00The Obama phenomenon in perspective<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R7QBY3k6PrI/AAAAAAAAAm8/vSM9SWlCLe4/s1600-h/marxEngelsbadge.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R7QBY3k6PrI/AAAAAAAAAm8/vSM9SWlCLe4/s400/marxEngelsbadge.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5166756199248051890" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Socialist Worker USA - February 15, 2008 | Page 2<br /><br />BARACK OBAMA is edging ahead of the one-time “inevitable” Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton--on the strength of a campaign that has tapped into mass discontent with the status quo and the desire for a genuine and fundamental alternative.<br /><br />In the caucuses and primaries after Super Tuesday, Obama went eight for eight, winning by a resounding margin in every case. Adding in the results before February 5 and the split decision on Super Tuesday itself, a majority of media estimates had Obama with a slight, though definite, lead in overall convention delegates.<br /><br />More striking than details like the delegate count, however, is the intense excitement generated by Obama's campaign--most obviously among African Americans and young voters who are turning out for the primaries in record numbers, but now reaching across the different categories of the electorate.<br /><br />If you look more closely at his actual positions and proposals, Obama is firmly within the moderate mainstream of the Democratic Party and largely indistinguishable from Clinton. But the resonance he has found for his calls for “change” has set him apart.<br /><br />Increasingly, Obama's campaign has sought to portray itself as a movement, building from the grassroots.<br /><br />As Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks pointed out, “Obama aired a 30-second Super Bowl ad that drew unabashedly on the iconography of the American left...[offering] images of rallies and protest marches, of poverty and environmental destruction, of the devastation of war and of beaming, hopeful, multiracial crowds...<br /><br />“Whatever the causes, Americans seem eager to reclaim a spirit of idealism that many thought ended with the 1960s, to embrace a heritage that acknowledges conflict and struggle, but also hope and progress.<br /><br />“Obama's Super Bowl ad represented a gamble: a bet that the symbolism of past social movements is now more likely to give Americans a thrill than a chill. And the matter-of-factness with which his ad was greeted--and Obama's electoral success so far--suggest that his campaign correctly read the national mood.”<br /><br />Brooks is right, and there's more to the point she makes. By pressing on the idea that ordinary people, rather than political leaders, have made the difference in history, the Obama campaign is legitimizing ideas of struggle and grassroots mobilization--something missing from U.S. politics for many decades.<br /><br />Coming after the cynicism and demoralization bred by years of stagnating living standards for working-class people and the political dominance of the Republican right, this is a breath of fresh air.<br /><br />Plus, there is the historic significance of Obama's campaign--that an African American could quite possibly become president of a country that was founded on slavery, and where an apartheid system reigned across the U.S. South a few generations ago.<br /><br />At the same time, it is important to remember that Obama is not a radical. He is dressing his campaign with the trappings of social movements of the past, but his goal is not actually to build a new movement, but rather to win an election.<br /><br />If he does get the nomination, Obama will be the representative of a political party that has always put the interests of the business and political elite first, before the demands of the majority in society--and his own record shows no sign that he would defy this history, whatever his rhetoric on the campaign trail.<br /><br />Anyone committed to fighting for change today should see how Obama's campaign has raised hopes and expectations. People are becoming convinced of that most basic sentiment at the heart of all the great struggles of the past: that what we do matters--and that could mean more in the future than the candidate trying to employ this sentiment to gain votes.<br /><br />But there is another lesson to be drawn from all the social struggles invoked by Obama's campaign--the civil rights movement, the fight for women's suffrage, the struggle for unions. Their strength rested on the willingness to remain independent and mobilize for justice, no matter what president was sitting in the White House.<br /><br />- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />SO WHAT happens now?<br /><br />Clinton can't be counted out by any means. Still, her strategy seems increasingly desperate: hold on through Obama's victories in this month's primaries; hope that her current opinion-poll lead holds up in Ohio and Texas, the biggest states voting on March 4; and use a victory then to get party leaders to put pressure on Obama to accept Clinton as the winner and give up on the race.<br /><br />But even if Clinton does win Ohio and Texas, it's likely that Obama will still be ahead in “pledged delegates”--that is, delegates to the August national convention awarded on the basis of the candidates' share of the vote in the actual primaries and caucuses.<br /><br />At that point, Clinton's claim that she should be the nominee would rely on her edge among the “superdelegates”--the nearly 800 party leaders who have been given a vote at the convention based on their holding office now or in the past, or their position within the party apparatus.<br /><br />Under this set-up, the convention vote of, for example, Georgia's U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a superdelegate who supports Clinton, will count for as much as a pledged delegate from Georgia won by Obama--each of which represents the preferences of more than 10,000 Georgia voters in the February 5 primary.<br /><br />As Donna Brazile, the former campaign manager for Al Gore in 2000, put it, “One person, one vote? Forget about it. Some votes are worth more than others.”<br /><br />Still, pro-Clinton party leaders would have a hard time winning on this basis alone. For one thing, the legitimacy of the Democratic Party would be called into question. If party big-wigs were seen as ramming through the nomination, it would undermine the enthusiastic support during the primaries for both Obama and Clinton, perhaps to the extent of jeopardizing the more-than-likely Democratic victory in November.