by Rick Wolff -
Obama’s Deficit Reduction Commission released a remarkable document this week. Under the cover of “deficit reduction,” the document lists a host of proposed reductions in social security and medicare payments, a rise in the tax on oil products, cuts in public employment including the military, multi-year wage freezes for public employees including the non-combat military, cutting foreign military bases, reduced tax deductions (effectively raising taxes), and reduced basic income tax rates on individuals and businesses (effectively lowering taxes). This contradictory package has two basic goals.
First, the Commission document seeks to reduce Washington’s deficits, now that they have zoomed since 2007 to cover the costs of bailing out the credit system (banks, insurance companies, etc.) and the costs of at least moderating this great capitalist crisis. Second, the document seeks to place the real costs of deficit reduction on the mass of working people, leaving untouched the distribution of wealth and income and its foundation, the organization of production into a mass of workers producing profits and a tiny group of people who are directors and major shareholders of enterprises deciding what to do with those profits. This really is class war.
To achieve its goals, the vast bulk of the document’s proposed costs will fall on the middle and lower income groups, the working classes. If the documents’ proposals become the law, it means that the federal government will be swinging into an AUSTERITY program just like the Europeans are pursuing. And that will add to the state and local governments’ austerity programs that they have already been imposing across our country for two years.
The average working people will feel the bulk of social security and medicare cuts, the public employment cuts and public wage freezes, the raised regressive oil tax, etc. To hide that fact, symbolic steps are included imposing some tax increases on the rich (partly offsetting their tax cuts), some very modest cuts in the immense military establishment, etc. And even these may be removed or moderated in the final proposal as it works its way through a US congress that is ever more dependent on capitalist enterprises and contributions from the rich.
Perhaps most importantly, the document shows not the slightest interest in any sustained raising of the basic real wages of workers, let alone altering the structure of enterprises to reduce the social power now wielded by the small minority that controls the profits generated in those enterprises. Indeed the document reflects nothing so much as that minority’s already effective use of those profits to shape politics in the US. Both major parties, the major mass media, and academic institutions – all have become increasingly dependent on money distributed from the profits available to corporate boards of directors. These dependent institutions dare not offend those who increasingly sustain them.
Thus the Deficit Reduction Commissioners never raise the possibility of new taxes on the wealthiest top 5 % such as a federal intangible property tax (levied progressively on all portfolios of stocks and bonds over, say, $1 million). They say nothing about a set of steadily rising progressive increases in the tax rates on personal incomes over $1. No word is spoken about a stiff inheritance tax on estates over $2-3 million. A new progressive tax structure on corporate profits seems unimaginable to these commissioners, and so on.
Those options are not considered. The Commission’s document keeps them off the public agenda, out of public debate. The costs and benefits of taxing the super rich and large corporate profits are excluded from the long overdue consideration that our failed system needs. That exclusion is at least as important as anything else the document does.
from Rick Wolff's Website
Robert Pollin Interviewed by Paul Jay -
Paul Jay: So if you've got more or less zero percent inflation and you're getting 3 percent on your bond, you're making 3 percent. But if inflation's 3 percent and you're getting 3 percent on your bond, you're down to zero. Now, the Fed is saying that we can do this quantitative easing, increasing the money supply, in a way that isn't inflationary, up to a point. So why are bondholders so concerned, then?
Robert Pollin: Because they want to make sure.
Paul Jay: They don't believe --.
Robert Pollin: It is going to be inflationary. How much it's going to inflationary is an issue. But, you know, what these people are ignoring is that the greatest danger to the financial system, including themselves, is deflation, because deflation means, conversely with inflation, that the value of the dollars is going up. So that means that it's going to be more difficult for people, the debt holders, to pay off their debts. In a deflation it's more difficult to pay off your debts. In an inflation, with cheaper dollars, it's easier to pay off your debts.
Paul Jay: But if you own government bonds, aren't you doing fine with deflation? 'Cause now your 3 percent is worth even more, and when you cash out your bond, your dollars buy even more. So you might actually like deflation.
Robert Pollin: Again, that's very short-term, narrow thinking, because if we think about the financial system as a whole, if we already have a very fragile financial system, if you have a deflation and on average it's more difficult for everybody to pay off their debts, we will have more debt defaults. The kind of things that happened, you know, a year and a half ago will certainly reemerge. Ordinary people will start defaulting, foreclosing. That will inevitably happen as a consequence of deflation.
Paul Jay: So if you're really focused on your bonds and on your saving accounts, you may think you're protecting them, but the whole economy is burning around you.
Robert Pollin: That's right.
Paul Jay: In which case, in the end you might be dealing with such a collapse that what you had may not be worth much anyway.
Robert Pollin: Well, yeah, I mean, you can say: Great, deflation is good for me because I'm still going to get $30 on a $1,000 bond, and $30 will buy more because prices have fallen.
Paul Jay: Well, a part of the problem is that there are a lot of people sitting on a lot of cash right now. And as you've pointed out in previous interviews, some of the big banks are sitting on almost $1 trillion of cash. A lot of businesses are staying liquid, a lot of investors are staying liquid. If you're sitting on a lot of cash, then maybe austerity measures, no stimulus, and deflation is good for you, 'cause at some point you're going to be able to buy back in at bargain prices.
Robert Pollin: Yes. I mean --.
Paul Jay: Except a lot of people are going to lose their houses and homes and --.
Robert Pollin: It's playing with fire. You can say, yeah, when deflation hits, the value of my money goes up, I'm sitting on $1 trillion, and now I can buy more with $1 trillion dollars than I could last year. But all that ignores is the fact that it's also more difficult for each and every person that is a debtor in this economy, that it makes it more difficult for them to pay back their debts. And when that happens, of course, you can have a massive debt devaluation because there's all these defaults out there. That's what happened a year and a half ago. And, by the way, we really haven't had any experience with major deflation in this economy. So we are moving into uncharted territories. It's extremely dangerous. Bernanke himself and actually even Greenspan acknowledge this. So the notion that deflation is a solution to everything is scary.
Paul Jay: The thing is that these really are class issues. Like, if you're on the side of sitting on a lot of dough and you want short-term gain, and then, you know, après moi, le déluge -- if I make my short-term gain, then the hell with what comes next -- you're in this camp. If you're trying to think longer-term, you're in this other camp. But it seems like in this last vote there's a heck of a lot of people who voted either for the short-term gain or out of the fear of inflation.
Robert Pollin: Who knows what they were voting for. I mean, they're voting for the fact that they don't have jobs, that we're at, as you said in the last interview, properly measured, nearly 20 percent unemployment. People can't pay off their mortgages. They're getting, you know, fear of being tossed out of their homes. They think the government is arrogant. We've borrowed all this money, there's a big deficit, and there's no jobs. I mean, I don't think that most people are thinking much beyond that. If they are, they're fairly sophisticated. And, unfortunately, sophisticated people, it turns out, don't really understand what's going on either.
Paul Jay: Or just want to make a quick buck.
Robert Pollin: Well, they certainly want to make a quick buck. Now, whether you can make a quick buck in a deflationary environment, again, I think it's very, very tenuous. I can certainly play out the logic, but I can play out the other logic. When, you know, tens of millions of people can't pay off their debts, they --.
Paul Jay: The unfortunate thing is the way to make a quick buck in this economy is take your dollars and go to Asia and Latin America and do your investments over there and let it burn here a little longer.
Robert Pollin: Okay. Yeah. That's certainly the thought.
***
Robert Pollin is Professor of Economics and founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
from MRZine
by Zelig Stern -
Capitalism today is in the midst of the most serious crisis since the great depression. The big question is if this crisis, is the crisis? As capitalist economies grow, inner contradictions which are inherent to the system begin to grow more severe. The two most serious contractions of the capitalist system are the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, and the tendency for supply to outpace demand. As these contradictions intensify capitalism is faced by a series of crises which tend to intensify in turn. As the crises intensify they tend to lead toward an 'ultimate' crisis in which capitalism will enter a state of permanent depression or permanent stagnation . It is still not clear whether or not this crisis will be the crisis.
