April 30, 2009

Status QuObama: A Hundred Days of Fake-Progressive BS and Liberal-Left Surrender by Paul Street


http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/status-quobama-hundred-days-fake-progressive-bs-and-liberal-left-surrender
The nation's first Black president proceeds unmolested by the Left as he moves mountains of money in a crusade to save the investment banking class. Anti-war forces dissolve into nothingness as Barack Obama extends the U.S. occupation of Iraq indefinitely. A new theater of war called Af-Pak coagulates in South Asia, yet benumbed "progressives" praise their president as the consummate man of peace. "By demanding nothing of Obama and the Democrats except that they not technically be Republicans, our so-called "progressive" organizations effectively grant advance approval to whatever corporate and imperial policies the new president and the Democrats execute."

Status QuObama: A Hundred Days of Fake-Progressive BS and Liberal-Left Surrender
by Paul Street


"The new White House, with its first black president, its first black Attorney General, and its first black Ambassador to the UN decided not to be present at the world's leading forum to address international race relations."
Barack Obama's media maven David Axelrod recently told the Los Angeles Times that "Barack Obama wasn't elected to stand guard over the status quo; he was elected to change it." Insofar as Axelrod is right on why millions of voters supported Obama, the obvious question is "so what?" Obama was selected by the predominantly corporate and imperial establishment in advance precisely to, well, preserve the capitalist, imperial, and racial status quo.