<br /><br />Also, despite his rhetoric, Obama is far from a radical outsider in the Democratic Party. He has plenty of support among party leaders, including Sens. Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle--all superdelegates themselves. To some degree, Obama's campaign has become a rallying point for factions of the Democratic establishment that are tired of the Clintons and their supporters running the party apparatus for the last two decades.<br /><br />The superdelegates are bound to no one, so if Obama continues to have the edge in upcoming primaries, the majority of superdelegates who have yet to declare themselves for either candidate could go to him, erasing Clinton's advantage--for that matter, the superdelegates currently pledged to Clinton could switch sides.<br /><br />But there is a flip side to this: If Obama calculates that he can't overcome Clinton's superdelegate advantage, he is far more likely to give in and accept her nomination--perhaps in return for the vice presidential nomination or some other accommodation--than try to challenge the party rules by mobilizing pressure from his base.<br /><br />The related question is how low the Clinton team could sink as the convention approaches. They've already used dirty tricks--like Bill Clinton's race-baiting before the South Carolina primary in an effort to marginalize Obama as “the Black candidate,” or the string of supporters who found some reason to refer to the ancient history of Obama's drug use.<br /><br />The Clintons aren't used to losing and won't concede defeat unless they think they've tried every avenue--whether it's the high road or the low.<br /><br />- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />DESPITE THEIR differing styles and rhetoric, Clinton and Obama are much closer to each other politically--and even to the Republicans they promise to oppose--than they are to the mass of people who are voting for them in the hopes that they will bring fundamental changes to Washington when they take over the White House.<br /><br />But Election 2008 is important in a wider sense--it has provided further evidence of the mass popular rejection of George Bush and his Republican agenda, and it has raised the hopes of millions of people for something new.<br /><br />Those hopes will be important in the struggles of the future--after the election and before it, too--to fight for a real alternative to a world of war, poverty and injustice.Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-62827057431624670162008-02-14T01:11:00.000+13:002008-02-14T01:12:05.241+13:00Black Steel- Tricky<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Wu8LpalUelY&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Wu8LpalUelY&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-43481488904601158132008-02-13T19:56:00.004+13:002008-02-14T00:38:30.711+13:00Pilger tears strips off Sorry Day<object height="373" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CQw60P1D3Ts&rel=1&border=1"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/CQw60P1D3Ts&rel=1&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="373" width="425"></embed></object><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><div id="date"><br /></div><div id="noresource"><div id="image"><img src="http://news.ninemsn.com.au/img/2007/national/1202_pilger_a_lg.jpg" alt="John Pilger speaks at an Aboriginal protest outside the gates of NSW Parliament House in 2004. (AAP)" align="absmiddle" /></div></div><p><b>By Josephine Asher</b><br />ninemsn</p> <p>Controversial expat Australian journalist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pilger" target="_new">John Pilger</a> says Sorry Day is an event "without substance" geared towards white Australians, not indigenous people. </p><p> Pilger — who has made documentaries campaigning against the unfair treatment of indigenous Australians — told ninemsn Australians should boycott Sorry Day if they were serious about improving conditions for indigenous people. </p><p> "The 'sorry' is without much substance unless it is backed by an honest and massive rehabilitation campaign of all resources available to Aboriginal people," he said. </p><p> "Tears will be shed and there will be much emotion, but it will be over by next week." </p><p> He said Australia needed to sign a treaty, overhaul land rights, improve health benefits and implement comprehensive anti-poverty programs.</p><p> Pilger also criticised the government for not apologising at least a generation ago. </p><p> "Australia has treated its indigenous people worse than any other developed country," he said. </p><p> "Aboriginal people have been betrayed by every government since the Whitlam government." </p><p> He called on ordinary Australians not to celebrate Sorry Day unless they were going to take action on indigenous issues. </p><p> "To understand it they need to look at themselves and realise it's down to them to pressure their government to end the disgrace," he said. </p><p> "The whole 'sorry' thing is really to satisfy the white population, not the black population."</p><p> Pilger will unveil the world's largest poem in Sydney today to launch The Night Words Festival — a three-day celebration of rhythm and verse at the Sydney Opera House described as a "cosmopolitan corroborree".</p><p> <i>The Public's Poem</i>, displayed on a huge notebook almost five metres high, is a collection of one-line contributions from 400 young, old, native and new Australians compiled on Australia Day. </p><p> Pilger contributed this line: "Until whites give back to black their nationhood, they can never claim their own, no matter how many flags they fly."</p><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R7KVKHk6PpI/AAAAAAAAAms/sRqgFbW3puo/s1600-h/Malcolm.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R7KVKHk6PpI/AAAAAAAAAms/sRqgFbW3puo/s400/Malcolm.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5166355723612470930" border="0" /></a><br /><h1>Indigenous activists: ‘Sorry’ not enough, compensation now!</h1><br />9 February 2008<br /><br /><br /><b style="font-size: 110%;">In the lead up to the February 12 Indigenous rights convergence in Canberra, <em>Green Left Weekly</em> gathered statements from Indigenous activists around Australia. At the fore of people’s minds was the Northern Territory intervention, PM Kevin Rudd’s scheduled apology to the Stolen Generations and the issue of compensating those affected by that policy.</b> <br /> <br /> <div id="articleCntent"> Greg Eatock, Aboriginal Rights Coalition, Sydney<br /><br />“The Aboriginal movement has not experienced this level of unity since the 1970s. The destruction being caused by the intervention is becoming clearer, suicide rates have increased in the NT for example. From left-wing to conservative, our people recognise the need to stand against the racist intervention. We are expecting thousands to converge on Canberra.”