In the '60s and '70s capitalism faced a major crisis in which both major contradictions grew to significant proportions. In order to arrest the falling rate of profits, the capitalist class launched a major attack against the wages of workers. They successfully reduced the rate of growth of wages enough compared to the rate of growth of productivity to halt the falling rate of profit, shifting the burden of crisis from capitalists to workers. This solution to the first contradiction only intensified the second one. In the midst of a crisis of over production the reduction of wage growth also meant a reduction of demand. The only way for the capitalists to create enough demand to insure the sale of their produce while keeping wages down was to use their increased profits to loan money back to the workers. This debt financed demand stimulated growth, but over time, as consumers began to use debt not only to make new purchases but also to service old
debt, more and more debt was needed to stimulate the same amount of demand. This is illustrated in Chart I where it is clear that the mass of debt grew much faster than consumer demand. As the debt service to household income ratio grew the system faced an increasing threat of massive default, which could lead to the collapse of the financial system and debt financed demand. The fact that capital resisted so fervently any increase in wages for two decades in the face of the growing precariousness of debt financed demand illustrates how great the threat of any fall in the rate of profit was. When such a massive default does happen, it is unclear how capitalism would be able to pull itself out of permanent crisis, ie the “ultimate” crisis. Without easy credit for the working class, the only way to stimulate demand would be to raise wages, which would reignite the rate of profit crisis.
Since the '70s capitalism faced a number of small yet increasing crises of debt deflation. In each case the government was able to quickly bail out the major financial interests and get credit flowing quickly, thus preventing major crisis. The question became when would debt deflation happen too quickly, or too intensively for the government to bail the economy out. This may have happened during the great financial crisis of 2007. The 2007 crisis was far larger, and far faster than any of the previous crises. It is still uncertain whether or not the most recent bail out will be sufficient to jump start the flow of credit. If it is not, this crisis may yet turn out to be the crisis.
Without a doubt, the bailout prevented the economy from falling into a significantly more serious depression. Additionally the economy is showing real signs of recovery. Not only have profit levels nearly fully recovered, but consumer demand is also showing signs of recovery. Admittedly, it seems increasingly likely that the economy will recover, and safely return to its now normal debt financed consumption. However there are two ominous signs that indicate that recovery is still not certain and permanent depression or stagnation may be the very near future of capitalism. The first sign is that while consumer demand has been steadily recovering, its growth has been significantly slower than normal recovery rates. The second is that the availability of consumer credit continues to fall.
The first sign that the system may not be out of the woods yet is the menacingly slow recovery of consumer demand. As seen in Chart I, despite steady growth since its low in the first quarter of 2009, consumer demand was still as of the second quarter of 2010 nearly $850 billion short of where it would have been if it had retained per-crisis levels of growth. The 2007 crisis marked the largest drop in consumer spending since the great depression. The major factors in the contraction of consumer demand were, layoffs and a sudden unavailability of credit. However the effects of these two factors were greatly amplified by consumer uncertainty in the moment of crisis. With a massive wave of layoffs and foreclosures consumers where unsure of how much money they would have in the future, and as a result increased savings at the expense of consumption. Consumer saving as a portion of disposable income increased from an average of 2.7% between 2003 and 2007, to a high of 7.2% in the the second quarter of 2009. This amplification of the effects of layoffs and credit freezes on consumer spending can also help to explain a large part of the recovery of consumer spending since the height of the crisis. As layoffs and foreclosures have slowed, consumers have regained confidence and began spending more again, personal savings as a portion of disposable income has fallen down to 5.9%.
Another cause for the slow but steady recovery of consumer demand is the the end of mass layoffs. Between November of 2009 and May of 2010 the economy gained jobs in every month but one. The private sector has continued to rehire workers and employment has grown in the private sector each month through the present. However, two factors prevent this recovery in private sector jobs from leading to adequate growth in consumer demand. The first is that private sector hiring has been too slow to make up for jobs lost in the initial crisis, let alone to lead to increased consumer demand. This is due to the cyclical relationship between employment and consumer demand. With low consumer demand at the height of the crisis, private firms laid off masses of workers. As demand recovered, due to consumer confidence and the bailout, and as reserve stocks of commodities were sold off, firms began rehiring. However as demand remains well below previous levels, hiring remains well below previous levels. The other problem is that government austerity measures have lead to massive layoffs in the public sector, so that while the private sector increased jobs, the economy as a whole lost jobs from June to September.
More ominous than the slow recovery of consumer demand is the credit situation. As described above, the increasing consumer demand needed to sustain a growing economy has been made possible since the mid seventies only by a more rapidly increasing mass of consumer debt. However, as seen in Chart I, the availability of consumer credit since the crisis has been rapidly decreasing. Whatever tepid increases in consumer demand have developed since the crisis will be short lived unless the the credit situation is reversed. Given the level of wages necessary to ward of a crisis of profitability, especially considering the current job situation and reduction of wages since the crisis, renewed availability of consumer credit is a necessity for the system.
When the housing bubble burst in 2007 it caused a chain reaction of debt defaults which threatened to bankrupt the entire financial system. To prevent this the U.S. government provided the massive multi-billion dollar bailout to the banking industry; cash, no strings attached. This bailout was enough to secure the financial giants from bankruptcy, however by the time the financial system was stabilized the real economy was in turmoil. The banks, having learned their lesson from the massive defaults, are no longer willing to lend to risky debtors. The problem is that in a system based on financial bubbles and debt financed demand, every debtor is a risky debtor. The banks have now regained profitability through loaning to a small handful of secure debtors including the U.S. federal government. While non financial profits have rebounded and layoffs have significantly slowed (both more the result of cut backs than of increased sales), the foundation of the real economy is shaky at best. The only remedy to this instability is renewed access to credit, but the banks, interested in private profit not macro economic stability, are refusing to grant credit until after the economy regains stability. The question is, have things leveled off enough that slowly the economy will gain a little stability, banks will begin to loan a little, therefore increasing stability and further increasing debtor reliability, or is the catch 22 the economy faces too great to overcome. If the latter is the case, consumer demand will be unable to continue its recovery leading to a second crisis in the real economy which the financial sector may not be able to survive. This may be the 'ultimate' crisis.
Two factors indicate that the former scenario is more likely than the latter. The first is that, though the bailout did not get credit flowing again as mainstream economists and law makers had hoped, it did manage to rescue the financial system from total meltdown. With the financial system still in place it is only a matter of time before credit starts flowing again. Financial firms only make profits when they are making loans. And since no firm is ever satisfied with their current level of profits, but rather always seeks greater profits, it is impossible that these firms will remain content with the limited supply of relatively risk free debtors. Eventually their memory of the housing crisis will fade and they will begin making risky loans again. Since for the moment consumer demand is rising, it appears that the financial sector has a little bit of time to forget before it is too late.
The second factor indicating the greater likely hood of recovery than 'ultimate' crisis is the continued submissiveness of the working class in the class war. The state of class struggle plays an decisive factor in the course of economic crisis. It is the lack of resistance to cutbacks, layoffs, speedups, etc. on the part of the working class that has allowed profitability in the non financial sector to recover, thus enabling relative recovery of stability in the real economy. With no signs of an increased offensive on the part of the working class, this situation may be able to persist for a while.
