THERE is no alternative but to call things by their name. Anyone with minimal commonsense can observe without much effort how little realism remains in the current world.
When United States President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Michael Moore stated "Now please earn it!" That witty comment pleased a lot of people for its acuity, although the Norwegian committee’s decision was perceived by many as no more than demagogy and an exaltation of the apparently inoffensive politicking of the new president of the United States, an African American, a good speaker and an intelligent politician at the head of a powerful empire enveloped in profound economic crisis.
The Copenhagen world meeting was about to take place and Obama raised hopes of a binding agreement in which the United States would join a world consensus in order to avoid the ecological disaster that is threatening the human species. What occurred there was disappointing; international world public opinion had been the victim of a painful deception.
In the recent People’s World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which took place in Bolivia, responses full of wisdom were put forward by the ancient indigenous nationalities, invaded and virtually destroyed by European conquistadores who, in their search for gold and easy riches, imposed over the centuries their egotistic cultures, incompatible with humanity’s most sacred interests.
Two news items that arrived yesterday express the philosophy of the empire in its attempt to make us believe in its "democratic", "pacific," "altruistic" and "honest" nature. Suffice it to read the text of those agency cables from the capital of the United States.
WASHINGTON , April 23, 2010—"The Obama administration is considering deploying a new group of intercontinental ballistic weapons that could deliver large conventional warheads, non-nuclear but capable of reaching targets anywhere in the world in approximately one hour and with a extremely powerful explosive capacity.
"While the new super-bomb, mounted on Minuteman missiles, will not have nuclear warheads, its destructive capacity will be equivalent, as confirmed by the fact that its deployment is anticipated in the recently signed START 2 agreement with Russia.
"The Moscow authorities demanded and succeeded in having inserted in the agreement, a provision demanding the United States decommission one nuclear missile for every missile it deploys.
"According to reports in The New York Times and on CBS News, the new weapon, baptized PGS (Prompt Global Strike), could carry out tasks like killing terrorist Osama bin Laden in a cave, destroying a North Korean missile as it is being transported to the launch pad, or demolishing an Iranian nuclear site - all without using nuclear bombs.
"The advantage of having a non-nuclear weapon with the same localized impact effects of a nuclear bomb is considered interesting by the Obama government.
"The project was initially proposed by Obama’s predecessor, Republican George W. Bush, but was blocked by Moscow’s protests. Bearing in mind that the Minuteman also transport nuclear warheads, the Moscow authorities said, it would be impossible to establish that the deployment of a PGS was not the beginning of a nuclear attack.
"But Obama’s government considers that it can give Russia or China the necessary guarantees to avoid misunderstandings. The launch facilities of the new weapon will be mounted in sites at a distance from nuclear warhead deposits and will be open to periodic inspection by Moscow or Beijing experts.
"The Prompt Global Strike warhead would be launched on Minuteman missiles armed with 1,000-lb. conventional warheads, designed to strike targets with incredible accuracy.
"Responsibility for the PGS project – which is estimated to cost $250 million just in the first year of experimentation – has been handed to General Kevin Chilton, chief of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Chilton explained that the PGS will fill a gap in the Pentagon’s current range of options.
"‘Today, we can present some conventional options to the president to strike a target anywhere on the globe, but within a time span of at least four hours,’ said the general. ‘To act on a particular target faster than that, the only thing we have is a nuclear response.’"
"In the future, with the new missile, the United States could act rapidly and with conventional resources, both against a terrorist group or an enemy country, in a much shorter time period and without arousing international anger at the use of nuclear weapons.
"It is anticipated that the first tests will begin in 2014, and that by 2017 it would be available in the U.S. arsenal. Obama will no longer be in power, but the super-missile could be the non-nuclear legacy of this president, who has already won the Nobel Peace Prize."
"WASHINGTON, April 22, 2010—An unmanned Air Force space plane was launched this Thursday from Florida, in the midst of a veil of secrecy over its military mission.
"The rocket carrying the reusable X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle lifted off at 7:52 p.m. EDT (2352 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, according to a video distributed by the army.’
"‘The launch is imminent,’ Air Force Major Angie Blair told AFP.
"Resembling a small space shuttle, the aircraft is 8.9 meters in length and 4.5 in wingspan.
"The manufacture of the reusable space shuttle has taken years and the army has only offered vague explanations as to its objective or role in the military arsenal.
"The vehicle is designed to ‘provide the environment of a ‘laboratory in space’ to test new technologies and components before these technologies are assigned to satellite programs in operation,’ stated the Air Force in a recent communiqué.
"Officials have stated that the X-37B will land at the Air Force Vandenberg Base in California, but they did not say how long the inaugural mission will last. ‘
"‘To be honest, we don’t know when it’s going to come back,’ Gary Payton, second assistant secretary of Air Force space programs, told reporters this week.
"Payton stated that the shuttle could remain in space for up to nine months.
"The aircraft, manufactured by Boeing, began as a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) project in 1999 and was then transferred to the Air Force, which plans to launch a second X-37B in 2011."
Is anything more needed?
Today they have found themselves with a colossal obstacle: the now uncontainable climate change. The inevitable temperature increase of more than two degrees centigrade is being mentioned. Its consequences will be catastrophic. In just 40 years the world population will increase by two million, thus reaching a total of nine billion people; in that brief period: docks, hotels, seaside resorts, communications, industries and installations in the vicinity of ports will be submerged in less time than is required for the enjoyment of half of the existence of the generation of one developed and rich country, which is currently refusing to make the most minimum sacrifice to preserve the survival of the human species. Agricultural land and potable water will be considerably reduced. The seas will become polluted; many marine species will become impossible to consume and others will disappear. This is not affirmed by logic but by scientific investigations.
Via natural genetics and the transfer of varieties of species from one continent to another, human beings succeeded in increasing production per hectare of food and other products useful to humans which, for some time, alleviated the scarcity of foodstuffs like corn, potato, wheat, fibers and other necessary produce. Later, genetic manipulation and the use of chemical fertilizers similarly contributed to the solution of vital needs, but they are now reaching the limit of their possibilities for producing healthy food appropriate for consumption. On the other hand, in barely two centuries, hydrocarbon resources that nature took 400 million years to form are being exhausted. In the same way, vital non-renewable mineral resources that the world economy requires are being exhausted. At the same time, science created the capacity of self-destroying the planet several times in a matter of hours. The greatest contradiction in our era is, precisely, the capacity of the species to destroy itself and its incapacity to govern itself.
Human beings have succeeded in raising their possibilities of life to limits that exceed their own survival capacity. In that battle raw materials in their reach are being consumed at an accelerated rate. Science made it possible to convert matter into energy, as occurred with nuclear reaction, at the cost of enormous investments, but the viability of converting energy into matter is not even on the horizon. The infinite cost of investment in pertinent investigations is demonstrating the impossibility of achieving in a few dozen years what the universe took tens of billions of years to create. Is it necessary for the child prodigy Barack Obama to explain that to us? Science has grown extraordinarily, but ignorance and poverty are also growing. Can anyone demonstrate the contrary?
Translated by Granma International
April 30, 2010
Capitalism - we can't afford it, Rob Griffiths, Friday 30 April 2010
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/layout/set/print/content/view/full/89832
International Workers Day will be celebrated globally today. But the nature of the celebrations will illustrate the very different political conditions prevailing in each country.
In Greece, the militant movement against the socialist government's austerity programme, dictated by the European Union Commission and Central Bank, will fly the red flag in defence of public services, jobs and wages.
The Greek Communist Party along with its trade union front PAME and the Young Communists provide the most consistent, militant and imaginative opposition to the cuts - whatever the pretensions of ultra-left adventurists and opportunists.
Spain and Portugal will also see colourful, working-class May Day marches and rallies led by communists and other forces on the left. They know that if the bankers and speculators succeed in smashing public services, working-class living standards and trade union resistance in Greece they will be next in the firing line.
In Italy, the fractured left will still be able to mobilise workers on a far bigger scale than in Britain and many other countries.
But nowhere else in Europe can teach us more about the perils of social democracy and communist liquidationism than that country, in which the most powerful communist party in the western world capitulated to parliamentarianism, reformism and bourgeois respectability.
It changed its name to the Party of the Democratic Left and split the communist movement shortly before the Christian Democrats dissolved in a sewer of corruption and their leader sat in the dock alongside anti-communist and fanatically pro-EU "socialist" prime minister Bettino Craxi.
The latter fled to Tunisia to escape imprisonment. But the divided left failed to fill the political vacuum and the result was the rise of media monopolist Berlusconi and his neo-fascist allies.
The French Communist Party will use its deep roots in the trade union movement and local communities to lead many May Day events. Its activists will be buoyed up by good results in the recent regional elections, where the Union of the Left made substantial advances.
But some of the biggest, most joyous celebrations of International Workers Day will be taking place in Latin America.
Scores of thousands will fill the Plaza de la Revolucion in Havana in a riot of colour, chanting their defiance of the US trade blockade and demanding freedom for the Miami Five.
Workers around the world will share those sentiments.
But we must keep up the pressure on our own governments and US President Obama to close Guantanamo Bay concentration camp and respect Cuba's national sovereignty instead of constantly trying to subvert it.
In Venezuela the revolutionary process continues to unfold as socialists and communists look beyond May Day in their efforts to mobilise the masses of people against the wealthy oligarchy and its US backers.
The workers and people of China have much to celebrate.
The international capitalist crisis has barely dented that country's phenomenal growth, based as it is on large-scale public ownership and central planning, as well as the utilisation of foreign capital and technology.
As the World Development Report of 2008 confirmed, China's reduction of poverty has been "massive and unprecedented" in human history.
Between 1981 and 2001 around 500 million people - almost half the population - were pulled out of poverty.
International Workers Day is likely to be a stormier affair in Russia. Communist protesters have clashed with security forces recently in demonstrations over prices and incomes.
The struggle for independent and militant trade unionism is taking place in very difficult conditions there against the manoeuvring of the Putin regime and its client monopoly capitalists.
Russian workers and their unions need our support and solidarity, but so too do the communists of Latvia and Lithuania - where their parties are banned - and the socialists and Communists of Poland and Hungary, who are banned by law from displaying the red star or the hammer and sickle.
This should remind us of how much the world has changed in just one generation.
In 1985, who would have predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse, capitalism would be restored and fascists in the Baltic States would be publicly honouring the anti-Soviet scum who fought alongside the nazi Waffen SS during the second world war?
Or that Nelson Mandela would be released from prison to be elected as president as part of a revolutionary alliance between the African National Congress, the Confederation of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party?
The SACP has confounded those who hoped to turn the ANC into a neoliberal party led by a new black bourgeoisie with the communists and trade unions marginalised. Instead, the ANC has been renewed and its communist component strengthened.
The government of Jacob Zuma now has to show the growing number of unemployed and disaffected youth that its new economic and social strategy will fight poverty, thereby undermining the appeal of black nationalist demagogues.
South Africa has abolished its nuclear weapons, but the rest of the world has yet to receive the "peace dividend" promised by US President Bush at the end of the cold war.
The need to rid the world of weapons of mass murder, to use precious resources to combat poverty and global warming instead, will be a theme of May Day throughout the world today.
But two others should be added.
First, the state terrorism inflicted on the Palestinian people - particularly those in Gaza - is a stain on Israel and humanity that can be tolerated no longer.
National and international sanctions must be imposed on Israel until real progress is made towards the two-state settlement demanded by countless United Nations resolutions. Free Marwan Barghouti and all the other political prisoners in Israeli jails!
Secondly, we have to renew our determination to defend jobs, wages, pensions, benefits and public services against the ruling class offensive now underway in Britain and across western Europe.
After the biggest bail-out of an economic system in history, the slogan for International Workers Day in 2010 could be: "Capitalism - we can't afford it!"
International Workers Day will be celebrated globally today. But the nature of the celebrations will illustrate the very different political conditions prevailing in each country.
In Greece, the militant movement against the socialist government's austerity programme, dictated by the European Union Commission and Central Bank, will fly the red flag in defence of public services, jobs and wages.
The Greek Communist Party along with its trade union front PAME and the Young Communists provide the most consistent, militant and imaginative opposition to the cuts - whatever the pretensions of ultra-left adventurists and opportunists.
Spain and Portugal will also see colourful, working-class May Day marches and rallies led by communists and other forces on the left. They know that if the bankers and speculators succeed in smashing public services, working-class living standards and trade union resistance in Greece they will be next in the firing line.
In Italy, the fractured left will still be able to mobilise workers on a far bigger scale than in Britain and many other countries.
But nowhere else in Europe can teach us more about the perils of social democracy and communist liquidationism than that country, in which the most powerful communist party in the western world capitulated to parliamentarianism, reformism and bourgeois respectability.
It changed its name to the Party of the Democratic Left and split the communist movement shortly before the Christian Democrats dissolved in a sewer of corruption and their leader sat in the dock alongside anti-communist and fanatically pro-EU "socialist" prime minister Bettino Craxi.
The latter fled to Tunisia to escape imprisonment. But the divided left failed to fill the political vacuum and the result was the rise of media monopolist Berlusconi and his neo-fascist allies.
The French Communist Party will use its deep roots in the trade union movement and local communities to lead many May Day events. Its activists will be buoyed up by good results in the recent regional elections, where the Union of the Left made substantial advances.
But some of the biggest, most joyous celebrations of International Workers Day will be taking place in Latin America.
Scores of thousands will fill the Plaza de la Revolucion in Havana in a riot of colour, chanting their defiance of the US trade blockade and demanding freedom for the Miami Five.
Workers around the world will share those sentiments.
But we must keep up the pressure on our own governments and US President Obama to close Guantanamo Bay concentration camp and respect Cuba's national sovereignty instead of constantly trying to subvert it.
In Venezuela the revolutionary process continues to unfold as socialists and communists look beyond May Day in their efforts to mobilise the masses of people against the wealthy oligarchy and its US backers.