<br /><br />Mitch, Aboriginal activist, Alice Springs<br /><br />“Kevin Rudd has said his apology will contain an affirmation never to repeat past wrongs, but this is precisely what his government is doing rolling out Howard’s intervention. He is continuing the genocidal policy of the Stolen Generations and the Howard years.<br /><br />“We are back to ’flour, tea and tobacco days’, being forced to work and jump through hoops for ration vouchers. Centrelink is not providing proper services for remote communities so there has been a mass exodus of our young people. My brothers have been forced into town to look for work.”<br /><br />Barbara Shaw, Mt Nancy town camp, Alice Springs<br /><br />“Centrelink is never organised to get our food vouchers in on time. We went the last long weekend without food. Kevin Rudd says this intervention is to help children but I have many young mouths to feed and the welfare quarantine makes this so much harder. I am a self-determined person concerned for my people, why should I be controlled by a government department? Today [February 7] we leave for Canberra to demand change.”<br /><br />Michael Mansell, legal director, Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, Hobart<br /><br />“The Rudd government claims to have exhausted consultation over the apology [which] really means Aboriginal people were told there would not be compensation and the final wording was entirely up to the government. It wasn’t negotiation: it was the Government telling people what was to happen.<br /><br />“When the apology is given, it is widely believed there will not be a reference to genocide and there will be a lot of emphasis on the good intentions of administrators, officials and missionaries.<br /><br />“It is more likely to look like an apology to those who did the moving than those removed.<br /><br />“It is a pity the Coalition could not come to terms with history. To argue ’stolen’ should not be used indicates a shallow understanding of historical fact. Should we say the children were ’borrowed’ instead of stolen?<br /><br />“The refusal to compensate undermines the claims of sincerity about the apology. How can a prime minister be sincere about what happened to the Stolen Generations but still leave them to suffer the consequences of being taken? It does not make sense.”<br /><br />Nicole Watson, academic, Junbunna Indigenous House of Learning University of Technology Sydney<br /><br />“I think that the proposed review of the intervention should be brought forward. While members of the task force have been at pains to convince us that the intervention has been a success, they cannot provide any evidence to prove that the intervention is producing positive outcomes. Only a rigorous and independent evaluation can do this.<br /><br />“The government must commit itself to a dialogue with Indigenous people about the issue of compensation. In a society where we have a third party insurance scheme for victims of motor vehicle accidents and criminal injuries compensation schemes, the issue of compensation is hardly controversial. Furthermore, it is inhumane to force individuals who have already suffered great pain to endure the rigors of court processes.<br /><br />“A national compensation scheme should be established. An apology in the absence of compensation is an exercise in pragmatism rather than nation building. It also demonstrates a lack of foresight because the issue of compensation is not going to disappear after February 13.”<br /><br />Sam Watson, Murri activist and Socialist Alliance member, Brisbane<br /><br />[On the NT intervention and the possibility of a extending it to Queensland.]<br />“Howard’s core strategy for the NT intervention was to suspend the NT Land Rights legislation and gain control of the land. At the same time as soldiers and tanks were moving in, the legislation was suspended for five years. Meanwhile, Australia was pushing the export of uranium — around 75% of which is in the NT.<br /><br />“The Rudd government has been in power [for] three months, and the intervention is still in place. [Indigenous affairs minister] Jenny Macklin met with Queensland= premier Anna Bligh to discuss extending the intervention to Queensland. The Queensland Aboriginal leadership have a message to Bligh and Macklin: don’t even think it, don’t even try it — or there will be blood on the streets.<br /><br />“Howard used the <em>Little Children are Sacred</em> report as a pretext for the intervention, accusing virtually every Aboriginal man in remote communities of being a paedophile. Yet only a handful of investigations have occurred, and only a handful of actual charges laid.”<br /><br />[On the Stolen Generations, compensation, and Rudd’s apology.]<br />“When Rudd apologises, he must lay out pathways for stolen generation peoples to receive adequate compensation. The Canadian government has allocated [funds] for the victims of the Residential Homes era — the Canadian version of the Stolen Generations. Tasmania and Victoria [have] offered significant sums of money to Stolen Generations victims as compensation.<br /><br />A key recommendation of the <em>Bringing Them Home</em> report was that compensation must be paid. In this day and age, it is basic justice that victims of violent crimes receive compensation through the courts.<br /><br />Without compensation, Rudd’s apology won’t buy a loaf of bread or a handful of dirt.”<br /><br />[On the February 12 convergence and beyond for Aboriginal rights.]<br />“Under Howard, the Aboriginal political leadership largely lost its edge. Under the surface, Aboriginal political cadres have been organising and regrouping. February 12 will be a coming out of the political spearhead of Black Australia.”<br /><br /></div> <div class="footer" style="font-size: 90%;"><br />From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #<a href="http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2008/739">739</a> 13 February 2008. </div><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R7KjOnk6PqI/AAAAAAAAAm0/WFNIdXLQ5GM/s1600-h/aboriginal-map.preview.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R7KjOnk6PqI/AAAAAAAAAm0/WFNIdXLQ5GM/s400/aboriginal-map.preview.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5166371194084671138" border="0" /></a>Lara Pullin, SA member ACT branch:<br />Intervention has to go. Sorry means nothing without an end to the NT intervention.