>Given these two factors it seems quite likely that slowly but surely the real economy will gain stability, and the banks will begin to make credit available again, before the current lack of consumer credit causes a stagnation in the recovery of demand great enough to throw the real and financial economy into the depth of permanent crisis. That being said, it must be kept in mind that recovery is not guaranteed, especially if some form of workers resistance can be cultivated. Additionally, even if the economy is able to recover, it will not be a quick process. High unemployment, austerity, low wages, and speed ups will be the norm for at least a number of years. Finally, recovery means nothing more than returning to the situation which existed before the crisis. If there is a recovery it is only a matter of time before the next major default, and next time the government may not be able to rescue the financial system from meltdown. It is yet to be seen
if this round of bailouts was enough to fend off the 'ultimate' crisis, let alone the next one.
Appendix: Counter Factual Demand Curve
The counter factual demand curve is calculated by plotting the the quarterly increases in consumer demand between 2003 and the last quarter of 2007. Then calculating their corresponding regression equation to extrapolate what the increase in consumer demand would have been each quarter from the first quarter in 2008 through the present if trends had remained the same. The regression equation turns out to be y=134.4325-0.91853x where x= 1 corresponds to 2003 quarter I, x=2 corresponds to 2003 quarter II, etc.
by Billy Wharton -
Things may be a bit pricey as Americans head to the Thanksgiving dinner table, or at least what passes as the “traditional” table, this year. The Farm Bureau, an advocacy group for American farmers, reports that the typical Thanksgiving Day meal will cost about 1.3% more this year. The annual report is the product of 112 volunteer shoppers in 34 states with the same grocery list in hand.
The meal analyzed by the Farm Bureau includes all of the typical Thanksgiving favorites. A 16-pound turkey is combined with milk, various ingredients needed to cook the meal and the usual suspects – rolls, cranberries, pumpkin pie. The meal is designed to feed at least 10 people.
The average meal this year will cost $43.47, up from last year, but still lower than 2008, a year when soaring turkey prices pushed costs up to $44.61. The overall trend is quite clear – if you want to eat the turkey, you are going to be treated like one at the cash register. Thanksgiving dinner prices have steadily increased since 1987 when they reached a low of $24.51. Although the Farm Bureau claims this is generally in line with the overall inflation rate, the resulting 77% increase may pinch recession slimmed pocketbooks.
The prime offender this year is not the turkey. Although turkey still constitutes the biggest cost at the holiday table, $17.66 for a 16 pounds, turkey prices declined by nearly $1 this year. However, milk and the package of ingredients to prepare the meal were on the rise. Milk prices are up 38 cents or 13% and the ingredients (onions, eggs, sugar, flour, evaporated milk and butter) moved up by 72 cents or 28%. There are some price breaks because of price declines in green peas and bagged stuffing, but most items increased over the last year.
John Anderson, a Farm Bureau economist, explained that the turkey price declines are primarily the result of aggressive pricing by retailers. “Turkey production,” Anderson related, “has been slightly lower in 2010 than in 2009 and supplies of turkey in cold storage are below last year’s level.”
On the other hand, Anderson viewed the increase in dairy prices as being primarily the result of increased consumer demand “as the economy has gradually improved this year.”
One bit of information not included in the Farm Bureau report is the steadily increasing use of antibiotics by commercial farmers of turkeys. The Environmental Defense Fund reports that the mass antibiotic use has come in response to an overall surge in demand for turkey meat even outside of the holiday season. The problem is that nearly 2/3 of the animals who receive the medication aren’t even sick. This raises questions about the effects of consuming turkeys and the resulting production of antibiotic resistance flu strains.
Committed meat eaters might head to a local farmer’s market for a pricey, but antibiotic free locally grown turkey. A little more fun, but still relatively costly alternative is the Tofurky. The advantage here is that this Tofu-champion is 100% vegan and comes with an anti-genetically modified organism pledge. A cheaper and perhaps tastier main dish could be pasta. The price declining green peas could be mixed with a nice marinara sauce and freshly grated parmesan. Enjoy also the sigh of relief from the turkey.
The basic message here is that your Thanksgiving feast will cost more. And, if you want to eat healthy, perhaps even more. While this might be little concern for Wall Street types who saw their salaries increase by 12% in the beginning of this year, the rest of us will feel the pinch. So, don’t be a turkey this year – consider bringing a little socialist wisdom about the right to safe, tasty and inexpensive food to your table and place the capitalist Franken-foods where they belong, in the trash can.
***
Billy Wharton is a writer, activist and the editor of the Socialist WebZine. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the NYC Indypendent, Spectrezine and the Monthly Review Zine. He can be reached at whartonbilly@gmail.com.
by Chloe
Finally, an anti-rape campaign that targets the perpetrators, rather than the victims! The campaign, which was launched in Edmonton, Alberta, last week, is called “Don’t Be That Guy.” In a series of posters, it addresses the legal reality that a woman who is extremely drunk, or even passed out, cannot consent to sex. With messages like “just because she isn’t saying no… doesn’t mean she’s saying yes ”and“ Just because you’re helping her home… doesn’t mean you get to help yourself,” the campaign targets “opportunistic offenders,” as Edmonton Police Superintendent calls them. According to the Vancouver Sun:
The three advertisements were chosen after focus-group testing showed the messages were clearly understood by, and resonated with, young men.
Campbell said she hopes the “graphic” and “blunt” messages make a real difference in educating young men and reducing sexual assaults.
In 2009, alcohol was a factor in half the cases investigated by the police sexual assault section, said Campbell. In the first six months of this year, 52 per cent of cases investigated, involving 153 victims, had alcohol as a factor, she said.
“In each of these cases, the victims were clearly intoxicated … in some cases passed out at the time of the sexual assault. In each and every case, the offender was known to the victim,” Campbell said.
I applaud the Edmonton Police force for the strong stance they’ve taken on this issue and for their willingness to work with assault prevention groups and hospitality industry representatives to create the kind of anti-assault campaign we so rarely see. This kind of approach is the only kind that can truly end sexual assault. After all, in the words of Karen Smith of the Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton, “as long as society directs prevention strategies at women, we all stop looking at what the real problem is – the perpetrators.”
from Feministing
International food import bills could pass the one trillion dollar mark in 2010 with prices of most commodities up sharply
In the latest edition of its Food Outlook report, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned the international community to prepare for harder times ahead unless production of major food crops increases significantly in 2011.
Food import bills for the world’s poorest countries are predicted to rise 11 percent in 2010 and by 20 percent for low-income food-deficit countries.
This means, by passing a trillion dollars, the global import food bill will likely rise to a level not seen since food prices peaked at record levels in 2008.
“With the pressure on world prices of most commodities not abating, the international community must remain vigilant against further supply shocks in 2011 and be prepared,” FAO said.
The FAO Food Price index has gained 34 points since June, and is now only 16 points short from its peak in June 2008, when rising process sparked food riots in dozens of countries.
Weather partly to blame
Contrary to earlier predictions, world cereal production is now forecast to contract by two percent rather than to expand by 1.2 percent as anticipated in June. Unexpected supply shortfalls due to unfavourable weather events were responsible for this change in direction, according to the report.
Global cereal stocks are forecast to decline sharply and Food Outlook makes a strong call for production to be stepped up to replenish inventories. World cereals stocks are anticipated to shrink by seven percent according to FAO, with barley plunging 35 percent, maize 12 percent and wheat 10 percent.
Only rice reserves are foreseen to increase, by six percent according to the report.
Consumers to pay
“Given the expectation of falling global inventories, the size of next year’s crops will be critical in setting the tone for stability in international markets,” FAO said. “For major cereals, production must expand substantially to meet utilization and to reconstitute world reserves, and farmers are likely to respond to the prevailing prices by expanding plantings.
“Cereals however may not be the only crops farmers will be trying to produce more of, as rising prices have also made other commodities attractive to grow, from soybeans to sugar and cotton.
This could limit individual crop production responses to levels that would be insufficient to alleviate market tightness. Against this backdrop, consumers may have little choice but to pay higher prices for their food,” FAO warned.