The workers and people of China have much to celebrate.
The international capitalist crisis has barely dented that country's phenomenal growth, based as it is on large-scale public ownership and central planning, as well as the utilisation of foreign capital and technology.
As the World Development Report of 2008 confirmed, China's reduction of poverty has been "massive and unprecedented" in human history.
Between 1981 and 2001 around 500 million people - almost half the population - were pulled out of poverty.
International Workers Day is likely to be a stormier affair in Russia. Communist protesters have clashed with security forces recently in demonstrations over prices and incomes.
The struggle for independent and militant trade unionism is taking place in very difficult conditions there against the manoeuvring of the Putin regime and its client monopoly capitalists.
Russian workers and their unions need our support and solidarity, but so too do the communists of Latvia and Lithuania - where their parties are banned - and the socialists and Communists of Poland and Hungary, who are banned by law from displaying the red star or the hammer and sickle.
This should remind us of how much the world has changed in just one generation.
In 1985, who would have predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse, capitalism would be restored and fascists in the Baltic States would be publicly honouring the anti-Soviet scum who fought alongside the nazi Waffen SS during the second world war?
Or that Nelson Mandela would be released from prison to be elected as president as part of a revolutionary alliance between the African National Congress, the Confederation of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party?
The SACP has confounded those who hoped to turn the ANC into a neoliberal party led by a new black bourgeoisie with the communists and trade unions marginalised. Instead, the ANC has been renewed and its communist component strengthened.
The government of Jacob Zuma now has to show the growing number of unemployed and disaffected youth that its new economic and social strategy will fight poverty, thereby undermining the appeal of black nationalist demagogues.
South Africa has abolished its nuclear weapons, but the rest of the world has yet to receive the "peace dividend" promised by US President Bush at the end of the cold war.
The need to rid the world of weapons of mass murder, to use precious resources to combat poverty and global warming instead, will be a theme of May Day throughout the world today.
But two others should be added.
First, the state terrorism inflicted on the Palestinian people - particularly those in Gaza - is a stain on Israel and humanity that can be tolerated no longer.
National and international sanctions must be imposed on Israel until real progress is made towards the two-state settlement demanded by countless United Nations resolutions. Free Marwan Barghouti and all the other political prisoners in Israeli jails!
Secondly, we have to renew our determination to defend jobs, wages, pensions, benefits and public services against the ruling class offensive now underway in Britain and across western Europe.
After the biggest bail-out of an economic system in history, the slogan for International Workers Day in 2010 could be: "Capitalism - we can't afford it!"
April 29, 2010
SA Communist Party (SACP): 'South Africa needs new path'
Wed, 28 Apr 2010
http://business.iafrica.com/news/2381770.htm
Capitalism remains a challenge in South Africa and the needs of humanity are yet to be met, the SA Communist Party (SACP) said on Monday evening, ahead of Tuesday's Freedom Day celebrations.
"Millions of our people remain homeless and have little to celebrate with us," said spokesman Malesela Maleka.
"The challenges of capitalism and its inherent inability to meet the needs of humanity has continued to present us with a huge challenge."
He said although significant progress had been made, it was not enough.
The education sector, he said, continued to reproduce significant racial and class discrimination, while the health system showed major weakness with the slow implementation of the National Health Insurance.
He said these were "clear signs" and something needed to be done to give democracy meaning.
"We need to place our society onto a different developmental path, one in which meeting social needs is the priority and not profit-driven growth," said Maleka.
"We have built a constitutional order of which we are rightfully proud, but a great majority of South Africans are unable to fully enjoy the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights."
He said this was not a moment to despair, but a moment for national reflection on the challenge of nation building.
"It is a moment to deepen our resolve to build working class power and people's fronts in the areas of education, health, in building vibrant and strong participatory governance at a local level, in transforming the workplace and fostering a decent jobs agenda, building sustainable livelihoods and fighting crime and corruption."
He said Freedom Day marked an important day in the struggle calender because of a democratic breakthrough.
However, the election did not mark an end to the national democratic and class struggle, but a struggle on a different terrain, said Maleka.
The party urged South Africans to remember struggle heroes like Chris Hani, Yusuf Dadoo, Harry Gwala, Oliver Tambo and Moses Mabhida.
http://business.iafrica.com/news/2381770.htm
Capitalism remains a challenge in South Africa and the needs of humanity are yet to be met, the SA Communist Party (SACP) said on Monday evening, ahead of Tuesday's Freedom Day celebrations.
"Millions of our people remain homeless and have little to celebrate with us," said spokesman Malesela Maleka.
"The challenges of capitalism and its inherent inability to meet the needs of humanity has continued to present us with a huge challenge."
He said although significant progress had been made, it was not enough.
The education sector, he said, continued to reproduce significant racial and class discrimination, while the health system showed major weakness with the slow implementation of the National Health Insurance.
He said these were "clear signs" and something needed to be done to give democracy meaning.
"We need to place our society onto a different developmental path, one in which meeting social needs is the priority and not profit-driven growth," said Maleka.
"We have built a constitutional order of which we are rightfully proud, but a great majority of South Africans are unable to fully enjoy the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights."
He said this was not a moment to despair, but a moment for national reflection on the challenge of nation building.
"It is a moment to deepen our resolve to build working class power and people's fronts in the areas of education, health, in building vibrant and strong participatory governance at a local level, in transforming the workplace and fostering a decent jobs agenda, building sustainable livelihoods and fighting crime and corruption."
He said Freedom Day marked an important day in the struggle calender because of a democratic breakthrough.
However, the election did not mark an end to the national democratic and class struggle, but a struggle on a different terrain, said Maleka.
The party urged South Africans to remember struggle heroes like Chris Hani, Yusuf Dadoo, Harry Gwala, Oliver Tambo and Moses Mabhida.
April 28, 2010
Lavrov: PACE should not ignore Yanukovych’s opinion on Holodomor, Ukraine-Interfax , April 28, 2010
Lavrov: PACE should not ignore Yanukovych’s opinion on Holodomor,
Interfax-Ukraine, April 28, 2010
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/65316/print/
Strasbourg, April 28 (Interfax) - The statement by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on Holodomor in Ukraine is evidence of an objective approach to history and PACE should not help but heed it, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.
"I believe that it is simply a return to an absolutely normal, reasonable, objective approach to history. I am convinced that PACE will be unable to ignore such an objective fact," he told the press in Strasbourg on Wednesday responding to a question from Interfax.
"The statement by the Ukrainian leader should not be regarded as sensation," Lavrov said. "It would be stretching too much to regard this as a sensation considering the abnormal approach of the previous Ukrainian leader who interpreted the famine of the mid-1930s solely as the genocide of the Ukrainian people though that was not true and could not be," he added.
Lavrov said that the horrible famine was connected with the decisions of the then Soviet leadership. "And Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Belarusians and many other peoples that lived in the territory of the Soviet Union" suffered from hunger, he said.
"This is an objective historical fact," he said.
Lavrov voiced hope that there will no longer be "any attempts to politicize the subject of the famine instead of grieving over the victims of that period belonging to different peoples."
Speaking at PACE on Tuesday, Yanukovych said that he finds it unfair to call the Holodomor of the 1930s genocide of the Ukrainian people. It was a common tragedy of for people that lived in the indivisible Soviet Union, he said.
"Marxist Fundamentalism" By Zoltan Zigedy, April 16-30 2010 issue of People's Voice, (CPC)
(The following article is , Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)
As much as things have changed since Karl Marx's time, his fundamental insights about the nexus of labour, exploitation, and profit remain the best guide to understanding capitalism and capitalist crisis. Theorists have come and gone, spinning elaborate revisions or alternatives based upon concepts of under consumption, over production, imbalance, disequilibrium, etc.
Many have found in changing features of capitalism - like monopolization, automation, vertical integration, de-centralization, chip and robot innovation, globalization, financialization, etc. - the altering of the logic of capitalist production and its inclination to dysfunction. Still others have seen changes in ownership and management relations as changing the dynamics of capitalist accumulation. While all of these reflect truths and useful perspectives, they miss or obscure the engine that drives all capitalist processes: the pursuit of profits through the exploitation of labour by the capitalist enterprise.
For Marx, the expression of this engine and its propensity to misfire lies in the struggle to maintain profits against its intrinsic tendency to decline. Call me a fundamentalist, but I believe this was, and remains, the best, if not only, road to understanding capitalist crisis, including the current deep downturn.
Exploitation, Profits, and Wages
I have written often and emphatically of the rise in the US rate of exploitation in the aftermath of the severe economic decline. I have pointed to the explosion of labour productivity driven by mass unemployment, weak organized resistance, and government complicity. The official numbers are staggering and beyond any recent precedent. And the reports of this radical restructuring of the relations between labour and capital continue to mount...
The Commerce Department reports that fourth quarter 2009 pretax corporate profits rose nearly 30% over the prior year and 8% over the prior quarter (the third quarter increase was 10.8% over the second quarter). The US economy has not seen such an annual increase in pretax corporate profits since 1984 during the Reagan administration. Clearly labour productivity and the rate of profit are moving in lockstep. This is further evidence that profits are growing from an intensification of the labour process - on the backs of workers.
Should further data be necessary, the Commerce Department also reports that personal income dropped in 42 of 50 states last year at a cumulative rate of 1.7%, unadjusted for inflation. It must be noted that this report lumps together wages, dividends, rent, retirement income, and government benefits, underestimating the impact upon the working class.
Of course not all profits were generated directly through exploitation at the point of production. Half of the explosion of profits was generated through the financial sector. With the financial sector, workers were, however, exploited indirectly through the massive bailout, the assumption of cancerous assets, and the extension of essentially risk and interest free loans. Some estimate this burden - to be collected on future taxes and the slashing of common, public assets and social programs - to total $14 trillion. Some estimate even more.
I would concede that US organized labour is showing some gumption in the electoral arena, prodding the Administration and Democrats to show a bit of backbone on behalf of programs benefiting working people. Nonetheless, the legacy of complicity in the destruction of class-struggle unionism in the early stages of the Cold War saddles current labour leaders with a timid, class collaborationist approach that fails to mount even a modest resistance to this brutal class offensive.
Growth, the Safety Net, and the Class Struggle
Thanks to stronger, more militant labour movements, oppositional formations, and genuine left political parties, there has been much resistance in the European Union to any US-style surrender to a solely capitalist recovery constructed on the backs and from the pockets of working people. In a rare departure from past practices of reserving ideological rants to the back pages, The Wall Street Journal offered a front-page lecture to the EU: "Europe's Choice: Growth or Safety Net" (3-25-10).
The WSJ writers take up the cause of high unemployment among young people in Europe, but oddly fail to see any connection with the failings of capitalism. Instead they fault pensions, benefits, job protection, and the other elements of Europe's historic social democratic safety net. Odd, indeed. They note that "...many economists say: chip away at the cherished `social model.' That means limiting pensions and benefits to those who really need them, ensuring the able-bodied are working rather than living off the state, and eliminating business and labour laws that deter entrepreneurship and job creation."
This prescription might have counted as an enticement for the US-model when the US economy was perking along, but it invites contempt in the face of massive US unemployment, under funded and non-existent pensions and benefits, criminally inadequate health care, home foreclosures, increased hunger, etc. It is no wonder that the writers comment "Even in the best of times, Europeans are loath to move toward a US-style model." And well they should be.
The trenches of this battle for the future of the European working class are in the traditionally poorer countries - Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland - that borrowed extensively to maintain an economic pace and standard of living on a par with their richer neighbours: keeping up with the Joneses on a national scale. Now the stronger EU members want to punish them for their debt - debt on a scale not far from that of the US or UK. The more powerful states are insisting on budget cuts that will drastically slash incomes, pensions, and benefits while also stifling any potential for growth. This is simply imposing the US model by fiat.
In Greece, in particular, the working classes are vigorously and determinedly resisting these draconian changes, led by a fighting labour movement and the Greek Communists. They deserve our solidarity and serve as an example to our own labour movement.
Debt and the Class Struggle
Debt is a two-headed monster. At the depth of the crisis, the debt-burden incurred by irresponsible financial institutions was readily and undemocratically shifted from the private to the public sector through massive bailouts. Their debt problem is now our problem. Zhu Min, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China put it well: "The governments tried to put every burden from the financial sector onto their own children."
But now with those burdens on the shoulders of working people, these same governments alarmingly call for debt reduction. Not surprisingly, they closely follow the EU strategy by demanding reductions in social programs. In the case of the US, the debt diet prescribes trimming the "waste" from social programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Of course there is no talk of reducing the immensely costly military budget or raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. The debt issue is calculated to be another weapon in the assault on the living standards of working people.
Lessons must be drawn from this intense offensive against workers. In the US, the Democratic Administration and its Congressional troops have done little or nothing to side with working people in the class struggle. Rather, they have urged measures that have intensified exploitation, heaped debt on the working class, and threatened its safety net. The leaders of the labour movement have achieved little by lobbying, cajoling, and coddling; they have failed to take the struggle to the workplace and the streets.
The capitalist crisis is far from over. The financial monstrosities that sparked the crisis are once again fat, unregulated, and in hot pursuit of new risky ventures that will accelerate their rate of profit. There is every reason to believe that they will run aground again. We had an opportunity to stop this mad cycle with nationalization, but our economic leaders chose to reward the banks and encourage them to press on with their madness. Non-financial firms are swelling with profit from intensified exploitation, but lacking markets or consumption growth that would justify investment, expansion, or further employment, a situation that promises further pressure on their rate of profit. Of course they can further put the screws to workers, but hopefully we will take a lesson from our Greek comrades and join them in the streets.
(Zoltan Zigedy's columns can be read at http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/)
As much as things have changed since Karl Marx's time, his fundamental insights about the nexus of labour, exploitation, and profit remain the best guide to understanding capitalism and capitalist crisis. Theorists have come and gone, spinning elaborate revisions or alternatives based upon concepts of under consumption, over production, imbalance, disequilibrium, etc.