<br /><br />Other governments around the world are using the Australian intervention as a model of how to attack their Indigenous people.<br /><br />People are not going to accept just “sorry”. They want a sorry that means something, a sorry that includes the “c” word that nobody seems to be able to get out, a sorry that does not divide people. We are not going to be divided like that.<br /><br />It’s long overdue, it needs to be done but the main thing I am concerned about is to make sure that they get compensated though nothing will take away the trauma and pain they’ve gone through.<br /><br />Natasha Moore, member SA Perth branch:<br /><br />I think it is a start. By apologizing he’s acknowledging and recognizing the Indigenous people as the first people on this land. I think it will be part of a healing process so other Australians and Aboriginal people can come together and form alliances and partnerships on issues facing communities in the various cities around Australia.<br /><br />I think it is just a stepping stone to getting more Indigenous issues addressed.<br /><br />For the Stolen Generations, I feel for them. It has been a long time coming and governments have not acknowledges them for being stolen from their families and placed in institutions or foster homes. For them it is very important for those words to be said by our government but I also think it is only the start of a much bigger process that needs to happen.<br /><br />Sam Watson, SA national spokesperson on Indigenous affairs:<br /><br />We are sending a pretty clear message to Mr Rudd and his government: Don’t say sorry say sovereignty.<br /><br />He can say sorry tomorrow and certainly there will be a huge number of senior people and elders in the chamber to receive his apology but people will also have to note that inside this Parliament of Australia there is not one single Aboriginal person.in the House or the Senate. So, again Aboriginal people are hostage to a political system in which we have no control and in which we have no real representation or capacity to influence or exert any pressure.<br /><br />Lindi Dietzel, SA Geelong branch member:<br /><br />I hope it is not hollow and I hope that it gives an answer for a lot of people who have a lot of grief. It is a great place to start but let’s see. We’ll watch this placeJosephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-77849283223017461822008-02-11T20:17:00.000+13:002008-02-11T20:27:13.681+13:00Venezuela warns US of economic war over oil<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R6_3KHk6PhI/AAAAAAAAAlg/VC9seq2hqvc/s1600-h/chavezREDSTAR.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R6_3KHk6PhI/AAAAAAAAAlg/VC9seq2hqvc/s400/chavezREDSTAR.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165619050821860882" border="0" /></a><br />President Hugo Chavez warned he would halt oil supplies to the United States if it continued to attack Venezuela as he said it had done with an Exxon Mobil lawsuit freezing assets of the OPEC nation. The anti-imperialist president also said such US aggression could cause world oil prices to spike to $200 a barrel.<br /><br />Washington has distanced itself from the Exxon legal offensive in which the largest US company won international court orders freezing up to $US12 billion ($A13.5 billion) of the state oil company PDVSA's assets. "If you freeze us, if you really manage to freeze us, if you damage us, then we will hurt you. Do you know how? We are not going to send oil to the United States," Chavez said on his weekly TV show.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">"Take note, Mr Bush, Mr Danger."</span><br /><br />Chavez has frequently issued conditional threats to stop shipments to its biggest oil customer, but has maintained supplies despite clashing with the Bush administration over everything from crude prices to free trade to democracy.<br /><br />Exxon Mobil has gone after the assets of PDVSA in US, British and Dutch courts as it challenges the nationalisation of a multibillion dollar oil project by Chavez's government last year. A British court has issued an injunction "freezing" as much as $US12 billion ($A13.45 billion) in assets.<br /><br />"The outlaws of Exxon Mobil will never again rob us," Chavez said, accusing the Irving, Texas-based oil major of acting in concert with "the imperialist government of the United States" and of being part of corporate "worldwide mafias."Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-18264732330361320932008-02-10T20:42:00.000+13:002008-02-10T21:22:28.199+13:00Writers Guild leadership claims victory in Strike<object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/W-cdaQ_pAFw&rel=1"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/W-cdaQ_pAFw&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br /><h1>WGA Presidents Letter</h1> <p class="credit"> <a href="http://www.wgaeast.org/index.php/articles/by_author/2557">WGAE</a><br /> February 09, 2008<br /> </p> <div class="copy-heading">WGAE President Michael Winship and WGAW President Patric M. Verrone announce tentative deal.<br /></div> To Our Fellow Members, <p> We have a tentative deal. </p> <p> It is an agreement that protects a future in which the Internet becomes the primary means of both content creation and delivery. It creates formulas for revenue-based residuals in new media, provides access to deals and financial data to help us evaluate and enforce those formulas, and establishes the principle that, "When they get paid, we get paid."<br /><br />Specific terms of the agreement are described in the summary on our website and will be further discussed at our Saturday membership meetings on both coasts. At those meetings we will also discuss how we will proceed regarding ratification of this agreement and lifting the restraining order that ends the strike. </p> <p> Less than six months ago, the AMPTP wanted to enact profit-based residuals, defer all Internet compensation in favor of a study, forever eliminate "distributor's gross" valuations, and enforce 39 pages of rollbacks to compensation, pension and health benefits, reacquisition, and separated rights. Today, thanks to three months of physical resolve, determination, and perseverance, we have a contract that includes WGA jurisdiction and separated rights in new media, residuals for Internet reuse, enforcement and auditing tools, expansion of fair market value and distributor's gross language, improvements to other traditional elements of the MBA, and no rollbacks. </p> <p> Over these three difficult months, we shut down production of nearly all scripted content in TV and film and had a serious impact on the business of our employers in ways