China closes door on western values Ray Kwong jan 27 2014

source: http://www.ejinsight.com/20150127-china-closes-door-on-western-values/


If you think life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is a good thing, then shame on you.

That’s the gist of new directives from Beijing, which in no uncertain terms seek to put the kibosh on western ideas in an effort to enforce the Communist Party’s authority.

China is setting up an entirely new, mandatory way to look at the world in yet another sign that as its economy grows, the country is closing itself off from the West in a significant way, Business Insider said.

Mandates for universities to teach core socialist values that “enhance the leadership of the Communist Party of China” went out in late December.

Since then, professors have reported tighter controls, including government monitors filing covert reports on classroom lectures, AP reported.

Last week’s target was think tanks.

“Think tanks should stick to Marxist ideology, follow the CPC’s leadership and provide intellectual support to rejuvenate the nation,” a Xinhua report on the decree said.

It said think tanks have until 2020 not only to get with the program but to “wield major global influence”.

The call for greater “ideological guidance” does not come willy-nilly.

A confidential internal memo called Document No. 9, widely circulated within the party in 2013 and first cited by the New York Times in August that year, warned that power could escape the party’s grip unless it eradicated subversive western currents coursing through Chinese society.

“Western forces hostile to China and dissidents within the country are still constantly infiltrating the ideological sphere,” the memo said, highlighting seven dangerous western values, including those relating to constitutional democracy, human rights and press freedom.

In the blatant self-preservation department, the memo also forbade criticism of past errors the party may have made and put a halt to the second-guessing of plans on reform and opening up.

To be sure, democracy, freedom and human rights have been debated in China for more than 30 years, but until now, senior leaders have pretty much voiced their views through the party’s mouthpiece, the People’s Daily.

President Xi Jinping told the politburo Friday that all members of the party should value ideological work and promote “core socialist values”, state media reported.

Xi also stressed that dialectical materialism, a strand of Marxist philosophy, should provide party members with the right approach to problem solving as China continues on its path to reform and development.

That approach basically means China will not let western values undermine party rule, opting instead — for better or worse — to work out all its problems and challenges on its own, both domestically and abroad.

“We should grasp new traits in new phases of development and stipulate guidelines in accordance with reality,” Xinhua quoted Xi as saying.

He said ideology should be the heart of the party, the report said.

Critics of China’s renewed Marxist path, Business Insider said, are being publicly shamed.

On Sunday, the Communist Party magazine Qiushi Journal openly attacked a prominent Peking University law professor, He Weifang.

He has been critical of the government, calling high-profile corruption trials “satire” and arguing that Chinese communism and a strong rule of law don’t mix at US institutions like Princeton University and the Brookings Institute, a leading think tank.

He was called out by Qiushi for his stance on the rule of law in China — which the government itself has acknowledged is weak by creating an extensive anti-corruption campaign.

...

Trojan hearse: Greek elections and the Euro leper colony By Greg Palast Jan 23, 2015

source: http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/15022


Europe is stunned, and bankers aghast, that polls show the new party of the Left, Syriza, will win Greece’s parliamentary elections to be held this coming Sunday, January 25.

Syriza promises that, if elected, it will cure Greece of leprosy. Oddly, Syriza also promises that it will remain in the leper colony. That is, Syriza wants to rid Greece of the cruelty of austerity imposed by the European Central Bank but insists on staying in the euro zone.

The problem is, austerity run wild is merely a symptom of an illness. The underlying disease is the euro itself.

For the last five years, Greeks have been told that, if you cure your disease—that is, if you dump the euro—the sky will fall. I guess you haven’t noticed, the sky has fallen already. With unemployment at 25%, with Greek doctors and teachers eating out of garbage cans, there is no further to fall.

In 2010, when unemployment was a terrible 10%, a year into the crisis, the “Troika” (the European Central Bank, European Commission and the International Monetary Fund) told the Greeks that brutal austerity measures would restore Greece’s economy by 2012.

Ask yourself, Was the Troika right?

There is a saying in America: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Can Greece survive without the euro? Greece is already dead, but the Germans won’t even bother to bury the corpse. Greeks are told that if they leave the euro and renounce its debts, the nation will not be able to access world capital markets. The reality is, Greece can’t access world markets now: no one lends to a corpse.