THE "HIDDEN PRIMARY"
Every four years, many Americans are fooled into investing their hopes in an electoral process that does not deserve their trust. These voters are led by the dominant (so-called "mainstream") corporate media and the broader U.S. political culture and thought-control system to hope that a savior can be installed in the White House - someone who will raise wages, roll back war and militarism, provide universal and adequate health care, rebuild the nation's infrastructure, produce high-paying jobs, fix the environmental crisis, reduce inequality, guarantee economic security, and generally make daily life more livable.
The dreams are regularly drowned in the icy waters of historical and political "reality." In the actuality of American politics and policy, the officially "electable" candidates are vetted in advance by what Laurence Shoup calls "the hidden primary of the ruling class." By prior Establishment selection, all of the "viable" presidential contenders are closely tied to corporate and military-imperial power in numerous and interrelated ways. They run safely within the narrow ideological and policy parameters set by those who rule behind the scenes to make sure that the rich and privileged continue to be the leading beneficiaries of the American system.
"All of the ‘viable' presidential contenders are closely tied to corporate and military-imperial power in numerous and interrelated ways."
In its presidential as in its other elections, U.S. "democracy" is "at best" a "guided one; at its worst it is a corrupt farce, amounting to manipulation, consistent with the larger population projects of propaganda in a controlled and trivialized electoral process. It is an illusion," Shoup claims - correctly in my opinion - "that real change can ever come from electing a different ruling class-sponsored candidate." (Laurence H. Shoup, "The Presidential Election 2008," Z Magazine, February 2008).
While he advances the illusion of change through corporate-controlled elections with a special flair, "Brand Obama" is no special or magical exception to this harsh reality.
As recent reports on Obama's "first 100 days" make clear, the dominant (so-called "mainstream") corporate media is propagating the foolish notion that the new president has in fact acted impressively on his purported mandate to "change the status quo." The deeper reality of the new administration is straight out of Shoup: preservation of the existing order.
My article in last week's Black Agenda Report (titled "Race Cowardice From the Top Down") was dedicated to Obama's deep conservatism on race. This essay focuses on Obama service to the related and combined structures of American empire and capitalism, both of which are of course richly racialized.
OBAMA AND THE EMPIRE
The Occupation Lives On
Obama won his epic primary battle with Hillary Clinton largely because he was able to convince much of the Democratic Party's liberal base to believe in the fairy tale that he was a strong and consistent opponent of George W. Bush and Hillary's arch-criminal invasion of Iraq. The fantasy lives on. Reading the fine print on Obama's Iraq plan, however, it is evident that he intends to sustain the occupation of that country into the indefinite future. He will keep at least 50,000 troops in Iraq well after the August 2010 combat troop withdrawal date he campaigned on.. Many of the troops who stay will be in combat units re-designated as "Advisory" brigades, a new classification that George Orwell would appreciate. Obama's "withdrawal" plan "says nothing about the private contractors and mercenaries that are an essential part of the occupation and whose numbers may even be increased to cover functions previously provided by active-duty troops. ...It will leave in place the world's largest foreign embassy, as well as the world's largest CIA foreign station, in Baghdad." The U.S will maintain critical control over Iraqi skies and a significant naval and air presence "over the horizon."
"It is evident that he intends to sustain the occupation of that country into the indefinite future."
So much for a rapid end to the occupation, long supported by the great majority of Iraqis, not to mention most Americans since 2005.
The Doctrine of Good Intentions
Recently, Obama added occupation insult to injury during his visit to so-called "Camp Victory" in Iraq. Consistent with his longstanding support for the Doctrine of America's Good and Democratic Intentions on the global stage, Obama said that its time for the Iraqis to step up to the plate and "take responsibility" for the "democracy" and "sovereignty" the noble United States has so benevolently granted them. This was a nauseating thing to say more than six years into a brazenly imperial and petro-colonial invasion that Obama is finding ways to continue against the expressed will of the Iraqi people. Beyond the fact that Iraqis have been standing up against the foreign invaders in the name of national sovereignty since the beginning of the U.S. invasion, Obama's claim of benevolent U.S intent is Orwellian in light of the unimaginable havoc we have wreaked in Mesopotamia, including more than 1 million killed, a vast out-exodus of the professional class and the near-collapse of Iraqi infrastructure, all following in the wake of an earlier devastating U.S. military attack and more than a decade of mass-murderous U.S.-led "economic sanctions. As the respected veteran Middle East journalist Nir Rosen recently said on Democracy Now two weeks ago, we've created a Hell in Iraq, not a free democracy.
Kooky Conspiracy Talk on "Af-Pak"
Meanwhile, Obama is increasing the level of imperial violence in Afghanistan and in nuclear Pakistan. He brushed off Afghanistan president Karzai's plea for the U.S. to stop killing Afghans and for the U.S. to propose some sort of timeline for ending our illegal occupation of that country. Karzai's minimal assertions of national independence have irked Obama, who is increasing the U.S. force presence in Afghanistan, a legendary graveyard of empires. Noam Chomsky reasonably expects Karzai to be placed under the supervision of a U.S. imperial surrogate who will essentially run the country from Washington.
"Obama is expanding the United States' not-so covert war in Pakistan."
It would be nice to report that the real source of Obama's irritation with Karzai was that the Afghan president recently signed a law that worsens the terrible oppression of women in Afghanistan. But when asked about that law, Obama made it clear that women's right have little to do with his "new strategy" for Afghanistan, which is all about "defeat[ing] al Qaeda ."
At the same time, Obama is expanding the United States' not-so covert war in Pakistan. As the Middle East expert and University of Michigan historian Juan Cole has been saying of late, Obama has bought into a recycled version of the crackpot Cold War conspiracy and "domino theory." In Obama's "updated, al Qaida version" of the domino thesis, Cole notes, "the Taliban might take Kuna Province, and then all of Afghanistan, and might again host al-Qaida, and might then threaten the shores of the United States."
Pakistan is added on to Afghanistan by Obama like Cambodia was added on to its neighbor Vietnam by President Nixon. This time however, the dangerous territorial expansion is openly acknowledged with Obama merging the two nations "into one theater of war, called Af-Pak" (Glen Ford).
As Cole observes, Obama's call to arms is no more credible than Dick Cheney and John McCain's raving about the danger of an "al-Qaida victory in Iraq." The Taliban and al Qaeda are nowhere close to being able to take over Afghanistan and Pakistan. If anything, Cole notes, the greatest thing working on the weak Pakistani Taliban's behalf is the occurrence of U.S. Predator drone strikes on Pakistani territory, which help the extremists seem like sympathetic victims to parts of the Pakistani public.
Standard Double Standards on the Middle East, Race, and Cuba
Obama is continuing core Bush policies on Israel and Iran. He refuses to pay honest attention to the legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people, about whose fate he stayed sickeningly mute during the savage U.S.-Israel assault on Gaza last December and January - an attack that conveniently ended on the day of his inauguration.
"Obama refuses to pay honest attention to the legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people."
Obama lectures Arabs on their duty to "unclench [their] fist[s] but says nothing about Israel's murderously employed fists and refuses to acknowledge the well-known fact that Israel is a heavily nuclearized state in the Middle East. He continues the Bush administration practice of ignoring the Palestinians' elected government and refuses to acknowledge that continuing illegal Israeli incursions into the West Bank make the official U.S. goal of a two-state Israel-Palestine solution impossible.
Obama is continuing the basic Bush policy of encouraging an anti-Iran alliance between the Israeli occupation state and so-called "moderate" Arab states. These "moderate" states include Egypt's atrocious dictatorship and Saudi Arabia, the most reactionary government on Earth. All of these states continue to be lavishly funded by the U.S.
Obama has followed in George W. Bush's footsteps by boycotting the second international United Nations conference on racism, the so-called "Durban II" gathering in Switzerland this month and for the same two basic reasons as Bush. First, the conference dares to raise the issue of slavery reparations. Second, the conference dares to discuss the racism experienced by Arab Palestinians under the apartheid-like system in the occupied territories. And so the new White House, with its first black president, its first black Attorney General, and its first black Ambassador to the UN decided not to be present at the world's leading forum to address international race relations.
Meanwhile, Obama resorts to off-the-books, so-called supplemental funding of the colonial Iraq and Afghanistan Wars - a deceptive war-financing method that Bush pioneered and which Obama said he would abandon.
He sustains the crushing 47-year trade embargo and the American travel ban on Cuba, rejecting broad Latin American sentiment and even the opinion of some Republicans. He insists on trying to punish and undermine Cuban socialism, which can never be forgiven for daring to modernize and develop outside and against the supervision of Uncle Sam.
A Tortuous Record on Habeas Corpus and Torture
Then there's Obama's interesting record on human rights and torture. Last February the Obama administration filed a federal brief that embraced the Bush administration's position against habeas corpus as long as the "enemy combatants" are seized abroad and flown to the Bagram Air Force prison in Afghanistan instead of to Guantanamo.
Two Thursday ago, the Obama Justice Department expressed its determination to protect CIA torturers from prosecution after it released memorandums on the Bush administration's extreme torture practices. Those memorandums only saw the light of day because of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. By announcing in advance that it will not go after the direct torturers, the Obama administration has destroyed its ability to use the threat of prosecution as a way of getting CIA personnel to testify against the top officials who formulated the Bush torture policy. It also disturbingly echoes the Nazi's defense of human right perpetrators on the grounds that the criminals were just following orders.
"The Obama administration has destroyed its ability to use the threat of prosecution as a way of getting CIA personnel to testify against the top officials."
As the Justice Department released the memos spelling out brutal CIA interrogation methods a couple weeks ago, Obama said that "nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past" (New York Times, April 17, 2009). This from a former and supposedly liberal law professor, someone who should be expected to understand that one investigates and punishes past human rights crimes precisely in order to discourage and prevent their occurrence in the present and future. It's true that Obama subsequently seemed to relent a bit in the face of a wave of civil-libertarian disgust and said that his Attorney General Eric Holder might want to investigate the Bush administration lawyers who approved torture. But don't look for much from Holder. As one of my regular ZNet readers recently noted, "Holder was a key figure in the early days of Bush's 'dark side' policies, breaking ranks (if one can call the weak Democratic Party opposition ‘ranks') to support Bush's denial of Geneva protections to detainees."
As the New York Times reported nine days ago, citing top White House aides, moreover, Obama "opted to disclose the memos because his lawyers worried that they had a weak case for withholding them and much of the information had already been published in the New York Review of Books, in a memoir by George Tenent, the former CIA Director, and even in a 2006 speech by President George W. Bush." (New York Times, April 21, 2009, A1).
Now we have Obama and the Democratic leadership in the Senate signaling that they will block efforts to set up an independent commission to investigate the Bush torture policy. Obama spokesperson Robert Gibbs justifies this sickening position by saying that "this is not a time for retribution" and that "we're all best suited looking forward."
"My Most Agonizing Decision"
Revealingly enough, when Obama went to Langley last week to reassure CIA staffers of his safety to their interests, Obama said that his decision to release the torture memos was the "most agonizing" call of his presidency so far. I heard that line on the evening news and turned off my television. "Wow," I said. "The was his ‘most agonizing' decision so far - reluctantly agreeing under legal compulsion to release documents showing a previous administration's human right crimes. Not his decision to launch missiles and expand illegal wars certain to kill children and other civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Not his decision to hand out yet more hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street parasites while poverty rises across the nation and the world. Not his decision to increase the war and military budget while destitution expands at home and abroad.
OBAMA AND CAPITALISM
"Keeping Perpetrators Afloat"
Turning to the home front, Obama refuses to advance the obvious cost-cutting and social democratic health care solution - single-payer national health insurance (improved Medicare for all). Consistent with his recent description of himself as a "New [that is corporate] Democrat," Obama will spend untold trillions of dollars on further taxpayer handouts to the giant Wall Street firms who spent millions on his campaign and who drove the economy over the cliff. He is too attached to those firms and to their so-called "free market" ideology to undertake the elementary bank nationalizations and public financial restructuring that are obviously required to put the nation's credit system on a sound and socially responsible basis. Obama's plan to guarantee the financial, insurance, and real estate industries' toxic, hyper-inflated assets while keeping existing Wall Street management in place amounts to a giant effort (according to liberal economist James K. Gailbraith) to "keep perpetrators afloat" at a cost of at least one trillion taxpayer dollars. The program amounts to what leading liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calls a "coin flip" in which "investors win if its heads and taxpayers lose if its tails." The government (identical to the people in a functioning democracy) takes more than 90 percent of the risk but private investors reap at least half the reward.
Fake-Progressive Chest-Pounding/ "No Peace Dividend"
Obama pounds his chest about executive bonuses and makes carefully orchestrated visits expressing concern about poverty and job-loss to places like Pomona, California and Elkhart, Indiana. But it's all a public relations game crafted to provide fake-progressive cover for his corporate, Wall Street agenda and for his related commitment to the unmentionable 1$ trillion-a-year Pentagon budget, which pays for more than 760 bases across more than 130 nations and accounts for nearly half the military spending on earth - all in the name of "defense." The leading Wall Street investment firm and bailout recipient Morgan Stanley reported one day after Obama's election victory that Obama [quote] "has been advised and agrees that there is no peace dividend."
"Change Means More of the Same"
Early last April the New York Times published an article with an ironic title: "In Cuba, Change Means More of the Same." This "news" item reports that "rather than dismantling Cuba's socialist framework," Cuba's President Raul Castro "seems to be trying to make it work more efficiently." Castro, the Times reports, seeks to keep power concentrated "at the top." But what is U.S. President Barack Obama - Mr. "Change" himself - trying to accomplish other than to make the American corporate profits system "work more efficiently" without "dismantling the [capitalist] framework" and with power (and wealth) still concentrated "at the top?"
"It's all a public relations game crafted to provide fake-progressive cover for his corporate, Wall Street agenda."
As the Times acknowledged last March in an article titled "English-Speaking Capitalism on Trial," Obama and his neoliberal partner Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, have "focused on ways of revitalizing the [existing] system.... Even as both men have embarked on enormous increases in public-sector spending," Times correspondents John Burns and Landon Thomas noted, "they have maintained that the solutions to the crisis lie in reawakening the markets and recapitalizing the banks rather than tearing at the system's foundations. And both, when they respond to private anger at the private sector, have seemed more geared to managing anger than stoking it."
As the prolific Marxist geographer David Harvey recently observed on "Democracy Now," "what [the Obama team is] trying to do is to reinvent the same system" - to "reconstitute the same sort of capitalism we have had over and over again over the last thirty years in a slightly more regulated, benevolent form" that doesn't "challenge the fundamentals"
"Conservative Solutions to Radical Problems"
Meanwhile, Obama's tepid and undersized stimulus plan is dysfunctionally over-loaded with business-friendly tax cuts and too short on labor-intensive projects to put people to work right away. He says nothing or close to it about the overdue labor law reform he campaigned on, the Employee Free Choice Act, which ought, as Noam Chomsky recently argued, to be at the heart and center of any reasonably progressive economic recovery program. Worse, Obama speaks in support of the anti-union, teacher-bashing, and test-based corporate education agenda, advocating teacher "merit pay" and charter schools. He makes a public visit (in support of his stimulus bill) to the headquarters of Caterpillar, a provider of bulldozers for illegal Israeli settlements. Caterpillar was also the first large U.S. manufacturer in decades to break a major strike with scabs.
"Obama says nothing or close to it about the overdue labor law reform he campaigned on, the Employee Free Choice Act."
Praised by political and media elites for the skill with which he and his handlers are "managing [betrayed popular] expectations," Obama fails to advance elementary and urgently needed progressive measures like a moratorium on foreclosures, a capping of credit card interest rates and finance charges, and the rollback of capital income tax rates to 1981 (not just 1993) levels. He won't let the government enter into the business of making direct mortgage loans. Even before the inauguration, Obama committed himself to so-called "entitlement reform," code language for claiming to cut the federal deficit by chipping away at Medicare and Social Security - by taking a pound of flesh from the incomes and health of senior citizens.
His federal restructuring of the auto industry is bound to lead to yet more wage and pension cuts for current and retired auto workers. His refusal to undertake such restructuring on Wall Street, which collapsed the economy, reflects the enormous political power of the street's great firms but many labor progressive also think it may reflect the fact there are no great institutions of working class power like the UAW to be undermined on Wall Street. Consistent with that suspicion, Obama's aides defend him against the charge that he is wimpy when it comes to confronting powerful institutions by praising him for "picking fights" with "main components of the Democratic base, like organized labor" (New York Times, April 19, 2009, Sec.1, p.1) - as if unions instead of capitalist corporations were the real source of money and power in Washington.
The liberal-progressive economist Robert Kuttner, who hoped passionately for a "progressive" Obama presidency, is sorely disappointed, noting that the new chief executive is advancing "conservative solutions to radical problems." Kuttner's thwarted dreams for Obama are summarized in a rapidly written book published before the election under the revealing (see below) title "Obama's Challenge."
Socialism for the Rich and Capitalism for the Rest
Meanwhile, a rising number of citizens in "the world's richest nation" face new challenges in the struggle simply to keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. Badly damaged by a vicious 1990s welfare "reform" (elimination) that Obama has repeatedly praised as a great policy success, the nation's public family cash assistance system is too weak to match the expansion of destitution across America even as the new president advances a new level of Wall Street Welfare. Tent cities, modern-day Hoovervilles for the evicted and foreclosed, have sprung up in more than a dozen U.S. cities. Foreclosures dipped briefly while the mortgage companies waited for the details on Obama's tepid housing plan. But foreclosures are surging again and unemployment continues to expand as Obama speaks of "glimmers of [economic] hope" and while Fed Chief Bernake claims to discern "green shoots" of recovery.
"Wall Street paychecks and bonuses are soaring back to 2007 levels."

