Next Year Country

Compelling Memoir of a Revolutionary Daughter

2012-02-15T16:53:00.001-06:00

Review of Carmen Aguirre, Something Fierce (Vancouver: Douglas & Mcintyre, 2011)

J Kavanagh
New Socialist webzine
15 February 2012

Something Fierce recently won CBC's Canada Reads 2012 contest. It has been long-listed for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. It was also nominated for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. Here we offer an appreciation by J. Kavanagh.

If I had to limit myself to one word to describe Something Fierce, it would be "raw." Aguirre does not claim that this, her first book, flowed from her pen this way. She credits her editor with always challenging her to be more immediate, more direct. But the story could not have been written without Aguirre's clear recall of so much of her life and her willingness to relive painful experiences.

The story is engaging, if not always easy to read. But you will want to keep on reading because she illuminates an experience that most of us will never have first-hand. We see the world through the eyes of a child, then a teenage girl whose parents are involved in the dangerous struggle against the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Eventually we see her as a young adult, herself now committed to the revolutionary struggle.

As a child she meets Chileans arriving in Vancouver, their bodies bearing the marks of Pinochet's torture chambers. Even her childhood games imagine participation in the struggle. Her mother and father separate and eventually she and her sister are taken to South America by her mother and her mother's new partner. They will assist the Chilean resistance from Bolivia and then Argentina.

With this she begins a life of disguise and deception. She cannot be honest with friends back home in Vancouver about where she is and what she is doing. She cannot be honest with people she meets about what her family is doing. If she witnesses racist abuse directed at Indian people by border guards, she must remain impassive, not draw attention to herself. Friendships made in one city are for the most part abandoned when they move on. They cannot know who might be watching them.

As they move from place to place they must blend in, even if it means mixing with people from the political elite. Even if it means talking to medical students who accept that supervising torture will be a part of their job.

At one point she befriends a German/Chilean family living in Argentina. They are openly in support of Pinochet. Even more startling, they are quite open about their admiration for Hitler. Carmen must remain non-committal, not only for fear of betraying her parent's activity, but because the girl in this family is her only companion in an isolated backwater.

When Aguirre arrives in South America, she feels like she has come home. But at the same time she experiences South America with some of the sensibility acquired during her years in Canada. She bridles against the routine sexism of young men in Bolivia. Once, out with friends, she begins to offer a few young men the same kind of mocking harassment she has experienced on the street. Her friends are amused and frightened at the same time, and the young men are thunderstruck to be greeted this way. But this is a rare exception to her normally prudent and careful self.

The move from Bolivia to Argentina reminds her of how brown she is compared to the average Argentinian. For a time she reacts to this by becoming a shy homebody, devoting herself to keeping their home clean and tidy. Through her we experience the Falklands War and its aftermath as it was experienced in Argentina, including the mistreatment of Argentinian soldiers by their officers, and the public hostility to them after Argentina's defeat.

Through her we experience runaway inflation. On one occasion, her parents leave her for a time while they are carrying out their political assignments. They leave what they believe to be adequate provision, but in the weeks while they are gone the money they have left becomes increasingly worthless. Only when she is down to her last scrap of food does she get a gift of food from a family friend.

This book has much to teach a broad audience about imperialist brutality. I am sure there are many people who have no knowledge of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. And who can blame them? Where would they get this knowledge? That experience is typically not part of our political discussion. Or worse, Pinochet is lauded for his fiscal policies (See Niall Ferguson's TV series "The Ascent of Money"). It is worth remembering that the much-revered Margaret Thatcher dismissed the leftists who opposed Pinochet's rule as sore losers.

Some readers may be left hungering for more. While the resistance certainly inspired great commitment and courage, was it as effective as it could have been? Why did the resistance decide they had been defeated, just as Pinochet's rule was coming to an end? What can we take away from this book to make us more effective today?

Aguirre did not set out to answer those questions. I don't know of any book that addresses them. Such a book could be written by any number of serious scholars. But only Aguirre could have written this book. She has given us the gift of her own experience. For many readers this may be their first exposure to the reality of struggles in the Third World. I hope it inspires them to read more.

J Kavanagh was involved in the Chilean solidarity movement beginning days after the coup of September 11, 1973. He is presently retired in British Columbia, but remains politically active.

NDP would sacrifice even medicare for Quebec votes

2012-02-15T16:37:00.000-06:00

Thomas Walkom
Toronto Sun
February 14, 2012

When asked how she would react if the Quebec government decided to charge patients user fees every time they went to a doctor or hospital, Peggy Nash replied, "It’s a provincial decision so it’s the decision of Quebecers.”

Desperate to maintain seats in Quebec, New Democrats — like the Liberals and Conservatives before them — are going through a familiar round of ideological contortions.

Is the party of Tommy Douglas still a stout defender of national medicare? Absolutely yes when New Democrats are speaking to audiences outside Quebec.

But inside that province, as NDP leadership candidate and Toronto MP Peggy Nash made clear Sunday, matters are more complicated.

During a debate with fellow contenders in Quebec City, Nash was asked how she would react if the Quebec government decided to charge patients user fees every time they went to a doctor or hospital.

“It’s a provincial decision so it’s the decision of Quebecers,” was her answer.

Had that same question been asked in Toronto about, say, a decision by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to let provinces charge such user fees, I expect the moral outrage from all seven NDP leadership candidates would have been palpable.

They would have vied with one another to point out that the Canada Health Act, the federal law governing medicare, specifically bans user fees.

They would have pointed out, correctly, that such fees penalize the sick, that they offend the very idea of universal medicare and that, unless set high enough to act as a barrier to care, they cost more to collect than they raise in revenue.

But not in Quebec City. During the debate proper, none of the other leadership candidates challenged Nash. Rival Paul Dewar, who asked the question, later told reporters he was “surprised” by her answer.

Nor was the question an abstract one. With the possible exception of British Columbia, Quebec has gone farther than any other province in permitting two-tier care.

Two years ago Premier Jean Charest specifically proposed user fees for visits to physicians and hospital emergency rooms — in direct violation of the Canada Health Act.

At the time, then-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff got into hot water for making the kind of statement Nash did this week. He later had to recant.

The NDP’s then-leader, Jack Layton, was more dexterous. He questioned Harper’s willingness to enforce the medicare law but very carefully didn’t criticize Charest for planning to break it.

Layton’s Quebec push was on at the time and the NDP chief didn’t want to queer his chances in the province.

So what answer might Peggy Nash have given? Well, she got it half right. Health is a matter of provincial jurisdiction and no province is obliged to adhere to the principles of medicare. Quebec, or any other province, may do what it pleases.

But the other half of the answer is that provinces that don’t uphold these principles don’t get federal cash. That’s the deal. And for provinces that impose user fees, the financial penalties are very specific.

Sure Quebec can have user fees, she could have said. But if my party wins power federally it won’t get a dime from us.

And she could have pointed out that Quebecers, just like other Canadians, value medicare, which is why Charest eventually backed down.

Of course, she didn’t say such things. Federal politicians trawling for Quebec votes rarely do. Quebec governments traditionally demand both money from Ottawa and the right to spend that money as they choose. A political party that challenges this somewhat self-serving formula risks being labelled unsympathetic to the province’s “specificity.”

No aspiring NDP leader wants that. For New Democrats, Quebec is a necessary way-station on the road to power. Even national medicare can be sacrificed. But not Quebec’s amour propre.

Farmers launch challenge to restore Wheat Board and seek $17billion in damages

2012-02-15T16:29:00.000-06:00

Canadian Wheat Board Alliance

Winnipeg, February 15, 2012 - The Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board (FCWB) announced that the law firm of Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP (SGM), working with FCWB counsel, Anders Bruun, has launched a court action in the Federal Court of Canada to restore the Canadian Wheat Board and recover damages farmers have suffered as a result of Ottawa’s tampering with western grain marketing. More information about the class action can be found at www.cwbclassaction.ca

The action places new and significant constitutional arguments in front of the courts. The plaintiffs are four grain farmers, Harold Bell of British Columbia (250) 785-8996 / 262-9278, Andrew Dennis of Manitoba (204) 476-6498, Nathan Macklin of Alberta (780) 957-2583 / 832-3190, and Ian McCreary of Saskatchewan (306) 567-2099 / 561-7838.

“The goals of this action are twofold” observed Steven Shrybman, one of the SGM legal team handling the litigation. “Our primary objective is to restore democratic farmer control of the Wheat Board and the right of producers to collectively market their grain. We are also seeking compensation from the government for damages it has caused to the interests of producers.”

Brookdale, Manitoba, area farmer Andrew Dennis added “this is a complex and far reaching litigation which will include both constitutional issues and a class action to recover lost money for farmers. We have also retained Anders Bruun, a lawyer with over 20 years of grain trade experience, to act as co-counsel with SGM to prosecute this case. Mr. Bruun represented the FCWB when we stopped Ottawa removing barley from the Wheat Board in 2007. SGM has a successful track record on similar cases so we feel confident that we will ultimately reverse Ottawa’s unlawful actions and we expect our members will receive substantial compensation for the damages already done.”

Bill Gehl, chairperson of the Canadian Wheat Board Alliance and a member of the Friends, observed that “in response to a FCWB legal case last year a Federal Court Judge held that Minister Ritz broke the law by introducing legislation to destroy our Canadian Wheat Board. The Harper government has defied the courts to implement this legislation.”

“Rejecting this legislation is about more than the Canadian Wheat Board, it is about due process and the rule of law itself and that affects everyone in Canada” observed Anders Bruun, the Friends legal counsel.
Stewart Wells, one of the farmer-elected Directors of the Wheat Board dismissed under the illegal legislation, said “we have a broadly based group supporting this action including 8 of the 10 deposed farmer-elected CWB Directors, the Producer Car Shippers of Canada, the Canadian Wheat Board Alliance, various civil society groups, the National Farmers’ Union and others who are affected by the changes Ottawa has imposed on farmers.”

Laurence Nicholson, an irrigation farmer at Seven Persons, Alberta concluded “we have called on the Government of Canada to respect the law and stop their bullying of farmers. Instead they have chosen to break the law, so now it falls to us to give the courts the opportunity to assert the rule of law and redress this injustice.”

NDP leadership candidates ducking biggest issue of our time

2012-02-15T16:21:00.001-06:00

BY NICK FILLMORE
Canadian Dimension
February 14th 2012

Heading into the final weeks of the NDP leadership race, the candidates still have not debated the most important challenge facing society—the destructive force of modern-day capitalism.

How can a political party that calls itself “social democratic”, or even “progressive,” have a leadership campaign go on for several weeks without candidates—as far as I can determine—discussing the damaging force that capitalism has become?

At Davos last month, heads of think tanks and corporations called for the revamping of capitalism because of the destruction the system has wrought.

Even the normally mild-mannered monthly Toronto Life had freelance journalist Jason McBride do a hatched job on dysfunctional capitalism in its March issue in an article entitled “Something Rotten on Bay Street.”

McBride interviewed prominent economist Roger Martin, Dean of University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and author of Fixing the Game.

Writes McBride: “Martin is a great believer in business as ‘an agent of positive change,’ but he argues that business has failed, spectacularly, to fulfill this role, largely because of its misplaced faith in erroneous economic theory: specifically, that the primary purpose of any corporation should be the maximization of shareholder value.”

Why can’t the NDP speak up?

Surely if it is okay for Big Business and one of its leading proponents to slag capitalism, it should be safe for aspiring NDP leadership hopefuls to speak up and join the conversation.

In fact, the NDP itself could benefit greatly from a society-wide discussion concerning the problems caused by capitalism.

If there are no improvements to the neoliberal-style of capitalism practiced now, the NDP—if elected—will come up against the extreme right wing views of powerful corporate bodies. This includes the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, which consists of executives from all of Canada’s most powerful corporations, and the 50-member Canadian Bankers Association.

If these two bodies did not like policies proposed by a new NDP government, they could easily undermine the government’s agenda. Just ask Barack Obama.

At this stage it is highly unlikely that any of the remaining seven NDP candidates will come forward to open-up a discussion on the failures of capitalism.

Journalist Murray Dobbin, in an October 24 article on The Tyee, provided an insightful description of the positions being taken by the three leading candidates:

“If the party chooses one of the front runners, Brian Topp or Thomas Mulcair, it will cement the party’s rightward drift and pre-occupation with tactical manoeuvring at a time when world events will make drift of any kind a sideshow,” wrote Dobbin.

Dobbin is supporting former CAW negotiator and MP Peggy Nash for the leadership. He likes Nash because of her excellent grasp of economics and the fact that he believes she can bring together the various social movements the NDP will need if it hopes to defeat the Conservatives.

Even so, it is unlikely that even Peggy Nash will come out and promote the reorganization of capitalism during the race.

Instead of explaining how they would challenge the system, the NDP leadership hopefuls are playing it safe, making proposals that would, at best, reinstate some of hundreds of programs slashed by Harper. Greatly restricted by budget limitations, they also would be able to add few of their own excellent programs.

Starry-eyed by the possibility of forming the next government, the NDP is targeting mushy middle ground voters.

However, if the new leader wanted to try to really shake up Ottawa, s/he could go another way.

A little assertiveness will do better at the polls

The party could adopt a more aggressive stance and target the tens-of-thousands of angry and disgruntled Canadians, many of whom are struggling or being left behind by Harper’s neoliberal policies.

The way in which the public embraced the Occupy Movement in the beginning shows that people know they are being exploited. They are in need of leadership.

The new NDP leader could take a bold step and expand the activities of the riding associations. Most associations have never been fully utilized. They could be turned into activist groups that would, as the saying goes “get their hands dirty,” assisting groups and people in their communities who are facing difficulties.

The associations could recruit volunteers who would be able to help, say, a women’s shelter that has lost its funding because of Conservative cutbacks, or an after-school program that might need to find new facilities.

The party could recruit a lot of those young people who were so emotionally touched by Jack Layton’s remarkable letter when he passed away.

If it wanted to, the NDP even could develop its own version of the Company of Young Canadians, the Trudeau era organization that provided many kinds of support for poor communities.

The party would benefit considerably by getting involved in these kinds of activities. Such a program would allow the party to rebuild and expand its depleted grassroots networks. If the NDP is elected, it will need a wide and responsive base to support it against the right-wing attacks that are almost guaranteed.

And communities would greatly appreciate the support and, most important, there would be a good return at the ballot box. Yes, it could be the right time for the NDP to show some imagination and ingenuity that would allow it to deservedly make its mark in the 2015 election.

Why pensions should remain a "hot topic"!

2012-02-14T14:29:00.000-06:00

By Jim Harding
No Nukes
February 14, 2012

“Pensions” have been the hot topic on coffee-row ever since Harper announced his plan to cut Old-Age Security (OAS). I can’t remember as many people engaging me about my R-Town column as on this.

This is good for we’re going to need all the public participation we can muster to convince Harper to back-off. And it’s mandatory that our collective memory about this lasts until the 2015 election. Canadians needing OAS at that time will be much more vulnerable unless Harper is stopped in his tracks now.

THE BIG PICTURE

We need to know his end-game. It’s quite simple: to shift pensions from the public to the private market. This means shifting pensions from the government to the individual, who will then be at the mercy of the profit-hungry financial sector. It’s no different than what Harper is doing in other sectors. By undermining the farmer-elected Canadian Wheat Board, without consultation or respect for the rule of law, Harper leaves farmers individually more vulnerable to the profit-seeking grain and rail companies.

Harper’s game-plan is to turn back the clock on progressive social programs. He can’t directly attack Medicare, so he tries to undermine it indirectly. His recent arbitrary decision to only provide per capita funding to the provinces, regardless of the proportion of seniors, who naturally require more healthcare, could balkanize Medicare and make it more vulnerable to encroaching privatization. Harper is always trying to use divide-and-rule politics to undermine the federal commitment to social programs. Playing generations off against each other over pensions is his latest ruse.

IGNORING FACTS

Facts don’t matter. This is an ideologically-driven agenda and Harper will continue to lay the ground for OAS cuts regardless of the overwhelming evidence otherwise; just as he did with the omnibus crime bill. The Department of Finance, the OECD and Parliamentary Budget Officer have all said that the OAS is not threatened by the aging of the baby boomers. The number of seniors on OAS will certainly double by 2030, but the cost of pensions will only rise from 2.3% to 3.1% of the GDP, which is the most relevant figure. And the cost will then fall to 2.6% by 2050. These are among the lowest costs for pensions in the G7. When it serves his purposes, even Harper admits how low our public debt is relative to GDP, compared to other countries.

Harper controls politics by controlling messages created out of half-truths or non-truths. Message control is how he divides to win and rule. In the aftermath of his announced OAS cuts his Ministers reassure today’s seniors that they won’t be affected; Finance Minister Flaherty tries to deflect the matter by saying nothing will happen until 2020 or, when pushed, until 2025. But think about it; this means that someone who is turning 57 might have to work to 67 before they qualify for old-age security.

TARGETTING THE VULNERABLE

The OAS is not vulnerable to Harper’s predictable attack on public programs for wasting taxpayer’s money. The OAS is one of the best examples of the taxpayer protecting the taxpayer; citizens pooling resources for the common good. You have to live in Canada for ten years after turning 18 to qualify, and full benefits only come after 40 years of residence. (The GIS remains available for low-income immigrants.) The OAS is also income-tested; full benefits don’t accrue if one’s income is above $69,000.

Harper will predictably try to undermine the progressive, universal aspect of the OAS by saying wealthier seniors who don’t need public pensions are driving up the costs for the taxpayer. Seniors may even be scapegoated for jeopardizing pensions for future generations. But this is utter hog-wash, for there are hardly any wealthy seniors; only 6% of all Canadian seniors are subject to the OAS clawback due to higher income.

Further, one-third of seniors require the income supplement, the GIS, which provides additional income for those in need. The OAS simply works! It stabilizes senior income security. It provides up to 75% of the income of low-income seniors. Most compelling, it provides base income for women who have done unpaid domestic work their whole lives, and don’t qualify for the CPP.

All OAS benefits are taxable. Not only did all the baby-boomers pay taxes all through their working lives, but they will continue to pay income taxes on their pensions. Seniors also pay property taxes and the GST; they more than pay their way.

The biggest impact from raising the retirement age would be on the lowest-income seniors, especially those with ill health. Harper’s handlers will talk of our growing life expectancy as if we are all in the same boat. We aren’t. The lowest 20% of earners have, on average, six fewer years of life compared to the top 20%. If the retirement age is raised it will adversely affect those struggling the most.

POLARIZING GENERATIONS

The viability and fairness of the OAS is not Harper’s interest. He wants to use wedge politics to compound conflict between the generations to try to turn more young people, already struggling with low job security and incomes, against “seniors’ entitlements”. As one Harper-supporting financial advisor, appealing to the myth of “Freedom 55” put it, “If I was 25 I’d be really mad.” We hear it over and over in his Ministers’ scripted messages: “we must be sure that the pension system is there for the next generation”. If this was their concern then they’d strengthen the OAS and CPP. But it is not. Harper wants to can get younger people to resent seniors getting pensions; he wants to convince youth that they will face a huge burden paying for baby boomers. Then he can manoeuvre the cuts he wants.

Harper’s desire to shift public pensions to private savings is totally unrealistic. At present there are 11 million Canadians without workplace-based pensions. The up-and-coming generations will have even less workplace pensions available to them; corporations are already cutting these back. Furthermore, the ability to personally save for retirement is becoming even harder; only one-third of those presently eligible for RRSP’s use these to their limit. And the new Tax Free Savings Accounts (TFSA) which benefit those with the necessary cash-flow and are excluded from the OAS income test will reduce taxes available to fund seniors’ programs. You can see how Harper’s appeal to narrow self-interest undermines our true public self-interest.

STOPPING THE WEDGE

Harper’s politics is built on base emotions such as fear, anger, blaming and resent. Fueling these distracts the public from an evidence-based politics. It enables Harper to rule by the force of law rather than the rule of law. It’s insidious but, so far, it’s gotten Harper from the Canadian Taxpayer’s Association to the PMO’s office. The only antidote is to enhance knowledge and solidarity so the wedge doesn’t work. Today’s seniors not only have to fight for themselves but for their kids and grandkids.

Harper will have a publicly funded pension of, perhaps, $200,000 a year. He won’t need or qualify for the OAS. It is easy for him to say that sixty-five year-old seniors getting $6,000 taxable OAS benefits a year isn’t sustainable. Like CEO’s who continue to give themselves pay hikes after public bail-outs and job-cuts to workers, Harper is headed for the 1%. Farmers, First Nations, Métis, environmentalists, artists, workers, seniors and youth are all going to feel the brunt of Harper’s wedge. These groups should consider creating a progressive democratic alliance so that Canada can rid itself of Harper and his wrecking-ball crew. We owe it to our country.

Naomi Klein on the Greek Crisis

2012-02-14T03:44:00.002-06:00

Συνέντευξη: Η Naomi Klein για την κυβέρνηση Παπαδήμου from ThePressProject on Vimeo.

The Nation-State Reborn

2012-02-14T03:42:00.000-06:00

BY DANI RODRIK
Social Europe Journal
14/02/2012

One of our era’s foundational myths is that globalization has condemned the nation-state to irrelevance. The revolution in transport and communications, we hear, has vaporized borders and shrunk the world. New modes of governance, ranging from transnational networks of regulators to international civil-society organizations to multilateral institutions, are transcending and supplanting national lawmakers. Domestic policymakers, it is said, are largely powerless in the face of global markets.

The global financial crisis has shattered this myth. Who bailed out the banks, pumped in the liquidity, engaged in fiscal stimulus, and provided the safety nets for the unemployed to thwart an escalating catastrophe? Who is re-writing the rules on financial-market supervision and regulation to prevent another occurrence? Who gets the lion’s share of the blame for everything that goes wrong? The answer is always the same: national governments. The G-20, the International Monetary Fund, and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision have been largely sideshows.

Even in Europe, where regional institutions are comparatively strong, it is national interest and national policymakers, largely in the person of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who have dominated policymaking. Had Merkel been less enamored of austerity for Europe’s debt-distressed countries, and had she managed to convince her domestic electorate of the need for a different approach, the eurozone crisis would have played out quite differently.

Yet even as the nation-state survives, its reputation lies in tatters. The intellectual assault on it takes two forms. First, there is the critique by economists who view governments as an impediment to the freer flow of goods, capital, and people around the world. Prevent domestic policymakers from intervening with their regulations and barriers, they say, and global markets will take care of themselves, in the process creating a more integrated and efficient world economy.

But who will provide the market’s rules and regulations, if not nation-states?Laissez-faire is a recipe for more financial crises and greater political backlash. Moreover, it would require entrusting economic policy to international technocrats, insulated as they are from the push and pull of politics – a stance that severely circumscribes democracy and political accountability.

In short, laissez-faire and international technocracy does not provide a plausible alternative to the nation-state. Indeed, the erosion of the nation-state ultimately does little good for global markets as long as we lack viable mechanisms of global governance.

Second, there are cosmopolitan ethicists who decry the artificiality of national borders. As the philosopher Peter Singer has put it, the communications revolution has spawned a “global audience” that creates the basis for a “global ethics.” If we identify ourselves with the nation, our morality remains national. But, if we increasingly associate ourselves with the world at large, our loyalties will expand, too. Similarly, the Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen speaks of our “multiple identities” – ethnic, religious, national, local, professional, and political – many of which cross national boundaries.

It is unclear how much of this is wishful thinking and how much is based on real shifts in identities and attachments. Survey evidence shows that attachment to the nation-state remains quite strong.
A few years ago, the World Values Survey questioned respondents in scores of countries about their attachments to their local communities, their nations, and to the world at large. Not surprisingly, those who viewed themselves as national citizens greatly outnumbered those who regarded themselves as world citizens. But, strikingly, national identity overshadowed even local identity in the United States, Europe, India, China, and most other regions.

The same surveys indicate that younger people, the highly educated, and those who identify themselves as upper class, are more likely to associate themselves with the world. Nevertheless, it is difficult to identify any demographic segment in which attachment to the global community outweighs attachment to the country.
As large as the decline in transport and communications costs has been, it has not obliterated geography. Economic, social, and political activity remains clustered on the basis of preferences, needs, and historical trajectories that vary around the globe.

Geographical distance is as strong a determinant of economic exchange as it was a half-century ago. Even the Internet, it turns out, is not as borderless as it seems: one study found that Americans are much more likely to visit Web sites from countries that are physically close than from countries that are far away, even after controlling for language, income, and many other factors.

The trouble is that we are still in the grasp of the myth of the nation-state’s decline. Political leaders plead impotence, intellectuals dream up implausible global-governance schemes, and the losers increasingly blame immigrants or imports. Talk about re-empowering the nation-state and respectable people run for cover, as if one has proposed reviving the plague.

To be sure, the geography of attachments and identities is not fixed; indeed, it has changed over the course of history. That means that we should not entirely dismiss the likelihood that a true global consciousness will develop in the future, along with transnational political communities.

But today’s challenges cannot be met by institutions that do not (yet) exist. For now, people still must turn for solutions to their national governments, which remain the best hope for collective action. The nation-state may be a relic bequeathed to us by the French Revolution, but it is all that we have.

Greece: From despair to resistance

2012-02-13T16:40:00.001-06:00

By Panagiotis Sotiris I glr
Greek Left Review
February 13, 2012

On Sunday 12 February 2012 the people of Greece, in demonstrations and street fights all over the country expressed in a massive, collective and heroic way their anger against the terms of the new loan agreement dictated by the EU-ECB-IMF Troika. Workers, youths, students filled the streets with rage, defying the extreme aggression by police forces, setting another example of struggle and solidarity.

Greece is becoming the test site for an extreme case of neoliberal social engineering. The terms of the new bail-out package from the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the so-called Troika, equal a carpet bombing of whatever is left of collective social rights and represent an extreme attempt to bring wage levels and workplace situation back to the 1960s.

Under the terms of the new agreement the following drastic changes are going to be put to vote:

The minimum wage, which up to now was determined under the terms of the National Collective Contract signed by the Trade Union Confederation and the Employers Associations, is going to be reduced by 22%. For new workers under 25 the reduction is going to reach 32%. This is going to immediately affect around 25% of total workforce in Greece. Moreover, wage maturities (the increases in wages according to the years of workplace experience) are going to be frozen.

This reduction is also going to affect all other private sector employees covered by collective contracts and agreements. With most contracts having reached or reaching their end, with a new system of collective bargaining and mediation in place that openly favors employers, the terms of the new agreement demand that also individual terms of employment are going to change leading in most sectors to wage reductions of up to 50% (until now even when a collective agreement expired individual contracts signed under its terms could not be altered). These wage reductions are going to be devastating, taking into consideration that drastic reductions in public sector pay have already been imposed and that labor cost in Greece is already down by 25%, helped by unemployment having reached unseen before levels (the official unemployment in November exceeded 20%).

All pensions are going to be reduced by more than 15%, a reduction that is following other reductions that had been earlier imposed. Moreover, the terms of the agreement demand a new overhaul of the pension system paving the way for more reductions and raising of age limits. Pension reductions are not only going to affect the living conditions of older people but will also limit inter-generational solidarity, a crucial aspect of social cohesion in Greece.

All forms of social spending are going to be drastically cut including funds for hospitals and health coverage and social benefits. Sincehospitals are already in critical condition because of earlier cuts, this new wave of cuts is expected to lead to a dramatic deterioration of health services in a country that is already facing a deteriorating health indicators.

A new wave of privatizations is demanded, including the sale of crucial infrastructure such as airports and ports and full privatization of public utilities.

A new wave of lay-offs of public sector-employees is going to be implemented, helped by a wave of closures of public institutions, including primary and secondary education schools, university departments and agencies such as the one responsible for public housing. Moreover, terms of employment in Public Utilities (partly owned by the State) and Banks are going to change, with all provisions for secure employment eliminated, leading to another wave of mass lay-offs.

The social cost of this transformation is going to be immense. For the first time since WWII large parts of Greek society are facing the danger of extreme pauperization. And the first signs are already here: increased homelessness, soup kitchens and a new wave of people immigrating from Greece in search for employment. And things are only going to get worse as traditional forms of solidarity, mainly through family relations, can no longer cope with the situation.

It is obvious that most of these measures have little or nothing to do with dealing with increased debt. Indeed, private sector wage reductions are reducing pension contributions, leading to more deficits. What is at stake is an attempt from the part of the EU-IMF-ECB troika and the leading fractions of the Greek bourgeoisie to violently impose a social ‘regime change’ in Greece.

According to the dominant narrative the problem with Greece is a chronic lack of export competitiveness which demands a new approach based on cheap labor and doing away with any environmental restrictions, urban planning regulations and archeological protections that could discourage potential investors. It aims at turning Greece into a big Special Economic Zone for investors. What is not mentioned in this narrative is that not only the social cost is going to be tremendous but also that low labour cost competitiveness necessarily would lead to a hopeless ‘race to the bottom’, since there are always going to be countries, even in the close vicinity such as Bulgaria, with lower wages. Moreover, it is a well known fact that competitiveness does not rely only on labour cost but also on productivity and this has to do with infrastructure, knowledge, collective experience and ability, exactly what is being dramatically eroded by the current economic and social situation in Greece.

What is missing from this narrative is the crisis of the Eurozone and of the whole European Integration project. It is becoming obvious that the problem is the euro, as a common currency in a region marked by great divergences in productivity and competitiveness. The euro in a previous period functioned as a constant pressure for capitalist restructuring through competitive pressure, but at the same time it created increased imbalances, mainly to the benefit of European core countries such as Germany. In a period of capitalist crisis the euro only makes thing worse, increasing imbalances and deteriorating the sovereign debt crisis. That is why the crisis of the Eurozone is a crucial aspect of the current global capitalist crisis and one of the main failures of neoliberalism.