There’s a way back across the River Styx. But it’s not by paddling on a euro.

There’s life after euro

Many nations do quite well without the euro. Sweden, Denmark and India do just fine without the euro—and so does Turkey, which had the luck to be excluded from the euro-zone. As long as Turks stick to the lira, even Turkey’s brain-damaged Islamo-fascist President Tayyip ErdoÄŸan cannot destroy their economy.

Can Greece just dump the euro? They have happy precedents to follow. Argentina was once pegged to the US dollar much as Greece is tied to the euro today. In 2000, Argentines, hungry and angry, revolted. Argentina ultimately overthrew the dollar dictatorship, the IMF diktats and the threats of creditors, and defaulted on its dollar bonds. Free at last! In the decade since, the Argentine economy soared. Yes, today, Argentina is under attack by financial vultures, but that is only because the nation became so temptingly wealthy.

I was in Brazil when its President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told the IMF to go to hell—and rejected privatization of the state banks and the state oil company, rejected cutting pensions and thumbed his nose at the rest of the austerity nonsense. Instead, Lula created the bolsa familia, a massive pay-out to the nation’s poor. The result: Brazil not only survived but thrived during the 2008-10 world financial crisis. Despite pressure, Brazil never ceded control of its currency. (It is a sad irony that Brazil is only now faltering. That’s the fault entirely of Lula’s successor, President Dilma Rousseff, who is beginning to dance the austerity samba.)

Austerity: Religion, not economics

The euro is simply the deutschmark with little stars on it. Greece cannot adopt Germany’s currency without adopting Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, as its own.

And Schäuble has determined that Greece must be punished. As my homey Paul Krugman points out, there is no credible economic theory that says that austerity—that is, cutting government spending, cutting wages, cutting consumer demand—can in any way help a nation in recession, in deflation. That’s why, in 2009, Obama ordered up stimulus, not a sleeping pill.

But austerity has nothing to do with economics. It is religion: the belief by the stern Lutheran Germans that Greeks have had too much fun, spent too much money, and spent too much lazy time in the sun—and now Greeks must pay a price for their sins.

Oddly, I hear this self-flagellating nonsense from Greeks themselves: we are lazy. We deserve our punishment. Nonsense. The average Greek works more hours in a year than any other worker in the 34 nations of the OECD; Germans the least.

The euro’s father describes his little bastard

Alexis Tsipras, the leader of Syriza, would like to pretend that austerity and the euro are two different things, that you can marry the pretty girl but not invite her ugly sister to the wedding. Apparently, the Syriza chief is blissfully ignorant of the history of the euro. The horror of austerity is not the consequence of Greek profligacy: it was designed into the euro’s plan from the beginning.

This was explained to me by the father of the euro himself, economist Robert Mundell of Columbia University. (I studied economics with Mundell’s buddy, Milton Friedman.) Mundell not only invented the euro, he also fathered the misery-making policies of Thatcher and Reagan, known as “supply-side economics”—or, as George Bush Sr. called it, “voodoo economics.” Supply-side voodoo is the long-discredited belief that if a nation demolishes the power of unions, cuts business taxes, eliminates government regulation and public ownership of utilities, economic prosperity will follow.

The euro is simply the other side of the supply-side coin. As Mundell explained it, the euro is the way in which congresses and parliaments can be stripped of all power over monetary and fiscal policy. Bothersome democracy is removed from the economic system. “Without fiscal policy,” Mundell told me, “the only way nations can keep jobs is by the competitive reduction of rules on business.”

Greece, to survive in a euro economy, can only revive employment by reducing wages. Indeed, the recent tiny reduction in unemployment is the sign that Greeks are slowly accepting a permanent future of low wages serving piña coladas to Germans on holiday cruises.

It is argued that Greece owes Germany, the IMF and the European Central Bank for bail-out-billions. Nonsense. None of the billions in bail-out funds went into Greek pockets. It all went to bail out Deutsche Bank and other foreign creditors. The EU treasuries swallowed 90% of its private bankers’ bonds. Germany bailed out Germany, not Greece.