they did not expect and were hard pressed to deflect. Nevertheless, an ongoing struggle against seven, multinational media conglomerates, no matter how successful, is exhausting, taking an enormous personal toll on our members and countless others. As such, we believe that continuing to strike now will not bring sufficient gains to outweigh the potential risks and that the time has come to accept this contract and settle the strike. </p> <p>Much has been achieved, and while this agreement is neither perfect nor perhaps all that we deserve for the countless hours of hard work and sacrifice, our strike has been a success. We activated, engaged, and involved the membership of our Guilds with a solidarity that has never before occurred. We developed a captains system and a communications structure that used the Internet to build bonds within our membership and beyond. We earned the backing of other unions and their members worldwide, the respect of elected leaders and politicians throughout the nation, and the overwhelming support of fans and the general public. Our thanks to all of them, and to the staffs at both Guilds who have worked so long and patiently to help us all. </p> <p>There is much yet to be done and we intend to use all the techniques and relationships we've developed in this strike to make it happen. We must support our brothers and sisters in SAG who, as their contract expires in less than five months, will be facing many of the same<br />challenges we have just endured. We must further pursue new relationships we have established in Washington and in state and local governments so that we can maintain leverage against the consolidated multinational conglomerates with whom we bargain. We must be vigilant in monitoring the deals that are made in new media so that in the years ahead we can enforce and expand our contract. We must fight to get decent working conditions and benefits for writers of reality TV, animation, and any other genre in which writers do not have a WGA contract. </p> Most important, however, is to continue to use the new collective power we have generated for our collective benefit. More than ever, now and beyond, we are all in this together.<br /><br />Best,<br /><br />Michael Winship<br />President<br />Writers Guild of America, East<br /><br />Patric M. Verrone<br />President<br />Writers Guild of America, West<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R66zZ3k6PgI/AAAAAAAAAlY/J0J7XSwrlp8/s1600-h/strikebaby-slackmistress.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R66zZ3k6PgI/AAAAAAAAAlY/J0J7XSwrlp8/s400/strikebaby-slackmistress.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165263079637401090" border="0" /></a>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-79098675009682896922008-02-09T20:43:00.000+13:002008-02-09T21:40:46.383+13:00Gaza needs Food Not Bombs!<div style="text-align: center;">Solidarity with the people of Gaza picket in Auckland<br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61c13k6PfI/AAAAAAAAAlQ/U03o-FiOlM8/s1600-h/Palestineprotest+001.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61c13k6PfI/AAAAAAAAAlQ/U03o-FiOlM8/s400/Palestineprotest+001.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5164886428185411058" border="0" /></a><br />"Gaza needs food not bombs!" echoed through the streets of Auckland as 30 people joined a lively picket in solidarity with the people of Gaza today in the city centre. Organised by Students for Justice in Palestine, GPJA and Socialist Worker, it attracted huge support from passers by.<br /><br />John Minto from GPJA condemned the collective punishment policy that the Israeli government was inflicting on the people of Gaza comparing it with the Bantustans of Apartheid South Africa. Joe Carolan from SW celebrated the people power revolt that ripped down the Apartheid Wall, comparing it to the revolt in Berlin in 1989, and warned that if Egypt's dictator Mubarrak used troops and riot cops to reseal Gaza's border, the revolt would spread into Egypt. Egypt is the second highest recipient of US military aid after Israel. Sahar Ghulkor from SJP thanked people for demonstrating their solidarity with Gaza with very little notice, and extolled us to build for two forthcoming days of action on march 1st and march 15th. March 1st will see a radical theatre group build an Apartheid wall and Israeli military checkpoint outside of Auckland's US consulate, and March 15th promises to be one of the largest anti war mobilisations in the city in years, building support for (a) an end to the occupation of Iraq, (b) solidarity with the people of Gaza and Palestine and (c) the withdrawal of all NZ troops from Afghanistan.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61b4Xk6PeI/AAAAAAAAAlI/W2zQZ6kWZf0/s1600-h/Palestineprotest+003.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61b4Xk6PeI/AAAAAAAAAlI/W2zQZ6kWZf0/s400/Palestineprotest+003.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5164885371623456226" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61bjXk6PdI/AAAAAAAAAlA/mYiiBQXHypQ/s1600-h/Palestineprotest+006.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61bjXk6PdI/AAAAAAAAAlA/mYiiBQXHypQ/s400/Palestineprotest+006.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5164885010846203346" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61bXnk6PcI/AAAAAAAAAk4/c32cL8lFsRU/s1600-h/Palestineprotest+004.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61bXnk6PcI/AAAAAAAAAk4/c32cL8lFsRU/s400/Palestineprotest+004.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5164884808982740418" border="0" /></a>"gaza, Gaza, GAZA, <span style="font-weight: bold;">GAZA!</span>- Victory to the Intifada!"<br /><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61bKHk6PbI/AAAAAAAAAkw/_5SBddAydPs/s1600-h/Palestineprotest+005.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61bKHk6PbI/AAAAAAAAAkw/_5SBddAydPs/s400/Palestineprotest+005.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5164884577054506418" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61azXk6PaI/AAAAAAAAAko/ch18NcruMPY/s1600-h/Palestineprotest+012.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61azXk6PaI/AAAAAAAAAko/ch18NcruMPY/s400/Palestineprotest+012.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5164884186212482466" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61al3k6PZI/AAAAAAAAAkg/jvGGmj39OHo/s1600-h/Palestineprotest+013.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61al3k6PZI/AAAAAAAAAkg/jvGGmj39OHo/s400/Palestineprotest+013.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5164883954284248466" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61aXXk6PYI/AAAAAAAAAkY/rDjY8t_Iwe0/s1600-h/Palestineprotest+007.