At the same time, the European Union is going through a reactionary and authoritarian mutation. This is the logic of the European Economic Governance, as inscribed in the proposed new fiscal Eurotreaty. According to this member-states are going to include austerity measures such as balanced budgets in their national constitutions and European Union mechanisms will have the power to intervene and impose huge fines and funding cuts whenever they think that a member-state is not prudent enough with its finances. And to this end the ‘expertise’ of the IMF in imposing austerity and privatization is also used. The prevailing logic is one of limited sovereignty and to this direction Greece is a testing ground. Already under the terms of the bail-out packages by the EU-ECB-IMF troika, there are supervision mechanisms in place in all Greek government ministries which dictate policies in an almost neo-colonial way. This is going to be the norm if the logic of European Economic Governance is imposed. That is why although the current Greek government is acting in an almost servile way towards the EU, it is only receiving humiliating blows.

European Union is rapidly becoming the most reactionary and undemocratic institution in the European continent since Nazism. Talking about a ‘democratic deficit’ is not enough. What we are dealing with is an aggressive attempt towards a post-democratic conditions, with limited sovereignty and accountability and little or no room for political debate and confrontation regarding economic policy choices, since there are to be dictated by markets through the mechanisms of EU supervision. Seeing ex-ECB central bankers becoming prime-ministers, such as Monti and Papademos, is more than symbolic.

But putting the blame only on the current aggressively neoliberal and almost neocolonial configuration of the EU is not enough. The most aggressive sectors of the Greek capital (Banks, construction, tourism, shipping industry, energy), are openly supporting this strategy. Although sectors of capital have suffered from the prolonged recession, and despite the fact that the crisis has curtailed plans for a leading role in the Balkans, the dominant fractions are investing upon austerity, workplace despotism and doing away with all forms of worker’s rights as a means to regain profitability. However, the problem with this strategy is that an increase in exports cannot possibly compensate for the shrinking of domestic demand, which can affect even dominant fractions of capital.

The Papademos government has been trying to pass the terms of this devastating austerity package by ideologically blackmailing Greek society through the threat of default and exit from the Eurozone. But the question is not if Greece is going to default but how. The measures imposed are simply leading to some form of creditor led default – they have already taken the step of a debt restructuring and “haircut” of previous debt – with society taking the full cost.

That is why Greece defaulting on its own sovereign terms, that is choosing the immediate stoppage of debt payments and of annulment of debt, is the only viable way to avoid social default. At the same time it is also necessary to immediately exit the Eurozone. Stoppage of debt payments and reclaiming monetary sovereignty will help public spending on immediate social needs and will help stop the erosion of the productive base by imports. It is not a nationalist choice, as some tendencies of the Greek and European Left have argued, but the only way to fight the systemic violence of the current policies of the EU. Moreover, it is truly internationalist in the sense of the first step towards dismantling the aggressive neoliberal monetary and political configuration of the EU, something which is obviously in the interest of the subaltern classes all over Europe.

Stoppage of payments to the debt and exiting the Euro are not simple technical solutions. They must be part of a broader set of necessary radical measures that must include nationalization of banks and critical infrastructure, capital controls and income redistribution. But even these measures are not enough, what is needed is a radical alternative economic paradigm in a non-capitalist direction, that must be based on public ownership, new forms of democratic planning and workers’ control, alternative non commercial distribution networks, and a collective effort towards regaining control of social productive capabilities.

Rethinking the possibility of such radical alternatives is not a simple intellectual exercise. It is also an urgent political exigency. Against the current ideological blackmail and the attempt by the government, the ruling classes and the EU to present extreme austerity as the only solution, what is needed is not just to say no to austerity but to bring back confidence to the possibility of alternatives. Hegemony in the last instance is about who has the ability to articulate a coherent discourse about how a country and a society is going to produce, cater for social needs, be organized and governed. The crisis of neoliberal hegemony is indeed opening up a political and ideological space for the the emergence of such a counter-hegemonic alternative, but it is not going to last for ever. Moreover, in the absence of a positive vision the ruling classes are aiming at individualized desperation and sense of defeat as a means to maintain dominance. Rebuilding people’s confidence in the possibility of alternatives requires the collective work for a radical program based upon the experiences emerging in the terrain of struggles. This is one of the most urgent challenges the Greek Left is facing.

Despite the fact that a coalition government of ‘national unity’ under Papademos was practically imposed in November the political crisis is far from over. PASOK, the Socialist party is facing its biggest crisis, the conservative New Democracy is facing increased pressure from its base not to accept the measures, the far-right exited the coalition government. 22 members of parliament from PASOK and 21 from New Democracy voted against the loan agreement and were subsequently expelled from their respective parties, marking a new phase in an open political crisis.

The extreme pressures from the Troika, with functionaries of the IMF such as Pool Thomsen acting as colonial Governors only makes things worse. Even though the agreement was passed through parliament, since the PASOK and New Democracy had a combined wide majority that could compensate for dissenting parliamentarians, the political system is being stressed to its limits. Attempts to create new political parties are under way, including an attempt towards a “Papademos” party that could gather self proclaimed all those supporting the “regime change” process in place, but they are far from gaining any momentum.

In such a conjuncture the Left is getting increased support, but at the same time is showing the limits of its strategy and program. SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) is still insisting in the fantasy of a democratic EU and refuses to bring forward demands such as the exit from the euro. KKE, the Communist Party, despite its radical anticapitalist and anti-EU positions, has sectarian tactics and underestimates the necessity for an immediate transitory program. ANTARSYA the anticapitalist Left, has played an important role in the struggles and in articulating political goals such as the annulment of debt and the exit from the euro, but does not have the necessary access to large layers of the subaltern classes. What is needed is radical recomposition of the Greek Left, both in the sense of the collective elaboration of a radical alternative that can create the possibility of counter-hegemony and of a radical Left Front that could represent the emerging new subaltern unity evident in mass demonstrations and strikes, in forms of self-organization, in networks of solidarity, in collective experiences of struggle.

Currently Greece is entering a new phase of the protracted people’s war against the policies of the EU-ECB-IMF Troika. The 48hr general strike on 10 and 11 February and the mass demonstrations and street clashes on 12 February have become the new turning points in the struggle. The ‘people’s war’ is far from over. Facing the danger of an extreme historical backwardness, we refuse to despair. We insist on the ‘windows of opportunity’ for social change the current situation opens. We shall fight to the end.

Iran Escalation: All the Elements for War Are Coming Together

2012-02-13T16:32:00.002-06:00

By Tom Burghardt
Dissident Voice
February 13th, 2012

With all the bluster of late in Western media that President Obama is assiduously working to “restrain” Israel from launching a preemptive attack on Iran, recent developments should put paid the lies of this dog-and-pony show.

Last Sunday during an interview with NBC News, the president made it clear that “all options” regarding plans for a joint U.S.-Israeli attack “are on the table.” Far from distancing his government from the strident rhetoric emanating from Tel Aviv, Obama added that the administration is working “in lockstep” with Israel to “prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”

Never mind that unlike Israel, which is estimated to possess upwards of 200 nuclear weapons, as a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Iran is perfectly within its rights under international law to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

Indeed in December 2003, the Islamic Republic signed an additional protocol authorizing IAEA inspectors to make intrusive, snap inspections of their nuclear facilities and have expressed a willingness to negotiate an end to the Western-manufactured “standoff.”

In our Orwellian Empire, however, “diplomacy” is a convenient cover — and political talking point — for war and regime change. “Again,” Obama told NBC News, “our goal is to resolve this diplomatically. That would be preferable. We’re not going to take options off the table, though.”

The president followed-up his threats on Monday when he signed an executive order freezing “all Iranian government and financial institutions’ assets that are under U.S. jurisdiction,” Bloomberg News reported.

According to the White House, Obama took the additional step towards cratering Iran’s economy and cited “‘deceptive practices’ of the Iranian central bank in hiding transactions of sanctioned parties and its failure to prevent money laundering, concluding that Iran activities pose an ‘unacceptable risk’ to the international financial system.”

If only Obama’s “neocon-lite” regime had taken similar measures to rein-in the fraudulent and patently “deceptive practices” of the big Western capitalist financial firms that continue to pose an “unacceptable risk” to the economic and social well-being of the global proletariat!

Nigel Kushner, the CEO of the London-based Whale Rock Legal told Bloomberg that “the practical impact is less important than the message it sends to Iran.” The analyst went on to say that the new executive order is “a declaration of economic warfare, to the extent that it’s not already been declared,” Bloomberg averred.

Accordingly, the asset freeze blocks “all property and interests in property belonging to the Iranian government, its central bank, and all Iranian financial institutions, even those that haven’t been designated for sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department,” and is one more sign that “hope and change” fraudsters in Washington have taken these steps as deliberate provocations.

This is spelled out quite clearly by neocon Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the oxymoronic Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which has rightly been described as the successor organization of the infamous Project for the New American Century.

Last summer, an exposé of the organization by Eli Clifton at Think Progress revealed that FDD’s über-rich donors include individuals who, like Obama, march “in lockstep” with Israel’s Likud party.

According to Clifton’s research, FDD sugar daddies include: U.S. Healthcare CEO Leonard Abramson, the head of the Abramson Family Foundation ($822,000); Edgar M. and Charles Bronfman, heirs to the Seagram liquor fortune (($1,050,000); Home Depot cofounder Bernard Marcus ($600,000); mortgage backed securities “pioneer,” Lewis Rainieri ($350,000); “hedge fund mogul” Michael Steinhardt ($850,000) and Ameriquest owner and former Bush administration ambassador to the Netherlands, Roland Arnall ($1,802,000).

“Most of the major donors,” Clifton wrote, are active philanthropists to ‘pro-Israel’ causes both in the U.S. and internationally,” who “helped promote the ‘Bush doctrine’ which led to the invasion of Iraq” and are doing so today with the ginned-up crisis over Iran.

Dubowitz told Bloomberg that Obama’s new executive order was “the logical next step in the ‘administration’s economic war on the Iranian regime’.” He gloated that “freezing assets of Iran’s central bank and its government institutions, including the National Iranian Oil Company, makes them ‘subject to much tougher enforcement by the U.S. government and the global financial sector’.”

In response, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ramin Mehmanparast told Tehran Times Tuesday, that “the issue of sanctions pursued by Western countries and U.S. officials is not a new issue. The issue… is regarded as a hostile measure and indicates that officials of Western countries, particularly the Americans, have not yet come to know our great nation.”

“If illogical pressure and inhumane methods are used to hinder the progress of the country and to prevent it from achieving its rights,” Mehmanparast said “they (countries that impose sanctions) will definitely not receive a pleasant response from our nation.”

Military Build-Up Accelerates

War is not pursued by economic means alone, however.

On the military front, Navy Times reported last week that the “essence” of a massive war game carried out along the U.S. east coast, “Bold Alligator 2012″ was “planning, staging and getting them here–and not a few platoons, not a Marine Expeditionary Unit but an entire Marine Expeditionary Brigade that could number upwards of 14,500 Marines and sailors.”

According to the right-wing Israeli publication Debkafile, the “Bold Alligator” drill “is the largest amphibian exercise seen in the West for a decade, staged to simulate a potential Iranian invasion of an allied Persian Gulf country and a marine landing on the Iranian coast.”

As part of the exercise, three Marine Corps gunship carriers that practiced an amphibious landing and attacked a “hostile” mechanized enemy division which had “invaded its neighbor.”

Practicing alongside their U.S. counterparts, “French, British, Italian, Dutch, Australian and New Zealand military elements are integrated in the drill.”

Debkafile reported that “Bold Alligator” is “led by the USS Enterprise nuclear carrier with strike force alongside three amphibian helicopter carriers, the USS Wasp, the USS Boxer and the USS Kearsage.”

“On their decks,” the Israeli publication averred, “are 6,000 Marines, 25 fighter bombers and 65 strike and transport helicopters, mainly MV-22B Ospreys with their crews. Altogether 100 combat aircraft are involved.”

Coinciding with naval exercises currently underway in the Persian Gulf, when the “Bold Alligator” war games end, “the participants are to be shipped out to Persian Gulf positions opposite Iran. Altogether three American aircraft carrier strike groups, the French Charles de Gaulle carrier and four or five US Marines amphibian vessels will be posted there,” Debkafile’s military sources report.

As war drums beat louder, researcher Rick Rozoff at Stop NATO revealed that during a January 30 meeting, President Obama “met with his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili in the Oval Office at the White House for an unprecedented private meeting between the heads of state, a tête-à-tête initiated by Washington.”

Rozoff reports that:

Obama had summoned the ambitious and erratic Georgian leader to Washington to propose a quid pro quo: The use of Georgian territory for American attacks on Iran in exchange for the U.S. exercising its not inconsiderable influence in Georgia–with a population of only 4.7 million the third largest recipient of American foreign aid–to assist in securing Saakashvili’s reelection in next year’s presidential poll.

The move was denounced by former Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, “who was overthrown by Saakashvili’s self-styled Rose Revolution in 2003,” a U.S.-financed “civil society coup” that installed an American-educated puppet in power in Tbilisi. Shevardnadze warned, “I don’t rule out that to retain the [presidential] chair Saakashvili may join a military campaign against Iran, which would become a catastrophe for our country.”

“Georgian analysts and opposition party leaders seconded Shevardnadze’s suspicions, specifying that the Saakashvili regime would provide air bases and hospitals, of which a veritable proliferation have appeared in recent months, for such a war effort.”

“A Georgian opposition analyst estimated that 30 new 20-bed hospitals and medical clinics were opened last December and that new air and naval sites are being built and modernized, military air fields in Vaziani, Marneuli and Batumi most ominously,” Rozoff wrote.

Similarly, The Jerusalem Post, citing a piece that appeared Saturday in The Times, reported that Azerbaijan, which shares a long border with Iran, “is teeming with Mossad agents working to collect intelligence on the happenings within the Islamic Republic.”

“This is ground zero for our intelligence work,” an anonymous Mossad intelligence operative told The Times. “Our presence here is quiet, but substantial. We have increased our presence in the past year, and it gets us very close to Iran. This is a wonderfully porous country.”

One might say, a “wonderfully porous country” for staging terror attacks, as NBC News revealed last week.

According to Richard Engel and Robert Windrem, “deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders.”

That group the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department, enjoys considerable support amongst Washington’s power elite as The Christian Science Monitor disclosed last summer.

Indeed, “a high-powered array of former top American officials,” from Rudy Giuliani to Howard Dean, “have been paid tens of thousands of dollars to speak in support of the MEK.”

While Obama administration officials have tried to distance the U.S. secret state from the Mossad’s assassination program, as Richard Silverstein noted on the left-wing Tikun Olam web site:

One aspect of this report, however, is misleading. The U.S. officials who confirm Mossad involvement in these plots carefully note that the U.S. is not participating. That, unfortunately is not quite true. The Bush administration allocated $400-million for this black ops war against Iran. A good portion of this is suspected of funding Israel’s efforts. So it is highly likely that we are the paymasters for this effort and our denials ring hollow.

But the Iranian terror cult’s connections to the CIA don’t stop there. In fact, “law enforcement officials have told NBC News that in 1994, the MEK made a pact with terrorist Ramzi Yousef a year after he masterminded the first attack on the World Trade Center in New York City,” Engel and Windrem wrote.

According to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Yousef built an 11-pound bomb that MEK agents placed inside one of Shia Islam’s greatest shrines in Mashad, Iran, on June 20, 1994. At least 26 people, mostly women and children, were killed and 200 wounded in the attack.

Yousef, the nephew of reputed “9/11 mastermind” Khalid Sheik Mohammad, was the top bombmaker for Osama Bin Laden’s Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets, also known as Al Qaeda, who had a long history of close collaboration with the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence agency before “going off the reservation” in the early 1990s.

These connections, and links, to Western destabilization operations are hardly historical relics of Washington’s anticommunist jihad against the former Soviet Union, as Peter Dale Scott pointed out in The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus last summer.

Scott noted that:

Americans have used al-Qaeda as a resource to increase their influence, for example Azerbaijan in 1993. There a pro-Moscow president was ousted after large numbers of Arab and other foreign mujahedin veterans were secretly imported from Afghanistan, on an airline hastily organized by three former veterans of the CIA’s airline Air America.

And today, with foreign fighters flooding into Syria, including Libyan jihadist elements armed and trained by the CIA and MI6, it should hardly come as a shock that Al Qaeda’s “emir,” Ayman al-Zawahri, in a reprise of Islamist-backed efforts in alliance with the CIA in Afghanistan during the 1980s “urged Muslims in Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan to come to the aid of Syrian rebels confronting Assad’s forces,” Reuters reported Sunday.

Western operations against Syria are viewed as a prelude to an all-out attack on Iran as Michel Chossudovsky and other analysts describe in a new series published by Global Research.

Indeed, U.S. war planners have presented regional military commanders with a target list that include “beyond Iran’s nuclear facilities, communications systems; air defense and missile sites; Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities; munitions storage facilities, including those for sea mines (remember the Strait of Hormuz); airfields and aircraft facilities; and ship and port facilities, including midget submarines, missile boats and minelayers,” The Washington Post disclosed.

“Aircraft employed,” the Post averred, “would include B-2 stealth and B-52 bombers, fighter-bombers and helicopters, along with ship-launched cruise missiles.”

In other words, Washington is contemplating a massive air and sea bombardment followed by a land invasion, as the “Bold Alligator 2012″ drill suggests, with the express purpose of forcing “regime change” in Tehran.

As analyst Peter Symonds pointed out in the World Socialist Web Site, “While the US and its allies insist that Iran must satisfy ‘international concerns’ about its nuclear programs, the demands for ‘clarification’ are endless.”

“IAEA inspectors visited Iran on January 29-31 and are due to return for further discussions later this month,” Symonds wrote. “No report has been released, but the US and international media nevertheless accused Tehran of ‘obfuscation’ and ‘time wasting’.”

Ominously, Haaretz reported that a new dossier “to be issued next month by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s nuclear program is expected to be harsher than the last one, which the IAEA released in November.”

According to Haaretz, “the agency’s board of governors is scheduled to convene on March 5 in Vienna, the same day on which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to give a speech in Washington at a meeting of the annual policy conference of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.”

Netanyahu is also scheduled to meet with Obama where talks on the “international response” to the “threat from Tehran” will take center stage. Isn’t that a coincidence!

“The reality,” the World Socialist Web Site noted, “is that nothing short of complete capitulation to all Washington’s demands–not only on the nuclear issue, but its relations with the Syrian government and groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as its alleged ‘interference’ in Iraq and Afghanistan–would end the US build-up to war.”

“In short,” Symonds observed, “Washington is pressing for a regime in Tehran that bows to American economic and strategic interests in the Middle East and Central Asia on every significant issue.”

“For all the talk about ‘diplomacy’ and ‘sanctions,’ the World Socialist Web Site warned, “the US is recklessly setting course for a war with Iran that threatens to engulf the Middle East and spread internationally.”

The clock is ticking…

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His articles are published in many venues. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press. Read other articles by Tom, or visit Tom's website.

Tainted Love

2012-02-12T17:29:00.000-06:00

Greek Left's veterans Theodorakis and Glezos head up new resistance movement

2012-02-12T15:31:00.002-06:00

Nicolas Mottas
Spectrezine
February 10, 2012

While crisis-hit Greece faces a new round of neoliberal austerity madness, two legendary personalities call for civil disobedience.

While the negotiations between the Greek government, IMF and the EU over debt swap with private creditors continue, new anti-austerity resistance movements are being born. This time the initiative belongs to prominent personalities of the Greek left who yesterday declared the creation of the 'United Popular Democratic Resistance' -- E.LA.DA. in Greek, an acronym which literally means "Greece". The idea belongs to two legendary figures of the country's modern history: the internationally renowned composer Mikis Theodorakis and Manolis Glezos, a Second World War resistance hero. Speaking to an audience at Athens's Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, they both declared that the establishment of a nationwide resistance movement against the economic austerity and policies consstitutes a "national need", as long as Greece is passing through a "national tragedy".

Theodorakis mentioned that today the Greeks live under "a status-quo of (economic) violence", adding that the only answer to the blackmail of the financial elites is "resistance and solidarity".

"We shall unite our hearts and thoughts" the 86 years-old composer said, adding humorously that he and Glezos are "kids who never give up".

From his side, Manolis Glezos -- the man who, in 1941, along with the late Apostolos Santas climbed on the Acropolis and tore down the Nazi flag -- noted that the newly formed 'United Popular Democratic Resistance' is not a political party aiming to participate in elections but an effort to "unite the Greeks". Furthermore, he added that the movement is open to "everyone who wants to participate", without any "patronization from political parties" .

Apart from Theodorakis and Glezos, the leading panel of speakers included Giorgos Kasimatis, an emeritus Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Athens. During his speech, Kasimatis argued that the new movement aims at "creating new political powers against the economic oppression" and referred to what Greece should do regarding the crisis: "When people are impoverished the government is obliged to refuse paying the debt." Professor Kasimatis said, adding that "when the loan agreements are (constitutionally) illegal and the debt is outrageously big, then part of the debt can be rejected as odious and illegal" .

This is not the first time Mikis Theodorakis has come at the forefront of anti-austerity, anti-neoliberal movements. A year ago, the famous composer established an independent socio-political organisation called "Spitha' (Spark) thus initiating his struggle against IMF and the Greek government. But this time his reunion with Glezos -- also a historical member of the Greek left -- constitutes the first serious attempt to create a broad united front against the catastrophic neoliberal policies applied in Greece. It should be noted that, despite the non-party character of the new movement, both Theodorakis and Glezos have significant influence in broad parts of the Greek public, primarily within the Left, while they remain respected figures by the majority of the population. After all, their background is rich in pro-democratic struggles against Nazi forces in the 1940s but also during the years of the military Junta in the 1970s.

According to the Greek daily "Avgi', the founding event of the ‘United Resistance' was attended by members of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) as well as by prominent artists and academics. It is expected that the new movement will attract the interest of the major parties which oppose the current coalition government, but nobody can predict the success or failure of the initiative.

What can be said with certainty is that such actions by people like Theodorakis and Glezos give hope to a nation which struggles to maintain its dignity under especially difficult circumstances. While the leadership of the country succumbs to the pressure of the IMF, the EU and the Capitalist financial elites, the need for unity, anti-austerity movements is greater than ever. Towards this direction, the decision of the two octogenarian prominent Greeks certainly constitutes a positive message.

An ‘excess of democracy’: what two generations of radicals can learn from each other

2012-02-12T08:01:00.002-06:00

Hillary Wainwright
Red Pepper
February 2012

Hillary Wainwright

The philosophy and experience of 1960s/70s radical movements are in several ways complementary to the ideas of the direct action movements of today. Hilary Wainwright examines the possibility of forging a new kind of political economy by learning from the best of both.

The ability of the Occupy movement to create platforms outside our closed political system to force open a debate on inequality, the taboo at the heart of the financial crisis, is impressive. It is a new source of political creativity from which we all have much to learn.

At the same time, no veteran of the movements of the late 1960s and 1970s can help but be struck by similarities. There’s the same strong sense of power from below that comes from the dependence of the powerful on those they dominate or exploit. There’s the creative combination of personal and collective change, and the bringing together of resistance with experiments in creating alternatives here and now. There’s the spurning of hierarchies and the creation of organisations that are today described as ‘horizontal’ or ‘networked’ – and that now with the new techno tools for networking have both more potential and more ambiguity.

And the same hoary problems reappear: informal and unaccountable leaderships, the tensions between inclusion and effectiveness. The Tyranny of Structurelessness, the 1970s pamphlet that tackled these unanticipated pitfalls from the perspective of the women's liberation movement in particular, may be well read.

But that was 40 years ago – even before the widespread use of faxes, let alone personal computers and mobile phones! How could reflecting on these marginalised earlier movements possibly take forward the debates opened by Occupy and the Indignados?

From social rebellion to capitalist renewal

The fate of the energies and aspirations of that rebellious decade is a long and complex cluster of stories. To consider their relevance today, I want only to point to a historical process that was not generally anticipated at the time and still is not fully understood. This was the capacity of capitalism, as it searched for ways of out of stagnation and crisis, to feed opportunistically on the chaotic creativity and restless experimental culture of the movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

For example, from the 1980s, at the same time as attacking the trade unions, corporate management was also dismantling the military-style hierarchies characteristic of many leading companies and decentralising the production process. A new generation of managers, especially in the newer industries, was recognising that workers’ tacit knowledge was a rich source of increased productivity and greater profits – so long as workers had little real power over their distribution.

Another example is how, in the endless search for new markets, culturally-savvy marketing managers were able to identify and exploit the commercial opportunities in the expanded horizons and wants of the increasing mass of women with incomes of their own.

The key underlying feature of these and similar trends is that much of the innovative character of capitalism’s renewal in the 1980s and 1990s – underpinned by the expansion of credit – came from sources external to both the corporation and the state. In fact, frequently its origins lay in resistance and the search for alternatives to both.

In other words, capital proved very much more nimble in responding to – and appropriating – the new energies and aspirations stimulated by the critical movements of the 1960s and 1970s than did the parties of the left – for which these movements could have been a force for democratic renewal.

What kind of a counter-movement?

Now, with the credit that underpinned the apparent ebullience of this particular period of capitalism having become toxic, the search for alternatives is back. As I write, the Financial Times, much to its own astonishment, is publishing a week of articles on 'The Crisis of Capitalism'. The opening article declares that 'at the heart of the problem is widening inequality'.

Are we seeing in the combination – not necessarily convergence – of unease within at least the cultural elites, the growth of sustained popular resistance and public disgruntlement, the emergence of what Karl Polanyi called a ‘counter-movement’ to the socially destructive consequences of rampant capitalism? And to what extent might the ideas of the movements of the 1960s and 1970s influence the character of that counter-movement?

A fundamental break

To answer this we need, briefly, to remind ourselves of the core nature of the original social critique made by the 1960s/70s movements and in particular the nature of its potential break with the institutions of the post-war order: their paternalism, their exclusions, their narrow definition of democracy and their assumption that production and technology were value neutral.

Central to the character of this critique was its aspiration, more in practice than in theory, to overcome the debilitating dichotomies of the cold war: between the individual and the collective/social; freedom and solidarity/equality; ‘free’ market versus ‘command’ state – dichotomies that were refrozen through neoliberalism and the manner of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The ideas and practices of the women’s movement are particularly illustrative. This movement came about partly from the gender-blind inconsistencies and incompletely fulfilled promises of the radical movements of the time. It deepened and extended their innovations, adding insights arising from women’s specific experiences of breaking out of their subordination.

Especially important here was an insistence on the individual as social and the collective as based on relations between individuals: a social individualism and a relational view of society and social change. After all, the momentum of the women’s liberation movement was animated both by women’s desire to realise themselves as individuals and their determination to end the social relationships that blocked these possibilities. This required social solidarity: an organised movement.

The nature of its organisation was shaped by a constant attempt to create ways of organising that combined freedom and autonomy – what every woman struggles for in her own life – with solidarity, mutuality and values of equality. The result – cutting a complex and tense story short – was ways of relating that both allowed for autonomy and also achieved co-ordination and mutual support, without going through a single centre. In other words, here was what could be called an early, pre-ICT, 'networked' form of organisation.

The political economy of networks

This networked form was distinctive because integral to its origin, character and sustainability were values of solidarity and equality and democracy. Awareness of these origins could help us now, when networked organisations are everywhere, to distinguish between the instrumental use of the concept of network in essentially undemocratic organisations (within states and corporations, for example) and, on the other hand, as a way of connecting distributed activities based on shared values of social justice and democratically agreed norms.

The latter possibility is radically enhanced through the new information and communications technology in its non-proprietorial forms. The new possibilities of systems co-ordinating a multiplicity of autonomous organisations with shared values, through democratically agreed norms or protocols, can help upscale economic organisations based on non-capitalist – collaborative, P2P (peer to peer) co-operative or other social and democratic – forms of ownership, production, distribution and finance.

What enables us to make this apparently surprising leap from the forms of organisation shaped by the consciousness-raising groups of the women’s movement (or indeed other civil society initiatives of the same period, such as the factory shop stewards’ committees combining against multi-plant, multinational corporations and developing alternative plans for socially useful production) is the importance they give to practical, experiential knowledge and the need to share and socialise it.

The political economy of knowledge

The reason why this is important for the development of a political economy beyond capitalism is that behind the imposed choice between capitalist market and the state is the polarisation between scientific, social and economic knowledge on the one hand and practical knowledge on the other. While the former was regarded as the basis of economic planning and centralised through the state, defenders of the free market held up the latter as being held individually by the entrepreneur and capable of coordination only through the haphazard workings of the market, based on private ownership. The relevant breakthrough of the women’s and other movements of the 1960s/70s was to make the sharing and socialising of experiential knowledge – in combination with scientific forms – fundamental to their purposeful, but always experimental, organisations. And to do so through consciously co-ordinated/networked and self-reflexive relations between autonomous/distributed initiatives.

Translating this into economics in the age of information and communications technology – a project requiring much further work – points to the possibility of forms of co-ordination that can include and help to regulate a non-capitalist market. A regulated, socialised market, that is, in which the drive to accumulate and make money out of money is effectively suppressed. It also provides a basis for democratising and, where appropriate, decentralising the state, within the framework of democratically agreed social goals (such as concerning equality and ecology).

It is over these issues concerning the sharing of knowledge and information and the implications for the relationship between autonomy and social co-ordination that the ideas coming from the Occupy movement can creatively converge with those of earlier movements. It is interesting in this context to read the economics working group of Occupy London describing in the Financial Times how Frederick von Hayek, the Austrian economist and theorist of free-market capitalism, with his ideas on the significance of distributed knowledge, is 'the talk of Occupy London'. No doubt this was partly a rhetorical device for the FT audience. But the challenge of answering Hayek and his justification of the free market on the basis of a theory of distributed practical and/or experiential knowledge does provide a useful way of clarifying for ourselves the importance of the networked social justice initiatives of today and the anti-authoritarian social movements of the past for an alternative political economy.

There is a point at which Hayek’s critique of the ‘all knowing state’ at first glance converges with the critique of the social democratic state made by the libertarian/social movement left in the 1960s/70s. Both challenge the notion of scientific knowledge as the only basis for economic organisation and both emphasise the importance of practical/experiential knowledge and its ‘distributed’ character. But when it comes to understanding the nature of this practical knowledge and hence its relation to forms of economic organisation, these perspectives diverge radically.