Many have found in changing features of capitalism - like monopolization, automation, vertical integration, de-centralization, chip and robot innovation, globalization, financialization, etc. - the altering of the logic of capitalist production and its inclination to dysfunction. Still others have seen changes in ownership and management relations as changing the dynamics of capitalist accumulation. While all of these reflect truths and useful perspectives, they miss or obscure the engine that drives all capitalist processes: the pursuit of profits through the exploitation of labour by the capitalist enterprise.
For Marx, the expression of this engine and its propensity to misfire lies in the struggle to maintain profits against its intrinsic tendency to decline. Call me a fundamentalist, but I believe this was, and remains, the best, if not only, road to understanding capitalist crisis, including the current deep downturn.
Exploitation, Profits, and Wages
I have written often and emphatically of the rise in the US rate of exploitation in the aftermath of the severe economic decline. I have pointed to the explosion of labour productivity driven by mass unemployment, weak organized resistance, and government complicity. The official numbers are staggering and beyond any recent precedent. And the reports of this radical restructuring of the relations between labour and capital continue to mount...
The Commerce Department reports that fourth quarter 2009 pretax corporate profits rose nearly 30% over the prior year and 8% over the prior quarter (the third quarter increase was 10.8% over the second quarter). The US economy has not seen such an annual increase in pretax corporate profits since 1984 during the Reagan administration. Clearly labour productivity and the rate of profit are moving in lockstep. This is further evidence that profits are growing from an intensification of the labour process - on the backs of workers.
Should further data be necessary, the Commerce Department also reports that personal income dropped in 42 of 50 states last year at a cumulative rate of 1.7%, unadjusted for inflation. It must be noted that this report lumps together wages, dividends, rent, retirement income, and government benefits, underestimating the impact upon the working class.
Of course not all profits were generated directly through exploitation at the point of production. Half of the explosion of profits was generated through the financial sector. With the financial sector, workers were, however, exploited indirectly through the massive bailout, the assumption of cancerous assets, and the extension of essentially risk and interest free loans. Some estimate this burden - to be collected on future taxes and the slashing of common, public assets and social programs - to total $14 trillion. Some estimate even more.
I would concede that US organized labour is showing some gumption in the electoral arena, prodding the Administration and Democrats to show a bit of backbone on behalf of programs benefiting working people. Nonetheless, the legacy of complicity in the destruction of class-struggle unionism in the early stages of the Cold War saddles current labour leaders with a timid, class collaborationist approach that fails to mount even a modest resistance to this brutal class offensive.
Growth, the Safety Net, and the Class Struggle
Thanks to stronger, more militant labour movements, oppositional formations, and genuine left political parties, there has been much resistance in the European Union to any US-style surrender to a solely capitalist recovery constructed on the backs and from the pockets of working people. In a rare departure from past practices of reserving ideological rants to the back pages, The Wall Street Journal offered a front-page lecture to the EU: "Europe's Choice: Growth or Safety Net" (3-25-10).
The WSJ writers take up the cause of high unemployment among young people in Europe, but oddly fail to see any connection with the failings of capitalism. Instead they fault pensions, benefits, job protection, and the other elements of Europe's historic social democratic safety net. Odd, indeed. They note that "...many economists say: chip away at the cherished `social model.' That means limiting pensions and benefits to those who really need them, ensuring the able-bodied are working rather than living off the state, and eliminating business and labour laws that deter entrepreneurship and job creation."
This prescription might have counted as an enticement for the US-model when the US economy was perking along, but it invites contempt in the face of massive US unemployment, under funded and non-existent pensions and benefits, criminally inadequate health care, home foreclosures, increased hunger, etc. It is no wonder that the writers comment "Even in the best of times, Europeans are loath to move toward a US-style model." And well they should be.
The trenches of this battle for the future of the European working class are in the traditionally poorer countries - Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland - that borrowed extensively to maintain an economic pace and standard of living on a par with their richer neighbours: keeping up with the Joneses on a national scale. Now the stronger EU members want to punish them for their debt - debt on a scale not far from that of the US or UK. The more powerful states are insisting on budget cuts that will drastically slash incomes, pensions, and benefits while also stifling any potential for growth. This is simply imposing the US model by fiat.
In Greece, in particular, the working classes are vigorously and determinedly resisting these draconian changes, led by a fighting labour movement and the Greek Communists. They deserve our solidarity and serve as an example to our own labour movement.
Debt and the Class Struggle
Debt is a two-headed monster. At the depth of the crisis, the debt-burden incurred by irresponsible financial institutions was readily and undemocratically shifted from the private to the public sector through massive bailouts. Their debt problem is now our problem. Zhu Min, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China put it well: "The governments tried to put every burden from the financial sector onto their own children."
But now with those burdens on the shoulders of working people, these same governments alarmingly call for debt reduction. Not surprisingly, they closely follow the EU strategy by demanding reductions in social programs. In the case of the US, the debt diet prescribes trimming the "waste" from social programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Of course there is no talk of reducing the immensely costly military budget or raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. The debt issue is calculated to be another weapon in the assault on the living standards of working people.
Lessons must be drawn from this intense offensive against workers. In the US, the Democratic Administration and its Congressional troops have done little or nothing to side with working people in the class struggle. Rather, they have urged measures that have intensified exploitation, heaped debt on the working class, and threatened its safety net. The leaders of the labour movement have achieved little by lobbying, cajoling, and coddling; they have failed to take the struggle to the workplace and the streets.
The capitalist crisis is far from over. The financial monstrosities that sparked the crisis are once again fat, unregulated, and in hot pursuit of new risky ventures that will accelerate their rate of profit. There is every reason to believe that they will run aground again. We had an opportunity to stop this mad cycle with nationalization, but our economic leaders chose to reward the banks and encourage them to press on with their madness. Non-financial firms are swelling with profit from intensified exploitation, but lacking markets or consumption growth that would justify investment, expansion, or further employment, a situation that promises further pressure on their rate of profit. Of course they can further put the screws to workers, but hopefully we will take a lesson from our Greek comrades and join them in the streets.
(Zoltan Zigedy's columns can be read at http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/)
April 27, 2010
President Evo Morales on President Obama: “I Can’t Believe a Black President Can Hold So Much Vengeance Against an Indian President”, April 23, 2010
As the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba closes, we speak to Bolivian President Evo Morales about the US decision to cut off climate aid to Bolivia; narcotrafficking; the tenth anniversary of the Water Wars in Cochabamba; the protest at the San Cristóbal silver mine; and the contradiction between promoting the environment and extractive industries—oil/natural gas exploration, mining.
On Thursday organizers of the peoples’ summit released an Agreement of the Peoples based on working group meetings. Key proposals include the establishment of an international tribunal to prosecute polluters, passage of a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, protection for climate migrants, and the full recognition of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. [includes rush transcript]
AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Bolivia in the town of Tiquipaya, just outside Cochabamba. On Thursday, the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth concluded with a major rally at the Félix Capriles Stadium in Cochabamba featuring Bolivian President Evo Morales and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
Over the past three days of the summit, known here simply as “La Cumbre,” seventeen working groups met to discuss various climate-related issues, from climate debt to the dangers of carbon trading. Last night, summit organizers released an Agreement of the Peoples based on the working group meetings.
Key proposals include the establishment of an international tribunal to prosecute polluters, passage of a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, protection for climate migrants, and the full recognition of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The peoples’ summit also condemned a proposed forest program known as REDD, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation.
At Thursday’s rally, Bolivian President Evo Morales called on world leaders to adopt these proposals from the peoples’ summit.
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] If we apply and implement all of the conclusions of this World Conference on the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba will be a hope to the world. What the governments of developed countries suggest is allowing the earth to warm two degrees or more. Clearly, the proposals coming from some working groups are not solutions, but ways to cook all of humanity.
AMY GOODMAN: Bolivian President Evo Morales, speaking before over 15,000 people in Cochabamba’s largest soccer stadium.
In the hours before the rally, supporters of Morales filled the sidewalks of the city. Morales is the first indigenous president of Bolivia, and much of his support comes from the majority indigenous population.
Signs of Bolivia’s vibrant indigenous culture were on full display outside and inside the stadium. Many indigenous women wore bowler hats and flared skirts. The sound of pan flutes and the Andean string instrument, the charango, could be heard throughout the stadium as several musical acts gave impromptu performances on the field. Bolivian women and children sold empanadas and fresh juices.
At the rally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez warned that capitalism could lead to the destruction of the planet.
PRESIDENT HUGO CHÁVEZ: [translated] We will not submit to the hegemony of the imperial Yankees. You can even write it down. If the hegemony of capitalism continues on this planet, human life will one day come to an end. For those of you who believe that’s an exaggeration, one must remember this: the planet lived for millions of years without the human species.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. We’re broadcasting from Cochabamba. Again, you were listening to the closing ceremony and the closing speeches at Cochabamba’s largest soccer stadium. It took place on Earth Day. You just heard the President Evo Morales. You also heard, as well, President Chávez. In just a moment, we are going to be joined by President Morales. He has just arrived by van. He’s coming up the stairs. So we’ll go to a break, some of the remarkable indigenous music that has been playing throughout the area, and then we’ll be joined by the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: As the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth concludes, we are joined now by Bolivian President Evo Morales. Following the failed Copenhagen climate talks in December, Morales issued a call to hold the peoples’ summit to give the poor and the Global South an opportunity to strategize on fighting climate change. President Morales joins us now for the hour. We’re here at the Universidad del Valle—Uni. del Valle, it’s called here—in Tiquipaya.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, President Morales.
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Thank you very much.
AMY GOODMAN: You have joined us in New York several times on Democracy Now! We are very honored to be here in your country, in Bolivia.
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] And thank you very much for the invitation to converse, as we’ve always done.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we are speaking on the day after the World Peoples’ Conference has concluded, the day after Earth Day. What do you feel you have accomplished?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] First of all, we have been surprised by the participation of all the peoples of the world. We didn’t imagine so many people, more than 30,000 participants in sixteen—or seventeen working groups, and a declaration that provides so much direction for life and for nature, the participation of scientists and people responsible for different sectors and regions of the world.
There are two particularly important things. In Copenhagen, there was interest in having a document approved that would cause harm to Mother Earth. And the debate was only about the effects of the climate crisis, not the causes. And the peoples here have debated the causes, which is capitalism—I could elaborate on that—genetically modified crops, which cause harm to Mother Earth and human life.
And in addition, I am so pleased to see that there’s been such deep interest in engaging in a dialogue with the United Nations, so that these conclusions of the peoples of the world can be heard and respected. Not just by the peoples who participated, they should also be heard and respected by humankind as a whole, all of those who live on the planet.
AMY GOODMAN: The proposals that have come out of this conference, this summit, can you name them and explain them, beginning with the climate justice tribunal?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] For example, the developed countries should respect the Kyoto Protocol, and that means put it into practice, the 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions; and that the global temperature increase should be a maximum one-degree Centigrade; that a climate justice tribunal should be established, based in Cochabamba—and I say thank you very much to the social movements who approved this proposal that it be based here; that there should continue to be a debate or there still is a debate on having a world referendum on climate change; that the economic resources spent on defense and wars should be for life and for nature.
According to information we have, we find that the developed countries spend $1.7 trillion, supposedly for defense and international security, but that actually means in military intervention in other countries. Imagine, with $1.7 trillion for life and for nature, that would be so important. And that is the right of Mother Earth, the right to regenerate Mother Earth’s caring capacity. It’s very important.
And I can tell you, I know and I have lived in my family, in my community, in my aillu, traditional community, where we said this year, we’ll grow chili peppers the next year, and we evaluate this among five different or eight communities. And over that time, it is regenerated in another place. Some time goes by, and we replant it in different place. And so, if we rotate the crops, then there’s not a detrimental impact on the environment. These seem like small things, but they translate into large things internationally in terms of the world environment.
In Bolivia, after this event, we are going to begin with reforestation. And the plan that we have in Bolivia, as of the first anniversary of the Declaration of International Mother Earth Day, because last year that was approved—before, it was Earth Day, and now it’s International Mother Earth Day. So one year after that, which is now, we’re going to begin planting. And next year, as of April 22nd, we will plant ten million trees. What does that mean? That a Bolivian, whether it’s a child or an older person, has to plant a plant or a tree. And we’re ten million, and there will be ten million, without any international contribution. This would be just an effort by Bolivians to begin to reforest our country.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what is happening to the glaciers here in Bolivia?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] It’s a very bitter experience. Chacaltaya, near the city of La Paz, when I was a child, I always heard that people would ski there. And now that I am president and living in La Paz, there is no skiing there. And there’s just a spot of snow left. Also, in the department of Potosí, we have another mountain, and the miners would say [inaudible], that they would say that it was dressed in white. It was all snow-covered. And what I’ve been told is that fifty years from now, there will no longer be snow on Illimani, the major mountain overlooking La Paz. This is what the experts say. These have to do with water problems, and that is the great concern, not only of the peasant and indigenous communities who love their Mother Earth and who take care of it, but also of the whole population.
AMY GOODMAN: President Morales, who would be brought before a climate justice tribunal?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] First, the developed countries that are not respecting the Kyoto Protocol. It’s a basic document, the Kyoto Protocol. The developed countries should responsibly implement the provisions. We would begin with the countries that have not ratified or adopted the Kyoto Protocol, such as the government of the United States. And to that effect, you also have the International Court of Justice. So this is a new organization that would grow out of this event, this world movement for the rights of Mother Earth. This world movement for the rights of Mother Earth should already bring an action, as I say, against the countries that have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. And second, those that have ratified it, but are not implementing the Kyoto Protocol.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to President Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia. Yesterday at the Earth Day rally, the foreign minister of Ecuador said that the US had cut two-and-a-half million dollars to Ecuador because they didn’t sign onto the Copenhagen Accord. He said he would give two-and-a-half million dollars to the United States if they signed onto the Kyoto Protocol. Bolivia, the US cut two-and-a-half million dollars, or $3 million, because you didn’t sign onto the Copenhagen Accord. Can you explain what happened?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] The thing is that there’s permanent sabotage and blackmail from the US government. I cannot believe that a black president can have so much vengeance with an Indian president, because our grandparents and our populations, black and indigenous, have been excluded, marginalized, humiliated. That’s where Obama is coming from, from that experience and that suffering. And me, too. And so, it’s one who’s been discriminated against discriminating against another who’s been discriminated against, one oppressed who is oppressing another oppressed. So much blackmail, and the so much blackmail we had experienced before, and now I’m being subject to $3 million blackmail.