Price increases, seen for most agricultural commodities over the past six months, are the result of a combination of factors, especially unexpected supply shortfalls due to unfavourable weather events, policy responses by some of the exporting countries, and fluctuations in currency markets.
International prices could rise even more if production next year does not increase significantly – especially in maize, soybean, and wheat, FAO said in its report.
Even the price of rice – the supply of which according to FAO is more adequate than other cereals – may be affected if prices of other major food crops continue climbing.
from Climate and Capitalism
Protests Shake Hinche, Shut Down Cap-Haïtien
Large, militant protests against the presence of United Nations (UN) troops in Haiti broke out on Nov. 15 in Hinche in the Central Plateau and Cap-Haïtien on the northern coast. The protesters demanded the withdrawal of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), a Brazilian-led multinational force with more than 13,000 soldiers, police agents and staffers that has occupied Haiti since June 2004. Many Haitians blame MINUSTAH for an outbreak of cholera in October that by Nov. 18 had already caused more than 1,100 deaths.
Thousands of people participated in the protests in Cap-Haïtien, the country’s second-largest city. Some threw rocks at MINUSTAH troops and blocked streets with barricades of flaming tires. Protesters reportedly set fire to the police stations at Barrière Bouteille and Pont Neuf in retaliation for actions by Haitian riot police, who allegedly fired on demonstrators. People also looted a World Food Program (WFP) warehouse in the city’s southeastern section.
MINUSTAH claimed that six of its soldiers were injured and that armed protesters fired on troops in Quartier Morin, on the outskirts of the city. “One of these demonstrators lost his life when he was hit by a bullet coming from a blue helmet [a UN soldier], who responded in legitimate self-defense,” according to a Nov. 15 UN press release. Later in the day the body of a young man was found at 24th Street; according to witnesses, an armored car belonging to a Chilean MINUSTAH contingent had been in the area and two blasts had been heard. In addition to the two deaths, some 19 people were injured in Cap-Haïtien on Nov. 15, according to local media, about 15 of them with bullets.
“We’d rather die from bullets than be decimated by the cholera epidemic,” some of the Cap-Haïtien protesters shouted while throwing rocks at the base of a Nepalese MINUSTAH contingent.
In Hinche a large number of protesters reportedly threw stones at MINUSTAH troops on Nov. 15, injuring six Nepalese soldiers; two demonstrators were arrested. Hinche, the capital of Center department, was the site of a protest by some 10,000 peasants in June rejecting an offer of hybrid seeds by the Monsanto Company, a US-based biotechnology multinational, supposedly to aid the country after a devastating earthquake on Jan. 12 [see Update #1036]. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 11/15/10, __, 11/16/10; MINUSTAH press release 11/15/10 via AlterPresse; Radio Kiskeya (Haiti) 11/15/10; Radio Métropole (Haiti) 11/16/10)
Cap-Haïtien remained largely paralyzed by the protests through Nov. 17. There was extensive use of tear gas by security forces, and 17 arrests were reported. One more protester was killed on Nov. 17, and several others were wounded at the city’s southern entrance; according to witnesses, MINUSTAH troops opened fire when their vehicle was immobilized. (AlterPresse 11/17/10; Radio Métropole 11/17/10)
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
November 26, the day after Thanksgiving, is traditionally a day where corporate dominance over our lives is asserted and our complicity in consumer capitalism is encouraged and expected. Known as Black Friday consumer/citizens are prodded by media and business to flood stores en masse to start the holiday shopping season.
Buy Nothing Day is the resistance to this! A symbol of resistance to a symbol of consumer capitalism, ecological devastation, and neo-liberalism. Use this day as a start on reducing your consumption and ending participation in corporate expectations of you.
What will you do this Buy Nothing Day? The Socialist Party of Central Virginia is asking everyone reading this to participate in some way in the myriad of activities planned.
First off- don't buy anything on Nov. 26! Make sure you send us an e-mail before that day, or the day of, to let us know how you plan to participate.
Here are some ideas:
1. Don’t buy anything!
2. Attend, or help organize, a free store: Nov. 26- Really Really Free Market, Really Really Free Speech Zone, and Really Really Free Movie 1p.m.-8p.m. Random Row Bookstore, 315 West Main St., Charlottesville, VA. Nov. 27- Noon-3 p.m. Monroe Park, Richmond, VA.
3. Organize a gift making party or workshop- reuse goods for art!
4. Post about Buy Nothing Day on Facebook.
5. Write and call your friends and family and ask them not to buy anything on Nov. 26.
6. Visit a shopping mall and don’t purchase anything; tell shoppers to hurry up and start buying because we have a planet to consume!
7. Zombie shoppers- get some friends to dress like zombies and wander around the mall with empty shopping bags.
8. Cut up your credit cards. Offer to cut up other people’s credit cards- set up a stand at a mall, “Free Debt Reduction,” and bring scissors to cut up cards.
9. Bike or walk to work.
10. Pack a lunch for work- Thanksgiving leftovers anyone?
11. Puppet or street theater at a Wal-Mart, or other big box store or mall.
12. Research a particularly vicious corporation and hand out fliers to shoppers at their stores.
So, what are you doing for Buy Nothing Day? Please let us know by e-mailing us at spvirginia@comcast.net or by posting on our blog
In Unity,
Socialist Party of Central Virginia
Lindsey German is a lifelong socialist and campaigner for women's liberation. She is convener of the Stop the War Coalition (UK) and helped organize the 2 million strong march in February 2003. She has written on many issues, including women, class and marxist theory. Her first political involvement dates back to the 1960s. She is currently part of the socialist organization and website Counterfire, and is working on a book on women and war. She is also co-authoring a people's history of London. Lindsey answered a few questions from Socialist WebZine editor Billy Wharton after the 50,000 student strong demonstration in London.
Billy Wharton - We have seen large demonstration in London by students and lectures against fee increases. Can you tell us more about these demonstrations? What are the key issues? Who is going out in the streets?
Lindsey German - The student demonstrations are the birth of a new movement. There were more than 50,000 on the streets of London, and seemed to me from all sectors of education. So there were Oxford and Cambridge students (equivalent to your Ivy League) but also many other from lower status universities eg 400 from Bath, from schools (where many teachers turned a blind eye to them bunking off school) and from FE colleges (which teach pre university and vocational courses). So lots of very young kids who are furious with the government which they rightly see as wrecking their futures.
There are two major issues: the raising of fees to a possible £9k a year which will make them the most expensive state universities in the world; and the total marketisation of education with for example arts being the preserve only of the rich. But this comes on top of a series of attacks on other areas of welfare. So these kids see their future as grim: debts after education, few jobs, no prospect of entering the housing market, having to work longer and pay more for pensions.
The anger and direct action shown on Wednesday was supported by many of the students and they will keep coming out on the streets. They are especially angry at the Libdems, the junior coalition party which got elected in university seats like cambridge by pledging no fees but have now reneged on their promises. I'm not easily shocked but I was rather surprised at the number of home made placards on Wednesday which contained obscenities about their leader, Nick Clegg.
This new movement will produce a new left if it is to succeed. That will raise issues of a different society, where education is freely available for all and where it is aimed at enriching human experience, not training obedient workers.
BW - The Cameron government unveiled $130 billion in budget cuts, a massive package of cuts. Clearly, students are responding to this. What are some of the areas of fight-back? How have working people responding the cuts?
LG - The Cameron cuts are very unpopular and will become more so. There have been various industrial actions in recent weeks among firefighters, tube workers and BBC journalists although two of these are now in negotiations. These are all on jobs/pensions/cuts related issues. But while there is a lot of anger about cutting benefits and forcing low paid or unemployed out of housing in inner London, there has so far not been widespread industrial action. There will be a major trade union demo in March, which could be very large. I think the students may be a catalyst to more workers' struggle, as they were in France in 68. I certainly hope so but the recovery of the British working class movement after its defeats has been a very slow process. The connection between most unions and the Labour Party hasn't helped with this.