Whereas Hayek theorises this practical knowledge as inherently individual and hence points to the haphazard , unplanned and unplannable workings of the market and the price mechanism, the radicals of the 1960s/70s took, as we have just explained, a very different view. For them, the sharing of knowledge embedded in experience and collaboration to create a common understanding and self-consciousness of their subordination and of how to resist, was fundamental to the process of becoming a movement. In contrast to the individualism of Hayek, their ways of organising assumed that practical knowledge could be socialised and shared. This led to ways of organising that emphasised communication and shared values as a basis for co-ordination and a common direction. It provided the basis for purposeful and therefore more or less plannable action – action that was always experimental, never all-knowing; the product of distributed intelligence that could be consciously shared.

At the risk of being somewhat schematic, it could be argued that the movements of the 1960s/70s applied these ideas especially to develop an – unfinished – vision of democratising the state. This took place both through attempts to create democratic, participatory ways of administering public institutions (universities and schools, for example) and through the development of non-state sources of democratic power (women’s centres, police monitoring projects and so on). It involved working ‘with/in and against’ the state, such as when the Greater London Council was led by Ken Livingstone in the early 1980s.

Today's movements are effectively focusing their energies especially on challenging the oligarchic market, and the injustice of corporate, financial power. Here the development of networked forms are increasingly linked to distributed economic initiatives – co-ops, credit unions, open software networks, collaborative cultural projects and so on. In this way, today's movements are beginning to develop in practice a vision of socialising production and finance and creating an alternative kind of market, complementary to the earlier unfinished vision of democratic public power.

What they have in common, more in practice than in theory, is an assertion of organised democratic civil society as an economic actor, both in the provision of public goods and in the sphere of market exchange.

Cultural equality

This emphasis on the development of strategies for political and economic change that empower democratic civil society, rather than an exclusive reliance on the state, marks a distinct development beyond the politics of the social democratic reformers of the past. The architects of the welfare state and the post-war order, with all its achievements and limits, believed in economic and political reform. But they did so generally on the basis of assumptions of cultural superiority: they, the professionals, knew what was best for the masses. By contrast, the rebellions of the 1960s/70s were asserting cultural equality. Their goals concerned economic and social needs but in a context of challenging dominant understandings of knowledge, emphasising the public importance of practical, tacit and experiential knowledge. This underpinned commitment to developing the organisations in the workplace and wider society that could share this knowledge and turn it into a source of transformative power.

The broadly anti-capitalist movements since the late 1990s are remaking that struggle, in radically changed political and economic circumstances. The context is framed by a new form of cultural domination. It is in effect the imposition of a financial accounting mentality. Thus, pensioners are defined as a 'burden'; workers are defined as 'costs'. Higher education is defined as a personal investment, as if everyone determined their future in terms of a personal rate of return rather than a contribution to society. The aim is a culture of acquiescence to the cuts and privatisation in the interests of an unproblematised goal of 'growth'.

How can we challenge these new forms of cultural subordination, turning citizens, by the dictat of an imposed accounting system, into mere ‘hands’ or ‘dependants’ in the language of 19th-century capitalism?

Alternative values in material practice

Part of the answer is surely to be found by illustrating in practice the alternative values that could found a political economy based on a framework of equality, mutuality and respect for nature. Many such illustrations are up and spreading: credit unions that organise finance as a commons; public sector workers countering privatisation with proposals for improving and democratising services for and with fellow citizens; ‘free culture’ networks insisting on the use of ICT as a means of extending and enriching the public sphere rather than a digital oilfield for profit; a revival of co-operatives and collective consumer action around energy, food and other spheres in which the logic of capital is particularly destructive to society and the environment. The strategic question we have to work on is how to generalise from, interconnect and extend these scattered developments.

In this sense the insistence on ‘being the change we want to see’ and creating alternatives here and now has a macro significance as well as a micro one. The exhaustion of the existing system is in some ways far deeper than in the 1960s and 1970s but we should never underestimate the ability of capital to adapt and appropriate – which is why we must think ambitiously, though remaining grounded, about our collective organisational innovations.

Finally, what about relations with the state?

One of the distinctive features of the recent movements and the steady development across the world of forms of social or, more radically, solidarity economics is an ambition to be part of a process of systemic change. This inevitably raises the question of the relation of these usually autonomous initiatives to the state and to electoral politics.

Most activists in these experiments, rightly, have no faith in the ability of the political class to lead ways out of the crisis. But there has been an overly-generalised theorisation of engagement with political institutions as necessarily counterposed to the building of non-capitalist economic relations in whatever spaces can be struggled for now. Experience, however, points to the possibility of a pragmatic and cautious engagement with political institutions from a consciously and determinedly autonomous base.

An example of this can be found in Argentina, where networks of workers' co-ops have struggled for legislation favourable to their interests [PDF link]. For example, starting with support at a municipal and provincial level in Buenos Aires, they have won the legal right to maintain ownership and control of occupied factories. The logic of their approach has been to develop autonomous sources of power rooted in actual alternatives, rather than merely forms of pressure and protest that leave the creative initiative (or rather lack of it) with the political class.

This experience effectively illustrates an alternative, progressive recognition of the creative, productive power of civil society to the one described earlier in capitalism’s ability to absorb and subordinate the creativity of the critical culture of the 1960s and 1970s.

In conclusion

This brings us back to my opening question of what use there might be in revisiting these earlier movements. In sum, my arguments point to the importance of the unfinished foundations in democratic civil society of an alternative political economy – including a different kind of state. You could say we were rudely interrupted in our work. But maybe, as we join with new generations with capacities and visions way beyond our own, we will be collectively stronger if we recover what was potentially powerful and what the elites feared and tried to destroy.

It’s not easy to sum up succinctly what the managers of the ruling order felt so threatened by in the 1960s/70s, so let’s use the words they employed themselves. It was ‘an excess of democracy’ that lay behind ‘the reduction of authority’, concluded the Trilateral Commission when it investigated the causes of the political and economic crises of the early 1970s on behalf of governments of the dominant western powers. The elite alarm at that time was thus more than just the regular ruling class fear of the mob. The notion of ‘an excess of democracy’ implied a fear of intelligent and organised opposition, which was hence less easy to counter.

It was the autonomous and yet purposeful, organised and capable nature of the movements - including, perhaps especially, in the workplace that they feared most. Here was the emergence of a new generation with allies throughout society that no longer accepted the place allotted to them by the elite democracy handed down to them after the war. And yet that generation comprised the children of the post-war democratic order, gaining legitimacy through appealing to its claims and its unfulfilled promises. At that moment, the elites lost their authority. Simple repression would no longer work – not that they didn't try it.

Related to this and later on, as the ideas of the radical movements began to shape political debate in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, the threat, at least in the UK, became that a form of socialism (or at least a viable political vision threatening to the elites) might emerge that could no longer be dismissed by reference to the failure of the Soviet model. Norman Tebbit, Margaret Thatcher's right-hand hatchet man, put it neatly in reference to the radically democratic Greater London Council of the early 1980s: 'This is the modern socialism and we must destroy it.'

The grounds for these fears lay in the distinctive features of those movements and projects described in this article. In their ways of organising (combining autonomy and co-operation, creating the participatory conditions for the genuine sharing of knowledge), the alliances they built (across the traditional divides of economics, culture, labour and community) and their vision (beyond state versus market, individual versus social), they held out in practice the possibility of an alternative, participatory and co-operative political economy.

For a time, the new political culture seemed unstoppable. Now, in the presence of Occupy and the multiplicity of movements that share in new ways the same hopeful characteristics, it feels as if, like a mountain stream that disappeared from sight, the same 'excess of democracy', with its springs in the 1960s and 1970s, is bubbling up again.

Many thanks to Marco Berlinguer, Roy Bhaskar, Robin Murray, Doreen Massey and Jane Shallice

Hilary Wainwright is a founding editor of Red Pepper and research director of the New Politics programme at the Transnational Institute (TNI).

Global Justice and the Future of Hope

2012-02-12T07:30:00.000-06:00

By Rajesh Makwana
Dissident Voice
February 11th, 2012

Would it be easier to create a sustainable global economy if the world more closely resembled the demographics and geography of Iceland — a volcanic island with a manageably small population and a unique abundance of renewable energy? This was among the many questions raised during a panel discussion at Tipping Point Film Fund’s UK premier of Future of Hope, often referred to as the Iceland documentary.

Since the Nordic country experienced the systemic failure of its entire banking sector in 2008, a number of Iceland’s senior banking executives have been arrested, sacked or sued. Grass roots organisations, including the Ministry of Ideas that was featured in the film, have since hosted a National Assembly of unprecedented scale. The government-backed Assembly was designed to focus specifically on the nation’s next steps; to agree on a set of collective values and to establish a clear vision for how to rebuild their economy from the ashes of the old. While the film did not focus on the Assembly itself, progressives would not be surprised by its outcome: participants emphasised the importance of robust public services, establishing an environmentally responsible and sustainable economy, and ensuring equality and transparency in the country’s future renaissance.

There are some important parallels between the Icelandic response to financial collapse and what concerned citizens and activists attempted to do in 2011 — from the Arab spring to the multitude of public occupations in towns and cities around the world. After the collapse of their financial sector, Icelanders took the opportunity to reflect on what went wrong. Given the various interconnected crises that humanity faces at this crucial juncture in history, it would be prudent for us all to do the same. Moreover, we need to identify the root causes of these crises and create a public dialogue to ensure that these causative factors are widely recognised and understood. Like the Icelanders, we also need to agree on the core values that should guide the reform process, and communicate a practical vision of how these values can create a more sustainable and equitable world.

Identifying the Crises We Face

Of the many crises facing humankind, none is more pressing than the reality of poverty and deprivation, a crisis that humanity has routinely failed to address since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was first adopted in 1948. Despite decades of ‘development’ pledges and donor aid, three billion people still live on less than $2.50 a day, two and a half billion do not have access to clean water and sanitation, and almost a billion people are classified as hungry. According to the World Health Organisation, around 40,000 people a day die from a lack of nutritious food, clean water and rudimentary medical care — over 14 million people every year.

Another fundamental concern is how a deregulated and globalised economy has locked large swathes of humanity into unsustainable patterns of overproduction and overconsumption. This irresponsible economic model is the real cause of our environmental problems, which include the rapid depletion of the world’s natural resources and surging carbon emissions that governments seem unable — or unwilling — to contain. We are also confronted by an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, the excessive influence of corporate power, on-going financial instability and economic uncertainty.

A commentator in Future of Hope identified one of the root causes of their financial collapse as the domination of aggressively masculine business practices sanctioned by their government. These, he went on to explain, would still be considered successful strategies if they hadn’t ultimately precipitated the country’s collapse. The same blinkered approach to commerce applies across the world. The inherent flaws in the ‘business as usual’ model remain largely unacknowledged despite the grave financial and environmental crises it has exacerbated, and policy makers continue to blindly pursue their intimate relationship with the corporate sector.

The values that have driven this aggressive and ideological approach to business and politics are not difficult to identify: self-interest, excessive competition and greed. These values are embodied in the ‘neoliberal policies’ of deregulation, liberalisation and privatisation that facilitate wealth accumulation through the pursuit of profit and endless GDP growth. We have constructed a world where national institutions and systems of global governance are very much guided by these policies. And everything from world trade, global finance, climate change mitigation, and even international development is influenced by this ideological approach to politics and policymaking.

Much more needs to be done to stimulate a popular debate about the impact of neoliberal policies on our everyday lives. Just as challenging is establishing a common vision for what a sustainable and equitable future world should look like and how to make it a reality. A key theme of the Iceland film was that of ‘sustainable sufficiency’ — the need to produce and consume only what we really need. Localising economies and rethinking patterns of international trade, production and consumption can go a long way to achieving this. But this is not enough. As Icelanders interviewed in the film appreciated, we can only succeed in creating a more sustainable world if we replace the outdated values that underpin our failed policies of the past with ones that more accurately reflect what it means to be human.

Rethinking Human Values: Sharing and Cooperation

Self-interest, competition and wealth accumulation have had their day and reaped havoc in the process. It stands to reason that their ill effects can be counterbalanced when the principles of sharing and cooperation occupy the hearts and minds of future policy makers. These are values we are all familiar with — we practice them in our homes and communities and teach them to our children. Placing international cooperation and sharing at the heart of policymaking has the potential to transform our economies, our societies and our relationship with the natural world.

The redistribution of financial resources is the logical first step in making this fundamental shift in economic, social and environmental policy. If implemented as a program on an international scale, redistribution can rapidly end deprivation and prevent needless deaths. More equitably sharing the world’s financial resources will not address the structural causes of our global malaise, but it is the most practical way to ensure people everywhere have access to basic food, water and medicine in the immediate future. Financial redistribution can also fund climate adaption and mitigation programs in developing countries, and can even help plug the hole in public finances when nations are forced to implement measures of economic austerity.

The world is awash with money, and there are many options available to governments for harnessing it for redistributive purposes. For example, hundreds of billions of dollars can be raised by closing tax havens, preventing tax evasion, implementing financial transaction taxes and a tax on carbon. Vast sums can be raised by reducing military budgets, redirecting fossil fuel subsidies and ending the most perverse subsidies provided to large scale industrial farming corporations in rich countries. It is also possible to tap into the IMF’s massive gold reserves and to harness the Fund’s Special Drawing Right’s facility. The list goes on.

Redistribution also presents a starting point for broader reforms to the global economy. Central to these in an era of dwindling natural resources and escalating emissions is the sustainable management of the global commons. Applying the principle of sharing to the way natural resources are managed requires us to recognise that they are limited in quantity and that they must be distributed and consumed more equitably across the world. By conserving and regulating our use of the world’s resources through this understanding, economic sharing can help nations to move away from patterns of overconsumption and excessive carbon emissions.

Building World Public Opinion

Future of Hope conveys the message that humanity’s entrepreneurial spirit can ultimately overcome adversity and rebuild life for the better. This hope and vision will be sorely needed in the coming years as campaigners continue to highlight injustice and demand that governments enact reforms that are commensurate with the basic needs of the majority of the world.

The crises we face and the movements campaigning for change are an increasingly global phenomenon. The process of reform, therefore, must also take place on an international scale. A worldwide public debate about these issues is something that until recently might have seemed an unlikely possibility. But with so many options for global collaboration now available — all turbocharged by social media platforms and the extended reach of the ‘networked individual’ — it is entirely conceivable that world public opinion will eventually take its rightful place as the real superpower in world affairs.

As the burgeoning array of movements for social and economic justice continue to connect across national borders, it is clear that our collective progress depends on the growth in our sense of global unity and an appreciation of humanity’s interdependence. Within this new paradigm of collective responsibility and vision, it seems only natural for nations to shift away from upholding the values of self-interest, competition and greed, and to focus instead on sharing the world’s financial and natural resources more equitably and sustainably.

• Future of Hope is a documentary film following individuals that strive to change the world of consumerism, a system of credit and debt that the Icelandic economy was built upon for the past 10 years or more.

Italy’s radical left press, once thriving, is in danger of extinction

2012-02-11T00:47:00.002-06:00

Revolting Europe
February 10, 2012

‘Monti is succeeding where Berlusconi failed’ read a headline line in yesterday’s radical il manifesto newspaper. The depressing news announced by the communist title was that liquidators were coming in. The state subsidy that supports the non-profit making press had been cut so much by Italy’s current and previous prime ministers that the newspaper could no longer pay its bills. The options now are closure, or sale, unless a huge financial black hole can be filled soon.

The calamity that has befallen il manifesto comes hot on the heels of the demise on January 1 of Liberazione, the newspaper of the Communist Refoundation Party. In a country that once had the largest marxist party in Western Europe, is it the end of the communist daily press?

To be sure, il manifesto, a minnow compared to capitalist media giants owned by the Berlusconi, Agnelli and De Benedetti family groups, has always had a struggle to survive in its 40-year history as an independent radical voice for millions of communists, progressives and trade unionists.

History

The paper originated with Il Manifesto group, a current within the Italian Communist Party (PCI)at odds with the leadership over attitudes to the Soviet Eastern Bloc and new social movements that emerged out of the industrial and social upheaval of 1960s Italy.

A monthly journal of the same name was launched in 1969 by communist journalists Rossana Rossanda and Lucio Magri who by the end of 1969 were expelled from the party and who went to co-found in 1972, the PDUP (Partito di Unità Proletaria, or Proletarian Unity party),from which they agitated for an anti-capitalist agenda, though without pretences of being a ‘vanguard’.

As the PCI began swinging to the right in the 1970s with the infamous historic compromise with the Christian Democrats, the paper acted as the party’s left conscience. Later when the PCI, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, changed its name and formally abandoned the goal of socialism, il manifesto was highly critical. And the political expression of some of its founders, the PDUP, joined with others who remained committed to socialism to form a new party, Communist Refoundation.

The paper was not sectarian, though, seeking to promote debate and unity on the Left, which now includes another communist party, PdCI (Party of Italian Communists, a split from Communist Refoundation), those on the left within the centre-left Democrats, greens, and new (mostly) progressive political movements such as the Italy of Values of former Clean Hands magistrate Antonio di Pietro.

As to the paper itself, il manifesto has gained a reputation for its bitter and sarcastic headlines, often brilliant puns and clever choice of photographs. The satirical sketches of Vauro, one of Italy’s most famous cartoonists, have added to the wide respect for the paper across political lines. And for committed internationalists, the paper’s foreign pages are second to none, with exclusive coverage from a progressive perspective from correspondents across the globe. Among them is Giuliana Sgrena, the war correspondent who was kidnapped in Iraq and who after release revealed, in 2005, that the US had used white phosphorus and napalm in Fallujah during Operation Phantom Fury.

Not just a paper

The paper isn’t the only il manifesto product. The co-operative owned by its journalists and readers has spawned a range of related publishing and media ventures: in 1972, they began book publishing, which in 1994 came under the Manifestolibri brand; music publishing kicked off in 1995, with most notably the release of a number of albums by the Roman rap group Assalti Frontali; and from 1998 they began translating and distributing an Italian version of the prestigious liberal left Le Monde Diplomatique. Furthermore, they have in different periods produced a number of magazines, including, the weekly Carta, launched in 1998 with social reportage and in-depth investigations, and the Revista del Manifesto, a monthly political journal. And their website today is a lively mix of news, blogs and mulitmedia content.

The paper doesn’t just do debate and ideas. It has been the promoter of several major demonstrations, including an event in Rome organised with Liberazione in 2007 to put pressure on the centre-Left government of the time to implement its electoral programme. This was a huge success with a million descending into the streets of the capital.

But now this critical voice and cultural reference point for Italy’s radical left is in grave danger of disappearing, leaving a huge void in a country dominated by the media empire of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Threat to media pluralism

The state fund at the heart of the paper’s problems is supposed to guarantee media plurality. And director Norma Rangeri is quite clear that the move to slash it – although part of a wider assault on public spending, welfare and public services – is a deliberate political act to silence opposition in the media to the current austerity and privatising policies that are devastating the lives of millions of Italians. But, as Valentino Parlato, the founder of the paper and head of the management board overseeing the co-operative, recognised at a press conference held yesterday the paper has also lost its edge recently and could do better.

Certainly, the removal as prime minister of scandal-ridden, billionaire Berlusconi, left the paper bereft of perfect target to satirise, pillory and campaign against. Competition hurt too: from Liberazione, launched in 1995; a revitalised l’Unità, the paper founded by Antonio Gramsci in 1924 that followed the Italian Communist Party in the 1990s and noughties to New Labour-style politics but has been revamped with a campaigning edge; and a largely progressive campaigning and sharply satirical daily Il Fatto Quotidiano, launched in September 2009. And, like other titles, the drop in ad revenues, a fall in sales – from 40-50,000 in the 1980s to around 20,000 today – and explosion of rival free sources of news, information and opinion on the web, did further damage.

To its great credit, the paper and its very modestly paid workforce (all on 1,300 euros net monthly) have been fighting like mad to avoid this moment. A staff of 107 in 2006 has been cut to 74 (of which 52 journalists). And half of these workers are now temporarily laid off. To save cash, unlike all other Italian dailies, il manifesto doesn’t print in full colour, although this means it has taken a hit on advertising. All this has seen it cut costs by 20% since 2008. It also increased the cover price.

Not yet given up the ghost

But it’s not been enough. So is it arrivederci for il manifesto? It seems inevitable when you consider as many as 100 national regional and local titles are currently at risk for closure and even the most robust newspapers are suffering. Yet, the paper has not yet given up the ghost.

Yesterday the newspaper issued a call for funds from readers and supporters around the country, but also their input on how to make it a more compelling read. And there are still efforts to get the Government to relent, and release some funds. So it is not impossible that by the time the liquidators arrive to look at the books, they may be some good news. And with it, the chances that an essential daily read for Italians seeking an alternative view of society will survive.

Empire and Trade

2012-02-11T00:08:00.001-06:00

By Mel Watkins
Progressive Economics Forun
February 10th, 2012

Empires vary: of conquest, of settlement, of trade; contiguous and maritime. Empires abound: a long list, longer even than many books on empire admit to.

Wikipedia lists over 200 empires from the Akkadian Empire of Sargon the Great in the 24th century BCE to today’s American Empire. In terms of territory the largest are the Achaemenid, the Han and the Roman in ancient times, the Mongol and the Yuan Dynasty in medieval times, and the British, the Russian, the Spanish, the Qing and the French in modern times.

Round up the above with the Incan and the Aztec from the Americas, the Mauryan in India, the Zulu in sub-Saharan Africa. It is evident that empire is a world-wide phenomenon, thriving in diverse cultures over the millenia. The nation-state is no more than a late arrival.

Yet economists still have difficulty with the word “imperialism,” and insist that trade is based on comparative advantage among independent countries. The real world is one riddled with asymmetries of power – that being inherent to empire- where politcal economy, precisely because of its explicit recognition of power, trumps orthodox ecoomics with its a-political methodology.

In fact, the rationale for empire is typically to monopolize trade. “Trade theory,” built on Ricardo’s two-country model – which pervades introductory economics textbooks – misleads students, and their professors, and needs to be rethought. Ricardo’s two countries, England and Portugal, were. as we all know, both imperial centres. Yet orthodox economics deems that irrelevant.

Christopher's Movie Matinée: haphazard adventures in Flower Power cinema

2012-02-09T21:38:00.000-06:00

National Film Board of Canada

In 1968, in Yorkville (Toronto), the NFB provided a group of hippies with cameras, film and a few NFB film crew members so they could make a film illustrating their lives and their world. The result is a frustrating yet strikingly beautiful testimony to a protest era not unlike our own.

Read more HERE.

Cuba Embargo’s Golden Anniversary

2012-02-09T16:02:00.001-06:00

Fernando Ravsberg
Havana Times
February 8, 2012

Johana Tablada, the deputy director of the North American Division of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, granted us an interview to discuss the US economic embargo against Cuba, which has just marked its 50th year of remaining in place under ten US presidents.

Q: One of the arguments given by the proponents of the embargo is that it’s an excuse used by the Cuban government to explain all of its own mistakes.

A: If it’s an excuse then why not lift the blockade? Why not remove it and let life tell us where the truth lies? They’re not lifting it because it’s a way of putting pressure on us, a way of persecuting us. Then they step back and say, “Look how badly things are going there.” That’s how it’s been for 50 years now.

Q: What are the major types of damage caused by the embargo?

A: We could spend the whole day talking about all the harm it does, but to summarize, I’d say the essential harm is that Cuba has been prevented from developing itself to its full potential. The blockade prevents us from having relations with the US and it impedes us from interacting with the rest of the world under normal conditions; this latter is because the embargo has an extra-territorial dimension that places pressure on third countries in order to make the Cuban system collapse.

Q: But don’t you trade with all of the other countries in the world?

A: The truth is that we cannot trade with everyone. No article produced whose components are more than 10 percent Cuban can enter the United States. So, if a Japanese company wants to use our nickel, then it is restricted from exporting its products to the US if they contain that metal from Cuba.

What’s more, they prohibit us from buying anywhere in the world products containing more than 10 percent US components. The blockade prevents it and punishes any company that sells such products to Cuba.

We are also affected in financial transactions. We cannot open accounts in banks if they have operations that take place in a subsidiary bank in the US. Therefore, especially with globalization, it’s very difficult to operate under those controls.

All vessels docking in Cuban ports suffer a penalty that prevents them from re-entering the US for 180 days.

Who’s going to accept coming to the Caribbean with a prohibition from landing on our island when they can go to other more important ports in the region?

There are US laws penalizing foreign investment in Cuba. They punish such investors.

Q: Who have they applied this punishment?

Johana Tablada

A: It can give two examples: it was leveled against executives of the Canadian company Sherritt, who were denied visas to enter the United States after they invested in Cuban nickel; likewise, the Spanish company Sol Melia had to choose between keeping their business in Florida and their investments in Cuba.

Q: All this seems contradictory to the policy of US food trade with Cuba.

A: There is no “policy.” It’s only a window in the blockade that was the product of a strong campaign on the part of the agricultural lobby in the US, which acted in alliance with humanitarian organizations that considered it cruel to deny items as essential as food and medicine.

It can’t even be called “trade,” because we can’t sell anything to the US in return. It’s very restricted and operates under conditions that are commercially outdated and unprofitable. There’s no credit; instead, cash must be paid by Cuba in advance.

Q: The oil lobby is more powerful than agricultural interest groups. With discoveries of oil in Cuban waters, will this open a larger window?

A: We still don’t know, but there’s increasing consensus among US citizens that travel should be allowed, relations should be restored, and authorization should be given to oil companies to participate in the Cuban oil program. Cuba does not engage in any discrimination against American companies.

A billboard reading “12 hours of the blockade is equivalent to the annual amount of insulin needed by 64,000 patients in our country,” demonstrates how the US embargo affects all sectors of society. Photo: Raquel Perez

Q: Obama authorized travel by Cuban-Americans and eliminated restrictions on sending money. Now US officials are complaining that Cuba didn’t respond with similar gestures?

A: We said publicly that we continue to be open to dialogue without conditions, and in 2009 we presented the US with a draft agenda on seven issues. Within this we included the blockade, but also less sensitive issues of common interest: a proposed immigration accord, the restoration of direct mail, an agreement on the fight against drug trafficking, cooperation in confronting natural disasters and the tightening of relations between our scientific communities. They never responded.

Q: Isn’t it asking too much of Obama to lift the embargo if only Congress can do that?

A: The blockade is the scaffolding of very complex set of sanctions, and not everything is codified by Congress. In addition, in almost all of the restrictions there is a section stating that these cannot be applied if they threaten the national interest or if the president stipulates otherwise.

The US president possesses a long list of privileges that allow for greater flexibility on issues like medicine and Cuban children having access to medications, antibiotics, and equipment and devices necessary for some surgical procedures.

Q: One of the reasons given for the embargo is that Cuba didn’t compensate US companies that were nationalized in 1959. Is this true?

A: The Americans were not the only ones. At least 15 other countries — Switzerland, Germany, Spain, for example — had property nationalized. All of others have been compensated and many of these companies are back in Cuba. The US was the only one that refused to accept the compensation agreement. Apparently it was more attractive for them to plan the invasion at Playa Giron (the Bay of Pigs).

Q: What prospects do you see in the future?

A: Most US citizens would like to have good relations with Cuba. For many of them — just as for many Cubans — the idea of ??working together for social justice remains more attractive than the idea of ??trying to become a part of the now famous 1 percent.

Cuba remains a poor and blockaded country that has showed it is possible to build a society in which all children have a place to sleep and go to school – which would be a miracle for many people in the world. For that reason alone Cuba deserves to see the blockade disappear.
—–
An authorized translation by Havana Times (from the Spanish original) published by Cartas Desde Cuba.

30,000 Drones To Fill American Skies By The End Of The Decade

2012-02-09T15:38:00.002-06:00

GlobalResearch.ca
February 8, 2011

Congress passed a bill this week paving the way for unmanned drones to ply American skies.

The bill requires the FAA to rush a plan to get as many drones in the air as possible within nine months.

How many drones are we talking?

Shaun Waterman at The Washington Times reports the agency predicts that 30,000 drones could fill U.S. skies by the end of the decade.

Naturally, many are concerned that surveillance by police and federal government agencies will skyrocket in response.

From The Washington Times:

“There are serious policy questions on the horizon about privacy and surveillance, by both government agencies and commercial entities,” said Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists...

The bill calls for numerous test ranges to be operated in conjunction with NASA and the Department of Defense, use of drones in the Arctic, guidance system improvements, and an assessment of the “catastrophic failure of the unmanned aircraft that would endanger other aircraft in the national airspace system.”

This new bill follows up the Army's January directive to use drone fleets in the U.S. for training missions and "domestic operations."

And both of these initiatives are mandated in the NDAA (section 1097) that calls for six drone test ranges to be operational within six months of that bills signing December 31.

The commercial drone market would be worth hundreds of millions more if the bill passes.

Book launch of a history of Alberta's working people, February 24

2012-02-08T14:21:00.001-06:00

Project 2012
Alberta Federation of Labour
February 07, 2012

Thirty-three years after the publication of the first book on the history of Alberta labour, Athabasca University Press is releasing a major work that tells the story of Alberta's working people, their trade unions and organizations, and the struggles they went through as they built this Province and its communities.

Trade union leaders and activists and the general public are invited to the launch of Working People in Alberta: A History on Friday, February 24th at 3:00 PM in the Main Hall of the Ironworkers Building, 10512 - 122 Street in Edmonton.

Published on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Alberta Federation of Labour, this new book provides a much-needed update to Alberta Labour: A Heritage Untold, written by Warren Caragata in 1979. Working People in Alberta contains over 300 lavishly-illustrated pages, and was produced by members of the Alberta Labour History Institute (ALHI) as part of Project 2012, a 5-year partnership with the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) to produce educational and historical materials in preparation for the AFL's Centennial in 2012.

According to Athabasca University professor Alvin Finkel, the book’s principle author, Working People in Alberta does more than build on Caragata’s achievement; it incorporates social history approaches to the history of working people to provide a narrative that goes beyond organizations and institutions. Stories about their struggles and achievements are told by workers, both union and non-union, in their own words, drawing heavily on over 200 interviews conducted by the Alberta Labour History Institute (ALHI) over its 13-year history.