But it’s with great pride and humility that we’re now better off without the United States. We’re better off economically. And in terms of macroeconomic policy, we’re better off without the International Monetary Fund.
AMY GOODMAN: What was the $3 million supposed to be for, before it was cut?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Of course, for social programs, as well as environmental programs, but that’s just $3 million. In terms of fighting drug trafficking, they have the responsibility to make an investment, and that it’s not just a question of cooperation, it’s a matter of an obligation on their part. Nonetheless, they have pulled out, and we are facing drug trafficking alone—some crumb to make it seem like something, certainly. And so, for example, I had information that they were going to invest in the Millennium Development Account, like $600 million, and they withdrew all of it. And so, we worked this out with other countries. We’re talking about investment. One is not going to raise that claim about this. We are a country of dignity.
But what they do is take vengeance, intimidate. And that is why my doubt is, one who has been subjugated, one’s family has been subjugated to discrimination, is now president; how is it possible that he can discriminate against another movement that has been discriminated against? It is the peoples who will hear.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see a change between President Bush and President Obama?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] If something is changed, it’s just the color of the president that’s changed.
AMY GOODMAN: President Morales, you have often talked about the difference between coca and cocaine. You say coca is not cocaine. For a US audience, that is hard to understand. Please explain.
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Cocaine is like the white hair of our interpreter, and the coca leaf is green like the leaves that you see on the tree outside. The coca leaf, in its natural state, is food, it’s medicine. It is used quite a lot in rituals, as you will have seen in the ceremonies that have taken place at this World Conference on the Rights of Mother Earth.
To turn coca into cocaine, many chemical agents are required, chemical precursors, and therefore a mix of sulfuric acid and other chemicals will turn it into a drug. But we have no culture of cocaine, but we do have a profound culture of coca leaf. I’m very sorry that the US State Department considers that people who consume coca leaf are drug addicts. That’s absurd. It’s totally false. And that those of us who produce coca leaf are drug traffickers and that they say that coca is cocaine, well, that is a lie. And so, we’re engaged in a permanent battle to continue to inform the whole world about this. But people like you, for example, know now that coca is not cocaine.
But in addition to that, when Bolivian tin was in its boom, it was used by US industry. And at that time, the United States was encouraging coca production, so that the miners, the workers, would consume coca leaf to help them extract tin to be sent to the United States. The best producers of coca leaf at that time were given awards. This is documented.
And I continue to be convinced that cocaine and drug trafficking is an invention of the United States. And with that invention, they’ve been able to create this war against drug trafficking. Capitalism lives from war. Capitalism needs wars in order to sell its weaponry. So this is not an isolated drug issue. It goes to the very interests of capitalism. And on the pretext of fighting drugs, they establish military bases. It’s political control and domination that they want. It’s the new colonialism.
AMY GOODMAN: President Morales, let me ask you, though—I have been speaking, not with your opponents, but your supporters, who are concerned that there is a growing narcotrafficking problem here. And I’m wondering if you feel that is the case. And you, more than anyone, understand that anything like this could be a trigger for massive intervention. So what will you do about this?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] It is a problem, and we acknowledge it. I don’t know if it’s growing, but the drug cartels and the cocaine cartels have become so powerful, the Plurinational State of Bolivia does not have certain instruments and technology for struggling against the drug cartels. It is a weakness on our part.
And the most important thing is that the peasant movement is voluntarily reducing coca crops. Before, it was forced eradication, which violated human rights. The disadvantage is that we don’t have radars, satellites, and a drug trafficker is not the one who steps on—who processes the coca leaf. They go around all around the world, and their money is in the banks. We need to end bank secrecy, for example. Why not? So, imagine, there’s not any real effective contribution to the anti-drug trafficking effort.
AMY GOODMAN: Is there a role the US can play in combating drug trafficking here that you think would be constructive?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] We just need equipment and technology.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Bolivian President Evo Morales, who rose to the presidency—was a cocalero, the head of the coca growers’ union. And now I want to go back ten years. I want to go back to the Water Wars, where you really rose in popularity and ultimately to the presidency. Right outside this window here at the University del Valle, we can see the mountain Tunari. That was the name used for this mysterious company, Aguas del Tunari, that was actually the US company Bechtel, who came to privatize the water supply. You joined with the farmers, with the factory workers, led by Oscar Olivera, and you led a mass movement against the privatization and pushed out Bechtel. Talk about those moments.
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] I was born in Oruro, Orinoco, in another department in the Altiplano, and—before doing my obligatory military service in 1978. In 1979, I went to the Chapare region, which is here in the department of Cochabamba. And in 1979 and 1980, when I was going back and forth, I would come by Tunari, and it was always covered with snow. Most of the year it was snow-covered. Now, when there’s snowfall, it may be covered with snow just for half a day at most. I have experienced that.
Now, apart from that, the first companions who rose up against the drilling of wells was right over here in a place called La Vinto, Vinto Chico. I remember perfectly well that the communities had mobilized and put up roadblocks. And they said, “Evo, you have contacts with the press. Bring the press.” And they said, “The privatization of water is harming us.” I had some friends in the press. We brought them there. They talked with them, and they denounced it. I was very struck by the situation. And now I’m talking about the 1990s. I learned a great deal.
And then this contract came with the company called Aguas del Tunari. For the people in the city, the rate that they were going to be charged for water was going to increase threefold, fourfold, sevenfold. That provoked a response from the population. And the privatization of the springs, the melting, for irrigating, for the peasant movement, all of this was a problem. And Oscar Olivera and others came together. We all came together in order to wage debates. There was a colleague named Fernandez, who was among the irrigators. There was Oscar Olivera from the workers’ sector.
And what had most struck was that in the legislature—and at the time, I was a legislator, in 1999, 2000—I was told in the Congress that we need to approve a $50 million loan for the—and from the Andean Development Corporation, but that was going to be for Aguas del Tunari. So I figured that if there’s a company that is going to be awarded a project or a contract for privatizing water, they need to invest the money. Why is it that the government needs to lend money to the company Aguas del Tunari? Am I making my—you get my point? In the indigenous and peasant world, in the world of the poor, the businessperson is one who has a lot of money. Transnational corporations are great millionaires. And a transnational, Aguas del Tunari, was given a contract for privatizing the water. Well, then the legislature has to approve a law to give a loan to that company? What kind of privatization is that? Now I can make some more comments, with all the more reason, about other transnationals. That really struck me. There’s no investment by the company at all here. Then we found out who were the partners of this transnational: a politician by the name of Medina, another politician. And they put the papers together to create a company. But there wasn’t any money, and so the Bolivian government was supposed to lend it money.
This and many things brought us together—the peasant movement, the irrigators, the people in the city. I would say that the factory workers of Oscar Olivera participated in this struggle very little. It was essentially the peasants, the irrigators and the coca growers. We joined the struggle. We didn’t have water problems in Chapare. There’s flooding in Chapare. The issue was that it had to do with a policy of privatization. And drinking water included the trade unions. So we said, “This policy is going to come to Chapare, and before that happens, let’s fight it in Cochabamba.”
I remember that one day I felt defeated in our mobilizations here. About a thousand of us went out, said, “Let’s go out and march.” And we went out to march, and they began to shoot teargas at us. And the press said they’re shooting teargas at the coca growers, who are defending water. And then the population rose up, and there was a state of siege. It was the last state of siege that we defeated. And since then, there’s been no state of siege.
AMY GOODMAN: So how does it feel, from—going from that victory, pushing Bechtel out of the country, being a stone-throwing protester, to becoming the president of your nation, representing the police and the military that you were opposing at that time?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Well, as president, we continue getting the companies out of the country. Before, as a social movement leader, now as president. We also have removed the company Aguas del Illimani from La Paza, as president. As president, we have removed Transredes, an oil company. So that’s not changing. These are policies that have been defined by social movements in Bolivia, and we’ll continue to pursue them.
But I do want you to know, we said no more will we have companies being the owners of our natural resources. We do need partners. For example, some agreements that we’ve signed with some companies, the company invests, but under the control of the owner is the Plurinational State of Bolivia. We are owners of 60 percent of the shares, and the investor holds 40 percent. It is legally guaranteed and constitutionally guaranteed that they will recover their investment, but they also—we also guarantee the right to share in the profits.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to break for sixty seconds, but then we’re coming back to our exclusive hour with the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, as we broadcast live from Cochabamba, Bolivia. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: You’ve just been watching and listening to the celebratory music, the major celebrations that took place at the close of the summit yesterday in the main soccer stadium here in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. And we have been broadcasting all week from the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth. We’re here now in the Bolivian town of Tiquipaya, just outside of Cochabamba, with President Evo Morales.
You are talking about industry and the role of corporations. I’d like to address how you deal with indigenous rights, environmental rights, and reconcile that with corporations. Let’s go to San Cristóbal, the mine, the protests of the last week. Please tell us what is happening there. The miners have shut down the area. They’re calling on Sumitomo, the Japanese company, to give them reparations, stop polluting the water. I think 6,000 liters of water a second are used. What is the government doing? What are you doing, President Morales?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] First, that is a concession that is legally guaranteed and armored by the previous governments. It’s the legacy of the neoliberal governments. But in addition, the people in the area know that the company has negotiated with them. They’ve created a foundation to give money to community members and the experience that is that such kinds of agreements, blackmail or prebends, are not a solution. Those are not eternal. And that those who are culpable are the leaders of the communities who agreed to enter into agreements with the company. There’s also a political component. When the right lost in the municipal elections, the next day, they began to wage conflicts. So there’s an internal issue there.
If we want to resolve the issue of San Cristóbal, we need to change a law, a law on mining. And certainly, that is going to be subject to an in-depth review, the concession contract itself. But yesterday, the day before yesterday, the conflict has ended. They lifted that, and we explained the truths. But sometimes these kinds of conflicts are used politically at the local level.
AMY GOODMAN: The State Department has issued a warning that people shouldn’t travel in that area, the US State Department.
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] You always hear campaigns of that sort from the US State Department. It’s just one part of the highway that’s been blocked. But, as I say, that was lifted two days ago. And then I was informed that some tourists were kept from going through, but the community members, in a responsible way, had the tourists come through. You can see that this is a satanization by the United States State Department. And we say, in a humanitarian sense, they have a right to be there, even though they’ve politicized it.
But they don’t realize that those responsible for those agreements are not only the previous governments, but also the leaders of—the previous leaders of those communities. So there was this agreement between the state and the leaders of the community. I know about it. I was there talking with them. They accepted that there be a foundation that would invest, I’m not sure how many millions in the community.
That also doesn‘t mean that we’re trying to deflect responsibility. It is our responsibility to seek solutions. And I was saying a moment ago that we need to—that there are contracts that are armored, and we need to figure out how to change them.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to the bigger issue. Bolivian economy is based on 20 percent, 30 percent on extractive industries like silver, zinc. You are really getting into lithium now. Bolivia has the world’s majority reserves in lithium, an incredible alternative energy source for batteries, for electric cars. How do you reconcile the extractive industries with the environment, Pachamama, the indigenous word for Mother Earth, with indigenous rights?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] We need in-depth studies on this. If we want to defend Mother Earth and the rights of Mother Earth, any project for industrializing natural resources has to respect the regeneration of bio-capabilities. Like with some minerals, for example, non-renewable minerals, it will be difficult. So the internal debate is what to do about this, because Bolivia, before, lived from tin, as a colonial state. Now we live off of gas and oil. Our economic resources come fundamentally from oil and gas, and mining is in second place. To what extent can the industrialization of these resources allow for respect for Mother Earth?
As of this conference, and going forward, everything has to change. But when they tell us that lithium could be an alternative energy source, I was asking, what about the brine, and in what time can it be regenerated? Some tell me fifty years, some tell me 100 years. I would be happy if it were fifty years, because we have there these salt flats of 10,000 square kilometers. And if you take a broader look, it’s 16,000 square kilometers. It’s immense. So we’re going forward. And if that happens, then we’ll be satisfied, in terms of having a replacement for the energy sources that cause so much harm to Mother Earth.
AMY GOODMAN: These are the issues that have been raised by mesa 18, the group that was not included in the summit, the issues of—even someone on the stage in your opening ceremony, Faith Gemmill from North Alaska, said, “Keep the coal in the hole, keep the oil in the ground.” What is your response to that, to stop the extractions?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] You want me to tell you the truth about working group 18? That’s a business of the NGOs and the foundations. The indigenous brothers and sisters had never before had an indigenous working group within the seventeen. But since it’s a question of justifying investments by the NGOs, then they set up working group 18.
Now, the internal debate. Those foundations, NGOs, said, “Amazon, no oil.” So they’re telling me that I should shut down oil wells and gas wells. So what is Bolivia going to live off of? So let’s be realistic. But since these foundations and NGOs justify using some of the indigenous brothers and sisters—I don’t blame my indigenous brothers and sisters. They use the leaders to justify their good salaries and their own way of life.