And yet last Sunday's New York Times reports on page one that pay at the nation's leading investment banks, after falling off last year, is, yes, bouncing back to stratospheric heights. Wall Street paychecks and bonuses are soaring back to 2007 levels, thanks in no small measure to the fact that the bankers can borrow cheaply, with all those federal guarantees. It's party time again on the street, thanks to the $600 billion committed under the TARP, the vast credit lines proffered by the Fed, expanded F.D.I.C. guarantees, the government bailout of AIG, and the like...thanks to not-so Temporary Assistance for not so Needy Banks,
A recent glowing Los Angeles Times assessment of Obama's first hundred Days reproduces an interesting statement from Obama to the leaders of the banking industry last March. As the financial chieftains began to complain to him about the public's failure to understand their industry's need for high levels of compensation, Obama cut them off. "Be careful how you make those statements," Obama said. "The public isn't buying that. My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."
As a student who told me about this Los Angeles Times story writes, "The question for me (and I assume for many leftists) is why is Obama using his administration to protect the bankers from the angry rabble (us)? Why doesn't his administration simply address the people's needs and leave the bankers to their fate? These are, of course, rhetorical questions. We know that he is serving to protect and legitimate the highly undemocratic and destructive class system of state capitalism through another crisis."
"What's the Dollar Value of a Starry-Eyed Idealist?"
It's not for nothing that Obama received a record-setting $38 million from the financial, real estate, and insurance industries in the last election cycle, including close to $1 million from Goldman Sachs alone. Government Sachs and Morgan Stanley and AIG are not in the business of handing over the White House to progressive enemies of Empire and Inequality, Incorporated.
"Morgan Stanley and AIG are not in the business of handing over the White House to progressive enemies."
"It's not always clear what Obama's financial backers want," Ken Silverstein noted in the fall of 2006, "but it seems safe to conclude that his campaign contributors are not interested merely in clean government and political reform - a reasonable judgment given well-known facts on the purposes behind election finance at the upper levels. "On condition of anonymity," Silverstein reported, "one Washington lobbyist I spoke with was willing to point out the obvious: that big donors would not be helping out Obama if they didn't see him as a ‘player.' The lobbyist added: ‘What's the dollar value of a starry-eyed idealist?'"
The Invisible Color of the Crisis
Two and a half years later, the crisis of black and Latino communities deepens with special pain and invisibility. Following the usual racial pattern in the long history of American business cycles, the Great Recession is hitting people of color harder than it is hitting whites. The rising official black poverty and unemployment rates continue (as usual) to hover around double that of whites.
This "little" problem is rarely discussed in the "mainstream" political and media culture. It doesn't help, of course, that the new administration stays militantly silent on the nation's savage racial inequalities and the institutional racism that continues to feed those disparities in the age of Obama, consistent with the extreme race-neutralism of the Obama campaign (see Paul Street, "Race Cowardice from the Top Down," Black Agenda Report. April 22, 2009) - this even after Obama's technically black Attorney General made a speech (last February) arguing that the U.S. in a "nation of cowards" on race.
"The new administration stays militantly silent on the nation's savage racial inequalities."
Domestic Private Assault Weapons Live On
With rising economic insecurity, the population becomes more and more dangerously unraveled. Domestic gun violence is in the rise and yet even as we endure a record epidemic of mass shootings, the "pragmatic" Obama has recently suggested that he will abandon yet another campaign promise by failing to fight in Congress to renew the ban on assault weapons that expired in 2004.
LEFT" SURRENDER: OUR CHALLENGE, NOT OBAMA'S
"We Were Warned"

Progressive activists and intellectuals are right to be angered about the new president's short but already clear record of centrist imperial and state-capitalist governance and "expectation management." But as Naomi Klein noted some weeks ago, they have no right to be disappointed or surprised. Obama's post-election trajectory is thoroughly predictably given well-known limits and incentive in the dominant, corporate-crafted U.S. political culture and party system and in light of numerous warnings about the Obama phenomenon that various Left activists and intellectuals over recent years.
As Scott Horton noted last March on Antiwar.com, "those who bought into the slogans ‘Hope' and ‘Change' last fall should have read the fine print. We were warned."
Indeed, candidate Obama's speeches to elite establishment bodies like the Council on Foreign Relations and his presentations to institutions like NASDAQ and wealth funders and newspaper editorial boards sent strong signals of his basic underlying safety to - and belief in - dominant domestic and global hierarchies and doctrines.
"Obama has consistently surrounded himself with elite agents of corporate and imperial power."
From the start of his campaign and through his cabinet selections and appointments, moreover, Obama has consistently surrounded himself with elite agents of corporate and imperial power, people like James Jones, Rahm Emmanuel, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner. Obama's claim that he will provide the "vision" to move such corporate and imperial operatives in a "progressive" direction is like a baseball manager claiming that he's going to build a team based on speed and defense with a roster full of clumsy, slow-footed 280-pound power hitters.
"Incapable of Action or In Obama's Pocket"
Furthermore, progressives need to take a certain degree of responsibility for Obama's behavior. The absence of spine and intelligence on the part of what passes for a Left in the U.S. is quite remarkable. By demanding nothing of Obama and the Democrats except that they not technically be Republicans, our so-called "progressive" organizations effectively grant advance approval to whatever corporate and imperial policies the new president and the Democrats execute.
Real progressive change is our challenge, not Obama's. But many of us on the left don't seem terribly interested in meeting the test. As John Judis has argued in even the centrist journal The New Republic, a major reason that Obama has been able to go forward with a conservative and inadequate economic plan "is that there is no popular left movement agitating for him to go" further..."Sure," Judis writes, "there are leftwing intellectuals ...beating the drums for nationalizing the banks and for a $1 trillion-plus stimulus. But I," Judis argued, "am...referring to movements that stir up trouble and get people angry. Instead, what exists of a popular left is either incapable of action or in Obama's pocket." By Judis' analysis, the U.S. labor movement and groups like "Moveon.Org" are repeating the same "mistake that political groups often make" - the mistake of "subordinating their concern about issues to their support for the Democratic Party and its leading politician."
"What exists of a popular left is either incapable of action or in Obama's pocket."
The antiwar movement is disbanding itself, essentially defeated by the nation's first black president.
The Congressional Quarterly claims that the anti-war movement is paying the price of "its own success." But that's baloney. As BAR's Glen Ford points out. "The anti-war movement has hit rock-bottom because of its failure to challenge this particular president, an imperialist with charm, a warmonger with a winning smile. Obama has whipped them, but good."
This is exactly what John Pilger and I predicted would result from an Obama presidency last year - the abject surrender and pacification of the antiwar movement based on the fairly tale notion of Obama as an antiwar president.
Meanwhile, the dominant U.S. labor federations are on board with Obama's inadequate corporate health care and economic stimulus plans.. They remain remarkably respectful and relatively mute in their public commentary on Obama's apparent reluctance to push the EFCA. Grotesquely enough, SEIU president Andy Stern is an open and vicious opponent of single-payer national health insurance, itself supported by most Americans.
Meanwhile, the left Democratic journal The Nation has absurdly called Obama's tepid budget proposal "an audacious plan to transform America" in progressive ways. Progressive filmmaker Michael Moore proclaimed absurdly that Obama's auto restructuring plan sends the message that "the government of, by, and for the people is in charge here, not big business."
"You Can Carp and Gripe"
According to the liberal historian Alan Lichtman, assessing Obama's First Hundred Days for two Los Angeles Times reporters, "you can carp and gripe. But you really have to go back as far as Franklin Roosevelt for this much coming out of a newly elected president." Besides forgetting the example of Lyndon Johnson, Lichtman elegantly obliterates the question of the empire- and inequality-friendly content and power-preserving nature of what it is exactly that is and isn't coming out of the White House. The liberal academic's pithy comment also managed to identify substantive criticism of the new administration as negativistic fault-finding and complaining - a standard charge against anyone who dares to criticize concentrated power from the left.
"Progressives Can Only Hope..."
"The most progressive aspects of the New Deal owed their existence to working class protest."
Leading left-liberal Democratic economists/public intellectuals Robert Kuttner and Paul Krugman hope for "a new New Deal" under Obama. They fail, however, to mention the significant extent to which the most progressive aspects of the New Deal owed their existence to working class protest and to related left-wing activism during the 1930s. In a New York Times column titled "Franklin Delano Obama" six days after the election, Krugman wrote that "Mr. Obama's chances of leading a new New Deal depend largely on whether his short-term economic plans are sufficiently bold. Progressives," Krugman counseled, "can only hope that he has the necessary audacity."
Just yesterday (I am writing on the morning of April 28, 2009), Krugman said the following at the end of a column that criticized Wall Street bankers for believing that they will soon be able to return to their pre-2008 norm of making outrageous profits off other people's money: "We can only hope that our leaders prove them wrong, and carry through with real reform."
In "Obama's Challenge," Kuttner hoped that the onset of "the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression," will lead Obama to shows his colors as "that rare transformational leader" who "educates" the "people on behalf of expansive uses of progressive government" through the "force of [his] own character,"
Progressives can only hope that the great, wise, and wonderful wizard of Obama can have the audacity to save the day? Hello?
"Only When it Has Encountered Rebellion From Below"
Krugman and Kuttner might want to take a look at Howard Zinn's bestselling volume A People's History of the United States or at Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward's classic study Poor Peoples' Movement: How They Succeed and Why They Fail, to review some elementary lessons on how big progressive change occurs. These studies demonstrate in rich historical detail how direct action, social disruption, and the threat of radical change from the bottom up forced social and political reform benefiting working- and lower-class and black people during the 1930s and the 1960s. They show the critical role played by grassroots social movements and popular resistance in educating presidents and the broader power elite on the need for change. As Zinn noted two springs ago, "The Democratic Party has broken with its historic conservatism, its pandering to the rich, its predilection for war, only when it has encountered rebellion from below, as in the Thirties and the Sixties."
As Obama himself (along with John Edwards) repeatedly noted during the campaign, in a comment that has not fallen from his lips since he reached the White House, "change doesn't happen from the top down. Change happens from the bottom up." And here we might add that change from the bottom up happens through the painstaking creation and expansion of grassroots social forces and organizations beneath and beyond the great quadrennial corporate-crafted mass marketed narrow-spectrum and candidate centered electoral and media extravaganzas that pass for the only politics that matter in the United States.