As such, it reflects a priority of the Institute from the time it was born in 1999, when its members set out to conduct comprehensive interviews with Alberta's labour pioneers and union activists, determined to counter a tradition in which so much history was written from the viewpoint of Canada’s elites. Furthermore, it focuses on more than just the labour movement, delving extensively into the stories of unorganized workers and community leaders, as well as those of trade unionists.

Working People in Alberta is authored by Alvin Finkel, with contributions by Jim Selby, Jason Foster, Winston Gereluk, Jennifer Kelly and Dan Cui, James Muir, Joan Schiebelbein, and Eric Strikwerda. It is dedicated to Neil Reimer (1921-2011), a pioneer of Alberta's labour movement and an active member of ALHI, who served as National Director of the the Energy & Chemical Workers Union (now the Communications, Energy & Paperworkers Union) and as the first Leader of Alberta’s New Democratic Party, amongst other contributions.

The book is part of an historical series being produced by AU Press, Working Canadians: Books from the CCLH. Besides relying on sustained Project support and contributions from Alberta's trade unions, research and publication of Working People in Alberta was made possible, in part, by financial support from the Alberta Historical Resources Foundations (AHRF).

Table of Contents: Unlike so many historical works that begin with the arrival of white settlers, Working People in Alberta begins with a chapter on Alberta’s First Nations, the province’s first inhabitants. Chapters include:

Unsung Builders of Alberta: Introduction to A History of Working People in Alberta
Ch 1 Millennia of Native Work
Ch 2 The Fur Trade and Early European
Settlement
Ch 3 One Step Forward: Alberta
Workers 1885-1914
Ch 4 War, Repression, and
Depression, 1914-1939
Ch 5 Alberta Labour and Working-Class
Life, 1940-1959
Ch 6 The Boomers Become the Workers:
Alberta, 1960-1980
Ch 7 Alberta Labour in the Eighties
Ch 8 Revolution, Retrenchment, and the
New Normal:The 1990s and Beyond
Ch 9 Women, Labour, and the
Labour Movement
Ch 10 Racialization and Work
Conclusion: A History to Build Upon

The book launch is open to leaders and activists from trade unions and other organizations, as well as to the general public. Refreshments and hors d'oeuvres will be served. As space will be limited, you are asked to RSVP by February 17, 2012 by email to marketing.aupress@athabascau.ca or phone (780) 481-2347.

For more information on the Alberta Labour History Institute and Project 2012, contact Karen Werlin, Administrator at 780-421-0471 or kwerlin@telus.net; or Winston Gereluk, Project 2012 Chair; AFL Centennial Director at 780-483-3021 or winstong@fastmail.fm
For information on the AFL Centennial contact Maureen Werlin, AFL Centennial Coordinator at 780-483-3021 or mwerlin@afl.org.

Chilean student leader to speak in Regina

2012-02-08T12:31:00.001-06:00

Written by SPR
Act Up for Sask.
08 February 2012

Camilo Ballesteros, an influential leader in the Chilean student movement, is a student at the Santiago University of Chile (Universidad de Santiago de Chile-FEUSACH). In 2009 he was elected president of the Faculty of Physical Education Students Union. In 2010, he was elected president of the FEUSAC Students Federation. In this capacity he became one of the most important student leaders during the 2011 students’ national mobilization.

As part of a cross-country Canadian university tour, Camilo will speak on the Chilean student movement, social change and the demand for free, quality education for everyone. All are welcome to attend. Event poster and parking map

International Student Movement Website: http://www.emancipating-education-for-all.org/

Wednesday February 8th, 2012 @ 7 p.m.

CB Room 106, College Avenue Campus

2201 College Avenue University of Regina

Free Parking Lot 20 M

Media and power

2012-02-07T18:15:00.001-06:00

BY TIM PELZER
PeoplesWorld.com
February 7 2012

Book Review: The Political Economy of Media and Power
Editor: Jeffery Klaehn
Peter Lang Publishing, 2010, paperback, 376 pages, $38.95

Canadian sociologist Jeffery Klaehn has put together a penetrating collection of essays dealing with the political economy of the mass media spanning a broad range of topics. Although the British, Canadian and American writers are University Professors or PHD students, the essays are written in clear, simple, accessible prose.

Richard Lance Keeble in "Hacks and Spooks" writes about the close ties between British and American intelligence agencies and the mass media. The media has always closely cooperated with intelligence agencies in both countries, sharing the same political outlook and goals. The CIA, M15 and M16 have used the mass media to plant stories.

For instance, from 1948-77 M16 operated the information Research Department Office (IRD) where it ran dozens of Fleet Street journalists and news agencies across the globe. The IRD, set up by the Labor government in 1948, spread " white" (true), "grey" (partially true) and "black" (false) propaganda about the former socialist countries of central Europe as well as "planting smears, lies, false rumors and forged official reports about the Soviet threat in the media", writes Keeble.

The propaganda group successfully distorted anti-colonial struggles in countries such as Kenya, Malaya and Cyprus and covered up British atrocities. The CIA, M15 and MI6 also recruited journalists to spy for them in foreign countries, using their ability freely to enter enemy countries and reach top officials.

At home, the IRD conducted "psychological operations" against peace and progressive movements in the UK. M15 attempted several times to undermine Labor Party governments during the 1960s and 70s by leaking false information on top officials to sympathetic Fleet Street newspapers, Keeble reveals.

More recently, M16 used its press contacts to spread false information about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to frighten the public into supporting a western attack against Iraq.

One BBC correspondent justified the media's uncritical acceptance of disinformation by stating, "if M15 and M16 sometimes peddle disinformation, many viewers and readers may not very much care as 'we're all on the same side.' "

The CIA ran its own propaganda unit modeled on the IRD during the 1960s called the Forum World Features to feed false information to the public. The Senate's Church Committee and the House of Representative's Pike Committee revealed in the 1970s that the CIA had invested large resources in propaganda operations. For instance, the CIA had a secret agreement with the New York Times to employ at least 10 agents as reporters or clerks in foreign bureaus. Feminist writer Gloria Steinem was revealed to be an agent. "The Pike Committee found that 29 per cent of the CIA's covert operations was directed at 'media and propaganda,' meaning that in 1978 the agency had spent in this area as much as the combined budgets of the world's biggest news agencies (AP, Reuters and UPI) put together", Keeble writes.

The CIA planted a false story through Readers Digest in 1982 that the Turkish assassin who tried to kill Pope John Paul II was a KGB agent.

In the "The Faculty Filter", Robert Jensen writes that after 24 years Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman's magnum opus "Manufacturing Consent" is more relevant than ever.

Chomsky and Herman developed the propaganda model to show that the media's positions on key issues will always reflect the thinking of the political and economic elite. US Journalism schools, which are tied the corporate media, do not teach the propaganda model because there are two basic types of faculty members: professionals who see the world in the same way as the corporate media; professors who are critical but lack the "moral capacity to step outside the privileges that come with their university positions" and are unwilling to risk confrontations with the media industry, writes Jensen.

James Winter in "Reporting on the Pharmaceutical Industry" documents how the industry markets dangerous drugs that kill and maim thousands, ghost write flawed scientific studies for medical researchers who are paid for their signature, invents non- existent diseases to create a market for their products and bribes doctors to sell their products, among other things.

The mass media, which loves to report on medical discoveries, cite corporate medical studies that only list the positive benefits of drugs and not possible side effects, providing free advertising. The corporate media also creates hysteria about non-existent health conditions, such as the swine flu pandemic in 2009 that never happened, so that governments will buy vaccines that enrich companies and shareholders.

Winter also suggests that the Canadian media has been critical of the Canadian public healthcare system and promote private participation because certain businessmen such as Paul Desmarais Sr., part owner of the Southam newspaper chain and other media, is also owner of powerful insurance companies that would benefit from privatization.

In "Appearance, Intimacy Exhibition, Hypersexualization and Pornography", Richard Poulin and Melanie Claude write how the media is sexualizing young girls and teenagers through fashion, magazines, TV, the internet and the overall pornographying of culture. Corporations use sexualized images of young people to sell products. Young people are confronted with sexual images in video games, magazines, films and TV shows.

This early sexualization has led to the "emergence of a hyper sexualized society ... where the female body is fragmented and objectified, and where the value of women is reduced to their physical attributes and their ability to please and seduce", write Poulin and Claude.

The capitalist mass media, which has treated young women as commodities, normalize and promote pornography and prostitution. "Women's liberation, a crucial conquest of the feminist movement, has been transformed by the no-liberal market into submissiveness to male pleasures."

Klaehn's "The Political Economy of Media and Power" is a thought provoking work that sheds light on the dark corners of capitalism and its media infrastructure. These above mentioned essays are just a small sampling of what awaits the reader in Klaehn's fascinating book.

US Thwarted at the UN: Imperial Ambitions Persevere

2012-02-07T16:01:00.002-06:00

By Ben Schreiner
Dissident Voice
February 7th, 2012

To Washington’s great chagrin, the attempt to impose “regime change” in Syria under the auspices of a United Nations Security Council resolution fell apart Saturday, thwarted by the double veto of Russia and China.

Speaking Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the Russian and Chinese veto a “travesty,” while labeling the Security Council “neutered.” American Ambassador Susan Rice, meanwhile, stated that she was “disgusted” by the veto.

On NBC Nightly News (2/4/12), Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell called the Security Council vote “just a terrible day for the United Nations and diplomacy.” (“Diplomacy” in Washington speak, we see, entails strictly toeing the U.S. line.)

Not content with merely condemning the Security Council, the U.S. also began to plot an alternative means for intervention.

Secretary of State Clinton reassured that the U.S. would work with the Arab League to continue applying “immense pressure” on Syria, while adding pointblank that, “Assad must go.” President Obama added much the same on Saturday, arguing that Mr. Assad had “lost all legitimacy to rule.” (Apparently, the revealed targeting of funeral mourners in the C.I.A.’s drone campaign does not constitute the grounds on which one loses legitimacy.)

Such rhetoric, one will recall, mirrors that which presaged the NATO orchestrated demise of Gaddafi. Of little surprise, then, that the Mossad connected Debkafile reported over the weekend that in the face of growing Russian resistance to foreign intervention, “The United States, the Europeans and the Gulf Arabs are likely to redouble their efforts to unseat Bashar Assad.” And as if summoned on cue, the proverbial hawk Joseph Lieberman emerged on Sunday to float the idea of providing direct military support to the Free Syrian Army.

But as their plans to turn Syria into Libya 2.0 were initially impeded over the weekend, the pouting Washington elite quickly pivoted, directing their bitter ire towards a long favorite foe: Russia.

In the immediate wake of the Security Council vote, Ambassador Rise preceded to openly berate Russia on the Council floor for continuing to supply arms to the Syria government. As she later told CNN, Russia and China “will have any future blood spilt on their hands.” (Ms. Rice has no qualms with the blood spilt in U.S. client states like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and so on. Nor, needless to say, does the U.S. have any reservations about Israeli apartheid.)

Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, on the other hand, argued on Monday, ahead of his Tuesday visit to Damascus, that such outbursts sounded “indecent and perhaps on the verge of hysterical.” So much for that U.S.-Russia “reset.”

Of course, always eager to parrot the official U.S. line, the American media also quickly cast its scorn toward Russia.

As New York Times imperial messenger Thomas Friedman wrote (2/4/12), “The more Putin throws his support behind the murderous dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the more he looks like a person buying a round-trip ticket on the Titanic — after it has already hit the iceberg.” (Friedman is the same man who, as President Bush searched into Putin’s very soul, encouraged his readers to “keep routin’ for Putin.”)

Yet amidst all this public sulking at its U.N. rebuff, the U.S. was ultimately able to extract a measure of revenge for Russia’s diplomatic intransigence. For as massive protests broke out onto the streets in Russia on Saturday, the U.S. press pounced.

As NBC Nightly News (2/4/12) eagerly reported, a hundred thousand hit the streets of Moscow on Saturday calling for the “end of Putin’s rule.”

While on CBS Evening News (2/4/12), Elizabeth Palmer reported from Russia on the “tens of thousands protesting against Putin and a legacy of corruption.”

And as the Washington Post adoringly wrote on the protests (2/4/12): “The temperature was below zero, which only made the crowd more joyful as well as forceful, as if mere weather could prevent them from showing their disdain for Putin.”

Completely omitted from the network news broadcasts (in addition to many stalwart liberal sources, such as Democracy Now!), was the fact that tens of thousands also turned out in support of Putin. For as the Los Angeles Times (2/4/12) critically noted, Putin continues to enjoy more than 50 percent support within the country, “especially among the working class outside Moscow.”

Yet unwilling to acknowledge (or perhaps unable to comprehend) that people would actually be willing to hit the streets on their own volition to support Putin, the American press posited ulterior motives.

Typical of the discrediting of the pro-Putin protesters, the Washington Post wrote:

The post office brought in busloads of its workers for the counter-rally, and teachers were recruited from points nearby.

One who chose not to show up was Yulia Konstantinova, a math teacher who turned down a request from her principal and joined the anti-Putin Bolotnaya march instead. “We’re sick and tired of pretending everything is fine,” she said. “It’s not true.”

Predictably enough, as the American press dutifully reported on the political division in Russia, and swooned over those voicing their dissent with Putin, it employed a universal blackout of coordinated protests in dozens of U.S. cities called in opposition to American policy towards Iran. A bit hard to furnish war, I suppose, if one reveals any degree of popular discord.

But with the U.S. now openly lusting not only for Damascus, but Tehran as well, one ought to expect the blackout of internal U.S. dissent to continue. Moreover, the swift and coordinated discrediting campaign levied against Russia for bucking Washington assures that the U.S. power elite remains firmly fixated on its anticipated imperial spoils. Any and all obstacles will simply not be tolerated. American imperial ambitions do not die easily.

Ben Schreiner is a freelance writer living in Salem, Oregon. He may be reached at: bnschreiner@gmail.com.

Cash compensation will be sought, SFL says

2012-02-07T15:54:00.002-06:00

CBC News
Feb 7, 2012

Saskatchewan Federation of Labour president Larry Hubich says people whose rights were infringed by the essential services law deserve compensation.

Unionized workers whose constitutional rights were infringed by the province's essential services law should be individually compensated, the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour says.

The labour organization that won a partial victory in court Monday in its fight against the province's labour law overhaul says it expects financial compensation for the unions involved, but also for tens of thousands of workers.

"We'll be seeking damages for every individual who lost the right to strike, had their freedom taken away, as well as the costs to the unions of having to deal with this," said Larry Kowalchuk, a lawyer representing the SFL in the case.

SFL president Larry Hubich said there could be tens of millions of dollars involved.

On Monday, a Queen's Bench judge ruled that the province's Public Service Essential Services Act is flawed and unconstitutional, because it doesn't give unions an adequate way to challenge which employees can't strike.

Under the law, certain public employees — such as health care workers and snowplow drivers — can be deemed essential and banned from striking.

The unions argued that the Saskatchewan law was extreme and undermined the right to strike and bargain collectively. The SFL took the province to court over the matter last year.

A similar challenge against amendments to the Trade Union Act, which critics say make it tougher to unionize, was dismissed by Justice Dennis Ball.

The judge said the government will have a year to fix the essential services law. He also said he'll meet with the two sides to discuss "remedy" — which the unions take to mean money.

"You violate someone's human rights, that individual is entitled to damages," Kowalchuk said.

Unions as organizations are also expected to seek financial compensation, Hubich said.

Some unions say they've spent a lot of time and money arguing against unfair essential services provisions.

"Remedy includes damages for everybody who has had to incur additional costs to go through a process that is deemed to be unconstitutional," Hubich said.

Justice Minister Don Morgan says the government might amend the legislation or it might appeal Ball's decision.

Contradictory Dickens

2012-02-07T15:10:00.002-06:00

On the bicentenary of Charles Dickens' birth, Terry Eagleton looks at the contradictions of the man and his work

Red Pepper
February 7, 2012

Charles Dickens, the anniversary of whose birth we mark this year, was present at the making of modern Britain. When he began to write, stagecoaches were still the most familiar form of transport; by the time of his later novels, the railways had arrived. Capitalists in the early Dickens are either villains out of Victorian melodrama or generous-hearted paternalists; in the later novels they are faceless functionaries, part of an anonymous system which governs them as much as they govern it.

Dickens was born in the era of Byron and Napoleon, but lived to see the development of trade unions, joint stock companies and the beginnings of corporate capitalism. His fiction evolves from the workhouse of Oliver Twist to the factories of Hard Times and the state bureaucracy of Bleak House.

Dickens did more than describe this newly industrial nation. It is present in his very style of writing. He is the first truly urban writer in Britain. He sees human beings vividly yet fleetingly, like people you might collide with on a busy street corner. The rhythms of his writing catch the excitement as well as the anxiety of city life. He tends to perceive in fragments rather than in the round, reflecting a society that has grown too opaque and divided to be seen as a whole. Characters are sealed off from each other in their own solitary space, with no settled relationships between them.

In this reified world of industrial capitalism, people seem as impenetrable as pieces of furniture, harbouring some mysterious inner secret to which one can never quite break through. Everyone appears as a grotesque or an eccentric. There is no longer any agreed norm of humanity, just a set of isolated freaks, either ominous or amusing, who bounce off each other at random.

Middle-class energy

Dickens is famous for denouncing the evils of industrial capitalism, but his theatrical, flamboyant prose also reflects the energy of a middle class that is still riding high. As an aspiring young novelist, he liked to see himself as a fashionable man about town, renowned for knowing every side street and back alley in London. Jane Austen writes about the landed estates of the English countryside, which in her day was the centre of social and economic power. Dickens, by contrast, is metropolitan to his ink‑stained fingertips. What he describes is the London of lawyers, merchants, small clerks and well-heeled bourgeois – the greatest commercial and imperial centre of the globe, where British ruling-class power is now increasingly to be found.

Dickens was born into that most contradictory of all social groups, the lower middle class. So, in fact, were most of the great 19th century novelists, from the Brontë sisters to George Eliot and Thomas Hardy. The lower middle class are close enough to the common people to sympathise with their plight; but they also aspire to wealth, rank and education, and thus cast a glance up as well as down the social hierarchy. They are peculiarly well-placed as artists to survey the social system as a whole, as well as to experience a painful conflict between how things are and how one would wish them to be.

Dickens’ compassion for the poor and outcast is legendary. In a stunning moment in Bleak House, he turns on Queen Victoria herself and upbraids her, along with the entire ruling class, for their shameful neglect of the orphans and street urchins. But he also handed over a woman he found begging in the street to the police. He was the most genuinely popular of all English novelists, an astonishingly gifted entertainer and champion of popular culture. But he also valued his reputation as a high-brow novelist and his membership of the social establishment. Hardly any other English writer has combined ‘high’ and popular writing so magnificently, appealing alike to academia and the labour movement.

Dickens was haunted all his life by a typically lower middle class fear of being dragged down into the popular masses from whom he had managed to extricate himself by his art. He sent his own sons to Eton, detested social climbers like the unctuous Uriah Heep as only a social climber could, and had more than a dash of the imperial Little Englander about him. He viciously caricatures trade unionism in Hard Times, and spoke up in favour of a brutal governor of the West Indies.

He may have been a scourge of Victorian England, but he believed with typical middle class complacency that the period in which he lived was a vast improvement on any previous stretch of history. The Victorian middle class to which he belonged saw itself as in the van of social progress, but was also deeply anxious about rumblings of revolution. Dickens’ writing, with its extraordinary mixture of comedy and tragedy, tears and laughter, brashness and sentimentalism, reflects this divided vision. Few English writers have penetrated so deeply into human emotions, and few have had a mind so disastrously empty of ideas. If he can be searingly realistic, he can also be absurdly Romantic.

Images of children

Dickens’s abiding concern with children shows up some of these ambiguities. In one sense, the figure of the oppressed child is the most powerful indictment one can imagine of society’s heartlessness. Innocent, vulnerable and bewildered, Dickens’ children, from Oliver Twist and Paul Dombey to Little Dorrit and Pip of Great Expectations, are stark images of undeserved suffering.

Victorian England, as Dickens recognises, is a society in which everyone has been orphaned, and in which the upper classes have disowned their paternal responsibility for the weak. Yet the child, by definition, is incapable of understanding the causes of his or her own wretchedness. All a child wants is the immediate relief of its pain. It has no understanding of social processes. As such, the figure of the afflicted child points to reform rather than revolution. And Dickens was certainly no revolutionary, as his lurid portrayals of the French Revolution in A Tale of Two Cities would suggest.

Even so, as the great Marxist literary critic Georg Lukács insists, a writer’s imagination may be more radical than his or her ideology. Dickens may have been as fearful of social revolution as any other Victorian bourgeois, but the system he portrays in his last great novels – Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend, Great Expectations – could be transformed by nothing short of an upheaval.

Dickens has come a long way from the jolly, Tally-ho world of Pickwick Papers and the fairy-tale endings of his early fiction. We are now in a universe in which middle class men and women are hollow illusions, while objects seem strangely alive. Market capitalism and an oppressive state have now taken on a sinister life of their own. Social life is vacuous and unreal, and the only true realities are crime, labour, sickness and hardship. Families, cosily celebrated by the younger Dickens, are now sick, semi‑pathological places of oppression. New life can spring only from death, self-sacrifice and dissolution.

This was not what those who lionised Dickens at their dinner parties wanted to hear. But it was what he insisted they should confront, and two centuries after his birth we should honour him for that courage.

Prayer to the “Job Creator”

2012-02-07T14:37:00.000-06:00

By William Manson
Dissident Voice
February 7th, 2012

Oh beneficent Job-Creator, omnipotent yet merciful, we humbly solicit your aid in this time of need. Thou hast, in thy unfathomable Wisdom, taken away our livelihoods, sending forth a Plague of outsourcing, automation and credit default swaps. We have meekly borne thy punishments, and have humbly awaited our redemption and deliverance. Yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics hath borne false witness to a grievous Truth: thou hast turned away from us in our most ominous time of need.

O yea, we grew restive and dissatisfied with the blessings — however meager — which thou had bestowed on our sorry, ungrateful selves. We sowed discontent among the people, calling for a Living Wage and a union contract. Yet, O wise and forgiving Job-Creator, we now beg your indulgence of our childish ingratitude! Should you, in your magnificent Plan, choose to restore to us the bounty of our former Jobs, we shall strive most humbly to prove worthy, this time, of the infinite beneficence of our utmost, all-knowing Lord and Master.

In our deepest spirit of contrition and atonement, we therefore offer you these Sacrifices:

1. We shall not stray from your dominion, looking to the false god called “Government” to deliver us from our sufferings and need.

2. No: we shall hold steadfast, unwavering in our faith in your Banks and Corporations to relieve us of the miseries of debt and cursed usury.

3. We shall further petition Caesar to relieve you of any remaining taxation or regulations which hath provoked your banishment of millions of our humble selves to the purgatory of Unemployment.

4. We shall, moreover, praise the Bounty of your Market—rejecting all false prophets who would spread a contagion of doubt and rebellion.

O all-mighty Job-Creator, we kneel before thy throne of Wall Street. Do not, we most humbly ask, forsake us! It is in thy Power to give—under whatever terms you like!—what thou hast taken away. If we covet the “Job,” however degrading and sinful it may be, it is only to serve our most reverend Lord and Master.

Harvesting the bounty of Profit to your utmost Glory, we shall glean that which remains for our unworthy yet devoted selves.

Oh merciful Job-Creator, thou hath taken away, yet thou canst give again!

Amen.

William Manson is the author of The Psychodynamics of Culture (Greenwood Press).

Washington threatens reprisals against Nicaragua’s voters

2012-02-06T19:42:00.001-06:00

John Riddell
February 2, 2012
An interview with Felipe Stuart Cournoyer.

In a fit of petulant anger, the U.S. government lashed out on January 25 against the outcome of Nicaragua’s recent presidential election. To understand the context of the U.S. threats, I talked to Felipe Stuart Cournoyer, a Nicaraguan citizen and member of Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).(1)

Riddell: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed that Nicaragua’s November 6, 2011, election “marked a setback to democracy in Nicaragua and undermined the ability of Nicaraguans to hold their government accountable,” but offered no particulars. What has roused Washington’s ire?

Stuart: It’s quite simple. The Sandinista candidate, Daniel Ortega, won with 62.66% of the vote, more than twice the total of the Independent Liberal Party (PLI) candidate favoured by the U.S. embassy. Washington is not pleased when small, poor countries defy its will.

Riddell: But Clinton says U.S. concern is based on a report by Organization of American States (OAS) observers.

Stuart: The OAS report notes that the official results were similar to the readings of pre-election polls, and to their own exit polls on election day.(2) Both the OAS and the European Union observer missions noted some irregularities and technical difficulties, but did not consider that they called into question the FSLN victory. The main complaint of right-wing opposition parties was that Ortega should not have been permitted to run for re-election. The voters certainly gave a clear verdict on that one.(3)
Riddell: Clinton says the U.S. will respond by a “review of our assistance” and “aggressive scrutiny” of loans by international bodies to Nicaragua. That sounds like sanctions. What’s this about? Have aid projects gone wrong?

Economic and social gains

Stuart: On the contrary, aid projects under Ortega’s presidency have been enormously successful. Let me cite the most important. Illiteracy was 30% when the FSLN was elected in 2006. Thanks to a literacy campaign carried out with help from Cuba and Venezuela, the United Nations has now declared Nicaragua to be free of illiteracy.

Riddell: I thought the problem of illiteracy was dealt with under the first Sandinista government of the 1980s.

Stuart: It certainly was, despite the U.S.-sponsored war. Before the 1979 revolution, the illiteracy rate was 52%; we brought it down to 12%. But under the neo-liberal regimes of the 1990s illiteracy grew again to over 30%.

But back to aid: the recent projects assisted by Venezuela and other ALBA countries have had an immense effect. Also there have been useful World Bank projects, and the Bank says it is “optimistic” about Nicaragua’s performance.(4)

In fact, the Nicaraguan economy has expanded well in recent years, particularly in the countryside. Despite U.S. displeasure and the world recession, exports have doubled since 2006, and the rate of foreign direct investment has increased by about two-thirds. Among the biggest projects: an oil refinery, under construction with Venezuelan assistance (US$4 billion), projects to double electrical generating capacity ($2.6 billion—mostly renewable), along with ongoing projects to bring electricity to tens of thousands of rural families; and a large manufacturing facility for a Chinese company ($3 billion). Inflation is low; economic expansion in 2010 and 2011 was the highest in Central America.(5)

Riddell: How has this expansion affected working people?

Stuart: Employment has increased about 35% since 2006 in both formal and informal sectors. Extreme poverty has been cut in half: to 9% from 17%. Nicaragua’s reduction in income inequality ranks second in the region, after Venezuela.

Mobilization at the community level

Riddell: What have been the changes on a community level?

Stuart: Using solidarity aid from Venezuela and the ALBA countries, the Sandinista government invested massive resources in programs to aid working people: aid to small businesses, credits and aid to women farmers and small stores, provision of zinc for roofs, and so on. The success of such programs depends on going beyond the government bureaucracy and setting up new structures, run by new people – a source of popular involvement and employment.

This took me by surprise. Back in 2006, I predicted that the Sandinista government could only succeed if carried forward by a mass mobilization. This has indeed happened, but not in the way I expected. Yes, there have been demonstrations, one of half a million in this country of six million. Also, starting in 2008, neighbourhood councils were established. But above all it has been the government programs that have mobilized people – that was the only way these measures could succeed.

Take the literacy campaign, for example. The FSLN launched it back in the 1990s; in 2007, the FSLN government took over responsibility for it. Well, organizing such a campaign, with over a million to be educated, is quite a task. Potential students must be identified, convinced to take part, and signed up. Structures must be established for all the volunteer teachers and administrators. After literacy is achieved, there are follow-up programs, which continue today. It’s nothing less than a mass movement. And the outcome is to involve people socially, raise their political awareness, and enable them to participate in community processes.

Riddell: These programs affect chiefly the countryside, right?

Stuart: Yes, there has been an economic revival there. The government programs in the countryside have a multiplier effect. They generate consumer demand, which helps small business. The road programs help in marketing products as well as creating employment. The countryside is finally being electrified. This has a long way to go, but the progress is being noticed.

There is still a need for land reform, to undo the expansion of large estates in the 1990s. That is not posed for action right now. Government initiative has aimed mainly at supporting the smallholders, including by promoting small farmers’ organizations and farm marketing cooperatives.

Indigenous relations

Riddell: How are government relations with Nicaragua’s indigenous peoples?

Stuart: This is an important achievement of the government. Under the first FSLN government, in the 1980s, the constitution incorporated measures for indigenous autonomy, including assuring these peoples of a share of natural resources revenue. After the FSLN was defeated in 1990, the new governments refused to pass enabling legislation. Now that has been done. Indigenous communal lands have won recognition. The FSLN has a strategic alliance with Yatama, the main indigenous party, which governs the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN). Indigenous representatives are also represented in the National government.

Riddell: How do the changes play out in your Managua neighbourhood?

Stuart: The biggest change has been in education and health care, both of which are now free. Operación milagro – largely staffed by Cuban doctors – provides operations for those with limited eyesight, and has been an immense success. There are many health campaigns initiated by the Ministry of Health that are carried out through popular participation at a neighbourhood level. Also, the Sandinista doctors have an association, and they spend their time off and weekends providing medical services in remote areas where the public health system is skimpy. That’s a program not of the state but of the FSLN as a party.

Progress toward socialism?

Riddell: Would you say this process is socialist in its direction?

Stuart: The historic program of the FSLN was for a transition toward socialist revolution, for mobilization to get rid of capitalism. It included the call for nationalization of the banks and the largest industrial firms. Some steps in that direction were taken in the 1980s.

This program has never been repudiated, but it is not what the FSLN is doing now or what the majority of its members consider possible. The FSLN today says it is “socialist – in solidarity – Christian.” That is interpreted to mean an “option for the poor”: less poverty, more employment, social programs, and zero hunger.

Socialists are challenged to participate in this process and raise consciousness with respect to real events. A key issue before the FSLN today is to tax the incomes of the rich, who are largely tax-exempt. Another is to challenge a huge fraudulent debt foisted on the government when two big banks failed some years ago. I think the government should move the take a qualitatively greater share of revue from mobile telephone and digital communications industries, and financial services, including – if necessary – nationalization.