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61aXXk6PYI/AAAAAAAAAkY/rDjY8t_Iwe0/s400/Palestineprotest+007.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5164883705176145282" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61aFHk6PXI/AAAAAAAAAkQ/M1xZYDmgNUg/s1600-h/Palestineprotest+011.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R61aFHk6PXI/AAAAAAAAAkQ/M1xZYDmgNUg/s400/Palestineprotest+011.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5164883391643532658" border="0" /></a>Oisin Carolan on the picket line<br /></div>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-27407111240911230502008-02-07T22:29:00.000+13:002008-02-07T22:30:50.657+13:00Age of Panic- Senser<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bAjgTQS3dSw&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bAjgTQS3dSw&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-30197768828888060072008-02-07T20:39:00.000+13:002008-02-07T20:41:30.045+13:00Hilary Clinton and the North of Ireland<table class="contentpaneopen"><tbody><tr><td colspan="2" align="left" valign="top" width="70%"><span class="small"> Written by Eamonn McCann </span> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2" class="createdate" valign="top"> Wednesday, 06 February 2008<br /><br /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2" valign="top"> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" ><img src="http://www.swp.ie/images/stories/Hillary%20Clinton.jpg" alt="Hillary Clinton" title="Hillary Clinton" align="left" border="0" height="115" hspace="6" width="113" /> Ask not what you can do for the peace process, but what the peace process can do for you.</span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" > That’s the way Hillary Clinton looks at Ireland. </span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" >When her husband was top tom-cat in Washington, some of us argued that it was insulting to women to depict her as a gangster’s moll: she was a made-up member of the Mob. Now she’s bidding to become capa di tutti capi.</span></p> <span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" > </span><p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" >In the process, she has distorted beyond recognition any role she ever played in the North. Marcella Bombardieri of the Boston Globe describes her “telling and retelling one particularly moving story about bringing together Catholic and Protestant women in Northern Ireland...</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" >“ Clinton said she had hosted a meeting of enemies in the conflict. They had never been in the same room before, and ‘no one thought this was going to be a very good idea.’</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" >Clinton goes on: “A Catholic woman shared her daily fears that her husband wouldn't come home at night. Across the table, a Protestant woman described the same worry about her son.<br /><br />"And for the first time they actually saw each other not as caricatures or stereotypes, but as human beings who actually had common experiences as mothers and wives and people. One of the reasons why I'm running for president is to be constantly reaching out to try to bring people together to resolve conflicts and not let them fester and get worse."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" >What happened in Belfast was that Clinton had attended a meeting organised by the Northern Ireland Office of well-known (and well-known to one another) full-time community organisers. The tearful tale of her bringing enemies together across the divide is lies. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" >The yarn wasn’t presented as a vague reminiscence. It was a nicely-structured, detailed story, part of her standard campaign presentation. “More than an isolated stump speech snippet, her Northern Ireland story speaks to the larger issue of whether her travels around the world as first lady qualify as serious diplomacy. That experience is a crucial element of her argument that she is the most qualified presidential candidate.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" >The deft distortion is implicitly offered as a model for the engagement with a troubled world, soothing ancient enmities, bringing peace---a very attractive message for an anxious US electorate. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" >The notion is widespread in Ireland, too, that we “owe” the Clintons for their role in “our” peace process. The concrete action constantly referred to is Bill Clinton giving Gerry Adams a US visa back in 1994.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" >This did help speed the IRA ceasefire seven months later by enabling the Provos ’ leaders to convince their rank-and-file that there was something tantalising on offer if they changed their ways. Give up the guns and we’ll be well-got in the White House, was the message. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" >This was a major factor in ensuring that when the Republican Movement abandoned the path of armed struggle, it veered to the right and not to the left. Hence the wholesale embrace of neo-liberalism in government in the North. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" >This has been the most specific and identifiable effect on Northern politics of the involvement of the Clintons . </span></p></td></tr></tbody></table>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-7792916584253473642008-02-05T18:52:00.000+13:002008-02-05T21:13:13.239+13:00Hizbollah resistance on Play Station 2<object height="355" width="425">Visit the website <a href="http://www.specialforce2.org/english/index.htm">HERE</a><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yvmj7wj1UOw&rel=1"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/yvmj7wj1UOw&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-47036754777288326752008-02-04T00:53:00.000+13:002008-02-04T00:55:20.617+13:00NZ Troops in Afghanistan<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R6WreJ4f_UI/AAAAAAAAAkI/yVy8d3fuvRo/s1600-h/afghan_troops_416.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R6WreJ4f_UI/AAAAAAAAAkI/yVy8d3fuvRo/s400/afghan_troops_416.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5162721082387463490" border="0" /></a>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-55993134657169693052008-02-01T23:23:00.000+13:002008-02-01T23:34:58.676+13:00Social Networking - Gated Communities on the Web<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R6L1j54f_TI/AAAAAAAAAkA/cGq14WFxITc/s1600-h/communitymaplarge.