I heard yesterday—last night I was with the people from Via Campesina up until 2:00 a.m. You know Via Campesina. I’m one of the founders. And they tell me, “Don’t build roads.” And another one says, “Don’t build dams.” The day before yesterday, when I was just back here, I announced that we’re going to build a road from Oruro to a place near here. That is the most widely applauded project by the grassroots people, because the people who need to be able to have access. If we look just out here, in Alto, every day they’re asking for small-scale dams. So NGOs and some leaders say, no, when they’re not interpreting the needs of their grassroots. That is the truth. And for this reason, it was like a confrontation Via Campesina—
AMY GOODMAN: We just have thirty seconds. Your hope for this summit?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] I wanted to explain—I don’t want to feel that there’s not freedom of expression, in terms of addressing your concern. But I do want you to know, that is the truth, and that last night, with Via Campesina, we had those confrontations. So they ended up—they stopped talking about the dams, about the roads. Now I’m an enemy of thermoelectric plants, for example, but not hydroelectric plants.
AMY GOODMAN: Five Seconds.
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Well, then, thank you very much.
AMY GOODMAN: Thank you very much. We’ve been speaking with Bolivian President Evo Morales. And that concludes our exclusive week here in Cochabamba, Bolivia at the Worlds Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth.
Ukrainian president Yanukovych reverses Ukraine's position on Holodomor famine, Strasbourg, April 27 RIA Novosti, 27th April 2010
http://en.rian.ru/exsoviet/20100427/158772431.html
It is "unjust" to call the Stalin-era famine that killed millions across the Soviet Union a genocide of the Ukrainian people, President Viktor Yanukovych said on Tuesday.
Yanukovych's statement to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) marks a complete reversal of the policy of his predecessor, Viktor Yushchenko, who sought international recognition of the 1932-1933 Great Famine, known to Ukrainians as the Holodomor, as genocide.
PACE will discuss on Wednesday a report commemorating the victims of the Soviet famine that includes an amendment recognizing the Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people.
"We consider it incorrect and unjust to consider the Holodomor a fact of genocide of a certain people," Yanukovych said, calling it "a common tragedy" of the Soviet people.
The Ukrainian president said not only Ukrainian, but also Russian, Belarusian and Kazakh people starved during the famine.
"Those were consequences of Stalin's totalitarian regime, his attitude to people," he said.
More than 3 million people perished in Ukraine due to the famine, and Ukrainian nationalists say Russia, as the legal successor of the Soviet Union, should bear responsibility. Yushchenko, who was known for his anti-Russian policies as president, led Ukraine's efforts to secure international recognition of the famine as an act of genocide.
Yanukovych was elected in February to succeed Yushchenko and swiftly aligned Kiev closer to Moscow, including by agreeing to extend Russia's lease on a naval base in Crimea.
Russia says the famine cannot be considered an act that targeted Ukrainians, as millions of people from different ethnic groups also lost their lives in vast territories across the Soviet Union.
A draft PACE resolution on the famine says it was caused by "cruel and deliberate actions and policies of the Soviet regime" responsible for the deaths of "millions of innocent people," not only in Ukraine, but also in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Russia. Relative to its population, Kazakhstan is believed to be the worst affected Soviet republic, the document says.
It is "unjust" to call the Stalin-era famine that killed millions across the Soviet Union a genocide of the Ukrainian people, President Viktor Yanukovych said on Tuesday.
Yanukovych's statement to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) marks a complete reversal of the policy of his predecessor, Viktor Yushchenko, who sought international recognition of the 1932-1933 Great Famine, known to Ukrainians as the Holodomor, as genocide.
PACE will discuss on Wednesday a report commemorating the victims of the Soviet famine that includes an amendment recognizing the Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people.
"We consider it incorrect and unjust to consider the Holodomor a fact of genocide of a certain people," Yanukovych said, calling it "a common tragedy" of the Soviet people.
The Ukrainian president said not only Ukrainian, but also Russian, Belarusian and Kazakh people starved during the famine.
"Those were consequences of Stalin's totalitarian regime, his attitude to people," he said.
More than 3 million people perished in Ukraine due to the famine, and Ukrainian nationalists say Russia, as the legal successor of the Soviet Union, should bear responsibility. Yushchenko, who was known for his anti-Russian policies as president, led Ukraine's efforts to secure international recognition of the famine as an act of genocide.
Yanukovych was elected in February to succeed Yushchenko and swiftly aligned Kiev closer to Moscow, including by agreeing to extend Russia's lease on a naval base in Crimea.
Russia says the famine cannot be considered an act that targeted Ukrainians, as millions of people from different ethnic groups also lost their lives in vast territories across the Soviet Union.
A draft PACE resolution on the famine says it was caused by "cruel and deliberate actions and policies of the Soviet regime" responsible for the deaths of "millions of innocent people," not only in Ukraine, but also in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Russia. Relative to its population, Kazakhstan is believed to be the worst affected Soviet republic, the document says.
21-22 April 48-hour strike of PAME- a decisive step for the escalation of the struggle, KKE News, April 27, 2010
http://inter.kke.gr/News/2010news/2010-04-23-48ori
The success of the 48-hour strike of All Workers’ Militant Front (PAME) has been a decisive step for the escalation of the struggle of the working class, the poor popular strata and the youth. Tens of thousands of workers and employees both in the private and public sector followed the call of PAME, which is the class oriented alliance of trade unions, federations, labour centers and trade unionists and went on strike. PAME organised mass strike demonstrations in 69 cities throughout the country.
The 48-hour strike expressed on the one hand the opposition to the anti-people measures and especially to the new bill of the social democrat government of PASOK on social security that strikes a blow at the rights of the working people and the poor popular strata. On the other hand, it called into question the so-called bourgeois legitimacy and the intimidation of the plutocracy.
The success of the strike has been one more response to the anti-people measures announced by the social democrat government of PASOK that promotes cuts on salaries and pensions, increase of retirement ages, general application of flexible forms of employment, abolition of restrictions on mass dismissals, privatizations by means of new reactionary reforms that promote the merging of municipalities, the lift of cabotage that increases unregistered employment among seamen, liberalization of closed professions etc.
The working people rejected the coordinated effort of government, the other bourgeois and opportunist forces that sought the consensus of the people in order to “save the country from the crisis”. They rejected and unveiled the false dilemma of the plutocracy: “EU or IMF” that in fact forces the people to choose which one will undertake the mission to lead the people to bankruptcy -as they have decided together- and ensure new immense profits for plutocracy.
Since the daybreak of April 21st thousand of workers picketed factory gates and other workplaces and paralyzed for 48 hours big multinational companies, big industries, department stores, hotels, the port of Piraeus (the biggest port in the country) and other workplaces as well.
The working class in Greece is now stronger; it defied the employers’ intimidation and the strike breakers of the yellow trade unionism that controls the trade union federations in the private (GSEE) and public sector (ADEDY). The bourgeoisie and in particular the ship-owners that constitute its hard core made every effort to stop the strike of PAME in the port. Thus, according to a court decision on April 20 the strike was declared illegal and abusive. However, not even for a single moment did the decision of the court bend the seamen who guarded their strike for 48 hours.
We should also highlight that once again GSEE aided the intimidation campaign launched by plutocracy along with the media. Following its strike-breaking tactics it did not stage a strike and in that way it supported the government. On the other hand, ADEDY called for a strike only for April 22 and held a rally in the centre of Athens which was marked by the scant participation of the working people.
On the contrary, the mass rally of PAME at Syntagma Square in Athens was held with tens of thousands of people who condemned the barbarous anti-labour anti-people offensive launched by the government, the employers, the EU and the parties of the bourgeoisie.
In his speech Yiannis Tasioulas, President of the Athens trade union of construction workers condemned the action of the ship-owners to declare the strike illegal and highlighted that “law is the rights of the workers”. Representatives of PASEVE (Antimonopoly Rally of the self-employed and the small tradesman) and other trade unionists also saluted the demonstration as well.
A delegation of the CC of KKE headed by the General Secretary of the CC of KKE, Aleka Papariga participated in the rally.
“Once again the seamen showed the way with their fearlessness and their disobedience towards the anti-labour decision of the justice. We must resist otherwise they will lead us to Washington and Brussels, to the Euro zone and the IMF like sheep to the slaughter. Here is the dilemma of the government: either we take a loan and people loose all their rights or we do not take any and people loose everything as well. The working people must reject this dilemma and move on to the recovery of the movement because only this can pave the way for the rights of the workers. The recovery of the economy means the recovery of the profit making and the plutocracy. The IMF and the Eurozone pursue the abolition of people’s gains and the breaking of people’s struggles. Beyond that, any loan will bring new worse anti labour measures in return. People must stand up to this offensive” commented Aleka Papariga in her statement to the media.
Furthermore, an important element of this strike is that tens of communist and workers’ parties, federations and trade unions from all over the world expressed their solidarity with the 48-hour strike of PAME.
The struggle will escalate with the new 24-hour strike of the seamen on April 26 against the lift of the cabotage and the total liberation of navigation that the EU and the government promote, with the strike demonstrations on May 1st and with multiform mobilisations for the escalation of the struggle in the next period.
The success of the 48-hour strike of All Workers’ Militant Front (PAME) has been a decisive step for the escalation of the struggle of the working class, the poor popular strata and the youth. Tens of thousands of workers and employees both in the private and public sector followed the call of PAME, which is the class oriented alliance of trade unions, federations, labour centers and trade unionists and went on strike. PAME organised mass strike demonstrations in 69 cities throughout the country.
The 48-hour strike expressed on the one hand the opposition to the anti-people measures and especially to the new bill of the social democrat government of PASOK on social security that strikes a blow at the rights of the working people and the poor popular strata. On the other hand, it called into question the so-called bourgeois legitimacy and the intimidation of the plutocracy.
The success of the strike has been one more response to the anti-people measures announced by the social democrat government of PASOK that promotes cuts on salaries and pensions, increase of retirement ages, general application of flexible forms of employment, abolition of restrictions on mass dismissals, privatizations by means of new reactionary reforms that promote the merging of municipalities, the lift of cabotage that increases unregistered employment among seamen, liberalization of closed professions etc.
The working people rejected the coordinated effort of government, the other bourgeois and opportunist forces that sought the consensus of the people in order to “save the country from the crisis”. They rejected and unveiled the false dilemma of the plutocracy: “EU or IMF” that in fact forces the people to choose which one will undertake the mission to lead the people to bankruptcy -as they have decided together- and ensure new immense profits for plutocracy.
Since the daybreak of April 21st thousand of workers picketed factory gates and other workplaces and paralyzed for 48 hours big multinational companies, big industries, department stores, hotels, the port of Piraeus (the biggest port in the country) and other workplaces as well.
The working class in Greece is now stronger; it defied the employers’ intimidation and the strike breakers of the yellow trade unionism that controls the trade union federations in the private (GSEE) and public sector (ADEDY). The bourgeoisie and in particular the ship-owners that constitute its hard core made every effort to stop the strike of PAME in the port. Thus, according to a court decision on April 20 the strike was declared illegal and abusive. However, not even for a single moment did the decision of the court bend the seamen who guarded their strike for 48 hours.
We should also highlight that once again GSEE aided the intimidation campaign launched by plutocracy along with the media. Following its strike-breaking tactics it did not stage a strike and in that way it supported the government. On the other hand, ADEDY called for a strike only for April 22 and held a rally in the centre of Athens which was marked by the scant participation of the working people.
On the contrary, the mass rally of PAME at Syntagma Square in Athens was held with tens of thousands of people who condemned the barbarous anti-labour anti-people offensive launched by the government, the employers, the EU and the parties of the bourgeoisie.
In his speech Yiannis Tasioulas, President of the Athens trade union of construction workers condemned the action of the ship-owners to declare the strike illegal and highlighted that “law is the rights of the workers”. Representatives of PASEVE (Antimonopoly Rally of the self-employed and the small tradesman) and other trade unionists also saluted the demonstration as well.
A delegation of the CC of KKE headed by the General Secretary of the CC of KKE, Aleka Papariga participated in the rally.
“Once again the seamen showed the way with their fearlessness and their disobedience towards the anti-labour decision of the justice. We must resist otherwise they will lead us to Washington and Brussels, to the Euro zone and the IMF like sheep to the slaughter. Here is the dilemma of the government: either we take a loan and people loose all their rights or we do not take any and people loose everything as well. The working people must reject this dilemma and move on to the recovery of the movement because only this can pave the way for the rights of the workers. The recovery of the economy means the recovery of the profit making and the plutocracy. The IMF and the Eurozone pursue the abolition of people’s gains and the breaking of people’s struggles. Beyond that, any loan will bring new worse anti labour measures in return. People must stand up to this offensive” commented Aleka Papariga in her statement to the media.
Furthermore, an important element of this strike is that tens of communist and workers’ parties, federations and trade unions from all over the world expressed their solidarity with the 48-hour strike of PAME.
The struggle will escalate with the new 24-hour strike of the seamen on April 26 against the lift of the cabotage and the total liberation of navigation that the EU and the government promote, with the strike demonstrations on May 1st and with multiform mobilisations for the escalation of the struggle in the next period.
April 25, 2010
MASS STRUGGLES SHAKE CHAREST LIBERALS, PV Québec Bureau, April 16-30, 2010 issue of People's Voice
Québec's political landscape is becoming increasingly volatile. A number of recent mass demonstrations by labour and other peoples' organizations have rocked the province with tens of thousands of people hitting the streets. As People's Voice goes to press, a major government scandal appears to be coming to a head, and a recent poll by Léger Marketing and Le Devoir newspaper has announced that Jean Charest's Liberal government is at an historically all-time low approval rating.
The major direction of public anger has been against the Charest Liberals' budget, unveiled in late March. Over 12,000 students, workers and community groups mobilized on April 1 against the budget. On April 11, 50,000 people rallied against the budget in Québec City. These huge protests came just weeks after the March 20th mobilization of 75,000 people in Montréal under the banner of the Front Commun (Common Front) - a coalition of trade unions representing almost all public and para-public sector workers in Québec (see our April 1-15 issue).