Riddell: How have all these changes affected the outlook of young people?

Stuart: There was good participation by youth in the election, and most of those who voted supported the FSLN. There is wide support for the notion of social solidarity and basic anti-imperialist consciousness. But this does not mean anti-capitalism. Earlier there was concern that an FSLN government would lead to renewed war and conscription, but these fears have collapsed.

Riddell: Has the pressure for emigration eased?

Stuart: Slightly, but it remains very great. There are more economic opportunities in the countryside now. College graduates have a bit more opportunity for a job in the country, but still far too many feel they have to leave. Half a million Nicaraguans work seasonally in Costa Rica.

Don’t forget how poor Nicaragua is – the second-poorest country in the hemisphere. In 2006, the unemployment rate was 50%. That’s improved, but it has a long way to go. Such a poor country can’t transform itself in five years.

Will the U.S. stir up trouble?

Riddell: Is it possible that the new U.S. threats will stir up rightist disruption in Nicaragua?

Stuart: As things stand, there is no campaign of active disruption by the Right, like what they did in 2008-09. There were some small disruptive actions in the elections, and there is vague talk of an armed group in the North. But for now, the more mature forces on the Right are not interested in that. The economic expansion in Nicaragua offers opportunities for capitalists as well as workers.

Of course, if the U.S. turns up the heat on Nicaragua, the right wing may behave differently. But what we hear from Clinton may be just electioneering.

The Right has suffered an enormous defeat – reduced from 62% to 37% of the electorate during Ortega’s first term. They need time to regroup. In the elections, they offered no alternative to government programs – even promised to continue them. They campaigned that the Sandinistas were establishing a “dictatorship” – but there was no evidence for that and it did not go over.

Riddell: What is the role of imperialist corporations in Nicaragua?

Stuart: They are powerful in the mining industry and in the maquila sector.(6) Gold is Nicaragua’s third-most-important export (after beef and coffee), with the largest mines owned by Canadian capital. Gold mining comes with environmental and employment issues, of course – that has always been the case.

But some things are different from conditions in nearby countries. The companies cannot use private militias to drive peasants or indigenous people off the land. In case of conflicts with workers or neighbouring peasants, the companies cannot rely on help from police or army. That would be inconceivable. Please bear in mind that the police and army were established by the revolution of 1979, and its influence endures among them.

The maquila sector is growing at the expense of Honduras mainly because firms are seeking greater investment security and social stability in Nicaragua.

Riddell: How are Nicaragua’s relations with its neighbours?

Stuart: Good, with two exceptions.

First, there is a dispute with Costa Rica over a small scrap of territory that is now before the world court. Costa Rican construction of a road along their side of the San Juan river, which borders Nicaragua, has raised environmental concerns. The Costa Rican government is right-wing, and it has allowed the U.S. army onto its land, a potential threat that has not caused trouble so far.

Second, there is Honduras. Nicaragua led the international campaign against the June 2009 right-wing coup in Honduras. Porfirio Lobo’s subsequent election to the Presidency did nothing to alter the nature of the coup regime and efforts to restore Honduran democracy have not yet succeeded. Meanwhile, Nicaragua is extremely vulnerable in a conflict with Honduras – 60% of Nicaragua’s exports go through the Honduran port of Cortés.

Last year the Cartagena agreement was signed in an effort to normalize the situation. Unfortunately, in Honduras, right-wing repression and assassinations continue. But Nicaragua has utilized the agreement to normalize its relations with Honduras.(7)

Women’s emancipation

Riddell: Could you speak of the condition of women in Nicaragua?

Stuart: There has been a big increase in political participation by women. Of the 62 Sandinista parliamentary deputies, 34 are women – more than half. Seventy percent of the Sandinista candidates in the forthcoming 2012 municipal elections will be women. Women play the key role on the community level. The FSLN leadership, including the Presidency, has made women’s participation in governance and politics a national priority.

Pressure from the women’s movement secured passage of a new law to counter violence against women, especially within the family.

The abortion question is still closed. Abortion has long been illegal, largely because of the strong Catholic bent of the population. In 2006 the outgoing Liberal government, with FSLN support, extended the ban to therapeutic abortions. However, despite this, the incidence of maternal death has declined.

In general, women’s situation is better because of the improvements in the countryside and in public health. Contraception is available if you can afford it.

Riddell: And gay rights?

Stuart: They are accepted, although not to the same extent as in Canada. Public display of affection, although not illegal, sometimes attracts police attention. There is an active gay movement, influenced by developments elsewhere in the hemisphere. Although same-sex marriage is stalled in the U.S., it is now legal in Argentina and Mexico City and seems close to adoption in Cuba. Young people are especially influenced by these trends.

Riddell: What are the prospects for 2012?

Stuart: We shall see. Before November, the FSLN faced an immense barrier: it was a minority in parliament and its measures could only pass with support of forces to its right. Now the FSLN has a majority at all levels and greatly enhanced authority. Let us see what Nicaraguans can make of this opportunity.

First published in Axis of Logic.
________________________________________________

Related articles by Felipe Stuart Cournoyer:

“Nicaragua’s Sandinista Government Allies with Anti-Imperialist Forces“

“Defying Attacks from the Right, FSLN Government Stays on Course“
References

Felipe Stuart’s comments represent only his own opinion, not necessarily that of the FSLN or the Nicaraguan government.

On January 23, the Organization of American States issued its final and definitive report of its Observer Mission to the November 6, 2012, Nicaraguan national elections. See Nicaragua News Bulletin (January 31, 2012) for a brief summary and resumé of reactions to the report.

For more information on the elections, see “Nicaragua: The Other Side,” by Fred Morris, published by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. See also “Nicaragua’s 2011 National Elections,” by Toni Solo.
See the response by Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Samuel Santos to Clinton’s statement.

For a detailed assessment of Nicaragua’s economy, see interview with Dr. Paul Oquist Kelly, Minister Private Secretary to President Ortega for National Policy.

A maquila is a manufacturing operation in which a factory imports materials and equipment on a duty-free and tariff-free basis for assembly, processing, or manufacturing and then re-exports the assembled, processed, or manufactured product.

See Felipe Stuart Cournoyer and John Riddell, “Agreement Signed for Democratic Rights in Honduras,” on this website.

Saskatchewan essential services law struck down

2012-02-06T15:14:00.001-06:00

CBC News
Feb 6, 2012

A Saskatchewan law limiting the ability of public sector workers to go on strike has been ruled unconstitutional by a Queen's Bench judge.

In a 132-page decision released Monday, Regina Justice Dennis Ball said the Public Service Essential Services Act, also known as Bill 5, infringes on workers' rights and is of "no force or effect."

However, a "declaration of invalidity" will be suspended for a year, Ball said.

The law, bitterly opposed by labour groups, was passed by the Saskatchewan Party government in 2008.

It sets out a process where some workers — such as nurses and snowplow drivers — can be declared essential and banned from going on strike.

The problem with Saskatchewan's law, Ball ruled, is that it doesn't give employees an adequate dispute resolution process where they can challenge which employees are designated as essential.

"Although the benefits that accrue from the statutory limitations on the rights to bargain collectively and to strike are significant, they are clearly outweighed by their deleterious effects on the employees affected," Ball said in the decision.

Ball was also asked to look at Bill 6, amendments to the Trade Union Act, which ended the practice of automatic union certification in cases where a majority of employees sign union cards. Instead, a secret ballot vote is required to unionize a workplace.

The Trade Union Act amendments also raised the threshold percentage of workers needed to trigger a vote — to 45 per cent from 25 per cent.

However, Ball rejected arguments that the Trade Union Act amendments were unconstitutional.

During a trial last year, the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour and more than two dozen unions argued that the two pieces of legislation, which were passed in 2008, infringe on the rights of people to form unions and bargain collectively with their employers.

Lawyers representing the government argued the legislation was reasonable and does not infringe on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

It's believed to be the first time in Canada an essential services law has been taken to court on a charter challenge.

Ball noted other provinces have essential services legislation, but Saskatchewan's is unique.

"No other essential services legislation in Canada comes close to prohibiting the right to strike as broadly, and as significantly, as the PSES Act," he said.

While Ball declared the essential services law unconstitutional, the effect won't kick in for more than a year.

That will give the two sides an opportunity to talk about remedies.

Ball said he will meet with both sides to talk about what should happen next.

Vale plans 40 million-litre-a-day water pipeline for potash mine in Saskatchewan

2012-02-05T21:00:00.000-06:00

By Brent Patterson
Council of Canadians
February 2, 2012

Katepwa Lake

CBC reports that the Brazilian mining giant Vale plans to build a potash mine near the town of Kronau, Saskatchewan that would start operations in 2015. CBC notes there are concerns “about the mine’s environmental and social impacts” but highlights that large volumes of water would be needed to separate the potash from other minerals.

“As there is no water source near Kronau, Vale wants to build a 70-kilometre water pipeline from Kronau to Katepwa Lake in the Qu’Appelle Valley. The company wants to pump more than 40 million litres of water — the equivalent of 15 Olympic-sized swimming pools — out of the lake every day.”

“The provincial body that regulates Saskatchewan’s water supply is currently studying whether there is enough water to meet Vale’s request. People living in the Katepwa Lake area say they are concerned about the effects the mine — and the withdrawal of all that water — would have on not just their water supply, but on the province’s lakes. …Vale plans to host public meetings over the next few months about the Kronau proposal.”

Back in November 2010, the Globe and Mail reported, “Vale’s potash plans in Saskatchewan include a potash development project valued up to $3-billion, which is now in the pre-feasibility stage. A decision on whether to build a mine is expected in 2012.” It would appear that Vale has now opted to proceed with its plan.

Harper government adds seniors to "attack list"

2012-02-05T20:49:00.000-06:00

By Jim Harding
No Nukes
February 4, 2012

Prime Minister Harper is coming out of the political “closet”. He has likely struggled to keep his political agenda to his inner circle; trying to appear moderate enough to slip through the first-past-the-post system to get his majority.

His reactionary agenda is falling into place. He’s already undermined international negotiations for an effective climate treaty. He’s labeled those wanting to transition to a less fossil-fuel dependent economy as “anti-Canadian radicals”. He’s embraced environmental de-regulation so Canada can become even more of an oil-exporting state and he’s breached the rule of law and “stolen” money from the farmer-elected Canadian Wheat Board. He has now indicated that spending cuts could hit $8 billion. There’s not much ambiguity left. His Canada would not be a compassionate, moderate country; ecological sustainability and social equality be damned.

TRANSFORMING CANADA

Harper gave his “coming out” speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Perhaps wanting to impress the rich and powerful present, he stands ready to be as tough on Canadians as required to give global corporations yet another boost. The pillars of his regressive “vision” are: first, to tie all policy, including on immigration, to the labour force needs of corporate economic growth; second, to fast-track environmental protection in the interests of mining and energy multinationals; and third, to cut federal services to control the deficit while turning his back on growing inequalities across Canada.

Harper uses two main tactics in his effort to remake Canada as a corporate state. He uses pre-emptive attacks and no-consultation ultimatums, as he did with healthcare funding, to drive forward his agenda and uses “wedge” issues that temporarily divide Canadians; keeping Canadians in shock, dismay and disunity. Harper recruits many of the deadly sins to “get the job done”, especially envy, pride and greed.

At Davos he attacked Canada’s long-established old-age security program as having the “capacity to undermine Canada’s economic position”. With a now predictable linguistic twist, pensions are made a “threat to social programs”. The increasing number of elderly, not increasing inequality from corporate economic growth, becomes responsible for the government having to cut spending. Seniors now join the ranks of the other groups being scapegoated by Harper’s corporate agenda.

DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS

Harper exploits half-truths. It’s true that with present trends the proportion of those 65 and over will double globally, becoming 15% of the population by 2040. This trend is accentuated in developed countries. It is also true that the baby boom bulge could triple expenses for old-age security here by 2030.

But statistics can be manipulated. At present Old Age Security (OAS) costs are only slightly above 2% of the GDP, which is one of the lowest of the G 20 countries. (Italy is at 10%). Even with the expected growth in seniors it would still cost only around 3% of the GDP by 2030. Meanwhile Canadian pensions have not been extravagant; in 2005 they were only 60% of the net median income, which is much lower than many G20 countries.

POLITICS OF DECEIT

But Harper doesn’t respect facts. He governs by opinion and undercuts the informed consent required for a healthy democracy. There’s lots of deceit here. Harper says he has a mandate from the last election to rule by law, as he’s done with the dismantling of the farmer-elected Canadian Wheat Board. But do you recall any mention during the last election of his plan to cut old-age security? Had Harper announced this intention he would not have won his majority. The senior advocacy group CARP has already come out in opposition to his proposed cuts.

Harper groups together rising pension costs with rising healthcare costs so that he can attack all universal programs, but there is no comparison. Based on today’s trajectory, healthcare costs could rise from 12% to 19% of the GDP by 2030, so reforming the organization and delivery of healthcare, and paying more attention to evidence-based prevention and treatment is clearly needed. The exploiting of Medicare for profit also needs to be curtailed.

In contrast, public pensions are working just fine. Harper has even had to admit that the Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) is financially sound. The OAS, for which most seniors qualify, and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) which provides additional resources to one-third of seniors, to help them stay out of glaring poverty, would remain viable even with the baby boom bulge, especially if taxes were made more equitable.

POLARIZING GENERATIONS

Why does Harper want to break what is working? He wants to make future seniors pay for his pro-corporate policies today. His “transformations”, in his words at Davos, are “necessary to sustain economic growth”. But what would be the consequences for Canadians? With the globalization of the labour force, our offspring are being streamed into low-paying, precarious jobs, what Guy Standing, in his recent book, calls The Precariat. It is therefore necessary to oppose cuts not just for today’s seniors, but for our children, for when they become seniors. Facing the restricted economic prospects of today they will be even more dependent on a solid public pension system than we are.

Harper will nevertheless try to drive a wedge between the generations by arguing that it is unfair for those in the shrinking workforce to support the growing senior population. Yet it is high youth unemployment – particularly among young men, and not seniors who have paid taxes throughout their lives, that is responsible for this imbalance. The solution is to green and diversify the economy and create compassionate public policy to give youth more social security. Some form of base income needs to be brought back into political debate. The growing old-age dependency ratio can be managed by progressive policy, including progressive economic policy; that’s what governments should be for. Except for Harper! For him society serves the economy rather than the reverse.

Harper’s plan to extend the age of retirement will also be justified by the increases in life expectancy. Yet we already see seniors, before 65, suffering from the stress and disability of our “one against all” economic system. The solution to growing life expectancy is not to drive future seniors into poverty but to transform the economy to better distribute wealth to meet human needs.

TAKING BACK CANADA

Such progressive policy is not on Harper’s agenda. Projected back in 2010 to receive a parliamentarian pension of at least $150,000 per year, it is easy for him to call for cuts to old-age security. Cutting and privatizing pensions is part of the overall post-2008 recession strategy to further reduce corporate costs and increase CEO/shareholder entitlements. Yet, as the experience with the mean-spirited Tea-Party politics in the US shows, fewer corporations are actually paying into worker pension plans. The attack on public pensions while unemployment is high is simply not sound fiscal or social policy. The neo-liberal claim that this is needed to create jobs is disproven by the outcomes, such as a jobless “recovery”, which stare us in the face.

We shouldn’t underestimate the political tricks Harper has up his sleeve, especially when the stakes are so high for senior citizens, today and tomorrow. It is likely he will try to polarize Canadians with his anti-democratic “transformations” early in his present term and then return to a more covert politics as he approaches the 2015 election. Let’s think big and not let this happen. Let’s join together to take Canada back from the brink.

Co-operative Capitalism in Saskatchewan

2012-02-05T19:34:00.001-06:00

Next Year Country
Dec.-Jan., 1977-78

Saskatchewan's cooperative past has often been lamented for its passing. NYC cast a critical eye on Saskatchewan cooperatives in a series of articles beginning with these in 1997-78.

Open publication - Free publishing - More co-operatives

SFL Calls on Provincial Government to Reject Harper Pension Cuts

2012-01-31T17:53:00.000-06:00

Saskatchewan Federation of Labour
Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Thousands of Saskatchewan people are concerned today about looming changes to Canada’s universal pension plan, specifically Old Age Security (OAS). Despite the nation’s strong economic position, especially in relation to the US and Europe, and despite the Harper Government’s fondness for dolling out tax breaks to corporations, the Prime Minister has indicated that he intends to make cuts to Canada’s highly-regarded pension program. The SFL is calling on the provincial government to stand up for the people of Saskatchewan and to oppose any cuts that the Harper Government proposes for pensions.

“What we see in Ottawa is a government that is willing to spend money on tax cuts for big corporations, but not on pensioners across the country who are trying to make ends meet,” said Larry Hubich, President of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour. “If the Harper Government’s priorities are going to continue to be corporate profits over people, then we need a provincial government that is willing to do the right thing and stand up to Ottawa.”

The Prime Minister’s announced intentions to cut OAS benefits for Canadian seniors come even as our economic position continues to be among the strongest in the world. The cuts further illustrate how far the federal government’s priorities are out of sync with those of average citizens.

“Stephen Harper and his government would rather spend our money on expensive fighter jets and gold-plated pensions for themselves than on meager pensions for struggling seniors. For Mr. Harper to cut pensions is not consistent with the values that we hold in Saskatchewan, and the provincial government should do its part oppose his plan.”

Unions must change quickly to survive, says secret report by CEP/CAW

2012-01-28T09:11:00.003-06:00

BY DAVE CHIDLEY
The Canadian Press
January 26, 2012

Ken Lewenza

Unions must overhaul themselves dramatically — and fast — or face a slow death, says a secret report by the two groups contemplating the biggest merger in Canadian labour history.

In a surprisingly blunt assessment of organized labour’s current difficulties, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) union say in a discussion paper that they must become a lot more relevant to working people, not only in contract bargaining, but for social change.

The paper, titled “A Moment of Truth for Canadian Labour,” says the economic pressures of globalization, growing employer aggression, hostile government policy and public cynicism have weakened unions significantly during the past two decades.

“If unions do not change, and quickly, we will steadily follow U.S. unions into continuing decline,” says the paper, which is marked “confidential.”

“We must reverse the erosion of our membership, our power and our prestige.”

Statistics show union membership in the private sector in Canada has slid from about 30 per cent in the early 1970s to 17.4 per cent — or 1.92 million employees — excluding farm workers. Public sector unionization remained at about 75 per cent in the same period.

U.S. union membership in the private sector has plunged from 30 per cent to 7 per cent over the past four decades. Public-sector unionization south of the border has stayed at about 37 per cent.

In Canada, employers such as Vale, U.S. Steel and Caterpillar have taken a hard line and demanded major concessions that has bruised organized labour and left workers wondering whether unions can be effective.

To help turn the trend around, the paper calls for the CAW, which represents 190,000 members, and CEP, which has another 130,000 members, to create a “brand” and “visibility for a new kind of national Canadian industrial unionism.”

“This improved brand image will be essential for attracting more individual workers to want to join a union,” says the paper, written by key strategists in the two unions and distributed at the highest levels of both groups.

The paper, which has received the support of CAW president Ken Lewenza and CEP president Dave Coles, is the springboard for talks between the two unions for a possible merger next year. The two unions announced the formation of a “proposal committee” and an extensive consultation process this week.

“We have to be thinking outside of the box,” Lewenza said in an interview Wednesday.

The paper says unions are experiencing a significant generational change as senior workers who fought for improvements retire and organizers struggle to appeal to younger employees.

Furthermore, the public perception of unions has grown more negative, with many believing that unions are primarily self-interested and outdated, according to the paper.

The paper says that if organized labour wants to reverse its demise in power and influence, unions will have to be innovative in how they organize workers and provide and improve services for them.

“The formation of a new union must be founded on a desire to and willingness to modernize our practices, to innovate with new models of organizing and servicing, and to rebuild our image with workers,” the paper adds.

“A new union would aim to spark a ‘culture shift’ among staff and local union leadership, to go beyond ‘servicing’ and view their work as movement building.”

Organized labour has not adapted well to changing workplace circumstances in the pursuit of people in industries such as the media and technology sectors. In response, unions could resort more to the “hiring hall” concept that’s used in the construction industry, where contractors contact a central agency for organized workers when they need skilled labour, said one insider familiar with the paper.

CAW and CEP insiders say a new union would look at new ways to open its doors so people like laid-off workers could join or become affiliated, to become more effective in pushing for better employment opportunities and social programs. Workers in non-unionized plants could also be more welcome in a union that’s pursuing social change in a community.

Unions also need to use new technology and social media to “educate, agitate, organize and mobilize,” said CAW economist Jim Stanford, who helped write the paper.

“The overall challenge is to reboot the ‘brand’ of unions in the minds of workers, so that we are seen once again as a movement that fights for fairness and security for all working people,” he noted.

The hard-hitting paper acknowledges that the labour movement has failed to restructure or to address the longstanding issue of too many unions and locals. It also points to the movement’s inability to initiate and lead effective campaigns or co-ordinate services.

Alluding to the Canadian Labour Congress and some provincial labour federations, the paper also criticizes umbrella union groups for “paralysis and dysfunction.”

Food as a Commodity

2012-01-26T00:17:00.000-06:00

By Fred Magdoff
Monthly Review
January 2012

Food is one of the most basic of human needs. Routine access to a balanced diet is essential for both growth and development of the young, as well as for general health throughout one’s life. Although food is mostly plentiful, malnutrition is still common. The contradiction between plentiful global food supplies and widespread malnutrition and hunger arises primarily from food being considered a commodity, just like any other.

For many millennia following the origin of our species, humans were hunters and gatherers—an existence that one might think of as tenuous. However, judging from archeological evidence as well as recent examples, hunters and gatherers generally ate a diverse diet that supplied adequate nutrition. For example, studies in the 1960s and ‘70s of the !Kung of southern Africa, foragers for literally thousands of years, indicate that although they ate meat that they hunted, about two-thirds of their food was plant-based—nuts (supplying more than one-third of caloric intake), fruits, roots, and berries—and their diet provided approximately 2,400 calories a day. The groups of hunter-gatherers were egalitarian, with everyone participating in the provisioning of food.

Read more HERE.

Farmers standing up to Harper's anti-democratic rule

2012-01-24T16:58:00.001-06:00

No Nukes
January 24, 2012

After squeezing a majority government out of the Canadian electorate Harper is ratcheting up his assault on our democracy. One of his first acts was to ram through Bill C-18 which undercuts the farmer-elected Canadian Wheat Board (CWB). A Federal Court judge found Harper had breached his “statutory duty to consult the CWB and conduct a vote”, a requirement under Section 47.1 of the 1998 legislation. Harper barreled on and now former CWB directors have called for an injunction on Bill C-18; and a class action suit is seeking compensation for damages to farmers. As Bruce Johnstone so rightly asked in the January 14, 2012 Leader Post: “What gives this government the right to seize farmer’s assets, sell them and pocket the proceeds, without paying any compensation to farmers?”

Farmers need a lot of financial support in their efforts to draw a line in the sand and show Harper that he can’t trample on the rule of law. The line may have to be drawn one community meeting at a time.

And this is starting to happen. On January 22nd nearly 100 people gathered in the Raymore Elks Hall to show their support for standing up for the rights of farmers. CWB members, a diversity of political party supporters and a wide-range of community leaders from 30 communities packed into the small hall. Ralph Goodale, Minister when the CWB was changed to give farmers a say, spoke last and spoke passionately. After speeches, questions, debate, lots of learning and a great supper, many people started donating $1 for every acre they farm to the farmer’s defense fund.

ANTI-DEMOCRATIC LEGACY

I was asked to talk about Harper’s assault on democracy, to look at the pattern of his rule since 2006. I was dumbfounded by the growing list of undemocratic acts. There was the proroguing of Parliament before the Vancouver Olympics to suppress information about complicity in Afghan torture. Bullying was already happening, as Harper warned the Law Clerk to conduct himself “according to government interpretation”. There was a constant misleading of Parliament to impose his rule: cuts to KAIROS, a long-stand ecumenical and international development group, were done deceitfully. Minister Oda claimed KAIROS failed to meet CIDA’s new guidelines; it was later found that someone in her office had inserted “not” onto the grant form reversing CIDA’s actual recommendation. Basic honestly was beginning to erode. Then Harper’s 2006 and 2008 Campaign Manager was accused of making “false and misleading statements” regarding overspending for attack ads used against the Leader of the Opposition.

Harper wasn’t just suppressing information required for a functioning Parliamentary democracy, he was starting to repress the inherent rights of Canadians. The government squandered $1 billion on the G8 and G 20 meetings; 20,000 police were brought in, 1,100 Canadians were arbitrarily held in detention centers, the vast majority of whom had no charge laid or were there under false arrest. Harper made Canada look like a banana republic.

The list continues. Harper obstructed international attempts to negotiate a climate treaty. Under his rule Canada became the only country to not repatriate its citizens from Guantanamo Bay. When Harper tied to get Canada a seat on the Security Council, his hostility towards international law was already well known. Canada, a pioneer of the United Nations, was soundly defeated by Portugal.

Harper steadily centralizes power. Though using populist rhetoric about accountability and transparency, he appointed an unelected party supporter to his Cabinet, eliminated an Access to Information database (CAIRS), and fired the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for trying to regulate nuclear safety at Chalk River. The Chief Statistician at Stats Canada was driven out because he spoke the truth about how the qualitative information from the Long Census Form was required for good governance.

Harper established rigid controls over Cabinet and civil service contact with the media. After taking $10 million in public subsidies for his election campaign, he threatened to abolish the per-vote public subsidy that keeps Canadian politics from being in the pockets of the rich, as in the U.S. Harper was found to be in Contempt of Parliament prior to the 2011 election. This was a first for any Prime Minister in the Commonwealth, yet another blight on Canada.

ONE-MAN RULE

With the economic uncertainty following the 2008 financial crisis, Harper was carefully marketed as an Economic Strong Man who could rule decisively. This helped deflect attention from the $10 billion dollar surplus becoming a $50 billion deficit, the largest in our history. Harper branded the federal stimulus package, Action Canada, as a Conservative vote-getting machine and was trying to rebrand Government of Canada departments as those of the “Harper Government”. Most Canadians didn’t fall for this, but with 4 of 10 not voting and the opposition vote split several ways, Harper gained enough seats, mostly from suburban Ontario, to get his majority.

Harper is sometimes referred to as Teflon Man: nothing sticks. He has deflected criticisms of his anti-democratic legacy mostly by playing the politics of fear. He has barged ahead with his extravagant plan to build super-jails in a time of a lowering crime rate and a plan for super-jets (The F-35 Stealths) without any rational bidding process. This is perhaps a $40 billion combined cost, at a time when the government says it will cut $8 billion in spending.

Harper preemptively undermined the UN climate treaty process by announcing he would withdraw from all commitments to the Kyoto Accord, which had previously been endorsed by Parliament. Following a similar pattern, he preempted the National Energy Board’s hearings on the Northern Gateway pipeline by attacking opponents as “foreign-funded radicals”. NGOs and First Nations were demonized while multi-nationals who would export thousands of jobs to China were in “the national economic interest”. This brings us back to the CWB, where the benefactors of Harper’s squashing of the rule of law will be the grain and transportation corporations to which farmers will be more beholding.

POLITICS AS WARFARE

While others in the world struggle and in some cases die to create democratic space for progressive reform, Harper systematically shuts down and closes off democratic processes so he can force through his corporate agenda. He skillfully manipulated the electoral system using attack ads, wedge issues like gun control and immigration, suppression of opponents and outright deceit. He’s no democrat in any sense of the term. What characterizes his politics is preemptive attacks: Syria’s dictator labels his opponents as “foreign-supported terrorists”; Harper’s slams his as “foreign-funded radicals”. It’s semantic warfare.

Harper and his circle of ideologues are angry at democracy for its tolerance for dialogue and compromise. They are angry at those who would dare oppose them; they prefer to strike first, with no apologies. Harper’s past political adviser, Tom Flanagan, has spoken of elections as “war by other means”; you fatally wound your enemies. Flanagan actually called for the assassination of Wikipedia activist Julian Assange. What kind of model is this for upcoming generations?

Harper sees politics as war. He sees sport as warlike. He wants the military to be at the centre of our political culture, while he undermines the very freedoms for which we ritually thank the military. Politics is not rivalry among citizen politicians; it’s not about political participation by farmers, workers, environmentalists, indigenous or other peoples to find the best methods of governance. It is a zero-sum game where winner takes all; where you rule by law not by the rule of law.

Saskatchewan Farmers have now drawn a line in the sand. The majority of Canadians do not like Harper’s anti-democratic rule. Will others soon join the farmers who have said “enough is enough”?

For more info or to donate go to: www.friendsofcwb.ca

Tommy Douglas for Robbie Burns Day

2012-01-24T15:36:00.000-06:00

Tommy Douglas
Videos by Doug Taylor.

It is a flat world when it comes to wheat

2012-01-24T08:35:00.002-06:00

Canadian Wheat Board Alliance
January 23, 2012

In the November 24 Western Producer D’Arce McMillan argues that “ending single desk won’t change realities of wheat market.” However, it was the problems created by those realities that the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) was created to address. Without the CWB it will be the same old market Canadian farmers and consumers have been insulated from since farmers founded the Wheat Board in 1935.

From a consumer point of view, the contention that the mixture of wheat Canadians eat will not change once the single desk Board is gone is unrealistic. Here is why:

When it comes to commodity trading the world for all intents and purposes is flat. In the absence of orderly marketing, the private trade arbitrages all prices to a lowest common denominator almost automatically.
Part of that flat world is made possible by low-cost ocean transport. The Baltic Dry Index measures how expensive it is to move things by ship. Larger and more fuel efficient vessels have lowered unit costs by two thirds in the past five years.

Once a commodity is on an ocean freighter it can go anywhere in the world. This results in some odd things happening. For example, eastern Canada imports most of its oil from the Middle East half way around the world rather than pay the high overland shipping costs to get oil from western Canada.