BW - What is the state of the anti-war movement in Britain? In the US, the movement has ground to a halt. Any hope from the European side of the movement?
LG - The anti war movement in Britain is going ok. We have a national demo calling for troops out of Afghanistan next week to coincide with the Nato summit. That looks good altho not on the scale of some of the Iraq mobilisations. But it is definitely on an upswing and we are attracting many new people especially young people. Opinion here is heavily against the war but we need to get that mobilised. I know some European groups are calling for an international day of demos on the 10th anniversary, and I hope that the US movement will be part of that.
BW - We recently became aware of the new electoral group the Socialist and Trade Union Coalition. This seems like a positive development. Are you a part of this formation? What will the electoral outlet be for the anti-budget cuts militancy we are seeing now?
LG - I wasn't part of TUSC. As you may know I was involved in Respect and regret its failure in recent years. That came out of a mass movement round war, and I think another serious electoral alternative will only develop out of the mass movement. It is a big problem that all main parties subscribe to the neo liberal agenda, but the alternative to that won't be built by simply amalgamating a few groups, it will come out of the struggle. As part of that, I'm involved in organising the Coalition of Resistance which is broad based and has a conference on 27 November, aimed at organising against the cuts.
by Dan LaBotz -
“The Socialist Party campaign for the U.S. Senate in Ohio was a great success. We won more than 25,000 votes for socialism in Ohio,” said Dan La Botz the 65-year old school teacher, writer and activist and the party’s candidate for Senator. "We didn't win in traditional terms, but this was not a traditional campaign. The corporate parties want working people to wake up and think about politics only on election day, and then they want them to go back to sleep. This campaign was about creating an ongoing movement to build power to transform our society.”
Explaining his satisfaction with the outcome of the election, La Botz said, “These were 25,000 votes for ending corporate domination of our society, for ending capitalism’s booms and busts, and for creating economic security and a full-employment economy. These were votes for ending the use of coal and stopping mountain-top removal—while providing support for miners and power plant workers during a period of transition. These were votes for peace, votes to get out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan now. These were votes to tax the rich to pay for health, education, transportation and housing. We are very happy with the result.”
Only Socialist Party presidential candidates Eugene V. Debs in the period from 1900s to 1920s and Norman Thomas in the period from the 1920s to the 1940s won more votes for socialism in Ohio than La Botz.
Asked why the Socialist Party did so well in the election, compared to other socialist candidates in the past, La Botz said, “First, we’ve are in a terrible economic crisis and people are looking for alternatives. Then the Tea Party attack on Obama led to a great national debate about socialism. We were able to explain to Ohio voters that democratic socialism means the American people n needs of working people rather than on the needs of corporate CEOs, corporate boards, and their investors. Socialism is about rebuilding the labor unions and social movements so that working people have the power to push aside the corporate parties and run the country in the interest of the majority.”
La Botz said the party had used its resources wisely. “We used the $10,000 we raised to travel 15,000 miles around Ohio, to distribute tens of thousands of pieces of literature, to talk to thousands of Ohioans about socialism. We were able to do this because we had built an organization in cities and on college campuses throughout the state. We brought together senior citizens, working age adults, and college students. Our organization was made up of peace activists, LGBT activists, environmental activists and labor union members from teachers to teamsters. We united half a dozen small socialist groups in this campaign,” La Botz explained.
“Many people recognize that the Republicans and Democrats, representing the corporations as they do, cannot resolve the country’s problems in the interest of working people. My Socialist Party campaign was part of a long term project to build a working peoples’ party in this country. Our efforts will in the long run coalesce with those of others around the country to build a working class socialist movement. We aim to turn the country upside down, to put working people and the poor on top. And we’re going to do it.”
“The campaign is over, but the struggle continues,” said the former steelworker, truck driver and college professor. “We will continue to organize to fight for jobs, for a green economy, for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and for equality and justice for all. We will continue to resist the scapegoating of Latino immigrants, Muslims, gays, and African Americans. We will continue to fight the corporations and government policies. We continue to operate on the theory that working people make this country run, and that working people should run the country.”
Dan La Botz won almost half his votes in Ohio’s three largest cities:
Urban area
CLEVELAND - 4,713
COLUMBUS - 4,257
CINCINNATI - 3,489
DAYTON - 1,706
AKRON - 1,527
TOLEDO - 1,488
YOUNGSTOWN - 1,063
CANTON - 943
Dan La Botz for U.S. Senate—Ohio
DanLaBotz.com // contact@danlabotz.com // P.O. Box 19136, Cincinnati OH 45210-99
by Rick Wolff -
The 2010 elections revealed yet again the peculiar habits of the US electorate. The majority of eligible voters – about 60% - did not vote despite the months of endless media hype devoted to the campaigns, politicians, funding groups, and even to some of the issues they raised. Many elections were very close, thus pitting 20% of voters on one side against a roughly equal number on the other. The exit polls indicated that the overwhelmingly dominant issue on most actual voters’ minds was the ongoing economic crisis.
This dominant concern about the economic crisis continues to focus on electoral politics. The voters’ upset focuses primarily on unemployment and home foreclosures, secondarily on government priorities given to bailouts of banks and other corporations blamed for producing the crisis. Yet those voters seem totally uninterested in taking any action – political, electoral, or otherwise – against the chief, direct agents of their upset. For example, the rise of unemployment since the current crisis began (December, 2007) has overwhelmingly occurred in private employment. Those who fired almost all of the 8 million US workers added to the unemployment rolls are private capitalist employers. Yet voters concerned about unemployment focus their rage and action against government and thus the party in power as if private capitalist employers were passive by-standers rather than active agents causing unemployment for their own profit-driven reasons.
The same applies to home foreclosures. The active agents there are banks and other holders of mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. They are the people going into courts to initiate and pursue foreclosure actions. Yet voters seem again to literally overlook actions against those agents and instead rage against government and politicians in power.
The same applies yet again to government bailouts of the banks and other corporations since it was their private boards of directors that pleaded for and provided massive public support for those bailouts. Those boards also threatened the direst economic consequences – for everyone - if the government did not bail them out with huge sums in ways they specified.
Needless to say, capitalist employers of both financial and non-financial enterprises must heartily support voters thinking and acting in these ways. It permits the employers’ private-profit driven actions – those that cause social problems – to be blamed not on them but instead on politicians.
Finally, this peculiar syndrome of US politics may also help to explain one reason why majorities of the eligible population usually don’t vote at all. Perhaps they see through the peculiarity. That is, they grasp that it makes little difference – especially in economic matters – which politicians win elections. They understand that switching parties and politicians leaves untouched the actual, direct agents making the key decisions about jobs, wages, and prices that determine our economic situations. So in 2008 and now again in 2010 when those economic issues have been uppermost on peoples’ minds, the voting minority gets excited about denouncing the government and switching parties, while the non-voting majority sees elections as pointless and irrelevant. The fact that the same electoral focus of voters drove a party switch in one direction in 2008 and in the opposite direction in 2010 will likely reinforce such aversion to electoral politics.
We might understand US voters as citizens who have given up and perhaps cannot any longer even imagine changing the economy or its ruling corporate structure. So, in depressed resignation, they focus on politicians and parties that can at least be alternated periodically, however minimal the results. Yet that also suggests real political possibilities for new parties or other political formations that explicitly retarget their struggles to confront the direct agents of the economic problems at the forefront of mass concerns.
from Rick Wolff's Website
by Noam Chomsky -
The U.S. midterm elections register a level of anger, fear and disillusionment in the country like nothing I can recall in my lifetime. Since the Democrats are in power, they bear the brunt of the revulsion over our current socioeconomic and political situation.