According to labour and social movements, the Liberal budget has attracted strong opposition because it targets workers and the poor through increased fees and taxes, including a $200 per-person "contribution" for health care and higher tuition fees. The budget also steps up a sharp privatization attack on public services.
"In fact, the budget is probably illegal because of its reforms to health care," Robert Luxley, editor of the Québec communist newspaper Clarté, told People's Voice in an interview. "It violates the Canada Health Act and provokes a federal-level attack on Medicare."
"People in Québec are mobilizing now because they think enough is enough," Luxley said. He pointed to the case of the labour unions where the Common Front is negotiating against a government position of five per cent wage increases in five years. "This is after a two year wage freeze, which is a decrease with inflation, and many years of other cutbacks."
The government is demanding a series of harsh austerity measures from the Common Front's members. For example, nurses' overtime will essentially be abolished, reclassified as regular work hours. Sick leave pay will be regressively reduced from 80 per cent to 50 per cent.
At the same time as the budget, the Liberals have announced they will build two major university hospitals in Montréal as "public-private partnerships", in spite of strong public opposition and a damning review of P3s by Québec's Auditor General. The contracts are worth more than three billion dollars. In the case of the Montréal University Research Centre, the contract will be awarded to a former Québec Liberal Party official.
"Over the past year there have been a lot of revelations showing the government is linked in an illegal way to the big bosses - especially in the building industries who are the first beneficiaries of the government's bailout packages," Luxley said. Radio Canada (CBC) has just revealed statements by the former Minister of Justice, Marc Bellemare, that construction companies have conspired with Charest to appoint three Québec judges.
The Radio Canada revelations show that some of the companies are possibly linked with the Mafia or the Hells Angels, Luxley told PV. "But that is not the major point. We see that the bosses have decided to make the laws for the government. This again proves what the Communists say [about capital and the state] and what happens `behind the curtain!'"
"At this moment we think it is necessary for the Common Front to place itself at the core of the fight-back and make a bigger commitment to the broader people's struggle," Luxley said. "It is not enough to stay the course and continue fighting on their immediate bargaining demands. The Common Front must go further, denouncing the budget."
Québec solidaire, the province's left party with one member in the National Assembly, has called for the resignation of the government. Luxley also regards as very positive the resolution adopted on April 9 by some of the health sector unions in the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN), calling for the government to resign.
"This is an excellent idea. What is needed is a political general strike against the budget," Luxley said.
If the spirit of resistance is being taken up by the people, the evidence lies in the April 1 action of the students and workers in Montréal, and April 11 mass mobilization in Québec City, according to Luxley.
The student demo featured a larger turn-out than recent years. Bold speeches by youth and community activists suggested the struggle was a class conflict. In Québec the rally came together under the direction of a man better known to the public as an organizer of pop music concerts. It bought out people from the broad sweep of civil society.
"While the Québec demonstration was, perhaps, `mixed' - for example, there were evidently some anti-taxation voices - it is correct to say that the workers and poor people pay far too much taxes. The people are seeing clearly that the rich do not pay enough," said Luxley.
He noted that the Communist Party had longstanding demands for a progressive tax system based on ability to pay, including increasing the corporate tax rate to 29 per cent, ending tax loopholes and shelters and jailing corporate tax evaders, while eliminate taxes on incomes under $35,000/yr and abolishing the regressive GST and QST. "These kinds of demands could be won through the type of struggle we see developing with the Common Front," he said.
Following the Common Front's mass action on March 20, the government publicly called for a flurry of negotiation. Before long, however, it was clear the government was not willing to change any of its demands and talks remain jammed. Instead, the Charest Liberals put forward their budget as a way to divide the people from the demands of the Common Front, Luxley suggested.
"I think both sides are very conscious that this is a battle to win the public's opinion," Luxley said. "The government is running a series of large ads in the media. They are suggesting that cutbacks will save public services. It is blatantly hypocritical."
The ads say that the debt load because of the economic crisis can be re-paid - 38 per cent by the public and corporations, and 62 per cent by the government itself. In fact, Luxley explained, this means the main victims of the cutbacks will be the workers and people at large.
Meanwhile, the Charest Liberals are touring Québec, meeting with local business associations and boards of trade. "They desperately want to be the hero of big business at all costs," Luxley said. "Charest knows this is the Liberals' last mandate. They are not afraid to use their powers."
"The Common Front exists because of the past experience of the trade union movement in Québec," he added. "When the unions were divided, the people were defeated. They have learnt from this to be united. Today the people want to make pressure on the government, and are searching for real alternatives. The Le Devoir poll reinforces the idea that the people are not satisfied by the main political parties. This is a very important situation. It calls for more united action of the working class and people's forces, with the Common Front at the core."
The major direction of public anger has been against the Charest Liberals' budget, unveiled in late March. Over 12,000 students, workers and community groups mobilized on April 1 against the budget. On April 11, 50,000 people rallied against the budget in Québec City. These huge protests came just weeks after the March 20th mobilization of 75,000 people in Montréal under the banner of the Front Commun (Common Front) - a coalition of trade unions representing almost all public and para-public sector workers in Québec (see our April 1-15 issue).
According to labour and social movements, the Liberal budget has attracted strong opposition because it targets workers and the poor through increased fees and taxes, including a $200 per-person "contribution" for health care and higher tuition fees. The budget also steps up a sharp privatization attack on public services.
"In fact, the budget is probably illegal because of its reforms to health care," Robert Luxley, editor of the Québec communist newspaper Clarté, told People's Voice in an interview. "It violates the Canada Health Act and provokes a federal-level attack on Medicare."
"People in Québec are mobilizing now because they think enough is enough," Luxley said. He pointed to the case of the labour unions where the Common Front is negotiating against a government position of five per cent wage increases in five years. "This is after a two year wage freeze, which is a decrease with inflation, and many years of other cutbacks."
The government is demanding a series of harsh austerity measures from the Common Front's members. For example, nurses' overtime will essentially be abolished, reclassified as regular work hours. Sick leave pay will be regressively reduced from 80 per cent to 50 per cent.
At the same time as the budget, the Liberals have announced they will build two major university hospitals in Montréal as "public-private partnerships", in spite of strong public opposition and a damning review of P3s by Québec's Auditor General. The contracts are worth more than three billion dollars. In the case of the Montréal University Research Centre, the contract will be awarded to a former Québec Liberal Party official.
"Over the past year there have been a lot of revelations showing the government is linked in an illegal way to the big bosses - especially in the building industries who are the first beneficiaries of the government's bailout packages," Luxley said. Radio Canada (CBC) has just revealed statements by the former Minister of Justice, Marc Bellemare, that construction companies have conspired with Charest to appoint three Québec judges.
The Radio Canada revelations show that some of the companies are possibly linked with the Mafia or the Hells Angels, Luxley told PV. "But that is not the major point. We see that the bosses have decided to make the laws for the government. This again proves what the Communists say [about capital and the state] and what happens `behind the curtain!'"
"At this moment we think it is necessary for the Common Front to place itself at the core of the fight-back and make a bigger commitment to the broader people's struggle," Luxley said. "It is not enough to stay the course and continue fighting on their immediate bargaining demands. The Common Front must go further, denouncing the budget."
Québec solidaire, the province's left party with one member in the National Assembly, has called for the resignation of the government. Luxley also regards as very positive the resolution adopted on April 9 by some of the health sector unions in the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN), calling for the government to resign.
"This is an excellent idea. What is needed is a political general strike against the budget," Luxley said.
If the spirit of resistance is being taken up by the people, the evidence lies in the April 1 action of the students and workers in Montréal, and April 11 mass mobilization in Québec City, according to Luxley.
The student demo featured a larger turn-out than recent years. Bold speeches by youth and community activists suggested the struggle was a class conflict. In Québec the rally came together under the direction of a man better known to the public as an organizer of pop music concerts. It bought out people from the broad sweep of civil society.
"While the Québec demonstration was, perhaps, `mixed' - for example, there were evidently some anti-taxation voices - it is correct to say that the workers and poor people pay far too much taxes. The people are seeing clearly that the rich do not pay enough," said Luxley.
He noted that the Communist Party had longstanding demands for a progressive tax system based on ability to pay, including increasing the corporate tax rate to 29 per cent, ending tax loopholes and shelters and jailing corporate tax evaders, while eliminate taxes on incomes under $35,000/yr and abolishing the regressive GST and QST. "These kinds of demands could be won through the type of struggle we see developing with the Common Front," he said.
Following the Common Front's mass action on March 20, the government publicly called for a flurry of negotiation. Before long, however, it was clear the government was not willing to change any of its demands and talks remain jammed. Instead, the Charest Liberals put forward their budget as a way to divide the people from the demands of the Common Front, Luxley suggested.
"I think both sides are very conscious that this is a battle to win the public's opinion," Luxley said. "The government is running a series of large ads in the media. They are suggesting that cutbacks will save public services. It is blatantly hypocritical."
The ads say that the debt load because of the economic crisis can be re-paid - 38 per cent by the public and corporations, and 62 per cent by the government itself. In fact, Luxley explained, this means the main victims of the cutbacks will be the workers and people at large.
Meanwhile, the Charest Liberals are touring Québec, meeting with local business associations and boards of trade. "They desperately want to be the hero of big business at all costs," Luxley said. "Charest knows this is the Liberals' last mandate. They are not afraid to use their powers."
"The Common Front exists because of the past experience of the trade union movement in Québec," he added. "When the unions were divided, the people were defeated. They have learnt from this to be united. Today the people want to make pressure on the government, and are searching for real alternatives. The Le Devoir poll reinforces the idea that the people are not satisfied by the main political parties. This is a very important situation. It calls for more united action of the working class and people's forces, with the Common Front at the core."
Greek Anarchists Riot After IMF Deal Announced, Sunday, April 25 2010
Source: Infoshop News
Contributed by: Anonymous
The crisis is not a natural disaster that simply happens; the crisis is the outcome of the choices of all those who want to maintain this system, in which we are exploited, repressed and governed. Their proposals on how to come out of the crisis do not differ from suggestions on how the existing situation could be reinforced and take root. Our propositions can be nothing less than strikes and solidarity, occupations and sabotage, expropriations and mutual help… in order to create the world that we choose for ourselves, against all kinds of segregations and hierarchy.
-Assembly of the revolted in (the island of ) Salamina, (and the neighborhoods of) Perama, Keratsini, Nikaia, Koridallos, Piraeus
While the IMF meets in Washington, D.C. this weekend, Greece's financial troubles have continued to deepen. Greek Prime Minister Papandreou chose the remote Aegean island of Kastelorizo on Friday to announce his government was to activate the IMF-EU “rescue” plan, effectively throwing the proletariat and lower middle classes in the country at the mercy of international financial giants. IMF loans always have nasty strings attached, rules that force the recipient to re-structure their economy along a neo-liberal, privatized, U.S. friendly model due to the influential U.S. position in the IMF.
The current situation in Greece has many similarities to the IMF crisis in Argentina in 2002 that sparked a nation-wide rebellion and created a of worker-run businesses in its wake. Add to this crisis the recent revelations that the Greek ruling class has been evading paying its share of taxes for years, and you have a country that is turning into a powder keg.
This is social war at its peak; this is the guarantee that the Greek standard of living will be crushed, and that a dictatorship of capital shall reign.
“What a day today, huh”, shrugged the old man from inside the kiosk. “What about it?” I try to sound oblivious. “April 21st, the junta…” He’s quickly agitated, starts to move his hands up in the air, drawing some imaginary bird, the junta’s shivering emblem. “That was the day they came, the day we went into hiding. We knew what was coming, oh did we know. But you know what? This is something you learn to appreciate after all these years. I never thought I would say this, but at least you knew what was coming. Yes, back in the day, a dictatorship was actually declared.”
Meanwhile, the repression and control capital demands to enforce it's rule continues to express itself in attacks against immigrants by fascists and police, and in the case of the Revolutionary Struggle prisoners. The actions the state is taking against these prisoners are the actions of a dictatorship, of a government without legitimacy.
This morning the Athens daily Eleftherotypia issued a statement explaining why it has abstained from covering the latest “developments” in the “revolutionary struggle” case. It has openly accused the police of offering no access to journalists covering the story – and sure enough, of fabricating much of the story. This all comes from a paper that ranks among the very top in circulation in the country – and one that has been fully supportive of the PASOK government, so far. There’s something rotten in the air, some sense of an impending authoritarian rule, or is it already here? Hard to tell, these days. Back in the day, at least, dictatorships were actually declared.
Where has this economic crisis come from? It is not a natural disaster. It is not a storm that has blown in off the sea. It is a manufactured crisis, created by international banks that prey on the weak. There is no new and sudden shortage of raw materials, labor, food, or other tangible goods in Greece that are the causes of true crises in meeting people's needs. There is the same capacity for production as before the crisis began.
This crisis has been the creation of Goldman Sachs, among others, which helped Greece hide it's true debt in order to gain membership in the EU, and is now betting that Greece will default on repaying that very same debt they helped hide. Greece is also being forced to pay more to access credit, which exacerbates the crisis as the interest payments on Greece's debts rise, creating a vicious cycle of increasing interest payments and increasing hesitance to loan Greece money. At the same time, the very banks creating this vicious cycle are taking out bets that Greece will default on it's payments, giving them an incentive to keep the cycle going. These actions, along with other speculative attacks to try and push Greece into default by banks with bets on default are the cause of this crisis, but the Greek people are its victims, and the crisis seems to only be getting worse.
Anarchists responded the same day the IMF deal was announced with marches in at least 4 cities, including a 2,000 person march in Athens. Any response by a government whose true interest lied in protecting its citizens would have expelled these international banks, seized their assets, or imprisoned them for attempting to financially burn down the country.
But anarchists know that governments will always serve the interests of capital first, and so the only solution to the crisis is anarchist revolution and expropriation of all resources from the hands of capitalists to the hands of the working class, who can continue producing the things people need regardless of the position Goldman Sachs has on Greek debt.