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h8iJcagR9X0/R6L1j54f_TI/AAAAAAAAAkA/cGq14WFxITc/s400/communitymaplarge.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5161958120102034738" border="0" /></a><br /><h1><br /></h1> <div class="sumbody"> <div class="metadata"><br /><div id="metaextras" class="hidden"><div class="license"> <!-- <rdf:rdf xmlns="http://web.resource.org/cc/" dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"> <work about="http://indymedia.org.nz/newswire/display/74838/index.php"> <dc:title>Social Networking - Gated Communities on the Web</dc:title> <dc:creator><agent> <dc:title>Anonymous </dc:title> </agent></dc:creator> <dc:rights><agent> <dc:title>Anonymous </dc:title> </agent></dc:rights> <dc:format>text/plain</dc:format> <cc:license resource="http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/"> </work> <cc:license about="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ "> <cc:requires resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Notice "> <cc:requires resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Attribution "> <cc:permits resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Reproduction "> <cc:permits resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Distribution "> <cc:permits resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/DerivativeWorks"> <cc:prohibits resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/CommercialUse "> </cc:License> </rdf:RDF> --> <div class="cleardiv"> </div></div> </div> </div> <div style="font-style: italic;" class="summary">Comrade Danyl Strype comments on the rise of corporate-controlled 'social networking' sites and the potential for community-controlled alternatives.<br /><br /></div> <div class="body"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> I spent about an hour today unsuccessfully trying to contact the organizers of the Luminate 08 eco-festival through their MySpace page, the only web presence they seem to have.</span><br /><br />The first problem was that I was not a member of MySpace, which informed me that I needed to login to send a message to another member. Although every woman and her dog seems to have a MySpace site these days, until today I had resisted because MySpace is owned by corporate media baron Rupert Murdoch. Instead I have an old school html homepage hosted by a local Internet Service Provider in Aotearoa, and post my writing here on Indymedia rather than handing control of my personal information and articles to a corporate-owned blog host.<br /><br />However, since Luminate's page lacked an email address, I buckled under, and signed up for a MySpace user account. This allowed me to compose my message, only to discover that I couldn't send a message to another member without being an approved node in their network. In the end I resorted to contacting one of the organizers directly through an email address on her own homepage, but many potential correspondents would have become frustrated and given up long before.<br /><br />Like most mainstream media organisations and indeed most 'free' services on the web, social networking sites like MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, Orkut and Friendster are for-profit enterprises selling their users attention spans to advertisers. In order to garner more eyeball time, social networking sites create online gated communities in which people can only communicate and share information with others using the same site. Imagine you could only send email to people using the same email host as you. This defeats the key reason for having an internet - to allow for open communication across an unlimited number of independent systems.<br /><br />The same problem can be seen with instant messaging (IM) networks like MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and ICQ. These systems are designed so that users can only chat with others using the same software and servers, closed systems controlled by corporate owners. Imagine using a free cell phone which could only call other cell phones made by the same company, using only their network.<br /><br />Luckily in the case of IM, an alternative has emerged. The Jabber protocol allows anyone to run an IM server or write chat programs which can connect to them. Google has made their Gtalk IM system Jabber-compatible and other corporate interests like the owners of the Wengo system have followed suit. However, the protocol remains a common good controlled by a community of interested developers and users, rather than an intellectual property owned and controlled by the likes of Microsoft.<br /><br />In the early days of the web, users had a single homepage, containing whatever information about themselves they wanted to share. Due to the gated nature of sites like MySpace, unless we can convince everyone we know to agree on one site, we end up having to put our personal information into a separate profile on each of the networking sites we need to use. To change one piece of information, we have to login to multiple sites and change each profile. Is this really progress?<br /><br />On the other hand, sites like MySpace do have a certain appeal to users. The users need no knowledge of code or servers to set up their own web presence and regularly add content. Most importantly they offer a way to share thoughts, ideas and information across a network of people that develops in a way analogous to the neural networks that form among the neurons in the brain - potentially a new form of social intelligence which is much more adaptive than the regimented, heirarchical social systems of corporations and nation-states.<br /><br />It is probably pragmatic to make some use of these services at this time, just as we used free corporate services like Yahoo before we had the option of using independently-run services like RiseUp.net. However, in the long term I believe we need to create the online equivalent of intentional communities, as an alternative to corporate-controlled gated ones like MySpace.<br /><br />So what would a free and open social networking system look like? Firstly, it would allow sharing of communication and content between an unlimited number of separate servers run by different groups. It would be compatible with free software/ open source software. It may well be made up of a cluster of separate services. For example a site could specialize in hosting people's profiles, and make that information available in an open format that could be accessed by other sites, which in turn might specialize in hosting blogs, image galleries, video etc. It might make use of an open ID protocol, that allows people to sign up once and use the same username and password to log into each of these different sites.