Paul Street (paulstreet99@yahoo.com) is a political commentator and author in Iowa City, IA. He is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Paradigm, 2004); Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Routledge, 2005); Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History (Rowman & Littlefied, 2007), and Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Paradigm, 2008).

UK ends bilateral military aid to Colombia

UK ends bilateral military aid to Colombia


Sibylla Brodzinsky in Bogotá
www.guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 April 2009


Britain has quietly ended nearly a decade of military aid to Colombia's armed forces after accusations of gross violations of human rights, including the murder of civilians who were shot and reported as guerrillas killed in combat.

The Colombian government was "extremely surprised" by the decision to cut off the bilateral cooperation programmes, the deputy defence minister, Sergio Jaramillo, told the Guardian.

The British foreign secretary, David Miliband, announced the move in a written statement to the House of Commons last month, stating that the government "shares the concern … that there are officers and soldiers of the Colombian armed forces who have been involved in, or allowed, abuses".

"Our bilateral human rights projects with the Colombian ministry of defence will cease," the statement said.

The projects included a landmine clearance programme that had been under way since 2000 and a human rights training project that began in 2006. Together, funding for the programmes totalled £190,000 a year.

While the financial value is relatively small, the termination of British military aid has symbolic significance for Colombia. Jaramillo called the decision a "severe blow" to the armed forces from a "great ally".

"No other European country has worked as closely with the army as the United Kingdom," he said.

Colombia's military had long been accused of colluding with illegal rightwing paramilitary groups. Investigators are looking into 1,296 cases since 2002 of reported executions of civilians by army soldiers who dressed the victims in rebel uniforms and planted weapons on them to present them as legitimate guerrilla casualties.

The UN high commissioner for human rights described the practice as "widespread and systematic". Many of the cases came to light after a public outcry over the fate of 11 men missing from a poor suburb of Bogotá who were then reported as combat deaths thousands of miles away, days after their disappearance. Twenty-seven officers, including three generals were discharged over those killings.

Liban. "La résistance fait partie de notre culture et de notre histoire." Interview de Khaled Hadadeh, sec gén du P C Liban, parti, oct 2008








Liban. "La résistance fait partie de notre culture et de notre histoire."
8 octobre 2008


au Liban un an après la victoire du Hezbollah sur l’armée israélienne : "La résistance fait partie de notre culture et de notre histoire."

Interview de Khaled Hadadeh, secrétaire général du PCL, parti communiste libanais par Chris Den Hond, Mireille Court et Nicolas Qualander

traduction de l’arabe par Hussein Sabbah

Le Parti communiste libanais participe à la résistance contre l’occupation israélienne, résistance politique, sociale, mais aussi armée, malgré le peu de moyens dont il dispose. Nous avons passé une journée entière à Jamaliya, dans la vallée de la Bekaa, où 7 militants communistes sont tombés les armes à la main lors d’une opération israélienne en août 2006. Nous avons aussi rencontré Khaled Hadadeh, secrétaire général du PCL.

Est-ce que la diplomatie française sous Sarkozy est différente de celle de Chirac ou de Bush concernant le Moyen Orient ?

On constate une modification de la façon dont le gouvernement français exerce sa politique au Liban et au Moyen Orient en général, mais ce n’est pas un changement important. C’est plutôt une réponse à ce qui s’est passé en Irak. Avec le recul de la mainmise nord américaine, il semble que l’Union européenne essaie de profiter de cette faiblesse pour regagner un peu de terrain perdu. J’ai l’impression que le nouveau gouvernement français essaie de compenser ce qu’il a perdu pendant l’occupation de l’Irak et la chute de Saddam Hussein, mais cela ne change pas grande chose dans le conflit israélo-arabe. L’Union européenne a toujours les mêmes relations, les mêmes points de vue dans l’ensemble que le gouvernement nord américain, comme s’ils étaient en train de se compléter pour défendre les intérêts d’Israël dans la région. La solution de paix, prônée par l’UE et le gouvernement américain, vise à préserver les intérêts israéliens militaires et politiques dans la région.

Dans un communiqué de presse récent, le PCL se dit partisan d’une modification de la constitution pour changer le modèle confessionnel au Liban. Pourquoi ?

Le modèle confessionnel au Liban est à l’origine de problèmes et de guerres civiles depuis la création du grand Liban en 1926. C’est le représentant du mandat français au Liban qui l’a imposé et jusqu’à aujourd’hui les guerres civiles à caractère confessionnel se succèdent. La classe politique au Liban est comme une classe de féodaux, où des groupes humains géographiquement bien délimités suivent un chef politique ou tribal et où le régime libanais reflète une union de ces chefs féodaux qui représentent les intérêts de leur propre groupe communautaire. En plus, cette logique pousse les chefs de sectes à chercher l’appui de forces étrangères pour consolider leur pouvoir. Cette composition confessionnelle rend le Liban instable, ce qui est renforcé encore par l’instabilité régionale. N’importe quel changement dans le rapport de force régional se reflète au Liban en guerre civile, parce que le Liban est le maillon faible de la région avec le système politique le plus fragile. Nous pensons que ce système confessionnel et clientéliste est devenu la cause principale du problème du Liban. Nous proposons un début de solution pour établir un système laïc et démocratique au Liban, en se basant sur une réforme politique qui abandonnerait le système confessionnel et qui établirait une nouvelle loi électorale, basée sur la proportionnalité. Un Sénat pourrait alors représenter les intérêts des différentes confessions.

Le PCL s’est déclaré partisan de la résistance contre Israël ?

Le Parti communiste ne soutient pas seulement la résistance, nous avons initié la résistance. Nous avons commencé dans les années 60 avec la création de la garde populaire pour faire face aux agressions israéliennes au Liban. Lors de l’invasion israélienne au Liban en 1982, le Parti et d’autres organisations communistes ont lancé le Front de la résistance nationale libanaise qui a libéré Beyrouth et la partie du Liban occupé jusqu’à la rivière Litani entre 1982 et 1985. La résistance contre l’occupation étrangère fait partie de notre culture et de notre histoire. Nous luttons également pour un changement démocratique à l’intérieur du Liban. Ce qui distingue notre résistance nationale par rapport à la résistance actuelle dominée par le Hezbollah, est que la résistance que nous voulons est une résistance avec un aspect national global et pas un aspect confessionnel. La résistance qu’on a voulu est une résistance qui fait le lien entre la libération des territoires occupés et le changement démocratique laïc interne au Liban. Mais nous nous considérons toujours comme faisant partie de la résistance, même si notre participation dans la dernière période est plus ou moins faible en raison de la faiblesse de nos moyens logistiques. Au Liban les partis politiques présents, sauf le Parti communiste libanais, sont tous des partis à caractère confessionnel. Le Hezbollah n’est pas le seul parti islamique. Le Courant du futur, présidé par Monsieur Hariri, est un courant sunnite, donc un courant islamique. Ce courant devient même un espace pour l’émergence des courants islamiques intégristes comme Al Qaida. Le Parti socialiste est un parti des Druzes, qui défend le point de vue druze. Les Forces libanaises, c’est un parti intégriste chrétien. Tous les partis libanais sont des partis à caractère confessionnel, pas seulement le Hezbollah. Notre parti a payé le prix fort pour sa position laïque et démocratique. Dans les années 80, il y a eu des confrontations entre nous et les forces chiites, Amal et Hezbollah. Dans les années 70, il y a eu des confrontations avec les forces chrétiennes. Nos camarades d’origine chrétienne ont été tués ou chassés de leur domicile dans la région dominée par les Forces libanaises. Les intégristes sunnites qui sont maintenant avec le courant de Hariri et le Courant du futur à Tripoli nous ont fait payer un prix très cher en tuant nos camarades à Tripoli. Toutes ces forces intégristes confessionnelles ont assassiné nos camarades.