While the new IMF deal agreed to by the government is not certain to end the crisis, it is certain to inspire a long, hot summer of hatred for for capitalists and their lackey politicians.
(h/t Occupied London for some of the writing and photos)
Contributed by: Anonymous
The crisis is not a natural disaster that simply happens; the crisis is the outcome of the choices of all those who want to maintain this system, in which we are exploited, repressed and governed. Their proposals on how to come out of the crisis do not differ from suggestions on how the existing situation could be reinforced and take root. Our propositions can be nothing less than strikes and solidarity, occupations and sabotage, expropriations and mutual help… in order to create the world that we choose for ourselves, against all kinds of segregations and hierarchy.
-Assembly of the revolted in (the island of ) Salamina, (and the neighborhoods of) Perama, Keratsini, Nikaia, Koridallos, Piraeus
While the IMF meets in Washington, D.C. this weekend, Greece's financial troubles have continued to deepen. Greek Prime Minister Papandreou chose the remote Aegean island of Kastelorizo on Friday to announce his government was to activate the IMF-EU “rescue” plan, effectively throwing the proletariat and lower middle classes in the country at the mercy of international financial giants. IMF loans always have nasty strings attached, rules that force the recipient to re-structure their economy along a neo-liberal, privatized, U.S. friendly model due to the influential U.S. position in the IMF.
The current situation in Greece has many similarities to the IMF crisis in Argentina in 2002 that sparked a nation-wide rebellion and created a of worker-run businesses in its wake. Add to this crisis the recent revelations that the Greek ruling class has been evading paying its share of taxes for years, and you have a country that is turning into a powder keg.
This is social war at its peak; this is the guarantee that the Greek standard of living will be crushed, and that a dictatorship of capital shall reign.
“What a day today, huh”, shrugged the old man from inside the kiosk. “What about it?” I try to sound oblivious. “April 21st, the junta…” He’s quickly agitated, starts to move his hands up in the air, drawing some imaginary bird, the junta’s shivering emblem. “That was the day they came, the day we went into hiding. We knew what was coming, oh did we know. But you know what? This is something you learn to appreciate after all these years. I never thought I would say this, but at least you knew what was coming. Yes, back in the day, a dictatorship was actually declared.”
Meanwhile, the repression and control capital demands to enforce it's rule continues to express itself in attacks against immigrants by fascists and police, and in the case of the Revolutionary Struggle prisoners. The actions the state is taking against these prisoners are the actions of a dictatorship, of a government without legitimacy.
This morning the Athens daily Eleftherotypia issued a statement explaining why it has abstained from covering the latest “developments” in the “revolutionary struggle” case. It has openly accused the police of offering no access to journalists covering the story – and sure enough, of fabricating much of the story. This all comes from a paper that ranks among the very top in circulation in the country – and one that has been fully supportive of the PASOK government, so far. There’s something rotten in the air, some sense of an impending authoritarian rule, or is it already here? Hard to tell, these days. Back in the day, at least, dictatorships were actually declared.
Where has this economic crisis come from? It is not a natural disaster. It is not a storm that has blown in off the sea. It is a manufactured crisis, created by international banks that prey on the weak. There is no new and sudden shortage of raw materials, labor, food, or other tangible goods in Greece that are the causes of true crises in meeting people's needs. There is the same capacity for production as before the crisis began.
This crisis has been the creation of Goldman Sachs, among others, which helped Greece hide it's true debt in order to gain membership in the EU, and is now betting that Greece will default on repaying that very same debt they helped hide. Greece is also being forced to pay more to access credit, which exacerbates the crisis as the interest payments on Greece's debts rise, creating a vicious cycle of increasing interest payments and increasing hesitance to loan Greece money. At the same time, the very banks creating this vicious cycle are taking out bets that Greece will default on it's payments, giving them an incentive to keep the cycle going. These actions, along with other speculative attacks to try and push Greece into default by banks with bets on default are the cause of this crisis, but the Greek people are its victims, and the crisis seems to only be getting worse.
Anarchists responded the same day the IMF deal was announced with marches in at least 4 cities, including a 2,000 person march in Athens. Any response by a government whose true interest lied in protecting its citizens would have expelled these international banks, seized their assets, or imprisoned them for attempting to financially burn down the country.
But anarchists know that governments will always serve the interests of capital first, and so the only solution to the crisis is anarchist revolution and expropriation of all resources from the hands of capitalists to the hands of the working class, who can continue producing the things people need regardless of the position Goldman Sachs has on Greek debt.
While the new IMF deal agreed to by the government is not certain to end the crisis, it is certain to inspire a long, hot summer of hatred for for capitalists and their lackey politicians.
(h/t Occupied London for some of the writing and photos)
April 24, 2010
Today, the struggle for the defense of life must indisputably include the necessity of abolishing the capitalist system, Granma, April 24, 2010
Today, the struggle for the defense of life must indisputably include the necessity of abolishing the capitalist system, Speech given by Esteban Lazo Hernández, vice president of the Cuban Council of State, April 22, 2010
(given at the closing session of the People’s World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, at the Félix Capriles Stadium, Cochabamba, Bolivia )
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2010/text.html
Viva the struggle of the peoples of Latin America and of the world! (Exclamations of "Viva!")
Viva the struggle for Mother Earth! (Exclamations of "Viva!")
Dear brother Evo Morales, president of the Plurinational State of Bolivia and today, before this great event, we must say, from the bottom of our hearts, the undisputed leader of this noble and heroic people of Bolivia (Applause);
Compañeros of the Bolivian government;
Other authorities present at this historic event;
Participants in the conference that concludes today;
Brother and sister defenders of Mother Earth, of Pachamama committed to the survival of the human species;
President Evo’s initiative to convene this Conference in order to initiate a direct, frank and constructive dialogue with the social, indigenous, scientific and world people’s movements and organizations, with the aim of analyzing the real causes that provoke climate change, is an act of extraordinary importance and exceptional human meaning.
A few minutes ago, we heard the reading of the excellent and profound document drawn up as a result of this first summit, and I can assure all of you of our firm and resolute support for that document, which was read out in the afternoon of today. (Applause and exclamations)
I should also like to transmit fraternal greetings from President Raúl Castro and the leader of the Cuban Revolution, and our Commander in Chief Fidel Castro (Applause), who have been attentively following the development of this historic meeting, which has demonstrated our people’s awareness of climate change and their determination to contribute to the search for real solutions to this crucial phenomenon that is threatening humanity’s survival.
Compañeras and compañeros:
During the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, 1992, the Commander in Chief stated, and I will repeat it for its actuality:
"If humanity is to be saved from that self-destruction, there has to be a better distribution of the wealth and technology available on the planet. Less luxury and less squander in a few countries so that there is less poverty and less hunger on a large part of the Earth." (Applause)
Today, the struggle for the defense of life today must indisputably include the necessity of abolishing the capitalist system with its lifestyle and patterns of production and consumerism that are ruining the environment and leading humanity into a headlong race to its own destruction.
It is intolerable that the total income of the 500 richest people in the world is superior to the income of the 416 million poorest people in the world.
How can it be explained that one third of the world population lacks the medical attention and medicines essential to preserving health – a situation that is being aggravated as climate change and the scarcity of water and food become greater – in a globalized world in which the population is growing, forests are disappearing, agricultural land is diminishing, the air is becoming unbreathable and the human species is running the real risk of disappearing.
How is it possible that $12 trillion is being directed to rescuing bankrupt banks and to recompense speculators, while the planet’s resources are needed to save Mother Earth, to which we all belong, and humanity. (Applause)
That demonstrates the priorities of the industrialized countries, which are not, precisely, to combat climate change and its irreparable consequences for human beings with the entire force of their resources
The failure of the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which took place in Copenhagen last December, is a motive of profound concern for everyone. It failed due to the lack of political will of the most developed nations to achieve ambitious commitments to reducing their emissions, and the fraudulent and exclusive practices that prevailed there.
The so-called Copenhagen Agreement was the result of exclusive negotiations and political manipulation on the part of the nation primarily responsible – both historically and now – for climate change; it does not reflect the requirements supported by science, nor does not respond to the political imperative of halting the advance of this global phenomenon.
It is a necessity that the social, indigenous, scientific and world people’s movements and organizations unite, as was discussed this morning. We have to demand of the developed countries that they acknowledge and settle their climatic debt to humanity.
The wide-ranging participation in this event is an expression that people are becoming aware of the need to fight for that objective, in which the life of all of us is at stake.
It is essential to promote a genuine process of citizens’ participation and consultation with society, and an open dialogue with and among the peoples, with the aim of undertaking urgent actions to avert greater damage and suffering to humanity and to Mother Earth, as proposed in the conference that ended this morning.
Precisely today, April 22, the United Nations is celebrating International Mother Earth Day, proclaimed last year at the initiative of President Evo Morales. (Applause)
We should take advantage of this commemoration and every opportunity that presents itself to work to reestablish harmony with nature and give value to the principles of solidarity, justice and respect for life.
The developed countries carry on their shoulders the weight of 76% of the emissions accumulated in the atmosphere and, therefore, must assume full responsibility for the historical and current impact of their economies and lifestyles on the global climatic equilibrium.
The most recent statistics show that greenhouse gas emissions from the highly developed countries increased by 12.8% from 1990 to 2007.
In that same period, the United States experienced a 15.8% increase of its emissions and concentrated 55% of the total growth of all the emissions of all the developed countries.
The United States cannot continue holding the international community hostage to its domestic policy and must submit to the same rules as the rest of the developed countries. (Applause)
It is unjust and unacceptable to the peoples, movements and social organizations of the South that the developed countries are attempting to transfer the cost of their reductions in greenhouse gas emissions – the result of their historic responsibility in terms of climate change – to the impoverished economies of the underdeveloped countries.
We demand that the Southern nation’s right to development be respected and that this development takes place in a healthy and ecologically balanced environment.
The developed countries must commit themselves to contributing new and additional resources needed for the execution and promotion of national programs aimed at adapting to and mitigating climate change in the developing countries.
Insufficient promises that hardly ever materialize or, when made concrete, remain at levels inferior to those initially promised, are not enough.
The shameful scenario of Copenhagen, marked by the brutal repression of peaceful demonstrations and demands from the social movements and those of the civil society in general, cannot happen again. (Applause)
Dear compañeras and compañeros:
Compañero Evo Morales can be proud of the fact that his resounding victories in the elections of last December and the recent April 4th elections have now been joined by the resounding success of this Conference and his world leadership in this important battle. (Applause)
The democratic and cultural Bolivian revolution constitutes an example for many countries of the world, which see in this process a hope for the construction of societies with new principles and values, directed at generating social well-being and protecting nature and the resources that she generously offers us.
Just three days ago, in Venezuela, the bicentenary commemoration of the beginning of the independence struggle culminated in Caracas with the 9th Extraordinary Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, an event that gave continuity to a new kind of relations of cooperation and solidarity among our countries that are part of this mechanism and which concluded in an important prelude for this summit that we are holding today.
Being here in this beautiful Bolivian land necessarily brings to our minds one of the greats of Latin America, Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara (Applause and exclamations), who gave up his life for an independent Latin America, the owner of its wealth and its fate; as Che did yesterday, today Cuban doctors and teachers are covering the most remote areas fighting for life and for a better future for the Bolivian people and for other peoples in our America. (Applause)
Today, humanity’s enemies are having recourse to lies and infamies and are redoubling their threats against our peoples, against all those who are fighting for sovereignty and independence, for life and for Mother Earth.
I should like to reiterate, in this historic place and at this historic conference, in the name of its people and government, that Cuba will not yield to the coercion and pressure of United States imperialism (Applause and exclamations) and that of its European allies, who cannot resign themselves to accepting that Cuba has the right to exist in freedom and sovereignty. Cuba will never permit external impositions or interference! Cuba will never again return to being a yanki colony! (Exclamations of "No!" and applause)
In the name of the Cuban people, I express our gratitude for the constant solidarity of Bolivia and its people and the peoples of Latin America toward our people.
Compañeras and compañeros:
We have experienced unforgettable days in Cochabamba. Here, our commitment to Mother Earth, to our planet, has been renewed. In this struggle, there is still a long road to be covered, with swiftness and firmness, however arduous it may be, because, as compañero Fidel also stated at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992: "Tomorrow will be too late to do what we should have done a very long time ago."
Thank you very much.
¡Patria o Muerte!
¡Venceremos! (Applause)
Translated by Granma International
(given at the closing session of the People’s World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, at the Félix Capriles Stadium, Cochabamba, Bolivia )
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2010/text.html
Viva the struggle of the peoples of Latin America and of the world! (Exclamations of "Viva!")
Viva the struggle for Mother Earth! (Exclamations of "Viva!")
Dear brother Evo Morales, president of the Plurinational State of Bolivia and today, before this great event, we must say, from the bottom of our hearts, the undisputed leader of this noble and heroic people of Bolivia (Applause);
Compañeros of the Bolivian government;
Other authorities present at this historic event;
Participants in the conference that concludes today;
Brother and sister defenders of Mother Earth, of Pachamama committed to the survival of the human species;
President Evo’s initiative to convene this Conference in order to initiate a direct, frank and constructive dialogue with the social, indigenous, scientific and world people’s movements and organizations, with the aim of analyzing the real causes that provoke climate change, is an act of extraordinary importance and exceptional human meaning.
A few minutes ago, we heard the reading of the excellent and profound document drawn up as a result of this first summit, and I can assure all of you of our firm and resolute support for that document, which was read out in the afternoon of today. (Applause and exclamations)
I should also like to transmit fraternal greetings from President Raúl Castro and the leader of the Cuban Revolution, and our Commander in Chief Fidel Castro (Applause), who have been attentively following the development of this historic meeting, which has demonstrated our people’s awareness of climate change and their determination to contribute to the search for real solutions to this crucial phenomenon that is threatening humanity’s survival.