Wheat also travels on the sea. So contrary to Mr. McMillan, that is why it is entirely reasonable to expect that without the CWB a lot of eastern Canadian flour will be milled from wheat coming in by ocean-going ships, rather than rail car from western Canada or even from south of the border.

Processors pay a premium for a reliable supply of a consistent quality grain. With the single desk the CWB is the only grain dealer on the planet with the logistical ability and the financial incentive to make a speciality of providing reliable supplies of premium grain. Along with a policy of encouraging domestic processing by having a uniform price, this gives domestic processors an incentive to use western Canadian wheat while still leaving a premium on the table for farmers.

However, if Harper removes the CWB single desk, processors will no longer have access to a reliable and consistent supply of wheat, not because the wheat disappears, but because the cost of assembling and delivering supplies will no longer be provided by the CWB and the logistical costs of assembling the required volumes will increase. This is exactly what is being reported by Reuter’s news service:

”Canadian millers, who include Archer Daniels Midland and P&H Milling Group, have said they may tap U.S. wheat to manage risks around no longer being able to secure all their supplies through a single supplier.”

The largest processors will also demand, and get, bulk discounts from the private trade, and the smaller processors will seek operational economies by sourcing cheaper grains elsewhere.

Without a single desk supplier like the Wheat Board, ultimately all sizes of processors will seek the cheapest source of grain, regardless of where it comes from. That is where the flat earth comes in. Like oil, grain from off shore will be cheaper than grain transported over thousands of miles of roads or rails from western Canada.

Many of those ships carrying wheat will come from two deep water ports. One will be the Piranha River which allows ocean-going vessels to travel up the center of the Argentinean wheat growing region. The other port is Odessa, the deep water Black Sea port that started the world’s wheat trade after the defeat of Napoleon in 1812.

Chernobyl sits just 600 very flat kilometres north of Odessa in part of the Eurasian wheat belt. Historically, it is grain grown in this area that was shipped around the world. The declining cost of ocean freight along with killing our Wheat Board means this area can again start shipping grain to Eastern Canada’s food processors just like eastern Canada’s refineries process Middle Eastern oil.

Without the CWB looking out for their collective interests, western farmers will find the world is as flat as the prices they can expect from a truly globalized wheat market.

Incidentally, for those who like to eat, the scientific literature is full of articles documenting contamination of grains from this area with radioactive materials from the Chernobyl accident. The good news is that 25 years later contamination levels in grains are lower and some mitigation efforts have reduced levels by a third on small test plots. The bad news is soil contamination levels are not appreciably lower.

So the evidence, on many levels is not as reassuring as some writers would have western farmers or their customers believe.

Have Social Democrats surrendered?

2012-01-24T08:10:00.002-06:00

BY GEORGE IRVIN
Social Europe
January 24, 2012

Some years ago, Europe’s social democratic parties replaced the red flag with a red rose. Now they appear to have abandoned progressive politics altogether and raised the white flag of surrender to the politics of austerity.

After the 2008 crash, social democrats briefly rediscovered Keynes; a few even talked about the imminent demise of neoliberal ideology. But as the strength of the centre-right grew and neoliberal parties were returned to power in the wake of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, ‘austerity’ politics triumphed. Social democracy, fearful of being deemed insufficiently prudent, appears to have capitulated to the logic of balanced budgets and cuts in welfare provision.

In Italy, the PD supports Monti’s so-called ‘technocratic’ government; in France, François Hollande has led the PS into battle under the banner of fiscal responsibility; in Germany, the SPD derides Keynesian-type remedies; in the UK, Ed Balls announces that if Labour comes to power he will not reverse the cuts. Never mind Spain, where Zapatero’s ill-fated PSOE failed to generate jobs, or even The Netherlands, where the PvdA until relatively recently held Ministry of Finance in a right-wing coalition.

For several years, the EU centre-right has successfully ridden a wave of fear and xenophobia. As austerity bites and jobs, pensions and benefits become less secure by the day, the right consolidates its grip on power by blaming the crisis on profligate politicians who tax away the money of hard-working citizens to the benefit of undeserving foreigners. Deeper austerity reinforces such views and worsens the situation.

The average voter has been conned into accepting austerity for two reasons. First, he or she faces a choice between cutting spending and going into greater debt—typically at usurious rates of interest. With jobs scarcer and employment less secure, the prospect of greater personal debt is quite terrifying. Crucially, voters have been sold the view that the government budget must balance just like a household budget, a view that most European social democratic politicians have failed to challenge—with disastrous consequences.

This Micawberesque view of state finances is utterly misleading. At a time when domestic households and firms are trying to rebuild savings (deleverage), unless there is a miraculous export boom, increased government savings can only be compatible with lower national income; ie, with even greater unemployment and uncertainty. As the Japanese economist Richard Koo (RWER 58 ‘The world in balance sheet recession’) has warned, if Europe is not to follow the Japanese down the path of 20 years of stagnation, massive economic stimulus is required.

Social democrats know that three issues are of utmost importance: finance, jobs and global warming. A reckless financial sector which caused the crisis continues to reward itself with outrageous pay, while dergulation and the bonus culture has made the EU (starting with the UK) more unequal. Next, high unemployment has been endemic in the EU since well before the 2008 financial crisis; it cannot be cured by supply side measures, by a ‘deregulated job market’. And although climate change seems a longer term problem, if we are to contain it action must be taken now.

These issues are linked. More jobs can be generated by a massive public works programme aimed at energy conservation and new sources of sustainable energy generation. Additionally, the impact of global warming on poorer countries must be addressed through an international transfer of resources.

How can such a programme be financed? Consider only two measures: an FTT and more efficient tax collection. First, the EU has started to take seriously the notion of a Tobin (or Financial Transactions) tax—once an FTT is implemented, the revenues could be used as a massive boost for public investment and overseas transfers. The European Commission (EC) estimates annual revenue to be of the order of €57bn per annum, assuming securities transactions involving an EU-based financial institution were taxed at 0.1 per cent and all OTC derivatives deals at 0.01 per cent. (Using an across-the-board tax of 0.1% on all euro trading globally, I estimated the upper bound on revenue to be €200bn per annum, so the EC estimate appears to be very cautious.)

In addition, there is a serious tax gap in Europe —the difference between what should be paid by law and what is actually paid. Total EU GDP is approximately €12tr per annum, and one recent and comprehensive source puts the tax gap at 8% of Europe’s combined GDP. For VAT alone, another study puts the gap at €100bn, so an upper bound estimate for the total gap would be in the region of €1tr. On the assumption that the tax gap will not be closed oversight, taking half this figure, or €500bn per annum, as available for economic stimulus seems reasonable. (Note that I have said nothing about expanded public borrowing, jointly backed Eurobonds, or even quantitative easing—all of which could be used to generate further funds for expansion.)

In short, there is no financial constraint on creating new EU jobs and greening Europe through public investment.

How would such a stimulus be viewed by the financial markets? Until recently, the answer would have been negative; indeed, fear of the financial markets has been one of the main reasons why economic policy in Europe has been so conservative. But times are changing, and as the IMF has argued recently, ‘austerity’ is no longer to be welcomed. Indeed, some argue that financial markets are turning against austerity and Merkosy-style ‘governance’, which is seen as a most serious threat to the EU’s wellbeing.

The lesson for social democrats is that their real fight is with those seeking to impose further budgetary austerity on Europe. To paraphrase my old colleague Howard Reed, it’s time to put an end to the suicidal economic policies currently wreaking havoc with our economic and social fabric.

Spain: Trial of Judge Baltasar Garzón ‘a blow to human rights’

2012-01-24T00:52:00.001-06:00

Hugo Relva
Amnesty International
20 January 2012

Judge Baltasar Garzón

The Spanish Supreme Court’s pending criminal trial of a pioneering investigative judge is a threat to human rights and judicial independence, Amnesty International said today.

Judge Baltasar Garzón, 56, faces trial in Madrid on 24 January on charges he abused his power while leading an investigation into crimes under international law committed during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War and the ensuing decades of dictatorship under General Francisco Franco.

The judge is renowned for opening investigations into public officials and others suspected of committing genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture in other countries – most notably Chile’s former military ruler Augusto Pinochet.

“Given Judge Baltasar Garzón’s success at investigating and prosecuting crimes under international law around the world, it beggars belief that Spanish judicial authorities would seek to prevent him from investigating such crimes in Spain,” said Hugo Relva, Legal Adviser at Amnesty International, who is in Madrid to observe the trial.

“The charges against him must be dropped, as they represent a blow to human rights and efforts to obtain justice.”

Two other criminal trials have been brought against Garzón over allegations he received bribes and facilitated illegal wire-tapping of prisoners’ conversations with their lawyers. He has denied any wrongdoing. Amnesty International takes no position on the merits of these criminal investigations.

A conviction in the trial that begins on 24 January could lead to him being disbarred for up to 20 years, effectively ending his career as a jurist and scuppering his Franco investigation.

Garzón’s investigation, launched in 2008, was the first to look into crimes under international law during the Spanish Civil War and the early years of Franco’s rule. It covers more than 114,000 cases of enforced disappearance that took place between July 1936 and December 1951.

In May 2010, Spain’s General Judicial Committee suspended Garzón after the Supreme Court accused him of wilfully breaking a 1977 amnesty law.

The law has been interpreted as preventing the investigation of crimes committed up to 1976.

Amnesty International supports Garzón’s position that Spain should set aside the amnesty law, as it interferes with obligations to investigate and prosecute crimes under international law.

“Under international law there are no statutes of limitation for enforced disappearance, torture and other crimes against humanity, and Spain has an obligation to investigate and, if there is sufficient admissible evidence, to prosecute the suspects and to provide full reparations to the victims,” said Hugo Relva.

Amnesty International has evidence that several other recent investigations into past crimes in Spain have been prevented from going forward pending the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Garzón trial.

“It seems the search for truth, justice and reparation for past crimes under international law in Spain is being held hostage to this trial based on outrageous charges,” said Hugo Relva.

“The Spanish authorities should instead focus their efforts on revealing the fate of the thousands of victims of enforced disappearance, torture, extrajudicial executions and other crimes under international law committed during the civil war and Franco’s rule, and bring those responsible to justice.”

Rigoberta Menchu to Investigate Murders of Women in Honduras

2012-01-23T22:22:00.000-06:00

Alternavox
January 23, 2012

Rigoberta Menchu

Nobel Prize winners Rigoberta Menchu (1992) and Jody Williams (1997) will arrive in Honduras to boost the investigation into the murders of several women in Honduras, said the executive director of the Women Rights Center, Gilda Rivera.

“They arrive in Honduras on January 25, on National Women´s Day, the day in which Honduran women won, after many battles, their right to vote and take part in the decisions made in our country, though in practice that is not accomplished,” said Rivera.

During their stay, both women will meet with police authorities and leaders of pro-women´s rights in the country, which has the world´s second highest rate of women killings.

Honduras has the second highest rate of feminicide after Guatemala, where more than 1,750 cases have been reported in the last 6 years and 80 percent of the cases have not been investigated adequately.

Menchu and Williams will be heading a campaign to stop the hundreds of killings of women in this country, during which they will hold talks with those who have to investigate such acts and try to implement measures against those acts.

Fighting corporate propaganda with guerrilla art warfare

2012-01-23T22:07:00.000-06:00

By Nadim Fetaih
Roar
January 24, 2012

It is time. Throughout history, art has been the heart and blood of society. In recent years, artists have had to sell their talents in order to feed themselves. When before, art could inspire emotion, movements, and even revolution – now, most art is used to subdue and brainwash the masses.

Art has been connected to intellectual movements of the past (e.g. surrealism mirroring the growth of questioning the power of the mind). It has been used as a means to show beauty in the most benign (e.g. Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings). Since the rise of the Soviet Union, though, there has been a growth in the manipulation of inspiration – a bastard child of art was formed: propaganda.

After this, thousands of years of artistic technique and gained knowledge of artistic “rules” have been turned against the very people art always sided with. Whether it is the films and music used as propaganda to help enforce Hitler’s ideals, to advertisements used to continue the cycle of consumption in the capitalist world, propaganda has manipulated the thoughts and actions of people while at the same time stiffening artistic integrity and creativity.

This is the front line of the war for freedom. This is where the corporate powers have their hold upon the masses. Their ads, movies, music – all meant to ensure the stability of the “American Dream”. Its message is clear: Consume. Consume. Consume. And all those who stand in the way of consumption and economic control will be seen as a terrorist of the state, needed to be fought by the “heroes” of capitalism.

It is time. It is time to fight fire with fire. A new revolutionary tactic is born: Guerrilla Art Warfare. Inspired by decades of beautiful guerrilla art. Inspired by Banksy and all the filmmakers in the world who refuse to abide by film laws.

Let us bring art back into the hands of the people. To the artists around the world, I beg you: take charge, spread emotion in an increasingly cold and grey world. Teach citizens to feel again. Spread your message. Fight propaganda — not with your own, but with true art that speaks to the average person.

Inspire the masses. Take down ads, replace them with universal truths; corporations are NOT people; ads are taking over our schools, our public space, our free-time, our clothes, even our news; consuming traps us in a prison with invisible bars.

Attached is a video of a small group of people who have decided to bring a message to the masses in a way that only they could. What is your message? How will your art portray it? Choose your weapon, be it paint brush, camera, charcoal, tools, a pen, pencil or a spray paint canister.

German Intelligence Watching Left Party Politicians

2012-01-23T22:01:00.001-06:00

Spiegel Online
January 23, 2012

More than one-third of the Left Party's parliamentarians are under observation by Germany's domestic intelligence agency, SPIEGEL has learned. Much larger than previously thought, the operations cost nearly 400,000 euros a year. Critics worry it's disproportionate to surveillance of the right-wing extremist NPD party.

Germany's opposition far-left Left Party is under more intense surveillance from domestic intelligence than previously thought, SPIEGEL has learned. Information from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) reveals that 27 Left Party parliamentarians are being observed -- more than one-third of the party's 76-strong parliamentary group.

Another 11 members of state parliaments around the country are also being watched, SPIEGEL has learned. The agency has declined to release the politicians' names, as it would "run counter to the operative aims of the observation."

Concern about the Left Party's democratic pedigree is not new. The party formed in 2007 when a successor party to the East German communist party joined a leftist group from Western Germany. There have been numerous reports since then of party figures who were affiliated with the East German secret police, the Stasi, prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The BfV is reportedly watching not just radical party members, but also a number of more moderate members, including almost all of the Left Party's leading figures in parliament. Among the targets are leader Gregor Gysi, deputy chairwoman Sahra Wagenknecht, and members of the party's parliamentary committee Dietmar Bartsch and Jan Korte.

But it's the inclusion of Steffen Bockhahn, a member of the parliamentary committee that oversees the country's intelligence agencies' budgets, that is raising eyebrows. His surveillance is particularly sensitive because in December 2011, the parliamentary research service determined that "because of the special job description of the committee … only very extraordinary circumstances could justify the surveillance of a member."

'Questions About Proportionality'

According to a Jan. 4, 2012 document from the Interior Ministry, the BfV employs seven workers for the "handling of the Left Party" with personnel costs of some €390,000 ($504,000) per year. By way of comparison, more than 10 domestic intelligence agents are conducting surveillance on members of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), at a cost of some €590,000 each year.

The BfV stresses that the Left Party politicians are not "under surveillance," but being "observed," during which no "intelligence service methods" are used. Instead, only public sources such as newspapers or speech manuscripts are analyzed, it says.

Still, Left Party parliamentary group leader Gregor Gysi reacted angrily to the news. "The parliamentarians are there to control the domestic intelligence agency. It is shameless that they think they can monitor a third of the parliamentarians in the Left Party faction," he told daily Mitteldeutsche Zeitung on Sunday. "Now it has finally become clear that the domestic intelligence agency is nuts."

The environmentalist Green Party has also expressed concern over the BfV measures, as the agency has recently come under fire for investigative errors in the case against the Zwickau neo-Nazi terror cell, which is thought to have murdered at least 10 people since 2000.

Comparing BfV efforts against the far-left and far-right inspires "questions about the sense and proportionality of the measures," said Volker Beck, a senior member of the Greens' parliamentary group. "The measures seem disproportionate when compared to the expenditures for measures against the NPD."

"What the Hell do We Want Anyway?"

2012-01-23T18:23:00.003-06:00

John's Speech to Occupy Regina on 22 October 2011

By John F. Conway
January 23, 2012

Some very powerful and influential people are very, very unhappy with what you are doing and saying.

John Manley, CEO of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives – the group which designed the blueprint for the mess we are in – calls you “ridiculous” and just a bunch of “wanna-bes.” He speaks for the 150 largest Canadian corporations with assets of $4.5 trillion and annual revenues of $850 billion. They are the real rulers of the business dictatorship that now oppresses us.

Some of the movers and shakers in the media have been reasonable, though careful and equivocal, but many more have not.

The Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente, after a brief visit with the Toronto occupiers, concluded, “So much for the voice of the oppressed masses. They need pacifiers.” She opines that they are not to be taken seriously until they attract as many people as the New York Halloween parade or the Toronto Marathon.

Our very own John Gormley also thinks you are not to be taken seriously since an acquaintance of his visited your campsite at 8 am one morning and found you still sleeping. Meanwhile the bankers and financial manipulators were up at the crack of dawn, presumably looking for more pension funds to loot and finding new ways to increase our debt slavery.

In the US Occupiers have been referred to as “mobs,” “anti-American” and are described as “jealous” people who should “get a job.”

The biggest recurring rant from our corporate aristocrats and their political and media puppets has to do with what the hell we want. Just what will make you shut up, go home and roll over?

The fact is they know what you want and they are worried, very, very worried. And they are getting more worried as the occupation goes on and as the world, the world they have constructed in last thirty years, erupts. There is a dangerous political virus loose and it must be stopped. They are searching desperately for an antidote before the political epidemic gets bigger and perhaps spins the world out of the crushing embrace of their less than tender tentacles.

We want to take away their power to rule and give it back to the people. We want to replace this business dictatorship with the democratic rule of the people.

Oh yes, they know what we want. And we know what we want. We want everything to change. It was most succinctly put on a hand-made poster carried by a student on Wall Street in New York: “Unfuck the world.”

They want details? Here are a few.

First, we want an end to the economic terrorism that haunts us all every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year…and doesn’t end until we find peace in our graves. Yes, we want a quite different War on Terror.

What is this economic terrorism?

The terror of those whose pension funds have been looted, of those who have seen their jobs shipped out of the country to a low wage area and see their once vibrant neighbourhoods, cities and towns turn into war zones of despair, of those who struggle to meet their mortgage payments and fear foreclosure and homelessness.

The quiet terror of the young couple with a new baby who look to a future with little hope, of the debt ridden university graduate who can’t find a job let alone the career they were promised, of the welfare recipient or the unemployed whose food budget runs out early and then faces the degradation of food bank line ups and going cap-in-hand to private charities.

The terror we all share in this society where if you lose your job, your house or apartment, sufficient income to live with dignity…then you begin to be remorselessly excluded from full membership in civil society and the right to a life with dignity.

Second, we want a new social and economic morality to guide our system…and we want laws to enforce that morality. People should come before profits. The environment should not be raped and pillaged by the profit seekers. The public interest should trump all other interests. Our food and drugs should be regulated and rendered safe. Our public infrastructure should be funded and inspected so that bridges don’t fall on our heads and natural gas lines don’t blow up in our neighbourhoods. These rules should be law and those who break them should be put in jail and stripped of their power over others.

Question: why did it take American laws to put Conrad Black in jail. Answer: the US has slightly stronger laws relating to white collar corporate crime. Well, we want some tough laws and a war on corporate crime and wrong doing.

Third, we want a better life….good well funded schools and day cares, a universal public health system and an end to the nibbling delisting and privatization that continues, universal access to university education, secure jobs with benefits and pensions, the ability to live in an apartment or house within our means, a future for our kids – a future our efforts will make better for them than it was for us….need I go on? We all want this…and we were working slowly towards it before the corporate wrecking crew took power in the 1980s.

Fourth, not only do we want a better life in the future, we want it now. We want the lives that have been torn from those over forty restored to them intact. We want them made whole again. We want the promised future lives of those starting out on their working lives in their 20s and 30s to be restored and the promises fulfilled. And we want a massive investment in our children….this is a wealthy society and if we plan it properly and fairly and democratically, it could be the New Jerusalem the old CCFers talked about.

Finally…the big one…we want to turn today’s world upside down, just as the corporate coup in the 1980s turned our world upside down for 30 years. We don’t need a plan…the business lobby provides us with one. We just do the opposite of what they did starting in the 1980s. In fact, it is a good rule of thumb in democratic politics…when the business lobby asks for something, it is a pretty good bet that the public interest is best served by doing the opposite. That was my guiding principle while I was on the public school board.

Here was their agenda, and ours today:

Theirs: cutback on social spending to erode the social security net.
Ours: increase social spending to expand the social security net.

Theirs: attack the incomes of wage and salary earners and increase the total share
of the society’s wealth flowing to capital and its servants.
Ours: increase the incomes of wage and salary earners and dramatically decrease
the total share of the society’s wealth flowing to capital and its servants.

Theirs: weaken the central government and avoid national programs.
Ours: strengthen the central government to ensure national programs with national
standards can be delivered.

Theirs: deregulate, privatize public assets and move to free market forces as the
engine of social and economic development.
Ours: regulate, develop public assets and democratically plan our social and
economic development in the public interest.

Theirs: free trade with the US and Mexico
Ours: withdraw from the free trade agreement and negotiate sectoral agreements
that do not take away our sovereignty and democratic rights to govern ourselves.

Theirs: hamstring and discredit governments with huge annual deficits and
crippling debt, while shifting the tax load from the rich and the corporate
sector to the middle and working classes.
Ours: take our governments back into the hands of the people and use them as tools
to realize the public interest; create a fair and progressive tax system; impose a tax on financial transactions; take public debt out of the private sector and use the Bank of Canada for all public borrowing.

Theirs: smash trade unions any way you can; change the laws to give employers’
big advantages in preventing unionization; make it hard as hell to organize a union; take away the right to strike.
Ours: encourage the organization of unions; make it easier to organize; strictly
enforce better labour standards and labour relations laws; prevent
employers from blocking unions through threats and intimidation.

The main tool used now against the movement is ridicule – it is essential to delegitimize the movement in the public’s mind. It deeply worries our masters that a recent poll reported that 54 per cent of Americans supported Occupy Wall Street.

So far ridicule has not worked – the movement is a disorganized rabble; they don’t know what they want; they are a bunch of trouble makers on a lark; a mixture of entitled middle class brats, disgruntled unionists and aging hippies…and on and on it goes.

Then there is the more elaborate guilt trip. Just what are you whining about? You live in the richest society in the world with the highest standard of living. The poorest of the poor in North America live better than most of humanity. Just look at the misery around the world…why are you complaining?

Well, that red herring is not working either. Oppression is not just about starvation, or about living under a brutal dictatorship – oppression is simply the imposition of unjust burdens. And that is what has happened here – an accumulation of unjust burdens over the past 30 years and a future where we are told it will only get worse.

It is a question of justice, of right and wrong. And this society is unjust and morally wrong in the way it has organized and distributes social, political and economic power. And the reality is, as we all know, you can only change the world in which you live and work.

A measure of our life’s work is can we change it for the better for those who come after us?

Co-ops in Saskatchewan and Quebec: A Comparative Analysis

2012-01-23T13:10:00.000-06:00

GLOBALIZATION, SOCIAL INNOVATION, AND CO-OPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF QUÉBEC AND SASKATCHEWAN FROM 1980 TO 2010

By Mitch Diamantopoulos
July 2011

Workers bottling milk, Saskatchewan Co-operative Creamery, Moose Jaw (Ca. 1950s)

This study examines the development gap that has emerged between the co-operative sectors of the Canadian provinces of Québec and Saskatchewan since 1980. It harnesses historical research, textual analysis, and semi-structured interviews to better understand how some movements are able to regenerate their movements in the face of crisis.

The study finds that the regeneration of the Québec movement reflects the concertation (concerted action) of social movement, sector, and state actors. Deeply rooted in a collectivist tradition of cultural nationalism and state corporatism, this democratic partnership supported the renovation and expansion of the co-operative development system in a virtuous spiral of movement agency, innovation, and regeneration. Concertation of social movement and state actors created momentum for escalating orders of joint-action, institution-building, and policy and program development.

By contrast, the degeneration of the Saskatchewan movement reflects the decline of the agrarian economy and movement and a failure to effectively coordinate the efforts of emerging social movements and the state for development action. This has yielded a vicious spiral of movement inertia, under-development, and decline. Although green shoots are in evidence, regeneration efforts in Saskatchewan lag Québec’s progress in rebuilding the foundations for effective democratic partnership.

The study concludes with a detailed comparison of these diverging movements, offering conclusions and recommendations for the repair of the Saskatchewan development system and the regeneration of its co-operative movement.

Read paper HERE.

Front de Gauche: a dynamic that disturbs

2012-01-22T15:29:00.001-06:00

By Sébastien Crépel
l’Humanité
Translated Friday 20 January 2012
by Henry Crapo and reviewed by Bill Scoble

The progress that Jean-Luc Mélenchon is making in the opinion polls, which bodes well for the advancement of the Left, is disturbing to the bipartisan scenarios prepared in advance.

“Something is happening around the candidate of the Front de gauche. It isn’t l’Humanité that is saying this, but now the quasi-unanimity of commentators, such as the political commentator for France Inter and leading journalist of Point, Anna Cabana who, yesterday morning, on the airwaves of the public radio station, evoked “a dynamic, a chemistry, a crystallization, as one says about love — the opposite of what is happening around François Hollande”.

In fact, the candidate of the Front de gauche is gaining likely voters: an increase of 1.5% in the most recent polls by Ifop and LH2 (see l’Humanité for yesterday), with respectively 7.5 and 8.5%. But it is especially the electoral potential that Jean-Luc Mélenchon holds in this election: 23% of voters would “certainly” or “probably” vote for Jean-Luc Mélenchon according to BVA (and not “will vote”, as erroneously reported in our edition yesterday).

This progress for the candidate and his program comes at a moment when the team of Hollande-Sarkozy seems to be stalled in the public opinion. “For April 2012, everything seemed to be written in advance. A four-way match (with Bayrou and Le Pen), or rather Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen as scare-crow. This film of the presidential election didn’t find its public,” rejoices Olivier Dartigolles, spokesman for the PCF and member of the campaign council of the Front de gauche.

Who can complain if, thanks to the dynamics growing within the Front de gauche, there at last emerges a citizens’ debate on the present alternatives?

However, this is not what emerges from commentaries that accompany this rise of the Front de gauche. It is presented rather as a menace. “The electoral potential” of Jean-Luc Mélenchon could “dangerously erode the first ballot position of the socialist candidate”, writes Gaël Sliman of BVA. And the commentator of France Inter explains that “Mélenchon does a service for Sarkozy by prospering at the expense of Hollande”.

This is a short-sighted analysis because, if one looks closely, the danger for the Left is the continuous erosion of intended votes these past three months, essentially profiting François Bayrou. And the attempts at rapprochement with the latter have not reversed the tendency — quite the contrary.

From this point of view, the advance of the Front de gauche is actually a real chance for the Left: in the context of the stalling candidacy of François Hollande, and even a collapse for Eva Joly (Green) who gets barely 3%, the only dynamic that pulls all the Left toward the top today is on the side of the Front de gauche.

200,000 pageviews... thank you readers

2012-01-22T13:58:00.000-06:00

- NYC

That is an additional 100,000 over the past seven months. Thanks!

Iraq’s Palestinians in Syria: Another Chapter of Dispossession

2012-01-21T19:17:00.002-06:00

By Amal Shahine, Anas Zarzar
Al Akhbar
January 20, 2012

Graffiti in Yarmouk camp in Damascus, Syria.

When Saddam Hussein’s regime fell, several thousand Palestinian refugees in Iraq were forced to flee to Syria where they live in a state of legal limbo and at the whim of international aid agencies.

Often it seems like Palestinians are faced with barriers or struck by ill fortune wherever they try to settle and build their lives anew. Take for instance some Iraqi Palestinians who fled the hell of Iraq to seek yet another refuge, this time in Syria. They much prefer living in poverty in their new home as opposed to risking the endless spiral of sectarian killing and constant threat of death they faced in Iraq.

The story began in 2003 with the US occupation of Iraq, which turned out to be a turning point not only for the Iraqis but for Palestinians living there too.

In 1948, a number of Palestinian families fled to Iraq, settling in various cities and provinces. Their population in Iraq reached about 35,000 before the US occupation.

Since 2003, these Palestinians have been forced to move a number of times as they fled Iraq’s sectarian death machine. More than 400 Palestinian families have had to leave Baghdad as a result of sectarian threats, hatred, old racist grudges, or for strictly financial reasons.

Iraqi citizens are able to enter many other countries legally in the event that they are subject to persecution, repression, and harassment. Palestinians on the other hand, have to be smuggled through the desert as they are not allowed to enter any country legally, except in rare individual cases.

Some of the Palestinians of Iraq, like countless Iraqis, fled to Syria. Palestinians who went to Syria from Iraq are divided into two groups. The first, came to Syria as Palestinian refugees and were housed in camps along the Syrian-Iraqi borders. The second, entered Syria with fake Iraqi passports that the Syrian authorities seem to have ignored.

Abu Musa is one of the earliest Palestinians to flee from Iraq to Syria, only to find his refugee status was “suspended.” He and others in his situation, are not recognized either as Iraqi or Palestinian refugees because they are not registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This is due to the fact that Saddam Hussein refused to label them as refugees, considering them “guests” and “brethren” instead.

Abu Musa told Al-Akhbar: “We asked the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) for some kind of verification of our rights and legal status because the Syrian government is not concerned with us politically or organizationally. The only body that is directly responsible for us is the PLO.”

Abu Musa said he met with many Palestinian officials and leaders of several organizations as part if his efforts to explain to them the circumstances of about 3,000 Palestinians who fled Iraq. He adds however that “none of these officials have responded to our needs.”

The suffering of “Iraq’s Palestinians,” as they have been labeled, has doubled after the political crisis in Syria escalated. Merely leaving their homes to walk around or run errands could lead to them being picked up by the Syrian security forces. Once in detention, such Palestinians in Syria could remain there until their situation is explained and their reasons for violating Syrian residency laws are understood.