Nevertheless, Greece must pay Germany back, Mr. Tsipras, if you want to continue to use Germany’s currency, that is.

Greece: Goldman sacked

Greece’s ruin began with secret, fraudulent currency swaps, designed a decade ago by Goldman Sachs, to conceal Greek deficits that exceeded the euro zone’s 3%-of-GDP limit. In 2009, when the truth came out, Greek debt holders realized they had been cheated. These debt buyers then demanded usurious levels of interest (or, if you prefer, a high “spread”) to insure themselves against future fraud. The compounding of this interest premium brought the Greek nation to its knees. In other words, the crimes committed to join and stay in the euro, not Greek profligacy, caused the crisis.

The USA, Brazil and China escaped from depression by controlling their money supply, government spending and currency exchange rates—crucial tools Greece gave up in return for the euro.

Worse, once the Trojan hearse of the euro entered Athens, tourism, Greece’s main industry, drained to Turkey where hotels and souvenirs are priced in cheap lira. This allowed Dr. Mundell’s remorseless wage-lowering machine, the euro, to do its work, to force Greece to strip all its workers of pensions and power.

Greece fell to its knees, with no choice but to beg Germany for mercy.

But there is no mercy. As Germany’s Schäuble insists, democracy, this week’s vote, means nothing. “New elections change nothing in the accords struck with the Greek government,” he says. “[Greeks] have no alternative.”

Ah, but they do, Mr. Schäuble. They can tell you to take your euro and shove it up your Merkel.

The Greek election won’t end the fight 23 jan 2015

 
 photo: Communist youth cadre of the KKE

source: posted by Morning Star in Features
This article was produced by the International Section of the Communist Party of Greece.

When in local government Syriza supported reactionary changes to industrial relations and hiving off municipal services to NGOs, none of which bodes well for the future, argues the Communist Party of Greece (KKE)

Kevin Ovenden’s article Athens Stands on the Verge of its Liberation painted a picture of the situation in Greece today which has nothing to do with reality and misleads the Morning Star’s readers.

He argued that Syriza belongs to the “radical left” and that the impending election of a Syriza government marks a rupture with the European Establishment.

He attempted to depict Syriza as the historic successor of the titanic struggles of the communist movement in Greece in the 20th century.

Greece’s anti-fascist resistance forces the National Liberation Front (EAM), the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS), and the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) which fought the US and British-backed imperialist government between 1946 and 1949 came into fierce confrontation with the fascist occupier, imperialism and the class enemy in Greece, paying the price with thousands of dead, years of persecution, torture and exile.

By contrast the president and leading officials of Syriza are feted in the mansions of the plutocracy, the IMF, in Texas, in the Bilderberg Group meeting at Lake Como in Italy, in the City of London.

They loudly declare that Greece’s membership of the European Union and Nato is not disputed.

We must not restrict ourselves to the title of a party and how it describes itself — “left wing,” “anti-austerity” — if we want to examine its true character.

The reality is that Syriza accepts the strategy of the EU and capitalism. It has emerged as the new social-democratic party in the place of Pasok, a new pole in the two-pole bourgeois political system.

That doesn’t mean that New Democracy and Syriza do not have differences — simply that their differences express existing differences inside the eurozone countries, among sections of the financial elite, bourgeois class and businessmen.

The one view, which at the moment prevails in the European Commission, the EU and Germany, talks about a restrictive political line, continuing austerity measures so each country can move out of the “crisis phase” and so the eurozone does not further slide into crisis.

There is another view that talks about an “expansive” political line, as the IMF and Mario Draghi from the European Central Bank do.

They say that ready money must be provided to the businessmen in order for the capitalist economies to start to develop again.

This is the essence of the debate and it has nothing to do with the interests of the working class or its allies.

Its lack of strategic differences with the line taken by New Democracy is expressed by Syriza’s electoral lists, which include many “pro-memorandum” (the accord signed between the Greek government and IMF pledging huge spending cuts) figures from Pasok and other parties. These include Pasok theoretician Konstantinos Tsoulakos, former minister Theodora Tzakri and former Defence Ministry chief of staff Nikos Toskas.