Compañeras and compañeros:
During the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, 1992, the Commander in Chief stated, and I will repeat it for its actuality:
"If humanity is to be saved from that self-destruction, there has to be a better distribution of the wealth and technology available on the planet. Less luxury and less squander in a few countries so that there is less poverty and less hunger on a large part of the Earth." (Applause)
Today, the struggle for the defense of life today must indisputably include the necessity of abolishing the capitalist system with its lifestyle and patterns of production and consumerism that are ruining the environment and leading humanity into a headlong race to its own destruction.
It is intolerable that the total income of the 500 richest people in the world is superior to the income of the 416 million poorest people in the world.
How can it be explained that one third of the world population lacks the medical attention and medicines essential to preserving health – a situation that is being aggravated as climate change and the scarcity of water and food become greater – in a globalized world in which the population is growing, forests are disappearing, agricultural land is diminishing, the air is becoming unbreathable and the human species is running the real risk of disappearing.
How is it possible that $12 trillion is being directed to rescuing bankrupt banks and to recompense speculators, while the planet’s resources are needed to save Mother Earth, to which we all belong, and humanity. (Applause)
That demonstrates the priorities of the industrialized countries, which are not, precisely, to combat climate change and its irreparable consequences for human beings with the entire force of their resources
The failure of the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which took place in Copenhagen last December, is a motive of profound concern for everyone. It failed due to the lack of political will of the most developed nations to achieve ambitious commitments to reducing their emissions, and the fraudulent and exclusive practices that prevailed there.
The so-called Copenhagen Agreement was the result of exclusive negotiations and political manipulation on the part of the nation primarily responsible – both historically and now – for climate change; it does not reflect the requirements supported by science, nor does not respond to the political imperative of halting the advance of this global phenomenon.
It is a necessity that the social, indigenous, scientific and world people’s movements and organizations unite, as was discussed this morning. We have to demand of the developed countries that they acknowledge and settle their climatic debt to humanity.
The wide-ranging participation in this event is an expression that people are becoming aware of the need to fight for that objective, in which the life of all of us is at stake.
It is essential to promote a genuine process of citizens’ participation and consultation with society, and an open dialogue with and among the peoples, with the aim of undertaking urgent actions to avert greater damage and suffering to humanity and to Mother Earth, as proposed in the conference that ended this morning.
Precisely today, April 22, the United Nations is celebrating International Mother Earth Day, proclaimed last year at the initiative of President Evo Morales. (Applause)
We should take advantage of this commemoration and every opportunity that presents itself to work to reestablish harmony with nature and give value to the principles of solidarity, justice and respect for life.
The developed countries carry on their shoulders the weight of 76% of the emissions accumulated in the atmosphere and, therefore, must assume full responsibility for the historical and current impact of their economies and lifestyles on the global climatic equilibrium.
The most recent statistics show that greenhouse gas emissions from the highly developed countries increased by 12.8% from 1990 to 2007.
In that same period, the United States experienced a 15.8% increase of its emissions and concentrated 55% of the total growth of all the emissions of all the developed countries.
The United States cannot continue holding the international community hostage to its domestic policy and must submit to the same rules as the rest of the developed countries. (Applause)
It is unjust and unacceptable to the peoples, movements and social organizations of the South that the developed countries are attempting to transfer the cost of their reductions in greenhouse gas emissions – the result of their historic responsibility in terms of climate change – to the impoverished economies of the underdeveloped countries.
We demand that the Southern nation’s right to development be respected and that this development takes place in a healthy and ecologically balanced environment.
The developed countries must commit themselves to contributing new and additional resources needed for the execution and promotion of national programs aimed at adapting to and mitigating climate change in the developing countries.
Insufficient promises that hardly ever materialize or, when made concrete, remain at levels inferior to those initially promised, are not enough.
The shameful scenario of Copenhagen, marked by the brutal repression of peaceful demonstrations and demands from the social movements and those of the civil society in general, cannot happen again. (Applause)
Dear compañeras and compañeros:
Compañero Evo Morales can be proud of the fact that his resounding victories in the elections of last December and the recent April 4th elections have now been joined by the resounding success of this Conference and his world leadership in this important battle. (Applause)
The democratic and cultural Bolivian revolution constitutes an example for many countries of the world, which see in this process a hope for the construction of societies with new principles and values, directed at generating social well-being and protecting nature and the resources that she generously offers us.
Just three days ago, in Venezuela, the bicentenary commemoration of the beginning of the independence struggle culminated in Caracas with the 9th Extraordinary Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, an event that gave continuity to a new kind of relations of cooperation and solidarity among our countries that are part of this mechanism and which concluded in an important prelude for this summit that we are holding today.
Being here in this beautiful Bolivian land necessarily brings to our minds one of the greats of Latin America, Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara (Applause and exclamations), who gave up his life for an independent Latin America, the owner of its wealth and its fate; as Che did yesterday, today Cuban doctors and teachers are covering the most remote areas fighting for life and for a better future for the Bolivian people and for other peoples in our America. (Applause)
Today, humanity’s enemies are having recourse to lies and infamies and are redoubling their threats against our peoples, against all those who are fighting for sovereignty and independence, for life and for Mother Earth.
I should like to reiterate, in this historic place and at this historic conference, in the name of its people and government, that Cuba will not yield to the coercion and pressure of United States imperialism (Applause and exclamations) and that of its European allies, who cannot resign themselves to accepting that Cuba has the right to exist in freedom and sovereignty. Cuba will never permit external impositions or interference! Cuba will never again return to being a yanki colony! (Exclamations of "No!" and applause)
In the name of the Cuban people, I express our gratitude for the constant solidarity of Bolivia and its people and the peoples of Latin America toward our people.
Compañeras and compañeros:
We have experienced unforgettable days in Cochabamba. Here, our commitment to Mother Earth, to our planet, has been renewed. In this struggle, there is still a long road to be covered, with swiftness and firmness, however arduous it may be, because, as compañero Fidel also stated at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992: "Tomorrow will be too late to do what we should have done a very long time ago."
Thank you very much.
¡Patria o Muerte!
¡Venceremos! (Applause)
Translated by Granma International
April 22, 2010
"We Can Make Him Disappear": Immigration Officials Are Holding People In Secret, Unmarked Jails, December 19, 2009
From The Nation / By Jacqueline Stevens
http://www.alternet.org/rights/144656/%22we_can_make_him_disappear%22:_immigration_officials_are_holding_people_in_secret,_unmarked_jails
In addition to publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is holding prisoners in 186 unlisted, unmarked locations, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces.
"If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear." Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008. Also present was Amnesty International's Sarnata Reynolds, who wrote about the incident in the 2009 report "Jailed Without Justice" and said in an interview, "It was almost surreal being there, particularly being someone from an organization that has worked on disappearances for decades in other countries. I couldn't believe he would say it so boldly, as though it weren't anything wrong."
Pendergraph knew that ICE could disappear people, because he knew that in addition to the publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is also confining people in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces revealing no information about their ICE tenants -- nary a sign, a marked car or even a US flag. (Presumably there is a flag at the Veterans Affairs Complex in Castle Point, New York, but no one would associate it with the Criminal Alien Program ICE is running out of Building 7.) Designed for confining individuals in transit, with no beds or showers, subfield offices are not subject to ICE Detention Standards. The subfield office network was mentioned in an October report by Dora Schriro, then special adviser to Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, but no locations were provided.
I obtained a partial list of the subfield offices from an ICE officer and shared it with immigrant advocates in major human and civil rights organizations, whose reactions ranged from perplexity to outrage. Andrea Black, director of Detention Watch Network (DWN), said she was aware of some of the subfield offices but not that people were held there. ICE never provided DWN a list of their locations. "This points to an overall lack of transparency and even organization on the part of ICE," said Black. ICE says temporary facilities in field or subfield offices are used for 84 percent of all book-ins. There are twenty-four listed field offices. The 186 unlisted subfield offices tend to be where local police and sheriffs have formally or informally reached out to ICE. For instance, in 2007 North Carolina had 629,947 immigrants and at least six subfield offices, compared with Massachusetts, with 913,957 immigrants and one listed field office. Not surprisingly, before joining ICE Pendergraph, a sheriff, was the Joe Arpaio of North Carolina, his official bio stating that he "spearheaded the use of the 287(g) program," legislation that empowers local police to perform immigration law enforcement functions.
A senior attorney at a civil rights organization, speaking on background, saw the list and exclaimed, "You cannot have secret detention! The public has the right to know where detention is happening."
Alison Parker, deputy director of Human Rights Watch, wrote a December comprehensive report on ICE transit policies, "Locked Up Far Away." Even she had never heard of the subfield offices and was concerned that the failure to disclose their locations violates the UN's Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a signatory. She explained that the government must provide "an impartial authority to review the lawfulness of custody. Part and parcel is the ability of somebody to find the person and to make their presence known to a court."
The challenge of being unable to find people in detention centers, documented in the Human Rights Watch report, is worsened when one does not even know where to look. The absence of a real-time database tracking people in ICE custody means ICE has created a network of secret jails. Subfield offices enter the time and date of custody after the fact, a situation ripe for errors, hinted at in the Schriro report, as well as cover-ups.
ICE refused a request for an interview, selectively responded to questions sent by e-mail and refused to identify the person authorizing the reply -- another symptom of ICE thwarting transparency and hence accountability. The anonymous official provided no explanation for ICE not posting a list of subfield office locations and phone numbers or for its lack of a real-time locator database.
It is not surprising to find that, with no detention rules and being off the map spatially and otherwise, ICE agents at these locations are acting in ways that are unconscionable and unlawful. According to Ahilan Arulanantham, director of Immigrant Rights for the ACLU of Southern California, the Los Angeles subfield office called B-18 is a barely converted storage space tucked away in a large downtown federal building. "You actually walk down the sidewalk and into an underground parking lot. Then you turn right, open a big door and voilà, you're in a detention center," Arulanantham explained. Without knowing where you were going, he said, "it's not clear to me how anyone would find it. What this breeds, not surprisingly, is a whole host of problems concerning access to phones, relatives and counsel."
http://www.alternet.org/rights/144656/%22we_can_make_him_disappear%22:_immigration_officials_are_holding_people_in_secret,_unmarked_jails
In addition to publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is holding prisoners in 186 unlisted, unmarked locations, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces.
"If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear." Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008. Also present was Amnesty International's Sarnata Reynolds, who wrote about the incident in the 2009 report "Jailed Without Justice" and said in an interview, "It was almost surreal being there, particularly being someone from an organization that has worked on disappearances for decades in other countries. I couldn't believe he would say it so boldly, as though it weren't anything wrong."
Pendergraph knew that ICE could disappear people, because he knew that in addition to the publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is also confining people in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces revealing no information about their ICE tenants -- nary a sign, a marked car or even a US flag. (Presumably there is a flag at the Veterans Affairs Complex in Castle Point, New York, but no one would associate it with the Criminal Alien Program ICE is running out of Building 7.) Designed for confining individuals in transit, with no beds or showers, subfield offices are not subject to ICE Detention Standards. The subfield office network was mentioned in an October report by Dora Schriro, then special adviser to Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, but no locations were provided.
I obtained a partial list of the subfield offices from an ICE officer and shared it with immigrant advocates in major human and civil rights organizations, whose reactions ranged from perplexity to outrage. Andrea Black, director of Detention Watch Network (DWN), said she was aware of some of the subfield offices but not that people were held there. ICE never provided DWN a list of their locations. "This points to an overall lack of transparency and even organization on the part of ICE," said Black. ICE says temporary facilities in field or subfield offices are used for 84 percent of all book-ins. There are twenty-four listed field offices. The 186 unlisted subfield offices tend to be where local police and sheriffs have formally or informally reached out to ICE. For instance, in 2007 North Carolina had 629,947 immigrants and at least six subfield offices, compared with Massachusetts, with 913,957 immigrants and one listed field office. Not surprisingly, before joining ICE Pendergraph, a sheriff, was the Joe Arpaio of North Carolina, his official bio stating that he "spearheaded the use of the 287(g) program," legislation that empowers local police to perform immigration law enforcement functions.
A senior attorney at a civil rights organization, speaking on background, saw the list and exclaimed, "You cannot have secret detention! The public has the right to know where detention is happening."
Alison Parker, deputy director of Human Rights Watch, wrote a December comprehensive report on ICE transit policies, "Locked Up Far Away." Even she had never heard of the subfield offices and was concerned that the failure to disclose their locations violates the UN's Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a signatory. She explained that the government must provide "an impartial authority to review the lawfulness of custody. Part and parcel is the ability of somebody to find the person and to make their presence known to a court."
The challenge of being unable to find people in detention centers, documented in the Human Rights Watch report, is worsened when one does not even know where to look. The absence of a real-time database tracking people in ICE custody means ICE has created a network of secret jails. Subfield offices enter the time and date of custody after the fact, a situation ripe for errors, hinted at in the Schriro report, as well as cover-ups.
ICE refused a request for an interview, selectively responded to questions sent by e-mail and refused to identify the person authorizing the reply -- another symptom of ICE thwarting transparency and hence accountability. The anonymous official provided no explanation for ICE not posting a list of subfield office locations and phone numbers or for its lack of a real-time locator database.
It is not surprising to find that, with no detention rules and being off the map spatially and otherwise, ICE agents at these locations are acting in ways that are unconscionable and unlawful. According to Ahilan Arulanantham, director of Immigrant Rights for the ACLU of Southern California, the Los Angeles subfield office called B-18 is a barely converted storage space tucked away in a large downtown federal building. "You actually walk down the sidewalk and into an underground parking lot. Then you turn right, open a big door and voilà, you're in a detention center," Arulanantham explained. Without knowing where you were going, he said, "it's not clear to me how anyone would find it. What this breeds, not surprisingly, is a whole host of problems concerning access to phones, relatives and counsel."
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