Le Hezbollah a changé ?

Avec le Hezbollah, la situation est un peu différente. Depuis les années 80, le Hezbollah a changé. Il a changé ses relations avec notre parti et les autres forces de la résistance. Je pense que le Hezbollah est persuadé qu’il ne peut pas créer un Etat islamique au Liban. Hassan Nasrallah l’a dit pendant son dernier discours lorsqu’il a parlé de deux vérités. Il n’évoque pas l’idée d’un Etat islamique ce qu’il avait fait dans une autre période quand d’autres clans évoquaient un Etat pour les chrétiens ou que chaque région soit dirigée par un clan. Nasrallah a abandonné cette option. Il appelle à un Etat partagé par tous les Libanais. Il a aussi mis l’accent sur le rôle national de la résistance à travers les partis qui l’ont initiée, donc à travers notre parti. Finalement la relation entre le Hezbollah et le PCL pendant la dernière guerre a créé des liens plus étroits entre nos militants et les partisans du Hezbollah. Ces facteurs nous poussent à dire que la possibilité de travailler ensemble entre le Parti communiste libanais et le Hezbollah est réelle. Bien sûr que cette coopération ne va pas se transformer en alliance forte entre les deux partis. Il reste des problèmes sérieux. Le Hezbollah ne fait pas suffisamment le lien entre le processus de libération de l’oppresseur étranger et le processus de changement démocratique et social au Liban

April 29, 2009

Swine flu, pigs and profits By Hillel Cohen Published Apr 29, 2009


Fear of a swine flu pandemic is spreading much faster than the virus itself.






While it’s too soon to predict how widespread and deadly this new variation of influenza virus will be, information about the likely origin of the outbreak is starting to surface. A huge factory-farm pig operation owned by U.S. corporate giant Smithfield and operated by its Mexican subsidiary, Granjas Carroll de Mexico, may have spawned this new threat to public health.

Local residents from the towns of La Gloria and Perote in the Mexican state of Veracruz have been fighting the pork-breeding giant for years.


Producing close to a million hogs annually, the company maintains huge lagoons of hog manure as well as open-air dumps for rotting remains of hogs that die before being slaughtered. Fumes from the hog waste foul the air for miles and residents believe that their ground water may have also been contaminated. Swarms of flies that feed on the manure are in close reach of the towns.

It is well known that flies can spread avian flu by carrying material from infected bird droppings from place to place. It is possible that flies feeding on the hog manure may also be in contact with bird droppings and became the mechanism for mixing virus material from hogs, birds and humans, which is now causing the outbreak.

According to reports from the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, local residents tried to block the construction of the farm as early as 2005. A year ago, several activists were arrested by Veracruz authorities, who have worked closely with Granjas Carroll to suppress opposition to the huge hog operation.

Long before the swine flu outbreak made it into the international news, hundreds of La Gloria residents were complaining of severe respiratory infections, with many developing into pneumonia. Pneumonia is one of the severe complications of influenza infection. Veratect, a U.S. private company that monitors health outbreaks around the world for its subscribers, noticed the outbreak in Veracruz over a month ago and called the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). With its attention still on alleged—and non-existent—bioterrorism, the CDC ignored these calls for several weeks.

The first confirmed case of the new swine flu virus was that of a young boy in La Gloria, who has since recovered. The outbreak has spread to Mexico City and other Mexican areas as well as some cases in New York, California, Texas and other locations in the U.S., as well as around the world. At this writing at least 1,500 suspected cases in Mexico have resulted in over 150 deaths. While cases in the U.S. have so far been milder, one or two suspected deaths have already been recorded.

Health officials believe that the current strain of virus is a mix of genetic material from viruses that infect hogs and birds as well as humans. For almost a decade, world and U.S. health officials have focused on so-called avian or bird flu—labeled H5N1—which has spread around the world but has not “jumped” to human populations. Although some people contracted bird flu from close proximity to poultry and water foul, no human-to-human transmission has been reported.

This new swine flu is a variation of H1N1, which is much more common in human flu. It’s already clear that it is spreading by human-to-human transmission.

Because the largest number of cases have come from Mexico, some right-wing commentators on the Fox network have already tried to blame Mexican immigrants for bringing the virus across the border and may use the fear over swine flu to whip up even more immigrant bashing.

The fact that the U.S. cases seem to be among tourists from this country or those close to tourists has so far limited the attacks on immigrants. So far, however, relatively little attention in the big business mass media has been given to the Smithfield connection or the fact that similar huge and hazardous plants can be found in North Carolina, Utah and elsewhere.

An article in Rolling Stone magazine in 2006 estimated that Smithfield alone produced 26 million TONS of animal waste a year—the byproduct of over $11 billion in sales. So-called “free-trade” agreements like NAFTA have enabled corporate giants like Smithfield to set up their hazardous shops in Mexico with little or no regulation and at the expense of the local people.

Will the corporate criminals who have profited from this environmental and public health disaster be held responsible?

Cohen is a doctor of public health.

Africa must revisit Marx and The Communist Manifesto













http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=6&aid=7&dir=2009/April/Wednesday29

As Africa searches for the redesign of the iniquitous economic and political relationship between itself and the Americans and Europeans, it would do no harm to reflect on the ageless proposals that Karl Marx makes in Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto, write
RAMPHOLO MOLEFHE


The current engulfment of the international capitalist system in reckless mismanagement of resources created on the back of the working peoples of the world, themselves relegated to most cruel extremes of poverty and underdevelopment, rekindles the debate about the extent to which the economies of the underdeveloped countries should remain enslaved to those of the Western industrialised countries.

It was plausible in the late 1950s and the early 1960s that the leading intellectuals of the anti-colonial movement should be engrossed in this debate because the conditions for it were implanted in the ideological and practical choices that they had to make about the development of their countries that had achieved national political independence and those that were still fighting for it.

The Africans who fought fascism and the protection of democracy in World War II had not only been exposed to the ideological alternative that was reflected in the contribution of the Soviet Union to the defeat of Hitler, but they were also distressed at the failure of the capitalist countries to extend to them the benefits of the democracy that they had defended with their very lives.

In his introduction to the Communist Manifesto, Vladimir Pozner, points out that "By the time of my arrival the (Soviet Union) had surpassed its 1940 industrial output; only a few years later. In 1957, it ushered in the space age with Sputnik, the first artificial satellite in space; that was followed by Yuri Gagarin's spectacular flight - the world watched with awe and envy as the first ever human being soared into space.

"In the 1950s and the 1960s, the Soviet economy boomed; living standards improved rapidly, the national economy barrelled along, all this leading Nikita Khrushchev to predict that the U.S.S.R. would soon catch up with and surpass the United States as the world's number one economic power.

Along with economic growth came political liberalisation: In 1956 at the XX Congress of the Communist Party, Khrushchev denounced Stalin for the crimes he had committed and special commissions were set up to free millions of people incarcerated in the Gulag.

"At about the same time the Bandung international conference of African peoples on the continent and in the Diaspora had inspired commonness of purpose as Kwame Nkrumah, in 1957 led Ghana to national independence on the Pan-Africanist platform, also writing one of the most influential theoretical works to come out of the continent: "Neo-colonialism, the last stage of imperialism". It was a worthy follow up to Vladimir Lenin's earlier contribution to the discourse: "Imperialism, the last stage of capitalism".

As the African struggle for decolonisation unfolded, it demanded of the leaders and the masses who followed a critical assessment of the alternate world outlooks represented in the United States and Britain in the capitalist camp, and the Soviet Union and China in the socialist East.

The West Indian intellectual Walter Rodney, who wrote "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa," and South African, Archie Mafeje and Basil Davidson who wrote on the African liberation movement, all in one way or the other, presented the African readership with the possibility of disengagement from the dominant international economic system that they experienced by way of slavery, colonialism and the new neo- colonialism.

The African politicians, Nkrumah, Ben Bella, Abdel Nasser, Julius Nyerere, Patrice Lumumba, Sekou Toure, Leopold Senghor and the later generation of Augustino Neto, Gabriel Mugabe, Samora Machel and Marcelino Dos Santos grappled with the problem of finding an African application of Western democracy and the socialist ideal to which they were more recently exposed after the second imperialist world war even as 'communism' had been stigmatised in the education they received in London, Paris and Washington.
The African experiment with establishing socialist democracy was thwarted, among others, by:

Underdeveloped production forces and immature relations of production that blurred the true nature of the relationship between the owners of property and the dispossessed;

Stifled development of an indigenous capitalist class which suffered under the weight of the more financially resourced and administratively interconnected captains of agricultural and industrial enterprise in the Western imperialist countries;

The overhanging euphoria and prolonged celebration of the achievements of the nationalist struggles that reclaimed administration of political affairs from the retreating colonial governments whose practitioners were physically present on the continent;

The smothering of a rigorous scientific and materialist interpretation of history and analysis of the prevalent economic political and economic existence of the Africans by a sentimental attachment among the ideologues of the liberation movement and to nationalist leaders to 'African culture';

Incoherent and distorted development of the working classes which grew only at the economic growth points that had been identified by the Western multinationals, in the towns and not in the countryside, thus undermining all prospects for the development of strong trade unions and socialist and communist parties.