More than half the “mainstream Americans” in a Rasmussen poll last month said they view the Tea Party movement favorably—a reflection of the spirit of disenchantment.
The grievances are legitimate. For more than 30 years, real incomes for the majority of the population have stagnated or declined while work hours and insecurity have increased, along with debt. Wealth has accumulated, but in very few pockets, leading to unprecedented inequality.
These consequences mainly spring from the financialization of the economy since the 1970s and the corresponding hollowing-out of domestic production. Spurring the process is the deregulation mania favored by Wall Street and supported by economists mesmerized by efficient-market myths.
People see that the bankers who were largely responsible for the financial crisis and who were saved from bankruptcy by the public are now reveling in record profits and huge bonuses. Meanwhile official unemployment stays at about 10 percent. Manufacturing is at Depression levels: one in six out of work, with good jobs unlikely to return.
People rightly want answers, and they are not getting them except from voices that tell tales that have some internal coherence—if you suspend disbelief and enter into their world of irrationality and deceit.
Ridiculing Tea Party shenanigans is a serious error, however. It is far more appropriate to understand what lies behind the movement’s popular appeal, and to ask ourselves why justly angry people are being mobilized by the extreme right and not by the kind of constructive activism that rose during the Depression, like the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations).
Now Tea Party sympathizers are hearing that every institution—government, corporations and the professions—is rotten, and that nothing works.
Amid the joblessness and foreclosures, the Democrats can’t complain about the policies that led to the disaster. President Ronald Reagan and his Republican successors may have been the worst culprits, but the policies began with President Jimmy Carter and accelerated under President Bill Clinton. During the presidential election, Barack Obama’s primary constituency was financial institutions, which have gained remarkable dominance over the economy in the past generation.
That incorrigible 18th-century radical Adam Smith, speaking of England, observed that the principal architects of power were the owners of the society—in his day the merchants and manufacturers—and they made sure that government policy would attend scrupulously to their interests, however “grievous” the impact on the people of England; and worse, on the victims of “the savage injustice of the Europeans” abroad.
A modern and more sophisticated version of Smith’s maxim is political economist Thomas Ferguson’s “investment theory of politics,” which sees elections as occasions when groups of investors coalesce in order to control the state by selecting the architects of policies who will serve their interests.
Ferguson’s theory turns out to be a very good predictor of policy over long periods. That should hardly be surprising. Concentrations of economic power will naturally seek to extend their sway over any political process. The dynamic happens to be extreme in the U.S.
Yet it can be said that the corporate high rollers have a valid defense against charges of “greed” and disregard for the health of the society. Their task is to maximize profit and market share; in fact, that’s their legal obligation. If they don’t fulfill that mandate, they’ll be replaced by someone who will. They also ignore systemic risk: the likelihood that their transactions will harm the economy generally. Such “externalities” are not their concern—not because they are bad people, but for institutional reasons.
When the bubble bursts, the risk-takers can flee to the shelter of the nanny state. Bailouts—a kind of government insurance policy—are among many perverse incentives that magnify market inefficiencies.
“There is growing recognition that our financial system is running a doomsday cycle,” economists Peter Boone and Simon Johnson wrote in the Financial Times in January. “Whenever it fails, we rely on lax money and fiscal policies to bail it out. This response teaches the financial sector: Take large gambles to get paid handsomely, and don’t worry about the costs—they will be paid by taxpayers” through bailouts and other devices, and the financial system “is thus resurrected to gamble again—and to fail again.”
The doomsday metaphor also applies outside the financial world. The American Petroleum Institute, backed by the Chamber of Commerce and the other business lobbies, has intensified its efforts to persuade the public to dismiss concerns about anthropogenic global warming—with considerable success, as polls indicate. Among Republican congressional candidates in the 2010 election, virtually all reject global warming.
The executives behind the propaganda know that global warming is real, and our prospects grim. But the fate of the species is an externality that the executives must ignore, to the extent that market systems prevail. And the public won’t be able to ride to the rescue when the worst-case scenario unfolds.
I am just old enough to remember those chilling and ominous days of Germany’s descent from decency to Nazi barbarism, to borrow the words of Fritz Stern, the distinguished scholar of German history. In a 2005 article, Stern indicates that he has the future of the United States in mind when he reviews “a historic process in which resentment against a disenchanted secular world found deliverance in the ecstatic escape of unreason.”
The world is too complex for history to repeat, but there are nevertheless lessons to keep in mind as we register the consequences of another election cycle. No shortage of tasks waits for those who seek to present an alternative to misguided rage and indignation, helping to organize the countless disaffected and to lead the way to a better future.
from Z Communications
by Billy Wharton -
While all eyes were placed firmly on Tea Party electoral breakthroughs such as Rand Paul in Kentucky, other disturbing trends also developed behind the scenes of this round of elections. This was the first election since the Supreme Court decision that reversed the limits on corporate campaign donations by affirming corporate personhood. The money did certainly flow in 2010 and it served to shape the outcome of at least some of the elections. Ominous unnamed sources funded dozens of attack ads in contested races, Political Action Committee (PAC) funds flowed freely and the unions continued their failed strategy of footing the bill for the Democratic Party. The sheer scale of the spending combined with restrictive ballot access laws, served to further drown out independent candidates. Voters responded by staying home.
Money, Money, Money
Overall spending increased rapidly in 2010. The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) reports that more than $4 billion, or the annual GDP of Mongolia, was spent on this election. The Supreme Court decision on corporate personhood seems to have had the biggest impact on outside spending. Outside spending relates to activities such as the purchases of election ads, making phone calls for candidates and other electoral activities on behalf of candidates. Spikes in outside spending normally occur during presidential years and then wane in by-elections. Until this year.
CRP tallies of outside spending show it surging in 2010 to nearly $300 million, a level equal to the heavily financed presidential election of 2008. In a reversal of 2008, Conservative concerns outspent Liberal ones by nearly two to one. Much of the Conservative money, some $32 million, was funneled through Chambers of Commerce in support of Republican candidates. Who did this spending is still unknown, as contributors evaded or delayed disclosure of their contributions.
One race that attracted serious money was the hotly contested Colorado Senate race in which Democrat Michael Bennet squeaked by Republican Ken Buck by less than 1% of the vote. Bennet spent more than $10 million on the race and received more than $1 million from a Democratic Party PAC. The outside spending was equally remarkable. Nearly $6 million was spent on advertisements opposing Bennet and another $2.4 million to support Buck. The total spending in this race amounted to around $34 million, a figure equal to the monthly GDP of Caribbean island-nation of Dominica.
Unions: The Definition of Insanity
Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity is useful when evaluating the role of unions in elections. Einstein understood insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." If you think of the trade unions as people, they are in serious need of mental counseling. They keep on doing the same thing, supporting the Democrats, with the same results, working people get screwed. This time, the strategy of the union leadership was to do this same thing again, but on a much grander scale.
Union leaders took advantage of the new rules by avoiding the annoying formality of setting up a separate fund for campaign donations. This year they spent directly from member’s dues. And, boy did they spend. The Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees alone spent about $37 million in outside spending on electoral races. Union money flowed throughout the country with little affect on policy proposals – the Democrats are still firmly committed to budget cutting or in Washington-speak “restructuring entitlements.”
The folly of union electoral politics was most clearly on display in the race for Governor in New York State. Here, Democratic candidate Andrew Cuomo left the heavily union-financed Working Families Party (WFP) twisting in the wind for weeks. The WFP offered their endorsement, but Cuomo refused, thereby putting the group’s ballot line in jeopardy. Cuomo eventually relented, but forced WFP officials to sign off on his proposals to cut the state budget – including cutbacks on unionized public workers! With the WFP politically neutered, Cuomo went on an embarrassing media offensive against public employees unions targeting them for concessions. Though the WFP kept its ballot access, it sold its soul and with it the last progressive cover for the trade union’s suicidal Democratic Party insider strategy.