<br /><br />Most importantly it could provide a way for people to organize themselves more efficiently than the corporate managers and government officials currently trying to do their organizing for them. This potential of the internet, as demonstrated in the use of net-based communication tools in the mobilization of protesters against globalization since the late 90s, threatens the myth that complex societies need heirarchy and centralization of power to get things done. This may be the motive behind the rise of the gated social networking trend and a good reason for activists to involve themselves in building alternatives. </div> <div class="cleardiv"> </div> </div> <div class="related" style="margin-bottom: 10px;"><h3>Related</h3><ul><li class="url"><a href="http://www.myspace.com/luminatefestival">http://www.myspace.com/luminatefestival</a></li></ul></div>Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13716356.post-54851897585966106642008-02-01T17:24:00.000+13:002008-02-01T17:27:05.710+13:00Venezuela Union Leader is Fired from State Oil Company<div class="byline"> <span class="date">January 30th 2008</span><span class="author">, by Kiraz Janicke - Venezuelanalysis.com<br /><br /></span> </div> <div id="teaserimage"><div class="teaserimage"><a href="http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/files/images/2008/01/orlando_chirino2.jpg"><img src="http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/files/imagecache/medium/files/images/2008/01/orlando_chirino2.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a></div><div class="image_description"> Fired union leader Orlando Chirino (Aporrea) </div> </div> Caracas, 30 January 30, 2008 (venezuelanalysis.com) - Venezuelan union leader Orlando Chirino classified his dismissal from state owned oil company PDVSA, as an act of ‘discrimination and political persecution" this week. Chirino, a national coordinator of the National Union of Workers (UNT) and a member of the joint direction of the oil industry union Sinutrapetrol, was fired without explanation by PDVSA management towards the end of 2007.<br /><br />Speaking to the media as he lodged a complaint with the Ministry of Labor last Friday, Chirino said his sacking was arbitrary and without prior warning. He pointed out that although his wages were suspended on November 30 he did not receive notification of his dismissal until December 28.<br />"This act of discrimination that violates my constitutional right to work," he added.<br /><br />Chirino explained that he was covered by a clause in the PDVSA collective contract, which gives additional protection against sacking to workers who earn no more than three times the minimum wage, however he said the PDVSA management increased his wage prior to his sacking in order to remove these protections.<br /><br />Chirino, who has worked for PDVSA since March 2003, said, "I gambled my life defending the principal industry and president Chavez from the attack of the coup plotting opposition and imperialism," during the oil industry lockout (Dec 2002- Jan 2003).<br /><br />From 2006 Chirino worked in the Department of Social Control of SISDEM (System of Democratization of Employment), in PDVSA. However, he alleged that he has been the victim of marginalization and discrimination within PDVSA for two years, and that he has been denied the usual salary increases and bonuses. The reason for this persecution, "corresponds to my categorical opposition to bureaucratic and corrupt practices in the industry and my intransigent defense of worker's rights," he said.<br /><br />Chirino claimed the decision to fire him was primarily based on his opposition to President Chavez's proposed constitutional reforms together with pressure from the Ministry of Labor and the Bolivarian Socialist Force of Workers (FSBT), which he described as a "bureaucratic union current."<br /><br />Chirino lost significant support in the trade union movement last year, including from within his own trade union current C-CURA, due to his opposition to the constitutional reforms (which he described as "class collaborationist") and a proposal he made to fuse with sectors of the largely discredited, right-wing opposition aligned trade union federation, the CTV.<br /><br />Despite Chirino's opposition, the vast majority of the rank and file workers in C-CURA also voted to join the new United Socialist Party of Venezuela and in September, twenty-four unions aligned to C-CURA in Zulia sent Chirinos an open letter criticizing his position on the reforms and the PSUV.<br /><br />In a statement on October 22 a number of other union leaders from C-CURA, including Stalin Pérez Borges, National Coordinator of the UNT and Ismael Hernández, Coordinator of the UNT Carabobo (both identified with the MAREA Socialista current within C-CURA and the PSUV), also distanced themselves from Chirino's position on the reforms and criticized his comments on the CTV.<br /><br />Hernandez said that Chirino's comments were often mistakenly believed to be to be the views of C-CURA. However, he clarified, "Chirino's declarations reflect his personal opinion...but not the majority of C-CURA. In our current there has been no instance or national assembly where a majority has voted in favor of the proposed resolutions on these issues."<br /><br />Perez Borges also said he was radically opposed to any fusion with the CTV, which "depends 100% on imperialist support."<br /><br />However, in another statement today, Perez Borges, Hernandez, and a number of other union leaders, on behalf of the MAREA Socialista current expressed their solidarity with Chirino. "Independently of the fact that we don't share some of the political positions that Orlando Chirino has defended in recent times, we defend his right to express himself, his right to work and to be recognized and respected as a trade union leader in our country," they wrote.<br /><br />"It is evident that the decision to dismiss him is unacceptable as well being illegal and is the result of pressure, rumors, and intolerance that characterizes the Bolivarian Socialist Force of Workers, who are using their position in the Ministry of Labor to conspire in PDVSA for the unjust dismissal of this comrade," the statement continued.<br /><br />The statement called for the direct intervention of Chavez into the matter to ensure that Chirino is reinstated. MAREA Socialista also said they would initiate a campaign alongside Chirino for his reinstatement. Chirino is also calling for international expressions of support.Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11960995458664423354noreply@blogger.com