Needless to say, these obstacles to the binding of the working class movement on the continent and its resultant failure to link itself to the international working class struggles manifests itself at varied levels of intensity in each country, in the Francophone countries and in the British colonies, in the Muslim or Arabic countries and in the Christian countries which invariably deny the efficacy of African traditional faith and belief systems, and most divisively, along tribal or ethnic lines which were effectively exploited by colonialism to pre-empt unification of the African labourers in the towns and in the villages.

In this contribution to the imminent discourse, limited in its expanse by the space and time available to African journalism, about the range of opportunities offered by the irreversible dilemma posed to the Western imperialist countries by the credit crunch in their banks and other financial institutions, it is proposed that the survival of the Africans will in part require revisiting the ideological questions that have found no answers in the prosecution of the post-independence agenda of the African countries. It will require revising the Marxist proposition and the Communist Manifesto, both of which appear to be as relevant today as they were 160 years ago. Only then will the Africans gain a full grasp of the operations of the G8 and G20 leaders, for their own sake.

In 1948, on the very eve of the French Revolution, Marx and Engels published: "Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells."

The metaphor could not be more vivid in its description of the predicament that now faces the political mascots of the imperialist countries which recently gathered at the G8 meeting in Italy. They assembled there evidently to contemplate, away from the irritating gaze of the co-opted leaders of the middle level regional economies of the underdeveloped countries which made up the rest of the 'G20' assembly. The underlying notion, which could not have been as apparent to Marx and Engels then as it was to Lenin and Nkrumah 50 to 100 years into maturation of capitalism into an international system of bourgeois economic enterprise, is the extent to which the compelling force of the profit motive could lead to the decimation of the loose morality and rules of 'fair competition', resulting in what the African press gullibly refers to as the 'global credit crunch'.

African journalists, as Franz Fanon would have found, are eager to own the dilemmas of their heroes in the West, feeding the exploited peoples of the underdeveloped countries the false impression that they play such a role in the ownership and control of the world's economic resources as to create a 'global financial crisis'. In reality, the large majority of the peoples of the globe turn out to be the victims of the reverberations of the credit crunch in America and Europe rather than an acquiescent participant in the creation of that monster.

The European and American captains of the financial institutions, having outmanoeuvred the old state mechanisms in their pursuit of profit, now demand of it public funds generated by the working classes in the form of taxes to retrieve the banks, insurance companies and motor vehicle industries from the abyss of self-induced financial collapse.

That, alas, without commensurate subjection of the financial institutions to sharing of ownership and control of their companies with their workers! That without community oversight of the workings of the multinationals to enforcement of good practices by the trade unions and workers' committees! As if in anticipation of 21st Century excesses of the managers of capital, Engels and Marx continue: "For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production...It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society.

The writers find that: "The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by enforced destruction of production forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented".

In 19th Century terms, Engels and Marx reflect on the destruction of agricultural products in the American south and Europe in order to protect their farmers against a drop in prices of agricultural goods which would be dumped on Africa and the other starving continents as 'food aid'. In the process, the African farmers would be dissuaded from farming because whatever prices they put on their products could not compete with 'free food'.

The African farmers would then be driven into the labour pool, ready for exploitation by Western multinationals that would arrive to exploit the mines and the forests, leaving behind only toxic waste, prostitutes, petty thieves and corrupt politicians and public officials who thrive on bribes and kickbacks.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank would be on hand to prescribe the development plans by which the poor economies of the underdeveloped countries would manage the digging of their diamonds and the slaughtering of their cows, leaving vast sections of the population unemployed and living in abject poverty.It is the continued remoulding of this section of the populace of the underdeveloped countries into a frustrated 'proletariat' that would lead to "direct attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

"At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition..."

More significantly, Marxs observation points out that throwing government regulations and billions of taxpayers dollars at the conduct of what the imperialists call the free market will not, in the long run, satiate the appetites of the ingenious captains of capital and schemers in the ilk of that wonderful capitalist and multi-billionaire, Bernie Madoff, who will forever be in pursuit of that driving motive of capitalism - profit.

As Africa searches for the redesign of the iniquitous economic and political relationship between itself and the Americans and Europeans, it would do no harm to step out of denial and childlike mimicry of the cliches of the Westerners - credit crunch and global financial crisis - and to reflect on the ageless proposals that Marx makes in Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto.

For a united, militant and mass struggle: May Day 2009 statement from the Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada












May Day Greetings to working people around the world, struggling for peace, jobs, economic and social justice, democracy, equality, sovereignty and socialism!

May Day Greetings to the workers in Greece, France, Ireland, the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, and other countries who have organized mass political strikes against the national and transnational corporations and their governments, which are responsible for global depression, mass unemployment, hunger and misery.

May Day Greetings to the people of Cuba as they celebrate 50 years of working class power in 2009, and to the people of Vietnam, who survived decades of continuous war to defeat French, Japanese and finally US imperialism, to achieve working class power and to build socialism. Holding their own against the power of US imperialism, their example is helping to create a better world, where people’s needs trump corporate greed. Today, despite US aggression and the economic blockade, Cuba has become the most influential state in Latin America, a beacon to those struggling against imperialism and neocolonialism, and a support to countries embarking on a socialist path.

May Day Greetings to all those struggling against imperialism, for national liberation and self-determination, including the heroic Palestinian people, and the people of South Africa, led by the alliance of the ANC, COSATU and the SACP in their struggle for a non-racialized and socialist future.

May Day Greetings to all those fighting against war and reaction, in particular the US-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, where Canada is also deeply involved, to those campaigning for the abolition of nuclear weapons and for collective security; and to all those struggling to save our planet from environmental catastrophe caused by imperialism’s predatory exploitation of nature.

Imperialism’s Offensive Against Labour


The economic recession, which is rapidly descending into global Depression, was caused by the insatiable greed of the corporations, and by their governments, which adopted neo-liberal policies of free trade, privatization, deregulation, corporate tax cuts, and attacks on labour and democratic rights. The capitalist meltdown is devastating industries and communities across Canada, such as auto and steel in Ontario, and forestry in Quebec and British Columbia.

Deregulation has freed the transnational corporations of restraints, enabling them to trample over national and international laws, risking the health and security of nations and peoples around the world, with the objective of increasing their super-sized profits.

In Canada, this agenda led to the listeria outbreak and the Walkerton tragedy, which caused the deaths of 30 people and permanent injury to hundreds more. In the name of “cutting red tape”, key parts of the health care system, post-secondary education, child care, social programs and transportation have been privatized. The neo-liberal drive has paved the way for TILMA, giving corporations the right to strike down municipal and provincial laws protecting public assets and programs built up by labour over generations.

The attack on civil, human and democratic rights has gained momentum since the so-called “anti-terrorism” legislation of 2001, in Canada and in other countries, enabled police to seize people and hold them indefinitely, without divulging charges or evidence.

The economic crisis is now being used to attack labour rights like a sledgehammer. Corporations and their governments demand trade unions open collective agreements and accept deep cuts to wages, benefits, and pensions, under threat of bankruptcy and the loss of all jobs, pensions and benefits. This union busting is happening in all the capitalist countries, carried out jointly by governments and corporations. The aim is to break the back of opposition to the massive redistribution of wealth from the pockets of workers to the bank accounts of the global corporate/capitalist elite.

Hammer or Anvil?


In Canada, the front line of the attack on labour is in the manufacturing sector. The union on the line this spring is the Canadian Auto Workers, traditionally the most militant private sector union and still the most resistant to concessions. The CAW is also still outside the Ontario Federation of Labour, and therefore more vulnerable. Corporations and governments are trying to turn unorganized, lower-paid workers against organized workers, falsely blaming the relatively high wages of unionized auto workers for the crisis. This campaign aims to pit worker against worker, and to blur or erase the class divide between workers and bosses.

While the union is weakened by these factors, and also by a tendency (since the Auto Pact was struck down in 2001 by the WTO) to accept responsibility for the corporate bottom line, the CAW has refused to make any further concessions despite intense pressure from the Harper Tories, the McGuinty Liberals, Obama and the Democrats, the Big Three auto makers, and the unorganized auto makers including Toyota, Honda, and other Asian and European auto makers with plants in Canada.

This is the cause that all of labour must rally to, with the understanding that an injury to one, is an injury to all. But this won’t be just an injury. If the corporations and their governments break the CAW, they set the pattern that federal Labour Minister Tony Clement wants, a pattern that will break the back of the trade union movement across Canada. This cannot be allowed to happen. Labour and its allies must meet the challenge by mobilizing workers across Canada to take mass independent labour political action to protect free collective bargaining, which is what the CAW’s struggle now represents.

The ferocity of the attack on auto workers and the CAW, and through them on all unions and all workers, has exposed capitalism’s authoritarian nature. The gloves are off and the right to free collective bargaining, the right to organize and strike, and virtually all labour rights are on the line. Right-wing, authoritarian governments like the Harper Tories are quite willing follow the example set by “Iron Heel” Bennett in the Dirty Thirties, when he attacked workers, jailed their leaders, passed anti-labour and antidemocratic laws. Like RB Bennett, Harper is prepared to do whatever it takes to save capitalism and corporate profits.

Labour has always been the main target of this right-wing, reactionary, corporate agenda. They know that labour is at the core of the resistance to right wing policies, and is at the core of the counteroffensive to push forward a people’s agenda. Labour’s militant action in France, Greece and in Latin America and other places, has frightened the right, and made them more determined to break the labour movement in North America before it too takes militant political action including general strikes to fightback.