Unintended Consequences
Things did not work out exactly as planned on Tuesday. Though big-moneyed interests did manage to shape some outcomes, the trend toward self-financed mega-rich candidates took a hit. This is not entirely negative as long as the inane notion that fueled it - that these candidates were too rich to give in to special interests – dies along with it.
The CRP reports that only 1/5 of the 58 Federal level candidates who contributed at least $500,000 to their own campaigns achieved victory. The rest faced spectacularly expensive defeats. The poster-child for this reversal was Republican Senate Candidate in Connecticut Linda McMahon. McMahon coughed up more than $46 million in profits from her wrestling empire yet still came up empty.
While self-financed narcissists were going down in flames, there were also some small signs of grassroots resistance. In New York, thousands of disaffected progressives and independents found their way to Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins. Hawkins’ vote total of more than 57,000 surpassed previous Green efforts and secured permanent ballot access for the party. Simultaneously, in Ohio, Socialist Party USA candidate for Senate Dan LaBotz captured the attention of more than 27,000 voters. Though LaBotz and the Socialists were practically starting from scratch in the state, they managed to present socialist politics in a manner that drew some amount of attention. Both Hawkins and LaBotz bucked the money trends as they ran their campaigns on the cheap and got the most out of small individual contributions.
Where is Everybody?
Despite all the money spent. Despite all the attack commercials. Despite the unrelenting reports on 24/7 political news channels, the American people still did not turn out to vote. The United States Election Project reports that the average turn out was around 41%. Heavily contested races peaked out just above 50% while other states hovered around the high 30’s. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that turnout among African-American voters was far lower than the 2008 Presidential election. Overall, for the entire country, people just stayed home.
The explanation for all this is exceedingly simple. Save the moralistic homilies about the duty of people to vote. The American people get at least one part of the problem. There are no significant choices offered at the ballot box. There is a basic agreement between the Democrats and Republicans over issues ranging from budget cuts, to free trade, to military strategy and expenditures. No amount of well-financed public relations can effectively dress up this agreement as difference. The American voters know this, so they stay home.
The next step, of course, is to build that alternative. This process is likely to take place primarily outside of the electoral arena. With the Obama Deficit Commission preparing to issue a report in December that is widely expected to propose dramatic cutbacks in public programs such as Social Security and Medicare, there will be plenty of issues to organize around. Protest politics will come back to the US. Whether this reappearance will be represented in the electoral arena remains to be seen. Certainly, thanks to the Supreme Court decision on corporations, there will be powerful interests lining up to prevent such manifestations.
***
Billy Wharton is a writer and activist whose articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the NYC Indypendent, Spectrezine and In These Times. He can be reached at whartonbilly@gmail.com
by Jewish Voice for Peace -
Two days ago at 11:30 in the morning in New Orleans, more than 12 young, proud Jews with Jewish Voice for Peace gave voice to the disillusionment of a generation. They loudly named the unnameable in the Jewish community-Israel’s immoral violations of human rights of Palestinians and much of the Jewish institutional world’s active support of those violations.
And they did it in front of 3,000 Jewish leaders from across America -- and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu himself.
If there was ever a moment where courage and moral strength was required, this was it, each person carrying in him or herself the inspiration of Palestinian friends who risk much worse to make their claim to peace and justice.
Here's what the young Jews, many of them Israeli-American, said:
We care deeply about our history, our families, our spiritual lives and the lessons we learned from our elders about the Jewish values of justice and healing. And we refuse to remain silent about the Israeli settlements, the Occupation, the silencing of dissent, the loyalty oath, the siege of Gaza. Israel's actions and institutional Jewish support for them are making Israel a pariah and turning us away from the Jewish world we seek to claim and embrace.
The Executive Director of Pacifica Radio today dismissed the entire staff of the KPFA Morning Show–Aimee Allison, Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Laura Prives, and Esther Manilla–and ordered tomorrow’s program to be taken off the air, according to the KPFA News. John Hamilton’s abbreviated report is below. | SEE ALSO Brian Edwards-Tiekert’s report | David Bacon’s report | Esther Manilla interview on KPFA News | Aaron Glantz on Huffington Post
The move by Arlene Engelhardt casts into doubt the future of KPFA’s most popular locally produced program—as well as the station’s single biggest source of fund raising revenue.
Morning Show producer Esther Manilla is a shop steward with the KPFA staff union, CWA Local 9415. She says the staff of the KPFA Morning Show was told by KPFA’s interim general manager that their program tomorrow would be replaced by syndicated content from Pacifica station KPFK.
The layoffs came in spite of a proposal by the union representing KPFA’s paid staff for a “sustainable budget” that supporters say would have dramatically scaled back cuts to programs and staff at KPFA.
On Friday, the union filed an Unfair Labor Practices charge with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing Pacifica management of unlawfully failing to consider the alternative to cuts.
KPFAworker.org is encouraging listeners to voice their feelings to Arlene Engelhardt. Her office number is (510) 849-2590
***
KPFA’s union has filed an Unfair Labor Practices charge with the National Labor Relations Board against the station’s parent organization Pacifica. The union accuses Pacifica management of violating its obligation to bargain in good faith. Pacifica appears poised to cut roughly a quarter of the station’s union workers, including staff on KPFA’s Morning Show, Against the Grain, Hard Knock Radio, and the Evening News, as well as other vital positions.
Pacifica’s executive director, Arlene Engelhardt, has rejected all proposed alternative cost-savings measures that have won the backing of the union, KPFA’s Local Station Board, and KPFA management. KPFA has already cut nearly a fifth of its workforce over the past year.
The text of the charge is as follows:
Violation of sections 8(a)(1) and (5) of the National Labor Relations Act.
Within the past six months, the Employer has violated its obligation to bargain with the Union in good faith in various respects including the following:
1. The Employer has failed and refused to honor an agreement that it reached with Union negotiations over the payment of medical benefits for employee who are eligible for Medicare. The Employer reached an agreement with the Union to permit Medicare-eligible employees to collect Medicare payments and to supplement those payments with medical benefits payable by the Employer. Despite this agreement, the Employer has refused to honor its commitment to pay the supplemental medical benefits.
2. The Employer has failed and refused to comply with its obligation to meet and bargain with the Union over financial alternatives to employee layoffs prior to implementing any such layoffs. Although the Employer has permitted the Union to present proposals of such financial alternatives, the Employer never gave any meaningful consideration to those alternatives and never engaged in negotiations with the Union over them. Rather, it simply dismissed those alternatives out of hand.
3. The Employer has permitted the Pacifica National Board to dictate and interfere with local labor-management issues in direct contravention of the collective bargaining agreement’s delegation of such authority to the Employer’s Executive Director. All of the above conduct is designed to interfere, and has interfered, with the Union’s ability to represent its members. This conduct cannot be effectively addressed by means of the grievance process, because the Employer will not recognize its obligation to bargain with the Union in good faith.
from KPFA Worker
Please listen to an episode of the morning show that deals with the layoffs:
by Ramor Ryan
Radical sociologist and anti-capitalist writer John Holloway's latest work Crack Capitalism (Pluto Press 2010) continues to explore the fundamental themes of how best to combat capitalism and change the world anew. Following on from his widely read and contentiously debated book Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today (Pluto Press 2002), Crack Capitalism explores the key question - what now is to be done? Upside Down World's Ramor Ryan talks to John Holloway in Mexico about social movements in Latin America and the ever-present potential for revolutionary change.