Syriza has abandoned its radical demagogy, especially in relation to membership of the imperialist inter-state union that is the EU.

Its president Alexis Tsipras has repeatedly made clear that Greece will retain membership: “Greece has some institutional obligations as an equal member of the EU, our obligations are to achieve the fiscal goals.”

“We have an institutional obligation to have balanced budgets.”

“We must observe the founding treaties of the EU, this is an absolute obligation.”

We should bear in mind the consequences of these “institutional obligations” for healthcare, pensions, education, foreign policy, immigration and so on.

Tsipras is equally clear on the issue of Greece’s membership of Nato.

“Our country is committed to the institutional framework and agreements in relation to Nato.”

A Syriza government would continue to provide Nato with access to Greek airspace and waters, the use of its infrastructure and the Suda base from which it can continue to butcher people.

It would continue to provide frigates for Nato missions in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere.

We would continue to be entangled in imperialist plans in a region full of flashpoints and tensions — the Aegean, Cyprus ...

Some say we are hasty to judge. That we should wait and see how Syriza in government will operate.

But Syriza is not an untried, untested political force. It supported the Maastricht Treaty. It supported Greece’s accession to the euro.

In local government it supported reactionary changes to industrial relations and hiving off municipal services to NGOs.

Syriza’s candidate for the prefecture of Attica Rena Dorou said before local elections that she would abolish the memorandum in the region if elected.

After the election, as the new prefect, she has voted for and implemented the budget drafted by her predecessor, a pro-memorandum figure from Pasok.

This is a budget that provides tens of millions of euros to business interests and crumbs to projects related to people’s living conditions, such as anti-flood and anti-earthquake infrastructure.

In the municipality of Drapetsona-Keratsini, the Syriza-controlled council decided to end permanent, stable work with real rights for local government workers and hired 485 workers on two-month contracts, contracts for only 135 days a year and contracts that provided only five days’ work a month.

This at a time when Communist mayors are fighting to ensure that no workers are dismissed, against “flexible” labour relations, for the reduction of taxes, the abolition of nursery fees and the expansion of municipal services.

We can also look at Syriza’s stance in the trade union movement. Over the past two years, it has not tried to utilise its increased electoral support to mobilise trade unionists but has fostered passivity and the softening of workers’ demands.

It has told workers to stay at home and wait for a Syriza government, their alleged “saviour.”

It wages war on the class-oriented trade union movement PAME.

Trade union elections in Greece are different to those in Britain — we vote for a slate for the executive committee as a whole and not for individual posts.

Each trade union grouping puts forward its own slate of candidates and elects the number of seats on the basis of the percentage they receive.

Syriza participates in joint electoral slates with PASKE, the Pasok-oriented movement, and DAKE, the New Democracy aligned movement, against PAME in dozens of trade unions.

In the private sector, where it has a trade union majority, it signs unacceptable agreements — recently in the Veropoulos supermarket chain it agreed to wage reductions of between 10 and 12 per cent.

There should be no illusions that the “leftwingers” in Syriza will have a positive effect. They are the same

people who voted for Maastricht and the euro.

First they said they would never accept any “pro-memorandum” figures on their electoral lists. Now they have them, they say there should be no “pro-memorandum” ministers.

They’ll probably end up with pro-austerity ministers and adjust their demand to saying there should be no “pro-memorandum” prime ministers.

The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) has a diametrically opposed approach. Through important struggles and mass political work it demonstrates that whatever bourgeois management formula is followed, while Greece remains in the framework of the EU, Nato and capitalist development it will not benefit the working class.

We fight for the emancipation of the working class and the people from social democracy and opportunism.

We struggle to isolate fascism in neighbourhoods and workplaces.

We fight for the regrouping of the labour movement and the formation of a people’s alliance against the monopolies and against capitalism.

The KKE calls on the workers to support it in the elections so that there can be a strong workers’ and people’s opposition inside and outside parliament the day after the elections.

The KKE will not support any government that is bound by the anti-people strategy of the EU and capital.

We are ready to play a role in a workers’ government, where the people will be the masters of the economy and control state power — a government that will unilaterally cancel the debt, disengage from all imperialist organisations and socialise the monopolies.