Abu Waad, a Palestinian who has been questioned by Syrian security, says: “When we got to Syria through al-Hasaka governorate, the Syrians gave us official al-Hasakah papers even though we did not settle there. These papers help us to move around normally, but do not grant us legal status.”

Abu Waad explains that the real problem occurs when “a policeman or a security man stops any of us. Our papers are not seen as legal. They are meaningless ink on paper, especially during this period that Syria is going through now.”

The lack of safety and security is not the only problem that the Palestinians of Iraq have to contend with. Their living conditions pose a major obstacle that is hard to overcome.

Abu Musa who is an activist in the Volunteer Committee for the Palestinians of Iraq says: “70% of the Palestinians of Iraq – out of a total of 3,000 – live in miserable conditions, whereas we used to have a decent life in Iraq.”

Another aspect to this tragedy is that rent for any room in the Yarmouk Refugee Camp is no less than 7,000 Syrian pounds (SYP) – about US$100 – especially after a wave of price hikes hit Syria.

Families in the camps have five members on average. The UNHCR gives each family SYP6,000 (US$85) per month and SYP24,000 (US$342) every four months. This means that the average family receives about of SYP12,000 (US$170) per month.

“Under these conditions, what is to become of us and our children?” wonders one refugee camp resident.

Work is another challenge for Iraqi Palestinians in Syria and is no less difficult to come by than education. Whoever is lucky enough to find work, earns half the wage of a regular worker because he does not have proper papers and is easily exploited.

To make things worse, the food and financial aid provided by the UNHCR are subject to international political conditions being favorable, according to Abu Musa. He and other Palestinians are at the mercy of politicians and international and regional events.

Palestinians even need passports and official papers after they have died, in order to be buried in the cemetery.

According to Abu Musa: “When one of our friends died, we could not get him an official death certificate from the hospital or mayor, so we smuggled him into the cemetery and buried him illegally in the very early morning to avoid being seen.”

Canada's Wealthy: They're richer than you think

2012-01-21T18:20:00.001-06:00

By Stephen LaRose
Planet S
January 2012

Whether it’s Greek mythology, Shakespeare or Mickey Mouse stealing his master Yen Sid’s robes in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, one common element in drama is that protagonists — heroes as well as villains — are often humbled by their own pride, greed and stupidity.

No one will confuse studies with titles like Why Have Poorer Neighbourhoods Stagnated Economically while the Richer have Flourished? Neighbourhood Income Inequality in Canadian Cities, or Currents: Western Canada’s Economic Bulletin, or even Canada’s CEO Elite 100: the 0.01% with Antigone, Julius Caesar or Fantasia.

But you can’t read through the three recent reports — by the Canadian Labour Market and Skills Research Network, the Canada West Foundation and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, respectively — without feeling that the Canadian economy is in the first stage of an economic apocalypse.

First things first. The CLMSRN report, released last August, studied the gap between rich and poor Calgary neighbourhoods between 1980 and 2005. During that time, the mean after-tax income for Calgary’s richest neighbourhoods increased 75 per cent. Most of those people had jobs in the oil industry or related fields.

In Calgary’s poorest neighbourhoods during the same period, after-tax income increased by a mere five per cent.

Most of those poorer Calgarians held lower-paying white-collar or blue-collar jobs in 1980, but with the decline in unionization, more outsourcing of work and the elimination of many light- and heavy-industry jobs, they drifted into service industry McJobs.

Back in 1980, most of those residents thought they could work their way to a better life. Today, they don’t.

The Canada West report says that while western Canada’s poor haven’t gotten poorer (at least in real dollar amounts), “those who are neither rich nor poor — the middle 60 per cent — are feeling the pinch.”

It continues: “Income growth for the 60 per cent in the middle has significantly lagged behind the richest 20 per cent and the poorest 20 per cent in western Canada.”

So, if the lowerand middle classes aren’t benefitingfrom the expansion of the Canadian economy, then who is?

Step right up, Hugh Mackenzie of the CCPA. Mackenzie’s report says the poorest of Canada’s top 100 chief executive officers had an annual pay of $1.85 million in 2007.

The average full-time annual wage for a Canadian in the same period? Mackenzie reports it was $44,366.

The CEOs’ wages also went up during the 2008-09 recession — butthe average Canadian wage didn’t, “resulting in a dangerous mix: Canadians are feeling the squeeze of shrinking disposable incomes, a rising cost of living, and record high household debt,” Mackenzie’s report says.

The report, published on the CCPA’s website policyalternatives.ca, is accompanied by a graphic counter comparing CEO salaries to average Canadian wages. When we checked on Tuesday afternoon, top CEOs had collected over $207,786 in 2012 while regular Canadians had earned $1,003.55.

Hey, what happened to “the rising tide lifts all boats”? Weren’t round after round of tax cuts, business deregulations and free-trade agreements supposed to unleash the power of capitalism, giving everybody jobs and a new enlightened age?

“Put it this way,” says the executive director of the CCPA’s Saskatchewan office, Simon Enoch, “the last time the Canadian economy saw income disparity to the extent that we’re seeing today was in 1929. And we all know what happened in 1929.”

Enoch says it’s no coincidence that Canadians, and people in most western economies in general, have felt their earning power slip away.

“It pretty much started in the 1970s, when wage increases were decoupled from productivity,” he says. “With that, the productivity of workers increased, but they didn’t share in the benefits — workers didn’t get paid more for their productivity, but their employers got more money from the workers’ productivity.”

Secondly, Enoch says, the attacks on the trade union movement and the social safety net have eroded the confidence people had in the economy a generation ago.

Much of what’s passed as economic growth in the past couple of decades is the result of an expansion of consumer credit and a housing “bubble,” Enoch says. (In Saskatchewan and Alberta’s case, things may be a bit different — our economies depend on the exploitation of non-renewable resources. It’s not particularly more egalitarian though, since our governments collect royalties far below market value to boost resource-sector profits.)

Meanwhile, governmental fiscal and tax policies are designed to shift taxation away from big business and onto consumers.

“If people have a strong social safety net, people are less apt to be intimidated by employers when it comes to issues such as pay disputes,” says Enoch.

That’s why, he says, the attack on trade unions to organize workers is just as important to the entrenchment of a neo-liberal economic agenda — the one we have now — as the dismantling of social programs.

Ironically, the outcome is a stressed-out workforce whose members are less productive than they were before these cuts, says Enoch.

“First of all, you have more stressed people: worrying about their finances, worrying about their futures, retirements, what they’re leaving to their children, that sort of thing. The end result is that you have a lot more mental health issues, manifesting in, for example, depression, anxiety disorders and the like. People feel powerless, especially when it comes to their financial state.”

Income disparity’s effects, says Enoch, blow a big hole in the boat of democracy.

“First of all, politics becomes a rich person’s game: the middle class and poor can’t participate in it because they have to work for a living,” he says. “The rich are the only ones who can take part in the political process apart from voting in elections — [that’s why] the rules get drawn in ways that benefit the rich.”

Such as? “Well, you have, increasingly, a larger attitude being expressed by those in the one per cent category that the universality of health care and education isn’t necessary,” says Enoch. “They can afford their own, and they think what they can access will be better than they could get under the public system, and they don’t care about what will happen to anybody who can’t afford what they’re willing to pay.”

And what’s the end result? People who have already maxed out their credit, have no hope that their McJob will lead to anything better and who worry they’re one illness or missed paycheque away from financial catastrophe.

They don’t sound like the kind of people who are willing to spend money to kick-start an economic recovery.

Especially when the one per cent regard themselves as beyond the reach of governments (and the people they’re supposed to serve).

Ironically, without a reorientation in political and economic thinking, that same one per cent may well be brought as low as any tragedy’s protagonist — or those who lost everything in the 1929 stock market crash.

“One good thing about the Occupy movement is that the issue of income disparity has returned to public discussion,” concludes Enoch. “Governments might not want to talk about it, but that movement is an expression of disenfranchisement with what’s passing for public discourse on economic and social policy today.

“Once the issue of income disparity is mentioned in public, political parties have to talk about that issue. They haven’t had to before,” he says.

“At least, that’s progress.”

How Harper seized control of pipeline and health-care debates

2012-01-21T18:13:00.001-06:00

BY JENNIFER DITCHBURN
The Canadian Press
Jan. 20, 2012

Building a storyline that sticks helped the Conservatives sink two successive Liberal leaders and they are using the same strategy early in 2012 on a pair of major policy debates facing Canadians.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's team has attempted to leap out in front of its opponents and shape the narrative on the hot-button issues of health-care funding and oil pipeline construction.

When Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver came out guns blazing over “environmental and other radical groups” and foreign interests who he said were trying to hijack the domestic debate, discussion immediately shifted away from the very concerns environmental groups have been voicing.

Critics and stakeholders were left struggling to poke holes in the government's logic – the involvement of Chinese interests in the process, for example – rather than leading the debate themselves.

Jim Armour, a vice-president at Ottawa public relations firm Summa and a former communications director for Mr. Harper, says the government cannily played a Canadian sovereignty card.

“I think by making this about foreign interests, U.S. money, not allowing ourselves to be held hostage by the U.S, the government's been very smart and been able not only to take advantage of an opportunity, but also take advantage of something Canadians are thinking anyway,” Mr. Armour said.

On the issue of federal health-care funding for the provinces, Mr. Harper caught the premiers flat-footed. Without warning or consultation, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced a new formula for health transfers into the future. Then, Mr. Harper really put the premiers on defence as he rejected their baleful, uncoordinated pleas for additional funds.

As they began a first ministers meeting this week, they were left reacting to Mr. Harper rather than setting the agenda for the debate themselves.

“I think it was incredibly well handled. The federal government and Minister Flaherty pretty well took health care off the agenda before any of the health stakeholders or even the provinces got to the table,” Mr. Armour said.

“If it was a bar fight, it was all over before anyone got their coat off.”

Ottawa lobbyist Geoff Norquay, who also once worked for Mr. Harper, agrees.

“[It] completely sidestepped everybody's expected narrative, and everybody's expectations as to how this particular issue would play out, and over many years,” Mr. Norquay said, noting Mr. Harper put the division of provincial-federal powers front and centre in the discussion.

The communications strategy bears some similarity to how the Conservatives handled the more strictly political issue of how to critically maim their opposition opponents.

Former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion was hobbled by the “Not a Leader” ad campaign, and his successor Michael Ignatieff was never able to recover from the “Just Visiting” motto that labelled him an arrogant dilettante.

Those portraits were painted by an ad campaign funded by the formidable Conservative Party war chest before Mr. Dion or Mr. Ignatieff ever had a chance to make their own first impressions on voters.

Mr. Armour says the Conservatives have put three main principles at the centre of their communications strategy: message discipline, acting on insight and opportunity.

The message control has been well documented. The insight comes from properly reading and analyzing the landscape and the players, and the opportunity is the moment that presents itself to act.

Mr. Harper's summit next week with Canada's first-nations leaders will be another big communications challenge for the Conservatives on a complex, sensitive policy issue.

Unlike with the pipeline and health-care funding stories, Mr. Harper was forced to react defensively to the crisis in Attawapiskat after it exploded in the media. The unified message that emerged from government was that it was dealing quickly with financial mismanagement on the reserve.

Human-rights lawyer Paul Champ, who represents some first-nations communities, said that despite some key underlying facts about Attawapiskat, the Tories managed to shape the story about the situation.

“Even those Canadians who don't see themselves as being racist or having racist stereotypes, I think the are definitely susceptible to that frame that first nations mismanage money, or that first-nations bands are irresponsible or are wasting money,” Mr. Champ said.

“I think those are regrettably very deeply rooted stereotypes in Canada. This government played on that.”

Wall Strikes Out on Fiscal Federalism

2012-01-21T15:53:00.001-06:00

By Erin Weir
Progressive Economics Forum
January 21st, 2012

Saskatchewan’s Brad Wall recently issued a statement exhorting his fellow Premiers to blaze largely unspecified new trails on healthcare, Employment Insurance and Equalization. Unfortunately, he misses the ball on all three issues.

Greg Fingas and Verda Petry have already refuted Wall’s call for further healthcare privatization.

On Employment Insurance, Wall implies that eastern Canadians are collecting excessive benefits funded by western Canadians. He goes even further than the old Lotto 10-42 stereotype, alleging that people can work for just over 10 weeks and collect almost 52 weeks of benefits.

The number of benefit weeks available depends on the regional unemployment rate and on how many hours the unemployed individual had paid EI premiums. As far as I can tell, Wall or his staff picked out the minimum number of insurable hours and the maximum duration of benefits from the highest-unemployment regions. Of course, as I point out in today’s Regina Leader-Post, someone with just the minimum hours would not get the maximum benefit:

No labour shortage

As reported in the Jan. 11 story “Wall wants health innovation cash,” Premier Brad Wall stated that federal Employment Insurance (EI) “discourages Canadians from moving here” despite “a serious labour shortage.”

Far from a labour shortage, Saskatchewan has thousands of job seekers who cannot find work. The provincial unemployment rate has jumped to 5.2 from 4.1 per cent since October.

Wall inaccurately claimed, “In some regions, a person can work just over 10 weeks and receive almost a year’s worth of EI benefits.” In regions with the highest unemployment rates, including northern Saskatchewan, the minimum threshold to qualify for benefits is 420 insurable hours (10.5 full-time weeks). But someone with just this minimum could not collect benefits for the maximum of 45 weeks.

Most unemployed workers do not get EI. The percentage receiving benefits is 34 in Saskatchewan and 39 nationally.

Rather than making EI more accessible to Saskatchewan workers, Wall’s stated goal is to make it even less accessible elsewhere to prompt more migration. How small a minority of jobless workers does he think deserve benefits?

The premiers should endorse the Canadian Labour Congress proposal to lower regional eligibility thresholds to a common national standard. Doing so would help the growing number of unemployed workers, reduce provincial welfare costs and remove the supposed incentive to stay in regions with high unemployment.

Erin Weir, Toronto
Weir is a Saskatchewan expatriate and economist with the United Steelworkers union’s Canadian National Office.

Wall goes on to argue that, by subsidizing poorer provinces, “Canada’s Equalization system works similarly to discourage labour mobility in a way that hurts the national economy.” There may be some legitimate technical debates about how the Equalization formula measures hydroelectric revenues and the property tax base. But Wall’s attack on the program is a bit strange given that the Saskatchewan government was receiving Equalization until the relatively recent run-up in global commodity prices.

His claim about labour mobility also misses the issue of fiscally-induced migration. Imagine someone offered jobs paying $50,000 in a rich province and $55,000 in a poor province. The national economy would be best served by them taking the higher-paid job (which would be more productive in a neoclassical economic model).

But what if the poorer province must levy 20% taxes to fund its public services, while the rich province can charge only 10%? The financial incentive would be to take the lower-paid job in the rich province ($45,000 vs. $44,000 after-tax). By allowing all provinces to provide roughly comparable services at roughly comparable tax rates, Equalization helps ensure that migration is based on actual economic opportunities rather than on fiscal differences between provinces.

There may be problems with “the same old dynamics of federalism,” but Wall does not hit them.

Co-operatives in Saskatchewan

2012-01-18T23:12:00.001-06:00

Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan

George and Mary Farnsworth proudly display Co-op products, Admiral, Saskatchewan, August 1950.

Everett Baker (Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society)

Like its counterparts in England and Europe, the co-operative movement in Canada arose from a sense of exploitation. On the prairies, farmers were frustrated by the high prices being charged by bankers, railroads, elevator companies, implement manufacturers, and shopkeepers. Individuals had little control over what they paid for goods and services, or the prices they received for their products. The formation of the first co-operatives was thus fuelled by the desire of farmers to gain control over their local economies, coupled with a shared sense of the necessity for collective action.

While agitating for change in the political arena, farmers at the same time began to use co-operatives to supply themselves with goods and to help them take control of handling and marketing their produce. They formed buying clubs to make bulk purchases of farm supplies and basic commodities, and in 1906 banded together to establish the Grain Growers’ Grain Company to market their grain. In 1911, farmers launched the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company, with the aim of building an elevator system owned and controlled by farmers.

The heightened demand for Canadian produce during World War I created a favourable environment for the growth of producer and consumer co-ops, but although hundreds of co-operative associations were formed over the next few years, many did not survive the post-war depression. The successful formation of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool in 1924 encouraged livestock, dairy, and poultry producers to form their own marketing organizations a few years later.

Surprisingly, the hardships of the 1930s strengthened the co-op movement, and co-operative methods were used to meet a wide variety of needs, including marketing, banking, insurance, the refining of oil, and provision of farm implements. That decade witnessed the birth of Consumers Co-operative Refineries, credit unions, and Canadian Co-operative Implements, at its peak one of North America’s largest farm machinery co-ops. It was also during the 1930s that the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool gave up its marketing function to the Wheat Board and developed its expertise in grain handling.

The sector made major strides during the next decade, beginning in 1940, when the western co-op wholesales came together to form Interprovincial Co-operatives Limited (IPCO). IPCO facilitated the marketing, under the familiar CO-OP label, of commodities produced and processed by co-operatives throughout the sector. In 1941, the Saskatchewan Co-operative Credit Society (today’s Credit Union Central) became English Canada’s first central credit union system. In 1944, the provincial government created the Department of Co-operation and Co-operative Development to support new and existing co-ops. That same year witnessed the amalgamation of the Co-op Refinery and Saskatchewan Co-op Wholesale into a single organization known as Saskatchewan Federated Co-operatives Ltd. (SFCL). This merger was an important step towards the establishment of an integrated co-operative retail system.

Like the 1914–18 conflict, World War II brought expanded opportunities for all types of co-operatives. Farm production co-ops were formed by veterans returning from the war. Ventures that had taken root during the Depression grew stronger and diversified, often through amalgamations. SFCL merged with the other western wholesales to form Federated Co-operatives Ltd. (FCL); the western wheat pools became members of IPCO; the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool began to diversify through joint ventures with other co-ops; and the Dairy Pool and Saskatchewan Co-op Creameries came together to form Dairy Producers Co-op. The formation of the Co-op Life Insurance Company, Co-op Trust, and the expansion of the credit union system contributed to substantial growth in the co-operative financial sector over this period. During the 1960s, health care and other community-service-based co-ops took on a more formalized structure, and by the 1980s there were co-operative organizations in almost every sector of the economy.

Although urbanization has eroded its rural base, the co-operative movement in Saskatchewan remains strong, vibrant, and innovative. And as they have done since their earliest stages, co-operatives continue to play an integral role in the social and economic development of the province. Initial forms of co-operation have evolved into an extensive network of co-operatives engaged in a wide range of activities, including agriculture and resources, community development, recreation, child care and education, wholesale and retail, financial and community service, housing, and employment.

Co-operatives play an important role at every level of the economy. A major statistical analysis done in 1998 revealed that the 1,306 co-operatives in Saskatchewan generated revenues of nearly $7 billion and controlled assets of more than $10 billion. Capital investment totalled $372 million, and they had a surplus amounting to $208.9 million. In addition, co-operatives employed 15,046 people and paid wages of $458.7 million.

Two of Saskatchewan’s three largest businesses are co-operatives, as are four of the province’s top twenty firms. Large organizations, such as the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool (SWP), Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL), and Credit Union Central (CUC) wield significant economic power in the provincial economy. Although smaller co-operatives seem insignificant in comparison, they are major players at the community level, and two of the largest—FCL and CUC—exist primarily to serve the needs of a network of smaller retail and financial co-operatives.

Saskatchewan is home to a broad range of co-operative organizations that vary greatly in size, scope, and operational focus. Not surprisingly, agricultural and resource-based co-operatives comprise more than one-quarter of the total. Other areas in which co-operatives play a major role include retail and wholesale, finances, community development, recreation, child care and preschool, and community service. There is a small group of other types of co-operatives that provide services to members in areas such as housing, real estate development, employment, publishing, film production, and transportation.

The diverse nature of the organizations that are able to function successfully according to co-operative principles is a testament to the flexibility of this business model. Co-operatives clearly possess characteristics that have enabled them to address problems experienced by their members and the communities in which they live. Their impact on communities is substantial, especially in the smaller centres, where the co-op may be one of the few remaining businesses in town. In these cases, co-ops supply not only a wide range of goods and services that might not otherwise be provided, but also employment, thus contributing significantly to the survival of the most vulnerable communities. Co-operatives have a long track record in Saskatchewan and are engaged in organizational renewal that will allow them to continue to make crucial contributions to sustainable economic development in the province.

Catch 22: War satire still bites in the age of Fallujah and Helmand

2012-01-18T22:31:00.002-06:00

Catch 22, by Joseph Heller, reviewed by Matt Owen
Red Pepper
January 2012

Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, called Catch 22 ‘the only war novel I’ve ever read that makes any sense’. Readers of a certain sensibility – of which the record would suggest there are many; the book has sold more than 10 million copies – clearly understand what she meant. Joseph Heller’s novel marked its 50th anniversary in November, and despite the fact that it was first published in a very different era – at the height of the cold war and the beginning of large‑scale US involvement in Vietnam – its caustic satire of war, militarism and bureaucracy has barely aged.

A fluid, non-chronological narrative that flits between a preponderance of characters, Catch 22 defies straightforward synopsis. The novel mainly follows Yossarian, an American B-25 bombardier (Heller himself occupied this role during the second world war), as well as a number of other airmen of the fictional 256th squadron. Most of the events take place on an air base on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean, moving inland during the latter (and much darker) stages of the novel.

The novel’s central conflict – at once the source of both the great humour and profound pathos of the text – stems from the imagined piece of military code that gives the novel its title and has since been absorbed into the English language as a popular idiom. Within the text, Heller explains it thus:

‘There was only one catch and that was Catch 22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to, he was sane and had to.’

Now part of common English as simply an idiom for a ‘no-win situation’, the catch itself reflects the central theme of the novel: the ludicrous reality of thousands of men setting out to try to murder one another every day because those are their orders.

Catch 22 is full-blooded in its satire; much of the action is almost slapstick, and the dialogue sometimes borders on all-out absurdity, especially in the earlier stages of the novel. However, like all good satire, the heart of the text has more than a ring of truth to it, which remains every bit as applicable 50 years later as it did in 1961.

After all, is First Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder’s bombing of his own squadron to make an extra buck all that far removed from the corporate war profiteers of today, who rely on their own nations being in a perpetual state of conflict in order to sell their hardware? Is Captain Black’s exaggerated, blinkered patriotism all that far removed from the chest-thumping rhetoric employed by consecutive US presidents in a bid to win support for their military designs? Is Hungry Joe dying at the hands of his nightmares all that far removed from modern reality, when one considers that a comparable number of soldiers have committed suicide after serving in recent wars as have died while fighting them? The madness of the Italian Front is the madness of the Vietnamese jungle is the madness of Fallujah and Helmand.

Ultimately, Catch 22 is the perfect anti-war novel because it eschews anything that could be considered pious pacifism in favour of a bold examination of what war-making actually amounts to. Heller stated that the central question of the novel was ‘What does a sane man do in an insane society?’ If there is an answer, then it is surely ‘stay alive’. Throughout the text, the overbearing background character, lurking beneath every joke, casting its shadow over every scene, is death. And it is death’s most perfect application – war – that, in a novel lacking a conventional hero, emerges as the arch-villain.

Mark Twain once said that ‘the secret source of humour is not joy but sorrow’. In no piece of literature is this better exemplified than Catch 22. Classicism drew a sharp distinction between tragedy and comedy; Heller’s novel erases this distinction absolutely. Frequently cited as one of the greatest literary works of the 20th century, Catch 22 hardly needs any more praise, or exposure, but when one has just finished re-reading it, it’s hard not to give it anyway.

Sadly, we still live in a web of insane societies. But Heller’s novel may at least console you with the notion that – somewhere, behind the dehumanising monoliths of militarism and unending war – the sane still exist.

Catch 22...

Yossarian: Is Orr crazy?

Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: Of course he is. He has to be crazy to keep flying after all his close calls he's had.

Yossarian: Why can't you ground him?

Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: I can, but first he has to ask me.

Yossarian: That's all he's gotta do to be grounded?

Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: That's all.

Yossarian: Then you can ground him?

Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: No. Then I cannot ground him.

Yossarian: Aah!

Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: There's a CATCH?

Yossarian: A catch?

Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: Sure. Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat isn't really crazy, so I can't ground him.

Yossarian: Ok, let me see if I've got this straight. In order to be grounded, I've got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I'm not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying.

Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: You got it, that's Catch-22.

Yossarian: Whoo... That's some catch, that Catch-22.

Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: It's the best there is.

Climate Justice Movement in Saskatoon

2012-01-18T19:46:00.002-06:00

Climate Justice Movement in Saskatoon

We are seeking to revitalize the climate justice movement in Saskatoon and bring climate issues to the minds and hearts of Saskatchewan! With the vision of creating a local and dynamic group, we are looking for passionate people from all walks of life to help us develop a strong grassroots movement in order to combat the climate crisis in a manner that addresses inequality, colonialism, racism, sexism and all other forms of oppression.

Whether you are a seasoned "activist", a newbie to environmentalism or just someone who recognizes the gravity of our current situation and wants to make a difference - we want you! We are striving to create a varied group with respect for a diversity of ideas and tactics. The climate crisis is not going to be solved by our current government and it is up to us to begin to voice our dissent and develop alternatives!

For more information, please contact: Karen Rooney: karen-rooney@hotmail.com or Mark Bigland-Pritchard: mark@lowenergydesign.com.

Harper seems determined to turn Canada into anti-union paradise

2012-01-17T16:15:00.002-06:00

BY LINDA MCQUAIG
Toronto Star
January 17, 2012

Hundreds of shivering factory workers locked out of their plant by manufacturing giant Caterpillar in London, Ont., might well draw some warm comfort from -- of all things -- the sayings of Newt Gingrich.
Of course, the conservative Republican presidential contender is no friend of labour or social justice; he recently proposed that poor children be schooled in the ways of free enterprise by being hired to clean school washrooms.

Nonetheless, Gingrich, one of the stars of the Republican freak show, is desperate to defeat front-runner Mitt Romney. With the mitts off, Gingrich is denouncing Romney's background as a Wall Street corporate raider, accusing him of practising a form of capitalism where "you basically take out all the money, leaving behind the workers."

The multi-millionaire Romney showed his empathy for working people by noting, in a discussion about private health care, that "I like being able to fire people who provide services" and insisting that comments about the rich having too much money should be confined to "quiet rooms."

All this has unleashed an unexpected and fierce debate about the brutality of unbridled capitalism -- a debate the Republican establishment is scrambling to sweep back into the quiet rooms as quickly as possible.
Here in Canada, Stephen Harper has tried to head off a similar debate, dismissing the relevance of Occupy Wall Street on the grounds that "we have a very different situation here than the United States."

In fact, under the Harper government, the slightly milder Canadian version of capitalism is rapidly giving way to a more virulent U.S.-style variant, with even greater wealth concentration and fewer protections for working people.

Indeed, Gingrich's depiction of a capitalism where "you basically take out all the money, leaving behind the workers" seems like a perfect description of what's going on in London, where the highly profitable U.S.-owned Caterpillar is demanding its Canadian workforce accept a 50-per-cent wage cut. When the workers declined this take-it-or-leave-it offer, they were locked out on New Year's Eve.

If this isn't ruthless, heartless capitalism -- enough to make even Newt's blood boil -- it's hard to imagine what is. Yet, as the 500 London workers have bundled up in the cold, the Harper government refuses to get involved, sitting silently on the sidelines as Caterpillar brings its notorious anti-union fervour to Canada.
In fact, the Harper government is involved, having played a key role in bringing about this disaster for the London workers by approving the sale of the company, Electro-Motive Diesel, to foreign-owned Caterpillar in 2010, after supposedly investigating whether the deal was in Canada's interests.

The Canadian Auto Workers, which represents the locked out workers, believes Caterpillar purchased the plant with the intention of gaining technology and market share and then moving operations south.

The Harper government also approved a foreign takeover by another notorious union-busting company, mining giant Rio Tinto, which has now locked out 800 workers in Alma, Que.

The Canadian Labour Congress is demanding that Ottawa strengthen its foreign takeover laws to make the secretive review process more open, with public hearings in affected communities and publication of the conditions imposed -- if any -- on foreign owners.

Ironically, the Harper government has complained forcefully about "foreign" interference from outside environmentalists protesting a proposed pipeline across the Rockies. But when it comes to foreign companies stripping Canadian workers of half their wages and then moving operations out of the country, the government hasn't a negative word to say.

Harper is of course staunchly pro-capitalist, and has aggressively lowered corporate tax rates, while refusing to link lower taxes to investment or job creation.

But his anti-union stance, evident in disputes at Air Canada and the post office last summer, has been particularly provocative. He seems determined to turn Canada into an anti-union paradise -- prompting the Ontario Federation of Labour to call for a mass rally at the Caterpillar plant in London this Saturday.
As the PM gears up for his coming battle against federal public sector unions, he will no doubt draw inspiration from Mitt Romney's stirring words: "I like to be able to fire people who provide services."

Do Social Democratic Parties Have a Future?

2012-01-17T15:52:00.001-06:00

By Katerina Svickova
Left Eye On Books
January 8th, 2012

In light of the popular movements of today and the debate on democracy they triggered, we don’t even know if traditional party politics will be the most adequate vehicle to address the challenges related to globalization, financial capitalism, inequality or the environment. But, thanks to “What is Left of the Left?” we have a better grounding and knowledge about where the Social Democratic parties stand and the path that they have covered so far.

To state that the political left is searching for its soul is not particularly revealing to informed left-leaning readers. A look at the political map of Europe these days shows that the electorate is not convinced about the capacity of the left to steer their societies through this economic downturn. In the United States too, support for the Democratic administration and the Democratic Party is low. Numerous books, including “The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism,” reviewed on this site, are asking why neoliberalism gained such a grip on power and on the minds of decision makers, opinion makers and large shares of the general public. So where to has the Left (seemingly) disappeared? What is left of the Left?