Ramor Ryan: Your previous book, Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today quickly became one of the quintessential texts of the new anti-Capitalist milieu. In it you contend that the possibility of revolution resides not in the seizure of state apparatuses, but in day-to-day acts of abject refusal of capitalist society, and ask how we can reformulate our understanding of revolution as the struggle against power, not for power. Ultimately, you assert that revolution today must be understood as a question, not as an answer. How do you build on this thesis in your latest work Crack Capitalism?
John Holloway: To my delight, Change the World stirred up a lot of discussion, both horrified criticism and cries of delight. But the reaction that made most impact on me was the one that said “Great, we know you’re right, we don’t want to take power, we don’t want to enter into the dirty logic of political parties, but then what on earth do we do?” In the new book I propose an answer – crack capitalism, create cracks in capitalist domination in as many ways as possible and let them expand and multiply and flow together. But of course it’s an answer that is really a question: still the question is how do we do it and do these cracks have any chance of survival? The important thing is to look around and see where we are already, to see the millions and millions of different ways in which people are already creating cracks, breaking with the logic of capital and creating spaces or moments in which different social relations prevail. The
Zapatistas are the most obvious example, or the movement in Argentina in 2001/2002 or the MST in Brazil, but there are millions of examples of people just walking in the opposite direction, against the stream, individually or collectively. So many dignities. What the book tries to do is think from those many dignities, to think how we can understand them as the starting point for revolutionary change.
RR: You focus on social movements, not political parties or political leaders, as the place where the answers will emerge to the question of what a revolution will look like today. You have asserted that "At the heart of the social movements of recent years, at least in their more radical variants, is a drive against the logic of capitalist society." Can you elaborate on this idea with particular focus on social movements in Latin America?
JH: Yes, I think there is an almost universal and highly contradictory drive against the dynamic of capitalism. Anti-capitalism is the most common thing in the world, though people do not necessarily think of it in those terms. The problem with political parties is that they channel anti-capitalist anger back into a capitalist form, the form of the state. I think it is important to give this anti-capitalist anger an anti-capitalist form of organisation, a form of organisation that helps people to express their anger and their desires, that is based on the mutual recognition of people’s dignity. This is an extremely important tradition in the anti-capitalist movement, from the Paris Commune, the soviets in Russia, the anarchist councils in Spain, the asambleas barriales in Argentina, the communal councils of the Zapatistas with their mandar obedeciendo, the cabildos in Bolivia, and so on. When the organisation gets turned towards the state, as in the
case of Bolivia or Venezuela or Cuba, it is not that the revolutionary push just disappears, but it is difficult to maintain the momentum, simply because the state is a form of organisation that was constructed to subordinate social conflict to the dynamic of capital, it is a form of organisation that separates leaders from led, and that excludes people. The state may be the adequate form for bringing about change on behalf of the people, but it cannot be the organisational form of change by the people, and that is what a real break with capitalism requires.
RR: Born in Ireland and raised in Scotland, you have lived in Latin America for the last 19 years, based in Mexico. How has the lived-experience of Latin America impacted your work?
JH: It’s hard to know. I moved to Mexico three years before the Zapatista uprising and I think that for me, as for many others, the uprising was like a flash of lightning that made things fall into place, that gave a new sense and force to what I had been feeling and thinking already. It was the great Zapatista announcement that here was a new way of organising against capitalism, of talking against capitalism, a new grammar of anti-capitalist revolution. And then the argentinazo of 2001/2002 was enormously important in being a sort of urban zapatismo. And of course the constant interaction with colleagues and students who are immersed in memories of revolutionary struggle and in trying to find new ways forward. It is often horrifying, but always an extremely stimulating place to live and think.
RR: Your work has spawned considerable debate in Latin America, particularly irking supporters of the regional left-leaning governments (for example, Chavez in Venezuela , Evo Morales in Bolivia or the FMLN backed government in El Salvador). They argue that by taking political power they are more effectively 'changing the world'. Do you think there is a conflict of interest between social movements
and political parties? Is the electoral victory of left parties impacting negatively on the grassroots social movements?
JH: I’m all I favour of combining with people and going together as far as we can. I certainly don’t think we should start off with definitions and exclusions and “we’re not going to work with them because they’re members of a political party”. Left-wing parties include all sorts of people who are there because they genuinely want to change things. And on the whole (though not always) I think it’s probably better for the left to win elections (I would rather have Chávez or Evo or Dilma or Christina Kirchner to the right wing alternatives, and I think AMLO would have been less disastrous than Calderón here in Mexico).
That said, that is not our politics, that is not where important anti-capitalist change is going to come. There are just too many forces that pull governments back in to the logic of capitalist accumulation and that means that their interests are opposed to ours. The real issue is that progressive governments are progressive governments and we, on the other hand, are the left that dare not speak its name but must and are beginning to: we are the anti-progressive left. Not of course in the sense of being against change or the emancipation of social creativity, but in the sense of being opposed to the destructive Progress that is at the core of capitalism. Nearly all the great struggles of recent years, perhaps especially here in Latin America, have been against
Progress – the extension of the línea 12 of the Metro in Mexico City, the construction of the paper mills in Uruguay, the building of Walmarts in Cuernavaca and Puebla and lots of other places, the mining of lithium in Bolivia, the destruction of the Amazon in Peru, and so on. Left-wing governments champion Progress, that is the problem.
RR: You have argued that the "social movements are not organized as parties: their aim is not to take state power." During the 2009 coup d'état in Honduras and more recently in Ecuador, social movements have come out strongly in support of the Presidents under attack. What do such mobilizations reveal about the relationship between social movements and state power?
JH: (You might add Kirchner’s death a few days ago, and what does that tell us?) Of course it’s a very complex relationship. Right-wing attacks on left-wing governments, as in the case of Honduras or Ecuador or the coup attempt in Venezuela a few years ago are very clearly attacks on the people those governments claim to (but do not) represent, so that it makes a lot of sense to mobilise to defend them, but not uncritically. The response of the CONAIE in Ecuador to the attack on Correa a few weeks ago seemed to me excellent, where they used their defence of the President to criticise his failure to really implement measures of change.
RR: The Zapatistas have served as one of the most poignant examples of a movement that created a thriving autonomous zone without forming a political party or seeking electoral mandate, existing outside and beyond the established political scenario and creating a 'crack' in the capitalist system. But the Mexican State appears to have managed to contain and wear-out the Zapatista initiative. Critics (from the left) argue that considering the failure of the Zapatista example, to effectively expand or multiply in Mexico 16 years after the initial uprising of '94, that this must this be now understood as an example of the impossibility of attempting to build a revolution without deposing the existing state power. Could you comment on this?
JH: I don’t think the Mexican state has outworn the Zapatista initiative. The appearance that that is the case is generated to some extent by the shift in direction of the Zapatista movement after the final failure of the San Andrés agreements a few years ago, the decision that the time had passed for making demands and that they just had to get on with building their own autonomous zone. But yes, the resonance of the movement is not as strong as it used to be and yes there is a failure to expand and multiply. I think this can be explained in many ways – the growth of a climate of fear in Mexico, the impact of the narcos and the growing militarization of the country, the ebb of the global anti-capitalist movement for the moment. I don’t see taking state power as being an answer, for all the old reasons, but that does not mean that the idea of changing the world without taking power, or cracking capitalism, gives us easy answers either. I suspect
that there may be a spread of people, collectively and individually, just getting on with things, working on their own projects of change, of alternative living (by choice or necessity) especially in the face of the current crisis. But precisely because these movements are subterranean, it is hard to be sure. The question you ask is certainly not to be closed by an easy answer. Preguntando caminamos – I don’t think we have any choice.
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Ramor Ryan is a Chiapas-based Irish writer, and author of Clandestines: the Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile (AK Press 2006). His next book, Zapatista Spring, will be published by AK Press in Spring 2011.
from Upside Down World