Organize! Educate! Resist!


There is a rich history of working class struggle in Canada, including the Winnipeg General Strike, which took place 90 years ago in 1919. In October 1976, labour again took to the streets in a general strike against wage controls. Labour in Ontario organized rotating political strikes against the Harris government in 199697, which were on the verge of becoming province-wide before being cut down by right-wing leadership in the trade union movement. Since then, sectoral struggles across the country, especially in the public sector, have become more militant, and more inclusive of labour’s friends and allies. The call by the Confederation of National Trade Unions in Quebec for widespread protests on May 1 to fight for jobs and access to Employment Insurance benefits is an important step in the right direction.

There is no room for complacency today. Instead of summit meetings with governments and employers, the CLC must call together its affiliates and labour’s friends and allies to determine a course of militant, collective and workplace action. This will open up a mass struggle against the corporate offensive, to demand a People’s Agenda: free collective bargaining, a Canadian auto industry and manufacturing sector, good jobs and wages for all, secure pensions, strong and universal Medicare, public and post-secondary education, social programs, and child care, massive investment in affordable housing construction, progressive tax reform to put the load on the greedy not the needy, fair trade not free trade, serious action to cut greenhouse gas emissions and protect the environment, withdrawal from NAFTA, and a foreign policy of peace and disarmament, including the immediate withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan, reducing the arms budget by 50% and redirecting to civilian spending.

The NDP would be a stronger and more effective opposition in Parliament were it to wholeheartedly adopt these demands as its own, and support mass action, including strikes and occupations by workers and unions, and the public, under attack.

For our part, Communists in the labour movement will continue to fight for a strong, united and militant trade union movement and for independent labour political action in defence of workers jobs, rights and standards.

The Communist Party will continue to work to build a strong and broad-based People’s Coalition, including the labour and democratic movements, Aboriginal peoples, the womens’, seniors’, youth and students’ movements, and all those forces opposed to the demolition of free collective bargaining, jobs, pensions, and living standards, and the social gains of decades of struggle. A People’s Coalition which includes labour, NDPers, progressive Greens, Quebec Solidaire, the Communist Party, and others committed to a People’s Agenda, can build a powerful front of resistance, and campaign for a different future for working people in Canada.

Mass independent labour political action in Europe and elsewhere is building up a strong and united resistance. But it will take international labour unity and solidarity to move labour and its allies onto the counteroffensive to turn back the corporate assault. More than ever the trade union movement in Quebec and English-speaking Canada need to raise the banner of unity in the world trade union movement, advancing a common program of action between the International Trade Union Confederation and the World Federation of Trade Unions in defence of workers rights and interests, and against war and reaction.

Unity, solidarity and struggle! That’s the job on May Day 2009.

The “NAFTA Flu”: Critics Say Swine Flu Has Roots in Forcing Poor Countries to Accept Western Agribusiness


The “NAFTA Flu”: Critics Say Swine Flu Has Roots in Forcing Poor Countries to Accept Western Agribusiness
Swinefluweb







As the US reports its first known death from the global swine flu, the World Health Organization has raised its pandemic threat level. Several countries around the world have banned the import of US and Mexican pork products. We speak to professor and author Robert Wallace, who says the swine flu is partly the outcome of neoliberal policies that forced poorer countries to open their markets to poorly regulated Western agribusiness giants.


Guest:

Robert Wallace, Visiting professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Minnesota and author of the forthcoming book Farming Human Pathogens: Ecological Resilience and Evolutionary Process. He blogs at Farming Pathogens.

AMY GOODMAN: As fears of a possible worldwide pandemic of swine flu continue to grow, the World Health Organization raised its pandemic threat level Tuesday, and WHO chief Keiji Fukuda said a pandemic was a “very serious possibility” but still not inevitable.

Mexican health authorities confirmed seven deaths but put the suspected death toll from swine flu at 159 and said over 2,500 people have been sickened. New cases have appeared in cities across the United States and in Australia, Canada, Spain, Israel, Britain and New Zealand. Suspected cases are being investigated in countries across Europe, Asia and Latin America.

With sixty-five confirmed cases in the United States, forty-five of which are in New York, President Obama asked Congress for $1.5 billion in supplemental funding.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, meanwhile, is sending a team to Mexico to investigate claims that industrial pig farms were the source of the outbreak in humans. Several countries around the world have banned the import of US and Mexican pork products. The pork industry has raised concerns over the nomenclature of the influenza strain and is lobbying to call the virus by its scientific name, H1N1.

I’m joined now via Democracy Now! video stream from Minneapolis by Robert Wallace, who has written extensively about avian influenza. He is a visiting professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Minnesota. He’s author of the forthcoming book Farming Human Pathogens: Ecological Resilience and Evolutionary Process. He blogs at farmingpathogens.wordpress.com.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Robert Wallace. Start off by just explaining what is the swine flu.

ROBERT WALLACE: Well, the swine flu is a influenza. It’s influenza A H1N1. The “H” refers to hemagglutinin molecule. That’s a molecule on the surface of the influenza that allows the virus to key into its target cell. “N” refers to neuraminidase. That’s the molecule also on the surface of the influenza, but it allows the influenza, once it’s born, to key out of the cell that it’s been replicated in. And there are sixteen different types of H hemagglutinins and nine different types of neuraminidases. And so, they can recombine in different combinations. We have in this case H1N1.

That was the pathogen that caused the 1918 pandemic, which killed 50 to 100 million people around the world. Since that time, descendants of that pandemic strain have become less virulent and become seasonal influenza that we—some of us are infected with from one winter to the next.

This H1N1—excuse me—is entirely different, in the sense of that it does have H1, and it does have N1, but it also has genes from other organisms. So it’s not just a human pathogen. It also contains genes from pigs, genes from birds, as well as genes from—when I—influenza—genes from pig influenza, I should be very clear about that, and genes from bird influenza, as well as genes from human influenza.

And this H1N1 apparently arose in Veracruz and subsequently spread from there. It spread to states nearby, up to Mexico City, and was able to get on the international transportation network and make its way across the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Wallace, you’ve called it the “NAFTA flu.” Why?

ROBERT WALLACE: Well, swine flu—in some ways, the pork industry is kind of correct. “Swine flu” is a bit a misnomer, but not in the way they think. Because of the reasons I stated, it’s actually comprised of influenzas from—that have typically infected swine, typically infected birds and humans.

But the problem is, is that puts the onus on the swine as being the cause for why this kind of influenza has come about, and it’s just that is simply not the case. The swine are not in the driver’s seat. They are not in a position to organize themselves into what are now cities of pigs that stretch around the world.

We really have to go back to the livestock revolution. Before World War II, poultry and pigs were basically farmed in backyard operations across this country. So we’re talking about poultry flocks of the size of seventy chickens. After the World War II, all those independent farming operations were—many of them were basically put under one roof and increasingly put under the control of particular corporations—Holly Farms, Tyson, Perdue. And the geography of the poultry and pork change. So, while previously pork and poultry were grown across the country, it was now grown, or they’re now raised within only a few southeastern states here in the United States. After the livestock revolution, poultry and pigs were now being grown and raised in much larger populations, so we go from seventy poultry now up to populations of 30,000 at a time. So we have cities of pigs and poultry.

That model was subsequently spread around the world. So, starting in the 1970s, the livestock revolution was brought to East Asia. You have the CP Group, which is now the fourth—world’s fourth-largest poultry company, in Thailand. That company subsequently brought the livestock revolution into China once China opened up its doors in 1980. So we have cities of poultry and pork developing around the world.

And this phenomenon goes hand in hand with the very structural adjustment programs that the IMF and the World Bank helped institute during this time. So if you’re a poor country, you’re having financial difficulties, in order to get some money to bail you out, you had to go to the International Monetary Fund for a loan. And in return, the IMF would make demands on you to change your economy in such a way that would allow you—will force you to open up your economy to outside corporations, including agricultural companies. And, of course, that would have a detrimental effect on domestic agriculture. So, small companies within poor countries could not out-compete large agribusinesses from the North that are subsidized by the industrial governments. So they’re not able to compete with them, so there’s—they either must contract their labor and land to the companies, foreign companies that are coming into their country, or they basically retire out of the business and sell their land to the large companies that are coming in. So, in other words, the spread of the cities of pork and poultry go hand in hand with this structural adjustment program.

And, of course, NAFTA is our local version of that. The North American Free Trade Agreement was signed in 1993, instituted in 1994, and has had a subsequent effect on how poultry and pigs are raised in Mexico. So, from that time, the pattern I just described, the small farmers had to either bulk up, in terms of acquiring the farms around them, acquiring the pigs around them, or had to sell out to agribusinesses that were coming in. So the Smithfield subsidiary that is now being accused of being the possible plant of origin for this H1N1 is a subsidiary of an outside corporation.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you see, Robert Wallace, finally, about the significance of the World Health Organization saying that the global swine flu pandemic is a very serious possibility? And what needs to be done right now?

ROBERT WALLACE: Well, I mean, it is a serious possibility. I mean, there is no doubt that it can very well threaten into becoming a pandemic. It’s well on its way. In my mind, the train has left the station. The question now is whether or not it’s going to be dangerous to the point that it develops the virulence of the 1918 pandemic. That is still very much an open question.