“What is Left of the Left?” is also the title of a volume edited by James Cronin, George Ross and James Shoch, three distinguished U.S. scholars. Cronin is a historian specializing in modern British and European history, Ross is a political scientist with rich expertise in European studies and Shoch is a professor of governance with a publication record on American economic, trade and industrial policy. Accordingly, the volume is a sound piece of academic work and a very matter-of-fact exploration of the ups and downs of the left since the 1970s. It offers well researched and well presented insights into the struggle of the European and U.S. left-wing parties to get a grip on major challenges facing them since the ’70s.

These challenges include: the end of capitalism’s “golden age” and loss of faith in Keynesian policies, the collapse of Soviet communism and its disenchanting effects, the globalization of the economy, the acceleration of the trend towards post-industrial employment and shifts in social structure and demography. The assessment of how European and U.S. left-wing parties coped with these challenges is conducted from two perspectives. Several chapters trace the development of Social Democratic parties in specific places (U.K., France, Sweden, U.S. and Central and Eastern European countries) while other compare responses of left-wing parties in several countries to particular issues (new social risks, immigration and European integration). Further, the volume contains chapters that ground these contributions in a longer term account of the fate of the left. Lastly, the well written introduction and conclusion distill and bind together insights from the individual contributions to ensure that the volume is not just a set of disparate chapters.

What are some of the overarching insights? First, mainstream left-wing parties today are more center-left than left. The contributions in the volume make this clear and underpin empirically the shift of socialist parties to the center over time. This shift was particularly profound in the U.K. Labor Party as Cronin shows. However, it is also visible in the Swedish Social Democratic Party, still the bastion of true Social Democracy as Jonas Pontusson argues. Also in France, starting with the famous U-Turn under President Francois Mitterand (from a socialist economic program to a strongly neoliberal policy), the center-left became not so different from the political center-right in economic policy and the direction of reforms. A chapter on the left in the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, now all Member States of the European Union, also indicates that most of the left-wing parties are left-wing largely just in proclamations but not in action. They became advocates of the same economic policies — liberalization, privatization and marketization — as the center-right. However, it would be simplistic to assign a common, universal underlying reason for this shift. The chapters show the specific challenges that the left was facing in their particular national contexts and to which the parties then tailored their responses.

The second overarching message is that the challenges lying in front of the left — in the form of globalization and shifts and changes it brings along — are not the first ones of such profoundness. The chapter by S. Brenan on “Social Democracy’s Past and Potential Future” shows the learning process and the internal discussions and divisions in Europe’s socialist parties since the end of the 19th century. Back then, as now, socialists also had to find a response to globalization. And they were not spared difficulties after that, including the need to find a response to the catastrophe of the World War I, the economic depression and the carnage in the wake of World War II.

Brenan argues that the adaptation and response was successful when Social Democrats managed to thwart the orthodox Marxist doctrine, which condemned them to passively waiting for capitalism’s end and accompanying class conflict. Instead, they had to accept that capitalism was not dying and that it generated much desired wealth, albeit while causing a lot of dislocation. An important lesson learned was that rather than waiting until capitalism discredits itself and collapses, a more appropriate and more electorally rewarded response was activism, regulation of capitalism and the protection of vulnerable from the negative consequences thereof. Rather than conflict, cross-class cooperation offered a better ground for the acknowledged need to control the economic forces by political ones. Capitalism and markets were to be tamed rather than defeated or abandoned. This shift in the vision of Social Democrats could be also epitomized by the words of French poet Paul Eluard, “There is another world, but it is in this one.”

However, this shift, and finding appropriate concrete responses to concrete issues, has not been an easy process, as the studies of individual countries demonstrate. It was accompanied by internal fights, a superficial embrace of new ideas on creative reformism of the markets or, conversely, becoming too comfortable in the mixed economy. In such situations, cynicism within the party transposed into a public perception of the party as emptied of a vision, becoming a status quo defender that protects vested interests. This is, however, not inevitable, as the chapter on the Nordic model by Jonas Pontusson demonstrates. In the Nordic countries and in Sweden in particular, Social Democracy flourished and managed to influence the whole atmosphere and thinking, including that of the right-wing parties. Pontusson argues that the social democratic Nordic model remains viable under the conditions of globalization and liberalization and supports his argument by empirical evidence showing superior performance of Nordic countries in terms of economic growth, employment or educational attainment compared to liberal market economies, like the U.K. and U.S., and the continental social market economies, like Germany. He shows how the egalitarianism of the Nordic countries contributed to their success. A crucial message is thus that social solidarity, equality and economic growth are not contrasting goals but can go hand in hand.

The third important point that the volume makes regards the difficulties of nationally based parties to cooperate and coin policies at the transnational level. This is probably no revelation but a case study written by Ross on the left parties’ response to European integration helps to explore the facets and roots of the challenge and to understand the barriers involved.

The insights of the volume do not only apply to European Social Democratic parties. Three chapters of the book explore the situation of the Democratic Party in the U.S. The chapters address directly the challenges identified in the introduction of the whole volume. R. Teixeira presents an analysis of the evolution and transformations in the Democratic coalition — the various social groups that form the electorate of the Democratic Party. If the insights and conclusions of the author are correct, the outlook of Democrats in prospective elections is a positive one as demographic developments and social changes seem to be in their favor. C. Howard provides a fine-grained analysis of the American welfare state. Howard paints a more complex picture of U.S. social policy whereby both Republicans and Democrats support welfare but within the overall frame of mind of distrust in big government. He shows how Democratic officials changed their approach in recent decades, shifting from social insurance to tax expenditures and social regulations. In his account, the American welfare state is larger than generally perceived in terms of the level of spending (because he also adds tax-related measures). Yet it achieves relatively little in reducing poverty and inequality as it is designed mostly to cater to the middle class and upper middle class, i.e. to the most active members of the polity. This suppression of the issues of poverty and inequality has now, though, returned with a vengeance through the Occupy movement, which rightly calls for putting the issue of inequality back on the public and government agenda. Finally, the third chapter presents the ambivalent response of the Democratic Party to issues related to globalization and, specifically, free trade.

So overall, what can we say, after reading the volume, about for what the current center-left stands? The response can be boiled down, in brief, to recognition of the “variety of lefts.” The analyses have shown that in each country, the Social Democratic parties target differently composed constituencies, face historically and contextually influenced problems and identify their own solutions. There is no simple pattern and no one-size-fits-all recipes to the individual and overarching challenges. Jane Jensen very nicely illustrates this in a chapter on new social risks, showing the diversified responses of Social Democratic parties in Sweden, Germany and the U.K.

From a volume of this type, one could always ask for more depth, more comprehensiveness or for other comparisons. A reader concerned about the fate of the leftist policies might also yearn for more clues about where the left could go and what responses it could present. Yet the book does not do this job for the social democratic parties or movements. It does not suggest a vision that they should consider. Moreover, it does not diminish the challenges standing in front of social democratic parties. So even having read the volume, we still don’t know where the left should concentrate its effort and how to re-kindle the enthusiasm and inspiration among people as the left used to do. In light of the popular movements of today and the debate on democracy they triggered, we don’t even know if traditional party politics at the national level will be the most adequate vehicle to address the challenges related to globalization, the excesses and dislocations of financial capitalism, social transformations, inequality or the environment, or whether the future of the leftist ideas lies in alternative movements or more cooperation at the transnational level. But with this volume, we have a better grounding and knowledge about where the social democratic parties stand and about the path that they have covered so far.

The insights from the volume can help us set more adequate expectations from what political parties and party politics can and cannot achieve. Despite being very straightforward about the challenges, the volume carries also a positive message. Left-wing parties already stood in front of tough challenges and managed to find viable solutions. It has traditionally been the job of the left to show that a better world is possible and to activate, mobilize people around this vision. In the past, it managed to do so. So chances are that today and tomorrow, it ultimately will be able to do so, too.

Katerina Svickova holds master degrees in European Studies, European Economic Integration and International Relations from the University of Economics and Charles University in Prague and the Central European University in Budapest. She has worked in the non-profit sector supporting social enterprise. She currently works for the European Commission. Opinions presented in her posts and articles represent strictly her personal, and in no way an institutional, perspective.

Torture as Acceptable Government Policy: USA, NATO and Canada

2012-01-17T15:33:00.001-06:00

By John W. Warnock
Act Up in Sask
16 January 2012

On January 5 Afghan President Hamid Karzai declared that within one month the U.S. government and NATO must hand over control of the Parwan prison at Agram Air Force Base north of Kabul to the Afghan government. An Afghan government commission investigated and reported that the there is systematic abuse of those held in this prison.

Gul Rahman Qazi, head of the commission, told the press that only 300 of the 2700 mainly Afghans held at the prison had been charged with any offense. The remainder “were being held without charges or evidence of guilt” and should be released. The vast majority of detainees had “no access to the courts” or family members. Many of those who had been charged in court and released, or who had served enough time in the jail to cover their sentences, were still being held by NATO authorities on the grounds that they were suspected of being insurgents.

In addition, the Afghan commission charged that detainees were being subjected to practices that were widely understood to be torture. These included beatings, various techniques of sleep deprivation, being held in small cells with no light, no heat and inadequate clothes and blankets, and being stripped and given intrusive body searches. Some of those who had not been charged were held for long periods of time in solitary confinement.

The U.S. and Canadian governments rejected Karzai’s demand arguing that the abuse of detainees at Afghan prisons was widespread and unacceptable. They would not transfer detainees to Afghan facilities. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission stated that President Karzai’s government did not have the finances or ability to operate the Parwan prison. Those held in the NATO prison would be better off to stay where they were.

In October 2011 the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan released a report which concluded that there was widespread abuse of detainees in the prisons run by Afghan authorities. President Karzai’s secret police was accused of systematically using torture. But there is no recognition by NATO governments that torture takes place in NATO facilities.

The U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay

At the beginning of the US war on Afghanistan, the administration of President George W. Bush established a new detention prison at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Many of those captured by U.S. forces in the war were sent there as “enemy combatants.” This was a calculated strategy so that the detainees would not have access to basic civil rights and the courts under the U.S. Constitution or as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Those eventually charged would be tried by Military Tribunals, which deny many of the basic civil rights which are the normal practice in civilian courts.

It is now widely known that prisoners at the Guantanamo site have been beaten, given the cold water treatment, subjected to various sleep deprivation techniques, held in wire cages with constant bright lights and loud music, stripped and mishandled by women agents, forced to stand naked for long periods of time, held in painful stress positions, and subject to 24 hour straight interrogations. Those of a Muslim faith experienced religious humiliation. These techniques were also used in the early days of the facility at Parwan.

One of the controversial techniques used by U.S. officials has been waterboarding: a suspect is fastened to a platform or board, a heavy cloth is placed over the face, and water is then poured on the detainee. It produces the effect of drowning, inducing terror and resulting in long term physical effects. It is now recognized that the CIA used waterboarding on certain detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, believed to have planned the 9/11 attack on the USA, has been waterboarded 183 times by U.S. officials. This torture technique was used during the Inquisition as well as by British forces on IRA suspects in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s. The U.S. government hanged Japanese soldiers for waterboarding U.S. captives during World War II.

President Obama’s war

The war in Iraq was seen as George Bush’s war. The Democrats in Washington and Barrack Obama insisted during the 2008 presidential campaign that the war in Afghanistan was “the good war” as it was against the perpetrators of 9/11. President Obama pledged to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay during his first term of office, but has refused to do so. The number of detainees has fallen from the peak of 775 under Bush to 171 today. Only one detainee has been charged and convicted.

When George Bush left office there were about 600 detainees at Parwan. Under President Obama, the number has risen to a high of 3,000. In May 2010 the International Committee of the Red Cross revealed that the U.S. government also maintains one of their secret “black jails” at Parwan. The Obama administration takes the position that Afghanistan is a “war zone” and thus detainees have no access to U.S. constitutional guarantees.

Canada and the use of torture

All the NATO governments are bound by the United Nations Convention Against Torture. The prohibition covers “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for the purposes of obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession...” Torture is never justified. Extraordinary rendition, which has been used by the Canadian government, is prohibited. The Canadian government has ratified all the international conventions which prohibit torture.

Torture is also banned under the Canadian Criminal Code. The description of torture is the same as in the UN Convention. Being ordered by a superior officer or a public authority is no defence. No information gathered using torture is admissible as evidence. So why is it that the U.S., Canadian and NATO governments engage in torture?

The use of torture in imperialist wars

The international law against the use of torture was developed in Europe during the 17th century. Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), a Dutch protestant theologian, is often identified as “the father of international law.” In 1625 he published the three volume work, The Law of War and Peace. International law was viewed as a “natural law” which was to be followed among civilized, Christian countries. It had a utilitarian basis as well: we won’t torture your soldiers if you don’t torture ours.

But it was never intended that these international laws would apply in the relations between the European imperial powers and their colonies. Those who were colonized were not Christians and were judged to be barbarians. Grotius himself was a strong supporter of Dutch imperialism and even worked for the Dutch East India Company. The Dutch denied basic human rights to those they colonized and employed torture as part of colonial administration, as did the other European imperial powers.

Today, the international law of torture is said to be jus cogens, an international standard of behaviour to which all countries are obliged to comply, even if they have not adopted the international conventions. But there is the reality of the gross discrepancies in power, now between the advanced capitalist states in NATO and the less developed countries. Some have noted that the Afghan and Iraq wars have again featured the Christians against the non-Christians. How many people with white skins are detained in the prisons at Guantanamo Bay and Parvan? Why would NATO governments find it useful or necessary to invoke the UN Convention Against Torture? Against whom?

John W. Warnock is retired from teaching political economy and sociology at the University of Regina. He well remembers the course in international law that he took from Professor William V. O’Brien at Georgetown University.

Canadian Labour At The Crossroads?

2012-01-17T09:48:00.005-06:00

By Doug Nesbitt
Socialist Project Bullet
January 17, 2012

A wage cut of fifty per cent. An elimination of pensions. Cuts to benefits. These demands have inevitably led to a major showdown at a locomotive factory in London, Ontario between the 700 unionized workers of Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) and Caterpillar, a massive U.S.-based corporation. The workers, members of Canadian Auto Workers Local 27, responded to the employer's demands with a positive strike vote of 97 per cent. The employer, Progress Rail, a subsidiary of Caterpillar, locked out the workers on New Year's Day.

In addition to facing down a notorious anti-union employer who hammered the American United Auto Workers in the 1990s,[1] there are plenty of rumours about Caterpillar closing the London plant and moving operations to Muncie, Indiana. EMD workers in London make $36/hour while their counterparts in Muncie are paid only $12.50-14.50 (Cdn)[2]. Indiana is also on the cusp of becoming the first rust-belt state to introduce a “Right to Work” law, a notorious form of anti-union legislation made possible by the even more infamous Taft-Hartley law of 1947, the long-standing crown jewel of American anti-union legislation.[3]

All Out January 21

The response of organized labour to the lockout has been swift. The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) is coordinating a mass rally in London on January 21 with buses coming in from numerous cities across the province and as far away as Sudbury and Ottawa. The OFL is anticipating at least ten thousand protesters.[4]

Mainstream media coverage has also been extensive and the shocking nature of Caterpillar's demands have so far ensured that coverage has been neutral and even supportive of the workers. The story is being covered by all major Canadian dailies, prime-time news hours on CBC and CTV, and has received coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and now the European and Australian press.

Not surprisingly, the federal government has stayed silent. Since they won their first majority government in May, the Tories have gone to war with organized labour. In June, postal workers were locked out by Canada Post, the state-owned crown corporation. The Tories responded with back-to-work legislation which called for pay increases lower than the employer's last offer.[5]

Federal Labour Minister Lisa Raitt went further, twice threatening to legislate Air Canada flight attendants back-to-work, even though Air Canada was privatized in 1988. From a party espousing government non-intervention in the economy, Raitt's reasoning behind intervening in the private sector was that Air Canada was essential to the economy.[6] This absurdity was repeated in October when Raitt floated the idea of defining the “economy” as an “essential service,” thus providing some pseudo-legal justification for further interventions.[7]

The government's hypocrisy goes further. In March 2008, on the very shop floor of EMD London, Prime Minister Harper announced a billion dollar tax break to industry in 2008, $5-million of which went to EMD London.[8] Two years later, EMD London was purchased by Caterpillar.

Despite its record high revenue and profits in 2011, stemming from sales of its machinery to a booming resource sector (tar sands, mining), Caterpillar is attempting to destroy a union.[9] In addition to their anti-union stance, the threat of roughly two thousand jobs being lost in London,[10] and their profiting off environmental disasters like the tar sands and mining operations around the world, Caterpillar supplies Israel the bulldozers it uses to carry out house demolitions in occupied Palestine.[11]

High Stakes Clash

This leaves labour – and all the political allies of labour – at a crossroads in this high profile, high stakes clash between workers and state-blessed corporate power. The implications for other workers – such as Toronto municipal workers, the locked-out steelworkers of Alma, Quebec, the York Region Transit workers, and all other workers, union and non-union – couldn't be greater. Since the Tory victory in May, employers, public and private, have received the message loud and clear: the federal government is siding with them in a sustained attempt to hold down wages and benefits, slash them where possible, and break the ability of workers to resist these moves by breaking their only means of defence: unions.

Is labour up to the challenge? The OFL has already moved the rally's location from the picket lines outside the factory, to downtown London's Victoria Park eight kilometres away. The move is explained by the OFL as ten thousand being too many for it to be “safe” on the picket line.[12] What nonsense is this? Fifteen thousand pickets peacefully shut down the Port of Oakland last November in an Occupy-initiated general strike.

Holding the rally in Victoria Park will ensure that is a symbolic display of opposition and nothing more. Only a few hundred of the ten thousand will likely take up Local 27's invite to the picket lines after the rally. Thousands of protesters will be boarding buses after the downtown rally to head back home and won't have time to make it to the picket lines.

If you're having deja vu, you're not alone. Last year, ten thousand people from across Ontario attended the Hamilton Day of Action against U.S. Steel held January 29, 2011.[13] On the steps of Hamilton City Hall, union leaders and labour politicians denounced the lockout and backed the steelworkers refusing to see their pensions gutted by U.S. Steel. A short march made it around a few cold and deserted downtown blocks before returning to City Hall. As one of the hundreds who lined up for union-sponsored buses back to their respective hometowns, I later realized that we had marched past the old Stelco building, U.S. Steel's Hamilton office, without even stopping to do anything.

Bolder Action?

The days of action in Hamilton and London may boost the spirits of locked-out workers, but what will it accomplish beyond this? In the wake of Occupy as well as the Capitol Building occupation in Wisconsin last year against the stripping of public sector bargaining rights, the time seems ripe for bolder action. Bold action could galvanize thousands of Canadians angry at the Tories and the one per cent, could overturn the limited range of Canada's political debates, and maybe just put employers and the Tories on the back foot for once.

The battle at EMD might be lost, but it could still be a turning point for labour by showing a new determination to take more controversial but increasingly necessary actions to counter the “race to the bottom” overseen by an entrenched federal government keen on hammering workers and dismantling hard-won social programs.

Drawing on the Occupy movement, the Spanish Indignados, and the Republic Windows and Doors occupation in Chicago from late 2008, occupying EMD London should be on labour's agenda. In this sense, moving ten thousand pickets away from the factory is a lost opportunity for initiating the occupation. If this sounds too radical, Egypt and Occupy have changed what's possible – an occupation could be a galvanizing moment for Canadians and become a worldwide beacon of resistance. And the story of EMD London exposes so clearly the intertwined problems of corporate greed and tax breaks, the war against workers, failing democratic institutions, environmental destruction and imperialism. And what better union than the Canadian Auto Workers, founded on the plant occupations in Flint and Oshawa in 1936 and 1937, to carry this out?

Even if an occupation doesn't happen but the demand is shouted loud enough – “Occupy EMD!” – it normalizes the idea among networks of workers and activists and lays the groundwork for occupations taking place in inevitable future labour disputes.

The decision to occupy will have to be taken by EMD London workers themselves. But solidarity actions can be carried out across Ontario and beyond. Caterpillar owns Battlefield Equipment Rentals with over 30 locations in Ontario, two in Manitoba and five in Newfoundland. The activist networks built up by the Occupy movement could link up even more with trade unionists to spread the resistance to Caterpillar far beyond London itself. This is what Americans did last August when dozens of Verizon Wireless stores across the country were picketed in solidarity with the communication workers strike against Verizon. The union, Communications Workers of America, even launched an “adopt-a-store” campaign for local activists to show their support, leading to many weekly pickets of Verizon Wireless stores.[14]

Where Battlefield Equipment Rentals can't be found, pressure can be put on the 166 Tory MPs riding offices in every province, highlighting government complicity with the corporate tax breaks to EMD London. Ottawa labour activists already showed this could be done when they occupied John Baird's riding office during the postal worker lockout.[15]

In short, the Canadian labour movement needs to reinvent itself and abandon the long-standing attitude toward conciliatory relations with employers, hopeless appeals for government intervention, and a general neglect of the wider, non-union working-class. The lockout in London makes this reinvention both necessary and possible. London could be the place where the labour movement – or at least a substantial minority of activists, union and non-union – recovers a tradition of militancy on behalf of the whole working-class and sees itself as a collective force for economic and political justice and transformation. •

Doug Nesbitt is Co-Chief Steward of PSAC 901 representing Queen's University Teaching Assistants and Fellows. He was born and raised in London, Ontario and now lives in Kingston pursuing a PhD in History at Queen's. He also co-hosts Rank and File Radio, a weekly labour news program on CFRC 101.9FM.

Endnotes:

1. Lance Selfa, “When Illinois was the war zone,” Socialist Worker, October 15, 2009.

2. Scott Taylor, “London versus Muncie,” London Free Press, January 16, 2012.

3. Shaun Harkin, “Indiana's war on labor,” Socialist Worker, January 4, 2012.

4. Jonathon Brodie, “Rally moves to Vic Park,” London Community News, January, 12, 2012.

5. Vanessa Lu, “Tory bill legislates Canada Post wage rates,” Toronto Star, June 21, 2011.

6. Jane Taber, “With economy in mind, Raitt plays hard ball in Air Canada dispute,” Globe and Mail, September 16, 2011.

7. “Raitt suggests economy should be 'essential service',” CBC, October 21, 2011.

8. Jonathan Sher, “Workers urged to fight for jobs,” London Free Press, January 16, 2012.

9. “Caterpillar profit climbs 44%,” Globe and Mail, October 24, 2011.

10. “Amid Electro-Motive talks, time not on London's side,” London Free Press, December 27, 2011.

11. David Heap, “Caterpillar destroys homes from Ontario to Palestine,” Rabble, January 13, 2012.

12. Jonathon Brodie, “Rally moves to Vic Park,” London Community News, January, 12, 2012.

13. Doug Nesbitt, “The People vs U.S. Steel,” The Leveller, February 24, 2011.

14. For details, see Steve Early's August 24, 2011 interview at Against the Grain.

15. CUPW solidarity - occupation of John Baird's office,” Media Co-op, June 23, 2011.

CWB battle not over

2012-01-16T15:32:00.002-06:00

BY BRUCE JOHNSTONE
The Leader Post
January 14, 2012

According to Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, it's all over but the crying for supporters of the Canadian Wheat Board's single desk.

"It's a done deal, folks,'' Ritz told delegates at the Western Canadian Wheat Growers convention in Moose Jaw last week, referring to the legislation to eliminate the CWB's monopoly over wheat and barley exports Aug. 1.

Then in Saskatoon this week, Ritz dismissed the threat of a class-action lawsuit by Regina lawyer Tony Merchant as "a bit of comic relief '' and reiterated that the Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act "is now, and will continue to be, the law of the land.''

While Ritz sounds confident, even cocky, it has a certain whistling-past-thegraveyard feel to it.

It's almost as if by repeating the phrases "specious'' and "baseless" often enough, Ritz will make the mounting legal challenges facing his government disappear.

Unfortunately for Ritz and company, the legal challenges are real and they're not going away.

In fact, in all likelihood, they're going to multiply in the weeks and months ahead.

The first challenge is the federal court ruling Dec. 6 that says Ritz's actions in pushing through Bill C-18 in clear violation of the Canadian Wheat Board Act (which requires a producer plebiscite if major changes are made to the single desk) were an "affront to the rule of law.''

The federal government is appealing that decision to the federal court of appeal. For his part, Ritz dismissed it as a "declaration'' that has no legal effect.

If that's the case, then why is the federal government appealing the decision?

But if the government is taking the federal court ruling seriously, why is it proceeding to implement the legislation?

Shouldn't the government find out whether its actions were legal or not before implementing Bill C-18?

That's why former elected directors of the CWB are calling on the federal court to quash the Harper government's appeal of the federal court ruling.

"We believe that the Harper government should have to choose - either the government moves ahead to dismantle the CWB without a vote of farmers, or they continue with their efforts to reverse the decision at appeal - but they should not be able to do both at the same time," said Bill Toews, a former CWB director.

Another legal obstacle for the Harper government is the application by eight former directors of the CWB for a court injunction to suspend Bill C-18 until its legality is determined. That application will be heard in Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench in Winnipeg next week.

Finally, the aforementioned Merchant class action, which seeks $15.4 billion in damages for Western Canadian farmers resulting from the loss of the single desk and the assets accumulated by the CWB. This elicited a chuckle from Ritz, since Merchant is a well-known Liberal and the lone plaintiff is Duane Filson, a twicedefeated Liberal candidate for Cypress Hills-Grasslands.

Ritz can laugh all he wants, but the Merchant class action (assuming it is certified by a court) poses another thorny legal problem for the Harper government.

Assuming Bill C-18 is a legal act (a big assumption at this point), can the government confiscate the assets of the CWB, remove its monopoly, manage the business for a few years, then sell the assets to a third party, without paying a single penny in compensation to farmers?

Let's not forget the CWB is not a conventional Crown corporation. It receives no ongoing support from the federal government (or at least it didn't until the Harper government took it over) other than a federal guarantee of the initial payments to farmers. The assets have been financed by farmers, who pooled their grain and used the proceeds from the sale of their crops to finance the CWB's operations and pay themselves.

What gives this government the right to seize farmers' assets, sell them and pocket the proceeds, without paying any compensation to farmers?

And the Merchant class action promises to be the first of several such lawsuits. The Friends of Canadian Wheat Board and Canadian Wheat Board Alliance are just two of the groups considering similar legal action.

As Yogi Berra famously said: "It ain't over 'til it's over."

New book critiques Wall policies

2012-01-16T11:33:00.000-06:00

By David Hutton
The Star Phoenix
January 13, 2012

Saskatchewan’s economic momentum will dissipate if the provincial government doesn’t install stronger public policies geared toward social problems, a number of University of Saskatchewan professors argue in a new book.

The book — New Directions in Saskatchewan Public Policy — is the first academic critique of Brad Wall’s Saskatchewan Party government, analyzing and suggesting solutions in areas of immigration, taxation, climate change, urban affairs, poverty reduction, labour, aboriginal affairs, and health.

“The government is riding the economic boom and not making social investments,” said University of Saskatchewan political studies professor David McGrane, the book’s editor, at a campus press conference Friday.

“The government needs to invest in social infrastructure to create long-term benefits. Good public policy is needed to ensure our economic prosperity continues beyond what may be a short-term economic boom.”

In his chapter, McGrane argues the Saskatchewan Party government should hold the line on taxes and install a carbon tax and a harmonization of the federal and provincial sales tax that provides rebates.

Thus far, the Wall government has rejected the idea of installing a harmonized sales tax, which has caused political turmoil in British Columbia, where it was voted down in a referendum last summer. The tax shifts a portion of the burden from businesses to consumers and imposes a tax on many items that weren’t previously subject to PST.

McGrane said it could be installed alongside rebates for low-income people.

“If you’re going to do it in Saskatchewan, do it now and you’ll have four years to sell it to people,” he said.

Ryan Walker, a professor of urban planning, focused his critique on urban growth and the province’s sprawling cities. Walker said the provincial government could play a lead role in how the province’s big cities, Saskatoon and Regina, develop through a provincial growth management strategy. The time is now, during a period of fast growth, to tackle the issue, Walker said.

The major cities are currently sprawling at an unsustainable pace, he said.

“One of the problems is if we don’t focus on how we’re growing we could end up with an enormous tax bill,” Walker said.

Revenge of the Pawns

2012-01-15T10:40:00.001-06:00

By Jamie
New Left Project
09 January 2012

Wonderful little film by Erik Olin Wright, made in 1968, about the dilemmas of revolution.

He explains:

"The key idea in this animated film was this: the pawns revolt against the 'ruling class' pieces, sweep them from the board and then dance an American square dance on the board. In the end, however, they start a new chess game, but this time the pawns are on the back row moving like Kings and bishops and the like, while the old aristocratic pieces occupy the pawn row and move like pawns. The message of the film was that the pawns failed to make a revolution because they thought it was sufficient to depose the old elite. They neglected to remove the board itself. The chessboard, then, was a metaphor for underlying social structure that generates 'the rules of the game'. A revolution, to be sustainable, has to transform that.

Now, this idea is not a uniquely Marxist idea. In a sense it is the foundational idea of much structurally oriented sociology: people fill “locations” in social structures — sometimes called roles — which impose constraints and opportunities on what they can chose to do. This doesn’t mean that human practices or activities are rigidly determined by roles. Intentions and choices still really matter. Agency matters. But such choice occurs in a setting of systematic (rather than haphazard) constraints.

The Marxist form of this general idea is to make a claim — a pretty bold one when you think about it — that the key to understanding this structural level of constraint is the nature of the economic structure in which people live, or even more precisely, the nature of the “mode of production”. In my little film there was no production, no economy. The chessboard was a completely open-ended metaphor for social structure. So it is in that sense that the film was not specifically based on a Marxist framework.

As for its inspiration, I think the film grew out of the concerns for radical, egalitarian social change that were part of the intellectual culture of the student movement, the American civil rights movement and Vietnam War era anti-war movement. I participated in various ways in these social movements of the 1960s and was very much caught up in the utopian aspirations of the times, but I also felt that the task of constructing emancipatory alternatives was more arduous than many people thought. It is not enough to attack the establishment and remove its players. Constructing an alternative is a task in its own right. And that is what the film tried to convey."