One of the things we must keep in mind is that even if it is not currently killing a lot of people at this point—and we should be thankful that’s the case—it could still evolve a greater virulence over time. The 1918 pandemic was characterized by an outbreak in the spring and then subsequently followed by a much more deadly outbreak in the following fall. So we really have to keep an eye on how this thing evolves. And it’s very much a changing situation, as we can see from this past week, a changing situation from day to day.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Wallace, I want to thank you for being with us, joining us by Democracy Now! video stream from Minneapolis. His forthcoming book is called Farming Human Pathogens. We’ll link to his blog at democracynow.org.

The Declaration of Cumaná: Capitalism 'threatens life on the planet' By derrick


Published on rabble.ca (http://www.rabble.ca)

Created Apr 24 2009 - 4:58pm






We, the Heads of State and Government of Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela, member countries of ALBA, consider that the Draft Declaration of the 5th Summit of the Americas is insufficient and unacceptable for the following reasons:

- The Declaration does not provide answers to the Global Economic Crisis, even though this crisis constitutes the greatest challenge faced by humanity in the last decades and is the most serious threat of the current times to the welfare of our peoples.

- The Declaration unfairly excludes Cuba, without mentioning the consensus in the region condemning the blockade and isolation to which the people and the government of Cuba have incessantly been exposed in a criminal manner.

For this reason, we, the member countries of ALBA believe that there is no consensus for the adoption of this draft declaration because of the reasons above stated, and accordingly, we propose to hold a thorough debate on the following topics:

1. Capitalism is leading humanity and the planet to extinction. What we are experiencing is a global economic crisis of a systemic and structural nature, not another cyclic crisis. Those who think that with a taxpayer money injection and some regulatory measures this crisis will end are wrong. The financial system is in crisis because it trades bonds with six times the real value of the assets and services produced and rendered in the world, this is not a “system regulation failure”, but a integrating part of the capitalist system that speculates with all assets and values with a view to obtain the maximum profit possible. Until now, the economic crisis has generated over 100 million additional hungry persons and has slashed over 50 million jobs, and these figures show an upward trend.

2. Capitalism has caused the environmental crisis, by submitting the necessary conditions for life in the planet, to the predominance of market and profit. Each year we consume one third more of what the planet is able to regenerate. With this squandering binge of the capitalist system, we are going to need two planets Earth by the year 2030.

3. The global economic crisis, climate change, the food crisis and the energy crisis are the result of the decay of capitalism, which threatens to end life and the planet. To avert this outcome, it is necessary to develop and model an alternative to the capitalist system. A system based on:

- solidarity and complementarity, not competition;
- a system in harmony with our mother earth and not plundering of human resources;
- a system of cultural diversity and not cultural destruction and imposition of cultural values and lifestyles alien to the realities of our countries;
- a system of peace based on social justice and not on imperialist policies and wars;
- in summary, a system that recovers the human condition of our societies and peoples and does not reduce them to mere consumers or merchandise.

4. As a concrete expression of the new reality of the continent, we, Caribbean and Latin American countries, have commenced to build our own institutionalization, an institutionalization that is based on a common history dating back to our independence revolution and constitutes a concrete tool for deepening the social, economic and cultural transformation processes that will consolidate our full sovereignty.

ALBA-TCP, Petrocaribe or UNASUR, mentioning merely the most recently created, are solidarity-based mechanisms of unity created in the midst of such transformations with the obvious intention of boosting the efforts of our peoples to attain their own freedom. To face the serious effects of the global economic crisis, we, the ALBA-TCP countries, have adopted innovative and transforming measures that seek real alternatives to the inadequate international economic order, not to boost their failed institutions. Thus, we have implemented a Regional Clearance Unitary System, the SUCRE, which includes a Common Unit of Account, a Clearance Chamber and a Single Reserve System. Similarly, we have encouraged the constitution of grand-national companies to satisfy the essential needs of our peoples and establish fair and complementary trade mechanisms that leave behind the absurd logic of unbridled competition.

5. We question the G20 for having tripled the resources of the International Monetary Fund when the real need is to establish a new world economic order that includes the full transformation of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, entities that have contributed to this global economic crisis with their neoliberal policies.

6. The solutions to the global economic crisis and the definition of a new international financial scheme should be adopted with the participation of the 192 countries that will meet in the United Nations Conference on the International Financial Crisis to be held on June 1-3 to propose the creation of a new international economic order.

7. As for climate change, developed countries are in an environmental debt to the world because they are responsible for 70% of historical carbon emissions into the atmosphere since 1750. Developed countries should pay off their debt to humankind and the planet; they should provide significant resources to a fund so that developing countries can embark upon a growth model which does not repeat the serious impacts of the capitalist industrialization.

8. Solutions to the energy, food and climate change crises should be comprehensive and interdependent. We cannot solve a problem by creating new ones in fundamental areas for life. For instance, the widespread use of agricultural fuels has an adverse effect on food prices and the use of essential resources, such as water, land and forests.

9. We condemn the discrimination against migrants in any of its forms. Migration is a human right, not a crime. Therefore, we request the United States government an urgent reform of its migration policies in order to stop deportations and massive raids and allow for reunion of families. We further demand the removal of the wall that separates and divides us, instead of uniting us.

In this regard, we petition for the abrogation of the Law of Cuban Adjustment and removal of the discriminatory, selective Dry Feet, Wet Feet policy that has claimed human losses. Bankers who stole the money and resources from our countries are the true responsible, not migrant workers. Human rights should come first, particularly human rights of the underprivileged, downtrodden sectors in our society, that is, migrants without identity papers. Free movement of people and human rights for everybody, regardless of their migration status, are a must for integration. Brain drain is a way of plundering skilled human resources exercised by rich countries.

10. Basic education, health, water, energy and telecommunications services should be declared human rights and cannot be subject to private deal or marketed by the World Trade Organization. These services are and should be essentially public utilities of universal access.

11. We wish a world where all, big and small, countries have the same rights and where there is no empire. We advocate non-intervention. There is the need to strengthen, as the only legitimate means for discussion and assessment of bilateral and multilateral agendas in the hemisphere, the foundations for mutual respect between states and governments, based on the principle of non-interference of a state in the internal affairs of another state, and inviolability of sovereignty and self-determination of the peoples.

We request the new Government of the United States, the arrival of which has given rise to some expectations in the hemisphere and the world, to finish the longstanding and dire tradition of interventionism and aggression that has characterized the actions of the US governments throughout history, and particularly intensified during the Administration of President George W. Bush. By the same token, we request the new Government of the United States to abandon interventionist practices, such as cover-up operations, parallel diplomacy, media wars aimed at disturbing states and governments, and funding of destabilizing groups. Building on a world where varied economic, political, social and cultural approaches are acknowledged and respected is of the essence.

12. With regard to the U.S. blockade against Cuba and the exclusion of the latter from the Summit of the Americas, we, the member states of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America, reassert the Declaration adopted by all Latin American and Caribbean countries last December 16, 2008, on the need to end the economic, trade and financial blockade imposed by the Government of the United States of America on Cuba, including the implementation of the so-called Helms-Burton Act. The declaration sets forth in its fundamental paragraphs the following:

“CONSIDERING the resolutions approved by the United Nations General Assembly on the need to finish the economic, trade and financial blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba, and the statements on such blockade, which have been approved in numerous international meetings.

“WE AFFIRM that the application of unilateral, coercive measures affecting the wellbeing of peoples and hindering integration processes is unacceptable when defending free exchange and the transparent practice of international trade.

“WE STRONGLY REPEL the enforcement of laws and measures contrary to International Law, such as the Helms-Burton Act, and we urge the Government of the United States of America to finish such enforcement.

“WE REQUEST the Government of the United States of America to comply with the provisions set forth in 17 successive resolutions approved by the United Nations General Assembly and put an end to the economic, trade and financial blockade on Cuba.”

Additionally, we consider that the attempts at imposing the isolation of Cuba have failed, as nowadays Cuba forms an integral part of the Latin American and Caribbean region; it is a member of the Rio Group and other hemispheric organizations and mechanisms, which develops a policy of cooperation, in solidarity with the countries in the hemisphere; which promotes full integration of Latin American and Caribbean peoples. Therefore, there is no reason whatsoever to justify its exclusion from the mechanism of the Summit of the Americas.

13. Developed countries have spent at least USD 8 billion to rescue a collapsing financial structure. They are the same that fail to allocate the small sums of money to attain the Millennium Goals or 0.7% of the GDP for the Official Development Assistance. Never before the hypocrisy of the wording of rich countries had been so apparent. Cooperation should be established without conditions and fit in the agendas of recipient countries by making arrangements easier; providing access to the resources, and prioritizing social inclusion issues.

14. The legitimate struggle against drug trafficking and organized crime, and any other form of the so-called “new threats” must not be used as an excuse to undertake actions of interference and intervention against our countries.

15. We are firmly convinced that the change, where everybody repose hope, can come only from organization, mobilization and unity of our peoples.

As the Liberator wisely said:

Unity of our peoples is not a mere illusion of men, but an inexorable decree of destiny. — Simón Bolívar

Featured Story

Dejemos que la izquierda de Estados Unidos tenga cuidado! por Andrew Taylor 23.06.2021

La Administración Biden ha habilitado una nueva "Iniciativa contra el terrorismo doméstico" para defender "The Homeland"...